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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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As we head toward the holidays, some helpful advice on today's BradCast for how to deal (and even help) some of your MAGA friends and family members who may drive you crazy, even if you still love them. That, even as the very cult-like movement begins to show some serious signs in recent weeks of, just maybe, beginning to falter. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... It was a remarkable day in a federal courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia on Wednesday, as both the U.S. District Court judge overseeing the case and others in the courtroom were reportedly "stunned into silence", after the interim U.S. Attorney who brought the case against James Comey, on behalf of Donald Trump, just before the statute of limitations was to time out, admitted that the grand jury never actually voted to approve the felony indictment filed in court against the former FBI Director!

There are a whole lot of reasons why the two felony charges against Comey, related to allegedly lying to Congress back in 2020, would likely be tossed out of court before ever reaching a jury. But today's courtroom revelation by Trump's insurance lawyer, Lindsey Halligan --- tapped as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (despite no prosecutorial experience), specifically to bring charges against Trump's perceived foes like Comey and New York A.G. Letitia James --- was one that few saw coming.

On Monday's show we were joined by Attorney Keith Barber to discuss that day's stunning ruling by a different judge working on a separate element of Comey's pre-trial motions. That judge's ruling was gobsmacking enough, finding a "disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps" in the prosecution's case that might "undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding". Responding to today's arguably even more gobsmacking revelations, Barber writes at Daily Kos: "Folks, on this alone the case must be dismissed. It’s over."

We should find out if he's right about that in fairly short order. U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff ordered the DOJ to respond with an explanation to this morning's admission by Halligan by end of business day today.

THEN... There are signs everywhere that things are quickly turning south for Donald Trump, from the drubbing his party took in elections earlier this month, to a faltering economy, to record-low approval ratings (even from Republicans), and this week's swift Congressional passage of a measure mandating the release of the Epstein Files within 30 days, effectively overcoming Trump's months-long attempted cover-up.

Just last week, top MAGA supporters were blowing their collective stacks after the President's insistence, during a Fox "News" interview regarding H1-B visa rules supported by Big Tech companies and now by Trump, that America doesn't have enough talented people.

All of which has resulted in recent headlines (from before yesterday's Epstein vote!), such as "MAGA's metastasizing mess" (Axios), "Trump faces a splintering GOP --- and rare dissent from his party" (WaPo), "7 signs Trump is losing his groove" (Politico), "Trump’s Grip on Republicans Shows First Signs of Slipping" (WSJ) and "The MAGA Crackup Might Finally Be Here" (NYT).

So is Trump really losing his MAGA base? Is a crackup finally here? Or, at least, getting closer?

We're joined today by former dyed-in-the-wool MAGA member and former GOP operative RICH LOGIS who, after supporting Trump in 2016 and 2020 --- with dozens of "Make America Great Hats" to prove it --- finally pulled himself out of what he now describes as Trump's MAGA cult. He went on to begin a long process of making amends to friends and family, and eventually formed the Leaving MAGA organization to help others do the same.

"One of the really difficult parts for me in my decision to leave MAGA was a recognition that Trump did not in fact care about me, when I thought he did," Logis tells me today, in response to my question about whether he believes we may finally be seeing the movement fade as it turns against itself. He cites the Epstein story as revealing so many flip-flops that his supporters may finally be closing in on an important truth. "With the Epstein story in particular," he says, "what it shows is that there is this burgeoning cognitive dissonance throughout the MAGA community. I think that people in MAGA are starting to ask themselves if Donald Trump has been lying to them for many, many years."

"Our epiphanies happen gradually, then suddenly all at once. I'm seeing that similarly with Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well," he asserts, even as he concedes there is still a long way for many to go. "I think there is still a lot of denial within the MAGA community. Trump's toxic superpower is lying. But I think with the Epstein story in particular, Trump has lied one too many times. I think that, for some in MAGA, they are starting to now stick."

We discuss much more with Logis, including why he believes Trump's Fox "News" interview on H1-B visas blew so many MAGA tops; whether the exodus from MAGA is yet being reflected in the number of folks turning to his Leaving MAGA organization; and how best to help your MAGA friends and loved ones out of the cult of misinformation, disinformation and outrage that has become "a kind of addiction" for so many of them. "The outrage creates dopamine hits. When someone has that kind of an addiction, facts and expertise don't tend to get people out of it."

So, how to deal with those folks over the holidays? He offers several tricks and tips today, along with pointers to Leaving MAGA's new, free, weekly online support group for friends and family members of those in MAGA (sign up here for more info here), and their free e-pamphlet titled Reaching Out as a "how-to guide" with "dos and don'ts" for "people who want to reach out to loved ones and friends in MAGA, but aren’t sure how."

"We don't want people to give up on their MAGA close ones," says Logis. "We are living proof that it is possible for people to change."

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Things are not going well for the President of the United States. As revealed by the mostly breaking news stories covered on today's BradCast, today may be seen as one of the worst days he has ever had. Here's hoping for more such days. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

• Tuesday began pleasantly enough, with Donald Trump offering Saudi Arabia's crown prince a royal welcome to the White House in advance of a black tie dinner, despite the fact that the CIA determined that Mohammed bin Salman likely personally approved the 2018 bone saw murder of Washington Post journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi. After the regal parade of Saudi and U.S. flag-draped black horses and a rare flyover by six U.S. fighter jets to celebrate the arrival of the killer prince and major Trump Family business partner, Trump berated a reporter for daring to ask about the murder. He claimed, appallingly, that "a lot of people didn't like" Khashoggi anyway, that bin Salman "knew nothing about it", and, even if he did, hey, "things happen."

• Around the same time, on the other end of Pennsylvania Ave., victims of Trump's longtime best friend and convicted pedophile, the late Jeffrey Epstein, were rallying on the steps of the U.S. Capitol with the lead, bi-partisan co-sponsors of a bill mandating the Dept. of Justice release the "Epstein Files". One of the survivors, a Trump voter who was introduced to Epstein when she was just 14 years old, described the President as a "national embarrassment". The bill was finally to be voted on today, after months of attempted obstruction by both Trump and supposedly very Christian Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Today's vote happened only thanks to a Discharge Petition signed by a majority of House members (all Democrats, 4 Republicans) demanding it. Despite Trump's months of cover-up, blocking the DOJ from releasing the files that he could have ordered released in full at any time, the four sentence legislation was adopted nearly unanimously by the U.S. House in a 427 to 1 vote. Apparently, nobody other than Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) wanted to be regarded as having voted to protect pedophiles.

• Within hours, remarkably, the U.S. Senate, without debate, adopted the same bill by another veto-proof margin. The measure was passed by unanimous consent before heading to Donald Trump's desk for his signature. You think he'll hold one of his big signing ceremonies to do it?

• With all of that seemingly very good news, we echo the caveat I offered on yesterday's show. A provision in the legislation (the third of four sentences) allows the DOJ to "withhold certain information" including "materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation." As luck would have it, just last week, months after Trump's DOJ declared there was nothing left to investigate in the Epstein matter, and days before Trump would pretend to flip-flop to favor the bill, he asked his corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation into the involvement of his political foes with Epstein. She complied within hours, of course. On Sunday, Republican co-sponsor of the Discharge Petition in the House, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-LA), warned the new investigations might prevent the DOJ release of the files. Today, before the vote, at the presser on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) --- who deserves credit for taking on the President by keeping her name on the Petition --- warned same. That, after Trump's pretend change of heart on Sunday calling for the release of the files by instructing Republicans to vote for the bill so that lawmakers "can have whatever they are legally entitled to". The latter part of that phrase, observed David Kurtz today, is "doing a lot of work there."

• As rare as successful Discharge Petitions are in forcing votes on bills that the House Speaker refuses to bring to the floor, it happened yet again on Monday! A majority of House members, with the help of a few swing district Republicans signed on to force a vote --- within seven days, as required by House rules --- on a bill that would roll back Trump's Executive Orders earlier this year blocking collective bargaining rights for most federal workers.

• But things got even worse for Trump as today wore on. This time on the Gerrymandering Wars front. A three-judge federal appeals court panel in Texas blocked the new Trump-ordered gerrymander of the state's already gerrymandered U.S. House map, finding it to be an unlawful and unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Following a ten day hearing, the 2 to 1 ruling by the court panel, written by a Trump-appointed federal judge, blocked the new map from going into effect for the 2026 election --- at least for now. The new map was written by the GOP state Legislature to flip five, largely minority House seats from "blue" to "red" next year. It resulted in California voters recently adopting a new map, in an overwhelming statewide vote, to flip the same number of seats from "red" to "blue" in response. That map --- and perhaps a similar one now in the works by Democrats in Virginia --- will stay in place next year, unless otherwise blocked by a court for some reason. Texas' Republican Governor Greg Abbott vowed to appeal today's ruling to his friends on the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court.

• The ruling in the Lone Star State comes on the heels of the decision late last week by the Republican leaders of the Indiana state Legislature, to not redistrict the state's already very red U.S. House map in a Special Session this year, despite heavy pressure from Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. The decision resulted in social media threats by Trump against both men, and a swatting attack against one of them. Despite that dangerous situation just hours after Trump's initial threat --- and his laughable opposition to political violence --- he issued another similar one against Republican lawmakers in the Hoosier State on Sunday.

• Finally, also not great news for Trump in today's Green News Report with Desi Doyen, as Trump's joke of a FEMA Director is pushed out after just six months; the U.N. climate summit under way in Brazil (which the U.S. sent no representatives to) declares it will finally be taking on climate disinformation by the fossil fuel industry and its supporters (like Trump); and that, speaking of, new documents reveal Exxon has been quietly funding climate denial and disinformation campaigns across Latin American for years...

As noted, it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Donald Trump, which is generally a very good day for the rest of us, as described with much more context, detail, insight, color, sound and special effects on today's program. I hope you'll tune in...

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Okay. Lots of crime and corruption by the President of the United States and his criminal henchman and women on today's BradCast. The good news, however, is that most of it falling apart on him, because he's not even good at criming. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Most noteworthy among our coverage today...

• As Donald Trump threatens a distraction war of regime change against Venezuela, two human rights organizations released a damning report last week finding that more than 250 Venezuelan detainees that Trump shipped to the CECOT gulag in El Salvador earlier this year were subjected to "systematic and prolonged torture and abuse". That, despite the fact that just 3% of those disappeared to the known torture prison by the Administration had been convicted of any violent crime in the U.S.

• Trump's corrupt indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James are absolutely falling apart in court before several different judges and different pretrial motions. Attorney KEITH BARBER (who writes at Daily Kos as "Keith DB") is here to help us break down a remarkable 24-page ruling (PDF) issued today by a federal magistrate judge in the Comey case.

  After reviewing the grand jury transcript in chambers, Judge William Fitzpatrick determined that Lindsey Halligan, Trump's former insurance lawyer turned unlawfully-seated U.S. Attorney in Virginia, engaged in a "disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps" that appear to have violated Comey's rights in numerous ways.

  Among those rights violation, as Barber details, Halligan's apparent instructions to grand jurors that Comey's refusal to testify before them could be used to infer his guilt. That's a "clear violation of Comey's 5th Amendment rights," explained Barber in a posting at DailyKos today. Comey's rights were also violated, according to the judge, when the grand jury was instructed by Halligan that they didn't need to rely on the record presented to them. Rather, they could infer that the government had far better evidence to be presented later at trial.

  Not unlike the judge who wrote that those two instructions alone were "fundamental misstatements of law that could compromise the integrity of the grand jury process," Barber was flabbergasted.

  "It's unprecedented. That is one of those things that is like 'Prosecutor 101', which, of course, Halligan never took," he tells me. "I honestly can't believe she's that dumb, but she certainly acted that way. Normally the most faint whiff by a prosecutor before a jury --- including a grand jury --- that suggests that a defendant's unwillingness to testify imputes guilt is sufficient to result in a mistrial or dismissal of charges. That alone, by itself, should end the day for this."

  But there was much more from both the judge in this matter --- who has taken the extraordinary step of turning over the grand jury transcript to the defendants, as we discuss --- and from a separate federal judge who heard a separate pre-trial challenge last week, as combined from both Comey and James, regarding Halligan's apparently unlawful seating as U.S. Attorney.

  "This case will never get to trial," says Barber, regarding the Comey case. "If it doesn't get dismissed for this reason --- the misconduct before the grand jury --- then one of the others will kill it or the cumulative weight of all of these irregularities are going to cause the judge to toss it."

  "There's stupid, and there's corrupt," he quips. "And then there's stupidly corrupt. It's just ridiculous."

• Next... in a Sunday night social media posting, Trump appeared to flip-flop on his statement from just last week describing any Republican who would vote to release the Epstein Files as "stupid". In his Sunday post, however, Trump called on Congressional Republicans to vote in favor of pending legislation to release the Epstein Files. The legislation is likely to finally receive a vote in the House this week, that calls on the DOJ to release "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in DOJ's possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein."

  But, don't be fooled by Trump's seeming reversal, for at least two reasons. 1) Trump could order the release of those files today if he actually wanted them released. He doesn't need legislation to force him to do so. And 2) the legislation would allow the DOJ to withhold "materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation." While corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi announced several months ago that there were no more loose ends and nothing more to investigate in the Epstein matter following the jailhouse death of the child sex offender and longtime close friend of Trump, she announced last week that she was opening a new investigation last week into Democrats alleged to have been involved with Epstein. That announcement followed a public request from Trump for such a probe just one day earlier. So, yeah, vote to release the files if you like, but you can probably assume that anything that might incriminate Trump will be withheld so as not to "jeopardize an active federal investigation."

• Then, we open the phone lines to callers on what they think about the Trump/Epstein mess and whether they believe those files will ever see the light of day as long as Trump has the power to continue covering them up...

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It's another busy day on The BradCast But what else is new? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The U.S. House was finally back in session on Wednesday for the first time after the nearly two month paid vacation ordered by GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson during the nation's longest ever federal government shutdown. It should soon be over with tonight's House vote on an 11-week stop-gap Continuing Resolution --- at least until all of this happens all over again when the CR times out at the end of January.

With the reconvening of Congress, Arizona's newest Representative, Adelita Grijalva (D), was finally sworn in, nearly two months after her Special Election. As promised, she immediately became the 218th member to sign a Discharge Petition that, with signatures from a majority of the House, will now force a vote on the release of the Epstein Files being held by the Dept. of Justice and covered up there by order of Donald Trump. He reportedly appears multiple times in the DOJ's investigative files into the late child sex predator and Trump's longtime best friend, Jeffrey Epstein.

A vote to release those files should happen within seven days under House rules. But before Congress even reconvened today for the first time in weeks, several previously unseen emails written by Epstein were released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. They reveal, among other things, Epstein asserting back in 2011 that Trump "spent hours at my house with" a victim whose name is redacted from the documents released today. And another email from Epstein in 2019 declaring "of course [Trump] knew about the girls."

THEN... New York City's Democratic Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani ran on a so-called "Affordability Agenda" including promises of a Rent Freeze for about 30% of the city's tenants; Free and Faster Buses; Free Universal Child Care; and a pilot program for City-Owned Grocery stores across the five Boroughs.

So, how affordable for NYC is the Affordability Agenda promised by the charismatic 34-year old Muslim and self-declared democratic socialist who won by a landslide last week?

We're joined today by our old friend RICHARD (RJ) ESKOW, longtime columnist, host of the weekly Zero Hour television and radio program, and former lead writer for Bernie Sanders' 2016 Presidential campaign.

Eskow did the math on each of Mamdani's four top-line Affordability Agenda items, concluding that, at least three of the four of them, are "surprisingly affordable". Even the fourth, he finds, is also easily affordable if both city and state officials are willing to play along. That one will require raising taxes on millionaires in the city (who currently pay the same percentage of their income as a resident earning just $50,000) and on corporations, whose taxes will be raised to parity with the rate charged by neighboring states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire (while still remaining lower than they were before Trump's 2017 tax cuts).

"Every revolution should come this cheap," quipped Eskow after his analysis.

We run through the presumptive costs of each of the new Mayor's headline programs, discuss how they will be paid for (one of them should actually make money for the city), and why it is that these not-particularly-radical programs caused so many Republican (and many "conservative" Democratic) heads to explode during Mamdani's remarkable campaign.

These are programs for working people that "can make New York City a city for everyone again," Eskow tells me. "It's all doable. It's all affordable. The rest is just scare tactics."

He explains how the billionaires who went to war against Mamdani during the campaign simply "don't want to give up the money. It wouldn't cost them any more a year, it's a marginal tax, an incremental tax. They don't want to give up that 1%. They don't want to pay their property taxes on their luxury apartments."

"But more than that," argues Eskow, "it is the presentation. That working people deserve to have an affordable, pleasant, decent life in New York City, like they did for 200 years. I think that's what threatens them the most. And that's where the struggle comes in."

We also discuss how ginned-up fears about fairly unremarkable "democratic socialism" --- which rightwingers and billionaires like Trump tried to turn into "COMMUNISM!" during the campaign --- are both wildly misleading and little more than another scare tactic.

"If you like Social Security, if you like Medicare, if you want to strengthen and expand those programs, you may be a democratic socialist," he explains. Tune in for much more...

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If it weren't for a handful of Democrats caving Sunday night in the U.S. Senate, we'd have spent the full hour on today's BradCast discussing last week's remarkable election victories for both the party and, more importantly, for democracy, voting rights and elections themselves. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Such as it is, however, today show is a bit bifurcated.

FIRST UP... We're joined by journalist ALEX BURNESS of Bolts Magazine. The outlet did their usual yeoman's job of covering not just the topline election contests you may have heard about, but hundreds of other smaller or more under-the-radar elections in more than 30 states last week that you likely haven't heard as much or even anything about.

Today we focus with Burness on his article last week covering five different ways that last week's off-year elections will reverberate moving forward on issues like mail voting, felony disenfranchisement, mid-decade gerrymandering and related election matters in at least five states. In almost every case --- from redistricting in California and Virginia, to restoring felony voting rights in Virginia, to a Photo ID initiative in Maine, to election scheduling in New York, to "the backstop of democracy" in Pennsylvania --- the news for voters and voting rights advocates was very good indeed. (Texas was, as usual, like a whole 'nother country. Tune in for those details.)

THEN... We turn back to the federal government shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history, following last week's enormous wins for Democrats at the polls in state after state; Donald Trump's approval rating at all-time, historic lows; and clear pluralities of Americans blaming Republicans for the shutdown, as Democrats were seen as united in their fight to restore trillions of dollars in health care cuts for millions of Americans (to the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and even Medicare) made by Trump and the GOP.

With that backdrop and the wind very much at the backs of the Dems in this fight on Sunday night, seven Democratic Senators --- Tim Kaine (VA), Dick Durbin (IL), John Fetterman (PA), Maggie Hassan (NH), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), and Jacky Rosen (NV) --- and one independent who caucuses with them (ME's Angus King), decided this would be the perfect time to undercut their own caucus by jumping ship to vote with Senate Republicans to allow them to reopen the government. None of the eight turncoats are facing reelection next year.

What did they get for Dems in return? The promise of a vote in the Senate, perhaps in December, on restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies. That's it. No promise of a similar vote in the U.S. House (where Republicans control the majority anyway), and no promise that Trump would even sign such a bill if the GOP allowed passage in both chambers.

In other words, at least as I see it, those 7+1 Dems got nothing in exchange for their votes, and the rest of the caucus, in both the Senate and House, is reportedly furious about it. On the other hand, thousands of federal workers will be paid again and the critical Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will now eventually be restarted...albeit at lower levels following Trump and the GOP slashing some $180 billion from the program in their so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" over the Summer.

You'll note that Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is not among those who voted on Sunday night in favor of reopening the government. He voted against it. But, of course, those seven Dems would not have moved forward without his approval. Or, if they did, it's just more evidence of what an awful Leader he is for the Party right now, and how much he needs to be both replaced as Leader in the Senate immediately and primaried out of the Senate entirely next year.

That's my take anyway. At the end of today's show we have time for just a few callers. At least one of them sees things somewhat differently --- at least, sees a brighter side to all of this --- and, for the record, notes that the Government reopening also means that there will (or should) soon be a bipartisan vote on releasing the full Epstein Files in the U.S. House. We'll see if that comes about as the week proceeds. I'm not yet holding my breath...

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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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Well, buckle up for today's jam-packed BradCast. Though you might need a shower after a portion of today's show regarding new details on Trump and Epstein. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... We're joined by financial investigative journalist, author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect, DAVID DAYEN, to discuss two remarkable farm related, shutdown related stories he broke this week.

The first regards the need for Congress to approve billions of dollars in bailout money for U.S. farmers after Donald Trump's tariff-sparked trade war with China and other countries has decimated the U.S. farm industry. He had to do the same thing during his first term as well. "The reason he needs to bail them out again in the second term is for the same reason as the first term --- the consequences of Trump's own policies," Dayen explains. "The tariffs that have been imposed on China has created a very inevitable and obvious backlash."

Maddeningly, the Trump Administration just granted $20 billion dollars in foreign aid to Argentina, run by a fellow autocrat, which is now making huge bank by taking over exports to China of stuff like soy beans, a key U.S. farm commodity that China --- previously our largest customer --- will no longer buy from the U.S., thanks to Trump's tariffs.

"Think about this," says Dayen, "we've paid off Argentina. Argentine farmers are undercutting U.S. farmers in the global market. And now we're paying off U.S. farmers to compensate for that."

But in order to provide that bailout to U.S. farmers (and Big Ag), Trump and Republicans need buy-in from Democrats. Dayen posits that this might be a path toward ending the government shutdown as Dems are fighting to reverse huge Trump/Republican cuts to the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare. Republicans could agree to restore health care funding while Dems could agree to bail out farmers.

The second story Dayen offers this week, is a stunner. Trump's own Department of Labor published a little noticed, but startling admission in the Federal Register last week, asserting that Trump's own immigration policies now threaten a farmworker crisis and significant "risk of supply shock-induced food shortages." As the Dept. explains in the Register: "The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers."

An astonished Dayen tells me: "How remarkable it is that you have Trump's Labor Department saying that Trump's immigration enforcement is causing such disruption that we may not have enough food in America. That is just remarkable to behold!"

The agency goes on to concede "this threat will grow", unless they are allowed to enact a rule that reforms our H-2A guest worker program to allow more foreign farmworkers to come into the U.S., but with lower wages than currently allowed. That, Dayen reports, will also depress wages for U.S. citizen farmworkers in the bargain.

But are any of the DOL's claims true? Tune in for Dayen's response, based on his reporting with experts, labor unions and farm workers.

ALSO TODAY... A whole bunch of news, some of it breaking as we went to air...

• Israel and Hamas have apparently agreed to a pause in their horrific two-year long war, to allow for a long-awaited release of remaining Israeli hostages; a pull-back of Israeli troops in Gaza; and the long-overdue restoration of humanitarian aid to the war-torn enclave. There remains as much unknown as known about the deal, as reportedly brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the U.S., among others. Naturally, Trump wants to take all the credit. The framework for stage one of the plan appears to be moving forward, which is very good news if so. But, as we discuss, all of this should still be regarded with extreme caution for the moment.

• Just before airtime, news broke that the same Trump personal defense attorney who was recently appointed as the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia to indict former FBI Director James Comey just over a week ago, indicted another Trump foe today. New York Attorney General Letitia James was charged with two counts related to mortgage fraud. As in the Comey case, the grand jury charging document in the James case was signed only by Trump's personal attorney, Lindsey Halligan --- a former insurance lawyer who has never prosecuted a case --- after none of the long-time career prosecutors at the critical EDVA U.S. Attorney's office, apparently, would agree to bring these charges. The indictment also comes after Trump had ordered the Attorney General to indict her and Comey (and Sen. Adam Schiff) in a public message that he meant to post privately. Last year, James oversaw the massive fraud case against Trump, his companies and their executives (including his two eldest sons), that resulted in a half billion dollar verdict.

• Earlier this week, Trump's wildly corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared to take umbrage when she was asked by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) at a Senate oversight hearing, whether the FBI had found, during their investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, photos of Trump with young nude girls as the late child sex trafficker, according to public reporting, had kept in his safe and would show to certain people. Bondi refused, repeatedly, to answer the question. The next day, author Michael Wolff, who penned a tell-all book based on hours of observation and interviews inside the first Trump White House, and who reportedly spent hours interviewing Epstein, explained exactly what he saw in those photos that he claims were shared with him on two occasions by Epstein. This is the segment you may need to shower after.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, including the news that, despite hundreds of millions of dollars Trump is wasting to try and revive the deadly, dying U.S. coal industry, nobody wants to buy it! That, as solar and wind power are exploding in popularity around the world, as led by China, though not here in the U.S., thanks to our fossil fuel-funded loser Administration.

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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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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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I can't believe we're covering any of this. But, on today's BradCast, we're sounding twin alarms about the President of the United State's explicit threats of wars against both Venezuela and...yes...Chicago. There must really be some bad shit on him in those Epstein Files! [Audio link to full shows follows this summary.]

You would think that when Donald Trump posts on social media on Saturday morning that "Chicago [is] about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR" with a photo of him in battle fatigues in front of attack helicopters, a burning Chicago skyline and the phrase "Chipocalypse Now" in the style of 1979's Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now, that the nation's major newspapers might report on it in their print editions on Sunday. But, nope. Apparently a threat by the U.S. President to invade another major U.S. city no longer even merits a notice in either the New York Times or Washington Post the next day.

Moreover, you'd think ten U.S. warships ordered down to Central America within missile range of Venezuela --- just days after Trump violated all international (and U.S.) law by bombing a speed boat he claims to have been filled with "narco-terrorists" carrying "massive amounts of drugs" (there is no public evidence of either) that we'd see screaming ALL CAPS front page headlines about a pending U.S. war in Central America across all of the nation's papers. I guess blatant war crimes admitted to by a President of the United States and the threat of an impending U.S. attack on yet another sovereign nation just doesn't spark the outrage from the "liberal media" that it used.

So, here we are. The guy who those same papers described as an "anti-war" Presidential candidate is still playing them all like chumps as he threatens to unleash new wars both foreign and domestic.

Whatever is actually in those Epstein Files that he is refusing to release --- after promising to do so while running for President --- must be really really bad for him. And while everyone is looking for just two more Republicans with the courage to sign on to a Discharge Petition to force a vote in the U.S. House on the release of the criminal files on sex traffickers and Trump pedophile pals Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, perhaps they should look at the Democrats who are likely to win two upcoming Special Elections this month instead. Signatures from those two Democrats, once seated in the House (unless somehow blocked by Republicans from doing so), would be enough to trigger that vote. Could be a very interesting month.

We cover all of that and more on today's show, and open the phones to a bunch of listeners with their own thoughts on all of this madness.

Please tune in and let me know if you can make any more sense of this moment than I can. I welcome all the help and good sense you can offer. God knows ain't any Trump supporters calling in to defend him anymore. So make of that what you will...

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It's been a while, but they're back for today's BradCast to help send us off with a smile --- and just a little bit smarter --- for a brief, much-needed holiday break from the program next week. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

First up today, however, a few late news headlines...

• Don't be fooled by either bad corporate media headlines or Donald Trump's false claim of "TOTAL VICTORY". In fact, a New York appeals court on Thursday affirmed last year's civil fraud conviction against the nation's criminal-in-chief, but finds [PDF] the nearly half billion dollar fine charged against him for his years of cooking his company's books with faked, artificially inflated financial statements to be 'excessive'. So, the bank and tax fraud verdict holds, the amount of the fine is to be redetermined, and all other penalties against Trump, his company and his two eldest sons remain in place.

• Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the El Salvadoran Maryland man "mistakenly" sent to a gulag in El Salvador by the Trump Administration, will be released from a Tennessee prison on Friday. He has been held in the facility since returning to the U.S. to be be slapped with Trumped-up charges meant to save face for the Administration. The court has now issued several orders to prevent Abrego Garcia from being scooped up by ICE and deported again after he is freed...but we'll see if the Trump Administration has any respect left whatsoever for the courts and the Rule of Law.

• The Gerrymandering Wars continue. Shortly after airtime on Wednesday, the Texas state House --- delayed more than two weeks by state Democratic lawmakers leaving Texas to break quorum --- adopted a newly gerrymandered U.S. House Map to steal five seats from Democrats in next year's midterms. The Lone Star state Senate will soon pass same and the heist will be signed by the state's corrupt Governor. In the meantime, here in California, our state Legislature, by a 2/3rds vote, adopted Gov. Gavin Newsom's "Rigged Election Response Act" today. The measure, quickly signed by the Governor, will ask state voters in November for permission to temporarily waive the Congressional map created by the state's Citizen Redistricting Commission to replace it with a new one that is likely to flip five "red" U.S. House seats to "blue" next year, in response to Texas' obnoxious mid-decade redistricting at the command of Donald Trump.

We pick up on those stories and many more today with our old OG blogger pals, the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS' of the Professional Left Podcast. Both join us today for a wide ranging conversation that takes a few surprising (and amusing) twists and turns along the way.

On today's court ruling in NY on Trump's fraud fine, Digby finds it "unfortunate that the headlines that are coming out are backing Trump's contention that this is some kind of a vindication. It is not." She observes "there is probably going to be a fine, and it will be a painful fine, it's just not going to be half a billion dollars."

Driftglass has an additional idea. While Trump is "still guilty," he notes, "I will take a straight-up swap: zero fines in exchange for the Epstein Files. How's that? There's a deal!"

We spend quite a bit of time today on the next steps in the Gerrymandering War begun by TX. Both Digby and Driftglass support CA's response to it. Says Driftglass, an Illinois resident: "I think what California has done, and I hope Illinois does, is show them that nuclear deterrence is the only way we can keep these people in a box. We'd rather not. But if you're going to bring a knife, we are going to bring a gun." As to what his already Democratic-gerrymandered state plans to do? Well, tune in for Drifty's assessment.

Digby, a fellow L.A. resident, is "hopeful" that voters will approve the statewide ballot measure on November 4th, despite a big money campaign already underway to defeat it. "Trump has treated California like garbage," says Parton. "We've been through a lot of trauma in this state. The way that he talks about the Governor, the way he talks about all the politicians here, I think Californians are sick of it."

"Essentially," she rages, "we're here to provide federal money for Trump's red states, including Texas. I think there's this sense that alright, it's time to fight back," She and Driftglass are also both veryfond of Newsom's new, wildly popular Trump trolling routine on social media. We compare our favorite Newsom trolling meme's (one of them is pictured above) before today's show is over.

Other items covered with D&D today include Trump's pathetic, pretend show of force with the deployment of the National Guard in D.C. and elsewhere. ("He is performing acts of fascist theatre" for the benefit of his MAGA supporters, charges Driftglass.); whether any of the Trump/Republican wildly unpopular policies are working or liked by voters and, if not, why the hell do they continue to double down?; and much more.

Finally, we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, our last before the Labor Day holiday break, as climate change fueled catastrophes continue around the globe, and as Trump's acting NASA Administrator announces his intention to defy federal law by ending the Agency's statutory mission to "study Earth" and "address environmental issues".

NOTE: We are ducking out from both The BradCast and Green News Report next week for a respite until after the Labor Day holiday! Hope you all will have a good one!

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It may not be the most pressing issue many are focusing on right now. But, as discussed on today's BradCast, the Administration's burgeoning attempts to officially whitewash American history is very much of a piece with all of the other authoritarian tactics and policies emanating from this White House. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Last week, a Florida insurance attorney turned White House Special Asst. to the President, Lindsey Halligan, penned a rather menacing and certainly unprecedented letter to the head of the Smithsonian Institution, the beloved, 179-year old historical organization established by Congress in 1846 (fifteen years prior to the Civil War), as an independent agency led by a Secretary and a bipartisan Board of Regents.

Halligan's letter, citing Donald Trump's March Executive Order titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History", serves to notify the Smithsonian's Secretary that the White House intends to carry out a "comprehensive internal review of selected Smithsonian museums and exhibitions...to ensure alignment with the President's directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions."

Two days later, the 118-year old Organization of American Historians (OHA) penned their own scathing response, calling out what they describe as an "unacceptable instance of ongoing executive overreach, striking at the independence of one of our nation’s preeminent historical and cultural institutions." They characterize the White House's stated intentions as "the opposite of a fulsome presentation of the history of the United States" and "in service of authoritarian control over the national narrative, collective memory, and national collections."

Over the weekend, Willamette University historian, award-winning author SETH COTLAR, whose newsletter is called Rightlandia, drew attention in a Bluesky thread to a reference in Halligan's letter focused on what she describes as "Americanism --- the principles, and progress that define our nation".

But that phrase, "Americanism", as Cotlar, who joins us on today's program, explains, has its own troubling history.

"The beauty of it for those who are using it is that is so vague. How could an American be opposed to 'Americanism'?," he asks rhetorically. "What things that would be at the Smithsonian would be operating against 'Americanism'? It's a very undefined thing, which is typical of an authoritarian regime, where they get to decide what it is."

And that, of course, is only the beginning of Cotlar's concerns, given that the phrase "Americanism" has historically been "used by the far right in the U.S. in order to push illiberal, I would argue often fascistic, visions of the nation. Usually racist, often antisemitic."

"The term," Cotlar tells me, "has functioned very effectively as tool of radicalization" going back at least to WWI, throughout the national rise of the KKK in the 1920s, into the anti-Communist McCarthy era in the 50s and 60s, and beyond...right into Trump's White House.

It has "functioned very effectively as tool of radicalization. It would be a way to foster a sense of 'This is what it means to be an American'. It means to be white and Christian, and people who are not white and Christian are somehow not quite as truly American as anybody else."

The phrase "America First," which Trump has used throughout all of his Presidential campaigns, has a similarly troubling history that Trump may or may not know about himself. (He doesn't know much, after all, about history.) But "the people in Trump's movement who do know this history are very aware of what the term 'America First' means, and its genealogy," argues Cotlar.

He goes on to detail how the Administration's unprecedented attempt to push aside actual historians to take control of the Smithsonian is ultimately the "history piece" of Trump's broad and radical "nationalistic" agenda, meant to "restore some nostalgic vision of some idyllic past." He describes the effort as a "weirdly Stalinesque, Orwellian effort to just obliterate parts of the actual historical record."

Much more on all of this with Cotlar today in a fascinating conversation.

ALSO ON TODAY'S PROGRAM...

• The latest on the ongoing Gerrymandering Wars, with the opening salvo both fired and won by Texas Republicans, at Donald Trump's demand, now spreading into California, but perhaps not to Indiana where, despite a pressure campaign by the White House, a handful of Republicans have come out in opposition (for now) to the idea of rewriting their U.S. House map to steal seats from Democrats before next year's midterms.

• And, finally, as yet a third federal judge has now nixed Trump's attempt to distract from his refusal to release the Epstein Files (which he is in) by releasing grand jury transcripts, folk musicians Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer with a "Gathering of Old-Time Musicians" unleash their "Ode to the Epstein Files" which --- their very ear-wormy new tune insists --- "Ain't Gonna Go Away."

Enjoy!...

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Today on The BradCast: Donald Trump's latest attempt to make himself feel powerful by deploying U.S. military troops on American streets --- against Americans --- has nothing to do with Law and Order. It has everything to do with a need for authoritarian control by a very small wannabe tyrant. It also has to do with distracting from the fact that he's in the Epstein Files and won't release them, as previously promised. [Audio link to full story follows below this summary.]

Among our stories today that help make that case and a few others...

• The 30-year old (white) Georgia man who attempted a mass shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta on Friday fired some 200 shots at its glass windows, smashing bullet holes into about 150 of them. He was also misinformed by the nation's health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and others who spread the same nonsense, that his depression was due to a COVID vaccine shot. Kennedy took 18 hours before issuing a tepid statement in response to the shooting that killed a responding (black) police officer. Donald Trump has yet to say anything about it...much less deploy the U.S. National Guard to Georgia.

• At the top of Rachel Maddow's program Monday night, she told a harrowing story about a convicted triple ax-murderer. Turns out he is a (white) American citizen who is now roaming the streets of the nation after Donald Trump just sprung him from prison. The National Guard will not be deployed to Florida to hunt him down, because Trump wants him to be free.

• Meanwhile, in D.C., Donald Trump, a 34-time convicted felon and adjudicated sexual abuser, announced on Monday that the U.S. National Guard would be deployed to the nation's capital, where violent crime is at a 30-year low, according to the U.S. Attorney's office there. The announcement follows a recently attempted 3am carjacking of a (white) guy who used to work on Trump's so-called DOGE project. Like Los Angeles, where Trump previously deployed National Guard and U.S. Marines for no legitimate reason, and in likely violation of the law, D.C. has a black female Mayor. More easy pickins as tough-guy Trump sees it, I suspect. But none of this has anything to do with the Rule of Law or being Tough on Crime. At his Monday presser, Trump also suggested he would soon be deploying both National Guard and even active duty military troops to a number of other Democratically-run American cities, if not to GOP-controlled states like Georgia or Texas, despite a number of recent mass shootings in both. But, again, none of this is about Law and Order. It's about authoritarian control by a tiny, petty tyrant.

• In that same vein, Washington Post reports today on a Pentagon plan to create a permanent military "reaction force" that would allow Trump to deploy U.S. military troops to U.S. cities within an hour on either side of the Mississippi, for whatever bullshit authoritarian reasons he wanted to dream up. Bullets would already be flying in the streets of the U.S. against the U.S. Government had any recent Democratic President carried out anything like all of this. Apparently, Republican "opponents" of Big Government Tyranny only oppose Big Government Tyrants they didn't vote for.

• One of Trump's other recent attempts to distract from the fact that he's in the Jeffrey Epstein files --- and is therefore, refusing to release them --- is also failing miserably. A U.S. District Court judge in New York on Monday, denied the Trump Dept. of Justice's motion to release Grand Jury transcripts from the 2020 indictment on sex trafficking and abuse of minors by Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The judge excoriated DOJ for its attempt at misleading the public about what is (or, in this case, isn't) in those transcripts, writing in his scathing ruling that "the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at 'transparency' but at diversion --- aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such."

• Down in Texas, meanwhile, Gov. Greg Abbott is still trying to have his GOP-controlled state legislature steal five U.S. House seats from Democrats in next year's midterm elections by redistricting the state's map again, in the middle of the decade, at the order of Donald Trump. State House Dems are still not letting them. They continue to break quorum in the state House by remaining in other states. On Monday, TX' corrupt Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton asked the state Supremes to expel 13 of the absent Democratic members. On Monday night, Abbott took to Fox "News" to threaten to rewrite the maps to steal not five but 10 seats if California's Governor dares to respond to the TX heist by rewriting maps to flip five Republican seats in the Golden State in turn. And on Tuesday, Abbott announced that the 30-day Special Legislative Session would be concluded this week, with a new one started immediately thereafter. There is still no indication that Dems plan to show up for it, as state Repubs continue to hold disaster relief hostage following the deadly July 4th flash floods if Dems refusing to allow them to steal next year's U.S. House elections.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as flash flooding and record heat continues across the Midwest and around the world; and as the Trump Administration continues to raise energy prices for Americans by gutting renewable energy production in the U.S., even while announcing plans to build a nuclear reactor...on the Moon!...

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