Happy Spring! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, flowers are in bloom and things couldn't be better! Right? (If you believe that, you may not want to listen to today's BradCast.) [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our roller-coaster coverage today...

• Finland, not Disneyland, is, once again, the happiest place on Earth, for the eighth year in a row, according to 2025's World Happiness Report from the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. The United States, despite this being its "golden age", according to one guy, has now fallen to its lowest-ever position on the annual happiness study. Tune in to hear why people in Finland, Iceland, Sweden and, apparently, our new enemy Denmark, are so happy...and we are not. (Even Mexico cracked the survey's top 10 this year! The U.S. didn't even crack the top 20.)

• In grimmer news, Israel has broken its ceasefire with Gaza this week, reigniting its brutal massacre of Palestinians amid one of the bloodiest weeks since the conflict began after Hamas' 2023 attack on Israel. To date, more than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7th of that year, according to local health authorities. Israel claims to have begun their assault again because Gaza refused to agree to a change in the terms of the ceasefire agreement that has otherwise largely held since January. The new wave of brutal military assaults is with the full approval of Donald Trump, according to the White House.

• Meanwhile, in Russia's brutal assault on Ukraine, we do not seem to be any closer to a ceasefire either, though not for lack of Donald Trump knowingly and repeatedly spreading Russian propaganda regarding the situation on the ground in the Ukrainian held Kursk region of Russia. Trump is apparently working hard to help improve Vladimir Putin's negotiating position in peace talks. All of that according to an exclusive report today from Reuters today, which details how the U.S. intelligence community has informed Trump that he is spreading false Russian propaganda. But he keeps doing it anyway, for some reason. Ukraine has agreed to a full 30-day pause in fighting in recent days. Russia has not.

• Had the Voice of America and its affiliated global sister networks like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty not been removed from the airwaves beginning last weekend, by order of the President of the United States, it might have been pretty embarrassing for him. After all, VOA is mandated, by Congressional legislation, to be an "authoritative source of news" that is "accurate, objective, and comprehensive." The last thing Trump likely wants right now is a U.S.-funded media outlet, with "America" in its name, calling out his pro-Russia lies regarding Ukraine. That, of course, is just one of the reasons why VOA and its partner networks have been so critical around the world over the past 83 years, particularly to listeners and readers in autocratic nations --- at least until being silenced by our new autocratic President.

  The reason given by the White House for shutting down the service last week --- which couldn't be shut down by German Nazis or Soviet Communists over all of these decades --- is that VOA and its sister networks, under management of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), was broadcasting "radical propaganda" from the Left. As discussed on this show with VOA's Chief National Correspondent, Steve Herman, earlier this week, it was doing nothing of the kind. (If you missed that must-listen interview, it is right here.) Washington Post's fact-checker Glenn Kessler took at a look at the White House's ten examples in support of their absurd claims, finding them to be "remarkably flimsy", to say the least.

  Today, Washington Post's Sally Jenkins tells the story of how tennis superstar Marina Navratilova grew up on --- and dreamed of freedom one day thanks to --- Voice of America broadcasts that she and her family were able to pick up each night on a red plastic transistor radio in their small country village in Czechoslovakia during the darkest days of the communist Soviet regime. We share some of that moving --- and inspiring --- story today.

  We also share the harrowing reflections on the shutdown by Ukrainian philosopher and journalist Stanislav Aseyev, who was jailed for 962 days and tortured for reporting on the ground at the time for VOA's partner network, Radio Liberty following Russia's first invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

  So, yes, reminder: We are all Voice of America now.

• And finally, speaking of attacks on free speech in tyrannical times, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report with news on the environmental nonprofit Greenpeace being ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to a fossil fuel company for its part in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline; a new report from the World Meteorological Organization documenting our spiraling climate crisis; and a reported breakthrough from Chinese automaker BYD, supposedly allowing their new EV batteries charge in about 5 minutes time. Don't look for those cars here, however. Though they are the world's #1 best-selling EV, they aren't allowed for sale in the U.S. With the CEO of their main competitor, Tesla, now seemingly co-running the nation, that is unlikely to change anytime soon...

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It seems like we've been covering Wisconsin's ferociously-contested, closely-watched, expensively-waged --- and sometimes questionably-tallied --- Supreme Court elections for decades now on The BradCast. Because we have. And now, another one just weeks from today could once again flip the partisan balance of the high court in the Badger State. As discussed with our guest today, the results are important to the entire nation. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP, a bit of quick election news from even farther north, as the Liberal Party's Mark Carney wins a landslide election on Sunday to become Canada's next Prime Minister on a wave of anti-Trump nationalism. Whether he gets to keep the job remains to be seen, with parliamentary elections coming very soon, even as the nation's Conservative Party has lost much of its steam as Canadians unite to take on Trump's threat of trade war and annexation.

Canada is hardly the only ally Trump is pissing off. In Ukraine, however, his idiocy is reportedly coming at the cost of actual lives after he has blocked arms, intelligence and now even crucial, commercial satellite imagery from reaching Ukrainian troops on the battlefield as they struggle to hold off Russia's invasion. Over the weekend, in advance of peace talks this week, Trump has claimed that he may impose new sanctions on Russia and unfreeze his block on weapons and intelligence to Ukraine. Don't believe him.

THEN, with another election just weeks away that will, once again, determine the partisan balance of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, we are joined by Wisconsin's native son, JOHN NICHOLS, progressive author and National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation. The April 1 election comes just two years after liberals finally won back 4 to 3 control of the state's high court for the first time in 15 years.

What is at stake if the majority flips back to control by the state's hard right Republican Party? "Pretty much everything," explains Nichols, "from abortion rights, to voting rights, to labor rights" and, "this may seem a bit of stretch to folks who haven't been following Wisconsin politics, but I tell you this is the case: whether Wisconsin respects the results of presidential elections." That, he says, is among the points that should raise interest in this contest for everyone in America.

The theoretically "non-partisan" contest to fill the seat being vacated by liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, the Court's most senior jurist, is being waged between liberal Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford and the state's radical, Republican former Attorney General Brad Schimel. He is being backed by lots of billionaire money, including from one of Elon Musk's political affairs committee, which has begun to blanket the airwaves in favor of Schimel.

But Nichols reports that the unpopular Musk's entry in the race --- which he clearly knows nothing about --- is as likely to propel support for Crawford to the polls in what could become a very big turnout and a bellwether for elections during the Trump Era over the coming months and years.

"I don't think [Musk] knows anything about Wisconsin. I don't think he even cares about Wisconsin," argues Nichols. "Someone told him that this Wisconsin Supreme Court race is a critical juncture in our politics, and he should come in on the Republican/Trump side. They were right --- it IS a critical juncture. If this race is decided for Susan Crawford, it will be the first major push-back against not just Trumpism, but also against Musk's entry into politics. So, yeah, it is a critical juncture."

"The billionaire class is all in for Schimel," he adds, "because of the simple reality that these Wisconsin Supreme Court races are pivotal contests. Not just for the state, but really in defining a lot of the direction of American jurisprudence."

Much more, of course, from Nichols --- who knows Wisconsin (and U.S.) politics as well as anyone --- on today's BradCast...

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We pick up on today's BradCast with something that came up at the very end of yesterday's program. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

After I raised the question we've been discussing of late, regarding why Donald Trump is seemingly dismantling the U.S. Government from top to bottom, despite the unpopularity of the bulk of his actions, our friend 'Driftglass', one of my guests yesterday, suggested that everything Trump was doing was clearly very popular with Russia and its strongman President Vladimir Putin.

Democratic U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley came at the same the point during a confirmation hearing this week for two Trump nominees in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Is President Trump a Russian asset?," the Oregon Senator asked Deputy Sec. of State nominee Christopher Landau directly, before detailing one thing after another that Trump has done, particularly regarding Ukraine, that would seem to directly benefit Putin.

"What else could a Russian asset actually possibly do that Trump hasn't yet done?," he asked both Landau and Matthew Whitaker, Trump's nominee to be Ambassador to NATO. Tune in for Merkley's full line of questioning and the two nominees' embarrassingly evasive answers.

Relatedly, and amusingly, Elon Musk's AI chatbot called Grok, was asked a similar question this week. The query asked Grok to "use all publicly available information from 1980" through the present to determine: "What is the likelihood from 1-100 that Trump is a Putin compromised asset"?

We share part of the detailed answer, as Musk's AI explains why it estimates "a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties."

Well, that's probably embarrassing for Musk's co-President.

As to Merkley's question about what else a Russian asset could "actually possibly do that Trump hasn't yet done," while Trump's nominees tried to change the subject rather than answer that question, Reuters offers an exclusive today that offers such an answer. The outlet is reporting that Trump is readying plans to revoke legal status for some 240,000 refugees who fled to the U.S. from Ukraine after Russia's invasion of their country. They also cite reporting from CBS News last week that Trump is planning to revoke legal immigrant status for as many as 1.8 million migrants here legally from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and, perhaps most alarmingly, Afghanistan.

Reuters details the case of a former Afghan intelligence officer who served as a CIA asset identifying "High Value Targets" for the U.S. during our long war there. He was granted a two-year parole by the U.S. in January of 2024, on the very strong recommendation of his CIA handler after the Taliban retook Afghanistan. The man, with no criminal record, identified as Rafi, was recently detained by ICE when he showed up for a regular check-in, in advance of an asylum hearing scheduled for next month. When Reuters inquired with ICE as to why they were keeping Rafi in detention, they were told that immigration policies for Afghan refugees who aided Americans were "ended on January 20, 2025," the day Trump was sworn in to office.

If it's not clear by now that Republicans are lying when they claim to support "legal" immigration, they're just against people coming here "illegally", then the stunning story of what the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) tweeted last night about Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) --- a 40-year American citizen who came to the U.S. lawfully as a child 60 years ago, and delivered the Spanish-language rebuttal to Trump's address to Congress on Tuesday night --- may be an eye-opener for you.

Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, rebutting a litany of environmental and energy related lies that Trump unleashed during his Congressional address, and much more...

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I've gotta be quick with today's BradCast summary, as Trump's first address during his second term to a joint session of Congress is coming up shortly. And I don't want to miss a single lie! (Full coverage tomorrow, natch). [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But the central theme of today's show: Donald Trump is bad for business. He has no clue how to run a business, much less a country, which should decidedly not be run as a business. They are two very different things. But even on his own terms, Trump is lousy at running the country as a business.

Among our many stories today underscoring those points in various ways....

• Today, Trump's 25% tariffs against our two largest trading partners and friends, Canada and Mexico, kicked in, earning blowback from the otherwise even-tempered and very polite Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And, again, the U.S. stock market took another dive in response to Trump's "dumb" trade war, wiping out all gains since the election on the major indexes, thanks to Trump being lousy at his job.

• Among Trump's biggest supporters last November were farmers. Now, they too, are beginning to notice what a clown he is, after the Trump Administration began wiping all climate related data from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture website (cuz climate change doesn't exist if you delete website references to it), along with information on programs regarding grants and subsidies for farmers. All of which they rely on, especially as the Summer growing season is set to begin. A group of farmer's and environmental groups have now filed suit against Trump's USDA, demanding the returns of the databases and tools (that we paid for, before Trump thought it made good "business sense" to waste all of those tax-payer dollars.)

• Cuts and mass layoffs at our beloved National Parks, in advance of the busy Summer tourist season, aren't going over much better with the public --- or the crucial staffers who keep the parks open and clean and some 375 million visitors a year safe. About 4,000 workers at both National Parks and U.S. Forests have now been laid off for specious, and potentially unlawful, reason. People will die because of these pointless cuts. Park experts believe it may take centuries to rebound from the damage to the parks these cuts will cost.

• But what about all of that "waste, fraud and abuse" that Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros are telling us they are axing within federal government agencies? More than$100 billion, Musk is now claiming! Last week, we detailed how the DOGErs quietly deleted billions of dollars in claimed "savings" from their so-called "Wall of Receipts" website, documenting government contracts they'd cancelled at agency after agency. It turned out their "receipts", numbers and claims to go with them were riddled with errors. Last week, they had claimed to have "saved" American tax-payers some $65 billion. But thanks to excellent reporting by a number of outlets, it appeared the number was closer to just over $2 billion at best. The buffoonery continued over the weekend, however, as the Bros once again quietly removed still more false items --- about 1,000 of them! --- and replaced them with others again. You'll be stunned to learn the largest of those new "receipts", as well, are also riddled with errors and false claims.

• This week we are "celebrating" --- if that's the right word for it --- our 16th Anniversary of connecting the climate change dots over your public airwaves in our world famous Green News Report. We have been producing it, week in and week out, over all these years, of course, thanks only to support from readers and listeners like you! Today, in our latest GNR, Desi Doyen has news on Trump's funding freezes crippling the nation's farmers; climate-fueled wildfires exploding in the Carolinas; and mass layoffs now underway at NOAA and the National Weather Service...

• Finally, since Trump is so bad at both business and diplomacy, even a major oil company, Norway's Haltbakk Bunkers, is now refusing to fuel up U.S. Naval vessels in protest of Trump's disgraceful treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House last Friday. "We have today been witnesses to the biggest shitshow ever presented 'live on tv' by the current American president and his vice president," the company posted to social media shortly after. "Huge credit to the president of Ukraine restraining himself and for keeping calm even though USA put on a backstabbing tv show. It made us sick. Short and sweet. As a result, we have decided to immediate STOP as fuel provider to American forces in Norway and their ships calling Norwegian ports. ... 'No Fuel to Americans!' ... We encourage all Norwegians and Europeans to follow our example. SLAVA UKRAINA".

Running the government "like a business" is working out great! Welcome to "America's Golden Age"!...

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At the Oval Office on Friday between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the whole world saw a President clearly terrified of Vladimir Putin and Russia. But it wasn't President Zelenskyy, it was clearly President Trump. Before we get there today, however, some alarming news on today's BradCast on what appears to be enormous planned and/or threatened cuts at Social Security. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last week, our friend DAVID DAYEN, investigative financial journalist, author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect, was first to break the news of the Trump Administration making plans to cut the Social Security Administration (SSA) by half. That would mean, at a minimum, layoffs of tens of thousands of employees at the notoriously efficient agency which has never missed or even had a late payment since its founding in 1935 and whose administrative expenses are less than 1% of their total budget.

To achieve the type of massive cuts the Administration is actively devising, according to emails obtained by Dayen, it would likely have to include the closure of SSA field offices around the country, which service about 120,000 visitors each day. That includes signing up beneficiaries for various SSA services that amount to checks sent to some 73 million retired and disabled Americans who receive about $126 billion in social safety net payments from the agency each month.

On the heels of Dayen's reporting, most of the corporate media outlets have now confirmed plans by the Trump Administration to cut at least 7,000 workers. Dayen, who joins us on today's program, however, is standing by his reporting on the efforts being drawn up to slash much deeper and wider than that. The cuts, according to experts --- including the SSA's former Commissioner under President Biden --- could, within the coming months, result in much-needed payments to beneficiaries being delayed, at a minimum.

Former SSA Commissioner and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley told CNBC over the weekend: "Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits. I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days." He advised that "people should start saving now."

Citing the fact that the agency is already under-staffed and operating with with 7,000 fewer employees than just a decade ago, Dayen tells me "there's about a 50-year low in terms of the number of employees at the Social Security Administration."

"Even before Donald Trump was inaugurated, people would say [SSA] was in an operational crisis from a lack of manpower to do the large and important work that needs to to be done. Every day in America, 10,000 people turn 65. The needs on the disability front have gone up year after year after year. There simply aren't enough people to process systems, many of which are still manual."

"Republicans have refused to fund the system whenever they get into power in the government, in even a small way. They force these cuts. It's a one-way ratchet, where the number of the workforce never gets rebuilt," Dayen explains, alluding to "lies" by folks like Elon Musk and House Speaker Mike Johnson who claim, without evidence, that SSA is a hotbed of "waste, fraud and abuse."

When these cuts are put in place, and field offices shut down, beneficiaries may be forced to travel hundreds of miles to have an in-person meeting or hearing regarding their benefits. Even phone services are likely to be cut. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's Acting SSA chief has "proposed using [private, for-profit] call center employees to replace SSA workers who staff an 800 number for beneficiaries."

"It sounds like Privatization 101, doesn't it?," quips Dayen. "This is what is done when privatizers get in power. They cut spending. They cut the workforce to make it look like they're slimming down the federal government. But those tasks still have to be performed, and they're usually performed by outside contractors who are more expensive than if you would do the actual activity in house."

Much more on all of that from Dayen today. Please tune in.

NEXT... We dive into Friday's shameful televised Oval Office meeting between President Trump, Vice-President Vance and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, where Trump and Vance berated the heroic Ukrainian leader for not being grateful enough to them. Or something. In what devolved into a shouting match, at least on Trump and Vance's part, both of the American leaders took to echoing Russian propaganda and talking points at Zelenskyy after he'd flown to the U.S. to sign an agreement (incredibly enough) to give away half of his nation's natural resources to the U.S. in order to repay previous military support. All in the hopes of eventually coming to a peace agreement with Russia.

But, the Ukrainian President insisted, the U.S. needed to offer security guarantees if his country was to agree to any sort of ceasefire, given that Vladimir Putin had violated such agreements dozens of times in the paste, including the 1994 agreement when Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons arsenal after the fall of the Soviet Union. In exchange, the pact between Ukraine, Russia, U.S., U.K., Germany, France and China guaranteed that Ukraine's sovereign borders would remain protected and secure. That is just one of many agreements broken by Putin. Thus, any such deal with Russia's belligerent strongman would require security assurances from Ukraine's allies...which the U.S., at least until Friday, has long been.

Shortly after Trump's televised Oval Office spectacle, Zelenskyy was sent away from the White House, which cancelled the planned signing of the resources agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine.

It was, as the New York Times' conservative Brett Stephens described it, "A Day of American Infamy", as Trump seemed to officially change sides in the war to support Russia and Putin...for some reason...after 80 post-WWII years of an unbreakable alliance with Western Europe.

Callers ring in today with thoughts on Friday's spectacle and more. But, of course, those listeners who, in recent years, were willing to call in to blame the U.S. and Ukraine for Russia's invasion, were nowhere to be found...

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Yes, we're often critical of the corporate mainstream media on The BradCast. But they also need to be defended in part during times like these, when Constitutional freedom of the press is literally under attack by the Trump White House and the billionaires who support them. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Before we get to our guest, a few reminders of the critical role the corporate mainstream media play, even amid all of their failures. CNN's instant fact-checker Dan Dale, for example, offers an invaluable service in citing reality, point-by-point, fact-by-fact in quick response to things like Donald Trump's head-spinning hour+ of non-step lies at his "cabinet meeting" on Wednesday.

Also, Washington Post on Tuesday, deserves credit for their news coverage of massive cuts to critical services at Trump's Department of Veteran Affairs, with its new Secretary, Doug Collins, posting embarrassingly giddy videos, praising $2 billion in cancelled contracts at the agency by Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros. In fact, as WaPo reported, the cuts amounted to about 875 contracts for critical services for vets, including medical and burial services, cancer treatment and prevention programs, and the recruitment of doctors for the serially understaffed VA, among other things. The bulk of those cancelled contracts also happened to be with Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs). The Post's coverage on Tuesday ("DOGE to Cancel government contracts that help veterans, records show") was followed up on Wednesday with the much brighter headline: "Under pressure, VA halts contract cancellations in major reversal".

Yes, the mainstream corporate media is critically important, even with all of their failures.

All of which is why the ongoing attacks on the free press by the White House --and by billionaire media owners, like Washington Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos --- right now are so troubling.

NEXT... We're joined today by longtime journalist, media critic and WaPo veteran DAN FROOMKIN, now publisher and editor of the non-profit Press Watch (and, more recently, Heads Up News) to discuss all of that and more.

Among the topics discussed today with Froomkin, who is able to offer unique insight into all of these matters...

• AP reporters are now barred from White House and Air Force One press avails, because the AP Style Guide dares to refer to the international body of water known for 400-years as the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally known name, rather than the "Gulf of America" as Trump insists. AP is now suing the White House in response, in what Froomkin suggests is a text book case of unconstitutional punishment for free speech, adding "we're not even getting into the free press element!"

  "The whole point [of the First Amendment] is the government cannot punish you because of something you say that is political. This is exactly what is happening now. They've admitted it. They said, 'We're banning the AP because it refuses to say the words 'Gulf of America'" Froomkin believes that "even our corrupted Supreme Court can't possibly redefine the First Amendment to make this permissible." We'll see about that.

  He explains why he opposes a boycott by the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) of White House events that AP is barred from, as some have called for, and suggests the better response is for reporters who are still allowed access to use it far more aggressively in confronting Trump and other WH officials on their "nonstop" string of lies.

• On Tuesday, WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the WHCA would no longer decide who is welcome in the White House pool coverage, meaning that ideological partisan propaganda sites, like Breitbart, The Blaze, Newsmax and One America News will now be taking the place of well-established, legitimate media outlets.

  "It's important that we actually have reporters who are interested in determining facts rather than just asking him questions that he can hit out of the park because they are actually on his side," Froomkin argues, defending the pool reporters that he is also frequently critical of. "The reporters in this pool are not just representative of the media, they are representatives of the public. This is the only opportunity for anybody to actually confront Trump with facts and assertions and to confront him with his lies. It is so important that the reporters who are chosen to do this are not then at risk of being punished by the White House and being pulled off the beat if they ask tough questions."

  But, of course, if it's the White House, not the WHCA that determines who is allowed in the room, reporters are far more likely to pull punches if only to ensure they do not displease the ones allowing them access in the first place.

• We also discuss WaPo owner Jeff Bezos' gob-smacking announcement on Wednesday that the Opinion Page of the venerable paper --- that previously declared "Democracy Dies in Darkness" --- would now only include opinions "in support and defense of … personal liberties and free markets." That, after the billionaire owner, in 2013, vowed when he purchased paper that he would not interfere in its editorial content.

  It turns out that you just cannot trust a billionaire!," Froomkin, who worked at the Post for 12 years, quips. "It's a gut punch for everybody who works there, anybody who EVER worked there, and anybody who loves the Post. Its just devastating. [Bezos is] basically saying, 'I want my views expressed and opposing views will not be expressed.' It just turns on its head anything that is valuable about an Opinion Page, where you go for a diversity of views."

There is much more worth diving into in my conversation today with the great Froomkin today.

FINALLY... Speaking of gut punches, we close out the week with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, with some alarming news, to say the least, about plans by Trump's EPA to undermine almost 20 years of climate regulation in one fell "legal" swoop...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump White House announces arms-for-rare-earths deal with Ukraine; Spring is getting warmer across the U.S. due to man-made climate change; PLUS: Trump E.P.A. moves to ditch scientific finding that climate change endangers public health... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump’s seven most anti-environmental moves --- and how to push back; Scientists issue warning to public about 'high-risk' events that could demolish local economies: 'Remember the effect on people'; Trump’s reversal of EV program could carry a hefty $1B price tag; Despite historic rains in 2023, aquifers deep beneath L.A. area remain depleted; Trump warned of a "bloodbath" in the auto industry if he wasn't elected --- now he's engineering one... PLUS: Extreme heat linked to accelerated aging in older adults, study finds... and much, MUCH more! ...

Before it disappears amid Trump's never-ending chaos, a bit more insight on today's BradCast regarding last week's "Thursday Afternoon Massacre", when at least seven longtime veteran prosecutors at DoJ chose to resign rather than enact improper orders from Trump's hand-picked, acting political apparatchiks installed to head up his weaponized Dept. of Justice. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... We take a few minutes today to rebut several blatant lies that Donald Trump has been telling over the past 24 hours about Ukraine, its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia's three-year old invasion of its sovereign neighbor, and the money spent by the U.S. to date to help the war-torn democratic nation retain that sovereignty.

Trump now appears to be switching the official U.S. position in the conflict, siding with the invaders --- Russia and its corrupt President Vladimir Putin --- against Ukraine and our stalwart, longtime European allies in the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.

Among the many lies Trump has told about it all over the past 24 hours:

• Ukraine "started" the war. (False.)
• The U.S. has spent $350 billion in support of Ukraine's defense. (False.)
• Zelenskyy is a "dictator" with an approval rating of 4%. (False and false.)

Tune in for specific rebuttals on each of those points and more. But, on that last one, in fact, Zelenskyy's popularity in his country, at 52% as of December, outpaces Trump's in the U.S. where our President (who actually aspires to be a dictator!) has seen his approval ratings slip and his disapproval ratings spike (by 10 points in just four weeks since taking office!), according to new Reuters/Ipsos polling out today.

THEN... At least nine senior Dept. of Justice prosecutors --- many of them Republicans tapped for acting positions by the Trump Administration --- have resigned since last week in response to inappropriate orders from Trump's hand-picked acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove. Seven of them chose to leave rather than sign on to a motion to drop criminal charges against NYC's Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted by DoJ last year on a series of corruption charges related to alleged favors to Turkish interests in exchange for air travel, luxury hotel stays and campaign contributions.

In recent months, however, the Democratic Mayor has been cozying up to Trump, offering to help with his deportation of immigrants in NYC. In exchange, Trump has ordered the DoJ to drop all charges against him, claiming Adams' indictment was constraining deportation efforts and was merely an effort by the Biden Administration to interfere with the unpopular Adams' reelection changes later this year. Bove has absurdly asserted, on behalf of the Trump Administration, that the indictment of a Democratic NYC Mayor by a Democratic U.S. Attorney last year, following a three-year probe, was evidence of "election interference" and the DoJ's "weaponization" under Biden.

The astonishing events of late last week, as all of this unfolded at both the DoJ office in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and Public Integrity unit at Main Justice in D.C. --- where five top prosecutors quit rather than sign on, and Bove threatened to fire every single prosecutor if nobody volunteered to sign the paperwork to drop the charges against Adams within an hour --- were so dramatic and disturbing, we needed to call in a ringer to help us try to make sense of it all.

We're joined today by our friend and veteran federal prosecutor, RANDALL D. ELIASON, formerly Chief of the DoJ's Public Corruption and Government Fraud section at the U.S. Attorney's office in D.C., now professor at George Washington University Law School, newsletter author at the Sidebars Blog and "Great Courses" lecturer on White Collar Criminal Law.

"One of the many remarkable things about this case is the memo from Bove [which] is just so blatant in its rationale that it's startling --- mind-blowing --- to think that you would even put this in writing," explains Eliason, referring to the clearly unlawful "quid pro quo" described by Trump's Acting Dep. A.G. in his memo to Danielle Sassoon, Trump's Acting U.S. Attorney at SDNY until she resigned after refusing the order. Bove made clear that charges against Adams were being dropped in exchange for his help on mass deportations.

Bove was Trump's personal defense attorney before being named as Acting Deputy A.G., was formerly a federal prosecutor at SDNY himself. In his memo to Sasoon, he charges, remarkably, that she was failing to "uphold the Constitution by disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President" and had "lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice.”

"He has got it exactly backwards," Eliason argues. "All prosecutors know that they swear an oath to the Constitution, not the President. You can't just disregard that oath."

"We don't swear an oath to the President or the President's policies," he continues. "The principled thing to do for a person in Sassoon's position is exactly what she did. If you give me an order that I can't in good faith follow, that is going to require me to violate my obligations, I can't carry out that order."

Eliason has much more insight to offer here, including why he disagrees with those who suggest Sassoon might have better served justice by staying at her post to push back against excesses of the Trumpers; whether he personally experienced anything like this during his lengthy career at DoJ; and what "the willingness to use the justice system for political ends" forebodes for the agency going forward in the Trump Regime.

"I was telling my students today that this is something I think they'll be talking about in fifty years, like the Saturday Night Massacre. This is such an earth-shattering event inside Justice," he tells me. Tune in for much more!...

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On Day 2 of the second corrupt Trump Presidency, we catch up on today's BradCast with the destruction he wrought (or attempted to) on Day 1, just hours after he became the first convicted felon, adjudicated rapist and adjudicated insurrectionist to be sworn in as President of the United States. And it all just happens to come, coincidentally, on the 15th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's horrific 2010 Citizens United decision, which helped make so much of this day possible. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Given Donald Trump's "flood the zone" strategy, including scores of Executive Orders, Actions, Directives and Memoranda signed on Monday (much of it for show, some of it dangerously real) we try to cover a lot in a very short time on today's program. I'll do my best to quickly summarize at least some of it here...

• Since MLK Day was largely preempted by yesterday's Inauguration (and our 2025 Inauguration Counter-Programming Special --- thanks to many for the kind words about it!), we begin today with a piece of Martin Luther King's 1967 "Blue Print" speech to a group of students in Philadelphia that, surprisingly, served as inspiration for us today!

• Please note: It has now been more than "24 hours" since Trump was sworn in (and since he was elected in November, since that was the original, oft-repeated promise) and Russia's horrific war on Ukraine is still raging anyway.

• Trump signed scores of orders on Monday night, though the most immediately substantive was his "full, complete and unconditional" blanket pardons for about 1,500 January 6, 2021 insurrectionists and seditionist --- including the leaders of the far-right paramilitary groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who were found guilty and sentenced to more than a decade in prison for Seditious Conspiracy, in their treasonous (if failed) attempt to help Trump steal the 2020 election. Many of the violent domestic extremists who were released from prison today attacked law enforcement officers on that awful day at the U.S. Capitol, "armed with firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a massive 'Trump' billboard, 'Trump' flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches and even an explosive device." But all is now, apparently, forgiven with Trump's pardons, despite the assertion on Fox "News" just one week ago by then Vice President-elect J.D. Vance that "Obviously, if you committed violence on that day, you shouldn't be pardoned." But that was a week ago, and this is now, when, with today's release of the January 6 terrorists, Trump now has his own domestic paramilitary if and when needed. And those who testified against them originally, including law enforcement officers, are now, understandably, very concerned for their own personal safety.

• Trump signed an Executive Order declaring a "national emergency" and "invasion" at the southern border, where there is no such emergency or invasion. But now he has a pretext to invoke the military wherever it may be needed to round up, arrest, detain, imprison and deport undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, among other things.

• Trump signed an Executive Order claiming to end the 14th Amendment's Constitutional right to birthright citizenship, even as historian and tyranny expert Timothy Snyder helpfully reminds us: "A president’s executive order cannot undo a law or a Supreme Court decision, let alone a provision of the Constitution. Forget that and you do have a dictatorship on day one." That EO is already being challenged in court by 24 states.

• Trump, who miserably failed to handle the COVID pandemic, which killed more than a million Americans, signed a declaration withdrawing> from the World Health Organization.

• Trump signed an Executive Order revoking Joe Biden's landmark 2023 Executive Order on AI safety.

• Trump signed Executive Orders "protecting women from radical gender ideology" and declaring there are only two immutable sexes: male and female, as determined by whether they are born with eggs or sperm.

• Trump revoked a 2021 Biden Executive Order calling on federal agencies to promote voting access and expand voter registration. Trump and Republicans will have none of that! What do you think this is, a representative Constitutional democracy or something?!

• Trump also rescinded a Biden era Executive Order that had repealed an Executive Order from Trump's first term that attempted to game the U.S. Census for partisan gain by, among other things, attempting to exclude non-citizen residents of the U.S. from the count of the "whole number of persons in each state", as per the 14th Amendment, for the first time since the very first Census was carried out in 1790.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our first Green News Report of the second Trump era, with more on his Day 1 efforts to use Executive Orders to undermine the climate, the health of Americans, the livability of the planet, and the U.S. economy along with it. Trump signed Executive Orders declaring a "national energy emergency" (which is not a thing that actually exists); to stop all off-shore wind projects (what happened to that "national energy emergency"?!); and to join with Iran, Libya and Yemen by withdrawing (yet again) from the landmark, voluntary Paris Climate Agreement, a move that could end up costing the U.S. hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars via lost leadership, technology and manufacturing of clean, renewable energy...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: New year, new punishing extreme weather; 2024 was the hottest year in human history; President Biden bans new offshore drilling across most U.S. coastal waters; PLUS: The legacy of Jimmy Carter, one of the greatest conservation presidents in U.S. history... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Russia's failed energy war has lessons for fossil fools everywhere; Climate change added 41 days of dangerous heat around world in 2024; Climate-driven sea level rise will overwhelm major oil ports, study shows; Restoration efforts continue following complete blackout of Puerto Rico's power grid; How Elon Musk's DOGE could end fossil fuel subsidies; Biden Admin adds exemptions into new climate rules for hydrogen energy; FWS deal to expand Okefenokee Refuge, enabling buyout of mining project... PLUS: Ex-Trump official: We need to take Greenland, because climate change... and much, MUCH more! ...

Still trying to make sense of it all on today's BradCast. But at least we've got confirmation today on a few different stories that we've been yelling and screaming about for years now. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• A hand-count of ballots in Ashtabula County, Ohio last week found that two contests on the ballot --- one, a tax levy to fund city schools, the other, to fund a cemetery district --- were actually adopted by voters on November 5th, after previously being reported, inaccurately, as having failed. The hand-count in the contests took place after errors were discovered in the tabulation for all County Issues on the ballot during a hand-count of a fire district levy, which also flipped from NO to YES, thanks to the hand-count.

  Tomorrow, the 2024 Presidential Electors, chosen by the popular vote in each state, will meet in each state capital to cast their vote in the Electoral College. A majority of those votes will be cast for Donald Trump, based on the computer-tallied results in each state. Those results either accurately reflect the intent of the majority of the electorate --- or they do not. Without the publicly-overseen hand-counts that cybersecurity and voting system experts were strongly recommending this year in particular (we think it's a good idea for every election), Americans are unlikely to ever know one way or the other if Trump actually defeated Kamala Harris. At least in Ashtabula they now know that their levy issues were tallied as per voter intent, and the local high school which saw its roof collapse in early December under five and a half feet of snow, will now be able to afford to fix the damage.

• Former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov pleaded guilty on Monday to lying to federal agents about a supposed $10 million in bribes he falsely claimed were paid by Burisma, an energy company in Ukraine, to Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Those lies, which Smirnov said were peddled to him by members of Russian intelligence, were at the center of House Republicans' failed attempt to impeach President Biden, after they and Trump and his other supporters laundered that disinformation from Russian intelligence operatives into the American media and chambers of the U.S. Congress.

• Over the weekend, CNN reported that nearly three dozen of Donald Trump's nominees for his incoming Administration were donors to his campaign or to "outside" groups supporting him. Eight of Trump's nominees to Cabinet positions, so far, donated more than $37 million dollars. That doesn't even include the $277 million dollars spent by Elon Musk to help buy Trump's Presidency and his position of power within it. Musk has been named to head up Trump's so-called "Department of Government Efficiency." Compare that to the seemingly paltry $100,000 in donations to the 2020 Biden Campaign or super PACs supporting him, from a dozen members of Biden's Cabinet. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) noted this weekend on Meet the Press, "Never before in American history have so few billionaires, so few people, had so much wealth and so much power. And never before, in American history, have the people on top had so much political power. We can't go around the world saying, 'Oh, well, in Russia, Putin has an oligarchy.' Well, we've got an oligarchy here too!"

• Of course, it's not just those hoping to abuse positions of power in Trump's next Administration. Over the past week, Amazon founder (and Washington Post owner) Jeff Bezos and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg each announced their companies were giving $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. And over the weekend, ABC News --- owned by the Goliath, $200 billion Disney corporation --- announced they were settling a defamation case filed against them and George Stephanopoulos after the ABC anchors' on-air assertion that Donald Trump "had been found liable for rape" in the lawsuits filed against him by writer E. Jean Carroll, in which juries found Trump liable for some $88 million dollars after guilty verdicts for sexual abuse and defamation. The case they chose to settle would likely easily have been won by ABC for a number of reasons, including the fact that the Judge in Carroll's defamation case against Trump told the jury that the jury in the sexual assault case found Trump was indeed found guilty of what "many people commonly understand the word 'rape'" to mean. Instead of fighting, however, the Disney-owned company bent the knee, agreed to issue an apology, give $15 million to Trump's future Presidential Library fund as a "charitable contribution", and $1 million to his law firm. Why would they do that? Josh Marshall offers an excellent explanation, citing how legacy media outlets like ABC News and Washington Post (along with CNN, NBC, MSNBC and others) amount to a drop in the bucket to the major corporations which own them. While those corporations are willing to sacrifice their money-losing news outfits, they are willing to pay tribute to the "King" to help dissuade him from abusing his power to go after the rest of their multi-billion dollar corporations that are far more vulnerable to abuses of power by a corrupt President.

• Finally, we open the phone lines to listeners on all of the above --- or whatever else is on their minds today --- in what is likely to be our last call-in show of the year. And, for reasons I cannot explain, they were all suspiciously kind today. Hmmm....

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It has been a very busy several days since we spoke with you last on BradCast! So it's another very busy show today. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• BREAKING before air: Law enforcement officials have arrested a "strong person of interest" in last week's Manhattan murder of UnitedHealthcare's CEO. A 26-year old man in Altoona, Pennsylvania --- said to have a gun like the killer's, a silencer for it, a fake ID and other related stuff --- has reportedly led police to believe they may have their man, though no official announcement has been made to that end as of airtime.

• Over the weekend, Romania's constitutional court nullified the results of the first round of voting in the NATO member nation's Presidential elections due to evidence of massive interference by Russia via tens of thousands of cyberattacks and a scheme to pay a coterie of TikTok users to post pro-Russia propaganda in favor of a longshot Presidential candidate. (Sound familiar?) The election will now be re-run. Imagine that. In the meantime, despite all manner of concern about Russian (and domestic) interference in the U.S. Presidential election this year, official certification of Electors in each state moves forward this week, without nary a hint of the hand-count or post-election audit that so many world-class cybersecurity and voting system experts have called for --- for very well-supported reasons --- following Donald Trump's reported victory on November 5th.

• Also, over the weekend, the Assad Family's barbaric, decades-long autocratic rule of Syria finally came to an ignominious end, following a lightning offensive by rebel groups at the end of a deadly, 12-year civil war on the long road to Damascus. Bashar Ashad and his family fled to Russia, Syria's top ally, seeking asylum and exile. Russia --- for its part, as President Biden noted during his remarks on the stunning fall of Assad's Syria on Sunday --- had been unable to come to the aid of its longtime ally, as they are stuck in their own quagmire following their invasion of U.S. and NATO-supported Ukraine. While Biden lauded the good news of the fall of Assad as "a moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud country," he was more cautious about what comes next and whether those now claiming power --- tied in years past to al-Qaeda --- can moderate their politics to govern Syria responsibly. Time will tell.

• And, with still more bad news for authoritarianism, South Korea's opposition Democratic Party continues to have the support of the people as it pushes back against the rightwing ruling party and its President following last week's auto-coup via martial law declared by President Yoon Suk Yeol. The declaration was called off just hours later amid a popular uprising and members of both parties fighting their way past military troops to open the National Assembly to a hold a vote to end the martial law declaration. In the days since, Yoon now clings tenuously to power. His party, the People Power Party (or PPP), blocked an impeachment attempt by the Democrats over the weekend and demonstrators remain on the streets as South Korean officials announced a travel ban for the President, and the PPP declared the party and the nation's Prime Minister will take over all foreign and domestic business from Yoon until he leaves office earlier than planned. So, with no power, why is he still hanging around? And with no constitutional basis for this shift of President powers to a political party and a Prime Minister, the opposition Democrats are describing it as a second coup and vow to continue their impeachment attempts on a weekly basis through the end of the year or until Yoon is deposed.

• Finally today, the Biden Administration has reportedly been considering issuing broad, unprecedented, preemptive pardons to a number of Donald Trump's self-declared domestic enemies. That effort kicked into even higher gear with the incoming President's announcement that he planned to nominate Kash Patel to head up the FBI. Patel has been outspoken about investigations and prosecutions against a long list of Trump's perceived enemies, listing some 60 of them by name in his recent book, including Joe Biden himself, Vice President Kamala Harris, former Sec. of State Hilary Clinton, former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, Trump's own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley and dozens more. Over the weekend, during an interview with NBC News, Trump appeared to up the ante yet again by calling for the jailing of former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and other members of the bipartisan January 6 House Select Committee.

  So, should Biden use his Constitutional Presidential pardon power before leaving office to grant clemency to many of those who will likely be targeted by a weaponized Trump Administration? Or is it more important to maintain the polite "norms and traditions" that only Dems seem to follow as Trump and Republicans run rough-shod over them? My view is pretty clear: Offer them all pardons. If they want one, grant it. If they don't, they're on their own.

  We open up the phones to get the opinions from listeners on this matter and whether or not they would like to see Biden issue such pardons. Suffice to say, we remain a divided nation...

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Today was our first chance to open the phone lines to listeners on The BradCast, in the grim wake of last week's disastrous elections for the nation, the planet and democracy itself. It was, to say the least, a very lively show today, FWIW. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before getting to callers today, a few items of note...

• First, an update on outstanding Senate races still to be determined. Though AP called Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate race for Republican hedge-fund CEO David McCormick last week against three-term incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Casey, other outlets have not yet called it. McCormick is currently said to be leading Casey by about 40,000 votes out of nearly seven million cast, or just over one half of one percentage point. If the gap falls to less than half a point, with provisional and overseas ballots still being tallied, a recount will likely happen under state law. For the record, about 175,000 votes were reportedly cast in that race for third-party Senate candidates, including about 65,000 for the Green Party candidate.

• Over the weekend, media outlets called the U.S. Senate race in Nevada for the incumbent Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen, who appears to have defeated Republican challenger Sam Brown by about a point and a half.

• The last uncalled U.S. Senate race is in Arizona, where Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego leads Trump-endorsed election denier Kari Lake by a little more than two points. Republicans have flipped at least three Dem seats overall this year in the Senate, so far, and will have a majority of at least two seats in the upper chamber over the next two years to allow all of Donald Trump's appointments --- to his cabinet, other executive agencies and, of course, lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary --- to sail through for his second term in office. Many more details (and concerns) about the tabulation of those races on today's show

• As many have been writing in to ask about voting system concerns and various reported anomalies since last Tuesday, I take a few minutes today to discuss just some of the incidents currently of most note that I have been looking into and speaking with computer scientists, election integrity advocates, and folks on the ground about over the past week.

  For the moment, I don't see many signs of anything that could possibly change the results of the race, at least for President. Though I am looking at several incidents in several different swing states that deserve both explanation and a broader look to see if similar anomalies, still unreported, may have occurred elsewhere. For example, I have been eyeing whatever happened in both Centre County, Pennsylvania and Battle Creek (Calhoun County), Michigan, where some absentee ballots inexplicably, for now, failed to upload properly to the central Election Management System (EMS) server after being scanned by tabulators without incident.

  Yes, I am also looking at a host of other reported incidents and concerns, including the use of Elon Musk's Starlink system for Internet connectivity in some jurisdictions. Though, in theory, that would only effect Electronic Pollbooks at voting precincts, rather than ballots themselves. As noted on today's program, rest assured that I and others are still watching and digging where we can. And, my usual reminder here that sometimes it takes a while for tabulation errors to come to light after an election. Your problem reports that you believe I may not have seen are welcome in comments below, as always.

• Lastly, before we get to a lot of listener phone calls today, from all sorts of political perspectives, a few thoughts of my own about the unspeakable failure by our nation's media --- mainstream corporate media, social media, independent media --- to adequately inform voters about actual facts regarding this election. Facts including why it is that Donald Trump now poses an exponentially more acute threat to the nation and the world than he did during his first term. (I discuss several such reasons, including that his corrupted U.S. Supreme Court majority has, since his previous term, issued a ruling that Presidents may commit any crime they like while in office, and can never be held to account for it.) And how, if voters claimed they were voting for Trump in response to the economy and inflation under the Biden-Harris Administration, they were obviously wildly uninformed, misinformed and, too often, purposely disinformed about the facts on which they claimed to have voted, given the success of the Admin's record on the economy, versus the inflation and debt that is promised by very few economic policies that Trump promised during the campaign. Yeah, I've got a word or two to get out on all of that today. (And will, almost certainly, have many more in the future.)

• Finally, a bunch of callers ring in to let it all out on whoever and whatever they'd like to blame for what happened, or to discuss why they still seem pleased with their votes for third-parties (one caller supported RFK, Jr., who wasn't evening running!), or to simply call in, in the case of at least one Trump supporter, to gloat. Today was the day to let it all out with, likely, many such days to come --- along with the suffering and misery that awaits all of us now. Yes, even the Trump and RFK supporters, sadly, who seem to have no clue how bad this is all going to get...thanks to our failed media...

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It is nothing short of reckless, from the perspective of national security, to allow any individual or private corporation to maintain monopoly ownership and control over a global Internet satellite communications system.

Nonetheless, today, courtesy of launch licenses issued by the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), the world's richest man, Elon Musk --- net worth $273.5 billion --- has amassed monopoly control via Starlink, a global Internet communication system that owns and operates more than 6,300 satellites.

Haven't we --- almost literally --- seen this movie before? And does it ever end well?

The scope of this non-fictional threat is by no means confined to the enormity of Musk's wealth. As The Atlantic's Marina Koren astutely observed in "Elon Musk Has the 'Off Switch'", the combination of ownership and control over X (formerly Twitter) and Starlink has enabled Musk to wield "unprecedented power." And we've already experienced an instance in which Musk, who reportedly "regularly communicates" with the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, has utilized that "unprecedented power" to undermine a core component of U.S. foreign policy...

We're all over the place on today's BradCast, as things seem to be speeding up exponentially as Election Day draws near. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• On Wednesday, the Dept. of Justice filed an indictment against two members of the Russia's state media outlet known as RT for their part in a scheme that covertly paid some $10 million to rightwing media influencers to help spread Russian propaganda via an American-looking website media company based in Tennessee. Among the willing dupes or useful idiots, take your pick, who profited from the scheme to the tune of millions of dollars: popular rightwingers like Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin (who actually used to call himself a "progressive" when we worked with him years ago at The Young Turks!) Their Kremlin-approved-and-encouraged lies about Russia and Ukraine and much more were spread far and wide from them to Elon Musk, Donald Trump and many others (including far too many on the Left!), in a far-reaching plot meant to cause division in the U.S. and disrupt our electoral system to the benefit of Trump. It was all helped along by those who are apparently all too willing to sell out the U.S. in exchange for power and/or money and/or just to be one of the cool anti-establishment rebel kids out there. We break it all down for ya today.

• Lifelong rock-ribbed Republican conservative, former top member of House GOP Leadership, and daughter of Dick, Liz Cheney announced her intention in North Carolina on Wednesday to do the right thing by voting for Kamala Harris this year. I say "right thing" because, for those Republicans who truly oppose Donald Trump, if they really want to help keep him out of power, the best way is to cast their vote for Harris, as opposed to feebly writing-in Ronald Reagan or some such cowardly measure that only ultimately serves to help Trump regain power.

• Aside from standing up for democracy, the rule of law, and the Constitution by voting for Harris, Cheney might also have noticed that Kamala Harris popular economic policies are more likely to grow the economy than Trump's various schemes. His poor economic showing during his term in office makes that clear enough. But, if you need further encouragement that Harris' policies will be better for the economy than Trump's moving forward, check out what the economists at that lefty, pinko outfit Goldman-Sachs had to say about it this week. Turns out, "Comrade Kamala" (as Trump absurdly likes to call her), is the worst communist ever!

• The U.S. House returns from its August break on Monday for a short session before breaking again for the election. But they've got another "fiscal cliff" ahead of them, with a government funding deadline at the end of this month. Apparently, Donald Trump is encouraging House Speaker Mike Johnson to threaten another shutdown before the election, unless Dems agree to adopt the SAVE Act, a bill that would require proof of citizenship when registering to vote, despite the fact that it is already unlawful for non-citizens to vote in federal elections (and ID is already required for all voters who register in all 50 states under federal law). But, sure, go for it, Mike! I'm sure it'll work out just fine for you guys.

• Pretending there is massive voter fraud being carried out by non-citizens appears to be the GOP's fake news claim of this election year (helped along by all of those folks getting sweet sweet Russian money to lie to that end, and those who choose to believe them). In North Carolina last week, the state and national Republican Party filed yet another lawsuit in hopes of popularizing that claim, despite the complete lack of evidence for it. In this suit, they are claiming that some 225,000 voters in the state's voter registration database did not supply a driver's license or social security number when they registered and, therefore, might be "illegal aliens" voting. They want them all to be removed from the rolls and forced to re-register, even though the election is now just weeks away and Mail-in voting begins this weekend in NC. But there are a few (a whole bunch, actually) problems with their claims and suggested remedy, as we explain on today's program. That said, Republicans know about those problems --- and don't care. They aren't filing these lawsuits to win them. They are filing them to help them try and steal the election, if necessary, next January 6th.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, amid a sweltering heat wave here in Southern California; a record heat wave in Phoenix; record humidity recorded over much of the rest of the country all summer long; and other both good and terrible climate and environmental news items, as usual...

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