Coupla things...

1) We're off today and next week from The BradCast and Green News Report. We had already planned to take a much-needed Spring Break next week. But we were forced to take off a day early from BradCast because Desi had to have a root canal today! Youch. But she insisted on getting out today's GNR before doing so. (A champ. All went well. She is now resting comfortably.)

2) You may have had problems reaching The BRAD BLOG lately. We've had problems with our server for years, but it's become especially acute of late. Believe me, I promise that it drove me far crazier than it might have driven you.

But... GREAT NEWS!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Global fallout expands from US-Israel War on Iran; Trump Administration relaxes smog pollution rules to moderate rising gas prices; Three US offshore wind farms survived Trump assault, now delivering clean electricity; PLUS: Earth's climate is out of balance, new report warns... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): America's bookend wars for oil; "If the Strait remains closed, we’re not talking about a global recession – we’re talking about a depression"; Maryland Supreme Court rejects climate lawsuits; The point of no return: new evidence shows Antarctic melting is already locked in; Epic river migrations of fish rapidly collapsing, UN report finds; USDA says it needs roads to fight remote wildfires, but a new study says roads bring more fire to forests ... PLUS: Suddenly, the US manufactures a ton of grid batteries ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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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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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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump backs off threat to bomb Iran's power plants, which would be a war crime; New analysis finds US-Israel war on Iran is a disaster for the climate and environment; Trump Administration pays offshore wind company $1 billion taxpayer dollars to not build new wind farms; PLUS: Extreme heat wave in Southwestern US really was historic... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Earth being 'pushed beyond its limits' as energy imbalance reaches record high; Global news coverage of climate change falls for fourth straight year; If you teleport to start a race war and the Waffle House is closed? That's really bad;

... PLUS: The Iran War is also a climate war ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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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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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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Oil and gas prices continue to spike as Iran War continues to escalate; Trump Administration orders restart of oil pipeline off California coast in violation of state law; U.N. warns prolonged conflict in Middle East could trigger record global hunger; PLUS: Trump Administration weighs incredible new strategy to use taxpayer money to block new offshore wind farms... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): For 100 years, Big Oil knew it was turning Louisiana's coast into 'Swiss cheese,' records show; Revealed: the world's worst mega-leaks of methane driving global heating; How blue California and red Texas became green powerhouses; Fossil fuels 'ripping away national security' but renewables 'turn the tables', says UN climate chief; Democrats introduce windfall profit tax as big oil set to make billions from Iran war ... PLUS: A solid-state EV battery that can achieve 800 miles of driving range - It's becoming a reality ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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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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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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Cuba's electric grid collapses, the first nationwide blackout since Trump effectively shut off the flow of oil to the island nation; Big Oil worried Trump's war on Iran will cause long term destruction of demand; PLUS: The number of extreme heat days has doubled around the world, new study finds... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Energy Secretary directs oil company to restore operations off California coast; DOE: Fuel prices will stay high long term; Illinois to data centers: Bring your own renewables and skip the line; 'The Plastic Detox' review - a film so terrifying you will want to change your life immediately; Climate denier warhawk Newt Gingrich has a modest proposal; Warming waters threaten seafood supply ... PLUS: Ruling the night: Bat species at risk ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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