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...

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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!...

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It's always about elections, as detailed yet again on today's BradCast, with a boatload of breaking news, and a concurrent trip through the twisted windmills of the mind of the President of the United States. Or whatever's left of it. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among today's many stories...

• Best idea of the week, perhaps of the year, to date: The editors of The Nation magazine nominate the City of Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize. (Seconded!)

• Don't be fooled by Donald Trump swapping out Himmler-wannabe, Border Patrol commandant Gregory Bovino for $50,000 bribe recipient and architect of first term child separation policy Tom Homan as Chief Goon in charge of the federal government's assault on Minneapolis. As many are confirming, little has changed, to date, on the ground, after the rotation of lead stooges, even as Trump has become desperate to prevent another embarrassing government shutdown this weekend.

• Speaking of, we detailed the many moving parts of the threat of a new government shutdown on yesterday's program, as Democrats insist on new guardrails on ICE and CBP in exchange for fiscal 2026 DHS funding. While a brief shutdown is still likely to happen over the weekend, a deal brokered between Dems and the White House just before airtime today would split off the bill that funds DHS from five other spending bills which would be adopted in full. A Continuing Resolution, to keep funding DHS at current levels, would then be approved to allow two more weeks to negotiate reforms, such as an end to unconstitutional door-to-door patrols, a no-masking policy, mandatory body cams, etc., following the ICE/CBP murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, etc.

• As just one sign of Trump's desperation to prevent another government shutdown, with midterm elections looming --- and likely to be very bad for his party --- ICE has reportedly ended its surge into the state of Maine, where hundreds of arrests over the past week, including of legal immigrants has infuriated residents. News of ICE leaving just one week after its new campaign comes via the otherwise "blue" state's Republican Sen. Susan Collins, so take it for what it's worth. Collins --- Chair of Senate Appropriations --- has a very difficult election this year as the only Republican Senator facing reelection in a state won in 2024 by the Democrats. There is a lot to unpack regarding all of that today. But, with Trump desperate to hang on to control of the U.S. Senate this November, its not surprising that he is hoping to make life easier for Collins, despite previously calling on his supporters to vote her out.

• The guy hired to be the new chief artistic director of the Kennedy Center after its takeover by Trump thugs, has quit --- just two weeks after his hiring was announced.

• The U.S. trade deficit --- the amount of goods and services we export versus what we import --- grew sharply in November, with imports surging and exports plummeting, despite Trump's tariff scheme which was supposed to accomplish the very opposite.

• Picking up where we left off yesterday, as news was just breaking that Trump's FBI had raided the Fulton County elections warehouse in Atlanta, reportedly grabbing secured ballots from the 2020 election --- which Trump is still pretending to have won, more than five years later --- we've got several additional details today on what was taken; what the FBI was looking for; the clown show that the execution of the search warrant became; the federal prosecutor from an entirely different state brought in to obtain the warrant; the long-known failures of the three post-election tallies by Fulton County as overseen by the state's Republican Sec. of State; and how all of this has election experts very concerned about bad faith efforts by Trump and his supporters in advance of the 2026 midterms.

• In other bad faith news regarding Trump's false claims to have won states that he didn't, the ties between his reasons for surging immigration enforcers into Minneapolis and Trump's years-long false claims to have won the state of Minnesota three times (he won it zero times), has now become clearer than ever.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as humanity slips still closer to 'Doomsday'; as the U.S. is formally withdrawn, for the second time, from the Paris Climate Agreement; as Trump is blocked by a fourth court in a fourth state on his effort to halt nearly completed offshore wind projects; and as sales of EVs now now outpace gasoline cars in Europe...

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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...

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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...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Danger is not over yet after deadly, extreme winter storm pummels U.S.; House Republicans overturn ban on mining near Minnesota's pristine Boundary Waters; Judge blocks Trump administration from halting EV charging funds appropriated by Biden; PLUS: Michigan Attorney General's lawsuit accuses Big Oil of operating a 'fossil fuel cartel'... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump’s Grant Terminations Upheld by Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals; Natural Gas Price Surges Almost 30% as Arctic Blast Grips Much of US; Enviros Charge Administration Violated Laws In Approving Alaska Road; Oregon Court Tosses Old Rule that Allowed Logging on Vast Swaths of US Land; New ExxonMobil Climate Accounting Again Blames Consumers, Not Corporation... PLUS: How Cuts To Federal Climate Funds Could Threaten Polar Vortex Research... and much, MUCH more! ...

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...

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We've been arguing in various ways on The BradCast in recent months that our ignorant, thin-skinned, cruelly incompetent, man-baby clown, pedophile protecting President is growing weaker by the day. That, of course, doesn't make him any less dangerous. In fact, it makes him more so by the day --- or even hour, at this point. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We're joined today for our first horrifying and occasionally hilarious visit of the year with two of our favorite roundtablers and very smart fellow old-school bloggers HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of The Professional Left Podcast.

We try --- wish us luck --- to make sense, any sense, of the past 24 to 72 hours or more, as brutal violence by Donald Trump's dangerously inept ICE thugs in Minneapolis intensifies and he threatens to misuse the Insurrection Act against peaceful, "Minnesota nice" protesters, even as the state's wartime Governor stands in the breach; as the President of the United State's tyrannical menacing of our NATO ally of Greenland (and NATO itself) grows darker by the day; as he outrages his far-right base by appearing to all but abandon protesters in the streets of Iran that on Tuesday he instructed to "KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!", vowing "HELP IS ON ITS WAY", only to toss them all under the regime's knife by Wednesday, while either hundreds or tens of thousands are reportedly being slaughtered; and, as his corrupt, show-of-power invasion, takeover and/or theft of Venezuela and its dirty oil, less than two weeks ago, already begins to (at least temporarily) fade into the blurry, bloodstained rearview mirror.

That's not all. But even that much is a lot of ground for one short hour. But these are no times for the faint of heart.

Among a whole bunch of well-informed and sagacious commentary, today's program also includes a few bloodcurdling turns of phrase such as "this is Stephen Miller's baby", "Donald Trump is the vessel", "the bitter harvest of that lie", "a dumb place to start their revolution" and, yes, "a cornered rat is a dangerous rat".

Tune in to hear who said them, in what context, and if any of us is able to make any sense of any of this madness right now.

If nothing else, Desi Doyen joins us at show's end for our latest Green News Report...which always makes perfect sense...

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Some of the weirdness has been completely predictable, if not to many of his duped supporters. Some of it is a surprise. All of it underscores, yet again on today's BradCast, that we have a full-blown loser serving as President of the United States. [Audio link to the full show follows this summary.]

Among the many many stories supporting those points, as covered on today's program...

• Grocery prices see biggest spike in three years (Axios)
• Court finds Trump illegally blocked renewable energy grants to 16 "blue" states (AP)
• Bipartisan Senate Budget Committee restores almost all science funding cut by Trump (NYT)
• 5 Repubs join all Senate Dems in vote to block more military action in Venezuela (WaPo)
• 17 Repubs join all House Dems to pass bill restoring ACA health care subsidies (AP)
• Boebert slams Trump for veto of unanimously-approved CO drinking water project (DKos)
• 35 Repubs join all House Dems in failed effort to override Trump's CO water project veto (CO Politics)
• Treasury Sec. Bessent told Trump he's furious about DOJ's criminal probe of Fed Chair Powell (Axios)
• Six top Civil Rights Division criminal prosecutors resign over DOJ refusal to investigate ICE killing of Renee Good in MN (MS NOW)
• Six top DOJ prosecutors in MN resign over attempt to investigate Good's wife (NYT)
• Unhinged Trump warns: "DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING" in MN (Politico)

And, if all of that isn't enough for ya, we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, with Trump losing his weird fight against wind power yet again in another federal court, among many other items of note...

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On today's BradCast: We all saw it with our own eyes on video tape. But the Administration is doubling down anyway, vowing to send even more federal ICE officials to make things even worse. Even more violent. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Following last Wednesday's killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, Trump Administration officials (including Donald Trump himself, his Vice President J.D. Vance and Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem), blatantly lied about the victim. She was a "domestic terrorist" who "attacked" ICE officials, they falsely claimed. Her killer, Ross, was "fighting for his life," they suggested, when he fired three times into Good's car, point blank, as she tried to escape in a panic. She "viciously ran over the ICE officer," the President of the United States lied, adding falsely: "It is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital."

None of those claims are true. Good was murdered by Ross as she tried to drive around him, while another masked ICE thug was attempting to open her locked car door through the open driver side window. Ross was seen walking around the crime scene without incident afterward.

Hers was neither the first nor last ICE shooting into a vehicle. Wall Street Journal reports there have been at least 13 such shootings since July, including many in which the Dept. of Homeland Security made the same false claims --- "domestic terrorism", "attacked ICE officials", "pinned or rammed them with their weaponized vehicle" --- only to be undermined by video or other evidence that revealed their lies.

"No law enforcement professional wears a mask. None," Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal emphasized during a press conference on Friday. "Law enforcement professionals do not shoot at moving vehicles. I'm not saying fleeing, because she [Good] was not fleeing. She was getting out of the way. Law enforcement professionals do not stand in front of moving vehicles invoking an action that is illegal. No, we don't."

Bilal refused to describe the ICE agents in Minneapolis as professional cops. "I call them made-up, fake, wannabe law enforcement, because what they do is against not only the legal law, but the moral law." She vowed to work with the local D.A. to prevent similar actions in her own city. "You will not be able to hide," she said, adding "the criminal in the White House will not able to keep you from going to jail." Bilal concluded by noting "Renee Good should be here today."

She is not the only member of local law enforcement around the country attempting to separate what they do from the supposed policing being carried out by ICE officials, now across the country. We're joined today by former Redlands, California Police Chief JIM BUEERMANN, founder of Future Policing Institute, who went to lengths to separate his thoughts on what ICE officials are now doing from what he describes as actual "cops" on their local beat.

"I would like to make a very clear distinction between the ICE agents and municipal police officers that I would call cops," he told me. "They are enforcing the law, but they are not police officers. And there is a huge distinction," said Bueermann. "There is a huge difference between the expectations of police chiefs and sheriffs across this country about the behaviors of their officers, their 'cops', and what appears to be the policies, practices, organizational culture of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents."

He argues that the "behaviors, practices and policies" of ICE are very different from "what we refer to as 'community policing' practices, and operate under seemingly very different rules."

While clearly condemning the killing of Good, it was clear he wanted to disown the practices and behavior of his federal counterparts, who undergo "a different set of training protocols than what you see from local police officers." He carefully condemned the federal officials of employing "bad tactics", at least based on the video evidence we have all seen to date, such as Ross stepping in front of a running vehicle with a driver behind the wheel.

My conversation was frustrating, at times, with the cautious Bueermann. But his message was ultimately clear. "I have not seen anything, certainly, [to suggest] that this woman was a 'domestic terrorist,'" based on the evidence he'd seen. "It's very difficult to watch that and not think that a much better, safer, less deadly outcome was achievable without much effort."

"We certainly need to speak up loudly about the behavior that we are seeing," he concedes, while helping us to try and make sense of what is clearly a senseless, tragic situation. "Until something changes dramatically," he told the L.A. Times last week, "this probably, and I say this sadly, won’t be the last tragic incident involving ICE and protesters."

It wasn't. Following the murder of Good on Wednesday, Oregon officials were reportedly launching their own investigation of a Thursday incident in Portland after federal officers shot a couple during a vehicle stop. Unfortunately, there has been no video released from that incident, to date.

Bueermann also shares his concerns about federal officials attempting to lock MN state officials out of the investigation of Good's killing, and federal officials hiding their identify during their work, with masks and unmarked civilian vehicles. "You have to have your nameplate, and you have to have a badge number --- all of the identifiers in a democratic policing environment," argues Bueermann. "That's another distinguishing factor between cops and these federal ICE agents. Cops don't do that. ICE agents do."

Finally, we're joined by a few callers, including one from Minneapolis, where protests have been growing since last week and where the caller, Roger, is concerned about taking part in them, as federal officials clearly hope to, yes, terrorize the populace into tempering their First Amendment freedoms...

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If the first week of the new year is any indication of what's to come, Year Two of the second Trump Presidency is going to be even more nightmarish than many of us have been warning. Several fresh nightmares along those lines are unfolding on today's BradCast, as the President of the United States' obliteration of the Constitutional Order and Rule of Law grows more violent and grotesque by the day. It may only be outpaced by his determination to destroy what is left of our livable planet [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

With Donald Trump's federal immigration thugs now shooting and murdering Americans at point blank range in American cities with impunity (by the dozens), it's clear that the Rule of Law at the federal level no longer exists. We're all gonna have to get used to that idea for a while I'm afraid. We've got several examples of that today.

FIRST... we're joined by JEAN SU, Senior Attorney and Director of the Energy Justice Program at the Center for Biological Diversity. She joins us today on the heels of last night's White House announcement Trump is withdrawing the United States from the nearly 30-year old bedrock international climate agreement that forms the basis for virtually every climate pact since then meant to stave off or mitigate the effects of our quickly accelerating climate crisis.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a treaty to which every single nation in the world is a member. It was originally signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and ratified unanimously by the U.S. Senate. On Wednesday night, however, Trump unilaterally declared he is withdrawing the U.S. from that pact and 65 other international organizations and treaties which, the White House said, "no longer serve American interests."

Su and the Center for Biological Diversity describe Trump's unilateral withdraw from the UNFCCC as unlawful and unconstitutional. "It is an illegal exit from the treaty," Su argues today. "The Constitution is crystal clear about how we can, as a country, enter treaties" with a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate for ratification. "But the Constitution is silent on the withdrawal of treaties. It's our legal view, along with other international law organizations, that no, it is not legal for a President to unilaterally undo what a unanimous Senate passed."

She characterizes the UNFCCC as "the 'mother ship' of all collective climate bargaining and negotiations around the world." The Paris Climate Agreement, for example, which is not a treaty, but a voluntary pact, was created in 2016 under that "mother ship" treaty in hopes of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Trump already pulled the U.S. from the Paris Agreement last year. Withdraw from the UNFCCC however, as Su tells me, would be even far more devastating to both the climate AND U.S. economic interests.

"The global climate treaty ends up being a place where different governments can negotiate economic deals and band together and say, 'We want the world to move off fossil fuels and towards a renewable energy future.' When you have the entire world and the global economy making those moves, the U.S. suffers by being a pariah on that. And in that way, U.S. consumers, citizens, we all suffer economically by being the odd-man out."

But other nations are quickly filling that vacuum. Trump's failure to lead on renewable energy and electric vehicles has allowed China to become the world's top manufacturer of both, as Trump tries instead to revive the dirty, deadly, dying coal and oil industries. "He has these partnerships with deeply entrenched corporate monopolists in this country, and he is literally going around the world pillaging it for those interests," says Su. "And it is an international security threat."

When she last joined us on the show just after Trump's second election victory in November of 2024, Su described him as a "climate-denying fascist" who would "strip the Environmental Protection Agency [and] the Civil Rights Division of the Dept. of Justice" until the "administrative apparatus" at both were "entirely smothered, stripped bare, and not functional in any way, in terms of actually protecting our environment and our health and safety." She couldn't have been more right about that, as evidenced over the past year. She also described, at the time, several "bright spots" she saw nonetheless. Today, we discuss some of those bright spots again to see if they remain as bright as she'd hoped they would back in late 2024.

Please tune in for a really informative conversation on all of the above and more.

THEN... Speaking of disrespect for our Constitutional Order and Rule of Law, a fifth U.S. District Court Judge today has now ruled that a fifth U.S. Attorney appointed by the Trump Administration is serving in the role unlawfully and in violation of the Constitution. John Sarcone III, the nation's top prosecutor in the Northern District of New York is "not lawfully appointed" as U.S. Attorney, according to the federal judge, who issued her opinion in a case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, attempting to quash grand jury subpoenas obtained by Sarcone seeking information on the two massive civil fraud cases James successfully brought against Trump and the National Rifle Association.

Meanwhile, over in the Eastern District of Virginia this week, a federal judge --- one appointed by Trump himself! --- took it upon himself to issue an order to Lindsey Halligan, giving her seven days to explain why she is still serving in the role of U.S. Attorney after a different federal judge, last November, found that she was unlawfully serving in the post. The judge's ruling last year resulted in the dismissal of revenge indictments obtained by Halligan at Trump's orders against both James and former FBI Director James Comey. Nonetheless, Halligan is still serving in the position, with one judge in the District even including an asterisk by her name whenever she is mentioned in court documents, denoting last year's ruling of her unlawful appointment.

With five top federal prosecutors illegally heading up the DOJ facilities in major jurisdictions (the others are New Jersey, Nevada and Los Angeles), it is clear that the Trump Administration and Attorney General Pam Bondi believe they have no legal requirement to follow any of the nation's laws.

FINALLY... With more lawlessness and ill-considered climate-related actions by the Administration, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Trump's unlawful Venezuela attack becomes even more unlawful; as the Administration announces thousands of layoffs at FEMA amid ever-worsening climate disasters; and as Los Angeles struggles to rebuild following two deadly, devastating climate change-fueled wild fires that destroyed thousands of homes one year ago this week...

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Not that I hope to tip off our degenerate authoritarian oligarchy on today's BradCast. But if the Republican Party still believes in math (and it's unclear if they do), there was more very bad news for them in Tuesday's elections this week. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Unapologetically progressive Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn appears to have lost the Special Election race for the U.S. House in Tennessee's very "red", GOP-gerrymandered 7th Congressional District to stalwart Trump Republican Matt Van Epps on Tuesday. Unofficial numbers suggest she lost by about 9 points.

Sounds like a rout. But, in fact, it really wasn't. Trump won the district last year by 22 points, meaning there was a 13 point shift toward Democrats on Tuesday, precisely the average shift that we have seen toward Dems in all of the Special Elections for U.S. House this year. There are 14 counties in TN's 7th CD. Everyone of them shifted towards the left on Tuesday. That, after Republicans were forced to dump a lot of money into what should have been an easy contest on Tuesday.

While House Speaker Mike Johnson pretended not to be concerned about any of this --- "They were really trying to set the scenario that there's some sort of wave going on. There's not. We just proved that there's not." --- actual math really does suggest trouble ahead for the GOP in next year's critical 2026 midterm cycle.

With that average 13 point shift toward Democrats in special elections this year, we do a little bit of mathing on today's show. For example, last year, in the 2024 U.S. House general elections...

• 28 Republicans won their races by 10 percent or less.
• 64 of them won by 12 points or less.
• And a whopping 92 Republicans won by just 15 percent or less last year.

With a razor-thin 3 vote advantage heading into the new year, no wonder several GOP-controlled states are attempting panicked mid-decade gerrymanders, and that the corrupt Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court are likely to help them. But new maps may ultimately make their problems worse, not better, if this year's elections are any indication. Safe Republican districts made less safe with new gerrymanders to steal districts from Democratic voters may end up backfiring. Of course, I won't dismiss Democrats' ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory between now and next year. But when Johnson says, "This doesn't concern me at all," he is either lying, in denial or incredibly stupid. And he's not all that stupid.

"This is one of the biggest flashing red light warning signs we've seen yet for Republicans," a far more realistic GOP strategist observed last night. Much more on today's show.

As if that's not enough, in a stunning runoff election on Tuesday in Georgia, the Democratic candidate easily unseated the incumbent Republican Mayor in the suburban city of Roswell, outside of Atlanta. She will be the previously deep "red" city's first Democratic Mayor in nearly 30 years. But don't worry, Mike. All's well!

Also today, our disgusting racist President said a whole bunch of disgusting racist things at the White House on Tuesday about Somalia and the American Somali population in Minnesota and elsewhere, repeatedly describing them as "garbage", "people who don't work," and people who should "go back to where they came from." Where many of them came from is a war-torn nation in Africa, with thousands seeking refuge here in the 90s. Most of them are now American citizens, with many living in Minnesota, where Trump's degenerate federal jack-booted immigration thugs will reportedly be targeting them, specifically in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, with upcoming raids.

State Governor Tim Walz --- who Trump last week described as "retarded" --- as well as the Minneapolis Mayor, its Chief of Police and many other officials and immigration advocates are vowing not to roll over to Trump's racist immigration hooliganism. Similar raids are reportedly being launched this week in New Orleans, where residents are also hoping to push back against Trump's increasingly unpopular thuggery however they can.

Finally today, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report (after we had to preempt yesterday), with news on the end of disappointing U.N. climate talks in Brazil; the rising death toll following two simultaneous climate change-fueled typhoons in Southeast Asia; and the Trump Administration's latest plans to pollute your air and poison your drinking water...

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We've done quite a bit on The BradCast over the years, from investigative reporting, to deep dive explainers and interviews with experts and news makers, to ranting monologues, to taking calls from listeners on all manner of things. But, unless I'm mistaken, I believe this is the first time we've turned the show into a game show! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Before we get to our fun (if disturbing?) game today, a few news items of note...

• Category 5 Hurricane Melissa looks to be a monster deadly storm in the Caribbean on several different levels. It's slamming smack-dab into Jamaica overnight tonight. In addition to record wind speeds (satellite records showed the storm, in record warm waters, topping 190mph for a time last night according to satellite records, which would be a Cat 6 if there actually was such a thing on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale), it's also incredibly slow moving. That means it is likely to dump a lot of water --- as much as 40 inches of rain in some places --- as it slowly swamps the entire island. Desi Doyen also joins us for a few insights on how climate change has worsened just about every aspect of this deadly storm.

• Earlier this year the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), detailed how "multi-year contingency funds" would be used to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to "continue operations during a Federal Government shutdown." Last week, however, as the shutdown drags on, a USDA memo explained that, despite already appropriated Congressional funding to be used for such a contingency, federal SNAP money would no longer be made available to states after November 1 if the shutdown was still ongoing. That, after Republicans already slashed some $186 billion from the program in Trump's so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" earlier this year. More than 40 million people rely on SNAP to put food on the table --- the vast majority of them employed, by the way --- but the Trump Administration is now planning to help starve people (including millions of their own voters) rather than even negotiate with Democrats who are refusing to help Republicans keep the government open until hundreds of millions (in fact trillions) of dollars in Trump/GOP health care cuts for Americans are restored.

• Next Tuesday is Election Day in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, California and elsewhere. On Friday, Trump's Dept. of Justice announced that federal monitors were being deployed to polling places in five counties in California and one in New Jersey (which both have Democratic governors), though none to Virginia, which has the most contests on the ballot next week...and a Republican Governor. DOJ has yet to explain why monitors are being deployed or under what law they are doing so. Election experts --- and CA's Governor --- warn this may be a trial run for what the Administration is planning for next year's critical midterms.

THEN... It's on to "Who Wants to be a U.S. Citizen?", the first BradCast call-in game show!

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently announced that it was making it more difficult to pass the test required for those applying to become U.S. Citizens. They are doubling both the number of questions asked PDF on the Naturalization Civics Test and the number of correct answers that need to be given to pass the test.

According to experts, the questions are also more difficult than they were previously. So, today, we open up our phone lines to listeners --- most of them, presumably U.S. citizens! --- to see if they could answer the questions now being asked of prospective citizens by this Administration.

Like the Trump Administration, we make up the rules of the game as we go. And our listeners did fairly well! But I'll bet they did a helluva lot better than our current President would have been able to had he been forced to pass this test!

Tune in for what turned out to be both an amusing and troubling hour of fun and games with our lucky listeners!...

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Elections, crime and voter suppression. Three of our favorite topics here on The BradCast, all of which we cover in several different ways and several different cases on today's show. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

As I described as a virtual certainty on yesterday's program, the federal government did indeed shutdown this morning as of 12:01am. Republicans, who control the White House and both chambers of Congress --- and who could keep the government open all by themselves --- have chosen to shut it down, rather than negotiate with Democrats. For their part, Democrats want to prevent Republicans from spiking health care costs for tens of millions of Americans as of January 1. Short of a deal to prevent that, Dems seem determined to avoid helping Republicans pass a new spending bill. (Which, did I already mention, Republicans could do all by themselves? Even in the U.S. Senate.)

This is likely to go on for a while. The Trump Administration is hoping to hurt as many Americans as possible in the bargain, and is violating federal law by posting notices on every single page of federal government websites (which are supposed to be strictly non-partisan), like the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), falsely claiming: "The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government." Completely unlawful. But, as we know by now, Donald Trump doesn't care about Law and Order or the Rule of Law.

In the meantime, voters may have something to say about all of this in several states next month and in all 50 states next year. So, rather than offer policies the American people might like, Republicans at Trump's corrupted, weaponized Dept. of Justice are hoping to help him rig next year's midterm elections instead.

In the battleground state of Nevada, Trump's U.S. Attorney, Sigal Chattah, according to an exclusive report last night from Reuters, is asking DOJ to help Republicans by investigating "voter fraud" claims made by the state Republican Party and to investigate organizations that help to elect Democrats. Chattah was formerly the state Republican Party Chair. She is also seeking to drop the cases against the GOP Fake Electors in Nevada, who tried to help Trump steal the 2020 election. Chattah was the personal attorney for one of those Fake Electors, even as she, as a federal prosecutor, is now trying to undermine the case against them rather than recusing, as required by DOJ ethics rules, from such cases.

Tune in for more of Chattah's corruption today. But amusingly, a George W. Bush-appointed federal Judge ruled just last night that she is unlawfully serving as the top federal prosecutor in the state as Acting U.S. Attorney beyond the 120 days allowed for someone to hold that position without Senate confirmation.

And, speaking of the failed GOP attempt to steal the 2020 Presidential election, a federal judge late last week found that MyPillow CEO and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell defamed the election technology company Smartmatic at least 51 different times while falsely asserting that the election vendor interfered with the 2020 election to steal votes from Trump and give them to Joe Biden. The only jurisdiction in the entire nation where Smartmatic's voting systems were used that year was in Los Angeles County, where Biden won 71% of the vote. Smartmatic and another company, Dominion, have either won or struck multi-million settlements in every defamation case that each has brought so far against three different rightwing media outlets (Fox, Newsmax and One American News) and several of Team Trump's 2020 MAGA election deniers, such as Lindell. (In a side note, the MyPillow dude says he is now preparing to run for Governor in Minnesota next year against Democratic Gov. Mike Walz! That should be fun!)

AND THEN... Earlier this year, Trump's DOJ ordered 27 mostly Democratic-controlled states to turn over their entire, unredacted statewide voter registration databases to the federal government for unspecified reasons. The Department's Civil Rights Division (which has been turned on its head under Trump) is demanding the entire files, including unredacted personal and sensitive information such as Social Security and Drivers License numbers, etc., for every registered voter. The reasons are unclear, and most states have refused to turn the files over. But now the Department is suing at least eight of those states, including California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania for those files.

Our old friend ARI BERMAN, best-selling author and National Voting Rights Correspondent at Mother Jones, has been covering this story and joins us today to help us try to make sense of it.

The DoJ is claiming in their lawsuits that the states in question are somehow violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and the Civil Rights Act of 1960. We discuss all of this today with Berman, who describes the weaponization scheme as of a piece with the GOP's broader "voter-suppression agenda" (which he details in full in MoJo's cover story this month.) Among the questions I've got for him today...

• Why is the Trump Administration demanding access to these databases and the sensitive information within them in the first place?
• What are they accusing the states of having done, in their claims that they have somehow violated three of the nation’s landmark voting rights related laws?
• If it's a fishing expedition regarding claims of voter fraud and non-citizens supposedly voting illegally, didn’t the Trump Administration already try (and fail) to show the very same thing with their quickly disbanded "Election Integrity" Commission during Trump’s first term, when our delusional President was falsely insisting he actually won the popular vote in 2016 but for some 3 million unlawful votes he pretended were unlawfully cast against him in the very blue state of California?

Lots to discuss with Ari today! Hope you'll tune in!...

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It's clear that Donald Trump would much rather we talk about political violence today than his quickly failing economic policies or his 15-year close personal friendship with notorious pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. So we do him the favor of discussing both at the top of today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

From there, it's on to our central story. On yesterday's show, we covered the news of the killing of rightwing activist and longtime Trump ally Charlie Kirk, as reports of his death were just breaking. Today, as the manhunt continues for his seemingly well-prepared killer, we've got more details on both the shooting and the investigation and, with 24 hours of perspective, well-considered analysis of what all of this may mean for the nation as we move ahead.

There is still no known motive for the uncaptured and still-unknown shooter. Yet, a huge portion of the MAGA Right --- from wingnut social media trolls to wingnut billionaires to wingnut elected officials, including the President of the United States --- are, in some cases literally, declaring "WAR" on "the radical left Democrats".

Trump took to the airwaves last night after the murder, conspicuously covering up his right hand in a pre-recorded Oval Office tantrum, in which he condemned political "violence and murder" by "the radical left" as the "tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible." (Hmmm...Can we think of anybody else who might have demonized those with whom they disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible?)

"My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges and law enforcement officials," vowed the President who has said the most despicable things about federal judges and pardoned --- on his first day in office --- more than a thousand of his own supporters for their political violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, where hundreds of them literally and physically attacked law enforcement officials.

Trump also failed to mention the violent attacks on elected officials in his four-minute revenge screed, like the ones against the Speaker of House in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, who was assassinated along with her husband in the middle of the night in their own home less than three months ago by a far-right MAGA dude. The same man also gunned down MN State Senator John Hoffman and his wife in their home that same night, as part of a planned string of attacks against dozens of Democratic elected officials.

Let's also not forget Trump's repeated hilarious jokes over the years about the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi, whose skull was bashed in with a hammer by a guy hunting down Nancy Pelosi. Trump, his sons, and his supporters, have issued jokes about that violent attack for years. Just as Utah's Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee did on social media earlier this Summer to make light of the shootings at the homes of Hortman and Hoffman in Minnesota.

But now, things are different, apparently. While political violence against Democrats doesn't seem to count, with Kirk dead there will be consequences and retribution. "THIS IS WAR," declared the Trumpers on Twitter. "The Democrat Party must be classified as a domestic terror organization and their members and leaders treated accordingly," warned a bunch of them.

"The Left is the party of murder," pronounced Elon Musk, the man with the most Twitter followers in the world. "If they won't leave us in peace, then our choice is fight or die," he tweeted, joining Trump and the others in trying to increase the blood lust, rather than working to cool it down.

At the same time, Democrats --- as they did when their own were attacked --- have been calling for an end to the growing epidemic of political violence and gun violence in this nation. We call for the same.

Among those whose comments or writings over past 24 hours are cited, either positively or negatively, on today's program...

• Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT)
• Donald Trump
• Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC)
• Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ)
• Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL)
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
• Heather Digby Parton
• Josh Marshall

Finally, as Trump and his duplicitous Administration are now, officially, taking credit for U.S. infrastructure improvements made under Joe Biden's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report where, whaddaya know? While Trump is working hard to kill the U.S. wind and solar energy industries on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, the rest of the world is quickly moving to clean, cheap, renewable energy. And China, not the U.S., is making a mint off of it...

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