On today's BradCast: Apparently, the high price of lying to MAGA viewers about the 2020 election has been totally worth it for rightwing "news" outlets, according to a newly released trove of insider documents. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Two years ago, Fox "News" agreed to pay more than three-quarters of a billion dollars to Dominion Voting Systems to make the voting equipment vendor's defamation lawsuit against them go away. Fox' on-air personalities and their guests had falsely, repeatedly, and without evidence, claimed Dominion used their voting systems to steal the Presidential election from Donald Trump in 2020. Many of the top Fox hosts and executives knew the claims were not true at the time. But they ran with them anyway, as MAGA viewers were fleeing to other, even farther right media outlets like Newsmax and OAN, which were even more shameless in their promotion of evidence-free claims that the election had been stolen for Joe Biden.

Those outlets were forced to pay up as well for their knowing, on-air lies. Newsmax settled with Dominion for $67 million and with Smartmatic for $40 million. OAN similarly settled with Smartmatic --- whose only voting systems in the U.S. were in Los Angeles County in 2020 --- for an undisclosed amount. In every such legal case, to date, the rightwing media outfits chose to pay up rather than face public scrutiny in a court of law, and to see their "news" personalities take the stand to defend claims that emails and text messages revealed during discovery proved that even they didn't believe.

Now Smartmatic's $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox is on the verge of going to trial early next year. Last time, Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion to avoid a trial where the jury members had already been selected and journalists, including our guest today, were waiting in the courtroom for the trial to begin.

Late last month, a trove of hundreds of pages of "damning filings" were made publicly available in Smartmatic's case against Fox. Media Matters for America Senior Fellow MATT GERTZ, who joins us on today's show, plowed through them. The documents reveal, among other things, Fox personalities like Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld, discussing "how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL"; prime time stars Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham worrying about backlash from viewers for failing to cover phony claims about fraud enough; Bret Baier, the network's supposed "straight news" anchor trying to convince the network to reverse its (accurate) call that Arizona had gone to Biden, given how furious that fact had made Trump and the outlet's MAGA viewers.

"I think we certainly filled in some gaps after the Dominion suit that have been answered to one degree or another through the Smartmatic one," Gertz tells me today, summarizing the newly released documents in the Smartmatic case. "More broadly, what the suit shows is they knew. Fox News' top executives and hosts were well aware that Donald Trump lost the election, that there had not been massive voter fraud, as he had claimed, that kept him from being re-elected, and they went out and said the opposite to their viewers. Night after night, segment after segment. For weeks. They did it because they were worried about losing portions of their market share to outlets like Newsmax and OAN that were perceived as more willing to push those lies."

While Fox has paid a price for that to Dominion, and may have to do so again with Smartmatic, Gertz asserts the lesson for Fox seems to be that it was all worth it. "They have, in the days since then, demonstrated that they are absolutely willing to do it again if the Republican nominee in 2028 tries the same con that Donald Trump did in 2020," he argues, citing the fact that those who tried to tell the truth about 2020 have since been pushed out at the network, while those who were willing to lie are still there, have received promotions, or are now members of the Trump Administration itself.

"What happens is that, because Donald Trump lies so much, he forces his supporters to make their peace with either letting the lie go past and ignoring it, or running with it. There are very few who are willing to say, 'This thing is not happening.'"

Much more on all of that with Gertz today, along with what Monday's agreement among the family heirs to 94-year old Fox owner Rupert Murdoch's business empire likely means for the far-right politics of Fox "News" going forward after he dies. And, far more troubling, the news this week that a far-right Trump supporter and donor with no experience in the news business whatsoever, will now serve as the ombudsman for CBS News as part of the recent concessions made by CBS-owner Paramount to win approval from Trump's FCC for its merger with Skydance.

"CBS News has instituted an ombudsman because its parent company was trying to convince the FCC that if he approved their merger, the network's coverage would change in a way he liked," explains Gertz. "They didn't pick a journalist with a reputation for integrity and neutrality. They picked a rightwing think-tanker and Republican donor who has no newsroom experience, but will give Donald Trump what he wants, which is a CBS News that moves its political coverage to the right."

"They are leveraging the power of the Executive Branch through Trump appointees who are willing to corruptly do the President's bidding, in order to force those companies to do so," he asserts. "They are changing the incentives for media outlets so that they need to kneel to the Republican Party's diktats if they want their mergers completed, or if they want to avoid criminal investigations, even. It's certainly a step towards authoritarianism, toward the treatment that Victor Orban of Hungary enforces on media outlets in his country. Orban is someone Trump has said is a model for what he's trying to do."

In other cheery news on today's show...

• The GOP-controlled Missouri state House voted today to approve a new U.S. House map that will likely steal one of the two remaining Democratic seats in the state for Republicans in next year's midterms. They also approved a measure that would make it harder to adopt citizen-led Constitutional ballot initiatives by mandating that measures must win a majority of voters in each of the state's eight Congressional districts, rather than a simple statewide majority as currently required. The move comes in the wake of state voters recently approving ballot initiatives that establish abortion as a state Constitutional right; for the legalization of marijuana; and for the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Both measures adopted by the MO House on Tuesday now head to the state Senate where they are expected to be approved before going to MO's Republican Governor for his signature. The ballot initiative amendment, however, must be approved by voters under the existing, simple statewide majority rules before being added to the state Constitution.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as both electricity usage and prices spike across the country, even as Trump continues to shut down much-needed windfarms and other renewable energy sources around the nation...

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Today on The BradCast: The corporate capitulation is worse than you think. And it strikes right at the heart of what this nation's founders saw as perhaps the most important protection for freedom from monarchs and tyrants. Ya know, like the one we ended up with anyway. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First up, a few interesting results reported today from both special elections and primaries held on Tuesday in a number of local jurisdictions across the country, including Detroit, Seattle, Delaware and Rhode Island. In short, the news, as we have seen in elections virtually everywhere so far this year, was largely very good for both Democrats and democracy.

The news was less good out of D.C. last night, where the nation's embarrassing Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. --- a man with no professional background in either science or medicine --- announced the Department is now cutting $500 million in grants for the development of new mRNA vaccines of the type that recently, arguably miraculously, helped the planet emerge from the most deadly pandemic in a century.

Of course, if you either didn't hear about that disturbing news from HHS or had no idea how many people are now likely to die unnecessarily because of it, you may have your own favorite corporate media outlet to blame.

Following Donald Trump's gutting of the 80-year old Voice of America earlier this year, his and the Republican Congress' ending of federal funding for NPR and PBS a week or so ago, and the absurd $16 million dollar settlements of ridiculous defamation lawsuits filed by Trump against the corporate owners of Disney/ABC and Paramount/CBS, the largest media conglomerates in the nation continue to rollover in fear, in hopes of placating and/or currying favor with our press-freedom hating, tyrannical man-baby President.

All of that in strict contradiction with the intentions of the U.S. Constitution's framers, who specifically wrote protections into our founding document for just one industry: a free press. All of that is detailed in a new report published last week by FreePress.net entitled "A More Perfect Media: Saving America’s Fourth Estate from Billionaires, Broligarchy and Trump".

That report is meant as a companion to the nonprofit media watchdog's newly released "Media Capitulation Index", grading the independence --- or, far more often, lack thereof --- of the nation's 35 largest corporate media conglomerates.

We're joined today to discuss both reports and the chilling state of our formerly free press, by TIMOTHY KARR, Senior Director of Strategy and Communications at Free Press. We've got a lot to dig into, including how we might finally dig our way out of this disaster.

His group's Media Capitulation Index, amusingly, scores each of the 35 American media conglomerates examined by Karr's group from 1 to 5 Chickens, rating them from "vulnerable" to "compromising" to "capitulating" to "obeying" to "propaganda," respectively. There is one other possible score, a single Star representing "independent". Remarkably, only two of the 35 media giants examined received a Star. For the rest? A whooole lotta Chickens.

So, what distinguishes what we are seeing now under Trump from what we've seen these companies do in years past in hopes of currying favor with previous Presidents of both major parties? Karr explains that what we are witnessing now is of an entirely "different order" than anything we have ever seen in our nation's nearly 250-year history.

"Wealthy media companies were aligning themselves with an authoritarian-minded leader who had little regard for the First Amendment --- that he swore on the Bible to uphold and defend --- on January 20th," observes Karr. "This is capitulation of a different order. It's not a bending to prevailing political winds. It's a complete caving to an authoritarian, and abdicating their responsibility --- the responsibility protected under the First Amendment --- to act as a check against abuses of power, to speak truth to power. That has pretty dangerous consequences for democracy."

As we are now seeing those dangerous consequences play out, we've got a lot to discuss along that score, along with how might eventually emerge from this long national nightmare with even stronger protections for a free press. Perhaps even, with news organizations that might not find it necessary to bend over in order for their corporate owners to receive government approval in completely different industries in which the owner is massively invested. (Hint: Look to the states, not the federal government...for now.)

Anyway, far too much in our conversation today to adequately summarize here. So, I won't even try to go much further. I will urge you, however, to tune in to today's show if you value a truly independent media, and appreciate --- as our founders did --- how crucial that idea is in preventing the rise of a monarch of the very type they were hoping to break free from. (And, how did that work out?...)

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Given the amount of madness now under way, particularly regarding Trump's Epstein problems --- much of that, thankfully, hilarious --- it seemed another good moment on The BradCast to once again send up our Digby/Driftglass Signal! Happily, they answered the call. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

With an avalanche of incoming, we've got a lot of ground to cover on today's program. So, our OG blogger pals --- HEATHER DIGBY PARTON Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo, and the pseudonymous 'DRIFTGLASS' of the Professional Left Podcast --- generously join us for the full hour to try and make some sense of it all.

Among the many stories discussed today...

• Donald Trump's hilariously ham-fisted attempts at covering up his long-running role in the life of his former bestie and late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, are become more transparently ridiculous by the day. Driftglass describes it as "Stupid Watergate," where even the MAGA supporters are finally catching on. What took them so long? "This is a cult that we are dealing with" after all, Digby reminds.

  There is a lot of news wrapped into that one story alone to keep us busy today. But, no, neither Digby nor Driftglass believe Speaker Mike Johnson's gambit to recess the U.S. House early for the rest of Summer to avoid demands for votes to release the "Epstein Files" (which Johnson himself favored just last week) is going to make any of this go away or get better for Trump. Digby explains why. And it may, as the pair seem to concur, be the "load-bearing lie", finally knocked down, that does to the Trump Presidency what Hurricane Katrina did to George W. Bush's.

• One of Trump's latest attempts at distraction from his ever-growing Epstein woes was to declare this week that "Barack Hussein Obama" (and Hillary Clinton) have been caught dead to rights in a "coup" to steal the 2016 Presidential election! The one that Trump won. What is the "irrefutable proof" Trump claims has been newly uncovered by his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revealing that, as Trump charged yesterday, "Obama was sedatious"? (His actual word.) Well, it takes all of us on today's program to even muster a guess at what the hell any of them are talking about. (Even folks on the Right who previously decried "RussiaGate" aren't impressed.) But, sure. Here's the evidence. They finally caught Obama!

  Whatever the supposed crime is "doesn't matter because there's nothing there," explains Driftglass. "There is no conspiracy. It simply exists as a bright shiny object to distract from the fact that Donald Trump is covering up a pedophile business that his dead best friend ran, with Donald Trump's knowledge, consent, and approval. That's it. That's the only reason this is happening. It will be another distraction next week and another one after that if this one doesn't work."

• In somewhat darker news, we also try to make sense of the firing (next year, anyway) of Stephen Colbert by Paramount/CBS on the heels of a $16 million settlement paid by the company to Trump as an obvious attempt to win his FCC's approval for a merger with a company named Skydance.

  "The big overview here is that all these institutions have been caving," laments Digby. "Whether it's Big Law, universities, these big media companies settling with Trump, basically paying bribes to get what they want. "The fact that [Colbert's firing] happened within days of the settlement --- if it wasn't part of the settlement, or if they just decided to throw it in as a little treat for Trump to make him happy --- either way, it's a horrible thing. And it's happening throughout our culture."

  "All we've got are the comedians," she argues, echoing her column today at Salon. "The only people who have what it takes to speak truth to power in our whole damn culture. And that is a pathetic realization."

• All of which brings us to our final topic of discussion today, based on an email I received earlier this week, calling me out for describing Trump as a "wannabe-dictator" instead of a flat-out dictator. His argument, which I share today, was sound, and my guests tended to agree with him. (Trump's "a fascist," asserts Driftglass. "Coming up with an accurate definition of what is happening right now is important, because it gives us a place to stand and start.") But I think I'm gonna be sticking with "wannabe" by and large right now. I explain why on today's lively, funny and sometimes appropriately grim program...

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It is not some dystopian Orwellian future. It is now. Our wannabe-dictator President is --- successfully! --- assaulting and undermining free speech and press freedoms left and right, public and private. On today's BradCast we connect those dots and open the phone lines over your public airwaves (while we still have access to them!), to discuss all of that and what can be done about it. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Sure, discussing the fact that Donald Trump's name is likely all over the so-called "Epstein Files" is fun too. But, if all of the major news outlets which might report on that are systematically shut down or intimidated into pulling their punches, what then?

Shortly after taking office, Trump unlawfully shut down Voice of America and its sister networks. They are funded and mandated by Congress --- by law --- to broadcast "accurate, objective, and comprehensive" news and information around the globe in dozens of languages to hundreds of millions of listeners, often in authoritarian nations without any other access to a free press. The truth about what is happening to our government must not get out to the rest of the world, apparently.

Last week, his Trump's cowardly Congressional Republicans took the rare step of rescinding $1.1 billion --- two years of previously appropriated, bipartisan funding --- from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund NPR radio and PBS television stations across the country. That loss of funding will be particularly painful to small stations in rural areas that perform critical, often life-saving functions for their communities. That, after Trump sought the Congressional rescission by lying about the CPB, describing the private entity as a left-wing "monstrosity". (Even if they were, which they are not, it would still be an outrageous violation of the Constitution's First Amendment freedom of the press mandates.)

That move came the week after CBS, currently owned by Paramount, agreed to a ridiculous $16 million settlement with Trump in a lawsuit he filed over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris last year. The suit would have been laughed out of court had it ever got there. But Paramount needs Trump's FCC to approve a buyout by a rightwing company named Skydance. And so, in Stephen Colbert's words early last week on CBS's The Late Show, Paramount agreed to give Trump a "big fat bribe" to make the absurd lawsuit go away.

Two days later, CBS announced The Late Show would be shutting down entirely after next season for "financial reasons". On Friday morning, Trump celebrated the "firing" of Colbert --- the nation's top-rated late night host and long-time Trump critic --- by crowing, "I absolutely love that Colbert got fired," before adding: "I hear [ABC's] Jimmy Kimmel is next." (ABC and its owner Disney previously settled a similarly ridiculous defamation suit with Trump for similarly cowardly and corrupt reasons.)

Skydance's purchase of Paramount should now go very smoothly with Trump's corrupt federal government. The company's CEO, a Trump supporter, met with Trump's FCC Chair last week and noted, according to documents filed by the company in support of the merger, that they "discussed Skydance’s commitment to unbiased journalism and its embrace of diverse viewpoints, principles that will ensure CBS’s editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers." That, just days after Skydance held early acquisition talks to buy a far-right media outlet.

While Trump is killing public media, in the form of the 80+ year old Voice of America and its Congressionally-mandated sister networks, as well as clawing back previously approved bipartisan federal funding for NPR and PBS (the tiniest drop in the bucket in a federal budget that, as of July 4, guts health care and food assistance to millions, while giving $4 trillion in tax cuts, largely to the wealthy, while exploding the national debt by $3.4 trillion), he is also taking down major commercial broadcast outlets, their newsrooms, and even their entertainment divisions that dare to tell the truth about Donald Trump.

Moreover, it's no longer only outlets perceived as "liberal" that Trump is abusing his power to target. On Friday, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against Wall Street Journal, its parent company News Corp. (which also owns Fox "News"), its owner Rupert Murdoch, and two WSJ journalist who reported last week on a birthday card that Trump allegedly penned to his former longtime friend, sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday. The card is said to include a hand-drawn sketch of a woman, signed by Trump, along with comments about the “wonderful secrets” the two men purportedly shared. That, as Trump is taking fire --- even from MAGA --- for blocking the Dept. of Justice from releasing hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence and video recordings said to document the 2019 criminal indictment of Epstein, and an unknown number of references that may implicate his longtime bestie, Donald Trump.

This is not a warning about a potential attack and an attempted undermining of the American free press. It is a loud, blaring alarm that it is ALREADY underway, and is likely to go much further still , unless we all stand up against it. All of us.

In the second part of today's show we open up the phone lines --- and our public airwaves --- to callers on all of the above...

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On today's BradCast: As you know, much of what we hold dear in these United States is under assault right now, thanks to the man we were collectively dumb enough to elect as President last year. But, for countless reasons, no single institution may be more important to help protect than our nation's free press, which is under far greater fire than I think most Americans realize. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Sadly, that attack has now been joined by too many of the major corporate outlets that control far too many of our previously independent mainstream news sources, all the way down to the local level. And the worst of them, as we've recently learned, are all too willing to hoax their own customers into unknowingly joining the battle.

We've got a number of U.S. media-under-attack stories for you today, from international U.S. media to national media to local media.

First, a bit of encouraging news on the international level. On Tuesday, a federal judge ordered [PDF] the restoration of the 83-year old, Congressionally-mandated and funded Voice of America. The international news outlet, originally created by the U.S. to counter Nazi propaganda in Europe, had been broadcasting continuously since 1942, until Donald Trump ordered its parent agency, the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) shut down last month. Some 1,300 VOA staffers and contractors were sidelined, as the airwaves of VOA and its USAGM-overseen sister networks such as Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting fell silent. A number of VOA journalists sued, and on Tuesday, the court ordered USAGM to return employees and contractors to their pre-March 14 status. That's good news, though VOA is not fully back yet, and the Administration is expected, of course, to appeal the ruling.

Nationally, corporate pressure super-charged by Trump is also threatening another American broadcast institution. 60 Minutes' longtime executive producer, Bill Owens, quit on Tuesday amid pressure from CBS' corporate owners Paramount, as the company is seeking approval from the Administration for a corporate merger with an outfit called Skydance. That approval, however, is threatened by Trump, who filed a laughable, $20 billion suit against the top-rated, long-running newsmagazine after he didn't like an interview they aired with Kamala Harris before last year's election. Since then, Trump has similarly bristled at tough reports from the notoriously independent new program, charging that they will "pay a big price" for daring to report accurately on his Administration. We don't yet know the full story of what happened at 60 Minutes. But as Paramount is hoping to settle Trump's ridiculous suit, Owens told staffers that the program's independence is threatened, so it was time for him to leave. That, even as he told the show's employees that it is "too important to the country" for them to quit in protest.

From attacks against the U.S. international free press to the national level, we finally arrive on today program at still more threats newly underway against highly-trusted local news outlets, thanks in no small part to collusion between giant corporate broadcasters and the Trump Administration's corrupted FCC.

Last month, Trump's newly-seated Federal Communications Commission Chair, Brendan Carr, announced a new initiative to gut FCC radio and television rules that he described in a notice seeking public comment as his "Delete, Delete, Delete" plan [PDF].

As The Desk detailed earlier this month, the nation's largest owner of local television stations, Nexstar Media Group --- which controls more than 200 TV stations in more than 160 markets across the country --- ordered the local newsrooms at all of the stations it operates (including affiliates of NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, CW, etc.), to create a "news" story from deceptive, misleading talking points that suggest that the FCC was seeking comment from the public on regulations that "threaten the growth of your local TV news stations". Each, nearly identical report, voiced by local anchors, aired on dozens of stations, instructing viewers to visit a weblink that resolves to a Nexstar-run page instructing them how to let the FCC know that viewers are "worried about the long-term health of my local television stations" and want to "eliminate the regulations that are threatening the growth of my local TV station."

As a number of employees at some of those stations told The Desk on background, however, they were uncomfortable running the reports as "news", but were given no choice by their corporate parents at Nexstar.

Given the national power company, which already rakes in some $5 billion per year, it's hardly a surprise that we haven't heard much about this story in the corporate media. We do our best to make up for that today.

Our guest is the longtime award-winning broadcast journalism veteran turned media activist SUE WILSON, who described some of this earlier today in an article at The BRAD BLOG headlined "Trump's FCC on Precipice of Ending All Limits on Corporate Control of Local TV News Stations". In it, she explains how Nexstar already controls two --- and sometimes three (with FCC permission) --- TV stations in virtually every major media market in the country. But now, with the FCC's Carr looking to "delete, delete, delete" as many regulations as possible, the company is hoping to do away with remaining restrictions on how many stations any single company may control both nationally and at the local market level.

Wilson details how Nexstar and fellow broadcast goliath Sinclair, a far-right outlet who ordered a similar "must-run" package for its nearly 200 stations in support of Trump back in 2018, have long been gaming the system meant to limit corporate control of local stations. Today she details how they are colluding with the new FCC Chair to simply gut regulatory ownership limits while ignoring, or somehow working around, those that have been implemented statutorily by Congress.

"What we are seeing more and more across the United States is that you can turn on your TV set, and you can watch a local news reporter do a report," she tells me today. "You turn to the next station and it's the same reporter doing the exact same report." And that, of course, is with the limits currently in place --- the ones that Nexstar are misleading their own viewers into helping them make it worse. Worse for viewers, anyway, if not more profitable for Nexstar, Sinclair and the others.

Wilson also details today --- as she did in her article earlier --- how you can, and should, respond yourself to the FCC's call for comments. But you will need to do it quickly. Final comments are supposed to be filed --- either by Twitter/X or via the FCC's Comment site --- by Monday, April 28.

"We are fighting a juggernaut in the Capitol. They want to deregulate the media. They want to take over the media, is what they are really after. We have to stop them," argues Wilson, urging listeners to remind the FCC in comments that the "publicly-owned airwaves belong to us."

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When we allow a felon to become President of the United States (thanks, in no small part, to extreme rightwing activists on the Supreme Court ignoring and rewriting the 14th Amendment), it's not surprising that he'd quickly begin violating laws and undermining the U.S. Constitution. When that felon also hopes to be a dictator, we certainly shouldn't be surprised that one of his first targets is the Constitution's landmark guarantees of a free press, as discussed on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST... Unfortunately, the First Amendment isn't the only one Donald Trump is hoping to dismantle. According to nonprofit news outlet CalMatters, ICE has already begun rounding up migrant workers in Central California, resulting in about 75% of farm-workers staying home this week during peak harvest season for oranges and other produce in America's "Salad Bowl". If that continues longer term, economists are predicting "absolute economic devastation" locally, skyrocketing food prices and shortages across the country nationally, along with a "recession-level event if this is the new long-term norm."

In related news, Trump's Executive Order signed on Monday, seeking to redefine, by fiat, the text and clear meaning of the 14th Amendment's very first sentence establishing birthright citizenship to anyone born here, regardless of the citizenship status of the parents, ran into its first legal roadblock in Court on Wednesday. A Reagan-appointed federal judge declared today that the Order "boggles the mind," calling it "blatantly unconstitutional". He temporarily paused the Order nationwide in the first of five different challenges brought by 22 state Attorneys General. If allowed to be enacted, as one of the challengers argued in court today, it would "impact hundreds of thousands of citizens nationwide who will lose their citizenship under this new rule."

THEN... Trump doesn't seem to much care for the First Amendment either. And, shamefully, a number of mainstream broadcast news outlets owned by major corporations have been all too eager to help him dismantle it. See Disney-owned ABC News' pathetic agreement in December to settle Trump's absurdly frivolous lawsuit with blatantly unconstitutional claims. Instead of fighting the defamation suit, they agreed to contribute $15 million to Trump's Presidential Library fund. See also the reports last week that Paramount-owned CBS News is in talks to do the same thing over another ridiculous complaint that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris in a way that Trump didn't like.

While those outfits are settling private lawsuits, Trump's new Federal Communications Commission Chair, Brendan Carr is weaponizing the FCC to go after the same news outlets. Last week, President Biden's outgoing Chair dismissed several specious complaints against ABC, CBS and NBC that echoed Trump's private lawsuits, declaring "the FCC should not be the President's speech police" and that "the FCC should not be journalism's censor-in-chief." This week, however, the newly seated Carr un-dismissed those complaints (if not the ones against a Fox affiliate, for some reason).

We're joined today by JOHN BERGMAYER, the Legal Director at good government group Public Knowledge. He charges that "Chairman Carr has made it plain he intends to weaponize the FCC to threaten political speech and news coverage he disagrees with." You're not surprised right?

"We have things like defamation law against a public figure, but you can't just prove that they are wrong, or you disagree with them, or they're being unfair or 'mean to me'. You have to prove they are 'actively deciding to harm me' through conscious deception," Bergmayer explains today. "That's a very hard standard to meet. I don't think any of these cases meet the very tough requirements for the FCC to decide in the complainants favor."

He also adds: "It's really notable that Chairman Carr did not reinstate a complaint that was against a Fox affiliate in Philadelphia, that was based on the Fox affiliate airing information that it knew, that was judged to be, defamatory."

"It really is a troubling sign that the current Chairman views these regulatory tools as a means to advance his cultural and partisan agenda," Bergmayer tells me. "What's particularly disturbing is that the Chairman wants to pick fights with the First Amendment rights of broadcasters or use dubious theories of law to go after perceived slights by Big Tech."

We also discuss the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling earlier this month that appears to end the FCC's ability, as a federal agency, to ensure Net Neutrality and an Open Internet (not that Trump or his FCC would have any particular interest in doing so.)

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, following an unprecedented blizzard in the U.S. South; yet another new, climate-changed fueled fire amid record dry weather here in L.A. County; Trump's delusional claims about California's water supply; and more...

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We have a responsibility to call it out on today's BradCast. So we do. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Donald Trump's anti-immigrant, anti-free press, anti-federal government (Biden's federal government, never Trump's), anti-law and order, anti-anyone he believes shows insufficient fealty to him sentiment is growing increasingly menacing by the day. Sometimes by the hour.

It's not just rhetoric. At a rally on Saturday in California, Trump suggested a heckler should "get the hell knocked out of her". Earlier that same day, after week's of his lies about FEMA's response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, federal officials working on recovery in one of the hardest hit areas of North Carolina were sent an emergency notice to "stand down and evacuate" from Rutherford County after National Guard troopers "had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA."

In recent days, his lies about "illegal migrants" on murderous rampages, having taken over entire cities and towns has grown more Hitlerian and eugenicist (they have "bad genes"); he has called for CBS and all of the other broadcast networks to have their licenses revoked (networks have no such licenses) and for 60 Minutes to be "taken off the air"; the man who, as President in 2017, claimed to "love the First Amendment. Nobody loves it better than me", recently said "wait until you see what I’m going to do with" the New York Times if he is elected again. All of that as he has continued his vow to "put in jail" those who criticize judges and Supreme Court Justices who he likes, as he repeatedly promises retribution against "the enemy within," now including threats to use the nation's military to do so.

If you thought he was just going to be going after immigrants he doesn't like, think again. "What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements. These are actual Nazi sentiments," Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” told Politico.

With three weeks to go before Election Day and early voting underway in most of the nation now, the disgraced former President and convicted felon is largely tied with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, both nationally and in the seven battleground states, if you believe the pre-election polling averages. Are Americans not hearing what Trump is saying? Or do they not care? Or is this what they actually want? Is all of this not being adequately reported by our by mainstream corporate media? Or is it simply being ignored by voters?

In the second half of today's show --- after covering a number of the items above --- we open up the phones for listeners thoughts on all of it, with some excellent callers from a number of political viewpoints, from both here in Southern California and across the country...

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We have, of course, Special Coverage on today's BradCast of Tuesday night's one and only Vice Presidential Debate, likely the last direct face-off between the two tickets before Election Day. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

It was somewhat disorienting to watch a Presidential ticket debate that didn't include name-calling, one-liner zingers and direct personal attacks. But with "Minnesota Nice" Democratic Governor Tim Walz taking on Ohio's Republican U.S. Senator J.D. Vance, who has an historically low favorability rating and a desperate need to improve his likeability among the electorate, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the debate ended up coming across more like an olde tyme, pre-Trump Era (even pre-Rove Era) 1990s Presidential debate.

But Vance's politeness was there only to try and mask his well-documented, far-right, autocratic MAGA policy preferences on everything from abortion to gun safety to climate change to health care to his running-mate Donald Trump's violent attacks on our democracy, leading to evasive answers to questions from both the CBS News moderators and Walz himself on whether he believed, for instance, that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. "Tim, I'm focused on the future," Vance said, refusing to respond. "That is a damning non-answer," Walz replied, adding: "He lost the election. This is not a debate. It's not anything, anywhere other than in Donald Trump's world." It wouldn't be the only direct question that Vance deflected.

While a nervous Walz stumbled through some of the early moments of the debate, he regained his footing thereafter and displayed a command of facts, data and reality on a host of topics raised by the moderators. The Yale Law School trained Vance also proved to be a competent debater, deftly smoothing over his extremist, hard-right record and former persona as a Trump-opponent, while doing his best to focus his fire on Kamala Harris whenever possible...facts be damned.

We're joined today, as we frequently are on such occasions, by longtime friends and old school bloggers, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of his eponymous blog and The Professional Left Podcast for some help in making sense of whatever played out in the New York City studios of CBS last night. (Reportedly it was in the same studio that Captain Kangaroo was taped. Make of that what you may.)

Both Parton and Driftglass agree that the two Vice Presidential candidates "accomplished what they set out to do" and, as Parton added, "as far as the niceness thing", that should be chalked up to the fact that "Donald Trump wasn't there being a jackass."

"Vance needed to soften all of the ridiculous extremist policies of himself and Donald Trump, and present himself as something other than a full-blown King Cobra, which I think he managed to do," she says, referencing her coverage of the debate at Salon today, in which she described Vance as possessing "all the charm and warmth of a King Cobra." On Tuesday night, she explains today, "he sounded semi-sane. I'm sure most people who haven't been following him probably thought, 'Oh, well, he's not that bad.'"

Both also agree that they would have have preferred to see a more aggressive Walz, even if that might not have been what the MN Guv needed to do to reach whichever undecided voters still exist out there. Instant polling of debate watchers released shortly afterward, gave Vance the slimmest of edges over Walz and a big bump in favorability for both candidates, even as Walz' favorability remains far higher than Vance's.

"Clearly they are executing a strategy," explains Driftglass. "I wanted to see [Walz] come out there with a sword in both hands and just scream, 'Liar!' for 90 minutes," when what he needs, "tactically, is to go out there and be the nicest guy you ever met. I think for the people he is striving to reach, it worked."

On the other hand, he continues, Vance's job was to "polish up the turd" that Trump put on the ticket "to make him look like a human being so that he can go out there and be the nice guy." The result, says Driftglass, "was a festival of whatabout-ism and lying."

We discuss much of the sane-washing, whatabout-ism, lies and damning non-answers to a host of topics raised during the 90-minute debate on Tuesday --- and Walz' responses to them --- in our very lively Special Coverage today...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Powerful Cyclone Amphan headed for one of the world's poorest regions amid a pandemic; Man-made climate change leading to more intense hurricanes; Trump E.P.A. refuses to limit toxic rocket-fuel chemical in your drinking water; PLUS: What the Covid crisis should teach us about the climate crisis... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): EPA Settlements: Will Coronavirus get polluters off the hook?; Companies worth $2 trillion are calling for a Green Recovery;
When will renewables pass coal? Sooner than anyone thought; 'Stealth' bailout shovels millions of dollars to oil and gas companies; American Climate Video: In Case of Wildfire, Save Things of Sentimental Value... PLUS: Thinking of buying a bike? Get ready for a very long wait... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Seven Democratic Presidential candidates turned up the volume --- and on each other (especially against current front-runner Bernie Sanders) --- at Tuesday night's Presidential debate in Charleston, South Carolina. We have special coverage today. [Audio link to show follows below.]

It was the final debate before the crucial South Carolina Primary on Saturday and the critical Super Tuesday primaries just three days later in 14 states across the country. So, tensions were very high and the attacks on Sanders were cranked up to 11 at times, with the elections over the next week likely to be do or die for a number of the "contestants" (as billionaire contestant Michael Bloomberg described them).

We are joined today for insight, analysis and, yes, a few snarky comments from two BradCast post-election special coverage vets. Award-winning opinion journalist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo is with us, along with Roosevelt University political scientist DAVID FARIS, columnist at The Week and author of It's Time to Fight Dirty.

Both offer very smart thoughts, as usual, on the Party's very long debate process to date (Tuesday's was the 10th this cycle), whether the forums as structured have helped the Democratic electorate in making their choices, and how it all might be done better in the future. We cover the reasons behind the, at times high-decibel attacks from several of the candidates amid what seems universally agreed to have been a very poorly-moderated debate, and why so much time has been spent on weedy, wonky health care math, and so little time spent on issues of most interest to the American people, including the greatest threat posed right now to both the nation and the world: Donald Trump.

But the horse race, at this point in the contest, is unavoidable. Will Sanders continue to break away from the pack after Super Tuesday? Will Elizabeth Warren finally break through as a unity candidate? Will Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer survive? Does anybody actually like Bloomberg? Will SC Rep. James Clyburn's coveted endorsement for Biden this morning keep the former Vice President alive beyond the Palmetto State? Is it just us, or is Pete Buttigieg beginning to seem desperate? And who, among all of them, is best prepared to take on the elephant in the country, the still-sitting President of the United States?

All of those questions asked and answered on today's program, based on telling comments, strategy and behavior from each of the remaining candidates Tuesday night, a number of whom, sadly or otherwise, may no longer be in the 2020 Presidential nominating race just one week from today...

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On today's BradCast: Donald Trump's federal government shutdown is the now the longest in U.S. history and landowners in Texas are fighting to keep the federal government from stealing their land even before Trump shakes down the U.S. Treasury somehow for $5.7 billion. Also, we might have avoided all of these messes had we only paid attention to a remarkably prescient warning from a 1958 episode of an obscure television show on CBS. [Audio link to show follows below.]

On Friday, some 800,000 furloughed federal workers missed their paychecks, after hundreds of them protested the shutdown, lockout, "shakedown" outside the White House as they are having trouble paying rents, mortgages and for food and medical needs. Nonetheless, Trump continues to threaten a "national emergency" declaration to force the funding of his long-promised southern border wall with money the Administration is considering taking from U.S. military disaster relief funding earmarked for hurricane and fire-ravaged states like Florida, Texas, California and dozens of others.

House Democrats (and a handful of Republicans) continue to vote to reopen the government --- or, at least, some of its various agencies which have nothing to do with immigration or a wall --- while Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to allow a vote on same in the upper chamber, even for identical bills to the those passed virtually unanimously there last year. Airports are being forced to enact closures for lack of TSA personnel, the nation's foods supply is going untested by the FDA for contamination, FBI agents are sending letters to the White House and Congress describing the furlough of thousands of special agents as a national security threat, and federally subsidized HUD housing for the elderly and poor is being forced to do without.

Meanwhile, down in Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, even before Trump receives the $5.7 billion he is demanding for hundreds of miles of new border wall/fencing, property owners are receiving letters from the federal government to begin the process of eminent domain. Families who have lived on the banks of the Rio Grande for generations are being threatened with having their homes taken away to pave the way for the construction of Trump's wall. Even an historic, 150-year old Catholic mission chapel on the banks of the river --- and on the city seal of Mission, TX --- finds itself in a legal battle with the federal government to remain in place.

We're joined today by RICKY GARZA, Rio Grande Valley native and staff attorney for the non-profit Texas Civil Rights Project. As Trump came to the area for another photo-op on Thursday, Garza is working to help hundreds of local property owners in the valley understand their legal rights to fend off a government takeover of their land and homes.

Garza scoffs at the President's claims of "crisis" conditions in what he describes as a "diverse region of over a million people that lives and dies by the water that comes from the river," but which may soon be cut off from it entirely. "The only crisis that exists now is artificially created by this administration," he tells me. "The only time I heard any talk about a crisis along the border was when I turned on cable news."

"Polling consistently shows that an overwhelming majority of people that actually live and work on the border oppose the border wall, and oppose the militarization of our communities," he says.

"What we're seeing on the ground is that people are having their lives interrupted by this intrusion into the borderlands by the federal government and border militarization. We've seen a decrease in apprehensions along the border, yet an increase in Border Patrol hiring, staffing and construction of things like the border wall, erections of things like security towers along the areas close to the river, and aerostat blimps that were formerly used in Iraq now deployed in some neighborhoods to surveil the border, and implicitly, all of us," Garza laments. "It's just another sad example of the federal government failing to understand the realities of life on the border, and what it's really like for us, just trying to live our lives in peace."

Finally today, a few minutes from a gob-smacking episode of the 1958 CBS Television series called Trackdown in which --- and this is for real --- a colorful con-man named "Trump" (seriously!) comes to town and tries to tell its gullible, terrified residents that only he can save them...by selling them on a "wall" to protect them from total destruction!!!...

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On today's BradCast, I'm in for Brad and Desi; they're on a well-deserved break til next week; I'm on my own holiday hiatus from In Deep with Angie Coiro, so doesn't that work out nicely?

It's early days in D.C., where Reps and Sens are shuffling back into their offices preparing for various swearings-in. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi --- retaking the leadership gavel Thursday --- is wasting absolutely no time letting Donald Trump know she plans to lead, not follow. He's wiped Mike Pence's offer to drop the border fund demand by some three billion bucks; Donny's back to demanding $5 billion, dismissing "someone" (um, Pence) who floated that lower figure. In both an appearance on the Today show and outside the White House following a border security meeting with Trump, Pelosi made it clear that taking the federal budget hostage cuts no ice --- he's getting no money for a wall.

Meanwhile, Apple is the latest company singed by Trump's tariffs. The company revised (lowered) its quarterly earnings estimate by 7.6%. Once that news went public, its stock dropped by nearly the same percentage. Apple CEO Tim Cook says it's not entirely a matter of the Trump/China trade war, but that was no small factor.

DAVE JOHNSON joins me to talk about how the 2020 presidential race is shaping up, starting with the news that Elizabeth Warren has officially gotten serious about running. Then, the tension between the Sanders and O'Rourke camps, and Beto's less-than-stellar track record with fossil fuel legislation. Has he just changed his tune because the record's gone public, or has he truly shifted his priorities?

By the way, Dave's a partner in the launch of what could be a very important site: We Can Have Nice Things, explaining modern economic theory in plain language, including how infrastructure and citizens' health and welfare get paid for in sane economic systems.

The New York Times Magazine has published Mark Leibovitch's profile of Harry Reid, who, as it turns out, is expecting to die soon. SARAH KENDZIOR says something critical is missing from that article: how Reid tried to get Comey to take Trump's Russian connections seriously, and how he pushed the media to pay attention to Trump's corruption --- both for naught.

Sarah's podcast, Gaslit Nation, has just moved from monthly to weekly production.

Finally, a few minutes deflecting attention from Mitt Romney's self-serving yabber in his anti-Trump op-ed to Lamar Alexander's much more productive, thoughtful exercise in how a willing Congress and a sane, savvy president can triumph over impasse together. Feels more like a fairy tale than a possibility in today's circumstances, but still - it's a worthy read.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

On today's BradCast, I'm your host - Angie Coiro, host of In Deep with Angie Coiro.

Donald Trump's tweet fingers were a'twitchin', as he tried to keep up with the flow of Mueller investigation news while churning out headlines of his own. For starters, he made three key appointments/nominations:

• Army head General Mark Milley will move over to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
• Former H.W. Bush Attorney General William Barr is up for confirmation as Trump's next A.G.;
• Former Fox 'News' talking head Heather Nauert is up to replace Nikki Haley as UN ambassador.

I've got the whys and wherefores on those for you. Also, Trump went into rage mode at word of his former Sec. of State Rex Tillerson's very frank discussion on Thursday at a public interview with CBS news veteran Bob Schieffer. Tillerson's explanation of Trump's incomprehension of basic issues, along with his trademark lack of discipline, provoked high-minded Trump tweets calling Tillerson "dumb as a rock" and "lazy as hell".

The BBC has a good basic rundown if you're trying to catch up with the case of Chinese telecom Huawei's alleged spying. I bring you the highlights plus updated news.

Meanwhile, a Swiss paper has published a conversation with Fox's Tucker Carlson who damned the White House occupant as "incapable" of fulfilling his promises. And he went further: "I don't think he's capable of sustained focus. I don't think he understands the system. I don't think the Congress is on his side. I don't think his own agencies support him."

Then, legal expert and journalist LARA BAZELON joins me to discuss her work on restorative justice for wrongly-convicted parolees. She's covered the topic for years for Slate.com, and has now released a book called Rectify. The full version of our conversation will be posted here over the weekend. Don't wait for that, though - I've brought you a big chunk of it right here on The BradCast!

Plus, so much more! It's a bellyful of news today. Check it out!...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

On Tuesday, CNN, along with its Chief White House Correspondent, Jim Acosta, filed a federal complaint alleging President Donald J. Trump and high level White House personnel, including Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the U.S. Secret Service, violated their First Amendment free press rights to access White House press facilities.

They also allege the Trump administration violated their Fifth Amendment rights to due process when, without notice or a compelling reason for doing so, the White House rescinded Acosta's press credentials and seized his "hard pass" following a contentious November 7 Presidential press conference.

The complaint goes on to charge that the news organization's First Amendment rights were violated a second time on November 9, when Acosta traveled to France to cover the President's visit and to interview French President Emmanuel Macron during the centenary events commemorating the end of World War I. "The Secret Service refused to allow Acosta to attend an allegedly 'open' press event whose attendees included journalists from around the world," according to the CNN complaint. They did so even though "the French government issued credentials to Acosta." (Ironically, as they also note, Trump did not attend the event "due to inclement weather.")

Citing both facts and case law, the CNN complaint sets forth the argument that the President's actions against both Acosta and the news outlet amounted to an unlawful "attempt to censor the press and exclude reporters from the White House who challenge or dispute the President's point of view". However, that compelling argument, which is now supported by the White House Correspondents' Association, the ACLU and even by Fox "News", may not carry the day at the District Court level given that the case has been assigned to Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee...

On today's BradCast, on the day following Sunday night's Academy Awards show, we're joined in studio at KPFK/Pacifica Radio for the hour by our friend MIMI KENNEDY, Advisory Board Chair of Progressive Democrats of America and star of the CBS sit-com Mom (which also stars last night's Best Supporting Actress winner Allison Janney). [Audio link to show follows below.]

We've got lots to discuss today with Kennedy, a longtime progressive activist and leader (that's her and me in the photo above, just after today's show), and we also open up the phone lines to callers as well.

Among the many issues and items we chat and/or bicker about today:

• What Best Actress winner Frances McDormand was referring to when she, somewhat cryptically, called for "inclusion riders" Sunday night during her barn-buster acceptance speech;

• How Hollywood and its politics have changed very quickly over the past year or two in light of the #MeToo and #OscarsSoWhite movements;

• Whether Democrats chances to retake the U.S. House this November are as good as many Dems seem to think;

• Conservative Democrat Connor Lamb's chances of winning next week's U.S. House Special Election in the "Trump Country" of Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional district;

• Big turnout in advance of Tuesday's first-in-the-nation 2018 primary elections in Texas;

• Serious concerns about election integrity that still undermine democracy in 2018 (Mimi and PDA have been longtime champions for the cause!) and whether the solutions being offered by a number of states and large jurisdictions --- including a disturbing move to computer-printed and computer-counted paper ballots --- is a good idea, or if we'll be left with the same or worse lack of ability for the public to oversee election results that we already have in many places. (Among them, see the 100% unverifiable computerized touch-screen style voting systems used in much of Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, etc.);

• And whether elected Democratic officials and 2020 Presidential hopefuls are finally understanding the importance of single-payer "Medicare for All" (or, as PDA has been advocating for years: "Healthcare not Warfare!").

Also on today's show: More tentatively encouraging news on the Korean Peninsula (at least until Trump screws it up again); Trump's artificial DACA deadline hits, endangering hundreds of thousands of young immigrant 'Dreamers'; Another senior Republican U.S. Senator, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, announces that he is resigning, as of next month.

All of that and a bunch of great callers ringing in on all of the above on today's BradCast!...

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