So much Team Trump criming, so little time to cover it all on today's BradCast. But we try. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Over the weekend, MSNBC broke the news, followed by confirmation from New York Times, that Donald Trump's so-called 'Border Czar', Tom Homan, was caught on tape last September accepting $50,000 in cash --- in a takeout food bag --- from undercover law enforcement officials posing as businessmen. The sting came about after the target of a separate corruption probe tipped off officials that Homan was accepting bribes in exchange for lucrative border security contracts in a new Trump administration, presuming he won last year's election.

After Trump took office, he tapped Homan to oversee his mass deportation of migrants, a scheme that, they had promised, would focus on removing "the worst of the worst" criminals. Instead, the majority of deportees have no criminal record, but the guy running the program has apparently been caught on tape accepting a cash payoff before returning to office.

The investigation into Homan, which reportedly began in the summer of 2024 under the Biden Administration's DOJ, was summarily closed after Trump returned to power by Trump's former criminal defense attorney turned Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, and his FBI Director, Kash Patel. One of Trump's other personal attorneys, Emil Bove, who served as a top DOJ official until recently being confirmed by Republicans in the U.S. Senate as a federal judge, also reportedly had a hand in shutting down the probe of Homan.

A DOJ spokesperson described the investigation as "blatantly political" and an effort to target "President Trump’s allies rather than investigate real criminals and the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our country," claiming the investigation "found no evidence of illegal activity."

Over the same weekend that story broke, Trump sent what appears to have been meant as a private message to his Attorney General Pam Bondi, effectively ordering her to bring criminal charges against three of his top political foes, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey, and California U.S. Senator Adam Schiff. The message addressed to "Pam", seemingly meant to be private, was instead posted publicly by Trump on his own failing social media website.

We're joined today for insight on all of this by RANDALL D. ELIASON, former chief of the DOJ's Fraud and Public Corruption Section at the U.S. Attorney Office in the District of Columbia. He now teaches white collar crime at George Washington University Law School and pens the Sidebars Blog newsletter.

Is there any reason to believe the DOJ and FBI were right to drop the bribery probe against Homan, in which it seems he was caught dead to rights taking a cash bribe according to multiple reports?

"It's really impossible to know without knowing exactly what's on the tape. It would all come down to what he said and what he agreed to do in exchange for the cash," Eliason tells me today. "But I will say that accepting $50,000 in cash in a fast-food bag is kind of an indication of corrupt intent, that the recipient knows something shady is going on. So you've got to say at a bare minimum, there's a substantial basis to conduct additional investigation." Reportedly, that's exactly what DOJ was doing until Team Trump shut it all down.

"This line coming out from the White House and the DOJ that there was no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing, that doesn't hold water," he argues. "There's clearly something fishy going on here when you're taking fifty grand in cash in a Cava food bag. So there's certainly some smoke there." But, he further explains, "the Supreme Court has made the federal bribery statute so narrow" there are a number of ways Homan could get off the hook. Of course, the fastest way is to have friends at the DOJ willing to corruptly dismiss the entire matter.

We discuss that in detail, along with what Eliason describes as an extraordinary break from decades of norms and tradition with Trump's "private" message to his A.G. regarding bringing charges against his perceived political foes.

"Trump sees the Justice Department as a tool that he can use to punish his enemies and reward his friends," charges Eliason. "And this historical, very important norm that politics is kept separated, that the Justice Department is kept independent from the White House because we don't want politics to influence criminal investigations and criminal prosecutions, has just been flipped completely on its head and thrown out the window. It doesn't exist anymore under this administration."

"He is trying to use the Justice Department to go after his political opponents. And he also uses it to reward his friends. Whether it's Homan, or [Mayor] Eric Adams in New York City, or all the January 6 rioters, pardoning all of them. It's one of the most discouraging things that is happening in this administration --- the complete gutting of the law."

"This is really scary stuff," adds Eliason. "This idea that the President can order a prosecutor to bring criminal charges, and if he doesn't, he'll fire you and put someone in place who will. It's unthinkable to anyone who has worked as a federal prosecutor. It's directly contradictory to the mission and ethical obligations of a federal prosecutor. It would have been completely unheard of before now."

It is all of a piece, he explains, with "many things that are going on at the Justice Department that just breaks the hearts of those of us who worked there and love it."

Finally, breaking news just before airtime today on Trump's FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's outrageous threat last week against Disney/ABC and their affiliate stations to take away their broadcast licenses unless they cancel Jimmy Kimmel's late night show after comments Kimmel made that they didn't care for regarding the recent murder of Republican activist Charlie Kirk. After enormous public blowback against Disney following last week's "indefinite suspension" of Jimmy Kimmel LIve, news broke late today that Kimmel will now be returning to air as of Tuesday night. Looks like public pressure, a torrent of cancelled Disney+ subscriptions and the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment may have won this round, at least partly...at least for now. Since getting off air, Sinclair Broadcasting, a rightwing outlet that owns more than 35 ABC affiliate stations and is seeking favors from the FCC, has announced they plan to air news programming instead of Kimmel's show beginning on Tuesday night...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Today on The BradCast (my last until next week, see "NOTE" below), a full week after the awful murder of Republican activist Charlie Kirk, the political ramifications --- and opportunism --- is becoming quite clear. And it all has a very familiar echo to those of us, including my guests today, who were around and paying close attention 24 years ago this month. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Back then, an unpopular President in the first eight months of his term saw his political fortunes reversed in the aftermath of the horrific terror attacks on September 11, 2001, as much of the nation "rallied around the flag" in support of that President, in response. His Administration, however, ran way too far with its presumed mandate in subsequent months and years. Innocent Americans themselves came under suspicion and paid a price (sometimes large, sometimes small) for their words and their political beliefs. The nation ended up committing itself to (at least) two, years-long, unwinnable foreign wars. And actions taken against Americans in the name, supposedly, of national security would bend norms, laws and Constitutional rights beyond recognition at times.

Charlie Kirk has yet to be buried. And yet, his most powerful ally, a very unpopular Donald Trump, his Administration and their supporters are already targeting their fellow Americans for retribution --- for a crime they had nothing to do with.

After years of describing Democrats as "fascists" and "the enemy within", Trump now claims that Kirk's death was the "tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree...in the most hateful and despicable way possible." In making his case, he cites "radical left" "scum" and unnamed "leftist organizations" as being responsible, vowing to target, prosecute and defund them for a crime that nobody other than the shooter seems to have carried out.

On Monday, Trump's Vice President, J.D. Vance, declared "left-wing extremism" was to blame and that "the data is clear" it is "not a both sides problem." It is "people on the Left" that are to blame for rising political violence. That, after the Trump Dept. of Justice removed a National Institute of Justice report from its website that finds white supremacist and far-right violence "continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism" in the United States. The study (now archived here) was there on the day that Kirk was killed. It was disappeared by the Trump Administration thereafter.

Speaking to Vance on the very same show on Monday, Trump's top White House political czar, Stephen Miller, furiously vowed "to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks" and to "use every resource we have at the DOJ, Homeland Security and throughout this government to dismantle and destroy these networks."

Of course, there are no known "networks", at this time, tied to Kirk's murder in any way. But that's okay. Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, promised on Monday to "absolutely target" anyone who uses "hate speech" that she doesn't like in the wake of Kirk's death. When asked about Bondi's remarks by an ABC News reporter on the White House lawn, Trump accused him of having "a lot of hate in your heart" and threatened: "Maybe I'll come after ABC."

(Shortly after we wrapped today's program, news broke that ABC was "indefinitely" pulling its popular late-night show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The announcement came after Trump's FCC chair threatened to "take action" against ABC and its owner Disney, and suggesting he might pull broadcast licenses from affiliate stations. The threats were apparently in response to Kimmel's charge on Monday that MAGA was "doing everything they can to score political points from" Kirk's death. Today, it seems, they scored another point. Though, to be fair, Trump said back in July, after taking credit for the recent cancellation of Stephen Colbert's top-rated late night show on CBS, "I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next." So, obviously all of this is just opportunism.)

Oh, and Rep. Clay Higgins, Chair of the Federal Law Enforcement subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter this week to the CEOs of six social media companies, (falsely) instructing them that they are required, by law, to remove comments regarding Kirk's assassination that Higgins and his compatriots might find offensive. He claimed the "restriction of public statements...is not an oppression of free speech [but] the protection of free speech." [Emphasis added for Orwell's sake.]

All of this sounds both familiar and chilling to those of us who lived through the aftermath of 9/11, including my guests today, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS' of the Professional Left Podcast.

"This isn't surprising," says Digby. "They've been telegraphing this since Donald Trump started running back in 2022, that they were going to go after 'the Left' and his enemies, 'the enemies of the state.' After the Kirk shooting there were MAGA people who were saying out loud, 'This is our Reichstag Fire,' looking for that moment they could use as an excuse to do what they were always going to do anyway."

"They have to start targeting people online who they said were insufficiently reverent toward Charlie Kirk, and getting them fired. So much more free speech. But that's the first step you take in this," she adds, citing similar threats from Republicans in the George W. Bush Administration back in 2001.

"I would like to thank the Reichstag Fire comparators for acknowledging they are Nazis," quips Driftglass, "because that's what the Reichstag Fire was. Way to go, guys!"

Citing similar blowback against those who disagreed with Bush and his wars after 9/11, Driftglass adds: "This didn't start with Donald Trump. They have been demonizing the Left as responsible for everything wrong with this country for at least the last 35 years. And the rhetoric has finally caught up with actual action being taken at the highest level of the White House."

"In Neuromancer by William Gibson," Driftglass observes, "he coined a phrase called the 'consensual hallucination.' That's what they [MAGA] are all engaged in. They have hallucinated into existence a vast leftwing conspiracy, sneaky liberal media, lots of awfulness that justifies everything they do. This has been set up for 40 years now, that the Left is always worse, always a threat, and always a justification for escalation against the 'enemy within.'"

There is, of course, much more on all of this on today's show, as both Digby and Driftglass join us for the full hour, including their insights on Trump's apparent attempt to start a war with Venezuela; his apparent attempt to start a war with Chicago; his laughable $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times and much more...

[NOTE: 'The BradCast' is off tomorrow due to an unavoidable medical appointment, though we hope to get a Green News Report out beforehand! Otherwise, see ya on Monday!]

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

We're lucky to have a guest on today's BradCast who is able to offer a smart perspective on a whole bunch of legal stories breaking over the past 24 to 72 hours, because there has been a whole bunch of those stories tumbling in, regarding our crumbling court system and the Trump Administration's unrelenting assault on the Constitution and rule of law. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We're joined today to discuss all of them by KEITH BARBER, former lifelong Republican and attorney who now writes on legal matters at the progressive Daily Kos. I had initially asked him to join us to discuss his latest coverage of on an adverse ruling for the Trump Administration late last week in U.S. District Court.

In that case, the lower courts had previously put a hold on the Administration's attempted firing of thousands of government workers across dozens of federal agencies. The temporary injunction on the layoffs issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was meant to allow time for the lower courts to fully hear and try the challenge to the firings, as filed by several employees and their unions. But the injunction was overturned earlier this year by the Supreme Court, without explanation, on their "Emergency Docket", known by critics as the "Shadow Docket".

Before the injunction was blocked by the corrupted Supreme Court majority, it was meant to avoid irreparable harm to the workers by maintaining the status quo until a full trial on the merits could determine whether the firings were lawful in the first place. Late last week, as Barber reports, the court ruled [PDF] against the Administration, describing the government's case as a "sham" based on "fabricated" arguments and "chicanery". That said, thanks to the High Court's earlier ruling, lifting the lower court's injunction, last week's ruling comes largely too late to restore workers who lost their job. Many of the agencies in question have either removed those jobs since then or have been shut down entirely while the case made its way up and back down the judicial system.

The OPM case is just one of dozens like it, where lower court rulings --- meant to temporarily pause the Administration's unprecedented and seemingly unlawful actions until the merits of challenges could be heard --- were "temporarily" overturned by the High Court without explanation on the Shadow Docket as the cases proceeded below.

This same scheme has played out dozens of times in the eight months since Trump returned to office. Over mass firings of government employees, to very specific firings of decades-long experienced agency personnel for obviously (and unlawful) political reasons; to the complete or near-complete shutdowns of entire federal agencies and departments; to attempted Administration takeovers of supposedly independent federal Commissions; to attempted rescission of billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars in already appropriated spending by Congress; to mass roundups and deportations of migrants by federal agents; to the deployment of U.S. military into American cities against the wishes of state and local authorities. That's just to name a few of the major, unprecedented upheavals and attempted upheavals allowed to "temporarily" proceed by the corrupted Supreme Court majority, almost always in contradiction to lower U.S. District and Appeals Court rulings.

Many of those cases are now completing their full trials on the merits and/or being heard by appellate courts, with inevitable trips ahead back up to the Supreme Court for final rulings. As Barber details today, however, we can be almost certain that if the Supremes choose to take up those cases, they will most likely do so in order to overturn a lower court ruling on the merits against Trump. Otherwise, given the number of cases they must choose between hearing each year, they are likely to simply allow favorable rulings for Trump in the lower courts to simply stand as is. We' find out in the coming months.

Either way, Barber explains all of this by concurring with the argument I have been offering for quite some time. "We have a corrupt Supreme Court," he asserts. "Donald Trump corrupts everything he touches, to include the United States Supreme Court."

I had hoped to dig into related aspects of the OPM mass firing case (in which the Administration falsely claimed that the thousands of fired workers were laid off due to "poor performance") and what it portends in the months ahead. But a whole bunch of other legally related issues came tumbling in today and in recent days, which I was also able to discuss with Barber on today's program.

Among our additional topics for discussion today...

• Longtime federal prosecutor Maurene Comey filed suit against the administration on Monday for her recent firing. She argues it was solely (and unlawfully) due to a political vendetta by Trump. Comey is the daughter of James Comey, the former FBI Director famously fired by Trump during his first term in office.

• Attorney General Pam Bondi's recent vow to "absolutely target" anyone who dares use "hate speech" she doesn't like in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder. For the record, Kirk would have disagreed. "Hate speech does not exist legally in America," he posted on social media last year, adding "ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment." Bondi also recently vowed to prosecute businesses who choose not to print posters of Kirk, despite the 2018 SCOTUS ruling that a religious baker in Colorado could not be forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding.

• Terrorism charges were dropped today by a judge in New York court against the 27-year old man accused of murdering the CEO of UnitedHealthcare last December.

• In a 4 to 3 split ruling, the Georgia Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to hear Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' appeal to a lower court ruling removing her and her office from prosecuting the sprawling racketeering indictment against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants for their alleged efforts to steal the 2020 Presidential election in the state. While a state commission may now assign the case to a different prosecutor, they may choose not to do so or the chosen prosecutor may choose to drop the election interference case entirely. Willis' removal stems from a lower court ruling which determined she had had an inappropriate romantic relationship with a fellow prosecutor on the case.

• On Monday, Donald Trump announced his latest laughable defamation lawsuit against a major media outlet. This time, it's a $15 billion case against the New York Times for reporting which Trump, apparently, doesn't like. Barber describes the 85-page suit [PDF] as absurd. "I honestly think that Saturday Night Live or somebody should do a comedy sketch where the whole thing should be read out loud," he tells me. "It's nuts." That said, so were the ridiculous defamation suits against ABC News and CBS News, both of which chose to settle with Trump at the insistence of their corporate parents. The Times, however, has no such corporate parent. "I hope they don't settle this," says Barber. "I would expect that not only would they prevail, but they'd also get back all of their legal expenses."

And finally today, we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report on our newly endless summers (no, it's not just your imagination); billions of taxpayer dollars being spent on new subsidies set for the fossil fuel industry, thanks to Trump and the Republicans' newly passed budget bill; and the surging success of renewable energy, lead by China, pretty much everywhere across the globe...except in the U.S...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Today on The BradCast: Charlie Kirk was a racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobe. He also did not deserve to be killed for any of it. Prove me wrong, as Kirk liked to say, on either of those points. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

I'd have otherwise been happy to move on from the topic at this point, but for the inappropriate lionization of Kirk by, not just the Right, but the mainstream media in the days since his horrific murder in Utah last week, allegedly by a 22-year old man from a religious, Republican family from the state. Kirk no more deserves to be lionized than he deserved to be shot and killed by a longtime firearm aficionado.

It's also difficult to move on given the way the President of the United States and his Administration and his supporters are using Kirk's death --- lying about it --- as a weapon to declare war on their perceived political enemies, on civic democracy and on the Constitution itself.

Donald Trump has now repeatedly blamed "radical left" "scum" for Kirk's murder, despite any evidence yet to support such a claim. Despite being the worst demonizer to ever lead the American government, Trump claims the attack on Kirk is the "tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible."

He has now promised to use the federal government to go after those people and organizations that he believes to be organizers and "funders" of the "radical left", which he has repeatedly referred to (again, without evidence) as "fascists", "Marxists", "communists" and "worse". Despite the countless, recent, deadly attacks by Trump supporters against elected Democratic officials --- and despite his own Vice President (Vance) and HHS Secretary (Kennedy), comparing him to Hitler --- Trump insisted on Sunday that "the problem is on the left. It’s not on the right."

Kirk's killing took place, however, on the very same day that a 16-year old boy in Colorado --- who authorities claim to have been "radicalized" by an "extremist network" and obsessed with antisemitism, Nazis and Holocaust denial --- went on a gun rampage through his Evergreen, CO high school (near Columbine) before taking his own life.

Oddly enough, Trump has yet to mention one word about that incident, to my knowledge, even though it sent teenage students to the hospital in critical condition. Nor has he called for those who encouraged and funded and radicalized that shooter to be brought to justice, for some reason.

And, while Kirk is being lauded for championing free speech (he did, hateful as it may have been, at least at his personal appearances), he also organized a nationwide effort to tape and target school teachers and college professors for firing for not using the right kind of speech. With Kirk's death, that effort has now kicked into overdrive, as teachers, random Americans and even members of the media are being fired for merely quoting Kirk's actual, often wildly offensive words on social media.

All of this, I would argue --- the attack on the First Amendment by the Right --- a convenient way for them to avoid their very serious problem with political violence against their perceived enemies on the non-Right and a way to not have to deal with the nation's worsening gun violence epidemic which they, like Kirk before he died, continue to countenance through their words of support and lack of actions.

As Kirk would say, prove me wrong. We opened the phones up in the second part of today's show to allow listeners to do exactly that. How do you think it went?...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

On today's BradCast: Apparently, the high price of lying to MAGA viewers about the 2020 election has been totally worth it for rightwing "news" outlets, according to a newly released trove of insider documents. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Two years ago, Fox "News" agreed to pay more than three-quarters of a billion dollars to Dominion Voting Systems to make the voting equipment vendor's defamation lawsuit against them go away. Fox' on-air personalities and their guests had falsely, repeatedly, and without evidence, claimed Dominion used their voting systems to steal the Presidential election from Donald Trump in 2020. Many of the top Fox hosts and executives knew the claims were not true at the time. But they ran with them anyway, as MAGA viewers were fleeing to other, even farther right media outlets like Newsmax and OAN, which were even more shameless in their promotion of evidence-free claims that the election had been stolen for Joe Biden.

Those outlets were forced to pay up as well for their knowing, on-air lies. Newsmax settled with Dominion for $67 million and with Smartmatic for $40 million. OAN similarly settled with Smartmatic --- whose only voting systems in the U.S. were in Los Angeles County in 2020 --- for an undisclosed amount. In every such legal case, to date, the rightwing media outfits chose to pay up rather than face public scrutiny in a court of law, and to see their "news" personalities take the stand to defend claims that emails and text messages revealed during discovery proved that even they didn't believe.

Now Smartmatic's $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox is on the verge of going to trial early next year. Last time, Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion to avoid a trial where the jury members had already been selected and journalists, including our guest today, were waiting in the courtroom for the trial to begin.

Late last month, a trove of hundreds of pages of "damning filings" were made publicly available in Smartmatic's case against Fox. Media Matters for America Senior Fellow MATT GERTZ, who joins us on today's show, plowed through them. The documents reveal, among other things, Fox personalities like Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld, discussing "how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL"; prime time stars Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham worrying about backlash from viewers for failing to cover phony claims about fraud enough; Bret Baier, the network's supposed "straight news" anchor trying to convince the network to reverse its (accurate) call that Arizona had gone to Biden, given how furious that fact had made Trump and the outlet's MAGA viewers.

"I think we certainly filled in some gaps after the Dominion suit that have been answered to one degree or another through the Smartmatic one," Gertz tells me today, summarizing the newly released documents in the Smartmatic case. "More broadly, what the suit shows is they knew. Fox News' top executives and hosts were well aware that Donald Trump lost the election, that there had not been massive voter fraud, as he had claimed, that kept him from being re-elected, and they went out and said the opposite to their viewers. Night after night, segment after segment. For weeks. They did it because they were worried about losing portions of their market share to outlets like Newsmax and OAN that were perceived as more willing to push those lies."

While Fox has paid a price for that to Dominion, and may have to do so again with Smartmatic, Gertz asserts the lesson for Fox seems to be that it was all worth it. "They have, in the days since then, demonstrated that they are absolutely willing to do it again if the Republican nominee in 2028 tries the same con that Donald Trump did in 2020," he argues, citing the fact that those who tried to tell the truth about 2020 have since been pushed out at the network, while those who were willing to lie are still there, have received promotions, or are now members of the Trump Administration itself.

"What happens is that, because Donald Trump lies so much, he forces his supporters to make their peace with either letting the lie go past and ignoring it, or running with it. There are very few who are willing to say, 'This thing is not happening.'"

Much more on all of that with Gertz today, along with what Monday's agreement among the family heirs to 94-year old Fox owner Rupert Murdoch's business empire likely means for the far-right politics of Fox "News" going forward after he dies. And, far more troubling, the news this week that a far-right Trump supporter and donor with no experience in the news business whatsoever, will now serve as the ombudsman for CBS News as part of the recent concessions made by CBS-owner Paramount to win approval from Trump's FCC for its merger with Skydance.

"CBS News has instituted an ombudsman because its parent company was trying to convince the FCC that if he approved their merger, the network's coverage would change in a way he liked," explains Gertz. "They didn't pick a journalist with a reputation for integrity and neutrality. They picked a rightwing think-tanker and Republican donor who has no newsroom experience, but will give Donald Trump what he wants, which is a CBS News that moves its political coverage to the right."

"They are leveraging the power of the Executive Branch through Trump appointees who are willing to corruptly do the President's bidding, in order to force those companies to do so," he asserts. "They are changing the incentives for media outlets so that they need to kneel to the Republican Party's diktats if they want their mergers completed, or if they want to avoid criminal investigations, even. It's certainly a step towards authoritarianism, toward the treatment that Victor Orban of Hungary enforces on media outlets in his country. Orban is someone Trump has said is a model for what he's trying to do."

In other cheery news on today's show...

• The GOP-controlled Missouri state House voted today to approve a new U.S. House map that will likely steal one of the two remaining Democratic seats in the state for Republicans in next year's midterms. They also approved a measure that would make it harder to adopt citizen-led Constitutional ballot initiatives by mandating that measures must win a majority of voters in each of the state's eight Congressional districts, rather than a simple statewide majority as currently required. The move comes in the wake of state voters recently approving ballot initiatives that establish abortion as a state Constitutional right; for the legalization of marijuana; and for the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Both measures adopted by the MO House on Tuesday now head to the state Senate where they are expected to be approved before going to MO's Republican Governor for his signature. The ballot initiative amendment, however, must be approved by voters under the existing, simple statewide majority rules before being added to the state Constitution.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as both electricity usage and prices spike across the country, even as Trump continues to shut down much-needed windfarms and other renewable energy sources around the nation...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

I can't believe we're covering any of this. But, on today's BradCast, we're sounding twin alarms about the President of the United State's explicit threats of wars against both Venezuela and...yes...Chicago. There must really be some bad shit on him in those Epstein Files! [Audio link to full shows follows this summary.]

You would think that when Donald Trump posts on social media on Saturday morning that "Chicago [is] about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR" with a photo of him in battle fatigues in front of attack helicopters, a burning Chicago skyline and the phrase "Chipocalypse Now" in the style of 1979's Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now, that the nation's major newspapers might report on it in their print editions on Sunday. But, nope. Apparently a threat by the U.S. President to invade another major U.S. city no longer even merits a notice in either the New York Times or Washington Post the next day.

Moreover, you'd think ten U.S. warships ordered down to Central America within missile range of Venezuela --- just days after Trump violated all international (and U.S.) law by bombing a speed boat he claims to have been filled with "narco-terrorists" carrying "massive amounts of drugs" (there is no public evidence of either) that we'd see screaming ALL CAPS front page headlines about a pending U.S. war in Central America across all of the nation's papers. I guess blatant war crimes admitted to by a President of the United States and the threat of an impending U.S. attack on yet another sovereign nation just doesn't spark the outrage from the "liberal media" that it used.

So, here we are. The guy who those same papers described as an "anti-war" Presidential candidate is still playing them all like chumps as he threatens to unleash new wars both foreign and domestic.

Whatever is actually in those Epstein Files that he is refusing to release --- after promising to do so while running for President --- must be really really bad for him. And while everyone is looking for just two more Republicans with the courage to sign on to a Discharge Petition to force a vote in the U.S. House on the release of the criminal files on sex traffickers and Trump pedophile pals Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, perhaps they should look at the Democrats who are likely to win two upcoming Special Elections this month instead. Signatures from those two Democrats, once seated in the House (unless somehow blocked by Republicans from doing so), would be enough to trigger that vote. Could be a very interesting month.

We cover all of that and more on today's show, and open the phones to a bunch of listeners with their own thoughts on all of this madness.

Please tune in and let me know if you can make any more sense of this moment than I can. I welcome all the help and good sense you can offer. God knows ain't any Trump supporters calling in to defend him anymore. So make of that what you will...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

On today's BradCast: With authoritarianism now having descended upon these United States, the full-throated pushback against it, at least by some, continues. In the courts. At the ballot box. And even as the corrupt man baby President ups his abuse of the federal government apparatus in his twisted quest for revenge against his perceived political enemies. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to our guest today, a few news headlines of note...

• Republicans in the U.S. House surreptitiously moved to create a new January 6 Subcommittee to "uncover the full truth that is owed to the American people...that House Democrats skipped over," according to GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson. As discussed today, that effort to reopen the insurrection that Donald Trump incited in hopes of stealing the 2020 election may not go so well for Republicans.

• Meanwhile, Americans continue to reject Republicans at the ballot box by enormous numbers. Last week, it was a state Senate seat in a ruby-red District in Iowa where Kamala Harris had lost by 11 points last November, but where the Democratic candidate won a special election last week by 11 points. On Tuesday this week, it was two state legislative seats in heavily Democratic districts in Florida. There as well, we saw a huge swing towards the Dems, with a state House victory in which the Dem picked up 15 points over Harris' tally last year, and in a state Senate special election, where the Dem candidate won while gaining 22 points compared to the Presidential results in November.

• And it's not just voters turning against Trump. His losses in federal courts continue to mount this week. Among them, yesterday a U.S. District court judge ruled that Trump's use of National Guard troops for domestic law enforcement in Los Angeles was "willfully" in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act (1878). And a federal appeals court affirmed that his use of the Alien Enemies Act (1798) earlier this year to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants was unlawful as well. Today, a federal district court judge sided with Harvard University, finding Trump's attempt to withhold $2 billion in federal research grants from the Ivy League school was unlawful.

• Kyle Clark, brilliant local anchor at NBC-affiliate station 9News in Denver, tells viewers: "If this was happening in another nation, we'd call it by name. It's authoritarianism."

Then it's on to Trump's War of Revenge against his perceived political enemies. He's mad at his Fed Chair Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates quickly enough. But, since he can't fire Powell, he tried to take aim last week at Fed Governor Lisa Cook, the first (and only) black woman ever named to the Federal Reserve Board since its creation in 1913.

Trump is attempting to fire Cook based on public allegations made by Trump's very MAGA head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) that she had committed mortgage fraud. Prior to his criminal referrals of Cook to the Dept. of Justice, Trump's FHFA chief Bill Pulte (pictured above) made similar public allegations against New York Attorney General Letitia James (who won a half billion dollar financial fraud suit against Trump, his company and his two eldest sons last year), and California's U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (who played key roles in both Trump's second impeachment for his January 6 insurrection and on the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee which publicly investigated it.)

As absurd as the mortgage fraud allegations against all three Democrats appear to be, the way they came about is even more absurd, as detailed today by our guest, MICHAEL HILTZIK, LA Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning financial journalist and author. He wrote about all of this last week.

"This is the most transparent act of political retribution that I have ever seen, and I've been at this for a long time," Hiltzik tells me today, in reference to the allegations against Cook, who is challenging Trump's attempt to fire her in a lawsuit. "It's not only that, it's also the most absurd."

Tune in for the remarkable details, but in general, Hiltzik explains, Pulte --- who spends much of his time as a MAGA influencer on social media --- is Director of the FHFA, which oversees the quasi-federal Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac organizations. Those two outfits backstop the majority of the nation's home mortgages.

But, as it turns out, Trump has also named Pulte as Chair of both Fannie and Freddie! So, he is overseeing himself! And, in the case of the allegations against Schiff, as Hiltzik details, a memo reveals the Director of the FHFA (Pulte) ordered the Chairs of Fannie and Freddie (Pulte and Pulte) to, essentially, "go into your files, which are otherwise private, and pull out every document you can see related to Adam Schiff and send it over."

It seems Pulte did something similar for both Cook and James. In the meantime, despite Trump using Pulte's public allegations as a pretext for trying to fire Cook --- which he can only do, under law, "for cause" --- nobody has "produced documents that show any sort of fraud whatsoever in any of these three cases," asserts Hiltzik.

None of this, of course, is by accident. It is not a coincidence that Pulte has referred all three to the DoJ for a criminal probe. Their years-old mortgages --- which have been paid off in full, on time and without incident or complaint --- weren't pulled for some sort of random audit or something. "We know it isn't random because we have the memo that Pulte sent to Pulte," Hiltzik quips.

"You want to say it doesn't pass the smell test, but it's beyond that," he argues. "These cases are beyond absurdity."

So, if these charges are so obviously absurd and corrupt, why is the Administration even playing this game? Is it even lawful for the FHFA to target financial documents of American citizens for personal reasons? And what is Trump's actual hoping to accomplish in removing Cook from the Federal Reserve Board in the first? All of those questions, and many more, asked and answered in my conversation with Hiltzik on today's program. Enjoy!

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

We're back on today's BradCast after a much-needed, "end of Summer" break. That's either good or bad news depending on how you (or I) might see it. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The good news for me, I suppose, is that we missed one of the most insanely busy news weeks of Trump's second term. The bad news is that I need to get both you and me caught up on "our story so far", so everything makes sense (or, as much as is possible amidst this insanity) going forward into the Fall (and pending government shutdown at the end of this month.)

To that end, we've got a day-by-day, blow-by-blow, collected summary of much --- if not all --- of the key news from over the last week today. From many of the ongoing losses for Trump in the (lower) courts, to some very encouraging electoral news on several fronts for Democrats, to Americans pushing back (effectively) against the regime on several levels, to some of the not so good news, including natural and man-made disasters and tragedies, and the ever-ongoing, non-stop, self-destructive idiocy of the Trump Administration.

Also, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, catching you up with some maddening and important stuff there as well!

It doesn't make too much sense for me to go into the details here. I'd be writing and linking all night. So tune in to get caught up on a lot of the unofficial "end of Summer" news to help get yourself buckled up for all the madness that most assuredly lies ahead...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

It's been a while, but they're back for today's BradCast to help send us off with a smile --- and just a little bit smarter --- for a brief, much-needed holiday break from the program next week. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

First up today, however, a few late news headlines...

• Don't be fooled by either bad corporate media headlines or Donald Trump's false claim of "TOTAL VICTORY". In fact, a New York appeals court on Thursday affirmed last year's civil fraud conviction against the nation's criminal-in-chief, but finds [PDF] the nearly half billion dollar fine charged against him for his years of cooking his company's books with faked, artificially inflated financial statements to be 'excessive'. So, the bank and tax fraud verdict holds, the amount of the fine is to be redetermined, and all other penalties against Trump, his company and his two eldest sons remain in place.

• Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the El Salvadoran Maryland man "mistakenly" sent to a gulag in El Salvador by the Trump Administration, will be released from a Tennessee prison on Friday. He has been held in the facility since returning to the U.S. to be be slapped with Trumped-up charges meant to save face for the Administration. The court has now issued several orders to prevent Abrego Garcia from being scooped up by ICE and deported again after he is freed...but we'll see if the Trump Administration has any respect left whatsoever for the courts and the Rule of Law.

• The Gerrymandering Wars continue. Shortly after airtime on Wednesday, the Texas state House --- delayed more than two weeks by state Democratic lawmakers leaving Texas to break quorum --- adopted a newly gerrymandered U.S. House Map to steal five seats from Democrats in next year's midterms. The Lone Star state Senate will soon pass same and the heist will be signed by the state's corrupt Governor. In the meantime, here in California, our state Legislature, by a 2/3rds vote, adopted Gov. Gavin Newsom's "Rigged Election Response Act" today. The measure, quickly signed by the Governor, will ask state voters in November for permission to temporarily waive the Congressional map created by the state's Citizen Redistricting Commission to replace it with a new one that is likely to flip five "red" U.S. House seats to "blue" next year, in response to Texas' obnoxious mid-decade redistricting at the command of Donald Trump.

We pick up on those stories and many more today with our old OG blogger pals, the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS' of the Professional Left Podcast. Both join us today for a wide ranging conversation that takes a few surprising (and amusing) twists and turns along the way.

On today's court ruling in NY on Trump's fraud fine, Digby finds it "unfortunate that the headlines that are coming out are backing Trump's contention that this is some kind of a vindication. It is not." She observes "there is probably going to be a fine, and it will be a painful fine, it's just not going to be half a billion dollars."

Driftglass has an additional idea. While Trump is "still guilty," he notes, "I will take a straight-up swap: zero fines in exchange for the Epstein Files. How's that? There's a deal!"

We spend quite a bit of time today on the next steps in the Gerrymandering War begun by TX. Both Digby and Driftglass support CA's response to it. Says Driftglass, an Illinois resident: "I think what California has done, and I hope Illinois does, is show them that nuclear deterrence is the only way we can keep these people in a box. We'd rather not. But if you're going to bring a knife, we are going to bring a gun." As to what his already Democratic-gerrymandered state plans to do? Well, tune in for Drifty's assessment.

Digby, a fellow L.A. resident, is "hopeful" that voters will approve the statewide ballot measure on November 4th, despite a big money campaign already underway to defeat it. "Trump has treated California like garbage," says Parton. "We've been through a lot of trauma in this state. The way that he talks about the Governor, the way he talks about all the politicians here, I think Californians are sick of it."

"Essentially," she rages, "we're here to provide federal money for Trump's red states, including Texas. I think there's this sense that alright, it's time to fight back," She and Driftglass are also both veryfond of Newsom's new, wildly popular Trump trolling routine on social media. We compare our favorite Newsom trolling meme's (one of them is pictured above) before today's show is over.

Other items covered with D&D today include Trump's pathetic, pretend show of force with the deployment of the National Guard in D.C. and elsewhere. ("He is performing acts of fascist theatre" for the benefit of his MAGA supporters, charges Driftglass.); whether any of the Trump/Republican wildly unpopular policies are working or liked by voters and, if not, why the hell do they continue to double down?; and much more.

Finally, we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, our last before the Labor Day holiday break, as climate change fueled catastrophes continue around the globe, and as Trump's acting NASA Administrator announces his intention to defy federal law by ending the Agency's statutory mission to "study Earth" and "address environmental issues".

NOTE: We are ducking out from both The BradCast and Green News Report next week for a respite until after the Labor Day holiday! Hope you all will have a good one!

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Coming on the heels of the presently enjoined, 4th Amendment violating, racial profiling mass roundups of Latinos in California, the Trump regime's effort to not only federalize law enforcement in the District of Columbia but also to target the homeless for removal resurrects the ghost of the late Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller.

An acknowledged anti-semite, Niemöller initially supported Hitler's rise to power. But he drew the ire of Der Führer's totalitarian regime after he openly opposed the Nazification of Protestant Churches.

Narrowly escaping death after he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1937, Niemöller spent the years 1938 to 1945 in infamous Nazi concentration camps.

Following his release from Dachau in 1945, Niemöller penned the poem, First They Came...

Today on The BradCast: Donald Trump's latest attempt to make himself feel powerful by deploying U.S. military troops on American streets --- against Americans --- has nothing to do with Law and Order. It has everything to do with a need for authoritarian control by a very small wannabe tyrant. It also has to do with distracting from the fact that he's in the Epstein Files and won't release them, as previously promised. [Audio link to full story follows below this summary.]

Among our stories today that help make that case and a few others...

• The 30-year old (white) Georgia man who attempted a mass shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta on Friday fired some 200 shots at its glass windows, smashing bullet holes into about 150 of them. He was also misinformed by the nation's health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and others who spread the same nonsense, that his depression was due to a COVID vaccine shot. Kennedy took 18 hours before issuing a tepid statement in response to the shooting that killed a responding (black) police officer. Donald Trump has yet to say anything about it...much less deploy the U.S. National Guard to Georgia.

• At the top of Rachel Maddow's program Monday night, she told a harrowing story about a convicted triple ax-murderer. Turns out he is a (white) American citizen who is now roaming the streets of the nation after Donald Trump just sprung him from prison. The National Guard will not be deployed to Florida to hunt him down, because Trump wants him to be free.

• Meanwhile, in D.C., Donald Trump, a 34-time convicted felon and adjudicated sexual abuser, announced on Monday that the U.S. National Guard would be deployed to the nation's capital, where violent crime is at a 30-year low, according to the U.S. Attorney's office there. The announcement follows a recently attempted 3am carjacking of a (white) guy who used to work on Trump's so-called DOGE project. Like Los Angeles, where Trump previously deployed National Guard and U.S. Marines for no legitimate reason, and in likely violation of the law, D.C. has a black female Mayor. More easy pickins as tough-guy Trump sees it, I suspect. But none of this has anything to do with the Rule of Law or being Tough on Crime. At his Monday presser, Trump also suggested he would soon be deploying both National Guard and even active duty military troops to a number of other Democratically-run American cities, if not to GOP-controlled states like Georgia or Texas, despite a number of recent mass shootings in both. But, again, none of this is about Law and Order. It's about authoritarian control by a tiny, petty tyrant.

• In that same vein, Washington Post reports today on a Pentagon plan to create a permanent military "reaction force" that would allow Trump to deploy U.S. military troops to U.S. cities within an hour on either side of the Mississippi, for whatever bullshit authoritarian reasons he wanted to dream up. Bullets would already be flying in the streets of the U.S. against the U.S. Government had any recent Democratic President carried out anything like all of this. Apparently, Republican "opponents" of Big Government Tyranny only oppose Big Government Tyrants they didn't vote for.

• One of Trump's other recent attempts to distract from the fact that he's in the Jeffrey Epstein files --- and is therefore, refusing to release them --- is also failing miserably. A U.S. District Court judge in New York on Monday, denied the Trump Dept. of Justice's motion to release Grand Jury transcripts from the 2020 indictment on sex trafficking and abuse of minors by Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The judge excoriated DOJ for its attempt at misleading the public about what is (or, in this case, isn't) in those transcripts, writing in his scathing ruling that "the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at 'transparency' but at diversion --- aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such."

• Down in Texas, meanwhile, Gov. Greg Abbott is still trying to have his GOP-controlled state legislature steal five U.S. House seats from Democrats in next year's midterm elections by redistricting the state's map again, in the middle of the decade, at the order of Donald Trump. State House Dems are still not letting them. They continue to break quorum in the state House by remaining in other states. On Monday, TX' corrupt Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton asked the state Supremes to expel 13 of the absent Democratic members. On Monday night, Abbott took to Fox "News" to threaten to rewrite the maps to steal not five but 10 seats if California's Governor dares to respond to the TX heist by rewriting maps to flip five Republican seats in the Golden State in turn. And on Tuesday, Abbott announced that the 30-day Special Legislative Session would be concluded this week, with a new one started immediately thereafter. There is still no indication that Dems plan to show up for it, as state Repubs continue to hold disaster relief hostage following the deadly July 4th flash floods if Dems refusing to allow them to steal next year's U.S. House elections.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as flash flooding and record heat continues across the Midwest and around the world; and as the Trump Administration continues to raise energy prices for Americans by gutting renewable energy production in the U.S., even while announcing plans to build a nuclear reactor...on the Moon!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

So much for the campaign to "Make America Healthy Again". Today on The BradCast, former public health officials are calling for the head of Donald Trump's chief health Secretary, a guy who has no scientific or medical expertise whatsoever. But he does have a famous name. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last Wednesday, Trump's Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced he was cancelling some $500 million for research of the miracle mRNA vaccines that finally brought the world out of years of the COVID pandemic. Scientists at the National Institute of Health (NIH) were working on new versions that could also be used to protect against influenza and other diseases. The cuts came after Kennedy falsely claimed that the vaccine, which saved millions of lives, was not effective against respiratory diseases.

Two days later, on Friday last week, a man who blamed the COVID vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal, attempted a mass shooting at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. He was blocked from entering the CDC, but opened fire at a pharmacy across the street, killing a police officer before, apparently, taking his own life.

RFK Jr., who was gone fishin' in Montana at the time, didn't bother to issue a public response to the incident for 18 hours. The CDC employees union has since called for a "clear and unequivocal stance in condemning vaccine disinformation" from the longtime vaccine denier. And a group of fired former federal health workers, Fired but Fighting, has called for the HHS Secretary to step down, along with White House Office of Budget and Management (OMB) Director Russ Vought, who previously declared: "When [federal workers] wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. ... We want to put them in trauma."

Mission accomplished, Russ.

We're joined today by ARYN MELTON BACKUS, a now former health communications specialist at the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, and a founding member of Fired But Fighting. Though she won the legal challenge to her Valentine's Day firing in U.S. District Court, the matter remains on appeal and, as she explained today, she is not encouraged by what she has seen from our wildly corrupted U.S. Supreme Court. "We are also fighting for the future of public health," she tells me today. "So even if I am officially terminated, we will stay here and we will fight for the public health of our nation."

We discuss her firing and Kennedy's subsequent complete shutdown of her former office at CDC, and how (and if) the critical (and wildly successful) work of that office will be picked up anywhere else. The private sector, she laments, is simply not suited for such work. "Part of the problem with public health is that it is not profitable. If you can prevent people from getting sick or very sick to begin with, it doesn't make money for a lot of these private companies." She offers the example of a large, private pharmaceutical company who might make drugs to treat cancer, so may not be all that eager to prevent smoking, for some reason.

The closure of her office "was really surprising to a lot of people," given that smoking prevention isn't a particularly partisan issue. The campaign led by her office, Backus says, has "led to over a million people quitting smoking and saved the U.S. millions of dollars in healthcare costs. Smoking rates are the lowest they've ever been. But there's still a lot of work to be done." So, she explains, it came as a "a shock that Sec. Kennedy decided that we were no longer necessary, especially as he's declared a war on chronic disease, and smoking is one of the biggest contributors to chronic disease that there is."

As to his anti-vax advocacy, Backus charges: "Bobby Kennedy has been a major spreader of vaccine mis- and disinformation for decades. But going back to 2020 and the pandemic, he repeatedly spread lies about the COVID-19 vaccine. He called CDC a 'cesspool of corruption.' That has made a lot of people at CDC villainized." And that has got a lot of Backus' former colleagues very concerned at this time about their personal safety. Even more so after the shooting at the CDC on Friday.

Tune in for much more. Also today...

• The horrific situation in Gaza got even more horrific over the weekend, with Israel's admittedly targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalists near a hospital in Gaza City.
• Back here at home, on Monday, Donald Trump announced his federalization of the Washington D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department, including the deployment of the National Guard to D.C., despite crime being at a 30-year low in the nation's Capitol upon his taking office for a second term, and falling 26% as compared to this same time last year. (And despite his claims on January 6, 2021, that he didn't have the authority to deploy the national guard to protect the U.S. Capitol after inciting his supporters to attack it.

Finally, callers ring in on all of the above, in the few minutes we have left. Now, I need to go back and give the show a listen myself to discover where I announced that I wanted "the streets to be less safe", as one of our wingnut callers claimed that I said today, hilariously, before hanging up on himself...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Just in case we've been unclear previously on The BradCast: We are now officially in Banana Republic territory in the U.S., with El Presidente pulling one of the most classic strongman moves late last week. When El Presidente's economic numbers go south, fire, jail or kill the person who reports those economic numbers to El Presidente. Thankfully, he only fired her. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

Trump's approval numbers are heading south as well, along with the nation's economic indicators as his trade war against the entire world continues to expand.

But, when Reality interferes with Trump Propaganda --- whether it's at the Smithsonian's American History Museum or in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly job numbers report --- he will take action to try and nullify Reality.

On Friday, the BLS released its latest employment report. The Bureau preliminarily estimated that a lower-than-predicted 73,000 jobs were created last month, as the affects of Trump's trade wars and immigration crackdown begin to undermine a previously strong economy.

Worse, job numbers from the prior two months were revised downward in the latest report by about 258,000. Such revisions are completely normal and expected. With more complete data now in, BLS reports just 19,000 new jobs were created in May and a paltry 14,000 in June. That, as the unemployment ranks climbed by 221,000 last month.

Any way you look at it, the BLS report was not good for either the economy or Trump --- unless you can claim the report, created with meticulous contributions by hundreds of non-political, career BLS officials, was "rigged" to make Trump look bad. Of course, that is what Trump did, as he fired the highly-regarded BLS Commissioner, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, shortly after Friday's monthly report was released.

She is hardly the first longtime career official to be fired by Trump in the first six months of his disastrous second term. He has done the same to top prosecutors at the DOJ determined to not be loyal enough to Trump, at the National Institutes of Health, at EPA, at NOAA, etc. etc. etc.

But this firing really seems to be freaking out lot of folks, for some reason.

We're joined today by VALERIE WILSON --- labor economist at the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, where she heads up the organization's Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy --- to discuss just some of those reasons.

"I think this particular firing has raised alarm bells with so many people because of how important, how essential, those monthly jobs numbers are in this country," Wilson explains today. "There's a lot of visibility around these numbers and statistics. And we know that a lot of decision-makers rely on those numbers: the Federal Reserve, state and local governments, policymakers, businesses." Moreover, she tells me, "the fact that this seems to be a politicized firing because the President simply didn't like what the report was saying, is especially troubling to people who rely on the accuracy of those numbers to make important decisions."

We've got a lot to talk about with Wilson on this topic today...

• Is there any evidence that the July report was "rigged"?
• Is there evidence that any BLS report has ever been rigged?
• Could a BLS report like this actually be rigged without anyone noticing?
• Is it true, as the White House "fact" sheet supporting Trump's firing of McEntarfer claims, that "BLS Has Lengthy History of Inaccuracies [and] Incompetence"?
• Who would ever take the job of replacing her and, whoever it is, should we trust their numbers?
• How important are BLS' numbers to non-governmental analyses created by organizations like EPI?
• Given Wilson's role as Director of EPI's Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, and the Trump Administration's attack on anti-discrimination (DEI) programs in the federal government, has she already seen a change in the type or quality of economic and labor data available from the government?

All of that and a lot more to discuss with Wilson today, who is exceptionally good at explaining what all of this now means.

Finally, speaking of disturbing news from our Banana Republicans, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest 'Green News Report', as the blaze that wiped out the historic Grand Canyon North Rim Lodge earlier this Summer has turned into a raging mega-fire, and as the Trump Administration cites both notorious climate science deniers and nonexistent AI slop "reports" to justify gutting regulations meant to protect us from, and mitigate the worst affects of our quickly worsening climate crisis...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

The war began decades ago, back when even Republicans favored a clean environment. But we are still nowhere near the final battle between climate champions and the fossil fuel industry profiteers who have now fully captured the GOP and the Trump Administration. We are joined on today's BradCast by a longtime warrior in this fight, who is surprisingly optimistic today, despite what would seem to be very grim news this week from the fossil fools in the Trump Administration. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad climate news, a few other quick items, including the worldwide tsunami fallout following last night's giant, 8.8 magnitude earthquake off Russia's east coast and Kamala Harris' announcement today that she does not intend to run for Governor in California next year.

Then, it's on to the huge announcement from the Trump Administration's corrupted, anti-environment Environmental Protection Agency this week that it is proposing to overturn the Obama EPA's 2009 "endangerment finding" which concluded that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gasses are indeed planet warming pollutants that represent a danger to the health and welfare of the public. It is that finding --- essentially ordered by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling back in 2007 --- that provides authority to the EPA to use the Clean Air Act to regulate the production of climate warming gasses. The finding serves as the legal underpinning for most, if not all, of the climate change regulations that have been enacted ever since.

This week, however, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and former fracking CEO turned Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright, announced that a new report from five cherry-picked climate science deniers, has given them legal authority to begin the process of overturning the 2009 "endangerment finding" and with it, kill all of the climate regulations --- to power plants, the auto industry, etc. --- that followed it.

It's obviously big and alarming news, even if it was promised in the Project 2025 manifesto that Trump pretended to disown during the campaign. But, as our guest details today, the EPA proposal is also alarmingly flawed in many ways that he believes makes it unlikely to stand up to legal scrutiny, even if this matter reaches this particularly corrupted Supreme Court.

We're honored to be joined on today's program DAVID DONIGER, Senior Attorney and Strategist for Climate & Energy at the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council. Doniger first joined the NRDC in 1978; went on to have a hand in formulating the Montreal Protocol, which successfully stopped the depletion of the earth's ozone layer; served on President Clinton's White House Council on Environmental Quality; held key posts at the EPA, and is now back at the NRDC, still fighting the good and very long fight.

In AP's coverage of the EPA announcement this week, Doniger is cited as describing Zeldin's move as an attempted "kill shot" that, if successful, would then allow the Administration to invalidate all climate regulations. “They’re trying to completely defang the Clean Air Act by saying, ‘Well, this stuff [CO2, methane, etc.] is just not dangerous,'" Doniger told the Washington Post. "That claim is just mind-bogglingly contrary to the evidence."

Today, he explains the importance of the Obama endangerment finding to climate law and the Administration's legal justifications for UNfinding that finding. "Basically, they have thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall, and they want to see if any of it sticks," he tells me. "Much of the spaghetti is all tangled up around itself. So it's going to take some work to show all the different ways in which this is just plainly wrong and illegal. But we will do that in the coming months, and take them to court if they persist."

We discuss the "mountain" of well-documented scientific evidence that counters the EPA's cherry-picked report from "five known, fringe climate deniers" and how Doniger believes "the record is going to be set straight, and these fringe people --- and how fringe their views are --- will be clear" as they do battle "in an echo chamber with themselves and try to construct an alternative reality."

Their goal, he argues, is that "if they can somehow turn reality upside-down and conclude that it's not dangerous, then they think they will knock the legs out from all of these regulations."

Doniger, who also discusses who is behind all of this and how much the transportation and power sectors in the U.S. are polluting the globe with climate warming emissions, doesn't believe the effort to "permanently damage the Clean Air Act as a law to deal with climate change," is going to work, "even in this Supreme Court."

He tells me that there have been a series of additional SCOTUS rulings since the 2007 opinion that required the EPA to act on climate change via the Clean Air Act following an endangerment finding. Moreover, he notes, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act actually wrote into law that greenhouse gasses are pollutants that must be regulated. Doniger concedes that "you can never be sure with this Court", but cites those "four decisions that go right through 2022 where the present Court issued that last one."

"If they erase the endangerment finding, we will bring a lawsuit to challenge that. If they erase the vehicle standards, we will challenge that. Same thing with the power plant standards," he vows.

"There are four Supreme Court decisions, as recent as 2022, that follow the conclusion, the holding, of the [2007 Massachusetts v. EPA] case, that Congress gave EPA the authority and responsibility to address any form of dangerous air pollution including greenhouse gases."

"This administration is swinging for the fences," asserts Doniger, "but most of the time, when you swing for the fences, you strike out."

He's been in this fight far longer than I. Hopefully he's got this right and my worries are for naught. We will find out in the months and years ahead, as the long war for a livable planet continues...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

News is coming in from every direction on today's BradCast, though there does seem to be a recurring theme throughout: a wholly corrupt Presidency. [Audio link to today's show follows this summary.]

Among today's delights...

• In the wake of another mass shooting yesterday in New York City, a Reuters exclusive finds the Trump Administration's Dept. of Justice cancelled tens of millions of dollars in gun violence prevention grants last April, as established in 2022 under Joe Biden via the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The DOJ has also cancelled tens of billions of dollars in grants for mental health programs. Thoughts and prayers are largely all that remain.

• Remember that tricked-out, $400+ million flying palace jumbo jet bribe that Donald Trump accepted (in violation of the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause) from Qatar to use as a "free" Air Force One? Looks like that "free" plane --- which Trump plans to keep for himself after leaving office --- is costing U.S. tax-payers about a billion dollars to ready for His Majesty's use. And it looks like Trump is now stealing that money from funding previously appropriated for maintaining and updating America's dilapidated Cold War-era intercontinental nuclear ballistic missile stockpile.

• Senate Republicans this week are fast-tracking approval of a lifetime appointment for Donald Trump's personal criminal defense attorney turned senior DOJ official, Emil Bove, to become a federal appeals court judge. That, after a third whistleblower came forward this week with yet more evidence regarding Bove's corruption at DOJ, including dismissal of corruption charges against the NYC Mayor, and Bove's instruction to DOJ prosecutors to violate court orders if necessary to advance Trump's unlawful mass deportation agenda. [Update: After airtime, just as I was getting ready to hit publish here, despite whistleblowers and scores of former judges warning against his appointment, Senate Republicans confirmed Bove for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.]

• The great satirical song writer Tom Lehrer died this week at the age of 97. We take the opportunity to enjoy a momentary respite from the rest of the day's madness to enjoy a couple of his wildly clever --- and often still timely --- tunes today.

• Today, just as Project 2025 called for, Trump's EPA Chief Lee Zeldin officially submitted a corrupt proposal to the White House for overturning the EPA's landmark 2009 "endangerment finding". The 2009 scientific finding currently serves as the legal underpinning for virtually all federal regulations meant to curb the greenhouse gasses that are warming the atmosphere at an alarming pace and creating deadly climate chaos. This is a very big deal, as we discuss today. Though I'm hoping to get into more of the legal ramifications of this move on tomorrow's program.

• Finally, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report documenting just some of the latest deadly effects around the world hastened by the unfettered burning of fossil fuels and the endangerment it causes the public, thanks to emission of climate warming gasses such as CO2 and methane. Oh, and Donald Trump (because he believes they mess up the view from his golf courses) is killing both clean, renewable wind energy projects and the tens of thousands of jobs that go with them...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)