My ears are still ringing after the President of the United States spent about 20 minutes barking at me last night. But the show --- in this case, the final BradCast of 2025 --- must go on. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

VERY QUICKLY... Some final election results for the year, as a Democratic union leader and U.S. Army veteran won a special election on Tuesday for a state Senate seat in Kentucky in a more than 47-point landslide over his Republican opponent! Gary Clemons won almost 73% of the vote, according to today's unofficial results. Granted, it was in a Democratic leaning area of Louisville, but one where Kamala Harris won by just 6 points last year. So, it amounted to an approximately 42-point shift in favor of Team Blue. In Kentucky. That should help propel the Resistance into the critical mid-term election year of 2026.

THEN... Two of our favorite guests are here today for an end-of-year roundtable, of sorts, as we wrap up a...well...tumultuous year, to put it far too nicely, as we try to make sense of whatever happened last night during Donald Trump's weird, lie-filled, prime-time tirade and a whole bunch of other stuff at year's end.

We're joined once again today by fellow old-school bloggers HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of the Professional Left Podcast.

AP noted last night that Trump has frequently said he believes more Americans would back him if they simply heard him describe his track record. Well, I think everybody heard him last night. Even if they had their TVs off, since the guy was shouting so loud. What he was shouting, however, was mostly a string of ridiculous claims and a whole bunch of numbers, many of which were made up out of whole cloth.

In his mercifully brief, but endlessly angry remarks, he said "at levels never seen before" or "at record levels" at least 7 times; referred to at least 11 different "records" that he claims to have broken over the past year; cited "history" --- as in, "never before in American history" --- at least 12 times; and blamed Joe Biden for most of his own failures at least 7 times.

Whether anybody is more inclined to back him after hearing that "record" --- (new polling out yesterday from PBS/NPR/Marist found his overall support at just 38%, AP/NORC clocked him in at just 36% approval) --- than they were before last night remains to be seen.

"I couldn't guess about his supporters, because I've lost all sense of anything making sense amongst the American electorate," quips an enjoyably cynical Digby today. "These people are crazy. And so is he. I am just looking at this and thought what kind of person watched that gibbering clown last night and thought, 'Wow, that is a great president'?"

"It is clear that Donald Trump has made a career out of lying to people. Now he's just a living sales pitch. But you can't out-shout kitchen table math," argues Driftglass in regard to last night's speech, before somewhat countering himself. "On the other hand, if you've ever read 1984, it's just a matter of telling the rubes what you want them to think. They are so sunk-cost bought-in to Donald Trump, they know if they don't believe it, the whole thing crashes down."

"There's a thing in aeronautics called the Jesus Nut," he continues. "It's this bolt-nut combination that holds the entire helicopter assembly together. Without it, you'd better pray to Jesus because you're going down. Donald Trump is that to them. He is the thing holding it all together. So whatever crazy crap he says, they have to believe it, they have to go along with it, because the alternative is the abyss."

When we move to the topic of whether Republicans are going to accept the Democrats latest attempt to help save them from themselves by extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies that Trump and the GOP cut --- with monthly premiums now set to skyrocket for tens of millions of Americans in the new year --- Digby believes that "Republicans are not coming to their senses."

"I think that the vast majority of the Republican caucus, in both the House and Senate, are happy to let the subsidies expire because they know they are going to lose next fall. They see the writing on the wall. And they figure, 'The one thing we did was we destroyed Obamacare.' That's been on their agenda from the very beginning. If they get nothing else out of this whole mess, they get that. They destroyed Obamacare. They don't care about how many people suffer, because this is their Great White Whale. Or Great Black Whale, I guess, in the case of Obamacare."

Driftglass, who explains that his ACA monthly premiums are set to quadruple next year for him and his wife thanks to the GOP's cuts (from about $700/month this year to more than $2500/month next year!), believes that Trump's own supporters "are going to take a huge hit, but they are going to go look for scapegoats, not solutions. And that is tragic. And it's dangerous."

He is also wistful about what has happened over the past year. "This country is now a different country than it was in 2024," he observes. "We have become a different place. We've lost our innocence. This happened after the Viet Nam War, the Civil Rights Movement. Fundamentally, this country has changed in ways we do not understand yet. And whatever happens after Trump, it is going to be a different place than you and I grew up in. And part of that is that there is now a solid block of 36% of the American public who are just insane."

We have much more insanity to try and make sense of on today's program. From the house of cards that Speaker Mike Johnson is barely hanging on to; to the release of the Epstein Files that, by law, is supposed to happen tomorrow (both Digby and Drifty are dubious, to say the least); to why it is that Indiana Republicans actually stood up to Trump's threats and refused to gerrymander their U.S. House map; to what could possibly reverse Trump's seemingly quickly sinking fortunes (and health) next year.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen helps us close out the show with our final 'Green News Report' for 2025, at the end of a program that hopefully gives you lots to chew on, worry about, think about, plan for, fight for or laugh about until we return in 2026...

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On today's BradCast: Our final round-up of the Gerrymandering Wars at year's end, as we head into the critical 2026 election year following a big, disturbing, redistricting ruling by the corrupt Republican SCOTUS majority. Also today, similarly disturbing news regarding our petty President's latest scheme to undermine life-saving climate science. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... News broke last night that Donald Trump has ordered the dismantling of the world-renowned National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, due to what the fossil-fueled Administration ridiculously describes as "federal climate alarmism".

NCAR was created by the National Science Foundation in 1960 as an independent executive agency funded by Congress, as global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels was already becoming an increasing concern. Even one of the few climate scientists known for his climate change skepticism described NCAR today as a "crown jewel" for the study of atmospheric chemistry and physical meteorology.

The climate science community is, as Hill Heat journalist Brad Johnson reports, "in complete shock" about this "insane move" to undermine science and put millions of lives at risk.

But, believe it or not, while shuttering the 65-year old institution will certainly serve the White House's fossil fuel industry masters well enough, the move actually seems to have as much to do with Trump's twisted vendetta against Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on behalf of brain-poisoned former MAGA County Clerk Tina Peters. She is currently serving 9-years in prison related to breaking into and making unlawful copies of voting system hard drives in a failed attempt to prove fraud during the 2020 election.

Yes. It's all as ridiculous and self-defeating as it sounds. But, that's Trump. Scientists vow to fight the move, even as Trump will likely have to count on his corrupted SCOTUS to allow him to force his will on yet another federal agency created by Congressional mandate to be independent from the Executive Branch.

THEN... As you know by now, afraid of being seen as a loser yet again next year, our corrupt President began ordering Republican-controlled states earlier this year to take the virtually unprecedented step of redistricting U.S. House maps mid-decade in order to try and gerrymander seats held by Democrats out of existence.

The multi-state effort had largely been a wash for the GOP to date, as "blue" states pushed back to try and balance the scales in response. It might have even resulted in a loss for Republicans next year, thanks to a ruling by a three-judge federal panel --- led by a Trump-appointed judge(!) --- after a 9-day hearing of evidence and witnesses, finding that Texas' attempt to gerrymander five Democratic seats in largely majority-minority districts amounted to an unlawful, unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

But, after the briefest of reviews over the Thanksgiving holiday, the corrupt Republican SCOTUS majority issued a terse, unsigned "shadow docket" ruling that allowed the unlawfully gerrymandered Texas map to be used in next year's critical midterms anyway. The 6 to 3 Republican majority said it was just too late and too confusing to use the House maps that used over the past two elections in the Lone Star state.

Citing the "Purcell Principle", another one of the Roberts Court's made-up use-if-and-when-necessary legal doctrines, the majority gave Texas the green light to use its new, unconstitutional, Republican-friendly map next year because the lower court "improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections."

Try not to laugh. That "active primary campaign" the lower court "improperly inserted itself into" would be the midterm primaries scheduled for next March in Texas, to determine candidates for the ballot in November of 2026. While few realized it was an "active" campaign at this point, it could have been, as our guest today notes, moved back by the court, if necessary. Though it is hardly necessary, being months away and, until the new ruling, run on a map that voters have been using without a problem since 2022.

All of that, is ridiculous enough. But, as Justice Elana Kagan noted in her dissent on behalf of the Court's three liberals, the majority ruling now offers a clear roadmap for how states may unlawfully gerrymander at will, in a way that will prevent any court from blocking them, as long as they time their legislation just right.

We're joined today by JAY WILLIS, former attorney, now editor-in-chief at the great legal website Balls and Strikes. He explains that the Court's "Purcell Principle", originally invented in 2006 to avoid chaos at the polling place by a court ruling just days before an election, is now being abused to prevent anything that Republican Justices simply don't like.

"The Purcell Principle has gotten stretched to the point of meaninglessness, where anytime the Justices decide that we are too close to an election in a way where changing the rules would hurt Republicans, they just say, 'No, no! Purcell Principle! Can't do that!,'" Willis tells me. "The Court described the Purcell Principle as forbidding changes on the 'eve' before an election. Now, that Principle is almost an entire calendar year in the hands of this court."

"What this rule amounts to," he argues, "is a free pass for Republican officials to conduct elections outside the scope of the law, as long as they basically get the timing right."

"As Kagan points out in her dissent, you don't have to have a law degree to understand that a racially gerrymandered map is illegal and unconstitutional unless the legislature that passes it waits until close to an election," he says, adding, "That can't be how the law works, a law that allows racial gerrymanders to remain in place in an election, as will be the case in Texas in 2026. That's just not a law that functions. That is not a tenable status quo."

Apparently, it is now. Much more on all of this, and how SCOTUS plans to make things even worse next year, on today's BradCast...

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Today on The BradCast: It's difficult to notice --- or trust your own eyes --- when it all happens in slow motion. At least until it happens quickly. But, yes, the wall continues to crack. Day by day. Brick by brick. [Audio to full show follows this summary.]

Among the many stories covered on today's program...

• One of the worst headwinds that House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Congressional Republicans will be facing next year, in their hopes of hanging on to their narrow majority in the lower chamber, is their cuts to Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) subsidies that are set to expire at year's end. It will skyrocket the cost of premiums for millions of Americans beginning on January 1. Today, Johnson announced his own caucus in the House could not agree on a fix, all but guaranteeing there will be no such fix until next year earliest. Congress will be recessing until 2026 at the end of this week.

• On yesterday's Rachel Maddow Show, she was somewhat misleading in her suggestion that last night at midnight, December 15th, was the last chance to sign up for a health care policy under the Affordable Care Act to ensure health care coverage next year. In fact, the Open Enrollment period for Obamacare --- for both new policies or to change a current one --- continues until January 15th next year in most states. Though, depending on which state you are in, coverage may now not begin until February under a new policy. In several states, however, which run their own exchanges (rather than forcing resident to purchase policies via the federal exchange), including California, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington D.C., you can still sign up for policies (or change current ones) before the end of the year to see them take effect as of January 1. Costs are going to go up either way for millions of Americans, thanks to Republicans in Congress refusing to extend subsidies that would prevent monthly premiums for policies purchased via the Obamacare marketplaces from doubling or tripling in many cases from what they were this year.

• Donald Trump and the U.S. Military's murder spree on the high seas continued on Monday with three new attacks on three supposed drug boats near the coast of Venezuela, bringing the number of people killed by our completely unlawful attacks to at least 95. In related news on Monday, Trump signed an Executive Order "designating fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction", in hopes of adding some --- any --- legal justification to both his murder strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, and a promised eventual attack on supposed "narco-terrorists" in Venezuela (even though fentanyl is not produced or trafficked from there.) Also relatedly, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday said he will not release video of the unlawful second strike on an alleged drug boat from September 2nd, when the U.S. fired on two shipwrecked survivors following an attack earlier in the day, a huge violation of both U.S. and International law.

• Trump's not-insane, very powerful, and very low profile White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, had a whole bunch of pretty shocking things to say about Trump, his policies (both foreign and domestic), his top appointees (from Vance to Bondi to Vought), his retribution campaign against political foes, and much more in some ten interviews reportedly given over the past year to an author who has written a book about WH Chiefs of Staff over the years. A number of Wiles' eyebrow raising remarks from those interviews were published by Vanity Fair today and D.C. is abuzz trying to figure out what it all means.

• As still more bricks in the wall appear to be falling out, a number of Republicans, including MAGA loyalists past and present, have seemingly turned --- gently or otherwise --- against Donald Trump's deranged, repulsive remarks on Monday about the murder of Hollywood legend Rob Reiner, who was killed just hours earlier on Sunday along with his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, in their Los Angeles home.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report as climate change-fueled torrential rain, flooding and levee failure plague the Pacific Northwest; Trump continues his very selective and political approval for federal disaster aid; and as New York City's congestion pricing program (which Trump opposes, natch) continues to clear the air in Midtown...

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Today's BradCast was not the show I had hoped to do today. But, after a weekend of gut-wrenching violence around the globe and back here at home, including here in Los Angeles, I'm not sure what other show we could have done. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Please forgive the technical snafus at our flagship station, Pacifica Radio's KPFK here in L.A. at the top of the show. (Even if they may provide the most "comedy" were were able to muster for today's program!)

Among the tragic incidents covered today, with callers ringing in at the end...

• Two U.S. service members and an American civilian translator were killed in Syria, supposedly by a member of ISIS, though that remains unclear.

• At least two were killed and nine wounded during a gun massacre at Brown University in Rhode Island. The shooter, despite being falsely identified by the FBI on Sunday (that man was later released) remains at large at this hour, three days later. For several of the students at Brown, shamefully, it was not the first school shooting they survived.

• At least 15 were killed and more than 40 wounded in an antisemitic gun massacre by two men, a father and son, during a celebration of the first night of Hanukah at Sydney, Australia's Bondi Beach on Sunday. The identities of the two shooters (one of whom was killed, the other is in the hospital) remain unknown. But a heroic fruit-vendor named Ahmed el Ahmed, managed to tackle and disarm one of the shooters. Following a very rare mass shooting in Australia, political leaders there vowed to enact still tougher gun laws in a nation that already has many strict ones in place.

• And on Sunday night, in heartbreaking news that has rocked Hollywood, the state of California, the nation and likely the world, we learned that iconic actor, director, writer, producer and political activist Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were murdered at their Brentwood home yesterday afternoon. The couple's youngest son, who had a history of substance abuse, has been taken into custody by law enforcement following what is being described as a gruesome knife attack.

As you may guess, we've got a lot to say about all of the above. Particularly about the horrific death of the legendary Reiner; the horrific comments made about his murder by our psychologically twisted President of the United States; and the important role Reiner, a devoted liberal Democrat, has played over decades in both American and California politics.

Callers ring in...

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It's difficult to fathom. But, we've got hard evidence on today's BradCast that Congress was actually in session today. Both chambers! Doing oversight. Holding votes and stuff! And, when it comes to the Republicans who control those chambers, natch, voting against the best interests of their own constituents. All of that, as Trump continued to lose one battle after another today --- in the courts and even in the state Senate of a very Republican state. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

There was also quite a bit of breaking news both right before and during today's hour. Among the stuff we covered...

• Just before airtime, news broke that yet another federal grand jury has, for a second time, rejected an attempt by the Trump Administration's corrupt Dept. of Justice to revenge indict New York Attorney General Letitia James. If you're keeping score at home, that's one indictment tossed out by a federal judge, followed by two attempted indictments rejected by two different grand juries, against the woman who successfully held Donald Trump to account actual fraud to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in both criminal and civil court last year.

• Also just before airtime, Republican lawmakers in the Indiana state Senate voted to reject a new U.S. House map that would have gerrymandered the Hoosier State's two remaining Democratic seats out of existence, defying Trump's orders, death threats from his supporters, threats to primary those Senators next year, and even his last minute message that he would cut off all federal funding to the state if they didn't obey! To their credit, the state Republicans did not!

• A federal judge on Thursday found that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was being held unlawfully held by ICE in immigration detention and ordered that he be freed immediately. Despite foot-stomping and promises by Trump's DoJ to appeal, Abrego Garcia was released before today's show ended. He is, of course, the Maryland resident, father and Salvadoran national who was wrongfully deported back to El Salvador earlier this year, before being ordered to be brought back to the U.S. by a federal judge. DoJ then indicted him on seemingly trumped-up charges, which he still faces, and ICE unlawfully tossed him into detention. Until today.

• Speaking of immigration, Dept. of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem embarrassed herself and the Administration under questioning from Democrats in the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday. We share some of the sharp questioning for DHS Barbie from Democratic Reps. Dan Goldman (NY) and Seth Magaziner (RI). Also testifying today was FBI Director of Operations Michael Glasheen who similarly embarrassed himself and the Administration when trying (and failing) to explain to the Committee's Democratic Ranking Member, Bennie Thompson (MS), why the non-existent "Antifa" organization is now absurdly regarded by the Bureau to be the nation's top domestic terror threat.

• Over in the U.S. Senate, Republicans blocked a Democratic bill to restore premium subsidies for more than 20 million Americans who receive access to health care via the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare). Monthly premiums are now almost certain to skyrocket for millions at years end, leaving many Americans without health care at all. Four Republicans joined the Democrats' attempt to restore the massive GOP cuts, but it wasn't enough to overcome a Republican filibuster. For their part, a ridiculous Republican bill to give Americans about $1,000 per year in a so-called Health Savings Account to somehow cover health care needs, went down in flames. Several pending discharge petitions in the House may force votes next week on the matter in the lower GOP-controlled chamber.

• "Catastrophic" flooding is forcing evacuations for as many as 100,000 residents in the Pacific Northwest over the next several days, following as much as 18 inches of rain over the past 72 hours in some areas. The Skagit River in Washington, which reaches major flood stage at 32 feet, is now expected to crest at a record 47 feet! All consequences of the climate change disaster which most Republicans pretend is not happening, and pretend to not be caused by the man-made burning of fossil fuels.

• With increasingly dangerous floods, droughts, storms, fires, etc., it is disappointing to learn that Zillow, the nation's largest real estate listing site, is removing a feature, added just last year, that allowed home buyers to learn about a property's exposure to the climate crisis. Making climate risk data more difficult to find and use, does not make its reality disappear, however. "The risk doesn't go away," says Matthew Eby, founder of the non-profit financial climate risk modeling site, First Street, which supplied the scientific data previously used for the Zillow feature. "It just moves from a pre-purchase decision into a post-purchase liability." Good luck, home buyers!

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, on the U.S. seizure of an oil tanker near Venezuela; the Trump EPA's deletion from their website of humanity's roll in climate change; Exxon Mobil pleads for help from the corrupted SCOTUS Six; And a U.S. court strikes down Trump's Executive Order blocking wind energy projects...

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Today on The BradCast: If Democrats don't put up a candidate for every goddamn contest on the ballot next year --- in every state, county, city, town, village and hamlet in the nation --- they are out of their flippin' minds. If things continue as are seeing week after week at year's end in 2025, they could well be in a position to win any race, almost anywhere in the country in 2026. (Though they may need to demand a few ballot hand-counts to ensure the correct winner, if a disturbing new report out today is any indication.) [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Following up on huge shifts toward Democrats by the electorate in Special Elections across the country all year; an outright Blue Wave in state after state during the November 4th off-year elections last month; and another Special Election in a deep-red GOP-gerrymandered U.S. House district last week; Democrats racked up more stunning victories on Tuesday night in several Presidential battleground states, as the American electorate continues a remarkable shift toward the Left, even in races that Dems don't win outright.

Among the unofficial election results from last night, what they all mean moving forward into the critical 2026 mid-terms, and one great big red flag that voters from all parties need to watch out for next year...

• A Democrat won the Miami, Florida Mayoral runoff for the first time in nearly 30 years, defeating a Republican candidate endorsed by both Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis. She won by nearly 20 points in a city that narrowly went to Trump in the Presidential contest just last year. Eileen Higgins will also make history by becoming the city's first-ever female Mayor in a city not much more than an hour's drive from Mar-a-Lago. She ran on affordability agenda, vowed to protect the immigrant community threatened by Trump, and to take on many of the city's worsening climate change-related challenges ignored by both Trump and DeSantis in South Florida. She also promised, to roars from supporters during her Tuesday night victory speech, to build a city where "immigrants feel welcome and respected".

• There were also two Special Elections to fill vacancies in the Florida state House on Tuesday. One seat was previously held by a Democrat and the other by a Republican. While neither seat was flipped, the Democratic candidate improved on last year's results by about 11 percentage points in one case, and 15 points in the other. It was an incredibly good night for Dems in the Sunshine State, which had been moving farther and farther to the right over the past decade or more.

• In Georgia, Democrat Eric Gisler flipped a GOP state House seat on Tuesday, in a Special Election in a district that went for Trump by more than 12 points last year. He defeated his Republican opponent by just under 2 points, according to the latest unofficial tally, notching a 14 or 15 point swing for Democrats in the previously "red" state House District. The victory comes after what the state's Democratic Party described as "22 years of failed Republican leadership."

• In Albuquerque, New Mexico, two-term Democratic incumbent Mayor Tim Keller became the first Mayor in city history to win a third consecutive term. As he vowed during his victory speech on Election Night: "We are not going to allow ICE in. We are not going to let Trump come into Albuquerque." Democratic wins also appear to have flipped the City Council.

• Even in Iowa, where a Democratic candidate lost her race last night in a landslide Special Election for a vacant state House seat by nearly 40 points, the electorate shifted about 11 points toward the Democrat in the otherwise extremely "red" state House District. It was the fifth Special Election for a state legislative seat in the Hawkeye State this year. In each of them, the electorate shifted to Dems by anywhere from 9 to 15 points.

• In all, as a Bolts Magazine analysis of all 2025 state legislative elections finds today, "Democrats gained 25 state Senate and House seats that were held by the GOP, out of the 118 that were resolved this year in regular or special elections." That number outpaces the party's wins in 2017, before 2018's mid-term Blue Wave during Trump's first Presidency. Republicans flipped exactly ZERO such races over the past year. Moreover, the outlet notes, "the GOP may have gotten lucky this year: Most of the legislative elections that occurred in 2025 were for seats that Democrats already held, which limited their opportunity for gains."

• With all of that in mind, Republicans should be terrified ahead of next year's mid-terms. Even --- and, perhaps, especially --- in GOP-controlled states that have recently gerrymandered their U.S. House map (at Trump's orders) in hopes of flipping "blue" seats to "red" ones. To do that, they must make safe "red" seats a bit less safe. In Missouri, where Republicans recently adopted a new map designed to remove one of two remaining Democratic U.S. House seats, opponents are trying to block the new map by putting it on next year's ballot as a citizen's veto referendum. Yesterday, organizers of the effort let me know that they have "delivered over 300,000 signatures --- three times what was required" to MO's Sec. of State in order to force a referendum on the gerrymandering measure next November. "Under the Missouri Constitution," they said, "once those signatures are submitted, the map cannot take effect unless voters approve it." But, they are also warning that Republican state officials are "signaling they may ignore that constitutional requirement and attempt to implement the map anyway." The group, People Not Politicians, tells me they are ready to go to court immediately, if necessary, to file a challenge if, in fact, the state is "considering the nullification of its own constitutional check on legislative power."

• But here's something that Democrats and Republicans alike need to be aware of next year. The computer-tallied results from several ballot propositions in upstate New York's Rensselaer County appear to have gone sideways during last month's November 4th elections. Thanks to the tenacity of supporters of the Stephentown Memorial Library in tiny, rural Stephentown, just three miles from the state's border with Massachusetts, a hand recount of the county's hand-marked paper ballots was carried out. After a hand-recount, it was discovered that a measure to fund the town's library, initially reported as having lost 528 to 60, was actually found to have been adopted by voters 540 to 279! Several countywide measures were also mistallied as well by the County's optical scanners made by Clear Ballot. One of them, a measure that would have ended funding for a local volunteer rescue squad, was not adopted as originally reported by results of 517 to 505. In fact, the local measure was found to have been defeated --- 2,381 to 2,250 --- following the hand count! So, how could the original results have been so wildly wrong? We explain today, based on the few details we've been able to gather from local media reporting and some input from several longtime voting system and election integrity experts we reached out to.

• Finally, at the end of another very busy show, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as climate impacts accelerate in the Middle East; Repubs give another big gift to Big Oil; a MAGA v. MAHA feud breaks out over Trump's EPA rollback of toxic chemical rules; and as deployment of utility-scale solar operations sets a new record in the U.S., despite Trump's efforts to kill development of cheap, clean, reliable, renewable energy...

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Today on The BradCast: For years, we've called out the authoritarian petrostates working to block the fight against fossil fuels and our existential battle against climate change that has been exacerbated by them. Even as the U.S. has long been the world's worst per capita emitter, I think today, under this particular President, is the first time we've had to include the U.S. government itself as one of those "authoritarian petrostates." [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... It's another win for New York Attorney General Letitia James against Donald Trump. As you know, she successfully oversaw several fraud cases (both civil and criminal), against him and his company in the Empire State last year. Since re-taking office, Trump has weaponized his Justice Dept. to try and exact his revenge against James. He continues to fail. Hilariously.

First he had to find someone willing to seek an indictment against James after his own U.S. Attorney in Virginia refused to do so. He appointed his personal insurance lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to the job. She was able to obtain a grand jury indictment related to supposed mortgage fraud. But two weeks ago, a judge tossed out the indictment after finding Halligan was unlawfully serving as U.S. Attorney. Last week, Trump found a federal prosecutor from Missouri who was willing to re-indict James. But the grand jury rejected the indictment! (In an amusing side note, yesterday ProPublica found that Trump himself appears to have committed the very same "crime" that he has been trying to indict James for!)

Then, on Monday night, a federal judge in Massachusetts found in favor of a group of some 18 state Attorneys General, led by James, who had sued to block Trump's "Day One" Executive Order shutting down virtually all wind farm projects on federal lands and waters. The EO was tossed out by the judge as "arbitrary and capricious" and a violation of U.S. law. James wins again! So do the residents of those states and all the rest of us who pay the price for dangerous, climate killing fossil fuel energy, rather than clean, cheap renewable energy like wind power.

SPEAKING OF PAYING THE PRICE FOR FOSSIL FUELS... The 30th annual U.N. Climate Summit (COP30) wrapped up in Brazil a couple of weeks ago. For the first time, the United States, under the Trump Administration, didn't even bother to send a delegation. Ultimately, progress toward the world's transition away from fossil fuels to meet the 10-year old Paris Climate Agreement targets --- to keep temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times --- was stymied by fossil fuel industry lobbyists and authoritarian petrostates like Saudi Arabia, Russia and now, sadly, the U.S. The conference's final statement, which must be agreed upon by all parties, did not even mention fossil fuels.

Today, as the European Union's climate change service announced that 2025 would be either the second or third-hottest year ever recorded globally, after 2024 smashed all previous records, we are joined by one of the world's premier climate scientists.

Dr. MICHAEL E. MANN is the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth & Environmental Science and Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the group awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Price, author of some 160 peer-reviewed and published papers, and of more than half a dozen books on climate science. His latest, with vaccine scientist Dr. Peter J. Hotez, is Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World.

Today, Mann joins us to share, among many related things, his thoughts on the disappointment of COP30 in Brazil, and how that "Bad COP" suggests that it may be time for a new format for the annual climate conferences. "The U.N. needs to show some backbone," he urges today.

As to the U.S. under Republican/Trump rule, he tells me: "The problem is that you have a small number of bad actors, authoritarian petrostates, leading among them, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and now the United States. We have to view the United States as part of what I sometimes call the 'Coalition of the Unwilling.' A small number of fossil fuel-driven countries that are doing everything they can to block a global agreement."

Mann warns, during our broad discussion, that the time for action to prevent the worst effects of climate change is now quickly running out. "It is sometimes said that 'Nature bats last,'" he quips today. "The Earth's system, the global climate, doesn't care about the politics of fossil fuel countries, and the bickering between the petrostates and the rest. The climate system doesn't care. It will continue to warm up as long as we burn fossil fuels. And all of these impacts will continue to get worse."

"We have a finite budget, a finite amount of carbon that we can burn and keep the planet below 1.5 Celsius --- for Americans, it's 3 degrees Fahrenheit, basically --- a level of warming beyond which we will see far worse consequences than we've already witnessed," Mann explains. "We can actually calculate, with some uncertainty, how much carbon is left in that budget. The calculations show that three years of business as usual --- if we don't begin to ramp down those carbon emissions dramatically, if we just continue with business as usual for three or more years --- then we burn through that budget."

"What's so tragic is if we had acted decades ago, if politicians around the world, governments around the world, had listened to the scientists decades ago, we could have fairly gently decarbonized our societal infrastructure. A fairly gentle reduction of carbon emissions, and a relatively slow, steady move away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy. We could have afforded that, if we had started acting decades ago. We can't afford that now. We have got to undergo that transition in a matter of years. Right now, we are clearly not meeting the moment when it comes to these annual climate summits. Something's gotta change."

We also discuss his continuing feud with Microsoft founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates, who Mann charges with now spreading climate disinformation at an alarming rate by suggesting that somehow a 'technological fix' will be found to solve these problems; how climate scientist Mann found common ground with virus scientist Hotez to co-write their new book, Science Under Siege on "the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World" (and what those forces now are); and how --- and if --- he remains optimistic that the world can overcome the quickly worsening climate challenges we now face with so little time left before impacts become irreversible.

"This is Tolkien-esque battle. It's a battle not for Middle Earth, but for Earth itself," he tells me, referencing the Lord of the Rings novels. "There are so clearly forces of good and evil that are involved. I think framing it in those terms can be helpful and clarifying. There's a line...'There's some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.' It's about fighting the good fight. Even if the odds don't seem in your favor, and the forces against which you are fighting seem overwhelming, the only way you're going to prevail is if you fight the good fight. And that's what we've got to do."

Tune in for much more worth hearing from Mann today...

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Today on The BradCast: Don't let our ridiculous, sociopathic President's absurd antics and unspeakable corruption prevent you from losing sight of the relentless, damaging effects of his simple, terrible, policy-making decisions, and the increasingly high costs Americans are paying for them. Even regarding policy-making decisions that Trump previously vowed he would not make. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

As you know, Donald Trump ran in 2024 on a promise to decrease costs for consumers on "day one", vowing to "make American affordable again." Now he claims the word "affordability" has been made up as part of another "Democrat hoax", and that his policies --- including massive tariffs which serve as a tax on every American --- are actually lowering prices. They aren't.

Similarly, he repeatedly vowed to never touch Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. He is now gutting all three of them in various ways, as even Fox "News" pointed out today, believe it or not, noting that "Trump broke his promise to protect a lifeline for 71 million Americans." Not to mention his massive cuts to the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) that go into effect on January 1, increasing the cost of health care for everyone, even those with employee health care plans.

Back in October, after Trump's tariffs pushed away the world's largest soybean customer, China, Trump claimed to have made a "deal" with them their purchase of 12 million metric by the world's largest customer by year's end. Instead, China has purchased a quarter of the amount that the Administration claimed the Great Deal Maker had secured. American farmers are now facing bankruptcy while consumers are paying more everything, including for beef, the price of which has spiked thanks, in no small part, to climate change-fueled drought. (Climate change, as Trump will tell you, is just another "Democrat hoax," of course.)

In hopes of mitigating the damage his policies have caused for farmers, on Monday, Trump announced another new bailout for the ag industry. (The Administration is, euphemistically, calling it a "bridge payment".) The latest aid package is for some $12 billion to farmers as overseas customers, especially China, have fled, while prices for fertilizer and seed are up (also thanks to Trump's tariff tantrum) and the labor market is scarce, thanks to Trump's immigration policy thuggery. The new aid package follows on two similar farmer bailouts during Trump's first term --- when he originally began his trade war against China --- for $22 billion in 2019 and a whopping $46 billion in 2020.

As if all of that isn't bad enough, last week Trump announced a new rule to reverse money- and life-saving fuel efficiency standards enacted by Joe Biden for cars and trucks. He claimed that encouraging the manufacture of more polluting cars and cutting $7,500 incentives for clean electronic vehicles would somehow make the purchase of new cars $1,000 cheaper in the U.S. than they would have been under the Biden rules.

All of that is nonsense. It is as absurd as Trump's years-long bluster about ending a "Biden EV mandate" that never actually existed, as explained by our guest today, DAN BECKER, Director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the Climate Law Institute of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. Becker has worked for years at the Campaign, developing the strategy and fight for the biggest single step any nation has taken to fight global warming: The Barack Obama Administration's ground-breaking program to cut deadly greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution in half from cars, SUVs and pickup trucks. Biden furthered that program with additional efficiency standards. And, last week, Trump announced he was doing away with them.

"In one stroke," Becker told AP, "Trump is worsening three of our nation's most vexing problems: the thirst for oil, high gas pump costs and global warming." Today, Becker joins us to dive into the details.

The previous CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standard enacted by Obama and then Biden "saves gas. And by saving gas, you save money at the pump because you don't have to fill your tank with as much gas, or go as often. And when you burn less gas, you pollute less," Becker tells me today. "In fact, every gallon of gas burned pumps 25 pounds of carbon dioxide pollution into the atmosphere. And we burn a lot of gallons. So this is a major source of global warming pollution. And the US, because we drive a lot more than other folks, we drive more gas guzzlers than other folks, and we drive them further. We are the biggest auto polluter on the planet. And Trump is only going to make that much worse."

The Obama/Biden rules "represent the biggest single step that any nation has ever taken to cut use of oil --- saving you money at the pump --- cut pollution that is a result of burning that gas in your car," Becker explains. "And it's really unjustifiable to watch the President of the United States tear up this very valuable protection for consumers, for the environment, cutting our dependence on foreign oil, and at the same time lie, and say 'Oh, it's actually a good thing for you because you will save money.' Because, in fact, it will cost you much more at the gas pump than you would save upfront with a dirtier car."

All the while, China is expanding their sale of Electric Vehicles around the world at a massive pace --- even while they, essentially, aren't allowed to be sold in the U.S. (unless you are willing to pay a 100% tariff). "They're selling like hotcakes in Asia, Europe, South America, and Africa. But we don't buy them here," says Becker. In the bargain, however, U.S. automakers --- including those who joined Trump at the White House last week for his announcement --- are, shooting themselves in the foot. "The reality is that the auto companies are working with Trump to create their own grave," warns Becker.

Why are they doing this? Tune in today for an explanation of that and much more, as Trump's policies --- never mind his bluster and daily sociopathy --- are costing Americans a fortune...and even their lives...

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Yikes. Quite a news day. We do our best to keep up on today's BradCast. But our conversation about the political fight to avoid falling over the GOP's massive health care funding cliff at year's end, may be the most immediately important news of all today for tens of millions of Americans. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Okay, we begin first with a few headlines. And there are a lot of them today, most still developing and several breaking just before and during the show. So, in short for the moment...

• The Dept. of Justice arrested and charged a long-sought suspect today in the case of the unexploded pipe bombs left near the Democratic and Republican Committee headquarter buildings on the eve of January 6, 2021. They gave no details yet on how the Virginia man identified today was caught, nor what his motive may have been.

• A Dept. of Defense Inspector General's report [PDF] was released today on DefSec Pete Hegseth's "Signalgate" scandal. Despite claims yesterday by Team Hegseth that the IG report offered him "TOTAL exoneration", it offers quite the opposite. It finds, among other things, that Hegseth "created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots" by detailing an attack on Yemen on the unsecured Signal app on his personal phone with high-level Cabinet members and an accidentally invited national security reporter. He also appears to have destroyed evidence in the matter.

• Following a classified briefing at the Capitol today, several high-ranking Democratic members of the House and Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees said they were "deeply disturbed" after viewing "one of the most troubling things" they'd ever seen. They had just watched unreleased, still-classified, unedited footage from the September 2nd U.S. military rocket strike on two shipwrecked survivors of a previous strike on a supposed "drug boat" in the Caribbean. The unlawful order to carry out the second strike was previously reported to have been issued by Pete Hegseth. Such an attack is in strict violation of U.S. and International law, as well as the DoD's own Rules of War Manual. The Commander who reportedly carried out the double-tap strike, Admiral Mitch Bradley, is said to have claimed during today's briefing that the order to kill the survivors wasn't given by the SecDef. Still many unanswered questions here.

• BREAKING just before airtime: After a federal judge last week tossed out Donald Trump's revenge indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James, finding Trump's personal insurance lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed as U.S. Attorney, a new prosecutor --- said to have actual prosecutorial experience --- was brought in from Missouri to file a new grand jury indictment today. The grand jury, however, rejected the new indictment!

• BREAKING late in the show today: The corrupted, activist Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, as somewhat expected, overruled a lower appeals court ruling (written by a Trump-appointed judge) that had blocked the state of Texas' mid-decade Congressional gerrymander. State Republican lawmakers drew the map over the summer, at Trump's urging, in hopes of flipping five U.S. House seats in the Lone Star State from "blue" to "red" next year. The lower court found the new map to be an unlawful racial gerrymander and blocked its use. The SCOTUS majority, however, while offering little to no reason for their 6 to 3 "shadow docket" ruling, suggested the new TX map was only a partisan gerrymander --- which is now allowable since their horrible 2019 ruling in Rucho --- as opposed to an unlawful (for now) racial gerrymander. They are now allowing the new gerrymander to be used in the 2026 midterms.

• Thanks in no small part to the Trump Administration's shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year, the global child mortality is now on the rise for the first time in decades. Nearly a quarter of a million more kids under the age of 5 are expected to die in 2025 than in 2024, according to a new report.

NEXT... Speaking of health care and both children and adults unnecessarily dying...we're joined today by Politico's Senior Heath Care Reporter ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN as America heads toward a Republican-caused health care crisis cliff as of January 1.

Over the summer, Donald Trump and his Republicans in Congress passed their so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" to give a trillion dollars in tax cuts mostly to the wealthy and added $2.4 trillion to the national debt, resulting in about half a trillion dollars in automatic cuts to Medicare. In the bargain, they also slashed a trillion dollars from Medicaid and hundreds of billions from the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare), which will subsequently spike monthly health care premiums for some 24 million Americans as of January 1.

This is why Democrats refused to vote with Republicans to keep the government open for a record 43 days in October and November. At least until seven rogue Democrats and one independent who caucuses with them in the Senate, undermined their own party to vote with Republicans to reopen the Government. The only thing they received in exchange was the promise of a vote in the Senate this month on restoring the GOP cuts to the Affordable Care Act subsidies. That vote is scheduled to happen next week, but will require 60 votes for passage in the 100-seat Senate. No vote is currently scheduled for the U.S. House on this, as premium bills will otherwise be doubling and tripling for millions next year.

Ollstein, a longtime Capitol Hill reporter lays out the political and policy landscape and stakes as we barrel toward what is now quite likely to be a very serious health care crisis in the U.S., unless Republicans come to terms with the electoral tidal wave that otherwise awaits them next year. Her reporting this week suggests that the bulk of the GOP Congressional caucus either doesn't yet understand the concerns or doesn't care about what is about to happen.

"There's nothing like a looming deadline to juice Congress into action," she quips. "Although that action may not lead anywhere --- especially this time."

"There are a bunch of Republicans who do want to cut a deal," she stresses. "They are very anxious, about both the concrete ramifications of letting the subsidies expire --- that millions of their constituents will have higher bills, become uninsured, etc. --- and they are worried about the political consequences, that this will backfire in the 2026 midterms." But, Ollstein also notes, for many in the party, the otherwise now very popular "Obamacare" is still a dirty word after years of the GOP trying and failing to kill it "root and branch" or even offer any alternative to it.

We've got lots to sift through here today, in trying to make sense of the current political lay of the land, with many Republicans "afraid of a primary challenge from the right attacking them for 'supporting Obamacare,'" even if millions of their own Republican constituents now rely on it for their health care.

Tune in for all the details on this one. Too many to cover in a quick summary here. But the fight in the weeks ahead is going to affect all of us, including your health care prices, even if you are not an ACA customer, as Ollstein also explains.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the Trump Administration rolls back fuel economy standards, which will increase the cost of everyone's gas; as the Administration's threats against Venezuela become more obviously about oil by the day; as youth climate activists sue to block new fossil fuel development in Utah; and as one boy from fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades here in Southern California rolls out a quickly blossoming idea to seed the area with wildflowers...and love...

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Not that I hope to tip off our degenerate authoritarian oligarchy on today's BradCast. But if the Republican Party still believes in math (and it's unclear if they do), there was more very bad news for them in Tuesday's elections this week. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Unapologetically progressive Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn appears to have lost the Special Election race for the U.S. House in Tennessee's very "red", GOP-gerrymandered 7th Congressional District to stalwart Trump Republican Matt Van Epps on Tuesday. Unofficial numbers suggest she lost by about 9 points.

Sounds like a rout. But, in fact, it really wasn't. Trump won the district last year by 22 points, meaning there was a 13 point shift toward Democrats on Tuesday, precisely the average shift that we have seen toward Dems in all of the Special Elections for U.S. House this year. There are 14 counties in TN's 7th CD. Everyone of them shifted towards the left on Tuesday. That, after Republicans were forced to dump a lot of money into what should have been an easy contest on Tuesday.

While House Speaker Mike Johnson pretended not to be concerned about any of this --- "They were really trying to set the scenario that there's some sort of wave going on. There's not. We just proved that there's not." --- actual math really does suggest trouble ahead for the GOP in next year's critical 2026 midterm cycle.

With that average 13 point shift toward Democrats in special elections this year, we do a little bit of mathing on today's show. For example, last year, in the 2024 U.S. House general elections...

• 28 Republicans won their races by 10 percent or less.
• 64 of them won by 12 points or less.
• And a whopping 92 Republicans won by just 15 percent or less last year.

With a razor-thin 3 vote advantage heading into the new year, no wonder several GOP-controlled states are attempting panicked mid-decade gerrymanders, and that the corrupt Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court are likely to help them. But new maps may ultimately make their problems worse, not better, if this year's elections are any indication. Safe Republican districts made less safe with new gerrymanders to steal districts from Democratic voters may end up backfiring. Of course, I won't dismiss Democrats' ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory between now and next year. But when Johnson says, "This doesn't concern me at all," he is either lying, in denial or incredibly stupid. And he's not all that stupid.

"This is one of the biggest flashing red light warning signs we've seen yet for Republicans," a far more realistic GOP strategist observed last night. Much more on today's show.

As if that's not enough, in a stunning runoff election on Tuesday in Georgia, the Democratic candidate easily unseated the incumbent Republican Mayor in the suburban city of Roswell, outside of Atlanta. She will be the previously deep "red" city's first Democratic Mayor in nearly 30 years. But don't worry, Mike. All's well!

Also today, our disgusting racist President said a whole bunch of disgusting racist things at the White House on Tuesday about Somalia and the American Somali population in Minnesota and elsewhere, repeatedly describing them as "garbage", "people who don't work," and people who should "go back to where they came from." Where many of them came from is a war-torn nation in Africa, with thousands seeking refuge here in the 90s. Most of them are now American citizens, with many living in Minnesota, where Trump's degenerate federal jack-booted immigration thugs will reportedly be targeting them, specifically in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, with upcoming raids.

State Governor Tim Walz --- who Trump last week described as "retarded" --- as well as the Minneapolis Mayor, its Chief of Police and many other officials and immigration advocates are vowing not to roll over to Trump's racist immigration hooliganism. Similar raids are reportedly being launched this week in New Orleans, where residents are also hoping to push back against Trump's increasingly unpopular thuggery however they can.

Finally today, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report (after we had to preempt yesterday), with news on the end of disappointing U.N. climate talks in Brazil; the rising death toll following two simultaneous climate change-fueled typhoons in Southeast Asia; and the Trump Administration's latest plans to pollute your air and poison your drinking water...

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On today's BradCast: Things are now moving very quickly, it seems, in the story of our Defense Secretary reportedly ordering the murder of shipwrecked survivors in the Caribbean. Luckily, our guest today is able to help us make sense --- where sense is to be had --- of all of the different parts of this quickly spidering story. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

The Trump Administration has been citing their supposed War on Drugs or War on Terror --- or, as what they describe as a war on "narco-terrorists" --- as legal justification for more than 20 U.S. military attacks against small boats in international waters near the coast of Venezuela. The attacks by the U.S. military have, so far, according to the Pentagon, resulted in more than 80 deaths of supposed drug-traffickers. No evidence, however, has been given by the Administration to support their claims that either drugs or "narco-terrorists" were on the defenseless boats in question when they were destroyed by U.S. rocket fire. In previous years, alleged drug boats would have been interdicted, evidence collected, and those on board either tried or interrogated to further bust up international drug cartels like the one found to have been facilitated for years by the former President of Honduras.

So, it has raised concerns from both Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress that Donald Trump, today, formally issued a pardon to the former President of Honduras who was tried and convicted by the Dept. of Justice last year to 45 years in prison for his role in trafficking some 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S.

All of that is contextual backstory to allegations, originally reported by Washington Post last week, that Trump's Defense Secretary, former Fox "News" weekend co-host Pete Hegseth, issued orders to "kill everyone" in the Pentagon's first attack on a supposed drug boat in early September. Two survivors of the attack, reportedly clinging to the remains of their boat, were subsequently murdered in a second kill shot, said to have been on the orders of Hegseth and carried out by Admiral Mitch Bradley. He currently leads the U.S. Special Operations Command. Before his October promotion, he served as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command that carried out the attack in question on September 2nd.

Killing victims of a boat strike is wildly unlawful under both U.S. and international law. It is even cited specifically in the Department of Defense's Law of War Manual, Section 18.3.2.1, describing "Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations." The provision warns the "requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal." It goes on to cite, specifically: "For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal."

After previously boasting about having watched the September 2nd attack live via drone video, Hegseth today claimed that the second strike on the survivors happened amid the "fog of war" and that he "didn't stick around" for the rest of the mission after the first strike. Though he claims Bradley "made the right call" in killing the survivors. "He had complete authority to do it," said the man who theoretically gave him that authority, while now appearing to throw Admiral Bradley somewhat under the bus.

And all of that, of course, comes on the heels of feigned outrage from both Hegseth and Trump just about a week ago, after a video was released by six Democratic members of Congress --- all veterans of the U.S. armed forces or intelligence services --- reminding members of the military that they are required to "refuse illegal orders". The video resulted in outrageous claims by Trump that the Democratic officials had committed "sedition" which, as he also noted, is punishable by death. In response, Hegseth announced a Pentagon investigation of one of the members, U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a former Navy Colonel and astronaut who could theoretically be called back into active duty by a politicized Pentagon in order to be court-martialed for, apparently, reminding troops that it is unlawful to carry out unlawful orders.

As noted, there is a whole lot going on in these quickly developing stories, but we've got just the guest today to help us make sense of them. We're joined by CARRIE A. LEE, PhD, an expert on civil-military relations and, until her resignation in July, associate professor at the US Army War College, where she served as the Chair of the Department of National Security and Strategy. She is now Senior Fellow at the Democracy and Security Network for Strategic Democracy Initiatives at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Lee explains today both what a civil-military relations expert is, and why she regretfully decided to leave her post at the War College earlier this year, after determining, as she explained in a social media thread, "that the United States faces threats today that cannot be effectively fought from inside the walls" of the US Army War College. She explained at the time that "in order to speak, I had to leave."

"I very much saw the writing on the wall after the election," she tells me today in describing her thought process for resigning in July, including "a lot of the threats that then President-elect Trump had made about what euphemistically I would call the 'creative uses' of the military that he had planned."

"It became very clear that if I had spoken out, that was going to bring an entirely unhealthy level of scrutiny to the institution I worked for, an institution that I really loved, and that I feel does outstanding work in educating future senior officers of the United States Army."

Lee explains that she ultimately left "to fight against the politicization of the military and abuses of power using the military domestically in ways that undermine democracy and Constitutional rights."

Today, Lee is speaking freely, as we discuss, among other things...

• The Pentagon's (empty and/or ridiculous?) threat to reactivate Sen. Kelly for a possible court martial.
• The "politicization death spiral" underway at DoD.
• The Trump Administration becoming "enthusiastic about punishing dissent and finding ways to weaponize and use their institutions of power to punish political opponents."
• How service members are able to determine whether an order is unlawful, and whether someone like Admiral Bradley would have the needed legal advice to know if striking shipwreck survivors was lawful or not. ("The manual explicitly says 'patently unlawful orders'. When the manual literally gives the example that we're talking about ['orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal'] that's a pretty good indication that it is patently unlawful." She also notes: "The initial strike was probably unlawful, as well.")
• Whether "fog of war" serves as a justifiable defense for Hegseth.
• The difficult personal decisions that career military officials are now faced with in deciding whether to stay in their positions amid the Trump Administration's misuse of our armed forces. (See her paper published this week titled "The Soldier in the Illiberal State is a Professional Dead End")

"I think we are talking about two separate issues in the news cycle that is going on right now, as we eagerly await updates to figure out what new turn in the hall of mirrors we are about to take," Lee neatly summarizes our conversation. "There's the politicization of the military and the weaponization of the military justice system to try to punish political opponents. That's issue number one. Issue number two is what the heck is going on in the Caribbean, and are these orders lawful?; what is patently unlawful and therefore must be refused?; and what has the veneer of legal justification that would lead a military commander to go with it?"

As noted, lots to discuss on today's BradCast...

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It's no easy feat getting caught up on The BradCast after just one week off during the madness of the Trump Era. But, hey, nobody said fighting to save democracy amid an attempted authoritarian takeover by a crazy, brain-poisoned, power-mad, criminal cretin was going to be easy. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

With far more to cover than we had time to catch up with, we did our level best today and took a bunch of great callers to boot! But that requires focusing on the stuff that really matters and, well, putting off the rest for another day, if ever. And the stuff that really really counts right now, in my opinion, remains the fight for democracy and voting itself.

To that end --- and many others --- we covered quite a bit of ground in very short order today. Among the many stories we touched on before opening the phones to our first post-Thanksgiving callers...

• Today, a federal appeals court unanimously upheld a lower court ruling finding that Alina Habba, Donald Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer turned U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, was unlawfully appointed.

• That ruling follows on last week's court ruling that Lindsey Halligan, Trump's even more unqualified personal insurance lawyer turned U.S. Attorney in Virginia, was also illegally appointed. That ruling subsequently resulted in the dismissal of Halligan's absurdly corrupt criminal indictments against Trump's foes, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

• Trump's belligerent, unqualified Defense Secretary and former weekend Fox "News" host, Pete Hegseth, may be in very big trouble for reportedly issuing unlawful orders to "kill everyone" in the Administration's first unlawful attack on supposed drug runners in boats in international waters off of Venezuela in the Caribbean. (More on that, I suspect, in the days ahead.)

• A quick catch-up on the various battles in the Gerrymandering Wars since we left --- in Texas, Indiana and North Carolina.

• Following the shock resignation of former(?) MAGA stalwart Marjorie Taylor Greene a week or so ago, Punchbowl News reported that a senior Congressional Republican is warning that the House GOP is "a tinder box." That "morale has never been lower" and that Republican House Speaker "Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out." We'll see about that. But it's anything but inconceivable, at this point.

• Speaking of, in tomorrow's Special Election for the U.S. House in Tennessee's 7th Congressional District, progressive Democrat Aftyn Behn was said to be within two points of Republican Matt Van Epps, according to new polling last week, in a District won last year by Trump by a whopping 22 points! I wonder why morale is so low among Republicans in the House these days.

• Never mind polling. Let's look at some actual numbers following Democrats' rout of Republicans in the November off-year elections last month. A deep dive by Politico into 268 county, town and village executive seat races last month in New York --- including in deep red counties, towns and villages --- found that Dems out-performed 2017's "blue wave" election in the state, flipping, for example, more than 50 executive seats from "red" to "blue" last month. That, compared to the GOP flipping just one (1!) seat from "blue" to "red" on the same day.

• Another appeals court panel ruling while we were off --- this one from judges nominated by both George W. Bush and Donald Trump --- upheld a lower court ruling finding that a ridiculously frivolous lawsuit filed by Trump and Habba against Hillary Clinton and James Comey, claiming they tried to steal the 2016 election (or something), will, in fact, result in a one million dollar fine against the pair.

And finally, we open up the phone lines to listeners, who are, apparently, in a very lively mood after a bit of rest over the holiday weekend. Enjoy!...

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