We've got a lot of news from all over the world, and no small amount of explainers to go with it on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Deadly, record-shattering Hurricane Melissa finally makes landfall in Jamaica as a catastrophic, slow moving, 185 mph Category 5 storm. As discussed, this is likely to be very very bad. The island nation has set up a support and donations site here.

• So much for Donald Trump's recent declaration of "everlasting peace" in the Middle East, as Israel reignites its brutal attack on Gaza following its claim that Hamas has violated the recent peace agreement.

• "Peace President" Donald Trump continues his unlawful killing spree in international waters with the announcement that he ordered the U.S. military murder of another 14 alleged "narco-terrorists" on four small boats off of Mexico's Pacific coast. That, as the Administration redeploys its largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, not to help storm victims in Jamaica, but almost certainly to wage --- or, at least, threaten --- war on Venezuela (and, perhaps, Colombia).

• Weird and related?: U.S. Defense Dept. officials are being required to sign NDAs. WTF?

• Twenty-three Democratic state Attorneys General announced they are suing the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture to continue food assistance to some 42 million low-income Americans via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP, previously known as food stamps). The suit follows the agency's flip-flop on using already-appropriated emergency contingency funds to feed hungry American families amid the ongoing federal government shutdown. If funding ends on November 1, as planned by the USDA, it would be the first time in the 60-year history of the program.

• Following Friday's announcement by Trump's corrupted Dept. of Justice that it plans to send federal monitors to polling places in five counties in California and one in New Jersey during next Tuesday's November 4th elections, for unexplained reasons, the Golden State has announced it plans to dispatch state monitors to oversee the federal ones.

• The Gerrymandering Wars continue and expand. Following Trump's arm-twisting of state GOP lawmakers in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina to rewrite U.S. House district maps to steal seats from Democrats next year --- and Democrats' attempted responses in California and Virginia --- Indiana's Republican Governor has called a special session of the legislature to try and steal another GOP House seat from Democratic voters. But Dems aren't done responding yet, as House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries is said to be in talks with Illinois lawmakers about redrawing that state's map to further favor Dems next year. We do all of the math for ya today, breaking down which party's voters would come out ahead if all of these plans are successful. The answer may surprise you. But the corrupted, rightwing, activist U.S. Supreme Court could still blow up everything (in favor of Republicans) before all is said and done in the critical 2026 midterms.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is back with our latest Green News Report with more on the monstrous Hurricane Melissa; the Trump Administration's withholding of disaster funding to states that didn't vote for him; and the deadly, expensive climate change threats that continue to worsen, whether the Administration removes climate science data from its websites or not...

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: The War in Gaza may be in the middle of a very fragile ceasefire, but the Wars both For and Against Democracy in America continue apace today. And, according to our guest, the effort underway in one otherwise very "red" state today is heartening. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Some news following our brief respite yesterday...

• After the good news yesterday, regarding the release of all living Israeli hostages held by Hamas as part of a cessation of hostilities in Gaza brokered by the U.S. and a number of other countries, a few violent flair-ups and Israel pulling back on several elements of the deal offer worrisome signs for the nascent, fragile peace deal. Israel reportedly killed six Gazans on Tuesday, and Hamas reportedly murdered a number of fellow Palestinians as the military arm of the group began to retake control of the war-torn enclave amid Israel's partial retreat.

• Back here at home, Democrats saw another big (and, according to Newsweek, "shock") victory up in Fairbanks, Alaska, where Democratic Mayoral candidate Mindy O'Neall ousted Republican-backed Mayor David Pruhs. It is both the first Democratic mayoral victory and first time that a sitting Mayor has been unseated in about a decade in Fairbanks. And yet, it is another instance of a huge shift by the electorate toward Democrats in special and local elections since Donald Trump took office again, just nine long months ago.

• Little wonder then that Trump has called on GOP-controlled states to gerrymander their U.S. House maps in hopes of flipping "blue" seats to "red" before a single vote is even cast in next year's critical midterms. Texas redrew their already-gerrymandered earlier this year in hopes of stealing five "blue" seats next year in majority-minority districts. And lawmakers in North Carolina announced plans on Monday for a mid-decade redistricting there as well, to take away yet another seat from Democratic voters in the closely divided state. NC had a fair, 7 to 7 court-drawn U.S. House map in 2022, only to see Republicans take control of the state Supreme Court, which allowed a redrawn, 10 to 4 gerrymander in 2024. On Monday, state Republicans announced plans to redraw the map again for 2026, to steal one more seat from Democrats. That, of course, rather than simply change their policies to ones actually supported by the majority of voters.

BUT AFTER... Texas and before North Carolina, it was my old home-state of Missouri whose Republican Governor and state Legislature last month moved to undermine voters with an unprecedented mid-decade gerrymander of the Show-Me State's U.S. House Map.

While Republicans already control 6 of 8 Congressional Districts in the state, with just two Democratic seats left --- one in St. Louis in the Eastern part of the state, the other in Kansas City in the West --- state lawmakers recently voted to split up the Kansas City district held for the past 20 years by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II.

Pro-democracy groups and voters, however, are pushing back. Several lawsuits have been filed challenging the new map as a violation of the state constitution. And a coalition of democracy advocates called People Not Politicians (PNP) is fighting back in another way: with a referendum that, if allowed on next year's statewide ballot, would immediately stop the gerrymander from moving forward in 2026, as a "citizens veto", until the entire state was able to ring in on the legislation at the ballot box.

Today, we're joined by PNP Policy Director RICHARD VON GLAHN, who has worked on 10 previous Missouri ballot initiatives, including the successful ballot campaign last year to raise the minimum wage and provide workers paid sick leave in the state. It was adopted with 58% of the vote. He seems very confident about the group's ability to get this referendum before voters next year.

"We can let the people decide if the legislation passed by the General Assembly should go into effect or if they should have to start over," he tells me. "We have done this 27 times in Missouri's history, and 25 of those 27 times that an issue has been put up for a vote, citizens have over-ridden what the legislature has done."

Von Glahn says the coalition is "not just on pace, we are ahead of pace" to qualify for the ballot, which would immediately restore the state's previous Congressional map for next year. "In the 72 hours after the legislature first passed this, we had over 2,000 Missourians volunteer, saying, 'Put a clipboard in my hands, I'm ready to go out and hit the streets and talk to my neighbors.'"

Of course, the state's Republican Attorney General and Sec. of State are already pushing back, attempting to disqualify about 25,000 signatures that were gathered even before the state's Republican Governor Mike Keyhoe signed the new law. Von Glahn explains today why he's confident that their objections will not stand. They are currently challenging the AG's determination in court. But, even if they lose that legal battle, he argues, they will qualify for the ballot anyway with well over the 110,000 or so signatures needed.

"It is a completely frivolous action by the Attorney General," he says, asserting that the AG "just made up words in the [state] constitution to try to thwart this." Nonetheless, the seasoned ballot initiative organizer vows: "We are also going to turn in such an overwhelming number of signatures, that whether the signatures from the first two weeks are counted or not is not going to be a factor."

He also notes that volunteers gathering signatures are not just Democrats in the otherwise supposedly "red" state where voters, just last year, voted for adding a right to abortion in the state's constitution after Republican state lawmakers adopted a near-total ban. "Voters don't ask us, 'Well, will this benefit Republicans or Democrats?' Because this is actually about centering VOTERS in our democracy. No one wants to feel like a political pawn or that our elections are manipulated behind our backs. That's why, as we are out working on this and talking to voters, it is not a PARTISAN message. It is really, like the name says, people, not politicians should be the center and focus of our democracy."

Please tune in for many more encouraging words about all of this from Von Glahn.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, as at least three major storm systems from three different directions slam the U.S. at the same time from the East Coast to the West and all the way up to Alaska. Oh, and also, remember that National Weather Service meteorologist who Trump found to agree that a hurricane had been predicted to hit Alabama back in 2019? That guy, Trump's "Sharpiegate" dude, has just been confirmed by Republicans in the U.S. Senate to head up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which houses the National Weather Service...

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!)

Well, buckle up for today's jam-packed BradCast. Though you might need a shower after a portion of today's show regarding new details on Trump and Epstein. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... We're joined by financial investigative journalist, author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect, DAVID DAYEN, to discuss two remarkable farm related, shutdown related stories he broke this week.

The first regards the need for Congress to approve billions of dollars in bailout money for U.S. farmers after Donald Trump's tariff-sparked trade war with China and other countries has decimated the U.S. farm industry. He had to do the same thing during his first term as well. "The reason he needs to bail them out again in the second term is for the same reason as the first term --- the consequences of Trump's own policies," Dayen explains. "The tariffs that have been imposed on China has created a very inevitable and obvious backlash."

Maddeningly, the Trump Administration just granted $20 billion dollars in foreign aid to Argentina, run by a fellow autocrat, which is now making huge bank by taking over exports to China of stuff like soy beans, a key U.S. farm commodity that China --- previously our largest customer --- will no longer buy from the U.S., thanks to Trump's tariffs.

"Think about this," says Dayen, "we've paid off Argentina. Argentine farmers are undercutting U.S. farmers in the global market. And now we're paying off U.S. farmers to compensate for that."

But in order to provide that bailout to U.S. farmers (and Big Ag), Trump and Republicans need buy-in from Democrats. Dayen posits that this might be a path toward ending the government shutdown as Dems are fighting to reverse huge Trump/Republican cuts to the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare. Republicans could agree to restore health care funding while Dems could agree to bail out farmers.

The second story Dayen offers this week, is a stunner. Trump's own Department of Labor published a little noticed, but startling admission in the Federal Register last week, asserting that Trump's own immigration policies now threaten a farmworker crisis and significant "risk of supply shock-induced food shortages." As the Dept. explains in the Register: "The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers."

An astonished Dayen tells me: "How remarkable it is that you have Trump's Labor Department saying that Trump's immigration enforcement is causing such disruption that we may not have enough food in America. That is just remarkable to behold!"

The agency goes on to concede "this threat will grow", unless they are allowed to enact a rule that reforms our H-2A guest worker program to allow more foreign farmworkers to come into the U.S., but with lower wages than currently allowed. That, Dayen reports, will also depress wages for U.S. citizen farmworkers in the bargain.

But are any of the DOL's claims true? Tune in for Dayen's response, based on his reporting with experts, labor unions and farm workers.

ALSO TODAY... A whole bunch of news, some of it breaking as we went to air...

• Israel and Hamas have apparently agreed to a pause in their horrific two-year long war, to allow for a long-awaited release of remaining Israeli hostages; a pull-back of Israeli troops in Gaza; and the long-overdue restoration of humanitarian aid to the war-torn enclave. There remains as much unknown as known about the deal, as reportedly brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the U.S., among others. Naturally, Trump wants to take all the credit. The framework for stage one of the plan appears to be moving forward, which is very good news if so. But, as we discuss, all of this should still be regarded with extreme caution for the moment.

• Just before airtime, news broke that the same Trump personal defense attorney who was recently appointed as the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia to indict former FBI Director James Comey just over a week ago, indicted another Trump foe today. New York Attorney General Letitia James was charged with two counts related to mortgage fraud. As in the Comey case, the grand jury charging document in the James case was signed only by Trump's personal attorney, Lindsey Halligan --- a former insurance lawyer who has never prosecuted a case --- after none of the long-time career prosecutors at the critical EDVA U.S. Attorney's office, apparently, would agree to bring these charges. The indictment also comes after Trump had ordered the Attorney General to indict her and Comey (and Sen. Adam Schiff) in a public message that he meant to post privately. Last year, James oversaw the massive fraud case against Trump, his companies and their executives (including his two eldest sons), that resulted in a half billion dollar verdict.

• Earlier this week, Trump's wildly corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared to take umbrage when she was asked by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) at a Senate oversight hearing, whether the FBI had found, during their investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, photos of Trump with young nude girls as the late child sex trafficker, according to public reporting, had kept in his safe and would show to certain people. Bondi refused, repeatedly, to answer the question. The next day, author Michael Wolff, who penned a tell-all book based on hours of observation and interviews inside the first Trump White House, and who reportedly spent hours interviewing Epstein, explained exactly what he saw in those photos that he claims were shared with him on two occasions by Epstein. This is the segment you may need to shower after.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, including the news that, despite hundreds of millions of dollars Trump is wasting to try and revive the deadly, dying U.S. coal industry, nobody wants to buy it! That, as solar and wind power are exploding in popularity around the world, as led by China, though not here in the U.S., thanks to our fossil fuel-funded loser Administration.

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 for today's BradCast after a week off during which many things happened. Some good. Many more less so. It'll take us about a month to get caught up. So, we better get started. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST... A bit of news from over the weekend and into today...

• In Colorado on Sunday, in what authorities are describing as a "targeted act of violence", at least 8 people were burned by an attacker in Boulder with a make-shift flamethrower and Molotov cocktail device. The victims were demonstrating in support of the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza since the October 2023 attack on Israel. The alleged assailant, quickly taken into custody, was said to have shouted "Free Palestine" and "End Zionists" during the rampage. On Monday, law enforcement officials said he would be charged with federal hate crimes and 16 state charges related to attempted murder.

• News of Sunday's attack in Boulder came just moments after news reports from Gaza that more than 20 Palestinians had been killed and more than 100 wounded near a food distribution site recently set up by the Israeli government amid desperate conditions in the war torn enclave. The deadly attack, attributed by news reports to the Israeli military, comes amid continuing, if failed, third-party talks between Israel and representatives of Hamas seeking a temporary truce, the return of hostages, and increased distribution of aid among a desperate populace in Gaza.

• Ukraine on Sunday acknowledged what appears to have been a pretty massive --- and clever --- explosive-laden sneak drone attack deep inside of Russia, reportedly damaging some $7 billion worth of strategic bomber aircraft at several air bases. The Ukrainian-made drones were apparently snuck into the air bases via the roofs of wooden sheds and released by remote control. The Ukrainian offensive comes on the heels of deadly, long-range attacks by Russia, reportedly against both the civilian population and critical infrastructure, deep inside of Ukraine. On-again off-again peace talks continue nonetheless in the more than three-year old war following Russia's full scale assault on its sovereign neighbor in early 2022.

• Here at home, some encouraging (for the moment) news out of the corrupted rightwing U.S. Supreme Court. On Monday, the Court rejected petitions to hear appeals of two Second Amendment-related rulings upholding state restrictions on semiautomatic assault-style rifles and large-capacity ammo magazines out of Maryland and Rhode Island. The usual far-right suspects --- Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch --- dissented the decision to allow the lower appeals court rulings to stand.

THEN... But speaking of the corrupted, extremist, rightwing activist Supreme Court, two emergency rulings issued on its so-called "shadow docket" last week remind us, yet again, that this Court has little interest in upholding precedent, whether it's decades-old precedent or even their own from just one year ago.

On Friday, in what dissenting Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson referred to as a "plainly botched" ruling by the majority, the Court allowed the Trump Administration to end legal protected status for about half a million migrants in this country from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The Court does so even as litigation continues in the lower court, challenging the Dept. of Homeland Security's lifting of lawful protected status in the U.S. granted by the Biden Administration. On Thursday, half a million migrants were here perfectly legally. On Friday, they suddenly became subject to Trump's mass deportation goon squad, allowing them to be removed from the country --- even though they may eventually win their case! So much for the irreparable harms that are supposed to be considered amid ongoing litigation in such "emergency" rulings.

That ruling came the day after the Court's rightwingers undercut their very own ruling from just last year that, itself, had overturned decades of Court precedent known as "Chevron deference". In last year's case, the Court majority ruled that judges, not federal agency experts, are better equipped to decide whether various regulations suit the intentions of Congressionally-adopted statutes. The landmark ruling last year overturning Chevron had long been sought by corporations seeking to undermine environmental and other regulations. But on Thursday, after a lower court used its newly gained deference to decide a federal agency's regulations weren't strict enough, the High Court decided the experts at the agency in question should once again be granted deference.

As our guest today, veteran legal journalist CHRIS GEIDNER explained in his Law Dork newsletter late last week, now the Court can pull one lever "when the conservative majority believes an agency has gone too far" but when it believes "a lower court goes too far" it can pull last week's newly invented lever "and explain that the lower court did not provide sufficient deference to the agency." As Geidner tells me today, "It is truly a 'heads I win, tails you lose' situation."

In short, it the activist rightwingers on SCOTUS continue to simply make it up as they go along, overturning any precedent, old or new, in order to achieve their desired political outcome.

Geidner joins us to make sense of all of that; share his thoughts on why last week's Trump nomination of his former defense attorney, Emil Bove, to a U.S. Appeals Court is "a line that cannot be crossed"; and for a summary of the big cases that will be receiving full opinions from SCOTUS this month as their latest term wraps up before July...

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': We momentarily take Donald Trump's delusional bait on Gaza, before spitting it out to take on his and Elon Musk's very real, horrifying, unlawful breakdown of the American Constitutional order and all that it means (or used to) around the globe. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

After air last night --- as usual these days --- a number of troubling Trump-related stories broke. Among them, news that the Administration has notified all U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) workers across the globe that they are immediately off the job and must return to the U.S. within 30 days. Decades-old programs in about 120 countries are now stopped dead in their tracks, including life-saving food for starving children that will now be left at the ports; HIV medicine on shelves that won't be delivered to AIDS victims; hundreds of other programs supporting clean water, independent media, education, including for girls under Taliban rule in Afghanistan; tracking and preventing polio, smallpox, tuberculosis and Ebola outbreaks; and much more.

American foreign aid "soft power" initiatives that foster goodwill around the globe and make up less than one-percent of the annual U.S. budget are apparently all now out of business. Foreign strongmen from Russia to Hungary to Iran to China and beyond are rejoicing today and openly expressing their public thanks to Musk and Trump for doing their bidding.

Also last night, Trump announced during a presser in D.C. with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the U.S. will relocate (forcibly, I guess?) nearly 2 million Palestinians from Gaza to somewhere or another, "take over the Gaza Strip", raze the entire territory and claim "ownership" of it for the U.S., before filling it with beautiful new seaside resorts, turning it into the "Riviera of the Middle East". What could possibly go wrong?

Here to explain what is definitely wrong about that and so much more today, are two of our favorite BradCast panelists, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS', longtime blogger and co-host of his weekly Professional Left Podcast.

In addition to Trump's delusional "ethnic cleansing" dreams for Gaza, we also discuss how he is "a powerful useful idiot" for Netanyahu and his rightwing allies. But Parton isn't buying the idea that his new scheme is meant to distract from Trump's lawlessness elsewhere. "The idea that he's got some strategy to distract from all the terrible things that Elon Musk is doing, I don't think that's true. I think they've just divided up the work."

"I'd say this is tossing a match onto a pile of oily rags," Driftglass chimes in. "But the fire is already burning. This is adding napalm to napalm. And everybody knows it. I think Trump is narcissistic enough and stupid enough and willing to listen to his real estate friends enough to say, 'Sure, why not?'"

Meanwhile, back on the home front (Fatherland?), where "Elon Musk bought his way into the Treasury [and] bought this 60% share in this President," the richest man in the world is "getting what he paid for," says Driftglass, in personally shutting down one federal agency after another, all unlawfully. But who's gonna stop him? Drifty argues Trump will simply ignore any adverse court rulings that may come down the road, if they come at all. "You can't undo the damage I've done, therefore I win!," he quips, before noting: "Trump is perfectly willing to change his mind on a dime and lie about everything and say 'I never authorized anything.' But it's going to take public outrage in the streets, by the right people." Who are those "right people"? Tune in.

Digby joins me in dismissing Trump's largely toothless Executive Orders but agrees that what Musk is doing is of another order. "The DOGE thing is a genuine constitutional crisis," she warns. "The Republicans have absolutely laid down and said [to Trump], 'Please give me your boots so I can lick them.' So they are completely useless, and that's a big part of the problem. I'm terrified about how far this can go."

For much more terror and how we might, collectively, put a stop to it, please tune in for today's often terrifying --- if still occasionally humorous --- BradCast...

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!)

Well, he did vow retribution against his "enemies". Today on The BradCast, we cover, among other things, Donald Trump's unlawful "Friday Night Massacre" of independent Inspectors General at Executive Branch agencies, his "Monday Massacre" of dozens of prosecutors this afternoon at the Dept. of Justice, and as much of note that happened in between that we find time for, along with speaking to callers on the back end. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the many stories covered today...

• Trump calls for ethnic cleansing in the Middle East, telling reporters on Air Force One over the weekend that he would favor "cleaning out" Gaza by sending Palestinians from there to other Middle Eastern countries. All the better to build sea side golf resorts in the strip of land that was previously home to more than two million.

• In case you didn't notice last week (I wouldn't blame you) Trump, with a stroke of his Executive Order pen, ended anti-discrimination programs across pretty much the entirety of the federal government, as originally (and successfully) instituted via Executive Order by Lyndon B. Johnson back in the Civil Rights era. Calling it "a reversal of 60 years of progress" and "a blatant step backwards," Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) said in a statement, charging Trump's order "gives federal government officials and complicit federal contractors a green light to engage in discriminatory practices that exclude minorities and women from employment and contracting opportunities."

• The laughably unqualified Fox "News" weekend co-host, accused sexual assaulter and public drunkard Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Sec. of Defense by Senate Republicans late on Friday night. All Dems voted against, and there were only 3 Republican defectors (Murkowsky, Collins and McConnell). That resulted in a tie vote which broken in Hegseth's favor by Vice President J.D. Vance. It was only the second time in U.S. history that a Presidential cabinet member faced a tie vote. (The first was Betsy DeVos' nomination for Education Secretary during the first Trump Administration.)

• South Dakota Governor, puppy killer, and ridiculous liar Kristi Noem was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Sec. of Homeland Security over the weekend. As DHS chief, she will oversee U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP); the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); the Transportation Security Administration (TSA); U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the United States Secret Service (USSS); the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG); and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), among others. I'm sure it will go well. All Republicans voted for her. Six Democrats (Fetterman, Kaine, Kim, Peters, Slotkin and Shaheen) shamefully voted in support of this corrupt, inexperienced Trump stooge.

• On Friday night, news broke that Trump had fired about 17 independent Inspectors General at agencies across the federal government in violation of the law (U.S. Code, Title 5, Section 403(b)) mandating that, while Presidents can fire Inspectors General, they must notify Congress in writing 30 days in advance before doing so, along with "substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons" for such removals. But, of course, who is going to enforce the law against the lawless Trump?

• Speaking of which, on Monday, just before airtime, news broke that Trump's interim apparatchiks heading up the Dept. of Justice were sending out firing notices to more than a dozen prosecutors who worked with Special Counsel Jack Smith and those who prosecuted hundreds of January 6 cases.

We've got a whole bunch of related news and background in between and amongst all of those stories, before callers weigh in today on all of the above and more...

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!)

Yup. We're back! And we've got lots to begin getting caught up with on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among the many stories reported and discussed on today's program...

• Donald Trump's recent flip-flops on abortion, pandering on IVF and his desecration of Arlington Cemetery for political purposes. (By the way, Dems should embrace Trump's pandering promise to have the Government pay for anyone's fertility treatments. It's the GOP's first baby step toward universal healthcare/Medicare-for-All after all! Sounds great! Hold them to it!)

• More than 10,000 hotel workers celebrated Labor Day by going on strike for better wages and working conditions across the U.S. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden campaigned together, speaking to a packed house of union workers in Pittsburgh on Labor Day, touting the most pro-union, jobs-creating Admin in history and promised to continue it under a Harris-Walz Administration. Trump, apparently unable to find any union workers who wanted to hear from him, stayed home yesterday.

• More than a hundred thousand demonstrators took to the streets in Israel to protest against their far-right Benjamin Netanyahu-led government, demanding a deal for a cease-fire and the release of hostages in Gaza, after six of them were found dead in a tunnel beneath Rafah on Sunday. Twenty-three year old Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin was among those found dead, just days after his parents spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, calling for a cease-fire and the release of more than 100 hostages who remain in Hamas custody following their horrific attack on Israel last October. As we have been arguing for months, however --- and as Israeli protesters are noted as mentioning in this Guardian piece --- Prime Minister Netanyahu is unlikely to ever agree to a deal that would effectively end Israel's war on Gaza, because it would also result in the end of his governing coalition. After that, he will have to face corruption charges filed against him from which he is currently immune...as long as he remains Prime Minister. If all of that sounds like a deal that Donald Trump hopes to win for himself in November, you are right. Tune in for much more on all of this today.

• Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Russia launched another deadly, long-range missile assault on Ukraine, this time on a military academy and nearby hospital. More than 50 were killed, more than 200 wounded. That as Ukraine has finally taken possession of land inside Russia's Kursk region, including some 500 square miles along the Ukrainian border, and continues to plead with the U.S. and Europe to send weapons to help them defend themselves against the two-and-half-year onslaught by its imperialistic Russian neighbor.

• Massachusetts is holding its Congressional and state legislative primaries today, just days after its Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin warned residents in the state about scam text messages being sent to some voters, falsely telling them that they are ineligible to vote. It is just one of the many dirty tricks we will be seeing between now and Election Day, the period of time that I am calling PHASE 1 of this year's general elections.

• And, speaking of, Labor Day is a good moment to mark where things are in the horse race toward Election Day, following the unprecedented plot-twist of the last 6 weeks following Kamala Harris taking over at the top of the ticket. She has surged in the polling averages against Donald Trump --- particularly in the seven critical battleground states --- since then. But, she remains just barely ahead of Trump in the states she most needs to win. Her slim lead nationally and in the most critical battleground states she would need to get to 270 electoral votes, in a system that advantages Republicans, has resulted in, as Politico colorfully describes it today, "the equivalent of a knife fight in a phone booth."

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us today to begin catching up on much that we missed in climate and environmental news after being off just one week, including the role of climate action in the 2024 contest; new data on deadly extreme heat in the U.S.; China meeting its renewable electricity targets six years early; and the Klamath River, now finally running free again along the California/Oregon border after being dammed up for more than 100 years!...

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!)

At a moment of a potential Holocaust in Gaza, Donald Trump's Super Tuesday call for Israel's right wing extremist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "finish the problem" in Gaza sounds ominously like Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Problem".

Whether or not one accepts South Africa's claim that the "scale of destruction in Gaza" reflects "genocidal intent", there can be no question but that a failure to heed VP Kamala Harris' poignant call on Sunday for an "immediate ceasefire" in Gaza, along with an unhindered flow of humanitarian aid, could lead to an annihilation of Gaza's civilian population.

Over the past 5 months, the Israeli military has reduced most of Northern Gaza into an uninhabitable wasteland. Approximately 80% of the Palestinian population (1.9 million) has been internally displaced and pushed to the brink of famine.

In normal times, Hitler comparisons might seem over the top. These are not normal times...