We’ve done quite a bit on The BradCast over the years, from investigative reporting, to deep dive explainers and interviews with experts and news makers, to ranting monologues, to taking calls from listeners on all manner of things. But, unless I’m mistaken, I believe this is the first time we’ve turned the show into a game show! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
FIRST UP… Before we get to our fun (if disturbing?) game today, a few news items of note…
- Category 5 Hurricane Melissa looks to be a monster deadly storm in the Caribbean on several different levels. It’s slamming smack-dab into Jamaica overnight tonight. In addition to record wind speeds (satellite records showed the storm, in record warm waters, topping 190mph for a time last night according to satellite records, which would be a Cat 6 if there actually was such a thing on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale), it’s also incredibly slow moving. That means it is likely to dump a lot of water — as much as 40 inches of rain in some places — as it slowly swamps the entire island. Desi Doyen also joins us for a few insights on how climate change has worsened just about every aspect of this deadly storm.
- Earlier this year the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), detailed how “multi-year contingency funds” would be used to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to “continue operations during a Federal Government shutdown.” Last week, however, as the shutdown drags on, a USDA memo explained that, despite already appropriated Congressional funding to be used for such a contingency, federal SNAP money would no longer be made available to states after November 1 if the shutdown was still ongoing. That, after Republicans already slashed some $186 billion from the program in Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” earlier this year. More than 40 million people rely on SNAP to put food on the table — the vast majority of them employed, by the way — but the Trump Administration is now planning to help starve people (including millions of their own voters) rather than even negotiate with Democrats who are refusing to help Republicans keep the government open until hundreds of millions (in fact trillions) of dollars in Trump/GOP health care cuts for Americans are restored.
- Next Tuesday is Election Day in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, California and elsewhere. On Friday, Trump’s Dept. of Justice announced that federal monitors were being deployed to polling places in five counties in California and one in New Jersey (which both have Democratic governors), though none to Virginia, which has the most contests on the ballot next week…and a Republican Governor. DOJ has yet to explain why monitors are being deployed or under what law they are doing so. Election experts — and CA’s Governor — warn this may be a trial run for what the Administration is planning for next year’s critical midterms.
THEN… It’s on to “Who Wants to be a U.S. Citizen?”, the first BradCast call-in game show!
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently announced that it was making it more difficult to pass the test required for those applying to become U.S. Citizens. They are doubling both the number of questions asked PDF on the Naturalization Civics Test and the number of correct answers that need to be given to pass the test.
According to experts, the questions are also more difficult than they were previously. So, today, we open up our phone lines to listeners — most of them, presumably U.S. citizens! — to see if they could answer the questions now being asked of prospective citizens by this Administration.
Like the Trump Administration, we make up the rules of the game as we go. And our listeners did fairly well! But I’ll bet they did a helluva lot better than our current President would have been able to had he been forced to pass this test!
Tune in for what turned out to be both an amusing and troubling hour of fun and games with our lucky listeners!…
(Comments are now closed.)