The stakes seem high enough on every level that it remains remarkable, as we muse at one point on today's BradCast, that mainstream corporate media barely mentions, much less reports on any of it. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Kamala Harris has clawed back a lot of ground that voters were initially giving to Donald Trump when it came to the question of who they trusted most to handle the economy. Recent polling finds the two largely tied on the issue, despite the fact that, under the Biden-Harris Administration, GDP is at record highs, unemployment at 50-year lows, there has been record job creation (above and beyond the restoration of jobs lost during the pandemic), middle-class wages are rising substantively for the first time in decades, inflation is largely back to pre-pandemic levels, interest rates are finally being lowered by the Fed, energy prices are dropping and major Wall Street indexes continue to meet and beat all-time record highs.

Sounds like a pretty good economy. You'd think the incumbent Administration might be rewarded for it. But, oh, well. Trump says nobody can afford to buy back anymore. So there's that.

Harris has already put forward a host of new economic proposals [PDF] in her campaign, including $6,000 child tax credits for families with newborns; $25,000 to help first-time home buyers afford down payments; increasing the amount that new, small businesses can deduct for startup costs from $5,000 to $50,000. She detailed still more plans for what she describes as her "Opportunity Economy" in Pittsburgh today.

By way of contrast, Trump wants to give another trillion dollar tax break to the wealthy and huge corporations, institute and enormous national sales tax for consumers on all imported goods, adopt some gimmicky, ill-defined schemes such as "No Tax on Tips" (which Harris favors as well) and otherwise "Drill, Baby, Drill" to pay for it all (even though oil and gas drilling, for good or ill, is already at record highs under Biden-Harris). I'd link to those proposals but they don't appear to be detailed anywhere, other than, perhaps, in Project 2025.

Corporate mainstream media does a lousy job of highlighting economic facts and the starkly different visions of the candidates. But they do an even worse job when it comes to educating the electorate about some of the landmark legislation that the Administration was able to get through extraordinarily narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, all of which are transformational for the American economy, American jobs and the global climate.

The poorly-named bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, while including some measures for lower inflation, is also the largest ever single investment in climate action in world history, clocking in at as much as $1.2 trillion in size. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, offers about $500 billion to upgrade our rail and road systems, build out a national EV charging network, upgrade the electric grid and much more. The CHIPS and Science Act authorizes $280 to onshore manufacturing factories and jobs in high-tech industries. All of which, though they are just barely getting started, will amount to millions of new jobs and a cleaner, renewable, electrified future that will slash global warming emissions in half by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050...if they stay on the current trajectory.

Trump has promised to end that trajectory and kill as many of those programs as possible, despite the cost to the economy, jobs and a livable climate for all.

We're joined today by RYAN COOPER, Executive Editor of The American Prospect, to discuss the economic and climate stakes of this year's election, as he recently reported on for The Prospect, as our two potential futures are now starkly divergent, with trillions of dollars, millions of jobs (in all 50 states) and a clean, renewable energy future hanging in the balance.

As Cooper explains at The Prospect, a recent independent analysis comparing best-case scenarios for Harris versus Trump and his Project 2025 plan find that by 2020, "she would actually beat the 50 percent emissions reduction target slightly (and hit net zero by 2050), add 2.2 million jobs, save $7.7 billion in yearly household energy costs, increase GDP by $450 billion per year, and prevent 3,900 early deaths from air pollution."

"For Trump, they estimated that by 2030, he would stall out emission cuts (meaning an increase relative to Harris by 1.75 billion metric tons [of climate choking emissions] per year), destroy 1.7 million jobs, increase household energy spending by $32 billion, decrease GDP by $320 billion per year, and increase early deaths caused by air pollution by 2,100."

And yet, according to pre-election polling, the two candidates are largely tied when it comes to who voters believe will best handle the economy!

Cooper says blame not only falls on mainstream corporate media, but on Democrats who "really haven't been selling" their climate and economic agenda. Also, he tells me, I may be "imagining a much more rational and grounded political party in the Republicans than actually exists. This is a cult of personality," he emphasizes, with members who are "brain-poisoned" at this point. Despite the "overwhelming popularity" of federal government programs that help assure clean air and water, "the idea that [millions of renewable energy and manufacturing] jobs are going to cause a realignment among Republicans against liberal, clean energy, Toyota Prius-type stuff, is somewhat wishful thinking. Maybe in five or ten years it may be a different story."

These are, in fact, enormous, economy-shifting projects that take time to fully play out and integrate into society and the American psyche. "Under Biden, only about 17 percent of the $1.6 trillion authorized in his climate bills and the American Rescue Plan had gotten out the door as of this April," Cooper reports at The Prospect. "More has been done since then, but much more remains."

Despite those obstacles, the media really are failing to educate the electorate on this, failing to explain the extraordinary breadth of the Biden-Harris climate achievements which would likely be exceedingly popular if Americans fully understood them. "Nobody wants their air and water polluted outside of hard-core 'rolling coal' truck owners. Nobody wants to give their kid brain cancer so a chemical company can make more money," Cooper says, chalking up much of the lack of understanding among the electorate to "the incredibly biased information space in political media. Ordinary people are just not hearing about this stuff. When you tell swing voter panels about this stuff, most of them refuse to believe you!"

"We are talking about the industries of the 21st century," he stresses. "The whole world is re-gearing everything around renewable energy --- the cheapest energy in most of the world that has ever been produced. The whole industrial supply chain, everything, how we live, is being transformed. It's significant. I think it will be seen as the Industrial Revolution was."

True. Unless America elects Donald Trump, who has promised to gut it all. There is much more worth tuning in for in my conversation with Cooper today.

ALSO TODAY... Speaking of Trump's Project 2025, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) explains how Team Trump's promise to "dismantle the administrative state” includes dismantling and/or privatizing dozens of federal agencies, putting as many as one million jobs at risk; Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) cites the menace of Project 2025 in a U.S. House subcommittee hearing on whistleblowers today; And Jason Kravits wraps it all together in a brilliant Schoolhouse Rock-style satirical tune to end today's BradCast on a high note...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

Today on The BradCast: Rachel Maddow is an excellent broadcaster. But, boy, did she fall --- along with a bunch of other mainstream corporate media outlets on Friday --- for a wildly misleading spin on a new rule adopted last week by the Georgia State Board of Elections in advance of this November's elections. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to an expert to help set the record straight on this matter today, to explain how virtually everyone from WaPo to New York Times to Atlanta Journal Constitution to, yes, Maddow got it wrong...a few quick news items of note...

• It's possible, with Hurricane John about to slam into the West Coast of Mexico in the Pacific, and a different storm to be named Helene quickly spinning up in the Atlantic, that by week's end --- if John crosses the Mexican peninsula and enters the Gulf --- we could have two major hurricanes, both threatening landfall in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time. Climate change is wacky fun, in't?

• Nearly 500 are confirmed killed and more than 1,000 injured near Lebanon's border with Israel on Monday, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the deadliest barrage on Hezbollah since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. All of which is meant to extend the Israeli PM's time in office and out of jail on corruption charges filed well before his war on Gaza --- and even war crimes charges that are likely to come his way if and when he is ever finally removed from office. Hezbollah reportedly fired thousands of rockets in return at Israel.

• Congressional leaders have reportedly reached a deal to keep the Government open after the end of this month, as the new fiscal year begins on October 1. The deal would continuing funding the Government until at least December 20. The agreement to prevent a government shutdown just weeks before the Presidential election --- when every member of the U.S. House and one-third of the U.S. Senate will be on the ballot --- comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson gave up on a measure Donald Trump was insisting on to make it a crime for non-citizens to vote (which is already unlawful under federal law). We'll see if the agreement is finalized by both chambers, and whether Republicans will then send us over yet another fiscal cliff this Christmas.

• Newly released FBI data find violent crime in America, including murder, dropped precipitously from 2022 to 2023.

• The U.S. economy continues to outpace the rest of the developed world and the stock market remains at all-time record levels under the Biden-Harris Administration, even as Donald Trump's failing media company, which trades on the NASDAQ as DJT, plummeted another 10% on Monday to a new all-time low since going public, as the race is on to meet my prediction that his loser of a company could become a penny stock by Election Day!

• And, speaking of Trump grifts, it looks like Melania Trump, who has barely appeared on the campaign trail this season, was paid nearly $240,000 to speak at a political fundraiser at her own home in Mar-a-Lago last April. Who wrote the check to her remains unknown at this time.

And then, it's on to the story which has apparently freaked out Democrats and voting rights advocates since it was first misreported by pretty much everybody on Friday. That was the day that three Trump-supporting MAGA election denialists on the Georgia State Elections Board adopted a new rule requiring hand-counting at each precinct at the end of election night.

But the new rule requires only the hand-counting of the number of ballots cast at the precinct --- not the actual results on those ballots, as many have misreported --- before they are sealed up and sent to county headquarters.

Similar reconciliation of the number of ballots cast against the number of voters who signed in to the poll books or to the number of pages reported as scanned by the precinct tabulators, are carried out in many of other states without problem at the end of election night.

According to our guest today, an expert in Georgia's terrible touchscreen voting and scanning system, the process is likely to take anywhere from 15 minutes to a half an hour after the close of polls. But you wouldn't know that from the mainstream media coverage, with Democrats and Republican election officials alike in Georgia, screaming bloody murder that this new rule would lead to inaccurate tallies, delays in the count, and potentially add "months" to the time it will take to tally up results in the Peach State this year!

We're joined again today by the great MARILYN MARKS, longtime voting system expert and Executive Director of the Coalition for Good Governance. Her non-partisan organization is responsible for the federal lawsuit that ultimately banned Georgia's unverifiable, insecure touchscreen voting systems made by Diebold, only to see them replaced by Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger with similarly unverifiable and insecure touchscreen systems made by Dominion. She is also the woman who discovered and exposed the MAGA breach, copy and distribution of statewide voting system software in Coffee County, GA that resulted in criminal charges against five people, including Sidney Powell, in the state's racketeering felony indictment against Donald Trump and many others.

As Marks explains today, the mainstream media outlets were misreporting on Friday's new hand-count of the number of ballots cast rule "out of hysteria for no good reason." She confirms that "it's simply a ballot counting rule that most states have," allowing them to "know how many ballots you have collected" and to confirm that number before ballots are moved anywhere. "That is a common-sense rule. It will take about 20 minutes at most to implement at most of the polling places in Georgia --- that's a rough estimate --- and it is a safeguard on a lot of different things."

"If there are major discrepancies," between the number of ballots and the number signed into the poll books, she says, "that's the time to figure it out, not after all the equipment and people get moved."

Many Democrats --- justifiably --- fear that, if Trump loses in the state again, some Republican officials on the election boards at both the state and county level are hoping to find ways to create havoc and chaos that could delay certification and ultimately place the actual election results in doubt, leading to challenges in Court or Congress on January 6th next year.

"We seem to be in such a hyper-partisan environment right now," says Marks, "that if we can throw some mud, true or not, on the other side, it's a way to build enthusiasm for our team." But that, she suggests, is short-sighted and unhelpful given the very REAL concerns about the election in Georgia (and elsewhere.)

We also discuss, some of the very good reasons that Democrats should be concerned about the reported results in Georgia this year, particularly given the software breach of statewide voting systems in Coffee County that Sec. Raffensperger has refused to mitigate in any way before the 2024 election, including with software patches distributed by Dominion.

Marks is concerned by the "chaos" that could be caused by someone exploiting the Coffee County caper. "It would be so easy for someone to shut down the system by just writing code that would shut down all the machines at 10am on Election Day," she offers by way of just one example. "There's nothing Georgia could do about it. They are not prepared." In response, I offer an even simpler and arguably more chilling scenario at how a tiny group of people can create utter havoc in the state by simply claiming that the state's touchscreen systems have misprinted their ballots --- whether that's true or not. There is no way, with the systems, to determine if they are telling the truth.

Tune in for more on those actually real concerns about GA elections, as well as Marks' tips for voters in both Georgia and other states, including North Carolina, California, and anywhere else that voters may be forced to vote on a 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems at the polling place this year...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

From darkness to light on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... As an increasingly panicked Team Trump continues to find new depths in which to sink and new, more dangerous lows to drill down into --- Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world turned virulent Trump supporter, has gamed his increasingly rightwing social media site (which we still call Twitter) to force his obnoxious, dangerous, wildly false political commentary even beyond the nearly 200 million followers he has. All while turning off the very limited, crowdsourced fact-check system, for himself, even as it is supposed to apply to everyone else on the increasingly trash-filled site.

Among the results, a tweet of his this week that suggested someone should try and assassinated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It became a rare incident where even he decided he had gone too far and deleted the tweet after tens, if not hundreds of millions, had already seen it. (And, upon deleting it, going to on to blame everyone else for not appreciating his brilliant sense of humor).

That came after dozens and dozens of tweets this year, which have reached billions of people, falsely claiming that Democrats are bringing non-citizens into the country to vote in this year's election. The Washington Post, last week, did a deep dive into how Musk's false tweets have translated into very specific threats against elections officials around the country. "He's by no means unique," Maricopa County, Arizona's Republican Election Recorder told WaPo. "He just happens to have a very, very large microphone."

He's not the only one.

Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have spent the last week endangering the residents of Springfield, Ohio by spreading false claims about legal Haitian immigrants there (who they falsely describe as "illegal") destroying the town and eating the pets of other residents. The results of those lies: dozens of bomb threats that shutdown City Hall, schools, hospitals and has turned the Republican-run city into somewhat of a police state, as OH's Republican Governor was forced to deploy state law enforcement officials to protect town residents.

Kamala Harris, who doesn't utter falsehoods that threaten the lives of Americans, was asked about all of this madness during an forum with the National Association of Black Journalists this week. We thought her answer to that question was worth sharing in full today. It ends with this assertion: "This is exhausting and it's harmful. And it's hateful. And grounded in some age old stuff that we should not have the tolerance for. So, let's turn the page and chart a new way forward and say 'You can't have that microphone again.'"

THEN... Despite all of the above, there remains a huge number of Americans who regard themselves as very religious and yet appear dead set on voting again for the most un-religious person who has ever run for the White House.

Recent polling, however, shows that at least some of Trump's support from the religious community may be falling, even as other polling makes clear that the thrice-married, philandering and felonious former President still dominates the white Christian evangelical vote. At least the male voters who describe themselves as such.

But, according to our guest today, a white evangelical pastor himself, it doesn't have to be that way. And he is devoted to changing it. We're joined today by DOUG PAGITT, Executive Director and co-founder of Vote Common Good, a non-profit focused on "energizing and mobilizing people of faith to make the common good their voting criteria."

In a recent opinion piece for MSNBC, Pagitt detailed how his group's bus tour through battleground states this year is helping Christians to understand they don't have to vote Republican, while helping to teach Democratic candidates how to reach those voters, particularly in swing-states and counties.

So how did we get to such a place in this country, where a guy like Trump --- who has never been seen attending a regular religious service, either before, during, or after his Presidency --- would be the preferred candidate for a huge part of the religious community? Pagitt has a bunch of thoughts on all of this today.

"What's really going on is that the Democratic Party has had a pattern and reputation for not wanting religious voters," he tells me. "Kamala Harris is changing that. Joe Biden was changing that. Barack Obama worked to change that. But what Donald Trump exploited was this idea --- you hear him say, 'Democrats hate you religious people' --- somehow making out evangelicals to be both the rightful heirs of this nation as Christian Nationalists, but then also the persecuted minority. And somehow they get to hold both of these views."

Pagitt asserts that many Christians have, just by dint of birth, become Republican voters over the years. Because, as he says, "We don't know how to talk about faith in politics in the United States. We've been struggling with it since the founding of the country. We've never been good at it."

"But it doesn't have to be that way," he says. "Forty-four years ago, Jimmy Carter was an evangelical pastor from Georgia. He got 60% of the evangelical vote. In a lot of ways, the Democratic structure said to Republicans, 'You can have the religious white voters, we'll take the other voters.' That would be fine with me if we didn't keep electing someone like Donald Trump."

"The only reason we are out here, trying to get faith voters to consider voting for a Democrat for the first time in their life, is because this country cannot stand having Donald Trump have the power of the Presidency in his hand ever again."

Pagitt and his group have arguably made inroads. They are able to show deeply religious communities where they spent time in 2020 that swung radically in favor of Democrats after voting for Trump in 2016. He tells me that he believes their work can be critical in helping to do that again elsewhere, including in some of the most religious communities, where winning over a small subset of the electorate may be key to winning in marginal races for Congress and even the Presidency.

"There's an awful lot of people who have been told their whole life that Democrats are the enemy, and they're realizing they're not. But behavioral change is extremely slow," he explains today. "We know that three things always have to be in place when someone makes a behavioral change, whether that's doing a new diet or changing your voting habits."

"You have to take in some kind of new information that makes you think, 'Maybe I should do something different.' You need someone to invite you to actually behave differently based on that information. And then you need a community to participate in where people like you do that new thing. So many of these people, they don't have that. So we try to create that for them and let them know it's okay. It seems so rudimentary, but I've watched people with tears in their eyes when we say to them, 'If you choose to vote for a Democrat, first of all, it doesn't make you one. But even if it did, you're going to be okay. Your faith is still going to be alive.'"

We had a lot to talk about with Pagitt on today's show around all of this that I suspect you'll find enlightening. I know I did!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

I think we've got a humdinger for ya on today's BradCast. At least if you, like me, are still scratching your head every day as to why --- after all these years and all we now know about the disgraced former President and cognitively declining convicted criminal, and after last week's crushing debate defeat --- about a half of the nation's voters are still supporting this guy. Yes, his supporters are even out here in theoretically "liberal" Southern California, as our callers demonstrate today! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First, we catch up a bit on some of the weekend's news, including the little that is currently known about the second attempted assassination of Donald Trump at one of his golf courses on Sunday; the many lies Trump told about immigration, the economy and wildfires during an appearance out here in Los Angeles on Friday (when he threatened to let the state burn to the ground if California Gov. Gavin Newsom --- who he called "Newscum" --- refused to do Trump's bidding if he becomes President again); and as Trump ignored and exacerbated the number of bomb and terror threats now being made against the residents of Springfield, Ohio.

After nearly a full week of Trump (and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance) making false claims that Haitian immigrants in the town are "illegally" there --- (They aren't. Both President Biden and then President Trump granted them the right to be there under a 1952 law) --- and that they are eating the dog and cat pets of other residents, Trump continues to double-down and make things even more perilous for the folks of Springfield, both old and new.

The Ku Klux Klan and other neo-Nazis have now descended on the town. The state's Republican Governor Mike DeWine has decried the rhetoric and false claims by Trump and Vance as "disgusting". The woman who made the initial Facebook claim, highlighted by Vance, about a neighbor's cat disappearing has admitted she had no first-hand knowledge and says she regrets her post. And the city has had to shut down or lock down city hall, elementary schools, college campuses and hospital facilities over the past week, thanks to Trump supporters threatening political violence.

Despite all of that, Trump had the temerity on Sunday night to blame the "rhetoric" of Biden and Harris for a mentally unstable guy's failed attempt to shoot the former President at one of his Florida golf courses. While both Biden and Harris immediately condemned the thwarted attack, noting "there is no place for political violence in America", Trump charged that it was the President and Vice President's words that that has put HIM In danger. He went so far as to tell Fox "News" that it was "their rhetoric [that is] causing me to be shot at," in the same breath that he charged they "are destroying the country --- from both the inside and out."

So, with all that we know about this guy, how can it be that he is still largely neck and neck with Kamala Harris in pre-election polling just 50 days out from this year's critical election?!

I thought I'd open the phones today specifically to Trump supporters (and, yes, we have them here in Southern California) to answer that question, by inviting them to let us know why they are still on board with him. They don't get a free pass. I challenge them a bit, but let them explain themselves in the bargain.

And, yup, if we can believe the very first caller, "Luther," who says he is from Arkansas, it is for at least one of the very worst reasons you can possibly imagine. You'll decide if he's for real or not. He was rather convincing. But the callers that followed didn't necessarily have much better reasons for their support of this guy.

Anyway, you'll be the judge. And I welcome your comments in response. Give it a listen. I think you'll "enjoy" today's program...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

We're catching up with a lot of news on today's BradCast, as climate change ravages the globe and the critical November general election nears. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our many stories on another busy program...

• The death toll following Vietnam's climate change-fueled Typhoon Yagi climbs to 200, with more than a hundred still missing following flooding and landslides since the devastating storm blew ashore last weekend.

• Climate change-fueled Hurricane Francine is dumping up to 9 inches of water over parts of Louisiana, leaving hundreds of thousands of customers without power as it moves northward through the state and into the Mississippi Valley.

• In preparation for next year's Electoral College certification on January 6th, the Dept. of Homeland Security has, for the first time, declared that day's joint session of Congress to be a "National Security Special Event", on par with Presidential Inaugurations, U.N. General Assemblies and Super Bowls. The new designation is meant to help avoid another deadly security crisis akin to the Trump-incited insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on the same date in 2021.

• The first new polling taken since Kamala Harris' crushing defeat of Donald Trump at Tuesday's Presidential Debate in Philadelphia finds the Vice President's lead over the disgraced former President growing to 5 points nationally, according to Reuters/Ipsos. The survey offers a number of other interesting findings.

• Less than an hour after Tuesday's debate, superstar Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, encouraging her tens of millions of fans to register to vote. More than 300,000 visited the Vote.gov site she recommended in her endorsement during the 24 hours that followed. And on Wednesday night, at MTV's Video Music Awards, she again encouraged followers that were 18 and over to do so. In advance of Donald Trump's rally in Tucson, Arizona tonight, legendary Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Linda Ronstadt also encouraged her fans to vote for Harris, explaining that she felt a responsibility to do so publicly before the disgraced former President's Thursday evening appearance at a venue named after her, the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, in her hometown.

• This week, Kansas' Republican Sec. of State Scott Schwab sent a blistering letter to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, sharply criticizing the Trump-appointee for the disenfranchisement of about 1,000 Kansans whose August primary ballots were mailed back before the Election Day deadline, but either failed to include a USPS postmark or arrived later than the state's three-day grace period following Election Day. Schwab suggested some ballots mailed back on time are still arriving at county offices weeks later. Schwab's concerns were echoed the following day in what NBC News described as "an unusually frank joint open letter" to DeJoy from the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), excoriating the Postmaster General for failures to address numerous, longterm shortcomings that have alarmed the election officials. The letter reads, in part: "We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance issues with USPS election mail service. Failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process." As vote-by-mail ballots are beginning to go out to voters around the country, this is a good reminder to send them back early, to hand deliver them when possible, or to vote in person on or before Election Day (unless you are forced to vote on touchscreen systems at the polls. In which case, fight like hell to vote via hand-marked paper ballot via absentee or vote-by-mail.)

• Good news for young voters in Tarrant County (Fort Worth), Texas today. After more than four hours of impassioned public comment at the Commissioners Court, a list of 51 early voting sites was approved by a 4 to 1 vote that would keep open a number of sites at colleges campuses, such as UT Arlington and four Tarrant Community Colleges, that Tarrant's Republican County Judge, Tim O’Hare, wanted to shut down in opposition to local election officials. More than 10,000 students voted at the UT Arlington campus --- which has a majority of Hispanic students --- during early voting in the 2020 election. Thanks in no small part to a public outcry by local citizens, O'Hare's effort failed today.

• But potentially bad news for voters elsewhere in Texas this week, thanks to the state's criminally indicted and wildly corrupt Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Last week Paxton filed lawsuits against Travis County (Austin) and Bexar County (San Antonio) after County Commissioners in each of the two populous and Democratic-leaning counties hired a non-partisan firm to help reach and register non-registered voters. Paxton also threatened a similar suit against Harris County (Houston), the state's most populous (and Democratic-leaning) if they did the same. Critics are accusing Paxton of intimidation and attempting to suppress the Latino vote in the state ahead of the November election. So far, officials in both Bexar and Travis are sticking to their guns. Last month, TX state officials raided the homes of voting rights advocates, including an 87-year old woman, who volunteer with LULAC, the nation's largest and oldest Latino voting rights group. No charges have been filed in what many are decrying as a blatant attempt at voter suppression and intimidation by the state's hard-right Attorney General.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with coverage of the failure by ABC News to adequately cover climate change during this week's Presidential Debate in Philadelphia, even as heat and fires raged in the West and Hurricane Francine came ashore as a Category 2 in Louisiana...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

On today's BradCast, we take up the President's charge to stand "in defense of democracy". [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• During President Biden's solemn, somber and historic prime time Oval Office address to the nation on Wednesday evening (transcript here), to explain his Sunday decision to drop out of the 2024 Presidential race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for the top of the ticket, he focused in no small part on the need to defend democracy against wannabe "kings and dictators," while he charged that "the cause of American democracy itself" is now at stake. "We must unite to protect it," he implored. We discuss and continue to join that fight.

• Meanwhile, as the U.S. House on Wednesday voted 417 to 0 to create a special task force to probe what happened during the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified on Wednesday that, in fact, nearly two weeks since the shooting, we have no idea "whether or not it's a bullet or shrapnel" that wounded Trump's ear. In fact, to date, no medical expert or law enforcement official has ever offered an official public accounting of what actually happened to the former President that day, even as mainstream corporate media have simply taken the social media claim by Trump, an inveterate liar, that a "bullet...pierced the upper part of my right ear" as fact. Ever since, Trump has exploited the event to claim at his convention, in rally speeches and on social media, that he "took a bullet for democracy."

  As we detail today, however, all available evidence suggests that is simply a lie. The man who, himself, has become the greatest threat to American democracy in modern history is now using the near miss for stolen valor to pretend to be a defender of democracy.

  As Ernie Canning explains at The BRAD BLOG this week, whether Trump "took a bullet" or not, it was not "for democracy," as investigators have reportedly found no evidence to suggest the shooting was politically motivated. And, as TPM's Josh Marshall has been reporting for some time, evidence suggests it was more likely some sort of flying shrapnel that grazed Trump's ear, along with causing similar minor injuries to several local cops who were near the stage that day. In any event, the media's failure to even ask the Trump Campaign about these details --- as one rally goer was actually killed and two others critically wounded that day --- for apparent fear of angering the former President, is "bizarre" and "a total journalistic failure" to the American people and to history. It also, as we note, underscores tyranny expert and author Timothy Snyder's repeated warnings about giving up power to would-be autocrats by "obeying in advance." Much more on all of this on today's show.

• We've got more details today on the DNC's plan to begin a virtual roll-call vote on August 1st next week --- well in advance of their August 19 convention in Chicago --- in order to finalize the party's Presidential and Vice-Presidential nominees no later than August 7th. Why are they doing this? No, it's not to ensure there are no challengers to presumptive nominee Kamala Harris. Rather, it is thanks to a story we've been covering since the beginning of the year about the failure by Republican state lawmakers to change the statutory deadline for submitting certified party nominees for the Buckeye State ballot by August 7th, as they've done for many years, as needed, when Republicans hold their national conventions late in the summer. Yes, state lawmakers, in a late special session, finally changed the statutory deadline. But the new law doesn't take effect until September 1, opening opening up Democrats to a potential legal challenge by Republicans as to whether their nominee can lawfully be on the state's ballot at all this November. Tune in for more details.

• More news "in defense of democracy" out of Ohio this week. A ballot measure for a state constitutional amendment that would create an independent redistricting committee has qualified for the November ballot! If adopted by voters, it could end the state GOP's wildly gerrymandered Congressional and state legislative maps for 2026. Otherwise, Republican Buckeye State politicians will continue to be allowed to choose their own voters, rather than vice versa, until at least 2030.

• And still more good news "in defense of democracy" from the Buckeye State today! A federal judge has struck down part of a sweeping election reform package adopted by Ohio Republicans last year that makes it a felony for disabled voters to allow caregivers, roommates, in-laws or even grandchildren to help them cast their absentee ballot by mail or drop box. The voter suppression law threatened to charge anyone but immediate family members (which apparently doesn't include grandchildren!) with felonies for helping those voters in need to cast their ballot. That, as the CDC finds that people with disabilities make up more than a quarter of the U.S. adult population.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news on explosive wildfires in the U.S. and Canadian west; the two hottest days ever recorded on Planet Earth (this past Sunday and Monday); and a focus on the Republicans' shocking Project 2025 plans to gut federal science agencies --- such as the EPA and National Weather Service --- along with climate science and many if not most environmental protections and climate change initiatives...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

Welp, we've just been through about three political weeks in this country unlike any other, at least in my lifetime, as briefly summarized at the top of today's BradCast. And, before I'm even able to get today's show posted, that summary is already out of date, with the breaking news just after airtime that President Biden has COVID again. Good lord. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Other than that, to help me "hold on for dear life" amid the political whirlwind, I brought back our friends and fellow old school bloggers HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of The Pro Left Podcast to try and help us make sense of everything that continues to unspool this week. Among those things...

• The weekend's assassination attempt of Donald Trump by a registered Republican and how all of that has (or hasn't) affected the current state of the Presidential race.
• The temporarily-undergrounded and now-reemerging battle among elected Democrats as to whether Joe Biden should or shouldn't be replaced on the Presidential ticket.
• The "sign of weakness" in naming of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as the GOP's Vice-Presidential pick and what Trump hopes to gain from selecting a former critic-turned-toady who opposes support for our democratic allies in Ukraine and seeks a nationwide abortion ban (even in cases of rape or incest) as his running mate.
• Other noteworthy observations from the Republican Party's "unity" convention, including the curious and controversial anti-corporate elite/pro-union speech delivered at the RNC by Teamsters President Sean O'Brien, why Republicans refuse to learn how to pronounce Kamala Harris' first name after more than 3 years in office, and the media's terrible job in covering the entire affair. (Especially MSNBC in this case!)

All of that and too much more on today's BradCast! Enjoy!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

Well, this is all going well. Though, somehow, today's BradCast made me feel moderately better about it all for the moment. (See?! He's a moderate!) Anyway, I'm hoping you'll feel somehow marginally better as well after listening to today's program. [Audio link to full show follows this brief summary.]

We begin with a few noteworthy news items for helpful, or at least interesting, context...

• A new survey from a Democratic pollster finds that while Donald Trump is currently beating Joe Biden nationally by one point in head-to-head polling, Kamala Harris is actually ahead of Trump by a point in the same poll. A different Dem, who nobody is talking about (for good reason?) also leads Trump in the same survey.
• Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she stands behind the President, though offered a less than full-throated endorsement for his continuing candidacy on a cable new interview this morning, though she absolutely did not say that Biden should either "Reconsider Decision to Stay in the Race" or "consider dropping out" as New York Times falsely reported before correcting their headline, without explanation, after being called out (and after more than 200 articles focused on Biden's performance in the two weeks since the debate.)

And then we're joined for some much-needed common sense --- and a few similarly much-needed belly laughs (between tears) --- by two of our favorite roundtable guests: HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of The Professional Left Podcast.

You'll never guess what we're discussing today! But we've got a lot of it to talk about, and both Digby and Drifty are on their game.

"I will fight like hell for whoever is the top of the Democratic ticket come November," Driftglass (occasionally known as Bill) tells us. "The threat from Donald Trump outweighs every other consideration. Thus far, for the last three and a half years, [Biden] has governed the country remarkably well, steered through many crises, and done right by me. I think it's time we buckle down and say, 'Look, whoever the Democratic nominee is, is better than Trump.' Period. Full stop."

For her part, Digby concurs with the sentiment, but notes that, although there is no indication yet he plans to do so --- even with support on Capitol Hill for him to continue being lukewarm at best --- if Biden does decide to drop out: "I think that I would really, really like him to do it on the night that Donald Trump is going to accept the nomination for his party, and just stab him as hard in the back on his way out as he can, because you know that Donald Trump would do the same to him."

Now we're talking. And there is much more both insight and snark where that came from today, including discussion of...

• Wildly unhelpful and misleading corporate media coverage.
• What we should learn from the election in France on Sunday.
• Whether he can serve four more years or not, can Biden still actually win in November?
• Would Harris have a better shot?
• The disconnect between elected officials, media "experts" and actual Democratic voters on the ground.
• If Biden were to step down, is there time and process for a reasonably non-chaotic way to transition to a new candidate?
• Would Digby and Driftglass vote for George W. Bush or even Dick Cheney if one them became the Democratic candidate to take on Donald Trump?
• And who is this "Johnny Unbeatable" guy? And where should Democrats find him?

All of that and much more on today's unbeatable BradCast...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

Today on The BradCast: Either Trump wins or the nation gets it, apparently. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

For months now, the Republican propaganda outlet known as Fox "News" has been leading the rest of the rightwing echosphere in misleading the public about this year's election. To listen to their 24/7 lockstep message, it is a metaphysical impossibility that Donald Trump could lose this November. If he does, it can only be because Democrats have stolen the election "again", as "they did in 2020."

While its hosts almost certainly know better, they have been characterizing Joe Biden as so old and feeble --- and Trump so wildly popular --- that there can only be one legitimate outcome this year: a Trump victory. A Trump landslide, in fact. Anything short of that is, as Fox is dangerously grooming its brain-poisoned viewers to believe, due to massive fraud carried out by Democrats.

We're joined today by MATT GERTZ, longtime Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, to discuss his research --- detailed in an op-ed last week --- on how "Fox News is helping Trump plan another Jan. 6-style assault on democracy."

"If you look at the last two presidential elections --- in 2016 Donald Trump won, in 2020 Donald Trump lost --- the one thing that they have in common is that in both cases, Donald Trump claimed to have been the victim of massive election fraud," Gertz tells me today. "He always does this. It is the most predictable thing in politics, that Donald Trump will claim he is the victim of election fraud with no evidence to that effect." But now, of course, Fox "News" is joining in on the scam and the "guard rails" that were in place in 2020 in the Republican Party are all now all but gone, warns Gertz.

"What Fox News, and the rightwing media more broadly, has been doing over the past several years, is prime their audiences to assume that any election that doesn't end with a massive Trump victory is the result of illegitimate votes being cast, that it is a rigged election against Donald Trump and they should respond with all possible action to prevent Joe Biden from being allowed to remain in office if he wins."

"What's different now is that they know what the result can be," charges Gertz. "They know that all of these claims about election fraud incite their viewers, that it leads them to even march upon the Capitol to try to prevent the peaceful transition of power. And they're doing it anyway."

I have been wondering aloud of late which outcome concerns me the most, a Trump victory or a Trump loss. It might be a toss-up right about now...

THEN... We've been covering the oppressive heat dome across much of the nation --- and elsewhere in the world --- for some time now. Last week, we added wildfires in several states to the mix, along with the first named storm of hurricane season spinning quickly up before slamming Mexico and the southern coast of Texas. Now we can add massive flooding to the mix, as several states in the Upper Midwest --- where South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota meet --- inundated over the weekend with as much as eight times their typical rain fall for this part of the year. In one town, the flood gauge was submerged!

Many of those states are run by Republican Governors who are also climate change denialists, reminding us, yet again, that the stakes this November could not be higher, as Trump has vowed to rollback all of the landmark climate achievements of the current President.

In related news, as temperature records are being shattered around the globe, at least 1,300 pilgrims at the annual Hajj in the Saudi Arabia's city of Mecca died from heat stroke as temperatures climbed above 124 degrees Fahrenheit. And, oddly enough, back here in California, on the central and northern coast, unseasonably cold ocean temps --- due to a bizarre weather pattern from Oregon --- have led officials to issue warnings to beach goers to stay out of the water for any length of time to avoid hypothermia, even as temperatures inland climbed over 100 degrees this weekend. More madness and chaos in our climate changed world...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

Today on The BradCast we try and nip another completely false, outrageous rightwing Zombie Lie in the bud before it eats too many brains and becomes canon in the Wingnut Multiverse. Wish us luck. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

But first, a few news items today...

• Extreme, climate change-fueled weather is now pretty much just exploding everywhere. Today, the two latest chapters: a pair of deadly wildfires in New Mexico and "A" is for "Alberto", the first named storm of what is expected to be an exceptionally busy and intense hurricane season given the unprecedented record warmth of ocean waters. This particular storm, in the Gulf, appears to be heading toward Mexico, though its already grazing parts of Texas with a ton of water.

• Tuesday's Congressional Primary elections in Virginia, Oklahoma and Georgia appear to have gone off smoothly enough for now, with the biggest story coming out of Virginia in the Republican primary for the 5th U.S. House District. Far-right Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Bob Good was thought to be all but done for, as he was targeted by both Donald Trump (because Good dared to support DeSantis in the Presidential Primary) and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (because Good was one of eight Republicans who voted him out of the job earlier this year.) An even farther Right, well-funded state Senator by the name of John McGuire was set to easily unseat Good, and still might. But, as of airtime, there are just 321 votes between them out of more than 62,000 tallied to date. Counting of late mail-in will resume tomorrow between the two election deniers following a break for today's Juneteenth federal holiday.

• And, down in Louisiana today, far-right lawmakers and the state's new far-right Governor Jeff Landry have decided they don't care much for the U.S. Constitution's establishment clause, and have decided to mandate that the Ten Commandments must be posted in every public elementary, middle school, high school and college classroom in the state. That'll show those U.S. Constitution loving heathens! The effort is obviously an attempt to bring the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court in hopes that its corrupted rightwing majority will overturn decades of precedent respecting the separation of church and state. And I bet they will.

THEN... Last September, California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new state law to increase the minimum wage for fast food workers at national companies with more than 60 stores from $16/hour to $20/hour. Before it even took effect on April 1 this year, Rupert Murdoch's rightwing media outlets (Wall Street Journal, NY Post, Fox "News") were working overtime in cahoots with an outfit calling itself the California Business and Industrial Alliance (CABIA) to claim that thousands of fast food jobs had already been cut after Newsom signed the bill into law.

A UCLA Economics Professor by the name of Lee Ohanian either went along with it or fell for it, detailing the supposed massive job loss in an article at the right-leaning policy think-tank called the Hoover Institution, part of Stanford University, citing WSJ's misleading employment statistics. It all offered a nice academic patina to the (false) claim that nearly 10,000 fast food workers had been laid off between last September and January, thanks to Newsom and California's Marxist policies.

CABIA then happily cited the "Hoover Institution" in a full-page advertisement in USA Today earlier this month, a mock obituary declaring "In Memoriam: Victims of Newsom's Minimum Wage". The ad cites Hoover for its claim that "nearly 10,000 fast-food jobs" were lost "after $20 minimum wage signed last fall." The ad details all the hard times for poor McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subway, Rubio's California Grill, and about half a dozen others. All victims of California's impossible idea that people who work should receive a living wage in exchange.

Turns out, as our guest today, Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist and author MICHAEL HILTZIK reports at the L.A. Times, the claim, the statistics used and the entire argument put forth by WSJ, NY Post, Fox "News", CABIA and Hoover is all "baloney, sliced thick." And Hiltzik has the receipts from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Federal Reserve to prove it.

In fact, Hiltzik details, as it turns out, fast food employment actually went up from last September to this past January --- when using seasonally adjusted figures --- and even continued to go up after the law took effect on April 1, with employment in the sector outpacing April of 2023 (apples to apples!) by nearly 7,000 jobs.

"What we're dealing with here is the misuse of employment figures by essentially using non-seasonally adjusted figures, rather than what CABIA and the Wall Street Journal should be using, which is seasonally-adjusted," Hiltzik tells me, describing the scam. "When you have an industry in which employment fluctuates during the year for seasonal reasons, you have to use seasonally-adjusted figures. That's the case with fast food restaurants. Everyone in the restaurant industry knows this. Employment in restaurants peaks in September, year after year after year. You have to compare each month to the same month in other years, and that's why the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that, in fact, employment in the sector in California went up compared to the same earlier period."

"Any economist knows that you absolutely must use seasonally-adjusted figures. The Wall Street Journal didn't seem to know this, even though they're supposed to be experts in finance and the economy," he scoffs.

Hiltzik describes the Murdoch/CABIA/Hoover sleight-of-hand as "fabricated" and "false", and we discuss why it's happening --- an has been nationalized --- in the first place. He also debunks the lie that Rubio's Grill has had to close 48 stores across the state thanks to CA's new leftist law. (Spoiler: It was private equity, not the $20 min. wage, that dunnit.)

For the record, though Ohanian, the UCLA professor who laundered the Journal's purposely misleading numbers at the Hoover Institution, admitted to Hiltzik that he got it wrong, his April 24, 2024 article is still posted there without correction or retraction...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

There are just 140 days until the November 5 General Elections. Threats against them by adversaries both foreign and domestic are simmering and/or growing. We discuss some of them --- and much more --- on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• Kari Lake loses yet again. This time, it's the Arizona state Court of Appeals which has, again, rejected her claims that the 2022 gubernatorial election was stolen from her when she lost it by some 17,000 votes to Democrat Katie Hobbs.

• Unexplained mass texts, warning of voter intimidation, falsely suggesting they were sent by the Spartanburg County Elections Office during South Carolina's down-ballot primaries last week, should serve as a warning for this November's elections.

• U.S. officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are reportedly sending their own warnings, privately, to candidates in the U.S. who, they say, are being targeted with disinformation campaigns by foreign adversaries, including Russia, China and Iran.

• And, in what should serve as yet another warning before November, a pro-Kremlin hacker group, said to be closely allied with Russia's intelligence services, reportedly took down the websites of a number of political parties and other institutions on the first day of voting in Europe's recent parliamentary elections.

• New York's highest court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Donald Trump to lift the gag order barring him from attacking witnesses, jurors and the family members of prosecutors or the judge in the hush money/election interference case in which the disgraced former President was recently found guilty of 34 criminal felonies.

• And, speaking of, the Biden-Harris Campaign is finally using Trump's shameful court losses --- for both felony crimes and civil liabilities --- against him, in an aggressive television ad and mass emails to supporters taking him to task as a "convicted felon" as well as "a liar and a fraud". Of course, even now, Team Biden will have to overcome ridiculous reporting on the effort by the New York Times, whose headline yesterday (until it was changed) read "Biden Campaign Ad Paints Trump as a Felon". Um...."paints" him as a felon?! He is a felon!

• After telling us for months that President Biden is so mentally debilitated that "he can't string two sentences together," Donald Trump supporters like Sean Hannity at Fox "News" are now working overtime to try and lower expectations for him in advance of next week's first Presidential debate.

• Maryland's Democratic Governor Wes Moore on Monday pardoned about 175,000 convictions related to marijuana and paraphernalia possession over the years. The long-overdue pardons, following the state's full legalization of marijuana last year, will help tens of thousands of Black and Brown people who were disproportionately charged and convicted over the many decades of our failed, frequently racist "war on drugs". Moore's action follows President Biden's 2022 mass pardon of thousands charged under federal marijuana law and his request to state Governors to take similar action given that most cannabis related crimes were brought under state law.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with news on hundreds of millions in the U.S. now (or soon) facing record heat from the Midwest to the East Coast and an early wildfire season out West; Similarly oppressive heat has been bearing down from Greece to the Middle East; Calgary is facing a serious water crisis in Canada; France's nukes are being shut down by cheaper renewable energy sources like wind and solar; And a major rail company must cough up some $400 million for unlawful trespass against a native American tribe...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

Far-right Republicans in the Lone Star State are telling us about their extreme plans. Why are both state and national media downplaying them? We discuss on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST UP... The Presidential Primary season comes to a close this week, with Tuesday's contests in New Jersey, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, Iowa and D.C. (Though Democrats in Guam and the Virgin Islands still have a chance to ring in this weekend! And non-Presidential primaries will continue in many states in the week's ahead!) We've got some of your noteworthy results fron Tuesday today, such that there are any, including Presidential results reflecting small, if notable numbers of voters on each sides of the aisle who remain dissatisfied with both President Biden and convicted felon Donald Trump as their party's nominee.

THEN... This week, lawmakers in the very narrowly GOP-controlled chambers of Arizona's state legislature became the latest such body to try and pass new laws mimicking Texas' Senate Bill 4. That law, currently under federal challenge by the Biden Administration, grants unprecedented authority to state and local law enforcement officials to arrest people suspected of being in the country unlawfully and allows state judges to deport them. Those are roles traditionally played by federal, not state, officials. In Arizona, the Democratic Governor vetoed a similar effort earlier this year, so GOP lawmakers are now moving to place the measure on the state's already very long November ballot.

What happens in the increasingly radicalized state of Texas, unfortunately, does not stay in Texas, where Republicans hold solid majorities in both chambers of the state legislature, every single statewide office (since 1994), and every seat on the state Supreme Court. Those Republicans have only become more radical with each passing year, as evidenced by the state GOP's horrifying official party platform [PDF] adopted at their recent state party convention.

Just a few of the many planks, among others, call for doctors to be charged with homicide for carrying out an abortion; the Bible to be taught by chaplains in public schools; the deportation of noncitizens living lawfully in the country if they happen to participate in the wrong public protest; the withdraw of the U.S. from the United Nations and the organization's removal from U.S. soil.

Perhaps most disturbing (at least to me), the manifesto calls for a new law to mandate that statewide officials must win not only a majority in the state, but majorities in more than half of Texas' 254 counties in order to win office. That measure, if turned into law, would make it largely impossible for any Democrat to ever win statewide office again, given that the vast majority of the state's liberals are populated in a handful of large counties that are home to the state's major cities. Texas would become a one party state.

The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty this week described the TX GOP party platform as "hair-raising" and a sign that the state GOP has "gone off the deep end". But, at the same time, she marginalizes the document as "not a serious policy road map."

It is not only national media downplaying it. The Austin American Statesman describes the platform as little more "a wish list...than a road map that will be followed...by lawmakers in Austin or Washington". The otherwise excellent Texas Tribune similarly downplays the stated threats to democracy (and just about everything else) in their own coverage.

But our guest today, ANDREA GRIMES, an Austin-based journalist and activist who has been covering state GOP conventions since 2010, argued in an op-ed at MSNBC late last week that such views by major media outlets "aren’t merely outdated. They’re patently incorrect, contradicted by demonstrable evidence that the Texas GOP platform has been driving policy in Texas and beyond not just recently, but for several years."

She joins us to detail that case today, warning that while all of these planks may sound crazy, increasingly radicalized and extremist Republicans and their office holders in Texas "and beyond" are telling us exactly what they plan to do and have a record, going back years now, of enacting into law some of the state GOP party's most appalling measures. Once fringey ideas that began as little more than seemingly buffoonish platform planks dismissed by media outlets as sops to the party's most extremist elements have since become mainstream Republican party orthodoxy and enacted into law in Texas and many other states. The failure by mainstream media to notice and warn that "these people are not messing around" continues to ill-serve the nation.

Grimes details how the problem goes back to at least the "Tea Party" days and the "white racist reactionary political movement" that rose up in response to the nation's first Black President. But that has accelerated, she says, since 2016 "with the rise of Trump" and "a Republican Party that is living its best, most crazy life at this point, achieving win after win in terms of policy."

So why are these state GOP party platforms, much of which have become law in recent years, still being downplayed by editors at mainstream state and national media outlets, rather than being regarded as the warnings that they are?

"The phrase that continues to come into my head over and over is 'normalization bias'," Grimes tells me. "It's very difficult to come to grips with the true terrors of our political reality because they are outrageous. It is outrageous for Samuel Alito to be flying an upside-down American flag at his home. It is outrageous for Trump to foment an insurrection. It's outrageous for insurrectionists to storm the U.S. Capitol. These things are outrageous. And I think there's a sense among members of the mainstream media that, if they can strive to pursue the maintenance of objectivity and normalization, that things will somehow even out on their own, and they won't be asked to truly describe the world as it is. They won't be asked to go into this uncomfortable place of appearing biased, when in fact they would simply be describing reality."

"American journalism is so rooted in this conceit of objectivity. It is so beholden to this idea," she adds. We've got much more to discuss along these lines today, including whether there is any analogue to this phenomenon on the Democratic side (spoiler alert: nope, nothing even close) and what, if anything, can now be done by Americans to stem the tide of radicalism, particularly if media outlets continue to fail call it out for what it is. It's a great conversation, I think, that I hope you tune in for!

FINALLY... Just before the close of today's show, news breaks out of Georgia that the state Appeals Court has placed a pause on Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' sprawling conspiracy indictment against Trump and 18 co-conspirators for their alleged criminal scheme to steal the 2020 election in Georgia, as an appeal by the defendants to remove Willis from the case moves forward. Upshot for now: The case was highly unlikely, at this point, to get to trial before November. Now it absolutely won't.

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

How many times did the disgraced, twice-impeached, four-time criminally indicted former President tell us he would "absolutely" be taking the oath to testify in his own defense at his 2016 election interference trial in New York? More times than we can count. Each time was a lie, as discussed among other matters on today's BradCast, as closing arguments are set to begin next week, before jury deliberations in the first-ever criminal trial of a U.S. President. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to today's "ketchup" konversation on Trump's first criminal trial, we touch on a few noteworthy results out of primary and special elections in Georgia, Kentucky, Oregon and California on Tuesday, along with problem reports for voters and tabulation out of Georgia, Kentucky and, from last week's primaries, in both Baltimore and Prince George's County, Maryland.

Then, we're joined once again by award-winning columnist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, of Salon and Hullaballoo, and former attorney and lifelong Republican KEITH BARBER, who now regularly blogs on legal matters as "KeithDB" at the progressive Daily Kos.

On Tuesday, the Defense rested in Donald J. Trump's criminal trial in New York on 34 felony counts related to a hush-money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 election, in a successful effort to help him cheat to win it. The trial has focused on the subsequent, allegedly falsified reimbursements made by Trump during his first year in the White House to his then lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen to cover it all up.

Last week, Cohen finished his testimony as the final witness for the Prosecution. This week, Robert Costello, a cartoonishly thuggish lawyer buddy of both Trump and Rudy Giuliani, took the stand as one of just two witnesses called by the Defense. After a turn last week before the GOP's U.S. House "Weaponization of Justice" Committee, Costello would be the final witness for the Defense, in what turned out to be a wildly failed effort to try and discredit Cohen.

We catch up on all of that today, as we discuss, among other things...

• Justice Juan Merchan's upbraiding of Costello during his obnoxious testimony as the Defense's star witness, turning what might have been a mild win for Trump following cross-examination last week of Cohen, into what both Parton and Barber characterize as a disaster for the Defense. According to Parton, "It was really stupid of them to call him, knowing that the prosecution already knew what he had to say...He was bombastic, he was rude. ... Costello looked like a hired gun."

• To the surprise of absolutely no one, Trump failed to take the witness stand in his own defense after all, following months of promising to do so. It may have been the only smart thing he has done to help his case during the entire trial. As Parton notes, "Trump saw him as a good stand-in for himself," as he was almost certainly testifying at the instance of Trump and against advice of counsel. It went at least as poorly for Costello as it would have gone for the former President turned current Defendant, had he taken the stand.

• Barber details what he sees as "the missing link" in the Prosecution's case and "the biggest weakness" in the Defense's cases; how the jury is likely to view Trump's lack of testifying in his own defense ("The jury will be strongly admonished by the judge to not consider Donald Trump's failure to testify"); and what exactly they will be charged with deciding when they are finally instructed by the judge --- likely beginning next week --- to begin deliberations.

• Parton discusses her biggest concerns about the case, and how the mainstream corporate media has failed, yet again, in its responsibility of accurately reporting on the threat to the nation represented by Trump. Barber casts more blame on his old party, the Republicans.

• And, in a related matter today, we turn to the federal criminal indictment against Trump down in Florida for stealing highly classified national security documents and refusing to return them to the Government. On Wednesday, earlier court documents related to the eventual search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago, were unsealed, leading Trump to lie about the FBI being "locked and loaded" in an attempt to "assassinate" him during the search...when Trump was in an entirely different state.

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)

It's received almost zero attention or notice, but the Republican appointees to the Federal Election Commission on Thursday tried to overturn a bedrock principle of American democracy: transparency of contributions and the identities of donors to political campaigns. The move caught us here at The BradCast by surprise, but we feel slightly better after hearing that our guest today, one of the nation's foremost experts on campaign finance, also just learned about this unprecedented effort. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST UP... Two unusual rulings from the packed, stolen and corrupted U.S. Supreme Court. Unusual for several reasons. One, because both oppose rightwing advocacy. Two, because a majority of rightwingers on the Court voted in favor of both of them. And three, because the Court's liberals voted in a bloc against one of them! We try to make sense of all of that for you today in each of the two rulings.

One came late on Wednesday, when the Court invoked the so-called Purcell Principle, which prevents changes to election rules, laws and district maps too close to an election, theoretically in order to avoid confusion by voters or election administrators. But this principle is opportunistically invoked by the rightwing Court when they feel like it --- even it means allowing, for example, the use of a U.S. House District map that has been found unconstitutional by the courts --- and ignored when they don't.

Their unsigned shadow-docket ruling [PDF] on Wednesday, however, invoked Purcell to allow a U.S. House District map that was newly approved by Louisiana's GOP-controlled legislature. It adds a second Black-majority voting district in the state after its previous map was found to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act following a years-long legal fight. But after the new map was approved by the state earlier this year, a group of self-described "non-Black voters" sued, claiming the new map was an unlawful racial gerrymander. A 3-judge panel on the 5th Circuit agreed and ordered a new new map. That is the order that was blocked on Wednesday by SCOTUS, allowing the second Black-majority district to stand as is, at least for 2024, even as the Court's liberal Justices, to the surprise of many, voted in against the rightwing majority. If you're confused as to why, tune in! We explain all!

The other unusual SCOTUS ruling came today, via a 7 to 2 majority opinion [PDF] written by Justice Clarence Thomas(!) and opposed only by fellow rightwing Justices Sam Alito and Neil Gorsuch. The majority opinion rejected an effort by the sleazy payday lending industry to kill the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

The CFPB was the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren during the Obama Administration, before she became a U.S. Senator. It was created on the heels of the subprime mortgage crisis that led to the Great Recession. To avoid industry influence on funding of the federal government's only consumer-oriented agency, it was housed inside of the Federal Reserve and allowed to draw up to $600 million per year for its budget, rather than go through the Congressional appropriations process each year. The payday lender group filed suit to argue the CFPB's funding mechanism ran afoul of the Constitution's Appropriations Clause and, therefore, all of the CFPB's actions since its 2010 founding, including billions of dollars in fines leveed against their industry, must all be rolled back and the agency dissolved.

Thomas, the Court's liberals, and three more of its Republican appointees flatly rejected the lender's case. They held that, though its funding mechanism is somewhat outside the norm, Congress may still change the way it is funded at any time. Also, as the majority opinion notes, there have been other agencies, such as the Customs Service and USPS, which have had similar, non-annual standing appropriations since the founding of the country.

NEXT... On Thursday, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) held an historic vote on a new rule to allow campaign donors to remain anonymous if they claimed that allowing their identities to become public would lead to harassment. The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) already allows some very rare exceptions for members of groups who are shown to have been historically harassed by the U.S. Government itself. Beyond that, however, allowing for campaign donors to remain anonymous challenges the very basis of our system of open, transparent, democratic elections.

We're joined today by CRAIG HOLMAN, longtime government affairs and ethics lobbyist at the non-profit watchdog Public Citizen. He is helping to lead the fight against this startling effort headed up by Trump-appointed FEC Commissioner Alan Dickerson.

The new rule "cuts into the very fabric of a functional democratic society," argues Public Citizen in its public comment against the rule. They note it would "vastly expand the donor [disclosure] exemption far beyond its original purpose, would undermine effective disclosure of the sources of political spending, deprive voters of critical election information, swamp the FEC under a wave of new paperwork, and runs contrary to the core mission of the agency." Other than that, it's great!

"What I really find astounding is that people of all partisan persuasions, Democrats and Republicans, have always believed in disclosure," Holman tells me today. "That's the one pillar of campaign finance law that no one has really come out against. The Republicans may come out against contribution limits, regulation of money in politics, but they always say to have transparency so we know where the money is coming from. This is the very first time that the FEC has encroached upon that principle."

The good(ish) news for now, is that he reports the Commission deadlocked, in a three-to-three vote along partisan lines today. That kills it for the moment. Though, in a second vote today, Holman says they agreed to ask the FEC's General Counsel to study the matter and report back in 75 days. That, he says, is likely to result in a second attempt by Dickerson later this year. Holman says he knows Dickerson to be a "hardcore deregulation" supporter. But "this is the first time the FEC has addressed the actual issue: 'Should we just get rid of disclosure altogether?'"

"Fortunately the FEC deadlocked," Holman says. But "that means three Republicans were saying 'Yes, let's get rid of disclosure!' That's frightening. We only defeated this resolution by a deadlock vote."

Holman has much more on "how absurd" Dickerson's proposal is, and the fact that "it caught us all by surprise." He also fills us in on a petition that he has filed for a new FEC rule that will be voted on next month regarding mandatory disclosure by campaigns when they use deepfake audio and video, created by Artificial Intelligence, to mislead voters.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as wildfires continue to explode in Canada; Broadcast media continues to ignore Donald Trump's billion-dollar quid pro quo proposal to Big Oil donors; and Joe Biden takes on China regarding the sale of electric vehicles and solar panels in the U.S...

[NOTE: The BradCast will be off at the beginning of next week due to a family funeral. We'll be back soon!]

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
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!)