Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) actually didn’t go far enough when he told members of the U.S. military: "Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders." In fact, as fellow armed services veteran Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA) emphasized in the same video, service members "must refuse illegal orders."

Under the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which was passed by Congress after the post-WWII Nazi tribunals at Nuremberg, the "I was just following orders" defense was officially discredited for the U.S. military as well. All members of the U.S. armed forces have, as "reported by The Military Times, a duty to disobey "illegal" orders. Any member of the military who carries out an "illegal" order, The Military Times observed, may become the subject of a court martial. Depending on the nature of the illegal order, a member of the military who obeys an illegal order could later be tried for crimes against humanity by an international tribunal.

Neither the UCMJ, nor any existing case law, carves out an exception for "illegal" orders issued by the Commander in Chief. Thus, Donald Trump's effort to label an accurate quote of military law as "sedition" and the "announcement" by Trump's renamed "Department of War" that it is investigating Kelly, are patently absurd.

The more serious questions are: (1) Did Trump's call for Kelly and the five other Democratic members of Congress who publicly called upon members of the military to comply with their "duty to disobey illegal orders" to be "hanged" amount to a criminal violation of 18 U.S. Code §115, which makes it a crime to threaten to assault a member of Congress in retaliation for their performance of their official duties --- (here using their office to remind members of the military of their obligations under the UCMJ)? And (2) whether his amplification of calls for them to be "hanged" amounts to a high crime that warrants impeachment…

To be fair, we warned you on yesterday's show, when setting aside one blissful hour to celebrate the weekend's joyous and peaceful "No Kings" rallies across the nation, that there would be plenty of time to get back to less-than-joyful news on The BradCast from America's unprecedented criminal Trump Era. Well, as promised, we're back to it today! In spades! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Donald Trump doesn't know a whole lot. But, if there's one thing he knows well, it's how to break the law. Civil law. Criminal law. Foreign and domestic. You name it. As the first felon to ever become an American President, he knows how to commit crimes of all sorts and, unfortunately, how to get away with most of them. It's especially easy for him now, after taking office again following a ruling last year by his own corrupted, activist, rightwing U.S. Supreme Court majority which, similarly, has no interest in the rule of law, and is willing to make up a wholly nonexistent "Presidential Immunity" doctrine that has existed nowhere in our Constitution or rule of law in the 250 years of our nation's history.

We have a few too many examples of Trump's crime and pro-crime spree in today's news, highlighting the Golden Age of Trump and Republican Lawlessness and Disorder in America...

• In violation of U.S. and international law, Trump has now ordered at least seven explosive attacks by the U.S. Military on small boats off the coast of Venezuela in the Caribbean, said (without evidence) to be ferrying drugs and "narco-terrorists" to the U.S. After one of those attacks last week, two people survived. They were pulled out of the water by a U.S. war ship and rendered aid. But, rather than trying them for whatever offense Trump is claiming they carried out, the Administration is sending them back to their home countries in Ecuador and Colombia. Now why would they do that? We discuss.

• Here at home, Trump's respect for the Rule of Law is no greater. A bunch of the more than 1,500 January 6th insurrectionists pardoned by Trump on the first day of his second term of office have since been found to have committed additional, separate crimes. Today, CBS News reports on a Trump-pardoned rioter who, according to New York state law enforcement officials, was planning to assassinate Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The man, Christopher Moynihan, one of the first to break into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, allegedly said in text messages that he planned to "eliminate" Jeffries, who he described as a "terrorist" that he "cannot allow" to live. "He must be eliminated, I will kill him for the future," said the man, detailing a plan to do so during a NY speaking engagement this week by the Democratic leader. Remind me again how it is Democrats carrying out political violence?!

• In other wildly corrupt Trump pardon news, he granted clemency last Friday to disgraced former Rep. George Santos, the wildly corrupt Republican New York fabulist and expelled U.S. Congressman. Santos pleaded guilty earlier this year to fraud and identify theft, in which he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from supporters of his own campaign, including family members. He was sentenced to seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty just before trial. Santos served just two and a half months of that sentence in a "Club Fed" facility before he was sprung last week by the fraud and theft enthusiast currently residing in our White House.

• While Trump's favored Republican criminals run free, his weaponized Dept. of Justice is running down his list of political foes, finding something, anything to criminally charge them with. One of those indicted on particularly ridiculous charges is Trump's former FBI Director James Comey, who he fired for not blocking DOJ probes into Russian interference, on Trump's behalf, in the 2016 election. Describing the indictment as an "egregious abuse of power," Comey's attorneys on Monday filed motions for immediate dismissal of the case, which they characterize as an unlawful "vindictive" prosecution, and one that was brought by Trump's personal lawyer who, Comey alleges, is not legally serving as U.S. Attorney in VA.

• But, according to a Reuters exclusive today, it's not just the Dept. of Justice that has been weaponized against Trump's perceived enemies. Agencies across the entirety of the Executive Branch, including U.S. intelligence officers, have been meeting in what is being described as the "Interagency Weaponization Working Group". It reportedly includes officials from the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Justice and Defense Departments, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Communications Commission, among other agencies. All banding together in what Reuters describes as revealing "the administration’s push to deploy government power against Trump’s perceived foes is broader and more systematic than previously reported."

• All of that not horrific enough for ya? New York Times reports late today that Trump is demanding the DOJ pay him $230 million for investigating him for the many crimes he has committed over the year. Any such payment, according to DOJ guidelines, would have to be approved first by the Deputy A.G. in charge of the Department's Civil Division. That Deputy A.G. is currently Todd Blanche, Trump's lead criminal defense attorney. Think he'll agree to the payout? It's good to be king, right?

• In other news related to King Donald's abuse of power to try and stay in power, Republican state lawmakers in North Carolina have approved a new U.S. House map that will allow them to steal another Congressional seat from Democrats next year, in a state where gerrymandering has already allowed them to hold 10 out of 14 seats. Earlier corrupt legislation by Republican state lawmakers prevents the Democratic Governor, in the very closely divided state, from vetoing a newly redistricted map. This one is designed to unseat a Black Democratic Congressman in the eastern part of NC.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us with some of the only good news of the day in our latest Green News Report. (Though even that news is somewhat tempered by the rest of her six-minute report.)

Enjoy!

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We pick up on today's BradCast with several new developments in stories we covered on yesterday's show plus much more, thanks to another insane day in Trump World. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• On yesterday's show, we spoke with former DOJ Public Corruption chief Randall Eliason about reporting over the weekend, confirmed by multiple outlets, that Donald Trump's so-called "Border Czar", Tom Homan, accepted $50,000 in cash inside of a takeout food bag last year in exchange for a promise to "facilitate" future contracts if Trump won the election. According to internal DOJ documents and multiple sources at each outlet, Homan was caught on tape receiving the money from undercover law enforcement agents posing as businessmen. But after Trump took office, the bribery probe into Homan was summarily dropped by Trump associates leading the FBI and DOJ, on the supposed basis that no crimes were committed by Homan in the payoffs during the investigation begun during the Biden Administration.

  But, by last night, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took the DOJ denials a step further, claiming that Homan "never took the $50,000." That denial was not made by the DOJ when the story was first reported over the weekend. And even Homan himself, when asked about all of this on Fox "News" last night, didn't make that claim. Here merely said "I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal." Tune in for the full update on that wild story, before it disappears into the Trump news cycle ether. (Though Congressional Dems, to their credit, are trying to prevent that from happening.)

• In another follow-up to another story we covered, if only briefly, yesterday... The news broke just before airtime that Disney/ABC announced Jimmy Kimmel's late night show would be returning to air on Tuesday, after it had been "indefinitely" sidelined last week following threats by Trump's sleazy FCC Chair Brendan Carr to rescind broadcast licenses from local affiliates who carried the show. The wildly inappropriate, unprecedented (and perhaps unlawful?) threats from Carr (and Trump) came after they decided they didn't like a fairly benign (and accurate) remark that Kimmel made on his show last week regarding the assassination of far-right Republican activist Charlie Kirk. The decision by Disney to bring Kimmel back was clearly based on massive public opprobrium, including massive cancellations of Disney's streaming services, etc.

  That good news, however, was tempered last night by an announcement from local station conglomerate Sinclair, declaring they would be pre-empting Kimmel's how with news programming. Broadcast behemoth Nexstar joined Sinclair on Tuesday, meaning that tens of millions of Americans in dozens of major markets will still be unable to watch Jimmy Kimmel Live! Both of those corporate conglomerates --- which own dozens of local stations all over the country (even if most Americans don't even realize it) have major mergers pending before Trump's corrupted FCC. So this very public fight, with serious First Amendment implications, will apparently continue. That, explains Josh Marshall today, is not necessarily a bad thing.

• Our twisted President rambled for nearly an hour today to the U.N. General Assembly in New York. It was as insane as you might have imagined, only more so. From lies about his domestic accomplishments during his second term, to lies about his having "ended seven wars", to threats to the world's nations regarding migration, energy and climate change, about which he took particularly hilarious zeal in lying about in virtually every aspect, describing it as a "con", a "scam" and a "hoax". Desi Doyen helps us debunk just some of the most obnoxious lies from Trump at the U.N. on Tuesday. And, as also discussed: Please wary of the claims reported late today that Trump has somehow flipped his position on Russia's war on Ukraine.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with both good and bad news for the world's oceans; and a report on the disbanding of a climate change denier group recently convened by Trump's Dept. of Energy to help lie about climate science...

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Today's BradCast is best understood --- and felt --- by listening to it. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But, in short, here are some of the topics we cover along the way...

• 27-year old White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who told Fox "News" yesterday that Trump "came up with" the "motto and foreign policy doctrine" known as "Peace Through Strength", is a living breathing monument to how much Donald Trump disrespects Americans, American values, and the Free Press.

• Trump's unlawful, unconstitutional bombing of Iran's nuclear cites over the weekend did not "completely and totally obliterate" them, as he lied to the American people on Saturday night. But it did set the use of those facilities back "a few months" according to an early, classified U.S. assessment reported on by several outlets today.

• Trump's self-declared "cease-fire" between Israel and Iran yesterday apparently never happened. So, he went "absolutely berserk" used the "f-bomb" to the media today instead.

• "Heatwave Shell", as veteran meteorologist Guy Walton has named it (he names heatwaves after Big Oil companies whose products have made heatwaves more and more deadly each and every passing year) is causing misery, and danger, across much of the eastern half of the nation this week.

• Among the locations hardest hit by Heatwave Shell today is New York City, which is also holding its Democratic Mayoral Primary today. Normally, such contests might very well determine who will become the City's next Mayor in the very Democratic city. This year, the politics --- a corrupt incumbent Mayor who plans to run as an independent in November, a disgraced former Governor who may do the same if he loses today, and two very progressive candidates who could win, but would cause freakouts from the Right and maybe even the supposed center --- could shake things up. Beyond the politics, however, we focus today on the voting method now used in NYC's Mayoral elections, specifically Ranked Choice Voting, how it works (and/or doesn't), its dangers (as I see them) to American democracy, and an alternative form of voting (Approval Voting) that solves many of the concerns that RCV proponents care about, without risking disenfranchisement and loss public oversight of election results. Tune in for this one, if you ever wondered what RCV was all about, liked the idea, or hated it.

• The corrupt Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrated their corruption and Republican activism again on Monday, by issuing an obnoxiously terse ruling --- without comment or explanation --- that not only allows the Trump Administration to endanger migrants by deporting them to countries from which they did not come, and which the State Dept. advises against traveling to, but also fails to mention a word about the Trump DOJ's repeated, lawless, intentional violation of lower federal district court orders in this and related cases. The three liberal Justices issued a blistering, 20-page dissent, while the corrupt majority couldn't be bothered to write a word to explain their full approval of "legalistic noncompliance" in yet another "disastrous" decision that undermines the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution itself.

• And with that corrupt ruling on the Court's emergency docket --- the so-called "Shadow Docket" --- nearly full-blown Authoritarianism arrives in the U.S. But I carefully use the word "nearly" because --- guess what? --- we in the media are still here, for now, and are still reporting on what the authoritarian tyrants are doing. Today's latest example...

• A hard-working migrant landscaper here in Southern California was descended upon by a bunch of masked and armed ICE and/or CPB goons on Saturday while trimming weeds outside of an IHOP. Narciso Barranco, as the viral video of his arrest revealed, was then pepper-sprayed, thrown to the ground, repeatedly punched in the shoulder and face, before being shoved into an unmarked van for detention and, presumably, deportation after some 25 or 30 years in the U.S. Barranco has no criminal history and is the proud father of three sons, all U.S. Marines. And no, as the video shows, he did not "assault" federal agents with his weed-whacker, as DHS lied in response to their shame after the video of his violent arrest went viral. He did, however, when he was finally able to speak from detention more than 24 hours later to his eldest son (who served in Afghanistan), ask him to go finish the landscaping job at the IHOP that he was unable to complete himself on Saturday.

• And finally today, speaking of the dangers to all of us by the tyrannical Right and their corporate sponsors, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with more on this week's heatwave; dangers now posed to the food supply, thanks to climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels; and the window for us to forestall the worst of our climate crisis quickly closing...

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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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Yes, we're often critical of the corporate mainstream media on The BradCast. But they also need to be defended in part during times like these, when Constitutional freedom of the press is literally under attack by the Trump White House and the billionaires who support them. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Before we get to our guest, a few reminders of the critical role the corporate mainstream media play, even amid all of their failures. CNN's instant fact-checker Dan Dale, for example, offers an invaluable service in citing reality, point-by-point, fact-by-fact in quick response to things like Donald Trump's head-spinning hour+ of non-step lies at his "cabinet meeting" on Wednesday.

Also, Washington Post on Tuesday, deserves credit for their news coverage of massive cuts to critical services at Trump's Department of Veteran Affairs, with its new Secretary, Doug Collins, posting embarrassingly giddy videos, praising $2 billion in cancelled contracts at the agency by Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros. In fact, as WaPo reported, the cuts amounted to about 875 contracts for critical services for vets, including medical and burial services, cancer treatment and prevention programs, and the recruitment of doctors for the serially understaffed VA, among other things. The bulk of those cancelled contracts also happened to be with Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs). The Post's coverage on Tuesday ("DOGE to Cancel government contracts that help veterans, records show") was followed up on Wednesday with the much brighter headline: "Under pressure, VA halts contract cancellations in major reversal".

Yes, the mainstream corporate media is critically important, even with all of their failures.

All of which is why the ongoing attacks on the free press by the White House --and by billionaire media owners, like Washington Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos --- right now are so troubling.

NEXT... We're joined today by longtime journalist, media critic and WaPo veteran DAN FROOMKIN, now publisher and editor of the non-profit Press Watch (and, more recently, Heads Up News) to discuss all of that and more.

Among the topics discussed today with Froomkin, who is able to offer unique insight into all of these matters...

• AP reporters are now barred from White House and Air Force One press avails, because the AP Style Guide dares to refer to the international body of water known for 400-years as the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally known name, rather than the "Gulf of America" as Trump insists. AP is now suing the White House in response, in what Froomkin suggests is a text book case of unconstitutional punishment for free speech, adding "we're not even getting into the free press element!"

  "The whole point [of the First Amendment] is the government cannot punish you because of something you say that is political. This is exactly what is happening now. They've admitted it. They said, 'We're banning the AP because it refuses to say the words 'Gulf of America'" Froomkin believes that "even our corrupted Supreme Court can't possibly redefine the First Amendment to make this permissible." We'll see about that.

  He explains why he opposes a boycott by the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) of White House events that AP is barred from, as some have called for, and suggests the better response is for reporters who are still allowed access to use it far more aggressively in confronting Trump and other WH officials on their "nonstop" string of lies.

• On Tuesday, WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the WHCA would no longer decide who is welcome in the White House pool coverage, meaning that ideological partisan propaganda sites, like Breitbart, The Blaze, Newsmax and One America News will now be taking the place of well-established, legitimate media outlets.

  "It's important that we actually have reporters who are interested in determining facts rather than just asking him questions that he can hit out of the park because they are actually on his side," Froomkin argues, defending the pool reporters that he is also frequently critical of. "The reporters in this pool are not just representative of the media, they are representatives of the public. This is the only opportunity for anybody to actually confront Trump with facts and assertions and to confront him with his lies. It is so important that the reporters who are chosen to do this are not then at risk of being punished by the White House and being pulled off the beat if they ask tough questions."

  But, of course, if it's the White House, not the WHCA that determines who is allowed in the room, reporters are far more likely to pull punches if only to ensure they do not displease the ones allowing them access in the first place.

• We also discuss WaPo owner Jeff Bezos' gob-smacking announcement on Wednesday that the Opinion Page of the venerable paper --- that previously declared "Democracy Dies in Darkness" --- would now only include opinions "in support and defense of … personal liberties and free markets." That, after the billionaire owner, in 2013, vowed when he purchased paper that he would not interfere in its editorial content.

  It turns out that you just cannot trust a billionaire!," Froomkin, who worked at the Post for 12 years, quips. "It's a gut punch for everybody who works there, anybody who EVER worked there, and anybody who loves the Post. Its just devastating. [Bezos is] basically saying, 'I want my views expressed and opposing views will not be expressed.' It just turns on its head anything that is valuable about an Opinion Page, where you go for a diversity of views."

There is much more worth diving into in my conversation today with the great Froomkin today.

FINALLY... Speaking of gut punches, we close out the week with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, with some alarming news, to say the least, about plans by Trump's EPA to undermine almost 20 years of climate regulation in one fell "legal" swoop...

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We can't fight every stupid, idiotic, dangerous or perilous thing during the Trump Era, can we? I know I can't, personally. But I don't speak for everyone else. And one person's stupid or idiotic may be another's dangerous or perilous. An interesting debate over picking battles and who gets to decide which ones should be waged is at the heart of today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... however, speaking of dangerous, Donald Trump lackey and MAGA merchandiser (or "sycophantic suck-up" as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse accurately described him today), Kash Patel was confirmed for a ten-year term as FBI Director by cowardly, sycophantic suck-up Republicans in the U.S. Senate today. All Democrats voted against him. Just two Republicans (Collins and Murkowski) joined them.

Aside from being wildly unqualified and publishing an "enemies list" of so-called "members of the Executive Branch deep state” that he vows to target, Patel also pleaded the Fifth to avoid implicating himself in crimes during grand jury testimony regarding his role in Trump's theft of thousands of pages of highly classified national security documents; was paid $25,000 by Russian propagandists to appear in an anti-FBI documentary series; appears to have millions of dollars linked to Chinese interests through shell corporations in the Cayman Islands; and, according to whistleblower allegations cited by the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, appears to have committed perjury during his Senate confirmation hearing.

Other than that, he sounds like the perfect choice for FBI Director! Donald Trump has done it again! Did I mention Patel also publicly vowed, as recently as last December, to "come after" journalists "who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig Presidential elections"? (So much for the First Amendment, even if Patel remains a fan of the Fifth.)

THEN... Speaking of the First Amendment and protection of the free press, we recently reported on the Trump White House's attempt to violate the First Amendment by barring the Associated Press from White House events unless and until the 178-year old international media organization agreed to change its Style Guide to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America".

On the surface, it seems like a pretty minor fight, given everything else the Constitutional order is up against. But, upon closer examination, it really is fight over basic Constitutional rights. As NYTimes' opinion writer Jamelle Bouie accurately characterized it at Bluesky, "your willingness to accept this gulf of america nonsense is an indication of your willingness to accept much worse things coming from this administration."

Meanwhile, over The Atlantic, Senior Editor Gilad Edelman doesn't have any such concerns, and even appears to be victim-blaming by suggesting the fight is one that "the AP probably should never have picked in the first place."

That brief article by Edelman recently touched off our guest today, longtime media critic, political strategist and writer, JAMISON FOSER, who wonders, in a recent article, who Edelman thinks he is to decide which fights are worth waging in the Trump Era and which are not.

"I think the nature of the situation that we're in," Foser tells me today, "and the breadth and depth of the ways that we are in trouble, and things are stacked against us --- an autocratic movement has control of our entire government, much of the news media, much of the ways that people get information online --- things are really stacked against us."

"We are not in a situation in which there are obvious, clear, easily discernible, winnable fights we can choose. So this idea that people should only choose fights that they can win --- I think people should choose the fights that feel right to them. We should all be doing a little less trying to police what fights other people are choosing to engage in, and more finding a place where we can stand up and pick a fight where we can," he argues.

"We will probably lose it," he concedes, "because we will probably lose most of them. But sometimes in the loss there is some value. In this one [AP's defense of First Amendment freedoms] there is some value. There's value in saying, 'We can't stop Donald Trump from ordering his government to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. But we can say we are not going along with that. It is racist, and dumb, and he can't make us say it. There's value in saying that to ourselves, in not giving in to his attempt to control the English language. And there's value in showing our fellow Americans that we are not going along with that."

In AP's case, all they were doing was following the Style Guide they have used for decades. And Edelman still characterized it as a "fight" they "should never have picked."

We've got much more to discuss along those lines today with Foser --- including how elected Democrats might wage more productive fights --- in what I think is a really interesting conversation. Please give it a listen.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, covering the heroic senior DoJ official who quit this week rather than violate the law by following Trump Admin orders to claw back money lawfully granted to clean energy initiatives under Biden; climate change now tripling the price of coffee and cocoa; and Trump declaring himself 'King' to cancel New York City's very successful, first-in-the-nation congestion pricing...

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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've got a lot of news, both good and not as good, for labor on today's BradCast. Also, some results of some pretty crazy primary contests on Tuesday from the final three states to hold primary elections this year before November's critical midterms. [Audio link to full show is posted after this summary.]

First up, those primary results in Delaware, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. After a couple of races in DE and RI, we hit the most notable on the night, coming out of the Granite State, where Republican voters have elected another hard-right, conspiracy theorist and election denying loon as their nominee in a U.S. Senate race they might have been able to easily win this fall with a non-insane candidate. Instead, retired Army Brigadier General Don Bolduc --- who wants to abolish the FBI and the 17th Amendment (the direct election of U.S. Senators) and has described the state's popular, relatively moderate Republican Governor Chris Sununu as "a Chinese communist sympathizer” --- will now take on New Hampshire's incumbent Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan in November.

Two hard-right Trumpers also won the GOP nominations for the NH's two U.S. House Seats, each currently held by Democrats. We take a bit of time today to focus on Karoline Leavitt, the apparent winner of the Republican nod in the NH's 1st Congressional District, where she will fake Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas after winning her upset victory against establishment-preferred Trumper Matt Mowers. The 25-year old Leavitt (who, mark my words, will be a new GOP star whether she wins or loses), previously worked in the Trump White House and has clearly taken on the hard-right mantle and obnoxious manner of her former boss. That resulted in an extraordinarily ugly primary battle between her and fellow Trump Administration colleague Mowers for the nomination and the title of who was the Trumpiest of them all. In both the Senate and House GOP primaries, the candidates preferred (and heavily invested in) by Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy lost. Democrats are likely just fine with the results.

Then, railroad workers appear to be ready to go on strike as of 12:01am on Friday, over the horrific working conditions they have been required to endure for years. We detail some of those terrible conditions in advance of what could be a wildly disruptive and expensive work stoppage in advance of the midterm elections, with some 57,000 workers now set to strike barring a breakthrough.

Next, we're joined for some significantly more positive labor news today by The American Prospect's longtime Editor-at-Large, HAROLD MEYERSON to discuss what he describes as a "groundbreaking" new labor law in California to improve the wages and working conditions of some 550,000 fast-food workers in the state. The measure was signed last week, on Labor Day, by the state's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.

In addition to setting a $22/hour minimum wage for the state's half-million fast-food workers (adjusted annually to keep up with the consumer price index), AB 257 also mandates the creation of a 10-person Council to oversee working conditions in the sector statewide. The Council, as Meyerson reported recently at The Prospect, would include "two representatives of franchise owners, two from the corporate chains, two fast-food workers, two fast-food 'advocates' (likely SEIU), and two who are the governor’s appointees to head labor-related state agencies."

"It's been really groundbreaking," Meyers explains today, "There's been nothing like it, really, in American history. It sets up what's called sectoral bargaining, in which representatives of workers in an entire industry sit down with representatives of management in the industry, and in this case, with a couple of state officials, as well. And they set standards for the industry...to craft wage and benefit and workplace safety and other standards for every worker in a chain fast-food outlet in California that has at least 100 outlets nationwide. So McDonalds, Jack in the Box, Starbucks, you name it."

That is a huge victory for labor groups like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and is likely to bring positive change for workers faster than otherwise unionizing hundreds of Taco Bell shops, one at a time.

Along with a helpful dose of American Labor history, Meyerson details how "sectoral bargaining is actually fairly common in Western Europe [where] it evolved on top of a much higher level of unionization of their workers than we have here in the United States." For now, however, as the SEIU has been fighting for a decade to unionize fast-food shops and establish a $15 minimum wage for their workers, the CA state effort is indeed both progressive and ground-breaking.

Of course, that means that an effort is already under way by the franchise industry and other wealthy business interests to shut the whole thing down. If the anti-worker forces in the state can collect enough signatures in the next several months, they can prevent the measure from going into full effect until voters decide on it via a 2024 ballot initiative. Otherwise, as Meyerson explains, "the law goes into effect. They can always then put an initiative on the ballot [in 2024 anyway], but at that point they would effectively be demanding a wage cut for half a million workers and their families."

All of this comes as a new Gallup survey found that, as of Labor Day, support for unions was at 71% among Americans, a nearly 60-year high. That, paradoxically, as just 6% of workers are currently in private unions. Yet, approval for labor unions hasn't been this high since 1965. Interestingly, when Gallup began their annual survey in 1936, amid the Great Depression, approval for labor unions was only one point higher, at 72%.

Lots to digest, I suspect, on today's BradCast. Buckle up...

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