As you might have guessed, it's a grim day on today's BradCast [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage...

• 31-year old, far-right youth activist, influencer and longtime Donald Trump ally Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, said back in 2023: "I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights." Today, Kirk was gunned down while answering a question, ironically enough, about U.S. gun violence during a heavily-attended outdoor speaking event at Utah Valley University. The shooting drew bipartisan condemnation before his death was announced just prior to airtime today. No suspect had yet been taken into custody.

• Receiving much less attention, three teens were in critical condition in surgery or the emergency room after a shooting at their high school in suburban Denver at around the same time Kirk was shot in UT. The same sheriff's office that initially responded to Colorado's 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School, which killed 14 students, was reportedly first on the scene today at Evergreen High School west of Denver.

• Poland reported that as many as 19 Russian drones entered their airspace on Wednesday and were shot down with the help of NATO air command and the Dutch air force which scrambled F-35 fighter jets. A number of the drones were said to have been launched out of Belarus, an authoritarian Russian ally which has has been used to stage attacks on Ukraine since Russia invaded its sovereign neighbor in 2022. Poland, a NATO member, activated Article 4 of the defense pact, to demand consultation with allies. Europe and NATO remain on high alert today, though Russia claims it had attacked the "military-industrial complex of Ukraine" in a "large-scale strike" but that "there were no targets envisioned for destruction on the Polish territory."

• In somewhat brighter news today, Democratic candidate James Walkinshaw trounced his Republican rival in a U.S. House Special Election in the 11th Congressional District of Virginia on Tuesday by 50 points, 75% to 25%. That's a 16-point swing toward the Dems as compared to last November's Presidential election in the northern Virginia suburbs of D.C. Walkinshaw's seating in Congress and promised signing of the Discharge Petition to force a U.S. House vote on the release of the Epstein Files puts proponents of that measure just one vote away from the necessary 218 signatures needed to trigger a mandatory vote on the House floor. Another U.S. House Special Election to fill another vacant seat in another very Democratic Congressional District in Arizona takes place later this month. The Democratic candidate there, Adelita Grijalva, has also vowed to sign the petition, which has currently has the signatures of all 212 currently seated Democrats and four Republican members.

Finally, we're joined today by author and financial journalist DAVID DAYEN, Executive Editor of The America Prospect, to discuss the coming showdown in Congress to avoid a government shutdown as of October 1. That's when the Continuing Resolution passed in March to keep the government open at the time expires. If Republicans can't come to terms with Democrats on another CR by the end of this month, the government will likely shutdown.

That is a price that more Democrats now seem willing to pay to try and stop --- or, at least slowdown --- Donald Trump's authoritarianism. And it's a moment when Democrats, currently in the minority in both chambers of Congress, actually have some leverage to use.

While all Democrats in the House voted against the Republican CR back in March, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a handful of Dems agreed to help Republicans overcome the 60 vote filibuster threshold in in the Senate in exchange for...well, pretty much nothing.

This time, Schumer claims he will not do the same thing. But, is he asking for enough from Republicans in exchange for Democrats' support in keeping the government open this time? Is he willing to let it shut down in order to stop Trump?

There are a lot of things that Democrats could demand, above and beyond a short term fix to prevent health care costs from skyrocketing for the millions of Americans signed up to the Affordable Care Act. That's something, as we discuss, that Republicans should be desperate to do on their own. Democrats could demand that subsidy support for the ACA be made permanent. Schumer could demand that Congress assert its right to block Trump from refusing to spend funds already appropriated by Congress. He could demand the end to Trump's economy crushing tariffs, mass ICE raids, National Guard in U.S. streets and much more. In other words, this is a moment when Dems could demand an end to the Trump Authoritarianism.

But will they? And, if so, and Republicans don't agree to the terms, what then?

"The whole idea that we're going to get a goodie in exchange for participation in the budget is a very old way of doing business in Washington," argues Dayen today. "Business as usual is out the window in Washington. You have someone who is trying to consolidate power entirely into himself. And you have these rare moments where he can be thwarted at some level. And you can't approach that the way you would approach a normal negotiation. I just don't understand how that can be acceptable. You have to deal with the problem at hand, where Donald Trump is acting like a despot, a dictator, and the things that you could negotiate on would have to be things that would prevent dictatorial processes from going forward."

"Shutdown fights like this are teachable moments," he says. "They are ways to get the attention of the public. They are ways to get the public understanding that there is a debate happening in Washington, and this is what that debate is about. If you're the Democratic Party staring down 33% approval ratings, watching what Trump is doing, and seeing your party get less popular in the exchange because you're not doing enough about it, you should want this moment. You should want a way to reset public attention on what is happening. Maybe we'll see some things start to change here in coming days as Democrats start to internalize this, but it's been a bit enervating so far."

As you can tell, we have much to discuss with Dayen on today's show, in a conversation recorded just prior to the news about Kirk's death in Utah today...

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Storm clouds continue to gather, even as there are fewer and fewer government scientists to warn us about what is actually coming. On today's BradCast we offer more than a few warnings of our own. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Don't buy Elon Musk's pretend attack today on Donald Trump and the Republicans' so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" as "a disgusting abomination". Musk doesn't really mean it. (He's just trying to save his drug-addled hide after the waste, fraud and abuse of his deadly, unlawful and wildly destructive DOGE scam.) But don't let that keep you from enjoying the fireworks anyway!

• Big kudos to Miami's NBC6 for featuring veteran South Florida meteorologists John Morales' chilling warning about the "cuts, gutting and sledge hammer attack on science" by the Trump Administration and, specifically, to NOAA and the National Weather Service that, he explains, are already "degrading" the quality of forecasts as hurricane season is now under way.

• Speaking of hurricane season, Trump's newly tapped, entirely inexperienced head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency --- a military guy by the name of David Richardson and the fifth person to hold the position since Trump's re- election --- reportedly told FEMA staffers on Monday that he had no idea there was such a thing as a hurricane season in the U.S. Following Reuters exclusive on that yesterday, a spokesperson from FEMA's parent agency, DHS, claimed Richardson was just joking. But...was he really? If Trump's newly sworn-in Social Security Administrator, Frank Bisignano, offers any hints, the lack of knowledge of the people tapped to run these critical agencies may be far worse than you may think.

• Some elections and democracy news today from overseas that is likely to have ramifications for the U.S. in various ways. In a closely divided election for President in Poland over the weekend, voters narrowly chose Karol Nawrocki, a rightwing historian and staunch nationalist. He will have veto power over Parliament, headed up, since 2023, by liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

• In The Netherlands, ultra-right party leader, Geert Wilders, quit the governing coalition in the Dutch Parliament today over his complaints that migration policies weren't cruel enough. The stunning move has touched off a governing crisis until new elections can be held later this year. The nation's liberal opposition party, however, seems to enjoying the fresh chaos.

• One year to the day after South Korea's conservative President stunned the nation by declaring martial law --- before the move was undone just hours later --- voters elected liberal party leader Lee Jae-myung on Tuesday to be the nation's new President. The disgraced former President, after facing impeachment charges, is currently standing trial on charges of insurrection, which is punishable by death or life in prison. Must be nice.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here for our latest Green News Report, with predictions of a long, hot summer; Canada's wildfire season off to an early and terrible start (and already affecting northern U.S. states); a village in Switzerland wiped off the map last week due to a glacier collapse, thanks to global warming; and the Republican plan to raise your dirty energy prices via their "Big, Beautiful Bill"...

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Some days these days on The BradCast, it's hard to believe we're covering what we are covering. I'd say that's the case on most days, these days. Today is, yet again, one of those days. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST, we try to bring you up to date following Donald Trump's rigged GOP Caucuses in Nevada last week. Given that he and some guy named Ryan Binkley were the only two on the ballot, Trump won with Saddam Hussein-like or Vladimir Putin-like numbers, taking 99.1% of the vote and all of the state's available RNC delegates in the bargain. Nikki Haley, having competed in the state-run Primary just two days earlier, was not allowed to participate in the state's GOP-run Caucuses.

The Virgin Islands also held a GOP Caucus on the same day. Trump won there as well, defeating Haley (who was allowed to be on that ballot) by about 74% to 26%. Only about 250 voters bothered to show up, so don't read too much into it.

On the Dem side of the aisle, Joe Biden's only noteworthy competitor on the Nevada Primary ballot last Tuesday (which he handily won), was self-help guru Marianne Williamson. She dropped out of her run for the Democratic nomination the next day.

Tomorrow, however, expect an actual contest in the 3rd Congressional District in New York, where voters on Republican-leaning Long Island will select a replacement member of the U.S. House for the recently expelled pathological liar and Republican con-artist, Rep. George Santos. The polls suggest a close race for the seat between conservative Democrat and former Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi and his Republican opponent, the Ethiopian-born Israeli-American Mazi Pilip. The winning party will explain why the contest in the district should be seen as a bellwether for November's elections. The losing party will insist that it isn't.

THEN, it's back to the last few mad days since we last spoke, during which Trump (just before airtime today) filed his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping that his friends and appointees on the High Court will agree, unlike anyone on the lower courts, that U.S. Presidents have complete immunity to commit any crime they like while in office; Robert Hur, a former Trump-appointed DoJ prosecutor tapped by A.G. Merrick Garland to be a Special Counsel, ended a year-long nearly 400-page investigation [PDF] by finding there were no crimes to charge President Biden with concerning his possession and return of some classified documents following his two terms as Vice President. But, Hur took pains to also note, Joe Biden is old; and, our disgraced former President attacked Haley, his final GOP opponent, because her husband, Maj. Michael Haley is in the Horn of Africa for a year-long active duty deployment with the South Carolina National Guard. (No word on the whereabouts of Trump's wife Melania. Though it's a safe bet that she, like the entirety of the Trump family going back generations, is not out serving her country as a member of the military.)

But it was Trump's remarks about NATO at that very same South Carolina rally over the weekend that have, appropriately, received the most coverage since then. (If nothing near the absurd coverage that the corporate media has given to Special Counsel Hur's inappropriate insinuations regarding Biden's mental fitness.)

Trump relayed a story at the rally in which he claims that, when he was President, he told the leader of a NATO nation that, if they hadn't "paid their bills" to NATO, and were attacked by Russia, the U.S. would NOT come to their defense. That, in defiance of the NATO Treaty's Article 5 agreement that states that if one member is attacked, “each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked".

NATO nations, however, don't "pay" to be in NATO. In 2014, President Obama led an agreement among the treaty's 30+ member nations to work toward each spending a minimum of 2% of their annual GDP on defense. That's the "bill" for which Trump (who has been sued thousands of times personally for not paying bills) claims that many of those countries are "delinquent".

Making matters worse --- unimaginable just a few short years ago, in fact --- Trump also claims to have told that NATO leader that while the U.S. would not come to their defense, he would also encourage Russia "to do whatever the hell they want" to such countries.

NATO's Secretary-General, as well as the governments of several NATO nations, including Germany and Poland, issued unusual and harsh rebukes on Sunday in response to Trump's astonishing --- once unthinkable --- remarks.

FINALLY today, we open up the phone lines to listeners to get their thoughts on all of the above and anything else they may wish to ring in on today. And so they do. And so we're delighted, as always, to hear from those listeners who may not agree with us. Those are always the best calls after all, right?...

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If, like me, you're old enough to get the joke in today's headline, congratulations on still being alive! (If you don't remember it, here's a reminder.) But, no, we didn't forget Poland on today's chocked-with-a-surprising-amount-of-not-awful-news BradCast!

Among our stories covered today....

• Who knew that holding a U.N. conference (COP28) on our climate catastrophe in a petrostate like the United Arab Emirates might end without an agreement --- or with a bad one --- from all 200 participating nations for the first time in the annual summit's 28 year history? Well, it ain't over until it's over, with nations now officially in "overtime" at the Conference, which was otherwise set to end last night. Will they dare mention the phrase "fossil fuels" in whatever final statement they finally unanimously agree to make? Stay tuned!

• In what is being described as a "political earthquake", after eight years under the heavy hand of a far-right anti-immigrant, anti-media, anti-woman authoritarian party's Prime Minister and President, Poland --- with a front-row seat over the past two years to Russia's autocratic invasion of Ukraine --- elected a centrist, pro-EU Prime Minister on Monday! That is good news on a whole bunch of fronts. It became official today when Donald Tusk received a vote of confidence from parliament after a brief delay when a right-wing lawmaker used a fire-extinguisher to douse candles in a Hanukkah menorah in parliament. "This is a wonderful day," said Tusk to the Polish people on Monday night. "Not for me, but for all those who have deeply believed over these years that things will get even better, that we will chase away the darkness, that we will chase away evil. From tomorrow, we will be able to right the wrongs so that everyone, without exception, can feel at home." The news is a welcome counter-point to the recent rise of right-wing authoritarianism in nations from Argentina to The Netherlands. And, hopefully, its a good omen for 2024 in the U.S.

• On the other hand, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had to fly all the way to the U.S. on Tuesday to, essentially, beg far-right Congressional Republicans --- who have apparently lost the plot of democracy --- to continue supporting Ukraine's efforts to hold off the imperialist invasion of his country by fascist Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

• Speaking of Congress and democracy, very good news out of New York's high court today, which ordered a new U.S. House map for next year's 2024 Congressional elections, after the map used in 2022 resulted in a bunch of seats flipping from D to R in newly drawn districts after state Dems kinda screwed up the whole process. We explain.

• And in more potentially good news for 2024, inflation continues to fall faster than expected, as the U.S. economy continues to show surprising resilience and little sign of the recession that many had feared when Donald Trump's Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, began raising interest rates last year to combat inflation. Inflation is almost back to normal at 3.1% over last year; gasoline is down 11% over the past two months; employers are still hiring and unemployment remains at a near record-low rate of 3.7%. But, some prices are still high at grocery stores, as is rent and the cost of a home mortgage. Economists are watching Powell closely for a read as to when the Fed may deign to finally lower interest rates next year.

• No sooner had we gotten off air yesterday, than the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would consider an expedited petition filed on Monday by Special Counsel Jack Smith to hear Donald Trump's appeal on Presidential Immunity in his January 6 federal indictment. It doesn't necessarily mean SCOTUS will hear the full case. But it means they will consider doing so. Smith had filed the petition for cert just hours earlier, leapfrogging the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in hopes of keeping next year's scheduled March 4th trial date for Trump on track. All of which, at least for now, is encouraging news to suggest that SCOTUS may both do the right thing and do so with the alacrity that would allow the American people a verdict in the case against Trump in advance of next year's Presidential election.

• The defamation damages trial against dirtbag former NYC Mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani --- in which he's already been found guilty of defamation --- continued into its second day on Tuesday. But not before his attorney admitted in Court on Monday (as the federal judge has already found), that Rudy's horrendous claims about two Georgia election workers in 2020 committing fraud for Joe Biden were false. And not before Giuliani then stepped out of the courtroom on Monday and repeated the same baseless claims yet again on the courthouse stairs. Today, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell scolded both Rudy and his attorney, noting that Giuliani's remarks on Monday night "could support another defamation claim" by mother and daughter plaintiffs Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The pair are currently seeking damages in the amount of $15.5 to $43 million in their civil lawsuit. And they will deserve every penny they receive.

• Speaking of dirtbags, following the news last week that Wisconsin's 10 fake Trump electors had settled a civil lawsuit against them, the state's U.S. Senator Ron Johnson --- already on record as having encouraged state lawmakers to steal the Badger State's 2020 election for Trump --- described the settlement as a "travesty of justice." He insisted that Democrats had done the very same thing "repeatedly" and "in multiple states" in the past. Nonetheless, he couldn't name any state where Democrats had secretly created false slates of electors in hopes of stealing an election when pressed by CNN's Kaitlan Collins. (If Johnson was referring to what happened in Hawaii in 1960, he is wrong about that as well.)

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with both the good and bad, so far, out of the COP28 Climate Conference in Dubai, and some very good news indeed from President Biden regarding the nation's largest ever investment in high speed rail and U.S. passenger rail service.

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Global chaos continues today on The BradCast, in Gaza, in elections around the world, in the U.S. House and, of course, for our worsening climate crisis. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Our coverage today includes...

• ISRAEL V. HAMAS: Some encouraging news last night, after an apparent diplomatic breakthrough on opening up the Gaza Strip to humanitarian aid seemed possible following days of shuttle diplomacy by U.S. Sec. of State Antony Blinken and some nine hours of marathon negotiations with Israel's P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu. The effort, reportedly at the direction of President Biden, resulted in the announcement that he would be visiting Tel Aviv on Wednesday --- a first for a U.S. President during war time --- for a meeting with Netanyahu, followed by meetings with the leaders of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority in Jordan. The last part of that encouraging news may have begun to disintegrate with the late Tuesday bombing of a hospital in Gaza, said to have killed hundreds of civilians, including women and children. Hamas blames Israel. Israel blames Hamas. The innocent people of Gaza pay the price.

• DEMOCRACY V. AUTOCRACY: There were elections both in the U.S. and several nations around the world over the weekend. In three of the four cases --- Louisiana, Ecuador and New Zealand --- the news was not good for small "d" democrats (or capital "D" democrats in Louisiana), as voters chose rightwingers to displace progressives (or conservative Democrats in Louisiana). But don't forget about Poland! There the news was far better in a nation which has had a front-row seat to the existential battle against fascism, as it borders both democratic Ukraine and Vladimir Putin's authoritarian Russia. Polish voters, in record numbers, voted out the ruling far-right party in favor of opposition centrist and progressive parties led by former EU President Donald Tusk. Good news indeed in perhaps the weekend's most important election.

• U.S. HOUSE CHAOS: After winning his party's nomination to become House Speaker last week, election denialist and far-right Ohio Republican Jim Jordan was unable to win the 217 vote majority from his own caucus in the first round of voting on the House floor on Tuesday after GOP hard-liners deposed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy two weeks ago, and then refused to support the winner of the private caucus election that nominated Steve Scalise last week. Republicans no longer recognize elections as valid, unless they win them. As TPM's Josh Marshall recently wrote, regarding the election denialism Republicans invented to try and steal elections from Democrats in 2020, "It’s like the virus had escaped the lab. It wasn’t just Freedom Caucus weirdos anymore. It's now treated as a given that caucus elections are purely advisory or essentially meaningless." Or, as TAP's David Dayen quipped last week, while asserting that the internecine House GOP chaos "could really go on indefinitely" and that the lack of a House Speaker actually matters to millions of Americans (including you this Thanksgiving), "In the Future, Everyone Will Be Speaker for 15 Minutes."

• CLIMATE REALITY AND LIES: Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the Mississippi River hits records lows amid drought, along with rivers in the Brazilian Amazon Basin; Exxon Mobil makes a huge investment to expand its deadly fossil fuel production, even as climate change ravages bees, beer, coffee and chocolate; and years-long GOP lies about China taking no action on climate change are exposed as lies yet again...

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There's a reason I always warn, when reporting election results on The BradCast, that they have only been tallied by computers to date, and that errors in results often do not come to light until days, weeks or even months after elections...if ever. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST UP TODAY... Some thoughts on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' 'Doomsday Clock' which was, this week, ticked forward from '100 Seconds until Midnight' to just '90 Seconds until Midnight.' The main reason for the move, the first since 2020, as explained by The Bulletin, whose esteemed scientists, diplomats and Nobel Laureates take such decisions quite seriously, is thanks to "Russia's war on Ukraine," its "thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons," and for "violating international protocols and risking widespread release of radioactive materials" in bringing "its war to the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor sites."

In response to the metaphorical clock --- first unveiled at the dawn of the Cold War in 1947 --- being moved closer than ever to a proverbial 'midnight', when humanity destroys itself, a Kremlin spokesperson said Wednesday that the move was "really alarming." (Really? You were "alarmed" by this, Russia? Really?!)

That, on the same day that the U.S. and nearly a dozen European countries finally agreed to send modern battle tanks to Ukraine so the sovereign former Soviet nation can better defend itself from the grotesque, ongoing, hostile invasion by it's empirical neighbor.

We take the opportunity today to explain why --- amid our years of (continuing) anti-war advocacy --- we, nonetheless, support Ukraine's right to defend itself against Russia's war crimes; agree with critical support being supplied by fellow democratic nations against an autocratic invader; and how we see many of those on the supposed Left in the U.S. that are echoing Kremlin propaganda by, among other things, demanding Ukraine declare a ceasefire and negotiate with their invaders, have been unhelpfully (and wildly) misled.

THEN... Yes, we likely drive regular listeners crazy when reporting results after elections and offering the caveat, over and over again, that reported results in the immediate aftermath are wholly unverified and only tallied by computers --- either correctly or incorrectly --- and that there is no way to know for certain either way unless and until results of hand-marked paper ballots are examined by actual human beings.

Last week, more than two months since the November midterm elections, we finally learned that a computer tabulator mistallied some of the results in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The error appears to have resulted in at least one loser being named as the winner in a School Board race in Ocean Township. After a probe into "an unrelated issue" caused the County's Board of Elections to notice potential problems in the tallies, an investigation reportedly found errors in six voting districts across four municipalities.

One candidate named as a loser after November 8 last year appears to have won his race by a single vote after results were correctly re-tallied. But a bunch of races had been mistallied originally thanks to results from at least one precinct being uploaded more than once to the Election Management System's central tabulator from a USB memory stick.

While there is no evidence of nefariousness in the matter, a spokesperson from the County's private election vendor, ES&S (the nation's largest), attempted to downplay what happened as "a human procedural error". But the fact that it is even possible to upload the same results more than once without a system warning is disturbing. Longtime election and voting system experts have expressed horror at the problem, if not surprise, given the woeful state of NJ's post-election audit protocols and the nature of proprietary computerized voting system software.

Since the problem has come to light, one state lawmaker has called for passage of a measure that would mandate Open Source software on all voting and tabulation systems in the Garden State, along with the use of paper ballots at polling places. I explain today why Open Source systems (while a fine idea if we must tally ballots with computers) is no panacea, and why the state Senator's call for "paper ballots" --- as opposed to HAND-MARKED paper ballots --- will likely ensure that 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems, still shamefully used across most of the state at the polls on Election Day, will continue to undermine confidence in NJ elections.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with a spate of troubling new studies on the deteriorating state of our climate, but also with a number of stories detailing some good news, of late, in response to it!

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Biden promotes bipartisan infrastructure repairs and upgrades as funding flows from new climate laws; U.S. West braces for another round of major storms; PLUS: Republican dysfunction in U.S. House a bad omen for climate policy... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): How to prepare for this week's Atmospheric River storm; In famed Mt. Kilimanjaro game park, the animals are giving up; Protests near German village eradicated to expand coal mine; Biden rolls out new rules. Courts may torpedo them; Farewell to the Senate's biggest climate denier; The toll extreme weather took in the U.S. during 2022, by the numbers; Winter warm spell stifles skiing in the Swiss Alps; A hotter, wetter Arctic spells trouble for everyone... PLUS: Alaska’s Arctic waterways are turning a foreboding orange... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Biden EPA opens civil rights probe into Jackson, MS' water crisis; Big insurance companies begin to back away from Big Oil: PLUS: BMW to build massive E.V. battery plant in U.S. --- Republicans who voted against incentives take credit... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Only 5 percent of plastic waste generated by US last year was recycled, report says; Secret files suggest chemical giant feared weedkiller’s link to Parkinson’s disease; Russia is destroying water/power infrastructure in Ukraine; Utilities sticking with fossil fuels despite climate pledges; How coal producers legally dodge cleanup obligations; Will new UK PM Sunak rebuild green agenda torn up by Truss?; More than half of bird species in the U.S. are in decline; Deforestation slowed last year, but not enough to meet climate goals; New European pipelines are hydrogen ready... PLUS: Inside the fantastical, pragmatic quest to make "hybrid" meat.... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Russia cuts off natural gas to two NATO countries; 'Unprecedented' water restrictions on tap for Southern California; Record-breaking heat wave broils India and Pakistan; PLUS: Ford officially launches the all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): U.S. Identifies Possible Wind Power Areas Off Oregon, Atlantic Coasts; Biden Administration Allows Additional Natural Gas Exports; UN Report Says Humanity Has Altered 70 Percent of the Earth’s Land, Putting the Planet on a 'Crisis Footing'; Mystery fires at sensitive facilities compound Russia’s war challenge; How U.S. Gas Exports to Europe Could Lock in Future Emissions; 50bn tonnes of sand and gravel extracted each year, finds UN study... PLUS: Too many new coal-fired plants planned for 1.5C climate goal, report concludes' ... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: When the hot debates die down, the liars, of late, having been trying to claim (false) victory. Let's not let them, shall we? [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

We're seeing a lot of that in recent days when it comes to, for example, Russia's help for Donald Trump election in 2016 (yes, it actually happened, despite the disinformed denialists now opportunistically claiming otherwise) and, as we focus on today's program, on those pretending that the CDC and other public health officials had it all wrong about COVID. They didn't. And just because we're all really sick and tired of the continuing pandemic and discussion of COVID in the news has largely been overtaken by other pressing matters, the deadly virus is still killing hundreds of Americans each day. That, after nearly 1,000,000 Americans were killed over the past two and half years. Please don't let the anti-mask and anti-vaccine bullies mislead or cow you.

We never enjoy being the bearer of bad news (it just seems to be our lot in life of late), but a new COVID sub-variant of Omicron, known as BA.2.12.1, is apparently the most transmissible yet, and it is quickly rising across the nation (and world). Some facts you may want to know about that today, why you should get your shots if you haven't already, and why you shouldn't bow to pressure from anyone to not wear a mask indoors if you damned well feel like it.

Also, the Vice President tested positive today. Thankfully, because she is double-vaccinated and boosted, she is, so far at least, said to be asymptomatic. Many others are not quite as lucky, particularly the unvaccinated, many children, and, in particular, those who live in states run by Republicans like Florida Governor and Presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis. He is still turning up the heat on his lies that critics of his failed COVID policies --- the state banned mask mandates and forced schools to remain open when they shouldn't have --- were wrong, and that he was right.

Well, if death rates in states like Florida and Georgia last year, which were two to three times those in blue states per capita, are considered to be "right", then I guess I'm glad I don't live in such states. But I'd still like to help those who do. Yes, as Axios reported late last month, based on then-new CDC numbers, "America's political divisions are now on display in mortality rates."

Sadly, Florida, with its more than 73,000 COVID deaths, is a perfect example. As Axios Tampa Bay reported, "Death rates in Florida and Georgia (more than 200 deaths per 100,000) were much higher than in states with largely vaccinated populations such as New York (112 per 100,000), New Jersey (73 deaths per 100,000), and Massachusetts (50 per 100,000)." And, based on data comparing deaths that would normally be expected, "Between August and December 2021, Florida experienced more than triple the number of excess deaths (29,252) as New York (8,786), despite both states having similar population counts."

That didn't stop DeSantis, during his State of the State address earlier this year, from lying to his constituents: "We would not allow fear or politics to harm our kids. We were right and they wrong and millions of families in Florida are better for it." Sure. Unless you count the tens of thousands of Florida families mourning the unnecessary loss of their loved ones thanks to DeSantis' deadly lies and horrific COVID policies.

In other news of note late last week, on Earth Day, Twitter announced a long overdue policy banning advertisements purchased to push climate change denialism. We'll see if they actually carry it out. But, perhaps more of note, since Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase of the social media company was announced on Monday, it will be interesting to see if the self-proclaimed "free speech absolutest" and CEO of Tesla, the company almost single-handedly responsible for kicking off the planet's electric vehicle revolution, will keep the ban in place as he takes the company private to use as his own personal plaything. (P.S. The entire story of Musk's purchase of Twitter serves as still more evidence that taxes are way way too low for rich people and corporations!)

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for a chocked-full-o'-news Green News Report, as we try to get you all caught up with all of the climate related stuff of note that you missed while we dared take a much-needed Spring Break last week...

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We cover two big stories in depth on today's BradCast. One out of the White House which effects the world. The other out of Florida, which effects the rest of the nation...or, at least, it should. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

President Biden, on Thursday, announced that he is releasing one million barrels of oil, per day, for the next 180 days, from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve in hopes of lowering gas prices for Americans in response to what he described as the "Putin Price Hike".

In addition to the unprecedented release from the Reserve, Biden called out Big Oil companies for keeping prices high (previously known as war profiteering) as they see record profits and pad the pockets of investors and executives, even as Putin's war inflates prices on global energy markets. He also called on Congress to pass a "Use it or Lose it" law that would charge a fee to oil and gas producers who are sitting on as many as 9,000 unused drilling permits on more than a million acres of land, as prices rise for Americans at the pump.

At the same time, Biden announced his plan to invoke the Defense Production Act to encourage American production of minerals that are needed for electric vehicle battery production.

We share the President's remarks today at the White House and Desi Doyen helps us unpack what it all means --- for gas prices and for our climate crisis.

Next, the big news out of Florida. A federal judge on Thursday struck down parts of a new state law that makes voting much harder for many in the Sunshine State, finding it unconstitutional and racially motivated. Moreover, he invoked a key provision of the Voting Rights Act to prevent more such measures for the next ten years.

FL's Senate Bill 90 was adopted by the state's Republican legislature last year in the wake of Donald Trump's evidence free claims about fraud in the 2020 election. That, despite Florida's claims that the election was well run and free of fraud or other problems. The new law limits the use of drop boxes; adds more ID requirements for those requesting absentee ballots; restricts who may collect and drop off ballots; further restricts third-party voter registration; and makes it a crime to give voters food or water to voters as they wait in line to cast their ballot, among other restrictions challenged by the League of Women Voters of Florida and other voting rights advocates.

In his 288-page order [PDF], U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker slammed parts of the measure as racially motivated and little more than a law enacted "to improve the Republican Party's electoral prospects." His ruling quotes Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. throughout, while asserting that plaintiffs "allege that SB 90 runs roughshod over the right to vote, unnecessarily making voting harder for all eligible Floridians, unduly burdening disabled voters, and intentionally targeting minority voters --- all to improve the electoral prospects of the party in power...Having reviewed all the evidence, this Court finds that, for the most part, Plaintiffs are right."

But the most noteworthy element of this story is that Judge Walker also invoked a little used provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act to "bail-in" the state of Florida to the VRA's preclearance requirement for the next 10 years. That provision, used against repeat violators of the VRA, will force the state to obtain approval from the U.S. Dept. of Justice or a three-judge federal panel before new voting laws that may have a racially disparate effect on voters can be implemented.

As UC-Irvine election law expert Rick Hasen described the ruling as "quite a blockbuster" and a "a huge deal." He told the New York Times, "This is an opinion that full throatedly reads the Voting Rights Act in the expansive way that Congress intended it to be read, and essentially dares the higher courts to overrule it." He also believes that "conservative 11th Circuit or the Supreme Court" is likely to do so, even though "the district court's analysis is probably right."

Florida Republicans are furious. Gov. Ron DeSantis calls the ruling "performative partisanship". The State's Republican Senate President calls it "highly unprofessional, inaccurate, and unbecoming of an officer of the court." That, as the League of Women Voters celebrated the ruling against "an anti-voter measure that raised barriers to voting with specific impacts on elderly voters, voters with disabilities, students, and communities of color."

"State legislatures everywhere should recognize that anti-voter laws like SB 90 violate the fundamental rights of their constituents," said the LWV's Chief Counsel, adding: "We call on legislatures around the country to stop making laws that impede the rights of the people they are elected to protect and serve."

Naturally, Florida Republicans say they intend to appeal, and many think that our right-leaning federal appeals courts and/or our corrupt U.S. Supreme Court will overturn Judge Walker's landmark ruling. For now, however, it's a critical one that should be echoed against many of the intentionally discriminatory laws that have been adopted by GOP-controlled states over the past year.

We explain what it all means and why it matters on today's program.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us again for our latest Green News Report, recorded today before Biden's big White House announcement (though we anticipated it). We also detail Europe prepares for energy shortages, Poland's decision to ban Russian energy imports and much more, including a major milestone for solar power!...

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Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)