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Social Security recipients could soon see their benefits interrupted or delayed as a flood of cuts hits the agency, thanks to the efforts of Elon Musk and DOGE. Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who served as Social Security commissioner under President Biden, says the system is on the brink of collapse as the Trump administration pushes out thousands of staffers and peddles lies about who actually benefits from its services. The former commissioner adds that he believes “they’re trying to wreck Social Security’s reputation, wreck its ability to serve its customers, wreck its unbeaten string of regular monthly payments, so that, having wrecked it, then they have an emergency under which they can rob it.”

On Friday, FBI agents arrested a county judge in Milwaukee and charged her with obstructing justice and concealing an individual from arrest. After an undocumented immigrant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, appeared before her in court on an unrelated misdemeanor charge, Judge Hannah Dugan learned that ICE agents were waiting in the hallway outside her courtroom to arrest him. Dugan told the agents they could not perform the arrest without a judicial warrant and adjourned the hearing, directing Flores-Ruiz to leave her courtroom into a public hallway. Milwaukee-based attorney Ann Jacobs says it appears that two DEA agents who remained in the hallway as Flores-Ruiz left did not take any action toward an arrest while he was still inside the courthouse. He was later pursued and arrested outside. One week later, FBI agents arrested Dugan, accusing her of helping Flores-Ruiz avoid arrest. “The message is crystal clear: ‘If you cross the Trump administration, we will arrest you,’” says Jacobs. “The goal is to chill judges from ruling against the Trump administration,” with “the hopes that they can cudgel the judiciary into simply becoming meekly obedient to the executive branch.” Dugan’s longtime friend Emilio De Torre, who spoke at protests held this week at the FBI’s offices in Wisconsin, says FBI Director Kash Patel’s public celebration of her arrest is “absolutely disgusting and damaging,” and slams the effects of Trump’s attacks on civil society. “People here in Milwaukee are not taking kindly to the fact that our community, our economy, our family, now our courthouses and our schools are being disrupted by the heavy-handed overreach that we see.”

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Today on The BradCast: His various attempts to undermine the Constitution and American civil rights law continue to be blocked by judges in the courts. But that isn't stopping the President and his lackeys from gutting civil rights protections and environmental justice enforcement at key federal agencies...for the moment. Nor is it stopping our guest [...]

An estimated 3 million people protested at about 1,300 gatherings around the United States on April 5th in what was the first coordinated mass action against Donald Trump’s regime.

Student activists at U.S. universities grapple with the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the Trump administration’s criminalization of their protests.