What’s Happening

Agatha Christie mystery. This is a twenty five dollars Amazon gift card at one of the wealthiest enclaves in the country, and it has prompted a police report, accusations of foul play, bullying, a trial that's generated about fourteen hundred pages in testimony all over a twenty five dollars Amazon gift card. Sometimes the wealthy will fight over the silliest things, and we will bring that delicious story to you coming up next. In the meantime, what else is going on? Time for

what's happening? Wow? Well, this just crossed the Associated Press wire. President Trump saying twenty five percent tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports will start tomorrow. There had been some talk about maybe there's some waffling going on. Of course, fears of a North American trade war now on the table. The Mexican president had said, all the phone lines are opening. We promised to beef up security when it comes to the spread of fetanyl across the border. What more do

you want? We're here, ready to listen. Apparently there have not been any further conversations, at least conversations that have resulted in Trump saying that the tariffs are off the table. The bulk of the drugs, as we reported last week to you here, comes from Mexico Canada. I believe apply accounts for maybe less than one percent. Maybe I don't know. Not the volume, certainly of the drugs that they say is the reason for these tariffs that come from Mexico.

So we'll stay on top of that and what that does to the markets and the futures as we move forward. Pope Francis, of course, remains in the news. The Vatican said tonight it's tonight there that Pope Francis had suffered two episodes of acute respiratory failure. He has been in the hospital for two weeks now. These two episodes of respiratory failure happened over the course of the day. They say they were caused by significant accumulation of endro endo

bronchial mucus and consequent bronco spasm. So this is the same kind of troubles he was having on Friday. Remember, he had pneumonia. It was discovered in both of his lungs. He was intubated and then he had mechanical ventilation, and then the ventilation was removed and now he's back on the ventilation. So that's where we're at, in that guarded condition. He's eighty eight years old. Long history of pulmonary troubles there, So that's where we stand with that Pope. In Germany,

we go. Vehicle is rammed into a crowd in Mannheim, Germany, killing at least two. This is their Christian carnival season, so you've got crowds gathered in cities across Germany, parades and the like. Witnesses say this incident did occur near one such event. The car ramming came on what Christian Germans Marcus Rose Monday. This is the height of their carnival season, which takes place before their Lent period begins

ash Wednesday. Miniature tear in the skies for you. Now, five passengers injured and severe turbulence on a United flight, forcing an emergency landing in Texas. This one was a United Airlines flight. I had to make an emergency landing in Waco last night. It hit severe turbulence that injured five passengers. I always get real nervous with turbulence, and my husband always leans in and says, remember, turbulence never bring down planes. It's true, they don't. They just scare

the hell out of you. On the way. SkyWest flight fifty six ninety, operating as United Express, took off from Springfield Branson in Missouri, was headed to George Bush in her Continental Airport and we don't know where the flight hit the rough air but minor injuries. Another reminder to keep that seatbelt on even when you're cruising altitude, because you never know when those turbulence might hit. Woman stung by a scorpion while getting her luggage at Boston's Logan.

Holy hell, if the baggage claim at Boston's Logan wasn't a situation enough, there's scorpions involved. It happened just before seven pm. We don't know what kind of condition she's in. She's forty, but oh my goodness, the venom from some species of scorpions can cause severe illness, affecting the heart, the nervous system, and other organs. However, most scorpion stings are not serious. They just caused pain and redness. Hope she got one of the latter scorpions to sting her.

We've got rain. It rained for about forty five seconds last night where I live. My husband's like, here comes the rain, like it's gonna last forty five seconds. It's a quick hitting storm. They're calling it. Several inches of snow the San Bernardino Mountains got. There is another storm that is set to arrive mid week, so running springs. They've already got the snowplows out there up there, I

should say. And they've got a winter Weather Advisory in effect for areas of San Bernardino in Riverside County until four pm. Bay area also getting a shillacking as well. From what I understand, we've got a person in a well. It's not a baby, so your memories of Baby Jessica are intact. But firefighters are trying to rescue a gas company worker fell into a well in Hesperia. This is a thirty to forty foot deep well fell when soil covering the old well collapsed. This was on Orange Street.

We don't know what's going on. We don't know how the rescue is going. We're too consumed with eyes on Jackie and Shadow. We are, as a people in southern California more concerned about Jackie in Shadow and the holes in their eggs than the man trapped in the well in Hysperia. I'm not judging us. I'm just saying it's notable. There was a street in bel Air where you could come across Hundi's just one hundred dollars bills everywhere, littered

across the street. Not just that, but designer handbags, burkins just littered everywhere. You can thank one of those residential burglaries for this loot that was just dumped along Milldale Drive. Break in happened about one am. Officers responded they did not find anybody, but they did find the all of the loot and just the cash. Who keeps cash just in their like people do that. They just keep cash,

not in a safe or anything. Maybe it was an inside job, maybe somebody knew where the cash was hidden or something like that. And then finally, Hulu has released a statement about why they screwed up yesterday technical difficulties. I guess they cut off the ending or something like that. But people were very much up in arms over this. They say. The first issue left an undisclosed number of subscribers unable to access the live stream shortly after the

show began. People eventually able to gain access to it. And then the second issue happened when the Hulu live stream suddenly ended for some viewers before Best Actress and Best Picture awards were announced. Apparently people lost their minds. It was like the Heidi game, but different. There was a story that resurfaced, and we'll get to it in just a second. That really shows how good the rich have it, how wonderful the wealthy have it when you

look at what they concern themselves with. The Wall Street Journal had this great article about a gift card that is rocking the Hampton's and all of the chaos it is caused. And the fact that so many people are so invested in a twenty five dollars gift card when they are made of money is fascinating. Speaking of money, though, I just wanted to update you on this. President Trump says, those twenty five percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada will start tomorrow. It was kind of in limbo.

Would there be negotiations, Would Mexico and Canada and Trump get on the phone, Would some sort of deal be made to where we could punt this down the road or just get rid of it entirely. Trump announced the tariffs at the White House today. You said they are to force our neighbors Canada and Mexico to step up

their fight against fentanyl trafficking into the US. He provided a one month delay in February as both countries promised concessions, but he said today that there was no room left for Mexico or for Canada to avoid the steep new tariffs. Don't really know what he wants in this. I suppose the answer is somewhere in the weeds of It's not

just about the fentanyl, is it. The US stock markets, by the way, moved sharply lower after the comments were made public within the houries that he would also add on another ten percent tariff on goods from China on top of the initial ten percent he put in place last month. So you better believe we will have all of the impact of this coming up tomorrow when those tariffs do kick in, and their effect on Wall Street and what it means moving forward, and where we can

feel the pain if any as this continues. So back to the Hampton's here, the Hampton's by Way, beautiful area. I'm more of a West Coast, best coast person. I went to Cape Cod once was not impressed. Beautiful for that kind of coastal environment, I guess. But I'm a Southern California beach person. I feel that way Northern California versus Southern California too. Southern California coast, best coast. But I may be saying this town wrong because I've never

been there, and everyone will correct me. I'm sure. Is it Ammagansetts Amagansett? I don't know, but Amagansett. That's the way I'll say it for now until I'm corrected. Is a hamlet, It's like a postcard community. It's in the larger town of East Hampton. And call it a last glorious stretch of beach beast, that's funny, a last glorious stretch of beach before Long Island. Peter's out at Montauk.

This is a place where Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker have home homes as home to realtors and contractors and gas station owners evenly, who have been there for generations. You've got the blue collar, you've got the new money moving kind of a thing. One resident describes this as a divide between the nine one sevens and the six

three ones. The nine one sevens are the Manhattan mobile phone people, the people like Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, probably the people who moved from the city because it's beautiful nine one sevens. And the locals, which are the six three ones, the people like the gas station owners who have been there for generations. So there is a little bit of a divide between the locals and the transplants,

as you can imagine. The Amagan sit School Amaganseit School is the largest employer of the town and this school runs from pre kindergarten through sixth grade. The school has about one hundred and ten students but a budget of about eleven million dollars. And it turns out, we've learned through this investigation over a twenty five dollars gift card, the school has thirty eight surveillance cameras pre K through sixth grade thirty eight surveillance cameras. You're telling me there

are people with nothing to do there. That's exactly what I'm telling you. So here is the issue. It goes back to a Friday in December of twenty twenty three. It's Friday, December fifteenth, twenty twenty three, eight thirty seven am, when Principal Maria Dore emerges from the mail room at this local elementary school. Maria emerges from the mailroom and

in her hot little hands, she has a red envelope. Now, whether this red envelope and its contents were rightfully Maria's is a question that has convulsed this small town ever since. The steaks are very low. It is a twenty five dollars gift card. When you're talking about multimillionaires that populate this place, a red envelope that went missing, or by some accounts, was stolen from that mail room. The envelope contained a twenty five dollars Amazon gift card. This was

you know, it's December fifteenth. Parents are giving teachers, administrators things. It's a Christmas season expression of gratitude, simple as that. But it wasn't so simple. This little gift card has prompted a police report, accusations of foul play, bullying, and a disciplinary trial that has accounted for more than fourteen hundred pages in testimony. They've called more than a dozen

witnesses over a twenty five dollars gift card. The reporters who have followed this thing, God bless them, say the passages from this testimony read like an Agatha Christine mystery, except there is no gun at play. There's no dagger. It's just the stupid gift card. The arbiter who's overseeing this hearing process US has already charged twenty five thousand dollars to do just that, nearly a thousand times of

value of this missing Amazon gift card. And those fees, by the way, are just inching up and up and up. It's insane. According to Nika Nezgoda. Nika is an artist who splits her time with her husband and three kids between New York City and Amagansett. She says, who is it that says the fighting is so vicious because the stakes are so small? That was a political scientist by the Bye Wallace sayer. But yes, that's exactly right. She hit the nail on the head. The fighting has been vicious.

Her husband, Hank, was on the school board at one point. He says, well, you know the town's nickname dramagon Set, dramagon Set as opposed to ammagon Set. He says that it's not entirely a trivial matter. He said them more a details that come to light the more it seems there was something the farious happening at the school. Again, this is a pre k through sixth grade school, So this happened during the pre holiday rush when everything is just crazy in schools. You know this from going to

school of having kids maybe working in it. Everything's kind of hectic in the weeks leading up to the holidays and the weeks after. It's all a blur. So a parent presents Cassie Butts with two cards on that December fifteenth. Cassie Butts is the receptionist at the school. You know about receptionists, they know where all the bodies are buried. So Cassie gets these two cards. One is for herself and one is for a therapist that works at the school,

Chrissy Chrissy McElroy. So l's just call him. Cassie and Chrissy supposed to be the two recipients, Cassie the receptionist, Chrissy the therapist. Cassie testified yes. Cassie testified that she slipped Chrissy's read card into her mailbox that morning, but hours later, when Chrissy went to go retrieve it, apparently Cassie said, oh, so missus, so and so left you what it appears to be a gift card I put in your mailbox, and Chris goes, oh, thanks, whatever, she

goes to retrieve it, there's nothing there. What became of that, well, what became of that is that the Principle was placed on administrative leave, put through this ensuing disciplinary hearing. And these are usually private for a number of reasons. Number one probably because it's embarrassing for this stuff to see the light of day. But Principle Principal Maria demanded a public hearing. So we have all the dirty details of what happened with gift card gate and Maria's involvement with this.

We have all the details. The whole world has them, and they're worth some time. No of why we should spend no time on things like this and just how political school districts are. I mean, we don't need any more reminders, but this is case in point. We'll get into the gift card gate when we come back. Ammagansett in East Hampston, this is the biggest employer of Amaganset happens to be a pre K through six elementary school. There was a parent who gave the receptionist a couple

gift cards around the holidays. One was to go to the receptionist, another to the school therapist. Instead, the principal ended up with this gift card, and everybody cried thievery. They said, this principal stole this gift card. It's a twenty five dollars gift card to Amazon that they're all up in arms about. And of course it's bigger than

just the gift card. It's bigger than just the small circle of the principle, the therapist and the receptionist, because of course it is These disciplinary hearings that were called on the principle, as I mentioned, are usually private, but she demanded this all be in public so that everyone can see how ridiculous this is. Stephen Godstand, good Stand, excuse me, Stephen Goodstand is a lawyer representing the school district,

and he says, it's straightforward this case. There is timestamped footage from a camera outside the mailroom that shows Cassie, the receptionist, entering with a red envelope at eight twenty four am, then leaving empty handed seven minutes later. Then the principal pops in at about thirteen minutes later. She leaves with a pile of papers, including a red envelope.

Later that day, Cassie, the receptionist, encounters Maria, the principle, and tells her about the missing gift card, because remember, the therapist says, Oh, I never got that red gift card that you said was in my box. So the receptionist says to the principle, what's up. There's this missing card. I put it in the and Cassie testifies that the principal told her to keep quiet. Oh, just keep quiet about that. You don't want it to become a big deal. It's not a big deal. It's just a gift card.

And the lawyer representing the school district says, it's obvious that the principle was hoping this would die down because she knew that her sticky fingers would have been caught. Monday did come, but the mystery of the missing envelope only grew. He argued. By Tuesday, the interim superintendent was pulling video feeds in interviewing teachers because everyone had their hands in this. The assistant interim superintendent said, I did

the investigation. There is no other explanation as to where that gift card went or was there now if you ask the principal, she says she found that red envelope in her mailbox that morning, opened it the next day and found a gift card from a local gas station, and a family had given her a simil a similar

card a few months ago. She assumed it was from them, and she says that when Cassie mentioned the missing gift card from the therapist's mailbox, the reason she said, don't tell anyone was because she assumed the card would soon turn up. Let's not make a federal case out of it. Cassie, the principal, testified, it's a school, things go missing all

the time. Apparently, she discovered that Cassie was spreading rumors and confronted her by producing the shell card that she found the red envelope from the gas station the shell card in a recycling bin at home and presented it to that interim superintendent that tasked himself with doing the investigation. But he says that envelope wasn't signed, so it wasn't good enough for him. It wasn't a good enough piece

of evidence, so he pressured her to resign. It turns out this was all about the fact that the principle in this case wanted to run for superintendent, and that's where it all came from. They wanted to get rid of this woman because of somebody else running for superintendent, a guy by the name of Mike Rogers, a gym teacher, a volunteer firefighter twenty five years at that school, widely known around town as coach co president of the local

ten teachers union. And you don't have to say that this is a place close to New Jersey to know that the teachers' union or any union holds great weight. It turns out that as superintendent you get free use of a house adjacent to the school. You can imagine how valuable that would be in the Hamptons when you think about the cost of housing. It seems that everybody wanted the coach, Mike Rogers to be the superintendent. So they decided to torpedo maria Doors candidacy, and that's what

it comes down to. They wanted to paint her as a crook and a thief as she tried to climb the letter to be superintendent of this tiny school district in the Hamptons. One parent said, a lot does ride on this BS twenty five dollars gift card. It's definitely going to throw a huge wrench in s no matter which way it goes to which I say, guess which camp that parent is in? Is the in then nine one seven camp? Or is he in the local six

three ones? It's always fun when rich people fight, But it seems like it seems like Maria may have been in the rich people camp and coach was in the six six' three one, camp and the locals tried to take back their their position of. Power so maybe it was maybe it was all for, good but never heard such a fight over. It twenty five dollars gift card From.

Amazon those are ones that you kind of forget about sometimes, too like when your uncle gives you the twenty five dollars gift card To amazon At christmas and then you find it in your purse LIKE i just. Did that's. Fun it's a fun little. Find you've been listening to The gary And Shannon. Show you can always hear us live ON KFI am six forty nine am to one pm Every monday Through, friday and anytime on demand on The iHeartRadio app