On today's BradCast: More corruption by top Trump Administration (and other) officials than we can barely squeeze into a single show. And most of it largely revealed over just the past week or so! [Audio link to full show follows below.]

As we go to air, staunch anti-choice "conservative" Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) announces he will resign from the U.S. House following the revelation of text messages with his mistress in which he is said to have advised her to have an abortion. Murphy, the only clinical psychiatrist serving in Congress, is the author of the GOP's mental health care reform legislation passed last year, supposedly in response to a number of mass shootings. Mental health reform is still the GOP's only legislative answer to our gun epidemic and public health crisis in the U.S.

However, today the NRA gave permission to Republicans to "politicize" Sunday's massacre in Las Vegas by calling on the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to review its regulations regarding "bump stock" devices that can turn semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic weapons. The shooter in Vegas who shot nearly 600 people, killing 58 of them in a matter of minutes from his 32nd floor hotel room, reportedly used a number of those devices to carry out his bloodbath. It should be noted (as we do), that such a change in regulation would still not necessarily require the NRA-owned Republican members of Congress to vote on any new gun safety legislation.

Then, we're joined by BRENDAN FISCHER of the Campaign Legal Center to discuss a tidal wave of corruption issues recently revealed about top Trump Administration officials. Among those issues: Jared Kushner is fined again for filing late financial disclosure forms, after revising them dozens of times, while giving different numbers on his forms than his own wife, Ivanka Trump, did regarding joint assets. (She was also forced to amend her own forms several times); Kushner and Ivanka and half a dozen other top Admin officials used private email addresses (and lied to Congress about them) for public business in the White House. Lock them up!); The heads of the EPA (Pruitt), Interior (Zinke) and Treasury (Mnuchin) all have issues regarding tens of thousands of dollars of tax-payer funded travel on private and military chartered jets, after Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was finally forced to resign for spending nearly $1 million on same last week; and the Secret Service now claims they kept no visitor logs at Mar-a-Lago during Trump's many weekends there over the past eight months.

Fischer explains why all of those issues of "trickle down corruption" actually matter --- even in the Trump Era beset by otherwise distracting daily crises. He also discusses Republican U.S. Senate nominee and former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore's failure to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars of both own income and liabilities on his U.S. Senate ethics filings and why the partisan gerrymandering case, Gill v. Whitford, as heard earlier this week at the U.S. Supreme Court (much more on this from yesterday's show), is so important to overcoming all of the nightmares discussed on today's show.

"It's really like drinking from a fire-hose when it come to trying to track some of these ethics violations," Fischer, Associate Counsel at CLC, tells me. "And this comes from the top. This comes from President Trump entirely disregarding ethics laws, rules and norms that past Presidents have followed voluntarily. This entire disregard for the laws that are on the books --- that are designed to guarantee that public officials are working for the public rather than private interests --- has permeated the entire administration and is now trickling its way down to down-ballot races, like this Senate race in Alabama."

Plus: Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with updates on Puerto Rico's ongoing Hurricane Maria disaster, as well as the billions of tax-payer dollars spent due to global warming and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.

And, finally today, a bit of breaking news on Trump's reported plans to try and "decertify" the 2015 anti-nuclear agreement with Iran, despite his own Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and Chairman of his Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon all recently agreeing that Iran is in compliance with the hard-won 7-nation treaty...

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The intemperate remarks that President Donald J. Trump directed at protesting African-American athletes during an Alabama campaign rally, along with remarks he subsequently posted on Twitter, were wrong on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to begin.

Our oft-dissembling President claimed to be offended by the sight of African-American athletes who take a knee in order to protest the fact that black Americans are nearly three times more likely to die from police use of force. The timing of their peaceful assertion that "black lives matter" --- "during the playing of our national anthem" --- is inappropriate, according to Trump. It "disrespects the flag." Trump later tweeted: "Courageous Patriots have fought and died for our great American Flag."

That's utter nonsense...

On today's BradCast, we open the phone to callers to discuss another very busy news week, though most want to talk about election integrity. That's good. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the stories we cover before we get to listener calls: The Trump Administration is blocking members of Congress --- both Democratic and Republican --- from taking military flights down to Puerto Rico, for some reason, where the disaster for 3.5 million U.S. citizens following Hurricane Maria is said to be quickly deteriorating. Meanwhile, Trump continues to sing his own praises for his handling of the disaster, while using his Twitter account to tweet about the NFL instead of offering help or support for the storm victims.

Then, the state of Wisconsin finally decertifies its terrible, two-decade old Optech Eagle paper ballot tabulators which will only read marks in pencil (not pen). That, despite many WI municipalities which used those same machines to both tally and then 'recount' the 2016 Presidential election, rather than ever count ballots by hand. Those machines may well be replaced by 100% unverifiable touch-screen systems. Also, though the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security informed the state late last week that Russia attempted to hack their voting system last year, it turns out DHS now admits has no such evidence.

Here in California, where DHS told the state the same thing last week (and apparently got it wrong there as well), Democrats in the state assembly recently passed a bill, AB-840, that will make stealing elections easier, by removing nearly half of the ballots cast from the state's 1% post-election hand 'audit'. Governor Jerry Brown (D) is now deciding whether to sign the bill, which election integrity advocates and voting system experts are begging him to veto instead, describing AB-840 as a "roadmap to fraud". You can contact the Governor with your opinion on whether he should sign or veto right here.

Callers ring in on all of that today, and challenge me on a point or two regarding voting and election fraud, before Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, on the rapidly devolving humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico, and even some good news about coal for the Pacific Northwest (and for all of us, in truth)...

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Buckle up for today's BradCast. It's a humdinger, from first to last. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up: In written testimony this week to the U.S. Senate, Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the U.S. Military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed with Donald Trump's Sec. of State Rex Tillerson and European diplomats that Iran was in compliance with the 2015 anti-nuclear agreement between Iran, the U.S., Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany. He also argued that, in lieu of a breach of the treaty, pulling out of it, as Trump has continually threatened, would provide a disincentive for other nations, like North Korea, to enter any such agreements with the U.S. Also, Iran's Foreign Minister blasted the U.S. President today for tweeting fake news over the weekend charging they had test-launched an intercontinental missile.

Next: It was Special Election Day on Tuesday in several states and, once again, Democrats continued to pick up state legislative seats previously held by Republicans. They've now notched eight such wins (in FL, NY, NH and OK) since last November, while the GOP has failed to take over any Democratic held seats in 2017. At the same time, Alabama's far-right religious extremist Roy Moore --- who was twice removed as a Justice from the state's Supreme Court for violations of law, the Constitution and federal court orders (regarding the Ten Commandments and Marriage Equality) --- defeated Trump's endorsed candidate Sen. Luther Strange in Alabama's Republican Primary Runoff election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The win by an openly homophobic and Islamophobic candidate has led to shock-waves for establishment Republicans, deleted tweets by Trump, and questions for Dems as to whether their candidate, former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, might have a shot at picking up the U.S. Senate seat in the deeply "red" state in this December's general election.

Finally: Speaking of radical religious extremists who place their personal religious beliefs above protecting and defending the U.S. Constitution, we're joined by the indefatigable founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, MIKEY WEINSTEIN, to discuss a U.S. Air Force Reserve Chaplain who appears to be doing exactly that. Weinstein, a registered Republican and former White House legal counsel for Ronald Reagan, details his group's legal complaints against Capt. Sonny Hernandez (pictured above), whose recent writings declare that Christian service members who support the Constitutional rights of those who follow other religions are, in fact, tools of Satan. Yes, really.

In a recent article, for example, headlined "Christian Service Members: Avoid Supporting or Accommodating Evil!", Hernandez writes that "Christian service members who openly profess and support the rights of Muslims, Buddhists, and all other anti-Christian worldviews to practice their religions --- because the language in the Constitution permits --- are grossly in error, and deceived." He goes on to charge that "Counterfeit Christians in the Armed forces will appeal to the Constitution, and not Christ," which, he writes, "will lead them to hell."

Weinstein, whose group offers legal representation for thousands of clients in the military, predicts that, despite the Air Force Inspector General's current investigation of Hernandez, he will likely be promoted from Captain to Major, rather than being "administratively discharged and, if possible, court-martialed."

"When you write, on a Christian Nationalist blog, a column telling military people 'you better not be showing respect to people that don't follow my particular version of Christianity...because of this silly thing called the Constitution, you are not only erroneous but you are stirring the dark evil of Mephistopheles --- Satan,' and you're writing it to the military community, it's beyond unconscionable. From our perspective it's actionable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice."

As Weinstein details during our conversation today about Hernandez, who he describes as an "anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic, Constitution-hating individual," the military has attempted to come to his defense, which Weinstein characterizes as "a kill-shot to the head with regard to stupidity by the Air Force, or willful ignorance." Nonetheless, he explains that Hernandez is hardly the only one in the U.S. military violating their sworn oath to protect the Constitution in such a way. Weinstein charges that the problem of theocratic "Dominionism" --- "which is an attempt to try to replace our democracy with this weaponized version of Christianity" --- has exploded in the U.S. Armed Forces following Trump's inauguration, and already far outpaces the same concerns that led to the formation of MRFF during the George W. Bush Administration.

I can't possibly do full justice to the impassioned case that the extremely colorful Weinstein offers on today's show here, (he also rings in on Trump's national anthem "controversy" and much more), so please tune in for this one, if you can...

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On today's BradCast: a hodge-podge of mid-Summer news and D.C. dysfunction with listener calls to help make it all better somehow. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the stories covered on today's very busy show:

• Trump reluctantly signs a new bipartisan bill sanctioning Russia, North Korea and Iran (and why Bernie Sanders didn't support the bill either);
• A recently discovered Department of Justice announcement signals political appointees at Trump's DoJ civil rights unit plans to target affirmative action measures at colleges and universities on behalf of white Americans;
• A federal judge rules Alabama does not have to notify thousands of former felons that their right to vote has been restored;
• In addition to every single voting machine being hacked at last weekend's DefCon hackers conference in Las Vegas, electronic pollbook systems were also hacked there, and one contained the personal records of some 650,000 Tennessee voters.
• A long-serving, top EPA official resigns citing Trump Administration rollbacks to environmental protection in a blistering exit letter [PDF].

Then we open up the phone lines to callers on any and all of the above (and more), before Desi Doyen joins us finally for the latest similarly-busy Green News Report on South Carolina canceling plans for new nuclear plants, new studies predicting big trouble for humanity (especially those who live near the coast) and much much more...

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On today's BradCast: A ton of breaking (and largely distressing) news, before largely encouraging review of four upcoming U.S. House special elections that may offer a bit of an antidote to some of that distressing news, at least for Democrats and progressives. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Today's show both opens and closes with a ton of breaking news, including, for a start: Another school shooting, which appears to be a murder-suicide, in San Bernardino, CA (the same town where 14 were killed in a mass shooting in late 2015); The white supremacist Charleston church shooter is sentenced to 9 consecutive life sentences in state court after being sentenced earlier this year to execution in federal court; Stolen U.S. Supreme Court "Justice" Neil Gorsuch is sworn in, as President Trump thanks Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell for the theft; War planes take off from the very same air base said to have been bombed by Trump last Friday, and U.S. war ships head toward the Korean Peninsula for a possible confrontation with nuclear-armed North Korea; and Trump huddles with the Koch Brothers at Mar-a-lago as special elections to fill Republican U.S. House vacancies left by Administration appointees get underway in Kansas, Georgia and Montana (and in Los Angeles, where there is a Democratic vacancy).

We're joined today by the great Howie Klein, progressive champion and founder of DownWithTyranny.com for an overview of all four upcoming U.S. House races and the surprising (if still long-shot) possibilities of Democratic pickups in the three otherwise very Republican districts. Klein breaks down the likelihood for Dem victories in each district, describes the candidates who are running, and why it is that both the Republican and Democratic parties seem to have been underestimating the possibility of several of those seats "going blue" in the first federal elections of the Trump Era.

Among the upcoming U.S. House races, Klein notes that in CA-34, leading candidate Jimmy Gomez is a very progressive Dem running against another Dem who, he charges, is actually a Republican who changed his party affiliation for this race; in KS-4 (which votes on Tuesday, 4/11), Klein tells me that a week ago he'd have said the Dem candidate, James Thompson, had no chance in the deeply "red" district. But now that national GOPers are suddenly pouring panic money and other resources into the race, he thinks it's still long odds, but possible that Republican Ron Estes could face an upset in the home district of Koch Industries. In GA-6, he details, progressives have very high hopes for 30-year old Jon Ossoff who is running way ahead of a split GOP field in a "Jungle Primary" compromised of some 18 candidates in the first round of voting set for 4/18, where any candidate who gets 50%+1 could win the whole thing outright; And, finally, we review Montana's at-large U.S. Congressional race which, he says, could also be vulnerable to the populist Democratic candidate now running in a Republican state that has shown itself able elect Democrats to statewide seats in the very recent past.

Klein spares no criticism, however, for a number of Democratic organizations, like the Kansas Democratic Party which, he says, "should be ashamed of themselves" for failing to spend money on the House race. "They haven't had a candidate this strong running for that seat ever, and they haven't had an opportunity like this as long I can remember. They should be all over this, and they're not."

"These are dark, deep 'red' districts, and normally there would be no Democrats having any chance. But because of Trump's policies, because of that crackpot healthcare bill --- TrumpCare or whatever it was --- because of that, Republicans are discouraged and thinking, 'I'm not even going to go vote'. Or other Republicans are thinking, 'You know what? I'll vote for the Democrat!,'" Klein tells me. We'll soon see if he's right. But, of course, we'll also have to presume that Georgia's 15-year old, 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems weren't manipulated by (or since) a recent "massive" hack of its voter database.

And finally, as we head off air today, breaking news about the resignation and criminal booking of Alabama's Republican Governor Robert Bentley in the face of impeachment charges and...as if that's all not enough...a U.S. District Judge in Texas once again finds that state Republicans deliberately discriminated against racial minorities with their controversial Photo ID voting law...

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Today on The BradCast, a story out of France today, discussed at top of show, proves that things could be much, much worse. That said, with things as bad as they are, we discuss what needs to be done to restore sanity to Congress and how to save the Supreme Court, the right to vote, the truth, and everything else that is supposed to come with "democracy". [Audio link to show is posted below.]

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

• Civil rights opponent Jeff Sessions of Alabama was confirmed last night as the U.S. Attorney General largely on party lines, save for West Virginia's Democratic Senator Joe Manchin who voted for him. Should Manchin be primaried? Or is the fight for a Democratic majority as a check against Trump and the GOP more important? (I welcome your short and sweet comments on that for possible use on air! Email me, if you like: BradCast - at - BradBlog.com)

• Then, are Democrats taking the bait by taking the side of Trump's stolen Supreme Court nominee Neal Gorsuch, who claims to be "disheartened" by Trump's recent attacks against a federal judge? Answer: Yes, they are. But you can help stop that.

• Next, after new Attorney General Sessions takes office and immediately lies about violent crime statistics, what would he be willing to lie about next in order to make it harder for Democratic-leaning Americans to vote? Michael Slater, President and Executive Director of Project Vote joins us to discuss not only the "voter fraud" myths being perpetuated by Trump, but how American voters need to start working NOW on how to prevent (more) voter suppression and assure the right to vote.

While Slater tells me he believes the media are getting much better in their response to GOP "voter fraud" lies, he warns that Democrats still need a lot of help and organizations when it comes to keeping their eye on the ball. "The Democrats have never been as supportive of voting rights, and put as much energy into expanding voting rights, as we have seen the Republicans in their efforts to restrict voting rights," he notes, during our, at times, chilling, but hopefully enlightening conversation.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as news breaks that the 3-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously rejected Trump's bid to restore his stayed Executive Order banning immigrants, travelers and refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries...

All of that and much more on today's BradCast!...

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On today's BradCast: The full letter and the full story behind the letter from Martin Luther King's widow, Coretta Scott King, that resulted in Senate Republicans voting to force Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to sit down and shut up for the duration of debate over Donald Trump's objectionable nominee for Attorney General, Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL). [Audio link to show follows below.]

We detail Sessions' failed 1985 "voter fraud" prosecution/harassment of black civil rights workers in Monroe, Alabama which resulted in the Senate's rare, bi-partisan 1986 rejection of Sessions for a federal judgeship under Ronald Reagan and why the fight for the right to vote matters as much now as it did back then...

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Today on The BradCast, while it may be pretty slim pickings, we're actually able to carve out a bit of good news, here and there, at the end of the first week of the Trump Presidency (which already feels like a year). [Audio link to show is posted below.]

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

• Still more of Donald Trump's closest political appointees and family members are found to have voter registrations in two separate states (a sign of "voter fraud", if you believe the Clueless-in-Chief);
• Trump's approval rating is just 36% in Quinnipiac's first poll of his Presidency (compared to the much much larger 59% that very popular President Barack Obama enjoyed in his first poll from the same group in 2009);
• Federal courts order redistricting in Alabama and in Wisconsin due to unlawful GOP gerrymandering;
• Nikki Haley, the new U.S. Ambassador to the UN, threatens allies in her first remarks at the peacekeeping body;
• Trump says he believes in torture, but will defer to his new DefSec who says he doesn't;
• Journalist John Judis, author of The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, joins us to explain how the political story behind Australia's national health care system may offer an encouraging lesson, even if the new administration guts the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") in the U.S.;
• Trump's top political appointees all had private RNC email addresses in the White House, until exposed by the media (Lock them up!);
• And, an effort that could put an initiative for California secession from the U.S. ("CalExit") on the statewide ballot in 2018 receives official approval from the CA Sec. of State.

Did I mention it already feels like a year?...

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On today's BradCast, U.S. Senate confirmation hearings for Donald Trump's top Administration nominees are officially underway. They began today with Day 1 of hearings for controversial U.S. Attorney General nominee Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions of Alabama. [Audio link to show posted below.]

In the days leading up to today's Sessions session, Democrats have blasted Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for reversing course on demands he had made for Obama nominees back in 2009, requiring that all background checks and vetting by the Office of Government Ethics be completed before hearings begin. Also, before today's hearing commenced, members of the Congressional Black Caucus requested time to give testimony on Sessions' extremely controversial civil rights record. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA), however, while agreeing to allow the member testimony, broke with Senate tradition by only allowing it only after all of the other witness testimony has completed.

We cover all of that today and more details on the former Alabama state AG and U.S. Attorney's https://www.thenation.co...e-to-the-jim-crow-era/\">troubling record on civil rights along with his failure to tell the truth about it. We offer extended excerpts of Sessions' testimony today, including exchanges with Senators Franken (D-MN), Klobuchar (D-MN) and Whitehouse (D-RI), who pressed the A.G. nominee on voting rights, civil rights, and climate science, among other issues, in what was, in my opinion --- and, in particular, given the moment --- an all-too friendly hearing among Senate colleagues.

Nonetheless, hooks were baited and traps were set for what could lead to trouble for Sessions on several of these key issues in the days (and years) ahead, if his nomination is confirmed as expected...

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On today's BradCast, Donald Trump officially becomes President-Elect, House Republicans adopt a radical restructuring of the U.S. Government at the long-sought behest of the Koch Brothers, and Trump's nominee for Attorney General is exposed as a liar. [Audio link to show posted below.]

While corporate media were covering another mass shooting, this one allegedly by an Army veteran in Florida, the U.S. Congress met in a Joint Session today to certify the final Electoral College vote count. Despite multiple challenges to the results in 10 different states by House Democrats from the Progressive and Black Caucuses, not one U.S. Senator (Democratic, Republican or, yes, Independent) stepped up to join them, as required by the Constitution, for an official challenge to the results. We have full coverage of that, along with the citizen protests inside the Senate chamber as Vice President Joe Biden officially certified the results.

In another reminder that Democrats may not yet full appreciate what we are all now up against, Republicans in the U.S. House passed the radical REINS Act ("Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny" Act) on the second day of the Congressional session. The bill, which the Koch Brothers and their many political organizations have been pushing for years, will upend more than a century of governmental functioning by requiring that every major regulation adopted by a federal agency be approved by both houses of Congress within 70 days. Under the Act, if either the House or Senate fail to ratify new regulations --- created by experts, sometimes over many years, to enforce laws passed by Congress --- it cannot be enforced, and no other similar regulation can be considered until the next session of Congress, a year or two later.

Investigative journalist Steve Horn, who covered the bill's passage in the House at DeSmogBlog yesterday, joins us to discuss the disturbing and far-reaching ramifications if this bill passes in the Senate and is signed by the President, and why it is that it's seemingly receiving little or no attention or concern from Democrats or corporate media.

"The Koch Brothers and the entities they fund...see this as a potential landmark thing. It's huge," Horn tells me. "If it gets through the courts, it could be something akin to a Citizens United, where it sets a whole new precedent. I think the Koch Brothers see this as a potential sea change in government. They want to change the landscape altogether." Well, this'll do it.

Then, as the GOP is drastically limiting the number of days and witnesses for upcoming confirmation hearings of Trump's top appointments, more than 1,000 attorneys are opposing the controversial appointment of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions as the next U.S. Attorney General. And a number of longtime DoJ Civil Rights Unit attorneys are calling him out for lying about his litigation record on civil rights when he served as US Attorney in the 80s.

And, finally, Michelle Obama, in her final remarks as First Lady at the White House, called for hope, not fear, as we all move forward together...

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On today's BradCast, Republicans are flexing their muscles and demonstrating their willingness to break all norms --- and even laws and the Constitution when necessary --- in order to take power and hold onto it at all costs, while Democrats continue to be caught flat-footed. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

An unprecedented attempted power grab is now underway at the capitol in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Republican lawmakers, stinging from having lost the Governorship and their majority on the state's Supreme Court last month, have suddenly convened an emergency "special session" to strip power from the incoming Democratic Governor.

The naked lame duck coup attempt by the GOP --- which already enjoys a super majority in both chambers of the statehouse --- would take away Executive Branch powers previously granted to the outgoing Republican Governor. If successful, the "sore loser power grab" as some are calling it, strips the incoming Democrat of control of state and county boards of election(!), limits his ability to make appointments, shifts power from the newly Democratic-majority high court back down to the Republican-controlled state court of appeals, and keeps Republican state employees in place across many state agencies.

All of those attempts to effectively undo the will of millions of voters also comes on the heels of a federal court order for new special elections for the state legislature in 2017, after finding that Republicans had unconstitutionally gerrymandered 28 statehouse districts following the 2010 census. (And that, not long after a federal court found Wisconsin Republicans had also done so.)

With a similarly unprecedented coup at the federal level --- for example, a stolen U.S. Supreme Court majority --- Republicans in a number of other states are also quickly working to pass newly restrictive laws to make it harder for Democrats to even take part in elections around the nation.

It's difficult to win a war when you're fighting against a dishonest opponent who has no interest in playing fairly. The questions then remain: When will Democrats figure that out? What do they intend to do about it? And who, if anyone, will emerge to lead the way in the current Democratic power vacuum more than a month since Election Day?

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with details on Trump's disturbing new appointments at federal agencies, the EPA's admission that fracking can harm drinking water supplies, and the Arctic unraveling before our eyes...

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As we note on more than one occasion on today's BradCast, buckle up! [Audio link to show is at bottom of article.]

Just days before the Presidential election, Democrats are in court in 6 different states attempting to preemptively block alleged "voter intimidation" schemes by Trump and the GOP, and today a federal judge slapped a restraining order on the Trump campaign and his operatives, to try and prevent it. (The order is now posted here [PDF].)

Meanwhile, the GOP nominee is just a narrow polling error away from defeating Hillary Clinton, according to the experts at FiveThirtyEight, who now find Trump's chance of winning the Presidency to be about 1 in 3. So every vote will count --- at least if it's counted correctly.

Longtime non-partisan election integrity expert Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org joins us to explain her startling new discovery of functionality built into computer vote tabulators --- both touch-screen and paper-ballot systems in use in 99% of the nation's jurisdictions --- that, she says, would allow some votes to be weighted more than others in a way that would be nearly impossible to detect.

Harris details what she describes as "Fraction Magic" (see a real-time video demonstration here) and how that functionality, and its use by election insiders (or even outside hackers --- as the U.S. Government continues to warn about), could determine the results of elections on Tuesday, from the Presidential level on down to local races and ballot initiatives.

This ability to fractionalize votes (for example, the functionality allows certain types of voters to have their votes weighted as 1.2 votes, while other votes are counted as just .8 of a vote, so the final results will still tally up to the correct number of votes cast), was originally discovered in the GEMS tabulation system, used with Diebold/Premier voting systems and, Harris explains, systems made by almost all of the other private vendors used across the country. "It's now been confirmed in Hart Intercivic, in 2006. In Dominion. They've admitted it. And ES&S, according to the Illinois Board of Elections, has also got it in there. ES&S counts about 60 percent of the votes in the U.S. So it is actually pretty pervasive."

"We are putting our whole system at risk," warns Harris, about both "Fraction Magic" and the use of voting and tabulation systems that are difficult, if not impossible, for the public to oversee. "Sooner or later, if we keep running these mystery elections, there's going to be something that is actually destabilizing, kind of a perfect storm. This is predictable. Sooner or later, when you keep running elections that are not accountable to the public, that are not something we can verify with actual evidence --- i.e. ballots and ballot images --- there's going to be a meltdown that's destabilizing. This is actually rather dangerous."

Like you didn't think you had enough to worry about between now and Election Day?

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the last Green News Report before Election Day, and we round up a few other last minute voting concerns in swing-states North Carolina and Ohio...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: President Obama suggests re-routing the controversial Dakota Access pipeline; Some major --- and some tricky --- environment-related ballot measures; China's top climate official warns Trump about climate science denial; PLUS: Corporate media covered Clinton emails 25 times more than climate change... 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): World On Track For 3C Of Warming Under Current Pledges, Warns UNEP; Oil prices slide 3 percent on record U.S. crude stock build; Global carbon intensity falls, on declining coal use; Oil patch states may have seen the last boom; Is Coal’s Political Heft Plunging? One State May Be Canary in Mine; Hurricane Matthew Took A Big Bite Out Of Southeastern States' Beaches... PLUS: Bad News for Honey as U.S. Seeks Handle on Glyphosate Residues in Food... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, after a few words on some important California ballot propositions (on a statewide plastic bag ban, and a dangerous tax on safe e-cigarette and vaping devices) that we didn't get to discuss on yesterday's show, I make a startling admission! [Audio link to show is posted below.]

My admission: As much as I cover the elections, especially the Presidential election, while I know who I won't vote for, and who I probably would vote for if I lived in a swing-state, I have no clue who I should actually cast my vote for in the Presidential race this year here in California! I don't endorse candidates (and, both the FCC and Pacifica Radio wouldn't allow it anyway), but that doesn't mean listeners can't! So, today we open the phone lines for advice from callers, with the question: "Who should I vote for and why?"

You'll be shocked to learn that listeners have a few thoughts for me on that. Tons of callers ring in, with some good advice, some really bad advice, and a very lively and hopefully helpful hour of The BradCast ensues in the bargain. (You may --- or may not --- be amazed at some of the reasons a few listeners offer to convince me that I should vote for Trump.) Please feel free to ring in with your own answers to that question in comments below, if you're inclined.

Finally today: Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, and a sad follow-up to it with news of more tragic fossil fuel deaths in both the U.S. and China this week...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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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!)