The seasonal drink that made pumpkin spice a star is turning 20. And unlike the autumn days it celebrates, there seems to be no chill in customer demand. 

Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte goes on sale Thursday in the U.S. and Canada, as it does each year when the nights start getting longer and the fall winds gather. It’s the coffee giant’s most popular seasonal beverage, with hundreds of millions sold since its launch in 2003. And it has produced a huge — and growing — industry of imitators flecked with cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. 

In the year ending July 29, U.S. sales of pumpkin-flavored products reached $802.5 million, according to Nielsen. That’s up 42% from the same period in 2019. There are pumpkin spice Oreos, protein drinks, craft beers, cereals and even Spam. A search of “pumpkin spice” on Walmart’s website brings up more than 1,000 products. A thousand products that smell or taste like, well, pumpkin pie. 

For better — and, some might say, for worse — the phenomenon has moved beyond coffee shops and groceries and into the larger world. Great Wolf Lodge is featuring a Pumpkin Spice Suite at five of its resorts this fall, decked out with potpourri, pumpkin throw pillows and bottomless pumpkin spice lattes. 

It has also spawned a vocal group of detractors — and become an easy target for parodies. Comedian John Oliver once called pumpkin spice lattes “the coffee that tastes like a candle.” There’s a Facebook group called “I Hate Pumpkin Spice” and T-shirts with slogans like “Ain’t no pumpkin spice in my mug.” 

The haters, though, appear to be in the minority. Last year, Starbucks said sales of its pumpkin spice drinks — including newer offerings like Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew — were up 17% in the July-September period. And in a 2022 study of 20,000 Twitter and Instagram posts mentioning pumpkin spice, just 8% were negative, according to researchers at Montclair State University in New Jersey. 

Before the latte: what pumpkin spice was 

It wasn’t always this way. 

Canned pumpkin and pie spices were relegated to the baking aisle when Starbucks began experimenting with an autumn drink that would replicate the success of the Peppermint Mocha, which took the winter holidays by storm in 2002. Customer surveys suggested chocolate or caramel drinks, but Starbucks noticed that pumpkin scored high for “uniqueness.” That would turn out to be prescient. 

In the spring of 2003, a team gathered in a lab in Starbucks’ Seattle headquarters, bringing fall decorations to set the mood. They sipped espresso between bites of pumpkin pie, figuring out which spices most complemented the coffee. After three months, they offered taste tests; pumpkin spice beat out chocolate and caramel drinks. 

Starbucks tested the Pumpkin Spice Latte in 100 stores in Washington, D.C., and Vancouver, British Columbia, that fall. The company quickly realized it had a winner and rolled it out across the United States and Canada the following fall. And in 2015, a watershed: The company added real pumpkin to the recipe. 

These days, Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte has its own handle on X — formerly known as Twitter — with 82,000 followers, and a Facebook fan group called the Leaf Rakers Society with 43,000 members. And it has fans like Jon McBrine, who drinks black iced coffee for most of the year but eagerly awaits the latte’s return each fall. 

“I love the flavor and I love the subculture that has evolved from this huge marketing campaign,” says McBrine, a graphic designer and aspiring author who lives in the Dallas area. 

It’s hot through the end of October where he lives, so McBrine typically orders his with ice. But at least once a year, he gets a hot latte, savoring memories of the autumns of his childhood in Delaware. 

“It’s part of getting into the season,” he says. “It’s almost like a ritual, even if you’re just waiting in the drive-thru.” 

Pumpkin spice latte as sensory experience 

Jason Fischer, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies human perception through sight, sound and smell, says odor and flavor have a more direct route than other senses to the area of the brain that processes memories. 

That’s due to evolution; humans needed to remember which foods were safe to eat. But it means smells and memories are closely linked. 

Still, he said, people’s sense of smell can be malleable. In experiments, subjects have taken a sniff of something and described it in many different ways. But when they’re shown a label for that smell — say, “pumpkin spice” — their perceptions shift and their descriptions become more similar. 

“Odors and sights go with certain places, like the aroma of pine and the crunching of needles beneath your feet,” he says. “They’re associated with a certain kind of experience. And then marketing taps into that, and it’s a cue for a product.” 

Pumpkin spice doesn’t conjure happy memories for everyone. Kari-Jane Roze, who lives in Fredericton, Canada, loves many things about autumn, including back-to-school routines, changing leaves and hockey. But she’s not a fan of pumpkin pie or pumpkin bread — and she has a particular dislike for pumpkin spice lattes. 

“The artificial flavor is disgusting,” says Roze, who works at New Brunswick Community College. “The only thing I do not like about fall is seeing everyone obsess over PSLs. Makes me want to shut off social media for a month.” 

She won’t have to deal with those “PSLs” for long. The limited-time nature of the product is another thing that keeps customers hooked, marketing experts say. Last year, Starbucks’ holiday-themed drinks arrived on Nov. 3. And then, for devoted fans, the wait begins anew. 
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All 19 defendants in an election-fraud case in the Southeastern U.S. state of Georgia — including former President Donald Trump — reported to an Atlanta jail to be booked by police before a noon deadline on Friday.

After Trump’s appearance at the Fulton County Jail on Thursday evening — in which he posed for the first-ever mug shot of a former president — seven other defendants surrendered to police on Friday. Trump’s other co-defendants reported to the jail earlier in the week.

Court records show that all of the 19 defendants except one posted bond, agreed to the bail conditions set by court officials, and were allowed to leave the jail after being booked.

Harrison William Prescott Floyd, who is accused of harassing a Fulton County election worker, remained in jail after turning himself in on Thursday.

It was not clear whether Floyd was denied bail or was not able to come up with the money to secure his release.

Federal court records said Floyd, who is active with the group Black Voices for Trump, was also arrested three months ago on charges of aggressively confronting FBI agents who had served him with a grand jury subpoena.

Trump paid a $200,000 bond his lawyers negotiated earlier this week with Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis.

The former president spent about 20 minutes in the Atlanta jail Thursday evening to be booked on felony charges of racketeering and conspiracy linked to his alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 reelection loss in Georgia.

It was the fourth time that Trump had been arrested and booked in the past five months.

Before boarding his plane at Atlanta’s airport, Trump spoke briefly to reporters about his arrest.

“What has taken place here is a travesty of justice. We did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong, and everybody knows that,” Trump said. “What they’re doing is election interference.”

Trump is facing 91 charges across the four indictments for his alleged actions before, during and after his single-term presidency ended in early 2021.

He faces 13 charges in Georgia, where Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is expected to set arraignments for each of the defendants in the coming weeks. During an arraignment, the defendants typically appear in court for the first time and enter a plea of guilty or not guilty.

At least five of Trump’s co-defendants are trying to move their cases to federal court, instead of being tried in Georgia.

Of those wanting to keep their trials in Georgia, at least two defendants are requesting speedy trials.

Trump’s legal team has asked that Trump’s case be separated from any co-defendant who seeks a speedy trial. Trump’s lawyers have not yet proposed a date for the trial.

Regardless of when the trial in Atlanta starts, Trump is already facing weeks of criminal trials he would be obligated to appear at in the first half of 2024.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing and has said that the allegations leveled against him are a political witch hunt aimed at thwarting his 2024 campaign to reclaim the presidency.

Even with the array of charges he is facing, Trump is the leading contender for the Republican nomination to run for the presidency against the presumptive Democratic nominee, President Joe Biden.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The United Auto Workers (UAW) union said Friday members voted overwhelmingly in favor of authorizing a strike at three Detroit automakers if agreement is not reached before the current four-year contract expires on September 14.

The authorization was approved by 97% of voting members at General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, said UAW President Shawn Fain, who leads the union that represents about 150,000 workers.

Fain reiterated that the union did not plan to extend the deadline to get a new labor contract.

“The deadline is Sept. 14,” he said. “We have a lot of options that we are looking at but extension on the contract is not one of them.”

Separately, President Joe Biden, who met with Fain last month, told reporters in Nevada he is concerned about a potential UAW strike.

“I think that there should be a circumstance where jobs that are being displaced are replaced with new jobs” for UAW members “and the salaries should be commensurate.”

Some senators want national UAW agreements to cover jobs at battery joint ventures that currently pay less.

Fain said workers had made numerous concessions over the last two decades including giving up wage hikes, defined benefit pensions and post-retirement health care benefits.

“We’re fed up,” Fain said, listing a series of demands. “We’ve sat back for decades while these companies continue to just take and take and take from us.”

Fain has outlined an ambitious set of demands, including wage hikes of 46%, an end to the tiered wage system that pays new hires less than veterans, reinstating cost-of-living adjustments and restoring defined-benefit pension plans for new hires that the automakers ended in 2007. At Stellantis, just 30% of hourly U.S. workers are eligible for defined benefit pensions.

Fain said he expected the “Detroit Three,” as this cluster of automakers are known, to come to the bargaining table next week with counterproposals to the UAW demands. He said talks were “still going slow” after opening in July. Analysts estimate a more than 50% chance of a strike.

It was not clear how long it would take a strike to significantly reduce the Detroit Three’s inventories. Through July, Stellantis U.S. Ram, Jeep, Chrysler and Dodge each had more than 100 days of inventory but many specific popular models have less.

The vote does not guarantee a strike will be called, only that the union has the right to call a strike if there’s no agreement by September 14.

GM, Ford and Stellantis have said they want to reach a deal that is fair to workers but also gives the companies flexibility, as the industry shifts to electric models that have fewer parts and require less labor.

Ford shares were up 1%, while General Motors were unchanged in afternoon trade.
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With White House funding to help get more electric cars on the road, some states are creating local rules to get top technologies into their charging stations. Deana Mitchell has the story.
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A camera clicks. In a fraction of a second, the shutter opens and then closes, freezing forever the image in front of it.

When the camera shutter blinked inside an Atlanta jail on Thursday, it both created and documented a tiny inflection point in American life. Captured for posterity, there was a former president of the United States, for the first time in history, under arrest and captured in the sort of frame more commonly associated with drug dealers or drunken drivers. The trappings of power gone, for that split second.

Left behind: an enduring image that will appear in history books long after Donald Trump is gone.

“It will be forever part of the iconography of being alive in this time,” said Marty Kaplan, a professor at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communications.

In the photo, Trump confronts the camera in front of a bland gray backdrop, his eyes meeting the lens in an intense glare. He’s wearing a blue suit, white shirt and red tie, his shoulders squared, his head tilted slightly toward the camera. The sheriff’s logo has been digitally added above his right shoulder.

Some of the 18 others charged with him in Georgia smiled in their booking photos like they were posing for a yearbook. Not Trump. His defiance is palpable, as if he’s staring down a nemesis through the lens.

“It is not a comfortable feeling — especially when you’ve done nothing wrong,” he later told Fox News Digital about the moment.

Not like any other photograph

Trump facing charges is by now a familiar sight of 2023 to Americans who watched him stand before a judge in a New York courtroom or saw watercolor sketches from the inside of federal courthouses in Miami and Washington, where cameras aren’t allowed.

This is different.

As Anderson Cooper put it on CNN: “The former president of the United States has an inmate number.” P01135809, to be exact. But until he surrendered to face charges of trying to steal the 2020 election in Georgia, his fourth indictment this year, he avoided having to pose for the iconic booking photo like millions accused of crimes before him.

Never mind that Trump, like all Americans, is innocent until proven guilty in court; the mug shot, and all it connotes, packs an extra emotional and cultural punch.

A mug shot is a visceral representation of the criminal justice system, a symbol of lost freedom. It permanently memorializes one of the worst days of a person’s life, a moment not meant for a scrapbook. It must be particularly foreign to a man born into privilege, who famously loves to be in control, who is highly attentive to his image and who rose to be the most powerful figure in the world.

“‘Indictment’ is a sort of bloodless word. And words are pale compared to images,” said Kaplan, a former speechwriter for Vice President Walter Mondale and a Hollywood screenwriter. “A mug shot is a genre. Its frame is, ‘This is a deer caught in the headlights. This is the crook being nailed.’ It’s the walk of shame moment.”

Already leveraging the moment

Trump is unlikely to treat the mug shot as a moment of shame as he seeks a second term in the White House while fighting criminal charges in four jurisdictions. His campaign has reported a spike in contributions each time he’s been indicted.

And the imagery itself? Trump hasn’t shied away from it. In fact, his campaign concocted one long before it became real.

Months before he was photographed in Georgia on Thursday evening, his campaign used the prospect of a mug shot as a fundraising opportunity. For $36, anyone can buy a T-shirt with a fake booking photo of Trump and the words “not guilty.” Dozens of similar designs are available to purchase online, including many that appeal to Trump’s critics.

Now they have a real one to work with. Within minutes of the mug shot’s release, Trump’s campaign used it in a fundraising appeal on its website. “BREAKING NEWS: THE MUGSHOT IS HERE,” reads the subject line of the campaign’s latest fundraising email, which advertises a new T-shirt with the image. And this quote: “This mugshot will forever go down in history as a symbol of America’s defiance of tyranny.”

In a show of solidarity, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, a photo of herself smiling broadly in front of a gray background, the sheriff’s logo in the top left corner to mimic the jail’s style — essentially her DIY mug. “I stand with President Trump against the commie DA Fani Willis,” she said, a swipe at the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney who persuaded a grand jury to indict Trump.

Recent history is full of politicians seeking political dividends from their booking photos. They’ve offered large smiles or defiant smirks and tried to make the best of their predicament.

Yet this is one of just 45 presidents in all of U.S. history — not only someone who held the keys to the most powerful government in the world, but who held a position that for many these days, both at home and overseas, personifies the United States. To see that face looking at a camera whose lens he is not seeking out — that’s a potent moment.

“There’s a power to the still image, which is inarguable,” said Mitchell Stevens, a professor emeritus at New York University who has written a book about the place imagery holds in modern society and how it is supplanting the word.

“It kind of freezes a moment, and in this case it’s freezing an unhappy moment for Donald Trump,” Stevens said. “And it’s not something he can click away. It’s not something he can simply brush off. That moment is going to live on. And it’s entirely possible that it will end up as the image that history preserves of this man.”
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Police on the Hawaiian island of Maui have released the names of 388 people still unaccounted for following devastating wildfires earlier this month.

In a video statement released late Thursday, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said he understood the release of the list could cause pain for those whose loved ones are still missing, but the police department felt it could help with the investigation.

The list contains the names and points of contact for each missing person reported. Pelletier asked anyone who finds their own name on the list or with information regarding a person on the list to contact Maui police or the FBI.  

The Associated Press reports that following a 2018 wildfire in Paradise, California, officials were able to reduce a list of missing people from 1,300 to about a dozen within a month of releasing a list of those reported missing.  

In an update Monday, Maui County officials said all single story, residential properties in the disaster area had been searched and teams were beginning to search multistory residential and commercial properties.

As of Tuesday, the police department said the August 8 fires killed at least 115 people and left an unknown number of others missing, making them the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press and Reuters.
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