Hurricane Milton slices through Florida; FEMA grapples with Republican disinfo, funding shortages; PLUS: Biden EPA issues landmark rule to replace every lead pipe in America...
Guest: Dana Gold of GAP's 'Democracy Protection Initiative'; Also: States work to support voters after Helene; GOPers file suits before election to challenge it after...
Just after Hurricane Helene, Florida braces for powerful Hurricane Milton; Trump lies about federal response to Helene; PLUS: New study finds hurricanes have hidden death tolls...
'Pro-choice' Melania wants $250k from CNN; $100k 'Trump Watch' invites influence peddlers; Damning new 1/6 details; MAGA county clerk gets 9 years for CO vote system tampering...
After another climate disaster, climate change finally front and center at VP Debate; PLUS: Ongoing climate disaster Helene, now second deadliest hurricane in modern U.S. history...
'GNR' Special Coverage: Climate change-fueled Hurricane Helene unleashes widespread death and destruction, as storm victims face daunting challenge of recovery...
Climate change strikes again, killing more than a hundred in 5 states, millions without power, concerns about their ability to vote; Also: Callers ring in before VP Debate...
Helene guns for Florida; Global warming doubled odds of EU's catastrophic floods; PLUS: Biden promotes climate action, issues warning, at final U.N. address...
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...
On today's BradCast, I'm in again for Brad and Desi, who are on the road for a bit of fa la la la la! I'm the host of In Deep with Angie Coiro, heard alongside the BradCast on many stations and streams.
Come along with me (please, I need all the company I can muster) as I traipse through the latest Trump-tinged headlines. I combine two stories that, on the face of it, have not much to do with each other: the latest child death under the watchful eye of the Border Patrol, and a grimly comical conversation about Santa Claus between Donald Trump and a young girl he just had to dominate. When you dig down, the latter reveals a lot about why we're witnessing the former.
Other headlines: Trump's hypocrisy in Iraq. I mean, the man stood in front of Americans serving us all overseas, and said "We're no longer the suckers, folks" --- addressing the very military he suckered by claiming "bone spurs" to stay home from Vietnam. The same day, ironically, the New York Times ran its story on how his exemption may have come about.
Then I'm so pleased to bring you extended excerpts of a recent onstage conversation with REP. JACKIE SPEIER. Her picture belongs in the dictionary under "indomitable" - undefeated by five gunshot wounds in Jonestown, by the persistent patriarchal hold on America's political power, by the politicians who want to paint late-term abortion as heartless murder - who she countered on the floor of the house with the heartbreaking truth of her real-life abortion.
While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!
IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Deadly volcano erupts in Guatemala; Trump Administration moves toward unprecedented bail-out of failing coal plants; Canada's prime minister nationalizes controversial Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline; New renewable electricity surpasses new fossil fuel generation; PLUS: G7 nations subsidize fossil fuels to the tune of $100 billion a year, despite climate pledges... 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): Hurricane Season 2018: Experts warn of super storms, call for new Category 6; Battery pioneer unveils surprising new breakthrough; Coal miners' fund set for deep cuts as black lung epidemic grows; Zinke presses to keep Navajo Generating Station online; Pruitt had aide do personal tasks, hunt for a used Trump Hotel mattress; New Mexico, Colorado wildfires force hundreds to evacuate; After the storm, Puerto Rico misses a chance to rebuild with renewables; Endangered mountain gorilla population recovers to over 1,000... PLUS: Park officials consider whether non-native lake trout 'swam' to Yellowstone... and much, MUCH more! ...
Guest: Alex Doukas of Oil Change Int'l; Also: Trump's trade war, Bad news for CA Repubs, Bad news for TX voters, listeners aghast at AL Sec. of State's crazy emails...
On today's BradCast: Both Trump in the U.S. and Trudeau in Canada have revealed schemes to prop up dying elements of the fossil fuel industry by having their respective governments spend billions "picking winners and losers," which Republicans, at least, used to pretend to abhor. [Audio link to show follows below.]
First up today, however, just before Tuesday's primaries in eight states, one of them, California, announces record voter registration numbers including the fact that, for the first time, registrations for "No Party Preference" voters now outnumber registration for the Republican Party in the state.
As California has made registration far easier for voters in a number of ways, Texas continues to do the opposite. A federal court last week found the state in violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA or "Motor Voter Act") as well as the Constitution's Equal Protection clause, and ordered them to implement online voter registration for those who renew drivers licenses online within 45 days. Of course, TX appealed the ruling to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has now temporarily blocked the lower court ruling. That is likely to block online registration for Texans until at least after the crucial 2018 midterms, as the case filed by voting rights advocates in 2016 continues to languish.
Also today, Donald Trump has managed to infuriate allies, adversaries, and even his own party, as longtime U.S. trading partners Canada, Mexico and the EU began to push back against steep tariffs imposed, as of today, by the Trump Administration on imported steel and aluminum. In response, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for example, has announced a dollar for dollar retaliation in what is quickly turning into a full blown global trade war, likely to increase prices for Americans on many consumer goods.
At the same time, a new scheme by the Trump administration to pick winners and losers in the energy industry, by forcing electric operators to use coal and nuclear power under the pretext of a 70-year old, Cold War-era "national security" provision, was revealed today by Bloomberg News.
And, up in Canada, PM Trudeau is facing criticism after announcing his government's plan to purchase the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan. A massive extension of the pipeline, to send dirty tar sands oils from Alberta to British Columbia for export overseas, has been long opposed by environmentalists and indigenous groups. But Trudeau's nationalization of the pipeline is meant to overcome both the protests and legal barriers.
Our guest today, ALEX DOUKAS of Oil Change International (a Canadian himself) explains what "these egregious and terrible decisions that Trump and Trudeau have taken over the last few days" mean for the U.S., Canada, and our dangerous fossil fuel future. Doukas heads up the group's Stop Funding Fossil Fuels program and observes that Trump is "setting up consumers to pay vastly more for more polluting forms of electricity, just to give handouts to his corporate cronies and his buddies in the coal industry."
That, as Trudeau, who claims to favor the reduction of fossil fuel emissions to curb global warming, has, with his plan to purchase what Doukas describes as the "doomed" Kinder Morgan pipeline, "gives the lie to the idea that the Trudeau Government is really serious about tackling climate change."
Trump and Trudeau, Doukas argues, are "actually a lot more alike than I would have hoped, because they're both willing to step in and nationalize parts of the fossil fuel industry to keep the dollars flowing to the petro-state." He adds: "Pretending that the tar sands is a long term industry, is the same thing that's happening in the U.S. --- lying to coal miners that coal is going to make a comeback, that we're going to make coal great again. It's not going to happen."
But, while he argues that Kinder Morgan, the Houston-based "successor of Enron," has "basically pulled one over on the Canadian government for a failing project they they knew wasn't going to get built," establishing the precedent of government intervention in the dying industries may come back to haunt the supporters of the petro-chemical industries in both countries.
Finally, we've received a lot of feedback following Thursday's program, in which we shared some of the insane emails [PDF] sent over the past week to me by Alabama's seemingly unbalanced Sec. of State John Merrill (R) in advance of his state's (and his own) primary elections next week. We share a bit of the response from listeners, computer experts and election integrity advocates who were, by and large, flabbergasted by Merrill's behavior, as revealed in those emails...
While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!
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