We catch up on a whole bunch of stuff on today's BradCast, from Trump's ransacking of military hurricane recovery funds in order to pay for his border wall --- as Hurricane Dorian slams a military base in North Carolina that is still crippled from last year's Hurricane Florence --- to both the Horse Races and the Track Conditions for a bunch of upcoming elections between next week and next year. [Audio link to full show is posted at end of summary.]

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

• Dorian ravages parts of the East Coast as the death toll rises in The Bahamas, and the President of the United States continues to spend time on his twisted, bizarre lies about his erroneous claims that it was going to hit Alabama;

• At the same time, while an actual national emergency plays out, Trump's Administration is stealing $3.6 billion under the phony pretense of a "national emergency" in order to build his wall on the southern border. Hundreds of millions are being stolen from construction projects meant to help rebuild military bases in Florida, North Carolina and Puerto Rico after devastation from previous hurricanes over the past two years. That, as Camp Lejeune in NC hunkers down as Dorian hits, with blue tarps still serving as roofs on hundreds of structures there after Hurricane Florence last year. Lejeune is just one of scores of bases that Trump is robbing to pay for his wall, and there are bases in many other states losing millions as well, including in six states with Republican Senators facing reelection next year after voting for Trump's fake "national emergency". They will have to explain to voters why millions of dollars will not be coming into their local economies as previously allocated by Congress;

• But, while those Senators may have trouble in their reelection bids, Team Trump is working to smooth his path to the GOP nomination. Politico reports the likely cancellation of GOP Presidential primaries and caucuses in at least four states next year where Trump might have faced embarrassing loses to several Republican challengers;

• One of Trump's primary challengers, former Illinois Tea Party Rep. Joe Walsh is none too happy about the GOP's attempt to rig the nominating contest next year for Trump by scrapping primaries and caucuses. Nonetheless, we congratulate the newly-reformed former Rep. both for his righteous efforts to call Trump out for the danger he poses to the nation, and for his somewhat chilling recent appearance on Fox Business Channel earlier this week with "Stepford" Stuart Varney, whose astonishing insistence that Trump has never lied to the American People is something that needs to be seen (or heard) to be believed;

• Also, as Dorian strikes, voters in NC's 3rd and 9th Congressional districts are Early Voting in advance of next Tuesday's two U.S. House Special Elections there. Or, they are trying to, at least. We've got an update on poll closures due to the storm, extended hours set for this weekend, and some questions about whether either or both election may need to be postponed yet again because of the hurricane;

• In California, a Democratic Congressman is facing an interesting challenge from a man with the exact same name...which leads us down a fascinating rabbit hole into instances when this has happened before (last year in another U.S. House race in Kansas, and way back in 2001, in fascinating local election in California);

• Speaking of the U.S. House, GOP incumbents are racing for the exits, with yet another Texas Congressman announcing this week he will not seek re-election (the fifth to do so, so far, in the Lone Star State) and longtime Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner announcing his retirement as well. We've got memories, fond and otherwise, to share on the retiring Wisconsin Congressman (the state's second to call it quits this cycle.) So far, 13 House GOPers have announced they are getting out while the getting's good;

• And, speaking of quitting, former Starbucks CEO and billionaire Howard Schultz officially declares that he is nixing his plans to run for President as a "centrist" independent, which many Democrats feared might help pave the way for a Trump re-election in 2020;

• Finally, we're delighted to end the week with another musical finish. This one may, in fact, be Internet satirist Randy Rainbow's masterwork...

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On today's BradCast: Good news for Bernie, good news for the Green New Deal, bad news for Tucker Carlson and Fox "News", and the fight is joined against the "invasion" on the U.S. southern border. (No, not that one.) [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up: When Congress settled on a compromise spending deal last week to keep the federal government open, the agreement included a special carve-out to protect a number of sensitive wildlife and tourism related areas along the Rio Grande River in South Texas, including the threatened National Butterfly Center and the 150-year old La Lomita Mission Chapel. But, as the Director of the 100-acre butterfly and wildlife refuge tells us, she is continuing the Center's lawsuit against the government because she fears Donald Trump's "National Emergency" declaration may now override the protective legislative carve out. "In fact, we expect the equipment already at work near us will just roll right over and through us," Marianna Trevino-Wright said via email after bill was signed and the "emergency" declared by the President, noting that even the current legislative agreement lasts for just six months before negotiations for 2020 appropriations begin. "We have not been spared," Trevino-Wright wrote, "We were given a temporary stay of execution."

Receiving no such "stay" however, are thousands of private residents living along the South Texas border. So, last Friday, the non-profit good government organization Public Citizen filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of three private citizens and the Frontera Audubon Society challenging Trump's "National Emergency" declaration to steal money from the military in order to build his wall with Mexico on the border. The lawsuit [PDF] filed in the U.S. District Court for D.C. describes the scheme as unlawful and unconstitutional.

We're joined today by ALLISON ZIEVE, General Counsel for Public Citizen and Director of their Supreme Court Assistance Project, to discuss the complaint filed on behalf of three Starr County, TX residents whose property and homes on the banks of the Rio Grande --- where they and their families have lived for as many as five generations --- will now be bisected by a giant barrier, cutting them off from the river entirely. In one case, the wall would be built just feet from the landowner's house.

The suit describes the federal government's heavy-handed tactics to condemn and seize private lands from the plaintiffs as an "imminent invasion of privacy and the quiet enjoyment of their land." The case is also filed on behalf of Frontera Audubon, which charges the wall will impede migration of wildlife at the nature preserve and prevent their members from getting to where birds and other sensitive species are threatened along a 250-mile wildlife corridor on the Rio Grande River.

Zieve tells me how Public Citizen's complaint, filed last Friday, differs from the one filed by 16 state Attorneys General on Monday also seeking to block Trump's "emergency" declaration as an unlawful exercise of the National Emergency Act, and how the cases are likely to play out as they work their way, almost certainly, to the U.S. Supreme Court, particularly, she notes, "if any of the plaintiffs win" at the appellate level.

"If there's no emergency, the President can't declare one," Zieve argues, adding: "What it really comes down to is there is no emergency. Everybody knows that. It's not really that [the Administration] thinks there's an emergency. It's that they think the President can do whatever he wants. And that's just not our Constitutional system."

Also on today's show: Bernie Sanders shatters historic U.S. records for funds raised on the first day of his announcement that he's running for President again in 2020. And it wasn't even close. And the elements of the Green New Deal prove to be wildly popular, garnering well over 80 percent support across all political parties, according to a new poll by Business Insider.

Finally, the unaired profane interview between Tucker Carlson of Fox 'News' and historian Rutger Bregman about raising taxes on the wealthy that, apparently, Fox does not want you to hear, since they taped it last week but decided against running it --- so we did.

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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!)