Democratic voters, it seems, are an easily spooked bunch. A few bad polls and some seem ready to all but throw in the towel on the November midterms. But now is not the time for that sort of thinking. As discussed on today's BradCast, there is simply too much at stake this year --- Constitutional freedoms, democracy itself, survival on Planet Earth, just to name a few --- to get sidetracked by despair. To paraphrase Obama, don't boo-hoo! Vote! (And make sure everyone else you know does the same!) [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

It was always gonna be an uphill fight this year. It still is. But it makes no sense to wallow. It does make sense to get to work. As President Biden correctly noted this afternoon, "Today we face an inflection point, one of those moments that only come around every several generations where there's so much change happening --- technologically, politically, and socially --- that the decisions we make now are going to determine the future of our nation and the future of your generation for the next 30 or more years."

With all of that in mind, these are among the stories covered on today's program...

• Breaking just before airtime: Special Counsel John Durham --- tapped by Donald Trump and Bill Barr to investigate the investigators who investigated Russia's interference in the 2016 election --- is now 0 for 2 in Court. Igor Danchenko, said to have been a primary source for the so-called "Steel dossier", was charged in Durham's probe with five counts of lying to the FBI. He was acquitted today by a jury on all charges. He was the second to be indicted by Durham and then fully exonerated at trial. Even more humiliating for Durham: he personally handled most of the argument and questioning in court and reportedly ended up being rebuffed by his own witnesses who provided support for the defense. Worse, Danchenko, a Russian citizen living in the U.S., was reportedly "a treasured FBI informant" whose indictment "hurt U.S. national security."

• Last week we detailed the five U.S. Senate seats that could plausibly be flipped this year from Republican to Democratic (in PA, OH, WI, NC and FL) and the two Democratic seats that could plausibly be won by Republicans (in NV and GA). At the end of yesterday's show, however, we added another to the Plausible Red to Blue list when the "gold standard" Des Moines Register poll over the weekend found Iowa's 89-year old, 7-term Republican Senator Chuck Grassley to be just three points ahead of his Democratic challenger Mike Franken. Today, there's yet another Republican Senate seat said to be in jeopardy --- in deep red Utah of all places! According to two different polls, independent candidate Evan McMullin is said to be in a dead heat with GOP Senator Presidential election theft enthusiast and not Trump "bootlicker" Mike Lee. On Monday, the two sparred in their only debate. It didn't go all that well for Lee.

• On Monday, the Biden Administration opened its student loan forgiveness program at StudentAid.gov. The process has reportedly already served some 12 million applicants who may be forgiven for as much as $20,000 in debt. The process to apply reportedly takes no more than five minutes. All that is needed is a name, birthdate and social security number. The government will supposedly take care of the rest. At the same time, Republicans are suing to block Biden's program, created via Executive Order. But if they believe it's truly illegal, as Slate's Mark Joseph Stern observes today, they should introduce a bill to force those who received debt forgiveness to pay the money back. Do you think Republicans will do so?

• On Tuesday, President Biden spoke at a DNC event and vowed to codify the Constitutional rights and freedoms previously guaranteed by Roe v. Wade into federal law as his first order of business in January, after our corrupt, stolen and packed Republican Supreme Court majority took privacy rights and reproductive freedoms away from Americans last June. We share Biden's remarks today. But, in order to enact those protections, as he points out, Dems will need to hold their House majority and pick up at least two more Democratic Senators willing to reform the undemocratic Senate filibuster rule in November. If that happens, not only can abortion and privacy rights be protected by federal law, but voting rights can be expanded and protected, and the corrupt Supreme Court itself can be expanded and un-corrupted. But, again, if that's what you'd like to see, you better to get to work between now and November 8!

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news on how GOP rollbacks to climate policies made things worse for Florida; how the Pacific Northwest is facing record heat and wildfires in mid-October(!); how FL's Sen. Rick Scott wants the government to do less for disaster victims; and how a can of soup and a priceless Van Gogh have sparked debate over climate protest tactics...

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Over the past two and a half decades, The Daily Show on Comedy Central has arguably helped change the news landscape in America. Whether that's a good or bad thing is a question we discuss on today's BradCast with the show's co-creator and original head writer, as the seminal fake news shows recently turned 25 years old! [Audio link to full show is posted at end of this summary.]

But, first up, some quick news headlines on what appears to be a freshly booming economy, as the nation tries to climb out of its pandemic recession. That otherwise good news, unfortunately, is somewhat tempered by uncertainty as the Delta variant of the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc, mostly among the unvaccinated. New economic data this week also reveals that states with low vaccination and high infection rates are having a much harder time returning to pre-pandemic economic and job levels.

Also today, the Biden Administration announces one "final" extension of the moratorium on federal student loan payments, through the end of January next year. That, as Congressional Democrats from across the political spectrum, from Chuck Schumer to Elizabeth Warren to Ayanna Pressley, continue to push the President to simply cancel most of the $1.7 trillion dollars in federal student debt that would otherwise be spent by former students on the economy, buying homes, having children, etc.

Then, this past week, Comedy Central's beloved, long-running The Daily Show celebrated its 25th year on basic cable! How did they celebrate? By not being on the air at all, as the show's current host, Trevor Noah, after more than a year broadcasting the temporarily re-dubbed The Daily Social Distancing Show from his New York apartment, is enjoying a much-needed summer vacation until late September.

But that doesn't stop us from celebrating anyway! We're joined today by the always-delightful LIZZ WINSTEAD, co-creator, with Madeleine Smithberg, and former head writer of the satirical "news" show, to discuss its origin story and its broad affect on the national news-scape over the ensuing decades since its 1996 premier, as originally hosted by Craig Kilborn, followed by Jon Stewart, and now Noah.

From the shockingly easy way she and Smithberg were able to get the show on the air back in 1996, to its first bizarre week (before they had a live audience --- which I saw and loved and she hated!), to its various hosts over the years, thoughts on the bevy of stars who broke out from the show but never ended up hosting it, to how it has changed both the audience for news and the theoretically non-fake news outlets themselves, we take a much-needed pause today from another rough week to look back on the awesome satirical damage that Winstead has helped wrought.

"When people want to ask me about those origins," Winstead explains, "I think it's important, because a lot of people don't know that two women created the show, and they don't understand where it came from and how it came to be."

"When we launched, and this is important, there was only CNN," she says, citing how much of the show's early satire was to be aimed at local news and the many so-called "news magazine" that proliferated at the time. "MSNBC launched a couple of weeks after us, and then Fox launched that same year in October. An explosion of 24-hour news and how they had to keep up. And they did it poorly. I guess what I never counted on was that they would be so bad at their job that it would make us have so much to work with, follow the trends, and then throw those trends back in their faces."

"The satire and the fun really comes from not just throwing it back in their faces, but --- also adding to the comedy --- what are the results of all of this? You create a dumber electorate. You create an idiocracy. And we've seen that play out."

If so, it's hardly The Daily's fault. Winstead also responds to the critique, as some have argued, that too many young people ended up getting more of their news from The Daily Show than from real news sources. She rejects that notion, and tells me why.

Winstead, the Minneapolis native, who later went on to serve as Program Director of the now-defunct Air America Radio, where she also served as morning co-host with some lady named Rachel Maddow, also reflects on how topics and field pieces were chosen by The Daily's "correspondents" (a countless number of whom have moved on to their own wildly successful shows and movie careers.)

For so long, Americans were under the notion that we should "just ignore people who are lying, mean, or wrong or dumb," but that's "kind of why we are in this mess" now, she argues. "One of the things that 'Daily Show' tried to do constantly was say, 'Do not underestimate the stupidity of people, and do not underestimate the danger of that stupidity!' I think [the country] did, for years, and we are literally in the space we are now because we thought we could just close our eyes and ignore it, and it would go away."

Please tune in for much more from our conversation, including Winstead's thoughts and concerns on what has become her central focus now, even as she continues her work as a stand-up comedian, to help raise awareness and concern and action for her reproductive rights organization, Abortion Access Front. She founded the non-profit in 2015 and it is now, as she explains, facing the fight of all of our lives...

Finally, in our closing few minutes of the show today, we take the opportunity to respond to some listener mail, including from one listener who has a very good question about my oft-used reference to the importance of "independently verifiable" news and from another listener with some pretty serious "CRITICISM" of The BradCast...

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On today's BradCast: Great news for a change, with a big victory for voters in Georgia! [Audio link to show is posted below.]

After what seemed impossibly long odds just days ago, a bill that would have moved the state from 100% unverifiable touch-screen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting devices to just-as-bad-if-not-worse 100% unverifiable computer-printed and barcoded "paper ballots", failed to pass in the state's General Assembly before the legislative session ended for the year on Thursday at midnight.

That, despite a powerful lobbying effort by the nation's largest private voting machine vendor, ES&S, which stood to make millions on the deceptive "paper ballot" scheme being pushed by elected officials --- including GA's Republican Sec. of State candidates State Rep. Buzz Brockway and State Sen. Josh McKoon --- in both chambers of the legislature.

In recent days, however, Election Integrity advocates on the ground in Atlanta and via social media have been rallying like crazy and mounting an extraordinarily impressive effort to inform the public in hopes of blocking this dangerous bill. The effort was focused on detailing the many dangers of unverifiable barcoded ballots as produced by the type of touch-screen Ballot Marking Device (BMD) computer voting systems that GA lawmakers were hoping to move to after 15 years of using easily-hacked, oft-failed DRE voting systems statewide.

We're joined again today, for a bit of a victory lap, by election integrity expert MARILYN MARKS who has been tirelessly fighting the bill and rallying the social media troops on Twitter, along with Jenny Cohn and others in recent days. (Cohn was on the show several weeks ago to discuss the GA bill and her must-read article documenting the many dangers of unverifiable BMD "paper ballot" voting systems.) Marks was also on the program just days ago, when overcoming the "incidious" vendors' last minute push for SB403 in the GA legislature seemed all but impossible.

"It is because of the hundreds of people that called, wrote, tweeted...just so much pushback from the citizens," that the effort to kill the bill was successful, she tells me today.

After citing the many who made Thursday's late night victory possible, Marks turns our attention to several continuing related battles. Among them, the lawsuit her organization, Coalition for Good Governance, filed months ago in hopes of ending GA's use of DREs in favor of a verifiable HAND-MARKED paper ballots. GA already uses such a system for absentee vote-by-mail balloting and, Marks argues, the same existing system could easily and inexpensively be expanded for use by all voters at the polling place before this fall's crucial mid-terms.

She also offers a warning for voters around the nation, where unverifiable computer-marked and barcoded paper ballot BMD schemes, like the ones being pushed in GA, are already being deceptively sold to the public as "paper ballot" systems by Republicans and Democrats alike. PLEASE NOTE: Paper ballots or "voter-marked" paper ballots are not enough. Demand nothing less than HAND-MARKED paper ballots as your state or county "upgrades" its system with the hundreds of millions of dollars that have just been allocated for this by Congress!

Marks tells me she's hopeful that the broad social media effort on SB430 has resulted in lessons that can be used around the country "when --- it's not an 'if', but 'when' --- the barcode balloting comes to them. And they better be watching carefully, because this money is about to start flowing from the federal government like now, literally now, and you know exactly what the vendors are going to do."

Also on today's show: A recently leaked memo reveals how Administrator Scott Pruitt's EPA is now instructing employees to use false talking points regarding the science of climate change in order to create doubt and confuse the public about the broad scientific consensus finding the human burning of fossil fuels as the main cause of global warming; A new AP survey of young voters finds huge majorities see Donald Trump as "racist", "dishonest" and "mentally unfit" for office; Judge Stephen Reinhardt, "liberal lion" on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, died suddenly on Thursday, after nearly 40 years on the court; And, finally, a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds some 75% of Americans now support a "Medicare-for-All" style, single-payer, national health care insurance program...

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On today's BradCast, students are mad as hell, for a lot of very good reasons, and now they are taking things into their own hands, not a moment too soon, by threatening to vote. Where Republicans appear to have little interest in helping them, Democrats certainly can and should, but they'll need to step up with a clear, progressive agenda to do exactly that in advance of the 2018 mid-terms. [Audio link to show is posted at end of story.]

First up today, there was another Special Election on Tuesday in another deep "red" district, this time in rural Kentucky, where Democrats picked up their 37th "red-to-blue" state legislative flip since the 2016 Presidential election. The GOP believes the "odd" circumstances around this particularly election make it an outlier (the Republican preacher who held the seat killed himself in December, following allegations of sexual misconduct with a 17-year old), and show little concern that Democrat Linda Belcher reportedly defeated her Republican opponent by some 36 points in a district that went to Trump in 2016 by 49 points. (That's a huge 86 point swing towards the Democrats, for those keeping score at home!)

Meanwhile, high school students across the country walked out of class on Wednesday to hit the streets in a call for gun safety legislation following last week's school shooting massacre in Parkland, Florida. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School pressed lawmakers at the Florida statehouse in Tallahassee, where Republicans quickly voted to shelve the possibility for any major gun reform before the end of the legislation session early early next month. At the nation's capitol in D.C., among other places, students also marched and promised to vote out legislators who clung to support from the NRA while rejecting calls to reform our nation's permissive and deadly gun laws.

But while Democrats, in this environment, would seem well positioned to take over the U.S. House in this year's mid-terms, a recent series of Dem-sponsored focus groups reportedly finds voters complaining that while "Republicans have the wrong agenda, Democrats have no agenda."

We're joined today by ERIC LEVITZ, Associate Editor of the Daily Intelligencer blog at New York Magazine, to discuss that problem, by way of his recent article highlighting a new research paper [PDF] from the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. The authors of the report found that, rather than blow a $1.5 trillion hole in the national debt with tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, as recently passed by the Republican Party, we could have completely wiped out every penny of the nation's collective and sky-rocketing student debt for the same or less cost. And that money, as Levitz reports, would have "benefited all Americans by increasing economic growth and lowering unemployment" by allowing young Americans to purchase new homes, cars and make other investments which would also help to raise middle-class wages.

Levitz describes the student loan debt as a real "crisis", which has spiraled wildly out of control since the 1990s. "You've got 44 million people saddled with these debts, and that's limiting their ability to participate in the economy. All of these wages that would be going into local businesses, and circulating throughout the economy, and creating markets and stimulating demand is going to either private lenders or actually the government," he argues, charging that the government could "just completely eliminate all that debt, which just so happens to be roughly the same price as the GOP tax cuts."

In another crazy idea cited by Levitz, the federal government could offer free tuition to public colleges and universities for the same cost we currently spend on grants and tax breaks for students, without saddling them with debt for decades. That's right, it would cost the federal government zero dollars to make tuition free at our public colleges and universities.

Isn't it time Democratic officials and candidates told voters what they are for, instead of only how much they are against Donald Trump and the Republican Party, by spelling out a clear, forward-thinking progressive agenda for the future? Just asking for a friend.

On that, however, Levitz does see some reason for some optimism in the spate of 2020 Democratic Presidential hopefuls who are finally embracing progressive ideals like healthcare-for-all legislation and even vowing to reject "dark money" from corporate PACs. (Oh, and here's Levitz' excellent article about Donald Trump's obscenely hypocritical plan to have Big Government tell poor people what they can eat, which I only had time to quickly reference on today's show.)

Finally today, a bit more encouraging news on the gun legislation front, as a Parkland father who lost his daughter in the shooting last week faces off at the White House with Donald Trump, and as a major GOP donor says he will not give one more penny to any politicians who fail to support a ban on military-style assault weapons...

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