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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 2025 was the second (or third) hottest year on record, as new climate reports show 'unprecedented run of global heat'; The oceans are getting hotter, too; California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years; PLUS: Court rules Trump Administration illegally blocked clean energy grants to 'blue' states... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Venezuela suffers from a century-long curse --- will the U.S. inherit it?; New EPA proposal would strip states and tribes of authority to block oil and gas pipelines; Trump administration moves to reverse mining ban near Boundary Waters; RFK Jr. and flouridated water 'skeptics' turn to obstructing access to other sources; Maine adopts tougher limits on PFAS in drinking water; Why Greenland matters in a warming world... PLUS: This battery is about to change the world in 3 months, or make this guy a fool... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump Administration is trying to reverse coal's decline, but apparently no one wants to buy it; Officials announce arrest in connection to the catastrophic Pacific Palisades Fire; Solar and wind power are growing faster than demand globally (but not in the U.S.); PLUS: Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics warns Trump's science cuts will have long term, negative consequences... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Wildfires are getting deadlier and costing more. Experts warn they’re becoming unstoppable; After gutting subsidies, Trump White House finds new ways to stifle solar; Exxon steps back from Texas Gulf Coast plastics plant; New England’s final coal plant shuts down years ahead of schedule; Supreme Court shoots down challenge to WA carbon market... PLUS: Experts warn that Colorado River use needs cutting immediately... and much, MUCH more! ...

Trump lives and dies by ratings and reviews. Well, the reviews are in on today's BradCast for his sleepy, low-energy, hour-plus long campaign style remarks to the nation's top military brass at Tuesday's bizarre, in-person convocation of the nation's highest-ranking military generals. The unusual gathering was called at the U.S. Marine base at Quantico by his Defense Secretary. The reviews were not good. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

Before we get to today's weird military gathering, a few thoughts as the government is now all but certain to begin a partial shutdown as of midnight tonight. It is the first such federal shutdown since the last time Donald Trump was in the White House and Republicans held majority control of both chambers of Congress. He has been remarkably sanguine about it this time. He refused to even meet with Democratic leaders until yesterday, after which he went on to post an obnoxious, racist, AI-generated video mocking both House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Democrats refuse to sign on to a Republican bill that continues spending at current levels unless Republicans restore hundreds of billions of dollars that Trump and the GOP are cutting to American healthcare via the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid at year's end.

There may be several reasons why Trump is fine with the government shutting down. Beyond a delay in a mandatory House vote on releasing the Epstein Files, a government shutdown would also prevent the Bureau of Labor Statistics from releasing this Friday's much-anticipated jobs report for September, after previous monthly reports revealed grim numbers for Trump's second term. If the shutdown goes on long enough, BLS won't be able to gather its gold-standard data for future economic reports either, which are relied upon by the government, as well as businesses and investors worldwide.

For the record, the BLS didn't close during the last Trump shutdown. He could have mandated it stay open this time as well to continue its critical work. But, for some reason, he didn't.

Then it's on to the "urgent" in-person meeting of the nation's 800+ generals, admirals and other top military brass at Quantico today, as called at the last minute by Fox "News" weekend host turned Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth for unexplained reasons. It featured what amounted to little more than a live-for-the-cameras version of Hegseth's grievance-filled social media feed. The New York Times described his remarks to the generals as "a familiar litany of culture war talking points," including a lot of macho bullshit about the "warrior ethos", "wokeness" and "stupid rules of engagement" which Hegseth argues are somehow holding the U.S. military back.

For his part, Trump's partisan campaign-style rally that followed Hegseth seems to have fallen flat before the generals, who are not supposed to display approval or disapproval for political leaders. Media outlets described Trump's hour and ten-minutes of remarks as a "rambling and sometimes incoherent", "unusually meandering address" in which he attacked his perceived political enemies and called for the generals to use U.S. cities as "training grounds" for the military. Focusing on Democrats, who he described as the "radical left" and the "enemy from within", he suggested "the war from within" would be waged in cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, presumably against Americans in cities that Trump doesn't like.

Experts and Defense officials are describing the comments as "embarrassing", with one telling The Intercept, "We are diminished as a nation by both Hegseth and Trump." Said another: "Listening to Donald Trump was deeply troubling and it is clear he is unfit for the role of commander in chief." Still another, citing the 25th Amendment, observed: "This is truly disturbing. He is clearly unwell even for Trump."

During his long remarks to a nearly quiet room, Trump described Illinois' Governor J.B. Pritzker as "incompetent" and "stupid", vowing that he was "going in very soon" to Chicago. Trump's invasion of the Windy City with U.S. military troops has been promised for several months now. But, over the weekend and into Monday, it looks like it began in earnest, even with just baby steps, including deployment of ICE thugs and other federal law enforcement and a mobilization of 100 U.S. National Guard troops to eventually join them. Pritzker pushed back hard against Trump and ICE as Trump's "jack-booted thugs" at a presser on Monday, charging them with showing up in the city on Sunday endangering citizens and "harassing people for not being white." We share some of his warning comments to the public.

Also over the weekend, Trump federalized 200 U.S. National Guard troops in Oregon to invade Portland "authorizing Full Force", even though there is no local insurrection, no assaults on federal buildings by "antifa", and the city is not burning down, as Trump seems to believe. The state's Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek tried to explain that over the weekend during a phone call with a confused Trump, who reportedly said, "Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different." He is said to have claimed, "They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible."

As I suggested yesterday, what Trump is describing appears to be what happened five years ago in Portland, during protests following the murder of George Floyd. Today, Philip Bump details how b-roll footage of those protests has been playing in a loop on Fox "News" ever since, any time they mention Portland, as they did on several different shows on Friday night, just before Trump's Saturday morning announcement about deploying troops there. Like Pritzker, Kotek is also taking to the airwaves to push back on Trump's unwelcome, completely unnecessary military thuggery.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Hurricane Season kicks into high gear with a Trump-gutted National Weather Service trying desperately to keep up. And as the Dept. of Energy's fracking CEO turned Secretary, Chris Wright, cancels billions in subsidies for clean renewable energy in hopes of propping up the dying U.S. coal industry with millions of acres of new federal land access and new subsidies of the kind that he cited as evidence that the wind and solar industry are "maybe not a business that's going places." The DoE also expanded their list of banned words to include "climate change", "emissions", "green" and "decarbonization" among things that Department officials may not utter or use anymore in official documents...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hurricane season wakes up, as National Weather Service struggles with staffing amid Trump layoffs; Trump Administration unveils plans for taxpayers to bail out Big Coal; PLUS: Energy Department orders staffers: 'Don't say climate change'... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump is doing everything he can to raise your energy bills; Hurricanes swerve: Disaster response might avoid a stress test; 'Ludicrous': Bureau of Land Management to sell off federal coal reserve leases in Wyoming; UNESCO designates 26 new biosphere reserves amid biodiversity challenges and climate change; Indigenous land defender killed as Ecuador cracks down on activists... PLUS: World ocean acidity crosses critical threshold for marine life: study... and much, MUCH more! ...

We pick up on today's BradCast with several new developments in stories we covered on yesterday's show plus much more, thanks to another insane day in Trump World. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• On yesterday's show, we spoke with former DOJ Public Corruption chief Randall Eliason about reporting over the weekend, confirmed by multiple outlets, that Donald Trump's so-called "Border Czar", Tom Homan, accepted $50,000 in cash inside of a takeout food bag last year in exchange for a promise to "facilitate" future contracts if Trump won the election. According to internal DOJ documents and multiple sources at each outlet, Homan was caught on tape receiving the money from undercover law enforcement agents posing as businessmen. But after Trump took office, the bribery probe into Homan was summarily dropped by Trump associates leading the FBI and DOJ, on the supposed basis that no crimes were committed by Homan in the payoffs during the investigation begun during the Biden Administration.

  But, by last night, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took the DOJ denials a step further, claiming that Homan "never took the $50,000." That denial was not made by the DOJ when the story was first reported over the weekend. And even Homan himself, when asked about all of this on Fox "News" last night, didn't make that claim. Here merely said "I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal." Tune in for the full update on that wild story, before it disappears into the Trump news cycle ether. (Though Congressional Dems, to their credit, are trying to prevent that from happening.)

• In another follow-up to another story we covered, if only briefly, yesterday... The news broke just before airtime that Disney/ABC announced Jimmy Kimmel's late night show would be returning to air on Tuesday, after it had been "indefinitely" sidelined last week following threats by Trump's sleazy FCC Chair Brendan Carr to rescind broadcast licenses from local affiliates who carried the show. The wildly inappropriate, unprecedented (and perhaps unlawful?) threats from Carr (and Trump) came after they decided they didn't like a fairly benign (and accurate) remark that Kimmel made on his show last week regarding the assassination of far-right Republican activist Charlie Kirk. The decision by Disney to bring Kimmel back was clearly based on massive public opprobrium, including massive cancellations of Disney's streaming services, etc.

  That good news, however, was tempered last night by an announcement from local station conglomerate Sinclair, declaring they would be pre-empting Kimmel's how with news programming. Broadcast behemoth Nexstar joined Sinclair on Tuesday, meaning that tens of millions of Americans in dozens of major markets will still be unable to watch Jimmy Kimmel Live! Both of those corporate conglomerates --- which own dozens of local stations all over the country (even if most Americans don't even realize it) have major mergers pending before Trump's corrupted FCC. So this very public fight, with serious First Amendment implications, will apparently continue. That, explains Josh Marshall today, is not necessarily a bad thing.

• Our twisted President rambled for nearly an hour today to the U.N. General Assembly in New York. It was as insane as you might have imagined, only more so. From lies about his domestic accomplishments during his second term, to lies about his having "ended seven wars", to threats to the world's nations regarding migration, energy and climate change, about which he took particularly hilarious zeal in lying about in virtually every aspect, describing it as a "con", a "scam" and a "hoax". Desi Doyen helps us debunk just some of the most obnoxious lies from Trump at the U.N. on Tuesday. And, as also discussed: Please wary of the claims reported late today that Trump has somehow flipped his position on Russia's war on Ukraine.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with both good and bad news for the world's oceans; and a report on the disbanding of a climate change denier group recently convened by Trump's Dept. of Energy to help lie about climate science...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Historic U.N. treaty protecting the High Seas comes into force; Coral reefs won't survive a warming planet, study warns; PLUS: The Trump Energy Department's climate science deniers group has been disbanded... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): UN chief warns 1.5C warming goal at risk of 'collapsing'; Judge says work on wind farm off Rhode Island can proceed, for now; Defense Department delays cleanup of 'forever chemicals' nationwide; PA governor threatens to pull the state out of the region's power grid; National parks remove signs about climate, slavery and Japanese detention; FOIA records reveal EPA leaders' frequent meetings with industry lobbyists; Communities around the world find plastic pellets in their local waterways... PLUS: The people behind America’s disaster recovery... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's clear that Donald Trump would much rather we talk about political violence today than his quickly failing economic policies or his 15-year close personal friendship with notorious pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. So we do him the favor of discussing both at the top of today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

From there, it's on to our central story. On yesterday's show, we covered the news of the killing of rightwing activist and longtime Trump ally Charlie Kirk, as reports of his death were just breaking. Today, as the manhunt continues for his seemingly well-prepared killer, we've got more details on both the shooting and the investigation and, with 24 hours of perspective, well-considered analysis of what all of this may mean for the nation as we move ahead.

There is still no known motive for the uncaptured and still-unknown shooter. Yet, a huge portion of the MAGA Right --- from wingnut social media trolls to wingnut billionaires to wingnut elected officials, including the President of the United States --- are, in some cases literally, declaring "WAR" on "the radical left Democrats".

Trump took to the airwaves last night after the murder, conspicuously covering up his right hand in a pre-recorded Oval Office tantrum, in which he condemned political "violence and murder" by "the radical left" as the "tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible." (Hmmm...Can we think of anybody else who might have demonized those with whom they disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible?)

"My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges and law enforcement officials," vowed the President who has said the most despicable things about federal judges and pardoned --- on his first day in office --- more than a thousand of his own supporters for their political violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, where hundreds of them literally and physically attacked law enforcement officials.

Trump also failed to mention the violent attacks on elected officials in his four-minute revenge screed, like the ones against the Speaker of House in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, who was assassinated along with her husband in the middle of the night in their own home less than three months ago by a far-right MAGA dude. The same man also gunned down MN State Senator John Hoffman and his wife in their home that same night, as part of a planned string of attacks against dozens of Democratic elected officials.

Let's also not forget Trump's repeated hilarious jokes over the years about the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi, whose skull was bashed in with a hammer by a guy hunting down Nancy Pelosi. Trump, his sons, and his supporters, have issued jokes about that violent attack for years. Just as Utah's Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee did on social media earlier this Summer to make light of the shootings at the homes of Hortman and Hoffman in Minnesota.

But now, things are different, apparently. While political violence against Democrats doesn't seem to count, with Kirk dead there will be consequences and retribution. "THIS IS WAR," declared the Trumpers on Twitter. "The Democrat Party must be classified as a domestic terror organization and their members and leaders treated accordingly," warned a bunch of them.

"The Left is the party of murder," pronounced Elon Musk, the man with the most Twitter followers in the world. "If they won't leave us in peace, then our choice is fight or die," he tweeted, joining Trump and the others in trying to increase the blood lust, rather than working to cool it down.

At the same time, Democrats --- as they did when their own were attacked --- have been calling for an end to the growing epidemic of political violence and gun violence in this nation. We call for the same.

Among those whose comments or writings over past 24 hours are cited, either positively or negatively, on today's program...

• Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT)
• Donald Trump
• Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC)
• Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ)
• Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL)
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
• Heather Digby Parton
• Josh Marshall

Finally, as Trump and his duplicitous Administration are now, officially, taking credit for U.S. infrastructure improvements made under Joe Biden's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report where, whaddaya know? While Trump is working hard to kill the U.S. wind and solar energy industries on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, the rest of the world is quickly moving to clean, cheap, renewable energy. And China, not the U.S., is making a mint off of it...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump Administration is taking its War on Wind and Solar on the road; Deforestation is a major driver behind the decline of rainfall in the Amazon rainforest; Developing countries shifting from fossil fuels thanks to cheap Chinese solar; PLUS: August 2025 was third hottest August on record globally... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Fossil-fuel firms receive US subsidies worth $31 billion each year, study finds; Study links more frequent and severe heat waves to pollution from major fossil fuel producers; Warming seas threaten key phytoplankton that fuels the food web; Trump administration dissolves group that authored controversial report sowing doubt in the severity of climate change; Plastic recycling is mostly fictional. Trump’s EPA approves... PLUS: California’s first solar-covered canal is now fully online... and much, MUCH more! ...

The Trump Administration is at war against science (and reality) on at least two different fronts, both of which we dig into on today's BradCast. One is the Administration's War on the Science of Public Health, the other is the ongoing War on Climate Science. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

We begin with Administration's full-frontal attacks on public health, as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., testified before a U.S. Senate Committee today, facing tough questions from Democrats and even a few Republicans. Some of the colloquies turned into shouting matches.

Kennedy's years-long personal war against life-saving vaccines --- including the COVID vaccine --- often took center stage throughout the three-hour proceeding. But things had gone off the rails long before he showed up to take several verbal beatings today. Among some of the context for today's hearing: An anti-vax gunman shot up the CDC in early August; Kennedy's cancellation of half a billion dollars in research grants for new mRNA vaccines of the type that helped get us out of the COVID pandemic and could offer cures for cancer and other diseases; His firing of the CDC Director last week, less than a month into her tenure because, as she claims in an op-ed today, she refused to follow Kennedy's demand to "preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric".

Add to that, the state of Florida's announcement this week by its loony Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, that it is lifting all vaccine mandates for school children, including for measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, tetanus and polio. Ladapo compares vaccine mandates for school children to slavery. As one elected official in Florida said in response: "This is a public health disaster in the making for the Sunshine State." Unfortunately, as our guest today seems to concur, the entire nation is now facing the possibility of a similar public health disaster under the second Trump term.

We're joined today for a thoughtful discussion on all of this and more by DR. TYLER EVANS, infectious disease and public health expert and former Chief Medical Officer for New York City amid its COVID-19 response. Evans is now CEO and co-founder of the Wellness and Equity Alliance and author of the new book, Pandemics, Poverty, and Politics: Decoding the social and political drivers of pandemics from Plague to COVID-19.

It's impossible to adequately summarize our wide-ranging conversation, but I will share a few brief quotes...

• On RFK Jr.: "At this point, effectively every trusted and established or distinguished organization around infectious disease and public health are essentially demanding his resignation. Time is up. His answers are circular logic. They're definitely not based in science. And the more he talks --- particularly for folks who really understand the science --- it's like nails on a chalkboard for us."

• On the effect of vaccine conspiracy theories on public health: "If somebody is in the emergency room and you hear two doctors actively arguing about somebody's diagnosis and treatment, how do think that's going to make the patient feel? ... What we're seeing right now with RFK is doing exactly that. His intent is clearly to disrupt as much of the science as well as the implementation of science in public health as much as he possibly can."

• On the politicization of public health: "It doesn't matter if it's a blue or red city, state. At the end of the day, microbes, or other pathogens, or environmental stressors don't understand the difference between red and blue. It's all humans to them. We really need to depoliticize public health. ... We are politicizing everything about public health [and] now it's getting worse."

• On RFK's defunding of mRNA research: "At this point, we have millions of data points demonstrating it is incredibly safe. The mRNA literally is the most effective vaccine against COVID-19. So these claims that somehow they're not effective, or unsafe, are just patently untrue. They're just completely made up. ... This guy is just completely making stuff up. The defunding of the science behind advancing further mRNA vaccines just hurts all Americans."

Evans has much more on all of the above today, as well as on lessons he learned during the worst of the COVID pandemic in NYC; his personal experiences responding to viral outbreaks, like Ebola, around the world; the importance of a competent federal government during an historic pandemic; the lunatic that Florida has installed as its top public health official and more. "If we are removing vaccination mandates, particularly for kids, it is probably one of the most disastrous things we could ever do, from a public health standpoint," says Evans about the cancellation of vaccine mandates in the Sunshine State.

We ran longer than expected with Evans (though it was well worth it), but we still had a few minutes left today for Desi Doyen to take on Donald Trump's latest escalation in his War against Climate Science and specifically on cheap, clean, renewable, abundant wind and solar energy. All of that before closing with our latest Green News Report on new California wildfires; the deadly landslide in war-torn Sudan; and dozens of climate scientists taking on the Trump Administration's absurd "report" by five prominent climate science deniers meant to serve as the basis for the Administration's cancellation of hundreds of billions of dollars in critical climate change initiatives...

Yes, it's a very busy BradCast today...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Wildfires destroy historic California Gold Rush town; Trump further escalates attacks against on US wind energy; Extreme rains trigger deadly landslide in war-torn Sudan; PLUS: Dozens of climate scientists issue scathing rebuttal to Dept. of Energy's science-denying report... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Powerful rain and floods devastate northern India as experts blame climate change; FEMA staffing shortages could hinder disaster recovery efforts, GAO says; Despite Trump's brags, new data shows massive emissions from Texas wells; Explosion at Louisiana oil plant leaves Black community coated in toxic fallout; EPA plans to dramatically reduce wetland protection; Scientists may have identified a culprit behind declining Amazon rains... PLUS: Despite Trump, US scientists continue to work on key global climate reports... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's a tough call on today's BradCast as far as which is worse: the stupidity or the outrage in response. (It's the stupidity, stupid.) But we report, you decide. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Donald Trump's many wars on America, Americans, American democracy, American values and the rest of the world, including livability on the planet itself, continued this week, as one of this nation's greatest accomplishments turns 60 years old, even as it founders under years-long GOP assault. And, coincidentally, the state of Texas plays a part in just about every one of our stories today...

• We kick things off with some goodish news. Following the unspeakable tragedy last month when at least 135 people, including dozens of camping school children, were killed during flash flooding on the banks of the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country, the Trump Administration is finally allowing the National Weather Service to hire new meteorologists and other critical staffers. That, after Trump's DOGE scam resulted in the firing and early retirement of hundreds at the now hollowed-out NWS.

• As another heat wave broils much of Texas this week, cheap, clean, renewable energy --- including wind and solar (as well as battery storage for when it's dark or the wind isn't blowing) --- has helped prevent collapse of the state's grid under extraordinary demand, even as some of its coal and gas plants were taken off line due to the climate change-intensified heat.

• Nonetheless, the Trump Administration has been doubling down this week on its war against cheap, clean, renewable energy, such as wind and solar, on behalf of the fossil fuel industry which has captured it. Former fracking CEO turned Trump's Energy Secretary Chris Wright was making the media rounds this week, attempting to justify the Administration's Orwellian removal of Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessments from government websites. He told CNN it's simply an effort to "fix" the science contained in those reports, released every four years after being compiled, peer-reviewed and fact-checked multiple times over several years prior to publication by hundreds of scientists and more than a dozen federal agencies. Wright is hoping to counter the peer-reviewed science on climate change in those landmark quadrennial reviews with a "report" released by the Dept. of Energy last week, as authored in two-months time by five notorious climate science deniers hand-picked by the former fracking executive. Wright's denialist, AI-assisted slop is now being used as the basis for the Administration's effort to scrap every federal climate change-related regulation enacted since 2009.

• Meanwhile, the GOP's War on Democracy continued on Thursday, as Texas state lawmakers remained in other states to try and save it. They are breaking quorum in the Lone Star State's House of Representatives in order to prevent passage of a new U.S. House map, ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott at the direction of Donald Trump, which would steal five seats currently held by Democrats in majority minority districts in next year's midterms. Republican state officials --- from its Governor to its corrupt Attorney General to its U.S. Senator to its Republican House Speaker --- are hoping to enlist Trump's FBI to hunt down, round up and arrest the fleeing Dems in other states, despite no criminal charges against them and a state Constitution that allows them to break quorum (according to the state's all-Republican Supreme Court.) That, as California advances its own effort --- to be placed before voters this Fall --- to counter Texas' attempted mid-decade gerrymander. We get you all caught up with the latest in this harrowing ongoing saga today.

• The Republican attack on democracy --- including on U.S. House districts drawn by federal court order to correct Texas districts found in violation of the Voting Rights Act --- comes on the very same week that the landmark Act, which added tens of millions to to the voting rolls since its passage, turns 60 years old. The VRA has been under successful attack by Republicans in recent years. But today we mark the law's 60th anniversary with some of the remarks upon its signing by heroic President Lyndon Baines Johnson...of Texas.

• Finally, born and bred Texan Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, detailing some of the remarkable actions taken this week by the Trump Administration --- remarkably, as energy costs and demand are quickly rising --- to roll back successful efforts to incentivize cheap, clean, renewable energy. Among the new fronts in his war this week: An absurd "energy density" requirement for power sources; an attempt to rescind $7 billion appropriated by Congress during the Biden era to help defray the cost of residential rooftop solar in low- and middle-income communities; orders to shut down on-going wind energy projects; and Trump's ridiculous mandate that wind farms may no longer be built any closer than a mile from roads and railways...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Fire at Grand Canyon North Rim is now the largest mega-fire in the U.S.; New research shows the cascading health impacts of wildfire smoke; PLUS: Trump Administration rolls out climate science deniers to justify overturning climate change regulations... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): How to protect yourself from the bad air caused by wildfires; Fighting wildfires is hellish work - it's even worse under Trump; Duffy to announce nuclear reactor on the moon; 'Erratic' wildfire breaks out in Northern California, prompting evacuations; Heatwave linked to climate change breaks records in Japan; Report calls plastics 'grave danger' to health as nations negotiate treaty; Scientists crack the case of the melting sea stars... PLUS: The First Planned Migration of an Entire Country Is Underway... and much, MUCH more! ...

The war began decades ago, back when even Republicans favored a clean environment. But we are still nowhere near the final battle between climate champions and the fossil fuel industry profiteers who have now fully captured the GOP and the Trump Administration. We are joined on today's BradCast by a longtime warrior in this fight, who is surprisingly optimistic today, despite what would seem to be very grim news this week from the fossil fools in the Trump Administration. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad climate news, a few other quick items, including the worldwide tsunami fallout following last night's giant, 8.8 magnitude earthquake off Russia's east coast and Kamala Harris' announcement today that she does not intend to run for Governor in California next year.

Then, it's on to the huge announcement from the Trump Administration's corrupted, anti-environment Environmental Protection Agency this week that it is proposing to overturn the Obama EPA's 2009 "endangerment finding" which concluded that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gasses are indeed planet warming pollutants that represent a danger to the health and welfare of the public. It is that finding --- essentially ordered by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling back in 2007 --- that provides authority to the EPA to use the Clean Air Act to regulate the production of climate warming gasses. The finding serves as the legal underpinning for most, if not all, of the climate change regulations that have been enacted ever since.

This week, however, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and former fracking CEO turned Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright, announced that a new report from five cherry-picked climate science deniers, has given them legal authority to begin the process of overturning the 2009 "endangerment finding" and with it, kill all of the climate regulations --- to power plants, the auto industry, etc. --- that followed it.

It's obviously big and alarming news, even if it was promised in the Project 2025 manifesto that Trump pretended to disown during the campaign. But, as our guest details today, the EPA proposal is also alarmingly flawed in many ways that he believes makes it unlikely to stand up to legal scrutiny, even if this matter reaches this particularly corrupted Supreme Court.

We're honored to be joined on today's program DAVID DONIGER, Senior Attorney and Strategist for Climate & Energy at the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council. Doniger first joined the NRDC in 1978; went on to have a hand in formulating the Montreal Protocol, which successfully stopped the depletion of the earth's ozone layer; served on President Clinton's White House Council on Environmental Quality; held key posts at the EPA, and is now back at the NRDC, still fighting the good and very long fight.

In AP's coverage of the EPA announcement this week, Doniger is cited as describing Zeldin's move as an attempted "kill shot" that, if successful, would then allow the Administration to invalidate all climate regulations. “They’re trying to completely defang the Clean Air Act by saying, ‘Well, this stuff [CO2, methane, etc.] is just not dangerous,'" Doniger told the Washington Post. "That claim is just mind-bogglingly contrary to the evidence."

Today, he explains the importance of the Obama endangerment finding to climate law and the Administration's legal justifications for UNfinding that finding. "Basically, they have thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall, and they want to see if any of it sticks," he tells me. "Much of the spaghetti is all tangled up around itself. So it's going to take some work to show all the different ways in which this is just plainly wrong and illegal. But we will do that in the coming months, and take them to court if they persist."

We discuss the "mountain" of well-documented scientific evidence that counters the EPA's cherry-picked report from "five known, fringe climate deniers" and how Doniger believes "the record is going to be set straight, and these fringe people --- and how fringe their views are --- will be clear" as they do battle "in an echo chamber with themselves and try to construct an alternative reality."

Their goal, he argues, is that "if they can somehow turn reality upside-down and conclude that it's not dangerous, then they think they will knock the legs out from all of these regulations."

Doniger, who also discusses who is behind all of this and how much the transportation and power sectors in the U.S. are polluting the globe with climate warming emissions, doesn't believe the effort to "permanently damage the Clean Air Act as a law to deal with climate change," is going to work, "even in this Supreme Court."

He tells me that there have been a series of additional SCOTUS rulings since the 2007 opinion that required the EPA to act on climate change via the Clean Air Act following an endangerment finding. Moreover, he notes, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act actually wrote into law that greenhouse gasses are pollutants that must be regulated. Doniger concedes that "you can never be sure with this Court", but cites those "four decisions that go right through 2022 where the present Court issued that last one."

"If they erase the endangerment finding, we will bring a lawsuit to challenge that. If they erase the vehicle standards, we will challenge that. Same thing with the power plant standards," he vows.

"There are four Supreme Court decisions, as recent as 2022, that follow the conclusion, the holding, of the [2007 Massachusetts v. EPA] case, that Congress gave EPA the authority and responsibility to address any form of dangerous air pollution including greenhouse gases."

"This administration is swinging for the fences," asserts Doniger, "but most of the time, when you swing for the fences, you strike out."

He's been in this fight far longer than I. Hopefully he's got this right and my worries are for naught. We will find out in the months and years ahead, as the long war for a livable planet continues...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump signs slew of executive orders to bail out the declining, polluting coal industry; Torrential rains and flooding cripple Congo's capital city; PLUS: Big banks quietly planning ways to maximize profits amid climate chaos... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump makes sweeping move to undercut state climate laws like California's; In the rain-soaked South, storms portend future ‘generational’ floods; White House ends funding for key US climate research body; US exits carbon talks on shipping, urges others to follow, document says; NOAA contracts being reviewed one by one, throwing the agency into chaos; Threatened carbon pipeline filed hundreds of lawsuits against landowners... PLUS: More oil and gas FAFO as crude keeps diving... and much, MUCH more! ...

We've got a few explainers on today's BradCast. But I thought you might find it useful to be armed with some facts, truth and understanding right about now. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our explainer coverage today...

• Not long after we got off air today, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer signaled he would allow Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans to adopt a bad six-month spending bill rather than fight them, because that fight would results in a government shutdown as of midnight on Friday. It's certainly a dilemma for the Dems, many of whom seemed to come around to the decision to fight rather than fold today. Even the nation's largest federal workers union --- whose members would arguably be first and most directly effected by a shutdown --- persuasively called on Dems to do just that, arguing: "With thousands of federal workers either fired, placed on administrative leave, or at immediate risk of losing their jobs, AFGE members have concluded that a widespread government shutdown has been underway since January 20 and will continue to spread whether senators vote yes or no on H.R. 1968." Schumer's announcement that he will vote with Republicans to end debate on the Continuing Resolution Friday, suggests the GOP is likely to get the support of at least eight Democrats Senators that will be needed to overcome a filibuster tomorrow. But, we'll see if a few more Dems find the spine to stand up against Trump and stand up for Americans before then.

• Speaking of AFGE, they and a few other unions won a big victory today. They had sued the federal government to restore the jobs of thousands of "probationary" federal workers unlawfully fired by the Trump Administration. Today, a federal judge ordered those workers, at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior and Treasury to be rehired "immediately". U.S. District Judge William Alsup excoriated the Trump Justice Department's legal justification for the layoffs and their refusal to present evidence to support their case. "It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie," railed Judge Alsup from the bench. "That should not have been done in our country. It was a sham in order to try to avoid statutory requirements."

• Yesterday, you may have seen headlines about Trump's EPA chief Lee Zeldin declaring a rollback of more than 30 important health, safety and environmental regulations. (Eg: "Trump takes an ax to more than a dozen pollution rules in rapid-fire deregulation".) In fact, none of those regulations have actually been rolled back. Yet. "Today I'm pleased to make the largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history," the new EPA Administrator dramatically declared in a two-minute video filled with one lie after another, falsely describing "suffocating rules that restrict nearly every sector of our economy and cost Americans trillions of dollars." The video was released to accompany Zeldin's Wednesday essay in the Wall Street Journal offering more false and misleading details on those lies.

  Today, we step through the key lies, explain the truth about them, and what Zeldin's announcement really amounts to. No, there is no "EV mandate" and the U.S. is already "energy dominant" as it was when Trump took office after America long ago became the world's leading producer of oil, gas, coal and renewable energy under President Biden, who also adopted a number of landmark climate initiatives that increased manufacturing, boosted the economy, produced clean energy and made America safer for everyone.

  It will be a long and difficult path for Trump's EPA to overturn dozens of health and safety rules long in place, as well as the agency's landmark 2009 scientific "endangerment finding" on the adverse health effects of planet warming carbon pollution on which a number of those regulations, adopted under the Clean Air Act, are based.

  Bottom line: the Trump Administration plan, as detailed by Zeldin, will increase pollution, worsen the climate crisis, allow more deadly cancer-causing toxins into our air and water, and force Americans to pay the bill for all of it through what Desi Doyen describes as a "pollution tax". You may support Zeldin and Trump's scheme to do all of those things, but let's be clear about what their announcement yesterday is calling for.

  The fossil fuel industry --- already the most profitable industry in the history of civilization --- immediately declared their support for the effort. Few others have done so and many have vowed to challenge it in court. Now it's up to all of us to fight against these unpopular plans. Tune in today for more details that may help to give you the ammunition to do so.

• Finally, Desi Doyen has a bit more on the Trump EPA's vow to Make America Polluted Again, and much more in our latest Green News Report...

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