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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Flood-ravaged Carolinas struck by another round of wildfires, as Trump pushes to dismantle FEMA; Melting glaciers around the world threaten water supplies for billions of people; PLUS: Fossil fuel industry pushing Congress to give it 'immunity' from liability for climate damages... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The doublespeak of Energy Secretary Chris Wright; Congress seeks trillions in cuts. Will oil industry's tax breaks skate by?; NIH ends future funding to study the health effects of climate change; The vicious cycle of extreme heat leading to more fossil fuel use; Juliana v. US: Supreme Court decision brings 10-year climate case to an end; Fossil-funded research used to avoid paying workers hurt by 2010 Gulf spill... PLUS: Climate deniers shift focus to renewable energy skepticism... and much, MUCH more! ...

We've got a few explainers on today's BradCast. But I thought you might find it useful to be armed with some facts, truth and understanding right about now. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our explainer coverage today...

• Not long after we got off air today, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer signaled he would allow Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans to adopt a bad six-month spending bill rather than fight them, because that fight would results in a government shutdown as of midnight on Friday. It's certainly a dilemma for the Dems, many of whom seemed to come around to the decision to fight rather than fold today. Even the nation's largest federal workers union --- whose members would arguably be first and most directly effected by a shutdown --- persuasively called on Dems to do just that, arguing: "With thousands of federal workers either fired, placed on administrative leave, or at immediate risk of losing their jobs, AFGE members have concluded that a widespread government shutdown has been underway since January 20 and will continue to spread whether senators vote yes or no on H.R. 1968." Schumer's announcement that he will vote with Republicans to end debate on the Continuing Resolution Friday, suggests the GOP is likely to get the support of at least eight Democrats Senators that will be needed to overcome a filibuster tomorrow. But, we'll see if a few more Dems find the spine to stand up against Trump and stand up for Americans before then.

• Speaking of AFGE, they and a few other unions won a big victory today. They had sued the federal government to restore the jobs of thousands of "probationary" federal workers unlawfully fired by the Trump Administration. Today, a federal judge ordered those workers, at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior and Treasury to be rehired "immediately". U.S. District Judge William Alsup excoriated the Trump Justice Department's legal justification for the layoffs and their refusal to present evidence to support their case. "It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie," railed Judge Alsup from the bench. "That should not have been done in our country. It was a sham in order to try to avoid statutory requirements."

• Yesterday, you may have seen headlines about Trump's EPA chief Lee Zeldin declaring a rollback of more than 30 important health, safety and environmental regulations. (Eg: "Trump takes an ax to more than a dozen pollution rules in rapid-fire deregulation".) In fact, none of those regulations have actually been rolled back. Yet. "Today I'm pleased to make the largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history," the new EPA Administrator dramatically declared in a two-minute video filled with one lie after another, falsely describing "suffocating rules that restrict nearly every sector of our economy and cost Americans trillions of dollars." The video was released to accompany Zeldin's Wednesday essay in the Wall Street Journal offering more false and misleading details on those lies.

  Today, we step through the key lies, explain the truth about them, and what Zeldin's announcement really amounts to. No, there is no "EV mandate" and the U.S. is already "energy dominant" as it was when Trump took office after America long ago became the world's leading producer of oil, gas, coal and renewable energy under President Biden, who also adopted a number of landmark climate initiatives that increased manufacturing, boosted the economy, produced clean energy and made America safer for everyone.

  It will be a long and difficult path for Trump's EPA to overturn dozens of health and safety rules long in place, as well as the agency's landmark 2009 scientific "endangerment finding" on the adverse health effects of planet warming carbon pollution on which a number of those regulations, adopted under the Clean Air Act, are based.

  Bottom line: the Trump Administration plan, as detailed by Zeldin, will increase pollution, worsen the climate crisis, allow more deadly cancer-causing toxins into our air and water, and force Americans to pay the bill for all of it through what Desi Doyen describes as a "pollution tax". You may support Zeldin and Trump's scheme to do all of those things, but let's be clear about what their announcement yesterday is calling for.

  The fossil fuel industry --- already the most profitable industry in the history of civilization --- immediately declared their support for the effort. Few others have done so and many have vowed to challenge it in court. Now it's up to all of us to fight against these unpopular plans. Tune in today for more details that may help to give you the ammunition to do so.

• Finally, Desi Doyen has a bit more on the Trump EPA's vow to Make America Polluted Again, and much more in our latest Green News Report...

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It may be the least surprising news you'll hear all week on The BradCast, but the story still needs to be told. The Trump Administration --- which still pretends to give a damn about "law and order" --- has, in just its first month and a half, handed out "Get Out of Jail Free" cards to nearly 100 corporations mostly headed up by Trump friends, donors and "investors" in his various crypto scams. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to our guest today on his new report documenting all of that, some news...

• Following a reportedly heated caucus meeting on Wednesday afternoon, Senate Democrats emerged to declare they would not help Republicans get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster to adopt a Trump-friendly Continuing Resolution to keep the government open through September. The GOP bill fails to put any brakes on Trump's lawlessness, and Dems are calling, instead, for a month-long, clean CR at current spending levels to allow time to finish bipartisan negotiations on a full 2025 budget vote in April. On Tuesday, House Republicans adopted the GOP spending bill without Democratic votes or input and immediately left town for a recess in hopes of forcing the Senate to pass the House bill before a Friday government shutdown deadline. Today, however, to the surprise of many, Senate Dems appeared to say no. For now. (After we got off air, additional reporting suggests the Dems' seemingly righteous stand against Trump and the Republicans in the Senate may be less than it seems.)

• All of that as Donald Trump's demolition of the federal government and Constitutional Order continues apace, with co-President Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros announcing new cuts and purges at the Dept. of Education, NASA, NOAA, Health and Human Services and the EPA.

• And, where Trump and Musk are gutting public agencies and services (unlawfully in many or most cases), Trump held an unlawful White House lawn commercial for Tesla, Musk's beleaguered EV company which has seen its stock market value plummet nearly 50% since last year's election. (But that free car commercial is hardly the only gift Trump is granting to Musk. See my conversation with today's guest.)

• On Tuesday, ProPublica revealed an email sent to remaining staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) directing them to shred and/or burn remaining documents at its nearly emptied D.C. headquarters. Quick court action by groups suing to block the agency's closure has resulted in an agreement [PDF] by the White House to halt any further destruction of documents for now. If you believe them.

• The Dept. of Justice is reportedly gutting its Public Integrity Section. That is the unit which investigates and prosecutes crimes carried out by public officials. Existing probes will reportedly be handed to U.S. Attorneys around the country appointed by the President, rather than be prosecuted by longtime career officials at Main Justice in D.C.

For all of Trump's vows to "restore law and order", he has been doing the exact opposite during his first seven weeks in office. From pardoning violent criminals who attacked police officers during his January 6, 2021 insurrection to firing Inspectors General, to gutting the Dept. of Justice and other federal agencies that enforce the law, Trump's most robust pro-crime efforts may be seen in the corporate realm, particularly on behalf of those corporate CEOs who have been lining his pockets with tens of millions of dollars.

We're joined today by RICK CLAYPOOL of the nonprofit government watchdog Public Citizen, where he is a Research Director focused on corporate crime and the ways in which corporate power distorts democracy.

Last week, Claypool issued a new report titled "Corporate Clemency: How Trump Is Halting Enforcement Against Corporate Lawbreakers." In it, he details how the "Trump administration has already halted or moved to dismiss enforcement investigations and cases against 89 corporations." Though he notes today that, a week after the report was originally published, that number is now closer to 100.

Cases and investigations against powerful corporations have been nixed at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (all of them, in fact); at the DoJ and SEC, including for companies who appear to have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars bribing foreign officials; at the DoJ's Civil Rights Division, as well as its Environmental and Natural Resources Division; at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and elsewhere.

"34 corporate inauguration donors facing federal enforcement collectively gave at least $34 million toward Trump’s inaugural festivities," according to the new reports, which goes on to note that "These 34 corporations collectively face 60 separate federal investigations and lawsuits." Or, at least, they did.

In addition to scores of now dismissed investigations and cases against companies, particularly with Trump-friendly CEOs, as detailed in Claypool's staggering report, Public Citizen has also created a searchable public database, called the "Corporate Enforcement Tracker," where you can follow details on the status of investigations, suits and indictments rolled back, paused, reversed or killed entirely by the Administration for your favorite companies.

Claypool describes it as "highly unusual" for an Administration to do anything like this upon taking office. "A former Commissioner from the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission remarked that they were never aware of cases being dismissed by the agency itself for any reason, other than maybe the strength of the case, not because of the content. But here, the cases are plainly being dropped and dismissed in response to Trump's Executive Order - the anti-transgender and transgender 'ideology' Executive Order," explains Claypool. "It's horrifying to see the agency that is supposed to be protecting people from discrimination seems to be actively discriminating against a category of worker they are supposed to be protecting."

Other nixed cases including chemical companies previously facing prosecution for "high concentrations of carcinogenic air pollution coming from the factory. This factory was disproportionately harming black and low income Americans. Flash forward to now, the Trump Justice Department actually put out a press release about dropping the case, essentially celebrating that this is the end of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies."

Million dollar donations to the President's Inaugural and Library Fund are "just the tip of the iceberg," warns Claypool, citing media and crypto company CEOs padding Trump's pockets with tens of millions of dollars. And that's before we even get to the favors that Trump is offering Elon Musk's many companies, previously facing dozing of enforcement actions.

"If companies know they can break the law with impunity, they will," Claypool argues. "It is a frequent precursor to corporate catastrophes. Like the crash of 2008, like Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers pushing Oxycontin, like Volkswagen cheating [on emissions tests]. The lack of oversight allows corporate misconduct to fester. If they can cut corners in ways that break the law, but they don't think they're going to get caught, they're probably going to break the law. And that's going to harm people in the process."

Claypool's report at Public Citizen concludes this way: "Corporate crime and lawbreaking can victimize millions of Americans at an unimaginable scale. The bitter irony that it can happen under the banner of a supposed 'law and order' presidential platform might be amusing if the reality was not so plainly catastrophic. This will not end well."

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We pick up on today's BradCast with something that came up at the very end of yesterday's program. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

After I raised the question we've been discussing of late, regarding why Donald Trump is seemingly dismantling the U.S. Government from top to bottom, despite the unpopularity of the bulk of his actions, our friend 'Driftglass', one of my guests yesterday, suggested that everything Trump was doing was clearly very popular with Russia and its strongman President Vladimir Putin.

Democratic U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley came at the same the point during a confirmation hearing this week for two Trump nominees in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Is President Trump a Russian asset?," the Oregon Senator asked Deputy Sec. of State nominee Christopher Landau directly, before detailing one thing after another that Trump has done, particularly regarding Ukraine, that would seem to directly benefit Putin.

"What else could a Russian asset actually possibly do that Trump hasn't yet done?," he asked both Landau and Matthew Whitaker, Trump's nominee to be Ambassador to NATO. Tune in for Merkley's full line of questioning and the two nominees' embarrassingly evasive answers.

Relatedly, and amusingly, Elon Musk's AI chatbot called Grok, was asked a similar question this week. The query asked Grok to "use all publicly available information from 1980" through the present to determine: "What is the likelihood from 1-100 that Trump is a Putin compromised asset"?

We share part of the detailed answer, as Musk's AI explains why it estimates "a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties."

Well, that's probably embarrassing for Musk's co-President.

As to Merkley's question about what else a Russian asset could "actually possibly do that Trump hasn't yet done," while Trump's nominees tried to change the subject rather than answer that question, Reuters offers an exclusive today that offers such an answer. The outlet is reporting that Trump is readying plans to revoke legal status for some 240,000 refugees who fled to the U.S. from Ukraine after Russia's invasion of their country. They also cite reporting from CBS News last week that Trump is planning to revoke legal immigrant status for as many as 1.8 million migrants here legally from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and, perhaps most alarmingly, Afghanistan.

Reuters details the case of a former Afghan intelligence officer who served as a CIA asset identifying "High Value Targets" for the U.S. during our long war there. He was granted a two-year parole by the U.S. in January of 2024, on the very strong recommendation of his CIA handler after the Taliban retook Afghanistan. The man, with no criminal record, identified as Rafi, was recently detained by ICE when he showed up for a regular check-in, in advance of an asylum hearing scheduled for next month. When Reuters inquired with ICE as to why they were keeping Rafi in detention, they were told that immigration policies for Afghan refugees who aided Americans were "ended on January 20, 2025," the day Trump was sworn in to office.

If it's not clear by now that Republicans are lying when they claim to support "legal" immigration, they're just against people coming here "illegally", then the stunning story of what the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) tweeted last night about Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) --- a 40-year American citizen who came to the U.S. lawfully as a child 60 years ago, and delivered the Spanish-language rebuttal to Trump's address to Congress on Tuesday night --- may be an eye-opener for you.

Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, rebutting a litany of environmental and energy related lies that Trump unleashed during his Congressional address, and much more...

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As discussed with our two guests on today's BradCast, Trump's speech to Congress on Tuesday night was so long and boring it could still be going on today, for all I know. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP today, however, a few important news headlines...

• After enacting 25% trade tariffs against our two largest trading partners and allies, Canada and Mexico, on Tuesday --- and seeing the stock-market plummet in response --- Trump agreed on Wednesday to delay implementation of tariffs on automobile imports, which would have sent car prices skyrocketing in the U.S., for one month.

• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled narrowly against the Trump Administration in one of its first rulings regarding whether or not they will require the Administration to follow the rule of law or not. In a 5 to 4 emergency ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with the Court's three Democratic appointees to uphold lower court rulings that order the Administration to unfreeze as much as $2 billion in payments to thousands of contractors for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in order to pay for work that has already been completed. Trump's January 20th Executive Order freezing both contracts and payments, signed on his first day in office, has already resulted in hundreds of layoffs by contractors, food for starving children left rotting in warehouses, and life-saving medicine going undelivered around the world.

• Newly-elected, 70-year old Democratic U.S. Rep. and former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner of Texas died on Tuesday night following an unspecified medical emergency after attending Trump's address to Congress, where he used his platform to rally against planned Republican cuts to Medicaid. Turner's death, and the months it will take to hold a special election to fill his seat, will give House Republicans a bit more breathing room in what is still one of the slimmest House majorities in U.S. history.

THEN, it's on to the longest --- and arguably dullest and most falsehood-filled --- addresses to Congress ever delivered by a U.S. President. It wasn't officially a State of the Union Address, for reasons that aren't worth boring you with (if you watched the speech, you've been through enough already), but it had all the same trappings.

It was also the most vengeful and obnoxiously partisan address ever delivered to Congress by a U.S. President, as Trump repeatedly attacked his predecessor throughout, blaming him for things like the newly-rising cost of eggs, describing Joe Biden as "the worst President in American history" and Democrats as "radical left lunatics".

The evening also featured some Democrats trying whatever they could think of to push back against Trump's lawless wrecking ball of an Administration to date. Those efforts resulted in one member, Rep. Al Green of Texas, being removed by the House Sergeant-at-Arms at Speaker Mike Johnson's direction, and others walking out at various points throughout the seemingly endless remarks.

We're joined for insight on all of this today, as ever, by our very smart, old school blogger friends HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, the award-winning columnist at Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS', longtime fellow blogger and broadcaster, as co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast.

The hour and 39-minute speech "was absolutely interminable," agrees Parton today, arguing that the "litany of atrocities" outlined by Trump as unparalleled achievements in his first six weeks in office, suggests he believes "he is no longer encumbered by the law, by the Constitution, by anything."

"Who is there left to be persuaded, cajoled, shocked, outraged?," Driftglass asks rhetorically. "The only thing that is going to shock the people in the middle is economic hardship. The recession that Trump is bringing down on their heads. Cutting off their services. Invading their Social Security. That might actually light a fire under them and get them moving."

But we will see. We discuss, among many other things...

• the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of attempts by elected Dems to push back against Trump, and the forced removal of spirited protester, Rep. Green, from the proceedings;
• Trump's vow to "get" Greenland from Denmark "one way or the other" and the beginning of the GOP's renewed, if ever-present, love for American imperialism;
• the hypocritical reaction to the speech by Congressional Republicans who, just one year ago, were clutching their pearls after what they described as "the most political, partisan speech ever delivered by a President in the hallowed House chamber" following President Biden's final SOTU.
• how Medicaid and even Social Security are now both "on the chopping block" for Trump and Congressional Republicans;
• and explanations from both Digby and Driftglass as to why Trump is violently dismantling the federal government with Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros, despite the unpopularity of those actions among the public.

That's just a taste. As ever, tune in for much more...

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At the Oval Office on Friday between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the whole world saw a President clearly terrified of Vladimir Putin and Russia. But it wasn't President Zelenskyy, it was clearly President Trump. Before we get there today, however, some alarming news on today's BradCast on what appears to be enormous planned and/or threatened cuts at Social Security. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last week, our friend DAVID DAYEN, investigative financial journalist, author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect, was first to break the news of the Trump Administration making plans to cut the Social Security Administration (SSA) by half. That would mean, at a minimum, layoffs of tens of thousands of employees at the notoriously efficient agency which has never missed or even had a late payment since its founding in 1935 and whose administrative expenses are less than 1% of their total budget.

To achieve the type of massive cuts the Administration is actively devising, according to emails obtained by Dayen, it would likely have to include the closure of SSA field offices around the country, which service about 120,000 visitors each day. That includes signing up beneficiaries for various SSA services that amount to checks sent to some 73 million retired and disabled Americans who receive about $126 billion in social safety net payments from the agency each month.

On the heels of Dayen's reporting, most of the corporate media outlets have now confirmed plans by the Trump Administration to cut at least 7,000 workers. Dayen, who joins us on today's program, however, is standing by his reporting on the efforts being drawn up to slash much deeper and wider than that. The cuts, according to experts --- including the SSA's former Commissioner under President Biden --- could, within the coming months, result in much-needed payments to beneficiaries being delayed, at a minimum.

Former SSA Commissioner and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley told CNBC over the weekend: "Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits. I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days." He advised that "people should start saving now."

Citing the fact that the agency is already under-staffed and operating with with 7,000 fewer employees than just a decade ago, Dayen tells me "there's about a 50-year low in terms of the number of employees at the Social Security Administration."

"Even before Donald Trump was inaugurated, people would say [SSA] was in an operational crisis from a lack of manpower to do the large and important work that needs to to be done. Every day in America, 10,000 people turn 65. The needs on the disability front have gone up year after year after year. There simply aren't enough people to process systems, many of which are still manual."

"Republicans have refused to fund the system whenever they get into power in the government, in even a small way. They force these cuts. It's a one-way ratchet, where the number of the workforce never gets rebuilt," Dayen explains, alluding to "lies" by folks like Elon Musk and House Speaker Mike Johnson who claim, without evidence, that SSA is a hotbed of "waste, fraud and abuse."

When these cuts are put in place, and field offices shut down, beneficiaries may be forced to travel hundreds of miles to have an in-person meeting or hearing regarding their benefits. Even phone services are likely to be cut. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's Acting SSA chief has "proposed using [private, for-profit] call center employees to replace SSA workers who staff an 800 number for beneficiaries."

"It sounds like Privatization 101, doesn't it?," quips Dayen. "This is what is done when privatizers get in power. They cut spending. They cut the workforce to make it look like they're slimming down the federal government. But those tasks still have to be performed, and they're usually performed by outside contractors who are more expensive than if you would do the actual activity in house."

Much more on all of that from Dayen today. Please tune in.

NEXT... We dive into Friday's shameful televised Oval Office meeting between President Trump, Vice-President Vance and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, where Trump and Vance berated the heroic Ukrainian leader for not being grateful enough to them. Or something. In what devolved into a shouting match, at least on Trump and Vance's part, both of the American leaders took to echoing Russian propaganda and talking points at Zelenskyy after he'd flown to the U.S. to sign an agreement (incredibly enough) to give away half of his nation's natural resources to the U.S. in order to repay previous military support. All in the hopes of eventually coming to a peace agreement with Russia.

But, the Ukrainian President insisted, the U.S. needed to offer security guarantees if his country was to agree to any sort of ceasefire, given that Vladimir Putin had violated such agreements dozens of times in the paste, including the 1994 agreement when Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons arsenal after the fall of the Soviet Union. In exchange, the pact between Ukraine, Russia, U.S., U.K., Germany, France and China guaranteed that Ukraine's sovereign borders would remain protected and secure. That is just one of many agreements broken by Putin. Thus, any such deal with Russia's belligerent strongman would require security assurances from Ukraine's allies...which the U.S., at least until Friday, has long been.

Shortly after Trump's televised Oval Office spectacle, Zelenskyy was sent away from the White House, which cancelled the planned signing of the resources agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine.

It was, as the New York Times' conservative Brett Stephens described it, "A Day of American Infamy", as Trump seemed to officially change sides in the war to support Russia and Putin...for some reason...after 80 post-WWII years of an unbreakable alliance with Western Europe.

Callers ring in today with thoughts on Friday's spectacle and more. But, of course, those listeners who, in recent years, were willing to call in to blame the U.S. and Ukraine for Russia's invasion, were nowhere to be found...

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We can't fight every stupid, idiotic, dangerous or perilous thing during the Trump Era, can we? I know I can't, personally. But I don't speak for everyone else. And one person's stupid or idiotic may be another's dangerous or perilous. An interesting debate over picking battles and who gets to decide which ones should be waged is at the heart of today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... however, speaking of dangerous, Donald Trump lackey and MAGA merchandiser (or "sycophantic suck-up" as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse accurately described him today), Kash Patel was confirmed for a ten-year term as FBI Director by cowardly, sycophantic suck-up Republicans in the U.S. Senate today. All Democrats voted against him. Just two Republicans (Collins and Murkowski) joined them.

Aside from being wildly unqualified and publishing an "enemies list" of so-called "members of the Executive Branch deep state” that he vows to target, Patel also pleaded the Fifth to avoid implicating himself in crimes during grand jury testimony regarding his role in Trump's theft of thousands of pages of highly classified national security documents; was paid $25,000 by Russian propagandists to appear in an anti-FBI documentary series; appears to have millions of dollars linked to Chinese interests through shell corporations in the Cayman Islands; and, according to whistleblower allegations cited by the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, appears to have committed perjury during his Senate confirmation hearing.

Other than that, he sounds like the perfect choice for FBI Director! Donald Trump has done it again! Did I mention Patel also publicly vowed, as recently as last December, to "come after" journalists "who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig Presidential elections"? (So much for the First Amendment, even if Patel remains a fan of the Fifth.)

THEN... Speaking of the First Amendment and protection of the free press, we recently reported on the Trump White House's attempt to violate the First Amendment by barring the Associated Press from White House events unless and until the 178-year old international media organization agreed to change its Style Guide to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America".

On the surface, it seems like a pretty minor fight, given everything else the Constitutional order is up against. But, upon closer examination, it really is fight over basic Constitutional rights. As NYTimes' opinion writer Jamelle Bouie accurately characterized it at Bluesky, "your willingness to accept this gulf of america nonsense is an indication of your willingness to accept much worse things coming from this administration."

Meanwhile, over The Atlantic, Senior Editor Gilad Edelman doesn't have any such concerns, and even appears to be victim-blaming by suggesting the fight is one that "the AP probably should never have picked in the first place."

That brief article by Edelman recently touched off our guest today, longtime media critic, political strategist and writer, JAMISON FOSER, who wonders, in a recent article, who Edelman thinks he is to decide which fights are worth waging in the Trump Era and which are not.

"I think the nature of the situation that we're in," Foser tells me today, "and the breadth and depth of the ways that we are in trouble, and things are stacked against us --- an autocratic movement has control of our entire government, much of the news media, much of the ways that people get information online --- things are really stacked against us."

"We are not in a situation in which there are obvious, clear, easily discernible, winnable fights we can choose. So this idea that people should only choose fights that they can win --- I think people should choose the fights that feel right to them. We should all be doing a little less trying to police what fights other people are choosing to engage in, and more finding a place where we can stand up and pick a fight where we can," he argues.

"We will probably lose it," he concedes, "because we will probably lose most of them. But sometimes in the loss there is some value. In this one [AP's defense of First Amendment freedoms] there is some value. There's value in saying, 'We can't stop Donald Trump from ordering his government to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. But we can say we are not going along with that. It is racist, and dumb, and he can't make us say it. There's value in saying that to ourselves, in not giving in to his attempt to control the English language. And there's value in showing our fellow Americans that we are not going along with that."

In AP's case, all they were doing was following the Style Guide they have used for decades. And Edelman still characterized it as a "fight" they "should never have picked."

We've got much more to discuss along those lines today with Foser --- including how elected Democrats might wage more productive fights --- in what I think is a really interesting conversation. Please give it a listen.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, covering the heroic senior DoJ official who quit this week rather than violate the law by following Trump Admin orders to claw back money lawfully granted to clean energy initiatives under Biden; climate change now tripling the price of coffee and cocoa; and Trump declaring himself 'King' to cancel New York City's very successful, first-in-the-nation congestion pricing...

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As usual these days on The BradCast, thanks largely to the planned chaos of our Felon-in-Chief, there's more going on than we can cover. We try to stay focused on the most important and/or least covered stories. But late this afternoon, thanks to some remarkable politically thuggery at Trump's fully weaponized DoJ, and some remarkable courage in response to it, we've got a humdinger of a story to cover as well, as it broke just before airtime today. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Here are some of today's stories. (Though tune in for much more!)...

• A U.S. District judge in D.C. late last night, blocked the Trump Administration's termination of Hampton Dellinger, head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which helps federal employees avoid violations of the Hatch Act, and helps ensure whistleblower protections for them. Judge Amy Berman Jackson described Hampton's removal as "plainly" in violation of the law.

• Following up on a story that broke at the end of yesterday's program, more details today on a rare victory for Donald Trump in court these days, after a federal judge dismissed a challenge by several federal labor unions to Trump/Musk's so-called "buyout" offer that was sent to some 2 million federal employees. The Judge ruled the unions didn't have the standing to sue. With that obstacle out of the way, for now, and some 75,000 workers reportedly accepting the offer (we'll see if they ever get paid or if the scheme is found to be unlawful through a separate suit), the Administration has reportedly begun mass firings of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

• Republicans in the U.S. Senate confirmed health menace Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, giving the longtime anti-vax conspiracist, oversight of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) among many others. All Dems voting against him. The only Republican to do so was Sen. Mitch McConnell, a polio victim as a child. That, as another "completely preventable" measles outbreak is now underway in west Texas, where all of the victims are said to be unvaccinated children. Kennedy's elevation as the nation's top health official also follows the head of Samoa's medical system charging that Kennedy lied during his Senate confirmation hearings regarding his involvement in a massive measles epidemic that killed 83 people on the island nation in 2019. Most of those killed were children under 5 years of age. All were unvaccinated for the most contagious infectious disease known to humans, one that is otherwise fully avoidable with the MMR vaccine, developed in 1971, which our new HHS Sec. has spent years advocating against.

• Then, the remarkable BREAKING NEWS out of New York and D.C. late this afternoon...

  Earlier this week, as we reported, Donald Trump ordered the DoJ to drop its felony indictment against NYC's Democrat-ish Mayor Eric Adams. He was charged last year with five criminal counts including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations from Turkish interests. Most believe that prosecutors have him dead to rights, though he's pleaded not guilty, has refused to resign and is even running for reelection in November.

  He's also been buddying up to Trump since last year's election, and the 34-time convicted felon turned President has taken the unprecedented step of ordering his personal defense lawyer turned Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove (pictured above right), to make the corruption charges against Adams go away, as the wildly unpopular Mayor has vowed to help Trump with his immigrant deportation efforts in NYC.

  But the Acting U.S. Attorney in charge of the very independent Southern District of New York (SDNY), Danielle Sassoon --- a Republican former clerk to the late, far-right Justice Antonin Scalia and a member of the far-right Federalist Society --- refused to drop the charges against Adams. In a remarkable 8-page letter [PDF] to Trump's new Attorney General, Pam Bondi, requesting a meeting with her, Sassoon accused Bove of acceding to a "quid pro quo," said she was "confident" that Adams was guilty as charged, and that prosecutors were also preparing to charge him with destroying evidence. She said would resign, rather than drop the charges against Adams if that's what DoJ was insisting upon.

  In accepting her resignation, Bove wrote in his own extraordinary, Orwellian, 8-page letter to Sassoon, charging that she was somehow violating her oath of office by "disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President." In fact, her oath is to defend the Constitution and rule of law, not one of fealty to a President. Bove further alleged that the courageous Sassoon was insisting on "pursuing a politically motivated prosecution" (the charges against the Democrat Adams were brought last year by a Democratic U.S. Attorney appointed by Joe Biden) and that her refusal to dismiss the criminal charges --- for Bove's clearly stated political purpose! --- was "a disservice to the nature of this work and the public's perception of our efforts." He also promised that the DoJ would now investigate her.

  But, that's not all. After that, the case moved to the DoJ's public corruption unit in D.C., where two five more top officials, "The acting chief, three deputy chiefs and a deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division who oversaw the section" also refused to drop the charges against Adams, choosing to resign instead. Good for them as well!

  As of airtime, Adams remained indicted, six senior DoJ officials promoted by Trump have resigned in protest, and who knows where this all goes from here?!...

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the impact of climate change is reshaping U.S. real estate markets (bigly!); the Trump Admin is failing to hire thousands of seasonal firefighters before fire season; and Trump is rolling back money-, water- and energy-saving appliance standards again. And receiving a ridiculous "tongue bath" in the bargain from one of his top, most sycophantic cheerleaders at Fox "News"...

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