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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump White House announces arms-for-rare-earths deal with Ukraine; Spring is getting warmer across the U.S. due to man-made climate change; PLUS: Trump E.P.A. moves to ditch scientific finding that climate change endangers public health... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump’s seven most anti-environmental moves --- and how to push back; Scientists issue warning to public about 'high-risk' events that could demolish local economies: 'Remember the effect on people'; Trump’s reversal of EV program could carry a hefty $1B price tag; Despite historic rains in 2023, aquifers deep beneath L.A. area remain depleted; Trump warned of a "bloodbath" in the auto industry if he wasn't elected --- now he's engineering one... PLUS: Extreme heat linked to accelerated aging in older adults, study finds... and much, MUCH more! ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Today on The BradCast: Let the Constitutional Crises begin! As the Trump Administration attempts to Cancel Culture pretty much everything with a memo that orders nearly half of the total, already appropriated federal budget immediately (and unconstitutionally) put on ice! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We might have seen it coming, as several of our other stories today might have augured. Among them...

• Late last week, while touring fallout from last year's climate change-fueled Hurricane Helene disaster in a Republican-leaning area of North Carolina, and the then-ongoing climate change-fueled Los Angeles Fires, Trump suggested he might shut down (privatize) FEMA entirely and called for Photo ID voting restrictions in California in exchange for federal disaster aid to victims who had lost everything. When asked if NC would also see conditions placed on their federal disaster aid, Trump's meandering non-answer (full of one fantastical lie after another) made clear that, no, only Democratic-leaning states would have to agree to change policies in exchange for much-needed federal disaster aid.

• Amusingly, Trump pretended on social media last night that he'd ordered the U.S. military into California "under Emergency Powers" to turn on the magical, non-existent water "spigot" somewhere in Northern California, which the state chooses to keep turned off in order to somehow cause devastating fires in Southern California. Now that might sound like a ridiculous lie and a completely delusional fantasy that makes no sense at all, but at her first White House press briefing, Trump's Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed today that "the water has been turned back on in California." (That's great news, because I live in Los Angeles, had to evacuate briefly a week or so ago due to the fires, and had no idea the water had been turned off all this time! (OMG... this is only Week 2?!?)

• Last week, in Week 1, and receiving a bit less coverage than so many of the other nightmares Trump set off with his flurry of Executive Orders, is the fact that the Administration abruptly ordered the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to suspend all research grants, programs, travel and even ongoing cancer treatment trials. The result of putting tens of billions of dollars of research and grants on ice has sent confusion, anxiety and chaos throughout the American health community at what experts describe as one of the worst possible times, amid a slew of quickly spreading winter viruses and the increasing risks of avian flu in the U.S.

• On Monday this week, U.S. public health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were ordered to cease all work with the World Health Organization (WHO) just one week after Trump signed an order declaring the U.S. was ending its cooperation with the worldwide organization. (Unclear he can legally do so, by the way. But he doesn't care.) His Executive Orders also froze spending on a decades old global AIDS program that has saved 25 million lives, but now will block HIV the distribution of medication to more than 20 million people, including drugs already obtained with U.S. funds and sitting on shelves at local clinics around the world.

• All of that might have been a signal for where all of this was going. According to a two-page memo from the acting Director of Trump's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Monday, the White House has now ordered a "temporary pause" on "all federal financial assistance" with the exception of Medicare and Social Security payments. The memo directs federal agencies to pause "all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance," and any other programs that included "D.E.I., woke gender ideology and the Green New Deal" as of Tuesday (today!) at 5pm. That, even though there is no "Green New Deal." It never passed. (Shhh...don't tell them!)

  As the non-profit news site NOTUS explained, "the list of programs that could be touched by the order is vast: Medicaid, disaster relief, farm aid, student loan programs, Head Start, highway funds, nutrition assistance, rent assistance and dozens of other programs." Some 70 million low-income Americans alone, who are enrolled in Medicaid, could lose their access to health care. These are all funds already allocated by Congress and approved by previous Presidents including, in some cases, Trump himself.

  The impoundment of the funds --- said to amount to "more than $3 trillion," according to the memo, which is nearly half of the entire federal budget for fiscal year 2024 --- appears to be in strict violation of the federal Impoundment Control Act of 1974, enacted by Congress after Richard Nixon held back Congressionally-appropriated funding that he didn't like. According to the Constitution anyway (quaint!) Congress, not the President, controls the purse strings of the U.S. budget.

  As you may recall, attempting to withhold Congressionally-approved funding to Ukraine during his first term, unless they agreed to announce a fake investigation of the Biden Family, is what led to Trump's first impeachment. Ever since, Republicans have devised an argument that the Impoundment Control Act is actually unconstitutional. This is clearly their first volley in getting a ruling on that from their corrupted U.S. Supreme Court.

  Late on Tuesday, as Trump's deliberate chaos reigned shortly before the 5pm deadline to freeze the spending, a federal judge placed an administrative stay on the order, pending further arguments on Monday morning. She also made clear that the National Council of Nonprofits, the plaintiffs which sued earlier in the day, alleging the freeze would cause their members irreparable harm, must show evidence to support that argument on Monday or the judge would have no choice but to end her administrative stay and deny the requested temporary restraining order. And then... ???

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report with more on Trump's attempt to weaponize FEMA, but also with some good news, for a change, for both Los Angeles and New York City!...

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We should be both relieved and outraged!

Relieved that, earlier this month, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new round of booster shots specifically re-designed to address new variants of the deadly COVID virus.

Outraged because, despite the expenditure of tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on research and development (R&D), the pharmaceutical industry's refusal to waive its "gifted" patent rights prevented a global rollout of the COVID vaccines. In turn, that refusal resulted in the need for the new booster shots.

Outraged because the industry's refusal to waive their patent rights has produced "excess mortality" with COVID that, as of the beginning of this month, has killed at least 6.5 million people worldwide, with no end in sight.

Outraged because this will, in all likelihood, not be the last newly reconstituted booster shot needed. It is the considered opinion of two thirds of the world's epidemiologists that the failure to provide global vaccinations will give rise to mutations that "could render current COVID vaccines ineffective."

And, yes, the patent rights were, indeed, a gift --- from the United States to the Pharmaceutical Industry...

The state of California is embarking on a ground-breaking effort to manufacture and distribute a life-saving drug. The plan also deals a first major blow to private pharmaceutical companies that have long abused the nation's legal system for profit at the expense of the health of the citizenry.

"On my first day in office I signed an Executive Order to put California on a path towards creating our own prescription drugs," Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom declared in a July 7 video posted to Twitter, referencing his inauguration promise in January of 2019. "And now it's happening".

Newsom's statement came in the wake of his approval of a Golden State Budget Proposal that will invest $50 million into development and $50 million more into a State-owned facility that will manufacture and distribute generic (aka biosimilar) insulin to Californians at slightly above cost.

If it succeeds, California, which has the world's 5th largest economy, will not only become the first State, but also the only government, other than Cuba, to embrace the socialized production of generic medications. (Although Cuba develops and manufactures its own generic medications and provides free "preventative medical care, diagnostic tests and medications for hospitalized patients", Pharmacy Times reported, "Cubans pay out-of-pocket for outpatient medications.")

California's progressive Democratic Governor pointed to the extraordinarily high cost of insulin as a form of "market failure" that justifies his embrace of socialized medications. His decision to allow the Golden State to produce its own generic insulin also highlights the immoral manipulation of the nation's patent laws by for-profit drug companies...