Well, it's our last BradCast for a week or so, as we prepare for a muuuch-needed stand-down next week after Memorial Day. But we make up for it by packing a lot into today's program, with two of our favorite (and your favorite) guests. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We're joined today again for one of our semi-regular (irregular?) round tables with our old-school, right-about-everything-for-20-years blogger pals, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, award-winning columnist at Salon and her own Digby's Hullabaloo blog; and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS', blogger and co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast from Flyover Country, Illinois.

As noted, we cover a whole lot of ground today, including both important and incredibly dumb news alike! Among the important news...

• DoJ Team Trump attorneys are upbraided in court by a U.S. District judge in New Jersey for indicting Newark's Democratic Mayor Ras Baraka on ridiculous trespassing charges, vowing last week to bring him to trial, only to drop all charges this week. At the same time, they then went on to indict Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver on ridiculous charges stemming from the same incident two weeks ago at an ICE detention facility in Newark. Those charges will also likely be dropped eventually, and Trump's former loser defense attorney, now interim U.S. Attorney in NJ, Alina Habba, will likely find herself upbraided again.

• After Trump spent years campaigning on promises to not touch Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, House Republicans earlier today barely passed Trump's budget bill that --- you guessed --- will slash both Medicare and Medicaid by more than a trillion dollars, taking away health care from as many as 14 million Americans. That, in order to help pay for tax cuts to wealthy people while ballooning deficit spending by about 4 trillion dollars. (Digby: "It's a complete travesty, and I think everybody knows it.")

• The Trump Regime's ongoing horrors and errors and blatant, thuggish, authoritarian violations of court orders regarding his clownish yet cruel and unlawful mass deportation efforts. (Driftglass: "This is a mass weapon attack, like raining missiles down on an enemy target. Some of it is going to get through. And they'll get most of what they want.")

• Qatar's $400 million bribe to Trump in the shape of a Boeing 747 "flying palace" that may never be used as Air Force One, but that he hopes to keep for his own personal use after his Presidency. "Emoluments," like "groceries," is such an old-fashioned word. (Driftglass: "He's just a giant greed hole of need and narcissism." Digby: "It sure sounds like 'I'd like you to do us a favor though...'")

• And, oh, yeah, Republicans on Thursday also nuked the filibuster in the U.S. Senate by ignoring the Senate Parliamentarian to pass a law with a bare majority that, according to Senate rules, requires 60 votes for passage. And they did so in order to ban California's clean air laws. So much for states' rights. That, despite the fear by many Democrats of nuking the filibuster to protect Voting and Reproductive Rights for all Americans when they last controlled the Senate. (Digby: "Senate rules are dead. So get ready. We are in such untrod territory.")

As you might imagine, both Digby and Driftglass have quite a few thoughts on all of the above, as well as on the Dumb News we cover today as well (apologies in advance)...

• Trump's Director of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, doesn't know what "habeas corpus" means.

• Republicans are pretending to be horrified by former FBI Director James Comey posting a photo of someone spelling out "86 47" in seashells on a beach. (Ya know, just like those "86 46" t-shirts rightwingers used to pimp. Says Digby: "This is a Republican thing, and they've been doing it forever." See her "Art of the Hissy Fit" from 2007 for more.)

• Trump is attacking and threatening Bruce Springsteen. Bruce Springsteen!

• And the dumbest news of all this week: Jake Tapper has a book about Joe Biden and a super-duper, totally important right now, conspiracy cover-up of his physical --- and, allegedly, cognitive --- decline while in office.

Don't worry. I didn't give away the best lines or hottest takes on either the important or dumb news, so tune on in!

And finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report with nothing but really good --- okay, really bad --- news to kick off Summer!...

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Today on BradCast: Some really troubling news about voting rights and the Voting Rights Act that hasn't received nearly enough attention since a terrible court ruling last week. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... A few other items of note...

• If you haven't heard, Donald Trump seems to be freaking out about something Bruce Springsteen said on stage last week when he opened his "Land of Hope and Dreams" tour in the U.K. We share a bit of what Bruce had to say, about democracy and more. "The America I love, the America I've written about --- that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years --- is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration," Springsteen correctly sounded the alarm as he opened his show. "Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism, and let freedom ring." And that's not all he had to say. We share more.

• Speaking of democracy, after recent come-from-way-behind victories by center-left and liberal parties running against authoritarian rightwing opponents in Canada and Australia in recent weeks, it happened again on Sunday. This time in Romania, where a Trump-supporting far-right nationalist candidate who looked set to win the nation's Presidential election just weeks ago, learned differently once voters actually showed up to cast their vote. Being a wannabe Trumper, he is, of course, claiming "fraud", though he has failed to present any evidence so far (as I said, just like Trump.) The apparent win for the pro-European, pro-democracy candidate is also very good news indeed for neighboring Ukraine.

• On Friday, a handful of Republicans in the U.S. House who want even more cuts to health care and nutrition assistance for the nation's neediest --- including millions of children and disabled Americans --- in order to help pay for huge tax cuts to the wealthy, blocked progress of Trump's so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill" in Committee. By the time Sunday rolled around, those so-called "deficit hawks" had been brought to heel. Another Committee meeting was called to begin at 10pm on Sunday night and the measure was successfully voted out of committee, even though it would still add trillions to the nation's debt. The measure now advances to the House floor where Speaker Mike Johnson hopes for passage before the Memorial Day recess. Thereafter, Trump's legislative agenda heads to the U.S. Senate.

• Also last Friday, there was some good-ish news from the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court via another emergency ruling at the behest of an appeal by the Trump Administration. All Justices, other than Thomas and Alito, rejected the appeal, issuing a ruling that found the Trump Administration had failed to give appropriate Constitutional Due Process to Venezuelan migrants they are hoping to deport from Texas to El Salvador under Trump's (mis)use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

NEXT... While alleged Venezuelan gang members may have access to at least some Due Process to avoid unlawful removal from the country and a life sentence in an El Salvadoran gulag, American voters in at least seven states may now have no way to challenge unlawful, racially discriminatory violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

A ruling last week by a three-judge panel on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the last route for private individuals and organizations in states covered by the Circuit (Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota) to hold jurisdictions accountable for violations of the Voting Right Act. The decision echoes a similar ruling by the 8th Circuit back in 2023. But last week's ruling would seem to block the one other remaining path that voters still had to bring private complaints following that other terrible ruling two years ago.

If the 8th Circuit's decision is allowed to stand, it would mean that only the U.S. Dept. of Justice could bring suit against violations of the last central tenet still standing from the VRA. The ruling, which my guest today describes as "dead wrong", applies, for now, only in the seven states covered by the 8th Circuit. But if plaintiffs decide to appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and lose there, it would effectively kill the entire VRA in all 50 states --- at least during Republican Administrations.

JUSTIN LEVITT previously served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice under President Obama and then as White House Senior Policy Advisor for Democracy and Voting Rights under President Biden. He is now a Professor of Constitutional Law at Loyola University Law School here in Los Angeles and joins us today to explain what he describes as last week's "truly unprecedented" decision. (That's the nicest thing he had to say about it!)

"They have effectively eliminated the ability to enforce the Voting Rights Act" in those seven states, Levitt tells me. "The 8th Circuit was way out of line, but it's not a sure bet that the Supreme Court won't follow them out of that line."

The 8th Circuit panel determined that because the Voting Rights Act doesn't specifically mention a private right to sue, that such suits are barred. Only DoJ can sue. But, in fact, since 1982, there have been more than 450 such suits and only 18 of them were brought by DoJ. Some made it all the way to SCOTUS and yet none of the judges in any of those cases --- until now --- found the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue under the law. Go figure.

"This is about people in robes forgetting why they're there. People in love with a particular statutory interpretation methodology and forgetting that what they are supposed to be doing is effectuating the intent of Congress," argues Levitt. The VRA has been amended several times since 1965 --- under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush --- and adopted by huge majorities in both chambers of Congress. The members of Congress who amended it, and Presidents who signed the re-authorizations, "absolutely thought that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund would be bringing cases right alongside the Department of Justice and others. It's ludicrous to think that Congress wanted anything different than that." If they had wanted anything different, he notes, they could have changed the law to say as much at that time, since so many suits had already been brought under the law by individual voters and private voting rights organizations even before the law's several re-authorizations.

So, what happens next? What can be done about any of this? If the case does make it to SCOTUS and they too undermine the VRA are there ANY routes left for voters to challenge racially discriminatory election laws in the U.S.? Levitt answers all of those questions and many others on today's BradCast...

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Today on The BradCast: A whole lotta madness. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our many, mad stories today...

• The Trump Administration challenged the constitutionality of lower court judges issuing nationwide injunctions at the U.S. Supreme Court today, as part of Donald Trump's wildly unconstitutional Executive Order declaring an end to Constitutional Birthright Citizenship. He's lost in every lower court, so far, even if the merits of that Order, largely, were not heard by the High Court today. The Administration did, however, appear to be on track to lose their maximalist argument against nationwide injunctions as well.

• The House GOP's effort to ram Trump's "big, beautiful" agenda through the House before the Memorial Day recess continues apace, after several all-nighter mark-up sessions in major House committees. The bill is meant to encompass the entire Trump/GOP agenda to give enormous tax cuts to rich people and corporations, while taking health care (and much more ) from millions of the neediest Americans, in one single bill. But many Republicans can't agree on how many Americans should have their health care taken away from them to pay for a bill that will add nearly $4 trillion to the national debt. And some Republicans appear to have no idea about major provisions in the legislation.

• As Congress is gutting health care and nutrition assistance for the nation's neediest, the Trump Administration continues to work toward --- "eliminating" --- the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) just weeks before hurricane and wildfire season kick into gear. Trump fired FEMA's acting Director last week after he dared testify, in contradiction to Trump, that he didn't think it a good idea to eliminate the agency. His replacement is promising to "run right over" anyone who gets in his way, even as an internal review obtained by CNN warns that FEMA "is not ready" for hurricane season.

• And hurricanes this year could be more deadly than ever. That, thanks to both climate change and, more immediately, drastic Trump cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which houses it. Last week, five former NWS directors penned an open letter, warning of great danger to the public in the wake of recent draconian cuts at the Service. Scientific American details their chilling concerns.

• It has now been two months since Maryland father and Venezuelan migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia was "accidentally" disappeared to a gulag in El Salvador by the Trump Administration in violation of a court order. But Trump's ridiculous contention about Abrego Garcia having "MS-13" tattooed onto his knuckles continues. That, as the Administration continues to defy a Supreme Court order to facilitate the man's return. But because Trump was obviously and transparently wrong about "MS-13" on the man's knuckles (it clearly Photoshopped onto a photo shown to him), everybody else in his Administration must pretend he wasn't wrong about it. That led to an absurd and surreal colloquy between DHS Sec. Kristi Noem and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) in a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wednesday.

• Yes, it's a mad world right now in these United States, though one that we should have seen coming. (Some of us did.) Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter --- who died last week in New Hampshire at the age of 85 --- tried to warn us about pretty much everything we're seeing now...back in 2012, before the Trump-era.

• Finally, we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, as Republicans in Congress work to end Joe Biden's landmark clean, renewable energy initiatives; the Trump EPA rolls back limits on toxic chemicals in drinking water; and some recent good news for the climate out of Australia...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: House Republicans' budget proposal effectively kills Inflation Reduction Act's clean energy incentives; Trump EPA to roll back first-ever limits on 'forever chemicals' in your drinking water; Global sea level rise is accelerating; PLUS: Australia's Labor Party wins big, doubling down on renewable energy and climate commitments... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Toxic wildfire pollution infiltrates homes of 1 billion people a year: study; Republicans' 'clearly unprecedented' gambit to kill climate programs; Trump's 'fear factor': Scientists go silent as funding cuts escalate; FEMA cuts emergency training as hurricane season looms; Georgia shields maker of Roundup weed killer from some cancer claims; Balcony solar took off in Germany. Why not the US?... PLUS: Trump promised U.S. dominance. Instead, energy companies are faltering... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's a bit of a roller-coaster ride on today's BradCast. We begin with some good election and Trump Administration accountability news. But while Trump's latest clownishly absurd attempted corruption may not ultimately work out for him, it serves as a reminder of the rough road ahead for justice and the Justice Department itself in these United States. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Some good news...

• On Tuesday, Omaha, Nebraska's Republican Mayor Jean Stothert was defeated in her run for a fourth term by Democratic challenger John Ewing Jr. He will become the first Black mayor of the otherwise "red" state's largest city. Stothert's attempt to leverage anti-trans hate against her opponent appears to have failed to win over voters.

• That news comes on the heels of last week's School Board elections in Texas (which we are finally catching up with today!), where book-banning, trans-hating right-wingers were voted off of School Board majorities in at least four of the largest districts in the state.

• In one of two good news updates to stories we recently covered on the show, a federal judge on Tuesday ordered some 200 federal workers fired by the Trump Administration from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) back to work. The workers ran the Coal Worker's Heath Surveillance Program which offers health screenings to miners who may have developed incurable Black Lung disease, and helps them find safer jobs and covers health costs if they have. The judge in the case, filed by two West Virginia miners afflicted with the disease, found the Trump Administration (remember when he used to pretend to love coal miners?) had no authority to unilaterally shut down the screening program mandated by the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. NIOSH workers were reportedly back on the job today after the U.S. District Judge issued her order yesterday.

• And, in another happy follow-up story, facing a lawsuit from farmers and First Amendment advocates, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) agreed to restore years of critical climate change date --- relied on by farmers and many others --- to its website, after disappearing it shortly after Trump took office.

THEN... I don't know if we should consider it "good news" or not, but it certainly looks like Trump's plan to accept a tricked-out $400 million "flying palace" jumbo jet as a "gift" from the Royal Family of Qatar, for use as Air Force One while in office and for his own personal use thereafter, ain't gonna work out for him.

Despite his loyalist Attorney General Pam Bondi --- formerly, a $115,000/month lobbyist for Qatar --- pronouncing that the "gift" would be neither a bribe nor a violation of the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause, banning gifts "of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State" to public officials, it appears she's only half right about that.

We're joined today by our old friend RANDALL D. ELIASON, former chief of the Fraud and Public Corruption section at the DoJ's U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. He is now a professor of white-collar criminal law at George Washington University and writes at his own SidebarsBlog, where he wrote about much of this today.

He explains that, thanks to recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, public officials may, in fact, now accept "gifts" of any size or amount from anybody, without violating current bribery statutes, so long as the official does not offer anything in return. Yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds. Eliason describes it as "absurd...but that's the Supreme Court's concept of corruption" now.

"The Supreme Court, over the last couple of decades, has narrowed public corruption laws so much that there's a strict requirement now of a link to a particular official act that you can identify and say this gift was because Trump agreed to do this in exchange," he tells me. "They could give him $400 million cash in his own bank account, and that's not a bribe anymore, unless they can link it to something he agreed to do in exchange."

"The fact is, the way the Supreme Court has interpreted bribery, it should be a bribe, but it's not, unless there was some agreement we don't know about by Trump to do something in particular in exchange. If it's just to cozy up to him, curry favor with him in general, because they are hoping for future things to happen, that's not a bribe."

"There's no question this is corrupt," he makes clear, "as most of us understand the term," but not a bribe. "Congress could have stepped in to amend those laws, but they haven't done that, for some surprising reason."

Trump's violation of the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause, on the other hand, with acceptance of a "flying palace", would be a different matter, Eliason agrees. Though the question becomes: who exactly has the legal standing to challenge that violation in a court of law?

"I think the bigger picture is that we can't rely on lawsuits to solve this problem," he argues. "It's going to take too long and get bogged down again. If there's going to be a response, it needs to be a political one. It needs to be enough people standing up and objecting and putting pressure on him that he cancels the deal. And ultimately the voters have to respond."

Much more on all of that today along with Eliason's reflections on what has happened to his beloved DoJ and the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. where used to work, soon to be led, most likely, by Fox News' whacked out "Judge" Jeanine Pirro --- and whether all of it can be put back together again when this madness ends...presuming it does.

"What's happening at Justice is terrible, and it's heartbreaking," he laments. "It violates everything that DOJ has stood for, for decades. They are pushing people out for doing nothing more than doing their jobs. Or those people are leaving, because they can't honorably stay there and do what they are being asked to do."

What would he have done had he still been at the DOJ under Trump? And will the institution be salvageable after this? Tune for his thoughts and insight on all that and much more...

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On today's BradCast: While we're all distracted on a daily basis by Donald Trump's endless, lawless, childish idiocy, Republicans have been quietly preparing to adopt some "deeply evil stuff" in Congress in order to help pay for trillions of dollars in huge tax cuts to wealthy Americans. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

On Monday, House Republicans finally unveiled the final piece of their proposed, so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill" that would "dramatically reshape America for the worse," according to my guest today, who broke down the cruel proposal at the heart of Trump's main budget and tax agenda for his second term at the Center for American Progress last night.

The plan includes, among other things, what my guest describes as "the largest Medicaid cuts in history," cutting access to health care to more than 8 million people at or near poverty-level income; "the largest SNAP cuts in history", threatening daily nutrition assistance to the 1 in 8 Americans who receive, on average, about $2 per meal, per day from the program, many of them children; it would increase the cost of energy and electricity for all Americans by cutting the Biden Administration's landmark investments in clean, renewable energy while keeping billions of dollars in permanent federal subsidies for fossil fuel companies; and the GOP measure would also increase costs for undergraduate student loans for the roughly 1 out of 8 Americans who have them and/or are in the process of trying to pay them off.

All of that to help pay for a massive $68,000 tax cut for millionaires and a $300,000 cut for the luckiest American households in the top 0.1 percent. The House GOP proposal, if adopted as written, would do nothing --- or even raise taxes --- for some 33 million households. But it would increase the federal deficit by trillions of dollars, despite a Republican Party which has long pretended to oppose deficit spending. (At least when they're out of power.)

How's that for making American Millionaires and Billionaires Great Again?

We're joined today to break down all the ugly details on both the bill and its chance for passage by BOBBY KOGAN, Senior Director for Federal Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress. He previously served as an adviser to the Office of Management and Budget in the Biden-Harris White House and as Head of Budget Analysis for the U.S. Senate Budget Committee under Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT.)

"It absolutely would really, really hurt the people who they claim to represent and serve," Kogan tells me, referring to the proposed cuts of at least $600 billion to Medicaid and the loss of health care coverage for tens of thousands of Americans in each of the House districts represented by GOP lawmakers supporting these cuts. A number of House Republicans --- especially those representing "blue" or "purple" districts --- previously claimed to oppose Medicaid cuts. If House Speaker Mike Johnson loses just 3 votes he will not be able to pass the bill. So, what does it say that their long-awaited proposal includes massive cuts anyway? "What I would say is they maybe talk a good game," argues Kogan. "They might pretend that they don't want to cut Medicaid. But their actions show that they are actually laser-focused on cutting Medicaid."

Among the many proposed changes to the program would be increased work requirements for recipients, which Republicans claim is necessary to save money by trimming waste, fraud and abuse. "It will save money by kicking people off their Medicaid," Kogan explains bluntly. "It's not about stopping fraud. The hyper-majority of what they are proposing in Medicaid cannot be credibly construed as going after fraud. Instead, what they are doing is transforming Medicaid from a lifeline for folks into something you only get if you meet certain conditions. It'll save money because if you lose your job, now you no longer get your Medicaid."

"States that have implemented these work requirements have led to disaster," he tells me. "It's not actually something that leads to more work. Instead, it puts up so much red tape that folks fail to make it through. They end up disenrolling tons of people who are working. It saves tons of money because people have lost their Medicaid."

The proposed cuts to food for needy adults and children via the SNAP program are no less evil or immoral, he says, along with the increased education and energy costs that tens of millions of Americans will face if this bill becomes law. All to pay for huge tax cuts to already wealthy people.

Is there anything in what Kogan describes as a "profoundly evil bill" that might actually help non-wealthy Americans? Can Republicans even get it over the finish line in the House with their incredibly narrow margin, much less through the Senate, much less agree on a version that can ultimately be passed by both chambers? And what can you do to help prevent all of this from happening? (Hint from Kogan: Call your members of Congress! Especially if they're Republican!) We discuss all of that and much more today with Kogan, who knows a whole lot about all of this stuff and is great at explaining it.

ALSO TODAY: The Washington Post filed a chilling story over the weekend about pizzas being delivered to the homes of federal judges in at least seven states over the last several months. The message being sent --- as Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their supporters have been attacking judges for rulings they oppose over social media and elsewhere --- is all too obvious and disturbing, especially since whoever is behind the threats have recently begun referencing the murdered son of one of the judges.

AND FINALLY: Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report in which, among other things, the Trump Administration is working toward shutting down FEMA entirely --- and just fired its Director --- weeks before hurricane season begins; and Republicans in Texas are moving to require that all solar plants must produce energy...at night...

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

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

Constitutional Due Process plays a starring role in today's BradCast --- as it damned well should --- in several different stories of note. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

• Today, we revisit the ridiculous story about the one election from 2024 that is still unsettled. At least it was before Monday, when a federal district judge may have finally put an end to it. We'll see. This is the contest for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat, where incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs' re-election was challenged by her opponent, Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin. At least two recounts found that he lost by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast. Nonetheless, Griffin has been deploying a playbook clearly created for Donald Trump prior to last year's election, in demanding some 65,000 lawfully cast ballots be tossed out entirely --- though only in a few Dem-leaning counties, and only for his race. We unpack all the details again on today's show. But, long story short: The state Supreme Court (dominated 6 to 2 by Republicans, or 6 to 1 in this case, since Riggs recused herself) recently okayed the potentially disenfranchisement of thousands of NC voters to help out Griffin. But Riggs then took the matter to federal court, where U.S. District Court Judge Richard Myers --- a Trump-appointee --- on Monday said absolutely not. You may not change the rules of an election after an election and violate the Constitutional Due Process of voters in the bargain, according to his order [PDF]. This is, of course, very good news for Riggs, but also for democracy itself. Hopefully, it's finally over. We'll see if Griffin chooses to keep his six-months of idiocy and attempted vote suppression going on appeal. Myers has given him one week to decide.

• Trump said over the weekend that he just doesn't really know if the Due Process mandates of the Constitution are actually, ya know, mandatory. He was answering questions about his use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to detain and deport alleged gang members from Venezuela to a gulag in El Salvador for a life sentence, without ever allowing them a day in court to make their case, or even contact with lawyers or family. But the AEA law may only be invoked in the first place against migrants from nations that have declared war on the U.S., or in the event of "invasion" or "incursion" directed by a foreign government. That is certainly not the case with Venezuela, though Trump argued otherwise in his invocation of the wartime law. Earlier this year, reporting from the New York Times and Washington Post revealed that the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) found back in February that there was no evidence of Venezuela's President directing an invasion of the U.S. Trump made his proclamation to begin deportations in March anyway. At the time, the Admin claimed the reporting was wrong and the DoJ vowed extraordinary measures to track down the leakers. But, according to a redacted memo released on Monday under the Freedom of Information Act by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, summarizing the IC's findings, the newspapers had it right and --- I hope you're sitting down --- it appears the Trump Administration was lying about all of this from the jump.

• In related news, yet another federal judge --- this time in the Southern District of New York --- has enjoined the Trump Administration from moving migrants detained under the Alien Enemies Act until they are given full Due Process. The ruling was not unlike one from a Trump-appointed federal judge in South Texas last week. In this case, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a Clinton appointee, found [PDF] that since the Administration has "not demonstrated the existence of a ‘war,’ ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion,’ the AEA was not validly invoked by the Presidential Proclamation."

• Meanwhile, the fortunes of Trump buddy and richest man on earth, Elon Musk --- also, potentially, the world's most hated --- are really beginning to nose dive. Aside from users fleeing Twitter/X in droves this year in the wake of both his partnering with Trump and the Nazification of the social media site, the future of his Electric Vehicle company appears even bleaker. The stock price of Tesla is down some 40% since he DOGEd himself to Trump last December and subsequently outed himself as a far-right extremist. But sales of the company's cars in Europe have fallen even farther. According to new numbers out this week from both Germany and the UK, where, even as overall sales of cars is dropping, EV sales are booming --- at least for companies not owned by Musk --- Tesla sales continue to drive over a cliff. They are down 46% in Germany compared to last April, and a whopping 62% in Britain. Sad!

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as drastic cuts to the National Weather Service are now beginning to endanger public safety, according to its former leaders; Trump's DoJ is suing states to block climate laws and lawsuits; and the Administration plans to shrink National Parks in the U.S. to make room for more mining and drilling, and violate international law by mining the sea floor...

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On today's BradCast: If the 101st Day is any indication, it doesn't look like the second hundred are gonna go any better for him than the first. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• On our roundtable program yesterday with Digby and Driftglass, we discussed who was likely the first top Trump Administration official to be tossed under the bus in the wake of Donald Trump's dismal and worsening approval ratings. Today we know: Trump National Security Adviser and Signal group chat enthusiast, Mike Waltz. At least he outlasted Trump's first (of four) NSAs in the first term. The disgraced and loony Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn survived just 24 days before being tossed and eventually pleading guilty to criminal charges of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians. At least Waltz gets a consolation prize. Trump tapped him to be U.N. Ambassador.

• Last week, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth --- a Reagan-appointee --- ordered the rehiring of staffers and contractors at the Congressionally-mandated and funded Voice of America and its similarly critical global sister networks Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting after the Trump-order shutdown in March of its parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media. This week, Judge Lamberth ordered the Administration to restore $12 million in funding to another VOA sister network, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty --- broadcasting to dozens of countries in dozens of languages since the Cold War --- while issuing both a history lesson and an important Constitutional lesson for the Trump Administration (and, arguably, for Congress) about the important roles of the three co-equal branches of Government in his order [PDF].

• In still more Trump-is-a-Loser news today, a Trump-appointed federal judge in South Texas, issued a first-of-its-kind permanent injunction on Trump's "unlawful" use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 --- in peacetime --- to deport alleged gang members from Venezuela to a gulag in El Salvador. "The President's invocation of the AEA...exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute's terms," U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. wrote in the order [PDF], concluding that Trump's attempt to falsely proclaim the U.S. was being "invaded" by Tren de Aragua gang members at the direction of the Venezuelan government was patently false, "exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful."

• Also of note today, the Board and shareholders of one of the companies most closely associated with America, Coca-Cola, flatly rejected two proposals to abolish the company's anti-discrimination programs, often smeared by Trump and fellow wingnuts as "DEI". Shareholders and the Board of Directors at yet another iconic American company, Levi Strauss, reportedly did the same last week.

• It's not just courts and a few iconic U.S. companies that are pushing back at Trump's nonsense of late. Even Democrats, if you can believe it --- at least a couple who are clearly eye-balling Presidential runs in 2028 --- are now more aggressively doing the same, especially now that the public has turned so clearly against out tinpot dictator-wannabe. Last night, at an event in San Francisco, former Vice President and Presidential nominee Kamala Harris offered her first substantive public remarks since losing to Trump last year, deriding his "wholesale abandonment" of American values. That came on the heels of a stem-winder by Illinois' Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker, taking on Trumpers and go-along, get-along, "do nothing" Dems alike, at a fundraiser on Sunday in New Hampshire. We share extended excerpts from both speeches today.

• And finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report to help us close things out near the end of a week that began with a huge loss for our failing President, as his attempts at hectoring our neighbor to the north and meddling in Canada's elections completely backfired, producing not just another Liberal Party Prime Minister, whose election might have been unthinkable last December, but a climate and energy action champion at that...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us, won't you?...

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

Among our coverage...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Earth Day. Somehow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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On today's BradCast: "Irrational exuberance" reigned on Wall Street as of 1:18pm Eastern Time. Though, after the past week of our moronic President's idiotic "economic policy" crashing the markets day after day after day, it's hard to blame investors for over-celebrating even the smallest hint of a respite from his imbecility. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Before we get to Trump (sort of) backing down from his worldwide (except for Russia) trade war, a bit of an addendum today to my disturbing conversation on yesterday's program with Slate's legal ace Mark Joseph Stern. He and I were both in general agreement on Tuesday that the Supreme Court's horrible 5 to 4 ruling on Monday night --- in a case challenging the deportation and foreign imprisonment of Venezuelan migrants without due process under Trump's peacetime use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 --- allowed for the detention and foreign imprisonment of not just migrants but of U.S. citizens without due process as well.

Today, preeminent Constitutional law scholars Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC-Berkley's Law School, and Laurence Tribe, Emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, argued an almost identical case in a New York Times op-ed headlined "We Should All Be Very, Very Afraid".

So it's not just some progressive radio dude and a legal reporter at a lefty-ish Internet publication issuing such a warning this week. Thus, I felt a need today to underscore that important point once again before it too gets lost in Donald Trump's ongoing authoritarian chaos.

For what it's worth, even a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas on Wednesday has now temporarily blocked the deportation of Venezuelan migrants under Trump's Stalin-like implementation of the Alien Enemies Act. Details on today's program.

THEN... The roller coaster on Wall Street continued on Wednesday, though at least much of today's ride was an upswing for a happy change. After four and a half days of market blood-letting following Trump's ridiculous "Liberation Day" pronouncement of major sanctions against virtually every nation on Earth (except for Russia) last week --- and with the bond market tanking as well and economists warning about a likely recession --- President Super Genius finally backed down, at least partially, as he always does.

Despite a remarkable, immediate spike in the major market indexes in response, within minutes after Trump's lie-filled social media post about his "90 day PAUSE", investors may soon begin to realize that the news isn't quite as good as they might have hoped. Trump (for today anyway), is leaving in place 10% tariffs against pretty much everybody (except Russia) and now claims to be raising tariffs against China to 125%, because they dared match the previous sanctions he'd declared against them.

In all, though it was unclear as of this afternoon whether Trump was dropping his 25% or 35% or 10% tariffs against our largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, if Trump keeps in place the current 10% tariffs against most of the world, and his 125% tax on goods imported from China, it seems that the inflationary cost to American consumers will be just about what it was before Trump choked this afternoon. Even after today's spike, the Dow remained about 10% lower than its all-time record set during the Biden Administration.

How that --- or any new brain farts from President Stable Genius --- affects the market in coming days remains to be seen.

In addition to the financial cost of Trump crashing the economy, there has seemingly been a political cost as well to President Make-It-Up-As-You-Go-Along as well, resulting in what Politico last night characterized as a "House Republican mutiny" that threatens to hold up (post air: sure enough!) or even block all together, his massive, deficit-exploding tax cuts for his wealthy friends and their corporations.

How will Trump's partial flip-flop on tariffs affect his political fortunes on the massive GOP budget plan? Stay tuned. Though keep your hands and arms inside the roller coaster at all times until this madness comes to a complete stop...whenever that may be...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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