Well, we're back! And I had some great stuff I was looking forward to covering on our first BradCast after a long holiday break. But, of course, our psychotic President of the United States had other ideas. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Don't worry. We will get to those other things that he'd prefer we don't cover, one way or another in coming days. But today we try to make sense of his stupid, senseless, unlawful attack on Venezuela late on Friday night/early Saturday morning, and of his kidnapping of that nation's corrupt President, Nicholas Maduro, and his wife. ("Corrupt" if only because he stole his 2024 election.)

Anyway, as you'll hear, I'm a bit under the weather today. So, I'm gonna keep this summary short.

We cover what happened; how unlawful it was; how much both Donald Trump and Team Trump lied about it all before, during and after; how clueless they seem to be about what happens next; and, ultimately, why he decided to attack Venezuela in the first place.

Yes, it's about distraction from the Epstein Files and the Jack Smith testimony. Yes, it's about oil, (but only somewhat, in my opinion). But it's also about at least two other things most of all: 1) A raw show of power by a very weak man and 2) Trump's rejection by the courts last year when he attempted to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as justification for the mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants. Tune in for more on that, and for what our callers think it's all about...and which country (Cuba? Mexico? Colombia? Iran? Greenland?) will be next...

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It's difficult to fathom. But, we've got hard evidence on today's BradCast that Congress was actually in session today. Both chambers! Doing oversight. Holding votes and stuff! And, when it comes to the Republicans who control those chambers, natch, voting against the best interests of their own constituents. All of that, as Trump continued to lose one battle after another today --- in the courts and even in the state Senate of a very Republican state. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

There was also quite a bit of breaking news both right before and during today's hour. Among the stuff we covered...

• Just before airtime, news broke that yet another federal grand jury has, for a second time, rejected an attempt by the Trump Administration's corrupt Dept. of Justice to revenge indict New York Attorney General Letitia James. If you're keeping score at home, that's one indictment tossed out by a federal judge, followed by two attempted indictments rejected by two different grand juries, against the woman who successfully held Donald Trump to account actual fraud to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in both criminal and civil court last year.

• Also just before airtime, Republican lawmakers in the Indiana state Senate voted to reject a new U.S. House map that would have gerrymandered the Hoosier State's two remaining Democratic seats out of existence, defying Trump's orders, death threats from his supporters, threats to primary those Senators next year, and even his last minute message that he would cut off all federal funding to the state if they didn't obey! To their credit, the state Republicans did not!

• A federal judge on Thursday found that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was being held unlawfully held by ICE in immigration detention and ordered that he be freed immediately. Despite foot-stomping and promises by Trump's DoJ to appeal, Abrego Garcia was released before today's show ended. He is, of course, the Maryland resident, father and Salvadoran national who was wrongfully deported back to El Salvador earlier this year, before being ordered to be brought back to the U.S. by a federal judge. DoJ then indicted him on seemingly trumped-up charges, which he still faces, and ICE unlawfully tossed him into detention. Until today.

• Speaking of immigration, Dept. of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem embarrassed herself and the Administration under questioning from Democrats in the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday. We share some of the sharp questioning for DHS Barbie from Democratic Reps. Dan Goldman (NY) and Seth Magaziner (RI). Also testifying today was FBI Director of Operations Michael Glasheen who similarly embarrassed himself and the Administration when trying (and failing) to explain to the Committee's Democratic Ranking Member, Bennie Thompson (MS), why the non-existent "Antifa" organization is now absurdly regarded by the Bureau to be the nation's top domestic terror threat.

• Over in the U.S. Senate, Republicans blocked a Democratic bill to restore premium subsidies for more than 20 million Americans who receive access to health care via the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare). Monthly premiums are now almost certain to skyrocket for millions at years end, leaving many Americans without health care at all. Four Republicans joined the Democrats' attempt to restore the massive GOP cuts, but it wasn't enough to overcome a Republican filibuster. For their part, a ridiculous Republican bill to give Americans about $1,000 per year in a so-called Health Savings Account to somehow cover health care needs, went down in flames. Several pending discharge petitions in the House may force votes next week on the matter in the lower GOP-controlled chamber.

• "Catastrophic" flooding is forcing evacuations for as many as 100,000 residents in the Pacific Northwest over the next several days, following as much as 18 inches of rain over the past 72 hours in some areas. The Skagit River in Washington, which reaches major flood stage at 32 feet, is now expected to crest at a record 47 feet! All consequences of the climate change disaster which most Republicans pretend is not happening, and pretend to not be caused by the man-made burning of fossil fuels.

• With increasingly dangerous floods, droughts, storms, fires, etc., it is disappointing to learn that Zillow, the nation's largest real estate listing site, is removing a feature, added just last year, that allowed home buyers to learn about a property's exposure to the climate crisis. Making climate risk data more difficult to find and use, does not make its reality disappear, however. "The risk doesn’t go away,” says Matthew Eby, founder of the non-profit financial climate risk modeling site, First Street, which supplied the scientific data previously used for the Zillow feature. "It just moves from a pre-purchase decision into a post-purchase liability." Good luck, home buyers!

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, on the U.S. seizure of an oil tanker near Venezuela; the Trump EPA's deletion from their website of humanity's roll in climate change; Exxon Mobil pleads for help from the corrupted SCOTUS Six; And a U.S. court strikes down Trump's Executive Order blocking wind energy projects...

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Today on The BradCast: For years, we've called out the authoritarian petrostates working to block the fight against fossil fuels and our existential battle against climate change that has been exacerbated by them. Even as the U.S. has long been the world's worst per capita emitter, I think today, under this particular President, is the first time we've had to include the U.S. government itself as one of those "authoritarian petrostates." [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... It's another win for New York Attorney General Letitia James against Donald Trump. As you know, she successfully oversaw several fraud cases (both civil and criminal), against him and his company in the Empire State last year. Since re-taking office, Trump has weaponized his Justice Dept. to try and exact his revenge against James. He continues to fail. Hilariously.

First he had to find someone willing to seek an indictment against James after his own U.S. Attorney in Virginia refused to do so. He appointed his personal insurance lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to the job. She was able to obtain a grand jury indictment related to supposed mortgage fraud. But two weeks ago, a judge tossed out the indictment after finding Halligan was unlawfully serving as U.S. Attorney. Last week, Trump found a federal prosecutor from Missouri who was willing to re-indict James. But the grand jury rejected the indictment! (In an amusing side note, yesterday ProPublica found that Trump himself appears to have committed the very same "crime" that he has been trying to indict James for!)

Then, on Monday night, a federal judge in Massachusetts found in favor of a group of some 18 state Attorneys General, led by James, who had sued to block Trump's "Day One" Executive Order shutting down virtually all wind farm projects on federal lands and waters. The EO was tossed out by the judge as "arbitrary and capricious" and a violation of U.S. law. James wins again! So do the residents of those states and all the rest of us who pay the price for dangerous, climate killing fossil fuel energy, rather than clean, cheap renewable energy like wind power.

SPEAKING OF PAYING THE PRICE FOR FOSSIL FUELS... The 30th annual U.N. Climate Summit (COP30) wrapped up in Brazil a couple of weeks ago. For the first time, the United States, under the Trump Administration, didn't even bother to send a delegation. Ultimately, progress toward the world's transition away from fossil fuels to meet the 10-year old Paris Climate Agreement targets --- to keep temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times --- was stymied by fossil fuel industry lobbyists and authoritarian petrostates like Saudi Arabia, Russia and now, sadly, the U.S. The conference's final statement, which must be agreed upon by all parties, did not even mention fossil fuels.

Today, as the European Union's climate change service announced that 2025 would be either the second or third-hottest year ever recorded globally, after 2024 smashed all previous records, we are joined by one of the world's premier climate scientists.

Dr. MICHAEL E. MANN is the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth & Environmental Science and Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the group awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Price, author of some 160 peer-reviewed and published papers, and of more than half a dozen books on climate science. His latest, with vaccine scientist Dr. Peter J. Hotez, is Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World.

Today, Mann joins us to share, among many related things, his thoughts on the disappointment of COP30 in Brazil, and how that "Bad COP" suggests that it may be time for a new format for the annual climate conferences. "The U.N. needs to show some backbone," he urges today.

As to the U.S. under Republican/Trump rule, he tells me: "The problem is that you have a small number of bad actors, authoritarian petrostates, leading among them, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and now the United States. We have to view the United States as part of what I sometimes call the 'Coalition of the Unwilling.' A small number of fossil fuel-driven countries that are doing everything they can to block a global agreement."

Mann warns, during our broad discussion, that the time for action to prevent the worst effects of climate change is now quickly running out. "It is sometimes said that 'Nature bats last,'" he quips today. "The Earth's system, the global climate, doesn't care about the politics of fossil fuel countries, and the bickering between the petrostates and the rest. The climate system doesn't care. It will continue to warm up as long as we burn fossil fuels. And all of these impacts will continue to get worse."

"We have a finite budget, a finite amount of carbon that we can burn and keep the planet below 1.5 Celsius --- for Americans, it's 3 degrees Fahrenheit, basically --- a level of warming beyond which we will see far worse consequences than we've already witnessed," Mann explains. "We can actually calculate, with some uncertainty, how much carbon is left in that budget. The calculations show that three years of business as usual --- if we don't begin to ramp down those carbon emissions dramatically, if we just continue with business as usual for three or more years --- then we burn through that budget."

"What's so tragic is if we had acted decades ago, if politicians around the world, governments around the world, had listened to the scientists decades ago, we could have fairly gently decarbonized our societal infrastructure. A fairly gentle reduction of carbon emissions, and a relatively slow, steady move away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy. We could have afforded that, if we had started acting decades ago. We can't afford that now. We have got to undergo that transition in a matter of years. Right now, we are clearly not meeting the moment when it comes to these annual climate summits. Something's gotta change."

We also discuss his continuing feud with Microsoft founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates, who Mann charges with now spreading climate disinformation at an alarming rate by suggesting that somehow a 'technological fix' will be found to solve these problems; how climate scientist Mann found common ground with virus scientist Hotez to co-write their new book, Science Under Siege on "the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World" (and what those forces now are); and how --- and if --- he remains optimistic that the world can overcome the quickly worsening climate challenges we now face with so little time left before impacts become irreversible.

"This is Tolkien-esque battle. It's a battle not for Middle Earth, but for Earth itself," he tells me, referencing the Lord of the Rings novels. "There are so clearly forces of good and evil that are involved. I think framing it in those terms can be helpful and clarifying. There's a line...'There's some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.' It's about fighting the good fight. Even if the odds don't seem in your favor, and the forces against which you are fighting seem overwhelming, the only way you're going to prevail is if you fight the good fight. And that's what we've got to do."

Tune in for much more worth hearing from Mann today...

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Yikes. Quite a news day. We do our best to keep up on today's BradCast. But our conversation about the political fight to avoid falling over the GOP's massive health care funding cliff at year's end, may be the most immediately important news of all today for tens of millions of Americans. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Okay, we begin first with a few headlines. And there are a lot of them today, most still developing and several breaking just before and during the show. So, in short for the moment...

• The Dept. of Justice arrested and charged a long-sought suspect today in the case of the unexploded pipe bombs left near the Democratic and Republican Committee headquarter buildings on the eve of January 6, 2021. They gave no details yet on how the Virginia man identified today was caught, nor what his motive may have been.

• A Dept. of Defense Inspector General's report [PDF] was released today on DefSec Pete Hegseth's "Signalgate" scandal. Despite claims yesterday by Team Hegseth that the IG report offered him "TOTAL exoneration", it offers quite the opposite. It finds, among other things, that Hegseth "created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots" by detailing an attack on Yemen on the unsecured Signal app on his personal phone with high-level Cabinet members and an accidentally invited national security reporter. He also appears to have destroyed evidence in the matter.

• Following a classified briefing at the Capitol today, several high-ranking Democratic members of the House and Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees said they were "deeply disturbed" after viewing "one of the most troubling things" they'd ever seen. They had just watched unreleased, still-classified, unedited footage from the September 2nd U.S. military rocket strike on two shipwrecked survivors of a previous strike on a supposed "drug boat" in the Caribbean. The unlawful order to carry out the second strike was previously reported to have been issued by Pete Hegseth. Such an attack is in strict violation of U.S. and International law, as well as the DoD's own Rules of War Manual. The Commander who reportedly carried out the double-tap strike, Admiral Mitch Bradley, is said to have claimed during today's briefing that the order to kill the survivors wasn't given by the SecDef. Still many unanswered questions here.

• BREAKING just before airtime: After a federal judge last week tossed out Donald Trump's revenge indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James, finding Trump's personal insurance lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed as U.S. Attorney, a new prosecutor --- said to have actual prosecutorial experience --- was brought in from Missouri to file a new grand jury indictment today. The grand jury, however, rejected the new indictment!

• BREAKING late in the show today: The corrupted, activist Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, as somewhat expected, overruled a lower appeals court ruling (written by a Trump-appointed judge) that had blocked the state of Texas' mid-decade Congressional gerrymander. State Republican lawmakers drew the map over the summer, at Trump's urging, in hopes of flipping five U.S. House seats in the Lone Star State from "blue" to "red" next year. The lower court found the new map to be an unlawful racial gerrymander and blocked its use. The SCOTUS majority, however, while offering little to no reason for their 6 to 3 "shadow docket" ruling, suggested the new TX map was only a partisan gerrymander --- which is now allowable since their horrible 2019 ruling in Rucho --- as opposed to an unlawful (for now) racial gerrymander. They are now allowing the new gerrymander to be used in the 2026 midterms.

• Thanks in no small part to the Trump Administration's shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year, the global child mortality is now on the rise for the first time in decades. Nearly a quarter of a million more kids under the age of 5 are expected to die in 2025 than in 2024, according to a new report.

NEXT... Speaking of health care and both children and adults unnecessarily dying...we're joined today by Politico's Senior Heath Care Reporter ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN as America heads toward a Republican-caused health care crisis cliff as of January 1.

Over the summer, Donald Trump and his Republicans in Congress passed their so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" to give a trillion dollars in tax cuts mostly to the wealthy and added $2.4 trillion to the national debt, resulting in about half a trillion dollars in automatic cuts to Medicare. In the bargain, they also slashed a trillion dollars from Medicaid and hundreds of billions from the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare), which will subsequently spike monthly health care premiums for some 24 million Americans as of January 1.

This is why Democrats refused to vote with Republicans to keep the government open for a record 43 days in October and November. At least until seven rogue Democrats and one independent who caucuses with them in the Senate, undermined their own party to vote with Republicans to reopen the Government. The only thing they received in exchange was the promise of a vote in the Senate this month on restoring the GOP cuts to the Affordable Care Act subsidies. That vote is scheduled to happen next week, but will require 60 votes for passage in the 100-seat Senate. No vote is currently scheduled for the U.S. House on this, as premium bills will otherwise be doubling and tripling for millions next year.

Ollstein, a longtime Capitol Hill reporter lays out the political and policy landscape and stakes as we barrel toward what is now quite likely to be a very serious health care crisis in the U.S., unless Republicans come to terms with the electoral tidal wave that otherwise awaits them next year. Her reporting this week suggests that the bulk of the GOP Congressional caucus either doesn't yet understand the concerns or doesn't care about what is about to happen.

"There's nothing like a looming deadline to juice Congress into action," she quips. "Although that action may not lead anywhere --- especially this time."

"There are a bunch of Republicans who do want to cut a deal," she stresses. "They are very anxious, about both the concrete ramifications of letting the subsidies expire --- that millions of their constituents will have higher bills, become uninsured, etc. --- and they are worried about the political consequences, that this will backfire in the 2026 midterms." But, Ollstein also notes, for many in the party, the otherwise now very popular "Obamacare" is still a dirty word after years of the GOP trying and failing to kill it "root and branch" or even offer any alternative to it.

We've got lots to sift through here today, in trying to make sense of the current political lay of the land, with many Republicans "afraid of a primary challenge from the right attacking them for 'supporting Obamacare,'" even if millions of their own Republican constituents now rely on it for their health care.

Tune in for all the details on this one. Too many to cover in a quick summary here. But the fight in the weeks ahead is going to affect all of us, including your health care prices, even if you are not an ACA customer, as Ollstein also explains.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the Trump Administration rolls back fuel economy standards, which will increase the cost of everyone's gas; as the Administration's threats against Venezuela become more obviously about oil by the day; as youth climate activists sue to block new fossil fuel development in Utah; and as one boy from fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades here in Southern California rolls out a quickly blossoming idea to seed the area with wildflowers...and love...

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Not that I hope to tip off our degenerate authoritarian oligarchy on today's BradCast. But if the Republican Party still believes in math (and it's unclear if they do), there was more very bad news for them in Tuesday's elections this week. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Unapologetically progressive Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn appears to have lost the Special Election race for the U.S. House in Tennessee's very "red", GOP-gerrymandered 7th Congressional District to stalwart Trump Republican Matt Van Epps on Tuesday. Unofficial numbers suggest she lost by about 9 points.

Sounds like a rout. But, in fact, it really wasn't. Trump won the district last year by 22 points, meaning there was a 13 point shift toward Democrats on Tuesday, precisely the average shift that we have seen toward Dems in all of the Special Elections for U.S. House this year. There are 14 counties in TN's 7th CD. Everyone of them shifted towards the left on Tuesday. That, after Republicans were forced to dump a lot of money into what should have been an easy contest on Tuesday.

While House Speaker Mike Johnson pretended not to be concerned about any of this --- "They were really trying to set the scenario that there's some sort of wave going on. There's not. We just proved that there's not." --- actual math really does suggest trouble ahead for the GOP in next year's critical 2026 midterm cycle.

With that average 13 point shift toward Democrats in special elections this year, we do a little bit of mathing on today's show. For example, last year, in the 2024 U.S. House general elections...

• 28 Republicans won their races by 10 percent or less.
• 64 of them won by 12 points or less.
• And a whopping 92 Republicans won by just 15 percent or less last year.

With a razor-thin 3 vote advantage heading into the new year, no wonder several GOP-controlled states are attempting panicked mid-decade gerrymanders, and that the corrupt Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court are likely to help them. But new maps may ultimately make their problems worse, not better, if this year's elections are any indication. Safe Republican districts made less safe with new gerrymanders to steal districts from Democratic voters may end up backfiring. Of course, I won't dismiss Democrats' ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory between now and next year. But when Johnson says, "This doesn't concern me at all," he is either lying, in denial or incredibly stupid. And he's not all that stupid.

"This is one of the biggest flashing red light warning signs we've seen yet for Republicans," a far more realistic GOP strategist observed last night. Much more on today's show.

As if that's not enough, in a stunning runoff election on Tuesday in Georgia, the Democratic candidate easily unseated the incumbent Republican Mayor in the suburban city of Roswell, outside of Atlanta. She will be the previously deep "red" city's first Democratic Mayor in nearly 30 years. But don't worry, Mike. All's well!

Also today, our disgusting racist President said a whole bunch of disgusting racist things at the White House on Tuesday about Somalia and the American Somali population in Minnesota and elsewhere, repeatedly describing them as "garbage", "people who don't work," and people who should "go back to where they came from." Where many of them came from is a war-torn nation in Africa, with thousands seeking refuge here in the 90s. Most of them are now American citizens, with many living in Minnesota, where Trump's degenerate federal jack-booted immigration thugs will reportedly be targeting them, specifically in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, with upcoming raids.

State Governor Tim Walz --- who Trump last week described as "retarded" --- as well as the Minneapolis Mayor, its Chief of Police and many other officials and immigration advocates are vowing not to roll over to Trump's racist immigration hooliganism. Similar raids are reportedly being launched this week in New Orleans, where residents are also hoping to push back against Trump's increasingly unpopular thuggery however they can.

Finally today, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report (after we had to preempt yesterday), with news on the end of disappointing U.N. climate talks in Brazil; the rising death toll following two simultaneous climate change-fueled typhoons in Southeast Asia; and the Trump Administration's latest plans to pollute your air and poison your drinking water...

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On today's BradCast: Things are now moving very quickly, it seems, in the story of our Defense Secretary reportedly ordering the murder of shipwrecked survivors in the Caribbean. Luckily, our guest today is able to help us make sense --- where sense is to be had --- of all of the different parts of this quickly spidering story. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

The Trump Administration has been citing their supposed War on Drugs or War on Terror --- or, as what they describe as a war on "narco-terrorists" --- as legal justification for more than 20 U.S. military attacks against small boats in international waters near the coast of Venezuela. The attacks by the U.S. military have, so far, according to the Pentagon, resulted in more than 80 deaths of supposed drug-traffickers. No evidence, however, has been given by the Administration to support their claims that either drugs or "narco-terrorists" were on the defenseless boats in question when they were destroyed by U.S. rocket fire. In previous years, alleged drug boats would have been interdicted, evidence collected, and those on board either tried or interrogated to further bust up international drug cartels like the one found to have been facilitated for years by the former President of Honduras.

So, it has raised concerns from both Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress that Donald Trump, today, formally issued a pardon to the former President of Honduras who was tried and convicted by the Dept. of Justice last year to 45 years in prison for his role in trafficking some 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S.

All of that is contextual backstory to allegations, originally reported by Washington Post last week, that Trump's Defense Secretary, former Fox "News" weekend co-host Pete Hegseth, issued orders to "kill everyone" in the Pentagon's first attack on a supposed drug boat in early September. Two survivors of the attack, reportedly clinging to the remains of their boat, were subsequently murdered in a second kill shot, said to have been on the orders of Hegseth and carried out by Admiral Mitch Bradley. He currently leads the U.S. Special Operations Command. Before his October promotion, he served as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command that carried out the attack in question on September 2nd.

Killing victims of a boat strike is wildly unlawful under both U.S. and international law. It is even cited specifically in the Department of Defense's Law of War Manual, Section 18.3.2.1, describing "Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations." The provision warns the "requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal." It goes on to cite, specifically: "For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal."

After previously boasting about having watched the September 2nd attack live via drone video, Hegseth today claimed that the second strike on the survivors happened amid the "fog of war" and that he "didn't stick around" for the rest of the mission after the first strike. Though he claims Bradley "made the right call" in killing the survivors. "He had complete authority to do it," said the man who theoretically gave him that authority, while now appearing to throw Admiral Bradley somewhat under the bus.

And all of that, of course, comes on the heels of feigned outrage from both Hegseth and Trump just about a week ago, after a video was released by six Democratic members of Congress --- all veterans of the U.S. armed forces or intelligence services --- reminding members of the military that they are required to "refuse illegal orders". The video resulted in outrageous claims by Trump that the Democratic officials had committed "sedition" which, as he also noted, is punishable by death. In response, Hegseth announced a Pentagon investigation of one of the members, U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a former Navy Colonel and astronaut who could theoretically be called back into active duty by a politicized Pentagon in order to be court-martialed for, apparently, reminding troops that it is unlawful to carry out unlawful orders.

As noted, there is a whole lot going on in these quickly developing stories, but we've got just the guest today to help us make sense of them. We're joined by CARRIE A. LEE, PhD, an expert on civil-military relations and, until her resignation in July, associate professor at the US Army War College, where she served as the Chair of the Department of National Security and Strategy. She is now Senior Fellow at the Democracy and Security Network for Strategic Democracy Initiatives at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Lee explains today both what a civil-military relations expert is, and why she regretfully decided to leave her post at the War College earlier this year, after determining, as she explained in a social media thread, "that the United States faces threats today that cannot be effectively fought from inside the walls" of the US Army War College. She explained at the time that "in order to speak, I had to leave."

"I very much saw the writing on the wall after the election," she tells me today in describing her thought process for resigning in July, including "a lot of the threats that then President-elect Trump had made about what euphemistically I would call the 'creative uses' of the military that he had planned."

"It became very clear that if I had spoken out, that was going to bring an entirely unhealthy level of scrutiny to the institution I worked for, an institution that I really loved, and that I feel does outstanding work in educating future senior officers of the United States Army."

Lee explains that she ultimately left "to fight against the politicization of the military and abuses of power using the military domestically in ways that undermine democracy and Constitutional rights."

Today, Lee is speaking freely, as we discuss, among other things...

• The Pentagon's (empty and/or ridiculous?) threat to reactivate Sen. Kelly for a possible court martial.
• The "politicization death spiral" underway at DoD.
• The Trump Administration becoming "enthusiastic about punishing dissent and finding ways to weaponize and use their institutions of power to punish political opponents."
• How service members are able to determine whether an order is unlawful, and whether someone like Admiral Bradley would have the needed legal advice to know if striking shipwreck survivors was lawful or not. ("The manual explicitly says 'patently unlawful orders'. When the manual literally gives the example that we're talking about ['orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal'] that's a pretty good indication that it is patently unlawful." She also notes: "The initial strike was probably unlawful, as well.")
• Whether "fog of war" serves as a justifiable defense for Hegseth.
• The difficult personal decisions that career military officials are now faced with in deciding whether to stay in their positions amid the Trump Administration's misuse of our armed forces. (See her paper published this week titled "The Soldier in the Illiberal State is a Professional Dead End")

"I think we are talking about two separate issues in the news cycle that is going on right now, as we eagerly await updates to figure out what new turn in the hall of mirrors we are about to take," Lee neatly summarizes our conversation. "There's the politicization of the military and the weaponization of the military justice system to try to punish political opponents. That's issue number one. Issue number two is what the heck is going on in the Caribbean, and are these orders lawful?; what is patently unlawful and therefore must be refused?; and what has the veneer of legal justification that would lead a military commander to go with it?"

As noted, lots to discuss on today's BradCast...

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It's no easy feat getting caught up on The BradCast after just one week off during the madness of the Trump Era. But, hey, nobody said fighting to save democracy amid an attempted authoritarian takeover by a crazy, brain-poisoned, power-mad, criminal cretin was going to be easy. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

With far more to cover than we had time to catch up with, we did our level best today and took a bunch of great callers to boot! But that requires focusing on the stuff that really matters and, well, putting off the rest for another day, if ever. And the stuff that really really counts right now, in my opinion, remains the fight for democracy and voting itself.

To that end --- and many others --- we covered quite a bit of ground in very short order today. Among the many stories we touched on before opening the phones to our first post-Thanksgiving callers...

• Today, a federal appeals court unanimously upheld a lower court ruling finding that Alina Habba, Donald Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer turned U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, was unlawfully appointed.

• That ruling follows on last week's court ruling that Lindsey Halligan, Trump's even more unqualified personal insurance lawyer turned U.S. Attorney in Virginia, was also illegally appointed. That ruling subsequently resulted in the dismissal of Halligan's absurdly corrupt criminal indictments against Trump's foes, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

• Trump's belligerent, unqualified Defense Secretary and former weekend Fox "News" host, Pete Hegseth, may be in very big trouble for reportedly issuing unlawful orders to "kill everyone" in the Administration's first unlawful attack on supposed drug runners in boats in international waters off of Venezuela in the Caribbean. (More on that, I suspect, in the days ahead.)

• A quick catch-up on the various battles in the Gerrymandering Wars since we left --- in Texas, Indiana and North Carolina.

• Following the shock resignation of former(?) MAGA stalwart Marjorie Taylor Greene a week or so ago, Punchbowl News reported that a senior Congressional Republican is warning that the House GOP is "a tinder box." That "morale has never been lower" and that Republican House Speaker "Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out." We'll see about that. But it's anything but inconceivable, at this point.

• Speaking of, in tomorrow's Special Election for the U.S. House in Tennessee's 7th Congressional District, progressive Democrat Aftyn Behn was said to be within two points of Republican Matt Van Epps, according to new polling last week, in a District won last year by Trump by a whopping 22 points! I wonder why morale is so low among Republicans in the House these days.

• Never mind polling. Let's look at some actual numbers following Democrats' rout of Republicans in the November off-year elections last month. A deep dive by Politico into 268 county, town and village executive seat races last month in New York --- including in deep red counties, towns and villages --- found that Dems out-performed 2017's "blue wave" election in the state, flipping, for example, more than 50 executive seats from "red" to "blue" last month. That, compared to the GOP flipping just one (1!) seat from "blue" to "red" on the same day.

• Another appeals court panel ruling while we were off --- this one from judges nominated by both George W. Bush and Donald Trump --- upheld a lower court ruling finding that a ridiculously frivolous lawsuit filed by Trump and Habba against Hillary Clinton and James Comey, claiming they tried to steal the 2016 election (or something), will, in fact, result in a one million dollar fine against the pair.

And finally, we open up the phone lines to listeners, who are, apparently, in a very lively mood after a bit of rest over the holiday weekend. Enjoy!...

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Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) actually didn’t go far enough when he told members of the U.S. military: "Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders." In fact, as fellow armed services veteran Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA) emphasized in the same video, service members "must refuse illegal orders."

Under the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which was passed by Congress after the post-WWII Nazi tribunals at Nuremberg, the "I was just following orders" defense was officially discredited for the U.S. military as well. All members of the U.S. armed forces have, as "reported by The Military Times, a duty to disobey "illegal" orders. Any member of the military who carries out an "illegal" order, The Military Times observed, may become the subject of a court martial. Depending on the nature of the illegal order, a member of the military who obeys an illegal order could later be tried for crimes against humanity by an international tribunal.

Neither the UCMJ, nor any existing case law, carves out an exception for "illegal" orders issued by the Commander in Chief. Thus, Donald Trump's effort to label an accurate quote of military law as "sedition" and the "announcement" by Trump's renamed "Department of War" that it is investigating Kelly, are patently absurd.

The more serious questions are: (1) Did Trump's call for Kelly and the five other Democratic members of Congress who publicly called upon members of the military to comply with their "duty to disobey illegal orders" to be "hanged" amount to a criminal violation of 18 U.S. Code §115, which makes it a crime to threaten to assault a member of Congress in retaliation for their performance of their official duties --- (here using their office to remind members of the military of their obligations under the UCMJ)? And (2) whether his amplification of calls for them to be "hanged" amounts to a high crime that warrants impeachment…

It's our last BradCast today before our Thanksgiving break. And, frankly, it was a very different show than the one I went to bed last night pondering for today. Blame the pathetic, desperate, criminal coward in the White House. Again. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Today, in several posts to his failing social media site, an increasingly unhinged Donald Trump, the President of the United States, called for six Democratic members of Congress --- four House members and two Senators, all distinguished veterans of the U.S. armed forces or intelligence services --- to be killed.

Their "crime"? Advising U.S. service members, in a 90-second video on Tuesday, that they may --- indeed, they must --- "refuse illegal orders."

It's not particularly controversial. But today, Trump, who is floundering in virtually every aspect of his job, pretended to be outraged, repeatedly describing the comments from those Democrats as "SEDITIOUS", describing them as "TRAITORS" and calling for them to be put to "DEATH!" (That, even though he pardoned actual seditionists that he incited to try and overthrow the U.S. Government on January 6, 2021.)

In addition to his own words, Trump also elevated another wingnut loon on his social media site who declared: "HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!"

Just two months ago, Republicans pretended to be furious about political violence and words that might lead to it following the murder of a far-right Republican activist. But, since Trump is now calling for the deaths of Democratic members of Congress, his lackeys and quislings at both the White House and in Congress are joining Dear Leader. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, pretending to be furious today, for example, falsely charged that those six elected officials and distinguished veterans "encourage[d] young troops to disobey orders". He forgot to mention that the orders in question are unlawful ones, as the Dems repeated over and again while reminding those "young troops" of their oath to defend and follow both the Constitution and rule of law, and encouraging them: "Don't give up the ship."

I had a word or two to say about all of this on today's program. So did a lot of other folks both in and out of Congress, some of which we share as well.

In not unrelated news on today's show...

• NBC News reports that the senior military attorney for the U.S. Southern Command, which has, so far, killed more than 80 people in boats off the Caribbean and Pacific coasts near Venezuela, determined that U.S. strikes on small boats said to be carrying supposed "narco-terrorists" (as the Administration describes them) were unlawful. His opinion, however, was overruled by Trump's political appointees in D.C. The service members who participated in those extrajudicial killings could, as the lawyer reportedly warned, eventually face accountability under U.S. and/or international law.

• TPM's Josh Kovensky reports that federal prosecutors in Chicago have dropped a whole bunch of supposed "domestic terrorism" cases against people who protested against Customs and ICE agents in Chicago in recent months. Among those who saw their charges dropped: A woman who was shot five times by a CBP officer who bragged to colleagues about it afterwards, and who falsely claimed the woman participated in a convoy of cars that "rammed" and "boxed" the federal agents in. And a 70-year old Air Force vet initially charged with felony assault, which was later downgraded to a misdemeanor and finally dropped all together by Trump prosecutors on Thursday.

• Last week, we told you about the Trump Administration's draft plan, reported by Washington Post, to open up off-shore oil drilling along the entire coast of California, off the West Coast of Florida (in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, not on the Atlantic side near Mar-a-Lago, of course), and off of Alaska in the pristine High Arctic region, where responding to a spill or a Deepwater Horizon-like disaster would be all but impossible. Today, the Administration officially unveiled the proposal and elected officials --- including both Democrats in California and Republicans in Florida --- vow to fight the effort.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as this year's U.N. climate summit wraps up in Brazil; as Iran faces an historic drought in Tehran that could result in the evacuation of some 10 million people; and as the developing world is now turning to China for billions of dollars of investment and development in clean, cheap, renewable energy, since the Trump Administration has taken the U.S. out of that increasingly lucrative industry.

As noted, we'll be taking some much-needed downtime in the week ahead. But, while we're "gone", please have a happy and safe Thanksgiving --- and remember the advice from those six Dems in their video yesterday: Don't give up the ship!

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As we head toward the holidays, some helpful advice on today's BradCast for how to deal (and even help) some of your MAGA friends and family members who may drive you crazy, even if you still love them. That, even as the very cult-like movement begins to show some serious signs in recent weeks of, just maybe, beginning to falter. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... It was a remarkable day in a federal courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia on Wednesday, as both the U.S. District Court judge overseeing the case and others in the courtroom were reportedly "stunned into silence", after the interim U.S. Attorney who brought the case against James Comey, on behalf of Donald Trump, just before the statute of limitations was to time out, admitted that the grand jury never actually voted to approve the felony indictment filed in court against the former FBI Director!

There are a whole lot of reasons why the two felony charges against Comey, related to allegedly lying to Congress back in 2020, would likely be tossed out of court before ever reaching a jury. But today's courtroom revelation by Trump's insurance lawyer, Lindsey Halligan --- tapped as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (despite no prosecutorial experience), specifically to bring charges against Trump's perceived foes like Comey and New York A.G. Letitia James --- was one that few saw coming.

On Monday's show we were joined by Attorney Keith Barber to discuss that day's stunning ruling by a different judge working on a separate element of Comey's pre-trial motions. That judge's ruling was gobsmacking enough, finding a "disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps" in the prosecution's case that might "undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding". Responding to today's arguably even more gobsmacking revelations, Barber writes at Daily Kos: "Folks, on this alone the case must be dismissed. It’s over."

We should find out if he's right about that in fairly short order. U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff ordered the DOJ to respond with an explanation to this morning's admission by Halligan by end of business day today.

THEN... There are signs everywhere that things are quickly turning south for Donald Trump, from the drubbing his party took in elections earlier this month, to a faltering economy, to record-low approval ratings (even from Republicans), and this week's swift Congressional passage of a measure mandating the release of the Epstein Files within 30 days, effectively overcoming Trump's months-long attempted cover-up.

Just last week, top MAGA supporters were blowing their collective stacks after the President's insistence, during a Fox "News" interview regarding H1-B visa rules supported by Big Tech companies and now by Trump, that America doesn't have enough talented people.

All of which has resulted in recent headlines (from before yesterday's Epstein vote!), such as "MAGA's metastasizing mess" (Axios), "Trump faces a splintering GOP --- and rare dissent from his party" (WaPo), "7 signs Trump is losing his groove" (Politico), "Trump’s Grip on Republicans Shows First Signs of Slipping" (WSJ) and "The MAGA Crackup Might Finally Be Here" (NYT).

So is Trump really losing his MAGA base? Is a crackup finally here? Or, at least, getting closer?

We're joined today by former dyed-in-the-wool MAGA member and former GOP operative RICH LOGIS who, after supporting Trump in 2016 and 2020 --- with dozens of "Make America Great Hats" to prove it --- finally pulled himself out of what he now describes as Trump's MAGA cult. He went on to begin a long process of making amends to friends and family, and eventually formed the Leaving MAGA organization to help others do the same.

"One of the really difficult parts for me in my decision to leave MAGA was a recognition that Trump did not in fact care about me, when I thought he did," Logis tells me today, in response to my question about whether he believes we may finally be seeing the movement fade as it turns against itself. He cites the Epstein story as revealing so many flip-flops that his supporters may finally be closing in on an important truth. "With the Epstein story in particular," he says, "what it shows is that there is this burgeoning cognitive dissonance throughout the MAGA community. I think that people in MAGA are starting to ask themselves if Donald Trump has been lying to them for many, many years."

"Our epiphanies happen gradually, then suddenly all at once. I'm seeing that similarly with Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well," he asserts, even as he concedes there is still a long way for many to go. "I think there is still a lot of denial within the MAGA community. Trump's toxic superpower is lying. But I think with the Epstein story in particular, Trump has lied one too many times. I think that, for some in MAGA, they are starting to now stick."

We discuss much more with Logis, including why he believes Trump's Fox "News" interview on H1-B visas blew so many MAGA tops; whether the exodus from MAGA is yet being reflected in the number of folks turning to his Leaving MAGA organization; and how best to help your MAGA friends and loved ones out of the cult of misinformation, disinformation and outrage that has become "a kind of addiction" for so many of them. "The outrage creates dopamine hits. When someone has that kind of an addiction, facts and expertise don't tend to get people out of it."

So, how to deal with those folks over the holidays? He offers several tricks and tips today, along with pointers to Leaving MAGA's new, free, weekly online support group for friends and family members of those in MAGA (sign up here for more info here), and their free e-pamphlet titled Reaching Out as a "how-to guide" with "dos and don'ts" for "people who want to reach out to loved ones and friends in MAGA, but aren’t sure how."

"We don't want people to give up on their MAGA close ones," says Logis. "We are living proof that it is possible for people to change."

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Things are not going well for the President of the United States. As revealed by the mostly breaking news stories covered on today's BradCast, today may be seen as one of the worst days he has ever had. Here's hoping for more such days. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

• Tuesday began pleasantly enough, with Donald Trump offering Saudi Arabia's crown prince a royal welcome to the White House in advance of a black tie dinner, despite the fact that the CIA determined that Mohammed bin Salman likely personally approved the 2018 bone saw murder of Washington Post journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi. After the regal parade of Saudi and U.S. flag-draped black horses and a rare flyover by six U.S. fighter jets to celebrate the arrival of the killer prince and major Trump Family business partner, Trump berated a reporter for daring to ask about the murder. He claimed, appallingly, that "a lot of people didn't like" Khashoggi anyway, that bin Salman "knew nothing about it", and, even if he did, hey, "things happen."

• Around the same time, on the other end of Pennsylvania Ave., victims of Trump's longtime best friend and convicted pedophile, the late Jeffrey Epstein, were rallying on the steps of the U.S. Capitol with the lead, bi-partisan co-sponsors of a bill mandating the Dept. of Justice release the "Epstein Files". One of the survivors, a Trump voter who was introduced to Epstein when she was just 14 years old, described the President as a "national embarrassment". The bill was finally to be voted on today, after months of attempted obstruction by both Trump and supposedly very Christian Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Today's vote happened only thanks to a Discharge Petition signed by a majority of House members (all Democrats, 4 Republicans) demanding it. Despite Trump's months of cover-up, blocking the DOJ from releasing the files that he could have ordered released in full at any time, the four sentence legislation was adopted nearly unanimously by the U.S. House in a 427 to 1 vote. Apparently, nobody other than Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) wanted to be regarded as having voted to protect pedophiles.

• Within hours, remarkably, the U.S. Senate, without debate, adopted the same bill by another veto-proof margin. The measure was passed by unanimous consent before heading to Donald Trump's desk for his signature. You think he'll hold one of his big signing ceremonies to do it?

• With all of that seemingly very good news, we echo the caveat I offered on yesterday's show. A provision in the legislation (the third of four sentences) allows the DOJ to "withhold certain information" including "materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation." As luck would have it, just last week, months after Trump's DOJ declared there was nothing left to investigate in the Epstein matter, and days before Trump would pretend to flip-flop to favor the bill, he asked his corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation into the involvement of his political foes with Epstein. She complied within hours, of course. On Sunday, Republican co-sponsor of the Discharge Petition in the House, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-LA), warned the new investigations might prevent the DOJ release of the files. Today, before the vote, at the presser on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) --- who deserves credit for taking on the President by keeping her name on the Petition --- warned same. That, after Trump's pretend change of heart on Sunday calling for the release of the files by instructing Republicans to vote for the bill so that lawmakers "can have whatever they are legally entitled to". The latter part of that phrase, observed David Kurtz today, is "doing a lot of work there."

• As rare as successful Discharge Petitions are in forcing votes on bills that the House Speaker refuses to bring to the floor, it happened yet again on Monday! A majority of House members, with the help of a few swing district Republicans signed on to force a vote --- within seven days, as required by House rules --- on a bill that would roll back Trump's Executive Orders earlier this year blocking collective bargaining rights for most federal workers.

• But things got even worse for Trump as today wore on. This time on the Gerrymandering Wars front. A three-judge federal appeals court panel in Texas blocked the new Trump-ordered gerrymander of the state's already gerrymandered U.S. House map, finding it to be an unlawful and unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Following a ten day hearing, the 2 to 1 ruling by the court panel, written by a Trump-appointed federal judge, blocked the new map from going into effect for the 2026 election --- at least for now. The new map was written by the GOP state Legislature to flip five, largely minority House seats from "blue" to "red" next year. It resulted in California voters recently adopting a new map, in an overwhelming statewide vote, to flip the same number of seats from "red" to "blue" in response. That map --- and perhaps a similar one now in the works by Democrats in Virginia --- will stay in place next year, unless otherwise blocked by a court for some reason. Texas' Republican Governor Greg Abbott vowed to appeal today's ruling to his friends on the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court.

• The ruling in the Lone Star State comes on the heels of the decision late last week by the Republican leaders of the Indiana state Legislature, to not redistrict the state's already very red U.S. House map in a Special Session this year, despite heavy pressure from Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. The decision resulted in social media threats by Trump against both men, and a swatting attack against one of them. Despite that dangerous situation just hours after Trump's initial threat --- and his laughable opposition to political violence --- he issued another similar one against Republican lawmakers in the Hoosier State on Sunday.

• Finally, also not great news for Trump in today's Green News Report with Desi Doyen, as Trump's joke of a FEMA Director is pushed out after just six months; the U.N. climate summit under way in Brazil (which the U.S. sent no representatives to) declares it will finally be taking on climate disinformation by the fossil fuel industry and its supporters (like Trump); and that, speaking of, new documents reveal Exxon has been quietly funding climate denial and disinformation campaigns across Latin American for years...

As noted, it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Donald Trump, which is generally a very good day for the rest of us, as described with much more context, detail, insight, color, sound and special effects on today's program. I hope you'll tune in...

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Okay. Lots of crime and corruption by the President of the United States and his criminal henchman and women on today's BradCast. The good news, however, is that most of it falling apart on him, because he's not even good at criming. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Most noteworthy among our coverage today...

• As Donald Trump threatens a distraction war of regime change against Venezuela, two human rights organizations released a damning report last week finding that more than 250 Venezuelan detainees that Trump shipped to the CECOT gulag in El Salvador earlier this year were subjected to "systematic and prolonged torture and abuse". That, despite the fact that just 3% of those disappeared to the known torture prison by the Administration had been convicted of any violent crime in the U.S.

• Trump's corrupt indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James are absolutely falling apart in court before several different judges and different pretrial motions. Attorney KEITH BARBER (who writes at Daily Kos as "Keith DB") is here to help us break down a remarkable 24-page ruling (PDF) issued today by a federal magistrate judge in the Comey case.

  After reviewing the grand jury transcript in chambers, Judge William Fitzpatrick determined that Lindsey Halligan, Trump's former insurance lawyer turned unlawfully-seated U.S. Attorney in Virginia, engaged in a "disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps" that appear to have violated Comey's rights in numerous ways.

  Among those rights violation, as Barber details, Halligan's apparent instructions to grand jurors that Comey's refusal to testify before them could be used to infer his guilt. That's a "clear violation of Comey's 5th Amendment rights," explained Barber in a posting at DailyKos today. Comey's rights were also violated, according to the judge, when the grand jury was instructed by Halligan that they didn't need to rely on the record presented to them. Rather, they could infer that the government had far better evidence to be presented later at trial.

  Not unlike the judge who wrote that those two instructions alone were "fundamental misstatements of law that could compromise the integrity of the grand jury process," Barber was flabbergasted.

  "It's unprecedented. That is one of those things that is like 'Prosecutor 101', which, of course, Halligan never took," he tells me. "I honestly can't believe she's that dumb, but she certainly acted that way. Normally the most faint whiff by a prosecutor before a jury --- including a grand jury --- that suggests that a defendant's unwillingness to testify imputes guilt is sufficient to result in a mistrial or dismissal of charges. That alone, by itself, should end the day for this."

  But there was much more from both the judge in this matter --- who has taken the extraordinary step of turning over the grand jury transcript to the defendants, as we discuss --- and from a separate federal judge who heard a separate pre-trial challenge last week, as combined from both Comey and James, regarding Halligan's apparently unlawful seating as U.S. Attorney.

  "This case will never get to trial," says Barber, regarding the Comey case. "If it doesn't get dismissed for this reason --- the misconduct before the grand jury --- then one of the others will kill it or the cumulative weight of all of these irregularities are going to cause the judge to toss it."

  "There's stupid, and there's corrupt," he quips. "And then there's stupidly corrupt. It's just ridiculous."

• Next... in a Sunday night social media posting, Trump appeared to flip-flop on his statement from just last week describing any Republican who would vote to release the Epstein Files as "stupid". In his Sunday post, however, Trump called on Congressional Republicans to vote in favor of pending legislation to release the Epstein Files. The legislation is likely to finally receive a vote in the House this week, that calls on the DOJ to release "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in DOJ's possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein."

  But, don't be fooled by Trump's seeming reversal, for at least two reasons. 1) Trump could order the release of those files today if he actually wanted them released. He doesn't need legislation to force him to do so. And 2) the legislation would allow the DOJ to withhold "materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation." While corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi announced several months ago that there were no more loose ends and nothing more to investigate in the Epstein matter following the jailhouse death of the child sex offender and longtime close friend of Trump, she announced last week that she was opening a new investigation last week into Democrats alleged to have been involved with Epstein. That announcement followed a public request from Trump for such a probe just one day earlier. So, yeah, vote to release the files if you like, but you can probably assume that anything that might incriminate Trump will be withheld so as not to "jeopardize an active federal investigation."

• Then, we open the phone lines to callers on what they think about the Trump/Epstein mess and whether they believe those files will ever see the light of day as long as Trump has the power to continue covering them up...

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Tying up a few loose ends as another insane week wraps up on The BradCast today. But with a few laughs along the way and a song to help us over the finish line. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Donald Trump's corrupted Dept. of Justice joined a federal lawsuit filed by the California Republican Party to block Prop 50 on Thursday. The statewide measure was approved by voters in a landslide just last week at the ballot box in response to Texas lawmakers' Trump-ordered gerrymander of their state's already gerrymandered U.S. House map. It is likely to result in five "red" seats in CA turned "blue" in next year's mid-year elections. But Trump's corrupt Attorney General, Pam Bondi, with the announcement of DOJ joining the suit, hilariously characterized the voter approved measure as "a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process." She is very concerned that it will "entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians". Specifically, white Californians. When the suit was originally filed last week, the response from Newsom's office: "Good luck, losers."

• The longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history is now over. At least until the end of January. We detail all the loose ends, takeaways as we head into another election year, and how the Congressional Democrats' fight to restore massive Trump/GOP cuts to health care that will spike costs for tens of millions of Americans by January 1 is continuing.

• All of that, as Trump's approval numbers continue to plummet. Now, even among Republicans, as just 33% of Americans approve of Trump's management of the federal government.

• In one election from last week that couldn't be called until today, progressive, self-declared democratic socialist Katie Wilson, a community organizer and first-time candidate, appears to have narrowly won the race to become Seattle's next Mayor. She defeated the Democratic establishment supported incumbent Bruce Harrell while running on an affordability agenda being compared to Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's in NYC. The contest foretells the fascinating battle emerging between the younger, more progressive and older, more centrist wings of the Democratic Party as we move into another critical election year.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, with news on the ongoing U.N. climate summit in Brazil (which the U.S. isn't even attending); Trump's newly reported plan to drill for oil off the coast of California (which Gov. Newsom describes as "dead on arrival"), and the 50-year anniversary of the tragic 1975 wreck of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, which inspired major, life-saving changes by NOAA (which Trump is decimating) and a haunting hit song by Gordon Lightfoot which also has a fascinating history that we discuss at the end of today's eclectic program...

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It's another busy day on The BradCast But what else is new? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The U.S. House was finally back in session on Wednesday for the first time after the nearly two month paid vacation ordered by GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson during the nation's longest ever federal government shutdown. It should soon be over with tonight's House vote on an 11-week stop-gap Continuing Resolution --- at least until all of this happens all over again when the CR times out at the end of January.

With the reconvening of Congress, Arizona's newest Representative, Adelita Grijalva (D), was finally sworn in, nearly two months after her Special Election. As promised, she immediately became the 218th member to sign a Discharge Petition that, with signatures from a majority of the House, will now force a vote on the release of the Epstein Files being held by the Dept. of Justice and covered up there by order of Donald Trump. He reportedly appears multiple times in the DOJ's investigative files into the late child sex predator and Trump's longtime best friend, Jeffrey Epstein.

A vote to release those files should happen within seven days under House rules. But before Congress even reconvened today for the first time in weeks, several previously unseen emails written by Epstein were released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. They reveal, among other things, Epstein asserting back in 2011 that Trump "spent hours at my house with" a victim whose name is redacted from the documents released today. And another email from Epstein in 2019 declaring "of course [Trump] knew about the girls."

THEN... New York City's Democratic Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani ran on a so-called "Affordability Agenda" including promises of a Rent Freeze for about 30% of the city's tenants; Free and Faster Buses; Free Universal Child Care; and a pilot program for City-Owned Grocery stores across the five Boroughs.

So, how affordable for NYC is the Affordability Agenda promised by the charismatic 34-year old Muslim and self-declared democratic socialist who won by a landslide last week?

We're joined today by our old friend RICHARD (RJ) ESKOW, longtime columnist, host of the weekly Zero Hour television and radio program, and former lead writer for Bernie Sanders' 2016 Presidential campaign.

Eskow did the math on each of Mamdani's four top-line Affordability Agenda items, concluding that, at least three of the four of them, are "surprisingly affordable". Even the fourth, he finds, is also easily affordable if both city and state officials are willing to play along. That one will require raising taxes on millionaires in the city (who currently pay the same percentage of their income as a resident earning just $50,000) and on corporations, whose taxes will be raised to parity with the rate charged by neighboring states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire (while still remaining lower than they were before Trump's 2017 tax cuts).

"Every revolution should come this cheap," quipped Eskow after his analysis.

We run through the presumptive costs of each of the new Mayor's headline programs, discuss how they will be paid for (one of them should actually make money for the city), and why it is that these not-particularly-radical programs caused so many Republican (and many "conservative" Democratic) heads to explode during Mamdani's remarkable campaign.

These are programs for working people that "can make New York City a city for everyone again," Eskow tells me. "It's all doable. It's all affordable. The rest is just scare tactics."

He explains how the billionaires who went to war against Mamdani during the campaign simply "don't want to give up the money. It wouldn't cost them any more a year, it's a marginal tax, an incremental tax. They don't want to give up that 1%. They don't want to pay their property taxes on their luxury apartments."

"But more than that," argues Eskow, "it is the presentation. That working people deserve to have an affordable, pleasant, decent life in New York City, like they did for 200 years. I think that's what threatens them the most. And that's where the struggle comes in."

We also discuss how ginned-up fears about fairly unremarkable "democratic socialism" --- which rightwingers and billionaires like Trump tried to turn into "COMMUNISM!" during the campaign --- are both wildly misleading and little more than another scare tactic.

"If you like Social Security, if you like Medicare, if you want to strengthen and expand those programs, you may be a democratic socialist," he explains. Tune in for much more...

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Both the solutions to the problems we face and the problems themselves, are created and/or ultimately settled at the ballot box. In theory. So, once again, much of our coverage on today's BradCast --- both good news and bad --- revolves around that fact in one way or another. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

A good chunk of today's show focuses in on the fallout following Sunday's late-night capitulation by seven Senate Democrats and one independent who caucuses with them over the federal government shutdown. A central point is that the huge majority of Dems in both chambers of Congress did not capitulate. They stood united during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history in favor of holding out for the restoration of enormous cuts by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans to health care, including the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare.

And, while the shutdown's imminent end is a disappointment to many who wanted the fight to continue --- especially those who understand that the 7+1 caving Democrats received little to nothing in return for their decision to vote with the Republicans --- it's important to understand that the failure was not by "the Democrats", but by those 7+1 (and, arguably, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer who shamefully failed to prevent it) and the hundreds of Republicans in both chambers who unanimously stand by their cuts to health care subsidies that will result in skyrocketing prices --- by as much as 400% or even higher as of January 1 --- for millions of Americans, along with the loss of coverage for millions and the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands.

It's also important to notice how well the Democratic caucus hung together this time --- how they are learning to fight in the Trump era, as opposed to similar situations in the recent past --- until a handful of rogue lawmakers undermined them on Sunday night. The Senators who caved should be held to account. Not the ones who didn't. That's particularly important to remember as the Continuing Resolution now working its way through Congress to reopen the government will time out again at the end of January, when all of this may start up all over again.

Tune in for much more detail and nuance on all of the above.

Among the stories cited in support of that particular argument, and other news covered on today's program...

• Good news in the Gerrymandering Wars! A judge in Utah has ordered implementation of a new U.S. House map for 2026 that includes a new, heavily "blue" district in Salt Lake City. It will likely flip one of the state's four currently "red" seats in the U.S. House to "blue" next year.

• Donald Trump's approval ratings continue to plummet through the shutdown and last week's blowout election results for Democrats. Relatedly, eight counties in California that voted for Trump last year voted in favor of Prop 50 last week, to redistrict the state to flip as many as five "red" U.S. House seats to "blue" in response to Trump and Texas Republicans' mid-decade gerrymander. (All further begging the question about the wisdom of the handful of Senate Dems to end the shutdown before affordable health care coverage could be restored to millions of Americans.)

• While there are many reasonable arguments for reopening the government after 40 days of the longest shutdown in U.S. history, with many Americans suffering, even the right-leaning "center left" Third Way group slammed the supposed "moderate centrists" who caved on Sunday night. In a statement the group's President said they "oppose the agreement in the Senate to end the government shutdown," arguing: "This was a battle worth fighting, and it was worth fighting longer."

• Trump issued full pardons over the weekend to 77 of his personal attorneys and political allies, including the fake electors in swingstates he lost, who worked so hard to try and help him steal the 2020 election. Those receiving clemency including folks like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb, and many others involved in spreading lies about fraud in 2020, the fake electors scheme and the unlawful efforts to breach voting systems in places like Coffee County, Georgia. While many of those pardoned are facing state criminal charges, which a Presidential pardon can't change, none are currently facing federal charges. That begs the question of why he pardoned them and who else may be covered by the vaguely worded clemency statement. The Dept. of Justice's former Pardon Attorney, who was replaced by Trump, believes that the criminal President is sending a message that he has their back if they are needed to violate the law again to help him try and steal future elections.

• On Monday, the corrupt, activist, rightwing U.S. Supreme Court majority announced they would hear a case regarding the Republican National Committee's challenge to Mississippi's law that allows mail-in ballots cast and postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrive up until five days afterward. The RNC and Mississippi State Republican Party argue that when Congress defined "Election Day", they meant that lawful ballots could only be cast on that day. A SCOTUS ruling in their favor, against the State, could undermine elections in some 30 states with similar laws allowing for late arriving ballots, just in time to create chaos in the critical 2026 midterms.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as a new round of U.N. climate talks kicks off in Brazil without U.S. in attendance; and as Australia finds itself with so much rooftop solar energy they are now planning to give it away for free...

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