On today's BradCast, guested hosted by me, Angie Coiro, Donald Trump lies at CPAC and Sean Spicer excludes journos from hearing White House news --- just another day with the Trump administration. [Audio link posted below.]

Guest Scott Dworkin of The Democratic Coalition Against Trump tackles the massive tangle that is the Trump family's business relationship with Russia. He saves the best for last: why he thinks the FBI's James Comey will ultimately weigh in on the side of justice.

Then, sociology professor Jonathan Martin makes the case that yes, we should look at a third-party break with Democrats.

Gender Spectrum's Joel Baum joins us to talk about supporting transgender children and teens under an administration that works to take their rights away --- and what parents, teachers, and other loving adults can do.

Then, what went down as journalists from established news organs first had to sign up for a White House press gathering, then one by one got turned away. And, finally, a spotlight on Steve Bannon's appearance at CPAC, and his alleged script for "The Singularity: Resistance Is Futile." (Not. Kidding.)

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On today's BradCast, as dark as yesterday's show was, today is somewhat the opposite, with a whole bunch of encouraging news from the courts and the people across these United States. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Attorney and legal journalist Mark Joseph Stern of Slate joins us to break down the full 4th Circuit Court of Appeals' potentially landmark decision upholding the state of Maryland's ban on semi-automatic "weapons of war" and the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling today on a race-based death penalty case out of Texas.

On MD's ban on military-style assault weapons, enacted by the legislature following the 2012 Sandyhook Elementary school massacre, the full court's majority ruling, including a number of Republican-appointed judges, soundly rejected the opponents argument that, as Stern says, "once enough people own a certain type of gun, the 2nd Amendment magically begins to protect it." He explains what may happen next with this case as it moves toward the Supreme Court and offers his thoughts on why GOPers and the NRA are suddenly unconcerned with their "states rights" arguments when it comes to guns.

On the SCOTUS death penalty case, granting a repreive, for now, to a Texas man on death row since 1997, Stern explains how the case underscores that "people who are sentenced to death in this country get the worst lawyers sometimes...It's really quite shocking." Incredibly enough, Chief Justice John Roberts eloquently agreed --- at least in this case.

And more encouraging news also covered today...

• A federal court in Texas blocks the state's attempt to defund Planned Parenthood;
• North Carolina's Democratic governor moves to withdraw the state's appeal to SCOTUS, filed by his Republican predecessor seeking to overturn a federal appeals court finding that the state's election reform law unconstitutionally discriminated against African-Americans "with surgical precision";
• An FEC commissioner refuses to back down in the face of legal threats from Koch Brothers'' funded group after her demand to see Trump's alleged evidence of thousands of illegal votes cast in New Hampshire's 2016 Presidential election;
• Another new poll finds Trump's approval ratings "sinking like a rock";
• A Muslim group raises $90 thousand (so far) to help repair the desecrated Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, MO;
• A people continue to exercise democracy, whether Republicans and Donald Trump like it or not, by showing up in huge numbers at Congress member town halls across the country...

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On today's BradCast: 75 years ago this past weekend, FDR issued Executive Order 9066, sending 120,000 Japanese-Americans to concentration camps in one of the most shameful moments in American history. Today, we fight to keep history from repeating itself as Trump offers big lies about terrorism, voter fraud and the media, among other things --- for a reason. [Audio link to full show posted below.]

While Trump's Executive Order attempting to ban Muslims and refugees from seven different countries has been blocked by the federal courts, another one is promised to take its place soon. And in order to do so, the Administration continues to offer lies about terror attacks to justify its actions, this time with the President citing a non-existent terror incident in Sweden --- fake news that he heard about (and misreported) from Fox "News" the night before his campaign rally in Florida on Saturday.

That dangerous lie comes on the heels of a week of another big lie from Trump and his top advisers concerning false claims of "thousands" of cases of "voter fraud" in New Hampshire and elsewhere --- and as Trump declares the media to be "the enemy of the American People."

While the lies are now non-stop, ridiculous and, at times, hilarious, the insidious reason behind them is chilling, dangerous, shameful and about as un-American as possible. Why all of it matters, and more, on today's BradCast...

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On today's BradCast: Donald Trump holds his first solo press conference as President...and it's a doozy. But just before that presser was going on at the White House, so was another at the National Press Club in D.C. to announce that nearly 1 million signatures calling for Trump's immediate impeachment were being delivered to Congress. [Audio link to complete show follows below.]

Journalist, author and activist Norman Solomon of Roots Action --- who, with Free Speech for People, have created the ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org campaign --- joins us to explain the grounds for the remarkable effort to begin Congressional proceedings to remove Trump from office, not even one month into his Presidency.

"This is a very long process, but not as long as many people think. This could be a lot quicker than we might have imagined just a few weeks ago," Solomon tells me, detailing what he sees as crystal clear violations of the U.S. Constitution's foreign and domestic "Emoluments" clauses, as well as a number of statutes as well.

Solomon charges that "It's such a dangerous precedent to have a President willfully, flagrantly, violating the Constitution," why he believes this can be done even with Republicans in control of both the House and Senate, and why the question of whether Vice President Mike Pence would be even worse for progressives, if he were to ascend to the Presidency, does not matter.

"If we shrug and say 'Well, we don't think it's practical', or 'We don't like the result of the Vice President becoming President', then we've bought further into what, frankly, is moving towards dictatorship," he argues. "If we say this is okay, that the President is above the supreme law of the land, then that opens the floodgates to autocracy and the antithesis of democracy."

The author of War Made Easy: How President and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death also discusses what he sees as the "big danger" of "Democrats attacking Trump with over-the-top extreme rhetoric" concerning Russia.

Then, Desi Doyen joins us for our 8th Anniversary(!) episode of the Green News Report! And, finally, I respond to some listener mail which disagrees with my take on the Logan Act (as detailed during Tuesday's BradCast), and how some believe it should be used to prosecute former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in regard to his conversation about sanctions with Russia's ambassador prior to the Inauguration...

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On today's BradCast: There may appear to be chaos right now at the federal level of lawmaking --- in both the Executive and Legislative branches. But that disarray may be working out just fine for Donald Trump and his supporters, as my guest today explains. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

First up, however, Senate Democrats win one for a change, as Andrew Puzder, Trump's labor-hating billionaire nominee to head the Department of Labor removes himself from contention after a number of Republicans threaten to vote against his confirmation. At the same time, however, Congress sends a bill to the President that will kill an Obama era regulation, instituted in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, that would have made it slightly more difficult for some with mental disabilities to purchase fire arms.

Then, while the "unbelievable turmoil" surrounding this insane White House right now may be alarming to many Democrats and progressives and other reality-based individuals, for Trump supporters living in their own versions of "reality", they may be hearing and seeing exactly what they had hoped from this President --- even as chaos continues to keep both critics and the non-wingnut media off balance and on edge.

D.D. Guttenplan, editor-at-large at The Nation, joins us to explain how much of the on-going chaos is being purposely deployed, not unlike a military strategy developed to avoid anti-aircraft fire during World War II. "I think it's deliberate, and I think it's working," he tells me. And while the temptation to respond to every outrage from this White House may be "satisfying, in the long run it's going to exhaust us."

He makes the case, based on his reporting in the industrial rust belt, that many Trump's supporters are quite pleased with his Administration so far, and that until Democrats begin to focus on winning back those otherwise Dem-leaning voters, they will continue to be overwhelmed by the "barrage of comments, and picked fights, and scandals, and daily assaults on whoever is most vulnerable among us."

"As long as we're being reactive, we're not prioritizing, and we need to prioritize," Guttenplan contends, before going on to detail what he believes some of those priorities need to be in order for Democrats to both win back their voters and the White House along with it.

Finally, speaking of avoiding distractions, last week, while everything else has been going on, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) arrested and detained a man who came here from Mexico with his parents illegally when he was seven years old. Despite legal work permits from the federal government's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program under Obama, no criminal record, and claims by Trump that immigrants like him would not be rounded up, he has been detained for the past week in Tacoma, Washington, according to his attorneys, in the first such case reported since the new President took office...

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On today's BradCast: If those friendly to America are rising up against Donald Trump's disastrous Presidency, imagine what our actual enemies think! Well, we don't have to imagine quite as much as of today, even as Republicans in Congress continue their work to undermine American democracy. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Donald Trump's Yemen raid last week --- the first special ops mission he approved after becoming President --- was an unmitigated disaster during which a U.S. Navy SEAL was killed along with a number civilians, including an 8-year old American girl. The target was reportedly meant to be the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who is still alive and well and mocking Trump this week, even as White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer ridiculously declared the failed mission "a successful operation by all standards."

Also mocking Trump today is the Supreme Leader of Iran, who thanked the new President for "showing the real face of America" after Trump banned Iranian travelers and put the country "on notice" in a Tweet last week, threatening military action and emboldening Iran's hardliners in the process of an increasing alarming drumbeat toward war. (Corporate media chasing all of Trump's idiotic statements may want to start paying much closer attention to this. Please?)

Back at home, the President's wildly controversial and wholly unqualified nominee for Education Secretary, billionaire Betsy DeVos, became the first cabinet nominee in history to be approved by the U.S. Senate after a tie vote in which the Vice President had to cast the decisive vote. At least this time the Democrats finally stood unified in voting against DeVos, along with two Republican Senators who joined them.

In the meantime, while The Netherlands announces that, due to hacking fears, they will do away with computer tabulation machines in favor of hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots ("Democracy's Gold Standard") for their upcoming election, Republicans in the U.S. House moved to abolish the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the only federal agency tasked with setting standards for our nation's oft-failed, easily-hacked electronic voting and tabulation systems.

As explained in detail on today program, the EAC has been a disaster on several levels since its creation following the 2000 Presidential election debacle in Florida. Among countless BradBlog.com stories highlighting their failures over the years, was our 2006 exclusive on the un-aired network interview with the EAC's first Chair, the Bush-appointed Rev. DeForest Soaries. He described the agency in the interview as a "charade" and warned that our computerized voting and tabulation system is "ripe for stealing elections and for fraud." (Also, as mentioned today, see the chapter I contributed with Michael Richardson and John Gideon to Mark Crispin Miller's Loser Take All, revealing how, in 2004, Nevada's then Sec. of State, now U.S. Senator Dean Heller illegally certified and lied about his state's touch-screen voting systems, which are still in use today, with an assist from the corrupt EAC.)

Nonetheless, despite its many failures, the answer to the EAC's problems is not to abolish the agency, but to fund it properly and make it work. That the GOP is prepared to eliminate it entirely --- even amidst Trump's false claims of millions of fraudulent votes cast in the 2016 election --- is quite telling.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, along with today's late breaking news that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced in court papers that it plans to grant the final permit needed to complete the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, despite former President Obama's order to conduct a full environmental impact study before construction is completed on the $3.8 billion pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota...

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On today's BradCast, history and democracy need heroes right about now. Senate Democrats have the option to fight back against Trump's nominee to the GOP's stolen U.S. Supreme Court, or they can become collaborators and enablers of the Republican theft and be voted out of office in response. [Audio link to show follows below.]

In 2016, Senate Republicans stole the U.S. Supreme Court by refusing to hold a hearing, much less a vote, on Barack Obama's centrist (arguably, too centrist) nominee Judge Merrick Garland following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Now that Donald Trump has announced his own nomination for the stolen seat, Judge Neil Gorsuch, history --- and democracy --- demands that Democrats filibuster any nominee other than Garland, even if it leads (as it will) to the "nuclear option" in which Senate Republicans do away the filibuster rule, as Trump has now called for.

We explain why all of this matters on today's show, detailing the GOP's extraordinarily dishonest and hypocritical action and rhetoric on this point from Republican Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, Sen. Orrin Hatch, Sen. John McCain and others.

Most importantly, we call for listeners to demand their U.S. Senators prevent the Court from being further stolen during Trump's Chaos Presidency. (You can reach your Senators' D.C. offices by calling them at: 202-224-3121). We strongly support Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley's call for exactly this, hope you do too, and hope you'll let your Senators know you will work and donate and vote against them if they fail to protect the Court.

We also take listener calls today from those who both agree and disagree with the above strategy to defend democracy.

Also today, in very related news, orders have reportedly been sent to the Army Corp of Engineers to allow construction of the final section of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota; Senate Republicans break the rules in order to jam several Trump cabinet nominees through committee, despite their alleged financial improprieties and lying to Congress about them; And several Dems join Republicans to confirm ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as the next Secretary of State.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as Trump and the GOP Congress move with lightning speed to gut decades of environmental protections, and the state of California pushes back...

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Today on The BradCast, while it may be pretty slim pickings, we're actually able to carve out a bit of good news, here and there, at the end of the first week of the Trump Presidency (which already feels like a year). [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Among the stories covered on today's show...

• Still more of Donald Trump's closest political appointees and family members are found to have voter registrations in two separate states (a sign of "voter fraud", if you believe the Clueless-in-Chief);
• Trump's approval rating is just 36% in Quinnipiac's first poll of his Presidency (compared to the much much larger 59% that very popular President Barack Obama enjoyed in his first poll from the same group in 2009);
• Federal courts order redistricting in Alabama and in Wisconsin due to unlawful GOP gerrymandering;
• Nikki Haley, the new U.S. Ambassador to the UN, threatens allies in her first remarks at the peacekeeping body;
• Trump says he believes in torture, but will defer to his new DefSec who says he doesn't;
• Journalist John Judis, author of The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, joins us to explain how the political story behind Australia's national health care system may offer an encouraging lesson, even if the new administration guts the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") in the U.S.;
• Trump's top political appointees all had private RNC email addresses in the White House, until exposed by the media (Lock them up!);
• And, an effort that could put an initiative for California secession from the U.S. ("CalExit") on the statewide ballot in 2018 receives official approval from the CA Sec. of State.

Did I mention it already feels like a year?...

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On today's BradCast, the board members of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that their Doomsday Clock has been moved 30 seconds closer to midnight in the wake of Trump's nuclear pronouncements and the increasingly alarming threat of climate change. We're now two and half minutes to midnight. Sounds about right. [Audio link to show posted below.]

Those worries are unlikely to ease anytime soon, as the Administration trashed 150 years of institutional memory at the State Department yesterday with a purge of its leadership, while taking an increasingly aggressive stance against the media, science, facts and other institutional establishments on which the nation and its citizenry have long relied.

Among the related stories also covered on today's program:

• Trump's top political appointee and voter registration fraudster Steve Bannon lashes out at the free press, telling them to "keep its mouth shut";
• Four top State Department officials were forced out of their leadership positions, as world tensions are ratcheted up (in no small part by Trump.)
• Mexico's President cancels his planned visit to the White House after the U.S. President orders a wall between the two countries.
• More pipeline spills in the wake of Trump orders to complete the KeystoneXL and Dakota Access pipelines;
• The sources of Trump's false "voter fraud" claims, reiterated again in a remarkable ABC News interview last night, are revealed and debunked. (Here's the 2012 Pew study that he claims is about "voter fraud". It isn't. Here's his fourth-hand story about non-citizens voting, which he didn't actually hear from the pro golfer he claims told him about it. Here's some of the evidence showing that the illegal votes we know of, to date, from 2016 were cast for Trump, not Hillary Clinton. Here's the story of his daughter Tiffany being registered in two different states at once.)
• Advocate for discriminatory Photo ID voting restrictions is placed in charge of DoJ's Civil Rights Division as the administration prepares to go "all in" on such restrictions nationally.
• Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, recapping the new Administration's chilling assault on the environment and its protectors since taking office less than a week ago.

MSNBC's Chris Hayes tweeted yesterday that "Every day feels like 10 days." I couldn't agree more...

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On today's BradCast, Donald Trump called this morning for "a major investigation" into what he falsely claims to be 3 to 5 million illegal votes cast in the November 2016 election, "including those registered in two states". But Trump probably should have checked with his own top appointees before pointing fingers. [Audio link to show posted below.]

Of course, many Republicans will be all too happy to "investigate" Trump's "bogus" claims and use them, no matter what little fraud is revealed, in order to institute voting restrictions that have nothing to do with fraud, but may well keep those who tend to vote Democratic from being able to vote at all.

As discussed today, we've been covering these issues for more than a decade here at The BRAD BLOG and on The BradCast for a reason. Donald Trump is just one of them. We look at his repeatedly debunked claims, the discredited studies cited in support of them by his Press Secretary and the nascent effort by some Democratic members of Congress to push back.

Also today: More on Team Trump's chilling efforts to remove climate science and environmental protection from the Environmental Protection Agency and listener calls on all of the above and much more...

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Never mind his inauguration crowd size or his claims to be "a very big person when it comes to the environment", or even his false claims about "voter fraud". On today's BradCast, while it may be hard to imagine, and the corporate media may have yet to fully notice, Donald Trump's actions speak much louder than his obnoxious words and virtually non-stop stream of public lies. [Audio link to show posted below.]

Don't be distracted by what Donald Trump says. Pay attention to what he does. To that end, while folks were debating his "alternative facts" on the crowd size at his inauguration, the new Administration was busy shutting down the Twitter accounts and ability for federal employees to communicate with the press and public at the Department of Interior, the National Park Service, the EPA and other federal agencies.

While claiming to be a champion for the environment this morning, he then signed an Executive Action to move forward with approval of the dirty and dangerous KeystoneXL and Dakota Access Pipelines by the afternoon.

While the new President continued to pretend that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election (even the New York Times called it a "Lie" in their headline!), he and his supporters fought successfully to stop the post-election "recounts" in all three states where evidence of such illegal votes --- if it actually existed (it doesn't) --- might have been revealed.

While the Administration claimed last week that their work wouldn't begin until Monday, their new Dept. of Justice leadership was taking action on Inauguration Day to undermine a long-standing lawsuit against Texas' unlawful Photo ID voting restrictions. Yes, Republican Trumpers understand the importance of voting laws and procedures --- even when it's not an election year. Do Democrats and progressives?

Julie Ebenstein, staff attorney at the ACLU Voting Rights Project, joins us to explain what exactly the Trump DoJ did on Friday in the Texas case and what it may signify for that case and others like it, what it all may mean for the future of the currently-gutted Voting Rights Act, and how the ACLU and other private plaintiffs plan to continue the fight for voting rights with or without the Trump Administration's DoJ on their side.

"There's certainly concern that DoJ will shift and no longer take the same positions that it's taken in the Texas and North Carolina cases --- and a lot of concern for future cases, for future protection of people's voting rights," Ebenstein tells me. "If the Department of Justice does not provide and enforce the same robust protections of the Voting Rights act, it's diluting the already scarce resources that are out there to challenge these laws." But, she vows, "we'll continue to do the work we've always done. There are certainly cases where private organizations like the ACLU will go forward without any Department of Justice involvement. We're going to keep doing what we do, no matter what we see coming."

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On today's BradCast, guest hosted by Angie Coiro, the impossible challenge of wrangling all the lies and all the damage inflicted on the country in the first three days of an impossible President.

Even as the show was in production, Trump and the GOP continued to stomp all over the little hope that remained for a decent American life in a clean, free, educated country. Among the litany: the return of the "global gag rule" (don't dare acknowledge that abortion exists!), Jeff Sessions won't recuse himself from investigating Trump's finances, because what are friends for?; the White House comments line is eliminated, and Spanish disappears from the White House website.

Follow me as I dissect Chuck Todd and Kelly Ann Conway's amazing "alternative facts" face-off --- a search that yields both classic rhetorical fallacies and the language of domestic abuse.

My first guest, Amisha Upadhyaya, wants to harvest the energy of the weekend's worldwide marches into doable activism for individuals. Thus, the birth of Still We Rise, coming soon to a town near you.

Finally, high school teacher Andrew Simmons joins me to explain how turning his class into a full-immersion Oceania --- with himself as Big Brother --- gives his students a real understanding of Orwell's 1984. Because if not now, when?...

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Before this disappears into the ether of the memory hole, since the the history books tend to be written by the "winners", here's what the actual, contemporaneous, independently verifiable evidence shows instead. These are not the "alternative facts", as Kellyanne Conway described what new Whitehouse Press Secretary Sean Spicer and his boss have been trying to sell, but what the demonstrable facts actually show.

The turnout for the Womens' March in D.C. alone on Saturday, dwarfed the attendance at Donald Trump's Inauguration the day before. The official estimate from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority finds Saturday was the second-busiest day ever for the D.C. Metro rail system, bested only by the first Inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009. Ridership for Trump's Inauguration was even lighter than the average workday in the nation's capital...

According to crowd scientists (yes, apparently there is such a thing), the Womens' March was about three times the size of Trump's Inauguration which was, in turn, also dwarfed by each of Obama's two Inaugurations, but particularly his first one. Based on analysis of photos and video taken at the National Mall and the surrounding areas, Marcel Altenburg and Keith Still, crowd scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain, "estimated that there were about 160,000 people in those areas in the hour leading up to Mr. Trump’s speech Friday. ... They estimated that at least 470,000 people were at the women’s march in Washington in the areas on and near the mall at about 2 p.m. Saturday."

That, in contradiction to the new Alt-Fact President, who insisted the crowd at his ceremony on Friday "looked like a million, a million and a half people," and that the area "all the way back to the Washington Monument was packed." Once again, actual evidence suggests that wasn't the case, by a long shot.

Here, for the record, is just some of the actual evidence --- high quality photos taken from the Washington Monument, at both Obama's 2009 Inauguration and Trump's 2017 ceremony, "captured 45 minutes before the respective oaths of office, show[ing] areas that were crowded with people at Mr. Obama’s inauguration that were clearly empty during Mr. Trump's"...

Today on The BradCast...

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it --- that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"
- Mario Savio, 1964.

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On today's BradCast, a few of Donald Trump's nominees for top cabinet slots may be facing trouble, as Senate hearings continue this week in the U.S. Senate, preparations are finalized (and changed) for the Inauguration, and President Obama issues last minute pardons and commutations. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

First today, as we go to air, breaking news on Obama's merciful commutation of the unprecedented 35-year prison sentence for U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning and a number of additional last-minute pardons and commutations.

Then, as Senate confirmation hearings resume today for Donald Trump's nominees, including for Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos and Interior Dept. Secretary nominee Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT), we look at concerns about both of them. Billionaire DeVos, for example, has given, quite literally, millions of dollars in donations to Republicans and GOP causes over the years, including tens of thousands to the GOP Senators set to vote on her nomination in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee today. And, in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders pressed Zinke on whether or not he believes, like Trump, that climate change is "a hoax".

Then, we're joined by financial journalist and award-winning author David Dayen, to discuss several Trump nominees whose confirmations could now be in jeopardy, including the President-elect's picks to head up Health and Human Services (Rep. Tom Price), Labor (billionaire Andrew Puzder), Treasury (billionaire Steve Mnuchin) and Commerce (billionaire Wilbur Ross). We also discuss Dayen's recent big scoop at The Intercept on a memo detailing "widespread misconduct" (including fraud) at Mnuchin's mortgage bank OneWest and CA's then Democratic Attorney General, now U.S. Senator Kamala Harris' failure to further investigate or prosecute, despite recommendations from her own staff to do so.

Whether or not some of those nominations fall apart, Dayen notes a "supreme irony" in the both the election of Trump and the nominations of guys like Mnuchin and Ross, both profiteers of the "Great Foreclosure Machine".

"There was never any accountability for that. The Obama Administration famously kind of walked off the field in terms of prosecuting bankers and financial institution executives who instigated [the 2007 financial crisis]," argues Dayen. "And then who gets placed into power in the aftermath is the same people whose reputations have been rehabilitated effectively, who weren't given any sanctions for the actions that they took. And, in addition, the fact that there was no accountability created this sort of broken social fabric that helped lead to the rise of populist figures like Donald Trump in the first place."

"There are a lot of ways you can look at this," he tells me. "But there's no question that that failure to get the accountability that the American people wanted in the wake of the financial crisis played a role in the actions that occurred on Election Day 2016, and now those same people who profited off that neglect will be in charge."

Finally, as public pressure builds against some of those nominations, pressure has also led to a number of changes in plans for this week's Inauguration...

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