On today's BradCast: We've got good news for voters from a bunch of courts today --- including in both battleground and "red" states --- when it comes to the absentee mail-in voting that Donald Trump and the Republican Party are working so hard to block. But we've also got some very disturbing news out of the state of Georgia in a story that nobody other than us seems to be covering for reasons we can't quite explain. Especially since it now involves installing all brand-new, untested, and uncertified software --- at the very last minute, just days before Early Voting is to start --- on every touchscreen voting system used across the state. [Audio link to full show follows below summary]

But first, the good court rulings coming out of several states so far this week...

• A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court judge's six-day extension beyond Election Day for the receipt of incoming absentee ballots postmarked by November 3rd in the critical battleground state of WISCONSIN. The unanimous ruling comes from a panel of three Republican-appointed judges, including one nominated by Trump, in a state which he is said to have barely flipped to "red" in 2016, for the first time in decades, by just over 20,000 votes out of millions cast. Republicans could appeal to the GOP's stolen U.S. Supreme Court. That's just one of the reasons they are trying to pack the Court with Trump's nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, in record time before the election;

• Similarly good news out of Mike Pence's home state of INDIANA, where a federal judge rejected a deadline of noon of Election Day for absentee ballots to be received. The ruling will allow ballots postmarked by November 3rd to be counted if they arrive by November 13. The judge says the extra days do not benefit any particular party or candidate and "should in fact help assuage" concerns about the legitimacy of election results in the Hoosier State;

• In the state of MONTANA, a federal judge blocked an effort by the Trump Campaign and other GOP groups to prevent counties from automatically sending absentee ballots to all active registered voters as they did during this year's June primary elections. That, after the plaintiffs were unable to "point to a single instance of voter fraud in Montana in any election during the last 20 years," according to the judge who described concerns about widespread fraud as "a fiction". While the state went to Trump by some 20 points in 2016, its Democratic Governor Steve Bullock won re-election on the same statewide ballot that year, and is now running for the U.S. Senate to unseat incumbent Republican Steve Daines;

• In ALABAMA, a federal judge ruled that the state may not block counties from offering curbside voting and that witness signature requirements and Photo ID requirements for absentee voters during the COVID-19 pandemic are unconstitutional for certain voters. Their Republican wingnut Sec. of State John Merrill says he will appeal all the way to the stolen Supreme Court if necessary;

• And in the closely divided battleground of NORTH CAROLINA, a proposed settlement between the state and plaintiffs will allow for absentee ballots to be "cured" by voters if they lack proper signatures; voters will be able to use secured drop-boxes for mail-in votes; and for ballots postmarked by Election Day may be received until November 12. But this week, a letter has been sent by the Trump Campaign to Republican officials on County Boards of Elections instructing them to ignore guidance from the State Board of Elections! The NC SBE has had to send a letter in response to those same officials, warning them that they are required to follow state guidance and that guidance from "a political party or other source should not be considered or followed." The extraordinary situation has led one international expert on election security from Duke University to (accurately) opine: "It comes down to the fact that this President is not actually trying to win this election – this President is trying to not have to concede this election. That’s what going on." That expert is right on the money.

Then, to the extraordinarily disturbing story out of GEORGIA, which our guest today, MARILYN MARKS of the Coalition of Good Governance, describes as "scandalous". As we reported during Monday's show, last Friday, the Secretary of State's office quietly sent a notice to elections officials in all 159 counties telling them to immediately stop their pre-election "Logic and Accuracy" testing of the new, unverifiable touchscreen voting systems that all voters are currently forced to use at the polling place. The reason, as the office explained, was due to "an error in the November database which will require every county to get a new database for the November 3, 2020 election."

That startling news late on Friday night resulted in an emergency filing by the Coalition with U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, who has been overseeing their long-running lawsuit to block the use of unverifiable touchscreen voting systems in favor of verifiable hand-marked paper ballots at the polls. On Monday, Totenberg called an emergency hearing for all parties to the suit, during which the Secretary of State's office and the state's new private vote system vendor and ballot programmer, Dominion Voting, claimed that new databases (which contain the programming for all contests in each county) were not actually needed to correct an error that prevented some U.S. Senate candidates from appearing on the touchscreen in certain cases. In fact, what they planned to do instead was to change the code used on the voting machine software itself, and install new software onto all 34,000 touchscreens in the state. All of this, just days before Early Voting is to begin, and now just over one month before Election Day.

As Marks notes, the new software to be installed on every voting machine in Georgia has not been certified for use --- or even tested --- by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) as required by state law. But this story is even more scandalous in several ways that we discuss on today's program, after another emergency hearing was called by the judge today, following another emergency filing from the Coalition on Wednesday night regarding an apparent change of plans by the Secretary of State.

"It's outrageous. They're wiping all of the software," Marks tells me, and installing "new software that's just been written, has not been tested, and has not been certified by the Elections Assistance Commission. As far as we know, it has not even been submitted for approval. This is federal certification, and Georgia, like most states, is not supposed to be using systems not certified by the federal government."

"They've written this over a weekend, and have not thoroughly tested it. There's been no user testing. The number of things that can go wrong will take up more time than your show permits," she says. "They might as well have gone out and said, 'we're going to buy the Lucy and Ethel software, and put it in.'"

While that is troubling enough, Marks also notes that the programming is not even being done by public state officials, but by private contractors at the Canadian-based firm from whom GA purchased the systems for more than $100 million for first time use this year. "This election has been completely outsourced to Dominion Voting Systems. They are a third party profit-making corporation and, essentially, Georgia has just said, 'Take it and do with it as you will, Dominion!'"

Marks says it is all "outrageous and preposterous," telling me, "Like you, I am shocked that the national media has not picked up on this more, because we're talking about the votes of 7 million voters here."

"I thought that I was beyond having anything that could shock me anymore," she continues. "But I have to say, my jaw is still on the floor from this week. And the fact that the media is not covering it, I don't understand. I can only surmise that they are still in disbelief. Maybe the facts just aren't fully out yet. That's the only thing I can come up with. This is scandalous. "

Please tune in for the full story --- there is much more to it. But, suffice to say for now, it IS a scandal that WE have been covering this story and this lawsuit for at least three years, while the mainstream corporate media seems to be ignoring it almost entirely, even with the possibility that the Peach State could flip from red to blue this year in the Presidential race for the first time in decades, and that there is not one, but two U.S. Senate seats on the ballot there this November, both of which are currently held by Republicans and believed to be endangered by Democratic challengers.

Finally, we close today with our latest Green News Report, with special coverage of the surprise --- and surprisingly substantive --- discussion of climate change in this week's otherwise off-the-rails Presidential Debate in Cleveland, OH...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: GNR Special Coverage --- A surprise, substantive discussion about climate change at the first 2020 Presidential Debate in Cleveland, Ohio... 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): How Biden’s $1.7 trillion climate plan would change America after Trump’s Big Oil presidency; New Study Shows a Vicious Circle of Climate Change Building on Thickening Layers of Warm Ocean Water; Great breakthrough for solar panel recycling; Trump Moves to Expand Rare Earths Mining, Citing China; Big Coal CEO, who fought against black lung benefits, files for black lung benefits; Colorado regulators approve drilling buffers, other new restrictions on oil and gas development... PLUS: Priced Out: Both parties used to love the carbon tax. So why are they giving up on it?... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: What else? Special coverage of what we'll call the Presidential "debate" in Cleveland, OH on Wednesday night between Donald Trump and Joe Biden as nominally "moderated" by Chris Wallace of Fox "News". [Audio link to show follows below.]

It was, perhaps, best described by CNN's Dana Bash as "a shitshow", though her colleague Jake Tapper didn't do bad either in his description of "a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow saw it as a "monstrous cavalcade of increasingly wild and obscene lies" and an "unintelligible display of logorrhea," mostly from the unhinged, unbalanced, unfit, wholly unqualified President of the United States. Stephen Colbert also did a helluva job in his own description of the train wreck as well on CBS' Late Show, though you'll have to tune in for that one.

To be fair, Trump 2000 Campaign Manager Bill Stepien called Trump's effort "the greatest debate performance in presidential history," and Fox "News" observed on their chyron: "BIDEN STUMBLES HIS WAY THROUGH FIRST DEBATE". So there's that.

We're joined today to try and make sense of whatever you may want to call Wednesday's embarrassing spectacle, by two of our favorite post-debate sense-makers, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo and ERIC BOEHLERT of Press Run, who argues in his column today that, unless the Presidential Debate Commission changes the format to, at a minimum, allow Trump's mic to be cut off (which, it looks like, they may), the next two Presidential debates should be called off entirely. Parton, who also wrote about Trump's "massive failure" today, agrees. But I don't, and we debate (ya know, an actual debate) as to why.

We also discuss and/or debate whether Biden should or shouldn't disclose his position on doing away with the Senate filibuster in order to expand the GOP's stolen U.S. Supreme Court and much much more, including Trump's failure to condemn white supremacy, his deadly criminal failure to contain the coronavirus, his very serious threat to American democracy itself, and whether either of the two candidates accomplished what they needed to.

As Parton sums up whatever went down in Cleveland on Wednesday night: "We had one mainstream, normal politician and an alien from outer space, debating on the same stage. And that didn't work out really well." She observes that all of this is "bad for the country" and goes on to cite Trump's "extra-Constitutional, extra-judicial" threat to "steal" the November election as "one of the most dangerous things any President has tried to do."

Says Boehlert about Trump performance: "He was dramatically different last night than he was in 2016. And he was awful in 2016," before going on to describe the reason as "creeping authoritarianism" in which "Trump is building a bonfire every day, every hour."

If you loved the first 2020 Presidential Debate, you may or may not love our show today. If you were as troubled by what you saw as we were, then you may take some comfort --- and even get a few much-needed laughs --- out of our special coverage today...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: California to end sales of all new gas-powered cars by 2035; US sees 'alarming increase' in combined heat waves and droughts; First 2020 Presidential debate will have no climate questions; PLUS: China announces bold pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2060... 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): Ginsburg's death could reawaken Mass. v EPA; See the toxic sites near you that are threatened by climate change; Seniors Were Left Behind When Hurricane Laura Hit; Western wildfires destroy forest designated as carbon offset; Pebble Mine executive resigns a day after being caught on tape boasting of his control over GOP politicians; E.P.A. Rejects Its Own Findings That a Pesticide Harms Children's Brains; Melting Antarctic sea ice will raise sea levels 2.5 meters even if Paris goals are met... PLUS: Richest 1 percent produce double the carbon emissions of poorest 3 billion people... and much, MUCH more! ...

The COVID-19-related tale that the President spun last month, during his lengthy RNC acceptance speech, wasn't even close to the truth. His administration is not "focusing on the science, the facts and the data" in order "to save as many lives as possible." His new "plan" will not permit everyone, other than high-risk Americans, "to safely return to work and to school". (Emphasis added).

To the contrary, with the U.S. COVID death toll already approaching a gruesome 190,000, Trump's Orwellian "plan" is to depict his abject failure to save lives as a smashing success. In addition to recklessly and dangerously claiming to prepare for a Nov. 1 date for the release of a COVID-19 vaccine prior to the completion of clinical trials, the White House has now adopted a pseudo-scientific and lethal strategy that could kill millions of Americans.

It is one thing for epidemiologists, in their medical literature, to describe "herd immunity" as a naturally occurring phenomenon, where, as the result of an epidemic --- as opposed to a safely developed and fully-tested vaccine --- a large number of surviving individuals acquired long-term immunity to a communicable disease. Epidemiological literature tracks instances where the number of naturally immunized survivors reached a "threshold", which, in turn, led to a decline in the incidence of future infections to such a disease, creating an "indirect immunity" for a community at large.

It was an altogether different proposition when the new White House "Covid Health Advisor", Dr. Scott Atlas, recently proposed a strategy to create a naturally occurring "herd immunity" to the deadly COVID-19 virus in the United States. Aside from, somehow, attempting to protect a small group of high-risk individuals --- the elderly, the sick and the immune-compromised --- Atlas' proposed scheme, echoed by the President, would allow the deadly virus to spread quickly to everyone else as they "return to work and to school."

The notion that you can protect a small group of high-risk individuals, while allowing the deadly virus to spread to everyone else, ignores the science of community spread. Children who acquire the virus at school, for example, can serve as a major source of COVID-19 infections for their more vulnerable parents and grandparents. Moreover, while risk levels may differ, coronavirus infections have led to deaths within all age groups. The death toll is not confined only to those with already-compromised immune systems. As Kristin Urquiza said, when tearfully addressing the Democratic National Convention, her previously healthy 63-year old father's "only preexisting condition was believing in Donald Trump."

Atlas is a Senior Fellow from the libertarian Hoover Institution. He is a radiologist, with no professional expertise in epidemiology or in treating infectious diseases. Like many Trump sycophants, he has frequently appeared as a contributor on the President's favorite propaganda outlet, Fox "News".

His proposal to create "herd immunity" was promptly embraced by our science-eschewing President and by his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, according to The New York Times, which cited a recent appearance on Fox in which Trump moronically averred, "Once you get to a certain number --- we use the word 'herd' --- once you get to a certain number, it's going to go away."

Horrified medical experts were quick to describe the Atlas/Trump "herd immunity" strategy as "dangerous". But it's much worse than that. Given deadly uncertainties and the potential for a genocidal death toll, the Atlas/Trump "herd immunity" strategy is patently insane.

While it may not entail the same deliberate desire to commit mass murder, an effort to create a naturally occurring COVID-19 "herd immunity" is as mad as Adolf Hitler's infamous "Final Solution" --- at least in terms of the massive lethal results.

Yes, it is that insane...

On today's BradCast: Never mind the lawlessness of it all. Personally, I'm still having trouble today getting over the creepy, grotesque scene of thousands jammed shoulder to shoulder together on the White House lawn for Donald Trump's viral super-spreader event in celebration of his acceptance speech to run for a second failed term as President. But maybe that's just me. [Audio link to today's upbeat show after a very grim night follows below.]

We're joined today for our Republican National Convention Week-in-Review by HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, award-winning opinion journalist at Salon and Hullabaloo, and RICHARD "RJ" ESKOW, longtime progressive columnist and host of The Zero Hour show on radio, TV and podcast.

It was a bizarre and stunningly dishonest week from the GOP, to say the least, capped off by the mother of all Lie Fests from the President of the United States himself. His droning, 70-minute long attempt to gaslight the American people by lying about his record and trying to scare the hell out of them about Joe Biden, did not disappoint, at least on the dishonesty scale. We make short work of a few much-needed, monster fact-checks at the top of the show before we get to the central question of the day.

Setting aside the lies and the hypocrisy of breaking countless laws while use the White House ("the People's House") to declare himself the "Law and Order President", did Trump's false, fear-mongering speech, and all the same that came before it this week from every other RNC speaker, accomplish what Republicans and Trump needed them to?

Parton and Eskow (and Desi Doyen and me) all have plenty of thoughts on that question and many others in today's lively round-table at the end of another long convention week and as we prepare for the nightmares to come in the general election season, debate season, and, undoubtedly, the boatload of October Surprises and dirty tricks that lie ahead...

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I'll be brief in today's BradCast summary, because I've got to head back into Day 2 of the bizarre dystopian nightmare known as Donald Trump's Republican National Convention. We're watching it so you don't have to. You're welcome. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

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

• Two nightmare storms slamming the Gulf Coast in the same week as the biggest and more dangerous of the two, Hurricane Laura, is gunning for the Louisiana/Texas border, likely as a Category 3;

• A Florida judge puts the brakes on Gov. Ron DeSantis' demand that all public schools open five days a week for in-person classes by the end of this month. He says the state's plan "disregards safety" amid a still roiling --- if slightly easing (for now) --- pandemic in the Sunshine State;

• Highlights (low lights?) from Day 1 of the RNC, in which every speaker sounded as if their remarks were either written by the same person, or simply ripped straight off of Fox "News". As ridiculous as the evening was --- featuring enough dangerous lies about Trump's mishandling of the COVID crisis that MSNBC had to break in with a doctor for some serious fact-checking; a couple of accused felons warned Democrats will "“abolish the suburbs altogether"; a seemingly stoned Don Jr. and his seemingly insane former Fox "News" host girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle --- we determined that ridicule was the best was to cover it. So we called in Stephen Colbert for some assistance.

• Good news for voters in Indiana. A federal court struck down the state's latest attempt to purge voters from the rolls without bothering to contact them in any way first.

• Good news, for now, for voters in Pennsylvania. A Trump-appointed federal judge forced the Trump Campaign to make fools of themselves by demanding they present evidence of voter fraud via secure absentee ballot drop-boxes in Pennsylvania, where they are suing to prevent the use of the convenient devices during this year's general election. The plaintiffs were unable to to present any such evidence.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with more on the twin storms pummeling the Gulf Coast and the raging fires in California (both amid a global pandemic making evacuating shelters very tricky for social distancing), the Trump Administration puts a pause on it's approval for the controversial Pebble Mine in Alaska after Don Jr. and Fox "News" decide maybe they're against it after all, and a quick review of last week's virtual Democratic National Convention where Joe Biden and many others promised action on climate change...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Twin storms pummel the Gulf Coast and Northern California fires rage out of control during the coronavirus pandemic; Trump Administration abruptly pauses controversial Pebble Mine; PLUS: 2020 Democratic National Convention touts climate action... 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): Exxon Ends 92-Year Run on Dow Jones; Hedge Fund Collects $3 Billion in Bet on Wildfire Insurance Claims;
Dems’ Climate Plan Takes Aim At The Fossil Industry’s Political Power; Thousands Allowed To Bypass Environmental Rules In Pandemic; Climate Is Taking On a Growing Role for Voters, Research Suggests; Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering... PLUS: An Apocalyptic August in California... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: A new effort by grassroots progressive activists to make sure all 27 U.S. House races and all 141 state House and Senate races on the ballot are competitive this year in the state of Florida is already yielding encouraging results. [Audio link to full show is posted at bottom of summary.]

But, first up today, a few thoughts and a quick review of some highlights from the second night of the virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention, including some mainstream media abetted confusion about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' role in the very cool 50-state-plus-several-territories Roll Call vote on Tuesday and more. Bottom line: to the surprise of nobody, Joe Biden is now officially the Party's Presidential nominee this year. At the same time, voters in Wyoming, Alaska and Florida took to the polls on Tuesday for statewide primary elections, which received much less coverage than they might otherwise have.

The good news, for a start: there have been few, if any, problem reports for voters at the polls in all three states as of today. That's particularly surprising for Florida, where there always seems to be one disaster or another. But, whether it's because so many ballots were already cast by mail in the Sunshine State in advance of Election Day or some other reason, it's always good news when voters aren't (to my knowledge) being disenfranchised due to chaos and failures at the polling place. As to the results, we focus today on several interesting races in Florida, the mother of all swing-states, which will once again play an out-sized role in the critical November elections.

One race was the Democratic primary contest won by former Republican software designer turned whistleblower Clint Curtis. Longtime BRAD BLOG readers will remember him well, as we broke his story in 2004 when he filed a sworn affidavit alleging that he was asked by a man named Tom Feeney --- Florida's then powerful state House Speaker (later U.S. House Rep and always close friend of the Bush Family) --- to create prototype software to flip an election on touchscreen voting systems without detection. With much less funding than his Democratic opponent, Curtis reportedly won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House in Florida's very Republican 6th Congressional District. He'll likely face an uphill climb this year to oust first-term incumbent Michael Waltz. But, if Curtis could defeat his Democratic opponent who outspent him by about 5 to 1, anything could happen this November.

To discuss some of the other races in the rest of the state, we're joined once again today by progressive "Down With Tyranny" blogger and co-founder of the progressive BlueAmericaPAC, HOWIE KLEIN who brought along a SPECIAL GUEST today!

Last week on this show, Klein discussed an effort by activists in Florida to make sure there would be no Republicans running for office at the state or federal level without Democratic competition on the ballot. As Klein emphasizes at his blog today, in response to ABC News which finally noticed the effort as of Election Day morning, it was not the state or national party which undertook this effort, but outside activists who watched some 21 state House and Senate races go uncontested all together by Democrats in 2016. That, Klein and his special guest argue today, means that in huge swaths of the state, Democrats (who, theoretically, outnumber Republicans in Florida) don't bother to turn out at all for elections at the state level. In a state which Donald Trump is said to have won in 2016 by just 130,000 votes out of millions of registered voters, the ill-considered strategy by the Florida State Democratic Party to sit out all together in many places, has arguably been a costly one. The GOP has dominated both the state legislature and Governor's mansion for years now.

On Tuesday, thanks to the activists, Democrats were on the Florida ballot from top to bottom, including 140 out of 141 state House and Senate contests. (One candidate, who his now suing, was disqualified due to a technicality in her filing paperwork.) Klein details just some of the several actually progressive candidates who will now be competitive on this November's ballot --- even in so-called "red" districts --- and perhaps provide additional reason for Democrats to show up and vote in some cases where they may not have.

One of those candidates who won an astonishingly tight three-way primary race for the Democratic U.S. House nomination in FL's 3rd Congressional District was Howie's special guest on today's program, 26-year old businessman and very impressive progressive candidate, ADAM CHRISTENSEN. The first time candidate, who'd be perhaps the youngest ever sworn in to the U.S. House if he's successful in November, is running to fill the seat being vacated by far-Right GOP Trumper, Rep. Ted Yoho (perhaps most famous for recently verbally assaulting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building.)

I must say I was exceedingly impressed with Christensen --- one of BlueAmericaPAC's endorsed progressive candidates in FL --- and his unflinching run for the seat in what has traditionally been a very "red" district. "If it was ever going to happen," he tells me today, "if this seat was ever going to flip, it was this year. So I jumped in, and a bunch of people realized we have a shot at this."

He has also taken a leadership role in the effort to run competitive candidates at the state level. "We were able to get House district candidates for every single district in the state of Florida to be able to run, so that we could actually go on a broad-based attack to be able to try to flip the Florida House. We partnered with four out of the five House candidates in our Congressional District to number one, try to turn out the vote, and number two, to try to make sure that we ran viable candidacies and we were able to cut the margins in some of the rural counties and actually win the rural counties." He cites that as one of the reasons he was "able to pull off an upset last night", with all three candidates in his race winning between 32.3 and 34.5% of the vote. Christensen came out on top by about 800 votes out of some 61,000 cast.

"There is a way that these districts can never be won, and that's if you don't run candidates in them," Klein argues. "If you don't run candidates, you don't win. And, also, if you don't run candidates the party starts to die. People don't even know what the Democratic Party means in some of these places. If you're running candidates, they're going to enthuse voters who will vote down ballot. These voters who come in are going to vote for Biden [and Biden voters will] vote for someone like Adam. That's why it pays, always, to have these candidates."

Christensen echoes Klein's thinking. "If you go on a full, broad-based attack and make them spend time, resources and energy in places that they don't want to, you are going to win. Politics is a game of attrition, and if you don't treat it that way, you will lose. If you do not run candidates everywhere, you will lose," he says.

I'd encourage you to click below to tune in for the full conversation with the candidate, as he explains how he is unflinchingly prepared to take his case --- for progressive platforms like the Green News Deal and Medicare for All --- to those who have, for years, called themselves Republicans because they (falsely) believe the party is "conservative". For example, as he explains, he supports "middle class tax cuts" because, as he details today and on his website's platform page, Americans are burdened with PRIVATE taxes such as insurance for health care and costs for universal childcare. Providing those services by public means would ultimately lower costs ("private taxes") on the middle class.

"What we do is speak in the language of Republicans, of independents. We use the terms 'middle class tax cuts', 'small business tax cuts'. What I mean by that is we are going to reduce the amount of taxes --- private taxes --- that everyone has to pay," says Christensen. "We are going to get rid of the insurance companies from the health industry --- which is a small business tax cut, because small businesses pay eight grand per employee, and 30% of that goes to an insurance company. That is a tax cut. Get rid of those, that is a tax cut. Use those terms."

Both Klein and Christensen argue that there are a lot of independent voters in the District who, along with Democrats, may go with Christensen and pull off an upset against Kat Cammack --- Yoho's Chief of Staff and the apparent winner of the 10-candidate free-for-all on Tuesday to win the GOP nomination for the 3rd District seat.

Christensen, who was raised as a Republican, also understands --- as I have long discussed --- the need to take the fight straight to them on the Right, to not flinch from the Fox "News" phony attack squad, but meet them where they live and explain, as he does in very astute detail today in response to my questions, how progressive policies are, yes, even good for Republicans!

So, can a true progressive win in a very so-called "conservative" Congressional district on his first try, without moderating his views --- but expound on them clearly to explain how they would help even so-called "conservatives --- during a general election contest? We may found out in just over 70 days. Klein points out that Rep. Katie Porter, in what had long been deep "red" Orange County, California, already proved it can be done. But I think Christensen's story, and his run --- staffed by volunteers who are all 23-years old or younger! --- should be an inspiring one for a lot of folks around the country considering the possibility of doing the exact same thing in the future, even in what are seen as so-called "red" areas of the country...

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Today's BradCast is a really meaty show and --- at times --- a quite terrifying one. Apologies in advance! [Audio link to show is posted at bottom of summary.]

We're joined today by NILS GILMAN, Vice President of Programs at the Berggruen Institute and co-founder of the Transition Integrity Project (TIP). The bi-partisan group was founded in late 2019 to examine concerns, as Gilman explains today, about whether a Joe Biden victory would result in a reasonably smooth transition with the Trump Administration or whether, as the group's chilling new report [PDF] "Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition" describes, they needed to be concerned "that the Trump Administration may seek to manipulate, ignore, undermine or disrupt the 2020 presidential election and transition process." As TIP would discover, however, those nightmares could be far worse than the group initially expected. An actual transition process of any kind, at this point, might be a welcome response to some of the group's worse fears.

"Already it's certain that if Biden manages to win, he's going to be handed an inbox from hell," Gilman tells me. "There's going to be probably 15% unemployment. There's going to be an ongoing pandemic. There's going to be a lot of social contestation in the country. We'd like for him to at least be handed a functional bureaucracy. But we weren't convinced that was actually going to take place. ... What we learned in that process was it wasn't just the administrative process that could potentially be disrupted, it would be potentially the electoral transition itself that was subject to disruption."

TIP, a group of more than 100 current and former senior government officials, campaign leaders and other experts from media to the military convened to examine these issues and "war gamed" several different potential scenarios for how things might play out from November 3rd (Election Day) through January 20, 2021 (Inauguration Day). Over four different sessions, examining four different potential electoral scenarios, the highly-esteemed panel of former Governors, DoJ officials, campaign chiefs and advisers of both parties role-played as both Team Trump and Team Biden. As their recently published report details, the tabletop "war game" exercises included a scenario that "posited that the winner of the election was not known as of the morning after the election and the outcome of the race was too close to predict with certainty; in another, the exercise began with the premise that Democratic party candidate Joe Biden won the popular vote and the Electoral College by a healthy margin; and in a third, the exercise assumed that President Trump won the Electoral College vote but again lost the popular vote by a healthy margin. The fourth exercise began with the premise that Biden won both the popular vote and the Electoral College by a narrow margin."

Following the exercises, TIP's other co-founder and Georgetown Law Professor Rosa Brooks told Fox "News" (which happens to play a key role on behalf of Trump and the Republican effort in every case), all of the scenarios "ended in both street-level violence and political impasse." Brooks observed that "the law is essentially...almost helpless against a President who's willing to ignore it."

As Gilman warns in his own recent article "Getting from November to January," explaining how the exercises helped to reveal that institutions from government to political organizations to the courts to citizen activists and media could help mitigate the worst possible scenarios: "Wargaming shows that, short of a landslide victory for Joe Biden in the upcoming elections, we may be headed for a severe constitutional crisis." He adds: "in each scenario other than a Biden landslide, we ended up with a constitutional crisis that lasted until the inauguration, featuring violence in the streets and a severely disrupted administrative transition."

Sounds cheery, no? Gilman, who is also an historian, joins us today to discuss the genesis of the project; the comparable historical parallel to our upcoming election (the 1876 election between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, where two different sets of competing electors were sent by states to D.C. before the Constitutional Crisis was finally averted with a comprise that resulted in the end of the Civil War Reconstruction period, launching more than a 100 years of Jim Crow that we are still dealing with today); the specifics findings of the Project (eg. the potential dispute created by Trump's authoritarian use of Presidential powers to, for example, employ the Dept. of Justice to seize ballots and stop the counting) must be met "as a political battle, not just a legal battle"; and that during the exercises, "Team Trump was consistently more ruthless than Team Biden – more willing to ignore existing democratic norms, to make use of disinformation, to deploy federal agencies to promote Trump's personal and electoral interests, and to engage in intimidation campaigns."

As former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, one of the participants in the exercises noted, "The worst news is that, faced with presidential lawlessness, few of the participants at the Transition Integrity Project found effective responses. ... Many of the games turned on who made the first bold move. Time after time, that first mover was Trump."

While Gilman argues that nothing is inevitable, he notes, "the media will have a huge role in this" and the time to talk about it is NOW. "The plea I would make would be to patriots --- particularly people in the government who have taken an oath to the defend Constitution --- that there are some basic principles, which are not partisan at all. Every American citizen that wants to vote should be enabled to do so as easily and safely as possible, and every one of those votes should be counted properly."

His TIP report goes further to note that it is "just as important that the public has confidence in the count." That, as I discuss with Gilman, may require a level of transparency in our voting system that --- despite my best efforts over the past nearly-two decades --- we have long ago been obscured with computer tabulation and voting systems which make it impossible, after an election, to know if many ballots --- at least those that are not hand-marked paper ballots --- actually reflect the intent of each voter.

As mentioned, it's a very meaty show, with a LOT to talk about. Gilman joins us for the full hour, and even that wasn't enough to cover so much of what the group found; what we can all do about it; and whether our mainstream media, the Biden Campaign and the Democratic Party itself are prepared to handle what is very likely to be hurled at them --- and all of us --- as of November 3rd...

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On today's BradCast (after a quick correction, thanks to @RadioDoogie on The Twitters, about a point covered on yesterday's show): Conspiracy theorists are too often disregarded. Especially with so many actual conspiracies behind so many of the disasters we're now facing in the U.S. [Audio link to show is posted below summary.]

Sure, some should be disregarded. One example is rightwing wingnut Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, who seemed to think that the coronavirus was some sort of conspiracy spun up by Democrats or the Chinese (or someone) to take down Donald Trump and the Republicans. A missive from one of his aide's suggests he berated staff members who wore masks after he demanded they show up at his office each day in the middle of our worsening pandemic to "be an example to America on how to open up safely."

COVID isn't a conspiracy. And now Gohmert is infected with it. We wish him and, most importantly, his family and staff well. He's just one of far too many who could now be facing serious consequences because he either fell for the phony conspiracy claims or knew better but didn't care. Here's just another heartbreaking example of someone else who fell for the hoax that Gohmert was helping to spread that coronavirus was a hoax.

But, there is indeed a conspiracy behind the claims that COVID is a hoax. We saw that well-funded conspiracy playing out in real time this week, as the dark money-supported "Tea Party Patriots" spun off to another phony astroturf organization calling itself "America's Frontline Doctors". They're the ones who put on that Breitbart live-streamed show in D.C. this week --- with quack "doctors" declaring hydroxychloroquine is a "cure" for COVID and that you shouldn't wear a mask --- which both Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. (and millions of others) retweeted in tandem earlier this week. The pair of Stable Geniuses were temporarily suspended (Jr.) by the social media platform for sharing what Twitter and Facebook and YouTube describe as "false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19" or saw the retweets deleted entirely (Sr.) But, yes, there is a very real --- and well-funded --- conspiracy of desperate wingnuts hoping to save the 2020 election for Trump who are behind the deadly nonsense that has hoaxed so many and killed at least 150,000 Americans to date.

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, police have now identified the infamous "Umbrella Man". Remember the white man clad from head to toe in black, with a gas-mask and umbrella, using a hammer to casually smash the windows at an AutoZone store to help kick off riots and looting after two days of otherwise peaceful protests following the police killing of George Floyd?

Turns out the man, now identified by the Minneapolis Police Department as Mitchell Wesley Carlson, is allegedly a member of the Hell's Angels-affiliated Aryan Cowboy Brotherhood, a white supremacist group who "wanted to sow discord and racial unrest by breaking out the windows and writing" "free shit for everyone zone" on the doors of the store, according to the MPD. (He has also been tied to the Aryan Cowboys harassment of a Muslim woman and her four-year old child in a neighboring city of Stillwater.)

The conspiracy to spark riots blamed on "leftist anarchists" worked, and was undoubtedly part of a larger effort identified by leaked memos from federal authorities tracking "white racially motivated violent extremists" who reportedly discussed inciting riots while posing as "members" of the loosely affiliated group of anti-fascists who call themselves Antifa. So, the "conspiracy theory" pushed by Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr and other Fox "News"-fueled Republicans that Black Lives Matter, Antifa and unidentified "leftist anarchists" are somehow behind riots and looting at mostly peaceful protests around the country has little evidence to support it. But the theory that a conspiracy of white supremacist provocateurs is hoping to spark a race war --- evidence of which is conveniently ignored by Trump, Barr and all the rest --- appears to be, so far, right on the money.

Finally today, at the end of another harrowing hour, it's the great Randy Rainbow to save us all with another much-needed --- and hilarious --- musical happy ending...

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On today's BradCast: Things are going to get far worse before they finally get better. In this case, "worse" means far more deadly and "better" means an election this fall that somewhat accurately reflects the intent of the electorate. Donald Trump has now get the killing Americans part down, but he and his fixer/Attorney General are still feeling their way around how best to undermine the election. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Just weeks ago, in late May, the Trump Death Cultists on Fox "News" and those entrusted to govern states like Florida, were railing against media, demanding apologies by those who warned that opening up for business prematurely amid a deadly viral pandemic was a terrible idea. Republican Governors like Florida's Ron DeSantis and hackish clowns like Sean Hannity of Fox "News" aren't asking for apologies anymore, it seems, as at least 56 Florida hospital ICUs across the state have now hit capacity, with dozens more nearly full as well. Florida is just one such GOP-led state whose political decisions in advance of the November election have had deadly consequences as 31 states are now seeing infections and hospitalizations rise.

The conservative projected death estimates put out by the infectious disease modelers at University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) have once again been revised in the bargain. IHME now forecasts more than 208,000 deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19 by November 1, while noting that some 45,000 lives could be saved over that same period if we all simply wore masks in public. Other experts believe the mortality number could be as high as 500,000 by the end of this year.

So, again, we ask: At what point does it become a CRIMINAL act when DeSantis and Donald Trump and Vice President Pence command schoolchildren, amid this out-of-control surging pandemic, back to in-person classes next month, under thread of financial penalty, and in defiance of CDC guidelines? At least the CDC guidelines based on science and health data, versus Pence's newly promised revised CDC guidelines that the Administration ordered to be cooked up after Trump found the real ones to be too "tough" and "expensive". When do these people become liable for criminal deadly negligence or even mass murder?

This scheming is nothing short of sick and twisted. We will soon look back on these days with ghastly horror at what they have done in short-sighted and ill-considered hopes of winning re-election this November.

Speaking of which, while Trump and his corrupt A.G. Bill Barr have been out lying about absentee voting amid the pandemic, it seems Republican strategists and candidates are becoming quite concerned that their voters may be actually be listening to them. Many GOP voters new believe that vote-by-mail ballots are all fraudulent, which could end up costing the GOP dearly this year.

At the same time, folks like EDDIE PEREZ, Global Director of Technology and Standards at the OSET (Open Source Election Technology) Institute, has been doing his level best to debunk many of the lies about mail-in voting being infectiously spread by Trump and his Attorney General who, for example, recently declared that "a foreign country could print up tens of thousands of counterfeit ballots" and use them to undermine our elections somehow. Perez explains (and here's a shorter Twitter version of his explanation) why such claims are largely nonsense, even if there are, in fact, some concerns about fraud in absentee voting --- just not the ones that Trump and Barr are mostly trumpeting.

As no fan of absentee voting myself --- other than in cases where voters literally cannot vote at the polls on Election Day, or are forced to use 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems at the polling place, or when we find ourselves in the middle of an out-of-control deadly global pandemic --- I've got a few pointed questions for Perez on the reality of absentee ballot fraud.

Among the issues he speaks to: Whether ballots can really be counterfeited (by foreign or domestic actors alike); What security measures are in place to prevent someone from casting a ballot in someone else's name?; Should voters have confidence in signature matching by election officials who are not hand-writing experts? And more. "If nothing else," Perez tells me, "the country needs to realize --- and particularly election officials and Get Out The Vote organizations --- there are really, really good reasons to protect public health to make by-mail voting available to people, as one of several options. That's really critical. For November, you've got to have a balance. We need to pay attention to educating voters about what it's going to take to ensure that their ballot is accepted and counted."

Also, as Perez, before joining the non-profit OSET Institute, was a 15 year veteran of Hart-Intercivic, one of the nation's three major private voting system vendors (about whom we've reported a great deal of less than flattering things over the years), we take a few minutes today to discuss why private, for-profit vendors are ill-equipped to meet the critical needs of transparent, overseeable elections in support of American democracy. "I'll say that the one thing we can agree on," Perez notes, "is transparency in the voting process is what helps to build trust with the public. Transparency is what is going to produce confidence. And that's what we need in our democracy."

I didn't have the heart or time to respond that "trust" has nothing to do with Americans elections. But, other than that, on the need for transparent oversight to build confidence among the electorate, he is spot on.

Finally, two objectionable SCOTUS opinions were handed down today, allowing religious organizations to, among other things, ignore any and all state or federal anti-discrimination laws, because "freedom of religion", apparently, also now includes the freedom to take actual freedoms away from everyone else...

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Donald Trump celebrated the national 4th of July holiday weekend by using the backdrop of our national monuments to try and "gaslight" the nation again on coronavirus while hoping to spark a race war to jump-start his flagging re-election effort. So, how did your Independence Day weekend go? But, first up on today's BradCast...[Audio link to show is posted below summary]...

A number of countries around the world have now all but defeated the COVID-19 virus within their borders. In the U.S., on the other hand, thanks to our failed/non-existent national strategy, new infections and hospitalizations continue to explode, hitting new records for each of the past 27 days. That, as Trump and his White House continue to hope that by ignoring the pandemic, it will simply go away or that Americans will simply "grow numb to the escalating death toll" by Election Day. Good luck with that.

His own FDA Commissioner didn't have the courage over the weekend to contradict Trump's false claim at the White House on July 4 that, for 99% of people who contract the virus, it's "totally harmless". Iowa Sen. Jodi Ernst (R), who described President Obama's eradication of the Ebola epidemic in the U.S. with just two deaths as "failed leadership", didn't have the courage to describe Trump's leadership as "failed", despite nearly 3 million confirmed cases now in the U.S. and more than 130,000 deaths from COVID-19. Ernst is up for re-election in the Hawkeye State in just four months. Hopefully voters will keep her cowardice and its deadly consequences in mind.

Former Trump National Security Advisor Tom Bossert, however, came much closer to telling the truth to the American people on Sunday, by warning that "We are in trouble." And that if the virus continues on its current trajectory in the U.S., "we could top 500k US deaths this year." Good luck ignoring or becoming numb to that.

In U.S. Supreme Court news on Monday, the Justices on the Republicans' stolen Court released two interesting opinions on Monday. In a 6 to 3 ruling, the Supremes struck down a statutory exemption written into the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 that allows for the federal government to make otherwise banned robocalls on cellphones. The court found that exemption unconstitutional, but allowed the rest of the law to stand in what could be a good omen for a challenge coming up next year at the High Court to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). And, in a unanimous decision today, SCOTUS found that states may bar so-called "faithless electors" from casting votes at the Electoral College that contradict the popular will of state voters. We'll discuss more about both opinions on tomorrow's BradCast.

Today, however (amid a tribute to the late great Ennio Marricone) we're left to make sense of Trump's astonishing, aggressive, political, campaign-style rallies held on the 3rd and 4th of July at Mount Rushmore and at the White House in which he, according to our guest today, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, all but ignored the deadly coronavirus pandemic, along with its accompanying economic disaster, to offer "angry declarations of war against fellow Americans on the day the country celebrates freedom and independence."

By declaring war on what he described in the shadow of our nation's founders as "far-left fascism" and a "merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children" by "unleash[ing] a wave of violent crime in our cities," Parton concedes that at least he's being transparent. "If nothing else, I think we can see what the contours of the next four months of the Presidential campaign are going to be," she tells us, "and how he and his people have decided that they are going to deal with the real crises that are manifesting themselves in the country --- the obvious one is COVID-19 and the rapid spread of it throughout the country, and the other is the ongoing protest of unarmed black men being killed by police and systemic racism in general." That, as we discuss, instead of offering actual Presidential leadership during the most deadly pandemic in more than a century which might have otherwise assured his re-election.

Parton also offers her thoughts on last week's mind-blowing allegations that Russian military intelligence paid bounties to members of the Taliban in exchange for dead U.S. troops in Afghanistan while Trump has done absolutely nothing in response, and the too-overlooked story from Carl Bernstein late last week in which former Senior White House officials, from Trump's former SecDef, Sec. of State, Chief of Staff, two National Security Advisors and others confirm that Trump was "uninformed" and "delusional" during phone calls with world leaders; never got better at it over the years; was sycophantic in dealing with adversarial autocrats; and "near-sadistic" in his treatment of U.S. allies, especially the female leaders of the U.K. and Germany who he called "stupid" during at least one of the phone calls.

That conversation and few listener calls round out the hour, as we are now exactly 120 days from Election Day, November 3rd...not that anyone's counting...

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As life in the U.S. continues to get grimmer, we find a few much-needed points of light during today's BradCast! [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

First up, the GOP-controlled Mississippi state legislature finally voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to remove the offensive Confederate flag symbol from their own state flag. Both the Governor and Lt. Governor support the move and the bill will be signed. Yes, the ongoing uprising against systemic racism in the U.S. continues to bring about long-overdue positive change! Also, there was (mostly) good news in a long-awaited abortion case at the U.S. Supreme Court today, but we'll get there in a second.

Before that, we've been arguing in recent days that Donald Trump should eventually be brought up on charges for what amounts to mass murder in his purposefully and criminally delinquent and negligent handling of the COVID crisis. More evidence of that affirmative endangerment of the public was reported over the weekend by the Washington Post, which obtained video evidence that the Trump Campaign, just hours before his June 20 campaign rally in Oklahoma, removed thousands of social distancing stickers placed on seats at Tulsa's BOK Center venue by its management. As the city's health director pleaded with the campaign to postpone the rally amid spiking infections rates, and local residents and business owners went all the way to the state's Supreme Court to try and block it, the Trump Campaign was purposely making it less safe for rally attendees. The infection rate in Tulsa has continued to spike since Trump's under-attended Death Rally (where he had falsely bragged in advance that there wouldn't be "an empty seat"), as infection rates now continue to rise in at least 36 states after the largest single day increase across the nation on Friday.

Florida, Texas and Arizona, with Republican Governors who were among the first to reopen, are now seeing among the largest growth in infections and hospitalizations in the country. That, despite Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' hubris-filled attacks on the media just weeks ago following an initial lack of new confirmed cases after reopening for Memorial Day and a now-embarrassing rant from Sean Hannity on Fox 'News' claiming that FL and NY "got it right", states like NY got it wrong (NY's infection rate was just 6% of Florida's on Friday) and that "the mob and the media....owe Gov. DeSantis a huge apology." Well, that didn't age well.

Then back to a bit more good(ish) news as the U.S. Supreme Court's Chief Justice John Roberts, for the third time in as many weeks, joined the Court's liberal wing on yet another major case --- well, mostly. It was enough, at least, to strike down an extremist anti-abortion measure in Louisiana, in any case. Had the attempt by state Republicans to insert Big Government in-between a woman and her doctor been upheld by the Court, it would have left the entire state of 4.6 million with just one single doctor legally allowed to perform the still-Constitutionally protected medical procedure.

We're joined today by one of our favorite SCOTUS corespondents, MARK JOSEPH STERN of Slate, to explain today's 4 to 1 to 4 opinion which resulted in the end of the state law requiring abortion doctors to unnecessarily obtain difficult-to-receive hospital admitting privileges. While abortion rights activists are breathing a sign of relief today, Stern explains, they likely won't have long to enjoy it. The Court with a stolen Republican Majority still appears hell bent on rolling back Roe v. Wade, he says.

While Roberts, in his own concurring opinion [PDF], effectively joined the liberals again today in striking down the Louisiana law --- again, maddening the right-wingers in the bargain --- he "is a very canny legal strategist, who still quite obviously opposes the Constitutional right to an abortion," Stern warns. In fact, what Roberts opinion today did was "leave us with a state of abortion jurisprudence that sort of rewinds the clock back to maybe 1992. Whereas, for the past four years, at least in theory, we have had a more robust protection of Constitutional rights."

With Roberts' new opinion, Stern reports, abortion rights proponents have actually lost some ground, even while the second "admitting privileges" law to find its way to the Court in four years was again struck down --- just like the previous virtually identical one out of Texas in 2016 (which Roberts then voted to uphold.)

The Chief Justice also voted recently with the Court's Democratic appointees to ban LGBTQ employment discrimination and in striking down Trump's rollback of DACA protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrant children who were brought here by their parents. So, why has Roberts seemingly become a "liberal squish" on three important landmark cases this session? Stern argues that he hasn't at all. Another ruling today regarding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in which the Court's rightwing 5 to 4 majority dreamed up new (non-existent) Constitutional powers for the Presidency, and a SCOTUS decision over the weekend to block absentee voting for all voters --- not just those 65 and older --- in Texas, in the middle of a pandemic, and in clear violation of the 26th Amendment, is just more evidence that the Republicans' stolen SCOTUS majority is still anything but "liberal", even after these three recent surprise opinions on LGBTQ rights, DACA and abortion.

Stern also offers his thoughts on whether Roberts would be voting as he has been of late if Justice Anthony Kennedy was still on the Court as its swing vote, and whether all of this suggests that the Court should now be expanded in response to theft of what should have been an actual liberal majority by now...

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Remember waaay back on Monday when we warned you to take the news from biotech company Moderna about their self-proclaimed early success in tests of a coronavirus vaccine with a huge grain of salt? The announcement that spiked their stock price some 50% in one single day and resulted in a 900 point rally for the Dow? Well, the market is still enjoying its irrational exuberance, but Moderna's stock price is largely back to where it was before Monday's "science by press release". Not to be a party pooper before the Memorial Day weekend, but that seems an apt analog, somehow, for much of what we cover/warn about on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show is at bottom of summary.]

Donald Trump and his Republican henchmen in Congress are running into a problem. Pretending the coronavirus crisis away only goes so far. Sure, you can announce that you have "reopened" for business, but that doesn't mean anybody will show up. Even with all 50 states now relaxing various restrictions, demand remains low and, therefore, unemployment remains high and is still getting higher each week.

New numbers from the U.S. Dept. of Labor report that 2.4 million Americans filed new unemployment claims last week. It is the ninth week in a row of new claims higher than 2 million --- some weeks were larger than 6 million --- even though the all-time weekly record, prior to COVID-19, was less than one million. Even during the 2008 Great Recession, initial claims for unemployment insurance never topped one million. The good news is the number of new filers has been decreasing in recent weeks. The bad news is that almost all of those people, nearly 40 million of them, remain out of work. For now, however, they have been able to rely on expanded benefits enacted by Congress that offer an additional $600 a week through the end of July. The program was designed to, yes, keep people at home in order to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Those payments have, by and large, prevented the U.S. economy from tanking entirely. And now, Republicans in Congress are insisting that they will not extend those benefits, as they join Trump in trying to convince themselves and the nation that the crisis is over. It isn't. Not by a long shot. Ending that expansion of unemployment right now in hopes of forcing workers back to their jobs --- where they may well get sick and die, just as had been happening before the shutdowns --- in hopes of restarting the economy, is likely to kill the economy entirely, according to economists, anyway. But what do they know? We discuss.

In lieu of an actual plan --- versus a Jedi Mind Trick --- to prevent a new rise in infections and deaths, Trump and his GOP pals seem prepared to hide the statistics and otherwise distract us with things like a new, wholly (and statutorily) unqualified Director of National Intelligence! Gutting a long-standing arms control deal with Russia! And trying to blame Obama for all sorts of imaginary scandals in hopes of harming presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden.

It shouldn't work. But, given our gullible corporate media, who knows? Satirist Randy Rainbow, however, has a new musical take on it all for us today.

While Republicans on Fox "News" are instructing their "patriotic" American cult members to get out there and get back to work, their star anchors continue to do so from the safety of their own home studios, where Fox Corp has directed them to remain for at least another month. YOU are supposed to die for the economy and the President's reelection! Not THEM!

And the irrational exuberant premature reopenings could well make a huge difference in the ultimate COVID-19 death toll, if a new study about the timing of the initial lockdowns from Columbia University disease modelers tells us anything. They find that a heart-breaking 36,000 fewer Americans would have died if the country had implemented stay-at-home restrictions just one week earlier in March. Moreover, the researchers found, had shutdowns occurred on March 1 the vast majority (83%) of deaths would have been avoided. Each single day that Trump and Governors around the country ignored or refused too take the crisis seriously resulted in the unnecessary loss of thousands of American lives.Depending on how quickly and/or irresponsibly states now lift restrictions, many more thousands of lives could be lost. Given the way a number of GOP-run states are now attempting to hide or censor infection and death rates, the cost could ultimately become unspeakable.

Another new study from the University of Wisconsin and Ball State University offers a real life example of all of this. The analysis found that last month's primary election in Wisconsin --- when the state's rightwing Supreme Court blocked attempts by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to postpone the election or switch it to an all Vote-by-Mail election --- resulted in a "statistically and economically significant association between in-person voting and the spread of COVID-19 two to three weeks after the election." They found that WI counties "with higher levels of in-person voting per polling location led to increases in the weekly positive rate of COVID-19 tests. Furthermore, counties with higher absentee voting participation had lower rates of detecting COVID-19 two to three weeks after the election."

Yes, these decisions matter. Lives hang in the balance. No matter the Jedi Mind Trick Trump was hoping to pull off when he recently declared: "We're opening up; the states are opening up. It's a transition to greatness!" Perhaps "greatness" is now just another word for mass murder.

Finally today, a bit of email from a listener in the Badger State who now regards it as "Wississippi," and Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with ongoing climate disasters --- yes, our climate crisis continues even as the coronavirus has temporarily cleared the air a bit --- from the state of Michigan to the Bay of Bengal...

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P.S. By the way, we are ducking out early for some much needed Memorial Day weekend down time. Yes, my brain actually hurts each day these days. Hopefully a few days off will help. See ya on the other side! Stay safe and healthy until then!

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