On today's BradCast: For a guy who believes he's a strongman, or wants to be one --- in a nation where too many have fallen for that idea as well --- the President, with each passing day, is revealing himself to be incredibly weak. Even his own supporters have noticed, and are finally beginning to turn away from him in all of the swing states and even in some of the so-called "reddest" states! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Yes, he's still causing a lot of pain for a lot of people. He'll continue to cruelly do so as long as he can. But don't fall for his tough guy act. He continues to be a wannabe strongman, even while he's failing on virtually every front. We make the case on today's program, along with the latest news and coverage of several under-the-radar issues and contests on next Tuesday's off-year election ballot.

Among the evidence from which we draw today...

• Tough guy Donald Trump calls for the U.S. "Department of War" to resume testing nuclear weapons just minutes before meeting with China's actual strongman President Xi Jinping last night. Just about every point Trump made in his social media announcement on nuclear weapons was false, leaving actual expert in this field completely confused. (And then Xi, like so many other world leaders who have figured out how easy it is to play Trump, went on to eat his lunch. Trump didn't even notice.)

• "What If Trump Is Weaker Than We Think—and America’s Finally Figuring It Out?", muses our friend Thom Hartmann, as Trump's previously ironclad grip on Republicans in Congress begins to reveal numerous cracks in both chambers. "It's just a matter of time," Thom correctly concludes.

• Michigan's Democratic state Senate Majority Whip and 2026 U.S. Senate Candidate, Mallory McMorrow, calls out the Administration for choosing to violate the law by "using food as a political weapon" in cutting off money allocated by Congress to fund payments to some 42 million Americans on SNAP. The threat to starve Americans, beginning on November 1, is supposedly due to the federal government shutdown that our very weak President appears both uninterested and unable to do anything about. Late today, a federal judge suggested she was likely to order the Administration to follow the law by using emergency contingency funds to keep SNAP going as November begins.

• Trump's national approval numbers are beginning to fall again, to all time lows, following a brief and tiny uptick on the heels of the faltering Israel/Hamas agreement. He continues to have the lowest approval numbers for any President in modern history at this point in his term. So, naturally, he is lying about that to media in hopes they will dutifully report his fake news. For example, on Air Force One this week, he lied to the press gaggle: "I have the best numbers for any President in many years, any President!" Nice try, weakman.

• But where his plunging approval ratings are really beginning to leave a mark are in 12 states that voted in his favor last year, where new polling now shows him underwater in all of them! The states where he enjoys negative ratings after winning them last year include every single battleground state (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) as well as five states where he easily won less than one year ago. His approval ratings are now underwater in Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Texas! In all of those states he's plunged in approval by an average of about 15 percentage points since last November. Does that sound like a strongman to you?

• We'll see if voters agree with the argument in next week's off-year elections, as important contests and ballot issues loom in New York City, New Jersey, Virginia and California. But there are also some under-the-radar races elsewhere, several of which we detail today in advance of Tuesday's Election Day, including Republican efforts to make voting more difficult (for certain people) in both Texas and Maine, and a Hail Mary effort by Republicans to try and somehow win a majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in time for the 2028 Presidential election.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the deadly, record-breaking, climate change-fueled Hurricane Melissa continues to wreak havoc in the Caribbean as it begins to peter out in strength during its move into the colder North Atlantic. Oh, and bad news for Iceland, just to add a bite to the end of today's program...

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We pick up on today's BradCast with several new developments in stories we covered on yesterday's show plus much more, thanks to another insane day in Trump World. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• On yesterday's show, we spoke with former DOJ Public Corruption chief Randall Eliason about reporting over the weekend, confirmed by multiple outlets, that Donald Trump's so-called "Border Czar", Tom Homan, accepted $50,000 in cash inside of a takeout food bag last year in exchange for a promise to "facilitate" future contracts if Trump won the election. According to internal DOJ documents and multiple sources at each outlet, Homan was caught on tape receiving the money from undercover law enforcement agents posing as businessmen. But after Trump took office, the bribery probe into Homan was summarily dropped by Trump associates leading the FBI and DOJ, on the supposed basis that no crimes were committed by Homan in the payoffs during the investigation begun during the Biden Administration.

  But, by last night, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took the DOJ denials a step further, claiming that Homan "never took the $50,000." That denial was not made by the DOJ when the story was first reported over the weekend. And even Homan himself, when asked about all of this on Fox "News" last night, didn't make that claim. Here merely said "I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal." Tune in for the full update on that wild story, before it disappears into the Trump news cycle ether. (Though Congressional Dems, to their credit, are trying to prevent that from happening.)

• In another follow-up to another story we covered, if only briefly, yesterday... The news broke just before airtime that Disney/ABC announced Jimmy Kimmel's late night show would be returning to air on Tuesday, after it had been "indefinitely" sidelined last week following threats by Trump's sleazy FCC Chair Brendan Carr to rescind broadcast licenses from local affiliates who carried the show. The wildly inappropriate, unprecedented (and perhaps unlawful?) threats from Carr (and Trump) came after they decided they didn't like a fairly benign (and accurate) remark that Kimmel made on his show last week regarding the assassination of far-right Republican activist Charlie Kirk. The decision by Disney to bring Kimmel back was clearly based on massive public opprobrium, including massive cancellations of Disney's streaming services, etc.

  That good news, however, was tempered last night by an announcement from local station conglomerate Sinclair, declaring they would be pre-empting Kimmel's how with news programming. Broadcast behemoth Nexstar joined Sinclair on Tuesday, meaning that tens of millions of Americans in dozens of major markets will still be unable to watch Jimmy Kimmel Live! Both of those corporate conglomerates --- which own dozens of local stations all over the country (even if most Americans don't even realize it) have major mergers pending before Trump's corrupted FCC. So this very public fight, with serious First Amendment implications, will apparently continue. That, explains Josh Marshall today, is not necessarily a bad thing.

• Our twisted President rambled for nearly an hour today to the U.N. General Assembly in New York. It was as insane as you might have imagined, only more so. From lies about his domestic accomplishments during his second term, to lies about his having "ended seven wars", to threats to the world's nations regarding migration, energy and climate change, about which he took particularly hilarious zeal in lying about in virtually every aspect, describing it as a "con", a "scam" and a "hoax". Desi Doyen helps us debunk just some of the most obnoxious lies from Trump at the U.N. on Tuesday. And, as also discussed: Please wary of the claims reported late today that Trump has somehow flipped his position on Russia's war on Ukraine.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with both good and bad news for the world's oceans; and a report on the disbanding of a climate change denier group recently convened by Trump's Dept. of Energy to help lie about climate science...

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The Trump Administration is at war against science (and reality) on at least two different fronts, both of which we dig into on today's BradCast. One is the Administration's War on the Science of Public Health, the other is the ongoing War on Climate Science. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

We begin with Administration's full-frontal attacks on public health, as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., testified before a U.S. Senate Committee today, facing tough questions from Democrats and even a few Republicans. Some of the colloquies turned into shouting matches.

Kennedy's years-long personal war against life-saving vaccines --- including the COVID vaccine --- often took center stage throughout the three-hour proceeding. But things had gone off the rails long before he showed up to take several verbal beatings today. Among some of the context for today's hearing: An anti-vax gunman shot up the CDC in early August; Kennedy's cancellation of half a billion dollars in research grants for new mRNA vaccines of the type that helped get us out of the COVID pandemic and could offer cures for cancer and other diseases; His firing of the CDC Director last week, less than a month into her tenure because, as she claims in an op-ed today, she refused to follow Kennedy's demand to "preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric".

Add to that, the state of Florida's announcement this week by its loony Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, that it is lifting all vaccine mandates for school children, including for measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, tetanus and polio. Ladapo compares vaccine mandates for school children to slavery. As one elected official in Florida said in response: "This is a public health disaster in the making for the Sunshine State." Unfortunately, as our guest today seems to concur, the entire nation is now facing the possibility of a similar public health disaster under the second Trump term.

We're joined today for a thoughtful discussion on all of this and more by DR. TYLER EVANS, infectious disease and public health expert and former Chief Medical Officer for New York City amid its COVID-19 response. Evans is now CEO and co-founder of the Wellness and Equity Alliance and author of the new book, Pandemics, Poverty, and Politics: Decoding the social and political drivers of pandemics from Plague to COVID-19.

It's impossible to adequately summarize our wide-ranging conversation, but I will share a few brief quotes...

• On RFK Jr.: "At this point, effectively every trusted and established or distinguished organization around infectious disease and public health are essentially demanding his resignation. Time is up. His answers are circular logic. They're definitely not based in science. And the more he talks --- particularly for folks who really understand the science --- it's like nails on a chalkboard for us."

• On the effect of vaccine conspiracy theories on public health: "If somebody is in the emergency room and you hear two doctors actively arguing about somebody's diagnosis and treatment, how do think that's going to make the patient feel? ... What we're seeing right now with RFK is doing exactly that. His intent is clearly to disrupt as much of the science as well as the implementation of science in public health as much as he possibly can."

• On the politicization of public health: "It doesn't matter if it's a blue or red city, state. At the end of the day, microbes, or other pathogens, or environmental stressors don't understand the difference between red and blue. It's all humans to them. We really need to depoliticize public health. ... We are politicizing everything about public health [and] now it's getting worse."

• On RFK's defunding of mRNA research: "At this point, we have millions of data points demonstrating it is incredibly safe. The mRNA literally is the most effective vaccine against COVID-19. So these claims that somehow they're not effective, or unsafe, are just patently untrue. They're just completely made up. ... This guy is just completely making stuff up. The defunding of the science behind advancing further mRNA vaccines just hurts all Americans."

Evans has much more on all of the above today, as well as on lessons he learned during the worst of the COVID pandemic in NYC; his personal experiences responding to viral outbreaks, like Ebola, around the world; the importance of a competent federal government during an historic pandemic; the lunatic that Florida has installed as its top public health official and more. "If we are removing vaccination mandates, particularly for kids, it is probably one of the most disastrous things we could ever do, from a public health standpoint," says Evans about the cancellation of vaccine mandates in the Sunshine State.

We ran longer than expected with Evans (though it was well worth it), but we still had a few minutes left today for Desi Doyen to take on Donald Trump's latest escalation in his War against Climate Science and specifically on cheap, clean, renewable, abundant wind and solar energy. All of that before closing with our latest Green News Report on new California wildfires; the deadly landslide in war-torn Sudan; and dozens of climate scientists taking on the Trump Administration's absurd "report" by five prominent climate science deniers meant to serve as the basis for the Administration's cancellation of hundreds of billions of dollars in critical climate change initiatives...

Yes, it's a very busy BradCast today...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Extreme flash flooding forces early cancellation of Wisconsin State Fair; July 2025 was the third hottest July ever recorded; PLUS: Trump Administration slashes U.S. renewable energy at home but plans to put a nuclear reactor on the Moon... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Tropical Storm Erin tracker: Forecast to strengthen into 1st Atlantic hurricane of 2025 by this weekend; Trump administration yanks loan from transmission line project meant to carry Kansas wind energy; Finland charges captain of tanker, tied to Russia, in undersea cable damage; Neo-Nazi gets maximum sentence in terror plot to destroy Maryland's power grid; Far more environmental data is being deleted in Trump's second term than before... PLUS: Chemours must immediately stop unlawfully polluting Ohio River, federal judge orders; ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Nations gather in Geneva to again confront the global crisis of plastic pollution; Trump EPA moves to claw back billions in community grants for rooftop solar; PLUS: As energy costs rise, Trump Administration escalates its war on cheap renewable energy... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): You Are Contaminated [with plastic]; Document shows plastics industry knew recycling was false solution in 1974; At least one killed as massive wildfire in southern France continues to burn; Costs to build gas plants triple; Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose; JD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating trip; Solar is EU’s biggest power source for the first time ever in June 2025... PLUS: The Air Conditioning Dilemma: Cooling homes heats the planet... and much, MUCH more! ...

News is coming in from every direction on today's BradCast, though there does seem to be a recurring theme throughout: a wholly corrupt Presidency. [Audio link to today's show follows this summary.]

Among today's delights...

• In the wake of another mass shooting yesterday in New York City, a Reuters exclusive finds the Trump Administration's Dept. of Justice cancelled tens of millions of dollars in gun violence prevention grants last April, as established in 2022 under Joe Biden via the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The DOJ has also cancelled tens of billions of dollars in grants for mental health programs. Thoughts and prayers are largely all that remain.

• Remember that tricked-out, $400+ million flying palace jumbo jet bribe that Donald Trump accepted (in violation of the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause) from Qatar to use as a "free" Air Force One? Looks like that "free" plane --- which Trump plans to keep for himself after leaving office --- is costing U.S. tax-payers about a billion dollars to ready for His Majesty's use. And it looks like Trump is now stealing that money from funding previously appropriated for maintaining and updating America's dilapidated Cold War-era intercontinental nuclear ballistic missile stockpile.

• Senate Republicans this week are fast-tracking approval of a lifetime appointment for Donald Trump's personal criminal defense attorney turned senior DOJ official, Emil Bove, to become a federal appeals court judge. That, after a third whistleblower came forward this week with yet more evidence regarding Bove's corruption at DOJ, including dismissal of corruption charges against the NYC Mayor, and Bove's instruction to DOJ prosecutors to violate court orders if necessary to advance Trump's unlawful mass deportation agenda. [Update: After airtime, just as I was getting ready to hit publish here, despite whistleblowers and scores of former judges warning against his appointment, Senate Republicans confirmed Bove for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.]

• The great satirical song writer Tom Lehrer died this week at the age of 97. We take the opportunity to enjoy a momentary respite from the rest of the day's madness to enjoy a couple of his wildly clever --- and often still timely --- tunes today.

• Today, just as Project 2025 called for, Trump's EPA Chief Lee Zeldin officially submitted a corrupt proposal to the White House for overturning the EPA's landmark 2009 "endangerment finding". The 2009 scientific finding currently serves as the legal underpinning for virtually all federal regulations meant to curb the greenhouse gasses that are warming the atmosphere at an alarming pace and creating deadly climate chaos. This is a very big deal, as we discuss today. Though I'm hoping to get into more of the legal ramifications of this move on tomorrow's program.

• Finally, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report documenting just some of the latest deadly effects around the world hastened by the unfettered burning of fossil fuels and the endangerment it causes the public, thanks to emission of climate warming gasses such as CO2 and methane. Oh, and Donald Trump (because he believes they mess up the view from his golf courses) is killing both clean, renewable wind energy projects and the tens of thousands of jobs that go with them...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Massive algae bloom and marine heat wave are decimating South Australia's coast and fisheries; Iran grapples with water crisis and extreme heat; Wind-driven wildfires force evacuations in Greece, Turkey; PLUS: Donald Trump's irrational hatred of wind energy is killing jobs across the U.S.... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump Environmental Protection Agency moves to repeal finding that allows climate regulation; Cheap Tricks for Hard Problems: Picking up nickels in front of the climate steamroller; Black women fight for life in Houston’s most toxic neighborhood; As Trump shrinks FEMA, local emergency managers say they're barely getting by; Fishing groups push to delay protections for endangered right whale to 2035... PLUS: The Drying Planet: New data shows huge swaths of land across the globe are quickly drying... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today's BradCast is best understood --- and felt --- by listening to it. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But, in short, here are some of the topics we cover along the way...

• 27-year old White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who told Fox "News" yesterday that Trump "came up with" the "motto and foreign policy doctrine" known as "Peace Through Strength", is a living breathing monument to how much Donald Trump disrespects Americans, American values, and the Free Press.

• Trump's unlawful, unconstitutional bombing of Iran's nuclear cites over the weekend did not "completely and totally obliterate" them, as he lied to the American people on Saturday night. But it did set the use of those facilities back "a few months" according to an early, classified U.S. assessment reported on by several outlets today.

• Trump's self-declared "cease-fire" between Israel and Iran yesterday apparently never happened. So, he went "absolutely berserk" used the "f-bomb" to the media today instead.

• "Heatwave Shell", as veteran meteorologist Guy Walton has named it (he names heatwaves after Big Oil companies whose products have made heatwaves more and more deadly each and every passing year) is causing misery, and danger, across much of the eastern half of the nation this week.

• Among the locations hardest hit by Heatwave Shell today is New York City, which is also holding its Democratic Mayoral Primary today. Normally, such contests might very well determine who will become the City's next Mayor in the very Democratic city. This year, the politics --- a corrupt incumbent Mayor who plans to run as an independent in November, a disgraced former Governor who may do the same if he loses today, and two very progressive candidates who could win, but would cause freakouts from the Right and maybe even the supposed center --- could shake things up. Beyond the politics, however, we focus today on the voting method now used in NYC's Mayoral elections, specifically Ranked Choice Voting, how it works (and/or doesn't), its dangers (as I see them) to American democracy, and an alternative form of voting (Approval Voting) that solves many of the concerns that RCV proponents care about, without risking disenfranchisement and loss public oversight of election results. Tune in for this one, if you ever wondered what RCV was all about, liked the idea, or hated it.

• The corrupt Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrated their corruption and Republican activism again on Monday, by issuing an obnoxiously terse ruling --- without comment or explanation --- that not only allows the Trump Administration to endanger migrants by deporting them to countries from which they did not come, and which the State Dept. advises against traveling to, but also fails to mention a word about the Trump DOJ's repeated, lawless, intentional violation of lower federal district court orders in this and related cases. The three liberal Justices issued a blistering, 20-page dissent, while the corrupt majority couldn't be bothered to write a word to explain their full approval of "legalistic noncompliance" in yet another "disastrous" decision that undermines the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution itself.

• And with that corrupt ruling on the Court's emergency docket --- the so-called "Shadow Docket" --- nearly full-blown Authoritarianism arrives in the U.S. But I carefully use the word "nearly" because --- guess what? --- we in the media are still here, for now, and are still reporting on what the authoritarian tyrants are doing. Today's latest example...

• A hard-working migrant landscaper here in Southern California was descended upon by a bunch of masked and armed ICE and/or CPB goons on Saturday while trimming weeds outside of an IHOP. Narciso Barranco, as the viral video of his arrest revealed, was then pepper-sprayed, thrown to the ground, repeatedly punched in the shoulder and face, before being shoved into an unmarked van for detention and, presumably, deportation after some 25 or 30 years in the U.S. Barranco has no criminal history and is the proud father of three sons, all U.S. Marines. And no, as the video shows, he did not "assault" federal agents with his weed-whacker, as DHS lied in response to their shame after the video of his violent arrest went viral. He did, however, when he was finally able to speak from detention more than 24 hours later to his eldest son (who served in Afghanistan), ask him to go finish the landscaping job at the IHOP that he was unable to complete himself on Saturday.

• And finally today, speaking of the dangers to all of us by the tyrannical Right and their corporate sponsors, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with more on this week's heatwave; dangers now posed to the food supply, thanks to climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels; and the window for us to forestall the worst of our climate crisis quickly closing...

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It all sounds a bit too familiar to those of us on The BradCast who covered the last time a Republican President forced the U.S. into a "Forever War" in the Middle East based on known lies regarding "Weapons of Mass Destruction" which they never had. Here we go again? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Of course, part of the irony this time around is that Donald Trump ran for President on the false claim that he opposed the war in Iraq. And, despite his expansion of every inherited U.S. war, his unlawful targeted assassination of Iran's top military commander, and extreme expansion of the use of killer drones in all sorts of country during his first term in office, his supporters (and the corporate media) were dumb or duplicitous enough to characterize him as an "anti-war" President.

Trump's unconstitutional and unlawful attacks on three nuclear facilities in Iran over the weekend --- after Israel had cleared the field for him --- should put an end to the "anti-war" fairy tale once and for all. But we'll see.

Following Saturday's U.S. bombing run --- which, according to the Administration, has "obliterated" the three targeted nuclear production cites (something about which you should remain skeptical) --- Iran has responded with a fairly limp attack on a U.S. air base in Qatar and perhaps another in Iraq; the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a terrorism advisory warning of potential Iran-sponsored cyberattacks and the possibility of new attacks in the U.S.; Trump's failing social media cite seems to have fallen victim to one of those cyberattacks over the weekend; and Russia suggests "a number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads."

Meanwhile, the Administration has been unable to proffer any actual evidence to suggest that Iran was anywhere near building a nuclear weapon --- the pretext for Saturday's attack --- much less posing a threat, imminent or otherwise, to the U.S.

According to sources in the U.S. intel community who spoke to our guest today, Rolling Stone's Senior Political Reporter, ANDREW PEREZ, "there is no intel" to suggest anything has changed regarding an Iranian nuclear program since Trump's own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in March that "the IC [U.S. Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003."

While the White House attacked Perez and his co-author, Asawin Suebsaeng for "false and lazy 'reporting' designed to undermine President Trump's highly successful operation to dismantle Iran's nuclear capabilities," subsequent statements from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Sec. of State Marco Rubio confirm that, in fact, "there is no intel" to suggest anything has changed in Iran's nuclear program between Gabbard's March 25th testimony in Congress and Trump's Saturday night B-2 stealth bomber assault on Iran.

Perez was not impressed by the White House attack on his reporting. "What we've been hearing from the Administration is that there has been no new intelligence to justify any sort of immediate actions against Iran," he says today. "What we're hearing is the White House is looking at the same intel it was looking at months ago."

To what does Perez attribute Trump's sudden decision to join Israel's war after spending months trying to negotiate a deal with Iran (like the one Obama struck in 2015)? "One of the major factors in the President's different posture, as it pertained to Iran, was watching Fox News coverage the last couple of weeks." On Fox, of course, they've been covering Israel's attack on Iran and calling for the U.S. to join in. Trump, according to Perez, thought "it looked very cool."

"What the President did this weekend definitely constitutes several acts of war," Perez argues. "It does look possible that this doesn't blow up into a broader conflict, but it still could."

None of this, it should be noted, should have even been necessary in the first place, but for Trump having unilaterally reneged on Obama's 2015 anti-nuclear deal with Iran. By all assessments (perhaps other than Israel's) the agreement worked, observably preventing Iran from enriching uranium above levels required for civilian use --- at least until Trump ripped it up upon taking office because HE wasn't the one to have made it.

Hilariously, that agreement was struck after Trump, in both 2011 and again in 2013 declared: "Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly - not skilled!"

Then, with a few minutes left on today's program, we open up the phone to callers, including one who claims to have voted for Trump three times but now concedes he feels like he was completely duped. "I am so disappointed," he tells me. "I feel stabbed in the back." Tune in to find out why!...

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Last night on BlueSky, "Driftglass", our OG blogger pal and semi-regular round-tabler on this program observed: "The BradCast is always a three course meal." Well, it may not always be tasty, but hopefully it's always filling. Either way, let's get cooking. [Audio link to full, delicious show follows this post.]

On today's menu...

• APPETIZER: Tucker Carlson hilariously destroys Ted Cruz over Donald Trump's apparent threats, plans, ponderings, whims, to fully join Israel's military attack on Iran. Aside from threatening to entangle the U.S. in another much larger "forever war" in the Middle East, which some of MAGA (Tucker, for instance) now pretend to oppose, the erupting civil war on the Trump right is now pitting folks like Carlson and Steve Bannon against Sean Hannity, Fox 'News', Lindsey Graham, etc. And it's all delicious! But it also offers yet another opportunity for us to help expose the myth --- the blatant, opportunistic lie --- that Trump was ever an "anti-war" candidate or President in the first place.

• MAIN COURSE: This one does not go down easily. But it does expose yet another series of longtime Republican lies. The corrupted, activist, Republican U.S. Supreme Court majority today upheld Tennessee's ban on medically prescribed gender-affirming care for trans minors. Aside from being unspeakably cruel, incoherent, Constitutionally flawed, the 6 to 3 opinion underscores at least three more longtime GOP lies: Republicans do not oppose Big Government coming between doctor and patient, as they pretended to argue, for example, during the original ObamaCare debates in 2010; Donald Trump (who appointed three of the majority Justices and argued in favor of the ban, which will now block health care for children in 26 other GOP-controlled states) was never "the most pro-LGBT Pres candidate ever nominated by either party," as some supporters falsely claimed back in 2016; And Republicans do not give a damn about "parental rights", as they first began arguing mostly loudly circa 2021. As the brilliant "Driftlgass" likes to say: No fair remembering stuff!

• SIDE DISH: More on the legislative details on this hopefully tomorrow, but Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans' so-called "Big Beautiful" budget bill --- currently moving through the Senate after passage by one vote in the House --- appears to be an absolute political disaster for them, according to a whole bunch of recent polling. Turns out Americans do not like more than a trillion dollars worth of cuts to their health care and food nutrition assistance programs, robbing health care entirely from millions in the bargain. They don't like killing Joe Biden's landmark, renewable energy incentives for families and businesses alike. And they really don't like increasing the national debt by about $3 trillion in order to help pay for about $4 trillion in tax cuts that go mostly to the wealthy and large corporations. All of it is apparently so unpopular that Hawaii's Democratic Gov. Brian Schatz believes that the Left --- if they can stick together --- may find the momentum to actually kill the bill. (I remain dubious, if hopeful!)

• JUST DESSERTS: Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, one day later than originally prepared, as we ran out of time for it yesterday. Still, it's just as disturbing warmed over for a second day...

Bon appétit!...

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Going into the weekend we knew we were in for a bizarre news split-screen on Saturday, with major protest rallies scheduled across the country and Trump's military birthday parade he threw for himself (with $40+ million of your tax dollars) in D.C. But, it wasn't just two huge stories happening at once by Saturday. It was four. We try to get you caught up on all of them on today's BradCast before opening the line to callers. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

All of the stories happening all at once over the weekend, were all thanks to Donald Trump in varying ways...

• First, on Friday night, Israel unleashed a full-scale attack against Iran, killing its three top military commanders and several nuclear scientists --- among many others. The pretext for the attack was Iran's nuclear program which, had Trump not torn up the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the hard-fought and carefully constructed nuclear deal Iran agreed to in 2015 with China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the U.S., there wouldn't even be a program for Israel to target. The strike came after Trump failed to strike a new nuclear deal with Iran, which had restarted its nuclear program after Trump reneged on the original deal. He had been begging them for the last month to agree to a new deal to limit its nuclear program that is almost identical to the one struck under Obama that Trump tore up during his first term. The ongoing volleys of missiles between Israel and Iran have also led the Trump Administration to call back the Voice of America Persian-bureau after foolishly (and unlawfully) shuttering VOA and its sister networks back in March.

• In the early Saturday morning hours, a long-time Trump supporter disguised as a policeman assassinated the Democratic leader of Minnesota's House of Representative, Rep. Melissa Hortmann, and her husband inside their own home. Hortmann, as House Speaker in 2023-2024, was a key player in passage of a host of popular progressive initiatives under Gov. Tim Walz that came to be known as the Minnesota Miracle. The same shooter also attempted to assassinate Democratic state Senator John Hoffman at his house just prior. Hoffman and his wife remain alive but in critical condition after Hoffman was shot nine times and his wife eight times. The alleged rightwing assailant, 57-year old Vance Luther Boelter, was found to have had a list of some 70 names on a target list in his car. The names were reportedly Democratic officials, both state and federal, and champions of abortion rights. Officials also say he had a number of "No Kings" flyers in the car, suggesting he might have been planning to target one of Saturday's many protests in the state. After a two-day manhunt, Boelter was captured late on Sunday in a cornfield south of Minneapolis/St. Paul. He was charged on Monday with both state and federal crimes including assassination and attempted assassination. It is just the latest example of increasing political violence by the right in the Trump Era, as warned about for years, even by his own FBI Director who conceded that domestic homegrown terror from those on the right --- not by migrants --- was, by far, the greatest threat currently facing Americans.

• The third major weekend story happening all at once that wouldn't have happened if not for Donald Trump, was the authoritarian-style military birthday parade he threw for himself (though we paid for it) that happened to fall on the U.S. Army's 250th birthday as well as Trump's 79th. It was, by almost all accounts, a sparsely attended snoozer of a parade which saw even Trump supporters streaming away long before it was over. Of course, the manhunt for the MN assassin and the war in Israel/Iran, thankfully, sucked up most of the cable TV news coverage.

• In likely --- or hopefully --- the most important news of the weekend, some five million Americans took to the streets to stand up against the President in "No Kings" protests decrying the rising fascism of Donald Trump, including his deployment of military troops against Americans on U.S. soil and his burgeoning military-style migrant round-ups by ICE. According to organizers, enormous and joyful rallies were held in more than 2,000 cities and town in all 50 states. They were almost all entirely peaceful but for a man who brandished a rifle at protesters in Salt Lake City, UT (a protester was killed); a counter-protesters who pulled a handgun on rally-goers in Phoenix, AZ; and an SUV driver who struck and injured a demonstrator before speeding away in Riverside, CA.

  In Los Angeles, late in the day, there was a bit of violence as well. But, as all reporting seems to indicate (David Dayen's at TAP was the best) it was local law enforcement officials from both the L.A. County Sheriff's Dept. and the LAPD who sparked the violence with their unannounced use of horses, rubber bullets and teargas to suddenly clear demonstrators at 4pm, hours before the rally was to have ended in Downtown L.A.

After all of that and much more, we open the phones today to our live local listeners here in Southern California to hear their own reports and personal experiences from the weekend's many "No Kings" protests...

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Incredibly, many Trump-supporting MAGA dupes still believe any of this is being done in the name cutting government "waste, fraud and abuse" --- much less "efficiency" in the federal government. As discussed on today's BradCast, I guess there are still millions who won't give a damn about any of it unless --- more likely, until --- it effects them directly. And it will. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

As David Dayen helpfully reported last month at The American Prospect, if you fired every single federal worker in existence --- all 2.3 million of them --- you'd save about $271 billion per year. While that may sound like a lot, it's just 4% of the annual budget. Of course, we'd lose much more in uncollected tax revenue, unprosecuted fraud in the private sector, lives lost, just to name a few big points. And, of course, Americans, such as Social Security recipients would lose a lot on a personal level when there was nobody left in government to send out their monthly checks.

But, as Republicans have been telling us (lying to us about) for decades now, the federal government has just become too bloated. It must be cut down to size, even if it's randomly done through mass firings at every federal agency, of anybody viewed as legally fireable (whether they are or aren't doesn't matter.) But here's another fun fact from Dayen: in 1960, amid the Golden Age of America's middle class, the federal government comprised 4.3% of all workers. Today, that number is just 1.4%.

Other than that, our government is huge, bloated and out of control! Who needs all that air traffic safety, security of nuclear weapons, food inspections, safe drinking water, disease tracking, cancer cures, law and order, disaster response, medical care, education, Social Security checks or life-saving weather reports and climate data? The federal government is just too "big". Let's gut it all! Legally or otherwise!

Much more on all of this --- and some of the heroes (even Trump-appointed ones!) trying to block and/or call attention to the worst of it --- on today's program, as culled from, among others, some of the following source material...

• AP: Delta jet flips upside down on a snowy Toronto runway and all 80 aboard survive
• Rolling Stone: FAA Employees Say Trump and Musk's Firings Are Dangerous
• AP: Trump fires FAA air traffic control staff, just weeks after DC crash
• NYT: Adams's Lead Prosecutor Quits Defiantly: 'It Was Never Going to Be Me'
• WaPo: Mass resignation marks a new kind of defiance in the second Trump era
• WaPo: High-ranking D.C. federal prosecutor resigns in protest
• WaPo: Musk's DOGE seeks access to personal taxpayer data, raising alarm at IRS
• WaPo: Top Social Security official exits after clash with Musk's DOGE over data
• NBC: Department of Homeland Security preparing to fire hundreds of senior leaders this week
• Bloomberg: US Health Department Layoffs Expand to Medicare, FDA
• NBC: CDC 'disease detectors' among hundreds fired as Trump administration ramps up agency cuts
• Politico: Mass firings continue across nation's health agencies
• Guardian: NOAA imposes limits on scientists, sparking concerns over global forecasts
• The Hill: EPA fires nearly 400 workers after OPM order
• The Hill: EPA puts employees who tackle pollution in overburdened communities on leave
• The Hill: National Science Foundation cuts 10 percent of staff
• Wired: National Science Foundation Fires 168 Workers as Federal Purge Continues
• AP: Trump's firing of 1,000 national park workers raises concerns about maintenance and operating hours
• SF Chronicle: Yosemite halts camping reservations, with no timetable for their return
• Fox 13 Utah: 'Crisis' at Zion as mandated job cuts hit popular national park
• Reuters: USDA probationary staff fired at three agencies, sources say
• NBC: USDA says it accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is trying to rehire them
• The Oregonian: At least 600 workers to leave Bonneville Power Administration, spurring concerns about transmission grid
• CNN: Hundreds of FAA probationary workers fired by Trump administration, union says
• AP: Trump wants states to 'clean up forests' to stop wildfires but he cuts funds

Other than that, slow news day.

Also, on similar notes, we close today with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, as the costs of our climate crisis continue to mount in from coast to coast in recent days; Trump's FEMA is already denying critical disaster aid; and the Administration is desperately trying to find fired Dept. of Energy workers after figuring out that they were the ones who safeguarded the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The costs of climate change continue to mount, as extreme weather strikes across the U.S.; Trump Administration's FEMA already denying disaster aid, even to 'red' states; PLUS: Trump officials fired nuclear staff that oversee the country's nuclear weapons stockpile... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Senior DOJ prosecutor quit after being told to investigate Biden climate spending; Trump wants states to 'clean up forests' to stop wildfires but he cuts funds; EPA fires nearly 400 workers after OPM order; EPA chief seeks to claw back $20 billion in climate funding; CO and CT lowered utility bills by reining in lobbying; World’s largely unprotected peatlands are ticking 'carbon bomb', warns study... PLUS: After landing his dream job as a park ranger, he’s ‘heartbroken’ to be let go in federal cuts... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Crews gain ground against L.A. Fires, as long road to recovery begins; Trump's Dept. of Energy nominee, a fossil fuel executive, calls for more domestic energy production; PLUS: President Biden urges Americans to hold the line on climate action in farewell address... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): FDA bans Red Dye No. 3 from food; For LA water issues, misinformation spreads nearly as fast as the wildfires; As climate risks mount, homeowners far beyond California face soaring insurance bills; Standoff in South Africa ends with 87 miners dead; Biden approved L.A. wildfire aid. But Trump will control spending; More Americans than ever are living in wildfire areas. L.A. is no exception; EPA warns of 'forever chemicals' in sludge fertilizer... PLUS: Biden administration withdraws proposal that aimed to save whales off East Coast by slowing ship speeds... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's been a rough 24 hours or so. But we are among the lucky ones, as detailed at the top of today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The photo of a massive fire nearby first came in via cell phone from a neighbor before we had even been able to publish yesterday's show to the blog. The show was, of course, about the ongoing wind and firestorms here in Los Angeles., including an interview with a longtime colleague whose house burned down on Tuesday night in Pacific Palisades.

Now it seemed to be happening to us. The City began sending alerts to all of our phones, telling us to get ready for an evacuation. From my back patio, I could see the huge flames and orange plumes rising out of Runyon Canyon, a park just a few blocks from where we live. It would come to be known as the "Sunset Fire" for some reason, as reported by the national media. Which meant that most of you probably learned more about the fire and what was going on than we did being in the middle of it.

The photo used above for our graphic today was taken by another neighbor at the end of our block about 30 minutes before the "GET OUT NOW!" order came from the City. As you can tell, it was unsettling to say the least.

Long story short (we share the longer version on today's show, with a bunch of interesting Lessons Learned along the way), after the mandatory evacuation order came, we, and a whole bunch of others folks in the area, grabbed up whatever belongings we felt we needed and high-tailed it out of here. Or, at least tried to. The narrow streets here in the lower Hollywood Hills were packed, in what national media correctly described as a sudden, chaotic evacuation.

Anyway, with the winds having died down from hurricane force levels 24 hours earlier, firefighters were able to get airborne again and knock down "our" particular raging inferno in fairly short order. "Only" 60 acres said to have burned. The mandatory evacuation order was lifted by morning and all was well upon our return. Safe and sound. But, as noted, tune in for more of the harrowing details.

It was inconvenient, and not a lot of fun. But we were among the lucky ones. More than 2,000 10,000(!) structures have now reportedly been destroyed or damaged in at least 4 different raging fires around Los Angeles, in what is being described as the most costly fire disaster in U.S. history, if not the most deadly. Six people are now reported killed, though authorities say that number is expected to climb when, and if, they are finally able to get the largest fires under control. Winds are predicted to pick up again tonight and through next week, though not as high as they had been over the past 48 hours or so. Stay safe out there. But do tune in for a few tips we learned over the past 24 hours about sudden, unexpected evacuations.

Also today, President Jimmy Carter --- who, speaking of harrowing experiences, was once lowered into a melted down nuclear reactor core! --- was finally laid to rest today. We share details and a few audio excerpts from today's memorial service at the National Cathedral in D.C.

Finally, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report, with more details on the L.A. fires and their connection to climate change, as we miraculously were able to produce both that and a 'BradCast' today...which I didn't see as remotely possible at about 7 or 8pm last night. But we made it. We are among the lucky ones...

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PROGRAMMING NOTE: We will be off from Monday's BradCast due to a previously scheduled, unchangeable appointment. We'll be back Tuesday, as normal, but I didn't want you to worry, given everything otherwise underway in L.A. over this past week!

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