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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Today on The BradCast: The last 4 or 5 days since Elon's DOGE Bros have, with the apparent permission of Trump, started taking command and control of computer systems and databases at federal agencies --- including the U.S. Treasury's system which pay out nearly $6 trillion per year --- have been, to say the least, chaotic, disturbing and insane. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

As we discussed yesterday, Trump, his co-Prez and their flunkies are unlawfully taking over and disassembling the U.S. Constitutional order and its Administrative State. In response, however, their lawless overreach also seems to be having the effect of coalesce the Opposition in a number of ways...

• Career federal agency insiders and whistleblowers are either pushing back against assaults on their agencies or otherwise informing the public of what is happening inside them;
• Civil lawsuits are being filed by both affected individuals at the agencies and by outside groups attempting to enforce the rule of law, informing the public of what is going on inside those agencies in the bargain.
• Public pressure is being brought to bear on elected officials through phone calls, attendance at protest rallies, etc.
• Democratic elected officials seem to be having a fire lit under them by all of this, and are finally beginning to lead rallies and take other actions in their overdue Opposition roles.

That is not an exhaustive list. For example, the free press, where we still have one, also play a key role in all of the above. In helping to let you know what is actually happening, public perception and opinion can change. From a wildly disinformed electorate last November to, perhaps, a more accurately informed populace as we all move forward and take action on those things, with at least some of the urgency that this historic moment demands

An Opposition is emerging. How effective and sustained it will be remains to be seen. But, I believe the outlines are finally beginning to coalesce. At least, I hope that is the case.

Today, we report some of the stories, connect some of the dots, and share some of the signs of that emerging Opposition, through a number of breaking news items over the past 24 hours or so...

• Trump's dumb new tariffs on China are bouncing back, raising energy prices for Americans.

• Disgraced Gen. Michael Flynn's stunning threat against insiders at CIA, FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who dare speak up against Trump's wildly unqualified nominees for HHS (RFK Jr.), Director of Nat'l Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard) and FBI Director (Kash Patel).

• After the Acting FBI Director last week tried to courageously stand up to Trump's personal defense lawyer turned Acting Deputy AG at the DoJ, the Bureau turned over answers to questionnaires from some 5,000 employees who were assigned to work on January 6 cases. The head of the FBI's New York field office vows to defend his agents against the Administration's unlawful purges. The FBI Agents Association advises its members: "Do NOT resign or offer to resign." Lawyers for DoJ prosecutors and FBI agents threaten to sue against "violation of due process rights."

• Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) vows to place a "blanket hold" on all of Trump's nominees to the State Dept. until the Administration pulls back its attack on --- and DOGE Bro takeover of --- USAID.

• Trump prepares an Executive Order to shut down the Dept. of Education, even though he can't actually do so without approval by Congress, which he will not receive. Musk's DOGE Bros have reportedly now moved in there as well, and are said to be scheming to cut spending and staff while accessing sensitive computers systems with personal information on millions of students who have received financial aid.

• Federal employee unions and advocates for retired Americans sue to block Musk's DOGE Bro takeover of the U.S. Treasury Department's payment system. And who is it who has gained access to the incredibly sensitive computers that handle payments of some $6 trillion, annually, in Social Security checks, Medicare payments, veterans benefits, tax refunds, federal worker paychecks and almost everything else the U.S. pays for? Apparently, it's a 25-year old employee of Musk's named Marko Elez who has remarkably been allowed to obtain full access and Administrative privileges to the system, to cut off payments, and even rewrite the incredibly sensitive and (previously) highly-guarded code that handles some 95% of spending by the U.S. Department insiders are flabbergasted and speaking to the press about what is going on.

All of these stories, as terrible as they are, actually include positive indications of an overdue Opposition finally beginning to assemble.

And, before we go, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, on how Trump's dumb tariff threats on imports from Canada imports are spiking energy prices; how the Administration is literally deleting "climate change" across the entire federal government; how Trump's deranged California water stunt has dumped billions of gallons of water, much of it into the oceans and none of it to Southern California (where our reservoirs are already full!)...

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It's one disaster after another on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last night, 67 people were killed when an Army Helicopter crashed into an American Airlines jet from Wichita, Kansas as it was coming in for a routine landing at Reagan National Airport in D.C. Everyone in both aircrafts is presumed dead.

Today, even as dozens of bodies were still unrecovered from the icy Potomac River, and before virtually anything was known about the cause of last night's deadly disaster, the President of the United States presented a sick, disgraceful, lie-filled, misinformation-fest, disguised as a White House press briefing. He blamed "diversity" hiring by his two Democratic predecessors for the disaster, while admitting he had no evidence to support his claim, other than his "common sense" and "high level genius." I've got a thing or two to say about all of that on today's program.

While I wouldn't normally have drawn such an inference this soon after such a national tragedy or in just week two of any Presidency, given Donald Trump's appalling comments today, I felt it necessarily to detail that, in his very first week on the job, Trump fired the leadership of the FAA and TSA, as well as the entire membership of an air security and safety commission. He named no acting Director in the meantime at FAA, which had been in the middle of a hiring wave for air traffic controllers --- until Trump ordered a hiring freeze on his second day in office last week. Early reports from the FAA found that the air traffic control tower last night at Reagan National appeared to have been short staffed.

We'll wait for the NTSB's investigation (much less for the recovery of all the bodies) to be complete. But if there is any President to be blamed for what happened last night, the first major air crash in 16 years, it would seem be the "high level genius" currently in office, who thought it appropriate to use racist, sexist, ableist slurs to avoid accountability for his own pathetic, irresponsible actions in the first week of his second shamefully embarrassing Presidency.

THEN... We're joined by JACQUELINE SIMON, Policy Director of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the nation's largest federal workers union. She's here to discuss the Trump Administration's scammy email sent to some two million federal workers this week --- clearly written by co-President Elon Musk --- offering what many in the media incorrectly described as "buyout" offers this week.

In fact, it's a trap. The emails from the federal Office of Personnel Management --- portending to offer seven months of severance in exchange for workers at scores of federal agencies responding with "RESIGN" in the subject field of an email before February 6 --- were little more than "a barely veiled threat" to federal workers, charges Simon. Sign it now or be fired later. Moreover, she notes, "there's no guarantee whatsoever that anyone would ever see any of that money, because Congress would have to approve it. They don't have the money."

The scheme, Simon tells me, also ignores the legally required process for contract buyouts and severance pay for federal workers, as written into law. But, she observes, "they aren't really worrying the rules. They're not really worrying about the law. And if they are challenged, and if they do have to pay judgments, it's going to be the American people that pay. It's not coming out of Elon Musk's pocket. It's not coming out of Trump's pocket. It's coming out of your pocket and mine."

AFGE and several other public service unions also filed a legal complaint this week against a separate, if related scheme launched by Trump with an Executive Order signed last week. It would, if allowed by the courts, make it easier for him to fire career federal workers without cause which, Simon confirms, he has already begun doing unlawfully anyway.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, with news on new data suggesting that a Southern California Edison high-voltage wire may have sparked the deadly Eaton Fire on January 7th in Altadena, California; the Senate confirmations of Trump's unqualified picks to head the EPA and Dept. of Transportation; Ireland is slammed by the strongest storm in its recorded history; and other troubling news for our climate changed world...

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Today on The BradCast: Let the Constitutional Crises begin! As the Trump Administration attempts to Cancel Culture pretty much everything with a memo that orders nearly half of the total, already appropriated federal budget immediately (and unconstitutionally) put on ice! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We might have seen it coming, as several of our other stories today might have augured. Among them...

• Late last week, while touring fallout from last year's climate change-fueled Hurricane Helene disaster in a Republican-leaning area of North Carolina, and the then-ongoing climate change-fueled Los Angeles Fires, Trump suggested he might shut down (privatize) FEMA entirely and called for Photo ID voting restrictions in California in exchange for federal disaster aid to victims who had lost everything. When asked if NC would also see conditions placed on their federal disaster aid, Trump's meandering non-answer (full of one fantastical lie after another) made clear that, no, only Democratic-leaning states would have to agree to change policies in exchange for much-needed federal disaster aid.

• Amusingly, Trump pretended on social media last night that he'd ordered the U.S. military into California "under Emergency Powers" to turn on the magical, non-existent water "spigot" somewhere in Northern California, which the state chooses to keep turned off in order to somehow cause devastating fires in Southern California. Now that might sound like a ridiculous lie and a completely delusional fantasy that makes no sense at all, but at her first White House press briefing, Trump's Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed today that "the water has been turned back on in California." (That's great news, because I live in Los Angeles, had to evacuate briefly a week or so ago due to the fires, and had no idea the water had been turned off all this time! (OMG... this is only Week 2?!?)

• Last week, in Week 1, and receiving a bit less coverage than so many of the other nightmares Trump set off with his flurry of Executive Orders, is the fact that the Administration abruptly ordered the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to suspend all research grants, programs, travel and even ongoing cancer treatment trials. The result of putting tens of billions of dollars of research and grants on ice has sent confusion, anxiety and chaos throughout the American health community at what experts describe as one of the worst possible times, amid a slew of quickly spreading winter viruses and the increasing risks of avian flu in the U.S.

• On Monday this week, U.S. public health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were ordered to cease all work with the World Health Organization (WHO) just one week after Trump signed an order declaring the U.S. was ending its cooperation with the worldwide organization. (Unclear he can legally do so, by the way. But he doesn't care.) His Executive Orders also froze spending on a decades old global AIDS program that has saved 25 million lives, but now will block HIV the distribution of medication to more than 20 million people, including drugs already obtained with U.S. funds and sitting on shelves at local clinics around the world.

• All of that might have been a signal for where all of this was going. According to a two-page memo from the acting Director of Trump's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Monday, the White House has now ordered a "temporary pause" on "all federal financial assistance" with the exception of Medicare and Social Security payments. The memo directs federal agencies to pause "all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance," and any other programs that included "D.E.I., woke gender ideology and the Green New Deal" as of Tuesday (today!) at 5pm. That, even though there is no "Green New Deal." It never passed. (Shhh...don't tell them!)

  As the non-profit news site NOTUS explained, "the list of programs that could be touched by the order is vast: Medicaid, disaster relief, farm aid, student loan programs, Head Start, highway funds, nutrition assistance, rent assistance and dozens of other programs." Some 70 million low-income Americans alone, who are enrolled in Medicaid, could lose their access to health care. These are all funds already allocated by Congress and approved by previous Presidents including, in some cases, Trump himself.

  The impoundment of the funds --- said to amount to "more than $3 trillion," according to the memo, which is nearly half of the entire federal budget for fiscal year 2024 --- appears to be in strict violation of the federal Impoundment Control Act of 1974, enacted by Congress after Richard Nixon held back Congressionally-appropriated funding that he didn't like. According to the Constitution anyway (quaint!) Congress, not the President, controls the purse strings of the U.S. budget.

  As you may recall, attempting to withhold Congressionally-approved funding to Ukraine during his first term, unless they agreed to announce a fake investigation of the Biden Family, is what led to Trump's first impeachment. Ever since, Republicans have devised an argument that the Impoundment Control Act is actually unconstitutional. This is clearly their first volley in getting a ruling on that from their corrupted U.S. Supreme Court.

  Late on Tuesday, as Trump's deliberate chaos reigned shortly before the 5pm deadline to freeze the spending, a federal judge placed an administrative stay on the order, pending further arguments on Monday morning. She also made clear that the National Council of Nonprofits, the plaintiffs which sued earlier in the day, alleging the freeze would cause their members irreparable harm, must show evidence to support that argument on Monday or the judge would have no choice but to end her administrative stay and deny the requested temporary restraining order. And then... ???

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report with more on Trump's attempt to weaponize FEMA, but also with some good news, for a change, for both Los Angeles and New York City!...

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Well, he did vow retribution against his "enemies". Today on The BradCast, we cover, among other things, Donald Trump's unlawful "Friday Night Massacre" of independent Inspectors General at Executive Branch agencies, his "Monday Massacre" of dozens of prosecutors this afternoon at the Dept. of Justice, and as much of note that happened in between that we find time for, along with speaking to callers on the back end. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the many stories covered today...

• Trump calls for ethnic cleansing in the Middle East, telling reporters on Air Force One over the weekend that he would favor "cleaning out" Gaza by sending Palestinians from there to other Middle Eastern countries. All the better to build sea side golf resorts in the strip of land that was previously home to more than two million.

• In case you didn't notice last week (I wouldn't blame you) Trump, with a stroke of his Executive Order pen, ended anti-discrimination programs across pretty much the entirety of the federal government, as originally (and successfully) instituted via Executive Order by Lyndon B. Johnson back in the Civil Rights era. Calling it "a reversal of 60 years of progress" and "a blatant step backwards," Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) said in a statement, charging Trump's order "gives federal government officials and complicit federal contractors a green light to engage in discriminatory practices that exclude minorities and women from employment and contracting opportunities."

• The laughably unqualified Fox "News" weekend co-host, accused sexual assaulter and public drunkard Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Sec. of Defense by Senate Republicans late on Friday night. All Dems voted against, and there were only 3 Republican defectors (Murkowsky, Collins and McConnell). That resulted in a tie vote which broken in Hegseth's favor by Vice President J.D. Vance. It was only the second time in U.S. history that a Presidential cabinet member faced a tie vote. (The first was Betsy DeVos' nomination for Education Secretary during the first Trump Administration.)

• South Dakota Governor, puppy killer, and ridiculous liar Kristi Noem was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Sec. of Homeland Security over the weekend. As DHS chief, she will oversee U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP); the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); the Transportation Security Administration (TSA); U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the United States Secret Service (USSS); the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG); and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), among others. I'm sure it will go well. All Republicans voted for her. Six Democrats (Fetterman, Kaine, Kim, Peters, Slotkin and Shaheen) shamefully voted in support of this corrupt, inexperienced Trump stooge.

• On Friday night, news broke that Trump had fired about 17 independent Inspectors General at agencies across the federal government in violation of the law (U.S. Code, Title 5, Section 403(b)) mandating that, while Presidents can fire Inspectors General, they must notify Congress in writing 30 days in advance before doing so, along with "substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons" for such removals. But, of course, who is going to enforce the law against the lawless Trump?

• Speaking of which, on Monday, just before airtime, news broke that Trump's interim apparatchiks heading up the Dept. of Justice were sending out firing notices to more than a dozen prosecutors who worked with Special Counsel Jack Smith and those who prosecuted hundreds of January 6 cases.

We've got a whole bunch of related news and background in between and amongst all of those stories, before callers weigh in today on all of the above and more...

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When we allow a felon to become President of the United States (thanks, in no small part, to extreme rightwing activists on the Supreme Court ignoring and rewriting the 14th Amendment), it's not surprising that he'd quickly begin violating laws and undermining the U.S. Constitution. When that felon also hopes to be a dictator, we certainly shouldn't be surprised that one of his first targets is the Constitution's landmark guarantees of a free press, as discussed on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST... Unfortunately, the First Amendment isn't the only one Donald Trump is hoping to dismantle. According to nonprofit news outlet CalMatters, ICE has already begun rounding up migrant workers in Central California, resulting in about 75% of farm-workers staying home this week during peak harvest season for oranges and other produce in America's "Salad Bowl". If that continues longer term, economists are predicting "absolute economic devastation" locally, skyrocketing food prices and shortages across the country nationally, along with a "recession-level event if this is the new long-term norm."

In related news, Trump's Executive Order signed on Monday, seeking to redefine, by fiat, the text and clear meaning of the 14th Amendment's very first sentence establishing birthright citizenship to anyone born here, regardless of the citizenship status of the parents, ran into its first legal roadblock in Court on Wednesday. A Reagan-appointed federal judge declared today that the Order "boggles the mind," calling it "blatantly unconstitutional". He temporarily paused the Order nationwide in the first of five different challenges brought by 22 state Attorneys General. If allowed to be enacted, as one of the challengers argued in court today, it would "impact hundreds of thousands of citizens nationwide who will lose their citizenship under this new rule."

THEN... Trump doesn't seem to much care for the First Amendment either. And, shamefully, a number of mainstream broadcast news outlets owned by major corporations have been all too eager to help him dismantle it. See Disney-owned ABC News' pathetic agreement in December to settle Trump's absurdly frivolous lawsuit with blatantly unconstitutional claims. Instead of fighting the defamation suit, they agreed to contribute $15 million to Trump's Presidential Library fund. See also the reports last week that Paramount-owned CBS News is in talks to do the same thing over another ridiculous complaint that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris in a way that Trump didn't like.

While those outfits are settling private lawsuits, Trump's new Federal Communications Commission Chair, Brendan Carr is weaponizing the FCC to go after the same news outlets. Last week, President Biden's outgoing Chair dismissed several specious complaints against ABC, CBS and NBC that echoed Trump's private lawsuits, declaring "the FCC should not be the President's speech police" and that "the FCC should not be journalism's censor-in-chief." This week, however, the newly seated Carr un-dismissed those complaints (if not the ones against a Fox affiliate, for some reason).

We're joined today by JOHN BERGMAYER, the Legal Director at good government group Public Knowledge. He charges that "Chairman Carr has made it plain he intends to weaponize the FCC to threaten political speech and news coverage he disagrees with." You're not surprised right?

"We have things like defamation law against a public figure, but you can't just prove that they are wrong, or you disagree with them, or they're being unfair or 'mean to me'. You have to prove they are 'actively deciding to harm me' through conscious deception," Bergmayer explains today. "That's a very hard standard to meet. I don't think any of these cases meet the very tough requirements for the FCC to decide in the complainants favor."

He also adds: "It's really notable that Chairman Carr did not reinstate a complaint that was against a Fox affiliate in Philadelphia, that was based on the Fox affiliate airing information that it knew, that was judged to be, defamatory."

"It really is a troubling sign that the current Chairman views these regulatory tools as a means to advance his cultural and partisan agenda," Bergmayer tells me. "What's particularly disturbing is that the Chairman wants to pick fights with the First Amendment rights of broadcasters or use dubious theories of law to go after perceived slights by Big Tech."

We also discuss the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling earlier this month that appears to end the FCC's ability, as a federal agency, to ensure Net Neutrality and an Open Internet (not that Trump or his FCC would have any particular interest in doing so.)

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, following an unprecedented blizzard in the U.S. South; yet another new, climate-changed fueled fire amid record dry weather here in L.A. County; Trump's delusional claims about California's water supply; and more...

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On Day 2 of the second corrupt Trump Presidency, we catch up on today's BradCast with the destruction he wrought (or attempted to) on Day 1, just hours after he became the first convicted felon, adjudicated rapist and adjudicated insurrectionist to be sworn in as President of the United States. And it all just happens to come, coincidentally, on the 15th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's horrific 2010 Citizens United decision, which helped make so much of this day possible. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Given Donald Trump's "flood the zone" strategy, including scores of Executive Orders, Actions, Directives and Memoranda signed on Monday (much of it for show, some of it dangerously real) we try to cover a lot in a very short time on today's program. I'll do my best to quickly summarize at least some of it here...

• Since MLK Day was largely preempted by yesterday's Inauguration (and our 2025 Inauguration Counter-Programming Special --- thanks to many for the kind words about it!), we begin today with a piece of Martin Luther King's 1967 "Blue Print" speech to a group of students in Philadelphia that, surprisingly, served as inspiration for us today!

• Please note: It has now been more than "24 hours" since Trump was sworn in (and since he was elected in November, since that was the original, oft-repeated promise) and Russia's horrific war on Ukraine is still raging anyway.

• Trump signed scores of orders on Monday night, though the most immediately substantive was his "full, complete and unconditional" blanket pardons for about 1,500 January 6, 2021 insurrectionists and seditionist --- including the leaders of the far-right paramilitary groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who were found guilty and sentenced to more than a decade in prison for Seditious Conspiracy, in their treasonous (if failed) attempt to help Trump steal the 2020 election. Many of the violent domestic extremists who were released from prison today attacked law enforcement officers on that awful day at the U.S. Capitol, "armed with firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a massive 'Trump' billboard, 'Trump' flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches and even an explosive device." But all is now, apparently, forgiven with Trump's pardons, despite the assertion on Fox "News" just one week ago by then Vice President-elect J.D. Vance that "Obviously, if you committed violence on that day, you shouldn't be pardoned." But that was a week ago, and this is now, when, with today's release of the January 6 terrorists, Trump now has his own domestic paramilitary if and when needed. And those who testified against them originally, including law enforcement officers, are now, understandably, very concerned for their own personal safety.

• Trump signed an Executive Order declaring a "national emergency" and "invasion" at the southern border, where there is no such emergency or invasion. But now he has a pretext to invoke the military wherever it may be needed to round up, arrest, detain, imprison and deport undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, among other things.

• Trump signed an Executive Order claiming to end the 14th Amendment's Constitutional right to birthright citizenship, even as historian and tyranny expert Timothy Snyder helpfully reminds us: "A president’s executive order cannot undo a law or a Supreme Court decision, let alone a provision of the Constitution. Forget that and you do have a dictatorship on day one." That EO is already being challenged in court by 24 states.

• Trump, who miserably failed to handle the COVID pandemic, which killed more than a million Americans, signed a declaration withdrawing> from the World Health Organization.

• Trump signed an Executive Order revoking Joe Biden's landmark 2023 Executive Order on AI safety.

• Trump signed Executive Orders "protecting women from radical gender ideology" and declaring there are only two immutable sexes: male and female, as determined by whether they are born with eggs or sperm.

• Trump revoked a 2021 Biden Executive Order calling on federal agencies to promote voting access and expand voter registration. Trump and Republicans will have none of that! What do you think this is, a representative Constitutional democracy or something?!

• Trump also rescinded a Biden era Executive Order that had repealed an Executive Order from Trump's first term that attempted to game the U.S. Census for partisan gain by, among other things, attempting to exclude non-citizen residents of the U.S. from the count of the "whole number of persons in each state", as per the 14th Amendment, for the first time since the very first Census was carried out in 1790.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our first Green News Report of the second Trump era, with more on his Day 1 efforts to use Executive Orders to undermine the climate, the health of Americans, the livability of the planet, and the U.S. economy along with it. Trump signed Executive Orders declaring a "national energy emergency" (which is not a thing that actually exists); to stop all off-shore wind projects (what happened to that "national energy emergency"?!); and to join with Iran, Libya and Yemen by withdrawing (yet again) from the landmark, voluntary Paris Climate Agreement, a move that could end up costing the U.S. hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars via lost leadership, technology and manufacturing of clean, renewable energy...

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As usual, the incoming President has almost no clue what he's talking about. Not that he cares or that it matters. That's especially true, as discussed on today's BradCast, when it comes to elections and voting laws. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... It's another one of those fire-hose news days akin to what we experienced, day after day, during the first Trump term. We can only cover what we can cover. So, we start with the news, as reported by CNN today, that the House Ethics Committee voted in secret earlier this month to release the report from their years-long investigation of allegations against now-former Rep. and now-former Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz. The report, which Republicans on the bipartisan panel voted against releasing in November, is said to focus on allegations of Gaetz' salacious sexual misconduct with minors, illicit drug use, and other crimes, potentially included bribery and more. CNN says the Committee has decided to make the report public "after the House's final day of votes this year" unless they "change course now that it has voted."

NEXT... In an update to a story we've been following since last month's election, the North Carolina State Board of Elections has decided it will not order a full hand-recount in the election for State Supreme Court between the incumbent Democrat, Justice Allison Riggs, and her Republican opponent, Jefferson Griffin. The original computer-reported tally from the November 5 contest found Riggs defeated Griffin by 623 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast. A Griffin-requested machine recount widened Riggs' lead to 724 votes over the Republican challenger, who then requested a hand-count. State law allows a small number of precincts in each county to be hand-counted before ordering a full hand-count in the event that the smaller audit is way out of line with the computer recount. In the hand-count samples in all 100 counties in NC, both candidates picked up votes (Riggs gained 70, Griffin picked up 56), but it was not enough to trigger a full, statewide hand-count. With Riggs declared the certified winner, Griffin is also seeking to toss some 60,000 ballots out entirely, claiming those voters, including military and overseas voters, were either not entitled to vote or to have their votes counted. The matter is expected to end up at the state Supreme Court. Presumably, Justice Riggs, one of just two remaining Democrats on the seven-person High Court, will recuse herself if that happens.

THEN... Donald Trump has been vowing and/or threatening to end Joe Biden's "EV mandate" on "Day One" when he takes office, even though there is no Biden "EV mandate." A week or so ago on Meet the Press, Trump reiterated his plans to sign Executive Orders to "end the electric mandate immediately for the cars" and for "ending a lot of the environmental things that were ridiculous that hurt our country very badly and didn't do anything for the environment...ya know, standard things." This week, Reuters has an exclusive report on the specific plans from the Trump Transition team for those "standard things", including what the news outlet describes as "sweeping changes to cut off support for electric vehicles and charging stations" and to redirect that funding to "national-defense priorities." The plans also involve reversing California's (and twelve other states') emission standards that save lives and reduce energy prices for residents, and doing away with the Biden administration's $7,500 consumer tax credit for EV purchases, a policy expected to harm U.S. automakers like General Motors (if less so for Tesla, whose CEO spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected). But all of those things may be easier said than done, certainly on "Day One", as Desi Doyen explains.

FINALLY... Speaking of easier said than done, Donald Trump has also been demanding changes to voting and election laws, most prominently after he began falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Earlier this month, he declared at a Fox "News" event, once again, that "we want to have paper ballots, one-day voting, voter ID, and proof of citizenship" among other changes to election law that he has repeatedly called for. He doesn't seem to understand most of the things he's demanding, nor care about the fact that some of the measures would disenfranchise millions of Americans.

We're joined today by JOSHUA A. DOUGLAS, election law professor at the Univ. of Kentucky College of Law; author of a number of recent books on American democracy, and now the host of the Democracy Optimist podcast and companion newsletter.

This week, at Washington Monthly, Douglas explained why Trump, in truth, will have "little official power to implement the new rules he supports," given that the U.S. Constitution gives most power regarding elections to the states. While Congress has certainly adopted a number of landmark federal voting laws over the years, Douglas tells me today, "it's really a process of local control. The President himself cannot issue an Executive Order or some sort of decree that elections should be changed one way or the other without states being the ones to pass those laws --- or Congress, but that's a difficult path, as well."

"The President doesn't have any power unilaterally to dictate election rules," says Douglas, while recognizing that Trump will have both the bully pulpit to muscle Congress and states into adopting new laws and rules, along with the power to appoint members of the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) and Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and, particularly in Trump's case, to direct his Dept. of Justice to enforce certain laws and ignore others. "But the President, under the Constitution, doesn't have any formal powers to regulate elections, beyond signing or vetoing a Congressional law."

We step through some of the specific measures Trump has been demanding, such as "paper ballots" (which the vast majority of voters already use), "one-day voting" (ending absentee and early voting), Voter ID (already mandated by most states and, under federal law, already required when registering voters in all 50 states), and the point that most concerns Douglas, "proof of citizenship" when registering to vote. If actually adopted at the federal level, he argues, it would likely disenfranchise tens of millions of voters and become "a real logistical nightmare for election officials."

The efforts by Republicans to change election laws on the state level, are a different matter, as Douglas explains as well. But, bottom line, there is no "magic wand" for Trump to use to undermine elections by himself, much less on "Day One". And there are quite a few things that YOU can do, to stop him and anyone else who would try to restrict our right to vote.

Given recent events, is Douglas still the "democracy optimist" he was when he originally named his podcast and newsletter earlier this year? Tune on in to find out...

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The cruelty really does appear to be the point, as discussed on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

On Wednesday, the hateful creeps who have been fired up for years by Fox "News" and the Republican Party against trans kids, had their day at the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard some two and half hours of oral argument for and against the state of Tennessee's Big Government ban on safe, medically prescribed gender-affirming care for minors.

U.S. v. Skrmetti, as CHRIS GEIDNER of Law Dork, our guest today, pointed out in his coverage last night after sitting through the full hearing at the Court, should have been an "an easy case, in some ways." The actual legal question for the moment is whether the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld TN's cruel ban, applied the proper standards when hearing the case. If the law banning medical care for youths, as recommended by their doctors and approved by their parents, is based on sex, it should be subject to at least "intermediate scrutiny" by the court, meaning the government needs to prove "there is an important government interest and the law is substantially related to it," Geidner explains. "You need to have a reason" to adopt such a law that may discriminate on the basis of sex.

No such scrutiny was applied to TN's Senate Bill 1 when its challenge was heard and the law upheld by the lower court. The Biden Administration and the ACLU attorney representing the private challengers in the case made clear that the law is, in fact, based on sex and therefore should be remanded to the lower court to be heard under heightened scrutiny to ensure there us a legitimate governmental interest in enforcing the law which, plaintiffs argue, violates the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause.

That said, Wednesday's hearing became, at times, more of a culture war over trans rights in general, as 25 other largely GOP-controlled states have adopted similar bans in recent years. Their laws will be affected by whatever happens in this case currently at SCOTUS. That, as Donald Trump and his allies have vowed to roll back protections for transgender people at the national level after he takes office again next year.

The matter, in short, is very high stakes. But the stakes are the highest at the moment for the kids who will be --- and already are being --- unconscionably harmed by these insidious laws meant to help Republicans gain or hold power under the guise of keeping children safe. These laws do no such thing. They are actively harming children rather than help them.

Geidner breaks down what happened at the High Court on Wednesday; how a 2020 case (before the all-out GOP war on transgender people kicked into high gear) in which Republican Justices Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts actually joined the Court's liberals to protect trans rights may affect this case; and whether TN will be able to get five Justices to uphold their ban --- or if the challengers will find five that are willing to at least send the matter back down to the lower court for a proper hearing.

"All that DoJ and the ACLU, representing the private plaintiffs, were saying is that, 'The 6th Circuit got the wrong standard, and all that you need to do is say that this is a sex-based classification, and send it back for them to do the rest of this work'," says Geidner. The case, the challengers argued, is a Constitutional Equal Protection matter. But, as Geidner observes, "What we saw from Chief Justice Roberts and Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh was an attempt to come up with a way of resolving the case that would allow these laws to exist that isn't anti-trans. Which can essentially only happen by turning the Equal Protection clause on its head or rendering it virtually irrelevant." That would have a sweeping effect on all matter of legislation encroaching on Constitutional rights.

The matter, Geidner assess, now most likely rests upon decisions by Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Gorsuch who, Geidner notes --- after having written the majority opinion in 2020's landmark Bostock case that prevented discrimination against transgender people by their employers --- fell curiously silent throughout the entire hearing on Wednesday.

Most media coverage after the hearing on Wednesday suggested things don't look good for the challengers --- and for the children they are hoping to protect. Geidner concedes that may be the case, but he holds out hope and explains why today.

Also on today's program...

• A few words about the 7.0 magnitude quake in Northern California this afternoon, and the tsunami warning that briefly followed it, affecting some 5.3 million people on the West Coast. (For those who asked after the news broke today: We're fine! And nowhere near the quake down here in Southern California! But thanks for asking!)
• And, finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report on a North Carolina town suing Duke Energy for years of deception about climate change; how climate change has become the dominant cause of drought in the U.S. West; South Africa's High Court bans new coal plants; and small, imperiled island nations like Vanuatu and Kiribati, whose entire existence is now threatened by rising seas, are leading a courageous landmark fight for global climate action at the U.N.'s International Court of Justice...

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We do our best to avoid being Pollyanna-ish on The BradCast. But not everything that happened on Tuesday (or since) has been terrible. Just a lot of it. But, in fact, some of it was quite good and worth taking notice! [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our many stories today...both good, bad and otherwise...

• A quickly moving wildfire exploded northwest of Los Angeles on Wednesday, fueled by dry brush and wind gusts up to 80mph. As of Thursday afternoon it had scorched some 14,000 acres, burned through several homes, mansions, ranches and agricultural areas and threatens another 3,500 other structures in the suburban community. 10,000 residents have been evacuated. The so-called "Mountain Fire" was 0% contained at air time. "It's like trying to put out a blowtorch with a squirt gun," said a Ventura County Fire Dept. official in a climate changed wildfire season that has, so far, burned three times as much land as last year at this time.

• Speaking of California and climate, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday called an emergency special state legislative session beginning next month "to protect our state against any unlawful actions by the incoming Trump Administration." He declared on Twitter that "California is ready to fight. Whether it be our fundamental civil rights, reproductive freedom, or climate action --- we refuse to turn back the clock and allow our values and laws to be attacked."

• AP announced late this afternoon that carpet-bagging hedge-fund billionaire and Pennsylvania's Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick had defeated three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey on Tuesday, adding yet another pick up for Republicans in next year's U.S. Senate, where they are already set to take back majority control. (After we got off air, however, Democratic election attorney Marc Elias countered, "The Pennsylvania Senate race is not over," citing a statement from PA's Republican Sec. of the Commonwealth estimating another 100,000 ballots remain to be adjudicated in the race where McCormick currently leads by a reported 32,000 votes over Casey.)

• This morning, President Joe Biden took to the Rose Garden to offer his first public remarks since Election Day, following Kamala Harris' apparent loss to the lawless former President, noting, "You can't love your country only when you win,". By way of contrast to Trump, Biden vowed a peaceful transfer of power, lauded Harris' run, discussed the importance of democracy (even when ya lose) and offered encouragement to staffers and supporters by telling them that "setbacks are unavoidable, giving up is unforgivable." We share his brief remarks today in full.

• Protecting and/or expanding reproductive freedoms was on the ballot in 10 different states on Tuesday. Abortion rights won in seven of them, including Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York. In fact, otherwise "deep red" MO became the first state in the union, since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, to reverse a near-total abortion ban and enshrine reproductive rights into the state's constitution!

  Similar initiatives failed, however, in three states: Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota and for various reasons in each, which we discuss today. Most notably, in FL, the measure to restore freedoms and repeal the state's Big Government six-week ban was supported by a healthy 57% to 43% majority of voters. But the state mandates a 60% supermajority for adoption of Constitutional ballot amendments and, at the same time, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis applied state muscle and seemingly unlawful measures to prevent passage.

  Politico's longtime Capitol Hill heath care reporter ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN joins us today to break down what happened in each state, and where the never-ending battle for and against reproductive freedoms goes from here.

• In other good ballot measure news, voters in Washington state overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to repeal the state's landmark climate law, adopted two years ago under outgoing Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee. The new law slashes dangerous carbon emissions by charging fossil fuel polluters for their pollution. The law has already brought in some $4 billion for habitat restoration and hardening the state against the worsening ravages of climate change. Voters reportedly voted by a 24-point margin to keep the law in place!

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our first post-election Green News Report, with details on the troubling worldwide implications for climate under the incoming Trump Administration, as environmental groups vow to press forward. Also, details on both the wildfires in Los Angeles and the rare, late-season Hurricane Rafael which has knocked out power to Cuba (again) and is making its way into record warm Gulf of Mexico waters...

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The headline, and stunning heartbreak over the past 24 hours, likely explain today's BradCast well enough. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

But, as Kamala Harris said today in her brief concession speech at Howard University (shared in full on today's program) after setting an example by vowing to "engage in a peaceful transfer of power" with Donald Trump...

We are joined today (much sooner than anticipated for some odd reason, after speaking with them just last week), by our old friends and fellow old-school bloggers, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog and 'DRIFTGLASS', who writes at his eponymously-named blog and co-hosts the weekly Professional Left Podcast from his home in "Flyover Country, Illinois."

Among the questions asked and discussed...

• What did we all miss last week during our final conversation before Election Day, when we were clear-eyed, but bullish on Harris' odds this week?
• What, if anything, could the remarkably well-run Harris Campaign have done better? And what does this actually reveal about Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss to Trump?
• Are a huge number of Americans, millions of whom voted directly against their own self-interests, cruel and stupid or just wildly disinformed by our failed and/or corrupted media?
• Why would so many Latinos vote for the guy who promises "mass deportations"?
• Will Democrats ever figure out how to counter the "perpetual 50 state campaign" that is run by Republicans over their enormous and extremely well-funded media outlets (who have also poisoned the well of otherwise legit corporate media outlets?)
• How soon and/or how badly will Trump and his Republican over-reach after taking power?
• Got any helpful advice for how best to handle all of this and move forward in the days ahead? (Turns out, they do.)

As usual, both of them have much wisdom for us...even on a dark, dark day like today for the nation and the world...

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I'm writing today's BradCast summary much quicker than usual, as polls are now beginning to close with unofficial results coming in momentarily. But we've got a lot packed into today's show no matter when you tune in, that may help you make sense of what will happen tonight and over the next several days (and weeks and even months!). [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Among our coverage today....

• Not much help on who's gonna win from the voters of first-in-the-nation Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, the first town in the nation to both open and close their Election Day polls just after midnight last night. Their six total voters tied 3 to 3 between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. But four of those voters are registered Republicans and two are independent. So it might actually tell us more than originally appears.

• Polling guru Nate Silver's final forecast model for the 2024 Presidential election, which ran 80,000 simulations just after midnight, based on the latest pre-election polling and other noteworthy data, finds that Kamala Harris won precisely 40,012 of them. Or 50.015% of the time! Not much help there either. We may have to wait for actual, ya know, votes to be actually, ya know, counted before we can find out if all the polls telling us that everything is "tied" are actually right. (I wouldn't bet on it.)

• There were a number of problems for voters around the country today, though not widespread, so far, and, thankfully, not violent (so far) as some had feared. There were bomb threats in Georgia, said to have come from Russian sources. But most of the issues that have come to light so far were with voting systems, of the type we've seen many times in the past. Hand-marked paper ballots that failed to scan in a very Republican-leaning county in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, where polls were ordered to stay open an extra two hours to accommodate. Print-on-demand ballot printers that failed in a very Democratic-leaning county in battleground Arizona, leading to long lines for Native American voters. Similar isolated problems in a Democratic-leaning Louisville in Kentucky, as well as in parts of Alabama and Iowa. Thankfully, in most cases reported so far, voters were able to continue voting on hand-marked paper ballots, even if they will be tallied later --- and, in some cases, by hand --- as opposed to by computer tabulators at the polls. In some cases, lines grew longer as the problems were worked out, and judges ordered polls to stay open a bit longer tonight in the bargain. While rain drenched parts of several states, reports today suggest that voters were happy to tough it out with raincoats and umbrellas in long lines in order to cast their votes in the most critical Presidential election in U.S. history.

• We run down what is now expected to lie ahead over the next few hours, days, weeks and even months, particularly in the event that Kamala Harris is declared the winner by the media either tonight or over the next few days, and how Donald Trump will likely declare victory tonight no matter what.

• Relatedly, longtime election data researcher and author Richard Hayes Phillips helps us break down the battleground states likely to offer a "red mirage" in their reported results beginning this evening. That is where initially reported results misleadingly suggest a Republican win before more Democratic-leaning results come in because of various factors, including absentee ballots taking longer to tally in states where officials are not allowed to begin processing them until Election Day. He advises to be on the lookout for that "red mirage" effect tonight --- and to not panic when it inevitably does! --- particularly in the critical battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Many more details on that in today's show.

• And, while we wait...a couple of somewhat related moments out of television's "Golden Years", including a 1958 western featuring a conman actually named Trump (seriously!) who is trying to terrify a town into paying him for a wall(!) to protect them from what he warns will otherwise be complete and total destruction. (Yes, seriously!) We played this clip originally back in 2019, but hauled it out again today in hopes that it might be the last chance for it to be relevant ever again. (Wishful thinking?)

• And, some thoughts from TV's 98-year old legendary icon Dick Van Dyke who, yesterday, endorsed Kamala Harris and, along with it, included a video in which he reads a speech he initially delivered at an event with Martin Luther King, Jr., as written by Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, in Los Angeles in the Spring of 1964, just before passage of the Civil Rights Act. "Hatred is not the norm," Van Dyke reads from the 60-year old speech this week, during a moment in history that, he says, makes the speech "mean as much today, if not more, than it did then."

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our Election Day Green News Report, as wet weather complicates voting after October was one of the driest on record in almost every state; as a new tropical storm threatens the Gulf Coast; along with a boatload of actually very positive climate news for the U.S. as President Biden begins to wind down his term in office amid landmark climate achievements...

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It's now or never. It's our final BradCast before Election Day 2024 and our last chance to open our phone lines to callers to have their say. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Either Kamala Harris will become the next President of the United States and the first Black, Southeast-Asian American woman to do so, or Donald Trump, a 78-year old, 34-time convicted criminal felon, adjudicated rapist and self-proclaimed wannabe-Dictator will. Those are the two choices.

So today we take a bit of time to make that case to those who are either undecided, planning not to vote at all, or considering voting for a so-called "third-party" candidate.

To that end, we open up the phones to listeners to make their own such case to other voters. Among those who did so was listener "Maura", who described herself as being "a Republican and business owner most of my life." Her argument to those voters is that, while Harris may not be perfect, "voting is a bit like getting on a bus. You have the option to get on a bus or not get on a bus. And if you're going somewhere, you go to the bus that goes closest to where you are trying to go."

She also went on to spell out a number of other things she likes about Harris' policies and added at the end: "Plus! Plus! She is the only candidate that is likely to have the support in Congress, and to be able to support and protect our civil rights across the country. If we have civil rights, we must have them nationally."

Before we get to a full slate of callers today, however, a few very related news items of note...

• Just another heads up: Donald Trump will declare victory on Tuesday night, whether he has actually won or not. Do not be surprised. Do not be alarmed. Do not be frightened. Do not be gaslit. It is completely, 100% expected in the event that he is losing and it will be your first post-election indication that he is attempting to steal the 2024 election as he tried, but failed, to do in 2020.

• On Sunday, Donald Trump reiterated his disturbing homicidal ideation at a rally by telling supporters he wouldn't mind if someone "shot through the fake news" which was covering the event. That followed, just days earlier, a similarly appalling remark in which he mentioned Republican former Congresswoman Liz Cheney and suggested the idea of having "nine barrels shooting at her," asking how she feels about being so pro-war "when the guns are trained on her face." (For those Trump apologists who say those remarks were just fine, because "context", I'd ask if they would be just fine with Kamala Harris, at a rally, declaring in any context: "Let's put Donald Trump there with a rifle, with nine-barrels shooting at him, with guns trained on his face.")

• Stunning news out of Iowa on Saturday, where the "gold standard" Des Moines Register poll run by Ann Selzer found Kamala Harris actually was leading Donald Trump --- in IOWA --- by three points on the last weekend before Election Day. If Harris is actually leading in deep-red Iowa, as the survey finds, what does that tell us about all of the other polls, particularly in so-called battleground states, that pre-election polling averages claim to be tied just before E-Day? Selzer has a remarkably accurate record over the years in her Iowa polling to the extent that polling guru Nate Silver, creator of polling average site 538, said about Selzer and her shock poll results on Saturday: "In a world where most pollsters have a lot of egg on their faces, she has near-oracular status."

• Over the weekend, European Green parties from nearly 20 different countries, issued a joint statement calling on "US Green Party candidate Jill Stein to withdraw her Presidential candidacy, and endorse Kamala Harris." The Euro Greens cite the U.S. party's "close relationship" with authoritarians around the world and an election in which the stakes "could not be higher" on a host of issues, including climate change. "We are clear that Kamala Harris is the only candidate who can block Donald Trump and his anti-democratic, authoritarian policies from the White House," they declared in calling for Stein to endorse Harris in a race they describe as "too close for comfort."

• Longtime election expert and fellow Election Integrity advocate Jonathan Simon recently penned an open letter to the Green Party's Jill Stein, including results from the so-called "Blue Wall" states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania back in 2016, noting that Stein's share of the vote that year in all three states was larger than the margin of victory for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton that resulted in his winning the White House the first time.

• And, finally, before we get to callers and their "closing arguments" to undecided voters or those considering voting third-party, we share the closing argument, in his own words, from independent, self-described democratic socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on why he believes it is critically important to elect Kamala Harris despite his virulent disagreements with the Biden-Harris Administration's policy on Israel and Gaza...

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The contrast and choice for American voters, as discussed on today's BradCast, couldn't be more stark, now less than a week before the most consequential Election Day in modern American history. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last night, in the nation's capitol, on the Ellipse in front of the White House, on the very same spot where, on January 6, 2021, the now convicted felon and former President of the United States urged his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol in a desperate last gasp effort to steal the 2020 election, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her "closing argument" to what her Campaign described as more than 75,000 supporters.

She summarized her many policy prescriptions to help boost young and struggling Americans and the middle class, underscored her calls to restore reproductive freedoms stolen from American women, accurately characterized her opponent as a threat to democracy itself, and promised to work to end the hateful divisiveness that he has turned into his singular political bludgeon.

Her remarks came just two days after Donald Trump offered his own "closing argument" in his old home town of New York City, before a packed house at Madison Square Garden, the site of a notorious 1939 American Nazi rally. The historic parallel was made impossible to ignore.

His six-hour raucous event was chock full of crude, racist and misogynistic attacks on his opponent, with mostly male speakers characterizing Harris as a prostitute, a "devil", and the "Antichrist," among other things. A comedian opened the affair by describing Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage", along with demeaning jokes about Black people, other Latinos, Palestinians and Jews. Trump, when he finally took the state, made no effort to disassociate himself from any of his fellow speakers who, by yesterday, he had characterized as taking part in a "love-fest".

These are the two major choices for President of the United States now before voters in a contest that pre-election polling averages, if you believe, describe as a virtual tie. "On November 5th," quips a popular social media post making the rounds in recent weeks, "it’ll be as if the whole world is waiting for the results of a biopsy to come back."

That is where we are. And that is why I needed to hear today, for the last time before Election Day, from our old and always very smart friends and fellow old-school bloggers, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog and 'DRIFTGLASS, who writes at his eponymously-named blog and co-hosts the weekly Professional Left Podcast from his home in "Flyover Country, Illinois."

I've got much to ask them both about today, as we try to make sense of this moment before the storm likely to be unleashed --- no matter who is ultimately announced to be the winner --- as early as next Tuesday night. Though Driftglass sagely warns today: "This election is not going to be over once the votes are counted. This election will be over in January, when hopefully Madame President is sworn in."

Hailing from Abraham Lincoln's birthplace in Springfield, IL, Driftglass explains why Harris' remarks on Tuesday led him to recall the Gettysburg Address. "Nobody can be Lincoln," he acknowledges, before observing that while his most famous speech "didn't end the Civil War, it changed the terms under which the war was being fought." He details a number of parallels with Harris' speech at the Ellipse on Tuesday, including: "The opening was about honoring the people who had fallen defending liberty --- the bastards who charged the Capitol --- and how we have to reinvent the country, how we have to come together. I think it was a very deliberate choice of venue and style, drawing explicit connections between what has happened on this ground, and what we need to do next."

Parton, for her part, characterized Trump's "fascist" rally at MSG as a "a hate-fest, not a 'love-fest.' The fact that he even said that is hilarious. They made it clear what they were doing. They were trying to gather the faithful through hatred, bigotry, racism and homophobia. This is something they did on purpose. They want to reach their low-propensity voters --- the 'Bro Vote' --- who basically don't pay attention to politics."

"By having all these other people say all these awful, ugly things, Donald Trump gets a pass on that stuff," she explains. "This wasn't him saying this stuff, this was all the people he lined up at his rally. That has an effect."

But, she argues, and Driftglass concurs, he may have made a fatal error in a contest that is purportedly this close by allowing that racist attack on Puerto Rican voters, who number nearly half a million in the battleground state of Pennsylvania alone.

We've got much more than that, of course, to discuss with them today, including...

• Why this election is reportedly so close and if it really is that close.
• If so, where all of these Trump voters coming from, given the number of Republicans --- and female voters --- who have abandoned him in favor of Harris.
• How Trump "cracked the code", as well as the media, in how to run for President as a Republican.
• How Harris is being "held to impossibly high standards" while Trump is "being held to no standards at all."
• What Trump's "little secret" with GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson might be, and how easily Democrats are "panicked" by it.
• How Trump and Johnson promise to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) if Republicans win the White House and Congress, even as some 50 million Americans --- including millions of Republican voters (who either don't notice or care?) --- now have health coverage thanks to that landmark legislation.
• And whether we are all victims right now of the greatest mass gaslighting in world history.

Before they go today, both Digby and Driftglass offer their own "closing argument" for our listeners who may still be either undecided, considering voting for Trump or a third-party candidate, or who may be thinking of not voting at all...

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We've got a helluva BradCast for you today, on two different topics, both of hugely critical importance to American democracy and this year's elections. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST UP... On Tuesday, two different major media outlets offered alarming new reports on, among other things, Donald Trump's long-time admiration for Adolf Hitler. Both detailed stories are based in part or full on new interviews with Trump's longest-serving White House Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, who also served as Trump's Dept. of Homeland Security chief before being brought over to head up his White House.

The very conservative Kelly explains in his on-the-record, recorded conversations with the New York Times' Michael Schmidt (free link!) that he had been reluctant, as a longtime, high-ranking member of the military, to speak out publicly about his old boss, given his belief that the military should largely stay out of public politics. But Trump's recent, repeated comments about "the enemy within", in reference to the former President's personal domestic political opponents, and his remarks about unleashing the U.S. military against them, changed his mind.

As of late this afternoon, Fox "News" reportedly still hasn't found time in its 24/7 schedule to play any of the disturbing, freely available audio from Schmidt's three conversations with Kelly, as published yesterday. So we figured we'd go ahead and do so ourselves on today's program. You're welcome!

In short, Kelly's remarks detail how Trump...

• meets the very "definition of fascist", is "certainly an authoritarian", "admires people who are dictators" and "prefers the dictator approach to government;
• repeatedly praised Hitler during Kelly's time in the White House and insisted the German dictator "did some good things";
• doesn't understand either history or the U.S. Constitution, though frequently insisted he knew more about the President's Constitutional authority than the lawyers in the White House Counsel's office did;
• looked down on those who were disabled or killed on the battlefield, confirming that Trump would often described them as "losers and suckers";
• and that, never mind his policies, many of which Kelly might agree with, the man simply doesn’t have the character to serve as President of the United States, which is far more important than any particular partisan policy positions.

That, of course, is the quickest of summaries. Tune in for more. And for a really harrowing report on Trump's disturbing views of the military ("only suckers went to Vietnam"), the Constitution, rule of law, and extraordinary lack of character, see Jeffrey Goldberg's article yesterday at The Atlantic, headlined "Trump: I Need the Kind of Generals Hitler Had". It includes more from Kelly and opens with the story of a murdered woman in the military whose family was told by Trump at the White House that he would personally pay for her funeral. Then, when the bill arrived, he was reportedly furious, refused to pay it, and declared "It doesn't cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!"

NEXT UP... In a sharp, if perhaps welcome, turn, we're joined today by CHRIS MELODY FIELDS FIGUEREDO, the Executive Director of the nonprofit Ballot Initiative Strategy Center.

The record 11 different abortion rights related referendums on the ballot in 10 different states this year, in the wake of SCOTUS overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, have received a fair bit of attention from the media. But, in fact, there are more than 150 ballot measures on the ballot this year across 41 states right now, on everything from how elections are run, to how redistricting should happen, to who gets paid sick leave, to raising the minimum wage, to stuff like banning trophy hunting and cracking down on retail theft. All of which has the potential to reshape state policy on key issues nationwide for years to come.

In a very lively conversation today with Fields Figueredo, we discuss much of the above and more, including the explosion of the use of citizen ballot initiatives (and reasons for it); ongoing efforts in Republican-controlled states to make such citizen referenda harder to get onto the ballot and more difficult for voters to adopt; why very progressive initiatives are frequently adopted in otherwise very "red" states; how a number of critical initiatives this year could radically change politics as we know it in states like Ohio; whether there is a real correlation between initiatives on the ballot and partisan turnout; some of the sneaky initiatives on ballots in some states this year; and where progressives can go to get advice on how best to vote on often deceptive or confusing referendums. (I've got twenty of them on my ballot here in Los Angeles this year!)

"Ballot guides are my favorite thing," she tells me, admitting that she's a huge "nerd". "There are a number of organizations in your state that may be producing ballot guides that give you information in plain language," Fields Figueredo advises. "Go to organizations that you trust. Also a great resources is the League of Women Voters. Their ballot guides put it in simple language. We also have a Ballot Measure Hub. It's not going to have every single ballot measure in the country, but I would go to trusted news sources or local organizations that are going to try to put these issues into plain language."

Yup, it's another five pound BradCast in a one pound bag today! Enjoy!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)