On today's BradCast: It's been less than two weeks since he ordered the U.S. military invasion of a sovereign nation, killed about 80 people, kidnapped their leader and his wife to put them on trial for something or other here in the U.S., claimed he now "runs" their country and controls their natural resources, to exploit and sell as he pleases, the money from which will be held in offshore bank accounts controlled by him. Oh, and he's now declared himself "Acting President" there. And we almost don't discuss any of it anymore, because he's moved on to his next several imperial conquests, not to mention his deadly militarized assaults of thousands of people who live in U.S. cities, including American citizens. As Jon Stewart recently asked in exasperation, "What are we even doing here?!" Good question, Jon. [Audio link to full program follows this summary.]

Before we try to make some kind of sense --- any kind of sense --- of all of that, a few other news items of note today...

• And then they came for the journalists... Donald Trump's FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter on Wednesday, seizing her laptops, her phone and her smartwatch, as part of a supposed classified documents leak investigation requested by the Pentagon. The Post's Executive Editor described it as an "extraordinary, aggressive action [that] is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work." The New York Times characterized the raid on a journalist's home as "a significant escalation in the Trump administration's tactics in seeking information from the news media." The journalist, Hannah Natanson, as AP explained, "has reported extensively on the federal workforce and recently published a piece describing how she gained hundreds of new sources --- leading one colleague to call her 'the federal government whisperer.'"

• Here we go again?... In Qatar today, some personnel at a major U.S. air base that houses thousands of troops are reportedly being advised to evacuate immediately, amid growing unrest in Iran, the killing of hundreds of anti-government protesters by the ruling regime in Tehran, and Trump's vows to those protesters that "help is on the way." The base, Al Udeid Air Base outside of Doha, was targeted in Iran's response to the U.S. attack on nuclear facilities last July.

Then, as Mad King Trump saber rattles with both Iran and, perhaps even more incredibly, our NATO ally of Greenland, there is still the matter of his recent invasion of Venezuela less than two short weeks ago, and the power vacuum left in its wake as he tries to convince reticent American oil companies to go plunder the nation's vast oil reserves.

None of it is lawful. And, of course, none of it makes any sense. But, also, none of it is over, even if he, we, the media have, for the moment, moved momentarily on to other Trump-induced nightmares.

"This isn't close to over," argues my guest today, NICHOLAS GROSSMAN, International Relations professor and political scientist at the University of Illinois. He is quick to compare Trump's rush to praise himself for the attack and abduction of Venezuela's President, Nicolas Maduro, to George W. Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech in 2003, just after the initial assault on Iraq, before the nation would quickly devolve into years-long, deadly chaos and violence.

"Tactically," Grossman concedes, the operation in Venezuela "was very impressive. But not strategically so." He describes reports in recent days of runs on banks, stores, and paramilitaries in the streets, arguing that the "competitions for power" are just beginning. "The situation is likely to devolve rather than stabilize. Or just have a spate of violence, and then at which point the regime re-stabilizes. It's unclear why that would be better than where it was with Maduro in charge."

Grossman, who teaches classes on terrorism insurgency, national security policy and 21st century technology and warfare, wrote about Trump's unlawful assault last week, detailing how it is likely to make things worse, not better, in Venezuela, the United States, and elsewhere in the region.

Moreover, he tells me today, despite Trump's rhetoric, all of this is unlikely to result in a rush of American oil companies to exploit the nation's resources. "This is where the lack of any sort of follow-on plan creates such a problem," says Grossman. "There is not a reliable security situation there, especially long term. There's not reliable rule of law." Add that to a glut of oil already on the market keeping prices (and profits) low; a particularly dirty and difficult-to-refine crude available there; and it seems unlikely that any of this will actually pay off for anybody.

So, why, in fact, was it done in the first place? On that, argues Grossman: "It doesn't really need to be only one reason. It's many things possibly at once. A lot of it, I do think, is demonstration of power. Because they can."

"Nothing Trump and his administration have done have seemed to conceive of national interest in the same standard way that Presidents, various leaders, voters of both parties, had in the United States for many years. There's 'because I can, because then people will be more afraid of me, because people will be more likely to pay me off.'"

He speculates on other explanations as well, and rings in on where Trump's militaristic tirade is likely to bring the U.S. next, even if things begin to further devolve in Venezuela at the same time.

"The biggest effect seems to be that it has emboldened him. And emboldened actors such as Pete Hegseth, where they don't think anybody can stop them. And they certainly don't care about violating norms, or the long term risks of upsetting the international order."

There is much more troubling stuff to chew over in my broad conversation with Grossman today. I hope you'll tune in...

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If the first week of the new year is any indication of what's to come, Year Two of the second Trump Presidency is going to be even more nightmarish than many of us have been warning. Several fresh nightmares along those lines are unfolding on today's BradCast, as the President of the United States' obliteration of the Constitutional Order and Rule of Law grows more violent and grotesque by the day. It may only be outpaced by his determination to destroy what is left of our livable planet [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

With Donald Trump's federal immigration thugs now shooting and murdering Americans at point blank range in American cities with impunity (by the dozens), it's clear that the Rule of Law at the federal level no longer exists. We're all gonna have to get used to that idea for a while I'm afraid. We've got several examples of that today.

FIRST... we're joined by JEAN SU, Senior Attorney and Director of the Energy Justice Program at the Center for Biological Diversity. She joins us today on the heels of last night's White House announcement Trump is withdrawing the United States from the nearly 30-year old bedrock international climate agreement that forms the basis for virtually every climate pact since then meant to stave off or mitigate the effects of our quickly accelerating climate crisis.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a treaty to which every single nation in the world is a member. It was originally signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and ratified unanimously by the U.S. Senate. On Wednesday night, however, Trump unilaterally declared he is withdrawing the U.S. from that pact and 65 other international organizations and treaties which, the White House said, "no longer serve American interests."

Su and the Center for Biological Diversity describe Trump's unilateral withdraw from the UNFCCC as unlawful and unconstitutional. "It is an illegal exit from the treaty," Su argues today. "The Constitution is crystal clear about how we can, as a country, enter treaties" with a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate for ratification. "But the Constitution is silent on the withdrawal of treaties. It's our legal view, along with other international law organizations, that no, it is not legal for a President to unilaterally undo what a unanimous Senate passed."

She characterizes the UNFCCC as "the 'mother ship' of all collective climate bargaining and negotiations around the world." The Paris Climate Agreement, for example, which is not a treaty, but a voluntary pact, was created in 2016 under that "mother ship" treaty in hopes of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Trump already pulled the U.S. from the Paris Agreement last year. Withdraw from the UNFCCC however, as Su tells me, would be even far more devastating to both the climate AND U.S. economic interests.

"The global climate treaty ends up being a place where different governments can negotiate economic deals and band together and say, 'We want the world to move off fossil fuels and towards a renewable energy future.' When you have the entire world and the global economy making those moves, the U.S. suffers by being a pariah on that. And in that way, U.S. consumers, citizens, we all suffer economically by being the odd-man out."

But other nations are quickly filling that vacuum. Trump's failure to lead on renewable energy and electric vehicles has allowed China to become the world's top manufacturer of both, as Trump tries instead to revive the dirty, deadly, dying coal and oil industries. "He has these partnerships with deeply entrenched corporate monopolists in this country, and he is literally going around the world pillaging it for those interests," says Su. "And it is an international security threat."

When she last joined us on the show just after Trump's second election victory in November of 2024, Su described him as a "climate-denying fascist" who would "strip the Environmental Protection Agency [and] the Civil Rights Division of the Dept. of Justice" until the "administrative apparatus" at both were "entirely smothered, stripped bare, and not functional in any way, in terms of actually protecting our environment and our health and safety." She couldn't have been more right about that, as evidenced over the past year. She also described, at the time, several "bright spots" she saw nonetheless. Today, we discuss some of those bright spots again to see if they remain as bright as she'd hoped they would back in late 2024.

Please tune in for a really informative conversation on all of the above and more.

THEN... Speaking of disrespect for our Constitutional Order and Rule of Law, a fifth U.S. District Court Judge today has now ruled that a fifth U.S. Attorney appointed by the Trump Administration is serving in the role unlawfully and in violation of the Constitution. John Sarcone III, the nation's top prosecutor in the Northern District of New York is "not lawfully appointed" as U.S. Attorney, according to the federal judge, who issued her opinion in a case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, attempting to quash grand jury subpoenas obtained by Sarcone seeking information on the two massive civil fraud cases James successfully brought against Trump and the National Rifle Association.

Meanwhile, over in the Eastern District of Virginia this week, a federal judge --- one appointed by Trump himself! --- took it upon himself to issue an order to Lindsey Halligan, giving her seven days to explain why she is still serving in the role of U.S. Attorney after a different federal judge, last November, found that she was unlawfully serving in the post. The judge's ruling last year resulted in the dismissal of revenge indictments obtained by Halligan at Trump's orders against both James and former FBI Director James Comey. Nonetheless, Halligan is still serving in the position, with one judge in the District even including an asterisk by her name whenever she is mentioned in court documents, denoting last year's ruling of her unlawful appointment.

With five top federal prosecutors illegally heading up the DOJ facilities in major jurisdictions (the others are New Jersey, Nevada and Los Angeles), it is clear that the Trump Administration and Attorney General Pam Bondi believe they have no legal requirement to follow any of the nation's laws.

FINALLY... With more lawlessness and ill-considered climate-related actions by the Administration, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Trump's unlawful Venezuela attack becomes even more unlawful; as the Administration announces thousands of layoffs at FEMA amid ever-worsening climate disasters; and as Los Angeles struggles to rebuild following two deadly, devastating climate change-fueled wild fires that destroyed thousands of homes one year ago this week...

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Things are not going well for the President of the United States. As revealed by the mostly breaking news stories covered on today's BradCast, today may be seen as one of the worst days he has ever had. Here's hoping for more such days. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

• Tuesday began pleasantly enough, with Donald Trump offering Saudi Arabia's crown prince a royal welcome to the White House in advance of a black tie dinner, despite the fact that the CIA determined that Mohammed bin Salman likely personally approved the 2018 bone saw murder of Washington Post journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi. After the regal parade of Saudi and U.S. flag-draped black horses and a rare flyover by six U.S. fighter jets to celebrate the arrival of the killer prince and major Trump Family business partner, Trump berated a reporter for daring to ask about the murder. He claimed, appallingly, that "a lot of people didn't like" Khashoggi anyway, that bin Salman "knew nothing about it", and, even if he did, hey, "things happen."

• Around the same time, on the other end of Pennsylvania Ave., victims of Trump's longtime best friend and convicted pedophile, the late Jeffrey Epstein, were rallying on the steps of the U.S. Capitol with the lead, bi-partisan co-sponsors of a bill mandating the Dept. of Justice release the "Epstein Files". One of the survivors, a Trump voter who was introduced to Epstein when she was just 14 years old, described the President as a "national embarrassment". The bill was finally to be voted on today, after months of attempted obstruction by both Trump and supposedly very Christian Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Today's vote happened only thanks to a Discharge Petition signed by a majority of House members (all Democrats, 4 Republicans) demanding it. Despite Trump's months of cover-up, blocking the DOJ from releasing the files that he could have ordered released in full at any time, the four sentence legislation was adopted nearly unanimously by the U.S. House in a 427 to 1 vote. Apparently, nobody other than Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) wanted to be regarded as having voted to protect pedophiles.

• Within hours, remarkably, the U.S. Senate, without debate, adopted the same bill by another veto-proof margin. The measure was passed by unanimous consent before heading to Donald Trump's desk for his signature. You think he'll hold one of his big signing ceremonies to do it?

• With all of that seemingly very good news, we echo the caveat I offered on yesterday's show. A provision in the legislation (the third of four sentences) allows the DOJ to "withhold certain information" including "materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation." As luck would have it, just last week, months after Trump's DOJ declared there was nothing left to investigate in the Epstein matter, and days before Trump would pretend to flip-flop to favor the bill, he asked his corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation into the involvement of his political foes with Epstein. She complied within hours, of course. On Sunday, Republican co-sponsor of the Discharge Petition in the House, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-LA), warned the new investigations might prevent the DOJ release of the files. Today, before the vote, at the presser on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) --- who deserves credit for taking on the President by keeping her name on the Petition --- warned same. That, after Trump's pretend change of heart on Sunday calling for the release of the files by instructing Republicans to vote for the bill so that lawmakers "can have whatever they are legally entitled to". The latter part of that phrase, observed David Kurtz today, is "doing a lot of work there."

• As rare as successful Discharge Petitions are in forcing votes on bills that the House Speaker refuses to bring to the floor, it happened yet again on Monday! A majority of House members, with the help of a few swing district Republicans signed on to force a vote --- within seven days, as required by House rules --- on a bill that would roll back Trump's Executive Orders earlier this year blocking collective bargaining rights for most federal workers.

• But things got even worse for Trump as today wore on. This time on the Gerrymandering Wars front. A three-judge federal appeals court panel in Texas blocked the new Trump-ordered gerrymander of the state's already gerrymandered U.S. House map, finding it to be an unlawful and unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Following a ten day hearing, the 2 to 1 ruling by the court panel, written by a Trump-appointed federal judge, blocked the new map from going into effect for the 2026 election --- at least for now. The new map was written by the GOP state Legislature to flip five, largely minority House seats from "blue" to "red" next year. It resulted in California voters recently adopting a new map, in an overwhelming statewide vote, to flip the same number of seats from "red" to "blue" in response. That map --- and perhaps a similar one now in the works by Democrats in Virginia --- will stay in place next year, unless otherwise blocked by a court for some reason. Texas' Republican Governor Greg Abbott vowed to appeal today's ruling to his friends on the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court.

• The ruling in the Lone Star State comes on the heels of the decision late last week by the Republican leaders of the Indiana state Legislature, to not redistrict the state's already very red U.S. House map in a Special Session this year, despite heavy pressure from Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. The decision resulted in social media threats by Trump against both men, and a swatting attack against one of them. Despite that dangerous situation just hours after Trump's initial threat --- and his laughable opposition to political violence --- he issued another similar one against Republican lawmakers in the Hoosier State on Sunday.

• Finally, also not great news for Trump in today's Green News Report with Desi Doyen, as Trump's joke of a FEMA Director is pushed out after just six months; the U.N. climate summit under way in Brazil (which the U.S. sent no representatives to) declares it will finally be taking on climate disinformation by the fossil fuel industry and its supporters (like Trump); and that, speaking of, new documents reveal Exxon has been quietly funding climate denial and disinformation campaigns across Latin American for years...

As noted, it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Donald Trump, which is generally a very good day for the rest of us, as described with much more context, detail, insight, color, sound and special effects on today's program. I hope you'll tune in...

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Okay. Lots of crime and corruption by the President of the United States and his criminal henchman and women on today's BradCast. The good news, however, is that most of it falling apart on him, because he's not even good at criming. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Most noteworthy among our coverage today...

• As Donald Trump threatens a distraction war of regime change against Venezuela, two human rights organizations released a damning report last week finding that more than 250 Venezuelan detainees that Trump shipped to the CECOT gulag in El Salvador earlier this year were subjected to "systematic and prolonged torture and abuse". That, despite the fact that just 3% of those disappeared to the known torture prison by the Administration had been convicted of any violent crime in the U.S.

• Trump's corrupt indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James are absolutely falling apart in court before several different judges and different pretrial motions. Attorney KEITH BARBER (who writes at Daily Kos as "Keith DB") is here to help us break down a remarkable 24-page ruling (PDF) issued today by a federal magistrate judge in the Comey case.

  After reviewing the grand jury transcript in chambers, Judge William Fitzpatrick determined that Lindsey Halligan, Trump's former insurance lawyer turned unlawfully-seated U.S. Attorney in Virginia, engaged in a "disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps" that appear to have violated Comey's rights in numerous ways.

  Among those rights violation, as Barber details, Halligan's apparent instructions to grand jurors that Comey's refusal to testify before them could be used to infer his guilt. That's a "clear violation of Comey's 5th Amendment rights," explained Barber in a posting at DailyKos today. Comey's rights were also violated, according to the judge, when the grand jury was instructed by Halligan that they didn't need to rely on the record presented to them. Rather, they could infer that the government had far better evidence to be presented later at trial.

  Not unlike the judge who wrote that those two instructions alone were "fundamental misstatements of law that could compromise the integrity of the grand jury process," Barber was flabbergasted.

  "It's unprecedented. That is one of those things that is like 'Prosecutor 101', which, of course, Halligan never took," he tells me. "I honestly can't believe she's that dumb, but she certainly acted that way. Normally the most faint whiff by a prosecutor before a jury --- including a grand jury --- that suggests that a defendant's unwillingness to testify imputes guilt is sufficient to result in a mistrial or dismissal of charges. That alone, by itself, should end the day for this."

  But there was much more from both the judge in this matter --- who has taken the extraordinary step of turning over the grand jury transcript to the defendants, as we discuss --- and from a separate federal judge who heard a separate pre-trial challenge last week, as combined from both Comey and James, regarding Halligan's apparently unlawful seating as U.S. Attorney.

  "This case will never get to trial," says Barber, regarding the Comey case. "If it doesn't get dismissed for this reason --- the misconduct before the grand jury --- then one of the others will kill it or the cumulative weight of all of these irregularities are going to cause the judge to toss it."

  "There's stupid, and there's corrupt," he quips. "And then there's stupidly corrupt. It's just ridiculous."

• Next... in a Sunday night social media posting, Trump appeared to flip-flop on his statement from just last week describing any Republican who would vote to release the Epstein Files as "stupid". In his Sunday post, however, Trump called on Congressional Republicans to vote in favor of pending legislation to release the Epstein Files. The legislation is likely to finally receive a vote in the House this week, that calls on the DOJ to release "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in DOJ's possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein."

  But, don't be fooled by Trump's seeming reversal, for at least two reasons. 1) Trump could order the release of those files today if he actually wanted them released. He doesn't need legislation to force him to do so. And 2) the legislation would allow the DOJ to withhold "materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation." While corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi announced several months ago that there were no more loose ends and nothing more to investigate in the Epstein matter following the jailhouse death of the child sex offender and longtime close friend of Trump, she announced last week that she was opening a new investigation last week into Democrats alleged to have been involved with Epstein. That announcement followed a public request from Trump for such a probe just one day earlier. So, yeah, vote to release the files if you like, but you can probably assume that anything that might incriminate Trump will be withheld so as not to "jeopardize an active federal investigation."

• Then, we open the phone lines to callers on what they think about the Trump/Epstein mess and whether they believe those files will ever see the light of day as long as Trump has the power to continue covering them up...

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Tying up a few loose ends as another insane week wraps up on The BradCast today. But with a few laughs along the way and a song to help us over the finish line. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Donald Trump's corrupted Dept. of Justice joined a federal lawsuit filed by the California Republican Party to block Prop 50 on Thursday. The statewide measure was approved by voters in a landslide just last week at the ballot box in response to Texas lawmakers' Trump-ordered gerrymander of their state's already gerrymandered U.S. House map. It is likely to result in five "red" seats in CA turned "blue" in next year's mid-year elections. But Trump's corrupt Attorney General, Pam Bondi, with the announcement of DOJ joining the suit, hilariously characterized the voter approved measure as "a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process." She is very concerned that it will "entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians". Specifically, white Californians. When the suit was originally filed last week, the response from Newsom's office: "Good luck, losers."

• The longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history is now over. At least until the end of January. We detail all the loose ends, takeaways as we head into another election year, and how the Congressional Democrats' fight to restore massive Trump/GOP cuts to health care that will spike costs for tens of millions of Americans by January 1 is continuing.

• All of that, as Trump's approval numbers continue to plummet. Now, even among Republicans, as just 33% of Americans approve of Trump's management of the federal government.

• In one election from last week that couldn't be called until today, progressive, self-declared democratic socialist Katie Wilson, a community organizer and first-time candidate, appears to have narrowly won the race to become Seattle's next Mayor. She defeated the Democratic establishment supported incumbent Bruce Harrell while running on an affordability agenda being compared to Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's in NYC. The contest foretells the fascinating battle emerging between the younger, more progressive and older, more centrist wings of the Democratic Party as we move into another critical election year.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, with news on the ongoing U.N. climate summit in Brazil (which the U.S. isn't even attending); Trump's newly reported plan to drill for oil off the coast of California (which Gov. Newsom describes as "dead on arrival"), and the 50-year anniversary of the tragic 1975 wreck of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, which inspired major, life-saving changes by NOAA (which Trump is decimating) and a haunting hit song by Gordon Lightfoot which also has a fascinating history that we discuss at the end of today's eclectic program...

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Today was Election Day for major contests in New York City, New Jersey, Virginia and California, not to mention about 30 other states which also held either statewide or local off-year contests. We'll have full reported results for you, of course, on tomorrow's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

In the meantime, there was a whole lot going on today, while America votes...

• Several polling places were temporarily closed in more than half a dozen New Jersey counties on Tuesday following threats, reportedly via email, ultimately determined by officials to be "non-credible". One local official suggested the emails may have originated "abroad", bringing to mind the emailed bomb threats that resulted in temporary evacuations of a number of polling places in at least five different battlegrounds states on Election Day during the 2024 Presidential election. Those threats were reported, at the time, to have come from IP addresses in Russia.

• Former Vice President Dick Cheney died on Monday at the age of 84. His family announced the news today. We share some thoughts.

• The Trump Administration has fired yet another government watchdog whose job it was to root out waste, fraud and abuse at a federal agency. This time, according to a Reuters exclusive, it was the acting Inspector General at the Federal Housing and Finance Authority (FHFA), whose Trump-appointed activist Director, Bill Pulte, has been issuing bogus criminal referrals to the DoJ about "mortgage fraud" purportedly committed by Donald Trump's political foes, such as New York Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA). The IG in this case, a 40-year veteran DoJ prosecutor, was said to have been in the process of notifying Congress that FHFA leadership was violating the law by refusing to cooperate with the Office of the Inspector General. To date, the Administration has fired almost 20 IGs at almost every major (and not-so-major) federal agency or department.

• Trump's corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi filed legal documents on Friday in hopes retroactively fixing some pretty huge problems with the weaponized political indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and NY A.G. Letitia James. The filings attempt to rewrite history regarding the corrupt and almost certainly unlawful appointment of Trump's former insurance lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, as Interim U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. She was expressly appointed to the position after Trump's previous USA either resigned or was fired for refusing to file the politically motivated charges demanded by Trump, due to lack of evidence.

• Trump, almost certainly looking at an embarrassing loss tonight in California's Prop 50 initiative --- which would temporarily rewrite the state's Congressional map in response to a Trump-ordered U.S. House gerrymander in Texas over the summer --- was already falsely claiming this afternoon that the contest was somehow "rigged". CA's Sec. of State called out his evidence-free bullshit in a statement late today.

• Speaking of the Gerrymandering Wars kicked off by our desperate and incredibly unpopular President, Gov. Wes Moore, in the Democratically-controlled state of Maryland, announced a new Commission to consider jumping into the redistricting game before 2026. Maybe.

• Voting Rights advocates had a big victory on Friday, as one of two federal judges overseeing different lawsuits against Trump's bogus election-related Executive Order, issued a permanent ban on his attempt to mandate proof of citizenship documents by those registering to vote with the national voter registration form. The judge made clear --- as we did when Trump originally issued his dumb EO --- that Presidents have zero legal or Constitutional authority regarding elections.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with a grim humanitarian crisis brewing in Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean following last week's monster Hurricane Melissa; record rainfall in New York City; incredibly alarming glacial retreat in Antarctica; and the Trump Administration's Godfather-like thuggery used to block the world's first-ever emissions rules for international shipping...

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Well, buckle up for today's jam-packed BradCast. Though you might need a shower after a portion of today's show regarding new details on Trump and Epstein. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... We're joined by financial investigative journalist, author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect, DAVID DAYEN, to discuss two remarkable farm related, shutdown related stories he broke this week.

The first regards the need for Congress to approve billions of dollars in bailout money for U.S. farmers after Donald Trump's tariff-sparked trade war with China and other countries has decimated the U.S. farm industry. He had to do the same thing during his first term as well. "The reason he needs to bail them out again in the second term is for the same reason as the first term --- the consequences of Trump's own policies," Dayen explains. "The tariffs that have been imposed on China has created a very inevitable and obvious backlash."

Maddeningly, the Trump Administration just granted $20 billion dollars in foreign aid to Argentina, run by a fellow autocrat, which is now making huge bank by taking over exports to China of stuff like soy beans, a key U.S. farm commodity that China --- previously our largest customer --- will no longer buy from the U.S., thanks to Trump's tariffs.

"Think about this," says Dayen, "we've paid off Argentina. Argentine farmers are undercutting U.S. farmers in the global market. And now we're paying off U.S. farmers to compensate for that."

But in order to provide that bailout to U.S. farmers (and Big Ag), Trump and Republicans need buy-in from Democrats. Dayen posits that this might be a path toward ending the government shutdown as Dems are fighting to reverse huge Trump/Republican cuts to the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare. Republicans could agree to restore health care funding while Dems could agree to bail out farmers.

The second story Dayen offers this week, is a stunner. Trump's own Department of Labor published a little noticed, but startling admission in the Federal Register last week, asserting that Trump's own immigration policies now threaten a farmworker crisis and significant "risk of supply shock-induced food shortages." As the Dept. explains in the Register: "The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers."

An astonished Dayen tells me: "How remarkable it is that you have Trump's Labor Department saying that Trump's immigration enforcement is causing such disruption that we may not have enough food in America. That is just remarkable to behold!"

The agency goes on to concede "this threat will grow", unless they are allowed to enact a rule that reforms our H-2A guest worker program to allow more foreign farmworkers to come into the U.S., but with lower wages than currently allowed. That, Dayen reports, will also depress wages for U.S. citizen farmworkers in the bargain.

But are any of the DOL's claims true? Tune in for Dayen's response, based on his reporting with experts, labor unions and farm workers.

ALSO TODAY... A whole bunch of news, some of it breaking as we went to air...

• Israel and Hamas have apparently agreed to a pause in their horrific two-year long war, to allow for a long-awaited release of remaining Israeli hostages; a pull-back of Israeli troops in Gaza; and the long-overdue restoration of humanitarian aid to the war-torn enclave. There remains as much unknown as known about the deal, as reportedly brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the U.S., among others. Naturally, Trump wants to take all the credit. The framework for stage one of the plan appears to be moving forward, which is very good news if so. But, as we discuss, all of this should still be regarded with extreme caution for the moment.

• Just before airtime, news broke that the same Trump personal defense attorney who was recently appointed as the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia to indict former FBI Director James Comey just over a week ago, indicted another Trump foe today. New York Attorney General Letitia James was charged with two counts related to mortgage fraud. As in the Comey case, the grand jury charging document in the James case was signed only by Trump's personal attorney, Lindsey Halligan --- a former insurance lawyer who has never prosecuted a case --- after none of the long-time career prosecutors at the critical EDVA U.S. Attorney's office, apparently, would agree to bring these charges. The indictment also comes after Trump had ordered the Attorney General to indict her and Comey (and Sen. Adam Schiff) in a public message that he meant to post privately. Last year, James oversaw the massive fraud case against Trump, his companies and their executives (including his two eldest sons), that resulted in a half billion dollar verdict.

• Earlier this week, Trump's wildly corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared to take umbrage when she was asked by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) at a Senate oversight hearing, whether the FBI had found, during their investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, photos of Trump with young nude girls as the late child sex trafficker, according to public reporting, had kept in his safe and would show to certain people. Bondi refused, repeatedly, to answer the question. The next day, author Michael Wolff, who penned a tell-all book based on hours of observation and interviews inside the first Trump White House, and who reportedly spent hours interviewing Epstein, explained exactly what he saw in those photos that he claims were shared with him on two occasions by Epstein. This is the segment you may need to shower after.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, including the news that, despite hundreds of millions of dollars Trump is wasting to try and revive the deadly, dying U.S. coal industry, nobody wants to buy it! That, as solar and wind power are exploding in popularity around the world, as led by China, though not here in the U.S., thanks to our fossil fuel-funded loser Administration.

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As our corrupted U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term this week, its Chief Justice has a lot of explaining to do. Don't hold your breath for that explanation. At least from John Roberts. Our guest on today's BradCast, however, just wrote a book about him and has plenty to explain about him, what has happened under his leadership to our High Court, and the long road ahead toward reforming it. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Our guest today, the great LISA GRAVES, knows a thing or two about the Supreme Court, from her experience in all three branches of the federal government. She has served as a Deputy Asst. Attorney General at the U.S. Dept. of Justice, the Chief Counsel for nominations on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and as the Deputy Chief for the Article III Judges Division of the U.S. Court System. She has also exposed a lot of the corruption of the current members of the High Court, as a longtime researcher and as founder and Executive Director of True North Research.

Her brand new book is called WITHOUT PRECEDENT: How Chief Justice Roberts and his Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights. (Check out an excerpt here.)

In her most recent news letter, Graves argues that "we are in the midst of an unprecedented set of constitutional crises." She asserts that while Donald Trump's "belligerent and erratic orders --- and his appalling musings --- are shaking the foundations of our nation, it is the U.S. Supreme Court with John Roberts at the helm that is recklessly and aggressively emboldening him."

We begin there, after a long summer of the Roberts Court largely granting Trump's wishes, at least temporarily, in case after case after case on the Court's Emergency Docket (better described as its "Shadow Docket"), allowing him to largely get away with everything, no matter how radical, unlawful or unconstitutional. That, in unmistakably stark contrast to the Court's rightwing majority blockade of far less cataclysmic executive actions attempted by the Democratic Biden Administration when, for example, President Biden was barred by SCOTUS from offering about ten thousand dollars in school loan forgiveness during the COVID pandemic (as specifically allowed by law) or when attempting to regulate deadly emissions by power plants, despite the federal Clean Air Act's mandate to do exactly that.

Where the Roberts Court has allowed Trump to ignore the law and Constitution alike, the same corrupted majority blocked the Democratic President time after time, declaring a newly discovered "Major Questions" doctrine in the Constitution. It was apparently sitting right next to their invented "Presidential Immunity" clause they discovered last year, just in time to get Trump off the hook from very real crimes both retroactively and prospectively.

"If [Kamala] Harris had won, I don't think this Court would be bending over backwards to allow every new initiative of a Harris Administration," argues Graves. "What we saw when Biden was President, was the Roberts Court going out of its way to invent whole new magical phrases to try to stop signature initiatives of the Biden Administration, that were modest in themselves, and were even more modest when compared to the radical, reactionary, destructive actions of Donald Trump."

We've got a lot to speak to Graves about today, including all of that, as well well as the lies told by "documented liar" Justice Brett Kavanaugh about so-called "temporary" decisions made by the Court on the Shadow Docket; how Robert's nomination 20 years ago last month kicked off the full industrialization and weaponization of Republican Dark Money invested in seating Justices who would turn the Court, its precedents and our Constitution on their collective head; and how, even during his nomination hearings, John Roberts, a longtime anti-democratic, anti-Voting Rights Act Republican activist, was already playing the American people.

Graves also explains today what she sees as a long but viable path toward Court reform. "If we don't do so, it is at our peril. Because the Roberts Court and John Roberts is acting with such supreme arrogance in enabling Trump and in decimating our rights," she asserts. "It will continue to take blow after blow against our freedoms, against statutes that were passed to protect our rights, including efforts to mitigate climate change and so much more, until we reform this Court and pass laws to restore rights we've lost, and even expand upon them."

"So it's really a moral duty. It's a moral imperative that we not give in to hopelessness," she says, citing decades-long Civil Rights Era struggles. "Just because we can't do it this year, it doesn't mean we can't be building it. And, in fact, we must be building forward, to demand that we have representatives who are going to support reforming the Supreme Court, to protect our rights and to undo the damage that has been done by this packed, stacked and captured Court."

"The damage that has been done is done to us. We the people. So we have an obligation to work together to move those reforms into law in the years to come. Each year that we go forward, we hopefully will have the opportunity to have elections that will allow us to hold the people accountable who are advancing this extreme agenda and repel it. And in repelling it, have the opportunity to pass meaningful, real reform, the reform that's needed as well as the substantive restoration of rights, and expansion of rights, that is every American's rightful inheritance."

ALSO TODAY... U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is not just a Trump sycophant and corrupted tool. She is also a horrible human being, as she demonstrated over and over again today in obnoxious testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in her first oversight hearing as U.S. Attorney General.

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Elections, crime and voter suppression. Three of our favorite topics here on The BradCast, all of which we cover in several different ways and several different cases on today's show. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

As I described as a virtual certainty on yesterday's program, the federal government did indeed shutdown this morning as of 12:01am. Republicans, who control the White House and both chambers of Congress --- and who could keep the government open all by themselves --- have chosen to shut it down, rather than negotiate with Democrats. For their part, Democrats want to prevent Republicans from spiking health care costs for tens of millions of Americans as of January 1. Short of a deal to prevent that, Dems seem determined to avoid helping Republicans pass a new spending bill. (Which, did I already mention, Republicans could do all by themselves? Even in the U.S. Senate.)

This is likely to go on for a while. The Trump Administration is hoping to hurt as many Americans as possible in the bargain, and is violating federal law by posting notices on every single page of federal government websites (which are supposed to be strictly non-partisan), like the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), falsely claiming: "The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government." Completely unlawful. But, as we know by now, Donald Trump doesn't care about Law and Order or the Rule of Law.

In the meantime, voters may have something to say about all of this in several states next month and in all 50 states next year. So, rather than offer policies the American people might like, Republicans at Trump's corrupted, weaponized Dept. of Justice are hoping to help him rig next year's midterm elections instead.

In the battleground state of Nevada, Trump's U.S. Attorney, Sigal Chattah, according to an exclusive report last night from Reuters, is asking DOJ to help Republicans by investigating "voter fraud" claims made by the state Republican Party and to investigate organizations that help to elect Democrats. Chattah was formerly the state Republican Party Chair. She is also seeking to drop the cases against the GOP Fake Electors in Nevada, who tried to help Trump steal the 2020 election. Chattah was the personal attorney for one of those Fake Electors, even as she, as a federal prosecutor, is now trying to undermine the case against them rather than recusing, as required by DOJ ethics rules, from such cases.

Tune in for more of Chattah's corruption today. But amusingly, a George W. Bush-appointed federal Judge ruled just last night that she is unlawfully serving as the top federal prosecutor in the state as Acting U.S. Attorney beyond the 120 days allowed for someone to hold that position without Senate confirmation.

And, speaking of the failed GOP attempt to steal the 2020 Presidential election, a federal judge late last week found that MyPillow CEO and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell defamed the election technology company Smartmatic at least 51 different times while falsely asserting that the election vendor interfered with the 2020 election to steal votes from Trump and give them to Joe Biden. The only jurisdiction in the entire nation where Smartmatic's voting systems were used that year was in Los Angeles County, where Biden won 71% of the vote. Smartmatic and another company, Dominion, have either won or struck multi-million settlements in every defamation case that each has brought so far against three different rightwing media outlets (Fox, Newsmax and One American News) and several of Team Trump's 2020 MAGA election deniers, such as Lindell. (In a side note, the MyPillow dude says he is now preparing to run for Governor in Minnesota next year against Democratic Gov. Mike Walz! That should be fun!)

AND THEN... Earlier this year, Trump's DOJ ordered 27 mostly Democratic-controlled states to turn over their entire, unredacted statewide voter registration databases to the federal government for unspecified reasons. The Department's Civil Rights Division (which has been turned on its head under Trump) is demanding the entire files, including unredacted personal and sensitive information such as Social Security and Drivers License numbers, etc., for every registered voter. The reasons are unclear, and most states have refused to turn the files over. But now the Department is suing at least eight of those states, including California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania for those files.

Our old friend ARI BERMAN, best-selling author and National Voting Rights Correspondent at Mother Jones, has been covering this story and joins us today to help us try to make sense of it.

The DoJ is claiming in their lawsuits that the states in question are somehow violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and the Civil Rights Act of 1960. We discuss all of this today with Berman, who describes the weaponization scheme as of a piece with the GOP's broader "voter-suppression agenda" (which he details in full in MoJo's cover story this month.) Among the questions I've got for him today...

• Why is the Trump Administration demanding access to these databases and the sensitive information within them in the first place?
• What are they accusing the states of having done, in their claims that they have somehow violated three of the nation’s landmark voting rights related laws?
• If it's a fishing expedition regarding claims of voter fraud and non-citizens supposedly voting illegally, didn’t the Trump Administration already try (and fail) to show the very same thing with their quickly disbanded "Election Integrity" Commission during Trump’s first term, when our delusional President was falsely insisting he actually won the popular vote in 2016 but for some 3 million unlawful votes he pretended were unlawfully cast against him in the very blue state of California?

Lots to discuss with Ari today! Hope you'll tune in!...

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September 30th: A date that will live...next week. Apparently, it all comes down to next Tuesday. On today's BradCast, among other things, we detail why September 30th is so important to not one, not two, but three major stories in the news today. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among those stories...

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to an exclusive report today from WaPo and later confirmed by others, has ordered hundreds of the U.S. Military's top generals and admirals --- and their top enlisted advisors --- stationed in the U.S. and at commands across the globe, to convene for an "urgent" in-person meeting at the U.S. Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, next Tuesday, September 30th. None of the military personnel have been told why the meeting has been called or why those leading important posts around the world couldn't simply attend via the Pentagon's secure teleconferencing system. Some officials are concerned about national security issues in the event that something breaks out next week, while the top leaders posted to Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific regions are back in Virginia, meeting with Pete for some unknown reason. Hegseth has been firing scores of top military brass in recent weeks, and has pledged to cleanse at least 20% of the top officers corps, particularly those he believes may not share the same political beliefs as the Administration, at what is supposed to be a non-political institution. One source quipped that next Tuesday's mysterious meeting is "being referred to as the general squid games."

• That mysterious military meeting, on September 30th, happens to come on the final day of the federal government's 2025 Fiscal Year, when, if Republicans don't agree to a spending deal with Democrats, the government will shut down and begin furloughing federal workers as of midnight. Democratic leaders are insisting that any spending deal include the extension of enhanced premium support for some 25 million Americans who enjoy access to healthcare via the Affordable Care Act; the restoration of draconian Medicaid cuts enacted in the Republicans' "Big Beautiful Bill"; and a mechanism to ensure Donald Trump and/or Congressional Republicans don't simply rescind any spending agreed to by Democrats after they help Republicans reach the 60 votes needed for passage in the Senate. For their part, Republicans aren't even trying to negotiate with Democrats. Earlier this week, Trump used an insane, horseshit-fill social media post to call off the White House meeting previously scheduled with Democratic leaders today. And now the Administration has issued a memo to federal agencies suggesting they plan "mass layoffs" if the government shuts down next week, as seems almost certain at this point. Democratic Leaders Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries in the House, however, say they aren't falling for the Administration's "lawless" threats. They have good reason for that argument.

• This morning, CNN published a report (apparently based on a single, Administration-friendly source), claiming that Attorney General Pam Bondi had "reservations" about indicting Trump's political foe, former FBI Director James Comey, as Trump has publicly insisted she do. I was busy explaining why you should be skeptical of the reporting on Bondi's supposed "concerns", and why any such indictment of Comey would be wildly corrupt (no matter the charges), when news broke mid-show that, yup, Comey has now been indicted. Why is September 30th important to this story? Well, it was on September 30th, 2020, that the Administration is claiming Comey lied to Congress regarding the DOJ's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The five-year statute of limitations to bring Trump's revenge charges (as weak as they clearly are) against Comey, runs out as of next Tuesday, September 30th, 2025, five years after his contested remarks to Congress. Thus, Trump's corrupt remarks to Bondi over the weekend: "We can't delay any longer … JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!"

• In non-September 30th related news, a federal judge this week ordered the Trump Administration restore more than half a billion dollars worth of federal research grant funding to UCLA. The funding, appropriated by Congress but unlawful blocked by the Administration, is earmarked for medical research grants on Parkinson's disease, cancer, cell regeneration in nerves and other areas meant to improve the health of Americans. Trump had previously offered to settle his ridiculous claims of discrimination and antisemitism against UCLA, if the University of California system coughed up $1 billion dollars and instituted favored Administration social policies. Gov. Gavin Newsom described the attempted shakedown as extortion. This week, a federal judge declared it almost certainly in violation of the federal Administrative Procedure Act.

• And finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, on the heels of Trump's insane anti-renewable energy, pro-fossil fuel rant at the United Nations this week; and much more...

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So much Team Trump criming, so little time to cover it all on today's BradCast. But we try. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Over the weekend, MSNBC broke the news, followed by confirmation from New York Times, that Donald Trump's so-called 'Border Czar', Tom Homan, was caught on tape last September accepting $50,000 in cash --- in a takeout food bag --- from undercover law enforcement officials posing as businessmen. The sting came about after the target of a separate corruption probe tipped off officials that Homan was accepting bribes in exchange for lucrative border security contracts in a new Trump administration, presuming he won last year's election.

After Trump took office, he tapped Homan to oversee his mass deportation of migrants, a scheme that, they had promised, would focus on removing "the worst of the worst" criminals. Instead, the majority of deportees have no criminal record, but the guy running the program has apparently been caught on tape accepting a cash payoff before returning to office.

The investigation into Homan, which reportedly began in the summer of 2024 under the Biden Administration's DOJ, was summarily closed after Trump returned to power by Trump's former criminal defense attorney turned Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, and his FBI Director, Kash Patel. One of Trump's other personal attorneys, Emil Bove, who served as a top DOJ official until recently being confirmed by Republicans in the U.S. Senate as a federal judge, also reportedly had a hand in shutting down the probe of Homan.

A DOJ spokesperson described the investigation as "blatantly political" and an effort to target "President Trump’s allies rather than investigate real criminals and the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our country," claiming the investigation "found no evidence of illegal activity."

Over the same weekend that story broke, Trump sent what appears to have been meant as a private message to his Attorney General Pam Bondi, effectively ordering her to bring criminal charges against three of his top political foes, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey, and California U.S. Senator Adam Schiff. The message addressed to "Pam", seemingly meant to be private, was instead posted publicly by Trump on his own failing social media website.

We're joined today for insight on all of this by RANDALL D. ELIASON, former chief of the DOJ's Fraud and Public Corruption Section at the U.S. Attorney Office in the District of Columbia. He now teaches white collar crime at George Washington University Law School and pens the Sidebars Blog newsletter.

Is there any reason to believe the DOJ and FBI were right to drop the bribery probe against Homan, in which it seems he was caught dead to rights taking a cash bribe according to multiple reports?

"It's really impossible to know without knowing exactly what's on the tape. It would all come down to what he said and what he agreed to do in exchange for the cash," Eliason tells me today. "But I will say that accepting $50,000 in cash in a fast-food bag is kind of an indication of corrupt intent, that the recipient knows something shady is going on. So you've got to say at a bare minimum, there's a substantial basis to conduct additional investigation." Reportedly, that's exactly what DOJ was doing until Team Trump shut it all down.

"This line coming out from the White House and the DOJ that there was no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing, that doesn't hold water," he argues. "There's clearly something fishy going on here when you're taking fifty grand in cash in a Cava food bag. So there's certainly some smoke there." But, he further explains, "the Supreme Court has made the federal bribery statute so narrow" there are a number of ways Homan could get off the hook. Of course, the fastest way is to have friends at the DOJ willing to corruptly dismiss the entire matter.

We discuss that in detail, along with what Eliason describes as an extraordinary break from decades of norms and tradition with Trump's "private" message to his A.G. regarding bringing charges against his perceived political foes.

"Trump sees the Justice Department as a tool that he can use to punish his enemies and reward his friends," charges Eliason. "And this historical, very important norm that politics is kept separated, that the Justice Department is kept independent from the White House because we don't want politics to influence criminal investigations and criminal prosecutions, has just been flipped completely on its head and thrown out the window. It doesn't exist anymore under this administration."

"He is trying to use the Justice Department to go after his political opponents. And he also uses it to reward his friends. Whether it's Homan, or [Mayor] Eric Adams in New York City, or all the January 6 rioters, pardoning all of them. It's one of the most discouraging things that is happening in this administration --- the complete gutting of the law."

"This is really scary stuff," adds Eliason. "This idea that the President can order a prosecutor to bring criminal charges, and if he doesn't, he'll fire you and put someone in place who will. It's unthinkable to anyone who has worked as a federal prosecutor. It's directly contradictory to the mission and ethical obligations of a federal prosecutor. It would have been completely unheard of before now."

It is all of a piece, he explains, with "many things that are going on at the Justice Department that just breaks the hearts of those of us who worked there and love it."

Finally, breaking news just before airtime today on Trump's FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's outrageous threat last week against Disney/ABC and their affiliate stations to take away their broadcast licenses unless they cancel Jimmy Kimmel's late night show after comments Kimmel made that they didn't care for regarding the recent murder of Republican activist Charlie Kirk. After enormous public blowback against Disney following last week's "indefinite suspension" of Jimmy Kimmel LIve, news broke late today that Kimmel will now be returning to air as of Tuesday night. Looks like public pressure, a torrent of cancelled Disney+ subscriptions and the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment may have won this round, at least partly...at least for now. Since getting off air, Sinclair Broadcasting, a rightwing outlet that owns more than 35 ABC affiliate stations and is seeking favors from the FCC, has announced they plan to air news programming instead of Kimmel's show beginning on Tuesday night...

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Today on The BradCast (my last until next week, see "NOTE" below), a full week after the awful murder of Republican activist Charlie Kirk, the political ramifications --- and opportunism --- is becoming quite clear. And it all has a very familiar echo to those of us, including my guests today, who were around and paying close attention 24 years ago this month. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Back then, an unpopular President in the first eight months of his term saw his political fortunes reversed in the aftermath of the horrific terror attacks on September 11, 2001, as much of the nation "rallied around the flag" in support of that President, in response. His Administration, however, ran way too far with its presumed mandate in subsequent months and years. Innocent Americans themselves came under suspicion and paid a price (sometimes large, sometimes small) for their words and their political beliefs. The nation ended up committing itself to (at least) two, years-long, unwinnable foreign wars. And actions taken against Americans in the name, supposedly, of national security would bend norms, laws and Constitutional rights beyond recognition at times.

Charlie Kirk has yet to be buried. And yet, his most powerful ally, a very unpopular Donald Trump, his Administration and their supporters are already targeting their fellow Americans for retribution --- for a crime they had nothing to do with.

After years of describing Democrats as "fascists" and "the enemy within", Trump now claims that Kirk's death was the "tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree...in the most hateful and despicable way possible." In making his case, he cites "radical left" "scum" and unnamed "leftist organizations" as being responsible, vowing to target, prosecute and defund them for a crime that nobody other than the shooter seems to have carried out.

On Monday, Trump's Vice President, J.D. Vance, declared "left-wing extremism" was to blame and that "the data is clear" it is "not a both sides problem." It is "people on the Left" that are to blame for rising political violence. That, after the Trump Dept. of Justice removed a National Institute of Justice report from its website that finds white supremacist and far-right violence "continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism" in the United States. The study (now archived here) was there on the day that Kirk was killed. It was disappeared by the Trump Administration thereafter.

Speaking to Vance on the very same show on Monday, Trump's top White House political czar, Stephen Miller, furiously vowed "to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks" and to "use every resource we have at the DOJ, Homeland Security and throughout this government to dismantle and destroy these networks."

Of course, there are no known "networks", at this time, tied to Kirk's murder in any way. But that's okay. Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, promised on Monday to "absolutely target" anyone who uses "hate speech" that she doesn't like in the wake of Kirk's death. When asked about Bondi's remarks by an ABC News reporter on the White House lawn, Trump accused him of having "a lot of hate in your heart" and threatened: "Maybe I'll come after ABC."

(Shortly after we wrapped today's program, news broke that ABC was "indefinitely" pulling its popular late-night show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The announcement came after Trump's FCC chair threatened to "take action" against ABC and its owner Disney, and suggesting he might pull broadcast licenses from affiliate stations. The threats were apparently in response to Kimmel's charge on Monday that MAGA was "doing everything they can to score political points from" Kirk's death. Today, it seems, they scored another point. Though, to be fair, Trump said back in July, after taking credit for the recent cancellation of Stephen Colbert's top-rated late night show on CBS, "I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next." So, obviously all of this is just opportunism.)

Oh, and Rep. Clay Higgins, Chair of the Federal Law Enforcement subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter this week to the CEOs of six social media companies, (falsely) instructing them that they are required, by law, to remove comments regarding Kirk's assassination that Higgins and his compatriots might find offensive. He claimed the "restriction of public statements...is not an oppression of free speech [but] the protection of free speech." [Emphasis added for Orwell's sake.]

All of this sounds both familiar and chilling to those of us who lived through the aftermath of 9/11, including my guests today, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS' of the Professional Left Podcast.

"This isn't surprising," says Digby. "They've been telegraphing this since Donald Trump started running back in 2022, that they were going to go after 'the Left' and his enemies, 'the enemies of the state.' After the Kirk shooting there were MAGA people who were saying out loud, 'This is our Reichstag Fire,' looking for that moment they could use as an excuse to do what they were always going to do anyway."

"They have to start targeting people online who they said were insufficiently reverent toward Charlie Kirk, and getting them fired. So much more free speech. But that's the first step you take in this," she adds, citing similar threats from Republicans in the George W. Bush Administration back in 2001.

"I would like to thank the Reichstag Fire comparators for acknowledging they are Nazis," quips Driftglass, "because that's what the Reichstag Fire was. Way to go, guys!"

Citing similar blowback against those who disagreed with Bush and his wars after 9/11, Driftglass adds: "This didn't start with Donald Trump. They have been demonizing the Left as responsible for everything wrong with this country for at least the last 35 years. And the rhetoric has finally caught up with actual action being taken at the highest level of the White House."

"In Neuromancer by William Gibson," Driftglass observes, "he coined a phrase called the 'consensual hallucination.' That's what they [MAGA] are all engaged in. They have hallucinated into existence a vast leftwing conspiracy, sneaky liberal media, lots of awfulness that justifies everything they do. This has been set up for 40 years now, that the Left is always worse, always a threat, and always a justification for escalation against the 'enemy within.'"

There is, of course, much more on all of this on today's show, as both Digby and Driftglass join us for the full hour, including their insights on Trump's apparent attempt to start a war with Venezuela; his apparent attempt to start a war with Chicago; his laughable $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times and much more...

[NOTE: 'The BradCast' is off tomorrow due to an unavoidable medical appointment, though we hope to get a Green News Report out beforehand! Otherwise, see ya on Monday!]

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We're lucky to have a guest on today's BradCast who is able to offer a smart perspective on a whole bunch of legal stories breaking over the past 24 to 72 hours, because there has been a whole bunch of those stories tumbling in, regarding our crumbling court system and the Trump Administration's unrelenting assault on the Constitution and rule of law. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We're joined today to discuss all of them by KEITH BARBER, former lifelong Republican and attorney who now writes on legal matters at the progressive Daily Kos. I had initially asked him to join us to discuss his latest coverage of on an adverse ruling for the Trump Administration late last week in U.S. District Court.

In that case, the lower courts had previously put a hold on the Administration's attempted firing of thousands of government workers across dozens of federal agencies. The temporary injunction on the layoffs issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was meant to allow time for the lower courts to fully hear and try the challenge to the firings, as filed by several employees and their unions. But the injunction was overturned earlier this year by the Supreme Court, without explanation, on their "Emergency Docket", known by critics as the "Shadow Docket".

Before the injunction was blocked by the corrupted Supreme Court majority, it was meant to avoid irreparable harm to the workers by maintaining the status quo until a full trial on the merits could determine whether the firings were lawful in the first place. Late last week, as Barber reports, the court ruled [PDF] against the Administration, describing the government's case as a "sham" based on "fabricated" arguments and "chicanery". That said, thanks to the High Court's earlier ruling, lifting the lower court's injunction, last week's ruling comes largely too late to restore workers who lost their job. Many of the agencies in question have either removed those jobs since then or have been shut down entirely while the case made its way up and back down the judicial system.

The OPM case is just one of dozens like it, where lower court rulings --- meant to temporarily pause the Administration's unprecedented and seemingly unlawful actions until the merits of challenges could be heard --- were "temporarily" overturned by the High Court without explanation on the Shadow Docket as the cases proceeded below.

This same scheme has played out dozens of times in the eight months since Trump returned to office. Over mass firings of government employees, to very specific firings of decades-long experienced agency personnel for obviously (and unlawful) political reasons; to the complete or near-complete shutdowns of entire federal agencies and departments; to attempted Administration takeovers of supposedly independent federal Commissions; to attempted rescission of billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars in already appropriated spending by Congress; to mass roundups and deportations of migrants by federal agents; to the deployment of U.S. military into American cities against the wishes of state and local authorities. That's just to name a few of the major, unprecedented upheavals and attempted upheavals allowed to "temporarily" proceed by the corrupted Supreme Court majority, almost always in contradiction to lower U.S. District and Appeals Court rulings.

Many of those cases are now completing their full trials on the merits and/or being heard by appellate courts, with inevitable trips ahead back up to the Supreme Court for final rulings. As Barber details today, however, we can be almost certain that if the Supremes choose to take up those cases, they will most likely do so in order to overturn a lower court ruling on the merits against Trump. Otherwise, given the number of cases they must choose between hearing each year, they are likely to simply allow favorable rulings for Trump in the lower courts to simply stand as is. We' find out in the coming months.

Either way, Barber explains all of this by concurring with the argument I have been offering for quite some time. "We have a corrupt Supreme Court," he asserts. "Donald Trump corrupts everything he touches, to include the United States Supreme Court."

I had hoped to dig into related aspects of the OPM mass firing case (in which the Administration falsely claimed that the thousands of fired workers were laid off due to "poor performance") and what it portends in the months ahead. But a whole bunch of other legally related issues came tumbling in today and in recent days, which I was also able to discuss with Barber on today's program.

Among our additional topics for discussion today...

• Longtime federal prosecutor Maurene Comey filed suit against the administration on Monday for her recent firing. She argues it was solely (and unlawfully) due to a political vendetta by Trump. Comey is the daughter of James Comey, the former FBI Director famously fired by Trump during his first term in office.

• Attorney General Pam Bondi's recent vow to "absolutely target" anyone who dares use "hate speech" she doesn't like in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder. For the record, Kirk would have disagreed. "Hate speech does not exist legally in America," he posted on social media last year, adding "ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment." Bondi also recently vowed to prosecute businesses who choose not to print posters of Kirk, despite the 2018 SCOTUS ruling that a religious baker in Colorado could not be forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding.

• Terrorism charges were dropped today by a judge in New York court against the 27-year old man accused of murdering the CEO of UnitedHealthcare last December.

• In a 4 to 3 split ruling, the Georgia Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to hear Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' appeal to a lower court ruling removing her and her office from prosecuting the sprawling racketeering indictment against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants for their alleged efforts to steal the 2020 Presidential election in the state. While a state commission may now assign the case to a different prosecutor, they may choose not to do so or the chosen prosecutor may choose to drop the election interference case entirely. Willis' removal stems from a lower court ruling which determined she had had an inappropriate romantic relationship with a fellow prosecutor on the case.

• On Monday, Donald Trump announced his latest laughable defamation lawsuit against a major media outlet. This time, it's a $15 billion case against the New York Times for reporting which Trump, apparently, doesn't like. Barber describes the 85-page suit [PDF] as absurd. "I honestly think that Saturday Night Live or somebody should do a comedy sketch where the whole thing should be read out loud," he tells me. "It's nuts." That said, so were the ridiculous defamation suits against ABC News and CBS News, both of which chose to settle with Trump at the insistence of their corporate parents. The Times, however, has no such corporate parent. "I hope they don't settle this," says Barber. "I would expect that not only would they prevail, but they'd also get back all of their legal expenses."

And finally today, we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report on our newly endless summers (no, it's not just your imagination); billions of taxpayer dollars being spent on new subsidies set for the fossil fuel industry, thanks to Trump and the Republicans' newly passed budget bill; and the surging success of renewable energy, lead by China, pretty much everywhere across the globe...except in the U.S...

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We've got a bit more on today's BradCast regarding Team Trump's attempt to distract from the many failures of his Administration by hoping to frighten Americans with the deployment of military assets against those of us here in Los Angeles. Plus, we've got a number of other stories that I suspect they would be happy for us not to tell you about today. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The City of Angels continues to hang tough against the Trump Administration, even as horrible human and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, last night, described the city of nearly four million people as "a city of criminals". The pathetic insult against the nation's second largest city came after Trump federalized 4,000 California National Guard troops against the wishes of the state's Governor, Gavin Newsom, and deployed 700 U.S. Marines to L.A., purportedly to help ICE round up migrants as part of the Administration's by the San Francisco Chronicle from Noem to Fox "News" host turned SecDef Pete Hegseth, the DHS chief requests Hegseth order military troops to actively participate in arrests and detentions on U.S. soil, an apparent violation of the law, unless the President invokes the Insurrection Act first under certain circumstances. Her letter suggests the Administration is preparing to do exactly that. Or she doesn't understand how the law works. Or both.

In 2020, after George Floyd was murdered, spurring far larger protests than the relatively minor ones we've seen here in L.A. in recent days, Donald Trump insisted it would be against the law for him to federalize and deploy troops against the wishes of a Governor. "We have laws. We have to go by the laws," he insisted at the time. "We can't move in the National Guard. I can call 'insurrection' but there's no reason to ever do that. We can't call in the National Guard unless we're requested by a Governor."

Things change. Presidencies fail. The protests against the Administration in cities large and small are expanding by the day from coast to coast.

IN OTHER NEWS THIS WEEK covered on today's program...

• U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's brother Brad Bondi bombed --- and I mean bombed --- in his run to become President of the D.C. Bar Association. We discuss what that means and why it's important.

• SCOTUS did something right by voters, for a change --- this time in Pennsylvania --- against the wishes of the Republican Party which hoped to disenfranchise voters (as usual).

• MyPillow CEO and 2020 election conspiracy doofus Mike Lindell took the stand this week to double-down in his own defense during trial in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer. Since 2020, the bedding impresario and former crack addict has spent tens of millions to repeatedly echo evidence-free claims of a stolen election, including the false charge that Coomer was part of an "antifa" scheme to rig voting machines and steal the election from Trump. We've got much more for you today on all of this to remind you of many of Lindell's ridiculous lies, schemes, antics and evidence-free allegations. Though they are completely nuts, his own attorneys now seem to be hoping to use them in order to buttress his defense. Tune in for details.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, on toxic smoke from record, climate-change driven wildfires in Canada, threatening the health of residents in both their country and ours; more bad news about indoor air pollution; a new lawsuit against Big Oil for its role in a heat wave that killed an elderly Oregon woman; and the Trump Administration's curious attempt to bury a federal report on last year's decrease in climate warming carbon emissions...

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It's a bit of a roller-coaster ride on today's BradCast. We begin with some good election and Trump Administration accountability news. But while Trump's latest clownishly absurd attempted corruption may not ultimately work out for him, it serves as a reminder of the rough road ahead for justice and the Justice Department itself in these United States. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Some good news...

• On Tuesday, Omaha, Nebraska's Republican Mayor Jean Stothert was defeated in her run for a fourth term by Democratic challenger John Ewing Jr. He will become the first Black mayor of the otherwise "red" state's largest city. Stothert's attempt to leverage anti-trans hate against her opponent appears to have failed to win over voters.

• That news comes on the heels of last week's School Board elections in Texas (which we are finally catching up with today!), where book-banning, trans-hating right-wingers were voted off of School Board majorities in at least four of the largest districts in the state.

• In one of two good news updates to stories we recently covered on the show, a federal judge on Tuesday ordered some 200 federal workers fired by the Trump Administration from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) back to work. The workers ran the Coal Worker's Heath Surveillance Program which offers health screenings to miners who may have developed incurable Black Lung disease, and helps them find safer jobs and covers health costs if they have. The judge in the case, filed by two West Virginia miners afflicted with the disease, found the Trump Administration (remember when he used to pretend to love coal miners?) had no authority to unilaterally shut down the screening program mandated by the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. NIOSH workers were reportedly back on the job today after the U.S. District Judge issued her order yesterday.

• And, in another happy follow-up story, facing a lawsuit from farmers and First Amendment advocates, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) agreed to restore years of critical climate change date --- relied on by farmers and many others --- to its website, after disappearing it shortly after Trump took office.

THEN... I don't know if we should consider it "good news" or not, but it certainly looks like Trump's plan to accept a tricked-out $400 million "flying palace" jumbo jet as a "gift" from the Royal Family of Qatar, for use as Air Force One while in office and for his own personal use thereafter, ain't gonna work out for him.

Despite his loyalist Attorney General Pam Bondi --- formerly, a $115,000/month lobbyist for Qatar --- pronouncing that the "gift" would be neither a bribe nor a violation of the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause, banning gifts "of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State" to public officials, it appears she's only half right about that.

We're joined today by our old friend RANDALL D. ELIASON, former chief of the Fraud and Public Corruption section at the DoJ's U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. He is now a professor of white-collar criminal law at George Washington University and writes at his own SidebarsBlog, where he wrote about much of this today.

He explains that, thanks to recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, public officials may, in fact, now accept "gifts" of any size or amount from anybody, without violating current bribery statutes, so long as the official does not offer anything in return. Yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds. Eliason describes it as "absurd...but that's the Supreme Court's concept of corruption" now.

"The Supreme Court, over the last couple of decades, has narrowed public corruption laws so much that there's a strict requirement now of a link to a particular official act that you can identify and say this gift was because Trump agreed to do this in exchange," he tells me. "They could give him $400 million cash in his own bank account, and that's not a bribe anymore, unless they can link it to something he agreed to do in exchange."

"The fact is, the way the Supreme Court has interpreted bribery, it should be a bribe, but it's not, unless there was some agreement we don't know about by Trump to do something in particular in exchange. If it's just to cozy up to him, curry favor with him in general, because they are hoping for future things to happen, that's not a bribe."

"There's no question this is corrupt," he makes clear, "as most of us understand the term," but not a bribe. "Congress could have stepped in to amend those laws, but they haven't done that, for some surprising reason."

Trump's violation of the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause, on the other hand, with acceptance of a "flying palace", would be a different matter, Eliason agrees. Though the question becomes: who exactly has the legal standing to challenge that violation in a court of law?

"I think the bigger picture is that we can't rely on lawsuits to solve this problem," he argues. "It's going to take too long and get bogged down again. If there's going to be a response, it needs to be a political one. It needs to be enough people standing up and objecting and putting pressure on him that he cancels the deal. And ultimately the voters have to respond."

Much more on all of that today along with Eliason's reflections on what has happened to his beloved DoJ and the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. where used to work, soon to be led, most likely, by Fox News' whacked out "Judge" Jeanine Pirro --- and whether all of it can be put back together again when this madness ends...presuming it does.

"What's happening at Justice is terrible, and it's heartbreaking," he laments. "It violates everything that DOJ has stood for, for decades. They are pushing people out for doing nothing more than doing their jobs. Or those people are leaving, because they can't honorably stay there and do what they are being asked to do."

What would he have done had he still been at the DOJ under Trump? And will the institution be salvageable after this? Tune for his thoughts and insight on all that and much more...

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