We were forced to take a last-minute swerve once again for today's BradCast. Happily, for a change, it was for good cause this time. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

ICE Barbie, sometimes known as Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, was fired by Donald Trump today. The precise reasons are unknown. There are many potential culprits, from giving a huge, no-bid, $143 million DHS contract to her friends (to create DHS publicity videos starring herself); to her alleged long-term sexual tryst with her top "Special Government Employee", former Trump Campaign chair and alleged sexual harasser Corey Lewandowski; to her lack of oversight of out-of-control federal agencies such as ICE and CBP; to the Minneapolis murders by federal immigration thugs of Renee Good and Alex Pretti on her watch in January, after which she falsely described the two American citizens as "domestic terrorists" and has refused to apologize ever since.

Of course, pretty much all of those things would seem to win her favor with Trump. So, what exactly happened here? Still unclear. Of course, rather than fire her from the federal government outright, our FIFA Peace Prize winning President just made up a new, ridiculous sounding, pretend position for her to have (and you to pay for), called "Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas".

All of this comes after two days of Noem's testimony in brutal hearings in both the U.S. House and Senate, including angry questioning even from a few Republicans on the Committees, if you can believe it. We cover all of that, and some of the sharpest Committee exchanges today, along with a preview of what we might expect from Trump's appointment of Oklahoma's yahoo, former MMA fighter Senator Markwayne Mullin to fill the role of DHS chief, heading up the government's third largest Cabinet department with a budget well in excess of $100 billion. It should all go very well!

With another trenchant reminder of just how horrible Noem's reign of terror and error has been at DHS, we share a story today from former Republican attorney Keith Barber at Daily Kos. He breaks down a stunning ruling this week from a Trump-appointed federal judge who cites the "abhorrent and illegal practices" --- not to mention "laws of human decency [that] condemn such villainy" --- of the Trump Regime, in the case of a legal resident who came here from Honduras 15 years ago when he was just 9 years old. He was granted protected status and has been a model resident ever since. We share the harrowing story of his unlawful arrest by ICE, as told by Barber and the judge, and the judge's blistering ruling [PDF] in Hesler Asaf Garcia Lanza v. Kristi Noem in which the judge highlights the Administration's "trampling our system of laws...which has safeguarded this nation for close to 250 years."

THEN... In some of today's 2026 Midterm Election news that we didn't sideline for the breaking Noem news, Montana's sleazy, two-term, Republican Sen. Steve Daines --- at precisely 3 minutes before the legal deadline --- filed papers to withdraw from his reelection bid this year. He had only just filed for reelection at the end of February.

Making it all the more sleazy, Montana's Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme filed his papers to run for the seat just five minutes before Daines filed his own to drop out. Both Daines and Trump almost immediately endorsed Alme thereafter. Go figure.

We discuss what all of that means, and who, other than Alme and the Republican Party, may benefit from Daine's chicanery on today's program.

FINALLY... We're joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report, as Trump's expanding War on Iran continues to roil world markets and disrupt global energy supply chains, even as renewable energy may ultimately --- and ironically --- turn out to be the winner in all of this idiocy...

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!)

To be clear, as we discuss briefly at both the top and bottom of today's BradCast, there have been virtually NO election years in all of American history in which the nation wasn't engaged in some sort of war or foreign conflict. So, for those who see Donald Trump's latest attack on Iran as some sort of scheme to try and undercut midterm elections this year, well, it ain't gonna work, it never has, and though he may try anything, don't be scared by his nonsense. That's what he wants you to be. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

To that end today, we cover both Tuesday's first primary elections of the critical 2026 Midterms and the growing debacle of Trump's deadly, ongoing misadventure in Iran, which has quickly devolved into a broad regional conflict.

FIRST UP... We covered many of the top-line (and some of the not so top-line) unofficial results out of Tuesday's primaries in three states today. Tune in for all of it. But, among the most noteworthy results detailed on today's program...

No real surprises in Arkansas' primaries Tuesday, though there was yet another Special Election triumph for Democrats there yesterday, with another "blue" to "red" flip in the state House, as the Democratic candidate won by some 60 points!

In North Carolina, Dems got the U.S. Senate candidate they were looking for in popular former Governor Roy Cooper, who is now set to square off against Trump-endorsed, election denying former RNC Chair Michael Whatley. Neither primary was particularly competitive on Tuesday, though some 200,000 more voters turned out for the D contest than for the R race. Make of that what you will. The November election will be to fill the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, in what is perhaps this year's best opportunity for Dems to flip a Republican Senate seat.

After some late Primary Night chicanery by Texas' sleazeball Attorney General (and Republican U.S. Senate candidate) Ken Paxton in Dallas County, it appears the Democratic Party got much of what they wanted out of yesterday's contests for the U.S. Senate. Popular Democratic state Rep. James Talarico defeated progressive firebrand Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett by just a few points. But it was enough to win the Dem Senate nomination outright without heading to a runoff. Crockett gracefully conceded and called for party unity on Wednesday.

On the other side, four-term senior Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn has been forced into a weeks long, very expensive, and likely brutally ugly runoff with Trump's wildly corrupt pal Paxton for this year's Republican nomination. Dems couldn't ask for anything more out of the Lone Star race at the moment. Runoff day is May 26. You'll need plenty of popcorn between now and then.

There is quite a bit more that we cover on this beat on today's program, from a number of interesting U.S. House primaries and the ousting of three GOP-friendly state House members by three progressive candidates in NC, to a fascinating contest between two very MAGA candidates in the same state, including a very powerful one endorsed by Trump, in a race where the current margin stands at just two votes!

Please tune on in!...

THEN... Back to the War in Iran, which continues to spread throughout the Gulf region and beyond, as it becomes clearer by the day that the Trump Administration had no clear objectives when launching the war, and even less of a clue how to get out of it, at this point.

We're joined to discuss a whole bunch of related matters by Professor JUAN COLE, longtime historian, author and Middle East expert at the University of Michigan. He is also founder and chief editor of the indispensable, long-running Informed Comment blog.

I've got a ton of questions for Professor Cole today. Among them, we discuss...

• How what Trump likes to describe as our 47-year history with Iran (going only back to the Islamic Revolution of 1979), actually goes back much further than that and yes, as Cole explains, "It's all about oil, my friend."

• Who is left to succeed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei following his assassination on day one of the latest assault by the U.S. and Israel? And is restoring the deposed Shah's son, Reza Pahlavi, any kind of real possibility (much less a good idea)?

• Isn't the targeting of civilian leaders both wildly illegal under international law and a horrible idea for a whole bunch of other reasons? ("You never want to take out the leadership that you're going to be negotiating with," notes Cole, observing that even Vladimir Putin seems to understand that much.)

• Cole has argued at Informed Comment that this war "is likely to be short", since neither the U.S. nor Israel have enough weaponry to carry out this type of combat for very long. In another piece today, he notes that Iran claims to have some 80,000 inexpensive weaponized drones that they are using in a "Techno-Guerilla War". They are to produce new ones at the rate of about 400 per day. They cost about $30,000 a piece, whereas the missiles needed to intercept them cost about $1.5 million per. The math is both unsustainable and the strategy unlikely to succeed, he tells me.

• And then there is "the reason that the U.S. has never waged an all-out war on Iran" before this week. It's because "the Persian Gulf region is the cockpit of the world economy" with 20% of the globe's oil and liquefied natural gas resources. Production has now all but halted in the region and, Cole warns, "if this thing actually managed to go on for any length of time, you're talking about a world recession."

Hopefully, that's enough to whet your appetite. But, if not, tune in for the good Professor's thoughts on what he sees as the real potential irony of this fine mess, and how it could end up boosting not just the fortunes of China, but electric vehicles and renewable energy, which Trump "hates like the Devil hates holy water"...

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 getting caught up on today's BradCast with a whole bunch of stuff, from the dark Trump secrets still buried in unreleased Epstein Files, to his lies, illegal actions and terrible advice about the economy, to another loss for Republicans in the Gerrymandering Wars and some actual election fraud finally discovered in Georgia! (And you'll never guess whodunnit!) [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Happily, the corporate mainstream media finally seems to be fully on board the disturbing, still-unexplained, and unlawful absence of critical documents from the Epstein Files released to date by the Dept. of Justice as per the Epstein Files Transparency Act. In addition to the absence of multiple 2019 FBI interviews with a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was just 13-years old, additional revelations are coming to light. CNN, for instance, confirmed those three missing interviews and contemporaneous FBI interview notes this week, and found that at least another 90 interviews with other survivors are also apparently missing, for unexplained reasons, from the DOJ's website.

But, with the major outlets seemingly digging in, we've got a bit more time today to get caught up on some other stuff, regarding some economic matters, some SCOTUS issues, and some election news. Among those stories...

• Fallout from last week's 6 to 3 U.S. Supreme Court ruling determining that Trump's chaotic, worldwide taxes on imports to the U.S., as issued under the supposed authority of the U.S. International Emergency Economic Powers Act (or, IEEPA), are both unlawful and unconstitutional. As it turns out, those illegal tariffs have also been very expensive for American consumers who paid for about 90% of them according to studies issued this month from both the Federal Reserve and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That, despite Trump's repeatedly lie (as echoed again during his State of the Union Address this week), that "the tariffs [are] paid for by foreign countries." Both the Fed and Congress disagree.

• But, don't be fooled by SCOTUS' ruling last Friday, even if it came in opposition to the President for a happy change. In fact, the challenge to Trump's tariffs was a case brought by the far-right architect of today's corrupted Supreme Court, and it took almost half a year longer to be handed down by the corrupted Court than necessary. No, SCOTUS has not "joined the No Kings Movement", as MS NOW's Stephanie Ruhle ridiculously declared after the ruling was handed down.

• For the record, the "economic emergency" that Trump disingenuously declared as his pretext to enact the levies was supposedly based on a global trade deficit that the U.S. has with many countries of the world. As it turns out, that deficit grew larger under Trump's tariffs last year, according to Trump's own Commerce Dept. data.

• Not to worry, however, everyone is going to be rich once the Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act kicks in for this year's tax season, right? Um, so far...based on IRS data to date, not so much, as average refunds in the first part of the filing season have been some 42% lower than the Administration has long been promising they would be.

• But, hey, there are a lot of MAGA suckers out there, I guess. And we should have expected no less from the guy whose failing media company, Trump Media & Technology Group (which trades as DJT on the stock exchange) has seen its value plummet faster than his approval ratings. This week, shares in his loser company, which once sold for $100 --- and cost a bunch of MAGA folks their life savings --- closed for the first time on Monday in the single digits! The company, which has lost hundreds of millions of dollars every year since it went public in 2022, clawed its way back above $10/share in recent days. It seems unlikely to stay there.

• In election and voting news, Team Red continue to struggle in their Gerrymandering Wars in advance of the critical midterm elections, as both the Utah state Supreme Court (on Friday) and a three-judge federal panel (on Monday), rejected state Republicans' attempts to override a 2018 ballot initiative in which voters chose to require U.S. House district maps in the otherwise very Republican state to be drawn fairly, with neutral rules, by an independent redistricting commission. The GOP state Legislature has been trying to lock in their unlawful map, drawn to create four safe Republican Congressional Districts. But, after the recent rulings, we appear now to be at the end of their four-year battle to block a new map that will offer three Republican leaning Districts and one safely Democratic seat in Salt Lake County.

• Down in Georgia, where Trump has been falsely claiming massive voter fraud since he lost the 2020 election there, the MAGA majority on the State Election Board has, in fact, finally discovered some election fraud! And it was apparently committed by one of Elon Musk's super PACs in both 2020 and 2024.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report today, with a bunch of energy related lies from Trump's SOTU this week; Big Oil's appeal to SCOTUS to help them quash climate liability lawsuits; Trump's Interior Dept. quashing bedrock conservation rules for public lands; and a new suit filed by young Americans to challenge the Trump EPA's recent gutting of 20 years of climate change-related regulations...

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: When fascism takes root, there's a whole lot more that comes with it. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP TODAY... Based on little more than a threat from Donald Trump's FCC Chair Brendan Carr to rewrite Equal Time rules for late-night talk show interviews on broadcast television, CBS, newly owned by Paramount/Skydance, is rolling over in advance. Stephen Colbert, whose top-rated Late Show with Stephen Colbert will be ending in May on the heels of the merger, says that CBS attorneys barred him from interviewing Texas' Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico on Monday, amid his primary election against Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

But all of that seems to have blown up in CBS' face, as nearly three-times the number of viewers, so far, have watched Colbert's streaming-only interview, posted to Youtube after network suits nixed the broadcast version, and some $2.5 million came rolling in for Talarico's campaign in the bargain.

Colbert himself told the story on Monday and then followed up on Tuesday. We share both segments today.

THEN... Trump and his party stormed to power in 2024 based in no small part on opportunistic, weaponized charges of antisemitism on the Left, amid campus protests against Israel's war on Gaza. After taking office again last year, that political campaign turned into a government extortion campaign against universities, colleges, law firms and other organizations who, the Trump Administration claimed, were exercising antisemitism.

But, when rightwing podcaster Ben Shapiro attempted to call out antisemites in the Republican Party and MAGA movement late last year, he was met with little more than a shrug by the 30,000 young Christian followers of the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk at the group's America Fest gathering in Phoenix. Shapiro was, among other things, calling out former Fox 'News' host turned podcaster Tucker Carlson for a softball interview with avowed neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, and Shapiro's former employee, turned hugely popular podcaster, Candace Owens. She has, among other things in recent months, advanced a conspiracy theory that Israel was somehow behind last year's murder of Kirk.

It gets even more twisted, as new polling and focus groups find that young Republicans and evangelicals don't seem to have much of a problem with Hitler, and even long-established GOP institutions like the Heritage Foundation, have apparently decided to stand with Carlson and Nazis. Surprised? Don't be. They also got behind Trump even after he enjoyed a Thanksgiving week dinner with Kanye and Fuentes a few years earlier.

The notion that Evangelical Republicans claim to be supporters of Israel because they support the Jewish people has always been absurd to those of us paying actual attention for the past whole bunch of decades. The fact that the lie is only now beginning to come to the attention of some in the public and media is somewhat mind-blowing.

But the slow-motion implosion among MAGA Republicans is really something to watch, and far more widespread and insane than I can adequately detail here in a short summary post.

Longtime investigative journalist ART LEVINE, on the other hand, who joins us for a very lively conversation on today's program, has published an exhaustive expose on all of this at The Washington Spectator this month, headlined "Inside the MAGA Meltdown Over Antisemitism". The piece's similarly exhaustive (if very accurate) sub-hed: "A Parade of Charlie Kirk Wannabes, Nazi Sympathizers, End Times Prognosticators, Media Grifters and Nostalgic Evangelicals Scramble for Control of Their Imploding Coalition".

Levine tells me today that it is all "insanely hypocritical," arguing that "essentially, Donald Trump might be considered the Anti-Semite in Chief, because of his own overt symbolism. If you're inviting, over to your home, Kanye West, who recently had a 'Heil Hitler' video on Twitter, and Nick Fuentes, he is an open Holocaust denier, it's just nuts!"

"There's no more fig leaves," Levine charges, based on his months of painstakingly documented and linked research. "All of the standard distancing modes between Republicans and antisemitism has dropped away."

Tune in for much much more. And bring a big bucket of popcorn with ya...

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: The critical 2026 midterm elections are now officially underway, with early voting having begun in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas for their March 3rd midterm primaries. But Republicans are not done trying to undermine those elections with legislation meant to undercut democracy itself. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... A few words on the passing, at the age of 84, of Rev. Jesse Jackson, civil rights icon, voting rights advocate, and two-time Democratic Presidential candidate.

Also, a few words on what appears to be the further collapsing of support for Donald Trump, as detailed in several new polls released in advance of the Washington's Birthday holiday yesterday, and as analyzed by CNN's Harry Enten. Bottom line for the moment, Trump's approval is nearing all-time lows among the public. It is lower than Joe Biden at the same point of his first term as President and even lower than Trump's own numbers at this point during his own failed first term in office. As Enten highlights, Trump is now 27 points underwater among independent voters.

"I don't understand how this works out well for the President of the United States. When you are 27 points below water, under water, with the center of the electorate, with independents, you lose, your party loses," explained the colorful Enten on Monday. With that in mind...

NEXT... If you're losing among the electorate, the Republican Party appears to now believe, don't adjust your policies to popular ones. Just change the electorate!

After seemingly failed mid-decade gerrymandering bids last year (quickly answered by Democratic states); after recent hollow threats by Trump to "nationalize" elections (he has no such legal or Constitutional authority); after ordering the FBI to raid the election warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia in an effort to continue the charade that the 2020 election was stolen from him (they still have shown no such evidence); the GOP seems to believe they can legislate their way to a more favorable electorate this year.

Last week, the Republican-controlled House narrowly passed the so-called "SAVE America Act" [PDF], formerly known as the SAVE Act, with every Republican member voting in favor. The measure would, among other things, if also passed in the U.S. Senate, force those newly registering to vote to somehow show proof of citizenship, in person, during the registration process.

The effort is part of Trump's long-running, evidence-free assertion that millions of noncitizens are unlawfully on the voting rolls and voting against him and, I guess, other Republican candidates.

The measure would also force states to run their voting rolls through a notoriously inaccurate federal Dept. of Homeland Security tool --- originally designed for something else entirely --- known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (or SAVE) database.

That tool has, in recent months, been used by GOP-controlled states to check their rolls for evidence of noncitizen voters. In state after state, it has found almost none. Among the few that it has flagged as potential noncitizen voters, many of them turn out to be false positives, citizens who are inaccurately identified as noncitizens in the database, or noncitizens on the rolls who never voted, but were registered due to clerical error after making clear to DMV workers that they were not American citizens.

Nonetheless, the SAVE America Act, would both force use of that failed tool in all 50 states --- potentially resulting in lawful voters being removed from the rolls --- and mandate proof of citizenship when registering, despite tens of millions of Americans who have no easy, or free, access to such documents.

We're joined today by lawyer turned election integrity social media advocate JENNIFER COHN --- who has been reading through the various iterations of the newly renamed SAVE Act --- to discuss both the barriers it includes for new voters (or those who have recently moved and must re-register), the obstacles that stand in the way of Republican passage of the Act in the U.S. Senate, and what the real purpose of this insidious legislation actually is.

"Up to 69 million women could be disenfranchised by this bill because their last names no longer match their birth certificates because they've taken their husband's name," explains Cohn. She says that while the legislation mentions documents that might help women overcome that barrier, "They're tricky about it. They say, for example, that you could use a 'Real ID' if it indicates your citizenship. What they don't say is that only five states issue Real IDs that indicate your citizenship. So that won't work for the vast majority of Americans."

Passports will work, but they now cost $165 for new applicants or $130 for renewals. They also take time to obtain and require, in most cases, a birth certificate, which many do not have access to. Those may also cost time and money to obtain. But a birth certificate alone won't work either if your name has changed through marriage, or other reasons. And if you have a passport, but your name has changed since you obtained it, that will be a problem as well. Cohn notes that the Republican authors of the bill did something else that is "sneaky in the latest version of the bill. It still omits marriage certificates from the list of approved documents." So even those might not adequately offer proof of citizenship when coupled with a birth certificate during registration under SAVE.

There is much more to be concerned about, Cohn tells me, arguing that "the media really has not caught up" with what Republicans are trying to do with the SAVE Act and just how bad the SAVE database actually is.

While I explain that I think much of this is meant simply to frighten voters into not participating in elections, to scare them, to cause chaos --- especially as I see no path toward passage of the SAVE Act in the Senate --- Cohn thinks I may be wrong, that insidious plans may be in the works to force passage against the wishes of Democrats in the upper chamber, where 60 votes would normally be needed for passage in the 100-seat Senate. (Tune in for details on those insidious plans.)

She believes that people should be freaked out by all of this. If nothing else, she argues, so that they take action to call their Senators (202-224-3121) to demand they vote against SAVE, and to help people understand that this is much much more than a simple "Voter ID bill" as Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and other wildly dishonest Republicans are disingenuously attempting to portray it to the public.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report on the heels of last week's landmark rollback of the EPA's critical Endangerment Finding, which had allowed regulation of fossil fuel pollution under the Clean Air Act; and following a massive raw sewage spill at a federal facility near D.C., which Trump is attempting to blame on Maryland's Democratic Governor...

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 not all peaches and cream on today's BradCast, especially in our "everything is stupid" world. But it could be --- in fact it was supposed to be --- a lot worse by now. [Audio link to full story follows below this summary.]

We've got a lot of news today to cover for a start, including another Democratic special election overperformance in another deep "red" district; more and more embarrassing court losses and grand jury rejections for the Administration; calls from a few MAGA folks for Attorney General Pam Bondi to resign following her ridiculous performance in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday; ICE claims to be retreating from Minnesota altogether, after the heroic residents of Minneapolis finally wore them down; and three new polls (including a very Trump-friendly one!) find that voters now think Joe Biden was a better President than Donald Trump.

After the news, we're delighted to be joined once again today, for another one of our somewhat free-wheeling round table shows with our longtime OG blogger pals, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of The Professional Left Podcast.

It has been a minute since they've joined us, so we've got a lot of ground to cover and get caught up with today, including...

• Whether Trump and his Regime are really falling and, if they are, how much pain they may continue to cause on the way down;
• Whether Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance was actually a...um... turning point;
• Why so many Congressional Republicans, heading into the midterms, seem to be whistling past the graveyard;
• Whether I'm being too kind in describing Bondi as "screeching harpy";
• What we've all learned from the release and cover-up of the Epstein Files;
• Whether anyone should actually fear Trump's impotent threats to "nationalize" the elections;
• And what we might expect from Trump's upcoming State of the Union Address, after which both Digby and Driftglass will almost certainly be joining us again for analysis...

"It's all overwhelming," concedes Digby. "But, at the same time, I do see --- and I'm frankly surprised --- people are aware, and I think that this is good. People have awakened to what's going on," she argues, citing polling evidence, today's news out of Minneapolis, and other "reasons for hope" from her column at Salon today.

"Trump likes to talk about a 'Golden Age,' slapping gold all over everything to sort of manifest it," she says. "The truth is that it's possible that what this has done is awaken the American public to its own ideals, its own values. And maybe at the end of the day --- I hate to sound Pollyannish here --- but maybe somehow or another it's going to end up being the catalyst for a different kind of Golden Age. Not the kind he's talking about, but the kind that we've all been craving for many, many years."

Recognizing that "incredibly damaging things are happening," Driftglass observes that "the Trump Administration is now reduced to looting the place as fast as it can and lying about it. On the other hand, if you're winning, if you're confident, you're not rolling troops into states and trying to disrupt their elections. And you're not sending a shrieking moron to Congress with a 'burn book' to insult Democrats. You only do that to make sure that your tiny, bigoted, idiot base stays on side."

"One side is fired up and looking for big wins, and the other side feels dispirited and awful," Drifty says, while assessing this year's electoral landscape. "Trump is giving them nothing, nothing to hope for. He's just wrecking it, and his people don't know how to do anything other than be awful. And that's not a recipe for winning."

As usual, many more incisive observations from both today, including Digby on the "absolutely grotesque" Pam Bondi and Driftglass on the Epstein Files: "They really thought this was just one more grift that would get them votes, and they found out this is not just another grift. There is no 'off switch' on this thing. They are all lashed to this horrible thing that is Donald Trump's kryptonite, with no way to get rid of it because they made all these promises."

AND FINALLY... Since everything is stupid, Desi Doyen helps us close out today with our latest Green News Report, as the Trump Administration, as foretold by Project 2025, takes their biggest single fossil fuel-funded shot at gutting decades of climate change mitigation policies across the entire federal government all at once...

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!)

There is, as usual, too much going on at once. That is, of course, by design of the sick, criminal gangster in the Oval Office. But it means that some of the most important stuff you need to know is getting lost amid all the noise. We do our best, on today's BradCast, to once again try to shine a spotlight on the most important thing you are least likely to hear the least about elsewhere. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

First off, a few stories you may hear something about today.

• The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suddenly, without notice or explanation, shut down the air space above the El Paso, Texas airport on the border with Mexico early on Wednesday for ten days. A few hours after the surprise announcement, the FAA said "never mind" and reopened it with little explanation. Early reporting suggests some sort of rift between the Pentagon and the FAA regarding drones flown by Mexican drug cartels into the U.S., and the testing of some sort of new anti-drone laser weapon in response. But, as Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX), whose district includes El Paso, said, "the information coming from the federal government does not add up." It doesn't. But we've got an alternative explanation that makes at least as much sense as the government's, and it has something to do with Donald Trump's longtime threats of war against our (former?) ally across the Southern Border.

• Also today, Trump's demented U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi embarrassed the nation (and herself) again during U.S. House testimony regarding the DOJ's unlawful cover-up of the Epstein Files. We share some of the low-lights from Bondi's remarkably snide behavior before the House Judiciary Committee this afternoon, when she pretended to be angry that Democratic members wanted to talk more with her about Epstein and law enforcement, than about the stock market (bizarrely enough).

NEXT... The news you are almost certainly not hearing enough about this week, especially as it is news likely to adversely affect every single American --- and everyone else on our quickly warming planet --- for generations to come.

The corrupt Trump Administration's EPA is set to announce on Thursday that it is overturning the so-called "endangerment finding", initially issued by the EPA under George W. Bush, even though his Administration refused to open the email containing it at the time.

The endangerment finding was first drafted in response to a landmark 2007 Supreme Court case named Massachusetts v. EPA. The SCOTUS majority held at the time that under the mandates of the Clean Air Act, if greenhouses gasses that warm the planet, such as Carbon Dioxide and Methane, were found by the EPA to be "air pollutants" that can "reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare," the government was required to regulate them.

The EPA's eventually finding was officially adopted by Barack Obama's Administration, and is now the basis for the bulk of federal regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in the transportation sector, but many others as well. The fossil fuel industry has sought for years to overturn the scientific finding. Doing so would lead to the end of a majority of the federal government's climate related regulations.

Thanks to the corrupted Trump Administration, and a ridiculous Dept. of Energy "report" created by five climate science-denying stooges (unlawfully empaneled, according to a recent federal court ruling), the finding will be overturned on Thursday, in what Trump allies are describing as "total victory," following more than 15 years of work to restore the halcyon days of unregulated destruction of the atmosphere by the unmitigated burning of fossil fuels. The "total victory" comes as the last 11 years have been confirmed as the hottest ever recorded on planet Earth.

So, what does all of this mean? Can it be stopped in the courts? Can states now institute their own climate regulations to replace those likely to be ended by the federal government?

We're joined today by DAN BECKER, Director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the Climate Law Institute of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. Becker has long been a key player in the fight against climate change. He developed the strategy and led the fight for the Obama Administration's landmark program to cut emissions from cars, SUVs and pickups, the largest step any nation had taken at the time to slash climate warming emissions.

"It's huge," Becker tells me about the revocation of the finding. "Unfortunately, what the Trump Administration folks are going to do is not only revoke the Endangerment Finding, but they are going to repeal the biggest single step that any nation has ever taken, that used the Clean Air Act as a mechanism to cut pollution from cars," which are "the biggest problem, the biggest source of emissions in the United States."

"This is going to make kids sicker because there will be more air pollution. Kids with asthma will have more frequent asthma attacks. They'll miss more school. Their parents, who will have to stay home to take care of them, will miss more work. People with lung disease will suffer and some will die. People with heart disease will also have increased early deaths," he laments, describing some of the most immediate fallout from all of this.

But, while "this is bad for people," Becker says, "it's good for China because the Chinese auto industry wants to make a market in clean vehicles. And if they have no competition from United States automakers because the US automakers are going to make gas guzzlers as a result of not being required to make clean vehicles, then the Chinese manufacturers will win."

"That isn't really good for American workers. It's not good for American profits," he asserts, before adding: "They're laughing all the way to bank, as Trump does what General Motors told him to do."

All of this was "pre-cooked," explains Becker, when the oil and auto industries came aboard the Trump campaign. "The oil industry alone contributed $450 million dollars, and Trump said, 'If you give me a billion, I'll do anything you want.' This is the 'anything they want,' and they're getting it wholesale." It was, of course, "all pre-cooked, written out, and the menu laid by the Heritage Foundation" in Project 2025. Heritage, he notes, "is also funded by the oil industry."

So, a whole lot more on all of this today, including what you can do about it. Tune in and please share this one, as I expect most folks will hear little or nothing about it, with all of the other madness playing out, preventing most from ever even hearing about the thing that may cost them their jobs, their money, their health, and potentially even their own lives and those of their children and grandchildren...

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 wish we coulda talked about Bad Bunny for the entire BradCast. But, alas, fighting fascism calls. (Which actually brings us back to Bad Bunny! But I digress.) [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

After a few minutes on the rollicking, patriotic Super Bowl Halftime show heard round the world on Sunday, and the doddering old man in the White House that it helped drive crazy --- (Yes. It's a short drive.) --- it's back to the business of trying to help save a nation from itself. And, truthfully, as horrible as it is, it's going pretty well, in that regard.

On Saturday, another Democratic candidate won a special election for a state legislative seat in a landslide after Donald Trump won the same district by a landslide in 2024. This time, it was Democratic Louisiana state House candidate Chasity Verret Martinez who defeated her Republican opponent by 24 points on Saturday, in a district that Trump won by 13, for an overall 37-point swing for the Ds. That special election followed on one in Texas just a week earlier for the state Senate, where the Democrat won by 14 points in a district Trump won in 2024 by 17 points. That was a 31-point swing for the Ds...in deep "red" Texas!

So, yeah, there is a way out of this madness, and it runs through the ballot box. Which is obviously why Trump is hoping to game that ballot box, take control of it, "nationalize" elections, etc. All stuff that he has zero legal or Constitutional authority or lawful ability to do. But that doesn't mean he won't try.

Toward that end --- (maybe?) --- at the end of last month, Trump's FBI obtained a warrant from a federal magistrate to raid the Fulton County, Georgia elections warehouse just outside of Atlanta. They absconded with the 2020 ballots and other materials from the state's largest County. The warrant explained that the search was meant to protect against violations of a federal law related to voting fraud and another to the federal law requiring retention of ballots and other election-related material for 22 months after each federal election.

But the 2020 election was more than five years ago now, which is theoretically outside of the statute of limitations to bring criminal charges against some sort of fraud in that election. Also, what was the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard doing at the raid in Fulton County?

Some of these questions may be answered in the next 24 hours or so, as a Trump-appointed federal judge has ordered the Government to release the affidavit that was used to gain the magistrate's approval for the Search Warrant in the first place. Presumably, that affidavit would detail allegations of some sort of ongoing crime or crimes.

But there are also a host of other questions, unlikely to be answered by that affidavit, including what harm Trump may actually do with the materials, including hundreds of thousands of ballots and 2020 voter rolls, obtained by the FBI? How could any of that be used to undermine Georgia's elections this year, or those elsewhere across the country?

We're joined today by longtime friend of the show and election integrity and voting system transparency hero, MARILYN MARKS of the nonprofit Coalition for Good Governance.

Marilyn knows the GA election system as well or better than anyone else, including, arguably, its Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, the Republican who many have regarded as a hero for holding off Trump's attempt to steal the state in 2020 during his infamous phone call seeking to strong-arm Raffensperger to "find" enough votes to flip the state from Joe Biden to Trump. But, as we note again today, Raffensperger is no hero.

It was Marks' long-running lawsuit against the state that resulted in the court-ordered decertification of GA's old, insecure, unverifiable touchscreen voting systems, only to see them replaced by Raffensperger with new, insecure, unverifiable touchscreen voting systems made by a different company. That, despite expert advice to move to a transparent, overseeable, resilient, verifiable hand-marked paper ballot system.

So, what is Trump's game with the FBI raid in Fulton? And should we be worried about it? Should Raffenpserger, who is running for Governor this year, be worried about it? Well, given the disastrous way he ran the 2020 election in the Peach State, argues Marks, yes, he should be quite concerned.

While she breaks down just some of the ways that Raffensperger screwed up the tallies of the 2020 election in Georgia --- and the purported three different counts that "confirmed" the results there (despite each count coming out differently!) --- it wasn't only the Republican Sec. of State whose decisions were odd. For his part, for example, though Trump asked for a received a "recount" in the election he lost by about 12,000 votes, that recount was done on the same computer tabulators that tallied the race the first time, even though he should have had a hand-count, according to state law.

"The law requires a manual count, not a machine recount," Marks tells me. "Trump and Biden and [Libertarian Party candidate] Joe Jorgenson would have all had the opportunity to put a counter at every table. Imagine if a proper hand recount were done and Trump had had a counter at every table. He would have a had a hard time saying later, 'the count was wrong', because it would have been his people counting. Raffensperger knew that was the law. He did not give Trump the recount that he should have had. And, mysteriously, Trump did not ask for the recount he should have had."

We discuss that mystery and many others, even as Marks reiterates that she has seen no evidence to suggest that the election was stolen from Trump in 2020.

"We have no evidence that Trump won the state," she reiterates again today. "Was the election conducted in a reckless, sloppy, unverifiable way? It indeed was."

"There's a lesson to be learned there," she explains. "We've got an even more contentious year here in 2026. And we damned well better get our act together to have a resilient system. So it is important for us to go back and know what was really done wrong in Georgia."

What does a "resilient system" entail? And how can you help ensure one? Tune in and find out. Hint: it begins (though doesn't end) with hand-marked paper ballots at every polling place...

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: The President of the United States likes to dismiss concerns about climate change by explaining that the real threat to humanity is actually nuclear weapons. And yet, as we were reminded again at midnight last night, he's not actually interested in doing anything about that threat to humanity either. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST... before we get to our excellent guest today on that, just a quick follow up to our recent coverage regarding last week's raid by the FBI at the Fulton County, Georgia elections warehouse, outside Atlanta, where federal officials absconded with ballots and other materials from the 2020 election that Donald Trump pretends was stolen from him, because he is unable to admit he lost it.

We've been trying to get to this story all week, but just a quick notice to mention that, following last week's raid --- and the Dept. of Justice's lawsuits against 23 states attempting to force them to turn over private voter data (suits that already being dismissed by federal courts) --- all three top Administration officials who had requested time to confront the bipartisan National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) annual conference last week, cancelled their appearances at the last minute.

NASS had rearranged the conference schedule to allow for remarks by Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. By Friday afternoon, however, all but Gabbard had cancelled. And just before her remarks were to begin, she pulled out as well. Maine's Democratic SoS, Shenna Bellows called them "cowards," noting, along with others, that the Administration's threats to interfere with upcoming elections is unlawful and likely to end poorly for them.

THEN... It's on to other, ahem, explosive news of the day. As of midnight last night, Trump allowed the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between the U.S. and Russia to expire. The New START agreement, struck with Russia by President Barack Obama in 2010, included strict caps on the numbers of ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads each country could deploy, and included an extensive verification regime. The 10-year pact was extended for another five years in 2021 by President Joe Biden, and Russia has said they were open to another extension. Trump simply let it expire.

We're joined today by long time nuclear weapons policy analyst STEPHEN SCHWARTZ, former Executive Director and Publisher of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, keepers of the notorious "Doomsday Clock". On his excellent social media feed at @AtomicAnalyst last night, Schwartz lamented that, while "Trump has boasted for decades that he knows everything there is to know about nuclear weapons and could easily negotiate a great deal with Russia," he allowed New START, "the last treaty constraining US and Russian nuclear weapons" to expire, and "hasn't lifted a tiny finger to replace it."

"He did absolutely nothing during his first term," Schwartz tells me today. "Now, here we are again. He did absolutely nothing during his first year in office, and now we have no treaty whatsoever. I think because, first of all, he doesn't care about it, and because he views the treaty as tainted because it was negotiated by his arch-enemy Barack Obama."

"It's a great loss for humanity. It's not a win for anybody," he opines. "Anybody who thinks that getting rid of the treaty will make the United States or the world safer hasn't been living in reality for quite some time."

Welp. That sounds like Trump.

Schwartz breaks down the specifics of New START, and the dangers now posed with its loss. We also discuss, among other things, the fact that Trump's so-called "Golden Dome" anti-missile system, if Congress ever called for it to be built, is likely to make the U.S. less safe, not more so.

"The Golden Dome is the latest iteration of decades of efforts to try to use technology to eliminate the political problem that gives us the ever-present threat of nuclear war," Schwartz, author of Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 explains. "But it only works --- if it works at all --- against weapons that are flying through the air. It does not work on anything that would be coming at you from under water [such as Russia's Poseidon drones, developed in response to the threat of a U.S. defensive missile shield], nor for that matter would it shoot down planes that would be carrying nuclear missiles or nuclear gravity bombs."

It does, however, result in adversaries building even more advanced and more numerous offensive weapons systems to ensure they can overcome such a defensive system.

There's a whole lot more with Schwartz today, including: his assessments of the various nuclear threats now posed by China, North Korea, Iran and others, and whether the U.S. under Trump remains the greatest nuclear threat to the planet; why it would be such a terrible idea for Trump to restart U.S. nuclear missile testing, as he vowed last year; and much more.

Tune in for our excellent, enlightening, educational and, at times, chilling conversation with Schwartz today.

FINALLY... We close with still more nuclear related news --- this time, nuclear energy --- and the Trump Dept. of Energy's secret change to nuclear power plant safety rules, in our latest Green News Report with Desi Doyen, on that and much 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!)

On today's BradCast: Some of us saw it coming and warned about it long ago. Now that it's here, many STIL don't seem to see it. We get some help today, toward that end, from our guest, who published a startling report on all of it this week. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP, however, a few headlines...

The Trump Administration claimed today to be drawing down their deployment of under-trained, over-paid ICE and CBP goons from Minnesota. They say they are immediately withdrawing 700 of them. Donald Trump says a "softer touch" is needed. But that "softer touch" will still leave at least 2,000 thugs on the streets of Minneapolis --- the same number that had already been terrorizing residents in the Twin Cities region before they murdered Renee Good last month.

But staffing issues for the federal government is clearly a problem for them. More than a dozen of the top prosecutors have now resigned from the U.S. Attorney's office in Minnesota in recent weeks, since the start of Operation Metro Surge. And with hundreds of habeas petitions filed in court by detainees since then, federal judges are accusing ICE and government attorneys of ignoring scores of court orders to release them.

On Tuesday, one of those attorneys hit a breaking point. Julie Le, an ICE immigration court judge who volunteered at the beginning of January to help out the short-staffed U.S. Attorney's office, had been assigned more than 85 cases in that time. During a hearing yesterday, she made an emotional and dramatic plea to the judge. "I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep,” she said, adding “The system sucks, this job sucks, I am trying with every breath I have to get you what you need."

Today, it appears Le was pushed out of her job by DOJ, along with her supervisor.

THEN... We're joined today by Talking Points Memo's investigative reporter JOSH KOVENSKY, to discuss two different disturbing stories he's published in recent days. Both of them insane. One of them wacky. The other exceedingly troubling.

Following the FBI's raid of the Fulton County, Georgia elections warehouse last week outside of Atlanta --- part of Trump's latest scheme to obfuscate his humiliating election loss in 2020 --- the President of the United States took to social media to double down. He advanced a number of posts that revived the old "ItalyGate" conspiracy that posits (and forgive me if I get a detail wrong), that Barack Obama and China, with the help of money from Iran --- funneled somehow through Switzerland and/or Dubai --- took control of Italy's military spy satellites to hack computerized voting machines and/or ballot tabulators to steal the election for Joe Biden in 2020.

Sure, it may sound crazy, but that's only because it is. And while there may be no actual evidence to support any of it, that didn't prevent Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, from being on the ground to oversee last week's FBI raid of 2020 ballots in Fulton County. Why would the nation's top spy chief, whose job has nothing to do with domestic law enforcement, be there? We discuss that and other related idiocy today with Kovensky.

In far more troubling news, in a deep dive at TPM this week, Kovensky details how a series of White House memos issued after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, direct the Dept. of Justice to reinterpret a post 9/11 federal terrorism statute known as 2339A. The statute, as originally intended, allows prosecutors to hold associates of terrorists and terror groups to account for "material support to terrorists".

The Trump Administration's reinterpretation of the statute, however, demands, as Kovensky reports, that prosecutors use the provision to "target those who espouse 'anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,' [and] direct federal law enforcement to use speech --- including “extremism on migration, race, and gender” --- as key criteria for who to investigate and against whom to bring the most aggressive charges possible."

Once again --- (as longtime BRAD BLOG readers may recall when they were turned against me and my family in 2013 in a different way) --- the federal government's post 9/11 tools for fighting terror, are being turned against non-terrorist Americans.

In this case, the government is now employing these measures to prosecute, as terror organizations, people and left-leaning advocacy groups regarded as political opponents of Donald Trump, including Black Lives Matter and "Antifa" --- along with anybody else the government wants to associate with them.

"These are 'material support for terrorism' statutes. It sounds dry, but it's important," argues Kovensky today, explaining how the provision has already been used to go after people at protests where someone else may have committed a crime, "if the protest was associated with a leftwing cause or something opposed to the administration. Then we are now starting to see the DOJ go after it as 'terrorism'."

"With 'material support for terrorism', if you're convicted on that," he adds, "prosecutors can then apply for a 'terrorism enhancement.' Even if you have no prior criminal history, and regardless of whether or not the underlying charge was non-violent --- it could be something as simple as spray-painting a government building --- you're now looking at a recommended minimum for the judge of 17.5 years behind bars. So it dramatically increases the severity of the possible sentence."

This is why you may have heard people like A.G. Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and others in the Administration in recent months, refer to protesters --- even those like Renee Good and Alex Pretti who were murdered by immigration officials --- as "domestic terrorists", along with vows to hunt down and break up their "networks".

"It gives the government greater powers to investigate," Kovensky tells me, "but it also raises unbelievably grave concerns about freedom of speech and freedom of association."

And, yes, this is what many civil libertarians argued more than two decades ago. "If you look at the commentary in the early 2000s after 9/11 and what a slippery slope this was with the PATRIOT Act, it's all very eerie," he says.

Told you this was a troubling one. Tune in for much 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!)

We getcha caught up on a whole bunch of news from over the weekend on today's BradCast, before opening up the phones to callers [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among that news...

• As we'd be warning, the federal Government is now in another partial shutdown. In theory, once House lawmakers get back to the Capitol amid climate change-fueled extreme weather across much of the country, they will adopt a package of bills approved in the U.S. Senate that set new funding levels for most of the Government, along with a two week extension of current spending levels for DHS, ICE and CBP, as Democrats continue to insist on new guardrails for the goons who have been terrorizing America under the guise of Donald Trump's deadly mass deportation campaign.

• Puerto Rico's pop/rap superstar Bad Bunny won a whole bunch of big awards at Sunday night's Grammy Awards and spoke out, movingly (much of it in Spanish), against the cruel deportation horrors of the Trump regime. Many other artists did as well. Trump is threatening to sue some o them. Bad Bunny --- a pretty good bunny, as it turns out --- will be making Trump and MAGA's heads continue to explode this Sunday, as the most popular artists on the planet headlines the Super Bowl halftime show.

• Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year old Ecuadorian boy used as bait by ICE officers to try and lure his mother out of her house in Minneapolis before he and his father were shipped down to an ICE detention facility in Texas, was ordered to be returned home, along with his father, over the weekend. In his ruling, some of which we share today, the federal judge excoriated the federal Government. Liam is now back in Minnesota, though his school was closed today due to a bomb threat. Moreover, a measles outbreak at the family detention center in TX has been reported. Hopefully, Ramos and his father will be okay.

• There were a couple of runoff Special Elections over the weekend in Texas. In one, for the U.S. House in a very "blue" Houston district, Democratic Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee easily defeated a fellow Democrat. Once sworn in to the seat held by Rep. Sylvester Turner until his death last year, the GOP's already incredibly thin majority margin will become thinner still. House Speaker Mike Johnson will be able to lose just ONE vote and still pass a measure on a party line vote.

• But, also in Texas on Saturday, in a state Senate seat in a very "red" district which Trump won in 2024 by 17 points, Democratic labor union leader Taylor Rehmet defeated his Republican opponent, who enjoyed a full-throated endorsement from Trump, by more than 14 points! That is a stunning 31-point swing for Democrats in a very Republican district near San Antonio, against a MAGA-endorsed candidate, deep in the heart of Texas. Think any GOPers are noticing yet? The day after the election, hilariously, Trump claimed that he knew nothing about the race. "I'm not involved in that, that's a local Texas race," Trump tried to gaslight a Fox "News" reporter, hilariously claiming, "I don't know anything about it."

• On Sunday night, in a long rambling post on his failing social media site, Trump announced he would be shutting down the Kennedy Center (he calls it the Trump Kennedy Center) for two years due to much-needed renovation. All of it, complete and utter lies, as detailed on today's program. In short, he is shutting it down, because it has collapsed after he unlawfully took control of it, as both performers and patrons have fled from his hot, obnoxious mess.

There is a lot of other news along the way today, before we then open up our public airwaves to callers, who also have quite a bit on their minds!...

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've been warning about it on The BradCast ever since the government re-opened after the last shutdown, its longest ever, in October and November. There now seems to be no way to avoid another shutdown as of midnight Friday, a former White House and Senate budget expert explains on today's 'BradCast'. But, he also notes, "this is the right thing to shut down the government for." [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... A couple of other news items of note today...

• The first special elections since the murder of Veterans Affairs Intensive Care Unit nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis were held on Tuesday, to determine partisan control of the Minnesota state House of Representatives. Two vacant seats in very Democratic-leaning parts of the Twin Cities region were up for grabs. One featured a Democrat who ran unopposed. (Spoiler: she won.) The other featured a Democratic candidate running against a Republican who had run for the same seat, and lost, in both 2022 and 2024. It's a district where Kamala Harris won by 71 points. On Tuesday, the Democratic candidate, Meg Luger-Nikolai, won the election by more than 91 points! That's a 20-point swing for the Ds, as Luger-Nikolai garnered more than 95% of the vote. Her Republican challenger won just over 4%. If Republicans weren't worried about this year's midterms before, Tuesday night's results oughta put the fear of God into 'em.

• Speaking of elections, Donald Trump is still pretending he won the one that he lost in 2020 to Joe Biden. To that end, Trump has weaponized his FBI and today, they were ordered to raid the Fulton County (Atlanta) elections warehouse. Reportedly, the federal agents were there to collect ballots and other materials from the 2020 election, which have been retained by court order since then. Supposedly, this will finally provide Trump the evidence of massive "voter fraud" that he has alleged for so many years. If the Georgia Republican Sec. of State was unwilling back in January of 2021 to "find 11,780 votes" to help Trump steal the state's election that year, by golly, Trump is gonna "find" them himself now, five years later.

THEN... U.S. border patrol agents have fired shots 16 times over the course of the past year. In every instance, as WaPo reported yesterday, the Trump Administration declared the shootings to have been justified before any probe had been completed. Four U.S. citizens have been shot in those incidents. Two of them were killed over the past three weeks in Minneapolis.

While Trump is putting up a show of "softening" his stance on the federal government's invasion of the Twin Cities region by ICE and CBP, Greg Sargent argues that it's little more than posturing because Trump is now "frightened" that Democrats in Congress will shut the government down again unless serious restrictions are placed on funding for the Dept. of Homeland Security's immigration goon squads.

Senate Democrats, for their part, seem quite serious about doing just that, as the deadline for a new, 2026 government spending bill is midnight on Friday. With the House in recess, any changes made to the six funding bills they adopted before leaving, couldn't be voted on back in the House until they reconvene next week. That virtually guarantees at least a brief shutdown. To make things worse, Senate Republicans have been unwilling to decouple the DHS/ICE funding from the other funding bills, to keep the rest of the government open, until they can come to an agreement over new guardrails that Democrats are insisting on for ICE and CPB's clownish but deadly operations across the country.

"This is the right thing to shut down the government for," argues our guest, BOBBY KOGAN, today. He served as an advisor to the White House Office of Management and Budget under President Biden and, before that, as Senior Advisor on the Senate Budget Committee. He is now Senior Director of Federal Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Kogan argues that "there is nothing more more quintessential than fighting government oppression." He tells me that he has long argued that nothing is more important to society than "shelter, food and healthcare. I'm the person who says that's the quintessential thing. But, actually, not being executed by the government is the most quintessential thing --- not being executed by the government for existing, and just filming them --- this is a thing you have to shut down the government for."

But at what cost? How many other unrelated agencies will also have to be closed for a time in the bargain? How many Americans will be harmed by those closures? And what exactly are Democrats insisting on in exchange for approving another $10 billion for ICE, after the Republicans' "Big Beautiful Bill" already established a $75 billion slush fund for the out-of-control agency just last Summer?

In addition to guarantees that they will follow the law and the Fourth Amendment's right to privacy with judicial warrants during raids of private homes, Kogan says that Democrats are coalescing on a number of demands, including mandated body cams during enforcement actions and DOJ civil rights reviews of federal government shootings. He also believes that someone, such as DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, will need to be fired, and that clawing back some of that $75 billion granted to ICE last year would also be "a good idea."

"We gave money to the IRS [during the Biden Administration], and as soon as they came to power," he explains, Republicans rescinded much of that money. He suggests Dems should do the same thing as well with the $75 billion that ICE received last year with no-strings-attached.

"There's not much leverage that the Democratic Party has because it is in the minority," Kogan concedes. "But you have to try. Because what else can you possibly do? This is one of the few must-pass bills that still exist. Government shutdowns cannot go on forever because eventually everything starts to break. So it's only a little bit of leverage, but you've got to use it."

Based on his conversations with Democrats in Congress, he tells me, they are not in the mood for "pinky promises from the administration that is busy executing U.S. citizens" when it comes to vows of course corrections. So, he assesses, "the most likely outcome is a six bill shutdown."

"Will it work? I don't know," Kogan asserts. "But Democrats owe it to the American people to do the best they can. Because it is not just political whims or whatever that matters. It matters to real people. And it matters to history. How we respond to this is going to shape what we are as a nation. So Democrats owe it to the American people to give it their all."

FINALLY... The legendary Bruce Springsteen released a new song today via social media called The Streets of Minneapolis. In his announcement, he explained that he "wrote this song on Saturday [the day Alex Pretti was killed], recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good." He added: "Stay free."

We share his moving --- and inspiring --- tune, in full, to close out today's program...

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've got a lot to get to on today's BradCast. While much of our coverage may seem like a grab bag from the headlines above, you'll find there is a central theme at its heart. I think. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• We begin with the darkest news, so things can only get brighter from there, right? The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, keepers of the notorious "Doomsday Clock" reveal their latest adjustment, ticking the metaphorical timepiece from last year's 89 seconds to midnight, to just 85 seconds to humanity's end this year. The group of science advocates cited increasing risk of nuclear warfare, worsening human-caused climate change (Donald Trump was singled out there) and other threats to civilization itself, such as the misuse of biotechnology and artificial intelligence.

• Buffoonish, Nazi-ish U.S. Customs and Border Patrol chief enforcement clown, Gregory Bovino, is pushed out following the latest killing of another U.S. citizen over the weekend in his violent, chaotic Minneapolis operation. New villains are rotated in by the White House, even as Trump appears to try and play nice with his mortal enemies, Minnesota's Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

• But there are even more signs that the courageous people of Minneapolis are winning this one, even if the battle is far from over. The chief federal judge in Minnesota (a George W. Bush appointee) has ordered in-person testimony from the Acting Director of ICE, after the Administration has repeatedly failed to comply with court orders regarding immigrant rights. The judge has ordered him to explain why he should not be held in contempt by the court.

• Trump's corrupt U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's thuggish letter to Minnesota's Gov. Walz --- sent to the state just after the border patrol agent execution of 37-year old VA ICU nurse and U.S. citizen Alex Pretti over the weekend --- landed with a thud, after she essentially suggested the federal immigration crackdown would end only if the state turned over its voter roll data to the federal government. Voting rights and election law experts described the move as "reprehensible". Bondi has sued some 23 states who refused to comply with the demand. Two weeks ago, a federal judge in California dismissed the DOJ's lawsuit against the state, finding it "unprecedented and illegal". Last week, a judge in Georgia dismissed the lawsuit in the Peach State. And yesterday, a federal judge in Oregon dismissed the DOJ's suit there. In the meantime, MN Sec. of State Steve Simon has explained that he has no intention of violating state or federal law to answer Bondi's "ransom note".

• As we covered last week, a recent federal review of nearly 50 million voter registrations found zero evidence of widespread fraud by noncitizens on the voter rolls in state after state, county after county. In a new report late last week, out of more than two million active voter registrations in Utah, the state was able to find just one single noncitizen on its rolls. The state found that the person never voted and has since been removed from the rolls. Utah is another state that has correctly refused to turn over its unredacted voter data to Bondi and the DOJ.

• In news from the front lines of the Trump/GOP Gerrymandering Wars, Democrats in Maryland are now moving ahead with a plan to draw a new map designed to flip the state's last remaining Republican U.S. House district from "red" to "blue". And a state judge in Virginia, just before airtime today, declared the effort by state Democrats to adopt a constitutional amendment to redraw its U.S. House map to flip as many as 4 or 5 seats from "red" to "blue" this year to be unlawful. Proponents of the measure accuse Republican opponents as forum shopping for a friendly judge and vow to appeal his ruling.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report following the weekend's deadly winter storm across much of the U.S.; as House Republicans vote to overturn a decades-long ban on toxic mining in MN; as Michigan's Attorney General sues the Big Oil "cartel"; and as a judge blocks Trump's attempt to withhold funding for a national EV charging network adopted by Democrats under President Biden...

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: Apparently, the Trump Administration's murder of U.S. citizens will continue until morale improves. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Once again, we must devote another show to another brutal, virtually execution-style killing of another American citizen on the streets of a great American city by our own federal government.

On Saturday, Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents murdered beloved 37-year old Veterans Affairs hospital Intensive Care Unit nurse, Alex Pretti. His shooting, while bearing peaceful witness to federal government atrocities, comes about two weeks after --- and a mile or so away --- from where 37-year old mother Renee Good was similarly killed in her car at point blank range by one of thousands of heavily militarized federal law enforcement agents deployed by Donald Trump to Minneapolis, Minnesota to supposedly enforce civil (not criminal) immigration law.

While we spend a short amount of time on the blatant, quickly-disproven lies told by the Trump Administration about the incident --- from the chief of the CBP to the Secretary of DHS to the President of the United States himself --- about Pretti, most of our time today is devoted to his heroic acts and those of thousands of others in the Twin City area in recent weeks. They are leading the way toward minimizing and hopefully ending ICE atrocities, and helping to inspire elected officials as well as the rest of the formerly "free" nation.

To be clear --- as the video tapes of the killing from about four different angles reveal --- Pretti was not attacking federal officials, or attempting to "assassinate" them. He was neither "acting violently" nor "brandishing" a deadly weapon, as Administration officials lied to the public in the wake of the killing. Pretti was simply documenting the atrocities. He was lawfully videotaping with his phone, even as he tried to render aid to a woman thrown to the pavement by one of Trump's federal goons. He was trying to comfort the woman, even while being pepper sprayed, until he was eventually dragged away, subdued by a pack of agents, and then shot at least ten times at close range. The gun he was licensed to carry was never "brandished" or even removed from his belt, until a federal agent did so just before Pretti was subsequently executed.

This latest horrific killing comes just days before Congress was set to pass new spending bills before the government must otherwise shut down again at week's end. Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who had previously planned to vote yes on the package already passed narrowly in the House, now suggest they will vote no on including more funding for DHS and ICE without serious restraints enacted by law on their unlawful behavior. But there are also, arguably, reasons why Democrats might still want to vote for the bill, including the fact that a government shutdown of agencies included in the part of the budget that funds DHS, would also shutdown and furlough employees again at agencies like FEMA, in the middle of a deadly winter storm, just months after the longest federal shutdown in U.S. history last October and November.

There is much more, including a tepid response, following the killing of Pretti, from the CEOs of giant, Minnesota-based corporations --- such as Target, Best Buy, 3M, Delta Airlines and UnitedHealth Group --- who have otherwise remained silent over the past year of Trump's violent reign. But we would rather hear from listeners today, as we carve out time to take a bunch of calls, including from longtime listener Roger up in Minneapolis. He is one of the heroes in the Twin City who are, right now, heroically leading the way for the nation towards the light and the rule of law, against Trump's lawless thugs, even amid frigid temps that fell as low as negative 40 degrees wind chill over the past several days...

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!)

Hey! Another busy day on The BradCast! What are the odds? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

No, you're not hallucinating. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith did testify previously before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. It was back in December last year. But it was a closed-door hearing with mostly Committee attorneys on the Republican side doing the questioning on behalf of the Committee's Republican members. Smith had wanted to testify publicly last year, as all previous Special Counsels have done following Presidential probes. Republicans were so proud of that hearing that they waited until New Years Eve to release its transcript and audio, so as few Americans as possible would see it.

Today in D.C., in the same Committee, Smith was finally allowed to testify publicly. The man who secured two different federal, criminal indictments of Donald Trump --- one for his alleged crimes related to trying to steal the 2020 election, the other for stealing thousands of pages of classified national security documents upon leaving office the first time --- has nothing to hide. [Full video now here.]

As Smith told the Committee today during his opening remarks: “If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat. No one --- no one --- should be above the law in this country. And the law required that he be held to account, so that is what I did. To have done otherwise on the facts of these cases would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and as a public servant, of which I had no intention of doing."

The veteran, three-decade long Dept. of Justice prosecutor testified for about five hours today, and Republicans weren't able to lay much of a glove on any aspect of his election probe. Not that they didn't try, of course. (Smith was unable to speak about the stolen documents case beyond what has already been made public about it, as sycophantic Trump-appointed federal Judge Aileen Cannon still has his report on that matter under seal.) For his part, Trump was so bothered by it that he took to his failing social media cite to again call Smith "deranged", while instructing his Attorney General to bring charges against Smith.

Republicans focused many of their attempted attacks against Smith on false claims that he "spied" on the phone calls of GOP members of Congress in the days before and after Trump's January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Neither Smith nor his team "spied" on anyone. They did, however, receive judicial warrants to obtain toll records for the phones of several members who Trump contacted while the Capitol was under violent siege, when the sore loser President hoped to delay Congressional confirmation of Joe Biden's 2020 victory, as he falsely claimed the election had been stolen from him. The toll records do not include information on the content of phone calls. They only detail numbers dialed or received, the date and time, how long they talked.

Several Republicans also took the old First Amendment "free speech" defense out for a spin today. It didn't work much better at denting the case against Trump. As Smith explained once again, Trump is welcome to lie about a stolen election all he likes. But when those lies are used in furtherance of a crime, it's a different matter.

You can lie to your friends that you are worth $10 million dollars, if you want, explains our guest today, former lifelong Republican and attorney KEITH BARBER. But you can't offer that same lie on your mortgage application. That becomes criminal fraud, not free speech.

Barber, who now contributes to the progressive Daily Kos website, joins us for analysis, with both legal and political insight on Smith's testimony, and how --- or if --- today's public hearing might move the political needle one way or another for those in his former party.

After observing that there was next to no coverage of today's historic hearing on the front page of the Fox "News" website this afternoon, Barber argues: "The opinions of MAGAs on this are intractable. It's a cult. There's nothing you can do about it. Everybody else is more open-minded and I think has already decided Trump is out to lunch on this. I don't think that these hearings are going to move the needle all that much."

Barber is with us for much of the hour today for both analysis of the Smith hearing and for legal insight on an extraordinarily disturbing story broken late last night by the Associate Press. The outlet reported on a secret memo instructing federal ICE agents --- in contradiction of the Constitution, decades of Supreme Court precedent and written training materials for new officers --- that they may enter a private home without a judicial warrant signed by a judge. Only an administrative warrant, issued by ICE itself, is needed, according to the memo revealed by two agency whistleblowers.

Similarly disturbing: though the memo, signed last May be the acting Director of ICE, is addressed to "all ICE personnel", it has only been distributed to "select DHS officials" who have then shared it with some employees "who were told to read it and return it," according to AP. The memo offers no detail on how this new legal determination was made nor any explanation for basis of reversing decades of longstanding guidance.

Barber published his own report on the troubling news earlier today at Daily Kos, in a piece headlined "Secret ICE Memo Trains Agents To Conduct Unconstitutional Home Invasions". He tells me that the secret change in guidance has resulted in more violence, as people are dragged out of their homes, believing the old rules, that a warrant signed by a judge is needed to enter a home. Then, their doors are smashed in and they are dragged out.

"It's really concerning because it is increasing the level of violence associated with these things, and because of the secrecy involved in it. And it's also just wrong under the law," says Barber. "That is not what the Supreme Court in multiple cases and certainly a host of lower courts have ruled the Fourth Amendment allows."

Finally, we close out another absurdly busy day with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, as the Arctic's climate change-disrupted polar vortex returns to freeze much of the U.S. this week, and as our dumb President offers astoundingly stupid new lies about wind energy...

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!)