It was time for our monthly-ish check-in with two of our favorite old-school blogger pals before standing down next week from the BradCast before the holiday. How rude it was for SCOTUS to release a bunch of horrible, corrupt rulings to throw off our plans. Nonetheless, we persist on today’s program. [Audio to full show follows this summary.]
We’re joined today by the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo and the man known mostly as ‘DRIFTGLASS’ from The Professional Left Podcast.
We kick things off with the news from the courts…
- From the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court: A wildly racist and dangerous ruling on Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from Haiti and Syria; Another on Presidential rules that unlawfully violate U.S. asylum laws; A “deranged” ruling that imagines up yet another way to bar gun safety laws; And one that gives the thumbs up to cancer-causing glyphosate in Monsanto (now Bayer‘s) Roundup weedkiller. In all, the extremist, activist, corrupt, far-right Republican Supreme Court rarely disappoints. As horrific as these rulings are, it’s all a very good reminder of the importance of upcoming elections and the need to make damn sure that every Democrat elected to Congress has a plan for SCOTUS reform.
- Much better news from the (largely) un-corrupted lower courts today, including: A federal court in Boston nixed Donald Trump‘s Executive Order this year attempting to unconstitutionally restrict mail-in voting. That follows another federal court yesterday which similarly nixed Trump’s EO from last year, also mean to rig elections by unconstitutionally mandated documentary proof of citizenship. And both of those rulings followed an appeals court which upheld a lower court ruling blocking the Dept. of Justice from demanding Michigan’s voter rolls. (That is the ninth state in which the Trump DOJ has been blocked from doing so, but it’s the first appellate court to take up and uphold the lower courts.)
Both Digby and Driftglass have a few thoughts on the above, before we move to a few other, if related topics, including…
- This week’s stunning Primary Elections in New York, where NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani saw all three of his endorsed progressive candidates for U.S. House win. Two of them are self-described democratic socialists. Two unseated sitting Members of Congress. What does it all mean for Democrats and other democracy fans moving forward? We discuss.
- Why is Trump willing to toss Congress’ bipartisan housing affordability bill over the side by refusing to sign it unless Senate Republicans kill the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act (which would likely disenfranchise millions of voters, including Republicans)?
- Why everyone is obsessed with Trump’s hilariously failed Reflecting Pool renovation (Driftglass calls it his “Deflecting Pool”; Digby says it’s the “perfect metaphor for every screwup of Donald Trump and the Republicans”), and now his willingness to jail innocent people for the disaster instead of accept blame for his own corruptly failed project.
- Also, too, Trump’s continuing failed War on Iran.
A random quote or two from today’s program….
Driftglass on Trump’s failed vote rigging and today’s corrupt SCOTUS opinions: “Trump only has two mandates now. And that’s cheat and red meat. Those are the only two things he cares about. Cheating is to stay in office and do everything he possibly can to knock down any democratic lever of power that we can grab ahold on. And feed red meat to the base. That’s what these court rulings, in the aggregate, do. They make the base happy because they punish brown people, they make brown people sad, they kick them out of the country, they blame them for everything. And then they attack election integrity so that the Republican Party can hang on to power by its fingernails.”
Digby on what to demand from Democratic candidates: “I agree completely with this idea of the reform agenda. The way to go about that is through the corruption angle. This is something that the polling is showing people are appalled by. Even some Republicans are appalled by it. It is the way in to talk about reform. It’s the way in to talk about everything from oligarchy, to insider trading, to Donald Trump stealing the country blind and spending all this money on BS like the Reflecting Pool and the stupid ballroom. This is the entry point into that conversation that we need to have about reform. If you come at it from corruption, you can hit every part of the Democratic coalition. It’s smart if Democrats take that tack in their campaigning. And if they take the majority, they have to hit the ground running to prepare 2028 for that agenda.”
FINALLY… We close today with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, our last before our July 4th break next week, on scientists’ red alert over a new White House scheme to block critical research grants; Deadly, record heat in France; and Trump gives still more taxpayer dollars to the coal industry…
