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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Extreme winter storm batters the U.S. Northeast; Extreme dryness fuels winter fire weather in Oklahoma; PLUS: Winter Olympic athletes call for climate action to save winter sports... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): America is becoming a petrostate; Supreme Court agrees to hear from oil and gas companies trying to block climate change lawsuits; Winter is Not What it Used to Be in the Upper Midwest; Environmental Protest Group Extinction Rebellion Says FBI Is Investigating It For Terrorism... PLUS: Climate Coalition Sue to Stop Trump EPA 'From Torching Our Kids' Future... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast: The cover-ups (plural) continue! It's good to be king. Amirite, Donald? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our lively coverage today...

• After a week of climate change-fueled downpours in Southern California, it looks like it's the East Coast's turn, as a record climate-fueled blizzard all but shuts down the Northeast with as much as three feet of snow in some places. All of that, just over a week after Donald Trump gutted some 20 years of EPA rules meant to slow or mitigate our worsening climate crisis by regulating the release of man-made greenhouse gases that are heating the planet. But Trump says, "don't worry about it!", the public will now have more money to spend on health care in the bargain!

• Trump's FCC Chair Brendan Carr offers some tips on how broadcasters may avoid scrutiny by issuing a "pledge" to support this Administration's celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this Summer. We take his suggestion to play more Schoolhouse Rock! In today's case, the classic 1973 episode about the nation's founding, called "No More Kings!"

• In the federal courts, corrupt Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled on Monday in Florida that the tax-payer funded report by Special Counsel Jack Smith --- detailing the tax-payer funded probe of Donald Trump's theft of thousands of national security documents upon leaving office after his first term, resulting in his federal criminal indictment on the matter --- is barred from ever being released to the public. Not even by future Administrations, if her absurd, ahistorical ruling were to be upheld. Smith himself remains barred from ever discussing it in the bargain. Stick a pin in all of that for a moment, because...

• Across the pond, just days after the arrest of the former Prince Andrew, related to revelations about his relationship with pedophile and Trump's longtime best friend Jeffrey Epstein, yet another high-ranking official was arrested on Monday. Former UK Ambassador to the U.S., Peter Mandelson is facing potential indictment on similar charges to the former Prince. All of it revealed by emails and other documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice under the mandates of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

• Meanwhile, back here, as we discussed on last Thursday's BradCast in somewhat salacious detail, investigative journalist Roger Sollenberger has uncovered evidence revealing that the DOJ has unlawfully failed to release records regarding as many as four FBI interviews with a woman who alleges that she was raped, physically abused, and threatened by Donald Trump when she was just 13-years old. Sollenberger has also noticed some curious oddities regarding the timing of the discovery of certain Epstein-related documents by the DOJ and the return to Trump of the documents he stole at the end of his first term. (Yes, after Jack Smith was forced to drop his indictments against Trump when he was elected again, the DOJ returned those stolen documents to him shortly after he was sworn in a second time!)

  Is it possible that documents related to these allegations of Trump having raped and assaulted a minor were among those stolen by Trump? Might that explain why Trump was seemingly willing to face jail time to protect those documents, rather than simply return them to the Government after being politely asked repeatedly and warned many times of the consequences of not doing so? And if, in fact, he was hoarding some Epstein-related documents in his Mar-a-Lago mansion to keep them from seeing the light of day, is it possible that Jack Smith, after obtaining those documents via search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, knows all about it, but is now permanently barred by the Trump-appointed lackey Judge Cannon from ever talking about it? And is all of that revealed in the final report of his investigation that Cannon has absurdly blocked from ever being released to the public?

• Tune in for much more, plus callers ringing in today on all of the above!...

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Today on The BradCast: If only we were a real country. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

On Thursday, South Korea's former President, Yoon Suk Yeol, was found guilty of an attempted coup in December of 2024, when he declared martial law and directed troops to shut down the National Assembly in hopes of preventing it from being able to meet and vote to block the President's edict. The Judge ruled that the country's now former conservative leader (he was quickly impeached and removed from office) had, among other things, unlawfully sent militiamen to surround and "block the Assembly building and arrest key figures...in order to prevent lawmakers from gathering to deliberate or vote...to obstruct or paralyze the Assembly’s activities so that it would be unable to properly perform its functions." Sound familiar?

After today's verdict, Yoon was quickly sentenced to life in prison, with labor. The Democratic opposition charged the sentenced "lacked a sense of justice" because the judge didn't choose the other possible sentence for this crime: the death penalty.

It took just 14 months for accountability in South Korea, the second democratic nation in the past six months to sentence a former leader for an attempted coup. Brazil's former President and Donald Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro enjoyed 33 months of freedom before he was handed a 27-year sentence for directing his supporters to attack the nation's parliament building in January of 2023 after Bolsonaro had lost his reelection bid. Sound familiar?

Meanwhile, across the pond today, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the younger brother of King Charles III, was arrested by British police after a probe related to allegations that he had shared sensitive trade information with the late pedophile and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein while serving as the UK's special envoy for international trade. The former Prince was previously stripped of his title and more following allegations of sex with minors trafficked to him by Epstein.

Today was the first time in nearly 400 years that a British royal had been arrested. The last time, during King Charles I's reign, it was amid a power struggle between the King and Parliament in 1642, after which Charles was eventually beheaded.

There has been much more fallout for top government officials in Great Britain, Norway, France and elsewhere in recent days, related to information revealed by the release of the Epstein Files. Basically, everywhere but in the U.S.

The new allegations against the Prince formerly known as Andrew were revealed in documents published last month by the U.S. Dept. of Justice under the Epstein Transparency Act, a law fought for and won last year mainly by Congressional Democrats. That law, begrudgingly signed by Trump, Epstein's years-long best bud, mandates the release of all DOJ and FBI documents related to the multi-year criminal probes of Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. No documents may be withheld, and only the names and identifying information of victims may be redacted.

Trump's Dept. of Justice, however, is blatantly in violation of that law, continuing their long cover-up for him.

On Sunday, investigative journalist Roger Sollenberger discovered evidence in DOJ's publicly searchable Epstein database that the FBI interviewed "a victim of Jeffrey Epstein who also accused Donald Trump of sexually and violently assaulting her" when she was 13 years old, back in the mid-80s. The documents suggest the government found her to be a credible accuser in 2019 and, in 2021, a victim matching her biological details won a settlement from the late pedophile's estate.

On Wednesday, Sollenberger discovered even more details on the matter, including that the FBI found the woman to be credible enough that she was subsequently interviewed three more times thereafter by the FBI. But the records referencing those interviews, compiled by the DOJ for use in Maxwell's trial have since been removed from the Internet. Fortunately, that record was copied by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine before it was removed by DOJ. As Sollenberger discovered, the records of the actual interviews, and the FBI's interview notes from three of four of those meetings, do not appear to have been published yet at all, in apparent defiance of the Epstein Transparency Act, an in contradiction to claims by Trump's U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that all such documents have now been released.

So...there is a whole lot to dig into on today's program, as you might imagine, including some very strange questions about timing of the victim's FBI interviews and Epstein's 2019 death in prison while awaiting trial. Also, Sollenberger raises even more curious points about the interview documents in question and how they may relate to the thousands of supposed "national security" documents stolen by Trump from the White House when he left office after his first term, before repeatedly refusing, despite threat of criminal indictment, to return them to the Government.

Cherry on top today? Desi Doyen joins us to close out the show with our latest Green News Report...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Environmental and public health groups sue Trump EPA over repeal of the EPA's Endangerment Finding; New data suggest the rate of man-made global warming may be accelerating; Trump EPA to loosen mercury pollution rules for coal plants; PLUS: The Trump Administration has effectively canceled enforcement of environmental laws... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump already decimated the EPA. It wasn't enough for Big Business; Trump Taps Ex-RFK Jr. Aide To Lead National Science Foundation; Environmental Protest Group Extinction Rebellion Says FBI Is Investigating It For Terrorism; How The NRC Lost Its Independence; Climate Change Threatens Winter Olympics’ Future – And Snowmaking Has Limits; The Quest To Warn Everyone On Earth About Deadly Weather ... PLUS: >What’s Behind Your Eye-Popping Power Bill? We Broke It Down By Region... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: When fascism takes root, there's a whole lot more that comes with it. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP TODAY... Based on little more than a threat from Donald Trump's FCC Chair Brendan Carr to rewrite Equal Time rules for late-night talk show interviews on broadcast television, CBS, newly owned by Paramount/Skydance, is rolling over in advance. Stephen Colbert, whose top-rated Late Show with Stephen Colbert will be ending in May on the heels of the merger, says that CBS attorneys barred him from interviewing Texas' Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico on Monday, amid his primary election against Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

But all of that seems to have blown up in CBS' face, as nearly three-times the number of viewers, so far, have watched Colbert's streaming-only interview, posted to Youtube after network suits nixed the broadcast version, and some $2.5 million came rolling in for Talarico's campaign in the bargain.

Colbert himself told the story on Monday and then followed up on Tuesday. We share both segments today.

THEN... Trump and his party stormed to power in 2024 based in no small part on opportunistic, weaponized charges of antisemitism on the Left, amid campus protests against Israel's war on Gaza. After taking office again last year, that political campaign turned into a government extortion campaign against universities, colleges, law firms and other organizations who, the Trump Administration claimed, were exercising antisemitism.

But, when rightwing podcaster Ben Shapiro attempted to call out antisemites in the Republican Party and MAGA movement late last year, he was met with little more than a shrug by the 30,000 young Christian followers of the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk at the group's America Fest gathering in Phoenix. Shapiro was, among other things, calling out former Fox 'News' host turned podcaster Tucker Carlson for a softball interview with avowed neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, and Shapiro's former employee, turned hugely popular podcaster, Candace Owens. She has, among other things in recent months, advanced a conspiracy theory that Israel was somehow behind last year's murder of Kirk.

It gets even more twisted, as new polling and focus groups find that young Republicans and evangelicals don't seem to have much of a problem with Hitler, and even long-established GOP institutions like the Heritage Foundation, have apparently decided to stand with Carlson and Nazis. Surprised? Don't be. They also got behind Trump even after he enjoyed a Thanksgiving week dinner with Kanye and Fuentes a few years earlier.

The notion that Evangelical Republicans claim to be supporters of Israel because they support the Jewish people has always been absurd to those of us paying actual attention for the past whole bunch of decades. The fact that the lie is only now beginning to come to the attention of some in the public and media is somewhat mind-blowing.

But the slow-motion implosion among MAGA Republicans is really something to watch, and far more widespread and insane than I can adequately detail here in a short summary post.

Longtime investigative journalist ART LEVINE, on the other hand, who joins us for a very lively conversation on today's program, has published an exhaustive expose on all of this at The Washington Spectator this month, headlined "Inside the MAGA Meltdown Over Antisemitism". The piece's similarly exhaustive (if very accurate) sub-hed: "A Parade of Charlie Kirk Wannabes, Nazi Sympathizers, End Times Prognosticators, Media Grifters and Nostalgic Evangelicals Scramble for Control of Their Imploding Coalition".

Levine tells me today that it is all "insanely hypocritical," arguing that "essentially, Donald Trump might be considered the Anti-Semite in Chief, because of his own overt symbolism. If you're inviting, over to your home, Kanye West, who recently had a 'Heil Hitler' video on Twitter, and Nick Fuentes, he is an open Holocaust denier, it's just nuts!"

"There's no more fig leaves," Levine charges, based on his months of painstakingly documented and linked research. "All of the standard distancing modes between Republicans and antisemitism has dropped away."

Tune in for much much more. And bring a big bucket of popcorn with ya...

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Today on The BradCast: The critical 2026 midterm elections are now officially underway, with early voting having begun in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas for their March 3rd midterm primaries. But Republicans are not done trying to undermine those elections with legislation meant to undercut democracy itself. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... A few words on the passing, at the age of 84, of Rev. Jesse Jackson, civil rights icon, voting rights advocate, and two-time Democratic Presidential candidate.

Also, a few words on what appears to be the further collapsing of support for Donald Trump, as detailed in several new polls released in advance of the Washington's Birthday holiday yesterday, and as analyzed by CNN's Harry Enten. Bottom line for the moment, Trump's approval is nearing all-time lows among the public. It is lower than Joe Biden at the same point of his first term as President and even lower than Trump's own numbers at this point during his own failed first term in office. As Enten highlights, Trump is now 27 points underwater among independent voters.

"I don't understand how this works out well for the President of the United States. When you are 27 points below water, under water, with the center of the electorate, with independents, you lose, your party loses," explained the colorful Enten on Monday. With that in mind...

NEXT... If you're losing among the electorate, the Republican Party appears to now believe, don't adjust your policies to popular ones. Just change the electorate!

After seemingly failed mid-decade gerrymandering bids last year (quickly answered by Democratic states); after recent hollow threats by Trump to "nationalize" elections (he has no such legal or Constitutional authority); after ordering the FBI to raid the election warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia in an effort to continue the charade that the 2020 election was stolen from him (they still have shown no such evidence); the GOP seems to believe they can legislate their way to a more favorable electorate this year.

Last week, the Republican-controlled House narrowly passed the so-called "SAVE America Act" [PDF], formerly known as the SAVE Act, with every Republican member voting in favor. The measure would, among other things, if also passed in the U.S. Senate, force those newly registering to vote to somehow show proof of citizenship, in person, during the registration process.

The effort is part of Trump's long-running, evidence-free assertion that millions of noncitizens are unlawfully on the voting rolls and voting against him and, I guess, other Republican candidates.

The measure would also force states to run their voting rolls through a notoriously inaccurate federal Dept. of Homeland Security tool --- originally designed for something else entirely --- known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (or SAVE) database.

That tool has, in recent months, been used by GOP-controlled states to check their rolls for evidence of noncitizen voters. In state after state, it has found almost none. Among the few that it has flagged as potential noncitizen voters, many of them turn out to be false positives, citizens who are inaccurately identified as noncitizens in the database, or noncitizens on the rolls who never voted, but were registered due to clerical error after making clear to DMV workers that they were not American citizens.

Nonetheless, the SAVE America Act, would both force use of that failed tool in all 50 states --- potentially resulting in lawful voters being removed from the rolls --- and mandate proof of citizenship when registering, despite tens of millions of Americans who have no easy, or free, access to such documents.

We're joined today by lawyer turned election integrity social media advocate JENNIFER COHN --- who has been reading through the various iterations of the newly renamed SAVE Act --- to discuss both the barriers it includes for new voters (or those who have recently moved and must re-register), the obstacles that stand in the way of Republican passage of the Act in the U.S. Senate, and what the real purpose of this insidious legislation actually is.

"Up to 69 million women could be disenfranchised by this bill because their last names no longer match their birth certificates because they've taken their husband's name," explains Cohn. She says that while the legislation mentions documents that might help women overcome that barrier, "They're tricky about it. They say, for example, that you could use a 'Real ID' if it indicates your citizenship. What they don't say is that only five states issue Real IDs that indicate your citizenship. So that won't work for the vast majority of Americans."

Passports will work, but they now cost $165 for new applicants or $130 for renewals. They also take time to obtain and require, in most cases, a birth certificate, which many do not have access to. Those may also cost time and money to obtain. But a birth certificate alone won't work either if your name has changed through marriage, or other reasons. And if you have a passport, but your name has changed since you obtained it, that will be a problem as well. Cohn notes that the Republican authors of the bill did something else that is "sneaky in the latest version of the bill. It still omits marriage certificates from the list of approved documents." So even those might not adequately offer proof of citizenship when coupled with a birth certificate during registration under SAVE.

There is much more to be concerned about, Cohn tells me, arguing that "the media really has not caught up" with what Republicans are trying to do with the SAVE Act and just how bad the SAVE database actually is.

While I explain that I think much of this is meant simply to frighten voters into not participating in elections, to scare them, to cause chaos --- especially as I see no path toward passage of the SAVE Act in the Senate --- Cohn thinks I may be wrong, that insidious plans may be in the works to force passage against the wishes of Democrats in the upper chamber, where 60 votes would normally be needed for passage in the 100-seat Senate. (Tune in for details on those insidious plans.)

She believes that people should be freaked out by all of this. If nothing else, she argues, so that they take action to call their Senators (202-224-3121) to demand they vote against SAVE, and to help people understand that this is much much more than a simple "Voter ID bill" as Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and other wildly dishonest Republicans are disingenuously attempting to portray it to the public.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report on the heels of last week's landmark rollback of the EPA's critical Endangerment Finding, which had allowed regulation of fossil fuel pollution under the Clean Air Act; and following a massive raw sewage spill at a federal facility near D.C., which Trump is attempting to blame on Maryland's Democratic Governor...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Fallout grows after Trump EPA revokes the Endangerment Finding, a key goal of Project 2025; Trump's dismantling of America's climate supercomputer threatens U.S. insurance markets; China's emissions have been flat or falling for nearly 2 years; PLUS: Massive sewage spill in nation's capital is likely the largest in U.S. history... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Some like it hothouse: Unleashing subsurface strategic energy assets to achieve unmanageable climate outcomes; Dem Senators Launch Inquiry Into EPA’s Repeal Of Endangerment Finding; A new Ohio bill could be a de facto statewide ban on solar and wind; The voracious vine that 'ate the South' can also fuel wildfires; Hazardous South L.A. oil wells plugged after decades of community pressure... PLUS: Trash piles up in Havana as US oil chokehold halts garbage trucks ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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

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