A study in contrasts across two different U.S. wars in the Persian Gulf, and shadows of accountability emerge into view on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST UP... It has arguably taken far too long, but this week it became final. John Eastman, the sleazy attorney who helped conjure up much of Donald Trump's bonkers "legal" argument for stealing the 2020 electoral college vote in Congress on January 6, 2021, no longer has a license to practice law in his home state of California. He is officially disbarred after the state Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal this week. The disgraced former lawyer, a speaker at Trump's insurrectionist rally in front of the White House on January 6, now vows to challenge the California State Bar's final ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. Good luck with that, John.

Also today, hints of somewhat more timely accountability in Minnesota, as an ICE agent is charged with assault under state law for pointing a gun at motorists from his unmarked car during Trump's so-called Operation Metro Surge immigration offensive in Minneapolis. The case will be a test of whether state charges may be brought against federal agents by state officials. Prosecutors say they are still investigating at least 18 more related cases in the Twin Cities region following the ICE shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti earlier this year.

NEXT... We're joined today by former U.S. Army Captain, former lifelong Republican and attorney KEITH BARBER, who now writes frequently at the progressive Daily Kos website as "KeithDB".

More than 30 years ago, Barber penned a 39-page article for the Fall, 1994 volume of the Military Law Review (pp. 235-274), examining evidence behind allegations of war crimes then made by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark against the U.S. during the first Gulf War under President George HW Bush.

Barber, at the time, found that Clark's evidence of widespread war crimes failed to hold up to legal scrutiny. Last week, with few changes to International Law over the past three decades in regard to such crimes, he compared similar allegations regarding the lawfulness of Donald Trump's war in Iran.

His original article for the Military Law Review was titled "No Fire This Time: False Accusations of American War Crimes In The Persian Gulf." His follow-up last week: "The Real Fire This Time: American War Crimes In the Iran War".

The two headlines tell the tale, but we walk through --- as Barber does in his recent piece --- the central allegations of whether the two different offensives were considered lawful under International Law, and whether the conduct of each meets established legal principles of discrimination and proportionality. (Don't worry, we explain what all of that means.)

Also of note during our conversation, Barber's thoughts on whether the change in his personal political leanings may have colored his findings, either then or now, and about whether the Military Law Review would have published his findings had they come to a different conclusion 30 years ago. Tune in for some revealing answers in a sobering discussion today on those points and more.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is in da house for our latest Green News Report as Big Oil continues to reap billions from Trump's war in Iran; Extreme weather slams U.S. slands in the western Pacific; and fossil-fuel loving candidates are ousted by voters from the nation's largest public utility board in Arizona, in favor of pro-renewable energy candidates, thanks, ironically enough, to the rightwing Turning Point outfit!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Big Oil is reaping $30 million an hour from consumers thanks only to the Iran War; Hawaii grapples with more storms and destructive flooding; Super Typhoon Sinlaku slams into U.S. Pacific island territories; PLUS: Arizona voters oust pro-fossil fuel candidates from public utility board...with the help of Turning Point USA... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought; Global warming is making the strongest hurricanes stronger; All of Michigan under Flood Watch as roads washed out, dams fail, people evacuated; The Forest Service reorganization is illegal. USDA's top lawyer told them to do it anyway; Boundary Waters mining bill approved by Senate after Sen. Smith protest; IMF sees global oil shortfall this year and warns Iran war could tip world into recession ... PLUS: Bessent questions the cause of climate change and its economic toll ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Plenty --- far too much --- to get angry about on today's BradCast. Though we do find a bit of light among the darkness to help kick things off. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The good news: a federal judge in Indiana has blocked, for now, a law adopted by state Republicans that would have prevented Student IDs from being used as identification for voting purposes. The case to determine the Constitutionality of Indiana's SB10 will continue. But for now, for this year's critical midterm elections, some 40,000 Hoosier students will be able to vote with their IDs, just as they have, without incident, for the past 20 years.

Moreover, what happens in IN regarding Photo ID restrictions on voting doesn't stay in IN. It was a 2008 case out of Marion County, IN which originally opened the door nationally to the use of stricter and stricter, purposely disenfranchising, polling place voter ID laws. Liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the controlling decision, later came to admit that the Court got it wrong. So did the lower District Court Judge who penned the original ruling. So, we'll keep our eyes on this matter. But it is good news for democracy fans for the moment, barring any new surprises from higher courts this year.

In less good news today, Republicans in the U.S. Senate have, for the fourth time, blocked a Democratic resolution to assert Congress's Constitutional power to declare (or prevent) war as Donald Trump's unimaginably ill-considered war in Iran continues. Worse: WaPo reports today that thousands of more ground troops are on now on their way to the region at Trump's command.

THEN... We get to today's really enervating news, though we get there in a way that just might energize you to do something about it!

No matter how the Trump Administration and his U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins are trying to gaslight the public about it, they are, in fact, dismantling the beloved U.S. Forest Service. The plan, officially announced last month, will benefit no one but those who wish to plunder the 193 million acres of our public lands overseen, maintained and protected by the agency for more than 120 years. Despite her rhetoric and lies, Rollins is not clear-cutting the U.S. Forest Service for the good of the American people. The effort is for commercial purposes. To rob Americans of our sacred public lands to the benefit of the extraction industry, from miners to drillers to loggers. And, because it's the Trump Administration naturally, they are doing so unlawfully, the way they do pretty much everything.

We're joined today for a deep dive on all of this by award-winning filmmaker and conservationist JIM PATTIZ of MoreThanJustParks.com. He helped touch off a proverbial five-alarm fire about all of this with his blazing-hot, razor-sharp descriptive demolition of what the Administration is actually hiding under their March 31 announcement that the USDA is moving the Forest Service Headquarters from D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, while shuttering dozens of critical research centers around the country in the bargain.

Don't be fooled, Pattiz explains. This is not meant as "a sweeping restructuring of the agency to move leadership closer to the forests and communities it serves," as the USDA claimed in its press release. It is not "a structural reset and a common-sense approach to improve mission delivery." It is, as Pattiz detailed at Hatch Magazine last week, a scheme to relocate the beloved agency to a state which is currently suing the federal government to take over some 18.5 million acres of public lands, "that wants to own them, stripped of its science, stripped of its regional expertise, stripped of its institutional independence, and reorganized into a structure purpose-built for political compliance."

"This is a coordinated demolition of federal land stewardship in America," he warns. "The Forest Service was the last major federal land agency that still had the institutional muscle to resist. It had the scientists. It had the regional foresters. It had the culture, imperfect as it was, that still believed forests belonged to the public. After today, that agency no longer exists."

The USDA and White House itself have come out with both barrels against Pattiz and his fellow public lands supporters, particularly after he demonstrated this week in his newsletter how relocating the Forest Service headquarters from D.C. is in strict violation of federal laws adopted by both parties in Congress regarding fiscal year 2026!

"The White House called it 'lies from these losers," Pattiz tells me. But it is anything but. Pattiz has the receipts. In fact, he also has the goods regarding how it was Trump officials themselves who lied about their intentions to do exactly what they are now doing during their confirmation hearings in the Senate.

"This will affect somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 employees," says Pattiz, "of a work force that's already lost a fourth of the Forest Service workforce since Trump started his second term --- a critical agency that does most of the wildland firefighting in the United States --- a fourth of that agency gone. And now you're talking about an additional potentially 5,000 employees."

It's hardly just fire fighters. Scientists will be lost as well, along with decades of institutional knowledge with the move to Utah and the shuddering of regional research offices around the country, to be consolidated into one office in Colorado. Knowledge, research and decades-old, ongoing experiments will be lost that can't necessarily simply be restarted the next time a Democrat returns to power. "When you shutter 57 research stations, that is absolutely a 'kill shot' to our research program, which is the envy of the world," says Pattiz. "It's a kill shot."

And it's all being spearheaded by longtime enemies of public lands, such as Utah's Republican Sen. Mike Lee and a new Forest Service Director who was previously a logging executive --- the first time in the agency's 122-year history that its Director was not selected from among those already serving within it. In response to the new chief, Tom Schultz, citing Teddy Roosevelt, renowned defender of public lands, and Gifford Pinchot, who created what would become the Service, in the USDA's announcement about the move to Utah and the gutting of the Service, Pattiz was incensed.

"It makes my blood boil," he tells me today. "It is the antithesis of what the Forest Service is all about. Theodore Roosevelt made a career out of opposing people like Tom Schultz. It's just absurd to hear this logging executive who has inexplicably been installed as the Forest Service chief using the names of Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt, because what they are doing is the anathema of Roosevelt and his legacy."

But it's not over yet. Lawsuits, Pattiz says, are soon to be filed. In the meantime, "the biggest thing people can do is write and call your representatives and senators, and tell them to stick up for the laws that they wrote." The very laws that were adopted on a bipartisan basis, signed by this President, requiring approval from Congress before a massive restructuring (and destruction) of this sort can begin at all. "Contact your representatives. Tell them to hold this Dept. of Agriculture accountable."

There is a lot more from Pattiz, who is really good at explaining all of this, on today's show. You'll be glad you tuned in for it!...

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On today's BradCast: With voters in Hungary demonstrating on Sunday that the ballot box can be mightier than the autocrat, and with shake-ups in the U.S. House this week and fresh news from the Gerrymandering Wars, it seems a good moment to consider all of this news in light of the critical November midterms. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Also today, some weather and climate news, and an update on paper tiger Trump in the Middle East. Among our stories today...

• As we go to air, the most powerful storm currently on Earth --- and of 2026, so far --- Super Typhoon Sinlaku is slamming tens of thousands of citizens on U.S. territories in the western Pacific Ocean, including the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. The damage may continue for a while, as the devastating storm --- unusual for this early in the year --- slowed down as it reached the islands, potentially resulting in maximum destruction.

• Back here on the mainland, it's a political storm blowing through the U.S. House this week. Following serious sexual assault allegations first reported on Friday, California's Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell resigned from the U.S. House on Tuesday. He may now also be facing a criminal probe following a fifth woman stepping forward today with still more disturbing accusations. His resignation was followed shortly after by the resignation of Texas Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, whose affair with a married staffer lead to her suicide. While the allegations against Gonzalez have been known for some time, it was only after Swalwell's announcement that he was stepping down on Monday (facing threats of expulsion) that the Texas Rep. agreed to leave as well, safeguarding the GOP's razor-thin majority in the lower chamber during the interim.

• Speaking of which, new news today in the Gerrymandering Wars kicked off last year by Donald Trump's order to Republican states to redraw their U.S. House maps to steal "blue" seats from voters this November. One of the hopes for Democrats to redraw their own maps in response to the GOP campaign was dashed on Monday night, as state Senate Democrats in Maryland ended their latest session without voting on a new state map, as sought by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore. He had asked for a redrawn map to help flip the state's last Republican-held House District in favor of the Dems, but was blocked by the Democratic state Senate President who felt the move might end up harming Democrats.

• In other related Gerrymandering War news, the Republican-dominated Florida legislature is set to convene a special session next week to consider redrawing its already gerrymandered U.S. House map, even as Virginia voters are already early voting on a state Constitutional Amendment sponsored by Democrats to temporarily set aside the state's independently drawn U.S. House map in favor of one that could flip as many as four more seats from "red" to "blue" this November. The Special Election Day is next Tuesday, April 21, and pre-election polling suggests it could be a close contest!

• In Congress' upper chamber, meanwhile, the Cook Political Report this week made four adjustments to their November forecast for the U.S. Senate, with all four changes moving toward the left for this year's races in North Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska and Georgia. That said, Cook's current forecast for the Senate still predicts Republicans hanging on to majority control of the upper chamber next year --- if just barely for now.

• Why has Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to blockade traffic in the Strait of Hormuz in his effort to prevent Iran from blockading traffic through the Strait of Hormuz? We try to explain today, before noting that China now seems to be calling Trump's bluff.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the war on Iran deepens global poverty even as Big Oil is rolling in profits; as news policies in the UK and France seek to permanently reduce dependency on fossil fuels; and as birds turn out to be smarter than Donald Trump when it comes to wind energy, according to newly released studies...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Iran War energy crisis deepens global poverty while Big Oil rakes in big profits; France and Britain enact new policies to reduce costly fossil fuel dependence; PLUS: Turns out birds are smart enough to avoid wind turbines, new studies show... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Iran war escalation could trigger global recession, IMF warns; Aftermath: Plastics Clogged in the Persian Gulf; Trouble in paradise as atmospheric rivers drown Hawaii; Communities are waiting on billions in disaster funding from the Trump administration; EPA Zeldin tells climate skeptics to 'celebrate vindication' after repeal of baseline climate rule; Lead still haunts yards in Exide battery recycler cleanup zone ... PLUS: The simple math of the death of LNG ... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's all we can do, at this point, on our Monday shows, to hang on for dear life and try to get caught up with as much of the weekend's madness as possible. And so we do again on today's BradCast, along with the help of a few callers (including some Trump supporters!) [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the weekend's madness...

• After a marathon one-days-in-a-row of negotiations with Iran, the world's second greatest deal-maker, Vice President J.D. Vance, gives up and goes home. In retaliation, Donald Trump announces that he will shut down the Straight of Hormuz...which was already shut down by Iran in response to the U.S. attack, and was one of the main reason for the weekend's negotiations amid what is supposed to be a two week ceasefire between US/Israel and Iran.

• Then, the brightest news, by far, of the weekend. Just days after Vance --- the weekend's double-loser --- stumped for him in person, Hungary's 16-year, rightwing dictatorial leader, Viktor Orbán, was crushed by voters who removed him from power in a landslide Sunday election. Orbán, a longtime Trump/Vance ally, modern-day U.S. Republican Party hero, and dictatorial autocrat has blocked migration to his country, gutted LGBTQ rights, shut down freedom of speech and judicial independence, gamed the electoral system, cozied up to Vladimir Putin, blocked EU support of Ukraine amid Russia's war against them, and oversaw the takeover of major media outlets by corporate cronies during his 16 years of consolidating power. (Sound familiar?) But, on Sunday, voters in Hungary overcame all of that, crushed Orban's party and publicly celebrated across the nation all night long. I suspect we'll be seeing similar in this country before too terribly long.

• While the supposedly-anti-war Vance was failing to strike a deal with Iran (or get Orbán elected), Donald Trump attended an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight here in the U.S., attacked Pope Leo XIV in a ridiculous lengthy screed (for being soft on crime and nuclear weapons, or something) and posted an AI "painting" of himself on social media depicted as Jesus healing the sick. By Monday, after criticism from even his own religious supporters, he deleted the photo and claimed it was supposed to be him posing as a doctor in support of the Red Cross. (I'll pause here so you can get up off the floor from laughter.)

• Despite what Trump, Republicans and Fox "News" repeatedly tells you, as it turns out, California is in pretty good shape. As Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom enjoyed rubbing in Trump's face over the weekend, the Golden State's GDP increased by 5% last year, leading every other state in the union, as the fourth largest economy in the world.

• Meanwhile, this year's sleepy election to fill Newsom's termed-out position as the head of the 4th largest economy in the world in November suddenly got a lot less sleepy over the weekend and into Monday. Where Democratic Party alarm bells had already been ringing about a Top Two primary that could send two Republicans to compete against each other in this year's November general election. (Though dumb Trump probably helped to avoid that last week by endorsing one of the two Republicans who had been tied for first place at 10%.), Now, sexual assault allegations against one of the leading Democrats, Bay Area Congressman Eric Swalwell, have resulted in his dropping out of the crowded race on Sunday and announcing his resignation from Congress on Monday, moments before airtime. We'll see how, and if, that ends up shaking up the statewide Gubernatorial Primary on June 2nd enough to allow one of the far-too-many Dems on the ballot to break through to the first or second spots in the Primary to go on to the November general.

• Finally, in the second half of today's show, we open the phones to callers on any and all of the above and, after many weeks of asking, a couple of Trump supporters finally ring in to answer my invitation!...

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On today's BradCast: Finally, even MAGA is beginning to notice. Or, at least they are finally admitting they've noticed. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Day after day, especially as his war on and/or supposed ceasefire with Iran continues to be a global embarrassment, Donald Trump keeps proving his critics were right all along.

In many case, such as MAGA media elite or his own Truth Social supporters turning on him, it's amusing and encouraging. In other cases, like those who, with the encouragement of Republican officials, bought into the Trump myth, it is very sad. Especially in states like deep "red" West Virginia, where energy prices are now skyrocketing amid his broken promises to revive dirty, deadly, expensive coal and his broken campaign vow, repeated dozens of times, to cut everyone's gas and energy prices by 50% within his first year. (See Margie Mason's great piece for AP here.)

Trump is now failing, and very quickly, to paraphrase him. At record levels! Like nobody has ever seen before!

In fact, a majority of Americans would now like to see him impeached an historic third time. New polling appears to break the record for such a finding this early in a President's term.

But, before any of that can happen --- if it ever does --- there are still a whole bunch of folks likely to die in his absurdly ill-considered war, and a whole bunch of Administration friends and insiders likely to profiteer off it all on the so-called prediction markets.

Also, Desi Doyen joins us today for our latest Green News Report. Things don't look any better there either...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Global oil and gas supply still locked up amid unsettled ceasefire; Damage to the agriculture supply chain is already done; PLUS: Heads up --- a Super El Nino is brewing in the Pacific Ocean that will boost extreme weather... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): An incredibly weird time to be alive: The world witnessed the best and worst of humanity in a single week; The Iran War and the energy lesson we failed to learn; Trump’s EPA chief delivers the keynote at a conference of climate change deniers; Louisiana LNG project could pollute more than all other US terminals; Corpus Christi water crisis spurs stampede on South Texas aquifers ... PLUS: After harsh winter, Ukrainians find joy in releasing bats rescued from war ... and much, MUCH more! ...

We pick up today where we left off at the tail end of The BradCast yesterday, as the President of the United States proved once again to the world to be a desperate paper tiger. Turns out (but you knew this), he's also a lousy negotiator and an absurdly incompetent Commander-in-Chief. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get back to the war today, and it's apparent lack of ceasefire(?), some excellent news for small "d" democracy and for Democrats alike here in the Homeland.

Democrat Shawn Harris lost his special election for the U.S. House on Tuesday in Georgia's very "red" 14th Congressional District to Trump-endorsed Clay Fuller by 12 points. Sounds like a landslide! But the GOP victory in the House District previously held by far-right Marjorie Taylor Greene masks a remarkable move toward the Democrats in the most Republican District in the battleground state. In fact, Harris' loss --- a stunning 25-point swing toward the Democratic candidate as compared to Trump's 2024 win in the district --- helps obscure the fact that it was "the most significant overperformance the [Democratic] party has seen across all seven House special elections" since Trump's return to power last year.

Also on Tuesday, Chris Taylor, a liberal, Democratic-supported state judge in Wisconsin, won this year's election for the state Supreme Court by some 20 points, expanding the court's liberal majority to 5 to 2. The margin was extraordinary by any measure, but especially considering the incredibly narrow races for the state high court over much of the past two decades in another battleground state. Not to mention the ironclad majority that Republican-supported Justices previously enjoyed there for so long. No longer, thanks to persistent Democratic leadership in the state and indefatigable voter turnout to reverse the previously dark fortunes of Badger Staters.

It wasn't only those two marquee races on Tuesday where voters registered displeasure with Republicans ahead of this year's critical midterms. Rightwingers were removed from school boards in local elections in a number of states, from Wisconsin to Oklahoma to Missouri!

THEN... It's back to the political front lines in the Middle East, where the tenuous ceasefire Donald Trump proved desperate to claim on Tuesday night --- under terms that wildly appear to favor Iran --- seemed to be falling apart all day on Wednesday. The terms of the deal remain unclear, at best, with both sides reporting different understandings. We try our best to make sense of it all today.

But the bottom line for now is that, even under the most generous interpretation, Trump seems not to have been taken to the cleaners as much as having driven there himself.

Iran is already insisting that the U.S. has violated the agreement, and says it will not open up the Strait of Hormuz, even as the Trump Administration was claiming that it was open and declaring "victory" on Wednesday, as the stock market appeared to play along for the day.

But even by my best understanding of the terms of the ceasefire negotiations, it appears that Iran will end up with much much more than they had before Trump decided to start a war with them, and the U.S. will have much less than they started with. By way of comparison to what the U.S. had before Trump tore up the Obama-era nuclear agreement with Iran, the entire world will also have much less than before the great deal maker destroyed the delicate power balances in the Middle East faster than he was able bankrupt an Atlantic City casino.

We're joined today to help us make sense out of the chaos by the incredibly knowledgeable and clear-spoken NICOLAS GROSSMAN, International Relations professor and national security expert at the University of Illinois. Last week he argued at his Arc Digital newsletter and at MS NOW that there was "No Off Ramp in Sight".

So, do we now have an off ramp after all? Probably not, argues Grossman. "This problem is really not going away," he says. "Already the war itself has disrupted a lot of global energy supplies. Iran is still choking traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. If they are charging, they will get a ton of revenue for this. All of that is ongoing, and all of that continues to be America's problem. Because it will affect the global economy, the American economy, make the prices of everything higher, and we should probably expect more of that."

"To the extent that Trump took an off-ramp, it was basically by surrendering," asserts Grossman, who argues that, "if we go by what the Pakistani mediators say the US had agreed to, it would be almost a total American surrender, giving Iranians everything they want, getting nothing the US wanted, and leaving the United States in a decently weaker geostrategic position than before the war started."

We cover a lot of territory with Grossman today, including how crippling sanctions against Iran have now been lifted and how they now not only control the Strait, but may be allowed to charge $2 million a pop for passage --- none of which they had prior to the war. All as part of an agreement which currently says nothing at all about restrictions on their missile, drone, or even nuclear programs.

Grossman makes a lot of excellent points. But one, I think, is worth putting up front here: that toll being placed by Iran on ships going in and out of the Strait. If that is allowed to become the practice, "it would amount to something like $100 billion a year" for Iran, he explains. That is an amount larger than their current annual government budget.

"If we think back to the Obama nuclear deal," Grossman continues, which "did actually restrict Iran's nuclear program," Trump and Republicans have spent years accusing Obama of "sending 'pallets of cash' to the Iranians." The cash that was sent, as part of the careful agreements, was actually Iranian funds they had spent for airplane parts prior to the 1979 revolution, for parts they never received. It was their money. In any event, as Grossman notes, "that total value was $1.7 billion, and it was returning frozen funds, returning Iran's own money to them. One payment of $1.7 billion is a lot less than $100 billion every year," as Trump's ceasefire agreement would appear to allow the Iranians to collect in order to reopen transnational shipping of a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas supply.

The art of the deal.

Tune in for much more today...

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Wow. Quite a roller coaster on The BradCast today. Spoiler alert: One of the big unknowns throughout the bulk of the show finally became known in our final few minutes on air. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Following Donald Trump's obnoxiously profane Easter Sunday threat to commit war crimes with the mass bombing of civilian power plants and bridges in Iran at 8pm tonight (Tuesday); his repeat of those promises on Monday; and his fresh Tuesday morning vow that "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" if Iran refused to meet his tough-guy demand to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, Trump appears to have re-earned his TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) title just over an hour or so before the latest random deadline he had otherwise pulled out of his ass. (That followed on similar TACOs in weeks prior over the same issue, though later reporting tonight suggests Iran has agreed to allow traffic through the Strait for two weeks in exchange for a U.S. ceasefire during that period. They will charge ships for passage, however.)

As noted at the top of the show --- before Trump called off the attack during our final few minutes --- it looks like the markets called this one again late today. After taking a dive at open in the morning, they largely recovered by the close --- as if someone got word in advance of Trump's announcement...yet again.

So, was it just another TACO? Or did it matter to Trump that his top MAGA supporters, from Tucker Carlson to Candance Owens to Marjorie Taylor Green to Alex Jones (for chrissakes!), were all turning tail on him over the past two days, describing him as having gone "insane" or worse, and calling for his removal from office under the 25th Amendment?

And where does Trump's ridiculously ill-considered war go from here? That question remains for another day.

NEXT UP... Last week, while we were on break, Trump fired his wildly corrupt and perfectly sycophantic Attorney General Pam Bondi for reasons that also remain unknown as of today. The firing was arguably meant to distract from his disastrous war which was, itself, meant as a distraction from the news out of the Epstein Files, emerging just before he launched his war, that a woman had credibly alleged he sexually assaulted her when she was 13-years old.

Beyond that, however, what of Bondi's year-long legacy overseeing the corruption and destruction of the rule of law on Trump's behalf at the Dept. of Justice?

We're joined to discuss that today by our friend RANDALL D. ELIASON, the DOJ's former chief of Fraud and Public Corruption at the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. He wrote about this fine mess at his Sidebars blog this week, in a piece titled "Pam Bondi's Legacy of Destruction".

Eliason, who now teaches white collar crime at George Washington University Law School, laments the tragic fallout from the past year of Bondi's tenure by quipping: "I tell everybody, I've become a history professor," telling his students "Back when we used to prosecute white collar crime, these were the offenses..."

Lots to discuss with Eliason today, as usual, including...

• The 23,000(!) "criminal investigations into cases involving terrorism, white collar crime, drugs, and other offenses" that Bondi has shut down since taking office.
• The top two or three most shameful aspects of "Bondi's tragic track record."
• How Eliason sees her performance as far worse than Bill Barr's during Trump's first term. ("I wouldn't have thought that somebody could make Barr look good by comparison.")
• How describing the Justice Dept. under Bondi as "Trump's personal law firm" is "too generous".
• How he now has to tell students that he can't recommend they go to the DOJ for the previously "highly coveted jobs" that were "really, really hard to get and considered to be a dream job for a lot of people," even though it is now understaffed "because of all the people who have headed for the exits rather than work for this Administration --- and all the ones who have been fired."
• Whether Bondi should face ethical sanctions under the Florida State Bar or even criminal charges under a future administration.
• What we should expect moving forward under the "acting AG" stewardship of Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer turned Deputy AG Todd Blanche.
• And much more!...

"In one year," Eliason tells me, "this thing called the 'presumption of regularity', that over decades was built up" by the DOJ for its attorneys in the court system, "has been shredded" by Bondi's "pattern of lying to and misleading the courts." He fears "it's going to take a long, long time" to get that back, "if it can be done at all."

"She was willing to use the Dept. of Justice to pursue the President's political enemies. That is just directly contrary to the Department's mission and everything it has stood for for decades. That's what authoritarians do."

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our first Green News Report following Spring Break and, as you might expect, it's a doozy!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump threatens war crimes against civilian power infrastructure in Iran; Iran War is boosting global demand for solar panels, heat pumps, and electric cars; PLUS: U.S. West's mountain snowpack has melted early, raising fears of a record fire season to come... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Strongest El Niño in a century? What this rare phenomenon could bring; Drive slower, work from home and ditch the tie: the world responds to Iran war energy crisis; NOAA halts crucial dataset that helps measure Arctic sea ice; Trump's 'God Squad' blocks endangered species protections in the Gulf of Mexico; These maps show exactly where the West might burn this summer ... PLUS: Solar power in Africa is heating up — thanks in part to chili peppers ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Perhaps we should have known when he announced his run for President after coming down an escalator, after all. In any event, we're back for today's BradCast after a week off for Spring Break, with a lot to catch up with. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We begin by catching up on just some of the news we missed over the past week, including his corrupt firing of corrupt women --- Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi --- to help distract from his own personal failures.

But Donald Trump's profane, social media post on Easter Sunday, threatening war crimes (which is, itself, a war crime) sort of helps focus both the mind and today's program.

"Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!," he vowed, adding: "Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP".

Today (Monday), during a lengthy news conference at the White House to tout the rescue of a downed U.S. airman in Iran on Sunday, Trump repeated the his threat of war crimes --- including complete destruction of civilian power infrastructure in Iran, "back to the stone age" --- to happen tomorrow at 8pm, he vowed, if Iran doesn't agree to whatever conditions Trump claims to be demanding now. In a war that he's, arguably, already lost.

The response to his weekend tweet, from not-insane people on the right, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and from the not-right, like UK columnist Christopher Bucktin, seem to make clear that not-insane people around the globe, at this point, see Trump in serious and terrifying mental decay. So do medical professionals.

All of which brings us back to a point we discussed in our last show before Spring Break: Trump has become a serious danger to both the nation and the world. So much so, that even corrupt, compromised, evil J.D. Vance would be a more palatable alternative to the unstable, psychologically broken man who now terrifyingly has his finger on the nuclear button. At least in my opinion.

We open up the phones to listeners today to see if they agree on that and much more. Hope you'll tune in!...

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The information from two recent polls on California's upcoming Gubernatorial race suggests a moment we've long warned about. One where California's "Cajun Primary" system poses a potential disaster not only for the state's Democratic Party but also for small "d" democracy.

At its core, democracy requires "majority rule" even as the minority right of dissent is respected. As explained by the Albert Shanker Institute, "majority rule" does more than provide a mechanism for democratic decision making. "The principle also establishes the equality of all citizens. Each person counts equally; there is no weighted vote for anyone."

With that in mind, a Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) survey in February, and a more recent UC Berkeley poll in March, might be setting off alarms for state Democrats. It should be a warning for small "d" democracy as well...