Chaos and confusion on the high seas. Chaos and confusion in primary elections across the U.S. That’s what Trump and his corrupt SCOTUS has wrought. On today’s BradCast, we unpack just some of the chaos and confusion before finishing on at least one bright light amid this madness [Audio to full show follows this summary.]
FIRST: I had hoped to get everyone (including myself) caught up today with an update on Donald Trump‘s disastrous, ongoing, unlawful war on Iran. But I quickly realized what a chaotic mess it all remains, both militarily and, here in the U.S., politically.
Both sides in this war are liars. I’m not sure which regime is now the most untrustworthy. In short, the deadlock in the Strait of Hormuz continues with Iran blocking passage and the U.S. blocking Iranian ports. News reports from around the world suggest international cargo ships and small Iranian boats are being fired upon, as are oil fields in the United Arab Emirates, and maybe even U.S. Naval ships, as the U.S. claims to have escorted a couple of ships through the Strait over the past 24 hours and Trump continues to threaten Iran with war crimes.
But the Pentagon insists, despite all the missiles, drones and attacks, the ceasefire between the two countries is holding, that the war — previously known as “Operation Epic Fury” — is over or “terminated”, and that an entirely new thing, which they now call “Project Freedom” is underway in the Gulf. That, of course, a transparent attempt to avoid obvious violations of the U.S. War Powers Act, which the Administration is in violation of, but isn’t being enforced anyway, so why bother to lie about it? Iran laughed at Trump’s new name for his war, describing it as “Project Deadlock” instead. Tough guy SecDef Pete Hegseth upped the ante by referring to it as a “direct gift from the United States to the world” and described it as “a powerful red, white and blue dome over the Strait.”
Please hold your laughter. And your wallet. The cost of oil and gasoline continue to skyrocket, businesses are shuttering and the world economy remains on the brink of recession or worse. Other than that, complete and total victory for Team U.S.A.!
NEXT: We have talked about the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court‘s use — or misuse — of the so-called Purcell Principle for years now. It’s a so-called “doctrine” based on the Court’s ruling in a 2006 case in which they warned “court orders affecting elections…can themselves result in voter confusion” when issued close to Election Day.
Since then, application of the doctrine by the Roberts Court has been mixed, at best and wildly corrupt, at worst. That is again being demonstrated this week in the wake of last week’s horrific ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, in which the Court’s rightwing majority gutted most of whatever they had left standing in the Voting Rights Act, by giving the go-ahead to Republican states to dismantle majority-minority U.S. House (and other) Districts as they please. Just be sure to say you’re doing a partisan gerrymander, rather than a racial one, and it’s all fine.
The ruling last Wednesday, came after the Court has repeatedly invoked Purcell over the years to block or reverse “last minute” changes to election laws, purportedly to avoid chaos and confusion for election workers and voters. Most recently, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (the nation’s most rightwing!) found that Texas had violated the law with a racially gerrymandered map, the Supreme Court came to the state’s rescue and, on the shadow docket, without explanation, allowed the state to keep their unlawful map in place for this year’s election. In a concurrence written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, he partially detailed the majority’s reasoning by explaining that it was just too late before the November 2026 elections to make a change to the Texas U.S. House map in early December of 2025, which he described as “on the eve of an election.”
Now, move the clock to last Wednesday, when the very same corrupted Court majority issued a ruling allowing all 50 states to rewrite their U.S. House Maps right now, even as voters in several of those states (Louisiana and Alabama, for a start) are actually already voting in their state’s primaries!
There is, of course, chaos and confusion among election officials and voters in those states (and others) tonight. But SCOTUS, apparently, does not care. They even rushed to certify last Wednesday’s ruling on Monday this week to help things along, rather than wait 32 days before doing so, as per their own rules. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in furious dissent, charged that it was only the third time the Court had done so in the past 25 years and that “The Court’s decision in these cases has spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana.”
The corrupt hypocrisy of the Roberts Court will be remembered as a disgrace — hopefully — for the next hundred or more years. Reform of the High Court must become the first order of business for Democrats the next time they get anywhere near holding federal government power again.
FINALLY: As usual, amid war and the Trump Administration, much of the news in our latest Green News Report ain’t great. But Desi Doyen manages to highlight a very bright, if wildly ironic point amid the devastation: much of the world (other than the U.S.) now appears to be on a very sharp trajectory toward a transition to clean, cheap, renewable energy in direct, if ironic, response to the Trump-created bottleneck of fossil fuel in the Middle East…
