Today on The BradCast, hate crimes are on the rise as Trump, Republicans and their supporters pretend to be outraged by "basket of deplorables", and the corporate media is all too happy to help them out. [Audio link posted below]

Amongst the stories covered today's program:

• NYC Trump supporter attacks two Muslim women pushing strollers.
• Muslim woman set on fire in NYC.
• Mosque torched in Fort Pierce, FL.
• Oregon supporter hangs effigy of Clinton on the interstate.
• Trump supporter punches protesters at Asheville, NC rally where Trump accuses Clinton of running a 'hate-filled campaign'.
• Despite her mischaracterized remarks and misreported statement of "regret", Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comments was on the mark.
• AP finally deletes two-week old inaccurate tweet about their misleading report on the Clintons' charitable foundation.
• KY's Republican Governor suggests bloodshed will be needed if Clinton wins.
• Super Typhoon Meranti is strongest of the year, heads toward Taiwan.
• August 2016 is warmest month ever recorded on Planet Earth.

Oh, and some good news for both the economy and the climate. But you'll have to tune in for those!

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On today's BradCast, guest hosted by Angie Coiro of In Deep Radio, a surprising crush of news headlines post-holiday weekend.

Among them: Bulldozers tore up North Dakota sacred lands of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe amidst protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, even as all parties await a court judgment to block construction. Bill Cosby's lawyers claim that attorney Gloria Allred just wants the spotlight and is making racist attacks. And a CNN presidential election poll appears to have completely excluded millennials!

Meanwhile, one of my guests, Robert J. Elisberg of Huffington Post, wants to know if Trump's letter-writing doctor violated HIPAA by discussing his "knowledge" of Hillary Clinton's alleged health problems. So Flash Gordon, MD joins us to clarify.

Jessica Luther looks at the Brock Turner case in California, the Lizzy Seeberg suicide in a Notre Dame sexual assault case, and her new book Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape.

Then it's back to Elisberg, this time for a tale of Berlin, L.A., and a handful of "Hillary Clinton for President" buttons. Finally, a review of a few important medical stories, including a ban on "antibacterial" soaps.

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Donald Trump's newly celebrated 'pivot' to becoming a 'maturity' as a Presidential candidate, as declared by some Republicans and some in the corporate media, may be far less of a 'pivot' than he and his surrogates are pretending, especially in his new attempts to woo African-American voters.

On today's BradCast [audio link posted below.], we take a look at some of the claims of Trump's surrogates, and how they stack up against reality. (Hint: Taking out a newspaper ad calling for the death penalty for five African-American kids found completely innocent of a horrible crime doesn't seem a particularly smart way to woo the African-American vote.)

Similarly, if the GOP wants to reach out to minority voters, they have a very peculiar way of showing it, as Republican Party officials, operatives and Governors --- from CA to NC, from NJ to MI --- re-double their efforts to keep 'certain' voters from being able to cast a vote at all this November.

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Shockingly good news on today's BradCast, following today's remarkable announcement by the U.S. Dept. of Justice that they are working to end the federal government's "use of privately operated prisons".

After that, you may want to pop up some popcorn to best enjoy the rest of today's program. [Audio link to complete program is posted below.]

First up today, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates issued a memo, as Washington Post reported, instructing federal officials "to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or 'substantially reduce' the contracts’ scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is 'reducing --- and ultimately ending --- our use of privately operated prisons.'

Wow. Her memo goes on to cite a recent DoJ Inspector General's report finding that privately run prisons do not provide same level of service, "do not save substantially on costs" and "do not maintain the same level of safety and security" as those run by the federal government's Bureau of Prisons.

I am joined by Carl Takei, staff attorney for the ACLU's National Prison Project, for both an explanation and a bit of a victory lap after his organization and others have spent decades taking on the private, for-profit prison industry. Takei details what the announcement means, why it has finally come about now, and how the ACLU and others --- including investigative reporters, the Bernie Sanders campaign, and eventually the Hillary Clinton campaign --- have long argued precisely what the DoJ has admitted today.

"Handing control of prisons over to for-profit companies is a recipe for abuse, neglect, and misconduct because their primary duty is to their shareholders. They have to deliver value to their shareholders by skimming a profit off of whatever payments the government gives them to run the system," Takei tells me.

"In the 1990s, when the Bureau of Prisons first started this experiment with private prisons, the argument was they could provide incarceration more cheaply and that the innovations of the free market would somehow make things better. In fact, it turned out to be far worse. Because the major way that you can make money off incarceration is by cutting expenses," he says. "Some of the biggest expenses are security staff, medical staff, and providing medical services. Anywhere that the company starts cutting back its expenditures, it ends up harming the people inside."

He goes on to offer some startling examples of both that and of some of the easily-disproven responses and claims of the for-profit, private prison industry lobby.

Next, we look at how the coming and/or current GOP Civil War is shaping up not as a battle of ideas for the party's future, but as a wingnut street-fight over whose false version of 'reality' will win out. It's getting quite ugly. But also, at least for those of us on the outside, kinda hilarious in several regards.

Then, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with "some news that blows" and, finally, we close with the NYC Parks Department hilariously short response to the growing erection of naked Donald Trump statues around the city. You're welcome.

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Today on The BradCast: While the corporate media continues to amplify Trump's BS, we do our best to counter it with actual, independently verifiable facts. Yes, it is possible. [Audio to full show linked below.]

Fact-checks on today's program include long-disproven and yet still-repeated nonsense from Trump's 'major speech on national security and terrorism' in Ohio on Monday --- (You knew it wasn't going to go well when it started with former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani claiming that in the "eight years before Obama came along, we didn’t have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States".) --- and on Trump's wildly misleading claims about 'voter fraud' in Pennsylvania on Friday.

Trump's latest lie concerning voters voting multiple times "in certain areas" in Pennsylvania (they don't) and about the 59 precincts in Philadelphia where Romney received zero votes in 2012 (he did, as we reported at the time, finding it to be neither surprising nor "fraudulent") have all been debunked long ago. But, as he and other desperate Republicans repeat the same bullshit, as he keeps sinking in the polls, we're happy to revisit the facts once again so you can check 'em for yourself.

As to the GOP Presidential nominee's new scheme to combat that 'voter fraud' in PA with police officers and citizens observers, he may be calling for something that is a violation of a long-standing, federal court-approved, 1983 consent decree, signed by the Republican National Committee after a similar voter intimidation scheme was carried out by the GOP in minority areas of New Jersey. We explain.

Also on today's program: Very important news from over the weekend that has not received the coverage it deserves. From the two Muslim clerics gunned-down execution style in broad daylight in Trump's hometown of Queens, NY on Saturday, to the devastating and growing cost of climate change as 20,000 residents of Louisiana were rescued amid record rain and flooding ("close to two feet over a 48-hour period") and 4,000 were evacuated as hundreds of homes were destroyed (for the second year in a row) amid wildfires in just one small, rural county in bone-dry California.

Finally on today's BradCast: the Rightwing talk radio host who may have finally realized what he and his fellow propagandists have done. "There's got to be a reckoning on all this," he said this weekend. "We've created this monster."

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On today's BradCast [audio link posted below], our coverage of the Democratic National Convention continues; a fascinating conversation with a longtime Sanders supporter who explains his gut-wrenching decision to vote for Clinton this November; and pundits on the Right continue to melt down as the two major party conventions illustrate stark differences in world views between Democrats and Republicans.

First up, Donald Trump does not want you to watch the proceedings in Philadelphia, as he told supporters in a fund raising email today. Wednesday night's blockbuster DNC speeches from President Obama and Vice President Biden to the one from Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine to a particularly stinging Trump critique from self-made billionaire and former Republican-turned-Independent NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, make the case for why Trump would be delighted if you didn't notice what was going on in Philly.

But it's not all unity and flowers at the DNC, as some Sanders supporters and anti-war advocates continue to protest, and as polls between Clinton and Trump remain very tight for now.

Then, we're joined by Black Lives Matter advocate and fierce Bernie Sanders supporter Shaun King --- former Daily Kos blogger turned NY Daily News journalist --- to discuss his column this week describing the difficult choice he's made to support Bernie Sanders by supporting Hillary Clinton.

He explains, in detail, that while he's "disgusted that the Democratic establishment clearly did everything in its power to make sure Bernie didn't win," he has determined that Trump represents a "dangerous threat" to the nation that must be stopped with "a necessary vote" for Clinton this fall.

"Donald Trump has out-maneuvered and out-thought seventeen other candidates in the Republican primaries, and I think he's doing it now in this presidential race," King warns. "I think it's going to be a dog-fight to the very end. There's a distinct likelihood he could win. And anybody who says otherwise doesn't really have their finger on what people are thinking right now."

I think it's important that you, particularly Sanders supporters, listen to the conversation, hear out the reasons for his decision --- which he has clearly struggled with --- and then decide for yourself what to make of it. So, I don't want to quote too much from our conversation today. I will note, however, that he tells me: "I trust Bernie as a person and as a politician. He's maybe the only politician I would say that about. I felt like if he could swallow not only a sense of pride but compromise on some of the things that matter most to him --- be it disagreements he's had with the Clinton campaign --- then if he could do that then I could do it."

I also get King's thoughts on why he has long supported (and still supports) Sanders; on the belief of Bernie partisans that the primary was "stolen" by fraud; about the option for voting "third party"; on the idea that only after a Trump win, as some suggest, will the Democratic Party finally learn its lesson; and why it is that some folks at his former journalistic home Daily Kos (one of the places where The BradCast is posted every day) seem to absolutely freak out whenever I report on polling that suggests Clinton may have a difficult time defeating Trump. (Or, frankly, when I report on anything that they perceive as being critical, somehow, of the Democratic nominee. That, even as Sanders supporters elsewhere have been accusing me for months of being a "HillBot". Sigh. As much as I love democracy, sometimes I really hate elections.)

Finally, Bill O'Reilly seems to be melting down, again, as he plays the victim card on behalf of himself and Fox 'News', again, following his recent comments about slavery. All of that and more on today's show...

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On today's BradCast: Day One of Donald Trump's Republican National Convention in Cleveland was insane. But it was all going well enough until it became apparent late on Monday night that portions of Melania Trump's headliner speech was plagiarized directly from Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic convention speech.

Incredibly, the man who made 'You're fired!' a catch phrase can't seem to muster up the ability to hold anyone in his own campaign accountable for it. As such, the oratorical fraud and, more importantly, how its being handled (and denied) by Team Trump, offers a stark warning to voters as to how a Trump Presidency might handle the actual serious issues and difficult decisions that need to be made.

Or, at least, it should.

Speaking of warnings, new national polling remains tight between Trump and Hillary Clinton, who continues losing ground in several of them. That, as several new cases and disturbing allegations of voter registration fraud by Republican election insiders in a number of states, along with some very troubling news from the U.S. Dept. of Justice concerning their plans to no longer send observers to polling places in certain jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination, should serve as yet another stark warning for American voters...

But will it?

All of that and Desi Doyen with today's Green News Report on the latest BradCast...

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On today's BradCast, the bombshell passage of Britain's EU 'Brexit' Referendum is shaking both world markets and politics. Is the rise of nationalism and anti-immigration sentiment in the UK a disturbing omen for the U.S. Presidential election this fall? [Audio link to complete show is below.]

Donald Trump certainly hopes so, as he's changed his position on European unity from just three years ago, when he was for it, to today, when he's apparently against it, now that he's running for President. On today's show we discuss a number of things that Americans can and should learn from both the dishonest politics of the Brexit vote and the way the election itself was carried out (on publicly hand-counted, hand-marked paper ballots.)

Meanwhile, back here across the pond, the fight to count votes from the June 7th primary in California continues, and the fight to keep (certain) voters from voting at all continues as well in a federal courtroom in North Carolina (No, Washington Post, Photo ID is not required to board an airplane and you should let your readers know as much), and in the great state of Texas, where so-called 'conservatives' have spent millions of taxpayer dollars attempting to defend their illegal, discriminatory and unconstitutional Photo ID voting restriction year after year in case after case. (Texit, anyone?)

Finally, we look at details from the unlawful purge of voters in Brooklyn, which came to light after the NY state primary in April. Were Sanders voters purged at a higher rate than Clinton voters, as Sanders supporters have been charging? We look at some of the actual evidence now in, which suggests otherwise (and as we've previously argued.) Plus: Death toll rising along with flood waters in West Virginia and in China; And Bluegrass fans lose a legend...

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On today's BradCast, have Bernie Sanders supporters been responsible in their attempts to oversee voting and vote tabulation during this year's Democratic Primary? How about long time Election Integrity advocates and journalists? Are cries of "FRAUD!!!" in the race between Sanders and Hillary Clinton misguided and misleading? Or are they on-point? [Audio link to show is posted below.]

From a sweltering Los Angeles, on the first official day of Summer, I speak to some of the many claims and allegations that this year's Democratic primary was "stolen" --- either by Hillary Clinton, the DNC, or anybody else. Just a few thoughts on all of this from someone who has investigated and covered issues of Election Integrity and fraud and voter suppression and non-overseeable computer voting systems and tabulators, often in excruciating detail, for more than a decade at The BRAD BLOG, on The BradCast, and anywhere else that would have me. As part of today's epic rant on all of this, I also offer some advice to those who believe California was "stolen", and how state law allows them to actually try and find out...if they really want to.

Also today, the Sanders campaign says supporters are answering his call from last week for fresh candidates to step up and run for office with progressive platforms at the local, state and federal level.

Meanwhile, the NRA-funded Republicans continue to obstruct any meaningful legislative action to try and help prevent gun violence following last week's massacre in Orlando, as the U.S. Senate blocks attempts to bar suspected terrorists from buying weapons of mass destruction at local gun shops, gun shows and online. All of that is playing out, as Donald Trump, the GOP's presumptive nominee for President, offers a particularly egregious lie in hopes of backpedaling from his repeated statements last week that he would have liked to have seen club patrons with many more guns in that dark, crowded LGBT nightclub in Orlando. It's a position that even the terrorist-enabling NRA no longer seems to fully agree with.

Finally, with firearm violence plummeting in California --- while it remains steady nationally --- the state legislature takes some action on scientific gun research in the wake of the federal government's effective twenty-year ban on same. And, before we close, with triple-digit temps shattering records out here today, a few climate scientists remind us that their own research concerning global warming, finds it to be anything but a bleeping "hoax"...

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From Trump's taco bowl to the nation's vital and crumbling infrastructure --- are the corporate media up to the task of adequately informing the U.S. electorate in one of the most crucial election years in our history? Signs aren't encouraging.

Today on The BradCast, why gleeful Democrats and Hillary Clinton supporters are nuts to be celebrating and underestimating the presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. Multiple recent polls, today's breaking news, our nation's recent history, pathetic corporate media coverage, a flawed and vulnerable front-runner and an incredibly frail electoral system should give Dems serious pause.

In the meantime, President Obama's comments on Trump, our aging infrastructure crisis and anti-government sentiment at a press briefing in Washington D.C. on Friday and in Flint, MI on Wednesday are cause for reflection on the notion of good government of, by, and for 'we, the people'.

And then Desi Doyen joins us for what may be our grimmest Green News Report ever before we finish up today with a laugh, some good and bad news about "Boaty McBoatface", and a bit of listener mail...

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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 'Presumptive' GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump goes nuclear over climate; CNN airs more ads for the fossil fuel industry than news stories on climate change; Volkswagen documents reveal scheme to defraud emissions tests; Mitsubishi admits cheating on fuel economy tests; PLUS: One major U.S. city is the first to mandate solar panels on all new buildings... 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): The story behind Prince’s low-profile generosity to green causes; Punishing heat wave sets records across Asia; EPA launching new water infrastructure effort after Flint; Water Wars: GA Gov. Nathan Deal to Marco Rubio: ‘Maybe senators ought to have gag orders as well’; Exxon Mobil loses top credit rating it held since depression; Indian villagers have found a way to bottle the fragrance of monsoons; CO struggles with marijuana's huge carbon footprint... PLUS: “There is no doubt”: Exxon knew CO2 pollution was a global threat by late 1970s... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast, as voters head to the polls in MD, CT, RI, DE and PA (where there are already reports of problems on the state's 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems), some voters are petitioning NY for a partial hand-count of the paper ballots from last week's troubled Presidential Primary in the state. Meanwhile, blowback continues in NC against the state Republicans' pro-discrimination and anti-voting rights laws. [Audio link for the show is at bottom of article.]

The election season grinds on, with more lawsuits, legal investigations and challenges then I ever recall seeing at this point in the cycle. In New York, where last week's Presidential Primary was plagued with problems such as questionable voter purges, closed polling places and failed optical-scan computer tabulation systems, Election Justice USA, which filed a suit against NY the day before the DNC (and Clinton and Sanders campaigns) did so, is now calling for a partial hand-count of paper ballots across the state.

The group's petition cites those problems and others for the lack of confidence that many voters now have in the results as reported by NY's paper-ballot optical-scan computer tabulators which have failed in the past, as the NY Daily News found in 2012, to count an enormous percentage of ballots in some precincts. Their petition also includes a video clip from an award-winning 2008 documentary film, HOLLER BACK - [not] VOTING IN AN AMERICAN TOWN, in which I appeared discussing the reasons for hand-counting paper ballots, rather than merely trusting in oft-failed, easily hacked computer tabulators. (But its an excellent film anyway!)

I explain all of the above today, as well as why Bernie Sanders supporters are both overstating their current argument of "fraud" in the NY election, even as the lack of transparency in the state's electronic counting system leaves voters with every reason to have uncertainty in the computer-tallied results. (In somewhat related news, also discussed today, hand-counts in DuPage County, IL recently resulted in three different write-in candidates, 2 Republicans and 1 Democrat, being found to have won their races after originally being announced "losers" following last month's primary elections there.)

Also today, before moving on to our interview, a federal judge has upheld NC's massive voter restriction law which mandates Photo ID voting restrictions, bans same-day registration, restricts early voting and registration and much more. I've previously described that law, enacted by state Republicans just days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, as "the most extreme anti-voter bill passed by any state since the Jim Crow Era." Opponents of the law, including the NAACP, ACLU and U.S. Dept. of Justice, have now appealed the District Court's 485-page ruling which argues that "there is little official discrimination" in NC anymore.

That ruling, by a George W. Bush appointed judge, is difficult to square with the state's GOP nominee for Attorney General, who told a crowd at a rally in support of NC's controversial anti-LGBT law yesterday that "we must fight to keep our state straight."

Joining us today to discuss that "deeply unpopular" law and others like it --- as well as massive blowback it has engendered for the state --- is gay rights activist, Fred Karger, a former GOP operative, campaign official for Presidents Reagan and Ford, and the first openly gay Presidential candidate. (His run for the 2012 Republican nomination is the subject of the documentary film FRED.)

On the heels of his successful campaign against CA's Prop 8, the Mormon Church and the National Organization for Marriage, Karger recently described at Huffington Post how boycotts can work against such measures. We discuss that, the continuing disintegration of his formerly Grand Old Party, and his thoughts on the reasons for the sudden spate of discriminatory laws, mostly in the South.

"I think it's because they're sore losers," he tells me. "It's not even been a year since the Supreme Court allowed marriage equality to be the law of the land in all fifty states. So we're seeing tens of thousands of very happy same-sex couples getting married. And there's a backlash because there are a lot of people very unhappy about that." He goes on to explain why GOP politicians, "when they're running for re-election or moving up for another post," see the gay and transgender community as "an easy target".

Finally today, we close today with a fascinating and previously unknown fact about the dearly departed Prince...

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On today's BradCast, 200k former felons get their voting rights back in Virginia, even as one protester for campaign finance reform loses his right to vote after being sentenced for a federal felony.

In a surprise announcement today, citing long-standing post-Civil War restrictions meant to keep African-American voters away from the ballot box, VA's Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) issued an executive order to re-enfranchise more than 200,000 former felons who have completed their prison sentences as well as their parole and probation periods. That good news comes even as former felons in Maryland are voting for the first time in decades, in advance of next week's primary, following that state legislative override of a veto by Gov. Larry Hogan (R).

Meanwhile, Brooklyn's top Board of Elections official is suspended amidst the NY Attorney General's new investigation into the still-unexplained purge of more than 100,000 Democratic voters in the months leading up to last Tuesday's disastrous Presidential Primary in NY.

Then, we are joined again by Florida postal worker Doug Hughes, who was sentenced on Thursday to four months in federal prison as part of a plea deal following his infamous demonstration for campaign finance reform last year when he landed his homemade gyrocopter on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol to raise awareness for the problem of money in politics following disastrous U.S. Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United and other related cases.

Hughes tells me, as he told the U.S. District Court Judge in federal court yesterday, that he has "no regrets" for his protest, despite the high costs he is being forced to pay, including, ironically enough, the loss of his voting rights in the state of Florida.

"I will never do this again, but I have no regrets over having done it," he says. "Judge Kotelly said my flight was a stunt. And it was a stunt, because it didn't change anything as far as the laws were concerned. It didn't do anything. Except it changed the perception that resistance is futile. People now believe that they can change [the campaign finance system], and a lot of people are getting engaged in changing it."

Hughes shares his thoughts on the 'Democracy Spring' protests for election and campaign finance reform that have resulted in more than 1,000 arrests over the past two weeks at the nation's capitol, even as the mainstream corporate media barely covered any of it. He describes his remarkable conversation with a CNN producer who called him yesterday after his sentencing. He says he told the CNN staffer that Democracy Spring protesters "were chanting 'Where is CNN?' You get thousands of people together and not a single CNN camera! There was no coverage of what was going on. I said, 'What kind of ghouls are running the organization that you've got to have to have somebody dead before the media will cover it?'"

The colorful and impassioned Hughes also comments on the absurdity of big banks and other major corporations getting away with tax-deductible financial settlements for actual crimes (including murder), while their executives get off scot-free. But, he argues, there is a way to change what seems like an unbeatable system, and he says it involves taking on both Democrats and Republicans alike in primary elections if they refuse to join forces to move campaign finance reform forward. "Like 4% of the population of any district is more than enough to beat the incumbent in the primary."

There is much more to hear from my discussion with Hughes (his website is here if you'd like to help him), before I am finally joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report. This one, on Earth Day --- and a very significant one at that...

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On today's BradCast: Tragic breaking news, ridiculous wingnut 'outrage', good news for Maryland voters, and, perhaps, a better way to nominate public officials. [Audio link to the full show is posted below.]

First up, coverage of the shocking loss of musical icon Prince, whose death today at age 57 at his home in Minnesota has stunned the world; Then, Rightwing "outrage" about U.S. President Andrew Jackson, the racist, slave holding, "genocidal maniac" (as Desi Doyen describes him today, with good reason) being replaced on the $20 bill by African-American abolitionist and former slave Harriet Tubman; And some (hopefully) good news about next week's Presidential Primary elections in MD, where voters will, for the first time in more than 15 years, finally be allowed to vote on hand-marked paper ballots instead of 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting machines.

[Some of our exclusive reporting referenced on today's show in regard MD's Diebold touch-screen systems: "DIEB-THROAT" (2005), MD's SAIC Report (2006), MD Election Director storms out of interview (2008), Argonne Lab's remote Diebold hack (2011)]

Then, I'm joined by John Opdycke, President of OpenPrimaries.org, for a fascinating discussion about the anti-democratic (small "d") problem of primary nomination contests that are closed to non-party affiliated voters. The conversation kicks off following concerns about Tuesday's primary in New York, where voters faced voter registration purges and other problems at the polling place, along with the nation's earliest voter deadline for changing party affiliation in order to be allowed to participate in the state's closed primary elections. (Voters had to change party affiliation by October 9th of last year to be able to vote in this year's Presidential Primary on April 19th!)

Opdycke explains why shutting non-party affiliated voters out of the process is of particular concern in primaries that are run with tax-payer funding and resources. But, he explains, the problem is larger than that. "This is a very serious question. Who does the political process belong to? Does the process itself belong to the people, or does it belong to the political parties? Right now, our democracy belongs lock, stock and barrel to the political parties, from top to bottom. And that is a very big problem and it is beginning to come to light."

"What the open primaries movement is pushing for is public primaries, not partisan primaries," he tells me, citing states like California, Nebraska and Washington that hold "Top Two" primaries (also known as "Cajun" or "Jungle" primaries) for many elected public offices, allowing candidates of all (or no) parties to compete against each other to run in the general election. "This is a fundamentally different conception of what a primary is. It's a public primary. Not a partisan primary."

While recognizing that political parties are private organizations with a First Amendment right to organize as they see fit, Opdycke explains how the result blocks people from the process and makes it nearly impossible to change the system. "They control the political process. They control the boards of elections. They control how redistricting is done. They control the primaries. They control voter registration. They control every aspect. They even control the Presidential debates. And we Americans, we've participated in that. We have in some ways ceded our power to these political organizations and I think the time has come to take that back. Not abolish political parties, but simply return them to an appropriate place."

He goes on to respond to various concerns and critiques of "Top Two" primary systems, as we have reported on them in years past (here and here, for example) at The BRAD BLOG, in what I hope is a very enlightening conversation and one that needs to be continued in the months and years ahead, all over the country.

Finally, we finish up with a much-needed laugh, courtesy of Stephen Colbert, on a day when we could all really use one...

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On today's BradCast we cover Tuesday's Presidential Primary in New York, from the reported results (huge margins for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton), to concerns about the accuracy of results, to the multiple official probes that have now been promised by the state Attorney General and the NYC Comptroller.

Those officials have stated they plan to look into reported mass voter purges, failed tabulation computers and other completely predictable problems faced by voters at polling places in the Empire State yesterday.

We also open the phone lines to callers ringing in on those results and concerns, and where Democrats should (and shouldn't) go from here as the nomination race moves forward to PA, MD, DE, CT and RI next week and ultimately out here to CA in June.

Also today: Breaking news on criminal indictments in Flint, MI; a billion dollar settlement for Volkswagen; Harriet Tubman to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill; the hottest March in recorded history in our latest Green News Report; and much more about which our own Desi Doyen has a word or three to share.

That's a very short description of a very busy program today, but I hope you'll give it a listen anyway!

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