Gotta keep it short today. (You're welcome.) But there's plenty to make up for it on today's very lively BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage...

• Habemus Papam! And all signs are that Pope Leo XIV may be a good one...even if he's from Chicago.

• Happily, the new Pope tossed Donald Trump's dumb, first and only, but not-actually-done trade deal with U.K. right off today's front pages. But, suffice to say, it ain't much of a deal anyway, done or otherwise. At least not for the U.S.

• Speaking of deals from the world's greatest (read: worst) negotiator, the one that Trump struck last week with Ukraine, to share some profits from exploitation of rare earth minerals in the war-torn nation in exchange for our continuing support, actually is a good deal! Especially for Ukraine, which seems to have outfoxed Trump. (Which apparently isn't all that difficult.)

• In other dumb Trump trade news, California Governor Gavin Newsom and U.S. Senator Adam Schiff --- not to mention film and TV producers and unions, etc. --- are calling Trump's weekend bluff, when he claimed to want to save the U.S. film industry. He declared an unworkable, potentially industry-crushing 100% tariff on all films "produced in Foreign Lands". The serious people, however, want to see federal tax credits to encourage more production in the U.S. So, does Donny really want to keep the industry from "DYING a very fast death", as he claimed? If so, his Democratic friends in California have an actual solution. (Don't hold your breath he'll take it.)

• Arizona's two-time statewide loser and election fraud fraudster Kari Lake has a new job with the Trump Administration. She's helping him shut down the world-revered Voice of America news and culture outlet and its global sister networks, despite the Congressionally-mandated and funded outlets' charter to produce accurate and unbiased news and cultural programming --- particularly in regions where a free press is restricted. VOA has done exactly that for the past 83-years since WWII, until being silenced by the Trump Administration. As lawsuits filed by VOA journalists, unions and contractors move forward to reopen the networks, Lake announced this week that she plans to replace the programming with far-right wingnut propaganda produced by the loons at the One America News Network (OAN). Which would, of course, be against the law.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here with some alarming news that came in after we'd already laid down today's Green News Report. We close today's program with both...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump EPA to reportedly kill off money-saving, energy-saving Energy Star program; Trump's cuts to science funding are hurting the U.S. economy; Most Americans rely on federal science every day, but don't realize it; PLUS: Republican-controlled Congress targets California's clean air standards and more... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Land under the country's largest cities is sinking. Here's where - and why; Water a weapon in India/Pakistan conflict; Anti-government group threatens crucial weather radars, NOAA warns; Congress asks whether FEMA is ready for hurricane season amid cuts; 17 states sue Trump Admin for blocking funds for electric vehicle charging; Trump Admin. decommissions sea ice data that warned of climate change... PLUS: Coal ash waste could be a rare earth reservoir... and much, MUCH more! ...

We've got a bit more religion-related news than usual on today's BradCast. But it's not to celebrate the new Papal Conclave underway as of today at the Vatican. It's because rightwingers in the U.S. are using phony claims of "religious bias" to rewrite Constitutional rights, freedoms, and the specific intentions of the Framers who wrote it. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

First up, before we get to our guest, some quick news, including some election news...

• After six months of trying to undermine democracy and invalidate tens of thousands of lawfully cast votes in North Carolina from last November's election, Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin has finally conceded, giving up his post-election challenge against Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs who defeated him in last year's election for state Supreme Court by 734 votes. Just two days after a Trump-appointed federal judge declared Griffin's challenge --- attempting to change the rules of an election after the election --- to be unconstitutional, while giving him seven days to decide if he wanted to appeal, Griffin gave up the ghost. We've been covering the contest over the past six months and revisited its ugly details on yesterday's BradCast on the heels of Monday's federal court ruling. It took a while --- and revealed a lot of villains in the Republican Party and on the NC Supreme Court --- but Democracy has won this round, at least, in the last unsettled race of 2024.

• Speaking of Republican losers, despite an endorsement from the Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance's half-brother, Republican Cory Bowman, was trounced on Tuesday by Aftab Pureval, the incumbent Democratic Mayor of Cincinnati in the city's mayoral primary. Pureval defeated Bowman by nearly 70 points (82.5% to 12.9%) in the three way race. As the top two vote-getters, however, both will go on to compete head-to-head in November's general election. Cincinnati hasn't elected a Republican Mayor since 1967 and they don't seem ready to do so again any time soon.

• On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court let its cruelty and corruption shine once again, by barring trans service members from serving in the military even while challenges are still underway in lower courts, despite many of those members serving openly and with distinction for years. That the Trump-packed SCOTUS would go along with his cruel mandate is not all that surprising. But the fact that they did so on an "emergency" basis, on the so-called "shadow docket", without explanation or briefing or oral argument, even as trans service members had been suing --- and winning --- at the lower court level, is particularly galling and cowardly. All three of the Court's liberal Justices dissented.

But, speaking of galling news from the High Court, last week, SCOTUS heard oral argument last week in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, a case engineered by rightwingers to challenge --- really, to tear down --- the Constitution's First Amendment establishment clause meant to protect the separation of church and state.

The case involves a wannabe remote charter public school called St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. It would be run by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City in "deep red" Oklahoma. The state's Charter School Board narrowly approved its application for public funding, despite its plans for "the evangelizing mission of the Church," including "that God created persons male and female" and that those who reject the Holy Trinity will "end up in hell". That approval would mean that, as a certified public school, it would receive taxpayer dollars in support of that "mission" whether taxpayers agreed with it or not.

While the state's Republican Governor and Superintendent of Public Schools support the idea of publicly funding religious charter schools, both the state's Republican Attorney General and its Republican-majority Supreme Court decidedly do not. The state Supremes blocked St. Isidore's charter, citing both the First Amendment of the Constitution and state law which prohibits the expenditure of public money on any "sectarian institution" and requires that public schools be "free from sectarian control."

That, in a state which has, in recent years, reduced some K-12 schools to just four days a week for lack of public money in the wake of GOP tax cuts. If SCOTUS reverses the state Supreme Court, as appeared likely during last week's oral argument, money from secular public schools will be diverted to religious education. In fact, as my guest explains today, states across the nation are likely to be mandated to approve and pay for such religious institutions --- even schools indoctrinating children into religions that today's proponents of St. Isidore may not wish to see funded by taxpayer dollars.

We're joined today by DANIEL MACH, Director of the ACLU's Program for Freedom of Religion and Belief, which is supporting opponents of this radical assault on 250 years of American separation of church and state. The ACLU's coalition includes Oklahoma faith leaders, parents, and public-education advocates, including national charter school advocate associations which object to turning public schools into Sunday schools.

"Oklahoma officials are not just blurring these lines separating church and state," Mach wrote when sending up alarm bells about this case back in 2023, "they’re attempting to completely eviscerate them." Our friend, legal journalist Mark Joseph Stern of Slate argues that this case is likely to "bury what remains of church–state separation, forcing every American to subsidize the indoctrination of children into faiths they may not share. And it would further enfeeble secular public education, diverting billions of dollars away from inclusive public schools toward religious academies that openly discriminate against those outside their faith."

But there is hope. A little. Justice Amy Coney Barret has recused from the case, meaning that if Chief Justice John Roberts --- the only Justice who appeared to be at least moderately uncertain of his final verdict last week --- decides in favor of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, then SCOTUS would be tied 4 to 4 and the Oklahoma high court's ruling would stand.

"This was a strong decision by the Oklahoma Supreme Court," Mach tells me today, explaining that their opinion "wasn't even close", pronouncing the Charter Board's decision as "so far beyond the pale...so far beyond what we have decided as a country that our government should and should not be doing" that even a Republican high court in a very Republican state had to say no to it.

"It's an interesting moment," says Mach, "because we have a conservative movement and an extremely conservative U.S. Supreme Court that supposedly cares about states' rights. But a ruling for the Catholic school here would be giving no weight to Oklahoma state statutes, the Oklahoma constitution, the Oklahoma Republican Attorney General, and the state Supreme Court, which interpreted its own state law. All of which made absolutely clear that charter schools in Oklahoma are public schools."

There is much more in my conversation with Mach today that you'll want to tune in for, much of which defies conventional wisdom about all of this...even if it may not be enough to prevent the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court from further undermining the Constitution and the original intention of its Framers. That, he says, would be not just a "seismic shift in the law", but "a ground-breaking disaster"...

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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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I'll try to make this brief today, so you can get right on to actually listening to today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today, as Donald Trump officially becomes the lowest-rated President in U.S. history during his first 100 days in office since polling began in the FDR Era...

• The Trump Administration has now gutted the Voting Rights Unit in the Civil Rights Section of the Dept. of Justice. All of the senior managers have been reassigned elsewhere and all pending cases from the prior Administration have now been dropped. So much for the DoJ's "crown jewel"...and enforcement of voting rights.

• After losing one case after another after another in lower courts since taking office, the Trump Administration is hoping to change their luck by turning the tables by arresting a sitting state judge in Wisconsin for allegedly helping an undocumented migrant avoid arrest by ICE when he was in her courtroom for a completely unrelated case. The state judge, Hannah Dugan, was hand-cuffed at the court (as opposed to, for example, Trump being allowed to turn himself in at an appointed hour for his two felony indictments) and Trump's FBI Director, Kash Patel, posted a photo of the perp walk on social media in violation of DoJ's long-standing policy. The case against Hannah, however, may not turn out to be a very good one, according to Marcy Wheeler.

• And now they're "deporting" U.S. citizens. At least children. With their mothers. Late last week, two mothers were both deported to Honduras after showing up for a scheduled check-in along with their kids, one of whom is 2-years old, one who is 7-years old, and one who is 4-years old...with Stage 4 cancer. The children are all U.S. citizens. Neither of the mothers were reportedly allowed to speak to a lawyer after being handcuffed and shipped out of the country. One of the women was reportedly allowed to speak to the father of her children for 1-minute before the call was cut off by ICE and the women and their children were all deported. And yet, when asked about it on Sunday, Sec. of State Marco Rubio had the gall to say that, while both citizens and non-citizens alike are entitled to Constitutional due process, "if you're in this this country unlawfully, you have no right to be here and you must be removed." But, how do you determine if someone is in the country unlawfully without due process? Clearly, neither of these women --- OR THEIR CHILDREN --- received it. That, by the way, is according to the far-right, very Trumpy, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge in Texas overseeing their cases. Even he is not happy about it!

• So, is this what Trumpers were hoping for when they voted for him last November? I had hoped to talk to a few of them as I asked such listeners to give us a call today. But, right as we finally got to the phones, the entire phone system here at KPFK crashed. [Please consider giving them a donation to help upgrade the phone system! And please tell them Brad sent you when you do!]

• Oh, well. That gave us some time to walk through at least a few of the major new polls out over the past few days in the run up to Trump's 100th Day in office this week, finding him with the lowest rating at this time in office of every President who has served over the past 100 years. And it's not just his overall approval that has crashed --- into the 30s in some of the polls --- but, on every single issue of note, more Americans oppose him than support him...by huge margins...

• And also, some time to enjoy the schadenfreude of a whole bunch of MAGA folks who seem to now deeply regret their vote for Donald Trump...

This seems to be the worst fascist takeover ever. But he's doing it anyway...

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Will they fight for the actual health and lives of their constituents? Or go along with (literally) deadly DOGE cuts? Will they throw away tens or hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the clean, renewable energy industry in their own home districts? Or screw over their own voters and local economies in favor of Trump's tax cuts for billionaires and huge corporations? All of those questions, a few answers, and much more --- even several bright spots --- on today's Earth Day 2025 BradCast. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

Among our coverage...

• West Virginia coal miners are suing Bobby Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), for recent layoffs at the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH) and the shut down of critical medical screening and job replacement services for miners. The lead plaintiff in the suit is suffering from lung disease, amid a growing epidemic of black lung in Coal Country. But with some 875 of NIOSH's 1,000 employees terminated earlier this month, they are no longer available to help move miners like him to non-dusty jobs, as required by the Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977. In addition to free screenings for lung disease and the right to job transfers, the federal law also blocks Administrations from weakening existing protections. The Trump Administration, however, doesn't seem to much care about the rule of law.

• In response to the NIOSH layoffs and shutdown of these critical programs for miners, WV's Republican U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito --- who voted to confirm Kennedy just weeks ago --- is now begging him to restore those jobs at NIOSH, many of which were in her state, and the critical medical services for miners in Central Appalachia. All of that, as Trump recently welcomed coal miners to the White House to serve as props for his announcement of new Executive Orders meant to try and force the revival of the dying coal industry ("beautiful, clean coal," as he insists on falsely describing it) and to otherwise try and knee-cap cleaner, safer, more profitable renewable energy initiatives in the bargain.

• Also part of the new Administration's celebration of Earth Day this year, Trump's Environmental Protection Agency sent letters to hundreds of EPA employees in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights today to inform them their services are no longer needed, as environmental justice --- protecting low-income Americans and minorities most at risk from air and water pollution --- no longer aligns "with the agency’s current and future needs."

• Back in Congress, Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House are facing a serious dilemma. The House Ways and Means Committee is currently tasked with cutting some $1.5 trillion in federal services to Americans in order to help pay for Trump's $4.5 trillion tax cuts to mostly benefit huge corporations and the wealthy. But many Republican members of the Committee have seen huge, renewable energy-related job growth in their home districts, thanks entirely to tax credits made available via the Inflation Reduction Act passed without a single Republican vote in 2022 and signed into law by President Biden. The majority of the tax credits to companies to spur new manufacturing jobs in the renewable energy business are, by design of the previous Democratic Administration, in "red" states and counties. But Trump has ordered Congressional Republicans to kill all clean energy funding enacted by Biden. This is a real, if under-reported conundrum for Republicans and, potentially, a very good opportunity for Democrats in response.

• But Earth Day turned out to be another very bad for chief DOGE Bro and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Just after the close of the markets today, Tesla issued its latest quarterly report. It was brutal for the company, which announced that profits fell an extraordinary 71% as compared to the first quarter of 2024. That, thanks to several reasons, though none of them as obvious as the worldwide public disgust in response to Musk's obnoxious turn late last year to the hard, Trump, MAGA right.

• As Desi Doyen is here to remind us, however, there are still some reasons to be hopeful on this year's Earth Day. At least everywhere else in the world, where new technologies and clean-energy breakthroughs are actually being supported and making remarkable progress; where nature itself is offering exciting new opportunities to fight climate change; where threatened species are making surprising come backs in several places thanks to scientists, conservationists and local communities; where cities and states around the world are making major advances in reducing pollution, and; where countries --- other than the U.S., at least --- are banding together to help vulnerable nations adapt and survive our climate crisis.

• On the other hand, Desi is also here with our latest Green News Report --- where every day is Earth Day --- to catch us up with a few stories we missed while off on Spring Break last week. Most of those stories, focused largely on the U.S., are not nearly as bright, however, especially as the world lost one of its great climate champions this week...

Happy Earth Day. Somehow.

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Well, we're back live on today's BradCast, like it or not. With so much going on we've got no choice but to run right into the middle of the freeway and pray for the best. The result? Not a bad show, if I say so myself. [Audio link to full show follows this tweet.]

After a quick round-up, needed for context today, of just some of last week's madness while we were otherwise off for a much-needed break, we pick up with...

• The opinion [PDF] of the very conservative Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who, last week in the case of the mistakenly-deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia warned that the Trump Administration's refusal to bring the man home to Maryland from a gulag in El Salvador "should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear." Judge Wilkinson goes on to warn, among other things, that "The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order," and that "If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?"

• But Donald Trump's tyranny is now here, in full flower, which one Republican U.S. Senator admitted recently has all of her colleagues "afraid", even if most are still too afraid to say as much out loud.

• SCOTUS was literally forced to awaken from bed over the weekend to issue an extraordinary, 7 to 2, middle-of-the-night order PDF to the Trump Administration, clarifying that no Venezuelan migrants being held in Texas may be deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 "until further order of this court." (If you're wondering who were the two Justices in favor of sending migrants to foreign gulags without benefit of any Constitutional due process, that would be Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, of course.)

• And, by the way, Washington Post reported over the weekend that the 18 intelligence agencies comprising Trump's own National Intelligence Council concluded in an assessment earlier this month that the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the U.S., as Trump has lied about in unlawfully invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants without due process.

• Trump's fiscal policies continue to be disastrous as well. The U.S. stock market plummeted yet again on Monday in response to Trump's tariff and trade war and his new threats of firing his own Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who Trump is now blaming for the fact that he crashed the U.S. economy with his own dumb trade war that few if any countries are apparently willing to negotiate with Trump about.

• Pope Francis, the world's first Latin American pontiff and a great champion of progressive causes including the fight against climate change and for environmental justice --- as Desi Doyen details today --- died on Monday at the age of 88 after a months-long illness and a brief meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance on Easter Sunday.

• That's not all we cover today, but it gives you an idea before we open up the phones to callers, callers, callers. Lot of them, including some with some very interesting thoughts and questions! Please tune in!...

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On today's BradCast: The decision handed down by the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court last night just after we got off air was confusing, divided, muddled and, at closer inspection, as discussed with today's guest, even grimmer than it first appeared. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST UP, however, what qualifies as the brighter news of the day, believe it or not...

• Markets continued to plummet for a fourth straight day following Donald Trump's punishing, unilateral, worldwide (except for Russia) tariffs announced last week at the White House. But the push-back against his authority to issue them, granted by Congress, has begun to grow more quickly than one might have expected among Congressional Republicans.

• And, just before airtime today, a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled in favor of the Associated Press in its lawsuit against the Administration after it banned the news outlet from coverage of certain events in the White House and on Air Force One. The AP has accused the Administration of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment, in response to the outlet's decision to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally recognized name, rather than as the Gulf of America as Trump has attempted to mandate via Executive Order.

THEN, we're joined by Slate legal journalist MARK JOSEPH STERN to unpack the confusing --- and troubling --- 5 to 4 opinion issued by SCOTUS last night, largely allowing Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, for now, to detain and deport migrants to foreign gulags. Stern, who describing the ruling last night as one that "couldn't be more ominous", explains that the Court's brief, split decision is "going to cause a lot of confusion, chaos and uncertainty in the lower courts, and for these migrants, who the administration is trying to disappear to El Salvador."

While the five men on the Court disagreed with the four women (including the Court's lone female GOP-appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett) on most aspects of the ruling, they all agreed, at least, that deportees must be afforded the opportunity to challenge their detention in court before removal.

The terse, but alarming opinion was issued via the Court's "shadow docket" without full briefing or oral argument, in response to an emergency appeal in a challenge by Venezuela migrants deported under the AEA with no due process whatsoever. The Trump Administration invoked the wartime law --- which, according to its text, may only be used to detain and deport migrants from countries that have "declared war" on the U.S. --- to send Venezuelans they claim to be violent gang members to a gulag in El Salvador. And while the full Court decreed that such detainees must be allowed to challenge their detention in the jurisdiction in which they are detained, it will seemingly be impossible for the hundreds now already in a prison outside of the country to do so.

The Trump Administration's view, observes Stern, is that, once a migrant is locked up in a foreign gulag, they "have had their Constitutional rights permanently extinguished. They have no right to due process or any other rights, procedural or substantive. And further, that federal courts have no jurisdiction to order any kind of relief to help them." That is the case, according to the Government in the related Kilmar Abrego Garcia matter, even when someone has been "mistakenly" deported.

There are all sorts of troubling issues wrapped up in the majority's unsigned opinion, including the fact that they simply took the Administration at its word on several key points, despite Trump's Dept. of Justice repeatedly lying to and/or thumbing their nose at direct orders issued by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, whose impeachment Trump subsequently called for. That call led to a gentle reprimand from the Chief Justice a few weeks ago, even if John Roberts sided with the majority in favor of Trump anyway in Monday's decision.

"We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her blistering dissent, excoriating the majority. "The government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law," she warned, ominously noting that it is now the official position of the Court that even "United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. History is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this nation's system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise."

Stern shares her concern, particularly about the likelihood of U.S. citizens being swept off the streets and shipped off to foreign prisons. He adds: "By the way, something like 1-1.5% of individuals detained by ICE every year are actually U.S. citizens. The burden falls disproportionately on tribal citizens and Puerto Rican people on the mainland, due to racial profiling and other kinds of stereotyping. So this is not a far-off hypothetical."

He is also concerned about what the string of recent decisions by the corrupted high court in favor of the Administration and in contradiction to lower court judges, is likely to signal.

"I am worried that the Court is just going to start rubber-stamping these Trump requests for emergency relief, and refuse to consider the extraordinary and immense harms that will be inflicted on the American people by doing so," he explains. "That five men and sometimes Justice Barrett have decided that the real problem isn't Trump and his lawless crusade. The real problem is district court judges standing in his way. If that is the approach that the Supreme Court is taking --- if they really do think that the real problem is judges and not the Trump Administration's unprecedented assault on the rule of law, then again, we are all in grave danger. It's not just Venezuelan migrants."

Much more insight, disturbing details and outrage during my disturbing conversation today with Stern.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report after deadly, widespread extreme storms and flooding over the weekend; as Trump's trade war is increasing the cost of reconstruction for disaster victims; and as Senate Republicans work to strip California of its clean air car standards...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Millions of Americans reeling from widespread damage after relentless extreme storms; Trump's global trade war increasing the cost of reconstruction after disasters; Federal funding cuts halt repair work on America's most iconic hiking trails; PLUS: Senate Republicans push to strip California of its clear air car standards... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Myanmar earthquake death toll tops 3,500, with heavy rain forecast to continue; NPS restores original Harriet Tubman, Underground Railroad webpage; Worries grow over risk to Americans as Trump cuts health, safety agencies; Forecasters predict another active 2025 Atlantic Hurricane Season; Nations considering the 1st global tax on emissions from shipping... PLUS: US ends food aid for millions. World Food Program calls it a 'death sentence'... and much, MUCH more! ...

Who coulda foreseen it? Oh, yeah. Everybody in the world other than the idiot who did it and his weird cult followers working desperately to justify it today. As you might expect, we've got a lot to try and make sense of on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this very brief summary.]

So, Donald Trump pulled the trigger during his rambling "Liberation Day" remarks in the White House Rose Garden, just after the close of markets on Wednesday. The trade tariffs would be slapped on virtually every country in the world and would be, as one tech investment manager described it just after the announcement, "worse than the worst case scenario."

Today, Wall Street reacted. Poorly. The Dow fell over a cliff by more than 1,600 points. The S&P 500 plunged nearly five percent. The tech-heavy NASDAQ plummeted almost six percent. That's what happens when 54% tariff on China suggest that your next iPhone may soon cost $2,300. (The price of Apple stock crashed by nearly ten percent). In all, today amounted to the biggest nosedive for the markets since the mishandling of the COVID pandemic in 2020...the last time this idiot was in the White House.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman asserted that Trump's numbers announced on Wednesday included "false claims about our trading partners" and simply make no sense, suggesting he's "gone full-on crazy." Though, no matter how many times reality and facts are likely to be pointed out to him --- that we are not, for example, "subsidizing Canada by $200 billion a year" --- he "will never drop that claim."

Trump's made-man and Senior Trade Advisor Pete Navarro, fresh out of prison, defended the tariffs, claiming they will raise $6 trillion in revenue for the U.S. over the next ten years. They won't. But if they did, that would amount to a new 25% tax on American consumers, the largest tax hike in U.S. history, since U.S. consumers, not foreign governments, will be paying higher prices to cover the huge new import taxes on just about everything.

Trump's new taxes are likely to result, as well, in reciprocal tariffs from virtually every nation in the world against the U.S. Every nation in the world, that is, except Russia, which was curiously left off the list of newly sanctioned nations for some odd reason.

But, as our friend David Dayen, investigative financial journalist, author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect explained on this program last year, these tariffs are better seen as a means by which Trump hopes to bend companies, industries and, yes, entire foreign governments, to his will. "Look at these tariff threats more as like sanctions," Dayen told us in early December. "'If you do things we don't like, you're going to get higher tariffs.' That's not really about trade policy. That's really about doing what the United States says. It's really about policing the world through economic terms."

"Businesses are going to come to this President and say, 'Give me a waiver from your tariff.' The mind boggles at the potential for corruption here," Dayen said at the time. "This is what oligarchies look like. This is what Russia looks like. If you're closer to the king, you're going to do better."

"He wants to use tariffs and, more generally, the role of the United States as an economic hegemony, to bully other countries to do our bidding," Dayen foretold, in what now appears to be exactly what Trump is doing. He reiterated and added to some of those thoughts at TAP today. "Stop trying to place coherence on a policy that’s really just a mob boss breaking legs and asking for protection money."

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) smartly explained it in very similar terms last night in a social media thread. "Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive," Murphy argued, citing how "British kings used taxation to reward loyalty and punish dissent. ... The tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief."

But there is a way out. There is a way to end this madness. Trump only enjoys the unilateral power to issue economy-killing, job-crushing, 401k-flattening sanctions because Congress gave him that power. They can also take it away. There was an attempt by every Democrat and a handful of Republicans in the U.S. Senate yesterday to do exactly that, when it came to sanctions against Canada. The measure was successfully adopted by the Senate, but is unlikely to receive a vote in the U.S. House, where it would likely also be adopted if members were allowed to vote on it. So, Speaker Mike Johnson will make sure they can't.

With all of that in mind, "these tariffs won't stand," writes Josh Marshall at TPM today. Anyone running for Congress or thinking of doing so has all they now need to take down any Republican who would support this insanity --- and the harm it is now causing to their own constituents. "It’s malpractice for anyone challenging a Republican member of Congress not to be on this today," he detailed this morning.

So, yeah. Once again, it all comes down to democracy and elections. To that end, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Pennsylvania this week ruled in favor of voters, believe it or not. And a George W. Bush-appointed federal judge in Texas did the same thing late last month. We break down both rulings today before Desi Doyen joins us to close with our latest Green News Report, including a bit of bad news for the coal industry, thanks to good news from voters in Illinois this week as, once again, still more evidence that, yes, elections matter!...

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Tuesday was a very good day for Democrats. For a change. At ballot boxes in both Wisconsin and Florida, and in the U.S. Senate. We enjoy while we can on today's BradCast, while trying to make sense of everything else we have time for in the bargain. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Republicans won both U.S. House Special Elections for vacant seats in Florida's 1st and 6th Congressional Districts on Tuesday. You'd think the GOP would be celebrating today, but not so much. Last November, in each of those very "red" Districts, their candidates won by more than 30 points. On Tuesday, however, GOPers were still victorious, but the vote swung some 15 points or more toward the Democratic candidates in both contests. If that were to happen across the country during next year's mid-term elections it would become an absolute wipe-out for the Republican Party in the House.

In Wisconsin, even worse news for Republicans, Donald Trump, and his co-President Elon Musk. The state went to Trump just over five months ago by less than a point. But on Tuesday, the Democratic-backed candidate for WI's state Supreme Court, Susan Crawford, appears to have crushed GOP-backed MAGA candidate Brad Schimel by ten points. That's virtually unheard of in modern times in the notoriously narrowly-divided Badger State. That, after Musk dumped more than $25 million of his own money into the race --- even giving away million dollar checks to voters (unlawfully) in the bargain --- in what became the most expensive state court election in U.S. history. Liberals will now retain majority control of WI's high court for at least the next three years. Their majority could grow larger still as rightwing Justices face re-election bids over those years. Key issues likely to be decided by the high court during that time include abortion, voting and collective bargaining rights and challenges to GOP gerrymandering of Congressional districts. All of that is why Musk was so happy to set so many millions of his own dollars on fire, to no avail.

All of that happened on Tuesday, as New Jersey's Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker was wrapping up his marathon, record-breaking, 25-hour and 6-minute, non-stop "good trouble" speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, injecting a bit of hope into a few moribund Democrats across the nation and in the halls of Congress after ten long weeks of Trump and Musk's brutal destruction of the federal government and Constitutional order. It doesn't hurt that Booker, an African-American, also smashed the long-held Senate filibuster record set in 1957 by notorious segregationist Strom Thurmond, during his then successful blockade of civil rights legislation.

We're joined today to discuss all of that and much more by two of our longtime O.G. blogger friends, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, award-winning columnist at Salon and proprietor of Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS', eponymous blogger and co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast.

In addition to Tuesday's elections and what they may portend for Trump and Musk, as well as Booker's Senate 'filibuster' and what it may --- or should --- portend for Democratic leadership in Congress, we also discuss Trump's economy- and job-crushing new tariffs, his ill-considered and ever-increasing DOGE slashing of the federal government, and much more!

"He can bully everybody. He can't bully reality," observes Driftglass today, regarding Trump and one or more of the topics mentioned above. Says Digby about Republicans: "I think that they are seeing the writing on the wall, that there is a very, very large backlash."

Tune in for a very lively "Liberation Day" edition of The BradCast! Cheers!...

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A legal fight for the integrity and public oversight of elections in the Peach State has been running in federal court for nearly eight years now. As we've reported over those years here on The BradCast, it began long before Trump and his Republican MAGA stooges dreamt up their imaginary 'Stop the Steal' scheme to pretend the 2020 election was stolen from them. The long-running suit has highlighted vulnerabilities and revealed criminal actions along the way. But, as of last night, the case may have come to an end. Our guest today, however, a lead Plaintiff in the case, vows: "This fight is far from over." [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The madness wrought by our last election continues today, however, as layoffs begin for thousands of workers in agencies overseen by the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), now directed by vaccine conspiracist Bobby Kennedy, Jr. "The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support staff and senior leaders, leaving the federal government without many of the key experts who have long guided U.S. decisions on medical research, drug approvals and other issues" at the CDC, NIH, FDA and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, among others, AP reports today. A coalition of Democratic state Attorneys General are now suing to block the scheme, which they describe as unlawful, charging it will result in "serious harm to public health" and put states "at greater risk for future pandemics and the spread of otherwise preventable disease, while cutting off vital public health services."

Raising attention to madness like that was just one of the reasons that New Jersey's Democratic U.S. Senator Corey Booker determined he needed to take and hold the floor of the U.S. Senate "as long as I am physically able." As of airtime, he was on the brink of breaking the all-time, 24-hour and 18-minute record for holding the Senate floor. Shortly after airtime today, he did so, before standing down after just over 25 hours. We share some of his remarks.

THEN... We've been waiting for this federal court ruling for more than a year since its 17-day trial in January of 2024. In fact, we've been waiting for it for almost eight years, since it was first filed in 2017, challenging Georgia's use of 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems. The state was the first, along with Maryland, to do so statewide back in 2002.

In 2019, the judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, determined the state's Diebold touchscreen voting systems were so error-prone, unverifiable and vulnerable to manipulation, that she ordered they may no longer be used. In 2020, Georgia's current Sec. of State, Brad Raffensperger, defied voting system and cybersecurity experts who advised him to move the state to a hand-marked paper ballot system. Instead, with the blessing of former SoS, now Governor Brian Kemp, he moved to a new, unverifiable touchscreen voting system made by Dominion, at a price tag of more than $100 million to taxpayers. It has since proven to have many of the same vulnerabilities as the old Diebold systems. Last year's trial revealed many of those flaws.

But last night, well over a year since the trial in an Atlanta federal courtroom concluded, Judge Totenberg finally issued her 33-page ruling [PDF], lauding the plaintiffs for their "dedication to ensuring that Georgia's elections are conducted in a transparent, safe, and reliable manner," before dismissing the case entirely due to what she described as a lack of standing by the Plaintiffs to bring the suit in the first place. "Ultimately, Plaintiffs failed to establish at trial that Georgia's continued use of the [touchscreen Ballot Marking Device] will likely cause them to suffer a legally cognizable injury," she wrote in her order's Conclusion. "The Court therefore lacks jurisdiction to consider the merits of Plaintiffs' claims."

"Although Plaintiffs have not ultimately prevailed on their legal claims, their work has identified substantial concerns about the administration, maintenance, and security of Georgia's electronic in-person voting system," Totenberg ruled. "These investigative and educational efforts have prompted meaningful legislative action to bolster the transparency and accountability of Georgia's voting systems."

We're joined today --- as we have been many times over the years to discuss this case, and its many startling revelations and news-breaking findings --- by longtime election security and transparency champion, MARILYN MARKS, Founder and Executive Director of the non-profit good government group, Coalition for Good Governance, one of the case's lead Plaintiffs. Marks seemed as gobsmacked, confused and disappointed by all of this today as we were in the hours since last night's release of the judge's order.

"We haven't really absorbed this blow yet," she tells me. "After eight years to find out, 'Oh, you had no business to be here to begin with, here in court.'" Marks did her best, nonetheless, to explain the court's ruling. "She's basically said, 'You've got the right to vote. You've got the right to cast a ballot. But you don't have the right to know who you're voting for.'" That, a reference to the unreadable QR codes printed out on each ballot by Dominion's touchscreens, supposedly containing the voter's ballot selections. That QR code cannot be read or approved for accuracy by voters, however. Instead, they are asked to verify their selections on the human-readable portion of the computer-marked paper. But those selections are not used to tabulate election results.

Marks cites a 2022 race in which voters for Michelle Long-Spears, a candidate for Georgia's DeKalb County Commission, selected the candidate's name on the touchscreen, saw it on the computer-printed ballot as their selection, but could not tell that the QR Code actually registered a vote for her opponent.

Throughout the years-long course of this case, Marks, in her role as Plaintiff, helped reveal a number of troubling matters, from the fact (as demonstrated in court) that voters at the polling place are able to hack GA's Dominion touchscreens with no more than a ballpoint pen; to expert findings that resulted in a warning about these systems issued by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; to the tape-recorded confession she obtained from an Atlanta businessman who detailed his role in a scheme to unlawfully access and copy the code for the proprietary statewide voting system in Coffee County, GA, and share it over the Internet with fellow MAGAs after the 2020 election. That man, Scott Hall, was one of several criminal co-conspirators charged along with Donald Trump in Fani Willis' RICO case against him and 18 others. Hall, Sidney Powell and other Trumpers pleaded guilty. Marks was the one who first revealed the now notorious Coffee County breach during the course of the case that was dismissed last night.

"Back in her decision in the Fall of 2020," as part of this case, Marks explains today, "right before the 2020 election, [Judge Totenberg] was saying that with these [new Dominion] systems, it is a matter of when, not if, this system is going to be hacked. She talked about how it cannot be audited. She went through many, many warnings for the state, that essentially this was not a good system. She seemed to agree with us on the merits for the last eight years, but now says, 'You shouldn't have been here anyway.'"

Marks asserts that Totenberg appeared to agree with Plaintiffs on the merits throughout the case and its eventual trial, as attorneys for the State, representing Raffensperger, failed to rebut Plaintiff's many world-class voting system experts and their testimony. "I don't think I read anything where she felt that [Raffensperger] presented compelling facts. Our experts presented unrebutted facts. [The state's attorneys] really had nothing other than, 'You guys are election deniers. You don't have standing. Y'all haven't really been hurt.' There was really no rebuttal on the experts' findings."

In fact, despite claims by the State, the Plaintiffs in this case never challenged the results of any election. Rather, they presented an airtight case that the systems used in Georgia can be manipulated, violate voter secrecy rights, and can't be known to reflect the intent of any voter after an election. Those unrebutted facts, which Totenberg appears to have agreed with, were not enough to overcome her final ruling --- after nearly eight years and countless findings in favor of the Plaintiffs --- that they can't show they suffer any harm with the use of these systems.

Marks says she is still discussing the matter with attorneys, but suggested she may appeal the case to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals which has already, in a previous ruling in this case, agreed that Plaintiffs did, in fact, have standing.

For the record, Republican state lawmakers enacted a law last year that bars the use of QR Codes on ballots by 2026. Marks, however, explains why that provision is likely to put upcoming elections at legal risk and is unlikely be effectuated, as the state Legislature has, to date, failed to appropriate the nearly $70 million the law calls for to only somewhat correct Raffensperger's Touchscreen Follies.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the Trump Administration declares they will be shutting down FEMA (in this middle of this year's hurricane season!); is closing coal mine safety offices around the county; and overturning landmark fees on oil and gas drillers' climate-warming methane pollution...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump Administration plans to dismantle Federal Emergency Management Agency right in the middle of hurricane season; Trump/DOGE to cut coal mine safety offices; PLUS: Republican-controlled Congress overturns landmark fee on oil and gas drillers' methane pollution... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump’s U.S.A.I.D. cuts hobble earthquake response in Myanmar; Earth’s soil is drying up. It could be irreversible; Plastics are seeping into farm fields, food and eventually human bodies. Can they be stopped?; FEMA blocked $10B in disaster aid; 'Forever chemicals' from nearby factory found in dust of NC homes; How Trump''s tariffs could brake EVs but accelerate Tesla... PLUS: A Navajo Nation community has running water after waiting nearly 25 years... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump Administration omits climate change from the U.S. National Threat Assessment Report; EPA's rollback of landmark clean air and water rules will cause significant harm to public health; PLUS: U.S. Supreme Court closes the door on historic youth climate lawsuit... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): NIH ends future funding to study the health effects of climate change; Huge South Korea wildfires kill 27 and threaten to destroy ancient temples; Climate change is the backdrop to our lives, but it's missing in movies; Despite staff and budget cuts, NOAA issues critical drought warnings in its Spring Outlook; How Elon Musk’s layoffs are threatening America's shrimp; A guide to the 4 minerals shaping the world’s energy future... PLUS: Is planting trees 'DEI'? Trump administration cuts nationwide tree-planting effort... and much, MUCH more! ...

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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