At the Oval Office on Friday between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the whole world saw a President clearly terrified of Vladimir Putin and Russia. But it wasn't President Zelenskyy, it was clearly President Trump. Before we get there today, however, some alarming news on today's BradCast on what appears to be enormous planned and/or threatened cuts at Social Security. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last week, our friend DAVID DAYEN, investigative financial journalist, author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect, was first to break the news of the Trump Administration making plans to cut the Social Security Administration (SSA) by half. That would mean, at a minimum, layoffs of tens of thousands of employees at the notoriously efficient agency which has never missed or even had a late payment since its founding in 1935 and whose administrative expenses are less than 1% of their total budget.

To achieve the type of massive cuts the Administration is actively devising, according to emails obtained by Dayen, it would likely have to include the closure of SSA field offices around the country, which service about 120,000 visitors each day. That includes signing up beneficiaries for various SSA services that amount to checks sent to some 73 million retired and disabled Americans who receive about $126 billion in social safety net payments from the agency each month.

On the heels of Dayen's reporting, most of the corporate media outlets have now confirmed plans by the Trump Administration to cut at least 7,000 workers. Dayen, who joins us on today's program, however, is standing by his reporting on the efforts being drawn up to slash much deeper and wider than that. The cuts, according to experts --- including the SSA's former Commissioner under President Biden --- could, within the coming months, result in much-needed payments to beneficiaries being delayed, at a minimum.

Former SSA Commissioner and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley told CNBC over the weekend: "Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits. I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days." He advised that "people should start saving now."

Citing the fact that the agency is already under-staffed and operating with with 7,000 fewer employees than just a decade ago, Dayen tells me "there's about a 50-year low in terms of the number of employees at the Social Security Administration."

"Even before Donald Trump was inaugurated, people would say [SSA] was in an operational crisis from a lack of manpower to do the large and important work that needs to to be done. Every day in America, 10,000 people turn 65. The needs on the disability front have gone up year after year after year. There simply aren't enough people to process systems, many of which are still manual."

"Republicans have refused to fund the system whenever they get into power in the government, in even a small way. They force these cuts. It's a one-way ratchet, where the number of the workforce never gets rebuilt," Dayen explains, alluding to "lies" by folks like Elon Musk and House Speaker Mike Johnson who claim, without evidence, that SSA is a hotbed of "waste, fraud and abuse."

When these cuts are put in place, and field offices shut down, beneficiaries may be forced to travel hundreds of miles to have an in-person meeting or hearing regarding their benefits. Even phone services are likely to be cut. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's Acting SSA chief has "proposed using [private, for-profit] call center employees to replace SSA workers who staff an 800 number for beneficiaries."

"It sounds like Privatization 101, doesn't it?," quips Dayen. "This is what is done when privatizers get in power. They cut spending. They cut the workforce to make it look like they're slimming down the federal government. But those tasks still have to be performed, and they're usually performed by outside contractors who are more expensive than if you would do the actual activity in house."

Much more on all of that from Dayen today. Please tune in.

NEXT... We dive into Friday's shameful televised Oval Office meeting between President Trump, Vice-President Vance and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, where Trump and Vance berated the heroic Ukrainian leader for not being grateful enough to them. Or something. In what devolved into a shouting match, at least on Trump and Vance's part, both of the American leaders took to echoing Russian propaganda and talking points at Zelenskyy after he'd flown to the U.S. to sign an agreement (incredibly enough) to give away half of his nation's natural resources to the U.S. in order to repay previous military support. All in the hopes of eventually coming to a peace agreement with Russia.

But, the Ukrainian President insisted, the U.S. needed to offer security guarantees if his country was to agree to any sort of ceasefire, given that Vladimir Putin had violated such agreements dozens of times in the paste, including the 1994 agreement when Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons arsenal after the fall of the Soviet Union. In exchange, the pact between Ukraine, Russia, U.S., U.K., Germany, France and China guaranteed that Ukraine's sovereign borders would remain protected and secure. That is just one of many agreements broken by Putin. Thus, any such deal with Russia's belligerent strongman would require security assurances from Ukraine's allies...which the U.S., at least until Friday, has long been.

Shortly after Trump's televised Oval Office spectacle, Zelenskyy was sent away from the White House, which cancelled the planned signing of the resources agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine.

It was, as the New York Times' conservative Brett Stephens described it, "A Day of American Infamy", as Trump seemed to officially change sides in the war to support Russia and Putin...for some reason...after 80 post-WWII years of an unbreakable alliance with Western Europe.

Callers ring in today with thoughts on Friday's spectacle and more. But, of course, those listeners who, in recent years, were willing to call in to blame the U.S. and Ukraine for Russia's invasion, were nowhere to be found...

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Yes, we're often critical of the corporate mainstream media on The BradCast. But they also need to be defended in part during times like these, when Constitutional freedom of the press is literally under attack by the Trump White House and the billionaires who support them. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Before we get to our guest, a few reminders of the critical role the corporate mainstream media play, even amid all of their failures. CNN's instant fact-checker Dan Dale, for example, offers an invaluable service in citing reality, point-by-point, fact-by-fact in quick response to things like Donald Trump's head-spinning hour+ of non-step lies at his "cabinet meeting" on Wednesday.

Also, Washington Post on Tuesday, deserves credit for their news coverage of massive cuts to critical services at Trump's Department of Veteran Affairs, with its new Secretary, Doug Collins, posting embarrassingly giddy videos, praising $2 billion in cancelled contracts at the agency by Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros. In fact, as WaPo reported, the cuts amounted to about 875 contracts for critical services for vets, including medical and burial services, cancer treatment and prevention programs, and the recruitment of doctors for the serially understaffed VA, among other things. The bulk of those cancelled contracts also happened to be with Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs). The Post's coverage on Tuesday ("DOGE to Cancel government contracts that help veterans, records show") was followed up on Wednesday with the much brighter headline: "Under pressure, VA halts contract cancellations in major reversal".

Yes, the mainstream corporate media is critically important, even with all of their failures.

All of which is why the ongoing attacks on the free press by the White House --and by billionaire media owners, like Washington Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos --- right now are so troubling.

NEXT... We're joined today by longtime journalist, media critic and WaPo veteran DAN FROOMKIN, now publisher and editor of the non-profit Press Watch (and, more recently, Heads Up News) to discuss all of that and more.

Among the topics discussed today with Froomkin, who is able to offer unique insight into all of these matters...

• AP reporters are now barred from White House and Air Force One press avails, because the AP Style Guide dares to refer to the international body of water known for 400-years as the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally known name, rather than the "Gulf of America" as Trump insists. AP is now suing the White House in response, in what Froomkin suggests is a text book case of unconstitutional punishment for free speech, adding "we're not even getting into the free press element!"

  "The whole point [of the First Amendment] is the government cannot punish you because of something you say that is political. This is exactly what is happening now. They've admitted it. They said, 'We're banning the AP because it refuses to say the words 'Gulf of America'" Froomkin believes that "even our corrupted Supreme Court can't possibly redefine the First Amendment to make this permissible." We'll see about that.

  He explains why he opposes a boycott by the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) of White House events that AP is barred from, as some have called for, and suggests the better response is for reporters who are still allowed access to use it far more aggressively in confronting Trump and other WH officials on their "nonstop" string of lies.

• On Tuesday, WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the WHCA would no longer decide who is welcome in the White House pool coverage, meaning that ideological partisan propaganda sites, like Breitbart, The Blaze, Newsmax and One America News will now be taking the place of well-established, legitimate media outlets.

  "It's important that we actually have reporters who are interested in determining facts rather than just asking him questions that he can hit out of the park because they are actually on his side," Froomkin argues, defending the pool reporters that he is also frequently critical of. "The reporters in this pool are not just representative of the media, they are representatives of the public. This is the only opportunity for anybody to actually confront Trump with facts and assertions and to confront him with his lies. It is so important that the reporters who are chosen to do this are not then at risk of being punished by the White House and being pulled off the beat if they ask tough questions."

  But, of course, if it's the White House, not the WHCA that determines who is allowed in the room, reporters are far more likely to pull punches if only to ensure they do not displease the ones allowing them access in the first place.

• We also discuss WaPo owner Jeff Bezos' gob-smacking announcement on Wednesday that the Opinion Page of the venerable paper --- that previously declared "Democracy Dies in Darkness" --- would now only include opinions "in support and defense of … personal liberties and free markets." That, after the billionaire owner, in 2013, vowed when he purchased paper that he would not interfere in its editorial content.

  It turns out that you just cannot trust a billionaire!," Froomkin, who worked at the Post for 12 years, quips. "It's a gut punch for everybody who works there, anybody who EVER worked there, and anybody who loves the Post. Its just devastating. [Bezos is] basically saying, 'I want my views expressed and opposing views will not be expressed.' It just turns on its head anything that is valuable about an Opinion Page, where you go for a diversity of views."

There is much more worth diving into in my conversation today with the great Froomkin today.

FINALLY... Speaking of gut punches, we close out the week with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, with some alarming news, to say the least, about plans by Trump's EPA to undermine almost 20 years of climate regulation in one fell "legal" swoop...

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"This country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting and incompetently run," said the President of the United States today before his first Cabinet meeting. At least he's right on that last part, as detailed on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Donald Trump and Elon Musk's corrupt gaslighting of the nation continues, as their DOGE Bros continue to violate the law by cancelling contracts they have no legal right to, in the supposed name of "government efficiency" and cutting "waste, fraud and abuse" from the federal government. And yet, they've been unable to find any evidence of any fraud or abuse to date. Other than their own.

The only transparency DOGE has offered to document their "cost-cutting" claims at federal agency after agency is a so-called "Wall of Receipts" claiming to have "saved" $65 billion for the American people. But multiple analyses of those "receipts" by news outlets and people who understand how government contracting ... and math ... and reality ... actually work, have found error after error. The actual savings from canceled contracts and public services to taxpayers is closer to $2.5 billion, rather than $65 billion (which is chump change in the U.S. budget either way). The DOGE Bros seem to have acknowledged as much when they quietly removed their top five largest so-called spending cuts from their website in the middle of the night on Tuesday without notice or explanation.

As these clowns and liars continue their attempted national gaslighting, pretending to cut "waste, fraud and abuse" in government grants and contracts, Musk awarded his own company, SpaceX, a huge new federal government contract to deploy some 4,000 Starlink Internet terminals for the FAA. Given that Trump has fired all of the Inspectors General who would certainly have flagged the obviously grotesque conflicts of interest involved in such an arrangement, Musk --- whose companies and tens of billions in government contracts had previously been regulated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which are all now being gutted, killed and/or neutered by Musk himself) --- he's probably got nothing to worry about.

Nonetheless, as federal judges continue to order pauses on much of Trump's most unlawful activities for the moment --- (or try to, the Administration apparently doesn't find it necessary to follow court orders) --- Musk is further gaslighting and poisoning MAGA brains on his social media cite, calling for the impeachment of "unelected" judges who, he charges, are threatening democracy...by standing up for the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.

Also today, Desi Doyen explains the breaking news on Trump's EPA Administrator attempting to roll back agency scientists' 20-year old finding that greenhouse gasses cause global warming and, therefore, pose a threat to the health of Americans. That "endangerment finding", according to SCOTUS almost 20 years ago, means that the EPA must regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act. So now, the Administration is trying to fraudulently UN-find the EPA's landmark finding under Trump's corrupt, new leadership.

Finally, in related matters, Desi has our latest Green News Report, detailing new studies on the quickening melting of the world's glaciers; sea ice plummeting to record lows among ridiculously high temps in the Arctic; and Trump's order to shut down all, already-operating EV charging stations at federal facilities. Because, ya know, Trump is just cut government waste, fraud and abuse, right?...

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Today on The BradCast: Blowback to the Trump/Musk DOGE Bro Coup seems to be beginning in earnest following a series of rough town-halls for members of Congress in their local districts. It was also very bad day for the top Bro. But, based on what may happen this Friday, the blowback for these would-be dictators could get still worse. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Twenty-one senior civil service employees at what had been called the U.S. Digital Service, before it was renamed by Donald Trump as the U.S. DOGE Service, resigned en masse on Tuesday. All of the skilled, non-partisan tech engineers who announced their resignation in a brief group letter [PDF], previously worked for major tech firms like Google and Amazon before joining the USDS to serve their country by helping to modernize computer services and systems across the federal government, including "Social Security, veterans' services, tax filing, healthcare, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services."

In their letter, the senior officials detail how Elon Musk's DOGE crew of young, unskilled Musk fanboys showed up in January with "White House visitor badges", many refusing to identify themselves, and "asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability." The process, they write, "created significant security risks" and resulted in layoffs of 40 colleagues whose lost "expertise makes critical systems and Americans' data less safe."

"We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services," they write in their quit letter. "We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE's actions."

There was more bad news today for the world's richest man, and for the company that won him that title. New data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association released today finds that Tesla sales are absolutely tanking across Europe, falling nearly by half over the past year, as Musk has become a pariah as a global champion of far-right politics. His partnership with Trump and open support for Germany's far-right neo-Nazi party, as well as other strongmen, appears to be costing Tesla tens of billions of dollars. With the news of plummeting sales in the EU as compared to one year ago --- even while sales of Electric Vehicles in the EU otherwise sky-rocketed during the same period --- the share price of Tesla stock in the U.S. fell over a cliff on Tuesday, by more than 8%. The company's total worth has fallen more than 20% since the start of the year.

That news was accompanied with bad news for Trump as well, as a number of U.S. consumer confidence surveys released on Tuesday, revealed the largest decline in confidence in the U.S. economy in years, thanks to Trump's tariff and trade war threats and failure to tame inflation, as promised on the campaign trail.

THEN... With Trump and Musk perhaps beginning to feel some economic anxiety, a grassroots initiative hopes to spread that anxiety to corporations who kowtow to Trump with the dissolution of anti-discrimination (DEI) efforts.

This Friday, February 28th, a number of grassroots organizations are calling for a 24-hour "Economic Blackout", from Midnight to 11:59pm, hoping to demonstrate the spending power of American consumers. The efforts asks participants to buy and spend money on nothing beyond essentials that day, and to support only small, local businesses if they must spend anything at all.

"No purchases in store, online. No Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy. No fast food, gas, major retailers. No credit or debit cards for non-essential spending," one widely-circulated flier instructs, adding "We can do this TOGETHER!" along with a promise to grow the effort more broadly in the future. "If they fail to listen, the next blackout will be LONGER."

We're joined today by JONATHAN SIMON, a longtime friend as an election integrity champion and author, who is now a Senior Editor at the non-profit news outlet, Who, What, Why. In a recent article, he pondered some of the pros and cons of such an effort and its chances of success.

"It's more the beta test of a potentially very powerful weapon, which then needs to be expanded and focused," he tells me today, explaining how, if successful, this sort of protest could be expanded. "When you've shown you have a powerful weapon, then you can start articulating and bullet-pointing demands on what you want, and what you want in return for not using the weapon. This is very early stage. But there is enormous latent power in consumer buying choices."

"Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the annual GDP of this country," explains Simon. "It is an enormous part of our economy. Corporations and the economy in general are exquisitely sensitive to even small downturns or small deficits."

"We grew up soft. Let's face it. We grew up in the world's most stable democracy," he observes, while offering appropriate skepticism of the effects of this new (for our generation) protest tactic, as almost the least we can personally do. But, he notes optimistically, "It has the potential to galvanize us and wake us up. We need to wake up. This could be the start of it"...

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On today's BradCast: What's in it for Donald Trump? Seriously. Why does he want to break the government? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

I know why Elon Musk wants to dismantle and destroy the federal government piece-by-piece (so his government contracts can't be policed or businesses regulated, etc.) And I understand Trump's need for retribution against his perceived enemies. But why does Trump want to seemingly dismantle damn near every federal agency, from the U.S. Forest Service to USAID and beyond, no matter how ham-handedly? No matter how much it grows (not shrinks) the national debt, no matter how many Americans (including his own voters) it puts out of work, and no matter how much the chaos he is wreaking continues to sink his approval ratings? No matter how much none of his flailing lowers the price of eggs.

It's certainly not in the name of "efficiency" or cutting "waste, fraud and abuse", as the evidence makes plain, no matter how many lies and quickly disproven claims about "million and millions" of dead people receiving Social Security checks or Musk's DOGE Bros claiming to have "saved" at least $55 billion in Government contracts to date. (It's more like $2 billion.) All false claims that both Trump and Musk repeat, only to have to walk them back when proven wrong, time and again.

We discuss a lot of that at the top of the show, along with a bunch of related news headlines from over the weekend, before opening up the phones today to listeners for answers to that simple question: What's in it for Donald Trump? Why does he really want to dismantle the government?

We talk to a lot of callers with a lot of differing explanations (though being controlled by Vladimir Putin seems to be a listener fave...even if it doesn't fully answer all of my questions about Trump's behavior here.)

Perhaps Trump's recently-confirmed Sec. of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, gave away the truth on Fox "News" over the weekend, when he falsely claimed that Trump ran on "reprivatizing the economy". He didn't run on that. Though Project 2025 --- which he pretended to disavow during the campaign --- certainly called for it. Is that his game? Cripple federal government so private corporations can then fill the gap and offer the same services to the American people for a higher price that includes profit to those private corporations?

Please tune in for lots of interesting discussion today. And, if you have a better explanation for why Trump wants to kill the U.S. government by gutting hundreds of thousands of government jobs and services, seemingly at random, for no easily discernible reason, feel free to let me know in comments below...

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We can't fight every stupid, idiotic, dangerous or perilous thing during the Trump Era, can we? I know I can't, personally. But I don't speak for everyone else. And one person's stupid or idiotic may be another's dangerous or perilous. An interesting debate over picking battles and who gets to decide which ones should be waged is at the heart of today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... however, speaking of dangerous, Donald Trump lackey and MAGA merchandiser (or "sycophantic suck-up" as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse accurately described him today), Kash Patel was confirmed for a ten-year term as FBI Director by cowardly, sycophantic suck-up Republicans in the U.S. Senate today. All Democrats voted against him. Just two Republicans (Collins and Murkowski) joined them.

Aside from being wildly unqualified and publishing an "enemies list" of so-called "members of the Executive Branch deep state” that he vows to target, Patel also pleaded the Fifth to avoid implicating himself in crimes during grand jury testimony regarding his role in Trump's theft of thousands of pages of highly classified national security documents; was paid $25,000 by Russian propagandists to appear in an anti-FBI documentary series; appears to have millions of dollars linked to Chinese interests through shell corporations in the Cayman Islands; and, according to whistleblower allegations cited by the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, appears to have committed perjury during his Senate confirmation hearing.

Other than that, he sounds like the perfect choice for FBI Director! Donald Trump has done it again! Did I mention Patel also publicly vowed, as recently as last December, to "come after" journalists "who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig Presidential elections"? (So much for the First Amendment, even if Patel remains a fan of the Fifth.)

THEN... Speaking of the First Amendment and protection of the free press, we recently reported on the Trump White House's attempt to violate the First Amendment by barring the Associated Press from White House events unless and until the 178-year old international media organization agreed to change its Style Guide to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America".

On the surface, it seems like a pretty minor fight, given everything else the Constitutional order is up against. But, upon closer examination, it really is fight over basic Constitutional rights. As NYTimes' opinion writer Jamelle Bouie accurately characterized it at Bluesky, "your willingness to accept this gulf of america nonsense is an indication of your willingness to accept much worse things coming from this administration."

Meanwhile, over The Atlantic, Senior Editor Gilad Edelman doesn't have any such concerns, and even appears to be victim-blaming by suggesting the fight is one that "the AP probably should never have picked in the first place."

That brief article by Edelman recently touched off our guest today, longtime media critic, political strategist and writer, JAMISON FOSER, who wonders, in a recent article, who Edelman thinks he is to decide which fights are worth waging in the Trump Era and which are not.

"I think the nature of the situation that we're in," Foser tells me today, "and the breadth and depth of the ways that we are in trouble, and things are stacked against us --- an autocratic movement has control of our entire government, much of the news media, much of the ways that people get information online --- things are really stacked against us."

"We are not in a situation in which there are obvious, clear, easily discernible, winnable fights we can choose. So this idea that people should only choose fights that they can win --- I think people should choose the fights that feel right to them. We should all be doing a little less trying to police what fights other people are choosing to engage in, and more finding a place where we can stand up and pick a fight where we can," he argues.

"We will probably lose it," he concedes, "because we will probably lose most of them. But sometimes in the loss there is some value. In this one [AP's defense of First Amendment freedoms] there is some value. There's value in saying, 'We can't stop Donald Trump from ordering his government to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. But we can say we are not going along with that. It is racist, and dumb, and he can't make us say it. There's value in saying that to ourselves, in not giving in to his attempt to control the English language. And there's value in showing our fellow Americans that we are not going along with that."

In AP's case, all they were doing was following the Style Guide they have used for decades. And Edelman still characterized it as a "fight" they "should never have picked."

We've got much more to discuss along those lines today with Foser --- including how elected Democrats might wage more productive fights --- in what I think is a really interesting conversation. Please give it a listen.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, covering the heroic senior DoJ official who quit this week rather than violate the law by following Trump Admin orders to claw back money lawfully granted to clean energy initiatives under Biden; climate change now tripling the price of coffee and cocoa; and Trump declaring himself 'King' to cancel New York City's very successful, first-in-the-nation congestion pricing...

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Before it disappears amid Trump's never-ending chaos, a bit more insight on today's BradCast regarding last week's "Thursday Afternoon Massacre", when at least seven longtime veteran prosecutors at DoJ chose to resign rather than enact improper orders from Trump's hand-picked, acting political apparatchiks installed to head up his weaponized Dept. of Justice. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... We take a few minutes today to rebut several blatant lies that Donald Trump has been telling over the past 24 hours about Ukraine, its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia's three-year old invasion of its sovereign neighbor, and the money spent by the U.S. to date to help the war-torn democratic nation retain that sovereignty.

Trump now appears to be switching the official U.S. position in the conflict, siding with the invaders --- Russia and its corrupt President Vladimir Putin --- against Ukraine and our stalwart, longtime European allies in the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.

Among the many lies Trump has told about it all over the past 24 hours:

• Ukraine "started" the war. (False.)
• The U.S. has spent $350 billion in support of Ukraine's defense. (False.)
• Zelenskyy is a "dictator" with an approval rating of 4%. (False and false.)

Tune in for specific rebuttals on each of those points and more. But, on that last one, in fact, Zelenskyy's popularity in his country, at 52% as of December, outpaces Trump's in the U.S. where our President (who actually aspires to be a dictator!) has seen his approval ratings slip and his disapproval ratings spike (by 10 points in just four weeks since taking office!), according to new Reuters/Ipsos polling out today.

THEN... At least nine senior Dept. of Justice prosecutors --- many of them Republicans tapped for acting positions by the Trump Administration --- have resigned since last week in response to inappropriate orders from Trump's hand-picked acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove. Seven of them chose to leave rather than sign on to a motion to drop criminal charges against NYC's Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted by DoJ last year on a series of corruption charges related to alleged favors to Turkish interests in exchange for air travel, luxury hotel stays and campaign contributions.

In recent months, however, the Democratic Mayor has been cozying up to Trump, offering to help with his deportation of immigrants in NYC. In exchange, Trump has ordered the DoJ to drop all charges against him, claiming Adams' indictment was constraining deportation efforts and was merely an effort by the Biden Administration to interfere with the unpopular Adams' reelection changes later this year. Bove has absurdly asserted, on behalf of the Trump Administration, that the indictment of a Democratic NYC Mayor by a Democratic U.S. Attorney last year, following a three-year probe, was evidence of "election interference" and the DoJ's "weaponization" under Biden.

The astonishing events of late last week, as all of this unfolded at both the DoJ office in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and Public Integrity unit at Main Justice in D.C. --- where five top prosecutors quit rather than sign on, and Bove threatened to fire every single prosecutor if nobody volunteered to sign the paperwork to drop the charges against Adams within an hour --- were so dramatic and disturbing, we needed to call in a ringer to help us try to make sense of it all.

We're joined today by our friend and veteran federal prosecutor, RANDALL D. ELIASON, formerly Chief of the DoJ's Public Corruption and Government Fraud section at the U.S. Attorney's office in D.C., now professor at George Washington University Law School, newsletter author at the Sidebars Blog and "Great Courses" lecturer on White Collar Criminal Law.

"One of the many remarkable things about this case is the memo from Bove [which] is just so blatant in its rationale that it's startling --- mind-blowing --- to think that you would even put this in writing," explains Eliason, referring to the clearly unlawful "quid pro quo" described by Trump's Acting Dep. A.G. in his memo to Danielle Sassoon, Trump's Acting U.S. Attorney at SDNY until she resigned after refusing the order. Bove made clear that charges against Adams were being dropped in exchange for his help on mass deportations.

Bove was Trump's personal defense attorney before being named as Acting Deputy A.G., was formerly a federal prosecutor at SDNY himself. In his memo to Sasoon, he charges, remarkably, that she was failing to "uphold the Constitution by disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President" and had "lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice.”

"He has got it exactly backwards," Eliason argues. "All prosecutors know that they swear an oath to the Constitution, not the President. You can't just disregard that oath."

"We don't swear an oath to the President or the President's policies," he continues. "The principled thing to do for a person in Sassoon's position is exactly what she did. If you give me an order that I can't in good faith follow, that is going to require me to violate my obligations, I can't carry out that order."

Eliason has much more insight to offer here, including why he disagrees with those who suggest Sassoon might have better served justice by staying at her post to push back against excesses of the Trumpers; whether he personally experienced anything like this during his lengthy career at DoJ; and what "the willingness to use the justice system for political ends" forebodes for the agency going forward in the Trump Regime.

"I was telling my students today that this is something I think they'll be talking about in fifty years, like the Saturday Night Massacre. This is such an earth-shattering event inside Justice," he tells me. Tune in for much more!...

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Incredibly, many Trump-supporting MAGA dupes still believe any of this is being done in the name cutting government "waste, fraud and abuse" --- much less "efficiency" in the federal government. As discussed on today's BradCast, I guess there are still millions who won't give a damn about any of it unless --- more likely, until --- it effects them directly. And it will. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

As David Dayen helpfully reported last month at The American Prospect, if you fired every single federal worker in existence --- all 2.3 million of them --- you'd save about $271 billion per year. While that may sound like a lot, it's just 4% of the annual budget. Of course, we'd lose much more in uncollected tax revenue, unprosecuted fraud in the private sector, lives lost, just to name a few big points. And, of course, Americans, such as Social Security recipients would lose a lot on a personal level when there was nobody left in government to send out their monthly checks.

But, as Republicans have been telling us (lying to us about) for decades now, the federal government has just become too bloated. It must be cut down to size, even if it's randomly done through mass firings at every federal agency, of anybody viewed as legally fireable (whether they are or aren't doesn't matter.) But here's another fun fact from Dayen: in 1960, amid the Golden Age of America's middle class, the federal government comprised 4.3% of all workers. Today, that number is just 1.4%.

Other than that, our government is huge, bloated and out of control! Who needs all that air traffic safety, security of nuclear weapons, food inspections, safe drinking water, disease tracking, cancer cures, law and order, disaster response, medical care, education, Social Security checks or life-saving weather reports and climate data? The federal government is just too "big". Let's gut it all! Legally or otherwise!

Much more on all of this --- and some of the heroes (even Trump-appointed ones!) trying to block and/or call attention to the worst of it --- on today's program, as culled from, among others, some of the following source material...

• AP: Delta jet flips upside down on a snowy Toronto runway and all 80 aboard survive
• Rolling Stone: FAA Employees Say Trump and Musk's Firings Are Dangerous
• AP: Trump fires FAA air traffic control staff, just weeks after DC crash
• NYT: Adams's Lead Prosecutor Quits Defiantly: 'It Was Never Going to Be Me'
• WaPo: Mass resignation marks a new kind of defiance in the second Trump era
• WaPo: High-ranking D.C. federal prosecutor resigns in protest
• WaPo: Musk's DOGE seeks access to personal taxpayer data, raising alarm at IRS
• WaPo: Top Social Security official exits after clash with Musk's DOGE over data
• NBC: Department of Homeland Security preparing to fire hundreds of senior leaders this week
• Bloomberg: US Health Department Layoffs Expand to Medicare, FDA
• NBC: CDC 'disease detectors' among hundreds fired as Trump administration ramps up agency cuts
• Politico: Mass firings continue across nation's health agencies
• Guardian: NOAA imposes limits on scientists, sparking concerns over global forecasts
• The Hill: EPA fires nearly 400 workers after OPM order
• The Hill: EPA puts employees who tackle pollution in overburdened communities on leave
• The Hill: National Science Foundation cuts 10 percent of staff
• Wired: National Science Foundation Fires 168 Workers as Federal Purge Continues
• AP: Trump's firing of 1,000 national park workers raises concerns about maintenance and operating hours
• SF Chronicle: Yosemite halts camping reservations, with no timetable for their return
• Fox 13 Utah: 'Crisis' at Zion as mandated job cuts hit popular national park
• Reuters: USDA probationary staff fired at three agencies, sources say
• NBC: USDA says it accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is trying to rehire them
• The Oregonian: At least 600 workers to leave Bonneville Power Administration, spurring concerns about transmission grid
• CNN: Hundreds of FAA probationary workers fired by Trump administration, union says
• AP: Trump wants states to 'clean up forests' to stop wildfires but he cuts funds

Other than that, slow news day.

Also, on similar notes, we close today with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, as the costs of our climate crisis continue to mount in from coast to coast in recent days; Trump's FEMA is already denying critical disaster aid; and the Administration is desperately trying to find fired Dept. of Energy workers after figuring out that they were the ones who safeguarded the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile...

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As usual these days on The BradCast, thanks largely to the planned chaos of our Felon-in-Chief, there's more going on than we can cover. We try to stay focused on the most important and/or least covered stories. But late this afternoon, thanks to some remarkable politically thuggery at Trump's fully weaponized DoJ, and some remarkable courage in response to it, we've got a humdinger of a story to cover as well, as it broke just before airtime today. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Here are some of today's stories. (Though tune in for much more!)...

• A U.S. District judge in D.C. late last night, blocked the Trump Administration's termination of Hampton Dellinger, head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which helps federal employees avoid violations of the Hatch Act, and helps ensure whistleblower protections for them. Judge Amy Berman Jackson described Hampton's removal as "plainly" in violation of the law.

• Following up on a story that broke at the end of yesterday's program, more details today on a rare victory for Donald Trump in court these days, after a federal judge dismissed a challenge by several federal labor unions to Trump/Musk's so-called "buyout" offer that was sent to some 2 million federal employees. The Judge ruled the unions didn't have the standing to sue. With that obstacle out of the way, for now, and some 75,000 workers reportedly accepting the offer (we'll see if they ever get paid or if the scheme is found to be unlawful through a separate suit), the Administration has reportedly begun mass firings of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

• Republicans in the U.S. Senate confirmed health menace Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, giving the longtime anti-vax conspiracist, oversight of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) among many others. All Dems voting against him. The only Republican to do so was Sen. Mitch McConnell, a polio victim as a child. That, as another "completely preventable" measles outbreak is now underway in west Texas, where all of the victims are said to be unvaccinated children. Kennedy's elevation as the nation's top health official also follows the head of Samoa's medical system charging that Kennedy lied during his Senate confirmation hearings regarding his involvement in a massive measles epidemic that killed 83 people on the island nation in 2019. Most of those killed were children under 5 years of age. All were unvaccinated for the most contagious infectious disease known to humans, one that is otherwise fully avoidable with the MMR vaccine, developed in 1971, which our new HHS Sec. has spent years advocating against.

• Then, the remarkable BREAKING NEWS out of New York and D.C. late this afternoon...

  Earlier this week, as we reported, Donald Trump ordered the DoJ to drop its felony indictment against NYC's Democrat-ish Mayor Eric Adams. He was charged last year with five criminal counts including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations from Turkish interests. Most believe that prosecutors have him dead to rights, though he's pleaded not guilty, has refused to resign and is even running for reelection in November.

  He's also been buddying up to Trump since last year's election, and the 34-time convicted felon turned President has taken the unprecedented step of ordering his personal defense lawyer turned Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove (pictured above right), to make the corruption charges against Adams go away, as the wildly unpopular Mayor has vowed to help Trump with his immigrant deportation efforts in NYC.

  But the Acting U.S. Attorney in charge of the very independent Southern District of New York (SDNY), Danielle Sassoon --- a Republican former clerk to the late, far-right Justice Antonin Scalia and a member of the far-right Federalist Society --- refused to drop the charges against Adams. In a remarkable 8-page letter [PDF] to Trump's new Attorney General, Pam Bondi, requesting a meeting with her, Sassoon accused Bove of acceding to a "quid pro quo," said she was "confident" that Adams was guilty as charged, and that prosecutors were also preparing to charge him with destroying evidence. She said would resign, rather than drop the charges against Adams if that's what DoJ was insisting upon.

  In accepting her resignation, Bove wrote in his own extraordinary, Orwellian, 8-page letter to Sassoon, charging that she was somehow violating her oath of office by "disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President." In fact, her oath is to defend the Constitution and rule of law, not one of fealty to a President. Bove further alleged that the courageous Sassoon was insisting on "pursuing a politically motivated prosecution" (the charges against the Democrat Adams were brought last year by a Democratic U.S. Attorney appointed by Joe Biden) and that her refusal to dismiss the criminal charges --- for Bove's clearly stated political purpose! --- was "a disservice to the nature of this work and the public's perception of our efforts." He also promised that the DoJ would now investigate her.

  But, that's not all. After that, the case moved to the DoJ's public corruption unit in D.C., where two five more top officials, "The acting chief, three deputy chiefs and a deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division who oversaw the section" also refused to drop the charges against Adams, choosing to resign instead. Good for them as well!

  As of airtime, Adams remained indicted, six senior DoJ officials promoted by Trump have resigned in protest, and who knows where this all goes from here?!...

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the impact of climate change is reshaping U.S. real estate markets (bigly!); the Trump Admin is failing to hire thousands of seasonal firefighters before fire season; and Trump is rolling back money-, water- and energy-saving appliance standards again. And receiving a ridiculous "tongue bath" in the bargain from one of his top, most sycophantic cheerleaders at Fox "News"...

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You'll be delighted to know that we've got a (mostly) non-Trump related election story for you on today's BradCast, and a guest here to discuss it! Though we've got a few Trump related stories we have to get to first. Sorry. [Audio link for complete show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Donald Trump has "plainly violat[ed] the First Amendment," according to an announcement last night from the Associated Press. The notice was in response to the White House blocking the 178-year old nonpartisan global news outlet from the President's Oval Office signing of an Executive Order with self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk, giving him and his DOGE Bros government-wide control of the hiring and firing of all federal workers at all federal agencies other than the Defense Dept. AP's punishment was because Trump doesn't like the way the AP Style Guide refers to the Gulf of Mexico after he declared that it should be called the Gulf of America. The White House affront to First Amendment free speech and free press rights echoes former Fox 'News' host turned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's order last month to remove a number of well-established news outlets, such as New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and NBC News, from offices they've occupied for decades at the Pentagon. Rightwing MAGA "news" outlets will be given those spaces instead.

• Free speech doesn't fare any better under Trump, even when it comes from independent federal government Inspectors General. On Tuesday, after the IG at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) issued a 6-page report [PDF] critical of the Administration's pause of all agency activities, Trump fired him. The report found that the attempted Trump/Musk/DOGE shutdown of largely all of USAID's critical foreign aid work around the globe and evacuation of thousands of overseas workers would result in, among other things, hundreds of millions of dollars of already-shipped food for starving people rotting in ports; life-saving medicine for deadly diseases remaining in warehouses unused; and "inadvertently funding entities or salaries of individuals associated with U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.” Obviously, that guy had to go!

• The latest Inspector General firing came the day before 8 of at least 17 IGs fired in Trump's first week, in pretty clear violation of the Inspector General Act of 2022, filed a lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court in D.C., challenging their unlawful "purported removals". The 32-page complaint [PDF] charges, among other things, that these IGs, with decades of experience between them, "have been sent a message that non-partisanship and truth-telling will not be tolerated. That message will have the effect of intimidating the [inspector general] workforce and thus chill their critical work for the American people."

THEN... It's on to the last unsettled race of 2024.

While Trump won the narrowly divided swing state of North Carolina last year, Democrats won almost every other election on the statewide ballot, from Governor to Attorney General, etc. Their candidate for the state Supreme Court, current Justice Allison Riggs, defeated her Republican challenger Judge Jefferson Griffin by just 734 votes out of 5.5 million cast statewide. That narrow result was certified by the State Board of Elections after a post-election canvass, audit and two recounts requested by Griffin.

But Griffin is still challenging the result in state court, arguing that some 66,000 early and mail-in ballots cast by North Carolinians should be tossed out because some registrations lacked drivers license or social security numbers (even though many of those cases were due to database clerical errors on the part of officials, not registrants, or were created before the law required that information); other challenged ballots come from military and oversees voters without copies of Photo IDs included in the mailing (which Griffin maintains is now required under the state's new polling place Photo ID restrictions); or were cast by U.S. citizens who never lived in the U.S. (even though they were born to U.S. citizen parents and have always been allowed to vote).

Griffin is hoping to defy state election officials with a friendly ruling from the state Supreme Court, which has a 5 to 2 Republican advantage --- or 5 to 1, since Riggs has recused herself from this case. Riggs, on the other hand, is seeking relief in federal court, where federal law would almost certainly block the tossing of 66,000 ballots from voters who followed the rules for the election.

To try and make sense of this absurd mess, we're joined today by DEBRA DICKS MAXWELL, President of the North Carolina state chapter of the NAACP. Last week, Maxwell wrote an op-ed pointing out that minorities and young voters are disproportionately disqualified in Griffin's list of ballots that he wants to toss. She noted that he is seeking an unprecedented "do-over" election, even though countless races in state history have been proven by courts to have violated the rights of voters, particularly when it comes to gerrymandered elections found to have been conducted with Congressional districts that violated the Constitution and Voting Rights Act both before and after the elections were run.

"We at the NAACP North Carolina State Conference have never been granted any relief like that, even in cases where we proved that Black voters’ rights were violated," she tells me. "They did not enjoy a 'do-over' because of the gerrymandering by the General Assembly, stacking and packing Black votes into fewer districts [so] there was less representation for people of color at the legislative level. That did not change."

"Judge Griffin is refusing to concede and accept [the results] since he has friends on the North Carolina State Supreme Court," she argues. "Judge Griffin should concede. But because he feels that the results don't matter, 'what I want matters', that is sending the wrong message to thousands of voters, not only in this state but across the country."

If Griffin receives a new election, Maxwell warns, "that would send seismic waves through this county, this state, and even through the country to ask for a do-over." Among other things, she asserts, it would decrease voter participation in future elections when people wonder "'Why should I vote when they are just going to call it how they want it?' Especially as we are gathering thousands of those people who are on that 60,000 list. One of my chairs in the NAACP told me, 'I'm on that list!' We know people who are on there. They are very upset."

Maxwell also explains that the state NAACP is currently "winning on results of a federal [Photo] ID case" filed last May. "It is February and we are still waiting on the outcome." But, if they win the case, she says, it doesn't mean that last year's elections will receive a "do-over"...

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Today on The BradCast: Congrats, America! Bribery, influence peddling, petty corruption, money laundering, fraud, conflicts of interest, even attempted cop-killing and much more is all, effectively, now legalized in these United States! At least if you're on the right team. [Audio link to today's show follows this summary.]

In his Inauguration speech, just three (looong) weeks ago, Donald Trump declared: "The golden age of America begins right now." Apparently he meant the Golden Age of Corruption. For him. And his chosen pals.

But, first up today, a correction to one point from yesterday's show (see the quick version of that correction at the bottom of yesterday's show posting).

Then, we step quickly through a few crime-related turns for Trump and his cronies today alone. Steve Bannon pleaded guilty to one New York state felony charge related to a fraudulent scheme in which he helped steal millions from hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters to supposedly build a wall on the U.S. southern border during Trump's first term. The plea agreement, if he behaves, will result in no jail time for Bannon who was previously charged [PDF] with related felony crimes at the federal level until preemptively pardoned for them by Trump on the last day of his first term. Repeat offender Bannon served four months in federal prison last year after being convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to answer subpoenas from the House January 6 Committee. After his sentencing today, he called on Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to weaponize the DoJ against New York prosecutors Alvin Bragg and Letitia James.

Today, Trump also gave a full pardon today to Illinois' corrupt former Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted on felony charges related to trying to sell Barack Obama's U.S. Senate after he won the Presidency in 2008. Trump previously sprung Blago from his 14-year prison sentence with a commutation, six years early, during his first term.

Also today, Trump's personal defense attorney turned Acting Deputy A.G. corruptly ordered the DoJ to drop all charges against NYC's Democrat-ish Mayor Eric Adams on charges related to doing favors for Turkey in return for free airplane trips and hotel stays around the world.

Both Blago and Adams have each cozied up to Trump in recent months and today, they received their prize. The rest of us received the message that criming --- particularly public corruption --- is just fine as long as you say nice things about Donald Trump after getting caught.

But, if you didn't get the message, our quick summary of just some of Trump's most corrupt, pro-crime, anti-rule of law activities from just his first three weeks in office, from Day 1 right up until today, should help. Including...

• Pardoning all of the violent January 6 offenders on his first day in office;
• Firing Inspectors General from more than a dozen government agencies;
• Dropping DoJ prosecutions in progress for Republican elected officials (and even some Democratic ones that have cozied up to him);
• Firing scores of senior DoJ and FBI officials so far (he will be removing many more in the days ahead);
• Ordering all work at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) --- the folks who police Big Bank, Credit Card and Payday Lender fraud on behalf of American consumers --- immediately stopped over the weekend;
• Signing a new Executive Order on Monday halting all enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (FCPA), the law meant to prevent bribery by Americans and American Companies of foreign officials. (Trump's order describes the federal law as an "excessive barrier" to U.S. commerce!);
• Quietly removing the head of the Office of Special Counsel at the Justice Department last Friday, (That's the office in charge of overseeing whistleblower complaints against the government and enforcing laws meant to tamp down on undue political influence);
• And, the removal of the Director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) just last night. (That's the office that polices integrity and conflicts of interest of Executive Branch officials.)

There is much more, of course, including, I'm sure, much we don't even know about yet. But there's a starter. And, of course, many of the acts summarized above --- in addition to making Trump's personal criming much easier --- are also, themselves, unlawful, even if that may take some time for the courts to sort out. Whether Trump obeys court orders that he doesn't like, or chooses to trigger a full blown Constitutional Crisis instead, remains to be seen.

To discuss America's new Golden Age of Corruption, we're joined today by longtime public corruption and ethics expert CRAIG HOLMAN, Ph.D., Capitol Hill lobbyist on Government Affairs for the nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen. He steps us through some of Trump's most recent corrupt acts, such as the Friday firing of OGE Chief David Huitema who was finally confirmed by the U.S. Senate to a 5-year term in December, after Republicans blocked a vote for more than a year following his nomination by President Biden. Holman, last year, was instrumental in finally helping to push Huitema's confirmation through GOP obstruction in the Senate.

"The Office of Government Ethics serves a very fundamental purpose," Holman explains, "to try to educate and make everyone in the administration --- over 140 different federal agencies --- understand what the ethics rules are, understand what the conflict of interest code is all about, and then help public officials comply with those types of rules." Well, no wonder Trump hopes to neuter that office!

"What we're seeing here --- besides utter chaos on Capitol Hill --- is a full-scale assault on accountability, oversight, and the checks and balances. It goes way beyond the Office of Government Ethics. It's already affected the Office of Special Counsel, 17 independent IGs have been fired," Holman tells me, before adding: "And, by the way, almost all of these firings have a direct financial impact on Elon Musk. So we're seeing the conflict of interest code being torn apart. Every agency he's gone into, all those agencies were overlooking Elon Musk's business practices. The people who were in charge of that have since been fired from these agencies."

We cover much more today in my conversation with Holman, including what interest Congress (specifically, the Republicans who currently control both chambers) may have in all of this, as their own Constitutional powers are being stripped away from them; whether Trump will actual obey court orders as they come down against him; and whether the Humpty Dumpty of our Constitutional order will ever be able to be put back together again, after all of this is finally, mercifully over.

The situation is "dire," warns Holman today. "We are on the very precipice of losing American democracy here. In the first Trump Administration, he sounded like he wanted to end democracy, and by the end of it he actually tried throwing a coup d'etat on Jan. 6th. This time around, he knows what he's doing. That's why we've seen this flurry. He's just marching unrestrained over our democratic norms and our democratic institutions. This is a very dire situation we are seeing here."

As if all of that news isn't swell enough, we close today with Desi Doyen's latest Green News Report on the heels of the hottest January in global recorded history. Enjoy!...

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On today's BradCast: A spotlight on Trump's latest scheme to make election crimes --- specifically his own, but Elon's too --- unaccountable again. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last Friday, the Chair of the Federal Election Commission, Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat, posted a letter she received from the White House informing her that she had been fired. It was the first time in the FEC's 50 year history that any Commissioner had been fired by a President. It is, also illegal. Weintraub, appointed by George W. Bush in 2007, is challenging the unlawful firing. She has, in the meantime, been locked out of her office, her email, her work computer and banned from the FEC building where she has worked without incident or scandal for 18 years. There is a legal way to replace Commissioners. This is not it.

Today we are joined by former FEC Chair ANN RAVEL, appointed by Barack Obama, she served on the Commission with Weintraub from 2014 through 2017. She also served as Deputy Asst. Attorney General at DoJ and is a professor at UC-Berkley School of Law.

Over the weekend, Ravel told me via email that she thought Trump's attempt to fire Weintraub was "insane" and saw it as one more indication that the President has "no moral compass". Today, she offers more details on just how outrageous and unprecedented this effort is. We also discuss why Trump would want to make sure there was no Democrat in charge of the FEC, which had a 3 to 2 imbalance in favor of Republican members before Weintraub was theoretically removed last week.

"There were approximately 20, maybe more, complaints that had been filed against Trump at the FEC," Ravel explains today. "There were dozens of complaints related to the 2024 elections --- not only against Trump and Musk, who spent nearly $300 million dollars to help the President get elected --- but also complaints that Trump had filed himself against Kamala Harris, media outlets and the like. And that is undoubtedly the reason why Trump wanted to eliminate the chair."

"The FEC is not a biased commission," Ravel argues. "It is balanced in terms of party, and there's always been adherence to the law at the FEC, given that it was established during the Watergate scandal. That's the reason for the bipartisan structure."

The Commission's usual 3 to 3 partisan make-up has, in recent years, resulted in tie votes where no action is taken by the FEC. She tells me today that there were no instances, during her tenure, of a Republican Commissioner crossing party lines to vote with Democratic appointees, though the reverse was not unusual. Despite all of that, Ravel says she still believes in the institution even if it could benefit from reforms --- though not like this.

"I feel really strongly about the disclosure that is required by the law at the Federal Election Commission, because it's very important for the American public, when they are voting, or just generally, to know who is behind the campaigns. Who is spending billions of dollars in trying to influence certain things," she tells me. "I really do think that he was trying to subvert the FEC at a critical moment, because of all of the campaign finance violations relating to Trump and his supporters."

Tune in today for much more from Ravel!

Also today, after my discussion last week with financial journalist David Dayen about the Administration's efforts to kneecap the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, things got much worse for the embattled federal agency over the weekend. The CFPB was created in 2008 in response to the sub-prime mortgage scandal that crashed the economy. As the only federal agency whose prime mission is working on behalf of consumers, the Bureau has held Big Banks and sleazy Payday Lenders to account over its short life, returning tens of billions of dollars to ripped off customers in the bargain. So, of course, Republicans have been trying to shut it down since its inception.

Over the weekend, its new Acting Director, Russell Vought --- Trump's newly-sworn in Director of the White House Office of Management Budget (OMB) and a key architect of Project 2025 --- ordered "all" activity by the Bureau to cease, including "all supervision and examination activity." He has also killed the CFPB's web page (which now reads "File Not Found"), and ordered their D.C. headquarters closed as of today. Only an act of Congress can lawfully shut down the CFPB, but the lawless Trump Administration is trying to do so anyway.

In response, the union which represents some 1,600 workers at the CFPB filed two lawsuits on Sunday night. But will Trump follow the orders of any court that issues rulings he doesn't like? A post to Twitter/X by Vice President J.D. Vance on Sunday night suggested he might not. A federal District Court judge in Rhode Island on Monday found that the Administration has already failed to comply with "the plain text" of his previous "clear and unambiguous" order to release billions of dollars in federal grants and other funding that the OMB had attempted to freeze two weeks ago.

I hope ya'll are ready for a very real, very serious Constitutional crisis in the days ahead, when the Administration simply decides to stop following the orders of any court. Because it sure is starting to feel like that is exactly where this nightmare is ultimately going...

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CORRECTION, 10:05pm PT: On the show posted above, my guest Ann Ravel mentioned that she had heard FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub had been removed from her office by U.S. Marines, by force, after her unlawful firing by Trump. In fact, though Weintraub is challenging the removal, that story of her being physically removed from her office, appears to be entirely fake, circulated by Rightwingers who also claimed, in this false telling, that Trump had discovered Weintraub had committed massive election fraud in 2020 and 2024. Ann told me she hadn't seen that part of the false claim, but apologized a few hours after airtime via email for being "sucked into" the disinfo regarding the Marines removing Weintraub from the building. In fact, she touched base with Weintraub directly to confirm that that that part of the story was completely false. My apologies for the error!

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