On the heels of last weekend's Hamas attack on Israel and Israel's subsequent retaliation against Gaza, there has been a flood of disinformation about the conflict allowed to circulate on social media. Also on today's BradCast, we take some time to focus on a major victory back home in the ongoing strike by auto workers against Detroit's Big Three. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

FIRST UP, a quick word or two on the landfall of Hurricane Lidia last night on the Pacific Coast of Mexico near the resort of Puerta Vallarta. When we got off air yesterday, the storm had quickly spun up to a Category 3 before ultimately making landfall as a Category 4, with windspeeds topping 140 mph. Happily, it hit in a sparsely populated area, so damage and loss of life, so far, has reportedly been minimal. But the rapid intensification of the storm, and its gaining of strength as it got closer to land is both remarkable and something we have seen much more of in recent years as our climate crisis worsens. Also, the fact that Lidia made landfall on the Pacific Coast of Mexico just one day after another storm, Max, did as well, should similarly be ringing alarm bells.

NEXT, the relentless military response by Israel against Gaza continues in the wake of the unspeakably horrific attack by Hamas on Israel over the weekend. So does a flood of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda on social media sites. Elon Musk's Twitter/X site is particularly horrible in this regard, following his firing of most of the company's content moderation team and its replacement by community volunteers who are, according to an NBC report today, largely being ignored by the company as false and inflammatory content runs wild. AP is helpful today in offering independently verifiable facts to correct the record on a number of viral social media videos and photos purposely doctored to mislead. One, for example, showed a manipulated "order" from President Biden, claiming to send $8 billion in aid to Israel. Another purports to show videos of Russian President Vladimir Putin warning the U.S. to "stay away" from the Israel-Hamas conflict. Both assertions were completely false, but were allowed to remain on Twitter for hours without correction to be seen by millions of users.

THEN, in some brighter news, the United Auto Workers union struck a stunning deal late last week with GM that will allow workers who build batteries for electric vehicles to join the union's master agreement with the company. That, after many thought that an agreement to unionize workers at EV plants would be impossible.

Our guest today is DR. MARICK MASTERS, Professor of Business and Political Science at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he also served as Director of the Labor@Wayne program. He joins us to discuss the big news for workers at battery plants and other successes, so far, by the UAW and its President Shawn Fain during the ongoing, unprecedented strike against all three major U.S. automakers.

Late last week, Masters published an article at The Conversation on "Why the UAW union's tough bargaining strategy is working". He joins us today to discuss the new tactics and strategies employed by union leaders in the growing work stoppage and how it might both lead to success and ultimately be adopted by other union organizers.

On the landmark agreement with GM to include workers making parts for battery electric vehicles in the master union contract, Masters describes the deal as "a monumental achievement on the part of the UAW," adding: "I don't think that anyone, including myself, thought that this was doable. I didn't think that was something that the companies would concede, but GM did."

He cautions, however, that "it remains to be seen whether the two other companies [Ford and Stellantis] will accede to this demand of the union. But I don't think the UAW would sign a tentative agreement with them if they didn't."

Masters breaks down the UAW's so-far successful three-part strategy in the ongoing strike; explains why labor leader Fain is receiving so much support from the public both for his "audacious" demands and style of negotiations; and discusses whether the strategies employed by the auto workers might be applied elsewhere, at both non-union companies like Elon Musk's Tesla and in other industries where workers are finally standing up to management and demanding better pay, benefits and working conditions...

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We begin again on today's BradCast with the latest developments in what AP is now calling the latest Israel-Palestinian war, before catching up with a number of political and climate related issues here at home. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

ISRAEL v. HAMAS:

• On Monday, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, the U.K., and the U.S. issued an unusual joint statement condemning the "terrorist actions of Hamas" over the weekend, declaring "steadfast and united support to the State of Israel" and recognizing "the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people".

• Today, an at-times visibly angry President Biden expressed similar sentiments, decried the weekend’s "atrocity on a appalling scale"; warned against adversaries both at home and abroad who might be tempted to take advantage of the situation for political violence; vowed to help secure the release of American hostages around the world; declared this "a moment for the United States to come together, to grieve with those who are mourning"; promised to uphold the "laws of war", and reiterated that the U.S. "stands with Israel" while condemning the "indiscriminate evil" of the weekend’s attack. He also confirmed that 14 Americans are now confirmed to have been killed as a result of Saturday's surprise assault by Hamas.

• Beyond that, we cover the latest, including escalating death tolls, with at least 1,000 dead in Israel, and at least 800 dead in Gaza, as Israel continues its fourth day of pounding neighborhood after neighborhood in the Gaza Strip with air strikes. More than 200,000 Palestinians have reportedly fled their homes for U.N. shelters, as deliveries of food, fuel, water, electricity, medicine and other supplies to Gaza have been cut off by Israel, as hospitals are said to be running out of supplies, surgical equipment and antibiotics.

• Back home in Congress, the U.S. House remains crippled thanks to Republicans having removed their own House Speaker last week. Given our recent history and the current situation in the Middle East, that might not actually be a terrible thing.

2004 MISCELLANY:

• On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, after a 4 to 3 vote, scheduled a hearing next week on a voter petition to draw fair legislative maps for the state Senate and Assembly, for the first time in more than a decade. Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose recent election gave liberals a majority on the High Court for the first time in 15 years, has decided to not recuse herself from the case, even as GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos' threat to impeach her if she did so has shown no sign of materializing yet.

• Out here in California, 74-year old former L.A. Dodgers All-Star Steve Garvey announced today that he will be running as a Republican next year to fill the seat held by Dianne Feinstein, who recently passed away. He will be vying for one of the two spots up for grabs in next year's March Primary, in hopes of going on to compete in the November general election. He will have to face off with at least three Democratic all-stars hoping to become the state's new Senator, including Congressmembers Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff --- and potentially against Laphonza Butler should she decide to run, after having been tapped by Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the rest of Feinstein's term.

• Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., with much support from Republicans, announced on Monday that he plans to drop out of his Democratic primary bid and run for President as an independent next year. In theory, he will join Cornel West who plans to do the same after leaving the Green Party, and a potential candidate put up for 2024 by the right-leaning "centrist" group calling itself No Labels.

LATE-BREAKING AND FINALLY:

• Republican Rep. George Santos (NY), already facing 13 federal campaign finance-related charges, now faces an additional 10 related to identify theft for stealing donor credit cards to make unauthorized charges.

• Hurricane Lidia spun up quickly before airtime to become a major Category 3 storm as it headed toward landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast near Puerto Vallarta. (Since we've gotten off air, Lidia has spun up even more, making landfall as a Cat 4 with 140 mph winds!) It is the second tropical storm to slam the Pacific coast in two days, following landfall by Max on Monday.

• Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with good news for both striking auto workers and Electric Vehicles, and bad news for India, the children of the world, and your olive oil...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: New York City floods again after third 100-year storm in two years; From Minneapolis to Mexico, bizarre extreme heatwaves set new September records; Home insurance bubble could burst as climate disasters strain insurance markets; PLUS: Norway almost 100% EVs... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): In Michigan, not-so-sunny prospects for solar farms; More than 100 dolphins dead in Amazon as water hits 102 degrees Fahrenheit; There’s a lesson to take from China’s abandoned electric cars; Gas Furnaces Face 95% Efficiency Standard With Final DOE Rule; UAE's Jaber says oil, industrial firms to commit to decarbonization at COP28... PLUS: Truck stops upgrade to recharge electric vehicles and their drivers... and much, MUCH more! ...

Woah, Nelly! Today's BradCast may arguably be both the dumbest and most fun ever! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The subject material --- Wednesday night's ridiculous GOP 2024 "Presidential Primary Debate" (if it's even worth calling it that) at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library out here in Simi Valley, California --- is what makes it dumb.

It featured seven "candidates" --- former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, supposed businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum --- but not the much-indicted guy who Republicans apparently intend, for now, to actually nominate for the job next year.

Our excellent special coverage panelists --- award-winning blogger and columnist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and "DRIFTGLASS" of the Professional Left Podcast from "Flyover Country, Illinois" --- are what make it fun.

Hear Digby discuss the GOP's "Bizarro World alternet universe" and the "big orange elephant in the room"! Hear Driftglass explain the "Doomsday machine with no off switch" and "the smelly wet sock of the mainstream media"! Also, Doug Burgum!

To paraphrase Haley last night, hearing us today may help you "feel a little bit dumber." I'd tell you more, but that would ruin all the fun...and most of the dumbness! Enjoy!...

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If you had "Hurricane in Southern California" on your Climate Crisis 2023 Bingo card, please come on up to accept your prize. Details on that on today's BradCast, along with a whole bunch of other stuff we've had to set aside of late, thanks to the now 91 criminal felony charges being faced by our corrupt and disgraced former President. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the stories covered today that (largely) have nothing to do with felony indictments...

• Hurricane Hilary spins up suddenly off the coast of Mexico and is now gaining strength amid an El Nino. The storm is said to be heading north to make what could be an "exceedingly rare" landfall over the next few days somewhere here in Southern California or along the Baja Peninsula before moving up and into Arizona --- if you believe scientists who are experts in this sort of thing.

• The gerrymandered Republican state legislature in North Carolina on Wednesday overrode vetoes by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to enact new laws that are unspeakable cruel to, among others, transgender children. If you are unaware, we explain exactly why these types of laws --- now adopted by 22 GOP-controlled states (though being challenged in court in most of them) --- are so awful and cruel. That is, unless you are a Republican, like those who stole control of the NC legislature, who believe Big Government should intercede between doctors and patients and that so-called "parental rights" should also be overruled by Big Government autocratic fiat.

• Speaking of autocracy, gerrymanders and Big Government Republicans now dictating to small, local government and voters...the morally and ethically broken GOP-controlled state legislature in Texas has recently passed a law to oust the chief election official in Harris County (Houston) --- and only in Harris County --- just months before upcoming municipal elections in the state's largest and most Democratic-leaning County. A state judge this week found the new law in violation of the Lone Star State's constitution. But, just hours later, the state put that ruling on hold by appealing it to the TX Supreme Court (all Republican). The November elections are now just weeks away and, unless something changes quickly, will apparently be run by the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector who has zero experience running elections and had nothing to do with the months-long planning for the one where early voting is set to begin next month.

• In far more encouraging news about autocracy, gerrymandering and, in this case, democracy, we head to the great state of Wisconsin. On August 1, Justice Janet Protasiewicz became the state Supreme Court's newest member after being elected earlier this year. Her landslide (for Wisconsin) 11-point victory in April means that liberals now hold a majority on the state's High Court for the first time in about 15 years. On August 2, a group of petitioners filed with the state Supremes to not only force new, fair legislative maps for the state's House and Senate for the first time in more than a decade, but also for emergency elections next year for all members of the state Senate, many of whom will not otherwise face reelection until 2026 despite occupying seats that petitioners argue are held only thanks to the GOP's unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. BRAD BLOG legal analyst Ernie Canning wrote about this challenge to the state's illicit, entrenched legislative majorities this week and the potentially very good news it represents for Badger State voters. Just after airtime today, however, he updated his article with...well, some more good news but also...some troubling news about the gerrymandered GOP's new scheme to undermine democracy, the rule of law, the state constitution and state voters with impeachment proceedings against Protasiewicz in hopes of stealing back the Court to hold onto their entrenched, corrupt state legislative majorities. (See Ernie's UPDATE today on that story for more details.)

• Then, a bit of listener mail in response to my apparently controversial suggestions of late that Donald Trump may very well not be on the general election ballot by November of next year.

• And, finally, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report with updates on the horrific fires on Maui and in Canada, but some very encouraging news about President Biden and the Democrats' landmark climate law, signed one year ago this week, which is already resulting in a clean energy manufacturing, construction and jobs boom in the U.S. --- and even overseas!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Surge of global heat, fire and floods shatter records from North America to Antarctica; Extreme heat in Europe killed at least 61,000 people last year; Biden's Inflation Reduction Act already reducing U.S. emissions; PLUS: Torrential rains trigger catastrophic floods in U.S. Northeast and Europe... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Rough years ahead as new El Nino spikes global temps, disasters; Disasters daily? Welcome to our 'new normal'; Disaster towns: Victims of environmental catastrophes — and Americans’ short attention spans; Toxic slime hits Florida's Lake Okeechobee again; Study says drinking water from nearly half of US faucets contains potentially harmful chemicals; Another major insurance company limits new homeowners insurance in California; EPA: common cleaning product chemical poses cancer threat; U.S. carbon emissions fall for first time in Biden era...PLUS: Biden announces $650 million to plug orphaned oil and gas wells ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Blackouts and deadly storms slam troubled Texas grid, amid early extreme heat wave; Another insurer ditches Florida as hurricane season gets underway; U.S. wind and solar energy hit major new milestone; PLUS: United Nations adopts first-ever treaty to protect marine life on the high seas... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): What you should know about buying a used EV; Brazil seizes world's biggest illegal shark fin consignment; Offshore wind foes in New Jersey gathering force legally and politically; Sweltering heat, power cuts in Northern India as death toll climbs; Biden announces $600 million in climate investments during California trip; US Government toughens rules on chemicals used to break up oil slicks; Power companies spend millions to fight Maine’s proposed non-profit utility; Sharks are at much greater risk of extinction than previously thought... PLUS: Inside the black box of Amazon returns... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast, we continue our focus on next Tuesday's critical midterm elections by picking things up, somewhat, from our conversation on yesterday's program. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

We were joined yesterday by longtime election and voting system expert Eddie Perez to discuss, among other things, what he has been writing about as the "manufactured chaos" that Republicans are creating to wreak havoc in the 2022 elections.

Today, we dive into broader details of that organized, manufactured chaos program that is emerging as a national strategy by the GOP to create enough havoc around the country to allow them a patina of "evidence" with which to challenge results of election outcomes they don't like.

A number of seemingly disparate efforts are actually now emerging as of a piece with a national strategy that you (and the Democrats and the media) need to know about before it all comes crashing down at once amid chaotic smoke and mirrors on Election Day and thereafter.

This is clearly an effort that echoes the less coordinated post-election chaos of 2020. Many of the same players are involved, including corrupt Trump attorneys John Eastman and Cleta Mitchell, as well as his convicted former aide Steve Bannon, the laughable billionaire pillow guy Mike Lindell, not to mention those in the far-right political media set to help execute the strategy as if it is legitimate, from Tucker Carlson on down.

The hope, as Josh Kovensky outlines at TPM today, is to sow the seeds of enough chaos to be able to create court cases and "thousands of sworn affidavits" (sound familiar?) to "credibly" point to (false) claims of "fraud" in virtually any election around the country next week, if and when they don't win it. "The chaos is the point," he writes.

We pull many of these threads together on today's program. One example is the seemingly isolated case of the campaign manager for Maryland's white nationalist Republican candidate for Attorney General who directed supporters at a rally last weekend to vote next Tuesday "as late in the day as possible," explaining that, "If everyone could stand in long, long lines at 6 o’clock, that would actually help us."

Then there are the door-to-door canvassers --- organized in part by folks like Eastman, Bannon, Lindell, Mitchell and others --- who, according to a Reuters report today, have been active in at least 23 states. They are dressing as if they are government officials --- sometimes armed and with badges --- intimidating voters with questions about who lives in their house, what their voting record is, etc. They appear to be collecting information to use to challenge voters on Election Day at the polls and/or in the post-election period, as required to create enough chaos to offer the appearance of fraud and/or uncertainty in the legitimacy of election results. And, yes, Fox "News" and the rest will be standing by to report all of these false accusations as if they are real.

Forewarned is forearmed, as they say. It's important that you --- not to mention the Democratic Party and everyone at legitimate media outlets --- understand what is going on before the fog of chaotic election war overwhelms all of us beginning next Tuesday.

In a not unrelated story today, we noted yesterday that AP has found more than 100 election lawsuits have already been brought this year related to the 2022 elections. Most have been filed by Republicans in efforts to make voting more difficult. We detailed several of those cases yesterday (in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada). Today we discuss one filed in Illinois that seeks to invalidate lawful absentee ballots that are cast on or before Election Day but do not arrive until afterward, in the two week period allowed by state law. A Republican Congressman is suing to block the counting of those votes, even though they are lawfully cast ballots that could include tens of thousands cast by members of the U.S. military stationed overseas. The complaint was originally filed in May of this year. But the Trump-appointed federal judge overseeing the case has yet to rule on it, for some reason, with Election Day less than a week away. Chaos in waiting.

Also, since we quickly waved at these Trump accountability stories at the top of today's show, some links for more deets for ya:

• A judge has appointed an independent monitor to oversee Trump Organization finances in the civil fraud suit filed by NY A.G. Letitia James against Trump, his company and his three oldest kids.
• The NY criminal tax fraud case against the Trump Organization is now under way.
• Top Trump aide Kash Patel has been granted immunity to testify against him before a federal grand jury probing the documents Trump stole upon leaving the White House.
• Trump settled the lawsuit against him for ordering his security goons to beat up protesters in front of Trump Tower in 2015, as jury selection was underway in the case.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with a whole bunch of climate related stories both good and bad as winter is coming...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Biden EPA opens civil rights probe into Jackson, MS' water crisis; Big insurance companies begin to back away from Big Oil: PLUS: BMW to build massive E.V. battery plant in U.S. --- Republicans who voted against incentives take credit... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Only 5 percent of plastic waste generated by US last year was recycled, report says; Secret files suggest chemical giant feared weedkiller’s link to Parkinson’s disease; Russia is destroying water/power infrastructure in Ukraine; Utilities sticking with fossil fuels despite climate pledges; How coal producers legally dodge cleanup obligations; Will new UK PM Sunak rebuild green agenda torn up by Truss?; More than half of bird species in the U.S. are in decline; Deforestation slowed last year, but not enough to meet climate goals; New European pipelines are hydrogen ready... PLUS: Inside the fantastical, pragmatic quest to make "hybrid" meat.... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Florida residents face the catastrophic damage and death toll of Hurricane Ian; Community specifically designed for climate resilience passes Ian's test; President Biden pledges timely, full aid for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Fiona; PLUS: Next on the U.S. Supreme Court's chopping block: the Clean Water Act... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Deep State of Denial: Far right furiously rationalizing Hurricane Ian; Ian exposes messy politics of disaster spending; Pakistan disease outbreaks after floods spur calls for crisis plan; Carbon capture project faces local pushback in Louisiana; Free shipping isn't free for everyone; The EV boom is about to begin - does the U.S. have the power to charge it?; California suffers driest 3 years on record, with no end in sight... PLUS: Memories of the end of the last ice age, from those who were there.... and much, MUCH more! ...

Like it or not, we're back on today's BradCast after a much-needed week off! And, as it turns out, we've got plenty to talk about. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among the huge number of stories covered on today's show, as we try to get caught up with both what we missed and what's still unraveling today...

• It's hot here in Los Angeles. Really hot. A record heat wave (in both intensity and duration) now stretches from Southern California all the way up into Canada. And, no, it is not normal. (Or at least it didn't used to be.)

• It's also not normal for Mississippi's capital city of Jackson to have no water for drinking, bathing, flushing or even fighting fires. But it was predictable. That's what happens when you lower taxes and defer maintenance on critical infrastructure for decades before a warming climate dumps tons of rain to knock your water systems offline entirely. Now the state's Republican Governor (who has been instrumental in deferring that maintenance), is discussing privatizing the water system. As of Sunday, in any event, water pressure is finally returning to residents after a full week without, and about a month of boil water notices prior to the outage.

• Some good news following Labor Day: Public approval of labor unions, at 71% of the American people, is now the highest it has been since 1965, according to Gallup. That's a 7-point spike in their pre-Labor Day survey since the pandemic began and a more than 21-point jump since 2009. And, as we discuss, that's all good news for both union workers and non-union workers alike!

• A judge in New Mexico has ordered Cuoy Griffin, co-founder of Cowboys for Trump and an elected Otero County Commissioner, immediately removed from his post for violation of the U.S. Constitution's "Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause". Griffin, who was convicted of participating in Trump's January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, is the first public official to be removed from office since 1869 under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

• There is new evidence out of Coffee County, Georgia today --- including security camera surveillance video gathered via a federal lawsuit against Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger to block use of his unverifiable touchscreen voting systems --- revealing that rightwing MAGA Trump supporters lied about unlawfully breaching and making copies of the County's voting system software after the 2020 election. The long-running lawsuit was filed by Coalition for Good Governance founder Marilyn Marks, a regular guest on this program. She originally broke the Coffee County voting system software breach story on this show some months ago, along with detailing Raffensperger's clumsy, months-long efforts to cover-up of the entire boondoggle. More details on that story coming soon!

• In the second-to-last primary day of the midterm election season, voters in Massachusetts are selecting party nominees for the contest to succeed the state's popular, outgoing Republican Governor in the otherwise liberal-leaning state. As in Maryland in July, the choice on the GOP side in MA is between a Trump-backed election denier and an otherwise normal-ish Republican candidate. In MD, the Trump-backed loon won, likely handing Governor's mansion to the Democrats this fall. Will the same thing happen in MA? Tune in tomorrow!

• While we were out, Alaska's embarrassing former Republican Governor Sarah Palin, did not win the Special Election for the state's only U.S. House seat. After a Ranked Choice Voting election featuring two Republicans and one Democrat, the Democrat, Mary Peltola was elected to fill the seat occupied for nearly 50 years by the late Republican Rep. Don Young. She'll serve the rest of Young's term through the end of the year and becomes the first Alaska Native elected to Congress. The same three candidates, and one other, will square off in another RCV election in November for a full term beginning in January. Hopefully Palin will continue her losing streak.

• Also, while we were out, the President of the United States found it necessary to offer a prime-time address to warn of the rising menace posed to democracy itself by Donald Trump and his supporters. Joe Biden was, of course, both correct and accurate in his remarks outside of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, highlighting the fact that democracy itself will be on the ballot this fall and the threat that demagogues from the right now pose to our nation. "What’s happening in our country today is not normal," he said, though corporate media outlets seemed to have a tremendously difficult time simply pointing out how Biden's assertions were demonstrably true. By way of just one example, after a Trump rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend, in which an invited speaker discussed support for January 6 insurrectionists, including her nephew, who is literally a Hitler fan, USA Today's Francesca Chambers actually said: "President Biden and former President Trump are having some difficulties when it comes to optical issues both could have avoided." (!!!)

• Finally today, some thoughts on the Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida who, on Monday, issued an absurd ruling ordering a Special Master to review thousands of pages of highly classified and other stolen government documents obtained by the FBI during its federal court-ordered search of Donald Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago last month. The ruling by Judge Aileen Cannon --- to appoint a Special Master to examine the documents for both executive privilege (which hasn't been claimed by Trump, and can only be asserted by Biden) and for attorney-client privilege --- was ridiculous and absurd on several counts and yet still somewhat less of an outrage than many have characterized it to be over the past 24 hours. We explain why.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Inflation Reduction Act's landmark climate action is now the law of the land; Western states hit with unprecedented water cuts; Massachusetts passes sweeping climate and energy bill; PLUS: California proposes big changes amid historic drought... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Hundreds of thousands drop flood insurance as rates rise; Court clears path for Biden oil and gas leasing pause; Judge halts federal coal leasing; Five million in southwest China face power cuts in heatwave; 20 years of data confirm forest fires are getting worse; EU food companies break their plastics promises; San Francisco's salt marsh restoration a stunning success; Ants can be better than pesticides in growing crops; Major cities blighted by nitrogen dioxide pollution... PLUS: Climate change is a secret driver of inflation... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast: We are now learning even more about what Trump didn't bother to tell his followers when he played the victim card on Monday following the FBI's search at his Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida. It's becoming difficult to avoid the pretty clear conclusion that he is now simply hoping to foster political violence as the walls, the truth, and accountability close in on him. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

First up today, here's the original video version of the Lincoln Project's amusing new ad, hoping to get inside Trump's head and make him wonder who must be the reported "insider" that tipped off investigators about stolen national security documents Trump was believed to have been keeping at Mar-a-Lago.

Before diving fully back into the latest news following Monday's Mar-a-Lago search and the reasons for it, we've got just a bit of encouraging news for Democrats and democracy lovers amid these decidedly UNconventional times. Today, a brief look at polling numbers trending toward Dems in this November's mid-terms, particularly for the U.S. Senate, and how best to make sense of that data.

Then, after days of media speculation and parroting of misleading claims sourced largely Trump and his attorneys, some clearer, more plausible and better sourced details are finally beginning to emerge from several outlets regarding what actually happened at Mar-a-Lago, and why the FBI decided they needed to obtain a warrant from a federal court to execute their search of Trump's property.

CNN sums much of it up well. But, long story short, after days of Trump and his gullible minions (including, shamefully enough, a bunch of top elected Republican officials) whining that the DoJ should have first taken less aggressive and invasive steps to get at whatever they were looking for, it turns out, DoJ very much already did!

Following a criminal referral from the National Archives in January, charging that incredibly sensitive national security documents had been stolen by Trump when he left office, a grand jury subpoenaed him for those documents in June. Top DoJ officials also visited Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump and his attorneys around the same time to get the documents back. But while some were reportedly returned, others were not, according to both an insider and security surveillance video from inside Mar-a-Lago, reportedly turned over by the Trump Organization.

Documents that were withheld from the National Archives, and said to be of a highly classified nature, were also reportedly stored in the unsecured basement at Trump's South Florida resort.

All of that, as Trump has been out-and-out hoping to scam the public and his supporters (I know, shocking!) by falsely portraying himself as the victim of outrageous "prosecutorial misconduct," "the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats." All part of little more than a "political witch hunt" which has resulted in the U.S. having become a "broken, Third-World Country."

Except, if he wanted to prove any of that to be true, as we discussed yesterday with former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason, he could have simply released the warrant he was given by the FBI on Monday, detailing what they were looking for and what crimes they believe may have occurred, along with a full inventory that he was given, listing the documents and other materials that the FBI retrieved from his residence.

Trump could have done all of that. He did none of it.

On Thursday, however, Attorney General Merrick Garland offered brief remarks to announce that DoJ has now asked a federal judge to unseal the warrant, while declaring his support the men and women of the DoJ and FBI who have now been mercilessly targeted by Team Trump over the past week.

The selective release of at least part of the warrant by Trump's attorneys, including the name of the federal magistrate judge who signed it, has resulted in anti-Semitic slurs and calls for extreme violence against the judge and his family. Some have even been posted to Trump's own social media outlet.

It's difficult to believe that political violence isn't the whole point of what the disgraced former President is now doing, as the walls continued to close in on him. An attempted attack at an FBI field office in Cincinnati, Ohio today, by a man with body armor, a nail-gun and an AR-15, would seem to underscore that. (Shortly after airtime, it was reported that the man, injured in a gunfight as he fled but still on the run as of airtime, had been killed by authorities. Also, that the man had attended Trump's January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.)

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the deadly effects of our climate emergency quickly worsen around the world; elected Republican officials in the U.S. are found to have been conspiring to punish private companies working to curb carbon emissions; and at least one country with a long history of denialism among its rightwing elected class (other than the U.S.), is finally getting on board to cut greenhouse gas emissions after voters recently elected non-deniers to take control of its government...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: South Korea the latest victim of climate-intensified deadly flash floods; July was one of the hottest ever recorded; Republican state treasurers coordinating to block climate action by private companies; PLUS: Mexico declares state of emergency over intensifying persistent drought... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The biggest climate ghouls of the 2022 midterms; House starts process for climate bill passage; Rainwater everywhere on Earth unsafe to drink due to 'forever chemicals', study finds; In Amazon, a UN development agency partners with oil industry to quash opposition; Europe's energy crisis may get a lot worse; Flash floods overwhelm Denver, D.C. Metro; EPA launches civil rights probes of Texas air quality regulator; Conceding to Manchin, U.S. climate bill exempts most oil industry from methane fees... PLUS: Deepwater Horizon spill oil residue still present, 10 years later... and much, MUCH more! ...

With the bipartisan January 6 Committee having postponed today's hearing, we take the opportunity on today's BradCast to spend some time rebutting the disgraced former President's supposed rebuttal to the two damning hearings held to date. But, of course, we've got much more as well, including election results from Tuesday and evidence of both voting system problems and bad faith elected MAGA officials already trying to disenfranchise 2022 voters. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

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

• An error caused by paper jams during ballot scanning on Election Day at the precincts on the state's computer tabulators in Iowa during their June 7 primaries has reportedly resulted in a whole bunch of recounts across the state. Cedar Rapid's KCRG cites an email from the Sec. of State's office which has lead to those recounts, in hopes of reconciling the number of ballots misreported by the scanners as cast with the number of voters who actually signed in to vote.

• Noteworthy election results from four states which held primaries on Tuesday (Maine, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina) and one (Texas) which purposely held a low-turnout U.S. Special Election yesterday, instead of at the same time as their regular primaries in March or primary runoffs in May. While we cover a lot of Tuesday's races, and why they matter (or don't), the most disturbing one is likely the Secretary of State's race in Nevada, where a 2020 election denialist by the name of Jim Marchant has apparently won a 38% plurality to become the GOP's nominee to become the critical swing-state's chief election official in advance of the 2024 election.

• The dangers of an election denier like Marchant, who served as one of the state GOP's fake electors in 2020, and who has said he wouldn't have certified Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump that year had he been SoS at the time, is a stark warning of what lies ahead. But we're already seeing the dangers of brain-poisoned MAGA Mobsters in positions of elected authority. The three-person County Commission in a very right-leaning rural county in New Mexico, is refusing to certify results from their June 7 primary. Even though votes are cast on hand-marked paper ballots across the state, the County Commission unanimously voted against certification of primary results, citing distrust of the County's digital ballot scanners made by Dominion Voting. They have no evidence of fraud, which might otherwise allow a court to order the hand-count they are seeking. They just don't trust the results in the County where Trump won 62% of the vote in 2020. The Republican County Clerk is furious and the Democratic Sec. of State is now suing the County Commission ahead of this Friday's deadline for County certification. Expect much more of this in the months and years ahead. We've long warned about exactly this type of fallout from our irresponsible rush to the use secret vote casting and counting systems made by private vendors and the avenues it opens for opportunists to claim fraud without any evidence of same.

• On Monday night, after the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and other efforts by Trump to steal the 2020 election, our corrupt former President issued a 12-page rebuttal [PDF] to the Committee's first two hearings. We rebut his dumb rebuttal today. It leans heavily on tired, long-ago debunked nonsense, such as his lead in some swing-states on Election Night "inexplicably" disappearing (after heavily-Republican polling place ballots were quickly tallied before the arduous task of opening and verifying and counting heavily-Democratic vote-by-mail ballots one-by-one) and how thousands attended his rallies, while Biden chose not to hold super-spreader events during the worst pandemic in 100 years. Much of Trump's (ghost-writer's) claims were already debunked during the Committee hearings to date, which he seems to presume that his supporters didn't watch or are too dumb to understand.

  Trump's ghost-writer spends most of the rebuttal ink citing what is laughably described as "indisputable proof" of "Ballot Trafficking" presented in the repeatedly debunked 2000 Mules movie. That's a pretend documentary film created by a long-discredited GOP "election integrity" group named True the Vote and a rightwing activist named Dinesh D'Souza who actually pleaded guilty himself to several federal election fraud crimes before he was later pardoned by Trump.

  As noted, the film has been repeatedly debunked, including by us, several times by now. Months before it was even released, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) and FBI concluded the group's claims about cell phone data purporting to reveal evidence of "ballot harvesting" by "mules" of tens or hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots cast in drop-boxes, in fact, reveals no crimes at all. A GA state Board of Elections investigation after the movie's release found that supposed "ballot mules" in Atlanta, shown via security camera footage in the film, were just regular voters legally casting their own ballot and those of direct family members. None of the "mules" are ever seen in the film visiting a drop-box or multiple boxes more than once.

  But, perhaps the most stinging rebuttal came from Trump's own Attorney General, Bill Barr this week. During sworn testimony to the J6 Committee, shared by the panel on Monday, Barr laughed out loud at even the mention of the name of the film, before going on to explain how he found it to be "singularly unimpressive," "indefensible," and that it failed to "establish widespread illegal harvesting." That, of course, is a long way from the "indisputable proof" Trump's dumb rebuttal claimed it to be.

• Finally, speaking of the House J6 Committee, Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney released a video teaser on Tuesday for its next upcoming hearing scheduled for Thursday. This one will focus on the pressure Trump placed on Vice President Mike Pence to help him steal the 2020 election by tossing out valid Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021. Cheney's teaser video includes testimony from one of Trump's top White House attorneys who says he warned outside lawyer John Eastman, who developed the scheme for Pence to toss out the votes, to "get a great f'ing criminal defense lawyer," adding "you're gonna need it."

Special Coverage of tomorrow's J6 Hearing, of course, on tomorrow's BradCast!...

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