On today's BradCast, the news remains largely grim --- we'd expect no less during a global pandemic --- but there continue to be signs of light, way, way...way down at the end of the tunnel. For many in the journalism industry, however, the tunnel may be far too long and dark to make it out to the other side. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up, thanks to an entirely dysfunctional, entirely failed Presidential Administration, things that should already be getting better --- the easy stuff, like testing, personal protective equipment and ventilator shortages --- shamefully, do not appear to be getting better in many parts of the country. The death toll in the U.S. has now officially surpassed both China's and our own on 9/11.

But we see more and more signs each day that at least physical distancing appears to be working as hoped --- slowly, but with unmistakable progress in locations where it is being dutifully practiced. But there remains a long way to go, and a dark tunnel to get through until we see that full light.

With nobody on the federal level leading the way, states and cities continue to do so as best as they can. But it is difficult if not impossible for them, or the news media, to know what to even expect on a macro level as the economy heads into completely unknown territory. According to at least one new economic analysis from the St. Louis Fed, unemployment rates could end up dwarfing even the highest levels of the Great Depression, much less the Great Recession.

And with that cheery news, we're joined today by longtime media industry expert CRAIG SILVERMAN, BuzzFeed News' Media Editor, to discuss the troubling outlook for independent local media as well corporate media amid the coronavirus pandemic. The industry is one of the first to feel the brunt of a nearly national shutdown. Ironically enough, the readership for many news outlets has "skyrocketed across the board" online, he says. "People are hungry for the latest quality information about what's going on with the coronavirus, and they're going to news organizations to get that information."

At the same time, however, ad revenue has collapsed and the same outlets across the country (and world) seeing a spike in readership are being forced to shut down the print sides of their publications, lay off journalists, and otherwise scale back reporting at a time that good local journalism is needed more than ever.

A number of alt-weeklies have already gone under, as their ad revenue is based almost entirely on industries like restaurants, bars, movie theaters, concerts and live events that have all been forced to shut down. "The alternative weeklies are kind of canaries in the coal mine. A lot of alt-weeklies have already gone out of business in Canada and the United States," Silverman warns. "A lot of the very small newspapers, especially that are part of chains, or had debt, they may not be able to come back."

"Now, we've got some of the biggest newspaper chains in the US, like Gannett [publisher of USA Today and more than a dozen other major papers], yesterday they announced they're doing unpaid newsroom furloughs for one week a month. Los Angeles Times is significantly cutting back on its print sections Monday to Friday. Other newspapers are getting rid of print editions," he tells me.

Silverman explains what one journalism industry analyst is describing as a "full extinction event" for many outlets, and the millions of dollars in lost revenue for some of the largest ones, thanks to a bizarre ad blocking scheme that some major brands are instituting on coronavirus related news stories.

We also discuss what you, dear readers and listeners, can do to help. "This is the moment for you to pay for the media that you care about," he says. "It's about people deciding for themselves what media they want to support. It may not be a big national outlet. If you have money right now --- and that is a big 'if', a lot of people are struggling --- but if you have money and you can afford maybe $5, $10, $15 a month, this is the time to stand up and show that support. A lot of people in newsrooms who are getting laid off, furloughed, who are getting pay cuts, this can make a difference if enough people step up and start to do it."

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report as Trump's EPA, even in the middle of an unprecedented health crisis, has now officially reversed landmark Obama-era mileage standards for cars that, in addition to combating climate change and lowering gas prices, would have also helped prevent some 1,400 unnecessary American deaths per year. But that's not all the Administration is doing to undermine the planet's climate and the health of Americans while most folks are looking the other way, and as the plastic industry is hoping to find profit in a pandemic...

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On today's BradCast: We've got a boatload of news and more listener calls from the Coronaverse today, as Republicans continue to try and game this year's elections, even amid a global pandemic. (Priorities, ya know!) [Audio for today's show is posted below.]

We start with a quick review of some of the news from over the weekend, as Trump finally gave up the ghost on his idiotic threat of reopening the country on Easter (April 12), even though has no authority to reopen something that he hasn't closed in the first place. Instead, it appears he's finally heard the advice from his medical experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx that 100,000 to 200,000 Americans will die even "if we do things almost perfectly" and shut everything down (which we haven't yet in many places, though a number of additional states, under pressure, finally issued stay-at-home orders on Monday, including Arizona, Maryland and Virginia.) So Trump has reluctantly extended "federal guidance" to call for social distancing through the end of April for now.

But, there are a few glimpses of potentially good news --- as thin as the threads may be --- coming from South Korea, Seattle and California today, if otherwise grim case numbers and death continue to increase across the country and world. That "good news" finds that yes, social distancing does appear to be working. At least for now.

All of which underscores that this is likely to go on much longer than officials are currently making clear, or have any really plans for, particularly with absolutely nobody --- nobody --- steering the ship at the national level.

And, in turn, that underscores the importance of this year's Presidential election, as if Trump's appearance on Fox "News" this morning saying the quiet parts out loud didn't already give the game away. In complaining about the $4 billion that Democrats had hoped to include for improved security for running elections during a global pandemic in last week's $2.2 trillion stimulus/corporate bailout package, Trump told Fox: "They had things, levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." Well, there ya go. He just said out loud that if everyone was allowed to vote in this country, Republicans would be in big, big trouble. He gets something right every now and again, but its usually the things that he's not supposed to be saying.

New York, with the most concentrated health emergency and most cases in the nation right now, has finally postponed its planned April 28 Presidential primary to June 23. But, as Wisconsin Republicans are cool with the state's plan to hold its election next week (April 7!), and as Georgia's Republican Sec. of State has come up with a scheme to pretend to be doing the right thing by sending absentee ballot applications to "active" voters (not all voters, just ones he deems as active), Ohio's GOP legislature and Governor aren't even trying to hide their contempt for democracy.

Despite OH's Republican Sec. of State Frank LaRose stating clearly that "No date before June 2nd is logistically possible" to hold Ohio's rescheduled primary, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill last week to hold it a month earlier on April 28. Moreover, LaRose's suggestion to send a postage-paid absentee ballot application to all registered voters was also ignored. Instead, the legislation --- now signed by Governor Mike DeWine --- requires the Sec. of State to send a postcard to every voter letting them know how to get an absentee application themselves (and, unconstitutionally, find postage needed to mail it back in.) Furthermore, all of that has to happen, plus ballots must get to those voters with time to send it back postmarked by April 27. Good luck Ohio voters! It wouldn't be an election year with a voting disaster in the Buckeye State! That, even after the Republican Sec. of State has already stated that plan is not "logistically possible"! In short, Ohio is demonstrating to the country how NOT to reschedule elections during a pandemic...unless your actually hope, like the President's, is to keep "levels of voting" as low as possible in hopes of helping Republicans win elections. Voting Rights groups in Ohio: Start your lawsuits!

Finally, we open up the phones to stay-at-homers to say hello and for any good news stories they may have to offer. We find a "Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" instead, a bit of good news, and some much less than good news. But we hope you find it to be a good show nonetheless, to help keep you company at home while become a smarter world citizen in the bargain...

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On today's BradCast: Avery important lesson from the coronavirus crisis for progressives and for all Americans that I hope we are all able to remember once this crisis has finally ended. [Audio link to full show is posted at end of article. Please click it!]

Britain's 71-year old Prince Charles, 71-year old Rock-and-Roll Hall of Famer Jackson Browne and 81-year old playwright Terrence McNally all tested positive. The prolific playwright succumbed on Tuesday in Florida. They were all able to get tested for coronavirus. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Americans still cannot. Add it to the list of national disgraces we are collectively enduring as we stay-at-home as much as possible in hopes of slowing the spread to keep our medical system from becoming overwhelmed.

That said, Senate Democratic and Republican leaders have come to an agreement on another emergency spending bill to address a bit more of the growing fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic. The bill, if allowed to pass in the Senate by four Republicans now blocking it, and if House Democrats can pass a similarly acceptable bill, will cost a record $2 trillion. That's half the size of the nation's annual $4 trillion annual federal budget, and many experts agree, there will need to be much more spending hereafter.

And yet, nobody --- not Republicans or Democrats in the Senate, House of Representatives or White House --- seems to be complaining that we don't have the money to pay for it, or that we must cut somewhere else or raise taxes to be able to afford it. It is as if, as our guest today, Stony Brook University Professor of Economics and leading authority on Modern Monetary Theory STEPHANIE KELTON notes, we are able to just "conjure into existence, in a matter of days, a couple of trillion dollars," enough money for the largest spending bill in the history of the country. And, as it turns out, she is right!

As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) noted recently in response to the sudden disappearance of so-called "Deficit Hawks" on Capitol Hill: "It's actually a fascinating progressive moment, because what it's shown is that all of these issues have never been about 'how are you going to pay for it?' It's never been about whether we have the capacity to do these things. All of these excuses that we have been given as to why we can't treat people humanely have suddenly gone up in smoke. And what has been revealed is that all of these issues were really about a lack of political will and who you deemed worthy to be in an emergency or not."

Kelton, the former Chief Economist for the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, has been trying to make these points of late in Twitter threads, New York Times op-eds, and her upcoming book The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy. As she tells me today, "Congress will always find the funds to accomplish the things that it considers a priority. If that's tax cuts, then that's the priority, and the money will be there. If it's wars, that's the priority. If it's dealing with a global pandemic, then that suddenly becomes a priority."

She laments that Democrats, over months on the Presidential campaign trail, have not been able to educate the American public about these facts and how difficult it has now become --- after years of phony claims from politicians (of both parties) that the U.S. was going broke or that government should be run by the same fiscal rules that govern households and businesses --- "to disabuse people of these myths that we have heard from our politicians, pundits and reporters."

She argues "There is a time and a place for offsets. It's not a free lunch", but Bernie Sanders' call for "canceling $81 billion of medical debt is nothing. It's everything to the people who have medical debt. But from the perspective of the federal budget, it's practically a rounding error, it's so trivial. We could have done that and not offset it," she says. "The federal government's finances don't work like ours. They're not subject to the same constraints as a household or a private company. Once you get your head around that, a lot of other things follow."

"A year ago, could we have just done free college or Medicare For All or whatever? The answer is yes. Congress can write and pass any bill it chooses, period. The risk, though, is that if you don't include offsets, and you're simply authorizing these huge spending bills left and right, at some point you're going to eat up all of the fiscal space left in the economy. In other words, it's going to become inflationary. So there is a time and a place for offsets." That time, apparently, is not now, however. And she hopes that after this emergency finally passes, enough Americans will remember what happened here, how easy it was to "find" all the money when it was needed, to finally do away with the notion that endless wars and corporate subsidies and tax cuts for the wealthy are the only things we can afford to spend money on to "promote the general welfare" of the American people.

We discuss all of that and much more today, including details on what the proposed Phase III emergency coronavirus spending bill will and won't pay for, and the good news that America's Governors --- both Democratic and Republican --- seem to be rejecting our corrupt, man-child President when it comes to his dangerous coronavirus idiocy.

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After a glitchy start with a skeleton crew at KFPK in Los Angeles, today's BradCast was a reminder, for me at least, of why radio over our public airwaves is so essential, especially now. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

After a few news headlines on the latest from our horrifying global pandemic --- more state Governors, thankfully, issuing "stay-at-home" orders; more coronavirus cases and deaths in the U.S. and around the world; more screwups from our imbecilic President regarding his "great friends" in Congress who have now contracted COVID-19; more fights in Congress about a $1.8 trillion relief package meant to save the economy and the American people (or, if left to the Republicans, to save Donald Trump and their favored companies, unless Dems continue to hold strong and not fall for another bailout con); and my own suggested Bipartisan Stimulus Relief Plan (the one that should be adopted immediately) --- we open the phones to callers who have been enduring "stay-at-home" orders now for days in California, as well as elsewhere around the country.

I thought today would be a good moment to touch base with folks to see how everyone is doing, how they are holding up in these circumstances. Right now, radio and radio stations are considered an essential service as part of our federal Critical Communications Infrastructure (a designation we take seriously.) So we hope to stay on the air as long as possible, with as much live radio as we can.

Today's callers help underscore why I believe that's so important. Among the many great calls today:

• The 80-year old from L.A. who lives alone with his dogs and is having trouble getting food for them;
• The blind caller from Lake Elsinore who is "terrified";
• The caller from Minneapolis who felt he has never had to lock his doors at night, until now;
• The millennial (and former associate producer of our show!) who reports that few in Atlanta outside her window seem to be following the Democratic Mayor's "stay-at-home" order, as the state's wingnut Republican Governor refuses to issue one;
• The woman who believes we should call it the "Stable Genius Virus";
• And many others, including the last caller of the day who....well, we'll let you listen, but it's a bit heartbreaking, and I wish I could have said more, though the show was ending and I had few words to help, I fear...

Hopefully, we can all come together with love at this difficult and extraordinary moment of necessary physical distancing, as opposed to social distancing... And thank you for taking the time to join us for The BradCast during this unprecedented time in history...

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On today's BradCast: Governors in California, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania are among the first to issue statewide "stay-at-home" orders, though more are likely to do so very soon as the nation begins to self-quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic. But is it possible, legal or Constitutional that Donald Trump could exploit this serious public health crisis to postpone or cancel this November's critical Presidential election? We gets some legal and Constitutional answers to that question today and the answers are both comforting and not comforting at all. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

But first, CA Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a letter to Donald Trump, warned that, without mitigation efforts, including help from the federal government, as many as 56% of the Golden State's population (or 25.5 million people here) could become infected over the next two months.

At the same time, a shortage of personal protective equipment for health care workers has led to price-gouging by the nation's medical supply companies, according to a GA healthcare CEO who says he is being charged $7 a piece for critical masks that usually cost .58 cents each. But why do we even have a shortage, given that we've known about this matter for months and Trump has now supposedly invoked the Defense Production Act, allowing the federal government to commandeer manufacturing facilities to meet critical needs for the nation's security?

At the same time, just days after the Republican Party had been tarring the Democratic Party as "socialists", Republicans are now calling for major socialist giveaways to combat the COVID-19 crisis. In fact, Trump is even calling for the federal government to take ownership in private corporations that may soon be receiving yet another socialist bailout. That's right, according to the President, Republicans like him now support the very definition of socialism wherein the government takes control of the means of production.

Then again, based on the President's unhinged behavior at today's White House press briefing, which we share on the show, he may be losing track of reality even faster than previously.

All the while, states around the nation continue to postpone previously scheduled Presidential primary elections, with Connecticut and Indiana over the past 24 hours joining more than a half dozen states who have already done so. But, never mind the primaries. With a desperate, already-unbalanced President like Trump, would anybody be surprised if he attempted to invoke national emergency powers amid a global pandemic to try and cancel this November's Presidential election all together? And, if he wanted to, does either federal law or the U.S. Constitution allow him to do so?

Slate's ace legal and court reporter MARK JOSEPH STERN has been looking into that point which, he tells us, might have seemed crazy just a few weeks ago, but no longer. The short answer is no, Trump can't do it on his own, not without Congress agreeing. But there are enough "red" states with a mechanism for doing so that, under this Presidency, you'd be ill-advised to keep your guard down. He explains the no-longer-unimaginable circumstances that could occur.

He also details how the Trump Administration recently ordered immigration judges to remove CDC posters warning about the coronavirus epidemic from their courtrooms, as crowded detention centers become breeding grounds. Stern says that, at this point, with this crisis and some 50,000 jammed into crowded, unsanitary detention camps, "the entire system is in total disarray."

Stern has also been reporting of late on how it's not only the Executive Branch that has monumentally failed to take appropriate action for weeks to prevent the spread of the virus --- the Judicial Branch, headed up by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, has failed mightily on that score, as both courtrooms and prisons have turned into viral petri dishes over the past several weeks. "It is a mess, because the chief judge of every different district court is making these decisions on the fly," he tells me. "Unfortunately, people are still being exposed to this virus in federal courtrooms right now. "

But at least Roberts has cancelled oral arguments before his own Court this month, including cases regarding whether Trump must release his taxes to law enforcement officials and whether or not Presidential Electors in states across the country must, in fact, vote the way their state's have when those electors cast their lot with the Electoral College. That question --- if SCOTUS ever reconvenes and issues an opinion on it --- may play a key role in the question regarding the ability of this President to effectively cancel this year's Presidential election.

All of those issues, and many others today, in another don't-miss, news-packed BradCast!...

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To quote Donald Trump when he thought the cameras had stopped rolling after his disastrous Oval Office address last week: "Oooookaaay...." So, we are now living in a new world. For the time being. Millions are being instructed to stay home from work. Markets are tanking. Major states and cities are shutting down schools, restaurants, bars, clubs, theaters and casinos. Some are instituting full "stay at home" lock-down orders. And Congress is scrambling to pass emergency legislation to try and help displaced workers and families as the coronavirus crisis threatens to shut down the nation entirely for weeks, months or longer. All of this amidst a Presidential election under the most dangerously inept and dishonest Administration in the history of the nation.

On today's BradCast, we try to get you caught up with the unfolding, bizarre and disorienting mess that we are all going through together in hopes of "flattening the curve" of the rate of infections to try and ensure that the U.S. hospital system doesn't become overwhelmed with patients. Like you, we have no idea how this is supposed to work, but we're all working through it together, even as Trump literally told the nation's Governors today they are on their own in coming up with enough respirators and other medical equipment to keep their residents alive, and as he continues to lie to the country about the availability of testing and eventual arrival date of a vaccine (which is most likely more than a year from now, even as a single live test began today).

And, speaking of that Presidential election, states --- particularly those which are touchscreen-voting heavy, like Louisiana, Georgia and Ohio --- are beginning to announce postponements of their primary elections. Ohio's Governor has attempted to do so before tomorrow's planned election that was to be held along with Florida, Illinois and Arizona. But a state judge, late today (minutes ago, justt after we got off air) has now blocked the Republican Ohio Governor's attempt to postpone. So, full-on chaos for a change in the Buckeye State tonight. The other three big states (at least at this hour) are planning to go through with their own elections tomorrow, even as polling sites at senior citizen centers are requiring last-minute relocation and frequently-elderly poll workers are (justifiably) calling in to cancel.

Other states, such as New York are considering postponement, while Maryland considers moving to all-Vote-by-Mail primaries. More than a dozen states, such as Texas, do not even currently offer no-excuse absentee voting. That needs to change. [CORRECTION: I had initially cited Pennsylvania as one of those states that do not allow no-excuse absentee voting. In fact, no-excuse absentee voting was instituted late last year as part of a package of election reforms in the Keystone State. My apologies for the error!]

We cover all of that AND wave very briefly at Sunday's Presidential Debate (which we hope to revisit in a bit more detail soon - but we'll see) before opening the phones to check in with callers today, including one from Minneapolis who describes the situation there as dire, others from Southern California who wonder where the head of the CDC has disappeared to, and another who questions both the threat and infection numbers currently being reported. All of that and way too much more on today's BradCast...

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Six more states are voting today (Michigan, Washington, Missouri, Mississippi, Idaho, North Dakota). We'll have results tomorrow, as we're still trying to figure out who actually won and lost, in some cases, last week on Super Tuesday, particularly in Texas and California. Nonetheless, today, like last week, has already revealed more problems with electronic pollbooks that resulted in voters leaving without voting, and there is more likely trouble on the horizon in several states set to vote in the next several weeks. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

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

• A fire at Venezuela's National Electoral Council warehouse over the weekend has resulted in the destruction of 50,000 touchscreen voting machines and 582 computers. We swear we didn't do it! The unverifiable voting machines in question have been used during questionable past elections and are made by Venezuelan-based Smartmatic...the same company with a dodgy background of failed elections who also made the new touchscreen voting systems which failed so disastrously in Los Angeles County on Super Tuesday last week. But, again, we didn't do it!;

• Closer to home, voters today in St. Louis County --- Missouri's most populous --- were turned away from the polls for an hour or so this morning from at least 50 of the county's 400 polling places. Though St. Louis has finally moved to hand-marked paper ballots, they are using a print-on-demand system that uses electronic pollbooks (yes, more computers) to instruct the printers which ballot should be printed. Those e-pollbooks, apparently, were failing this morning until the company that makes them issued an update. In the meantime, there is also a manual print mode that pollworkers could have used to print ballots for voters when the e-pollbooks weren't working, but many appear to have not known that or just panicked and forgot. Also, in MO, Kansas City's African-American Mayor was turned away from the polls after his name was not found on the voting rolls. Later in the day, they figured out why;

• Both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden cancelled campaign rallies set for Ohio today (where early voting has already begun for next week's primaries in the Buckeye State), due to coronavirus concerns, in what may foreshadow still more trouble for this year's elections, including how to include enough hand-sanitizer for polling places, especially those which use touchscreens. (People can usually bring their own pens to polling places that use hand-marked paper ballots.) We may end up seeing Vote-by-Mail elections for the entire country this November if the virus continues to spread, despite the steady leadership of stable genius Donald Trump;

• Some good news for voters (finally!) out of Georgia today, as the state has reached a settlement with the Democratic party in federal court that requires voters be immediately notified about absentee ballots that are rejected by county officials due to perceived signature mismatch or some other infirmity, allowing them time to come in and cure the problem so their votes may still be counted;

• But there is also less good news out of Georgia, where last week's "good news story out of Georgia" was the fact that Athens-Clarke County's Board of Elections had voted to ditch the new, state-mandated unverifiable touchscreen voting systems for hand-marked paper ballots instead. The Board found that the touchscreens on the new Dominion ImageCast ballot marking devices (BMDs) were so large and bright that they violate voters constitutionally-mandated right to a secret ballot, as others could see how they were voting from 30 feet across the room, according to a related lawsuit filed in a separate GA county. But now, GA's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has called an emergency hearing in Athens, charging that the County's Board is violating state law by not using the new, unverifiable voting systems. Now why would he want do that?;

• Meanwhile, in Texas, ballot scans stored on 44 thumb-drives from the new Ballot Marking Device systems used for the first time during last week's Super Tuesday primaries in Dallas County apparently were not included in previously reported results. As many as 7,000 ballots could be missing from the current results. The County's Election Director was required to get permission from a court to "recount" the computer-marked ballots scanned in the county to include those previously left out of the count. A Dallas court, on Tuesday, gave permission to do so, but the order is limited to a computer-scan of the computer-marked paper ballots that were previously not included in last week's results;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news on the coronavirus and an oil price war, both affecting the stock market (and banks and fossil fuel-reliant communities) this week, a new troubling report on air pollution caused by fossil fuels, and some good news as New York state's disposable plastic bag ban finally kicks in...

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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Oil stocks tank due to coronavirus and a Saudi Arabian price war; Coronavirus economic disruption could infect banks and communities dependent on fossil fuel jobs; Outdoor air pollution takes three years off human lifespans; PLUS: New York State bans single use plastic bags... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Where Biden and Sanders diverge on climate change; The climate movement doesn’t know how to talk with union members about green jobs; 10-month deadline makes Netherlands a ‘test case’ for rapid decarbonization; Paris Agreement requires one coal unit to close every day until 2040; Oil executives tell 2020 Dem candidates that halting fossil fuel production would be 'criminal'; How America's shrinking cities can 'rightsize'; Pro-Trump climate denial group Heartland Institute lays off staff amid financial woes; Your plastic addiction is bankrolling Big Oil... PLUS: Coronavirus could halt the world’s emissions growth. Not that we should feel good about that.... and much, MUCH more! ...

Voting ground to a near halt on Super Tuesday in a number of states, most notably in major jurisdictions in Texas and California relying on electronic pollbooks and unverifiable computer touchscreen Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs). Who could have predicted it? Oh, yeah. We did. Over and over again on The BradCast. Not that many in the corporate media heeded our warnings. We know elections officials certainly didn't. [Audio link to show follows below.]

In Texas, the main problems seem to revolve around a lack of poll workers due to coronavirus fears and, most notably, a lack of voting machines for Democratic voters in many areas, since the Republican Party was unwilling to share their state-mandated even number of voting machines with voters from the other party. Obscene wait times as long as 6 or 7 hours to vote were reported in some locations in the Lone Star State.

In California, many counties did away with precinct based voting for the first time this year in favor of a Voting Center model. That meant that voters could cast their ballot at any of a smaller number of voting centers which took the place of community-based precincts. In Los Angeles County, for example, there were about 1,000 voting centers, compared with 5,000 precinct polling places in previous years. In order to accomplish this new paradigm, and allow voters same-day registration and party switching, computerized electronic pollbooks were used to check in voters. The systems check records against the state voter registration database in order to sign in voters before they can vote. But those computers had trouble in more than a dozen counties syncing up with the state database for some (still-unexplained) reason. That resulted in hours-long lines and voters forced to cast provisional ballots in many locations.

But the worst situation was undoubtedly in L.A. County, where a brand-new, 100% unverifiable, $300,000,000 touchscreen voting system manufactured by a company named Smartmatic was also deployed countywide for the first time. It did not go well. Voters across the nation's largest voting jurisdiction were stuck in two to four hour lines in many cases at voting centers where the e-pollbooks slowed down to a crawl and/or where BMDs failed to work, reportedly flipped votes, or had their paper ballot summaries become jammed in the new computer systems. A County spokesperson estimated on Tuesday that 20% of the new "Voting Solutions for All People" (VSAP) BMDs had failed. (By the way, that link to the main VSAP website at vsap.LAVote.net, singing its praises and listing its many partners who signed on to it, now appears to be down, even as the regular LAVote.net site seems to be working fine. A telling omen?)

As one Twitter listener quipped on Tuesday night: "#ShouldaListenedToBrad". (Anyone feel like making t-shirts for a fund raiser?)

We're joined today by two longtime L.A. County election workers, LARRY DILG and "DOUG", after their impossibly long days of service over this past week. We discuss what went wrong (and right) at their respective voting centers using L.A. County's new voting system --- ten years in development by Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, and warned against for most of those years by yours truly, for many of the reasons which revealed themselves to all on Tuesday.

"I think we faced into the problems pretty well," Dilg tells me. "We had 25 machines in our room. The machines would sometimes stop working, or get quirky --- paper jams and stuff like that. I thought it went pretty well, actually, considering. The big thing I experienced was there were many more voters than we've ever seen in our center before."

"I think we had one or two machines that just were down for the count," he continued. "Other than that, it was almost like they got overloaded for awhile and needed a rest. We'd give them a rest, then reboot them, and they were back up and running." He pegged the failure rate at closer to 10% for the BMDs at his voting center.

"Doug" reports: "I had eight BMDs, and two of them broke, ultimately with paper jams, and I had to take them out of action. Smartmatic people came and fixed those two." For the record, while the VSAP systems were designed and supposedly owned by the County, they were manufactured by Smartmatic, a voting machine company with a dubious history. I was surprised to hear that their employees were here and allowed to directly service the machines mid-election, much less at all.

As to the e-pollbooks, "Doug" reports: "They seemed to get worse and worse, over time. The problem with them is that they have to re-sync periodically with headquarters in Norwalk, to update themselves so that they know who has voted and who hasn't voted. According to my worker, the machine was updating about every 15 minutes, so every 15 minutes, it was down for two or three minutes ... So the problem was this updating was taking quite a bit of a long time and it seemed to get worse and worse as more people voted. We only had two pollbooks at my location, and sometimes they were both updating at the same time, which meant that anybody you tried to process during that period had to vote with a provisional ballot."

While Doug is "concerned about the tally of the votes", Dilg, a self-identified "idealist" believes "it's a really good system", even with all of the problems revealed on Super Tuesday. "I have to say yesterday was a very positive experience because there were people doing good things, all around the room, and feeling good about being citizens in a democracy. That kind of civic experience is very different from a rally, and it's a beautiful experience." Both say they will work again as pollworkers, and urge others to do the same.

And, oh, yeah. We also discuss the reported results across the country from Super Tuesday, where Joe Biden stunned the pundits with many unexpected victories in 10 states, including in Texas and Elizabeth Warren's home state of Massachusetts (where she placed third according to computer-tallied results!) and where Bernie Sanders won four states, including the day's richest prize of California (presuming the many weeks of counting ahead in the Golden State don't result in a change to the current standings in its partial tallies).

Also, NYC's billionaire former Republican mayor Mike Bloomberg dropped out of the Democratic Presidential race and endorsed Joe Biden, after dumping half a billion dollars to win zero states. And Elizabeth Warren, the only other remaining candidate in the race to have won delegates, is reportedly assessing the outlook on how and if she will move forward in what now appears to be a two-man race for the Democratic nomination...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: CBS News ignores the climate crisis in South Carolina Democratic debate, but candidates don't; JPMorgan economists warn climate change threatens human survival; Colorado River facing 'severe water shortages'; PLUS: Yet another refinery explodes, this time in Southern California... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Tribal nation condemns 'desecration' to build border wall; Trump downplays Coronavirus risk; Dismantling Fred Hiatt's pro-oil, anti-Sanders climate op-ed; Climate change is pushing ocean currents poleward; New Interior rule would limit which scientific studies agency can consider; After Trump mocks proposed sea wall in New York, plan is abruptly shelved; Climate change, soaring flood insurance could trigger a mortgage crisis; Uber and Lyft are convenient and highly carbon-intensive ... PLUS: Brazil is cracking down on climate migrants while worsening the climate crisis... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Seven Democratic Presidential candidates turned up the volume --- and on each other (especially against current front-runner Bernie Sanders) --- at Tuesday night's Presidential debate in Charleston, South Carolina. We have special coverage today. [Audio link to show follows below.]

It was the final debate before the crucial South Carolina Primary on Saturday and the critical Super Tuesday primaries just three days later in 14 states across the country. So, tensions were very high and the attacks on Sanders were cranked up to 11 at times, with the elections over the next week likely to be do or die for a number of the "contestants" (as billionaire contestant Michael Bloomberg described them).

We are joined today for insight, analysis and, yes, a few snarky comments from two BradCast post-election special coverage vets. Award-winning opinion journalist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo is with us, along with Roosevelt University political scientist DAVID FARIS, columnist at The Week and author of It's Time to Fight Dirty.

Both offer very smart thoughts, as usual, on the Party's very long debate process to date (Tuesday's was the 10th this cycle), whether the forums as structured have helped the Democratic electorate in making their choices, and how it all might be done better in the future. We cover the reasons behind the, at times high-decibel attacks from several of the candidates amid what seems universally agreed to have been a very poorly-moderated debate, and why so much time has been spent on weedy, wonky health care math, and so little time spent on issues of most interest to the American people, including the greatest threat posed right now to both the nation and the world: Donald Trump.

But the horse race, at this point in the contest, is unavoidable. Will Sanders continue to break away from the pack after Super Tuesday? Will Elizabeth Warren finally break through as a unity candidate? Will Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer survive? Does anybody actually like Bloomberg? Will SC Rep. James Clyburn's coveted endorsement for Biden this morning keep the former Vice President alive beyond the Palmetto State? Is it just us, or is Pete Buttigieg beginning to seem desperate? And who, among all of them, is best prepared to take on the elephant in the country, the still-sitting President of the United States?

All of those questions asked and answered on today's program, based on telling comments, strategy and behavior from each of the remaining candidates Tuesday night, a number of whom, sadly or otherwise, may no longer be in the 2020 Presidential nominating race just one week from today...

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On today's BradCast: With all the knives out between all of the 2020 Democratic Presidential candidates at Wednesday night's debate in Las Vegas, you may not have noticed that there was actually a rather substantive policy debate within it over how to deal with our intensifying climate emergency. But we noticed. [Audio link to show follows below.]

It's rare enough that climate and environmental issues are raised at all by Presidential Debate moderators, much less to allow for substantive discussion of differences between the candidates. And, in the few instances that it happens, the conversation is often buried at the end of the forum, and/or otherwise completely ignored in post-debate coverage which tends to be overwhelmed by electorate politics and horse-race discussion. That is an extraordinary disservice to the electorate, especially given that, as a number of recent polls both nationally and in early primary states reveal, climate change is now among the top issue for voters, often this cycle coming in second only to health care and ahead of both economic and foreign policy issues.

So, before Wednesday's debate gives way entirely to Saturday's Nevada Caucuses and next week's South Carolina Primary and then Super Tuesday in 14 states just three days later on March 3rd, we thought many still-undecided voters might be well-served by some expert help in unpacking some of the key differences between the leading candidates on climate action policies. Unlike Donald Trump and the Republicans, who treat the matter as a joke, all of the Democrats claim to understand the existential threat posed by global warming. But the differences in their responses to questions on the matter --- which are sometimes much larger than you may have noticed --- is both telling and informative.

To that end, we are joined today for a sharp review of the climate crisis portion of Wednesday's debate by LEAH STOKES of UC-Santa Barbara and DAVID ARKUSH of Public Citizen to break down the candidates differing positions for and against fracking bans; on taking on the fossil fuel industry and its executives politically, economically and, yes, criminally; on killing the filibuster; on carbon taxes; on a Green New Deal; on which of the candidates are climate champions (and which are not); and much more!

Both Stokes and Arkush are excellent and unabashed climate policy communicators with long and impressive track records of advocacy on these matters, including with elected officials. Neither of them pull any punches (unlike a number of the candidates on Wednesday night on this issue) and one of them even notes that fossil fuel industry executives could be, perhaps should be, not only prosecuted for fraud, but even "for homicide"...depending on who becomes the nominee and if they can take back the White House (and the Senate!) this November...

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Washington Post called it a "fiery...two-hour free-for-all that sizzled with animosity." New York Times reported "candidates turned on one another in scorching and personal terms". Associated Press declared it a "debate night brawl" that "threatened to further muddy the party's urgent quest to defeat Presidential Donald Trump".

On today's BradCast [audio link posted below], we dive in to those murky and troubled waters to make sense --- where there is room to make it --- of the raucous Democratic Debate in Las Vegas on Wednesday night in advance of Saturday's Nevada Caucuses, next Saturday's South Carolina Primary and March 3rd's Super Tuesday Primaries in more than a dozen states just three days later.

The melee at the Paris Hotel and Casino featured VT Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Veep Joe Biden, MA Sen. Elizabeth Warren, MN Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former South Bend, IN Mayor Pete Buttigieg and, in his first-ever appearance in a 2020 Presidential debate (despite not even being on any ballot until March 3rd), former Republican NYC Mayor turned Democratic billionaire candidate Michael Bloomberg --- who did not, I think its fair to say, receive a very warm welcome from his fellow contenders.

We're joined today for special coverage of as much of the wild evening as we can fit in, by former Editor-in-Chief of Rewire.news, JODI JACOBSON and longtime activist, reporter, author and documentarian DAVID BENDER, Political Director of the Progressive Voices Network. While slightly more collegial, suffice to say our coverage of Wednesday night's forum was no less challenging at times than the debate itself on several different levels.

Jacobson: "I'm a little shocked at everybody having vapors over this. I think it's past time. For crying out loud, we're facing existential crises of so many kinds. We're facing a true threat to our democracy, which is being dismantled daily...We've got climate crises bearing down on us...And I am not clear why people don't think we should be angry and we should be fighting hard."

Bender: "What I saw last night in this debate is a very, very happy Donald Trump...As Jodi said, we're facing an existential threat to the country, and what we've got to deal with it is a circular firing squad. I've been to every convention since 1968, and let me say, this is absolutely par for the course when Democrats get to a place when they're trying to take one another out and forget that there is something much larger."

That's just the tip of our special coverage iceberg today. Hopefully, it is at least as interesting and perhaps even more enlightening than the Dems' 9th 2020 Presidential Debate last night in Vegas. We'll let you decide. Please tune in for some fascinating insight, occasionally frustrating confrontation, and a whole lot of well-informed opinion...

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In the hours just before former Republican and current billionaire Michael Bloomberg makes his bought-and-paid-for debut on the Democratic debate stage in Las Vegas, our guest on today's BradCast has a bit of a disturbing scoop about Bloomberg's past comparisons between the AARP and the NRA! [Audio link to full show follows below.]

But, first up first up today, some good news from the courts on voting rights in two different key Presidential battleground states! In Florida, a federal appeals on Wednesday sided with ex-felons suing the state to block a law that prevented many of them from having their voting rights restored after the landslide passage of state constitutional Amendment 4 in 2018. After the landmark measure passed with big bi-partisan support to restore voting rights to some 1.5 million former felons (including 1 of 4 African-American men in the state) upon completion of their sentences, the state's new Republican Governor and GOP legislature muscled through legislation to block those former felons from voting until all court fees and fines have been paid off.

Today's federal appeals court ruling blocks that voter suppression measure, finding that "denying access to the franchise to those genuinely unable to pay solely on a account of wealth" is a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection clause.

There is similarly good news today from the state Court of Appeals in North Carolina, which ruled the Photo ID voting restrictions enacted by Republicans (a measure vetoed by the state's Democratic Governor last year, but overridden by the gerrymandered GOP majorities in both statehouse chambers) disproportionately disenfranchises poor and minority voters.

Despite little or no evidence of polling place impersonation --- the only type of voter fraud such laws could possibly prevent --- the NC GOP has been trying since at least 2013 to impose such discriminatory voting restrictions in the Tar Heel state. Their most notorious attempt, in 2013, was eventually nixed by a federal court which found the law was specifically designed to "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision" and to "impose cures for problems that did not exist." Another similar ruling recently against the state's new measure by a federal court, blocked the law from taking effect before NC's March 3rd Primaries. The new state appeals court decision is likely to also bar the measure until after the 2020 general election in one of the nation's most closely divided battleground states.

Then, it's on to electoral politics, with still more new national polling today showing Bernie Sanders vaulting into double-digit leads over all of his Democratic Presidential rivals. And while Sanders is frequently dismissed by corporate media, even as the front-runner (as we demonstrate again today), an even more curious case of the erasure of Elizabeth Warren by corporate media has made itself maddeningly clear in a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll out this week.

We explain how Warren was disappeared, in part, from a key question in that poll, despite placing third in the national delegate race to date and largely tying for second or third place in most of the recent national surveys. That, while candidates like Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg continue to receive a great deal of media attention while still polling only in single digits nationally.

Meanwhile, having no trouble at all receiving national coverage of late, is former Republican, recently-declared Democrat, and longtime billionaire Michael Bloomberg. While Sanders has skyrocketed in polling, Joe Biden has taken a dive, and Bloomberg appears to be surging at his expense. That is thanks, in no small part, to the former NYC Mayor's unprecedented blanketing of the national airwaves with his political propaganda ads. With his late polling surges, Bloomberg will appear, for the first time, on the Democratic debate stage tonight in Las Vegas before this Saturday's Nevada Caucuses (where he isn't even on the ballot.)

We are joined today by investigative financial journalist, author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect, DAVID DAYEN, who has been covering Bloomberg's long and disturbing record quite closely. Earlier this week, Dayen detailed how Bloomberg's life and career mirrors Donald Trump's in a number of disturbing ways, while cautioning about the dangers to both democracy and the Democratic Party itself of the "plutocrat-on-plutocrat election" that would be in store if Bloomberg wins the nomination.

"This is a hostile take-over of the Democratic Party. Much like Trump was a hostile take-over of the Republican Party," Dayen argues today. "I'm worried about the shell-shocked nature of the Democratic electorate that has given up on democracy and thinks the only way to beat their plutocrat is with our plutocrat. That concerns me for more reasons than just the Bloomberg nomination. It concerns me that people are so despondent that they think democracy doesn't work anymore. That leads us down a very dark road."

Dayen also has a scoop today, as published with Alexander Sammon at The Prospect, on Bloomberg's recent history of comparing the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) to the National Rifle Association (NRA), as part of his "decade-long history of promoting cuts to the social safety net" in his advocacy to slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as deficit reduction measures.

All of which raises serious questions about what the Democratic electorate must be thinking in their current, apparently growing support for Bloomberg to become the Party's standard-bearer in 2020. Dayen has many thoughts on that, as do I on today's program...

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We've got a lot to catch up on on today's BradCast after a long holiday weekend, as the crisis of rot and corruption inside the once-revered U.S. Dept. of Justice continues to metastasize under Donald Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr; as billionaire Michael Bloomberg buys his way into shaking up the 2020 Democratic Presidential race; as the Nevada Caucuses may be heading toward another embarrassing meltdown this weekend; and as our ongoing, literal planetary meltdown continues. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

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

• Amid an already deepening crisis at the Justice Dept., Trump went on a "clemency spree" on Tuesday, issuing pardons to a long list of crooks, cronies and n'er do wells --- many of them personal friends of the Prez, natch --- from former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (who attempted to sell a U.S. Senate seat), to Rudy Giuliani pal and former NYPD Commission Bernie Kerik (who lied to the Dept. of Homeland Security), to the former owner of the San Francisco 49ers (who bribed a Louisiana Governor for a riverboat casino gambling license.) Those are just some of the liars, tax frauds and scam artists like Trump who received get-out-of-jail free cards today, in hopes, we surmise, that someone may do the same for Trump some day, once the law finally catches up with him. And it will;

• With the American system of justice now in full and active breach at the DoJ under Barr's corrupt leadership, the calls for his resignation have grown impossible to ignore in the wake of his unprecedented overruling of career line prosecutors' recommendations for criminal sentencing of longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (among other wildly corrupt actions he's taken of late and since taking office last year.)

  Former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer, appointed by George H.W. Bush, describes "Bill Barr's America" as "a banana republic where all are subject to the whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen," in a new Atlantic op-ed while calling for a "public uprising demanding that Bill Barr resign immediately, or failing that, be impeached."

  More than 2,000(!) former DoJ officials, both Democratic and Republican, have now signed on to a Sunday public letter declaring Trump and Barr "have openly and repeatedly flouted" the concept of equal justice in the U.S., and demanding Barr step down, citing "damage" that Barr's actions "have done to the Department of Justice's reputation for integrity and the rule of law."

  And, in the wake of all of this --- and the President's continuing Twitter attacks on the U.S. District Court Judge overseeing Roger Stone's case and upcoming sentencing --- the Federal Judges Association, a group of more than 1,000 jurists, has now called an "emergency meeting" for Wednesday to discuss related issues that, according to its President, George W. Bush-appointed U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, "could not wait" until the group's spring conference scheduled for April;

• Meanwhile, the Democratic and democratic efforts to replace Trump in November's election continue apace, as Nevada Democrats address security concerns about their upcoming Saturday caucuses by switching to electronic voters! (Okay, that one's from The Onion, but still, it shouldn't be long);

• The Dominican Republic sets an example that Americans might want to pay attention to, by suspending their weekend election just a few hours after polls opened due to failed electronic voting systems. (Who could have seen that coming?);

• Billionaire Michael Bloomberg turned Presidential candidate turned self-declared reformed racist and misogynist, buys his way onto Wednesday's Democratic Presidential Debate stage in Las Vegas, even though he will not be on the ballot at Saturday's caucus there. Bloomberg, it was announced on Tuesday, will appear at the forum, after qualifying in several national polls, including a second place finish in a new NPR/PBS/Marist national poll and a virtual tie for second with Joe Biden in a new NBC News/WSJ survey. In both of those national polls, Biden has plummeted and current front-runner Bernie Sanders has taken double-digit leads over his nearest competitor;

• But, according to news reports from Washington Post, Politico and others over the weekend, the Nevada Caucuses could be a "complete disaster" mirroring Iowa's just two weeks ago. Under-trained caucus leaders, a lack of communication between the state party and the candidates' campaigns about the complicated process, and the use of an iPad "Caucus Calculator" could lead to a meltdown, many fear. If the hours-long lines at last weekend's Early Voting sites are any indication, state Dems may, once again, be in way over the heads. But we'll see;

• In slightly brighter primary news, late last week California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a last-minute bill into law that will allow Golden State voters to change party registration up to and on Election Day itself. That seemingly very smart move may help the state avoid some, if not all, of the expected confusion and potential meltdowns at their own March 3rd Super Tuesday primary in the state with the most Democratic delegates at stake (415 of them) in this year's nominating contest;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Antarctica breaks another stunning heat record, Mississippi gets swamped, Trump's EPA allows the return of toxic mercury even though the Obama-era regulation was a tremendous success and the utility industry doesn't even want him to, and some very big news from CNBC's Wall Street guru Jim Cramer declaring fossil fuels "over!"...

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