On today's BradCast: A multitude of terrifying threats from Hurricane Florence loom large across at least four states in the Southeast, as millions of Americans hunker down or evacuate on the final week of primary elections in the U.S. before the crucial 2018 midterm elections. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up, after a quick warning to ignore the President of the United State's assertion that the federal government is "totally prepared" for the damage that awaits the still-growing Hurricane Florence (while citing his Administration's response to last year's Hurricane Maria that killed nearly 3,000 citizens in Puerto Rico as "an incredible unsung success"), we head to New Hampshire for the penultimate federal primaries of the season. (Rhode Island voted today and New York holds state and local primaries on Thursday.)

On Tuesday, voters in the Granite State went to the polls with, happily, few problems reported so far, beyond the larger than anticipated turnout, particularly in a number of the state's many college towns. That may signal good news for Democrats, at least until the state GOP's new law making it much harder for college students to register to vote kicks in in 2019 (unless its blocked by courts before then). We fill you in on the noteworthy reported results today, including the single mom, Molly Kelly, who won the Democratic primary for Governor, the openly gay man, Chris Pappas, who defeated 10 other Democrats (including Bernie Sanders' son) to win the U.S. House nomination in one of the swingiest swing districts in the country, and 27-year old refugee from Afghanistan, Safiya Wazir, who unseated a four-term incumbent Democrat and appears poised to become a NH state Representative just 9 years after leaving her war-torn country for a better life in these United States.

Then, all eyes (pun intended) on the disturbing amount of cyclonic activity churning across the globe --- not just off the Eastern U.S. seaboard --- at the peak of hurricane season. The "monster" storm, Hurricane Florence grew in size today, as its movement continues to slow, and as it's trajectory appears to have taken a slight turn toward the southwest. The storm's brutal winds, surging waters and threat of days of unforgiving rainfall, now pose a grave threat to some 10 million residents of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and, as of Wednesday's latest predictions, Georgia.

But, while Florence may be the fiercest and most immediate threat to Americans, it's hardly the only storm worth keep an eye on, as nine --- count 'em --- nine storms across the globe are now either hurricanes, typhoons, tropical storms or depressions, or otherwise threatening to become one of the above at any moment. Among the most immediate non-Florence threats are Tropical Storm Olivia, slamming into Hawaii today (just two weeks or so following Hurricane Lane's record 50 inches of rainfall dumped on some parts of the island), Category 5 Typhoon Mangkhut, which just slammed Guam and now heads toward The Philippines and Hong Kong, and another storm currently brewing in the record warm Gulf of Mexico waters that could visit Texas and/or Louisiana by this weekend, even as Florence wreaks its own separate havoc on the East Coast. (Is Trump's FEMA "totally prepared" for all of that also?)

According to our guest today, 30-year veteran Weather Channel meteorologist, "Climate Guy" GUY WALTON this amount of cyclonic activity is not normal, and much of it is attributable to warming waters and highly unusual weather patterns in a climate-changed world.

"As you get more heat, you'll get more storms, and that's exactly what we're seeing," says Walton who points to sub-tropical storm Joyce, which was just named today, taking its place along with Hurricanes Helene and Isaac behind Florence in the Atlantic. "That will make four in the Atlantic basin alone. And if you look at the Gulf of Mexico, there could be a potential fifth, I guess named Kirk. If we have five simultaneous named systems in the Atlantic basin, that would be a record."

As to Florence, he warns: "Meteorologically, the greatest concern is the slowing of the storm and stalling right off the Carolina coast, right around Wilmington, and then very, very slowly moving south or southwest back towards Charleston. If that's the case, you could have winds and waves for many, many hours, if not for two or three days, just lashing at the shore. And that could produce more damage than, say, a Category 4 Hugo," in 1989, which killed 27 in South Carolina, left nearly 100,000 homeless and wreaked nearly $10 billion in damage.

"These things usually move northeast, they don't move southwest or west. If it does, that would be highly unusual. And devastating," he tells me.

Walton explains how climate change-fueled weather patterns are resulting in slower moving storms causing much more rainfall and flooding in recent years and why he believes some broadcast meteorologists --- versus climatologists --- are still either climate deniers or simply fail to connect the dots of increasingly extreme weather to global warming. He also discusses his upcoming children's book on climate, with Nick Walker, The World of Thermo: Thermometer Rising.

Finally today, we bounce off of Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News today with a few thoughts on talking about the rapidly increasing dangers of climate change, even while a major storm imperils millions of American citizens. As Bunch observes, many of them live in southern states with political leadership that has ill-served their residents by lying to them about climate change science over a shameful number of years, even as they now find themselves at the center of some of its most threatening and deadly effects...

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We catch up with quite a bit on today's BradCast, after being buried for much of last week in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for dishonest and disingenuous GOP operative, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, as Donald Trump's pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy in the "swing vote" seat on the GOP's already-stolen U.S. Supreme Court. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

We discuss that as well today (and whether Democrats should pack the Court if they ever return to power, as we discussed with David Faris on last Wednesday's show) and much more with tons of callers.

But first, we lead off with the latest on the fearsome Category 4 Hurricane Florence now barreling toward the U.S. Eastern seaboard, fueled by record warm waters, and currently projected to slam the Carolinas with, potentially, as much as four feet of rain as the storm is predicted to stall near the coast.

At the same time, Hawaii is facing down Hurricane Tropical Storm Olivia this week, just two weeks or so after Hurricane Lane dumped record rainfall on the islands, in the second worst rainfall event in recorded U.S. history (second only to Hurricane Harvey in Houston just last year.)

We also have some much brighter news, however, for our climate-changed world out of California today, as Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB-100, a landmark measure to require the state (with the world's fifth largest economy) to transition to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045. Along with it, Brown also signed an executive order that would result in carbon-neutral energy production and use for the entire state (including cars!) by 2045 as well!

With that bit of brief, albeit very good news out of the way, we turn to catching up with an Administration (still) in crisis upon the release of Bob Woodward's new book, FEAR: Trump in the White House and the anonymous op-ed purported to have been penned by a senior Trump Administration official last week, claiming that senior insiders have been secretly blocking the worst of Trump's most dangerous impulses and, last year, even considered invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the President.

We open up the phone lines today to all of the above, for tons of interesting thoughts from listeners on the op-ed (is the writer a hero or a coward --- or a scammer?), the Kavanaugh hearings and the Democrats' surprisingly unified response to the GOP rush to confirm him before they may lose their slim Senate majority in the upcoming midterms, and much more, as Hurricane Donald continues to lay waste --- or, at least, tries to --- to much of our nation...

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Everything --- EVERYTHING --- is not normal right now. From an imploding Presidency to the GOP's unprecedented withholding of documents for a SCOTUS nominee, to the more "normal" abnormalities we've become shamefully accustomed to, like mass shootings, election fraud and voter suppression in advance of another huge election and, yes, a global climate in crisis. Among the related stories covered on today's very busy BradCast [Audio link to show follows below.]...

• At least four were killed, including the shooter, in another mass shooting today, this time in downtown Cincinnati. Shamefully, the bloodbath barely cracks today's national headlines."This is not normal, and it shouldn't be viewed as normal. This is abnormal. No other industrialized country has this level of active multiple shootings on a regular basis," Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley said at a news conference today;

• It was day 3 of U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Republicans continue to rush through his confirmation while withholding tens of thousands of documents from both the Senate and the public, leading Democratic U.S. Senators Cory Booker (NJ), Mazie Hirono (HI) and others today to risk expulsion by releasing several "committee confidential" documents which are being withheld from the public. The documents being withheld, as suggested by several of the Senators, either reflect poorly on Kavanaugh or show him as having misled Congress in previous Senate testimony during his years as a George W. Bush staffer. "We are in uncharted and unprecedented territory here that the process has broken down, reflecting what is happening in our nation generally," warned Sen. Richard Blumenthal (CT);

• The White House is reported to be in "total meltdown" and the President "absolutely livid" after Wednesday's publication of a bombshell New York Times op-ed said to have been written by "a senior official in the Trump administration". The explosive piece claims the President is unstable, out of control, and that a group of Administration insiders have been working to contain the worst of his impulses. One top Administration official after another on Thursday denied penning the column, as Trump has suggested it to be "TREASON", called for the Times to turn over the writer's identity to "government at once", and as a former CIA Director (and Trump critic) John Brennan warns the situation is "dangerous" and "will get worse before [it] gets better."

Then, after a short remembrance for the late Burt Reynolds, who died today at 82, we move to the one thing Americans can and must do to try and restore a semblance of normality to the nation: participate in the November 6th midterm elections! To that end, we have several items of note regarding election integrity...

• In Texas, the 2018 dirty tricks are officially under way. An infiltrator into Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D)'s surging campaign to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R) used the campaign's text messaging system to send fraudulent messages regarding bringing "undocumented immigrants to polling booths" and "the dangers of socialism";

• In Michigan, two white, male, Republican-appointed federal appeals court judges overturned a lower court judge who, after a full trial, blocked the state GOP-majority legislature's ban on straight-ticket voting, finding the measure "a disproportionate burden on African Americans' right to vote". Both the lower court judge who previously blocked the measure and a third appeals court judge who dissented from her fellow appeals court panelists, were African-Americans appointed by a Democratic President. The U.S. Supreme Court, in the recent past, has blocked a host of court rulings that change election law just before elections, even when they might have protected thousands of voters from disenfranchisement. Will they step in to block this late federal court ruling?;

• In Virginia, Shaun Brown, an independent candidate for the U.S. House in the Commonwealth's 2nd Congressional District, was removed from the November ballot after a judge determined fraudulent petition signatures were used to place her on the ballot in hopes of peeling off votes from Democratic candidate Elaine Luria. Staffers from the office of first-term incumbent GOP Rep. Scott Taylor are said to have submitted many of those fraudulent signatures. Five of Taylor's staffers invoked the Fifth Amendment in the case, refusing to answer whether they were acting on Taylor's instructions. (We also take the opportunity to review just a few of the similar cases of election and signature petition fraud from former top GOP officials, such as Newt Gingrich, Thaddeus McCotter and Mitt Romney).

And, finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our 900th(!) episode of the Green News Report! In which we cover the dangers posed by Kavanaugh to the environment as illustrated during his Senate confirmation hearings, and a round-up of the latest havoc being wreaked around the globe from our climate in crisis.

If you are able and/or haven't done so recently, please consider a donation to support our work on both The BradCast and in celebration of the 900th Green News Report! We rely only on you to keep going! Really. Please stop whatever you are doing and take about 60 seconds to help us continue! It's greatly appreciated and much needed!...

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On today's BradCast: Details on the extraordinary court ruling out of North Carolina on Monday, and the judicial coup being staged in West Virginia. But first, voters went to the polls for Tuesday's primary elections in Arizona and Florida and in Oklahoma for primary runoff elections. It did not go well in Arizona. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

Maricopa County (Phoenix)'s paper ballot optical-scan computer systems failed in at least 100 precincts, according to the County Recorder. Many polling places were closed entirely this morning, and it was nearly noon before the systems were said to finally be working in all precincts. It's still unclear what the precise failure was, but the new County Recorder Adrian Fontes (who won his election after the previous, long-time Recorder was booted out for shutting polling places during the 2016 Primaries), tied it to pre-election tests that failed on Monday, and then a lack of contractors from the voting machine company (Dominion Voting) on hand to properly set up the systems before polls were to open today. "The contractor responsible for the voting machines was supposed to provide more than 100 technicians to assist with issues, but only 70 were available," the Arizona Republic reports Fontes as telling them at a news conference this morning. If we learn more, of course, we'll share it on tomorrow's show along with noteworthy problems and results in all three states holding elections today.

Then, following up on a story that broke minutes before airtime on Monday, we're joined today by Slate's excellent legal reporter MARK JOSEPH STERN to detail the extraordinary ruling issued by a three judge federal court panel finding all of North Carolina's U.S. House districts --- for a second time --- to be partisan gerrymanders in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Remarkably, the judges are considering ordering new maps to be drawn up before this November's elections, after already having found last January that Republicans had unlawfully gerrymandered the state's U.S. House districts. That ruling, however, was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which punted in June by ordering the lower court to review matters of standing. After having done so, the three-judge panel found the same Constitutional infirmities.

"The real villain here, in a sense --- aside from the Republicans, who obviously drew these incredibly gerrymandered maps --- is the Supreme Court and Justice Anthony Kennedy," says Stern. "A virtually identical ruling came down in January, at which point the US Supreme Court could have and should have acted on this question of partisan gerrymandering. Instead, the Supreme Court punted [and] sent this case back down for reconsideration. Now the [lower] court has reached the same conclusion it did in January."

The map in question was the one drawn up in 2016 after the state's previous GOP-drawn map, used in 2012 and 2014, was found to have been an unlawful racial gerrymander. So, Stern explains, the federal judges in North Carolina seem to have had enough and may now order new maps "on this incredibly compressed timetable where the election is looming" in just over 70 days, ballots need to go out to overseas voters 45 days in advance, and the state's primaries were already been held in May.

The unconstitutional maps have resulted in a wildly unbalanced 10 to 3 GOP majority in the state's Congressional delegations, despite North Carolina's status as a very divided swing state which narrowly elected Obama in 2008, Trump in 2016, and a Democrat to be its Governor in that same election. If the matter is appealed to SCOTUS by the state (as it almost certainly will be), the Supremes could deadlock 4 to 4, if Justice Kennedy's seat has yet to be filled, and the lower court ruling would stand. We could be in for a lot of chaos ahead (as if we need any more this year.)

Stern also explains the astonishing situation in West Virginia, where that state's Republican-majority House of Delegates recently impeached all four sitting members of the state's Supreme Court. (Its 5th member had already resigned after been charged with a felony crime.) The move, Stern reports, was timed in such a way to avoid allowing voters to replace the justices at the ballot box this year. That means the previously 3 to 2 Democratic-leaning court may soon become a 5 to 0 Republican court, and stay that way through 2020. Following impeachment trials of the justices in the state Senate, any vacancies will be filled by the appointments of Trump-loving Republican Gov. Jim Justice, a Democrat when he ran and won the Governor's race in 2016, but who flipped parties shortly thereafter.

"There are no good guys, per se, in this story," Stern notes. However, it serves as yet another example of Republicans blatantly hoping to pack the courts, and could prove to be another useful example that Democrats could cite in the future. If they ever re-take control of the U.S. House, Senate and White House, they'll be able to cite such moves when and if they decide to move to add seats to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to restore a majority that should have been theirs, until Senate Republicans stole a vacant seat in 2017 after holding it open for nearly a year following the early 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

Speaking of that stolen U.S. Supreme Court, Stern also offers his thoughts on whether Senate Democrats will be able to block --- or even stall --- the seating of Donald Trump's second nominee to the Court. Judge Brett Kavanaugh's Senate Judiciary Confirmation hearings are currently scheduled to begin next week and, Stern argues, "he owes an explanation as to why he thinks it's perfectly valid and legitimate and acceptable to be nominated by a racist and openly corrupted President to the Supreme Court."

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report on, among other things, the record rainfall in Hawaii following Hurricane Lane over the weekend, and the complicated climate legacy of the late Republican U.S. Senator and former GOP Presidential nominee, John McCain.

(And, on a related note, next week will be our 900th episode of the GNR! If you have not contributed lately to our efforts to continue connecting the climate change dots over your public airwaves for the past 10 years --- along with all else that we do --- please consider doing so now by stopping by BradBlog.com/Donate! Thanks! We rely only on you to keep going! But, don't do it for me! Do it for Desi! Pretty please?)

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On today's BradCast, we have not one, but two important and separate warnings for Donald Trump and the Republican Party, as pulled from the deep audio archives of 1988. Both of which --- on two separate topics from two separate people --- they seem to be completely ignoring, even as one of those warnings comes from their supposed idol Ronald Reagan. [Audio link to show posted below.]

First up today, the Trump-caused child immigration crisis continues to unfold with several disturbing new reports of unspeakable abuse at two separate federally-contracted facilities, based on filings in new federal court cases. One from Associated Press on beatings and more at a youth facility in Virginia and the other from the Center for Investigative Reporting on the forced injection of psychotropic drugs at a facility near Houston. That, as an Executive Order signed by the President on Wednesday, reversing part of his Administration's policy, fails to speak to family reunification for more than 2,300 children separated from their parents in recent weeks under Trump's "zero tolerance" border policy, and an Administration request to the Pentagon for space to house some 20,000 migrant children.

While all of those American nightmares have been unfolding over the past week, the effects of Trump's growing trade war have been quietly playing out in the background, as the Dow has dropped some 600 points over the past four days, with China and friendly allies like Canada, Mexico and the EU vowing massive and swift retaliation for ill-considered tariff's on foreign imports instituted by Trump. Among the hardest-hit victims of his new trade wars: farmers who were among some of biggest supporters of Trump's candidacy in 2016.

Perhaps that explains why, as share in an audio clip from 1988 today, Ronald Reagan warned: "We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war...all while cynically waving the American flag."

Next, we're joined by MARK JOSEPH STERN, legal reporter at Slate, and our "Supreme Correspondent" this month, as the U.S. Supreme Court slowly releases a bevy of decisions in advance of their planned Summer recess, on a number of major cases heard at the high court over the past term. Among the cases we discuss today:

• On Thursday, SCOTUS released a 5 to 4 decision allowing states to impose sales taxes on all online purchases. The ruling found some very strange bedfellows in both its majority and minority opinions, but both Stern and I agree, the decision makes sense, and will be good for local retailers, jobs, the economy and state budgets where, particularly in "red" states, tax cuts in recent years have lead to the gutting of education, infrastructure and other important social services. The 1967 SCOTUS ruling struck down today, was "a totally capricious standard that the Court created itself," Stern argues. "This was the Court fixing a problem that it made."

• Stern also details an exceedingly troubling --- if little reported --- case out of South Dakota, where a man was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, according to jury members themselves, they feared, as a gay man, he might enjoy life in prison too much. Seriously. Perhaps the most disturbing part of this matter: the Court declined to hear the case at all. Even the liberal Justices failed to offer a written dissent to the Court's decision.

• We also discuss the SCOTUS' regrettable punts this week on two partisan gerrymandering cases in Wisconsin and Maryland. (More on those cases earlier this week, with author David Daley on Monday's BradCast.)

• And the seemingly unprecedented federal court smack down of Kris Kobach, notorious GOP "voter fraud" fraudster and Kansas Secretary of State. His "Proof of Citizenship" voter registration law was struck down by a George W. Bush-appointed federal judge, and he was slapped for his contemptible performance in the courtroom --- where he represented both himself and the state of KS --- with more humiliating sanctions that include an order to attend six hours of legal classes. Moreover, as Stern reports, Kobach appears to be in still more violation of court orders, as he has yet to remove the requirement for citizenship documentation for voter registration from the KS Sec. of State website, as the judge ordered him to do "immediately" in her ruling on Monday.

  "I think that there is a decent chance that we could see even more sanctions for Kobach after this," Stern tells me. "Kobach is such a clown that this judge is going to finally have to bring down the hammer and I think it's going to be a glorious sight." (More on that case, with Sophia Lakin, one of the ACLU trial attorneys on the case, from Tuesday's BradCast.)

• Previewing the cases still to come before the end of the month, Sterns warns: "I think the Supreme Court is going to hobble public sector unions by preventing them from collecting dues from no-union members. I worry the Supreme Court is going to uphold the [Muslim] travel ban. I do think the Court may put real limits on the government's ability to collect information about where your cell phone has been from your provider. That's going to be a bright spot, I hope. But I also think the court's going to end up striking down California's disclosure requirements for crisis pregnancy centers. So, this is s not going to be a good term for progressives. I think everyone needs to just buckle in and focus on November."

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on a number of important issues that the Trump Administration did quietly this week as the rest of the nation and media were consumed with the child immigration story, and the 30th anniversary of Dr. James Hansen's first dire warning to Congress --- also in 1988 --- about the then-looming menace of global warming due to the unprecedented release of greenhouse gasses, such as carbon dioxide from the manmade burning of fossil fuels, into the atmosphere...

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It was another wildly busy BradCast today. I know. What else is new? But, with Trump declaring today on Twitter that "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea" (Phew! That was easy!) and that "Our Country’s biggest enemy" is the media(!), we had plenty of time to cover a lot of other things, the day after Tuesday's five state primary. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among those stories...

Maine's Republican Governor Paul LePage, the dumbest in the nation, was accidentally right (sort of) in his poorly stated opposition during yesterday's primaries, to Ranked Choice Voting (or RCV, also sometimes known as Instant Runoff Voting or IRV). On Tuesday, Maine was the first in the nation to use RCV in a statewide election, despite the fact that it's very difficult to count, virtually impossible for the public to oversee, requires central tabulation and computers to pull off, and candidates and voters in many places where it's been tried in the past have found that it's impossible to understand why some candidates won and others lost.

(NOTE: Before you send me your hate mail, progressives and third-party people, please listen to today's show first, and also note that I'm willing to entertain a much simpler method of voting/counting which solves many of problems that folks who support RCV are concerned about. It's called Approval Voting. Basically, that allows voters to vote 'yes' or 'no' for as many candidates as they like. Whoever receives the most 'yes' votes wins. Simple. Overseeable. No computers necessary. And, it helps to avoid the "spoiler effect" that many proponents of RCV hope to solve. Listen to the full show, and then feel free to send your hate mail. UPDATE: Here's one more nightmare scenario for RCV, if you still need one.)

Anyway, LePage has threatened to not certify Tuesday's elections in his state because they are using RCV, which voters adopted in 2016. He's wrong about that and somewhat right about his RCV concerns, but --- because it's LePage --- for all the wrong reasons. I explain in detail on the show.

Speaking of this country's failure to even be able to count 1+1+1 reliably and overseeably in elections (even without adding the complicated algebra of RCV), the state of Nevada took its new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems out for a test drive across the state in their primary election on Tuesday. It did not go well. At some precincts, some candidates did not appear on some screens. Other precincts reported candidates pre-selected on their touchscreens (possibly left over from a previous voter, whose ballots may not have actually been cast.) And other problems that we describe on today's show.

We also cover some actual election results from Tuesday's primaries in Maine, Virginia, North Dakota, South Carolina and Nevada, as well as special elections in Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker (R) had attempted to prevent two special elections for the state legislature from happening at all --- because he feared the seats would flip from "Red" to "Blue" --- one of those seats in the state Senate did, in fact, flip to the Democrats for the first time in four-decades, in a very Republican district.

In Virginia, GOP voters nominated Corey Stewart, a far rightwing, Trump-endorsed Confederacy defender as their nominee to challenge Sen. Tim Kaine for the U.S. Senate this year. In South Carolina, former Governor, now U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford was turfed out in his primary by another Republican for not being Trumpy enough. And, in D.C., retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee (correctly) charged that his party has become little more than a Trump "cult".

In Canada, meanwhile, the House of Commons unanimously pushed back on the Trump Administration's weekend attack on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau following the G7 summit, and on the tariffs imposed by Trump on steel and aluminum from our longtime friends and allies to the north. And the next day, in a complete coincidence, Trump's DHS hardened their border policy with Canada to, supposedly, prevent criminals and terrorists from entering the U.S.

Finally today, a ballot initiative that would break California into three states appears to have qualified for this November's ballot! While the measure is currently said to be very unpopular with actual voters in the Golden State, it seems at least as unthinkable that it could pass as that Donald Trump could ever become President of the United States...

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On today's BradCast, we're joined by our old friend CENK UYGUR, host and founder of the wildly popular online news outlet, The Young Turks and the entire TYTNetwork. [Audio link follows below.]

We have a wide-ranging conversation on a host of important topics, beginning with the chaotic mid-term primaries coming up next Tuesday in California, where, for example, 32 candidates, from all parties, are vying in the same race for the top two slots to go on to the November general election in the fight for longtime Democratic U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein's seat.

Of even greater concern to Democrats hoping to win back one or both chambers of Congress, are seven Republican U.S. House seats thought to be flippable in the Golden State this year. However, thanks to the state's "Top Two" primary system and a glut of Democrats on the ballot, the progressive vote could be split in a number of those races, resulting in no Democrats qualifying for the November ballot at all in several of those contests next week.

Uygur discusses the pros and cons of California's strange primary system and much more, including how both corporate and independent media ought to be covering the "insanity" of Donald Trump, who he describes as "the monster in office...on fascism's doorstep".

The corporate media, he argues, "are afraid of offending Republican viewers. Their business imperative to not lose a certain percentage of their audience is coloring how they cover the truth of the matter. In reality, they should go out there and do what we do, and say: 'If you believe this, you are nuts. It's not remotely true.' But they're afraid they are going to turn off 30% of the country, and lose advertising dollars."

"We are a news outlet that is proudly activist," he tells me when I ask whether TYT is a political organization. "The rest of mainstream news and corporate news say 'Hey, relax, don't do anything. Do the news, but don't care about it, don't try to fix anything! Fixing anything is bad!' And we don't agree with that. We think that you can present the news and say, 'Now here's what you can do to fix it.'"

As to independent outlets, he charges, "we're not emphasizing enough that the President of the United States is a combination of mentally unhealthy, certainly unstable, incredibly dumb and, most importantly, fascist."

We also talk about the continuing internecine battle between the progressive and establishment wings of the Democratic Party, whether they can and will and should come together this November, and we even chat a bit about the sad story of Roseanne Barr who, Ugyur believes, "similar to Kanye West, similar to Glenn Beck, similar to Alex Jones...all have mental health problems."

Uygur, who is also a founder of Wolf-PAC (fighting to get all money out of politics), and a former founding member of Justice Democrats (fighting to put progressive Democrats into office), also makes the case for a number of progressive U.S. House and Senate candidates in California endorsed by one or both of those groups.

Also on today's show: While the economy is supposedly doing great, according to Donald Trump and the GOP, wages are failing to rise commensurately, even after the massive tax cuts passed last year, largely for the wealthy and corporations. Now why would that be? And, some encouraging news today out of Virginia, which is poised to finally expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare") to some 400,000 residents, thanks to voters who turned out last November to flip enough seats in the state legislature from "red" to "blue" to finally assure health care to hundreds of thousands in the state. And, finally today, a bit more good news for Democrats, as new polling finds a majority of young voters plan to turn out to vote in this year's mid-terms, and they are far less Republicans than the population at large...

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On today's BradCast: The shootings and body counts mount while GOP politicians refuse to take action and rightwing media fan the flames. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up today (after a quick thanks to In Deep Radio's Angie Coiro for covering for us late last week so I could "enjoy" some emergency oral surgery), a quick preview of Tuesday's primary elections in Arkansas, Kentucky and Georgia and primary run-offs in Texas, where the internecine battles between progressives and establishment Democrats continue to shake out.

Also, news that Don Blankenship, West Virginia coal baron and former federal felon (convicted for his role in safety violations resulting in the 2010 deaths of 29 minors in one of his mines in 2010) announces his plan to run on the Constitution Party ticket for U.S. Senate this November after coming in third in WV's GOP U.S. Senate primary two weeks ago.

Then, new details on the politically brain-addled man who opened fire inside the Trump National Doral Miami resort in South Florida on Friday, and a trove of witness statements are released related to the October 2017 massacre in Las Vegas where a gunman opened fire on outdoor concert goers on the Strip, killing 58 and wounded more than 800 in a matter of minutes. Though officials never declared a motive for that shooting, the newly released statements suggest the shooter was an anti-government fanatic who had cited longtime Fox "News" and Rightwing talk radio tropes such as Waco, Ruby Ridge and FEMA camps in the days before the massacre.

Then, in a sadly similar vein, we're joined by author, Daily Beast columnist, podcaster and longtime gun legislation advocate CLIFF SCHECTER on fallout following Friday's mass shooting at Santa Fe High School outside of Houston, where a 17-year old student killed 10 and wounded at least 10 others. With the US now averaging at least one school shooting per week in 2018, we discuss who is to blame, what (if anything) can finally be done about any of it, and how Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo has courageously taken a very hard stand against the years-long failure of NRA-backed Republican politicians who offer "thoughts and prayers", but no actual action to try and help curb the nation's continuing, tragic and obscene gun epidemic.

"In Western European countries, you certainly have these radical rightwing groups like you do here," Schecter argues. "The key is they don't all have access to guns. They do here. That's what we're seeing. We're seeing white men radicalized and then armed. This is the predictable result of that."

"You're never going to prevent everything. There's still one shooting or two in Canada, and they've got much more stringent gun control. The key here is when you look at a public health crisis, you say 'What are the various ways, through regulations, policy, cultural change, shaming and the rest, that we can get to a place where people take this more seriously?'" Schecter goes on to explain how recent changes to gun laws have decreased gun violence, despite the idiotic statements of folks like Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and others who suggest that gun regulations make things worse, and how citizen ballot initiatives can be used to work around intransigent politicians.

Finally today, some thoughts on the perilously planned June summit between North Korea's Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump, and the embarrassingly plain fact that Trump has absolutely no idea what he is doing, as revealed (once again) following National Security Adviser John Bolton's ridiculously ill-advised "Libyan model" comments...

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On today's BradCast, Desi and I are back! But you should tune in anyway! [Audio link to show follows below.]

My great thanks to Angie Coiro of In Deep Radio for filling in for us last week!

Among the stories covered on today's program, as we try to get back up to speed...

• More than 2,000 were reportedly wounded and over 50 killed as Israel opened fire on protesters in Gaza today during the "festive" opening ceremony for the controversial U.S. embassy Donald Trump moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Much of the Muslim and Arab world condemned the attacks on the unarmed Palestinian protesters, but so so did the European Union, the United Nations, Russia and many others.

• Back in the U.S., a new analysis from Washington Post finds that an administrative error led to at least 26 Democratic leaning voters being assigned to the wrong legislative district during last November's House of Delegates election in Virginia. The race in Newport News between Democrat Shelly Simonds and Republican David Yancey in HD-94, was judged to be a tie after a "recount", which was subsequently broken by a random drawing giving the seat to Yancey and allowing the GOP to retain control of the House. That failure, and similarly mis-assigned voters in yet another highly gerrymandered district in Fredericksburg, prevented what should, in retrospect, have been a Democratic takeover of the state's House in 2017 amidst a "Blue Wave" that otherwise managed to flip 15 seats from R to D.

• Also today, a new report on what was reportedly a foreign-sourced cyberattack on Election Night two weeks ago in Knox County, Tennessee is troubling on a number of levels, though not necessary the one being reported by some media outlets citing a Ukrainian IP address used in the denial of service attack which was also sourced to countries on every continent except for Antarctica. We discuss what is known and still isn't, following the attack which took down the web-based election night results page for an hour after the close of polls two weeks ago, including one race said to have been decided by just 17 votes on the county's 100% unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic voting systems...

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On today's BradCast: Finally, thanks in no small part to our guest today, some accountability for a white nationalist who beat a black man nearly to death following their "Unite the Rally" which turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia last August. Meanwhile, the nation's top elected Republicans --- from the White House to Kansas --- continue to avoid accountability and personal responsibility for just about everything. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up: One of the nation's foremost GOP "voter fraud" fraudsters, Kris Kobach, Kansas Sec. of State, a supposed front-runner for the state's Governorship, almost faced some accountability after being found, for the second time, in contempt of court by a federal judge. Last week, the Kansas House voted 103 to 16 for a provision that would prevent state funds from being spent to cover fines issued to statewide officials found in contempt, as Kobach has now been found twice during his embarrassing attempt to defend his suppressive "proof of citizenship" voter registration law. This week, however, despite the lopsided bi-partisan vote, the state legislature appears to have folded after Kobach's office threatened to cost the cash-strapped state even more in ridiculous legal fees fighting over provision. So much for GOP personal responsibility.

Then, we're joined by longtime independent Nation of Change photojournalist ZACH D. ROBERTS, following the guilty verdict on Tuesday of 23-year old white supremacist Jacob Scott Goodwin, for the "malicious wounding" of De'Andre Harris, a 20-year old black man viciously beaten by a group of neo-Nazis in a parking garage last year in Charlottesville. The incident occurred during a melee after the rightwing protest of the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in a city park (see one of Roberts' photos above). Goodwin now faces up to 10 years in jail and a $20,000 fine.

Roberts, who also co-produced Greg Palast's documentary Best Democracy Money Can Buy, photographed the beating as a journalist covering the rally that day, and was instrumental --- with independent journalists like Shaun King --- in helping to identify the perps who, Roberts tells me, both city law enforcement and the FBI appeared less than eager to track down.

"Charlottesville law enforcement officials testified in the Goodwin trial that they offered immediate medical attention to him. They lied, under oath. They did absolutely nothing, to the point that they were keeping people away who were offering medical attention." It was only thanks to the crowd-sourced efforts by King, using video from independent journalist Chuck Modi and photos from Roberts, that those who participated in the beating --- armed with helmets, body shields, sticks and poles --- were eventually identified.

The parking garage assault of Harris, for which three others also face trial, took place not long before 32-year old Heather Heyer was killed by another white supremacist who drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters at the rally that Donald Trump infamously claimed featured "very fine people on both sides".

"There are four people total that have been arrested for this, in particular, and there are still at least three more that actively attacked, actively assaulted De'Andre. And there's at least a couple more that stood by," Roberts explains. "I thought that that was going to be the worst thing that I saw that day. Thankfully, I wasn't on the street when the car was run through. But I was there almost immediately afterwards and I saw the people who were nearly murdered, a lot of them, by the white supremacists."

Roberts, who faced pepper-spray and, after helping Harris, was "immediately met with a gun in my face by another white supremacist", discusses what he saw and documented that day, how law enforcement officials looked the other way, and what he thinks of Trump's comments following the deadly rally. "Donald Trump talking about 'good people on both sides' and everything like that, he's actually --- shockingly --- lying. He also doesn't know what he's talking about, because obviously he was not there."

Finally, Trump is losing another key attorney who had been working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller on behalf of the Office of the President and is now reportedly hiring another one who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment and both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the years that followed. We discuss what this latest shake-up may portend for Mueller's ongoing probe of Team Trump...

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On today's BradCast: After a months-long drought of one of our favorite guests, legal journalist MARK JOSEPH STERN of Slate returns today! And we make up for the deficit with a legal lightning round on a number of big cases being heard this and in recent weeks at the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as a number of important cases from elsewhere around the country.

Among the cases covered with Stern today: The years-long challenge to Texas Republicans' racial gerrymandering of Congressional and statehouse districts, which were struck down as unlawful by several lower courts, and Donald Trump's controversial anti-Muslim travel ban(s), which were also blocked by lower courts. The U.S. Supremes, however, may be on the verge of restoring both laws, according to Stern, despite previous findings of unconstitutionality. We also discuss the pending fate of two separate challenges to partisan gerrymandering heard recently by SCOTUS.

In both cases, Stern notes, referring to the stolen GOP majority on the Court after Obama's nominee Merrick Garland was blocked for a year, before Trump appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch: "I hope against hope that my predictions are wrong, but Republicans stole this seat for a reason."

But that's not all! We also hit several other important recent cases from federal courts around the country, which prove to offer a bit more encouraging news. Stern details the "complete train wreck" seen in a federal court in Kansas earlier this month, as their Sec. of State and top-shelf GOP "voter fraud" fraudster Kris Kobach disastrously attempted to defend his "proof of citizenship" voter registration law at trial. Kobach's humiliating effort resulted in a George W. Bush-appointed federal judge slapping him with the second of two contempt of court sanctions during the long case, and may signal, as Stern posits, the near end of the Republican Party's years-long disingenuous claims about a "voter fraud" epidemic.

"Kobach had committed a major self-own," Stern tells me. "He had gone into that trial thinking he was going to prove once and for all that 'voter fraud' was real, and he left that trial having inadvertently proved that it wasn't. He undermined all of the evidence that he had worked so hard to build up."

That, as one of Kobach's longtime colleagues in the long GOP "voter fraud" con, J. Christian Adams, finds himself as the defendant in a new lawsuit filed in Virginia by a number of U.S. citizens who were inaccurately accused by Adam's group, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), in error-riddled reports titled "Alien Invasion of Virginia" and "Alien Invasion II", of committing voter fraud. Adams is accused by the lawful voters of violations of the Constitution, the Voting Rights Act, and even the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

"It's satisfying to see these guys have to answer in court for all that they've said and done for so long, and it's great to see the victims of their slander fighting back in such a powerful way," Stern argues.

We finish up our legal lightening round today with a case decided last week by the Supreme Court, in which Justice Gorsuch, who enjoys the seat stolen for him by Senate Republicans last year, actually joined the Court's four liberal Justices in striking down a law that allows the deportation of immigrants accused of "violent crimes". While Stern applauds Gorscuh joining the liberal justices in this case, given the vague statutory language used for defining "violent crimes", he also cautions that Gorsuch's interest here may signal a broader, more disturbing scheme down the road by Trump's far rightwing appointee.

Also today: The Trump Administration doesn't appear to do any vetting of any of their nominees for any office, it seems. Last week, Elizabeth Anne Pierce, a corporate member of a public commission created by Trump's FCC Chair Ajit Pai, purportedly to help expand broadband Internet access, was arrested on allegations of fraud to the tune of $250 million for forging signatures on contracts on behalf of her startup high-speed fiber-optic company. And, on Capitol Hill today, Navy Admiral Ronny Jackson, Trump's personal physician turned nominee to head the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, comes under fire from Senators of both parties, regarding his complete lack of experience for such a role, but also for reports of fostering a "hostile work environment", "excessive drinking on the job" and "improperly dispensing meds" among other things. In the bargain, today at the White House, Trump appeared to begin the process of throwing Jackson --- who he reportedly had to convince to accept the nomination to head the VA and its 360,000 employees --- under the nearest bus.

And finally, Desi Doyen joins us with the latest Green News Report, and for a tribute or two to Schoolhouse Rock creator Bob Dorough, who died today at the age of 94...

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Don't get me wrong. The bold move by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in adopting a Congressional map that, according to an analysis cited by the Wall Street Journal, could see PA Democrats picking up as many as six Congressional House seats now held by Republicans, bodes well for those of us who value small "d" democracy and the rule of law.

So does the recent mind-boggling 85-point swing from "red to blue" in Kentucky, where Democrat Linda Belcher, in a Special Election, defeated her Republican opponent by 36 points in a state House district that Donald Trump carried by 49 points in 2016.

There are multiple indices of a public revulsion in response to Republican overreach that is much greater than that displayed in 2008 when Democrats rode a "Blue Wave" to victories that placed them in control of the White House, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

Last year, polls revealed as little as 12% support amongst the American electorate for Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. Another poll revealed that only 24% of Americans supported the GOP tax cut measure. (Though more recent polling suggests it's growing in popularity.) This year, a Quinnipiac poll, taken in the wake of the massacre at a Parkland, Florida high school, suggests that 2/3 of Americans have finally lost their patience with NRA-funded Republicans and their feckless "thoughts and prayers".

These surveys suggest a likelihood that Democrats in 2018 can recapture a majority in the U.S. House and potentially even the U.S. Senate --- a result that is critical to fending off the threat to democracy, political and economic equality and the rule of law now posed by the Trump/GOP oligarchic/kleptocratic agenda.

But a number of recent court rulings on extreme partisan gerrymandering reveal that the 2020 election will ultimately be of far greater significance than 2018, and not simply because it will be a Presidential election year…

On today's BradCast, the consequences of elections, from D.C. on immigration, to VA and NJ on gun safety legislation, and across both D.C. and dozens of states when it comes to marijuana policy under Trump's Attorney General. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

The White House, lawmakers and corporate media continue to squabble today over Donald Trump's racist and reportedly vulgar slur of black majority nations as either "shitholes" or "shithouses" during a bipartisan meeting on immigration last week, even as his Departments of Justice and Homeland Security issued a new and misleading report on terrorism that downplays the far greater threat of domestic attacks by homegrown white Americans, in favor of a focus on foreign-born terrorists.

In the meantime, as the White House and Congress attempt to strike a government spending deal that includes protections for DACA recipients in time to avoid a government shutdown at the end of this week, a changing of the guards in both New Jersey and Virginia following last November's elections is taking place and already reshuffling public policy.

NJ's wildly unpopular Republican Gov. Chris Christie was finally replaced on Tuesday by the new Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, one day after Christie finally signed a law that will ban deadly bumpstock devices, like those used to kill 58 people and wound hundreds of others in minutes in Las Vegas last year, in the Garden State. (To his discredit, he had little choice, as the legislation passed both state chambers with zero votes opposing it.)

At the same time, in VA, where Republicans managed to barely hang on to majorities in the state legislature, thanks to some gaming of several House races and of legislative district maps across the state (allowing them to retain control despite losing statewide by a 55% to 45% margin), the GOP's majority control in the state Senate resulted in the gutting of most of the gun safety agenda on which that state's new Democratic Governor Ralph Northam ran and won by a landslide.

Then, we head back to D.C., where Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced after the turn of the new year that the DoJ was reversing Obama-era enforcement guidance on federal law, in order to crack down on states where marijuana has been made legal for medicinal and/or recreational use after decades of prohibition.

As Drug Policy Alliance advisor and marijuana legislation lobbyist MIKE LISZEWSKI joins us to explain, the new DoJ guidance, rolling back the so-called "Cole Memo" from the Obama years, has not gone over well, even with a number of Republican lawmakers, particularly those from cannabis-friendly states where they have seen a dramatic rise in tax revenue thanks to new policies adopted by voters and state lawmakers.

"The Cole Memo was just guidance, it was never binding. But by removing it, Sessions has really given the green light to US Attorneys throughout the country to say, if you want to prosecute against state marijuana conduct you have our backing," Liszewski tells me, before arguing that there is no need for such policy, given that state laws, where pot has been legalized, are already very tough. "If someone was using a state marijuana law to shield some sort of bad activity, they're clearly in violation of state law. There's so much oversight, you're likely going to get caught rather quickly. So there's really no need for additional federal prosecution. It's really addressing a concern that doesn't actually exist --- unless you have some hysterical views about marijuana."

Sessions, of course, famously has views. Last year, for example, he famously stated that marijuana was "only slightly less awful" than heroin. Liszewski breaks down the DoJ's announced change in prosecutorial guidance and the effect it is likely to have (if any) in pro-cannabis states where, he says, it has "turned out to be wonderful for generating state tax revenue...in terms of the money it's pulling in, but also the law enforcement resources, the jail resources, the court resources, that don't have to go into prosecuting low-level marijuana cases."

We also discuss how Congress may still be able to move forward on drug policy under an Attorney General who is an avowed enemy of pot users and a President who claims to favor states' rights on the matter. Congress, Liszewski argues, is close to having the votes to end prohibition at the federal level all together, if it doesn't have those votes already. But, he says, thanks to a few "old guard" Committee Chairs in Congress, it may take a full reshuffling of the deck in the 2018 mid-term elections to see it actually happen.

"The 2018 elections are going to be so crucial to the future of marijuana reform," he says. "Because whether it's a shift in which party controls each chamber, or if it's just voting out the old guard and getting some new Republicans in, either way would be helpful towards ending federal marijuana prohibition."

"It would be very, very difficult to get the genie back in the bottle at this point," Liszewski adds, "especially seeing a good number of Republicans as well as states continuing to move forward right after the Sessions announcement. It really shows that Sessions is alone on an island with this and has very few supporters. I think the writing is on the wall."

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On today's BradCast, we do our best to try and make some sense of the utter chaos, havoc and non-stop breaking news plaguing the nation over the past 24 hours. Wish us luck! [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the stories covered on today's extremely busy program...

• Late updates on the devastating mud-flows that have, so far, resulted in the deaths of 17 in Southern California's Santa Barbara County, just north of Los Angeles, following a massive rainfall this week in the area just burned by the largest fire in state history;
• A federal judge has temporarily blocked Donald Trump's attempt to lift the DACA program, which has protected some 800,000 children of immigrants who came here with their parents through no fault of their own;
• Just days after announcing their intention to open 90% of U.S. coastline to off-shore drilling, Trump's Dept. of Interior chief Ryan Zinke reverses course, but only for the state of Florida, in what appears to be a political (and unlawful) favor to Florida's Governor Rick Scott, who Trump is supporting in a run for the U.S. Senate;

In election and voting news today...

• Just minutes before Virginia's House of Delegates convened its new legislative session today, Democrat Shelly Simonds conceded her 94th District race against Republican David Yancey without seeking the second "recount" she is entitled to by state law. The first "recount" resulted in a declared "tie" vote and a random drawing, following a very questionable ballot [JPG] counted for the Republican after the initial "recount" had handed the victory to Simonds by a single vote. (She could still ask for a recount as late as the 17th, if she and the Democratic Party wise up and changes their minds. Republicans absolutely would have demanded such a count had the random drawing gone the other way. They would also have prevented her from being seated until that count was completed. Moreover, I share some disturbing comments from a conversation about all of this with the Voter Registrar who oversaw the election in Newport News, VA.)
• In the 28th District race for Virginia's House, an appeals court denied the Democrats emergency motion for a new election today, after the Republican was declared the winner by 73 votes even though 147 voters were given the wrong ballot on Election Day last November. (With both of those Dems out, the GOP majority in the VA House has shrunk from 66-34 last session, to just 51-49 as of today, despite Democrats winning 55% of the vote statewide in the Republican gerrymandered state);
• In North Carolina, a federal court panel issued a landmark and blistering ruling on Tuesday night, finding state Republicans had blatantly gerrymandered the swing-state's U.S. House Districts on a partisan bases to ensure a 10 to 3 majority for themselves, in what the panel found to be a violation of the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. The court ordered new Congressional maps to be drawn up immediately, in the next two weeks, in time for the 2018 primaries. But Republicans vow to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is currently deciding a separate but very similar case on partisan gerrymandering of state legislative districts by Wisconsin Republicans.
• And today, a divided (and stolen by the GOP) U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case challenging Ohio Secretary of State John Husted's scheme to purge voter rolls after voters have gone just two years without voting in a federal election, in what Democrats and voting rights advocates argue is a violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

Finally today...

• Trump's Energy Secretary and former Texas Governor Rick Perry sees his scheme to extend the life of coal and nuclear plants under the false guise of "grid resiliency" go up in smoke after all of the appointees on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), most of whom were appointed by Trump, unanimously reject the plan, which was seen as a payoff to a coal baron benefactor of both Perry and Trump. A former Trump Campaign official, however, sees a far more insidious (and laughable) conspiracy.

What. A. Mess. Enjoy!...

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On today's BradCast: The wheels seem to be coming off everywhere. That's both good and bad news. [Audio link to show follows below.]

We start here: After a two month back and forth since the November 2017 off-year elections in Virginia, it appears that Republicans will retain --- if just barely --- their majority control of the Virginia House of Delegates (for now) following a random drawing out of a bowl in Richmond today resulted in Republican David Yancey being named the winner over Democrat Shelly Simonds.

That, despite a "recount" in the 94th District race finding the Democrat had won, until a Republican observer changed his mind and a Republican Circuit Court panel of judges agreed with him. That was followed by a rejected court challenge by the Democrat, today's random drawing to determine the winner of that court-declared tie, a likely second "recount" to come in the same race, a court challenge to a separate very close race in the 28th district decided by 73 votes with at least 147 voters receiving the wrong ballot entirely, and Democrats across the obscenely gerrymandered state having out-voted Republicans by a "landslide" 10% margin in the November 7, 2017 elections.

We detail all of that today --- including my brief, if telling, email conversation with the election official in the city of Newport News who supposedly oversaw the race in the 94th district. And, for the record, here is a JPG of the one single ballot in question which led to the current tie.

Then, in other election related news, we move on to Donald Trump's monumentally failed "voter fraud" Commission, disastrously helmed by longtime GOP "voter fraud" fraudster and Kansas Sec. of State Kris Kobach. The Commission, created after Trump's evidence-free assertions that millions of unlawful votes were cast against him in 2016, has been besieged with lawsuits against it, including by one of its own Commissioners. But there may be another reason that Trump suddenly, and without notice to anyone, disbanded it entirely by Executive Order on Wednesday evening: he got mad at Steve Bannon. Democrats and voting rights advocates are rejoicing after the news, but will the dissolution of the Commission result in even more concerns for advocates of free and fair elections?

Speaking of which, heads up! Trump's Dept. of Justice appears to have a new idea for how to game the 2020 Census (which is also an election-related issue).

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for a bone-chilling first Green News Report of the new year, as a dangerous blast from the melting Arctic slams much of the country, the Trump Administration guts even more environmental and safety regulations over the holiday weekend when few were noticing, before announcing a new disturbing scheme today to open up 90 percent of nation's off-shore oil reserves to new commercial drilling.

The wheels seem to be coming off both the world and the Trump Administration. We'll hope for the latter in time to prevent the former...

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