Today on The BradCast: Out with the old, in with the new? We'll see. That's what seems to be suggested by the apparently remarkable results of New York City's Democratic Mayoral primary election on Tuesday. And we've got a lot to discuss about it with our guest today. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST, however, a bit of news on an issue that has been somewhat sidelined in recent days, thanks to the various and unrelenting idiocy of you-know-who. His second-term legislative agenda, wrapped into a single Republican bill known as the "One Big Beautiful Big Act", remains wildly unpopular as it works its way through the U.S. Senate, following House passage last month. But that doesn't seem to be stopping Republicans from attempting to pass it out of the upper chamber before the July 4th holiday next week.

The Senate draft of the bill currently slashes more than a trillion dollars from Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and the SNAP food nutrition program. It guts most of Joe Biden's landmark renewable energy credits and adds about $3 trillion to our national debt. All to help pay for some $4 trillion in tax cuts that go disproportionately to the wealthy and corporations. "If enacted," writes former White House budget advisor Bobby Kogan this week, "this bill would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history."

But, where it was approved by Republicans by a single vote in the House, the so-called Budget Reconciliation measure must meet strict requirements to be passed by a simple majority in the Senate, where otherwise 60 votes are needed for passage in the 100-seat chamber. This week, the Senate Parliamentarian offered her verdict on a host of measures tucked into the bill which, she says, do not pass muster under Senate rules for inclusion in a Reconciliation bill.

Among the provisions that must be struck (unless Senate Repubs decide to break the rules again), are draconian cuts to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that would cost American consumers hundreds of billions; a scheme to shift costs of SNAP food nutrition for low-income Americans to states; the gutting of a number of Biden-era emissions reductions rules and EV incentives; and a plan to sell off anywhere from 3 to 250 million acres of public lands, just to name a few of the (thankfully) nixed provisions.

Of course, Republicans are looking for ways around the Parliamentarian's judgements and the Trump Administration, meanwhile, is already moving ahead with its own plan to open up nearly 60 million acres of national forest land to road construction and development for its friends in the extraction industry.

THERE IS BETTER NEWS today, however, for progressives out of New York City, after 33-year old progressive Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, an Assemblyman and Ugandan-born Muslim, stunned the establishment with what appears to be a crushing victory over disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo in yesterday's Democratic primary election for Mayor. Despite being wildly outspent by the well-funded former Democratic Governor, who had previously been seen as the front-runner, Mamdani's numbers after the first round of counting in the Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) election, featuring 11 candidates, resulted in Cuomo's concession early on election night.

Mamdani led a joyful, populist campaign, focused on cost of living issues and calling for, among other things, an immediate rent freeze for all of the city's rent-stabilized tenants, the creation of a network of city-owned grocery stores focused not on profits but on "keeping prices low," free childcare, free buses, a higher minimum wage and more, to be paid for by new taxes on the wealthy.

As counting continues (though it looks pretty clear that Mamdani will win after all the rounds of RCV tallying are completed next week), establishment centrist Democrats are now deciding whether they will join with a new generation of progressives, such as the Bernie Sanders and AOC-endorsed Mamdani, or attempt to push back against inevitable and much-needed progress for their Party. Mamdani will still need to win this November against the current, unpopular and wildly corrupt Mayor Eric Adams, who vows to run as an independent, Republican nominee and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, and a potential independent run by Cuomo.

So, there is a lot to discuss about all of this on today's show, and no one better to discuss it with than our friend and longtime progressive author and journalist JOHN NICHOLS, National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation and co-author, with Sanders, of It's Okay to be Angry About Capitalism.

"If there was anybody who was out there as sort of the face of the establishment wing, this was it," says Nichols about Cuomo today, to whom he gives "credit" for seeing the writing on the wall early after returns were coming in last night. He also observes that "he did it in a way that clearly acknowledged he got beat, but left a little bit of a window that he could continue his campaign as an independent candidate" in November. He believes "he'll be pressured to do it by some of the establishment."

Nichols spent time in the days prior to the election with Mamdani and NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, a Jewish progressive Democrat seeking the same office. They cross-endorsed each other in the RCV election and campaigned together in its closing days. Nichols lauded both of them and explains why he believes Mamdani had the edge in the end.

"Mamdani ran a campaign that got to the heart of what people are worried about --- not just their own experience, but actually for the big city --- how can the city survive? So he went straight for the affordability issues." While Nichols recognizes the coming attempt to undercut the candidate from many sides (citing both NYC billionaire Michael Bloomberg and Donald Trump sharpening their knives, along with the corporate media), he argues that Mamdani, if he wins this Fall and has a successful run as Mayor, may "create a model for the Democratic Party for how to go forward. And it isn't just about opposing Trump. It's also about an agenda."

This could be "a powerful lesson for Democrats," he tells me. "The message from New York is very, very simple. Go bold. Be confident. Get above the chatter of cable TV, the insiders and everything like that. Speak directly to the people about what you want to do for them. Donald Trump figured that out a long time ago. Now you have a Democrat in New York City, the largest city in the country who, by all evidence, has figured it out also."

"If you go soft, if you go empty, if you wait for the memo from the consultants, then you haven't learned a thing," he warns.

There is, of course, much more you'll want to tune in for in my conversation with John today!...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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On today's BradCast: It's getting worse, not better --- and more deadly --- in the U.S. Senate. That, even though the House version is already wildly unpopular. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Over the past week, Republicans in the U.S. Senate have been releasing their updates to the budget bill passed by Republicans by just one vote last month in the U.S. House. Donald Trump's so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," is so named because he couldn't wait to adopt his second-term legislative agenda over several bills. It's all jammed into this one big, brutally cruel bill. That's the plan, anyway.

You may recall the House version slashed more than a trillion dollars from Medicaid and SNAP food assistance, likely to leave some 15 million low-income and disabled men, women, and children without access to health care and millions more without a measly $6 a day in nutrition assistance. In addition to gutting clean, renewable energy incentives for American families and companies --- adopted under Joe Biden, resulting in a manufacturing boom in the U.S. --- the House version of the bill increases the national debt by nearly $3 trillion dollars. All to help pay for $4 trillion in tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit the wealthy and corporations.

Recent polling finds the American public rejects the House bill by a nearly 2 to 1 margin, including large numbers of Republicans and independents. So, what has the U.S. Senate done to improve on the bill? It seems they have made most of it far worse, not better, beginning with the cuts to health care.

We're joined again today by BOBBY KOGAN, former Biden-Harris White House budget advisor and chief budget analyst in the U.S. Senate Budget Committee prior to that. We spoke with him a month or so ago, following passage of the House version. He is back with us today to discuss what has changed, improved or worsened with the GOP Senate's proposed version of the bill.

"The Medicaid cuts in the Senate version are more extreme than the cuts in the House version," he explains. "Simply more people kicked off, more states losing more money, and harsher work requirements" which, he details, have a proven record of not working.

It's not just Medicaid. Cuts to the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) "will kick 4.2 million people off of their health insurance. And then they are also going beyond the pre-Biden status quo, and that's another few million people kicked off."

Rather than fix all of that, the Senate bill simply makes things worse, he says. All told, the loss of health care, according to a recent analysis of the House version by the Yale School of Public Health, finds more than 51,000 people are likely to die annually that otherwise would not, but for these cuts.

"It's really basic logic," Kogan argues, even as he says Republicans become "indignant" when this is pointed out. "If you cut a trillion dollars of funding that is all about providing health coverage to people, then you better believe that with a trillion dollars less there will be fewer people covered. Some of those people will get really sick. Some of them won't be able to afford it. Some of them of won't get better, where they would have otherwise gotten better if they'd had coverage. This is basic logic. But, basically, Republicans are too afraid to admit that they don't think the money is worth it."

"Obviously this is bad on the merits," he continues. "But it's also wild that this bill would disproportionately hit a lot of people who voted for Trump. A lot of Trump supporters are on Medicaid. Those folks are going to be hurting."

But, it's not just folks on Medicaid or the ACA Exchanges who will be affected. The measure will result in a "double hit to the hospitals" which rely on payments from Medicaid to survive. Many of them are in rural areas, which disproportionately vote Republican as well. Many of them are likely to face closure for lack of funding, punishing everyone, no matter where they get coverage, in those areas.

So, why are Republicans in the Senate doubling down on this mess? Tune in for Kogan's thoughts.

He tells me that there has never been another bill like this in U.S. history, "where it is large cuts for low-income people at the same time they are doing tax cuts for the rich." He cites the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office analysis that "shows it would make the poorest Americans poorer while making the richest Americans richer, in the same bill. And when you incorporate the tariffs, it's only the richest who are winning." To be exactly, it is only the richest 10% of Americans who will gain. Every other American will lose.

"It's just a crazy bill," says Kogan, who is now Senior Director of Federal Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress. "It's a crazy thing to go to your constituents and say, 'You elected me to take from the poor to give to the rich, while increasing the deficit by trillions of dollars.' That's a crazy thing."

Crazy or not, it may very well pass out of the Senate, though Kogan says it can still be stopped. And, even if it does pass through the Senate, it will have to get through the House again, where it only passed by a single vote the last time.

He's got much more to say on all of this today. Please tune in. But, perhaps his most important message, once again, is to contact your Senators, no matter where you live, and let them know how you feel about this bill! Miracles happen, as Kogan illustrates today with his story of that night in the Senate in 2017, when he served on the Senate Budget Committee during Trump's first term, when Republicans were trying to kill the Affordable Care Act entirely. Dems thought it was done for. Until the moment when a sickly John McCain showed up to vote it down, saving health care for millions. It's why you never stop fighting.

ALSO TODAY...

• We don't have to wait for passage (or failure) of Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" before his policies undermine health care. His recent travel ban from 19 countries and visa restrictions are already preventing sick children from coming to this country for life-saving surgery and blocking thousands of new medical residents from overseas, relied upon by hundreds of hospitals across the country, from taking their post on July 1.

• And finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the Pacific hurricane season is off to an unusually early and ferocious start, with Hurricane Erick making landfall today as a Cat 3 in Mexico; Trump budget cuts and layoffs are already undermining our National Parks as tourist season begins; And more on the Republican budget bill that will increase energy prices for Americans, while selling off our public lands to the private sector...

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

On today's menu...

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

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

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

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

Bon appétit!...

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Too much going on. So today we try to focus on at least one thing on today's BradCast that is disturbingly under-reported by the corporate media. Something that is right there in plain site, if you pay attention: The Trump Administration's increasing use of the word "remigration" and what it actually means. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First up, however, a few quick news stories today that also deserve coverage...

• Donald Trump has said he will not even call Democratic Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, despite the political violence that stunned the state (and nation) over the weekend with the assassination of top Democratic state lawmaker, Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, along with the attempted assassination of Democratic State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife by a Trump supporter. If there has ever been a more pathetic and classless person elected to high office in this country --- much less someone who supposedly survived an assassination attempt himself --- I have no idea who it would be.

• Bedding impresario and world-class Trump dupe, Mike Lindell, was found liable by a jury in Denver on Monday on two counts of defamation against former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer. Lindell must pay Coomer $2.3 million for, among other things, defaming him as a "traitor" by citing evidence-free reports by rightwing conspiracy theorists that the former Dominion executive took part in an antifa phone call promising to use Dominion voting machines to steal the 2020 election from Trump. Lindell, who failed to proffer any evidence or experts during the trial to support his ongoing claims that the election was stolen from Trump, says he will appeal the jury verdict.

• In other 2020 Trump dupe news, the State Bar Court of California appeal division upheld a determination that Trump attorney John Eastman should lose his law license after his efforts to steal the 2020 Presidential election for Trump. Eastman, among other things, falsely instructed then Vice President Mike Pence that he could lawfully refuse to accept Electoral votes submitted by swing states when Congress convened to certify the election on January 6, 2021. Eastman says he will appeal the decision to the California Supreme Court.

• And then they came for New York City's Comptroller and Mayoral candidate... Brad Lander, the city's Comptroller and a contestant in next week's Democratic Mayoral primary election, was roughed up and handcuffed by federal agents, some of them masked, inside a NYC federal courthouse on Tuesday. He was there attempting to help a migrant who ICE had descended upon to arrest and deport in the hallways. No charges, however, have been forthcoming from the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan so far. Lander's arrest follows the recent roughing up and handcuffing of California Sen. Alex Padilla last week at a Kristi Noem news conference in Los Angeles (no charges filed); the arrest of Newark, New Jersey's Mayor Ras Baraka outside of a federal detention facility (charges dropped); the indictment of NJ Rep. LaMonica McIver for allegedly assaulting federal agents at the same facility (charges still pending); and the arrest and indictment of Wisconsin state Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly interfering with the arrest of a migrant in her courthouse (charges still pending). All of those elected officials targeted by Trump's weaponized DHS are Democrats.

NEXT... and in a disturbingly related vein, we're joined by WIRED journalist DAVID GILBERT, who recently reported on the State Department's plan to restructure hundreds of bureaus under something being called the "Office of Remigration".

On Sunday, following his flopped birthday parade and wildly successful "No Kings" protest against him around the country the day prior, Donald Trump issued a long, rambling tantrum of a social media post, vowing to "expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities," at "the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens." All of those claims, of course, are total rubbish. But Trump's post goes on to target "Radical Left Democrats" who "are sick of mind" and "hate our Country", before concluding with a vow that "Our Federal Government will continue to be focused on the REMIGRATION of Aliens to the places from where they came". (Those are his ALL CAPS...or whoever actually wrote the long, uncharacteristically, mostly-grammatically correct post.)

That post, however, was in stark contrast to statements by Trump himself just days earlier suggesting that he would be softening his ICE roundups, at least to avoid devastating military-style raids of farms, hotel and restaurants where, as he conceded last week, "they have very good workers, they've worked for them for 20 years, they're not citizens but they turned out to be great."

What to make of Trump's flip-flops amid the sinking popularity of his immigration and deportation policies? It's difficult to know, suggests Gilbert today during our discussion homing in on the Administration's growing threats of "remigration" policies. It's an otherwise innocuous sounding word, but with a very sinister, dark meaning and origin. It is, essentially, a codeword for "ethnic cleansing", according to experts, as used in recent years by far-right, neo-Nazi parties in Europe.

"It's a concept that was floated first by French identitarians in 2010, 2012, and it was couched or centered in the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which posits that mass migration from 'third world countries' is happening to take over white people from Western countries," explains Gilbert. In an interview with a far-right Austrian activist and former neo-Nazi who is well known among Europe's racist communities, Gilbert was told that "this idea of 'remigration'...basically says that every single migrant, even if they are a citizen, needs to go back to their country of origin."

That, disturbingly, is what the Trump Administration and whoever is pulling its immigration policy strings (racist Stephen Miller, Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff is the best bet), now seem to be calling for.

Gilbert details the three-step process for remigration, as constructed by that Austrian activist. It's a thirty-year plan that the Administration seems to be "speed-running...to try and get done as quick as possible --- possibly within the four years of Trump's second term."

We've got a lot to discuss with Gilbert on this today, including why Sec. of State Marco Rubio seems to be fronting for this racist scheme; what it "clearly means" for "people who are not white, who are not Christian"; how the far-right in Europe is "jubilant" about what Trump has done already to effectuate remigration policy in the U.S.; and how this codeword for ethnic cleansing means that even naturalized citizens could soon be targeted for deportation to their home countries unless something or someone puts a stop to this twisted, rightwing madness.

"I think this has kind of passed people by, the idea of remigration, because the term seems so innocuous," Gilbert tells me, noting that even far-right groups in the U.S. haven't fully latched on, because "it doesn't initially stand out as something that's extreme. So far, people still don't really get it. But I think it will eventually creep in. It will become something that is just part of their core belief, that remigration is the only way that they can get their country back."

Tune in for much more today...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sadly, it's another in our Trump 2.0 Era "Then They Came For..." series on The BradCast, which previously included "the Judges", "the Mayors" and "Members of Congress". In today's case, at least, the victim, a U.S. Senator, was roughed-up and handcuffed but not arrested and was fairly quickly released. But those elected officials are hardly the only folks they are now coming for in Donald Trump's "New Police State". [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today highlighting that New Police State, Trump's continuing failures as President on several fronts, and his ongoing war with the Golden State...

• Breaking shortly before airtime... Just two days after the Trump Administration's corrupted and actually weaponized Dept. of Justice indicted a sitting Democratic U.S. Congresswoman from New Jersey on absurd assault charges related to allegedly impeding the arrest of Newark's Democratic Mayor (for whom all charges were soon dropped), California's Democratic U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, the state's first Hispanic Senator, was roughed up on Thursday, forcibly pushed out of a room where Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem was holding a press conference in L.A., was thrown onto the floor by FBI agents and handcuffed after he'd peacefully dared attempt to ask a question of Noem.

• A new Quinnipiac poll finds that Donald Trump is being rejected by voters on virtually every front. His approval rating in the survey of more than a thousand registered voters has now fallen to 38%; his budget bill is opposed by almost twice as many as those who support it (while a huge majority of Americans want to see Medicaid expanded or left as is, as opposed to cut, as the Trump/GOP "Big Beautiful Bill Act" would do); and he is deeply underwater on every single issue they polled on, including immigration, deportation and the economy. New polling out today from AP/NORC finds similarly poor numbers for the President, which is largely unprecedented in modern times this early in a new term.

• Those 4,000 California National Guard soldiers federalized by Trump and deployed against Americans on U.S. soil over the weekend against the wishes and needs of the state's Governor and the Los Angeles Mayor? They aren't getting paid yet, according to Military.com, which cites military sources describing a chaotic, still-incomplete activation, leaving soldiers without pay, a place to sleep, food, amid a local community uncharacteristically unsupportive of the deployed troops.

• But Trump's New Police State is not only rolling out in large cities. WaPo's Catherine Rampell has a chilling story of heavily armed masked men, claiming to be federal agents (while refusing to show ID), showing up with out-of-state plates to sweep up migrant gardeners in a tiny New England town. Yes, Trump's New Police State is coming to a town near you as well, no matter where you live.

• On Thursday at the White House, Donald Trump signed three bills that were recently --- and perhaps unlawfully --- rammed through the Senate by Republicans in violation of its rules, nuking the filibuster in the bargain to do so. They are meant to strip California of its legal right to establish its own clean air and car pollution standards. Specifically, the new laws, if they are allowed to stand --- CA has already said they are filing suit --- would, among other things, ban the state's 2036 deadline for phasing out the sale of new, gasoline-only cars and trucks. A dozen or so other states have previously adopted CA's now "banned" standards. Despite the fact that used all-gasoline cars and trucks could still be sold and that those who really wanted a new one could still buy them from another state in 2036, this is apparently what Trump has been falsely describing as "Joe Biden's EV mandate" for years now. Today, once again, he did another solid for his owners in the fossil fuel industry. Desi Doyen has the full scoop and context.

• Then, Desi is here with our 1,500th Green News Report! Sadly, with the above news and much more, it's a rather grim milestone today, largely from top to bottom.

• BUT, we close with something a bit brighter that we hope might cheer you up after all of that, and help you leave the theater whistling. It's the latest Randy Rainbow tune on Trump Derangement!...

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It's all so stupid and ridiculous. But, as discussed on today's BradCast, the stupidity and ridiculousness knows no bound now that he's won a criminal immunity ticket from the Supreme Court. So we will all pay the price until voters change the score. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

To that end, Gubernatorial primary elections were held in New Jersey on Tuesday for this November's general election. Democratic U.S. Rep. Mikey Sherrill, a Navy pilot and former prosecutor, will face off with Trump-endorsed Republican Jack Ciatterelli, who came within just about three points of unseating the state's now termed-out Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy four years ago.

Perhaps more interesting on Tuesday were six state legislative special elections held in three different states. Democrats outpaced expectations in five of them, including one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a native American candidate trounced her Republican challenger by a landslide 69 points! The results amounted to a 50-point over-performance by the Dem as compared to their results in the Presidential election in the same district last November. In all, Dems are now running an average of about 16.4 points ahead of their 2024 results in special elections in 2025.

Then, it's back once again to the mess here in Los Angeles, which isn't really a mess at all. Or, at least, it wasn't until tough guy Donald Trump decided to pretend that largely peaceful protests against his immigration policies required him to violate the law to federalize California National Guard troops and deploy them with the U.S. Marines to support the ICE round-ups of hard-working, non-criminal migrants in the city including, apparently, children.

In a televised address on Tuesday night, CA's Governor Gavin Newsom, who, along with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, opposed Trump's federalization and deployment of troops in the city, described the President's "authoritarian", wannabe "dictatorial" tactics. He warned that Trump is now waging war on democracy and the Constitution itself, and that Americans outside of California can expect to see much the same thing soon in their own hometowns. Will Americans heed his warning?

We're joined today by fellow L.A. resident HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, award-winning Salon columnist and longtime Digby's Hullabaloo proprietor, and another OG blogger friend known simply as 'DRIFTGLASS', co-host of his weekly Professional Left Podcast. As usual, they are here for a roundtable discussion to help us make sense of it all...as senseless and stupid as it all is.

Both share thoughts on what they see as the real point of Trump's dumb but dangerous incitement of violence here in L.A., what it is meant to distract from, and where all of this is headed. Is there any chance this doesn't lead to an invocation of the Insurrection Act by Trump, so he can really violate the law, American values, rights, and the Constitution itself?

"Donald Trump simply has no reason to obey the law anymore, of any kind, for any reason," argues Driftglass. "They feel no compunction about breaking the law because there's no one to stop them" Because he was elected, after receiving criminal immunity from SCOTUS, he believes "he can do whatever he wants. It's an ugly, terrifying fact that we warned people about for years. We begged people not to do this. We still came up short, because 77 million or so people voted for exactly this."

But, will even MAGA support the deployment of U.S. troops on American streets? Something that Republicans, including MAGA, have pretended for years to oppose? "As long as Trump is doing it, they'll be for it," asserts Digby. "The minute it's not him, they'll be against it. They retired the concept of hypocrisy a long time ago."

It is going to worse before it gets better, she warns, citing Trump's top henchman Stephen Miller who, she says, "has given interviews saying that they have plotted this out. Plan B, Plan C. They've been thinking this stuff through. This is actually part of their plan. They're testing the electrified fence here to see what they can get away with."

There is, of course, much much more from both of them today, including on a couple of stories you may have forgotten about for some reason, from just days ago. For example, last Friday, less than a week ago, Elon Musk publicly accused Trump of being named in the unreleased Epstein Files. Also, if you remember, Congressional Republicans passed a bill to slash $1.4 trillion worth of health care and food assistance from low-income Americans to help defray the cost of some $4 trillion in tax cuts mostly for the wealthy, at the cost of a $3 trillion spike to the national debt.

Remember when Republicans used to care about such things? As Digby sez: "They retired the concept of hypocrisy a long time ago"...

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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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Never mind all that stuff about Donald Trump's breakup with his best buddy on Friday, including Elon Musk's claim that Trump is blocking the release of the Jeffrey Epstein Files because he's featured in them. There's RIOTING AND LOOTING IN LOS ANGELES! ... according to Trump's social media feed.

As discussed on today's BradCast, however, from here in L.A., relatively minor weekend demonstrations against Trump's daily ICE quotas for arresting migrants --- now including day laborers outside of Home Depot, children and U.S. Marshals --- don't amount to much of a "riot" by L.A. standards, no matter what they may be showing you on cable TV or social media. [Audio link to full story follows below this summary.]

It was another lovely, mild, sunny day here in Southern California today, just as it was over the weekend. At least until Trump's federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brownshirts opened fire with tear gas and flash-bang grenades against largely peaceful demonstrators in a couple of small blocks downtown and a small city about 30 minutes south of downtown.

But I'm sure wall-to-wall media coverage and social media algorithms are telling folks out there a very different (and completely unhelpful) story about what is going on here.

In case they aren't, Trump is hoping to grab your attention by abusing his authority again, this time by federalizing the California National Guard against the wishes of both the state's Governor and the Mayor of Los Angeles. Moreover, late today, Trump is said to be deploying the U.S. Marines here, for some reason, in defiance of the U.S. Constitution. But the rule of law and Constitution are for suckers and Democrats, right?

We're happy to report on today's program what is actually going on today here in Los Angeles. Though it is fun to see that Trump --- after recently pardoning thousands of actually violent insurrectionists who actually launched a deadly riot against federal law enforcement officials at the U.S. Capitol a few years ago --- now thinks all of that, at least when it happens in California, is a bad thing.

Not that anything like what Trump incited among his followers on January 6, 2021 is happening here. Not even close. We have far larger demonstrations in this town about every other week just because it's a Thursday. Anyway, tough guy Trump would like you to discuss all of this, rather than his break-up with Elon and all of his other non-stop criming. So, I guess we make his dreams come true on today's program.

Among just some of our source material today...

• ICE is so desperate to meet Stephen Miller's 3,000-arrests-per-day quota, that they mistakenly arrested and detained a member of the U.S. Marshal Service recently. Instead of being shipped off to a super max prison in El Salvador, the arrestee who matched the "general description of a subject being sought by ICE", was eventually released once other law enforcement officials vouched for him.

• CA Governor Gavin Newsom charges that Trump's seemingly unlawful federalization of the California National Guard "is purposely inflammatory and will only escalate tensions". The state is now suing him to stop it. Newsom notes, correctly, that L.A. authorities have access to plenty of law enforcement officials to handle a handful of violent protesters amid the weekend's largely peaceful demonstrations. By Sunday night, in an excellent interview by NBC News' Jake Soboroff, an "unfazed" Newsom dared the Trump Administration to arrest him --- as Trump's "Border Czar" Tom Homan threatened against both him and Mayor Karen Bass --- and underscored again that Trump is little more than a bully whose tough guy act is being carried out because he is "trying to incite violence."

• Trump's unnecessary deployment of federal troops was so poorly planned, by the way, that Guard Members are being forced to sleep on the floor in an L.A. federal building basement or on the street. Photos here.

• His federalizing of the National Guard against the wishes of the Governor (and his mobilization of U.S. Marines) for this purpose is both unprecedented and likely unlawful under the Title 10 authority he has invoked. But if you think he will only do this in L.A. or California, think again. Trump's weekend declaration claims the authority to deploy federal troops --- in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act --- anywhere in the country that he feels like.

We also take a few calls today from listeners in L.A., some email from a listener in the U.K., and finish with this important message for folks both here and elsewhere: DON'T TAKE THE BAIT.

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There's probably not enough popcorn in the world for the hilarious madness that's blown up over the several hours or so, since we wrapped today's BradCast. Oh, well. I guess that's what next week is for. In the meantime... [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Somewhat less amusing, if still very interesting and actually of much more importance (I think)...from today's program.....

• Lincoln Project unleashes a killer 60-second ad against Donald Trump and the Congressional Republicans' "MAGA Murder Budget".

• Democratic "landslide" in South Carolina in Tuesday's special election for the statehouse, and what the "eye-popping win" may foretell for the forces opposed to authoritarianism in the year ahead.

• SCOTUS begins its month of long-awaited decision releases before Summer recess. They start with an easy one: a unanimous decision regarding a Catholic charity in Wisconsin.

• But, as long as Republican officials are continuing to pretend they care about religion, particularly Catholicism, will the Congressional Republicans pay attention to what the editorial staff at the 60-year old, independent National Catholic Reporter outlet has to say about their so-called "One Big, Beautiful Bill"? In its unsparing and historical accurate piece, the authors describe the measure as "one big shameful bill" and "one of the most immoral pieces of legislation in recent memory," before going on to explain why. And it's brutal. That's before they close this way: "Jesus weeps over this cruelty. So do we. We must reject this heartless bargain and instead pursue policies that honor the dignity of every citizen and the collective well-being of our nation."

• Newark, New Jersey's Democratic Mayor Ras Baraka is pushing back this week against the Trump Administration with a lawsuit against Trump's former defense attorney turned Interim U.S. Attorney for NJ Alina Habba for “false arrest and malicious prosecution". That, after Baraka was handcuffed and detained last month outside of a private facility contracted by DHS to house migrants. The charges were dropped just days later due to a complete lack of merit. Or, as Habba ridiculously described it, "for the sake of moving forward."

• And, catching up with a story that broke late last week while we were off...138 bipartisan, retired, state and federal judges submitted an amicus brief last Friday calling for a federal court to drop charges against Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan. She was arrested by federal officials in late April after, they claim, she helped a migrant avoid arrest in her courthouse. Her own subsequent arrest and the charges against her, according to the former judges, undermine "centuries of precedent on judicial immunity."

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here for our latest Green News Report, with disturbing news on understaffed National Weather Service offices along the Gulf Coast as hurricane season begins; officials sounding the alarm about Trump's gutting of FEMA; and dirty deeds, done dirt cheap for the fossil fuel industry recently by our corrupted SCOTUS...

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Yes. I think it is appropriate, as New York Times' very conservative columnist David Brooks did last Friday on PBS, to compare Elon Musk to Pol Pot, Mao Zedong and Stalin. The number of deaths around the globe that he --- and his boss Donald Trump --- are arguably directly responsible for has not yet reached into the millions. But, according to data compiled and tracked by our guest today, it shouldn't be long. More than 300,000 are already unnecessarily dead in just 4 months since the Trump/Musk/DOGE closure of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Tune in to today's BradCast for a full explanation from the woman who has been compiling the numbers to decide for yourself. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP, however, Team Trump seems almost as eager to help Americans die unnecessarily here at home. The "Big, Beautiful Bill" they are hoping to ram through Congress in the next several weeks will cut more than a trillion dollars from health care and food nutrition for as many as 14 million low-income Americans in order to pay for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. But what bothers Republicans about it is that it doesn't cut enough, apparently, from the needy.

Today, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came out with their scoring of the legislation, finding, among other things, that the bill, as recently passed by Republicans in the House, would increase the federal budget deficit by nearly $2.5 trillion dollars over the next decade. So, naturally, the White House and Republican in Congress are on a tear to...attack the CBO, claiming the non-partisan agency created by Congress and headed up by a Republican since 2019, are actually a bunch of partisan Dems trying to undermine Donald Trump.

That lie, put forward most directly by professional liar and Trump's WH Press Sec. Karoline Leavitt yesterday --- even before the CBO numbers were published today --- is also a "ridiculous" lie, as detailed today by WaPo's fact-checker.

THEN... You may recall Elon Musk in the early DOGE Days of February celebrating how he and his DOGE Bros "spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper." The United States Agency for International Development is (or was) the tip of the spear for critical foreign aid programs around the globe. Its small budget punches far above its weight and wins big returns for the world and for the U.S., with critical "soft-power" programs delivering nutritious food to starving populations and medicines to combat HIV, tuberculous, malaria, Ebola and much more. At least it did all of that, and more, before Musk, the richest man in the world, gleefully fed it into the wood chipper on behalf of the Trump Administration four months ago.

Since USAID's sudden shutdown, as my guest today, infectious disease mathematical modeller and health economist Dr. BROOKE NICHOLS, associate professor of Global Health at Boston University, has determined, more than 300,000 people have unnecessarily died around the globe, including more than 213,000 children. The number of chid deaths was in the 212,000 region a few hours ago before airtime, according to Nichols' Impact Counter website. The site tracks ongoing estimates of the number of those who have died since the shutdown of USAID programs, as well as the numbers estimated over the coming year. The carnage --- now tracking as more than 100 deaths per hour --- is broken down between adults and children, and many different causes of death, from HIV to tuberculosis to malnutrition to diarrhea.

Nichols herself says she was horrified by the numbers when she saw what the data at her own tracker was showing her about what she described recently to The Times of London as "100 percent preventable" deaths around the world.

"I was horrified," she tells me today about those "huge" numbers, "because they represent people. I was shocked." She clarifies that the total numbers (300,000+ deaths as of now) are "to date. That number will grow to close to a million by the end of the year if funding isn't restored in some way."

Having worked for years specifically on HIV via PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, initially begun during the George W. Bush Administration), she disputes the Musk/Trump/Republican claims that USAID's programs were riddled with "waste, fraud and abuse." Nichols says she had seen none of that. "Were there small bits and pieces that could have been programmed better? Maybe," she concedes. "But I'm sure that that is a tiny fraction of the budget. And certainly not worth throwing anything into the wood chipper and losing all these tens of thousands of lives."

On PEPFAR, specifically --- which is credited with saving the lives of some 26 million people since its launch in 2003 --- she tells me that before the program, the death toll of those, including children born with HIV, "was unimaginable. Through PEPFAR, it was a complete turnaround. All of a sudden people stopped dying. We were finally getting to the point to meeting all of these UN goals. If you're on treatment and you take your pills everyday, you can't transmit the virus. How cool is that? So we started to reach this tipping point where the epidemic was going down, it's more and more under control. And to have the carpet pulled out from under us as we get so close? It sets us back a decade."

Nichols has much more to share with us today from her home in The Netherlands, about how and why her Impact Counter came together; whether she had reason to believe any of this would be happening during last year's Presidential campaign ("No! I was shocked!," Nichols responds); and how all of this harms not only the direct victims of Trump's foreign aid shutdown, but also Americans here at home in several ways.

She also discusses the politics behind this unspeakable global disaster; the "broken trust" the U.S. is now facing "with a lot of countries, a lot of other organizations"; the mass of death threats and hate mail she has received for simply documenting the numbers; and what she ultimately hopes her work on the Impact Counter might lead to.

"I really hope that it can be used to understand and document what is happening, but also hopefully to advocate for change," she asserts. "Ultimately, I want this to be used so that fewer people die. If that's through people understanding what is happening in a political shift, that would be great. If it's from mobilizing other donors, that is also great."

All of that, as the NY Times' Nicholas Kristof reminded us back in March after he traveled overseas to personally document a number of the tragic deaths as they began to pile up, this all came on the heels of Musk's false insistence at the time: "No one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding. No one."

Turns out that was just another Trump Administration lie. If a particularly horrific one.

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Storm clouds continue to gather, even as there are fewer and fewer government scientists to warn us about what is actually coming. On today's BradCast we offer more than a few warnings of our own. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Don't buy Elon Musk's pretend attack today on Donald Trump and the Republicans' so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" as "a disgusting abomination". Musk doesn't really mean it. (He's just trying to save his drug-addled hide after the waste, fraud and abuse of his deadly, unlawful and wildly destructive DOGE scam.) But don't let that keep you from enjoying the fireworks anyway!

• Big kudos to Miami's NBC6 for featuring veteran South Florida meteorologists John Morales' chilling warning about the "cuts, gutting and sledge hammer attack on science" by the Trump Administration and, specifically, to NOAA and the National Weather Service that, he explains, are already "degrading" the quality of forecasts as hurricane season is now under way.

• Speaking of hurricane season, Trump's newly tapped, entirely inexperienced head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency --- a military guy by the name of David Richardson and the fifth person to hold the position since Trump's re- election --- reportedly told FEMA staffers on Monday that he had no idea there was such a thing as a hurricane season in the U.S. Following Reuters exclusive on that yesterday, a spokesperson from FEMA's parent agency, DHS, claimed Richardson was just joking. But...was he really? If Trump's newly sworn-in Social Security Administrator, Frank Bisignano, offers any hints, the lack of knowledge of the people tapped to run these critical agencies may be far worse than you may think.

• Some elections and democracy news today from overseas that is likely to have ramifications for the U.S. in various ways. In a closely divided election for President in Poland over the weekend, voters narrowly chose Karol Nawrocki, a rightwing historian and staunch nationalist. He will have veto power over Parliament, headed up, since 2023, by liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

• In The Netherlands, ultra-right party leader, Geert Wilders, quit the governing coalition in the Dutch Parliament today over his complaints that migration policies weren't cruel enough. The stunning move has touched off a governing crisis until new elections can be held later this year. The nation's liberal opposition party, however, seems to enjoying the fresh chaos.

• One year to the day after South Korea's conservative President stunned the nation by declaring martial law --- before the move was undone just hours later --- voters elected liberal party leader Lee Jae-myung on Tuesday to be the nation's new President. The disgraced former President, after facing impeachment charges, is currently standing trial on charges of insurrection, which is punishable by death or life in prison. Must be nice.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here for our latest Green News Report, with predictions of a long, hot summer; Canada's wildfire season off to an early and terrible start (and already affecting northern U.S. states); a village in Switzerland wiped off the map last week due to a glacier collapse, thanks to global warming; and the Republican plan to raise your dirty energy prices via their "Big, Beautiful Bill"...

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We're back for today's BradCast after a week off during which many things happened. Some good. Many more less so. It'll take us about a month to get caught up. So, we better get started. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST... A bit of news from over the weekend and into today...

• In Colorado on Sunday, in what authorities are describing as a "targeted act of violence", at least 8 people were burned by an attacker in Boulder with a make-shift flamethrower and Molotov cocktail device. The victims were demonstrating in support of the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza since the October 2023 attack on Israel. The alleged assailant, quickly taken into custody, was said to have shouted "Free Palestine" and "End Zionists" during the rampage. On Monday, law enforcement officials said he would be charged with federal hate crimes and 16 state charges related to attempted murder.

• News of Sunday's attack in Boulder came just moments after news reports from Gaza that more than 20 Palestinians had been killed and more than 100 wounded near a food distribution site recently set up by the Israeli government amid desperate conditions in the war torn enclave. The deadly attack, attributed by news reports to the Israeli military, comes amid continuing, if failed, third-party talks between Israel and representatives of Hamas seeking a temporary truce, the return of hostages, and increased distribution of aid among a desperate populace in Gaza.

• Ukraine on Sunday acknowledged what appears to have been a pretty massive --- and clever --- explosive-laden sneak drone attack deep inside of Russia, reportedly damaging some $7 billion worth of strategic bomber aircraft at several air bases. The Ukrainian-made drones were apparently snuck into the air bases via the roofs of wooden sheds and released by remote control. The Ukrainian offensive comes on the heels of deadly, long-range attacks by Russia, reportedly against both the civilian population and critical infrastructure, deep inside of Ukraine. On-again off-again peace talks continue nonetheless in the more than three-year old war following Russia's full scale assault on its sovereign neighbor in early 2022.

• Here at home, some encouraging (for the moment) news out of the corrupted rightwing U.S. Supreme Court. On Monday, the Court rejected petitions to hear appeals of two Second Amendment-related rulings upholding state restrictions on semiautomatic assault-style rifles and large-capacity ammo magazines out of Maryland and Rhode Island. The usual far-right suspects --- Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch --- dissented the decision to allow the lower appeals court rulings to stand.

THEN... But speaking of the corrupted, extremist, rightwing activist Supreme Court, two emergency rulings issued on its so-called "shadow docket" last week remind us, yet again, that this Court has little interest in upholding precedent, whether it's decades-old precedent or even their own from just one year ago.

On Friday, in what dissenting Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson referred to as a "plainly botched" ruling by the majority, the Court allowed the Trump Administration to end legal protected status for about half a million migrants in this country from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The Court does so even as litigation continues in the lower court, challenging the Dept. of Homeland Security's lifting of lawful protected status in the U.S. granted by the Biden Administration. On Thursday, half a million migrants were here perfectly legally. On Friday, they suddenly became subject to Trump's mass deportation goon squad, allowing them to be removed from the country --- even though they may eventually win their case! So much for the irreparable harms that are supposed to be considered amid ongoing litigation in such "emergency" rulings.

That ruling came the day after the Court's rightwingers undercut their very own ruling from just last year that, itself, had overturned decades of Court precedent known as "Chevron deference". In last year's case, the Court majority ruled that judges, not federal agency experts, are better equipped to decide whether various regulations suit the intentions of Congressionally-adopted statutes. The landmark ruling last year overturning Chevron had long been sought by corporations seeking to undermine environmental and other regulations. But on Thursday, after a lower court used its newly gained deference to decide a federal agency's regulations weren't strict enough, the High Court decided the experts at the agency in question should once again be granted deference.

As our guest today, veteran legal journalist CHRIS GEIDNER explained in his Law Dork newsletter late last week, now the Court can pull one lever "when the conservative majority believes an agency has gone too far" but when it believes "a lower court goes too far" it can pull last week's newly invented lever "and explain that the lower court did not provide sufficient deference to the agency." As Geidner tells me today, "It is truly a 'heads I win, tails you lose' situation."

In short, it the activist rightwingers on SCOTUS continue to simply make it up as they go along, overturning any precedent, old or new, in order to achieve their desired political outcome.

Geidner joins us to make sense of all of that; share his thoughts on why last week's Trump nomination of his former defense attorney, Emil Bove, to a U.S. Appeals Court is "a line that cannot be crossed"; and for a summary of the big cases that will be receiving full opinions from SCOTUS this month as their latest term wraps up before July...

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