'BradCast' 1/20/2023 (Guest: Ballot Initiative Strategy Center on 2022 successes and new GOP backlash)
On today's 'BradCast':\xa0 In a scathing ruling, a federal judge has dismissed disgraced former President Donald Trump's latest lawsuit and levied a $1 million fine against Trump and his new attorney, Alina Habba, for filing a 'completely frivolous bad faith' lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Peter Strzok and more than a dozen other defendants. The judge also ordered Trump and Habba to pay nearly $1 million to the defendants as punishment for 'a continuing pattern of misuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers' that 'diverts resources from those who have suffered actual legal harm.' Wildly popular progressive citizen ballot initiatives were quite successful in the 2022 election, even in so-called 'deep red' states, on major issues like abortion rights, minimum wage, gun safety, independent redistricting commissions and much more. So of course heavily-gerrymandered Republican-controlled state legislatures are responding to the successes by passing laws to erect new barriers to restrict the process of citizen-led direct democracy. CHRIS MELODY FIELDS FIGUEREDO, Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, explains the GOP backlash to progressive successes on statewide ballot measures around the country in 2022, and what the GOP is now doing to prevent those successes from ever happening again. Figueredo also discusses where the ballot initiative process has seemingly been captured by corporate interests, the dozens of states where citizens aren't allowed to place measures on the ballot, and how to protect citizen-led direct democracy against Republican efforts to quash it nationwide.