'BradCast' 2/24/2021 (Guest: Slate's Mark Joseph Stern on SCOTUS putting both Trump and U.S. elections in legal peril)

Published: Feb. 25, 2021, 2:19 a.m.

On today's 'BradCast':\xa0 Some good news out of Virginia, where the Democratically-controlled state legislature has voted to abolish the death penalty, breaking with the state's centuries-long history of systemic racism and extreme racial disparities in their death penalty practices. Donald Trump and the Republican Party were unable to steal the 2020 Presidential election, but have plans in place to pull it off next time with a radical new interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Elections Clause, arguing that only state legislatures may set procedures for federal elections. The US Supreme Court declined to assist this week, dismissing a 2020 election lawsuit in Pennsylvania based on the GOP's radical new tactic. No SCOTUS majority has ever affirmed this extreme reading of the federal Constitution, but the Republicans' stolen and packed Supreme Court may do so in the future. Slate's great legal journalist MARK JOSEPH STERN discusses the ruling, and justifiably destroys Justice Clarence Thomas' bizarre solo dissent. Stern also joins a lively debate over the question of whether SCOTUS was right to dismiss the case rather than hear it to clarify the issue before the 2022 midterm elections, and which could also have far-reaching implications for voting rights and free elections for decades to come. Stern also explains the specific legal jeopardy that Trump now faces, after an adverse Supreme Court ruling allowing a grand jury criminal probe to move forward on investigations into alleged bank, tax and insurance fraud by Trump and his organization, and a criminal investigation in Fulton County, Georgia, into Trump's attempts to interfere with the state's election results. Will a former President of the United States actually receive prison time?