Well, it's our last BradCast for a week or so, as we prepare for a muuuch-needed stand-down next week after Memorial Day. But we make up for it by packing a lot into today's program, with two of our favorite (and your favorite) guests. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We're joined today again for one of our semi-regular (irregular?) round tables with our old-school, right-about-everything-for-20-years blogger pals, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, award-winning columnist at Salon and her own Digby's Hullabaloo blog; and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS', blogger and co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast from Flyover Country, Illinois.

As noted, we cover a whole lot of ground today, including both important and incredibly dumb news alike! Among the important news...

• DoJ Team Trump attorneys are upbraided in court by a U.S. District judge in New Jersey for indicting Newark's Democratic Mayor Ras Baraka on ridiculous trespassing charges, vowing last week to bring him to trial, only to drop all charges this week. At the same time, they then went on to indict Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver on ridiculous charges stemming from the same incident two weeks ago at an ICE detention facility in Newark. Those charges will also likely be dropped eventually, and Trump's former loser defense attorney, now interim U.S. Attorney in NJ, Alina Habba, will likely find herself upbraided again.

• After Trump spent years campaigning on promises to not touch Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, House Republicans earlier today barely passed Trump's budget bill that --- you guessed --- will slash both Medicare and Medicaid by more than a trillion dollars, taking away health care from as many as 14 million Americans. That, in order to help pay for tax cuts to wealthy people while ballooning deficit spending by about 4 trillion dollars. (Digby: "It's a complete travesty, and I think everybody knows it.")

• The Trump Regime's ongoing horrors and errors and blatant, thuggish, authoritarian violations of court orders regarding his clownish yet cruel and unlawful mass deportation efforts. (Driftglass: "This is a mass weapon attack, like raining missiles down on an enemy target. Some of it is going to get through. And they'll get most of what they want.")

• Qatar's $400 million bribe to Trump in the shape of a Boeing 747 "flying palace" that may never be used as Air Force One, but that he hopes to keep for his own personal use after his Presidency. "Emoluments," like "groceries," is such an old-fashioned word. (Driftglass: "He's just a giant greed hole of need and narcissism." Digby: "It sure sounds like 'I'd like you to do us a favor though...'")

• And, oh, yeah, Republicans on Thursday also nuked the filibuster in the U.S. Senate by ignoring the Senate Parliamentarian to pass a law with a bare majority that, according to Senate rules, requires 60 votes for passage. And they did so in order to ban California's clean air laws. So much for states' rights. That, despite the fear by many Democrats of nuking the filibuster to protect Voting and Reproductive Rights for all Americans when they last controlled the Senate. (Digby: "Senate rules are dead. So get ready. We are in such untrod territory.")

As you might imagine, both Digby and Driftglass have quite a few thoughts on all of the above, as well as on the Dumb News we cover today as well (apologies in advance)...

• Trump's Director of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, doesn't know what "habeas corpus" means.

• Republicans are pretending to be horrified by former FBI Director James Comey posting a photo of someone spelling out "86 47" in seashells on a beach. (Ya know, just like those "86 46" t-shirts rightwingers used to pimp. Says Digby: "This is a Republican thing, and they've been doing it forever." See her "Art of the Hissy Fit" from 2007 for more.)

• Trump is attacking and threatening Bruce Springsteen. Bruce Springsteen!

• And the dumbest news of all this week: Jake Tapper has a book about Joe Biden and a super-duper, totally important right now, conspiracy cover-up of his physical --- and, allegedly, cognitive --- decline while in office.

Don't worry. I didn't give away the best lines or hottest takes on either the important or dumb news, so tune on in!

And finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report with nothing but really good --- okay, really bad --- news to kick off Summer!...

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Today on The BradCast: While Trump's mass deportation boondoggle gets worse, more cruel, more corrupt, more unlawful and more unconstitutional by the day, the increasing threat to U.S. national security, thanks to his Administration's unprecedented censorship of climate science, may soon collide with a "physical reality" that may make ALL of our problems far worse --- including immigration. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The Administration continues to characterize those being deported as criminal felons and sexual assaulters who entered the U.S. unlawfully, even if available evidence often suggests otherwise. Moreover, the convicted criminal felon and adjudicated sexual assaulter in the White House continues violate the law and Constitution himself with each passing day. He should be deported --- though allowed the due process of law he has always received, even as he denies it for everyone else.

Unlike the Administration, we offer evidence in support of our serious allegations: As the New York Times reported last night, emails from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's Chief of Staff reveal that her office attempted to manipulate a national intelligence analysis they didn't like --- which revealed Trump to be a liar --- regarding migrants from Venezuela and Trump's unlawful invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove them without due process.

That news comes on the heels of a stunning new analysis from the right-leaning Cato Institute finding that at least 50 of the Venezuelans Trump deported to a maximum-security torture prison in El Salvador were in the U.S. lawfully. They included construction workers, cooks, delivery drivers, a soccer coach, a veterinarian and a makeup artist, most of whom used the U.S. Customs and Border Protection app, called CBP One, to schedule an asylum appointment from outside of the country to seek lawful entrance into the U.S. That's 50 out of just 85 migrants whose entrance circumstances Cato was able to figure out. More than 200 migrants have been sent to El Salvador without Constitutional due process and in violation of court orders.

And all of that preceded still-breaking news over the past 24 hours or so that the Administration has violated yet another judge's orders by sending migrants from Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba and Mexico to South Sudan, a nation in the middle of a bloody civil war, where the U.S. State Department warns Americans "Do Not Travel", and where those migrants are not from. They were reportedly given less than 24 before being sent to a third country in violation of orders from the U.S. District judge overseeing their cases.

THEN... While the Administration is pretending to combat national security issues by deporting make-up artists and soccer coaches, actual national security issues are being exacerbated by their censorship and attempts at unpublishing climate science that you and I have paid for.

As my guest today recently explained, writing on the "silencing and censoring of environmental threats to U.S. national security" for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (the keepers of the infamous Doomsday Clock), for well over half a century, U.S. intelligence and military agencies, under Presidencies of all political stripes, have been documenting and warning about changes to the climate that threaten national security. Now, Donald Trump is attempting to "cancel" climate science --- actually censoring the words "climate change" from all government documents --- and ignoring and/or shutting down internal warning mechanisms regarding increased environmental threats to national security.

Our guest today is renowned climate scientist DR. PETER GLEICK, who is attempting to sound the alarm about the Administration's "silencing and censoring of environmental threats to US national security." He is an author and co-founder of the non-profit Pacific Institute research center, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a McArthur Fellow, and much more that I don't have space to list. (But see his website!) He has written dozens of scientific articles over the decades and has testified about the related matters before Congress.

"From a political point of view, between Democrats and Republicans, there's a very strong difference and emphasis on energy policy, on environmental policy," Gleick tells me when I ask about the timeline of the rise of climate denialism. But, he adds, it was "nothing like we're seeing today. What we're seeing today is fundamentally different than anything we've seen before."

"Even throughout both Democratic and Republican administrations in the past, the military and intelligence community have been very good about this. They see their job fundamentally as understanding and preparing for threats to the United States. All of those defense and intelligence assessments, throughout those administrations (since President Johnson), have repeatedly highlighted a clear understanding of two factors: One is how environmental issues may cause U.S. forces to get involved in conflict --- with failed states, with population displacements and migration, with impacts that lead to threats to our own security."

"The other category is how environmental threats may affect US military forces and bases and operations. Sea level rise we know is already flooding the naval bases in Norfolk. They are raising docks because they know sea level rise is a reality. They've seen extreme events damaging air force bases and destroying airplanes. They are aware of those threats, and they have been very good, throughout almost all administrations, about highlighting those threats in the national security assessments to the public," says Gleick.

But now, under Trump, things have very much gone sideways. We've got a Sec. of Defense who doesn't seem to understand that national defense is about more than simply cultivating manly warriors to fight on battlefields. And, for the first time, climate threats are no longer even being mentioned in National Security Strategy reports. The Congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment may not even been published by the Administration at all when it is legally next due, in 2027. Gleick has worked on previous Assessments and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences which advises on the project. But says, this time, the scientists who volunteer to work on the report are being dismissed and that there may or may not even be a new report. "The Trump Administration doesn't seem to pay much attention to the law at the moment."

"If there isn't one, we know what the science of climate change says. What we'll be missing are just the latest updates, the most recent climate science that tells us even more about what the consequences of climate change will be," he explains.

We discuss a number of concrete ways in which the climate crisis is already a threat to national security, from conflicts over water and water systems; the disappearance of Artic ice leading to expanded military basis by Russia; decreased agriculture productivity resulting in famine and, yes, mass migration that the U.S. has already begun to deal with.

"Climate is no longer a hypothetical threat to the world, national security, and international security," he argues. "It's increasingly an important component of that threat, whether you believe in it or not."

But, Gleick offers some hope. Scientists, including himself, have been diligently working to prevent the "wholesale deletion" of government climate data; he believes that "the remarkable revolution we are seeing in the renewable energy industry is unstoppable" and while Trump may want to "revive the coal industry, that's just not going to happen"; and whether Trump hopes to "cancel" climate science or not on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, he will be unable prevent the world from seeing the unavoidable physical reality of what lies ahead.

"Physical reality will happen," he laments. "Bad things that otherwise would not have happened are going to happen. People are going to get sick and die. There will be conflicts we are not prepared for that we could have been prepared for. Whether those realities swing the pendulum far enough back so that some sort of rationality can be re-established --- I hope that's the case. But I think it's dangerous times."

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I'm sorry to have to add to our "And Then They Came For..." series on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

First it was "And Then They Came For the Judges..." last month, as Trump's goons arrested, hand-cuffed and frog-marched Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan off to face criminal charges, alleging she helped a migrant evade arrest by ICE in her courthouse. She is now challenging that indictment with a motion last week arguing she enjoys absolute immunity for official acts, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's absurd --- but binding --- "Presidential Immunity" ruling in Trump v. United States last year.

Next it was "And Then They Came for the Mayors..." last week, after Trump's goons hand-cuffed and frog-marched Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ras Baraka off to jail, ridiculously charging him with "criminal trespass" after he arrived at a private facility contracted by ICE as a detention center, which the Mayor says the company doesn't have proper city permits to operate. After his dubious arrest, Trump's former defense lawyer turned Acting U.S. Attorney for NJ, Alina Habba declared Baraka's guilt on social media, claiming: "NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW".

But, on Monday, she dropped all charges against Baraka and announced new charges instead against NJ's Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver. Habba had previously claimed the Representative had "body slammed" one of the masked federal agents who had shown up to arrest Baraka last week during a scrum when supporters had surrounded him. Apparently, McIver refused to plead to a lesser charge, so an 8-page indictment [PDF] was filed yesterday on two counts of felony assault, including "assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement" during the incident.

The first-term Congresswoman decries the charges as "purely political" and vows to fight them. I suspect she will win and that her charges will also soon be dropped, just as Baraka's were. But we'll see.

We're joined today by attorney (and former Republican) KEITH BARBER, who has been covering these matters over at DailyKos, where he writes under the name of "KeithDB". He has reviewed much of the publicly available video of the incident in Newark, reviewed the charging document against McIver, released this afternoon, and sees a lot of problems with the federal government's case --- and the prosecutor overseeing them. "Alina Habba couldn't find her way around a court room with the help of GPS," he tells me.

Barber says he has seen no evidence of a "body slam" by McIver, and is critical of the public statements made by Habba about both the Baraka and McIver arrests. He explains the remarks are in violation of DoJ rules and guidelines "designed to protect the due process rights of the defendant."

He also describes both of the incidents as nothing less than "fascism" meant to intimidate those who would stand up to Trump. "This is a tyranny of an autocratic President, something that the founders of the United States of America worked hard [to avoid] when they developed the Constitution, to make sure that this country did not have an autocratic President. We had a bad history with kings, and we didn't want another king in this country with a different name."

Barber charges that Trump is "using the powers of his office to suppress opposition" and, he argues, his thuggery IS WORKING. Tune in for much more on that and all of the above!...

NEXT... While Trump's team of incompetent law enforcement officials are rounding up those who would oppose his mass, unlawful detention and deportation regime, the head of his own Dept. of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, literally does not know the meaning of habeas corpus as guaranteed by the Constitution. A stunning exchange today in the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee with Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) reveals that Noem believes "Habeas corpus is a Constitutional right that the President has to be able to remove people from this country."

As it turns out, it means almost the precise opposite of that, as we discuss.

THEN... A few thoughts on Paramount Global owner Shari Redstone's pressure on CBS News and 60 Minutes to settle Trump's pathetic $20 billion lawsuit against the venerable investigate news program regarding an interview last year with Kamala Harris that Trump didn't like. But the pressure from Redstone to settle the suit --- so that the Trump Administration might approve a pending Paramount merger with Skydance Media --- comes after Redstone hypocritically declared two years ago, at an award ceremony celebrating Freedom of the Press, "that press freedom is never guaranteed, that it must constantly be defended, and that it often comes at a significant cost, both personal and professional."

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news on internal agency warnings about FEMA's lack of preparedness ahead of hurricane season, which begins in less than two weeks; The good news of Trump's flip-flop on his previous blockade of a major offshore wind project in New York; and China rising as America falters under the incompetent leadership of our new, and already failed, Presidential regime...

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Today on The BradCast: A whole lotta madness. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our many, mad stories today...

• The Trump Administration challenged the constitutionality of lower court judges issuing nationwide injunctions at the U.S. Supreme Court today, as part of Donald Trump's wildly unconstitutional Executive Order declaring an end to Constitutional Birthright Citizenship. He's lost in every lower court, so far, even if the merits of that Order, largely, were not heard by the High Court today. The Administration did, however, appear to be on track to lose their maximalist argument against nationwide injunctions as well.

• The House GOP's effort to ram Trump's "big, beautiful" agenda through the House before the Memorial Day recess continues apace, after several all-nighter mark-up sessions in major House committees. The bill is meant to encompass the entire Trump/GOP agenda to give enormous tax cuts to rich people and corporations, while taking health care (and much more ) from millions of the neediest Americans, in one single bill. But many Republicans can't agree on how many Americans should have their health care taken away from them to pay for a bill that will add nearly $4 trillion to the national debt. And some Republicans appear to have no idea about major provisions in the legislation.

• As Congress is gutting health care and nutrition assistance for the nation's neediest, the Trump Administration continues to work toward --- "eliminating" --- the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) just weeks before hurricane and wildfire season kick into gear. Trump fired FEMA's acting Director last week after he dared testify, in contradiction to Trump, that he didn't think it a good idea to eliminate the agency. His replacement is promising to "run right over" anyone who gets in his way, even as an internal review obtained by CNN warns that FEMA "is not ready" for hurricane season.

• And hurricanes this year could be more deadly than ever. That, thanks to both climate change and, more immediately, drastic Trump cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which houses it. Last week, five former NWS directors penned an open letter, warning of great danger to the public in the wake of recent draconian cuts at the Service. Scientific American details their chilling concerns.

• It has now been two months since Maryland father and Venezuelan migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia was "accidentally" disappeared to a gulag in El Salvador by the Trump Administration in violation of a court order. But Trump's ridiculous contention about Abrego Garcia having "MS-13" tattooed onto his knuckles continues. That, as the Administration continues to defy a Supreme Court order to facilitate the man's return. But because Trump was obviously and transparently wrong about "MS-13" on the man's knuckles (it clearly Photoshopped onto a photo shown to him), everybody else in his Administration must pretend he wasn't wrong about it. That led to an absurd and surreal colloquy between DHS Sec. Kristi Noem and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) in a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wednesday.

• Yes, it's a mad world right now in these United States, though one that we should have seen coming. (Some of us did.) Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter --- who died last week in New Hampshire at the age of 85 --- tried to warn us about pretty much everything we're seeing now...back in 2012, before the Trump-era.

• Finally, we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, as Republicans in Congress work to end Joe Biden's landmark clean, renewable energy initiatives; the Trump EPA rolls back limits on toxic chemicals in drinking water; and some recent good news for the climate out of Australia...

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It's a bit of a roller-coaster ride on today's BradCast. We begin with some good election and Trump Administration accountability news. But while Trump's latest clownishly absurd attempted corruption may not ultimately work out for him, it serves as a reminder of the rough road ahead for justice and the Justice Department itself in these United States. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Some good news...

• On Tuesday, Omaha, Nebraska's Republican Mayor Jean Stothert was defeated in her run for a fourth term by Democratic challenger John Ewing Jr. He will become the first Black mayor of the otherwise "red" state's largest city. Stothert's attempt to leverage anti-trans hate against her opponent appears to have failed to win over voters.

• That news comes on the heels of last week's School Board elections in Texas (which we are finally catching up with today!), where book-banning, trans-hating right-wingers were voted off of School Board majorities in at least four of the largest districts in the state.

• In one of two good news updates to stories we recently covered on the show, a federal judge on Tuesday ordered some 200 federal workers fired by the Trump Administration from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) back to work. The workers ran the Coal Worker's Heath Surveillance Program which offers health screenings to miners who may have developed incurable Black Lung disease, and helps them find safer jobs and covers health costs if they have. The judge in the case, filed by two West Virginia miners afflicted with the disease, found the Trump Administration (remember when he used to pretend to love coal miners?) had no authority to unilaterally shut down the screening program mandated by the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. NIOSH workers were reportedly back on the job today after the U.S. District Judge issued her order yesterday.

• And, in another happy follow-up story, facing a lawsuit from farmers and First Amendment advocates, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) agreed to restore years of critical climate change date --- relied on by farmers and many others --- to its website, after disappearing it shortly after Trump took office.

THEN... I don't know if we should consider it "good news" or not, but it certainly looks like Trump's plan to accept a tricked-out $400 million "flying palace" jumbo jet as a "gift" from the Royal Family of Qatar, for use as Air Force One while in office and for his own personal use thereafter, ain't gonna work out for him.

Despite his loyalist Attorney General Pam Bondi --- formerly, a $115,000/month lobbyist for Qatar --- pronouncing that the "gift" would be neither a bribe nor a violation of the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause, banning gifts "of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State" to public officials, it appears she's only half right about that.

We're joined today by our old friend RANDALL D. ELIASON, former chief of the Fraud and Public Corruption section at the DoJ's U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. He is now a professor of white-collar criminal law at George Washington University and writes at his own SidebarsBlog, where he wrote about much of this today.

He explains that, thanks to recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, public officials may, in fact, now accept "gifts" of any size or amount from anybody, without violating current bribery statutes, so long as the official does not offer anything in return. Yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds. Eliason describes it as "absurd...but that's the Supreme Court's concept of corruption" now.

"The Supreme Court, over the last couple of decades, has narrowed public corruption laws so much that there's a strict requirement now of a link to a particular official act that you can identify and say this gift was because Trump agreed to do this in exchange," he tells me. "They could give him $400 million cash in his own bank account, and that's not a bribe anymore, unless they can link it to something he agreed to do in exchange."

"The fact is, the way the Supreme Court has interpreted bribery, it should be a bribe, but it's not, unless there was some agreement we don't know about by Trump to do something in particular in exchange. If it's just to cozy up to him, curry favor with him in general, because they are hoping for future things to happen, that's not a bribe."

"There's no question this is corrupt," he makes clear, "as most of us understand the term," but not a bribe. "Congress could have stepped in to amend those laws, but they haven't done that, for some surprising reason."

Trump's violation of the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause, on the other hand, with acceptance of a "flying palace", would be a different matter, Eliason agrees. Though the question becomes: who exactly has the legal standing to challenge that violation in a court of law?

"I think the bigger picture is that we can't rely on lawsuits to solve this problem," he argues. "It's going to take too long and get bogged down again. If there's going to be a response, it needs to be a political one. It needs to be enough people standing up and objecting and putting pressure on him that he cancels the deal. And ultimately the voters have to respond."

Much more on all of that today along with Eliason's reflections on what has happened to his beloved DoJ and the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. where used to work, soon to be led, most likely, by Fox News' whacked out "Judge" Jeanine Pirro --- and whether all of it can be put back together again when this madness ends...presuming it does.

"What's happening at Justice is terrible, and it's heartbreaking," he laments. "It violates everything that DOJ has stood for, for decades. They are pushing people out for doing nothing more than doing their jobs. Or those people are leaving, because they can't honorably stay there and do what they are being asked to do."

What would he have done had he still been at the DOJ under Trump? And will the institution be salvageable after this? Tune for his thoughts and insight on all that and much more...

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Given the topics on today's BradCast, it was a pretty lively show anyway. Thanks mostly to the callers, I suspect. Especially the one who loves Trump and doesn't believe in the evolution. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• The three-term Mayor of Newark, New Jersey was arrested by masked federal thugs on a public street on Friday. Mayor Ras Baraka was hand-cuffed and frog-marched (as seen above) outside a newly reopened federal detention center that, reportedly, doesn't have its state or city permits in order to operate. He was there to inspect it. The arrest happened as three Democratic members of Congress were eventually allowed to tour the privately run ICE facility that same afternoon. DHS and Donald Trump's former defense lawyer turned top federal prosecutor in NJ, subsequently took to the airwaves to apparently lie about the arrest. They have since doubled down by threatening to arrest the three members of Congress who were there as well, claiming they and Baraka "broke into" and "stormed" the federal facility. Video and eye-witness testimony of the incident, so far, suggests otherwise.

• After 45 days in detention, Tufts University grad student, Rümeysa Öztürk, was finally released from custody over the weekend, at the insistence of a federal judge. She was snatched off the street by masked federal goons in March, as seen on a chilling viral video, after her student visa was revoked (without her knowledge), apparently in response to her daring to exercise her First Amendment right to co-author an op-ed in the student paper calling for the University to divest from Israel.

• On Sunday, ABC broke the news that Trump intends to accept a tricked-out 747 Boeing jet from the Royal Family of Qatar to use as Air Force One, and then keep it as his own at the end of his term. The plane is reportedly worth about $400 million before it was decked out to serve as "a flying palace". All of which is wildly unconstitutional, if the literal words of Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 (the Emoluments Clause) actually still mean anything. For the record, it reads, "...no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." Seems pretty clear. Unless you are a lawless grifter or one of his duped supporters.

• Then, we open up the rest of the show to callers. Lots of them. Kicking off with a MAGA fan named "Denise", who believes Öztürk was in the country unlawfully, was a "terrorist" who wrote an op-ed in support of Hamas. None of those things, as reality would have it, are true by any measure. Then again, Denise also doesn't understand that First Amendment rights apply to all "persons" in the U.S., and says she knows that Darwin was a total con-artist is a total scam. So, ya know... Her call, and the many that followed, were all fun, however!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Today on The BradCast: The President of the Unites States' war on the U.S. Constitution and Rule of Law continues, even as he keeps losing battle after battle in courts of law, at ballot boxes and in the court of public opinion. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today....

• At the beginning of last week, we reported the news of the Canada's Liberal Party overcoming an enormous deficit against the Conservative Party last December to triumph in national elections on Monday, when the Conservative Party's Trumpy Leader even lost his own seat in Parliament. By week's end, we saw damned near the exact same story in Australia, where the Labor Party Prime Minister on Friday retained his post (the first time that a ruling PM was elected twice in a row over the past 20+ years) and the conservative opposition lost in a landslide that saw its Trumpy party leader also lose his seat in Parliament as well, for the first time in Australian history. If nothing else, Trump's obnoxious behavior toward our longtime allies seems to be working wonders for center-left political parties in those countries.

• Trump announced over the weekend that he will place a 100% tariff on movies "produced in foreign lands". Apparently, that would include American-made films shot in other countries, though he didn't explain --- and nobody in the Administration seems to yet know --- how such a "tariff" would actually be levied. Many fear it could also devastate the U.S. film industry. The new tariffs are necessary, Trump lied, because foreign film production is somehow a "National Security threat", according to his social media announcement. (It isn't a national security threat, of course. But I explain on today's show why Trump needs to pretend as much.)

• As Trump revealed on NBC's Meet the Press over the weekend, he's not entirely sure if Constitutional Due Process, as cited by the 5th and 14th Amendments, is actually mandatory. That despite the Supreme Court making clear that it very much is, and despite his sworn oath earlier this year upon taking office for a second time to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

• Clearly, the Rule of Law and Constitution don't mean all that much to Donald Trump, as again illustrated by his four Executive Orders, so far, targeting four different law firms that dare to represent people he regards as political enemies. His clearly unconstitutional orders bar attorneys at those firms from entering federal buildings, interacting with federal officials or taking federal jobs, etc. The largest and first of those targeted firms to challenge an Order is Perkins Coie. They won a resounding victory on Friday when a U.S. District Court Judge in D.C. found [PDF] the entire Order targeting them to be a clear cut case of "unconstitutional retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, plain and simple." She nullified the entire Order in the bargain.

Meanwhile, out here in Los Angeles, three prosecutors in the U.S. Attorneys office for the Central District of California tendered their resignations over the weekend, after Trump-appointed acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli appears to have struck a deal with former L.A. County sheriff's deputy Trevor Kirk, after his felony conviction by a jury in February.

Kirk was found by a jury to have injured a 58-year old black woman during what police body cam footage revealed as to be an "unjustifiably violent" arrest. The woman apparently had nothing to do with the robbery that the cops were called to respond to at a grocery store in Lancaster, an hour or so north of L.A., in 2023. But she claimed to be live-streaming the arrest of her male companion, who apparently wasn't involved in the reported robbery either. Kirk threw the woman to the ground, threatened to "punch" her "in the face", hand-cuffed and pepper-sprayed her twice.

The unusual deal between Essayli and Kirk was struck after the jury verdict, but prior to sentencing, which could have resulted in as many as nine years in prison for the now-former cop. The new agreement would change his felony conviction to a misdemeanor with prosecutors seeking probation for Kirk instead of jail time, and no bar on him serving as a cop in the future. None of the attorneys who obtained Kirk's conviction signed on to the new agreement struck on behalf of Trump's acting U.S. Attorney. It must still be approved by a judge.

We're joined today by independent L.A. based legal affairs reporter MEGHANN CUNIFF who was the first to break the story of the agreement before the ensuing resignations of the career prosecutors in the L.A. U.S. Attorney's office in what appears to be a response to the deal their new boss struck, undermining their case. Cuniff, who acknowledges how unusual it is for a deal to be struck after conviction and before sentencing, argues that it's possible the prosecutors might be resigning for other reasons in addition to the unusual post-verdict deal.

After making clear that she is not reporting a direct line between D.C. and the Trump-appointed loyalist Essayli and his deal to drastically reduce Kirk's sentencing, she concedes: "I've never seen it before. It's totally unheard of. You might see it if there's an issue of misconduct during the trial or somebody is cooperating afterward. But the prosecutors are definitely outraged after this."

Cuniff is also not at all certain that the U.S. District Court Judge who oversaw the case will agree to the terms of the deal struck by Trump's prosecutors. At the same time, L.A. County has struck a settlement in a $3 million civil lawsuit filed by the two victims in response to their wrongful arrests.

In addition to the Kirk case, the same U.S. Attorney's office is now reviewing the conviction of Alexander Smirnov, who pleaded guilty to lying to federal officials in 2020 about Hunter Biden having corrupt business dealings with a Ukrainian oil company, "in what prosecutors described as a Russian-influenced operation," says Cuniff.

"As soon as Trump took over, all of a sudden, they are trying to get this guy --- who took a plea deal and was sentenced in January --- out of prison, pending appeal, saying they are going to support his appeal," she explains. "The trial judge wouldn't do it, but they're going to the 9th Circuit [Court of Appeals]. The assistant U.S. Attorney who argued for this is the same one who went to court to argue for Trevor Kirk for a sentencing delay" to allow Trump's attorneys to strike a deal with the dirty cop...

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On today's BradCast: If the 101st Day is any indication, it doesn't look like the second hundred are gonna go any better for him than the first. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• On our roundtable program yesterday with Digby and Driftglass, we discussed who was likely the first top Trump Administration official to be tossed under the bus in the wake of Donald Trump's dismal and worsening approval ratings. Today we know: Trump National Security Adviser and Signal group chat enthusiast, Mike Waltz. At least he outlasted Trump's first (of four) NSAs in the first term. The disgraced and loony Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn survived just 24 days before being tossed and eventually pleading guilty to criminal charges of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians. At least Waltz gets a consolation prize. Trump tapped him to be U.N. Ambassador.

• Last week, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth --- a Reagan-appointee --- ordered the rehiring of staffers and contractors at the Congressionally-mandated and funded Voice of America and its similarly critical global sister networks Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting after the Trump-order shutdown in March of its parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media. This week, Judge Lamberth ordered the Administration to restore $12 million in funding to another VOA sister network, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty --- broadcasting to dozens of countries in dozens of languages since the Cold War --- while issuing both a history lesson and an important Constitutional lesson for the Trump Administration (and, arguably, for Congress) about the important roles of the three co-equal branches of Government in his order [PDF].

• In still more Trump-is-a-Loser news today, a Trump-appointed federal judge in South Texas, issued a first-of-its-kind permanent injunction on Trump's "unlawful" use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 --- in peacetime --- to deport alleged gang members from Venezuela to a gulag in El Salvador. "The President's invocation of the AEA...exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute's terms," U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. wrote in the order [PDF], concluding that Trump's attempt to falsely proclaim the U.S. was being "invaded" by Tren de Aragua gang members at the direction of the Venezuelan government was patently false, "exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful."

• Also of note today, the Board and shareholders of one of the companies most closely associated with America, Coca-Cola, flatly rejected two proposals to abolish the company's anti-discrimination programs, often smeared by Trump and fellow wingnuts as "DEI". Shareholders and the Board of Directors at yet another iconic American company, Levi Strauss, reportedly did the same last week.

• It's not just courts and a few iconic U.S. companies that are pushing back at Trump's nonsense of late. Even Democrats, if you can believe it --- at least a couple who are clearly eye-balling Presidential runs in 2028 --- are now more aggressively doing the same, especially now that the public has turned so clearly against out tinpot dictator-wannabe. Last night, at an event in San Francisco, former Vice President and Presidential nominee Kamala Harris offered her first substantive public remarks since losing to Trump last year, deriding his "wholesale abandonment" of American values. That came on the heels of a stem-winder by Illinois' Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker, taking on Trumpers and go-along, get-along, "do nothing" Dems alike, at a fundraiser on Sunday in New Hampshire. We share extended excerpts from both speeches today.

• And finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report to help us close things out near the end of a week that began with a huge loss for our failing President, as his attempts at hectoring our neighbor to the north and meddling in Canada's elections completely backfired, producing not just another Liberal Party Prime Minister, whose election might have been unthinkable last December, but a climate and energy action champion at that...

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On today's BradCast: We're barely 100 days into Trump's second term as President and the odds seem to be improving quickly, believe it or not, for an historic third Impeachment for the worst, most failed, most unpopular (at this point in his term) President in U.S. history. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... Before we get to news on the possibility of yet another impeachment for Donald J. Trump, some wildly amusing election news out of Canada, where Trump's idiotic hectoring of our long-time friends to the North succeeded in improbably reversing the fortunes of the Liberal Party in Monday's election. Prime Minister Mark Carney was victorious yesterday, as the Liberals soundly defeated Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre in a simply remarkable turn of events. The Liberals were all but doomed as of last December, when then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was facing a 25% deficit against the Conservative's Trumpy-wannabe Poilievre. Then Trudeau resigned and Carney took his place as PM, as Trump began threatening Canada with an offensive campaign to make it our 51st state. He then further won the hearts and minds of our largest trading partner and longtime ally by slapping huge trade tariffs on them and placing himself at the center of their Prime Minister's election. Long story short, Trump's idiocy translated into a once seemingly impossible victory for Carney and the Libs --- and Poilievre even lost his own seat that he's held in Parliament for 20 years to a Liberal opponent. Congrats, Mr. President! Please keep up the bad work!

NEXT... Back here in the U.S., Trump appears to be no more popular than he is in Canada. In fact, as pretty much every recent poll has shown, his approval ratings are in the toilet both overall and for almost every single issue pollsters are asking about.

That now includes Impeachment, where a poll released late last week found that a majority of American voters (52%), now "strongly support" or "somewhat support" the idea, including a 55% majority of voters who identify as independent and even 20% of self-identified Republicans!

That polling coincides with the introduction of seven articles of Impeachment on Monday in the U.S. House by Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar of Detroit, who argues that Trump has "repeatedly demonstrated that he is unfit to serve" and "represents a clear and present danger to our nation's Constitution and our democracy."

All of that comes on top of the ImpeachTrumpAgain.org campaign, launched on Inauguration Day earlier this year by the nonpartisan nonprofit, Free Speech for People (FSFP). While their campaign initially called for Trump's Impeachment on Day 1 for violations of the Constitution's Emoluments Clauses and Trump's "unlawful, corrupt campaign practices," it has since expanded to include some 17 High Crimes and Misdemeanors that, "since taking office, Trump has committed."

According to my guest today, FSFP's co-founder and President, JOHN BONIFAZ, the campaign's petition in support of Impeachment has now garnered more than 400,000 signatures from the public. Bonifaz is a Constitutional Law expert and author of several books on Impeachment, including 2018's The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump. He has also given testimony in Congress in years past for U.S. House Impeachment inquiries.

Among my questions for Bonifaz today...

• Why was Trump Constitutionally eligible as of Day 1 in his second term for Impeachment, as argued by FSFP's campaign?
• If Trump's historic TWO impeachments during his first term failed to remove him from office, is it really worth doing yet again, especially with Republican majorities currently in both the House and Senate?
• Impeachment or not, can Trump still be held accountable via the legal system for violations of the Constitution, including the Emoluments Clauses (as per a case found Moot by SCOTUS after Trump left office the first time) and for his withholding of nearly half a trillion dollars in spending approved by Congress?
• Of the ImpeachTrumpAgain.org's current seventeen suggested Articles of Impeachment detailed on their website, what are the top three or four most critical, as he sees it?
• How does the U.S. Supreme Court's absurd finding last year of so-called "Presidential Immunity" for "Official Acts" affect any hope of a U.S. Senate finding a President guilty of High Crimes and Misdemeanors under the Constitution's Impeachment Clause?
• What is his response to Democrats --- for example, Rep. Dan Goldman of NY, who worked on one of Trump's previous Impeachments during his first term --- arguing, as the Congressman did in mid-February, that "regardless of whether or not there are impeachment offenses, it's not happening and we need to focus on other ways of providing accountability on Donald Trump"?

As usual, Bonifaz' responses are clear, insightful, and very educational, as he argues that "we are dealing here with somebody who is lawless in the Oval Office. He is a reckless, lawless person who claims to be President of the United States when really he's trying to act like a monarch and a tyrant."

"The Framers [of the Constitution] were very clear," he tells me. "We were not to be a nation governed by a monarch or a tyrant. This was going to be a different nation, governed by a President checked by a Congress and by a Judiciary. But importantly, they put an extra guardrail into the Constitution, in addition to those co-equal branches of government, and that was the Impeachment Clause. They were also aware that there might come a day when a President would so engage in trampling on the Constitution, would so engage in violating the rule of law, that there would need to be a measure to allow for the Impeachment and removal of that President. And that is the place that we are now in. This is the very remedy the framers put in the Constitution to deal with this lawlessness coming from the Oval Office."

"We either have a Constitution or we don't," Bonifaz asserts, when I ask about why any of this is worth trying, given previous failures to use Impeachment to remove Trump from office during his first term. "We either have an Impeachment Clause or we don't. If we do not invoke it at this very moment in the face of this lawlessness coming from this President, then what's the point of having the Constitution at all? And what's the point of having the Impeachment Clause? We are not going to give up on this idea of a Constitution in which a President must be accountable to the people and to the other branches of government."

"Second, we normalize these High Crimes when we don't name them for what they are. These are not policy disputes. These are abuses of power. And this President must be held accountable under the Impeachment Clause for these High Crimes."

"And third," he continues, "members of Congress take the same oath that Donald Trump took to protect and defend the Constitution. They have a duty to stand up at this critical moment in our history and defend the Constitution in the face of this attack by this President on the rule of law and on our democracy."

There is much more in our conversation on all of the above that I suspect you'll find very very interesting and even encouraging.

FINALLY... we are joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report on Trump's denial of disaster relief funds for Arkansas, Kentucky and other states; his EPA's firing of ALL of the (volunteer!) scientists working on the Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment; and a new study finding that the world's biggest oil companies have caused some $28 TRILLION in climate damages to the world...

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I'll try to make this brief today, so you can get right on to actually listening to today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today, as Donald Trump officially becomes the lowest-rated President in U.S. history during his first 100 days in office since polling began in the FDR Era...

• The Trump Administration has now gutted the Voting Rights Unit in the Civil Rights Section of the Dept. of Justice. All of the senior managers have been reassigned elsewhere and all pending cases from the prior Administration have now been dropped. So much for the DoJ's "crown jewel"...and enforcement of voting rights.

• After losing one case after another after another in lower courts since taking office, the Trump Administration is hoping to change their luck by turning the tables by arresting a sitting state judge in Wisconsin for allegedly helping an undocumented migrant avoid arrest by ICE when he was in her courtroom for a completely unrelated case. The state judge, Hannah Dugan, was hand-cuffed at the court (as opposed to, for example, Trump being allowed to turn himself in at an appointed hour for his two felony indictments) and Trump's FBI Director, Kash Patel, posted a photo of the perp walk on social media in violation of DoJ's long-standing policy. The case against Hannah, however, may not turn out to be a very good one, according to Marcy Wheeler.

• And now they're "deporting" U.S. citizens. At least children. With their mothers. Late last week, two mothers were both deported to Honduras after showing up for a scheduled check-in along with their kids, one of whom is 2-years old, one who is 7-years old, and one who is 4-years old...with Stage 4 cancer. The children are all U.S. citizens. Neither of the mothers were reportedly allowed to speak to a lawyer after being handcuffed and shipped out of the country. One of the women was reportedly allowed to speak to the father of her children for 1-minute before the call was cut off by ICE and the women and their children were all deported. And yet, when asked about it on Sunday, Sec. of State Marco Rubio had the gall to say that, while both citizens and non-citizens alike are entitled to Constitutional due process, "if you're in this this country unlawfully, you have no right to be here and you must be removed." But, how do you determine if someone is in the country unlawfully without due process? Clearly, neither of these women --- OR THEIR CHILDREN --- received it. That, by the way, is according to the far-right, very Trumpy, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge in Texas overseeing their cases. Even he is not happy about it!

• So, is this what Trumpers were hoping for when they voted for him last November? I had hoped to talk to a few of them as I asked such listeners to give us a call today. But, right as we finally got to the phones, the entire phone system here at KPFK crashed. [Please consider giving them a donation to help upgrade the phone system! And please tell them Brad sent you when you do!]

• Oh, well. That gave us some time to walk through at least a few of the major new polls out over the past few days in the run up to Trump's 100th Day in office this week, finding him with the lowest rating at this time in office of every President who has served over the past 100 years. And it's not just his overall approval that has crashed --- into the 30s in some of the polls --- but, on every single issue of note, more Americans oppose him than support him...by huge margins...

• And also, some time to enjoy the schadenfreude of a whole bunch of MAGA folks who seem to now deeply regret their vote for Donald Trump...

This seems to be the worst fascist takeover ever. But he's doing it anyway...

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Today on The BradCast: His various attempts to undermine the Constitution and American civil rights law continue to be blocked by judges in the courts. But that isn't stopping the President and his lackeys from gutting civil rights protections and environmental justice enforcement at key federal agencies...for the moment. Nor is it stopping our guest today, a 30-year EPA veteran, from continuing the good fight at her agency. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Donald Trump proved to be a loser again on Thursday in three different federal courtrooms, in three different civil rights-related law suits, as determined by three different federal district judges (one of whom was appointed by him.) Two of the judges, one in New Hampshire, the other in Maryland, blocked his Dept. of Education's attempt to cut funding to K-12 schools with anti-discrimination or DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs.

The third civil rights-related court loss for Trump today was in D.C., where a federal judge blocked his attempt to mandate proof of citizenship when registering to vote, as per his recent attempted power grab via an Executive Order meant to undermine democracy, U.S. elections and the right to vote.

In the meantime, Harmeet Dhillon --- a rightwing culture warrior clown and former Trump 2020 "Stop the Steal" attorney --- has been appointed to oversee the Dept. of Justice's Civil Rights Division, where she has reportedly unleashed a "bloodbath" among senior officials at the office which oversees, among other things, voting rights. Current and former employees at the division charge that Dhillon is turning civil rights law upside down, by using it, as one former department employee familiar with the new changes said, to "victimize the very people it was created to protect."

THEN... In related-ish news, we reported earlier this week that Trump's new EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, sent letters to some 450 staffers at the Agency's Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights office, notifying them that they are being fired or reassigned as the office is being shut down. The firing letters to longtime staffers --- including scientists, researches and attorneys --- were sent on Monday night, Earth Day eve.

The EPA's Environmental Justice office, created during the Administration of Republican President George H.W. Bush, is tasked with protecting minority communities who are often most vulnerable to toxic emissions from chemical plants and oil refineries. Down in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley", for instance, there are about 150 plants and refineries concentrated along a stretch of land between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The population in the area is mostly Black, and multiple studies have found that nearly every census tract in the area ranks in the top 5% nationally for cancer risk.

Since taking office, however, Team Trump have pledged to "end the use of 'environmental justice' as a tool for advancing ideological priorities" and have been unwinding the unit's work under previous Presidents. For example, under Joe Biden's Administration, the EPA sued the owner of a Cancer Alley chemical plant where cancer cases were found to be 44% higher for those who lived within one mile of the plant than the national rate. The Biden Administration sued the company to clean up their act. The Trump EPA recently withdrew the lawsuit.

Amidst those horrors, we're delighted to be joined today by JOYCE HOWELL, 30-year veteran EPA senior attorney and Executive Vice President of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE)'s Council 238, representing some 8,400 EPA workers nationwide.

"'Environmental justice' is just another extension of the fundamental American right to equal protection under the law," she tells me when I ask her to explain what the phrase actually means. "To ensure that, no matter where you live, the laws that protect human health and the environment will apply to you. Environmental justice gives people the avenue for their voices to be heard when determinations are made about where to put a factory that spews so much pollution, relative to where they live. Or, if they are already living there, and there's someplace nearby that impacts them, that they would be able to, as members of the public, have their voice heard with regard to the permitting of that plant, to the number of inspections that take place [and] the oversight of programs that are delegated from EPA to the state."

Howell finds it "disconcerting" that EPA Administrator Zeldin has shut down the Environmental Justice office, removing its history from the Agency's website, dismissing the work of the office as ineffective and "an excuse to fund left-wing activist groups". That, as Zeldin vows to slash the EPA budget by 65%.

She tells me that while work is continuing at the EPA nonetheless, its "enforcement program has slowed down tremendously." More than even "under Trump 1," when she also served. Explaining how she, and her colleagues at the Agency, survived his first term, Howell says, "We do what we always do: we put our heads down and we did our work. That's what carried us through."

Her union, AFGE, may have plans to challenge the recent layoffs and reassignments in court, though she did not yet want to give away their thinking on that. But, when I asked why she was willing to speak on the record on these matters, --- while many of her current and former EPA colleagues have been speaking to the media under condition of anonymity due to concerns of retaliation --- Howell notes that, since she speaks on behalf of the union, she may have some protections under federal labor law that others may not, protecting her "speech on behalf of workers."

But, she adds, she recently "attended an organizing meeting and someone said, 'Cowardice is contagious. So is courage.' And I thought to myself, yeah, that's true. For me, it's important. I haven't been at EPA for all these years just to get a salary. I am there because I believe in the mission. I will tell you every single person there feels strongly the same way. We don't do it on behalf of ourselves. We do it on behalf of the American people."

I hope you'll turn in for a very interesting conversation today.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen helps us close today's show with our latest Green News Report, at the end of a very green --- and sometimes all too toxic --- Earth Day week!...

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Well, we're back live on today's BradCast, like it or not. With so much going on we've got no choice but to run right into the middle of the freeway and pray for the best. The result? Not a bad show, if I say so myself. [Audio link to full show follows this tweet.]

After a quick round-up, needed for context today, of just some of last week's madness while we were otherwise off for a much-needed break, we pick up with...

• The opinion [PDF] of the very conservative Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who, last week in the case of the mistakenly-deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia warned that the Trump Administration's refusal to bring the man home to Maryland from a gulag in El Salvador "should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear." Judge Wilkinson goes on to warn, among other things, that "The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order," and that "If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?"

• But Donald Trump's tyranny is now here, in full flower, which one Republican U.S. Senator admitted recently has all of her colleagues "afraid", even if most are still too afraid to say as much out loud.

• SCOTUS was literally forced to awaken from bed over the weekend to issue an extraordinary, 7 to 2, middle-of-the-night order PDF to the Trump Administration, clarifying that no Venezuelan migrants being held in Texas may be deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 "until further order of this court." (If you're wondering who were the two Justices in favor of sending migrants to foreign gulags without benefit of any Constitutional due process, that would be Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, of course.)

• And, by the way, Washington Post reported over the weekend that the 18 intelligence agencies comprising Trump's own National Intelligence Council concluded in an assessment earlier this month that the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the U.S., as Trump has lied about in unlawfully invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants without due process.

• Trump's fiscal policies continue to be disastrous as well. The U.S. stock market plummeted yet again on Monday in response to Trump's tariff and trade war and his new threats of firing his own Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who Trump is now blaming for the fact that he crashed the U.S. economy with his own dumb trade war that few if any countries are apparently willing to negotiate with Trump about.

• Pope Francis, the world's first Latin American pontiff and a great champion of progressive causes including the fight against climate change and for environmental justice --- as Desi Doyen details today --- died on Monday at the age of 88 after a months-long illness and a brief meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance on Easter Sunday.

• That's not all we cover today, but it gives you an idea before we open up the phones to callers, callers, callers. Lot of them, including some with some very interesting thoughts and questions! Please tune in!...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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On today's BradCast: "Irrational exuberance" reigned on Wall Street as of 1:18pm Eastern Time. Though, after the past week of our moronic President's idiotic "economic policy" crashing the markets day after day after day, it's hard to blame investors for over-celebrating even the smallest hint of a respite from his imbecility. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Before we get to Trump (sort of) backing down from his worldwide (except for Russia) trade war, a bit of an addendum today to my disturbing conversation on yesterday's program with Slate's legal ace Mark Joseph Stern. He and I were both in general agreement on Tuesday that the Supreme Court's horrible 5 to 4 ruling on Monday night --- in a case challenging the deportation and foreign imprisonment of Venezuelan migrants without due process under Trump's peacetime use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 --- allowed for the detention and foreign imprisonment of not just migrants but of U.S. citizens without due process as well.

Today, preeminent Constitutional law scholars Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC-Berkley's Law School, and Laurence Tribe, Emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, argued an almost identical case in a New York Times op-ed headlined "We Should All Be Very, Very Afraid".

So it's not just some progressive radio dude and a legal reporter at a lefty-ish Internet publication issuing such a warning this week. Thus, I felt a need today to underscore that important point once again before it too gets lost in Donald Trump's ongoing authoritarian chaos.

For what it's worth, even a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas on Wednesday has now temporarily blocked the deportation of Venezuelan migrants under Trump's Stalin-like implementation of the Alien Enemies Act. Details on today's program.

THEN... The roller coaster on Wall Street continued on Wednesday, though at least much of today's ride was an upswing for a happy change. After four and a half days of market blood-letting following Trump's ridiculous "Liberation Day" pronouncement of major sanctions against virtually every nation on Earth (except for Russia) last week --- and with the bond market tanking as well and economists warning about a likely recession --- President Super Genius finally backed down, at least partially, as he always does.

Despite a remarkable, immediate spike in the major market indexes in response, within minutes after Trump's lie-filled social media post about his "90 day PAUSE", investors may soon begin to realize that the news isn't quite as good as they might have hoped. Trump (for today anyway), is leaving in place 10% tariffs against pretty much everybody (except Russia) and now claims to be raising tariffs against China to 125%, because they dared match the previous sanctions he'd declared against them.

In all, though it was unclear as of this afternoon whether Trump was dropping his 25% or 35% or 10% tariffs against our largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, if Trump keeps in place the current 10% tariffs against most of the world, and his 125% tax on goods imported from China, it seems that the inflationary cost to American consumers will be just about what it was before Trump choked this afternoon. Even after today's spike, the Dow remained about 10% lower than its all-time record set during the Biden Administration.

How that --- or any new brain farts from President Stable Genius --- affects the market in coming days remains to be seen.

In addition to the financial cost of Trump crashing the economy, there has seemingly been a political cost as well to President Make-It-Up-As-You-Go-Along as well, resulting in what Politico last night characterized as a "House Republican mutiny" that threatens to hold up (post air: sure enough!) or even block all together, his massive, deficit-exploding tax cuts for his wealthy friends and their corporations.

How will Trump's partial flip-flop on tariffs affect his political fortunes on the massive GOP budget plan? Stay tuned. Though keep your hands and arms inside the roller coaster at all times until this madness comes to a complete stop...whenever that may be...

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