We're getting caught up on today's BradCast with a whole bunch of stuff, from the dark Trump secrets still buried in unreleased Epstein Files, to his lies, illegal actions and terrible advice about the economy, to another loss for Republicans in the Gerrymandering Wars and some actual election fraud finally discovered in Georgia! (And you'll never guess whodunnit!) [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Happily, the corporate mainstream media finally seems to be fully on board the disturbing, still-unexplained, and unlawful absence of critical documents from the Epstein Files released to date by the Dept. of Justice as per the Epstein Files Transparency Act. In addition to the absence of multiple 2019 FBI interviews with a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was just 13-years old, additional revelations are coming to light. CNN, for instance, confirmed those three missing interviews and contemporaneous FBI interview notes this week, and found that at least another 90 interviews with other survivors are also apparently missing, for unexplained reasons, from the DOJ's website.

But, with the major outlets seemingly digging in, we've got a bit more time today to get caught up on some other stuff, regarding some economic matters, some SCOTUS issues, and some election news. Among those stories...

• Fallout from last week's 6 to 3 U.S. Supreme Court ruling determining that Trump's chaotic, worldwide taxes on imports to the U.S., as issued under the supposed authority of the U.S. International Emergency Economic Powers Act (or, IEEPA), are both unlawful and unconstitutional. As it turns out, those illegal tariffs have also been very expensive for American consumers who paid for about 90% of them according to studies issued this month from both the Federal Reserve and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That, despite Trump's repeatedly lie (as echoed again during his State of the Union Address this week), that "the tariffs [are] paid for by foreign countries." Both the Fed and Congress disagree.

• But, don't be fooled by SCOTUS' ruling last Friday, even if it came in opposition to the President for a happy change. In fact, the challenge to Trump's tariffs was a case brought by the far-right architect of today's corrupted Supreme Court, and it took almost half a year longer to be handed down by the corrupted Court than necessary. No, SCOTUS has not "joined the No Kings Movement", as MS NOW's Stephanie Ruhle ridiculously declared after the ruling was handed down.

• For the record, the "economic emergency" that Trump disingenuously declared as his pretext to enact the levies was supposedly based on a global trade deficit that the U.S. has with many countries of the world. As it turns out, that deficit grew larger under Trump's tariffs last year, according to Trump's own Commerce Dept. data.

• Not to worry, however, everyone is going to be rich once the Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act kicks in for this year's tax season, right? Um, so far...based on IRS data to date, not so much, as average refunds in the first part of the filing season have been some 42% lower than the Administration has long been promising they would be.

• But, hey, there are a lot of MAGA suckers out there, I guess. And we should have expected no less from the guy whose failing media company, Trump Media & Technology Group (which trades as DJT on the stock exchange) has seen its value plummet faster than his approval ratings. This week, shares in his loser company, which once sold for $100 --- and cost a bunch of MAGA folks their life savings --- closed for the first time on Monday in the single digits! The company, which has lost hundreds of millions of dollars every year since it went public in 2022, clawed its way back above $10/share in recent days. It seems unlikely to stay there.

• In election and voting news, Team Red continue to struggle in their Gerrymandering Wars in advance of the critical midterm elections, as both the Utah state Supreme Court (on Friday) and a three-judge federal panel (on Monday), rejected state Republicans' attempts to override a 2018 ballot initiative in which voters chose to require U.S. House district maps in the otherwise very Republican state to be drawn fairly, with neutral rules, by an independent redistricting commission. The GOP state Legislature has been trying to lock in their unlawful map, drawn to create four safe Republican Congressional Districts. But, after the recent rulings, we appear now to be at the end of their four-year battle to block a new map that will offer three Republican leaning Districts and one safely Democratic seat in Salt Lake County.

• Down in Georgia, where Trump has been falsely claiming massive voter fraud since he lost the 2020 election there, the MAGA majority on the State Election Board has, in fact, finally discovered some election fraud! And it was apparently committed by one of Elon Musk's super PACs in both 2020 and 2024.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report today, with a bunch of energy related lies from Trump's SOTU this week; Big Oil's appeal to SCOTUS to help them quash climate liability lawsuits; Trump's Interior Dept. quashing bedrock conservation rules for public lands; and a new suit filed by young Americans to challenge the Trump EPA's recent gutting of 20 years of climate change-related regulations...

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Today on BradCast: I don't care what he says, no President has the power to cancel American elections. Period. Even if that definitive statement of fact is unlikely to be the end of that story. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Now, officially, one year into his final term as President, Donald Trump's "Golden Age for America" is a complete --- if wholly predictable --- failure. His approval ratings have tanked; he has terrorized a great American city by placing it under siege by his hapless, if deadly, militarized immigration goons from ICE and CBP (with some 1,500 U.S. military troops said to be standing by, should he decide to fraudulently invoke the Insurrection Act); NATO, the largest and most successful alliance in world history is now on the brink of collapse, thanks to his threats to steal the peaceful, semi-autonomous nation of Greenland from our ally Denmark; and, oh yeah, the stock market tanked today amid Trump's new tariff trade war threats against our friendly European allies who disagree with him regarding Greenland.

The November midterm elections can't come soon enough. But they will come, despite Trump's various impotent threats or suggestions to the contrary. A President has no power --- none, zero --- to cancel elections in the approximately 10,000 jurisdictions around the country which run them independently of the federal government.

Nonetheless, his Administration's fraudulent abuse of the legal system to try and make it more difficult for legal voters to vote continues. As does his Administration's failures in court, where their attempted legal fraud is not going well --- even in cases overseen by Trump-appointed judges.

Among today's coverage...

• A federal Judge late last week dismissed the Dept. of Justice's pathetic lawsuit against California, seeking to force it to turn over state voter roll data. The Democratically-controlled Golden State is just one of 23 states and the District of Columbia being sued by the DOJ for refusal to turn over private voter information --- including Social Security numbers, birth dates and Drivers License details --- as part of the performative Trump campaign to ferret out supposed fraudulent voter registrations by millions of non-citizens. In tossing the case, the judge found DOJ has no basis, nor legal authority, to demand CA turn over its voter file. Similar DOJ suits against the other states who refused to violate their own voters privacy rights are likely to be similarly unsuccessful.

• At the same time, the New York Times reports that federal officials have been unable to find any evidence of widespread fraud or mass non-citizen registrations among nearly 50 million state records examined so far. The records, from mostly Republican jurisdictions, have been run though a Dept. of Homeland Security database which was not designed for this purpose, under the DOJ ruse of assuring that voter registration databases are "clean". To date, just 0.02% of records checked have revealed even potential evidence of registration by non-citizens. That tiny number includes registrants who never voted or even knew they were registered, and/or naturalized citizens that triggered false positives in the DHS database.

• Of course, one of the reasons that 23 states are refusing to turn over state voter data to Trump's federal government, is for fear that sensitive information (Social Security numbers, etc.) will be misused. As we've learned today, those states were right to be concerned. The DOJ admitted in a "Corrections" court filing last Friday, that members of Elon Musk's failed DOGE team stole and misused sensitive, personal data from the Social Security Administration. At least one of the DOGE Bros apparently discussed an agreement with a Republican voter fraud group to share personal SSA data with the aim of somehow overturning election results.

• But the Trump Administration fraud doesn't stop there, of course, as even a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled today. In the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge David Novak ruled that Lindsey Halligan --- Trump's former tax lawyer --- and the DOJ, were unlawfully identifying Halligan in court documents and elsewhere as the District's U.S. Attorney. Back in November, a different judge in the District ruled that Halligan had been unlawfully appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi. As such, the indictments Halligan secured against former FBI Director James Comey and NY A.G. Letitia James were dismissed. Judge Novak recently gave Halligan seven days to explain why she was still representing herself as USA after the court, last November, found her unlawfully appointed. He demanded to know why that didn't represent a sanctionable fraud against the court. Last week, Halligan responded with an obnoxious, over-the-top, Fox "News"-like explanation (most likely written by Trump's former defense attorney turned Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who signed the document along with Bondi and Halligan). Today, Novak called them all out in a blistering 18-page order [PDF], forcing them to strike Halligan's use of USA in legal filings and elsewhere, while giving Halligan and the others fair warning that further ignoring orders from District judges may result in sanctions, including referral to the Bar Association.

• But wait, there is still more waste, fraud, abuse and court losses for the Trump Administration today, as we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, detailing yet another court ruling that has blocked Trump's attempt at shutting down construction of new off-shore wind farms --- many of them nearly completed --- set to offer clean, cheap, renewable energy for millions of Americans. Trump tried to shut down five such projects. Judges have, so far, restarted three of them. The other two are still being adjudicated...

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It's clear that Donald Trump would much rather we talk about political violence today than his quickly failing economic policies or his 15-year close personal friendship with notorious pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. So we do him the favor of discussing both at the top of today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

From there, it's on to our central story. On yesterday's show, we covered the news of the killing of rightwing activist and longtime Trump ally Charlie Kirk, as reports of his death were just breaking. Today, as the manhunt continues for his seemingly well-prepared killer, we've got more details on both the shooting and the investigation and, with 24 hours of perspective, well-considered analysis of what all of this may mean for the nation as we move ahead.

There is still no known motive for the uncaptured and still-unknown shooter. Yet, a huge portion of the MAGA Right --- from wingnut social media trolls to wingnut billionaires to wingnut elected officials, including the President of the United States --- are, in some cases literally, declaring "WAR" on "the radical left Democrats".

Trump took to the airwaves last night after the murder, conspicuously covering up his right hand in a pre-recorded Oval Office tantrum, in which he condemned political "violence and murder" by "the radical left" as the "tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible." (Hmmm...Can we think of anybody else who might have demonized those with whom they disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible?)

"My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges and law enforcement officials," vowed the President who has said the most despicable things about federal judges and pardoned --- on his first day in office --- more than a thousand of his own supporters for their political violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, where hundreds of them literally and physically attacked law enforcement officials.

Trump also failed to mention the violent attacks on elected officials in his four-minute revenge screed, like the ones against the Speaker of House in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, who was assassinated along with her husband in the middle of the night in their own home less than three months ago by a far-right MAGA dude. The same man also gunned down MN State Senator John Hoffman and his wife in their home that same night, as part of a planned string of attacks against dozens of Democratic elected officials.

Let's also not forget Trump's repeated hilarious jokes over the years about the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi, whose skull was bashed in with a hammer by a guy hunting down Nancy Pelosi. Trump, his sons, and his supporters, have issued jokes about that violent attack for years. Just as Utah's Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee did on social media earlier this Summer to make light of the shootings at the homes of Hortman and Hoffman in Minnesota.

But now, things are different, apparently. While political violence against Democrats doesn't seem to count, with Kirk dead there will be consequences and retribution. "THIS IS WAR," declared the Trumpers on Twitter. "The Democrat Party must be classified as a domestic terror organization and their members and leaders treated accordingly," warned a bunch of them.

"The Left is the party of murder," pronounced Elon Musk, the man with the most Twitter followers in the world. "If they won't leave us in peace, then our choice is fight or die," he tweeted, joining Trump and the others in trying to increase the blood lust, rather than working to cool it down.

At the same time, Democrats --- as they did when their own were attacked --- have been calling for an end to the growing epidemic of political violence and gun violence in this nation. We call for the same.

Among those whose comments or writings over past 24 hours are cited, either positively or negatively, on today's program...

• Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT)
• Donald Trump
• Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC)
• Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ)
• Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL)
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
• Heather Digby Parton
• Josh Marshall

Finally, as Trump and his duplicitous Administration are now, officially, taking credit for U.S. infrastructure improvements made under Joe Biden's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report where, whaddaya know? While Trump is working hard to kill the U.S. wind and solar energy industries on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, the rest of the world is quickly moving to clean, cheap, renewable energy. And China, not the U.S., is making a mint off of it...

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It's all so stupid and ridiculous. But, as discussed on today's BradCast, the stupidity and ridiculousness knows no bound now that he's won a criminal immunity ticket from the Supreme Court. So we will all pay the price until voters change the score. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

To that end, Gubernatorial primary elections were held in New Jersey on Tuesday for this November's general election. Democratic U.S. Rep. Mikey Sherrill, a Navy pilot and former prosecutor, will face off with Trump-endorsed Republican Jack Ciatterelli, who came within just about three points of unseating the state's now termed-out Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy four years ago.

Perhaps more interesting on Tuesday were six state legislative special elections held in three different states. Democrats outpaced expectations in five of them, including one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a native American candidate trounced her Republican challenger by a landslide 69 points! The results amounted to a 50-point over-performance by the Dem as compared to their results in the Presidential election in the same district last November. In all, Dems are now running an average of about 16.4 points ahead of their 2024 results in special elections in 2025.

Then, it's back once again to the mess here in Los Angeles, which isn't really a mess at all. Or, at least, it wasn't until tough guy Donald Trump decided to pretend that largely peaceful protests against his immigration policies required him to violate the law to federalize California National Guard troops and deploy them with the U.S. Marines to support the ICE round-ups of hard-working, non-criminal migrants in the city including, apparently, children.

In a televised address on Tuesday night, CA's Governor Gavin Newsom, who, along with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, opposed Trump's federalization and deployment of troops in the city, described the President's "authoritarian", wannabe "dictatorial" tactics. He warned that Trump is now waging war on democracy and the Constitution itself, and that Americans outside of California can expect to see much the same thing soon in their own hometowns. Will Americans heed his warning?

We're joined today by fellow L.A. resident HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, award-winning Salon columnist and longtime Digby's Hullabaloo proprietor, and another OG blogger friend known simply as 'DRIFTGLASS', co-host of his weekly Professional Left Podcast. As usual, they are here for a roundtable discussion to help us make sense of it all...as senseless and stupid as it all is.

Both share thoughts on what they see as the real point of Trump's dumb but dangerous incitement of violence here in L.A., what it is meant to distract from, and where all of this is headed. Is there any chance this doesn't lead to an invocation of the Insurrection Act by Trump, so he can really violate the law, American values, rights, and the Constitution itself?

"Donald Trump simply has no reason to obey the law anymore, of any kind, for any reason," argues Driftglass. "They feel no compunction about breaking the law because there's no one to stop them" Because he was elected, after receiving criminal immunity from SCOTUS, he believes "he can do whatever he wants. It's an ugly, terrifying fact that we warned people about for years. We begged people not to do this. We still came up short, because 77 million or so people voted for exactly this."

But, will even MAGA support the deployment of U.S. troops on American streets? Something that Republicans, including MAGA, have pretended for years to oppose? "As long as Trump is doing it, they'll be for it," asserts Digby. "The minute it's not him, they'll be against it. They retired the concept of hypocrisy a long time ago."

It is going to worse before it gets better, she warns, citing Trump's top henchman Stephen Miller who, she says, "has given interviews saying that they have plotted this out. Plan B, Plan C. They've been thinking this stuff through. This is actually part of their plan. They're testing the electrified fence here to see what they can get away with."

There is, of course, much much more from both of them today, including on a couple of stories you may have forgotten about for some reason, from just days ago. For example, last Friday, less than a week ago, Elon Musk publicly accused Trump of being named in the unreleased Epstein Files. Also, if you remember, Congressional Republicans passed a bill to slash $1.4 trillion worth of health care and food assistance from low-income Americans to help defray the cost of some $4 trillion in tax cuts mostly for the wealthy, at the cost of a $3 trillion spike to the national debt.

Remember when Republicans used to care about such things? As Digby sez: "They retired the concept of hypocrisy a long time ago"...

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Never mind all that stuff about Donald Trump's breakup with his best buddy on Friday, including Elon Musk's claim that Trump is blocking the release of the Jeffrey Epstein Files because he's featured in them. There's RIOTING AND LOOTING IN LOS ANGELES! ... according to Trump's social media feed.

As discussed on today's BradCast, however, from here in L.A., relatively minor weekend demonstrations against Trump's daily ICE quotas for arresting migrants --- now including day laborers outside of Home Depot, children and U.S. Marshals --- don't amount to much of a "riot" by L.A. standards, no matter what they may be showing you on cable TV or social media. [Audio link to full story follows below this summary.]

It was another lovely, mild, sunny day here in Southern California today, just as it was over the weekend. At least until Trump's federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brownshirts opened fire with tear gas and flash-bang grenades against largely peaceful demonstrators in a couple of small blocks downtown and a small city about 30 minutes south of downtown.

But I'm sure wall-to-wall media coverage and social media algorithms are telling folks out there a very different (and completely unhelpful) story about what is going on here.

In case they aren't, Trump is hoping to grab your attention by abusing his authority again, this time by federalizing the California National Guard against the wishes of both the state's Governor and the Mayor of Los Angeles. Moreover, late today, Trump is said to be deploying the U.S. Marines here, for some reason, in defiance of the U.S. Constitution. But the rule of law and Constitution are for suckers and Democrats, right?

We're happy to report on today's program what is actually going on today here in Los Angeles. Though it is fun to see that Trump --- after recently pardoning thousands of actually violent insurrectionists who actually launched a deadly riot against federal law enforcement officials at the U.S. Capitol a few years ago --- now thinks all of that, at least when it happens in California, is a bad thing.

Not that anything like what Trump incited among his followers on January 6, 2021 is happening here. Not even close. We have far larger demonstrations in this town about every other week just because it's a Thursday. Anyway, tough guy Trump would like you to discuss all of this, rather than his break-up with Elon and all of his other non-stop criming. So, I guess we make his dreams come true on today's program.

Among just some of our source material today...

• ICE is so desperate to meet Stephen Miller's 3,000-arrests-per-day quota, that they mistakenly arrested and detained a member of the U.S. Marshal Service recently. Instead of being shipped off to a super max prison in El Salvador, the arrestee who matched the "general description of a subject being sought by ICE", was eventually released once other law enforcement officials vouched for him.

• CA Governor Gavin Newsom charges that Trump's seemingly unlawful federalization of the California National Guard "is purposely inflammatory and will only escalate tensions". The state is now suing him to stop it. Newsom notes, correctly, that L.A. authorities have access to plenty of law enforcement officials to handle a handful of violent protesters amid the weekend's largely peaceful demonstrations. By Sunday night, in an excellent interview by NBC News' Jake Soboroff, an "unfazed" Newsom dared the Trump Administration to arrest him --- as Trump's "Border Czar" Tom Homan threatened against both him and Mayor Karen Bass --- and underscored again that Trump is little more than a bully whose tough guy act is being carried out because he is "trying to incite violence."

• Trump's unnecessary deployment of federal troops was so poorly planned, by the way, that Guard Members are being forced to sleep on the floor in an L.A. federal building basement or on the street. Photos here.

• His federalizing of the National Guard against the wishes of the Governor (and his mobilization of U.S. Marines) for this purpose is both unprecedented and likely unlawful under the Title 10 authority he has invoked. But if you think he will only do this in L.A. or California, think again. Trump's weekend declaration claims the authority to deploy federal troops --- in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act --- anywhere in the country that he feels like.

We also take a few calls today from listeners in L.A., some email from a listener in the U.K., and finish with this important message for folks both here and elsewhere: DON'T TAKE THE BAIT.

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Yes. I think it is appropriate, as New York Times' very conservative columnist David Brooks did last Friday on PBS, to compare Elon Musk to Pol Pot, Mao Zedong and Stalin. The number of deaths around the globe that he --- and his boss Donald Trump --- are arguably directly responsible for has not yet reached into the millions. But, according to data compiled and tracked by our guest today, it shouldn't be long. More than 300,000 are already unnecessarily dead in just 4 months since the Trump/Musk/DOGE closure of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Tune in to today's BradCast for a full explanation from the woman who has been compiling the numbers to decide for yourself. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP, however, Team Trump seems almost as eager to help Americans die unnecessarily here at home. The "Big, Beautiful Bill" they are hoping to ram through Congress in the next several weeks will cut more than a trillion dollars from health care and food nutrition for as many as 14 million low-income Americans in order to pay for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. But what bothers Republicans about it is that it doesn't cut enough, apparently, from the needy.

Today, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came out with their scoring of the legislation, finding, among other things, that the bill, as recently passed by Republicans in the House, would increase the federal budget deficit by nearly $2.5 trillion dollars over the next decade. So, naturally, the White House and Republican in Congress are on a tear to...attack the CBO, claiming the non-partisan agency created by Congress and headed up by a Republican since 2019, are actually a bunch of partisan Dems trying to undermine Donald Trump.

That lie, put forward most directly by professional liar and Trump's WH Press Sec. Karoline Leavitt yesterday --- even before the CBO numbers were published today --- is also a "ridiculous" lie, as detailed today by WaPo's fact-checker.

THEN... You may recall Elon Musk in the early DOGE Days of February celebrating how he and his DOGE Bros "spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper." The United States Agency for International Development is (or was) the tip of the spear for critical foreign aid programs around the globe. Its small budget punches far above its weight and wins big returns for the world and for the U.S., with critical "soft-power" programs delivering nutritious food to starving populations and medicines to combat HIV, tuberculous, malaria, Ebola and much more. At least it did all of that, and more, before Musk, the richest man in the world, gleefully fed it into the wood chipper on behalf of the Trump Administration four months ago.

Since USAID's sudden shutdown, as my guest today, infectious disease mathematical modeller and health economist Dr. BROOKE NICHOLS, associate professor of Global Health at Boston University, has determined, more than 300,000 people have unnecessarily died around the globe, including more than 213,000 children. The number of chid deaths was in the 212,000 region a few hours ago before airtime, according to Nichols' Impact Counter website. The site tracks ongoing estimates of the number of those who have died since the shutdown of USAID programs, as well as the numbers estimated over the coming year. The carnage --- now tracking as more than 100 deaths per hour --- is broken down between adults and children, and many different causes of death, from HIV to tuberculosis to malnutrition to diarrhea.

Nichols herself says she was horrified by the numbers when she saw what the data at her own tracker was showing her about what she described recently to The Times of London as "100 percent preventable" deaths around the world.

"I was horrified," she tells me today about those "huge" numbers, "because they represent people. I was shocked." She clarifies that the total numbers (300,000+ deaths as of now) are "to date. That number will grow to close to a million by the end of the year if funding isn't restored in some way."

Having worked for years specifically on HIV via PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, initially begun during the George W. Bush Administration), she disputes the Musk/Trump/Republican claims that USAID's programs were riddled with "waste, fraud and abuse." Nichols says she had seen none of that. "Were there small bits and pieces that could have been programmed better? Maybe," she concedes. "But I'm sure that that is a tiny fraction of the budget. And certainly not worth throwing anything into the wood chipper and losing all these tens of thousands of lives."

On PEPFAR, specifically --- which is credited with saving the lives of some 26 million people since its launch in 2003 --- she tells me that before the program, the death toll of those, including children born with HIV, "was unimaginable. Through PEPFAR, it was a complete turnaround. All of a sudden people stopped dying. We were finally getting to the point to meeting all of these UN goals. If you're on treatment and you take your pills everyday, you can't transmit the virus. How cool is that? So we started to reach this tipping point where the epidemic was going down, it's more and more under control. And to have the carpet pulled out from under us as we get so close? It sets us back a decade."

Nichols has much more to share with us today from her home in The Netherlands, about how and why her Impact Counter came together; whether she had reason to believe any of this would be happening during last year's Presidential campaign ("No! I was shocked!," Nichols responds); and how all of this harms not only the direct victims of Trump's foreign aid shutdown, but also Americans here at home in several ways.

She also discusses the politics behind this unspeakable global disaster; the "broken trust" the U.S. is now facing "with a lot of countries, a lot of other organizations"; the mass of death threats and hate mail she has received for simply documenting the numbers; and what she ultimately hopes her work on the Impact Counter might lead to.

"I really hope that it can be used to understand and document what is happening, but also hopefully to advocate for change," she asserts. "Ultimately, I want this to be used so that fewer people die. If that's through people understanding what is happening in a political shift, that would be great. If it's from mobilizing other donors, that is also great."

All of that, as the NY Times' Nicholas Kristof reminded us back in March after he traveled overseas to personally document a number of the tragic deaths as they began to pile up, this all came on the heels of Musk's false insistence at the time: "No one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding. No one."

Turns out that was just another Trump Administration lie. If a particularly horrific one.

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Storm clouds continue to gather, even as there are fewer and fewer government scientists to warn us about what is actually coming. On today's BradCast we offer more than a few warnings of our own. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Don't buy Elon Musk's pretend attack today on Donald Trump and the Republicans' so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" as "a disgusting abomination". Musk doesn't really mean it. (He's just trying to save his drug-addled hide after the waste, fraud and abuse of his deadly, unlawful and wildly destructive DOGE scam.) But don't let that keep you from enjoying the fireworks anyway!

• Big kudos to Miami's NBC6 for featuring veteran South Florida meteorologists John Morales' chilling warning about the "cuts, gutting and sledge hammer attack on science" by the Trump Administration and, specifically, to NOAA and the National Weather Service that, he explains, are already "degrading" the quality of forecasts as hurricane season is now under way.

• Speaking of hurricane season, Trump's newly tapped, entirely inexperienced head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency --- a military guy by the name of David Richardson and the fifth person to hold the position since Trump's re- election --- reportedly told FEMA staffers on Monday that he had no idea there was such a thing as a hurricane season in the U.S. Following Reuters exclusive on that yesterday, a spokesperson from FEMA's parent agency, DHS, claimed Richardson was just joking. But...was he really? If Trump's newly sworn-in Social Security Administrator, Frank Bisignano, offers any hints, the lack of knowledge of the people tapped to run these critical agencies may be far worse than you may think.

• Some elections and democracy news today from overseas that is likely to have ramifications for the U.S. in various ways. In a closely divided election for President in Poland over the weekend, voters narrowly chose Karol Nawrocki, a rightwing historian and staunch nationalist. He will have veto power over Parliament, headed up, since 2023, by liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

• In The Netherlands, ultra-right party leader, Geert Wilders, quit the governing coalition in the Dutch Parliament today over his complaints that migration policies weren't cruel enough. The stunning move has touched off a governing crisis until new elections can be held later this year. The nation's liberal opposition party, however, seems to enjoying the fresh chaos.

• One year to the day after South Korea's conservative President stunned the nation by declaring martial law --- before the move was undone just hours later --- voters elected liberal party leader Lee Jae-myung on Tuesday to be the nation's new President. The disgraced former President, after facing impeachment charges, is currently standing trial on charges of insurrection, which is punishable by death or life in prison. Must be nice.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here for our latest Green News Report, with predictions of a long, hot summer; Canada's wildfire season off to an early and terrible start (and already affecting northern U.S. states); a village in Switzerland wiped off the map last week due to a glacier collapse, thanks to global warming; and the Republican plan to raise your dirty energy prices via their "Big, Beautiful Bill"...

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Constitutional Due Process plays a starring role in today's BradCast --- as it damned well should --- in several different stories of note. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

• Today, we revisit the ridiculous story about the one election from 2024 that is still unsettled. At least it was before Monday, when a federal district judge may have finally put an end to it. We'll see. This is the contest for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat, where incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs' re-election was challenged by her opponent, Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin. At least two recounts found that he lost by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast. Nonetheless, Griffin has been deploying a playbook clearly created for Donald Trump prior to last year's election, in demanding some 65,000 lawfully cast ballots be tossed out entirely --- though only in a few Dem-leaning counties, and only for his race. We unpack all the details again on today's show. But, long story short: The state Supreme Court (dominated 6 to 2 by Republicans, or 6 to 1 in this case, since Riggs recused herself) recently okayed the potentially disenfranchisement of thousands of NC voters to help out Griffin. But Riggs then took the matter to federal court, where U.S. District Court Judge Richard Myers --- a Trump-appointee --- on Monday said absolutely not. You may not change the rules of an election after an election and violate the Constitutional Due Process of voters in the bargain, according to his order [PDF]. This is, of course, very good news for Riggs, but also for democracy itself. Hopefully, it's finally over. We'll see if Griffin chooses to keep his six-months of idiocy and attempted vote suppression going on appeal. Myers has given him one week to decide.

• Trump said over the weekend that he just doesn't really know if the Due Process mandates of the Constitution are actually, ya know, mandatory. He was answering questions about his use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to detain and deport alleged gang members from Venezuela to a gulag in El Salvador for a life sentence, without ever allowing them a day in court to make their case, or even contact with lawyers or family. But the AEA law may only be invoked in the first place against migrants from nations that have declared war on the U.S., or in the event of "invasion" or "incursion" directed by a foreign government. That is certainly not the case with Venezuela, though Trump argued otherwise in his invocation of the wartime law. Earlier this year, reporting from the New York Times and Washington Post revealed that the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) found back in February that there was no evidence of Venezuela's President directing an invasion of the U.S. Trump made his proclamation to begin deportations in March anyway. At the time, the Admin claimed the reporting was wrong and the DoJ vowed extraordinary measures to track down the leakers. But, according to a redacted memo released on Monday under the Freedom of Information Act by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, summarizing the IC's findings, the newspapers had it right and --- I hope you're sitting down --- it appears the Trump Administration was lying about all of this from the jump.

• In related news, yet another federal judge --- this time in the Southern District of New York --- has enjoined the Trump Administration from moving migrants detained under the Alien Enemies Act until they are given full Due Process. The ruling was not unlike one from a Trump-appointed federal judge in South Texas last week. In this case, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a Clinton appointee, found [PDF] that since the Administration has "not demonstrated the existence of a ‘war,’ ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion,’ the AEA was not validly invoked by the Presidential Proclamation."

• Meanwhile, the fortunes of Trump buddy and richest man on earth, Elon Musk --- also, potentially, the world's most hated --- are really beginning to nose dive. Aside from users fleeing Twitter/X in droves this year in the wake of both his partnering with Trump and the Nazification of the social media site, the future of his Electric Vehicle company appears even bleaker. The stock price of Tesla is down some 40% since he DOGEd himself to Trump last December and subsequently outed himself as a far-right extremist. But sales of the company's cars in Europe have fallen even farther. According to new numbers out this week from both Germany and the UK, where, even as overall sales of cars is dropping, EV sales are booming --- at least for companies not owned by Musk --- Tesla sales continue to drive over a cliff. They are down 46% in Germany compared to last April, and a whopping 62% in Britain. Sad!

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as drastic cuts to the National Weather Service are now beginning to endanger public safety, according to its former leaders; Trump's DoJ is suing states to block climate laws and lawsuits; and the Administration plans to shrink National Parks in the U.S. to make room for more mining and drilling, and violate international law by mining the sea floor...

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I've got no clue why so many in the media decided yesterday (Tuesday) was the 100th Day of Donald Trump's second term in office, when it is actually today (Wednesday). Am I missing something? No matter how many times I checked, counted, re-checked, recounted, asked AI, the 100th day --- not that any of it actually matters, unless you find accuracy from your media to be helpful --- is today. So, today is when we officially "celebrate" it on The BradCast. [Audio link to full, rollicking show follows below this summary.]

As we are wont at landmark moments in the second Trump Presidency, we are joined again today by two of our old school blogger friends who have been right about almost everything over the past 20+ years, whether the rest of the world wanted to notice or not. HEATHER DIGBY PARTON is the award-winning columnist at Salon and proprietor of Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and 'DRIFTGLASS' is the notorious eponymous blogger and co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast. They've both got plenty of thoughts to share at this particular "landmark moment".

Trump's approval ratings are plummeting on virtually every single issue via every single legitmate poll released over the past few days. Perhaps most notably, for the moment --- and for his own softening supporters --- his self-induced tanking economy is top of mind today. But, he's a loser on his immigration and mass deportation policies as well. Now, why would that be, given that he was supposedly elected for his great economic prowess ("Tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary of words!," he declared repeatedly in last year's campaign and right on up through his fateful "Liberation Day" on-again, off-again worldwide tariff proclamation earlier this month) and to "solve" the immigration issues that he and Republicans and Fox 'News' have been stoking and worsening for political purposes over so many years?

But none of it is working, as it turns out China is refusing to cower in the face of Trump's 145% tariffs because, as their Foreign Minister explained this week, "it will only make the bully want to push his luck more." There are quite a few elite American law firms, universities and media outlets that may wish to take notice of that response from the largest exporter of goods purchased by Americans, as ships will soon no longer be arriving and shelves at stores may be bare by the time we get to Christmas. That, as new economic numbers out today find that American GDP in the first quarter has fallen by 0.3% after increasing by 2.4% in the final quarter of last year under the economic guidance of President Biden, and more than two-thirds of Americans now predict a Trump Recession on the near horizon.

As to the violence, recklessness and fecklessness of his mass deportation policy, both of our guests concur that is backfiring as well. His supporters also seem to have begun to take notice. As Driftglass argues, they are seeing that "if anyone without a visa can be locked up and deported overnight, you can be, because now we have no Due Process." As Digby observes, "this is happening to people just like you who voted for Trump. And it could be you. They are not discriminating."

But there is much more on our plate to discuss today --- from why all of this is happening and whether it meets or exceeds our guests expectations; to what each of them expect to be Trump's response to his plummeting polls; to who they expect to be the first Trump cabinet member to fall; to what sort of Democrat is needed out there to guide the party back to relevance and put Humpty-Dumpty back together again --- if it can be.

Digby says she's "aged 10 years in the last 100 days" --- me too! --- as Driftglass breaks down what he describes as Trump's "fascist death spiral". Let it be true.

Join us, won't you?...

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Will they fight for the actual health and lives of their constituents? Or go along with (literally) deadly DOGE cuts? Will they throw away tens or hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the clean, renewable energy industry in their own home districts? Or screw over their own voters and local economies in favor of Trump's tax cuts for billionaires and huge corporations? All of those questions, a few answers, and much more --- even several bright spots --- on today's Earth Day 2025 BradCast. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

Among our coverage...

• West Virginia coal miners are suing Bobby Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), for recent layoffs at the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH) and the shut down of critical medical screening and job replacement services for miners. The lead plaintiff in the suit is suffering from lung disease, amid a growing epidemic of black lung in Coal Country. But with some 875 of NIOSH's 1,000 employees terminated earlier this month, they are no longer available to help move miners like him to non-dusty jobs, as required by the Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977. In addition to free screenings for lung disease and the right to job transfers, the federal law also blocks Administrations from weakening existing protections. The Trump Administration, however, doesn't seem to much care about the rule of law.

• In response to the NIOSH layoffs and shutdown of these critical programs for miners, WV's Republican U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito --- who voted to confirm Kennedy just weeks ago --- is now begging him to restore those jobs at NIOSH, many of which were in her state, and the critical medical services for miners in Central Appalachia. All of that, as Trump recently welcomed coal miners to the White House to serve as props for his announcement of new Executive Orders meant to try and force the revival of the dying coal industry ("beautiful, clean coal," as he insists on falsely describing it) and to otherwise try and knee-cap cleaner, safer, more profitable renewable energy initiatives in the bargain.

• Also part of the new Administration's celebration of Earth Day this year, Trump's Environmental Protection Agency sent letters to hundreds of EPA employees in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights today to inform them their services are no longer needed, as environmental justice --- protecting low-income Americans and minorities most at risk from air and water pollution --- no longer aligns "with the agency’s current and future needs."

• Back in Congress, Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House are facing a serious dilemma. The House Ways and Means Committee is currently tasked with cutting some $1.5 trillion in federal services to Americans in order to help pay for Trump's $4.5 trillion tax cuts to mostly benefit huge corporations and the wealthy. But many Republican members of the Committee have seen huge, renewable energy-related job growth in their home districts, thanks entirely to tax credits made available via the Inflation Reduction Act passed without a single Republican vote in 2022 and signed into law by President Biden. The majority of the tax credits to companies to spur new manufacturing jobs in the renewable energy business are, by design of the previous Democratic Administration, in "red" states and counties. But Trump has ordered Congressional Republicans to kill all clean energy funding enacted by Biden. This is a real, if under-reported conundrum for Republicans and, potentially, a very good opportunity for Democrats in response.

• But Earth Day turned out to be another very bad for chief DOGE Bro and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Just after the close of the markets today, Tesla issued its latest quarterly report. It was brutal for the company, which announced that profits fell an extraordinary 71% as compared to the first quarter of 2024. That, thanks to several reasons, though none of them as obvious as the worldwide public disgust in response to Musk's obnoxious turn late last year to the hard, Trump, MAGA right.

• As Desi Doyen is here to remind us, however, there are still some reasons to be hopeful on this year's Earth Day. At least everywhere else in the world, where new technologies and clean-energy breakthroughs are actually being supported and making remarkable progress; where nature itself is offering exciting new opportunities to fight climate change; where threatened species are making surprising come backs in several places thanks to scientists, conservationists and local communities; where cities and states around the world are making major advances in reducing pollution, and; where countries --- other than the U.S., at least --- are banding together to help vulnerable nations adapt and survive our climate crisis.

• On the other hand, Desi is also here with our latest Green News Report --- where every day is Earth Day --- to catch us up with a few stories we missed while off on Spring Break last week. Most of those stories, focused largely on the U.S., are not nearly as bright, however, especially as the world lost one of its great climate champions this week...

Happy Earth Day. Somehow.

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Donald Trump's chaos coaster continues on today's BradCast. Our top on today's ride: Social Security. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... As we warned yesterday amid "irrational exuberance" as the stock market briefly skyrocketed following Donald Trump's social media announcement that he was pausing his unilateral worldwide tariffs for 90 days, investors began to notice that it wasn't quite as good as it looked. Trump's remaining 10% tariffs on almost every nation (other than Russia) and boost of duties against imports from China to 145%, helped lead the U.S. markets to tank again today, if not quite as much as they rose yesterday.

But some brighter news for those who believe in both truth and election integrity today. Rightwing propaganda outlet Newsmax, which quietly settled a defamation suit last year brought against them by voting system company Smartmatic, was found this week by a judge in Delaware to have defamed Dominion Voting Systems following the 2020 Presidential election. A jury will now determine if the Trump-allied outlet intentionally smeared Dominion with "actual malice" when they claimed the company rigged voting machines in favor of Joe Biden, despite the lack of any such evidence. The trial is set to begin at the end of this month...unless Newsmax decides to settle that one too.

But, speaking of actual voter fraud, it looks like Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, committed it last year in Hawaii when she voted there in the 2024 election after previously declaring herself to be a resident of Texas. Oops.

THEN... Elon Musk's DOGE Bros are unleashing absolute havoc at the Social Security Agency. Their latest chaos involved a plan to end phone services for people filing for retirement or survivor benefits as of this coming Monday. But with cries of outrage, impossibly long lines at field offices, wait times on the phone, and website crashes for new applicants and longtime beneficiaries in recent days, the Agency has now backed off that terrible plan as well. For now.

We're joined today for insight and warnings about Trump, Musk, DOGE and much more by longtime Social Security expert DR. ERIC KINGSON, emeritus Professor of Social Work at Syracuse University, co-founder of the nonprofit Social Security Works, and policy advisor to two different Presidential commissions on Social Security Reform under both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

What DOGE is doing at SSA "has nothing to do with efficiency or correcting errors," he tells me. "There's an extremely small error rate in Social Security. As for efficiency, we spend less than one percent administering the program. It's a well-administered program --- until now."

He worries that for "the first time since the creation of the program, there is a major, major risk of dramatic changes that will hurt the American public, especially middle-aged workers and young workers today."

"It's purposeful," Kingson argues, regarding the chaos unleashed at the agency by Musk's DOGE Bros in recent weeks. "You don't do the things that DOGE is doing because you want to fix something. You want to destroy it. And you want to destroy it with cruelty and disrespect for human dignity."

Kingson, the co-author of a book on protecting and expanding "the Insurance Americans Love and Count On", believes "the next game plan" is to privatize the Agency on the basis that the havoc unfolding now will be used to argue later that the private sector "will do a lot better".

He concurs with President Biden's SSA Administrator Martin O'Malley that the damage being done right now could soon result in the collapse of the system; argues that DOGE and Trump "have been stripping Social Security of its expertise and historical memory"; and charges that Trump, Musk and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who claimed today that "Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will not take a hit" in the President's legislative agenda moving forward in Congress, are lying about fraud at the agency and benefits for Americans, which they plan to undermine. Kingson cites "a huge crisis" on the road ahead, as "half of today's workers under 67 will not be able to maintain their standard of living in retirement. If you count the cost of healthcare and long term care, it's probably about two-thirds. That's a crisis. What they are doing is stripping away the one thing you can count on: Social Security."

Much more on all of that --- and what you and I can and should do about it (hint: "Fight like hell!") --- in my conversation today with Kingson. I hope you'll tune in.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, as Trump signs a slew of Executive Orders to bail out the dying, polluting American coal industry, and as Big Banks plot new ways to profit off of our climate crisis...

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Tuesday was a very good day for Democrats. For a change. At ballot boxes in both Wisconsin and Florida, and in the U.S. Senate. We enjoy while we can on today's BradCast, while trying to make sense of everything else we have time for in the bargain. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Republicans won both U.S. House Special Elections for vacant seats in Florida's 1st and 6th Congressional Districts on Tuesday. You'd think the GOP would be celebrating today, but not so much. Last November, in each of those very "red" Districts, their candidates won by more than 30 points. On Tuesday, however, GOPers were still victorious, but the vote swung some 15 points or more toward the Democratic candidates in both contests. If that were to happen across the country during next year's mid-term elections it would become an absolute wipe-out for the Republican Party in the House.

In Wisconsin, even worse news for Republicans, Donald Trump, and his co-President Elon Musk. The state went to Trump just over five months ago by less than a point. But on Tuesday, the Democratic-backed candidate for WI's state Supreme Court, Susan Crawford, appears to have crushed GOP-backed MAGA candidate Brad Schimel by ten points. That's virtually unheard of in modern times in the notoriously narrowly-divided Badger State. That, after Musk dumped more than $25 million of his own money into the race --- even giving away million dollar checks to voters (unlawfully) in the bargain --- in what became the most expensive state court election in U.S. history. Liberals will now retain majority control of WI's high court for at least the next three years. Their majority could grow larger still as rightwing Justices face re-election bids over those years. Key issues likely to be decided by the high court during that time include abortion, voting and collective bargaining rights and challenges to GOP gerrymandering of Congressional districts. All of that is why Musk was so happy to set so many millions of his own dollars on fire, to no avail.

All of that happened on Tuesday, as New Jersey's Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker was wrapping up his marathon, record-breaking, 25-hour and 6-minute, non-stop "good trouble" speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, injecting a bit of hope into a few moribund Democrats across the nation and in the halls of Congress after ten long weeks of Trump and Musk's brutal destruction of the federal government and Constitutional order. It doesn't hurt that Booker, an African-American, also smashed the long-held Senate filibuster record set in 1957 by notorious segregationist Strom Thurmond, during his then successful blockade of civil rights legislation.

We're joined today to discuss all of that and much more by two of our longtime O.G. blogger friends, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, award-winning columnist at Salon and proprietor of Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS', eponymous blogger and co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast.

In addition to Tuesday's elections and what they may portend for Trump and Musk, as well as Booker's Senate 'filibuster' and what it may --- or should --- portend for Democratic leadership in Congress, we also discuss Trump's economy- and job-crushing new tariffs, his ill-considered and ever-increasing DOGE slashing of the federal government, and much more!

"He can bully everybody. He can't bully reality," observes Driftglass today, regarding Trump and one or more of the topics mentioned above. Says Digby about Republicans: "I think that they are seeing the writing on the wall, that there is a very, very large backlash."

Tune in for a very lively "Liberation Day" edition of The BradCast! Cheers!...

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The amount of news we need to catch up with today before getting to some callers at the back end of the show is ridiculous, even by BradCast standards! [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Natural disasters, lots of court rulings and some important election news out of several states on today's program. Here are summaries and links to just some of those stories...

• More than 2,000 are dead in Myanmar following a 7.7 Magnitude earthquake over the weekend. The death toll is expected to rise sharply, thousands of building have reportedly collapsed, health officials are said to be "overwhelmed" and, though Trump vowed to send help, apparently U.S. aid workers are nowhere to be found as they have been in the past. Aid workers from China, Russia and India are on the scene, however. Also, victims received little help or critical information from Radio Free Asia either, in the wake of Trump having shut down the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the parent agency for RFA, Voice of America and its international sister networks.

• But there was a lot of good news out of federal district courts since we last spoke, including for Voice of America and, presumably, Radio Free Asia. A judge issued a temporary restraining order to prevent Trump from violating federal law by shuttering the USAGM and the networks it oversees. The U.S. District Court judge ordered about 1,200 journalists, engineers and other staffers back to work, for now, after they were placed on leave or fired after Trump's seemingly unlawful order to shut it all down two weeks ago.

• More good news late last week from the U.S. District court for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). A judge on Friday ordered that it too be reopened and its workers rehired, after Trump/Musk attempted to gut the only federal agency that fights for consumer rights against fraud and deceptive practices by big banks, insurance companies and sleazy payday lenders.

• Another U.S. District Court on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump Administration from deporting migrants to countries from which they did not originally come without allowing a court challenge first.

• Over the weekend, two different federal judges --- both appointed by Republican President George W. Bush --- blocked the key parts of Trump's outrageous Executive Orders unconstitutionally targeting two major law firms he doesn't like (because they represented former Republican FBI Director Robert Mueller, who was tapped to investigate interference by Russia in our 2016 election during Trump's first term.)

• In Election News, Republicans took a pounding over the weekend in Louisiana's Saturday elections. All four constitutional Amendments placed on the ballot by the state's Trump-lovin' GOP Governor, Jeff Landry, went down in flames. Each lost resoundingly, with nearly two-thirds of voters rejecting each ballot issue, as turnout nearly doubled what state election officials had been expecting. For some reason, voters --- even in Republican-leaning states --- seem to be very angry of late. At Republicans. Landry tried to blame a billionaire who had nothing to do with Saturday's referendum for his embarrassing shutout, while ignoring the Republican billionaires who fruitlessly dumped billions in support of Landry's four losing amendments.

• Speaking of...it's Election Day on Tuesday in Florida and Wisconsin (and a number of other states), with two vacant U.S. House seats up for grabs in traditionally very red districts in the Sunshine State and ideological control of the state Supreme Court on the line in the Badger State. Republicans seem very concerned about all of those contests, with the President's billionaire top-funder, Elon Musk, generously spreading his "free speech" around in the form of $100 checks to Wisconsinites who signed his petition against "activist judges" and two $1 million checks given away to two lucky voters/signers-of-his-petition who showed up to his rally in Green Bay on Sunday. The richest-man-in-the-world stumped for the very Trumpy Republican state Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel, who is running against Judge Susan Crawford. She is supported by the state's Democrats. For reasons discussed on today's show, that election could hardly be more important --- to the nation, in fact. The House contests down in Florida, meanwhile, may also prove to be bellwethers for GOP electoral chances in upcoming off-year and mid-year elections under a very unpopular President.

• That's just some of what we covered today before opening up the phone lines to listeners to discuss all of that and whatever else happened to be on their minds today...

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On today's BradCast: The Trump Administration may have chosen the wrong group of Americans to launch a "war" against, including taking jobs, benefits and health care from them. But that's just one of the reasons Republicans now seem to be running scared of their own voters in upcoming special elections. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

On Thursday, the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees. Along with cuts at departments within HHS, such as the FDA, CDC, NIH and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, some 20,000 federal jobs are earmarked for slashing. The Dept. of Defense has already fired thousands of probationary workers (though a federal judge found the firings unlawful), and the IRS has been ordered to cut 6,700 workers. That alone will cost the U.S. hundreds of billions in lost revenue.

But, so far, no other federal agency has set their sites on firing as many workers as the Dept. of Veterans Affairs which, according to an internal memo at the beginning of the month, is planning to slash an astounding 80,000+ jobs, many of them held by veterans themselves. And they are pushing back.

We're joined today by former Congressman MAX ROSE (D-NY), a decorated former U.S. Army platoon leader and combat veteran who now serves as senior advisor to VoteVets.org, the nation's largest progressive nonprofit veterans organization. Last week, the group launched a six-figure, multimedia ad campaign in the districts of five different Republican veteran members of Congress, calling them out "for being complicit and dodging their constituents as Elon Musk's DOGE aimlessly fires Veterans across the country."

Given Rose's background, before discussing the VoteVets campaign, thousands of vets already fired from federal jobs, and GOP cuts to a series of hard-won services and benefits, I had to ask for his thoughts on the ongoing Signal scandal and what might have happened to him, as a platoon leader in Afghanistan (or to any other rank-and-file member of the military), had they used a commercially available texting app to discuss specific times, locations and methods of upcoming planned attacks as it was revealed this week the Administration's top NatSec and Defense cabinet officials did.

"Any level of the military would have been fired for that," Rose tells me. "But I think there's a deeper point here. Which is everyone likes the notion of disruption and innovation, and that is how this administration sold themselves. But the truth of the matter is that what we're seeing is recklessness, destruction, and a disregard for everything that was actually effective."

He offers thoughts on whether Trump's high level cabinet officials, such as National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Sec. of Defense Pete Hegseth should be fired, and whether the specific details shared in the group text --- with a journalist present --- was classified or not. "They are just openly talking about extraordinary events that are set to occur later on that day, that have geopolitical, strategic national security ramifications," he says. "It is beyond stunning. And it's exactly the opposite of what they sold themselves as. It's amateur hour."

As to the benefit cuts and firings that many veterans are already facing, thanks to the "recklessness" of the Trump Administration --- some of which are discussed by veterans themselves in VoteVets' new video ad --- the Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient is even more disappointed.

"Let's talk about the great tragedy of firing these veterans, who have served in uniform. Many of them served in harm's way, and they made an extraordinarily heroic and consequential decision to continue their service --- not just to our great country, but in service to their fellow veterans --- by dedicating this next portion of their career to the VA. Donald Trump ran on how much he loved veterans, how much he was grateful for their service, and now he's turned around in the early days of his Presidency and has decided to fire tens of thousands of them."

"The truth of the matter," Rose continues, "is that what they want to do --- the VA being the second-largest federal government department --- is they want to destroy it. They want to privatize it. They claim it's because the VA is an underperformer. But the stats tell exactly the opposite story. The statistics say that the VA consistently records higher quality metrics compared to peer institutions and higher ratings of patient satisfaction. That's why the veteran community is almost universally aligned in support, in not just preserving the VA but building upon it."

"This Administration's war on veterans," doesn't end there, he argues. "They decided to cut the PACT Act in the last Continuing Resolution, the budget deal, which was a monumental bipartisan piece of legislation to make sure that services are provided to veterans suffering the consequences of manning burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. They decided to cut the Small Business Administration, negatively impacting veterans ability to access small business loans. They decided to cut HUD and grants related to services for homeless veterans. So the list goes on and on."

As to how all of this may affect the political and electoral landscape moving forward, including among veterans, 6 out of 10 of whom voted for Trump in 2024? Tune in for the former Congressman's thoughts on that. But, as Rose asserts: "People should be digging deep. They should know there is hope for Democrats to bounce back. They should know there are extraordinary candidates raising their hands across the country, reaffirming their commitment to service, many of them being veterans."

AND, SPEAKING OF UPCOMING ELECTIONS... Republicans seem to be getting really nervous about next week's Special Elections in Florida to fill the vacated seats of former Reps. Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz, even though both are in deep red districts where Trump and both former Congressmembers easily won their elections just five months ago. Latest evidence of their concern? Today, Trump withdrew his nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik for U.N. Ambassador, to make sure her seat in a Trump +15 district in upstate in New York doesn't get flipped in an upcoming Special Election, given the razor-thin majority Republicans currently hold in the U.S. House. She is really bummed. Sad!

AND, FINALLY... Record, unprecedented, climate change-fueled wildfires are raging in South Korea. The blazes have already killed 27 and destroyed more than 300 structures, some of them historic, including a 7th century temple complex. As if that's not bad enough, Desi Doyen is also here with our latest Green News Report, as the Trump Administration has simply omitted climate change from their newly released U.S. National Threat Assessment Report; the EPA's rollbacks to air and water pollution rules are set to cost hundreds of thousands of American lives; and as the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court gives yet another offering to the fossil fuel industry responsible for so much of this deadly mess...

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Today on The BradCast: Things get worse for the Trump Administration and the buffoonish Republicans who love him on Capitol Hill, following another embarrassing round of disclosures from 'Signal Gate', while Dems take back control of a state House and flip a very "red" state Senate seat in Special Elections yesterday in a key battleground state. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

That's hardly all we've got for you in yet another too big show today...

'NOBODY WAS TEXTING WAR PLANS,' EH?: Capitol Hill continued to roil on Wednesday, after The Atlantic's Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg published the full message thread from the Signal group chat that he was invited to join, for some still-unexplained reason, last week, by Donald Trump's National Security Advisor Mike Waltz in advance of a U.S. attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The small group consisted of high-level Trump National Security and Defense officials, from the Vice President to the Sec. of Defense, Sec. of State, CIA Director, Director of National Intelligence and more. The newly published text messages from the Signal conversation on the unsecured commercial mobile app, reveal very specific times, places and methods of attack, just as Goldberg originally asserted in his original blockbuster report on Monday.

In response to the original report, SecDef doofus Pete Hegseth falsely told reporters, "Nobody was texting war plans." Today's Atlantic report reveals that he very much did. The new details also appear to counter claims from Trump's CIA Director John Ratcliffe and his wildly unqualified Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, when they both asserted that no classified information was shared with the Signal group. They were both members of that group. Donald Trump also made that same false claim on Tuesday. If very specific attack plans posted to Signal by Hegseth weren't "classified" details, they certainly should have been. But, even if not, they were definitely National Defense Information, which means members of the group chat may have violated the Espionage Act. The messages set to disappear after a number of weeks by Walz, would also be in violation of the Presidential Records and Federal Records Acts, according to legal experts.

Even a number of rightwing columnists are calling for accountability and the removal of Hegseth and Waltz. A few Republican U.S. Senators are calling for full investigations. And, of course, Democrats have already been demanding accountability, both at yesterday's Senate Intel hearing and in another one today in the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, which also featured laughable testimony from Ratcliffe and Gabbard. Desi Doyen has details for us on today's program.

PA VOTERS PUSH BACK: While things are falling apart politically for Trump and his incompetent aides and Congressional sycophants in D.C., voters are already ringing in with their dissatisfaction at the polls. In Special Elections in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, a Democratic win in the state House has resulted in the party regaining their slim majority in the Legislature's lower chamber. But that was to be expected from a very Democratic district. Bigger news for Dems came in the Special Election for the state Senate, where the Democratic candidate managed to flip a seat in a very red district that Trump won by 15 points last November. James Malone narrowly defeated his Republican opponent by running against Trump's madness and Elon Musk's DOGE Bro efforts to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid and the rest of the federal government. It was a huge upset victory for the Democrats, as they won this particular area of Republican-leaning suburbs and farming communities for the first time in 136 years! (Tuesday's win echoes another last month when Dems flipped a state Senate seat in a special election held in a deep red, Trump +21 district in Iowa.)

MORE ELECTIONS NEXT TUESDAY: Another round of critical elections are underway right now, with Election Day next week (April 1) in Wisconsin and Florida. The battle for majority control of WI's Supreme Court is underway (as we discussed recently with the Badger State's John Nichols of The Nation), as the world's richest man, Elon Musk, has thrown some $18 million into the race to support far-right Trump Republican Brad Schimel, in hopes of defeating liberal candidate Susan Crawford.

In Florida, there are two special elections Tuesday for the U.S. House, though both are in very red districts. The CD-1 race will fill the seat vacated by alleged child sex trafficker Matt Gaetz, the other, in CD-6, is to fill the seat vacated by Trump's incompetent National Security Advisor and Signal chat enthusiast Mike Waltz. Democratic candidates Gay Valimont and Josh Weil, respectively, are waging uphill battles to flip those very "red" U.S. House districts to "blue". Each have, reportedly, outraised their Republican opponents. Though Musk has now also reportedly jumped into those races with his billions as well, at the very last minute. A victory for Democrats in either of those seats (or anything close to it), will be seen as a political earthquake next week.

TRUMP ATTEMPTS ELECTION POWER GRAB: Finally, you may have heard about the Executive Order that Donald Trump issued last night, purporting to mandate proof of citizenship when registering to vote. That said, Presidents DO NOT HAVE THE POWER to issue such mandates. Election law is largely the legislative domain of States, Counties and occasionally via laws adopted by Congress. Trump's largely performative EO (which also includes a number of other voting and election mandates that are similarly beyond his powers as President) will face huge legal challenges. As Election Law professor Rick Hasen noted in his initial response to Trump's "dangerous Executive Order" last night, the measure is an attempted "executive power grab" that, if successful, would "disenfranchise millions of voters."

Ya know...Just another dull day in these United States...

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