An economic earthquake is hitting California today, and it’s not San Andreas’s fault. A highly contentious law takes effect that raises the minimum wage for most fast-food workers in the state to $20 per hour, a 25% increase over the existing $16 minimum wage.

Advocates say the law will raise the living standards of hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers, many of whom are Black and Latino. But critics argue it will lead to higher prices for consumers, cause job losses, and force small businesses to close. McDonald’s, Chipotle, and Jack in the Box are among the chains that have already said they’ll have to raise menu prices because of the added labor costs.

The details:

• The law applies to fast-food companies with at least 60 locations nationwide but excludes smaller fast-food operations in grocery stores and other venues.
• Despite reports earlier this year, Panera won’t be exempted.

Arguments for the minimum wage increase

Proponents say the pay hike is a necessary make-good for exploited employees who helped keep America fed during the pandemic but weren’t sufficiently compensated for their work.

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has also pushed back on the idea that fast-food workers are primarily teenagers looking for extra cash, saying that many adults rely on these jobs to support their families. As of 2021, the typical US fast-food worker is 26.4 years old and female, according to market research firm Datawheel.

Critics say in with the minimum wage, N-out for jobs

Restaurant owners say the law will saddle them with hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra labor costs per year—which they can’t absorb without hiking prices for customers, cutting jobs, or slashing employee hours.

The job cuts are already here. A large Pizza Hut franchisee in California is laying off more than 1,000 delivery drivers this year, citing the minimum wage increase.

Looking ahead…expect more robots. To trim costs, restaurants will likely ramp up their automation efforts by replacing humans with kiosks for taking orders. And Chipotle has already begun testing the “Autocado,” a guacamole-making robot.—DL

Quick bio lesson: Your body makes a hormone called GLP-1. This savvy little hormone helps your body regulate cravings and appetite—but it can decrease with age and/or lifestyle.

Plot twist! You can boost this hormone naturally with the GLP-1 Probiotic from Pendulum.*

Formulated by PhD scientists from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Berkeley, and Stanford, GLP-1 Probiotic helps you take control of your metabolic health and maintain a healthy weight.

Feel the difference that enhanced GLP-1 production can make. Brew readers get 20% off with the code MORNINGBREW on their first month of GLP-1 Probiotic or any Pendulum membership.

Cleanup of the Francis Scott Key Bridge gets underway. The long and complex process of clearing the collapsed bridge in Baltimore has begun, as what officials called one of the largest cranes on the Eastern Seaboard arrived on the scene. Demolition crews were on hand to cut the bridge into smaller, more manageable pieces, which will allow cranes to hoist the wreckage from the water. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore called the collapse a “national economic catastrophe” that will impact everyone from farmers in Kentucky to auto dealers in Ohio. There remains no timeline for reopening the Port of Baltimore, which handled more than $80 billion in imports and exports last year.

73 million customers affected by AT&T data leak. The communications giant said that 7.6 million current customers and 65.4 million former customers had their personal information leaked to the dark web approximately two weeks ago, forcing the company to reset the passcodes of current customers. The leak comes three years after a hacker claimed to have breached the company’s system and acquired the records of 73 million customers. AT&T reported that the leaked info was from 2019 and earlier and included names, addresses, phone numbers, and Social Security numbers. The company said it’s conducting an investigation and there was no evidence that its system was breached.

Erdogan suffers surprise rebuke in Turkish elections. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was given a failing grade by voters, who, as of last night, seemed poised to elect opposition mayors in cities across the country, including the capital and economic center, Istanbul. The Turkish economy is being bludgeoned by hyperinflation (hovering just under 70% annually), and Erdogan only recently permitted the central bank to hike its benchmark interest rate to 50% to get price increases under control. Voters appear to be blaming his policies for their deteriorating living conditions.

When it was launched on April 1, 2004, Gmail offered an entire gigabyte of storage, an unbelievable amount compared to other email providers at the time. That, along with Google’s reputation for pranks, had many people thinking Gmail was another April Fools’ gag.

Gmail accounts were initially invite-only and so coveted that they were selling for up to $250 on eBay. Two decades later, Gmail has an estimated 1.8 billion users, or approximately one user for every email in your archive. And that’s what made Gmail so innovative when it launched—you can seemingly hang on to emails forever.

In its quirky press release from 2004, Google laid out how it would revolutionize the email game.

• Storage: The 1 GB allowed users to hang on to ~13,500 emails. At the time, Yahoo and Hotmail maxed out at about 60 emails.
• Search: The idea that you could find an old email instantly is taken for granted now, but it was mind-blowing back then.
• Speed: Threading conversations saved time previously spent bouncing among multiple emails.

What does the future hold? Despite messaging apps like Slack dominating work communications, Gmail doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. The service rolled out AI tools that can help draft emails, search your archive, and improve security.—DL

Your credit card points are in danger . …of being lost forever, that is, thanks to the Credit Card Competition Act. Join The Points Guy in saying “no freaking way” to this Senate bill that could not only end rewards programs as we know them but also put your security at risk. Protect your points.

Iowa will face LSU in an Elite Eight showdown: One year after LSU’s Angel Reese got the better of Iowa’s Caitlin Clark in the national title game, women’s college basketball’s two biggest stars will meet again tonight with a trip to the Final Four on the line. LSU’s victory over Iowa in the final last year drew 9.9 million viewers, the largest television audience ever for a women’s college basketball game. On the men’s side, the Final Four is set for Saturday: Defending champion UConn will take on Alabama, while Purdue will face beloved underdog NC State.

Disney’s bitter proxy fight reaches its conclusion: It won’t be the happiest place on Earth, but some people will walk away from it in a better mood: At Disney’s annual meeting on Wednesday, shareholders will elect a 12-person board. It’ll mark the end of a monthslong corporate battle royale pitting the competing visions of CEO Bob Iger and hedge fund billionaire Nelson Peltz to breathe life into Disney’s stagnant stock price.

Say goodbye to Google Podcasts: If you’re an avid listener of Morning Brew Daily and Google Podcasts is your platform of choice, you’ll have to migrate over to YouTube Music. Users of the app that’s been downloaded more than 500 million times have until Tuesday to make the switch, the latest move by Google to organize its audio services fully under the YouTube umbrella. If you need help with the move, get some tips here.

Everything else…

• Las Vegas’s Tropicana hotel will close Tuesday to make way for an MLB baseball stadium. It opened in 1957.
• The jobs report for March drops Friday.
• Dev Patel’s thriller, Monkey Man, hits theaters on Friday.
• It’s understandable if you are disgruntled about this: The series finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm will air on Sunday night.

Stat: In further proof of Rebecca Black’s enduring genius, everyone is getting down on Fridays…by leaving work on the earlier side. The average employee now clocks out of work on Friday at 4:03pm, a full hour earlier than they did in 2021, according to a study of 75,000 North American workers by analytics firm ActivTrak. While Fridays have always been a day for casual fits at the office, the rise of WFH has empowered remote employees to log off early on a slow Friday afternoon. And bosses don’t seem to be putting much effort into stopping them, per the WSJ.

Quote: “Let me stop you right here.”

In a clip that’s gone megaviral, Guyana President Irfaan Ali interrupted a question from BBC journalist Stephen Sackur around concerns that the South American country’s massive oil reserves would accelerate climate change. “Do you know that Guyana has a forest…that is the size of England and Scotland combined? A forest that stores 19.5 gigatons of carbon? A forest that we have kept alive?” Ali asked. Offshore oil discoveries over the past decade have been transformative for Guyana, which has been the fastest-growing economy in the world for the past two years.

Read: The story about LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey that she called a “hit piece” before it was published. (Washington Post)