Today on The BradCast: Donald Trump’s latest attempt to make himself feel powerful by deploying U.S. military troops on American streets — against Americans — has nothing to do with Law and Order. It has everything to do with a need for authoritarian control by a very small wannabe tyrant. It also has to do with distracting from the fact that he’s in the Epstein Files and won’t release them, as previously promised. [Audio link to full story follows below this summary.]

Among our stories today that help make that case and a few others…

• The 30-year old (white) Georgia man who attempted a mass shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta on Friday fired some 200 shots at its glass windows, smashing bullet holes into about 150 of them. He was also misinformed by the nation’s health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and others who spread the same nonsense, that his depression was due to a COVID vaccine shot. Kennedy took 18 hours before issuing a tepid statement in response to the shooting that killed a responding (black) police officer. Donald Trump has yet to say anything about it…much less deploy the U.S. National Guard to Georgia.

• At the top of Rachel Maddow‘s program Monday night, she told a harrowing story about a convicted triple ax-murderer. Turns out he is a (white) American citizen who is now roaming the streets of the nation after Donald Trump just sprung him from prison. The National Guard will not be deployed to Florida to hunt him down, because Trump wants him to be free.

• Meanwhile, in D.C., Donald Trump, a 34-time convicted felon and adjudicated sexual abuser, announced on Monday that the U.S. National Guard would be deployed to the nation’s capital, where violent crime is at a 30-year low, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office there. The announcement follows a recently attempted 3am carjacking of a (white) guy who used to work on Trump’s so-called DOGE project. Like Los Angeles, where Trump previously deployed National Guard and U.S. Marines for no legitimate reason, and in likely violation of the law, D.C. has a black female Mayor. More easy pickins as tough-guy Trump sees it, I suspect. But none of this has anything to do with the Rule of Law or being Tough on Crime. At his Monday presser, Trump also suggested he would soon be deploying both National Guard and even active duty military troops to a number of other Democratically-run American cities, if not to GOP-controlled states like Georgia or Texas, despite a number of recent mass shootings in both. But, again, none of this is about Law and Order. It’s about authoritarian control by a tiny, petty tyrant.

• In that same vein, Washington Post reports today on a Pentagon plan to create a permanent military “reaction force” that would allow Trump to deploy U.S. military troops to U.S. cities within an hour on either side of the Mississippi, for whatever bullshit authoritarian reasons he wanted to dream up. Bullets would already be flying in the streets of the U.S. against the U.S. Government had any recent Democratic President carried out anything like all of this. Apparently, Republican “opponents” of Big Government Tyranny only oppose Big Government Tyrants they didn’t vote for.

• One of Trump’s other recent attempts to distract from the fact that he’s in the Jeffrey Epstein files — and is therefore, refusing to release them — is also failing miserably. A U.S. District Court judge in New York on Monday, denied the Trump Dept. of Justice‘s motion to release Grand Jury transcripts from the 2020 indictment on sex trafficking and abuse of minors by Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The judge excoriated DOJ for its attempt at misleading the public about what is (or, in this case, isn’t) in those transcripts, writing in his scathing ruling that “the Government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion — aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such.”

• Down in Texas, meanwhile, Gov. Greg Abbott is still trying to have his GOP-controlled state legislature steal five U.S. House seats from Democrats in next year’s midterm elections by redistricting the state’s map again, in the middle of the decade, at the order of Donald Trump. State House Dems are still not letting them. They continue to break quorum in the state House by remaining in other states. On Monday, TX’ corrupt Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton asked the state Supremes to expel 13 of the absent Democratic members. On Monday night, Abbott took to Fox “News” to threaten to rewrite the maps to steal not five but 10 seats if California‘s Governor dares to respond to the TX heist by rewriting maps to flip five Republican seats in the Golden State in turn. And on Tuesday, Abbott announced that the 30-day Special Legislative Session would be concluded this week, with a new one started immediately thereafter. There is still no indication that Dems plan to show up for it, as state Repubs continue to hold disaster relief hostage following the deadly July 4th flash floods if Dems refusing to allow them to steal next year’s U.S. House elections.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as flash flooding and record heat continues across the Midwest and around the world; and as the Trump Administration continues to raise energy prices for Americans by gutting renewable energy production in the U.S., even while announcing plans to build a nuclear reactor…on the Moon!…

The BradCast with Brad Friedman 8/12/2025

It’s Not About the Rule of Law, It’s About Authoritarian Control: ‘BradCast’ 8/12/2025  |  More on CDC shooting; Trump frees ax-murderer from prison, threatens to send more U.S. troops to U.S. cities; Judge nixes DOJ's Epstein 'diversion'; Texas doubles down on attempted election rigging...   · · · · ·   It’s Not About the Rule of Law, It’s About Authoritarian Control: ‘BradCast’ 8/12/2025  |  More on CDC shooting; Trump frees ax-murderer from prison, threatens to send more U.S. troops to U.S. cities; Judge nixes DOJ's Epstein 'diversion'; Texas doubles down on attempted election rigging...

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