On Thursday, Senior US District Court Judge Richard J. Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a Preliminary Injunction preventing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth from implementing the letter of censure he directed at Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, a former (retired) U.S. Navy Captain and former astronaut.

The preliminary injunction prevents the Navy from conducting a hearing to re-determine Kelly’s retirement grade. It also prevents reliance on Hegseth's censure letter in order to carry out "threats of additional criminal or administrative action."

In his Memorandum Opinion Judge Leon expressly found that Hegseth "trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees," when he issued a letter that censured Kelly for his participation in the duty to disobey illegal orders video, created with five other Congressional lawmakers, all military or intelligence veterans...

It's not all peaches and cream on today's BradCast, especially in our "everything is stupid" world. But it could be --- in fact it was supposed to be --- a lot worse by now. [Audio link to full story follows below this summary.]

We've got a lot of news today to cover for a start, including another Democratic special election overperformance in another deep "red" district; more and more embarrassing court losses and grand jury rejections for the Administration; calls from a few MAGA folks for Attorney General Pam Bondi to resign following her ridiculous performance in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday; ICE claims to be retreating from Minnesota altogether, after the heroic residents of Minneapolis finally wore them down; and three new polls (including a very Trump-friendly one!) find that voters now think Joe Biden was a better President than Donald Trump.

After the news, we're delighted to be joined once again today, for another one of our somewhat free-wheeling round table shows with our longtime OG blogger pals, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of The Professional Left Podcast.

It has been a minute since they've joined us, so we've got a lot of ground to cover and get caught up with today, including...

• Whether Trump and his Regime are really falling and, if they are, how much pain they may continue to cause on the way down;
• Whether Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance was actually a...um... turning point;
• Why so many Congressional Republicans, heading into the midterms, seem to be whistling past the graveyard;
• Whether I'm being too kind in describing Bondi as "screeching harpy";
• What we've all learned from the release and cover-up of the Epstein Files;
• Whether anyone should actually fear Trump's impotent threats to "nationalize" the elections;
• And what we might expect from Trump's upcoming State of the Union Address, after which both Digby and Driftglass will almost certainly be joining us again for analysis...

"It's all overwhelming," concedes Digby. "But, at the same time, I do see --- and I'm frankly surprised --- people are aware, and I think that this is good. People have awakened to what's going on," she argues, citing polling evidence, today's news out of Minneapolis, and other "reasons for hope" from her column at Salon today.

"Trump likes to talk about a 'Golden Age,' slapping gold all over everything to sort of manifest it," she says. "The truth is that it's possible that what this has done is awaken the American public to its own ideals, its own values. And maybe at the end of the day --- I hate to sound Pollyannish here --- but maybe somehow or another it's going to end up being the catalyst for a different kind of Golden Age. Not the kind he's talking about, but the kind that we've all been craving for many, many years."

Recognizing that "incredibly damaging things are happening," Driftglass observes that "the Trump Administration is now reduced to looting the place as fast as it can and lying about it. On the other hand, if you're winning, if you're confident, you're not rolling troops into states and trying to disrupt their elections. And you're not sending a shrieking moron to Congress with a 'burn book' to insult Democrats. You only do that to make sure that your tiny, bigoted, idiot base stays on side."

"One side is fired up and looking for big wins, and the other side feels dispirited and awful," Drifty says, while assessing this year's electoral landscape. "Trump is giving them nothing, nothing to hope for. He's just wrecking it, and his people don't know how to do anything other than be awful. And that's not a recipe for winning."

As usual, many more incisive observations from both today, including Digby on the "absolutely grotesque" Pam Bondi and Driftglass on the Epstein Files: "They really thought this was just one more grift that would get them votes, and they found out this is not just another grift. There is no 'off switch' on this thing. They are all lashed to this horrible thing that is Donald Trump's kryptonite, with no way to get rid of it because they made all these promises."

AND FINALLY... Since everything is stupid, Desi Doyen helps us close out today with our latest Green News Report, as the Trump Administration, as foretold by Project 2025, takes their biggest single fossil fuel-funded shot at gutting decades of climate change mitigation policies across the entire federal government all at once...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump EPA repeals landmark Endangerment Finding, the foundation for all U.S. climate regulations; Trump orders Defense Department to use more dirty, deadly, expensive coal, subsidized by taxpayers; PLUS: Trump threatens to block new bridge between Michigan and Canada... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Yes, Climate Still Matters. Here's How It Connects to Every Other Crisis in the World Today; Trump kills EV charging programs in blue states;Solar Powered Super Bowl a First; "Devastating": Trump EPA to Scrap Landmark Climate Finding in Pro-Fossil Fuel Deregulatory Push; Trump Wants 100% American-Made EV Chargers. Some See Sabotage; The US Is Exporting Huge Amounts Of Natural Gas. Will It Cost Americans? [yes] ... PLUS: What Are The Biggest Climate Polluters Near You? ... and much, MUCH more! ...

There is, as usual, too much going on at once. That is, of course, by design of the sick, criminal gangster in the Oval Office. But it means that some of the most important stuff you need to know is getting lost amid all the noise. We do our best, on today's BradCast, to once again try to shine a spotlight on the most important thing you are least likely to hear the least about elsewhere. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

First off, a few stories you may hear something about today.

• The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suddenly, without notice or explanation, shut down the air space above the El Paso, Texas airport on the border with Mexico early on Wednesday for ten days. A few hours after the surprise announcement, the FAA said "never mind" and reopened it with little explanation. Early reporting suggests some sort of rift between the Pentagon and the FAA regarding drones flown by Mexican drug cartels into the U.S., and the testing of some sort of new anti-drone laser weapon in response. But, as Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX), whose district includes El Paso, said, "the information coming from the federal government does not add up." It doesn't. But we've got an alternative explanation that makes at least as much sense as the government's, and it has something to do with Donald Trump's longtime threats of war against our (former?) ally across the Southern Border.

• Also today, Trump's demented U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi embarrassed the nation (and herself) again during U.S. House testimony regarding the DOJ's unlawful cover-up of the Epstein Files. We share some of the low-lights from Bondi's remarkably snide behavior before the House Judiciary Committee this afternoon, when she pretended to be angry that Democratic members wanted to talk more with her about Epstein and law enforcement, than about the stock market (bizarrely enough).

NEXT... The news you are almost certainly not hearing enough about this week, especially as it is news likely to adversely affect every single American --- and everyone else on our quickly warming planet --- for generations to come.

The corrupt Trump Administration's EPA is set to announce on Thursday that it is overturning the so-called "endangerment finding", initially issued by the EPA under George W. Bush, even though his Administration refused to open the email containing it at the time.

The endangerment finding was first drafted in response to a landmark 2007 Supreme Court case named Massachusetts v. EPA. The SCOTUS majority held at the time that under the mandates of the Clean Air Act, if greenhouses gasses that warm the planet, such as Carbon Dioxide and Methane, were found by the EPA to be "air pollutants" that can "reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare," the government was required to regulate them.

The EPA's eventually finding was officially adopted by Barack Obama's Administration, and is now the basis for the bulk of federal regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in the transportation sector, but many others as well. The fossil fuel industry has sought for years to overturn the scientific finding. Doing so would lead to the end of a majority of the federal government's climate related regulations.

Thanks to the corrupted Trump Administration, and a ridiculous Dept. of Energy "report" created by five climate science-denying stooges (unlawfully empaneled, according to a recent federal court ruling), the finding will be overturned on Thursday, in what Trump allies are describing as "total victory," following more than 15 years of work to restore the halcyon days of unregulated destruction of the atmosphere by the unmitigated burning of fossil fuels. The "total victory" comes as the last 11 years have been confirmed as the hottest ever recorded on planet Earth.

So, what does all of this mean? Can it be stopped in the courts? Can states now institute their own climate regulations to replace those likely to be ended by the federal government?

We're joined today by DAN BECKER, Director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the Climate Law Institute of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. Becker has long been a key player in the fight against climate change. He developed the strategy and led the fight for the Obama Administration's landmark program to cut emissions from cars, SUVs and pickups, the largest step any nation had taken at the time to slash climate warming emissions.

"It's huge," Becker tells me about the revocation of the finding. "Unfortunately, what the Trump Administration folks are going to do is not only revoke the Endangerment Finding, but they are going to repeal the biggest single step that any nation has ever taken, that used the Clean Air Act as a mechanism to cut pollution from cars," which are "the biggest problem, the biggest source of emissions in the United States."

"This is going to make kids sicker because there will be more air pollution. Kids with asthma will have more frequent asthma attacks. They'll miss more school. Their parents, who will have to stay home to take care of them, will miss more work. People with lung disease will suffer and some will die. People with heart disease will also have increased early deaths," he laments, describing some of the most immediate fallout from all of this.

But, while "this is bad for people," Becker says, "it's good for China because the Chinese auto industry wants to make a market in clean vehicles. And if they have no competition from United States automakers because the US automakers are going to make gas guzzlers as a result of not being required to make clean vehicles, then the Chinese manufacturers will win."

"That isn't really good for American workers. It's not good for American profits," he asserts, before adding: "They're laughing all the way to bank, as Trump does what General Motors told him to do."

All of this was "pre-cooked," explains Becker, when the oil and auto industries came aboard the Trump campaign. "The oil industry alone contributed $450 million dollars, and Trump said, 'If you give me a billion, I'll do anything you want.' This is the 'anything they want,' and they're getting it wholesale." It was, of course, "all pre-cooked, written out, and the menu laid by the Heritage Foundation" in Project 2025. Heritage, he notes, "is also funded by the oil industry."

So, a whole lot more on all of this today, including what you can do about it. Tune in and please share this one, as I expect most folks will hear little or nothing about it, with all of the other madness playing out, preventing most from ever even hearing about the thing that may cost them their jobs, their money, their health, and potentially even their own lives and those of their children and grandchildren...

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We usually stay out of most of the "culture war" nonsense on The BradCast, because that's what most of it is: nonsense. Republicans love it, of course, because it keeps their voters "outraged" and prevents them from having to deal with real issues destroying our country and planet. But today, for various reason, we dive into a few of those issues and cover the breaking news on the unsealing of the affidavit used to obtain the FBI search warrant for the raid of Fulton County, Georgia's elections warehouse outside of Atlanta. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

You may wish to tune in to better learn how all of these stories go together. But, among the stories covered on today's program...

• The corporate Trumper billionaire takeover of CBS News is not going well, so far. At least if the plummeting ratings of CBS Evening News --- versus the growth of audience for both ABC and NBC's nightly news broadcasts over the same period --- is any indication.

• While Donald Trump instructed his MAGA minions to hate Puerto Rican born U.S. citizen Bad Bunny's spectacular Super Bowl Halftime show, some of them broke away from Dear Cult Leader to realize, "Hey, that was pretty awesome!"

• Despite --- or perhaps because --- of its recent takeover by corporate Trumpy billionaires --- CBS News obtained a document from the Dept. of Homeland Security revealing that no more than 14% of the immigrants rounded up by ICE over the past year had either charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses. Turns out it is the Trump Administration, not the migrants, who are "the worst of the worst".

• A number of faith groups, including Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, have joined together to sue the Dept. of Justice charging religious discrimination after the DOJ's so-called Religious Liberty Commission includes several Christians, a Rabbi, a former Miss California and Dr. Phil. But, apparently, no Muslims, Sikhs or Hindus, which the group's complaint [PDF] describes as a violation of federal law.

• We recently learned that Trump was unlawfully attempting to block the nation's largest ongoing infrastructure project, the Hudson Gateway River Tunnels that will connect New York and New Jersey. He reportedly told Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer he would only release funds to complete the project --- and keep a thousand construction workers employed --- if Schumer agreed to name D.C's Dulles Airport and New York's Penn Station after Trump. In other corrupt river crossing news by Trump today, we learn that he is now threatening to block the nearly completed Gordie Howe International Bridge built and paid for by our neighbors to the north to connect Detroit to Windsor, Canada. He claims he "will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve.” As it turns out, Trump has an even more corrupt and even sleazier reason to block that project as well.

• On yesterday's BradCast, we talked in detail with longtime Georgia elections and voting system expert Marilyn Marks about the recent FBI raid of Fulton County, Georgia's elections warehouse, outside of Atlanta, wherein the federal government grabbed hundreds of boxes of ballots and other material from the 2020 election. We reviewed many of the long-known issues from that election in Fulton County, and the false claims by Trump that he actually defeated Joe Biden in the state that year. Today, a federal (Trump-appointed) judge has forced the DOJ to unseal the affidavit [PDF] used to obtain the FBI's search warrant from a federal magistrate. You'll (not) be shocked to learn that it was submitted by a longtime election denier now working in the White House and it contains little more than long-debunked allegations, most of which we have discussed multiple times on this program since 2020. We rounded up a whole bunch of them on yesterday's program with Marks, in case you missed it. She also offered a detail summary of the various Fulton County post-2020 counts here.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with more on Bad Bunny; more on our corrupt President; and still more on his terrible, deadly Administration...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Bad Bunny's Super Bowl power play; Court rules Trump Energy Department's secretive climate science denier panel violated federal law; PLUS: Judge blocks Trump's blockade of funding for the Hudson River Gateway tunnel project in New York... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): National Lab of the Rockies, formerly NREL, lays off more than 130 employees; A Trump 'blockade' is stalling hundreds of wind and solar projects nationwide; Trump's EPA issues record low legal actions against polluters; Study ties pollution from wildfire smoke to 24,100 US deaths per year; Why China is building so many coal pants despite its solar and wind boom ... PLUS: US-driven gas turbine crunch may speed up global clean power uptake... and much, MUCH more! ...

I wish we coulda talked about Bad Bunny for the entire BradCast. But, alas, fighting fascism calls. (Which actually brings us back to Bad Bunny! But I digress.) [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

After a few minutes on the rollicking, patriotic Super Bowl Halftime show heard round the world on Sunday, and the doddering old man in the White House that it helped drive crazy --- (Yes. It's a short drive.) --- it's back to the business of trying to help save a nation from itself. And, truthfully, as horrible as it is, it's going pretty well, in that regard.

On Saturday, another Democratic candidate won a special election for a state legislative seat in a landslide after Donald Trump won the same district by a landslide in 2024. This time, it was Democratic Louisiana state House candidate Chasity Verret Martinez who defeated her Republican opponent by 24 points on Saturday, in a district that Trump won by 13, for an overall 37-point swing for the Ds. That special election followed on one in Texas just a week earlier for the state Senate, where the Democrat won by 14 points in a district Trump won in 2024 by 17 points. That was a 31-point swing for the Ds...in deep "red" Texas!

So, yeah, there is a way out of this madness, and it runs through the ballot box. Which is obviously why Trump is hoping to game that ballot box, take control of it, "nationalize" elections, etc. All stuff that he has zero legal or Constitutional authority or lawful ability to do. But that doesn't mean he won't try.

Toward that end --- (maybe?) --- at the end of last month, Trump's FBI obtained a warrant from a federal magistrate to raid the Fulton County, Georgia elections warehouse just outside of Atlanta. They absconded with the 2020 ballots and other materials from the state's largest County. The warrant explained that the search was meant to protect against violations of a federal law related to voting fraud and another to the federal law requiring retention of ballots and other election-related material for 22 months after each federal election.

But the 2020 election was more than five years ago now, which is theoretically outside of the statute of limitations to bring criminal charges against some sort of fraud in that election. Also, what was the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard doing at the raid in Fulton County?

Some of these questions may be answered in the next 24 hours or so, as a Trump-appointed federal judge has ordered the Government to release the affidavit that was used to gain the magistrate's approval for the Search Warrant in the first place. Presumably, that affidavit would detail allegations of some sort of ongoing crime or crimes.

But there are also a host of other questions, unlikely to be answered by that affidavit, including what harm Trump may actually do with the materials, including hundreds of thousands of ballots and 2020 voter rolls, obtained by the FBI? How could any of that be used to undermine Georgia's elections this year, or those elsewhere across the country?

We're joined today by longtime friend of the show and election integrity and voting system transparency hero, MARILYN MARKS of the nonprofit Coalition for Good Governance.

Marilyn knows the GA election system as well or better than anyone else, including, arguably, its Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, the Republican who many have regarded as a hero for holding off Trump's attempt to steal the state in 2020 during his infamous phone call seeking to strong-arm Raffensperger to "find" enough votes to flip the state from Joe Biden to Trump. But, as we note again today, Raffensperger is no hero.

It was Marks' long-running lawsuit against the state that resulted in the court-ordered decertification of GA's old, insecure, unverifiable touchscreen voting systems, only to see them replaced by Raffensperger with new, insecure, unverifiable touchscreen voting systems made by a different company. That, despite expert advice to move to a transparent, overseeable, resilient, verifiable hand-marked paper ballot system.

So, what is Trump's game with the FBI raid in Fulton? And should we be worried about it? Should Raffenpserger, who is running for Governor this year, be worried about it? Well, given the disastrous way he ran the 2020 election in the Peach State, argues Marks, yes, he should be quite concerned.

While she breaks down just some of the ways that Raffensperger screwed up the tallies of the 2020 election in Georgia --- and the purported three different counts that "confirmed" the results there (despite each count coming out differently!) --- it wasn't only the Republican Sec. of State whose decisions were odd. For his part, for example, though Trump asked for a received a "recount" in the election he lost by about 12,000 votes, that recount was done on the same computer tabulators that tallied the race the first time, even though he should have had a hand-count, according to state law.

"The law requires a manual count, not a machine recount," Marks tells me. "Trump and Biden and [Libertarian Party candidate] Joe Jorgenson would have all had the opportunity to put a counter at every table. Imagine if a proper hand recount were done and Trump had had a counter at every table. He would have a had a hard time saying later, 'the count was wrong', because it would have been his people counting. Raffensperger knew that was the law. He did not give Trump the recount that he should have had. And, mysteriously, Trump did not ask for the recount he should have had."

We discuss that mystery and many others, even as Marks reiterates that she has seen no evidence to suggest that the election was stolen from Trump in 2020.

"We have no evidence that Trump won the state," she reiterates again today. "Was the election conducted in a reckless, sloppy, unverifiable way? It indeed was."

"There's a lesson to be learned there," she explains. "We've got an even more contentious year here in 2026. And we damned well better get our act together to have a resilient system. So it is important for us to go back and know what was really done wrong in Georgia."

What does a "resilient system" entail? And how can you help ensure one? Tune in and find out. Hint: it begins (though doesn't end) with hand-marked paper ballots at every polling place...

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Today on The BradCast: The President of the United States likes to dismiss concerns about climate change by explaining that the real threat to humanity is actually nuclear weapons. And yet, as we were reminded again at midnight last night, he's not actually interested in doing anything about that threat to humanity either. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST... before we get to our excellent guest today on that, just a quick follow up to our recent coverage regarding last week's raid by the FBI at the Fulton County, Georgia elections warehouse, outside Atlanta, where federal officials absconded with ballots and other materials from the 2020 election that Donald Trump pretends was stolen from him, because he is unable to admit he lost it.

We've been trying to get to this story all week, but just a quick notice to mention that, following last week's raid --- and the Dept. of Justice's lawsuits against 23 states attempting to force them to turn over private voter data (suits that already being dismissed by federal courts) --- all three top Administration officials who had requested time to confront the bipartisan National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) annual conference last week, cancelled their appearances at the last minute.

NASS had rearranged the conference schedule to allow for remarks by Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. By Friday afternoon, however, all but Gabbard had cancelled. And just before her remarks were to begin, she pulled out as well. Maine's Democratic SoS, Shenna Bellows called them "cowards," noting, along with others, that the Administration's threats to interfere with upcoming elections is unlawful and likely to end poorly for them.

THEN... It's on to other, ahem, explosive news of the day. As of midnight last night, Trump allowed the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between the U.S. and Russia to expire. The New START agreement, struck with Russia by President Barack Obama in 2010, included strict caps on the numbers of ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads each country could deploy, and included an extensive verification regime. The 10-year pact was extended for another five years in 2021 by President Joe Biden, and Russia has said they were open to another extension. Trump simply let it expire.

We're joined today by long time nuclear weapons policy analyst STEPHEN SCHWARTZ, former Executive Director and Publisher of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, keepers of the notorious "Doomsday Clock". On his excellent social media feed at @AtomicAnalyst last night, Schwartz lamented that, while "Trump has boasted for decades that he knows everything there is to know about nuclear weapons and could easily negotiate a great deal with Russia," he allowed New START, "the last treaty constraining US and Russian nuclear weapons" to expire, and "hasn't lifted a tiny finger to replace it."

"He did absolutely nothing during his first term," Schwartz tells me today. "Now, here we are again. He did absolutely nothing during his first year in office, and now we have no treaty whatsoever. I think because, first of all, he doesn't care about it, and because he views the treaty as tainted because it was negotiated by his arch-enemy Barack Obama."

"It's a great loss for humanity. It's not a win for anybody," he opines. "Anybody who thinks that getting rid of the treaty will make the United States or the world safer hasn't been living in reality for quite some time."

Welp. That sounds like Trump.

Schwartz breaks down the specifics of New START, and the dangers now posed with its loss. We also discuss, among other things, the fact that Trump's so-called "Golden Dome" anti-missile system, if Congress ever called for it to be built, is likely to make the U.S. less safe, not more so.

"The Golden Dome is the latest iteration of decades of efforts to try to use technology to eliminate the political problem that gives us the ever-present threat of nuclear war," Schwartz, author of Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 explains. "But it only works --- if it works at all --- against weapons that are flying through the air. It does not work on anything that would be coming at you from under water [such as Russia's Poseidon drones, developed in response to the threat of a U.S. defensive missile shield], nor for that matter would it shoot down planes that would be carrying nuclear missiles or nuclear gravity bombs."

It does, however, result in adversaries building even more advanced and more numerous offensive weapons systems to ensure they can overcome such a defensive system.

There's a whole lot more with Schwartz today, including: his assessments of the various nuclear threats now posed by China, North Korea, Iran and others, and whether the U.S. under Trump remains the greatest nuclear threat to the planet; why it would be such a terrible idea for Trump to restart U.S. nuclear missile testing, as he vowed last year; and much more.

Tune in for our excellent, enlightening, educational and, at times, chilling conversation with Schwartz today.

FINALLY... We close with still more nuclear related news --- this time, nuclear energy --- and the Trump Dept. of Energy's secret change to nuclear power plant safety rules, in our latest Green News Report with Desi Doyen, on that and much more!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Future Winter Olympic Games may start earlier due to warming winters; Low-income Heating Assistance Program (LIHEAP) survives the Congressional budget process and Trump's attempt to kill it; PLUS: Trump Energy Department secretly gutted nuclear plant safety rules... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The toxic legacy of Georgia's carpet empire: PFAS contamination; A Trump 'blockade' is stalling hundreds of wind and solar projects nationwide; Trump's EPA issues record low legal actions against polluters; Study ties pollution from wildfire smoke to 24,100 US deaths per year; Why China is building so many coal pants despite its solar and wind boom ... PLUS: US-driven gas turbine crunch may speed up global clean power uptake... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Some of us saw it coming and warned about it long ago. Now that it's here, many STIL don't seem to see it. We get some help today, toward that end, from our guest, who published a startling report on all of it this week. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP, however, a few headlines...

The Trump Administration claimed today to be drawing down their deployment of under-trained, over-paid ICE and CBP goons from Minnesota. They say they are immediately withdrawing 700 of them. Donald Trump says a "softer touch" is needed. But that "softer touch" will still leave at least 2,000 thugs on the streets of Minneapolis --- the same number that had already been terrorizing residents in the Twin Cities region before they murdered Renee Good last month.

But staffing issues for the federal government is clearly a problem for them. More than a dozen of the top prosecutors have now resigned from the U.S. Attorney's office in Minnesota in recent weeks, since the start of Operation Metro Surge. And with hundreds of habeas petitions filed in court by detainees since then, federal judges are accusing ICE and government attorneys of ignoring scores of court orders to release them.

On Tuesday, one of those attorneys hit a breaking point. Julie Le, an ICE immigration court judge who volunteered at the beginning of January to help out the short-staffed U.S. Attorney's office, had been assigned more than 85 cases in that time. During a hearing yesterday, she made an emotional and dramatic plea to the judge. "I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep,” she said, adding “The system sucks, this job sucks, I am trying with every breath I have to get you what you need."

Today, it appears Le was pushed out of her job by DOJ, along with her supervisor.

THEN... We're joined today by Talking Points Memo's investigative reporter JOSH KOVENSKY, to discuss two different disturbing stories he's published in recent days. Both of them insane. One of them wacky. The other exceedingly troubling.

Following the FBI's raid of the Fulton County, Georgia elections warehouse last week outside of Atlanta --- part of Trump's latest scheme to obfuscate his humiliating election loss in 2020 --- the President of the United States took to social media to double down. He advanced a number of posts that revived the old "ItalyGate" conspiracy that posits (and forgive me if I get a detail wrong), that Barack Obama and China, with the help of money from Iran --- funneled somehow through Switzerland and/or Dubai --- took control of Italy's military spy satellites to hack computerized voting machines and/or ballot tabulators to steal the election for Joe Biden in 2020.

Sure, it may sound crazy, but that's only because it is. And while there may be no actual evidence to support any of it, that didn't prevent Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, from being on the ground to oversee last week's FBI raid of 2020 ballots in Fulton County. Why would the nation's top spy chief, whose job has nothing to do with domestic law enforcement, be there? We discuss that and other related idiocy today with Kovensky.

In far more troubling news, in a deep dive at TPM this week, Kovensky details how a series of White House memos issued after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, direct the Dept. of Justice to reinterpret a post 9/11 federal terrorism statute known as 2339A. The statute, as originally intended, allows prosecutors to hold associates of terrorists and terror groups to account for "material support to terrorists".

The Trump Administration's reinterpretation of the statute, however, demands, as Kovensky reports, that prosecutors use the provision to "target those who espouse 'anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,' [and] direct federal law enforcement to use speech --- including “extremism on migration, race, and gender” --- as key criteria for who to investigate and against whom to bring the most aggressive charges possible."

Once again --- (as longtime BRAD BLOG readers may recall when they were turned against me and my family in 2013 in a different way) --- the federal government's post 9/11 tools for fighting terror, are being turned against non-terrorist Americans.

In this case, the government is now employing these measures to prosecute, as terror organizations, people and left-leaning advocacy groups regarded as political opponents of Donald Trump, including Black Lives Matter and "Antifa" --- along with anybody else the government wants to associate with them.

"These are 'material support for terrorism' statutes. It sounds dry, but it's important," argues Kovensky today, explaining how the provision has already been used to go after people at protests where someone else may have committed a crime, "if the protest was associated with a leftwing cause or something opposed to the administration. Then we are now starting to see the DOJ go after it as 'terrorism'."

"With 'material support for terrorism', if you're convicted on that," he adds, "prosecutors can then apply for a 'terrorism enhancement.' Even if you have no prior criminal history, and regardless of whether or not the underlying charge was non-violent --- it could be something as simple as spray-painting a government building --- you're now looking at a recommended minimum for the judge of 17.5 years behind bars. So it dramatically increases the severity of the possible sentence."

This is why you may have heard people like A.G. Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and others in the Administration in recent months, refer to protesters --- even those like Renee Good and Alex Pretti who were murdered by immigration officials --- as "domestic terrorists", along with vows to hunt down and break up their "networks".

"It gives the government greater powers to investigate," Kovensky tells me, "but it also raises unbelievably grave concerns about freedom of speech and freedom of association."

And, yes, this is what many civil libertarians argued more than two decades ago. "If you look at the commentary in the early 2000s after 9/11 and what a slippery slope this was with the PATRIOT Act, it's all very eerie," he says.

Told you this was a troubling one. Tune in for much more...

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You're going to get the most, by far, from today's BradCast, by listening to it. This briefest of summaries will not do it justice. Hopefully it suffices if only for a few links to a few of the stories and rulings cited throughout today's program. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

In short (very short), the Trump Administration is losing and losing and losing in court, in case after case after case. And they are not only losing, but being upbraided by judge after judge --- those appointed by both Democrats and Republicans alike --- in one ruling after another now. At least at the lower federal court level. It's just one reason why the Administration is so desperate to get up to the final appeal phase at Donald Trump's corrupted, hand-picked Supreme Court.

The rulings from many of the U.S. District Court judges have been brutal for the Administration, as now coming in day after day. Just one example from yesterday is U.S. District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes' blistering ruling [PDF] in which she took DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to the metaphorical gravel pit over Noem's barely disguised racist rhetoric as part of the Administration's attempt to order the end of legal protected status for more than 350,000 Haitian refugees in this country. (Ya know, like the ones in Springfield, OH who don't eat dogs or cats.)

The good guys aren't winning every motion in every case. And, as noted, the corrupted SCOTUS may have the last word in some of them. But the increasingly dreadful record for the Government in these cases, for the moment, has essentially become the equivalent of legal trench warfare, forcing the Administration to step back or stand down, with the people largely holding off the attempted fascist federal takeover of the United States of America. Or, at least, preventing it from getting appreciably worse.

Russia was supposed to have taken over Ukraine in a week's time after they initially invaded their smaller, weaker sovereign neighbor four years ago this month. Similarly, Trump was supposed to have brought the U.S. to fascist MAGA heel by now. He decidedly has not.

With each loss, of course, in both courts of law and public opinion, he and his Administration grow angrier, more out of control and more dangerous --- but easier still to defeat in the bargain.

As his and his party's approval ratings --- and ability to win elections in even some of the "reddest" parts of the country --- continue to erode, he is now desperately turning to an attempted takeover of American elections themselves.

"The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,'" Trump blathered to Dan Bongino, former conspiracy podcaster turned Deputy FBI Director turned conspiracy podcaster again, on Monday. "We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many --- 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting."

Trump then went on to completely mischaracterize why former MAGA Mesa County, Colorado Clerk Tina Peters is currently serving nine years in state prison for her criminal efforts related to attempting to defraud the 2020 election while illicitly conspiring to make unlawful copies of sensitive, proprietary voting system software. Despite having issued a pointless pardon for Peters (federal crimes have no effect on convictions under state laws), it's clear Trump knows absolutely nothing about her actual crimes.

But, as to the "nationalize the voting" thing, please know (as I explain in more detail on the show): Presidents have absolutely ZERO power to do any such thing. Elections are run by states and, to some extent, Congress may make laws that states must follow. He has no Constitutional or legislative or super-secret power to nationalize them, much less ordering "Republicans" to do so. It is, at best, a very empty threat. Whether he knows that or not is unclear. And, yes, as discussed, there are things that he can try to do, with the unlawful deployment of ICE forces, for example, to make things more difficult for voters to vote this year. But I suspect any such efforts will end up hurting his party's chances more than they will help.

Tune in for the full argument, of course.

At the same time --- as Saturday Night Live hilariously satirized over the weekend --- more and more Trump supporters are (slowly, but surely!) finding their way back toward sanity, or at least away from Trump. I suggest we find ways to help them safely get there.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with, yes, still more humiliating legal losses for Trump and more deadly climate change-fueled weather across the nation....

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Brutal Arctic cold likely to persist through February, and yes, it is linked to climate change, not groundhogs; Western states facing a record-setting snow drought; PLUS: Courts have now restarted 5 out of 5 offshore wind farms that Trump tried to block... 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): Trump’s EPA rollbacks could harm air and water, and worsen global heating; Trump’s biggest climate rollback stalls over fears it will lose in court; Drastic water shortages and air pollution are fueling Iran's protests; The UK government didn’t want you to see this report on ecosystem collapse; Russia delivers worst attack this year to Ukraine’s power sector ... PLUS: EIA: 99 percent of new US capacity in 2026 will be solar, wind + storage ... and much, MUCH more! ...

We getcha caught up on a whole bunch of news from over the weekend on today's BradCast, before opening up the phones to callers [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among that news...

• As we'd be warning, the federal Government is now in another partial shutdown. In theory, once House lawmakers get back to the Capitol amid climate change-fueled extreme weather across much of the country, they will adopt a package of bills approved in the U.S. Senate that set new funding levels for most of the Government, along with a two week extension of current spending levels for DHS, ICE and CBP, as Democrats continue to insist on new guardrails for the goons who have been terrorizing America under the guise of Donald Trump's deadly mass deportation campaign.

• Puerto Rico's pop/rap superstar Bad Bunny won a whole bunch of big awards at Sunday night's Grammy Awards and spoke out, movingly (much of it in Spanish), against the cruel deportation horrors of the Trump regime. Many other artists did as well. Trump is threatening to sue some o them. Bad Bunny --- a pretty good bunny, as it turns out --- will be making Trump and MAGA's heads continue to explode this Sunday, as the most popular artists on the planet headlines the Super Bowl halftime show.

• Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year old Ecuadorian boy used as bait by ICE officers to try and lure his mother out of her house in Minneapolis before he and his father were shipped down to an ICE detention facility in Texas, was ordered to be returned home, along with his father, over the weekend. In his ruling, some of which we share today, the federal judge excoriated the federal Government. Liam is now back in Minnesota, though his school was closed today due to a bomb threat. Moreover, a measles outbreak at the family detention center in TX has been reported. Hopefully, Ramos and his father will be okay.

• There were a couple of runoff Special Elections over the weekend in Texas. In one, for the U.S. House in a very "blue" Houston district, Democratic Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee easily defeated a fellow Democrat. Once sworn in to the seat held by Rep. Sylvester Turner until his death last year, the GOP's already incredibly thin majority margin will become thinner still. House Speaker Mike Johnson will be able to lose just ONE vote and still pass a measure on a party line vote.

• But, also in Texas on Saturday, in a state Senate seat in a very "red" district which Trump won in 2024 by 17 points, Democratic labor union leader Taylor Rehmet defeated his Republican opponent, who enjoyed a full-throated endorsement from Trump, by more than 14 points! That is a stunning 31-point swing for Democrats in a very Republican district near San Antonio, against a MAGA-endorsed candidate, deep in the heart of Texas. Think any GOPers are noticing yet? The day after the election, hilariously, Trump claimed that he knew nothing about the race. "I'm not involved in that, that's a local Texas race," Trump tried to gaslight a Fox "News" reporter, hilariously claiming, "I don't know anything about it."

• On Sunday night, in a long rambling post on his failing social media site, Trump announced he would be shutting down the Kennedy Center (he calls it the Trump Kennedy Center) for two years due to much-needed renovation. All of it, complete and utter lies, as detailed on today's program. In short, he is shutting it down, because it has collapsed after he unlawfully took control of it, as both performers and patrons have fled from his hot, obnoxious mess.

There is a lot of other news along the way today, before we then open up our public airwaves to callers, who also have quite a bit on their minds!...

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