On today's BradCast: Apparently, the high price of lying to MAGA viewers about the 2020 election has been totally worth it for rightwing "news" outlets, according to a newly released trove of insider documents. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Two years ago, Fox "News" agreed to pay more than three-quarters of a billion dollars to Dominion Voting Systems to make the voting equipment vendor's defamation lawsuit against them go away. Fox' on-air personalities and their guests had falsely, repeatedly, and without evidence, claimed Dominion used their voting systems to steal the Presidential election from Donald Trump in 2020. Many of the top Fox hosts and executives knew the claims were not true at the time. But they ran with them anyway, as MAGA viewers were fleeing to other, even farther right media outlets like Newsmax and OAN, which were even more shameless in their promotion of evidence-free claims that the election had been stolen for Joe Biden.

Those outlets were forced to pay up as well for their knowing, on-air lies. Newsmax settled with Dominion for $67 million and with Smartmatic for $40 million. OAN similarly settled with Smartmatic --- whose only voting systems in the U.S. were in Los Angeles County in 2020 --- for an undisclosed amount. In every such legal case, to date, the rightwing media outfits chose to pay up rather than face public scrutiny in a court of law, and to see their "news" personalities take the stand to defend claims that emails and text messages revealed during discovery proved that even they didn't believe.

Now Smartmatic's $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox is on the verge of going to trial early next year. Last time, Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion to avoid a trial where the jury members had already been selected and journalists, including our guest today, were waiting in the courtroom for the trial to begin.

Late last month, a trove of hundreds of pages of "damning filings" were made publicly available in Smartmatic's case against Fox. Media Matters for America Senior Fellow MATT GERTZ, who joins us on today's show, plowed through them. The documents reveal, among other things, Fox personalities like Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld, discussing "how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL"; prime time stars Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham worrying about backlash from viewers for failing to cover phony claims about fraud enough; Bret Baier, the network's supposed "straight news" anchor trying to convince the network to reverse its (accurate) call that Arizona had gone to Biden, given how furious that fact had made Trump and the outlet's MAGA viewers.

"I think we certainly filled in some gaps after the Dominion suit that have been answered to one degree or another through the Smartmatic one," Gertz tells me today, summarizing the newly released documents in the Smartmatic case. "More broadly, what the suit shows is they knew. Fox News' top executives and hosts were well aware that Donald Trump lost the election, that there had not been massive voter fraud, as he had claimed, that kept him from being re-elected, and they went out and said the opposite to their viewers. Night after night, segment after segment. For weeks. They did it because they were worried about losing portions of their market share to outlets like Newsmax and OAN that were perceived as more willing to push those lies."

While Fox has paid a price for that to Dominion, and may have to do so again with Smartmatic, Gertz asserts the lesson for Fox seems to be that it was all worth it. "They have, in the days since then, demonstrated that they are absolutely willing to do it again if the Republican nominee in 2028 tries the same con that Donald Trump did in 2020," he argues, citing the fact that those who tried to tell the truth about 2020 have since been pushed out at the network, while those who were willing to lie are still there, have received promotions, or are now members of the Trump Administration itself.

"What happens is that, because Donald Trump lies so much, he forces his supporters to make their peace with either letting the lie go past and ignoring it, or running with it. There are very few who are willing to say, 'This thing is not happening.'"

Much more on all of that with Gertz today, along with what Monday's agreement among the family heirs to 94-year old Fox owner Rupert Murdoch's business empire likely means for the far-right politics of Fox "News" going forward after he dies. And, far more troubling, the news this week that a far-right Trump supporter and donor with no experience in the news business whatsoever, will now serve as the ombudsman for CBS News as part of the recent concessions made by CBS-owner Paramount to win approval from Trump's FCC for its merger with Skydance.

"CBS News has instituted an ombudsman because its parent company was trying to convince the FCC that if he approved their merger, the network's coverage would change in a way he liked," explains Gertz. "They didn't pick a journalist with a reputation for integrity and neutrality. They picked a rightwing think-tanker and Republican donor who has no newsroom experience, but will give Donald Trump what he wants, which is a CBS News that moves its political coverage to the right."

"They are leveraging the power of the Executive Branch through Trump appointees who are willing to corruptly do the President's bidding, in order to force those companies to do so," he asserts. "They are changing the incentives for media outlets so that they need to kneel to the Republican Party's diktats if they want their mergers completed, or if they want to avoid criminal investigations, even. It's certainly a step towards authoritarianism, toward the treatment that Victor Orban of Hungary enforces on media outlets in his country. Orban is someone Trump has said is a model for what he's trying to do."

In other cheery news on today's show...

• The GOP-controlled Missouri state House voted today to approve a new U.S. House map that will likely steal one of the two remaining Democratic seats in the state for Republicans in next year's midterms. They also approved a measure that would make it harder to adopt citizen-led Constitutional ballot initiatives by mandating that measures must win a majority of voters in each of the state's eight Congressional districts, rather than a simple statewide majority as currently required. The move comes in the wake of state voters recently approving ballot initiatives that establish abortion as a state Constitutional right; for the legalization of marijuana; and for the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Both measures adopted by the MO House on Tuesday now head to the state Senate where they are expected to be approved before going to MO's Republican Governor for his signature. The ballot initiative amendment, however, must be approved by voters under the existing, simple statewide majority rules before being added to the state Constitution.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as both electricity usage and prices spike across the country, even as Trump continues to shut down much-needed windfarms and other renewable energy sources around the nation...

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Yes, it's possible that two seemingly conflicting things can be true at once. On today's BradCast we report on two different cases where that is true, regarding Russia's war on Ukraine and Dominion Voting Systems' defamation case against Fox "News". [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

First up today, on Presidents' Day, Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Ukraine to meet with its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy just days before the first anniversary of Russia's horrific invasion of its sovereign neighbor. It was also just days after Vice President Kamala Harris declared at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend that the U.S. believes Russia has committed "crimes against humanity" in their unlawful invasion.

In his remarks, President Biden described "a brutal and unjust war," as air raid sirens were heard during his visit to the Ukrainian capital. "One year later, Kyiv stands," said Biden after meeting with Zelenskyy at Mariinsky Palace. "And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you." As we discuss, yes, it's possible to understand various diplomatic missteps taken by the U.S. and NATO in Eastern Europe following the fall of the Soviet Union, while still being able to hold the correct party accountable --- in this case, Russia --- for unjustifiable and continuing atrocities.

As yet another war in defense of democracy rages in Europe against a tyrannical autocracy, a decades-long champion of democracy in the U.S. and across the world is now in his final hours. On Saturday, the Carter Center in Atlanta announced that "After a series of short hospital stays," 98-year old former President Jimmy Carter has "decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention."

We share some thoughts today on the legacy of our 39th President, including some of his comments last year on the first anniversary of the Donald Trump-incited Republican attempt to overthrow the U.S. Government on January 6, 2021. "One year on, promoters of the lie that the election was stolen have taken over one political party and stoked distrust in our electoral systems," Carter wrote at New York Times. "These forces exert power and influence through relentless disinformation, which continues to turn Americans against Americans."

The "relentless disinformation" of Fox "News" has been on full display for the past several days, following last week's redacted unsealing of Dominion Voting Systems' 192-page motion [PDF] seeking summary judgment in its $1.6 billion defamation suit against the right-wing fake news outlet. As the striking filing reveals in detail, Fox hosts and executives alike knew they were broadcasting fake, evidence-free claims of election fraud by Trump and his supporters following the 2020 election. They didn't much care. Instead, they feared losing viewers and chose to put company profits above both truth and the health of American democracy.

Dominion may prevail in this case. We hope they do. Even as we have been no friend to the company or any of the other oft-failed, private computer voting and tabulation firms over the past 20 years. In fact, some of the news misreported by Fox and Trump's supporters like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani was taken directly from some of our accurate, exclusive reporting from years ago. But, again, two seemingly conflicting things can be true at once. Fox lied about election fraud and should be held accountable for that, and Dominion and other voting system vendors have repeatedly failed in American elections.

By way of fresh evidence to support that charge, we close with details on voting system failures in both New Jersey and California in November of 2022. In both cases, the systems ended up naming candidates who actually lost to be the winners and vice versa. In Monmouth County, NJ, the ES&S voting tabulators allowed duplicate votes to be uploaded to it twice. It wasn't discovered until last month. In Alameda County, CA, the tabulators were programmed incorrectly to do the impossible math of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) elections in the Bay area. It was discovered in late December last year by a pro-RCV organization who happened to run the math on their own computers and discovered the error.

In both cases, the errors were discovered after losing candidates were certified as winners. How many places did that happen but wasn't ever discovered, because human beings rarely bother to count ballots to make sure the computers did so accurately. This is what comes of outsourcing public elections to private companies and running elections on computer systems that are virtually impossible to oversee by the American public.

Many more details --- and callers --- on all of the above on today's program!...

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Yes, the walls are continuing to close in on our disgraced, twice-impeached, indescribably criminal previous President, as discussed in two encouraging news stories today. But much of his damage is already done, to a rightwing party that has become so whacked out and authoritarian that the rails they are now off of can no longer be seen. On the other hand, we've got more good news for labor, the economy and maybe even democracy under Joe Biden's Presidency on today's BradCast...whether the corporate media decides to notice such things or not. [Audio link to full program is posted at the end of this summary.]

Among the enormous grab bag of stories covered on today's program...

• Lowest in 52 years: New weekly jobless claims come in at another record low today. And, while you might think such good news numbers, not seen since 1969, would be both cause of celebration and front page news alerts, that sort of thing only happens when such things occur while's there's a Republican in the White House, apparently.

• Good news brewing for workers: A Starbucks shop in Buffalo, New York becomes the first of the coffee giant's corporate-owned stores to become unionized in the United States. As discussed with labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein on a recent BradCast, the company will spend untold millions to keep that from spreading to its tens of thousands of other stores where workers may finally be realizing the collective bargaining is good for everybody.

• At least someone's doing something about it: Italy issues a record fine to e-commerce giant Amazon of more than a billion dollars for their monopolistic practices. Why doesn't the U.S. do the same thing? Perhaps it will with Joe Biden's new, anti-monopoly warriors setting up shop at the Federal Trade Commission and the anti-trust division at the Dept. of Justice.

• Unsolved MAGA mysteries: Some of the wingnuts on pillow impresario and failed election fraud fraudster Mike Lindell's streaming disinformation channel think it must be a Big Government conspiracy causing rightwing anti-vax and anti-mask warriors to keeping contracting COVID and dying from it. We think there may be another explanation.

• You decide: Authoritarian Fox "News" prime time star Laura Ingram can't figure out what Washington Post's Dana Milbank could possibly be referring to in calling for media to stand up for democracy right now. "Authoritarians? What are they even talking about?," Ingram puzzles. "Authoritarians? Who's that?!"

• Show-Me shame: Missouri's embarrassing wingnut Attorney General and U.S. Senate hopeful Eric Schmitt embarrasses my old home state with a letter welcoming President Biden to the Show Me state for his "first visit as President to one of the 25 states that cast its electoral votes for President Trump in 2020" before, on official state AG letterhead, describing him as a "socialist" endangering "the livelihoods of tens of millions" by mandating vaccines or testing for many workers. For an AG, you'd think he'd be better at fact-checking. (Biden has actually visited seven other Trump states before arriving in MO.) But, it's Schmitt's recent Big Government mandate to local public health officials and school boards across the state to immediately end "all" public health orders --- for mask mandates, quarantines and more --- that has one of our listeners from the state (an elementary school teacher) so troubled. She also smartly wonders: "What happened to Republicans being the party of local control?"

• I ❤ New York: As to those walls continuing to close in on the criminal former President, we've got two related pieces of good news today. In one, New York Attorney General Leticia James is reportedly calling Trump in for a deposition in her civil suit examining years of apparent tax and bank fraud by the Trump Organization.

• I ❤ the D.C. Court of Appeal: In today's second Trump accountability story, the federal appeals court in D.C. has denied his appeal claiming "Executive Privilege" should block the release of a treasure trove of White House documents regarding his January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, as subpoenaed from the National Archives by the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection and approved by the current Commander-in-Chief (the only one who ACTUALLY is able to invoke Executive Privilege.)

• 'Yes, Democracy is hard': Democracy is down but not out...yet. President Biden convened the first Summit for Democracy today, with more than 100 of the world's democratic nations invited to attend. We share part of his opening statement, wherein he acknowledges that democracy is on a "backward slide", even here in the U.S., but that its still well worth fighting for and definitely beats the alternative of autocracy, rising around the world, and even here at home.

• State of emergency: Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, covering Biden's new Executive Orders to achieve net zero emissions by 2050; Florida taking unprecedented steps to save beloved manatees; troubling news for New Englanders this winter; and a heads-up on a new, blockbuster Hollywood "comedy" aiming to underscore our climate change emergency in a very clever way...

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On today's BradCast: The GOP war on democracy and the judicial branch continue today, with a noteworthy lost battle in Wisconsin, an imbecilic turn of events in Maine, and a continuing hung jury in the U.S. Supreme Court. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First today, Austin's police chief finally describes the white evangelical American man who terrorized the city over the past month with a string of deadly package bombs as a "domestic terrorist". Yes, that actually qualifies as news these days.

Then, the nation's dumbest governor, Maine's Paul LePage (R), repeatedly berates a federal court judge as an "imbecile" for allowing a case brought by Maryland and Washington D.C. to move forward. The case charges that Donald Trump's continuing ownership of Trump International Hotel in D.C. is a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Emoluments Clause, barring gifts to the President from foreign or state governments. The "imbecile" judge in question that LePage decided to attack, found merely that plaintiffs have standing to proceed with their case.

In related GOPers-who-hate-the-rule-of-law news, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker finally decided to follow state law today, by scheduling special elections to fill two vacant state legislative seats in Republican districts, which he is terrified could flip to Democrats. After three different state judges each demanded he declare a date for elections by today, Walker and the Republicans in the state legislature appear to have given up their attempted scheme to call a special session of the legislature to change the law in order to undermine the orders of the courts. Their hope had been to leave those seats vacant --- and the voters in their districts unrepresented --- for more than a year. After deciding to do the right thing and follow state law, Walker remained outraged about it today.

Next up, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in another partisan gerrymandering case this week. Last October, speaking of Wisconsin, they heard arguments in Gill v. Whitford, a landmark case where a federal court tossed out all of the state legislative districts after finding them to be unlawfully gerrymandered by state Republicans in violation of the U.S. Constitution. This week, the SCOTUS Justices heard arguments in another redistricting case, Benisek v. Lamone, which focuses on a single U.S. House district in Maryland, held for years by Republicans, before Democrats gerrymandered it in their favor.

We're joined again today by FairVote's DAVID DALEY, who was as the Court for oral arguments in both cases. The author of RATF**KED: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy, explains the differences and similarities in the two SCOTUS cases (along with other recent rulings by both state and federal courts finding Republicans used unlawful partisan gerrymanders in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, in order to assure legislative majorities even when receiving far fewer votes than Democrats.)

Daley also shares his assessment, based on this week's oral arguments, as to whether there will be five Justices willing to finally end the scourge of extreme partisan gerrymanders. If they don't (as a number of others suggest) Daley warns this problem may not be fixed for at least another generation, as the Court's swing-vote, 81-year old Justice Anthony Kennedy, is rumored to be contemplating retirement at the end of the term in June.

"They are searching for a standard to measure [partisan gerrymandering], that this Court can apply, but also that future Courts can apply," Daley tells me. "If the courts do not solve this now, it's not only the last opportunity for the next generation, but the gloves will be off in 2020 in a really aggressive way. No matter what they do, if it is not a finding against partisan gerrymandering, it will essentially take off any guardrails for legislators of either party when this process comes back around" after the next Census.

Then, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with, as usual, mostly disturbing news --- but also some very good news for a group of natural gas pipeline protesters in Massachusetts, including the daughter of former Vice President Al Gore! (And, for those who may have missed it, here's Angie Coiro's BradCast interview with Gore last December, in which, among many other things worth listening to, he proudly discusses his daughter Karenna's arrest in the protest.)

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On today's BradCast, an insane week in D.C. ends with a dramatic flourish (or two). [Audio link to show follows below.]

Unprecedented chaos besetting U.S. Senate Republicans over the past week, amidst their 7-year quest to kill the Affordable Care Act, came to a suspenseful and dramatic close late on Thursday night and early Friday morning --- as the ailing Sen. John McCain joined Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins to defeat the last of the GOP proposals drafted in haste in hopes of repealing ObamaCare. At least for now. If there's one thing you can count on, Republicans will continue to treat their voters like suckers and morons.

And, an insane, profanity-filled tirade of a phone call to a reporter by Donald Trump's new White House Communications Director results not in the firing of Anthony Scaramucci, but with the firing of Trump's Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

In the meantime, while Democrats, to their credit, were successful in their efforts to save health care coverage for tens of millions of Americans, their efforts to prevent the use of vaping devices, which might otherwise help save the lives of half a million Americans each year, suffers a setback as the FDA delays restrictions on e-cigarettes and yet another new scientific study finds vaping is one of the most effective ways to help smokers quit.

Finally, speaking of science deniers, our latest Green News Report with Desi Doyen details U.S. Coast Guard plans to prepare for six feet of sea level rise and the GOP chair of the U.S. House Science Committee argues that climate change will actually be "beneficial". But, never fear, we've got quite a bit of good news in today's GNR as well!...

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Rightwinger Laura Ingraham ably filled in for Bill O'Reilly in the "No Spin Zone" this week, by seeing her argument dismantled by constitutional attorney, prosecutor, and former (Republican-appointed) special counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, John Flannery on Fox "News."

Ingraham just couldn't believe there would be "all these reports" on the news about "massive voter fraud going on" all over the country, led by ACORN, if they weren't all true! (As we showed both here and at UK's Guardian, it's not true. It's a GOP hoax. More at our special coverage page here.)

Despite being in way over her head, having fallen for the hoax, Ingraham, naturally, played the loyal dead-ender and stuck to her empty guns. (Gosh, we hope there are no typos on Ingraham's own driver's license or voter registration, or she might find herself purged from the voting rolls entirely this November, as they're doing in Florida and so many other state, not mentioned on Fox "News," or even by the Democrats.)

The video follows below, along with further evisceration of Ingraham's "If this were happening to the benefit of the Republicans, the Democrats would be screaming fraud" argument...

These are the top ten states, currently, regarding incident/problem reports coming in to the non-partisan 866-OUR-VOTE hotline. Pennsylvania leads the problem calls so far this morning. They are using paperless touch-screen systems in many counties for the first time this year...

In a related matter, the unspeakable democracy-hater/ABC radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham has apparently encouraged listeners during her morning talk show to jam a different hotline sponsored by the Democrats. Reportedly "crank calls are now flooding in" on that number. Amazing. Firedoglake advises that Ingraham can be emailed here.