If it weren't for a handful of Democrats caving Sunday night in the U.S. Senate, we'd have spent the full hour on today's BradCast discussing last week's remarkable election victories for both the party and, more importantly, for democracy, voting rights and elections themselves. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Such as it is, however, today show is a bit bifurcated.

FIRST UP... We're joined by journalist ALEX BURNESS of Bolts Magazine. The outlet did their usual yeoman's job of covering not just the topline election contests you may have heard about, but hundreds of other smaller or more under-the-radar elections in more than 30 states last week that you likely haven't heard as much or even anything about.

Today we focus with Burness on his article last week covering five different ways that last week's off-year elections will reverberate moving forward on issues like mail voting, felony disenfranchisement, mid-decade gerrymandering and related election matters in at least five states. In almost every case --- from redistricting in California and Virginia, to restoring felony voting rights in Virginia, to a Photo ID initiative in Maine, to election scheduling in New York, to "the backstop of democracy" in Pennsylvania --- the news for voters and voting rights advocates was very good indeed. (Texas was, as usual, like a whole 'nother country. Tune in for those details.)

THEN... We turn back to the federal government shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history, following last week's enormous wins for Democrats at the polls in state after state; Donald Trump's approval rating at all-time, historic lows; and clear pluralities of Americans blaming Republicans for the shutdown, as Democrats were seen as united in their fight to restore trillions of dollars in health care cuts for millions of Americans (to the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and even Medicare) made by Trump and the GOP.

With that backdrop and the wind very much at the backs of the Dems in this fight on Sunday night, seven Democratic Senators --- Tim Kaine (VA), Dick Durbin (IL), John Fetterman (PA), Maggie Hassan (NH), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), and Jacky Rosen (NV) --- and one independent who caucuses with them (ME's Angus King), decided this would be the perfect time to undercut their own caucus by jumping ship to vote with Senate Republicans to allow them to reopen the government. None of the eight turncoats are facing reelection next year.

What did they get for Dems in return? The promise of a vote in the Senate, perhaps in December, on restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies. That's it. No promise of a similar vote in the U.S. House (where Republicans control the majority anyway), and no promise that Trump would even sign such a bill if the GOP allowed passage in both chambers.

In other words, at least as I see it, those 7+1 Dems got nothing in exchange for their votes, and the rest of the caucus, in both the Senate and House, is reportedly furious about it. On the other hand, thousands of federal workers will be paid again and the critical Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will now eventually be restarted...albeit at lower levels following Trump and the GOP slashing some $180 billion from the program in their so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" over the Summer.

You'll note that Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is not among those who voted on Sunday night in favor of reopening the government. He voted against it. But, of course, those seven Dems would not have moved forward without his approval. Or, if they did, it's just more evidence of what an awful Leader he is for the Party right now, and how much he needs to be both replaced as Leader in the Senate immediately and primaried out of the Senate entirely next year.

That's my take anyway. At the end of today's show we have time for just a few callers. At least one of them sees things somewhat differently --- at least, sees a brighter side to all of this --- and, for the record, notes that the Government reopening also means that there will (or should) soon be a bipartisan vote on releasing the full Epstein Files in the U.S. House. We'll see if that comes about as the week proceeds. I'm not yet holding my breath...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Today on The BradCast: Analysis (and giddiness) continues amid the fallout from Election 2025, during which the bottom appeared to drop out for Team Trump --- at least for now --- pretty much everywhere that voters turned out in some 30 states holding off-year local or statewide elections. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We're joined today by listener faves and fellow old-school bloggers HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo and 'DRIFTGLASS' of the Professional Left Podcast in the wake of Tuesday's remarkable elections, in which Democrats and other anti-Trump voters made their opposition to the failed first year of the second Donald Trump presidency crystal clear --- even to Republicans who care to take notice.

Not only did Democratic candidates --- from the left to the center --- win, so did ballot initiatives supported by them. And, not only did they all win, they all won by huge margins in virtually every jurisdiction across the country holding elections on Tuesday, in both high and low profile contests and ballot initiatives from Maine to New York City to New Jersey to Virginia to Georgia to Mississippi to Pennsylvania to California and beyond.

"Trump and Trumpism, and this style of politics that he has brought into the Republican Party, the cult of personality that has been dominating our country over the last decade --- I think we can see a light at the end of the tunnel here," Digby argues. "Trump is now officially a lame duck. It's earlier than people thought it would be. It sent a shock-wave, I think, through the Republican Party that he's on his way out. And now, let the games begin. Because the fighting within the Republican Party is going to be a glorious thing to see."

"I was surprised how deep the coattails were, how deep the 'blue' ran in all these elections," observes Driftglass. "I am very confident now that a bunch of 'blue' states can redistrict with confidence." Rooting on Texas Republicans to please proceed with their gerrymandering, he continues: "Please, go ahead and do that. Because I think they did not understand that lots of large blocks of voters were not theirs permanently. We saw huge shifts in almost every demographic [on Tuesday]. 'Blue' won everywhere. And that should send a signal to Democrats everywhere it's okay to take risks, it's okay to be who you are, say what you believe and swing for the fences, because that is now being rewarded."

Among the many related and unrelated topics discussed today...

• The death and legacy of Dick Cheney.
• The announced retirement (next year) and legacy of Nancy Pelosi.
• The fallout from the surprising results of Election 2025.
• The media failures in the leadup to the election.
• The ridiculous, cowardly failure of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York (and other "leading" Dems) to endorse the young, charismatic Democratic sensation, now NYC Mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani.
• Are those establishment Dems more afraid Mamdani will fail? Or that he will succeed?
• Who's more of a socialist, Mamdani or Trump?
• Does Trump even know what "socialism" means, much less "communism"? (Much less whatever fairly moderate and measured affordability measures Mamdani ran on in his NYC campaign?)
• The D.C. Sandwich Guy is found "not guilty" of misdemeanor assault with a deadly hero. ("That's a 'wrap'," quips Driftglass. "Another example of the Trump Administration not knowing how courts work.")
• After Gov. Gavin Newsom's Prop 50 redistricting measure's resounding success in California on Tuesday, will other Dem Governors follow suit?
• Will Trump-ordered mid-decade GOP gerrymanders come back to haunt them next year?
• Will Tuesday's results finally bring Republicans any closer to ending the federal government shutdown?

And more! Including Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report on the critical climate races in Tuesday's elections and Brazil's successful climate fight against deforestation under its new President...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Follow @GreenNewsReport...




(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Democrats win in key climate races in the 2025 Elections; Climate change raised in Supreme Court oral arguments over Trump's 'emergency' tariffs; PLUS: Brazil's fight against deforestation is paying climate dividends... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Click here to listen or download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

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): India’s Ganga River drying at unprecedented levels; What the last gas boom (and bust) says about today’s rush to build; Trailer: The White House Effect; Fishermen missing in Vietnam as Philippines mourns dead from Typhoon Kalmaegi; FAA reducing air traffic by 10% across 40 ‘high-volume’ markets during government shutdown; Brazil launches plan to scale climate finance to $1.3 trillion a year... PLUS: Australia has so much solar that it’s offering everyone free electricity... and much, MUCH more! ...

We've covered a lot of Election Nights on The BradCast over the years. But it's difficult, if not impossible, to remember one where Democrats (and anti-GOP, anti-Trump voters) won pretty much everything in every corner of the country. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

True, it was an off-year election. Only about eight states even had statewide contests. But there were also local races in about 30 states. And, wherever voters voted, Team Trump lost on Tuesday. Badly. From "blue" California, to "purple" Virginia, to rural Maine, to battleground Pennsylvania, to deep "red" Mississippi and everywhere in between. And they lost by a lot in almost every case, whether it was for a candidate or an initiative on the ballot.

We run through as many reported results as we can fit in today --- both high profile contests and some that were deep under the radar --- before sharing an excerpt of the electrifying victory speech from Democratic New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who just blew the roof off the Brooklyn Paramount Theater with one of the best victory speeches I have ever seen. Actually, one of the best political speeches, of any kind, I have ever seen.

Then we're joined by longtime progressive journalist and author JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation magazine, where has been covering Mamdani, and many other progressives up and down the ballot --- along with the more centrist candidates in between --- for many months now, during the run-up to Tuesday's elections: the first time since Donald Trump took office for his failing second term that voters have been able to register their opinions about him at the ballot box in a whole bunch of states at once.

"We have had so many conversations where we are trying to find the straw" of good news following an election, Nichols observes, referencing our many post-election conversations. "But now we are in the bizarre, reverse position where, when you look across the entire United States, you are very hard pressed to find any disappointing results. And the reason for that is pretty simple. Donald Trump, a year after his election, nine months into his second presidency, it has been an unmitigated disaster."

"Last night, you got the confirmation that across this country, from New York to Virginia, to New Jersey to California --- but also to Mississippi, where they took away the Republican supermajority in the state Senate; to Georgia, where they were winning Public Service Commissions that they never win; to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Mayoral races in Iowa --- it was just across the board that Democrats won and won and won."

Beyond that, however, there are a lot of details to discuss, regarding why it happened and what message both Republicans and Dems need to take from what happened on Tuesday and, in particular, from the landslide election of the charismatic, 34-year old, Ugandan-born, Muslim, Democratic socialist immigrant whose charm offensive, good humor and promises of a tangible Affordability Agenda for NYC have now made him its next Mayor. And how, incredibly, it is even possible that many establishment Democratic Party leaders --- including U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York --- couldn't bring themselves to endorse the Democratic nominee for Mayor of NYC.

Are they most fearful that Mamdani will be a failure? Or that he will be a success?

We discuss all of that and much more on today's BradCast...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

As the Federal Government shutdown enters its second month --- now almost certain to become the longest in U.S. history --- it's Election Day tomorrow in the first major elections since our ridiculous and criminal President's disastrous second term began ten hellishly long months ago. It is the first chance for a whole lotta folks to ring in on what theythink of this President and his corrupted Party. So, this week on The BradCast, we continue to keep our eyes on both tomorrow's major off-year elections in several states and next year's critical midterms in all 50, as that election is also already underway in more ways than one. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Tuesday is the last day to vote in statewide elections for Governor and the state House of Delegates/Representatives in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively; Mayor in New York City; and for (or against) Prop 50 in California, among other contests of note that we've been discussing and/or previewing in recent days on the program.

After a few news headlines today, we zero in on the Prop 50 statewide ballot referendum in CA, asking voters if they would like to temporarily allow the state to set aside the U.S. House map drawn by CA's Independent Redistricting Commission in order to allow the Democratic state legislature to create a new one meant to flip five Republican seats to Democratic next year. That effort is in direct response to the Republican state Legislature in Texas, earlier this year, gerrymandering their already-gerrymandered Congressional map to steal five Democratic U.S. House seats for Republicans next year at the orders of Donald Trump who, justifiably, believes his Party will otherwise lose their slim House majority next year due to their terrible, unpopular policies.

(I also share today my amusing, bemusing and confusing experience in the parking lot of an L.A. County Voting Center on Sunday, where I went to vote and was troubled to notice a County voting system IT support truck with TEXAS license plates on it?! WTF?!)

Following TX's gross mid-decade gerrymander over the summer and CA's response to it, Republicans in Missouri and North Carolina have also drawn new Congressional maps to steal two more seats from Democrats next year. So, Virginia Democrats --- in the midst of their statewide election for the entire House of Delegates --- announced a complicated, surprise plan just over a week ago that, if successful, could flip as many as three U.S. House seats in the Old Dominion from "red" to "blue" next year. It's a complicated scheme in VA, requiring two affirmative votes by two consecutive sessions of the State Legislature and then approval from voters on a statewide ballot referendum next year. All in time to redraw VA's Congressional map before primaries begin next year.

Last week, Virginia Dems in the Legislature successfully completed Phase One of the plan, as the measure was adopted by the Senate on Friday, following approval by the House two days earlier. To proceed to Phase Two, Dems must retain their majority in the 100 seat state House on Tuesday, which they currently control with just 51 votes.

Also last week, Ohio's bipartisan redistricting commission redrew the Buckeye State's U.S. House map to make it harder --- but not impossible --- for two Democratic Congressmembers to hold on to their seats in the 2026 midterms.

We break down all the new details on all of those latest battles in the Gerrymandering Wars today (and some of the battles still to come), before opening the phones to listeners here in our live Southern California listening area for their last chance before Election Day to make the case for or against Prop 50 and more...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

As the November 4th off-year elections are now just days away, New York City voters appear likely to elect a young, charismatic Democratic socialist vowing to raise taxes on the wealthy as their new Mayor. But, as discussed on today's BradCast, that's not the only place where voters may finally have a chance to begin to even the score against the runaway wealth gap between the rich and...everyone else. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST... A few quick news items today, including...

• Hurricane Melissa's record-shattering path of destruction through the Caribbean --- including Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti and The Bahamas --- and now on toward the Canadian Atlantic coast (with effects likely to be felt across much of the U.S. Northeastern Seaboard this weekend.)
• Breaking news on Donald Trump firing all six members of one of the federal commissions that was otherwise set to review the building plans for his threatened, privately-funded 90,000 square foot ballroom at the White House --- for which he has already demolished the East Wing with neither approval nor permission from anyone --- and a giant "Arc d'Trump" that he wants to build somewhere on the National Mall in D.C.

THEN... Just days from Tuesday's off-year Election Day, New York City's Democratic candidate for Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, appears to be well ahead in pre-election polling. If those polls are correct, it seems that NYC voters are offering enthusiastic support for the "Affordability Agenda" on which Mamdani's remarkable campaign has been built, including promises for a rent freeze, universal child care, free buses and for city-owned grocery stores in food deserts across the city's five Boroughs. Some of those programs, according to the candidate, will be paid for by a small surcharge on the income taxes of those earning more than $1 million per year. Though, even if he wins next week, many of those programs --- including the new surcharge on millionaires --- would need approval from the City Council and/or State Legislature before implementation.

Meanwhile, out here in California, some progressives are already looking toward a straight-on wealth tax for the state's 200 billionaires that voters would need to approve in 2026. But there are some unique elements to this ballot proposal that may distinguish it from other such programs forwarded by progressives in the past.

Last week, one of the state's largest unions, SEIU's United Healthcare Workers West, along with U.C. Berkley economist Emmanuel Saez and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, unveiled what our guest today, HAROLD MEYERSON of The American Prospect, described last week as "The First Politically Viable Wealth Tax" in the nation.

The proposal, which its proponents are hoping to place onto next year's statewide ballot, would levy a one-time, 5% tax on the state's billionaires to help fund California's Medicaid program (known as Medi-Cal) following the massive, historic, trillion dollar cuts to the program enacted by Trump and Congressional Republicans in their so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" this past summer.

Meyerson is careful to delineate between Mamdani's income tax proposal of the wealthy (which he also supports), and the one in CA which would tax wealth itself, including assets owned such as stocks, etc. So, why does he see this one as the "first politically viable" such tax? For one reason, one of the well-worn critiques of such programs is that it would lead wealthy residents to flee or deter other wealthy people from moving in. In fact, Mamdani's main opponent in the NYC mayoral race, former state Gov. Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary, has repeatedly made that case against Mamdani's plan.

But, whether Cuomo's attack is true or not (Mamdani calls it exaggerated), the CA proposal introduced last week undercuts the critique entirely.

"First, it only applies to the wealth of people from this year, calendar 2025," explains Meyerson. And the "5% tax on wealth can be paid, spread out, over the next five years. It takes effect [if adopted by voters next year] in 2027. If you move into the state and you're ridiculously wealthy anytime after the end of this year, this doesn't apply to you. It only applies to the wealth of this year. If you move out of the state, you're still liable, under the terms of this tax, for paying it. So it is structured in such a way that it eliminates the argument that it will cause billionaires to move out --- because it only applies to billionaires in the state as of this year --- and that it will keep billionaires from moving in because, assuming they move in after Dec. 31st of this year, it doesn't apply to them."

That element alone of this proposal is likely to take the wind out of the sails of many of those who will certainly oppose the measure next year, if it qualifies for the ballot (supporters have until June to gather enough signatures). Meyerson believes that, especially in this blue-leaning state, the idea will be so popular that even conservative billionaire (and former Republican turned Democrat) Rick Caruso, who is likely to run for Governor, would have little choice but to support it. "It would look awfully self-interested, and against the interests of those Californians --- of whom there are gazillions --- reliant upon Medi-Cal, if he were to oppose it, or not take a stance on it," Meyerson tells me. "The optics would look pretty damn bad."

But there are other critiques that wealthy opponents will try to levee as well. Socialism! If it passes, Dems will just want to make it permanent! etc. etc. Meyerson speaks to all of those and offers his insights into the NYC election next week (and establishment Dems such as Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, who have remarkably failed to back the city's Democratic candidate for Mayor), the Prop 50 redistricting referendum in CA, and the gubernatorial contests in both New Jersey and Virginia...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

The first six months of the year in the U.S. featured the costliest weather and climate-related disasters on record. The "good news", however, as we discuss on today's BradCast, is that we know about it. Had it been up to the Trump Administration, we would not have. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We've also got some other good news today, including some rather stunning, surprising news in the Gerrymander Wars. But we begin today with climate, scientists pushing back against the Trump Administration to save the world, and a fantastic guest to discuss it all.

Since 1980, the Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters Database at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has tracked disasters that caused at least one billion dollars in damage each. Amid our quickly worsening climate crisis, the number of such disasters each year --- and the cost of them --- has been skyrocketing.

According to the latest update to that database unveiled this week, as of June 2025 there were a total of 14 weather events that exceeded $1 billion in damages this year, totaling more than $100 billion, including the Los Angeles wildfires which caused more than $60 billion in damage alone, clocking in as the costliest wildfire in U.S. history.

Between 1980 and 2024, there were an average of nine such disasters each year. But over the past five years, the average is now 24 per year and climbing. If it weren't for the folks at the non-profit Climate Central, we wouldn't have any of these numbers, since the Trump Administration shut down that database as of this year, on behalf of their deadly, dirty fossil fuel-industry friends. Thankfully, Climate Central has picked up the ball, the records going back to 1980 and the scientists who tracked this critical data --- who were pushed out of NOAA earlier this year --- to continue upkeep of the critical dataset that has long been relied upon by states, cities, farmers, insurance companies and many others.

We're joined today to discuss this and much more by meteorologist, climate scientist and award-winning science communicator TOM DI LIBERTO, who is now Media Director at Climate Central. He formerly served in NOAA's Office of Communication and served as Senior Climate Scientist at NOAA's critical Climate.gov site. That site has since been shutdown by the Administration (though it is being resurrected at Climate.us) and Di Liberto was fired by earlier this year, by form letter, after 15 years at the agency, along with more than 1,000 others who have been laid off as Trump continues to gut climate science and research at the nation's (formerly) most prestigious climate organization. NOAA also houses the National Weather Service.

"The amount of information that goes into creating this billion-dollar disaster analysis is a lot," Di Liberto explains. "For a long time, the one place that could manage to do all that was a government agency like NOAA. It was much too difficult for an individual company to be able to do this." He tells me that while some groups, like insurance companies, collect similar data "that data ends up being proprietary, unlike the billion-dollar disaster dataset, which was freely available when it came out of NOAA."

He describes the database --- now reborn at Climate Central, along with a lot of other critical data that might otherwise have been lost or destroyed --- as "a jewel" in both the U.S. and across the globe, because "other countries looked to it as a model for what they wished they could do."

My conversation with Di Liberto today is broad ranging, on that, on what the latest updates to the database warn us regarding the climate crisis; why it was shut down by Trump; why Republicans dismiss the database as "deceptive" ("I think when they said 'deceptive' they meant 'powerful'."); how and why he was fired by the Administration; why they want to make climate data disappear ("If you can't see it, you can't deal with it" even though "billion-dollar disasters will continue to happen whether we call them billion-dollar disasters or not."); what morale is now like at NOAA; and whether the agency can possibly be rebuilt after --- and if --- this man-made Trump nightmare finally ends.

Di Liberto is an excellent communicator on all of this. Please tune in for our very lively and informative conversation! You'll be glad you did.

ALSO TODAY... In, frankly, stunning news, Democratic state lawmakers in Virginia unveiled a seemingly ingenious plan today to rewrite their map for Congressional Districts before next year's midterms that could result in flipping as many as three currently "red" U.S. House seats to "blue" in the critical 2026 midterms. The unexpected scheme comes in direct response to unprecedented Trump/Republican mid-decade gerrymandering schemes in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina (so far). It is not an easy path. It will require two different successful votes both this year and next by both chambers of the state Legislature, and adoption of a state Constitutional amendment in a statewide special election early next year. But it actually appears doable, despite a Republican Governor (at the moment), an election for a new Governor and for every seat in the House of Delegates in just twelve days, and a wickedly clever technical administrative procedure by Dems in both the state House and Senate. Tune in for the full details. But it's great to see Dems even trying to pull off something that usually only Republicans would do!

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report! But even that ends on a high-ish note today! At least for the whales!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

As you might have guessed, it's a grim day on today's BradCast [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage...

• 31-year old, far-right youth activist, influencer and longtime Donald Trump ally Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, said back in 2023: "I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights." Today, Kirk was gunned down while answering a question, ironically enough, about U.S. gun violence during a heavily-attended outdoor speaking event at Utah Valley University. The shooting drew bipartisan condemnation before his death was announced just prior to airtime today. No suspect had yet been taken into custody.

• Receiving much less attention, three teens were in critical condition in surgery or the emergency room after a shooting at their high school in suburban Denver at around the same time Kirk was shot in UT. The same sheriff's office that initially responded to Colorado's 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School, which killed 14 students, was reportedly first on the scene today at Evergreen High School west of Denver.

• Poland reported that as many as 19 Russian drones entered their airspace on Wednesday and were shot down with the help of NATO air command and the Dutch air force which scrambled F-35 fighter jets. A number of the drones were said to have been launched out of Belarus, an authoritarian Russian ally which has has been used to stage attacks on Ukraine since Russia invaded its sovereign neighbor in 2022. Poland, a NATO member, activated Article 4 of the defense pact, to demand consultation with allies. Europe and NATO remain on high alert today, though Russia claims it had attacked the "military-industrial complex of Ukraine" in a "large-scale strike" but that "there were no targets envisioned for destruction on the Polish territory."

• In somewhat brighter news today, Democratic candidate James Walkinshaw trounced his Republican rival in a U.S. House Special Election in the 11th Congressional District of Virginia on Tuesday by 50 points, 75% to 25%. That's a 16-point swing toward the Dems as compared to last November's Presidential election in the northern Virginia suburbs of D.C. Walkinshaw's seating in Congress and promised signing of the Discharge Petition to force a U.S. House vote on the release of the Epstein Files puts proponents of that measure just one vote away from the necessary 218 signatures needed to trigger a mandatory vote on the House floor. Another U.S. House Special Election to fill another vacant seat in another very Democratic Congressional District in Arizona takes place later this month. The Democratic candidate there, Adelita Grijalva, has also vowed to sign the petition, which has currently has the signatures of all 212 currently seated Democrats and four Republican members.

Finally, we're joined today by author and financial journalist DAVID DAYEN, Executive Editor of The America Prospect, to discuss the coming showdown in Congress to avoid a government shutdown as of October 1. That's when the Continuing Resolution passed in March to keep the government open at the time expires. If Republicans can't come to terms with Democrats on another CR by the end of this month, the government will likely shutdown.

That is a price that more Democrats now seem willing to pay to try and stop --- or, at least slowdown --- Donald Trump's authoritarianism. And it's a moment when Democrats, currently in the minority in both chambers of Congress, actually have some leverage to use.

While all Democrats in the House voted against the Republican CR back in March, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a handful of Dems agreed to help Republicans overcome the 60 vote filibuster threshold in in the Senate in exchange for...well, pretty much nothing.

This time, Schumer claims he will not do the same thing. But, is he asking for enough from Republicans in exchange for Democrats' support in keeping the government open this time? Is he willing to let it shut down in order to stop Trump?

There are a lot of things that Democrats could demand, above and beyond a short term fix to prevent health care costs from skyrocketing for the millions of Americans signed up to the Affordable Care Act. That's something, as we discuss, that Republicans should be desperate to do on their own. Democrats could demand that subsidy support for the ACA be made permanent. Schumer could demand that Congress assert its right to block Trump from refusing to spend funds already appropriated by Congress. He could demand the end to Trump's economy crushing tariffs, mass ICE raids, National Guard in U.S. streets and much more. In other words, this is a moment when Dems could demand an end to the Trump Authoritarianism.

But will they? And, if so, and Republicans don't agree to the terms, what then?

"The whole idea that we're going to get a goodie in exchange for participation in the budget is a very old way of doing business in Washington," argues Dayen today. "Business as usual is out the window in Washington. You have someone who is trying to consolidate power entirely into himself. And you have these rare moments where he can be thwarted at some level. And you can't approach that the way you would approach a normal negotiation. I just don't understand how that can be acceptable. You have to deal with the problem at hand, where Donald Trump is acting like a despot, a dictator, and the things that you could negotiate on would have to be things that would prevent dictatorial processes from going forward."

"Shutdown fights like this are teachable moments," he says. "They are ways to get the attention of the public. They are ways to get the public understanding that there is a debate happening in Washington, and this is what that debate is about. If you're the Democratic Party staring down 33% approval ratings, watching what Trump is doing, and seeing your party get less popular in the exchange because you're not doing enough about it, you should want this moment. You should want a way to reset public attention on what is happening. Maybe we'll see some things start to change here in coming days as Democrats start to internalize this, but it's been a bit enervating so far."

As you can tell, we have much to discuss with Dayen on today's show, in a conversation recorded just prior to the news about Kirk's death in Utah today...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

It's a bit of a roller-coaster ride on today's BradCast. We begin with some good election and Trump Administration accountability news. But while Trump's latest clownishly absurd attempted corruption may not ultimately work out for him, it serves as a reminder of the rough road ahead for justice and the Justice Department itself in these United States. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Some good news...

• On Tuesday, Omaha, Nebraska's Republican Mayor Jean Stothert was defeated in her run for a fourth term by Democratic challenger John Ewing Jr. He will become the first Black mayor of the otherwise "red" state's largest city. Stothert's attempt to leverage anti-trans hate against her opponent appears to have failed to win over voters.

• That news comes on the heels of last week's School Board elections in Texas (which we are finally catching up with today!), where book-banning, trans-hating right-wingers were voted off of School Board majorities in at least four of the largest districts in the state.

• In one of two good news updates to stories we recently covered on the show, a federal judge on Tuesday ordered some 200 federal workers fired by the Trump Administration from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) back to work. The workers ran the Coal Worker's Heath Surveillance Program which offers health screenings to miners who may have developed incurable Black Lung disease, and helps them find safer jobs and covers health costs if they have. The judge in the case, filed by two West Virginia miners afflicted with the disease, found the Trump Administration (remember when he used to pretend to love coal miners?) had no authority to unilaterally shut down the screening program mandated by the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. NIOSH workers were reportedly back on the job today after the U.S. District Judge issued her order yesterday.

• And, in another happy follow-up story, facing a lawsuit from farmers and First Amendment advocates, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) agreed to restore years of critical climate change date --- relied on by farmers and many others --- to its website, after disappearing it shortly after Trump took office.

THEN... I don't know if we should consider it "good news" or not, but it certainly looks like Trump's plan to accept a tricked-out $400 million "flying palace" jumbo jet as a "gift" from the Royal Family of Qatar, for use as Air Force One while in office and for his own personal use thereafter, ain't gonna work out for him.

Despite his loyalist Attorney General Pam Bondi --- formerly, a $115,000/month lobbyist for Qatar --- pronouncing that the "gift" would be neither a bribe nor a violation of the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause, banning gifts "of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State" to public officials, it appears she's only half right about that.

We're joined today by our old friend RANDALL D. ELIASON, former chief of the Fraud and Public Corruption section at the DoJ's U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. He is now a professor of white-collar criminal law at George Washington University and writes at his own SidebarsBlog, where he wrote about much of this today.

He explains that, thanks to recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, public officials may, in fact, now accept "gifts" of any size or amount from anybody, without violating current bribery statutes, so long as the official does not offer anything in return. Yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds. Eliason describes it as "absurd...but that's the Supreme Court's concept of corruption" now.

"The Supreme Court, over the last couple of decades, has narrowed public corruption laws so much that there's a strict requirement now of a link to a particular official act that you can identify and say this gift was because Trump agreed to do this in exchange," he tells me. "They could give him $400 million cash in his own bank account, and that's not a bribe anymore, unless they can link it to something he agreed to do in exchange."

"The fact is, the way the Supreme Court has interpreted bribery, it should be a bribe, but it's not, unless there was some agreement we don't know about by Trump to do something in particular in exchange. If it's just to cozy up to him, curry favor with him in general, because they are hoping for future things to happen, that's not a bribe."

"There's no question this is corrupt," he makes clear, "as most of us understand the term," but not a bribe. "Congress could have stepped in to amend those laws, but they haven't done that, for some surprising reason."

Trump's violation of the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause, on the other hand, with acceptance of a "flying palace", would be a different matter, Eliason agrees. Though the question becomes: who exactly has the legal standing to challenge that violation in a court of law?

"I think the bigger picture is that we can't rely on lawsuits to solve this problem," he argues. "It's going to take too long and get bogged down again. If there's going to be a response, it needs to be a political one. It needs to be enough people standing up and objecting and putting pressure on him that he cancels the deal. And ultimately the voters have to respond."

Much more on all of that today along with Eliason's reflections on what has happened to his beloved DoJ and the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. where used to work, soon to be led, most likely, by Fox News' whacked out "Judge" Jeanine Pirro --- and whether all of it can be put back together again when this madness ends...presuming it does.

"What's happening at Justice is terrible, and it's heartbreaking," he laments. "It violates everything that DOJ has stood for, for decades. They are pushing people out for doing nothing more than doing their jobs. Or those people are leaving, because they can't honorably stay there and do what they are being asked to do."

What would he have done had he still been at the DOJ under Trump? And will the institution be salvageable after this? Tune for his thoughts and insight on all that and much more...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

On today's BradCast we're hoping to help you get acclimated to the tsunami of "fraud" claims --- both real and fake, and what they mean and don't --- that are most likely about to come our way over the next few days and weeks...at least if Donald Trump loses to Kamala Harris in 2024 as he did to Joe Biden in 2020. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Pardon us, however, for beginning with a brief victory lap following our L.A. Dodgers' big World Series win last night, and a related sidebar as to what history tells us (or doesn't) about who is going to win the Presidential election based on who won the World Series.

Then, as to the coming "fraud" storm...among the many stories cited along the way today...

• A Minnesota woman this week was charged with three felony counts of voter fraud after forging her dead mother's signature on an absentee ballot to vote for Donald Trump.

• Six people were charged over the summer for submitting nearly two dozen fraudulent absentee ballots on behalf of a Republican City Council candidate in New York. How they got away with it and how they got caught. The candidate's 19-year old daughter was among those charged.

• In the battleground state of Michigan, election officials in August indicted four voters who allegedly voted twice --- first by absentee and then again at the polls --- in the state's Presidential primary earlier this year. Once again, as in all of these cases, they were caught and charged thanks to safe-guards built into the system. Of the more than 11.7 million votes cast in the state over the past several elections, according to Michigan's State Auditor General, 99.99% of ballots cast were NOT from double voters.

• In Mesa County, Colorado this week, officials announced they blocked an effort in the very Republican-leaning county to cast about a dozen absentee ballots, apparently stolen out of mailboxes in the Vote-by-Mail state. The state's signature-matching procedures uncovered the fraud scheme, though three fraudulent ballots slipped through the system before the crime was discovered. Mesa is the same county where former County Clerk, Tina Peters, was earlier this month sentenced to 9 years in prison on felony charges related to helping her MAGA friends break into the County's voting systems in the middle of the night after the 2020 election to copy proprietary software and distribute it across the Internet to other Trump supporters.

• Last month we reported on the story out of Arizona where both the RNC and the state Republican Party went to court to argue against the removal of some 98,000 voters from the state voting rolls who, due to a years-old glitch in Maricopa County's voter database, had no record of presenting Proof of Citizenship with their registrations, as required by state law. In that case, Republicans opposed the systematic voter purge that the state's Democratic Sec. of State didn't want to do, but felt he had to under state law. The Republicans correctly argued to the AZ Supreme Court that such purges, within 90-days of an election, were in violation of federal law. They made that argument after the SoS revealed that the majority of the potentially "non-citizen" voters to be removed were registered Republicans.

  Yet, this week, on Wednesday in Virginia, after a U.S. District Court Judge and federal Appeals Court last week blocked an attempt by the state's Republican Governor to purge some 1,600 registered voters under the premise that some might be non-citizens, the corrupted Republican U.S. Supreme Court majority allowed the unlawful systematic purge, ordered by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, to move forward. All three Democratic-appointed SCOTUS Justices dissented. One of the purged Virginians, a U.S. citizen who has lived there her entire life, called it "a very bad October surprise."

All of these stories today help us understand the difference between real and fake fraud claims; the difference between voter fraud and election fraud; how easily most such penny-ante fraud is caught and often prevented before it happens; and how Republicans this year, from Donald Trump on down through his minions and back up through his corrupted SCOTUS, are hoping to use phony or exaggerated fraud claims to help sow the seeds to steal the election, if necessary, as of Tuesday night.

Get ready! Because that is coming --- if Harris is declared the winner.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with horrific "welcome to the future" news out of Spain this week, where extreme drought was followed up with a year's worth of rain and deadly flash flooding this week that swept through one town in a matter of hours, killing more than 150 so far; and some words of warning about Tuesday's election from Sen. Bernie Sanders regarding our climate changed future in the event that Trump is allowed back into the White House in January...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

We've got a flood of news on today's BradCast. Unfortunately, some of that reference is also literal. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our many stories today...

• Last week's primary elections in Tennessee (which they hold on Thursdays in the state, because they hope voters don't turn out for them!) saw state Rep. Gloria Johnson win the Democratic nomination for U.S Senate to run against the far-right Sen. Marsha Blackburn. Johnson was one of the "Tennessee Three" who state GOP lawmakers tried to expel after Johnson and two others state Reps participated in a gun safety protest on the House floor following a deadly mass shooting at an elementary school shooting in Nashville. Johnson, who is white, was spared expulsion by one vote. Her two colleagues, Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, both black, were expelled (though were subsequently returned to the House by their local constituents).

• Hurricane Debby made landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida Monday morning, just 20 miles or so from where Hurricane Idalia came ashore less than a year ago. Desi Doyen joins us with details on the storm surge and catastrophic flooding that is expected in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina as the storm moves to the north painfully slowly. She also explains why these disasters are made worse and more frequent thanks to man-made climate change.

• Also today, Wall Street weathered its own storm, as investors have begun to panic that the U.S. could be headed into a recession and/or that the Federal Reserve waited too long to lower interest rates. In Japan on Monday, investors really panicked, as the Nikkei 225 plunged more than 12%. The major U.S. indexes, however, "only" fell by about 2 or 3% today. Still, it was a bloodbath. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

• After a months-long pause, Donald Trump's federal indictment for his several failed attempts to steal the 2020 election returned to the D.C. court of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. The pause was thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's absurd ruling that Presidents enjoy immunity from most crimes they carry out while in office. That ruling, of course, though contrary to any non-corrupt reading of the Constitution, could still further derail the case. For now at least, after receiving the case back on Friday, Chutkan issued several rulings almost immediately over the weekend, finding mostly against the Defense in several outstanding motions. The case is, nonetheless, not expected to come to trial before this November's Presidential election, since her eventual rulings in regard to "presidential immunity" will almost certainly need to make their way back up to the corrupted SCOTUS.

• In breaking news shortly before airtime today, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced that she was dropping charges against Jenna Ellis after the former Donald Trump attorney agreed to cooperate with prosecutors against her 18 co-defendants. They were all charged earlier this year with fraud, forgery and conspiracy related to the Republicans 2020 fake electors plot in the state. Among those charged along with Ellis and still facing indictments are former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, as well as his former Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows. This could be very bad news for all of them.

• Also today, the corrupted SCOTUS did the right thing for a rare change in declining to halt Donald Trump's sentencing on 34 felony crimes in New York related to his successful scheme to cheat in the 2016 election by paying hush-money to a porn star with whom he was said to have had a sexual tryst. Trump's criminal sentencing will now move forward --- unless something else derails it again (which is always a good possibility) --- next month on September 18th.

• Over the weekend, Donald Trump backed out of the Presidential debate he previously agreed to participate in next month, as moderated by ABC News. He is proposing that he and all-but-certain Democratic nominee Kamala Harris debate before a live crowd on Fox "News" instead. The New York Times' coverage of that news over the weekend was wildly misleading and subsequently changed to eventually become accurate.

• In Virginia last week, a machine recount determined that far-right Republican state Sen. John McGuire did indeed defeat the far-right Republican Chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Bob Good, by just over 300 votes out of some 63,000 cast during the GOP's June state primary. Good, a 2020 election denier, ultimately abandoned his evidence-free claims of massive fraud via drop-box and conceded the race to McGuire.

• Down in Venezuela, Socialist Party strongman Nicolas Maduro still refuses to release election results from tens of thousands of polling places after the nation's Presidential election just over a week ago. The National Electoral Council --- heavily stacked with Maduro loyalists --- announced on Election Night that Maduro defeated opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez by about 7 percentage points. Both the U.S. (a longtime Maduro adversary) and Maduro allies such as the leaders of Brazil and Columbia, have called for Maduro to release all precinct-based results from the election. Without the ability for the public to oversee the full results, however, analysts are citing the limited number of Election Night precinct results tapes obtained by opposition-aligned groups from about 1,000 polling sites. Separate analyses of those poll tapes --- by New York Times, Associated Press and Washington Post --- suggest that Maduro not only didn't win by 7 points, he appears to have lost to Gonzalez in a 20-point landslide. We specifically detail the convincing NYTimes analysis and explain how Maduro could refute their findings by simply releasing the data that the voting public deserves to see. Democracy relies on the ability of the public to oversee its own elections. A fact that is equally true here in the U.S.

• While we ran long with all of today's breaking news, we still had time for a caller or two, one of whom who clearly hates democracy --- and is, apparently, no fan of me either!

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Quite literally, as I signed off at the end of yesterday's show, a ton of alerts popped up on my iPhone with some pretty big and surprising news. News that turns out to be far more complex and/or nuanced than many seem to appreciate. So, that's where we pick things up on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... As voters headed to the polls today in New York, Colorado, Utah and South Carolina for the last group of Congressional Primary Elections before next month's Republican National Convention, we're still keeping our eyes on a primary election from last week in Virginia.

Far-right Republican Rep. Bob Good, Chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, is currently just about 375 votes, out of more than 62,500 tallied, behind the even farther-right Republican state Sen. John McGuire in the GOP primary contest in VA's 16th Congressional District. With a margin that slim --- less than 1% --- whoever is certified next week as the winner of the currently "too close to call" race has every right to seek a recount. But Good --- who was opposed in the race by both Donald Trump and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy for various offenses against them --- is already on the offensive, charging that "this race cannot and must not be certified." He is claiming (without evidence, to date) "inappropriate activity" related to drop box voting in Lynchburg City, the largest in the district, that should prevent all votes in the city from being certified. That, even before a recount, apparently.

Good's own colleagues (all largely 2020 election deniers themselves!) appear to be laughing at him. Or worse. "No one is buying it," one House Republican told Axios. "What a loser," said another. "F**k Bob Good," said still another. But a Republican-turned-independent who lost to Good in 2020 may have best summed things up: "I don't find it surprising that an election between an election denier and an election denier would end with one of them denying the election was fair based on conspiracy theories."

In any event, we'll be watching and doing our best to ensure a fair, transparent recount, hopefully by hand and overseen by the public. We'll also be popping a fair amount of popcorn as it all plays out.

THEN... News broke last night that WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange had, at long last, struck a plea deal with the U.S. Dept. of Justice after years in a British maximum security prison fighting extradition to the U.S. and, before that, seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Assange was facing charges filed in 2019 by Donald Trump's DoJ related to the release, beginning in 2010, of a trove of stolen classified documents, many of which related to alleged war crimes carried out by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan. But many of the documents were related to other things that were less than criminal or even newsworthy. And some, in fact, put a number of people in grave danger.

Moreover, as our guest --- a journalist who wrote a number of articles based on WikiLeaks documents herself --- details today, many of the documents were obtained via unlawful hacking that Assange himself appears to have participated in. Other documents published by WikiLeaks, such as a trove of emails from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's Campaign Chair, are believed to have been hacked by Russia and given to WikiLeaks for publication before the 2016 Presidential election with dubious or no news value whatsoever.

Still, Assange and his supporters have maintained that WikiLeaks is a journalism outfit and, as a journalist, he can't be held to account under U.S. law for simply publishing documents in the public's interest, even classified or stolen ones --- at least if he was not involved in the theft.

But there is far more to the story, as detailed on today's program by longtime, independent national security journalist MARCY WHEELER of EmptyWheel.net. As of airtime, the plea agreement detailing the single charge he agreed to plead guilty to --- reportedly related to the Espionage Act --- had not been released. But Wheeler attempts to clear up some of what she characterizes as propaganda that has long been circulated by Assange's supporters.

"His hacking into other countries started before he reached out to Chelsea Manning," the military intelligence analyst who turned over reams of documents to WikiLeaks, Wheeler tells me. Among the documents from Manning was the famous "Collateral Murder" video, revealing U.S. helicopter pilots gunning down 11 people in Iraq, including 2 Reuters journalists. Wheeler charges that Assange "tried to help Chelsea Manning break a password. Then the hacking conspiracy continued through 2016. In other words, the attempt to get other people to hack things. It was a larger hacking conspiracy that other people pled guilty to and went to jail for." All decidedly not the behavior of an actual journalist, she says.

She details the "very, very deliberate effort on the part of Wikileaks to hide the fact that the hacking conspiracy started before, and continued long after, the Chelsea Manning stuff," and notes, by way of another example, that, "in 2015, WikiLeaks helped Edward Snowden [a national security whistleblower] flee to Russia."

"That's not something journalists do," Wheeler asserts. "You might think it's honorable or heroic, but that's not something journalists ever do."

Of course, if the charge against Assange relates only to journalistic activity, but not hacking, then, Wheeler believes, it would be a serious threat to press freedoms, "this precedent of somebody being prosecuted for publishing something, especially if they've taken the hacking part away entirely."

Wheeler was "reasonably comfortable" if hacking was tied to the charges against Assange, "but once you take the hacking away, yeah, it is a terrible precedent we should all be worried about."

"Regardless of how much you hate Julian Assange, or regardless of whether you think what he did was newsworthy, just the precedent is a worrying precedent," she warns. "That may be what we're left with going forward."

UPDATE 6/26/2024: With the plea agreement [PDF] now released, Wheeler has a detailed article on the "Damaging Precedent of the Julian Assange Espionage Guilty Plea" that, as she explains, fails to focus "on the alleged hacking, which always distinguished Assange from journalists". She notes, "This plea could have been written in a way that limited the damage of the precedent. For reasons we have yet to discover (but which may have been dictated by Assange’s side, not DOJ’s), it was not.":

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with Climate Change Gone Wild as summer begins, with disastrous record flooding in the Upper Midwest compounding record heat and wildfires already over much of the country. And, with hurricane season heating up, FEMA warns of a shortfall in disaster funding if Congress doesn't act quickly...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Today on The BradCast we try and nip another completely false, outrageous rightwing Zombie Lie in the bud before it eats too many brains and becomes canon in the Wingnut Multiverse. Wish us luck. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

But first, a few news items today...

• Extreme, climate change-fueled weather is now pretty much just exploding everywhere. Today, the two latest chapters: a pair of deadly wildfires in New Mexico and "A" is for "Alberto", the first named storm of what is expected to be an exceptionally busy and intense hurricane season given the unprecedented record warmth of ocean waters. This particular storm, in the Gulf, appears to be heading toward Mexico, though its already grazing parts of Texas with a ton of water.

• Tuesday's Congressional Primary elections in Virginia, Oklahoma and Georgia appear to have gone off smoothly enough for now, with the biggest story coming out of Virginia in the Republican primary for the 5th U.S. House District. Far-right Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Bob Good was thought to be all but done for, as he was targeted by both Donald Trump (because Good dared to support DeSantis in the Presidential Primary) and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (because Good was one of eight Republicans who voted him out of the job earlier this year.) An even farther Right, well-funded state Senator by the name of John McGuire was set to easily unseat Good, and still might. But, as of airtime, there are just 321 votes between them out of more than 62,000 tallied to date. Counting of late mail-in will resume tomorrow between the two election deniers following a break for today's Juneteenth federal holiday.

• And, down in Louisiana today, far-right lawmakers and the state's new far-right Governor Jeff Landry have decided they don't care much for the U.S. Constitution's establishment clause, and have decided to mandate that the Ten Commandments must be posted in every public elementary, middle school, high school and college classroom in the state. That'll show those U.S. Constitution loving heathens! The effort is obviously an attempt to bring the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court in hopes that its corrupted rightwing majority will overturn decades of precedent respecting the separation of church and state. And I bet they will.

THEN... Last September, California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new state law to increase the minimum wage for fast food workers at national companies with more than 60 stores from $16/hour to $20/hour. Before it even took effect on April 1 this year, Rupert Murdoch's rightwing media outlets (Wall Street Journal, NY Post, Fox "News") were working overtime in cahoots with an outfit calling itself the California Business and Industrial Alliance (CABIA) to claim that thousands of fast food jobs had already been cut after Newsom signed the bill into law.

A UCLA Economics Professor by the name of Lee Ohanian either went along with it or fell for it, detailing the supposed massive job loss in an article at the right-leaning policy think-tank called the Hoover Institution, part of Stanford University, citing WSJ's misleading employment statistics. It all offered a nice academic patina to the (false) claim that nearly 10,000 fast food workers had been laid off between last September and January, thanks to Newsom and California's Marxist policies.

CABIA then happily cited the "Hoover Institution" in a full-page advertisement in USA Today earlier this month, a mock obituary declaring "In Memoriam: Victims of Newsom's Minimum Wage". The ad cites Hoover for its claim that "nearly 10,000 fast-food jobs" were lost "after $20 minimum wage signed last fall." The ad details all the hard times for poor McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subway, Rubio's California Grill, and about half a dozen others. All victims of California's impossible idea that people who work should receive a living wage in exchange.

Turns out, as our guest today, Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist and author MICHAEL HILTZIK reports at the L.A. Times, the claim, the statistics used and the entire argument put forth by WSJ, NY Post, Fox "News", CABIA and Hoover is all "baloney, sliced thick." And Hiltzik has the receipts from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Federal Reserve to prove it.

In fact, Hiltzik details, as it turns out, fast food employment actually went up from last September to this past January --- when using seasonally adjusted figures --- and even continued to go up after the law took effect on April 1, with employment in the sector outpacing April of 2023 (apples to apples!) by nearly 7,000 jobs.

"What we're dealing with here is the misuse of employment figures by essentially using non-seasonally adjusted figures, rather than what CABIA and the Wall Street Journal should be using, which is seasonally-adjusted," Hiltzik tells me, describing the scam. "When you have an industry in which employment fluctuates during the year for seasonal reasons, you have to use seasonally-adjusted figures. That's the case with fast food restaurants. Everyone in the restaurant industry knows this. Employment in restaurants peaks in September, year after year after year. You have to compare each month to the same month in other years, and that's why the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that, in fact, employment in the sector in California went up compared to the same earlier period."

"Any economist knows that you absolutely must use seasonally-adjusted figures. The Wall Street Journal didn't seem to know this, even though they're supposed to be experts in finance and the economy," he scoffs.

Hiltzik describes the Murdoch/CABIA/Hoover sleight-of-hand as "fabricated" and "false", and we discuss why it's happening --- an has been nationalized --- in the first place. He also debunks the lie that Rubio's Grill has had to close 48 stores across the state thanks to CA's new leftist law. (Spoiler: It was private equity, not the $20 min. wage, that dunnit.)

For the record, though Ohanian, the UCLA professor who laundered the Journal's purposely misleading numbers at the Hoover Institution, admitted to Hiltzik that he got it wrong, his April 24, 2024 article is still posted there without correction or retraction...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

We've got quite a few good news items amidst all the madness on today's BradCast. You may enjoy a few hits of dopamine along the way. Your welcome. Please listen responsibly. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• Just to help kick things off...American University distinguished professor Allan Licthman has a "13 keys to the White House" method for predicting who will win any Presidential election. His method has accurately called the winners in 9 of the past 10 elections. (In fact, he was arguably right in 10 out of 10!) We discuss his method and, though he's not yet made his "official" prediction this year, who he believes currently has the upper hand in 2024.

• Donald Trump was found in criminal contempt of court in his New York trial related to his 2016 election interference via hush-money felony charges. Justice Juan Merchan found [PDF] Trump violated his gag order barring attacks on jurors and witnesses via social media and elsewhere in nine different instances. The judge made clear that incarceration is pretty much the only option left by state law if Trump commits new violations. Veteran federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner suggests today's ruling may make things "significantly worse" for the disgraced former President, as the bail conditions in all four of his criminal indictments in four different jurisdictions bar him from committing new crimes. We also get you quickly up to speed on some of the Prosecution's new witnesses on the stand in the actual trial on Tuesday.

• United Auto Workers' chief Shawn Fain is on a roll. Just over a week ago workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga voted by a 3 to 1 margin to unionize on the heels of the UAW's huge victories last year in their strike against Detroit's Big Three automakers. The victory by workers at the Tennessee plant was the first of its kind in the South. And then, late last week, the union struck a last minute deal for a new contract with Daimler Truck in North Carolina, bringing big pay raises and major benefit increases to workers at four of the company's plants in the state.

• As we reported previously, 18 Trump allies in Arizona last week were criminally indicted on nine charges each of conspiracy, fraud and forgery related to their failed attempt to steal the 2020 election for Trump in the state via a Fake Electors plot. Over the weekend, state Sen. Jake Hoffman, one of two sitting state Senators indicted as a Fake Elector, was chosen, just days later, by the Republican National Committee to be an official National Committeeman in the 2024 election. Apparently criminal indictments for election fraud are now being rewarded by today's GOP.

• The full 4th U.S. Court of Appeals on Monday ruled that West Virginia and North Carolina's decision to refuse health care for transgender people under government-sponsored insurance is discriminatory and a violation of federal law. NC blocked gender-affirming care for state employees and WV Medicaid blocked coverage for gender-affirming surgery. The plaintiffs won in an 8 to 6 ruling at the appeals court, though the thoroughly corrupted and illegitimate U.S. Supreme Court Republican majority will almost certainly have the final say in the matter.

• The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will finally remove marijuana as a Schedule III narcotic, according to a report by AP today. It will no longer be treated similar to heroin and cocaine, as the Biden Administration plans to finally reclassify the popular plant as Schedule I after 50 years, now that some 38 states have already legalized cannabis for medicinal and/or recreational use. President Biden previously pardoned thousands of Americans charged with simple possession under federal law and urged states to do the same. Democrats in Congress, in the meantime, are pushing the DEA and Attorney General to drop it from the list of controlled-substances entirely to treat it more like alcohol.

• The news above is one of a spate of newly or soon-to-be finalized regulations from a bunch of Biden Administration Executive Agencies. You may (or may not) have heard news of late about a cascade of new rules issued by the Administration on everything from Student Loan forgiveness to dozens of new environmental and climate-related regulations. There is a reason they are all happening right about now, and it has to do with the Congressional Review Act, which we explain in detail on today's program.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our 1,400th Green News Report! And yes, along with troubling news for Africa and the U.S. Gulf Coast, she's got some historic news of landmark new regulations from the EPA to curb pollution from U.S. power plants. And, yes, that too should be in time to beat GOP abuse of the Congressional Review Act as cited above...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

As noted on today's BradCast, CBS News' legendary radio and TV broadcaster Charles Osgood has passed away at age 91. Other than that, we've got some arguably much brighter news throughout the bulk of today's program. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the many stories covered today...

• Last night, just after midnight, Nikki Haley won every single vote cast in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, the first town in the state to vote in the state's first-in-the-nation Primary on Tuesday. They had a 100% turnout. Haley won all 6 votes. Donald Trump won 0. We discuss why that matters (and doesn't). Voters across the entire state are voting today on hand-marked paper ballots. In Dixville Notch --- and about 40% of towns in the state --- ballots are publicly hand-counted by human beings after polls close. The rest of the towns, the larger ones in general, are tallied by 15 or 20-year old computerized optical scanners. Though, due to a write-in campaign for Joe Biden in the state, where there is no officially sanctioned Democratic primary, most of those towns will be hand-counting a lot of ballots as well. We'll have full reported results out of NH --- and why they matter (or don't) --- on tomorrow's show, of course.

• For years, Republicans have been citing evidence of miscounted votes in Prince William County, Virginia as evidence of massive fraud in the 2020 Presidential race. The state's Republican A.G., after taking office in 2022, even filed criminal charges against the County's Registrar. Recently, however, the charges were unceremoniously dropped. And now we learn that, due to largely understandable tabulation errors, Joe Biden should have received 1,648 more votes than he was credited for, and that Donald Trump was given 2,327 votes that he shouldn't have, in a county that Biden won by more than 60,000 votes --- in a state where the Democrat won the Presidential race by some 450,000 votes. Races for U.S. Senate and U.S. House were also affected by the counting errors, though none of errors would reportedly have changed the results of any contest. We explain the whole mess.

• We've got quite a bit of good news for you today when it comes to redistricting and rolling back GOP racial and partisan gerrymanders! In North Dakota, a federal judge has ordered new state legislative map after Republicans, following the 2020 Census, cracked two Native American reservations into different districts in order to flip both state House and Senate seats from D to R. It worked in 2022. But now, the judge has ordered not only new maps, but also new elections this fall in the districts found to have been in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

• Louisiana's new Republican Governor approved a new U.S. House map for the state this week, after the GOP state legislature finally adopted it last week, following a federal court order to draw an additional majority-Black voting district in the state. The Republican-controlled legislature previously had just 1 such district out of its 6 Congressional seats, despite African-Americans accounting for nearly a third of the statewide population. GOP lawmakers only agreed to do so after many appeals, and after realizing that if they didn't draw up their own maps, the court would do it for them. The new map will likely result in an additional Democratic member of Congress from the Bayou State next year.

• And, in Wisconsin last week, voters filed a motion with the state's newly liberal-leaning Supreme Court seeking a new U.S. House map in time for the 2024 elections. Last month, the state's high court agreed with petitioners that the state GOP's state legislative maps for the Assembly and Senate, in place for more than a decade, were unlawful gerrymanders in violation of state Constitutional requirements. The new motion filed last week asks the same Supreme Court to order a new U.S. House map as well, on the same basis that the Justices determined the state legislative districts were unconstitutional. Petitioners argue that the unconstitutional and politically gerrymandered map resulted in Republicans winning 75% of the state’s Congressional seats despite winning just 50% of the statewide vote in the 2022 election. That year, the closely divided, if Dem-leaning Presidential battleground state also re-elected its Democratic Governor in the same statewide election.

• Finally today, San Diego was deluged on Monday with a year's worth of rain in a matter of three hours, overwhelming infrastructure in the usually mild Southern California city. But, as discussed in our latest Green News Report today with Desi Doyen, it was just one of dozens of cities across the U.S. in recent weeks where infrastructure has been hammered by climate change-fueled extreme Winter weather. Nearly 100 have been killed in the recent storms in a number of states as of airtime. That, as Big Oil gears up a multi-million ad blitz to hoax Americans into supporting fossil fuel friendly candidates in 2024, as the unstoppable transition to clean, renewable energy is finally underway...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)