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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Damages from California's storms to top $1 billion; No, offshore wind did not kill whales off U.S. northeast coast; Extreme weather disasters displaced 3.3 million Americans in 2022; PLUS: Hand-feeding manatees in Florida appears to be saving the species... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Pakistan blackout: Cash-strapped nation cuts power to save money, then can't turn it back on; Protest in Atlanta over state police killing of environmental activist turns violent; How Texas’ electricity plan could change the grid; EPA takes charge of Alabama landfill fire after finding carcinogens in air samples; 1st small modular nuclear reactor certified for use in US; Depleted under Trump, 'traumatized' EPA struggles with its mission ... PLUS: New solar panels help farmers harness full lights spectrum to improve crop yields... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast: Naturally. Now they're coming for citizen ballot initiatives too. They really do hate democracy, don't they?

But, first up today... As we await several criminal indictments hopefully headed the way of our failed, twice-impeached former President, an order released by a federal Judge in Florida last night was particularly satisfying.

It came in response to a motion for sanctions by Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and more than a dozen other defendants in a failed lawsuit filed by Donald Trump and his latest foolish attorney/sucker, Alina Habba, last year. In fact, the first version of Trump's suit was so deficient and devoid of facts or even actual charges, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks was kind enough to allow them to refile it before dismissing the second, longer, but no better version with prejudice.

On Thursday night, Judge Middlebrooks, in a blistering (and I mean blistering) 46-page order [PDF], explained why he was granting the defendants' request for sanctions. He began thusly: "This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim. ... Thirty-one individuals and entities were needlessly harmed in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative. A continuing pattern of misuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law, portrays judges as partisans, and diverts resources from those who have suffered actual legal harm."

And that's just the first two paragraphs! It gets even more brutally scathing from there, before concluding with an order for Trump and Habba to pay nearly $1 million to the defendants for the "completely frivolous bad faith" suit brought for "an improper purpose" amounting to "abusive litigation tactics." Perhaps most fun: the single biggest award of fees for a single defendant went to Clinton, who Trump must now pay almost $172,000!

Then, in more serious news today... Progressive citizen ballot initiatives did exceptionally well in 2022, on everything from abortion rights to the legalization of marijuana to the expansion of health care. Yes, even in so-called "red" states. As it turns out, progressive ideas seem to be wildly popular among voters of all stripes! And there is likely much more to come in 2023 and 2024, on abortion rights, minimum wage, gun safety, independent redistricting commissions and much more.

Therefore, in a number of states where Republicans have locked themselves into power with gerrymandered legislatures, they are moving toward making such statewide exercises in "direct democracy" more difficult to get onto the ballot in the first place, and hoping to make them harder to adopt by raising the threshold for passage, for example, from 50% to 60% where they can get away with it.

We're joined today by CHRIS MELODY FIELDS FIGUEREDO, Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center to discuss both progressive successes on statewide ballot measures around the country in 2022 and what the GOP is now doing to try and prevent those successes from happening again.

"That was a huge moment last year in a trend that I know is going to continue as we look at 2023 and '24, where we really see, in many states, that our elected officials are out of touch with the people," Figueredo tells me. "And in most states where they tried to limit the ability of the people to bring forth issues to their community through the ballot measure process, in most cases those were rejected in the states. So there's a lot of opportunity ahead of us."

But, she cautions, "We are seeing a direct backlash to what is happening across the country, of progressive issues winning when they're put before the voters. We're not seeing those changes, which the people say are urgent and important, through our representatives in government, whether it's at city council, whether it's at the state legislative level, and even in the federal government."

We've got a lot to discuss on all of this, including where the direct democracy ballot initiative process has seemingly been captured by corporate interests (in states like California) and about the dozens of states which still don't even allow citizens to place measures on the statewide ballot at all.

I'm also curious how much of the new blowback against such initiatives Figueredo attributes to the number of them in recent years that have instituted independent redistricting commissions in hopes of breaking gerrymandered strangleholds that the GOP still has on many state legislatures. "You have to connect the dots," Figueredo responds. "I think this is ultimately the question that is before us right now in our democracy. Is it of, for and by the people? And who ultimately has the power to make decisions for all of us? That's what's at stake right now."

"It's ultimately this question about power. You can connect the dots. And if we are looking at the ballot initiative process, or the initiatives in general, as a tool for power in our democracy, then yes, if you are an elected official who does not agree with people who may be your constituents and it doesn't fit your agenda, then your next step would be to undermine or weaken the will of the people."

There is much more in our conversation today, including what the U.S. Supreme Court may soon do to gut all such statewide initiatives regarding elections in their upcoming Moore v. Harper decision. Please tune in!...

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Seriously, what did you think was eventually going to happen after years of Republicans being lied to that elections were being rigged against them? Lots to discuss on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

The shooting spree for now --- we hope --- has come to an end in Bernalillo County (Albuquerque) New Mexico with the arrest of a Trump fan boy and failed Republican state House candidate who lost his election last November by nearly 50 points. With the help of four others, he's allegedly been shooting at the houses of local and state Democratic elected officials over the past month and a half. He was finally nabbed on Monday night. Luckily, no one was killed in the at least four houses he visited and targeted.

Today, we tell the story and detail how elections work in the state (after their disastrous use of touchscreens back in 2000, they now use hand-marked paper ballots tallied by computer tabulators with results confirmed, theoretically, by hand-counted, post-election audits); how the shooter should have been more of a concern much earlier (even before Republicans nominated this dude who only recently ended a 7-year prison sentence); and the fact that none of what happened over the past coupla months in the state's most populous Dem-leaning County should really have come as a surprise. After more than two years of Donald Trump lying about "rigged" elections --- and the state Republican party lying along with him --- it's almost more surprising that this hasn't happened sooner.

It was, as Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller observed at a news conference on Monday night after the arrest, "what we had all feared and what we had suspected --- that these shootings were indeed politically motivated." He correctly added: "They were dangerous attacks not only to these individuals … but, fundamentally, also to democracy. ... This was about a rightwing radical, an election denier ... And someone who did the worst imaginable thing you can do when you have a political disagreement, which is turn that to violence."

And, in another example today of why, when Republicans tell us what they are going to do, we should believe them: the GOP economic terrorists in the U.S. House, as Washington Post reported on Friday, are now making plans for crashing the nation's (and world's) economy by refusing to increase the U.S. debt limit this year.

Hopefully, there will be a large enough handful of not-insane Republicans in the House to work with Dems to raise it in order to pay for what the U.S. (Congress and Presidents of both parties) have already bought, so that we can avoid a first-ever default of U.S. Government debt payments. But, even the dangerous game that the hard-right, radical extremist Republicans are preparing for could send markets --- and the credit rating of the U.S. --- plummeting. As TPM's Josh Marshall smartly headlined a short item on some of these points over the weekend, paraphrasing an infamously ignored Presidential Daily Briefing from August of 2001: "House GOP Determined to Strike US".

Finally, with the seemingly endless storms in California finally ended, for now, we're back to the continuing water woes in the U.S. West. And it's not looking good for Arizona right now. Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report on that and U.S. solar manufacturing seeing a massive boost, thanks to legislation passed by Dems and signed by President Biden last year (and opposed by all Congressional Republicans); and Exxon scientists from the 70s, sadly, are proven to have been exactly right in their warnings about climate change. Unfortunately, Exxon paid millions to make sure you never heard about those warnings...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: As California recovers from epic storms, the fight for water is just beginning in the U.S. West; Massive boost to U.S. solar manufacturing arrives thanks to the Joe Biden and the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act; PLUS: Exxon scientists in the 1970s accurately predicted today's climate warming levels and weather disasters... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Fukushima water to be released into ocean in next few months; Gas and coal plant failures widespread as largest grid operator struggled to manage winter storms; Davos 2023: Big Oil in sights of climate activist protests; Nevada: Feds offer $700M to lithium project at heart of ESA dispute; Death by clear-cut: Canada's unique deep-snow caribou are vanishing; Sweden finds rare earth deposits that could benefit Western consumers; PLUS: Climate gentrification is coming to hurricane-wrecked Florida... and much, MUCH more! ...

Who says it never rains in Southern California? Evidence on today's BradCast would strongly suggests otherwise. [Audio link to full show follows below]

Repeated "atmospheric river" downpours continue to drench the Golden State for the second straight week, and will keep doing so through at least the weekend. Some 35 inches of rain have reportedly fallen in some parts of the state over the past two weeks after years of megadrought in the West, which the recent storms are, incredibly, still unlikely to make up for.

Hundreds of thousands of CA residents began Tuesday without power; tens of thousands were under mandatory evacuation orders; millions were under flood watches or warning; at least 15 people have been killed so far by the storms, flooding, hurricane-speed wind gusts and an uncountable number of fallen trees. That, as NOAA clocks in with a new report finding that, over the past seven years alone, there have been more than 122 separate climate-related disasters causing more than one billion dollars in damage and killing at least 5,000 people in the U.S. at the cost of more than one trillion dollars.

Imagine if we had decided to spend anywhere near that much to try and end the use of the fossil fuels that are causing this mess, or at least on efforts to mitigate the worsening effects of this climate crisis. Of course, that would have made paid supporters of the oil and gas industry mad. So, instead, we face these continuing deadly disasters, paid for with every more of your blood and treasure.

We discuss all of the above on today's program.

Also today, after pleading guilty to 15 counts of tax related fraud charges in New York and testifying against the Trump Organization, its longtime Chief Financial Officer (who is still paid more than a million dollars a year to work for them), Allen Weisselberg headed to Riker's Island today for no more than 5 months in the notorious state prison. The Judge who sentenced him on Tuesday said he regretted agreeing to such a short sentence in approving his plea deal last summer, after hearing him testify against the Trump Organization during the company's recent trial. "I would be imposing a sentence much greater," the judge said. ""I'm not going to deviate from the promise, though I believe a stiffer sentence is warranted, having heard the evidence." Trump's company was found guilty on 17 counts of tax fraud, but Weisselberg is the only one person from the company going to jail. For now. That, even though state prosecutors made clear during the trial that Donald Trump and his two sons, Eric and Don Jr., who ran the company while he served in the White House, knew about the massive, years-long tax fraud as well.

That comes after news broke last night that attorneys for Joe Biden recently discovered "a small number of documents with classified markings" on them, according to the White House. The documents, reportedly ten of them, were locked in a closet with other personal Biden family items at an office he used after his Vice Presidency. When the documents were discovered late last year, as the office was being cleared out, Biden's attorneys reportedly contacted the White House immediately and the White House notified the National Archives who took custody of the documents the following day. That, by way of stark contrast with Trump's hoarding of hundreds of classified documents; his refusal to return them to the National Archives, even after receiving a subpoena; and the disgraced former President's attempts to both lie about the documents and conceal them from law enforcement officials. Of course, none of that has prevented Trump's lackeys in Congress from disingenuously suggesting both cases were identical, but for the disparate treatment victim Trump received from the Justice Department. But, of course, selling such nonsense and lies is pretty much all those folks are good for at this point.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with more on California's extreme downpours; unprecedented flooding in Australia; and bad news about natural gas stoves...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: California slammed by another round of extreme downpours; Australia hit by unprecedented floods as hundreds airlifted to safety; PLUS: Natural-gas fired kitchen stoves are a significant cause of childhood asthma... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The Last 8 Years Were the Hottest on Record; EPA moves to toughen standards for deadly soot pollution; Battle lines drawn around EPA soot proposal; EPA, pipeline operator reach deal to clean up Kansas Keystone Pipeline spill; Building Steam in Lithium Valley; Cold-weather blackouts challenge conventional wisdom on fossil fuel grid reliability...PLUS: Climate change makes heat waves, storms and droughts worse, climate report confirms... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's our first call-in show of the new year on today's BradCast, but we've got a lot of news to get to as well first. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the bevy of stuff covered on today's program...

• Thousands in California face mandatory evacuations due to flooding and possible mudslides, with emergency declarations by the state's Governor and President Biden for more than a dozen counties. Some 8 inches of rain drenched some areas over the past 12 hours. A line of repeated deluges are expected to slam the otherwise drought-stricken state over the next week or more.

• Over the weekend, thousands stormed government buildings in Brazil in a January 6, MAGA-style insurrection in support of former President Jair Bolsonaro who recently lost his election to former Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known simply as "Lula" by his countrymen). Bolsonaro has taken refuge near Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago in Florida, as nearly 1,500 of his supporters were rounded up and arrested after Sunday's attempted coup. Democratic leadership in the White House and Congress condemned the attempt to undermine the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil. Republican leadership had yet to say a word as of airtime today.

• Speaking of Republican "leadership", GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy gave away the store to his farther right wing late on Friday to finally win the House Speakership after an embarrassing 15 rounds of voting. But at what cost? We discuss a number of his concessions, what they are likely to mean for McCarthy and his party, and for the rest of us going forward, with nation's debt ceiling and much more hanging in the balance. McCarthy's late night victory on Friday, January 6th 2023 (and into the early Saturday morning hours) came two years to the day after the Trump-incited insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It also came on the evening after Republicans failed to turn out for the second-year anniversary memorial, recognition event on the Capitol steps for 140 law enforcement officials who were injured or died during and after the Republican riot. During McCarthy's acceptance speech as Speaker, he also vowed to defund federal law enforcement. His GOP colleagues cheered in response.

• As the 118th Congress finally got under way on Monday, Republicans are expected to use their very slim majority to investigate Joe Biden's family and the so-called "weaponization of the federal government" against Twitter and other social media outlets...ironically enough, from during the time that Trump controlled the FBI. As explained on today's show today briefly (and I suspect we'll have to offer more details in the weeks and months ahead), claims being made by the liars on the Right (and a few misled and/or confused folks on the Left, sadly) that "Twitter was paid to practice censorship by the government and ban people the government did not like," is evidence-free nonsense. But you'll be hearing a lot of those false claims, as based on the so-called "Twitter Files" they misleadingly cite as evidence. That, even though the files in question, at least to date, reveal nothing of the sort.

• Relatedly, at least one of the far-right Freedom Caucus Members, its chair, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), hopes to sit on a new Congressional Committee to investigate the federal investigators probing Donald Trump's many crimes related to his attempt to steal the 2020 Presidential election and his theft of classified White House documents. That, even though Perry has had his phone confiscated as evidence by the FBI and faces potential criminal charges for his role in the J6 insurrection. He sees no conflict of interest in sitting on that Congressional panel.

• In Michigan on Friday, Attorney General Dana Nessel, tired of waiting for the Feds to act, has announced plans to reopen her own investigation into the fake electors plot in her state after referring the matter to the U.S. Dept. of Justice one year ago.

• And in Georgia, the Special Grand Jury convened by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has now wrapped up its work. According to a state judge, they have delivered their report on who, if anyone, should be indicted in the broad conspiracy led by Donald Trump and many of his top supporters to strong-arm state officials into overturning the election he lost there in 2020. Special Grand Juries in the state may not issue not issue indictments. So Willis must now decide if she wishes to seek indictments from a regular grand jury, and the judge overseeing the matter must decide if the Special Grand Jury's report should be publicly released, as they have requested.

• Finally, callers ring in on all of the above and more for the first time since the turn of the new year!...

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

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

Overlooking turbulent waters as a storm rolls in at one of Donald Trump's sleazy tax avoidance "nature reserve" schemes in Southern California. | PHOTO: DESI DOYEN

As of today, The BradCast and Green News Report will be on holiday hiatus until after the New Year's holiday. PDiddie will likely run some holiday toons here throughout (scroll down for them!), but otherwise we'll be trying to catch up with some family duties and attempting to recharge a bit at the end of another grueling year in the radio and blogging mines.

Our huge thanks to all of you who have supported us over the past year, especially those who have left something in our TIP JAR keep heads above water enough to keep going as long as we can! (Or just try that nifty quick tool on the top-right up there!) We couldn't do any of this without your support!

As we head into our TWENTIETH(!) year of trouble-making, muck-raking, blogging and broadcasting next year here at The BRAD BLOG, we send our best wishes to all for a peaceful holiday season. Please stay warm and healthy throughout! And to all, a good night!

-- Brad, Desi, Ernie, PDiddie and everyone else here at BRAD BLOG World News Headquarters...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Worst drought on record threatens famine in the Horn of Africa; Europe brokers new green electricity deal with Azerbaijan; Kansas and California grapple with persistent drought; PLUS: Nations sign historic deal to halt loss of nature worldwide... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): World's coal use creeps to new highs in 2022; 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn’t tell the public, government; EPA enacts tougher pollution rule for trucks, vans and buses; Alaska's Arctic waterways are turning orange, threatening drinking water; New study reveals billions of dollars in political spending by US fossil fuel trade associations; California just slashed rooftop solar incentives. What happens next?; Midwest soil is eroding faster than ever. Modern farming could be to blame... PLUS: Famed L.A. mountain lion P-22 euthanized; cougar had been struck by car.... and much, MUCH more! ...

While Special Counsel Jack Smith is said to be investigating the Trump-incited January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the his fake electors plot to try and steal the 2020 election, among other things, there is a still-ongoing, post-2020, multi-state plot, coordinated by Trump's top MAGA lieutenants that the Feds don't yet seem to be probing. Our guest on today's BradCast is trying to change that. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

For the better part of this past year, we've have been closely reporting on the bizarre plot uncovered by frequent guest and longtime election integrity expert Marilyn Marks during the lawsuit filed by her group, Coalition for Good Governance, seeking to replace Georgia's 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems with hand-marked paper ballots.

Marks recorded a phone call she received last year from an Atlanta businessman who, essentially, confessed to a scheme that has since been revealed to have been overseen and paid for by disgraced Trump attorney Sidney Powell. It involved the Board of Elections and local Republican Party officials in right-leaning Coffee County, Georgia allowing a team of computer wonks to make copies of the County's proprietary voting and tabulation software, including the sensitive Election Management System, manufactured by Dominion.

Thanks to GA's Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, every county in the state is forced to use the same vulnerable, unverifiable voting systems. Making copies of those systems in one County essentially offers a blueprint for how to disrupt elections in various ways in every County in the state. Moreover, those systems are also used in jurisdictions in at least a dozen other states. Cybersecurity experts have described the Coffee County breach as extremely worrisome.

Nonetheless, until the scheme was exposed by Marks, Raffensperger's office appears to have been covering the entire thing up. And, even after it was exposed, his office --- including one of Raff's top lieutenants, Gabe Sterling --- continued to deny any of it had happened.

"Even recently, there was people saying, 'We went to Coffee County and we imaged everything,'" Sterling declared at an election forum at the Carter Center in Atlanta last April, before falsely adding: "There's no evidence of that. It didn't happen." But it absolutely did happen, as security camera video from the Coffee County Board of Elections offices, also obtained via Marks' lawsuit, subsequently made abundantly clear. The plot even involved a number of well-known MAGA Mobsters, such as Doug Logan, CEO of the Cyber Ninjas outfit that later carried out the phony post-2020 "audit" in Arizona last year.

Voting system software breaches similar to the one in Coffee County were also carried out and reportedly overseen by Powell, in several others states, including Nevada, Michigan and Colorado. As the Washington Post confirmed again this week, the stolen software "was then uploaded to a website, from where it was downloaded by election deniers across the country."

Despite all of this disturbing evidence, federal authorities do not appear to have even begun to probe these coordinated plots which, as our guest today confirms, can really be considered a crime still in progress, since the copied software can be used to undermine upcoming elections, for example, in 2024.

We're joined today by SUSAN GREENHALGH, Senior Advisor on Election Security at the non-profit good government group, Free Speech for People, to discuss the 14-page letter [PDF] that she and more than a dozen of the nation's top cybersecurity and voting system experts sent this week to Special Counsel Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland, as well as the Directors of both the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), seeking a federal probe of the coordinated, ongoing plot.

"Now that they have the software," Greenhalgh explains today, "they have all the elements of the voting system, from the poll pads to the election management system which aggregates and reports totals, and everything in between. They can create their own election system and probe it to find out how it's vulnerable, and also develop ways that they can exploit those vulnerabilities. They can decompile the software to study the source code and understand how they might create malware that could get in and wreak havoc with the way the votes are counted."

Remember, these software breaches happened in most cases with the cooperation of insiders, local election officials who have direct access to these systems. Greenhalgh notes that "malware can be designed to be undetectable in many ways. So if you wanted, you could use it to disrupt an election so that people can't vote, or you could do it in ways to disrupt and manipulate or tamper with an election that is not visible to outsiders. Or you could just use the software to create disinformation campaigns and say 'I can show you how this election system was compromised and why it counts incorrectly'," even when it hasn't.

"We don't even have to imagine that because that's already been done," she continues. "That was by Matt DiPerno, the guy who ran against [Democrat] Dana Nessel for the Attorney General position in Michigan. He's also quite a famous election denier. He had a copy of voting system software that was obtained extra-legally in Michigan and put it on machines and put up videos that said, 'This is how we can manipulate these systems.'"

Greenhalgh details other ways in which these breaches are so troubling to the experts signed on to FSFP's letter; explains whether there is any evidence that the breaches were used to exploit systems in 2022; responds to remarks from the GA Sec. of State's office attempted to conflate real, longtime election security and voting systems experts with the MAGA conspiracy theorists and election liars; discusses how the Coffee County breach appears to have been covered-up by Raffensperger and other Georgia officials; and details why the lack of a federal investigation continues to threaten future elections, including the Presidential contest in 2024.

"The chance of manipulating elections going forward is very real," she warns.

Also today...since we could use some dumb news to offset that very disturbing story, 2024 Presidential candidate Donald Trump is now in the business of ripping off his supporters with hilarious, $99 digital trading cards in which he is illustrated as a super hero! Get yours today! Before they run out!

And finally...we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, including troubling news from NOAA on the worsening effects of climate change in the Arctic; the existential threat to the world's forests of rapidly expanding oil and gas exploitation; and the EU's decision this week to institute the world's first carbon import tariff...

It's another busy day on The BradCast! Enjoy!

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(P.S. We're off tomorrow for more dental adventures, but will be back next week to cover the House January 6 Committee's finale and more before our holiday break!)

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Climate change is profoundly disrupting the Arctic, new report from NOAA finds; Rapid oil and gas expansion poses an existential threat to the world's forests; PLUS: European Union agrees to enact world's first carbon import tariff... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Arctic blast takes aim at U.S. for Christmas, New Years; Internal documents reveal Big Oil's plan for profiting amid climate pressures; Musk pumps climate cenial on Twitter; What to expect from California's new rooftop-solar plan? More batteries; Clouds: One of climate change's great mysteries is finally being solved; U.S. carbon farming takes root; Drought emergency declared for all of Southern California; Florida lawmakers force homeowners to buy insurance... PLUS: Children of India's burning coalfields dream of a fire-free future... and much, MUCH more! ...

Of course, just as COVID and other respiratory viruses are surging in L.A. (and California, and much of the rest of the country), we have our first in-studio guest on The BradCast since the pandemic. Oh, well. Wish us luck! [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

We're joined today by the great STEVE HERMAN of Voice of America who spent some 26 years covering various regions in Asia and serving as VOA correspondent and Bureau Chief in India, Korea, Thailand. In 2016, he returned stateside to serve as VOA's Senior Diplomatic Correspondent, for a brief stint, before becoming the eight decade-old, U.S. funded media outlet's White House Bureau Chief. After serving 4 totally easy-peasy years at the White House during the Trump Administration and several months during Biden's, Herman is now on the road as VOA's Chief National Correspondent covering the 2024 campaign. (I know, I know...we're not even done with 2022 around here!)

In a broad, in-studio conversation today --- including questions from listener callers --- we cover, among many other things...

• Herman's initial visit to the Fukushima nuclear plant just after the 2011 meltdown disaster...without any sort of physical protection! (That was when he first appeared as a guest on our program.)

• How VOA stands virtually alone as a state-funded news outlet given its special charter, a "firewall" enshrined by federal statute that prevents the government from meddling in its coverage. "The White House, or even the head of our parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, cannot tell me or my editors what we have to report or cannot report. They cannot be involved editorially," says Herman.

• How and why that makes VOA different from state-funded propaganda outlets in Russia, China, Iran and elsewhere. "I like to say VOA is probably the only news organization in the world that is mandated by law to be fair and effective," Herman explains. "In that charter it says we must reflect the different views of what's going on in the United States."

• "Facts are facts," he tells me, regarding so much mis- and disinformation by both the Right and Left. "What they are reporting at RT [Russia Today] and Sputnik is not factual, especially about the war in Ukraine. ... It's a situation that we see from Chinese state media and Iranian state media. And this goes back all the way to why VOA was created after the start of World War II, because you had Nazi Germany on the airwaves, uncontested to a great degree, spitting out anti-American and pro-Nazi propaganda. What VOA was set up to do was to tell the audiences, initially in German and also in Japanese, what's going on with the war, whether it's good or bad."

• The efforts by the Trump Administration, while Herman served as VOA's WH Bureau Chief, to affect the agency's news coverage and attempts to pressure Herman himself. "When these things have happened over the decades in various administrations, it also demonstrates that VOA is not a propaganda service," he argues. "If it were a propaganda service, we would not be getting complaints from within the United States government on some of the stories we've been doing."

• - Herman's thoughts on the insane response by Donald Trump over the weekend to Matt Taibbi's "Twitter Files" thread detailing internal discussion/debate among Twitter executives in the run-up to the 2020 election when deciding whether or not to suppress questionably sourced reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop.

• All of that and much more, including praise for sushi in Los Angeles from a guy who worked for decades in Asia!

Also covered today, a few news headlines at the top of the show...

• Flu, COVID and other respiratory illness is "off the charts" in California, Los Angeles County and elsewhere around the country.
• Russia's latest missile assault on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, and the nearly 600 documented cases of apparent war crimes by the aggressor nation since Putin's invasion in February.
• The apparent coordinated domestic terror attacks on electric substations in Moore County, North Carolina that has knocked out power and water to tens of thousands of residents.
• Early voting is over and Election Day now awaits on Tuesday in Georgia's U.S. Senate runoff between Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock and Trump-backed sociopathic liar Hershel Walker.
• The weekend's aforementioned insane (and largely pointless) Twitter thread by Matt Taibbi, how it has been misreported by MAGA Republicans including Donald Trump, who dishonestly represented the reporting in order to call for "termination" of the U.S. Constitution (seriously!) in its wake...

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There are just too many crimes. Next time we'll need to plan a longer BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We're not yet beyond the 2022 elections. Votes are still being tallied and races still being called. Only last night, media outlets finally were able to project the GOP would win back a majority in the U.S. House next year, if barely, and that progressive Rep. Karen Bass would be the winner of the Los Angeles Mayoral race over billion real estate developer Rick Caruso. Of course, the fallout from the election will continue for a while. Today, two-time Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi --- love her or hate her, one of the most effective Speaker's in history --- announced that, while she plans to remain in Congress, she will not seek a leadership role next session. The first women to hold that job said during floor remarks today, that she is passing the torch to a new generation.

Most notably, however --- at least when it comes to accountability for the most corrupt man likely to ever hold public office in this nation, much less as President of the United States --- actual 2022 midterm voting continues as well, in the December 6th U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia.

That means the Dept. of Justice guidelines barring overt action in politically-related cases during the 60-day window prior to elections is likely still in effect. But even after the GA runoff on December 6th, as our friend Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel recently explained, "Merrick Garland hasn't done the specific thing you want because DoJ has been busy doing things they have to do first." In other words, before federal indictments can be brought against Donald Trump, as many (yours truly included) are eager to see, there remains a lot of legal work that must be done in order to ensure that any such indictments result in actual convictions.

Our guest today is DR. ALLISON GILL of the notorious "Mueller, She Wrote" Twitter account and podcast, which tracks the many (seemingly endless) criminal and civil cases and investigations under way against the disgraced former President about as closely as anyone in the country. She agrees that patience remains a virtue in these cases. Depending on the case, as she explains today, we are looking at a matter of weeks to a matter of months before indictments can be brought against Trump. Though she does believe they are coming and that his announcement this week that he is running again in 2024 provides no protection against prosecution in any of these cases.

As we begin to move beyond the midterms, today seemed a good day to touch base with Gill to help us try and reset where things are regarding to the many ongoing criminal and civil probes, indictments and lawsuits still bearing down on Trump. To be honest, we've lost track of some of them in recent weeks as we'd moved largely full time to 2022 election coverage.

Those pending cases include (but are not limited to):

• The New York state criminal tax fraud trial currently underway against the Trump Organization and its CFO Allen Weisselberg, as brought by Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg;
• Bragg's New York state criminal investigation into bank, tax and insurance fraud by Trump himself, as seemingly abandoned earlier this year, but which could be revived following the trial against his company;
• The $250 million New York state civil lawsuit for bank, tax and insurance fraud against Trump, his company, and his three oldest kids, Don Jr., Eric and Ivanka, filed by NY A.G. Letitia James, which Gill sees as extraordinarily damaging to Trump;
• The Georgia Special Grand Jury probe, as brought by Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, of the Trump-led criminal conspiracy to convince state officials to steal the 2020 Presidential election on his behalf;
• The Dept. of Justice's federal probe of thousands of pages of classified documents stolen from the White House by Trump upon leaving office, in apparent violation of the Espionage Act, Presidential Records Act and obstruction of justice;
• The DoJ's federal probe of the Trump-incited January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and his other many failed attempts to steal the 2020 Presidential election, including via a fake electors plot.

Add to those, Trump's failure to show up for his deposition this week in response to a lawful subpoena.from the the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. (Trump's former advisor Steve Bannon was recently sentenced to two months in prison for Contempt of Congress for failing to answer similar subpoenas from the Committee.)

"Don't forget," Gill adds today, "his Save America PAC is under federal criminal investigation. His Truth Social [companies] are under FINRA, FEC, and federal criminal investigation. He is facing a lot --- a lot --- of legal problems. We've got the E. Jean Carroll case, the Mary Trump case, the Hillary sanctions, the Michigan sanctions. He's in a lot of trouble from a lot of things. We're going to just have to see who drops the hammer first."

"If we just look at the Watergate timeline," she posits, regarding the sprawling January 6 investigation, "we won't see indictments until April 2023. And this is far more complex [than Watergate]. So it's going to be interesting to see how the timing plays out. Or whether maybe Garland says, 'Hey, Fani Willis, you take the fraudulent electors stuff, I'll take the documents stuff.'" That, she explains, would have the advantage of potentially convicting Trump under state law for which he can't be pardoned by a future President (or even by a Georgia Governor, since they are not granted state pardon power.)

Gill does believe --- in fact, she is "very, very certain" --- that Trump will be indicted in at least one of the federal cases we discuss today. Tune in to find out which one!

Finally today, Desi Doyen's got our latest Green News Report, as the COP27 U.N. climate conference in Egypt nears crunch time this weekend; Trump offers well-worn climate lies at his 2024 announcement; and some good energy related news to close out today's program...

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Welp, Election 2022 continues into its second week of counting on today's BradCast. But it's our first chance to open up the phones to listeners after last week's historic midterm face-plant by Republicans and its associated very very good news for Democrats and American democracy itself. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we go to the phones today, a bit of a monster "rant" on the accomplishments of Joe Biden and the Democrats after two years in office; a few updates on races called since we signed off last Friday; what they all mean; and some of the races still being tallied (which will also determine, among other things, which party controls the House of Representatives next year.)

The big races called since our final show last week include the U.S. Senate contests in Arizona and Nevada, both of which went to the incumbent Democrats in each state (Sen. Mark Kelly in AZ and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in NV). Those victories ensure majority control for Democrats in the upper chamber of Congress once again in January. Dems will have at least a 50/50 majority with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie vote, even before the December 6 Senate runoff in Georgia between incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and Herschel Walker (R).

But there are a ton of reasons for Democrats in GA to not let down their guard. Dante Atkins, over the weekend, detailed just some of the reasons why a 51-49 Senate is much better for Dems (and democracy) than a 50-50 Senate.

While Dems were celebrating retaining their Senate majority over the weekend, we were celebrating the fact that the last of the 2020 Election liars running for Secretary of State in battleground states were declared to have lost. In AZ, Democrat Adrian Fontes will become the new Sec. of State after defeating Trump-endorsed insurrection enthusiast and voting opponent Mark Finchem. And in NV, Democrat Cisco Aguilar was declared the winner over Trump-backed election liar Jim Marchant, founder of the "America First Secretaries of State coalition," featuring all of those Republican SoS candidates who, thankfully, were rejected by voters in last week's elections across the country in every single swing-state in which they ran. That alone will make the 2024 Presidential election indescribably safer.

Throughout the program, we also take care to call out a few of the folks from the Republican Party, the corporate media, and the even some on the lazy, knee-jerk far-left who ignored the available data and facts in order to misinform American voters that the GOP see a red wave, or even red tsunami, in last week's midterms. They didn't. They lost a seat in the Senate; will be lucky to win the narrowest of majorities in the House; lost Governorships in Maryland and Massachusetts (and, perhaps, Arizona, which is still close); took full control of both the Michigan and Minnesota state governments and may do the same in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, just to detail a few of the GOP's remarkable failures in a year that Conventional Wisdom suggests they should have owned the night.

Also, mid-hour today, we get an update in the tallies of the very right Los Angeles Mayoral race where progressive Rep. Karen Bass just got a big boost from the latest numbers in her contest against "former" Republican billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso.

Then, we turn to the phones for the first time since last week's midterms to get some thoughts from listeners on what the lack of "red wave" means for both Democrats and Republicans and whether any of it will help break the GOP's Trump Fever that is destroying both them and our democracy along with it (though not this week, at least!)...

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