Well, it's our last BradCast for a week or so, as we prepare for a muuuch-needed stand-down next week after Memorial Day. But we make up for it by packing a lot into today's program, with two of our favorite (and your favorite) guests. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We're joined today again for one of our semi-regular (irregular?) round tables with our old-school, right-about-everything-for-20-years blogger pals, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, award-winning columnist at Salon and her own Digby's Hullabaloo blog; and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS', blogger and co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast from Flyover Country, Illinois.

As noted, we cover a whole lot of ground today, including both important and incredibly dumb news alike! Among the important news...

• DoJ Team Trump attorneys are upbraided in court by a U.S. District judge in New Jersey for indicting Newark's Democratic Mayor Ras Baraka on ridiculous trespassing charges, vowing last week to bring him to trial, only to drop all charges this week. At the same time, they then went on to indict Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver on ridiculous charges stemming from the same incident two weeks ago at an ICE detention facility in Newark. Those charges will also likely be dropped eventually, and Trump's former loser defense attorney, now interim U.S. Attorney in NJ, Alina Habba, will likely find herself upbraided again.

• After Trump spent years campaigning on promises to not touch Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, House Republicans earlier today barely passed Trump's budget bill that --- you guessed --- will slash both Medicare and Medicaid by more than a trillion dollars, taking away health care from as many as 14 million Americans. That, in order to help pay for tax cuts to wealthy people while ballooning deficit spending by about 4 trillion dollars. (Digby: "It's a complete travesty, and I think everybody knows it.")

• The Trump Regime's ongoing horrors and errors and blatant, thuggish, authoritarian violations of court orders regarding his clownish yet cruel and unlawful mass deportation efforts. (Driftglass: "This is a mass weapon attack, like raining missiles down on an enemy target. Some of it is going to get through. And they'll get most of what they want.")

• Qatar's $400 million bribe to Trump in the shape of a Boeing 747 "flying palace" that may never be used as Air Force One, but that he hopes to keep for his own personal use after his Presidency. "Emoluments," like "groceries," is such an old-fashioned word. (Driftglass: "He's just a giant greed hole of need and narcissism." Digby: "It sure sounds like 'I'd like you to do us a favor though...'")

• And, oh, yeah, Republicans on Thursday also nuked the filibuster in the U.S. Senate by ignoring the Senate Parliamentarian to pass a law with a bare majority that, according to Senate rules, requires 60 votes for passage. And they did so in order to ban California's clean air laws. So much for states' rights. That, despite the fear by many Democrats of nuking the filibuster to protect Voting and Reproductive Rights for all Americans when they last controlled the Senate. (Digby: "Senate rules are dead. So get ready. We are in such untrod territory.")

As you might imagine, both Digby and Driftglass have quite a few thoughts on all of the above, as well as on the Dumb News we cover today as well (apologies in advance)...

• Trump's Director of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, doesn't know what "habeas corpus" means.

• Republicans are pretending to be horrified by former FBI Director James Comey posting a photo of someone spelling out "86 47" in seashells on a beach. (Ya know, just like those "86 46" t-shirts rightwingers used to pimp. Says Digby: "This is a Republican thing, and they've been doing it forever." See her "Art of the Hissy Fit" from 2007 for more.)

• Trump is attacking and threatening Bruce Springsteen. Bruce Springsteen!

• And the dumbest news of all this week: Jake Tapper has a book about Joe Biden and a super-duper, totally important right now, conspiracy cover-up of his physical --- and, allegedly, cognitive --- decline while in office.

Don't worry. I didn't give away the best lines or hottest takes on either the important or dumb news, so tune on in!

And finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report with nothing but really good --- okay, really bad --- news to kick off Summer!...

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It was an action-packed BradCast today, though not in a good way, unfortunately, thanks to Republicans and their state Supreme Court majority in Wisconsin. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

First up, as we've been telling you for weeks, there is absolutely no plan at the federal level for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic --- on either a medical level or an economic level --- even months after the Trump Administration first learned about it. The $2.2 trillion so-called Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, hastily adopted by Congress and signed by the President just over a week ago is a mess.

Individual checks for $1,200 may take months to get to many Americans (if they get them at all) and the process for doling out $350 billion allocated by the measure towards immediate relief for small businesses via forgivable loans is even more of a disaster out of the gate. Banks, serving as middlemen, are not set up for the onslaught of applications that began on Friday, with many applicants being turned away entirely by the largest banks, and with nowhere near enough money included in the pool to serve the 30 million companies considered eligible small businesses. Our guest today suggests that no more than 5% of businesses who need help under the CARES Act's Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) are likely to receive the immediately needed loans before the funding runs out.

Moreover, there is still no nationalized plan by the Trump Administration to ensure that states have all of the basic equipment they need --- from masks, gloves and gowns to ventilators and test kits --- as supply chains have become an all out "Wild West show, with middlemen and drop points and plane rescues," according to our guest DAVID DAYEN, financial investigative journalist and Executive Editor of The American Prospect. He is now producing his indispensable "Unsanitized: Covid-19 Daily Report" column and newsletter at The Prospect.

He reports that it is not only states competing with other states and the federal government for critical life-saving equipment, but that the federal government (FEMA) is also competing with the federal government (the Strategic National Stockpile or SNS), bidding up the same gear! All of this as U.S. deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 blew past the 10,000 mark on Monday, with a week ahead that could include a "9/11 attack worth of Americans" dying, day after day, for 10 days in a row beginning in the next few days, according to one of the more conservative data projections.

Dayen offers detail on much of the above and the problem that many Americans are also now facing in their attempts to file for bankruptcy protection --- at a time that many desperately need to do so --- with courthouses shutdown around the country, and only those lucky enough to be able to afford an attorney able to file electronically.

As CNN's Jake Tapper made clear on Sunday: there is no plan for any of this. It is a disaster that is likely to continue for months (at least) with no competent officials leading the way at the federal level, and absolutely no ultimate plan to help us get out, eventually, from under what is likely to be as bad or worse than the Great Depression. That, despite the "irrational exuberance" exhibited today by a Wall Street that seems to be in utter denial.

Then, where we had hoped when today's show began to bring you the long overdue good news that Wisconsin's Democratic Governor Tony Evers finally did the right thing on Monday morning by issuing an Executive Order to postpone tomorrow's Presidential Primary, state Supreme Court election and municipal races until June 9, we were forced to change course mid-show after the state's Rightwing Supremes blocked Evers' order along a 4 to 2 party line vote.

Therefore, unless something changes, where Badger State voters can find an open polling place tomorrow (scores of municipalities found zero poll workers willing to face death to man the polls, and Milwaukee's usual 180 polling sites are being reduced to just 5!), voters will have to risk their lives to cast a vote in person on Tuesday. After Republicans had their way with the state Supremes, they have also filed with the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn an order by a federal judge last week that allowed 6 extra days for voters to turn in absentee ballots, many of which have not yet even arrived to voters on the day before the Election (when they would otherwise be due.) After air time, it appears that the stolen Republican Majority on SCOTUS has also decided with their GOP brethren in WI, and voted along party lines to overturn the federal judge's extension of the deadline for absentee ballots. Tens of thousands will be disenfranchised in the bargain.

It is a chaotic mess and electoral disaster. But, more to the point, it is a DEADLY disaster in the making, with Republicans in the state all too happy to condemn voters to potential death because they think more Democrats will be affected and possibly killed, and they hope that their incumbent Republican state Supreme Court Justice, who is on the ballot on Tuesday, will prevail under these conditions. It is appalling and Americans should get ready for much more of this in the months ahead, with more than 20 states still to cast their postponed primary votes, and all 50 states preparing to figure out how to run an election during a deadly pandemic this November. One of the two major parties has made clear that they are more than happy to place their retention of political power over the lives of actual American citizens.

Finally, today, we open up the phones to allow a few callers from the coronaverse to ring in....

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Vice President Mike Pence refuses to acknowledge his own administration scientists say climate change is a threat to national security; Millions suffering from acute water shortages and deadly heat wave in India; Trump USDA burying studies on impacts of climate change on U.S. agriculture; PLUS: General Electric scraps natural gas power plant 20 years early...Now, why would they do that?... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): This is how 2020 candidates plan to hold Big Oil accountable for climate change; 'Climate apartheid' between rich and poor looms, UN expert warns; The truth comes out about the longest-lasting oil spill in Gulf of Mexico; Americans' plastic recycling is dumped in landfills, investigation shows; A 100% renewable grid isn't just feasible, it's in the works in Europe; U.S. spy satellite photos show Himalayan glacier melt accelerating; Maine, Vermont pass plastic bag bans on same day... PLUS: Militia groups become the armed wing for climate deniers... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Donald Trump holds his first solo press conference as President...and it's a doozy. But just before that presser was going on at the White House, so was another at the National Press Club in D.C. to announce that nearly 1 million signatures calling for Trump's immediate impeachment were being delivered to Congress. [Audio link to complete show follows below.]

Journalist, author and activist Norman Solomon of Roots Action --- who, with Free Speech for People, have created the ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org campaign --- joins us to explain the grounds for the remarkable effort to begin Congressional proceedings to remove Trump from office, not even one month into his Presidency.

"This is a very long process, but not as long as many people think. This could be a lot quicker than we might have imagined just a few weeks ago," Solomon tells me, detailing what he sees as crystal clear violations of the U.S. Constitution's foreign and domestic "Emoluments" clauses, as well as a number of statutes as well.

Solomon charges that "It's such a dangerous precedent to have a President willfully, flagrantly, violating the Constitution," why he believes this can be done even with Republicans in control of both the House and Senate, and why the question of whether Vice President Mike Pence would be even worse for progressives, if he were to ascend to the Presidency, does not matter.

"If we shrug and say 'Well, we don't think it's practical', or 'We don't like the result of the Vice President becoming President', then we've bought further into what, frankly, is moving towards dictatorship," he argues. "If we say this is okay, that the President is above the supreme law of the land, then that opens the floodgates to autocracy and the antithesis of democracy."

The author of War Made Easy: How President and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death also discusses what he sees as the "big danger" of "Democrats attacking Trump with over-the-top extreme rhetoric" concerning Russia.

Then, Desi Doyen joins us for our 8th Anniversary(!) episode of the Green News Report! And, finally, I respond to some listener mail which disagrees with my take on the Logan Act (as detailed during Tuesday's BradCast), and how some believe it should be used to prosecute former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in regard to his conversation about sanctions with Russia's ambassador prior to the Inauguration...

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