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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Amid mass layoffs, federal weather forecasters still working to keep Americans safe, as extreme storms again strike across U.S.; Massive cuts at federal agencies halt research into health impacts of pollution and climate change; PLUS: Trump Administration freezes funds intended to plug America's abandoned oil and gas wells... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 'Fossil fuels are killing us: Scientists publish sweeping review of industry harms; 'A health hazard:' Oregon flooding damages a city’s sewer system; Tesla reports 13% drop in sales from a year ago; What is causing US oil production to drop?; Trump fires TVA board chair, stripping power from governing body of largest US public utility; Edison CEO: It’s ‘certainly possible’ utility sparked Eaton fire. But climate change made it worse... PLUS: E.P.A. hunt for shady deals and 'gold bars' comes up empty... and much, MUCH more! ...

A legal fight for the integrity and public oversight of elections in the Peach State has been running in federal court for nearly eight years now. As we've reported over those years here on The BradCast, it began long before Trump and his Republican MAGA stooges dreamt up their imaginary 'Stop the Steal' scheme to pretend the 2020 election was stolen from them. The long-running suit has highlighted vulnerabilities and revealed criminal actions along the way. But, as of last night, the case may have come to an end. Our guest today, however, a lead Plaintiff in the case, vows: "This fight is far from over." [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The madness wrought by our last election continues today, however, as layoffs begin for thousands of workers in agencies overseen by the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), now directed by vaccine conspiracist Bobby Kennedy, Jr. "The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support staff and senior leaders, leaving the federal government without many of the key experts who have long guided U.S. decisions on medical research, drug approvals and other issues" at the CDC, NIH, FDA and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, among others, AP reports today. A coalition of Democratic state Attorneys General are now suing to block the scheme, which they describe as unlawful, charging it will result in "serious harm to public health" and put states "at greater risk for future pandemics and the spread of otherwise preventable disease, while cutting off vital public health services."

Raising attention to madness like that was just one of the reasons that New Jersey's Democratic U.S. Senator Corey Booker determined he needed to take and hold the floor of the U.S. Senate "as long as I am physically able." As of airtime, he was on the brink of breaking the all-time, 24-hour and 18-minute record for holding the Senate floor. Shortly after airtime today, he did so, before standing down after just over 25 hours. We share some of his remarks.

THEN... We've been waiting for this federal court ruling for more than a year since its 17-day trial in January of 2024. In fact, we've been waiting for it for almost eight years, since it was first filed in 2017, challenging Georgia's use of 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems. The state was the first, along with Maryland, to do so statewide back in 2002.

In 2019, the judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, determined the state's Diebold touchscreen voting systems were so error-prone, unverifiable and vulnerable to manipulation, that she ordered they may no longer be used. In 2020, Georgia's current Sec. of State, Brad Raffensperger, defied voting system and cybersecurity experts who advised him to move the state to a hand-marked paper ballot system. Instead, with the blessing of former SoS, now Governor Brian Kemp, he moved to a new, unverifiable touchscreen voting system made by Dominion, at a price tag of more than $100 million to taxpayers. It has since proven to have many of the same vulnerabilities as the old Diebold systems. Last year's trial revealed many of those flaws.

But last night, well over a year since the trial in an Atlanta federal courtroom concluded, Judge Totenberg finally issued her 33-page ruling [PDF], lauding the plaintiffs for their "dedication to ensuring that Georgia's elections are conducted in a transparent, safe, and reliable manner," before dismissing the case entirely due to what she described as a lack of standing by the Plaintiffs to bring the suit in the first place. "Ultimately, Plaintiffs failed to establish at trial that Georgia's continued use of the [touchscreen Ballot Marking Device] will likely cause them to suffer a legally cognizable injury," she wrote in her order's Conclusion. "The Court therefore lacks jurisdiction to consider the merits of Plaintiffs' claims."

"Although Plaintiffs have not ultimately prevailed on their legal claims, their work has identified substantial concerns about the administration, maintenance, and security of Georgia's electronic in-person voting system," Totenberg ruled. "These investigative and educational efforts have prompted meaningful legislative action to bolster the transparency and accountability of Georgia's voting systems."

We're joined today --- as we have been many times over the years to discuss this case, and its many startling revelations and news-breaking findings --- by longtime election security and transparency champion, MARILYN MARKS, Founder and Executive Director of the non-profit good government group, Coalition for Good Governance, one of the case's lead Plaintiffs. Marks seemed as gobsmacked, confused and disappointed by all of this today as we were in the hours since last night's release of the judge's order.

"We haven't really absorbed this blow yet," she tells me. "After eight years to find out, 'Oh, you had no business to be here to begin with, here in court.'" Marks did her best, nonetheless, to explain the court's ruling. "She's basically said, 'You've got the right to vote. You've got the right to cast a ballot. But you don't have the right to know who you're voting for.'" That, a reference to the unreadable QR codes printed out on each ballot by Dominion's touchscreens, supposedly containing the voter's ballot selections. That QR code cannot be read or approved for accuracy by voters, however. Instead, they are asked to verify their selections on the human-readable portion of the computer-marked paper. But those selections are not used to tabulate election results.

Marks cites a 2022 race in which voters for Michelle Long-Spears, a candidate for Georgia's DeKalb County Commission, selected the candidate's name on the touchscreen, saw it on the computer-printed ballot as their selection, but could not tell that the QR Code actually registered a vote for her opponent.

Throughout the years-long course of this case, Marks, in her role as Plaintiff, helped reveal a number of troubling matters, from the fact (as demonstrated in court) that voters at the polling place are able to hack GA's Dominion touchscreens with no more than a ballpoint pen; to expert findings that resulted in a warning about these systems issued by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; to the tape-recorded confession she obtained from an Atlanta businessman who detailed his role in a scheme to unlawfully access and copy the code for the proprietary statewide voting system in Coffee County, GA, and share it over the Internet with fellow MAGAs after the 2020 election. That man, Scott Hall, was one of several criminal co-conspirators charged along with Donald Trump in Fani Willis' RICO case against him and 18 others. Hall, Sidney Powell and other Trumpers pleaded guilty. Marks was the one who first revealed the now notorious Coffee County breach during the course of the case that was dismissed last night.

"Back in her decision in the Fall of 2020," as part of this case, Marks explains today, "right before the 2020 election, [Judge Totenberg] was saying that with these [new Dominion] systems, it is a matter of when, not if, this system is going to be hacked. She talked about how it cannot be audited. She went through many, many warnings for the state, that essentially this was not a good system. She seemed to agree with us on the merits for the last eight years, but now says, 'You shouldn't have been here anyway.'"

Marks asserts that Totenberg appeared to agree with Plaintiffs on the merits throughout the case and its eventual trial, as attorneys for the State, representing Raffensperger, failed to rebut Plaintiff's many world-class voting system experts and their testimony. "I don't think I read anything where she felt that [Raffensperger] presented compelling facts. Our experts presented unrebutted facts. [The state's attorneys] really had nothing other than, 'You guys are election deniers. You don't have standing. Y'all haven't really been hurt.' There was really no rebuttal on the experts' findings."

In fact, despite claims by the State, the Plaintiffs in this case never challenged the results of any election. Rather, they presented an airtight case that the systems used in Georgia can be manipulated, violate voter secrecy rights, and can't be known to reflect the intent of any voter after an election. Those unrebutted facts, which Totenberg appears to have agreed with, were not enough to overcome her final ruling --- after nearly eight years and countless findings in favor of the Plaintiffs --- that they can't show they suffer any harm with the use of these systems.

Marks says she is still discussing the matter with attorneys, but suggested she may appeal the case to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals which has already, in a previous ruling in this case, agreed that Plaintiffs did, in fact, have standing.

For the record, Republican state lawmakers enacted a law last year that bars the use of QR Codes on ballots by 2026. Marks, however, explains why that provision is likely to put upcoming elections at legal risk and is unlikely be effectuated, as the state Legislature has, to date, failed to appropriate the nearly $70 million the law calls for to only somewhat correct Raffensperger's Touchscreen Follies.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the Trump Administration declares they will be shutting down FEMA (in this middle of this year's hurricane season!); is closing coal mine safety offices around the county; and overturning landmark fees on oil and gas drillers' climate-warming methane pollution...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump White House announces arms-for-rare-earths deal with Ukraine; Spring is getting warmer across the U.S. due to man-made climate change; PLUS: Trump E.P.A. moves to ditch scientific finding that climate change endangers public health... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Trump’s seven most anti-environmental moves --- and how to push back; Scientists issue warning to public about 'high-risk' events that could demolish local economies: 'Remember the effect on people'; Trump’s reversal of EV program could carry a hefty $1B price tag; Despite historic rains in 2023, aquifers deep beneath L.A. area remain depleted; Trump warned of a "bloodbath" in the auto industry if he wasn't elected --- now he's engineering one... PLUS: Extreme heat linked to accelerated aging in older adults, study finds... and much, MUCH more! ...

With apologies to Rick Wilson, whose weekend social media quip I've stolen for the headline of today's BradCast, I'd say both things are true. We are both overwhelmed and under attack. In a way that the United States has never been under attack before. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

The "attack", of course, is coming from inside the house. In this case, from inside Donald Trump's White House. Or, at least from his extra-Constitutional White House henchmen: Elon Musk and his band of personal employees, none of who have been elected to anything or approved by the U.S. Senate or anything else. And yet, this band of miscreants that call themselves the "Dept. of Government Efficiency" or DOGE, some just literally out of high school, are unlawfully taking over the command and control functions of independent federal agencies in the Executive Branch, including the one that at Treasury that controls the nation's actual checkbook and its payments of more than $6 trillion each year. That system includes checks to federal workers, Social Security and Medicare payments, tax refunds, foreign aid and much much more.

They are doing all of this, apparently, with the lawless President's blessing. It is a Trump-approved attack on the rule of law, our Constitutional order, and, of course (the enemy of all MAGA!) the "Administrative State".

Doing my best today to overcome some local transmitter issues here in L.A. and technical issues inside our flagship local KPFK studios during our live show, I tried to put into stark perspective what appears to be unfolding --- what we know and what we don't, some of the heroes standing up in opposition --- over the past 72 or so unprecedented hours since we last spoke.

Here are just some of the media reports I was culling from. You'll have to tune in to hear how all the pieces fit together, what they portend moving forward, and for a quick listener call or two at the end...

• "Senior FBI official forcefully resisted Trump administration firings" - NBC NEWS
• "F.C.C. Chair Orders Investigation Into NPR and PBS Sponsorships" - NYTIMES
• "US health websites, datasets taken down as agencies comply with Trump executive orders" - CNN
• "More USAID staff ousted after Trump administration dismantles aid agency" - REUTERS
• "Trump and Musk move to dismantle USAID, igniting battle with Democratic lawmakers" - AP
• "Elon Musk's Team Now Has Access to Treasury's Payments System" - NYTIMES
• Historian Heather Cox Richardson puts a lot of this into perspective in her "Letters from an American" newsletter for February 1.
• Journalist Josh Marshall of TPM reports on several conversations with "people in the key executive departments" over the weekend, as Musk and his DOGE boys were taking over control of everything...

As noted, that's just a bit of today's source material. And a bit of what has happened over these past 72 hours. Tune in for much more today and, no doubt, on tomorrow's program, as Trump's attack on our Constitutional democracy, with the help of co-President and heavy Elon Musk, continues...

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Today on The BradCast: Let the Constitutional Crises begin! As the Trump Administration attempts to Cancel Culture pretty much everything with a memo that orders nearly half of the total, already appropriated federal budget immediately (and unconstitutionally) put on ice! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We might have seen it coming, as several of our other stories today might have augured. Among them...

• Late last week, while touring fallout from last year's climate change-fueled Hurricane Helene disaster in a Republican-leaning area of North Carolina, and the then-ongoing climate change-fueled Los Angeles Fires, Trump suggested he might shut down (privatize) FEMA entirely and called for Photo ID voting restrictions in California in exchange for federal disaster aid to victims who had lost everything. When asked if NC would also see conditions placed on their federal disaster aid, Trump's meandering non-answer (full of one fantastical lie after another) made clear that, no, only Democratic-leaning states would have to agree to change policies in exchange for much-needed federal disaster aid.

• Amusingly, Trump pretended on social media last night that he'd ordered the U.S. military into California "under Emergency Powers" to turn on the magical, non-existent water "spigot" somewhere in Northern California, which the state chooses to keep turned off in order to somehow cause devastating fires in Southern California. Now that might sound like a ridiculous lie and a completely delusional fantasy that makes no sense at all, but at her first White House press briefing, Trump's Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed today that "the water has been turned back on in California." (That's great news, because I live in Los Angeles, had to evacuate briefly a week or so ago due to the fires, and had no idea the water had been turned off all this time! (OMG... this is only Week 2?!?)

• Last week, in Week 1, and receiving a bit less coverage than so many of the other nightmares Trump set off with his flurry of Executive Orders, is the fact that the Administration abruptly ordered the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to suspend all research grants, programs, travel and even ongoing cancer treatment trials. The result of putting tens of billions of dollars of research and grants on ice has sent confusion, anxiety and chaos throughout the American health community at what experts describe as one of the worst possible times, amid a slew of quickly spreading winter viruses and the increasing risks of avian flu in the U.S.

• On Monday this week, U.S. public health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were ordered to cease all work with the World Health Organization (WHO) just one week after Trump signed an order declaring the U.S. was ending its cooperation with the worldwide organization. (Unclear he can legally do so, by the way. But he doesn't care.) His Executive Orders also froze spending on a decades old global AIDS program that has saved 25 million lives, but now will block HIV the distribution of medication to more than 20 million people, including drugs already obtained with U.S. funds and sitting on shelves at local clinics around the world.

• All of that might have been a signal for where all of this was going. According to a two-page memo from the acting Director of Trump's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Monday, the White House has now ordered a "temporary pause" on "all federal financial assistance" with the exception of Medicare and Social Security payments. The memo directs federal agencies to pause "all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance," and any other programs that included "D.E.I., woke gender ideology and the Green New Deal" as of Tuesday (today!) at 5pm. That, even though there is no "Green New Deal." It never passed. (Shhh...don't tell them!)

  As the non-profit news site NOTUS explained, "the list of programs that could be touched by the order is vast: Medicaid, disaster relief, farm aid, student loan programs, Head Start, highway funds, nutrition assistance, rent assistance and dozens of other programs." Some 70 million low-income Americans alone, who are enrolled in Medicaid, could lose their access to health care. These are all funds already allocated by Congress and approved by previous Presidents including, in some cases, Trump himself.

  The impoundment of the funds --- said to amount to "more than $3 trillion," according to the memo, which is nearly half of the entire federal budget for fiscal year 2024 --- appears to be in strict violation of the federal Impoundment Control Act of 1974, enacted by Congress after Richard Nixon held back Congressionally-appropriated funding that he didn't like. According to the Constitution anyway (quaint!) Congress, not the President, controls the purse strings of the U.S. budget.

  As you may recall, attempting to withhold Congressionally-approved funding to Ukraine during his first term, unless they agreed to announce a fake investigation of the Biden Family, is what led to Trump's first impeachment. Ever since, Republicans have devised an argument that the Impoundment Control Act is actually unconstitutional. This is clearly their first volley in getting a ruling on that from their corrupted U.S. Supreme Court.

  Late on Tuesday, as Trump's deliberate chaos reigned shortly before the 5pm deadline to freeze the spending, a federal judge placed an administrative stay on the order, pending further arguments on Monday morning. She also made clear that the National Council of Nonprofits, the plaintiffs which sued earlier in the day, alleging the freeze would cause their members irreparable harm, must show evidence to support that argument on Monday or the judge would have no choice but to end her administrative stay and deny the requested temporary restraining order. And then... ???

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report with more on Trump's attempt to weaponize FEMA, but also with some good news, for a change, for both Los Angeles and New York City!...

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We should be both relieved and outraged!

Relieved that, earlier this month, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new round of booster shots specifically re-designed to address new variants of the deadly COVID virus.

Outraged because, despite the expenditure of tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on research and development (R&D), the pharmaceutical industry's refusal to waive its "gifted" patent rights prevented a global rollout of the COVID vaccines. In turn, that refusal resulted in the need for the new booster shots.

Outraged because the industry's refusal to waive their patent rights has produced "excess mortality" with COVID that, as of the beginning of this month, has killed at least 6.5 million people worldwide, with no end in sight.

Outraged because this will, in all likelihood, not be the last newly reconstituted booster shot needed. It is the considered opinion of two thirds of the world's epidemiologists that the failure to provide global vaccinations will give rise to mutations that "could render current COVID vaccines ineffective."

And, yes, the patent rights were, indeed, a gift --- from the United States to the Pharmaceutical Industry...

The state of California is embarking on a ground-breaking effort to manufacture and distribute a life-saving drug. The plan also deals a first major blow to private pharmaceutical companies that have long abused the nation's legal system for profit at the expense of the health of the citizenry.

"On my first day in office I signed an Executive Order to put California on a path towards creating our own prescription drugs," Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom declared in a July 7 video posted to Twitter, referencing his inauguration promise in January of 2019. "And now it's happening".

Newsom's statement came in the wake of his approval of a Golden State Budget Proposal that will invest $50 million into development and $50 million more into a State-owned facility that will manufacture and distribute generic (aka biosimilar) insulin to Californians at slightly above cost.

If it succeeds, California, which has the world's 5th largest economy, will not only become the first State, but also the only government, other than Cuba, to embrace the socialized production of generic medications. (Although Cuba develops and manufactures its own generic medications and provides free "preventative medical care, diagnostic tests and medications for hospitalized patients", Pharmacy Times reported, "Cubans pay out-of-pocket for outpatient medications.")

California's progressive Democratic Governor pointed to the extraordinarily high cost of insulin as a form of "market failure" that justifies his embrace of socialized medications. His decision to allow the Golden State to produce its own generic insulin also highlights the immoral manipulation of the nation's patent laws by for-profit drug companies...