On today's BradCast: If the 101st Day is any indication, it doesn't look like the second hundred are gonna go any better for him than the first. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• On our roundtable program yesterday with Digby and Driftglass, we discussed who was likely the first top Trump Administration official to be tossed under the bus in the wake of Donald Trump's dismal and worsening approval ratings. Today we know: Trump National Security Adviser and Signal group chat enthusiast, Mike Waltz. At least he outlasted Trump's first (of four) NSAs in the first term. The disgraced and loony Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn survived just 24 days before being tossed and eventually pleading guilty to criminal charges of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians. At least Waltz gets a consolation prize. Trump tapped him to be U.N. Ambassador.

• Last week, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth --- a Reagan-appointee --- ordered the rehiring of staffers and contractors at the Congressionally-mandated and funded Voice of America and its similarly critical global sister networks Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting after the Trump-order shutdown in March of its parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media. This week, Judge Lamberth ordered the Administration to restore $12 million in funding to another VOA sister network, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty --- broadcasting to dozens of countries in dozens of languages since the Cold War --- while issuing both a history lesson and an important Constitutional lesson for the Trump Administration (and, arguably, for Congress) about the important roles of the three co-equal branches of Government in his order [PDF].

• In still more Trump-is-a-Loser news today, a Trump-appointed federal judge in South Texas, issued a first-of-its-kind permanent injunction on Trump's "unlawful" use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 --- in peacetime --- to deport alleged gang members from Venezuela to a gulag in El Salvador. "The President's invocation of the AEA...exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute's terms," U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. wrote in the order [PDF], concluding that Trump's attempt to falsely proclaim the U.S. was being "invaded" by Tren de Aragua gang members at the direction of the Venezuelan government was patently false, "exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful."

• Also of note today, the Board and shareholders of one of the companies most closely associated with America, Coca-Cola, flatly rejected two proposals to abolish the company's anti-discrimination programs, often smeared by Trump and fellow wingnuts as "DEI". Shareholders and the Board of Directors at yet another iconic American company, Levi Strauss, reportedly did the same last week.

• It's not just courts and a few iconic U.S. companies that are pushing back at Trump's nonsense of late. Even Democrats, if you can believe it --- at least a couple who are clearly eye-balling Presidential runs in 2028 --- are now more aggressively doing the same, especially now that the public has turned so clearly against out tinpot dictator-wannabe. Last night, at an event in San Francisco, former Vice President and Presidential nominee Kamala Harris offered her first substantive public remarks since losing to Trump last year, deriding his "wholesale abandonment" of American values. That came on the heels of a stem-winder by Illinois' Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker, taking on Trumpers and go-along, get-along, "do nothing" Dems alike, at a fundraiser on Sunday in New Hampshire. We share extended excerpts from both speeches today.

• And finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report to help us close things out near the end of a week that began with a huge loss for our failing President, as his attempts at hectoring our neighbor to the north and meddling in Canada's elections completely backfired, producing not just another Liberal Party Prime Minister, whose election might have been unthinkable last December, but a climate and energy action champion at that...

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I've got no clue why so many in the media decided yesterday (Tuesday) was the 100th Day of Donald Trump's second term in office, when it is actually today (Wednesday). Am I missing something? No matter how many times I checked, counted, re-checked, recounted, asked AI, the 100th day --- not that any of it actually matters, unless you find accuracy from your media to be helpful --- is today. So, today is when we officially "celebrate" it on The BradCast. [Audio link to full, rollicking show follows below this summary.]

As we are wont at landmark moments in the second Trump Presidency, we are joined again today by two of our old school blogger friends who have been right about almost everything over the past 20+ years, whether the rest of the world wanted to notice or not. HEATHER DIGBY PARTON is the award-winning columnist at Salon and proprietor of Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and 'DRIFTGLASS' is the notorious eponymous blogger and co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast. They've both got plenty of thoughts to share at this particular "landmark moment".

Trump's approval ratings are plummeting on virtually every single issue via every single legitmate poll released over the past few days. Perhaps most notably, for the moment --- and for his own softening supporters --- his self-induced tanking economy is top of mind today. But, he's a loser on his immigration and mass deportation policies as well. Now, why would that be, given that he was supposedly elected for his great economic prowess ("Tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary of words!," he declared repeatedly in last year's campaign and right on up through his fateful "Liberation Day" on-again, off-again worldwide tariff proclamation earlier this month) and to "solve" the immigration issues that he and Republicans and Fox 'News' have been stoking and worsening for political purposes over so many years?

But none of it is working, as it turns out China is refusing to cower in the face of Trump's 145% tariffs because, as their Foreign Minister explained this week, "it will only make the bully want to push his luck more." There are quite a few elite American law firms, universities and media outlets that may wish to take notice of that response from the largest exporter of goods purchased by Americans, as ships will soon no longer be arriving and shelves at stores may be bare by the time we get to Christmas. That, as new economic numbers out today find that American GDP in the first quarter has fallen by 0.3% after increasing by 2.4% in the final quarter of last year under the economic guidance of President Biden, and more than two-thirds of Americans now predict a Trump Recession on the near horizon.

As to the violence, recklessness and fecklessness of his mass deportation policy, both of our guests concur that is backfiring as well. His supporters also seem to have begun to take notice. As Driftglass argues, they are seeing that "if anyone without a visa can be locked up and deported overnight, you can be, because now we have no Due Process." As Digby observes, "this is happening to people just like you who voted for Trump. And it could be you. They are not discriminating."

But there is much more on our plate to discuss today --- from why all of this is happening and whether it meets or exceeds our guests expectations; to what each of them expect to be Trump's response to his plummeting polls; to who they expect to be the first Trump cabinet member to fall; to what sort of Democrat is needed out there to guide the party back to relevance and put Humpty-Dumpty back together again --- if it can be.

Digby says she's "aged 10 years in the last 100 days" --- me too! --- as Driftglass breaks down what he describes as Trump's "fascist death spiral". Let it be true.

Join us, won't you?...

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On today's BradCast: We're barely 100 days into Trump's second term as President and the odds seem to be improving quickly, believe it or not, for an historic third Impeachment for the worst, most failed, most unpopular (at this point in his term) President in U.S. history. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... Before we get to news on the possibility of yet another impeachment for Donald J. Trump, some wildly amusing election news out of Canada, where Trump's idiotic hectoring of our long-time friends to the North succeeded in improbably reversing the fortunes of the Liberal Party in Monday's election. Prime Minister Mark Carney was victorious yesterday, as the Liberals soundly defeated Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre in a simply remarkable turn of events. The Liberals were all but doomed as of last December, when then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was facing a 25% deficit against the Conservative's Trumpy-wannabe Poilievre. Then Trudeau resigned and Carney took his place as PM, as Trump began threatening Canada with an offensive campaign to make it our 51st state. He then further won the hearts and minds of our largest trading partner and longtime ally by slapping huge trade tariffs on them and placing himself at the center of their Prime Minister's election. Long story short, Trump's idiocy translated into a once seemingly impossible victory for Carney and the Libs --- and Poilievre even lost his own seat that he's held in Parliament for 20 years to a Liberal opponent. Congrats, Mr. President! Please keep up the bad work!

NEXT... Back here in the U.S., Trump appears to be no more popular than he is in Canada. In fact, as pretty much every recent poll has shown, his approval ratings are in the toilet both overall and for almost every single issue pollsters are asking about.

That now includes Impeachment, where a poll released late last week found that a majority of American voters (52%), now "strongly support" or "somewhat support" the idea, including a 55% majority of voters who identify as independent and even 20% of self-identified Republicans!

That polling coincides with the introduction of seven articles of Impeachment on Monday in the U.S. House by Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar of Detroit, who argues that Trump has "repeatedly demonstrated that he is unfit to serve" and "represents a clear and present danger to our nation's Constitution and our democracy."

All of that comes on top of the ImpeachTrumpAgain.org campaign, launched on Inauguration Day earlier this year by the nonpartisan nonprofit, Free Speech for People (FSFP). While their campaign initially called for Trump's Impeachment on Day 1 for violations of the Constitution's Emoluments Clauses and Trump's "unlawful, corrupt campaign practices," it has since expanded to include some 17 High Crimes and Misdemeanors that, "since taking office, Trump has committed."

According to my guest today, FSFP's co-founder and President, JOHN BONIFAZ, the campaign's petition in support of Impeachment has now garnered more than 400,000 signatures from the public. Bonifaz is a Constitutional Law expert and author of several books on Impeachment, including 2018's The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump. He has also given testimony in Congress in years past for U.S. House Impeachment inquiries.

Among my questions for Bonifaz today...

• Why was Trump Constitutionally eligible as of Day 1 in his second term for Impeachment, as argued by FSFP's campaign?
• If Trump's historic TWO impeachments during his first term failed to remove him from office, is it really worth doing yet again, especially with Republican majorities currently in both the House and Senate?
• Impeachment or not, can Trump still be held accountable via the legal system for violations of the Constitution, including the Emoluments Clauses (as per a case found Moot by SCOTUS after Trump left office the first time) and for his withholding of nearly half a trillion dollars in spending approved by Congress?
• Of the ImpeachTrumpAgain.org's current seventeen suggested Articles of Impeachment detailed on their website, what are the top three or four most critical, as he sees it?
• How does the U.S. Supreme Court's absurd finding last year of so-called "Presidential Immunity" for "Official Acts" affect any hope of a U.S. Senate finding a President guilty of High Crimes and Misdemeanors under the Constitution's Impeachment Clause?
• What is his response to Democrats --- for example, Rep. Dan Goldman of NY, who worked on one of Trump's previous Impeachments during his first term --- arguing, as the Congressman did in mid-February, that "regardless of whether or not there are impeachment offenses, it's not happening and we need to focus on other ways of providing accountability on Donald Trump"?

As usual, Bonifaz' responses are clear, insightful, and very educational, as he argues that "we are dealing here with somebody who is lawless in the Oval Office. He is a reckless, lawless person who claims to be President of the United States when really he's trying to act like a monarch and a tyrant."

"The Framers [of the Constitution] were very clear," he tells me. "We were not to be a nation governed by a monarch or a tyrant. This was going to be a different nation, governed by a President checked by a Congress and by a Judiciary. But importantly, they put an extra guardrail into the Constitution, in addition to those co-equal branches of government, and that was the Impeachment Clause. They were also aware that there might come a day when a President would so engage in trampling on the Constitution, would so engage in violating the rule of law, that there would need to be a measure to allow for the Impeachment and removal of that President. And that is the place that we are now in. This is the very remedy the framers put in the Constitution to deal with this lawlessness coming from the Oval Office."

"We either have a Constitution or we don't," Bonifaz asserts, when I ask about why any of this is worth trying, given previous failures to use Impeachment to remove Trump from office during his first term. "We either have an Impeachment Clause or we don't. If we do not invoke it at this very moment in the face of this lawlessness coming from this President, then what's the point of having the Constitution at all? And what's the point of having the Impeachment Clause? We are not going to give up on this idea of a Constitution in which a President must be accountable to the people and to the other branches of government."

"Second, we normalize these High Crimes when we don't name them for what they are. These are not policy disputes. These are abuses of power. And this President must be held accountable under the Impeachment Clause for these High Crimes."

"And third," he continues, "members of Congress take the same oath that Donald Trump took to protect and defend the Constitution. They have a duty to stand up at this critical moment in our history and defend the Constitution in the face of this attack by this President on the rule of law and on our democracy."

There is much more in our conversation on all of the above that I suspect you'll find very very interesting and even encouraging.

FINALLY... we are joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report on Trump's denial of disaster relief funds for Arkansas, Kentucky and other states; his EPA's firing of ALL of the (volunteer!) scientists working on the Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment; and a new study finding that the world's biggest oil companies have caused some $28 TRILLION in climate damages to the world...

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I'll try to make this brief today, so you can get right on to actually listening to today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today, as Donald Trump officially becomes the lowest-rated President in U.S. history during his first 100 days in office since polling began in the FDR Era...

• The Trump Administration has now gutted the Voting Rights Unit in the Civil Rights Section of the Dept. of Justice. All of the senior managers have been reassigned elsewhere and all pending cases from the prior Administration have now been dropped. So much for the DoJ's "crown jewel"...and enforcement of voting rights.

• After losing one case after another after another in lower courts since taking office, the Trump Administration is hoping to change their luck by turning the tables by arresting a sitting state judge in Wisconsin for allegedly helping an undocumented migrant avoid arrest by ICE when he was in her courtroom for a completely unrelated case. The state judge, Hannah Dugan, was hand-cuffed at the court (as opposed to, for example, Trump being allowed to turn himself in at an appointed hour for his two felony indictments) and Trump's FBI Director, Kash Patel, posted a photo of the perp walk on social media in violation of DoJ's long-standing policy. The case against Hannah, however, may not turn out to be a very good one, according to Marcy Wheeler.

• And now they're "deporting" U.S. citizens. At least children. With their mothers. Late last week, two mothers were both deported to Honduras after showing up for a scheduled check-in along with their kids, one of whom is 2-years old, one who is 7-years old, and one who is 4-years old...with Stage 4 cancer. The children are all U.S. citizens. Neither of the mothers were reportedly allowed to speak to a lawyer after being handcuffed and shipped out of the country. One of the women was reportedly allowed to speak to the father of her children for 1-minute before the call was cut off by ICE and the women and their children were all deported. And yet, when asked about it on Sunday, Sec. of State Marco Rubio had the gall to say that, while both citizens and non-citizens alike are entitled to Constitutional due process, "if you're in this this country unlawfully, you have no right to be here and you must be removed." But, how do you determine if someone is in the country unlawfully without due process? Clearly, neither of these women --- OR THEIR CHILDREN --- received it. That, by the way, is according to the far-right, very Trumpy, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge in Texas overseeing their cases. Even he is not happy about it!

• So, is this what Trumpers were hoping for when they voted for him last November? I had hoped to talk to a few of them as I asked such listeners to give us a call today. But, right as we finally got to the phones, the entire phone system here at KPFK crashed. [Please consider giving them a donation to help upgrade the phone system! And please tell them Brad sent you when you do!]

• Oh, well. That gave us some time to walk through at least a few of the major new polls out over the past few days in the run up to Trump's 100th Day in office this week, finding him with the lowest rating at this time in office of every President who has served over the past 100 years. And it's not just his overall approval that has crashed --- into the 30s in some of the polls --- but, on every single issue of note, more Americans oppose him than support him...by huge margins...

• And also, some time to enjoy the schadenfreude of a whole bunch of MAGA folks who seem to now deeply regret their vote for Donald Trump...

This seems to be the worst fascist takeover ever. But he's doing it anyway...

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Today on The BradCast: His various attempts to undermine the Constitution and American civil rights law continue to be blocked by judges in the courts. But that isn't stopping the President and his lackeys from gutting civil rights protections and environmental justice enforcement at key federal agencies...for the moment. Nor is it stopping our guest today, a 30-year EPA veteran, from continuing the good fight at her agency. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Donald Trump proved to be a loser again on Thursday in three different federal courtrooms, in three different civil rights-related law suits, as determined by three different federal district judges (one of whom was appointed by him.) Two of the judges, one in New Hampshire, the other in Maryland, blocked his Dept. of Education's attempt to cut funding to K-12 schools with anti-discrimination or DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs.

The third civil rights-related court loss for Trump today was in D.C., where a federal judge blocked his attempt to mandate proof of citizenship when registering to vote, as per his recent attempted power grab via an Executive Order meant to undermine democracy, U.S. elections and the right to vote.

In the meantime, Harmeet Dhillon --- a rightwing culture warrior clown and former Trump 2020 "Stop the Steal" attorney --- has been appointed to oversee the Dept. of Justice's Civil Rights Division, where she has reportedly unleashed a "bloodbath" among senior officials at the office which oversees, among other things, voting rights. Current and former employees at the division charge that Dhillon is turning civil rights law upside down, by using it, as one former department employee familiar with the new changes said, to "victimize the very people it was created to protect."

THEN... In related-ish news, we reported earlier this week that Trump's new EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, sent letters to some 450 staffers at the Agency's Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights office, notifying them that they are being fired or reassigned as the office is being shut down. The firing letters to longtime staffers --- including scientists, researches and attorneys --- were sent on Monday night, Earth Day eve.

The EPA's Environmental Justice office, created during the Administration of Republican President George H.W. Bush, is tasked with protecting minority communities who are often most vulnerable to toxic emissions from chemical plants and oil refineries. Down in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley", for instance, there are about 150 plants and refineries concentrated along a stretch of land between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The population in the area is mostly Black, and multiple studies have found that nearly every census tract in the area ranks in the top 5% nationally for cancer risk.

Since taking office, however, Team Trump have pledged to "end the use of 'environmental justice' as a tool for advancing ideological priorities" and have been unwinding the unit's work under previous Presidents. For example, under Joe Biden's Administration, the EPA sued the owner of a Cancer Alley chemical plant where cancer cases were found to be 44% higher for those who lived within one mile of the plant than the national rate. The Biden Administration sued the company to clean up their act. The Trump EPA recently withdrew the lawsuit.

Amidst those horrors, we're delighted to be joined today by JOYCE HOWELL, 30-year veteran EPA senior attorney and Executive Vice President of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE)'s Council 238, representing some 8,400 EPA workers nationwide.

"'Environmental justice' is just another extension of the fundamental American right to equal protection under the law," she tells me when I ask her to explain what the phrase actually means. "To ensure that, no matter where you live, the laws that protect human health and the environment will apply to you. Environmental justice gives people the avenue for their voices to be heard when determinations are made about where to put a factory that spews so much pollution, relative to where they live. Or, if they are already living there, and there's someplace nearby that impacts them, that they would be able to, as members of the public, have their voice heard with regard to the permitting of that plant, to the number of inspections that take place [and] the oversight of programs that are delegated from EPA to the state."

Howell finds it "disconcerting" that EPA Administrator Zeldin has shut down the Environmental Justice office, removing its history from the Agency's website, dismissing the work of the office as ineffective and "an excuse to fund left-wing activist groups". That, as Zeldin vows to slash the EPA budget by 65%.

She tells me that while work is continuing at the EPA nonetheless, its "enforcement program has slowed down tremendously." More than even "under Trump 1," when she also served. Explaining how she, and her colleagues at the Agency, survived his first term, Howell says, "We do what we always do: we put our heads down and we did our work. That's what carried us through."

Her union, AFGE, may have plans to challenge the recent layoffs and reassignments in court, though she did not yet want to give away their thinking on that. But, when I asked why she was willing to speak on the record on these matters, --- while many of her current and former EPA colleagues have been speaking to the media under condition of anonymity due to concerns of retaliation --- Howell notes that, since she speaks on behalf of the union, she may have some protections under federal labor law that others may not, protecting her "speech on behalf of workers."

But, she adds, she recently "attended an organizing meeting and someone said, 'Cowardice is contagious. So is courage.' And I thought to myself, yeah, that's true. For me, it's important. I haven't been at EPA for all these years just to get a salary. I am there because I believe in the mission. I will tell you every single person there feels strongly the same way. We don't do it on behalf of ourselves. We do it on behalf of the American people."

I hope you'll turn in for a very interesting conversation today.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen helps us close today's show with our latest Green News Report, at the end of a very green --- and sometimes all too toxic --- Earth Day week!...

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On today's BradCast: As you know, much of what we hold dear in these United States is under assault right now, thanks to the man we were collectively dumb enough to elect as President last year. But, for countless reasons, no single institution may be more important to help protect than our nation's free press, which is under far greater fire than I think most Americans realize. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Sadly, that attack has now been joined by too many of the major corporate outlets that control far too many of our previously independent mainstream news sources, all the way down to the local level. And the worst of them, as we've recently learned, are all too willing to hoax their own customers into unknowingly joining the battle.

We've got a number of U.S. media-under-attack stories for you today, from international U.S. media to national media to local media.

First, a bit of encouraging news on the international level. On Tuesday, a federal judge ordered [PDF] the restoration of the 83-year old, Congressionally-mandated and funded Voice of America. The international news outlet, originally created by the U.S. to counter Nazi propaganda in Europe, had been broadcasting continuously since 1942, until Donald Trump ordered its parent agency, the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) shut down last month. Some 1,300 VOA staffers and contractors were sidelined, as the airwaves of VOA and its USAGM-overseen sister networks such as Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting fell silent. A number of VOA journalists sued, and on Tuesday, the court ordered USAGM to return employees and contractors to their pre-March 14 status. That's good news, though VOA is not fully back yet, and the Administration is expected, of course, to appeal the ruling.

Nationally, corporate pressure super-charged by Trump is also threatening another American broadcast institution. 60 Minutes' longtime executive producer, Bill Owens, quit on Tuesday amid pressure from CBS' corporate owners Paramount, as the company is seeking approval from the Administration for a corporate merger with an outfit called Skydance. That approval, however, is threatened by Trump, who filed a laughable, $20 billion suit against the top-rated, long-running newsmagazine after he didn't like an interview they aired with Kamala Harris before last year's election. Since then, Trump has similarly bristled at tough reports from the notoriously independent new program, charging that they will "pay a big price" for daring to report accurately on his Administration. We don't yet know the full story of what happened at 60 Minutes. But as Paramount is hoping to settle Trump's ridiculous suit, Owens told staffers that the program's independence is threatened, so it was time for him to leave. That, even as he told the show's employees that it is "too important to the country" for them to quit in protest.

From attacks against the U.S. international free press to the national level, we finally arrive on today program at still more threats newly underway against highly-trusted local news outlets, thanks in no small part to collusion between giant corporate broadcasters and the Trump Administration's corrupted FCC.

Last month, Trump's newly-seated Federal Communications Commission Chair, Brendan Carr, announced a new initiative to gut FCC radio and television rules that he described in a notice seeking public comment as his "Delete, Delete, Delete" plan [PDF].

As The Desk detailed earlier this month, the nation's largest owner of local television stations, Nexstar Media Group --- which controls more than 200 TV stations in more than 160 markets across the country --- ordered the local newsrooms at all of the stations it operates (including affiliates of NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, CW, etc.), to create a "news" story from deceptive, misleading talking points that suggest that the FCC was seeking comment from the public on regulations that "threaten the growth of your local TV news stations". Each, nearly identical report, voiced by local anchors, aired on dozens of stations, instructing viewers to visit a weblink that resolves to a Nexstar-run page instructing them how to let the FCC know that viewers are "worried about the long-term health of my local television stations" and want to "eliminate the regulations that are threatening the growth of my local TV station."

As a number of employees at some of those stations told The Desk on background, however, they were uncomfortable running the reports as "news", but were given no choice by their corporate parents at Nexstar.

Given the national power company, which already rakes in some $5 billion per year, it's hardly a surprise that we haven't heard much about this story in the corporate media. We do our best to make up for that today.

Our guest is the longtime award-winning broadcast journalism veteran turned media activist SUE WILSON, who described some of this earlier today in an article at The BRAD BLOG headlined "Trump's FCC on Precipice of Ending All Limits on Corporate Control of Local TV News Stations". In it, she explains how Nexstar already controls two --- and sometimes three (with FCC permission) --- TV stations in virtually every major media market in the country. But now, with the FCC's Carr looking to "delete, delete, delete" as many regulations as possible, the company is hoping to do away with remaining restrictions on how many stations any single company may control both nationally and at the local market level.

Wilson details how Nexstar and fellow broadcast goliath Sinclair, a far-right outlet who ordered a similar "must-run" package for its nearly 200 stations in support of Trump back in 2018, have long been gaming the system meant to limit corporate control of local stations. Today she details how they are colluding with the new FCC Chair to simply gut regulatory ownership limits while ignoring, or somehow working around, those that have been implemented statutorily by Congress.

"What we are seeing more and more across the United States is that you can turn on your TV set, and you can watch a local news reporter do a report," she tells me today. "You turn to the next station and it's the same reporter doing the exact same report." And that, of course, is with the limits currently in place --- the ones that Nexstar are misleading their own viewers into helping them make it worse. Worse for viewers, anyway, if not more profitable for Nexstar, Sinclair and the others.

Wilson also details today --- as she did in her article earlier --- how you can, and should, respond yourself to the FCC's call for comments. But you will need to do it quickly. Final comments are supposed to be filed --- either by Twitter/X or via the FCC's Comment site --- by Monday, April 28.

"We are fighting a juggernaut in the Capitol. They want to deregulate the media. They want to take over the media, is what they are really after. We have to stop them," argues Wilson, urging listeners to remind the FCC in comments that the "publicly-owned airwaves belong to us."

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Will they fight for the actual health and lives of their constituents? Or go along with (literally) deadly DOGE cuts? Will they throw away tens or hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the clean, renewable energy industry in their own home districts? Or screw over their own voters and local economies in favor of Trump's tax cuts for billionaires and huge corporations? All of those questions, a few answers, and much more --- even several bright spots --- on today's Earth Day 2025 BradCast. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

Among our coverage...

• West Virginia coal miners are suing Bobby Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), for recent layoffs at the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH) and the shut down of critical medical screening and job replacement services for miners. The lead plaintiff in the suit is suffering from lung disease, amid a growing epidemic of black lung in Coal Country. But with some 875 of NIOSH's 1,000 employees terminated earlier this month, they are no longer available to help move miners like him to non-dusty jobs, as required by the Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977. In addition to free screenings for lung disease and the right to job transfers, the federal law also blocks Administrations from weakening existing protections. The Trump Administration, however, doesn't seem to much care about the rule of law.

• In response to the NIOSH layoffs and shutdown of these critical programs for miners, WV's Republican U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito --- who voted to confirm Kennedy just weeks ago --- is now begging him to restore those jobs at NIOSH, many of which were in her state, and the critical medical services for miners in Central Appalachia. All of that, as Trump recently welcomed coal miners to the White House to serve as props for his announcement of new Executive Orders meant to try and force the revival of the dying coal industry ("beautiful, clean coal," as he insists on falsely describing it) and to otherwise try and knee-cap cleaner, safer, more profitable renewable energy initiatives in the bargain.

• Also part of the new Administration's celebration of Earth Day this year, Trump's Environmental Protection Agency sent letters to hundreds of EPA employees in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights today to inform them their services are no longer needed, as environmental justice --- protecting low-income Americans and minorities most at risk from air and water pollution --- no longer aligns "with the agency’s current and future needs."

• Back in Congress, Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House are facing a serious dilemma. The House Ways and Means Committee is currently tasked with cutting some $1.5 trillion in federal services to Americans in order to help pay for Trump's $4.5 trillion tax cuts to mostly benefit huge corporations and the wealthy. But many Republican members of the Committee have seen huge, renewable energy-related job growth in their home districts, thanks entirely to tax credits made available via the Inflation Reduction Act passed without a single Republican vote in 2022 and signed into law by President Biden. The majority of the tax credits to companies to spur new manufacturing jobs in the renewable energy business are, by design of the previous Democratic Administration, in "red" states and counties. But Trump has ordered Congressional Republicans to kill all clean energy funding enacted by Biden. This is a real, if under-reported conundrum for Republicans and, potentially, a very good opportunity for Democrats in response.

• But Earth Day turned out to be another very bad for chief DOGE Bro and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Just after the close of the markets today, Tesla issued its latest quarterly report. It was brutal for the company, which announced that profits fell an extraordinary 71% as compared to the first quarter of 2024. That, thanks to several reasons, though none of them as obvious as the worldwide public disgust in response to Musk's obnoxious turn late last year to the hard, Trump, MAGA right.

• As Desi Doyen is here to remind us, however, there are still some reasons to be hopeful on this year's Earth Day. At least everywhere else in the world, where new technologies and clean-energy breakthroughs are actually being supported and making remarkable progress; where nature itself is offering exciting new opportunities to fight climate change; where threatened species are making surprising come backs in several places thanks to scientists, conservationists and local communities; where cities and states around the world are making major advances in reducing pollution, and; where countries --- other than the U.S., at least --- are banding together to help vulnerable nations adapt and survive our climate crisis.

• On the other hand, Desi is also here with our latest Green News Report --- where every day is Earth Day --- to catch us up with a few stories we missed while off on Spring Break last week. Most of those stories, focused largely on the U.S., are not nearly as bright, however, especially as the world lost one of its great climate champions this week...

Happy Earth Day. Somehow.

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Well, we're back live on today's BradCast, like it or not. With so much going on we've got no choice but to run right into the middle of the freeway and pray for the best. The result? Not a bad show, if I say so myself. [Audio link to full show follows this tweet.]

After a quick round-up, needed for context today, of just some of last week's madness while we were otherwise off for a much-needed break, we pick up with...

• The opinion [PDF] of the very conservative Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who, last week in the case of the mistakenly-deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia warned that the Trump Administration's refusal to bring the man home to Maryland from a gulag in El Salvador "should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear." Judge Wilkinson goes on to warn, among other things, that "The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order," and that "If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?"

• But Donald Trump's tyranny is now here, in full flower, which one Republican U.S. Senator admitted recently has all of her colleagues "afraid", even if most are still too afraid to say as much out loud.

• SCOTUS was literally forced to awaken from bed over the weekend to issue an extraordinary, 7 to 2, middle-of-the-night order PDF to the Trump Administration, clarifying that no Venezuelan migrants being held in Texas may be deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 "until further order of this court." (If you're wondering who were the two Justices in favor of sending migrants to foreign gulags without benefit of any Constitutional due process, that would be Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, of course.)

• And, by the way, Washington Post reported over the weekend that the 18 intelligence agencies comprising Trump's own National Intelligence Council concluded in an assessment earlier this month that the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the U.S., as Trump has lied about in unlawfully invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants without due process.

• Trump's fiscal policies continue to be disastrous as well. The U.S. stock market plummeted yet again on Monday in response to Trump's tariff and trade war and his new threats of firing his own Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who Trump is now blaming for the fact that he crashed the U.S. economy with his own dumb trade war that few if any countries are apparently willing to negotiate with Trump about.

• Pope Francis, the world's first Latin American pontiff and a great champion of progressive causes including the fight against climate change and for environmental justice --- as Desi Doyen details today --- died on Monday at the age of 88 after a months-long illness and a brief meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance on Easter Sunday.

• That's not all we cover today, but it gives you an idea before we open up the phones to callers, callers, callers. Lot of them, including some with some very interesting thoughts and questions! Please tune in!...

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Donald Trump's chaos coaster continues on today's BradCast. Our top on today's ride: Social Security. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... As we warned yesterday amid "irrational exuberance" as the stock market briefly skyrocketed following Donald Trump's social media announcement that he was pausing his unilateral worldwide tariffs for 90 days, investors began to notice that it wasn't quite as good as it looked. Trump's remaining 10% tariffs on almost every nation (other than Russia) and boost of duties against imports from China to 145%, helped lead the U.S. markets to tank again today, if not quite as much as they rose yesterday.

But some brighter news for those who believe in both truth and election integrity today. Rightwing propaganda outlet Newsmax, which quietly settled a defamation suit last year brought against them by voting system company Smartmatic, was found this week by a judge in Delaware to have defamed Dominion Voting Systems following the 2020 Presidential election. A jury will now determine if the Trump-allied outlet intentionally smeared Dominion with "actual malice" when they claimed the company rigged voting machines in favor of Joe Biden, despite the lack of any such evidence. The trial is set to begin at the end of this month...unless Newsmax decides to settle that one too.

But, speaking of actual voter fraud, it looks like Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, committed it last year in Hawaii when she voted there in the 2024 election after previously declaring herself to be a resident of Texas. Oops.

THEN... Elon Musk's DOGE Bros are unleashing absolute havoc at the Social Security Agency. Their latest chaos involved a plan to end phone services for people filing for retirement or survivor benefits as of this coming Monday. But with cries of outrage, impossibly long lines at field offices, wait times on the phone, and website crashes for new applicants and longtime beneficiaries in recent days, the Agency has now backed off that terrible plan as well. For now.

We're joined today for insight and warnings about Trump, Musk, DOGE and much more by longtime Social Security expert DR. ERIC KINGSON, emeritus Professor of Social Work at Syracuse University, co-founder of the nonprofit Social Security Works, and policy advisor to two different Presidential commissions on Social Security Reform under both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

What DOGE is doing at SSA "has nothing to do with efficiency or correcting errors," he tells me. "There's an extremely small error rate in Social Security. As for efficiency, we spend less than one percent administering the program. It's a well-administered program --- until now."

He worries that for "the first time since the creation of the program, there is a major, major risk of dramatic changes that will hurt the American public, especially middle-aged workers and young workers today."

"It's purposeful," Kingson argues, regarding the chaos unleashed at the agency by Musk's DOGE Bros in recent weeks. "You don't do the things that DOGE is doing because you want to fix something. You want to destroy it. And you want to destroy it with cruelty and disrespect for human dignity."

Kingson, the co-author of a book on protecting and expanding "the Insurance Americans Love and Count On", believes "the next game plan" is to privatize the Agency on the basis that the havoc unfolding now will be used to argue later that the private sector "will do a lot better".

He concurs with President Biden's SSA Administrator Martin O'Malley that the damage being done right now could soon result in the collapse of the system; argues that DOGE and Trump "have been stripping Social Security of its expertise and historical memory"; and charges that Trump, Musk and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who claimed today that "Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will not take a hit" in the President's legislative agenda moving forward in Congress, are lying about fraud at the agency and benefits for Americans, which they plan to undermine. Kingson cites "a huge crisis" on the road ahead, as "half of today's workers under 67 will not be able to maintain their standard of living in retirement. If you count the cost of healthcare and long term care, it's probably about two-thirds. That's a crisis. What they are doing is stripping away the one thing you can count on: Social Security."

Much more on all of that --- and what you and I can and should do about it (hint: "Fight like hell!") --- in my conversation today with Kingson. I hope you'll tune in.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, as Trump signs a slew of Executive Orders to bail out the dying, polluting American coal industry, and as Big Banks plot new ways to profit off of our climate crisis...

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On today's BradCast: "Irrational exuberance" reigned on Wall Street as of 1:18pm Eastern Time. Though, after the past week of our moronic President's idiotic "economic policy" crashing the markets day after day after day, it's hard to blame investors for over-celebrating even the smallest hint of a respite from his imbecility. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Before we get to Trump (sort of) backing down from his worldwide (except for Russia) trade war, a bit of an addendum today to my disturbing conversation on yesterday's program with Slate's legal ace Mark Joseph Stern. He and I were both in general agreement on Tuesday that the Supreme Court's horrible 5 to 4 ruling on Monday night --- in a case challenging the deportation and foreign imprisonment of Venezuelan migrants without due process under Trump's peacetime use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 --- allowed for the detention and foreign imprisonment of not just migrants but of U.S. citizens without due process as well.

Today, preeminent Constitutional law scholars Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC-Berkley's Law School, and Laurence Tribe, Emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, argued an almost identical case in a New York Times op-ed headlined "We Should All Be Very, Very Afraid".

So it's not just some progressive radio dude and a legal reporter at a lefty-ish Internet publication issuing such a warning this week. Thus, I felt a need today to underscore that important point once again before it too gets lost in Donald Trump's ongoing authoritarian chaos.

For what it's worth, even a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas on Wednesday has now temporarily blocked the deportation of Venezuelan migrants under Trump's Stalin-like implementation of the Alien Enemies Act. Details on today's program.

THEN... The roller coaster on Wall Street continued on Wednesday, though at least much of today's ride was an upswing for a happy change. After four and a half days of market blood-letting following Trump's ridiculous "Liberation Day" pronouncement of major sanctions against virtually every nation on Earth (except for Russia) last week --- and with the bond market tanking as well and economists warning about a likely recession --- President Super Genius finally backed down, at least partially, as he always does.

Despite a remarkable, immediate spike in the major market indexes in response, within minutes after Trump's lie-filled social media post about his "90 day PAUSE", investors may soon begin to realize that the news isn't quite as good as they might have hoped. Trump (for today anyway), is leaving in place 10% tariffs against pretty much everybody (except Russia) and now claims to be raising tariffs against China to 125%, because they dared match the previous sanctions he'd declared against them.

In all, though it was unclear as of this afternoon whether Trump was dropping his 25% or 35% or 10% tariffs against our largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, if Trump keeps in place the current 10% tariffs against most of the world, and his 125% tax on goods imported from China, it seems that the inflationary cost to American consumers will be just about what it was before Trump choked this afternoon. Even after today's spike, the Dow remained about 10% lower than its all-time record set during the Biden Administration.

How that --- or any new brain farts from President Stable Genius --- affects the market in coming days remains to be seen.

In addition to the financial cost of Trump crashing the economy, there has seemingly been a political cost as well to President Make-It-Up-As-You-Go-Along as well, resulting in what Politico last night characterized as a "House Republican mutiny" that threatens to hold up (post air: sure enough!) or even block all together, his massive, deficit-exploding tax cuts for his wealthy friends and their corporations.

How will Trump's partial flip-flop on tariffs affect his political fortunes on the massive GOP budget plan? Stay tuned. Though keep your hands and arms inside the roller coaster at all times until this madness comes to a complete stop...whenever that may be...

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On today's BradCast: The decision handed down by the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court last night just after we got off air was confusing, divided, muddled and, at closer inspection, as discussed with today's guest, even grimmer than it first appeared. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST UP, however, what qualifies as the brighter news of the day, believe it or not...

• Markets continued to plummet for a fourth straight day following Donald Trump's punishing, unilateral, worldwide (except for Russia) tariffs announced last week at the White House. But the push-back against his authority to issue them, granted by Congress, has begun to grow more quickly than one might have expected among Congressional Republicans.

• And, just before airtime today, a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled in favor of the Associated Press in its lawsuit against the Administration after it banned the news outlet from coverage of certain events in the White House and on Air Force One. The AP has accused the Administration of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment, in response to the outlet's decision to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally recognized name, rather than as the Gulf of America as Trump has attempted to mandate via Executive Order.

THEN, we're joined by Slate legal journalist MARK JOSEPH STERN to unpack the confusing --- and troubling --- 5 to 4 opinion issued by SCOTUS last night, largely allowing Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, for now, to detain and deport migrants to foreign gulags. Stern, who describing the ruling last night as one that "couldn't be more ominous", explains that the Court's brief, split decision is "going to cause a lot of confusion, chaos and uncertainty in the lower courts, and for these migrants, who the administration is trying to disappear to El Salvador."

While the five men on the Court disagreed with the four women (including the Court's lone female GOP-appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett) on most aspects of the ruling, they all agreed, at least, that deportees must be afforded the opportunity to challenge their detention in court before removal.

The terse, but alarming opinion was issued via the Court's "shadow docket" without full briefing or oral argument, in response to an emergency appeal in a challenge by Venezuela migrants deported under the AEA with no due process whatsoever. The Trump Administration invoked the wartime law --- which, according to its text, may only be used to detain and deport migrants from countries that have "declared war" on the U.S. --- to send Venezuelans they claim to be violent gang members to a gulag in El Salvador. And while the full Court decreed that such detainees must be allowed to challenge their detention in the jurisdiction in which they are detained, it will seemingly be impossible for the hundreds now already in a prison outside of the country to do so.

The Trump Administration's view, observes Stern, is that, once a migrant is locked up in a foreign gulag, they "have had their Constitutional rights permanently extinguished. They have no right to due process or any other rights, procedural or substantive. And further, that federal courts have no jurisdiction to order any kind of relief to help them." That is the case, according to the Government in the related Kilmar Abrego Garcia matter, even when someone has been "mistakenly" deported.

There are all sorts of troubling issues wrapped up in the majority's unsigned opinion, including the fact that they simply took the Administration at its word on several key points, despite Trump's Dept. of Justice repeatedly lying to and/or thumbing their nose at direct orders issued by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, whose impeachment Trump subsequently called for. That call led to a gentle reprimand from the Chief Justice a few weeks ago, even if John Roberts sided with the majority in favor of Trump anyway in Monday's decision.

"We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her blistering dissent, excoriating the majority. "The government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law," she warned, ominously noting that it is now the official position of the Court that even "United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. History is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this nation's system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise."

Stern shares her concern, particularly about the likelihood of U.S. citizens being swept off the streets and shipped off to foreign prisons. He adds: "By the way, something like 1-1.5% of individuals detained by ICE every year are actually U.S. citizens. The burden falls disproportionately on tribal citizens and Puerto Rican people on the mainland, due to racial profiling and other kinds of stereotyping. So this is not a far-off hypothetical."

He is also concerned about what the string of recent decisions by the corrupted high court in favor of the Administration and in contradiction to lower court judges, is likely to signal.

"I am worried that the Court is just going to start rubber-stamping these Trump requests for emergency relief, and refuse to consider the extraordinary and immense harms that will be inflicted on the American people by doing so," he explains. "That five men and sometimes Justice Barrett have decided that the real problem isn't Trump and his lawless crusade. The real problem is district court judges standing in his way. If that is the approach that the Supreme Court is taking --- if they really do think that the real problem is judges and not the Trump Administration's unprecedented assault on the rule of law, then again, we are all in grave danger. It's not just Venezuelan migrants."

Much more insight, disturbing details and outrage during my disturbing conversation today with Stern.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report after deadly, widespread extreme storms and flooding over the weekend; as Trump's trade war is increasing the cost of reconstruction for disaster victims; and as Senate Republicans work to strip California of its clean air car standards...

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