Constitutional Due Process plays a starring role in today's BradCast --- as it damned well should --- in several different stories of note. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

• Today, we revisit the ridiculous story about the one election from 2024 that is still unsettled. At least it was before Monday, when a federal district judge may have finally put an end to it. We'll see. This is the contest for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat, where incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs' re-election was challenged by her opponent, Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin. At least two recounts found that he lost by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast. Nonetheless, Griffin has been deploying a playbook clearly created for Donald Trump prior to last year's election, in demanding some 65,000 lawfully cast ballots be tossed out entirely --- though only in a few Dem-leaning counties, and only for his race. We unpack all the details again on today's show. But, long story short: The state Supreme Court (dominated 6 to 2 by Republicans, or 6 to 1 in this case, since Riggs recused herself) recently okayed the potentially disenfranchisement of thousands of NC voters to help out Griffin. But Riggs then took the matter to federal court, where U.S. District Court Judge Richard Myers --- a Trump-appointee --- on Monday said absolutely not. You may not change the rules of an election after an election and violate the Constitutional Due Process of voters in the bargain, according to his order [PDF]. This is, of course, very good news for Riggs, but also for democracy itself. Hopefully, it's finally over. We'll see if Griffin chooses to keep his six-months of idiocy and attempted vote suppression going on appeal. Myers has given him one week to decide.

• Trump said over the weekend that he just doesn't really know if the Due Process mandates of the Constitution are actually, ya know, mandatory. He was answering questions about his use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to detain and deport alleged gang members from Venezuela to a gulag in El Salvador for a life sentence, without ever allowing them a day in court to make their case, or even contact with lawyers or family. But the AEA law may only be invoked in the first place against migrants from nations that have declared war on the U.S., or in the event of "invasion" or "incursion" directed by a foreign government. That is certainly not the case with Venezuela, though Trump argued otherwise in his invocation of the wartime law. Earlier this year, reporting from the New York Times and Washington Post revealed that the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) found back in February that there was no evidence of Venezuela's President directing an invasion of the U.S. Trump made his proclamation to begin deportations in March anyway. At the time, the Admin claimed the reporting was wrong and the DoJ vowed extraordinary measures to track down the leakers. But, according to a redacted memo released on Monday under the Freedom of Information Act by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, summarizing the IC's findings, the newspapers had it right and --- I hope you're sitting down --- it appears the Trump Administration was lying about all of this from the jump.

• In related news, yet another federal judge --- this time in the Southern District of New York --- has enjoined the Trump Administration from moving migrants detained under the Alien Enemies Act until they are given full Due Process. The ruling was not unlike one from a Trump-appointed federal judge in South Texas last week. In this case, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a Clinton appointee, found [PDF] that since the Administration has "not demonstrated the existence of a ‘war,’ ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion,’ the AEA was not validly invoked by the Presidential Proclamation."

• Meanwhile, the fortunes of Trump buddy and richest man on earth, Elon Musk --- also, potentially, the world's most hated --- are really beginning to nose dive. Aside from users fleeing Twitter/X in droves this year in the wake of both his partnering with Trump and the Nazification of the social media site, the future of his Electric Vehicle company appears even bleaker. The stock price of Tesla is down some 40% since he DOGEd himself to Trump last December and subsequently outed himself as a far-right extremist. But sales of the company's cars in Europe have fallen even farther. According to new numbers out this week from both Germany and the UK, where, even as overall sales of cars is dropping, EV sales are booming --- at least for companies not owned by Musk --- Tesla sales continue to drive over a cliff. They are down 46% in Germany compared to last April, and a whopping 62% in Britain. Sad!

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as drastic cuts to the National Weather Service are now beginning to endanger public safety, according to its former leaders; Trump's DoJ is suing states to block climate laws and lawsuits; and the Administration plans to shrink National Parks in the U.S. to make room for more mining and drilling, and violate international law by mining the sea floor...

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Today on The BradCast: His various attempts to undermine the Constitution and American civil rights law continue to be blocked by judges in the courts. But that isn't stopping the President and his lackeys from gutting civil rights protections and environmental justice enforcement at key federal agencies...for the moment. Nor is it stopping our guest today, a 30-year EPA veteran, from continuing the good fight at her agency. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Donald Trump proved to be a loser again on Thursday in three different federal courtrooms, in three different civil rights-related law suits, as determined by three different federal district judges (one of whom was appointed by him.) Two of the judges, one in New Hampshire, the other in Maryland, blocked his Dept. of Education's attempt to cut funding to K-12 schools with anti-discrimination or DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs.

The third civil rights-related court loss for Trump today was in D.C., where a federal judge blocked his attempt to mandate proof of citizenship when registering to vote, as per his recent attempted power grab via an Executive Order meant to undermine democracy, U.S. elections and the right to vote.

In the meantime, Harmeet Dhillon --- a rightwing culture warrior clown and former Trump 2020 "Stop the Steal" attorney --- has been appointed to oversee the Dept. of Justice's Civil Rights Division, where she has reportedly unleashed a "bloodbath" among senior officials at the office which oversees, among other things, voting rights. Current and former employees at the division charge that Dhillon is turning civil rights law upside down, by using it, as one former department employee familiar with the new changes said, to "victimize the very people it was created to protect."

THEN... In related-ish news, we reported earlier this week that Trump's new EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, sent letters to some 450 staffers at the Agency's Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights office, notifying them that they are being fired or reassigned as the office is being shut down. The firing letters to longtime staffers --- including scientists, researches and attorneys --- were sent on Monday night, Earth Day eve.

The EPA's Environmental Justice office, created during the Administration of Republican President George H.W. Bush, is tasked with protecting minority communities who are often most vulnerable to toxic emissions from chemical plants and oil refineries. Down in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley", for instance, there are about 150 plants and refineries concentrated along a stretch of land between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The population in the area is mostly Black, and multiple studies have found that nearly every census tract in the area ranks in the top 5% nationally for cancer risk.

Since taking office, however, Team Trump have pledged to "end the use of 'environmental justice' as a tool for advancing ideological priorities" and have been unwinding the unit's work under previous Presidents. For example, under Joe Biden's Administration, the EPA sued the owner of a Cancer Alley chemical plant where cancer cases were found to be 44% higher for those who lived within one mile of the plant than the national rate. The Biden Administration sued the company to clean up their act. The Trump EPA recently withdrew the lawsuit.

Amidst those horrors, we're delighted to be joined today by JOYCE HOWELL, 30-year veteran EPA senior attorney and Executive Vice President of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE)'s Council 238, representing some 8,400 EPA workers nationwide.

"'Environmental justice' is just another extension of the fundamental American right to equal protection under the law," she tells me when I ask her to explain what the phrase actually means. "To ensure that, no matter where you live, the laws that protect human health and the environment will apply to you. Environmental justice gives people the avenue for their voices to be heard when determinations are made about where to put a factory that spews so much pollution, relative to where they live. Or, if they are already living there, and there's someplace nearby that impacts them, that they would be able to, as members of the public, have their voice heard with regard to the permitting of that plant, to the number of inspections that take place [and] the oversight of programs that are delegated from EPA to the state."

Howell finds it "disconcerting" that EPA Administrator Zeldin has shut down the Environmental Justice office, removing its history from the Agency's website, dismissing the work of the office as ineffective and "an excuse to fund left-wing activist groups". That, as Zeldin vows to slash the EPA budget by 65%.

She tells me that while work is continuing at the EPA nonetheless, its "enforcement program has slowed down tremendously." More than even "under Trump 1," when she also served. Explaining how she, and her colleagues at the Agency, survived his first term, Howell says, "We do what we always do: we put our heads down and we did our work. That's what carried us through."

Her union, AFGE, may have plans to challenge the recent layoffs and reassignments in court, though she did not yet want to give away their thinking on that. But, when I asked why she was willing to speak on the record on these matters, --- while many of her current and former EPA colleagues have been speaking to the media under condition of anonymity due to concerns of retaliation --- Howell notes that, since she speaks on behalf of the union, she may have some protections under federal labor law that others may not, protecting her "speech on behalf of workers."

But, she adds, she recently "attended an organizing meeting and someone said, 'Cowardice is contagious. So is courage.' And I thought to myself, yeah, that's true. For me, it's important. I haven't been at EPA for all these years just to get a salary. I am there because I believe in the mission. I will tell you every single person there feels strongly the same way. We don't do it on behalf of ourselves. We do it on behalf of the American people."

I hope you'll turn in for a very interesting conversation today.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen helps us close today's show with our latest Green News Report, at the end of a very green --- and sometimes all too toxic --- Earth Day week!...

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You'll be delighted to know that we've got a (mostly) non-Trump related election story for you on today's BradCast, and a guest here to discuss it! Though we've got a few Trump related stories we have to get to first. Sorry. [Audio link for complete show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Donald Trump has "plainly violat[ed] the First Amendment," according to an announcement last night from the Associated Press. The notice was in response to the White House blocking the 178-year old nonpartisan global news outlet from the President's Oval Office signing of an Executive Order with self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk, giving him and his DOGE Bros government-wide control of the hiring and firing of all federal workers at all federal agencies other than the Defense Dept. AP's punishment was because Trump doesn't like the way the AP Style Guide refers to the Gulf of Mexico after he declared that it should be called the Gulf of America. The White House affront to First Amendment free speech and free press rights echoes former Fox 'News' host turned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's order last month to remove a number of well-established news outlets, such as New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and NBC News, from offices they've occupied for decades at the Pentagon. Rightwing MAGA "news" outlets will be given those spaces instead.

• Free speech doesn't fare any better under Trump, even when it comes from independent federal government Inspectors General. On Tuesday, after the IG at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) issued a 6-page report [PDF] critical of the Administration's pause of all agency activities, Trump fired him. The report found that the attempted Trump/Musk/DOGE shutdown of largely all of USAID's critical foreign aid work around the globe and evacuation of thousands of overseas workers would result in, among other things, hundreds of millions of dollars of already-shipped food for starving people rotting in ports; life-saving medicine for deadly diseases remaining in warehouses unused; and "inadvertently funding entities or salaries of individuals associated with U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.” Obviously, that guy had to go!

• The latest Inspector General firing came the day before 8 of at least 17 IGs fired in Trump's first week, in pretty clear violation of the Inspector General Act of 2022, filed a lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court in D.C., challenging their unlawful "purported removals". The 32-page complaint [PDF] charges, among other things, that these IGs, with decades of experience between them, "have been sent a message that non-partisanship and truth-telling will not be tolerated. That message will have the effect of intimidating the [inspector general] workforce and thus chill their critical work for the American people."

THEN... It's on to the last unsettled race of 2024.

While Trump won the narrowly divided swing state of North Carolina last year, Democrats won almost every other election on the statewide ballot, from Governor to Attorney General, etc. Their candidate for the state Supreme Court, current Justice Allison Riggs, defeated her Republican challenger Judge Jefferson Griffin by just 734 votes out of 5.5 million cast statewide. That narrow result was certified by the State Board of Elections after a post-election canvass, audit and two recounts requested by Griffin.

But Griffin is still challenging the result in state court, arguing that some 66,000 early and mail-in ballots cast by North Carolinians should be tossed out because some registrations lacked drivers license or social security numbers (even though many of those cases were due to database clerical errors on the part of officials, not registrants, or were created before the law required that information); other challenged ballots come from military and oversees voters without copies of Photo IDs included in the mailing (which Griffin maintains is now required under the state's new polling place Photo ID restrictions); or were cast by U.S. citizens who never lived in the U.S. (even though they were born to U.S. citizen parents and have always been allowed to vote).

Griffin is hoping to defy state election officials with a friendly ruling from the state Supreme Court, which has a 5 to 2 Republican advantage --- or 5 to 1, since Riggs has recused herself from this case. Riggs, on the other hand, is seeking relief in federal court, where federal law would almost certainly block the tossing of 66,000 ballots from voters who followed the rules for the election.

To try and make sense of this absurd mess, we're joined today by DEBRA DICKS MAXWELL, President of the North Carolina state chapter of the NAACP. Last week, Maxwell wrote an op-ed pointing out that minorities and young voters are disproportionately disqualified in Griffin's list of ballots that he wants to toss. She noted that he is seeking an unprecedented "do-over" election, even though countless races in state history have been proven by courts to have violated the rights of voters, particularly when it comes to gerrymandered elections found to have been conducted with Congressional districts that violated the Constitution and Voting Rights Act both before and after the elections were run.

"We at the NAACP North Carolina State Conference have never been granted any relief like that, even in cases where we proved that Black voters’ rights were violated," she tells me. "They did not enjoy a 'do-over' because of the gerrymandering by the General Assembly, stacking and packing Black votes into fewer districts [so] there was less representation for people of color at the legislative level. That did not change."

"Judge Griffin is refusing to concede and accept [the results] since he has friends on the North Carolina State Supreme Court," she argues. "Judge Griffin should concede. But because he feels that the results don't matter, 'what I want matters', that is sending the wrong message to thousands of voters, not only in this state but across the country."

If Griffin receives a new election, Maxwell warns, "that would send seismic waves through this county, this state, and even through the country to ask for a do-over." Among other things, she asserts, it would decrease voter participation in future elections when people wonder "'Why should I vote when they are just going to call it how they want it?' Especially as we are gathering thousands of those people who are on that 60,000 list. One of my chairs in the NAACP told me, 'I'm on that list!' We know people who are on there. They are very upset."

Maxwell also explains that the state NAACP is currently "winning on results of a federal [Photo] ID case" filed last May. "It is February and we are still waiting on the outcome." But, if they win the case, she says, it doesn't mean that last year's elections will receive a "do-over"...

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As usual, the incoming President has almost no clue what he's talking about. Not that he cares or that it matters. That's especially true, as discussed on today's BradCast, when it comes to elections and voting laws. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... It's another one of those fire-hose news days akin to what we experienced, day after day, during the first Trump term. We can only cover what we can cover. So, we start with the news, as reported by CNN today, that the House Ethics Committee voted in secret earlier this month to release the report from their years-long investigation of allegations against now-former Rep. and now-former Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz. The report, which Republicans on the bipartisan panel voted against releasing in November, is said to focus on allegations of Gaetz' salacious sexual misconduct with minors, illicit drug use, and other crimes, potentially included bribery and more. CNN says the Committee has decided to make the report public "after the House's final day of votes this year" unless they "change course now that it has voted."

NEXT... In an update to a story we've been following since last month's election, the North Carolina State Board of Elections has decided it will not order a full hand-recount in the election for State Supreme Court between the incumbent Democrat, Justice Allison Riggs, and her Republican opponent, Jefferson Griffin. The original computer-reported tally from the November 5 contest found Riggs defeated Griffin by 623 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast. A Griffin-requested machine recount widened Riggs' lead to 724 votes over the Republican challenger, who then requested a hand-count. State law allows a small number of precincts in each county to be hand-counted before ordering a full hand-count in the event that the smaller audit is way out of line with the computer recount. In the hand-count samples in all 100 counties in NC, both candidates picked up votes (Riggs gained 70, Griffin picked up 56), but it was not enough to trigger a full, statewide hand-count. With Riggs declared the certified winner, Griffin is also seeking to toss some 60,000 ballots out entirely, claiming those voters, including military and overseas voters, were either not entitled to vote or to have their votes counted. The matter is expected to end up at the state Supreme Court. Presumably, Justice Riggs, one of just two remaining Democrats on the seven-person High Court, will recuse herself if that happens.

THEN... Donald Trump has been vowing and/or threatening to end Joe Biden's "EV mandate" on "Day One" when he takes office, even though there is no Biden "EV mandate." A week or so ago on Meet the Press, Trump reiterated his plans to sign Executive Orders to "end the electric mandate immediately for the cars" and for "ending a lot of the environmental things that were ridiculous that hurt our country very badly and didn't do anything for the environment...ya know, standard things." This week, Reuters has an exclusive report on the specific plans from the Trump Transition team for those "standard things", including what the news outlet describes as "sweeping changes to cut off support for electric vehicles and charging stations" and to redirect that funding to "national-defense priorities." The plans also involve reversing California's (and twelve other states') emission standards that save lives and reduce energy prices for residents, and doing away with the Biden administration's $7,500 consumer tax credit for EV purchases, a policy expected to harm U.S. automakers like General Motors (if less so for Tesla, whose CEO spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected). But all of those things may be easier said than done, certainly on "Day One", as Desi Doyen explains.

FINALLY... Speaking of easier said than done, Donald Trump has also been demanding changes to voting and election laws, most prominently after he began falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Earlier this month, he declared at a Fox "News" event, once again, that "we want to have paper ballots, one-day voting, voter ID, and proof of citizenship" among other changes to election law that he has repeatedly called for. He doesn't seem to understand most of the things he's demanding, nor care about the fact that some of the measures would disenfranchise millions of Americans.

We're joined today by JOSHUA A. DOUGLAS, election law professor at the Univ. of Kentucky College of Law; author of a number of recent books on American democracy, and now the host of the Democracy Optimist podcast and companion newsletter.

This week, at Washington Monthly, Douglas explained why Trump, in truth, will have "little official power to implement the new rules he supports," given that the U.S. Constitution gives most power regarding elections to the states. While Congress has certainly adopted a number of landmark federal voting laws over the years, Douglas tells me today, "it's really a process of local control. The President himself cannot issue an Executive Order or some sort of decree that elections should be changed one way or the other without states being the ones to pass those laws --- or Congress, but that's a difficult path, as well."

"The President doesn't have any power unilaterally to dictate election rules," says Douglas, while recognizing that Trump will have both the bully pulpit to muscle Congress and states into adopting new laws and rules, along with the power to appoint members of the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) and Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and, particularly in Trump's case, to direct his Dept. of Justice to enforce certain laws and ignore others. "But the President, under the Constitution, doesn't have any formal powers to regulate elections, beyond signing or vetoing a Congressional law."

We step through some of the specific measures Trump has been demanding, such as "paper ballots" (which the vast majority of voters already use), "one-day voting" (ending absentee and early voting), Voter ID (already mandated by most states and, under federal law, already required when registering voters in all 50 states), and the point that most concerns Douglas, "proof of citizenship" when registering to vote. If actually adopted at the federal level, he argues, it would likely disenfranchise tens of millions of voters and become "a real logistical nightmare for election officials."

The efforts by Republicans to change election laws on the state level, are a different matter, as Douglas explains as well. But, bottom line, there is no "magic wand" for Trump to use to undermine elections by himself, much less on "Day One". And there are quite a few things that YOU can do, to stop him and anyone else who would try to restrict our right to vote.

Given recent events, is Douglas still the "democracy optimist" he was when he originally named his podcast and newsletter earlier this year? Tune on in to find out...

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On today's BradCast we're hoping to help you get acclimated to the tsunami of "fraud" claims --- both real and fake, and what they mean and don't --- that are most likely about to come our way over the next few days and weeks...at least if Donald Trump loses to Kamala Harris in 2024 as he did to Joe Biden in 2020. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Pardon us, however, for beginning with a brief victory lap following our L.A. Dodgers' big World Series win last night, and a related sidebar as to what history tells us (or doesn't) about who is going to win the Presidential election based on who won the World Series.

Then, as to the coming "fraud" storm...among the many stories cited along the way today...

• A Minnesota woman this week was charged with three felony counts of voter fraud after forging her dead mother's signature on an absentee ballot to vote for Donald Trump.

• Six people were charged over the summer for submitting nearly two dozen fraudulent absentee ballots on behalf of a Republican City Council candidate in New York. How they got away with it and how they got caught. The candidate's 19-year old daughter was among those charged.

• In the battleground state of Michigan, election officials in August indicted four voters who allegedly voted twice --- first by absentee and then again at the polls --- in the state's Presidential primary earlier this year. Once again, as in all of these cases, they were caught and charged thanks to safe-guards built into the system. Of the more than 11.7 million votes cast in the state over the past several elections, according to Michigan's State Auditor General, 99.99% of ballots cast were NOT from double voters.

• In Mesa County, Colorado this week, officials announced they blocked an effort in the very Republican-leaning county to cast about a dozen absentee ballots, apparently stolen out of mailboxes in the Vote-by-Mail state. The state's signature-matching procedures uncovered the fraud scheme, though three fraudulent ballots slipped through the system before the crime was discovered. Mesa is the same county where former County Clerk, Tina Peters, was earlier this month sentenced to 9 years in prison on felony charges related to helping her MAGA friends break into the County's voting systems in the middle of the night after the 2020 election to copy proprietary software and distribute it across the Internet to other Trump supporters.

• Last month we reported on the story out of Arizona where both the RNC and the state Republican Party went to court to argue against the removal of some 98,000 voters from the state voting rolls who, due to a years-old glitch in Maricopa County's voter database, had no record of presenting Proof of Citizenship with their registrations, as required by state law. In that case, Republicans opposed the systematic voter purge that the state's Democratic Sec. of State didn't want to do, but felt he had to under state law. The Republicans correctly argued to the AZ Supreme Court that such purges, within 90-days of an election, were in violation of federal law. They made that argument after the SoS revealed that the majority of the potentially "non-citizen" voters to be removed were registered Republicans.

  Yet, this week, on Wednesday in Virginia, after a U.S. District Court Judge and federal Appeals Court last week blocked an attempt by the state's Republican Governor to purge some 1,600 registered voters under the premise that some might be non-citizens, the corrupted Republican U.S. Supreme Court majority allowed the unlawful systematic purge, ordered by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, to move forward. All three Democratic-appointed SCOTUS Justices dissented. One of the purged Virginians, a U.S. citizen who has lived there her entire life, called it "a very bad October surprise."

All of these stories today help us understand the difference between real and fake fraud claims; the difference between voter fraud and election fraud; how easily most such penny-ante fraud is caught and often prevented before it happens; and how Republicans this year, from Donald Trump on down through his minions and back up through his corrupted SCOTUS, are hoping to use phony or exaggerated fraud claims to help sow the seeds to steal the election, if necessary, as of Tuesday night.

Get ready! Because that is coming --- if Harris is declared the winner.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with horrific "welcome to the future" news out of Spain this week, where extreme drought was followed up with a year's worth of rain and deadly flash flooding this week that swept through one town in a matter of hours, killing more than 150 so far; and some words of warning about Tuesday's election from Sen. Bernie Sanders regarding our climate changed future in the event that Trump is allowed back into the White House in January...

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On today's BradCast: Finally! Some real and tangible justice for two of the 2020 election heroes who were grievously harmed by the disgraced former President's insidious lies, and other important news just weeks before your final chance to vote in arguably the most critical election in U.S. history. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage on today's program...

• We're now less than two weeks out from Election Day, your last chance to vote --- and help others to do the same --- in the 2024 election. Have you voted yet? Are you doing all you can to help and encourage others do so? Will you feel good ten years from now about however you decide to vote this year?

• In New York on Tuesday, a federal judge ordered [PDF] former Donald Trump lawyer and disgraced federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani to turn over, within seven days, his NYC penthouse apartment (valued at around $5 million) and most of his valuable luxury items to Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, the Atlanta, Georgia election workers who the disgraced former NYC Mayor (along with Trump himself) repeatedly defamed following the 2020 election. Late last year Giuliani was found liable for defaming the mother and daughter by using racist attacks to falsely claim they had tampered with ballots during tabulation in Fulton County, GA. A jury awarded them $150 million. They are about to collect a sizeable portion of that award. It's a small price to pay by Rudy, who ruined his own life while endangering and ruining the lives of others, all in service to Trump's Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. These are just a few of the countless lives ruined by the man who is running again for President for the sole reason that he needs stay out of prison.

• A strong signal was sent to all 2024 election officials in Arizona and around the nation on Monday, with the guilty plea [PDF] from an elected Republican Supervisor and MAGA election denier in rural Cochise County who had attempted to block the certification of results in the state's 2022 midterms. Peggy Judd pleaded her felony charge down to a misdemeanor after she and a fellow Republican Supervisor, who still faces trial in January, raised doubts about the accuracy of the county's computerized vote tabulators. The plea agreement, announced by AZ's Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, comes just days after a state judge in Georgia made clear that certification of election results is a mandatory, not optional, duty, even if officials may have questions about fraud or the accuracy of results. But, wait! Haven't we questioned the accuracy of computerized voting and tabulating systems in the past? Yes, we have! But there is a right --- and lawful --- way to do it, as discussed on today's show. And the way for candidates, elected officials and other voters to legally challenge results is in open court after the certification of results. That is particularly true in a County like Cochise where all voters are allowed to vote on verifiable hand-marked paper ballots.

• The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld last week's lower court rulings that blocked new, last-minute polling place rules instituted by the MAGA-majority on the State Election Board. Opponents of the new rules argued they could be used as a pretext to bollocks up and/or delay certification [PDF] of this year's election results in the critical battleground state.

• In another critical battleground state, North Carolina, Donald Trump has apparently decided that changes made in 2020 to help voters safely cast their ballot in the middle of a pandemic were great after all! Well, Trump has decided they are great this year, anyway. At least for voters in the western, heavily Republican-leaning part of the state following devastation from Hurricane Helene just weeks ago. New procedures instituted to make voting easier for those affected by the deadly storm are just fine, apparently, according to the disingenuous, hypocritical, flip-flopping Trump. That, after he'd previously declared many of the very same or similar voting accommodations in 2020, after more than 230,000 Americans had died on his watch before the election, to be a "big scam" because he thought it might help Democratic voters.

• But, before we give Republicans in North Carolina too many plaudits for doing the right thing, CBS News finds that an 1,800-member strong group of self-proclaimed "election protection" activists in the state (read: Republican election deniers, in this case) are targeting those with "Hispanic-sounding last names" in a campaign to challenge certain voters on the rolls. Lee County, NC Republican Party Chair and head of the so-called North Carolina Election Integrity Team, James Womack was caught on video tape explaining how such voters may be "suspicious", as part of an eight-state effort to suppress the vote, headed up by longtime GOP "voter fraud" fraudster and Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us today for our latest Green News Report, after Cuba is hit by an island wide power outage followed by a hurricane; Deadly deluges strike New Mexico, France and Bangladesh; Scientists declare the largest, longest coral bleaching event on record; And oil industry lobbyists prepare to reverse Joe Biden's landmark regulations if Donald Trump wins or steals the Presidency this year...

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If you find you today's BradCast informative, entertaining or helpful, please let folks on Twitter know. I suspect we won't otherwise get much traction over there today for some odd reason. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

It's amusing how, in April of 2023, not long after he purchased Twitter, Elon Musk was asked by Tucker Carlson about "New Twitter's" role in the 2024 election. His response: "The goal of new Twitter is to be as fair and even handed as possible. So, not following any political ideology."

That. Was. Darling! Just over a year later, Musk has leveraged his site almost entirely on behalf of Donald Trump, flooding his nearly 3 million followers with out and out false claims, often echoing the disgraced former President, including blatant, evidence-free lies about election fraud by Democrats.

That's in addition to the, at least, $100 million that the world's richest billionaire has plowed into political action committees to support a second term for Trump. One such Musk-funded group is called Future Coalition PAC. It is currently running a wildly cynical set of ads targeting Arab and Muslim voters in the battleground state of Michigan, claiming that "Kamala Harris Stands With Israel". The very same Musk-bankrolled group is simultaneously running ads targeting Jewish voters in battleground Pennsylvania with the message "Two-Faced Kamala Harris Stands With Palestine".

Another of Musk's PAC's recently created a website called Progress 2028, tailored to look like an official Harris Campaign page, while pushing decidedly false messages. ("Let's remove barriers for undocumented immigrants who are undocumented!") Apparently, all of that is legal. Though the group is also sending out false text messages, seemingly impersonating the Harris Campaign, pushing voters to the Progress 2028 website. That may not be legal.

But it was on behalf of yet another Musk dark money super PAC, the one he calls America PAC, in which he's invested at least $75 million, that, he announced over the weekend, that he will be giving away $1 million dollars to one lucky person each day --- so long as the person is registered to vote in a battleground state and signed his petition in support of the 1st and 2nd Amendments. Noted election law professor Rick Hasen, following the first big, lottery style check Musk handed out on stage Saturday during a rally in Pennsylvania, details how what Musk is doing is "clearly illegal vote buying". That's right. While using wild lies to make the evidence-free case that Democrats are committing election fraud, Musk is committing actual election fraud on behalf of Trump, each and every day between now and Election Day. (Anyone home, DoJ?)

His million dollar giveaways to encourage voter registration (a violation of 52 U.S.C. 10307(c), barring "offers to pay...either for registration to vote or for voting") began on the same day that Musk lied to attendees at a weekend rally in PA about Dominion Voting Systems somehow stealing the 2020 election for Joe Biden. (Similar lies cost Fox 'News' more than three-quarters of a billion dollars last year in a record settlement with Dominion to end the voting technology company's defamation suit against the rightwing propaganda outlet hours before the trial was to begin.)

We're joined today by the perfect guest to discuss all of the above and more. EDDIE PEREZ was formerly a longtime official at Hart-Intercivic, one of the nation's few major voting machine companies. He then went on to work as the chief of Twitter's Civic Integrity unit, back before Musk bought the social media site...when they still had a Civic Integrity unit! Perez is now on the Board of Directors at the nonpartisan, nonprofit, Open Source Election Technology (OSET) Institute and penned an oped for MSNBC last week headlined: "I ran Twitter's civic integrity team. Elon Musk has no idea how elections work."

In addition to debunking a number of Musk's false claims (no, Dominion doesn't even have voting systems in Philadelphia, for example!), Perez speaks to how Twitter (now ridiculously renamed X) has changed since Musk's takeover, turning it into a den of far-right conspiracy theories, hate speech and other dangerous nonsense.

"The degree to which the entire platform has obviously fallen off the deep end is incredible," he tells me. "I think it's fair to say Musk has thrown out the window any kind of commitment to having actual facts about the reality of how elections are run. What we have right now is basically a referendum on whether billionaires and oligarchs are going to shape the public's understanding of how elections are run. Are they going to do that by spreading false rumors and flooding the airwaves? Or are we going to listen to election professionals? And are we going to have standards and journalistic facts to educate the American people about how their elections are actually run with integrity?"

What would Twitter have done in the old days, before Musk purchased it, if someone like Musk had spread the disinformation he is now using the platform to spread? "Twitter took it seriously," says Perez. "What would have happened is there are different ways we would redirect users to actual, credible information. You do that not through censorship, not through taking things down. If you had a post that made an obviously false claim about some election process or voting, you might see a label on that Tweet saying, 'Here's some more information' [with links to credible sites, like the National Association of Secretaries of State]. They took it seriously. We're not going to slash and burn and taken people's posts down. But if we see an opportunity to send them to good information from trusted sources, why not do that? That helps voters. That helps democracy."

Perez also offers a number of pieces of advice on how listeners and voters can push back against the even larger avalanche of lies that is absolutely going to begin spewing forth shortly, in the event that Kamala Harris defeats Trump this year.

"They need to get their answers from their local elections office. You need to check your ballot before casting it. If you have a by-mail ballot and you haven't returned it yet, I recommend turning it in to a drop-box. And when you see inflammatory images [on social media and elsewhere], ask yourself, 'What's the story behind this? What's the context?' And find out where it came from" before blithely passing it along to others.

We've got a lot to learn from Perez today! Please tune in for a very lively, informative and, yes, at times, maddening BradCast!

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On today's BradCast: Too many hurricanes. It's almost as if there is some reason this is suddenly happening...even if Florida's U.S. Senator Rick Scott (up for re-election in four weeks, btw!) pretends as if doesn't have a clue. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• With less than four weeks to go before Election Day, folks in more than half of the states are now voting, registration deadlines are closing, and a group of Muslim imams and faith leaders have written a letter of endorsement [PDF] for Kamala Harris, noting "she is a committed ceasefire candidate...and the best option for ending the bloodshed in Gaza and now Lebanon." They also argue: "Knowingly enabling someone like Donald Trump to return to office, whether by voting directly for him or for a third-party candidate, is both a moral and a strategic failure. Particularly in swing states, a vote for a third party could enable Trump to win that state and therefore the elections,” the clerics argue. They advise that "given [Trump’s] well-documented history of harming our communities and country, as well as what he has promised he will do to Muslims and Palestinians should he return, it is incumbent upon us not to allow our high emotions to dictate our actions to our detriment.”

• Hurricane Milton spun up overnight from Category 1 to dangerous Category 5 in less than 24 hours, as it rapidly intensified over record warm Gulf of Mexico waters on a path toward the West Coast of central Florida. Milton formed just over a week after Hurricane Helene experienced similar rapid intensification in the Gulf before making landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida's panhandle --- the third storm to do so in less than 13 months. Helene then went on to devastate five more states in the U.S. Southeast, with the death toll now from that storm at 230. But, as Desi Doyen explains today, if Milton makes a direct hit on highly populated Tampa Bay, as currently feared, we could see an unspeakable disaster unlike anything we've seen in this country since at least Katrina back in 2005, if not longer. Landfall for Milton in Florida is currently expected on Wednesday night or Thursday morning.

• But, it barely took a full day before Donald Trump and his social media minions began unleashing lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene last week. In a social media post last Monday, for example, the disgraced former President accused the Biden Administration of "going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas." (Attempting to withhold disaster relief to Democratic areas is something that Trump actually did as President.) Trump further lied that President Biden "left Americans to drown" in North Carolina, and falsely said in an interview that the government is "going out of their way to hurt" Trump voters in the western part of the state. "They’re not getting water, they’re not getting anything," Trump said.

  NC Gov. Roy Cooper described it as a "relentless vortex of disinformation, dialed up by bad actors and platforms like X [Twitter]." The shameful lies (many of them dangerous ones) have required FEMA to set up a "Rumor Response" page in order to debunk them and help keep their employees safe.

  We're joined today by TOM SULLIVAN from on the ground in western North Carolina, specifically from Asheville where he lives, in Buncombe County, one of the hardest hit regions following Helene. Sullivan is a political activist and organizer, and the longtime morning blogger at our friend Digby's Hullaballoo blog. After a week without power or water --- it just came back to his residence on Sunday. And, boy, was he bothered to learn of the lies that had been going on over the past week about what is happening in NC, particularly in hard hit Asheville. He tells us the claims by the rightwingers are simply untrue and that FEMA, in fact, is everywhere there.

  "There are aid stations, trailers, and relief groups on every corner in downtown. It's the most accessible city in the region," he tells me. "The helicopters are going out to remote coves. A lot of people are cut off. So it's mostly helicopter, military, people with high-water vehicles who can get through to these remote areas. And there are hundreds of them." They have been dropping food and other aid since the moment the storm passed, according to Sullivan, who lives in a largely undamaged part of the town. He says the water system will still be down for weeks, and he details some of the devastation he has seen in the area.

  "Everything is working great. The coordination is superb," he asserts, even as he and others who are just now coming back online, have been appalled and enraged by the lies that have been told about what's actually going on on the ground. "More than just being a threat to FEMA employees who try to help people, this disinformation --- they are scaring people. Especially the rumor about '[FEMA's] going to take your property.' If people are afraid to sign up for the aid, they are not going to get aid, and that's hurting them."

  "Some of our Republican officials are telling people to just cut it out," explains Sullivan, while suggesting "there may be a backlash to this" on November 5, even as he concedes he is not yet seeing enough of it to know exactly how it may all shake out at the ballot box in the closely divided battleground state.

  Sullivan also tells me that he spoke to the local elections director today, and shares an update on what election officials will be doing in order to accommodate voters this year, just weeks away from Election Day, with absentee balloting already underway. He worries, as does Brian Beutler at "Off Message" today, that the campaign of lies following Helene is a "trial run" for what is likely to come after Election Day if Trump loses once again...

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We continue our laser focus on the track conditions for the 2024 horse race on today's BradCast, with somewhat better than usual news in a couple of different states. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our many stories covered on today's program...

• Hurricane John made landfall on the west coast of Mexico overnight, after spinning up from a tropical storm to a full-on Cat 3 in a single day, before blowing ashore. That, thanks to the storm's rapid intensification over record warm waters due to climate change. With that ominous note, Tropical Storm Helene, currently in the Caribbean, is also spinning up quickly over record warm waters and could soon become a very large and very dangerous hurricane as it guns for landfall along Florida's Gulf Coast by Thursday night.

• It looks like the threat is over in Nebraska for now. As we reported last week, Republican lawmakers in the state --- one of just two which divvy up Electoral College votes by Congressional district, rather than winner-take-all --- were being hard-pressed by Team Trump to change the way the state apportions electoral votes before November's election, just six weeks away. Kamala Harris' "Blue Wall" strategy of reaching the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House by carrying battlegrounds Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania along with the other traditionally "blue" states, requires that she also win the one single Congressional district around Omaha, as Joe Biden did in 2020. It is, as a grassroots campaign in the district characterizes it, a "blue dot" in an otherwise very "red" state. Nebraska's Republican Governor said last week that he would be willing to call a special session of the state legislature to change the 30-year old law for apportioning electoral votes to advantage Trump, if Republican lawmakers had the votes to do it. On Monday, however, a former Democratic state Senator turned Republican announced he would vote against the scheme, all but killing the possibility for now, according to the Governor today. As we discuss, however, that Omaha Senator may have had ulterior motives above and beyond his seemingly altruistic decision to simply do the right thing for democracy.

• Good news late last week out of Arizona as well! Some 98,000 registered voters will not be blocked from voting in state and local elections and ballot measures this year. That, after a unanimous ruling from the state's Supreme Court on Friday. Republicans in the state have been working for years --- decades, in fact --- to purge voters from the rolls who failed to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote. There are a bunch of good reasons that registrants wouldn't have done so. (For example, if they registered prior to the state's 2004 requirement, or registered via the National Voter Registration Form which does not inform Arizona voters that proof of citizenship documents are required to vote.) But, last week, when the state announced that, thanks to a newly discovered glitch in the state registration database, nearly 100,000 voters were on the rolls without having submitted proof of citizenship --- due to some confusion with how the state motor vehicle office renews driver's licenses --- the matter ended up at the state Supreme Court. And, shockingly, the AZ Republican Party in this case, in a remarkable flip-flop from years of advocacy to the contrary, argued to keep those voters on the rolls! Why? Well, as it turns out, the voters in question, according to the state's Democratic Sec. of State (who also argued to allow the voters to remain fully registered), there were about 10,000 more Republicans on the list of voters than Democrats. Apparently, the GOP isn't that concerned about non-citizens voting after all --- as long as they're registered as Republicans. (Please note: Despite years of attempts by Republicans to mandate citizenship documentation or demand the purging of potential non-citizen voters, they have failed to offer evidence that more than a miniscule handful of non-citizens are actually registered to vote, much less actually voting in U.S. elections.)

• The only way to vote that is more dangerous and less publicly overseeable than touchscreen voting is Internet Voting. And, yet, as much as cybersecurity and voting system experts advocate strongly against it, more and more states are allowing online voting for overseas citizens and military voters. One such state, apparently, is Montana, whose online voting system was opened for the 2024 election on Friday. It took only a few hours, it seems, before one voter noticed that Kamala Harris' name wasn't on the ballot in the Presidential race.

• Joe Biden gave his final address as President of the United States to the U.N. General Assembly today. We're happy to share a few excerpts from his remarks on the need for the world to come together to end wars, take on the climate crisis, safeguard against the dangers of artificial intelligence and protect democracy...among other things.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Climate Week kicks off in New York along with the U.N. General Assembly; Microsoft announces plans to reopen Three Mile Island, the site of the nation's worst nuclear accident, to power its Artificial Intelligence program; and California's Attorney General files a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against ExxonMobil for their decades of lies about the viability of plastic recycling...

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I don't know if they're gonna lose or not. But, as we report on today's busy BradCast, the disgraced former President and his Republican party this week sure do have the stench of losers on them. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our many stories covered today...

• Breaking just before air time: Turns out North Carolina's Trump-endorsed freak show Republican Lt. Gov and gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is even more of a freak show than previously known. And, by his own words on a porn site he frequented for many years, a "black NAZI!". Good luck this November in NC, Republicans!

• Stock market hits record highs today after the Fed lowered interest rates Wednesday more than expected, signaling post-pandemic inflation is back under control. Donald Trump's failing media company, however, which trades as DJT, hits record lows today and still appears to be on track to become a penny stock by November 5.

• The already terrible situation in the Middle East gets worse, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds news ways to keep the war(s) going to keep himself out of prison.

• House Republicans and Donald Trump stay on track to cause another government shutdown at the end of this month, just before the election, after House Speaker Mike Johnson's dead-on-arrival scheme, on behalf of Trump, to demand a new law to prevent already-unlawful non-citizen voting fails to get the support needed for passage from Republicans.

• J.D. Vance continues Trump's lies about "illegal" migrants taking over Springfield, Ohio. They're not "illegal". Trump, as President, gave them legal protected status. Vance says he gonna call them "illegal" anyway, as the Republican Mayor of the now-terrorized town begs them to knock it off, asking for "help not hate".

• New polling continues to look good for Kamala Harris in swing states. But the Democrats "Blue Wall" strategy of winning the White House by winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania --- along with all of the other traditionally "blue" states --- could hit a snag if Team Trump's newly reignited scheme, reportedly now being led up by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Pathetic) is successful. This week Graham was in Nebraska meeting with the state's Republican Governor and members of the legislature, encouraging them to call a special legislative session to change the way the state divvies up Electoral College votes.

  Currently, NE is one of just two states, along with Maine, that apportions Electoral College votes by U.S. House District. That means Harris is likely to win one of the state's votes, in the Omaha district, in the otherwise very "red" state. But Team Trump wants the state to change the law to move to a winner-take-all system just weeks before the election (and just 10 days before vote-by-mail voting begins!) in hopes of a scenario where, even if the Democrats' three-state Blue Wall strategy is successful, the Electoral College end in a 269-269 tie with NE's 2nd Congressional District vote given to Trump instead of Harris. That would send the decision of who will become the next President to the U.S. House, where the vote would be by state delegation, where Republicans are likely to hold a controlling majority even if Democrats win the House back in November.

  If this insane-but-theoretically-plausible scenario proceeds as Team Trump desperately hopes, however, Democrats may still have an ace in the hole...in Maine.

• A government watchdog group gets a hold of to emails among Georgia election denialists serving as county election officials, detailing their conversations about plans to block certification of 2024 election results in the Peach State if it looks like Donald Trump is going to lose it again.

• Texas' wildly corrupt Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing county election officials in state court to prevent them from sending voter registration forms to eligible but unregistered voters in several different Democratic-leaning Counties. The Counties are now, in turn, suing Paxton in federal court, charging his efforts amount to voter suppression in violation of longstanding federal laws.

• While the Lone Star State is busy suing its own election officials for daring to register voters, here in California, state lawmakers have passed a law, SB 299, to make the state's current automatic voter registration system even more automatic, potentially enabling the ability to vote for an additional 4.7 million eligible but currently unregistered voters. Politics Girl does the heavy lifting for us today. You can get more details from the grassroots coalition of more than 140 groups supporting the measure right here.

• Finally, at the end of a busy show, Desi Doyen joins us form our latest busy Green News Report, as the climate crisis rapidly worsens around the globe, despite new U.N. warnings; North Carolina estimates damage from a brutal, sudden tropical storm this week will top $7 billion; and as a new study finds Joe Biden's air pollution policies will save some 200,000 lives in the U.S...

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On today's BradCast, a focus on the challenges ahead for election officials in what is likely to be the most closely watched state in the country, in the most closely watched Presidential election of all time. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The endorsements for Kamala Harris keep rolling in. From the right (George Will for crying out loud?!) and from the non-right, as Scientific American revealed on Monday what is only their second Presidential endorsement in the well-respected magazine's 179-year history.

Also, today is National Voter Registration Day! We've got a few thoughts on a few tips, several of which come courtesy of our friends at the non-partisan group Vote Riders, who recommend not only registering to vote, with many states deadlines for that coming up very shortly, but also checking your voter registration status even if you believe you are already registered. Many states have purged a lot of voters since the last general election. The group also warns that Voter ID requirements have changed in many states since 2020. So today is also a great moment to make sure you have the sometimes very specific ID now required by your state to vote in this year's critical election. You can do that at their site as well.

THEN... The great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is likely to be the "tipping point" state for this year's election. If Dems win it, along with Michigan and Wisconsin (and the other traditionally "blue" states) Kamala Harris will almost certainly become the next President. But, while Harris currently leads in those so-called "Blue Wall" states, according to pre-election polling averages, her lead in PA remains the tightest of the three.

So, with all eyes likely to be on PA this year, we thought it would be a good moment to check in with our old friend MARYBETH KUZNIK, a longtime Election Integrity advocate and champion as founder and Executive Director of VotePA, and now as the Director of Elections and Voter Registration at the Fayette County, PA Election Bureau.

Fayette is in the southwestern part of the state, not too far geographically from Pittsburgh, though seemingly farther and farther away politically over the years, as the once reliable Democratic-leaning rural county has turned much more Republican in recent Presidential elections.

But, no matter their politics, all voters there need to be able to vote and have their votes counted as cast --- and in a way that they can know they have been counted as cast. Kuznik tells me that she sees her current job as an election official not terribly differently from her work as an Election Integrity advocate.

"I view this work that I'm doing now as an extension of everything else I've ever done," she tells me. "We, as election officials, as well as election activists, want --- or should want --- the same thing, which is to make sure every vote is counted accurately as cast. And that is without regard to party, or candidate, or whatever. You vote, and we count it the way you voted it."

Kuznik explains that her office is now in the final throes of finalizing ballot design and tabulator programming, following the last of the rulings from the state's Supreme Court as to which candidates will be allowed to appear on the ballot. Vote-by-Mail absentee ballots will very soon be going out to voters.

There is always an extraordinary amount of pressure on election officials to get everything exactly right. But there will be more than ever this year, given the many false claims that Republicans have brought in recent years after Donald Trump falsely claimed to have won the 2020 election. And nowhere is the pressure likely to be higher than in a state like PA, whose voters may decide the winner of the 2024 Presidential contest.

While Kuznik is confident in her and her staff's ability to get the job done well, there are still a number of concerns, some of which we've recently discussed on this program. For example, a bipartisan group of election officials across the country in recent days have expressed grave worries to Trump-appointed U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy regarding delays and other problems in the delivery of Vote-by-Mail ballots back to county officials. While Kuznik says she has a good relationship with the regional mail handler, she notes that a tiny handful of ballots from the state's primaries this year, "postmarked in April" were not finally delivered back to the County until August! "That's two or three" ballots, she says, "but that's two or three people's precious vote. Somebody died for the right of those people to vote. Hopefully we figure it out because I don't want it happening in this election."

PA also has some unhelpful rules for when officials can even begin tallying Absentee/Vote-by-Mail ballots. Unlike most states, PA officials are barred from beginning their VBM tallies until Election Day. That can lead to a number of problems. Among them, the "red mirage" issue that we saw in some states in 2020. Democrats tend to vote much more heavily by mail than Republicans. That means that, with the more laborious job of opening, verifying and tallying VBM ballots only beginning on Election Day, the results from more heavily Republican ballots cast at the polls that day may be reported first, giving the false impression that Republicans are ahead when some go to sleep on Election Night, only to see absentee tallies added in later, resulting in Democratic candidates overtaking the Republican.

We also discuss the fact that most voters in the Keystone State are now, thankfully, allowed to vote on verifiable hand-marked paper ballots at the polls; the concerns that many have reported about some conspiracy-minded GOP election officials in swing states scheming to hold up certification of results for dubious reasons --- in the event that Trump loses --- in hopes of wreaking chaos that can then be used to challenge the final Electoral College votes in the courts or in Congress on January 6th; and concerns about security threats against her office, staff and the many pollworkers required to pull of a successful election.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news on a natural gas pipeline explosion on Monday in suburban Houston; record deadly storms and flooding in Central Europe, West Africa and North Carolina this week; and the disgraced former President and wannabe mobster's recent visit to California, when he threatened to allow the entire state to burn down if he is allowed to become President again...

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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...

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I'm not sure I've ever declared a "winner" or "loser" in any Presidential debate, after covering them here for twenty years. They generally just don't work like that. But, as discussed on today's BradCast special coverage of last night's showdown in Philadelphia, there was one clear winner and one very clear loser. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Kamala Harris absolutely dominated her, perhaps one and only, face-off with Donald Trump from the moment she knocked him back on his heels by invading his space to reach out to shake his hand at the top, until she scraped up his lifeless husk of a soul off the debate stage at the very end.

Am I overstating the murder that some 67 million Americans witnessed with their own eyes during the ABC News debate on Tuesday night moderated by David Muir and Linsey Davis? CNN's post-debate flash poll of those who watched it said Harris outperformed him by 63% to 37%. Other snap polls found similar. We'll see what the broader polling finds in the coming days. And, of course, none of that ultimately means anything. Only votes do. But I can't think of anything that Harris could have done better, particularly given Trump's years-long record of surprise successes at these things. Finally, someone figured out how to get under his skin and stayed there for 90 minutes, as we all got to enjoy his, at times hilarious, meltdown in the bargain.

Our roundtablers today --- two of our favorite fellow old school bloggers, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of his eponymous blog and the weekly Pro Left Podcast --- seemed to concur with the bulk of my assessment.

"This was a really great debate for those of us who care about the future of this country, because she absolutely decimated him. And it was beautiful," observed Digby. "All she was doing was telling him facts to his face, and calling him what no one in his circle will ever call him, which is a disgrace, a criminal, and creepy and old. He doesn't know how to deal with that."

"She rolled in there prepped to be a prosecutor of a person who is morally and legally unfit to hold any office in this country, and she prosecuted her case brilliantly," echoed Driftglass. She used "all the keywords that will trigger this lunatic into making dumb mistakes, because we know he can been provoked. Every time, he didn't just take the bait, he swallowed the hook."

I'd share more, but it might take some of the joy out of listening to today's special coverage. Among some of the many specific points we focused on:

• Was Trump catfished by Team Harris' "unsuccessful" pre-debate ploy to keep the microphones open all night?
• Does he actually even know how the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) works?!
• Are undocumented immigrants in Ohio really eating American pets? (Someone said they were "on television" after all.)
• Are those immigrants getting government-funded sex change operations in prison?
• Does Donald Trump know anything about either fracking or solar energy?
• What does that "late great Hannibal Lecter" rally joke actually mean?
• Is Trump being catfished yet again by Team Harris' immediate post-debate call for a second debate?

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

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I must try and keep today's BradCast summary short to finish up in time to watch tonight's Presidential Debate (which we will be covering in detail on tomorrow's program, natch.) [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We start off with breaking news out of Missouri, where the state's Supreme Court has overturned a lower court ruling that had blocked an abortion rights measure from appearing on this November's ballot. Now the measure --- enshrining the right into the state Constitution, if approved by voters-- will be on the ballot this year in the Show-Me State, along with about eight others, including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota. That news is likely good for Democrats, who support the freedom for women and their doctors to determine their own medical procedures, and bad news for Big Government Republicans who don't. In the seven states where voters have been allowed to ring on reproductive rights since the corrupted SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, all of them have sided with freedom, even the normally "deep red" states.

NEXT... We cover another right being attacked by Republicans, of late: the right to vote. In this case, the right for former felons in Nebraska, who have fully completed their sentences, including parole, probation and restitution, to register and participate as voters.

Back in 2005, the state adopted a law allowing former felons the right to register and vote following a two-year waiting period after completion of their criminal sentences. Tens of thousands were immediately re-enfranchised. Earlier this year, in April, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of the state legislature, the two-year waiting period was removed. But in mid-July, just two days before the new law was to take effect, and advocates were gearing up to let folks know about it, the state's Republican Attorney General, Mike Hilgers, issued an advisory opinion that the new state law was unconstitutional and so was the twenty-year old measure adopted back in 2005! Furthermore, the state's Republican Sec. of State, Bob Evnen, used that opinion to notify election officials that registration for all former felons must immediately cease!

Voting rights advocates sued and the state Supreme Court is set to hear the case this week. In the meantime, however, chaos has ensued in the state, with former felons uncertain whether they can vote or even register to vote this year. Many, according to my guest today, journalist ALEX BURNESS of Bolts Mag, who recently penned an excellent deep dive article on this mess, are now afraid to register or vote at all, for fear of being sent back to jail for it. That, Burness explains, is largely the point of all of this.

Adding to all of it, as we discuss, is the fact that the Nebraska --- which is mostly a "red" state --- is one of just two that split up its Electoral Votes according to U.S. House Districts, rather than simply winner-take-all. This year, that means that, if Kamala Harris is able to win in all of the so-called Blue Wall States (MI, WI and PA) and all of the traditionally Democratic ones, she would wind up with exactly the 270 needed to win the White House...presuming she also wins the one electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd District, which leans "blue". Tens of thousands of disenfranchised voters, however --- or, even just fearful ones --- in Omaha, could decide the Presidency this year.

"If you wanted to skew the electorate --- even by a few thousand votes in what could be a very close 2nd Congressional District, that could literally decide the presidency --- if you were looking for levers you could pull at this late hour, that's one of them," Burness tells me. "In fact, it's a very good one."

There is much more to discuss on all of these points with Burness today, including the outrage of using a Jim Crow-era law to suppress the vote in 2024, and the irony that 34-time convicted felon Donald Trump is allowed to run for President of the United States, even while former felons who have served all their time are being prevented from even voting for or against him. A similar outrage is underway in a number of other GOP-controlled states, including Mississippi as Burness recently reported, this year.

THEN... We answer some very smart --- and, even, moving --- listener mail, including a snail mail letter we recently received, if you can believe it!

And FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with coverage of the extreme heat and wildfires broiling California and elsewhere in the Western U.S., even as Hurricane Florence spins up seemingly overnight in the Gulf of Mexico, where it is now threatening Texas and Louisiana, including, potentially, New Orleans...

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We're all over the place on today's BradCast, as things seem to be speeding up exponentially as Election Day draws near. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• On Wednesday, the Dept. of Justice filed an indictment against two members of the Russia's state media outlet known as RT for their part in a scheme that covertly paid some $10 million to rightwing media influencers to help spread Russian propaganda via an American-looking website media company based in Tennessee. Among the willing dupes or useful idiots, take your pick, who profited from the scheme to the tune of millions of dollars: popular rightwingers like Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin (who actually used to call himself a "progressive" when we worked with him years ago at The Young Turks!) Their Kremlin-approved-and-encouraged lies about Russia and Ukraine and much more were spread far and wide from them to Elon Musk, Donald Trump and many others (including far too many on the Left!), in a far-reaching plot meant to cause division in the U.S. and disrupt our electoral system to the benefit of Trump. It was all helped along by those who are apparently all too willing to sell out the U.S. in exchange for power and/or money and/or just to be one of the cool anti-establishment rebel kids out there. We break it all down for ya today.

• Lifelong rock-ribbed Republican conservative, former top member of House GOP Leadership, and daughter of Dick, Liz Cheney announced her intention in North Carolina on Wednesday to do the right thing by voting for Kamala Harris this year. I say "right thing" because, for those Republicans who truly oppose Donald Trump, if they really want to help keep him out of power, the best way is to cast their vote for Harris, as opposed to feebly writing-in Ronald Reagan or some such cowardly measure that only ultimately serves to help Trump regain power.

• Aside from standing up for democracy, the rule of law, and the Constitution by voting for Harris, Cheney might also have noticed that Kamala Harris popular economic policies are more likely to grow the economy than Trump's various schemes. His poor economic showing during his term in office makes that clear enough. But, if you need further encouragement that Harris' policies will be better for the economy than Trump's moving forward, check out what the economists at that lefty, pinko outfit Goldman-Sachs had to say about it this week. Turns out, "Comrade Kamala" (as Trump absurdly likes to call her), is the worst communist ever!

• The U.S. House returns from its August break on Monday for a short session before breaking again for the election. But they've got another "fiscal cliff" ahead of them, with a government funding deadline at the end of this month. Apparently, Donald Trump is encouraging House Speaker Mike Johnson to threaten another shutdown before the election, unless Dems agree to adopt the SAVE Act, a bill that would require proof of citizenship when registering to vote, despite the fact that it is already unlawful for non-citizens to vote in federal elections (and ID is already required for all voters who register in all 50 states under federal law). But, sure, go for it, Mike! I'm sure it'll work out just fine for you guys.

• Pretending there is massive voter fraud being carried out by non-citizens appears to be the GOP's fake news claim of this election year (helped along by all of those folks getting sweet sweet Russian money to lie to that end, and those who choose to believe them). In North Carolina last week, the state and national Republican Party filed yet another lawsuit in hopes of popularizing that claim, despite the complete lack of evidence for it. In this suit, they are claiming that some 225,000 voters in the state's voter registration database did not supply a driver's license or social security number when they registered and, therefore, might be "illegal aliens" voting. They want them all to be removed from the rolls and forced to re-register, even though the election is now just weeks away and Mail-in voting begins this weekend in NC. But there are a few (a whole bunch, actually) problems with their claims and suggested remedy, as we explain on today's program. That said, Republicans know about those problems --- and don't care. They aren't filing these lawsuits to win them. They are filing them to help them try and steal the election, if necessary, next January 6th.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, amid a sweltering heat wave here in Southern California; a record heat wave in Phoenix; record humidity recorded over much of the rest of the country all summer long; and other both good and terrible climate and environmental news items, as usual...

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