It's time for our monthly-ish reality check-in with two of our favorite BradCast guests. And we've got a lot to cover. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo and 'DRIFTGLASS' of the Professional Left Podcast are here once again to both freak us out AND, somehow, cheer us up all at the same time. Among today's topics of discussion...

SHUTDOWN POLITICS: Clearly this is becoming The Epstein Shutdown, at this point. Democrats are "very surprisingly united", says Digby, in their demands for reversing Donald Trump and the Republicans' radical health care cuts for tens of millions of Americans and for some sort of guarantee that Trump and his OMB Director Russ Vought won't simply double-cross any deal by rescinding it after Dems vote to reopen the government. Republicans, meanwhile, are revealing a number of cracks in their coalition, and appear to have no end game. That, even as House Speaker Mike Johnson continues to do Trump's bidding to prevent an almost certain vote on releasing the Epstein Files once he allows Arizona's Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva to be seated and the House to reopen for business. "It's clear that the government is being held hostage," observes Driftglass, "being shut down so that Russ Vought can gut it with impunity, and so that Mike Johnson can keep Trump's dirty secrets locked up."

TRUMP SEEKS VIOLENCE: Yesterday, our delusional President, referring to his deployment of the U.S. military against U.S. citizens here in Los Angeles, absurdly claimed that "had we not gone in at the beginning with a very strong powerful force, they would have lost L.A." That is, of course, a fantasy, as Digby and myself (both of us L.A. residents) are able to attest. She is careful to avoid any FCC language violations in her full, furious response: "It's BS. It is utter nonsense. It is like something from another planet." Meanwhile, Illinois resident Driftglass stands with his Gov. J.B. Pritzker who, he argues, is doing a good job of being both tough and funny in standing up to Trump's madness. As to the President's absurd claims of "war-ravaged" U.S. cities that he must save by unlawfully deploying the military: "It is an attempt to just keep escalating the lunatic rhetoric that they already believe. He is simply a vessel for the delivery of fascism by Russ Vought inside the government, and by Stephen Miller using armed forces...Their brain cannot accept that they are the bad guys."

TRUMP SEEKS VENGEANCE: His beauty queen pageant contestant turned insurance lawyer turned interim U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, has secured ridiculous indictments against Trump's former FBI Director James Comey and the sitting New York Attorney General Letitia James on direct orders from the White House. "It would be very surprising if they were able to get any conviction," says Digby, careful to avoid predictions, but adding: "It's very clear what this is. This is retribution."

'NO KINGS': But there are, apparently, plenty of hilarious inflatable frogs to go around. It should be a very colorful weekend, likely including the largest American protests in U.S. history on Saturday. Find a protest near you. George Soros will send you your paycheck, as usual. Maybe wear a colorful costume because, as Driftglass quips: "A bunch of people parading in inflatable animal suits and various other costumes, making noise and being goofy makes them look like the clowns they are"...

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On today's BradCast: The War in Gaza may be in the middle of a very fragile ceasefire, but the Wars both For and Against Democracy in America continue apace today. And, according to our guest, the effort underway in one otherwise very "red" state today is heartening. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Some news following our brief respite yesterday...

• After the good news yesterday, regarding the release of all living Israeli hostages held by Hamas as part of a cessation of hostilities in Gaza brokered by the U.S. and a number of other countries, a few violent flair-ups and Israel pulling back on several elements of the deal offer worrisome signs for the nascent, fragile peace deal. Israel reportedly killed six Gazans on Tuesday, and Hamas reportedly murdered a number of fellow Palestinians as the military arm of the group began to retake control of the war-torn enclave amid Israel's partial retreat.

• Back here at home, Democrats saw another big (and, according to Newsweek, "shock") victory up in Fairbanks, Alaska, where Democratic Mayoral candidate Mindy O'Neall ousted Republican-backed Mayor David Pruhs. It is both the first Democratic mayoral victory and first time that a sitting Mayor has been unseated in about a decade in Fairbanks. And yet, it is another instance of a huge shift by the electorate toward Democrats in special and local elections since Donald Trump took office again, just nine long months ago.

• Little wonder then that Trump has called on GOP-controlled states to gerrymander their U.S. House maps in hopes of flipping "blue" seats to "red" before a single vote is even cast in next year's critical midterms. Texas redrew their already-gerrymandered earlier this year in hopes of stealing five "blue" seats next year in majority-minority districts. And lawmakers in North Carolina announced plans on Monday for a mid-decade redistricting there as well, to take away yet another seat from Democratic voters in the closely divided state. NC had a fair, 7 to 7 court-drawn U.S. House map in 2022, only to see Republicans take control of the state Supreme Court, which allowed a redrawn, 10 to 4 gerrymander in 2024. On Monday, state Republicans announced plans to redraw the map again for 2026, to steal one more seat from Democrats. That, of course, rather than simply change their policies to ones actually supported by the majority of voters.

BUT AFTER... Texas and before North Carolina, it was my old home-state of Missouri whose Republican Governor and state Legislature last month moved to undermine voters with an unprecedented mid-decade gerrymander of the Show-Me State's U.S. House Map.

While Republicans already control 6 of 8 Congressional Districts in the state, with just two Democratic seats left --- one in St. Louis in the Eastern part of the state, the other in Kansas City in the West --- state lawmakers recently voted to split up the Kansas City district held for the past 20 years by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II.

Pro-democracy groups and voters, however, are pushing back. Several lawsuits have been filed challenging the new map as a violation of the state constitution. And a coalition of democracy advocates called People Not Politicians (PNP) is fighting back in another way: with a referendum that, if allowed on next year's statewide ballot, would immediately stop the gerrymander from moving forward in 2026, as a "citizens veto", until the entire state was able to ring in on the legislation at the ballot box.

Today, we're joined by PNP Policy Director RICHARD VON GLAHN, who has worked on 10 previous Missouri ballot initiatives, including the successful ballot campaign last year to raise the minimum wage and provide workers paid sick leave in the state. It was adopted with 58% of the vote. He seems very confident about the group's ability to get this referendum before voters next year.

"We can let the people decide if the legislation passed by the General Assembly should go into effect or if they should have to start over," he tells me. "We have done this 27 times in Missouri's history, and 25 of those 27 times that an issue has been put up for a vote, citizens have over-ridden what the legislature has done."

Von Glahn says the coalition is "not just on pace, we are ahead of pace" to qualify for the ballot, which would immediately restore the state's previous Congressional map for next year. "In the 72 hours after the legislature first passed this, we had over 2,000 Missourians volunteer, saying, 'Put a clipboard in my hands, I'm ready to go out and hit the streets and talk to my neighbors.'"

Of course, the state's Republican Attorney General and Sec. of State are already pushing back, attempting to disqualify about 25,000 signatures that were gathered even before the state's Republican Governor Mike Keyhoe signed the new law. Von Glahn explains today why he's confident that their objections will not stand. They are currently challenging the AG's determination in court. But, even if they lose that legal battle, he argues, they will qualify for the ballot anyway with well over the 110,000 or so signatures needed.

"It is a completely frivolous action by the Attorney General," he says, asserting that the AG "just made up words in the [state] constitution to try to thwart this." Nonetheless, the seasoned ballot initiative organizer vows: "We are also going to turn in such an overwhelming number of signatures, that whether the signatures from the first two weeks are counted or not is not going to be a factor."

He also notes that volunteers gathering signatures are not just Democrats in the otherwise supposedly "red" state where voters, just last year, voted for adding a right to abortion in the state's constitution after Republican state lawmakers adopted a near-total ban. "Voters don't ask us, 'Well, will this benefit Republicans or Democrats?' Because this is actually about centering VOTERS in our democracy. No one wants to feel like a political pawn or that our elections are manipulated behind our backs. That's why, as we are out working on this and talking to voters, it is not a PARTISAN message. It is really, like the name says, people, not politicians should be the center and focus of our democracy."

Please tune in for many more encouraging words about all of this from Von Glahn.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, as at least three major storm systems from three different directions slam the U.S. at the same time from the East Coast to the West and all the way up to Alaska. Oh, and also, remember that National Weather Service meteorologist who Trump found to agree that a hurricane had been predicted to hit Alabama back in 2019? That guy, Trump's "Sharpiegate" dude, has just been confirmed by Republicans in the U.S. Senate to head up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which houses the National Weather Service...

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We've got just a ton of news for ya on today's BradCast. Here's the short version: Trump is a loser. On just about everything right now. And he knows it. So he's acting out. So far, it's not working. On anything. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Donald Trump is losing in the polls. An even larger majority of Americans oppose him than they did on Election Day, when a majority of Americans voted against him. He's also still losing on every single actual issue.

He's losing in the courts. At least the lower courts, which mostly still follow the Constitution and rule of law, unlike the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court.

He's losing in his various attempts to start a war against the American people in cities and states that voted against him. So now he's trying to lash out at elected officials getting in his way, like Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker who are suing to prevent him from deploying federalized National Guard troops against Americans in the Windy City. This morning, Trump called for both men to be arrested. For what? Nobody knows, of course. It's just Trump acting out.

He's also leading elected officials from his own party, like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, to lose their years-long claims to be "conservatives" who have pretended to support small government and states rights while opposing Big Government federal overreach. In truth, all of those things were lies. Abbott's flip-flop, allowing the federalization of his state's National Guard troops (which he condemned as a "power grab" just last year) to be deployed by Trump against fellow Americans in Oregon and Illinois is just one example. (Remember: Almost every Republican calling themself a "conservative" is not actually conservative and never was.)

Trump will soon lose his laughably weak, weaponized indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, who was arraigned today. The trial, on two ridiculous counts related to allegedly lying to Congress about something or other in 2020, has now been set for January 5 by the Biden-appointed federal judge randomly assigned to the case. For a long list of reasons, including Lindsey Halligan, the former beauty pageant contestant that Trump unlawfully assigned to indict Comey, will likely be tossed before the trial even begins. But, if it does begin, it will likely crash and burn, according to prosecutors who had refused to bring a case against Comey themselves previously. They think the case is a loser.

He's losing in Congress, where Dems are united for tens of millions of Americans who are about to see their health care costs doubled, thanks to Trump and Republicans. Americans support the Dems in this fight, so far, and are strongly in favor of restoration of health care funding that Republicans are allowing to expire at the end of the year. Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene(!) is furious about the GOP doubling health care costs for those --- like her own adult children --- who purchased health insurance via the Obamacare exchanges. Trump is also screwing up the strategy of Republican leaders in Congress, by threatening mass firings and to withhold back-pay to furloughed federal workers once the shutdown ends (despite a federal law --- which he, himself, signed in 2019 --- that mandates the back-pay). So far, his threats have proven to be hollow, revealing him to be even weaker and more of a loser than he already was.

Oh, and as we discuss after Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report today, the billions of dollars in energy-related grants that Trump has (illegally) cancelled in 16 states that voted against him last year, as punishment against Democrats for the government shutdown, will also slash hundreds of millions of dollars from Congressional Districts represented by at least 20 Republican House members. That should help him be even more of a loser in next year's midterm elections.

Enjoy!

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As our corrupted U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term this week, its Chief Justice has a lot of explaining to do. Don't hold your breath for that explanation. At least from John Roberts. Our guest on today's BradCast, however, just wrote a book about him and has plenty to explain about him, what has happened under his leadership to our High Court, and the long road ahead toward reforming it. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Our guest today, the great LISA GRAVES, knows a thing or two about the Supreme Court, from her experience in all three branches of the federal government. She has served as a Deputy Asst. Attorney General at the U.S. Dept. of Justice, the Chief Counsel for nominations on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and as the Deputy Chief for the Article III Judges Division of the U.S. Court System. She has also exposed a lot of the corruption of the current members of the High Court, as a longtime researcher and as founder and Executive Director of True North Research.

Her brand new book is called WITHOUT PRECEDENT: How Chief Justice Roberts and his Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights. (Check out an excerpt here.)

In her most recent news letter, Graves argues that "we are in the midst of an unprecedented set of constitutional crises." She asserts that while Donald Trump's "belligerent and erratic orders --- and his appalling musings --- are shaking the foundations of our nation, it is the U.S. Supreme Court with John Roberts at the helm that is recklessly and aggressively emboldening him."

We begin there, after a long summer of the Roberts Court largely granting Trump's wishes, at least temporarily, in case after case after case on the Court's Emergency Docket (better described as its "Shadow Docket"), allowing him to largely get away with everything, no matter how radical, unlawful or unconstitutional. That, in unmistakably stark contrast to the Court's rightwing majority blockade of far less cataclysmic executive actions attempted by the Democratic Biden Administration when, for example, President Biden was barred by SCOTUS from offering about ten thousand dollars in school loan forgiveness during the COVID pandemic (as specifically allowed by law) or when attempting to regulate deadly emissions by power plants, despite the federal Clean Air Act's mandate to do exactly that.

Where the Roberts Court has allowed Trump to ignore the law and Constitution alike, the same corrupted majority blocked the Democratic President time after time, declaring a newly discovered "Major Questions" doctrine in the Constitution. It was apparently sitting right next to their invented "Presidential Immunity" clause they discovered last year, just in time to get Trump off the hook from very real crimes both retroactively and prospectively.

"If [Kamala] Harris had won, I don't think this Court would be bending over backwards to allow every new initiative of a Harris Administration," argues Graves. "What we saw when Biden was President, was the Roberts Court going out of its way to invent whole new magical phrases to try to stop signature initiatives of the Biden Administration, that were modest in themselves, and were even more modest when compared to the radical, reactionary, destructive actions of Donald Trump."

We've got a lot to speak to Graves about today, including all of that, as well well as the lies told by "documented liar" Justice Brett Kavanaugh about so-called "temporary" decisions made by the Court on the Shadow Docket; how Robert's nomination 20 years ago last month kicked off the full industrialization and weaponization of Republican Dark Money invested in seating Justices who would turn the Court, its precedents and our Constitution on their collective head; and how, even during his nomination hearings, John Roberts, a longtime anti-democratic, anti-Voting Rights Act Republican activist, was already playing the American people.

Graves also explains today what she sees as a long but viable path toward Court reform. "If we don't do so, it is at our peril. Because the Roberts Court and John Roberts is acting with such supreme arrogance in enabling Trump and in decimating our rights," she asserts. "It will continue to take blow after blow against our freedoms, against statutes that were passed to protect our rights, including efforts to mitigate climate change and so much more, until we reform this Court and pass laws to restore rights we've lost, and even expand upon them."

"So it's really a moral duty. It's a moral imperative that we not give in to hopelessness," she says, citing decades-long Civil Rights Era struggles. "Just because we can't do it this year, it doesn't mean we can't be building it. And, in fact, we must be building forward, to demand that we have representatives who are going to support reforming the Supreme Court, to protect our rights and to undo the damage that has been done by this packed, stacked and captured Court."

"The damage that has been done is done to us. We the people. So we have an obligation to work together to move those reforms into law in the years to come. Each year that we go forward, we hopefully will have the opportunity to have elections that will allow us to hold the people accountable who are advancing this extreme agenda and repel it. And in repelling it, have the opportunity to pass meaningful, real reform, the reform that's needed as well as the substantive restoration of rights, and expansion of rights, that is every American's rightful inheritance."

ALSO TODAY... U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is not just a Trump sycophant and corrupted tool. She is also a horrible human being, as she demonstrated over and over again today in obnoxious testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in her first oversight hearing as U.S. Attorney General.

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On today's BradCast: The partial federal government shutdown is soon heading into its second week. So far, Americans are blaming Trump and the Republicans for it. But that hasn't prevented our brain-addled President from deploying U.S. troops against U.S. citizens in U.S. cities that had the temerity to vote against him last year. Only the courts, so far, have been able to slow that down. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to our main topics today --- Trump's military invasion of the U.S. and the Democrats fight for affordable health care for tens of millions of Americans --- and listener calls to go with them, a public service announcement for listeners here in Southern California!

Vote-by-Mail ballots are now going out to all registered voters in the state for the November 4 Special Election for Prop 50. The ballot measure, if adopted, would allow the state to temporarily set aside the U.S. House Map for California created by the state's independent redistricting commission to allow new maps that could flip as many as five seats from "red" to "blue" in next year's midterms. That effort is in direct response to Texas redrawing its U.S. House Maps --- at the direction of Donald Trump --- to flip five mostly minority Democratic districts from "blue" to "red" next year.

But thousands of SoCal voters in temporary housing after their homes burned down during wildfires earlier this year are not getting their ballots automatically forwarded to them in the mail. Ballots aren't allowed to be forwarded. Those voters have to contact the Registrar's office to notify them of their temporary address in order to receive their ballot by mail. More details on that very important matter are currently right here. If you know anyone who has been dislocated by those fires, please refer them to that page, or let them know they must go to LAVote.gov (or call 800-815-2666) to add a temporary mailing address to their voter registration record to receive a VBM ballot in Los Angeles County.

Beyond that, we focus today in on the weekend's wild court actions up in Oregon, where a federal judge appointed by Trump during his first term has blocked his attempt to federalize the state's National Guard troops to invade Portland. Trump, consistently watching Fox "News" re-run five-year old footage from George Floyd protests in Portland, seems to believe the city is "war-ravaged" and "burning down". It is neither of those things, and U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut made that clear in her order [PDF] temporarily blocking Trump from federalizing the Oregon Guard and deploying them to Portland. In her ruling, she found the federal government argument was "untethered to facts" and that Portland was not "war-torn" or "under siege" by "Antifa, and other domestic terrorists." In fact, she warned, "This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law" and said that "Whether we choose to follow what the Constitution mandates …goes to the heart of what it means to live under the rule of law in the US." That all happened Saturday.

But then, in response on Sunday, Trump attempted to work around the judge's order by sending federalizes National Guard troops from California and Texas to Portland, forcing plaintiffs to go back to court in a late-night emergency hearing with Judge Immergut, who was forced to make clear, in a second ruling, that no troops from any state, were allowed for now to deploy to Portland.

In turn --- and even though he appointed her himself --- Trump is now attacking the judge, misgendering her by charging she "should be ashamed of himself." The attack comes as judges across the nation are facing hundreds of death threats --- particularly after blocking something Trump wants, even temporarily. Over the weekend, a judge's house in South Carolina was apparently blown up, with her husband and son hospitalized with serious injuries after the house was burned to the ground. She had reportedly been facing death threats for weeks after blocking the state from turning over its voter registration database to the Trump Administration.

By Monday, Trump was deploying hundreds of National Guard troops from Texas into Chicago, where both the state of Illinois and the city have now filed a similar suit to the one in Oregon. But, just an hour or so before airtime, the judge in that case declined, for now, to block the deployment. These stories, I'm sorry to say, are likely to continue, as Trump has threatened similar military attacks against "the enemy within" in states and cities that voted against him last year.

Moreover, the federal government shutdown continues today, as Democrats fight to prevent some 25 million Americans from seeing the costs of their health care more than doubled as of January 1. Despite what some have referred to as "conventional wisdom" that Dems would be blamed for the shutdown, so far early polling shows that Trump and Republicans are taking most of the blame and that, by huge majorities, Americans support the extension of Obamacare subsidies that will otherwise run out at the end of the year unless Republicans reverse their plan to defund the popular health care exchanges.

In the second half of today's show, we open the phones to a bunch of lively calls on all of the above!...

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On today's BradCast: Republican insistence on skyrocketing health care costs for tens of millions of Americans as of January 1 continues to keep much of the federal government closed for a second day. But it hasn't prevented Trump's ICE thugs from dragging American citizens, including women and children, out of their beds and into the streets naked in the middle of the night. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

It's Day 2 of the federal government shutdown, as Democrats vow to go the mat to prevent an explosion of health care costs for tens of millions of Americans beginning on the first day of the new year. The cost of monthly premiums for nearly 25 million Americans who purchase access to coverage via the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) exchanges is set to more than double, thanks to Donald Trump and Republicans cutting federal subsidies.

At the same time, Trump is vowing to exact maximum pain on his political foes by using cover of the shutdown for mass firings of federal workers and axing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of government services at what he describes as "Democrat agencies."

We're joined today by BOBBY KOGAN, formerly senior adviser in the Biden-Harris White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and, prior to that, chief analyst for the U.S. Senate Budget Committee under Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT). He is now Senior Director of Federal Budget Policy at American Progress. Suffice to say, Kogan knows a lot about what happens during shutdowns, what goes on behind the scenes in these standoffs, how they (usually) work, and why they matter.

He's also very funny and good spirited, which is really appreciated on a day like today. So, mostly, I'm gonna recommend you tune in. You'll get a lot from our wide-ranging conversation on all of this, as I did.

But, there are two specific points that he made that I want to highlight here for the moment. In regard to Trump and his OMB Director, Russ Vought (architect of the hard-right Project 2025 manifesto that Trump pretended to know nothing about during the campaign), are promising "mass layoffs" of government workers during the shutdown. If they do so, Kogan tells me, it would be, "extremely illegal". As he details, a shutdown does not give the White House some sort of special shutdown powers to carry out mass Reductions in Force (RIFs) of federal workers.

"It's actually the opposite. You are allowed, within reason, to RIF people when the government is open. Doing it when the government is closed is actually extremely illegal. It's an Antideficiency Act violation," he explains. "They're doing it because they want to do it. There is no special power to do this. It's illegal to do it during a shutdown, because the work necessary to make it happen is not work that is allowed to happen under a shutdown. They're just doing it anyway."

"It's a criminal act that carries a jail term. But, of course, the Trump Administration won't prosecute itself, so it will be yet another lawless budget act that the White House does."

Kogan's other point that I want to underscore here is his response when I asked if this is the right fight --- to prevent health care costs from spiking for millions of Americans beginning on the first of the year, with $350 billion in Trump/Republican cuts next year alone, along with a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid and another half-trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare over the next ten years --- for Democrats to plant their flag on.

His response is passionate in explaining why he believes that, yes, this is exactly the right fight for them to stand on...

Tune in for much more.

THEN... Last month, in a decision on the Supreme Court's emergency docket allowing previously unconstitutional "roving" ICE raids to continue in Los Angeles, based on nothing more than criteria such as race, skin color, how one is dressed, where they work or hang out, Justice Brett Kavanaugh dismissed concerns about U.S. citizens and others with the legal right to be in the country who might get swept up in these raids.

"As for stops of those individuals who are legally in the country," Kavanaugh wrote in his much-derided concurrence, "the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States."

I wonder if Kavanaugh is standing by that what happened in Chicago this week, in an apartment building in the middle of the night, where federal agents busted down doors on every floor of a five-story building, dragged residents out of beds --- including men, women, children and U.S. Citizens --- without warrants, zip-tied them, brought them out into the streets, some of them naked, where they were left without explanation or attorneys until 3am, as part of Trump's "Operation Midway Blitz".

It was not the only such brutal, middle-of-the-night operation. Another was carried out in the Chicago suburbs this week, also ensnaring U.S. citizens. The masked, jack-booted thugs aren't "coming". They are here and coming to your town soon enough. Someone alert Justice Kavanaugh.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen helps us close things out this week with our latest Green News Report, in what, ironically, may include some of the brightest news we are able to offer you today...

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Trump lives and dies by ratings and reviews. Well, the reviews are in on today's BradCast for his sleepy, low-energy, hour-plus long campaign style remarks to the nation's top military brass at Tuesday's bizarre, in-person convocation of the nation's highest-ranking military generals. The unusual gathering was called at the U.S. Marine base at Quantico by his Defense Secretary. The reviews were not good. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

Before we get to today's weird military gathering, a few thoughts as the government is now all but certain to begin a partial shutdown as of midnight tonight. It is the first such federal shutdown since the last time Donald Trump was in the White House and Republicans held majority control of both chambers of Congress. He has been remarkably sanguine about it this time. He refused to even meet with Democratic leaders until yesterday, after which he went on to post an obnoxious, racist, AI-generated video mocking both House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Democrats refuse to sign on to a Republican bill that continues spending at current levels unless Republicans restore hundreds of billions of dollars that Trump and the GOP are cutting to American healthcare via the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid at year's end.

There may be several reasons why Trump is fine with the government shutting down. Beyond a delay in a mandatory House vote on releasing the Epstein Files, a government shutdown would also prevent the Bureau of Labor Statistics from releasing this Friday's much-anticipated jobs report for September, after previous monthly reports revealed grim numbers for Trump's second term. If the shutdown goes on long enough, BLS won't be able to gather its gold-standard data for future economic reports either, which are relied upon by the government, as well as businesses and investors worldwide.

For the record, the BLS didn't close during the last Trump shutdown. He could have mandated it stay open this time as well to continue its critical work. But, for some reason, he didn't.

Then it's on to the "urgent" in-person meeting of the nation's 800+ generals, admirals and other top military brass at Quantico today, as called at the last minute by Fox "News" weekend host turned Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth for unexplained reasons. It featured what amounted to little more than a live-for-the-cameras version of Hegseth's grievance-filled social media feed. The New York Times described his remarks to the generals as "a familiar litany of culture war talking points," including a lot of macho bullshit about the "warrior ethos", "wokeness" and "stupid rules of engagement" which Hegseth argues are somehow holding the U.S. military back.

For his part, Trump's partisan campaign-style rally that followed Hegseth seems to have fallen flat before the generals, who are not supposed to display approval or disapproval for political leaders. Media outlets described Trump's hour and ten-minutes of remarks as a "rambling and sometimes incoherent", "unusually meandering address" in which he attacked his perceived political enemies and called for the generals to use U.S. cities as "training grounds" for the military. Focusing on Democrats, who he described as the "radical left" and the "enemy from within", he suggested "the war from within" would be waged in cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, presumably against Americans in cities that Trump doesn't like.

Experts and Defense officials are describing the comments as "embarrassing", with one telling The Intercept, "We are diminished as a nation by both Hegseth and Trump." Said another: "Listening to Donald Trump was deeply troubling and it is clear he is unfit for the role of commander in chief." Still another, citing the 25th Amendment, observed: "This is truly disturbing. He is clearly unwell even for Trump."

During his long remarks to a nearly quiet room, Trump described Illinois' Governor J.B. Pritzker as "incompetent" and "stupid", vowing that he was "going in very soon" to Chicago. Trump's invasion of the Windy City with U.S. military troops has been promised for several months now. But, over the weekend and into Monday, it looks like it began in earnest, even with just baby steps, including deployment of ICE thugs and other federal law enforcement and a mobilization of 100 U.S. National Guard troops to eventually join them. Pritzker pushed back hard against Trump and ICE as Trump's "jack-booted thugs" at a presser on Monday, charging them with showing up in the city on Sunday endangering citizens and "harassing people for not being white." We share some of his warning comments to the public.

Also over the weekend, Trump federalized 200 U.S. National Guard troops in Oregon to invade Portland "authorizing Full Force", even though there is no local insurrection, no assaults on federal buildings by "antifa", and the city is not burning down, as Trump seems to believe. The state's Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek tried to explain that over the weekend during a phone call with a confused Trump, who reportedly said, "Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different." He is said to have claimed, "They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible."

As I suggested yesterday, what Trump is describing appears to be what happened five years ago in Portland, during protests following the murder of George Floyd. Today, Philip Bump details how b-roll footage of those protests has been playing in a loop on Fox "News" ever since, any time they mention Portland, as they did on several different shows on Friday night, just before Trump's Saturday morning announcement about deploying troops there. Like Pritzker, Kotek is also taking to the airwaves to push back on Trump's unwelcome, completely unnecessary military thuggery.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Hurricane Season kicks into high gear with a Trump-gutted National Weather Service trying desperately to keep up. And as the Dept. of Energy's fracking CEO turned Secretary, Chris Wright, cancels billions in subsidies for clean renewable energy in hopes of propping up the dying U.S. coal industry with millions of acres of new federal land access and new subsidies of the kind that he cited as evidence that the wind and solar industry are "maybe not a business that's going places." The DoE also expanded their list of banned words to include "climate change", "emissions", "green" and "decarbonization" among things that Department officials may not utter or use anymore in official documents...

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I couldn't even come close to getting us all caught up on today's BradCast to all that has happened since our last show late last week. The madness of the Trump Era --- in fact, the madness of Trump --- continues to quicken in pace and grow more intense each day as our sick and twisted President grows more sick and twisted, literally, with each passing hour. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Still, we covered quite a lot of ground, with stories you may have heard about, such as the weekend shooting and firebombing at a Mormon church in Michigan, but with background and context you may or may not have heard. For example, the fact that it was the 5th mass shooting of the weekend in the U.S. and the 324th of the year so far --- in a year that was just 272 days old as of Sunday. Oh, and also that the alleged assailant, a 40-year old former U.S. Marine and Iraq War veteran is being described as a "MAGA MANIAC" today by the rightwing Drudge Report, citing guy's apparent support of Trump in 2020, with Trump-Pence signs on his house and a photo of him proudly wearing a camouflaged Donald Trump campaign shirt with the slogan: "Make Liberals Cry Again".

For some reason, the Trump Administration and Republicans --- hell bent in recent weeks on pretending Democrats are responsible for political violence in the U.S. --- would rather you don't notice those details, or the fact that violent domestic extremism from the Right, has, for decades, far out-paced violent extremism from the Left. And the fact that Republicans haven't done a damn thing about gun violence, no matter where it comes from. And, oh yeah, the fact that they, with a lot of help from Fox "News" at the time, forced the Obama Administration's DHS to retract a draft report on domestic rightwing extremism, warning about veterans like the shooter in Michigan this weekend, and another U.S. Marine and Iraq war vet who carried out one of two mass shootings in North Carolina over the same past weekend. Like the shooter in MI, he also used an easily-purchasable assault rifle for his massacre.

But we covered much --- much --- more on today's show than I can possibly hope to share with you here, along with callers ringing in. So I'll post some links to some of the stuff we covered, and let you tune in for the full stories and critical context in a nation only now beginning to figure out that pushing back against bullies like Trump seems to work. Cowering in fear does not.

As former FBI Director James Comey said in his remarks after being maliciously indicted at Donald Trump's orders last week, in a ridiculous case virtually guaranteed to be laughed out of court by either a judge and/or jury: "Fear is the tool of a tyrant. ... But I'm not afraid and I hope you're not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention, and you will vote like your beloved country depends on it --- which it does."

Among the stories covered and/or touched upon on today's show, before opening up the phones to listeners...

• Gavin Newsom Trolls Donald Trump Over Bonkers AI Video That Shows He's 'LOST IT'
• Trump questioned perception of Portland before approving military plan: 'Am I watching things on television that are different from what's happening?'
• Trump’s Bizarre Claim That 274 FBI Agents Were Planted ‘Prior to’ Jan. 6 Riot Gets Torpedoed By His Own FBI Director Kash Patel
• At least four dead and eight injured after shooting at Mormon church in Michigan
• Mormon church gunman was marine 'who supported Trump'
• Tracking the five mass shootings that occurred in the U.S. over this past week
• Hegseth's mystery meeting in Quantico could cost millions, require unprecedented security
• Trump cancels White House meeting with Schumer and Jeffries despite risk of a government shutdown
• As the shutdown deadline nears, Trump reverses his reversal on Democratic meeting
• Last Wednesday's BradCast with healthcare analyst Charles Gaba, discussing the trillions of dollars of healthcare funding that Trump and Republicans have gutted (leading to tomorrow night's likely federal Government shutdown.)
• Why the case against James Comey may end in humiliation for Trump's DOJ
• Trump says he "would think" the DOJ is investigating ex-FBI chief Wray
• Justice Department issues subpoena for Fani Willis travel records
• Eric Adams drops out of New York City mayoral race
• The Jimmy Kimmel blackout is completely over: Nexstar and Sinclair back down
• Democrats Accuse Mike Johnson Of Stalling New Member Swearing-In Over Epstein Files

I'm sure I missed a few in that list, but you get the idea. Please tune in to "enjoy" all of the above in amusing and informative BradCast format, along with a few thoughts on what we all can, should and will do about it...

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As detailed on today's BradCast, the cost of healthcare for tens of millions of Americans is likely to skyrocket as of January 1. It is likely to be far worse than you've heard. Congressional Dems are fighting to prevent it. Republicans, including the President, seem to be just fine with it. Those are basically the terms as we barrel toward a likely federal government shutdown next week. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We dig into the details, stakes, and positions of the two sides on that shutdown deadline (October 1) and the new costs for health care set to explode after December 31 with our guest today who knows a whole lot about all of the above. But first, a bit of news...

• Jimmy Kimmel returned to our public airwaves on Tuesday night, after a week-long suspension following threats by Donald Trump and his FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, to revoke broadcast licenses from ABC affiliate stations if they didn't nix Kimmel. In the wake of public outrage (and cancelled streaming service subscriptions), Disney, which owns ABC, buckled and invited Kimmel back on air. To the hilarious despair of Trump, Kimmel received enormous ratings last night, and delivered a heartfelt, emotional, blistering, funny, courageous and important monologue. We play an extended portion of it today, given that tens of millions of Americans in dozens of major markets were not allowed to see it thanks to the Sinclair and Nexstar corporations, the nation's two largest local TV station conglomerates, which are refusing to reinstate the program.

• Democrats continued their winning streak in Special Elections on Tuesday by, once again, outperforming themselves by enormous margins as compared to last November. In Georgia, for example, in a special election for the State Senate in a very Republican district, while the Democratic candidate lost, she picked up about 18 points for Dems in that district as compared to last November. In Arizona, Adelita Grijalva easily defeated her Republican opponent in a special election to fill the U.S. House seat left vacant by the death of her 12-term progressive Democratic father, Rep. Raul Grijalva. But where Raul won reelection by 26 points last November, his daughter, on Tuesday, won by nearly 39 points. That's a 13-point swing for Dems. If you compare her Tuesday victory to the Presidential results in that same District last year, Dems improved by 16 points. Adelita has also vowed to sign the Congressional discharge petition to force a vote in the U.S. House on releasing the Epstein Files. Her signature is the last one needed to achieve a majority of House members signing on. That should allow the vote to finally proceed.

Little wonder then that House Speaker Mike Johnson has instructed Republicans to stay home next week, even though without a deal with Democrats to keep the Government open, it will shut down on Wednesday, the first day of the new federal fiscal year.

To that end, Democrats are desperately working to strike a deal with Republicans. But they are standing firm (so far) in demanding a permanent expansion of the enhanced premium subsidies for more than 25 million Americans who receive access to health care via the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) exchanges. Monthly premiums --- and health care in general for everyone, thanks to Trump's tariffs --- are set to go through the roof at the end of the year, without an extension. This will adversely affect millions of Republican constituents across the country, as well as Democrats and independents.

But where Democrats are trying to strike a deal, Donald Trump, who had agreed to meet with Democratic leaders to negotiate this week, abruptly cancelled the meeting on Tuesday night, citing all kind of false and, frankly, batshit insane phony reasons for chickening out of his first face-to-face meeting with Democratic Leaders since retaking office this year.

There is a lot on the line in the days (and weeks ahead), which could, in addition to scrambling politics in D.C. and putting government employees out of work, result in millions of Americans losing their access to health care.

We're joined today to break all of this down by CHARLES GABA, a longtime independent healthcare data analyst, who first began his work on this as a hobby in the early years of Obamacare. He is now regularly cited as a source by mainstream media. Most recently, Gaba has been publishing state-by-state breakdowns of how much ACA customers can expect to see their monthly premiums rise next year, if Republicans refuse to extend the enhanced premiums temporarily enacted by Democrats after Joe Biden took office in 2021.

"Basically," he tells me, some 25 million Americans are "kind of screwed" beginning next year, unless Republicans come around to extending the subsidies. "I am one of those," explains Gaba, whose family --- including himself, his wife and his child --- enjoy access to healthcare thanks to the ACA. "If they are not extended, then starting January 1st, if we are in the same policy that we are today, we'd be looking at around an $11,000 increase in our premiums next year. That's on top of what we're already paying."

Gaba's state-by-state analyses leads him to expect "90-95% increases on average" for monthly premiums next year without a renewal of federal subsidies. He underscores that that is an "average", and that while some might see less, "there are also going to be other households that are going to see their net premiums increase 200%, 300%. In theory they could be looking at going five or six times what they are paying now, which of course, nobody could possibly afford. A lot of people at the more extreme ends are going to have to drop their coverage entirely."

While Republicans have teased the idea of extending subsidies temporarily, for another year, Gaba, one of the first to warn about this potential healthcare-pocalypse, tells me today why he is rallying Democrats to allow the Government to shut down, if necessary, unless Republicans agree to expand the ACA subsidies permanently, roll back their recent massive cuts to Medicaid and include provisions in any budget agreement that would prevent Trump from simply rescinding any of the spending agreed to by Congress.

And, oh yes, all of this is likely causing huge problems health care company actuaries trying to set pricing for the Open Enrollment period beginning November 1. "I'm sure they are going through Pepto-Bismol and Tums by the bottle-full right now. The insurance companies, they actually started crunching their numbers back in March. This is a multi-month process. The final contracts [with state regulators] are supposed to be signed usually sometime in mid-September." And yet, on CNN today, Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune called for a seven-week Continuing Resolution to keep the government open at current spending levels, kicking the can down the road to figure out whether ACA subsidies will be extended beyond the end of the year.

Tune in for insight on the very high stakes, potential horrors, and almost certain chaos that awaits over the next few days and weeks, even while few Americans have even noticed any of this just yet...

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Even if nothing else was taking place at this perilous moment, the September 8 SCOTUS decision to temporarily suspend both a presumption of innocence as well as the right, previously guaranteed by the 4th Amendment, not to be seized absent a reasonable suspicion of unlawful status, is deeply disturbing. Taken in context of recent events, the Court's decision on the "shadow docket" poses an ominous threat.

The decision was handed down after the "dangerous sociopath", President Donald J. Trump, threatened to arrest California Gov. Gavin Newsom, one of his chief political rivals. More importantly, perhaps, it was handed down shortly after Trump threatened to use the U.S. military to invade Chicago.

If the same SCOTUS majority goes on to temporarily suspend the Order issued on September 2nd by U.S. District Court Judge Charles E. Breyer, that enjoined Trump's use of the military to engage in local law enforcement without the consent of State and local authorities --- an action that Breyer ruled to be in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act --- it could hasten a bitter end to federalism and to our constitutional republic…

As you might have guessed, it's a grim day on today's BradCast [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage...

• 31-year old, far-right youth activist, influencer and longtime Donald Trump ally Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, said back in 2023: "I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights." Today, Kirk was gunned down while answering a question, ironically enough, about U.S. gun violence during a heavily-attended outdoor speaking event at Utah Valley University. The shooting drew bipartisan condemnation before his death was announced just prior to airtime today. No suspect had yet been taken into custody.

• Receiving much less attention, three teens were in critical condition in surgery or the emergency room after a shooting at their high school in suburban Denver at around the same time Kirk was shot in UT. The same sheriff's office that initially responded to Colorado's 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School, which killed 14 students, was reportedly first on the scene today at Evergreen High School west of Denver.

• Poland reported that as many as 19 Russian drones entered their airspace on Wednesday and were shot down with the help of NATO air command and the Dutch air force which scrambled F-35 fighter jets. A number of the drones were said to have been launched out of Belarus, an authoritarian Russian ally which has has been used to stage attacks on Ukraine since Russia invaded its sovereign neighbor in 2022. Poland, a NATO member, activated Article 4 of the defense pact, to demand consultation with allies. Europe and NATO remain on high alert today, though Russia claims it had attacked the "military-industrial complex of Ukraine" in a "large-scale strike" but that "there were no targets envisioned for destruction on the Polish territory."

• In somewhat brighter news today, Democratic candidate James Walkinshaw trounced his Republican rival in a U.S. House Special Election in the 11th Congressional District of Virginia on Tuesday by 50 points, 75% to 25%. That's a 16-point swing toward the Dems as compared to last November's Presidential election in the northern Virginia suburbs of D.C. Walkinshaw's seating in Congress and promised signing of the Discharge Petition to force a U.S. House vote on the release of the Epstein Files puts proponents of that measure just one vote away from the necessary 218 signatures needed to trigger a mandatory vote on the House floor. Another U.S. House Special Election to fill another vacant seat in another very Democratic Congressional District in Arizona takes place later this month. The Democratic candidate there, Adelita Grijalva, has also vowed to sign the petition, which has currently has the signatures of all 212 currently seated Democrats and four Republican members.

Finally, we're joined today by author and financial journalist DAVID DAYEN, Executive Editor of The America Prospect, to discuss the coming showdown in Congress to avoid a government shutdown as of October 1. That's when the Continuing Resolution passed in March to keep the government open at the time expires. If Republicans can't come to terms with Democrats on another CR by the end of this month, the government will likely shutdown.

That is a price that more Democrats now seem willing to pay to try and stop --- or, at least slowdown --- Donald Trump's authoritarianism. And it's a moment when Democrats, currently in the minority in both chambers of Congress, actually have some leverage to use.

While all Democrats in the House voted against the Republican CR back in March, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a handful of Dems agreed to help Republicans overcome the 60 vote filibuster threshold in in the Senate in exchange for...well, pretty much nothing.

This time, Schumer claims he will not do the same thing. But, is he asking for enough from Republicans in exchange for Democrats' support in keeping the government open this time? Is he willing to let it shut down in order to stop Trump?

There are a lot of things that Democrats could demand, above and beyond a short term fix to prevent health care costs from skyrocketing for the millions of Americans signed up to the Affordable Care Act. That's something, as we discuss, that Republicans should be desperate to do on their own. Democrats could demand that subsidy support for the ACA be made permanent. Schumer could demand that Congress assert its right to block Trump from refusing to spend funds already appropriated by Congress. He could demand the end to Trump's economy crushing tariffs, mass ICE raids, National Guard in U.S. streets and much more. In other words, this is a moment when Dems could demand an end to the Trump Authoritarianism.

But will they? And, if so, and Republicans don't agree to the terms, what then?

"The whole idea that we're going to get a goodie in exchange for participation in the budget is a very old way of doing business in Washington," argues Dayen today. "Business as usual is out the window in Washington. You have someone who is trying to consolidate power entirely into himself. And you have these rare moments where he can be thwarted at some level. And you can't approach that the way you would approach a normal negotiation. I just don't understand how that can be acceptable. You have to deal with the problem at hand, where Donald Trump is acting like a despot, a dictator, and the things that you could negotiate on would have to be things that would prevent dictatorial processes from going forward."

"Shutdown fights like this are teachable moments," he says. "They are ways to get the attention of the public. They are ways to get the public understanding that there is a debate happening in Washington, and this is what that debate is about. If you're the Democratic Party staring down 33% approval ratings, watching what Trump is doing, and seeing your party get less popular in the exchange because you're not doing enough about it, you should want this moment. You should want a way to reset public attention on what is happening. Maybe we'll see some things start to change here in coming days as Democrats start to internalize this, but it's been a bit enervating so far."

As you can tell, we have much to discuss with Dayen on today's show, in a conversation recorded just prior to the news about Kirk's death in Utah today...

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The Trump Administration is at war against science (and reality) on at least two different fronts, both of which we dig into on today's BradCast. One is the Administration's War on the Science of Public Health, the other is the ongoing War on Climate Science. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

We begin with Administration's full-frontal attacks on public health, as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., testified before a U.S. Senate Committee today, facing tough questions from Democrats and even a few Republicans. Some of the colloquies turned into shouting matches.

Kennedy's years-long personal war against life-saving vaccines --- including the COVID vaccine --- often took center stage throughout the three-hour proceeding. But things had gone off the rails long before he showed up to take several verbal beatings today. Among some of the context for today's hearing: An anti-vax gunman shot up the CDC in early August; Kennedy's cancellation of half a billion dollars in research grants for new mRNA vaccines of the type that helped get us out of the COVID pandemic and could offer cures for cancer and other diseases; His firing of the CDC Director last week, less than a month into her tenure because, as she claims in an op-ed today, she refused to follow Kennedy's demand to "preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric".

Add to that, the state of Florida's announcement this week by its loony Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, that it is lifting all vaccine mandates for school children, including for measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, tetanus and polio. Ladapo compares vaccine mandates for school children to slavery. As one elected official in Florida said in response: "This is a public health disaster in the making for the Sunshine State." Unfortunately, as our guest today seems to concur, the entire nation is now facing the possibility of a similar public health disaster under the second Trump term.

We're joined today for a thoughtful discussion on all of this and more by DR. TYLER EVANS, infectious disease and public health expert and former Chief Medical Officer for New York City amid its COVID-19 response. Evans is now CEO and co-founder of the Wellness and Equity Alliance and author of the new book, Pandemics, Poverty, and Politics: Decoding the social and political drivers of pandemics from Plague to COVID-19.

It's impossible to adequately summarize our wide-ranging conversation, but I will share a few brief quotes...

• On RFK Jr.: "At this point, effectively every trusted and established or distinguished organization around infectious disease and public health are essentially demanding his resignation. Time is up. His answers are circular logic. They're definitely not based in science. And the more he talks --- particularly for folks who really understand the science --- it's like nails on a chalkboard for us."

• On the effect of vaccine conspiracy theories on public health: "If somebody is in the emergency room and you hear two doctors actively arguing about somebody's diagnosis and treatment, how do think that's going to make the patient feel? ... What we're seeing right now with RFK is doing exactly that. His intent is clearly to disrupt as much of the science as well as the implementation of science in public health as much as he possibly can."

• On the politicization of public health: "It doesn't matter if it's a blue or red city, state. At the end of the day, microbes, or other pathogens, or environmental stressors don't understand the difference between red and blue. It's all humans to them. We really need to depoliticize public health. ... We are politicizing everything about public health [and] now it's getting worse."

• On RFK's defunding of mRNA research: "At this point, we have millions of data points demonstrating it is incredibly safe. The mRNA literally is the most effective vaccine against COVID-19. So these claims that somehow they're not effective, or unsafe, are just patently untrue. They're just completely made up. ... This guy is just completely making stuff up. The defunding of the science behind advancing further mRNA vaccines just hurts all Americans."

Evans has much more on all of the above today, as well as on lessons he learned during the worst of the COVID pandemic in NYC; his personal experiences responding to viral outbreaks, like Ebola, around the world; the importance of a competent federal government during an historic pandemic; the lunatic that Florida has installed as its top public health official and more. "If we are removing vaccination mandates, particularly for kids, it is probably one of the most disastrous things we could ever do, from a public health standpoint," says Evans about the cancellation of vaccine mandates in the Sunshine State.

We ran longer than expected with Evans (though it was well worth it), but we still had a few minutes left today for Desi Doyen to take on Donald Trump's latest escalation in his War against Climate Science and specifically on cheap, clean, renewable, abundant wind and solar energy. All of that before closing with our latest Green News Report on new California wildfires; the deadly landslide in war-torn Sudan; and dozens of climate scientists taking on the Trump Administration's absurd "report" by five prominent climate science deniers meant to serve as the basis for the Administration's cancellation of hundreds of billions of dollars in critical climate change initiatives...

Yes, it's a very busy BradCast today...

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On today's BradCast: With authoritarianism now having descended upon these United States, the full-throated pushback against it, at least by some, continues. In the courts. At the ballot box. And even as the corrupt man baby President ups his abuse of the federal government apparatus in his twisted quest for revenge against his perceived political enemies. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to our guest today, a few news headlines of note...

• Republicans in the U.S. House surreptitiously moved to create a new January 6 Subcommittee to "uncover the full truth that is owed to the American people...that House Democrats skipped over," according to GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson. As discussed today, that effort to reopen the insurrection that Donald Trump incited in hopes of stealing the 2020 election may not go so well for Republicans.

• Meanwhile, Americans continue to reject Republicans at the ballot box by enormous numbers. Last week, it was a state Senate seat in a ruby-red District in Iowa where Kamala Harris had lost by 11 points last November, but where the Democratic candidate won a special election last week by 11 points. On Tuesday this week, it was two state legislative seats in heavily Democratic districts in Florida. There as well, we saw a huge swing towards the Dems, with a state House victory in which the Dem picked up 15 points over Harris' tally last year, and in a state Senate special election, where the Dem candidate won while gaining 22 points compared to the Presidential results in November.

• And it's not just voters turning against Trump. His losses in federal courts continue to mount this week. Among them, yesterday a U.S. District court judge ruled that Trump's use of National Guard troops for domestic law enforcement in Los Angeles was "willfully" in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act (1878). And a federal appeals court affirmed that his use of the Alien Enemies Act (1798) earlier this year to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants was unlawful as well. Today, a federal district court judge sided with Harvard University, finding Trump's attempt to withhold $2 billion in federal research grants from the Ivy League school was unlawful.

• Kyle Clark, brilliant local anchor at NBC-affiliate station 9News in Denver, tells viewers: "If this was happening in another nation, we'd call it by name. It's authoritarianism."

Then it's on to Trump's War of Revenge against his perceived political enemies. He's mad at his Fed Chair Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates quickly enough. But, since he can't fire Powell, he tried to take aim last week at Fed Governor Lisa Cook, the first (and only) black woman ever named to the Federal Reserve Board since its creation in 1913.

Trump is attempting to fire Cook based on public allegations made by Trump's very MAGA head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) that she had committed mortgage fraud. Prior to his criminal referrals of Cook to the Dept. of Justice, Trump's FHFA chief Bill Pulte (pictured above) made similar public allegations against New York Attorney General Letitia James (who won a half billion dollar financial fraud suit against Trump, his company and his two eldest sons last year), and California's U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (who played key roles in both Trump's second impeachment for his January 6 insurrection and on the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee which publicly investigated it.)

As absurd as the mortgage fraud allegations against all three Democrats appear to be, the way they came about is even more absurd, as detailed today by our guest, MICHAEL HILTZIK, LA Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning financial journalist and author. He wrote about all of this last week.

"This is the most transparent act of political retribution that I have ever seen, and I've been at this for a long time," Hiltzik tells me today, in reference to the allegations against Cook, who is challenging Trump's attempt to fire her in a lawsuit. "It's not only that, it's also the most absurd."

Tune in for the remarkable details, but in general, Hiltzik explains, Pulte --- who spends much of his time as a MAGA influencer on social media --- is Director of the FHFA, which oversees the quasi-federal Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac organizations. Those two outfits backstop the majority of the nation's home mortgages.

But, as it turns out, Trump has also named Pulte as Chair of both Fannie and Freddie! So, he is overseeing himself! And, in the case of the allegations against Schiff, as Hiltzik details, a memo reveals the Director of the FHFA (Pulte) ordered the Chairs of Fannie and Freddie (Pulte and Pulte) to, essentially, "go into your files, which are otherwise private, and pull out every document you can see related to Adam Schiff and send it over."

It seems Pulte did something similar for both Cook and James. In the meantime, despite Trump using Pulte's public allegations as a pretext for trying to fire Cook --- which he can only do, under law, "for cause" --- nobody has "produced documents that show any sort of fraud whatsoever in any of these three cases," asserts Hiltzik.

None of this, of course, is by accident. It is not a coincidence that Pulte has referred all three to the DoJ for a criminal probe. Their years-old mortgages --- which have been paid off in full, on time and without incident or complaint --- weren't pulled for some sort of random audit or something. "We know it isn't random because we have the memo that Pulte sent to Pulte," Hiltzik quips.

"You want to say it doesn't pass the smell test, but it's beyond that," he argues. "These cases are beyond absurdity."

So, if these charges are so obviously absurd and corrupt, why is the Administration even playing this game? Is it even lawful for the FHFA to target financial documents of American citizens for personal reasons? And what is Trump's actual hoping to accomplish in removing Cook from the Federal Reserve Board in the first? All of those questions, and many more, asked and answered in my conversation with Hiltzik on today's program. Enjoy!

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So much for the campaign to "Make America Healthy Again". Today on The BradCast, former public health officials are calling for the head of Donald Trump's chief health Secretary, a guy who has no scientific or medical expertise whatsoever. But he does have a famous name. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last Wednesday, Trump's Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced he was cancelling some $500 million for research of the miracle mRNA vaccines that finally brought the world out of years of the COVID pandemic. Scientists at the National Institute of Health (NIH) were working on new versions that could also be used to protect against influenza and other diseases. The cuts came after Kennedy falsely claimed that the vaccine, which saved millions of lives, was not effective against respiratory diseases.

Two days later, on Friday last week, a man who blamed the COVID vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal, attempted a mass shooting at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. He was blocked from entering the CDC, but opened fire at a pharmacy across the street, killing a police officer before, apparently, taking his own life.

RFK Jr., who was gone fishin' in Montana at the time, didn't bother to issue a public response to the incident for 18 hours. The CDC employees union has since called for a "clear and unequivocal stance in condemning vaccine disinformation" from the longtime vaccine denier. And a group of fired former federal health workers, Fired but Fighting, has called for the HHS Secretary to step down, along with White House Office of Budget and Management (OMB) Director Russ Vought, who previously declared: "When [federal workers] wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. ... We want to put them in trauma."

Mission accomplished, Russ.

We're joined today by ARYN MELTON BACKUS, a now former health communications specialist at the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, and a founding member of Fired But Fighting. Though she won the legal challenge to her Valentine's Day firing in U.S. District Court, the matter remains on appeal and, as she explained today, she is not encouraged by what she has seen from our wildly corrupted U.S. Supreme Court. "We are also fighting for the future of public health," she tells me today. "So even if I am officially terminated, we will stay here and we will fight for the public health of our nation."

We discuss her firing and Kennedy's subsequent complete shutdown of her former office at CDC, and how (and if) the critical (and wildly successful) work of that office will be picked up anywhere else. The private sector, she laments, is simply not suited for such work. "Part of the problem with public health is that it is not profitable. If you can prevent people from getting sick or very sick to begin with, it doesn't make money for a lot of these private companies." She offers the example of a large, private pharmaceutical company who might make drugs to treat cancer, so may not be all that eager to prevent smoking, for some reason.

The closure of her office "was really surprising to a lot of people," given that smoking prevention isn't a particularly partisan issue. The campaign led by her office, Backus says, has "led to over a million people quitting smoking and saved the U.S. millions of dollars in healthcare costs. Smoking rates are the lowest they've ever been. But there's still a lot of work to be done." So, she explains, it came as a "a shock that Sec. Kennedy decided that we were no longer necessary, especially as he's declared a war on chronic disease, and smoking is one of the biggest contributors to chronic disease that there is."

As to his anti-vax advocacy, Backus charges: "Bobby Kennedy has been a major spreader of vaccine mis- and disinformation for decades. But going back to 2020 and the pandemic, he repeatedly spread lies about the COVID-19 vaccine. He called CDC a 'cesspool of corruption.' That has made a lot of people at CDC villainized." And that has got a lot of Backus' former colleagues very concerned at this time about their personal safety. Even more so after the shooting at the CDC on Friday.

Tune in for much more. Also today...

• The horrific situation in Gaza got even more horrific over the weekend, with Israel's admittedly targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalists near a hospital in Gaza City.
• Back here at home, on Monday, Donald Trump announced his federalization of the Washington D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department, including the deployment of the National Guard to D.C., despite crime being at a 30-year low in the nation's Capitol upon his taking office for a second term, and falling 26% as compared to this same time last year. (And despite his claims on January 6, 2021, that he didn't have the authority to deploy the national guard to protect the U.S. Capitol after inciting his supporters to attack it.

Finally, callers ring in on all of the above, in the few minutes we have left. Now, I need to go back and give the show a listen myself to discover where I announced that I wanted "the streets to be less safe", as one of our wingnut callers claimed that I said today, hilariously, before hanging up on himself...

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It's a tough call on today's BradCast as far as which is worse: the stupidity or the outrage in response. (It's the stupidity, stupid.) But we report, you decide. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Donald Trump's many wars on America, Americans, American democracy, American values and the rest of the world, including livability on the planet itself, continued this week, as one of this nation's greatest accomplishments turns 60 years old, even as it founders under years-long GOP assault. And, coincidentally, the state of Texas plays a part in just about every one of our stories today...

• We kick things off with some goodish news. Following the unspeakable tragedy last month when at least 135 people, including dozens of camping school children, were killed during flash flooding on the banks of the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country, the Trump Administration is finally allowing the National Weather Service to hire new meteorologists and other critical staffers. That, after Trump's DOGE scam resulted in the firing and early retirement of hundreds at the now hollowed-out NWS.

• As another heat wave broils much of Texas this week, cheap, clean, renewable energy --- including wind and solar (as well as battery storage for when it's dark or the wind isn't blowing) --- has helped prevent collapse of the state's grid under extraordinary demand, even as some of its coal and gas plants were taken off line due to the climate change-intensified heat.

• Nonetheless, the Trump Administration has been doubling down this week on its war against cheap, clean, renewable energy, such as wind and solar, on behalf of the fossil fuel industry which has captured it. Former fracking CEO turned Trump's Energy Secretary Chris Wright was making the media rounds this week, attempting to justify the Administration's Orwellian removal of Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessments from government websites. He told CNN it's simply an effort to "fix" the science contained in those reports, released every four years after being compiled, peer-reviewed and fact-checked multiple times over several years prior to publication by hundreds of scientists and more than a dozen federal agencies. Wright is hoping to counter the peer-reviewed science on climate change in those landmark quadrennial reviews with a "report" released by the Dept. of Energy last week, as authored in two-months time by five notorious climate science deniers hand-picked by the former fracking executive. Wright's denialist, AI-assisted slop is now being used as the basis for the Administration's effort to scrap every federal climate change-related regulation enacted since 2009.

• Meanwhile, the GOP's War on Democracy continued on Thursday, as Texas state lawmakers remained in other states to try and save it. They are breaking quorum in the Lone Star State's House of Representatives in order to prevent passage of a new U.S. House map, ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott at the direction of Donald Trump, which would steal five seats currently held by Democrats in majority minority districts in next year's midterms. Republican state officials --- from its Governor to its corrupt Attorney General to its U.S. Senator to its Republican House Speaker --- are hoping to enlist Trump's FBI to hunt down, round up and arrest the fleeing Dems in other states, despite no criminal charges against them and a state Constitution that allows them to break quorum (according to the state's all-Republican Supreme Court.) That, as California advances its own effort --- to be placed before voters this Fall --- to counter Texas' attempted mid-decade gerrymander. We get you all caught up with the latest in this harrowing ongoing saga today.

• The Republican attack on democracy --- including on U.S. House districts drawn by federal court order to correct Texas districts found in violation of the Voting Rights Act --- comes on the very same week that the landmark Act, which added tens of millions to to the voting rolls since its passage, turns 60 years old. The VRA has been under successful attack by Republicans in recent years. But today we mark the law's 60th anniversary with some of the remarks upon its signing by heroic President Lyndon Baines Johnson...of Texas.

• Finally, born and bred Texan Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, detailing some of the remarkable actions taken this week by the Trump Administration --- remarkably, as energy costs and demand are quickly rising --- to roll back successful efforts to incentivize cheap, clean, renewable energy. Among the new fronts in his war this week: An absurd "energy density" requirement for power sources; an attempt to rescind $7 billion appropriated by Congress during the Biden era to help defray the cost of residential rooftop solar in low- and middle-income communities; orders to shut down on-going wind energy projects; and Trump's ridiculous mandate that wind farms may no longer be built any closer than a mile from roads and railways...

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