On today's BradCast: Even as final results are still being determined from this year's midterms, the Democratic Caucus in the U.S. House prepared for its new majority with leadership votes on Wednesday, including on Rep. Nancy Pelosi's bid to retake her previous role as Speaker of the House. Also, three weeks after the November 6th election and Tuesday's runoff for the U.S. Senate in Mississippi, more Houses races are called and one race, believed to have been won by a Republican, offers a new mystery in the state of North Carolina. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

In MS, Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith reportedly won Tuesday's runoff against Democrat Mike Espy, as expected, but by a far narrower margin than previously expected in the deep "red" state, after she made a number of disturbing, racialized comments throughout the campaign. Trump won the state by 18 points in 2016. Hyde-Smith won by eight points. A ten-point shift towards Democrats. Nonetheless, the GOP win in MS results in an overall pickup of 2 seats for Republicans in the U.S. Senate this January.

The U.S. House, however, is a very different story. Today, AP finally called the still-undecided contest in New York's 22nd Congressional District for Democrat Anthony Brindisi over incumbent (and very Trumpy) Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney. The Dem flip comes in another "red" district where Trump had won in 2016 by 16 points. That brings the Democratic Party's pickups to 39 among AP's "called" races, with one more contest leaning Dem in California and another leaning GOP in New York state.

But, in North Carolina, where all 13 U.S. House races were expected to be certified by a routine vote of the State Election Board on Tuesday, a Democratic member refused to do so, citing "unfortunate activities" in one part of the state's 9th Congressional District, where Republican Mark Harris is said to have defeated Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes. After a two-hour session behind closed doors, the Board finally voted unanimously to certify all but the 9th District race for now. We've got a number of details on what may be behind this wildly unusual and still-unfolding mystery, which seems to center on Bladen County, in the eastern part of the district.

"I’m very familiar with the unfortunate activities that have happened in my part of the state," Democratic SBE vice-chair Joshua Malcolm announced during the meeting before the Board went into closed session. "And I am not going to turn a blind eye to what took place to the best of my understanding, which has been ongoing for a number of years, and which has been repeatedly referred to the United States attorney and the district attorneys to clean up. Those things have not taken place."

We'll keep an eye on that one. But, with Democrats now likely to end up with at least a 40 member majority in the U.S. House after having officially won by the overall largest popular vote margin in history for any party, the battle over party leadership and direction played out today with a vote by the Democratic Caucus in favor of Nancy Pelosi to be their nominee for the next U.S. House Speaker. She reportedly received 32 votes against her, however, which would be more than enough to block her return to Speaker when the full House votes in January.

I'm joined today by progressive journalist, author and activist NORMAN SOLOMON of RootsAction.org to discuss the challenge to Pelosi --- largely by less progressive members of her own party --- and how progressives will need to pressure the Democratic Congressional leadership from the bottom up when they take control in January. Solomon, who helped pen both a Democratic "autopsy" after the disastrous 2016 election, and a follow-up to it just before the November midterms, explains today how both newly elected Democrats and the voters who put them there will need to step up over the next two years to support wildly popular progressive reforms on everything from the minimum wage to healthcare and tax policy, if mistakes made by Democrats (with some of the same leadership) in years past is to be avoided.

"It's all about constituent power," says Solomon. "At RootsAction.org we are dedicated to mobilizing to make sure that more and more progressive constituents make their senators and representatives fully aware that they are being watched closely, and there are such things as primary challenges."

He argues that "the party has changed partly" over these past two years, though "not profoundly." Where it has changed, where Dems have rejected unpopular corporatist establishment positions, "its been because of a lot of these on-the-ground progressives".

Still, Solomon warns against complacency. "When they get Democrats in charge, there's more of a tendency among a lot of progressives to think, 'Well, the worst is over. The emergency is gone.' In fact, whether it's climate change, or perpetual war, or the rich continuing to get richer, these problems are festering. Yes, worse under Republicans, but for us to sit back in any way and not continue to organize and pressure is to leave Congress to its natural setting. It's sort of 'The Call of the Corporate Wild' that they're immersed in," he tells me. "The only way to counter that is that we have to mobilize no matter who is in power, to fight back against Wall Street."

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On Friday of the Thanksgiving weekend, in hopes that nobody would notice, the Trump Administration quietly released the latest National Climate Assessment, a 1,700-page report compiled by 13 federal agencies with more than 300 scientists, including data from over 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies. On today's BradCast, we notice. [Audio link to show follows below.]

The report is mandated by Congress every few years, so the Administration had little choice but to release it, though doing so a month earlier than expected over a holiday weekend --- without even notifying the scientists who worked on it --- was as noteworthy as the report's stark contradictions with Donald Trump's own climate change denialism.

Global warming, the report warns, may warm the U.S. by as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. It has already cost Americans $150 billion in various forms of damage since 2015 and, by the end of the century, unless severe steps are taken to curb emissions, climate change will result in a cost of some 10% to the nation's Gross Domestic Product. That hit to the economy will be more than twice that of the Great Recession a decade ago, the report finds, unless a very serious effort is undertaken immediately to curb man-made greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. Such action on a federal level, of course, seems very unlikely given that Donald Trump, when asked about the devastating economic effects detailed by his own administration's report, told reporters on Monday: "I don't believe it."

We're joined today by DR. MICHAEL E. MANN, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, to discuss the troubling scientific findings and the entirely predictable reaction by denialist Republicans and corporate media over the weekend since its release.

Mann's climate science work, as author of nearly 200 peer-reviewed and edited publications, as well as several landmark climate change books, has warned for years of the breathtaking scope of our current climate crisis, illustrated again by recent record hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and floods and outlined by the report. The new study was compiled prior to the recent fires in CA which have, so far, killed nearly 90 people, as well as before this year's Hurricanes Michael and Florence which devastated parts of Florida and the southeast coast of the U.S.

"Simply stating what the science has to say is alarming," Mann tells me. "We are seeing the impacts now play out in real time. That means we are much farther down this road than we ever should have allowed ourselves to get. And time is running out. There is a level of urgency unlike we've seen before. We have to bring our carbon emissions down dramatically now, to avoid ever more catastrophic warming of the planet. And this is what you see in the form of scientists, who are usually quite conservative, coming out and saying, 'Look, we have, in essence, an emergency now.'"

At the same time, Mann notes, "The emergency is heightened by the fact that, at a time when we need to see even more action if we're going to stabilize warming below catastrophic levels, we have a president who is trying to take us in exactly the opposite direction."

Last week, in response to a cold spell just days before his own Administration released its report, Trump tweeted: "Whatever happened to global warming?" When asked about that today, Mann responds today by saying: "I'm looking out the window now and it's dark outside. Whatever happened to the sun? His comments about climate change are about as sensible and intelligent as that. Even a 5-year-old understands the absurdity of the claims that he makes."

As usual, Mann has a lot of important thoughts and science to share on all of this, on whether action at this late date can even make a difference, on the media's coverage of the issue, and even on his "disagreement" with a recent comment made by newly elected Democratic progressive Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Please tune in.

Also today: Speaking of the costs of Trump's reckless deregulation and science denial, last week's E. coli outbreak in Romaine lettuce (and the similar nationwide taint that sickened hundreds and killed five earlier this year), was also entirely predictable. It followed the Trump Administration's rollback of Obama Administration testing requirements for water used by producer growers, which would have kicked in this year. Trump's deregulation was supposed to save growers $12 million a year, while the costs of tainted fruits and vegetables costs consumers about $180 million in healthcare costs annually.

We've also got some more midterm election news as well (no, it's still not over!), including Republican Rep. Mia Love finally conceding her U.S. House reelection bid to Democrat Ben McAdams in otherwise ruby red Utah --- and slamming both Trump and her own party in the bargain. That brings the total to 38 House seats picked up by Democrats, so far, with two more still-undecided races in New York.

It's not just midterm counting that continues, but voting as well, as super-genius GOP U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith faces a tougher-than-expected runoff on Tuesday in Mississippi against Democrat Mike Espy, after a string of disturbing remarks about "public hangings" and voter suppression during her campaign.

And, finally today, listeners ring in with calls on the new climate change report and more...

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On today's BradCast: More races were called and more candidates conceded over the weekend, as the counting from the midterm elections gets still closer to finally wrapping up, and as voter suppression by GOPers in two key states worked their magic. [Audio link to show follow below.]

But, first up today, the latest on the horrific California wildfires, with nearly 1,000 still said to be missing in the enormous Camp Fire in Northern California, where 77 were confirmed to have been killed as of airtime. Donald Trump toured the region over the weekend, referred to Paradise --- the town which was leveled shortly after the inferno broke out on November 8th --- as "Pleasure", and otherwise made something up, apparently out of whole cloth, about Finland raking their forest floors to prevent such disasters. Desi Doyen joins us for actual facts that apparently the President of the United States doesn't have access to, and to warn about what effect the rains predicted for this week over the Thanksgiving holiday may have on the blazes and their dangerous aftermaths.

Next, it's back to the continuing tally and fight to count votes from the November 6th midterm elections, as the last of the still-undecided races begin to get wrapped up, and several races get called by media over the weekend. In Florida, Republican Governor Rick Scott's years of disenfranchising some 1.7 million former felons (500,000 of them African American) paid off. The Sunshine State's incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson finally conceded to Scott after a partial hand-count in the state --- where more than 8 million paper ballots were tallied (either correctly or incorrectly, who knows?) by computer scanners --- resulting in a 0.12 percent edge (10,033 votes) for the termed out Republican Governor in the U.S. Senate election. Similarly, Democrat Andrew Gillum officially conceded to Republican Ron DeSantis in the Governor's race, after final computer tallies showed him losing by just 0.41 percent

The losses for Dems in Florida come on the heels of Democrat Stacey Abrams' loss to Republican Sec. of State and master vote suppressor Brian Kemp in the Georgia Governor's race late on Friday. Broad criticism of Kemp's massive voter suppression over the past eight years continued over the weekend, in what is unlikely to ever be viewed as a legitimate election.

Meanwhile, a runoff in the Secretary of State election in Georgia is now scheduled for December 4th and, in Arizona, Democrat Katie Hobbs has been named as that state's next Secretary of State, after media had inaccurately called it for the Republican candidate on election night. The Sec. of State position in both GA and AZ will play a crucial role in those two key swing-states in advance of the 2020 Presidential election.

Also over the weekend, the last of the California U.S. House races was called, with first time candidate, Democrat Gil Cisneros, defeating Republican Young Kim to turn the last of Orange County's once-impenetrably Republican House seats "blue". Dems now control every U.S. House seat in what had long been a GOP bastion, flipping four of them in just one election. They also now control every statewide elected position and enjoy a super-majority in both houses of the state legislature, all without partisan gerrymandering in the state where an independent commission draws state and federal districts.

Dems now hold a remarkable 45 to 8 advantage in California's U.S. House delegation, and have picked up at least 37 seats nationwide in the midterms. Just four more races are undecided (in NY, UT and GA) as of airtime.

And, as discussed today, a Special Election for the U.S. Senate in Mississippi in coming up on November 27th, with Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith heavily favored in her contest against Democrat Mike Espy. However, Hyde-Smith has recently been caught on video-tape making several troubling "jokes" about public hangings and voter suppression --- in a state with a long and disturbing history of both.

Finally today, we open up the phone lines to listeners on all of the above and much more, as we discuss what Democrats did right and wrong in the 2018 midterms, and what they might be wise to focus on once they officially take control of the U.S. House majority in January...

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