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Latest Featured Reports | Sunday, June 22, 2025
Senate Health Care Cuts 'More Extreme' Than House Version: 'BradCast' 6/19/25
Guest: Former WH budget adviser, Bobby Kogan; Also: Trump travel ban blocking emergency health care, new medical residents...
'Green News Report' 6/19/25
  w/ Brad & Desi
Early, ferocious start to Hurricane season as Erick slams Mexico; Trump Admin layoffs impacting nat'l parks; PLUS: Repub's budget bill would increase energy prices, sell off public lands...
Previous GNRs: 6/17/25 - 6/12/25 - Archives...
What 'Anti-War President'? MAGA Civil War Over Trump, Iran: 'BradCast' 6/18/25
Also: SCOTUS upholds cruel ban on medical care for trans kids; Trump/GOP budget bill wildly unpopular among Americans...
Trump Calls for 'Remigration', a Far-Right Codeword for 'Ethnic Cleansing': 'BradCast' 6/17/25
Guest: David Gilbert of WIRED; Also: Lindell found liable; Eastman disbarment upheld; NYC Mayoral candidate arrested by masked Feds...
'Green News Report' 6/17/25
  w/ Brad & Desi
Deadly flooding in WV, TX as Trump cancels flood control upgrades; Admin scraps settlement to restore Columbia River; PLUS: U.N. Oceans Summit calls for end to ocean 'plunder'...
Previous GNRs: 6/12/25 - 6/10/25 - Archives...
Last Weekend Today:
'BradCast' 6/16/25
Massive 'No Kings' rallies across nation; Trump's military parade flops; Israel bombs Iran; Political assassination in MN; Callers ring in with reports from their own protest experiences...
Sunday 'Despot Times, Despot Measures' Toons
THIS WEEK: From the Halls of Sunset Boulevard to the Shores of the 101... It's our latest collection of the week's best toons!...
Then They Came for the U.S. Senators: 'BradCast' 6/12/25
Trump 'police state' expands to small towns; Also: Voters rejecting Trump, policies; NatGuard unpaid in L.A.; Trump signs bills after GOP nukes filibuster to end CA clean car laws...
'Green News Report' 6/12/25
  w/ Brad & Desi
OUR 1,500th EPISODE! Trump dismantling FEMA, forcing states to kowtow to Trump; EPA to revoke power plant pollution rules; PLUS: Congress kills CA's clean car standards...
Previous GNRs: 6/10/25 - 6/5/25 - Archives...
Trump Inciting Violence, State of Fear in L.A., Elsewhere: 'BradCast' 6/10/25
Insurrection Act soon?; Also: Bondi bro bombs in D.C.; SCOTUS does right thing for PA; Trial against 2020 conspiracist Lindell underway...
'Green News Report' 6/10/25
Canadian wildfire smoke more toxic than usual; Natural gas stoves increase risk of cancers; PLUS: OR woman sues Big Oil for role in deadly 2021 extreme heat wave...
Never Mind Elon and Epstein Files, Trump Declares 'Riots' in L.A.!: 'BradCast' 6/9/25
President federalizes CA National Guard, deploys U.S. Marines in defiance of Guv, Mayor, laws to distract from all of his other, ongoing failures...
Sunday 'Breaking Up is Hard Hilarious to Do' Toons
THIS WEEK: Alien vs. Predator...NOAA vs. Nature...David vs. Goliath...In Memoriam ... And more, in our latest collection of the week's most ridiculous toons!...
'Jesus Weeps' at Trump's
'MAGA Murder Budget': 'BradCast' 6/5/25
Dem landslide in SC; Catholic outlet eviscerates Trump GOP's 'big shameful bill'; Bipartisan judges oppose Dugan indictment; Much more...
'Green News Report' 6/5/25
Nat'l Weather Service seriously understaffed on Gulf Coast; SCOTUS further limits enviro reviews; PLUS: Sounding the alarm on Trump's gutting of FEMA...
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...

DOJ PROBE SOUGHT AFTER VA ARREST
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...

Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...

ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
His Super-PAC, his voter registration (fraud) firm & their 'Americans for Prosperity' are all based out of same top RNC legal office in Virginia...

LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

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FINALLY: FOX ON GOP REG FRAUD SCANDAL
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...

COLORADO FOLLOWS FLORIDA WITH GOP CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
Repub Sec. of State Gessler ignores expanding GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, rants about evidence-free 'Dem Voter Fraud' at Tea Party event...

CRIMINAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL IN FL
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Brad Breaks PA Photo ID & GOP Registration Fraud Scandal News on Hartmann TV
Another visit on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture with new news on several developing Election Integrity stories...

CAUGHT ON TAPE: COORDINATED NATIONWIDE GOP VOTER REG SCAM
The GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal reveals insidious nationwide registration scheme to keep Obama supporters from even registering to vote...

CRIMINAL ELECTION FRAUD COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GOP 'FRAUD' FIRM
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RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...

VIDEO: Brad Breaks GOP Reg Fraud Scandal on Hartmann TV
Breaking coverage as the RNC fires their Romney-tied voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting...

RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...

EXCLUSIVE: Intvw w/ FL Official Who First Discovered GOP Reg Fraud
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...

GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
State GOP fires Romney-tied registration firm after fraudulent forms found in Palm Beach; Firm hired 'at request of RNC' in FL, NC, VA, NV & CO...
The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...


Guest: David Gilbert of WIRED; Also: Lindell found liable for defamation; Eastman disbarment upheld in CA; NYC Comptroller, Mayoral candidate arrested by masked Feds in courthouse...
By Brad Friedman on 6/17/2025 6:52pm PT  

Too much going on. So today we try to focus on at least one thing on today's BradCast that is disturbingly under-reported by the corporate media. Something that is right there in plain site, if you pay attention: The Trump Administration's increasing use of the word "remigration" and what it actually means. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First up, however, a few quick news stories today that also deserve coverage...

  • Donald Trump has said he will not even call Democratic Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, despite the political violence that stunned the state (and nation) over the weekend with the assassination of top Democratic state lawmaker, Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, along with the attempted assassination of Democratic State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife by a Trump supporter. If there has ever been a more pathetic and classless person elected to high office in this country --- much less someone who supposedly survived an assassination attempt himself --- I have no idea who it would be.
  • Bedding impresario and world-class Trump dupe, Mike Lindell, was found liable by a jury in Denver on Monday on two counts of defamation against former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer. Lindell must pay Coomer $2.3 million for, among other things, defaming him as a "traitor" by citing evidence-free reports by rightwing conspiracy theorists that the former Dominion executive took part in an antifa phone call promising to use Dominion voting machines to steal the 2020 election from Trump. Lindell, who failed to proffer any evidence or experts during the trial to support his ongoing claims that the election was stolen from Trump, says he will appeal the jury verdict.
  • In other 2020 Trump dupe news, the State Bar Court of California appeal division upheld a determination that Trump attorney John Eastman should lose his law license after his efforts to steal the 2020 Presidential election for Trump. Eastman, among other things, falsely instructed then Vice President Mike Pence that he could lawfully refuse to accept Electoral votes submitted by swing states when Congress convened to certify the election on January 6, 2021. Eastman says he will appeal the decision to the California Supreme Court.
  • And then they came for New York City's Comptroller and Mayoral candidate... Brad Lander, the city's Comptroller and a contestant in next week's Democratic Mayoral primary election, was roughed up and handcuffed by federal agents, some of them masked, inside a NYC federal courthouse on Tuesday. He was there attempting to help a migrant who ICE had descended upon to arrest and deport in the hallways. No charges, however, have been forthcoming from the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan so far. Lander's arrest follows the recent roughing up and handcuffing of California Sen. Alex Padilla last week at a Kristi Noem news conference in Los Angeles (no charges filed); the arrest of Newark, New Jersey's Mayor Ras Baraka outside of a federal detention facility (charges dropped); the indictment of NJ Rep. LaMonica McIver for allegedly assaulting federal agents at the same facility (charges still pending); and the arrest and indictment of Wisconsin state Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly interfering with the arrest of a migrant in her courthouse (charges still pending). All of those elected officials targeted by Trump's weaponized DHS are Democrats.

NEXT... and in a disturbingly related vein, we're joined by WIRED journalist DAVID GILBERT, who recently reported on the State Department's plan to restructure hundreds of bureaus under something being called the "Office of Remigration".

On Sunday, following his flopped birthday parade and wildly successful "No Kings" protest against him around the country the day prior, Donald Trump issued a long, rambling tantrum of a social media post, vowing to "expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities," at "the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens." All of those claims, of course, are total rubbish. But Trump's post goes on to target "Radical Left Democrats" who "are sick of mind" and "hate our Country", before concluding with a vow that "Our Federal Government will continue to be focused on the REMIGRATION of Aliens to the places from where they came". (Those are his ALL CAPS...or whoever actually wrote the long, uncharacteristically, mostly-grammatically correct post.)

That post, however, was in stark contrast to statements by Trump himself just days earlier suggesting that he would be softening his ICE roundups, at least to avoid devastating military-style raids of farms, hotel and restaurants where, as he conceded last week, "they have very good workers, they've worked for them for 20 years, they're not citizens but they turned out to be great."

What to make of Trump's flip-flops amid the sinking popularity of his immigration and deportation policies? It's difficult to know, suggests Gilbert today during our discussion homing in on the Administration's growing threats of "remigration" policies. It's an otherwise innocuous sounding word, but with a very sinister, dark meaning and origin. It is, essentially, a codeword for "ethnic cleansing", according to experts, as used in recent years by far-right, neo-Nazi parties in Europe.

"It's a concept that was floated first by French identitarians in 2010, 2012, and it was couched or centered in the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which posits that mass migration from 'third world countries' is happening to take over white people from Western countries," explains Gilbert. In an interview with a far-right Austrian activist and former neo-Nazi who is well known among Europe's racist communities, Gilbert was told that "this idea of 'remigration'...basically says that every single migrant, even if they are a citizen, needs to go back to their country of origin."

That, disturbingly, is what the Trump Administration and whoever is pulling its immigration policy strings (racist Stephen Miller, Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff is the best bet), now seem to be calling for.

Gilbert details the three-step process for remigration, as constructed by that Austrian activist. It's a thirty-year plan that the Administration seems to be "speed-running...to try and get done as quick as possible --- possibly within the four years of Trump's second term."

We've got a lot to discuss with Gilbert on this today, including why Sec. of State Marco Rubio seems to be fronting for this racist scheme; what it "clearly means" for "people who are not white, who are not Christian"; how the far-right in Europe is "jubilant" about what Trump has done already to effectuate remigration policy in the U.S.; and how this codeword for ethnic cleansing means that even naturalized citizens could soon be targeted for deportation to their home countries unless something or someone puts a stop to this twisted, rightwing madness.

"I think this has kind of passed people by, the idea of remigration, because the term seems so innocuous," Gilbert tells me, noting that even far-right groups in the U.S. haven't fully latched on, because "it doesn't initially stand out as something that's extreme. So far, people still don't really get it. But I think it will eventually creep in. It will become something that is just part of their core belief, that remigration is the only way that they can get their country back."

Tune in for much more today...

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Massive 'No Kings' rallies across nation; Trump's military parade flops; Israel bombs Iran; Political assassination in MN; Callers ring in with reports from their own protest experiences...
By Brad Friedman on 6/16/2025 6:25pm PT  

Going into the weekend we knew we were in for a bizarre news split-screen on Saturday, with major protest rallies scheduled across the country and Trump's military birthday parade he threw for himself (with $40+ million of your tax dollars) in D.C. But, it wasn't just two huge stories happening at once by Saturday. It was four. We try to get you caught up on all of them on today's BradCast before opening the line to callers. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

All of the stories happening all at once over the weekend, were all thanks to Donald Trump in varying ways...

  • First, on Friday night, Israel unleashed a full-scale attack against Iran, killing its three top military commanders and several nuclear scientists --- among many others. The pretext for the attack was Iran's nuclear program which, had Trump not torn up the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the hard-fought and carefully constructed nuclear deal Iran agreed to in 2015 with China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the U.S., there wouldn't even be a program for Israel to target. The strike came after Trump failed to strike a new nuclear deal with Iran, which had restarted its nuclear program after Trump reneged on the original deal. He had been begging them for the last month to agree to a new deal to limit its nuclear program that is almost identical to the one struck under Obama that Trump tore up during his first term. The ongoing volleys of missiles between Israel and Iran have also led the Trump Administration to call back the Voice of America Persian-bureau after foolishly (and unlawfully) shuttering VOA and its sister networks back in March.
  • In the early Saturday morning hours, a long-time Trump supporter disguised as a policeman assassinated the Democratic leader of Minnesota's House of Representative, Rep. Melissa Hortmann, and her husband inside their own home. Hortmann, as House Speaker in 2023-2024, was a key player in passage of a host of popular progressive initiatives under Gov. Tim Walz that came to be known as the Minnesota Miracle. The same shooter also attempted to assassinate Democratic state Senator John Hoffman at his house just prior. Hoffman and his wife remain alive but in critical condition after Hoffman was shot nine times and his wife eight times. The alleged rightwing assailant, 57-year old Vance Luther Boelter, was found to have had a list of some 70 names on a target list in his car. The names were reportedly Democratic officials, both state and federal, and champions of abortion rights. Officials also say he had a number of "No Kings" flyers in the car, suggesting he might have been planning to target one of Saturday's many protests in the state. After a two-day manhunt, Boelter was captured late on Sunday in a cornfield south of Minneapolis/St. Paul. He was charged on Monday with both state and federal crimes including assassination and attempted assassination. It is just the latest example of increasing political violence by the right in the Trump Era, as warned about for years, even by his own FBI Director who conceded that domestic homegrown terror from those on the right --- not by migrants --- was, by far, the greatest threat currently facing Americans.
  • The third major weekend story happening all at once that wouldn't have happened if not for Donald Trump, was the authoritarian-style military birthday parade he threw for himself (though we paid for it) that happened to fall on the U.S. Army's 250th birthday as well as Trump's 79th. It was, by almost all accounts, a sparsely attended snoozer of a parade which saw even Trump supporters streaming away long before it was over. Of course, the manhunt for the MN assassin and the war in Israel/Iran, thankfully, sucked up most of the cable TV news coverage.
  • In likely --- or hopefully --- the most important news of the weekend, some five million Americans took to the streets to stand up against the President in "No Kings" protests decrying the rising fascism of Donald Trump, including his deployment of military troops against Americans on U.S. soil and his burgeoning military-style migrant round-ups by ICE. According to organizers, enormous and joyful rallies were held in more than 2,000 cities and town in all 50 states. They were almost all entirely peaceful but for a man who brandished a rifle at protesters in Salt Lake City, UT (a protester was killed); a counter-protesters who pulled a handgun on rally-goers in Phoenix, AZ; and an SUV driver who struck and injured a demonstrator before speeding away in Riverside, CA.

    In Los Angeles, late in the day, there was a bit of violence as well. But, as all reporting seems to indicate (David Dayen's at TAP was the best) it was local law enforcement officials from both the L.A. County Sheriff's Dept. and the LAPD who sparked the violence with their unannounced use of horses, rubber bullets and teargas to suddenly clear demonstrators at 4pm, hours before the rally was to have ended in Downtown L.A.

After all of that and much more, we open the phones today to our live local listeners here in Southern California to hear their own reports and personal experiences from the weekend's many "No Kings" protests...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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'Pro-choice' Melania wants $250k to talk to CNN; $100k 'Trump Watch' invitation to influence peddlers; Damning new 1/6 details from Jack Smith; MAGA county clerk Peters gets 9 years for CO vote system tampering...
By Brad Friedman on 10/3/2024 6:23pm PT  

Tick-tock. Time is running out for all of the Trump scams, as detailed on today's BradCast. Unless, of course, he wins on November 5th --- or has more success stealing the Presidential election this year than he did in 2020. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the Trump scams, rackets and accountability for having fallen for them on today's program...

  • You know about many of Donald Trump's legendarily failed rackets from the old days: Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Water, Trump Vodka, Trump Casinos, just to name a few. More recently, during the time he's been running for President again, there's been Trump Sneakers, Trump Bibles, Trump Digital Trading Cards, Trump Coins, Trump Cryptocurrency and, introduced just last Friday, "Swiss-made" Trump Watches. He's selling them for $100,000 a pop! Even though, according to experts, they appear to be Chinese-made crap, if they even exist, and appear just as likely to be an open invitation to foreign influence peddling and money laundering. We explain.
  • All of the above enumerated rackets, by the way, are private rackets. Any profits from them do not go to his Presidential Campaign, but straight into Donald Trump's pocket. And so --- according to the new 165-page filing [PDF] by Special Counsel Jack Smith, unsealed by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan on Wednesday afternoon --- was Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election. New evidence in the filing from prosecutors in his 4-count federal indictment in D.C., further details how the disgraced former President and convicted felon was fully aware that he'd lost the election in 2020, but didn't care. He was going to fight to steal it anyway. He also knew he had put Vice President Mike Pence's life in grave danger on January 6th, 2021. His response: "So, what?" And all of that, as prosecutors argue in their brief, was done in Trump's capacity as a private candidate for office. It was not done as part of his official duties as President. Smith's motion is meant to make that case in hopes of preventing the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court from dismissing the case on the basis of their absurd, anti-American, anti-Constitutional, made-up-from-whole-cloth ruling in Trump v. U.S. declaring criminal immunity to sitting Presidents for crimes committed as part of their "official" duties.
  • In Colorado today, a state judge unleashed a brutal, if accurate, take-down of disgraced former Mesa County Clerk, Tina Peters during her sentencing hearing. Once a MAGA superstar, she is now a convicted felon on charges related to a criminal scheme to breach voting system software in her own County, based on false claims that fraud software was implanted in them to flip votes from Trump to Biden in 2020. The judge told Peters today: "I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen. You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan." He called out her continuing claims of evidence-free fraud as "just more lies. No objective person believes them. No, at the end of the day, you cared about the jets, the podcasts and people fawning over you." He then sentenced her to nine years in prison before she was handcuffed and hauled out of the courtroom to immediately begin serving her time. See ya, Tina! May she be the first of many.
  • Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the deadly disaster in six states continues to unfold in the U.S. Southeast following Hurricane Helene, which at least succeeded in finally helping to bring the issue of climate change to the top of Tuesday's Vice Presidential debate between Democrat Tim Walz and Republican J.D. Vance...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 10/3/2024 10:42am PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: After another climate disaster, climate change was finally front and center at the Vice Presidential Debate; PLUS: Ongoing climate disaster Hurricane Helene, now the second deadliest hurricane in modern U.S. history... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Two separate climate studies find that fossil fuel pollution intensified Hurricane Helene rainfall; Helene isn’t the first time Trump inserted politics into a natural disaster; At what price will oil shale drillers stop drilling?; Hurricane gives Democrats a climate opening in Florida; 'Everything is dead': Ukraine rushes to stem ecocide after Russia poisons river; American dams weren't built for today's climate-charged rains and floods... PLUS: Who will care for Americans left behind by climate migration?... and much, MUCH more! ...

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Guests: Heather Digby Parton of Salon, 'Driftglass' of 'Pro Left Podcast'...
By Brad Friedman on 10/2/2024 4:50pm PT  

We have, of course, Special Coverage on today's BradCast of Tuesday night's one and only Vice Presidential Debate, likely the last direct face-off between the two tickets before Election Day. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

It was somewhat disorienting to watch a Presidential ticket debate that didn't include name-calling, one-liner zingers and direct personal attacks. But with "Minnesota Nice" Democratic Governor Tim Walz taking on Ohio's Republican U.S. Senator J.D. Vance, who has an historically low favorability rating and a desperate need to improve his likeability among the electorate, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the debate ended up coming across more like an olde tyme, pre-Trump Era (even pre-Rove Era) 1990s Presidential debate.

But Vance's politeness was there only to try and mask his well-documented, far-right, autocratic MAGA policy preferences on everything from abortion to gun safety to climate change to health care to his running-mate Donald Trump's violent attacks on our democracy, leading to evasive answers to questions from both the CBS News moderators and Walz himself on whether he believed, for instance, that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. "Tim, I'm focused on the future," Vance said, refusing to respond. "That is a damning non-answer," Walz replied, adding: "He lost the election. This is not a debate. It's not anything, anywhere other than in Donald Trump's world." It wouldn't be the only direct question that Vance deflected.

While a nervous Walz stumbled through some of the early moments of the debate, he regained his footing thereafter and displayed a command of facts, data and reality on a host of topics raised by the moderators. The Yale Law School trained Vance also proved to be a competent debater, deftly smoothing over his extremist, hard-right record and former persona as a Trump-opponent, while doing his best to focus his fire on Kamala Harris whenever possible...facts be damned.

We're joined today, as we frequently are on such occasions, by longtime friends and old school bloggers, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of his eponymous blog and The Professional Left Podcast for some help in making sense of whatever played out in the New York City studios of CBS last night. (Reportedly it was in the same studio that Captain Kangaroo was taped. Make of that what you may.)

Both Parton and Driftglass agree that the two Vice Presidential candidates "accomplished what they set out to do" and, as Parton added, "as far as the niceness thing", that should be chalked up to the fact that "Donald Trump wasn't there being a jackass."

"Vance needed to soften all of the ridiculous extremist policies of himself and Donald Trump, and present himself as something other than a full-blown King Cobra, which I think he managed to do," she says, referencing her coverage of the debate at Salon today, in which she described Vance as possessing "all the charm and warmth of a King Cobra." On Tuesday night, she explains today, "he sounded semi-sane. I'm sure most people who haven't been following him probably thought, 'Oh, well, he's not that bad.'"

Both also agree that they would have have preferred to see a more aggressive Walz, even if that might not have been what the MN Guv needed to do to reach whichever undecided voters still exist out there. Instant polling of debate watchers released shortly afterward, gave Vance the slimmest of edges over Walz and a big bump in favorability for both candidates, even as Walz' favorability remains far higher than Vance's.

"Clearly they are executing a strategy," explains Driftglass. "I wanted to see [Walz] come out there with a sword in both hands and just scream, 'Liar!' for 90 minutes," when what he needs, "tactically, is to go out there and be the nicest guy you ever met. I think for the people he is striving to reach, it worked."

On the other hand, he continues, Vance's job was to "polish up the turd" that Trump put on the ticket "to make him look like a human being so that he can go out there and be the nice guy." The result, says Driftglass, "was a festival of whatabout-ism and lying."

We discuss much of the sane-washing, whatabout-ism, lies and damning non-answers to a host of topics raised during the 90-minute debate on Tuesday --- and Walz' responses to them --- in our very lively Special Coverage today...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Climate change strikes again, killing more than a hundred in 5 states, millions without power, concerns about their ability to vote...
By Brad Friedman on 9/30/2024 6:28pm PT  

Another BradCast necessarily, but not wholly, derailed today by our climate crisis. We were able to open the phone lines to hear from a number of callers with their thoughts in advance of Tuesday's Vice-Presidential Debate. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

We sidelined our planned coverage of Kamala Harris' address late last week on border security and immigration reform in Douglas, Arizona --- and Donald Trump's appalling response, calling her "mentally impaired" and "mentally disabled", before going on to lie (again) about crime statistics, and the fact that violent crime has plummeted under the Biden-Harris Administration --- in order to focus on the unspeakable disaster that continues to unfold in much of the U.S. Southeast.

The devastation and tragedy continues today, following Thursday's monster, Category 4 Hurricane Helene. It came ashore in the Big Bend region of Florida's panhandle, the third major tropical storm to do so in 13 months, and the second over the past two months alone. But Florida was hardly the only state affected, as death and destruction overtook parts of Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina as well. The latter, perhaps, having weathered the most damage, to date.

With over one hundred killed and more still missing, millions of survivors in the Southeast remain without power today. Some, particularly in Asheville, NC, remain physically cut off from the rest of the world, as the County's water treatment facility has failed and may be down for weeks.

Desi Doyen joins us for insight on the impacts and government response, and how denial of climate change by many elected officials from these states has exacerbated the destruction they are now hoping to claw their way out of today.

Then, there is the question of how this will affect the ability of voters in the most damaged areas --- particularly in NC, but in a number of other states as well --- to be able to cast their vote in this year's upcoming Presidential elections. In battleground NC, the U.S. Postal Service announced the suspension of service in a bunch of areas, making delivery of vote-by-mail ballots to voters and back again to the county, a question mark right now. That's particularly disturbing since state Republicans killed the the three-day grace period for ballots that were postmarked by Election Day to arrive at County to be counted after Election Day.

All of this also comes after NC Republicans spent years fighting to implement draconian Photo ID restrictions, despite a federal court describing the effort as targeting Black voters in the state with "almost surgical precision". So, what happens to those voters whose IDs blew away or were washed away in the wind and flooding? We've got a few details on all of the above today, and will continue to monitor the situation voters in the days and weeks ahead.

Then, we open up the phone lines to listeners in advance of Tuesday night's upcoming Vice Presidential debate between Democratic candidate Tim Walz and Republican J.D. Vance, asking what listeners expect and/or hope for from what appears to the last face-to-face debate between the Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance tickets. (Harris has agreed to another debate in October but, so far, Trump has declined. Probably smart considering the drubbing he took at their first and, so far, only debate in early September.) The debate host, CBS News, has announced good news for the Trump-Vance ticket, their moderators will not be fact-checking the candidates, both of whom, unlike Trump, are actually pretty good debaters...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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So, why do many American voters trust the failed former President on economic issues over the well-documented successes of Biden-Harris?...
UPDATE 9/4/24: Goldman Sachs reports economy will take hit if Trump wins; boost if Dems win; UPDATE 9/26/24 Harris releases policy booklet...
By Ernest A. Canning on 9/4/2024 10:35am PT  

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command," wrote George Orwell in his classic dystopian novel, 1984. It was a lesson that the Republican Party has learned well.

A recent poll pertaining to whose economic approach is preferred by American voters --- Donald Trump's or Kamala Harris's --- suggests that we remain in the midst of an Orwellian moment driven by GOP disinformation and the mainstream media's inability --- or disinterest --- in countering it. But, really, it's not particularly difficult if one tries.

As the business magazine Fortune described in early 2021, Donald Trump left office with "the worst jobs records since Herbert Hoover". Before that, in late 2020, a U.S. House Budget Committee report noted that Trump's mishandling of COVID had been an "epic failure" that "resulted in thousands of avoidable deaths and the most severe economic crisis in a generation...[S]mall businesses across the country [were] closing their doors for good, families [were] facing hunger and eviction, and millions of Americans [were] still having to make the impossible choice between their health and a paycheck."

The Biden administration, largely as the result of legislation passed before the MAGA Cult barely gerrymandered its way to a do-nothing House majority during the 2022 midterm, produced the fastest economic recovery and lowest inflation rate on the globe, as compared to all other advanced nations. Biden's economic record includes the "two strongest years of job growth in history", the creation of nearly 11 million new jobs, including "750,000 new manufacturing jobs", and, at 3.5%, "the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years." Where Trump never fulfilled his oft-repeated promise to create infrastructure projects, the Biden administration finally delivered, by making "infrastructure investments in all 50 States, D.C., territories and throughout Tribal Nations."

As we recently reported, during her swift-moving, upbeat campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has advanced immensely popular economic policies. Yet, according to a report on a head-scratching 3-day Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted between Aug. 23 and Aug. 25, 2024, "former President Trump's approach to the economy and employment was preferred by 43% of registered voters, as compared to only 40%, who preferred Harris's approach."

The Orwellian misinformation leading to such a polling result can be attributed, in no small part, to an epic mainstream media failure to adequately cover the Biden administration's stellar economic accomplishments. More directly the answer can be found in a recent book authored by Steve Benen, longtime blogger and producer of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, entitled Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past. In it, Benen notes that, for a significant percentage of the electorate, Trump's fictions have simply displaced reality. Many Americans have been duped by a brazen collective and organized effort by Trump, Congressional Republicans and the right-wing media echo chamber to rewrite recent history...

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Vast American majorities support her progressive economic policies...
By Ernest A. Canning on 8/28/2024 9:05am PT  

Marveling at the remarkably positive vibe emerging from the recent Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch observed:

The elite Beltway media is used to dictating the terms of America's political debate --- usually badgering Democrats to move to the center-right --- and clearly cannot handle this new power dynamic.

That "new power dynamic" Bunch references is embodied in Vice President Kamala Harris' open alignment with the economic needs of the vast majority of Americans who make up the working and middle classes.

Whether or not the recommendation from Sen. Bernie Sanders, this nation's most progressive Senator, was a factor, it is clear that Harris' decision to pick one of the nation's most progressive Governors, Tim Walz of Minnesota --- a governor who gleefully signed a bill for free breakfast and lunch for all school children into law --- as her Vice-Presidential pick, reflects her commitment to progressive values.

As Georgia's Republican former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan made clear during his DNC speech, there's no need for Harris to move to the right to attract voters from outside of the progressive realm. The threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump, Project 2025 and the MAGA cult, along with the Democrats' commitment to "freedom", "patriotism" and respect for the rule of law, will be enough to attract honest conservative voters irrespective of whether they still call themselves Republicans or now describe themselves as either former Republicans or independents.

By adhering to her progressive economic values --- whether it comes to support for organized labor, an increase in the federal minimum wage, the expansion of social safety net programs, tax increases on the wealthy, the expansion of accessible health care and a crackdown on corporate price gouging --- Harris can not only maintain authenticity but also take advantage of the fact that an overwhelming majority of the American electorate both want and need such progressive economic policy initiatives...

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Dems bring the rafters down on Day 3 as Repubs plot to bastardize democracy; Also: SCOTUS rules on GOP effort to purge 40k in AZ...
By Brad Friedman on 8/22/2024 6:24pm PT  

On today's BradCast: Democrats are appealing to voters with popular policies, while joyfully bringing down the rafters at the DNC in Chicago. Trump and Republicans, by contrast, are scheming to steal an election they sure seem like they are counting on losing at the ballot box. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage on today's program...

  • Democrats are cleaning Donald Trump's clock of late on a number of quantifiable metrics: television ratings for their national convention, versus the GOP's last month; polling numbers; crowd sizes; fund raising; and volunteer get-out-the-vote efforts. As silly as it seems to compare some of those things between the two parties, it's more important than you may realize that we do so. Because Trump is now lying about all of them. It's part of laying the groundwork to use lies about all of those things in support of a post-election effort --- if he loses at the ballot box --- to claim it was stolen from him, "again". To then inject chaos into the certification of Electoral College votes in hopes of tossing the decision to state legislatures or the courts or, most likely, the U.S. House where Republicans are likely to control enough state delegations to install Trump into office, even if they don't hold a majority of seats in the chamber. Yeah, I realize it all sounds like conspiracy theory nonsense. But, we were told the same back in back in late 2020 and early 2021 when warning about what was likely to happen on January 6th. Plus, Trump and his allies are essentially explaining the ploy out loud each and every day at this point, as when Trump told supporters in North Carolina on Wednesday: "Our primary focus is not to get out the vote ... We have all the votes ya need."
  • On Tuesday's show I detailed how Republicans were hoping that the corrupted, activist, rightwing U.S. Supreme Court majority, in an emergency ruling, would give them the okay to purge more than 40,000 voters from Arizona's rolls just weeks before early voting begins in the critical battleground state where Joe Biden won in 2020 by just over 10,000 votes. Today SCOTUS came back with their decision, which is mostly --- but not entirely --- good for the state's voters, blocking the worst of what the GOP had hoped to do. For now. We break down the, somewhat confusing (and poorly reported) details of their brief shadow docket ruling [PDF], along with the observation that Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch would have overturned decades of precedent to allow all of the voter suppression Republicans sought. And that Republican Justice Amy Coney Barrett, interestingly, voted along with all of the Court's liberal Justices (who are all now women) to block the worst of the purging, and who would have blocked the GOP scheme in its entirety if it was up to the four of them.
  • It was another rollicking, superstar-studded Day 3 at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Wednesday night, where Minnesota Governor Tim Walz formally accepted the party's nomination as Kamala Harris' Vice-Presidential running mate. He brought down the house in his joyful, pitch-perfect acceptance speech, becoming both America's Dad and America's Coach in the bargain. But not before folks like Oprah Winfrey shook the rafters and even joined a number of Republican heroes, like Georgia's former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who was there on Wednesday to reach out to undecided, independent and even Republican voters to help, as Walz put it, "turn the page" on the Trump era. We share extended excerpts today.
  • Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Democrats have woven issues of climate change and climate action into the very fabric of this week's DNC and, as she also reports, not a moment too soon...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

NOTE: We'll be standing down from The BradCast (and Green News Report) for a much-needed breather next week, before returning after the Labor Day holiday for the sprint to Election Day! (I might have said "sprint to the finish line", but for the fact, as suggested at the top of today's program, November 5 is very likely not even close to the finish line this year!)

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Guests: Heather Digby Parton of Salon, 'Driftglass' of 'Pro Left Podcast'; Also: A prob worth noting after FL's Congressional primaries on Tuesday...
By Brad Friedman on 8/21/2024 5:33pm PT  

I do realize The BradCast has been in occasional danger of late of becoming just giddy enough to, perhaps, become all but unrecognizable to some. Oh, well. Too bad. Those may be folks who are failing to realize they may be living through one of the most extraordinary moments in American political history. Lighten up. There's nothing wrong with appreciating the moment after so many years of darkness. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But to achieve the promise of this moment, there are still a bunch of very difficult weeks and months (not to mention years) ahead. A little-noticed reminder came from the state of Florida last night --- which voted in Congressional primaries on Tuesday along with Alaska and Wyoming --- when a number of county election result websites were failing to work as expected after the close of polls. They were websites run by a contractor named VR Systems, a little-known Tallahassee firm which also runs voter registration systems in several Florida counties and other states. If the name of the company is familiar, it is likely because we would eventually come to learn in 2017, thanks to whistleblower Reality Winner, that the firm was the victim of Russian-based spearphishing attacks in advance of the 2016 election. We still don't know the extent of those 2016 attacks, nor much about what happened to cause problems on Tuesday night with their websites in Florida. But, since nobody else seems to have connected those dots in the media, it seems worth sticking a pin in here for now.

After a few quick thoughts on that today, it's back to the political history underway in Chicago this week...

"Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn't it?," former First Lady Michelle Obama rhetorically asked the packed, roaring crowd at the United Center on Day 2 of this year's Democratic National Convention. "We're feeling it here in this arena, but its spreading all across this country we love. A familiar feeling that's been buried too deep for far too long. You know what I'm talking about. It's the contagious power of hope," she explained to a packed, raucous arena of Dems, who had just gone through what was absolutely the most electrifying roll-call --- to nominate Kamala Harris and Tim Walz --- in American political convention history.

"The anticipation, the energy, the exhilaration of once again being on the cusp of a brighter day," Michelle continued. "The chance to vanquish the demons of fear, division and hate that have consumed us, and continue pursuing the unfinished promise of this great nation, the dream that our parents and grandparents fought and died and sacrificed for."

"America, hope is making a comeback!," she declared. And the crowd of Democrats reached new heights of ecstasy. And all of that before her husband, former President of the United States, Barack Obama, tried to match her with his own unparalleled oratorical skills.

We've got much, much more for you today on all of the above, as we're joined again by old friends and fellow old school bloggers HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of his eponymous blog and his weekly Pro Left Podcast.

I'm not sure I can even try to summarize our conversation today. There is Parton describing how the DNC --- just half-way over this week as of airtime, mind you --- has "far surpassed my expectations ... And having it be this unusually, upbeat, joyful, happy, enthusiastic experience. I didn't expect it. And I have to say I am truly enjoying it, which I don't normally say about political conventions."

Says Driftglass: "The media has a story they want to tell, and that story is Dems In Disarray and protesters and cops in the street. And we are denying them that story. And that's what is freaking them out. Because that is not the fairy-tale they've been telling the public for forty years, which is that both sides are bad, there's no difference between the two parties. Only when there's a breach, a radical opening in that box, can people peek through that media filter and see the actual Democratic Party. ... The base of the party is finally getting heard. And the base of the party is pretty progressive. This weird filter that everything democratic had to flow through, the people who spoke for us in the media, were Maureen Dowd proclaiming, 'What the Democrats need is an open convention.' And the base said, 'Hell no. That is not what we need. Shut up.' It seems like the progressive base, almost as one, has reached out and told them to shut the hell up, the party is actually us!"

And then there is also Desi today: "I think part of what is going on is that hope is a moving thing for the human heart. It's moving to see Democrats articulate these common values that we all hold, no matter what your political party is --- of family, of patriotism, of opportunity, of equality for all. We've all been through a collective trauma over the last nine years. Seeing this kind of hope is like therapy."

Like I said, I can't even begin to summarize it. Perhaps this is why we don't necessarily realize we are going through historic moments until long after. But, tune in to today's show to hear a bunch of battle-hardened political muckrakers watching so much of what we've been advocating for, for so long, unfolding before our very eyes.

Maybe.

But, as Michelle said, there is a contagious power of hope...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 8/20/2024 10:32am PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Another round of rain and deadly catastrophic flooding, this time in Connecticut; Climate change dramatically increased the likelihood and severity of record wildfires last year, new study finds; PLUS: As Democratic National Convention gets underway, climate and environment groups endorse the Harris-Walz ticket... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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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): Americans have saved billions with a law they know next to nothing about; The biggest winners of Biden’s green climate policies? Republicans; DC Appeals court tosses Biden Administration pipeline safety rules; Oil and ink mix as Chevron reports 'the news in Texas, New Mexico; Why do so many pelicans keep dropping dead in California?; Water treaty between Mexico and U.S. faces biggest test in 80 years... PLUS: Nearly 68 million suffering from drought in Southern Africa... and much, MUCH more! ...

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Guest: Alan Minsky of PDA on 'Progressive Central 2024'; Also: Wall Street boom; Biden's huge win on Medicare prescription drug prices...
By Brad Friedman on 8/15/2024 6:52pm PT  

It's become very clear of late, as discussed on today's BradCast, that, whether the corporate media or rightwingers like to admit it or not, it is now progressive political policies that are popular among Americans. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

With progressive policies in place from the Biden-Harris Administration, for example, the U.S. economy continues to be the envy of the industrialized world. New, falling unemployment numbers and growing retail sales announced on Thursday, combined with recent data finding the annualized inflation rate has now fallen below 3%, sent the stock market soaring again on Thursday. Well, except for Donald Trump's failing media company (DJT), which fell to its lowest price since going public in January. Since then, the loser stock has shed more than 50% of its market value and a full two-thirds since its high-water mark in March. (We tried to warn MAGA investors. Oh, well.)

Just one of the progressive economic policies of this Administration is the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Biden in 2022 after being adopted by Democrats in Congress without a single Republican vote. Among many other things, the IRA allows Medicare, for the first time in history, to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. On Thursday, the Biden-Administration announced they have completed their first round of price negotiations on ten popular drugs which will save tax payers at least $6 billion a year and $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs to beneficiaries.

"Under the law I signed," Biden explained today in Maryland at a rally with Vice President Kamala Harris, "Medicare can negotiate lower prices for another 15 drugs next year, 15 the following, and 20 after that until every drug is covered. That's the law. Now!" As the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office determined before passage of the bill in 2022, the measure will save the federal government nearly $100 billion over a decade --- something that Republicans used to pretend to care about, at least until every single one of them voted against it.

That's just one example of popular progressive policies at work, of course. Harris' running-mate, Gov. Tim Walz, has signed a boatload of them into law in Minnesota, including the protecting abortion rights; legalizing recreational marijuana; implementing popular gun safety reforms; providing legal refuge for trans youths; enacting laws that expand paid family and medical leave; banning noncompete agreements; providing universal public school meals; free public college education for households with income less than $80,000/year; and capping the price of insulin in Minnesota (years before Biden was able to do so nationally.)

That alone is a virtual laundry list of both top progressive aims and popular policies that could be implemented at a national level. So, will a Harris-Walz administration be able to move such policies forward if elected in November? And what else do progressive activists hope to see from a new, Democratic administration?

We're joined today by ALAN MINSKY, Executive Director at Progressive Democrats of America, in advance of the group's 20th Anniversary Progressive Central gathering in Chicago this week ahead of the Democratic National Convention. Sen. Bernie Sanders will be keynoting the two-day gathering, co-hosted by a number of other progressive organizations and publications, with a speakers list featuring a huge list of progressive members of Congress, activists, and journalists.

So, how do progressives feel heading into next week's DNC after nearly four years of the most progressive Presidential administration in decades; an historic, month-long political whirlwind; and a brutal year of protests against Israel's horrific response in Gaza to last year's attack in Israel by Hamas? Minsky and I discuss the "turbulence" and "high stakes" of the moment, and the revelation, for much of the nation, that progressive policies are the popular ones.

"Progressive policies directly address the interests of the average household," Minksy explains, citing "four massive ticket items that just block people from achieving the American dream" so they "don't have to work three jobs to make ends meet."

Those four blocks, he explains, start with childcare. "It's almost prohibitively expensive to have a child in this society". And then the cost of higher education. "You get out with a degree, and you face housing costs, either rents or mortgages, both prohibitive for building anything like the kind of financial security that you want to have. And then, finally, of course, healthcare costs overwhelmingly shredding the finances of people and families late in life."

"Again, only progressives on all four fronts have clear policy solutions to each of those prohibitive costs that American families meet," he tells me, adding, "And these are practiced around the world in other countries, available for us to pursue. They're not radical ideas. They're commonsense ideas."

"The other thing progressive are willing to address that the other groups are not, because they just accept that it's there, part of the wallpaper of American society, and that's the clear spaces in our society where there is deep, endemic poverty. The urban core, small town and rural America, deep poverty in indigenous communities, and still in the Southeast --- the former Confederate states --- most of that region is still tremendously poor. Only progressives address this."

There is more, much more to chew on in our conversation, including the way disparate elements of the left can come together to achieve solutions to these issues, and how to "persuade a Harris-Walz Administration and their economic advisors that the way forward is to go further on those four big ticket items."

"Only the United States has a latent group of about 100 million people who can be lifted up, by very well understood mechanisms, into the middle class," observes Minsky. "When that happens, that is an economic boom."

As to the vibes on the ground in Chicago, where some progressive organizations are planning to protest the Biden-Harris position on Israel? "Free speech society, open society, that's where I want to live," says Minksy, before adding, in reference to the violence at protests at the DNC in the Windy City almost 60 years ago: "Chicago doesn't feel like it's 1968. It just doesn't. There will be notable actions. But, as much passion as there is out there, I don't think it's quite broadly at the level of what was going on in the country during the Vietnam War in 1968." We'll see if he turns out to be right about that.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as another storm, Hurricane Ernesto, spins up virtually overnight in record warm Atlantic waters and the U.S. Forest Service finally tells the freeloading Arrowhead Springs bottled water company to get lost and stop its near-century long theft of California's water for profit...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Guest: Domingo Garcia of LULAC; Also: Callers ring in on Kamala's joyful choice of Walz as running mate, Trump's grim campaign death spiral...
By Brad Friedman on 8/12/2024 6:20pm PT  

On today's BradCast: After the recent Republican National Convention, LULAC has decided they've had enough. They are coming off the sidelines for the first time in their nearly century-long history to endorse a Presidential ticket. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Over the past week, Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris, with her "joyful warrior" running mate, MN Gov. Tim Walz, have been barnstorming battleground states with rallies attracting 10,000 or 15,000 people at every stop. Her poll numbers are soaring (the NYT/Sienna poll, which has been very friendly to Donald Trump in recent months, now puts the Harris up by 4 points in each of the Democrats' key, must-win "Blue Wall" states (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) and both major labor unions and civil rights groups are jumping on board the train to endorse the Democratic Presidential ticket.

But, on Friday, the political arm of one such civil rights group, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the nation's largest and oldest Latino advocacy group, did something they haven't done in their nearly 100 year history: they endorsed a Presidential ticket. In this case, they are tossing in for the Harris/Walz ticket.

We're joined today by former LULAC President and current Chair of the LULAC Adelante PAC, DOMINGO GARCIA, to explain why the group finally decided, through a unanimous vote, they had to get off the sidelines and get into this fight against the menace posed to the nation --- and specifically to Latinos --- by Donald Trump.

"We saw the rhetoric coming from ex-President Trump saying that he was going to deport 15 million people; he was going to build these mass concentration-deportation camps; he was going to have the Army go door to door and ask people for their papers. These are just bizarro, weirdo ideas," Garcia tells me. "Then we saw the visions of the Republican National Convention, of people [holding signs] saying 'mass deportations'. We were saying, 'Whoa, these guys have gone to the extreme far-right, with almost neo-Nazi Klan mindsets that need to be stopped."

Garcia explains why the group, which was founded after WWI, and considered one of the more conservative civil rights groups, finally learned to believe Trump after his campaigns in 2016 and 2020.

"We take Trump at his word now," says Garcia, noting they didn't believe Trump in 2016 that he was going to separate children from their parents. "And he did! We did not believe him. We did not think there was anybody capable of that kind of cruelty," he explains, recoiling from the sight of two and three-year olds in prison buses. "It was so shocking that that was happening to America. To have a repeat this cycle --- we support securing the border; we support opening up legal immigration and cracking down on illegal immigration --- but doing it in this sort of evil, cruel way, using immigrants for fear-mongering, scapegoating, and as his political pinatas, we said we have to put a stop to that."

Garcia believes that LULAC has the reach to stop Trump, particularly in battleground states like Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where the Latino populations easily overcome the margins in the Presidential races over the last two cycles.

Among the other points Garcia speaks to on today's program...

  • The Trump Campaign's response to their endorsement by charging LULAC is out of touch with Latino voters.
  • What might explain the apparent increase in Latino support for Trump over the past two cycles.
  • What LULAC thinks of the very conservative border security bill agreed to by the Biden-Harris Administration with Senate Republicans, but then scotched by Trump to keep the so-called "border crisis" alive as a campaign issue for him.
  • What his group hopes to see Harris do moving forward from the current Administration's policies as they apply to Latino voters and their families.

FINALLY, as Harris/Walz continue to climb in the polls with their hopeful, positive campaign --- in contrast to Trump's dark, dystopian message --- listeners ring in on the addition of Walz to the ticket, and the madness of Trump, who now says that the tens of thousands turning out for Harris/Walz rallies is actually fake and being done by Artificial Intelligence. Yes, he is really claiming that the numbers that the Democratic ticket is drawing for rallies --- and caught on video by thousands of people --- is actually somewhere between zero and 1,000 or so, but for the use of A.I. to hoax the public into believing tens of thousands were there instead. Seriously. That's what he now says...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Trump's earful of weird press conference lies; Vance's 'ban on red meat' lie; Walz' gun safety and climate action governing prowess; Harris' rising odds v. GOP's 'suppress the vote, contest the vote' plans...
By Brad Friedman on 8/8/2024 6:56pm PT  

Our initial plans for today's BradCast were somewhat sullied by the disgraced former President's last minute announcement of what he called a "press conference" down at his resort home this afternoon. But he's also somewhat sullied the last 10 years or so of life in America, so we should be used to it by now. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

  • Donald Trump spewed a remarkable tsunami of lies and nonsense during an hour-long presser this afternoon, stacked with questions from mostly rightwing media outlets. It was ostensibly called to announce he had "agreed" to three Presidential Debates in September on Fox "News", ABC News and NBC News, and for a Vice-Presidential debate moderated by CBS News. The only one of those actually confirmed or agreed to by his opponent, as of air time, was the one on ABC that had long been agreed to by Kamala Harris, even as Trump had previously tried to duck out of it. We share just a few of his many weird lies told today, most of them stale and/or hilarious. Beyond that, we were just happy to see that his right ear (as seen in a close-up at right, from the photo above, taken today at Mar-a-Lago) appears to have healed up so well that it almost looks as if he had never been shot at all by a bullet from an AR-15 military-style assault rifle just over three weeks ago.
  • Trump's Vice-Presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, is a piker when it comes to spewing ridiculous lies and nonsense, compared to his running mate. But he's working on it. And he was happy, over the weekend during a rally in Atlanta, to repeat several of the lies Trump and Fox 'News' love to tell. Among them, that Kamala Harris wants "to take away your gas car" and that "she even wants to take away your ability to eat red meat." Both are complete fabrications, of course, and we might have let them slide, but for his claim that "the fake news will fact check. They'll fact check it 'true'. She actually said that." We're not fake news, of course, but that Vance/Trump lie has already been fact-checked. I don’t know how to couch this, nor cushion the blow for Vance, but, as it turns out, it's not actually true in the slightest.
  • Then there are the Vice-Presidential candidates, like MN Gov. Tim Walz, who has this annoying habit of telling the truth about stuff. It doesn't give us much to fact-check, but it does free up time to learn about the possible future Veep by sharing some fantastic video from 2022, in which he explained how to fix a burnt-out headlight harness from his 2014 Ford Edge with a $7.99 part from NAPA Auto Parts ("Just clip off the back, use some shrink-wrapped connectors on there, tape it back together and put it back in. It's about a five-minute fix and you're back on the road safe and sound.") And some rousing remarks from State of the State Address in 2023, before the passage of a slew of popular gun safety measures in MN like red flag laws and universal background checks. ("The time for hiding behind 'thoughts and prayers' is long gone. What we need is action and we need it now! So here's what's gonna happen: We've got a gun safety bill on the table, and we're gonna get it passed, and I'm gonna sign it." And they did and he did.)
  • The polls continue to surge for Kamala Harris since she took over at the top of the ticket just over three weeks ago. With most of the major polling averages (538, NYT, RealClearPolitics) now putting her up over Trump nationally by give or take 1 or 2 points. That's a huge swing from where Joe Biden was polling just before he dropped out and endorsed Harris. But for a separate indication of how things are going for the Harris-Walz ticket, the UK betting site Oddschecker observed today, that "For the first time since Kamala Harris stepped in for Joe Biden, she has overtaken Donald Trump as the betting favourite to win the US election. A wild swing in odds over the past three weeks." That's all great news for democracy fans, of course. But, as Desi likes to warn (and as a listener reminds us via email today), neither the polling numbers nor betting odds take the GOP's plans to "suppress the vote and contest the vote" by blocking certification into full consideration.
  • Finally, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report with news on Hurricane Debby coming back to the Carolinas today for a catastrophic second helping, and on Dem VP candidate Tim Walz' proven record as a climate champion, having adopted, as Minnesota's Governor, nearly 40 "cutting edge climate and clean energy laws and policies" that could be seen as a national policy template, as he cast "the fight against climate change" in his state "as an economic win for residents and an imperative for the state's children"...

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With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 8/8/2024 10:40am PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Tropical Storm Debby isn't done with the East Coast yet; Hottest oceans in 400 years endanger Australia's Great Barrier Reef, scientists warn; PLUS: Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate, Gov. Tim Walz, is a proven climate champion... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Harris faces racial attacks for promoting climate policies; July ends 13-month streak of global heat records as El Nino ebbs, but experts warn against relief; Fossil fuel industry's 'massive disinformation campaign' is slowing global transition to green energy; Tropical weather brings record rainfall. Experts share how to stay safe in floods... PLUS: Death toll for birds may be more than 1 billion a year in U.S.... and much, MUCH more! ...

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