A study in contrasts across two different U.S. wars in the Persian Gulf, and shadows of accountability emerge into view on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST UP... It has arguably taken far too long, but this week it became final. John Eastman, the sleazy attorney who helped conjure up much of Donald Trump's bonkers "legal" argument for stealing the 2020 electoral college vote in Congress on January 6, 2021, no longer has a license to practice law in his home state of California. He is officially disbarred after the state Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal this week. The disgraced former lawyer, a speaker at Trump's insurrectionist rally in front of the White House on January 6, now vows to challenge the California State Bar's final ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. Good luck with that, John.

Also today, hints of somewhat more timely accountability in Minnesota, as an ICE agent is charged with assault under state law for pointing a gun at motorists from his unmarked car during Trump's so-called Operation Metro Surge immigration offensive in Minneapolis. The case will be a test of whether state charges may be brought against federal agents by state officials. Prosecutors say they are still investigating at least 18 more related cases in the Twin Cities region following the ICE shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti earlier this year.

NEXT... We're joined today by former U.S. Army Captain, former lifelong Republican and attorney KEITH BARBER, who now writes frequently at the progressive Daily Kos website as "KeithDB".

More than 30 years ago, Barber penned a 39-page article for the Fall, 1994 volume of the Military Law Review (pp. 235-274), examining evidence behind allegations of war crimes then made by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark against the U.S. during the first Gulf War under President George HW Bush.

Barber, at the time, found that Clark's evidence of widespread war crimes failed to hold up to legal scrutiny. Last week, with few changes to International Law over the past three decades in regard to such crimes, he compared similar allegations regarding the lawfulness of Donald Trump's war in Iran.

His original article for the Military Law Review was titled "No Fire This Time: False Accusations of American War Crimes In The Persian Gulf." His follow-up last week: "The Real Fire This Time: American War Crimes In the Iran War".

The two headlines tell the tale, but we walk through --- as Barber does in his recent piece --- the central allegations of whether the two different offensives were considered lawful under International Law, and whether the conduct of each meets established legal principles of discrimination and proportionality. (Don't worry, we explain what all of that means.)

Also of note during our conversation, Barber's thoughts on whether the change in his personal political leanings may have colored his findings, either then or now, and about whether the Military Law Review would have published his findings had they come to a different conclusion 30 years ago. Tune in for some revealing answers in a sobering discussion today on those points and more.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen is in da house for our latest Green News Report as Big Oil continues to reap billions from Trump's war in Iran; Extreme weather slams U.S. slands in the western Pacific; and fossil-fuel loving candidates are ousted by voters from the nation's largest public utility board in Arizona, in favor of pro-renewable energy candidates, thanks, ironically enough, to the rightwing Turning Point outfit!...

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Article Categories: Election Irregularities, California, Iraq War, Arizona, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Iran, United Nations, Accountability, Minnesota, Bush Legacy, KPFK, Donald Trump, Oil, Climate change, Extreme weather, BradCast, Election 2020, ICE, Insurrection, John Eastman, Int'l Criminal Court, Election 2026, Int'l Court of Justice

Plenty --- far too much --- to get angry about on today's BradCast. Though we do find a bit of light among the darkness to help kick things off. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The good news: a federal judge in Indiana has blocked, for now, a law adopted by state Republicans that would have prevented Student IDs from being used as identification for voting purposes. The case to determine the Constitutionality of Indiana's SB10 will continue. But for now, for this year's critical midterm elections, some 40,000 Hoosier students will be able to vote with their IDs, just as they have, without incident, for the past 20 years.

Moreover, what happens in IN regarding Photo ID restrictions on voting doesn't stay in IN. It was a 2008 case out of Marion County, IN which originally opened the door nationally to the use of stricter and stricter, purposely disenfranchising, polling place voter ID laws. Liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the controlling decision, later came to admit that the Court got it wrong. So did the lower District Court Judge who penned the original ruling. So, we'll keep our eyes on this matter. But it is good news for democracy fans for the moment, barring any new surprises from higher courts this year.

In less good news today, Republicans in the U.S. Senate have, for the fourth time, blocked a Democratic resolution to assert Congress's Constitutional power to declare (or prevent) war as Donald Trump's unimaginably ill-considered war in Iran continues. Worse: WaPo reports today that thousands of more ground troops are on now on their way to the region at Trump's command.

THEN... We get to today's really enervating news, though we get there in a way that just might energize you to do something about it!

No matter how the Trump Administration and his U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins are trying to gaslight the public about it, they are, in fact, dismantling the beloved U.S. Forest Service. The plan, officially announced last month, will benefit no one but those who wish to plunder the 193 million acres of our public lands overseen, maintained and protected by the agency for more than 120 years. Despite her rhetoric and lies, Rollins is not clear-cutting the U.S. Forest Service for the good of the American people. The effort is for commercial purposes. To rob Americans of our sacred public lands to the benefit of the extraction industry, from miners to drillers to loggers. And, because it's the Trump Administration naturally, they are doing so unlawfully, the way they do pretty much everything.

We're joined today for a deep dive on all of this by award-winning filmmaker and conservationist JIM PATTIZ of MoreThanJustParks.com. He helped touch off a proverbial five-alarm fire about all of this with his blazing-hot, razor-sharp descriptive demolition of what the Administration is actually hiding under their March 31 announcement that the USDA is moving the Forest Service Headquarters from D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, while shuttering dozens of critical research centers around the country in the bargain.

Don't be fooled, Pattiz explains. This is not meant as "a sweeping restructuring of the agency to move leadership closer to the forests and communities it serves," as the USDA claimed in its press release. It is not "a structural reset and a common-sense approach to improve mission delivery." It is, as Pattiz detailed at Hatch Magazine last week, a scheme to relocate the beloved agency to a state which is currently suing the federal government to take over some 18.5 million acres of public lands, "that wants to own them, stripped of its science, stripped of its regional expertise, stripped of its institutional independence, and reorganized into a structure purpose-built for political compliance."

"This is a coordinated demolition of federal land stewardship in America," he warns. "The Forest Service was the last major federal land agency that still had the institutional muscle to resist. It had the scientists. It had the regional foresters. It had the culture, imperfect as it was, that still believed forests belonged to the public. After today, that agency no longer exists."

The USDA and White House itself have come out with both barrels against Pattiz and his fellow public lands supporters, particularly after he demonstrated this week in his newsletter how relocating the Forest Service headquarters from D.C. is in strict violation of federal laws adopted by both parties in Congress regarding fiscal year 2026!

"The White House called it 'lies from these losers," Pattiz tells me. But it is anything but. Pattiz has the receipts. In fact, he also has the goods regarding how it was Trump officials themselves who lied about their intentions to do exactly what they are now doing during their confirmation hearings in the Senate.

"This will affect somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 employees," says Pattiz, "of a work force that's already lost a fourth of the Forest Service workforce since Trump started his second term --- a critical agency that does most of the wildland firefighting in the United States --- a fourth of that agency gone. And now you're talking about an additional potentially 5,000 employees."

It's hardly just fire fighters. Scientists will be lost as well, along with decades of institutional knowledge with the move to Utah and the shuddering of regional research offices around the country, to be consolidated into one office in Colorado. Knowledge, research and decades-old, ongoing experiments will be lost that can't necessarily simply be restarted the next time a Democrat returns to power. "When you shutter 57 research stations, that is absolutely a 'kill shot' to our research program, which is the envy of the world," says Pattiz. "It's a kill shot."

And it's all being spearheaded by longtime enemies of public lands, such as Utah's Republican Sen. Mike Lee and a new Forest Service Director who was previously a logging executive --- the first time in the agency's 122-year history that its Director was not selected from among those already serving within it. In response to the new chief, Tom Schultz, citing Teddy Roosevelt, renowned defender of public lands, and Gifford Pinchot, who created what would become the Service, in the USDA's announcement about the move to Utah and the gutting of the Service, Pattiz was incensed.

"It makes my blood boil," he tells me today. "It is the antithesis of what the Forest Service is all about. Theodore Roosevelt made a career out of opposing people like Tom Schultz. It's just absurd to hear this logging executive who has inexplicably been installed as the Forest Service chief using the names of Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt, because what they are doing is the anathema of Roosevelt and his legacy."

But it's not over yet. Lawsuits, Pattiz says, are soon to be filed. In the meantime, "the biggest thing people can do is write and call your representatives and senators, and tell them to stick up for the laws that they wrote." The very laws that were adopted on a bipartisan basis, signed by this President, requiring approval from Congress before a massive restructuring (and destruction) of this sort can begin at all. "Contact your representatives. Tell them to hold this Dept. of Agriculture accountable."

There is a lot more from Pattiz, who is really good at explaining all of this, on today's show. You'll be glad you tuned in for it!...

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Article Categories: Election Reform, Indiana, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Iran, Photo ID Laws, Vote Caging/Intimidation/Suppression, KPFK, Donald Trump, BradCast, Public lands, War Powers Act, Mike Lee, USDA, Theodore Roosevelt, Election 2026, Brooke Rollins

On today's BradCast: With voters in Hungary demonstrating on Sunday that the ballot box can be mightier than the autocrat, and with shake-ups in the U.S. House this week and fresh news from the Gerrymandering Wars, it seems a good moment to consider all of this news in light of the critical November midterms. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Also today, some weather and climate news, and an update on paper tiger Trump in the Middle East. Among our stories today...

• As we go to air, the most powerful storm currently on Earth --- and of 2026, so far --- Super Typhoon Sinlaku is slamming tens of thousands of citizens on U.S. territories in the western Pacific Ocean, including the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. The damage may continue for a while, as the devastating storm --- unusual for this early in the year --- slowed down as it reached the islands, potentially resulting in maximum destruction.

• Back here on the mainland, it's a political storm blowing through the U.S. House this week. Following serious sexual assault allegations first reported on Friday, California's Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell resigned from the U.S. House on Tuesday. He may now also be facing a criminal probe following a fifth woman stepping forward today with still more disturbing accusations. His resignation was followed shortly after by the resignation of Texas Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, whose affair with a married staffer lead to her suicide. While the allegations against Gonzalez have been known for some time, it was only after Swalwell's announcement that he was stepping down on Monday (facing threats of expulsion) that the Texas Rep. agreed to leave as well, safeguarding the GOP's razor-thin majority in the lower chamber during the interim.

• Speaking of which, new news today in the Gerrymandering Wars kicked off last year by Donald Trump's order to Republican states to redraw their U.S. House maps to steal "blue" seats from voters this November. One of the hopes for Democrats to redraw their own maps in response to the GOP campaign was dashed on Monday night, as state Senate Democrats in Maryland ended their latest session without voting on a new state map, as sought by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore. He had asked for a redrawn map to help flip the state's last Republican-held House District in favor of the Dems, but was blocked by the Democratic state Senate President who felt the move might end up harming Democrats.

• In other related Gerrymandering War news, the Republican-dominated Florida legislature is set to convene a special session next week to consider redrawing its already gerrymandered U.S. House map, even as Virginia voters are already early voting on a state Constitutional Amendment sponsored by Democrats to temporarily set aside the state's independently drawn U.S. House map in favor of one that could flip as many as four more seats from "red" to "blue" this November. The Special Election Day is next Tuesday, April 21, and pre-election polling suggests it could be a close contest!

• In Congress' upper chamber, meanwhile, the Cook Political Report this week made four adjustments to their November forecast for the U.S. Senate, with all four changes moving toward the left for this year's races in North Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska and Georgia. That said, Cook's current forecast for the Senate still predicts Republicans hanging on to majority control of the upper chamber next year --- if just barely for now.

• Why has Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to blockade traffic in the Strait of Hormuz in his effort to prevent Iran from blockading traffic through the Strait of Hormuz? We try to explain today, before noting that China now seems to be calling Trump's bluff.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the war on Iran deepens global poverty even as Big Oil is rolling in profits; as news policies in the UK and France seek to permanently reduce dependency on fossil fuels; and as birds turn out to be smarter than Donald Trump when it comes to wind energy, according to newly released studies...

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Article Categories: Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Maryland, Virginia, Iran, Accountability, U.S. House, U.S. Senate, Nebraska, KPFK, Donald Trump, Oil, Wind energy, Climate change, Extreme weather, China, BradCast, Gerrymandering/Redistricting, Eric Swalwell, Wes Moore, Election 2026

It's all we can do, at this point, on our Monday shows, to hang on for dear life and try to get caught up with as much of the weekend's madness as possible. And so we do again on today's BradCast, along with the help of a few callers (including some Trump supporters!) [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the weekend's madness...

• After a marathon one-days-in-a-row of negotiations with Iran, the world's second greatest deal-maker, Vice President J.D. Vance, gives up and goes home. In retaliation, Donald Trump announces that he will shut down the Straight of Hormuz...which was already shut down by Iran in response to the U.S. attack, and was one of the main reason for the weekend's negotiations amid what is supposed to be a two week ceasefire between US/Israel and Iran.

• Then, the brightest news, by far, of the weekend. Just days after Vance --- the weekend's double-loser --- stumped for him in person, Hungary's 16-year, rightwing dictatorial leader, Viktor Orbán, was crushed by voters who removed him from power in a landslide Sunday election. Orbán, a longtime Trump/Vance ally, modern-day U.S. Republican Party hero, and dictatorial autocrat has blocked migration to his country, gutted LGBTQ rights, shut down freedom of speech and judicial independence, gamed the electoral system, cozied up to Vladimir Putin, blocked EU support of Ukraine amid Russia's war against them, and oversaw the takeover of major media outlets by corporate cronies during his 16 years of consolidating power. (Sound familiar?) But, on Sunday, voters in Hungary overcame all of that, crushed Orban's party and publicly celebrated across the nation all night long. I suspect we'll be seeing similar in this country before too terribly long.

• While the supposedly-anti-war Vance was failing to strike a deal with Iran (or get Orbán elected), Donald Trump attended an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight here in the U.S., attacked Pope Leo XIV in a ridiculous lengthy screed (for being soft on crime and nuclear weapons, or something) and posted an AI "painting" of himself on social media depicted as Jesus healing the sick. By Monday, after criticism from even his own religious supporters, he deleted the photo and claimed it was supposed to be him posing as a doctor in support of the Red Cross. (I'll pause here so you can get up off the floor from laughter.)

• Despite what Trump, Republicans and Fox "News" repeatedly tells you, as it turns out, California is in pretty good shape. As Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom enjoyed rubbing in Trump's face over the weekend, the Golden State's GDP increased by 5% last year, leading every other state in the union, as the fourth largest economy in the world.

• Meanwhile, this year's sleepy election to fill Newsom's termed-out position as the head of the 4th largest economy in the world in November suddenly got a lot less sleepy over the weekend and into Monday. Where Democratic Party alarm bells had already been ringing about a Top Two primary that could send two Republicans to compete against each other in this year's November general election. (Though dumb Trump probably helped to avoid that last week by endorsing one of the two Republicans who had been tied for first place at 10%.), Now, sexual assault allegations against one of the leading Democrats, Bay Area Congressman Eric Swalwell, have resulted in his dropping out of the crowded race on Sunday and announcing his resignation from Congress on Monday, moments before airtime. We'll see how, and if, that ends up shaking up the statewide Gubernatorial Primary on June 2nd enough to allow one of the far-too-many Dems on the ballot to break through to the first or second spots in the Primary to go on to the November general.

• Finally, in the second half of today's show, we open the phones to callers on any and all of the above and, after many weeks of asking, a couple of Trump supporters finally ring in to answer my invitation!...

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Article Categories: California, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Iran, Accountability, Democrats, Republicans, KPFK, Donald Trump, BradCast, Gavin Newsom, Eric Swalwell, Hungary, Viktor Orban, J.D. Vance, Election 2026, Pope Leo XIV

On today's BradCast: Finally, even MAGA is beginning to notice. Or, at least they are finally admitting they've noticed. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Day after day, especially as his war on and/or supposed ceasefire with Iran continues to be a global embarrassment, Donald Trump keeps proving his critics were right all along.

In many case, such as MAGA media elite or his own Truth Social supporters turning on him, it's amusing and encouraging. In other cases, like those who, with the encouragement of Republican officials, bought into the Trump myth, it is very sad. Especially in states like deep "red" West Virginia, where energy prices are now skyrocketing amid his broken promises to revive dirty, deadly, expensive coal and his broken campaign vow, repeated dozens of times, to cut everyone's gas and energy prices by 50% within his first year. (See Margie Mason's great piece for AP here.)

Trump is now failing, and very quickly, to paraphrase him. At record levels! Like nobody has ever seen before!

In fact, a majority of Americans would now like to see him impeached an historic third time. New polling appears to break the record for such a finding this early in a President's term.

But, before any of that can happen --- if it ever does --- there are still a whole bunch of folks likely to die in his absurdly ill-considered war, and a whole bunch of Administration friends and insiders likely to profiteer off it all on the so-called prediction markets.

Also, Desi Doyen joins us today for our latest Green News Report. Things don't look any better there either...

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Article Categories: Tucker Carlson, West Virginia, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Virginia, Iran, Impeachment, Accountability, Republicans, Economy, Israel, KPFK, Donald Trump, Natural gas, Coal, Oil, Climate change, Extreme weather, BradCast, Agriculture, Lebanon, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alex Jones, Electricity, Trump Media Group

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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Article Categories: Georgia, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, National Security, Iran, Democrats, Republicans, Economy, Israel, KPFK, WI Supreme Court Election, Donald Trump, Nuclear power/weapons, Oil, BradCast, Lebanon, Pete Hegseth, Election 2026

Wow. Quite a roller coaster on The BradCast today. Spoiler alert: One of the big unknowns throughout the bulk of the show finally became known in our final few minutes on air. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Following Donald Trump's obnoxiously profane Easter Sunday threat to commit war crimes with the mass bombing of civilian power plants and bridges in Iran at 8pm tonight (Tuesday); his repeat of those promises on Monday; and his fresh Tuesday morning vow that "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" if Iran refused to meet his tough-guy demand to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, Trump appears to have re-earned his TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) title just over an hour or so before the latest random deadline he had otherwise pulled out of his ass. (That followed on similar TACOs in weeks prior over the same issue, though later reporting tonight suggests Iran has agreed to allow traffic through the Strait for two weeks in exchange for a U.S. ceasefire during that period. They will charge ships for passage, however.)

As noted at the top of the show --- before Trump called off the attack during our final few minutes --- it looks like the markets called this one again late today. After taking a dive at open in the morning, they largely recovered by the close --- as if someone got word in advance of Trump's announcement...yet again.

So, was it just another TACO? Or did it matter to Trump that his top MAGA supporters, from Tucker Carlson to Candance Owens to Marjorie Taylor Green to Alex Jones (for chrissakes!), were all turning tail on him over the past two days, describing him as having gone "insane" or worse, and calling for his removal from office under the 25th Amendment?

And where does Trump's ridiculously ill-considered war go from here? That question remains for another day.

NEXT UP... Last week, while we were on break, Trump fired his wildly corrupt and perfectly sycophantic Attorney General Pam Bondi for reasons that also remain unknown as of today. The firing was arguably meant to distract from his disastrous war which was, itself, meant as a distraction from the news out of the Epstein Files, emerging just before he launched his war, that a woman had credibly alleged he sexually assaulted her when she was 13-years old.

Beyond that, however, what of Bondi's year-long legacy overseeing the corruption and destruction of the rule of law on Trump's behalf at the Dept. of Justice?

We're joined to discuss that today by our friend RANDALL D. ELIASON, the DOJ's former chief of Fraud and Public Corruption at the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. He wrote about this fine mess at his Sidebars blog this week, in a piece titled "Pam Bondi's Legacy of Destruction".

Eliason, who now teaches white collar crime at George Washington University Law School, laments the tragic fallout from the past year of Bondi's tenure by quipping: "I tell everybody, I've become a history professor," telling his students "Back when we used to prosecute white collar crime, these were the offenses..."

Lots to discuss with Eliason today, as usual, including...

• The 23,000(!) "criminal investigations into cases involving terrorism, white collar crime, drugs, and other offenses" that Bondi has shut down since taking office.
• The top two or three most shameful aspects of "Bondi's tragic track record."
• How Eliason sees her performance as far worse than Bill Barr's during Trump's first term. ("I wouldn't have thought that somebody could make Barr look good by comparison.")
• How describing the Justice Dept. under Bondi as "Trump's personal law firm" is "too generous".
• How he now has to tell students that he can't recommend they go to the DOJ for the previously "highly coveted jobs" that were "really, really hard to get and considered to be a dream job for a lot of people," even though it is now understaffed "because of all the people who have headed for the exits rather than work for this Administration --- and all the ones who have been fired."
• Whether Bondi should face ethical sanctions under the Florida State Bar or even criminal charges under a future administration.
• What we should expect moving forward under the "acting AG" stewardship of Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer turned Deputy AG Todd Blanche.
• And much more!...

"In one year," Eliason tells me, "this thing called the 'presumption of regularity', that over decades was built up" by the DOJ for its attorneys in the court system, "has been shredded" by Bondi's "pattern of lying to and misleading the courts." He fears "it's going to take a long, long time" to get that back, "if it can be done at all."

"She was willing to use the Dept. of Justice to pursue the President's political enemies. That is just directly contrary to the Department's mission and everything it has stood for for decades. That's what authoritarians do."

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our first Green News Report following Spring Break and, as you might expect, it's a doozy!...

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Article Categories: Tucker Carlson, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, U.S. Constitution, Iran, Accountability, Dept. of Justice, KPFK, Donald Trump, Solar energy, BradCast, Water, Electric vehicles, Pam Bondi, Fascism/Autocracy, William Barr, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alex Jones, Todd Blanche

Perhaps we should have known when he announced his run for President after coming down an escalator, after all. In any event, we're back for today's BradCast after a week off for Spring Break, with a lot to catch up with. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We begin by catching up on just some of the news we missed over the past week, including his corrupt firing of corrupt women --- Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi --- to help distract from his own personal failures.

But Donald Trump's profane, social media post on Easter Sunday, threatening war crimes (which is, itself, a war crime) sort of helps focus both the mind and today's program.

"Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!," he vowed, adding: "Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP".

Today (Monday), during a lengthy news conference at the White House to tout the rescue of a downed U.S. airman in Iran on Sunday, Trump repeated the his threat of war crimes --- including complete destruction of civilian power infrastructure in Iran, "back to the stone age" --- to happen tomorrow at 8pm, he vowed, if Iran doesn't agree to whatever conditions Trump claims to be demanding now. In a war that he's, arguably, already lost.

The response to his weekend tweet, from not-insane people on the right, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and from the not-right, like UK columnist Christopher Bucktin, seem to make clear that not-insane people around the globe, at this point, see Trump in serious and terrifying mental decay. So do medical professionals.

All of which brings us back to a point we discussed in our last show before Spring Break: Trump has become a serious danger to both the nation and the world. So much so, that even corrupt, compromised, evil J.D. Vance would be a more palatable alternative to the unstable, psychologically broken man who now terrifyingly has his finger on the nuclear button. At least in my opinion.

We open up the phones to listeners today to see if they agree on that and much more. Hope you'll tune in!...

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Article Categories: BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Iran, Accountability, Dept. of Defense, KPFK, Donald Trump, Oil, NASA, BradCast, Pam Bondi, Marjorie Taylor Greene, J.D. Vance, Kristi Noem

Some news, a few laughs, and an unwelcome chill or two on today's pre-Spring Break BradCast roundtable discussion. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First, some news, including the stunning --- though, arguably, no longer surprising --- story of a Democratic candidate winning a special election in a deep "red" district. This time, however, the District was Donald Trump's literal backyard, as public health expert and first time candidate Emily Gregory defeated her Republican, Trump-endorsed opponent to win a seat in the Florida state House on Tuesday. The District in question is home to Trump's home, Mar-a-Lago, and voted for Trump by 11 points in 2024. The Republican who previously held the state House seat won it by 19 points that same year. Gregory won by two points on Tuesday, making it the 10th GOP-held state legislative seat flipped by Dems from "red" to "blue" since Trump began his second term, and the 29th seat flipped over all. (Republicans have flipped zero seats from "blue" to "red" over that same period.)

Then, before we're joined by our guests, we've got the latest on Trump's flailing attempts to broker a peace agreement or cease fire or something on the war he began with Iran almost a month ago. They appear less than interested in talking to Trump. Nonetheless, he continues to insist he's "winning" the war and, in fact, has already "won" it. And yet, if anything, the war seems to be expanding across the region; thousands of U.S. troops are reportedly on their way there, for some reason; the Strait of Hormuz is still shut down; the average price of gas in the U.S. is now a full dollar per gallon higher than before Trump began his war; the global economy is on the precipice of a recession; and Iran is insisting on both reparations for war damage by the U.S. and continuing control of the Strait in order to even consider any sort of peace deal.

In short, it's a disaster. Trump seems to have no way out; does not seem to be in touch with reality; and seems to be mentally deteriorating before our eyes. Other than that, everything is great!

We're delighted to be joined once again today by our old school blogger friends, the award-winning Salon columnist and longtime Hullabaloo blogger HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, and the pseudonymous blogger and co-host of The Professional Left Podcast, known mostly as 'DRIFTGLASS'.

The last time the pair joined us on the program was a full month ago, the day after Trump's State of the Union address in February, when he was crowing about low gas prices, a booming stock market and having "obliterated" Iran's nuclear program last year.

Incredibly, he would launch his insanely ill-considered war on Iran just four days later.

So, we've got a lot to get caught up on with Digby and Driftglass today. She fears: "It's very hard to see how you get out of this." He warns: "It isn't just the dumbest war you ever heard of, it's the most corrupt administration in US history carrying out the dumbest war in history."

While our conversation is both insightful and occasional amusing, as usual, even on this matter, things do take a bit of a darker turn eventually. Digby explains why she gets "a chill down [her] spine" and Drifty details why he'd like to see the 25th Amendment exercised, while doubting that it will be. All of us then go on to answer the difficult question of, at this point, if we'd actually prefer to see J.D. Vance as President right about now. Tune in for how that conversation goes.

Also today, some insight from the heart of Illinois by Driftglass on their recent statewide primary (and misleading corporate media coverage thereof); and from my fellow Los Angelino Digby on California's upcoming 2026 primary, and the two Republican candidates currently leading polls in the very "blue" state's all-party, top-two Gubernatorial primary contest on June 2nd...

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QUICK SHOW NOTE! We were previously scheduled to be off next week for a Spring Break. We still will be. But we're taking off from The BradCast a bit earlier than expected due to an unavoidable medical issue. (Desi needs a root canal! Fun!) She promises, nonetheless, to get out another Green News Report tomorrow morning before she goes under. And, if all goes well, we should have Sunday Toons and maybe more at The BRAD BLOG if I can't help myself over the next week. But, otherwise, The BradCast (and GNR) will return after Easter!

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Article Categories: Florida, California, Illinois, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Iran, Accountability, Democrats, Republicans, KPFK, Donald Trump, BradCast, J.D. Vance, Election 2026

On today's BradCast, we turn briefly away from the folly and fallout of Trump's war on Iran to focus again on the folly and fallout of Trump's war on democracy here at home, with the critical 2026 Midterm Elections looming and threatened anew by Trump's corrupted High Court. To that end, one of our favorite guests returns today to offer a bit of what we'll describe as "hope". [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... A few related election matters...

• In a somewhat bizarre --- and seemingly unprecedented case --- a Republican sheriff running for Governor in California recently seized more than 650,000 ballots from last year's Special Election on Proposition 50. That was the ballot measure, overwhelmingly approved by almost 3.5 million votes, allowing the state Legislature to redraw California's U.S. House maps to make them more friendly to Democrats in response to Republican gerrymanders in Texas, North Carolina and elsewhere. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco announced on Friday that he'd obtained a warrant to take the ballots from the Riverside Registrar's office on the basis of a claim made by a local "election protection" group that last year's tally in the County included some 45,000 ballots that were not lawfully cast. Or something. State officials, including CA's Democratic Attorney General and Secretary of State, are objecting to the seizure and tally which was initially to be carried out by the Sheriff's staffers. The count was paused by a court earlier this month, before being restarted with a Special Master overseeing it late last week. We'll try to keep our eyes on this bizarre story.

• In North Carolina today, the state's most powerful Republican, state Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, conceded his 23-vote loss in the state's March 3rd Republican primary to Rockland County Sheriff Sam Page. Berger, who shepherded Trump's demand for a mid-decade gerrymander through the state Legislature last year, was endorsed by Trump. He lost his primary nonetheless in the Republican-leaning district.

• On Monday at the White House, Donald Trump told media: "Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating," adding, "I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all." It was also revealed on Monday, according to Palm Beach County, Florida records, that Trump cast a mail ballot for today's Special Election, in the County where he is registered to vote. (Late word after today's show: The Democratic candidate has won today's Special Election in Florida for the state House in the District that includes Mar-a-Lago, flipping the seat from "red" to "blue".)

THEN... On the very same day that it was revealed Trump voted yet again by absentee ballot --- as he frequently does, even while claiming mail-in voting is fraudulent --- in that Special Election, his Solicitor General was at the U.S. Supreme Court arguing against a law in deep "red" Mississippi that allows a five-day grace period for absentee ballots cast and postmarked prior to Election Day to arrive at the elections office to be counted.

Such laws are wildly popular around the country. Some 30 states allow similar. Mississippi's Sec. of State defended it at the corrupted High Court against Trump and the Republican National Committee's challenge. The Court's farthest right members --- Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito and Kavanaugh --- offered a series of bizarre hypotheticals about weird ways in which someone might try to exploit such laws to steal an election. (One of Gorsuch's took the prize. It had something to do with mail voters attempting to "recall" their late arriving ballots after Election Day. Tune in for the details on that absurdity which apparently went on to take up about 40 minutes of the two-hour oral argument!)

Then there was Alito's argument that because Congress declared Labor Day, Memorial Day and Washington's Birthday to be held on a specific day, that means they never meant people should be able to count votes after Election Day, even if they were clearly cast before hand. But, what about Early Voting? What about those whose mail ballot arrives before Election Day? As our guest explains, the rightwing Justices did their best to avoid those questions.

We're joined today by the great MARK JOSEPH STERN, longtime legal journalist at Slate, who was, let's say, chagrined by the radical and ridiculously Trumpy arguments offered by at least four of the Trump-friendly Republican Justices.

"Of course the reality is that we do not all vote on Election Day, and our ballots are not all counted on Election Day. So if the plaintiff's theory is correct, and if Alito is correct that the day is the day --- that there is this 24-hour period where everything has to happen --- then early voting is illegal, mail voting is illegal, and no ballots can be counted after midnight on Election Day," asserts Stern. "If it's not your birthday after midnight, then it can't be Election Day after midnight. There has to be a timer that goes off and every ballot that hasn't been counted just needs to be set on fire because the day is over. That's the implication of his theory."

The theory falls far short of facts and reality, including the notion that Congress, when establishing Election Day in federal law, really meant that ballots could only be cast and counted on that day. But that defies the way the nation has voted going back at least to the Civil War, when soldiers deployed in the field cast their ballots early by mail.

"If you take these theories seriously, it means that the way that we have conducted elections in this country, going back to the Civil War, has been unlawful and nobody knew it until now," Stern tells me. "Congress secretly smuggled in this ban on early voting, and nobody figured it out until the geniuses on the 5th Circuit did in 2024."

He calls it "a completely absurd and fantastical legal theory, just flying in the face of 'Support Our Troops.' Because what this theory would do in practice is ensure that a whole lot of service members who are serving in uniform abroad would not be able to have their votes counted in elections."

"Just to be clear," Stern emphasized, "at no point has Congress ever passed a law that says that states cannot count late-arriving ballots." In fact, as he also notes, "there are a lot of states that actually enacted these laws specifically to help military and overseas voters. And when Congress came in, a few decades ago, and issued these new rules about military and overseas voters, it specifically deferred to the states' ballot deadlines. So Congress knew at the time that some states were allowing these ballots to come in late, as long as they were sent by Election Day."

And that is key. Because, the Constitution grants the States the power to determine the "manner" of their own elections, unless Congress adopts a law that counters a state regulation. Congress has done no such thing in this case. Even if the Court's radical members don't like a state law, they have no Constitutional power --- at least for those who bother to read the Constitution conservatively --- to block such laws.

Despite the chaos and disenfranchisement it would cause --- about 750,000 ballots were tallied that way in the 2024 election alone --- and as absurd as all of this seems, you may have seen headlines from a bunch of media outlets' coverage of Monday's oral argument, suggesting that the Court's "conservatives" seem prepared to strike down the counting of late arriving ballots this November. (NYT: "Supreme Court Appears Poised to Reject Late-Arriving Mail-In Ballots Law"; AP: "Supreme Court sounds skeptical of late-arriving ballots, a Trump target"; Guardian: "US supreme court appears poised to limit mail-in ballots ahead of midterms", etc.)

While all three liberal Justices will vote in favor of the plaintiff and the counting of late-arriving ballots, and four of the Court's radical rightwingers seem prepared to vote against, the matter will likely come down to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

"Not very encouraging whenever we're having to rely on John and Amy to come to their senses," quips Stern, before noting hopefully: "There's an old saying that 'sometimes an opinion won't write.' I really think if there were ever an instance where that could happen, it would be here."

As I express gratefulness for his optimism he counters: "I'm not sure optimism is the right word. But I will say that despair is never a helpful emotion when we're talking about the Supreme Court. And despair is what the bad guys want us to feel. So I'm choosing to hold out some hope."

Nonetheless, he cautions against betting "on the outcome that I foresee is possible. Because, again, if you bet on this Court doing the worst thing imaginable, that bet quite often pays off."

FINALLY... We close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, with a look at the climate and environmental damage from Trump's war on Iran, and much more...

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Article Categories: Election Irregularities, Florida, California, Mississippi, North Carolina, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Election Fraud, Rights And Freedoms, Iran, Vote Caging/Intimidation/Suppression, RNC, U.S. Supreme Court, Vote-by-Mail, KPFK, Donald Trump, Wind energy, Climate change, BradCast, Election 2025, Election 2026

Today on The BradCast: Yet another reminder of the continuing importance of independent media over our public airwaves, as yet another massive --- and arguably unlawful --- media mega-merger narrows corporate control of local television stations and the public airwaves to fewer and fewer chieftains. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to our guest today, and then a few calls from listeners, a few headlines from over the weekend and into today...

• "Good. I'm glad he's dead," is a phrase that will be on the lips of tens, if not hundreds of millions of Americans at some point in the not too distant future. This past week, however, only our demented President was using it to describe the passing of 81-year old Robert Mueller, a war hero, patriot, and decades-long public servant to Republicans and Democrats alike. The former Republican FBI Director also came out of retirement to lead the independent Special Counsel investigation of Russia's interference in the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump --- who is not yet dead.

• The second part of the depraved, degenerate Trump's obnoxious social media attack on the late FBI Director read: "He can no longer hurt innocent people!" Trump would then go on to threaten the lives of 92 million Iranians with the war crime of "obliterat[ing]" the country's power plants (and desalination plants, their drinking water supply, along with them) "within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time" if Iran refused to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But, Trump chickened out, as he does, before the deadline arrived, claimed that talks with Iran were going well, and extended the threat for five more days. The stock market recovered a bit of what it lost last week and oil prices slightly fell, even as Iran claimed there were no talks underway with the U.S., directly or through intermediaries. TACO.

Then, we're joined by JOHN BERGMAYER, Legal Director at the D.C.-based nonprofit watchdog Public Knowledge regarding his groups lawsuit, filed today, in response to what the group describes as the unlawful merger between two huge local television station owners, Nexstar and Tegna. He announced on today's program that the organization has now filed a suit to block it.

The merger was approved late last week by Trump's corrupt FCC Chair Brendan Carr, after Nexstar showed it's loyalty to the Administration last year by keeping Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the airwaves even longer than ABC did, after the late-night host made a joke the Administration didn't like.

"A lot of these broadcast stations used to be local, semi-mom-and-pop-esque businesses, and they've been swooped up into these giant nationwide chains," Bergmayer explains. After consolidation, their newsrooms are gutted and replaced by more and more prepackaged content, often with a political bent toward the Right, and stripped of the local news coverage that so many Americans, for so many decades, had come to know and trust.

The merger violates long-standing federal statutes and FCC rules that prevent any one company from reaching more than 39% of American households. But Trump's corrupt FCC chair, at Trump's instructions, has waived the rules and is violating the laws, according to Bergmayer, by allowing the new mega-company to acquire local stations that reach a gob-smacking 80% of American homes.

"There are several lawsuits already filed in this deal. State attorneys general are suing on pure anti-trust grounds [against] a merger that violates anti-trust laws. Others include a coalition of broadband companies. And I can announce Public Knowledge is also suing in a different court. We are bringing up more of the communications law arguments."

The whole point of these laws adopted by Congress and signed by Presidents "was all about promoting media diversity," Bergmayer tells me. "A healthy democracy really depends on that." Now, he says, the laws and rules have been hollowed out. He concedes the FCC "does have the authority to waive" certain rules. But not on the limits to station ownership. "The 39% number was negotiated in Congress... and it was taken out of the realm of policies that the FCC has the authority to waive or to modify," he explains.

"It's a nationwide cap, and it's about controlling access to 39% of viewers, essentially," he says, noting if the FCC's ruling holds, it would be "a serious change to the structure of the market." And all done, he notes, at the direction of Donald Trump who personally called publicly for the FCC to do his bidding, even though the Commission is supposed to be an independent agency, separated by Congressional statute from control by the President.

Much more on all of this on today's show, and how media outlets in just about every town in America will now be affected by it, as Nexstar accelerates their gutting of the previously most trusted newsrooms in America.

Finally, a bit more on Trump's questionable claims about negotiations with Iran, reaction to his comments about Mueller's passing, some good news from the lower courts finding the Pentagon's new rules for media coverage to be patently unconstitutional, and callers ring on the upcoming No Kings rallies this coming Saturday in thousands of American cities, and more...

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Article Categories: BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, U.S. Constitution, Freedom of the Press, Iran, Accountability, Dept. of Defense, FCC, KPFK, Donald Trump, Russia, Election 2016, BradCast, Fascism/Autocracy, Robert Mueller, Pete Hegseth, Brendan Carr, Nexstar Media

Today on The BradCast: You're not the only one worried about the U.S. devolving quickly into an autocracy under Trump's attempted dictatorial rule. So are many of the world's top academic democracy experts and researchers! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We've got quite a bit to get to on today's show. Here is a very quick round-up...

• Our quickly deteriorating man-baby President hates offshore wind power so much (because, years ago, he felt it would sully the view from one of his golf courses), that now we all have to pretend it causes cancer, or drives whales crazy, or is a national security risk. Whatever nonsense claim Donald Trump dreams up. His attempts to stop five nearly completed projects off the U.S. east coast were all blocked by the courts. Now, he has a new strategy: Paying a French company that won leases for two new projects (off of New York and North Carolina) during the Biden Administration, nearly a billion dollars to not move ahead with those projects. That's right, 928 million in your taxpayer dollars is being offered to the company in a settlement if they agree to not do any work to provide clean, safe, renewable energy to millions of Americans during an energy crisis sparked, in no small part, by Trump's ridiculously ill-considered war on Iran. One other thing the company must do as part of the deal, according to the settlement documents reviewed by New York Times: invest money in dirty, deadly, natural gas infrastructure in Texas.

• According to the tenth annual democracy report issued this week by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, authoritarianism is on the rise across the globe with the U.S. and 43 other nations "autocratizing", while just 12 are becoming more democratic, out of more than 200 countries and territories examined by democracy researchers.

  "The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history," the group's Democratic Report 2026 warns. It finds that "By magnitude of decline on the [report's Liberal Democracy Index], the 2025 plunge is the largest one year drop in American history going back to 1789 "“ that is, in the entire period covered by V-Dem data."

  Among the bullet points atop the 7-page special section on "Autrocratization in the USA," included in the 52-page report [PDF] (the special section starts on page 33 and is worth a read!)...

  • Under Trump's presidency, the level of democracy in the USA has fallen back to the same level as in 1965.
  • Yet the situation is fundamentally different than during the Civil Rights era. In 2025, the derailment of democracy is marked by executive overreach undermining the rule of law, along with far-reaching suppression and intimidation of media and dissenting voices.
  • The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history.
  • Legislative Constraints --- the worst affected aspect of [U.S.] democracy [cited by the scholars] --- is losing one-third of its value in 2025 and reaching its lowest point in over 100 years.
  • Civil Rights and Equality before the Law are also rapidly declining, falling to late 1960s levels.
  • Freedom of Expression is now at its lowest level since the end of WWII.
  • Electoral components of [U.S.] democracy remain stable [in this year's "Liberal Democracy Index". But] election-specific indicators are re-assessed only in electoral years, and the 2025 scores are based on the quality of the 2024 elections.

  "What would it take to stop autocratization in the USA, and turn it around?," the report asks rhetorically. "Roughly 70% of all 'third wave' episodes of autocratization have been reversed, making U-turns. Elections were often pivotal windows of opportunity, and the first electoral cycle was often decisive."

  See you in November!!!

• That stunning V-Dem report also cites the federal judiciary as one of the few remaining bulwarks against U.S. autocratization and the loss of freedom of expression, as the Executive branch has all but usurped the powers of the Legislative branch under a compliant GOP majority in Congress. To that end, judges in the lower courts, if not at the Supreme Court, continue, by and large, to adhere to the Constitution and Rule of Law, providing a check on the criminal excesses of the Trump Regime. Another ruling this week from a Reagan-appointed federal judge underscores that point. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered that more than 1,000 federal workers at Voice of America --- the 84-year old beacon of democracy and for a free press around the globe --- be reinstated and VOA restored to the global airwaves by next week! That, following the unlawful dismantling last year of VOA, its parent agency (the U.S. Agency for Global Media) and its sister networks around the globe by twice-failed GOP candidate and Trump loyalist Kari Lake. Last week, the same judge determined Lake was never lawfully serving in her job and her mass firings --- leaving nothing more than a skeleton crew to unlawfully run rightwing propaganda --- were therefore null and void. This week, Lamberth gave the Administration one week to bring employees back to work and for the national treasure of a radio network, established during WWII, broadcasting in 49 different languages to some 352 million people, to finally be restored as per federal statutes.

• MAGA loyalist, white nationalist, and Trump National Counterterroism Center Director Joe Kent very publicly resigned this week, citing opposition to Trump's war on Iran. One of his objections from his announcement was that Iran "posed no imminent threat to our nation". As it turns out, there is much more to that story. And yes, it ties in to testimony given, or in this case not given, by Kent's friend and fellow veteran Tulsi Gabbard to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee this week. Gabbard, Trump's Director of National Intelligence and former opponent of dumb foreign wars (you can still buy one of Tulsi's "No War With Iran" t-shirts from her failed 2020 Democratic Presidential run, if you like) refused to say outloud during her testimony to the Committee whether the U.S. Intelligence Community assessed that Iran actually posed an imminent threat to the U.S., as Trump falsely insist. That, in contrast to her written testimony which concedes as much. All of this attracted the ire of Dems on the Committee, including Georgia's Sen. Jon Osoff, whose sharp questioning of Gabbard we share on today's program.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as oil and gas prices continue to skyrocket and a hunger crisis looms thanks to Trump's war; and as the autocratic Administration bigfoots California state law to order the restart of a disastrously failed crude pipeline near Santa Barbara...

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Article Categories: Election Irregularities, Election Reform, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, National Security, Rights And Freedoms, U.S. Constitution, Freedom of the Press, Iran, Accountability, U.S. Senate, KPFK, Donald Trump, Wind energy, BradCast, Fascism/Autocracy, Jon Ossoff, Tulsi Gabbard, Voice of America (VOA), Kari Lake, Election 2026

As discussed with our guest on today's BradCast, there may be one "silver lining" to Donald Trump's unspeakably ill-considered war on Iran. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get there today, some quick results from Tuesday's Midterm Primary elections in the great state of Illinois, where popular "kingmaker" Democratic Gov. (and almost certain Presidential hopeful) J.B. Pritzker is running for a third term, and where there was vigorous competition for four open U.S. House seats and an open U.S. Senate seat in this November's critical midterms.

Much of the action on Tuesday was on the Democratic side, given the deep "blue" nature of much of the state, and the location of many of the seats up for grabs, in and around Chicago. A win in yesterday's Democratic primary was about 99% of what is needed to ensure most of those candidates will head to Congress next year. So, many of the contests yesterday were for most, if not all, of the marbles. That's just one of the reasons why about $125 million was spent on races yesterday, much of it from special interest and dark money PACs representing interests and industries from AI to Crypto to Gaming to Israel.

Oddly, if predictably, many of the corporate media outlets downplayed the money (and, in some cases, the PACs that spent millions to come up nearly empty handed), while overplaying a dumb "Dems in disarray" narrative to suggest a divisive fissure between progressives and establishment Democrats with, as the narratives seems to have been drawn, progressives having taken a beating in Illinois last night. Some did. Some didn't. We offer some clarity on that point today. The real story was less the politics, and more about the money.

THEN... The world (and certainly Donald Trump!) may wish to take a lesson from China. The country has been assiduously going about insulating themselves from their lack of control over global oil and natural gas production volatility, thanks to the unpredictability of Middle Eastern wars and indescribably stupid world leaders like our own. China, in recent years, has been electrifying its economy, dominating clean technology supply chains, and installing more wind and solar than the rest of world combined.

All while Trump, back here at home, has been gutting our nascent renewable energy production and manufacturing industries by cancelling landmark federal government incentives enacted by Democrats during the Biden presidency.

Now, with fossil fuel prices spiking again, thanks to Trump's ridiculous war, and demand for energy rapidly growing (and consumer prices along with it), our guest today, RYAN COOPER, Managing Editor of The American Prospect, argues that solar and wind power are now very real, viable, inexpensive alternatives to Trump's outdated quest for a return to the days of deadly, expensive, coal and oil. Moreover, if previous wars have not, this one, he believes, should certainly highlight the fact that renewable energy, locally sourced, is an incredibly important national security imperative for nations around the globe...including ours. That, despite Trump and the MAGA Right's ridiculously self-destructive "drill, baby, drill" machismo.

"Over the last three or four years now, Europe really has drastically cut back on its consumption of gas, and has drastically sped up its deployment of solar and heat pumps, especially. And the reason is that those technologies are now competitive. Especially solar plus batteries," explains Cooper, who wrote about "The National Security Case for Renewable Energy" at TAP last week. "It's workable. It's ready to be deployed at scale. It is being deployed at scale in Europe, in China, all across Asia."

"The relative price advantage of solar and wind was already strong before this war happened, and now it's much stronger," he argues. "As soon as it's possible, as soon as we can get the Strait reopened, anybody with a lick of sense is going to be saying, 'Yeah, we've got to get rid of this oil stuff. It doesn't even make business sense. What are we doing here? This is stupid.'"

But, while the rest of the world is beginning to get that picture, will we ever get it back here in the U.S.? Will MAGA, who claims to hate forever wars over oil in the Middle East finally catch on? Will the U.S. auto industry come to rue their recent backing away from EVs under Trump, after redesigning plants and assembly lines for an electric future under Biden?

All of that and more today, including Cooper's explanation of his DIY solar panel and battery system set-up in his Pennsylvania backyard ("Feels like I'm giving a middle finger to the petrostate dictators and the oil barons."); why he believes Trump's decision to go to war in Iran is "the most purely deranged action by an American president in history"; and why he argues that: "When the dust clears, all nations with the slightest scrap of sense will be spending every available penny on energy security, meaning renewables," and that "you'd have to be a complete clod, a world-historical imbecile, a man evincing such staggering stupidity that it calls his very sentience into question, to not get it."

Know anybody like that?...

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Article Categories: Illinois, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, National Security, Iran, U.S. House, U.S. Senate, Democrats, Republicans, Economy, Israel, KPFK, Donald Trump, Natural gas, Oil, Wind energy, Solar energy, China, BradCast, Chicago, Electric vehicles, Infrastructure, J.B. Pritzker, Electricity, Election 2026

We've been wrestling with server problems all day at BradBlog.com and still are as we try to get today's show posted. It's been up and down (mostly down!) all day, for still-unknown reasons. So, please pardon a slightly briefer-than-usual summary for today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

It was otherwise a very lively and informative show! Among the stories we covered...

• Folks from our affiliate station in Hawaii --- KAKU 88.5 FM, "The Voice of Maui" --- check in with a note to say they've survived the island's latest 100-year storm. It reportedly dumped as much as four feet of rain over the past five days in some locations. That, as the continental U.S. Southwest swelters with record early heat pushing 100 degrees, and cold weather, blizzards and tornadoes slam the other half of the nation.

• Yesterday we broke news on this program that an oil pipeline near Santa Barbara, California --- which had been shutdown since a disastrous rupture in 2015 spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude up and down the coast --- was restarted over the weekend following an unprecedented declaration of the Defense Production Act by Donald Trump late on Friday. The company which now owns the decades old pipeline, Sable Offshore, has failed to meet state requirements to reopen it. Nonetheless, Trump's Executive Order has seemingly bigfooted state law, with oil now said to be flowing again through the still-corroded pipeline as of Saturday, according to Sable and confirmation from several media outlets late last night. Representatives of the State and the Center for Biological Diversity were in Court on Tuesday morning (as our guest, the Center's Talia Nimmer previewed on yesterday's show). Nimmer reports today that the state judge in the case confirmed an existing injunction against operation of the pipeline, issued last summer, but did not order it shut back down at today's hearing. Another hearing is now scheduled for April to sort things out, presuming the pipeline doesn't rupture again before then.

• Trump claims a former President recently told him that he wished he had bombed Iran. All four living Presidents denied such a conversation or even speaking with Trump recently, according to NBC.

• An increasingly delusional Trump is now claiming that "nobody expected" Iran would retaliate by firing missiles at U.S. bases and diplomatic outposts in neighboring countries if Iran was attacked. That is, of course, absolutely not even close to true. We play a bit of audio from Trump's remarks to that end both yesterday and today, where he really sounds as if he is now sort of melting down both physically and mentally.

• Trump is also desperately begging allies to help the U.S. in the Strait of Hormuz to reopen shipping of a fifth of the world's oil, since Iran (predictably) shut it down after the ill-advised U.S. and Israeli attack nearly three weeks ago. All of the allies have, so far, declined to help Trump out of his predictable, self-inflicted mess as oil prices continue to spike with no exit strategy in sight. Trump is said to be furious, but is now claiming he didn't need their help anyway.

• The head of Trump's National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, a longtime loyalist, announced his resignation today in response to Trump's war on Iran.

• If you haven't heard some of the remarkable deposition testimony by a couple of the DOGE Bros who were placed in charge of cancelling some $100 million in federal grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities last year, we've got you covered today. Prepare to be gobsmacked at how stupid these two 20-something Elon-wannabees --- Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox --- come across in these interviews, unable to explain even what DEI means (though they were looking to cancel any grant they could characterize as "DEI"), admitting they used ChatGPT to tell them which grants to cancel, and struggling to explain how gender diversity (or something) was the reason for their cancellation of grants having to do with documentation of the Holocaust.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Cuba's electric grid collapses following Trump's oil blockade of the island nation; how Big Oil now worries the Iran War will decimate demand for their deadly product; and as the number of extreme heat days have now doubled around the globe...

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Article Categories: California, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, National Security, Iran, Accountability, Hawaii, KPFK, Donald Trump, Oil, Climate change, Extreme weather, BradCast, Exxon Mobil, Elon Musk, Defense Production Act, Maui

Today on The BradCast: The President of the United States' war of aggression and distraction against Iran is going poorly enough as is, especially with Iran's entirely predictable shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz and, with it, transit out of the Persian Gulf of a fifth of the globe's daily supply of oil and natural gas. But now he's using his failure overseas as cover to punish, target, threaten and endanger Americans on the home front. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We pick up today's show with a quick update of the weekend war news since we last spoke, before turning to a late Friday declaration by Donald Trump's Energy Sec. (and former fracking CEO) Chris Wright, citing an Executive Order issued by the President to reopen pipelines and three offshore drilling rigs owned by a newly-formed company named Sable Offshore Corporation. The company reportedly met with Trump and other Administration officials to discuss reopening the rigs last year. Their aging equipment is part of a pipeline failure that resulted in a notorious ecological disaster on the California coastline just over ten years ago.

Trump has invoked the wartime Defense Production Act in hopes of preempting California state laws and authorities which had otherwise blocked the reopening of the system of platforms, pipelines and storage known as the Santa Ynez unit, even while Sable is facing civil lawsuits and criminal charges that had stalled the reopening of the unit.

The system was previously owned by ExxonMobil. In 2015, a deteriorating pipeline ruptured, resulted in a massive oil spill near Refugio State Beach, just south of Santa Barbara. At least 450,000 gallons of crude was spilled, coating some seven miles of beachfront along the coast, sending sticky tar balls onto the coastline as far as 150 miles away, killing untold numbers of wildlife and endangered species in the bargain.

California and other advocates had been preventing the reopening of the equipment until Trump's order late last week invoking DPA authority for the first time in U.S. history to help out one single fossil fuel company.

We're joined today by TALIA NIMMER, staff attorney for the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the nonprofit groups that had been suing to prevent Sable from reopening the project. The groups have argued in court that the system of pipelines being used by the company remains deteriorating and dangerous. It threatens, as detailed today, not only wildlife along the coastline, but, as Governor Gavin Newsom is arguing in court on behalf of the Golden State, a $51 billion coastal economy. The Executive Order, Nimmer explains, has usurped state law and authority in an unprecedented act.

The 2015 disaster "was one of California's most devastating oil spills. It resulted in the deaths of thousands of birds and marine mammals, cost millions of dollars, and really had devastating impacts on the community that they are still dealing with today," Nimmer says. "Restarting these idled and failed pipelines is really a big deal that puts our coast and our wildlife in great jeopardy, in great danger, and it should not be permitted without ensuring our coastal community is safe."

The Trump Administration is not waiting for approval from courts. Nimmer tells me that her group "just got word" that the damaged pipelines "have been restarted this weekend."

"It's unclear exactly what is open and what is not at this point," she reports. "But what is clear is that, just this morning, Sable issued a press release saying that they have begun transporting oil through these pipelines. Meaning that the pipelines have been restarted in defiance of state requirements and state law."

Nimmer tells me that Sable, "a newly-formed company, was formed strictly for the purpose of reopening these pipelines and oil operations" after purchasing them from ExxonMobil in 2024. "In its short existence, it has racked up numerous criminal charges and violations from state agencies, including a criminal complaint with five criminal charges that it has illegally discharged fill and other pollution into our waterways, and for conducting unlawful repair work on these pipelines."

"In October of last year," Nimmer continues, "the office of the state Fire Marshall determined that there are still further repairs that are needed before these pipelines can safely operate, which have not been done to date despite Sable having turned on the plugs this weekend."

She describes the move as a "radical and unprecedented way of using" the Defense Product Act "to benefit an individual oil company that has repeatedly broken the law and to greenlight a single oil project that California doesn't want or need."

"This is another example of a radical power grab by this Administration." Moreover, she argues, "it sets an extremely dangerous precedent for all state laws. It doesn't just put our coast at risk. It also puts every state at risk, because they can wake up tomorrow to find that projects they don't want are also being greenlighted and causing major risk to their communities." It is, she asserts, a "a huge infringement on state sovereignty."

Making matters still worse, as Trump is claiming such efforts are needed to counter spiking oil prices after his actions resulted in Iran's shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, the Santa Barbra operation is unlikely to lower the price of gas. "The oil in these pipelines would be a drop in the bucket," according to Nimmer. "It's estimated that only 0.05% of the state's total oil production would come from these pipelines. That would really have no impact on lowering global oil prices."

Much more on all of this today, while the State and the Center for Biological Diversity prepare to be in court tomorrow to try and to stop this runaway Administration's latest attack on the state of California.

In the second part of today's show, we open the phones to listeners ringing in on all of the above and a bit more...

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Article Categories: California, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Iran, Environment, KPFK, Donald Trump, Oil, BradCast, Exxon Mobil, Dept. of Energy, Defense Production Act, Chris Wright