Lots of bad news on today's BradCast for Trump and the Republican's in Congress as they head home for their long summer recess. And several astonishing followups to major voting-related stories we broke earlier in the week out of North Carolina and Georgia. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

First up, several big stories out of Congress today, none of them good for the President or Republicans...

• The GOP's only black U.S. House member, Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, says he won't run again in 2020. The stunning announcement Thursday night represents a huge pickup opportunity for Dems in a state slowing turning "blue", and just the latest in a quickly growing string of GOPers calling it quits in the House;

• On Friday, Donald Trump abruptly pulled his 5-day old nomination of TX Rep. John Ratcliffe to become the nation's next spy chief. Ratcliffe, after attacking former Special Counsel Robert Mueller during hearings in the House last week, was tapped by the President to replace Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who publicly contradicted Trump on Russian interference in U.S. elections, Iran compliance with the landmark nuclear pact that Trump violated and pulled out of, and on the national security threat of climate change, among other things. Ratcliffe, however, was revealed to have had no previous intelligence experience, as required by statute for the DNI role overseeing the nation's 17 intelligence agencies, and was found to have lied about past claims to have prosecuted terrorists;

• And, in more bad news for Trump on Friday, a majority of House Democrats have now publicly called for an official impeachment inquiry of the President. CA Rep. Salud Carbajal became the 118th out of 235 House Dems to publicly call for an inquiry to begin. With the majority of her caucus now supporting impeachment proceedings, it remains to be seen if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will finally modify her current position to allow Dems only to "legislate, investigate and litigate". House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler recently filed a court motion seeking grand jury information from the Mueller investigation which, for the first time, referenced a need for the documents due to Congressional consideration of impeachment proceedings.

Then, several (occasionally amazing) follow-ups to stories we broke earlier in the week regarding the citizen-led fights for publicly overseeable elections and hand-marked paper ballots in two key swing states.

First, on Tuesday's program we detailed what appeared to be a "win", if a short-lived one, by election integrity advocates in North Carolina, after they'd convinced the state Board of Elections, in a 3 to 2 vote, to adopt a resolution effectively blocking the certification of a 100% unverifiable computer touchscreen Ballot Marking Device made by ES&S, the nation's largest (and sleaziest) private voting vendor. That vote, if finalized next month, would likely result in hand-marked paper ballots across the entire state in next year's crucial Presidential election. The powerful ES&S is currently the only voting system vendor certified to do business in the closely divided battle ground state.

But, in reporting that story on Tuesday, we also broke the news that one of the three "yes" votes on the resolution blocking ES&S, Republican David Black, had changed his mind, leading to a new meeting --- and a revote on the resolution --- called for Thursday. Black's reversal would mean a 3 to 2 vote in FAVOR of ES&S' new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen systems for counties currently serving some 2.5 million voters whose current, older 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems are set to be certified, by state law, at year's end.

But, a funny thing happened before the Thursday revote, after the state Board's Chairman, Democrat Robert Cordle --- who had voted against the resolution on Monday --- told a wildly inappropriate joke to open a state conference of some 600 election officials. He was subsequently forced to resign by the Governor, resulting in Thursday's re-vote becoming a 2 to 2 deadlock, leaving the initial vote, which could lead to hand-marked paper ballots for all NC voters, in place.

There will be yet another vote --- the formal vote on the resolution --- on August 23rd, when whoever Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper names as the new Chair to the beleaguered 5-person Board, will be able to cast the decisive vote to determine if the key swing state will have verifiable elections in 2020 or not. And, yes, we share the "dirty joke" in question, about a woman and a cow, on today's program;

Then, we also have a follow-up to a story we broke on Monday's BradCast, regarding the federal lawsuit seeking to ban Georgia's 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems in favor of hand-marked paper ballots before the 2020 Presidential election. On Monday, plaintiff Marilyn Marks of the Coalition for Good Governance, joined us on the show to describe a revelation from a court hearing latest last week in which a witness from Georgia's Sec. of State's office revealed that all voting machines across the state in 2018 were programmed, without oversight, by three independent contractors working for ES&S out of their garages, using unsecured home WiFi.

Last night, the UK's Guardian picked up the story about the state's fully-outsourced elections, confirming our reporting from earlier in the week and adding a number of additional disturbing details. Among those new details: Georgia's entire voter registration system was similarly outsourced to a private company which even contractually disallowed the Sec. of State's office from having access to the network. More alarmingly, however, as the Guardian's Jordan Wilkie reports, during security penetration tests, a third-party (fourth-party?) cybersecurity company contracted by the state, found that it was able to "take over the entire network". Moreover, in November of 2018, a year later, in a second round of testing just before last year's midterms, many of the vulnerabilities discovered during the initial test remained unresolved.

Until last week's hearing, when much of this information was revealed on the stand for the first time during questioning of the Sec. of State's chief information officer, the state had completely misled the federal court about all of the above and more.

Finally today, some very grim news out of the Arctic, where Greenland, over the past week, has gone through an extraordinary melt event, with record high temperatures --- 10 to 30 degrees above the normal average --- resulting in the loss of some 10 billion tons of ice over the past day or two, with nearly 200 billion tons of water pouring into the Atlantic Ocean during the month of July. How's that for a cheery way to end the week? You're welcome!

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Both Democrats and Republicans alike --- on Capitol Hill and in the media --- are trying to make sense of Wednesday's landmark testimony by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller and where things go from here. We do a bit of the same ourselves on today's BradCast. Though I hope we are a great deal more honest about it than Donald Trump and Fox "News", and less confusing than Fox' Ainsley Earhardt who announced this morning that Mueller's testimony "didn't change anything", before going on to tell viewers that "it changed everything". [Audio link to show our full program is posted below.]

For full coverage and extended excerpts from Mueller's nearly seven hours of hearings before the U.S. House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, see yesterday's special coverage show. For analysis and the fallout since the Republican former FBI Director confirmed the multiple and repeated felonious and impeachable crimes by the President of the United States detailed in his 448-page report [PDF], we're joined by the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo today. As usual, we attempt to cut through the media drama and partisan positioning to get to the actual facts and important content that matters.

Among the issues discussed with Parton....

• The fact that only Republicans are ever allowed to be Special Counsel/Prosecutors, no matter whether the President being investigated is a Democrat or a Republican;
• Content of note from Wednesday's hearings that was both damning to Donald Trump and at risk of being lost amid frequently lousy corporate media coverage (and, wholly dishonest coverage from rightwing outlets);
• The proper context for making "sense" of some of the conspiracies offered on Wednesday by Republicans, even as Trump's AG/fixer Bill Barr and other GOPers may have done harm lately to the prospects of their own conspiracy-based argument about the origins of what would eventually become the Mueller investigation;
• How House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still dropping the ball on impeachment in Congress, at least for now, and setting the country up for even more Presidential corruption in both the near and distant future in the bargain;
• And, where all of this madness may and/or should go next.

"It seems obvious to me that we have a criminal in the White House. And an abuser, a corrupt leader, and a barbarian and an ignoramus," Parton explains, cutting to the chase. "He's an unfit President and he should be impeached. To me, this is obvious."

But, she goes on, in struggling to make sense of why impeachment proceedings have not already been triggered, "One of the reasons that the dial is not being moved is the way that the press is covering this. There was a lot of criticism, during and after the testimony, about the fact that they covered it like a sporting event. 'He didn't put on the best show', etc. etc. The theater criticism. This is a big problem because this is a complicated story. People are seeing it as a game, as this is a strategy, instead of what it really is --- which is a fundamental threat to our democracy.

"If Donald Trump gets away with this, if he gets off scot-free --- re-elected or not --- if he gets away with doing these things while in office, it has changed everything. The President is no longer accountable. If Donald Trump cannot be impeached, then nobody can be impeached. Impeachment no longer exists as a stop on a President like this. And that's very scary," warns Parton.

Also on today's BradCast: "Unprecedented" heat and wildfires in the Arctic; Ohio's "socialist" Republicans give the planet and Ohio residents the finger by going all in on Big Government bailouts of coal and nuclear power companies; U.S. automakers give Trump the finger by working out a secret deal with California to lower vehicle emissions; The Trump Administration gives humanity the finger by deciding to "Make America Kill Americans Again"; A federal judge in California gives the finger to the Administration's new, unlawful southern border asylum ban; And Kim Jong Un gives his friend Donald the finger by firing off a few ballistic missiles to celebrate Mueller's testimony.

And, finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for the latest Green News Report on some of the above, and much much more...

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As documented by today's BradCast special coverage, former FBI Director Robert Mueller finally offered his long-awaited testimony in the U.S. House during nearly 7 hours of hearings before both the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

The Republican former Special Counsel confirmed key details of his two-volume, 448-page report [PDF] on Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 election, the Trump Campaign's coordination with that effort and, in most detail, multiple instances of both indictable and impeachable criminal corruption of justice laid out by the report. In frequently halting and often terse responses to members of the two House panels, Mueller, as promised, refused to stray from the "four corners" of his report, issued earlier this year following his two-year probe.

Nonetheless, as heard on today's program, his responses made clear that both Donald Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr --- not to mention the bulk of the Republican Party and their rightwing media outlets --- have been completely misleading the American public with their claims that Mueller's report somehow "exonerated" the President. It did anything but.

"Did you actually totally exonerate the President?" Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler asked during his opening round of questions. "No," Mueller flatly replied, later adding that "the President was not exculpated for the acts that he alleged committed." When Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic Chair of the Intel Committee, asked, "Your investigation is not a witch hunt, is it?," Mueller dryly responded: "It is not a witch hunt."

In fact, as Mueller's testimony made clear to those who watched --- especially to those who didn't bother to read his actual report --- any other American who committed the crimes detailed in the Special Counsel's report would have been indicted on multiple felony counts, as more than 1,000 former federal prosecutors have now stated. But for the Dept. of Justice Office of Legal Counsel's (unsupportable) opinion that a sitting President cannot be indicted, Trump would most likely have been charged long ago for his repeated, unlawful attempts to quash the Special Counsel's investigation.

Moreover, near the close of today's long hearings, Mueller offered a chilling warning about what he describes as still-ongoing efforts by Russia and other foreign powers, "as we sit here", to interfere with and manipulate upcoming U.S. elections.

We hold most of the commentary and analysis on all of this for another day in order to bring you extended excerpts on today's program from the detailed questions and answers with members of Congress from both parties and in both the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. If you weren't able to catch seven hours of hearings beginning at 8:30am ET on a work day, we'll get you fairly well caught up on the key through-line and the most noteworthy stuff in just under an hour. You're welcome!

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On today's BradCast: Is the dam Nancy Pelosi has erected against the tide of impeachment finally beginning to crack? Does Donald Trump have Woodsy Owl as his environmental advisor? Was the Governor of Texas behind a bogus voter purge list? [Audio link to our full show is posted below.]

First up, with Trump overseas we'd hoped to be able to ignore him as much as possible this week. But, after newly absurd comments made regarding climate change during an interview with Piers Morgan following Trump's meeting with Prince Charles on the topic, we couldn't hold our tongues

Trump made clear that he doesn't really even understand the climate crisis or how pollution from carbon emissions is endangering livability on Planet Earth. He claims the U.S. has "the cleanest climate" ever and seems to think that "clean air and clean water", as he describes it --- not understanding that carbon dioxide in excess is a dangerous pollutant --- is all that matters. (It's as if his top Environmental Advisor is Woodsy Owl, observes WaPo's Philip Bump.)

He also seems to have no clue that our air and water has gotten dirtier since he took office, and that dangerous greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. But he is very able at newly parroting long-debunked Fox "News" talking points such as the notion that "it used to be called global warming, that wasn't working, then it was called climate change, now it's called extreme weather". Desi Doyen debunks the bunkery. (Hint: It was always called climate change --- the UN's IPCC or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed in 1988 --- and it was Republicans in the 2000s, during the George W. Bush Administration, who preferred that phrase over global warming which GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz found to be more "frightening" to voters!)

Then, Former Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid, who previously opposed impeachment, is now calling on Speaker Pelosi to begin an official inquiry in the U.S. House. And, on Tuesday, some thirty progressive groups who are usually allies to the Democrats published an open letter expressing "deep disappointment" in the Speaker for her blockade of impeachment proceedings against the President, citing her "refusal to use the full scope of your constitutional power to hold Trump accountable." The groups, which include CREDO, Indivisible, the Courage Campaign and Democracy for America among others, charge in their missive that "Voters gave Democrats control of the House of Representatives because they wanted aggressive oversight of the Trump administration" which requires "bold, moral leadership" they claim to be lacking. Though, they note, that Pelosi concedes "we are facing a constitutional crisis", they criticize her for failing to invoke the "remedy" handed to us by the Framers. "You have the power to ensure Congress exercises its constitutional obligation to hold this president accountable. But instead of using your power, you are giving us political excuses for why you shouldn't. Instead of leading, you and your colleagues have asked us to wait – wait for the Mueller report, wait for the unredacted Mueller report, wait for Mueller's testimony about the Mueller report, wait for more investigations, wait for bipartisan consensus, wait for impeachment to poll better, or wait for the 2020 election," the groups write in their open missive posted to WeCantWait.US.

We're joined today by CHARLES CHAMBERLAIN, Chair of progressive signatory Democracy for America, to discuss the letter and to respond to many of the reasons that Pelosi and other Democrats and strategists have cited for not taking action to begin official impeachment proceedings against this President. Is more information still needed from Mueller or his unredacted report before the House should begin? Are the multiple, ongoing investigations that Pelosi is encouraging in the House proving to be more helpful in detailing the high crimes and corruption of the Trump Administration? Should Dems wait until impeachment becomes even more popular among the public? Until more Republicans are willing to come on board? Would the effort endanger Democrats' chances of holding the House and taking back the Senate and White House in 2020? Should it be avoided because, as Pelosi claims, Trumps "wants" to be impeached? Or due to the conventional wisdom that, even if impeached, Senate Republicans would never vote to convict and remove Trump?

Chamberlain responds --- with gusto --- to all of those points and many other such excuses offered by party leadership for not (yet, anyway) beginning an official inquiry to consider Constitutional removal of this criminal President. He also discusses what you can do to help, and argues that impeachment will help, not hurt, Democratic chances in 2020. "It is our base that we need to be worried about. If Democrats don't follow through with what they were sent to do in 2018, then we have a high chance of them staying home," he tells me. "Let's be clear --- if there's one thing that helps people win politically, it's whenever when you're on offense, you're almost always winning. It's something that Republicans are experts at. It's something Donald Trump is expert at. And the more we can do it, the more likely we're going to win in 2020."

Finally today, newly published emails out of Texas reveal that Gov. Greg Abbott (R) appears to have been behind the push for a bogus list of some 100,000 "non-citizens voters" in the state which the Secretary of State used earlier this year to try and purge legal voters from the rolls and led the state's Attorney General to open criminal investigations. Thousands of voters on the list were, in fact, found to have been naturalized citizens and the list was withdrawn by court order, the Sec. of State (a former aid to and appointee of Abbott) was forced to resign, and the state is now paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements after being sued by several groups over the bogus purge list. Thanks to newly revealed details in the emails obtained and published this week by the Campaign Legal Center, it now appears that the Governor may have been behind the insidious voter suppression initiative the whole time...

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As usual, on today's BradCast, everything you need to know --- whether you want to know it or not --- in 57 minutes or less...or your money back! [Audio link to full show follows below.]

• First up today, Virginia's Democratic Governor Ralph Northam announces a plan to convene a special session of the state legislature this summer to respond to last Friday's massacre at a municipal building in Virginia Beach which killed twelve people. Republicans, who have long controlled both chambers of the gerrymandered state legislature, have nixed a panoply of popular gun safety measures year after year in subcommittees, such as measures to place limits on extended magazines like the type used in Friday's shooting, barring the purchase of more than one hand-gun per month, and background checks for all gun sales. Northam says he is asking for "votes and laws, not thoughts and prayers" from state lawmakers just months before the entire General Assembly will be on the ballot for the Commonwealth's November 2019 off-year elections;

• The GOP establishment appears to be pushing back hard today against Donald Trump's promised new tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico, which Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) recently predicted Trump won't actually implement. "He 's been known to play with fire, but not live hand-grenades," Kennedy opined regarding a new 25% tax that Americans would have to pay on all products from Mexico under the President's promised new scheme to, somehow, stop immigration across the southern border. Even members of his own Administration, however, don't appear to understand how Trump's proposed trade war would lead to an end of migration. But, in London today, Trump said it would be "foolish" to try and stop his plan to declare another "national emergency" to unilaterally impose the tariffs. Republicans are indicating they may have enough votes to override a Presidential veto. (We'll believe it when we see it.);

• Meanwhile, our Constitutional Crisis continues, as the White House has now instructed former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and former White House Counsel Chief of Staff Annie Donaldson to defy a Congressional subpoena for documents by claiming Executive Privilege over materials that have already been shared with Special Counsel Robert Mueller (and thus, have already had Privilege waived). With the persistent drumbeat calling for an official impeachment inquiry growing louder each day against the scofflaw President while the White House fights "all of the subpoenas" as per Trump's instructions, Democrats are preparing a number of votes in a number of Committees to hold current and former Administration members in contempt. In addition to possible votes of contempt in a number of committees, Dems have votes scheduled next week for the full House to declare both Attorney General William Barr and former White House Counsel Don McGahn in contempt;

• In 2020 Presidential election news today, Joe Biden released a 22-page, $5 trillion climate plan that includes $1.7 trillion in federal spending over the next ten years, to be paid for by reversing the GOP's 2017 $1.5 trillion tax cut and ending subsidies for fossil fuel companies. We share Biden's introductory video for the plan, which vows to create millions of jobs and protect the retirement and pensions of fossil fuel industry workers. And we compare it to those of other 2020 candidates, including Elizabeth Warren who released her own "aggressive" $2 trillion plan to take on our climate crisis today as well. Biden's new proposal to make America carbon neutral by 2050 is receiving mostly high marks from environmentalists and comes in the wake of a much-derided recently reported comment from a campaign spokesperson claiming that the former Vice President was seeking a "middle ground" on climate that might be joined by Republicans. Climate hawks and supporters of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' Green New Deal resolution characterized Biden's new proposal as an encouraging response to activism and pushback from their ranks;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news of Republican obstructionism finally giving way to a long-awaited $19 billion disaster relief package in Congress, the Trump Administration's newest scam to try and suppress climate science, Colorado's new plan to go big on renewable energy, and....yes...the Administration's promise of "freedom gas" for the world!...

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On today's BradCast: For the first time before, during or since the completion of his two-year Special Counsel's probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election and Donald Trump's obstruction of that investigation, Robert Mueller offered a 9-minute statement at the Dept. of Justice today to announce his expected resignation and to clarify a thing or two...sort of. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

Mueller made clear, as did his 448-page report [PDF], that while current Dept. of Justice guidelines prevent the indictment of a sitting President, he and his team of investigators would have cleared the President of wrong-doing if they could have. "If we had had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so," he explained, adding, "we did not, however, make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime." Mueller noted that he was bound, from the beginning, by DoJ's guidance which finds that "the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing."

The statement, once again, both contradicts Trump's Attorney General William Barr and clearly places the matter of impeachment on Congress' doorstep. Whether Congress will take up that matter, however, still remains unknown. Following Mueller's remarks, House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler offered his strongest condemnation of Trump to date, charging that "the Special Counsel has clearly demonstrated that President Trump is lying about the Special Counsel's findings, lying about the testimony of key witnesses in the Special Counsel's report and, above all, lying in saying that the Special Counsel found no obstruction and no collusion." He further said that "all options were on the table", regarding impeachment, and vowed that "no one, not even the President of the United States, is above the law."

Nonetheless, while Mueller took no questions after his statement, Nadler avoided direct answers to several questions from the press as to whether his Committee would finally begin a formal impeachment inquiry or even subpoena Mueller to testify. We share both statements in full today before we're joined for analysis and insight by award-winning opinion journalist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo. She charges that Mueller's statement, once again, highlights how Barr misrepresented the Special Counsel's efforts and findings. He "entirely contradicts what William Barr has told the American people," she says, before moving on to charge that "Democrats are dithering" in the face of clear and convincing evidence of criminal obstruction by the President of the United States.

We also discuss the recent, noteworthy commentary and actions by libertarian conservative Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan on these matters. Amash, alone (so far) among Congressional Republicans, has offered a number of powerful, clear and to-the-point summary condemnations on Twitter of what he describes as Trump's "impeachable" behavior documented by Mueller and takes Barr to task for misrepresentations of those findings. Moreover, as evidenced by a clip from Amash's first town hall event since calling for impeachment, back home in Grand Rapids on Tuesday night, the Congressman, who was elected in the Tea Party wave election of 2010 and is an original founding member of the far-right Freedom Caucus in the House, is not backing down from his advocacy and calls for impeachment of the President.

Parton rings in with her thoughts on Amash and whether he should be considered for the job of House Manager (essentially, one of the "prosecutors") in any trial for conviction and removal of the President in the U.S. Senate, should the Democrats finally move to impeach in the House.

Also today: After several unceasing weeks of severe weather and at least 200 reported tornadoes wreaking havoc and death across more than half a dozen states, the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center predicts a few days of relative calm, finally, in the days ahead, as we head toward the weekend. Major flooding, however, is predicted to continue in many states throughout the central U.S. and, despite the months of catastrophic climate-changed fueled extreme weather, the federal government, headed by a scofflaw President and climate science denier, continues to otherwise ignore our worsening climate crisis...

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The Constitutional Crisis in D.C. continues to heat up on today's BradCast, following Monday's directive from the White House that former White House Counsel Don McGahn should defy a lawful Congressional subpoena to appear for testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, and Monday's ruling by a U.S. District Court judge that Donald Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA, must turn over financial documents from Trump within the next week, as subpoenaed by Congress. And we've got a new case of GOP election fraud tossed into the mix with everything else today, as well. [Audio link to today's full show is posted below.]

McGahn did not appear Tuesday morning at the Judiciary Committee, defying his subpoena and prompting a public upbraiding from the panel's Democratic Chair Jerry Nadler who declared "our subpoenas are not optional" and vowed the Committee would hear McGahn's testimony "even if we have to go to court to secure it." Nadler added that Democrats will not be deterred from their Constitutionally mandated oversight investigations and "will hold this President accountable, one way or the other."

The "other" way, of course, is via an official impeachment inquiry in the House, which is now being sought by more and more House members, including several both in Democratic leadership and serving on the Judiciary Committee, which would take the lead in such an inquiry. Proponents of an impeachment inquiry now reportedly includes Chairman Nadler himself. He is said to have made the case to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday night, while she reportedly maintains that such an inquiry would hold up both legislation as well as other investigations in the House. Nonetheless, calls for impeachment proceedings from House Democrats are getting louder and appear more inevitable with each passing day and each defied subpoena, even with court rulings favoring Democrats to date. That could change as Trump takes his cases to Courts of Appeal or the GOP's stolen U.S. Supreme Court, as the Administration clearly hopes.

But, even conservative Republican Rep. Justin Amash (MI) is sticking to his guns following his weekend Twitter thread in which he declared the redacted report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller reveals that Trump "engaged in impeachable conduct," displaying a "pattern of behavior that meet[s] the threshold for impeachment." Amash pushed back against his fellow Republican critics in a new Twitter thread on Monday. The founding House Freedom Caucus member shot down a number of limp and uninformed defenses and excuses offered by Trump, his Attorney General Bill Barr and other apologists who wrongly claim the President could not have obstructive justice --- despite the mountain of evidence presented by Mueller of repeated instances --- because there was no "underlying crime" that Trump was attempting to obstruct. All of that, as Amash explains, is simply false from top to bottom.

Also today, more breaking news of yet another case of Republican absentee ballot election fraud, this time in Florida. The latest incident comes on the heels of a GOP absentee ballot fraud scandal that resulted in North Carolina calling a do-over election for this September after the State Board of Elections refused to certify last November's tainted contest in the 9th Congressional District. The newly exposed case was from earlier in 2018, in Miami, where a WhatsApp chat log obtained by the Miami New Times appears to reveal campaign supporters and organizers for a Republican running for a seat on the Miami-Dade's County Commission describing the theft and destruction of absentee ballots cast for their opponents. The incident offers yet more evidence that voting by mail --- unless absolutely necessary --- remains a terrible idea, as we have long argued (despite many Democrats, including lots of friends, readers and listeners in Oregon and other states with all Vote-by-Mail elections, who feel quite differently about it.)

Lastly today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as 67 tornadoes blew through half a dozen states over the weekend and at least another 21 continue to wreak over the past 24 hours in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri, where millions of Americans are now under flash flood warnings. Also on today's GNR, another coal company bankruptcy, a new scammy effort by BP and Shell to lobby for a carbon tax, and the introduction of comprehensive new plans to take on our climate crisis by two different 2020 Democratic hopefuls...

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Our guest on today's BradCast, argues that representative democracy is facing a "major crisis." And he wasn't even talking about the Constitutional Crisis we are now seeing as Trump turns up his obstruction measures against the U.S. Congress to 11. But partisan gerrymandering underscores that crisis as well. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

First up today, however, much of Texas and Oklahoma are under tornado watches and warnings today, as 10 million Americans were under flash flood warnings as of airtime today, following as many as 67 tornadoes over the weekend in in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas and Nebraska. That, after more than a month of record flooding along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers in many states. There is good reason that the UK's Guardian newspaper updated its style-guide last week to reflect the existential climate crisis humanity now faces, thanks to the burning of fossil fuels. The Guardian is now recommending "climate change" be referred to by its journalists as "climate emergency, crisis or breakdown", and that "global warming" is better described as "global heating", with "climate science denier" to be used instead of the inaccurate "climate skeptic". It will be nice when US media decides to do the same.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., Ford Motor Co.'s CEO --- who personally received a 6% raise last year, bringing his total compensation package to nearly $18 million --- announced plans for a "smart organizational redesign process" on Monday. That's a nice way of describing the company's decision to lay off as many as 7,000 workers by the end of summer. So much for the $1.5 trillion GOP tax cut assuring jobs, jobs, jobs and putting our economy "on rocket fuel", apparently, as Trump promised.

But the biggest news over the weekend, no doubt, comes from conservative Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, who announced and explained on Twitter why he believes "President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct" and why even the redacted version of the Mueller Report reveals Trump "engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment."

The courageous, staunch libertarian Tea Party Republican and co-founder of the hard right Freedom Caucus in Congress, also charges that Trump's new Attorney General William Barr "deliberately misrepresented Mueller's report", that "partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances," and that "the risk we face in an environment of extreme partisanship is not that Congress will employ [impeachment] as a remedy too often but rather that Congress will employ it so rarely that it cannot deter misconduct." He went on to warn, as we long have as well, that "When loyalty to a political party or to an individual trumps loyalty to the Constitution, the Rule of Law --- the foundation of liberty --- crumbles."

Trump's impressive response was to call Amash "a total lightweight" and "loser". Ours is to bestow him with our much-sought after, if rarely bestowed, Intellectually Honest Conservative Award

Of course, there are other reasons that so few (exactly zero, at the moment) other Congressional GOPers have joined Amash in standing up for what they used to pretend to believe in. One is that Democrats have yet to present the case for impeachment to the American public, even as the Trump Administration invokes every form of unlawful obstructive measure to try and keep them from doing so. (Breaking news during today's program, for example, includes a federal judge finding Trump's accounting firm Mazars must turn over Trump's financial documents as lawfully subpoenaed by Congress, despite a lawsuit from Trump attempting to block them from doing so; and news that the White House has now ordered former White House Counsel Don McGahn to defy a Congressional subpoena requiring him to testify to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.)

The other reason many Republicans in Congress feel no need to hold Trump to account is that the GOP's extreme partisan gerrymandering in state after state following the 2010 census has resulted in members of Congress who feel --- with no small amount of justification --- that they cannot be removed from office by voters in a general election. The radical imbalance of such obscene district maps have resulted, for example, in Democratic House candidates winning almost 50% of the vote last year in North Carolina, but ultimately taking just 3 of the state's 13 U.S. House seats. In Ohio, essentially 50/50 splits by voters for members of Congress have resulted in just 4 of 20 seats going to Democrats, year after year, over the past decade. We've similar stories in other key states such as Wisconsin, Maryland and Pennsylvania, with courts finding House Districts and state legislative districts alike to have been unconstitutionally gerrymandered, and orders by federal courts to draw new, fairer maps repeatedly blocked by the GOP's stolen U.S. Supreme Court.

That decade-long scam, as our guest today, DAVID DALEY of FairVote argued last week at New Republic, is precisely why GOP-controlled state after GOP-controlled state in recent weeks, have been able to adopt radical, extremist and even unpopular anti-abortion restrictions. Daley, author of the book RATF**KED: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy, lays out his argument, updates us on the recent partisan gerrymandering cases in North Carolina and Maryland now before SCOTUS (with a ruling due next month), and why, as he argues, the fight for fair maps, fair elections and democracy itself "is not going to be saved in this country by any given election," but needs to be "engaged and fought every single day" as we are now in "a war for the future of this country"...

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I'm Angie Coiro, host of In Deep with Angie Coiro, in for Brad and Desi on today's BradCast.

One story after another is piling out of the House today: subpoenas, threats of fines for unanswered subpoenas, and more. Chelsea Manning is out of jail for now. The Pentagon is shifting important funds to building a border wall. Chobani steps in to save a school lunch program. And the interview by the BBC's conservative Andrew Neil with the right-wing Ben Shapiro is a lesson in how journalism should be done --- and why being coddled by friendly interlocutors in the past did Ben no favors.

Then a deep dive into a topic that will never die: abortion. This week's "heartbeat" law and shenanigans in Alabama are just the latest in the non-stop assault on women's health care and autonomy. UC-San Francisco's DR. MONICA McLEMORE and NARAL's AMY EVERITT tackle the topic from both the medical and legal angles. You can hear the whole one-hour conversation on the In Deep website.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

On today's BradCast, it seems to be the day when we are now officially tumbling over the Constitutional Crisis cliff.

The day began with Donald Trump's Dept. of Justice issuing a letter to the House Judiciary Committee informing them that the President was formally asserting Executive Privilege to block the release to Congress of the unredacted report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as well as all of its underlying evidence, such as witness testimony, grand jury information, etc.

That, as the Committee held its scheduled session to consider a vote on a resolution [PDF] finding Trump's Attorney General turned personal fixer William Barr in contempt. The vote recommending the full House consider citing Barr came after weeks of Chairman Jerrold Nadler's repeated attempts, to no avail, to find good faith accommodation with the DoJ to release the subpoenaed Special Counsel materials. Nadler's thanks came today when the DoJ notified the Committee that, due to Trump invoking Executive Privilege, they would not be allowed to see any additional material from the Special Counsel investigation of Donald Trump's obstruction of justice and his 2016 campaign's involvement with alleged election interference by Russia. In an amusing sidebar, the White House statement today on this charged: "Faced with Chairman Nadler's blatant abuse of power...the President has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege."

And, as all of that was going on, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at a Washington Post event, declared cryptically that Trump's "obstruction, obstruction, obstruction" means that he is "becoming self-impeachable," whatever that might mean.

We're joined to try and make sense of all of this today --- including last night's blockbuster New York Times exposé finding Trump's tax records from 1985 through 1994 reveal that the self-proclaimed "greatest businessman of all time" personally lost more than $1 billion over that decade --- by our friend and award-winning journalist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hulaballoo.

Among the many questions raised and (some of them) answered today with the great "Digby"...

• Did the Times' report have anything to do with Trump's blanket use of Executive Privilege today to block a report that he had previously waived the privilege on? ("The bigger picture here," argues Parton, "is that it exposes Trump as the greatest liar and conman of all time.")
• Is Trump's legally dubious (to say the least) strategy of attempting to block any and all Congressional access to documents and witnesses really meant only to run out the clock until election season begins in earnest?
• Is there a group of non-elected Republicans who might finally step in to end this madness?
• Will the Democrats' attempt to refer a contempt citation for Barr be any more successful than the Republicans' attempt to cite Obama Attorney General Eric Holder in 2012 when, as we discuss, they made the exact same arguments against Holder that Dems are making against Barr today?
• Are the Dems moving too cautiously in their attempts to hold Trump and his Administration accountable?
• Are we any closer to an actual impeachment inquiry of the President, given (as 1998's Lindsey Graham helpfully reminds us today), the very same obstruction of Congress by a President for which Articles of Impeachment were issued against both Richard Nixon and by Graham and the Republicans against Bill Clinton?
• What the hell does Pelosi's "self-impeachable" remark actually mean?
• And should we all be concerned about what Trump might do next when things get even worse for him and his Presidency --- as his Administration continues to beat drums of war against Venezuela, Iran and other nations?

And, as if all of that isn't enough to squeeze into one very fast moving hour, as we got off the air today we received the breaking news that the GOP-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee has now subpoenaed Donald Trump, Jr., regarding his previous Congressional testimony on the Trump Tower Moscow project...as the walls appear to be tumbling down...

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NOTE: I'm on the road tomorrow, so we'll be airing a BradCast Recounted for ya. Angie Coiro is in for us on Friday. And I'll be back, whether you or I like it or not, on Monday!

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Our guest today, the former U.S. House Judiciary Committee's longtime General Counsel warns on today's BradCast, that we are already in the midst of a Constitutional Crisis and that what is happening now is far worse than anything he ever encountered during his many years in that post, even during the then-unprecedented corruption of the George W. Bush Administration. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

But first up today, some good news and bad for voters before 2020 out of two key battleground states. In Ohio, the good news is that a three-judge panel of federal judges on Friday unanimously found the Buckeye State's Congressional maps to be an "unconstitutional partisan gerrymander" and has ordered, via its 301-page ruling [PDF], for new maps to be drawn for use before the 2020 elections. The panel of two Dems and one Republican-appointee determined that the state's GOP-led legislature packed the majority of the state's Democratic voters into just four districts after the 2010 Census to guarantee Ohio's Congressional legislation would retain a 12 to 4 GOP advantage. Republicans have successfully held 75% of that delegation over the past decade despite receiving just more than half of the state's Congressional votes.

State Republicans vow to appeal, as the nation awaits next month's opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court on similar partisan gerrymandering cases in North Carolina and Maryland. A three-judge federal panel last week in Michigan similarly ordered new maps there before 2020 after finding GOPers in that state used a similar tactic to disenfranchise voters. Unconstitutional GOP partisan gerrymanders were also determined by federal courts to have been in place in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania for the past decade.

The bad news for voters today comes from Florida today, where the state's GOP-dominated legislature has adopted a bill to undermine Amendment 4, the landmark ballot measure voters adopted by nearly 65 percent last November to restore voting rights to some 1.5 million former felons in the state who had completed their sentences as well as all parole and probation. Passed along party lines, state lawmakers changed the definition of sentencing to include the payment of all court-imposed fines and fees. The result: Those former felons who have money will be able vote, those who do not, won't. Once signed by the state's Republican Governor, as expected, lawsuits will almost certainly be filed by voting rights advocates to challenge the new law that appears to rewrite Amendment 4 which had ended Florida's shameful lifetime ban on voting by former felons, including more than 20 percent of the state's African-American population.

Next, we are looking for answers today about what is happening and what may come next as the Trump Administration and its new Attorney General and "fixer" William Barr harden their obstruction of all Constitutional oversight by Congressional Democrats. We are joined today by attorney TED KALO, a 14-year veteran of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, where he served as General Counsel for his last 10 years there before leaving for private practice in 2011. Our conversation comes on the heels of Barr's astonishing testimony before the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and his refusal to appear before the Democratic-majority House Judiciary on Thursday. That, after the Dept. of Justice's failure to respond to a Wednesday subpoena deadline from the House panel to turn over a full, unredacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report and its underlying evidence, and after revelations that Barr appears to have lied to Congress in previous testimony concerning Mueller's view of Barr's public representation of the report's conclusions during the month before Barr finally released a redacted version.

Kalo tells me what is likely to happen next if Barr misses a final Monday deadline, offered in a good faith, last attempt letter sent by House Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler on Friday in hopes of avoiding contempt proceedings against the nation's top law enforcement official.

The reason why Barr supposedly skipped Thursday's House hearing was because the Committee had determined to allow staff counsel from both parties to question the Attorney General along with members, which Kalo says is "not unusual at all". He cites, for example, a similar practice carried out by Republicans "during one of the many investigations of Hillary Clinton's emails," and notes that it is "not uncommon historically" for Congressional committees to use staff attorneys for questioning witnesses.

Kalo details the two possible legal paths should Barr, as expected, continue to refuse to cooperate with the Committee and is found in contempt, including a civil litigation path in federal court, which could take months or years to resolve (though Kalo says there are grounds for courts to hear these matters on an expedited basis) or Congress finding Barr in "inherent contempt". In the latter case, he explains, the House Sergeant-at-Arms could be dispatched to arrest and detain the Attorney General. (Kalo also offers a definitive answer about the jail long said to be available at the Capital Building for such matters.)

"While it's frustrating as hell to watch this play out --- it's so obvious what's going on in plain sight --- as a matter of the goal of getting the information, Congress has to proceed cautiously because of its limited options for enforcing subpoenas," Kalo tells me. Therefore, he explains, Nadler is "bending over backwards to show that he tried his hardest to reach an accommodation with the Executive Branch, with an eye towards future litigation" where the court will see the Administration as "recalcitrant and unreasonable" and find in favor of the Dems.

Among the many other questions answered and/or explained by Kalo, he offers insight into my concerns about whether many of the long-established court precedents that appear to make Trump's legal arguments to block a number of subpoenas look ridiculous could actually be overturned by Trump appointees to the federal bench or even the GOP's stolen majority on the Supreme Court. "I think you're right," he says. "We have a federal judiciary that's been packed by people who start with the political result they want and then work the legal reasoning backwards. I think it's a valid fear that the courts won't follow longstanding precedent," before adding optimistically, that he believes the courts will follow precedent in many of these matters.

I also get his thoughts on Barr's remarkable testimony before the Senate on Thursday, arguing that a President has a legal and Constitutional right to shut down or obstruct a federal investigation looking into his own potential crimes if the President believes, on his own, that he has been unfairly accused. Yes, Barr actually made that argument under oath this week. Kalo calls the theory "ridiculous" and says, "I know of no legal authority for what the Attorney General was saying, and it defies reason." He goes on to explain why.

Finally, he concludes with a chilling note. "It can't be understated that we're in a Constitutional crisis. We're trying to respond to things that we never expected to occur from a President of the United States," Kalo argues, adding that, as dark as those years were when he served as General Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the George W. Bush years, what is happening now is worse --- "by far."

I wholeheartedly recommend you tune in for today's complete conversation, as there was much more than I am able to adequately summarize here...

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On today's BradCast: Following a shameful performance in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Trump's Attorney General (and personal fixer) William Barr failed to even show up for his testimony in the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, as calls for his resignation increase and as both Trump's FBI Director Christopher Wray and Hillary Clinton issue similarly warnings about the possibility of a stolen election in 2020. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

While some so-called "moderate" Democrats are only now having second thoughts about having voted for the confirmation of Trump's new A.G. following revelations this week of a letter from Special Counsel Robert Mueller to Barr complaining that he had misrepresented the Special Counsel's two-year report to the American people, other Democrats, including many running for the 2020 Presidential nomination are calling for Barr to step down. When even Chris Wallace of Fox "News" calls out a Republican --- and the "opinion people who appear on this network, who may be pushing a political agenda" --- you know that Republican must have done something very bad.

At a press conference today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described Barr's sworn Congressional testimony in early April as a crime, citing his statements that he had no idea how Mueller and his team felt about the 4-page letter Barr had released, inappropriately clearing Donald Trump of obstruction of justice, despite the probe detailing at least 10 instances when the President appears to have done just that. "What is deadly serious is that the attorney general of the United States of America was not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States. That’s a crime," Pelosi asserted, adding: "If anybody else did that, it would be considered a crime. Nobody is above the law, not President of the United States and not the Attorney General."

At the same time, Barr failed to show up for a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee today, after previously agreeing to testify. He changed his mind after facing tough questions at yesterday Senate Hearing, while citing the House panel's decision to allow staff counsel to ask questions as the reason for bowing out. The Committee's Chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler, during his opening remarks before Barr's empty witness chair, slammed the A.G. for a "lack of candor" and of having "misrepresented the findings of the Special Counsel." Nadler accused him of "failing to check the President's worst instinct", for having "failed to protect the Special Counsel's investigation from unfair political attacks", for having "failed the men and women of the Department of Justice", adding that "he has even failed to show up today." Democratic members of the panel mocked Barr's absence by munching on KFC and placing a toy plastic chicken in front of his witness name tag. While he didn't yet move to hold the nation's top cop in contempt of Congress, he suggested that may happen soon.

As we wait for Democrats to take real action to hold either Barr or Trump accountable, on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show Wednesday night, the 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton warned that "unless we know how to protect our election from what happened before and what could happen again," even the very best Democratic candidate could lose in 2020, due to the ongoing threat of foreign interference.

The former Democratic Senator and Secretary of State's comments echoed those recently offered by Trump's own FBI chief Christopher Wray. Last week, during comments at the Council of Foreign Relations, Wray claimed "enormous strides have been made since 2016 by all the different federal agencies, state and local election officials" and others," but said he is viewing whatever happened in 2018 as a "dress rehearsal" for "the big show in 2020".

We explain what both Clinton and Wray got right and wrong in their warnings and how, despite Clinton's stated concern that she might "scare" people with her language, voters should, in fact, be very worried about 2020, as jurisdictions around the nation are being allowed to implement new systems in advance of the next Presidential election that are even more difficult for the public to oversee (and thus, prevent manipulation) than many of the voting and tabulation systems they are replacing.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with details on new climate action plans from Presidential hopefuls Beto O'Rourke and Cory Booker, some good news from voters regarding climate concerns, bad climate change news for Jakarta and Washington D.C., and some good news for residents of New York State...

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Why tell the truth and follow the rule of law when BS'ing and obstructing truth and justice (and Congress) now appear to be a far more successful way to get ahead in life...and in the Presidency of the United States? As Donald Trump recently reached a new milestone of having told more than 10,000 lies while in office, according to Washington Post's fact-checker database, these are among the related stories covered on today's BradCast. [Audio link is posted below]...

• A fascinating new study finds that wealthy men are more likely than women and those of lesser means to simply make stuff up. That's right, lying appears to work for many, and is carried out far more frequently in North America than in other English speaking countries around the world. Or, as WaPo's headline summarizes the academic survey: "Rich guys are most likely to have no idea what they're talking about, study suggests". (Though, as you'll also learn, both Desi and Canada should be ashamed of themselves);

• That may also help us understand today who our President is and why he and his supporters do what they do, as a new CNN analysis catalogs 77 different "lies and falsehoods" by Trump and his associates, documented in Robert Mueller's redacted Special Counsel report. The lies were told by Trump, his "campaign staff, administration officials and family, Republican backers and his associates" who all "made false assertions to the public, Congress, or authorities," according to the analysis. While a handful of those lies were prosecuted as crimes (for example, some of those told to the FBI by Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and to Congress by his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen), most went unprosecuted for varying reasons, including the fact that lying to the public and the press is not a crime, even when the White House does it, repeatedly, apparently. Among the many lies cataloged, a plurality of which were told by the President himself, many concerned his dealings with Russia and those of campaign staff and administration officials;

• Speaking of which, in March, Trump's 2020 Campaign Manager Brad Parscale flew to Romania to deliver a paid speech to Romanian politicians and policy experts, raising questions among U.S. legal experts about conflicts of interest and whether Team Trump has learned anything after their extensive dealings with Russia during the 2016 campaign. They paid little price for that, however, so why worry about a Trump/Romania Special Counsel investigation now?;

• Mid-show today we covered some breaking news regarding today's U.S. support for a military coup being called for by Valenzuela's opposition leader and self-declared "President" Juan Guaido, and claims by U.S. Sec. of State Mike Pompeo that the nation's actual President Nicolas Maduro was preparing to leave the country in response. At the last minute, however, according to Pompeo, Maduro was talked out of it by Russia. But, of course, our Sec. of State is a huge and very successful liar as well, so there's no particular reason to believe any of his assertions regarding the attempted U.S. overthrow of Venezuela today;

• In other breaking news, a federal judge today determined that a lawsuit filed by some 200 Congressional Democrats against Donald Trump charging he is in violation of the Constitutional Emoluments clause may move ahead, allowing plaintiffs to gain access to information about Trump's private business dealings;

• And, in related news, Trump's private attorneys on Monday night filed a lawsuit on behalf of him, his company and his children's behalf against Deutsche Bank and Capital One in hopes of forcing them to not respond to lawful subpoenas for Trump financial documents as issued by a number of Congressional committees. Normally we'd say "good luck with that", but for Trump's stolen Supreme Court majority who have proven themselves capable of doing anything on his behalf at this point;

• The obstruction also continued today by Trump's Attorney General William Barr, who, the Justice Department has said, still plans to appear before the Republican-majority Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to give testimony regarding the Mueller Report, but that he is objecting to a planned appearance before the Democratically-run House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, where members may allow counsel from both the majority and minority to question Barr during the scheduled testimony. House Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler asserts it's not up to Barr to determine who gets to question him or how the hearing is to be carried out, suggesting he may ultimately need to subpoena the A.G. to force his testimony. But if Barr defies that subpoena, as other Administration officials have been ordered by Trump in recent days, then what? Who would enforce a Contempt of Congress citation against the nation's top law enforcement official? And how would it even be done? Well, there is a House Sergeant-at-Arms and, reportedly, a jail in the basement of the Capitol Building. We discuss;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, on the back-to-back devastating cyclones in Mozambique, a delay to the Interior Department's plan to expand off-shore drilling, air pollution getting worse under Donald Trump, and voter support for a Green New Deal in Spain's recent elections...

Yes. All of that. In under one hour. Somehow. You're welcome...

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On today's BradCast: It looks like Trump Attorney General William Barr's willingness to beclown himself to the level of Donald Trump didn't help much in protecting the President against his own clearly criminal and impeachable behavior as detailed by even the redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's long-awaited report. And Democrats in both the House and even the Senate are finally beginning to use the "i"-word they should have invoked long ago. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Barr's willingness to offer Trumpian lies to the American people about what the report actually says and doesn't was swell until the American people were actually allowed to read it. Trump's repeated and now well-documented attempts at criminal obstruction of justice by trying to shutdown or otherwise derail the Special Counsel's probe is now detailed for all to see, as of Thursday public release of the redacted 448-page report [PDF].

They are also now able to read Mueller's clarion call, also detailed in the report, for Congress to take up the matter as per their Constitutional duty to serve as the only real check on a lawless President. House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) has now subpoenaed the Dept. of Justice for the full, unredacted version of the report and its underlying evidence, and has called for both Barr and Mueller himself to testify to Congress in the coming weeks. At the same time, more House members are now calling for impeachment to get under way after, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) notes: "Mueller’s report is clear in pointing to Congress’ responsibility in investigating obstruction of justice by the President" and "squarely puts this on our doorstep."

"While I understand the political reality of the Senate + election considerations," she Tweeted, "upon reading this DoJ report, which explicitly names Congress in determining obstruction, I cannot see a reason for us to abdicate from our constitutionally mandated responsibility to investigate."

For his part, after falsely hailing the report as a "total and complete exoneration" before it was publicly released, Donald Trump (who probably, ya know, should have bothered to read it first) returned to angry form as of Friday morning, railing profanely and incoherently against the report, the respected federal prosecutors and Republican former FBI Director who wrote it after a meticulous two-year process, and against his own top level staffers who are revealed in the report as the best witnesses to Trump's various impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors.

We're joined today by award-winning opinion and analysis journalist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo for her insight into the report itself --- which she describes as a "roadmap for impeachment" --- and its fallout today as even several Presidential candidates are now joining the growing calls for impeachment proceedings to begin in the U.S. House.

Among the many topics of our lively discussion: Bill Barr's BS; Mueller's reasoning for choosing to not prosecute while passing the ball firmly to Congress to pick up instead; Why Don Jr. wasn't charged (but should have been); Whether the long-standing DoJ guidance prohibiting sitting Presidents from being indicted makes any sense, either legally, Constitutionally or politically; and whether Democrats in the House and Senate (not to mention Republicans there) will find the backbone to do the right thing and hold Trump accountable as per their Constitutional responsibilities, or whether they'll continue to pull punches as they have for so many years. That, as we also discuss, is precisely what has allowed dangerously criminal and unfit clowns like Donald Trump to ascend to the Presidency in the first place.

"If we care about the Constitution, and we care about the democracy, you can't just let this kind of stuff go." Parton argues. "Even if they can't get the Republicans [in the Senate] to convict, I think that they have to do it anyway. It's the right thing to do. They have to lay out the case."

"Most Americans are not going to read that report like I just did. They're just going to hear snippets of it. But if they do impeachment hearings, in which they establish this narrative out there for all Americans to see, and to hear it in their own words --- from Robert Mueller to Don McGahn, to Hope Hicks, to everyone of them --- and hear what they have to say, to describe what happened, I think that's important for the record. It's important for the voters to have that as they go to the voting booth, whether Trump is convicted or not."

In case you're wondering, the phone number to reach your member of Congress is 202-224-3121. I bet they'd like to hear from you...

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There were a number of important elections held around the country on Tuesday, so on today's BradCast, we've got some of the reported results from the key races, including both good and bad news for Democrats and progressives. Oh, and some stuff happened in D.C. today as well. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

We start with the good news out of Chicago, where former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot will become the Windy City's first black female Mayor, as well as the city's first openly gay chief executive. Lightfoot, who has never held elective office, ran as a progressive reformer to clean up Chicago's notorious old-school, insider politics after Democratic Mayor Rahm Emmanuel chose not to seek a third term. She is said to have easily bested Toni Preckwinkle, another African-American woman and a longtime elected official. by a nearly 50-point margin in Tuesday's final runoff contest.

There was still more good news for Democrats in the key swing-state of Pennsylvania on Tuesday, where Democratic Navy vet and former Dept. of Veterans Affairs official Pam Iovino is said to have defeated Republican D. Raja in a special election for a state Senate seat representing a suburban district outside of Pittsburgh. Republicans have held that seat for most of the past half-century, and the district (which uses 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems) reportedly went to Donald Trump by 6 points in 2016, when he took the state's 20 electoral votes for the first time since 1988.

Iovino's 4-point victory over Raja is being regarded as a potential bellwether for next year's Presidential contest when Democrats will need to win back Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin --- all of which went to Trump in 2016 before electing Democratic Governors during statewide elections in 2018 --- if they hope to take back the White House.

While there was good news for Dems in Pennsylvania, the news out of Wisconsin on Tuesday was decidedly less good...at least as of this hour. Progressive-aligned state Supreme Court candidate Judge Lisa Neubauer had been widely expected to win the seat of a retiring progressive-aligned state Justice, but appears to have fallen just short against GOP-aligned Judge Brian Hagedorn, according to unofficial results.

Hagedorn, who has likened homosexuality to bestiality, derided Planned Parenthood as a "wicked organization" and called the NAACP a "disgrace to America", declared victory in the early Wednesday morning hours after computer tallies gave him a lead of just under 6,000 votes out of just over 1.2 million cast across the state. Neubauer's campaign announced the race was "too close to call" and "almost assuredly headed to a recount", stating that "Wisconsinites deserve to know we have had a fair election and that every vote is counted".

With the margin less than 1% (it is currently one-half of 1%), she will be entitled to request --- and pay for --- such a "recount". State law, however, currently leaves it up to local jurisdictions to decide whether they wish to tally the state's mostly hand-marked paper ballots manually or simply run them through the same computer scanners that tallied them (correctly or incorrectly, who knows?) on Election Night.

Tuesday's state Supreme Court contest in the Badger State was particularly important for Democrats who, even if they had won, would have retained a 4 to 3 minority on the state's high court. But, with a conservative-aligned Justice retiring next year and the replacement election to be held on the same day as the state's 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary, they had hoped to finally flip the court to a more Dem-friendly 4 to 3 majority next year for the first time in years. That majority would be particularly important following the 2020 census and the inevitable subsequent court battles over redistricting in one of the most extremely GOP-partisan gerrymandered states in the country, not to mention hopes for rolling back a host of rightwing initiatives enacted under Republican Gov. Scott Walker now that voters sent him packing last November.

We're joined today by Wisconsin's own JOHN NICHOLS, Washington Correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of Madison, Wisconsin's Capital Times, to help us make sense of Tuesday's stunning reported results that appear to have taken both Democrats and Republicans alike off guard.

How and why did it happen, given Neubauer's huge fund-raising advantage over the toxic, Koch-supported former Walker protege who many Republicans chose to stay away from? Did a last minute infusion of out-of-state Republican cash make the difference? While turnout increased for both parties compared to the state's last Supreme Court election in 2018 (when the Dem-aligned candidate won by a full 12 points!), why did turnout appear to increase more for the GOP this year? And what happened that dampened turnout in Milwaukee?

Does a potential "recount" have any chance of reversing the currently reported results? And what should all of this --- an objectionably flawed rightwing candidate seen as having little chance of winning in Wisconsin, before he then goes on to narrowly win the state --- tell Democrats as they head into the crucial 2020 Presidential election looking to flip WI back into the D column? We discuss all of that and much more with the ever-wise Nichols today, who offers this "number one lesson" to progressives: "Do not assume Donald Trump is doomed."

Finally, there was also a lot of stuff that happened in Congress today for a change as well: The House Judiciary Committee voted to approve subpoenas for the Department of Justice to require Trump's Attorney General William Barr to turn over the full, unredacted Mueller Report, including its exhibits and underlying evidence; In the Senate, GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell unilaterally invoked the so-called "nuclear option" to change Senate rules, after failing to do so via regular Senate votes, in order to reduce the time needed to install Trump appointees to executive agencies and lifetime positions on the federal bench. The new rule will now require just 2 hours of debate, rather than 30, before holding a vote on such appointees; And, late in the day, the Democratic U.S. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal sent a letter to the IRS formally requesting the past 6 years of Donald Trump's tax returns as well as those for eight of his business entities. The House actions are certain to face challenges from the White House and likely end up being decided in court...

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