You'll be delighted to know that we've got a (mostly) non-Trump related election story for you on today's BradCast, and a guest here to discuss it! Though we've got a few Trump related stories we have to get to first. Sorry. [Audio link for complete show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Donald Trump has "plainly violat[ed] the First Amendment," according to an announcement last night from the Associated Press. The notice was in response to the White House blocking the 178-year old nonpartisan global news outlet from the President's Oval Office signing of an Executive Order with self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk, giving him and his DOGE Bros government-wide control of the hiring and firing of all federal workers at all federal agencies other than the Defense Dept. AP's punishment was because Trump doesn't like the way the AP Style Guide refers to the Gulf of Mexico after he declared that it should be called the Gulf of America. The White House affront to First Amendment free speech and free press rights echoes former Fox 'News' host turned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's order last month to remove a number of well-established news outlets, such as New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and NBC News, from offices they've occupied for decades at the Pentagon. Rightwing MAGA "news" outlets will be given those spaces instead.

• Free speech doesn't fare any better under Trump, even when it comes from independent federal government Inspectors General. On Tuesday, after the IG at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) issued a 6-page report [PDF] critical of the Administration's pause of all agency activities, Trump fired him. The report found that the attempted Trump/Musk/DOGE shutdown of largely all of USAID's critical foreign aid work around the globe and evacuation of thousands of overseas workers would result in, among other things, hundreds of millions of dollars of already-shipped food for starving people rotting in ports; life-saving medicine for deadly diseases remaining in warehouses unused; and "inadvertently funding entities or salaries of individuals associated with U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.” Obviously, that guy had to go!

• The latest Inspector General firing came the day before 8 of at least 17 IGs fired in Trump's first week, in pretty clear violation of the Inspector General Act of 2022, filed a lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court in D.C., challenging their unlawful "purported removals". The 32-page complaint [PDF] charges, among other things, that these IGs, with decades of experience between them, "have been sent a message that non-partisanship and truth-telling will not be tolerated. That message will have the effect of intimidating the [inspector general] workforce and thus chill their critical work for the American people."

THEN... It's on to the last unsettled race of 2024.

While Trump won the narrowly divided swing state of North Carolina last year, Democrats won almost every other election on the statewide ballot, from Governor to Attorney General, etc. Their candidate for the state Supreme Court, current Justice Allison Riggs, defeated her Republican challenger Judge Jefferson Griffin by just 734 votes out of 5.5 million cast statewide. That narrow result was certified by the State Board of Elections after a post-election canvass, audit and two recounts requested by Griffin.

But Griffin is still challenging the result in state court, arguing that some 66,000 early and mail-in ballots cast by North Carolinians should be tossed out because some registrations lacked drivers license or social security numbers (even though many of those cases were due to database clerical errors on the part of officials, not registrants, or were created before the law required that information); other challenged ballots come from military and oversees voters without copies of Photo IDs included in the mailing (which Griffin maintains is now required under the state's new polling place Photo ID restrictions); or were cast by U.S. citizens who never lived in the U.S. (even though they were born to U.S. citizen parents and have always been allowed to vote).

Griffin is hoping to defy state election officials with a friendly ruling from the state Supreme Court, which has a 5 to 2 Republican advantage --- or 5 to 1, since Riggs has recused herself from this case. Riggs, on the other hand, is seeking relief in federal court, where federal law would almost certainly block the tossing of 66,000 ballots from voters who followed the rules for the election.

To try and make sense of this absurd mess, we're joined today by DEBRA DICKS MAXWELL, President of the North Carolina state chapter of the NAACP. Last week, Maxwell wrote an op-ed pointing out that minorities and young voters are disproportionately disqualified in Griffin's list of ballots that he wants to toss. She noted that he is seeking an unprecedented "do-over" election, even though countless races in state history have been proven by courts to have violated the rights of voters, particularly when it comes to gerrymandered elections found to have been conducted with Congressional districts that violated the Constitution and Voting Rights Act both before and after the elections were run.

"We at the NAACP North Carolina State Conference have never been granted any relief like that, even in cases where we proved that Black voters’ rights were violated," she tells me. "They did not enjoy a 'do-over' because of the gerrymandering by the General Assembly, stacking and packing Black votes into fewer districts [so] there was less representation for people of color at the legislative level. That did not change."

"Judge Griffin is refusing to concede and accept [the results] since he has friends on the North Carolina State Supreme Court," she argues. "Judge Griffin should concede. But because he feels that the results don't matter, 'what I want matters', that is sending the wrong message to thousands of voters, not only in this state but across the country."

If Griffin receives a new election, Maxwell warns, "that would send seismic waves through this county, this state, and even through the country to ask for a do-over." Among other things, she asserts, it would decrease voter participation in future elections when people wonder "'Why should I vote when they are just going to call it how they want it?' Especially as we are gathering thousands of those people who are on that 60,000 list. One of my chairs in the NAACP told me, 'I'm on that list!' We know people who are on there. They are very upset."

Maxwell also explains that the state NAACP is currently "winning on results of a federal [Photo] ID case" filed last May. "It is February and we are still waiting on the outcome." But, if they win the case, she says, it doesn't mean that last year's elections will receive a "do-over"...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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

Today on The BradCast: Congrats, America! Bribery, influence peddling, petty corruption, money laundering, fraud, conflicts of interest, even attempted cop-killing and much more is all, effectively, now legalized in these United States! At least if you're on the right team. [Audio link to today's show follows this summary.]

In his Inauguration speech, just three (looong) weeks ago, Donald Trump declared: "The golden age of America begins right now." Apparently he meant the Golden Age of Corruption. For him. And his chosen pals.

But, first up today, a correction to one point from yesterday's show (see the quick version of that correction at the bottom of yesterday's show posting).

Then, we step quickly through a few crime-related turns for Trump and his cronies today alone. Steve Bannon pleaded guilty to one New York state felony charge related to a fraudulent scheme in which he helped steal millions from hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters to supposedly build a wall on the U.S. southern border during Trump's first term. The plea agreement, if he behaves, will result in no jail time for Bannon who was previously charged [PDF] with related felony crimes at the federal level until preemptively pardoned for them by Trump on the last day of his first term. Repeat offender Bannon served four months in federal prison last year after being convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to answer subpoenas from the House January 6 Committee. After his sentencing today, he called on Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to weaponize the DoJ against New York prosecutors Alvin Bragg and Letitia James.

Today, Trump also gave a full pardon today to Illinois' corrupt former Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted on felony charges related to trying to sell Barack Obama's U.S. Senate after he won the Presidency in 2008. Trump previously sprung Blago from his 14-year prison sentence with a commutation, six years early, during his first term.

Also today, Trump's personal defense attorney turned Acting Deputy A.G. corruptly ordered the DoJ to drop all charges against NYC's Democrat-ish Mayor Eric Adams on charges related to doing favors for Turkey in return for free airplane trips and hotel stays around the world.

Both Blago and Adams have each cozied up to Trump in recent months and today, they received their prize. The rest of us received the message that criming --- particularly public corruption --- is just fine as long as you say nice things about Donald Trump after getting caught.

But, if you didn't get the message, our quick summary of just some of Trump's most corrupt, pro-crime, anti-rule of law activities from just his first three weeks in office, from Day 1 right up until today, should help. Including...

• Pardoning all of the violent January 6 offenders on his first day in office;
• Firing Inspectors General from more than a dozen government agencies;
• Dropping DoJ prosecutions in progress for Republican elected officials (and even some Democratic ones that have cozied up to him);
• Firing scores of senior DoJ and FBI officials so far (he will be removing many more in the days ahead);
• Ordering all work at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) --- the folks who police Big Bank, Credit Card and Payday Lender fraud on behalf of American consumers --- immediately stopped over the weekend;
• Signing a new Executive Order on Monday halting all enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (FCPA), the law meant to prevent bribery by Americans and American Companies of foreign officials. (Trump's order describes the federal law as an "excessive barrier" to U.S. commerce!);
• Quietly removing the head of the Office of Special Counsel at the Justice Department last Friday, (That's the office in charge of overseeing whistleblower complaints against the government and enforcing laws meant to tamp down on undue political influence);
• And, the removal of the Director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) just last night. (That's the office that polices integrity and conflicts of interest of Executive Branch officials.)

There is much more, of course, including, I'm sure, much we don't even know about yet. But there's a starter. And, of course, many of the acts summarized above --- in addition to making Trump's personal criming much easier --- are also, themselves, unlawful, even if that may take some time for the courts to sort out. Whether Trump obeys court orders that he doesn't like, or chooses to trigger a full blown Constitutional Crisis instead, remains to be seen.

To discuss America's new Golden Age of Corruption, we're joined today by longtime public corruption and ethics expert CRAIG HOLMAN, Ph.D., Capitol Hill lobbyist on Government Affairs for the nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen. He steps us through some of Trump's most recent corrupt acts, such as the Friday firing of OGE Chief David Huitema who was finally confirmed by the U.S. Senate to a 5-year term in December, after Republicans blocked a vote for more than a year following his nomination by President Biden. Holman, last year, was instrumental in finally helping to push Huitema's confirmation through GOP obstruction in the Senate.

"The Office of Government Ethics serves a very fundamental purpose," Holman explains, "to try to educate and make everyone in the administration --- over 140 different federal agencies --- understand what the ethics rules are, understand what the conflict of interest code is all about, and then help public officials comply with those types of rules." Well, no wonder Trump hopes to neuter that office!

"What we're seeing here --- besides utter chaos on Capitol Hill --- is a full-scale assault on accountability, oversight, and the checks and balances. It goes way beyond the Office of Government Ethics. It's already affected the Office of Special Counsel, 17 independent IGs have been fired," Holman tells me, before adding: "And, by the way, almost all of these firings have a direct financial impact on Elon Musk. So we're seeing the conflict of interest code being torn apart. Every agency he's gone into, all those agencies were overlooking Elon Musk's business practices. The people who were in charge of that have since been fired from these agencies."

We cover much more today in my conversation with Holman, including what interest Congress (specifically, the Republicans who currently control both chambers) may have in all of this, as their own Constitutional powers are being stripped away from them; whether Trump will actual obey court orders as they come down against him; and whether the Humpty Dumpty of our Constitutional order will ever be able to be put back together again, after all of this is finally, mercifully over.

The situation is "dire," warns Holman today. "We are on the very precipice of losing American democracy here. In the first Trump Administration, he sounded like he wanted to end democracy, and by the end of it he actually tried throwing a coup d'etat on Jan. 6th. This time around, he knows what he's doing. That's why we've seen this flurry. He's just marching unrestrained over our democratic norms and our democratic institutions. This is a very dire situation we are seeing here."

As if all of that news isn't swell enough, we close today with Desi Doyen's latest Green News Report on the heels of the hottest January in global recorded history. Enjoy!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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

On today's BradCast: A spotlight on Trump's latest scheme to make election crimes --- specifically his own, but Elon's too --- unaccountable again. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last Friday, the Chair of the Federal Election Commission, Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat, posted a letter she received from the White House informing her that she had been fired. It was the first time in the FEC's 50 year history that any Commissioner had been fired by a President. It is, also illegal. Weintraub, appointed by George W. Bush in 2007, is challenging the unlawful firing. She has, in the meantime, been locked out of her office, her email, her work computer and banned from the FEC building where she has worked without incident or scandal for 18 years. There is a legal way to replace Commissioners. This is not it.

Today we are joined by former FEC Chair ANN RAVEL, appointed by Barack Obama, she served on the Commission with Weintraub from 2014 through 2017. She also served as Deputy Asst. Attorney General at DoJ and is a professor at UC-Berkley School of Law.

Over the weekend, Ravel told me via email that she thought Trump's attempt to fire Weintraub was "insane" and saw it as one more indication that the President has "no moral compass". Today, she offers more details on just how outrageous and unprecedented this effort is. We also discuss why Trump would want to make sure there was no Democrat in charge of the FEC, which had a 3 to 2 imbalance in favor of Republican members before Weintraub was theoretically removed last week.

"There were approximately 20, maybe more, complaints that had been filed against Trump at the FEC," Ravel explains today. "There were dozens of complaints related to the 2024 elections --- not only against Trump and Musk, who spent nearly $300 million dollars to help the President get elected --- but also complaints that Trump had filed himself against Kamala Harris, media outlets and the like. And that is undoubtedly the reason why Trump wanted to eliminate the chair."

"The FEC is not a biased commission," Ravel argues. "It is balanced in terms of party, and there's always been adherence to the law at the FEC, given that it was established during the Watergate scandal. That's the reason for the bipartisan structure."

The Commission's usual 3 to 3 partisan make-up has, in recent years, resulted in tie votes where no action is taken by the FEC. She tells me today that there were no instances, during her tenure, of a Republican Commissioner crossing party lines to vote with Democratic appointees, though the reverse was not unusual. Despite all of that, Ravel says she still believes in the institution even if it could benefit from reforms --- though not like this.

"I feel really strongly about the disclosure that is required by the law at the Federal Election Commission, because it's very important for the American public, when they are voting, or just generally, to know who is behind the campaigns. Who is spending billions of dollars in trying to influence certain things," she tells me. "I really do think that he was trying to subvert the FEC at a critical moment, because of all of the campaign finance violations relating to Trump and his supporters."

Tune in today for much more from Ravel!

Also today, after my discussion last week with financial journalist David Dayen about the Administration's efforts to kneecap the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, things got much worse for the embattled federal agency over the weekend. The CFPB was created in 2008 in response to the sub-prime mortgage scandal that crashed the economy. As the only federal agency whose prime mission is working on behalf of consumers, the Bureau has held Big Banks and sleazy Payday Lenders to account over its short life, returning tens of billions of dollars to ripped off customers in the bargain. So, of course, Republicans have been trying to shut it down since its inception.

Over the weekend, its new Acting Director, Russell Vought --- Trump's newly-sworn in Director of the White House Office of Management Budget (OMB) and a key architect of Project 2025 --- ordered "all" activity by the Bureau to cease, including "all supervision and examination activity." He has also killed the CFPB's web page (which now reads "File Not Found"), and ordered their D.C. headquarters closed as of today. Only an act of Congress can lawfully shut down the CFPB, but the lawless Trump Administration is trying to do so anyway.

In response, the union which represents some 1,600 workers at the CFPB filed two lawsuits on Sunday night. But will Trump follow the orders of any court that issues rulings he doesn't like? A post to Twitter/X by Vice President J.D. Vance on Sunday night suggested he might not. A federal District Court judge in Rhode Island on Monday found that the Administration has already failed to comply with "the plain text" of his previous "clear and unambiguous" order to release billions of dollars in federal grants and other funding that the OMB had attempted to freeze two weeks ago.

I hope ya'll are ready for a very real, very serious Constitutional crisis in the days ahead, when the Administration simply decides to stop following the orders of any court. Because it sure is starting to feel like that is exactly where this nightmare is ultimately going...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

CORRECTION, 10:05pm PT: On the show posted above, my guest Ann Ravel mentioned that she had heard FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub had been removed from her office by U.S. Marines, by force, after her unlawful firing by Trump. In fact, though Weintraub is challenging the removal, that story of her being physically removed from her office, appears to be entirely fake, circulated by Rightwingers who also claimed, in this false telling, that Trump had discovered Weintraub had committed massive election fraud in 2020 and 2024. Ann told me she hadn't seen that part of the false claim, but apologized a few hours after airtime via email for being "sucked into" the disinfo regarding the Marines removing Weintraub from the building. In fact, she touched base with Weintraub directly to confirm that that that part of the story was completely false. My apologies for the error!

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

Until they wised-up and changed the lyrics of the Gilligan's Island theme song at the beginning of Season 2, to also mention "the Professor and Mary Ann", the song originally referred to only those two (of just seven!) castaways as simply "and the rest". While the nation has understandably been focused on Trump and Musk's almost complete shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Elon's DOGE Bros' takeover of the computer payment system at U.S. Treasury that cuts checks for about 95% of payments made by the nation each year (about $6 trillion worth), the shutdowns, pauses and freezes at other critical, if smaller or lesser well-known agencies, has felt a bit like "and the rest." On today's BradCast, we focus on...well, the Professor and Maryanne for a bit...along with the other Castaways as well. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Tortured TV metaphor aside, we're joined today by award-winning, best-selling investigative journalist and author DAVID DAYEN, Executive Editor of The American Prospect, to discuss a few government agencies that Donald Trump has pretty much completely put out of business for the moment, maybe permanently, and completely unlawfully.

This week, Dayen reported at TAP about Trump's takeover of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created in 2011 in response to the Great Recession. It is the only federal agency specifically focused on protecting consumers. It was the brain-child of Elizabeth Warren during the Obama Administration, before she became a U.S. Senator, and it actually holds major banks and other huge corporations financially responsible to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars for ripping off Americans. No wonder the Republicans have been trying to shut it down since its inception. Now, as we discuss today, it appears they have done so. Unlawfully.

In late November, Elon Musk posted on Twitter/X: "Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies." In fact, the CFPB doesn't duplicate the work of any other federal agency. But the small, independent Bureau very well might have made it more difficult for Musk to take advantage of suckers on X with a new payment app he is rolling out.

Trump's newly-minuted U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent --- who allowed the DOGE Bros into the agency's computer payment system --- is also serving as Acting head of the CFPB. "The first thing Bessent did is he said, 'Put a pause on all litigation, all enforcement, all rule-making, and all communications,'" at CFPB, Dayen explains today. "They've basically turned the agency into a ghost town." Employees there tell him they are still able to do things like examine data and work on reports. But they just can't publish them or act on anything "that can protect consumers in real time."

We also discuss how Trump has effectively shut down the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with his unlawful removal of one of its Commissioners (who is now suing). Without her there, the Board which adjudicates union elections, worker rights and investigates labor law violations, no longer has a quorum to do any of that. "So it's a free pass for companies who don't want any consequences for union busting behavior to just continue to do it, appeal everything into a netherworld that half-exists and half-doesn't now," Dayen says.

All of this is illegal, of course. But Trump's captured DoJ certainly isn't going to do anything about it. Will the courts? As you know, SCOTUS has been captured and corrupted as well.

Dayen tells me he is also very concerned about whatever the DOGE Bros are doing inside of the nation's payment system at Treasury. Shortly after my conversation today with him, however, the news broke that Musk's lead Bros inside of Treasury's computer system, 25-year old Marko Elez, had resigned after a series of racist posts were discovered from a Twitter/X account that he deleted in December. If you're wondering if those posts are somehow out-of-context or written years ago, just last July he Tweeted: "Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool." So, yeah.

Also today, we discuss some of the very serious and under-reported concerns regarding the H5N1 bird flu above and beyond what it is doing to spike the price of eggs on grocery store shelves. The virus appears to be both quickly spreading AND mutating. Unfortunately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) are also effectively handcuffed by the Trump Administration in what they are allowed to study any communicate to the public about it. Not that Trump that we have reason to worry about Trump's leadership during a deadly pandemic or anything.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with more news on the DOGE Bros' ongoing infiltration and attack on the U.S. Government and our Constitutional order, such as over at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), where they have reportedly now descended, after the disgraced "scientist" who helped facilitate Trump's fake hurricane in Alabama years ago (remember "SharpieGate"?) has now been tapped to run the entire agency. In addition to producing critical climate and data on our oceans, the agency also houses the National Weather Service, which Project 2025 calls for privatizing. Sadly, she has even more today. Though we do close on an amusing note!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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

Follow @GreenNewsReport...




(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Elon Musk's DOGE Bros descend on NOAA, Trump taps disgraced 'SharpieGate' guy to run it; Iconic monarch butterfly hits new low in Western U.S.; PLUS: Study finds rat populations are increasing due to global warming... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Click here to listen or download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): January surprises with a global temperature record; "We feel terrorized": What EPA employees sasy about the decision to stay or go under Trump'; E.P.A. demotes career employees overseeing science, enforcement, and more; Colombia’s president orders national oil company to cancel US venture over environmental concerns... PLUS: Trump’s reversal of climate policies risks undermining U.S. manufacturing, costing jobs... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast': We momentarily take Donald Trump's delusional bait on Gaza, before spitting it out to take on his and Elon Musk's very real, horrifying, unlawful breakdown of the American Constitutional order and all that it means (or used to) around the globe. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

After air last night --- as usual these days --- a number of troubling Trump-related stories broke. Among them, news that the Administration has notified all U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) workers across the globe that they are immediately off the job and must return to the U.S. within 30 days. Decades-old programs in about 120 countries are now stopped dead in their tracks, including life-saving food for starving children that will now be left at the ports; HIV medicine on shelves that won't be delivered to AIDS victims; hundreds of other programs supporting clean water, independent media, education, including for girls under Taliban rule in Afghanistan; tracking and preventing polio, smallpox, tuberculosis and Ebola outbreaks; and much more.

American foreign aid "soft power" initiatives that foster goodwill around the globe and make up less than one-percent of the annual U.S. budget are apparently all now out of business. Foreign strongmen from Russia to Hungary to Iran to China and beyond are rejoicing today and openly expressing their public thanks to Musk and Trump for doing their bidding.

Also last night, Trump announced during a presser in D.C. with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the U.S. will relocate (forcibly, I guess?) nearly 2 million Palestinians from Gaza to somewhere or another, "take over the Gaza Strip", raze the entire territory and claim "ownership" of it for the U.S., before filling it with beautiful new seaside resorts, turning it into the "Riviera of the Middle East". What could possibly go wrong?

Here to explain what is definitely wrong about that and so much more today, are two of our favorite BradCast panelists, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS', longtime blogger and co-host of his weekly Professional Left Podcast.

In addition to Trump's delusional "ethnic cleansing" dreams for Gaza, we also discuss how he is "a powerful useful idiot" for Netanyahu and his rightwing allies. But Parton isn't buying the idea that his new scheme is meant to distract from Trump's lawlessness elsewhere. "The idea that he's got some strategy to distract from all the terrible things that Elon Musk is doing, I don't think that's true. I think they've just divided up the work."

"I'd say this is tossing a match onto a pile of oily rags," Driftglass chimes in. "But the fire is already burning. This is adding napalm to napalm. And everybody knows it. I think Trump is narcissistic enough and stupid enough and willing to listen to his real estate friends enough to say, 'Sure, why not?'"

Meanwhile, back on the home front (Fatherland?), where "Elon Musk bought his way into the Treasury [and] bought this 60% share in this President," the richest man in the world is "getting what he paid for," says Driftglass, in personally shutting down one federal agency after another, all unlawfully. But who's gonna stop him? Drifty argues Trump will simply ignore any adverse court rulings that may come down the road, if they come at all. "You can't undo the damage I've done, therefore I win!," he quips, before noting: "Trump is perfectly willing to change his mind on a dime and lie about everything and say 'I never authorized anything.' But it's going to take public outrage in the streets, by the right people." Who are those "right people"? Tune in.

Digby joins me in dismissing Trump's largely toothless Executive Orders but agrees that what Musk is doing is of another order. "The DOGE thing is a genuine constitutional crisis," she warns. "The Republicans have absolutely laid down and said [to Trump], 'Please give me your boots so I can lick them.' So they are completely useless, and that's a big part of the problem. I'm terrified about how far this can go."

For much more terror and how we might, collectively, put a stop to it, please tune in for today's often terrifying --- if still occasionally humorous --- BradCast...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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

With apologies to Rick Wilson, whose weekend social media quip I've stolen for the headline of today's BradCast, I'd say both things are true. We are both overwhelmed and under attack. In a way that the United States has never been under attack before. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

The "attack", of course, is coming from inside the house. In this case, from inside Donald Trump's White House. Or, at least from his extra-Constitutional White House henchmen: Elon Musk and his band of personal employees, none of who have been elected to anything or approved by the U.S. Senate or anything else. And yet, this band of miscreants that call themselves the "Dept. of Government Efficiency" or DOGE, some just literally out of high school, are unlawfully taking over the command and control functions of independent federal agencies in the Executive Branch, including the one that at Treasury that controls the nation's actual checkbook and its payments of more than $6 trillion each year. That system includes checks to federal workers, Social Security and Medicare payments, tax refunds, foreign aid and much much more.

They are doing all of this, apparently, with the lawless President's blessing. It is a Trump-approved attack on the rule of law, our Constitutional order, and, of course (the enemy of all MAGA!) the "Administrative State".

Doing my best today to overcome some local transmitter issues here in L.A. and technical issues inside our flagship local KPFK studios during our live show, I tried to put into stark perspective what appears to be unfolding --- what we know and what we don't, some of the heroes standing up in opposition --- over the past 72 or so unprecedented hours since we last spoke.

Here are just some of the media reports I was culling from. You'll have to tune in to hear how all the pieces fit together, what they portend moving forward, and for a quick listener call or two at the end...

• "Senior FBI official forcefully resisted Trump administration firings" - NBC NEWS
• "F.C.C. Chair Orders Investigation Into NPR and PBS Sponsorships" - NYTIMES
• "US health websites, datasets taken down as agencies comply with Trump executive orders" - CNN
• "More USAID staff ousted after Trump administration dismantles aid agency" - REUTERS
• "Trump and Musk move to dismantle USAID, igniting battle with Democratic lawmakers" - AP
• "Elon Musk's Team Now Has Access to Treasury's Payments System" - NYTIMES
• Historian Heather Cox Richardson puts a lot of this into perspective in her "Letters from an American" newsletter for February 1.
• Journalist Josh Marshall of TPM reports on several conversations with "people in the key executive departments" over the weekend, as Musk and his DOGE boys were taking over control of everything...

As noted, that's just a bit of today's source material. And a bit of what has happened over these past 72 hours. Tune in for much more today and, no doubt, on tomorrow's program, as Trump's attack on our Constitutional democracy, with the help of co-President and heavy Elon Musk, continues...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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

Follow @GreenNewsReport...




(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Crews gain ground against L.A. Fires, as long road to recovery begins; Trump's Dept. of Energy nominee, a fossil fuel executive, calls for more domestic energy production; PLUS: President Biden urges Americans to hold the line on climate action in farewell address... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Click here to listen or download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): FDA bans Red Dye No. 3 from food; For LA water issues, misinformation spreads nearly as fast as the wildfires; As climate risks mount, homeowners far beyond California face soaring insurance bills; Standoff in South Africa ends with 87 miners dead; Biden approved L.A. wildfire aid. But Trump will control spending; More Americans than ever are living in wildfire areas. L.A. is no exception; EPA warns of 'forever chemicals' in sludge fertilizer... PLUS: Biden administration withdraws proposal that aimed to save whales off East Coast by slowing ship speeds... and much, MUCH more! ...

I suspect it's gonna get much uglier before it's all said and done. And we're here for it! A "MAGA Civil War"? Count us in on The BradCast! [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

But, first up, some other news today...

• Repeated "wildfire weather" warnings from the National Weather Service for Los Angeles, predicting "a life-threatening, destructive windstorm," with wind gusts as high as 100mph(!) from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday morning, after months of dry weather appear to have been prescient. The day started here with a neighbors huge tree limb blowing over to crush our backyard canopy amid the gusty winds. By shows end today, tens of thousands being evacuated from a quickly growing wildfire in Pacifica Palisades, on the coast. It has gotten much worse since we got off air today, with hundreds reportedly abandoning their cars on the Pacific Coast highway to flee encroaching flames.

• In what counts for Trump criminal accountability court news these days, his favorite federal Judge/tool, Aileen Cannon in Florida, who was seated at the very end of his first term after he lost the 2020 election, , is working hard for her promotion to SCOTUS. On Tuesday, she exercised dubious authority to block the release, at least for now, of Special Counsel Jack Smith's report on Donald Trump's two different, now-abandoned federal felony indictments for stealing thousands of pages of highly classified national security documents upon leaving office, and for his failed attempts to steal the 2020 election. We'll see how long her ruling stands.

• Meanwhile, in New York, an appeals court on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump's attempt to stay his criminal sentencing, still scheduled for Friday, in the case in which he was found guilty of 34 felony fraud counts related to his hush money payments to a porn star to help him cheat to win the 2016 election. Barring any surprises, the sentencing is still on for this week, though the judge in the case has indicated he is unlikely to issue any jail time, given Trump's re-election. But, even with an "unconditional discharge", he will still become the nation's first convicted felon to be sworn in as President.

• On Monday in New York, in federal court, former NYC Mayor turned disgraced Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court for failing to lawfully respond to the $148 million defamation judgement against him won by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who Rudy and Trump both falsely claimed had committed fraud during the 2020 election. If only Rudy could have figured out how to become President and make all of his crimes go away like Donny did.

• Then, we're joined by RYAN COOPER, Managing Editor of The American Prospect, on the emerging (and hilarious) dust-up between the broligarchs who control Trump, like richest-man-in-the-world Elon Musk (and his sidekick Vivek Ramaswamy), and his hardcore MAGA cultists like Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon. Cooper's article on the matter is headlined "President Musk Declares War on American Workers".

  Just before the turn of the new year, sparks started flying when the duped MAGA cultists learned that Trump was going to continue the H-1B visa program that allows skilled tech workers to come to the U.S. and take less money to work longer hours than American citizens. After facing criticism for the Silicon Valley billionaires' favorite work visa scheme (the South African-born Musk came here himself on an H-1B), Musk took to the social media site he purchased and declared war on Loomer and any other MAGAs who dared oppose him, declaring: "The reason I'm in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B," before he added, "Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend."

  The self-proclaimed "free-speech absolutist" then proceeded to downgrade and demonetize Loomer's account on Twitter/X, along with dozens of other MAGAs who dared call out Musk and the H-1B program.

  Today, Cooper explains tells me why the Silicon Valley broligarchs are so fond of the H-1B program, which, he says, they wield as a "weapon of class warfare" that "provides a pool of exploitable labor" that must do as you say or get sent back to their country. We also discuss Musk and the Right's actual position on "free speech" ("Tthey get to say whatever they want, and you get to shut up."); who appears to really be calling the shots now in Trumpland (Hint: its the guy who controls the "still depressingly influential social media platform that all the Republicans are on"); and how this nascent war between the two major factions of Trump's MAGA cult/coalition is likely to shake out in the days ahead.

  "We are in the realm of syphilitic emperor history books," Cooper tells me. "You've got Trump, who is 78 and clearly has lost MANY steps from when he was a young man. But Elon Musk is also incredibly erratic and impulsive. With these two megalomaniac narcissists with giant fevered egos, typically you'd see a massive falling out over something." And yet, so far, Trump is standing with the richest man on Earth and pretending he even knows what the H-1B program is. Meanwhile, says Cooper, about "Trump and his toadies, the minute they become inconvenient for him, he just throws them over the side. Which, for some reason, doesn't seem to affect the supply of people lining up to get thrown over the side the next day."

• Finally, Desi Doyen has our first Green News Report of the new year, with much to catch up on after our long holiday break, including the brutal, climate change-fueled weather across much of the country this week; President Joe Biden's last-minute ban on new offshore drilling across most U.S. coastal waters; the environmental legacy of the late President Jimmy Carter; and much more...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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

We're back on today's BradCast after our holiday break! And just in time for today's completely peaceful January 6th certification of the 2024 Electoral College results during a joint session of Congress. It sure is fun how peaceful things are when Republicans aren't pretending the election was stolen from them, eh? [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

But that doesn't mean 2025 hasn't started off with a bang, unfortunately, as discussed along with a whole bunch of stuff today as we begin to get caught up on some news we missed over our break and the news that continues to break now that we're back.

Before opening up the phones to listeners in the second half of today's show, here are links to just some of the stories cited in our coverage today...

• Blogger and activist Jeff Tiedrich offers perhaps the best ever journalistic description of the "cognitively-impaired rage-baby" who, over the weekend, "melt[ed] down into saddest sad ever" over flags to be flown at half-staff in memory of President Jimmy Carter during the rage-baby's second inauguration two weeks from today.

• Our factoids of the day on Jimmy Carter's environmental legacy, as the long goodbye to the 37th President of the United States continues before he is finally laid to rest in Plains, Georgia later this week at age 100.

• In her capacity as President of the U.S. Senate, Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the 2024 Presidential election to Donald Trump, oversaw the certification of the Electoral College results today during a peaceful joint session of Congress. It was carried out without challenge, incident, death, insurrection or terror attack on the U.S. Capitol, as previously incited by the former President (now official President-elect) four years ago today.

• Criminal felon and rage-baby Donald Trump continues to rage this week following the ruling [PDF] last Friday by the judge in his New York hush money trial, where he was found guilty of 34 counts of felony fraud related to paying off a porn star to help him cheat to win the 2016 election. Justice Juan Merchan ordered that Trump would be sentenced this coming Friday, ten days before his second inauguration. But the judge also signaled Trump was unlikely to face any jail time and will instead receive an unusual, "unconditional discharge" for his many crimes. Nonetheless, Trump continues to rage and appeal and, so far, lose all of those appeals. Despite that likely lack of any actual punishment at all, the news now means Trump will almost certainly be sworn in to office as the first convicted felon to enjoy that great honor.

• Also today, a few words about the terror attacks by two U.S. citizens last week on New Year's Day, one in New Orleans on Bourbon Street, one in Las Vegas outside of a Trump hotel in a Tesla Cybertruck, The latter was carried out by a hardcore Donald Trump (and Elon Musk and Bobby Kennedy Jr.) supporter, even though that aspect of the attack has been virtually ignored by the corporate media.

Then we open the phones to listeners for the first time in the new year, To discuss the news of the day along with hopes and fears for what lies ahead this year. In addition to one of our favorite Trump trolls, we also hear from a caller who says that he went to school with Elon Musk in South Africa. What he tells us happened at that school, if true, may explain a whole lot about Elon Musk...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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

Today, on our last new BradCast of 2024: It's beginning to look a lot like failure, everywhere you look in D.C. It's already getting pathetic before either the new majorities are sworn in to Congress or the new Administration officially takes over the White House. But we're all here for the GOP fiascos today! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... A state appeals court panel in Georgia ruled 2 to 1 on Thursday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis must be disqualified from the racketeering indictment she filed against Donald Trump and 18-conspirators for their failed attempt to steal the state from Joe Biden in 2020. The case itself, however, may continue. The court cited an "appearance of impropriety" related to Willis' romantic relationship with a former Special Prosecutor assigned to the same case. She quickly filed an appeal to the ruling today, but it could be the end to this criminal case against the convicted felon who will be sworn in as President, even though today's ruling could still be overturned by the state Supreme Court or Georgia's Prosecuting Attorneys' Council could reassign the case to another prosecution team.

THEN... If you're looking for an idea of what next year may be like in Congress, when Republicans in the U.S. House will have an even slimmer majority than they do now, and when Donald Trump will be "running the ship" in the White House, look no farther than the clusterf__k that has unfolded over the past 24 hours in the House. A bipartisan, bicameral deal to avoid a Government shutdown on Friday, just before Christmas, was effectively nixed by... Elon Musk, the unelected South African who appears to have purchased not just the Presidency, but the entirety of the U.S. Government with his $277 million investment on Trump's behalf in the 2024 Presidential election.

After a few of Musk's tweets against it yesterday --- despite clearly never even having read a single page of the three-month Continuing Resolution meant largely to keep the government operating until a full budget deal could be reached in March --- the bill was pronounced dead. Then Trump jumped in, late in the game, to say that he too --- just like Elon! --- was against the bill! Even though he could have rung in to kill it or change it any time long before yesterday. Musk, the richest man in the world, and perhaps the most clueless (at least when it comes to how government and legislation works) now seems to be running the GOP ship in D.C., despite having no clue how to run a D.C. ship.

Trump then began demanding an end to the very idea of a Debt Ceiling despite the Debt Ceiling having nothing to do with this week's must-pass legislation. (His newfound objection to it is apparently because he doesn't want to have the raise the Debt Ceiling on his watch, so he'll be free when he does to blow up the national debt with new, enormous tax cuts for his wealthy pals...like Elon!) This afternoon a new bill was cobbled together that Trump claimed to support. But, minutes after we got off air, that measure failed, as Democrats were no longer interested in helping Speaker Mike Johnson --- or Trump or President Musk --- out of their own mess.

Of course, that's not all that's happening at years-end. And we've got two of our good friends and fan faves here to try and make sense (or not) of much of it. We're joined once again today by fellow old-school bloggers, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and DRIFTGLASS, author of his own eponymously-named blog and co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast, for an end-of-year roundtable, of sorts.

As usual, they've both got keen insight on the idiocy unfurling in D.C. today and much more, including such topics as...

• DRONES over New Jersey!!! (Also: Who cares?)
• Elon's buffoonery and Trump's diminishment.
• Mike Johnson's likely brief future as House Speaker.
• Consequences and dangers (for voters, for January 6th, for Inauguration Day) of a GOP holiday government shutdown and a GOP failure to elect a House Speaker.
• Corporate CEOs kissing Trump's ass, for some reason.
• Will we be targeted by the new Administration?
• Should Joe Biden offer preemptive pardons to people like Liz Cheney?
• Do Dems really need to reinvent themselves, as some claim, after narrowly losing the Presidency and picking up a seat in the House in November?
• Did the Dems blow an opportunity by not elevating superstar Rep. AOC to Ranking Member of the Oversight Committee?

...And what are Digby and Driftglass most worried about --- and most hopeful for --- in the new year, as a new Republican majority takes over Congress and either Trump or Musk take over the White House?

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is here for our last Green News Report of 2024, as the Biden EPA grants California's waiver to phase out sales of new, all-gasoline cars by 2035; A disturbing new study on microplastics and cancer; And Biden's Dept. of Energy finds that GOP plans to expand natural gas exports will hike up prices for Americans...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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

Still trying to make sense of it all on today's BradCast. But at least we've got confirmation today on a few different stories that we've been yelling and screaming about for years now. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• A hand-count of ballots in Ashtabula County, Ohio last week found that two contests on the ballot --- one, a tax levy to fund city schools, the other, to fund a cemetery district --- were actually adopted by voters on November 5th, after previously being reported, inaccurately, as having failed. The hand-count in the contests took place after errors were discovered in the tabulation for all County Issues on the ballot during a hand-count of a fire district levy, which also flipped from NO to YES, thanks to the hand-count.

  Tomorrow, the 2024 Presidential Electors, chosen by the popular vote in each state, will meet in each state capital to cast their vote in the Electoral College. A majority of those votes will be cast for Donald Trump, based on the computer-tallied results in each state. Those results either accurately reflect the intent of the majority of the electorate --- or they do not. Without the publicly-overseen hand-counts that cybersecurity and voting system experts were strongly recommending this year in particular (we think it's a good idea for every election), Americans are unlikely to ever know one way or the other if Trump actually defeated Kamala Harris. At least in Ashtabula they now know that their levy issues were tallied as per voter intent, and the local high school which saw its roof collapse in early December under five and a half feet of snow, will now be able to afford to fix the damage.

• Former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov pleaded guilty on Monday to lying to federal agents about a supposed $10 million in bribes he falsely claimed were paid by Burisma, an energy company in Ukraine, to Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Those lies, which Smirnov said were peddled to him by members of Russian intelligence, were at the center of House Republicans' failed attempt to impeach President Biden, after they and Trump and his other supporters laundered that disinformation from Russian intelligence operatives into the American media and chambers of the U.S. Congress.

• Over the weekend, CNN reported that nearly three dozen of Donald Trump's nominees for his incoming Administration were donors to his campaign or to "outside" groups supporting him. Eight of Trump's nominees to Cabinet positions, so far, donated more than $37 million dollars. That doesn't even include the $277 million dollars spent by Elon Musk to help buy Trump's Presidency and his position of power within it. Musk has been named to head up Trump's so-called "Department of Government Efficiency." Compare that to the seemingly paltry $100,000 in donations to the 2020 Biden Campaign or super PACs supporting him, from a dozen members of Biden's Cabinet. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) noted this weekend on Meet the Press, "Never before in American history have so few billionaires, so few people, had so much wealth and so much power. And never before, in American history, have the people on top had so much political power. We can't go around the world saying, 'Oh, well, in Russia, Putin has an oligarchy.' Well, we've got an oligarchy here too!"

• Of course, it's not just those hoping to abuse positions of power in Trump's next Administration. Over the past week, Amazon founder (and Washington Post owner) Jeff Bezos and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg each announced their companies were giving $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. And over the weekend, ABC News --- owned by the Goliath, $200 billion Disney corporation --- announced they were settling a defamation case filed against them and George Stephanopoulos after the ABC anchors' on-air assertion that Donald Trump "had been found liable for rape" in the lawsuits filed against him by writer E. Jean Carroll, in which juries found Trump liable for some $88 million dollars after guilty verdicts for sexual abuse and defamation. The case they chose to settle would likely easily have been won by ABC for a number of reasons, including the fact that the Judge in Carroll's defamation case against Trump told the jury that the jury in the sexual assault case found Trump was indeed found guilty of what "many people commonly understand the word 'rape'" to mean. Instead of fighting, however, the Disney-owned company bent the knee, agreed to issue an apology, give $15 million to Trump's future Presidential Library fund as a "charitable contribution", and $1 million to his law firm. Why would they do that? Josh Marshall offers an excellent explanation, citing how legacy media outlets like ABC News and Washington Post (along with CNN, NBC, MSNBC and others) amount to a drop in the bucket to the major corporations which own them. While those corporations are willing to sacrifice their money-losing news outfits, they are willing to pay tribute to the "King" to help dissuade him from abusing his power to go after the rest of their multi-billion dollar corporations that are far more vulnerable to abuses of power by a corrupt President.

• Finally, we open the phone lines to listeners on all of the above --- or whatever else is on their minds today --- in what is likely to be our last call-in show of the year. And, for reasons I cannot explain, they were all suspiciously kind today. Hmmm....

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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

Okay. The best way to take in today's BradCast is simply to listen to it. That is almost always the case, but especially today. The stuff you are tuning in for is likely right up front today. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

I have been hearing from a lot of listeners of the show and readers at The BRAD BLOG since the election, especially on the heels of our coverage last week of a letter sent to Vice President Kamala Harris by a group of top-flight computer scientists and cybersecurity and voting system experts, explaining to her why they are strongly urging her to seek hand-recounts of ballots in several battleground states. I covered their 5-page letter [PDF] in detail on our show last Thursday, along with my interview with longtime University of South Carolina computer science professor and voting system expert, Duncan Buell, one of the signatories.

Around the same time, a longtime financial services security expert, Stephen Spoonamore, who I've known for many years, also begin describing his own concerns about the reported results of the November 5th Presidential election, and has now sent two "Duty to Warn" letters to the Vice President (here is his latest) also recommending she ask for hand-recounts in several battleground states.

While the group of experts cite well-documented evidence of Trump supporters unlawfully breaching proprietary voting systems, copying its software and distributing it across the Internet following the 2020 election, in states including Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Colorado (for which several have been charged and/or convicted with felony crimes), Spoonamore's worries are a bit more speculative. He is concerned by his analysis of a reportedly high number of what are known as "Bullet Ballots", which include one single vote (in this case, for Trump for President) and for no one else on the ballot. He augments that concern with what he fears could be a related bevy of hoax bomb threats in largely Dem-leaning jurisdictions on Election Day, said to have come from Russian email domains, as well as the use of Trump supporter Elon Musk's Starlink Internet system in a number of places.

My opening monologue today speaks to all of those concerns, as shared by many Harris supporters who --- not unlike Trump supporters in 2020 and Clinton, Sanders and Kerry supporters in years past --- are suspicious of the reported results of the election. I try to offer some much-needed clarity about what Spoonamore, somewhat misleadingly, described originally as Bullet Ballots, cast at a suspiciously high rate in some battleground states, but not in immediately neighboring states, as well as his other allegations.

Many more details in the show, right up at the top, if you want to give it a listen. But, the long and short is this: It doesn't matter what one's reasons may be for a lack of confidence in the reported results, as currently tallied almost entirely by computer tabulators, either correctly or incorrectly. The only way to answer those concerns, and to determine if the results were tabulated accurately, is with a public hand-count of ballots, either in whole or even in a smaller audit of a random sampling of precincts to ensure computer-reported results accurately reflect the intent of voters.

That has been true for the two decades that I have been reporting on these issues and similar concerns --- sometimes justified, sometimes not (again, it doesn't matter) --- whether they come from Republicans or Democrats or third-party voters. Publicly hand-counting paper ballots (hopefully hand-marked paper ballots!) is the only way to possibly gain confidence among those in the electorate who are suspicious, rightfully or not, about reported results. Public hand-counts remain the Gold Standard for democratically conducted elections --- no matter how many in the media, or even in the "elections industry", misleadingly suggest otherwise.

When you really REALLY need to know who won the closest of elections, you publicly hand-count the ballots. Doing so, by the way, is not always dispositive. There are still sophisticated ways to defraud even a publicly hand-counted election. But it's the best and easiest place to begin.

As noted, there is much more specific detail in my coverage of all of this today, including, for example, news on a hand-counted audit of several precincts this week in Centre County, PA, following a still-unexplained problem uploading absentee ballots into the County's tabulator system on Election Day. So, for those who have touched base with me about any or all of these related concerns, please tune in today!

ALSO TODAY...

• Speaking of counting votes in Pennsylvania, hedge-fund CEO and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick currently leads three-term Democratic Senator Bob Casey by about 17,000 votes, or about one-quarter of one percent, out of nearly seven million votes tallied in the contest. A recount is set to begin shortly, and Counties may choose to count ballots either by hand (please do!) or by a different computer-tabulator than those used to tally them originally. But all of that is taking place amid a legal battle that has stretched on for years, concerning whether absentee ballots, which are known to have arrived on time, but with missing or incorrect dates on their outer envelope, should be counted. A number of counties led by Democrats say yes, they should be counted and that the dates are meaningless. That is true and almost everybody --- even many Republicans, including McCormick who sued to include such ballots in the count when he narrowly lost a 2022 GOP primary --- agree! But, in response to lawsuits filed by 2024 Dave McCormick joined by the Republican National Committee, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on Monday that, no, those votes may not be counted this year, since (terrible) state law mandates they may not be. More details, as usual, on today's program.

• Yesterday on The BradCast, we discussed the importance of full and proper FBI vetting of nominees to top Presidential Administration posts with former Deputy Asst. Attorney General and former Chief Counsel for Nominations in the US Senate, Lisa Graves. Instead, Donald Trump's team has hired a private firm to vet potential nominees. Graves explained how such background checks are critical for ensuring that top government officials do not have leverage that may expose them to blackmail, etc. Well, new details now coming out about the allegations of sex trafficking of 17-year old girls by Trump's nominee for U.S. Attorney General, Matt Gaetz serve as a reminder of how important that is. The fact that files said to detail evidence and testimony on some of the most illicit and disturbing charges against him were reportedly hacked from a law firm on Monday puts a huge, blinking, screaming red flag next to that point!

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report as Trump nominates climate science deniers and fossil fuel profiteers to top environment-related cabinet posts, and as President Biden visits the Amazon Rainforest to tout some of his landmark achievements taking on climate change...before Donald Trump returns to office and works to reverse much of that critical progress...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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