When we allow a felon to become President of the United States (thanks, in no small part, to extreme rightwing activists on the Supreme Court ignoring and rewriting the 14th Amendment), it’s not surprising that he’d quickly begin violating laws and undermining the U.S. Constitution. When that felon also hopes to be a dictator, we certainly shouldn’t be surprised that one of his first targets is the Constitution’s landmark guarantees of a free press, as discussed on today’s BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]
FIRST… Unfortunately, the First Amendment isn’t the only one Donald Trump is hoping to dismantle. According to nonprofit news outlet CalMatters, ICE has already begun rounding up migrant workers in Central California, resulting in about 75% of farm-workers staying home this week during peak harvest season for oranges and other produce in America’s “Salad Bowl”. If that continues longer term, economists are predicting “absolute economic devastation” locally, skyrocketing food prices and shortages across the country nationally, along with a “recession-level event if this is the new long-term norm.”
In related news, Trump’s Executive Order signed on Monday, seeking to redefine, by fiat, the text and clear meaning of the 14th Amendment’s very first sentence establishing birthright citizenship to anyone born here, regardless of the citizenship status of the parents, ran into its first legal roadblock in Court on Wednesday. A Reagan-appointed federal judge declared today that the Order “boggles the mind,” calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”. He temporarily paused the Order nationwide in the first of five different challenges brought by 22 state Attorneys General. If allowed to be enacted, as one of the challengers argued in court today, it would “impact hundreds of thousands of citizens nationwide who will lose their citizenship under this new rule.”
THEN… Trump doesn’t seem to much care for the First Amendment either. And, shamefully, a number of mainstream broadcast news outlets owned by major corporations have been all too eager to help him dismantle it. See Disney-owned ABC News‘ pathetic agreement in December to settle Trump’s absurdly frivolous lawsuit with blatantly unconstitutional claims. Instead of fighting the defamation suit, they agreed to contribute $15 million to Trump’s Presidential Library fund. See also the reports last week that Paramount-owned CBS News is in talks to do the same thing over another ridiculous complaint that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris in a way that Trump didn’t like.
While those outfits are settling private lawsuits, Trump’s new Federal Communications Commission Chair, Brendan Carr is weaponizing the FCC to go after the same news outlets. Last week, President Biden’s outgoing Chair dismissed several specious complaints against ABC, CBS and NBC that echoed Trump’s private lawsuits, declaring “the FCC should not be the President’s speech police” and that “the FCC should not be journalism’s censor-in-chief.” This week, however, the newly seated Carr un-dismissed those complaints (if not the ones against a Fox affiliate, for some reason).
We’re joined today by JOHN BERGMAYER, the Legal Director at good government group Public Knowledge. He charges that “Chairman Carr has made it plain he intends to weaponize the FCC to threaten political speech and news coverage he disagrees with.” You’re not surprised right?
“We have things like defamation law against a public figure, but you can’t just prove that they are wrong, or you disagree with them, or they’re being unfair or ‘mean to me’. You have to prove they are ‘actively deciding to harm me’ through conscious deception,” Bergmayer explains today. “That’s a very hard standard to meet. I don’t think any of these cases meet the very tough requirements for the FCC to decide in the complainants favor.”
He also adds: “It’s really notable that Chairman Carr did not reinstate a complaint that was against a Fox affiliate in Philadelphia, that was based on the Fox affiliate airing information that it knew, that was judged to be, defamatory.”
“It really is a troubling sign that the current Chairman views these regulatory tools as a means to advance his cultural and partisan agenda,” Bergmayer tells me. “What’s particularly disturbing is that the Chairman wants to pick fights with the First Amendment rights of broadcasters or use dubious theories of law to go after perceived slights by Big Tech.”
We also discuss the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling earlier this month that appears to end the FCC’s ability, as a federal agency, to ensure Net Neutrality and an Open Internet (not that Trump or his FCC would have any particular interest in doing so.)
FINALLY… Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, following an unprecedented blizzard in the U.S. South; yet another new, climate-changed fueled fire amid record dry weather here in L.A. County; Trump’s delusional claims about California‘s water supply; and more…
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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It’s traumatic to endure Trump’s cruel policies. It’s then absurdly cruel given Greg Palast’s findings. What will we do now?
Greg Palast says that media will report on GOP voter suppression tactics before an election, but post election, media will not report what effect that voter suppression had on election outcomes.
https://hartmannreport.com/p/tr...ession-won-c6f
TRUMP LOST. Vote Suppression Won.
The Hartmann Report
Here are the numbers from investigative reporter Greg Palast…
GREG PALAST
JAN 24
Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.
And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante†challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.
Stay with me and I’ll give you the means, methods and, most important, the key calculations.
snip
As in Bush v. Gore in 2000 and in too many other miscarriages of Democracy, this election was determined by good old “vote suppression,†the polite term we use for shafting people of color out of their ballot. We used to call it Jim Crow.
Here are key numbers:
— 4,776,706 voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls according to US Elections Assistance Commission data.

— By August of 2024, for the first time since 1946, self-proclaimed “vigilante†voter-fraud hunters challenged the rights of 317,886 voters. The NAACP of Georgia estimates that by Election Day, the challenges exceeded 200,000 in Georgia alone.

— No fewer than 2,121,000 mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors (e.g. postage due).

— At least 585,000 ballots cast in-precinct were also disqualified.

— 1,216,000 “provisional†ballots were rejected, not counted.

— 3.24 million new registrations were rejected or not entered on the rolls in time to vote.
If the purges, challenges and ballot rejections were random, it wouldn’t matter. It’s anything but random. For example, an audit by the State of Washington found that a Black voter was 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. Rejection of Black in-person votes, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study in Florida, ran 14.3% or one in seven ballots cast.
…………..
What do we do? Palast says we need new Civil Rights and Voting Rights Movements. He says to join groups like the NAACP, ACLU, Black Voters Matter, and Rainbow Coalition who are running campaigns to reverse laws purging legal voters.
Great link Bev. Thanks.
Dredd, here is Greg Palast’s site and article:
https://www.gregpalast.com/
https://www.gregpalast.com/trum...ppression-won/
It’s the great election integrity investigators who are to be thanked by all of us, Greg Palast and others, including Brad.
Everyone, everywhere as fast as possible needs to spread Greg Palast’s report and act on it.
I think it will further anger people who might then resist more. But also, it will help people get over their despair when they realize that our citizens are good and that a majority voted down traitorous, cruel, criminal Trump. We need this information and to organize.
Thank you for summing it up, Bev!
JMO, but it becomes even more powerful when you combine that info with findings from Beth Clarkson’s 2016 exit poll results in a red state (Kansas), that suggest there are likely ways to manipulate electronic votes to make a several % difference in outcome, which could be a factor in congressional and senate elections.
Maybe that’s how Trump got BOTH houses?
JMO, but Clarkson’s 2016 poll analysis haunts me to this day.
And the nation at large was utterly indifferent to her findings.
Again, JMO, but indifference would seem to be an encouragement to further wrongdoing, since it suggests there will be no accountability.
Beth’s report:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OeXEBcSzCA