On today’s BradCast: If ya think a $1.8 billion slush fund (which is not dead yet!) for his January 6th insurrectionist pals and himself is a bad idea, just imagine what he’ll do with a $1.5 trillion taxpayer slush fund! [Audio to full show follows this summary.]
FIRST UP… More good news from the lower district courts today. A federal judge on Wednesday permanently blocked Donald Trump‘s Executive Order that would have, among other things, unconstitutionally rigged the nation’s elections by requiring documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote. This is his EO from last year. Now permanently banned. His election EO from this year, unconstitutionally seeking to create an approval national voter list and limit mail balloting, is also being challenged.
That news follows another stunning Primary Election day in four states yesterday. We run through noteworthy results in Utah, Maryland, South Carolina and New York — where there are quite a few stunning results. All three of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani‘s endorsed U.S. House candidates won their Democratic primaries in New York City on Tuesday. All in deep blue districts, that effectively means they’ve been elected to Congress. Two of the candidates unseated sitting Democratic Congressmembers, and the other beat out the candidate endorsed by that District’s retiring member. Two of the three candidates identify themselves, as does Mamdani, as democratic socialists. So, of course, Republicans are describing them as “communists”. Whatevs. Good luck with that, kids.
In the meantime, Trump’s rapidly waning political power in elections was on display yet again on Tuesday. After two of his endorsed candidates for Governor lost in recent elections (in Iowa and Georgia) over the past two weeks, his originally endorsed candidate for South Carolina Governor definitively lost her GOP primary runoff on Tuesday. That is why Trump, on Sunday, added a second endorsement for the other candidate in the runoff as well, who ended up trouncing his original endorsee by nearly 40 points.
A lot more today where all of that came from on today’s show.
THEN… There are now at least 222 confirmed cases of the flu spreading like wildfire through a San Antonio, Texas U.S. Air Force basic training base. Four recruits have been hospitalized. One has died. Though the military is supposedly investigating that death. All of this, just months after former Fox “News” host turned Trump’s Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, lifted the 80-year old military mandate for annual flu shots. Only 40% of new trainees at the San Antonio base were vaccinated.
That, just another reminder of the Trump Administration’s contempt for science and public health, and the dangers it poses. Which makes the new White House scheme from its Office of Management and Budget all the more chilling. The OMB, headed up by hard-right Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, has proposed a new rule that would require every federal scientific research grant to receive approval from a Trump political appointee.
Under the current process, researchers submit grant proposals that are vetted and scored by a committee of experts in that particular scientific field, with top-scoring proposals recommended for funding. Under the new rule, if adopted, only grants first approved by the White House would be allowed to go through. Statutory mandates of Congress be damned. Science magazine characterizes the scheme as “Another red alert for American science”.
We’re joined today by Dr. COLETTE DELAWALLA, founder and CEO of Stand up for Science, which is leading the campaign to inform the public of the ongoing rule proposal, and the need to let Americans know that the public comment period for the rule runs only through July 13. The organization, representing thousands of scientists, hopes to organize the most public comments ever collected for any government regulation.
Delawalla tells me that the Administration essentially took what it learned from when DOGE tore through federal agencies, slashing grants for science research, ongoing clinical trials and much more, and applied it to a 412-page uniform guidance rule proposal to rollback all of the grants that Congress reestablished. “One rule that allows them to skirt Congress, and allows them to skirt already-established judicial hearings,” she says, “and apply it to 41 federal agencies. It effectively creates a $1.5 trillion slush fund” for the Administration to use — or not — as it likes.
“This impacts so much more than science,” Delawalla warns. “This is FEMA, and veteran benefits, and Dept. of Defense. This is Medicare. Department of Labor. So any discretionary dollars that flow from the federal government, that’s what is impacted by this very, very technical rule.”
“Any grant,” she stresses, “can be canceled for any reason. They don’t even have to have a reason. They can just cancel the grant” if this rule goes through. That includes ongoing clinical trials, including those initiated under previous Administrations.
It’s not just the Administration’s ideological punching bags like “DEI” and studies involving race and gender and climate change. It’s cancer research, studies regarding suicide prevention and much more.
“Why on Earth would anybody do this? It’s very simple,” she explains. “Science in the United States is an independent center of thought. Which means it’s not controlled by the government. Generally speaking, the government funds a lot of science in the United States, of course. And we allow our scientists to ask questions. That becomes a major problem if you are someone who doesn’t want the populace to have access to knowledge that proves your ideology incorrect.”
“If you believe that white people are better than black people, if you believe that people who are not disabled are better than people who are disabled, if you believe that people who are not LGBTQ+ are better than people who are LGBTQ+ — science refutes that. Science refutes the fundamental basis of their entire ideology.” And, of course, they can’t have that. Because now the lies are out of their control.
Much more on all of this today, but as importantly: what YOU can do about it. Delawalla’s group has set up a very easy to use portal at Fight2Win.StandupForScience.net, where they offer a tool to write public comments, contact your members of Congress and more.
“What we are doing is making as big a stink as we possibly can…until July 13th,” when the Public Comment period ends. “And then immediately, after that, we are going to start with litigation.” Public comments left now, she explains, will be crucial for use in court. Please tune in for today’s important conversation!…
“Try” is the correct word (The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan -28 ).