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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Big Oil is reaping $30 million an hour from consumers thanks only to the Iran War; Hawaii grapples with more storms and destructive flooding; Super Typhoon Sinlaku slams into U.S. Pacific island territories; PLUS: Arizona voters oust pro-fossil fuel candidates from public utility board...with the help of Turning Point USA... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought; Global warming is making the strongest hurricanes stronger; All of Michigan under Flood Watch as roads washed out, dams fail, people evacuated; The Forest Service reorganization is illegal. USDA's top lawyer told them to do it anyway; Boundary Waters mining bill approved by Senate after Sen. Smith protest; IMF sees global oil shortfall this year and warns Iran war could tip world into recession ... PLUS: Bessent questions the cause of climate change and its economic toll ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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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On today's BradCast: Finally, even MAGA is beginning to notice. Or, at least they are finally admitting they've noticed. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Day after day, especially as his war on and/or supposed ceasefire with Iran continues to be a global embarrassment, Donald Trump keeps proving his critics were right all along.

In many case, such as MAGA media elite or his own Truth Social supporters turning on him, it's amusing and encouraging. In other cases, like those who, with the encouragement of Republican officials, bought into the Trump myth, it is very sad. Especially in states like deep "red" West Virginia, where energy prices are now skyrocketing amid his broken promises to revive dirty, deadly, expensive coal and his broken campaign vow, repeated dozens of times, to cut everyone's gas and energy prices by 50% within his first year. (See Margie Mason's great piece for AP here.)

Trump is now failing, and very quickly, to paraphrase him. At record levels! Like nobody has ever seen before!

In fact, a majority of Americans would now like to see him impeached an historic third time. New polling appears to break the record for such a finding this early in a President's term.

But, before any of that can happen --- if it ever does --- there are still a whole bunch of folks likely to die in his absurdly ill-considered war, and a whole bunch of Administration friends and insiders likely to profiteer off it all on the so-called prediction markets.

Also, Desi Doyen joins us today for our latest Green News Report. Things don't look any better there either...

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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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Now is the time that the nation and the world really need our corporate media to rise to the occasion. I suspect they won't. But we try to do our part as best as we can on today's (and every day's!) BradCast. [Audio link to full show is below this summary.]

Here's a quick description and some of the source material referenced in today's lollapalooza of a program...

• Corporate media are failing to meet the moment, failing to cover Donald Trump's disastrous War on Iran for the generational calamity that it is.

• They have also long failed to meet the moment in covering our climate crisis, which is set to wreak havoc and smash records across much of the country as we move into next week. Heat records in the West, blizzards in the North, and likely tornadoes in between. All part of the climate changed mess that Trump is ignoring --- and making worse --- every single day now.

• After Trump killed Mojtaba Khamenei's wife and father --- and more than 150 school girls --- on the first day of the war, Iran's new Supreme Leader vows vengeance, including the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz now roiling global markets and spiking the price of oil, as well as on "other fronts in which the enemy has little experience and would be highly vulnerable."

• One of those "other fronts" could, I suppose, be the Trump FBI's irresponsibly reported and "unverified" claim (a word that ABC News left out of its initial reporting!) that "Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California." Of course, if there were any truth to an imminent drone attack, it would be regrettable, to say the least, that FBI Director Kash Patel fired a whole bunch of the folks leading the Bureau's highly experienced Iran counterintelligence team just days before Trump launched his new war.

• It is also regrettable that, just yesterday, Republicans in the U.S. Senate blocked a bill by Democrats to reopen every single agency in the Dept. of Homeland Security other than ICE and CPB, as the White House continues to block any guardrails against the thuggery (and murders of American citizens!) by the nation's immigration law enforcement officials. The nearly month-long shutdown of DHS means that the U.S. Coast Guard is currently unfunded. That seems a bad idea if there is REALLY a concern about drone attacks by "an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States homeland."

• It is similarly regrettable that Republicans refuse to fund DHS and the nation's cybersecurity watchdog along with it --- the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is also shut down during the DHS funding fight. This week we have seen the first major attack by a hacker group tied to the Iranian Intelligence Ministry since the start of the war. The attack against Stryker, a medical equipment and technology firm in Michigan, has reportedly wiped out and stolen data from tens of thousands of telephones and other networked devices at the company this week.

• But the most regrettable of all may be that, just prior to Trump's attack against Iran's nuclear energy facilities last June, Iran is believed to have removed about a 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60% of what would be needed to create a nuclear bomb, and 10,000 pounds of uranium enriched from 2 to 5%. All of it reportedly evacuated from the facilities in small, SCUBA-sized tanks and potentially now available to be used anywhere for anything Iran may want, including dirty bombs detonated by either them or any of their many proxy militias in the region.

  This enriched uranium was made possible by Trump's decision to unlawfully tear up the Obama-era anti-nuclear agreement with Iran that, by all measures, was working and had previously preventing the sort of enrichment that occurred after Trump ended it.

  That is just one of the reasons why University of Chicago's veteran international security and terrorism expert Robert Pape, author of "Escalation Trap", asked last night on MS NOW when discussing the likelihood of Trump needing to put American boots on the ground in Iran: "How else would you even try to get this enriched uranium? How are we gonna find that 10,000 pounds? That 1,000 pounds? When they could be in SCUBA tanks [in] a territory two and a half times the size of Texas?"

  "This is just a disaster in the making," he warned, adding: "I think we're probably only at the beginning of the disaster as it unfolds."

• Finally, speaking of disasters in the making...Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the price of oil skyrockets and our climate disaster continues with record heat melting California's snowpack and the rate of simultaneous heat waves and droughts having increased significantly thanks to global warming...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: International Energy Agency pledges to release strategic oil reserves in attempt to calm soaring global prices; Now you see it, now you don't --- California's snowpack rapidly melting; PLUS: Study finds simultaneous heat waves and droughts have increased significantly, thanks to man-made global warming... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): How would the Iran crisis play out in a world powered by renewables not fossil fuels?; What does the Iran war mean for the energy transition and climate action?; Mapped: How extreme weather is destroying crops around the world; Air pollution spikes as Trump doubles down on coal power; Trump's BLM is going all-in on resource extraction ... PLUS: FCC deciding whether to allow startup to launch huge mirror satellite to blast sunlight on cities at nighttime ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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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I wish you as much luck as I wished myself in making sense of what we tried to make sense of on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

So, what exactly did we try to make sense of? Well, for a start, Donald Trump knows his War on Iran is a disaster. He knows that not only has he failed to bring Iran to heel as the vassal state he'd hoped for, but with their shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz (even just the threat of same), oil and gas production in the region is coming to a halt, global prices are skyrocketing, and the world faces the very real threat of a global recession in the bargain. All in time for U.S. elections this fall.

Among our stories related to these perfectly predictable and insanely stupid points on today's program...

• Trump is claiming that the Iran War "is going to be ended soon" and is "very complete", but that it also will "go further" and that we may hit Iran "twenty times harder". All as his Secretary of Defense vowed that it is "only just beginning". The last 24 hours have been a good deal more insane than that So, tune in for more.

• U.S. electoral history, in the meantime, suggests that oil at more than $100 per barrel in March (as it was on Sunday before rising to $120 on Monday and then dropping back below $100) is very bad news for the party in power at the White House during November midterm elections.

• All of this suggests that Trump had no clue what he was unleashing when launching his new foreign war, other than hoping that it would make more people like him and, importantly, distract from very disturbing allegations made in the Epstein Files that a woman who was interviewed by the FBI four times in 2019 claims to have been sexually assaulted by Trump when she was just 13-years old. The Post and Courier investigated details of the account the woman offered during her 2019 interviews --- now that Trump's DOJ has made the previously "missing" files --- finding that many of them were, in fact, verifiable.

• Just to further (try to) mess with your head, Trump's FBI, last week, subpoenaed records of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona. We just learned about it on Monday. And, yes, it is all just as dumb as it sounds. We'll walk you through it.

• Amid all of this, on Monday, Trump absurdly stated that --- after his attack on Iran resulted in them shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, where some 20% of global oil and gas transits each day --- his threats and use of force to get it opened again should be viewed as "a gift from the United States of America to China." He said he hopes it "is a gesture that will be greatly appreciated." Among his many real gifts to China, however, is the ridiculous amount of money he is spending on wars both foreign and domestic, and his having gutted landmark incentives by Joe Biden and the Democrats for renewable energy and electric vehicle manufacturing in the U.S. On that latter point, last week, China's BYD, now the globe's largest seller of EVs, announced at a show in Chenzhen that it is introducing a new version of its EV battery technology that allows for some 620 miles on a single charge; will recharge from 10% to 80% in just over six minutes; and is guaranteed to last for 620,000 miles before needing replacement. All of those stats are currently "unheard of" for any EV until now, as detailed by Fast Company, blowing away anything that U.S. automakers, including Tesla, have been able to produce. BYD says the battery will be deployed across its entire 2026 model line, including its mass-produced vehicles in the $19,000 to $30,000 price range on up to their six-figure top-of-the-line luxury models. We still won't be allowed to buy them here in the U.S., of course, and Trump has gutted incentives for the EV and battery industries in the U.S. On the other hand, he is bringing back "beautiful clean coal"! So...Happy Golden Age of America!

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report touching on a number of related stories, including the environmental and climate impacts of Trump's War in Iran, where the rain has literally turned oily and while, here at home, despite the firing of Kristi Noem, FEMA remains a disaster...

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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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We're getting caught up on today's BradCast with a whole bunch of stuff, from the dark Trump secrets still buried in unreleased Epstein Files, to his lies, illegal actions and terrible advice about the economy, to another loss for Republicans in the Gerrymandering Wars and some actual election fraud finally discovered in Georgia! (And you'll never guess whodunnit!) [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Happily, the corporate mainstream media finally seems to be fully on board the disturbing, still-unexplained, and unlawful absence of critical documents from the Epstein Files released to date by the Dept. of Justice as per the Epstein Files Transparency Act. In addition to the absence of multiple 2019 FBI interviews with a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was just 13-years old, additional revelations are coming to light. CNN, for instance, confirmed those three missing interviews and contemporaneous FBI interview notes this week, and found that at least another 90 interviews with other survivors are also apparently missing, for unexplained reasons, from the DOJ's website.

But, with the major outlets seemingly digging in, we've got a bit more time today to get caught up on some other stuff, regarding some economic matters, some SCOTUS issues, and some election news. Among those stories...

• Fallout from last week's 6 to 3 U.S. Supreme Court ruling determining that Trump's chaotic, worldwide taxes on imports to the U.S., as issued under the supposed authority of the U.S. International Emergency Economic Powers Act (or, IEEPA), are both unlawful and unconstitutional. As it turns out, those illegal tariffs have also been very expensive for American consumers who paid for about 90% of them according to studies issued this month from both the Federal Reserve and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That, despite Trump's repeatedly lie (as echoed again during his State of the Union Address this week), that "the tariffs [are] paid for by foreign countries." Both the Fed and Congress disagree.

• But, don't be fooled by SCOTUS' ruling last Friday, even if it came in opposition to the President for a happy change. In fact, the challenge to Trump's tariffs was a case brought by the far-right architect of today's corrupted Supreme Court, and it took almost half a year longer to be handed down by the corrupted Court than necessary. No, SCOTUS has not "joined the No Kings Movement", as MS NOW's Stephanie Ruhle ridiculously declared after the ruling was handed down.

• For the record, the "economic emergency" that Trump disingenuously declared as his pretext to enact the levies was supposedly based on a global trade deficit that the U.S. has with many countries of the world. As it turns out, that deficit grew larger under Trump's tariffs last year, according to Trump's own Commerce Dept. data.

• Not to worry, however, everyone is going to be rich once the Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act kicks in for this year's tax season, right? Um, so far...based on IRS data to date, not so much, as average refunds in the first part of the filing season have been some 42% lower than the Administration has long been promising they would be.

• But, hey, there are a lot of MAGA suckers out there, I guess. And we should have expected no less from the guy whose failing media company, Trump Media & Technology Group (which trades as DJT on the stock exchange) has seen its value plummet faster than his approval ratings. This week, shares in his loser company, which once sold for $100 --- and cost a bunch of MAGA folks their life savings --- closed for the first time on Monday in the single digits! The company, which has lost hundreds of millions of dollars every year since it went public in 2022, clawed its way back above $10/share in recent days. It seems unlikely to stay there.

• In election and voting news, Team Red continue to struggle in their Gerrymandering Wars in advance of the critical midterm elections, as both the Utah state Supreme Court (on Friday) and a three-judge federal panel (on Monday), rejected state Republicans' attempts to override a 2018 ballot initiative in which voters chose to require U.S. House district maps in the otherwise very Republican state to be drawn fairly, with neutral rules, by an independent redistricting commission. The GOP state Legislature has been trying to lock in their unlawful map, drawn to create four safe Republican Congressional Districts. But, after the recent rulings, we appear now to be at the end of their four-year battle to block a new map that will offer three Republican leaning Districts and one safely Democratic seat in Salt Lake County.

• Down in Georgia, where Trump has been falsely claiming massive voter fraud since he lost the 2020 election there, the MAGA majority on the State Election Board has, in fact, finally discovered some election fraud! And it was apparently committed by one of Elon Musk's super PACs in both 2020 and 2024.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report today, with a bunch of energy related lies from Trump's SOTU this week; Big Oil's appeal to SCOTUS to help them quash climate liability lawsuits; Trump's Interior Dept. quashing bedrock conservation rules for public lands; and a new suit filed by young Americans to challenge the Trump EPA's recent gutting of 20 years of climate change-related regulations...

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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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On today's BradCast: When fascism takes root, there's a whole lot more that comes with it. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP TODAY... Based on little more than a threat from Donald Trump's FCC Chair Brendan Carr to rewrite Equal Time rules for late-night talk show interviews on broadcast television, CBS, newly owned by Paramount/Skydance, is rolling over in advance. Stephen Colbert, whose top-rated Late Show with Stephen Colbert will be ending in May on the heels of the merger, says that CBS attorneys barred him from interviewing Texas' Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico on Monday, amid his primary election against Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

But all of that seems to have blown up in CBS' face, as nearly three-times the number of viewers, so far, have watched Colbert's streaming-only interview, posted to Youtube after network suits nixed the broadcast version, and some $2.5 million came rolling in for Talarico's campaign in the bargain.

Colbert himself told the story on Monday and then followed up on Tuesday. We share both segments today.

THEN... Trump and his party stormed to power in 2024 based in no small part on opportunistic, weaponized charges of antisemitism on the Left, amid campus protests against Israel's war on Gaza. After taking office again last year, that political campaign turned into a government extortion campaign against universities, colleges, law firms and other organizations who, the Trump Administration claimed, were exercising antisemitism.

But, when rightwing podcaster Ben Shapiro attempted to call out antisemites in the Republican Party and MAGA movement late last year, he was met with little more than a shrug by the 30,000 young Christian followers of the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk at the group's America Fest gathering in Phoenix. Shapiro was, among other things, calling out former Fox 'News' host turned podcaster Tucker Carlson for a softball interview with avowed neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, and Shapiro's former employee, turned hugely popular podcaster, Candace Owens. She has, among other things in recent months, advanced a conspiracy theory that Israel was somehow behind last year's murder of Kirk.

It gets even more twisted, as new polling and focus groups find that young Republicans and evangelicals don't seem to have much of a problem with Hitler, and even long-established GOP institutions like the Heritage Foundation, have apparently decided to stand with Carlson and Nazis. Surprised? Don't be. They also got behind Trump even after he enjoyed a Thanksgiving week dinner with Kanye and Fuentes a few years earlier.

The notion that Evangelical Republicans claim to be supporters of Israel because they support the Jewish people has always been absurd to those of us paying actual attention for the past whole bunch of decades. The fact that the lie is only now beginning to come to the attention of some in the public and media is somewhat mind-blowing.

But the slow-motion implosion among MAGA Republicans is really something to watch, and far more widespread and insane than I can adequately detail here in a short summary post.

Longtime investigative journalist ART LEVINE, on the other hand, who joins us for a very lively conversation on today's program, has published an exhaustive expose on all of this at The Washington Spectator this month, headlined "Inside the MAGA Meltdown Over Antisemitism". The piece's similarly exhaustive (if very accurate) sub-hed: "A Parade of Charlie Kirk Wannabes, Nazi Sympathizers, End Times Prognosticators, Media Grifters and Nostalgic Evangelicals Scramble for Control of Their Imploding Coalition".

Levine tells me today that it is all "insanely hypocritical," arguing that "essentially, Donald Trump might be considered the Anti-Semite in Chief, because of his own overt symbolism. If you're inviting, over to your home, Kanye West, who recently had a 'Heil Hitler' video on Twitter, and Nick Fuentes, he is an open Holocaust denier, it's just nuts!"

"There's no more fig leaves," Levine charges, based on his months of painstakingly documented and linked research. "All of the standard distancing modes between Republicans and antisemitism has dropped away."

Tune in for much much more. And bring a big bucket of popcorn with ya...

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