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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Today on The BradCast: The critical 2026 midterm elections are now officially underway, with early voting having begun in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas for their March 3rd midterm primaries. But Republicans are not done trying to undermine those elections with legislation meant to undercut democracy itself. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... A few words on the passing, at the age of 84, of Rev. Jesse Jackson, civil rights icon, voting rights advocate, and two-time Democratic Presidential candidate.

Also, a few words on what appears to be the further collapsing of support for Donald Trump, as detailed in several new polls released in advance of the Washington's Birthday holiday yesterday, and as analyzed by CNN's Harry Enten. Bottom line for the moment, Trump's approval is nearing all-time lows among the public. It is lower than Joe Biden at the same point of his first term as President and even lower than Trump's own numbers at this point during his own failed first term in office. As Enten highlights, Trump is now 27 points underwater among independent voters.

"I don't understand how this works out well for the President of the United States. When you are 27 points below water, under water, with the center of the electorate, with independents, you lose, your party loses," explained the colorful Enten on Monday. With that in mind...

NEXT... If you're losing among the electorate, the Republican Party appears to now believe, don't adjust your policies to popular ones. Just change the electorate!

After seemingly failed mid-decade gerrymandering bids last year (quickly answered by Democratic states); after recent hollow threats by Trump to "nationalize" elections (he has no such legal or Constitutional authority); after ordering the FBI to raid the election warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia in an effort to continue the charade that the 2020 election was stolen from him (they still have shown no such evidence); the GOP seems to believe they can legislate their way to a more favorable electorate this year.

Last week, the Republican-controlled House narrowly passed the so-called "SAVE America Act" [PDF], formerly known as the SAVE Act, with every Republican member voting in favor. The measure would, among other things, if also passed in the U.S. Senate, force those newly registering to vote to somehow show proof of citizenship, in person, during the registration process.

The effort is part of Trump's long-running, evidence-free assertion that millions of noncitizens are unlawfully on the voting rolls and voting against him and, I guess, other Republican candidates.

The measure would also force states to run their voting rolls through a notoriously inaccurate federal Dept. of Homeland Security tool --- originally designed for something else entirely --- known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (or SAVE) database.

That tool has, in recent months, been used by GOP-controlled states to check their rolls for evidence of noncitizen voters. In state after state, it has found almost none. Among the few that it has flagged as potential noncitizen voters, many of them turn out to be false positives, citizens who are inaccurately identified as noncitizens in the database, or noncitizens on the rolls who never voted, but were registered due to clerical error after making clear to DMV workers that they were not American citizens.

Nonetheless, the SAVE America Act, would both force use of that failed tool in all 50 states --- potentially resulting in lawful voters being removed from the rolls --- and mandate proof of citizenship when registering, despite tens of millions of Americans who have no easy, or free, access to such documents.

We're joined today by lawyer turned election integrity social media advocate JENNIFER COHN --- who has been reading through the various iterations of the newly renamed SAVE Act --- to discuss both the barriers it includes for new voters (or those who have recently moved and must re-register), the obstacles that stand in the way of Republican passage of the Act in the U.S. Senate, and what the real purpose of this insidious legislation actually is.

"Up to 69 million women could be disenfranchised by this bill because their last names no longer match their birth certificates because they've taken their husband's name," explains Cohn. She says that while the legislation mentions documents that might help women overcome that barrier, "They're tricky about it. They say, for example, that you could use a 'Real ID' if it indicates your citizenship. What they don't say is that only five states issue Real IDs that indicate your citizenship. So that won't work for the vast majority of Americans."

Passports will work, but they now cost $165 for new applicants or $130 for renewals. They also take time to obtain and require, in most cases, a birth certificate, which many do not have access to. Those may also cost time and money to obtain. But a birth certificate alone won't work either if your name has changed through marriage, or other reasons. And if you have a passport, but your name has changed since you obtained it, that will be a problem as well. Cohn notes that the Republican authors of the bill did something else that is "sneaky in the latest version of the bill. It still omits marriage certificates from the list of approved documents." So even those might not adequately offer proof of citizenship when coupled with a birth certificate during registration under SAVE.

There is much more to be concerned about, Cohn tells me, arguing that "the media really has not caught up" with what Republicans are trying to do with the SAVE Act and just how bad the SAVE database actually is.

While I explain that I think much of this is meant simply to frighten voters into not participating in elections, to scare them, to cause chaos --- especially as I see no path toward passage of the SAVE Act in the Senate --- Cohn thinks I may be wrong, that insidious plans may be in the works to force passage against the wishes of Democrats in the upper chamber, where 60 votes would normally be needed for passage in the 100-seat Senate. (Tune in for details on those insidious plans.)

She believes that people should be freaked out by all of this. If nothing else, she argues, so that they take action to call their Senators (202-224-3121) to demand they vote against SAVE, and to help people understand that this is much much more than a simple "Voter ID bill" as Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and other wildly dishonest Republicans are disingenuously attempting to portray it to the public.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report on the heels of last week's landmark rollback of the EPA's critical Endangerment Finding, which had allowed regulation of fossil fuel pollution under the Clean Air Act; and following a massive raw sewage spill at a federal facility near D.C., which Trump is attempting to blame on Maryland's Democratic Governor...

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You're going to get the most, by far, from today's BradCast, by listening to it. This briefest of summaries will not do it justice. Hopefully it suffices if only for a few links to a few of the stories and rulings cited throughout today's program. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

In short (very short), the Trump Administration is losing and losing and losing in court, in case after case after case. And they are not only losing, but being upbraided by judge after judge --- those appointed by both Democrats and Republicans alike --- in one ruling after another now. At least at the lower federal court level. It's just one reason why the Administration is so desperate to get up to the final appeal phase at Donald Trump's corrupted, hand-picked Supreme Court.

The rulings from many of the U.S. District Court judges have been brutal for the Administration, as now coming in day after day. Just one example from yesterday is U.S. District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes' blistering ruling [PDF] in which she took DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to the metaphorical gravel pit over Noem's barely disguised racist rhetoric as part of the Administration's attempt to order the end of legal protected status for more than 350,000 Haitian refugees in this country. (Ya know, like the ones in Springfield, OH who don't eat dogs or cats.)

The good guys aren't winning every motion in every case. And, as noted, the corrupted SCOTUS may have the last word in some of them. But the increasingly dreadful record for the Government in these cases, for the moment, has essentially become the equivalent of legal trench warfare, forcing the Administration to step back or stand down, with the people largely holding off the attempted fascist federal takeover of the United States of America. Or, at least, preventing it from getting appreciably worse.

Russia was supposed to have taken over Ukraine in a week's time after they initially invaded their smaller, weaker sovereign neighbor four years ago this month. Similarly, Trump was supposed to have brought the U.S. to fascist MAGA heel by now. He decidedly has not.

With each loss, of course, in both courts of law and public opinion, he and his Administration grow angrier, more out of control and more dangerous --- but easier still to defeat in the bargain.

As his and his party's approval ratings --- and ability to win elections in even some of the "reddest" parts of the country --- continue to erode, he is now desperately turning to an attempted takeover of American elections themselves.

"The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,'" Trump blathered to Dan Bongino, former conspiracy podcaster turned Deputy FBI Director turned conspiracy podcaster again, on Monday. "We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many --- 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting."

Trump then went on to completely mischaracterize why former MAGA Mesa County, Colorado Clerk Tina Peters is currently serving nine years in state prison for her criminal efforts related to attempting to defraud the 2020 election while illicitly conspiring to make unlawful copies of sensitive, proprietary voting system software. Despite having issued a pointless pardon for Peters (federal crimes have no effect on convictions under state laws), it's clear Trump knows absolutely nothing about her actual crimes.

But, as to the "nationalize the voting" thing, please know (as I explain in more detail on the show): Presidents have absolutely ZERO power to do any such thing. Elections are run by states and, to some extent, Congress may make laws that states must follow. He has no Constitutional or legislative or super-secret power to nationalize them, much less ordering "Republicans" to do so. It is, at best, a very empty threat. Whether he knows that or not is unclear. And, yes, as discussed, there are things that he can try to do, with the unlawful deployment of ICE forces, for example, to make things more difficult for voters to vote this year. But I suspect any such efforts will end up hurting his party's chances more than they will help.

Tune in for the full argument, of course.

At the same time --- as Saturday Night Live hilariously satirized over the weekend --- more and more Trump supporters are (slowly, but surely!) finding their way back toward sanity, or at least away from Trump. I suggest we find ways to help them safely get there.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with, yes, still more humiliating legal losses for Trump and more deadly climate change-fueled weather across the nation....

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

Among that news...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Among today's many stories...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Danger is not over yet after deadly, extreme winter storm pummels U.S.; House Republicans overturn ban on mining near Minnesota's pristine Boundary Waters; Judge blocks Trump administration from halting EV charging funds appropriated by Biden; PLUS: Michigan Attorney General's lawsuit accuses Big Oil of operating a 'fossil fuel cartel'... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump’s Grant Terminations Upheld by Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals; Natural Gas Price Surges Almost 30% as Arctic Blast Grips Much of US; Enviros Charge Administration Violated Laws In Approving Alaska Road; Oregon Court Tosses Old Rule that Allowed Logging on Vast Swaths of US Land; New ExxonMobil Climate Accounting Again Blames Consumers, Not Corporation... PLUS: How Cuts To Federal Climate Funds Could Threaten Polar Vortex Research... and much, MUCH more! ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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It's five years to the day since January 6, 2021, when the then President of the United States got away with one of the most audacious crimes ever attempted in the U.S.: a failed attempt to have his own supporters violently overthrow the U.S. Government in order to help steal a Presidential election. Today on The BradCast, we hear from the federal prosecutor who tried --- and almost succeeded --- in holding him to account for those crimes and others. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Donald Trump really didn't want you to hear about those crimes. Especially from the guy who meticulously investigated them before obtaining two federal grand jury criminal indictments against the disgraced, then-former President for both the attempted election theft and his theft of thousands of pages of highly classified national security documents upon leaving office, and for his obstruction of the investigations into both matters.

It was likely no coincidence that Trump invaded Venezuela just hours after his lackeys and co-conspirators in the U.S. House, on New Years Eve, released video of more-than-eight-hours of closed-door testimony, in hopes it would stay buried there. We attempt to unbury it a bit today.

BUT FIRST UP... a few choice, incisive and amusing takes on Trump's wildly unlawful invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its leader, from comedian Jamie Kaler and the hilariously satirical Rep. Jack Kimble (R-CA) social media account.

Also today, news on Tuesday's sudden passing of 65-year old Rep. Doug LaMalfa, an actual Republican Congressman, for seven terms, from California and a major Trump supporter. His surprise death, along with yesterday's resignation of Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and the hospitalization of another Republican Congressman, Indiana's Jim Baird, following a recent traffic accident, renders Speaker Mike Johnson's caucus perilously close to losing their House majority as another deadline for a government shutdown looms on January 30.

THEN... It's on to the December 17, 2025 closed-door testimony of Special Counsel Jack Smith before the GOP-controlled U.S. House Judiciary Committee which, no doubt, regrets the fact they had to take his testimony in order to convince Trump they were actually investigating the now-second term President's absurd claims that Joe Biden's Dept. of Justice was weaponized to prevent Trump from running for President again.

Though Smith requested public testimony in the House, as per tradition for special prosecutors following a Presidential probe --- and, in this case, two historic criminal indictments --- Republicans balked. They forced the closed-door testimony before attempting to hide the 255-page transcript and more than eight hours of video-taped testimony from Smith over a holiday.

With the aid of coverage and insight from former senior federal prosecutor Randall Eliason, independent journalists Marcy Wheeler and Parker Malloy, and a bit from the New York Times, we share audio from some of the notable testimony and revelations from the three-decade veteran DOJ prosecutor who Republican interrogators on the Committee failed to lay a glove on. But, how could they? You'll have trouble finding a more by-the-book prosecutor than Smith.

In audio clips from the hearing that we share today, Smith speaks to...

• The lack of "weaponization" of the DOJ under Joe Biden, and the actual weaponization and death blows that the new Trump Administration is now reigning down on it over the past year since returning to office.
• His "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that Trump committed --- and would have been convicted of --- both the crimes related to January 6 and the classified documents case, had Smith not been forced to dismiss both cases after Trump's reelection.
• How the witnesses he would have presented at trial on the attempted theft of the 2020 election were all Republican allies of Trump.
• How Trump "exploited" violence on January 6th.
• How it was Trump himself who "chose" which Senators' phone call toll records would be probed in the investigation, and how none of those members were "spied" on, as now falsely claimed by Trump and Congressional Republicans. (Toll records detail only what number was called, when, and how long the call lasted. As Eliason explains, it would have been prosecutorial malpractice to not subpoena those records. Smith's investigation never "wire-tapped" any member of Congress, as recently and falsely claimed by Trump and his fellow GOP scam artists.)
• How Trump was entitled, under the First Amendment, to lie about a "stolen" election. But that he was not legally allowed to use those lies in furtherance of inducing his followers to commit crimes, such as storming the Capitol to obstruct the certification of Biden's victory or attempting to kill the Vice President.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our first Green News Report of the new year, with a collection of "while we were out" headlines to get us caught up for the new year following the warmest Christmas in recorded U.S. history...

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My ears are still ringing after the President of the United States spent about 20 minutes barking at me last night. But the show --- in this case, the final BradCast of 2025 --- must go on. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

VERY QUICKLY... Some final election results for the year, as a Democratic union leader and U.S. Army veteran won a special election on Tuesday for a state Senate seat in Kentucky in a more than 47-point landslide over his Republican opponent! Gary Clemons won almost 73% of the vote, according to today's unofficial results. Granted, it was in a Democratic leaning area of Louisville, but one where Kamala Harris won by just 6 points last year. So, it amounted to an approximately 42-point shift in favor of Team Blue. In Kentucky. That should help propel the Resistance into the critical mid-term election year of 2026.

THEN... Two of our favorite guests are here today for an end-of-year roundtable, of sorts, as we wrap up a...well...tumultuous year, to put it far too nicely, as we try to make sense of whatever happened last night during Donald Trump's weird, lie-filled, prime-time tirade and a whole bunch of other stuff at year's end.

We're joined once again today by fellow old-school bloggers HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of the Professional Left Podcast.

AP noted last night that Trump has frequently said he believes more Americans would back him if they simply heard him describe his track record. Well, I think everybody heard him last night. Even if they had their TVs off, since the guy was shouting so loud. What he was shouting, however, was mostly a string of ridiculous claims and a whole bunch of numbers, many of which were made up out of whole cloth.

In his mercifully brief, but endlessly angry remarks, he said "at levels never seen before" or "at record levels" at least 7 times; referred to at least 11 different "records" that he claims to have broken over the past year; cited "history" --- as in, "never before in American history" --- at least 12 times; and blamed Joe Biden for most of his own failures at least 7 times.

Whether anybody is more inclined to back him after hearing that "record" --- (new polling out yesterday from PBS/NPR/Marist found his overall support at just 38%, AP/NORC clocked him in at just 36% approval) --- than they were before last night remains to be seen.

"I couldn't guess about his supporters, because I've lost all sense of anything making sense amongst the American electorate," quips an enjoyably cynical Digby today. "These people are crazy. And so is he. I am just looking at this and thought what kind of person watched that gibbering clown last night and thought, 'Wow, that is a great president'?"

"It is clear that Donald Trump has made a career out of lying to people. Now he's just a living sales pitch. But you can't out-shout kitchen table math," argues Driftglass in regard to last night's speech, before somewhat countering himself. "On the other hand, if you've ever read 1984, it's just a matter of telling the rubes what you want them to think. They are so sunk-cost bought-in to Donald Trump, they know if they don't believe it, the whole thing crashes down."

"There's a thing in aeronautics called the Jesus Nut," he continues. "It's this bolt-nut combination that holds the entire helicopter assembly together. Without it, you'd better pray to Jesus because you're going down. Donald Trump is that to them. He is the thing holding it all together. So whatever crazy crap he says, they have to believe it, they have to go along with it, because the alternative is the abyss."

When we move to the topic of whether Republicans are going to accept the Democrats latest attempt to help save them from themselves by extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies that Trump and the GOP cut --- with monthly premiums now set to skyrocket for tens of millions of Americans in the new year --- Digby believes that "Republicans are not coming to their senses."

"I think that the vast majority of the Republican caucus, in both the House and Senate, are happy to let the subsidies expire because they know they are going to lose next fall. They see the writing on the wall. And they figure, 'The one thing we did was we destroyed Obamacare.' That's been on their agenda from the very beginning. If they get nothing else out of this whole mess, they get that. They destroyed Obamacare. They don't care about how many people suffer, because this is their Great White Whale. Or Great Black Whale, I guess, in the case of Obamacare."

Driftglass, who explains that his ACA monthly premiums are set to quadruple next year for him and his wife thanks to the GOP's cuts (from about $700/month this year to more than $2500/month next year!), believes that Trump's own supporters "are going to take a huge hit, but they are going to go look for scapegoats, not solutions. And that is tragic. And it's dangerous."

He is also wistful about what has happened over the past year. "This country is now a different country than it was in 2024," he observes. "We have become a different place. We've lost our innocence. This happened after the Viet Nam War, the Civil Rights Movement. Fundamentally, this country has changed in ways we do not understand yet. And whatever happens after Trump, it is going to be a different place than you and I grew up in. And part of that is that there is now a solid block of 36% of the American public who are just insane."

We have much more insanity to try and make sense of on today's program. From the house of cards that Speaker Mike Johnson is barely hanging on to; to the release of the Epstein Files that, by law, is supposed to happen tomorrow (both Digby and Drifty are dubious, to say the least); to why it is that Indiana Republicans actually stood up to Trump's threats and refused to gerrymander their U.S. House map; to what could possibly reverse Trump's seemingly quickly sinking fortunes (and health) next year.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen helps us close out the show with our final 'Green News Report' for 2025, at the end of a program that hopefully gives you lots to chew on, worry about, think about, plan for, fight for or laugh about until we return in 2026...

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