It's always about elections, as detailed yet again on today's BradCast, with a boatload of breaking news, and a concurrent trip through the twisted windmills of the mind of the President of the United States. Or whatever's left of it. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among today's many stories...

• Best idea of the week, perhaps of the year, to date: The editors of The Nation magazine nominate the City of Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize. (Seconded!)

• Don't be fooled by Donald Trump swapping out Himmler-wannabe, Border Patrol commandant Gregory Bovino for $50,000 bribe recipient and architect of first term child separation policy Tom Homan as Chief Goon in charge of the federal government's assault on Minneapolis. As many are confirming, little has changed, to date, on the ground, after the rotation of lead stooges, even as Trump has become desperate to prevent another embarrassing government shutdown this weekend.

• Speaking of, we detailed the many moving parts of the threat of a new government shutdown on yesterday's program, as Democrats insist on new guardrails on ICE and CBP in exchange for fiscal 2026 DHS funding. While a brief shutdown is still likely to happen over the weekend, a deal brokered between Dems and the White House just before airtime today would split off the bill that funds DHS from five other spending bills which would be adopted in full. A Continuing Resolution, to keep funding DHS at current levels, would then be approved to allow two more weeks to negotiate reforms, such as an end to unconstitutional door-to-door patrols, a no-masking policy, mandatory body cams, etc., following the ICE/CBP murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, etc.

• As just one sign of Trump's desperation to prevent another government shutdown, with midterm elections looming --- and likely to be very bad for his party --- ICE has reportedly ended its surge into the state of Maine, where hundreds of arrests over the past week, including of legal immigrants has infuriated residents. News of ICE leaving just one week after its new campaign comes via the otherwise "blue" state's Republican Sen. Susan Collins, so take it for what it's worth. Collins --- Chair of Senate Appropriations --- has a very difficult election this year as the only Republican Senator facing reelection in a state won in 2024 by the Democrats. There is a lot to unpack regarding all of that today. But, with Trump desperate to hang on to control of the U.S. Senate this November, its not surprising that he is hoping to make life easier for Collins, despite previously calling on his supporters to vote her out.

• The guy hired to be the new chief artistic director of the Kennedy Center after its takeover by Trump thugs, has quit --- just two weeks after his hiring was announced.

• The U.S. trade deficit --- the amount of goods and services we export versus what we import --- grew sharply in November, with imports surging and exports plummeting, despite Trump's tariff scheme which was supposed to accomplish the very opposite.

• Picking up where we left off yesterday, as news was just breaking that Trump's FBI had raided the Fulton County elections warehouse in Atlanta, reportedly grabbing secured ballots from the 2020 election --- which Trump is still pretending to have won, more than five years later --- we've got several additional details today on what was taken; what the FBI was looking for; the clown show that the execution of the search warrant became; the federal prosecutor from an entirely different state brought in to obtain the warrant; the long-known failures of the three post-election tallies by Fulton County as overseen by the state's Republican Sec. of State; and how all of this has election experts very concerned about bad faith efforts by Trump and his supporters in advance of the 2026 midterms.

• In other bad faith news regarding Trump's false claims to have won states that he didn't, the ties between his reasons for surging immigration enforcers into Minneapolis and Trump's years-long false claims to have won the state of Minnesota three times (he won it zero times), has now become clearer than ever.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as humanity slips still closer to 'Doomsday'; as the U.S. is formally withdrawn, for the second time, from the Paris Climate Agreement; as Trump is blocked by a fourth court in a fourth state on his effort to halt nearly completed offshore wind projects; and as sales of EVs now now outpace gasoline cars in Europe...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

Follow and stream @GreenNewsReport!...



(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The 'Doomsday Clock' ticks ever closer to midnight; Trump formally takes U.S. out of Paris Climate Agreement for a second time; Yet another court blocks Trump's cancellation of offshore wind projects; EVs really do make the air cleaner; PLUS: Electric vehicles outsell conventional gasoline cars in Europe for the first time ever... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Click here to listen or download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The Trump administration has secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules; Through the heatwave haze, the hypocrisy of Australia's fossil-fuel policy shines bright; Court orders the Netherlands to protect a Caribbean island from climate change; Legal setbacks against a dam in the Amazon raise questions about Brazil's reliance on hydropower; Carbon trade measure slipped into spending package... PLUS: EPA to roll back 'Good Neighbor' Rule on downwind smokestack pollution... and much, MUCH more! ...

We've been warning about it on The BradCast ever since the government re-opened after the last shutdown, its longest ever, in October and November. There now seems to be no way to avoid another shutdown as of midnight Friday, a former White House and Senate budget expert explains on today's 'BradCast'. But, he also notes, "this is the right thing to shut down the government for." [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... A couple of other news items of note today...

• The first special elections since the murder of Veterans Affairs Intensive Care Unit nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis were held on Tuesday, to determine partisan control of the Minnesota state House of Representatives. Two vacant seats in very Democratic-leaning parts of the Twin Cities region were up for grabs. One featured a Democrat who ran unopposed. (Spoiler: she won.) The other featured a Democratic candidate running against a Republican who had run for the same seat, and lost, in both 2022 and 2024. It's a district where Kamala Harris won by 71 points. On Tuesday, the Democratic candidate, Meg Luger-Nikolai, won the election by more than 91 points! That's a 20-point swing for the Ds, as Luger-Nikolai garnered more than 95% of the vote. Her Republican challenger won just over 4%. If Republicans weren't worried about this year's midterms before, Tuesday night's results oughta put the fear of God into 'em.

• Speaking of elections, Donald Trump is still pretending he won the one that he lost in 2020 to Joe Biden. To that end, Trump has weaponized his FBI and today, they were ordered to raid the Fulton County (Atlanta) elections warehouse. Reportedly, the federal agents were there to collect ballots and other materials from the 2020 election, which have been retained by court order since then. Supposedly, this will finally provide Trump the evidence of massive "voter fraud" that he has alleged for so many years. If the Georgia Republican Sec. of State was unwilling back in January of 2021 to "find 11,780 votes" to help Trump steal the state's election that year, by golly, Trump is gonna "find" them himself now, five years later.

THEN... U.S. border patrol agents have fired shots 16 times over the course of the past year. In every instance, as WaPo reported yesterday, the Trump Administration declared the shootings to have been justified before any probe had been completed. Four U.S. citizens have been shot in those incidents. Two of them were killed over the past three weeks in Minneapolis.

While Trump is putting up a show of "softening" his stance on the federal government's invasion of the Twin Cities region by ICE and CBP, Greg Sargent argues that it's little more than posturing because Trump is now "frightened" that Democrats in Congress will shut the government down again unless serious restrictions are placed on funding for the Dept. of Homeland Security's immigration goon squads.

Senate Democrats, for their part, seem quite serious about doing just that, as the deadline for a new, 2026 government spending bill is midnight on Friday. With the House in recess, any changes made to the six funding bills they adopted before leaving, couldn't be voted on back in the House until they reconvene next week. That virtually guarantees at least a brief shutdown. To make things worse, Senate Republicans have been unwilling to decouple the DHS/ICE funding from the other funding bills, to keep the rest of the government open, until they can come to an agreement over new guardrails that Democrats are insisting on for ICE and CPB's clownish but deadly operations across the country.

"This is the right thing to shut down the government for," argues our guest, BOBBY KOGAN, today. He served as an advisor to the White House Office of Management and Budget under President Biden and, before that, as Senior Advisor on the Senate Budget Committee. He is now Senior Director of Federal Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Kogan argues that "there is nothing more more quintessential than fighting government oppression." He tells me that he has long argued that nothing is more important to society than "shelter, food and healthcare. I'm the person who says that's the quintessential thing. But, actually, not being executed by the government is the most quintessential thing --- not being executed by the government for existing, and just filming them --- this is a thing you have to shut down the government for."

But at what cost? How many other unrelated agencies will also have to be closed for a time in the bargain? How many Americans will be harmed by those closures? And what exactly are Democrats insisting on in exchange for approving another $10 billion for ICE, after the Republicans' "Big Beautiful Bill" already established a $75 billion slush fund for the out-of-control agency just last Summer?

In addition to guarantees that they will follow the law and the Fourth Amendment's right to privacy with judicial warrants during raids of private homes, Kogan says that Democrats are coalescing on a number of demands, including mandated body cams during enforcement actions and DOJ civil rights reviews of federal government shootings. He also believes that someone, such as DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, will need to be fired, and that clawing back some of that $75 billion granted to ICE last year would also be "a good idea."

"We gave money to the IRS [during the Biden Administration], and as soon as they came to power," he explains, Republicans rescinded much of that money. He suggests Dems should do the same thing as well with the $75 billion that ICE received last year with no-strings-attached.

"There's not much leverage that the Democratic Party has because it is in the minority," Kogan concedes. "But you have to try. Because what else can you possibly do? This is one of the few must-pass bills that still exist. Government shutdowns cannot go on forever because eventually everything starts to break. So it's only a little bit of leverage, but you've got to use it."

Based on his conversations with Democrats in Congress, he tells me, they are not in the mood for "pinky promises from the administration that is busy executing U.S. citizens" when it comes to vows of course corrections. So, he assesses, "the most likely outcome is a six bill shutdown."

"Will it work? I don't know," Kogan asserts. "But Democrats owe it to the American people to do the best they can. Because it is not just political whims or whatever that matters. It matters to real people. And it matters to history. How we respond to this is going to shape what we are as a nation. So Democrats owe it to the American people to give it their all."

FINALLY... The legendary Bruce Springsteen released a new song today via social media called The Streets of Minneapolis. In his announcement, he explained that he "wrote this song on Saturday [the day Alex Pretti was killed], recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It's dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good." He added: "Stay free."

We share his moving --- and inspiring --- tune, in full, to close out today's program...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

We've got a lot to get to on today's BradCast. While much of our coverage may seem like a grab bag from the headlines above, you'll find there is a central theme at its heart. I think. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• We begin with the darkest news, so things can only get brighter from there, right? The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, keepers of the notorious "Doomsday Clock" reveal their latest adjustment, ticking the metaphorical timepiece from last year's 89 seconds to midnight, to just 85 seconds to humanity's end this year. The group of science advocates cited increasing risk of nuclear warfare, worsening human-caused climate change (Donald Trump was singled out there) and other threats to civilization itself, such as the misuse of biotechnology and artificial intelligence.

• Buffoonish, Nazi-ish U.S. Customs and Border Patrol chief enforcement clown, Gregory Bovino, is pushed out following the latest killing of another U.S. citizen over the weekend in his violent, chaotic Minneapolis operation. New villains are rotated in by the White House, even as Trump appears to try and play nice with his mortal enemies, Minnesota's Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

• But there are even more signs that the courageous people of Minneapolis are winning this one, even if the battle is far from over. The chief federal judge in Minnesota (a George W. Bush appointee) has ordered in-person testimony from the Acting Director of ICE, after the Administration has repeatedly failed to comply with court orders regarding immigrant rights. The judge has ordered him to explain why he should not be held in contempt by the court.

• Trump's corrupt U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's thuggish letter to Minnesota's Gov. Walz --- sent to the state just after the border patrol agent execution of 37-year old VA ICU nurse and U.S. citizen Alex Pretti over the weekend --- landed with a thud, after she essentially suggested the federal immigration crackdown would end only if the state turned over its voter roll data to the federal government. Voting rights and election law experts described the move as "reprehensible". Bondi has sued some 23 states who refused to comply with the demand. Two weeks ago, a federal judge in California dismissed the DOJ's lawsuit against the state, finding it "unprecedented and illegal". Last week, a judge in Georgia dismissed the lawsuit in the Peach State. And yesterday, a federal judge in Oregon dismissed the DOJ's suit there. In the meantime, MN Sec. of State Steve Simon has explained that he has no intention of violating state or federal law to answer Bondi's "ransom note".

• As we covered last week, a recent federal review of nearly 50 million voter registrations found zero evidence of widespread fraud by noncitizens on the voter rolls in state after state, county after county. In a new report late last week, out of more than two million active voter registrations in Utah, the state was able to find just one single noncitizen on its rolls. The state found that the person never voted and has since been removed from the rolls. Utah is another state that has correctly refused to turn over its unredacted voter data to Bondi and the DOJ.

• In news from the front lines of the Trump/GOP Gerrymandering Wars, Democrats in Maryland are now moving ahead with a plan to draw a new map designed to flip the state's last remaining Republican U.S. House district from "red" to "blue". And a state judge in Virginia, just before airtime today, declared the effort by state Democrats to adopt a constitutional amendment to redraw its U.S. House map to flip as many as 4 or 5 seats from "red" to "blue" this year to be unlawful. Proponents of the measure accuse Republican opponents as forum shopping for a friendly judge and vow to appeal his ruling.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report following the weekend's deadly winter storm across much of the U.S.; as House Republicans vote to overturn a decades-long ban on toxic mining in MN; as Michigan's Attorney General sues the Big Oil "cartel"; and as a judge blocks Trump's attempt to withhold funding for a national EV charging network adopted by Democrats under President Biden...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

Follow and stream @GreenNewsReport!...



(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Danger is not over yet after deadly, extreme winter storm pummels U.S.; House Republicans overturn ban on mining near Minnesota's pristine Boundary Waters; Judge blocks Trump administration from halting EV charging funds appropriated by Biden; PLUS: Michigan Attorney General's lawsuit accuses Big Oil of operating a 'fossil fuel cartel'... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Click here to listen or download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump's Grant Terminations Upheld by Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals; Natural Gas Price Surges Almost 30% as Arctic Blast Grips Much of US; Enviros Charge Administration Violated Laws In Approving Alaska Road; Oregon Court Tosses Old Rule that Allowed Logging on Vast Swaths of US Land; New ExxonMobil Climate Accounting Again Blames Consumers, Not Corporation... PLUS: How Cuts To Federal Climate Funds Could Threaten Polar Vortex Research... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast: Apparently, the Trump Administration's murder of U.S. citizens will continue until morale improves. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Once again, we must devote another show to another brutal, virtually execution-style killing of another American citizen on the streets of a great American city by our own federal government.

On Saturday, Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents murdered beloved 37-year old Veterans Affairs hospital Intensive Care Unit nurse, Alex Pretti. His shooting, while bearing peaceful witness to federal government atrocities, comes about two weeks after --- and a mile or so away --- from where 37-year old mother Renee Good was similarly killed in her car at point blank range by one of thousands of heavily militarized federal law enforcement agents deployed by Donald Trump to Minneapolis, Minnesota to supposedly enforce civil (not criminal) immigration law.

While we spend a short amount of time on the blatant, quickly-disproven lies told by the Trump Administration about the incident --- from the chief of the CBP to the Secretary of DHS to the President of the United States himself --- about Pretti, most of our time today is devoted to his heroic acts and those of thousands of others in the Twin City area in recent weeks. They are leading the way toward minimizing and hopefully ending ICE atrocities, and helping to inspire elected officials as well as the rest of the formerly "free" nation.

To be clear --- as the video tapes of the killing from about four different angles reveal --- Pretti was not attacking federal officials, or attempting to "assassinate" them. He was neither "acting violently" nor "brandishing" a deadly weapon, as Administration officials lied to the public in the wake of the killing. Pretti was simply documenting the atrocities. He was lawfully videotaping with his phone, even as he tried to render aid to a woman thrown to the pavement by one of Trump's federal goons. He was trying to comfort the woman, even while being pepper sprayed, until he was eventually dragged away, subdued by a pack of agents, and then shot at least ten times at close range. The gun he was licensed to carry was never "brandished" or even removed from his belt, until a federal agent did so just before Pretti was subsequently executed.

This latest horrific killing comes just days before Congress was set to pass new spending bills before the government must otherwise shut down again at week's end. Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who had previously planned to vote yes on the package already passed narrowly in the House, now suggest they will vote no on including more funding for DHS and ICE without serious restraints enacted by law on their unlawful behavior. But there are also, arguably, reasons why Democrats might still want to vote for the bill, including the fact that a government shutdown of agencies included in the part of the budget that funds DHS, would also shutdown and furlough employees again at agencies like FEMA, in the middle of a deadly winter storm, just months after the longest federal shutdown in U.S. history last October and November.

There is much more, including a tepid response, following the killing of Pretti, from the CEOs of giant, Minnesota-based corporations --- such as Target, Best Buy, 3M, Delta Airlines and UnitedHealth Group --- who have otherwise remained silent over the past year of Trump's violent reign. But we would rather hear from listeners today, as we carve out time to take a bunch of calls, including from longtime listener Roger up in Minneapolis. He is one of the heroes in the Twin City who are, right now, heroically leading the way for the nation towards the light and the rule of law, against Trump's lawless thugs, even amid frigid temps that fell as low as negative 40 degrees wind chill over the past several days...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

We're not in much of a celebratory mood around here right now, given all that's going on. But still, The BRAD BLOG was formed in a post-911, "Global War on Terror", Bush Era crucible of rightwing bad faith and fire. It's worse now than ever. But our institutional memory is both pretty keen and pretty useful. We saw these nightmares coming years ago, did our duty to warn. And yet, here we are.

So, it seems, the fire is still burning, as The BRAD BLOG "celebrates" our 22nd anniversary this week of reader/listner-supported investigative blogging, journalism, broadcasting, muck-racking and trouble-making...

Hey! Another busy day on The BradCast! What are the odds? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

No, you're not hallucinating. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith did testify previously before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. It was back in December last year. But it was a closed-door hearing with mostly Committee attorneys on the Republican side doing the questioning on behalf of the Committee's Republican members. Smith had wanted to testify publicly last year, as all previous Special Counsels have done following Presidential probes. Republicans were so proud of that hearing that they waited until New Years Eve to release its transcript and audio, so as few Americans as possible would see it.

Today in D.C., in the same Committee, Smith was finally allowed to testify publicly. The man who secured two different federal, criminal indictments of Donald Trump --- one for his alleged crimes related to trying to steal the 2020 election, the other for stealing thousands of pages of classified national security documents upon leaving office the first time --- has nothing to hide. [Full video now here.]

As Smith told the Committee today during his opening remarks: "If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat. No one --- no one --- should be above the law in this country. And the law required that he be held to account, so that is what I did. To have done otherwise on the facts of these cases would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and as a public servant, of which I had no intention of doing."

The veteran, three-decade long Dept. of Justice prosecutor testified for about five hours today, and Republicans weren't able to lay much of a glove on any aspect of his election probe. Not that they didn't try, of course. (Smith was unable to speak about the stolen documents case beyond what has already been made public about it, as sycophantic Trump-appointed federal Judge Aileen Cannon still has his report on that matter under seal.) For his part, Trump was so bothered by it that he took to his failing social media cite to again call Smith "deranged", while instructing his Attorney General to bring charges against Smith.

Republicans focused many of their attempted attacks against Smith on false claims that he "spied" on the phone calls of GOP members of Congress in the days before and after Trump's January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Neither Smith nor his team "spied" on anyone. They did, however, receive judicial warrants to obtain toll records for the phones of several members who Trump contacted while the Capitol was under violent siege, when the sore loser President hoped to delay Congressional confirmation of Joe Biden's 2020 victory, as he falsely claimed the election had been stolen from him. The toll records do not include information on the content of phone calls. They only detail numbers dialed or received, the date and time, how long they talked.

Several Republicans also took the old First Amendment "free speech" defense out for a spin today. It didn't work much better at denting the case against Trump. As Smith explained once again, Trump is welcome to lie about a stolen election all he likes. But when those lies are used in furtherance of a crime, it's a different matter.

You can lie to your friends that you are worth $10 million dollars, if you want, explains our guest today, former lifelong Republican and attorney KEITH BARBER. But you can't offer that same lie on your mortgage application. That becomes criminal fraud, not free speech.

Barber, who now contributes to the progressive Daily Kos website, joins us for analysis, with both legal and political insight on Smith's testimony, and how --- or if --- today's public hearing might move the political needle one way or another for those in his former party.

After observing that there was next to no coverage of today's historic hearing on the front page of the Fox "News" website this afternoon, Barber argues: "The opinions of MAGAs on this are intractable. It's a cult. There's nothing you can do about it. Everybody else is more open-minded and I think has already decided Trump is out to lunch on this. I don't think that these hearings are going to move the needle all that much."

Barber is with us for much of the hour today for both analysis of the Smith hearing and for legal insight on an extraordinarily disturbing story broken late last night by the Associate Press. The outlet reported on a secret memo instructing federal ICE agents --- in contradiction of the Constitution, decades of Supreme Court precedent and written training materials for new officers --- that they may enter a private home without a judicial warrant signed by a judge. Only an administrative warrant, issued by ICE itself, is needed, according to the memo revealed by two agency whistleblowers.

Similarly disturbing: though the memo, signed last May be the acting Director of ICE, is addressed to "all ICE personnel", it has only been distributed to "select DHS officials" who have then shared it with some employees "who were told to read it and return it," according to AP. The memo offers no detail on how this new legal determination was made nor any explanation for basis of reversing decades of longstanding guidance.

Barber published his own report on the troubling news earlier today at Daily Kos, in a piece headlined "Secret ICE Memo Trains Agents To Conduct Unconstitutional Home Invasions". He tells me that the secret change in guidance has resulted in more violence, as people are dragged out of their homes, believing the old rules, that a warrant signed by a judge is needed to enter a home. Then, their doors are smashed in and they are dragged out.

"It's really concerning because it is increasing the level of violence associated with these things, and because of the secrecy involved in it. And it's also just wrong under the law," says Barber. "That is not what the Supreme Court in multiple cases and certainly a host of lower courts have ruled the Fourth Amendment allows."

Finally, we close out another absurdly busy day with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, as the Arctic's climate change-disrupted polar vortex returns to freeze much of the U.S. this week, and as our dumb President offers astoundingly stupid new lies about wind energy...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

Follow and stream @GreenNewsReport!...



(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Polar vortex returns to slam much of the US with extreme cold and storms; New study warns of 'global water bankruptcy'; Mozambique grapples with extreme flooding; PLUS: Donald Trump peddles intensely stupid lies about wind energy... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Click here to listen or download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Half of fossil fuel carbon emissions in 2024 came from 32 companies; House votes to repeal ban on mining near Boundary Waters wilderness in Minnesota; Geothermal a valuable, but overlooked clean energy source; CAFOs: This is why our rivers are turning into sewers; Winter drought grips the U.S.; California exceeds clean car goal despite declining federal support... PLUS: New rules: less ice, more ICE... and much, MUCH more! ...

It was another one of those everything, everywhere, all at once days, where figuring out how best and where to focus our coverage --- with news breaking and changing by the hour --- is always a Trump Era challenge (nightmare). We're happy to have you along for the ride on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... There were some state legislative Special Elections in Virginia and Georgia on Tuesday. Dems appear to be continuing last year's trend of radically outperforming their own results from 2024.

Also, Republicans are hilariously and hypocritically furious at Gov. Gavin Newsom selecting the latest possible date, August 4th, to hold a U.S. House Special Election in California to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa earlier this month. We'll keep their crocodile anger in mind on January 31, when Texas holds its own U.S. House Special in Houston, to fill the seat left vacant following the death of Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner, who will have died 11 months prior to this month's election, scheduled by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, to fill his seat.

The reverberations from Donald Trump's vow to takeover Greenland (which he repeatedly referred to as Iceland during his remarks today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland) continue to rattle Europe, world markets, and the NATO alliance.

On Tuesday, in Davos, Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out plans to forge new alliances without the United States, given Trump's turn against our closest neighbor and largest trading partner. We share some of Carney's landmark remarks.

THEN... Our longtime European allies called an emergency meeting at the start of the WEF this week in response to Trump's declaration of punitive new trade tariffs imposed on the imports from those nations opposed to his promised takeover of Greenland, the semi-autonomous territory of Denmark.

The Europeans seem prepared to end their go-along-to-get-along footing of the second Trump term, now that the U.S. President seems hellbent on action against Greenland that would upend the longstanding NATO and the post-WWII rules-based order along with it. Even far-right populist parties who have benefited from Trump's support, seem to be distancing themselves from his latest behavior.

Today, during rambling remarks at Davos, Trump said, for the first time, that he would not use military force to takeover Greenland. "I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force," he claimed.

He then went on to falsely assert that NATO has never done anything for the United States, despite the fact that they came to our aid following 9/11. It was the first and only time in the 80-year history of the world's most successful military pact that the treaty's Article 5, mandating that an attack against one NATO member nation requires a response from all, had been invoked.

Several hours later and just before airtime today, as world markets continued to be rattled by all of the upheaval, Trump announced on his failing social media site, that he had struck what he described as "the framework of a future deal" with NATO's Secretary General, regarding Greenland. What that "future deal" looks like remains to be seen.

We're joined today for analysis of all of this madness by RYAN COOPER, Managing Editor of The American Prospect, on the heels of his story this morning on "How the Free World Can Fight Mad King Trump". In it, he details a number of ways that European nations can, and should, "stand up" to Trump, given Cooper's argument that "appeasement will only lead to him coming back for a second helping."

We discuss all of that and more today with Cooper, who notes, regarding whether anyone should believe Trump's vow to not use force against Greenland (or even Iceland): "You basically can't trust any word that comes out of Donald Trump's big, flapping, potty-mouth." Though he concedes that "it's notable that he said he wouldn't do it, because he usually doesn't do that," suggesting he has either been "talked into" or "convinced himself that it would be unwise to actually do a military operation."

Why is Trump so interested in Greenland in the first place? Tune in for Cooper's best guess, before we then dive into several actions that European nations could take to push back against Trump's bullying, including painful sanctions against him and his billionaire friends, akin to those that have been implemented against other militaristic tyrants, such as Vladimir Putin. And, there is also the "James Bond" option. Tune in for details. But all of these, as I note to Cooper, would come with considerable danger of U.S. blowback to the EU nations.

"The thing about that," he tells me, "is that you signal to the other party that you are willing to endure pain in order to stand up for yourself. At a certain point, if you're in something that is looking like a conflict, If you say, 'Well, I will not endure any pain myself,' you're just giving up. Europe should be ready."

"It would hurt to pull that lever," Cooper agrees. "But it is something you have to be ready to do to protect freedom and democracy around the world. Including in the United States."

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

Today on BradCast: I don't care what he says, no President has the power to cancel American elections. Period. Even if that definitive statement of fact is unlikely to be the end of that story. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Now, officially, one year into his final term as President, Donald Trump's "Golden Age for America" is a complete --- if wholly predictable --- failure. His approval ratings have tanked; he has terrorized a great American city by placing it under siege by his hapless, if deadly, militarized immigration goons from ICE and CBP (with some 1,500 U.S. military troops said to be standing by, should he decide to fraudulently invoke the Insurrection Act); NATO, the largest and most successful alliance in world history is now on the brink of collapse, thanks to his threats to steal the peaceful, semi-autonomous nation of Greenland from our ally Denmark; and, oh yeah, the stock market tanked today amid Trump's new tariff trade war threats against our friendly European allies who disagree with him regarding Greenland.

The November midterm elections can't come soon enough. But they will come, despite Trump's various impotent threats or suggestions to the contrary. A President has no power --- none, zero --- to cancel elections in the approximately 10,000 jurisdictions around the country which run them independently of the federal government.

Nonetheless, his Administration's fraudulent abuse of the legal system to try and make it more difficult for legal voters to vote continues. As does his Administration's failures in court, where their attempted legal fraud is not going well --- even in cases overseen by Trump-appointed judges.

Among today's coverage...

• A federal Judge late last week dismissed the Dept. of Justice's pathetic lawsuit against California, seeking to force it to turn over state voter roll data. The Democratically-controlled Golden State is just one of 23 states and the District of Columbia being sued by the DOJ for refusal to turn over private voter information --- including Social Security numbers, birth dates and Drivers License details --- as part of the performative Trump campaign to ferret out supposed fraudulent voter registrations by millions of non-citizens. In tossing the case, the judge found DOJ has no basis, nor legal authority, to demand CA turn over its voter file. Similar DOJ suits against the other states who refused to violate their own voters privacy rights are likely to be similarly unsuccessful.

• At the same time, the New York Times reports that federal officials have been unable to find any evidence of widespread fraud or mass non-citizen registrations among nearly 50 million state records examined so far. The records, from mostly Republican jurisdictions, have been run though a Dept. of Homeland Security database which was not designed for this purpose, under the DOJ ruse of assuring that voter registration databases are "clean". To date, just 0.02% of records checked have revealed even potential evidence of registration by non-citizens. That tiny number includes registrants who never voted or even knew they were registered, and/or naturalized citizens that triggered false positives in the DHS database.

• Of course, one of the reasons that 23 states are refusing to turn over state voter data to Trump's federal government, is for fear that sensitive information (Social Security numbers, etc.) will be misused. As we've learned today, those states were right to be concerned. The DOJ admitted in a "Corrections" court filing last Friday, that members of Elon Musk's failed DOGE team stole and misused sensitive, personal data from the Social Security Administration. At least one of the DOGE Bros apparently discussed an agreement with a Republican voter fraud group to share personal SSA data with the aim of somehow overturning election results.

• But the Trump Administration fraud doesn't stop there, of course, as even a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled today. In the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge David Novak ruled that Lindsey Halligan --- Trump's former tax lawyer --- and the DOJ, were unlawfully identifying Halligan in court documents and elsewhere as the District's U.S. Attorney. Back in November, a different judge in the District ruled that Halligan had been unlawfully appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi. As such, the indictments Halligan secured against former FBI Director James Comey and NY A.G. Letitia James were dismissed. Judge Novak recently gave Halligan seven days to explain why she was still representing herself as USA after the court, last November, found her unlawfully appointed. He demanded to know why that didn't represent a sanctionable fraud against the court. Last week, Halligan responded with an obnoxious, over-the-top, Fox "News"-like explanation (most likely written by Trump's former defense attorney turned Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who signed the document along with Bondi and Halligan). Today, Novak called them all out in a blistering 18-page order [PDF], forcing them to strike Halligan's use of USA in legal filings and elsewhere, while giving Halligan and the others fair warning that further ignoring orders from District judges may result in sanctions, including referral to the Bar Association.

• But wait, there is still more waste, fraud, abuse and court losses for the Trump Administration today, as we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, detailing yet another court ruling that has blocked Trump's attempt at shutting down construction of new off-shore wind farms --- many of them nearly completed --- set to offer clean, cheap, renewable energy for millions of Americans. Trump tried to shut down five such projects. Judges have, so far, restarted three of them. The other two are still being adjudicated...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

Follow and stream @GreenNewsReport!...



(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Insured losses from wildfires, storms and floods hit new record high in 2025; National disaster declared as wildfires ravage southern Chile; Torrential rains and deadly floods inundate parts of South Africa; PLUS: Federal courts continue to reject Trump's irrational attack on American offshore wind energy... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Click here to listen or download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Why your power bill is spiking faster than a nearby data center's; Trump Is Winning the Fight Against Offshore Wind Despite Court Losses; Clean Energy Advocates Criticize 'Glaring' Omission in White House Plan to Fuel Data Centers in PJM Region; After Helene, rural North Carolina turns to solar and battery hubs... PLUS: The past is an underused tool': An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm... and much, MUCH more! ...