{"id":15437,"date":"2025-07-10T18:48:37","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T01:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=15437"},"modified":"2025-07-10T18:54:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T01:54:08","slug":"democracy-is-still-our-best-way-out-of-this-mess-and-republicans-know-it-bradcast-7102025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=15437","title":{"rendered":"Democracy is STILL Our Best Way Out of This Mess &#8212; And Republicans Know It: &#8216;BradCast&#8217; 7\/10\/2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/BradCast_Trump-Noem-Abbott_071025.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">Yes, we are under a fascistic, authoritarian takeover of the United States. Yes, it can be frightening. But our wannabe authoritarians also happen to be clowns and fools and incompetent buffoons, and should be called out at such. And so we do on today&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><i>BradCast<\/i><\/a>, even while our best chance to kick these degenerates to history&#8217;s curb remains at the ballot box. Which is why they are fighting so hard to game it. Again. [<i>Audio link to full show follows this summary.<\/i>]\n<p>Among our coverage today&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Trump&#8217;s <b>EPA<\/b> <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/epa-trump-biden-asbestos-ban-abe1f739a20cc2637605f447d92d56a4\">reverses its position<\/a> to do the right thing after all regarding the Biden Administration&#8217;s ban of cancer-causing asbestos? Can it really be true?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Donald Trump<\/b> meets with African leaders at the White House, admires the Liberian President&#8217;s excellent English and <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/liberia-president-language-speaking-us-trump-4357549a81d24c6ee161091aaed9b66a\">wonders<\/a> how he learned to speak it so &#8220;beautifully&#8221;. (Spoiler: English is the official language of <b>Liberia<\/b>.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>As recovery efforts continue following deadly flash flooding last Friday in <b>Texas<\/b> (and on Sunday in <b>North Carolina<\/b>, and on Tuesday in <b>New Mexico<\/b>), dullard DHS Sec. <b>Kristi Noem<\/b> convenes a meeting to discuss the Admin&#8217;s stated plans for dismantling <b>FEMA<\/b> entirely. Her argument for doing so this week? A report that she claims reveals that FEMA&#8217;s response to the 2023 wildfires in Maui, <b>Hawaii<\/b> was so bad that &#8220;one in six survivors were forced to trade sexual favors&#8230;for just basic supplies.&#8221; But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/07\/09\/kristi-noem-fema-attack-00445683?cid=apn\">that&#8217;s not what the report claims<\/a> at all, and one of its authors calls Noem&#8217;s interpretation a &#8220;gross manipulation&#8221; of their work.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Native American<\/b> voters <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/north-dakota-redistricting-lawsuit-spirit-lake-turtle-mountain-tribes-0faa6dc38763267d42af1b6c2ab301c0\">won a 2023 trial<\/a> challenging <b>North Dakota<\/b>&#8216;s racially gerrymandered legislative maps. But then the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out their 2023 victory, claiming the challengers lacked standing to sue because Article 2 of the <b>Voting Rights Act <\/b>doesn&#8217;t <i>explicitly<\/i> allow individual groups or voters to challenge violations of the Act. Only the <b>Dept. of Justice<\/b> may do so, according to the 8th Circuit, despite decades of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.democracydocket.com\/news-alerts\/scotus-to-get-yet-another-chance-to-weaken-vra-with-north-dakota-case\/\">rulings to the contrary<\/a> in the 60 years since passage of the VRA. The court&#8217;s ruling last year now prevents private suits against discriminatory election laws in the seven states (<b>Arkansas<\/b>, <b>Iowa<\/b>, <b>Minnesota<\/b>, <b>Missouri<\/b>, <b>Nebraska<\/b>, <b>North Dakota<\/b> and <b>South Dakota<\/b>) comprising the 8th Circuit. On Wednesday, the <a href=\"https:\/\/narf.org\/nd-redistricting-appeal\/\">tribes announced<\/a> they were filing for a stay at the Appeals Court, as they intend to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Speaking of racial gerrymandering, on Wednesday, <b>Texas<\/b> Gov. <b>Greg Abbott<\/b> &#8212; even as recovery efforts continue on the Guadalupe River where more than 100 are now dead and 160 still missing following Friday&#8217;s flash-flooding &#8212; wants the state legislature <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/09\/us\/texas-congressional-resdistricting-maps.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Vk8.CHMJ.VUkVEvoI93AO&#038;smid=url-share\">to convene a special session<\/a> to&#8230;redistrict U.S. House seats in the state. TX Republicans already hold twice as many Congressional seats as Dems in the already-gerrymandered state. But the Trump White House and its corrupted <b>DOJ<\/b> have been pressuring TX to carry out a rare, mid-decade redrawing of its Congressional map in order to make four Democratic, minority-held seats around Houston and Dallas less&#8230;um&#8230;colorful. Abbott appears happy to oblige&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=15436\">our latest <i>Green News Report<\/i><\/a>, with more on flash flooding in <b>four U.S. states<\/b>, in the North, South, East and West over the past week alone; thousands now dead from an extreme heat wave in <b>Europe<\/b>; and new warnings from experts that no country is currently prepared for the <b>climate impacts<\/b> to come&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\".\/Images\/Speaker_Icon_24.png\" style=\"width: 24px; float: none; vertical-align: middle;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px; line-height: 18px;\"> <b><i><a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/audio\/BradCast_TrumpAsbestos-NoemFEMA-8thCircuitVRA-AbbottRedistrictTX_071025.mp3\">CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!&#8230;<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><center><b>* * *<\/b><\/center><i>While we post <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><\/i>The BradCast<i><\/a> here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they&#8217;re available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/id803467610\">iTunes<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pandora.com\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/PC:1000025838\">Pandora<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/The-BradCast-with-Brad-Friedman-p477565\/\">TuneIn<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iheart.com\/podcast\/256-the-bradcast-w-brad-friedm-30973643\/\">iHeart<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-BradCast-w-Brad-Friedman\/dp\/B08JJRN86R\/ref=sr_1_1\">Amazon<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/podcastgen\/bradcast\/feed.xml\">our native RSS feed<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-START--><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f0e0; border:2px solid #6b5a2e; border-radius:6px; padding:10px 14px; text-align:center; font-family:Georgia,serif;\"><span style=\"display:block; margin:0 0 8px 0; color:#3a2e0e; font-size:0.95em; line-height:1.5;\"><strong>The BRAD BLOG<\/strong>, <em>The BradCast<\/em> and <em>Green News Report<\/em> are all 100% independent and 100% listener and reader supported!<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\" style=\"display:inline-block; background:#6b5a2e; color:#ffffff; padding:6px 18px; border-radius:4px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:0.9em;\">Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-END--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, we are under a fascistic, authoritarian takeover of the United States. Yes, it can be frightening. But our wannabe authoritarians also happen to be clowns and fools and incompetent buffoons, and should be called out at such. And so we do on today&#8217;s BradCast, even while our best chance to kick these degenerates to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,675,543,479,2053,1416,548,883,323,1110,650,288,477,2037,1904,822,512,300,47,517],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-15437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-climate-change","category-donald-trump","category-election-2026","category-era","category-extreme-weather","category-fascism","category-fema","category-gerrymandering","category-greg-abbott","category-health-care","category-kpfk","category-kristi-noem","category-maui","category-native-americans","category-north-dakota","category-republicans","category-texas","category-voting-rights-act","bb-type-bradcast"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15437"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=15437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}