Coming on the heels of the presently enjoined, 4th Amendment violating, racial profiling mass roundups of Latinos in California, the Trump regime's effort to not only federalize law enforcement in the District of Columbia but also to target the homeless for removal resurrects the ghost of the late Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemà¶ller.

An acknowledged anti-semite, Niemà¶ller initially supported Hitler's rise to power. But he drew the ire of Der Fà¼hrer's totalitarian regime after he openly opposed the Nazification of Protestant Churches.

Narrowly escaping death after he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1937, Niemà¶ller spent the years 1938 to 1945 in infamous Nazi concentration camps.

Following his release from Dachau in 1945, Niemà¶ller penned the poem, First They Came...

It's your democracy at work, for better or worse, on today's BradCast! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... At a lively rally at the Democracy Center here in Los Angeles on Thursday, California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled the "Election Rigging Response Act", legislation meant to push back against Donald Trump and the state of Texas' attempted mid-decade gerrymander of its already-gerrymandered U.S. House map. The new TX map, if enacted, would steal five Democratic House seats from largely minority voters in the Lone Star State in next year's midterms.

"We can't stand back and watch this democracy disappear district by district all across the country," Newsom declared at the boisterous rally, announcing his plan to ask the Golden State legislature to quickly approve a ballot measure for November 4th that would allow CA to temporarily override the state's U.S. House map. Unlike in Texas, our maps are drawn by an independent redistricting commission. If Newsom's scheme overcomes several hurdles, a new map would be drawn by the Legislature to flip five currently Republican seats in CA. The Act must first be approved by two-thirds of the CA state Legislature. It would then have to pass muster with voters on November 4, and wold only take effect if Texas successfully rigs their map.

The attempted heist in Texas is currently on hold, with state Democratic lawmakers breaking quorum by leaving the state. But Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has insisted that he will call Special Session after Special Session until he is able to rig the map for Trump and Republicans who fear they will otherwise lose their slim U.S. House majority next year.

"We are not bystanders in this world. We can shape the future," Newsom told the crowd on Thursday, adding: "Donald Trump, you have poked the bear and we will punch back."

"We're giving the people of this state the power to save democracy, not just in California, but all across the United States of America. I hope we are waking up to this reality. Wake up, America. Wake up to what Donald Trump is doing," the Governor concluded. We share his remarks in full on today's show.

THEN... We're joined by veteran, award-winning journalist turned media reform champion SUE WILSON of the Media Action Center, for an update on a remarkable story she has been covering at The BRAD BLOG for at least five years.

Wilson initially reported in 2020 on a citizen Petition filed at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking to deny renewal of Sinclair Broadcasting's TV stion license in Baltimore. The complaint alleged that Sinclair, one of the nation's largest (and most right-leaning) station owners, was violating FCC rules that limit the number of stations that can be owned in a single market by secretly controlling two other television stations in Baltimore. Those two stations are run, according to the well-documented Petition, by sock-puppet companies actually controlled by Sinclair.

Filed in late 2020, the Petition wasn't heard by the FCC during the remaining months of Donald Trump's first term. Over the ensuing four years, for reasons we discuss today, Joe Biden's FCC failed to review the matter as well. In the meantime, in 2023, the Petitioner passed away. Another Baltimore resident was quickly substituted on the paperwork.

Fast-forward to 2025 and the FCC in Trump's second term, now led by his hand-picked Chair Brendan Carr, dismissed the original complaint on the basis that the substitute Petitioner missed the chance to file a petition on her own back in 2020. Her substitution for the man who waited five years for a hearing --- and died waiting --- was not allowed, Carr ruled, even though the well-documented facts of the matter hadn't changed. The Sinclair stations in question have since been re-licensed, despite the companies apparent violations of both FCC rules and federal law.

The lawyer for both the late Petitioner and his substitute, has filed an Application for Review, hoping to appeal the Commission's absurd ruling. Wilson detailed the latest remarkable chapter in this long-running story at The BRAD BLOG this week, and joins us to both break it down, and light up a warning about the next scheme that the FCC's Carr now has in place to undermine federal ownership rules of local television stations nationwide.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with the usual litany of disturbing climate and energy news, as well as perhaps the dumbest, most disinformative comment ever uttered on Fox "News" regarding renewable energy --- and that's saying quite a bit!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Tennessee is the latest state slammed by this Summer of Floods; New barriers protect much of Juneau, Alaska from glacial outburst flood; Glaciers in North America and Europe lost 'unprecedented' amount of ice over last four years; PLUS: Home-based batteries helping to keep the lights on in Puerto Rico... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Normalizing climate disaster in the Age of Trump; 'No country is safe': deadly Nordic heatwave supercharged by climate crisis, scientists say; How a retreat by the EPA would endanger the U.S. economy; California activates $2 billion solar and energy storage facility; Wildfires fanned by heatwave and strong winds rage across Europe... PLUS: Homeless and Burning in America's Hottest City... and much, MUCH more! ...

Sadly (or happily, as you may see it), we don't have many Republicans as guests on The BradCast these days. That's largely because so many are now crazy, brainwashed and/or liars, as I see it, and we don't like platforming crazy, brainwashed lies on this program. But today, I'm delighted to be joined by someone from the Right who appears neither crazy, brainwashed nor a liar, as we try to find common ground to end the worsening Gerrymander War touched off by Trump and Republicans in Texas of late. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First up, a few more thoughts today on the Big Government Tyranny that Republicans used to claim to oppose...until they found a Big Government Tyrant that they are happy to get behind, I guess. The U.S. National Guard was deployed to the streets of the nation's capitol yesterday, at the order of Donald Trump, to supposedly help fight crime in a city where violent crime is at a 30-year low, and has dropped by 26% since this time last year.

Those troops in D.C. may wish to look to those deployed out here in L.A. in early June, where they apparently did virtually nothing over their 60-day deployment away from their families, jobs and homes. The show of federal force was merely meant as a performative tough guy move by our pretend tough guy President. The same is true, no doubt, in D.C. today.

Trump's federalization of the California National Guard against the wishes of the state's Governor and L.A.'s Mayor, may also have been unlawful. A three-day bench trial is wrapping up today in L.A. on that very matter, but Liberal Redneck Trae Crowder already has his verdict on much of this today, some of which we share.

THEN... it's back to the ongoing gerrymandering war, as Democratic Texas state lawmakers are still breaking quorum by fleeing the state in hopes of blocking Republican Gov. Greg Abbott from stealing at least five "blue" U.S. House Seats from majority minority districts before next year's midterm elections. At the orders of Donald Trump, Abbott has convened a special session of the state Legislature to carry out a rare, mid-decade redistricting of the already gerrymandered state. A proposed new map would include, for example, a current House District in the state's liberal capital of Austin being broken up and added to a rural District that expands more than 300 miles from Austin.

Democratic state Governors, like California's Gavin Newsom, have vowed to respond in kind if Texas is successful. Other GOP-controlled states are now considering new gerrymanders in turn, as still more Dem states prepare to do the same if needed and if possible.

Where does it all end? We're joined today by writer FRED BAUER who has an idea or two on how it all could end, optimistically, in a way that "both sides" might support.

In his op-ed at Washington Post this week, headlined "There's a way to end Texas's redistricting war where everyone wins", Bauer, a Republican, makes the case for expanding the U.S. House by about 140 seats in almost every state before next year's midterms, in a way that, he argues, might be seen as benefiting both parties.

I've got lots of questions, as you may imagine. While I appreciate the idea of better representation of voters (one Member currently represents nearly 800,000 voters in each Congressional District of the "People's House"), I'm not sure that expansion alone will result in much more than still more gerrymandering, but in all 50 states with more Members.

Bauer has a few additions to his proposal, such as banning mid-decade redistricting and perhaps even mandating "continuous and compact" districts once again, as had been required by a Congressional apportionment law during the early part of the 20th Century.

"The key question I'm trying to think about here is how can we shift our Congressional districts from being engines of polarization to better be engines of representation," Bauer asserts. I share his hope.

And then there's the idea that Bauer seems open to of proportional representation. What does that mean? Well, tune in if you're unfamiliar. Or even you're not. But the point here is that I'm very happy to have a serious conversation with someone from the Right about how to find common ground to eventually end this mad race to the partisan bottom.

Can it happen in some sort of bipartisan way? Or will one party or the other eventually have to simply establish new rules for all? As usual, there is a lot to discuss on today's show. But we gotta start the Second Reconstruction somewhere...

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Dead man tell no tales. But the evidence submitted to the FCC before he passed away, challenging dodgy, unlawful television station ownership by a major national broadcasting conglomerate, is still alive and well. Or, at least, it should be.

As covered at The BRAD BLOG in September of 2020, Baltimore resident Ihor Gawdiak and his attorney Arthur Belendiuk filed a Petition to Deny (PtD) the FCC license renewals of three TV stations controlled in Baltimore by Sinclair Broadcasting in apparent violation of both FCC ownership rules and federal law.

In brief, Gawdiak's petition detailed a complicated shell game carried out by Sinclair, one of the nation's largest owners of local television stations, to carry out the plot while staying beneath the FCC radar.

Sinclair claims ownership of Baltimore's WBFF-TV Channel 45, (which shares news reports from the Baltimore Sun newspaper, owned by Sinclair's Executive Chairman, David Smith, son of Sinclair's founder, Julian Sinclair Smith.) The David Smith family also controls both Cunningham Broadcasting and Deerfield Media which operate Baltimore's WNUV-TV and WUTB-TV, respectively. Both companies have very deep and direct ties to Sinclair. (Belendiuk found the "official" owner of Deerfield was Smith's personal banker, Stephen Mumblow, and the "official" owner of Cunningham is the company's former banker, Michael Anderson, who has no broadcast experience and actually served as a paid employee of Sinclair.)

The elaborate shell game, Gawkiak's complaint argued, is an effort to monopolize the information U.S. television viewers can access in their own local towns, by skirting FCC ownership limits in a single market. Petitioner Gawdiak's license challenge first went to Trump's Republican-controlled FCC during his first term, then was taken over by Biden's FCC. Now it is back in the hands of Trump's heavily-controlled Commission once again.

The FCC likely breathed a sigh of relief when Gawdiak passed away in 2023 before the matter was ultimately adjudicated. But then another petitioner, Baltimore resident Eleanor Goldfield, signed on to take his place. Finally, it would seem, someone at the FCC would have to take a formal look at the complex Sinclair scheme of forming sidecar companies under their complete control, designed to flaunt FCC rules with tacit approval of federal regulator.

After five years, Trump's Sinclair-friendly FCC finally responded formally to attorney Art Belendiuk on June 27, 2025, informing him that one FCC petitioner may not be substituted for another and, therefore, the Commission would not be taking up this longstanding case.

This is despite the FCC's own administrative law judge, in a related proceeding, demanding such an inquiry take place.

In 2018, Ajit Pai, Trump's Republican FCC Chair at the time, called an unprecedented public Hearing about deliberate untruths Sinclair made to the FCC in its effort to acquire Tribune Broadcasting. The hearing was scuttled after Sinclair went behind closed doors with the Commission. But it resulted in a stunning $48 million dollar fine. Still, the judge in that hearing, Jane Halprin, demanded these conflicts be thoroughly examined in a future hearing at the Commission, stating: "This alleged deception was ostensibly aimed at allowing Sinclair to bypass the Commission's multiple ownership limitations. ... the behavior of a multiple station owner before the Commission may be so fundamental to a licensee's operation that it is relevant to its qualifications to hold any station license."

The 2020 Petition from Gawdiak could have provided for the scrutiny Halprin called for in the earlier matter.

In 2021, Belendiuk filed a Freedom of Information Act request on my behalf to discover just what was said in those closed door meetings between the FCC Media Bureau and the FCC. It took two years, but following an appeal to the Federal District Court in Washington DC, the FCC finally caved and released those files, a treasure trove of an extremely complicated shell game. (I detailed the full story for Project Censored here.)

Later in 2023, Gawdiak passed away. In early 2024, Goldfield signed on to take his place in the case.

Lo and behold, on June 27, 2025, the FCC finally responded [PDF] by agreeing with the arguments from Sinclair's attorneys that "Goldfield missed her opportunity to participate in the proceeding when she failed to file by the September 1, 2020, deadline and that permitting the substitution here would 'make a mockery of the Commission's deadlines and processes.'"

(As if the FCC waiting four years 10 months and 27 days to respond to a legal petition doesn't alone make a mockery of Commission deadlines and processes.)

In the bargain, the FCC subsquently allowed Sinclair to renew its Baltimore licenses.

But it ain't over until it's over. July 28, 2025, Belendiuk, the original attorney on the case, filed an Application for Review of the FCC's "decision." He raises the following three questions:

1. Did the FCC Media Bureau err in denying the Motion, given Gawdiak's inability to survive the almost five years the Commission waited to act on the Petition?
2. Did the Media Bureau err in failing to address the Petition as an informal objection to the Applications?
3. Did the Media Bureau err in granting the Applications without addressing the substance of the Petition?

It is entirely possible the FCC will not be the ultimate arbiter of this case. It could go to the U.S. Court of Appeals. (If we live that long.)

Aside: In April 2025, public interest watchdog and advocacy group Frequency Forward and Wisconsin member Randy Bryce put still more pressure on Sinclair when they filed their own Petition to Deny the license transfer applications of Wisconsin and other TV station licenses held by Sinclair Broadcasting, using much of the information gleaned from my FOIA.

The FCC swiftly denied that challenge on July 1, 2025. Says petitioner Bryce, who ran for Congress in the Badger State in 2018 and is running again next year: "It's outrageous that the FCC has been changed from a nonpartisan entity to a political arm of the extreme right. Their purpose should be to protect free speech, not stifle it."

APTRA, RTNDA, PRNDI and Emmy-winning Sue Wilson worked at CBS, PBS, NPR and Fox before directing the documentary Broadcast Blues, writing the blog Sue Wilson Reports and founding the Media Action Center. Reach her at SueWilsonReports@gmail, or via Bluesky or Twitter.

Today on The BradCast: Donald Trump's latest attempt to make himself feel powerful by deploying U.S. military troops on American streets --- against Americans --- has nothing to do with Law and Order. It has everything to do with a need for authoritarian control by a very small wannabe tyrant. It also has to do with distracting from the fact that he's in the Epstein Files and won't release them, as previously promised. [Audio link to full story follows below this summary.]

Among our stories today that help make that case and a few others...

• The 30-year old (white) Georgia man who attempted a mass shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta on Friday fired some 200 shots at its glass windows, smashing bullet holes into about 150 of them. He was also misinformed by the nation's health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and others who spread the same nonsense, that his depression was due to a COVID vaccine shot. Kennedy took 18 hours before issuing a tepid statement in response to the shooting that killed a responding (black) police officer. Donald Trump has yet to say anything about it...much less deploy the U.S. National Guard to Georgia.

• At the top of Rachel Maddow's program Monday night, she told a harrowing story about a convicted triple ax-murderer. Turns out he is a (white) American citizen who is now roaming the streets of the nation after Donald Trump just sprung him from prison. The National Guard will not be deployed to Florida to hunt him down, because Trump wants him to be free.

• Meanwhile, in D.C., Donald Trump, a 34-time convicted felon and adjudicated sexual abuser, announced on Monday that the U.S. National Guard would be deployed to the nation's capital, where violent crime is at a 30-year low, according to the U.S. Attorney's office there. The announcement follows a recently attempted 3am carjacking of a (white) guy who used to work on Trump's so-called DOGE project. Like Los Angeles, where Trump previously deployed National Guard and U.S. Marines for no legitimate reason, and in likely violation of the law, D.C. has a black female Mayor. More easy pickins as tough-guy Trump sees it, I suspect. But none of this has anything to do with the Rule of Law or being Tough on Crime. At his Monday presser, Trump also suggested he would soon be deploying both National Guard and even active duty military troops to a number of other Democratically-run American cities, if not to GOP-controlled states like Georgia or Texas, despite a number of recent mass shootings in both. But, again, none of this is about Law and Order. It's about authoritarian control by a tiny, petty tyrant.

• In that same vein, Washington Post reports today on a Pentagon plan to create a permanent military "reaction force" that would allow Trump to deploy U.S. military troops to U.S. cities within an hour on either side of the Mississippi, for whatever bullshit authoritarian reasons he wanted to dream up. Bullets would already be flying in the streets of the U.S. against the U.S. Government had any recent Democratic President carried out anything like all of this. Apparently, Republican "opponents" of Big Government Tyranny only oppose Big Government Tyrants they didn't vote for.

• One of Trump's other recent attempts to distract from the fact that he's in the Jeffrey Epstein files --- and is therefore, refusing to release them --- is also failing miserably. A U.S. District Court judge in New York on Monday, denied the Trump Dept. of Justice's motion to release Grand Jury transcripts from the 2020 indictment on sex trafficking and abuse of minors by Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The judge excoriated DOJ for its attempt at misleading the public about what is (or, in this case, isn't) in those transcripts, writing in his scathing ruling that "the Government's motion for their unsealing was aimed not at 'transparency' but at diversion --- aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such."

• Down in Texas, meanwhile, Gov. Greg Abbott is still trying to have his GOP-controlled state legislature steal five U.S. House seats from Democrats in next year's midterm elections by redistricting the state's map again, in the middle of the decade, at the order of Donald Trump. State House Dems are still not letting them. They continue to break quorum in the state House by remaining in other states. On Monday, TX' corrupt Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton asked the state Supremes to expel 13 of the absent Democratic members. On Monday night, Abbott took to Fox "News" to threaten to rewrite the maps to steal not five but 10 seats if California's Governor dares to respond to the TX heist by rewriting maps to flip five Republican seats in the Golden State in turn. And on Tuesday, Abbott announced that the 30-day Special Legislative Session would be concluded this week, with a new one started immediately thereafter. There is still no indication that Dems plan to show up for it, as state Repubs continue to hold disaster relief hostage following the deadly July 4th flash floods if Dems refusing to allow them to steal next year's U.S. House elections.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as flash flooding and record heat continues across the Midwest and around the world; and as the Trump Administration continues to raise energy prices for Americans by gutting renewable energy production in the U.S., even while announcing plans to build a nuclear reactor...on the Moon!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Extreme flash flooding forces early cancellation of Wisconsin State Fair; July 2025 was the third hottest July ever recorded; PLUS: Trump Administration slashes U.S. renewable energy at home but plans to put a nuclear reactor on the Moon... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Tropical Storm Erin tracker: Forecast to strengthen into 1st Atlantic hurricane of 2025 by this weekend; Trump administration yanks loan from transmission line project meant to carry Kansas wind energy; Finland charges captain of tanker, tied to Russia, in undersea cable damage; Neo-Nazi gets maximum sentence in terror plot to destroy Maryland's power grid; Far more environmental data is being deleted in Trump's second term than before... PLUS: Chemours must immediately stop unlawfully polluting Ohio River, federal judge orders; ... and much, MUCH more! ...

So much for the campaign to "Make America Healthy Again". Today on The BradCast, former public health officials are calling for the head of Donald Trump's chief health Secretary, a guy who has no scientific or medical expertise whatsoever. But he does have a famous name. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last Wednesday, Trump's Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced he was cancelling some $500 million for research of the miracle mRNA vaccines that finally brought the world out of years of the COVID pandemic. Scientists at the National Institute of Health (NIH) were working on new versions that could also be used to protect against influenza and other diseases. The cuts came after Kennedy falsely claimed that the vaccine, which saved millions of lives, was not effective against respiratory diseases.

Two days later, on Friday last week, a man who blamed the COVID vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal, attempted a mass shooting at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. He was blocked from entering the CDC, but opened fire at a pharmacy across the street, killing a police officer before, apparently, taking his own life.

RFK Jr., who was gone fishin' in Montana at the time, didn't bother to issue a public response to the incident for 18 hours. The CDC employees union has since called for a "clear and unequivocal stance in condemning vaccine disinformation" from the longtime vaccine denier. And a group of fired former federal health workers, Fired but Fighting, has called for the HHS Secretary to step down, along with White House Office of Budget and Management (OMB) Director Russ Vought, who previously declared: "When [federal workers] wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. ... We want to put them in trauma."

Mission accomplished, Russ.

We're joined today by ARYN MELTON BACKUS, a now former health communications specialist at the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, and a founding member of Fired But Fighting. Though she won the legal challenge to her Valentine's Day firing in U.S. District Court, the matter remains on appeal and, as she explained today, she is not encouraged by what she has seen from our wildly corrupted U.S. Supreme Court. "We are also fighting for the future of public health," she tells me today. "So even if I am officially terminated, we will stay here and we will fight for the public health of our nation."

We discuss her firing and Kennedy's subsequent complete shutdown of her former office at CDC, and how (and if) the critical (and wildly successful) work of that office will be picked up anywhere else. The private sector, she laments, is simply not suited for such work. "Part of the problem with public health is that it is not profitable. If you can prevent people from getting sick or very sick to begin with, it doesn't make money for a lot of these private companies." She offers the example of a large, private pharmaceutical company who might make drugs to treat cancer, so may not be all that eager to prevent smoking, for some reason.

The closure of her office "was really surprising to a lot of people," given that smoking prevention isn't a particularly partisan issue. The campaign led by her office, Backus says, has "led to over a million people quitting smoking and saved the U.S. millions of dollars in healthcare costs. Smoking rates are the lowest they've ever been. But there's still a lot of work to be done." So, she explains, it came as a "a shock that Sec. Kennedy decided that we were no longer necessary, especially as he's declared a war on chronic disease, and smoking is one of the biggest contributors to chronic disease that there is."

As to his anti-vax advocacy, Backus charges: "Bobby Kennedy has been a major spreader of vaccine mis- and disinformation for decades. But going back to 2020 and the pandemic, he repeatedly spread lies about the COVID-19 vaccine. He called CDC a 'cesspool of corruption.' That has made a lot of people at CDC villainized." And that has got a lot of Backus' former colleagues very concerned at this time about their personal safety. Even more so after the shooting at the CDC on Friday.

Tune in for much more. Also today...

• The horrific situation in Gaza got even more horrific over the weekend, with Israel's admittedly targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalists near a hospital in Gaza City.
• Back here at home, on Monday, Donald Trump announced his federalization of the Washington D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department, including the deployment of the National Guard to D.C., despite crime being at a 30-year low in the nation's Capitol upon his taking office for a second term, and falling 26% as compared to this same time last year. (And despite his claims on January 6, 2021, that he didn't have the authority to deploy the national guard to protect the U.S. Capitol after inciting his supporters to attack it.

Finally, callers ring in on all of the above, in the few minutes we have left. Now, I need to go back and give the show a listen myself to discover where I announced that I wanted "the streets to be less safe", as one of our wingnut callers claimed that I said today, hilariously, before hanging up on himself...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

It's a tough call on today's BradCast as far as which is worse: the stupidity or the outrage in response. (It's the stupidity, stupid.) But we report, you decide. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Donald Trump's many wars on America, Americans, American democracy, American values and the rest of the world, including livability on the planet itself, continued this week, as one of this nation's greatest accomplishments turns 60 years old, even as it founders under years-long GOP assault. And, coincidentally, the state of Texas plays a part in just about every one of our stories today...

• We kick things off with some goodish news. Following the unspeakable tragedy last month when at least 135 people, including dozens of camping school children, were killed during flash flooding on the banks of the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country, the Trump Administration is finally allowing the National Weather Service to hire new meteorologists and other critical staffers. That, after Trump's DOGE scam resulted in the firing and early retirement of hundreds at the now hollowed-out NWS.

• As another heat wave broils much of Texas this week, cheap, clean, renewable energy --- including wind and solar (as well as battery storage for when it's dark or the wind isn't blowing) --- has helped prevent collapse of the state's grid under extraordinary demand, even as some of its coal and gas plants were taken off line due to the climate change-intensified heat.

• Nonetheless, the Trump Administration has been doubling down this week on its war against cheap, clean, renewable energy, such as wind and solar, on behalf of the fossil fuel industry which has captured it. Former fracking CEO turned Trump's Energy Secretary Chris Wright was making the media rounds this week, attempting to justify the Administration's Orwellian removal of Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessments from government websites. He told CNN it's simply an effort to "fix" the science contained in those reports, released every four years after being compiled, peer-reviewed and fact-checked multiple times over several years prior to publication by hundreds of scientists and more than a dozen federal agencies. Wright is hoping to counter the peer-reviewed science on climate change in those landmark quadrennial reviews with a "report" released by the Dept. of Energy last week, as authored in two-months time by five notorious climate science deniers hand-picked by the former fracking executive. Wright's denialist, AI-assisted slop is now being used as the basis for the Administration's effort to scrap every federal climate change-related regulation enacted since 2009.

• Meanwhile, the GOP's War on Democracy continued on Thursday, as Texas state lawmakers remained in other states to try and save it. They are breaking quorum in the Lone Star State's House of Representatives in order to prevent passage of a new U.S. House map, ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott at the direction of Donald Trump, which would steal five seats currently held by Democrats in majority minority districts in next year's midterms. Republican state officials --- from its Governor to its corrupt Attorney General to its U.S. Senator to its Republican House Speaker --- are hoping to enlist Trump's FBI to hunt down, round up and arrest the fleeing Dems in other states, despite no criminal charges against them and a state Constitution that allows them to break quorum (according to the state's all-Republican Supreme Court.) That, as California advances its own effort --- to be placed before voters this Fall --- to counter Texas' attempted mid-decade gerrymander. We get you all caught up with the latest in this harrowing ongoing saga today.

• The Republican attack on democracy --- including on U.S. House districts drawn by federal court order to correct Texas districts found in violation of the Voting Rights Act --- comes on the very same week that the landmark Act, which added tens of millions to to the voting rolls since its passage, turns 60 years old. The VRA has been under successful attack by Republicans in recent years. But today we mark the law's 60th anniversary with some of the remarks upon its signing by heroic President Lyndon Baines Johnson...of Texas.

• Finally, born and bred Texan Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, detailing some of the remarkable actions taken this week by the Trump Administration --- remarkably, as energy costs and demand are quickly rising --- to roll back successful efforts to incentivize cheap, clean, renewable energy. Among the new fronts in his war this week: An absurd "energy density" requirement for power sources; an attempt to rescind $7 billion appropriated by Congress during the Biden era to help defray the cost of residential rooftop solar in low- and middle-income communities; orders to shut down on-going wind energy projects; and Trump's ridiculous mandate that wind farms may no longer be built any closer than a mile from roads and railways...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Nations gather in Geneva to again confront the global crisis of plastic pollution; Trump EPA moves to claw back billions in community grants for rooftop solar; PLUS: As energy costs rise, Trump Administration escalates its war on cheap renewable energy... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): You Are Contaminated [with plastic]; Document shows plastics industry knew recycling was false solution in 1974; At least one killed as massive wildfire in southern France continues to burn; Costs to build gas plants triple; Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose; JD Vance's team had water level of Ohio river raised for family's boating trip; Solar is EU's biggest power source for the first time ever in June 2025... PLUS: The Air Conditioning Dilemma: Cooling homes heats the planet... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast: The corporate capitulation is worse than you think. And it strikes right at the heart of what this nation's founders saw as perhaps the most important protection for freedom from monarchs and tyrants. Ya know, like the one we ended up with anyway. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First up, a few interesting results reported today from both special elections and primaries held on Tuesday in a number of local jurisdictions across the country, including Detroit, Seattle, Delaware and Rhode Island. In short, the news, as we have seen in elections virtually everywhere so far this year, was largely very good for both Democrats and democracy.

The news was less good out of D.C. last night, where the nation's embarrassing Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. --- a man with no professional background in either science or medicine --- announced the Department is now cutting $500 million in grants for the development of new mRNA vaccines of the type that recently, arguably miraculously, helped the planet emerge from the most deadly pandemic in a century.

Of course, if you either didn't hear about that disturbing news from HHS or had no idea how many people are now likely to die unnecessarily because of it, you may have your own favorite corporate media outlet to blame.

Following Donald Trump's gutting of the 80-year old Voice of America earlier this year, his and the Republican Congress' ending of federal funding for NPR and PBS a week or so ago, and the absurd $16 million dollar settlements of ridiculous defamation lawsuits filed by Trump against the corporate owners of Disney/ABC and Paramount/CBS, the largest media conglomerates in the nation continue to rollover in fear, in hopes of placating and/or currying favor with our press-freedom hating, tyrannical man-baby President.

All of that in strict contradiction with the intentions of the U.S. Constitution's framers, who specifically wrote protections into our founding document for just one industry: a free press. All of that is detailed in a new report published last week by FreePress.net entitled "A More Perfect Media: Saving America's Fourth Estate from Billionaires, Broligarchy and Trump".

That report is meant as a companion to the nonprofit media watchdog's newly released "Media Capitulation Index", grading the independence --- or, far more often, lack thereof --- of the nation's 35 largest corporate media conglomerates.

We're joined today to discuss both reports and the chilling state of our formerly free press, by TIMOTHY KARR, Senior Director of Strategy and Communications at Free Press. We've got a lot to dig into, including how we might finally dig our way out of this disaster.

His group's Media Capitulation Index, amusingly, scores each of the 35 American media conglomerates examined by Karr's group from 1 to 5 Chickens, rating them from "vulnerable" to "compromising" to "capitulating" to "obeying" to "propaganda," respectively. There is one other possible score, a single Star representing "independent". Remarkably, only two of the 35 media giants examined received a Star. For the rest? A whooole lotta Chickens.

So, what distinguishes what we are seeing now under Trump from what we've seen these companies do in years past in hopes of currying favor with previous Presidents of both major parties? Karr explains that what we are witnessing now is of an entirely "different order" than anything we have ever seen in our nation's nearly 250-year history.

"Wealthy media companies were aligning themselves with an authoritarian-minded leader who had little regard for the First Amendment --- that he swore on the Bible to uphold and defend --- on January 20th," observes Karr. "This is capitulation of a different order. It's not a bending to prevailing political winds. It's a complete caving to an authoritarian, and abdicating their responsibility --- the responsibility protected under the First Amendment --- to act as a check against abuses of power, to speak truth to power. That has pretty dangerous consequences for democracy."

As we are now seeing those dangerous consequences play out, we've got a lot to discuss along that score, along with how might eventually emerge from this long national nightmare with even stronger protections for a free press. Perhaps even, with news organizations that might not find it necessary to bend over in order for their corporate owners to receive government approval in completely different industries in which the owner is massively invested. (Hint: Look to the states, not the federal government...for now.)

Anyway, far too much in our conversation today to adequately summarize here. So, I won't even try to go much further. I will urge you, however, to tune in to today's show if you value a truly independent media, and appreciate --- as our founders did --- how crucial that idea is in preventing the rise of a monarch of the very type they were hoping to break free from. (And, how did that work out?...)

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Just in case we've been unclear previously on The BradCast: We are now officially in Banana Republic territory in the U.S., with El Presidente pulling one of the most classic strongman moves late last week. When El Presidente's economic numbers go south, fire, jail or kill the person who reports those economic numbers to El Presidente. Thankfully, he only fired her. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

Trump's approval numbers are heading south as well, along with the nation's economic indicators as his trade war against the entire world continues to expand.

But, when Reality interferes with Trump Propaganda --- whether it's at the Smithsonian's American History Museum or in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly job numbers report --- he will take action to try and nullify Reality.

On Friday, the BLS released its latest employment report. The Bureau preliminarily estimated that a lower-than-predicted 73,000 jobs were created last month, as the affects of Trump's trade wars and immigration crackdown begin to undermine a previously strong economy.

Worse, job numbers from the prior two months were revised downward in the latest report by about 258,000. Such revisions are completely normal and expected. With more complete data now in, BLS reports just 19,000 new jobs were created in May and a paltry 14,000 in June. That, as the unemployment ranks climbed by 221,000 last month.

Any way you look at it, the BLS report was not good for either the economy or Trump --- unless you can claim the report, created with meticulous contributions by hundreds of non-political, career BLS officials, was "rigged" to make Trump look bad. Of course, that is what Trump did, as he fired the highly-regarded BLS Commissioner, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, shortly after Friday's monthly report was released.

She is hardly the first longtime career official to be fired by Trump in the first six months of his disastrous second term. He has done the same to top prosecutors at the DOJ determined to not be loyal enough to Trump, at the National Institutes of Health, at EPA, at NOAA, etc. etc. etc.

But this firing really seems to be freaking out lot of folks, for some reason.

We're joined today by VALERIE WILSON --- labor economist at the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, where she heads up the organization's Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy --- to discuss just some of those reasons.

"I think this particular firing has raised alarm bells with so many people because of how important, how essential, those monthly jobs numbers are in this country," Wilson explains today. "There's a lot of visibility around these numbers and statistics. And we know that a lot of decision-makers rely on those numbers: the Federal Reserve, state and local governments, policymakers, businesses." Moreover, she tells me, "the fact that this seems to be a politicized firing because the President simply didn't like what the report was saying, is especially troubling to people who rely on the accuracy of those numbers to make important decisions."

We've got a lot to talk about with Wilson on this topic today...

• Is there any evidence that the July report was "rigged"?
• Is there evidence that any BLS report has ever been rigged?
• Could a BLS report like this actually be rigged without anyone noticing?
• Is it true, as the White House "fact" sheet supporting Trump's firing of McEntarfer claims, that "BLS Has Lengthy History of Inaccuracies [and] Incompetence"?
• Who would ever take the job of replacing her and, whoever it is, should we trust their numbers?
• How important are BLS' numbers to non-governmental analyses created by organizations like EPI?
• Given Wilson's role as Director of EPI's Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, and the Trump Administration's attack on anti-discrimination (DEI) programs in the federal government, has she already seen a change in the type or quality of economic and labor data available from the government?

All of that and a lot more to discuss with Wilson today, who is exceptionally good at explaining what all of this now means.

Finally, speaking of disturbing news from our Banana Republicans, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest 'Green News Report', as the blaze that wiped out the historic Grand Canyon North Rim Lodge earlier this Summer has turned into a raging mega-fire, and as the Trump Administration cites both notorious climate science deniers and nonexistent AI slop "reports" to justify gutting regulations meant to protect us from, and mitigate the worst affects of our quickly worsening climate crisis...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Fire at Grand Canyon North Rim is now the largest mega-fire in the U.S.; New research shows the cascading health impacts of wildfire smoke; PLUS: Trump Administration rolls out climate science deniers to justify overturning climate change regulations... 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): How to protect yourself from the bad air caused by wildfires; Fighting wildfires is hellish work - it's even worse under Trump; Duffy to announce nuclear reactor on the moon; 'Erratic' wildfire breaks out in Northern California, prompting evacuations; Heatwave linked to climate change breaks records in Japan; Report calls plastics 'grave danger' to health as nations negotiate treaty; Scientists crack the case of the melting sea stars... PLUS: The First Planned Migration of an Entire Country Is Underway... and much, MUCH more! ...