Today on The BradCast: Trump's authoritarianism receives yet another greenlight from his corrupted SCOTUS just days after he signed a budget bill that makes ICE larger than the entire militaries of many countries. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Sorry in advance for the less than cheery news on much of today's program. We don't invent it. We just report it...

• Last week, the Trump Administration's Environmental Protection Agency took a huge swing at the First Amendment's Constitutional free speech "guarantees" when it placed about 140 staffers on leave. Their crime? Signing their names on a letter to EPA chief Lee Zeldin, detailing concerns about the current direction of the agency, including its use of misinformation and implementation of a dangerous partisan agenda that contradicts science and "undermines the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment". A Trump EPA spokesperson described the dissenters, now facing investigations, as "unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda."

• Today, just before air, in an unsigned opinion [PDF] issued on the so-called "shadow docket", Donald Trump's corrupted SCOTUS overturned lower district and appeals court rulings that had previously blocked the Administration's mass layoffs of hundreds of thousands of government workers across dozens of agencies. The ruling came as part of a lawsuit filed by dozens of unions, non-profits and local governments which argue that only Congress, not the President, can order agency-crippling layoffs. The challengers had won injunctions in the lower courts to prevent the layoffs until after the suit had been fully heard. Today, SCOTUS said there is no need to wait because, contrary to the lower court rulings, the Justices believe the Government "is likely to succeed on its argument." Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of workers at the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Labor, Treasury, State, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, the EPA and elsewhere are now expected to be permanently laid off, even as the trial continues to play out in the lower courts.

• On Monday, scores of fully-armed and camouflaged federal immigration agents --- apparently led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CPB) --- along with members of the U.S. military, descended upon MacArthur Park here in Los Angeles in armored vehicles and on horseback to take over the nearly empty park. It's unclear if any migrants were actually detained at all. But the ridiculous display was code-named "Operational Excalibur" and meant as a conspicuous "show of presence", according to internal Army documents obtained by national security journalist Ken Klippenstein.

  The ostentatious show of force comes just days after Donald Trump signed a massive spending and tax cut bill that will gut health care and food assistance to millions of Americans; slash renewable energy initiatives meant to combat climate change; give huge tax cuts mostly to wealthy people; while increasing the national debt by about $3 trillion.

  But the new law will also, as JOSH KOVENSKY, investigative journalist at Talking Points Memo joins us to explain today, massively expand the nation's immigration enforcement infrastructure by, among other things, supersizing ICE. The agency currently operates on an annual budget of around $9 billion. That will now tripled to about $27 billion annually, as the Trump/Republican bill pumps around $170 billion in new spending into detention and deportation efforts through 2029.

  As Kovensky reported on July 4th, when Trump signed the bill into law, the ICE budget will now be larger than the U.S. Bureau of Prison, the FBI, and even the U.S. Marine Corps. This new, virtual military branch, will unleash its newly gained power not in foreign lands, but right here in the good ole' U.S.A.

  Much of the funding will go towards a "drastic expansion" of detention, Kovensky reports, as the Trump Administration continues to "push people to voluntarily leave the country."

  "If you think about MacArthur Park, it was one park," he tells me, citing the obnoxious Monday incident in L.A. "But now, with all this money, they can try to replicate this across the country. With all of these new officers they're hiring to detain people, all these camps they are going to be building to hold them, you're going to be seeing scenes like this play out nationally. I think that's the real risk, and something people should be expecting."

  With the massive budget increase, Kovensky warns of the ongoing threat of increased militarization, not just against migrants (much less the few that can be found with criminal records), but political opponents of the Administration in the wake of recent questionable arrests against Democratic judges, mayors, and other elected officials.

  "More than half the people who are currently in immigration detention awaiting removal have no criminal record," Kovensky observes. "I think that's a tell. The resources they're putting into this dramatically exceed what would be needed to focus only on criminal aliens."

  Tune in for much more.

• Finally, as if things aren't dark enough today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with coverage of the ongoing, heartbreaking --- and avoidable --- tragedy from Friday's flash flooding in Texas Hill Country, as the confirmed death toll reaches 111, including dozens of children, and more than 160 people still said to be missing; Record flooding in North Carolina from Tropical Storm Chantal; and details on the massive (and effective) climate and clean energy investments just gutted by Trump and the Republicans in their new spending bill...

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Going into the weekend we knew we were in for a bizarre news split-screen on Saturday, with major protest rallies scheduled across the country and Trump's military birthday parade he threw for himself (with $40+ million of your tax dollars) in D.C. But, it wasn't just two huge stories happening at once by Saturday. It was four. We try to get you caught up on all of them on today's BradCast before opening the line to callers. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

All of the stories happening all at once over the weekend, were all thanks to Donald Trump in varying ways...

• First, on Friday night, Israel unleashed a full-scale attack against Iran, killing its three top military commanders and several nuclear scientists --- among many others. The pretext for the attack was Iran's nuclear program which, had Trump not torn up the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the hard-fought and carefully constructed nuclear deal Iran agreed to in 2015 with China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the U.S., there wouldn't even be a program for Israel to target. The strike came after Trump failed to strike a new nuclear deal with Iran, which had restarted its nuclear program after Trump reneged on the original deal. He had been begging them for the last month to agree to a new deal to limit its nuclear program that is almost identical to the one struck under Obama that Trump tore up during his first term. The ongoing volleys of missiles between Israel and Iran have also led the Trump Administration to call back the Voice of America Persian-bureau after foolishly (and unlawfully) shuttering VOA and its sister networks back in March.

• In the early Saturday morning hours, a long-time Trump supporter disguised as a policeman assassinated the Democratic leader of Minnesota's House of Representative, Rep. Melissa Hortmann, and her husband inside their own home. Hortmann, as House Speaker in 2023-2024, was a key player in passage of a host of popular progressive initiatives under Gov. Tim Walz that came to be known as the Minnesota Miracle. The same shooter also attempted to assassinate Democratic state Senator John Hoffman at his house just prior. Hoffman and his wife remain alive but in critical condition after Hoffman was shot nine times and his wife eight times. The alleged rightwing assailant, 57-year old Vance Luther Boelter, was found to have had a list of some 70 names on a target list in his car. The names were reportedly Democratic officials, both state and federal, and champions of abortion rights. Officials also say he had a number of "No Kings" flyers in the car, suggesting he might have been planning to target one of Saturday's many protests in the state. After a two-day manhunt, Boelter was captured late on Sunday in a cornfield south of Minneapolis/St. Paul. He was charged on Monday with both state and federal crimes including assassination and attempted assassination. It is just the latest example of increasing political violence by the right in the Trump Era, as warned about for years, even by his own FBI Director who conceded that domestic homegrown terror from those on the right --- not by migrants --- was, by far, the greatest threat currently facing Americans.

• The third major weekend story happening all at once that wouldn't have happened if not for Donald Trump, was the authoritarian-style military birthday parade he threw for himself (though we paid for it) that happened to fall on the U.S. Army's 250th birthday as well as Trump's 79th. It was, by almost all accounts, a sparsely attended snoozer of a parade which saw even Trump supporters streaming away long before it was over. Of course, the manhunt for the MN assassin and the war in Israel/Iran, thankfully, sucked up most of the cable TV news coverage.

• In likely --- or hopefully --- the most important news of the weekend, some five million Americans took to the streets to stand up against the President in "No Kings" protests decrying the rising fascism of Donald Trump, including his deployment of military troops against Americans on U.S. soil and his burgeoning military-style migrant round-ups by ICE. According to organizers, enormous and joyful rallies were held in more than 2,000 cities and town in all 50 states. They were almost all entirely peaceful but for a man who brandished a rifle at protesters in Salt Lake City, UT (a protester was killed); a counter-protesters who pulled a handgun on rally-goers in Phoenix, AZ; and an SUV driver who struck and injured a demonstrator before speeding away in Riverside, CA.

  In Los Angeles, late in the day, there was a bit of violence as well. But, as all reporting seems to indicate (David Dayen's at TAP was the best) it was local law enforcement officials from both the L.A. County Sheriff's Dept. and the LAPD who sparked the violence with their unannounced use of horses, rubber bullets and teargas to suddenly clear demonstrators at 4pm, hours before the rally was to have ended in Downtown L.A.

After all of that and much more, we open the phones today to our live local listeners here in Southern California to hear their own reports and personal experiences from the weekend's many "No Kings" protests...

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Sadly, it's another in our Trump 2.0 Era "Then They Came For..." series on The BradCast, which previously included "the Judges", "the Mayors" and "Members of Congress". In today's case, at least, the victim, a U.S. Senator, was roughed-up and handcuffed but not arrested and was fairly quickly released. But those elected officials are hardly the only folks they are now coming for in Donald Trump's "New Police State". [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today highlighting that New Police State, Trump's continuing failures as President on several fronts, and his ongoing war with the Golden State...

• Breaking shortly before airtime... Just two days after the Trump Administration's corrupted and actually weaponized Dept. of Justice indicted a sitting Democratic U.S. Congresswoman from New Jersey on absurd assault charges related to allegedly impeding the arrest of Newark's Democratic Mayor (for whom all charges were soon dropped), California's Democratic U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, the state's first Hispanic Senator, was roughed up on Thursday, forcibly pushed out of a room where Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem was holding a press conference in L.A., was thrown onto the floor by FBI agents and handcuffed after he'd peacefully dared attempt to ask a question of Noem.

• A new Quinnipiac poll finds that Donald Trump is being rejected by voters on virtually every front. His approval rating in the survey of more than a thousand registered voters has now fallen to 38%; his budget bill is opposed by almost twice as many as those who support it (while a huge majority of Americans want to see Medicaid expanded or left as is, as opposed to cut, as the Trump/GOP "Big Beautiful Bill Act" would do); and he is deeply underwater on every single issue they polled on, including immigration, deportation and the economy. New polling out today from AP/NORC finds similarly poor numbers for the President, which is largely unprecedented in modern times this early in a new term.

• Those 4,000 California National Guard soldiers federalized by Trump and deployed against Americans on U.S. soil over the weekend against the wishes and needs of the state's Governor and the Los Angeles Mayor? They aren't getting paid yet, according to Military.com, which cites military sources describing a chaotic, still-incomplete activation, leaving soldiers without pay, a place to sleep, food, amid a local community uncharacteristically unsupportive of the deployed troops.

• But Trump's New Police State is not only rolling out in large cities. WaPo's Catherine Rampell has a chilling story of heavily armed masked men, claiming to be federal agents (while refusing to show ID), showing up with out-of-state plates to sweep up migrant gardeners in a tiny New England town. Yes, Trump's New Police State is coming to a town near you as well, no matter where you live.

• On Thursday at the White House, Donald Trump signed three bills that were recently --- and perhaps unlawfully --- rammed through the Senate by Republicans in violation of its rules, nuking the filibuster in the bargain to do so. They are meant to strip California of its legal right to establish its own clean air and car pollution standards. Specifically, the new laws, if they are allowed to stand --- CA has already said they are filing suit --- would, among other things, ban the state's 2036 deadline for phasing out the sale of new, gasoline-only cars and trucks. A dozen or so other states have previously adopted CA's now "banned" standards. Despite the fact that used all-gasoline cars and trucks could still be sold and that those who really wanted a new one could still buy them from another state in 2036, this is apparently what Trump has been falsely describing as "Joe Biden's EV mandate" for years now. Today, once again, he did another solid for his owners in the fossil fuel industry. Desi Doyen has the full scoop and context.

• Then, Desi is here with our 1,500th Green News Report! Sadly, with the above news and much more, it's a rather grim milestone today, largely from top to bottom.

• BUT, we close with something a bit brighter that we hope might cheer you up after all of that, and help you leave the theater whistling. It's the latest Randy Rainbow tune on Trump Derangement!...

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Today on The BradCast: The President of the Unites States' war on the U.S. Constitution and Rule of Law continues, even as he keeps losing battle after battle in courts of law, at ballot boxes and in the court of public opinion. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today....

• At the beginning of last week, we reported the news of the Canada's Liberal Party overcoming an enormous deficit against the Conservative Party last December to triumph in national elections on Monday, when the Conservative Party's Trumpy Leader even lost his own seat in Parliament. By week's end, we saw damned near the exact same story in Australia, where the Labor Party Prime Minister on Friday retained his post (the first time that a ruling PM was elected twice in a row over the past 20+ years) and the conservative opposition lost in a landslide that saw its Trumpy party leader also lose his seat in Parliament as well, for the first time in Australian history. If nothing else, Trump's obnoxious behavior toward our longtime allies seems to be working wonders for center-left political parties in those countries.

• Trump announced over the weekend that he will place a 100% tariff on movies "produced in foreign lands". Apparently, that would include American-made films shot in other countries, though he didn't explain --- and nobody in the Administration seems to yet know --- how such a "tariff" would actually be levied. Many fear it could also devastate the U.S. film industry. The new tariffs are necessary, Trump lied, because foreign film production is somehow a "National Security threat", according to his social media announcement. (It isn't a national security threat, of course. But I explain on today's show why Trump needs to pretend as much.)

• As Trump revealed on NBC's Meet the Press over the weekend, he's not entirely sure if Constitutional Due Process, as cited by the 5th and 14th Amendments, is actually mandatory. That despite the Supreme Court making clear that it very much is, and despite his sworn oath earlier this year upon taking office for a second time to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

• Clearly, the Rule of Law and Constitution don't mean all that much to Donald Trump, as again illustrated by his four Executive Orders, so far, targeting four different law firms that dare to represent people he regards as political enemies. His clearly unconstitutional orders bar attorneys at those firms from entering federal buildings, interacting with federal officials or taking federal jobs, etc. The largest and first of those targeted firms to challenge an Order is Perkins Coie. They won a resounding victory on Friday when a U.S. District Court Judge in D.C. found [PDF] the entire Order targeting them to be a clear cut case of "unconstitutional retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, plain and simple." She nullified the entire Order in the bargain.

Meanwhile, out here in Los Angeles, three prosecutors in the U.S. Attorneys office for the Central District of California tendered their resignations over the weekend, after Trump-appointed acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli appears to have struck a deal with former L.A. County sheriff's deputy Trevor Kirk, after his felony conviction by a jury in February.

Kirk was found by a jury to have injured a 58-year old black woman during what police body cam footage revealed as to be an "unjustifiably violent" arrest. The woman apparently had nothing to do with the robbery that the cops were called to respond to at a grocery store in Lancaster, an hour or so north of L.A., in 2023. But she claimed to be live-streaming the arrest of her male companion, who apparently wasn't involved in the reported robbery either. Kirk threw the woman to the ground, threatened to "punch" her "in the face", hand-cuffed and pepper-sprayed her twice.

The unusual deal between Essayli and Kirk was struck after the jury verdict, but prior to sentencing, which could have resulted in as many as nine years in prison for the now-former cop. The new agreement would change his felony conviction to a misdemeanor with prosecutors seeking probation for Kirk instead of jail time, and no bar on him serving as a cop in the future. None of the attorneys who obtained Kirk's conviction signed on to the new agreement struck on behalf of Trump's acting U.S. Attorney. It must still be approved by a judge.

We're joined today by independent L.A. based legal affairs reporter MEGHANN CUNIFF who was the first to break the story of the agreement before the ensuing resignations of the career prosecutors in the L.A. U.S. Attorney's office in what appears to be a response to the deal their new boss struck, undermining their case. Cuniff, who acknowledges how unusual it is for a deal to be struck after conviction and before sentencing, argues that it's possible the prosecutors might be resigning for other reasons in addition to the unusual post-verdict deal.

After making clear that she is not reporting a direct line between D.C. and the Trump-appointed loyalist Essayli and his deal to drastically reduce Kirk's sentencing, she concedes: "I've never seen it before. It's totally unheard of. You might see it if there's an issue of misconduct during the trial or somebody is cooperating afterward. But the prosecutors are definitely outraged after this."

Cuniff is also not at all certain that the U.S. District Court Judge who oversaw the case will agree to the terms of the deal struck by Trump's prosecutors. At the same time, L.A. County has struck a settlement in a $3 million civil lawsuit filed by the two victims in response to their wrongful arrests.

In addition to the Kirk case, the same U.S. Attorney's office is now reviewing the conviction of Alexander Smirnov, who pleaded guilty to lying to federal officials in 2020 about Hunter Biden having corrupt business dealings with a Ukrainian oil company, "in what prosecutors described as a Russian-influenced operation," says Cuniff.

"As soon as Trump took over, all of a sudden, they are trying to get this guy --- who took a plea deal and was sentenced in January --- out of prison, pending appeal, saying they are going to support his appeal," she explains. "The trial judge wouldn't do it, but they're going to the 9th Circuit [Court of Appeals]. The assistant U.S. Attorney who argued for this is the same one who went to court to argue for Trevor Kirk for a sentencing delay" to allow Trump's attorneys to strike a deal with the dirty cop...

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Today's BradCast is perhaps better listened to than explained. But here's a quick summary and some links for more details. [Audio link to full program follows this summary.]

We focus today on the largely peaceful pro-Palestinian protests that have sprung up on college campuses across the U.S. over the past week or two in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's punishing, ongoing assault of Gaza and the Biden Administration's facilitation --- reluctant or otherwise --- of that effort. Our central focus is on the responses to the protests here in the U.S. by counter protesters, media, politicians (including remarks by Joe Biden today), and, most disturbingly, armed riot police who seem to be touching off the bulk of the violence, or at least the eye-catching "if it bleeds it leads" scenes of chaotic confrontations that are easy to show on television news, whether they capture the truth of the moment or not.

As noted, today's program is better listened to than explained, I think. But, among the source material referenced in our coverage...

• L.A. Times: "More than 200 arrested as police dismantle UCLA pro-Palestinian camp"
• David Kurtz: "Another Wave of Campus Arrests Overnight as Police Intervene in Protests"
• Thomas Zimmer: "Student Revolt and the Curtailing of Critical Speech"
• MSNBC's Chris Hayes on American protests and proportionality.
• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on her response to young progressives or Arab-Americans who say they can't vote for Biden this year.
• Ernie Canning: "Third-Party Myopia v. Democracy's Survival"

As usual, I welcome your responses in comments below or via email. If you can keep 'em short and sweet perhaps I'll share them on the show.

Also today, Desi Doyen covers the damning new report [PDF] from Congressional Democrats exposing how the oil industry spent decades deceiving the public and sowing doubt about the dangers of burning the fossil fuels that are the primary drivers of our climate crisis. Internal documents reveal how Big Oil shifted from outright climate denial to a covert strategy of "deception, disinformation and doublespeak" to delay the transition to clean energy and preserve their profits --- publicly professing support for reducing emissions while privately lobbying against climate laws and regulations. The tranche of subpoenaed communications were the focus of a Senate Budget Committee hearing on Wednesday, with expert testimony delving into the details of the oil industry's ongoing efforts to mislead the public about fossil fuels and the climate crisis.

And finally, our latest Green News Report with a bit more on the above, and on the unforgiving costs the world continues to pay for it, including this week with extreme heat and storms in Asia and the oil industry-facilitated plastic pollution crisis across the globe...

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We've just about arrived at the point where the corrupt, stolen and packed rightwing U.S. Supreme Court almost isn't even trying to hide their corruption anymore. And, yes, as discussed today on The BradCast, that includes the Chief Justice. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

First up, Lori Lightfoot, the first black female and openly gay Mayor of Chicago was reportedly knocked out of contention in her reelection bid on Tuesday. It is the first time in 40 years that an incumbent Mayor was unseated. (The last one was the city's first female Mayor.) Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson will go on to compete in the run-off set for April 4. Vallas is a "tough on crime" candidate vowing to add hundreds of police to the streets of the nation's third-largest city. He is supported by the police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, whose leader defended January 6 insurrectionists and equated Lightfoot's vaccine mandate for city workers to the Holocaust. Johnson, an African-American supported by the teachers union and progressive organizations, has called for more money to be spent not on police, but for mental health care, education, jobs and affordable housing.

Next, we're joined by DAVID DAYEN, progressive financial journalist, author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect to discuss Tuesday's oral arguments at SCOTUS on two different challenges --- both largely absurd --- to President Biden's student loan forgiveness program. But for being blocked by Republican-appointed lower court federal judges, the plan would forgive up to $20,000 for federal student loan borrowers making less than $125,000/year under the authority of the HEROES Act. The 2003 law, adopted by Congress and signed by the President in the wake of 9/11, grants authority to the Education Secretary to "waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision" regarding student loan programs in the event of a national emergency.

Despite the legal authority granted by the clear language of the text, Republican lower court judges have blocked the program to date, and the corrupt rightwing Justices at SCOTUS seemed to be working hard to do the same during the 3-and-a-half hour hearing at the high court on Tuesday, according to Dayen. The Biden Administration, as he explains, has invoked the very same legal authority from the HEROES Act to "waive" student loan payments as the Trump Administration used to pause them during the pandemic. Of course, neither Trump's authority to do so, nor its authority to issue hundreds of billions of dollars in forgivable PPP loans to small businesses during the crisis, was challenged in court --- or saw its "fairness" questioned --- by Republican litigants. Low income student loan borrowers, however, are apparently a different matter.

There are two different sets of GOP plaintiffs challenging Biden's plan. One (Biden v. Nebraska) is a group of six Republican-controlled states (Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas, Kansas and South Carolina) and the other (Dept. of Education v. Brown) is two individuals who failed to qualify for student loan forgiveness. It seems that neither group of plaintiffs should have legal standing to sue at all in these cases, as neither seems to be able to demonstrate any real harm or injury. If these cases are to be tossed, it will likely be on those grounds. But, the Court's rightwingers sure did seem to want to block this program during Tuesday's hearing, citing the absurd and wholly-made-up, found-nowhere-in-the-Constitution "Major Questions Doctrine" as just one way to do so.

Dayen details the entire fiasco for us today. The Court will issue its opinion no later than June or July as hundreds of billions in financial relief for those need it most hangs in the balance.

Also discussed with Dayen today: The high court has decided to hear a case on whether the funding mechanism for the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) --- the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren during the Obama Administration following the 2008 financial crisis as the only federal watchdog agency focused mainly on consumers --- is unconstitutional. "If you believe it is," quips Dayen, "then you believe that not only numerous other agencies in the federal government have unconstitutional funding structures, but things like Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional." A similar funding mechanism has been used for decades, without challenge, by the FDIC, the FDA, the Federal Reserve and many others.

Dayen describes the ruling that the CFPB's entire funding mechanism is unconstitutional as coming from the "deeply radical" 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He seems to be hoping that SCOTUS has decided to hear this case next term (which begins in October) in order to reverse or, at least clarify, the lower court's ruling. We'll see if he's right about that.

Finally, we discuss drug-maker Eli Lilly's announcement today that the company plans to lower the cost for insulin, after President Biden and the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act, adopted last year, capped expenses for the drug at $35/month for federally insured patients, such as those on Medicare. Also, we discuss today's announcement of the nomination of Julie Su as Biden's new Labor Secretary to replace the departing Marty Walsh. As Dayen reports, the clever appointment of Su, a California progressive, will place her in charge of the Department whether her nomination is blocked in the Senate or not...

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One year after the former President's attempt to steal the 2020 election by hurling the bodies of his supporters at the U.S. Capitol, we're more convinced than ever on The BradCast that, as the New York Times Editorial Board declared on New Years Day, "Every Day is Jan. 6 Now". [Audio link to full show is posted at end of this summary.]

We will soon be entering our 19th year at The BRAD BLOG of trying to warn about the ongoing and worsening threats facing American democracy. But the rising tide of authoritarianism in this nation is now more of a threat than at any time in modern decades. If American democracy falls, so does virtually every other pressing demand, like the need to save humanity from the ravages of climate change. So, yeah. It's kind of important, and we will continue to stay on this beat as long as necessary, as long as we can.

Toward that end today, the despicable, disgraced, twice-impeached, failed, loser of a former President, Donald Trump, who lied about voter and election fraud in order to try and steal a Presidential election, cancelled his planned press conference at Mar-a-Lago on the first anniversary of his pathetic, desperate and deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. As it turns out, he's both a coward and didn't actually have anything to say that hasn't already been heard and/or debunked as bullshit.

His ridiculously (but not surprisingly) childish statement announcing he was calling off the presser came just hours after his pal, Sean Hannity of Fox 'News', was politely invited to answer questions from the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the Capitol assault and Trump's attempt to steal the election which lead up to it. The Committee makes clear in its letter [PDF] that they have already obtained many documents from others regarding Hannity's insider status and direct conversations with Trump in the days before, during and after the attack. While the Committee explained their efforts to go out of their way to avoid any First Amendment press freedom issues with Hannity, and even tried to appeal to his (pretend) patriotism, its unclear whether the Fox propagandist will cooperate.

Next, buttressing the persuasive argument made by Marcy Wheeler with Nicole Sandler on The BradCast last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland, facing pressure from the left to bring accountability to Trump and his cronies, addressed DoJ officials on Wednesday on the occasion of the first anniversary of last year's Capitol attack. After detailing the more than 700 arrests made to date, and at least 250 perpetrators who are still being sought for assaulting law enforcement officials that day, Garland promised the probe was far from complete and was following the facts of the case from the bottom up.

"The Justice Department remains committed to holding all Jan. 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law --- whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy," the AG vowed, adding: "We will follow the facts wherever they lead."

He also highlighted how the U.S. Supreme Court has radically gutted the Voting Rights Act twice over the past decade, and called again for new federal legislation to give the DoJ tools they need to assure the right to vote and to combat state legislatures institutionalizing the ability to subvert election results on a partisan whim.

Finally, we're joined again today by WILL BUNCH, longtime national correspondent and columnist at Philadelphia Inquirer. Bunch was with us on January 6th last year for a wild ride of a broadcast that day as the Capitol was still under assault during the official confirmation of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory as we went to air. At the time, it was particularly unclear what exactly the MAGA Mob was doing and how they might be stopped.

Among the topics of our conversation one year later with Bunch (who just tested positive for COVID!): Lessons learned since Jan. 6 and the many questions still unknown; The many, still confusing reasons and explanations as to why it took so long for law enforcement to respond to the worse attack on the Capitol in two centuries (he suggests part of that was due to "a dog that didn't bark"); Whether or not there should have been more accountability brought by the Justice Department by now (he notes that the Watergate probe took much longer); And his thoughts on Garland's comments at the DoJ today...among much more!

"Honestly, it's taken a full year and it's taken really diligent, praise-worthy work from the January 6th Committee in the House to bring into focus some of what we saw happening that day, that we didn't fully understand in real time," Bunch observes. "What the goals were, who was behind what and why. We've learned so much in the last twelve months."

We've got a lot to discuss on today's program...

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Today on BradCast: No, Tuesday's off-year elections were not nearly as disastrous for Democrats as the national media seems to want to insist. But there were both red flag warnings and important lessons they should absolutely pay attention to, and quickly. There were also wholly avoidable voting system failures which, unfortunately, open the door for some results to be challenged. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

First up, the latest summary on the marquee Gubernatorial races that seemed to encompass the entirety of the national media's coverage on Tuesday and into Wednesday. In Virginia, decades of modern history repeated itself, as the party that didn't win the White House last year appears to have taken control of the Governor's mansion this year. Trump-endorsed businessman and first-time candidate Glenn Youngkin was declared the narrow winner over VA's Democratic former Gov. Terry McCauliffe, after Youngkin dog-whistled his kinder, gentler not-Donald-Trump-at-all act into office.

His campaign leaned heavily on pretend, Fox "News"-generated phony outrage issues like opposition to teaching Critical Race Theory in public schools, even though there are no public schools in VA who actually teach it. But fake issues are much easier for Republicans to run on than the unpopular ones they actually support. So, with that, it appears Republicans may also have narrowly taken back majority control of the Commonwealth's House of Delegates, though those final numbers were still too close to call as of airtime.

In New Jersey, it appears that history will not repeat itself. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was declared the unofficial winner by media outlets late during today's show. If officially certified, Murphy will have defeated Republican John Ciaterelli to become the first Democrat to win a second term in the Garden State since the 1970s. But Ciaterelli made clear on Election Night that he plans to challenge the results. Reported electronic pollbook failures across the state on Tuesday (little noticed by most of the media, though we covered the pretty serious issue in some detail on our previous BradCast) may well give him an opening to mount such a challenge --- not that Republican election challengers these days generally need real problems to buttress false claims of fraud when they lose. If Murphy ends up falling behind again, he too could use the failure in his own contest.

We detail what appears to have happened across the state, preventing many voters from being able to vote at the polls for several hours on Tuesday morning, and why we've been warning about issues exactly like this for years when it comes to electronic voting, tabulation and pollbook issues that continue to threaten democracy itself.

But while many Democrats have been beside themselves since the polls closed on Tuesday night, wondering where they went wrong --- at least in those statewide contests --- in truth, if you dig below the national headlines, progressives had a bunch of victories on Tuesday in local races and on ballot initiatives.

We're joined today by one of our favorite post-election guests (following both good and bad nights for Democrats over the years), progressive champion, JOHN NICHOLS, Washington Correspondent for for The Nation, longtime contributor to The Progressive and Associate Editor of Madison, Wisconsin's Capital Times. We try to make sense of where both Dems and national media went both right and wrong during both the election and its aftermath. Why, for example, in both VA and NJ, where Democrats held control and adopted a host of very popular progressive policies in the past several years, did they have such a difficult time turning that record into victories yesterday? We also discuss several progressive wins that flew beneath the radar, and what Dems in D.C. and across the nation should take from what happened on Tuesday.

Finally, we close with a boatload of under-reported progressive wins in Tuesday's elections across the country, including historic mayoral victories from Boston to Pittsburgh to Albuquerque to Cincinnati to Durham, NC and beyond, along with a number of local ballot initiatives that defy the media narrative of the past 24 hours which seems to be arguing that Dems must immediately start acting more like Republicans if they hope to have any chance of victory during next year's critical 2022 mid-terms...

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Millions are voting around the country on Tuesday. Governors, Mayors, school boards and various initiatives are on the ballot (along with a couple of Special U.S. House elections) in a whole bunch of states in this year's off-year elections. Full results, such as we might have them, on tomorrow's BradCast. But for today, as voters vote (or try to), elected officials were making some pretty big and important and long-overdue deals today, from D.C. to Glasgow. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

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

• The extreme partisan gerrymandering in states controlled by Republicans continues apace, with Oklahoma the latest to propose cracking a major Dem stronghold into three pieces in order to squeeze out another GOP House member for the next decade in the already very "red" state. All of that made much easier in states that, prior to the 2020 Census, had to win approval for new maps from the federal Government under the Voting Rights Act. The GOP's stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court majority has helpfully done away with that little annoyance in advance of 2022 and 2024.

• Thanks to lighter off-year election turnout and measures enacted before and during the pandemic to make early and remote access to the ballot box easier, we're not hearing about too many voting problems today so far...except for in New Jersey, where electronic pollbooks reportedly failed across the state for several hours when polls opened. Unclear if there were backup paper pollbooks available, but as one outlet reported: "When the Internet would go down, the machines would crash."

• For the second year in a row --- and the third time in history (the first time was in 2005) --- the National Weather Service has once again run through all of the names in the alphabet for named Atlantic storms. With the naming of Subtropical Storm Wanda over the weekend, we are turning to the supplemental name set, which is starting over from "A" this year. Unlike last year, they won't be using letters from the Greek alphabet which seems to have confused a whole bunch of us. But the increasing number of storms is the real worry, despite absurd, years-ago-debunked climate change denialist talking points still coming out from the fossil fuel-sponsored Republicans in Congress.

• With the critical U.N. Climate Summit (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland now officially underway, President Biden officially apologized to the world for Donald Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate agreement, during his four disastrous years as President. (The U.S. was the only country, out of about 200 across the world, to withdraw from the pact.) Now that we're back in, two fairly big agreements were struck in the conference's opening days. One to stop and reverse deforestation and another to cut climate warming methane emissions by 30% by 2030. The first was signed on to by more than 100 countries, including the U.S., UK, China, Russia and Brazil. The second did not yet win the support of China or Russia, but the others, including Brazil, seem to be in. The agreements are pretty big deals, as Desi Doyen explains today --- even if there is much more work that must be done at this two week summit.

• Speaking of big deals, apparently another big one was struck in the U.S. Senate between Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and all of the other Democrats to lower prescription drug prices in Biden's Build Back Better bill. The details are still not fully known, but the agreement will allow "lower prescription drug prices for seniors and families," according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. The seemingly interminable negotiations continue on the BBB, but that news from Sinema and some encouraging remarks today from the other Democratic obstructionist, Joe Manchin (WV) are hopeful signs today, as Mitch McConnell makes clear that he is rooting for Sinema and Manchin to gut the (currently) $1.75 trillion social safety net and climate change legislation.

• After anti-vax alarmists had warned for weeks that as many as 10,000 cops would be lost from the NYPD once Mayor Bill deBlasio's vaccine mandate kicked in on November 1, it turns out the number of uniformed police placed on unpaid leave was much smaller. As of Monday, the number was 34, or 0.15 percent of NYPD employees. Over the past week, NYPD's vaccination rate jump 15 points to 85 percent. As evidence from other states and industries reveals, mandates work.

• Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report as host UK's Prime Minister Boris Johnson opens COP26 with a dramatic flair; as the U.S. House calls Big Oil on the carpet for decades of climate lies; and as the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court agrees to review a case that could dismantle the EPA's authority to regulate dangerous greenhouse gas emissions...

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On today's BradCast: MAGA dead-enders have found a way to continuing pretending the 2020 election was stolen from them in Arizona; it's now down to pretty much one Democrat in Congress who seems willing to take down Joe Biden and the Democratic party's entire agenda; and the lazy corporate media fall for another phony narrative, fed to them by police, to explain 2020's spike in killings across the country. Just another day making sense of the absurd. It's what we do.

First up, despite last week's hilariously embarrassing news for Donald Trump that his own Republican partisans hired by the Republican state Senate in Arizona to "audit" last year's election found that, yup, Trump lost to Biden as originally certified (and by an even larger margin), the disgraced former President is still lying to his supporters, claiming the audit found that he won. It didn't. But, at the same time, his supporters --- including perhaps the top wingnut website responsible for false reports of "fraud" in the 2020 election, Jim Hoft's Gateway Pundit --- are now circulating a phony "draft" of the Cyber Ninja's audit report. The fake report is being characterized as the "real" report by Hoft and friends. One of them, Matthew DePerno, a candidate for Michigan Attorney General(!) who Trump recently endorsed, posted it to Twitter claiming it was the "real " report from the Ninjas that RINOs in the GOP state Senate tried to "censure" [sic].

The fraudulent "draft" claims that the 2020 election in AZ "should not be certified," even though it already was, ten months ago, by the state's Republican Governor. A Ninjas spokesperson denies having anything to do with it, claims the very real looking "draft report" is "absolutely false", and "that it was not written by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, nor was [the call for decertification] in any version that was ever sent or shown to the [state] Senate for review."

Thankfully, Hoft, often referred to as the dumbest man on the Internet, isn't buying it! He and his site are furious that the national GOP and Republicans in Arizona are hiding the truth and "are working for the other side!" He's totally right! Hopefully Republican voters won't stand for it any longer and will vote all of them out of office next year to show 'em!

Next, from RINOs in Arizona, to DINOs in Arizona. Kyrsten Sinema, according to a number of her fellow Democrats today, seems to be the one --- even more than Joe Manchin --- holding up passage, and even negotiation, on the Build Back Better Act, the wildly popular $3.5 trillion sweeping social safety net and climate change legislation which is at the heart of the Biden agenda. It's also fully paid for by a small increase on taxes on corporations and the wealthy. While we covered the four pieces of legislation at the heart of what led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to describe this week as "a time of intensity" in some detail on yesterday's BradCast, I'll refer you to that one and today's show for all of the maddening details here. Though I will note that Sinema's (and Manchin's, to a slightly lesser extent) intransigence could result in both the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill failing to pass, along with the smaller, bipartisan infrastructure bill that Sinema was key to crafting with Republican Senators. She seems far more willing to negotiate with GOPers than with Congressional Dems in her own party, or even the Democratic President of the United States.

The result of all of this could be the death of both bills and Democratic hopes for success in 2022 along with it. But, it should be noted here, that even if Pelosi allows a House vote on the smaller, bipartisan infrastructure package that Sinema really wants to see passed this week (even though, unlike the larger package, it is not "paid for" and will increase the deficit that she and Republicans who support it claim to oppose), and even if it somehow is passed in the House (despite the Progressive Caucus vowing to vote against it), as Congressional expert Norm Ornstein explained on this program last week, Pelosi doesn't have to send it to the President until the reconciliation bill is passed as well. She can hold the smaller bill as long as she likes, according to Ornstein, who told us the Speaker never has to send it to the President's desk, if she doesn't feel like it.

Next, you may have seen the widely reported new statistics released by the FBI on Monday, finding an alarming spike in killings in the U.S., mostly with guns, during 2020. You may also have noticed that many of the stories on the new data --- from Washington Post, New York Times, NPR and others --- all referenced claims from police officials and academics who support them, that the record spike should be attributed, at least in part, to new policing rules and reticence by cops to take action following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year and the many others who were caught on tape being killed by the police.

Darn those "Defund the Police" activists whose outrageous advocacy has led to an historic spike in U.S. homicides!

Of course, that all appears to be bullshit, as explained by our guest today, CARL TAKEI, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU's Trone Center for Justice and Equality, where he litigates police practices. "This is a story that we have heard before," Takei explains. "It actually goes back to 2014, when then-St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson coined the term 'Ferguson Effect'" after the police killing of Michael Brown in Missouri that year, which sparked national outrage, weeks of protests and demands for police reform. "The 'Ferguson Effect', according to its proponents, means that police choose to be less proactive because protests against police hurt their feelings. And this decrease in proactivity then leads to a rise in homicides and other violent crimes."

"The problem with this is it doesn't  make sense," says Takei. "Why would decreases in arrests of people for low-level offenses like pan-handling or passing bad checks --- using counterfeit bills, as George Floyd was accused of doing before he was murdered --- why would decreases in these kinds of arrests lead to more homicides? That's the unanswered question at the core of the 'Ferguson Effect' idea."

"Police, when it comes especially to serious violent offenses like homicide, are reactive," he argues. "They respond after the shooting has already taken place. And they don't actually have the ability to prevent gun violence. And that's why, over forty years of seeing crime go up and police budgets going up, and then crime going down but police budgets continuing to go up --- we have forty years of year-on-year increases in police budgets and we've seen that there's actually no relationship between how much we are funding the police and what is happening in terms of crime rates."

Takei tells me, "Police aren't actually able to address the root causes of crimes. Especially crimes like interpersonal violence, or crimes that come from economic distress, from mental health issues, drug dependence issues. All of that requires different tools. But we live in a country where oftentimes the first and only response to anything that's labeled as crime is 'give more money to the police.'"

So, to what does Takei attribute the largest one-year spike in murder and manslaughter since record keeping began on these statistics in the 1960s? And what should be done about it? Tune in to find out. But it is damned frustrating to see so many theoretically legitimate news outlets incuriously parroting these unsupported-at-best and arguably completely phony claims about violent crime.

Finally today, a bit of good crime-related news out of Los Angeles this week, where prosecutors have moved to expunge another nearly 60,000 marijuana-related convictions from the past three decades, some five years after California voters approved the use and sale of recreational cannabis...

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We can only hope that today's BradCast meets our mission of informing the electorate with stuff you need to know...and does not waste your time with stuff that you do not. [Audio link to full show follows summary below.]

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

• Another tragic story about yet another unnecessary COVID death. This time, a healthy 28-year old from Alabama who got sick along with his mother and sister, after the family failed to get vaccine shots, suspecting that COVID might be a hoax. The young man's dying last words, according to his Mom: "This is not a hoax, this is real." His mother tells Washington Post: "It took watching my son die and me suffering the effects of covid for us to realize we need the vaccine. We did not get vaccinated when we had the opportunity and regret that so much now."

• Next door, in Gov. Ron DeSantis' petri dish called Florida, the state now leads the nation, as new COVID cases have tripled over the last two weeks, along with hospitalizations and deaths. Florida alone, according to CDC data, currently accounts for one quarter of all cases in the U.S. In another grim distinction they share with Arkansas today, both states now have "high" levels of transmission in every single county. The CDC finds several other states, including Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, sadly, are not far behind in the number of "high" level counties. Many of those states also have shamefully low vaccination rates making everything worse.

• The nationwide surge in COVID cases, due to the wildly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus, has resulted in the CDC reversing course on Tuesday, issuing new guidance for mask wearing. They now call, once again, for both the vaccinated and unvaccinated to wear masks in indoor, public spaces. They also now recommend indoor masking for all teachers, staff, students and visitors at K-12 schools in the new school year. Again, almost all of that thanks to those who refused to get vaccinated.

• Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., the new U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol held its first public hearing on Tuesday. Four U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metro Police officers gave riveting and often emotional testimony. The Committee was created by Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Republicans agreed to, and then reneged on, the creation of what would have been an evenly divided, bipartisan, independent blue ribbon panel, modeled on the 9/11 Commission, with equal subpoena power --- and the power to veto them --- granted to each side.

  After Republicans in the Senate blocked that plan, Pelosi created the House Select Committee, with seven Democrats and Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, chaired by Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was allowed to nominate 5 members. Three of his nominees were Members who had voted, after the deadly insurrection on January 6th, against the certification of Joe Biden's decisive victory last November. Pelosi rejected two of them, and McCarthy thereafter withdrew all of his nominees. The Speaker subsequently added another Republican to the panel, Illinois' Rep. Adam Kinzinger.

  Today, we share parts of Thompson's opening remarks on the necessity of the Committee's mission to investigate the January 6th attack, including why it happened and who instigated it, in order to restore "the peaceful transition of power" in the U.S. As well, Cheney offered her own opening statement, vowing to learn "what happened every minute of that day in the White House --- every phone call, every conversation, every meeting, leading up to, during and after the attack."

  "If those responsible are not held accountable," Cheney declared, "and if Congress does not act responsibly, this will remain a cancer on our constitutional republic."

  We then offer extended excerpts from the moving and, at times, disturbing testimony of the four officers who each risked their lives --- some, very nearly dying --- that day to protect the Capitol and its occupants, who were carrying out their Constitutional duty to certify the 2020 Presidential election.

  Those testifying on Tuesday --- each of them tearfully --- included Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonnell, a naturalized citizen from the Dominican Republican and Iraq War combat veteran who believed he was going to die defending his country that day; D.C. Metro Police Officer Michael Fanone, who was dragged down the stairs of the Capitol, beaten by the Trump-incited MGA mob, repeatedly electrocuted with his own taser and feared he'd be killed with his own gun, as he suffered both a heart attack and a concussion that day; Metro Police Officer Daniel Hodges, famously seen screaming in pain as he was pinned between a door and the surging mob who he describes as "terrorists" after fearing he would be "lynched" and having his eye nearly gouged out; And Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, an African American who describes repeatedly facing "a torrent of racial epithets", being called the N-word by the angry seditionists for what he says was the first time in his life while in uniform as an officer.

• Finally, after Desi and I let off a bit of steam from a somewhat grim and/or harrowing program, it's our latest Green News Report which, unfortunately today, is no less grim. Still, we hope today's is a useful, educational and even occasionally entertaining BradCasr nonetheless...

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On today's BradCast: The Republicans' stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court handed down a bunch of new decisions today. New York's primaries elections were very interesting in both NYC and Buffalo on Tuesday. And Congressional Democrats vow to fight on for voting rights after Senate Republicans, as expected, used the filibuster to block debate on protecting voting rights. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First, on yesterday's primaries in NY, the race for Mayor in New York City featured almost 15 candidates. But, under the city's new Ranked Choice Voting system, as we explained on yesterday's program, it could take weeks before we are told who the winner is. Whether voters will have confidence in those results --- after weeks of the virtually-impossible-to-oversee RCV counting (and recounting) system --- is anyone's guess. For the moment, a fairly conservative law-and-order candidate, Eric Adams, leads the pack in the ongoing first round of tallying, with about 32 points. He's followed by progressives Maya Wiley and Kathryn Garcia with 22 and 19.5% each, respectively. Andrew Yang is in fourth place with almost 12% of the vote. As none of the candidates received more than 50 percent, however, the Ranked Choice tallying will soon begin. When it ends, and who wins, is anybody's guess. Yes, even though Yang conceded after his 4th place finish, he could still end up winning under the confusing RCV process. And the winner of the Democratic primary is almost certain to be the next Mayor of NYC.

Meanwhile, up in Buffalo, New York's second largest city, India Walton, a 39 year-old African American socialist with no experience in political office, unseated the city's four-term Democratic Mayor Byron Brown in a huge upset. If she wins the general in November, Walton will be the first socialist mayor of a major city since 1960, after unseating an incumbent Buffalo Mayor for the first time since 1961. Brown, however, reportedly is considering a write-in campaign this fall against Walton, given that there will be no Republican for her to face on this year's ballot in the heavily Democratic city.

Down in D.C. on Tuesday, the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate "won" the vote to proceed with debate on their sweeping elections, voting rights and campaign reform bill known as For the People, when all 50 Democrats stuck together to vote in favor. But they lost anyway, because Republicans, for their part, all voted against debating voting rights, even as state level GOP legislatures are adopting bills all across the country to restrict such rights. 60 votes would have been needed to overcome the Republican filibuster in the Senate, where Senators representing a tiny majority of Americans (about 20 percent, according to Ari Berman), have the ability to block any and all legislation offered by Democrats, whose 50 Senators represent some 43 million more Americans than those represented by the 50 Republicans in the upper chamber. Nonetheless, Majority Leader Schumer, President Biden and House Speaker Pelosi all vowed to fight on, with Pelosi announcing that Dems would "not be deterred"; Biden declaring "this fight is far from over"; and Schumer promising that Tuesday's vote "was the starting gun, not the finish line."

For any of that to be true, however, West Virginia's Joe Manchin and Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema, at the very least, would have to agree to change the rules for the Senate filibuster. Dems hope that voters may help convince them to do so over the Independence Day recess, given that For the People is supported by some 68% of American voters.

Next, we're joined by the always-great MARK JOSEPH STERN, legal reporter at Slate, to discuss, among other things, the decisions handed down today at SCOTUS, as the Court wraps up this year's term at the end of the week. Despite the 6 to 3 advantage for rightwingers on the Republicans' stolen and packed Supreme Court (because Republicans were more than willing to kill the filibuster in order to accomplish it!), Chief Justice John Roberts, once again, managed to produce largely consensus decisions on all but one of the opinions released today.

Among those opinions, as explained and analyzed by Stern, was a very troubling ruling that kneecaps union organizing rights across the country. That one, which Stern notes "is very over the top" and makes up "a completely new rule that did not exist before," was the one decided by the rightwingers' 6 to 3 vote. It continues the Roberts Court's relentless erosion of labor rights. But there were also reasonable decisions handed down on police powers to enter your home without a warrant and on a high school's punishment of a cheerleader who used the F-word on Snapchat over a weekend while she was in 9th grade. One other decision was also released today, allowing President Biden to replace Donald Trump's terrible director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"There's enough credit to go around here," says Stern, in response to my question about whether Roberts deserves credit for some of the narrow decisions that were able to overcome a bitterly divided Court without causing too much damage to longstanding rights and precedent. "I think Chief Justice John Roberts is in the driver's seat on some of these compromise decisions. But I think that, to some degree, Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett are willing to go along, and so are the liberal justices. I think a lot of these decisions involve compromise on both sides. Some of them include some bitter pills for the left or the right to swallow, but at the end of the day, six justices are trying their best to duck the big issues, and issue really small decisions that don't ruffle too many feathers."

The fallout so far this term, the first with the GOP's 6 to 3 advantage, was "not as terrible as it could be." Though, Stern cautions, "It's not over yet. There are still some major decisions coming down the pike. And no matter what happens, we've still got next term with guns and abortion, of course."

The biggest decision this term, however, may be whether or not 82-year old Justice Stephen Breyer is going to step down to allow President Biden to nominate someone younger to fill his seat while Democrats hold the majority in the Senate, or whether he's going to pull a Ruth Bader Ginsburg and wait to leave the Court, one way or another, after Republicans have regained a majority in the upper chamber. Given that the Senate's Republican leader Mitch McConnell has already indicated he is unlikely to ever allow a Democratic President to fill a Supreme Court vacancy while Republicans hold a majority, we both hope that Breyer will take McConnell at his word, and get out now while the getting is still good.

As usual, it's another jam-packed BradCast. Enjoy!

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On today's BradCast, the fight for truth and justice continues from Palestine to Washington D.C. to Los Angeles, CA. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

Just before airtime today, encouraging news broke that Israel and Hamas have agreed to a cease-fire after nearly two weeks of fighting that left at least 230 Palestinians (including at least 65 children) dead in Gaza, and 12 Israels (including two children) dead on the other side. The promised pause in hostilities comes after President Biden's long-overdue pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which came after pressure from Congressional Democrats on Biden.

Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, revealed once again this week the bad faith with which they are supposedly "working" with Democrats. After the top Democrat and Republican on the Homeland Security Committee in the House negotiated a deal for the structure of an evenly partisan divided, independent commission to examine the deadly January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the GOP minority leaders in both the House and Senate whipped their own members to reject it. Nonetheless, the House passed the resolution to create the Jan. 6 Commission on Wednesday, after some stunning and dramatic debate, with 35 Republicans joining all of the Dems to adopt the Commission. The rest of the House GOPers scoffed at the attack on the Capitol and even at the U.S. Capitol Police themselves, the very law enforcement officials who risked life and limb to protect all Congressional members on that shameful, historic day. The measure must still overcome a Republican filibuster to be adopted in the Senate, where Mitch McConnell is opposing with lies about it being "unbalanced", in hopes of protecting his party, his counterpart in the House, Kevin McCarthy, and our disgraced former President who incited the riot.

Meanwhile, back here in California, we catch up with the GOP's ongoing recall attempt of progressive Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, whose poll numbers are on the rise, as the rates of COVID infections, deaths and positive tests are now among the lowest --- if not THE lowest --- in the nation. The CA GOP, unable to win statewide elections anymore, unless they can fool voters during a low turnout recall election, had cited Newsom's handling of the pandemic and the state's homelessness crisis as reason to unseat the first term Governor in a recall election later this year.

As our guest today, retired attorney and longtime BRAD BLOG legal analyst ERNEST A. CANNING explained in a fascinating post this week, however, a federal judge may have recently buttressed Newsom's case when it comes to his efforts on the housing crisis in the Golden State as well.

Specifically, while noting the high marks given to the Governor in the judge's ruling in the case filed by the Los Angeles Alliance for Human Rights seeking federal intervention on the homelessness crisis in L.A. City and County, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter's 110-page decision cites the real reason for, as Canning described it, "the nightmare of homelessness at the heart of a place that dares to call itself the City of Angels."

Canning explains Judge Carter's "eye-opening" historical revelations as he detailed a century of systemic racism and corruption in Southern California that has directly resulted in the crisis which now disproportionately affects African-Americans. From "racially restrictive covenants, redlining and eminent domain" used by Los Angeles "to racially segregate neighborhoods" to "Ku Klux Klan violence [that] further targeted Black families who resided in majority white neighborhoods" to sea-side property taken "from Black families and turn[ed]...into a whites-only park," the judge offered an insightful and maddening history of the horrors that have come to haunt all of us --- or, certainly should --- here in Southern California.

"There were no African Americans," says Canning, where he went to school while growing up in SoCal in the 50s and 60s. "The thing that Judge Carter reveals is that that didn't happen by happenstance. Back in 1910, 36% of African Americans were living in racially-diverse neighborhoods, and they were homeowners. In steps, the KKK, enforcement of racially restrictive covenants, redlining, and eminent domain" changed all of that. "We're not talking about Georgia or any of the former Confederate states, we're talking about Southern California."

I hope you'll take a look at his coverage of Judge Carter's ruling here.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with some not horrible, landmark news from the International Energy Agency on how the usually fossil fuel-friendly agency is now calling for reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050; and some incredibly exciting news on Wednesday night's unveiling by the Ford Motor Company of their brand-new, game-changing, all-electric F-150 Lightning pick-up truck, that could just save the world...and power your entire house for days...

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For reasons explain on today's BradCast, we've avoided coverage over the past week or two of the twisted internecine warfare going on inside the GOP. But, as of today, we can ignore it no longer. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

About 100 former Republican officials (the key word here may be "former"), will reportedly be releasing a statement on Thursday, threatening to start a new party if the GOP fails to roll back from its worsening Trump Big Lie madness. Those former officials should expect to be disappointed.

On Tuesday night, on the eve of today's GOP caucus vote in the U.S. House to oust longtime, far-right, conservative Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney (daughter of Dick) from her role as Conference Chair (third-highest ranking Republican leadership position in the House) she took to the House floor to vow she would not roll over for the dangerous, evidence-free claims of a stolen 2020 election being propagated by her crumbling party.

Therefore, on Wednesday morning, she was removed from her leadership position during a cowardly, 15-minute voice vote in a GOP conference meeting after Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy hung her out to dry. (He had previously both condemned Trump's behavior for fueling the deadly January 6th MAGA Mob attack on the U.S. Capitol and supported Cheney. But, of late, he has decided to cast his lot with the disgraced, sore loser ex-President instead.)

After the vote, Cheney defiantly reiterated her belief that the Party "must go forward based on truth" and "cannot both embrace the Big Lie and embrace the Constitution," adding that she would "do everything I can to ensure that the former President never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office."

We're joined today by our friend HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo to discuss the seeming meltdown and inflection point within the GOP, where Cheney will most likely be replaced in her leadership role by New York Rep. Elise Stefanik. She has a far less Trumpy voting record than Cheney (for instance, unlike Cheney, Stefanik voted against the 2017 Trump/GOP tax cuts.) But, also unlike Cheney, Stefanik is happy to lie about the results of the 2020 election on behalf of Donald Trump. That is, apparently, all that now matters for the Republican Party.

There is a lot to talk about on this front today, including what Parton describes as a bid by Cheney to offer an alternative path back to the White House for Republicans, even though fealty to falsehoods and a failed sociopathic President now appears to be perhaps the only real "value" left in the once Grand Old Party.

"Don't get me wrong," Parton says today. "I disagree with [Cheney] on everything. She's as far right as it gets, and if she runs for office, I will be the first one in line to oppose her. But this is not a partisan issue. Or it shouldn't be. Because this is really an assault on our democratic process."

However, she adds later, "This is a political move on her part. At some point, she, and I'm sure her father, decided that there was an opening at this moment for someone to be the face of the anti-Trump Republican, and she was a good choice for doing it. The party is going to be looking for a woman nominee. It may be 2024, it may not be until 2028. They are positioning her as the tough, real, rightwing conservative who stood up to Donald Trump and guess what? She's a woman, too. 'There's  not going to be anything Liz Cheney isn't tough enough to take on'."

As usual, Parton has many smart insights on all of this.

Finally, a couple of quick updates on some stories we covered in detail on our previous BradCast. Some new and disturbing news on the ongoing ransomware attack against the D.C. Metro Police, and late breaking news today that the Colonial Pipeline has begun to reopen after a five day shutdown due to a ransomware attack there as well. No word yet on whether Colonial, owner of the nation's largest pipeline network --- running from Texas to New Jersey and supplying about half of the gas, jet fuel and diesel for the Eastern Seaboard --- paid off the hackers to restore their crippled computer networks to restart the pipeline...

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On today's BradCast: There is at least one thing Republicans are very good at. Whenever possible, they leverage their rightwing policy agenda --- such that they have one --- however they can in order to shift political power to their advantage. They do this both inside government and in their external communities, such as media, law enforcement agencies and corporate industry. Our guest today suggests that Democrats must learn from the Right to do the same thing...but completely differently. [Link to full audio of today's show is posted below this summary.]

They shouldn't adopt policies to prevent their opponents from being able to vote, as Republicans do. But the progressive policy agenda should be constructed to expand the base of progressive voters. While Democrats are unlikely, at this point, to win the hearts and minds of many Trump supporters after their years of brainwashing by the Republican/Fox "News" propaganda industrial complex (including a weekend full of lies falsely claiming that Joe Biden's climate policy includes a ban on red meat --- or, as Trump's former WH Economic Advisor warned on his Fox show over the weekend, Americans may soon only be be allowed to drink "plant-based beer" on July 4...yeah, seriously), Democrats can expand their own electorate through both smart legislation and executive actions.

We're joined today to explain all of this by City University of New York's Distinguished Lecturer of Urban Studies and Roosevelt Institute Fellow DEEPAK BHARGAVA who, with Dorian T. Warren last month at The American Prospect, detailed what they describe as the "Progressive Multiplier" effect. A way, they argue, to defeat Trumpism, as long as Dems take the right lessons --- not the wrong ones! --- from Republicans.

"When rightwing governments take hold, when the Republicans take power, they of course care about their policy agenda, like tax cuts and deregulation," Bhargava tells me. "But they start with the premise that in order to get all that done, they have to take the knees out from under their opposition. They're first order of business --- even though they often don't run on these issues because they're manifestly unpopular --- their very first orders of business are typically to weaken unions. That's often number one. Number two is to weaken voting rights, targeting people of color especially, and young voters who lean Democratic. And number three is to change the rules of the political game through gerrymandering and other means, so that they are making an electorate that is more favorable to them.  By doing these things, by passing these things first, conservatives and Republicans create a situation where they have more power in the next legislature and the one after that, to do more and more conservative policy, to take the state or the country in a more extreme direction."

Bhargava is clear, however, the lesson for progressives must not be to prevent their opponents from access to the ballot box, as Republicans do, but to expand their own pool of voters. "This is the crucial distinction. I do want Democrats to be ruthless. But I want them to be ruthless about expanding democracy -- Republicans have been ruthless about restricting democracy --- democracy at the workplace, meaning unions, democracy at the polls, meaning voting rights. I want the Democratic Party to be ruthless about expanding everybody's participation. That means Republicans, too. But making it easier to participate, easier to join a union, easier to vote, easier to participate in all kinds of ways in civil society. So, this is the crucial difference. Yes, it will redound to Democrats' favor and progressives' favor if more people are able to be part of our democracy."

"The underlying agenda here is to expand democracy in America," he reiterates, "and that's why the two strategies don't have any equivalence."

How can that be done via legislation and --- as the GOP has taken obstruction of legislation to an art form --- via Executive Actions by the President? We discuss all of that, including many examples --- from labor policy to policing to immigration enforcement and much more --- on today's program.

One key example Bhargava offers today, among many --- as also discussed in his new book, out today, called Immigration Matters: Movements, Visions, and Strategies for a Progressive Future --- is that the Biden Administration could add millions of new voters to the rolls, almost overnight. "There are nine million people who right now are legal permanent residents with green cards who could become citizens if we aggressively did outreach, lowered the prohibitive fees, undid all the barriers Trump created. Nine million new people by 2022 could be voting. And, as it happens, the vast majority of those will turn out to be Democrats."

Of course, Republicans know this, which is why Trump's executive policies were "hugely strategic in making it much, much harder for people to become citizens and vote. They increased fees, they made the questions harder. They lengthened the time you had to wait. They did everything they could to throw roadblocks in the way." The Biden Administration could, and should, reverse all of that immediately, Bhargava argues.

Also on today's program, several examples of both the GOP's institutionalized and well-funded rightwing agenda machine --- courtesy, in this case, of Fox' phony "Biden burger ban" lie all weekend long, across all of their shows, and the upcoming extreme gerrymandering by several states where Republicans are picking up House seats after the 2020 decennial Census, where they control the entire redistricting process. While several Democratic-leaning states are picking up seats as well, none of them have processes completely controlled by Dems. But Democrats are not completely unaware of these ideas, as illustrated today by President Biden's Executive Order raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $15/hour and automatically indexing the new wage to inflation for the future. That will be hundreds of thousands of Americans who will have Democrats to thank for a nearly 50% raise. Dems, however, as Bhargava agrees, need to get much better at letting those Americans know who is responsible for their newly increased fortunes.

I hope you'll tune in for today's important discussion.

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report, with news on the GOP's laughable infrastructure counter-proposal to Biden's American Jobs Plan; the EPA revoking the Trump Administration's Big Government ban on state's rights to set their own emissions standards; and a very important message to climate emergency obstructionists from teen climate activist Greta Thunberg...

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