The nation's postal carriers and workers are not going down without a fight, as they've made abundantly clear with hundreds of rallies around the country in recent days, and as the head of the nation's largest postal workers union made very clear on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this link.]

Over the weekend, in hundreds of cities large and small around the country, unionized postal workers rallied outside of USPS facilities --- often joined by Democratic lawmakers --- to send the message that they don't intend to be privatized by Donald Trump, Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros. The Administration, in cahoots with Trump's Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, have been suggesting as much in recent days.

Despite the U.S. Constitution's mandate for a national postal service (originally stood up by the first Postmaster General, Benjamin Franklin, in 1775), Trump and Musk have been hinting that they hope to privatize the U.S. Postal Service. "It's been just a tremendous loser for this country," Trump declared at one point during Lutnick's recent swearing-in ceremony. "Tremendous amounts of money that they've lost," he added.

But the independent agency is not funded by taxpayer dollars. It is funded by the individuals who use its services, delivering mail six days a week to every address in the nation at the same price. It is not supposed to be a money maker, even though, as my guest notes, it sometimes does nonetheless.

We're joined today by MARK DIMONDSTEIN, President of the American Postal Workers Union. They have been sending out a big flashing red siren that Trump and his wrecking crew of billionaires are hoping to privatize the Post Office, to offer fewer services at a more expensive rate, with hundreds of thousands of good public jobs lost in the bargain.

"We are really seeing a struggle between Wall Street and Main Street. Wells Fargo just put out a report about how great it would be for investors if the Postal Service was privatized because package rates would go up," Dimondstein tells me. "What they want is their hands on the public till, the public commons, the public money so they can make private profit. But that doesn't do any good for the hundreds of millions of customers, the people of this country, that use the Postal Service. It's in the interest of the people to have a public entity based on service, not business. Based on service, not profit. But it's in the interest of a few wealthy billionaire investors that want to get their hands on this public money."

"They are on a mission. They see an opportunity," he charges. "But their power is going to buck up against the power of the people of the country, who, no matter who they voted for in the last election, support the public United States Postal Service." In fact, the USPS is perhaps the most popular federal institution in the nation.

Dimondstein has much more insight on today's program, on the cost to not only its workers, but the country at large if the Postal Service is privatized, along with ways that it could bring in much more money and provide far more services to the public in every corner of the country if the agency's hands weren't tied by Congress.

He also breaks the news during today's program that the controversial Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy --- originally appointed by Trump during his first term --- had just announced his immediate resignation. Despite the various cuts and organizational restructuring that DeJoy brought to the USPS during his term, Dimondstein actually came to his defense today. Somewhat.

"DeJoy was not a privatizer," the union leader argues. "He was forced out by this administration, in our view, precisely for that reason. He was not a privatizer. He was trying to uphold, to the best of his viewpoint, the public institution, the public mission." He argues DeJoy was, therefore, in contradiction with Trump, Musk and DOGE, who simply want to tear down the Service and sell its pieces off to the highest bidder. "That's not about efficiency. That's about how to rip off the public sector and move it into the private sector."

In the meantime, Dimondstein tells me, "The message is very clear. The US Mail is not for sale. Hands off the public Postal Service. It belongs to the people, not the billionaires."

"We are going to have to send a message as workers, united with the people of the country, to these privatizers and these billionaires: No, you're not going to pick our pocket. You're not going to turn this over to the private sector. You're not going to turn it over and laugh all the way to the bank at our expense. So anything the good listeners can do to help, we welcome it. It belongs to you, the people. Keep it, it's yours."

THEN... An update from over the weekend regarding the Trump Administration's shutdown of the Voice of America and its sister networks around the globe just over a week ago. The silencing of VOA last week --- for the first time since it first began airing as an American counter to Nazi propaganda spreading across Europe in early 1942 --- has been an indescribable loss of real news and information to more than 300 million listeners each week in more than 60 languages. The loss is particularly acute for those in autocratic nations where most sources of independent media have been entirely closed down. Now, VOA is as well, thanks to American autocrat, Trump.

We reported on the Administration's shutdown of VOA last week. First in my interview with its Chief National Correspondent, Steve Herman, and later in the week with a focus on some of those who were inspired toward freedom by VOA's coverage during the darkest days of the Cold War, and on reporters for the service who have been jailed and/or tortured around the world over the years for their work.

Over the weekend, as first reported by Herman at his personal website, a lawsuit [PDF] was filed by several VOA journalists and the worldwide nonprofit journalism organization, Reporters Without Borders. Herman notes that the lead plaintiff, VOA's White House Bureau Chief, Patsy Widakuswara, "grew up under a dictatorship in Indonesia" and that "Some of the other plaintiffs...are among nearly 50 VOA journalists whose J-1 visas are being cancelled [now that they've been placed on administrative leave,] and must leave the country within 30 days. At least six of those face going home to authoritarian countries where they could be jailed, or worse."

That, as Reporters Without Borders' 2024 World Press Freedom Index finds that "The United States ranks 55th out of 180 countries and territories...having dropped an alarming 10 spots from [just] 2023."

I regard the closure of VOA as a huge canary in the coal mines for press freedoms --- and many others --- in this country right now, as we discuss at the close of today's program...

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Happy Spring! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, flowers are in bloom and things couldn't be better! Right? (If you believe that, you may not want to listen to today's BradCast.) [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our roller-coaster coverage today...

• Finland, not Disneyland, is, once again, the happiest place on Earth, for the eighth year in a row, according to 2025's World Happiness Report from the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. The United States, despite this being its "golden age", according to one guy, has now fallen to its lowest-ever position on the annual happiness study. Tune in to hear why people in Finland, Iceland, Sweden and, apparently, our new enemy Denmark, are so happy...and we are not. (Even Mexico cracked the survey's top 10 this year! The U.S. didn't even crack the top 20.)

• In grimmer news, Israel has broken its ceasefire with Gaza this week, reigniting its brutal massacre of Palestinians amid one of the bloodiest weeks since the conflict began after Hamas' 2023 attack on Israel. To date, more than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7th of that year, according to local health authorities. Israel claims to have begun their assault again because Gaza refused to agree to a change in the terms of the ceasefire agreement that has otherwise largely held since January. The new wave of brutal military assaults is with the full approval of Donald Trump, according to the White House.

• Meanwhile, in Russia's brutal assault on Ukraine, we do not seem to be any closer to a ceasefire either, though not for lack of Donald Trump knowingly and repeatedly spreading Russian propaganda regarding the situation on the ground in the Ukrainian held Kursk region of Russia. Trump is apparently working hard to help improve Vladimir Putin's negotiating position in peace talks. All of that according to an exclusive report today from Reuters today, which details how the U.S. intelligence community has informed Trump that he is spreading false Russian propaganda. But he keeps doing it anyway, for some reason. Ukraine has agreed to a full 30-day pause in fighting in recent days. Russia has not.

• Had the Voice of America and its affiliated global sister networks like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty not been removed from the airwaves beginning last weekend, by order of the President of the United States, it might have been pretty embarrassing for him. After all, VOA is mandated, by Congressional legislation, to be an "authoritative source of news" that is "accurate, objective, and comprehensive." The last thing Trump likely wants right now is a U.S.-funded media outlet, with "America" in its name, calling out his pro-Russia lies regarding Ukraine. That, of course, is just one of the reasons why VOA and its partner networks have been so critical around the world over the past 83 years, particularly to listeners and readers in autocratic nations --- at least until being silenced by our new autocratic President.

  The reason given by the White House for shutting down the service last week --- which couldn't be shut down by German Nazis or Soviet Communists over all of these decades --- is that VOA and its sister networks, under management of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), was broadcasting "radical propaganda" from the Left. As discussed on this show with VOA's Chief National Correspondent, Steve Herman, earlier this week, it was doing nothing of the kind. (If you missed that must-listen interview, it is right here.) Washington Post's fact-checker Glenn Kessler took at a look at the White House's ten examples in support of their absurd claims, finding them to be "remarkably flimsy", to say the least.

  Today, Washington Post's Sally Jenkins tells the story of how tennis superstar Marina Navratilova grew up on --- and dreamed of freedom one day thanks to --- Voice of America broadcasts that she and her family were able to pick up each night on a red plastic transistor radio in their small country village in Czechoslovakia during the darkest days of the communist Soviet regime. We share some of that moving --- and inspiring --- story today.

  We also share the harrowing reflections on the shutdown by Ukrainian philosopher and journalist Stanislav Aseyev, who was jailed for 962 days and tortured for reporting on the ground at the time for VOA's partner network, Radio Liberty following Russia's first invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

  So, yes, reminder: We are all Voice of America now.

• And finally, speaking of attacks on free speech in tyrannical times, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report with news on the environmental nonprofit Greenpeace being ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to a fossil fuel company for its part in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline; a new report from the World Meteorological Organization documenting our spiraling climate crisis; and a reported breakthrough from Chinese automaker BYD, supposedly allowing their new EV batteries charge in about 5 minutes time. Don't look for those cars here, however. Though they are the world's #1 best-selling EV, they aren't allowed for sale in the U.S. With the CEO of their main competitor, Tesla, now seemingly co-running the nation, that is unlikely to change anytime soon...

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Earlier this month, Donald Trump issued an Executive Order calling for the "Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production". As discussed with our guest on today's BradCast, it's difficult to see that separately from his buddy Elon Musk's recent declaration that "logically we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized." [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... A few items of note...

• It was amusing watching corporate media outlets tip-toe in their reporting around the facts of Tuesday's successful return to Earth by astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore after being stranded on the International Space Station for 9 months following what was supposed to have been an 8 day mission. The pair were safely brought home in a SpaceX capsule that splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. Can you see the dilemma for the nation's major news outlets yet? We discuss. And laugh. (And also point out that the mission was tasked to Elon Musk's SpaceX by NASA last August, under President Joe Biden. No, Donald Trump did not "rescue the astronauts", as his Administration seems to want you to believe.)

• In more important news, after covering a string of losses in federal court for Trump on yesterday's program, a few more came in after we got off air. One was a major ruling that blocked his Order banning transgender people from serving in our nation's military. (Try not to laugh at Trump's straight-faced assertion in his EO that service by transgender people, many of whom have received top military honors, "conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life." Cuz if anyone knows about living an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life, it would be the Commander-in-Chief who was found liable for nearly $100 million for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Caroll and found guilty of 34 criminal felony counts related to hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to help him cheat to win an election and other honorable, truthful and disciplined living by Corporal Bonespurs.)

• In response to yesterday's program focused, in part, on the lower courts holding firm, for now, against Trump and Musk's rampant lawlessness, we received some interesting feedback from a number of listeners who seemed to view those victories for the Constitution and Rule of Law --- short-term or otherwise --- as hardly worth celebrating, given that all hope is now lost and, in short, America is all but over. While understanding the sentiment, I disagree with that thinking for several reasons, a number of which we discuss today.

THEN... Following news of yet another court loss for Trump late on Tuesday, in which a D.C. U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan blocked the Administration's attempt to claw back some $20 billion authorized by Congress and allocated by President Biden as part of his landmark climate initiatives before leaving office, we discuss a recent Executive Order signed by Trump that would massively expand logging and clear-cutting of our national forests and other public lands.

MATT SEDLAR, climate analyst at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, is here to discuss what this scheme is really about; how it relates to Trump's trade war with Canada; the various dangers it poses to both the economy and climate; and how it has little to do with improving forest management or wildfire protection, as Trump's EO falsely claims.

Sedlar explains how the Order appears to directly contradict pretty much everything else that Trump has been doing at the very same time.

"Laying off Forest Service workers, National Park Service workers, and putting out this Executive Order expanding logging, canceling leases for various offices and visitor centers for national parks across the United States," Sedlar tells me, "all point to the privatization of the public lands. Eliminating what we know of as national forests and national parks, and opening it up to making it into a revenue stream."

"It leans more towards that and less towards what he is saying, that this is forest management. Because the science simply does not support what he's saying. It didn't support it in the '80s when you had researchers and scientists warning against it, and it's definitely not going to support it now."

"These are all moves to generate revenue without a look at how this affecting long-term sustainable development. It's all short-term gain for long-term losses," he argues, citing both the costs to the fight against climate change and the bipartisan popularity of our National Parks and Forests.

Tune in, of course, for much more!...

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We remain on the precipice of a Constitutional Crisis on today's BradCast, as our Man Baby President has now begun defying court orders. Some reasonably argue we are there already, but we will truly be there when (and if, but mostly when) he defies an order from the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court. For now, he's testing the waters by defying lower court orders. For the most part, those courts are largely holding firm in defense of the Constitution and rule of law, as the Administration continues to lose in ruling after ruling. Sadly, that hasn't prevented people from dying thanks to our reckless, lawless President and his top fundraiser's wasteful, fraudulent, abusive and deadly closures of critical Executive Branch agencies. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among today's coverage...

• In a pathetic, early morning, MOSTLY ALL-CAPS social media rant today, Donald Trump demanded that a federal judge --- who reasonably ruled temporarily against his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport hundreds of Venezuelans --- be "IMPEACHED!!!". The law has only ever been used during wartime, as it mandates the detention, imprisonment or deportation of non-citizens in the U.S. only from a "foreign nation or government" that has "declared war" against us or that has "perpetrated, attempted, or threatened" "any invasion or predatory incursion." Venezuela has done none of those things. The ruling against Trump followed an unusual late-night, emergency hearing on Saturday. The judge ordered the Administration to pause deportation to an El Salvador prison of alleged Venezuelan gang-member migrants until Trump's use of the war-time law could be further adjudicated. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered any U.S. migrant flights en route to El Salvador be returned the U.S. The Administration appears to have ignored the court order and has been stonewalling the judge's demand for information on when planes left and landed ever since. Thus Trump called for his "IMPEACHMENT!!!" winning an unusual, if very gentle, slap on the wrist from U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in a rare public response today.

• Late last week, a federal judge in California ordered the reinstatement of thousands of federal workers at six different federal agencies, after finding that Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros unlawfully fired them without the legal authority to do so. An hour or two later, a federal judge in Maryland, in a separate lawsuit on a different legal basis, ordered that federal workers at 18 different agencies must be restored to their previous positions. The judge in CA has since made clear that rehiring the workers only to put them on immediate paid leave is also in violation of his order.

• In a major ruling today, a federal district court judge in Maryland ordered the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) --- which Trump, Musk and his DOGE Bro wrecking crew shut down almost entirely in the earliest days of his second term --- to be reopened. The judge ruled that Musk "likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways" in shuttering the critical international aid agency, which Musk described on his social media site ïn early February as having personally fed "into the wood chipper". USAID, among other critical work, supplies food to starving children and life-saving medicine to the sick around the globe. While Musk, the world's richest man, has claimed that "No one has died as a result" of his (unlawful, unconstitutional) closure of the agency, the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, in a must-read, gut-wrenching report (gift link) traveled to South Sudan and elsewhere to find "that is not true", before going on to document how and where "the efforts by Musk and President Trump are already leading children to die". Unless aid is somehow quickly restored, Kristoff reports, those efforts are likely to kill millions in the coming months and years.

• The wasteful, fraudulent and abusive efforts by Trump, Musk and DOGE has not been entirely for naught, however. Turns out someone finally found a "dead" person receiving Social Security! Even if that person turned out to be very much alive and is now trying to get the funds that were suspended for some reason by the Social Security Administration in mid-February, turned back on. The DOGE dismantling of the SSA --- where field offices are being shuttered and 7,000 workers are scheduled to be laid off --- isn't helping.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as deadly extreme storms killed more than 40 people in the U.S. over this past weekend; Trump's mass firings at NOAA are set to undermine accurate weather forecasting; and his Interior Dept. just cancelled the six-month old permits for construction of an off-shore wind-farm in New Jersey...

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Saturday was a very dark day for the cause of democracy and the free press around the world, as detailed on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Since its very first broadcast on February 1, 1942, the Voice of America has been, as my guest today described it in his "Requiem for the voice that carried a nation’s conscience" over the weekend, "a beacon that burned bright during some of the darkest hours."

"To eliminate" VOA and its sister networks around the globe, which broadcast to more than 400 million each week in more than 100 countries in more than 60 different languages, is to "turn our backs on those around the world who have counted on us. It is to surrender a unique platform that no other country can replicate."

"It was never just about America’s voice," wrote STEVE HERMAN, my guest on today's show, "it was about America’s integrity. There will be celebrations in the autocratic halls of power this weekend in Moscow, Minsk, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran."

Herman has been reporting for Voice of America overseas for decades --- from war zones, civil uprisings and natural disasters --- as a journalist and as VOA's Bureau Chief in India, Korea and Thailand at various times. He was serving as the federal government-funded outlet's Bureau Chief in Northeast Asia when we first got to know him during his remarkable coverage following 2011's tragic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown near Fukushima, Japan, when he was one of the first journalists allowed inside of the crippled reactor building just days after the disaster.

Over the past decade, the seemingly fearless Herman returned stateside to serve as VOA's State Department Bureau Chief, then its White House Bureau Chief and, finally, its Chief National Correspondent. At least until he was summarily placed on forced "excused absence" at the end of February by Trump officials who had wrested control of the otherwise non-partisan U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees VOA, as well as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Voice of Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and others.

Over the weekend, following a late-night decree by Donald Trump on Friday and an order signed by USAGM's White House advisor --- and Trump's nominee to run VOA --- failed Arizona Gubernatorial candidate and election denier Kari Lake, some 1,300 journalists were placed on leave at VOA, where the air has now fallen silent, or filled by music instead of the critical news and cultural content that has been a hallmark for so many decades around the world.

"I've been in other countries when all of a sudden the broadcasting goes off the air, the programming, and it's replaced by music. That always meant there was a coup that was occurring," Herman says darkly.

"What message are we sending out to the world when the regular programming of Voice of America --- whether it's in English, or Burmese, or Swahili, or Ukrainian, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Urdu, Pashtu, Dari, French Africa, all these services --- when it's Monday, we're supposed to be in regular programming," Herman explains. "There is no regular programming. Transmitters are now going off the air or they are silent. There's loop video running on some of the services streaming. The Voice Of America is effectively silenced as of this moment," he says.

As Herman investigates the possibility of challenging his own removal --- he was told, when placed on leave, that his social media posts are now being "investigated" --- he describes the news of the mass suspension of his colleagues over the weekend as "ten times the gut punch". He reports today that some 550 of them who were contractors have now been informed "that they are terminated effective March 31st."

After 83 years of continuously broadcasting, originally as a counterbalance to Nazi propaganda across Europe during WWII and, as mandated by federal law since then, to "serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of…accurate, objective, and comprehensive" news --- not as political propaganda for any party or President in power --- Herman calls the decision "a national tragedy."

It will be most felt by those in closed, autocratic societies, where VOA and its sister networks long-served as a beacon of light, hope, democracy, American values and a template for what a free, non-biased media outlet sounds like.

"Everybody is astonished and shocked," Herman tells me, describing a meeting earlier today which a bunch of his colleagues. "But every person is more concerned about the institution than they are with their individual job. That that was the utmost concern. What's being lost is not just the livelihoods of thousands of people. When you also put into that what's happening at Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, it's these institutions being silenced."

"To extinguish the entire operation over a weekend," he laments, "what is being lost is not replaceable. And it is a national tragedy. I don't opine much, as you know, but I think that's a fair way to look at what's happening," he says.

Why is all of this happening? What (and whose) purpose does it ultimately serve? What does it all mean and where will it go from here? Those are just some of the points of discussion in today's must-listen conversation with Herman, who has been a helpful source and friend of this program --- and as a champion of a free press --- for years now.

Kari Lake has recently referred to the USAGM networks as "radical Leftist advocacy organizations." Elon Musk, whose DOGE Bros have reportedly been camping out at the agency for weeks, recently tweeted, "It’s just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money."

Herman responds to say that the networks "talk to the hundreds of millions of people who listen to VOA, who listen to Radio Free Europe or Radio Free Asia, or watch the TV programs, or go online to check the news. Obviously we are not just talking to ourselves. We have a huge audience."

"Dollar for dollar," he continues, "US international broadcasting funded by the government --- whether it's totally 100% funded under the government but with a [political and editorial] firewall, or their grantees like Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia --- people who study public diplomacy will tell you that VOA and these other broadcasters are probably the best bang for the buck out there, in terms of soft power of the United States."

As to whether his reporting and that of his colleagues --- whose work had to pass muster of an editorial firewall and be checked for "balance" before publication or air --- was that of "radical left crazy people" or "radical Leftist advocacy organizations", Herman tells me today, as he has in the past, that he believes the work speaks for itself.

You can check out his work for yourself, at least until it is disappeared from the Internet, at the VOANews.com website. I also recommend you sign up for his personal newsletter and check out his book (which we discussed in studio on air when he was in town last Summer), Behind the White House Curtain: A Senior Journalist's Story of Covering the President --- and Why It Matters.

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It may be the least surprising news you'll hear all week on The BradCast, but the story still needs to be told. The Trump Administration --- which still pretends to give a damn about "law and order" --- has, in just its first month and a half, handed out "Get Out of Jail Free" cards to nearly 100 corporations mostly headed up by Trump friends, donors and "investors" in his various crypto scams. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to our guest today on his new report documenting all of that, some news...

• Following a reportedly heated caucus meeting on Wednesday afternoon, Senate Democrats emerged to declare they would not help Republicans get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster to adopt a Trump-friendly Continuing Resolution to keep the government open through September. The GOP bill fails to put any brakes on Trump's lawlessness, and Dems are calling, instead, for a month-long, clean CR at current spending levels to allow time to finish bipartisan negotiations on a full 2025 budget vote in April. On Tuesday, House Republicans adopted the GOP spending bill without Democratic votes or input and immediately left town for a recess in hopes of forcing the Senate to pass the House bill before a Friday government shutdown deadline. Today, however, to the surprise of many, Senate Dems appeared to say no. For now. (After we got off air, additional reporting suggests the Dems' seemingly righteous stand against Trump and the Republicans in the Senate may be less than it seems.)

• All of that as Donald Trump's demolition of the federal government and Constitutional Order continues apace, with co-President Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros announcing new cuts and purges at the Dept. of Education, NASA, NOAA, Health and Human Services and the EPA.

• And, where Trump and Musk are gutting public agencies and services (unlawfully in many or most cases), Trump held an unlawful White House lawn commercial for Tesla, Musk's beleaguered EV company which has seen its stock market value plummet nearly 50% since last year's election. (But that free car commercial is hardly the only gift Trump is granting to Musk. See my conversation with today's guest.)

• On Tuesday, ProPublica revealed an email sent to remaining staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) directing them to shred and/or burn remaining documents at its nearly emptied D.C. headquarters. Quick court action by groups suing to block the agency's closure has resulted in an agreement [PDF] by the White House to halt any further destruction of documents for now. If you believe them.

• The Dept. of Justice is reportedly gutting its Public Integrity Section. That is the unit which investigates and prosecutes crimes carried out by public officials. Existing probes will reportedly be handed to U.S. Attorneys around the country appointed by the President, rather than be prosecuted by longtime career officials at Main Justice in D.C.

For all of Trump's vows to "restore law and order", he has been doing the exact opposite during his first seven weeks in office. From pardoning violent criminals who attacked police officers during his January 6, 2021 insurrection to firing Inspectors General, to gutting the Dept. of Justice and other federal agencies that enforce the law, Trump's most robust pro-crime efforts may be seen in the corporate realm, particularly on behalf of those corporate CEOs who have been lining his pockets with tens of millions of dollars.

We're joined today by RICK CLAYPOOL of the nonprofit government watchdog Public Citizen, where he is a Research Director focused on corporate crime and the ways in which corporate power distorts democracy.

Last week, Claypool issued a new report titled "Corporate Clemency: How Trump Is Halting Enforcement Against Corporate Lawbreakers." In it, he details how the "Trump administration has already halted or moved to dismiss enforcement investigations and cases against 89 corporations." Though he notes today that, a week after the report was originally published, that number is now closer to 100.

Cases and investigations against powerful corporations have been nixed at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (all of them, in fact); at the DoJ and SEC, including for companies who appear to have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars bribing foreign officials; at the DoJ's Civil Rights Division, as well as its Environmental and Natural Resources Division; at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and elsewhere.

"34 corporate inauguration donors facing federal enforcement collectively gave at least $34 million toward Trump’s inaugural festivities," according to the new reports, which goes on to note that "These 34 corporations collectively face 60 separate federal investigations and lawsuits." Or, at least, they did.

In addition to scores of now dismissed investigations and cases against companies, particularly with Trump-friendly CEOs, as detailed in Claypool's staggering report, Public Citizen has also created a searchable public database, called the "Corporate Enforcement Tracker," where you can follow details on the status of investigations, suits and indictments rolled back, paused, reversed or killed entirely by the Administration for your favorite companies.

Claypool describes it as "highly unusual" for an Administration to do anything like this upon taking office. "A former Commissioner from the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission remarked that they were never aware of cases being dismissed by the agency itself for any reason, other than maybe the strength of the case, not because of the content. But here, the cases are plainly being dropped and dismissed in response to Trump's Executive Order - the anti-transgender and transgender 'ideology' Executive Order," explains Claypool. "It's horrifying to see the agency that is supposed to be protecting people from discrimination seems to be actively discriminating against a category of worker they are supposed to be protecting."

Other nixed cases including chemical companies previously facing prosecution for "high concentrations of carcinogenic air pollution coming from the factory. This factory was disproportionately harming black and low income Americans. Flash forward to now, the Trump Justice Department actually put out a press release about dropping the case, essentially celebrating that this is the end of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies."

Million dollar donations to the President's Inaugural and Library Fund are "just the tip of the iceberg," warns Claypool, citing media and crypto company CEOs padding Trump's pockets with tens of millions of dollars. And that's before we even get to the favors that Trump is offering Elon Musk's many companies, previously facing dozing of enforcement actions.

"If companies know they can break the law with impunity, they will," Claypool argues. "It is a frequent precursor to corporate catastrophes. Like the crash of 2008, like Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers pushing Oxycontin, like Volkswagen cheating [on emissions tests]. The lack of oversight allows corporate misconduct to fester. If they can cut corners in ways that break the law, but they don't think they're going to get caught, they're probably going to break the law. And that's going to harm people in the process."

Claypool's report at Public Citizen concludes this way: "Corporate crime and lawbreaking can victimize millions of Americans at an unimaginable scale. The bitter irony that it can happen under the banner of a supposed 'law and order' presidential platform might be amusing if the reality was not so plainly catastrophic. This will not end well."

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It seems like we've been covering Wisconsin's ferociously-contested, closely-watched, expensively-waged --- and sometimes questionably-tallied --- Supreme Court elections for decades now on The BradCast. Because we have. And now, another one just weeks from today could once again flip the partisan balance of the high court in the Badger State. As discussed with our guest today, the results are important to the entire nation. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP, a bit of quick election news from even farther north, as the Liberal Party's Mark Carney wins a landslide election on Sunday to become Canada's next Prime Minister on a wave of anti-Trump nationalism. Whether he gets to keep the job remains to be seen, with parliamentary elections coming very soon, even as the nation's Conservative Party has lost much of its steam as Canadians unite to take on Trump's threat of trade war and annexation.

Canada is hardly the only ally Trump is pissing off. In Ukraine, however, his idiocy is reportedly coming at the cost of actual lives after he has blocked arms, intelligence and now even crucial, commercial satellite imagery from reaching Ukrainian troops on the battlefield as they struggle to hold off Russia's invasion. Over the weekend, in advance of peace talks this week, Trump has claimed that he may impose new sanctions on Russia and unfreeze his block on weapons and intelligence to Ukraine. Don't believe him.

THEN, with another election just weeks away that will, once again, determine the partisan balance of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, we are joined by Wisconsin's native son, JOHN NICHOLS, progressive author and National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation. The April 1 election comes just two years after liberals finally won back 4 to 3 control of the state's high court for the first time in 15 years.

What is at stake if the majority flips back to control by the state's hard right Republican Party? "Pretty much everything," explains Nichols, "from abortion rights, to voting rights, to labor rights" and, "this may seem a bit of stretch to folks who haven't been following Wisconsin politics, but I tell you this is the case: whether Wisconsin respects the results of presidential elections." That, he says, is among the points that should raise interest in this contest for everyone in America.

The theoretically "non-partisan" contest to fill the seat being vacated by liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, the Court's most senior jurist, is being waged between liberal Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford and the state's radical, Republican former Attorney General Brad Schimel. He is being backed by lots of billionaire money, including from one of Elon Musk's political affairs committee, which has begun to blanket the airwaves in favor of Schimel.

But Nichols reports that the unpopular Musk's entry in the race --- which he clearly knows nothing about --- is as likely to propel support for Crawford to the polls in what could become a very big turnout and a bellwether for elections during the Trump Era over the coming months and years.

"I don't think [Musk] knows anything about Wisconsin. I don't think he even cares about Wisconsin," argues Nichols. "Someone told him that this Wisconsin Supreme Court race is a critical juncture in our politics, and he should come in on the Republican/Trump side. They were right --- it IS a critical juncture. If this race is decided for Susan Crawford, it will be the first major push-back against not just Trumpism, but also against Musk's entry into politics. So, yeah, it is a critical juncture."

"The billionaire class is all in for Schimel," he adds, "because of the simple reality that these Wisconsin Supreme Court races are pivotal contests. Not just for the state, but really in defining a lot of the direction of American jurisprudence."

Much more, of course, from Nichols --- who knows Wisconsin (and U.S.) politics as well as anyone --- on today's BradCast...

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We pick up on today's BradCast with something that came up at the very end of yesterday's program. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

After I raised the question we've been discussing of late, regarding why Donald Trump is seemingly dismantling the U.S. Government from top to bottom, despite the unpopularity of the bulk of his actions, our friend 'Driftglass', one of my guests yesterday, suggested that everything Trump was doing was clearly very popular with Russia and its strongman President Vladimir Putin.

Democratic U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley came at the same the point during a confirmation hearing this week for two Trump nominees in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Is President Trump a Russian asset?," the Oregon Senator asked Deputy Sec. of State nominee Christopher Landau directly, before detailing one thing after another that Trump has done, particularly regarding Ukraine, that would seem to directly benefit Putin.

"What else could a Russian asset actually possibly do that Trump hasn't yet done?," he asked both Landau and Matthew Whitaker, Trump's nominee to be Ambassador to NATO. Tune in for Merkley's full line of questioning and the two nominees' embarrassingly evasive answers.

Relatedly, and amusingly, Elon Musk's AI chatbot called Grok, was asked a similar question this week. The query asked Grok to "use all publicly available information from 1980" through the present to determine: "What is the likelihood from 1-100 that Trump is a Putin compromised asset"?

We share part of the detailed answer, as Musk's AI explains why it estimates "a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties."

Well, that's probably embarrassing for Musk's co-President.

As to Merkley's question about what else a Russian asset could "actually possibly do that Trump hasn't yet done," while Trump's nominees tried to change the subject rather than answer that question, Reuters offers an exclusive today that offers such an answer. The outlet is reporting that Trump is readying plans to revoke legal status for some 240,000 refugees who fled to the U.S. from Ukraine after Russia's invasion of their country. They also cite reporting from CBS News last week that Trump is planning to revoke legal immigrant status for as many as 1.8 million migrants here legally from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and, perhaps most alarmingly, Afghanistan.

Reuters details the case of a former Afghan intelligence officer who served as a CIA asset identifying "High Value Targets" for the U.S. during our long war there. He was granted a two-year parole by the U.S. in January of 2024, on the very strong recommendation of his CIA handler after the Taliban retook Afghanistan. The man, with no criminal record, identified as Rafi, was recently detained by ICE when he showed up for a regular check-in, in advance of an asylum hearing scheduled for next month. When Reuters inquired with ICE as to why they were keeping Rafi in detention, they were told that immigration policies for Afghan refugees who aided Americans were "ended on January 20, 2025," the day Trump was sworn in to office.

If it's not clear by now that Republicans are lying when they claim to support "legal" immigration, they're just against people coming here "illegally", then the stunning story of what the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) tweeted last night about Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) --- a 40-year American citizen who came to the U.S. lawfully as a child 60 years ago, and delivered the Spanish-language rebuttal to Trump's address to Congress on Tuesday night --- may be an eye-opener for you.

Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, rebutting a litany of environmental and energy related lies that Trump unleashed during his Congressional address, and much more...

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As discussed with our two guests on today's BradCast, Trump's speech to Congress on Tuesday night was so long and boring it could still be going on today, for all I know. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP today, however, a few important news headlines...

• After enacting 25% trade tariffs against our two largest trading partners and allies, Canada and Mexico, on Tuesday --- and seeing the stock-market plummet in response --- Trump agreed on Wednesday to delay implementation of tariffs on automobile imports, which would have sent car prices skyrocketing in the U.S., for one month.

• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled narrowly against the Trump Administration in one of its first rulings regarding whether or not they will require the Administration to follow the rule of law or not. In a 5 to 4 emergency ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with the Court's three Democratic appointees to uphold lower court rulings that order the Administration to unfreeze as much as $2 billion in payments to thousands of contractors for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in order to pay for work that has already been completed. Trump's January 20th Executive Order freezing both contracts and payments, signed on his first day in office, has already resulted in hundreds of layoffs by contractors, food for starving children left rotting in warehouses, and life-saving medicine going undelivered around the world.

• Newly-elected, 70-year old Democratic U.S. Rep. and former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner of Texas died on Tuesday night following an unspecified medical emergency after attending Trump's address to Congress, where he used his platform to rally against planned Republican cuts to Medicaid. Turner's death, and the months it will take to hold a special election to fill his seat, will give House Republicans a bit more breathing room in what is still one of the slimmest House majorities in U.S. history.

THEN, it's on to the longest --- and arguably dullest and most falsehood-filled --- addresses to Congress ever delivered by a U.S. President. It wasn't officially a State of the Union Address, for reasons that aren't worth boring you with (if you watched the speech, you've been through enough already), but it had all the same trappings.

It was also the most vengeful and obnoxiously partisan address ever delivered to Congress by a U.S. President, as Trump repeatedly attacked his predecessor throughout, blaming him for things like the newly-rising cost of eggs, describing Joe Biden as "the worst President in American history" and Democrats as "radical left lunatics".

The evening also featured some Democrats trying whatever they could think of to push back against Trump's lawless wrecking ball of an Administration to date. Those efforts resulted in one member, Rep. Al Green of Texas, being removed by the House Sergeant-at-Arms at Speaker Mike Johnson's direction, and others walking out at various points throughout the seemingly endless remarks.

We're joined for insight on all of this today, as ever, by our very smart, old school blogger friends HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, the award-winning columnist at Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS', longtime fellow blogger and broadcaster, as co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast.

The hour and 39-minute speech "was absolutely interminable," agrees Parton today, arguing that the "litany of atrocities" outlined by Trump as unparalleled achievements in his first six weeks in office, suggests he believes "he is no longer encumbered by the law, by the Constitution, by anything."

"Who is there left to be persuaded, cajoled, shocked, outraged?," Driftglass asks rhetorically. "The only thing that is going to shock the people in the middle is economic hardship. The recession that Trump is bringing down on their heads. Cutting off their services. Invading their Social Security. That might actually light a fire under them and get them moving."

But we will see. We discuss, among many other things...

• the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of attempts by elected Dems to push back against Trump, and the forced removal of spirited protester, Rep. Green, from the proceedings;
• Trump's vow to "get" Greenland from Denmark "one way or the other" and the beginning of the GOP's renewed, if ever-present, love for American imperialism;
• the hypocritical reaction to the speech by Congressional Republicans who, just one year ago, were clutching their pearls after what they described as "the most political, partisan speech ever delivered by a President in the hallowed House chamber" following President Biden's final SOTU.
• how Medicaid and even Social Security are now both "on the chopping block" for Trump and Congressional Republicans;
• and explanations from both Digby and Driftglass as to why Trump is violently dismantling the federal government with Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros, despite the unpopularity of those actions among the public.

That's just a taste. As ever, tune in for much more...

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I've gotta be quick with today's BradCast summary, as Trump's first address during his second term to a joint session of Congress is coming up shortly. And I don't want to miss a single lie! (Full coverage tomorrow, natch). [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But the central theme of today's show: Donald Trump is bad for business. He has no clue how to run a business, much less a country, which should decidedly not be run as a business. They are two very different things. But even on his own terms, Trump is lousy at running the country as a business.

Among our many stories today underscoring those points in various ways....

• Today, Trump's 25% tariffs against our two largest trading partners and friends, Canada and Mexico, kicked in, earning blowback from the otherwise even-tempered and very polite Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And, again, the U.S. stock market took another dive in response to Trump's "dumb" trade war, wiping out all gains since the election on the major indexes, thanks to Trump being lousy at his job.

• Among Trump's biggest supporters last November were farmers. Now, they too, are beginning to notice what a clown he is, after the Trump Administration began wiping all climate related data from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture website (cuz climate change doesn't exist if you delete website references to it), along with information on programs regarding grants and subsidies for farmers. All of which they rely on, especially as the Summer growing season is set to begin. A group of farmer's and environmental groups have now filed suit against Trump's USDA, demanding the returns of the databases and tools (that we paid for, before Trump thought it made good "business sense" to waste all of those tax-payer dollars.)

• Cuts and mass layoffs at our beloved National Parks, in advance of the busy Summer tourist season, aren't going over much better with the public --- or the crucial staffers who keep the parks open and clean and some 375 million visitors a year safe. About 4,000 workers at both National Parks and U.S. Forests have now been laid off for specious, and potentially unlawful, reason. People will die because of these pointless cuts. Park experts believe it may take centuries to rebound from the damage to the parks these cuts will cost.

• But what about all of that "waste, fraud and abuse" that Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros are telling us they are axing within federal government agencies? More than$100 billion, Musk is now claiming! Last week, we detailed how the DOGErs quietly deleted billions of dollars in claimed "savings" from their so-called "Wall of Receipts" website, documenting government contracts they'd cancelled at agency after agency. It turned out their "receipts", numbers and claims to go with them were riddled with errors. Last week, they had claimed to have "saved" American tax-payers some $65 billion. But thanks to excellent reporting by a number of outlets, it appeared the number was closer to just over $2 billion at best. The buffoonery continued over the weekend, however, as the Bros once again quietly removed still more false items --- about 1,000 of them! --- and replaced them with others again. You'll be stunned to learn the largest of those new "receipts", as well, are also riddled with errors and false claims.

• This week we are "celebrating" --- if that's the right word for it --- our 16th Anniversary of connecting the climate change dots over your public airwaves in our world famous Green News Report. We have been producing it, week in and week out, over all these years, of course, thanks only to support from readers and listeners like you! Today, in our latest GNR, Desi Doyen has news on Trump's funding freezes crippling the nation's farmers; climate-fueled wildfires exploding in the Carolinas; and mass layoffs now underway at NOAA and the National Weather Service...

• Finally, since Trump is so bad at both business and diplomacy, even a major oil company, Norway's Haltbakk Bunkers, is now refusing to fuel up U.S. Naval vessels in protest of Trump's disgraceful treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House last Friday. "We have today been witnesses to the biggest shitshow ever presented 'live on tv' by the current American president and his vice president," the company posted to social media shortly after. "Huge credit to the president of Ukraine restraining himself and for keeping calm even though USA put on a backstabbing tv show. It made us sick. Short and sweet. As a result, we have decided to immediate STOP as fuel provider to American forces in Norway and their ships calling Norwegian ports. ... 'No Fuel to Americans!' ... We encourage all Norwegians and Europeans to follow our example. SLAVA UKRAINA".

Running the government "like a business" is working out great! Welcome to "America's Golden Age"!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump Administration's federal funding freeze hits America's farmers hard; Extreme drought, high winds spark more than a hundred wildfires in the Carolinas; PLUS: Trump and Musk fire experienced meteorologists from the National Weather Service... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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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): 50 percent GDP collapse ahead from climate impacts? Actuaries sound the alarm --- who is listening?; Ontario will cut off U.S. electricity exports 'with a smile on my face,' Ford says; In many of Appalachia’s flood-ravaged areas, residents have little choice but rebuild in risky locations; Trump DOJ to drop lawsuit against polluting LA petrochemical plant; How to eat and drink fewer microplastics... PLUS: Wall Street Journal: Clean energy transition is unstoppable... and much, MUCH more! ...

At the Oval Office on Friday between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the whole world saw a President clearly terrified of Vladimir Putin and Russia. But it wasn't President Zelenskyy, it was clearly President Trump. Before we get there today, however, some alarming news on today's BradCast on what appears to be enormous planned and/or threatened cuts at Social Security. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last week, our friend DAVID DAYEN, investigative financial journalist, author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect, was first to break the news of the Trump Administration making plans to cut the Social Security Administration (SSA) by half. That would mean, at a minimum, layoffs of tens of thousands of employees at the notoriously efficient agency which has never missed or even had a late payment since its founding in 1935 and whose administrative expenses are less than 1% of their total budget.

To achieve the type of massive cuts the Administration is actively devising, according to emails obtained by Dayen, it would likely have to include the closure of SSA field offices around the country, which service about 120,000 visitors each day. That includes signing up beneficiaries for various SSA services that amount to checks sent to some 73 million retired and disabled Americans who receive about $126 billion in social safety net payments from the agency each month.

On the heels of Dayen's reporting, most of the corporate media outlets have now confirmed plans by the Trump Administration to cut at least 7,000 workers. Dayen, who joins us on today's program, however, is standing by his reporting on the efforts being drawn up to slash much deeper and wider than that. The cuts, according to experts --- including the SSA's former Commissioner under President Biden --- could, within the coming months, result in much-needed payments to beneficiaries being delayed, at a minimum.

Former SSA Commissioner and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley told CNBC over the weekend: "Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits. I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days." He advised that "people should start saving now."

Citing the fact that the agency is already under-staffed and operating with with 7,000 fewer employees than just a decade ago, Dayen tells me "there's about a 50-year low in terms of the number of employees at the Social Security Administration."

"Even before Donald Trump was inaugurated, people would say [SSA] was in an operational crisis from a lack of manpower to do the large and important work that needs to to be done. Every day in America, 10,000 people turn 65. The needs on the disability front have gone up year after year after year. There simply aren't enough people to process systems, many of which are still manual."

"Republicans have refused to fund the system whenever they get into power in the government, in even a small way. They force these cuts. It's a one-way ratchet, where the number of the workforce never gets rebuilt," Dayen explains, alluding to "lies" by folks like Elon Musk and House Speaker Mike Johnson who claim, without evidence, that SSA is a hotbed of "waste, fraud and abuse."

When these cuts are put in place, and field offices shut down, beneficiaries may be forced to travel hundreds of miles to have an in-person meeting or hearing regarding their benefits. Even phone services are likely to be cut. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's Acting SSA chief has "proposed using [private, for-profit] call center employees to replace SSA workers who staff an 800 number for beneficiaries."

"It sounds like Privatization 101, doesn't it?," quips Dayen. "This is what is done when privatizers get in power. They cut spending. They cut the workforce to make it look like they're slimming down the federal government. But those tasks still have to be performed, and they're usually performed by outside contractors who are more expensive than if you would do the actual activity in house."

Much more on all of that from Dayen today. Please tune in.

NEXT... We dive into Friday's shameful televised Oval Office meeting between President Trump, Vice-President Vance and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, where Trump and Vance berated the heroic Ukrainian leader for not being grateful enough to them. Or something. In what devolved into a shouting match, at least on Trump and Vance's part, both of the American leaders took to echoing Russian propaganda and talking points at Zelenskyy after he'd flown to the U.S. to sign an agreement (incredibly enough) to give away half of his nation's natural resources to the U.S. in order to repay previous military support. All in the hopes of eventually coming to a peace agreement with Russia.

But, the Ukrainian President insisted, the U.S. needed to offer security guarantees if his country was to agree to any sort of ceasefire, given that Vladimir Putin had violated such agreements dozens of times in the paste, including the 1994 agreement when Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons arsenal after the fall of the Soviet Union. In exchange, the pact between Ukraine, Russia, U.S., U.K., Germany, France and China guaranteed that Ukraine's sovereign borders would remain protected and secure. That is just one of many agreements broken by Putin. Thus, any such deal with Russia's belligerent strongman would require security assurances from Ukraine's allies...which the U.S., at least until Friday, has long been.

Shortly after Trump's televised Oval Office spectacle, Zelenskyy was sent away from the White House, which cancelled the planned signing of the resources agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine.

It was, as the New York Times' conservative Brett Stephens described it, "A Day of American Infamy", as Trump seemed to officially change sides in the war to support Russia and Putin...for some reason...after 80 post-WWII years of an unbreakable alliance with Western Europe.

Callers ring in today with thoughts on Friday's spectacle and more. But, of course, those listeners who, in recent years, were willing to call in to blame the U.S. and Ukraine for Russia's invasion, were nowhere to be found...

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"This country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting and incompetently run," said the President of the United States today before his first Cabinet meeting. At least he's right on that last part, as detailed on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Donald Trump and Elon Musk's corrupt gaslighting of the nation continues, as their DOGE Bros continue to violate the law by cancelling contracts they have no legal right to, in the supposed name of "government efficiency" and cutting "waste, fraud and abuse" from the federal government. And yet, they've been unable to find any evidence of any fraud or abuse to date. Other than their own.

The only transparency DOGE has offered to document their "cost-cutting" claims at federal agency after agency is a so-called "Wall of Receipts" claiming to have "saved" $65 billion for the American people. But multiple analyses of those "receipts" by news outlets and people who understand how government contracting ... and math ... and reality ... actually work, have found error after error. The actual savings from canceled contracts and public services to taxpayers is closer to $2.5 billion, rather than $65 billion (which is chump change in the U.S. budget either way). The DOGE Bros seem to have acknowledged as much when they quietly removed their top five largest so-called spending cuts from their website in the middle of the night on Tuesday without notice or explanation.

As these clowns and liars continue their attempted national gaslighting, pretending to cut "waste, fraud and abuse" in government grants and contracts, Musk awarded his own company, SpaceX, a huge new federal government contract to deploy some 4,000 Starlink Internet terminals for the FAA. Given that Trump has fired all of the Inspectors General who would certainly have flagged the obviously grotesque conflicts of interest involved in such an arrangement, Musk --- whose companies and tens of billions in government contracts had previously been regulated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which are all now being gutted, killed and/or neutered by Musk himself) --- he's probably got nothing to worry about.

Nonetheless, as federal judges continue to order pauses on much of Trump's most unlawful activities for the moment --- (or try to, the Administration apparently doesn't find it necessary to follow court orders) --- Musk is further gaslighting and poisoning MAGA brains on his social media cite, calling for the impeachment of "unelected" judges who, he charges, are threatening democracy...by standing up for the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.

Also today, Desi Doyen explains the breaking news on Trump's EPA Administrator attempting to roll back agency scientists' 20-year old finding that greenhouse gasses cause global warming and, therefore, pose a threat to the health of Americans. That "endangerment finding", according to SCOTUS almost 20 years ago, means that the EPA must regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act. So now, the Administration is trying to fraudulently UN-find the EPA's landmark finding under Trump's corrupt, new leadership.

Finally, in related matters, Desi has our latest Green News Report, detailing new studies on the quickening melting of the world's glaciers; sea ice plummeting to record lows among ridiculously high temps in the Arctic; and Trump's order to shut down all, already-operating EV charging stations at federal facilities. Because, ya know, Trump is just cut government waste, fraud and abuse, right?...

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Today on The BradCast: Blowback to the Trump/Musk DOGE Bro Coup seems to be beginning in earnest following a series of rough town-halls for members of Congress in their local districts. It was also very bad day for the top Bro. But, based on what may happen this Friday, the blowback for these would-be dictators could get still worse. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Twenty-one senior civil service employees at what had been called the U.S. Digital Service, before it was renamed by Donald Trump as the U.S. DOGE Service, resigned en masse on Tuesday. All of the skilled, non-partisan tech engineers who announced their resignation in a brief group letter [PDF], previously worked for major tech firms like Google and Amazon before joining the USDS to serve their country by helping to modernize computer services and systems across the federal government, including "Social Security, veterans' services, tax filing, healthcare, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services."

In their letter, the senior officials detail how Elon Musk's DOGE crew of young, unskilled Musk fanboys showed up in January with "White House visitor badges", many refusing to identify themselves, and "asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability." The process, they write, "created significant security risks" and resulted in layoffs of 40 colleagues whose lost "expertise makes critical systems and Americans' data less safe."

"We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services," they write in their quit letter. "We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE's actions."

There was more bad news today for the world's richest man, and for the company that won him that title. New data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association released today finds that Tesla sales are absolutely tanking across Europe, falling nearly by half over the past year, as Musk has become a pariah as a global champion of far-right politics. His partnership with Trump and open support for Germany's far-right neo-Nazi party, as well as other strongmen, appears to be costing Tesla tens of billions of dollars. With the news of plummeting sales in the EU as compared to one year ago --- even while sales of Electric Vehicles in the EU otherwise sky-rocketed during the same period --- the share price of Tesla stock in the U.S. fell over a cliff on Tuesday, by more than 8%. The company's total worth has fallen more than 20% since the start of the year.

That news was accompanied with bad news for Trump as well, as a number of U.S. consumer confidence surveys released on Tuesday, revealed the largest decline in confidence in the U.S. economy in years, thanks to Trump's tariff and trade war threats and failure to tame inflation, as promised on the campaign trail.

THEN... With Trump and Musk perhaps beginning to feel some economic anxiety, a grassroots initiative hopes to spread that anxiety to corporations who kowtow to Trump with the dissolution of anti-discrimination (DEI) efforts.

This Friday, February 28th, a number of grassroots organizations are calling for a 24-hour "Economic Blackout", from Midnight to 11:59pm, hoping to demonstrate the spending power of American consumers. The efforts asks participants to buy and spend money on nothing beyond essentials that day, and to support only small, local businesses if they must spend anything at all.

"No purchases in store, online. No Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy. No fast food, gas, major retailers. No credit or debit cards for non-essential spending," one widely-circulated flier instructs, adding "We can do this TOGETHER!" along with a promise to grow the effort more broadly in the future. "If they fail to listen, the next blackout will be LONGER."

We're joined today by JONATHAN SIMON, a longtime friend as an election integrity champion and author, who is now a Senior Editor at the non-profit news outlet, Who, What, Why. In a recent article, he pondered some of the pros and cons of such an effort and its chances of success.

"It's more the beta test of a potentially very powerful weapon, which then needs to be expanded and focused," he tells me today, explaining how, if successful, this sort of protest could be expanded. "When you've shown you have a powerful weapon, then you can start articulating and bullet-pointing demands on what you want, and what you want in return for not using the weapon. This is very early stage. But there is enormous latent power in consumer buying choices."

"Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the annual GDP of this country," explains Simon. "It is an enormous part of our economy. Corporations and the economy in general are exquisitely sensitive to even small downturns or small deficits."

"We grew up soft. Let's face it. We grew up in the world's most stable democracy," he observes, while offering appropriate skepticism of the effects of this new (for our generation) protest tactic, as almost the least we can personally do. But, he notes optimistically, "It has the potential to galvanize us and wake us up. We need to wake up. This could be the start of it"...

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 'Viciousness' of Trump’s climate attacks stuns even his critics; Who benefits? While US automakers play catch up, Trump handicaps US EVs; 'Unleash American blackouts': Experts warn Bonneville job cuts bring immediate and long-term risks to Pacific Northwest; House to launch the process of killing Biden rules; US global disaster response teams unable to deploy following USAID shutdown, sources say... PLUS: 'Never let anyone break your spirit': How an environmental justice forefather is thinking about our current moment... and much, MUCH more! ...