We've got two great stories to tell you on today's BradCast. One is likely to invigorate you. The other is likely to enrage you. You're welcome. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Be invigorated. After a complicated, three-step, months-long process, a refusal to back down, a determination to stand up against legal challenges, and a willingness to embrace and exploit political loopholes --- in a way that we've become accustomed to seeing Republicans, not Democrats, do --- voters in Virginia on Tuesday narrowly approved a Constitutional Amendment placed on the ballot by Democratic lawmakers to redraw VA's U.S. House map for this November's critical midterm elections.

The Special Election for the referendum was held as a direct response to Trump's orders last summer to Republican-controlled state legislature's to gerrymander their U.S. House maps in the middle of the decade in a pathetic and desperate attempt to hold on to a razor thin GOP majority after this year's midterms.

If (and its still a big if!), the VA Supreme Court doesn't put the kibosh on the entire thing, Democrats hope this move will result in the flipping of four currently Republican-held seats to Democratic ones, increasing their current 6 to 5 majority delegation to a whopping 10 to 1 in the otherwise very "purple" commonwealth.

It was an expensive and grueling election, with a whole lot of confusion purposely seeded into the matter by Republicans hoping to hoax voters into voting against the measure. They didn't succeed, though it was a pretty narrow 3-point victory for the "YES" coalition.

No matter what ends up happening in the courts in regard this matter --- and in a special session of the Florida legislature next week, where state Republicans hope to redraw their own already-gerrymandered U.S. House map to further advantage the GOP --- the complex story of how the measure in VA even made it to Tuesday's Special Election ballot in the first place is a harrowing lesson in how voters will have Democrats' backs if they are willing to stand up and fight for the people.

Tune in for the entire sordid and/or inspirational tale.

NEXT UP... Be enraged. After taking office again last year, Donald Trump placed a non-partisan, career professional with a 30-year history at the Social Security Administration in "acting" charge of the agency.

The good news didn't last long. Soon, Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE Bros came along and demanded access to the agency's master database containing the most sensitive data on 500 million Americans, both living and dead. That includes Social Security numbers, birth dates, medical and income history and much much more. It is data that had been jealously guarded, without a breech, for the nearly 90-year history of the beloved federal program --- until Trump and DOGE came along.

Soon, career professionals, including the top staffer in charge of data security at the agency, were resigning in protest. Lawsuits from unions and whistleblowers started flying, and the corrupt U.S. Supreme Court majority ultimately refused to stop the unprecedented DOGE access to American's most sensitive records. We have since learned, largely via whistleblower lawsuits, that the DOGE Bros entered an agreement to share the data with a disgraced, rightwing "voter fraud" outfit. One of the Bros reportedly even copied the entire database to a portable thumb drive and offered access to it to his next employer.

Our guest today is longtime advocate NANCY ALTMAN, co-founder and President of the non-profit watchdog group, Social Security Works and co-author of Social Security Works For Everyone! Protecting and Expanding the Insurance Americans Love and Count On.

"It is outrageous! They have the most sensitive of all our information," she tells me, detailing so much of what has now been stolen from the elderly, the disabled, and children who receive Social Security to help them stay alive. "All kinds of information. It is a scammer's treasure trove."

"They're talking about suppressing voting and using our information to do that. And Elon Musk, I'm sure, is trying to monetize all of our information," charges Altman. "It has been very securely held, and now it's in some cloud. Who knows who has access to it, who can hack into it? We are all in danger of being scammed." Some, she explains, already have been.

You may recall, in the early days of the second Trump nightmare, when he and Musk were falsely claiming to have found hundreds or thousands of people who were receiving Social Security payments, despite being 122 years old or older. That, she explains, was all a lie. "Whether it was incompetence or intentional, the answer is there is no truth to it."

"Even MAGA voters value Social Security and don't want to see it cut," Altman says. "So what do you do when the whole country feels that way and you want to get rid of it? You undermine confidence. You tell people there are all these people who aren't really disabled who are claiming benefits. They'll tell children they're never going to see their benefits. And they tell the American people there are all these dead people getting benefits. That is such a lie."

In the meantime, Altman asserts, all of this is just "the tip of the iceberg," noting, "I'm concerned that a lot more groups have this information now."

"If the Democrats are able to take the House, they 100% will have hearings on it to get to the bottom of what's going on," she insists, to find out "who has this data, what they've done with it, where it is now, and what --- if anything --- the Social Security Administration is doing to protect the data from further disclosure."

Until then, Trump has fired the Inspector General who might have looked into and exposed all of this, his Dept. of Justice is, naturally, doing nothing to hold anyone to account, and Democrats in Congress have been stymied from carrying out probes or hearings by Republicans who want to pretend none of this is going on.

But it is going on. It is still underway. It's "horrendous" and "malicious" and we are now, according to Altman "in uncharted territory."

"It's important to find out what has happened, what the dangers are, what the risks are, and what can be done to at least ameliorate it," she says, urging action by voters in the months ahead.

"The Democrats have a plan to expand benefits and require the wealthiest pay their fair share. They also have been pushing, repeatedly and endlessly, to get their colleagues to look into what's happening with DOGE, what's happening with offices, what's happening with pushing out the most experienced people --- so much that's going on that's harmful to our ability to access benefits. So it's very important, if you care about Social Security, to vote."

There's an idea. I hope you'll follow her advice and tune in for today's program...

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What are the odds that The BradCast would take a deep dive into the corruption of White House insiders placing anonymous, incredibly well-timed bets on unregulated "prediction markets' and making a killing at it? [Audio link to full show follows beneath this summary.]

BUT FIRST... It's Special Election Day in Virginia, where voters are deciding on a ballot amendment to allow state lawmakers to redraw their U.S. House map to help Democrats respond to Trump-ordered Republican mid-decade gerrymandering in other states. (Spoiler! The "YES" vote has reportedly won in what appears, at least at this hour, to have been a very close contest!) Full results and insight on tomorrow's program.

Beyond that, the lower courts continue to serve as a bulwark against many of Donald Trump's most corrupt, far-right excesses. Today a federal judge put the brakes on an absurd Administration requirement for new wind and solar energy projects to receive permitting approval from three senior political appointees at the Interior Department, including Sec. Doug Burgam. U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper put the kibosh, for now, on a series of apparently unlawful policies, clearly meant to favor the fossil fuel industry. The results has been the cancellation or delay of numerous clean, renewable energy projects at a time when energy prices are skyrocketing thanks, in no small part, to Trump's policies and wars.

Speaking of which, after repeated vows by Trump that he would not renew his tenuous ceasefire with Iran without a new agreement when it expires on Wednesday, and threats in recent days to drop "lots of bombs" on civilian power plants and bridges with a military that was "raring to go", our empty suit of a sundowning President TACOd yet again. Without a deal --- without even the peace talks he announced would occur on Tuesday --- Trump extended the ceasefire "indefinitely". For now.

THEN... Anonymous insiders are apparently winning millions on unusual, last minute bets on various aspects of Trump's wars --- often placed by brand new accounts on so-called prediction market apps like Kalshi and Polymarket just minutes before Trump's announcements. Now, some lawmakers and good government advocates are calling for reforms, including new laws and, at least, enforcement of existing regulations banning such bets.

For example, on the night of February 27, as talks were still underway between the U.S. and Iran to avoid war, 150 accounts placed bets that the U.S. would launch an attack against Iran the following day. The attack then happened. A New York Times analysis found that 16 of the accounts won more than $100,000 each from the wager. Around the same time, an account named "MagaMyMan" made an $87,000 bet on Iran's Supreme Leader being toppled, just 71 minutes before news of his assassination became public. He earned more than half a million dollars with that incredibly well-timed "prediction".

Similar bets have been placed, and fortunes made, just moments prior to various comments by Trump that have rocked the oil futures market in one direction or another. And while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has regulations already on the books against bets on war and foreign assassinations, Trump has appointed just one person, with industry ties, to the statutory bipartisan 5-member Commission. Moreover, Trump's son, Don Jr., serves as a paid advisor to both Kalshi and Polymarket. To date, existing regulations have not been enforced.

We're joined today by longtime government ethics and reform lobbyist CRAIG HOLMAN of Public Citizen, which has been calling on CFTC Chair Michael Selig to investigate these highly suspicious incidents, improve rule-making on these quickly growing "prediction" outfits, and otherwise enforce existing regulations.

"This is the first time we're seeing very, very large bets being placed and timed perfectly with political events," Holman tells me, describing how these new mobile app marketplaces are different from anything we've seen in the past. "We're talking not only about the size of the bets, we're talking about the timing, which immediately raises the appearance and suspicion of insider trading."

He cites that anonymous bet by "MagaMyMan" for $87,000 on the toppling of Iran's Ayatollah --- and his more than $500,000 payday --- as evidence of that insider trading. "To me, it sounds a lot like someone within the Trump Administration who knows exactly what is about to happen, and places a large bet that's a sure thing," he argues.

Among the related points discussed with Holman, a longtime good-government public policy lobbyist and champion on Capitol Hill, (who is really good at explaining this stuff!)...

• How Trump's own family business expansion into cryptocurrency and prediction markets means he has every incentive to prevent new regulations or the enforcement of existing ones.
• Whether Selig will actually call for probes into so many of the now known cases of what clearly appear to be insider trading.
• How "the CFTC has been basically rigged by Trump" to prevent the statutory seating of the four other members of the Commission.
• How very similar "bets", to the tune of billions of dollars, are also being placed on futures markets that are supposed to be regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
• The chances of several bills now proposed in Congress have of actually being adopted and ultimately signed by the President.

"It is not only the Wild West," Holman asserts, "some scholars like Paul Krugman call it treason. Because this is actually revealing foreign policy secrets, non-public information affecting foreign policy, to whoever is watching the markets. Not only other investors, but I imagine the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, they're all watching the market now" for a heads up on what the Trump Administration is about to do next.

It's both a maddening and enlightening discussion. I hope you'll tune in!

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our Earth Day edition of Green News Report. But, spoiler alert: It sounds much like many of other reports in that every day is Earth Day on GNR! So prepared to be both enraged and exhilarated...as usual!

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Economists warn high fuel prices could trip the world into global recession; Senate Republicans vote to strip protections from Minnesota's pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area; 16 years after catastrophic BP Oil Spill, Trump administration approves BP's new ultra deepwater drilling project; PLUS: Earth Day 2026 celebrates the only planet in the known universe capable of supporting life... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The ocean off California keeps breaking heat records; Supreme Court hands win to Chevron, Big Oil in environmental damage case; Federal bill would put Big Oil above the law; Record U.S. drought sparks fears about wildfires, water supply and food prices; Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought; Oil company founded by DOE chief Wright paid no US taxes last year ... PLUS: The wild wild Western water wars ... and much, MUCH more! ...

The Strait is open! (It's closed.) We're talking very powerfully! (They're not.) We're winning! (Nope.) Also, Greenland! Okay. Too much nonsense to make sense of on today's BradCast. But it won't stop us from trying. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Today's show is perhaps better listened to than explained. So I hope you'll tune in! Among the stories we cover before moving to Callers for the back half of the show...

Donald Trump claimed J.D. Vance, Trump's real estate pal Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner (who works for Iran's enemy, Saudi Arabia) were "heading over now" to Pakistan this morning for talks with Iran tomorrow as a fragile two-week "ceasefire" wraps up.

But Vance, at least, was still in the U.S. when Trump said otherwise, and Iran reports they have no plans to speak with the U.S. after a weekend of what they describe as piracy on the high seas. In fact, the U.S. reportedly attacked and took over an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel amid Trump's blockade of Iranian ports and Iran's blockade of the entire Strait of Hormuz.

If "Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again," as Trump claimed over the weekend before Iran announced they were closing the Strait, either they lied or he did. After it was opened for about a day over the weekend, it was closed again after Iran charged the U.S. with violating the ceasefire by blockading their ports and then attacking and stealing a cargo ship.

The supposed ceasefire ends as of Wednesday. Iran says they are ready and restocked for a long war. Is Trump? Is the U.S.? (Reminder: He first said his "little excursion" into war with Iran would take about 2 to 3 days. Then 4 to 5 weeks. We are now in week 8. On the other hand, that's 8 weeks in which few have been talking about the woman who says she was sexually assaulted by Trump when she was 13. So the war isn't all a loss for Trump.)

All of that, and much more news from his ill-considered war with Iran his failed negotiations; his latest promise that "the whole country is going to get blown up" if Iran refuses to make a deal; Iran's accurate response that Trump is too "erratic" to make a deal with, and cannot be trusted to keep it; as his job approval ratings and support on both the economy and war continue over a cliff in advance of November Midterms in which Republicans believe they are "gonna get killed".

In the meantime, more good news for Democrats at the polls in New Jersey late last week. It's Election Day tomorrow in Virginia on redrawing U.S. House maps that could help flip as many as four seats from "red" to "blue" this November. And there is chaos and confusion in California's Governor's race, which quite a few callers choose to chime in on today...

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A study in contrasts across two different U.S. wars in the Persian Gulf, and shadows of accountability emerge into view on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST UP... It has arguably taken far too long, but this week it became final. John Eastman, the sleazy attorney who helped conjure up much of Donald Trump's bonkers "legal" argument for stealing the 2020 electoral college vote in Congress on January 6, 2021, no longer has a license to practice law in his home state of California. He is officially disbarred after the state Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal this week. The disgraced former lawyer, a speaker at Trump's insurrectionist rally in front of the White House on January 6, now vows to challenge the California State Bar's final ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. Good luck with that, John.

Also today, hints of somewhat more timely accountability in Minnesota, as an ICE agent is charged with assault under state law for pointing a gun at motorists from his unmarked car during Trump's so-called Operation Metro Surge immigration offensive in Minneapolis. The case will be a test of whether state charges may be brought against federal agents by state officials. Prosecutors say they are still investigating at least 18 more related cases in the Twin Cities region following the ICE shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti earlier this year.

NEXT... We're joined today by former U.S. Army Captain, former lifelong Republican and attorney KEITH BARBER, who now writes frequently at the progressive Daily Kos website as "KeithDB".

More than 30 years ago, Barber penned a 39-page article for the Fall, 1994 volume of the Military Law Review (pp. 235-274), examining evidence behind allegations of war crimes then made by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark against the U.S. during the first Gulf War under President George HW Bush.

Barber, at the time, found that Clark's evidence of widespread war crimes failed to hold up to legal scrutiny. Last week, with few changes to International Law over the past three decades in regard to such crimes, he compared similar allegations regarding the lawfulness of Donald Trump's war in Iran.

His original article for the Military Law Review was titled "No Fire This Time: False Accusations of American War Crimes In The Persian Gulf." His follow-up last week: "The Real Fire This Time: American War Crimes In the Iran War".

The two headlines tell the tale, but we walk through --- as Barber does in his recent piece --- the central allegations of whether the two different offensives were considered lawful under International Law, and whether the conduct of each meets established legal principles of discrimination and proportionality. (Don't worry, we explain what all of that means.)

Also of note during our conversation, Barber's thoughts on whether the change in his personal political leanings may have colored his findings, either then or now, and about whether the Military Law Review would have published his findings had they come to a different conclusion 30 years ago. Tune in for some revealing answers in a sobering discussion today on those points and more.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is in da house for our latest Green News Report as Big Oil continues to reap billions from Trump's war in Iran; Extreme weather slams U.S. slands in the western Pacific; and fossil-fuel loving candidates are ousted by voters from the nation's largest public utility board in Arizona, in favor of pro-renewable energy candidates, thanks, ironically enough, to the rightwing Turning Point outfit!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Big Oil is reaping $30 million an hour from consumers thanks only to the Iran War; Hawaii grapples with more storms and destructive flooding; Super Typhoon Sinlaku slams into U.S. Pacific island territories; PLUS: Arizona voters oust pro-fossil fuel candidates from public utility board...with the help of Turning Point USA... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought; Global warming is making the strongest hurricanes stronger; All of Michigan under Flood Watch as roads washed out, dams fail, people evacuated; The Forest Service reorganization is illegal. USDA's top lawyer told them to do it anyway; Boundary Waters mining bill approved by Senate after Sen. Smith protest; IMF sees global oil shortfall this year and warns Iran war could tip world into recession ... PLUS: Bessent questions the cause of climate change and its economic toll ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Plenty --- far too much --- to get angry about on today's BradCast. Though we do find a bit of light among the darkness to help kick things off. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The good news: a federal judge in Indiana has blocked, for now, a law adopted by state Republicans that would have prevented Student IDs from being used as identification for voting purposes. The case to determine the Constitutionality of Indiana's SB10 will continue. But for now, for this year's critical midterm elections, some 40,000 Hoosier students will be able to vote with their IDs, just as they have, without incident, for the past 20 years.

Moreover, what happens in IN regarding Photo ID restrictions on voting doesn't stay in IN. It was a 2008 case out of Marion County, IN which originally opened the door nationally to the use of stricter and stricter, purposely disenfranchising, polling place voter ID laws. Liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the controlling decision, later came to admit that the Court got it wrong. So did the lower District Court Judge who penned the original ruling. So, we'll keep our eyes on this matter. But it is good news for democracy fans for the moment, barring any new surprises from higher courts this year.

In less good news today, Republicans in the U.S. Senate have, for the fourth time, blocked a Democratic resolution to assert Congress's Constitutional power to declare (or prevent) war as Donald Trump's unimaginably ill-considered war in Iran continues. Worse: WaPo reports today that thousands of more ground troops are on now on their way to the region at Trump's command.

THEN... We get to today's really enervating news, though we get there in a way that just might energize you to do something about it!

No matter how the Trump Administration and his U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins are trying to gaslight the public about it, they are, in fact, dismantling the beloved U.S. Forest Service. The plan, officially announced last month, will benefit no one but those who wish to plunder the 193 million acres of our public lands overseen, maintained and protected by the agency for more than 120 years. Despite her rhetoric and lies, Rollins is not clear-cutting the U.S. Forest Service for the good of the American people. The effort is for commercial purposes. To rob Americans of our sacred public lands to the benefit of the extraction industry, from miners to drillers to loggers. And, because it's the Trump Administration naturally, they are doing so unlawfully, the way they do pretty much everything.

We're joined today for a deep dive on all of this by award-winning filmmaker and conservationist JIM PATTIZ of MoreThanJustParks.com. He helped touch off a proverbial five-alarm fire about all of this with his blazing-hot, razor-sharp descriptive demolition of what the Administration is actually hiding under their March 31 announcement that the USDA is moving the Forest Service Headquarters from D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, while shuttering dozens of critical research centers around the country in the bargain.

Don't be fooled, Pattiz explains. This is not meant as "a sweeping restructuring of the agency to move leadership closer to the forests and communities it serves," as the USDA claimed in its press release. It is not "a structural reset and a common-sense approach to improve mission delivery." It is, as Pattiz detailed at Hatch Magazine last week, a scheme to relocate the beloved agency to a state which is currently suing the federal government to take over some 18.5 million acres of public lands, "that wants to own them, stripped of its science, stripped of its regional expertise, stripped of its institutional independence, and reorganized into a structure purpose-built for political compliance."

"This is a coordinated demolition of federal land stewardship in America," he warns. "The Forest Service was the last major federal land agency that still had the institutional muscle to resist. It had the scientists. It had the regional foresters. It had the culture, imperfect as it was, that still believed forests belonged to the public. After today, that agency no longer exists."

The USDA and White House itself have come out with both barrels against Pattiz and his fellow public lands supporters, particularly after he demonstrated this week in his newsletter how relocating the Forest Service headquarters from D.C. is in strict violation of federal laws adopted by both parties in Congress regarding fiscal year 2026!

"The White House called it 'lies from these losers," Pattiz tells me. But it is anything but. Pattiz has the receipts. In fact, he also has the goods regarding how it was Trump officials themselves who lied about their intentions to do exactly what they are now doing during their confirmation hearings in the Senate.

"This will affect somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 employees," says Pattiz, "of a work force that's already lost a fourth of the Forest Service workforce since Trump started his second term --- a critical agency that does most of the wildland firefighting in the United States --- a fourth of that agency gone. And now you're talking about an additional potentially 5,000 employees."

It's hardly just fire fighters. Scientists will be lost as well, along with decades of institutional knowledge with the move to Utah and the shuddering of regional research offices around the country, to be consolidated into one office in Colorado. Knowledge, research and decades-old, ongoing experiments will be lost that can't necessarily simply be restarted the next time a Democrat returns to power. "When you shutter 57 research stations, that is absolutely a 'kill shot' to our research program, which is the envy of the world," says Pattiz. "It's a kill shot."

And it's all being spearheaded by longtime enemies of public lands, such as Utah's Republican Sen. Mike Lee and a new Forest Service Director who was previously a logging executive --- the first time in the agency's 122-year history that its Director was not selected from among those already serving within it. In response to the new chief, Tom Schultz, citing Teddy Roosevelt, renowned defender of public lands, and Gifford Pinchot, who created what would become the Service, in the USDA's announcement about the move to Utah and the gutting of the Service, Pattiz was incensed.

"It makes my blood boil," he tells me today. "It is the antithesis of what the Forest Service is all about. Theodore Roosevelt made a career out of opposing people like Tom Schultz. It's just absurd to hear this logging executive who has inexplicably been installed as the Forest Service chief using the names of Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt, because what they are doing is the anathema of Roosevelt and his legacy."

But it's not over yet. Lawsuits, Pattiz says, are soon to be filed. In the meantime, "the biggest thing people can do is write and call your representatives and senators, and tell them to stick up for the laws that they wrote." The very laws that were adopted on a bipartisan basis, signed by this President, requiring approval from Congress before a massive restructuring (and destruction) of this sort can begin at all. "Contact your representatives. Tell them to hold this Dept. of Agriculture accountable."

There is a lot more from Pattiz, who is really good at explaining all of this, on today's show. You'll be glad you tuned in for it!...

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On today's BradCast: With voters in Hungary demonstrating on Sunday that the ballot box can be mightier than the autocrat, and with shake-ups in the U.S. House this week and fresh news from the Gerrymandering Wars, it seems a good moment to consider all of this news in light of the critical November midterms. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Also today, some weather and climate news, and an update on paper tiger Trump in the Middle East. Among our stories today...

• As we go to air, the most powerful storm currently on Earth --- and of 2026, so far --- Super Typhoon Sinlaku is slamming tens of thousands of citizens on U.S. territories in the western Pacific Ocean, including the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. The damage may continue for a while, as the devastating storm --- unusual for this early in the year --- slowed down as it reached the islands, potentially resulting in maximum destruction.

• Back here on the mainland, it's a political storm blowing through the U.S. House this week. Following serious sexual assault allegations first reported on Friday, California's Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell resigned from the U.S. House on Tuesday. He may now also be facing a criminal probe following a fifth woman stepping forward today with still more disturbing accusations. His resignation was followed shortly after by the resignation of Texas Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, whose affair with a married staffer lead to her suicide. While the allegations against Gonzalez have been known for some time, it was only after Swalwell's announcement that he was stepping down on Monday (facing threats of expulsion) that the Texas Rep. agreed to leave as well, safeguarding the GOP's razor-thin majority in the lower chamber during the interim.

• Speaking of which, new news today in the Gerrymandering Wars kicked off last year by Donald Trump's order to Republican states to redraw their U.S. House maps to steal "blue" seats from voters this November. One of the hopes for Democrats to redraw their own maps in response to the GOP campaign was dashed on Monday night, as state Senate Democrats in Maryland ended their latest session without voting on a new state map, as sought by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore. He had asked for a redrawn map to help flip the state's last Republican-held House District in favor of the Dems, but was blocked by the Democratic state Senate President who felt the move might end up harming Democrats.

• In other related Gerrymandering War news, the Republican-dominated Florida legislature is set to convene a special session next week to consider redrawing its already gerrymandered U.S. House map, even as Virginia voters are already early voting on a state Constitutional Amendment sponsored by Democrats to temporarily set aside the state's independently drawn U.S. House map in favor of one that could flip as many as four more seats from "red" to "blue" this November. The Special Election Day is next Tuesday, April 21, and pre-election polling suggests it could be a close contest!

• In Congress' upper chamber, meanwhile, the Cook Political Report this week made four adjustments to their November forecast for the U.S. Senate, with all four changes moving toward the left for this year's races in North Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska and Georgia. That said, Cook's current forecast for the Senate still predicts Republicans hanging on to majority control of the upper chamber next year --- if just barely for now.

• Why has Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to blockade traffic in the Strait of Hormuz in his effort to prevent Iran from blockading traffic through the Strait of Hormuz? We try to explain today, before noting that China now seems to be calling Trump's bluff.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the war on Iran deepens global poverty even as Big Oil is rolling in profits; as news policies in the UK and France seek to permanently reduce dependency on fossil fuels; and as birds turn out to be smarter than Donald Trump when it comes to wind energy, according to newly released studies...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Iran War energy crisis deepens global poverty while Big Oil rakes in big profits; France and Britain enact new policies to reduce costly fossil fuel dependence; PLUS: Turns out birds are smart enough to avoid wind turbines, new studies show... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Iran war escalation could trigger global recession, IMF warns; Aftermath: Plastics Clogged in the Persian Gulf; Trouble in paradise as atmospheric rivers drown Hawaii; Communities are waiting on billions in disaster funding from the Trump administration; EPA Zeldin tells climate skeptics to 'celebrate vindication' after repeal of baseline climate rule; Lead still haunts yards in Exide battery recycler cleanup zone ... PLUS: The simple math of the death of LNG ... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's all we can do, at this point, on our Monday shows, to hang on for dear life and try to get caught up with as much of the weekend's madness as possible. And so we do again on today's BradCast, along with the help of a few callers (including some Trump supporters!) [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the weekend's madness...

• After a marathon one-days-in-a-row of negotiations with Iran, the world's second greatest deal-maker, Vice President J.D. Vance, gives up and goes home. In retaliation, Donald Trump announces that he will shut down the Straight of Hormuz...which was already shut down by Iran in response to the U.S. attack, and was one of the main reason for the weekend's negotiations amid what is supposed to be a two week ceasefire between US/Israel and Iran.

• Then, the brightest news, by far, of the weekend. Just days after Vance --- the weekend's double-loser --- stumped for him in person, Hungary's 16-year, rightwing dictatorial leader, Viktor Orbán, was crushed by voters who removed him from power in a landslide Sunday election. Orbán, a longtime Trump/Vance ally, modern-day U.S. Republican Party hero, and dictatorial autocrat has blocked migration to his country, gutted LGBTQ rights, shut down freedom of speech and judicial independence, gamed the electoral system, cozied up to Vladimir Putin, blocked EU support of Ukraine amid Russia's war against them, and oversaw the takeover of major media outlets by corporate cronies during his 16 years of consolidating power. (Sound familiar?) But, on Sunday, voters in Hungary overcame all of that, crushed Orban's party and publicly celebrated across the nation all night long. I suspect we'll be seeing similar in this country before too terribly long.

• While the supposedly-anti-war Vance was failing to strike a deal with Iran (or get Orbán elected), Donald Trump attended an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight here in the U.S., attacked Pope Leo XIV in a ridiculous lengthy screed (for being soft on crime and nuclear weapons, or something) and posted an AI "painting" of himself on social media depicted as Jesus healing the sick. By Monday, after criticism from even his own religious supporters, he deleted the photo and claimed it was supposed to be him posing as a doctor in support of the Red Cross. (I'll pause here so you can get up off the floor from laughter.)

• Despite what Trump, Republicans and Fox "News" repeatedly tells you, as it turns out, California is in pretty good shape. As Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom enjoyed rubbing in Trump's face over the weekend, the Golden State's GDP increased by 5% last year, leading every other state in the union, as the fourth largest economy in the world.

• Meanwhile, this year's sleepy election to fill Newsom's termed-out position as the head of the 4th largest economy in the world in November suddenly got a lot less sleepy over the weekend and into Monday. Where Democratic Party alarm bells had already been ringing about a Top Two primary that could send two Republicans to compete against each other in this year's November general election. (Though dumb Trump probably helped to avoid that last week by endorsing one of the two Republicans who had been tied for first place at 10%.), Now, sexual assault allegations against one of the leading Democrats, Bay Area Congressman Eric Swalwell, have resulted in his dropping out of the crowded race on Sunday and announcing his resignation from Congress on Monday, moments before airtime. We'll see how, and if, that ends up shaking up the statewide Gubernatorial Primary on June 2nd enough to allow one of the far-too-many Dems on the ballot to break through to the first or second spots in the Primary to go on to the November general.

• Finally, in the second half of today's show, we open the phones to callers on any and all of the above and, after many weeks of asking, a couple of Trump supporters finally ring in to answer my invitation!...

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On today's BradCast: Finally, even MAGA is beginning to notice. Or, at least they are finally admitting they've noticed. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Day after day, especially as his war on and/or supposed ceasefire with Iran continues to be a global embarrassment, Donald Trump keeps proving his critics were right all along.

In many case, such as MAGA media elite or his own Truth Social supporters turning on him, it's amusing and encouraging. In other cases, like those who, with the encouragement of Republican officials, bought into the Trump myth, it is very sad. Especially in states like deep "red" West Virginia, where energy prices are now skyrocketing amid his broken promises to revive dirty, deadly, expensive coal and his broken campaign vow, repeated dozens of times, to cut everyone's gas and energy prices by 50% within his first year. (See Margie Mason's great piece for AP here.)

Trump is now failing, and very quickly, to paraphrase him. At record levels! Like nobody has ever seen before!

In fact, a majority of Americans would now like to see him impeached an historic third time. New polling appears to break the record for such a finding this early in a President's term.

But, before any of that can happen --- if it ever does --- there are still a whole bunch of folks likely to die in his absurdly ill-considered war, and a whole bunch of Administration friends and insiders likely to profiteer off it all on the so-called prediction markets.

Also, Desi Doyen joins us today for our latest Green News Report. Things don't look any better there either...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Global oil and gas supply still locked up amid unsettled ceasefire; Damage to the agriculture supply chain is already done; PLUS: Heads up --- a Super El Nino is brewing in the Pacific Ocean that will boost extreme weather... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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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): An incredibly weird time to be alive: The world witnessed the best and worst of humanity in a single week; The Iran War and the energy lesson we failed to learn; Trump’s EPA chief delivers the keynote at a conference of climate change deniers; Louisiana LNG project could pollute more than all other US terminals; Corpus Christi water crisis spurs stampede on South Texas aquifers ... PLUS: After harsh winter, Ukrainians find joy in releasing bats rescued from war ... and much, MUCH more! ...

We pick up today where we left off at the tail end of The BradCast yesterday, as the President of the United States proved once again to the world to be a desperate paper tiger. Turns out (but you knew this), he's also a lousy negotiator and an absurdly incompetent Commander-in-Chief. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get back to the war today, and it's apparent lack of ceasefire(?), some excellent news for small "d" democracy and for Democrats alike here in the Homeland.

Democrat Shawn Harris lost his special election for the U.S. House on Tuesday in Georgia's very "red" 14th Congressional District to Trump-endorsed Clay Fuller by 12 points. Sounds like a landslide! But the GOP victory in the House District previously held by far-right Marjorie Taylor Greene masks a remarkable move toward the Democrats in the most Republican District in the battleground state. In fact, Harris' loss --- a stunning 25-point swing toward the Democratic candidate as compared to Trump's 2024 win in the district --- helps obscure the fact that it was "the most significant overperformance the [Democratic] party has seen across all seven House special elections" since Trump's return to power last year.

Also on Tuesday, Chris Taylor, a liberal, Democratic-supported state judge in Wisconsin, won this year's election for the state Supreme Court by some 20 points, expanding the court's liberal majority to 5 to 2. The margin was extraordinary by any measure, but especially considering the incredibly narrow races for the state high court over much of the past two decades in another battleground state. Not to mention the ironclad majority that Republican-supported Justices previously enjoyed there for so long. No longer, thanks to persistent Democratic leadership in the state and indefatigable voter turnout to reverse the previously dark fortunes of Badger Staters.

It wasn't only those two marquee races on Tuesday where voters registered displeasure with Republicans ahead of this year's critical midterms. Rightwingers were removed from school boards in local elections in a number of states, from Wisconsin to Oklahoma to Missouri!

THEN... It's back to the political front lines in the Middle East, where the tenuous ceasefire Donald Trump proved desperate to claim on Tuesday night --- under terms that wildly appear to favor Iran --- seemed to be falling apart all day on Wednesday. The terms of the deal remain unclear, at best, with both sides reporting different understandings. We try our best to make sense of it all today.

But the bottom line for now is that, even under the most generous interpretation, Trump seems not to have been taken to the cleaners as much as having driven there himself.

Iran is already insisting that the U.S. has violated the agreement, and says it will not open up the Strait of Hormuz, even as the Trump Administration was claiming that it was open and declaring "victory" on Wednesday, as the stock market appeared to play along for the day.

But even by my best understanding of the terms of the ceasefire negotiations, it appears that Iran will end up with much much more than they had before Trump decided to start a war with them, and the U.S. will have much less than they started with. By way of comparison to what the U.S. had before Trump tore up the Obama-era nuclear agreement with Iran, the entire world will also have much less than before the great deal maker destroyed the delicate power balances in the Middle East faster than he was able bankrupt an Atlantic City casino.

We're joined today to help us make sense out of the chaos by the incredibly knowledgeable and clear-spoken NICOLAS GROSSMAN, International Relations professor and national security expert at the University of Illinois. Last week he argued at his Arc Digital newsletter and at MS NOW that there was "No Off Ramp in Sight".

So, do we now have an off ramp after all? Probably not, argues Grossman. "This problem is really not going away," he says. "Already the war itself has disrupted a lot of global energy supplies. Iran is still choking traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. If they are charging, they will get a ton of revenue for this. All of that is ongoing, and all of that continues to be America's problem. Because it will affect the global economy, the American economy, make the prices of everything higher, and we should probably expect more of that."

"To the extent that Trump took an off-ramp, it was basically by surrendering," asserts Grossman, who argues that, "if we go by what the Pakistani mediators say the US had agreed to, it would be almost a total American surrender, giving Iranians everything they want, getting nothing the US wanted, and leaving the United States in a decently weaker geostrategic position than before the war started."

We cover a lot of territory with Grossman today, including how crippling sanctions against Iran have now been lifted and how they now not only control the Strait, but may be allowed to charge $2 million a pop for passage --- none of which they had prior to the war. All as part of an agreement which currently says nothing at all about restrictions on their missile, drone, or even nuclear programs.

Grossman makes a lot of excellent points. But one, I think, is worth putting up front here: that toll being placed by Iran on ships going in and out of the Strait. If that is allowed to become the practice, "it would amount to something like $100 billion a year" for Iran, he explains. That is an amount larger than their current annual government budget.

"If we think back to the Obama nuclear deal," Grossman continues, which "did actually restrict Iran's nuclear program," Trump and Republicans have spent years accusing Obama of "sending 'pallets of cash' to the Iranians." The cash that was sent, as part of the careful agreements, was actually Iranian funds they had spent for airplane parts prior to the 1979 revolution, for parts they never received. It was their money. In any event, as Grossman notes, "that total value was $1.7 billion, and it was returning frozen funds, returning Iran's own money to them. One payment of $1.7 billion is a lot less than $100 billion every year," as Trump's ceasefire agreement would appear to allow the Iranians to collect in order to reopen transnational shipping of a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas supply.

The art of the deal.

Tune in for much more today...

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