Yikes. Busy day on The BradCast. Including some remarkable breaking news, both good and bad, throughout the hour. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among the many stories, breaking and otherwise, on today's program...

• When the show began, the monster Hurricane Helene, barrelling toward a direct landfall near Tallahassee and the Big Bend region of Florida's panhandle, was already a dangerous Category 3. By show's end, it had become a terrifying Cat 4. As disturbingly, the storm began the day as a Cat 1! Thanks to record warm Gulf waters caused by man-made global warming, we have yet another case of deadly, rapid intensification for this storm. Experts also warn of an "unsurvivable" 20-foot storm surge on the Gulf Coast. The dangers beyond Florida, in already soaked southeastern states, are also quite serious and severe in the days ahead.

• After what Trump Republicans describe as Joe Biden's supposedly "weaponized" Department of Justice indicted and/or convicted Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (NJ), Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX), and the President's own son Hunter Biden (twice) over the past year, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment on Thursday against NYC's Democratic Mayor Eric Adams. The Mayor, who says he will not resign, was charged on five counts related to corruption on behalf of Turkey. If the Biden's federal government has been "weaponized" against Republicans, they sure have poor aim!

• But, you know who was actually very good at weaponizing the federal government against his political enemies? Yup, Donald Trump, as a deep dive from the NYTimes' Michael Schmidt (free link) detailed over the past weekend. Time and again, during his years in office, then President Trump demanded --- and often got --- criminal and civil investigations by DoJ and highly unusual and invasive audits by the IRS against his perceived political enemies, many of whom, if they worked in the government, were also improperly fired. Schmidt also summarizes (free link) how Trump unleashed his government against such perceived enemies as F.B.I Director James Comey and other senior FBI officials; Hilary Clinton and her 2016 campaign; Obama's Sec. of State John Kerry; his own attorney Michael Cohen; News organizations and reporters at CNN, WaPo and NYT; his own National Security Adviser John Bolton; and many others. And, as Schmidt reminds us, Trump has already stated this month that he plans to do it again if elected to another term.

• Looks like its a big day for corrupt NYC Mayors! Today the D.C. Court of Appeals permanently disbarred former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, after New York state also permanently revoked his license to practice law earlier this Summer. The disbarments are related to the disgraced former Mayor and federal proseuctor's false legal filings claiming election fraud, without actual evidence, following the 2020 election on behalf of the loser Donald Trump.

• In related news, even as jury selection was underway in a major defamation trial in Delaware pitting voting machine vendor Smartmatic against the rightwing propaganda outlet known as Newsmax, a last minute, still-confidential settlement was struck between the parties. As CNN reports today, "The settlement is the latest in a string of 2020 election defamation cases to reach an out-of-court agreement before trial. Fox News famously settled with Dominion Voting Systems last year for a record $787 million, and the far-right channel One America News settled with Smartmatic earlier this year." They also note that "Newsmax still faces a separate defamation lawsuit over similar claims that was filed by Dominion." As referenced during the show, here is one of BRAD BLOG's exclusive investigative reports from 2010 that disgraced former Trump attorney Sidney Powell cited (and bastardized) as part of her defamatory allegations against both Smartmatic and Dominion, as subsequently echoed by all the rightwing fake news outlets and discredited and now disbarred yutzes like Giuliani.

• Finally, as the deadly Hurricane Helene speeds toward Florida, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report, with news on both that storm and Hurricane John (which continues to pound Mexico); how global warming has made all of these storms much worse; and Joe Biden's promotion of climate action at both Climate Week in NYC and his final address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Massive Hurricane Helene menaces Florida; Global warming doubled the odds of Central Europe's catastrophic flooding; PLUS: Biden promotes climate action at his final U.N. address and at Climate Week, but warns success is fragile... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): America's climate and economy are on the ballot; Hurricanes have changed. The way we prepare for them should, too; As Galveston faces rapid sea level rise, developers are building new condos; Extreme weather has a surprising impact on voters' attitudes about climate change; Another train car leaked dangerous chemicals in Ohio. Here's what to know; Cattle burn as 'monster' wildfires rage in Argentina ranchlands... PLUS: Global solar growth is on track for another record-breaking year... and much, MUCH more! ...

The stakes seem high enough on every level that it remains remarkable, as we muse at one point on today's BradCast, that mainstream corporate media barely mentions, much less reports on any of it. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Kamala Harris has clawed back a lot of ground that voters were initially giving to Donald Trump when it came to the question of who they trusted most to handle the economy. Recent polling finds the two largely tied on the issue, despite the fact that, under the Biden-Harris Administration, GDP is at record highs, unemployment at 50-year lows, there has been record job creation (above and beyond the restoration of jobs lost during the pandemic), middle-class wages are rising substantively for the first time in decades, inflation is largely back to pre-pandemic levels, interest rates are finally being lowered by the Fed, energy prices are dropping and major Wall Street indexes continue to meet and beat all-time record highs.

Sounds like a pretty good economy. You'd think the incumbent Administration might be rewarded for it. But, oh, well. Trump says nobody can afford to buy back anymore. So there's that.

Harris has already put forward a host of new economic proposals [PDF] in her campaign, including $6,000 child tax credits for families with newborns; $25,000 to help first-time home buyers afford down payments; increasing the amount that new, small businesses can deduct for startup costs from $5,000 to $50,000. She detailed still more plans for what she describes as her "Opportunity Economy" in Pittsburgh today.

By way of contrast, Trump wants to give another trillion dollar tax break to the wealthy and huge corporations, institute and enormous national sales tax for consumers on all imported goods, adopt some gimmicky, ill-defined schemes such as "No Tax on Tips" (which Harris favors as well) and otherwise "Drill, Baby, Drill" to pay for it all (even though oil and gas drilling, for good or ill, is already at record highs under Biden-Harris). I'd link to those proposals but they don't appear to be detailed anywhere, other than, perhaps, in Project 2025.

Corporate mainstream media does a lousy job of highlighting economic facts and the starkly different visions of the candidates. But they do an even worse job when it comes to educating the electorate about some of the landmark legislation that the Administration was able to get through extraordinarily narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, all of which are transformational for the American economy, American jobs and the global climate.

The poorly-named bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, while including some measures for lower inflation, is also the largest ever single investment in climate action in world history, clocking in at as much as $1.2 trillion in size. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, offers about $500 billion to upgrade our rail and road systems, build out a national EV charging network, upgrade the electric grid and much more. The CHIPS and Science Act authorizes $280 to onshore manufacturing factories and jobs in high-tech industries. All of which, though they are just barely getting started, will amount to millions of new jobs and a cleaner, renewable, electrified future that will slash global warming emissions in half by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050...if they stay on the current trajectory.

Trump has promised to end that trajectory and kill as many of those programs as possible, despite the cost to the economy, jobs and a livable climate for all.

We're joined today by RYAN COOPER, Executive Editor of The American Prospect, to discuss the economic and climate stakes of this year's election, as he recently reported on for The Prospect, as our two potential futures are now starkly divergent, with trillions of dollars, millions of jobs (in all 50 states) and a clean, renewable energy future hanging in the balance.

As Cooper explains at The Prospect, a recent independent analysis comparing best-case scenarios for Harris versus Trump and his Project 2025 plan find that by 2020, "she would actually beat the 50 percent emissions reduction target slightly (and hit net zero by 2050), add 2.2 million jobs, save $7.7 billion in yearly household energy costs, increase GDP by $450 billion per year, and prevent 3,900 early deaths from air pollution."

"For Trump, they estimated that by 2030, he would stall out emission cuts (meaning an increase relative to Harris by 1.75 billion metric tons [of climate choking emissions] per year), destroy 1.7 million jobs, increase household energy spending by $32 billion, decrease GDP by $320 billion per year, and increase early deaths caused by air pollution by 2,100."

And yet, according to pre-election polling, the two candidates are largely tied when it comes to who voters believe will best handle the economy!

Cooper says blame not only falls on mainstream corporate media, but on Democrats who "really haven't been selling" their climate and economic agenda. Also, he tells me, I may be "imagining a much more rational and grounded political party in the Republicans than actually exists. This is a cult of personality," he emphasizes, with members who are "brain-poisoned" at this point. Despite the "overwhelming popularity" of federal government programs that help assure clean air and water, "the idea that [millions of renewable energy and manufacturing] jobs are going to cause a realignment among Republicans against liberal, clean energy, Toyota Prius-type stuff, is somewhat wishful thinking. Maybe in five or ten years it may be a different story."

These are, in fact, enormous, economy-shifting projects that take time to fully play out and integrate into society and the American psyche. "Under Biden, only about 17 percent of the $1.6 trillion authorized in his climate bills and the American Rescue Plan had gotten out the door as of this April," Cooper reports at The Prospect. "More has been done since then, but much more remains."

Despite those obstacles, the media really are failing to educate the electorate on this, failing to explain the extraordinary breadth of the Biden-Harris climate achievements which would likely be exceedingly popular if Americans fully understood them. "Nobody wants their air and water polluted outside of hard-core 'rolling coal' truck owners. Nobody wants to give their kid brain cancer so a chemical company can make more money," Cooper says, chalking up much of the lack of understanding among the electorate to "the incredibly biased information space in political media. Ordinary people are just not hearing about this stuff. When you tell swing voter panels about this stuff, most of them refuse to believe you!"

"We are talking about the industries of the 21st century," he stresses. "The whole world is re-gearing everything around renewable energy --- the cheapest energy in most of the world that has ever been produced. The whole industrial supply chain, everything, how we live, is being transformed. It's significant. I think it will be seen as the Industrial Revolution was."

True. Unless America elects Donald Trump, who has promised to gut it all. There is much more worth tuning in for in my conversation with Cooper today.

ALSO TODAY... Speaking of Trump's Project 2025, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) explains how Team Trump's promise to "dismantle the administrative state” includes dismantling and/or privatizing dozens of federal agencies, putting as many as one million jobs at risk; Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) cites the menace of Project 2025 in a U.S. House subcommittee hearing on whistleblowers today; And Jason Kravits wraps it all together in a brilliant Schoolhouse Rock-style satirical tune to end today's BradCast on a high note...

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We continue our laser focus on the track conditions for the 2024 horse race on today's BradCast, with somewhat better than usual news in a couple of different states. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our many stories covered on today's program...

• Hurricane John made landfall on the west coast of Mexico overnight, after spinning up from a tropical storm to a full-on Cat 3 in a single day, before blowing ashore. That, thanks to the storm's rapid intensification over record warm waters due to climate change. With that ominous note, Tropical Storm Helene, currently in the Caribbean, is also spinning up quickly over record warm waters and could soon become a very large and very dangerous hurricane as it guns for landfall along Florida's Gulf Coast by Thursday night.

• It looks like the threat is over in Nebraska for now. As we reported last week, Republican lawmakers in the state --- one of just two which divvy up Electoral College votes by Congressional district, rather than winner-take-all --- were being hard-pressed by Team Trump to change the way the state apportions electoral votes before November's election, just six weeks away. Kamala Harris' "Blue Wall" strategy of reaching the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House by carrying battlegrounds Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania along with the other traditionally "blue" states, requires that she also win the one single Congressional district around Omaha, as Joe Biden did in 2020. It is, as a grassroots campaign in the district characterizes it, a "blue dot" in an otherwise very "red" state. Nebraska's Republican Governor said last week that he would be willing to call a special session of the state legislature to change the 30-year old law for apportioning electoral votes to advantage Trump, if Republican lawmakers had the votes to do it. On Monday, however, a former Democratic state Senator turned Republican announced he would vote against the scheme, all but killing the possibility for now, according to the Governor today. As we discuss, however, that Omaha Senator may have had ulterior motives above and beyond his seemingly altruistic decision to simply do the right thing for democracy.

• Good news late last week out of Arizona as well! Some 98,000 registered voters will not be blocked from voting in state and local elections and ballot measures this year. That, after a unanimous ruling from the state's Supreme Court on Friday. Republicans in the state have been working for years --- decades, in fact --- to purge voters from the rolls who failed to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote. There are a bunch of good reasons that registrants wouldn't have done so. (For example, if they registered prior to the state's 2004 requirement, or registered via the National Voter Registration Form which does not inform Arizona voters that proof of citizenship documents are required to vote.) But, last week, when the state announced that, thanks to a newly discovered glitch in the state registration database, nearly 100,000 voters were on the rolls without having submitted proof of citizenship --- due to some confusion with how the state motor vehicle office renews driver's licenses --- the matter ended up at the state Supreme Court. And, shockingly, the AZ Republican Party in this case, in a remarkable flip-flop from years of advocacy to the contrary, argued to keep those voters on the rolls! Why? Well, as it turns out, the voters in question, according to the state's Democratic Sec. of State (who also argued to allow the voters to remain fully registered), there were about 10,000 more Republicans on the list of voters than Democrats. Apparently, the GOP isn't that concerned about non-citizens voting after all --- as long as they're registered as Republicans. (Please note: Despite years of attempts by Republicans to mandate citizenship documentation or demand the purging of potential non-citizen voters, they have failed to offer evidence that more than a miniscule handful of non-citizens are actually registered to vote, much less actually voting in U.S. elections.)

• The only way to vote that is more dangerous and less publicly overseeable than touchscreen voting is Internet Voting. And, yet, as much as cybersecurity and voting system experts advocate strongly against it, more and more states are allowing online voting for overseas citizens and military voters. One such state, apparently, is Montana, whose online voting system was opened for the 2024 election on Friday. It took only a few hours, it seems, before one voter noticed that Kamala Harris' name wasn't on the ballot in the Presidential race.

• Joe Biden gave his final address as President of the United States to the U.N. General Assembly today. We're happy to share a few excerpts from his remarks on the need for the world to come together to end wars, take on the climate crisis, safeguard against the dangers of artificial intelligence and protect democracy...among other things.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Climate Week kicks off in New York along with the U.N. General Assembly; Microsoft announces plans to reopen Three Mile Island, the site of the nation's worst nuclear accident, to power its Artificial Intelligence program; and California's Attorney General files a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against ExxonMobil for their decades of lies about the viability of plastic recycling...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: California sues ExxonMobil for lying about effectiveness of plastic recycling; Hurricane John strikes Mexico as a surprise Category 3; Infamous Three Mile Island coming back to power Microsoft's A.I.; PLUS: Climate Week summit kicks off in New York City... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The hidden environmental, climate costs of food; Major investigation of 'zombie' oil wells; Midwest states struggle to fund dam safety projects despite surge in federal aid; Tugboat powered by ammonia sails for the first time, showing how to cut emissions from shipping; CA governor signs bill to ban all plastic shopping bags at grocery stores; New green aluminum plant could bring jobs and clean energy to Kentucky... PLUS: Under a Texas sun, agrivoltaics offer farmers a new way to make money... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast: Rachel Maddow is an excellent broadcaster. But, boy, did she fall --- along with a bunch of other mainstream corporate media outlets on Friday --- for a wildly misleading spin on a new rule adopted last week by the Georgia State Board of Elections in advance of this November's elections. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to an expert to help set the record straight on this matter today, to explain how virtually everyone from WaPo to New York Times to Atlanta Journal Constitution to, yes, Maddow got it wrong...a few quick news items of note...

• It's possible, with Hurricane John about to slam into the West Coast of Mexico in the Pacific, and a different storm to be named Helene quickly spinning up in the Atlantic, that by week's end --- if John crosses the Mexican peninsula and enters the Gulf --- we could have two major hurricanes, both threatening landfall in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time. Climate change is wacky fun, in't?

• Nearly 500 are confirmed killed and more than 1,000 injured near Lebanon's border with Israel on Monday, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the deadliest barrage on Hezbollah since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. All of which is meant to extend the Israeli PM's time in office and out of jail on corruption charges filed well before his war on Gaza --- and even war crimes charges that are likely to come his way if and when he is ever finally removed from office. Hezbollah reportedly fired thousands of rockets in return at Israel.

• Congressional leaders have reportedly reached a deal to keep the Government open after the end of this month, as the new fiscal year begins on October 1. The deal would continuing funding the Government until at least December 20. The agreement to prevent a government shutdown just weeks before the Presidential election --- when every member of the U.S. House and one-third of the U.S. Senate will be on the ballot --- comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson gave up on a measure Donald Trump was insisting on to make it a crime for non-citizens to vote (which is already unlawful under federal law). We'll see if the agreement is finalized by both chambers, and whether Republicans will then send us over yet another fiscal cliff this Christmas.

• Newly released FBI data find violent crime in America, including murder, dropped precipitously from 2022 to 2023.

• The U.S. economy continues to outpace the rest of the developed world and the stock market remains at all-time record levels under the Biden-Harris Administration, even as Donald Trump's failing media company, which trades on the NASDAQ as DJT, plummeted another 10% on Monday to a new all-time low since going public, as the race is on to meet my prediction that his loser of a company could become a penny stock by Election Day!

• And, speaking of Trump grifts, it looks like Melania Trump, who has barely appeared on the campaign trail this season, was paid nearly $240,000 to speak at a political fundraiser at her own home in Mar-a-Lago last April. Who wrote the check to her remains unknown at this time.

And then, it's on to the story which has apparently freaked out Democrats and voting rights advocates since it was first misreported by pretty much everybody on Friday. That was the day that three Trump-supporting MAGA election denialists on the Georgia State Elections Board adopted a new rule requiring hand-counting at each precinct at the end of election night.

But the new rule requires only the hand-counting of the number of ballots cast at the precinct --- not the actual results on those ballots, as many have misreported --- before they are sealed up and sent to county headquarters.

Similar reconciliation of the number of ballots cast against the number of voters who signed in to the poll books or to the number of pages reported as scanned by the precinct tabulators, are carried out in many of other states without problem at the end of election night.

According to our guest today, an expert in Georgia's terrible touchscreen voting and scanning system, the process is likely to take anywhere from 15 minutes to a half an hour after the close of polls. But you wouldn't know that from the mainstream media coverage, with Democrats and Republican election officials alike in Georgia, screaming bloody murder that this new rule would lead to inaccurate tallies, delays in the count, and potentially add "months" to the time it will take to tally up results in the Peach State this year!

We're joined again today by the great MARILYN MARKS, longtime voting system expert and Executive Director of the Coalition for Good Governance. Her non-partisan organization is responsible for the federal lawsuit that ultimately banned Georgia's unverifiable, insecure touchscreen voting systems made by Diebold, only to see them replaced by Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger with similarly unverifiable and insecure touchscreen systems made by Dominion. She is also the woman who discovered and exposed the MAGA breach, copy and distribution of statewide voting system software in Coffee County, GA that resulted in criminal charges against five people, including Sidney Powell, in the state's racketeering felony indictment against Donald Trump and many others.

As Marks explains today, the mainstream media outlets were misreporting on Friday's new hand-count of the number of ballots cast rule "out of hysteria for no good reason." She confirms that "it's simply a ballot counting rule that most states have," allowing them to "know how many ballots you have collected" and to confirm that number before ballots are moved anywhere. "That is a common-sense rule. It will take about 20 minutes at most to implement at most of the polling places in Georgia --- that's a rough estimate --- and it is a safeguard on a lot of different things."

"If there are major discrepancies," between the number of ballots and the number signed into the poll books, she says, "that's the time to figure it out, not after all the equipment and people get moved."

Many Democrats --- justifiably --- fear that, if Trump loses in the state again, some Republican officials on the election boards at both the state and county level are hoping to find ways to create havoc and chaos that could delay certification and ultimately place the actual election results in doubt, leading to challenges in Court or Congress on January 6th next year.

"We seem to be in such a hyper-partisan environment right now," says Marks, "that if we can throw some mud, true or not, on the other side, it's a way to build enthusiasm for our team." But that, she suggests, is short-sighted and unhelpful given the very REAL concerns about the election in Georgia (and elsewhere.)

We also discuss, some of the very good reasons that Democrats should be concerned about the reported results in Georgia this year, particularly given the software breach of statewide voting systems in Coffee County that Sec. Raffensperger has refused to mitigate in any way before the 2024 election, including with software patches distributed by Dominion.

Marks is concerned by the "chaos" that could be caused by someone exploiting the Coffee County caper. "It would be so easy for someone to shut down the system by just writing code that would shut down all the machines at 10am on Election Day," she offers by way of just one example. "There's nothing Georgia could do about it. They are not prepared." In response, I offer an even simpler and arguably more chilling scenario at how a tiny group of people can create utter havoc in the state by simply claiming that the state's touchscreen systems have misprinted their ballots --- whether that's true or not. There is no way, with the systems, to determine if they are telling the truth.

Tune in for more on those actually real concerns about GA elections, as well as Marks' tips for voters in both Georgia and other states, including North Carolina, California, and anywhere else that voters may be forced to vote on a 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems at the polling place this year...

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I don't know if they're gonna lose or not. But, as we report on today's busy BradCast, the disgraced former President and his Republican party this week sure do have the stench of losers on them. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our many stories covered today...

• Breaking just before air time: Turns out North Carolina's Trump-endorsed freak show Republican Lt. Gov and gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is even more of a freak show than previously known. And, by his own words on a porn site he frequented for many years, a "black NAZI!". Good luck this November in NC, Republicans!

• Stock market hits record highs today after the Fed lowered interest rates Wednesday more than expected, signaling post-pandemic inflation is back under control. Donald Trump's failing media company, however, which trades as DJT, hits record lows today and still appears to be on track to become a penny stock by November 5.

• The already terrible situation in the Middle East gets worse, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds news ways to keep the war(s) going to keep himself out of prison.

• House Republicans and Donald Trump stay on track to cause another government shutdown at the end of this month, just before the election, after House Speaker Mike Johnson's dead-on-arrival scheme, on behalf of Trump, to demand a new law to prevent already-unlawful non-citizen voting fails to get the support needed for passage from Republicans.

• J.D. Vance continues Trump's lies about "illegal" migrants taking over Springfield, Ohio. They're not "illegal". Trump, as President, gave them legal protected status. Vance says he gonna call them "illegal" anyway, as the Republican Mayor of the now-terrorized town begs them to knock it off, asking for "help not hate".

• New polling continues to look good for Kamala Harris in swing states. But the Democrats "Blue Wall" strategy of winning the White House by winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania --- along with all of the other traditionally "blue" states --- could hit a snag if Team Trump's newly reignited scheme, reportedly now being led up by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Pathetic) is successful. This week Graham was in Nebraska meeting with the state's Republican Governor and members of the legislature, encouraging them to call a special legislative session to change the way the state divvies up Electoral College votes.

  Currently, NE is one of just two states, along with Maine, that apportions Electoral College votes by U.S. House District. That means Harris is likely to win one of the state's votes, in the Omaha district, in the otherwise very "red" state. But Team Trump wants the state to change the law to move to a winner-take-all system just weeks before the election (and just 10 days before vote-by-mail voting begins!) in hopes of a scenario where, even if the Democrats' three-state Blue Wall strategy is successful, the Electoral College end in a 269-269 tie with NE's 2nd Congressional District vote given to Trump instead of Harris. That would send the decision of who will become the next President to the U.S. House, where the vote would be by state delegation, where Republicans are likely to hold a controlling majority even if Democrats win the House back in November.

  If this insane-but-theoretically-plausible scenario proceeds as Team Trump desperately hopes, however, Democrats may still have an ace in the hole...in Maine.

• A government watchdog group gets a hold of to emails among Georgia election denialists serving as county election officials, detailing their conversations about plans to block certification of 2024 election results in the Peach State if it looks like Donald Trump is going to lose it again.

• Texas' wildly corrupt Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing county election officials in state court to prevent them from sending voter registration forms to eligible but unregistered voters in several different Democratic-leaning Counties. The Counties are now, in turn, suing Paxton in federal court, charging his efforts amount to voter suppression in violation of longstanding federal laws.

• While the Lone Star State is busy suing its own election officials for daring to register voters, here in California, state lawmakers have passed a law, SB 299, to make the state's current automatic voter registration system even more automatic, potentially enabling the ability to vote for an additional 4.7 million eligible but currently unregistered voters. Politics Girl does the heavy lifting for us today. You can get more details from the grassroots coalition of more than 140 groups supporting the measure right here.

• Finally, at the end of a busy show, Desi Doyen joins us form our latest busy Green News Report, as the climate crisis rapidly worsens around the globe, despite new U.N. warnings; North Carolina estimates damage from a brutal, sudden tropical storm this week will top $7 billion; and as a new study finds Joe Biden's air pollution policies will save some 200,000 lives in the U.S...

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Republican Ken Paxton, the ethically challenged Texas Attorney General, who paid nearly $300,000 in restitution to plea bargain his way out of a securities fraud indictment that had been pending since 2015, is vehemently opposed to the effort by state county election officials to encourage voter registration via the unsolicited mailing of voter registration forms to likely eligible voters.

Paxton's effort at voter suppression in two of the Lone Star State's most populous --- and Democratic-leaning --- counties, has now resulted in several lawsuits. A suit in state court filed by Paxton against Bexar County (San Antonio), and two filed in federal court, one each by Bexar and Travis (Austin) Counties charging the Attorney General is attempting to suppress the vote in violation of long-standing federal law...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: U.N. weather agency warns the world is not moving fast enough to avert climate chaos...which may already be here; North Carolina storm damage estimated to top $7 billion; PLUS: New study finds Biden's climate policies will save 200,000 lives from toxic air pollution... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): A Vote for reality: Scientific American endorses Harris; Scientists warn 70% of the world’s population to see rapid increase in 'unprecedented' weather; Biden Admin spending climate cash fast, as Trump threatens to cancel it; EPA scientists said they were pressured to downplay harms from chemicals. A watchdog found they were retaliated against; The Gulf Coast is sinking, making hurricanes like Francine even more dangerous; Norway's electric cars outnumber petrol for first time in 'historic milestone'... PLUS: Hundreds of elephants to be killed in Zimbabwe and Namibia as food and water resources run dry... and much, MUCH more! ...

From darkness to light on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... As an increasingly panicked Team Trump continues to find new depths in which to sink and new, more dangerous lows to drill down into --- Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world turned virulent Trump supporter, has gamed his increasingly rightwing social media site (which we still call Twitter) to force his obnoxious, dangerous, wildly false political commentary even beyond the nearly 200 million followers he has. All while turning off the very limited, crowdsourced fact-check system, for himself, even as it is supposed to apply to everyone else on the increasingly trash-filled site.

Among the results, a tweet of his this week that suggested someone should try and assassinated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It became a rare incident where even he decided he had gone too far and deleted the tweet after tens, if not hundreds of millions, had already seen it. (And, upon deleting it, going to on to blame everyone else for not appreciating his brilliant sense of humor).

That came after dozens and dozens of tweets this year, which have reached billions of people, falsely claiming that Democrats are bringing non-citizens into the country to vote in this year's election. The Washington Post, last week, did a deep dive into how Musk's false tweets have translated into very specific threats against elections officials around the country. "He's by no means unique," Maricopa County, Arizona's Republican Election Recorder told WaPo. "He just happens to have a very, very large microphone."

He's not the only one.

Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have spent the last week endangering the residents of Springfield, Ohio by spreading false claims about legal Haitian immigrants there (who they falsely describe as "illegal") destroying the town and eating the pets of other residents. The results of those lies: dozens of bomb threats that shutdown City Hall, schools, hospitals and has turned the Republican-run city into somewhat of a police state, as OH's Republican Governor was forced to deploy state law enforcement officials to protect town residents.

Kamala Harris, who doesn't utter falsehoods that threaten the lives of Americans, was asked about all of this madness during an forum with the National Association of Black Journalists this week. We thought her answer to that question was worth sharing in full today. It ends with this assertion: "This is exhausting and it's harmful. And it's hateful. And grounded in some age old stuff that we should not have the tolerance for. So, let's turn the page and chart a new way forward and say 'You can't have that microphone again.'"

THEN... Despite all of the above, there remains a huge number of Americans who regard themselves as very religious and yet appear dead set on voting again for the most un-religious person who has ever run for the White House.

Recent polling, however, shows that at least some of Trump's support from the religious community may be falling, even as other polling makes clear that the thrice-married, philandering and felonious former President still dominates the white Christian evangelical vote. At least the male voters who describe themselves as such.

But, according to our guest today, a white evangelical pastor himself, it doesn't have to be that way. And he is devoted to changing it. We're joined today by DOUG PAGITT, Executive Director and co-founder of Vote Common Good, a non-profit focused on "energizing and mobilizing people of faith to make the common good their voting criteria."

In a recent opinion piece for MSNBC, Pagitt detailed how his group's bus tour through battleground states this year is helping Christians to understand they don't have to vote Republican, while helping to teach Democratic candidates how to reach those voters, particularly in swing-states and counties.

So how did we get to such a place in this country, where a guy like Trump --- who has never been seen attending a regular religious service, either before, during, or after his Presidency --- would be the preferred candidate for a huge part of the religious community? Pagitt has a bunch of thoughts on all of this today.

"What's really going on is that the Democratic Party has had a pattern and reputation for not wanting religious voters," he tells me. "Kamala Harris is changing that. Joe Biden was changing that. Barack Obama worked to change that. But what Donald Trump exploited was this idea --- you hear him say, 'Democrats hate you religious people' --- somehow making out evangelicals to be both the rightful heirs of this nation as Christian Nationalists, but then also the persecuted minority. And somehow they get to hold both of these views."

Pagitt asserts that many Christians have, just by dint of birth, become Republican voters over the years. Because, as he says, "We don't know how to talk about faith in politics in the United States. We've been struggling with it since the founding of the country. We've never been good at it."

"But it doesn't have to be that way," he says. "Forty-four years ago, Jimmy Carter was an evangelical pastor from Georgia. He got 60% of the evangelical vote. In a lot of ways, the Democratic structure said to Republicans, 'You can have the religious white voters, we'll take the other voters.' That would be fine with me if we didn't keep electing someone like Donald Trump."

"The only reason we are out here, trying to get faith voters to consider voting for a Democrat for the first time in their life, is because this country cannot stand having Donald Trump have the power of the Presidency in his hand ever again."

Pagitt and his group have arguably made inroads. They are able to show deeply religious communities where they spent time in 2020 that swung radically in favor of Democrats after voting for Trump in 2016. He tells me that he believes their work can be critical in helping to do that again elsewhere, including in some of the most religious communities, where winning over a small subset of the electorate may be key to winning in marginal races for Congress and even the Presidency.

"There's an awful lot of people who have been told their whole life that Democrats are the enemy, and they're realizing they're not. But behavioral change is extremely slow," he explains today. "We know that three things always have to be in place when someone makes a behavioral change, whether that's doing a new diet or changing your voting habits."

"You have to take in some kind of new information that makes you think, 'Maybe I should do something different.' You need someone to invite you to actually behave differently based on that information. And then you need a community to participate in where people like you do that new thing. So many of these people, they don't have that. So we try to create that for them and let them know it's okay. It seems so rudimentary, but I've watched people with tears in their eyes when we say to them, 'If you choose to vote for a Democrat, first of all, it doesn't make you one. But even if it did, you're going to be okay. Your faith is still going to be alive.'"

We had a lot to talk about with Pagitt on today's show around all of this that I suspect you'll find enlightening. I know I did!...

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On today's BradCast, a focus on the challenges ahead for election officials in what is likely to be the most closely watched state in the country, in the most closely watched Presidential election of all time. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The endorsements for Kamala Harris keep rolling in. From the right (George Will for crying out loud?!) and from the non-right, as Scientific American revealed on Monday what is only their second Presidential endorsement in the well-respected magazine's 179-year history.

Also, today is National Voter Registration Day! We've got a few thoughts on a few tips, several of which come courtesy of our friends at the non-partisan group Vote Riders, who recommend not only registering to vote, with many states deadlines for that coming up very shortly, but also checking your voter registration status even if you believe you are already registered. Many states have purged a lot of voters since the last general election. The group also warns that Voter ID requirements have changed in many states since 2020. So today is also a great moment to make sure you have the sometimes very specific ID now required by your state to vote in this year's critical election. You can do that at their site as well.

THEN... The great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is likely to be the "tipping point" state for this year's election. If Dems win it, along with Michigan and Wisconsin (and the other traditionally "blue" states) Kamala Harris will almost certainly become the next President. But, while Harris currently leads in those so-called "Blue Wall" states, according to pre-election polling averages, her lead in PA remains the tightest of the three.

So, with all eyes likely to be on PA this year, we thought it would be a good moment to check in with our old friend MARYBETH KUZNIK, a longtime Election Integrity advocate and champion as founder and Executive Director of VotePA, and now as the Director of Elections and Voter Registration at the Fayette County, PA Election Bureau.

Fayette is in the southwestern part of the state, not too far geographically from Pittsburgh, though seemingly farther and farther away politically over the years, as the once reliable Democratic-leaning rural county has turned much more Republican in recent Presidential elections.

But, no matter their politics, all voters there need to be able to vote and have their votes counted as cast --- and in a way that they can know they have been counted as cast. Kuznik tells me that she sees her current job as an election official not terribly differently from her work as an Election Integrity advocate.

"I view this work that I'm doing now as an extension of everything else I've ever done," she tells me. "We, as election officials, as well as election activists, want --- or should want --- the same thing, which is to make sure every vote is counted accurately as cast. And that is without regard to party, or candidate, or whatever. You vote, and we count it the way you voted it."

Kuznik explains that her office is now in the final throes of finalizing ballot design and tabulator programming, following the last of the rulings from the state's Supreme Court as to which candidates will be allowed to appear on the ballot. Vote-by-Mail absentee ballots will very soon be going out to voters.

There is always an extraordinary amount of pressure on election officials to get everything exactly right. But there will be more than ever this year, given the many false claims that Republicans have brought in recent years after Donald Trump falsely claimed to have won the 2020 election. And nowhere is the pressure likely to be higher than in a state like PA, whose voters may decide the winner of the 2024 Presidential contest.

While Kuznik is confident in her and her staff's ability to get the job done well, there are still a number of concerns, some of which we've recently discussed on this program. For example, a bipartisan group of election officials across the country in recent days have expressed grave worries to Trump-appointed U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy regarding delays and other problems in the delivery of Vote-by-Mail ballots back to county officials. While Kuznik says she has a good relationship with the regional mail handler, she notes that a tiny handful of ballots from the state's primaries this year, "postmarked in April" were not finally delivered back to the County until August! "That's two or three" ballots, she says, "but that's two or three people's precious vote. Somebody died for the right of those people to vote. Hopefully we figure it out because I don't want it happening in this election."

PA also has some unhelpful rules for when officials can even begin tallying Absentee/Vote-by-Mail ballots. Unlike most states, PA officials are barred from beginning their VBM tallies until Election Day. That can lead to a number of problems. Among them, the "red mirage" issue that we saw in some states in 2020. Democrats tend to vote much more heavily by mail than Republicans. That means that, with the more laborious job of opening, verifying and tallying VBM ballots only beginning on Election Day, the results from more heavily Republican ballots cast at the polls that day may be reported first, giving the false impression that Republicans are ahead when some go to sleep on Election Night, only to see absentee tallies added in later, resulting in Democratic candidates overtaking the Republican.

We also discuss the fact that most voters in the Keystone State are now, thankfully, allowed to vote on verifiable hand-marked paper ballots at the polls; the concerns that many have reported about some conspiracy-minded GOP election officials in swing states scheming to hold up certification of results for dubious reasons --- in the event that Trump loses --- in hopes of wreaking chaos that can then be used to challenge the final Electoral College votes in the courts or in Congress on January 6th; and concerns about security threats against her office, staff and the many pollworkers required to pull of a successful election.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news on a natural gas pipeline explosion on Monday in suburban Houston; record deadly storms and flooding in Central Europe, West Africa and North Carolina this week; and the disgraced former President and wannabe mobster's recent visit to California, when he threatened to allow the entire state to burn down if he is allowed to become President again...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Natural gas pipeline explodes in suburban Houston; Unprecedented, deadly storms and floods ravage Central Europe, West Africa, and North Carolina; PLUS: Trump threatens the entire state of California... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The disaster no major U.S. city is prepared for --- a combined power outage with a heat wave; Climate scientists troubled by damage from floods ravaging central Europe - it shows how unprepared the world is; Scientists just figured out how many chemicals enter our bodies from food packaging; A decade after signing of California groundwater law, major challenges remain; Biden’s green policies will save 200,000 lives and have boosted clean energy jobs, data shows ... PLUS: Norway: electric cars outnumber petrol for first time in 'historic milestone'... and much, MUCH more! ...

I think we've got a humdinger for ya on today's BradCast. At least if you, like me, are still scratching your head every day as to why --- after all these years and all we now know about the disgraced former President and cognitively declining convicted criminal, and after last week's crushing debate defeat --- about a half of the nation's voters are still supporting this guy. Yes, his supporters are even out here in theoretically "liberal" Southern California, as our callers demonstrate today! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First, we catch up a bit on some of the weekend's news, including the little that is currently known about the second attempted assassination of Donald Trump at one of his golf courses on Sunday; the many lies Trump told about immigration, the economy and wildfires during an appearance out here in Los Angeles on Friday (when he threatened to let the state burn to the ground if California Gov. Gavin Newsom --- who he called "Newscum" --- refused to do Trump's bidding if he becomes President again); and as Trump ignored and exacerbated the number of bomb and terror threats now being made against the residents of Springfield, Ohio.

After nearly a full week of Trump (and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance) making false claims that Haitian immigrants in the town are "illegally" there --- (They aren't. Both President Biden and then President Trump granted them the right to be there under a 1952 law) --- and that they are eating the dog and cat pets of other residents, Trump continues to double-down and make things even more perilous for the folks of Springfield, both old and new.

The Ku Klux Klan and other neo-Nazis have now descended on the town. The state's Republican Governor Mike DeWine has decried the rhetoric and false claims by Trump and Vance as "disgusting". The woman who made the initial Facebook claim, highlighted by Vance, about a neighbor's cat disappearing has admitted she had no first-hand knowledge and says she regrets her post. And the city has had to shut down or lock down city hall, elementary schools, college campuses and hospital facilities over the past week, thanks to Trump supporters threatening political violence.

Despite all of that, Trump had the temerity on Sunday night to blame the "rhetoric" of Biden and Harris for a mentally unstable guy's failed attempt to shoot the former President at one of his Florida golf courses. While both Biden and Harris immediately condemned the thwarted attack, noting "there is no place for political violence in America", Trump charged that it was the President and Vice President's words that that has put HIM In danger. He went so far as to tell Fox "News" that it was "their rhetoric [that is] causing me to be shot at," in the same breath that he charged they "are destroying the country --- from both the inside and out."

So, with all that we know about this guy, how can it be that he is still largely neck and neck with Kamala Harris in pre-election polling just 50 days out from this year's critical election?!

I thought I'd open the phones today specifically to Trump supporters (and, yes, we have them here in Southern California) to answer that question, by inviting them to let us know why they are still on board with him. They don't get a free pass. I challenge them a bit, but let them explain themselves in the bargain.

And, yup, if we can believe the very first caller, "Luther," who says he is from Arkansas, it is for at least one of the very worst reasons you can possibly imagine. You'll decide if he's for real or not. He was rather convincing. But the callers that followed didn't necessarily have much better reasons for their support of this guy.

Anyway, you'll be the judge. And I welcome your comments in response. Give it a listen. I think you'll "enjoy" today's program...

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