Even Joe Biden is now making jokes about the plummeting value of the former President's latest scam, his attempt to turn his failing social media site into a Wall Street meme stock. As discussed on today's BradCast, it ain't working. At least for now. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The value of Trump Media & Technology Group, trading under Donald Trump's initials as DJT, has lost about two-thirds of its value since it debuted as a publicly traded stock at the beginning of the month. If it "drops any lower," Biden quipped at a rally in Pennsylvania today, Donald Trump "might do better under my tax plan than his."

When it first went public, DJT quickly shot up to nearly $80 per share. It has been nose-diving by double-digit percentages pretty much every day since. The stock closed on Tuesday at less than $23 a share. On Monday night, the Washington Post's Drew Harwell posted a piece that is nearly equal parts hilarious, for those who enjoy the schadenfreude of Trump losing billions of theoretical dollars in just a few weeks time, and heart-breaking, for those who feel for the hundreds of thousands of Trump fans who have lost, in some cases, their "whole nest egg" because they were brain-poisoned enough to buy into Trump's latest fraudulent scheme.

Harwell's report of the reaction to the plummeting value of the stock by Trump supporters themselves on Truth Social, the money-losing venture that is currently DJT's only actual business, is harrowing and amazing. (But just more evidence of the "deep state", if you believe some of the denialists who are still buying more shares every day now!) But it serves as yet another reminder that, as sick as Trump is, it is our nation itself, and its people, whose illness we must eventually figure out how to attend to.

Anyway, tune in to today's show for many more thoughts on the above, and a whole bunch of other news of the day, including...

• Trump's recent Truth Social video rant on how Presidents simply can't do the job of Presidenting without absolute criminal immunity, the way the Founders wanted it. Then again, there is no evidence that the Founders wanting anything of the sort (quite the opposite, in fact); every President of the United States before (and since) Trump has been able to function just fine without it; and --- oh, yeah --- as Trump said in a separate rant just one day earlier, apparently "Crooked Joe Biden...can't put two-sentences together" but has been clever enough to mastermind all four of Trump's current criminal indictments in two different states and two separate federal jurisdictions, all without leaving a trace of evidence. "At what point are the actions of a sitting President...against his opponent for election interference considered illegal?," Trump asked. But, according to Trump just one day earlier, even if the President had anything to do with Trump's criminal indictments (he doesn't) it would still never be illegal!

• The disgraced former President's criminal trial in New York, on 34 federal counts related to hush-money payments to a porn star to help him win the 2016 election, seems to be moving faster than expected. On Tuesday, seven jurors were selected on the second day of the trial. Just five more jurors and six alternates are needed before opening statements can begin, perhaps as early as the beginning of next week.

• On Tuesday, House GOP lawmakers finally delivered their two articles of impeachment against Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the U.S. Senate, where the high-crime-and misdemeanor-free charges are expected to die either very quickly or somewhat less quickly, in an impeachment trial that, according to the rules, must begin immediately and continue until complete. Good thing there is nothing else Congress needs to be doing right now.

• The far-right conspiracy outlet known as One American News (OAN) has reportedly struck a confidential settlement with voting system vendor Smartmatic, in the defamation lawsuit brought against the Trump-supporting TV channel for lies told about the company's voting systems following the 2020 election. Despite repeated false claims by OAN anchors and guests that Smartmatic software was used "in 30 states" to steal the election for Biden --- with zero evidence in support of those claims --- the company's voting systems are only used in one U.S. jurisdiction: here in Los Angeles County, where even brain-poisoned MAGA dupes aren't dumb enough to claim the election was stolen from Trump.

  For the role that we personally played in confusing Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and the OAN clowns regarding Smartmatic's role in U.S. elections, I can only say: "You're welcome!"

  The terms of the settlement are undisclosed, but it follows on last year's $787 million settlement between Fox "News" and Dominion Voting Systems over similarly false claims, as well as a settlement between OAN and a former Dominion executive. There are many other similar defamation suits still pending, however, by both Smartmatic and Dominion over lies told about them following 2020 by other well-known Trump conspiracists.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with several pieces of pretty cool news littered amidst a number of terrifying climate crisis omens...

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If, by now, you don't realize that Republicans are attacking both democracy and the rule of law itself in this country, I don't know what world you live in. But on today's BradCast we've got two fresh --- and disturbing --- examples/warnings. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP today: Did the far-right, pro-Trump propaganda outlet called One America News (OAN) obtain passwords for employees of voting system vendor Smartmatic and then share them with Trump attorney Sidney Powell after the 2020 election? That appears to be what Smartmatic is charging in recently filed court documents, according to CNN, as part of its billion dollar defamation lawsuit against the fake Trump TV "news" outlet.

OAN was just one of many such rightwing outlets that echoed and forwarded Team Trump's false claims of election fraud in 2020. OAN was particularly aggressive in their evidence-free mission to hoax viewers into believing that systems made by Smartmatic and Dominion, another voting system vendor, flipped votes to help Joe Biden that year. The claims against Smartmatic were particularly absurd, given that the company has just one contract in the U.S. for voting systems. That is here in Los Angeles County, were Biden reportedly defeated Trump in 2020 by nearly 2 million votes.

As explained today, however, the reason that the pretend "election integrity" advocates who emerged on the right following 2020, only to offer evidence-free claims and falsely tie Smartmatic to Dominion (and Venezuela's dead former President Hugo Chavez), is likely thanks in no small part to some exclusive reporting we did on the two companies here at The BRAD BLOG, circa 2008 to 2010, which was cited and bastardized by Powell and others on the right after 2020. You're welcome!

NEXT UP: A new legal chapter in a story that deserves much more coverage than it has received to date. In one respect, it's not surprising that it hasn't received much coverage, given that it is based on an absurd legal premise --- one already rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court --- that few thought would ever advance beyond the Trump-appointed U.S. District Court judge who initially gave it credence in a redistricting lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of the NAACP against the state of Arkansas in 2022.

In short, the case was dismissed [PDF] before reaching the merits by U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky on the novel grounds that neither voters nor private organizations like the NAACP have the right to sue to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Only the U.S. Attorney General may do so, according to the Rudofsky. That news must have come as a great surprise to the hundreds of private plaintiffs who have successfully hundreds of such cases since adoption of the landmark Act in 1965. It also may come as a surprise to the U.S. Supreme Court which, as recently as last June, ruled in favor of private litigants in a redistricting lawsuit against the state of Alabama. Congress is likely shocked as well, given they have reviewed, rewritten and reauthorized the VRA several times since 1965, without ever noticing there was no private right of action to enforce the law.

While the initial ruling was ridiculous enough, a split decision by a three-judge panel on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in November, incredibly, allowed the lower court ruling to stand. But it got even more absurd this week, when, on Tuesday, the full en banc 8th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 7 to 3 deny a rehearing of the matter, upholding the original lower court's radical, unprecedented ruling. The ACLU described the ruling as "appalling and unjustified," after "More than 400 Section 2 cases have been litigated in federal court in the past four decades to protect the voting rights of racial and language minorities. Private plaintiffs have brought the vast majority of them."

The 8th Circuit, comprised of 10 Republican appointees and one appointed by a Democrat, is not even considered the most radical in the nation. That would be the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals which has recently rejected the notion --- along with SCOTUS --- that there is no right to private action for voters to sue under Section 2.

We're joined today by CHRIS GEIDNER, longtime legal journalist at Law Dork, to explain this gob-smacking series of rulings and what they mean moving forward, as the matter almost certainly will head to the U.S. Supreme Court. For now, the ruling is the law of the land "only" in the seven states that comprise the 8th Circuit (Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota). That could change, however, once the notoriously anti-VRA High Court gets a crack at this case.

Geidner decries the "out-of-control" appeals courts which seem to no longer believe it is necessary to follow long-standing precedent, if it regards laws that they don't like. "And then things go up to the Supreme Court," he charges, "and it's almost a win-win for the conservatives on the Supreme Court because if they reverse one or two of every three ridiculous decisions, they are able to set themselves up as a 'moderating' force that pulls back the extremes, while they are still letting one of every three extreme rulings go through."

"One of the underlying bases for a legal system is stability," Geidner tells me today. "When you have a legal system that is in such upheaval that lower courts have been told from the Supreme Court that 'No precedent is too sacred. We will overturn any precedent if we decide it should be overturned,'" that leads appellate courts to think that "if there's a chance that their opinion can lead to a revisiting of a precedent that they think is wrong, why wouldn't they go for it?"

"The answer," he notes, "is the rule of law, and they shouldn't. That's up to the Supreme Court, and until the Supreme Court does it, they need to follow precedent. But that's not the world in which we are living."

We also get some thoughts today from Geidner on the curious, now nearly month-long delay by a three-judge panel on the U.S. District Court of Appeals in D.C. to issue their ruling in response to Donald Trump's ridiculous claim that he is immune from criminal prosecution for any actions he performed while serving as President. A ruling was expected by many to have been issued by now. The case was heard on an emergency basis, as Trump's scheduled March 4 federal trial for attempting to steal the 2020 election is currently on pause in the bargain. But, Geidner notes that "the fact that we are quickly approaching a month" since the case was heard by what appeared to be three skeptical jurists, it is now beginning to look like "a dereliction of duty" and "a failure on the D.C. Circuit's part."

Stay tuned...

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A decision by President Ronald Reagan to veto [PDF] an Act of Congress that would have codified the FCC's Fairness Doctrine into law, rather than just FCC regulation, coupled with the failure of both the FCC and Congress to expand the Doctrine to apply not only to over-the-air broadcasting, but also to ubiquitous cable television networks like Fox "News", gave birth to today's mendacious right-wing media echo chamber.

The rationale offered by Reagan in his veto at the time, and by the Commissioners he appointed to the FCC when it repealed [PDF] the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, was that the Doctrine had a "chilling effect" on broadcasters' willingness to cover controversial topics. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, in Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC (1969), brushed aside that same argument as speculative.

"It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited market-place of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail," JFK-appointee Justice Byron White wrote on behalf of the unanimous Supreme Court in the Red Lion opinion. "Speech concerning public affairs," he added, "is more than self-expression; it is the essence of self-government."

That observation aligns with the words of James Madison, who introduced the First Amendment at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance," Madison proffered; "and a People who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives."

Because the "goal" of the First Amendment is to produce "an informed public capable of conducting its own affairs," the Court, in Red Lion, ruled that it's the First Amendment "right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, that is paramount."

The Supreme Court has never recognized a First Amendment right of a broadcaster to lie to the public, let alone a broadcaster's right to erect a pervasive, yet entirely fictional alternative reality, like the one created when Fox "News" embraced and amplified the same "Big Lie" that led to the January 6 insurrection.

If the Doctrine had been retained and expanded to cable TV outlets, it might well have prevented the January 6 insurrection. An expanded Fairness Doctrine would also have the potential to fend off today's ominous threat to the very survival of democracy in these United States...

On today's BradCast: When you're a monopoly power company --- especially in Florida --- they let you do it, I guess. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Before we get to the massive scandal(s) unspooling this week in Florida, a few other notes about corrupt media and corrupt power brokers. Donald Trump's favorite "Big Lie" fake news network, One American News (OAN), looks to be on the brink of going out of business, after Verizon joined AT&T to stop carrying their programming this weekend. Sad! At the same time, Trump is threatening to sue actual news network, CNN, because they repeatedly reported on his "Big Lie" attempts to steal the 2020 election. Good luck with that.

Then, it's on to the mind-blowing story out of the Sunshine State this week, where a leak of thousands of documents from a consulting firm in Alabama, has revealed all sorts of corruption by Florida Power & Light (FPL), the state's monopoly public utility company. The Florida papers are having a field day as they comb through the documents, publishing damning exposé after damning exposé on the dirt they are finding, which goes all the way up to FLP President and CEO, Eric Silagy, who, according to our guest today, incredibly enough, still has his job!

The documents were released amid a power battle over Montgomery, AL-based Matrix, LLC, a "powerful but little-known political consulting firm that has operated behind the scenes in at least eight states," according to the Guardian. They reveal a boatload of corruption by FPL, its CEO and many of its executive, including running "ghost candidates" in elections, mounting disinformation campaigns to maintain their monopoly (for example, to oppose residential solar power in the Sunshine State!) and secretly taking over pretty much full control of an "independent", right-leaning "news" site in Tallahassee called The Capitolist.

The website (which is still online, also incredibly enough) has been influential for years among Florida lawmakers. Its editor and founder is a guy by the name of Brian Burgess, the former Communications Director for FL's former Governor, now U.S. Senator Rick Scott. According to a deep dive from the Miami Herald, Burgess was being paid some $12,000 a month by FPL --- via a web of third parties cut-outs, including the consulting firm Matrix --- to publish its propaganda, push its preferred (sometimes fake) candidates, and ruthlessly attack its opponents, including both elected officials and reporters who dared publish stories the power company didn't like.

For insight into this (these) still unfolding scandal (scandals), we're joined today by ALISSA JEAN SCHAFER, the FL-based Research and Communications Manager for the Energy and Policy Institute, a non-profit "watchdog organization working to expose attacks on renewable energy and counter misinformation by fossil fuel and utility interests". Her organization certainly has its work cut out for it with this gobsmacking "web of scandal," as Schafer describes it.

"If you are a Floridian," she notes, "you have no choice who your power company is. We are in a monopoly market. So if you have Florida Power & Light, you're stuck with them. You're paying that bill every month. If you're seeing these headlines, I don't know understand how you can NOT be furious."

"It's kind of a crazy state. People like to make fun of us," concedes Schafer. "But at the end of the day, there are a lot of folks that are being impacted by this nonsense. We have elections coming up, and how are people supposed to know that their votes aren't being manipulated by these fake candidates that are being propped up by dark money. It's a very real concern."

Among those fake candidates, as the Herald reports, was one who was "running" against state Senator José Javier Rodríguez, who proposed legislation to allow landlords to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to tenants. "I want you to make his life a living hell … seriously,” wrote FPL’s CEO Silagy in a 2019 email to two of his vice-presidents. They then ran a third-party candidate with the same last name as Rodriguez, who split the vote. The state Senator was pushed out of his job by just 32 votes. FPL's "ghost candidate" later admitted he had been bribed to put his name on the ballot.

There is a lot to discuss today with Schafer on all of this, including how FPL is claiming they broke no laws; their ridiculous claim that rate-payer money wasn't actually used to hoax rate-payers through these schemes; and how The Capitolist's editor Burgess is able to claim with a straight face that he has "never pitched nor solicited feedback from FPL executives on any story or business venture" and has "never received a story pitch from any FPL executive." (Of course not. That's what Matrix was for! And they were in near daily communications with FPL execs, according to the leaked documents.)

"If we take a step back and look at our investor-owned utilities across the country, whether they are working with Matrix or not, this is a playbook that we do see time and time again," Schafer explains. "You have a consulting firm as the middle-man to do some of the dirty work, because utilities don't want their name on it. They want to be able to say, 'I never spoke to XYZ.' They can say that because they spoke to the consultant who then spoke to XYZ. You have similar trends of setting up shell companies to pass money through, so that it looks like the utility is just being a utility and not actually a political operative."

Finally today, Mitch McConnell is apparently furious at being out-foxed by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on this week's surprise agreement with Sen. Joe Manchin for a major tax, healthcare and climate deal called the Inflation Reduction Act. McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans decided to take it out on sick combat veterans who were exposed to deadly chemicals and toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan by voting against healthcare protections for them. Former Daily Show host and actual supporter of America's veterans, Jon Stewart, had a word or two for those Republican Senators at the Capitol on Thursday morning, including: "If this is America First, then America is fucked."

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We've got a lot of news to cover on today's BradCast, breaking and otherwise. Not all of it is terrible. So there's that! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among today's stories...

• First up, a story that broke late last week which we need to note here for the record. The 17-year old son of Glenn Youngkin, Virginia's presumptive Governor-elect, tried to vote illegally last week. Twice. At a precinct where his family isn't even registered to vote --- even though he's too young to vote at all, but "insisted" on being allowed to do so. His father pretended to run on an "election integrity" platform during the primary, but his campaign is now criticizing the media for reporting on the story at all. Meanwhile, Virginia election officials suggest Youngkin's son broke no laws --- which seems impossible to fathom once you hear the details. Of course, it's made all the more maddening by knowing what generally happens to those who happen to be black or brown while unknowingly voting or registering unlawfully --- versus what happens to the white son of an incoming Republican Governor. Just ask Crystal Mason in Texas for one.

• On Tuesday, a U.S. District Court judge overseeing Donald Trump's federal lawsuit attempting to prevent the National Archives from releasing January 6th-related records from his White House, denied his latest motion. The records were been subpoenaed by the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the Trump-incited attack on the U.S. Capitol and will be turned over to the Committee on Friday unless the judge, or a higher court, rules otherwise before then. We explain.

• The same Committee, led by its Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), have been very busy so far this week. On Monday, they subpoenaed six top Trump Campaign officials, including disgraced former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and far-right attorney John Eastman. And on Tuesday they issued 10 more subpoenas, this time to officials who worked for Trump or the Justice Department, including his senior adviser Stephen Miller and Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. While its unclear if the Committee will end up subpoenaing Trump himself, they have expressly not ruled it out and sure do seem to be working their way quickly up the food. Of course, until we learn if Attorney General Merrick Garland and the DoJ intend to bring criminal Contempt of Congress charges against Steve Bannon --- in response to the referral sent to them by the U.S. House --- for refusing to testify and turn over subpoenaed documents in the same investigation, none of these subpoenas will have much teeth. If Bannon is indicted, on the other hand, it will be game on for everyone. We continue to wait and watch...

• In COVID news, a North Dakota lawmaker who organized a rally on Monday to oppose vaccine mandates wasn't able to make it. He has COVID. But he's also certain that Ivermectin, the horse deworming anti-parasitic he is taking, will cure him. Public health experts do not concur.

• That NC lawmaker is hardly alone in falling for the vast, criminal, disinformation industry surrounding the coronavirus. A new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds nearly 80% of Americans either believe or are unsure whether to believe one or more complete falsehoods surround the pandemic, including evidence-free claims that the government is exaggerating the number of COVID deaths; that the government is hiding deaths caused by the vaccines; that the vaccines can give you COVID; that they contain microchips; or can change your DNA. The survey also found that those who trusted rightwing outlets like Fox "News", OAN and Newsmax were FAR more likely to be suckered by those lies.

• All of which helps explain the news that the gap between COVID infections and deaths in "red" states versus "blue" states continues to widen with each passing month. Last month, 25 out of every 100,000 residents in heavy Trump counties died from COVID, versus just 7.8 residents in counties that voted heavily for Joe Biden. It was the fifth straight month that the gap in death rates between Trump and Biden counties has widened. That gap continues to grow this month as well, with new deaths now running 5.8 times higher per capita in the the heaviest "red" counties versus the heaviest "blue" counties.

• We've reported many tragic stories over the past year about those who've refused, for various reasons, to get vaccinated, only to come to regret their choice after becoming hospitalized with a severe case of COVID. Many went on to die. Today, we have a variation on that story...with a sobering, but happier ending.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for another very busy Green News Report, following the passage last week of the $1.2 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill in Congress, including a number of key climate provisions, and as the critical U.N. climate summit known as COP 26 continues this week in Glasgow, Scotland...

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On today's BradCast": Despite what you may hear from certain elements of the media, the differences between the two parties when it comes to democracy and voting rights could not be more stark. Democrats are currently trying (and still failing, so far) in Congress, to protect voting rights for all voters. Republicans, meanwhile, are undermining those most basic of American rights around the country, even while facing mounting legal problems for having been gullible enough to play along with Donald Trump's Big Lie effort to steal the 2020 election. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

But we've got a lot more than that on today's program. Among the many stories covered...

• More ballot initiative results from Tuesday's off-year elections, including out of Tucson, Arizona where voters, by a nearly 2 to 1 margin, approved a new minimum wage of $15/hour. The victory for some 85,000 workers in the state's Democratic stronghold comes just months after its Senior Senator, Kyrsten Sinema, infamously thumbs-downed her own parties efforts to raise the federal minimum wage nationally to $15/hour. Hoping she noticed what happened in Tucson on Tuesday, because we're betting the folks in Tucson noticed her thumbs-down.

• In New York state, all three election and voting rights reform propositions placed on the ballot by the Democratic legislature failed by wide margins. Republicans opposed all three and mounted an aggressive campaign to defeat them. Prop 1 involved redistricting reform. Prop 3 would have allowed same-day registration. Prop 4 would have allowed for no-excuse absentee voting in the Empire State. We discussed all three with two longtime NY election integrity advocates last week. Even though there was disagreement on several of measures, it's still a bit of a surprise that all three went down. That, even as Prop 2, a very progressive proposition on the same ballot establishing "the Right to clean air, water and a healthful environment" in the state's Constitution, did pass, by a more than 2 to 1 margin. Hmmm.

• On Wednesday, back in D.C., a Senate vote on whether to proceed to debate on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act --- which restores much of what the U.S. Supreme Court has gutted in recent years from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 --- was blocked by Republicans. All Democrats voted in favor (including Joe Manchin) and even one Republican for a change (Lisa Murkowski). But as with the similarly Manchin-approved Freedom to Vote Act two weeks ago, a majority vote was not enough to overcome yet another GOP filibuster in the U.S. Senate, requiring 60 votes to even move to debate. So now we seem to be getting to the point where both Manchin and Sinema may need to put up or shut up on reforming the filibuster to allow for passage of these bills to help save democracy itself. In the meantime, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are vowing to "restore the Senate", whatever that may end up meaning, in order to push election and voting reform through. We'll see if that happens, because...

• ...As New York Times reports late today, the Democrats' big money donors are getting restless. They are whining that Joe Biden isn't giving them enough attention (good!) and that they are very unhappy about the party's seeming inability to adopt critical voting rights legislation. One major donor has gone so far as to vow to withhold any more money until election reform is passed. The pressure, even from wealthy donors, is welcome and could be helpful. Though what they believe President Biden is actually able to do if two intransigent Democratic Senators refuse to change Senate rules for passage is a separate question. Hopefully these donors also give to Manchin and Sinema and are cutting them off as well while they refuse to stand up and do the right thing for the country.

• On the other side of the political aisle, it's just nothing but ugly when it comes to democracy. Though some of our stories today may be worth popping some popcorn for. The Smartmatic voting tech company filed two new lawsuits on Wednesday against two "right-wing U.S. television networks," as Reuters properly describes them. One America News (OAN) and Newsmax are being sued for false claims made against the company, including that Smartmatic --- which doesn't have any election business in the U.S. at all other than a recent contract in Los Angeles County --- helped steal the election from Donald Trump in 2020. (And, yes, the fact that Smartmatic was brought into this at all is largely thanks to my series of exclusives from some years ago involving that company and its competitor Dominion Voting Systems, which Trump's dupes have happily misinterpreted and bastardized for their dumb corrupt purposes. You're welcome!) The two complaints are the latest billion dollar lawsuits filed by both Smartmatic and Dominion against the two right-wing networks, Fox "News", as well as Trump friends and attorneys like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Pillow Guy Mike Lindell. We wish them all the worst of luck.

• Even wingnut Erick Erickson has had enough of the "Stop the Steal" falderal --- at least when he's drunk enough to say so after his party won a few elections on Tuesday night. His rant to his fellow Republicans includes stuff like this: "You idiots have spent a year peddling the fiction the 2020 election was stolen because you were so busy humping Trump's leg that you never really even tried to convince persuadable voters to vote. ... either admit the election wasn't stolen or STFU from here on out. ... And if you really have clung to the 2020 was stolen mythology that lets you sleep well at night as a professional victim, please unfriend me and unfollow me because your presence is needed in Neverland and not here in reality."

• And, back in Arizona, the GOP-controlled Senate appears to be threatening and/or turning on the Cyber Ninjas they hired for their pretend audit of Maricopa County's 2020 election earlier this year. Or, at least, they are play-acting as much for the benefit of a judge as the Senate is facing potential sanctions for failing to turn over public documents related to the phony audit which claims to have found that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by an even larger margin than originally certified in the state. But, as it turns out, even those numbers appear to have been "made up out of whole cloth" by the Ninjas, according to experts who looked a bit closer. This could get ugly. At least we hope so.

• Finally, Desi Doyen's got some seemingly good news for us coming out of the critical U.N. Climate Conference in Glasgow, Scotland in our latest Green News Report, along with results of a number of environment and climate related issues that were on the ballot across the country in Tuesday's off-year elections...

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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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Will we ever escape the 2020 "Big Lie"? Maybe. But it's gonna take a while. That said, we've got some very good news on today's BradCast about the next "Big Lie" 2020 ballot audit! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But, first up today, GOP pollster Frank Luntz appeared on a podcast this week to offer some sage insight about the 2022 elections. We would caution you to take it much of it with some very large grains of salt! Among the points he made, which we discuss (dispute) today: Trump's "Big Lie" is working to con his supporters, but that may cost the Republican Party some wins in the House and/or Senate next year, because, as Luntz claims, voters don't turn out if they believe their vote doesn't count. We explain, based on our own 20 years or so on this particularly beat, why Luntz is probably very wrong and why Dems would be making a huge mistake to take too much comfort from his point on that. Luntz is also dangerously wrong about what he beliefs will happen if Trump becomes the nominee for President in 2024, as we also discuss.

Then, the far-right cable outlet Newsmax has issued a statement apologizing for its false "Big Lie" claims that the 2020 election was stolen for Joe Biden by the Dominion Voting Systems company and, specifically, by its Director of Product Strategy and Security, Dr. Eric Coomer. He sued the wingut outlet for defamation last December, naming the Trump Campaign, Team Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, and even farther rightwing outlet, One America News Network (OANN) as defendants as well.

All of them had forwarded baseless claims that Coomer was on a conference call with "Antifa", promising to steal the election for Biden. Seriously. That's what they claimed. It was an absurd charge that nonetheless was repeated and reported over and again in MAGA Land after they were confirmed as losers in the November election. It resulted in death threats and doxxing for Coomer, his family, his co-workers, etc. Newsmax has now admitted their reporting was false, and that they have no evidence to support Dominion or Coomer having stolen anything.

Newsmax has now been removed from Coomer's lawsuit in exchange for the public apology and an undisclosed sum of money. Looney Toons MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, however (who is being sued by Dominion for $1.3 billion [PDF]), can't seem to sleep at night now. He is furious about the development, and is now reportedly calling on the MAGA Mob to boycott Newsmax and watch OANN instead because Newsmax caved...by telling the truth.

Next, taking a break (mostly) today from our recent in-depth coverage of the clown show "audit" theater playing out in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona, we move to the next post-election audit of 2020 ballots demanded by the MAGA Mob. This one will now be in Windham, New Hampshire and will be very different from the non-transparent shell-game being carried out largely in secret by the clueless, experience-free Cyber Ninjas nitwits and cretins in Phoenix.

In Windham, a November recount of four local state Representatives races were found to have been off by about 300 votes from the initial tally. That, of course, is cause for concern [PDF]. Particularly since the town still uses really old, easily-manipulated, oft-failed Diebold AccuVote optical scanners to tally voters' hand-marked paper ballots. (Their systems are also programmed and maintained by a disreputable company named LHS Associates.)

The reason for the discrepancy in the state Rep results is apparently still unclear. This has led the MAGA Mob to believe they've finally found evidence that the election was stolen from Trump (somehow) and --- in his best fat, sad Jake LaMotta at the end of Raging Bull impression --- led Trump during a wedding at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend to declare "massive election fraud" has been discovered in NH, which he was certified to have lost by about 59,000 votes.

But, here's the fun twist! The Windham audit will not be overseen by Cyber Ninja clowns with no experience in elections or voting systems. Longtime post-election audit expert Mark Lindeman, Ph.D., who currently serves as Acting Co-Director for the non-partisan, non-profit voting system watchdog, Verified Voting, has been tapped to run the audit. In turn, two longtime friends of both The BradCast and The BRAD BLOG, whose expertise for this audit is unparalleled, have also been tapped to work on it.

UC-Berkley's math professor Philip Stark, who invented the Risk-Limiting Audit (RLA) protocol, tells me that he is now on board. BradCast listeners may remember him as a guest on this show. Also now on board is the legendary Finnish cybersecurity and voting systems expert, Harri Hursti. He is the first known hacker of a Diebold optical-scan system, as witnessed in the climactic final scene of HBO's Emmy-nominated 2006 documentary, Hacking Democracy (along with our guest from this past Wednesday's show, veteran Florida election official, Ion Sancho), and as the central figure in HBO's chilling 2020 follow-up to that doc, KILL CHAIN: The Cyber War on America's Elections. Moreover, Hursti is one of the organizers each year of the Vote Hacking Village at DefCon in Las Vegas and was first interviewed by myself in the award-winning 2008 documentary Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story.

These are serious experts in the field, and hopefully will result in a serious examination of whatever went wrong in Windham in this past election --- even if it's unlikely to uncover that the election was stolen from Trump. Whether the MAGA Mob, who were elated about the Windham audit initially, will be as happy about the serious, non-hack professionals running it remains to be seen. So far, they are not.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest news-packed Green News Report, with bad news about "new normal" global temperatures and the planet's glaciers, but better news about California stopping Nestle from stealing its water and Biden canceling Trump's wall...and using the saved tax-payer dollars to repair the environmental damage from the stupid project...

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Well, the good news on today's BradCast, is that he won't be California's Secretary of State anymore. [Audio link to show follows below summary.]

Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced he is appointing his long time friend, CA Sec. of State Alex Padilla, to fill the seat being vacated in the U.S. Senate by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. The ambitious Padilla has risen up through the ranks of CA politics, from the Los Angeles City Council to the State Senate to becoming a twice-elected SoS, and now to his appointment to the U.S. Senate. He will serve out the rest of Harris' term through 2022 as the state's first Latino Senator.

In his official announcement today, the Governor detailed a long list of accomplishments by Padilla during his career in the Golden State. In turn, we share a number of Padilla's disturbing failures both before and during his tenure as SoS, as we have covered at The BRAD BLOG over the years. In 2013, for example, while he was still a state Senator, we highlighted Padilla's dishonest and misleading campaign for a major election reform bill (SB 360) which ended the long-standing requirement for federal testing and approval of new voting systems in the state and transferred sole power for certification testing and approval of new systems to the SoS. As it happens, Padilla was the leading candidate for the office at the time and eventually became SoS in 2014.

In selling the measure to the public and the media --- it was eventually passed along partisan lines in the CA legislature and signed by then-Governor Jerry Brown --- Padilla claimed the bill was needed to allow counties in the state to create and own their own voting systems. "Allowing counties to develop, own and operate voting systems will increase voter confidence in the integrity of our elections," he told the public. The remarks echoed his early announcement of the bill [PDF] in which he deceptively explained that "A public voting system will be more transparent, instill public trust and be more accountable than our current systems."

At the time, Los Angeles County had been developing a new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting system. It was finally implemented (disastrously) for the first time this year. What Padilla failed to make clear in his deceptive sale of SB 360 was that L.A. County had already owned its current voting system at the time, and didn't need the radical new measure to do so. While Padilla's office had initially asked for our input on SB 360, they stopped communicating with us entirely once we asked about his dishonest sales pitches.

Moreover, after 10 years in development, when L.A.'s new, $300+ million voting system was found to be in violation of more than 40 California Voting System Standards late last year, Padilla certified it for use anyway, rather than simply mandating verifiable hand-marked paper ballots for every voter in the nation's most-populous County. The first roll-out of L.A.'s Padilla-approved "Voting Solutions for all People" (VSAP) system was a disaster during this year's March 3rd Super Tuesday primaries. Problems cited by testers (but ignored by Padilla) contributed to long lines for voters that stretched, in some cases, until after midnight. The same failed systems were again re-certified for use in the general election, though they fared better overall with much less use after the Governor mandated absentee ballots to be sent to all registered voters in the state during the pandemic.

Those are just some of the concerns that Election Integrity advocates in the state have had about Padilla. But the good news is that he'll likely be a reliable Democratic place-holder vote in the U.S. Senate while, perhaps, a more competent Sec. of State can be named to replace him in the Golden State. We'll see.

Also today, Rita Hart, Iowa's Democratic former state Senator and 2020 U.S. House candidate in the state's 2nd Congressional District, filed an election challenge in the House under the Federal Contested Elections Act. Iowa certified Hart's Republican opponent, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, as the winner of the open seat by just 6 votes out of nearly 400,000 cast in the November election. Hart's contest, however, notes that at least 22 legally cast votes for her were wrongly excluded from the final tally, including many which state election officials agree were lawfully cast but excluded from the count because they were discovered after the initial canvass. State law bars the inclusion of such ballots in the final tallies. She also argues that the state recount which narrowed the margin from 47 votes to 6 --- and included a number of major counting errors along the way --- was unconstitutionally conducted, as the 24 counties of the District used disparate counting methods. Some used machines, others hand-counted, others used a combination of both. She is seeking a full, uniform hand-count by the Government Accountability Office and hopes to eventually be seated by the Democratic-majority U.S. House Administration Committee under the Act. The investigation is likely to take months.

In other elections-related news today, rightwing propaganda outlet Newsmax joined fellow rightwing propaganda outlet Fox "News" on Monday by attempting to walk back their false assertions regarding the private elections vendors Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems. The two competing vendors have been targeted with baseless, evidence-free claims by Team Trump attorneys and others from the MAGA Mob --- which have been shared and parroted by both outlets, as well as One America News (OAN). Last week, Smartmatic sent a legal threat, demanding retraction for the outlets' claims that Smartmatic was involved with Dominion in a worldwide conspiracy --- with Venezuela and its dead President Hugo Chavez, China, Cuba, the Clinton Foundation and George Soros, among others --- to flip the results of the election and steal it from Donald Trump in several swing-states. As we explained recently, the baseless allegations are taken, in part, from my own accurate investigative exclusives about the ownership of Dominion and Smartmatic from more than a decade ago.

In response to the possibility of facing a defamation lawsuit, over the weekend Fox "News" ran a bizarre, three-minute segment on shows hosted by rightwing conspiracists Lou Dobbs, Janine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo, featuring a disembodied voice asking questions of Eddie Perez of the Open Source Election Technology foundation. Perez, who has recently been a guest on our show, is seen denying largely all of the claims that the wingnut outlets have been making to advance Trump's false claims that he won the election.

On Monday, Newsmax joined Fox by running its own version of an attempted retraction, to "clarify" that, in fact, they have absolutely no evidence to support myriad claims the stations has aired regarding Smartmatic and Dominion during the weeks since Election Day. The "clarification" will supposedly run across all Newsmax shows, according to its CEO and longtime Trump supporter, Chris Ruddy. Given that Smartmatic has hired one of the nation's top defamation attorneys --- who won a case for $177 million in 2017 --- its little wonder that both outlets are now running very scared. We'll see if OAN buckles soon as well, in the face of someone attempting to hold them accountable for countless lies meant to undermine our democratic system in support of Trump's attempt to steal the election from Joe Biden and the American people.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our last Green News Report of 2020! As Biden-Harris round out their historic climate team nominations; long-overdue climate legislation is included along with Congress' long-overdue COVID emergency relief package; and as the Trump Administration triumphantly ends the tyranny of efficient showerheads....

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On today's BradCast: Donald Trump's days in the White House are ending, but his response to that reality (and the reality of the most devastating hack of the U.S. government ever) is becoming more manic and desperate by the day. But at least, after nine months, Republicans have seen fit to allow some much-needed, long-overdue financial relief for sick, dying and desperate Americans as both Trump and the GOP's failed response to the pandemic has killed more than 316,000 Americans and may finally be catching up to them politically.

There was reportedly shouting and chaos --- even more than usual --- at the White House over the weekend, as Trump and his clown car friends and attorneys met to propose last gasp efforts to somehow steal and/or undermine the 2020 election. Trump's disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn --- recently pardoned by Trump for lying to the FBI --- is said to have called on the President to declare martial law to allow the military to re-run the Presidential election in swing-states that Trump lost; Team Trump attorney and professional conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell sought to be appointed as a Special Counsel to investigate 2020 "fraud"; and Team Trump's other corrupt, nut-ball attorney, Rudy Giuliani, reportedly wanted DHS to impound voting machines from battleground states for some reason. Trump's very Trumpy White House staff reportedly pushed back on all of those ideas, incredibly enough, and his outgoing Attorney General, Bill Barr, whose last day at DoJ is Wednesday, said in his final presser as AG on Monday that he saw no reason to appoint a special counsel and no legal grounds for the federal government to seize voting machines.

As that played out, over in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who had refused to even negotiate with Democrats on a new COVID relief bill for the past nine months following the passage of the initial $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March, finally relented to allow another round of relief --- albeit much smaller --- to be adopted by Congress. That, following more than 16 million infections, hundreds of thousands of deaths and an economy in tatters. The $900 billion package he finally agreed to includes one time $600 payments for many Americans and extends unemployment insurance which runs out entirely by the end of the year, as tens of millions of Americans are now out of work due to the Administration's wildly mishandled pandemic. The package also includes nutrition assistance for the hungry, another round of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for small businesses, money for hospitals and vaccine distribution, and even rent assistance, for the first time, among other things.

It's not nearly enough, says our guest today. But it's something, and it includes "nothing objectionable," at least for the most part. We're joined today by The American Prospect's Executive Editor, investigative financial journalist and author DAVID DAYEN, for details on the measure which he has been covering in-depth for months in his daily, indispensable "UNSANITIZED" report. Dayen explains what's in the bill and what is not, and why that is, along with why it is that McConnell even allowed the measure to come up for a vote at all after months of refusing to do so.

He argues that It's all about the January 5th U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia, which will determine control of Congress' upper chamber for the next two years. "Mitch McConnell's Senate majority was on the line if he didn't get something done," says Dayen. "If McConnell manages to win at least one of those races in Georgia, he's going to be in control again. Joe Biden will be President, and every dollar that Mitch McConnell agrees to put into the economy is a dollar that helps Joe Biden."

"The question of how 'Not Enough' this bill is entirely is predicated on how fast we can vaccinate people," Dayen explains. "If we can vaccinate everyone by April, then we're probably going to get a rickety but sufficient bridge." But, he adds, if Biden's incoming Surgeon General is right when he noted over the weekend that "we won't get widespread availability of the vaccine until early Fall, then we're in big, big trouble. Because there's no more must-pass bills. The government is now funded through September of next year." That, Dayen notes, means that there is little if any leverage for Democrats to force Republicans to act on behalf of the American people.

"Democrats had to take out grants for state and local government relief," to get this bill passed, he tells me. "So when we get into next year, cities and states that have had these tremendous budget shortfalls, they are the ones who have to figure out how to fill that shortfall when they have no help from the federal government coming. It's likely going to result in cuts to public safety, teachers, firefighters, and public employees and not filling your potholes --- all sort of things at the local level that are going to have to be foregone because there is no money available. Mitch McConnell knows this, [and] that it could have the effect of offsetting any kind of recovery efforts at the federal level. We saw that in 2009. That stunted the overall recovery of the economy, and we're walking into it again." And with McConnell's eyes on 2022, he's likely just fine with that.

All of this underscores the importance of those two U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia in January, and that Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff ought to be reminding voters every day that if they want any real relief from the federal government for the economic disasters that are almost certain to worsen due to all of this, they must elect both of them to give Senate control to the Democrats under a Biden Administration.

Finally, we've been reporting over the past week on two voting machines companies who have been threatening defamation lawsuits against Rightwing media outlets and the Team Trump attorneys who have been offering false claims that the companies were somehow involved in stealing the election for Joe Biden by flipping votes cast for Donald Trump. Last week, Smartmatic, which has no voting systems in any of the swing-states where Trump is trying to reverse his losses to Biden, threatened rightwing propaganda channels Fox "News", Newsmax and One American News Network (OANN) with defamation suits. They were sent a letter to instruct them that they would be sued if they did not retract false claims about the company, including allegations (apparently bastardized from our original, accurate investigative reporting from 10 years ago) that Smartmatic was somehow working with Venezuela's dead President Hugo Chavez and George Soros, along with the company's competitor Dominion Voting Systems in an international conspiracy to steal the election for Biden.

A day or two after Smartmatic's letter, Dominion sent a similar defamation threat letter to Team Trump attorney Powell seeking a retraction for her outlandish, evidence-free claims about the company.

On Friday then, in a bizarre segment on Fox' Lou Dobbs Tonight' --- which looked and sounded a lot like a deposition led by a disembodied off-camera voice --- Eddie Perez of the Open Source Election Technology (OSET) institute (he most recently appeared on The BradCast just a few weeks ago) answered a whole bunch of questions basically disabusing the evidence-free claims about Smartmatic that have been forwarded for weeks on Dobbs' show and many others. Reportedly Jeanine Pirro's and Maria Bartiromo's Fox shows ran the exact same segment with Perez, using almost identical introductions. The segments then led straight to commercial without comment from the hosts.

Fox is clearly terrified, and should be. As the New York Times' Ben Smith reported over the weekend, Smartmatic has retained attorney "J. Erik Connolly, who not coincidentally won the largest settlement in the history of American media defamation in 2017, for at least $177 million."

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We're still in Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street mode on today's BradCast, with a reminder that there are still 33 long days before Inauguration Day. And even though Freddy Kruger (in Nightmare) and Jason (in Friday, which I manage to get mixed up on today's show, but you'll get the idea!) get killed in every movie, they always find a way to reappear once you think they are absolutely, positively dead. We've made it this far, let's not let our guard down until the credits have finished fully rolling! [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

To that end, and beyond, we've got a number of stories worth your attention on today's show, including...

• The Democrats' majority in the new House of Representatives will be perilously thin --- just four votes --- when the new Congress is sworn in on January 3rd, warns Norm Ornstein at WaPo. That could very much come in to play when Biden's Electoral College victory is scheduled to be affirmed by Congress on January 6th, if all members are unable to be sworn in, in person, due to COVID. We discuss that short term concern as well as longer term ones for Dems in the House, where every single Dem vote will now likely be needed to pass absolutely anything --- especially once three members now tapped to serve in the Biden Administration vacate their seats and Dems are left with a slim one vote majority for a time. We discuss both those long and short ramifications today, as you need to know about both.

• But, before we even get to January 6th --- much less Inauguration Day on January 20th --- why did the Pentagon's Acting Defense Secretary, who was just appointed by Trump, call off all transition briefings with the Biden Transition Team last night? AXIOS reports Defense Department officials are "shocked" and the Biden team is very concerned. (Does Freddy still live?)

• We've got a bit of good news today, at least out of Georgia, where some rightwingers attempted to challenge the eligibility of some 50,000 registered voters who they claim have moved out of the formerly right-leaning Cobb County. They had hoped to keep them all from voting in the two, ongoing U.S. Senate runoff elections that will determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate on January 5th. The lame duck 3 to 1 GOP majority county Board of Elections heard the challenges today. Happily, the the Republicans members, who were all voted out and replaced by a Democratic majority on November 3rd, did the right thing. We explain.

• Meanwhile, a couple of days ago on the show, I was in the uncomfortable position of having to defend voting machine company Smartmatic, as part of a pretty epic rant, thanks to Team Trump and the MAGA Mob's bastardized use of some of my decade-old investigative reports at BRAD BLOG that were twisted and used to falsely attack the company for somehow working with Venezuela and its dead President Hugo Chavez to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump. The private voting system vendor is now threatening to sue rightwing propaganda outlets Fox "News", Newsmax and OANN for defamation if they do not retract what the company describes as defamatory claims about the company that had absolutely nothing to do with the 2020 election in ANY swing-state.

  But now, yet another voting machine company, Dominion Voting Systems --- which actually DOES have contracts in a number of swing-states and has also been falsely targeted by the MAGA Mob for allegedly flipping votes from Trump to Biden --- is threatening to sue Team Trump attorney Sidney Powell for her false, outrageous, and arguably defamatory claims.

• Yet maybe --- just maybe --- something good can ultimately come from all of these nightmares. For that, ironically enough, we turn today to the rightwing propaganda outlet called The Epoch Times for evidence. A new article in the paper which is widely read, cited and shared by wingnuts, including the President of the United States, highlights a far-right attorney who has been involved in a number of the failed legal attempts to overthrow Biden's victory. He is now calling for a return to hand-marked and even hand-counted paper ballots!

  Decrying "the vulnerability of our digital footprint in elections," he argues: "We can keep the paper, and we can audit the paper, and we can do so with efficiency. But the primary aim should not be efficiency behind closed doors. It should be transparency and accuracy. Paper gives it to you." The article makes clear (if you read it, you can skip the middle section with a bunch of grievance nonsense regarding Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg --- told you it was a propaganda rag!) that he is calling for HAND-MARKED and HAND-COUNTED paper ballots!

  I have long argued that we'd likely never get rid of these god-forsaken computer voting and tabulation systems and restore public oversight to our elections until a high-profile Republican got thoroughly screwed by those systems or even feared that they got screwed by them. That's because it has largely been Republicans who have been defending their use for so many years. I guess I should have also noted that a Republican who pretended he was screwed by one of those systems might do the trick as well. Well, at this point, we'll take what we can get.

  Once the dust settles on 2020, let's hope there are enough Republicans who still have serious concerns about computer voting and tabulation that they are willing to work with other Election Integrity advocates, many of them from the Left, to end the obscene --- and often impossible to oversee --- computerized corporate control that has been allowed to takeover our public elections in the United States.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Biden focuses on jobs and climate in several recently reported key nominations to his Administration; Trump continues trashing the planet on his way out the door; and Washington state's Governor unveils an ambitious new clean energy jobs plan...

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So, yeah, I'm a bit grumpy on today's BradCast. When you listen, you'll get an idea why. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

For one, I'm actually forced to defend a voting machine company. That could be a first in my nearly two decades of investigative reporting on Election Integrity and the woeful private voting system vendors who have been allowed to take over our public elections with their crappy, over-priced, often-unverifiable, easily-manipulated hardware and software. In this case, however, the claims made against one such company --- based on a twisted, bastardized re-imagining of my otherwise accurate and independently verifiable deep-dive reporting from more than a decade ago --- by sore-loser Donald Trump's dishonest attorneys and media stooges, need to be pushed back against, lest they further Trump's goal of undermining the United States' Constitutional republican democracy entirely.

Lawsuits may be coming in this case, warns Smartmatic's CEO, after the firm has been falsely blamed for stealing the election for Joe Biden in states where they do not even do business. (Their only contract in the U.S. is here in Los Angeles County. But that hasn't stopped Team Trump and the MAGA Mob from conflating them with a completely separate company, a competitor named Dominion Voting Systems, which has also been falsely blamed for stealing the election in jurisdictions where they do no business either.)

The bullshit, evidence-free claims of fraud continue from the deranged President and his pathetic team of desperate sycophants nonetheless. The latest nonsense comes via a so-called "forensic audit" by a so-called "military intelligence" outfit named Allied Security Operations Groups (or ASOG) which clearly knows nothing about voting systems or even election law. At least if you believe actual independent voting system and cybersecurity experts who examined their absurd, evidence-free allegations of "ELECTION FRAUD!"

Republicans in Congress clearly do not believe such experts, as GOP Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin held a ridiculous hearing on phony 2020 election fraud conspiracy claims in the U.S. Senate Government Affairs Committee today, no matter the lack of evidence for any such fraud. That, as more than 300,000 Americans --- more than the number of those killed during combat in all of World War II --- have now died from COVID-19 over the past nine months. Johnson and the rest of his caucus continue to largely ignore the deadly scourge while Americans are out of work by the tens of millions and about to be tossed from their homes amid the worst pandemic in a century. Both myself --- and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) --- have a word or two about all of that shamefulness as well today.

Meanwhile, actual voter fraud criminal Donald Trump, is coming under legal scrutiny again for the fact that he is unlawfully registered to vote in Florida at a non-legal voting domicile (Mar-a-Lago, a commercial club, as Trump agreed back in 1993 when the town of Palm Beach allowed him to convert the once-private residence into a business). He went on to unlawfully vote twice this past year --- one by mail and one in-person --- using that non-legal "residence" as his voting address. All three acts are felonies by the President of the United States under state law in Florida, though its corrupt Governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump sycophant himself, doesn't appear to give a damn. Laws --- including election laws --- apparently do not apply to Republicans, especially if they happen to be sore-loser Presidents offering bullshit claims about election fraud in hopes of bringing down American democracy. But, as the neighbors to Mar-a-Lago are now warning, Trump will not be welcome to take residence, lawfully or otherwise, after his Presidency mercifully ends in historic failure next month.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with the U.S. on the verge of breaking another record for billion-dollar climate-related disasters in a single year; insurance companies cancelling homeowner policies in California amid record wildfires; and as the U.N. warns yet again that the world must pick up the pace in order to slow the very worst effects of deadly global warming.

Other than that, everything is fantastic today!

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