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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Iran War energy crisis deepens global poverty while Big Oil rakes in big profits; France and Britain enact new policies to reduce costly fossil fuel dependence; PLUS: Turns out birds are smart enough to avoid wind turbines, new studies show... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Iran war escalation could trigger global recession, IMF warns; Aftermath: Plastics Clogged in the Persian Gulf; Trouble in paradise as atmospheric rivers drown Hawaii; Communities are waiting on billions in disaster funding from the Trump administration; EPA Zeldin tells climate skeptics to 'celebrate vindication' after repeal of baseline climate rule; Lead still haunts yards in Exide battery recycler cleanup zone ... PLUS: The simple math of the death of LNG ... and much, MUCH more! ...

We pick up today where we left off at the tail end of The BradCast yesterday, as the President of the United States proved once again to the world to be a desperate paper tiger. Turns out (but you knew this), he's also a lousy negotiator and an absurdly incompetent Commander-in-Chief. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get back to the war today, and it's apparent lack of ceasefire(?), some excellent news for small "d" democracy and for Democrats alike here in the Homeland.

Democrat Shawn Harris lost his special election for the U.S. House on Tuesday in Georgia's very "red" 14th Congressional District to Trump-endorsed Clay Fuller by 12 points. Sounds like a landslide! But the GOP victory in the House District previously held by far-right Marjorie Taylor Greene masks a remarkable move toward the Democrats in the most Republican District in the battleground state. In fact, Harris' loss --- a stunning 25-point swing toward the Democratic candidate as compared to Trump's 2024 win in the district --- helps obscure the fact that it was "the most significant overperformance the [Democratic] party has seen across all seven House special elections" since Trump's return to power last year.

Also on Tuesday, Chris Taylor, a liberal, Democratic-supported state judge in Wisconsin, won this year's election for the state Supreme Court by some 20 points, expanding the court's liberal majority to 5 to 2. The margin was extraordinary by any measure, but especially considering the incredibly narrow races for the state high court over much of the past two decades in another battleground state. Not to mention the ironclad majority that Republican-supported Justices previously enjoyed there for so long. No longer, thanks to persistent Democratic leadership in the state and indefatigable voter turnout to reverse the previously dark fortunes of Badger Staters.

It wasn't only those two marquee races on Tuesday where voters registered displeasure with Republicans ahead of this year's critical midterms. Rightwingers were removed from school boards in local elections in a number of states, from Wisconsin to Oklahoma to Missouri!

THEN... It's back to the political front lines in the Middle East, where the tenuous ceasefire Donald Trump proved desperate to claim on Tuesday night --- under terms that wildly appear to favor Iran --- seemed to be falling apart all day on Wednesday. The terms of the deal remain unclear, at best, with both sides reporting different understandings. We try our best to make sense of it all today.

But the bottom line for now is that, even under the most generous interpretation, Trump seems not to have been taken to the cleaners as much as having driven there himself.

Iran is already insisting that the U.S. has violated the agreement, and says it will not open up the Strait of Hormuz, even as the Trump Administration was claiming that it was open and declaring "victory" on Wednesday, as the stock market appeared to play along for the day.

But even by my best understanding of the terms of the ceasefire negotiations, it appears that Iran will end up with much much more than they had before Trump decided to start a war with them, and the U.S. will have much less than they started with. By way of comparison to what the U.S. had before Trump tore up the Obama-era nuclear agreement with Iran, the entire world will also have much less than before the great deal maker destroyed the delicate power balances in the Middle East faster than he was able bankrupt an Atlantic City casino.

We're joined today to help us make sense out of the chaos by the incredibly knowledgeable and clear-spoken NICOLAS GROSSMAN, International Relations professor and national security expert at the University of Illinois. Last week he argued at his Arc Digital newsletter and at MS NOW that there was "No Off Ramp in Sight".

So, do we now have an off ramp after all? Probably not, argues Grossman. "This problem is really not going away," he says. "Already the war itself has disrupted a lot of global energy supplies. Iran is still choking traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. If they are charging, they will get a ton of revenue for this. All of that is ongoing, and all of that continues to be America's problem. Because it will affect the global economy, the American economy, make the prices of everything higher, and we should probably expect more of that."

"To the extent that Trump took an off-ramp, it was basically by surrendering," asserts Grossman, who argues that, "if we go by what the Pakistani mediators say the US had agreed to, it would be almost a total American surrender, giving Iranians everything they want, getting nothing the US wanted, and leaving the United States in a decently weaker geostrategic position than before the war started."

We cover a lot of territory with Grossman today, including how crippling sanctions against Iran have now been lifted and how they now not only control the Strait, but may be allowed to charge $2 million a pop for passage --- none of which they had prior to the war. All as part of an agreement which currently says nothing at all about restrictions on their missile, drone, or even nuclear programs.

Grossman makes a lot of excellent points. But one, I think, is worth putting up front here: that toll being placed by Iran on ships going in and out of the Strait. If that is allowed to become the practice, "it would amount to something like $100 billion a year" for Iran, he explains. That is an amount larger than their current annual government budget.

"If we think back to the Obama nuclear deal," Grossman continues, which "did actually restrict Iran's nuclear program," Trump and Republicans have spent years accusing Obama of "sending 'pallets of cash' to the Iranians." The cash that was sent, as part of the careful agreements, was actually Iranian funds they had spent for airplane parts prior to the 1979 revolution, for parts they never received. It was their money. In any event, as Grossman notes, "that total value was $1.7 billion, and it was returning frozen funds, returning Iran's own money to them. One payment of $1.7 billion is a lot less than $100 billion every year," as Trump's ceasefire agreement would appear to allow the Iranians to collect in order to reopen transnational shipping of a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas supply.

The art of the deal.

Tune in for much more today...

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Now is the time that the nation and the world really need our corporate media to rise to the occasion. I suspect they won't. But we try to do our part as best as we can on today's (and every day's!) BradCast. [Audio link to full show is below this summary.]

Here's a quick description and some of the source material referenced in today's lollapalooza of a program...

• Corporate media are failing to meet the moment, failing to cover Donald Trump's disastrous War on Iran for the generational calamity that it is.

• They have also long failed to meet the moment in covering our climate crisis, which is set to wreak havoc and smash records across much of the country as we move into next week. Heat records in the West, blizzards in the North, and likely tornadoes in between. All part of the climate changed mess that Trump is ignoring --- and making worse --- every single day now.

• After Trump killed Mojtaba Khamenei's wife and father --- and more than 150 school girls --- on the first day of the war, Iran's new Supreme Leader vows vengeance, including the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz now roiling global markets and spiking the price of oil, as well as on "other fronts in which the enemy has little experience and would be highly vulnerable."

• One of those "other fronts" could, I suppose, be the Trump FBI's irresponsibly reported and "unverified" claim (a word that ABC News left out of its initial reporting!) that "Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California." Of course, if there were any truth to an imminent drone attack, it would be regrettable, to say the least, that FBI Director Kash Patel fired a whole bunch of the folks leading the Bureau's highly experienced Iran counterintelligence team just days before Trump launched his new war.

• It is also regrettable that, just yesterday, Republicans in the U.S. Senate blocked a bill by Democrats to reopen every single agency in the Dept. of Homeland Security other than ICE and CPB, as the White House continues to block any guardrails against the thuggery (and murders of American citizens!) by the nation's immigration law enforcement officials. The nearly month-long shutdown of DHS means that the U.S. Coast Guard is currently unfunded. That seems a bad idea if there is REALLY a concern about drone attacks by "an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States homeland."

• It is similarly regrettable that Republicans refuse to fund DHS and the nation's cybersecurity watchdog along with it --- the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is also shut down during the DHS funding fight. This week we have seen the first major attack by a hacker group tied to the Iranian Intelligence Ministry since the start of the war. The attack against Stryker, a medical equipment and technology firm in Michigan, has reportedly wiped out and stolen data from tens of thousands of telephones and other networked devices at the company this week.

• But the most regrettable of all may be that, just prior to Trump's attack against Iran's nuclear energy facilities last June, Iran is believed to have removed about a 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60% of what would be needed to create a nuclear bomb, and 10,000 pounds of uranium enriched from 2 to 5%. All of it reportedly evacuated from the facilities in small, SCUBA-sized tanks and potentially now available to be used anywhere for anything Iran may want, including dirty bombs detonated by either them or any of their many proxy militias in the region.

  This enriched uranium was made possible by Trump's decision to unlawfully tear up the Obama-era anti-nuclear agreement with Iran that, by all measures, was working and had previously preventing the sort of enrichment that occurred after Trump ended it.

  That is just one of the reasons why University of Chicago's veteran international security and terrorism expert Robert Pape, author of "Escalation Trap", asked last night on MS NOW when discussing the likelihood of Trump needing to put American boots on the ground in Iran: "How else would you even try to get this enriched uranium? How are we gonna find that 10,000 pounds? That 1,000 pounds? When they could be in SCUBA tanks [in] a territory two and a half times the size of Texas?"

  "This is just a disaster in the making," he warned, adding: "I think we're probably only at the beginning of the disaster as it unfolds."

• Finally, speaking of disasters in the making...Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the price of oil skyrockets and our climate disaster continues with record heat melting California's snowpack and the rate of simultaneous heat waves and droughts having increased significantly thanks to global warming...

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Donald Trump's disastrous War on Iran continues to wreak global havoc on today's BradCast, with no apparent end in sight. Though election news from Tuesday continues to offer at least a ray of hope. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

FIRST UP TODAY... the election news. Mississippi held its statewide midterm primary elections on Tuesday with no real surprises. The more interesting news comes out of two Special Elections in other states yesterday.

In Georgia's very MAGA 14th Congressional District, the Special Election primary to fill the seat left vacant by Marjorie Taylor Greene's January retirement following her split with Trump, offered some tantalizing results. It was a 14-person "jungle primary", with all candidates from all parties running for the top two slots. If nobody wins more than 50%, those two go on to the Special runoff on April 7.

On Tuesday night, Democratic candidate Shawn Harris, a cattle farmer and retired brigadier general, reportedly came out on top of the field with a bit more than 37% of the vote. Trump-endorsed Clayton Fuller came in with just under 35%, though he was largely battling fellow MAGA candidate Colton Moore, who took just over 11%. So the Republican front-runner had some actual competition from his own team, whereas Harris largely got a free ride, at least from Dems, to next month's runoff. Interestingly, however, Democrats in the contest received about 40% of the overall vote, cutting into Trump's 37-point victory in the District's 2024 Presidential race by some 17 points!

But the overperformance by the Democratic candidate in a Special Election for the New Hampshire state House on Tuesday --- in a Trump+9 District --- is being described today as "stunning" and a "major upset" for Democrats in NH's very very Republican 7th state House District. The 13-point overperformance for the Democrat became the tenth R-to-D flip in a Special Election for a state legislature since Trump's second term began, and the third one this year alone. The GOP has seen exactly zero such flips from D-to-R over that same period.

Also today, County Commissioners in Tarrant County (Fort Worth), Texas this week heard from poll workers with serious concerns about the County's 100% unverifiable computerized Ballot Marking Device systems made by Hart-Intercivic following apparent machine failures at the polls during the Lone Star state's March 3rd primary. Longtime pollworkers are hoping to see the computer systems replaced by a hand-marked paper ballot system before this November.

THEN... it's back to the nearly two-week old, but seemingly endless --- and clearly pointless --- War in Iran. This week, Iran has predictably shutdown all shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where 20 to 30% of the world's oil and natural gas transits out of the Persian Gulf every day. In response, as oil prices spike along with gasoline prices, the White House is attempting to convince Americans that "short-term pain is necessary for long-term gain." The White House originally said it, and their friendly GOP propaganda outlets are now endlessly repeating the phrase, without ever actually explaining what that "long-term gain" might be or how we actually get there.

We're joined today by Roosevelt University political scientist DAVID FARIS, author of, among other things, several books on Middle Eastern politics, to discuss both the foreign and domestic implications of this disastrous move by the U.S. Administration.

"This has become an existential conflict for Iran," observes a gobsmacked Faris. "And because it's an existential conflict, they are doing everything that they can to keep shipping from getting through the Strait of Hormuz. It is unbelievable that people in the Trump Administration did not know or did not believe that this could happen. It's astonishing."

Faris says he has been having "terrible flashbacks to the early 2000s" amid all of this, remembering how the Bush Administration at the time simply ignored experts who warned "This is a bad idea. Don't do this!," before the Administration kicked off several disastrous wars of choice in the region anyway.

In Trump's case, argues Faris, "He's relying on a handful of sycophants in his administration, people without any expertise in the region. He's being led by the nose, I think, by people that have wanted to do this for a long time. And who very arrogantly thought that killing the Supreme Leader would set off a chain of events that would either lead to the regime collapsing or a transfer of authority within the regime to someone more friendly to the Trump Administration."

"The fact that they thought that in the first place is, in itself, evidence that they are not being advised by anyone with any kind of meaningful expertise about this region, or about Iran in particular. That is really scary to me, because we are all on this plane."

Beyond the "short-term disruption" of oil price spikes and potential global recession, he warns, if Trump didn't foresee those dangers, it's unlikely he saw the potentially nuclear ones that could come amid a full blown civil war in Iran or, worse, a "proliferation cascade" in which the lesson for countries in the region is simply to go nuclear.

"There's lesson after lesson after lesson that says to countries that are worried about their security or worried about the United States bombing or invading them or overthrowing their regime, that the only way to prevent that from happening for sure is to get a nuclear weapon," he observes, citing ironic potential fallout following a war that was, at least in theory, partially meant to prevent Iran from weaponizing it's own nuclear energy program.

As to the promise of the "long-term gain" Republicans now tout, with little if any detail when arguing that Americans must now be willing to "sacrifice"? Faris has no idea what that "gain" might be.

"It's unclear because they don't know," he says. "There's no way to communicate the stakes to the American people if you, yourself, don't have a strategic goal in mind, don't have a sense of what the fallout or the consequences might be. You're obviously not going to be able to prepare the American people to make sacrifices for that thing. The American people rightly perceived that there was no imminent threat to American national security from Iran. So this whole episode feels like it came out of nowhere."

Which, of course, it did. Unless you count the need to cover-up the damaging allegations against Trump from the Epstein Files as "somewhere". But, Faris also explains that all of this comes with an electoral price in November. If you don't like this war, "you know who to blame. Trump started this war [and] it's going to get worse the longer this goes on."

Tune in for much more on all of this, including the good Professor's explanation of why, if the U.S. is supposedly "energy independent" now, as Republicans like to claim, gas prices in the U.S. are skyrocketing anyway...

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Okay. It's not called "Operation Epstein Fury". It's called "Operation Epic Fury". But who's kidding who here? Here we ago again. Today on The BradCast, another unlawful foreign regime change war by the U.S. is now underway in the Middle East. In this case, launched by a President who ran for office, lying over and over again that he was against such wars. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

As usual, tune in for much much more. But, among the many points made and news shared today before we get to callers ringing in on Donald Trump's new war on Iran in the second half the show...

• Yes, J.D. Vance really wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in 2023 headlined: "Trump's Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars" with the sub-hed: "He has my support in 2024 because I know he won't recklessly send Americans to fight overseas."

• Yes, Stephen Miller actually tweeted just 4 days before the November 2024 President election: "To anyone still gullible enough to fall for scummy media hoaxes: Trump said warmongering neocons love sending your kids to die for wars they would never fight themselves. Liz Cheney is Kamala's top advisor. Liz wants to invade the whole Middle East. Kamala = WWIII. Trump = Peace."

• Yes, Donald Trump really did spend years decrying "stupid" U.S. Presidents who spent "$8 trillion" on wars in the Middle East instead of building roads and bridges and schools and hospitals in the U.S. He really did say, over and over, in 2011 that "in order to get elected @BarackObama will start a war with Iran". He really did say in 2012 that Obama would "attack Iran in order to get re-elected," and "Now that Obama's Poll numbers are in a tailspin, watch him start a war with Iran. He's desperate." That Obama would have to do so to "save face", and Trump really did declare in 2013: "Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly --- not skilled!" [Emphasis added.]

• For the record, Barack Obama never did attack Iran. But he did negotiate a deal with Iran and other major countries to successfully prevent Iran from being able to obtain a nuclear weapon, an agreement that Trump unlawfully violated and ripped up after taking office. He's been begging Iran to strike a new deal ever since. But now his polls are in a tailspin. He is trying to save face, and, because of his inability to negotiate properly, he is (unlawfully and without Constitutional or Congressional authorization) choosing to spend billions on another foreign interventionist war instead of fixing roads and bridges and hospitals and schools in the U.S.

• In fact, Trump is apparently now bombing schools and hospitals in Iran, killing nearly two hundred school girls on the first weekend of his latest misadventure, as six U.S. service members have so far been announced killed and three of our F-15s have been shot out of the sky over Kuwait, with the crews, thankfully, ejecting safely.

• So far, 555 Iranians have reportedly been killed, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society. At least 11 people have been killed in Israel.

• The Supreme Leader of Iran, 86-year old Ayatollah Ali Khamanei has been killed. But the attack on Khamanei was "so successful," according to Trump, that, apparently, so were the preferred choices of the U.S. to replace him. So, now what?

• Why does Trump say he bombed Iran? Well, he seems to be making up new reasons every few hours since ordering the first bombs on Saturday morning along with Israel. To prevent an imminent attack on the U.S. by Iran? Well, that can't be. Nobody believes they have the intercontinental missiles to do that. So, he's already in violation of both U.S. and international law. To prevent them from restarting the nuclear program he claimed to have "completely obliterated" when he previously attacked Iran just eight months ago? To stop terror attacks by Iran-funded militias in the Middle East? We discuss all of the above. But he certainly didn't bomb Iran to distract media attention from his dreadful and getting-dreadful-er approval ratings as the midterm primaries are now under way, right? Certainly not as a distraction from the fact that his DOJ has been caught red-handed unlawfully covering up the release of very serious allegations by a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein that she was also raped by Trump when she was just 13-years old, right?

• As you can tell, we've got a lot to discuss today. And a lot of callers in the second half of the show who want to join in on the conversation. I hope you'll tune in...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welp. That sounds like Trump.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We've got a lot to get to on today's BradCast. While much of our coverage may seem like a grab bag from the headlines above, you'll find there is a central theme at its heart. I think. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• We begin with the darkest news, so things can only get brighter from there, right? The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, keepers of the notorious "Doomsday Clock" reveal their latest adjustment, ticking the metaphorical timepiece from last year's 89 seconds to midnight, to just 85 seconds to humanity's end this year. The group of science advocates cited increasing risk of nuclear warfare, worsening human-caused climate change (Donald Trump was singled out there) and other threats to civilization itself, such as the misuse of biotechnology and artificial intelligence.

• Buffoonish, Nazi-ish U.S. Customs and Border Patrol chief enforcement clown, Gregory Bovino, is pushed out following the latest killing of another U.S. citizen over the weekend in his violent, chaotic Minneapolis operation. New villains are rotated in by the White House, even as Trump appears to try and play nice with his mortal enemies, Minnesota's Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

• But there are even more signs that the courageous people of Minneapolis are winning this one, even if the battle is far from over. The chief federal judge in Minnesota (a George W. Bush appointee) has ordered in-person testimony from the Acting Director of ICE, after the Administration has repeatedly failed to comply with court orders regarding immigrant rights. The judge has ordered him to explain why he should not be held in contempt by the court.

• Trump's corrupt U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's thuggish letter to Minnesota's Gov. Walz --- sent to the state just after the border patrol agent execution of 37-year old VA ICU nurse and U.S. citizen Alex Pretti over the weekend --- landed with a thud, after she essentially suggested the federal immigration crackdown would end only if the state turned over its voter roll data to the federal government. Voting rights and election law experts described the move as "reprehensible". Bondi has sued some 23 states who refused to comply with the demand. Two weeks ago, a federal judge in California dismissed the DOJ's lawsuit against the state, finding it "unprecedented and illegal". Last week, a judge in Georgia dismissed the lawsuit in the Peach State. And yesterday, a federal judge in Oregon dismissed the DOJ's suit there. In the meantime, MN Sec. of State Steve Simon has explained that he has no intention of violating state or federal law to answer Bondi's "ransom note".

• As we covered last week, a recent federal review of nearly 50 million voter registrations found zero evidence of widespread fraud by noncitizens on the voter rolls in state after state, county after county. In a new report late last week, out of more than two million active voter registrations in Utah, the state was able to find just one single noncitizen on its rolls. The state found that the person never voted and has since been removed from the rolls. Utah is another state that has correctly refused to turn over its unredacted voter data to Bondi and the DOJ.

• In news from the front lines of the Trump/GOP Gerrymandering Wars, Democrats in Maryland are now moving ahead with a plan to draw a new map designed to flip the state's last remaining Republican U.S. House district from "red" to "blue". And a state judge in Virginia, just before airtime today, declared the effort by state Democrats to adopt a constitutional amendment to redraw its U.S. House map to flip as many as 4 or 5 seats from "red" to "blue" this year to be unlawful. Proponents of the measure accuse Republican opponents as forum shopping for a friendly judge and vow to appeal his ruling.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report following the weekend's deadly winter storm across much of the U.S.; as House Republicans vote to overturn a decades-long ban on toxic mining in MN; as Michigan's Attorney General sues the Big Oil "cartel"; and as a judge blocks Trump's attempt to withhold funding for a national EV charging network adopted by Democrats under President Biden...

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On today's BradCast: For a guy who believes he's a strongman, or wants to be one --- in a nation where too many have fallen for that idea as well --- the President, with each passing day, is revealing himself to be incredibly weak. Even his own supporters have noticed, and are finally beginning to turn away from him in all of the swing states and even in some of the so-called "reddest" states! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Yes, he's still causing a lot of pain for a lot of people. He'll continue to cruelly do so as long as he can. But don't fall for his tough guy act. He continues to be a wannabe strongman, even while he's failing on virtually every front. We make the case on today's program, along with the latest news and coverage of several under-the-radar issues and contests on next Tuesday's off-year election ballot.

Among the evidence from which we draw today...

• Tough guy Donald Trump calls for the U.S. "Department of War" to resume testing nuclear weapons just minutes before meeting with China's actual strongman President Xi Jinping last night. Just about every point Trump made in his social media announcement on nuclear weapons was false, leaving actual expert in this field completely confused. (And then Xi, like so many other world leaders who have figured out how easy it is to play Trump, went on to eat his lunch. Trump didn't even notice.)

• "What If Trump Is Weaker Than We Think"”and America's Finally Figuring It Out?", muses our friend Thom Hartmann, as Trump's previously ironclad grip on Republicans in Congress begins to reveal numerous cracks in both chambers. "It's just a matter of time," Thom correctly concludes.

• Michigan's Democratic state Senate Majority Whip and 2026 U.S. Senate Candidate, Mallory McMorrow, calls out the Administration for choosing to violate the law by "using food as a political weapon" in cutting off money allocated by Congress to fund payments to some 42 million Americans on SNAP. The threat to starve Americans, beginning on November 1, is supposedly due to the federal government shutdown that our very weak President appears both uninterested and unable to do anything about. Late today, a federal judge suggested she was likely to order the Administration to follow the law by using emergency contingency funds to keep SNAP going as November begins.

• Trump's national approval numbers are beginning to fall again, to all time lows, following a brief and tiny uptick on the heels of the faltering Israel/Hamas agreement. He continues to have the lowest approval numbers for any President in modern history at this point in his term. So, naturally, he is lying about that to media in hopes they will dutifully report his fake news. For example, on Air Force One this week, he lied to the press gaggle: "I have the best numbers for any President in many years, any President!" Nice try, weakman.

• But where his plunging approval ratings are really beginning to leave a mark are in 12 states that voted in his favor last year, where new polling now shows him underwater in all of them! The states where he enjoys negative ratings after winning them last year include every single battleground state (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) as well as five states where he easily won less than one year ago. His approval ratings are now underwater in Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Texas! In all of those states he's plunged in approval by an average of about 15 percentage points since last November. Does that sound like a strongman to you?

• We'll see if voters agree with the argument in next week's off-year elections, as important contests and ballot issues loom in New York City, New Jersey, Virginia and California. But there are also some under-the-radar races elsewhere, several of which we detail today in advance of Tuesday's Election Day, including Republican efforts to make voting more difficult (for certain people) in both Texas and Maine, and a Hail Mary effort by Republicans to try and somehow win a majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in time for the 2028 Presidential election.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the deadly, record-breaking, climate change-fueled Hurricane Melissa continues to wreak havoc in the Caribbean as it begins to peter out in strength during its move into the colder North Atlantic. Oh, and bad news for Iceland, just to add a bite to the end of today's program...

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We pick up on today's BradCast with several new developments in stories we covered on yesterday's show plus much more, thanks to another insane day in Trump World. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• On yesterday's show, we spoke with former DOJ Public Corruption chief Randall Eliason about reporting over the weekend, confirmed by multiple outlets, that Donald Trump's so-called "Border Czar", Tom Homan, accepted $50,000 in cash inside of a takeout food bag last year in exchange for a promise to "facilitate" future contracts if Trump won the election. According to internal DOJ documents and multiple sources at each outlet, Homan was caught on tape receiving the money from undercover law enforcement agents posing as businessmen. But after Trump took office, the bribery probe into Homan was summarily dropped by Trump associates leading the FBI and DOJ, on the supposed basis that no crimes were committed by Homan in the payoffs during the investigation begun during the Biden Administration.

  But, by last night, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took the DOJ denials a step further, claiming that Homan "never took the $50,000." That denial was not made by the DOJ when the story was first reported over the weekend. And even Homan himself, when asked about all of this on Fox "News" last night, didn't make that claim. Here merely said "I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal." Tune in for the full update on that wild story, before it disappears into the Trump news cycle ether. (Though Congressional Dems, to their credit, are trying to prevent that from happening.)

• In another follow-up to another story we covered, if only briefly, yesterday... The news broke just before airtime that Disney/ABC announced Jimmy Kimmel's late night show would be returning to air on Tuesday, after it had been "indefinitely" sidelined last week following threats by Trump's sleazy FCC Chair Brendan Carr to rescind broadcast licenses from local affiliates who carried the show. The wildly inappropriate, unprecedented (and perhaps unlawful?) threats from Carr (and Trump) came after they decided they didn't like a fairly benign (and accurate) remark that Kimmel made on his show last week regarding the assassination of far-right Republican activist Charlie Kirk. The decision by Disney to bring Kimmel back was clearly based on massive public opprobrium, including massive cancellations of Disney's streaming services, etc.

  That good news, however, was tempered last night by an announcement from local station conglomerate Sinclair, declaring they would be pre-empting Kimmel's how with news programming. Broadcast behemoth Nexstar joined Sinclair on Tuesday, meaning that tens of millions of Americans in dozens of major markets will still be unable to watch Jimmy Kimmel Live! Both of those corporate conglomerates --- which own dozens of local stations all over the country (even if most Americans don't even realize it) have major mergers pending before Trump's corrupted FCC. So this very public fight, with serious First Amendment implications, will apparently continue. That, explains Josh Marshall today, is not necessarily a bad thing.

• Our twisted President rambled for nearly an hour today to the U.N. General Assembly in New York. It was as insane as you might have imagined, only more so. From lies about his domestic accomplishments during his second term, to lies about his having "ended seven wars", to threats to the world's nations regarding migration, energy and climate change, about which he took particularly hilarious zeal in lying about in virtually every aspect, describing it as a "con", a "scam" and a "hoax". Desi Doyen helps us debunk just some of the most obnoxious lies from Trump at the U.N. on Tuesday. And, as also discussed: Please wary of the claims reported late today that Trump has somehow flipped his position on Russia's war on Ukraine.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with both good and bad news for the world's oceans; and a report on the disbanding of a climate change denier group recently convened by Trump's Dept. of Energy to help lie about climate science...

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The Trump Administration is at war against science (and reality) on at least two different fronts, both of which we dig into on today's BradCast. One is the Administration's War on the Science of Public Health, the other is the ongoing War on Climate Science. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

We begin with Administration's full-frontal attacks on public health, as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., testified before a U.S. Senate Committee today, facing tough questions from Democrats and even a few Republicans. Some of the colloquies turned into shouting matches.

Kennedy's years-long personal war against life-saving vaccines --- including the COVID vaccine --- often took center stage throughout the three-hour proceeding. But things had gone off the rails long before he showed up to take several verbal beatings today. Among some of the context for today's hearing: An anti-vax gunman shot up the CDC in early August; Kennedy's cancellation of half a billion dollars in research grants for new mRNA vaccines of the type that helped get us out of the COVID pandemic and could offer cures for cancer and other diseases; His firing of the CDC Director last week, less than a month into her tenure because, as she claims in an op-ed today, she refused to follow Kennedy's demand to "preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric".

Add to that, the state of Florida's announcement this week by its loony Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, that it is lifting all vaccine mandates for school children, including for measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, tetanus and polio. Ladapo compares vaccine mandates for school children to slavery. As one elected official in Florida said in response: "This is a public health disaster in the making for the Sunshine State." Unfortunately, as our guest today seems to concur, the entire nation is now facing the possibility of a similar public health disaster under the second Trump term.

We're joined today for a thoughtful discussion on all of this and more by DR. TYLER EVANS, infectious disease and public health expert and former Chief Medical Officer for New York City amid its COVID-19 response. Evans is now CEO and co-founder of the Wellness and Equity Alliance and author of the new book, Pandemics, Poverty, and Politics: Decoding the social and political drivers of pandemics from Plague to COVID-19.

It's impossible to adequately summarize our wide-ranging conversation, but I will share a few brief quotes...

• On RFK Jr.: "At this point, effectively every trusted and established or distinguished organization around infectious disease and public health are essentially demanding his resignation. Time is up. His answers are circular logic. They're definitely not based in science. And the more he talks --- particularly for folks who really understand the science --- it's like nails on a chalkboard for us."

• On the effect of vaccine conspiracy theories on public health: "If somebody is in the emergency room and you hear two doctors actively arguing about somebody's diagnosis and treatment, how do think that's going to make the patient feel? ... What we're seeing right now with RFK is doing exactly that. His intent is clearly to disrupt as much of the science as well as the implementation of science in public health as much as he possibly can."

• On the politicization of public health: "It doesn't matter if it's a blue or red city, state. At the end of the day, microbes, or other pathogens, or environmental stressors don't understand the difference between red and blue. It's all humans to them. We really need to depoliticize public health. ... We are politicizing everything about public health [and] now it's getting worse."

• On RFK's defunding of mRNA research: "At this point, we have millions of data points demonstrating it is incredibly safe. The mRNA literally is the most effective vaccine against COVID-19. So these claims that somehow they're not effective, or unsafe, are just patently untrue. They're just completely made up. ... This guy is just completely making stuff up. The defunding of the science behind advancing further mRNA vaccines just hurts all Americans."

Evans has much more on all of the above today, as well as on lessons he learned during the worst of the COVID pandemic in NYC; his personal experiences responding to viral outbreaks, like Ebola, around the world; the importance of a competent federal government during an historic pandemic; the lunatic that Florida has installed as its top public health official and more. "If we are removing vaccination mandates, particularly for kids, it is probably one of the most disastrous things we could ever do, from a public health standpoint," says Evans about the cancellation of vaccine mandates in the Sunshine State.

We ran longer than expected with Evans (though it was well worth it), but we still had a few minutes left today for Desi Doyen to take on Donald Trump's latest escalation in his War against Climate Science and specifically on cheap, clean, renewable, abundant wind and solar energy. All of that before closing with our latest Green News Report on new California wildfires; the deadly landslide in war-torn Sudan; and dozens of climate scientists taking on the Trump Administration's absurd "report" by five prominent climate science deniers meant to serve as the basis for the Administration's cancellation of hundreds of billions of dollars in critical climate change initiatives...

Yes, it's a very busy BradCast today...

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

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

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

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

News is coming in from every direction on today's BradCast, though there does seem to be a recurring theme throughout: a wholly corrupt Presidency. [Audio link to today's show follows this summary.]

Among today's delights...

• In the wake of another mass shooting yesterday in New York City, a Reuters exclusive finds the Trump Administration's Dept. of Justice cancelled tens of millions of dollars in gun violence prevention grants last April, as established in 2022 under Joe Biden via the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The DOJ has also cancelled tens of billions of dollars in grants for mental health programs. Thoughts and prayers are largely all that remain.

• Remember that tricked-out, $400+ million flying palace jumbo jet bribe that Donald Trump accepted (in violation of the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause) from Qatar to use as a "free" Air Force One? Looks like that "free" plane --- which Trump plans to keep for himself after leaving office --- is costing U.S. tax-payers about a billion dollars to ready for His Majesty's use. And it looks like Trump is now stealing that money from funding previously appropriated for maintaining and updating America's dilapidated Cold War-era intercontinental nuclear ballistic missile stockpile.

• Senate Republicans this week are fast-tracking approval of a lifetime appointment for Donald Trump's personal criminal defense attorney turned senior DOJ official, Emil Bove, to become a federal appeals court judge. That, after a third whistleblower came forward this week with yet more evidence regarding Bove's corruption at DOJ, including dismissal of corruption charges against the NYC Mayor, and Bove's instruction to DOJ prosecutors to violate court orders if necessary to advance Trump's unlawful mass deportation agenda. [Update: After airtime, just as I was getting ready to hit publish here, despite whistleblowers and scores of former judges warning against his appointment, Senate Republicans confirmed Bove for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.]

• The great satirical song writer Tom Lehrer died this week at the age of 97. We take the opportunity to enjoy a momentary respite from the rest of the day's madness to enjoy a couple of his wildly clever --- and often still timely --- tunes today.

• Today, just as Project 2025 called for, Trump's EPA Chief Lee Zeldin officially submitted a corrupt proposal to the White House for overturning the EPA's landmark 2009 "endangerment finding". The 2009 scientific finding currently serves as the legal underpinning for virtually all federal regulations meant to curb the greenhouse gasses that are warming the atmosphere at an alarming pace and creating deadly climate chaos. This is a very big deal, as we discuss today. Though I'm hoping to get into more of the legal ramifications of this move on tomorrow's program.

• Finally, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report documenting just some of the latest deadly effects around the world hastened by the unfettered burning of fossil fuels and the endangerment it causes the public, thanks to emission of climate warming gasses such as CO2 and methane. Oh, and Donald Trump (because he believes they mess up the view from his golf courses) is killing both clean, renewable wind energy projects and the tens of thousands of jobs that go with them...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Massive algae bloom and marine heat wave are decimating South Australia's coast and fisheries; Iran grapples with water crisis and extreme heat; Wind-driven wildfires force evacuations in Greece, Turkey; PLUS: Donald Trump's irrational hatred of wind energy is killing jobs across the U.S.... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump Environmental Protection Agency moves to repeal finding that allows climate regulation; Cheap Tricks for Hard Problems: Picking up nickels in front of the climate steamroller; Black women fight for life in Houston's most toxic neighborhood; As Trump shrinks FEMA, local emergency managers say they're barely getting by; Fishing groups push to delay protections for endangered right whale to 2035... PLUS: The Drying Planet: New data shows huge swaths of land across the globe are quickly drying... and much, MUCH more! ...