We're back! And with good news on today's BradCast...whether the media have been reporting it that way over the past week, as we've been on a break, or not. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST UP, some notable quick news headlines today --- and some from last week --- which we'll undoubtedly jump deeper into in the days and weeks ahead. Including...

• Cartoonishly corrupt Republican Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, is impeached by the hard-right Texas legislature.
• Cartoonishly corrupt Republican activist and pretend journalist James O'Keefe is sued by Project Veritas --- his own ironically named nonprofit --- for waste, fraud and abuse.
• A bunch of new Republicans entered the fray for the 2024 Presidential nod (the unhung Mike Pence, the disgraced Chris Christie and some guy named Doug Burgum).
• One Republican, popular New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, smartly announces he's not running.
• And progressive activist and academic Cornel West announces he's running for President under a third-party banner.

THEN, its on to the one story that made me wish I wasn't on vacation last week (well, a little, anyway.) And that's the story of President Biden outfoxing the GOP to take three Republican-engineered fiscal cliffs off the table over the next two years, all for the price of less than one, in his ingenious debt ceiling deal with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy...who got hosed in the bargain.

As you may know, we were all in favor of Biden avoiding negotiations entirely, invoking the 14th Amendment to declare the dumb Debt Ceiling law unconstitutional, and ordering the Treasury Department to simply pay our bills without disruption to avoid a first-ever U.S. default. If anyone had a prob with that, they could sue him --- or try to --- in order to force the global economy meltdown that would have come with such a default.

But Biden, and his lead negotiator, Steve Richetti, came up with a much better idea. In the bargain, they took not one, not two, but three GOP fiscal cliffs off the table for the price of less than one budget negotiation this fall. And it all would have been much more difficult if Biden had taken the leverage of invoking the 14th off the table.

In short (much more detail on today's show), the President outfoxed Republicans. Bigly. And where they had demanded some 18% in cuts to government spending, they got a measly 0.2% over the next ten years. In the bargain, the Debt Ceiling is suspended until 2025 and spending will largely stay flat over the next two years on a few non-defense matters.

Make no mistake. There are some cuts in the deal that suck. But nothing more than Biden would have been forced to give away anyway in order to avoid a protracted Government shutdown with obstructionist Republicans when a new budget would be needed at the beginning of the next fiscal year this October.

As British columnist Will Hutton correctly opined on Sunday, while "It is easy to write off President Joe Biden as a senile, 80-year-old duffer," the deal was "massively weighted in his favour" and represented an "extraordinary victory".

It's a shame that so many in the U.S. media --- on the Right, Left and Other --- seem incapable of reporting it that way, in order to properly educate the American electorate about what actually just happened.

We try to balance the scales a bit on that score on today's program before opening the phones to callers in the second half of the show to hear why they believe we might be wrong about all of this. (SPOILER ALERT: We're not!)

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On today's BradCast: It was a mixed bag for democracy overseas this weekend, where (as here in the U.S.) a democratic election does not necessarily guarantee the winner will be a small "d" democrat. Meanwhile, the version of democracy we have here at home ain't necessarily doing much better. Arguably worse, in fact. [Audio link to full show is posted at the end of this summary.]

Among the stories covered on today's program...

• A 49-year old man has been arrested after attacking two staffers of Virginia's Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly with a metal baseball bat on Monday at his district office in Fairfax. The motive for the attack was unknown as of airtime, but the incident is yet another in a sharp rise of threats and attacks against lawmakers and their families since Donald Trump's January 6, 2021 sore-loser insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

• For the first time in his 20 years as Turkey's leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will now face a runoff election to retain power in two weeks. Over the weekend, the increasingly authoritarian Erdogan was able to notch just 49.5% of the large turnout vote, falling just short of the 50% needed to win outright against opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who received just shy of 45%. The next two weeks will see a fight for the remaining 5.7% of the vote won in the first round on Sunday by a third party candidate. Erdogan is believed likely to pull off another victory on May 28 --- despite startling inflation and his handling of an earthquake that resulted in more than 50,000 deaths --- after failing to win outright for the first time in his political career. Kilicdaroglu, however, vows he will win control of the key NATO ally, which has drifted toward the conservative right and Russia in recent years.

• The news was slightly brighter in Thailand over the weekend, where two different opposition parties to the ruling military junta easily bested the competition. It was a "stunning" victory for the liberal Move Forward party who, with the help of young, first-time voters, easily defeated the populist, billionaire-controlled Pheu Thai party that had been favored to win going in to the weekend. Move Forward's agenda includes rolling back the military's political role and reforming laws that stifle dissent. The question now, however, is whether either Move Forward or Pheu Thai will be able to build a governing coalition in parliament and win the coveted Prime Minister's position. All parties, however, including those backed by the military, seemed to recognize the voice of the weekend's democratic vote. For now.

• Back here in the U.S., the controversy over last week's appalling, 70-minute Donald Trump town hall, gifted to him by CNN, continues. In the second half of today's program we open the phones to listeners on whether CNN should have held the forum at all --- allowing the disgraced, twice-impeached, criminally indicted, sexual abuser former President of the United States to offer lie after lie after lie before a live audience of cheering supporters --- and, if not, how should the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP Presidential nomination be covered? Also, while the performance was clearly a gift to Trump in his run for the GOP nod, will it actually help him in the long-run to win a general election next year? I am not so sure. In fact, I don't think it will help him at all and is as likely to hurt him in a number of ways. We take a lot of thoughts from a lot of callers on those points, several of whom disagree with my own take on the matter, though in several different and interesting ways...

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Democracy is not having an easy time of it of late, as both of our main stories on the always pro-democracy BradCast seem to underscore today. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST UP, after months of wrangling, Ohio's gerrymandered Republican state House on Wednesday decided to put majority rule up for a vote this summer. Specifically, they voted to hold a special election for a state constitutional amendment asking voters if all future amendments placed on the ballot must reach 60% for passage. The GOP amendment in August will require only 50% to be adopted, as has been the case for all such measures in the Buckeye State since 1912.

The August special election will come just in time to preempt a the state's November general election, which is likely to feature a citizen-led ballot amendment to protect abortion in Ohio as a constitutional right. That, of course, is why Republicans are hoping to undermine that measure with their own small turnout election in late Summer. They hypocritically characterized the controversial initiative as a "constitutional protection act", meant to keep "out-of-state special interests" away from Ohio's foundational documents. But the measure's top backer was a PAC named "Save Our Constitution", funded with $1.1 million from one single out-of-state billionaire GOP megadonor.

Every single former state Governor opposed the measure, along with five former Republican and Democratic state Attorneys General and the Ohio Libertarian Party. But it was supported by the state's hypocritical Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and Sec. of State Frank LaRose, both of whom eagerly supported an election reform package adopted just four months ago in January, which did away with August Special Elections after finding them to be low-turnout and expensive. Then these "conservatives" supported this new special election anyway, at a price tag of $20 million to state taxpayers, in exchange for which they will get to vote on taking away their own democratic power.

Similar efforts to undermine abortion rights, however, since the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the corrupt U.S. Supreme Court last year, have failed miserably in both right- and left-leaning states. But those measures won with anywhere from 50 to 60% of the vote. Recent AP polling finds support for reproductive freedoms in Ohio to be at 59%. Thus, the GOP's attempt to undermine majority rule this Summer by requiring 60% for passage of future ballot measures...other than their own.

NEXT: CNN called it a "town hall". In truth, it was a 70-minute Donald Trump infomercial filled with a non-stop litany of his twisted lies from beginning to end. The number of lies he told is entirely too long to detail here, on everything from the 2020 election, to January 6, to his stolen classified documents, to this week's federal court verdict finding him liable for sexual abuse and defamation, to pretty much anything else that you or CNN moderator Kaitlin Collins or the Trump-supporting crowd in attendance at St. Anselm's College in Manchester, New Hampshire could come up with.

He also made clear that he would pardon the January 6th insurrectionists and seditionists, and that he supports the imperialist invasion of authoritarian Vladimir Putin's Russia over defending democracy and humanity in Ukraine.

But, while Wednesday night's shameful spectacle clearly embarrassed even the many CNN commentators serving as post-game analysts, did the live town hall ultimately help or hurt Trump overall?

We're joined today by our old friend HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo to discuss exactly that and much more related to what is arguably one of the lowest moments in CNN history.

(I'd love your thoughts on that question as well, and may share them on air in the days ahead. Please leave any such thoughts below in comments or email me, if you prefer.)

"It was a clown show," says Parton who did not realize it would include an audience stacked with GOPers, as it was presented as a Republican town hall before next year's New Hampshire primary. "That gave him the ability to go on national TV and essentially hold a rally. A rally in which he had a foil there in Kaitlan Collins, who, I think she did about as good as you could do. I don't have a lot of complaints with her, she was thrown into a situation that was unwinnable."

She discusses why CNN is taking this attempted turn to the right, in order to curry favor with Trump voters at the behest of their new, rightwing owner who sees Fox "News" as fair and balanced. "CNN is in a ratings spiral, doing a lot of retooling. It seems obvious to me that CNN thought they could maybe cop some of those people if they put on the right show. That's what they did. It was horrifying."

While I discuss several points in which Trump did himself no favor with prosecutors preparing indictments against him, Parton cites some of the actually "dangerous" fallout likely to come from Wednesday night. "[Trump] said some things that were literally dangerous. For example, his stuff about Ukraine. I'm sure Vladimir Putin heard him clearly when he said, 'Within 24 hours [after taking office], I will do it'. We know exactly what he meant. Immediately upon becoming President, he would withdraw support and force Ukraine to surrender. That means the war that he was going on and on about, 'People are dying, they're dying'. They're going to be dying at least until November 2024 now, for sure, because he said that. There's no way that Russia will do anything until they know whether or not he's going to be President again. And that is disgusting."

FINALLY, we're joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report with news on Houston's latest toxic oil refinery fire; new, money-saving efficiency standards for dishwashers; troubling news from Greenland's ice sheet; and some hopeful news for PFAS "forever" chemicals out of tragedy in Minnesota...

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On today's BradCast: Our former President is slimier and even more racist than you knew. And Fox "News" is at least as slimy and racist as you thought. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP, just before airtime, and just as attorneys in Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation suit were literally moments away from beginning opening arguments in a Delaware courtroom, the judge announced the case was over. Fox had agreed to settle with the private voting system vendor, essentially conceding that every claim made on their Republican propaganda outlet, claiming the 2020 Presidential election was stolen from Trump, was actually a lie.

We wade through today's news, even as it breaks this afternoon, in which Fox has apparently agreed to pay $787.5 million to make their problems --- at least in this case --- go away. Star witnesses previously expected to take the stand in the case starting this week had included Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch, and hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo. For now anyway, they're off the hook and won't have to testify about the lies they repeatedly told their listeners.

It was unclear as of airtime whether there was more to the settlement agreement. In other words, whether Fox would be forced to inform their brain-poisoned listeners about the lies they were told. But, Fox issued a statement conceding, "We acknowledge the court's rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false," and adding: "We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues."

Dominion's separate defamation suits against Trump's lawyers and liars Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell and others continue, as does the $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox, as filed by Smartmatic, another voting system company about which Fox "News" repeatedly and knowingly lied.

Additional problems are expected for Fox in the days ahead, including a bevy of shareholder lawsuits and a campaign by the nation's largest progressive veterans group, Vote Vets, to demand U.S. military installations stop airing the Republican fake news network in common areas. "Nearly one-in-seven of those arrested in relation to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol had military backgrounds," the group notes in their ad campaign, "showing the ill-effect of disinformation among military and veteran communities."

NEXT UP (after a quick note on the scheduled start next week of columnist E. Jean Carroll's rape and defamation suit against Trump in New York), have you noticed those weird comments that Donald Trump keeps making in regard to Special Counsel Jack Smith's name? He's been doing it since just after the prosecutor was tapped to oversee the criminal probes of Trump's January 6 insurrection and the documents he stole upon leaving the White House.

"Jack Smith (nice, soft name, isn’t it?)," Trump wrote on his social media site last November. "Speaking of LEAKS, Special 'Prosecutor' Jack Smith (What did his name used to be?) leaked massive amounts of information to The Washington ComPost," the disgraced former President lied at the same outlet the day before he was indicted on 34 criminal felony charges in New York earlier this month. That night, as he spoke to his supporters back at Mar-a-Lago, he did it again, referencing "this lunatic special prosecutor named Jack Smith," before adding: "I wonder what it was prior to a change?" He then paused for effect, as some of those present shared a knowing, sinister chuckle.

I read and saw all of that as it happened, but had no idea what the hell Trump was insinuating. Neither, apparently, did many in the mainstream media, according to our guest today, author DAVID MARGOLICK, who wrote about it last week at The Nation. He explains that it was part of a long-faded anti-Semitic trope. Notorious racist and Jew-hater Henry Ford deployed it about 100 years ago in his newspapers, and members of Sen. Joe McCarthy's infamous UnAmerican Activities Committee used it as well to tar Jewish entertainers as Communists.

"I thought that it needed to be explained," Margolick tells me today, as he explains it, "because if even someone like you didn't pick up on it, it just shows how ancient this trope is, how largely forgotten it is, and how deeply embedded it is in the psyche of Donald Trump. I think that subsequent generations need to know what was going on with him, and how hard-wired this is with him, that he can't help doing it, even if no one is going to pick up on it."

We discuss the long, grotesque history of the slur in the U.S., and how dangerous it remains, even as many Americans have no clue what it's all about. Some of his supporters certainly do. "The history of this thing should be called out. People should really know what's really going on with him," says Margolick, noting a line from his piece at The Nation, in which describes Trump as "a perfect time capsule of prejudice."

"It's really odious," argues Margolick, discussing what moved him to take a break from working on books about Sid Caesar and Jonas Salk. "It's disturbing that it's going on uncontradicted, and nobody is objecting to it."

FINALLY, Desi Doyen joins us today for our latest Green News Report, with news on the Administration's newly released list of Electric Vehicles that are now eligible for $7,500 rebates, thanks to Joe Biden and the Democrats' landmark Inflation Reduction Act. Also of note in today's report, Germany has finally shut down the last of its nuclear power plants. So, that's a good thing...right?

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Today on The BradCast we talk with one of the few folks who got it right in 2022, when arguing that the data in the run-up to the midterms did not suggest a "red wave" would be coming for Republicans. Naturally, he was dismissed by the corporate media at the time. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

But first up, it's been a really really rough legal week for Fox "News", as jury selection in the $1.6 billion defamation suit they are facing from Dominion Voting Systems is supposed to begin tomorrow. We'll see if that happens. But we begin today with an explanation of why this case is so important and why Fox is now, arguably, the most dangerous institution in America (and, potentially, the world.) It's not due to their Republican politics, but due to the danger their propaganda poses to democracy itself.

Relatedly, over the weekend Fox reportedly settled with a Venezuelan businessman who sued the Republican propaganda outlet for having falsely named him on air as having participated in a scheme to steal the 2020 election from the former President. The terms of the settlement are undisclosed. But, given the evidence revealed so far in the Dominion lawsuit, it's safe to assume Fox likely paid a whole lotta money to make that other guy's suit go away.

On Tuesday in the Dominion case, Judge Eric Davis issued several pre-trial rulings, limiting what Fox could argue in court. Among them was that Fox would not be allowed to argue that the false claims they aired about the 2020 election being rigged against Trump were only made because Fox believed them to be "newsworthy" at the time. (They didn't, as evidence has already shown. They were lying about that on air.) Judge Davis was also furious to learn only this week that Fox lied to both Dominion and the court about Fox Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch's position as an officer at Fox "News", where he apparently serves as "executive chair" but failed multiple times to report as much.

On Wednesday, Judge Davis sanctioned Fox after it became clear they had withheld evidence that should have been turned over during discovery long ago. He stated he was launching a third-party investigation of the circumstances and was concerned about "very serious" "misrepresentations to the court," later adding: "I need people to tell me the truth. And by the way, omission is a lie." All not a very good way for Fox to begin a defamation case regarding their alleged lies.

But also, there was this: A Fox Corp. shareholder has now filed a lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch, his son Lachlan, and several Fox Corp. board members, due to their "decision to chase viewers by promoting the false stolen election claims [which] has exposed the Company to public ridicule and negatively impacted the credibility of Fox News." The shareholder, Robert Schwarz, charges that "FOX knew --- from the Board on down --- that Fox News was reporting false and dangerous misinformation ... [and] ... was more concerned about short-term ratings and market share than the long-term damages of its failure to tell the truth."

For those who may remember my interview in February with Media Matters CEO Angelo Carusone, this is exactly the type of shareholder lawsuit for violation of fiduciary duty that he predicted would come in the wake of Dominion's suit. And here they come. Bloomberg Law reports more are likely on the way. "They won't be able to sustain that from a financial perspective" Carusone predicted on the show in late February, noting that the "cascading effects" from the voting machine company's lawsuit "puts control of the company in jeopardy." Good.

Then, we're joined by SIMON ROSENBERG, longtime political strategist, creator and President of NDN/New Policy Institute, and now creator and publisher of the "Hopium Chronicles" newsletter. We've got a lot too deep dive with Rosenberg about. Along with another favorite guest of ours, Tom Bonier of TargetSmart, Rosenberg led the way last year in arguing that, contrary to claims from Republicans and misleading reporting by corporate media, data clearly suggested there was unlikely to be a "red wave" in the 2022 midterms. He was right. There wasn't. But that didn't prevent folks like FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver from accusing him at the time of relying on "hopium" in his analysis.

Now Rosenberg is gathering allies for a new project he describes as "Get to 55". As he details today, it's an effort to grow the Democratic and pro-democracy coalition to increase the Democratic President's victory margin from 51.4% in 2020 to 55% in 2024 and keep it there for a while. "It may be the only way we’re going to get the Republicans to abandon MAGA and become a more traditional center-right party," he recently wrote. Getting to 55%, he argued, "will be good for Democrats of course, but it will also be good for the country and the long-term future of the Republican Party itself."

Part of that strategy includes pulling in both disaffected Republican Never Trumpers and, especially, young voters into the Democratic coalition. What young voters pulled off last week, through a concerted effort to successfully help flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court to a liberal majority for the first time in 15 years, serves as a great object lesson in how it can be done. That remarkable effort resulted in a jaw-dropping 11-point win for the Supreme Court candidate endorsed by the Democrats and for what Republicans were describing the next day as "a five-alarm warning to Republicans about 2024."

But, while increasing turnout of young voters is one thing, will working with Never Trumpers like Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney force the Dems off of more popular, progressive policies in order to win over that 55% coalition? Tune in for Rosenberg's thoughts on that and much more on today's BradCast!...

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We'll just have to keep saying it on The BradCast: Republicans are pro-murder and anti-democracy. It's just that simple. And we've got too much more evidence of that today. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First up, the fallout continues following Monday's school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, where three 9-year olds and three adults were killed by an AR-15 wielding shooter at a private Christian elementary school. The U.S. Congressman representing the district where The Covenant School is located is Republican Congressman Andy Ogles.

Last year, Ogles sent out Christmas cards featuring himself, his wife and his children in front of a Christmas tree, proudly posing with their AR-15 style assault rifles. Since the shooting in his district, he has apparently taken down his social media posting of the festive card. A reporter from Sky News confronted him this week to try and learn why he hadn't taken it down previously, after other similar massacres, and why he seems to favor guns and murder over the lives of children and their right to be safe at school.

Jon Stewart, earlier this month, also had a related conversation with a Republican state lawmaker in Oklahoma by the name of Nathan Dahm. The GOP state Senator has authored bills to loosen restrictions on firearms and apparently believes that drag shows that may be seen by children must be banned, because "the government does have a responsibility to protect" them. But, as Stewart points out, Dahm appears to have no similar concerns about protecting kids from being murdered with guns, which is now the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens.

In a similar vein, Big Government Republicans in Kentucky's legislature today voted to override the veto of Democratic Governor Andy Beshear, to enact a law that will ban health care for trans kids and mandate that doctors begin "detransitioning" children currently on puberty blockers and hormones, despite the alarming rate of suicide by such kids. The bill also bars all discussion of sexual orientation and gender identify in schools for students of any age, as the Nanny State Republican party continues to pretend they favor free speech.

Meanwhile, this is an election year in Virginia, where the entire state legislature comes up for reelection in odd-numbered years and where the commonwealth's 1902 constitutional provision created to prevent black people from voting remains in place. The measure in question allows VA's Governor to decide, on any criteria they may like, whether or not to re-enfranchise former felons.

Under processes enacted first by former Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell and then broadly expanded and automated by subsequent Democratic Governors Terry McCauliffe and Ralph Northam, the voting rights for hundreds of thousands of Virginians were restored. But, since taking office last year, VA's new, so-called "moderate" Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has re-enfranchised almost nobody. Moreover, his office has finally informed state lawmakers that he will be using a secret process to personally decide, on a case-by-case basis, who will and won't be allowed to vote.

We're joined today by voting rights, criminalization and justice reporter ALEX BURNESS, staff writer at the progressive Bolts Magazine. He has been reporting on Youngkin's appalling, anti-democracy policy, and how it is harming those who are simply hoping to return to civil society after imprisonment in Virginia.

"We still don't know what the criteria is going to be, but it is clarifying in the sense that the policy is 'I'm going to do whatever I want and, at least for the moment, I'm not going to tell you what that means,'" Burness tells me, adding that the commonwealth's constitution mandates the Governor "literally has the power to make up criteria, based on whether you own a dog or a cat, or anything."

Burness explains why Democrats in the state have yet to pass a constitutional amendment to change this absurd, Jim Crow relic, despite the heartbreaking stories from so many who have served their time and simply want to have their rights as citizens fully restored. "This is one of a million reasons why Virginia's upcoming elections matter. Particularly with what Youngkin has done now, there is some renewed passion by folks to settle this once and for all and not leave it up to the whims of the Governor," says Burness.

The pathetic vote suppression by Youngkin comes on the heels of Minnesota's Democratic Governor signing a law this month to re-enfranchise some 55,000 citizens of voting age who are no longer incarcerated, whether they are on parole or probation or not; New Mexico's Democratic Governor signing a similar law that will restore voting rights to about 11,000 New Mexicans; and a recently advanced measure by Democratic lawmakers in Oregon to allow voting even for those still in prison, akin to the rights afforded to the incarcerated in Maine, Vermont and Washington D.C.

Finally today, more voter suppression is enacted by Arkansas' new Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Yesterday, we detailed her newly signed law adopted by Republican state lawmakers that will make it much much harder for Democrats to place citizen initiatives on the statewide ballot. (Even though the statute appears to be a violation of the state constitution.) Today, the American Democracy Minute's Brian Beihl details three other new bills recently signed by Huckabee Sanders to make absentee voting much more difficult in the state...

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Accountability still matters. Even for apparent Presidential misdeeds from more than 40 years ago, as discussed on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last week, New York Times' Peter Baker had quite a scoop. Ben Barnes, an 85-year old, longtime Democratic operative from Texas, detailed his claim that he and former Democratic Texas Governor turned Republican Presidential candidate John Connally took a trip through Middle Eastern capitals in the summer of 1980 to help convince Iran to not release the 52 Americans being held hostage until after that year's election.

His claim was that Connally, eyeing a cabinet role in the Reagan Administration, was hoping to send the message to Iran that they would get a better deal with Reagan than with Carter. Barnes said the pair were debriefed upon returning stateside by Reagan campaign manager and, later, CIA Director, William Casey. The campaign was reportedly terrified that Carter would win the release of the hostages that year in what would become known as the "October Surprise".

Instead, the hostages were ultimately released within an hour after Reagan being sworn in in January of 1981.

Our guest today, RUSS BAKER, (no relation to the Times' Peter Baker), is a longtime investigative journalist, author and now Editor-in-Chief of WhoWhatWhy.org. He has personally known Barnes for years and tells us that he isn't buying his story in the Times, said to have been revealed now by Barnes because the 98-year old Carter, who recently began hospice care, deserves to know the truth about what really happened.

Baker has been investigating the claim for decades that Casey himself engineered the "traitorous" deal on behalf of the Reagan camp and finds that explanation far more plausible than the Barnes/Connally scheme. Baker wrote his own response to Peter Baker's exclusive in a detailed newsletter article over the weekend headlined "The Iran Hostages, Carter, Reagan, and Bush: What the NY Times ‘Scoop’ Missed."

But whether it happened as Barnes claims or in some other way, Russ Baker, author of the 2009 best seller, FAMILY OF SECRETS: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years explains why all of this still matters 43 years later; how the corporate media has largely ignored what would have been an extraordinary scandal by the Reagan campaign, George Bush Sr.'s role in all of this, and how different the world would likely be today if not for Reagan's defeat --- by hook or by crook --- of Carter.

"If Reagan had not been elected, I think it's safe to say that George HW Bush would not have been elected President himself," Baker tells me. "Then we wouldn't have had the Gulf War. His son wouldn't have become President and we wouldn't have had the Iraq War. You might not even have had 9/11, frankly, because a lot of the anger that generated these activities that led to 9/11 [which] had to do with policies that were carried out by these presidencies. Maybe even more importantly, there are huge differences between Democratic and Republican Administrations around climate change. Think of what would have happened if Al Gore had been President. You can be pretty sure we would have had a very different policy years ago about climate change. So our very ability to continue to live on Earth may have been affected by all of these things."

"I don't think they would have changed the media ownership laws. I think there would have been a lot more regulation. I don't think you would have even had a Rupert Murdoch and a Fox News. I don't think you would have had the current composition of the Supreme Court and all of their rulings for business and the wealthy. I think campaign contributions would have been restricted, and that would have changed Congress itself," He continues. "So whatever you want to pick, I think it basically was a coup, by making sure Carter didn't get re-elected. And all of these regimes since then were extensions of that coup government. With some partial breaks, I would say --- people like Clinton and Obama, very very limited in their ability to do much. I think their hands were largely tied. So a very profound change to everything as a result of this October Surprise situation."

As to the corporate media's failure in all of this, it's not that they won't hold Presidents and candidates accountable, says Baker, as he lists a bunch of Democratic candidates and Presidents whose "scandals" have been covered in great detail by the media, "but they seem to go hard only on certain people, and not always for the right reasons."

There is much more to tune in for in today's conversation that it'd be impossible to summarize here.

Finally, we close with some news of the day, including the huge, deadly tornado that ravaged parts of rural Mississippi over the weekend, and the connection to climate change, as Desi Doyen joins to explain.

Also, we have the latest on today's mass shooting at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, where three 9-year old and three adults were murdered by an assault weapon-wielding 28-year old woman. It was the 129th mass shooting of the year in the U.S., according to CNN and the Gun Violence Archive.

As the breaking news of the shooting was being broadcast live today on Fox "News", a woman whose family was victim to another recent school shooting in a different state happened to be visiting Nashville. She briefly took over the cameras to explain how tired she was of all of this. Fox, after breaking away and then returning to the woman several times, finally cut her off, with anchor John Roberts concurring that he and his colleagues are, in fact, also becoming tired of the carnage. But are they really? You certainly wouldn't know it from all the activism that Fox "News" does in favor of elected officials who continue to block any and all rational gun safety legislation.

We have a few words for Roberts and Fox in response at the end of today's program...

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All of that clean, green, renewable energy needs to come from somewhere if we're gonna save humanity. Shamefully, many of those working to help produce it in rural America, including farmers and small town elected officials, have been paying an awful price for their heroic efforts, as detailed on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First up today, a few quick news items. Speaking of farmers and the climate, last week saw hundreds of climate activists and farmers rally in D.C. in hopes of increased support for climate provisions in this year's federal farm bill. Congress is working toward passage of their latest, half-a-billion dollar, five-year spending bill for farmers and nutrition support. The Biden Administration, the USDA and Congressional Democrats have made climate and net-zero farming a top priority, as agriculture currently contributes almost 10% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Farmers are on the front lines of our quickly changing climate and hope to get more help. Republicans, on the other hand, want to cut funding from the bill despite the farmer's asking for more help thanks to our worsening climate crisis.

Also, some good news out of Michigan today, where the state Senate has followed the state House in passing a bill to repeal the state's so-called "Right-to-Work" (for less!) law, adopted when the GOP controlled the state legislature in 2012. Pending final approval in the House, the measure, seen as a major victory for organized labor, will then be signed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. All of that made possible by passage of a statewide ballot initiative that ended gerrymandering in Michigan, resulting in a legislative trifecta for Democrats as of last November, giving them control of both chambers of the state legislature and the Governor's mansion. And all of that is resulting in good news for the working class!

Then, speaking of farmers, the climate and Michigan, we're joined by PETER SINCLAIR, a longtime climate videographer, journalist, climate-denial debunker and Michigan native who has been documenting a disturbing --- and disturbingly under-reported --- attack on farmers and elected officials in rural communities in the American heartland.

Through a series of short videos based on interviews with folks in a number of small townships in rural Montcalm County, MI, (see here, here, and here, for example), Sinclair has been telling the story of a broad and well-coordinated misinformation and disinformation campaign, resulting in attacks, threats and boycotts against those who are daring to consider support for wind and solar projects on their own farmlands and in their small towns.

Sinclair, an award-winning climate communicator and producer of Yale Climate Connections' This is Not Cool series, and creator of his long-running Climate Denial Crock of the Week, details the chilling threats and harassment being faced by folks in these communities from clearly coordinated anti-renewable energy campaigns which have polluted local residents with a bombardment of lies about climate change and clean energy.

Today, we share a number of clips from his video series, as farmers and current and former public officials explain the harassment they have been facing; the tools used by the harassers (such as Facebook); how these campaigns mirror other, better-reported ones coming from the right in recent years, such as those town-hall meetings with angry opponents of "ObamaCare" more than a decade ago and similar scenes at school board hearings over COVID requirements, etc.

"This campaign is so well-oiled that it is kind of self-replicating," Sinclair explains. "People hear there's going to be a solar or wind project nearby, they've been primed by twenty, thirty years of Fox News, talk radio to be suspicious. They go on to social media [and] they find literally thousands of references to misinformation and disinformation that's being constantly circulated and recirculated out there. Then they replicate this template. It typically starts by forming a Facebook group, making it private, not allowing any dissension, and herding a whole lot of people into it and continually bombarding them with a stream of negative misinformation. Pretty soon you've got people that are terrified, angry, and aggrieved, and then it's just a matter of pointing them in the direction of the nearest local planning commission or township board."

He tells me: "We have evolved a generation of people who are attuned to this culture war mindset. Some of the earliest anti-wind energy memes that really stood out had a picture of wind turbines and it said, 'The production tax credit, Obamacare's worst tax.' This was ten, twelve years ago, but you're supposed to make a connection between Obamacare, which you're supposed to hate, and wind turbines, which then, I guess you're supposed to make a connection that it has something to do with Obama. Of course there's no connection whatsoever!," laughs Sinclair, "but that connection is continually made."

We also discuss the dirty fingerprints of the fossil fuel industry on these sleazy campaigns (though they are often obscured by "a lot of dark, untraceable money floating around for this kind of activity"); one of the men who seems to be "the big cheese" organizer behind many of them (a guy by the name of Kevon Martis from a climate denier outfit known as the Energy and Environment Legal Institute is cited over and over as a cult-like figure by many of the harassed locals in different townships); and what the public can do to help push back against this corrupt and dangerous madness.

"Mr. Martis follows me closely on social media," Sinclair quipped. "One of my favorite tweets is, 'Peter Sinclair doesn't just want to take your energy, he wants to take your guns!'"

Ridiculous attacks aside, all of this is going on in hundreds of counties in dozens of states across America's farm belt and, frankly, deserves much more light and attention than it has been receiving from both state and national media, as well as state and national politicians. We try to offer some of that long-overdue public attention today in our conversation with Sinclair...

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There's a reason we don't spend much time discussing the Right's phony "culture war" BS on The BradCast. Today, we talk about why. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

We go into much more detail on the program, but perhaps the biggest reason is likely that most of these so-called "culture wars" aren't any such thing. But talking about it, helps to make them appear to be such a thing. Whether it's outrage over BLM or CRT or, more lately, ESG, the GOP and FNC and all of their various corporate sponsors (mostly from the oil and gas industry), prefer spending time on ginned-up, phony nonsense to keep their readers, listeners and viewers angry, so they don't notice how the Republican Party has absolutely nothing but pain and thievery to offer them.

When the non-wingnut corporate media and Democrats jump in to respond to those ginned-up issues, sadly, the Right has succeeded in creating yet another "partisan" "culture war" out of whole cloth, in which they are able to claim there is a pitched partisan battle between "both sides". They've been mastering this scam for years, and the media and Dems have been falling for it for years as well.

One might think, for example, that the nation is bitterly divided in the "culture war" over abortion rights, one of the GOP's decades-old stand-bys. In fact, it's not much of a partisan or left/right or Republican/Democratic issue at all. The vast majority of Americans, across party lines, support reproductive freedom. And a recently released detailed survey from PRRI (of about 23,000 people in all 50 states!), demonstrates that there is not one single state in the union where a majority of the population supports the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Not one. Not even in the Deep South.

But maybe if you're furious enough about "ESG" you won't notice the Constitutional freedoms the GOP has just stolen from all of us. What's ESG? Well, the folks who watch Fox "News" almost certainly know what it is. It stands for "Environmental Social Governance." And, while the corporate concept has been around for about 20 years, Republicans, with the encouragement (and lots of money) from the fossil fuel industry, have only recently decided to become furious about it. Yup, they're hoping --- and the media are helping --- to turn it into yet another pretend "culture war".

Republican Presidential hopefuls like Florida's Ron DeSantis, Texas' Greg Abbott and former Vice President Mike Pence are all over those "woke" corporations who consider things like the health of the environment when making investments and other business decisions. As discussed today in some detail, Republicans have now decided that sort of thing must stop immediately! Failing to invest as much money as possible, including public funds, in the fossil fuel industry that is helping to wipe out humanity, will almost certainly result in grandma's retirement fund going bankrupt! Or something. And it now appears we're all gonna be dumb enough (again) to help these fake Fox "News" and fossil fuel industry outrages become a real thing.

Just this once --- hopefully, today only --- we're gonna talk about it so you understand exactly what's going on and how you're getting played...so hopefully we'll all stop falling for these scams over and over again.

Also today, a follow-up to a story we covered last week, when Kris Mayes, the new Democratic Attorney General of Arizona, released documents from her office that the previous Attorney General, Republican Mark Brnovich, appears to have forgotten to release before leaving office in January.

Among other things, the documentation reveals that Brnovich's office spent some 10,000 taxpayer-funded hours in 2021 investigating phony claims of election fraud in the state's 2020 Presidential election, assigning everyone in the office to the matter at one point. And though the probe was completed by March 2022, Brnovich never bothered to release the findings, that there was no evidence the election was stolen from Trump in Arizona, to the public. Instead of letting his state and the nation know, during his failed run for the state GOP nomination for U.S. Senate last year, Brnovich lied about the investigation. He told state lawmakers and the public that his office had found "serious vulnerabilities", even while he was ignoring his own staff's recommendations to come clean about the facts.

We covered those disturbing revelations from Mayes last week. And now, the state's new Democratic Governor, former Sec. of State Katie Hobbs, has filed a complaint against Brnovich with the state bar association. Hopefully, that complaint will result in sanctions or even disbarment for the state's corrupt, former top attorney, who was already under sanctions from the state bar association, as it turns out, when he misled the public last year about all of this.

Finally, it's Desi Doyen with our latest woke, ESG, Green News Report! Today, we focus on continuing drought conditions in California, despite the recent series of major storms and continuing, bizarre, climate change-fueled weather across much of the nation; Also, we cover the railroad industry's opposition to new regulations following outrage (phony or otherwise) over the recent toxic train derailment in Ohio...

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"Industrial-scale defamation is not free speech," our guest on today's BradCast insists, as very real accountability for many liars and scoundrels and fake news con-artists on the Right gets closer with each passing day. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST: The forewoman of the Special Grand Jury in Georgia which recently completed its work in Fulton County, suggests multiple people have been recommended to District Attorney Fani Willis for indictment. "It is not a short list," teases Emily Kohrs about who her panel suggested to Willis should be charged in the investigation of the attempt to steal the 2020 Presidential election in the Peach State by Donald Trump and his top supporters. While Kohrs did not offer specific names, she did say, "you're not going to be shocked. It's not rocket science," before offering other somewhat cryptic --- if tantalizing --- hints.

NEXT: More accountability for right-wing liars. In this case, James O'Keefe, the Republican activist and scam-artist who initially made his name in 2010 by releasing deceptively edited videos which falsely suggested he dressed up as a 70s-era Blaxploitation pimp to walk into ACORN offices for advice on sex trafficking and how to avoid taxes. In fact, he never dressed as a pimp in those office, and never received any such advice. (See our full Special Coverage here.) Years --- and millions of dollars of dark-money later --- O'Keefe is now reportedly out at Project Veritas, his own ironically-named fake news and entrapment organization. Its Board of Directors detailed "financial malfeasance" by O'Keefe, and claims that he bullied staffers. Yes, the scammer who bilked Rightwingers out of millions, using hidden video "stings" to pretend to be a journalist uncovering "waste, fraud and corruption" on the Left, is seemingly undone by his own waste, fraud and corruption. Go figure.

THEN: We're joined by ANGELO CARUSONE, President and CEO of media watchdog Media Matters for America, to discuss Dominion Voting's $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox "News", after the network's executives, hosts and guests repeatedly offered massive lies to their audience about election fraud following the 2020 Presidential election.

Of course, like us, Carusone has been watching Fox lie on air for years now. So, is there something different this time around? Carusone explains why he believes the revelations from hundreds of insider texts, emails and depositions in Dominion's redacted 192-page brief [PDF], released last week in its motion for summary judgement against Fox, is seemingly very different from the lies that Fox has been caught telling in the past.

We discuss how "for so long the commercial media enabled Fox," allowing it to be regarded as an actual news organization, when it is not. Non-Rightwing corporate media outfits "actually enabled Fox News in a way, by treating them as anything other than the partisan political operation that we all know they are." Carusone argues that what is revealed in the Dominion brief "is so incontrovertible that even the enablers can't engage in the type of enabling --- or even just silence --- that they previously had for too long."

We discuss the "hypocrisy" of Fox' First Amendment defense and their claims that Dominion has "cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context," given that cherry-picking out of context quotes is actually the Fox 'News' business model!

We discuss what the hell happened to formerly respectable --- before joining Fox --- financial news reporters like Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs, who seemed to lead the coverage of phony 2020 fraud claims at the network by featuring Trump's loony attorneys like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani as guests, despite the fact that they had offered less than zero evidence in support of outrageous claims that Dominion's voting systems flipped millions of votes to steal the election for Joe Biden from Trump.

And, perhaps most crucially, we discuss what may happen if Fox loses this one, and how a judgement of $1.6 billion may be the least of the company's problems. "It's not just going to end at the $1.6 billion," says Carusone, "because what ends up happening is that shareholders themselves then begin to sue for breach of fiduciary duty. Because it's very apparent that the Murdochs made misrepresentations about the nature of this litigation for quite some time." While losing the case means losing a lot of money, Carusone argues, "it will set them up for additional litigation that will compound the problem. They won't be able to sustain that from a financial perspective. It puts control of the company in jeopardy."

Additionally, he explains, it will weaken their position with cable companies, from whom Fox currently receive the bulk of its revenue, particularly as advertisers have fled their toxic air to the point where MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell, is now their single largest client. "It's sort of like a Jenga puzzle," Carusone tells me. "Pulling one block is not going to topple it down, but it's certainly going to make it a lot more vulnerable to toppling. And this one is a pretty key part of that piece --- just the tiniest little breeze will probably knock the rest of it over."

FINALLY: We're joined by Desi Doyen for our 14th ANNIVERSARY Green News Report! Yes, we are now officially in our 15th year of independent green news, politics, analysis, snarky comment and connecting the global climate crisis dots over your public airwaves! All thanks, by the way, only to the support of listeners like you!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Back-to-back extreme weather disasters trigger national state of emergency in New Zealand; New studies find global warming is melting Antarctica's ice; PLUS: Growing concerns about safety for residents in aftermath of Ohio chemical train derailment...Even on Fox 'News'?!... 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): World Bank president, dogged by climate questions, steps down early; truck carrying hazardous nitric acid overturned on an Arizona highway, prompting evacuations of the area; Twice as much land in developing nations will be swamped by rising seas than previously projected, new research shows; Major US railroad merger could bring more tar sands to south-east Texas; Greens and tribes say proposed venting and flaring rule falls short; Tesla opens its EV charging network to the masses ... PLUS: Mono Lake tribe asserts water rights, urges halt of water diversions to Los Angeles... and much, MUCH more! ...

As we've advised many times on The BradCast, accountability takes a while. Particularly when you're talking about criminal accountability for a President of the United States for the first time ever. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

We're joined today, for the first time in several months, by perhaps the one person who may know nearly as much (and, in some cases, even more) about the many criminal cases against Donald Trump than the many prosecutors currently considering indictments against him for those crimes.

Longtime, independent national security and accountability journalist MARCY WHEELER of Emptywheel.net joins us for the full hour today. There is now just too much going on all at once in the various federal investigations being overseen by Special Counsel Jack Smith (not to mention the several criminal and civil probes underway in Georgia and New York), to fit into a single segment.

We dive into details with Wheeler on both the probe of Trump's hundreds of stolen, classified documents recovered by the FBI last year at Mar-a-Lago, and the ongoing investigation of the broad conspiracy surrounding the Trump-incited January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol (and his many other attempts to steal the 2020 election.)

Among the many points and questions discussed with Wheeler on today's show...

ON SPECIAL COUNSEL JACK SMITH:

• Where is he? Literally. And why are there no known new photos or videos of him Special Counseling?
• And what, if anything, does his incredibly low profile tell us about the work that he is doing?

ON THE TRUMP STOLEN DOCUMENTS PROBE:

• What does this week's news that Smith is hoping to pierce the attorney-client privilege by invoking the crime-fraud exception to force federal grand jury testimony from Trump attorneys like Evan Corcoran actually mean? And, is it true, as the New York Times reported on Tuesday, that Smith's motion to do so is "an aggressive new dimension to the inquiry"?
• What exactly is the crime being investigated that Smith contends took place between Corcoran and Trump that would nullify the attorney-client privilege?
• What do we need to know about this past weekend's startling news that Team Trump has now turned over still more classified documents and that some of them were reportedly scanned onto a laptop computer (and thumb drive) said to belong to a Trump aide at his main fundraising PAC?
• Why weren't those documents found at Mar-a-Lago during the FBI's very thorough search last August?
• Should we be concerned that more classified documents are out in the wild after being digitized and shared with others?
• Where are the dozens of documents that were previously in the now-empty classified document folders recovered by the FBI last August? And, is Trump's claim that he kept empty classified document folders as trophy keepsakes even plausible?
• Does the discovery and quick return of a handful of classified and other Presidential records found by aides at the offices and residences of Joe Biden and Mike Pence make any difference in a potential decision to charge Trump for having stolen thousands of documents and then lying about them to federal officials?

ON THE JANUARY 6 CONSPIRACY PROBE:

• Mike Pence has now been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury investigating the January 6 attack. He says he will challenge the subpoena based on the Constitution's "speech or debate" clause that, he claims, prevents him --- as President of the Senate on January 6 --- from having to answer questions by the Executive Branch. That, after Pence previously refused to testify to the House J6 Committee on the basis of separation of powers and Executive privilege.
• Many are describing Pence's defense "novel", but Wheeler (and I) recall when the previous Republican Vice President, Dick Cheney, hoping to also have it both ways, attempted to play the exact same hand to avoid testifying to both the Legislative and Executive branches during the George W. Bush era.
• In any event, will Pence's ploy work? And, if so, will it prevent Smith from being able to bring indictments?
• How do the recent guilty verdicts for Seditious Conspiracy, in the trials of a number of rightwing Oath Keepers militia members (and the ongoing trial of racist Proud Boys members), affect potential indictments of the former President?
• Is it likely that the DoJ will simply take the "Al Capone tax evasion" route by charging Trump with a simpler crime, such as wire fraud, based on his fundraising scheme that raked in some $250 million after the 2020 election for an "official election defense fund" that didn't actually exist?
• And, by the way, can a former President --- with a 24/7 Secret Service detail and all of that --- actually be sent to prison in the event he ever actually is indicted, convicted and sentenced?

As you can tell, just a few things to discuss with Wheeler today. And, as usual, she offers a ton of important, smart and keenly-informed insight!...

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For the first time in a long time on today's BradCast, we're happy to feature a Special Coverage episode of something that isn't actually horrible. In fact, it's something that turned out to be an unexpected amount of fun to watch and cover, while including what was, as I described it on today's show, "the greatest Rope-a-Dope Moment in the all-time history of State of the Union addresses." [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

We've got full post-speech team coverage today of Joe Biden's second SOTU as President (actually his third address to a joint session of Congress), and it was a humdinger! Both the speech and today's coverage. In fact, as our panel appeared to agreed today, it was likely the most enjoyable SOTU any of us had ever witnessed!

We're joined today by the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, award-winning columnist at Salon and founder of Digby's Hullabaloo blog (which just celebrated it's 20th anniversary!) and "DRIFTGLASS", otherwise known as @Mr_Electrico on Twitter and as simply Bill at home, where he produces The Professional Left Podcast each week with his wife Fran/"BlueGal". Like Digby and me, he too is a longtime, old-school progressive blogger!

Biden's lively remarks on Tuesday --- and his surprisingly brilliant off-the-cuff responses to jeers and obnoxiously inaccurate heckles from members of the new Republican House majority --- cannot be described as delivered by "Sleepy Joe". The 73-minute speech actually flew by, surprisingly enough.

During the address, he, justifiably, sang his Administration's praises for what has amounted to one of the most successful first two years of any Presidency going back to at least FDR. (That, as we discuss, is particularly surprising given the narrowest of majorities he had to work with for the past two years in Congress. And is true, whether or not you liked his many accomplishments, had hoped for still more, or preferred entirely different policies.)

Snap polling following Tuesday's SOTU revealed a whopping 72% of Americans who watched it reacted positively, with some of the most favorable reactions coming from those who, prior to the speech, disapproved of Biden or felt his policies would not move the country in the right direction. So will his remarks on Tuesday make any difference in his approval ratings moving forward?

We cover a lot of ground on today's Special Coverage episode, including thoughts on Biden's brilliant Rope-a-Dope / Jedi Mind Trick that resulted in Republicans yelling and screaming to insist they are absolutely not hoping to gut or cut or even sunset Social Security and Medicare(!); other details from the surprisingly populist and progressive speech; insight on why Biden's approval ratings have been so low over the past year (and who is to blame for that); analysis of the bizarre movement by some in the supposed "Anti-war Left" to oppose support for the fight for democracy in sovereign Ukraine and against the authoritarian invasion by its imperialist neighboring Russia; and of the weird, creepy, dark, up is down/down is up GOP response to Biden's SOTU by Donald Trump's former Press Secretary and "prolific liar" turned new Governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Lots of insight --- and hilarity! --- ensues during today's 'BradCast' Special Coverage! Enjoy!...

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Breaking news today and a weekend full of otherwise dumb news resulted in a bit of a hodge-podge on today's BradCast. I hope you'll enjoy it anyway! [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among the many stories covered on today's program...

• Rescue efforts continue in the aftermath of Sunday's horrific, pre-dawn, 7.8 magnitude earthquake --- and several huge aftershocks --- in Southern Turkey and Northern Syria. As we went to air, the death toll from both countries was more than 3,400. That tragic number is likely to continue to rise.

• American Republicans are, no doubt, breathing easier today following the great Chinese Spy Balloon Crisis that gripped them with fear and threatened their very lives and those of their families for several days since last week. On Saturday, the U.S. military shot down the high altitude balloon off the coast of South Carolina and have been collecting its remnants for study. Thankfully, nobody was hurt throughout this days long national nightmare, and the Dept. of Defense suggests the U.S. gained more from the exercise, on balance, than China did. The DoD claims our borders were similarly breached by Chinese spy balloons three times during the Trump Administration. Despite fevered demands from some on the Right, neither President Biden nor Vice President Harris resigned in shame amid "the catastrophic Chinese Spy Balloon spectacle [that] clearly threatened American families" from coast to coast.

• Great news for the wealthy! Thanks to campaign finance legislation adopted during the George W. Bush era in 2002, and huge inflation numbers in 2022, the amount of money that can now be donated to a single candidate for a single election has been increased from $2,900 to $3,300. The amount that can be given to national party committees, according to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has increased from $36,500 to $41,300 per year. And the amount allowed for payoffs to special national party committees, such as for national party conventions, has spiked from $109,500 to $123,900. Of course, those limits also apply to poor and working-class people instead. So, it's all totally fair and just some good ol' American "free speech" at work!

• After declining to support Donald Trump's two Presidential runs in 2016 and 2020, the Koch Network is getting back in the game, vowing to oppose Trump this year by declaring their support for one non-Trump Republican by summer's end. We'll see if they have any better luck this year than their similar losing strategy back in 2016.

• Despite conceding that Trump lost the 2020 election in Wisconsin, according to an audio recording obtained by AP, his campaign team in the Badger State vowed to help "fan the flame" of phony fraud as early as two days after Biden's win there.

• Love him (or his policies) or hate him (or his policies), Joe Biden has accomplished more in the first two years of his Presidency than perhaps any other American President in history going back to at least FDR. Nonetheless, just one day before his second official State of the Union address on Tuesday, new polling out today from Washington Post and ABC News finds that 62% of Americans believe Biden has accomplished "not very much" or "little or nothing" in the first two years of his term. That may be an extraordinary failure by Democrats and the White House to get the word out about their own accomplishments. But the greatest indictment here should be for the corporate mainstream media whose only actual (Constitutionally-protected) job is to inform the public and educate the American electorate! Clearly, they have failed. Again. We discuss.

• Finally, callers ring in today mostly on the topic of Biden's accomplishments or --- as several incorrectly see it --- lack thereof...

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Some tea leaf reading was necessary on today's BradCast, but it's our consensus that the news out of a hearing today at the Fulton County, Georgia Superior Court is encouraging. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

BUT FIRST TODAY, maddeningly, we've got to run through the litany of mass shooting over just the past 24 hours or so, following the horrific massacre over the weekend at a dance hall in Monterey Park, near Los Angeles. Since covering that shooting which resulted in 11 dead and 9 injured on yesterday's program, the massacres --- most apparently carried out with semi-automatic weapons and extended magazines that allow at least 30 rounds to be fired in seconds --- have continued. Two more in California. Another in Iowa. Another in Washington state. Republicans continue to send their thoughts and prayers. Democrats continue to try and actually do something about the epidemic.

AND SPEAKING OF EPIDEMICS, apparently the mishandling of classified documents by former Vice Presidents is a bit of an epidemic. Today, it was Mike Pence's turn to announce that his attorneys found "a small number of documents bearing classified markings" stored at his new palatial home in Indiana. While CNN's report compares the situation to Joe Biden's in paragraph 3, one must read all the way to paragraph 13 before the former President is mentioned.

You may remember him. He's the one who, literally, stole hundreds of classified documents comprising thousands of pages, on purpose, when he left the White House. He then repeatedly refused to return them to federal government officials (to whom he lied) for more than a year, despite the government begging him to return them and being forced to subpoena them, before finally taking them by force via a federal search warrant finding probable cause that multiple crimes were under way by the former President.

Once again, we've got to provide appropriate context to the story today since corporate media continues to fail to do so. In brief, the Pence and Biden cases are ones in which they discovered they had several documents they shouldn't have had in their possession, likely stored there by aides without their knowledge. After discovering them, the former Veeps then notified authorities and returned the documents. That, of course, is nothing like the felony crimes that Donald Trump pulled off and, apparently, continues to pull off even today, with dozens of classified documents still known to be missing.

Our friend Marcy Wheeler, investigative national security journalist, provided a handy chart today to help a few of our failed corporate media friends out when attempting to report on these apparently totally confusing matters...

NEXT, we move to the fascinating --- and encouraging, we think --- hearing at Fulton County Superior Court today. Two weeks ago, a Special Process Grand Jury convened by Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis completed its work and was dissolved. After eight months of investigation and some 75 interviews with subpoenaed witness, the panel completed a report and submitted it to Willis and Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney. While Special Process Grand Juries in GA, unlike regular Grand Juries, are not empaneled to issue indictments, they may recommend such indictments in their final report.

The panel has been investigating efforts by Trump and his supporters after the 2020 Presidential election to strong-arm state officials into stealing results on his behalf after he narrowly lost in the Peach State. The probe was kicked off by Willis shortly after the release of Trump's infamous, January 2, 2021 phone call to GA Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to "find" 11,870 votes "one more than we have" to steal the election for Trump and threatening the Secretary with legal action if he failed to do so.

In addition to that, the Special Grand Jury is believed to have been investigating calls made by other Trump allies to state officials; false allegations of election fraud proffered to state legislators; attempts to threaten and pressure poll workers into falsely confessing to fraud; the 16 Georgia Republicans who falsely claimed to be "duly elected and qualified" electors; the abrupt resignation of Trump's U.S. Attorney in Atlanta; and the unlawful breach and duplication of voting system software and data in rural Coffee County (as originally reported in detail on this program.)

Nobody other than Willis and McBurney (and the Special Grand Jurors) know what is in their report, but the panel requested that it be made public. Today's hearing in Atlanta was convened to determine if that would happen in full immediately, in part immediately, or not at all until sometime in the future. Willis and her office argued against immediate public disclosure of report, offering some tasty morsels as to why.

"We think, for future defendants to be treated fairly, it's not appropriate at this time to have this report released," Willis told the Judge. "At this time, in the interest of justice and the rights of, not the state, but others, we are asking that the report not be released because you, having seeing that report... [pause]...decisions are imminent."

What does that mean exactly? We discuss. Along with the counter arguments from an attorney representing media outlets such as the Atlanta Journal Constitution, New York Times and Wall Street Journal who argued today for the immediate public disclosure of the Special Grand Jury report. "We believe the report should be released now and in its entirety," argued the media intervenors' attorney, Tom Clyde. The question is difficult, given the rarity of Special Process Grand Juries in GA and the extraordinary circumstances of what they've been investigation. Judge McBurney is now considering his options. Willis is free to move ahead with indictments at any time, no matter what is ultimately decided about the report.

FINALLY TODAY, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report, with news on California's recently disastrous string of punishing storms; a new report on whether off-shore wind power is killing whales off the U.S. northeast coast; the high cost of weather disasters in the U.S. in 2022; and some good news for manatees off the coast of Florida...

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