low-income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. oh we're ready. ♪ captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, february 13: the second impeachment trial of former president donald trump draws to an end with the u.s. senate voting for acquittal and in our signature segment, the debate over mandated hazard pay for workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic. next, on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the anderson family fund. bernard and denise schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family.

barbara hope zuckerberg. the leonard and norma klorfine foundation. the peter g. peterson and joan ganz cooney fund. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. >> for 25 years, consumer cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect. we offer a variety of no-contract plans, and our u.s.-based customer service team can help find one that fits you. to learn more, visit www.consumercellular.tv. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> sreenivasan: good evening

and thank you for joining us. the senate voted today to acquit former president donald trump on one article of impeachment. the charge was that he incited insurrection causing a mob to attack the u.s. capitol on january 6. >> the respondent, donald john trump, former president of the united states, is not guilty in the article of impeachment. >> sreenivasan: 57 senators voted gulty, and 43, not guilty. but two-thirds of the senate, 67 votes, was needed to convict. seven republicans joined the senate's 50 democrats in voting guilty. after the vote, senate minority leader mitch mcconnell said he voted not guilty in part because mr. trump is no longer in office but he strongly condemned the former president's words and actions on january 6. >> there's no question-- none-- that president trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. no question about it.

the people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and actions of their president. and having that belief was a >> sreenivasan: senate majority leader chuck schumer had harsh words for the 43 republicans who voted to acquit. >> look at what republicans have been forced to defend. look at what republicans have been chosen to forgive. >> sreenivasan: the impeachment trial was expected to go quickly to closing arguments, but within minutes of the 10:00 a.m. start, the house managers prosecuting the former president asked to call republican representative jaime herrera beutler as a witness. >> we believe we've proven our case. bu last night, congresswoman jaime herrera beutler of washington state issued a statement confirming that, in the middle of the insurrection, when house minority leader kevin mccarthy called the president to beg for help, president trump responded, and i quote, "well, kevin, i guess these people are morupset about the election than you are."

>> sreenivasan: the request set off a furious response from mr. trump's attorneys. >> i'm going to need at least over 100 depositions, not just one. the real issue is incitement. they put into their case over 100 witnesses-- people-- who have been charged with crimes by the federal government. and each one of those, they said that mr. trump was a co-conspirator with. co-conspirator with. that's not true! but i have the right to defend that. >> the motion is agreed to by a vote of 55 to 45. >> sreenivasan: then, voting 55 to 45-- five republicans joined all 50 democrats-- the senate approved calling witnesses, throwing the proceedings into a confusing delay and then an hours-long recess. on return, there was a deal. there would be no witnesses. the president's lawyers agreed to allow representative herrara

beutler's statement into the record. the house managers agreed not to call witnesses. and shortly before 1:00 p.m., up to four hours of closing arguments got underway. >> the cold hard truth of what happened on january 6 could happen again. i fear, like many of you do, that the violence we saw on that terrible day may be just the beginning. we've shown you the risks, the extremist groups who grow more emboldened every day. senators, this cannot be the beginning. it can't be the w normal. it has to be the end. and that decision is in your hands. >> the senate doesn't have to go

down this dark path of enmity and division. you do not have to indulge this impeachment lust, the dishonesty and hypocrisy. it's time to bring this unconstitutional impeachment theater to end. >> sreenivasan: former president trump issued a statement after the vote, thanking his lawyers and repeating his claim that the impeachment was “...yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country.” >> sreenivasan: for more analysis on today's impeachment hearing i spoke with ryan goodman, n.y.u. law professor and co-editor-in-chief of "just security," prioro the senate vote. >> ryan, any surprises by the vote? >> there were a couple of surprises for sure. the fact that we got to seven senate republicans is significant. going into this, most of us expected around five. the other very surprising

vote, but statement was from the senate minority leader, mitch mcconnell who voted to acquit. the statement in many respects, is even stronger in condemnation of president trump than the statement by -;#. and then mitch mcconnell kind of kurned it back on to the technicalities, and justified why he voted the y he did. do you think that leaves an opening for the september or house to come up with a joint resolution to prevent president donald trump from ever taking office again. i think mcconnell left the door open. there's even a line in his statement that appears to elude to potential criminal liability on the part of president trump. he says that the president is not free of concerns, and free of accountability. congress itself has a mechanism which is the 14th

amendment to bar an individual constitution, but has given aid and comfort to an insurrection to bar the person from serving in public office again. i think it does put that much more in play than we otherwise imagined before mitch mcconnell's statement. >> there was also a moment today where an hour and a half or two hours, we were unsure whether witnesses were going be called into the process. at the end, they were not. why did that matter? >> that was a strange set of events that took place this morning where we even had a resolution adopted by the septnator chamber for witnesses and then a quick reversal and standing down no witnesses would be called at all. that was aharp change in the

way in which the trial was hammed, because we could now be living in a universe in which there would be phase two of the impeachment trial, and the american public would have gotten the opportunity to hear live testimony of actual witnesses, and that didn't happen in the end. see at the end of the day, it ended up being what was expected, no witnesses, and dashed a lot of peoples' expectations, and people on the reverse side, and raised their concerns. it was a bizarre, topsy turvy >> was the entire exercise worth it in terms that the vote was almost pre-destined. we had a good idea we weren't going to get to the 66 senate threshold that was necessary toind the president guilty. were the last couple of weeks good for the country, for just

the democratic party? >> that's a great question. the way i see it is, it was very good for the country in that we got the record and the events put on trial, and we have a pretty powerful statement by the senate which is a strong bipartisan statement on the part of the senate that president trump is guiltyil as charged to inciting an insurrection in our country, and that will be understood now in history. and a third aspect, i believe, ú of the trial is that another way in which we can defeat the big lie, which is understood as a big lie, the idea that the election was stolen from president trump. that's a highly important part of education. that was presented by the house managers, and the president's lawyers did not try to contest that.

in fact, we now have important public statements from people like leader mcconnell saying that the big lie was just that, a big lie, a1

eric cortez is a food clerk at this ralph's grocery store in long beach. cortez has worked for ralph's, a large supermarket chain in southern california, for 14 years, and throughout the covid-19 crisis. >> from day one. i've been working since day one, throughout the pandemic. it's been rewarding in a sense, because, you know, at the end of the day, our customers rely on us. >> reporter: cortez, who lives with his father, antonio curtis, said there have been several covid-19 scares among co-workers. >> we did have three members who did come dowwith it. thank god, they did recover, but at the same time, i was worried

about, hey, you know, it's me and my 78-year-old dad. so i was just like, i don't want to bring home anything to him. >> reporter: like many large companies across the country, ralphs' parent company kroger gave workers a "hazard pay" raise of $2 an hour at the end of march, but stopped by mid-may, before the pandemic came into full swing. what was your reaction when you heard that they stopped the hazard pay? >> kind of like a slap in the face, because they were calling us heroes-- they actually called it "hero pay." so, if we are heroes, we should be rewarded accordingly. >> with that, we'll do a roll call vote. >> reporter: last month, the long beach city council, pointing to large chains not doing enough, passed a hazard pay ordinance of $4 per hour for grocery store employees. the law went into effect immediately for 120 days and targeted companies with more than 300 workers nationwide and more than 15 employees per store. in the weeks since the long beach ordinance went into effect, other city councils in california-- oakland,

montebello, san jose, los angeles, irvine, and seattle, washington-- have passed similar laws mandating temporary pay raises of $3 to $5 per hour for grocery workers. after the seattle law was adopted, traders joe's announced a $4 per hour "thank you premium," an increase from $2, for its stores nationwide. but, in long beach this month, kroger announced that two of its stores-- a ralphs and a food4less-- will begin to close in april. >> you can see... >> reporter: cortez and his coworkers received letters from the company, which cited the ordinance as part of the reason. >> "this is to advise you of our company's decision to close and permanently terminate the entirety of the operations where businesses for economireasons, including the economic cost mandated by the long beach ordinance requiring an increase in employee wages, $4 an hour." >> reporter: cortez and his union's leadership, the united

food and commercial workers, or u.f.c.w., view the closures as a rning to other cities considering hazard pay mandates. >> it was announced as a retaliatory action. >> reporter: andrea zinder is the president of u.f.c.w. local 324 in south los angeles and orange counties. >> now, these stores were making money. both of the stores that they've slated to close have had their sales increase at approximately 30% during the pandemic, versus the same period last year. our members are working harder than ever. they are out there taking risks, and then they get slapped in the face with notice that their stores are going to close. >> it sets off a series of unintended consequences. >> reporter: ron fong is president and c.e.o. of the california grocers association, which represents 3,000 retail grocery stores in the state, and has sued long beach, oakland and other cities where hazard pay

mandates were passed. >> it's really unprecedented, what the local city ordinances are asking us to do, and that's to enact a $4, or in oakland's case, a $5 per hour raise. we're going to have to pass on these new expenses on to customers. >> reporter: fong said a california grocers association commissioned study estimated that a $5 per hour hazard pay would increase a typical family- of-four's grocery bill by $400 a year. do you think that potentially a smaller hazard pay increase would have been tolerable in these circumstances? >> what we try to tell the city councils is that our grocery stores have been providing heroes pay or hazard pay at their own pace. $4 on an average wage amounts to about a 30% raise, which is unreasonable on any business. when you say, okay, your costs are going to go up 30%, that's

but in our own way, we've been doing $1 and $2. a lot of our regional chains are continuing to do that, and have not stopped. >> reporter: the u.f.c.w., which is the union that represents these workers, they characterize the closures as a retaliatory action and pointed to the profits of kroger over the past year as more than enough to cover these hazard pay raises. >> you know, i'm not going to speak to kroger and ralph's, because we're-- we're not owners and we don't know their real finances. i know they like to talk about the bigger parent company that has done so well. but those two stores, obviously, were not doing well enough where they could sustain a $4 increase per employ, and made the difficult choice to close. >> reporter: with his store slated to close in two months,

cortez is hoping he can be reassigned to another ralphs, but he still thinks hazard pay is necessary for all grocery workers. what sort of difference does that extra $4 an hour make for you? >> oh, it makes a big difference, you know, get ahead on the bills, a little more food in the house, just put a little bit more in your savings. and at the end of the day, it just shows me as a worker that we are appreciated for working so hard and risking our health and safety-- not just ours, but our families as well. >> sreenivasan: for more on hazard pay for workers on the front lines of t covid-19 pandemic, i recently spoke with molly kinder from the brookings institution. > so, grocery store workers are among the quintessential examples of essential workers who have been out on the covid-19 frontline throughout the pandemic. they are at rk of contracting covid and potentiallpassing it back to their family. and they earn very low wages typically. so, grocery workers on average

make about $11.50 an hour nationwide. >> sreenivasan: so when you look around the country, what are some cities doing to try to, well, make up for this? i mean, if they institute laws that try to make grocery store chains pay more, is it working? >> so, the reason i think that you're seeing this momtum on the west coast of city and county governments passing these mandates, requiring some of the large grocery chains to pay hazard pay is because, frankly, a lot of them are not voluntarily doing so on their own. so, despite the fact that at brookings, we documented that the major grocery chains have earned enormous profits during the pandemic, and largely because of the pandemic, they typically ended their hazard pay in the spring and summer. since then, the pandem has grown worse. we are still not yet at a place where grocery workers can go to work and not risk their lives

and their family's lives. and despite these big profits, they are not typically passing that extra wealton to their workers in the form of hazard pay. so, some city and county governments are stepping up to say, we're going toequire you to do so. >> sreenivasan: so what are companies, corporations that are profiting during the pandemic, what are they doing with that cash, if they're not passing it on to their workers? >> so, if you look at the top three grocery providers in the country-- wal-mart, kroger and albertsons-- overall, if you look at their profits in the first three quarters of 2020 compared to the previous year, they've almost doubled overall. so kroger, for instance, has doubled its profits. it's made an extra $1.3 billion. and this is even after paying all the costs for cleaning and safety and hazard pay. they made an extra $1.3 billion. and what's striking is they haven't given any hazard pay since may. what they have done with some of that profit is they have spent upwards of $1 billion repurchasing their stock.

>> sreenivasan: which makes it go up? >> right. and that is going to benefit their shareholders. it doesn't necessarily benefit the workers who are, every day, during their shifts, risking their health for very low wages. kroger, nationally, a typical cashier might make around $10 an hour. and the kroger workers i've interviewed have a sense that these kroger called us a hero, they initially offered us this $2 an hour hero pay, that ended in may. we know that their profits have been up a lot since the previous year. why are we not seeing some of that? so i think some of kroger's decisions in terms of not carrying on the hazard pay and seeing these big profits and choosing to prioritize shareholders is quite striking. >> sreenivasan: so is there any truth to, let's say it's not the kroger's or the amazons or the wal-mart, other grocery chains out there saying, you know what, if you require us to do this, then we're going to have to pass that cost on to customers because we don't have enough

money in the bank to do both. >> i think there's a really reasonable debate that can be had about what's the right level of hazard pay that strikes a balance between the company's profits and how much they can afford, which workers should be included in those mandates. i think some of those details are fair game for debate. i don't think it's a fair assessment to say that these large, big retail and grocery chains do not have resources to compensate their workers extra. that simply is just not verified in the data. and i think there is a question of what should profit look like in a pandemic, when it's enabled by work, very low-wage work, that is so risky. these companies went into the pandemic making profit, but those profit levels have gone up significantly. should we expect as a society that they're going to pass more of that to their workers? and if they choose nt to, is there a place for government to step in and say, "you need to"? >> sreenivasan: molly kinder of brookings, thanks so much.

>> thanks for having me. >> this is pbs newshour weekend, saturday. >> sreenivasan: protests in myanmar continued for the eighth day, with thousands of demonstrators taking to the streets in several cities. the military junta, which took control of the country on february first, announced changes in the laws protecting the privacy and security of its citizens. the new laws will allow for detainment longer than 24 hours and searches of private property without court orders. the junta also called on civil servants to end their boycott and return to work, saying" actions" could be taken against those who do not comply. the united nations human rights office said friday that 350 people have been arrested in the country since the coup began. thailand today, demonstrators gathered at a monument to democracy in bangkok to call for the repeal of a law against insulting the monarchy. the demonstrators draped the

monument in red cloth to symbolize the blood of fighters for democcy. >> ( translated ): our message is that no matter what, don't get in our way towards democracy and don't try to obstrt us holding activities at the democracy monument. >> sreenivasan: earlier this week, hundreds protested in response to the arrest of ur pro-democracy leaders who have been charged with insulting the monarchy. last year, mass protests took place calling for the prime mistero step down and calling for reforms to the monarchy. a police spokesperson said at least seven peopleere arrested when clashes broke out later in the day. mario draghi, the former president of the european central bank, was sworn in today as the new prime minister of italy. outgoing premier giuseppe conte handed over a small bell used to signal the beginning of cabinet meetings in a ceremony marking the handover of power. conte's governing coalition collapsed as he lost support for his handling of the covid-19 pandemic.

>> sreenivasan: that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. for the latest news updates, visit www.pbs.org/newshour. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. stay healthy, and have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the anderson family fund. bernard and denise schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family.

barbara hope zuckerberg. the leonard annorma klorfine foundation. the peter g. peterson and joan ganz cooney fund. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutuaof america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. additional support has been provided by: consumer cellular. and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. you're watching pbs.

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