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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: After another climate disaster, climate change was finally front and center at the Vice Presidential Debate; PLUS: Ongoing climate disaster Hurricane Helene, now the second deadliest hurricane in modern U.S. history... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Two separate climate studies find that fossil fuel pollution intensified Hurricane Helene rainfall; Helene isn’t the first time Trump inserted politics into a natural disaster; At what price will oil shale drillers stop drilling?; Hurricane gives Democrats a climate opening in Florida; 'Everything is dead': Ukraine rushes to stem ecocide after Russia poisons river; American dams weren't built for today's climate-charged rains and floods... PLUS: Who will care for Americans left behind by climate migration?... and much, MUCH more! ...

Another BradCast necessarily, but not wholly, derailed today by our climate crisis. We were able to open the phone lines to hear from a number of callers with their thoughts in advance of Tuesday's Vice-Presidential Debate. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

We sidelined our planned coverage of Kamala Harris' address late last week on border security and immigration reform in Douglas, Arizona --- and Donald Trump's appalling response, calling her "mentally impaired" and "mentally disabled", before going on to lie (again) about crime statistics, and the fact that violent crime has plummeted under the Biden-Harris Administration --- in order to focus on the unspeakable disaster that continues to unfold in much of the U.S. Southeast.

The devastation and tragedy continues today, following Thursday's monster, Category 4 Hurricane Helene. It came ashore in the Big Bend region of Florida's panhandle, the third major tropical storm to do so in 13 months, and the second over the past two months alone. But Florida was hardly the only state affected, as death and destruction overtook parts of Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina as well. The latter, perhaps, having weathered the most damage, to date.

With over one hundred killed and more still missing, millions of survivors in the Southeast remain without power today. Some, particularly in Asheville, NC, remain physically cut off from the rest of the world, as the County's water treatment facility has failed and may be down for weeks.

Desi Doyen joins us for insight on the impacts and government response, and how denial of climate change by many elected officials from these states has exacerbated the destruction they are now hoping to claw their way out of today.

Then, there is the question of how this will affect the ability of voters in the most damaged areas --- particularly in NC, but in a number of other states as well --- to be able to cast their vote in this year's upcoming Presidential elections. In battleground NC, the U.S. Postal Service announced the suspension of service in a bunch of areas, making delivery of vote-by-mail ballots to voters and back again to the county, a question mark right now. That's particularly disturbing since state Republicans killed the the three-day grace period for ballots that were postmarked by Election Day to arrive at County to be counted after Election Day.

All of this also comes after NC Republicans spent years fighting to implement draconian Photo ID restrictions, despite a federal court describing the effort as targeting Black voters in the state with "almost surgical precision". So, what happens to those voters whose IDs blew away or were washed away in the wind and flooding? We've got a few details on all of the above today, and will continue to monitor the situation voters in the days and weeks ahead.

Then, we open up the phone lines to listeners in advance of Tuesday night's upcoming Vice Presidential debate between Democratic candidate Tim Walz and Republican J.D. Vance, asking what listeners expect and/or hope for from what appears to the last face-to-face debate between the Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance tickets. (Harris has agreed to another debate in October but, so far, Trump has declined. Probably smart considering the drubbing he took at their first and, so far, only debate in early September.) The debate host, CBS News, has announced good news for the Trump-Vance ticket, their moderators will not be fact-checking the candidates, both of whom, unlike Trump, are actually pretty good debaters...

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Yikes. Busy day on The BradCast. Including some remarkable breaking news, both good and bad, throughout the hour. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among the many stories, breaking and otherwise, on today's program...

• When the show began, the monster Hurricane Helene, barrelling toward a direct landfall near Tallahassee and the Big Bend region of Florida's panhandle, was already a dangerous Category 3. By show's end, it had become a terrifying Cat 4. As disturbingly, the storm began the day as a Cat 1! Thanks to record warm Gulf waters caused by man-made global warming, we have yet another case of deadly, rapid intensification for this storm. Experts also warn of an "unsurvivable" 20-foot storm surge on the Gulf Coast. The dangers beyond Florida, in already soaked southeastern states, are also quite serious and severe in the days ahead.

• After what Trump Republicans describe as Joe Biden's supposedly "weaponized" Department of Justice indicted and/or convicted Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (NJ), Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX), and the President's own son Hunter Biden (twice) over the past year, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment on Thursday against NYC's Democratic Mayor Eric Adams. The Mayor, who says he will not resign, was charged on five counts related to corruption on behalf of Turkey. If the Biden's federal government has been "weaponized" against Republicans, they sure have poor aim!

• But, you know who was actually very good at weaponizing the federal government against his political enemies? Yup, Donald Trump, as a deep dive from the NYTimes' Michael Schmidt (free link) detailed over the past weekend. Time and again, during his years in office, then President Trump demanded --- and often got --- criminal and civil investigations by DoJ and highly unusual and invasive audits by the IRS against his perceived political enemies, many of whom, if they worked in the government, were also improperly fired. Schmidt also summarizes (free link) how Trump unleashed his government against such perceived enemies as F.B.I Director James Comey and other senior FBI officials; Hilary Clinton and her 2016 campaign; Obama's Sec. of State John Kerry; his own attorney Michael Cohen; News organizations and reporters at CNN, WaPo and NYT; his own National Security Adviser John Bolton; and many others. And, as Schmidt reminds us, Trump has already stated this month that he plans to do it again if elected to another term.

• Looks like its a big day for corrupt NYC Mayors! Today the D.C. Court of Appeals permanently disbarred former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, after New York state also permanently revoked his license to practice law earlier this Summer. The disbarments are related to the disgraced former Mayor and federal proseuctor's false legal filings claiming election fraud, without actual evidence, following the 2020 election on behalf of the loser Donald Trump.

• In related news, even as jury selection was underway in a major defamation trial in Delaware pitting voting machine vendor Smartmatic against the rightwing propaganda outlet known as Newsmax, a last minute, still-confidential settlement was struck between the parties. As CNN reports today, "The settlement is the latest in a string of 2020 election defamation cases to reach an out-of-court agreement before trial. Fox News famously settled with Dominion Voting Systems last year for a record $787 million, and the far-right channel One America News settled with Smartmatic earlier this year." They also note that "Newsmax still faces a separate defamation lawsuit over similar claims that was filed by Dominion." As referenced during the show, here is one of BRAD BLOG's exclusive investigative reports from 2010 that disgraced former Trump attorney Sidney Powell cited (and bastardized) as part of her defamatory allegations against both Smartmatic and Dominion, as subsequently echoed by all the rightwing fake news outlets and discredited and now disbarred yutzes like Giuliani.

• Finally, as the deadly Hurricane Helene speeds toward Florida, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report, with news on both that storm and Hurricane John (which continues to pound Mexico); how global warming has made all of these storms much worse; and Joe Biden's promotion of climate action at both Climate Week in NYC and his final address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Massive Hurricane Helene menaces Florida; Global warming doubled the odds of Central Europe's catastrophic flooding; PLUS: Biden promotes climate action at his final U.N. address and at Climate Week, but warns success is fragile... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): America's climate and economy are on the ballot; Hurricanes have changed. The way we prepare for them should, too; As Galveston faces rapid sea level rise, developers are building new condos; Extreme weather has a surprising impact on voters' attitudes about climate change; Another train car leaked dangerous chemicals in Ohio. Here's what to know; Cattle burn as 'monster' wildfires rage in Argentina ranchlands... PLUS: Global solar growth is on track for another record-breaking year... and much, MUCH more! ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He's not the only one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Today on The BradCast: What you may not know about the horrifying Trump-Vance scheme to fire hundreds of thousands of non-partisan career civil servants and replace them with Trump loyalists --- if Trump is elected in November. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

• But, first up, results from Congressional and state legislative primary elections in "deep blue" Massachusetts on Tuesday were completely unsurprising. Though one of our listeners discovered --- and learned more details about --- a tabulation problem that resulted in one of the Democratic races for the state House in the town of Essex needing to be counted by hand overnight after the optical-scan system was unable to tally it accurately.

  As discussed, the incident serves as yet another excellent reminder of the critical importance of hand-marked paper ballots to help ensure results that voters may have confidence in, even when there are problems with the optical-scan systems. Though the issue appears to have been caused by an error in the programming and printing of ballots by the Commonwealth itself, at least MA has enough respect for its voters to allow all of them to cast hand-marked paper ballots --- whether by mail or at the polls --- unlike some other states I could mention. (Hi, Georgia!)

• Then, a quick review of the likelihood of the narrowly divided U.S. Senate flipping majority control this November from Democratic to Republican, with all eyes on the great state of Montana, where control of the upper chamber may come down to the tough reelection battle being faced by three term Democratic Senator and Montana native, Jon Tester.

  Recent polling averages show Tester trailing the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee Tim Sheehy, a wealthy rancher who moved to Montana about 10 years ago. But now, audio recordings have emerged of Sheehy slurring Native Americans at Republican fundraisers, where he repeatedly used a racist trope to disparage "drunken Indians" on the reservation. The audio recordings were surfaced last week by Char-Koosta News, "The Official News Publication of the Flathead Indian Reservation," in a state that is home to seven reservations and 12 Native American tribes, representing about 6% of the state population. It's also a state where Republicans have repeatedly attempted to suppress Native American votes.

  The outcome of the Tester/Sheehy contest is very likely to determine majority control of the U.S. Senate and whether Kamala Harris, if she wins this year, will be able to carry out her agenda or see it blocked from Day 1 by Republicans. As Jonathan Martin notes today at Politico, if she does win, but the Senate flips to GOP control (or Dems can't win back the House), Harris "would be the first Democrat to enter the presidency since 1884 without majorities in both chambers."

• And, since we're recalling the 1800s, Donald Trump has a scheme to return to the 1800s "spoils system" of appointing federal government officials based not on their skills or talent, but on their loyalty to their party and President. That system was replaced following the 1881 assassination of President James A. Garfield after he was killed by a man who was furious that he was not appointed to a foreign service position that he believed he was owed based on his work for the Republican Party.

  As James Rainey reported at the L.A. Times last week, after the law was changed under President Chester A. Arthur in 1883 to mandate a merit-based civil service system instead, "The next 22 presidents would leave the basic principles of the civil service intact. That changed when Trump took office."

  In his final year in office, Trump used his executive powers to create something called "Schedule F" which would have converted hundreds of thousands of career civil servants into at-will employees who could be fired without cause. Before full implementation, Trump lost in 2020 to Joe Biden, who quickly reversed the Executive Order.

  But now, both the far-right Project 2025 and Trump himself have detailed plans to remove and/or replace at least half a million federal workers in dozens of federal agencies should the Trump/Vance ticket win in November. In addition to replacing those career officials with loyalists, the scheme would also serve to gut the federal government of an indescribable amount of expertise on science, agriculture, healthcare, national security, education, energy, the economy, the military and so much more.

  We're joined to discuss the ramifications of all of this today by JACQUELINE SIMON, Policy Director of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union representing some 750,000 federal and District of Columbia employees.

  As "horrible" as the Trump Schedule F/Agenda 47/Project 2025 scheme is, she explains, "it's the logical conclusion of something that has been going on in the federal government now for many years."

  "A good way to look at what the outline of what government would look like according to Project 2025," Simon says, "is politicizing the work of people who are right now performing all kinds of functions. Scientific research --- the research that underlays regulations that protect public health, clean air, clean water, safe food --- all of those kinds of things. They want to move everything to the states, or privatize, or defund. Those efforts can also be avenues to politicize the work of the federal government. When you privatize, you can specify exactly what the contractor will do and won't do."

  "They would take all testing and testing development away from the CDC. They would deregulate the inspection of meat and poultry that's performed right now in the Dept. of Agriculture. Completely privatize the work done by civilians at the Dept. of Defense, so that the government would be fully, fully at the mercy of its contractors. They make no bones that they would effectively shut down the VA healthcare system and privatize all of that. They would close hospitals and clinics all across the country. And basically turn the VA into a private health insurance program. There are so many ways that the operations of government, the functions of government would be corrupted, undermined, and politicized, by privatization, and by, of course, a personnel system that would allow them to hire people who aren't competent, who can't perform the duties of the position, and then hire them and fire them at will."

  "It's been the Republican playbook for decades," she tells me. "This isn't new. This is Ronald Reagan moving forward. Almost everything in this document [Project 2025] has either been tried before or is part of Republican dogma, the Republican agenda in Congress for decades." But it is, if Trump is able to return to the White House, Simon warns, likely "the final dagger in the heart of the civil service"...

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Yup. We're back! And we've got lots to begin getting caught up with on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among the many stories reported and discussed on today's program...

• Donald Trump's recent flip-flops on abortion, pandering on IVF and his desecration of Arlington Cemetery for political purposes. (By the way, Dems should embrace Trump's pandering promise to have the Government pay for anyone's fertility treatments. It's the GOP's first baby step toward universal healthcare/Medicare-for-All after all! Sounds great! Hold them to it!)

• More than 10,000 hotel workers celebrated Labor Day by going on strike for better wages and working conditions across the U.S. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden campaigned together, speaking to a packed house of union workers in Pittsburgh on Labor Day, touting the most pro-union, jobs-creating Admin in history and promised to continue it under a Harris-Walz Administration. Trump, apparently unable to find any union workers who wanted to hear from him, stayed home yesterday.

• More than a hundred thousand demonstrators took to the streets in Israel to protest against their far-right Benjamin Netanyahu-led government, demanding a deal for a cease-fire and the release of hostages in Gaza, after six of them were found dead in a tunnel beneath Rafah on Sunday. Twenty-three year old Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin was among those found dead, just days after his parents spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, calling for a cease-fire and the release of more than 100 hostages who remain in Hamas custody following their horrific attack on Israel last October. As we have been arguing for months, however --- and as Israeli protesters are noted as mentioning in this Guardian piece --- Prime Minister Netanyahu is unlikely to ever agree to a deal that would effectively end Israel's war on Gaza, because it would also result in the end of his governing coalition. After that, he will have to face corruption charges filed against him from which he is currently immune...as long as he remains Prime Minister. If all of that sounds like a deal that Donald Trump hopes to win for himself in November, you are right. Tune in for much more on all of this today.

• Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Russia launched another deadly, long-range missile assault on Ukraine, this time on a military academy and nearby hospital. More than 50 were killed, more than 200 wounded. That as Ukraine has finally taken possession of land inside Russia's Kursk region, including some 500 square miles along the Ukrainian border, and continues to plead with the U.S. and Europe to send weapons to help them defend themselves against the two-and-half-year onslaught by its imperialistic Russian neighbor.

• Massachusetts is holding its Congressional and state legislative primaries today, just days after its Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin warned residents in the state about scam text messages being sent to some voters, falsely telling them that they are ineligible to vote. It is just one of the many dirty tricks we will be seeing between now and Election Day, the period of time that I am calling PHASE 1 of this year's general elections.

• And, speaking of, Labor Day is a good moment to mark where things are in the horse race toward Election Day, following the unprecedented plot-twist of the last 6 weeks following Kamala Harris taking over at the top of the ticket. She has surged in the polling averages against Donald Trump --- particularly in the seven critical battleground states --- since then. But, she remains just barely ahead of Trump in the states she most needs to win. Her slim lead nationally and in the most critical battleground states she would need to get to 270 electoral votes, in a system that advantages Republicans, has resulted in, as Politico colorfully describes it today, "the equivalent of a knife fight in a phone booth."

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us today to begin catching up on much that we missed in climate and environmental news after being off just one week, including the role of climate action in the 2024 contest; new data on deadly extreme heat in the U.S.; China meeting its renewable electricity targets six years early; and the Klamath River, now finally running free again along the California/Oregon border after being dammed up for more than 100 years!...

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Marveling at the remarkably positive vibe emerging from the recent Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch observed:

That "new power dynamic" Bunch references is embodied in Vice President Kamala Harris' open alignment with the economic needs of the vast majority of Americans who make up the working and middle classes.

Whether or not the recommendation from Sen. Bernie Sanders, this nation's most progressive Senator, was a factor, it is clear that Harris' decision to pick one of the nation's most progressive Governors, Tim Walz of Minnesota --- a governor who gleefully signed a bill for free breakfast and lunch for all school children into law --- as her Vice-Presidential pick, reflects her commitment to progressive values.

As Georgia's Republican former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan made clear during his DNC speech, there's no need for Harris to move to the right to attract voters from outside of the progressive realm. The threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump, Project 2025 and the MAGA cult, along with the Democrats' commitment to "freedom", "patriotism" and respect for the rule of law, will be enough to attract honest conservative voters irrespective of whether they still call themselves Republicans or now describe themselves as either former Republicans or independents.

By adhering to her progressive economic values --- whether it comes to support for organized labor, an increase in the federal minimum wage, the expansion of social safety net programs, tax increases on the wealthy, the expansion of accessible health care and a crackdown on corporate price gouging --- Harris can not only maintain authenticity but also take advantage of the fact that an overwhelming majority of the American electorate both want and need such progressive economic policy initiatives...

On today's BradCast: Democrats are appealing to voters with popular policies, while joyfully bringing down the rafters at the DNC in Chicago. Trump and Republicans, by contrast, are scheming to steal an election they sure seem like they are counting on losing at the ballot box. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage on today's program...

• Democrats are cleaning Donald Trump's clock of late on a number of quantifiable metrics: television ratings for their national convention, versus the GOP's last month; polling numbers; crowd sizes; fund raising; and volunteer get-out-the-vote efforts. As silly as it seems to compare some of those things between the two parties, it's more important than you may realize that we do so. Because Trump is now lying about all of them. It's part of laying the groundwork to use lies about all of those things in support of a post-election effort --- if he loses at the ballot box --- to claim it was stolen from him, "again". To then inject chaos into the certification of Electoral College votes in hopes of tossing the decision to state legislatures or the courts or, most likely, the U.S. House where Republicans are likely to control enough state delegations to install Trump into office, even if they don't hold a majority of seats in the chamber. Yeah, I realize it all sounds like conspiracy theory nonsense. But, we were told the same back in back in late 2020 and early 2021 when warning about what was likely to happen on January 6th. Plus, Trump and his allies are essentially explaining the ploy out loud each and every day at this point, as when Trump told supporters in North Carolina on Wednesday: "Our primary focus is not to get out the vote ... We have all the votes ya need."

• On Tuesday's show I detailed how Republicans were hoping that the corrupted, activist, rightwing U.S. Supreme Court majority, in an emergency ruling, would give them the okay to purge more than 40,000 voters from Arizona's rolls just weeks before early voting begins in the critical battleground state where Joe Biden won in 2020 by just over 10,000 votes. Today SCOTUS came back with their decision, which is mostly --- but not entirely --- good for the state's voters, blocking the worst of what the GOP had hoped to do. For now. We break down the, somewhat confusing (and poorly reported) details of their brief shadow docket ruling [PDF], along with the observation that Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch would have overturned decades of precedent to allow all of the voter suppression Republicans sought. And that Republican Justice Amy Coney Barrett, interestingly, voted along with all of the Court's liberal Justices (who are all now women) to block the worst of the purging, and who would have blocked the GOP scheme in its entirety if it was up to the four of them.

• It was another rollicking, superstar-studded Day 3 at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Wednesday night, where Minnesota Governor Tim Walz formally accepted the party's nomination as Kamala Harris' Vice-Presidential running mate. He brought down the house in his joyful, pitch-perfect acceptance speech, becoming both America's Dad and America's Coach in the bargain. But not before folks like Oprah Winfrey shook the rafters and even joined a number of Republican heroes, like Georgia's former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who was there on Wednesday to reach out to undecided, independent and even Republican voters to help, as Walz put it, "turn the page" on the Trump era. We share extended excerpts today.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Democrats have woven issues of climate change and climate action into the very fabric of this week's DNC and, as she also reports, not a moment too soon...

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NOTE: We'll be standing down from The BradCast (and Green News Report) for a much-needed breather next week, before returning after the Labor Day holiday for the sprint to Election Day! (I might have said "sprint to the finish line", but for the fact, as suggested at the top of today's program, November 5 is very likely not even close to the finish line this year!)

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Climate change and climate action woven into the Democratic National Convention; 99% of Americans have been affected by extreme weather just since May; PLUS: Buckle up --- 2024 is second only to 2023 for billion dollar weather disasters so far this year... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Microplastics are infiltrating brain tissue, human organs, studies show; Oil companies and Leonard Leo's dark money are funding push by GOP states to block climate laws; Fracking wells forced on many US landowners, study finds; Trump vows to ax clean power plant rule; In Wisconsin senate race, voters wil pick between two candidates with widely differing climate rules; Focus on heat illness intensifies after death of Baltimore sanitation worker; Ford delays new EV plant, cancels electric three-row SUV as it shifts strategy; Multi-day energy storage from Minnesota to Maine... PLUS: Multi-day energy storage from Minnesota to Maine... and much, MUCH more! ...

I do realize The BradCast has been in occasional danger of late of becoming just giddy enough to, perhaps, become all but unrecognizable to some. Oh, well. Too bad. Those may be folks who are failing to realize they may be living through one of the most extraordinary moments in American political history. Lighten up. There's nothing wrong with appreciating the moment after so many years of darkness. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But to achieve the promise of this moment, there are still a bunch of very difficult weeks and months (not to mention years) ahead. A little-noticed reminder came from the state of Florida last night --- which voted in Congressional primaries on Tuesday along with Alaska and Wyoming --- when a number of county election result websites were failing to work as expected after the close of polls. They were websites run by a contractor named VR Systems, a little-known Tallahassee firm which also runs voter registration systems in several Florida counties and other states. If the name of the company is familiar, it is likely because we would eventually come to learn in 2017, thanks to whistleblower Reality Winner, that the firm was the victim of Russian-based spearphishing attacks in advance of the 2016 election. We still don't know the extent of those 2016 attacks, nor much about what happened to cause problems on Tuesday night with their websites in Florida. But, since nobody else seems to have connected those dots in the media, it seems worth sticking a pin in here for now.

After a few quick thoughts on that today, it's back to the political history underway in Chicago this week...

"Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn't it?," former First Lady Michelle Obama rhetorically asked the packed, roaring crowd at the United Center on Day 2 of this year's Democratic National Convention. "We're feeling it here in this arena, but its spreading all across this country we love. A familiar feeling that's been buried too deep for far too long. You know what I'm talking about. It's the contagious power of hope," she explained to a packed, raucous arena of Dems, who had just gone through what was absolutely the most electrifying roll-call --- to nominate Kamala Harris and Tim Walz --- in American political convention history.

"The anticipation, the energy, the exhilaration of once again being on the cusp of a brighter day," Michelle continued. "The chance to vanquish the demons of fear, division and hate that have consumed us, and continue pursuing the unfinished promise of this great nation, the dream that our parents and grandparents fought and died and sacrificed for."

"America, hope is making a comeback!," she declared. And the crowd of Democrats reached new heights of ecstasy. And all of that before her husband, former President of the United States, Barack Obama, tried to match her with his own unparalleled oratorical skills.

We've got much, much more for you today on all of the above, as we're joined again by old friends and fellow old school bloggers HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of his eponymous blog and his weekly Pro Left Podcast.

I'm not sure I can even try to summarize our conversation today. There is Parton describing how the DNC --- just half-way over this week as of airtime, mind you --- has "far surpassed my expectations ... And having it be this unusually, upbeat, joyful, happy, enthusiastic experience. I didn't expect it. And I have to say I am truly enjoying it, which I don't normally say about political conventions."

Says Driftglass: "The media has a story they want to tell, and that story is Dems In Disarray and protesters and cops in the street. And we are denying them that story. And that's what is freaking them out. Because that is not the fairy-tale they've been telling the public for forty years, which is that both sides are bad, there's no difference between the two parties. Only when there's a breach, a radical opening in that box, can people peek through that media filter and see the actual Democratic Party. ... The base of the party is finally getting heard. And the base of the party is pretty progressive. This weird filter that everything democratic had to flow through, the people who spoke for us in the media, were Maureen Dowd proclaiming, 'What the Democrats need is an open convention.' And the base said, 'Hell no. That is not what we need. Shut up.' It seems like the progressive base, almost as one, has reached out and told them to shut the hell up, the party is actually us!"

And then there is also Desi today: "I think part of what is going on is that hope is a moving thing for the human heart. It's moving to see Democrats articulate these common values that we all hold, no matter what your political party is --- of family, of patriotism, of opportunity, of equality for all. We've all been through a collective trauma over the last nine years. Seeing this kind of hope is like therapy."

Like I said, I can't even begin to summarize it. Perhaps this is why we don't necessarily realize we are going through historic moments until long after. But, tune in to today's show to hear a bunch of battle-hardened political muckrakers watching so much of what we've been advocating for, for so long, unfolding before our very eyes.

Maybe.

But, as Michelle said, there is a contagious power of hope...

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It was a very late night for us here at your friendly neighborhood BradCast. And it's only Day 1 of the DNC. Wish us luck to make it through the week. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The DNC kicked off with a mighty bang on Monday in Chicago, amid lively speeches from a joyful, rollicking cavalcade of Democratic Party superstars, both longtime and upcoming. Before we share a few of our favorite and/or most newsworthy moments today, however, we've got to focus on some "track condition" business for this November, rather than the horse race.

The Arizona Republican Party, now joined by the RNC, is asking the corrupted rightwing U.S. Supreme Court for expedited help in purging some 40,000 perfectly legal American voters from the rolls in the critical battleground state in advance of November's Presidential election. Early voting begins there in a matter of weeks, and ballots must be printed even sooner.

At issue is a fight that AZ Repubs have been waging --- and losing --- over and over again over the past two decades. But they're still trying, clearly hoping that the current, Trump-packed, rightwing activist SCOTUS may be more friendly to their pleas. When the state was almost fully controlled by Republicans back in 2004, they adopted a law to require "documentary proof of citizenship" for those newly registering to vote. That, even though some 13 million Americans do not have access to birth certificates, etc.

But the National Voter Registration Form --- created as part of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to make it easier to register to vote in all 50 states, particularly those with a history of suppression --- requires only an attestation to citizenship, rather than documents. Courts determined years ago that AZ's state law is preempted by the NVRA.

Despite the lack of any evidence of any non-citizens registering or voting in AZ, petulant Republicans in the state then instituted a two-track registration system after losing at SCOTUS in 2013. The new system would allow those who registered to vote with the federal form (without proof of citizenship) to vote only in federal races --- for President, for example --- but not in state or local contests.

In 2018, the state agreed to a consent decree that would allow those "federal only" voters to vote in all races where Arizona was able to determine the voters' citizenship status via their own records at the department of motor vehicles. But now, AZ Republicans are suing yet again, and are being joined by the RNC, to prevent those "federal only" voters --- more than 40,000 of them in the state --- from voting either for President or by mail. And they are asking SCOTUS to decide by this Thursday, given that ballots need to be printed shortly thereafter.

All of that idiocy in a state where Joe Biden won in 2020 by just over 10,000 votes and where Republicans (as in many states) would rather prevent (certain) people from voting, than actually offering popular policy ideas for them to vote in favor of.

Then, it's back to the horse race today --- or, at least the horses in the stable preparing for the race --- as we share a number of clips from Monday's rousing Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. There was a lot to choose from on the first night, but we share just a few of the highlights today, including Kamala Harris' surprise appearance on the evening's torch-passing from the current President; Reverend Sen. Rafael Warnock (D-GA) on taking care of our neighbors, including those in Gaza; Joe Biden's call to end Israel's war in Gaza once and for all; superstar Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Harris' support for the working class versus "two-bit union buster" Donald Trump; UAW President Shawn Fein bringing down the house again with his declaration that "Donald Trump is a scab!"; rising freshman superstar and former public defender Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) comparing resumes of the two Presidential candidates. ("She became a career prosecutor while he became a career criminal, with 34 felonies, two impeachment and one porn star to prove it."); Hillary Clinton blowing out the United Center with her impassioned recitation of the history of those women working toward finally breaking "the highest, hardest glass ceiling" of them all (amid unstoppable, if satisfying, chants of "LOCK HIM UP!"); and finally, Joe Biden's moving, heartfelt closing stem-winder, detailing an impossibly long list of accomplishments by the Biden-Harris Administration, and his vow to become the top volunteer for the Harris-Walz ticket...

And finally, as if that wasn't enough, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as environmental groups line up to endorse the Harris-Walz ticket; another catastrophic flooding event unfurls, this time in Connecticut; and new evidence finding that climate change has dramatically exacerbated both the likelihood and severity of wildfires around the globe...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Another round of rain and deadly catastrophic flooding, this time in Connecticut; Climate change dramatically increased the likelihood and severity of record wildfires last year, new study finds; PLUS: As Democratic National Convention gets underway, climate and environment groups endorse the Harris-Walz ticket... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Americans have saved billions with a law they know next to nothing about; The biggest winners of Biden’s green climate policies? Republicans; DC Appeals court tosses Biden Administration pipeline safety rules; Oil and ink mix as Chevron reports 'the news in Texas, New Mexico; Why do so many pelicans keep dropping dead in California?; Water treaty between Mexico and U.S. faces biggest test in 80 years... PLUS: Nearly 68 million suffering from drought in Southern Africa... and much, MUCH more! ...