It's all we can do, at this point, on our Monday shows, to hang on for dear life and try to get caught up with as much of the weekend's madness as possible. And so we do again on today's BradCast, along with the help of a few callers (including some Trump supporters!) [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the weekend's madness...

• After a marathon one-days-in-a-row of negotiations with Iran, the world's second greatest deal-maker, Vice President J.D. Vance, gives up and goes home. In retaliation, Donald Trump announces that he will shut down the Straight of Hormuz...which was already shut down by Iran in response to the U.S. attack, and was one of the main reason for the weekend's negotiations amid what is supposed to be a two week ceasefire between US/Israel and Iran.

• Then, the brightest news, by far, of the weekend. Just days after Vance --- the weekend's double-loser --- stumped for him in person, Hungary's 16-year, rightwing dictatorial leader, Viktor Orbán, was crushed by voters who removed him from power in a landslide Sunday election. Orbán, a longtime Trump/Vance ally, modern-day U.S. Republican Party hero, and dictatorial autocrat has blocked migration to his country, gutted LGBTQ rights, shut down freedom of speech and judicial independence, gamed the electoral system, cozied up to Vladimir Putin, blocked EU support of Ukraine amid Russia's war against them, and oversaw the takeover of major media outlets by corporate cronies during his 16 years of consolidating power. (Sound familiar?) But, on Sunday, voters in Hungary overcame all of that, crushed Orban's party and publicly celebrated across the nation all night long. I suspect we'll be seeing similar in this country before too terribly long.

• While the supposedly-anti-war Vance was failing to strike a deal with Iran (or get Orbán elected), Donald Trump attended an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight here in the U.S., attacked Pope Leo XIV in a ridiculous lengthy screed (for being soft on crime and nuclear weapons, or something) and posted an AI "painting" of himself on social media depicted as Jesus healing the sick. By Monday, after criticism from even his own religious supporters, he deleted the photo and claimed it was supposed to be him posing as a doctor in support of the Red Cross. (I'll pause here so you can get up off the floor from laughter.)

• Despite what Trump, Republicans and Fox "News" repeatedly tells you, as it turns out, California is in pretty good shape. As Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom enjoyed rubbing in Trump's face over the weekend, the Golden State's GDP increased by 5% last year, leading every other state in the union, as the fourth largest economy in the world.

• Meanwhile, this year's sleepy election to fill Newsom's termed-out position as the head of the 4th largest economy in the world in November suddenly got a lot less sleepy over the weekend and into Monday. Where Democratic Party alarm bells had already been ringing about a Top Two primary that could send two Republicans to compete against each other in this year's November general election. (Though dumb Trump probably helped to avoid that last week by endorsing one of the two Republicans who had been tied for first place at 10%.), Now, sexual assault allegations against one of the leading Democrats, Bay Area Congressman Eric Swalwell, have resulted in his dropping out of the crowded race on Sunday and announcing his resignation from Congress on Monday, moments before airtime. We'll see how, and if, that ends up shaking up the statewide Gubernatorial Primary on June 2nd enough to allow one of the far-too-many Dems on the ballot to break through to the first or second spots in the Primary to go on to the November general.

• Finally, in the second half of today's show, we open the phones to callers on any and all of the above and, after many weeks of asking, a couple of Trump supporters finally ring in to answer my invitation!...

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We pick up today where we left off at the tail end of The BradCast yesterday, as the President of the United States proved once again to the world to be a desperate paper tiger. Turns out (but you knew this), he's also a lousy negotiator and an absurdly incompetent Commander-in-Chief. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get back to the war today, and it's apparent lack of ceasefire(?), some excellent news for small "d" democracy and for Democrats alike here in the Homeland.

Democrat Shawn Harris lost his special election for the U.S. House on Tuesday in Georgia's very "red" 14th Congressional District to Trump-endorsed Clay Fuller by 12 points. Sounds like a landslide! But the GOP victory in the House District previously held by far-right Marjorie Taylor Greene masks a remarkable move toward the Democrats in the most Republican District in the battleground state. In fact, Harris' loss --- a stunning 25-point swing toward the Democratic candidate as compared to Trump's 2024 win in the district --- helps obscure the fact that it was "the most significant overperformance the [Democratic] party has seen across all seven House special elections" since Trump's return to power last year.

Also on Tuesday, Chris Taylor, a liberal, Democratic-supported state judge in Wisconsin, won this year's election for the state Supreme Court by some 20 points, expanding the court's liberal majority to 5 to 2. The margin was extraordinary by any measure, but especially considering the incredibly narrow races for the state high court over much of the past two decades in another battleground state. Not to mention the ironclad majority that Republican-supported Justices previously enjoyed there for so long. No longer, thanks to persistent Democratic leadership in the state and indefatigable voter turnout to reverse the previously dark fortunes of Badger Staters.

It wasn't only those two marquee races on Tuesday where voters registered displeasure with Republicans ahead of this year's critical midterms. Rightwingers were removed from school boards in local elections in a number of states, from Wisconsin to Oklahoma to Missouri!

THEN... It's back to the political front lines in the Middle East, where the tenuous ceasefire Donald Trump proved desperate to claim on Tuesday night --- under terms that wildly appear to favor Iran --- seemed to be falling apart all day on Wednesday. The terms of the deal remain unclear, at best, with both sides reporting different understandings. We try our best to make sense of it all today.

But the bottom line for now is that, even under the most generous interpretation, Trump seems not to have been taken to the cleaners as much as having driven there himself.

Iran is already insisting that the U.S. has violated the agreement, and says it will not open up the Strait of Hormuz, even as the Trump Administration was claiming that it was open and declaring "victory" on Wednesday, as the stock market appeared to play along for the day.

But even by my best understanding of the terms of the ceasefire negotiations, it appears that Iran will end up with much much more than they had before Trump decided to start a war with them, and the U.S. will have much less than they started with. By way of comparison to what the U.S. had before Trump tore up the Obama-era nuclear agreement with Iran, the entire world will also have much less than before the great deal maker destroyed the delicate power balances in the Middle East faster than he was able bankrupt an Atlantic City casino.

We're joined today to help us make sense out of the chaos by the incredibly knowledgeable and clear-spoken NICOLAS GROSSMAN, International Relations professor and national security expert at the University of Illinois. Last week he argued at his Arc Digital newsletter and at MS NOW that there was "No Off Ramp in Sight".

So, do we now have an off ramp after all? Probably not, argues Grossman. "This problem is really not going away," he says. "Already the war itself has disrupted a lot of global energy supplies. Iran is still choking traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. If they are charging, they will get a ton of revenue for this. All of that is ongoing, and all of that continues to be America's problem. Because it will affect the global economy, the American economy, make the prices of everything higher, and we should probably expect more of that."

"To the extent that Trump took an off-ramp, it was basically by surrendering," asserts Grossman, who argues that, "if we go by what the Pakistani mediators say the US had agreed to, it would be almost a total American surrender, giving Iranians everything they want, getting nothing the US wanted, and leaving the United States in a decently weaker geostrategic position than before the war started."

We cover a lot of territory with Grossman today, including how crippling sanctions against Iran have now been lifted and how they now not only control the Strait, but may be allowed to charge $2 million a pop for passage --- none of which they had prior to the war. All as part of an agreement which currently says nothing at all about restrictions on their missile, drone, or even nuclear programs.

Grossman makes a lot of excellent points. But one, I think, is worth putting up front here: that toll being placed by Iran on ships going in and out of the Strait. If that is allowed to become the practice, "it would amount to something like $100 billion a year" for Iran, he explains. That is an amount larger than their current annual government budget.

"If we think back to the Obama nuclear deal," Grossman continues, which "did actually restrict Iran's nuclear program," Trump and Republicans have spent years accusing Obama of "sending 'pallets of cash' to the Iranians." The cash that was sent, as part of the careful agreements, was actually Iranian funds they had spent for airplane parts prior to the 1979 revolution, for parts they never received. It was their money. In any event, as Grossman notes, "that total value was $1.7 billion, and it was returning frozen funds, returning Iran's own money to them. One payment of $1.7 billion is a lot less than $100 billion every year," as Trump's ceasefire agreement would appear to allow the Iranians to collect in order to reopen transnational shipping of a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas supply.

The art of the deal.

Tune in for much more today...

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Some news, a few laughs, and an unwelcome chill or two on today's pre-Spring Break BradCast roundtable discussion. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First, some news, including the stunning --- though, arguably, no longer surprising --- story of a Democratic candidate winning a special election in a deep "red" district. This time, however, the District was Donald Trump's literal backyard, as public health expert and first time candidate Emily Gregory defeated her Republican, Trump-endorsed opponent to win a seat in the Florida state House on Tuesday. The District in question is home to Trump's home, Mar-a-Lago, and voted for Trump by 11 points in 2024. The Republican who previously held the state House seat won it by 19 points that same year. Gregory won by two points on Tuesday, making it the 10th GOP-held state legislative seat flipped by Dems from "red" to "blue" since Trump began his second term, and the 29th seat flipped over all. (Republicans have flipped zero seats from "blue" to "red" over that same period.)

Then, before we're joined by our guests, we've got the latest on Trump's flailing attempts to broker a peace agreement or cease fire or something on the war he began with Iran almost a month ago. They appear less than interested in talking to Trump. Nonetheless, he continues to insist he's "winning" the war and, in fact, has already "won" it. And yet, if anything, the war seems to be expanding across the region; thousands of U.S. troops are reportedly on their way there, for some reason; the Strait of Hormuz is still shut down; the average price of gas in the U.S. is now a full dollar per gallon higher than before Trump began his war; the global economy is on the precipice of a recession; and Iran is insisting on both reparations for war damage by the U.S. and continuing control of the Strait in order to even consider any sort of peace deal.

In short, it's a disaster. Trump seems to have no way out; does not seem to be in touch with reality; and seems to be mentally deteriorating before our eyes. Other than that, everything is great!

We're delighted to be joined once again today by our old school blogger friends, the award-winning Salon columnist and longtime Hullabaloo blogger HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, and the pseudonymous blogger and co-host of The Professional Left Podcast, known mostly as 'DRIFTGLASS'.

The last time the pair joined us on the program was a full month ago, the day after Trump's State of the Union address in February, when he was crowing about low gas prices, a booming stock market and having "obliterated" Iran's nuclear program last year.

Incredibly, he would launch his insanely ill-considered war on Iran just four days later.

So, we've got a lot to get caught up on with Digby and Driftglass today. She fears: "It's very hard to see how you get out of this." He warns: "It isn't just the dumbest war you ever heard of, it's the most corrupt administration in US history carrying out the dumbest war in history."

While our conversation is both insightful and occasional amusing, as usual, even on this matter, things do take a bit of a darker turn eventually. Digby explains why she gets "a chill down [her] spine" and Drifty details why he'd like to see the 25th Amendment exercised, while doubting that it will be. All of us then go on to answer the difficult question of, at this point, if we'd actually prefer to see J.D. Vance as President right about now. Tune in for how that conversation goes.

Also today, some insight from the heart of Illinois by Driftglass on their recent statewide primary (and misleading corporate media coverage thereof); and from my fellow Los Angelino Digby on California's upcoming 2026 primary, and the two Republican candidates currently leading polls in the very "blue" state's all-party, top-two Gubernatorial primary contest on June 2nd...

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QUICK SHOW NOTE! We were previously scheduled to be off next week for a Spring Break. We still will be. But we're taking off from The BradCast a bit earlier than expected due to an unavoidable medical issue. (Desi needs a root canal! Fun!) She promises, nonetheless, to get out another Green News Report tomorrow morning before she goes under. And, if all goes well, we should have Sunday Toons and maybe more at The BRAD BLOG if I can't help myself over the next week. But, otherwise, The BradCast (and GNR) will return after Easter!

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As discussed with our guest on today's BradCast, there may be one "silver lining" to Donald Trump's unspeakably ill-considered war on Iran. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get there today, some quick results from Tuesday's Midterm Primary elections in the great state of Illinois, where popular "kingmaker" Democratic Gov. (and almost certain Presidential hopeful) J.B. Pritzker is running for a third term, and where there was vigorous competition for four open U.S. House seats and an open U.S. Senate seat in this November's critical midterms.

Much of the action on Tuesday was on the Democratic side, given the deep "blue" nature of much of the state, and the location of many of the seats up for grabs, in and around Chicago. A win in yesterday's Democratic primary was about 99% of what is needed to ensure most of those candidates will head to Congress next year. So, many of the contests yesterday were for most, if not all, of the marbles. That's just one of the reasons why about $125 million was spent on races yesterday, much of it from special interest and dark money PACs representing interests and industries from AI to Crypto to Gaming to Israel.

Oddly, if predictably, many of the corporate media outlets downplayed the money (and, in some cases, the PACs that spent millions to come up nearly empty handed), while overplaying a dumb "Dems in disarray" narrative to suggest a divisive fissure between progressives and establishment Democrats with, as the narratives seems to have been drawn, progressives having taken a beating in Illinois last night. Some did. Some didn't. We offer some clarity on that point today. The real story was less the politics, and more about the money.

THEN... The world (and certainly Donald Trump!) may wish to take a lesson from China. The country has been assiduously going about insulating themselves from their lack of control over global oil and natural gas production volatility, thanks to the unpredictability of Middle Eastern wars and indescribably stupid world leaders like our own. China, in recent years, has been electrifying its economy, dominating clean technology supply chains, and installing more wind and solar than the rest of world combined.

All while Trump, back here at home, has been gutting our nascent renewable energy production and manufacturing industries by cancelling landmark federal government incentives enacted by Democrats during the Biden presidency.

Now, with fossil fuel prices spiking again, thanks to Trump's ridiculous war, and demand for energy rapidly growing (and consumer prices along with it), our guest today, RYAN COOPER, Managing Editor of The American Prospect, argues that solar and wind power are now very real, viable, inexpensive alternatives to Trump's outdated quest for a return to the days of deadly, expensive, coal and oil. Moreover, if previous wars have not, this one, he believes, should certainly highlight the fact that renewable energy, locally sourced, is an incredibly important national security imperative for nations around the globe...including ours. That, despite Trump and the MAGA Right's ridiculously self-destructive "drill, baby, drill" machismo.

"Over the last three or four years now, Europe really has drastically cut back on its consumption of gas, and has drastically sped up its deployment of solar and heat pumps, especially. And the reason is that those technologies are now competitive. Especially solar plus batteries," explains Cooper, who wrote about "The National Security Case for Renewable Energy" at TAP last week. "It's workable. It's ready to be deployed at scale. It is being deployed at scale in Europe, in China, all across Asia."

"The relative price advantage of solar and wind was already strong before this war happened, and now it's much stronger," he argues. "As soon as it's possible, as soon as we can get the Strait reopened, anybody with a lick of sense is going to be saying, 'Yeah, we've got to get rid of this oil stuff. It doesn't even make business sense. What are we doing here? This is stupid.'"

But, while the rest of the world is beginning to get that picture, will we ever get it back here in the U.S.? Will MAGA, who claims to hate forever wars over oil in the Middle East finally catch on? Will the U.S. auto industry come to rue their recent backing away from EVs under Trump, after redesigning plants and assembly lines for an electric future under Biden?

All of that and more today, including Cooper's explanation of his DIY solar panel and battery system set-up in his Pennsylvania backyard ("Feels like I'm giving a middle finger to the petrostate dictators and the oil barons."); why he believes Trump's decision to go to war in Iran is "the most purely deranged action by an American president in history"; and why he argues that: "When the dust clears, all nations with the slightest scrap of sense will be spending every available penny on energy security, meaning renewables," and that "you'd have to be a complete clod, a world-historical imbecile, a man evincing such staggering stupidity that it calls his very sentience into question, to not get it."

Know anybody like that?...

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Donald Trump's disastrous War on Iran continues to wreak global havoc on today's BradCast, with no apparent end in sight. Though election news from Tuesday continues to offer at least a ray of hope. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

FIRST UP TODAY... the election news. Mississippi held its statewide midterm primary elections on Tuesday with no real surprises. The more interesting news comes out of two Special Elections in other states yesterday.

In Georgia's very MAGA 14th Congressional District, the Special Election primary to fill the seat left vacant by Marjorie Taylor Greene's January retirement following her split with Trump, offered some tantalizing results. It was a 14-person "jungle primary", with all candidates from all parties running for the top two slots. If nobody wins more than 50%, those two go on to the Special runoff on April 7.

On Tuesday night, Democratic candidate Shawn Harris, a cattle farmer and retired brigadier general, reportedly came out on top of the field with a bit more than 37% of the vote. Trump-endorsed Clayton Fuller came in with just under 35%, though he was largely battling fellow MAGA candidate Colton Moore, who took just over 11%. So the Republican front-runner had some actual competition from his own team, whereas Harris largely got a free ride, at least from Dems, to next month's runoff. Interestingly, however, Democrats in the contest received about 40% of the overall vote, cutting into Trump's 37-point victory in the District's 2024 Presidential race by some 17 points!

But the overperformance by the Democratic candidate in a Special Election for the New Hampshire state House on Tuesday --- in a Trump+9 District --- is being described today as "stunning" and a "major upset" for Democrats in NH's very very Republican 7th state House District. The 13-point overperformance for the Democrat became the tenth R-to-D flip in a Special Election for a state legislature since Trump's second term began, and the third one this year alone. The GOP has seen exactly zero such flips from D-to-R over that same period.

Also today, County Commissioners in Tarrant County (Fort Worth), Texas this week heard from poll workers with serious concerns about the County's 100% unverifiable computerized Ballot Marking Device systems made by Hart-Intercivic following apparent machine failures at the polls during the Lone Star state's March 3rd primary. Longtime pollworkers are hoping to see the computer systems replaced by a hand-marked paper ballot system before this November.

THEN... it's back to the nearly two-week old, but seemingly endless --- and clearly pointless --- War in Iran. This week, Iran has predictably shutdown all shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where 20 to 30% of the world's oil and natural gas transits out of the Persian Gulf every day. In response, as oil prices spike along with gasoline prices, the White House is attempting to convince Americans that "short-term pain is necessary for long-term gain." The White House originally said it, and their friendly GOP propaganda outlets are now endlessly repeating the phrase, without ever actually explaining what that "long-term gain" might be or how we actually get there.

We're joined today by Roosevelt University political scientist DAVID FARIS, author of, among other things, several books on Middle Eastern politics, to discuss both the foreign and domestic implications of this disastrous move by the U.S. Administration.

"This has become an existential conflict for Iran," observes a gobsmacked Faris. "And because it's an existential conflict, they are doing everything that they can to keep shipping from getting through the Strait of Hormuz. It is unbelievable that people in the Trump Administration did not know or did not believe that this could happen. It's astonishing."

Faris says he has been having "terrible flashbacks to the early 2000s" amid all of this, remembering how the Bush Administration at the time simply ignored experts who warned "This is a bad idea. Don't do this!," before the Administration kicked off several disastrous wars of choice in the region anyway.

In Trump's case, argues Faris, "He's relying on a handful of sycophants in his administration, people without any expertise in the region. He's being led by the nose, I think, by people that have wanted to do this for a long time. And who very arrogantly thought that killing the Supreme Leader would set off a chain of events that would either lead to the regime collapsing or a transfer of authority within the regime to someone more friendly to the Trump Administration."

"The fact that they thought that in the first place is, in itself, evidence that they are not being advised by anyone with any kind of meaningful expertise about this region, or about Iran in particular. That is really scary to me, because we are all on this plane."

Beyond the "short-term disruption" of oil price spikes and potential global recession, he warns, if Trump didn't foresee those dangers, it's unlikely he saw the potentially nuclear ones that could come amid a full blown civil war in Iran or, worse, a "proliferation cascade" in which the lesson for countries in the region is simply to go nuclear.

"There's lesson after lesson after lesson that says to countries that are worried about their security or worried about the United States bombing or invading them or overthrowing their regime, that the only way to prevent that from happening for sure is to get a nuclear weapon," he observes, citing ironic potential fallout following a war that was, at least in theory, partially meant to prevent Iran from weaponizing it's own nuclear energy program.

As to the promise of the "long-term gain" Republicans now tout, with little if any detail when arguing that Americans must now be willing to "sacrifice"? Faris has no idea what that "gain" might be.

"It's unclear because they don't know," he says. "There's no way to communicate the stakes to the American people if you, yourself, don't have a strategic goal in mind, don't have a sense of what the fallout or the consequences might be. You're obviously not going to be able to prepare the American people to make sacrifices for that thing. The American people rightly perceived that there was no imminent threat to American national security from Iran. So this whole episode feels like it came out of nowhere."

Which, of course, it did. Unless you count the need to cover-up the damaging allegations against Trump from the Epstein Files as "somewhere". But, Faris also explains that all of this comes with an electoral price in November. If you don't like this war, "you know who to blame. Trump started this war [and] it's going to get worse the longer this goes on."

Tune in for much more on all of this, including the good Professor's explanation of why, if the U.S. is supposedly "energy independent" now, as Republicans like to claim, gas prices in the U.S. are skyrocketing anyway...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please tune on in!...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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As insane as it was, as you may have guessed, we're talking about Tuesday's night State of the Union Address on today's BradCast. But I can say with confidence that today's show is nowhere near as long or insane or angry or boring as that crazy speech last night! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

As you also may have guessed, we are joined today by our go-to roundtable of progressive old-school bloggers, award-winning Salon columnist and Hullabaloo blogger HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, and co-host of The Professional Left Podcast, the one and only 'DRIFTGLASS'. They are with us for the full hour.

I'm not sure how much I need to tee things up for today's program, especially if you saw what happened last night. If you didn't, we'll give you a good summary at the top of the show, and you won't have to listen to more than a minute or two of Donald Trump's voice thereafter. (You're welcome).

It was, as explained, an angry, racist, ugly, hate-filled State of the Union Address that, at a record length, included astonishingly little of substance and even less that resembled truth or reality. By now, we've come to except no less from a 34-time convicted felon, adjudicate sex abuser and accused rapist of at least one 13-year old girl.

He called Somali Americans living in Minneapolis "pirates"; he called the Mayor of the nation's largest city a "Communist"; he repeatedly called Democrats "crazy" and "sick" and charged they, not he, were "destroying our country". But the most offensive point, at least to me, was likely when he described voting in America as a "privilege", as opposed to what it is: a right for every citizen and one that must be protected. From him.

As also noted, the most important news of Tuesday night may have been the fact that three more Democrats swept Special Elections for state Legislatures in Pennsylvania and Maine yesterday. In PA, in particularly, it was a route, with one candidate winning by 63 points, the other by 35 points. That amounted to two more huge over-performances by Dems, as compared to Kamala Harris' numbers in the same district in 2024. On Tuesday, the swing toward Democrats was by 34 and 17 points respectively, as this year's critical midterm elections are now just 250 days away, with primary voting already underway in several states.

So ddid Trump say anything of importance on Tuesday night? Does any of it really matter? Does the SOTU itself even matter at this point?

Digby doesn't seem to think so. It was "a reality show, a wrestling match, a game show," she argues. "Virtually everything he said was a lie. It was insane. The fact checkers looked like they'd been hit over the head by a 2-by-4."

"This was a spectacle," charges Driftglass. "But it was something out of Imperial Rome. Trump slowed down and reveled in all these gory images of blood and violence. This was ancient, ugly, awful, fascist stuff. This was blood and country and revenge."

Beyond that, we actually had quite a few laughs on today's program, even though we also had to wade through some pretty dark topics, including the news of Trump's DOJ attempting (though now failing?) to hide very serious allegations in the Epstein Files of Trump having raped and assaulted a 13-year old girl.

We also discuss the Democrats response to the speech in the chamber (which seemed to infuriate Trump as his marathon remarks went on...and on) and in Virginia, where, both Digby and Driftglass seem to agree, freshly minted Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivered a very well-considered response on behalf of the party.

"He's bad at fascism, bad at governing, but he's really good at chaos," quips Digby today, as we try to make sense of at least some of that chaos. Wish us luck, and tune in for much, much more...

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

Among that news...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Among today's many stories...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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It was another one of those everything, everywhere, all at once days, where figuring out how best and where to focus our coverage --- with news breaking and changing by the hour --- is always a Trump Era challenge (nightmare). We're happy to have you along for the ride on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... There were some state legislative Special Elections in Virginia and Georgia on Tuesday. Dems appear to be continuing last year's trend of radically outperforming their own results from 2024.

Also, Republicans are hilariously and hypocritically furious at Gov. Gavin Newsom selecting the latest possible date, August 4th, to hold a U.S. House Special Election in California to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa earlier this month. We'll keep their crocodile anger in mind on January 31, when Texas holds its own U.S. House Special in Houston, to fill the seat left vacant following the death of Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner, who will have died 11 months prior to this month's election, scheduled by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, to fill his seat.

The reverberations from Donald Trump's vow to takeover Greenland (which he repeatedly referred to as Iceland during his remarks today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland) continue to rattle Europe, world markets, and the NATO alliance.

On Tuesday, in Davos, Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out plans to forge new alliances without the United States, given Trump's turn against our closest neighbor and largest trading partner. We share some of Carney's landmark remarks.

THEN... Our longtime European allies called an emergency meeting at the start of the WEF this week in response to Trump's declaration of punitive new trade tariffs imposed on the imports from those nations opposed to his promised takeover of Greenland, the semi-autonomous territory of Denmark.

The Europeans seem prepared to end their go-along-to-get-along footing of the second Trump term, now that the U.S. President seems hellbent on action against Greenland that would upend the longstanding NATO and the post-WWII rules-based order along with it. Even far-right populist parties who have benefited from Trump's support, seem to be distancing themselves from his latest behavior.

Today, during rambling remarks at Davos, Trump said, for the first time, that he would not use military force to takeover Greenland. "I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force," he claimed.

He then went on to falsely assert that NATO has never done anything for the United States, despite the fact that they came to our aid following 9/11. It was the first and only time in the 80-year history of the world's most successful military pact that the treaty's Article 5, mandating that an attack against one NATO member nation requires a response from all, had been invoked.

Several hours later and just before airtime today, as world markets continued to be rattled by all of the upheaval, Trump announced on his failing social media site, that he had struck what he described as "the framework of a future deal" with NATO's Secretary General, regarding Greenland. What that "future deal" looks like remains to be seen.

We're joined today for analysis of all of this madness by RYAN COOPER, Managing Editor of The American Prospect, on the heels of his story this morning on "How the Free World Can Fight Mad King Trump". In it, he details a number of ways that European nations can, and should, "stand up" to Trump, given Cooper's argument that "appeasement will only lead to him coming back for a second helping."

We discuss all of that and more today with Cooper, who notes, regarding whether anyone should believe Trump's vow to not use force against Greenland (or even Iceland): "You basically can't trust any word that comes out of Donald Trump's big, flapping, potty-mouth." Though he concedes that "it's notable that he said he wouldn't do it, because he usually doesn't do that," suggesting he has either been "talked into" or "convinced himself that it would be unwise to actually do a military operation."

Why is Trump so interested in Greenland in the first place? Tune in for Cooper's best guess, before we then dive into several actions that European nations could take to push back against Trump's bullying, including painful sanctions against him and his billionaire friends, akin to those that have been implemented against other militaristic tyrants, such as Vladimir Putin. And, there is also the "James Bond" option. Tune in for details. But all of these, as I note to Cooper, would come with considerable danger of U.S. blowback to the EU nations.

"The thing about that," he tells me, "is that you signal to the other party that you are willing to endure pain in order to stand up for yourself. At a certain point, if you're in something that is looking like a conflict, If you say, 'Well, I will not endure any pain myself,' you're just giving up. Europe should be ready."

"It would hurt to pull that lever," Cooper agrees. "But it is something you have to be ready to do to protect freedom and democracy around the world. Including in the United States."

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

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

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

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

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His pathetic lies about the 2020 election will apparently never end. He's a loser and can't get over it. Even now. But, as a longtime expert in election transparency, security and integrity --- and, specifically, Georgia's unverifiable touchscreen voting system --- explains on today's BradCast, there is still much to be worried about in the Peach State's 2026 midterm elections. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP TODAY... a few words on how Donald Trump, following his unlawful attack and invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its President and his wife --- appears to be barrelling the world toward a full collapse of the post-WW2 order, with his recent threats against Colombia, Mexico, Cuba and even NATO-ally Greenland.

Also, you have by now likely heard Trump's Tuesday "victory" boast, as posted on his failing social media site, that Venezuela would be "turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America." A bit of perspective on that claim today. There is, of course, never any reason to believe anything he says about anything. But, even if one assumes it's true, that amount of oil, at the high end, is about what we produce in the U.S. all by ourselves in about 3.5 days. We currently consume (burn) that much in about 2.5 days.

So, yay! Totally worth spending billions of dollars to kill 80 people in Venezuela, capture its President, and set the world on a path toward toppling the post-WW2 order of decades of (relative) peace and prosperity.

On the other hand, none of this madness seems to be escaping notice of the American voters. That was demonstrated yet again in the final Special Election of 2025, in Iowa on December 30th, where the Democratic candidate for a state Senate seat outperformed Kamala Harris one year earlier in the same district by nearly 30 points! That, and pretty much every other Special and Off-Year contest last year suggests it is likely to be a very bad year in 2026 for Trump and his Republican Party. And, as revealed by some comments he made on Tuesday, he knows it.

TO THAT END... Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Trump's failed attempt to topple the U.S. government with his January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in hopes of stealing the 2020 election.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the notorious, unlawful Coffee County, Georgia statewide voting system software breach by Team Trump. The long-under-the-radar criminal scheme, initially hatched during a late-night Oval Office meeting in December of 2020, was purportedly meant to discover evidence of election fraud in the battleground state that Trump lost that year by 12,000 votes to Joe Biden. We helped break the story on this program, and five of the participants in the plot to steal, copy and distribute the software used across the entire state of Georgia (and in parts of about a dozen other states) were charged as co-conspirators along with Trump in the RICO indictment initially filed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Several of the conspirators pleaded guilty to their part in the Coffee County scheme before the charges were eventually dismissed last month by a different prosecutor who took over the case.

In the meantime, the MAGA right is still pretending that the election was stolen from Trump in Fulton County (Atlanta). The latest ridiculous allegation to come to light in rightwing media, just before the holidays last month, is that 315,000 early votes cast in Atlanta were somehow fraudulent because poll tapes printed out by the ballot scanners were not signed by local officials. After Fulton officials confirmed last month that signatures were missing from those tapes, due to one of many administrative failures in Fulton County that year, rightwingers took to social media to pretend that meant that Trump actually won the election in Georgia.

"Massive voting fraud uncovered," declared Trump's buffoonish pal, Elon Musk, absurdly, as other rightwingers played along with claim that made its way just before the holidays into the supposedly non-wingnut media.

"This is the biggest bunch of nonsense," explains our guest today, MARILYN MARKS of the Coalition for Good Governance. She is a longtime voting system and Georgia election expert. "There is not one thing to suggest that they were fraudulent or there was a lack of certification for the election." She details why the claim is both "foolish" and "absurd".

She ought to know. Marks is the one who has legally challenged the state's 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems in federal court for years now, successfully resulting in the state's older Diebold systems being decertified by a federal judge, only to see them replaced by Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger with equally insecure, unverifiable touchscreens made by Dominion. Marks is no fan of Raffensperger or the way Fulton ran its election in 2020. But she knows "crazy claims" when she sees them from MAGA rightwingers.

We discuss all of that, and what really happened with those poll tapes, along with her continuing concerns about the potential 2026 fallout from the Coffee County scheme's stolen software --- a matter which has been left hanging since Georgia abandoned the criminal indictments against Trump and 18 co-conspirators for his criminal attempt to steal the state's 2020 election.

As usual, there is much more today on all of this, as we barrel toward the critical 2026 midterms, with Georgia's U.S. Senate race potentially determining the partisan balance in the upper chamber of Congress next year. The race will be decided on 100% unverifiable voting systems run by Raffensperger across the entire state --- even as he will be overseeing his own attempt to become the state's next Governor.

"What makes Georgia so different [from every other state] is that the Secretary of State programs every single ballot, in every single machine, in every single county. So you have a central point of failure," Marks tells me. "He is not only programming the elections for his own ballots, he is counting his own votes, he is certifying his own election, and he is auditing his own election. What could go wrong?"

What could go wrong? Tune in to find out!...

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