On today's BradCast: It's been less than two weeks since he ordered the U.S. military invasion of a sovereign nation, killed about 80 people, kidnapped their leader and his wife to put them on trial for something or other here in the U.S., claimed he now "runs" their country and controls their natural resources, to exploit and sell as he pleases, the money from which will be held in offshore bank accounts controlled by him. Oh, and he's now declared himself "Acting President" there. And we almost don't discuss any of it anymore, because he's moved on to his next several imperial conquests, not to mention his deadly militarized assaults of thousands of people who live in U.S. cities, including American citizens. As Jon Stewart recently asked in exasperation, "What are we even doing here?!" Good question, Jon. [Audio link to full program follows this summary.]

Before we try to make some kind of sense --- any kind of sense --- of all of that, a few other news items of note today...

• And then they came for the journalists... Donald Trump's FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter on Wednesday, seizing her laptops, her phone and her smartwatch, as part of a supposed classified documents leak investigation requested by the Pentagon. The Post's Executive Editor described it as an "extraordinary, aggressive action [that] is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work." The New York Times characterized the raid on a journalist's home as "a significant escalation in the Trump administration's tactics in seeking information from the news media." The journalist, Hannah Natanson, as AP explained, "has reported extensively on the federal workforce and recently published a piece describing how she gained hundreds of new sources --- leading one colleague to call her 'the federal government whisperer.'"

• Here we go again?... In Qatar today, some personnel at a major U.S. air base that houses thousands of troops are reportedly being advised to evacuate immediately, amid growing unrest in Iran, the killing of hundreds of anti-government protesters by the ruling regime in Tehran, and Trump's vows to those protesters that "help is on the way." The base, Al Udeid Air Base outside of Doha, was targeted in Iran's response to the U.S. attack on nuclear facilities last July.

Then, as Mad King Trump saber rattles with both Iran and, perhaps even more incredibly, our NATO ally of Greenland, there is still the matter of his recent invasion of Venezuela less than two short weeks ago, and the power vacuum left in its wake as he tries to convince reticent American oil companies to go plunder the nation's vast oil reserves.

None of it is lawful. And, of course, none of it makes any sense. But, also, none of it is over, even if he, we, the media have, for the moment, moved momentarily on to other Trump-induced nightmares.

"This isn't close to over," argues my guest today, NICHOLAS GROSSMAN, International Relations professor and political scientist at the University of Illinois. He is quick to compare Trump's rush to praise himself for the attack and abduction of Venezuela's President, Nicolas Maduro, to George W. Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech in 2003, just after the initial assault on Iraq, before the nation would quickly devolve into years-long, deadly chaos and violence.

"Tactically," Grossman concedes, the operation in Venezuela "was very impressive. But not strategically so." He describes reports in recent days of runs on banks, stores, and paramilitaries in the streets, arguing that the "competitions for power" are just beginning. "The situation is likely to devolve rather than stabilize. Or just have a spate of violence, and then at which point the regime re-stabilizes. It's unclear why that would be better than where it was with Maduro in charge."

Grossman, who teaches classes on terrorism insurgency, national security policy and 21st century technology and warfare, wrote about Trump's unlawful assault last week, detailing how it is likely to make things worse, not better, in Venezuela, the United States, and elsewhere in the region.

Moreover, he tells me today, despite Trump's rhetoric, all of this is unlikely to result in a rush of American oil companies to exploit the nation's resources. "This is where the lack of any sort of follow-on plan creates such a problem," says Grossman. "There is not a reliable security situation there, especially long term. There's not reliable rule of law." Add that to a glut of oil already on the market keeping prices (and profits) low; a particularly dirty and difficult-to-refine crude available there; and it seems unlikely that any of this will actually pay off for anybody.

So, why, in fact, was it done in the first place? On that, argues Grossman: "It doesn't really need to be only one reason. It's many things possibly at once. A lot of it, I do think, is demonstration of power. Because they can."

"Nothing Trump and his administration have done have seemed to conceive of national interest in the same standard way that Presidents, various leaders, voters of both parties, had in the United States for many years. There's 'because I can, because then people will be more afraid of me, because people will be more likely to pay me off.'"

He speculates on other explanations as well, and rings in on where Trump's militaristic tirade is likely to bring the U.S. next, even if things begin to further devolve in Venezuela at the same time.

"The biggest effect seems to be that it has emboldened him. And emboldened actors such as Pete Hegseth, where they don't think anybody can stop them. And they certainly don't care about violating norms, or the long term risks of upsetting the international order."

There is much more troubling stuff to chew over in my broad conversation with Grossman today. I hope you'll tune in...

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Today on The BradCast: It's difficult to notice --- or trust your own eyes --- when it all happens in slow motion. At least until it happens quickly. But, yes, the wall continues to crack. Day by day. Brick by brick. [Audio to full show follows this summary.]

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

• One of the worst headwinds that House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Congressional Republicans will be facing next year, in their hopes of hanging on to their narrow majority in the lower chamber, is their cuts to Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) subsidies that are set to expire at year's end. It will skyrocket the cost of premiums for millions of Americans beginning on January 1. Today, Johnson announced his own caucus in the House could not agree on a fix, all but guaranteeing there will be no such fix until next year earliest. Congress will be recessing until 2026 at the end of this week.

• On yesterday's Rachel Maddow Show, she was somewhat misleading in her suggestion that last night at midnight, December 15th, was the last chance to sign up for a health care policy under the Affordable Care Act to ensure health care coverage next year. In fact, the Open Enrollment period for Obamacare --- for both new policies or to change a current one --- continues until January 15th next year in most states. Though, depending on which state you are in, coverage may now not begin until February under a new policy. In several states, however, which run their own exchanges (rather than forcing resident to purchase policies via the federal exchange), including California, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington D.C., you can still sign up for policies (or change current ones) before the end of the year to see them take effect as of January 1. Costs are going to go up either way for millions of Americans, thanks to Republicans in Congress refusing to extend subsidies that would prevent monthly premiums for policies purchased via the Obamacare marketplaces from doubling or tripling in many cases from what they were this year.

• Donald Trump and the U.S. Military's murder spree on the high seas continued on Monday with three new attacks on three supposed drug boats near the coast of Venezuela, bringing the number of people killed by our completely unlawful attacks to at least 95. In related news on Monday, Trump signed an Executive Order "designating fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction", in hopes of adding some --- any --- legal justification to both his murder strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, and a promised eventual attack on supposed "narco-terrorists" in Venezuela (even though fentanyl is not produced or trafficked from there.) Also relatedly, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday said he will not release video of the unlawful second strike on an alleged drug boat from September 2nd, when the U.S. fired on two shipwrecked survivors following an attack earlier in the day, a huge violation of both U.S. and International law.

• Trump's not-insane, very powerful, and very low profile White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, had a whole bunch of pretty shocking things to say about Trump, his policies (both foreign and domestic), his top appointees (from Vance to Bondi to Vought), his retribution campaign against political foes, and much more in some ten interviews reportedly given over the past year to an author who has written a book about WH Chiefs of Staff over the years. A number of Wiles' eyebrow raising remarks from those interviews were published by Vanity Fair today and D.C. is abuzz trying to figure out what it all means.

• As still more bricks in the wall appear to be falling out, a number of Republicans, including MAGA loyalists past and present, have seemingly turned --- gently or otherwise --- against Donald Trump's deranged, repulsive remarks on Monday about the murder of Hollywood legend Rob Reiner, who was killed just hours earlier on Sunday along with his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, in their Los Angeles home.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report as climate change-fueled torrential rain, flooding and levee failure plague the Pacific Northwest; Trump continues his very selective and political approval for federal disaster aid; and as New York City's congestion pricing program (which Trump opposes, natch) continues to clear the air in Midtown...

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On today's BradCast: Things are now moving very quickly, it seems, in the story of our Defense Secretary reportedly ordering the murder of shipwrecked survivors in the Caribbean. Luckily, our guest today is able to help us make sense --- where sense is to be had --- of all of the different parts of this quickly spidering story. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

The Trump Administration has been citing their supposed War on Drugs or War on Terror --- or, as what they describe as a war on "narco-terrorists" --- as legal justification for more than 20 U.S. military attacks against small boats in international waters near the coast of Venezuela. The attacks by the U.S. military have, so far, according to the Pentagon, resulted in more than 80 deaths of supposed drug-traffickers. No evidence, however, has been given by the Administration to support their claims that either drugs or "narco-terrorists" were on the defenseless boats in question when they were destroyed by U.S. rocket fire. In previous years, alleged drug boats would have been interdicted, evidence collected, and those on board either tried or interrogated to further bust up international drug cartels like the one found to have been facilitated for years by the former President of Honduras.

So, it has raised concerns from both Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress that Donald Trump, today, formally issued a pardon to the former President of Honduras who was tried and convicted by the Dept. of Justice last year to 45 years in prison for his role in trafficking some 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S.

All of that is contextual backstory to allegations, originally reported by Washington Post last week, that Trump's Defense Secretary, former Fox "News" weekend co-host Pete Hegseth, issued orders to "kill everyone" in the Pentagon's first attack on a supposed drug boat in early September. Two survivors of the attack, reportedly clinging to the remains of their boat, were subsequently murdered in a second kill shot, said to have been on the orders of Hegseth and carried out by Admiral Mitch Bradley. He currently leads the U.S. Special Operations Command. Before his October promotion, he served as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command that carried out the attack in question on September 2nd.

Killing victims of a boat strike is wildly unlawful under both U.S. and international law. It is even cited specifically in the Department of Defense's Law of War Manual, Section 18.3.2.1, describing "Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations." The provision warns the "requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal." It goes on to cite, specifically: "For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal."

After previously boasting about having watched the September 2nd attack live via drone video, Hegseth today claimed that the second strike on the survivors happened amid the "fog of war" and that he "didn't stick around" for the rest of the mission after the first strike. Though he claims Bradley "made the right call" in killing the survivors. "He had complete authority to do it," said the man who theoretically gave him that authority, while now appearing to throw Admiral Bradley somewhat under the bus.

And all of that, of course, comes on the heels of feigned outrage from both Hegseth and Trump just about a week ago, after a video was released by six Democratic members of Congress --- all veterans of the U.S. armed forces or intelligence services --- reminding members of the military that they are required to "refuse illegal orders". The video resulted in outrageous claims by Trump that the Democratic officials had committed "sedition" which, as he also noted, is punishable by death. In response, Hegseth announced a Pentagon investigation of one of the members, U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a former Navy Colonel and astronaut who could theoretically be called back into active duty by a politicized Pentagon in order to be court-martialed for, apparently, reminding troops that it is unlawful to carry out unlawful orders.

As noted, there is a whole lot going on in these quickly developing stories, but we've got just the guest today to help us make sense of them. We're joined by CARRIE A. LEE, PhD, an expert on civil-military relations and, until her resignation in July, associate professor at the US Army War College, where she served as the Chair of the Department of National Security and Strategy. She is now Senior Fellow at the Democracy and Security Network for Strategic Democracy Initiatives at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Lee explains today both what a civil-military relations expert is, and why she regretfully decided to leave her post at the War College earlier this year, after determining, as she explained in a social media thread, "that the United States faces threats today that cannot be effectively fought from inside the walls" of the US Army War College. She explained at the time that "in order to speak, I had to leave."

"I very much saw the writing on the wall after the election," she tells me today in describing her thought process for resigning in July, including "a lot of the threats that then President-elect Trump had made about what euphemistically I would call the 'creative uses' of the military that he had planned."

"It became very clear that if I had spoken out, that was going to bring an entirely unhealthy level of scrutiny to the institution I worked for, an institution that I really loved, and that I feel does outstanding work in educating future senior officers of the United States Army."

Lee explains that she ultimately left "to fight against the politicization of the military and abuses of power using the military domestically in ways that undermine democracy and Constitutional rights."

Today, Lee is speaking freely, as we discuss, among other things...

• The Pentagon's (empty and/or ridiculous?) threat to reactivate Sen. Kelly for a possible court martial.
• The "politicization death spiral" underway at DoD.
• The Trump Administration becoming "enthusiastic about punishing dissent and finding ways to weaponize and use their institutions of power to punish political opponents."
• How service members are able to determine whether an order is unlawful, and whether someone like Admiral Bradley would have the needed legal advice to know if striking shipwreck survivors was lawful or not. ("The manual explicitly says 'patently unlawful orders'. When the manual literally gives the example that we're talking about ['orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal'] that's a pretty good indication that it is patently unlawful." She also notes: "The initial strike was probably unlawful, as well.")
• Whether "fog of war" serves as a justifiable defense for Hegseth.
• The difficult personal decisions that career military officials are now faced with in deciding whether to stay in their positions amid the Trump Administration's misuse of our armed forces. (See her paper published this week titled "The Soldier in the Illiberal State is a Professional Dead End")

"I think we are talking about two separate issues in the news cycle that is going on right now, as we eagerly await updates to figure out what new turn in the hall of mirrors we are about to take," Lee neatly summarizes our conversation. "There's the politicization of the military and the weaponization of the military justice system to try to punish political opponents. That's issue number one. Issue number two is what the heck is going on in the Caribbean, and are these orders lawful?; what is patently unlawful and therefore must be refused?; and what has the veneer of legal justification that would lead a military commander to go with it?"

As noted, lots to discuss on today's BradCast...

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It's no easy feat getting caught up on The BradCast after just one week off during the madness of the Trump Era. But, hey, nobody said fighting to save democracy amid an attempted authoritarian takeover by a crazy, brain-poisoned, power-mad, criminal cretin was going to be easy. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

With far more to cover than we had time to catch up with, we did our level best today and took a bunch of great callers to boot! But that requires focusing on the stuff that really matters and, well, putting off the rest for another day, if ever. And the stuff that really really counts right now, in my opinion, remains the fight for democracy and voting itself.

To that end --- and many others --- we covered quite a bit of ground in very short order today. Among the many stories we touched on before opening the phones to our first post-Thanksgiving callers...

• Today, a federal appeals court unanimously upheld a lower court ruling finding that Alina Habba, Donald Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer turned U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, was unlawfully appointed.

• That ruling follows on last week's court ruling that Lindsey Halligan, Trump's even more unqualified personal insurance lawyer turned U.S. Attorney in Virginia, was also illegally appointed. That ruling subsequently resulted in the dismissal of Halligan's absurdly corrupt criminal indictments against Trump's foes, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

• Trump's belligerent, unqualified Defense Secretary and former weekend Fox "News" host, Pete Hegseth, may be in very big trouble for reportedly issuing unlawful orders to "kill everyone" in the Administration's first unlawful attack on supposed drug runners in boats in international waters off of Venezuela in the Caribbean. (More on that, I suspect, in the days ahead.)

• A quick catch-up on the various battles in the Gerrymandering Wars since we left --- in Texas, Indiana and North Carolina.

• Following the shock resignation of former(?) MAGA stalwart Marjorie Taylor Greene a week or so ago, Punchbowl News reported that a senior Congressional Republican is warning that the House GOP is "a tinder box." That "morale has never been lower" and that Republican House Speaker "Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out." We'll see about that. But it's anything but inconceivable, at this point.

• Speaking of, in tomorrow's Special Election for the U.S. House in Tennessee's 7th Congressional District, progressive Democrat Aftyn Behn was said to be within two points of Republican Matt Van Epps, according to new polling last week, in a District won last year by Trump by a whopping 22 points! I wonder why morale is so low among Republicans in the House these days.

• Never mind polling. Let's look at some actual numbers following Democrats' rout of Republicans in the November off-year elections last month. A deep dive by Politico into 268 county, town and village executive seat races last month in New York --- including in deep red counties, towns and villages --- found that Dems out-performed 2017's "blue wave" election in the state, flipping, for example, more than 50 executive seats from "red" to "blue" last month. That, compared to the GOP flipping just one (1!) seat from "blue" to "red" on the same day.

• Another appeals court panel ruling while we were off --- this one from judges nominated by both George W. Bush and Donald Trump --- upheld a lower court ruling finding that a ridiculously frivolous lawsuit filed by Trump and Habba against Hillary Clinton and James Comey, claiming they tried to steal the 2016 election (or something), will, in fact, result in a one million dollar fine against the pair.

And finally, we open up the phone lines to listeners, who are, apparently, in a very lively mood after a bit of rest over the holiday weekend. Enjoy!...

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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...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: After Republicans shut down the federal government, Trump pulls funding for New York infrastructure projects; Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth denies 40 years of Defense Dept. climate threat assessments; Remembering renowned conservationist Jane Goodall; PLUS: Pope Leo XIV rebukes climate science deniers for contributing to the destruction of Creation... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Despite Trump efforts to suppress it, climate science is alive and well online; National parks open with limited staff, oil and gas permitting continues apace in government shutdown; Judge orders Trump administration to preserve $233M in FEMA grants it attempted to pull from blue states; An explosion left a black town contaminated. Politics are stunting the cleanup; Ford, GM will extend $7500 credit on EVs, hearing China’s footsteps... PLUS: Wright Is Wrong: On key facts related to Texas, the Secretary of Energy is either purposefully misleading or misinformed... and much, MUCH more! ...

Trump lives and dies by ratings and reviews. Well, the reviews are in on today's BradCast for his sleepy, low-energy, hour-plus long campaign style remarks to the nation's top military brass at Tuesday's bizarre, in-person convocation of the nation's highest-ranking military generals. The unusual gathering was called at the U.S. Marine base at Quantico by his Defense Secretary. The reviews were not good. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

Before we get to today's weird military gathering, a few thoughts as the government is now all but certain to begin a partial shutdown as of midnight tonight. It is the first such federal shutdown since the last time Donald Trump was in the White House and Republicans held majority control of both chambers of Congress. He has been remarkably sanguine about it this time. He refused to even meet with Democratic leaders until yesterday, after which he went on to post an obnoxious, racist, AI-generated video mocking both House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Democrats refuse to sign on to a Republican bill that continues spending at current levels unless Republicans restore hundreds of billions of dollars that Trump and the GOP are cutting to American healthcare via the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid at year's end.

There may be several reasons why Trump is fine with the government shutting down. Beyond a delay in a mandatory House vote on releasing the Epstein Files, a government shutdown would also prevent the Bureau of Labor Statistics from releasing this Friday's much-anticipated jobs report for September, after previous monthly reports revealed grim numbers for Trump's second term. If the shutdown goes on long enough, BLS won't be able to gather its gold-standard data for future economic reports either, which are relied upon by the government, as well as businesses and investors worldwide.

For the record, the BLS didn't close during the last Trump shutdown. He could have mandated it stay open this time as well to continue its critical work. But, for some reason, he didn't.

Then it's on to the "urgent" in-person meeting of the nation's 800+ generals, admirals and other top military brass at Quantico today, as called at the last minute by Fox "News" weekend host turned Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth for unexplained reasons. It featured what amounted to little more than a live-for-the-cameras version of Hegseth's grievance-filled social media feed. The New York Times described his remarks to the generals as "a familiar litany of culture war talking points," including a lot of macho bullshit about the "warrior ethos", "wokeness" and "stupid rules of engagement" which Hegseth argues are somehow holding the U.S. military back.

For his part, Trump's partisan campaign-style rally that followed Hegseth seems to have fallen flat before the generals, who are not supposed to display approval or disapproval for political leaders. Media outlets described Trump's hour and ten-minutes of remarks as a "rambling and sometimes incoherent", "unusually meandering address" in which he attacked his perceived political enemies and called for the generals to use U.S. cities as "training grounds" for the military. Focusing on Democrats, who he described as the "radical left" and the "enemy from within", he suggested "the war from within" would be waged in cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, presumably against Americans in cities that Trump doesn't like.

Experts and Defense officials are describing the comments as "embarrassing", with one telling The Intercept, "We are diminished as a nation by both Hegseth and Trump." Said another: "Listening to Donald Trump was deeply troubling and it is clear he is unfit for the role of commander in chief." Still another, citing the 25th Amendment, observed: "This is truly disturbing. He is clearly unwell even for Trump."

During his long remarks to a nearly quiet room, Trump described Illinois' Governor J.B. Pritzker as "incompetent" and "stupid", vowing that he was "going in very soon" to Chicago. Trump's invasion of the Windy City with U.S. military troops has been promised for several months now. But, over the weekend and into Monday, it looks like it began in earnest, even with just baby steps, including deployment of ICE thugs and other federal law enforcement and a mobilization of 100 U.S. National Guard troops to eventually join them. Pritzker pushed back hard against Trump and ICE as Trump's "jack-booted thugs" at a presser on Monday, charging them with showing up in the city on Sunday endangering citizens and "harassing people for not being white." We share some of his warning comments to the public.

Also over the weekend, Trump federalized 200 U.S. National Guard troops in Oregon to invade Portland "authorizing Full Force", even though there is no local insurrection, no assaults on federal buildings by "antifa", and the city is not burning down, as Trump seems to believe. The state's Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek tried to explain that over the weekend during a phone call with a confused Trump, who reportedly said, "Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different." He is said to have claimed, "They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible."

As I suggested yesterday, what Trump is describing appears to be what happened five years ago in Portland, during protests following the murder of George Floyd. Today, Philip Bump details how b-roll footage of those protests has been playing in a loop on Fox "News" ever since, any time they mention Portland, as they did on several different shows on Friday night, just before Trump's Saturday morning announcement about deploying troops there. Like Pritzker, Kotek is also taking to the airwaves to push back on Trump's unwelcome, completely unnecessary military thuggery.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Hurricane Season kicks into high gear with a Trump-gutted National Weather Service trying desperately to keep up. And as the Dept. of Energy's fracking CEO turned Secretary, Chris Wright, cancels billions in subsidies for clean renewable energy in hopes of propping up the dying U.S. coal industry with millions of acres of new federal land access and new subsidies of the kind that he cited as evidence that the wind and solar industry are "maybe not a business that's going places." The DoE also expanded their list of banned words to include "climate change", "emissions", "green" and "decarbonization" among things that Department officials may not utter or use anymore in official documents...

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September 30th: A date that will live...next week. Apparently, it all comes down to next Tuesday. On today's BradCast, among other things, we detail why September 30th is so important to not one, not two, but three major stories in the news today. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among those stories...

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to an exclusive report today from WaPo and later confirmed by others, has ordered hundreds of the U.S. Military's top generals and admirals --- and their top enlisted advisors --- stationed in the U.S. and at commands across the globe, to convene for an "urgent" in-person meeting at the U.S. Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, next Tuesday, September 30th. None of the military personnel have been told why the meeting has been called or why those leading important posts around the world couldn't simply attend via the Pentagon's secure teleconferencing system. Some officials are concerned about national security issues in the event that something breaks out next week, while the top leaders posted to Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific regions are back in Virginia, meeting with Pete for some unknown reason. Hegseth has been firing scores of top military brass in recent weeks, and has pledged to cleanse at least 20% of the top officers corps, particularly those he believes may not share the same political beliefs as the Administration, at what is supposed to be a non-political institution. One source quipped that next Tuesday's mysterious meeting is "being referred to as the general squid games."

• That mysterious military meeting, on September 30th, happens to come on the final day of the federal government's 2025 Fiscal Year, when, if Republicans don't agree to a spending deal with Democrats, the government will shut down and begin furloughing federal workers as of midnight. Democratic leaders are insisting that any spending deal include the extension of enhanced premium support for some 25 million Americans who enjoy access to healthcare via the Affordable Care Act; the restoration of draconian Medicaid cuts enacted in the Republicans' "Big Beautiful Bill"; and a mechanism to ensure Donald Trump and/or Congressional Republicans don't simply rescind any spending agreed to by Democrats after they help Republicans reach the 60 votes needed for passage in the Senate. For their part, Republicans aren't even trying to negotiate with Democrats. Earlier this week, Trump used an insane, horseshit-fill social media post to call off the White House meeting previously scheduled with Democratic leaders today. And now the Administration has issued a memo to federal agencies suggesting they plan "mass layoffs" if the government shuts down next week, as seems almost certain at this point. Democratic Leaders Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries in the House, however, say they aren't falling for the Administration's "lawless" threats. They have good reason for that argument.

• This morning, CNN published a report (apparently based on a single, Administration-friendly source), claiming that Attorney General Pam Bondi had "reservations" about indicting Trump's political foe, former FBI Director James Comey, as Trump has publicly insisted she do. I was busy explaining why you should be skeptical of the reporting on Bondi's supposed "concerns", and why any such indictment of Comey would be wildly corrupt (no matter the charges), when news broke mid-show that, yup, Comey has now been indicted. Why is September 30th important to this story? Well, it was on September 30th, 2020, that the Administration is claiming Comey lied to Congress regarding the DOJ's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The five-year statute of limitations to bring Trump's revenge charges (as weak as they clearly are) against Comey, runs out as of next Tuesday, September 30th, 2025, five years after his contested remarks to Congress. Thus, Trump's corrupt remarks to Bondi over the weekend: "We can't delay any longer … JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!"

• In non-September 30th related news, a federal judge this week ordered the Trump Administration restore more than half a billion dollars worth of federal research grant funding to UCLA. The funding, appropriated by Congress but unlawful blocked by the Administration, is earmarked for medical research grants on Parkinson's disease, cancer, cell regeneration in nerves and other areas meant to improve the health of Americans. Trump had previously offered to settle his ridiculous claims of discrimination and antisemitism against UCLA, if the University of California system coughed up $1 billion dollars and instituted favored Administration social policies. Gov. Gavin Newsom described the attempted shakedown as extortion. This week, a federal judge declared it almost certainly in violation of the federal Administrative Procedure Act.

• And finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, on the heels of Trump's insane anti-renewable energy, pro-fossil fuel rant at the United Nations this week; and much more...

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It all sounds a bit too familiar to those of us on The BradCast who covered the last time a Republican President forced the U.S. into a "Forever War" in the Middle East based on known lies regarding "Weapons of Mass Destruction" which they never had. Here we go again? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Of course, part of the irony this time around is that Donald Trump ran for President on the false claim that he opposed the war in Iraq. And, despite his expansion of every inherited U.S. war, his unlawful targeted assassination of Iran's top military commander, and extreme expansion of the use of killer drones in all sorts of country during his first term in office, his supporters (and the corporate media) were dumb or duplicitous enough to characterize him as an "anti-war" President.

Trump's unconstitutional and unlawful attacks on three nuclear facilities in Iran over the weekend --- after Israel had cleared the field for him --- should put an end to the "anti-war" fairy tale once and for all. But we'll see.

Following Saturday's U.S. bombing run --- which, according to the Administration, has "obliterated" the three targeted nuclear production cites (something about which you should remain skeptical) --- Iran has responded with a fairly limp attack on a U.S. air base in Qatar and perhaps another in Iraq; the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a terrorism advisory warning of potential Iran-sponsored cyberattacks and the possibility of new attacks in the U.S.; Trump's failing social media cite seems to have fallen victim to one of those cyberattacks over the weekend; and Russia suggests "a number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads."

Meanwhile, the Administration has been unable to proffer any actual evidence to suggest that Iran was anywhere near building a nuclear weapon --- the pretext for Saturday's attack --- much less posing a threat, imminent or otherwise, to the U.S.

According to sources in the U.S. intel community who spoke to our guest today, Rolling Stone's Senior Political Reporter, ANDREW PEREZ, "there is no intel" to suggest anything has changed regarding an Iranian nuclear program since Trump's own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in March that "the IC [U.S. Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003."

While the White House attacked Perez and his co-author, Asawin Suebsaeng for "false and lazy 'reporting' designed to undermine President Trump's highly successful operation to dismantle Iran's nuclear capabilities," subsequent statements from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Sec. of State Marco Rubio confirm that, in fact, "there is no intel" to suggest anything has changed in Iran's nuclear program between Gabbard's March 25th testimony in Congress and Trump's Saturday night B-2 stealth bomber assault on Iran.

Perez was not impressed by the White House attack on his reporting. "What we've been hearing from the Administration is that there has been no new intelligence to justify any sort of immediate actions against Iran," he says today. "What we're hearing is the White House is looking at the same intel it was looking at months ago."

To what does Perez attribute Trump's sudden decision to join Israel's war after spending months trying to negotiate a deal with Iran (like the one Obama struck in 2015)? "One of the major factors in the President's different posture, as it pertained to Iran, was watching Fox News coverage the last couple of weeks." On Fox, of course, they've been covering Israel's attack on Iran and calling for the U.S. to join in. Trump, according to Perez, thought "it looked very cool."

"What the President did this weekend definitely constitutes several acts of war," Perez argues. "It does look possible that this doesn't blow up into a broader conflict, but it still could."

None of this, it should be noted, should have even been necessary in the first place, but for Trump having unilaterally reneged on Obama's 2015 anti-nuclear deal with Iran. By all assessments (perhaps other than Israel's) the agreement worked, observably preventing Iran from enriching uranium above levels required for civilian use --- at least until Trump ripped it up upon taking office because HE wasn't the one to have made it.

Hilariously, that agreement was struck after Trump, in both 2011 and again in 2013 declared: "Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly - not skilled!"

Then, with a few minutes left on today's program, we open up the phone to callers, including one who claims to have voted for Trump three times but now concedes he feels like he was completely duped. "I am so disappointed," he tells me. "I feel stabbed in the back." Tune in to find out why!...

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We've got a bit more on today's BradCast regarding Team Trump's attempt to distract from the many failures of his Administration by hoping to frighten Americans with the deployment of military assets against those of us here in Los Angeles. Plus, we've got a number of other stories that I suspect they would be happy for us not to tell you about today. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The City of Angels continues to hang tough against the Trump Administration, even as horrible human and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, last night, described the city of nearly four million people as "a city of criminals". The pathetic insult against the nation's second largest city came after Trump federalized 4,000 California National Guard troops against the wishes of the state's Governor, Gavin Newsom, and deployed 700 U.S. Marines to L.A., purportedly to help ICE round up migrants as part of the Administration's by the San Francisco Chronicle from Noem to Fox "News" host turned SecDef Pete Hegseth, the DHS chief requests Hegseth order military troops to actively participate in arrests and detentions on U.S. soil, an apparent violation of the law, unless the President invokes the Insurrection Act first under certain circumstances. Her letter suggests the Administration is preparing to do exactly that. Or she doesn't understand how the law works. Or both.

In 2020, after George Floyd was murdered, spurring far larger protests than the relatively minor ones we've seen here in L.A. in recent days, Donald Trump insisted it would be against the law for him to federalize and deploy troops against the wishes of a Governor. "We have laws. We have to go by the laws," he insisted at the time. "We can't move in the National Guard. I can call 'insurrection' but there's no reason to ever do that. We can't call in the National Guard unless we're requested by a Governor."

Things change. Presidencies fail. The protests against the Administration in cities large and small are expanding by the day from coast to coast.

IN OTHER NEWS THIS WEEK covered on today's program...

• U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's brother Brad Bondi bombed --- and I mean bombed --- in his run to become President of the D.C. Bar Association. We discuss what that means and why it's important.

• SCOTUS did something right by voters, for a change --- this time in Pennsylvania --- against the wishes of the Republican Party which hoped to disenfranchise voters (as usual).

• MyPillow CEO and 2020 election conspiracy doofus Mike Lindell took the stand this week to double-down in his own defense during trial in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer. Since 2020, the bedding impresario and former crack addict has spent tens of millions to repeatedly echo evidence-free claims of a stolen election, including the false charge that Coomer was part of an "antifa" scheme to rig voting machines and steal the election from Trump. We've got much more for you today on all of this to remind you of many of Lindell's ridiculous lies, schemes, antics and evidence-free allegations. Though they are completely nuts, his own attorneys now seem to be hoping to use them in order to buttress his defense. Tune in for details.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, on toxic smoke from record, climate-change driven wildfires in Canada, threatening the health of residents in both their country and ours; more bad news about indoor air pollution; a new lawsuit against Big Oil for its role in a heat wave that killed an elderly Oregon woman; and the Trump Administration's curious attempt to bury a federal report on last year's decrease in climate warming carbon emissions...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I've got no clue why so many in the media decided yesterday (Tuesday) was the 100th Day of Donald Trump's second term in office, when it is actually today (Wednesday). Am I missing something? No matter how many times I checked, counted, re-checked, recounted, asked AI, the 100th day --- not that any of it actually matters, unless you find accuracy from your media to be helpful --- is today. So, today is when we officially "celebrate" it on The BradCast. [Audio link to full, rollicking show follows below this summary.]

As we are wont at landmark moments in the second Trump Presidency, we are joined again today by two of our old school blogger friends who have been right about almost everything over the past 20+ years, whether the rest of the world wanted to notice or not. HEATHER DIGBY PARTON is the award-winning columnist at Salon and proprietor of Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and 'DRIFTGLASS' is the notorious eponymous blogger and co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast. They've both got plenty of thoughts to share at this particular "landmark moment".

Trump's approval ratings are plummeting on virtually every single issue via every single legitmate poll released over the past few days. Perhaps most notably, for the moment --- and for his own softening supporters --- his self-induced tanking economy is top of mind today. But, he's a loser on his immigration and mass deportation policies as well. Now, why would that be, given that he was supposedly elected for his great economic prowess ("Tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary of words!," he declared repeatedly in last year's campaign and right on up through his fateful "Liberation Day" on-again, off-again worldwide tariff proclamation earlier this month) and to "solve" the immigration issues that he and Republicans and Fox 'News' have been stoking and worsening for political purposes over so many years?

But none of it is working, as it turns out China is refusing to cower in the face of Trump's 145% tariffs because, as their Foreign Minister explained this week, "it will only make the bully want to push his luck more." There are quite a few elite American law firms, universities and media outlets that may wish to take notice of that response from the largest exporter of goods purchased by Americans, as ships will soon no longer be arriving and shelves at stores may be bare by the time we get to Christmas. That, as new economic numbers out today find that American GDP in the first quarter has fallen by 0.3% after increasing by 2.4% in the final quarter of last year under the economic guidance of President Biden, and more than two-thirds of Americans now predict a Trump Recession on the near horizon.

As to the violence, recklessness and fecklessness of his mass deportation policy, both of our guests concur that is backfiring as well. His supporters also seem to have begun to take notice. As Driftglass argues, they are seeing that "if anyone without a visa can be locked up and deported overnight, you can be, because now we have no Due Process." As Digby observes, "this is happening to people just like you who voted for Trump. And it could be you. They are not discriminating."

But there is much more on our plate to discuss today --- from why all of this is happening and whether it meets or exceeds our guests expectations; to what each of them expect to be Trump's response to his plummeting polls; to who they expect to be the first Trump cabinet member to fall; to what sort of Democrat is needed out there to guide the party back to relevance and put Humpty-Dumpty back together again --- if it can be.

Digby says she's "aged 10 years in the last 100 days" --- me too! --- as Driftglass breaks down what he describes as Trump's "fascist death spiral". Let it be true.

Join us, won't you?...

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Today on The BradCast: Things get worse for the Trump Administration and the buffoonish Republicans who love him on Capitol Hill, following another embarrassing round of disclosures from 'Signal Gate', while Dems take back control of a state House and flip a very "red" state Senate seat in Special Elections yesterday in a key battleground state. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

That's hardly all we've got for you in yet another too big show today...

'NOBODY WAS TEXTING WAR PLANS,' EH?: Capitol Hill continued to roil on Wednesday, after The Atlantic's Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg published the full message thread from the Signal group chat that he was invited to join, for some still-unexplained reason, last week, by Donald Trump's National Security Advisor Mike Waltz in advance of a U.S. attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The small group consisted of high-level Trump National Security and Defense officials, from the Vice President to the Sec. of Defense, Sec. of State, CIA Director, Director of National Intelligence and more. The newly published text messages from the Signal conversation on the unsecured commercial mobile app, reveal very specific times, places and methods of attack, just as Goldberg originally asserted in his original blockbuster report on Monday.

In response to the original report, SecDef doofus Pete Hegseth falsely told reporters, "Nobody was texting war plans." Today's Atlantic report reveals that he very much did. The new details also appear to counter claims from Trump's CIA Director John Ratcliffe and his wildly unqualified Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, when they both asserted that no classified information was shared with the Signal group. They were both members of that group. Donald Trump also made that same false claim on Tuesday. If very specific attack plans posted to Signal by Hegseth weren't "classified" details, they certainly should have been. But, even if not, they were definitely National Defense Information, which means members of the group chat may have violated the Espionage Act. The messages set to disappear after a number of weeks by Walz, would also be in violation of the Presidential Records and Federal Records Acts, according to legal experts.

Even a number of rightwing columnists are calling for accountability and the removal of Hegseth and Waltz. A few Republican U.S. Senators are calling for full investigations. And, of course, Democrats have already been demanding accountability, both at yesterday's Senate Intel hearing and in another one today in the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, which also featured laughable testimony from Ratcliffe and Gabbard. Desi Doyen has details for us on today's program.

PA VOTERS PUSH BACK: While things are falling apart politically for Trump and his incompetent aides and Congressional sycophants in D.C., voters are already ringing in with their dissatisfaction at the polls. In Special Elections in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, a Democratic win in the state House has resulted in the party regaining their slim majority in the Legislature's lower chamber. But that was to be expected from a very Democratic district. Bigger news for Dems came in the Special Election for the state Senate, where the Democratic candidate managed to flip a seat in a very red district that Trump won by 15 points last November. James Malone narrowly defeated his Republican opponent by running against Trump's madness and Elon Musk's DOGE Bro efforts to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid and the rest of the federal government. It was a huge upset victory for the Democrats, as they won this particular area of Republican-leaning suburbs and farming communities for the first time in 136 years! (Tuesday's win echoes another last month when Dems flipped a state Senate seat in a special election held in a deep red, Trump +21 district in Iowa.)

MORE ELECTIONS NEXT TUESDAY: Another round of critical elections are underway right now, with Election Day next week (April 1) in Wisconsin and Florida. The battle for majority control of WI's Supreme Court is underway (as we discussed recently with the Badger State's John Nichols of The Nation), as the world's richest man, Elon Musk, has thrown some $18 million into the race to support far-right Trump Republican Brad Schimel, in hopes of defeating liberal candidate Susan Crawford.

In Florida, there are two special elections Tuesday for the U.S. House, though both are in very red districts. The CD-1 race will fill the seat vacated by alleged child sex trafficker Matt Gaetz, the other, in CD-6, is to fill the seat vacated by Trump's incompetent National Security Advisor and Signal chat enthusiast Mike Waltz. Democratic candidates Gay Valimont and Josh Weil, respectively, are waging uphill battles to flip those very "red" U.S. House districts to "blue". Each have, reportedly, outraised their Republican opponents. Though Musk has now also reportedly jumped into those races with his billions as well, at the very last minute. A victory for Democrats in either of those seats (or anything close to it), will be seen as a political earthquake next week.

TRUMP ATTEMPTS ELECTION POWER GRAB: Finally, you may have heard about the Executive Order that Donald Trump issued last night, purporting to mandate proof of citizenship when registering to vote. That said, Presidents DO NOT HAVE THE POWER to issue such mandates. Election law is largely the legislative domain of States, Counties and occasionally via laws adopted by Congress. Trump's largely performative EO (which also includes a number of other voting and election mandates that are similarly beyond his powers as President) will face huge legal challenges. As Election Law professor Rick Hasen noted in his initial response to Trump's "dangerous Executive Order" last night, the measure is an attempted "executive power grab" that, if successful, would "disenfranchise millions of voters."

Ya know...Just another dull day in these United States...

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This one is really a debacle. It's likely criminal as well, on several levels, according to today's guest on The BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

You have likely heard by now about the group text chat that The Atlantic's Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was somehow invited to over the commercially-available mobile phone app called Signal, in which top-level Trump Administration cabinet officials, including Donald Trump's Defense Secretary and former Fox 'News' weekend host, Pete Hegseth, discussed specific U.S. attack plans for bombing Yemen,

Goldberg detailed on Monday (free link) how he was invited into the group chat by Trump's National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz. Classified information was discussed in the conversation. But, while Goldberg knew better than to publish specifics, he explained: "What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing."

Other Signal accounts participating in the group included those for JD Vance (Vice President), Marco Rubio (Secretary of State), Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence), Scott Bessent (Treasury Secretary), John Ratcliffe (CIA Director), Stephen Miller (Deputy White House Chief of Staff), Susie Wiles (White House Chief of Staff) and Steve Witkoff (Special Envoy to the Middle East). That, as NPR reported today, the Signal app was cited in a Dept. of Defense email last week to all Pentagon employees, warning of a "vulnerability" exploited by "Russian professional hacking groups" that makes the app unsuitable for use by the military, even for non-public UNclassified information.

As luck would have it, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee had a hearing already scheduled for today, with witnesses including Gabbard and Ratcliffe --- both members of the Signal chat in question --- and Kash Patel, Trump loyalist and wildly-unqualified FBI Director. While most Republicans on the Committee were interested in discussing anything but this matter, Dems were rightly laser focused on it, including the fact that Witkoff was apparently at the Kremlin for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this month when the text list, detailing plans to bomb Houthis in Yemen and reportedly revealing the identify of a senior CIA officer, were discussed.

We're joined today by our friend and longtime independent national security journalist MARCY WHEELER. In her piece today at Emptywheel.net, she detailed "Seven Reasons Trump's Entire National Security Team Should Resign in Disgrace" following the signal debacle. We step through each of those reasons with her today.

Wheeler was amazed that, even though the identities of everyone in the group were available to all members, nobody seemed to notice, or be troubled by, the inclusion of a journalist. Especially a journalist who Hegseth would go on to try and smear as "a deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist whose made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again." That, after Hegseth revealed classified war plans to him in the Signal chat and the White House has already confirmed the matter.

Wheeler charges that Trump's entire national security team in the group appears to have potentially violated Section F of the Espionage Act, which, in her words from her today, "makes it a crime to so negligently mishandle National Defense Information that someone not authorized to receive it does receive it."

"If you are so stupid as to share attack plans on a Signal thread that a journalist happens to be accidentally added to, that may be criminal," she tells me today, detailing how Section F of the Act bars the sharing of National Defense Information "through gross negligence", etc. "In other words, Pete Hegseth shares information about this attack with somebody not entitled. Because Pete Hegseth is so stupid, that might get you to [Section F]. And you had the entire national security establishment just sitting there watching Pete Hegseth do that!"

There is also the matter of violating both the Presidential Records Act and Federal Records Act by setting comments in the chat group to automatically delete after a week. Moreover, she observes, the fact that Trump claimed on Monday afternoon to know nothing about the matter, even after the story was published in The Atlantic, means that either critical NatSec information was withheld from the President, or he was simply lying when he claimed to have known nothing about it when asked for comment by a journalist at the White House. Wheeler argues that's "not plausible, because if he hadn't been told in advance, he would be firing [group chat member and Chief of Staff] Susie Wiles right now. He'd be firing Mike Waltz right now. JD Vance. He would be firing everybody who knew this was going to come out and didn't warn him. He hasn't fired any of them, so we have to assume he was lying when he pretended he didn't know anything about this." She goes on to add: "But if he didn't know anything about it, it means that he can't trust anyone around him. That all the people who are running his national security are not keeping him in the loop."

Also, the fact that Witkoff was in Russia, at the Kremlin, as a member of the group chat means that all of the accounts of other members on the list may also be compromised. "You bring a phone into Russia, they are going to compromise the phone. Sitting in the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin is really close to the top of the list of stupid things you can do with a phone when you're planning war strikes," says Wheeler. "The timing on it is quite clear. He was in the Kremlin when that list was started. Was his phone compromised? And if so, what else was on his phone? That's, to my mind, one of the most pressing questions Democrats should be asking every minute."

Tune in for much more on all of this from Marcy, including the outrage that FBI Director Kash Patel claimed during his Senate Intel Committee testimony today that he only just learned about the matter himself late last night, and that Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, is likely too busy doing Fox "News" hits to be troubled with enforcing the rule of law against fellow members of the Trump Administration, no matter how much danger they may have placed the country in with their negligence and/or incompetence.

ALSO ON TODAY'S PROGRAM: Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, covering a new round of wildfires in the very dry, very windy Carolinas this week, as Trump dismantles FEMA; a new warning about dwindling fresh water supplies thanks to disappearing glaciers as the climate continues to warm; and the fossil fuel industry calling in IOUs from Congress to block liability lawsuits from being filed against them for their roles in knowingly causing our worsening climate crisis...

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You'll be delighted to know that we've got a (mostly) non-Trump related election story for you on today's BradCast, and a guest here to discuss it! Though we've got a few Trump related stories we have to get to first. Sorry. [Audio link for complete show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Donald Trump has "plainly violat[ed] the First Amendment," according to an announcement last night from the Associated Press. The notice was in response to the White House blocking the 178-year old nonpartisan global news outlet from the President's Oval Office signing of an Executive Order with self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk, giving him and his DOGE Bros government-wide control of the hiring and firing of all federal workers at all federal agencies other than the Defense Dept. AP's punishment was because Trump doesn't like the way the AP Style Guide refers to the Gulf of Mexico after he declared that it should be called the Gulf of America. The White House affront to First Amendment free speech and free press rights echoes former Fox 'News' host turned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's order last month to remove a number of well-established news outlets, such as New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and NBC News, from offices they've occupied for decades at the Pentagon. Rightwing MAGA "news" outlets will be given those spaces instead.

• Free speech doesn't fare any better under Trump, even when it comes from independent federal government Inspectors General. On Tuesday, after the IG at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) issued a 6-page report [PDF] critical of the Administration's pause of all agency activities, Trump fired him. The report found that the attempted Trump/Musk/DOGE shutdown of largely all of USAID's critical foreign aid work around the globe and evacuation of thousands of overseas workers would result in, among other things, hundreds of millions of dollars of already-shipped food for starving people rotting in ports; life-saving medicine for deadly diseases remaining in warehouses unused; and "inadvertently funding entities or salaries of individuals associated with U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.” Obviously, that guy had to go!

• The latest Inspector General firing came the day before 8 of at least 17 IGs fired in Trump's first week, in pretty clear violation of the Inspector General Act of 2022, filed a lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court in D.C., challenging their unlawful "purported removals". The 32-page complaint [PDF] charges, among other things, that these IGs, with decades of experience between them, "have been sent a message that non-partisanship and truth-telling will not be tolerated. That message will have the effect of intimidating the [inspector general] workforce and thus chill their critical work for the American people."

THEN... It's on to the last unsettled race of 2024.

While Trump won the narrowly divided swing state of North Carolina last year, Democrats won almost every other election on the statewide ballot, from Governor to Attorney General, etc. Their candidate for the state Supreme Court, current Justice Allison Riggs, defeated her Republican challenger Judge Jefferson Griffin by just 734 votes out of 5.5 million cast statewide. That narrow result was certified by the State Board of Elections after a post-election canvass, audit and two recounts requested by Griffin.

But Griffin is still challenging the result in state court, arguing that some 66,000 early and mail-in ballots cast by North Carolinians should be tossed out because some registrations lacked drivers license or social security numbers (even though many of those cases were due to database clerical errors on the part of officials, not registrants, or were created before the law required that information); other challenged ballots come from military and oversees voters without copies of Photo IDs included in the mailing (which Griffin maintains is now required under the state's new polling place Photo ID restrictions); or were cast by U.S. citizens who never lived in the U.S. (even though they were born to U.S. citizen parents and have always been allowed to vote).

Griffin is hoping to defy state election officials with a friendly ruling from the state Supreme Court, which has a 5 to 2 Republican advantage --- or 5 to 1, since Riggs has recused herself from this case. Riggs, on the other hand, is seeking relief in federal court, where federal law would almost certainly block the tossing of 66,000 ballots from voters who followed the rules for the election.

To try and make sense of this absurd mess, we're joined today by DEBRA DICKS MAXWELL, President of the North Carolina state chapter of the NAACP. Last week, Maxwell wrote an op-ed pointing out that minorities and young voters are disproportionately disqualified in Griffin's list of ballots that he wants to toss. She noted that he is seeking an unprecedented "do-over" election, even though countless races in state history have been proven by courts to have violated the rights of voters, particularly when it comes to gerrymandered elections found to have been conducted with Congressional districts that violated the Constitution and Voting Rights Act both before and after the elections were run.

"We at the NAACP North Carolina State Conference have never been granted any relief like that, even in cases where we proved that Black voters’ rights were violated," she tells me. "They did not enjoy a 'do-over' because of the gerrymandering by the General Assembly, stacking and packing Black votes into fewer districts [so] there was less representation for people of color at the legislative level. That did not change."

"Judge Griffin is refusing to concede and accept [the results] since he has friends on the North Carolina State Supreme Court," she argues. "Judge Griffin should concede. But because he feels that the results don't matter, 'what I want matters', that is sending the wrong message to thousands of voters, not only in this state but across the country."

If Griffin receives a new election, Maxwell warns, "that would send seismic waves through this county, this state, and even through the country to ask for a do-over." Among other things, she asserts, it would decrease voter participation in future elections when people wonder "'Why should I vote when they are just going to call it how they want it?' Especially as we are gathering thousands of those people who are on that 60,000 list. One of my chairs in the NAACP told me, 'I'm on that list!' We know people who are on there. They are very upset."

Maxwell also explains that the state NAACP is currently "winning on results of a federal [Photo] ID case" filed last May. "It is February and we are still waiting on the outcome." But, if they win the case, she says, it doesn't mean that last year's elections will receive a "do-over"...

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