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What to know before Trump appears in court · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Tuesday, April 4th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, why a supreme court election in Wisconsin could have major national implications, a March Madness record that you might not have realized was broken and the best scam artists in the animal kingdom.
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  But first, Donald Trump will be arraigned in New York this afternoon, where he's expected to plead not guilty. Today's the day we'll learn exactly what charges he faces, involving hush money paid to adult-film actor Stormy Daniels by Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. These two people are lead players in a complicated story that started years ago, so we thought you could use a refresher on the key facts.
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  Let's start with Daniels. She says in 2006, she had consensual sex with Trump, which he denies. He had married his third wife, Melania, the year before. Daniels says they met at a celebrity golf tournament, where Trump invited her to dinner. She later told "60 Minutes" that it turned out the meal was served in his hotel suite.
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  Stormy Daniels: I realized exactly what I'd gotten myself into. And I was like, "Ugh, here we go." [LAUGHS] And I just felt like maybe it was sort of… I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone's room alone. And I just heard the voice in my head, "Well, you put yourself in a bad situation and bad things happen, so you deserve this."
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  A "Wall Street Journal" investigation of the run-up to the 2016 election revealed that Michael Cohen secretly paid Daniels 130,000 dollars to keep quiet. That reporting helped trigger a federal investigation in 2018. Initially, Cohen said he paid Daniels using his own money, and Trump was not involved. But his story changed, and he testified on the Hill in 2019.
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  Michael Cohen: The last time I appeared before Congress, I came to protect Mr. Trump. Today, I am here to tell the truth about Mr. Trump.
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  This time, Cohen said Trump did know about the payment to Daniels, and he was done defending him.
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  Michael Cohen: The more people that follow Mr. Trump, as I did blindly, are going to suffer the same consequences that I'm suffering.
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  [END C-SPAN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Federal prosecutors argued the money amounted to illegal, unreported assistance to Trump's campaign. Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law and other charges. He was sentenced to three years in prison, which he mostly served in home confinement.
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  As we've mentioned before on this show, hush-money payments can be legal. But falsifying business records to cover them up, or paying them in a campaign context, can be against the law. Legal watchers expect charges along those lines for Trump and for Cohen to be a star witness.
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  Trump says he simply followed Cohen's legal advice and says investigations of him are motivated by politics. "Apple News" will have full coverage and analysis through the day of his court appearance and the charges.
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  Let's turn now to an election that's happening today in the critical swing state of Wisconsin that has major national implications. Voters there are choosing a justice for their state supreme court. If the candidate that Democrats support wins, it would flip the ideological balance of the court for the first time in 15 years. University of Wisconsin political science and law professor Howard Schweber talked to "Wisconsin Public Radio" about why it's such a big deal.
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  Howard Schweber: This election really does live up to its hype in the sense that the stakes are extraordinarily high across an extraordinarily broad range of issues.
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  [END WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Supreme court races in Wisconsin are officially nonpartisan, but many Democrats are supporting Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz. Republicans are backing former State Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly.
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  Whoever wins this election could be the deciding vote in an upcoming challenge to Wisconsin's abortion ban. It's a pre-Civil War law that was reinstated after Roe v. Wade was struck down last summer.
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  Gerrymandering is another top issue at stake here. Republican-drawn maps have helped conservatives hold power in the state for more than a decade. The state supreme court could also rule on legal challenges to election results, union rights, gun safety legislation and other hot-button issues.
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  The high stakes are pushing campaign spending to an all-time high for this kind of race. By one estimate, a total of 45 million dollars has been spent, triple the previous national record.
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  Men's college basketball has a new national champion. Here's the moment when UConn beat San Diego State.
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  [START NCAA ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  [CROWD CHEERING]
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  Announcer: Hurley and the Huskies have their dreams come true.
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  This is the fifth championship in the program's history. UConn won 76-59.
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  It was a lopsided victory to end March Madness. But this year's tournaments had a lot of close games and upsets. And it was also a record-breaking year for women's basketball TV ratings. LSU's win over Iowa in the championship game drew nearly 10 million viewers. That shattered the record for the most-watched women's college basketball game in history.
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  Demand to see the women play in person was way up this year, too. For the Final Four, average ticket prices for the women's games were around 100 dollars more than the men's matchups. "Wall Street Journal" sports reporter Rachel Bachman was in Dallas for the women's championship and described the energy on "NPR."
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  Rachel Bachman: Tickets being sold way over face value. Huge throngs of fans who drove hours to be there. In fact, Taylor Swift was also here in Dallas. And one ticket re-seller said that championship game tickets were going for more than the concert tickets. So, it had a very big-time feel.
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  Let's end with a story from "The New Yorker" about scam artists. Not the kind you might be expecting. As it turns out, the animal kingdom is full of scammers. From butterflies to snakes to fish, creatures are constantly conning each other to get any kind of survival edge they can.
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  There are basically two kinds of deception in the wild. One is when a creature takes advantage of a cognitive weakness in another species. That can include mimicking. For example, there is a butterfly that's evolved to have the same markings of a toxic butterfly species to avoid getting eaten. There's the other way around too: a snake whose tail looks like a wiggling worm, so it can attract a meal.
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  Then, there's just good old fashion lying. Like crows, which call out to alert each other when there's danger nearby. But a con-artist crow might send out a danger call as a tactic to keep others away from food that it found.
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  This piece has all kinds of creatures in it, including famous human scammers and liars like Frank Abagnale, you know, the "Catch Me If You Can" guy, and George Santos, the New York congressman facing multiple investigations, who's been caught in so many lies that we don't have time to list them all here.
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  If you're listening in the Apple News app right now, the animal kingdom scammers story is cued up to play for you next as a narrated article. So, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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