On today’s BradCast: If the 101st Day is any indication, it doesn’t look like the second hundred are gonna go any better for him than the first. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
Among our coverage today…
- On our roundtable program yesterday with Digby and Driftglass, we discussed who was likely the first top Trump Administration official to be tossed under the bus in the wake of Donald Trump‘s dismal and worsening approval ratings. Today we know: Trump National Security Adviser and Signal group chat enthusiast, Mike Waltz. At least he outlasted Trump’s first (of four) NSAs in the first term. The disgraced and loony Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn survived just 24 days before being tossed and eventually pleading guilty to criminal charges of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians. At least Waltz gets a consolation prize. Trump tapped him to be U.N. Ambassador.
- Last week, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth — a Reagan-appointee — ordered the rehiring of staffers and contractors at the Congressionally-mandated and funded Voice of America and its similarly critical global sister networks Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting after the Trump-order shutdown in March of its parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media. This week, Judge Lamberth ordered the Administration to restore $12 million in funding to another VOA sister network, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — broadcasting to dozens of countries in dozens of languages since the Cold War — while issuing both a history lesson and an important Constitutional lesson for the Trump Administration (and, arguably, for Congress) about the important roles of the three co-equal branches of Government in his order [PDF].
- In still more Trump-is-a-Loser news today, a Trump-appointed federal judge in South Texas, issued a first-of-its-kind permanent injunction on Trump’s “unlawful” use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — in peacetime — to deport alleged gang members from Venezuela to a gulag in El Salvador. “The President’s invocation of the AEA…exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms,” U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. wrote in the order [PDF], concluding that Trump’s attempt to falsely proclaim the U.S. was being “invaded” by Tren de Aragua gang members at the direction of the Venezuelan government was patently false, “exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful.”
- Also of note today, the Board and shareholders of one of the companies most closely associated with America, Coca-Cola, flatly rejected two proposals to abolish the company’s anti-discrimination programs, often smeared by Trump and fellow wingnuts as “DEI”. Shareholders and the Board of Directors at yet another iconic American company, Levi Strauss, reportedly did the same last week.
- It’s not just courts and a few iconic U.S. companies that are pushing back at Trump’s nonsense of late. Even Democrats, if you can believe it — at least a couple who are clearly eye-balling Presidential runs in 2028 — are now more aggressively doing the same, especially now that the public has turned so clearly against out tinpot dictator-wannabe. Last night, at an event in San Francisco, former Vice President and Presidential nominee Kamala Harris offered her first substantive public remarks since losing to Trump last year, deriding his “wholesale abandonment” of American values. That came on the heels of a stem-winder by Illinois’ Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker, taking on Trumpers and go-along, get-along, “do nothing” Dems alike, at a fundraiser on Sunday in New Hampshire. We share extended excerpts from both speeches today.
- And finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report to help us close things out near the end of a week that began with a huge loss for our failing President, as his attempts at hectoring our neighbor to the north and meddling in Canada‘s elections completely backfired, producing not just another Liberal Party Prime Minister, whose election might have been unthinkable last December, but a climate and energy action champion at that…
The BradCast
with Brad Friedman
5/1/2025
Trump Losing Streak Continues Without Pause into SECOND Hundred Days: ‘BradCast’ 5/1/2025 | National Security Adviser tossed; More big court losses via Republican-appointed judges; Also: 2028 Dems rising?.. · · · · · Trump Losing Streak Continues Without Pause into SECOND Hundred Days: ‘BradCast’ 5/1/2025 | National Security Adviser tossed; More big court losses via Republican-appointed judges; Also: 2028 Dems rising?..
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His “winning streak” does too (Trump’s Expanded Domestic Military Use Should Worry Us All).