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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: GNR Special Coverage --- Big wins and losses for the environment in the 2018 midterm elections; Science to return to the U.S. House Science Committee; PLUS: Big Oil's big money overwhelms state energy ballot initiatives... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The First Climate Election; Federal jury sides with sickened workers and families in Tennessee coal ash cleanup case; Voters rejected most ballot measures aimed at curbing climate change; The nation just elected a bunch of governors who campaigned on clean energy; Science candidates prevail in US midterm elections; What I learnt pulling a straw out of a turtle's nose; UN says Earth's ozone layer is healing; After Hurricane Michael, toxic algae has again spread; Is warming bringing a wave of new diseases to Arctic wildlife?... PLUS: The left vs. a carbon tax: The odd, agonizing political battle playing out in Washington state... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Some brakes --- some --- may now finally be applied to our ongoing Trump-induced national emergency, in the wake of his election two exhausting years ago. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Despite shameful obstacles placed in front of voters across the country during Tuesday's midterms, Democrats managed to wrestle back control of the U.S. House of Representatives by flipping at least 27 seats, as of airtime, with the results of several other races still unknown, according to unverified computer tabulation in all 50 states. Setting aside partisan issues, women and diverse candidates were the biggest winners yesterday...along with the American people.

At the same time, the GOP reportedly picked up several seats in the U.S. Senate, even while Democrats racked up some very important (and, occasionally stunning!) wins at the gubernatorial level. Those wins and losses (including Scott Walker ousted and Kris Kobach denied!) are likely to reverberate for the next decade, as the next round of redistricting occurs after the 2020 census.

Today we review as many of the noteworthy reported results from House, Senate and Governor races as we can possibly jam into one single show....and then we hit several important ballot initiative results as well.

Moreover --- and, perhaps, as importantly --- we look at several "too close to call" races where no winner has yet been declared by media and/or a number of contests with outcomes worth questioning, including in Florida, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere. (If only every candidate sounded like Georgia's Stacey Abrams at the end of a reportedly very close election night!)

Election Day may be over, but the fight for public oversight of results may just be beginning.

Oh, and as we long predicted would happen if results didn't go Trump's way on November 6, today he fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions to begin his move against Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Nonetheless, for today at least, we won't allow Trump to hijack our news cycle on The BradCast...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Brazil's election of extreme far-right Jair Bolsonaro has grave implications for the Amazon rainforest and climate change; PLUS: Energy and the environment are on the November 6 ballot, with landmark ballot propositions in several states... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The unseen driver behind the migrant caravan: climate change; Oil kingdom and a 'high priest' stall action for 30 years; 5 midterm votes that could have an outsize impact on climate change; More than 90% of world's children breathe toxic air, report says, as India prepares for most polluted season; Coastal Pacific oxygen levels now plummet once a year; Trump and Rauner administrations knew about Sterigenics cancer risks months before telling public; Cloud Peak cancels health care plan for retired miners; Army Corps, Texas officials propose sweeping hurricane protection plan... PLUS: Driven by Trump policy changes, fracking booms on public lands... and much, MUCH more! ...

After another long (though important) fund drive at KPFK, our Pacifica Radio Network flagship station here in Los Angeles, we're finally able to open the phones to hear from listeners on today's BradCast. [Audio link follows below.]

It's been a harrowing and deadly week --- and weekend --- filled with Rightwing hate and hate mongering (coincidentally, one week before Election Day for the most important election most of us have ever lived through). So, today we kick open the phones to callers on all of the above to get a sense of where things stand at this point and to help answer a bunch of questions about the crucial midterms.

Listeners ring in with questions about reported voting problems and voter suppression around the country and failing voting machines. Also, we discuss what voters can do beyond voting to participate in democracy over the next week or so.

And then there's the caller who rang in to explain why he says he has never voted, and doesn't plan to this year either. As you might imagine, both I, and a whole bunch of callers, have a few thoughts for that guy on today's program. Enjoy!...

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On today's BradCast, the FBI investigation into multiple allegations of sexual assault and belligerent drunken behavior by U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh continues, as Republicans in the U.S. Senate prepare to force a vote on his confirmation before Senators, much less the public, get a full look at the information gathered by the brief and limited probe. As that shameful illustration of a process broken by Republicans for the nation's highest court plays out, a number of other noteworthy news stories slip through the cracks just over one month before the crucial 2018 midterm elections. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

On Sunday, California's Governor signed a Net Neutrality bill into law, meant to replace the Obama-era consumer protection that was gutted by the Trump Administration's Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Hours later, Trump's Dept. of Justice sued the Golden State to prevent the new law from taking effect. So much for the GOP's pretend love of "states rights".

On Monday, Trump announced "a brand new deal to terminate and replace NAFTA" [the North American Free Trade Agreement] with a "totally" new deal between the U.S., Canada and Mexico as "the biggest trade deal in United States History." Even though it is NAFTA 2.0, it will now be called, if adopted by the U.S. Congress (a big "if", as our guest explains today), the United States Mexico Canada Agreement, or USMCA.

And, on Tuesday, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced the company will be increasing their minimum wage for all workers, both permanent and seasonal, to $15/hour beginning next month, after years of attacks by critics for low wages paid by the world's second most valuable company.

We're joined by financial journalist and author DAVID DAYEN to discuss all three of those news items, whether they are a "Big Deal or No Big Deal?", and how the news may or may not affect the upcoming November elections.

On Amazon's increased wages, Dayen tells me it is "only going to bid the price of labor up. So that is a good thing." He also explains why it is "a political success for Bernie Sanders and this idea that you need to put pressure on these huge, monopolistic companies in order the get them to do right by their workers." But, he also warns, "there's an escape valve here for Amazon."

The new NAFTA includes an end to what Dayen calls the "corporate shakedown regime" in NAFTA's "horrendous" extrajudicial process for settling trade disputes between corporations and countries. That's a "huge deal" he says, which could help set a template to vastly improve other trade deals as well, and potentially increase wages for workers. But he also explains why unions are, nonetheless, not yet all in for the deal and notes that it can only be approved by the next Congress --- which will likely be far more Democratic than the current one --- if labor buys in.

On DoJ's challenge to California's own Net Neutrality law, Dayen explains, the Administration may have little choice but to try and block it, even as Republicans --- when it comes to states other than California, anyway --- argue states should decide what's best for their own residents. In the Golden State, however, "if you give net neutrality protections, if you allow the state of California to pass them, then that's going to migrate," he says. "There's a genuine concern that these regulations --- which of course were in place at the federal level and were taken out by FCC Chair Ajit Pai and the conservatives on the FCC --- would almost, by default, come back if this were allowed to stand. ... All that work they did at the FCC could be for naught."

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report, with record rainfall numbers from Hurricane Florence (and the giant mosquitoes which have arrived in its wake), the Trump Administration's use of catastrophic climate change data to justify a deadly rollback of Obama-era fuel efficiency standards, and the French President calling for the nations of the world to reject trade deals with any country who is not a party to the Paris Climate Agreement (that would include only the U.S., which has announced its intention of pulling out of the landmark pact as soon as allowable --- the first day after the Presidential election in 2020)...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hurricane Florence floodwaters pose a toxic public health threat; North Carolina begins facing the long road of recovery; PLUS: Trump Interior Department formally rolls back still more methane regulations... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 5 Trump policies that will make future flooding worse; Why America should rethink how it talks about-and ranks-tropical storms; Jerry Brown: Trump's 'gross ignorance' main obstacle in climate change fight; Air pollution harms unborn babies. Now we might know why; Mosquitoes are eating plastic. Why that's a big problem; Trump administration levies new tariffs on Chinese solar inverters; The rush for better batteries; Clean energy weathers Hurricane Florence; 57 Detroit schools have lead, copper contamination in drinking water; What would it take to make recycling a national issue?; 'Treating Protest As Terrorism': US plans crackdown on KXL activists... PLUS: How we define a calamity determines how we plan for and respond to them. Or not.... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Except for our Florence coverage, it's all about November 6th, including the GOP's rush to seat another alleged sexual predator on the U.S. Supreme Court. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up today, a quick update on the still-ongoing disaster of Hurricane Florence, with the human death toll rising to 37 and the poultry and pork death tolls in the millions, after three feet of rain fell on parts of the Carolinas, thousands remain in shelters, and the environmental disasters --- including toxic human waste and animal waste now streaming into swelling rivers and floodwaters --- may just be beginning.

Next, the reason why Republicans are in such a panic to minimize the allegations of attempted rape by Brett Kavanaugh, their nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, in any way they possibly can in advance of the quickly arriving November 6th midterm elections. That minimization includes avoiding both time and an FBI investigation at any cost. The White House could have already requested one, which Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) insisted was "the very right thing to do" --- at least during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the 1991 sexual harassment allegations by Anita Hill against then-nominee, now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Then, you may recall at the beginning of the year I reported on a strange conversation I had on Twitter with Alabama's Sec. of State John Merrill regarding the state's voting systems, resulting in Merrill blocking me on the social media site. It wasn't the first time Merrill had blocked election experts or journalists or his own constituents. But, even after a federal court later in the year found that Donald Trump was violating the First Amendment rights of his constituents by blocking them on Twitter, Merrill still refused to unblock anybody. A query to his office about that, just before the state's May primary elections, resulted in a bizarre and unhinged exchange via phone and email with the Secretary. Today, Merrill is being sued by the ACLU of Alabama for violating his constituents' First Amendment rights for blocking them and, of course, that means that AL taxpayers will likely be on the hook to pay for the so-called "conservative" Merrill's knowingly unconstitutional behavior.

Also, speaking of transparency and the rule of law, the U.S. Supreme Court, just weeks before the 2018 midterms, has allowed a lower court ruling on "dark money" to take immediate effect, meaning that some political non-profits will now have to disclose the names of wealthy donors who spend more than $200 per year in hopes of buying elections. The Koch-sponsored hit squads, including their ringers on the FEC, are none too happy it.

Finally, we've got some good news for voters in California, where the Governor has now signed a bill requiring election officials to notify voters when local officials believe signatures on Vote-by-Mail ballots don't match the one on their registration file. Such voters will now be notified at least eight days before any results are certified, so they have a chance to fix the problem, which could happen for many reasons, before the ballot is simply discarded (as tens of thousands have routinely been tossed in previous elections).

Also, good news for Democrats in Wisconsin, where the "gold standard" of Wisconsin polling outfits finds divisive, two-term Republican Gov. Scott Walker now trailing Democrat Tony Evers in this year's Gubernatorial race.

And, in Kansas, yet another top former Republican official has endorsed Laura Kelly, the Democratic candidate for Governor, in her race against controversial GOP nominee Sec. of State Kris Kobach...

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On today's BradCast, we're closely watching a number of things: Major storms, major elections, and major lies (under oath) revealed as coming from the nominee for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

First up, we're watching the "monster" Category 4 Hurricane Florence closely this week, as it quickly increases in intensity, even while slowing down over record warm waters before its predicted landfall later this week, in what could result in a catastrophic wind and rainfall event in the Carolinas and Virginia by week's end. Officials warn power could be knocked out for weeks, but, citing his Administration's "unsung success" in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria (after which nearly 3,000 Americans died and power remained out for nearly a year), Donald Trump declares the federal government is "totally prepared". The National Weather Service now says that nearly 5.5 million people are threatened by the incoming storm.

We're also watching the final week of primaries before the crucial 2018 midterms this fall, with New Hampshire voters taking their turn to vote on Tuesday. But we're also still watching the fallout from earlier primaries this Summer, including an all-Republican State Objections Board in Kansas which, this week, a) Voted to allow a Republican state House candidate who was arrested and charged with election fraud last week to stay on the November ballot, and b) Dismissed a challenge to the incredibly narrow reported win (just 343 votes out of some 317,000 cast) by Sec. of State Kris Kobach several weeks ago, after he was certified to be the state's GOP nominee for Governor, despite an unknown number of uncounted or rejected provisional and late Vote-by-Mail ballots across the state and serious malfunctions of a new voting and tabulation system in the state's most populous county. Kobach's own deputy chaired this week's meeting of the three-member, all-GOP State Objections Board and personally appointed the County Clerk who purchased the new, unverifiable touchscreen ballot marking device system which spectacularly failed during their first outing in Johnson County last month.

Next, we're also still watching the proceedings for Donald Trump's latest nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrapped up last week, but not before revealing that Kavanaugh appears to have lied to the Senate under oath, multiple times, during his previous confirmation hearings for the U.S. Court of Appeal in Washington D.C., regarding whether he had received stolen documents from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee while serving as an operative in the George W. Bush Administration.

We're joined today by LISA GRAVES, the author of some of the documents stolen by one of Kavanaugh's fellow GOP operatives who worked in the Senate at the time Kavanaugh was shepherding controversial, hard-right Bush judicial nominees through the confirmation process. Graves, who is now co-founder of the non-profit Documented and former Executive Director for the Center for Media and Democracy, was Chief Counsel for Nominations for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) back when the stolen documents in question were pilfered.

She explains today how some of the very few recently-released emails from Kavanaugh's tenure during the Bush Administration revealed last week that he lied to Congress during testimony about his knowledge of, and personal participation in, what was a major Senate email theft scandal in the early and mid-2000s.

"It was the first time that we saw evidence that he had seen talking points, draft materials, content from the materials that were stolen," she tells me, detailing how she had long suspected as much, after the initial scandal broke over a decade ago. "It was so shocking what was happening at the time, in terms of that sort of confidential material being stolen, that Senator Hatch expressed his mortification and assigned the U.S. Sargent-at-Arms, who was a Republican, to lead an investigation." But that probe, she adds, did not have subpoena power, so last week was the first time the public finally saw the incriminating documents revealed by Sen. Leahy during last week's hearings.

Graves is now calling for Kavanaugh to be impeached whether or not he is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ironically, a complaint has been filed with Kavanaugh's boss on the D.C. Court of Appeals, Chief Judge Merrick Garland, Barack Obama's 2016 nominee to the Supreme Court who, for the first time in history, Republicans refused to even hold a vote on.

Kavanaugh's confirmation still appears likely, despite a very slim Senate GOP majority that could be lost in this November's midterms, and the presence of Republicans like Utah's Orrin Hatch who served on the Judiciary Committee at the time of the theft of those Democratic documents and continues to do so today. Hatch was just one of the Senators who Kavanaugh, we now know, appears to have blatantly lied to, under oath, during hearings in 2004 and 2006. Hatch was also a loud supporter of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for having lied under oath.

Graves argues that Kavanaugh's testimony from those years "compared to the evidence that he lied," is now "very strong and warrants a full investigation". She also says she has yet to speak to anyone in Congress about her call for impeachment following the new revelations. "I believe the American people have a right to know that this is what's happening. And I believe the Senate should stand up and defend itself against this sort of perjury. There are certainly other right-wing judicial nominees that the White House could nominate who don't have this track record, who haven't played this role, and who perhaps also don't have this extreme view of Executive power, where --- if Brett Kavanaugh were confirmed --- he could be called to rule on cases involving cases of potential perjury or lying to investigators,"

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with more on the dangers (and causes) of the looming Hurricane Florence off the Eastern seaboard, and another major storm currently threatening Hawaii this week; a brand new pipeline explodes in Pennsylvania, owned by the same company which owns the Dakota Access Pipeline that Trump approved in 2017, despite months of protest by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North Dakota; and, thankfully, some very good news about several new landmark actions taken by California this week to combat the growing menace of global climate change...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Powerful Hurricane Florence takes aim at the U.S. East Coast; Hawaii braces for its second major storm in two weeks; Brand new pipeline explodes in Pennsylvania; PLUS: California blazes new path of action to fight climate change... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Nearly 10K people have gotten cancer from toxic 9/11 dust; U.N. chief warns of a dangerous tipping point on climate change; Trump Administration wants to make it easier to release methane into the air; Brett Kavanaugh could be worse than you think - here's how he'll gut environmental protection; Pipeline dumps 8,000 gallons of jet fuel into Indiana river; California fire agency requests more money; California passes 100 percent clean energy bill, but punts on several plans for getting there... PLUS: Superfund: Acting EPA chief Wheeler will shape massive cleanup efforts linked to his former clients... and much, MUCH more! ...

We catch up with quite a bit on today's BradCast, after being buried for much of last week in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for dishonest and disingenuous GOP operative, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, as Donald Trump's pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy in the "swing vote" seat on the GOP's already-stolen U.S. Supreme Court. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

We discuss that as well today (and whether Democrats should pack the Court if they ever return to power, as we discussed with David Faris on last Wednesday's show) and much more with tons of callers.

But first, we lead off with the latest on the fearsome Category 4 Hurricane Florence now barreling toward the U.S. Eastern seaboard, fueled by record warm waters, and currently projected to slam the Carolinas with, potentially, as much as four feet of rain as the storm is predicted to stall near the coast.

At the same time, Hawaii is facing down Hurricane Tropical Storm Olivia this week, just two weeks or so after Hurricane Lane dumped record rainfall on the islands, in the second worst rainfall event in recorded U.S. history (second only to Hurricane Harvey in Houston just last year.)

We also have some much brighter news, however, for our climate-changed world out of California today, as Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB-100, a landmark measure to require the state (with the world's fifth largest economy) to transition to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045. Along with it, Brown also signed an executive order that would result in carbon-neutral energy production and use for the entire state (including cars!) by 2045 as well!

With that bit of brief, albeit very good news out of the way, we turn to catching up with an Administration (still) in crisis upon the release of Bob Woodward's new book, FEAR: Trump in the White House and the anonymous op-ed purported to have been penned by a senior Trump Administration official last week, claiming that senior insiders have been secretly blocking the worst of Trump's most dangerous impulses and, last year, even considered invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the President.

We open up the phone lines today to all of the above, for tons of interesting thoughts from listeners on the op-ed (is the writer a hero or a coward --- or a scammer?), the Kavanaugh hearings and the Democrats' surprisingly unified response to the GOP rush to confirm him before they may lose their slim Senate majority in the upcoming midterms, and much more, as Hurricane Donald continues to lay waste --- or, at least, tries to --- to much of our nation...

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We start off with some very good news on today's BradCast, for a change. (The less good news comes later...but it's nowhere near as bad as the good news is good.) On Wednesday, the California state legislature adopted a measure that will require the state to use only 100% "carbon-free" electricity by 2045. The landmark climate change bill, which state lawmakers have been debating for two years, now awaits the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

We're joined by Vox.com's environment and energy journalist DAVID ROBERTS to discuss what that actually means, if the goal is feasible, and what could prevent Brown from signing the landmark measure. (For a complete and, yes, wonky explanation of the debate over a separate if related measure that could hold up Brown's signature on this one, see Roberts' recent article here.)

Roberts breaks down what the legislation's change from 100% "renewable" to 100% "carbon-free" electricity means and why the entire effort is such a huge frickin' deal that deserves more coverage than its likely to get right now. Last year, the state of Hawaii lead the way by adopting a similar measure, but with California as the world's 5th largest economy, this move, as the Los Angeles Times recently reported, would truly turn the Golden State into a world leader on climate change action.

"If you put together the size of the economy, the nearness of the targets, and the ambition, I think this is as big as anyone has gone. I think this is as big as it gets," Roberts tells me. "I don't think there's another economy in the world that is comparably large and carbon-intensive, that has anything close to comparably ambitious goals."

The measure also increases the state's current goal of moving to 50% renewable energy by 2030, up to 60% by the same year. That, as Roberts explains, because California has almost reached its previous goal already, years earlier than planned! "They'll probably beat these targets, too," he says. "One of the reasons this is happening is most utilities in California are closing in on their 2030 targets already, and its 2018."

As usual, Roberts makes all of this otherwise-wonky stuff accessible to mere mortals --- and actually enjoyable. Well, at least I enjoyed it. Hope you will too!

Then, back to some less good news of the day. On Thursday, President Trump informed Congress that he wants to cancel the scheduled pay raise for federal workers that is due them in January, charging "Federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases". That, after giving a $1.5 trillion tax cut to corporations and the wealthy last December and signing a $717 billion defense appropriation bill just weeks ago. Both have resulted in what even the White House now admits will be unprecedented year-after-year trillion dollar deficits. Trump and Republicans now hope to force the "forgotten men and women" of the working class, that he pretended to care about during the 2016 election, to pay the price for it, even though non-military federal workers have already seen pay and benefits cuts of more than $200 billion since 2011 and now earn 5% less than they did at the start of the decade.

In West Virginia, coal baron and convicted felon Don Blankenship will not be allowed to run for the U.S. Senate this year on the Constitution Party's ballot line. The state's Supreme Court (or what's sufficing for it at the moment, with two of its five members recently resigned and the three others facing impeachment by the GOP state legislature --- see my conversation with Slate's Mark Joseph Stern about that earlier this week), agreed with their Sec. of State that Blankenship's candidacy would run afoul of the state's "sore loser" statute after he placed third last May in the Republican primary contest for that party's Senate nomination. The ruling is good news for the state's Attorney General and GOP Senate nominee Patrick Morrisey, as Blankenship might have siphoned off some of his support. Morrisey hopes to unseat the conservative incumbent Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin, this November.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with more on today's encouraging news out of California, some bad news for those who live in areas with high air pollution, and the disturbing news that Puerto Rico's Hurricane Maria is now officially the deadliest U.S. natural disaster in more than 100 years --- though Donald Trump still thinks he did a heckuva job in his response to it...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: California sets the most significant clean energy target in world history, while facing dire new predictions for climate impacts; Air pollution is making us dumber; PLUS: Hurricane Maria now officially the deadliest U.S. natural disaster in more than a century... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): California's huge energy decision: link its grid to its neighbors, or stay autonomous?; Hurricane Maria will be a permanent stain on Trump's legacy; Detroit turns off every public school's drinking water due to high levels of lead, copper; Milestone for earthquake forecasting; New York AG: Exxon climate fraud investigation nearing end; Court overturns Trans Mountain oil pipeline approval; EPA to reconsider Obama-era curbs on mercury emissions by power plants; Trump donor buys California power plant, asks feds to change energy market; Western countries 'should deal with own waste' amid plunge in China's plastics imports... PLUS: What comes after plastic?... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: British Columbia declares state of emergency over wildfires; Monsanto's parent company grapples with massive judgment against Roundup weed killer; 11 months later, the largest blackout in U.S. history is finally over --- mostly; In Appalachia, some victories against new pipelines; PLUS: Surprise! Despite prior denials, Interior Department readies plan to sell off public lands... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): California's largest fire ever keeps growing; Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke's latest wildfire interview is a doozy; Fracking water use skyrockets, creating 1,440 percent more toxic wastewater; Can offshore wind turbines succeed in the Great Lakes?; Fewer than 1 Percent of offshore tracts auctioned by Trump draw bids; Report finds traces of Glyphosate herbicide in Cheerios and Quaker Oats; Big NYC landlords join plan to cut energy use 20 percent by 2030; Not just land heat waves: Oceans are in hot water, too... PLUS: Science, health leaders lay out evidence vs. EPA 'secret science' rule... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump Administration using California wildfires to undermine endangered species and push for more aggressive commercial logging; Amid record heat, Glacier National Park is now on fire; PLUS: Federal court orders Trump's EPA to ban a dangerous pesticide... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The next five years will be 'anomalously warm,' scientists predict; Bayer stock plunges after jury awards man $289 million in Roundup cancer trial; Germany aims to ban glyphosate for 3 years; Significant rise in mosquito 'danger days': study; Tallahassee politicians failing to protect Florida's environment; When a pipeline runs afoul of government rules, officials change the rules; Internal emails show E.P.A. staff objected to agency's new rules on asbestos use; Coming soon: Wheeler's first big moves on science; Terrified by 'hothouse Earth'? Don't despair "” do something; This new electric car can charge while you drive... PLUS: How the Weather Channel is documenting the damage of climate change... and much, MUCH more! ...

After a quick report on Saturday's primary elections in Hawaii (moderate Democrats did well, more progressive candidates less so), we head straight out to Las Vegas for today's BradCast, where the 26th annual hackers convention, DEF CON, held its 2nd annual Vote Hacking Village. [Audio link to show follows below.]

After every voting system on display at last year's event was hacked within minutes by conference attendees, organizers tried to make it a bit more difficult this year. They made unverifiable electronic voting systems, optical-scan paper ballot tabulators and electronic pollbooks from a number of companies --- almost all of which will be in wide use across the country once again for this November's crucial midterms --- available for investigation and penetration. Once again, the hackers in attendance made short order of pretty much all of them.

Stunning vulnerabilities [PDF] were discovered, including some that officials have known about (and ignored or tried to keep secret for years) while others were revealed for the first time. Things like Chinese pop song files were found on one system used in actual elections recently, along with a host of other disturbing findings, which we summarize today.

Other disturbing findings regard the ES&S m650, an optical scanner used to tabulate paper absentee ballots in more than half of the country. Hackers discovered several severe vulnerabilities (some of which have been known for more than a decade, and others which election officials hoped to withhold from the public), including the ease with which the machine's entire operating system can be overwritten by inserting a zipdrive with a file named "update" before powering it on. Also, electronic pollbooks were found to be corruptible in seconds and found to store unencrypted administrative passwords --- in plain text format! --- on their removable memory cards (one of which was simply "password".)

There was also a mock election run on the systems still used in states like Georgia. In that election, a candidate not even on the ballot ending up winning. In another case which officials should take note of, a ballot cast via email was intercepted and changed. "The selection of the candidate was changed so that when it was received it was different from what was sent," the organizers note. "This is a big deal for the real world because we already allow for email balloting, in special cases for Americans living overseas [such as active military]. This is allowed in 30 states plus DC."

Moreover, the Voting Village organizers also offered replicas of swing-state Sec. of State website available to some 50 children from ages 6 to 17. You'll be shocked to learn that most were able to hack the mock SoS websites in some fashion, including changing candidates names and parties, and tampering with reported elections results to show, for example, 12 billion votes cast. The fastest exploit of a Sec. of State replica site (Florida's) was by an 11-year old who did it in 10 minutes!

We're joined today to discuss all of this by Emmy-award winning journalist and documentarian LULU FRIESDAT whose video from last year's DEF CON Voting Village went viral (several times) since then, and who was on hand to document this past weekend's conference once again. She details the extraordinary "sea change" since last year's event, as many elections officials and U.S. Intelligence Community representatives were on hand for this year's festivities.

"What's really great about this year's Def Con is that we are starting to see a collaboration and communication between three groups that really have been working more as silos previously, and that is election officials, security experts, and hackers," Friesdat reports. "It was very deliberate on the part of the organizers, Jake Braun, Harri Hursti and Matt Blaze, to really try to bring those three groups together... Because we're not going to make progress on this issue unless these three groups start communicating with each other."

"We don't have a one-size-fits-all solution for this. Every county is going to have to have some different solutions. What we have are principles. And I think the principles remain the same. The principles are yes, every voter who can mark a ballot by hand, needs to mark a ballot by hand. And security experts across the board are really starting to say that, openly publicly."

"There is a sea change happening. You really could feel it. This year, there was an entire panel of election officials, whereas last year almost none of them actually came," Friesdat tells me, adding cautiously: "There are thousands of election officials all over the country who are still dragging their feet. You look at states like Georgia, and they are doing everything they can to stay in basically an unauthenticated election protocol. So it is a wide spectrum."

Among the noteworthy accounts from Friesdat, we discuss California Sec. of State Alex Padilla's call for more federal funding for election systems (meaning, more money for more computers) and Colorado Elections Manager Dwight Shellman who, though a fan of electronic tabulation, calls for routine post-election audits everywhere (which almost no states do at all.)

We also discuss the remarks at the conference by DHS Asst. Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications Jeanette Manfra, who admitted last summer during U.S. Senate Hearings that the agency never found evidence that votes were changed in the 2016 Presidential election, in no small part, because nobody ever bothered to look! DHS never carried out any forensic investigations of voting systems, nor even bothered to count ballots to make sure they were accurately tabulated by counting computers in the election, despite the ongoing warnings by the Intelligence Community of Russian cyberattacks and interference. "Could it be done?," Friesdat asks rhetorically, "The answer, over and over and over again, is yes, it could be done. Election results could be manipulated. And is it difficult? No. It is a piece of cake."

While this year's DEF CON Voting Village was another huge leap forward in bringing concerns about all of these systems to the public, it appears we have a long way to go until American figures out the solution. I'd suggest that solution is public oversight of tabulation of hand-marked paper ballots (Not computers, but people! I call it "Democracy's Gold Standard".) But, hey, computers --- all of which are obviously wildly hackable --- could work too, right?

Speaking of which, we close today with an email from a listener who turned one of my recent rants on this issue into a poem...

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