On today's BradCast: Last September, Donald Trump demanded an "audit" of the 2020 Presidential election in Texas, where he was certified to have won by about 550,000 votes, the narrowest victory for a Republican nominee in the Lone Star State in decades. Hours after he demanded it, his lapdog, Republican Governor Greg Abbott, made it happen. Despite the state's top election administrator previously describing the 2020 election as "safe and secure", state taxpayers are now quietly paying for another review of results in the so-called "conservative" state. Four of its largest counties are being reviewed. Three of them went to Joe Biden in 2020. A report from the first phase of the so-called 'forensic audit' was released last week, when as few people as possible might notice: At the end of the day on Friday...New Years Eve. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

But before we get there today, a quick update on the quickly intensifying Omicron surge of the coronavirus, as more than 100,000 Americans were hospitalized as of Monday, the highest number since the late summer Delta surge. President Biden once again urged Americans to get their shots. In White House remarks he said the public should "be concerned about Omicron, but don't be alarmed," before adding, "but if you're unvaccinated, you have some reason to be alarmed."

It's unknown if the Republican anti-vaxxer community in Orange County, CA will be moved by the President's comments. Perhaps the death this week of their well known 46-year old Deputy District Attorney, Kelly Ernby, a longtime GOP anti-vaccine activist and failed political candidate, will get their attention. We share her tragic, if predictable, story today, just weeks after the prosecutor's last Southern California rally in December in favor of "freedom" in opposition to vaccine mandates.

Then we're joined by PHILIP B. STARK, longtime Professor of Statistics at UC-Berkeley and the inventor of the post-election Risk Limiting Audit (RLA) protocol, to discuss the very quietly released "Phase 1 Progress Report" [PDF] of what Texas is describing as a "Full Forensic Audit of November 2020 General Election". The phrase "forensic audit", as Stark notes, doesn't actually have any accepted definition or specific meaning. But, we also discuss much more about the newly found "forensic audit" fever among Republicans who have spent years blocking Democratic measures in Congress to institute legitimate post-election audits in all 50 states after every election.

You'll not be surprised to learn that the Lone Star State's review, at least so far, appears to have turned up pretty much nothing unusual at all. Their hand-count of ballots (not of results, apparently, but simply of the number of ballots) in a number of precincts in each of four different large counties (Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Collin) appears to have largely confirmed the original certified totals in those precincts. We discuss the not-much-to-see-here details that add to the continuing pattern of Republicans finding no evidence at all that the 2020 election was stolen, as Trump continues to falsely complain to this day.

But there is a much larger picture to discuss. The implementation of secret, computerized tallying of ballots over the past two decades has made election results virtually impossible for the public to oversee. That has helped open the door to crackpot claims like those from the loser former President that our elections are littered with fraud and false tallies. Stark explains how the lack of legitimate post-election audits, safeguards, transparency and "evidence-based elections" has led the nation to this moment when American democracy itself is now under very serious threat.

"The end goal is to conduct elections in such a way that we have strong evidence that the reported winners actually won," Stark explains. "In order to do that, you need to start by running your election well. You will have the documents, processes, the security protocols, etc., in place that allow you to do a meaningful audit that can tie a bow around the election, and say, yes, whatever might have gone wrong with the election didn't change the reported outcome."

"The problem," he continues, "is if you go into an election that wasn't run especially well, and then afterwards try to do something based on the records that you do have. You're never going to be able to present affirmative records that the reported winners really did win. They won't give you evidence for or against the outcome being right."

And then, the conversation turns much darker.

"I don't want to be alarmist, but I think we have a very short period of time in which to make our election processes far more publicly transparent and visible, and have much more public participation," Stark warns. "If we haven't implemented evidence-based elections by the 2024 Presidential election we are very likely to see serious civil unrest in the aftermath. We have to make it a top priority to conduct our elections in a way that they produce real evidence of who won, not just 'trust me, I did it right,' or 'trust the vendor who sold me the [voting and tabulation] equipment' or 'trust the people who configured it for me,' or 'trust this or trust that,' but actually 'show me!' We really need to have 'show me,' not 'trust me' elections."

As much as we strive to avoid false "both sidesism" on this program --- and even though some Dems in Congress have tried for years to adopt federal legislation mandating real post-election audits, only to be stymied by Republicans every time --- this really is a bipartisan problem. "After the 2016 election, the Republicans didn't want to look. After the 2020 election, the Democrats don't want to look. If you like the answer, you don't want to look too hard. I think that's a terrible mistake. It allows uncertainty to be weaponized, which is what we've seen in the aftermath of the 2020 election," Stark cautions.

He continues: "The fact that a system is vulnerable does not mean that it was exploited. But we ought to build our systems or run our systems in a way that if a vulnerability was exploited, we can catch it and correct the outcome before it becomes final. And we know how to do that. It is a solved problem. It is not rocket science. It does involve a lot of shoe leather. And it involves not trusting computers on the whole. It requires public transparency."

But if that is not going to happen at the federal level (thanks in no small part to Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema, who are joining Republicans to block passage of audit mandates in the Freedom to Vote Act), it can certainly happen at the state level, where very few, if any, states currently carry out audits that are robust and transparent enough to earn full voter confidence. "I hope that some state legislatures rise to the occasion and decide to do evidence-based elections in time for at least 2024, if not the midterms," Stark tells me.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our first Green News Report of the new year, with deadly climate change-fueled extreme weather already wreaking havoc across both the nation and the world as 2022 begins...

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Apparently it's another myth busting episode of The BradCast today. It would be nice if lousy reporting from the corporate media --- particularly regarding the economy --- didn't make these so frequently necessary of late. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

But, first up today, a few other stories of note today...

• The 17-year old white kid who crossed a state border into Kenosha, Wisconsin to unlawfully wield a semi-automatic weapon before using it to shoot three anti-racism protesters, killing two of them, was acquitted of all charges today. So, we guess it's now open season to shoot anyone ya like, as long as you claim it was done in self-defense. And, yes, as long as you're white.

• Democrats in the U.S. House finally came together today to pass the Build Back Better Act, President Biden's nearly $2 trillion landmark spending bill to expand healthcare, childcare, education, eldercare and much MUCH more, including the most substantive action to combat the global climate crisis in the history of the nation. Every Republican in the chamber voted against it. The transformative legislation includes scores and scores of long-overdue provisions that, if virtually any one of them were passed on their own as a standalone bill, it would be, to paraphrase the President, a BFD. But, of course, while getting it through the House took months, that was the easy part. Now, the crowning achievement of Biden's agenda will have to get through the U.S. Senate, where, without any Republican votes, all 50 Senators who caucus with the Democrats will have to sign off on in order to pass it under Senate budget reconciliation rules. That means obstructionist Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema may feel free to water it down further than they already have, or kill it all together. We'll find out what happens when the upper chamber picks up the measure, after the Thanksgiving holiday.

• A few days ago, we reported on the Spotsylvania County, Virginia School Board's 6 to 0 vote last week to begin removing certain books from their school's libraries after a debate about whether they should ban the books or both ban and burn them. It was one of several stories we highlighted to underscore the unmistakable drumbeat of rising authoritarianism in our country right now. But, at least on that story, there is some good news this week. Democracy struck back! After 4 and a half hours of public comment at the Board's subsequent meeting this week, cut off only because it was midnight, the Board voted to reverse it's ban! Though the Board's two book burning proponents stood their ground, they lost in a 5 to 2 vote. All thanks to excellent local media reporting and a huge turnout from teachers, librarians, parents and teachers who spoke passionately in favor of libraries and books while calling for the book burners to resign.

• Following up on another story we covered earlier this week, on the media's horrifically misleading reporting on inflation, we share part of a Paul Waldman excellent column from WaPo that sounds as if it could have been ripped straight from The BradCast's coverage that day, myth busting the very same issues that we did.

• Then, picking up on a related-ish myth that needs busting as well this week, we're joined by NICOLÁS RIVERO of Quartz, to discuss his recent myth-busting, deep-dive reporting on our current, pre-Christmas, "post-pandemic" supply chain issues and why, despite no shortage of bad reporting on this, a shortage of truck drivers is not actually to blame.

  In fact, the industry has been claiming virtually every year since 2005 (and, really, going back to the late 1980s as Rivero documents), that they have a shortage of drivers. Last month, the American Trucking Associations announced a shortage of 80,000 drivers, declaring it "an all-time high for the industry." That, despite the fact that states issue more than 450,000 new commercial driver's licenses every year. Something doesn't add up here. At the same time, as Rivero tells me today, "between 1995 and 2017, the turnover rate at big trucking companies averaged 94%," according to the industry's own data. "That means that every year, they are refilling the equivalent of virtually every driving position, because people are quitting and leaving."

  "The real shortage," he explains, is not of truckers, but "of good trucking jobs that can attract and retain workers in a tight labor market." So, why isn't supply keeping up with demand in that supposedly free market? Rivero discusses the industry's "race to the bottom," leading drivers to take equal or better paying jobs elsewhere that don't come with all of the burdens --- especially for long-haulers --- the industry now forces onto their drivers.

  We also discuss the trucker's unions' part in all of this, and how --- and if --- Biden's new infrastructure bill might actually improve the situation, for drivers, for the industry and, yes, for our "post-pandemic" supply chain woes.

• Finally, in our closing few minutes (before standing down to hit the road ourselves for the holiday next week!), the fight for control of the Virginia House of Delegates may not be as over as it appeared almost three weeks ago, when Republicans were declared by media to have taken the majority back from the Democrats during the off-year elections. A very close race in one district and a tallying error in another very close race (leading the Dem who currently holds that seat to withdraw her concession), has now resulted in two upcoming recounts. Republicans will control 50 seats in the 100-seat chamber. The question is now whether the GOP will control the chamber outright or --- long shot as it may be --- if both races flip to the Democrats resulting in a 50-50 power sharing agreement. Luckily, the commonwealth recently moved from 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems to hand-marked paper ballots. So a fair, overseeable count of voter intent is now possible in the state where Republican Glenn Youngkin was declared the winner in the Gubernatorial race and Republicans swept the other two statewide races on November 2nd for Lt. Governor and Attorney General.

We'll be watching over the holidays, even as 'The BradCast' and 'GNR' stand down next week for a much needed recharge of batteries and some long-overdue family time. We'll see ya after the holiday! Desi and I both hope it will be a healthy and happy one for all!...

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Way back in January, we reported on "How Trump Attempted to Use DoJ to Steal the Election". Why do our nation's corporate media outlets, all these months later, still have so much difficulty reporting it as such, despite the growing mountain of evidence on the unprecedented attempted theft of a Presidential election by a sitting U.S. President? That's just one of a number of stories and questions asked on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among those many stories...

• What took the Coast Guard and Amplify Energy Corp --- owner of the pipeline that spewed more than 3,000 barrels of crude oil into the waters and protected wetlands nearly Huntington Beach in Southern California last week --- so long to respond to the spill? Residents smelled it, witnesses saw oil on the water and on boats, and even the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) called in their report to the Coast Guard of a possible spill spotted from a satellite. Still, it was almost 10 hours before the Coast Guard investigated, and almost 12 hours before Amplify shut it down. That, despite technology pipeline companies always (falsely) claim will immediately detect spills and shut down the system as soon as they occur. Someone needs to face criminal charges, and this nation needs to get off oil, ASAP.

• Some brighter news out of Texas, where a federal judge has temporarily enjoined the state's S.B. 8 statute that deprives women of their Constitutionally-protected right to an abortion. The new GOP law in the Lone Star State inserts Big Government between a woman and her doctor to mandate that the medical procedure may not be carried out after 6 weeks of pregnancy, before most women know they're pregnant. Even in the case of rape or incest, Texas Republicans are demanding that women carry their rapists babies to term under the new law. On Wednesday, a U.S. District Court judge shut that whole thing down. For now. He also refused to put his stay on hold pending the state's appeal, because, as he wrote in his 113-page decision [PDF]: "The State has forfeited the right to any such accommodation by pursuing an unprecedented and aggressive scheme to deprive its citizens of a significant and well established constitutional right."

• Yesterday, we reported that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and fellow Republicans blinked in their ongoing effort to block Democrats from lifting the nation's borrowing limit to avoid the economic calamity that would ensue when the U.S. defaults on its debts, for the first time in history, on October 18th. Today, after McConnell blinked, he and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed on terms for the legislative process that Republicans will allow to let Democrats avoid disaster, at least until early December, when the GOP threatens the same economic terrorism all over again. AP (and other national outlets) continued to mislead the public by reporting: "the Republican and Democratic leaders edged back from a perilous standoff." But that's not what happened at all. The "leaders" (plural) did not "edge back", and it was not a "standoff". As  longtime journalist, author and media critic James Fallows has been expertly reporting for some time now, this was nothing more than a nihilistic Republican threat to tank the nation's, and the world's, economy. "To call it an 'impasse' or 'standoff' is misleading," writes Fallows this week. "This is the same kind of 'impasse' as one between a kidnapper demanding ransom for a captured executive, and a company that believes it should not pay. It is not a level-playing-field difference of view."

• The debt ceiling is hardly the only area where mainstream corporate media have been failing by ill-serving the public and our democracy. Today, they were joined in that disservice by the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, who released an otherwise very important report on how Donald Trump attempted to use the U.S. Dept. of Justice to STEAL the 2020 Presidential election. The 394-page report [PDF] was eight months in the making and is titled: "Subverting Justice: How the Former President and his Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election." Media reporting on the new report has taken to echoing that language (as they have since last November) in explaining how Trump tried to "subvert" the election, or "question" its results, or tried to "undermine" its legitimacy.  He used a "big lie" to try and pull off a "self coup". Of course, Trump did all of those things, but it was all in service to one single criminal objective: An attempt to STEAL the election!  Why do corporate media --- and Democrats, for that matter --- have such a difficult time calling it out as such? There is a mountain of hard, independently verifiable evidence to support that admittedly very serious charge, that I would never issue lightly. Today, Senate Democrats just added 394 more pages of said evidence to that mountain. Media need to start accurately calling out what happened here. A then sitting President of the United States abused the levers of his power to try and STEAL a Presidential election from the American people. It's as simple as that. Media should begin reporting it as such.

• Trump's attempted theft of the 2020 election continues, at least in hopes of stealing the next one. Despite the abject failure of the Cyber Ninjas in Maricopa County, Arizona (Sen. Dick Durbin called them "Ninja Turtles" today) to find any legitimate evidence of election fraud (or to even hand-count the results of the election accurately), the MAGA Mob is still continuing to waste tax payer dollars with phony "audits" and "investigations" of last year's election in other states. In Wisconsin, as in Arizona, Republican legislators have hired someone completely inexperienced in elections to investigate their loss in last year's election. In this case, the man placed in charge of the review is a former state Supreme Court Justice named Michael Gableman. This week Gableman admitted to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he does not have "any understanding of how elections work." Great choice, Republicans!  I'm sure he'll very wisely spend the $676,000 in taxpayer money that you "conservatives" gave him. The effort may even be as successful as the Turtles'!

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with more on last weekend's massive SoCal oil spill; a new study finding that, globally, the fossil fuel industry receives $11 million in government subsidies every minute (no doubt Joe Manchin will be furious about their "entitlement society"!); and another notorious pipeline company with high-tech spill prevention technology is charged with dozens of criminal counts for pipelines that leaked into Pennsylvania's drinking water...

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As Desi notes on today's BradCast, the underlying theme to our boatload of stories is that "elections matter". Then again, that seems to pretty much be our underlying theme every day on this program. Glad she's finally noticed! [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

Among the too-many stories covered on today's show...

• Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo finally resigns amid his sexual harassment scandal. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul will become New York's next Governor and the first woman to serve in that role;

• $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill finally clears the U.S. Senate with a 69 to 30 vote (including 19 Repubs voting in favor with all of the Dems.) It's a big early victory for President Biden's "Build Back Better" agenda and a feather in his cap. But there's a long way to go still, including an eventual vote in the House and, most importantly since everything hinges on it, agreement among Dems on the much larger $3.5 trillion, Dems-only reconciliation package paired to go with it. But, for now, so far so good;

• Pandemic horrors continue to worsen in the U.S., despite easy availability of free, safe and effective vaccines to prevent it. The most devastated states are run mostly or completely by Republicans. Arkansas had just 8 ICU beds available in the entire state as of Monday, according to Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, after throwing away 80,000 unused vaccine doses last week. Mississippi had 0 ICU beds open and more than 200 patients waiting in ERs for a room, with all numbers heading straight up. Louisiana hospitals have returned to the bad old pre-vaccine days, but Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards is "praying and fasting", so that should help. Florida is smashing their pandemic records with hospitalizations at an all-time peak and young, healthy and unvaccinated residents now dying (many from the same church over the past two weeks.) At the same time, Texas is halting elective medical procedures and begging out-of-state health care workers to come to the state. But the Republican Governors in both TX and FL are banning school districts from requiring masks for staff and children (who, under 12, cannot be vaccinated!) in the new school year. Two of the largest districts in Texas are, thankfully, defying Gov. Greg Abbott's authoritarian order. Several districts in Florida are doing the same in response to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is now threatening to withhold salaries of Superintendents and School Board Members who ignore his tyrannical and deadly edicts;

• In Wisconsin, where a Democratic Governor presides along side a gerrymandered GOP-controlled state legislature, Gov. Tony Evers vetoed several Republican absentee ballot voter suppression laws today, which would have affected disabled and elderly voters in particular, and challenged the state Assembly's schemes to carry out an Arizona-style post-election "audit";

• Speaking of 2020 denialism, Dominion Voting Systems filed three more defamation lawsuits today, seeking $1.6 billion in damages each, against wingnut news outlets Newsmax and One America News Network (OANN), as well as Trump MAGA billionaire Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock CEO and a major financier of the AZ Audit and huckster of 2020 denialism and fetishist merchandise and media. Today's new legal complaints, filed in federal court, are in addition to previous similar ones filed against Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, as well as MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Fox "News". (Ever wonder why these "news" organizations are being sued by voting machines companies, but we haven't been, despite our nearly-20 years of critical reporting on them? There's a reason for that, as we also discuss today.);

• And, speaking of the MyPillow Guy, CNN's Drew Griffin took apart his "Absolute Proof" of election fraud in an investigative report late last week. Even as Griffin made a few errors himself, suffice to say it didn't go well for MyPillow Guy, who is also reportedly having a tough time today kicking off his three-day "Cyber Symposium" in South Dakota, after which he has promised his "absolute proof" will result in a 9 to 0 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate Donald Trump before the month is out! Sounds plausible;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the U.N. declares "code red for humanity" in its latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), while apocalyptic wildfires and drought play out around the world at the very same time from Northern California to Greece. What an elaborate "hoax"!

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We open up the phones on today's BradCast for a bunch of very good calls, including from a teacher who was back for in-person instruction today for the first time in a year here in Los Angeles; a gun supporter who isn't insane, though we bicker a bit on his actual level of support for democracy as we succeed in finding some common ground; and a caller who survived a mass shooting in Oregon in 2013, among a number of other excellent calls from listeners today. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

But first up today, before we get to the phones...

• Some genuinely not divisive news (at least I think) regarding the first controlled flight of an aircraft on a planet other than Earth (that we know of). The Ingenuity helicopter alit above Mars today for its first test flight after arriving at the red planet hitched to the Perseverance rover. The flight was about 39 seconds in all, and traveled about 10 feet before landing at the newly-christened "Wright Field" on Mars, so named in honor of the Wright Brothers whose own first flight at Kitty Hawk, NC in 1903 was memorialized with a piece of wing fabric from the wings of that historic flight carried aboard the Ingenuity copter.

• In only slightly more divisive news, President Biden made it official today, announcing that all adults over the age of 16 are now eligible for COVID vaccine shots in all 50 states (as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico). The date for that nation-wide rollout, announced two weeks ago, was moved up from Biden's originally planned deadline of May 1. The news also comes the day after the CDC announced that just over 50% of U.S. adults have now received at least one COVID shot, with 32.5% now fully vaccinated.

• Next, if you're having trouble keeping up with the spate of one-after-another mass shootings of late, you're not alone. We try to get you all caught up on all of these horrific, arguably avoidable massacres today, including two that each took place over the weekend and took three lives each (one shooting was in Kenosha County, WI and the other, allegedly by a former police detective, in Austin, TX, a state which has seen at least three such incidents over the past month), as well as the latest news following the shooting by a 19-year old at a FedEx plant in Indianapolis that killed eight. In that case, the shooter had been visited last year by police after his mother called with concerns that he might commit "suicide by cop". His pump-action shotgun was confiscated under Indiana's red-flag law which allows officials to take weapons from someone considered to be a danger to themselves or others. But, somehow, the alleged shooter, who killed himself at the scene last Thursday, was able to legally purchase two semi-automatic rifles later last year anyway.

  Not that any of it matters, as long as NRA-funded Republicans, including Indiana's U.S. Senator Todd Young, are willing to pretend that this is a "mental health" issue (even as his party has spent the past decade trying to take such health care away from tens of millions of Americans) as opposed to a guns availability issue.

  In all, there were at least 9 such mass shootings over the past month, in Georgia, Colorado, Maryland, California, South Carolina, Texas, Indiana and Wisconsin. And yet, Republicans in the U.S. Senate, still doing the bidding of the terrorist-loving NRA, still refuse to allow any votes in the U.S. Senate on any gun safety measures. That includes even the lowest hanging fruit, such as closing background check loopholes which is even supported even by some 90% of NRA members (if not by their corrupt leadership).

• Finally, we had so many folks calling in on all of the above, that I threw over my plans to discuss the outrageous and violent attacks on journalists (and their First Amendment rights) by the Minnesota State Police in Brooklyn Center, MN, where protests continue on the heels of last week's killing of Daunte Wright, a black motorist during a routine traffic stop, by a 26-veteran cop on the local police force.

  As noted, tune in today for some great calls --- all of which remained shockingly civil and arguably constructive --- from the teacher, the gun supporter, the mass shooting survivor and many more...

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On today's BradCast: The effort by Donald Trump and Republicans to steal the Presidential election with false allegations of "voter fraud" didn't work. But that tsunami of disinformation is now being used to advance new restrictions on voting in the states as the GOP obstruction gets underway in the new Democratically-controlled U.S. Senate.

First today, there is quite a bit of news out of both the White House and the Senate. Among those stories covered today...

• President Biden's flurry of executive orders continue, including one today that calls for an end to privately-run federal prison facilities.
• Biden's nominee for Sec. of State, Anthony Blinken, was confirmed in the Senate. His nominee for Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, the first woman in that role, was sworn in today by the nation's first female Vice President.
• Mitch McConnell caved in his demand that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats promise to not do away with the wildly undemocratic legislative filibuster before he would agree to a new power-sharing agreement in the nation's wildly undemocratic upper chamber of Congress
• The historic second impeachment of Donald Trump, on charges of "Incitement of Insurrection" for the deadly, January 6th U.S. Capitol riot, formally began with Senators sworn in on Tuesday as "impartial" jurors and a vote by 45 Senate Republicans to toss out the whole matter entirely.
• And, before this one slips completely down the memory hole...Charges filed by the Justice Department against several military veterans who took part in the attempted insurrection at the Capitol that killed five people, include allegations that dozens of the former military insurrectionists pre-planned their coordinated attack, had hoped to arrest lawmakers, and appear to have had disturbing help from at least one, still-unidentified Congressional insider who gave the seditionists real-time help during the attack to locate lawmakers who had been shuttled into secured locations below the Capitol.

Then, we're joined by DAVID DALEY Senior Fellow at FairVote and author of the books UNRIGGED: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy and RATF**KED: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy. The latter documents the GOP's ingeniously insidious --- and successful --- plan to capture electoral control of statehouses in the 2010 elections in order to gerrymander the hell out of them for the next 10 years (or more).

Daley writes this week at Boston Globe about the latest effort by GOP state legislators to exploit Trump's absurdly false claims about "voter fraud" in the 2020 election in order to implement new restrictions on voting at the state level and new ways to game the electoral college vote. Among the states we discuss where Republicans are right now citing false fraud claims in order to game the systems: Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire, Georgia, Minnesota and Texas. These efforts are very real, and may well work, even in states which currently have Democratic Governors.

We also discuss the ridiculously undemocratic Senate, where Democratic Senators represent tens of millions of more voters than Republicans but, due to "the original gerrymander" as Daley describes it, are barely able to win 50 percent of the seats. "The US Senate is weighted so viciously towards small states in a way that the founders, if they saw it now, they would be truly horrified," he tells me.

"You've got a 50/50 body and yet, those 50 Democratic Senators are representing about 41.5 MILLION MORE PEOPLE.  When you add into that the small-state bias of the Electoral College, when you add into that the advantage that that bias has given Republicans in selecting Supreme Court Justices --- five of these nine Justices  on the Supreme Court selected by a President that lost the popular vote --- when you factor in the advantages that Republicans have with gerrymandering and geography --- all the way down from the US House to the state legislative level --- we are looking at an epidemic of Republican minority rule in this country."

And then there's the need to get rid of the undemocratic filibuster in the already wildly undemocratic Senate if Democrats hope, as they are now promising, to quickly accomplish "big, bold things" done. One of those "big, bold things," as we discuss, is HR-1, the "For the People Act." It's an enormously ambitious and much-needed bill that includes a ton of long-overdue reforms for voting and fair elections; ending dominance of big money and dark money in politics; and re-enforcing disclosure and ethics rules for members of Congress. But, as long as the filibuster remains in place, it will be next to impossible to see that, or any of the other much-needed reforms get through Congress. Constituents of Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona and Joe Manchin in West Virginia may wish to mention that to them. Repeatedly.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with more news on major executive actions signed by the new President to roll back years of Trump damage to our environment, and to push Biden's "Buy American" initiative to, among other things, move the nation as quickly as possible to American made, all-electric cars as the days of the internal combustion engine must quickly come to an end...

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As recently reported by John Kruzel of The Hill, the attorneys taking part in Donald Trump's dishonest effort to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 Presidential election "face mounting ethics complaints" that could result in sanctions ranging from fines to censure, suspension or even disbarment.

Michigan's Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel recently explained why she is seeking to have Team Trump attorney Sidney Powell and others subjected to discipline, including disbarment, for professional misconduct in conjunction with continuing frivolous legal efforts to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 Presidential Election...

Nessel's observations are certainly consistent with Rules 3.1 and 3.3 of the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct [PDF] which prevent the pursuit of frivolous claims and forbids attorneys from knowingly making false statements of fact or law to any tribunal. "An action is frivolous," Rule 3.1 explains, "if the lawyer is unable to make a good-faith argument on the merits of the action taken, or to support the action taken by a good-faith argument for an extension, modification, or reversal of existing law."

MI's rules are in line with the American Bar Association's Rules of Professional Conduct as well.

Nessel is by no means alone in her critique of the dubious legal tactics being taken by a number of attoneys allied with Trump. In Delaware, a state judge, on his own motion, issued an order "to Show Cause why the permission to practice" pro hac vice (in a specific case), previously extended to out-of-state Georgia Attorney L. Lin Wood, Jr., should be "revoked". The court believes Wood may have "engaged in conduct in other jurisdictions, which, had it occurred [in a Delaware case], would violate the Delaware Lawyers' Rules of Professional Conduct."

There's a growing body of evidence that multiple attorneys have knowingly pursued frivolous claims that in hopes of undergirding Trump's dangerous and baseless conspiracy theories that the election was somehow stolen from him. They've piled up 59 losses in state and federal courts, many entailing outright dismissals by judges who described the pleadings as "without merit". Yet, that didn't stop right-wing groups of attorneys from recently filing 11th hour federal complaints that are not merely meritless but beyond the pale. So much so, that the D.C. and state bar associations might consider imposing the ultimate tool of attorney discipline --- disbarment...

On today's BradCast, we won't be broken, even by more breaking news than we might have guessed. [Audio link to complete show is posted below.]

We knew we were starting with late breaking news today as California gave President-elect Joe Biden the requisite votes (270) needed to win the Electoral College just minutes before air time. But, because this is the Trump Era, that was quickly superseded by the breaking news just seconds before air time that Donald Trump's corrupt fixer and Attorney General Bill Barr is now out at the Dept. of Justice after recently conceding there was no massive fraud in the 2020 election that Trump decisively lost.

In other news covered on today's program on what developed into a surprisingly good news day by and large (at least by 2020 standards)...

• We begin with a fireside story for your holidays called "The President's New Suit". Spoiler alert: only his closest courtiers and sycophants (126 House members and, even more shamefully, 19 wingnut state Attorneys General) can see it. Even his stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court saw nothing there on Friday and dismissed the last-ditch effort to disenfranchise millions of American voters in four swing-states that voted for Biden, as filed last week by the indicted Republican Texas Attorney General and Presidential Pardon Hustler Ken Paxton.

• As the nation crosses its latest undescribably grim milestone today of more than 300,000 deaths from COVID-19, Trump continued to spend his time over the weekend lying about about "fraud" in the election that he lost, rather than the lives needlessly lost under his failed pandemic management as the surging crisis continues to smash new records each day. But, on Monday, the first doses of the first approved vaccine for the disease began to be distributed and administered to health workers and elderly Americans in assisted living facilities. It will likely be Spring before much of the general public will have access.

• No matter his lies and failures, Team Trump's onerous attempts to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in Wisconsin --- but only in its two most diverse, most Dem-leaning, most African-American counties --- continued over the weekend. Two different legal efforts in the Badger State, one in federal court and one in state court, fared no better than his 60 or so previous attempts to steal the election from Biden. Of the two latest cases, the last ones that we know of in WI, neither of which included evidence of fraud, one was dismissed by a Trump-appointed judge in federal court on Saturday, and the other was tossed by a 4 to 3 vote of the rightwing Wisconsin state Supreme Court on Monday. A conservative Justice, once again, voted with the court's three liberals, and excoriated the Campaign's attempt to toss more than 200,000 lawfully cast votes in a strategy that one Justice said "smacks of racism". The ruling came just moments before Wisconsin cast its 10 Electoral College votes for Biden.

• Down in Georgia, where 16 Electoral College votes were cast for Biden today --- eventually giving him 306 votes, versus the 304 votes Trump ultimately received in 2016, when he called his victory over Hillary Clinton a "landslide" --- former Gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams cast her vote as a Democratic Elector and offered some comments on bringing the nation together under the new Democratic President-elect, which we share on today's show.

• Abrams optimistic remarks come in stark contrast, however, to the violence that erupted in D.C. over the weekend, as "Far Right Paramilitaries Allied With Outgoing President March Through City Vandalizing Black Churches". That would be the racist Proud Boys MAGA Mob which stole Black Lives Matter banners from historically black churches and burned them on Saturday, as dozens were arrested and several stabbed just hours after Trump's Marine One flyover of the latest Sore Loser Rally in the nation's capital. One upside to the racist, rightwing sore-loserism, as we share on today's program, the wingnut speaker who rallied the crowd to chants of "Destroy the GOP! Destroy the GOP!" before calling for the defeat of incumbent Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in their January runoffs against Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff for partisan control of the U.S. Senate.

• And though we ran out of time for details, here's the story of the Michigan state capitol which had to be shut down today for security reasons during the casting of that state's 16 Electoral College votes for Biden, as a state GOP lawmaker appeared to threaten violence in Lansing this morning.

• Finally, in our remaining few minutes, we open up the phone lines to listeners, one of whom sees the continuing and futile Team Trump lawsuits as "treason", another who questions the safety of the COVID vaccine, and another who ends today's show with a rather appropriate song...

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On today's BradCast, some real facts on the real concerns about Dominion Voting Systems' unverifiable computerized voting machines in Georgia --- what we know (and don't) about what happened with them during the 2020 Presidential election in November; what concerns that voters of all parties should have about them before the two critical U.S. Senate runoffs in the Peach State in January which will determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate; and what all Americans can do about it. [Audio link to full show is posted beneath summary.]

But, first up today, a few quick --- and somewhat related --- news items today. On Wednesday, the U.S. tallied a heartbreaking record 3,124 COVID deaths, making it the fourth most deadly day in U.S. history after the Galveston Storm of 1900, and the Civil War battles of Antietam and Gettysburg. Wednesday saw more Americans die from COVID than those killed on September 11, 2001, which had previously been the nation's fourth most deadly day. The next most deadly single days in the U.S. thereafter are now, in order, last Thursday, last Wednesday, last Friday, last Tuesday and Pearl Harbor.

At the same time this week, Donald Trump has been throwing crowded, indoor, holiday parties at the White House, lying to guests, without a mask, that his election was stolen, and the Texas lawsuit filed this week would prove it to his stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court, somehow. It's as if the worst pandemic in more than a hundred years doesn't even exist because, after all, there's an election to be stolen and several centuries of American democracy to be undermined during the holidays.

As to that absurd Texas case filed by the criminally indicted Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, (which we explained in great detail on yesterday's BradCast), 18 GOP controlled states have now joined the Lone Star State in support of tossing out the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, despite any evidence of fraud in those states that could possible overturn Joe Biden's certified win in each of them. But, much less reported today, is the fact that more than 20 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have joined those four targeted states in opposing the corrupt Paxton's transparent effort to win a pardon from the corrupt Trump, before the FBI drops new federal charges for bribery and abuse of power on the Texas AG.

Yes, the Texas case is absurd and offers an unprecedented, radical interpretation of the U.S. Constitution in hopes of stealing the election for Trump. As Pennsylvania's Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, has correctly argued, "The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process." But we also now have an unprecedented, radical bunch of Justices sitting on the bench at SCOTUS. Anyone who tells you they know how those Justices will rule on this case is simply making things up.

In the meantime, there remain very real concerns about Georgia's voting system, just not the phony ones that Team Trump and the MAGA Mob have decided to focus on (read: lie about.)

Today, for the first time since before the November 3rd election, we're joined by voting systems expert MARILYN MARKS, Executive Director of the nonpartisan, good government watchdog group, Coalition for Good Governance. As a plaintiff in the long-running federal lawsuit seeking to bar Dominion Voting Systems' new, unverifiable touchscreen systems from use in the state, Marks has been one of the longest and loudest critics of both the private Canadian-based voting system vendor and the state's Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger who contracted them. (Her same federal suit already resulted in a federal judge, last year, banning the use of the state's 20-year old, unverifiable Diebold touchscreen systems.) Raffensperger defied both election integrity and cybersecurity experts by purchasing Dominion's unverifiable $100+ million systems instead of a hand-marked paper ballot system as recommended by the experts. And now, Team Trump is exploiting Raffensperger's ill-considered decision to make all sorts of unfounded claims about them.

That said, because these systems are unverifiable, it's next to impossible to know that they accurately recorded the intent of any of the voters who are forced to use them at polling places across the state --- something that Marks (and us) warned about long before Republicans decided to pretend they were concerned about "election integrity" and invented a ridiculous worldwide conspiracy led by Dominion to steal the election from Trump.

In addition to cribbing from and bastardizing some of The BRAD BLOG's decade-old, independently verifiable investigative reporting about Dominion to create their ridiculous conspiracy regarding Venezuela's dead President Hugo Chavez helping to steal the election from Trump, the same MAGA Mob has been stealing from and lying about Marks' long-running federal law suit to try and make their case in court.

"We have seen, in Sidney Powell's lawsuits, fabrication after fabrication," Marks tells me. "I sit there and read these documents, cringing at the lack of facts. They even take things from our documents, like experts' reports, then add craziness to them, literally change facts that were attested to by our experts and make them completely false."

In light of all of that, among the question Marks speaks to today: Is there any evidence that Dominion Voting Systems touchscreens or tabulators were, in fact, used to flip votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden in Georgia? Her answer may surprise you! If you've listened to The BradCast while we've covered this issue with Marks and others for years, it may not surprise you.

We have covered Georgia on this program and at BradBlog.com so long and in so much detail for a reason. The state, she notes "has been the poster-child for all that is wrong with US elections. It's all concentrated here. And now it's the center of the universe."

Marks also speaks to whether Americans and residents of Georgia should have confidence in the reported results from the November election, and what if anything, can be done to ensure confidence in the results of the critical January 5th U.S. Senate runoffs in the state.

For those with actual concerns about those runoff elections --- which doesn't actually seem to include many of the Republican sore losers complaining about the November results and an evidence-free "Dominion Conspiracy" --- Marks asks listeners to urgently, and politely, email both the Speaker of the GA House, David Ralston, and GA's Sec. of State Raffensperger to urge them to allow HAND-MARKED paper ballots for all voters at the polls in the upcoming runoffs. She argues that there is still time for that to happen in every county, even as Early Voting begins on Monday. "They can make a quick switch to hand-marked paper ballots. All they need are a few thousand black ballpoint pens. They just need to hear from the nation that this time we want a non-controversial election."

We also ask Marks (a now former Republican herself), whether or not there are at least a few Republicans who might end up finding legitimate interest in joining the fight for real Election Integrity after their current partisan interests in Trump's election eventually fade away. While a private company like Dominion should never have the type of control they now have over our public elections, neither should the much larger ES&S firm or the smaller Hart-Intercivic, just to mention the three largest corporations who have arguably been allowed to usurp our public elections with unsecure, poorly designed, easily manipulated, non-transparent, computerized voting and tabulation systems.

"I hope that maybe one piece of good is that the Republicans are now suddenly concerned about software, and they are concerned about transparency of other processes," she observers. "They're suddenly interested in election administration that before, they seemed to have assumed was just going to work for them. So, hopefully we will get better transparency out of this. But we're going to have to go through the crazy period first, I'm afraid."

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report, with mostly disturbing news, as usual, on the state of our climate and environment, but some really really encouraging news at the end, that we'll use to make ourselves feel much better on another insane day like today...

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"We will never surrender," Donald Trump told his brain-poisoned MAGA Mob over the weekend in Valdosta, Georgia after the American people decisively voted for him to lose the 2020 Election. "We will only win. We're gonna win. We always win. Somehow we find a way to win," he declared. Of course, a "win" for Trump, as we detail on today's BradCast, would require the nullification of tens of millions of lawful votes to undermine democracy and the will of the American people in order to steal the election. Trump is all in for that, as he made clear yet again today. [Audio link to full show is posted beneath summary.]

In the meantime, the Trump Campaign lost yet again in court on Tuesday night, as the Nevada Supreme Court agreed with a lower state court that there was no evidence of fraud that could have possibly reversed his loss to Joe Biden in the state by more than 33,000 votes. Team Trump has now lost more than 50 such cases in both state and federal court since Election Day, in no small part because they've failed to present any of evidence of "massive fraud" in any court, despite the false claims made by Trump dozens of times a day since then.

But he continues to try and strong-arm whoever he can --- the GOP leaders of the Michigan legislature, the Republican Governor of Georgia, the Republican leaders of the Pennsylvania House --- in hopes they will abet his unconstitutional coup. His latest "victory" in that Loser's Battle was a letter sent by about 70 members of the Pennsylvania legislature to the state's Congressional delegation to ask them to please disenfranchise every voter in the Keystone State by voting against accepting the state's 20 electors on January 6th. (Mark that day on your calendar, by the way. It's going to be a very long one. I explain why on today's show.) The Republican leader of the state Senate said she feared her house would be "bombed" if she had chosen not to sign the letter. (She didn't, but only because she wasn't given the chance.) Death threats come to all of those Republicans who do not cow to the MAGA Mob, no matter how Trumpy they may otherwise be, no matter how long they have already gamed the system to try and please him.

In Texas, the wildly corrupt, long-ago-indicted Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state's top "law enforcement" official, is already facing state charges for securities fraud felonies and, more recently, eight of his top, very rightwing staffers left the office and informed federal officials that Paxton has been violating the law by using his agency to do favors for a political donor. The FBI is reportedly investigating the charges of bribery and abuse of office. Paxton could probably really use a preemptive pardon and quickly from this outgoing President. This week, he came up with just the ticket that is very likely to win one for him!

Paxton filed a lawsuit on behalf of Texas directly with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to toss out the results of the elections in four states --- Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia --- claiming changes to their voting laws due to the COVID pandemic violated the U.S. Constitution. Coincidentally, there are just enough electors in those states that if they weren't allowed to vote, or if they voted for Trump instead, he could "win" the second term that he clearly lost.

We explain the ostensible basis for Paxton's suit today, which relies on a radical reading of the U.S. Constitution to nullify any and all votes cast by voters based on laws or rules or regulations set by state Governors or Secretaries of State or Boards of Elections or even state courts, rather than state legislatures only. Paxton also tosses in some long-ago debunked fraud claims that even the Trump Campaign hasn't tried to argue in their own failed lawsuits (no, there were no "suitcases full of ballots being pulled out from underneath tables" in Atlanta), and some bullshit "commonly accepted statistical tests," just for good measure, claiming, for instance, that the chances Joe Biden could win all four states against a titan of Great Americanism like Donald Trump "is less than one in a quadrillion" according to "expert analysis".

But, in the Trump Era, facts don't matter. Convincing, muscling, threatening, strong-arming Republican stooges into doing his bidding is all that matters, even if those stooges are on Trump's stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court. All nine Justices unanimously rejected another challenge that sought to toss out only 2.5 million votes in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Hopefully they see through this similarly transparent attempt to steal the election and/or win Paxton a preemptive pardon for his federal crimes.

Of note, the Texas state Solicitor General, who would normally take the lead on big cases to be argued before SCOTUS, didn't sign Paxton's 154-page complaint [PDF]. Only he and his new chief deputy (the last one left due to concerns about bribes the AG has allegedly taken) and a private, outside attorney were willing to do so. That attorney is presumably being paid by the taxpayer dollars of Texans who already employ hundreds of capable attorneys in the AG's office who wanted nothing to do with this case, apparently.

Nonetheless, the terrified incumbent Republican U.S. Senators in Georgia --- both facing serious challenges from Democrats in two runoff elections on January 5 that will determine control of the U.S. Senate --- issued a statement of support for the Texas Attorney General's attempt to rob Georgia's own voters, even as their own state's Republican Attorney General described the TX complaint as "constitutionally, legally and factually wrong."

In other news today that doesn't concern pathetic simpering Republicans kowtowing to a desperate, wannabe strongman, the comptroller of New York State has announced plans to divest the state's enormous, $226 billion pension fund from the fossil fuel sector, sending shockwaves through Wall Street and a jolt of excitement through the climate movement. Desi Doyen joins us to explain why this is such a big deal.

Finally, we close with our latest Green News Report on the globe's hottest November since record keeping began; the Trump EPA's decision to help kill tens of thousands of more Americans each year on their way out the door; Denmark's decision to leave the rest of their fossil fuels in the ground, and much more...

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If you think the monster is actually, truly dead now, it's only because you still need to watch more horror movies. You'll have to listen to today's show for most of the juiciest details, but among the stories covered today on today's very busy BradCast [Audio link to show is posted below summary.]

• Not satisfied with helping to assure the deaths of nearly 300,000 Americans during the COVID crisis so far, the swamp-filled Trump Administration ignores their own EPA scientists to join the polluters of the fossil fuel and chemical industries to block a rule that would require a slight decrease in particulate soot that would save more than 10,000 American lives a year. Because of course they do;

• Loyal Trump henchman and Attorney General Bill Barr reportedly considering quitting before he's fired by Trump for having the temerity to admit there is no known evidence that would turn the loser Trump into a winner in the 2020 election;

• More than 1,500 lawyers --- some of them former former federal judges, prosecutors and law professors --- call for bar associations to investigate the "historic abuse of the legal system" by Team Trump attorneys, like the COVID-stricken Rudy Giuliani and the execrable Joe diGenova (who called for a former federal official to be "shot" because he believed the 2020 election was secure) to be held accountability for their behavior. The letter cites false claims of "massive fraud" by Trump's attorneys, even as those same attorneys concede in court case after court case --- they and their allies have lost about 50 cases at this point --- that they have no actual evidence of fraud;

• After losing at least five different cases in five different swing-states on Friday alone, Trump continues his record as a loser on Monday, with an Obama-appointed federal judge in Michigan tossing one case, and a George W. Bush appointed-judge in Georgia tossing the other. Both rulings were brutal dismissals;

• The President's false claims of a stolen election continue to have very serious consequences, as an armed MAGA Mob on Saturday night descended on the personal home of Michigan's Secretary of State to terrorize her and her children as they were preparing for Christmas;

• Also down in Georgia today, the state's Trump-supporting Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger --- who, along with the state's Trump-supporting Gov. Brian Kemp, has been mercilessly attacked by Trump --- re-certified the state's Presidential election finding Biden won it by about 12,000 votes. The new certification comes after the election night machine count, a statewide hand count, and a third statewide count by machines as requested by the Trump Campaign. He lost every single time by about the same numbers in all three tallies;

• On Saturday morning, the President of the United States violated the law in a call to the Republican Governor of Georgia to try and convince him to take action to toss out the election results and direct the state legislature to declare the loser Trump to be the winner. To Kemp's credit (a phrase I thought I'd never type), he refused to do what Trump demanded. To Trump's wrap-sheet, he has added yet another violation of law in trying to interference with an election. 45 days until legal accountability for Trump's many crimes should begin;

• On Saturday night, Trump went down to Georgia --- where he's in a bind, cause he's way behind --- to hold a rally for the two incumbent Republican Senators facing a tough challenge in their U.S. Senate runoffs on January 5th, where controls of the U.S. Senate is at stake. Trump spent most of the nearly two-hour long rally whining about losing the election as he repeated phony, long-ago debunked claims to continue hoaxing the MAGA Mob into believing it was stolen from him and that they are all "victims". The two U.S. Senators spoke for about 30 seconds each;

• Finally, despite Trump's unsullied record of embarrassingly losing case after case, trying to overturn the will of the voters in both state and federal courts around the country --- in cases overseen by Republican and Democratic judges alike, including several that he himself appointed --- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito took an action over the weekend that has a few Court watchers justifiably unsettled. As we reported on last Friday's BradCast, Alito agreed to consider an appeal to a case filed by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), seeking to toss out Pennsylvania's results and award the state's electors to Trump. The matter was correctly dismissed by lower courts, but Alito has agreed to consider it and, late last week, scheduled this Wednesday, Dec. 9, as the deadline for defendants to file their rebuttal. That was key, because Wednesday is the day after the so-called "Safe Harbor" date under federal law, when all state Electoral College contests are supposed to be settled, at least at the state level, on Tuesday, Dec. 8. Last week, election law experts saw Alito's late date for defendants to reply as a message that he would not be taking any actions that might change the electoral count. But on Sunday morning, Alito changed that deadline to the morning of Tuesday, "Safe Harbor" day. What does that mean? And should we be worried that the monster isn't really, truly dead just yet? We discuss...

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On today's BradCast: The Donald Trump Crazy Train keeps chugging along. And its getting crazier, and seemingly farther off the tracks with each passing hour as the outgoing President's days in the White House continue to diminish and his likelihood of facing criminal accountability grows nearer and nearer. One of the biggest remaining questions is how many of his supporters are still to get run over by that train.

Among the many stories we cover today...

• Before we dive deep into The Crazy, some very grim milestones in the COVID crisis which, turns out, wasn't a hoax at all, as both Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz "guaranteed" us before the election. On Wednesday, there were more than 200,000 new cases, more than 100,000 hospitalizations and more than 2,777 deaths confirmed from COVID. All of them single day records, as the pandemic will continue to get far worse in coming months before it begins to get better. All thanks, in no small part, to idiots like Trump, Cruz and whole bunch of other Republicans who sadistically sacrificed their constituents' lives in dashed hopes of seeing Trump re-elected;

• Following Attorney General Bill Barr's comments to AP earlier this week that, "to date," the Dept. of Justice has "not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election," Trump, as expected, reportedly blew a gasket. It resulted in a two and half hour meeting for Barr at the White House and Trump said to be considering whether he will now fire his second AG, despite his years of covering up and lying for the President and his unprecedented directive to dozens of Asst. U.S. Attorneys to investigate bogus claims of "massive fraud" before and after the election;

• On Thursday, the rightwing Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the Trump Campaign's latest attempt to toss out hundreds of thousands of votes in a state that Trump lost. Of note, as has been the case in every suit they've filed (by way of contrast to what they say publicly to the chumps and suckers who believe in them), Team Trump offered zero evidence of fraud in their complaint. Rather, they complained about absentee ballot procedures that have been in place since before the 2016 election, when Trump is said to have won the state, as well as during this year's primaries. Apparently they forgot to claim that WI's absentee voting laws were illegal in those past elections. The suit was rejected today, however, because the court ruled it needs to be filed in a lower state court first before it can be heard by the state Supremes. The Campaign also filed another federal case in the state on Wednesday. It does not argue their was fraud in this year's election either;

• It's become so embarrassing that even top Trump sycophant Sen. Lindsey Graham is taking to Fox "News" to tell the Trump legal team that they need to provide proof of their fraud claims in court. "Doing a video is not proof," he said, shortly after Trump released a 46-minute video on Wednesday, falsely claiming (without evidence, naturally) that he actually won virtually every state in the union this year;

• Lack of evidence of fraud, however, has not stopped the Rudy Giuliani Traveling Dog 'n' Pony Show. After making presentations to GOP state legislators in "hearings" held in rented hotel banquet rooms in Pennsylvania and Arizona this week, the Republicans of the gerrymandered Michigan state legislature opened an actual hearing room in the state capital to the Rudy Show. It did not go well. We share the testimony from Melissa Carone, of one of the "witnesses" that Rudy hauled up to the stand. It's something to behold;

• Meanwhile, down in Georgia on Wednesday, a huge "Stop the Steal" rally at the Peach State capital, headed up by self-disgracing attorneys and Trump Crazy Train Conductors Sidney Powell and Lin Wood (who may actually be mentally ill), likely drove the what's left of the actual GOP crazy. Wood attacked the very Trumpy Republican Governor Brian Kemp, resulting in "Lock him up!" chants from the QAnon brain-poisoned crowd, before instructing the misinformed throngs that they should absolutely not vote for incumbent Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler or David Perdue in the upcoming January 5th runoff elections that will determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate;

• Finally, we close with some helpful words, believe it or not, from far-right, not insane Trump supporter Erick Erickson. In a Twitter thread this week, the former Editor-in-Chief of the rightwing RedState blog, finally seems to have had enough of the madness of GOP conspiracy theorists who now believe that Trump's own DOJ, FBI, CIA, Attorney General, and the Republican Governors of states like Georgia and Arizona, not to mention others, have all teamed up to steal the election for Joe Biden. "Maybe…and I know this might just blow your mind…but maybe what if you've been lied to the whole time. There is no conspiracy. There is no theft of the election," Erickson unloads, suggesting that "maybe, just maybe" the problem is Trump and supporters who can't understand that "ultimately it is really you who are the problem because you so willingly got played and even now want to be played because now you're emotionally invested in a cause and a candidate and to admit you were played and he lost and there was no deep state conspiracy or theft of the election would actually make you look bad. So it's better to double down on the lies and bullshit and blame everyone else."

Sounds about right. Thanks, Erick. You can stop blocking me on Twitter now.

Buckle up and/or pop a bucket of popcorn or two for today's BradCast...

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On today's BradCast we try to catch you up with at least five days of important news from over the long holiday weekend. That's damned near impossible in the Trump Era, unfortunately. But we did get about half way there, with the most important parts of Trump's continuing attempt to steal the 2020 election (yes, that's still ongoing!) before turning to some excellent listener calls...

Among the stories we did catch up on, and were able to offer some important context for...

• If someone could wrap Joe Biden in bubble wrap and place him in an hermetically sealed room for the next 50 days, it would be greatly appreciated.

• Los Angeles County has now implemented among the most severe COVID-19 restrictions in the nation amid a recent spike in cases and hospitalizations that threatens to soon overwhelm our health care system here. That said, California and L.A. have among the lowest per capita rates of infections, hospitalizations and death in the nation, but the rates have doubled in recent weeks. So, if we need to take these emergency measures, we only hope that places where it's really bad --- for example, in the Midwest and Texas --- take action now to save lives. Election Day is past and so its no longer necessary for GOP leaders in those states to pretend everything about the coronavirus is a hoax in order to try and re-elect Donald Trump;

• Arizona certifies its election results, confirming that Biden officially defeated Trump by more than 10,000 votes, in a state that hasn't gone "blue" in decades. The certification also clears the way for Democratic Senator-elect Mark Kelly to be seated in the U.S. Senate this week, following his defeat of Republican incumbent Sen. Martha McSally in what was a Special Election for the Senate on November 3rd. McSally has now lost two Senate seats to Democrats in a row. And the loony state GOP Chairwoman and failed Congressional candidate Kelli Ward is continuing to challenge the 2020 results --- even as the state's very Trumpy Republican Governor and Attorney General stand by them;

• Wisconsin certifies its elections results, confirming that Biden officially defeated Trump by just over 20,000 votes in a state that Trump is said to have defeated Hillary Clinton by a similar margin in 2016. The certification follows a partial "recount" in the state, paid for by the Trump Campaign at a cost of $3 million. The second count in Milwaukee and Dane Counties, where Trump sought to the re-tally, ended up netting an additional 87 votes overall for Biden. (Another artful deal by the world's greatest businessman);

• Over the weekend Trump lost resoundingly in two different cases, one in federal court and one in state court, in Pennsylvania. One loss came from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where three Republican-appointed federal judges upbraided the Trump Campaign's case, with the Trump-appointed Judge writing the scathing opinion to include: "Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here. ... Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections." The state case did not go any better for Team Trump, with a unanimous verdict by the state Supreme Court finding that the GOP legislators' attempt to toss out the election based on claims that the state's new absentee ballot law violates Pennsylvania's Constitution was filed much too late. The same law was in effect during the state primary earlier this year, and the legislators had no complaint about it. NEITHER OF THE TWO CASES, NOR ANY OF THE OTHER FAILED CASES FROM TEAM TRUMP ALLEGED FRAUD. Claims about "massive fraud" are only made by Trump and Giuliani and friends on Twitter and Fox "News". Courts require actual evidence and apparently, Trump has none to offer;

• We then open phones to callers with some questions about all of this stuff, including the one Trump Card that the President still hopes to play at the GOP's stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court. There, Trump hopes for an opinion that only state legislatures may make any laws or rules or regulations concerning the "times, places and manner of holding elections", as referenced in the U.S. Constitution. With such an opinion from a majority of Justices, if they can get it, Team Trump believes they can toss out election results this year, and have GOP state legislatures award electors to Trump instead of Biden, the popular winner. It's a radical, extremist (and arguably ridiculous) "originalist" interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, but Kavanaugh and Gorsuch have already indicated they buy it, Alito and Thomas are likely to go along with it, and the matter would potentially be left to Trump's most recent appoint, Amy Coney Barrett, to decide.

Many are turning away to other matters now that they believe the monster has been vanquished once and for all. We've seen enough monster movies to know that it's a terrible idea to walk away after you think the monster is dead, even while they are lying there with an axe in their apparently lifeless hand...

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It's been a weekend and more of The Crazy since we last spoke. On today's BradCast we get you all up to date on the last several days of The Crazy as Donald Trump's attempted coup to steal back the Presidency continues to fall apart with each passing hour, and as the Republican Party decides to distance themselves from Trump's loony conspiracy attorney Sidney Powell while she turns the MAGA crowd against her own party before the critical January U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia to determine control of the upper chamber of Congress. [Audio link to full show follows summary.]

The biggest news today broke mid-show, as Trump finally relented in allowing the General Services Administration to officially begin the transition to a Joe Biden Administration, even as he vowed he would "prevail" in his fight to overturn the will of the American voters and says his "case STRONGLY continues."

Well, about that case. It may be continuing, but it has never been anywhere close to strong. Among the related stories covered on today's show that prove it, before we turn to the phone for listener calls on all of this...

• First, a follow-up to Friday's show in which we debunked the insane case that Powell, Giuliani and now all of MAGA are making regarding an international conspiracy --- somehow led by the Dominion Voting System company, along with the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela --- to steal the election for Biden. The conspiracy originates with the bastardization of an exclusive investigative report I published at The BRAD BLOG in 2010. Powell et al aren't even close in their twisted version of the story that now includes all sorts of false charges about voting machine companies and more. The bottom line, as we noted on Friday, but which warrants underscoring again today, because I've been trying to make the case for so long and now we're seeing what I warned about finally come to pass...

1. Simply because a computerized voting and tabulation system is vulnerable to fraud and manipulation does not mean that any particular election run on it has been defrauded or manipulated, and;
2. Even if an election is 100% secure and accurate, if it can't be known by the public to have been 100% secure and accurate, it is every bit as much of a threat to confidence in our democratic system as it would be if the election had actually been stolen on such a system.

• Other than that...Catching us all up from Friday....Trump loses another lawsuit in Nevada as a state judge rejects an attempt to block certification of Biden's victory, by more than 33,000 votes, in the state.

• Trump loses in Arizona as a state judge rejects a move for yet another audit of votes in Maricopa County (Phoenix), and the County's Board of Supervisors (4 Rs, 1 D) unanimously voted on Friday to certify Biden's victory in the state's largest county. Also, the final "SharpieGate" lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in the state where Biden appears to have won by more than 10,000 votes.

• In Wisconsin, Team Trump is said to be obstructing the ongoing recounts requested by Trump in the two counties with the largest minority vote, Milwaukee and Dane, after apparently losing the state to Biden by more than 20,000 votes.

• Trump lost bigly in Michigan on Monday, where the state Board of Canvassers voted unanimously (with one abstention) to certify Biden's victory by nearly 160,000 votes. That, after Trump's attempt to twist the arms of the GOP leadership of the state's gerrymandered House and Senate on Friday appears to have gone nowhere. (But we'll soon find out for sure.)

• In Pennsylvania, Trump lost his attempt to toss out nearly seven million ballots and was excoriated by a conservative federal judge on Saturday for attempting to do so in the nation's sixth largest state where Biden appears to have prevailed by more than 80,000 votes. The brutal court loss led Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey to become just the second GOP Senator to concede (where Trump won't) by declaring [PDF] that "Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race" in the state. Trump's team of pathetic lawyers have since filed an emergency appeal to the 3rd Circuit, but failed to deliver their motion before the Court's deadline for doing so. This is the (likely doomed) case Trump hopes may reach SCOTUS where he believes he can win after packing the stolen GOP majority on the Court in his favor. He'd have to win a verdict there that somehow allowed legislatures in at least three states to reverse the will of their voters to appoint Trump electors instead of Biden's by December 8th.

• Down in Georgia, where Trump lost by about 13,000 votes following a statewide hand "audit" of all ballots last week, the Trumpy Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger and even Trumpier Republican Governor Brian Kemp both certified Biden's victory on Friday. Over the weekend, MAGA "Stop the Steal" rallies in the state included verbal attacks on both Kemp and Raffensperger, along with vows to destroy the GOP and promises to boycott the critical January U.S. Senate runoffs in the state. We wish them nothing but luck in their endeavor! That came as Powell was taking to far-far right wingnut Newsmax TV over the weekend to allege that Raffensperger and Kemp were paid off by Dominion to steal the election for the Democrats' Presidential candidate. She offered no evidence for her claims. After years of critically reporting on both Kemp and Raffensperger --- including his ill-advised decision to spend $100+ million on Dominion's 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems this year --- we are unaware of any such evidence to support her claims. But we wish her nothing but luck in her endeavor to prove it! For now, the thanks she received was being tossed under the bus by Trump late on Sunday night.

• There was a whole lot more along the way today, but you'll have tune it for it all, along with some great calls we responded to near the end of the show today, as The Crazy continues to continue...

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Join us on today's BradCast for a deep dive down into the twisted rabbit hole of Team Trump's recently manufactured claims that Canadian election vendor Dominion Voting Systems and its Venezuelan-tied competitor Smartmatic secretly joined forces as part of an enormous international conspiracy (also involving the late Hugo Chavez) to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump on behalf of Joe Biden and the Democrats. We happen to know a bit about these claims, as they are directly based on one (or more) of my own exclusive investigate reports from a decade ago. [Audio link to show is posted below summary.]

As it turns out, The BRAD BLOG is actually responsible for the original kernel of truth that has become the pretend conspiracy now being used as the basis for Trump's attempt to reverse the results of the 2020 election. These are the claims now being shared by Trump's attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, not to mention by Trump himself.

The initial story is based on a deeply reported, well-evidenced and independently verifiable 2010 investigative exclusive of mine (also republished by HuffPo) that Republicans, over the past week or so, have been citing as the basis for their so-far evidence-free claims that Democrats teamed up with Dominion, Smartmatic --- and also China and Cuba somehow --- to commit "nationwide voter fraud" via computers (computers don't commit voter fraud, voters do) to flip the results of the election. They claim this proves that Donald Trump actually won the election in a landslide --- though, as even Tucker Carlson of Fox "News" found out, they have no actual evidence to back any of it up.

We share their actual claims, the original basis for them (which they have absurdly bastardized to the point that it is barely recognizable) and how others in the party, like Arizona State GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, have run with the ball to misrepresent facts and manufacture claims in her scary scary new video titled "DOMINION EXPOSED! This Video Should Terrify Every Single American".

We explain what all of these folks got right (almost nothing) and wrong (pretty much all of it...though Chavez is tied in to the story --- or was before he died seven years ago), and what the top two real takeaways should be for both parties and all American voters now that the GOP has finally decided to become concerned --- or, at least, pretend to be --- about the dangers of electronic voting and tabulation systems:

1. Simply because a computerized voting and tabulation system is vulnerable to fraud and manipulation does not mean that any particular election run on it has been defrauded or manipulated, and;
2. Even if an election is 100% secure and accurate, if it can't be known by the public to have been 100% secure and accurate, it is every bit as much of a threat to confidence in our democratic system as it would be if the election had actually been stolen on such a system.

The past few days should give you plenty of evidence for that, at least!

There are too many details beyond that to include in a summary, so I hope you'll just buckle up and tune in for the full rollicking story today on this one!

But, one other point worth noting here. While we've been reporting on all of these facts --- with independently verifiable evidence --- for nearly two decades now, it is for the above reasons that we have been inviting Republicans of late to put their money where there mouths are. If they are actually concerned about easily manipulated elections by Dominion (or any other computer vote system vendor), then join us in demanding the use of only hand-marked paper ballots for Georgia's upcoming critical U.S. Senate runoffs in January (which will determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate). Those ballots should then be publicly hand-counted on Election Night. It's just two races with two candidates each, so it's very easy to count publicly in a single night, and it would result in Dominion being tossed out of elections entirely in the state of Georgia! How about it Repubs? You in? I'll even drive out to Phoenix to make a new video about it with Kelli Ward if she joins the call. Why wouldn't she?

Then, we're joined today by George Washington University Law School professor and Washington Post contributor RANDALL D. ELIASON, for his explanation as to why he believes it is appropriate to bring public pressure against high-profile law firms representing Trump in his evidence-free "voter fraud" cases, but not against attorneys and firms who choose to represent other despicable individuals like terrorists, child molesters and the KKK. That, after top national law firms recently withdrew from Trump's fraudulent "fraud" cases following public opprobrium encouraged by the anti-Trump Republicans of the Lincoln Project. (Also, here's that recent piece I mentioned from Eliason on Trump's upcoming PardonPalooza!)

Also today: The latest news from Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan in Trump's attempted coup; the one Republican Senator who is finally calling it out; and the news that Florida's Republican Senator Rick Scott and Donald Trump Jr., have now both tested positive for the coronavirus...

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