The last time multiple ballots were needed for any party to elect a House Speaker, a century ago in 1923, it took nine ballots to settle the matter. Today, before we got off the air from today's BradCast, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy had failed to secure a majority on the eleventh ballot. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Not all hope is lost. There's still the all-time record of 133 ballots over two months in 1855-1856 that today's Republican Party has yet to break. Give them time.

So, the 118th U.S. Congress has not yet been gavelled into existence. But that's not the only place where Republicans seem to be tripping over their own legislative [bleeps].

On today's program...

• Up-to-the-minute coverage of the madness and idiocy of Day 3 in the Republican-led House; how the 20 far-right anti-McCarthyites are shooting themselves and their party in the foot; what McCarthy has already given away (pretty much everything) in his still-failed effort to win them over; how Trump may be the biggest loser of all here; the Democratic Party's continuing unified support for leader Hakeem Jeffries (the lead vote-getter, with 212 votes, on each and every ballot to date); why all of this is important and the dangers ahead; a reminder of what the nation is now missing without Dems in control of the chamber; and the question of whether Dems should help McCarthy win the Speakership in exchange for a promise to raise the debt ceiling to avoid a national and potentially global depression, as suggested by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA).

• In Pennsylvania on Thursday, Democratic Gov.-Elect Josh Shapiro tapped former Philadelphia city commissioner and election official, Al Schmidt, a Republican, to serve as Sec. of the Commonwealth.

• Also in the Keystone State this week, Democrats in the State House have out-maneuvered Republicans to seat a House Speaker. In a surprise victory last November, Dems won back the majority from the GOP for the first time in a decade, but only by one seat. Then, one Democratic member died and two others vacated their seats for higher office. Until special elections to fill those three seats can be scheduled, both parties were claiming the majority and the right to run the House, set the legislative agenda, and schedule the special elections, which will likely result in a clear majority for the Dems after they are finally held. But Dems were able to win over some Republican votes to elect one of their own as Speaker in a surprise victory this week.

• In another surprise victory for Democrats, this time in the very Republican Ohio state House, Democrats out-maneuvered the GOP again by voting en masse with a group of Republicans to elect a more moderate Speaker than the one the GOP had chosen as their leader just last month. The power struggle comes in the wake of a still-unfolding racketeering scandal for the GOP as the state's former Republican House Speaker, Larry Householder, begins a federal trial this month with his co-defendant, the former Chair of the Ohio Republican Party, regarding $61 million in alleged bribes to pass legislation to help bail out energy giant, FirstEnergy.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our first Green News Report of the new year, with a ton of stuff we missed over our holiday break, and a bunch of stuff that has happened since our return, including the roll out of billions of dollars in infrastructure upgrades and new incentives for consumers to move to clean, renewable energy, as adopted when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress...

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On today's BradCast: Republicans in the U.S. Senate gets desperate, Team Trump keeps getting caught in lies, and an order of Catholic nuns in rural Pennsylvania takes action to block a pipeline from being built on their own land. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up: The Senate GOP today released the newest version of their attempted scheme to repeal and replace ObamaCare, and it's as bad as we'd warned it would be on our previous shows this week. The new version removes some of the tax cuts for the wealthy, but leaves in the massive Medicaid cuts that will remove health care for millions, and adds a new provision by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) that would allow private insurers to sell largely worthless health care plans to suckers in order to claim they have "lowered premiums!"

The newest proposal will also likely continue to have a very difficult time finding the 50 GOP votes needed for passage in the Senate, but it would be a huge mistake to count them out and let your guard down. As that is moving forward, with a vote said to be scheduled for next week, two House Democrats have now officially filed an Article of Impeachment against Donald J. Trump for Obstruction of Justice, and more evidence of Team Trump having lied about contacts with various Russians and other foreign agents continues to emerge. What, if anything, are they trying to hide? And why?

Then, an order of Catholic nuns in central Pennsylvania dedicated a new outdoor chapel last Sunday at the edge of a cornfield and smack-dab in the path of a planned $3 billion natural gas pipeline. PASTOR MALINDA HARNISH CLATTERBUCK of Lancaster Against Pipelines and the Community Mennonite Church of Lancaster joins us to explain the defiant action by the nuns of The Adorers of the Blood of Christ, in the ongoing attempt to block the huge "Atlantic Sunrise" pipeline from being built by a private, Oklahoma-based company. The Williams Partners company has received federal Eminent Domain orders from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that would allow them to steal the use of the land from the sisters and other residents along the 300-mile path of the massive pipeline path in rural Lancaster County, PA.

Clatterbuck scoffed at the "irreparable harm" argument being made in U.S. District Court by the company in their emergency motion, to be heard next week, against the sisters' open-air chapel . "It's really ironic that they would use that language when the harm that they are proposing to do, not just to Lancaster County, but to the whole extension of Central Pennsylvania with this pipeline, would be violating the waterways --- 380-some waterways --- this pipeline would be crossing. And it would be going through more than 250 wetlands. And permanently fragmenting over 44 deep forests. I feel like that's irreparable harm that we're really pushing back against," she tells me.

"The audacity of an industry to feel as though they have an entitlement to put a pipeline wherever they want to is unfathomable to me," the pastor and longtime community organizer says, while responding to Williams' statement that they have no problem with peaceful protest by the nuns, as long as they move their chapel to a different location on the land they have owned for almost 100 years. "Isn't that amazing, how arrogant they are? It's not their property. This is the nuns' property. And the nuns have a right to do on their property what they want, right? Isn't this America?"

Paging Sean Hannity! (Who used to pretend to be infuriated by eminent domain...at least when it was done by Democratic Administrations.) And, paging Republicans and Donald Trump! (Who still pretend to be infuriated by encroachments on "religious freedoms," such as when other Catholic nuns, like the Little Sisters of the Poor, challenged the contraceptives mandate of ObamaCare.)

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on the Delaware-sized iceberg that has just broken off of Antarctica, Tesla's plan to build the world's largest battery in just 100 days (or it's free!), and much more, including a Phoenix weatherman who has been lying to his viewers --- over our public airwaves --- about global warming...in the middle of yet another record heat wave...

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Lots of breaking news today on The BradCast, including the Cleveland, Ohio court which has now found probable cause to recommend murder charges in the police killing of 12-year old African American Tamir Rice; and, yet another huge security breach at a federal website. (But don't worry, Internet Voting is still totally safe, right?); Rep. Alan Grayson and other progressives say it's time to "burn up the phones" to stop TPP "Fast Track" authority in the U.S. House; And the climate science denying, "free speech loving" loons at Heartland Institute toss out an environmental journalist from their 10th annual pretend "Climate Change Conference".

Then, speaking of freedom of the press, we talk with Vice News' investigative reporter Jason Leopold on new information he's obtained on the U.S. drone killing of U.S. citizen Samir Kahn, as well as his own testimony (full video here, written testimony here [PDF]) before the U.S. House Oversight Committee last week in regard to the Obama Administration's "slow-walking" of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. He tells both them and me about the "thousands" of requests he's filed as a journalist and has had to sue to try and see fulfilled; the irony involved in his entertaining testimony before Republican legislators; and just some of the crazy news he made in the bargain.

Plus: don't miss the saddest story you'll ever hear about poor Rick Santorum's run for the 2016 GOP Presidential nomination. All on today's BradCast!...

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The BradCast really lives up to its name today, as I interview U.S. Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA30) on his remarks reported by The Hill today, charging that President Obama's support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) suggests he is not in touch with "the real world".

Rep. Sherman tells me that he believes the proposed (and still secret) trade pact is "a continuation of the worst trade policies in the history of mammalian life." He explains how those policies have failed the U.S. "Over the last 30 years we've gone from being the number one creditor nation to the number one debtor nation. The number one surplus nation, to the number one deficit nation in history."

"It's perhaps a coincidence, perhaps not," the Congressman tells me, "but just when our economy is getting to the point where you might see a few raises, we have this opportunity to enter into this agreement which will assure wage stagnation for at least another decade."

In regard to the secrecy surrounding the proposal, the Congressman bemoaned that it's a "one-sided propaganda machine where we get classified briefings from Administration experts and they're able to say 'I'm an economist. I've read and re-read every part of it and here's why it's great!'" But those who oppose it, he says, must "start by saying, 'I haven't been allowed to read it, but here's what I think'."

Sherman goes on to explain other concerns about the agreement, including money that he says will come out of medicare and currency manipulation by China and Japan, which the agreement does nothing about. "China gets 80% of the benefits of this deal," without even needing to be a party to it, Sherman argues. He also explains how you can help stop the deal. [Hint: He says call your Congressmember and then call them again at 202-224-3121.]

Also in the show, I explain again why I believe we're on the cusp of a Progressive Era in this country and a bunch of listeners call in to tell me whether I'm right or wrong about that...

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Since the entrance of Sen. Bernie Sanders into the race for the 2016 Democratic Presidential nomination (and even well before), we've been discussing the concept of the "democracy deficit", defined by Noam Chomsky as the significant gap between the policy positions of the electorate and their "representatives", occasioned by the manner in which, as he argues, "elections are skillfully managed to avoid issues and marginalize the underlying population…freeing the elected leadership to serve the substantial people."

An article by Kevin Cirilli in The Hill last week, "Banks brace for Bernie Sanders" provides yet another opportunity to examine that troubling paradigm and the well-organized role the nation's corporate elite play in it.

While an effective, issue-based campaign from a self-declared "democratic socialist" like Sanders could otherwise serve to galvanize a bottom-up, small "d" democratic revolution at the polls, The Hill fails to so much as suggest that Wall Street is in any way concerned about what might transpire if Sanders were actually to secure the Democratic Party Presidential nomination. "He poses no real threat to the former secretary of State’s eventual nomination," Cirilli writes, citing the self-fulfilling prophecy of the elusive "conventional wisdom".

Instead, quoting one banking lobbyist after another, each who marginalize Sanders, the DC-based publication reports only that "Wall Street is worried that Sen. Bernie Sanders’s vigorous calls for banking industry reform will pull Hillary Clinton to the left, as the two presidential candidates battle for the 2016 Democratic nomination"...