We’ve been wrestling with server problems all day at BradBlog.com and still are as we try to get today’s show posted. It’s been up and down (mostly down!) all day, for still-unknown reasons. So, please pardon a slightly briefer-than-usual summary for today’s BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

It was otherwise a very lively and informative show! Among the stories we covered…

• Folks from our affiliate station in Hawaii — KAKU 88.5 FM, “The Voice of Maui” — check in with a note to say they’ve survived the island’s latest 100-year storm. It reportedly dumped as much as four feet of rain over the past five days in some locations. That, as the continental U.S. Southwest swelters with record early heat pushing 100 degrees, and cold weather, blizzards and tornadoes slam the other half of the nation.

• Yesterday we broke news on this program that an oil pipeline near Santa Barbara, California — which had been shutdown since a disastrous rupture in 2015 spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude up and down the coast — was restarted over the weekend following an unprecedented declaration of the Defense Production Act by Donald Trump late on Friday. The company which now owns the decades old pipeline, Sable Offshore, has failed to meet state requirements to reopen it. Nonetheless, Trump’s Executive Order has seemingly bigfooted state law, with oil now said to be flowing again through the still-corroded pipeline as of Saturday, according to Sable and confirmation from several media outlets late last night. Representatives of the State and the Center for Biological Diversity were in Court on Tuesday morning (as our guest, the Center’s Talia Nimmer previewed on yesterday’s show). Nimmer reports today that the state judge in the case confirmed an existing injunction against operation of the pipeline, issued last summer, but did not order it shut back down at today’s hearing. Another hearing is now scheduled for April to sort things out, presuming the pipeline doesn’t rupture again before then.

• Trump claims a former President recently told him that he wished he had bombed Iran. All four living Presidents denied such a conversation or even speaking with Trump recently, according to NBC.

• An increasingly delusional Trump is now claiming that “nobody expected” Iran would retaliate by firing missiles at U.S. bases and diplomatic outposts in neighboring countries if Iran was attacked. That is, of course, absolutely not even close to true. We play a bit of audio from Trump’s remarks to that end both yesterday and today, where he really sounds as if he is now sort of melting down both physically and mentally.

• Trump is also desperately begging allies to help the U.S. in the Strait of Hormuz to reopen shipping of a fifth of the world’s oil, since Iran (predictably) shut it down after the ill-advised U.S. and Israeli attack nearly three weeks ago. All of the allies have, so far, declined to help Trump out of his predictable, self-inflicted mess as oil prices continue to spike with no exit strategy in sight. Trump is said to be furious, but is now claiming he didn’t need their help anyway.

• The head of Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, a longtime loyalist, announced his resignation today in response to Trump’s war on Iran.

• If you haven’t heard some of the remarkable deposition testimony by a couple of the DOGE Bros who were placed in charge of cancelling some $100 million in federal grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities last year, we’ve got you covered today. Prepare to be gobsmacked at how stupid these two 20-something Elon-wannabees — Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox — come across in these interviews, unable to explain even what DEI means (though they were looking to cancel any grant they could characterize as “DEI”), admitting they used ChatGPT to tell them which grants to cancel, and struggling to explain how gender diversity (or something) was the reason for their cancellation of grants having to do with documentation of the Holocaust.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Cuba’s electric grid collapses following Trump’s oil blockade of the island nation; how Big Oil now worries the Iran War will decimate demand for their deadly product; and as the number of extreme heat days have now doubled around the globe…

The BradCast with Brad Friedman 3/17/2026

Don Deteriorating; DOGE Bros Exposed; Kent Quits; More News from Collapsing TrumpWorld: ‘BradCast’ 3/17/2026  |  Also: Deluge in Maui; Admin's reopening of ancient Santa Barbara oil pipeline confirmed, injunction affirmed in court, but oil still flowing...   · · · · ·   Don Deteriorating; DOGE Bros Exposed; Kent Quits; More News from Collapsing TrumpWorld: ‘BradCast’ 3/17/2026  |  Also: Deluge in Maui; Admin's reopening of ancient Santa Barbara oil pipeline confirmed, injunction affirmed in court, but oil still flowing...

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