Given the topics on today's BradCast, it was a pretty lively show anyway. Thanks mostly to the callers, I suspect. Especially the one who loves Trump and doesn't believe in the evolution. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• The three-term Mayor of Newark, New Jersey was arrested by masked federal thugs on a public street on Friday. Mayor Ras Baraka was hand-cuffed and frog-marched (as seen above) outside a newly reopened federal detention center that, reportedly, doesn't have its state or city permits in order to operate. He was there to inspect it. The arrest happened as three Democratic members of Congress were eventually allowed to tour the privately run ICE facility that same afternoon. DHS and Donald Trump's former defense lawyer turned top federal prosecutor in NJ, subsequently took to the airwaves to apparently lie about the arrest. They have since doubled down by threatening to arrest the three members of Congress who were there as well, claiming they and Baraka "broke into" and "stormed" the federal facility. Video and eye-witness testimony of the incident, so far, suggests otherwise.

• After 45 days in detention, Tufts University grad student, Rümeysa Öztürk, was finally released from custody over the weekend, at the insistence of a federal judge. She was snatched off the street by masked federal goons in March, as seen on a chilling viral video, after her student visa was revoked (without her knowledge), apparently in response to her daring to exercise her First Amendment right to co-author an op-ed in the student paper calling for the University to divest from Israel.

• On Sunday, ABC broke the news that Trump intends to accept a tricked-out 747 Boeing jet from the Royal Family of Qatar to use as Air Force One, and then keep it as his own at the end of his term. The plane is reportedly worth about $400 million before it was decked out to serve as "a flying palace". All of which is wildly unconstitutional, if the literal words of Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 (the Emoluments Clause) actually still mean anything. For the record, it reads, "...no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." Seems pretty clear. Unless you are a lawless grifter or one of his duped supporters.

• Then, we open up the rest of the show to callers. Lots of them. Kicking off with a MAGA fan named "Denise", who believes Öztürk was in the country unlawfully, was a "terrorist" who wrote an op-ed in support of Hamas. None of those things, as reality would have it, are true by any measure. Then again, Denise also doesn't understand that First Amendment rights apply to all "persons" in the U.S., and says she knows that Darwin was a total con-artist is a total scam. So, ya know... Her call, and the many that followed, were all fun, however!

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I'll try to make this brief today, so you can get right on to actually listening to today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today, as Donald Trump officially becomes the lowest-rated President in U.S. history during his first 100 days in office since polling began in the FDR Era...

• The Trump Administration has now gutted the Voting Rights Unit in the Civil Rights Section of the Dept. of Justice. All of the senior managers have been reassigned elsewhere and all pending cases from the prior Administration have now been dropped. So much for the DoJ's "crown jewel"...and enforcement of voting rights.

• After losing one case after another after another in lower courts since taking office, the Trump Administration is hoping to change their luck by turning the tables by arresting a sitting state judge in Wisconsin for allegedly helping an undocumented migrant avoid arrest by ICE when he was in her courtroom for a completely unrelated case. The state judge, Hannah Dugan, was hand-cuffed at the court (as opposed to, for example, Trump being allowed to turn himself in at an appointed hour for his two felony indictments) and Trump's FBI Director, Kash Patel, posted a photo of the perp walk on social media in violation of DoJ's long-standing policy. The case against Hannah, however, may not turn out to be a very good one, according to Marcy Wheeler.

• And now they're "deporting" U.S. citizens. At least children. With their mothers. Late last week, two mothers were both deported to Honduras after showing up for a scheduled check-in along with their kids, one of whom is 2-years old, one who is 7-years old, and one who is 4-years old...with Stage 4 cancer. The children are all U.S. citizens. Neither of the mothers were reportedly allowed to speak to a lawyer after being handcuffed and shipped out of the country. One of the women was reportedly allowed to speak to the father of her children for 1-minute before the call was cut off by ICE and the women and their children were all deported. And yet, when asked about it on Sunday, Sec. of State Marco Rubio had the gall to say that, while both citizens and non-citizens alike are entitled to Constitutional due process, "if you're in this this country unlawfully, you have no right to be here and you must be removed." But, how do you determine if someone is in the country unlawfully without due process? Clearly, neither of these women --- OR THEIR CHILDREN --- received it. That, by the way, is according to the far-right, very Trumpy, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge in Texas overseeing their cases. Even he is not happy about it!

• So, is this what Trumpers were hoping for when they voted for him last November? I had hoped to talk to a few of them as I asked such listeners to give us a call today. But, right as we finally got to the phones, the entire phone system here at KPFK crashed. [Please consider giving them a donation to help upgrade the phone system! And please tell them Brad sent you when you do!]

• Oh, well. That gave us some time to walk through at least a few of the major new polls out over the past few days in the run up to Trump's 100th Day in office this week, finding him with the lowest rating at this time in office of every President who has served over the past 100 years. And it's not just his overall approval that has crashed --- into the 30s in some of the polls --- but, on every single issue of note, more Americans oppose him than support him...by huge margins...

• And also, some time to enjoy the schadenfreude of a whole bunch of MAGA folks who seem to now deeply regret their vote for Donald Trump...

This seems to be the worst fascist takeover ever. But he's doing it anyway...

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Today on The BradCast: His various attempts to undermine the Constitution and American civil rights law continue to be blocked by judges in the courts. But that isn't stopping the President and his lackeys from gutting civil rights protections and environmental justice enforcement at key federal agencies...for the moment. Nor is it stopping our guest today, a 30-year EPA veteran, from continuing the good fight at her agency. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Donald Trump proved to be a loser again on Thursday in three different federal courtrooms, in three different civil rights-related law suits, as determined by three different federal district judges (one of whom was appointed by him.) Two of the judges, one in New Hampshire, the other in Maryland, blocked his Dept. of Education's attempt to cut funding to K-12 schools with anti-discrimination or DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs.

The third civil rights-related court loss for Trump today was in D.C., where a federal judge blocked his attempt to mandate proof of citizenship when registering to vote, as per his recent attempted power grab via an Executive Order meant to undermine democracy, U.S. elections and the right to vote.

In the meantime, Harmeet Dhillon --- a rightwing culture warrior clown and former Trump 2020 "Stop the Steal" attorney --- has been appointed to oversee the Dept. of Justice's Civil Rights Division, where she has reportedly unleashed a "bloodbath" among senior officials at the office which oversees, among other things, voting rights. Current and former employees at the division charge that Dhillon is turning civil rights law upside down, by using it, as one former department employee familiar with the new changes said, to "victimize the very people it was created to protect."

THEN... In related-ish news, we reported earlier this week that Trump's new EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, sent letters to some 450 staffers at the Agency's Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights office, notifying them that they are being fired or reassigned as the office is being shut down. The firing letters to longtime staffers --- including scientists, researches and attorneys --- were sent on Monday night, Earth Day eve.

The EPA's Environmental Justice office, created during the Administration of Republican President George H.W. Bush, is tasked with protecting minority communities who are often most vulnerable to toxic emissions from chemical plants and oil refineries. Down in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley", for instance, there are about 150 plants and refineries concentrated along a stretch of land between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The population in the area is mostly Black, and multiple studies have found that nearly every census tract in the area ranks in the top 5% nationally for cancer risk.

Since taking office, however, Team Trump have pledged to "end the use of 'environmental justice' as a tool for advancing ideological priorities" and have been unwinding the unit's work under previous Presidents. For example, under Joe Biden's Administration, the EPA sued the owner of a Cancer Alley chemical plant where cancer cases were found to be 44% higher for those who lived within one mile of the plant than the national rate. The Biden Administration sued the company to clean up their act. The Trump EPA recently withdrew the lawsuit.

Amidst those horrors, we're delighted to be joined today by JOYCE HOWELL, 30-year veteran EPA senior attorney and Executive Vice President of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE)'s Council 238, representing some 8,400 EPA workers nationwide.

"'Environmental justice' is just another extension of the fundamental American right to equal protection under the law," she tells me when I ask her to explain what the phrase actually means. "To ensure that, no matter where you live, the laws that protect human health and the environment will apply to you. Environmental justice gives people the avenue for their voices to be heard when determinations are made about where to put a factory that spews so much pollution, relative to where they live. Or, if they are already living there, and there's someplace nearby that impacts them, that they would be able to, as members of the public, have their voice heard with regard to the permitting of that plant, to the number of inspections that take place [and] the oversight of programs that are delegated from EPA to the state."

Howell finds it "disconcerting" that EPA Administrator Zeldin has shut down the Environmental Justice office, removing its history from the Agency's website, dismissing the work of the office as ineffective and "an excuse to fund left-wing activist groups". That, as Zeldin vows to slash the EPA budget by 65%.

She tells me that while work is continuing at the EPA nonetheless, its "enforcement program has slowed down tremendously." More than even "under Trump 1," when she also served. Explaining how she, and her colleagues at the Agency, survived his first term, Howell says, "We do what we always do: we put our heads down and we did our work. That's what carried us through."

Her union, AFGE, may have plans to challenge the recent layoffs and reassignments in court, though she did not yet want to give away their thinking on that. But, when I asked why she was willing to speak on the record on these matters, --- while many of her current and former EPA colleagues have been speaking to the media under condition of anonymity due to concerns of retaliation --- Howell notes that, since she speaks on behalf of the union, she may have some protections under federal labor law that others may not, protecting her "speech on behalf of workers."

But, she adds, she recently "attended an organizing meeting and someone said, 'Cowardice is contagious. So is courage.' And I thought to myself, yeah, that's true. For me, it's important. I haven't been at EPA for all these years just to get a salary. I am there because I believe in the mission. I will tell you every single person there feels strongly the same way. We don't do it on behalf of ourselves. We do it on behalf of the American people."

I hope you'll turn in for a very interesting conversation today.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen helps us close today's show with our latest Green News Report, at the end of a very green --- and sometimes all too toxic --- Earth Day week!...

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Well, we're back live on today's BradCast, like it or not. With so much going on we've got no choice but to run right into the middle of the freeway and pray for the best. The result? Not a bad show, if I say so myself. [Audio link to full show follows this tweet.]

After a quick round-up, needed for context today, of just some of last week's madness while we were otherwise off for a much-needed break, we pick up with...

• The opinion [PDF] of the very conservative Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who, last week in the case of the mistakenly-deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia warned that the Trump Administration's refusal to bring the man home to Maryland from a gulag in El Salvador "should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear." Judge Wilkinson goes on to warn, among other things, that "The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order," and that "If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?"

• But Donald Trump's tyranny is now here, in full flower, which one Republican U.S. Senator admitted recently has all of her colleagues "afraid", even if most are still too afraid to say as much out loud.

• SCOTUS was literally forced to awaken from bed over the weekend to issue an extraordinary, 7 to 2, middle-of-the-night order PDF to the Trump Administration, clarifying that no Venezuelan migrants being held in Texas may be deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 "until further order of this court." (If you're wondering who were the two Justices in favor of sending migrants to foreign gulags without benefit of any Constitutional due process, that would be Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, of course.)

• And, by the way, Washington Post reported over the weekend that the 18 intelligence agencies comprising Trump's own National Intelligence Council concluded in an assessment earlier this month that the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the U.S., as Trump has lied about in unlawfully invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants without due process.

• Trump's fiscal policies continue to be disastrous as well. The U.S. stock market plummeted yet again on Monday in response to Trump's tariff and trade war and his new threats of firing his own Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who Trump is now blaming for the fact that he crashed the U.S. economy with his own dumb trade war that few if any countries are apparently willing to negotiate with Trump about.

• Pope Francis, the world's first Latin American pontiff and a great champion of progressive causes including the fight against climate change and for environmental justice --- as Desi Doyen details today --- died on Monday at the age of 88 after a months-long illness and a brief meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance on Easter Sunday.

• That's not all we cover today, but it gives you an idea before we open up the phones to callers, callers, callers. Lot of them, including some with some very interesting thoughts and questions! Please tune in!...

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump makes sweeping move to undercut state climate laws like California's; In the rain-soaked South, storms portend future ‘generational’ floods; White House ends funding for key US climate research body; US exits carbon talks on shipping, urges others to follow, document says; NOAA contracts being reviewed one by one, throwing the agency into chaos; Threatened carbon pipeline filed hundreds of lawsuits against landowners... PLUS: More oil and gas FAFO as crude keeps diving... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: The decision handed down by the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court last night just after we got off air was confusing, divided, muddled and, at closer inspection, as discussed with today's guest, even grimmer than it first appeared. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST UP, however, what qualifies as the brighter news of the day, believe it or not...

• Markets continued to plummet for a fourth straight day following Donald Trump's punishing, unilateral, worldwide (except for Russia) tariffs announced last week at the White House. But the push-back against his authority to issue them, granted by Congress, has begun to grow more quickly than one might have expected among Congressional Republicans.

• And, just before airtime today, a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled in favor of the Associated Press in its lawsuit against the Administration after it banned the news outlet from coverage of certain events in the White House and on Air Force One. The AP has accused the Administration of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment, in response to the outlet's decision to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally recognized name, rather than as the Gulf of America as Trump has attempted to mandate via Executive Order.

THEN, we're joined by Slate legal journalist MARK JOSEPH STERN to unpack the confusing --- and troubling --- 5 to 4 opinion issued by SCOTUS last night, largely allowing Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, for now, to detain and deport migrants to foreign gulags. Stern, who describing the ruling last night as one that "couldn't be more ominous", explains that the Court's brief, split decision is "going to cause a lot of confusion, chaos and uncertainty in the lower courts, and for these migrants, who the administration is trying to disappear to El Salvador."

While the five men on the Court disagreed with the four women (including the Court's lone female GOP-appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett) on most aspects of the ruling, they all agreed, at least, that deportees must be afforded the opportunity to challenge their detention in court before removal.

The terse, but alarming opinion was issued via the Court's "shadow docket" without full briefing or oral argument, in response to an emergency appeal in a challenge by Venezuela migrants deported under the AEA with no due process whatsoever. The Trump Administration invoked the wartime law --- which, according to its text, may only be used to detain and deport migrants from countries that have "declared war" on the U.S. --- to send Venezuelans they claim to be violent gang members to a gulag in El Salvador. And while the full Court decreed that such detainees must be allowed to challenge their detention in the jurisdiction in which they are detained, it will seemingly be impossible for the hundreds now already in a prison outside of the country to do so.

The Trump Administration's view, observes Stern, is that, once a migrant is locked up in a foreign gulag, they "have had their Constitutional rights permanently extinguished. They have no right to due process or any other rights, procedural or substantive. And further, that federal courts have no jurisdiction to order any kind of relief to help them." That is the case, according to the Government in the related Kilmar Abrego Garcia matter, even when someone has been "mistakenly" deported.

There are all sorts of troubling issues wrapped up in the majority's unsigned opinion, including the fact that they simply took the Administration at its word on several key points, despite Trump's Dept. of Justice repeatedly lying to and/or thumbing their nose at direct orders issued by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, whose impeachment Trump subsequently called for. That call led to a gentle reprimand from the Chief Justice a few weeks ago, even if John Roberts sided with the majority in favor of Trump anyway in Monday's decision.

"We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her blistering dissent, excoriating the majority. "The government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law," she warned, ominously noting that it is now the official position of the Court that even "United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. History is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this nation's system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise."

Stern shares her concern, particularly about the likelihood of U.S. citizens being swept off the streets and shipped off to foreign prisons. He adds: "By the way, something like 1-1.5% of individuals detained by ICE every year are actually U.S. citizens. The burden falls disproportionately on tribal citizens and Puerto Rican people on the mainland, due to racial profiling and other kinds of stereotyping. So this is not a far-off hypothetical."

He is also concerned about what the string of recent decisions by the corrupted high court in favor of the Administration and in contradiction to lower court judges, is likely to signal.

"I am worried that the Court is just going to start rubber-stamping these Trump requests for emergency relief, and refuse to consider the extraordinary and immense harms that will be inflicted on the American people by doing so," he explains. "That five men and sometimes Justice Barrett have decided that the real problem isn't Trump and his lawless crusade. The real problem is district court judges standing in his way. If that is the approach that the Supreme Court is taking --- if they really do think that the real problem is judges and not the Trump Administration's unprecedented assault on the rule of law, then again, we are all in grave danger. It's not just Venezuelan migrants."

Much more insight, disturbing details and outrage during my disturbing conversation today with Stern.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report after deadly, widespread extreme storms and flooding over the weekend; as Trump's trade war is increasing the cost of reconstruction for disaster victims; and as Senate Republicans work to strip California of its clean air car standards...

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On today's BradCast: The pointless bleeding on Wall Street caused by Donald Trump's trade wars slowed a bit by end of day Monday after a roller coaster ride throughout the day. U.S. markets ended largely down, through not as sharply as the two days last week just after Trump announced enormous sanctions against pretty much every nation in the world (other than Russia), for no explainable reason. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Given the pointlessness of it --- with even Republican billionaires and long-time supporters turning on him --- and the lies told by Trump when announcing his tariffs, we turn to Trump-supporting callers for an explanation. Would they be willing to call in and defend this madness? Spoiler: We don't get any persuasive explanations. Though we do get some interesting lies from one Trumper and some reasonable explanation from folks who don't support him or what he's doing to the world.

Also today, the tragic story of Maryland resident Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia continued to churn late last week, into the weekend, and right up until airtime. The 29-year old father from El Salvador with a wife and five-year old autistic son (both U.S. citizens), had been protected from deportation by an immigration judge back in 2019 after escaping gang persecution in his home country. Last month, however, after detaining him in an Ikea parking lot in front of his son, the Trump Administration "mistakenly" sent Abrego Garcia to a gulag in El Salvador. Now they claim it's too late to get him back from the violent prison where, the judge noted, he faces threats from the same persecutors he'd escaped years ago. On Friday, a federal judge ordered the federal Government to bring him back. Today, just before air, Chief Justice John Roberts placed a (supposedly temporary) administrative stay on the U.S. District Court Judge's order on behalf of SCOTUS, following an emergency appeal by the Trump DoJ. Where it all ends, nobody currently knows.

And finally, before we turn to the phones, the remarkable story out of North Carolina, where a majority Republican state appeals court panel on Friday ordered that more than 60,000 voters should be stripped of their vote in last November's state Supreme Court election if they can't cure supposed problems with their ballots or voter registrations within 15 days. They would be robbed of their vote, but only, apparently, in the Supreme Court election. Losing Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin claims that the 60,000+ voters voted unlawfully in his contest against incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs, even though they didn't. They followed all rules and laws in place at the time. Nonetheless, the 2 to 1 GOP appellate panel ordered those voters, including overseas military voters, to be given 15 days to be contacted and somehow cure supposed defects with their mail-in votes or voter registrations. This is part of Griffin's challenge to the election held almost six months ago, in which he lost to Riggs by 734 after two recounts and certification by the State Board of Elections. The matter now goes to the state Supreme Court, where Republicans have a 5 to 2 advantage over Democrats. One of those Dems is Riggs, however. She has recused herself. If the Court ties 3 to 3, the lower court ruling would stand...unless the federal court jumps in to put an end to this disturbing unconstitutional nonsense and blatant attempt by Republicans to steal another election before our very eyes...

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This one is really a debacle. It's likely criminal as well, on several levels, according to today's guest on The BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

You have likely heard by now about the group text chat that The Atlantic's Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was somehow invited to over the commercially-available mobile phone app called Signal, in which top-level Trump Administration cabinet officials, including Donald Trump's Defense Secretary and former Fox 'News' weekend host, Pete Hegseth, discussed specific U.S. attack plans for bombing Yemen,

Goldberg detailed on Monday (free link) how he was invited into the group chat by Trump's National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz. Classified information was discussed in the conversation. But, while Goldberg knew better than to publish specifics, he explained: "What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing."

Other Signal accounts participating in the group included those for JD Vance (Vice President), Marco Rubio (Secretary of State), Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence), Scott Bessent (Treasury Secretary), John Ratcliffe (CIA Director), Stephen Miller (Deputy White House Chief of Staff), Susie Wiles (White House Chief of Staff) and Steve Witkoff (Special Envoy to the Middle East). That, as NPR reported today, the Signal app was cited in a Dept. of Defense email last week to all Pentagon employees, warning of a "vulnerability" exploited by "Russian professional hacking groups" that makes the app unsuitable for use by the military, even for non-public UNclassified information.

As luck would have it, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee had a hearing already scheduled for today, with witnesses including Gabbard and Ratcliffe --- both members of the Signal chat in question --- and Kash Patel, Trump loyalist and wildly-unqualified FBI Director. While most Republicans on the Committee were interested in discussing anything but this matter, Dems were rightly laser focused on it, including the fact that Witkoff was apparently at the Kremlin for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this month when the text list, detailing plans to bomb Houthis in Yemen and reportedly revealing the identify of a senior CIA officer, were discussed.

We're joined today by our friend and longtime independent national security journalist MARCY WHEELER. In her piece today at Emptywheel.net, she detailed "Seven Reasons Trump's Entire National Security Team Should Resign in Disgrace" following the signal debacle. We step through each of those reasons with her today.

Wheeler was amazed that, even though the identities of everyone in the group were available to all members, nobody seemed to notice, or be troubled by, the inclusion of a journalist. Especially a journalist who Hegseth would go on to try and smear as "a deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist whose made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again." That, after Hegseth revealed classified war plans to him in the Signal chat and the White House has already confirmed the matter.

Wheeler charges that Trump's entire national security team in the group appears to have potentially violated Section F of the Espionage Act, which, in her words from her today, "makes it a crime to so negligently mishandle National Defense Information that someone not authorized to receive it does receive it."

"If you are so stupid as to share attack plans on a Signal thread that a journalist happens to be accidentally added to, that may be criminal," she tells me today, detailing how Section F of the Act bars the sharing of National Defense Information "through gross negligence", etc. "In other words, Pete Hegseth shares information about this attack with somebody not entitled. Because Pete Hegseth is so stupid, that might get you to [Section F]. And you had the entire national security establishment just sitting there watching Pete Hegseth do that!"

There is also the matter of violating both the Presidential Records Act and Federal Records Act by setting comments in the chat group to automatically delete after a week. Moreover, she observes, the fact that Trump claimed on Monday afternoon to know nothing about the matter, even after the story was published in The Atlantic, means that either critical NatSec information was withheld from the President, or he was simply lying when he claimed to have known nothing about it when asked for comment by a journalist at the White House. Wheeler argues that's "not plausible, because if he hadn't been told in advance, he would be firing [group chat member and Chief of Staff] Susie Wiles right now. He'd be firing Mike Waltz right now. JD Vance. He would be firing everybody who knew this was going to come out and didn't warn him. He hasn't fired any of them, so we have to assume he was lying when he pretended he didn't know anything about this." She goes on to add: "But if he didn't know anything about it, it means that he can't trust anyone around him. That all the people who are running his national security are not keeping him in the loop."

Also, the fact that Witkoff was in Russia, at the Kremlin, as a member of the group chat means that all of the accounts of other members on the list may also be compromised. "You bring a phone into Russia, they are going to compromise the phone. Sitting in the Kremlin with Vladimir Putin is really close to the top of the list of stupid things you can do with a phone when you're planning war strikes," says Wheeler. "The timing on it is quite clear. He was in the Kremlin when that list was started. Was his phone compromised? And if so, what else was on his phone? That's, to my mind, one of the most pressing questions Democrats should be asking every minute."

Tune in for much more on all of this from Marcy, including the outrage that FBI Director Kash Patel claimed during his Senate Intel Committee testimony today that he only just learned about the matter himself late last night, and that Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, is likely too busy doing Fox "News" hits to be troubled with enforcing the rule of law against fellow members of the Trump Administration, no matter how much danger they may have placed the country in with their negligence and/or incompetence.

ALSO ON TODAY'S PROGRAM: Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, covering a new round of wildfires in the very dry, very windy Carolinas this week, as Trump dismantles FEMA; a new warning about dwindling fresh water supplies thanks to disappearing glaciers as the climate continues to warm; and the fossil fuel industry calling in IOUs from Congress to block liability lawsuits from being filed against them for their roles in knowingly causing our worsening climate crisis...

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We've got a few explainers on today's BradCast. But I thought you might find it useful to be armed with some facts, truth and understanding right about now. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our explainer coverage today...

• Not long after we got off air today, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer signaled he would allow Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans to adopt a bad six-month spending bill rather than fight them, because that fight would results in a government shutdown as of midnight on Friday. It's certainly a dilemma for the Dems, many of whom seemed to come around to the decision to fight rather than fold today. Even the nation's largest federal workers union --- whose members would arguably be first and most directly effected by a shutdown --- persuasively called on Dems to do just that, arguing: "With thousands of federal workers either fired, placed on administrative leave, or at immediate risk of losing their jobs, AFGE members have concluded that a widespread government shutdown has been underway since January 20 and will continue to spread whether senators vote yes or no on H.R. 1968." Schumer's announcement that he will vote with Republicans to end debate on the Continuing Resolution Friday, suggests the GOP is likely to get the support of at least eight Democrats Senators that will be needed to overcome a filibuster tomorrow. But, we'll see if a few more Dems find the spine to stand up against Trump and stand up for Americans before then.

• Speaking of AFGE, they and a few other unions won a big victory today. They had sued the federal government to restore the jobs of thousands of "probationary" federal workers unlawfully fired by the Trump Administration. Today, a federal judge ordered those workers, at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior and Treasury to be rehired "immediately". U.S. District Judge William Alsup excoriated the Trump Justice Department's legal justification for the layoffs and their refusal to present evidence to support their case. "It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie," railed Judge Alsup from the bench. "That should not have been done in our country. It was a sham in order to try to avoid statutory requirements."

• Yesterday, you may have seen headlines about Trump's EPA chief Lee Zeldin declaring a rollback of more than 30 important health, safety and environmental regulations. (Eg: "Trump takes an ax to more than a dozen pollution rules in rapid-fire deregulation".) In fact, none of those regulations have actually been rolled back. Yet. "Today I'm pleased to make the largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history," the new EPA Administrator dramatically declared in a two-minute video filled with one lie after another, falsely describing "suffocating rules that restrict nearly every sector of our economy and cost Americans trillions of dollars." The video was released to accompany Zeldin's Wednesday essay in the Wall Street Journal offering more false and misleading details on those lies.

  Today, we step through the key lies, explain the truth about them, and what Zeldin's announcement really amounts to. No, there is no "EV mandate" and the U.S. is already "energy dominant" as it was when Trump took office after America long ago became the world's leading producer of oil, gas, coal and renewable energy under President Biden, who also adopted a number of landmark climate initiatives that increased manufacturing, boosted the economy, produced clean energy and made America safer for everyone.

  It will be a long and difficult path for Trump's EPA to overturn dozens of health and safety rules long in place, as well as the agency's landmark 2009 scientific "endangerment finding" on the adverse health effects of planet warming carbon pollution on which a number of those regulations, adopted under the Clean Air Act, are based.

  Bottom line: the Trump Administration plan, as detailed by Zeldin, will increase pollution, worsen the climate crisis, allow more deadly cancer-causing toxins into our air and water, and force Americans to pay the bill for all of it through what Desi Doyen describes as a "pollution tax". You may support Zeldin and Trump's scheme to do all of those things, but let's be clear about what their announcement yesterday is calling for.

  The fossil fuel industry --- already the most profitable industry in the history of civilization --- immediately declared their support for the effort. Few others have done so and many have vowed to challenge it in court. Now it's up to all of us to fight against these unpopular plans. Tune in today for more details that may help to give you the ammunition to do so.

• Finally, Desi Doyen has a bit more on the Trump EPA's vow to Make America Polluted Again, and much more in our latest Green News Report...

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It may be the least surprising news you'll hear all week on The BradCast, but the story still needs to be told. The Trump Administration --- which still pretends to give a damn about "law and order" --- has, in just its first month and a half, handed out "Get Out of Jail Free" cards to nearly 100 corporations mostly headed up by Trump friends, donors and "investors" in his various crypto scams. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to our guest today on his new report documenting all of that, some news...

• Following a reportedly heated caucus meeting on Wednesday afternoon, Senate Democrats emerged to declare they would not help Republicans get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster to adopt a Trump-friendly Continuing Resolution to keep the government open through September. The GOP bill fails to put any brakes on Trump's lawlessness, and Dems are calling, instead, for a month-long, clean CR at current spending levels to allow time to finish bipartisan negotiations on a full 2025 budget vote in April. On Tuesday, House Republicans adopted the GOP spending bill without Democratic votes or input and immediately left town for a recess in hopes of forcing the Senate to pass the House bill before a Friday government shutdown deadline. Today, however, to the surprise of many, Senate Dems appeared to say no. For now. (After we got off air, additional reporting suggests the Dems' seemingly righteous stand against Trump and the Republicans in the Senate may be less than it seems.)

• All of that as Donald Trump's demolition of the federal government and Constitutional Order continues apace, with co-President Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros announcing new cuts and purges at the Dept. of Education, NASA, NOAA, Health and Human Services and the EPA.

• And, where Trump and Musk are gutting public agencies and services (unlawfully in many or most cases), Trump held an unlawful White House lawn commercial for Tesla, Musk's beleaguered EV company which has seen its stock market value plummet nearly 50% since last year's election. (But that free car commercial is hardly the only gift Trump is granting to Musk. See my conversation with today's guest.)

• On Tuesday, ProPublica revealed an email sent to remaining staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) directing them to shred and/or burn remaining documents at its nearly emptied D.C. headquarters. Quick court action by groups suing to block the agency's closure has resulted in an agreement [PDF] by the White House to halt any further destruction of documents for now. If you believe them.

• The Dept. of Justice is reportedly gutting its Public Integrity Section. That is the unit which investigates and prosecutes crimes carried out by public officials. Existing probes will reportedly be handed to U.S. Attorneys around the country appointed by the President, rather than be prosecuted by longtime career officials at Main Justice in D.C.

For all of Trump's vows to "restore law and order", he has been doing the exact opposite during his first seven weeks in office. From pardoning violent criminals who attacked police officers during his January 6, 2021 insurrection to firing Inspectors General, to gutting the Dept. of Justice and other federal agencies that enforce the law, Trump's most robust pro-crime efforts may be seen in the corporate realm, particularly on behalf of those corporate CEOs who have been lining his pockets with tens of millions of dollars.

We're joined today by RICK CLAYPOOL of the nonprofit government watchdog Public Citizen, where he is a Research Director focused on corporate crime and the ways in which corporate power distorts democracy.

Last week, Claypool issued a new report titled "Corporate Clemency: How Trump Is Halting Enforcement Against Corporate Lawbreakers." In it, he details how the "Trump administration has already halted or moved to dismiss enforcement investigations and cases against 89 corporations." Though he notes today that, a week after the report was originally published, that number is now closer to 100.

Cases and investigations against powerful corporations have been nixed at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (all of them, in fact); at the DoJ and SEC, including for companies who appear to have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars bribing foreign officials; at the DoJ's Civil Rights Division, as well as its Environmental and Natural Resources Division; at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and elsewhere.

"34 corporate inauguration donors facing federal enforcement collectively gave at least $34 million toward Trump’s inaugural festivities," according to the new reports, which goes on to note that "These 34 corporations collectively face 60 separate federal investigations and lawsuits." Or, at least, they did.

In addition to scores of now dismissed investigations and cases against companies, particularly with Trump-friendly CEOs, as detailed in Claypool's staggering report, Public Citizen has also created a searchable public database, called the "Corporate Enforcement Tracker," where you can follow details on the status of investigations, suits and indictments rolled back, paused, reversed or killed entirely by the Administration for your favorite companies.

Claypool describes it as "highly unusual" for an Administration to do anything like this upon taking office. "A former Commissioner from the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission remarked that they were never aware of cases being dismissed by the agency itself for any reason, other than maybe the strength of the case, not because of the content. But here, the cases are plainly being dropped and dismissed in response to Trump's Executive Order - the anti-transgender and transgender 'ideology' Executive Order," explains Claypool. "It's horrifying to see the agency that is supposed to be protecting people from discrimination seems to be actively discriminating against a category of worker they are supposed to be protecting."

Other nixed cases including chemical companies previously facing prosecution for "high concentrations of carcinogenic air pollution coming from the factory. This factory was disproportionately harming black and low income Americans. Flash forward to now, the Trump Justice Department actually put out a press release about dropping the case, essentially celebrating that this is the end of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies."

Million dollar donations to the President's Inaugural and Library Fund are "just the tip of the iceberg," warns Claypool, citing media and crypto company CEOs padding Trump's pockets with tens of millions of dollars. And that's before we even get to the favors that Trump is offering Elon Musk's many companies, previously facing dozing of enforcement actions.

"If companies know they can break the law with impunity, they will," Claypool argues. "It is a frequent precursor to corporate catastrophes. Like the crash of 2008, like Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers pushing Oxycontin, like Volkswagen cheating [on emissions tests]. The lack of oversight allows corporate misconduct to fester. If they can cut corners in ways that break the law, but they don't think they're going to get caught, they're probably going to break the law. And that's going to harm people in the process."

Claypool's report at Public Citizen concludes this way: "Corporate crime and lawbreaking can victimize millions of Americans at an unimaginable scale. The bitter irony that it can happen under the banner of a supposed 'law and order' presidential platform might be amusing if the reality was not so plainly catastrophic. This will not end well."

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On today's BradCast: What's in it for Donald Trump? Seriously. Why does he want to break the government? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

I know why Elon Musk wants to dismantle and destroy the federal government piece-by-piece (so his government contracts can't be policed or businesses regulated, etc.) And I understand Trump's need for retribution against his perceived enemies. But why does Trump want to seemingly dismantle damn near every federal agency, from the U.S. Forest Service to USAID and beyond, no matter how ham-handedly? No matter how much it grows (not shrinks) the national debt, no matter how many Americans (including his own voters) it puts out of work, and no matter how much the chaos he is wreaking continues to sink his approval ratings? No matter how much none of his flailing lowers the price of eggs.

It's certainly not in the name of "efficiency" or cutting "waste, fraud and abuse", as the evidence makes plain, no matter how many lies and quickly disproven claims about "million and millions" of dead people receiving Social Security checks or Musk's DOGE Bros claiming to have "saved" at least $55 billion in Government contracts to date. (It's more like $2 billion.) All false claims that both Trump and Musk repeat, only to have to walk them back when proven wrong, time and again.

We discuss a lot of that at the top of the show, along with a bunch of related news headlines from over the weekend, before opening up the phones today to listeners for answers to that simple question: What's in it for Donald Trump? Why does he really want to dismantle the government?

We talk to a lot of callers with a lot of differing explanations (though being controlled by Vladimir Putin seems to be a listener fave...even if it doesn't fully answer all of my questions about Trump's behavior here.)

Perhaps Trump's recently-confirmed Sec. of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, gave away the truth on Fox "News" over the weekend, when he falsely claimed that Trump ran on "reprivatizing the economy". He didn't run on that. Though Project 2025 --- which he pretended to disavow during the campaign --- certainly called for it. Is that his game? Cripple federal government so private corporations can then fill the gap and offer the same services to the American people for a higher price that includes profit to those private corporations?

Please tune in for lots of interesting discussion today. And, if you have a better explanation for why Trump wants to kill the U.S. government by gutting hundreds of thousands of government jobs and services, seemingly at random, for no easily discernible reason, feel free to let me know in comments below...

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We can't fight every stupid, idiotic, dangerous or perilous thing during the Trump Era, can we? I know I can't, personally. But I don't speak for everyone else. And one person's stupid or idiotic may be another's dangerous or perilous. An interesting debate over picking battles and who gets to decide which ones should be waged is at the heart of today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... however, speaking of dangerous, Donald Trump lackey and MAGA merchandiser (or "sycophantic suck-up" as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse accurately described him today), Kash Patel was confirmed for a ten-year term as FBI Director by cowardly, sycophantic suck-up Republicans in the U.S. Senate today. All Democrats voted against him. Just two Republicans (Collins and Murkowski) joined them.

Aside from being wildly unqualified and publishing an "enemies list" of so-called "members of the Executive Branch deep state” that he vows to target, Patel also pleaded the Fifth to avoid implicating himself in crimes during grand jury testimony regarding his role in Trump's theft of thousands of pages of highly classified national security documents; was paid $25,000 by Russian propagandists to appear in an anti-FBI documentary series; appears to have millions of dollars linked to Chinese interests through shell corporations in the Cayman Islands; and, according to whistleblower allegations cited by the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, appears to have committed perjury during his Senate confirmation hearing.

Other than that, he sounds like the perfect choice for FBI Director! Donald Trump has done it again! Did I mention Patel also publicly vowed, as recently as last December, to "come after" journalists "who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig Presidential elections"? (So much for the First Amendment, even if Patel remains a fan of the Fifth.)

THEN... Speaking of the First Amendment and protection of the free press, we recently reported on the Trump White House's attempt to violate the First Amendment by barring the Associated Press from White House events unless and until the 178-year old international media organization agreed to change its Style Guide to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America".

On the surface, it seems like a pretty minor fight, given everything else the Constitutional order is up against. But, upon closer examination, it really is fight over basic Constitutional rights. As NYTimes' opinion writer Jamelle Bouie accurately characterized it at Bluesky, "your willingness to accept this gulf of america nonsense is an indication of your willingness to accept much worse things coming from this administration."

Meanwhile, over The Atlantic, Senior Editor Gilad Edelman doesn't have any such concerns, and even appears to be victim-blaming by suggesting the fight is one that "the AP probably should never have picked in the first place."

That brief article by Edelman recently touched off our guest today, longtime media critic, political strategist and writer, JAMISON FOSER, who wonders, in a recent article, who Edelman thinks he is to decide which fights are worth waging in the Trump Era and which are not.

"I think the nature of the situation that we're in," Foser tells me today, "and the breadth and depth of the ways that we are in trouble, and things are stacked against us --- an autocratic movement has control of our entire government, much of the news media, much of the ways that people get information online --- things are really stacked against us."

"We are not in a situation in which there are obvious, clear, easily discernible, winnable fights we can choose. So this idea that people should only choose fights that they can win --- I think people should choose the fights that feel right to them. We should all be doing a little less trying to police what fights other people are choosing to engage in, and more finding a place where we can stand up and pick a fight where we can," he argues.

"We will probably lose it," he concedes, "because we will probably lose most of them. But sometimes in the loss there is some value. In this one [AP's defense of First Amendment freedoms] there is some value. There's value in saying, 'We can't stop Donald Trump from ordering his government to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. But we can say we are not going along with that. It is racist, and dumb, and he can't make us say it. There's value in saying that to ourselves, in not giving in to his attempt to control the English language. And there's value in showing our fellow Americans that we are not going along with that."

In AP's case, all they were doing was following the Style Guide they have used for decades. And Edelman still characterized it as a "fight" they "should never have picked."

We've got much more to discuss along those lines today with Foser --- including how elected Democrats might wage more productive fights --- in what I think is a really interesting conversation. Please give it a listen.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, covering the heroic senior DoJ official who quit this week rather than violate the law by following Trump Admin orders to claw back money lawfully granted to clean energy initiatives under Biden; climate change now tripling the price of coffee and cocoa; and Trump declaring himself 'King' to cancel New York City's very successful, first-in-the-nation congestion pricing...

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Before it disappears amid Trump's never-ending chaos, a bit more insight on today's BradCast regarding last week's "Thursday Afternoon Massacre", when at least seven longtime veteran prosecutors at DoJ chose to resign rather than enact improper orders from Trump's hand-picked, acting political apparatchiks installed to head up his weaponized Dept. of Justice. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... We take a few minutes today to rebut several blatant lies that Donald Trump has been telling over the past 24 hours about Ukraine, its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia's three-year old invasion of its sovereign neighbor, and the money spent by the U.S. to date to help the war-torn democratic nation retain that sovereignty.

Trump now appears to be switching the official U.S. position in the conflict, siding with the invaders --- Russia and its corrupt President Vladimir Putin --- against Ukraine and our stalwart, longtime European allies in the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.

Among the many lies Trump has told about it all over the past 24 hours:

• Ukraine "started" the war. (False.)
• The U.S. has spent $350 billion in support of Ukraine's defense. (False.)
• Zelenskyy is a "dictator" with an approval rating of 4%. (False and false.)

Tune in for specific rebuttals on each of those points and more. But, on that last one, in fact, Zelenskyy's popularity in his country, at 52% as of December, outpaces Trump's in the U.S. where our President (who actually aspires to be a dictator!) has seen his approval ratings slip and his disapproval ratings spike (by 10 points in just four weeks since taking office!), according to new Reuters/Ipsos polling out today.

THEN... At least nine senior Dept. of Justice prosecutors --- many of them Republicans tapped for acting positions by the Trump Administration --- have resigned since last week in response to inappropriate orders from Trump's hand-picked acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove. Seven of them chose to leave rather than sign on to a motion to drop criminal charges against NYC's Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted by DoJ last year on a series of corruption charges related to alleged favors to Turkish interests in exchange for air travel, luxury hotel stays and campaign contributions.

In recent months, however, the Democratic Mayor has been cozying up to Trump, offering to help with his deportation of immigrants in NYC. In exchange, Trump has ordered the DoJ to drop all charges against him, claiming Adams' indictment was constraining deportation efforts and was merely an effort by the Biden Administration to interfere with the unpopular Adams' reelection changes later this year. Bove has absurdly asserted, on behalf of the Trump Administration, that the indictment of a Democratic NYC Mayor by a Democratic U.S. Attorney last year, following a three-year probe, was evidence of "election interference" and the DoJ's "weaponization" under Biden.

The astonishing events of late last week, as all of this unfolded at both the DoJ office in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and Public Integrity unit at Main Justice in D.C. --- where five top prosecutors quit rather than sign on, and Bove threatened to fire every single prosecutor if nobody volunteered to sign the paperwork to drop the charges against Adams within an hour --- were so dramatic and disturbing, we needed to call in a ringer to help us try to make sense of it all.

We're joined today by our friend and veteran federal prosecutor, RANDALL D. ELIASON, formerly Chief of the DoJ's Public Corruption and Government Fraud section at the U.S. Attorney's office in D.C., now professor at George Washington University Law School, newsletter author at the Sidebars Blog and "Great Courses" lecturer on White Collar Criminal Law.

"One of the many remarkable things about this case is the memo from Bove [which] is just so blatant in its rationale that it's startling --- mind-blowing --- to think that you would even put this in writing," explains Eliason, referring to the clearly unlawful "quid pro quo" described by Trump's Acting Dep. A.G. in his memo to Danielle Sassoon, Trump's Acting U.S. Attorney at SDNY until she resigned after refusing the order. Bove made clear that charges against Adams were being dropped in exchange for his help on mass deportations.

Bove was Trump's personal defense attorney before being named as Acting Deputy A.G., was formerly a federal prosecutor at SDNY himself. In his memo to Sasoon, he charges, remarkably, that she was failing to "uphold the Constitution by disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President" and had "lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice.”

"He has got it exactly backwards," Eliason argues. "All prosecutors know that they swear an oath to the Constitution, not the President. You can't just disregard that oath."

"We don't swear an oath to the President or the President's policies," he continues. "The principled thing to do for a person in Sassoon's position is exactly what she did. If you give me an order that I can't in good faith follow, that is going to require me to violate my obligations, I can't carry out that order."

Eliason has much more insight to offer here, including why he disagrees with those who suggest Sassoon might have better served justice by staying at her post to push back against excesses of the Trumpers; whether he personally experienced anything like this during his lengthy career at DoJ; and what "the willingness to use the justice system for political ends" forebodes for the agency going forward in the Trump Regime.

"I was telling my students today that this is something I think they'll be talking about in fifty years, like the Saturday Night Massacre. This is such an earth-shattering event inside Justice," he tells me. Tune in for much more!...

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Incredibly, many Trump-supporting MAGA dupes still believe any of this is being done in the name cutting government "waste, fraud and abuse" --- much less "efficiency" in the federal government. As discussed on today's BradCast, I guess there are still millions who won't give a damn about any of it unless --- more likely, until --- it effects them directly. And it will. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

As David Dayen helpfully reported last month at The American Prospect, if you fired every single federal worker in existence --- all 2.3 million of them --- you'd save about $271 billion per year. While that may sound like a lot, it's just 4% of the annual budget. Of course, we'd lose much more in uncollected tax revenue, unprosecuted fraud in the private sector, lives lost, just to name a few big points. And, of course, Americans, such as Social Security recipients would lose a lot on a personal level when there was nobody left in government to send out their monthly checks.

But, as Republicans have been telling us (lying to us about) for decades now, the federal government has just become too bloated. It must be cut down to size, even if it's randomly done through mass firings at every federal agency, of anybody viewed as legally fireable (whether they are or aren't doesn't matter.) But here's another fun fact from Dayen: in 1960, amid the Golden Age of America's middle class, the federal government comprised 4.3% of all workers. Today, that number is just 1.4%.

Other than that, our government is huge, bloated and out of control! Who needs all that air traffic safety, security of nuclear weapons, food inspections, safe drinking water, disease tracking, cancer cures, law and order, disaster response, medical care, education, Social Security checks or life-saving weather reports and climate data? The federal government is just too "big". Let's gut it all! Legally or otherwise!

Much more on all of this --- and some of the heroes (even Trump-appointed ones!) trying to block and/or call attention to the worst of it --- on today's program, as culled from, among others, some of the following source material...

• AP: Delta jet flips upside down on a snowy Toronto runway and all 80 aboard survive
• Rolling Stone: FAA Employees Say Trump and Musk's Firings Are Dangerous
• AP: Trump fires FAA air traffic control staff, just weeks after DC crash
• NYT: Adams's Lead Prosecutor Quits Defiantly: 'It Was Never Going to Be Me'
• WaPo: Mass resignation marks a new kind of defiance in the second Trump era
• WaPo: High-ranking D.C. federal prosecutor resigns in protest
• WaPo: Musk's DOGE seeks access to personal taxpayer data, raising alarm at IRS
• WaPo: Top Social Security official exits after clash with Musk's DOGE over data
• NBC: Department of Homeland Security preparing to fire hundreds of senior leaders this week
• Bloomberg: US Health Department Layoffs Expand to Medicare, FDA
• NBC: CDC 'disease detectors' among hundreds fired as Trump administration ramps up agency cuts
• Politico: Mass firings continue across nation's health agencies
• Guardian: NOAA imposes limits on scientists, sparking concerns over global forecasts
• The Hill: EPA fires nearly 400 workers after OPM order
• The Hill: EPA puts employees who tackle pollution in overburdened communities on leave
• The Hill: National Science Foundation cuts 10 percent of staff
• Wired: National Science Foundation Fires 168 Workers as Federal Purge Continues
• AP: Trump's firing of 1,000 national park workers raises concerns about maintenance and operating hours
• SF Chronicle: Yosemite halts camping reservations, with no timetable for their return
• Fox 13 Utah: 'Crisis' at Zion as mandated job cuts hit popular national park
• Reuters: USDA probationary staff fired at three agencies, sources say
• NBC: USDA says it accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is trying to rehire them
• The Oregonian: At least 600 workers to leave Bonneville Power Administration, spurring concerns about transmission grid
• CNN: Hundreds of FAA probationary workers fired by Trump administration, union says
• AP: Trump wants states to 'clean up forests' to stop wildfires but he cuts funds

Other than that, slow news day.

Also, on similar notes, we close today with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, as the costs of our climate crisis continue to mount in from coast to coast in recent days; Trump's FEMA is already denying critical disaster aid; and the Administration is desperately trying to find fired Dept. of Energy workers after figuring out that they were the ones who safeguarded the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile...

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