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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder criminally charged in Flint Water Crisis; Trump EPA's parting gift to polluters --- severe restrictions on all future pollution regulations; U.S. annual emissions plummet, due to coronavirus; PLUS: World's biggest battery farm now online in California... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Record Ocean Heat In 2020 Supercharged Extreme Weather; Trump Admin Slashes Critical Habitat For Northern Spotted Owl; >How Trump Admin's Climate Denial Left Its Mark on The Arctic Council; A Late Burst of Climate Denial Extends the Era of Trump Disinformation; Wildfire Smoke Causes Up To Half Fine-Particle Pollution in Western U.S.... PLUS: House Poor, Pollution Rich: Thousands of public housing residents live near the most polluted places in the nation - and the government has done little to protect them... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Donald John Trump made history yet again on Wednesday by becoming the first President to be Impeached twice. Plus, a former Congressman and diplomat warns accountability is needed if the nation ever hopes to recover. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

The U.S. House voted 232 to 197, with 10 Republicans joining all of the Democrats, to charge the soon-to-be-former President with "Incitement of Insurrection" [PDF] for inflaming his violent MAGA mob before they stormed the U.S. Capitol just one week earlier. Using false claims that he had actually won the election in a landslide, he told his infuriated supporters to "fight like hell" to prevent the 2020 election from being stolen for Joe Biden. At least five people, including a police officer, were killed during the insurrection, another officer later committed suicide. Scores of both law enforcement officials and rioters were hospitalized as the marauders attempted to find and kill Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers.

Soon-to-be-former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to the historic day by ruling out a trial on the charge in the U.S. Senate before next week's inauguration of Joe Biden. He did not, however, rule out his own vote to convict the twice-impeached President. Some close to McConnell have reportedly suggested that he may see the impeachment and a subsequent conviction of Trump as a way to distance the GOP from the nation's worst and most divisive President.

We share a number of the statements made during the House floor debate, both for and against Trump's impeachment, on Wednesday, including from one of the Republicans who broke with his party to vote to impeach the President.

Then, we're joined by former Democratic Congressman and diplomat TOM PERRIELLO, who now heads the Open Society Foundation for the U.S. Perriello, after serving as Representative for Virginia's 5th Congressional District, went on to serve as the U.S. Special Envoy to the African Great Lakes Region during the Obama Administration. Earlier in the 2000s he worked as a U.S. diplomat with the UN-mandated Special Court for Sierra Leone and as a consultant to the International Center for Transitional Justice in Kosovo (2003), Darfur (2005), and Afghanistan (2007).

Comments from Perriello caught our eye last week when he was quoted by the New York Times following the attempted coup at the Capitol. It was an article on the growing demands by Democrats for accountability for Trump, his family and his associates after he leaves office. In the piece, Perriello is cited --- based on his experience helping to resolve political crises in various developing nations, including one in which a President attempted to stay in office beyond his constitutional term --- noting: "Countries that skip the accountability phase end up repeating 100 percent of the time --- but the next time the crisis is worse."

“People who think that the way forward is to brush this under the rug," he told the paper, "seem to have missed the fact that there is a ticking time bomb under the rug."

On a day in which a majority of House Republicans argued and voted against accountability for last week's Trump-incited violent assault on the U.S. Capitol --- with many arguing, hypocritically, that impeachment would merely serve to anger Trump supporters and lead to more divisiveness and hostility at a time the nation needs healing --- Perriello's insight based on his years of experience abroad is enlightening. Citing, for example, the efforts to rebuild Liberia following the tumultuous, criminal reign of its former President Charles Taylor, was to bring charges. "The only real path to peace involved accountability for him and the other warlords who had driven so much of that conflict across the region."

"Accountability can take a lot of different forms, but there's a reason you don't have a lot of candidates out there and politicians saying they want to be the next Richard Nixon or the next Joe McCarthy. These are people who faced public accountability in the form of censure and resignation, with real consequences to them. And that tends to define the path forward," ," Perriello tells me. "There's a reason that in Germany, there are not statues set up to Hitler and other Third Reich figures. The way in which we choose to understand our history and hold people to account has real consequences for other leaders in the future, and the actions they choose to take."

Citing his concern about what could happen in the coming days, in the wake of last week's attempted coup, he notes: "The insurrectionists are already planning escalations. The failure to take seriously such similar provocations or promises, really, is part of what got us into this mess. ... To me, as someone who has worked in conflict zones and on transitional justice, the most scary image was them walking out not in handcuffs, because those images were ones that simply invited the idea of impunity. And impunity leads people to repeat those events, and repeat them with escalation. Allowing even a 24-hour news cycle in which these people could exit as heroes, was something that was almost certainly going to lead to more violence down the road. And that's why this issue of introducing accountability is important." 

So, is the best way for Joe Biden to help "heal" the country to look forward, not back, as the Obama Administration did when taking office after George W. Bush, when they failed to bring accountability for torture and domestic spying by the Administration or for those whose crimes resulted in the 2008 financial crisis? Or should the Biden Administration hold Trump and his enablers to account for their actions? Should some sort of Truth and Reconciliation Committee be formed to help the U.S. out of its current seemingly-intractable morass, as Perriello helped oversee in overseas, third-world nations?

He offers his thoughts on all of that, on Biden's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for Attorney General, as well as on today's history second impeachment of Donald Trump, and even explains why he believes "this may yet be our finest hour." All of that on today's jam-packed program!...

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On January 3rd --- three days before Trump's violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol --- John McCain's 2008 campaign chair Steve Schmidt argued "The die is cast for the Republican Party. It will be destroyed on January 6th." His brief but prophetic Twitter thread went on to argue that his former Party would not be able to survive its factionalism and "the poisonous fruit from four years of collaboration and complicity with Trump's insanity, illiberalism and incompetence are ready for harvest." He ended the thread charging: "There are only two sides in American politics now. There is the American side and the Autocratic side. May God help us all if we falter, flag or fail in defense of American democracy." Schmidt's prediction, as we discuss on today's BradCast, appears spot on. [Audio link to today's show is posted below the summary.]

Among the stories, many of which appear to buttress Schmidt's case, covered on today's program....

• The Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff issued an unprecedented statement to the military (and the nation), condemning the "violence, sedition and insurrection" at the U.S. Capitol last week, reminding them of their duty to defend the Constitutional process, and made clear that "President-elect Biden will be inaugurated and will become our 46th Commander in Chief" next week.

• In the wake of that deadly, Trump-incited coup attempt, many major corporations have announced they will be withholding millions in campaign funding to Republicans who voted against affirming Joe Biden's Electoral College victory last week. Some will also be withholding funding from Democrats...for apparently no sensible reason at all. (Not that we're against it.)

• If the news of losing their funding from major corporations wasn't bad enough for Republicans, their biggest funder, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, died on Tuesday. We suspect GOPers will keep kissing up to his widow, however, in hopes of continuing to rake in Adelson's corporate campaign cash.

• How upside-down has the nation become in the Trump Era? We have to laud Liz Cheney (Liz Cheney!) today for coming out in favor of the Article of Impeachment [PDF] Democrats are now moving through the House, charging Donald Trump with "Incitement of Insurrection". Even soon-to-be-former Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, reportedly, is not opposing it and is even said to be "pleased" about it.

• House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is not nearly as clever as McConnell, as several stories we cover today make all too clear. Among them, on Monday, following a conversation with the President, McCarthy told his House GOP Conference, according to Fox "News", that Trump acknowledged he bears some blame for what happened last Wednesday, when his supporters attacked the Capitol following his remarks to them, falsely claiming that the election was stolen and they must "fight" to save the nation. McCarthy's thanks for passing on that message from Trump? Today in Texas, Trump said he takes no responsibility at all for the riot. "People thought that what I said was totally appropriate," Trump told media, "Everybody to the ‘t’ thought it was totally appropriate.”

• Among those who didn't find it "totally appropriate," New Jersey's former Republican Governor and longtime Trump buddy Chris Christie, who said "if incitement to insurrection" isn't grounds for impeachment, "I don't know what is." Maryland's current Republican Governor Larry Hogan echoed the sentiment, agreeing that Trump has "blood on his hands" for the riot that resulted in the deaths of at least five people, including a police officer last week. "He was responsible for inciting this riotous mob. This was an insurrection. They stormed the Capitol and threatened to kill the Vice President and put the lives of people in danger and he had a huge role to play in that," said Hogan, a likely 2024 Presidential hopeful.

• But it may have been California's former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger whose remarks --- as someone who grew up in Austria in the shadow of WWII --- were the most profound and even, somehow, encouraging. We share his full, emotional, must listen statement posted online over the weekend, comparing the Nazi's Kristallnacht to last week's violent, failed coup.

• Finally, news breaks that Michigan's former Republican Governor Rick Snyder and other former state officials are about to be criminally charged for their parts in the Flint lead water poisoning disaster, which leads us to Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, with bad news for the planet as usual, but a bit of welcome schadenfreude concerning the fossil fuel industry and the fates of those toxic political appointees who worked in the Trump Administration...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 2020 tied with 2016 for the hottest year ever recorded; 2020 also shattered the record for billion-dollar weather disasters in the U.S.; PLUS: Fossil fuel industry shutting revolving door on Trump energy staffers... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The Climate Crisis Will Be Steroids for Fascism; EPA rule exempts many polluting industries from future air regulations; Biden Climate Plan Looks For Buy-in From Farmers Who Are Often Skeptical About Global Warming; Scientists unveil battery breakthrough for energy storage... PLUS: Africa's Great Green Wall receives over $14 billion to stop desertification... and much, MUCH more! ...

We open up the phone lines on today's BradCast for the first time since Donald Trump's deadly attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol last week, to get feedback from callers on whether it makes sense to impeach him again with just about a week and a half left in his term. (For the record, my own opinion is "YES!," and I explain why throughout the course of today's show.) [Audio link to full show is below the summary.]

We start with some of the latest breaking news...

• Trump's illegally appointed Acting Homeland Security Chief Chad Wolf announced, just before air time, that he is stepping down after being critical of Trump following last week's insurrection that killed at least five people, including a Capitol Police officer. Wolf called the riot "tragic and sickening".

• The FBI has reportedly notified all 50 states of the possibility of armed attacks on state houses, as Trump's MAGA Mob are continuing to tell each other that Trump will be inaugurated on January 20th (he won't be) and that we should all prepare for a national emergency in which Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and begins "high profile arrests" between now and Inauguration Day. All of that, his minions have convinced themselves, come amid what they describe to each other as "a battle for our republic against elites that are attempting the very coup that they are accusing Trump of doing."

• Over the weekend, however, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi informed House Dems that if Trump refused to resign, she would hold a vote on a resolution calling for Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power. If that doesn't work (it doesn't appear that it will), a vote on a second Impeachment could be held in the House as early as Wednesday. We share the Article [PDF], formally filed in the House today by Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Ted Lieu (D-CA), David Cicilline's (D-RI), and Jerry Nadler (D-NY) for "Incitement of Insurrection", on today's program.

• Over the weekend, both Democrats (like AOC) and Republicans like Sen. Pat Toomey (PA), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Ben Sasse (NE) and Trump ally and former Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie all suggested they might support impeachment and removal of the President. As Christie noted, "If inciting to insurrection" isn't an impeachable offense then "I don't really know what is."

• Nonetheless, a number of Republicans are suggesting that if either the 25th or impeachment are invoked, it would lead to further violence. As Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) pathetically tweeted on Saturday, "Those calling for impeachment or invoking the 25th Amendment in response to President Trump's rhetoric this week are themselves engaging in intemperate and inflammatory language and calling for action that is equally irresponsible and could well incite further violence." --- In other words, if you hold anybody accountable for inciting violence, you are inciting the same people to more violence. So, best to do absolutely nothing, apparently. Very patriotic and courageous, Congressman.

• On Sunday night, the PGA pulled their planned 2022 Championship from Trump's Bedminster, NJ golf resort, adding to the schadenfreude already most likely being enjoyed by anti-Trumpers since Twitter permanently banned him from the social media platform late on Friday.

As to the timing of how to pull off an impeachment with just days left in Trump's Presidency, it's important to understand --- as we discussed with former federal prosecutor Ben Clements on last Friday's show --- that an official doesn't even have to still be in office to be impeached. There is historical precedent for that. Clements, and others, argue it's important to impeach Trump if only to convict him at trial so that he cannot run for public office ever again.

It should also be noted that the House may vote to impeach this week or next, but wait until after Biden is sworn into office before sending the Articles to the Senate for a trial. That's what some Dems are now calling for. Rep. James Clyburn wants to wait until Biden's first 100 days are over. Others suggest waiting just long enough to allow Biden's cabinet to be sworn in, since all Senate business must stop when a Senate impeachment trial begins. With Chuck Schumer as Majority Leader, after Biden and Vice President-elect Harris are sworn in, a real trial could be held in the Senate, with dozens and dozens of witnesses, unlike the show trial McConnell held to quash the charges Trump was previously impeached for last year.

So, lots to chew over on today's program, and lots of callers ringing in with thoughts on all of the above...

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The walls are closing in very quickly now --- even throughout our hour today --- on the man who President-elect Joe Biden correctly, if generously, described today as "not fit to serve" and "one of the most incompetent Presidents in the history of the United States of America." As we go to air, Donald Trump is still in office. We can't tell you for certain if that will still be the case by the time you hear today's BradCast. [Audio link is posted at bottom of article.]

On Thursday night, U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick succumbed to injuries sustained during the attempted coup at the Capitol on Wednesday, as incited by Trump. He was the fifth person to have died amid the mayhem wrought by our outgoing criminal President. Sicknick's death, which Trump didn't bother to mention today, may add yet another crime --- conspiracy to incite murder or manslaughter --- to Trump's quickly growing rap-sheet.

On Friday morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued an ultimatum. Either Trump resigns now or new Articles of Impeachment will be filed on Monday. That, as the Administration rats continue to flee his sinking ship, with more resignations and the welcome news that sore loser Trump will not attend Biden's inauguration and plans to leave D.C. as of the day before. "Good riddance," we say, in echoing the two word statement issued by the American Federation of Teachers last night upon the news that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was also quitting (though only after four convicted murderers and war criminals who worked for her brother received Presidential Pardons.)

More on Trump's growing legal perils and calls for accountability with my guest today, but first a few words on the news that Dominion Voting Systems has filed a $1.3 billion lawsuit against Team Trump attorney  and his fellow perpetual liar and con-artist Sidney Powell. The private voting systems vendor charges Powell led a campaign to spread "wild" and "demonstrably false" claims about the company, including lies about their voting systems being developed with communist money in Venezuela by the late Hugo Chavez and, with the help of George Soros and China and Cuba, being used to steal the election for Biden.

(Her absurd Venezuela/Chavez claims are bastardized and re-imagined versions of my detailed, accurate, exclusive investigative reporting at The BRAD BLOG from approximately 2008 to 2010. And, while I've been wildly critical for many years of Dominion's unverifiable voting systems, as deployed by Georgia's Republican Sec. of State, there is nothing to support Powell's fantastical claims, including her evidence-free assertions that the state's SoS and Governor received kickbacks from the company to deploy their machines in the Peach State, for the first time, in 2020.)

Dominion, which previously warned they were likely to sue for slander and defamation if Powell did not retract her false claims (she refused and "doubled down" instead, according to the 124-page complaint [PDF]), also has sent similar warnings to other Team Trump liars such as Rudy Giuliani, Fox "News", Newsmax and One America News. They suggest they may even sue Trump himself. We'll hope they do, even if I'm called to testify by the private election vendor which should have no place in our public election system.

But, for now, according to our guest today, Constitutional expert and former federal prosecutor BEN CLEMENTS, Board Chair and Senior Legal Advisor of the non-partisan government accountability group, Free Speech for People (FSFP), it's accountability for the "seditious" President of the United States that is of the greatest immediate concern.

Clements, along with FSFP's  John Bonifaz and Ron Fein, filed an op-ed in the Boston Globe on Tuesday --- the day before the Trump-instigated insurrection at the Capitol on Wednesday --- calling for Trump to be immediately impeached for a second time.

"At the time we wrote the op-ed, we were only dealing with the first major set of felonies that the President committed this week, in the effort to falsify the Georgia election results in his favor," he tells me today, referring to last Saturday's phone call by the President to GA's Sec. of State, cajoling and threatening him to "find" enough votes to steal the election for him there. (Yes! That was just this past week as well!) "At this point, we obviously have a second set of felonies in connection with his incitement of a seditious mob on Congress, which creates an even greater urgency."

But the reason Clements is calling for a second impeachment this late in Trump's term is because, as he explains: "There is really, for the most part, only one sure way to ensure that Donald Trump is not permitted to again run for office in this country...And that way is through the impeachment power.   If the Senate convicts, an official can be removed, but they can also be disqualified from ever holding federal office again. Aside from removal, which is now needed more urgently than ever, there is the need to disqualify him, to prevent him from running in 2024, or from running for anything else at any time in the federal government."

With just 12 days left before Biden's Inauguration, is there even enough time for such a proceeding?  As Clements, who authored a book with Bonifaz and Fein called The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump, details that impeachment and a Senate trial can happen even after an official is out of office. Indeed, as he (and his op-ed) recounts, there is even historical precedent for it.

We also discuss whether the Constitution allows for a Presidential self-pardon, whether Trump will try to execute one, whether lawful or not, and as FSFP called for yesterday, the need for Joe Biden's Attorney General-designate, Judge Merrick Garland, to immediately empanel an independent task force, once confirmed, to coordinate and investigate "any potential federal criminal or civil violations that may have been committed by President Trump, members of his administration, or his campaign, business, or other associates."  Clements argues that, without public pressure, Democratic Administrations have had a tendency in the past, when taking office "after a corrupt and sometimes lawless Republican administration" to make a "a quick call to 'turn the page.'"

"We are hearing those calls broadly already," he says. But "if we really want to move forward, if we really want to restore the integrity of the Department of Justice, there must be accountability for the crimes of this Administration and particularly of Donald Trump. And there must be accountability for the destruction that he created to our democracy and to the Department of Justice. The reason we're calling for this is there is a risk that there will be this temptation to say 'he's out of office and let's move on.' And I think that would be a GRAVE mistake that will invite more lawless activity, that will invite more of the kind of activity that we saw on Wednesday with the attack on the Capitol."

As we chatted, news came in that Alaska's Republican Senator, Lisa Murkowski, is now calling for Trump to resign, declaring "I want him out" and threatening to leave her party if they continue to align with him. And Twitter finally did the right thing (years belatedly) by permanently banning Trump, citing the risk of further incitement of violence.

It's going to be a very dark weekend for Trump. But, for us, we close a dark week today with a long overdue, brand new and hilarious parody tune for the seditious moment, from the great Randy Rainbow! Enjoy!...

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Today's BradCast picks up where yesterday's left off, amid the Trump-instigated attempted insurrection by his MAGA Mob at the nation's Capitol amid the formal affirmation of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory. We continue then with all of the mind-boggling fallout thereafter. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among the stories covered today on today's show...

• Morning Joe speaks for us, in his response to Wednesday's shameful attempted coup and pathetic response to it by the Capitol Police;

• So does Joe Biden, who, like Joe Scarborough, notes how differently a white rightwing MAGA Mob was dealt with, versus how things would have played out had those violent rioters who invaded the Capitol building been BLM protesters;

• Trump won't be escaping to Scotland after all. Guess he'll have to find another country willing to harbor a likely fugitive from justice;

• Once the Capitol building was cleared of Trump's lawless marauders on Wednesday night --- and four insurrectionists had died in the bargain --- the Electoral College affirmation by Congress that they'd attempted to prevent, picked up once again, with a (very slightly) chastened GOP. We share several outstanding speeches from the Senate floor in the middle of the night/early morning, as delivered by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Mitt Romney (R-UT). That, before seven Republican U.S. Senators and 138 GOP House Members (68% of the caucus!) voted, unsuccessfully, to nullify millions of votes cast by the voters of Arizona and Pennsylvania;

• For the record, the seven Republican Senators who voted to nullify the voters in those two states --- even after the attempted coup at their own place of work --- are: Cruz (TX), Hawley (MO), Lummis (WY), Marshall (KS), Scott (FL), Tuberville (AL) and Hyde-Smith (MS). May their names live in eternal infamy and shame;

• Trump and his Republican Party's shameful, evidence-free attempt to use the Electoral Count Act of 1887 or 12th Amendment to the Constitution in order to steal the 2020 Presidential election has officially failed, as Biden's Electoral College "landslide" was affirmed by Congress at 3:45am on Thursday morning, January 7th. The MAGA Mob riots served no purpose other than to kill several Trump supporters and injure more than a dozen Capitol police. The results of the election were exactly as they were certified by all 50 states weeks ago;

• Amid the insurrection and while being locked out of his account at both Twitter and Facebook overnight (he has since been allowed to return to Twitter, though Facebook says he will be banned until at least after Inauguration Day), Trump's mood was said to have grown increasingly erratic. His rage reportedly resulted in Mike Pence's Chief of Staff (and Trump's own former Legislative Director) being banned from the White House, and staffers were reportedly instructed by the White House Counsel to stay away from him, lest they find themselves as an accessory to treason under the Sedition Act;

• About eight staffers have resigned following Wednesday's events, including Trump's former Press Secretary (Stephanie Grisham), his former Acting Chief of Staff (Mick Mulvaney) and his Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, the only cabinet member, so far, to jump off the sinking ship. Chao also happens to be married to the soon-to-be-former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who will presumably be the Republican Minority Leader following the apparent victories by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock on Tuesday in Georgia's U.S. Senate runoffs. None of those who waited until now to resign should be hailed as heroes;

• By Thursday morning, both incoming presumptive Senate Majority Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had issued statements calling for the 25th Amendment to be invoked by Vice President Pence and Trump's remaining cabinet members to remove him from office immediately. Pelosi correctly describes Trump as having incited "an unpseakable assault on our nation and our people." Short of impeachment, both Democratic leaders say, another impeachment for "willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States"; "gravely endanger[ing] the security of the United States"; and "demonstrat[ing] that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office" remain a possibility, as detailed in Articles now being circulated for consideration by House Democrats;

• If you're not familiar with how the 25th Amendment would work, should it be invoked (there is also at least one Republican lawmaker calling for it today, describing Trump as "unfit" and "unwell"), here's a quick primer;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for some much brighter news, believe it or not, in our latest Green News Report, where the overlooked news about Democrats clawing back a legislative majority in the Senate may be very very good news indeed...as long as WV's coal-loving Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, decides to help save the planet by playing along...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Democrats win U.S. Senate majority, paving the way for crucial climate legislation; Trump Administration, amid attempted coup, auctions off drilling rights in pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Massachusetts to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035; PLUS: Britain achieves new record in offshore wind energy generation... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Disproportionate protest response: Capitol Hill vs. Standing Rock; Trump Admin Clears the Way for Bird Slaughter; For First Time In 5 Years, US Gas Mileage Down, Emissions Up; Exxon Discloses Full Scope of Fuel Emissions for First Time; New Study on Regenerative Grazing Complicates Climate Optimism; For First Time In 5 Years, US Gas Mileage Down, Emissions Up... PLUS: Things to watch in a 50-50 Senate... and much, MUCH more! ...

As "today" is still ongoing, we'll need to keep the summary of today's BradCast --- and the extraordinary events we find ourselves covering on the fly --- a bit more terse than usual. [Audio link to today's full show follows below.]

Our first draft of history today includes the news that both Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff have reportedly won their U.S. Senate runoff contests in Georgia against incumbent Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively. With those two stunning, if narrow, victories, Democrats will soon enjoy partisan control of the U.S. Senate under the new Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, instead of soon-to-be-former Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Warnock will be the first African-American Senator and Ossoff the first Jewish Senator to represent the Peach State. Ossoff, at 33 years old, will also be the chamber's youngest member.

While that momentous news alone would normally be our top and perhaps only story for the day, it barely makes the top three. As you know by now, after weeks of false, evidence-free claims by the President of the United States that the election was stolen from him, and after an hour of his endlessly repeated, ginned-up rhetoric on same at a so-called "SAVE AMERICA" rally in D.C. this morning --- and after Donald Trump's buffoon, criminal attorney Rudy Giuliani called for "trial by combat" in his own remarks --- the MAGA Mob he summoned to D.C. stormed the U.S. Capitol building.

The rioting came during a joint session of Congress, amid GOP challenges to the formal, usually ceremonial Electoral College affirmation of Joe Biden's decisive November victory. Both chambers of Congress were evacuated as Trump-supporting rioters broke windows and doors to enter the building. Both the House and Senate chambers, as well as lawmaker offices, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were violently breached by the anti-American marauders. Vice President Pence, who had been presiding over the Joint Session, was ushered, with several other key lawmakers, to a secure location through underground tunnels beneath the Capitol building. One of the insurrectionists is said to have been shot and killed. Questions remain, lots of them, as to why there was not a larger police presence around the Capitol before this perfectly predictable attempted coup.

But, while we offer a first draft of history on all of the above today, the attempt to overthrow the American government, abetted by the President himself, was hardly the only sign of the long and steady degradation of our Constitutional representative republic by members of the Republican Party. On Tuesday, GOP members of the Pennsylvania Senate refused to seat a duly elected veteran Democratic state Senator on the first day of their new session and used their gerrymandered majority to muscle Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman out of his state Constitutional role as President of the state Senate. We share some of the remarkable audio from that Tuesday coup in the Keystone State, in what I'm calling "The Wisconsinization of Pennsylvania."

Joining us to explain what happened during those extraordinary events in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, the even more extraordinary events that we saw in D.C. on Wednesday --- and both where it all comes from and what it all means going forward --- is the great WILL BUNCH, longtime national columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.

Finally, as the President of the United States with no more than two weeks left in office only made matters worse with his Twitter statements throughout the riots that he fostered today, we turn for sanity to the President-elect instead. We close today's program with Biden's calming words to a nation in crisis, while the current disgraced President returns to his bunker amid the American Carnage he has wrought...

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Today on The BradCast: The last vote of the '2020' election has now been cast with Georgia's two U.S. Senate runoffs now over. The voting part anyway. Now the counting, fighting and complaining begin. [Audio link to full show follows below summary.]

We received mixed reports from on the ground in Georgia today. The state's voting systems manager, Gabriel Sterling, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Election Day in the contests that will determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate went very smoothly on the state's 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems made by Dominion and forced on in-person voters in the state for the first time in 2020 by their Republican Sec. of State, Brad Raffensperger. Lines to vote, according to Sterling were short in most places, though as long as 30 minutes at some Atlanta metro area voting stations. Other sources on the ground in the Peach State told us that lines in some places that were longer than for the Presidential general election back in November. Given there were just three races on the ballot (two for U.S. Senator, one for a Public Service Commissioner), there shouldn't have been any lines at all to speak of. Nonetheless, the 'Rube Goldberg' touchscreen computer ballot marking devices and the computerized pollbooks and computerized scanners that are used with them --- instead of a much simpler, verifiable, reliable hand-marked paper ballot system --- always take longer to cast a vote. They also, as usual, created problems for voters in several counties, with misprogrammed access cards and other reported failures. Emergency hand-marked paper ballots were said to have been deployed in some cases, as needed.

We try to read some of the tea leaves from today's reports, as to what it all may mean, while we wait for results that could come tonight....or over the next several days.

We're joined today from on the ground in Georgia by LAUREN WINDSOR, journalist, Executive Director of American Family Voices, producer of the grassroots political web-show, The Undercurrent, and, apparently, "operative", according to a report by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Windsor has been in the state for the past month with her producer, bird-dogging incumbent Republican millionaires and Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, regarding their respective stock market windfalls amid the COVID epidemic. They are running against Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively.

She's been there as Trump has made a mess out of the runoffs, which he described over the weekend as "illegal", before showing up at a rally in the state, supposedly for Loeffler and Perdue on Monday night, not long after he confused matters further by calling for $2,000 COVID checks for Americans after Republicans (including the two GA incumbents) had insisted on $600 checks.

Windsor has broken a number of stories over that time, including last month when, as AJC documented, Perdue lied to her by claiming he planned to challenge Joe Biden's electoral vote count in the Senate tomorrow --- even though his term ended on January 3 and won't begin again until this year's election is decided and certified. Trump retweeted her tweet reporting Perdue's lie and his campaign then retweeted the President's tweet. There is apparently nobody left in the Republican Party who cares about telling the truth.

Both Perdue and Loeffer, she tells me, are "trying to have it both ways with regards to supporting the Electoral College challenge. Now they're trying to have it both ways with supporting the $2000 relief checks. They're saying, 'We'll tell you that's what we want, but we're actually going to work with McConnell to make sure it won't happen.'"

She shares of number of stories from her adventures over the past month covering both millionaires Perdue ("this guy owns a home within a gated community that's within a gated community.") and Loeffler ("It wasn't exactly a 'rag to riches story' for Kelly Loeffler. It was more of a 'riches to riches' story.) And Windsor also has some thoughts on the failure of Republican hoaxster James O'Keefe --- who she has also been bird-dogging for years now --- to deliver his promised "bombshells" on Democratic "voter fraud" in the 2020 cycle. Windsor also offers her careful prediction for how today's critical contests will ultimately shake out.

Also today, we enjoy a rare bit of speculation on Donald Trump's future, following a curious story out of Scotland Monday reporting that the tiny airport near Trump's failing Turnberry Golf Resort is set to "expect the arrival of a US military Boeing 757 aircraft" on January 19th, the day before Biden is to be inaugurated. Hmmm....

And, speaking of speculation, Politico has a few scoops on what House and Senate Republicans are planning for their challenges at Wednesday's joint session of Congress to the affirmation of Biden's Electoral College votes in at least three states (perhaps as many as six) during their desperate, last-ditch --- most likely futile, definitely sore-loser --- effort to overturn the 2020 Presidential election and/or make a name for themselves as 2024 Presidential contenders and/or ruin their chances all together in the bargain. We shall see. Suffice to say, Wednesday is likely to be a very long day, as we have long been warning.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our first Green News Report of 2021! With a whole bunch of stories we were unable to cover while off last week, including several new parting gifts from the Trump Administration, such as "bomb" trains and more asthma attacks for children, as well as some much better news for humanity and the planet out of Japan...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: On way out the door, Trump Transportation Dept. approves natural gas 'bomb' trains; Trump EPA's parting gifts include more asthma attacks and premature deaths from air pollution; MI's Gov. Whitmer signs $640 million settlement in Flint Water Crisis; PLUS: Japan unveils ambitious national plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Global Warming Could Stop Relatively Quickly After Emissions Go to Zero; Trump auctions Arctic refuge to oil drillers in final major decision affecting US wilderness; Trump To Approve AZ Land Swap For Rio Tinto's Resolution Copper Project; Detroit business dumped liquid landfill waste in Flint system; How Trump Tried, but Largely Failed, to Derail Top U.S.Climate Report; Four U.S. Water Stories to Watch in 2021... PLUS: 117th Congress opens to new energy, environment fights... and much, MUCH more! ...

After a not-nearly-long-enough break, The BradCast is back for the new year, when everything will be entirely better than the old year, right? Well, if the last several days of insanity that we now refer to as "news" is any indication, the answer is: "Not so much!"  It will be impossible to adequately cover all we discussed on today's program in today's summary. But, we'll give you the basics here and hope you tune in for the full story. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

While we were off, both houses of Congress overrode Donald Trump's ridiculous veto of the "must-pass", $780 billion National Defense Authorization Act to fund the military for another year. But GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was nonetheless successful in preventing Americans from receiving $2,000 pandemic checks, despite best efforts of Democrats, a tiny, uninspiring handful of Republicans, and even Trump himself. That, as the nation clocked an unfathomable 350,000 COVID deaths, which is the equivalent of blowing up about 17 sold-out NBA arenas and killing every single person in every single one of them, or 115 9/11s over the past 10 months in the U.S.

With that, the new 117th Congress convened for the first time on Sunday, with a narrow majority for Republicans in the Senate (pending Tuesday's two U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia) and with a narrow majority for Democrats in the House, where they elected Nancy Pelosi as Speaker for another two years.

Despite all of that pretty big news, it all seemed to pale in comparison to Donald Trump's ongoing electoral death rattle. With concerns about how our unstable President may react as his days in office dwindle, every living former Defense Secretary (10 of them, Republican and Democratic, including the two fired by Trump and even Dick Cheney, who was apparently concerned enough that he reportedly led this effort), published a short, sharp group op-ed, making it crystal clear that any "efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory," and that "civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic."

Even as that was being published on Saturday, Trump was on the phone for an unhinged hour with the Republican Secretary of State of Georgia, haranguing, threatening and cajoling him to change the state's Presidential election results to award the state's electoral college votes to Trump. We play part of that call, which may have been in violation of both state and federal laws, on today's show. We do not do it justice. The Washington Post has published the full bonkers audio and transcript, including Trump's long-ago debunked fraud claims and repeated false assertions that he won the state by about a half million votes (he lost it by about 12,000) and that he just wants "to find 11,780" votes to "win" the state.

The news of that madness came on Sunday, as Georgia will have it's last day of voting in two U.S. Senate runoffs to determine partisan control of the Senate for the next two years on Tuesday, and as the new Congress meets in a joint session on Wednesday, January 6th, to affirm (or not) the results of Biden's Electoral College victory over Trump by a seemingly comfortable 306 to 232 margin.

Over the weekend, however, more than a dozen Republican U.S. Senators led by 2024 hopefuls Josh Hawley of MO and Ted Cruz of TX, announced they intend to challenge the Electoral College results on Wednesday during what is normally a pro forma procedural affair presided over by the President of the Senate (Vice President Mike Pence, in this case).

And this bring us to crux of where we are and what could happen on Wednesday, as Republicans continue to claim --- through failed lawsuits and other protests --- that the Electoral College Act (ECA) of 1887, which has determined the procedure to be used on Wednesday for about 150 years and 33 Presidential elections without question, is somehow a violation of the Constitution's 12th Amendment.

If Republicans can figure out how to make this argument on Wednesday --- with Pence potentially holding the reins to help them --- we could find ourselves in a Constitutional quagmire leading to....lord knows what.

We're joined today to help explain all of this madness by longtime election integrity advocate, election law scholar and democracy activist, PAUL LEHTO. He argues that, despite so many claims to the contrary (by many of the same folks who said that Trump could never become President back in 2016, by the way) there is, in fact, still a "path" for Trump and his Republicans to steal the election from Biden on Wednesday.

Tune in for the details, but it has to do with how the 12th Amendment says that questions about the validity of Electoral Votes should be dealt with (via a one vote per state vote in the U.S. House), versus how the ECA handles such challenges (with a regular, up or down majority vote in both houses needed to support such a challenge.)

Why is this even a question at this point? Lehto explains in detail.

He also cites the lesson that we should learn from all of this madness: "What we should learn is that what you and election integrity activists have talked about now for decades is coming home to roost," Lehto explains. "And that is that a big, big part of this is the inherent uncertainty when votes are purely processed through computers. Nobody really knows --- until there's a hand recount --- what the result is, and partisan people can attach to that uncertainty and that doubt any theory that they wish to in order to keep hope alive."

"So we need a voting system that leaves no doubt as to that result . And in order to have that you have to have transparency," he says, adding: "Basically, this is all the chickens coming home to roost, in terms of our non-transparent voting system."

There's more. But, again, you'll need to tune in for it. Happy New Year?...

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Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller --- and every civilian and sworn member of the U.S. military under Miller's chain-of-command --- has a legal duty, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to refuse to carry out an unlawful order to take part in a military coup that is designed to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to the duly elected 46th President of the United States on January 20, 2021. That duty holds even if the order to carry out that military coup is issued by the current Commander in Chief.

This is not an abstract concern.

Recall that the increasingly desperate Donald Trump previously discussed with the disgraced and recently pardoned, former National Security Advisor, Lt. General Michael Flynn, the possibility of utilizing the military to facilitate a re-do of what U.C. Irvine Law Professor Rick Hasen described as a "decisive" electoral victory for his opponent, Joseph R. Biden.

The prospect that Trump would dare to issue an unlawful coup order was driven home by the fact that all ten living former Secretaries of Defense found it necessary to publish an ominous Washington Post editorial on Sunday that they directed to Miller. With his subordinates, Miller has failed to fully cooperate with the transition, according to President Elect Biden.

The former Secretaries of Defense not only admonished Donald Trump's newly placed Acting Secretary of Defense that he had a duty to facilitate the transition, but also issued a stark warning: "Civilian or military officials who carry out [efforts to involve the U.S. military in the election] would be accountable, including facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequence of their actions on our republic."

The potential for such an unlawful order is underscored by the fact that the former Secretaries of Defense, who signed off on the op-ed, included Mark Esper. He was fired by Presidential Tweet on November 9 --- two days after the networks called the election for Biden. While we don't know precisely what Trump may have conveyed to Esper, there can be no doubt but that Esper, more than any other former Secretary of Defense, is acutely aware of Trump's post-election state of mind.

The word needs to go out, not only to Miller's subordinates and to high-ranking members of the military, serving at the Pentagon, but also to everyone who wears the uniform. You must not obey an unlawful order to carry out a military coup.