Both the solutions to the problems we face and the problems themselves, are created and/or ultimately settled at the ballot box. In theory. So, once again, much of our coverage on today's BradCast --- both good news and bad --- revolves around that fact in one way or another. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

A good chunk of today's show focuses in on the fallout following Sunday's late-night capitulation by seven Senate Democrats and one independent who caucuses with them over the federal government shutdown. A central point is that the huge majority of Dems in both chambers of Congress did not capitulate. They stood united during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history in favor of holding out for the restoration of enormous cuts by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans to health care, including the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare.

And, while the shutdown's imminent end is a disappointment to many who wanted the fight to continue --- especially those who understand that the 7+1 caving Democrats received little to nothing in return for their decision to vote with the Republicans --- it's important to understand that the failure was not by "the Democrats", but by those 7+1 (and, arguably, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer who shamefully failed to prevent it) and the hundreds of Republicans in both chambers who unanimously stand by their cuts to health care subsidies that will result in skyrocketing prices --- by as much as 400% or even higher as of January 1 --- for millions of Americans, along with the loss of coverage for millions and the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands.

It's also important to notice how well the Democratic caucus hung together this time --- how they are learning to fight in the Trump era, as opposed to similar situations in the recent past --- until a handful of rogue lawmakers undermined them on Sunday night. The Senators who caved should be held to account. Not the ones who didn't. That's particularly important to remember as the Continuing Resolution now working its way through Congress to reopen the government will time out again at the end of January, when all of this may start up all over again.

Tune in for much more detail and nuance on all of the above.

Among the stories cited in support of that particular argument, and other news covered on today's program...

• Good news in the Gerrymandering Wars! A judge in Utah has ordered implementation of a new U.S. House map for 2026 that includes a new, heavily "blue" district in Salt Lake City. It will likely flip one of the state's four currently "red" seats in the U.S. House to "blue" next year.

• Donald Trump's approval ratings continue to plummet through the shutdown and last week's blowout election results for Democrats. Relatedly, eight counties in California that voted for Trump last year voted in favor of Prop 50 last week, to redistrict the state to flip as many as five "red" U.S. House seats to "blue" in response to Trump and Texas Republicans' mid-decade gerrymander. (All further begging the question about the wisdom of the handful of Senate Dems to end the shutdown before affordable health care coverage could be restored to millions of Americans.)

• While there are many reasonable arguments for reopening the government after 40 days of the longest shutdown in U.S. history, with many Americans suffering, even the right-leaning "center left" Third Way group slammed the supposed "moderate centrists" who caved on Sunday night. In a statement the group's President said they "oppose the agreement in the Senate to end the government shutdown," arguing: "This was a battle worth fighting, and it was worth fighting longer."

• Trump issued full pardons over the weekend to 77 of his personal attorneys and political allies, including the fake electors in swingstates he lost, who worked so hard to try and help him steal the 2020 election. Those receiving clemency including folks like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb, and many others involved in spreading lies about fraud in 2020, the fake electors scheme and the unlawful efforts to breach voting systems in places like Coffee County, Georgia. While many of those pardoned are facing state criminal charges, which a Presidential pardon can't change, none are currently facing federal charges. That begs the question of why he pardoned them and who else may be covered by the vaguely worded clemency statement. The Dept. of Justice's former Pardon Attorney, who was replaced by Trump, believes that the criminal President is sending a message that he has their back if they are needed to violate the law again to help him try and steal future elections.

• On Monday, the corrupt, activist, rightwing U.S. Supreme Court majority announced they would hear a case regarding the Republican National Committee's challenge to Mississippi's law that allows mail-in ballots cast and postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrive up until five days afterward. The RNC and Mississippi State Republican Party argue that when Congress defined "Election Day", they meant that lawful ballots could only be cast on that day. A SCOTUS ruling in their favor, against the State, could undermine elections in some 30 states with similar laws allowing for late arriving ballots, just in time to create chaos in the critical 2026 midterms.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as a new round of U.N. climate talks kicks off in Brazil without U.S. in attendance; and as Australia finds itself with so much rooftop solar energy they are now planning to give it away for free...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

We try to make sense of a couple of different things on today's BradCast, neither of which make much sense. Wish us luck. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... It's official. Donald Trump is literally demolishing the entire East Wing of the White House in order to make room for his enormous, garish, 90's Vegas casino-styled ballroom. There is almost nothing that seems in any way legal about any of this. None of the official bodies have approved it. It's private funding is unlawful. But, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, Presidents no longer have to worry about laws and stuff. So, whatever. All of that after Trump told us last July that the new addition to the People's House "won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it, but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of."

I know. Shocking. Donald Trump lied. About all of it. But, don't worry, as we discuss, there are still a whole bunch of ways that he'll also be able to line his corrupt pockets with millions of tax-payer dollars in the bargain.

THEN... Of greater concern at the moment, at least to me, is the fact that Liberty Vote, a company that nobody ever heard of before last week --- because, apparently, it did not exist before last week --- has just purchased Dominion Voting, the nation's second largest voting system vendor, which supplies election hardware and software to 27 states. It is also the company that Trump and his supporters falsely claimed had stolen the 2020 election from him.

Liberty's CEO is a guy named Scott Leiendecker who was formerly the Republican Election Director in St. Louis, Missouri. He was hired for that job by the city's Election Commissioner at the time, a guy by the name of Ed Martin. Yeah, That Ed Martin. The far-right Republican activist who is now running Trump's "Weaponization" of the Dept. of Justice. The one who is pulling together the corrupt indictments of Trump foes like James Comey and Letitia James, and overseeing Trump's pardons and commutations for fellow corrupt Republicans like disgraced former Rep. George Santos. Yes, that Ed Martin.

Martin's old pal Leiendecker, after serving as the Republican Election Director in St. Louis, went on to create a company named KNOWiNK, which is now the nation's largest electronic pollbook vendor. He now owns both that company and the nation's second largest voting and tabulation system company. What could possibly go wrong?

There is a whole lot we don't know about the purchase, who is funding it, or what Leiendecker intends to do with the company. Though last week's official announcement of the acquisition (which does not appear to even be published in full on the web, as far as I can tell), begins triumphantly: "As of today, Dominion is gone. Liberty Vote assumes full ownership and operational control." The statement then goes on to emphasize "enabling compliance with President Trump's executive order" regarding voting systems as a top priority, even though that Order has since been blocked by several federal judges for failing to comply with the Constitution.

WIRED's Kim Zetter offers the deepest overall background on the purchase, its players, and the many concerns about it from voting system experts.

Our guest today, longtime election integrity advocate and security expert SUSAN GREENHALGH of Free Speech for People published a piece at Slate this week about the out-of-the-blue acquisition that blind-sided, among others, elections officials (Dominion's customers) across the country who were told nothing about it in advance. In her piece, Greenhalgh argues why, although "the announcement that the second-largest U.S. voting system vendor would be in the hands of a self-declared partisan [has] sparked concerns," the "wildly inappropriate and troubling" development "is merely one aspect of the badly broken, opaque, and corrupted election system industry that we’ve been subjected to for decades."

Greenhalgh joins us to discuss concerns about the Leiendecker/Liberty Vote purchase, the "corrupted election system industry" she mentioned, and how Congress, states, local jurisdictions and the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) could take action to mitigate all of this madness and the dwindling confidence Americans have in our elections in the wake of computerized voting systems made by a handful of opaque private companies.

The Dominion website now automatically redirects to Liberty's new, one page site which, for the moment, offers nothing more right now than a letter from Leiendecker focusing on his "promise" for "a 100% American-owned election technology company dedicated to restoring trust in our elections" with, among other things, "American values". The letter vows that the company is "turning the page and beginning the vital work of restoring faith in American elections."

While "faith" is not needed in American elections, public oversight certainly is, in order for Americans to have confidence in their reported election results. Whether Liberty improves on Dominion's record there, remains to be seen. Though lies and insinuations about Dominion --- which won a three-quarters of a billion dollar defamation settlement against Fox "News" after the Republican media outlet repeatedly and knowingly lied about the company --- certainly don't help to restore either "faith" or public oversight and confidence.

Nor does it help that Liberty suggested in its announcement that it would somehow carry out a "top-to-bottom" review of Dominion's hardware and software and would "report any vulnerabilities" it finds. While it's unclear who they would "report" them to, we already know, from last year's trial against the Georgia Sec. of State's mandated use of the company's insecure touchscreen voting systems across the entire state, that there are lots of very serious vulnerabilities in Dominion's systems as well as those made by other companies. But Leiendecker then goes on to vow to somehow replace those systems as needed before the 2026 mid-term elections. As we discuss with Greenhalgh, that is a virtual impossibility, given the time it takes to develop voting systems and have them tested and certified for use by federal and state regulators.

"We need a system that the Devil himself can run," argues Greenhalgh, citing a well-worn phrase among longtime election integrity folks. "The solution is not more transparency with the voting system vendors, just so we know exactly how partisan they are --- although we should know that, we should be entitled to know that --- it should be a system that is so transparent and so auditable --- and that is audited in a trustworthy and public way --- that we can trust the election results at the end of the day, no matter who is running it. That is the solution that we need to be going to."

As you can tell, we've got a lot to dig into with Greenhalgh on today's program, on all of the above and much more...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Among our additional topics for discussion today...

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

On today's BradCast: Apparently, the high price of lying to MAGA viewers about the 2020 election has been totally worth it for rightwing "news" outlets, according to a newly released trove of insider documents. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Two years ago, Fox "News" agreed to pay more than three-quarters of a billion dollars to Dominion Voting Systems to make the voting equipment vendor's defamation lawsuit against them go away. Fox' on-air personalities and their guests had falsely, repeatedly, and without evidence, claimed Dominion used their voting systems to steal the Presidential election from Donald Trump in 2020. Many of the top Fox hosts and executives knew the claims were not true at the time. But they ran with them anyway, as MAGA viewers were fleeing to other, even farther right media outlets like Newsmax and OAN, which were even more shameless in their promotion of evidence-free claims that the election had been stolen for Joe Biden.

Those outlets were forced to pay up as well for their knowing, on-air lies. Newsmax settled with Dominion for $67 million and with Smartmatic for $40 million. OAN similarly settled with Smartmatic --- whose only voting systems in the U.S. were in Los Angeles County in 2020 --- for an undisclosed amount. In every such legal case, to date, the rightwing media outfits chose to pay up rather than face public scrutiny in a court of law, and to see their "news" personalities take the stand to defend claims that emails and text messages revealed during discovery proved that even they didn't believe.

Now Smartmatic's $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox is on the verge of going to trial early next year. Last time, Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion to avoid a trial where the jury members had already been selected and journalists, including our guest today, were waiting in the courtroom for the trial to begin.

Late last month, a trove of hundreds of pages of "damning filings" were made publicly available in Smartmatic's case against Fox. Media Matters for America Senior Fellow MATT GERTZ, who joins us on today's show, plowed through them. The documents reveal, among other things, Fox personalities like Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld, discussing "how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL"; prime time stars Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham worrying about backlash from viewers for failing to cover phony claims about fraud enough; Bret Baier, the network's supposed "straight news" anchor trying to convince the network to reverse its (accurate) call that Arizona had gone to Biden, given how furious that fact had made Trump and the outlet's MAGA viewers.

"I think we certainly filled in some gaps after the Dominion suit that have been answered to one degree or another through the Smartmatic one," Gertz tells me today, summarizing the newly released documents in the Smartmatic case. "More broadly, what the suit shows is they knew. Fox News' top executives and hosts were well aware that Donald Trump lost the election, that there had not been massive voter fraud, as he had claimed, that kept him from being re-elected, and they went out and said the opposite to their viewers. Night after night, segment after segment. For weeks. They did it because they were worried about losing portions of their market share to outlets like Newsmax and OAN that were perceived as more willing to push those lies."

While Fox has paid a price for that to Dominion, and may have to do so again with Smartmatic, Gertz asserts the lesson for Fox seems to be that it was all worth it. "They have, in the days since then, demonstrated that they are absolutely willing to do it again if the Republican nominee in 2028 tries the same con that Donald Trump did in 2020," he argues, citing the fact that those who tried to tell the truth about 2020 have since been pushed out at the network, while those who were willing to lie are still there, have received promotions, or are now members of the Trump Administration itself.

"What happens is that, because Donald Trump lies so much, he forces his supporters to make their peace with either letting the lie go past and ignoring it, or running with it. There are very few who are willing to say, 'This thing is not happening.'"

Much more on all of that with Gertz today, along with what Monday's agreement among the family heirs to 94-year old Fox owner Rupert Murdoch's business empire likely means for the far-right politics of Fox "News" going forward after he dies. And, far more troubling, the news this week that a far-right Trump supporter and donor with no experience in the news business whatsoever, will now serve as the ombudsman for CBS News as part of the recent concessions made by CBS-owner Paramount to win approval from Trump's FCC for its merger with Skydance.

"CBS News has instituted an ombudsman because its parent company was trying to convince the FCC that if he approved their merger, the network's coverage would change in a way he liked," explains Gertz. "They didn't pick a journalist with a reputation for integrity and neutrality. They picked a rightwing think-tanker and Republican donor who has no newsroom experience, but will give Donald Trump what he wants, which is a CBS News that moves its political coverage to the right."

"They are leveraging the power of the Executive Branch through Trump appointees who are willing to corruptly do the President's bidding, in order to force those companies to do so," he asserts. "They are changing the incentives for media outlets so that they need to kneel to the Republican Party's diktats if they want their mergers completed, or if they want to avoid criminal investigations, even. It's certainly a step towards authoritarianism, toward the treatment that Victor Orban of Hungary enforces on media outlets in his country. Orban is someone Trump has said is a model for what he's trying to do."

In other cheery news on today's show...

• The GOP-controlled Missouri state House voted today to approve a new U.S. House map that will likely steal one of the two remaining Democratic seats in the state for Republicans in next year's midterms. They also approved a measure that would make it harder to adopt citizen-led Constitutional ballot initiatives by mandating that measures must win a majority of voters in each of the state's eight Congressional districts, rather than a simple statewide majority as currently required. The move comes in the wake of state voters recently approving ballot initiatives that establish abortion as a state Constitutional right; for the legalization of marijuana; and for the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Both measures adopted by the MO House on Tuesday now head to the state Senate where they are expected to be approved before going to MO's Republican Governor for his signature. The ballot initiative amendment, however, must be approved by voters under the existing, simple statewide majority rules before being added to the state Constitution.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as both electricity usage and prices spike across the country, even as Trump continues to shut down much-needed windfarms and other renewable energy sources around the nation...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Okay. So, now Republican elected officials who pretend to oppose "Big Government", are literally locking up their elected opponents in the state capital. (Insert eye-roll emoji here.) That's just one of the insane stories --- and disturbing signs of American democracy on the authoritarian precipice --- on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

• On Monday, Democratic state lawmakers returned to Texas after two weeks of out-of-state quorum breaking meant to prevent Texas Republicans from stealing five U.S. House seats with a new map drawn up at the insistence of Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott. But, before they were allowed to leave the capital building in Austin, the Republican House leader required Dems to sign a permission slip to be escorted 24/7 by Texas state troopers to ensure they return to vote on the new map on Wednesday. Democratic state Rep. Nicole Collier refused to sign away her freedoms, and was disallowed from leaving the House chamber, where she has effectively been held prisoner on the floor of the House by Republicans. She was was forced Monday night to sleep under bright lights at her desk House floor desk. [See photo above.] As of today, Collier is still being held prisoner by fellow elected officials from the state's rightwing authoritarian majority party. Lots of details on this remarkable story today, and how it serves as more shameful evidence of what Republicans have allowed American "democracy" to become.

• Out here in California, meanwhile, state Democrats are moving ahead with their plan to counter Texas' attempted heist by redrawing the Golden State's U.S. House map to remove five Republican seats from the map next year, in what Gov. Gavin Newsom describes as "fighting fire with fire". In CA, however, it won't be up to partisan state officials. No imprisonment of the opposition should be necessary. Here, the voters of the state must decide in a special election on November 4th as to whether they wish to temporarily set aside the U.S. House map created by the state's independent redistricting commission. The effort is meant to counter Texas Republicans undermining democracy --- and the odds of Dems winning back the House to put the brakes on Trump's authoritarian agenda --- in the 2026 midterms. I have been supportive of the CA response, called the "Election Rigging Response Act", despite my years-long record in opposition to gerrymandering by either party. One longtime listener calls me out via email today for my new position on this matter, charging that "If you fight fire with fire the fire grows stronger and then spreads." I share his well-meaning thoughts and my response to them on today's program.

• Speaking of corrupting democracy, the Trump-supporting Republican propaganda outlet Newsmax has agreed to pay $67 million to settle the defamation lawsuit filed against it by Dominion Voting Systems. After Trump lost the 2020 election, Newsmax --- along with Fox "News" and other dishonest GOP propaganda outlets --- advanced evidence-free claims that the election was rigged by, among other things, voting machine companies like Dominion. Documents that would have been shown to jurors at trial --- had Newsmax not agreed to settle --- reveal that officials at the fake news outfit knew Trump's claims about a stolen election were BS, but ran the phony conspiracy theories anyway to win duped MAGA viewers. The Newsmax settlement follows a similar $787.5 million defamation settlement with Dominion by Fox "News", and a reported $40 million paid by Newsmax to Smartmatic, another voting equipment vendor falsely accused of fraud by Trump-supporting outlets after the 2020 election.

• On yesterday's show, we detailed how the Dept. of Homeland Security is now using literal Nazi and neo-Nazi text and references and imagery in their new recruitment campaign for ICE. Today, both NOTUS and The Independent detail pretty good evidence to suggest that the unnamed Nazi-loving social media creator at DHS may be a guy named Eric Lendrum, who has a long public history of both Nazi-like political statements and claims that "conservatives" are being ostracized like slaves, or as Jews were in Nazi Germany. Lendrum now works in the DHS Public Relations office, which does PR for the largest law enforcement agency in the world, and evidence suggests he may be responsible for the relentless recent flood of DHS social media posts using Nazi memes, slogans and images.

• We tried to warn you. Though, for some, it could be the last timely warning they receive. E&E News' is reporting that public radio and TV stations are now scrambling to keep their local disaster-warning systems alive after Trump and Republicans in Congress rescinded all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helped fund hundreds of local NPR and PBS stations. In many areas around the U.S., those stations are --- or, historically, were --- a literal lifeline for local residents, particularly in rural areas. Emergency alert warning systems now at risk include those for hurricanes and tropical storms on the Atlantic Coast; for winter storms across the Northern Plains; tsunamis in Alaska; earthquakes in rural Northern California; tornadoes in states across the Great Plains; and flash flooding just about everywhere these days. Yes, elections have consequences. And now, potentially very deadly ones, including for many rural Trump voters.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report on Hurricane Erin smashing records off the Atlantic Coast; Climate change driving record humidity levels; Deadly rains in Pakistan and a heatwave in Scandinavia intensified by the burning of fossil fuels; and the collapse of a U.N. plastics pollution conference, thanks to nations like the U.S., Russia, and a bunch of Middle Eastern states who undermined a landmark agreement on behalf of the plastic-producing fossil fuel industry at the recent conference in Geneva...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

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...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

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...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Donald Trump's chaos coaster continues on today's BradCast. Our top on today's ride: Social Security. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... As we warned yesterday amid "irrational exuberance" as the stock market briefly skyrocketed following Donald Trump's social media announcement that he was pausing his unilateral worldwide tariffs for 90 days, investors began to notice that it wasn't quite as good as it looked. Trump's remaining 10% tariffs on almost every nation (other than Russia) and boost of duties against imports from China to 145%, helped lead the U.S. markets to tank again today, if not quite as much as they rose yesterday.

But some brighter news for those who believe in both truth and election integrity today. Rightwing propaganda outlet Newsmax, which quietly settled a defamation suit last year brought against them by voting system company Smartmatic, was found this week by a judge in Delaware to have defamed Dominion Voting Systems following the 2020 Presidential election. A jury will now determine if the Trump-allied outlet intentionally smeared Dominion with "actual malice" when they claimed the company rigged voting machines in favor of Joe Biden, despite the lack of any such evidence. The trial is set to begin at the end of this month...unless Newsmax decides to settle that one too.

But, speaking of actual voter fraud, it looks like Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, committed it last year in Hawaii when she voted there in the 2024 election after previously declaring herself to be a resident of Texas. Oops.

THEN... Elon Musk's DOGE Bros are unleashing absolute havoc at the Social Security Agency. Their latest chaos involved a plan to end phone services for people filing for retirement or survivor benefits as of this coming Monday. But with cries of outrage, impossibly long lines at field offices, wait times on the phone, and website crashes for new applicants and longtime beneficiaries in recent days, the Agency has now backed off that terrible plan as well. For now.

We're joined today for insight and warnings about Trump, Musk, DOGE and much more by longtime Social Security expert DR. ERIC KINGSON, emeritus Professor of Social Work at Syracuse University, co-founder of the nonprofit Social Security Works, and policy advisor to two different Presidential commissions on Social Security Reform under both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

What DOGE is doing at SSA "has nothing to do with efficiency or correcting errors," he tells me. "There's an extremely small error rate in Social Security. As for efficiency, we spend less than one percent administering the program. It's a well-administered program --- until now."

He worries that for "the first time since the creation of the program, there is a major, major risk of dramatic changes that will hurt the American public, especially middle-aged workers and young workers today."

"It's purposeful," Kingson argues, regarding the chaos unleashed at the agency by Musk's DOGE Bros in recent weeks. "You don't do the things that DOGE is doing because you want to fix something. You want to destroy it. And you want to destroy it with cruelty and disrespect for human dignity."

Kingson, the co-author of a book on protecting and expanding "the Insurance Americans Love and Count On", believes "the next game plan" is to privatize the Agency on the basis that the havoc unfolding now will be used to argue later that the private sector "will do a lot better".

He concurs with President Biden's SSA Administrator Martin O'Malley that the damage being done right now could soon result in the collapse of the system; argues that DOGE and Trump "have been stripping Social Security of its expertise and historical memory"; and charges that Trump, Musk and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who claimed today that "Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will not take a hit" in the President's legislative agenda moving forward in Congress, are lying about fraud at the agency and benefits for Americans, which they plan to undermine. Kingson cites "a huge crisis" on the road ahead, as "half of today's workers under 67 will not be able to maintain their standard of living in retirement. If you count the cost of healthcare and long term care, it's probably about two-thirds. That's a crisis. What they are doing is stripping away the one thing you can count on: Social Security."

Much more on all of that --- and what you and I can and should do about it (hint: "Fight like hell!") --- in my conversation today with Kingson. I hope you'll tune in.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, as Trump signs a slew of Executive Orders to bail out the dying, polluting American coal industry, and as Big Banks plot new ways to profit off of our climate crisis...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Buckle up for yet another busy day on The BradCast. It's gonna be this way for a long while, I suspect. At least we've got some apparently good news today in the bargain. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST UP: An apparent breakthrough in the months-long negotiations for a six-week, and perhaps longer, ceasefire and return of hostages to begin ending the horrific, long war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza was announced today. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office has yet to confirm the deal, said to begin Sunday, Israel's President Isaac Herzog called on them to do so, and President Joe Biden touted the deal on Wednesday. The months-long negotiations were also said to have been joined by the incoming President's team in recent weeks, who had (much to my surprise) lauded the Biden negotiators in recent days. The White House today said both Administration teams had been "speaking as one" in the latest talks.

THEN: Thanks to the (hopefully) good breaking news mentioned above, we've got a truncated version of coverage of today's six different U.S. Senate confirmation hearings for key posts in the new Trump Administration, with our focus today on Trump loyalist, apologist, Impeachment defense attorney and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, his pick for U.S. Attorney General, dodging largely all advice and consent questions she faced from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Even the easy ones. (Video here.) She repeatedly refused to say, for example, whether Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 election; whether she was aware of any evidence of "massive fraud" during that election; whether she'd advise the incoming President against pardoning violent January 6th insurrectionists who attacked police at the Capitol; whether she would target Trump's perceived enemies for prosecution; or whether she would even insist that he obey the law and Constitution. We share excerpts today from Bondi's questioning from Senators Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI).

FINALLY: Just before Thanksgiving --- just over a week after Donald Trump was announced the winner of he 2024 election --- we were joined on this program by RANDALL D. ELIASON, longtime D.C. federal prosecutor, now law professor at George Washington University, author of the SidebarsBlog newsletter and contributor to a number of media outlets.

Back then, he was calling for the sentencing of Trump in New York --- for his 34 felony convictions related to hush-money payment to a porn star to help him cheat to win the 2016 --- to happen before this month's inauguration, even as the three other criminal felony indictments (two at the federal level and one in Georgia) Trump faced would most likely be abandoned due to the outcome of the election.

On Friday, after several desperate and failed emergency appeals to the high court in New York and to his pals on the U.S. Supreme Court, Trump was, indeed sentenced for those felonies by NY's Justice Juan Merchan. The sentence, unfortunately, was for an "unconditional discharge", with the judge explaining that he felt it was his only option given the results of the election. That means Trump will face no jail time or even financial penalty for his 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide the 2016 payout. He will, however, take the oath of office next week as the first felon to become President of the United States.

Eliason returns to the program today, to explain if that's what he had been hoping for, or, at least, if that satisfies his pre-Thanksgiving advocacy. Over the weekend, in an article at Sidebars on the sentencing, he lauded Merchan and described the sentencing as "a small victory (yes, really) for the rule of law."

But is it? Apparently Trump thinks it is, Eliason argues. We drill down on that question (he calls Merchan's sentence "the least-bad option" even if it "feels like another example of [Trump] being above the law."); what Merchan might have done differently while attempting "to avoid even the perception" that the court was trying to influence the 2024 election; what the terse 5 to 4 SCOTUS rejection [PDF] of Trump's emergency appeal to block his NY sentencing augers for a second Trump Presidency ("not a good sign"); whether the case could still be tossed on appeal; and much more, including both Eliason's insight on whether the full Jack Smith Special Counsel report on Trump's now-abandoned federal indictments will ever be released, and his concerns about the DoJ under Trump during the next Administration.

On that last point, Eliason warns today, in the wake of Trump's A.G. pick Bondi appearing ready to roll over for whatever Trump wants: "The bigger picture concern is the threats that Trump has made to use the Justice Department to go after political opponents and those who criticize him. Like the people who ran the House January 6th investigation. That is obviously wrong --- a violation of everything the Justice Department stands for. And if those kinds of things do start to happen, that's going to be a major, major deal."

"That's one of my biggest concerns," he explains. "Trump says a lot of stuff that he never follows through on. But if his Justice Department --- which is going to have some of his personal trial attorneys, apparently, in top positions --- if they do start using the justice system to go after his political opponents and those who criticize him, then that's going to be a huge, huge problem."

Stand by for huge, huge problems...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

I suspect it's gonna get much uglier before it's all said and done. And we're here for it! A "MAGA Civil War"? Count us in on The BradCast! [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

But, first up, some other news today...

• Repeated "wildfire weather" warnings from the National Weather Service for Los Angeles, predicting "a life-threatening, destructive windstorm," with wind gusts as high as 100mph(!) from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday morning, after months of dry weather appear to have been prescient. The day started here with a neighbors huge tree limb blowing over to crush our backyard canopy amid the gusty winds. By shows end today, tens of thousands being evacuated from a quickly growing wildfire in Pacifica Palisades, on the coast. It has gotten much worse since we got off air today, with hundreds reportedly abandoning their cars on the Pacific Coast highway to flee encroaching flames.

• In what counts for Trump criminal accountability court news these days, his favorite federal Judge/tool, Aileen Cannon in Florida, who was seated at the very end of his first term after he lost the 2020 election, , is working hard for her promotion to SCOTUS. On Tuesday, she exercised dubious authority to block the release, at least for now, of Special Counsel Jack Smith's report on Donald Trump's two different, now-abandoned federal felony indictments for stealing thousands of pages of highly classified national security documents upon leaving office, and for his failed attempts to steal the 2020 election. We'll see how long her ruling stands.

• Meanwhile, in New York, an appeals court on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump's attempt to stay his criminal sentencing, still scheduled for Friday, in the case in which he was found guilty of 34 felony fraud counts related to his hush money payments to a porn star to help him cheat to win the 2016 election. Barring any surprises, the sentencing is still on for this week, though the judge in the case has indicated he is unlikely to issue any jail time, given Trump's re-election. But, even with an "unconditional discharge", he will still become the nation's first convicted felon to be sworn in as President.

• On Monday in New York, in federal court, former NYC Mayor turned disgraced Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court for failing to lawfully respond to the $148 million defamation judgement against him won by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who Rudy and Trump both falsely claimed had committed fraud during the 2020 election. If only Rudy could have figured out how to become President and make all of his crimes go away like Donny did.

• Then, we're joined by RYAN COOPER, Managing Editor of The American Prospect, on the emerging (and hilarious) dust-up between the broligarchs who control Trump, like richest-man-in-the-world Elon Musk (and his sidekick Vivek Ramaswamy), and his hardcore MAGA cultists like Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon. Cooper's article on the matter is headlined "President Musk Declares War on American Workers".

  Just before the turn of the new year, sparks started flying when the duped MAGA cultists learned that Trump was going to continue the H-1B visa program that allows skilled tech workers to come to the U.S. and take less money to work longer hours than American citizens. After facing criticism for the Silicon Valley billionaires' favorite work visa scheme (the South African-born Musk came here himself on an H-1B), Musk took to the social media site he purchased and declared war on Loomer and any other MAGAs who dared oppose him, declaring: "The reason I'm in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B," before he added, "Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend."

  The self-proclaimed "free-speech absolutist" then proceeded to downgrade and demonetize Loomer's account on Twitter/X, along with dozens of other MAGAs who dared call out Musk and the H-1B program.

  Today, Cooper explains tells me why the Silicon Valley broligarchs are so fond of the H-1B program, which, he says, they wield as a "weapon of class warfare" that "provides a pool of exploitable labor" that must do as you say or get sent back to their country. We also discuss Musk and the Right's actual position on "free speech" ("Tthey get to say whatever they want, and you get to shut up."); who appears to really be calling the shots now in Trumpland (Hint: its the guy who controls the "still depressingly influential social media platform that all the Republicans are on"); and how this nascent war between the two major factions of Trump's MAGA cult/coalition is likely to shake out in the days ahead.

  "We are in the realm of syphilitic emperor history books," Cooper tells me. "You've got Trump, who is 78 and clearly has lost MANY steps from when he was a young man. But Elon Musk is also incredibly erratic and impulsive. With these two megalomaniac narcissists with giant fevered egos, typically you'd see a massive falling out over something." And yet, so far, Trump is standing with the richest man on Earth and pretending he even knows what the H-1B program is. Meanwhile, says Cooper, about "Trump and his toadies, the minute they become inconvenient for him, he just throws them over the side. Which, for some reason, doesn't seem to affect the supply of people lining up to get thrown over the side the next day."

• Finally, Desi Doyen has our first Green News Report of the new year, with much to catch up on after our long holiday break, including the brutal, climate change-fueled weather across much of the country this week; President Joe Biden's last-minute ban on new offshore drilling across most U.S. coastal waters; the environmental legacy of the late President Jimmy Carter; and much more...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Today, on our last new BradCast of 2024: It's beginning to look a lot like failure, everywhere you look in D.C. It's already getting pathetic before either the new majorities are sworn in to Congress or the new Administration officially takes over the White House. But we're all here for the GOP fiascos today! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... A state appeals court panel in Georgia ruled 2 to 1 on Thursday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis must be disqualified from the racketeering indictment she filed against Donald Trump and 18-conspirators for their failed attempt to steal the state from Joe Biden in 2020. The case itself, however, may continue. The court cited an "appearance of impropriety" related to Willis' romantic relationship with a former Special Prosecutor assigned to the same case. She quickly filed an appeal to the ruling today, but it could be the end to this criminal case against the convicted felon who will be sworn in as President, even though today's ruling could still be overturned by the state Supreme Court or Georgia's Prosecuting Attorneys' Council could reassign the case to another prosecution team.

THEN... If you're looking for an idea of what next year may be like in Congress, when Republicans in the U.S. House will have an even slimmer majority than they do now, and when Donald Trump will be "running the ship" in the White House, look no farther than the clusterf__k that has unfolded over the past 24 hours in the House. A bipartisan, bicameral deal to avoid a Government shutdown on Friday, just before Christmas, was effectively nixed by... Elon Musk, the unelected South African who appears to have purchased not just the Presidency, but the entirety of the U.S. Government with his $277 million investment on Trump's behalf in the 2024 Presidential election.

After a few of Musk's tweets against it yesterday --- despite clearly never even having read a single page of the three-month Continuing Resolution meant largely to keep the government operating until a full budget deal could be reached in March --- the bill was pronounced dead. Then Trump jumped in, late in the game, to say that he too --- just like Elon! --- was against the bill! Even though he could have rung in to kill it or change it any time long before yesterday. Musk, the richest man in the world, and perhaps the most clueless (at least when it comes to how government and legislation works) now seems to be running the GOP ship in D.C., despite having no clue how to run a D.C. ship.

Trump then began demanding an end to the very idea of a Debt Ceiling despite the Debt Ceiling having nothing to do with this week's must-pass legislation. (His newfound objection to it is apparently because he doesn't want to have the raise the Debt Ceiling on his watch, so he'll be free when he does to blow up the national debt with new, enormous tax cuts for his wealthy pals...like Elon!) This afternoon a new bill was cobbled together that Trump claimed to support. But, minutes after we got off air, that measure failed, as Democrats were no longer interested in helping Speaker Mike Johnson --- or Trump or President Musk --- out of their own mess.

Of course, that's not all that's happening at years-end. And we've got two of our good friends and fan faves here to try and make sense (or not) of much of it. We're joined once again today by fellow old-school bloggers, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and DRIFTGLASS, author of his own eponymously-named blog and co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast, for an end-of-year roundtable, of sorts.

As usual, they've both got keen insight on the idiocy unfurling in D.C. today and much more, including such topics as...

• DRONES over New Jersey!!! (Also: Who cares?)
• Elon's buffoonery and Trump's diminishment.
• Mike Johnson's likely brief future as House Speaker.
• Consequences and dangers (for voters, for January 6th, for Inauguration Day) of a GOP holiday government shutdown and a GOP failure to elect a House Speaker.
• Corporate CEOs kissing Trump's ass, for some reason.
• Will we be targeted by the new Administration?
• Should Joe Biden offer preemptive pardons to people like Liz Cheney?
• Do Dems really need to reinvent themselves, as some claim, after narrowly losing the Presidency and picking up a seat in the House in November?
• Did the Dems blow an opportunity by not elevating superstar Rep. AOC to Ranking Member of the Oversight Committee?

...And what are Digby and Driftglass most worried about --- and most hopeful for --- in the new year, as a new Republican majority takes over Congress and either Trump or Musk take over the White House?

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is here for our last Green News Report of 2024, as the Biden EPA grants California's waiver to phase out sales of new, all-gasoline cars by 2035; A disturbing new study on microplastics and cancer; And Biden's Dept. of Energy finds that GOP plans to expand natural gas exports will hike up prices for Americans...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

On today's BradCast: The unspeakable corruption of the Trump 2.0 era is already under way, even before the 2024 election has even been finalized. So what are we all gonna do about it? I've got a few thoughts. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• The Biden Administration's Federal Trade Commission finalized its new rule today banning bait-and-switch junk fees for concert tickets, hotels, vacation rentals and more. The only vote on the FTC against the new rule? The man just named as Trump's incoming Federal Trade Commission Chair, of course.

• The Presidential Electors selected by popular vote in each state met today to officially cast their votes in the 2024 Presidential election in each state capital. And, though I didn't have time to mention it on air, 13 of the Republican Electors who cast votes for Donald Trump today in the Electoral College, in three different states, are currently facing felony charges for fraudulently declaring themselves to be official Electors in the 2020 election. But carrying out official duties as either alleged or convicted felons now seems to be a feature of the Republican Party.

• Convicted felon Donald Trump saw his motion to toss out his 34 state felony convictions rejected by New York Superior Court Justice Juan Merchan late on Monday. The judge, who oversaw Trump's trial for the filing of false business records as part of his hush money payoff scheme to porn star Stormy Daniels to help him cheat to win the 2016 election, denied every argument Trump's attorneys presented in their motion citing the recent ridiculous ruling by corrupt Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court that Presidents enjoy immunity for all crimes committed while carrying out official acts as President. The hush money scheme, however, took place before Trump became President, and evidence submitted by NY prosecutors during the trial regarding any official acts during Trump's first term as President was not enough to overcome the "overwhelming evidence" of his guilt presented by prosecutors, according to Merchan, who "held the line" on the rule of law, at least for now. It is now all but certain, for the first time in U.S. history, that a convicted felon will be sworn in as President of the United States on January 20th.

• But the corruption and abuse of power on display last week at a major cryptocurrency conference in the United Arab Emirates, as headlined by keynote speaker Eric Trump, the incoming President's son, is almost unfathomable. He hobnobbed with convicted criminals and others currently under investigation for financial crimes, and made clear that his family's new cryptocurrency platform, World Liberty Financial, is now open for business...wink, wink. Wanna buy off the next President of the United States? Here's a perfectly "legal" way to do so, to the tune of however many tens of millions or billions of dollars you'd like to give to the incoming felonious President. The New York Times offered mostly good coverage last week, even as few other media outlets seemed to pick up on the gob-smacking report --- and even as the "paper of record" managed to normalize this unprecedented abuse of power by the Trump Family with one of the greatest understatements of all time: at one point in their story they describe Donald Trump's new crypto-pipeline for bribery, payoffs, money laundering and political favors as little more than "a more relaxed approach during this new administration to business ethics"(!!!)

• So, what to do about all of this? Is there any way to push back? Or is this just the end of the rule of law and American democracy as we know it, as some "militant pessimists" (to paraphrase Josh Marshall in a more family friendly way), have been arguing since Trump's recent election? On that, and on all of our roles as The Opposition, I've got quite a bit to say --- more than I can possibly summarize adequately here. So, please tune in at least for that. It's important.

• Finally, Desi Doyen, who knows quite a bit about overcoming militant pessimism in her 15-year beat on the climate front, joins us for our latest Green News Report, as an "apocalyptic" cyclone unfolds in the excessively warm Indian Ocean; Malaria is on the rise again thanks to climate change; an historic ski resort in Switzerland is forced to call it quits; and, as the Biden Administration, still pushing out historic renewable energy action to the very end, its EPA succeeds in the long-overdue banning of several cancer-causing chemicals...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Lots of news today on BradCast, though not all of it terrible. It also features not one, but two song and dance men, though only one of them is not a horrible person. Either way, we promise to leave you singing on your way out of the theater. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among today's stories of note...

• In the largest single-day act of clemency in modern U.S. history, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of some 1,500 people today who were released from prison to home confinement during the COVID pandemic. As discussed, he also promised "more steps in the weeks ahead."

• The Dept. of Justice's Inspector General released a long-awaited report [PDF] today on the FBI's preparation for what became Donald Trump's January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Despite years of false claims by MAGA Republicans, including members of Congress, that undercover FBI employees somehow instigated the attack, the I.G. report finds, among other things, that none were present at the Capitol that day.

• Inflation and, specifically, high prices at the grocery store have been cited by many as the reason for Donald Trump's apparent election victory last month. In fact, he ran on promises of lowering prices at the grocery store "very quickly" throughout the campaign. In September, for example, he declared: "Vote Trump and grocery prices will come tumbling down". In October, he promised to "bring your grocery bill way down." And, in an interview that aired on NBC this past Sunday, he attributed his victory, in part, "on groceries" and said again that "we're going to bring those prices way down." Rarely did anyone in the media throughout the campaign press him on how he would lower the cost of groceries. So it seems voters were misinformed enough to believe him and vote for him. And yet, in an interview with Time before Thanksgiving just published today, Trump admits he has no actual plan to lower prices at the grocery store. "It's hard to bring things down once they're up," he told the magazine. "You know, it's very hard." We'll see how long it takes, if it ever does, for MAGA buyers remorse to set in.

• But you know who did help keep your grocery prices low? The Biden Administration's Federal Trade Commission. Biden's progressive Chair of the FTC, Lina Kahn, led a lawsuit against the proposed 2022 merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, arguing the $20 billion deal would raise prices for consumers and lower pay for the company's 700,000 union workers. This week, a federal judge agreed with the FTC and blocked the merger, at least for now. In the meantime, Trump's nominee to Chair the FTC, Andrew Ferguson (a former clerk for corrupt Justice Clarence Thomas), vows to abandon Khan's tough standards for mergers between powerful American companies.

• North Carolina Republicans took a beating in statewide races in November, losing the contests for Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, Sec. of State and Superintendent of Public Instruction. They also lost their gerrymandered supermajority in the state legislature. So, while they still have the power to do so in their lame-duck session, Republican lawmakers, passed a massive bill under the guise of disaster relief for Hurricane Helene (which simply shifted already existing funding from one account to another) and used the next several hundred pages of the bill to strip many of the key powers from all of the incoming Democratic statewide officials. The outgoing Democratic Governor vetoed the obvious power grab. But, last week, the GOP-controlled Senate used their supermajority to override the veto and, despite an outpouring of protest from voters at the state capital, the GOP-controlled House did the same last night. Nonetheless, I suspect this fight ain't over.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report on, among other things, the wildfire in Malibu, California that led to the emergency evacuation of thousands of residents, including film and TV legend Dick Van Dyke, who turns 99 on Friday. Also, on the effort by environmentalists to add Endangered Species Act protections to the quickly disappearing Monarch Butterfly. As Des mentions at the end of today's show, you can leave a public comment here in favor of the Fish and Wildlife Department's effort to protect the butterflies.

  And, as she also discussed, that fantastic and charming and so, so sweet music video and interview with Van Dyke by Coldplay's Chris Martin, released just last week before the fire --- filmed at Van Dyke's Malibu home which, thankfully (as you'll be especially happy to hear after watching the video!), didn't burn down this week, can be seen right here. Never mind today's BradCast for the moment. Go watch that video. We'll be here when you get back. You'll thank us!

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Hey! Happy "Certificate of Ascertainment of Appointment of Electors" Day! I know, it seems like it comes earlier and earlier every election year doesn't it? We take the festive opportunity on today's BradCast to discuss a few related points, including a bunch of new state criminal filed charges in the GOP's 2020 fake Electors plot and whether the convicted felon who is now our incoming President actually won a governing "mandate" (or not) in 2024. [Audio link to full show follows this link.]

FIRST UP... The wildfire we discussed briefly yesterday out here in Malibu, California, amid exceptionally dry and windy conditions, expanded by nearly 40% overnight and was reportedly just 7% contained as of airtime. At least 7,500 structures are threatened and more than 12,000 people are under evacuation orders, including wealthy homeowners and celebrities such as Cher and Dick Van Dkye, students at Pepperdine University, and thousands of middle class and working residents in the community. The area is a geographic haven for such fires for a number of reasons discussed today, all of which has been exacerbated in recent years by our worsening climate crisis.

THEN... FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Donald Trump after he fired James Comey for investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election, has decided to "obey in advance" by announcing he will resign in January when Trump takes office again, three years before the official end of his term. The incoming President has threatened to fire Wray and replace him with loyalist stooge and avowed government weaponizer Kash Patel. Still, there are reasons to be critical of Wray's limp decision to "bow out in advance."

NEXT... Not all law enforcement officials are willing to roll over. In Wisconsin, state prosecutors added 10 felony charges each to three different Donald Trump accomplices who attempted to help him steal the 2020 election. The new criminal charges [PDF] were filed on Tuesday against 2020 Trump attorneys Jim Troupis and Kenneth Chesebro, as well as Trump's 2020 Election Day operations director Mike Roman as part of the failed fake Electors scheme in the state that year. Troupis and Chesebro are said to be the original architects of the plot. Each of the Trump dupes had previously faced just one felony count apiece, with their first court appearance set for Thursday. Now they will each face 11 counts and a potential 6-year prison sentence and/or $10,000 fine for each count if found guilty.

FINALLY... In the early morning hours following the November 5th Election, Donald Trump declared he had won an "unprecedented and powerful mandate." Members of his transition team subsequently claimed a "MAGA Mandate" and "historic mandate for his agenda." But, Trumpian hyperbole aside, did he actually win any such thing?

Now that all states have certified their results and officially declared which slate of Electors will vote in the Electoral College in each state capital on December 17 --- (remember, I told you today was the "Certificate of Ascertainment of Appointment of Electors" Day!) --- the final results, with all votes said to be tallied, reveal that Trump defeated Kamala Harris by less than 1.5 percentage points and that a majority of Americans voted for someone other than him.

That doesn't seem particularly "unprecedented" or "powerful", much less a "mandate".

But what is a mandate anyway? Today, we're joined by JULIA R. AZARI, Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, who happens to have written a book on that very topic, called Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate.

As Azari warned in a short article posted the day after this year's election, when Trump's margin over Harris appeared to be far larger than it actually turned out to be, "Be wary of anyone claiming an election mandate," given that "talking about mandates flattens public opinion, rather than lifting it up" and "elevates the president above the Constitution and gives him a popular power he was never meant to have." As she explains today, that goes for Republicans and Democrats alike.

"I've been pretty critical of the way that Presidents of both major parties have used that concept," she tells me. "Although I would also note that, in contemporary times, Republicans have been a lot more focused and ideological in their mandate claiming."

Azari argues, essentially, that voters vote for and against many different things in an election, and there is no clear way to establish that they have voted for any one particular policy, much less in an election with one of the narrowest margins in modern history and where the winner of the Electoral College actually received a minority of the popular vote.

When any President-elect declares themselves to be the winner of a mandate --- or when the media echo that claim --- "this gives the President a little bit of extra power, at least in their own minds, that they feel justified in taking," Azari says, "and it enhances that power over that of Congress, rather than thinking of Congress as a co-equal branch."

She also notes: "When that power is in the hands of somebody who isn't really keen on Constitutional constraints, we may see some serious consequences."

We've got much to discuss with Azari on all of those points today. But what about Presidents who actually do win a majority of the popular vote? Do they have justification to claim a governing mandate? How should media report on such claims no matter who makes them? And how have claims of mandates been expanding and changing over the years going all the way back to the first such President to do so, Andrew Jackson in 1832? Please tune in for all of that history, both past and present, and much more on today's BradCast!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)