We'll have likely-unsurprising results from today's Super Tuesday elections in 16 states on tomorrow's BradCast, but we've got a few reminders today of the stakes, the challenges ahead and why it all matters. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• Arizona's former corporatist Democrat turned corporatist independent U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema says she will not run for re-election this November, clearing the way for a 2-person race to fill her U.S. Senate seat this fall. (And, perhaps, with both her and West Virginia's Joe Manchin also not running for re-election this year, a path someday to restoring the gutted Voting Rights Act and much more.)

• Speaking of the Voting Rights Act, a new study from NYU's Brennan Center of Justice out this week finds that the racial gap between white and black voters has been widening since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the law's key provision in 2013's Shelby v. Holder, claiming the landmark Act's protections against racially discriminatory voting laws and rules was out of date and no longer needed. While the racial disparity gap has grown everywhere across the country, it has grown twice as much in jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination at the polls where minority voters were previously protected by the VRA's currently-gutted Section 5 "preclearance" requirement.

• As if that is not disturbing enough, Republican "voter fraud" fraudster groups, such as the disgraced disinformationists at True the Vote, are ramping up efforts to suppress the vote in advance of this year's general election. According to a new New York Times investigation, a "grassroots" campaign has been quietly challenging the eligibility of thousands of legally registered voters at the County level in a number of swing-states around the country since 2020, removing eligible voters in the bargain and otherwise setting up for post-election challenges to the rolls this November, in the event that Donald Trump loses again.

• And speaking of the disgraced former President and current 2024 GOP front-runner, his longtime Chief Financial Officer, Allen Weisselberg is headed back to prison after spending about 100 days in Rikers last year related to a years long tax fraud scheme with the Trump Organization. On Monday, the 78-year old pleaded guilty to two counts of perjury after lying on the stand and in depositions with New York state prosecutors regarding his role in the massive, years-long fraud scheme by Trump, his company and his top executives. Trump and the executives, including his two eldest sons and Weisselberg were all found liable in the state's civil fraud case against them. Trump must now pay more than $450 million in penalties. His NY state criminal trial on 34 felony counts related to hush-money payments to help him win the 2016 election begins later this month, as Weisselberg prepares for another five months in the pokey, though he will not be required to testify against Trump under the plea deal.

• But it's not just rightwingers facing justice this week. On Tuesday, New Jersey's Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez and his wife saw new obstruction charges added to their existing indictments related to allegedly accepting gold bars, cash and a luxury car as bribes in return for favors to several businessmen. Menendez stands accused of using his former position as Chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee to help his business associates get multi-millionaire deals with Qatari investment funds and the government of Egypt.

• Okay, it's just mostly rightwingers. Liberty University, one of the nation's largest so-called "Christian" schools, founded by the late Jerry Falwell, Sr., and subsequently run by his son Jerry Falwell, Jr. (until he was forced out in scandal) has agreed to pay the largest fine ever under the federal Clery Act, requiring that colleges and universities that receive federal funding keep detailed public lists of campus crime statistics. The school must cough up an unprecedented $14 million related to its years-long cover-up of sexual abuse and rape allegations, while fostering a community of fear for women who were often victimized and/or ignored after reporting such incidents to school officials.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as record heat and wildfires continue in Texas; California's Sierra Mountains dig out from an intense weekend blizzard with hurricane-force wind gusts; And as the Biden Administration announced billions of dollars for cleaning up and modernizing the nation's ports under the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act...

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As I wrote here in 2010...

The point came to mind with a question posed during a recent CA U.S. Senate debate suggesting that many in the mainstream media remain trapped within this nation's irrational, post-9/11, global "war on terror" mindset. Trapped, as it were, despite President Joe Biden's sage (if ignored) advice to Israel's far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to not "repeat mistakes" the U.S. made in the aftermath of 9/11.

Paraphrasing a remark said to be made by an unnamed Biden Administration official, KTLA 5 moderator Frank Buckley asked primary candidate Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) whether she agreed that "peace [in Gaza] can only begin with the elimination of Hamas"?

After condemning the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack, Lee proclaimed that "a diplomatic and political settlement" that eventually included a "two-state solution" offers the only means for achieving peace and security. "Killing twenty-five to thirty thousand civilians is counterproductive to Israel's security." That's why, Lee explained, she was calling for a "permanent ceasefire"...

Brad is still under the (non-COVID) weather today, so guest host Nicole Sandler joins us to take the captain's chair for today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST: We start with some of today's breaking news (and there was a lot of it that came after airtime today, which we'll try to get to tomorrow), beginning in Congress, with Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announcing plans to retire from Senate leadership (although not from the Senate itself) after this November's election. Also, the question of whether the House GOP majority will be able to agree on a government funding package to avoid another Republican government shutdown by Midnight on Friday.

Also today, what to make of the reported results of Tuesday's Primary elections in Michigan, where both Joe Biden and Donald Trump easily won each of their respective party's contests, but where the New York Times and other corporate outlets found a strange way to spin the results. (As Brad pointed out on Twitter last night, Biden faced "significant challenge" in winning over 81% of the vote, while Trump "coasted to victory" with just over 68% on the GOP side against Nikki Haley's 27%, according to the Times' headlines.)

Biden did face just over 13% of Democratic voters who selected "Uncommitted" on Tuesday to register a protest vote against the Administration's policies in Israel amid its brutal invasion of Gaza. We try to offer a bit of context, however, amid the corporate media's too often misleading and/or context-free coverage.

THEN: Nicole speaks with investigative reporter JORDAN GREEN of Raw Story, who has spent months investigating a group of neo-Nazi teenagers who are working to recruit and indoctrinate even younger white kids online. Green reports on the neo-Nazi hate groups who are using the Internet to draw in teenage boys, "grooming children for a race war"; how their parents are reacting; and how these extremist groups have now turned to targeting Green, attempting to menace and intimidate him into halting his reporting.

He reports on being doxxed and seeing protests outside his own home, as the groups use similar fear and intimidation tactics against him that they also use to terrorize blacks, Jews, LGBTQ+ people and others.

Green discusses his investigation of the teen neo-Nazi recruitment group, his fight to protect his family and himself, and his resolve to continue: "That's not going to deter me from reporting," he tells Nicole. "This is the bedrock principle of democracy, to report without fear or favor. So I will continue to do that....They are certainly using the same tactics against journalists that they use against other groups that they dislike."

FINALLY: We finish up today with our latest Green News Report (featuring an ailing Brad!) which happens to be our 15th Anniversary episode! As a new study reveals that extreme weather disasters displaced 2.5 million Americans from their homes in 2023; Texas home prices have plunged in areas affected by a new state flood risk disclosure law; Chicago's lawsuit against Big Oil over climate damages. All of that as we celebrate 15 years of environmental news, politics, analysis and snarky comment over your public airwaves! (Thanks to YOU!)...

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I'm fighting (and losing to) a sinus infection, so otherwise exhausted after today's very lively BradCast. Thus, Imma try to keep this short and leave you to tune in for all the juicy fun on today's program. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

In general, amongst the stuff we covered...

• GOP South Carolina primary results prove yet again that about 40% of Republican voters, at least in the nominating contests to date, want an alternative toDonald Trump. Clearly, that's a crisis for...Joe Biden, as the New York Times helps us understand.

• A whole bunch of primaries (and caucuses and dysfunctional GOP party conventions) are coming up in a whole bunch of states over the next week, beginning with Michigan tomorrow and some 16 states and territories next Tuesday --- Super Tuesday --- March 5th. We lay out all of the confusing details, attempts by Trump to game the GOP nomination, and a move from some on the Left in Michigan to call out President Biden or his position on Israel.

• In addition to a whole bunch of nominating contests over the next week, the inept House GOP has scheduled a potential (if partial) government shutdown for this Friday, the same day that President Biden is set to deliver his State of the Union Address. At the same time, SCOTUS could come down with two key rulings any minute on whether Trump is allowed to be on the ballot at all this year, as per the Constitution's "Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause", and on his ridiculous "Presidential Immunity" argument in his criminal trials. Buckle up for all of the above over the next week or so.

• AND THEN: Russia's deadly invasion of its peaceful, democratic sovereign neighbor of Ukraine has now entered its third horrific year. More and more evidence over the past week has emerged to document both Vladimir Putin's treachery and his Kremlin's decade-long, active intelligence operation to interfere with the U.S. electoral system. All of it highlights the perfidy and/or stupidity of a whole bunch of Useful Idiots on the Right --- from Trump to rightwing media to Republicans in Congress --- who are all too happy to echo blatant Kremlin propaganda for (potential) political gain.

  But what of the small, if intense, number of folks on the supposed, "anti-war" progressive Left who have also spent years at this point echoing much of the same Kremlin propaganda? The one who, today, agree with Republicans who want to simply throw Ukraine to the Russian wolves because, something something "World War III", something something NATO, something something "negotiate" with the invaders, something something "privileged few" who want Ukraine to "fight to the last Ukrainian"? (That last, literally a documented Russian intel talking point, repeated endlessly now by many on the Left and Right who oppose aid to Ukraine to allow them to both defend themselves and democracy itself against imperialist foreign military aggression.)

  We call out some of those on the Left today for falling for disinformation and talking points, knowingly or unknowingly...because someone has to...and they call in to today's BradCast in response.

  Lively conversation ensues...

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On today's BradCast: As of this week, if it wasn't clear before (and, obviously, for many, it was not) it is now clearer than ever that the U.S., its corporate media, the Republican Party, its front-runner for the 2024 Presidential nomination (and, sadly, even too many on the "left"), have all fallen prey --- knowingly or unknowingly (it doesn't really matter) --- to a wildly successful, decade-long Russian intel op. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

From the Hillary emails in 2016 to the Hunter Biden laptop in 2020 to the Biden Burisma "bribery" allegations that fell apart so spectacularly this week with the arrest of the man who House GOPers cited as the lynch-pin for their entire Revenge Impeachment case against President Biden, it turns out it was all part of a wildly successful foreign campaign to divide and threaten American political system.

Turns out Alexander Smirnov, that guy with the false Burisma claims about the Bidens, apparently got it all from Russian intel operatives who have, for the past ten years, been pushing all of these phony narratives straight out from the Kremlin through various useful idiots, onto the set of Fox "News" and the rest of the rightwing media, into the mouth of the disgraced former President, and straight through to the hearing rooms of the U.S. Congress where it was shared --- either knowing or unknowingly (it doesn't really matter) --- by GOP dupes.

It's quite an extraordinary success story, in truth. For Vladimir Putin. And a shameful failure of our corporate mainstream media to even notice much of it happening in real time. They also played the role of useful idiots when it counted the most over much of the past decade and right on up until today.

Josh Marshall described it as "A Bigger Story Than You Can Possibly Imagine" this week, and I believe he is correct. Much more on all of that --- and Putin's deadly rise --- on today's program.

ALSO TODAY...

• MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is not only an election denier and grifter. He also won't pay off a bet. In 2021, Lindell claimed to have obtained "irrefutable" evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump by China over the Internet. His evidence was Internet data packets that he claims to have obtained from a "whistleblower". He offered $5 million to anyone who could prove the data wasn't from the election. A two-time Trump voter did so in 2022. The data, he proved, was nothing but junk. But Mike wouldn't pay up the $5 million he offered via his "Prove Mike Wrong" challenge. A private arbitration panel agreed the man was owed the money. Cheap chiseler Mike still wouldn't pay. This week, a federal judge ordered him to do so.

• Corporate media spend a lot of time focusing on Joe Biden's bad polling numbers against Donald Trump. This week, a new survey by Quinnipiac University, a major pollster, found Biden beating Trump among registered voters nationally by 4 points. So Politico covered the new survey with this headline: "Poll: Nearly 70 percent of voters say Biden is too old to serve again".

• Is it any wonder so many on the left are still under the misguided impression that someone, anyone, who knows who?, but certainly someone, should replace Joe Biden on the 2024 ballot! Because that unidentified someone would certainly have a better chance of defeating Donald Trump this year! Well, even if there was evidence of Biden not running this year (there isn't), recent polling doesn't even back up the assertion that other Dems would do better against Trump than Biden would. But, hey, if you've got a realistic scenario to replace Joe Biden that won't result in a second Trump Presidency, please feel free to email me! I'd love to hear it and maybe even share it with listeners!

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as SCOTUS seems set to gut yet another landmark environmental protection; A bizarre winter heat wave slams Japan; and the Biden Administration continues moving forward with its historic effort to replace all of the nation's toxic lead water pipes...

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Don't forget to laugh out loud next time you hear a Republican pretending to oppose "Big Government regulations" or acting as if they give a damn about "forgotten working folks". Those are two of the biggest lies in the GOP toolbox, as discussed on today's BradCast, and actively demonstrated down in Emperor Ron DeSantis' Republic of Florida even as I write. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... A few cheerier pieces of news to kick things off. The size of the fines against Donald Trump, his company and two of his sons in the New York fraud verdict against them is more staggering than you may realize following Judge Arthur Engoron's ruling [PDF] last Friday. Most outlets have cited the $355 million that Trump must cough up. But that doesn't include another $100 million or so already tacked on in interest to cover the fraudulent inflation of assets going back as far as 2019 or so. In truth, he now owes NY about $455 million, with some $87,000 in new interest accruing each day that he fails to pay up. But don't worry. He'll pay. NY A.G. Tish James said yesterday that she is prepared to seize his assets, including buildings, if he fails to do so.

While the corrupt former President's life is on the precipice of ruin, the not-corrupt current President, Joe Biden, was busy today forgiving another $1.2 billion in student loans for some 153,00 borrowers. That brings the total to nearly 4 million Americans who have seen some or all of their student debt wiped out by the Biden Administration, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Biden's original plan to forgive debt for 40 million borrowers. (That, even though the corrupt rightwing SCOTUS allowed Trump to change loan terms for borrowers under the very same law Biden tried to use.)

THEN... On yesterday's program with my guest John Nichols of The Nation, we discussed the possibility of rolling back the notorious anti-union law, known as ACT 10, in Wisconsin. The measure, which gutted most public sector unions (if not right-leaning police and firefighter unions) was muscled through to law more than a decade ago by the state's far-right then Gov. Scott Walker and his gerrymandered GOP toughs in the state legislature. Now that a newly liberal state Supreme Court has allowed Democratic Governor Tony Evers to implement fairer, non-gerrymandered legislative maps for the 2024 election, its conceivable Dems could finally return to power and restore collective bargaining rights to state workers next year.

Nichols cited neighboring Michigan as a role model for repealing Republican anti-union measures in a previously gerrymandered state, after its Democratic Governor and now Democratically-controlled state legislature rolled back that state's union-busting laws last week.

So, good news in the North this week...but really bad news down in Ron DeSantis' Florida, where a hastily-enacted 2023 law by the GOP legislature, passed in hopes of buttressing the Governor's ill-fated run for President, may now, literally, wipe out the very existence of hundreds of local public sector unions, with tens of thousands of workers, across the entire state.

Thousands of teachers, civil engineers, state and local clerical workers, mechanics, city park workers, those that answer 911 calls (but not police, firefighters or correctional officers, whose unions support DeSantis and are thus exempted from the law) are now seeing their unions decertified and dissolved by the state under Senate Bill 256, or are now on the brink of seeing that happening.

We're joined today by RICH TEMPLIN --- Legislative and Political Director of Florida AFL-CIO, the state's largest labor organization, representing more than 500 local unions --- to explain what is going on here, and what, if anything can be done about it.

None of this should be happening, he explains, because decades-old provisions in Florida's state Constitution protect the right to collective bargaining for public sector workers. But, "Constitutional Conservatism" is apparently for lefties and liberals now down in the Sunshine State, where Templin describes this attack on unions as "a sordid, complicated tale," that began "when Ron DeSantis decided to run for President."

"He was rewarding his biggest donors. Not only past donors but future donors he could count on for the campaign," Templin says, detailing how the wannabe President was "catering favor with national organizations that can provide national endorsements and national money. That's how we got sucked up into it. The extensive Koch Brothers network...He did this for them."

"When the bill was passed," Templin asserts, "there was no constituency group asking for it. There was no public sector employers asking for it. There were no public sector employees asking for it. It was 100% driven by billionaire out-of-state think tanks who the Governor was currying favor with for his Presidential run, and a legislature that was all too willing to turn their constituents over to his political ambitions."

At its heart, SB256 takes away the option for union members to voluntarily have their dues taken out of their paychecks each month. (Most unions anyway. Remember, police and firefighters unions are exempt from SB256.) Then the measure simply decertifies unions that do not have more than 60% dues-paying membership, even though Florida is a so-called "Right to Work" state where all workers must be allowed to "freeload" off of union contracts without being paying members of the union. They "took away the ability for members to conveniently pay their dues, and then they say, 'If there's not enough of you paying dues, you lose your union altogether.'"

While DeSantis didn't win the Koch Network endorsement or money --- or GOP Presidential nomination --- "he has really destroyed the state of Florida," in his failed attempt, according to Templin. "We are in shambles. It is going to take us a decade to dig out from what he's done."

SB256 is already a disaster, and not just because it was hurriedly pushed through the state legislature without regard to existing protections in the state constitution. But because nobody really knows how to implement it. How can unions be recertified after they've become decertified? What happens to existing union contracts?

Templin spoke to us today from the capital building in Tallahassee as a measure to try and fix some of SB256's most egregious disasters may come to the floor, and he is hoping to see amendments added to correct some of the law's most unworkable elements.

"This has been a time of great chaos," Templin laments. "There's a whole bunch of other bureaucratic hurdles that have been established to make it impossible for public sector unions to exist. They did this 'death by a thousand paper cuts' because the constitution doesn't allow them" to simply end collective bargaining for public sector workers as then Gov. Walker did in Wisconsin over a decade ago.

Templin has much more to say about all of this today, on the legal challenges to the measure, and how voters can help to turn things around in the state after years of rightwing autocracy, especially under DeSantis.

For some of the horrifying details on the ongoing effects of SB256 across the state, as it has fully taken effect as of the first of the year, be sure to check out investigative journalist Daniel Rivero's excellent and exhaustive recent article at South Florida's public radio outlet, WLRN.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Record marine heat wave decimated Florida's coral reefs; Plastics industry knew for 50 years that recycling didn't work, and deceived the public about it; PLUS: Nearly half the world's migratory species in decline, U.N. study finds... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Biden administration advances 2-pronged clampdown on toxic air pollution; 5 ways El Niño is wreaking havoc in South America; A collapse of the Amazon could be coming 'faster than we thought'; Judge revokes Florida wetlands permitting authority; Biden administration weighs slowing the shift to electric vehicles; Pesticide linked to reproductive issues found in Cheerios, Quaker Oats and other oat-based foods; Massive geothermal potential found offshore, where the Earth splits... PLUS: A climate reckoning is coming for the next president... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast we mark the Presidents' Day holiday honoring the birthdays of both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, with a quip from our friend Marcy Wheeler, independent national security journalist at Emptywheel, who tweeted: "Happy President's Day, America, a holiday celebrating the guy who said Presidents should not be kings and the guy who said insurrectionists should not be President." [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories covered in that spirit today...

FIRST: During a stunning, hastily called news conference over the weekend in Pakistan, a top official alleged that the nation's recent parliamentary election was littered with fraud. He claims to know because, he says, he was in charge of it in one of the country's largest provinces. The official now claims to be ashamed of what he did, "stabbing the country in its back", and announced that he was both resigning and turning himself in to law enforcement. "We converted losers into winners, reversing margins of 70,000 votes of independent candidates for 13 national Parliament seats," he said on Saturday, as fraud allegations stemmed from, among other things, Internet and cell service that was shut down on Election Day, as polling locations were moved at the last minute.

THEN: Contrast that potentially very real election fraud, announced by a real whistleblower who expects to be thrown in prison for his crime, with the endless phony allegations of "election fraud" by Donald Trump and his duped supporters following the 2020 election. Those claims, shamefully, continue all the way up through today. Just last year, when Trump was again asked for evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, he cited an oft-debunked documentary film released in 2022 called 2000 Mules. It was a film made by convicted (and Trump-pardoned) election fraudster Dinesh D'Souza in partnership with the long-ago discredited Rightwing Texas-based "election fraud" group called True the Vote, as headed up by a woman named Catherine Engelbrecht.

Trump told CNN that the group had "found millions of votes on camera, on government cameras, where they were stuffing ballot boxes.” We already knew all of that was a lie. The much-debunked 2000 Mules film actually showed no such thing to anyone actually paying attention to it. But last week, it was reported that True the Vote was forced to admit in a court filing to the state of Georgia --- which is suing the group for information on their so-called "whistleblowers", who they had claimed were insiders to massive Democratic fraud in 2020 --- that they actually have no such information. They have no documentation, records of any conversations, or even contact details for the so-called "whistleblowers" and "informants" they said they had built their case on in their phony "documentary".

FINALLY: On Friday, Russia's democratic hero and Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony. He had been a prisoner of Vladimir Putin's on trumped-up charges since returning to Russia in 2021 after an assassination attempt (stunning details of which are revealed "live" in the extraordinary 2022 documentary Navalny). His death at 47-years of age stunned supporters, many of whom had assumed he would one day unseat Putin to become "Russia's first George Washington", it's first truly democratic leader. Instead, as one lamented, he will be their "Martin Luther King", as a moral example that will inspire generations of freedom seeking Russians.

On Monday, Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya again demanded the return of his body, which she charges Russia will keep long enough to hide allow any traces of the nerve agent she believes was used to kill him to dissipate. She also vowed to continue his fight against the Kremlin.

World leaders, including President Biden, upon word of Navalny's death, condemned Putin. Our own disgraced former President, however --- a huge Putin fan --- waited for three days before issuing an unhinged rant on his social media in which, after mentioning Navalny's name, quickly became a lengthy screed about his own legal problems.

In a chilling --- if inspiring --- portion of the documentary film Navalny, when asked by the filmmaker for a message to supporters if he is killed upon his then-planned return to Russia. He says, in English, "My message is very simple: don't give up." The filmmaker then asks him to respond directly to the camera in Russian.

"Listen, I've got something very obvious to tell you," Navalny quips. "You're not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power --- to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes. We don't realize how strong we actually are."

Navalny then adds a familiar quote: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don't be inactive."

Putin is expected to win his fourth term as Russia's leader in Presidential "elections" next month. He faces no real opposition given that any such candidates have now been either jailed, killed or forced to live in exile.

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We covered so much territory on today's BradCast that I'm having trouble writing about all of the seemingly disparate pieces in a cogent narrative here. So I won't try. I'll give you the pieces, and hopefully you will listen to the show to see how it all ties together (or doesn't). [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among the many stories covered on today's program...

• Wednesday's mass shooting at the Kansas City Chief's Super Bowl victory rally; Wednesday's mass shooting at an Atlanta high school; President Biden's official response.

• Special Counsel Jack Smith's speedy filing [PDF] at SCOTUS in response to Donald Trump's continuing attempt to further delay his federal trial related to his attempts to steal the 2020 election with his absurd claim that Presidents enjoy "absolute immunity" for any and all crimes committed while serving in office.

• New York State Judge Juan Merchan on Thursday confirmed Trump's trial will begin on March 25 on 34 criminal felony charges related to hush-money payments made to a porn star to help him win the 2016 election. The judge rejected Team Trump's argument that sitting for a trial related to cheating to win the 2016 election will hamper his efforts to win the 2024 election. The trial is expected to last for six weeks.

• A salacious sidebar to the 13 criminal felony counts Trump is facing in Georgia for his failed conspiracy to steal the state's 2020 election played out in a Fulton County courtroom on Thursday. A defiant District Attorney Fani Willis responded on the witness stand to charges from one of Trump's 18 alleged co-conspirators that the D.A.'s romantic relationship with one of the prosecutors on the case was either inappropriate or somehow a conflict of interest effecting the charges brought against Trump and his co-defendants. Willis was defiant in her response to questions and her testimony will continue on Friday.

• BREAKING DURING SHOW!: A former FBI informant named Alexander Smirnov was arrested and charged with lying to government officials in the summer of 2020 about Joe Biden and his son Hunter receiving millions of dollars in bribes from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Those lies have been a central part of Trump and Rudy Giuliani and House Republicans' phony, years-long attempts to smear the Biden family and impeach President Biden. Today's felony charges were filed by Trump-appointed Special Counsel David Weiss, who was tapped by Trump A.G. Bill Barr five years ago to try and find dirt on the Bidens. He found it instead on those spreading the dirt.

• A few thoughts on how corporate mainstream media headlines, social media posts and mobile phone alerts can dangerously distort news.

• A few thoughts on how Phoenix, Arizona media outlets 3TV and CBS 5 are seemingly doing the bidding of the fossil fuel industry while pretending to be consumer advocates. We details some of their dishonest and misleading coverage of the cost of battery replacements for hybrid Electric Vehicles. Sadly (and shamefully), they are not the only media outlets undermining humankind by doing the bidding of Big Oil in misreporting on EVs in America.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with sad news on a mysterious and massive oil spill on the pristine beaches of Trinidad and Tobago; big changes happening in Greenland as it continues to get warmer and greener; and how climate change is now coming for your chocolate...

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Once again today, we try to stuff a 10-pound show into a 5-pound BradCast. Wish us luck! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our many stories for your listening pleasure, amusement and outrage today...

• Jon Stewart is back on The Daily Show! At least on Monday nights. At least for this year. And, boy howdy, was he missed. Other than looking about 20 years older, he literally hasn't missed a step over the 9 years since he's been away from the show, both comically and, more importantly, politically. His first night back included an epic opening monologue that framed the various concerns among Democrats about Joe Biden's age in a way that nobody else has or could. Hopefully, it helps to kick off the serious conversation that Democrats need to start having amongst themselves to begin coming to terms with the fact that one of the most effective and, yes, oldest Presidents of our lifetimes (or ever) will be running for re-election this November. We've got lots to say here. But, much more importantly, so did Stewart last night.

• Battling a massive Nor'easter and racing the clock against whatever may happen in the Special Election for U.S. House in New York's 3rd Congressional District tonight, in the contest to fill the expelled Rep. George Santos' seat, House Republicans take a do-over on Tuesday after their embarrassing failed effort last week to Revenge Impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. The first impeachment ever of a sitting cabinet members is not for any actual "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" as required by the Constitution, but for...something something ...border policy...something something. (And because they haven't been able to figure out yet how to Revenge Impeach Joe Biden.)

• After insisting that any new aid package for Ukraine must include a massive new package for the U.S. Border Security. And then after striking a bipartisan deal with Democrats for that Border Security bill they insisted on. And then after insisting that any new aid for Ukraine not include a massive new package for the U.S. Border because Donald Trump told them to kill the Border provisions, because he needed an issue to run on in November....Senate Republicans (some of them anyway) joined Democrats after an all-night filibuster to pass a foreign aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. House Speaker Mike Johnson, however, has already said he'll do everything he can to keep this National Security measure from ever being allowed up for a vote on the House floor. Because Donald Trump told him to.

• In the greatest tradition of Banana Republic strongmen, Donald Trump is reportedly planning to install his own daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-Chair of the Republican National Committee and the Chair of his own Campaign as the RNC's Chief Operations Officer. The GOP takeover by a twice-impeached, four-time criminally indicted, one-term failed President is now all but officially complete.

• And then we finally get to the Hur Report today and the corporate mainstream media's epically failed coverage of it's release by Special Prosecutor Robert Hur, who was appointed by Trump to the DoJ. Last week, the Dept. unsealed the full, unredacted, nearly 400-page report [PDF]. Hur was tapped by Attorney General Merrick Garland to probe the small number of classified documents that Joe Biden's attorneys discovered at one of his old office spaces and in his home.

  The headline for the report's release should have been "Special Prosecutor Fails to Find Evidence of Crimes in Biden Classified Docs Probe", at least if one bothers to read what Hur actually detailed in the bulk of his report.

  That, as Hur himself points out, by way of contrast to the many reasons that 40 criminal felony counts were brought against Trump under the Espionage Act after he stole tens of thousands of pages of highly classified documents upon leaving office and then refused to return them to the Government.

  "Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite," writes Hur on page 11. "According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview. and in other ways cooperated with the investigation."

  The report went on for hundreds of pages, laying out exculpatory evidence after exculpatory evidence, as former DoJ prosecutors Andrew Weissman and Ryan Goodman detail. That, even as Hur rifled through Biden's personal diaries searching for evidence of a crime, as brilliantly highlighted by national security journalist Marcy Wheeler.

  But the screaming HEADLINE NEWS!!! that our corporate media took away from all of it in dozens and dozens of stories was that the Trump-appointed Hur included remarks in the report having nothing to do with whether Biden should be charged with a crime or not, but that Hur, not a medical professional, describes as the President having a "poor memory" and "diminished faculties".

  And you wonder why our country is going to hell in a handbasket?

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with coverage of a new type of Super Bowl EV ad; The big investment into the Trump campaign by Big Oil and Gas this year; and a jury award of $1 million to Pulitzer Prize-winning climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann in his defamation case against two far-right climate science liars and harassers...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Super Bowl EV ads mark the slow but persistent cultural shift in the transition from fossil fuels; Oil and gas industry spending big to get Trump into the White House; PLUS: Jury sides with climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann in defamatory rightwing smear campaign... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Climate change reversing gains in air quality across the U.S.; Atlantic current shows signs of slowing; EPA again OKs use of toxic herbicide linked to Parkinson’s Disease; U.N.: Nearly half of world's migratory species are in decline; Cocoa prices are soaring, thanks to climate change impacts; Supreme Court watchlist: Agency power, air rules, water rights; Revealed: the 1,200 big methane leaks from waste dumps trashing the planet... PLUS: As use of A.I. soars, so does the energy and water it requires... and much, MUCH more! ...

Some days these days on The BradCast, it's hard to believe we're covering what we are covering. I'd say that's the case on most days, these days. Today is, yet again, one of those days. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST, we try to bring you up to date following Donald Trump's rigged GOP Caucuses in Nevada last week. Given that he and some guy named Ryan Binkley were the only two on the ballot, Trump won with Saddam Hussein-like or Vladimir Putin-like numbers, taking 99.1% of the vote and all of the state's available RNC delegates in the bargain. Nikki Haley, having competed in the state-run Primary just two days earlier, was not allowed to participate in the state's GOP-run Caucuses.

The Virgin Islands also held a GOP Caucus on the same day. Trump won there as well, defeating Haley (who was allowed to be on that ballot) by about 74% to 26%. Only about 250 voters bothered to show up, so don't read too much into it.

On the Dem side of the aisle, Joe Biden's only noteworthy competitor on the Nevada Primary ballot last Tuesday (which he handily won), was self-help guru Marianne Williamson. She dropped out of her run for the Democratic nomination the next day.

Tomorrow, however, expect an actual contest in the 3rd Congressional District in New York, where voters on Republican-leaning Long Island will select a replacement member of the U.S. House for the recently expelled pathological liar and Republican con-artist, Rep. George Santos. The polls suggest a close race for the seat between conservative Democrat and former Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi and his Republican opponent, the Ethiopian-born Israeli-American Mazi Pilip. The winning party will explain why the contest in the district should be seen as a bellwether for November's elections. The losing party will insist that it isn't.

THEN, it's back to the last few mad days since we last spoke, during which Trump (just before airtime today) filed his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping that his friends and appointees on the High Court will agree, unlike anyone on the lower courts, that U.S. Presidents have complete immunity to commit any crime they like while in office; Robert Hur, a former Trump-appointed DoJ prosecutor tapped by A.G. Merrick Garland to be a Special Counsel, ended a year-long nearly 400-page investigation [PDF] by finding there were no crimes to charge President Biden with concerning his possession and return of some classified documents following his two terms as Vice President. But, Hur took pains to also note, Joe Biden is old; and, our disgraced former President attacked Haley, his final GOP opponent, because her husband, Maj. Michael Haley is in the Horn of Africa for a year-long active duty deployment with the South Carolina National Guard. (No word on the whereabouts of Trump's wife Melania. Though it's a safe bet that she, like the entirety of the Trump family going back generations, is not out serving her country as a member of the military.)

But it was Trump's remarks about NATO at that very same South Carolina rally over the weekend that have, appropriately, received the most coverage since then. (If nothing near the absurd coverage that the corporate media has given to Special Counsel Hur's inappropriate insinuations regarding Biden's mental fitness.)

Trump relayed a story at the rally in which he claims that, when he was President, he told the leader of a NATO nation that, if they hadn't "paid their bills" to NATO, and were attacked by Russia, the U.S. would NOT come to their defense. That, in defiance of the NATO Treaty's Article 5 agreement that states that if one member is attacked, “each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked".

NATO nations, however, don't "pay" to be in NATO. In 2014, President Obama led an agreement among the treaty's 30+ member nations to work toward each spending a minimum of 2% of their annual GDP on defense. That's the "bill" for which Trump (who has been sued thousands of times personally for not paying bills) claims that many of those countries are "delinquent".

Making matters worse --- unimaginable just a few short years ago, in fact --- Trump also claims to have told that NATO leader that while the U.S. would not come to their defense, he would also encourage Russia "to do whatever the hell they want" to such countries.

NATO's Secretary-General, as well as the governments of several NATO nations, including Germany and Poland, issued unusual and harsh rebukes on Sunday in response to Trump's astonishing --- once unthinkable --- remarks.

FINALLY today, we open up the phone lines to listeners to get their thoughts on all of the above and anything else they may wish to ring in on today. And so they do. And so we're delighted, as always, to hear from those listeners who may not agree with us. Those are always the best calls after all, right?...

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Given the rationale behind the recent SCOTUS decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Texas, Governor Greg Abbott's election year efforts to block the U.S. Border Patrol's access to the Rio Grande in Texas amount to defiance of a federal court order.

President Joe Biden can and should assure State compliance with federal law by taking a page from previous Presidents by exercising his power to federalize both the TX National Guard and any members of the FL National Guard who are now impeding Border Patrol access along the pertinent stretch of the U.S. border with Mexico.

The Court's decision to "vacate" a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals injunction, pending appeal, did a great deal more than simply affirm the right of federal Border Patrol agents to remove razor wire erected by the Texas National Guard along 29-miles of the Rio Grande.

By granting U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar's emergency Application in the case, SCOTUS affirmed the federal government's contention that, under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, "state law cannot be applied to restrain...federal agents from carrying out their federally authorized activities".

As Prelogar argued to the High Court...

I'd say Tuesday was a high (or low?) watermark for GOP failure, but on The BradCast, we think it wise to never under (or over?) estimate them. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among our many stories covered today...

• Nikki Haley lost the one-person Republican Presidential Primary in Nevada by more than 30 points. (To be fair, it's not entirely her fault. Donald Trump rigged it. And he's setting up Republicans in the state for failure this November regarding the state's voting systems.) Joe Biden reportedly won his mostly one-person Democratic Primary in the state on Tuesday with nearly 90% of the vote.

• With three different swing-state GOP state Chairs (in Florida, Arizona and Michigan) ousted in recent weeks in scandals related to allegations of rape, bribery, or financial impropriety (and Nevada's GOP Chair heading to criminal trial in a few weeks for forgery as a fake 2020 elector), Trump's once-favored Chair of the RNC, Ronna Romney McDaniel, is being pushed out in the middle of a Presidential election year. Why? Trump's MAGA faithful are trying to find someone, anyone ... anyone but him ... to blame for their repeated, post-2016 election humiliations. Why not Ronna?

• But the humiliation continued on Tuesday, as newly tapped and freshly failed GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson engineered what Wall Street Journal described as "an embarrassment for the party", Punchbowl called "one of the most embarrassing days in recent House GOP history" (which is saying quite a lot!), and WaPo raved: "a stunning rebuke" for a months-long impeachment probe by Republicans hoping to identify "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" by Dept. of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. Turns out, they couldn't even convince their full caucus that he'd committed any, and one heroic Dem showed up from his hospital bed amidst chaos on the House Floor to deliver Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Green's phony impeachment scheme an embarrassing final blow. At least for Tuesday night, in the first impeachment vote ever against a sitting member of the Executive Branch.

• Actually, it wasn't the final blow on Tuesday night for House Republicans. Johnson held a subsequent vote for aid to Israel. It also went down in humiliating flames.

• All of that comes on the heels of Congressional GOP insistence that they would block any aid package for Ukraine --- now facing a very real existential crisis and invasion from a hostile neighbor --- unless the bill included a massive amount of money for the U.S. southern border, where Trump and Republicans pretend there is an ongoing "existential crisis" and "invasion". So, Dems gave in and agreed with Senate Republicans to add a very hard-right border deal to the aid package --- only to see Trump throw a fit at a possible real solution for the only real(ish) election year issue he seems to have left. So now House Republicans are vowing they will only consider an aid bill for Ukraine (and Israel and Taiwan) if it doesn't include money for the U.S. southern border. Seriously. It's as insane and stupid and dysfunctional and embarrassing as it sounds. And, it might even be hilarious, but for the fact that democracy remains on the brink in Europe, as the near-entirety of the Republican Party now cowers to the personal whims of their four-time indicted cult leader.

• Popular Republican criminal, pretend fake "pimp", and definitely fake "journalist" James O'Keefe quietly issued a tweet on Monday night, admitting that his reporting on 2020 election fraud in Pennsylvania was "wrong" and that he is "aware of no evidence or other allegation that election fraud occurred in the Erie [Pennsylvania] Post Office during the 2020 Presidential Election.” It took him four years and a begrudging lawsuit settlement to "correct" his false story about supposed massive mail ballot fraud by the USPS. Trump continues to fraudulently pimp that nonsense to this day. All of this on the heels of O'Keefe being pushed out of his own fake news organization, called Project Veritas, last year amid allegations of financial malfeasance and abuse of employees. Or, as his partner in the 2010 fake ACORN "pimp" hoax videos described it when quitting the group herself in December: "an unsalvageable mess --- one wrought with strong evidence of past illegality and financial improprieties."

• Finally today, some listener mail with an important coda to our mind-blowing interview on Tuesday with Susan Greenhalgh, election integrity advocate and consultant on the just-completed civil suit trial by Marilyn Marks and the Coalition of Good Governance against the State of Georgia and its Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger. The suit seeks to move the state from easily-hackable, unverifiable touchscreen voting systems to verifiable hand-marked paper ballots; And, some email on Taylor Swift and the Superbowl, which I thought we decided we wouldn't be discussing this week on The BradCast?!!...

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Today on The BradCast: Bad news from the DC Court of Appeals for the disgraced former President, though things could get much worse this week depending on how things go at SCOTUS on Thursday. [Audio link to full program follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• The unrelenting downpour in Southern California continues for a third straight day, as Los Angeles alone reports more than 300 mudslides since the atmospheric river began pouring in on Sunday, resulting in continuing flash flooding and evacuations throughout the region. Thankfully, there have been no deaths or major catastrophes yet reported, though three were killed in Northern California where strong winds toppled trees as the storm blew ashore on Sunday. It's not yet over, but we're told the sun may finally reappear again in SoCal, at least for a time, on Wednesday.

• Today was the last day to vote in Nevada's all vote-by-mail 2024 Presidential primaries, though few may have bothered. On the Democratic side, President Biden faces little or no competition. On the Republican side, Donald Trump helped rigged the state in his favor with the help of NV state party officials. He's not on the NV Primary ballot, since he objected to the all-mail process created by the state. He demanded caucuses instead. So Nikki Haley will be on the primary ballot, but Trump won't. While Haley won't be participating in the Thursday caucuses, but Trump will. Republican Delegates, however, will only be awarded to the winner of the rigged GOP Caucuses.

• Welp, it took nearly a month, but a three-judge panel on the D.C. Court of Appeals finally released their long-awaited ruling on whether Presidents have immunity against any and all criminal charges for crimes they carry out while serving as President. That is what the four-time indicted former President is arguing. And, to the shock of pretty much nobody, the court ruled in a unanimous, very thorough 57-page decision [PDF] today, that, nope, a President may not avoid criminal consequences for, by way of an example Donald Trump's attorney defended in court last month, ordering Seal Team 6 to murder a political rival. While the ruling was not surprising, it was successful for Trump, at least in part, by delaying his previously scheduled March 4th federal trial on four felony counts [PDF] related to his many attempts to steal the 2020 election. The D.C. panel struck down every single argument made by Trump and ordered the case to be returned to the trial court unless the defendant appeals the ruling to SCOTUS by Monday. Of course he will. The only question for the moment is: will there be enough votes at the corrupted rightwing SCOTUS to bother even hearing this dumb case.

• Then, we're joined by BRAD BLOG's longtime legal contributor ERNEST A. CANNING to discuss both today's Immunity ruling and the arguably far more consequential matter that will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday. The Supremes will hear oral argument for and against the case for disqualifying Donald J. Trump from the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the "Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause". The specific case, Trump v. Anderson, is named for the 91-year old Republican, Norma Anderson, who is one of six Republican and independent voters that sued under 14.3 in the state of Colorado to bar Trump from the state's Presidential ballot. They were successful. The CO Supreme Court barred Trump in a very well argued (and very conservative) ruling [PDF] late last year, pending a decision from SCOTUS. In the month since the Justices agreed to hear the case, as Canning writes this week, no fewer than 50 amici (friend of the court) briefs have been filed both for and against the Constitution's post-Civil War ban on insurrectionists serving in public office.

  Canning cites several key points offered in the various briefs from a host of scholars and experts, and we preview the questions likely to be up for debate during this Thursday's landmark hearing. The eventual opinion issued by SCOTUS could determine whether Trump is barred from the Presidential ballot in all 50 states. And what might happen then?

  Canning argues that if you follow conservative "textualist" and "originalist" doctrine, "what the intent was, what the actual language was" by the framers of the 14th Amendment, "there's no way you can come to a decision other than the fact that Donald Trump is disqualified within the meaning of the statute."

  That largely matches conventional wisdom suggesting the Constitutional case for banning Trump from office is pretty rock solid legally. Nonetheless, most of those media pundits and legal experts also tend to argue that the former President's friends and appointees on the High Court are likely to conjure up some sort of jiggery-pokery and pure applesauce to allow him to remain on the ballot this year anyway. "That could very well happen here," Canning tells me, before adding: "But I wouldn't bet the farm either direction."

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with more on the climate change-related causes of California's historic downpour, Chile's deadly heat and wildfires, and Spain's persistent drought. She also reports on how Europe has avoided Vladimir Putin's energy blackmail, and how Republicans plan to turn back the clock on the Biden Administration's landmark climate achievements if they succeed in winning back the White House in November...

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