The fraud trial of Trevor Milton, the founder and former CEO of electric truck company Nikola Motors, began yesterday with jury selection. Milton, who pleaded not guilty in the case, stands accused of lying about his company’s progress in developing electric vehicles, leading to huge losses for investors.

The case—a shoo-in for Hulu’s next ripped-from-the-headlines original that everyone at work except you is watching—is seen as a cautionary tale of buying into the hype around companies before they deliver a single product.

So how did Nikola go from the third-largest auto company in the US in 2020 with a $33 billion market value to just a $2.3 billion market value as of yesterday with an indicted founder?

A hype-y road

Milton founded Nikola in 2015, capitalizing on investor fervor around EVs, particularly those made by Elon Musk’s Tesla. In June 2020, the company went public via a SPAC. Prosecutors claim that Milton misled investors by making false claims about Nikola’s ability to produce hydrogen and by releasing a now-infamous promotional video that showed a moving Nikola truck (not disclosed: the truck was merely rolling downhill in neutral).

Beyond simply drumming up name association with retail investor darling Tesla, Milton also deliberately targeted less knowledgeable investors by promoting Nikola’s stock on social media and in interviews, prosecutors allege.

And those retail investors ultimately bore the brunt of Nikola’s losses when its stock dropped 40% following Milton’s resignation in September 2020, days after an activist short seller published a scathing report calling the company an “intricate fraud built on dozens of lies.”

Where things stand now

In December, Nikola agreed to pay a $125 million penalty to settle an SEC fraud investigation. The company, which is still around and has begun production on a battery-powered semi-truck model, reported a net loss of $173 million in the second quarter.

Before stepping down, Milton purchased a $32.5 million Utah ranch and a jet, and since his resignation, he has sold more than $300 million in company stock. The main charge against him carries a maximum sentence of 25 years, though he’s likely to see much less time, if he’s even convicted.—MK

Biden goes for a “moonshot” on cancer. Referencing JFK’s famous speech on its 60th anniversary, President Biden said yesterday he’s laying out his “moonshot” for eradicating cancer. The plan involves a new department focused on health and biomedical research, executive orders beefing up domestic biomanufacturing, and a government group called the “Cancer Cabinet.” In hopeful news that might help move things along, drugmaker Amgen reported its new cancer drug was more effective in some areas than chemo for late-stage lung cancer patients.

Goldman Sachs to lay off hundreds. The bank plans to reinstate annual employee culls, which it had suspended during the pandemic, and may start cutting jobs as soon as next week. Typically, Goldman targets between 1% and 5% of its workforce for layoffs each year, and this round is expected to be at the lower end of the spectrum (current headcount: 47,000). The expected layoffs come after Goldman’s profits fell by nearly half in the second quarter compared to the year before as deal-making slowed.

15,000 nurses walked off the job in Minnesota. The nurses involved in the largest-ever private sector nursing strike in the US plan to stay out for three days to demand fixes for understaffing, as well as higher pay. Though this strike targets 13 hospitals in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area, facilities across the country had trouble finding enough nurses even before the pandemic. Unions in at least two other states have also authorized work stoppages in the past month.

US News & World Report released its yearly ranking of the best colleges in the country yesterday. But this year’s list comes amid a growing number of complaints about how the scores that mean a lot to wide-eyed future loan borrowers (and the administrators who will eventually ask them for money) are calculated.

Besides controversial criteria like incoming students’ SAT scores and the level of alumni donations, one of the main problems critics have with the list is that it attributes 20% of its ranking formula to what amounts to basically a popularity contest. US News sends a yearly survey to college admins asking them to rate other schools’ “academic quality.”

Even Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, although not referring to the US News list directly, said last month that college rankings that value reputation above things like economic mobility are “a joke.”

There’s even more drama this year…Columbia University dropped from No. 2 to No. 18 because it didn’t submit any data while it investigated a math professor’s claims that the school might be fudging some numbers. On Friday, the university admitted to the fudging.

Final fun fact: 19 of the top 20 schools on this year’s list cost $55,000+ per year to attend.—MM

The Starbucks customer loyalty program inspires more devotion than the Mocha Joe’s punch card that always gets lost in your wallet. Now the coffee chain is trying to spark even more loyalty by taking its app-based program to the next technological level with NFTs.

The company unveiled its Starbucks Odyssey program yesterday, a platform using Polygon, an Ethereum network, that coffee drinkers can log into with their existing program credentials to play games or take challenges to earn non-fungible tokens. They’ll also be available for purchase via credit card, no crypto necessary.

These NFTs, called “journey stamps,” will unlock rewards for users that go beyond the typical free coffee, like events or trips.

Customers can join a waitlist now, but only time will tell whether people will be clambering for coffee-themed digital art. The project is a relatively recent one—an exec told TechCrunch it’s only been in the works for six months, but in that time the market for NFTs has changed drastically. Trading volume at OpenSea, the most popular NFT marketplace, plunged 99% from early May to late August, per Fortune.

Zoom out: The Web3 push is one of many big changes coming to Starbucks. A new leader will succeed interim CEO Howard Schultz, but not before Schultz lays out a new strategy at today’s investor day that’s aimed at boosting efficiency.—AR

Stat: People spend 17.6 million hours a day watching Instagram Reels, just a fraction of the 197.8 million hours users waste daily on TikTok, according to an internal Meta document viewed by the Wall Street Journal. While Reels might seem inescapable in your feed, engagement is trending down, dropping 13.6% in August from the month before, the document showed.

Quote: “Nothing can justify the persistence of this fundamental abuse of human rights.”

The director-general of the UN’s labor standards agency yesterday called for an “all-hands-on-deck approach” to combating modern slavery after releasing a report that found 50 million people were living in modern slavery—28 million in forced labor and 22 million in forced marriages in 2021. That’s 10 million more than in 2016.

Read: Johnson & Johnson and a new war on consumer protection. (The New Yorker)

Taking back texts: A complete guide to Apple’s new operating system, which lets you personalize your lock screen and a lot more.

Sleight of hand: Watch the reigning world champion of card magic (a real title) do his thing.

Interesting pod alert: After years on a personal odyssey, journalist Lauren Ober found out she was autistic. The Loudest Girl in the World shares Lauren’s journey once she was diagnosed. Listen now.

Brew Mini: If you know what kind of car James Bond drives, you’re more than 10% of the way to completing today’s Mini. Solve it here.

Tagline trivia

There’s nothing cringier than a movie tagline. We’ll give you the tagline for a film, and you have to name the film.

1. “Midnight never strikes when you’re in love.”
2. “Work sucks.”
3. “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.”
4. “The longer you wait, the harder it gets.”
5. “A comedy of trial and error.”

Saving at any point can be a challenge. Saving during an economic downturn? Mission impossible. But Anish Mitra uses his knowledge from 10 years on Wall Street to teach you how saving amid slowing economic growth doesn't have to be difficult. Watch here.

Check out more from the Brew:

On Business Casual: Nora chats with Alex Ma, the CEO and co-founder of Poparazzi, an app that allows you to build your friends’ profile pages instead of your own. Listen or watch here.

Ready to jumpstart your career but don’t know where to start? We’ve got you covered. Take our short quiz and find out which Morning Brew Accelerator is right for you.

1. Cinderella

2. Office Space

3. The Social Network

4. The 40-Year-Old Virgin

5. My Cousin Vinny