On today's BradCast: Even as final results are still being determined from this year's midterms, the Democratic Caucus in the U.S. House prepared for its new majority with leadership votes on Wednesday, including on Rep. Nancy Pelosi's bid to retake her previous role as Speaker of the House. Also, three weeks after the November 6th election and Tuesday's runoff for the U.S. Senate in Mississippi, more Houses races are called and one race, believed to have been won by a Republican, offers a new mystery in the state of North Carolina. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

In MS, Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith reportedly won Tuesday's runoff against Democrat Mike Espy, as expected, but by a far narrower margin than previously expected in the deep "red" state, after she made a number of disturbing, racialized comments throughout the campaign. Trump won the state by 18 points in 2016. Hyde-Smith won by eight points. A ten-point shift towards Democrats. Nonetheless, the GOP win in MS results in an overall pickup of 2 seats for Republicans in the U.S. Senate this January.

The U.S. House, however, is a very different story. Today, AP finally called the still-undecided contest in New York's 22nd Congressional District for Democrat Anthony Brindisi over incumbent (and very Trumpy) Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney. The Dem flip comes in another "red" district where Trump had won in 2016 by 16 points. That brings the Democratic Party's pickups to 39 among AP's "called" races, with one more contest leaning Dem in California and another leaning GOP in New York state.

But, in North Carolina, where all 13 U.S. House races were expected to be certified by a routine vote of the State Election Board on Tuesday, a Democratic member refused to do so, citing "unfortunate activities" in one part of the state's 9th Congressional District, where Republican Mark Harris is said to have defeated Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes. After a two-hour session behind closed doors, the Board finally voted unanimously to certify all but the 9th District race for now. We've got a number of details on what may be behind this wildly unusual and still-unfolding mystery, which seems to center on Bladen County, in the eastern part of the district.

"I’m very familiar with the unfortunate activities that have happened in my part of the state," Democratic SBE vice-chair Joshua Malcolm announced during the meeting before the Board went into closed session. "And I am not going to turn a blind eye to what took place to the best of my understanding, which has been ongoing for a number of years, and which has been repeatedly referred to the United States attorney and the district attorneys to clean up. Those things have not taken place."

We'll keep an eye on that one. But, with Democrats now likely to end up with at least a 40 member majority in the U.S. House after having officially won by the overall largest popular vote margin in history for any party, the battle over party leadership and direction played out today with a vote by the Democratic Caucus in favor of Nancy Pelosi to be their nominee for the next U.S. House Speaker. She reportedly received 32 votes against her, however, which would be more than enough to block her return to Speaker when the full House votes in January.

I'm joined today by progressive journalist, author and activist NORMAN SOLOMON of RootsAction.org to discuss the challenge to Pelosi --- largely by less progressive members of her own party --- and how progressives will need to pressure the Democratic Congressional leadership from the bottom up when they take control in January. Solomon, who helped pen both a Democratic "autopsy" after the disastrous 2016 election, and a follow-up to it just before the November midterms, explains today how both newly elected Democrats and the voters who put them there will need to step up over the next two years to support wildly popular progressive reforms on everything from the minimum wage to healthcare and tax policy, if mistakes made by Democrats (with some of the same leadership) in years past is to be avoided.

"It's all about constituent power," says Solomon. "At RootsAction.org we are dedicated to mobilizing to make sure that more and more progressive constituents make their senators and representatives fully aware that they are being watched closely, and there are such things as primary challenges."

He argues that "the party has changed partly" over these past two years, though "not profoundly." Where it has changed, where Dems have rejected unpopular corporatist establishment positions, "its been because of a lot of these on-the-ground progressives".

Still, Solomon warns against complacency. "When they get Democrats in charge, there's more of a tendency among a lot of progressives to think, 'Well, the worst is over. The emergency is gone.' In fact, whether it's climate change, or perpetual war, or the rich continuing to get richer, these problems are festering. Yes, worse under Republicans, but for us to sit back in any way and not continue to organize and pressure is to leave Congress to its natural setting. It's sort of 'The Call of the Corporate Wild' that they're immersed in," he tells me. "The only way to counter that is that we have to mobilize no matter who is in power, to fight back against Wall Street."

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On today's BradCast: Another U.S. House race flips (unexpectedly) from "red" to "blue" as California continues to bother to count ballots, and two lawsuits are filed in Georgia following the November 6th midterm elections, including one that seeks to overturn a major statewide race due to a seemingly inexplicable failure of the state's touchscreen voting machines. [Audio link to full posted at bottom of article.]

First up: Shortly after we got off air on Monday, AP and a host of other news outlets began retracting their previous calls for the incumbent Republican Rep. David Valadao in California's 21st Congressional District election after Democrat T.J. Cox took the lead for the first time since vote-counting began on the night of the November 6th midterms. Cox is now reportedly up by just 436 votes over Valadao with more than 110,000 tallied so far, in a district easily won by the Republican with a wide margin in 2016. If Cox' lead holds, as appears likely, the Democratic midterm "blue wave" is now on track to pick up a full 40 seats in the U.S. House this January.

In the meantime, Stacey Abrams, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Georgia gave up her hopes of defeating Republican Secretary of State and champion vote suppressor Brian Kemp over a week ago. But today, her new organization, Fair Fight Georgia, filed a federal lawsuit against the state over suppressive tactics and for paper ballots for all voters in future elections. She was then hectored by CNN's Jake Tapper about whether she believed Kemp's victory as Governor-elect was "legitimate". (It wasn't, as she suggests in her answers.)

While Abrams' complaint does not seek to overturn the Governor's race in Georgia, a separate lawsuit was filed on Friday -- the last day possible for a 2018 election contest in the state --- by the Coalition for Good Governance seeking to toss out the results of the Lieutenant Governor's contest. The central basis for the suit is the virtually inexplicable residual vote count (ballots where no vote was recorded) in the race. The anomaly occurs only in the Lt. Governor race, and only on votes cast via the state's 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems. Residual vote counts are as expected from hand-marked paper absentee and provisional ballots in the same race.

We're joined by plaintiff MARILYN MARKS, the Coalition's Executive Director, who explains how the undervote rate for Lieutenant Governor is far higher --- almost twice the rate --- than in contests that were much lower on the ballot, such as for Agriculture or Insurance Commissioner. The residual vote rate was also much higher than it was in the Lt. Governor's race during the 2014 election, when it was roughly along the lines of all the other races on the ballot that year.

"There was no meaningful drop-off at all if we just look at paper ballots. If you look at the mail-in ballots and provisional ballots, there was virtually no drop-off," Marks says. "So what this tells us is that the undervote is related only to the machine. Now please explain that!"

Marks, who says her group has obtained affidavits from voters who charge that a problem with the touchscreens prevented them from voting in the Lt. Governor's race, describes the potential explanations for this anomaly and suggests the suit may lead to an unprecedented forensic examination of Georgia's easily-hacked, oft-failed, unverifiable, Diebold touchscreen voting machines. Moreover, she notes, thanks to an earlier suit filed in federal court before the election, seeking to replace the state's touchscreens with hand-marked paper ballot systems --- the judge found the Diebold touchscreens unverifiable and dangerously insecure, but allowed their use for one more election anyway --- will be very helpful in illuminating the concerns outlined by the new complaint.

"There were innumerable reports of voters who didn't have this race show up on their electronic ballot," she tells me. "Some people in fact did find it on their review screen. For many voters, apparently, that's the first time they saw the Lt. Gov. race. In many cases, apparently, when they got to the review screen, staring at it, trying to get ready to make a correction --- without even touching the screen --- it automatically cast the vote and the message came up 'Thank you for voting, your vote was cast.'"

The state recently certified Republican Geoff Duncan as the winner over Democrat Sarah Riggs Amico by nearly 3.5 points in the race for Lt. Governor. In Georgia, the state's second highest executive official also serves as President of the state Senate, determining which initiatives are to be taken up for debate and possible passage by state lawmakers. Marks, a Republican who runs the non-partisan organization, also details her concerns that evidence of programming failure or manipulation from November 6th may have been destroyed, in apparent violation of Georgia's own election rules, when the machines were recently reprogrammed for the state's December 4th runoff elections for Secretary of State and Public Service Commissioner.

"They are absolutely violating their own law," says Marks. "Not only did we need those machines preserved for our court case --- the [separate] election security case that's in federal court --- but also we certainly need them in this new case that challenges the election results for the Lt. Governor's race. [We] said to the Sec. of State: 'Your rule, your own election code, says they cannot touch these machines, the internal memory, for one month if there is no election contest pending. Now there is an election contest pending. Obviously they are needed as evidence and the Secretary is continuing to take the position that over-writing the data, uploading new ballot programming for the Dec. 4th runoff, and putting these machines in unsecured voting places somehow does not make the internal memory data at risk."

On the topic of the GA SoS runoff next week, Marks also notes that the Democratic candidate John Barrow is strongly in favor of hand-marked paper ballots, where the Republican, Brad Raffensperger, is calling for unverifiable computer-marked/barcoded ballots instead.

All of these matters, including Abrams own lawsuit filed today, offer a chance for us to discuss the necessity of challenging insecure, non-overseeable voting systems before elections rather than after, which Democrats, she charges, failed to do this year in Georgia.

Finally today, we're joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report, with special coverage of the federal government's landmark National Climate Assessment released by the Trump Administration on Friday after Thanksgiving in hopes that few would notice its devastating warnings about the climate change threat to both the environment and the nation's economy...

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On Friday of the Thanksgiving weekend, in hopes that nobody would notice, the Trump Administration quietly released the latest National Climate Assessment, a 1,700-page report compiled by 13 federal agencies with more than 300 scientists, including data from over 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies. On today's BradCast, we notice. [Audio link to show follows below.]

The report is mandated by Congress every few years, so the Administration had little choice but to release it, though doing so a month earlier than expected over a holiday weekend --- without even notifying the scientists who worked on it --- was as noteworthy as the report's stark contradictions with Donald Trump's own climate change denialism.

Global warming, the report warns, may warm the U.S. by as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. It has already cost Americans $150 billion in various forms of damage since 2015 and, by the end of the century, unless severe steps are taken to curb emissions, climate change will result in a cost of some 10% to the nation's Gross Domestic Product. That hit to the economy will be more than twice that of the Great Recession a decade ago, the report finds, unless a very serious effort is undertaken immediately to curb man-made greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. Such action on a federal level, of course, seems very unlikely given that Donald Trump, when asked about the devastating economic effects detailed by his own administration's report, told reporters on Monday: "I don't believe it."

We're joined today by DR. MICHAEL E. MANN, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, to discuss the troubling scientific findings and the entirely predictable reaction by denialist Republicans and corporate media over the weekend since its release.

Mann's climate science work, as author of nearly 200 peer-reviewed and edited publications, as well as several landmark climate change books, has warned for years of the breathtaking scope of our current climate crisis, illustrated again by recent record hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and floods and outlined by the report. The new study was compiled prior to the recent fires in CA which have, so far, killed nearly 90 people, as well as before this year's Hurricanes Michael and Florence which devastated parts of Florida and the southeast coast of the U.S.

"Simply stating what the science has to say is alarming," Mann tells me. "We are seeing the impacts now play out in real time. That means we are much farther down this road than we ever should have allowed ourselves to get. And time is running out. There is a level of urgency unlike we've seen before. We have to bring our carbon emissions down dramatically now, to avoid ever more catastrophic warming of the planet. And this is what you see in the form of scientists, who are usually quite conservative, coming out and saying, 'Look, we have, in essence, an emergency now.'"

At the same time, Mann notes, "The emergency is heightened by the fact that, at a time when we need to see even more action if we're going to stabilize warming below catastrophic levels, we have a president who is trying to take us in exactly the opposite direction."

Last week, in response to a cold spell just days before his own Administration released its report, Trump tweeted: "Whatever happened to global warming?" When asked about that today, Mann responds today by saying: "I'm looking out the window now and it's dark outside. Whatever happened to the sun? His comments about climate change are about as sensible and intelligent as that. Even a 5-year-old understands the absurdity of the claims that he makes."

As usual, Mann has a lot of important thoughts and science to share on all of this, on whether action at this late date can even make a difference, on the media's coverage of the issue, and even on his "disagreement" with a recent comment made by newly elected Democratic progressive Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Please tune in.

Also today: Speaking of the costs of Trump's reckless deregulation and science denial, last week's E. coli outbreak in Romaine lettuce (and the similar nationwide taint that sickened hundreds and killed five earlier this year), was also entirely predictable. It followed the Trump Administration's rollback of Obama Administration testing requirements for water used by producer growers, which would have kicked in this year. Trump's deregulation was supposed to save growers $12 million a year, while the costs of tainted fruits and vegetables costs consumers about $180 million in healthcare costs annually.

We've also got some more midterm election news as well (no, it's still not over!), including Republican Rep. Mia Love finally conceding her U.S. House reelection bid to Democrat Ben McAdams in otherwise ruby red Utah --- and slamming both Trump and her own party in the bargain. That brings the total to 38 House seats picked up by Democrats, so far, with two more still-undecided races in New York.

It's not just midterm counting that continues, but voting as well, as super-genius GOP U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith faces a tougher-than-expected runoff on Tuesday in Mississippi against Democrat Mike Espy, after a string of disturbing remarks about "public hangings" and voter suppression during her campaign.

And, finally today, listeners ring in with calls on the new climate change report and more...

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On today's BradCast: More races were called and more candidates conceded over the weekend, as the counting from the midterm elections gets still closer to finally wrapping up, and as voter suppression by GOPers in two key states worked their magic. [Audio link to show follow below.]

But, first up today, the latest on the horrific California wildfires, with nearly 1,000 still said to be missing in the enormous Camp Fire in Northern California, where 77 were confirmed to have been killed as of airtime. Donald Trump toured the region over the weekend, referred to Paradise --- the town which was leveled shortly after the inferno broke out on November 8th --- as "Pleasure", and otherwise made something up, apparently out of whole cloth, about Finland raking their forest floors to prevent such disasters. Desi Doyen joins us for actual facts that apparently the President of the United States doesn't have access to, and to warn about what effect the rains predicted for this week over the Thanksgiving holiday may have on the blazes and their dangerous aftermaths.

Next, it's back to the continuing tally and fight to count votes from the November 6th midterm elections, as the last of the still-undecided races begin to get wrapped up, and several races get called by media over the weekend. In Florida, Republican Governor Rick Scott's years of disenfranchising some 1.7 million former felons (500,000 of them African American) paid off. The Sunshine State's incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson finally conceded to Scott after a partial hand-count in the state --- where more than 8 million paper ballots were tallied (either correctly or incorrectly, who knows?) by computer scanners --- resulting in a 0.12 percent edge (10,033 votes) for the termed out Republican Governor in the U.S. Senate election. Similarly, Democrat Andrew Gillum officially conceded to Republican Ron DeSantis in the Governor's race, after final computer tallies showed him losing by just 0.41 percent

The losses for Dems in Florida come on the heels of Democrat Stacey Abrams' loss to Republican Sec. of State and master vote suppressor Brian Kemp in the Georgia Governor's race late on Friday. Broad criticism of Kemp's massive voter suppression over the past eight years continued over the weekend, in what is unlikely to ever be viewed as a legitimate election.

Meanwhile, a runoff in the Secretary of State election in Georgia is now scheduled for December 4th and, in Arizona, Democrat Katie Hobbs has been named as that state's next Secretary of State, after media had inaccurately called it for the Republican candidate on election night. The Sec. of State position in both GA and AZ will play a crucial role in those two key swing-states in advance of the 2020 Presidential election.

Also over the weekend, the last of the California U.S. House races was called, with first time candidate, Democrat Gil Cisneros, defeating Republican Young Kim to turn the last of Orange County's once-impenetrably Republican House seats "blue". Dems now control every U.S. House seat in what had long been a GOP bastion, flipping four of them in just one election. They also now control every statewide elected position and enjoy a super-majority in both houses of the state legislature, all without partisan gerrymandering in the state where an independent commission draws state and federal districts.

Dems now hold a remarkable 45 to 8 advantage in California's U.S. House delegation, and have picked up at least 37 seats nationwide in the midterms. Just four more races are undecided (in NY, UT and GA) as of airtime.

And, as discussed today, a Special Election for the U.S. Senate in Mississippi in coming up on November 27th, with Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith heavily favored in her contest against Democrat Mike Espy. However, Hyde-Smith has recently been caught on video-tape making several troubling "jokes" about public hangings and voter suppression --- in a state with a long and disturbing history of both.

Finally today, we open up the phone lines to listeners on all of the above and much more, as we discuss what Democrats did right and wrong in the 2018 midterms, and what they might be wise to focus on once they officially take control of the U.S. House majority in January...

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It was another very busy day on today's BradCast, as news breaks out of Georgia and California --- and seemingly everywhere else --- though we finally found at least a moment to take some stock of the midterm elections and what they portend, nearly two weeks after Election Day. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Before we get to elections and politics, however, there are horrifying new numbers today out of the ongoing, climate change-fueled wildfires in California. Officials now say that more 60 are known to have been killed, but on Thursday evening they also raised the number of those still unaccounted for amid the record Camp Fire in Northern California to a staggering and gut-wrenching 631. [Update: Just before posting this here, officials in Northern California increased the death toll, announcing 71 dead with more than an unfathomable 1,000 now said to be unaccounted for!]

Then, a Trump-appointed federal judge orders the White House to immediately restore press credentials to CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta.

Next, another midterm election victory is called by AP and others for Democrats in what had long been solidly Republican Orange County in California. Katie Porter, an unapologetically progressive Elizabeth Warren protégé, is now said to have defeated incumbent Republican Rep. Mimi Walters in the heart of what was once known as "Reagan Country", in the state's 45th Congressional district. Walters had easily won reelection by a huge 17% margin just two years ago, but now becomes the third of Orange County's four U.S. House members to see their seat flipped to a Democrat. The fourth seat, in CA's 39th Congressional district, is very likely to be called for Democrat Gil Cisneros over Young Kim any day now.

As of air time, Dems have reportedly picked up a net gain of 36 seats for their new House majority, though that number may still climb to 38 or even 39 seats as votes are tallied in the last of the undecided House races.

Meanwhile, in Florida today, statewide "hand counts" --- or what suffices for them in the Sunshine State --- continued on a ridiculously abbreviated schedule through Sunday in the state's U.S. Senate race between incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and GOP Gov. Rick Scott, who is said to lead by 0.41%, or just over 12,000 votes out more than 8 million cast.

The partial "hand count" in the Senate race moves forward after full "machine recounts" in three of the state's largest and most Democratic-leaning counties were rejected by Scott's Sec. of State. In Palm Beach, the County's old computer scanners could not physically tally fast enough to meet the Thursday 3pm deadline at the end of just five days. In Hillsborough County, the second machine count differed from the original count by more than 800 ballots, so the first count will be used (whether it's right or wrong, nobody knows.) And in Broward County, state officials rejected their new count because it was uploaded to the Sec. of State's office two minutes after the 3pm deadline. Seriously.

As a source in Palm Beach told me earlier today about the impossible timelines instituted by state Republicans: "These deadlines they codified into law set up big counties to fail. How a county like ours (population 1.3 million) has the same deadline as a county like Liberty County (population 8400) is beyond me. Five days isn't enough, a week isn't enough, two weeks isn't enough. This is done by design. Why? The biggest counties are blue counties and they don't want those votes counted. It's not complicated."

And, in Georgia, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams announced that her Republican opponent Brian Kemp would be the winner of their very close and contested election, thanks in no small part to the extraordinary voter suppression he has implemented over the past eight years during his tenure as Secretary of State.

"Let's be clear: This is not a speech of concession because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper," Abrams said in a speech to supporters, while denouncing Kemp's outrageous record as the state's chief election official. "As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that."

At the same time, she also announced she is forming a new organization --- Fair Fight Georgia --- that will sue Kemp and the state for "gross mismanagement" of the election as she declared "the law currently allows no further viable remedy" to overcome what many now see as a stolen election in the Peach State.

Finally, we're joined by the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, to try and help us make sense of these past two tumultuous weeks since the midterms. We discuss the Dems' extraordinary (and under-appreciated) "Blue Wave", how it has clearly served to throw Trump into a dark emotional spiral while exposing him yet again as a con-man, even to many of his supporters, and how some Democrats appear to be taking the rightwing Fox "News" bait in hoping to block Nancy Pelosi's likely return as House Speaker and leader of the Congressional Democratic caucus in January...

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On today's BradCast: Good news for Democrats out of Maine, a mixed bag (at best) out of the Florida "recounts", and more shameful news from Georgia's illegitimate Governor's race...

First up, a federal judge in Maine allowed computer vote counting to continue today under the state's new Ranked Choice Voting scheme, denying a Constitutional challenge, for now, by an incumbent Republican Congressman. With the computer tally allowed to move forward based on the RCV algorithm, two-term GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin, who won the first tally (but without receiving a majority of first choice votes), is said to have been defeated by Democrat Jared Golden after the second choices of voters who had selected other candidates for the first choice were then added to the totals until one candidate, the Dem in this case, received a majority of votes.

If you're confused by that, it's just one reason why I've long been no fan of Ranked Choice Voting (sometimes called Instant Runoff Voting). Nonetheless, Golden's reported win results in a total pick-up, so far, of 35 U.S. House seats for Democrats, with several more undecided races pending that is likely to boost their "blue wave" to as many as 39 new seats in Congress.

A federal judge in Florida on Thursday observed that the state's elections have become a "laughingstock" which state officials "choose not to fix". He's right. In fact, the Republicans who have run the state for years now have chosen to make voting and counting ballots accurately --- and in a way that the public can know they've been counted accurately --- just about as difficult as humanly possible. U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker issued an order today finding Florida's absentee ballot "signature matching" scheme to be unconstitutional. The order allows some 4,000 voters whose Vote-by-Mail or provisional ballots had been rejected due to certain signature issues a few more days to try and cure those problems in their counties by Saturday at 5pm.

Sen. Bill Nelson's campaign, however, in his razor-thin re-election contest with Gov. Rick Scott, had wanted those ballots added to the count sight unseen. (Scott is appealing the ruling nonetheless.) With the explosion of Vote-by-Mail across the country, signature matching problems are becoming a big concern, particularly with votes cast by younger voters who use computers and don't develop personal signatures and for older voters whose signatures have changed over time. Add to that the problem of the awful computer touchscreens used to record those signatures at DMVs and polling places.

In a separate case today also brought by Nelson's campaign, Judge Walker denied an extension for statewide "machine recounts" in the U.S. Senate and Governors races across the state, despite the absurdly short statutory deadline to complete them by today. That, even after Palm Beach County --- one of the state's largest Democratic strongholds --- explained that they were physically unable to complete their "recount" even for only the U.S. Senate race due to their aging and failing computer tabulators which overheated during the process and can only tally one race at a time.

Immediately following the end of the "machine recount," Scott's Secretary of State ordered what suffices for a "manual hand-count" in Florida to begin in the U.S. Senate race, where the margin remains less than 0.25% percent. That limited hand-count of ballots for which the computer scanners reported no vote in the U.S. Senate race must be completed by Sunday --- another arbitrarily short deadline that seems designed to stymie a real hand-count of votes.

The reported 0.41% margin of Republican Ron DeSantis over Democrat Andrew Gillum in FL's Governor's race remains too large to merit an automatic hand count. But, given the "systematic machine failure during the machine recount" in Palm Beach, Democrats filed a new lawsuit today seeking a full hand count of all votes cast in the County.

In Georgia, meanwhile, more counting of absentee and provisional ballots ordered by federal courts to be included in the tallies continued, as Republican Gubernatorial candidate and vote suppressor Brian Kemp called again for counting to end. He remains just 0.22% above the mark that would trigger a December runoff with Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams. Her campaign continues to decry Kemp's horrific administration of the election while Secretary of State, and many outside the state --- including Ohio's Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown --- now see a Kemp victory, if it happens, as illegitimate. Brown went so far as to say: "If Stacey Abrams doesn’t win in Georgia, they stole it. I say that publicly, it’s clear."

The maddening story of 92-year old African-American voter Christine Jordan's fight to even cast a provisional ballot this year in Georgia (after voting in the same place for the last 50 years!), underscores that argument, as we discuss today.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with grim news on the rising death toll in California's record wildfires, some accountability for a top EPA official who was arrested today, and new Democrats in the U.S. House are already moving for bold action on climate change...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Death toll continues to rise as California wildfires rage on, and state officials grapple with preparing for tomorrow's disasters; Climate change may impact male fertility; Regional EPA official indicted on corruption charges; PLUS: New Democrats push old guard to take bold action on climate change... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Part of the answer to climate change may be America’s trees and dirt; Solving microplastic pollution means reducing, recycling—and fundamental rethinking; The wheels on these buses go round and round with zero emissions; Spraying poisons, chasing ghosts; Hail Mary plan to restart a hacked US electric grid; The good and bad of the steep drop in oil prices; In Yellowstone National Park, warming has brought rapid changes; Scientists acknowledge key errors in study of how fast the oceans are warming; Natural gas industry keeps pushing to whittle away payments to residents... PLUS: 12 years after mocking Al Gore’s fight against climate change, South Park reconsiders... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: The electoral dysfunction --- and the fight to count every vote anyway --- continues today in Florida and Georgia, along with some new good news for Democrats elsewhere. At the same time, of course, the dysfunction of Donald Trump's White House never ends. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

After a quick update today on several thousand newly tabulated votes in Georgia (most of which were for Democrat Stacey Abrams in her uphill battle for Governor against Republican vote suppressor Brian Kemp), we start today with news that another U.S. House seat has flipped from "red" to "blue" in California. As the counting continues in the Golden State, the AP and others declared first-time Democratic candidate Josh Harder the winner over four-term Republican U.S. Rep Jeff Denham in the previously GOP-leaning Central Valley.

That brings Dems to a 33-seat pickup, so far, in U.S. House contests this year. A number of other races in previously very Republican areas of California, such as Orange County, have already been declared as flipped to Democrats, with several others still undecided but trending towards Democrats. Those remaining undecided House races and a few in other states could ultimately result in a massive "Blue Wave" as large as 39 new seats in Congress, by my count, as votes from the November 6th midterms continue to be tallied.

In Florida, however, as the state's 67 counties scramble to complete an unprecedented three statewide computer "recounts" in the U.S. Senate, Governor and Agriculture Commissioner races (not to mention several other state legislative and local races) by this Thursday at 3pm, dozens of lawsuits are being filed in state and federal courts.

We cover some of the most notable today, including incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson's suit to extend the arbitrary "recount" deadline set for Thursday. At least one county, Democratic-leaning Palm Beach, has already said that it will be physically impossible to complete all of the machine rescans there in time, thanks to their aging computer tabulation system which can only scan one single race on 300 ballots at a time. Making matters still worse in the state's third most-populous county, those scanners reportedly overheated this week, leading to mismatched tabulations for the first batch of 174,000 ballots scanned (of some 700,000 total). That means that batch will need to be re-rescanned.

And all of that before a similarly absurd statutory Sunday deadline to complete any subsequent so-called "manual recounts" in races such as Nelson's U.S. Senate contest against Republican Gov. Rick Scott, where the margin is less than 0.25 percent. (It's currently reported to be just 0.13%, or 12,562 votes out of more than 8 million cast.)

Nelson has asked a federal court to extend the deadlines in all 67 Florida counties and, in separate filings, seeks to force a review of tens of thousands of absentee vote-by-mail ballots rejected across the state due to claims of signature mismatches and other unspecified "voter-caused error". Scott's hand-picked Sec. of State Ken Detzner is opposing those suits, and Scott has filed several of his own to try and halt the ongoing tabulation.

But not all Republicans oppose extending the deadlines and counting of all ballots, as we also note today, even as most of them, including the President of the United States, are calling for "recounts" to end and incomplete tallies reported from last weekend --- just days after the Tuesday midterms --- to be certified instead. (Friendly reminder here that Republicans held up a statewide hand-count in the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota for eight months in order to keep Al Franken from being seated in the Senate until July of 2009!)

Then, we're joined by BradBlog.com legal analyst ERNEST A. CANNING for the latest on the lawsuit filed by CNN this week (and supported by Fox "News" of all outlets!) against the White House for their removal of press credentials for White House Correspondent Jim Acosta. Not only is the White House in violation of the Constitution's First and Fifth Amendments, the complaint alleges, but the White House and Secret Service also reportedly blocked Acosta from a planned interview with French President Emmanuel Macron last weekend at an event marking the centennial of the WWI Armistice. That, even though the interview was approved by France...and Trump failed to even show up at the event!...

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The Florida election official so well-respected by Republicans and Democrats alike in 2000 that he was tapped to oversee that year's historic Presidential "recount" between George W. Bush and Al Gore in Florida (until it was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court), tells us today that it is likely impossible for the state to complete three statewide recounts --- for U.S. Senate, Governor and Agriculture Commissioner --- in time to meet the state's ridiculously arbitrary statutory deadlines. Run by Republicans for decades, the state "puts a premium on speed", rather than accuracy, ION SANCHO, the 28-year former Leon County (Tallahassee) Supervisor of Elections tells me on today's BradCast. "This is, by no means, a system geared toward finding the truth." [Audio link to show follow below.]

Sancho explains how it is currently unlawful to add any vote to the totals as based on a hand examination of ballots by human beings, as he details the process now officially under way in the Sunshine State for a machine "recount" in the gubernatorial race between Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ron DeSantis (who, the computers report, leads by about 0.41%) and a supposed "manual" count in the U.S. Senate contest between incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and term-limited FL Gov. Rick Scott (which Scott is said to be leading by 0.15%, or less than 15,000 votes out of more than 8 million cast.) Sancho details how even in a "manual" count in FL, ballots are first fed through tabulation computers and only ballots determined by the computers to be over- or undervotes are then re-examined. But, even those ballots are, yes, "remade" by officials onto a fresh ballot paper so that it can can then be run through a computer tabulator.

Given the limitations on the so-called high-speed tabulation systems made by companies like ES&S, still used across the state --- which only accept "300 ballots at a time" --- the scanners used in counties like heavily Democratic-leaning Palm Beach "cannot physically do this job" before statutory deadlines run out. All ballots must be "recounted" by Thursday (even though overseas and military votes aren't due until this coming Saturday!) It's a system, Sancho describes, that was put in place before the very popular no-excuse absentee Vote-by-Mail system was allowed in Florida, along with provisional voting and other election practices that require time-consuming ballot-by-ballot evaluation to determine whether it's eligible for tabulation in the first place.

As noted on today's program, Florida will have "counted" and "recounted" its ballots (correctly or incorrectly, we will never know) less than a week and a half after last week's midterms, several weeks before California even announces completion of its initial count in early December.

All of this, as Scott and even the President of the United States are falsely charging election fraud is ongoing in the state's two largest counties (Broward and Palm Beach), despite a complete lack of evidence to support any such claims. Scott's own Secretary of State and Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement --- who Scott oversees and who both have authority to oversee elections and election crimes in all 67 Florida counties --- concede they have no evidence to support the GOP claims. Sancho also responds to the "laughable" charges of "fraud" being made by Scott and the "truth-free statement" tweeted by Trump on Monday morning, which falsely claims that "ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged" in Florida.

A couple of points worth underscoring here, as the Republicans have been busy dusting off their 2000 playbook to lie about "fraud" occurring in Palm Beach and particularly in Broward, in hopes of shutting down the tabulation of legitimate ballots altogether, once again, in Florida: 1) Brenda Snipes, the Supervisor of Elections in Democratic-leaning Broward County, which has had a number of election failures over the years, was appointed by Republican Gov. Jeb Bush in 2003; 2) Current Republican Gov. Rick Scott appointed his hand-picked Sec. of State Ken Detzner, who has tasked officials from his own office to oversee Broward's election office this year; 3) Nobody from Detzner's office or Florida Law Enforcement has seen or alleged any criminal wrong doing in the county. None of that, however, has prevented GOPers from claiming otherwise.

"Everybody's vote needs to be given the same weight," Sancho, a longtime election integrity champion who has taken on both the state and the voting machine companies argues during today's conversation. "It shouldn't depend upon whether you're in a competent or incompetent jurisdiction. Your vote should count if you cast them properly and you've made no errors."

Also today: Desi Doyen on California's horrific, deadly wildfires which have, to date, killed 31 across the state with hundreds more still unaccounted for; Georgia's Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, in a still too-close-to-call race against GOP Sec. of State and notorious vote-suppressor Brian Kemp filed a new lawsuit over discarded absentee and provisional ballots on Sunday; Democrat Kyrsten Sinema appears to have defeated Republican Martha McSally to win the the U.S. Senate being vacated by Republican Sen. Jeff Flake in Arizona; And 15-term Orange County, CA Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has reportedly been unseated by Harley Rouda in one of the state's most GOP districts. That would bring the net pickup for Democrats in the U.S. House to 32, with results for more than ten seats in CA and elsewhere still said to be too close to call...

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On today's BradCast, I’m in for Brad and Desi today – Angie Coiro, of In Deep with Angie Coiro.

My guests are AMBER McKINNEY, from Law360, discussing the DACA ruling from the 9th circuit and Trump’s latest royal edicts on immigration; and D.D. GUTTENPLAN, editor-at-large at The Nation, and author of the new book The Next Republic: The Rise of a New Radical Majority.

Of course, we have to start off with a lovely story: the Wall Street Journal reports that Donald Trump's been caught red-handed, connected directly to the hush money sent to former mistresses.

Then it's onto the two ongoing big stories: horrific fires in Northern and Southern California, and the elections grinding on in Florida, Arizona, and Georgia. Both the NAACP and a passel of retired generals have weighed in against GOP interference.

A review of the numerous headlines on Trump's efforts to alter immigration policy by presidential proclamation, and his loss in the 9th Circuit court on his efforts to undercut DACA.

A sprinkling of good news (Ruth Bader Ginsberg already back and work! Thousands in the street protecting Mueller!), then D.D. Guttenplan with his new book on revolutionaries rejuvenating our republic.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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On today's BradCast: Who could have foreseen it? Oh, yeah, we did. For months. Years, actually. At this point, even decades. [Audio link to show follows below.]

American voters finally had their chance on Tuesday to respond to the ongoing, two-year national emergency precipitated by the 2016 election of Donald Trump and full Republican control of Congress. Control of the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House and dozens of governorships were up for grabs today. But Election Day 2018 was --- yet again --- marred by completely predictable disasters for voters, including hours-long lines and failing voting and registration computers at polling places across the country.

Today we cover just some of the worst reported messes (there are still more to come to light and many more that we simply couldn't get to)...

• In New York City, where paper ballot computer scanners failed leading to hours-long lines across city;

• In Georgia, where many voters in African-American precincts stood in line for hours due to failing electronic pollbook systems and too few 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting machines (amid the tight race between the vote-suppressing GOP Sec. of State and Gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp and his African-American Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams);

• In North Carolina, where high humidity and a very long ballot reportedly prevented scanners from accepting them in a number of precincts in Wake County (Raleigh);

• In South Carolina, where oft-failed, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems made by ES&S were reportedly flipping votes and officials were (outrageously) said to be making calibration adjustments to them in the middle of Election Day (a very dangerous idea!);

• In Kansas and Missouri where voters also reportedly fought with many problems, incluing long lines, voting systems that failed and poll workers unlawfully demanding Photo IDs to vote. In Kansas, Sec. of State and GOP "voter fraud" fraudster Kris Kobach is overseeing his own very tight race for Governor, and in Missouri, Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill is fighting for her life as Democrats hope to claw back a majority in the U.S. Senate or keep Republicans from expanding their current one.

Then, we're joined by Emmy award-winning journalist and documentarian LULU FRIESDAT with a troubling exclusive report for us out of Dallas County, Texas, amid the reportedly close contest for U.S. Senate between Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and his popular upstart Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke.

Friesdat reports on two different serious concerns out of the Long Star State's second-most populous county, where numbers reported by the County's ES&S tabulators from the state's March primary are still not adding up correctly (yes, months later, questions are still emerging), and from the County's counting room, where a Texas election integrity group is reporting today that a computer in the tabulation facility appears to be hooked up to WiFi. That Friesdat tells me, is highly unlawful and potentially very troubling for a number of reasons.

"It is not okay for it to be around voting machines and tabulators, because that is one of the easiest ways for election results to be hacked," says Friesdat, who has been covering concerns about voting systems for many years now. "So there are usually very, very clear laws regarding internet connectivity or Wi-Fi in a tabulating area. And that is the case in Texas. They have laws that forbid Wi-Fi or connectivity." That, in a county where their vendor is ES&S, the nation's largest voting machine vendor, which recently lied to the New York Times about whether their systems include remote access software. (Turns out many of them do, but that's not what they initially told the Times, even as it still remains unclear which counties use ES&S systems with such capabilities, and even with cellular modems.)

Friesdat does close on a positive note, however, noting that many in the public are becoming aware of these concerns and that observations by the public are helping. "The more people get involved and keep looking, down to the nitty gritty, what's going on in your elections --- it's helping, folks! Keep it up!"

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us today for our latest Green News Report, with some bad news about plastic and the air we breathe, but some good news from the U.S. Supreme Court (believe it or not) and from the World Bank, which has now said it will no longer help finance coal-fired power plants anywhere in the world, because renewables are now cheaper than coal.

Results --- as reported...probably --- tomorrow...

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It's the final day before Election Day polls open for the crucial 2018 midterms, and I hope you'll not believe a word about what you are hearing regarding who may or may not win or lose. In fact, for many reasons discussed on today's BradCast, nobody actually knows. And, given the way we tally votes in this country, it's possible nobody will ever know who won or lost, no matter whether Democrats or Republicans end up taking control of the Senate, the House or dozens of Governors' mansions across the country. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

But, over the weekend, amidst one of the nation's most hotly contested gubernatorial races, it was revealed by independent online news outlet WhoWhatWhy, that Georgia's entire voter registration database is completely vulnerable online such that "even a low-skilled hacker" could compromise all registrations in the state via its online My Voter Page portal. The stunning security hole allows any voter registration to be easily changed --- or even cancelled entirely --- as recently as this weekend, just hours before Election Day polls open on Tuesday for our crucial midterms.

The information about the vulnerability, as the outlet's Jordan Wilkie and Timothy Pratt reported first exclusively, came from an astute observer in Georgia who notified the state Democratic Party when he discovered the problem. In turn, the Dems notified U.S. intelligence officials and Georgia's Republican Sec. of State Brian Kemp, who happens to be overseeing his own reportedly very close race for Governor against Democrat Stacey Abrams. By Sunday morning, incredibly enough --- and without providing any evidence whatsoever --- Kemp released a statement falsely accusing the Democratic Party of Georgia of cybercrimes, suggesting they had attempted to hack the state's online voter registration database.

Shamefully, the corporate media ran with Kemp's claims. It would be hours before the actual facts of the matter were picked up, if at all, by those same media outlets who could simply have read WhoWhatWhy's original exclusive for details on what had actually happened in the first place.

We're joined today by MARILYN MARKS, Election Integrity champion and the Republican founder of Coalition for Good Governance, a non-partisan organization which has been taking Kemp to court countless times over recent months regarding his failed oversight of the state's 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting system, his voter roll purges of legitimate voters, and his rejection of absentee ballots from disproportionately African-American voters.

Her group was among the first to learn of the stunning online registration system vulnerability and help alert WhoWhatWhy to the problem. Marks details how Kemp --- who has resoundingly lost several times in federal court over the past week alone --- has pulled the same, almost identical scam on the public in the past. She tells me that this is at least the third time that Kemp has falsely claimed whistleblowers who discreetly reported vulnerabilities they discovered in the state's electoral system are actually attempting to hack it. He did the same in 2016 before, six months later, the Dept. of Homeland Security's Inspector General finally found that Kemp's allegations were completely baseless. And he did so again in 2017, after a data researcher discovered the state's entire voter registration database, voting machine programming and administrative passwords had been left online before and after the 2016 Presidential election with no security protections.

Then, as now, Kemp falsely reported the matter to the FBI as a cyber crime. Marks also had a word or two for the media outlets which continue to credulously parrot Kemp's claims, despite the complete lack of evidence to support the allegations. Marks described the latest incident as a "total abuse of [Kemp's] position as Secretary of State".

All of that comes over the weekend, even as the Dept. of Homeland Security, according to the Boston Globe today, is said to have discovered an alarming rate of actual attempted hacks --- some which they say have had "limited success" --- of our electoral systems in the weeks leading up to Tuesday's election.

Next, a few words of advice about voting from Oprah Winfrey, before we open the phone lines to callers regarding why they will or won't be voting in Tuesday's midterms.

Oh, and here's Jennifer Cohen's article today at the New York Book Review, in which she quotes me a time or three regarding "What Could Possibly Go Wrong" both at the polls on Tuesday and on the computer tabulators which will tally ballots --- correctly or incorrectly --- in all 50 states on Tuesday night...

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Nearing the final stretch, voters fight to overcome suppression; a few potential nightmare scenarios for Election Day voting preview themselves as Early Voting wraps up; and we look at a number of Secretary of State contests on Tuesday that could have big (and good!) consequences for voting rights before the 2020 Presidential election.

Among the stories covered on today's BradCast [Audio link to show posted below]...

Internet outages across Wisconsin are causing problems for voters hoping to get information on candidates and polling places from the state website. And voters in Rutherford County, Tennessee were unable to vote for an hour on the final day of Early Voting, due to the reported failure of a "primary data storage system" in the county that left polling places unable to verify registrations on electronic-pollbook systems which access voter files across the Internet. These situations, including reliance on the Internet voting at the polls, would result in havoc if they occur next Tuesday. What could possibly go wrong?

A federal judge in North Dakota denies an emergency motion filed by Native American voting rights groups to lift the state's new law requiring street addresses on IDs. Thousands of Native Americans living on reservations do not have such addresses. The George W. Bush-appointed judge claims federal precedent bars most last minute changes to election laws in order to avoid chaos, though the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the new GOP law to stand just weeks ago, despite it having been stayed during the state's primary in June (by the same judge). Chaos has reigned ever since, as tribes scramble to assign addresses and print new IDs, and the GOP Secretary of State refuses to say whether those new addresses will be accepted for voting purposes on Tuesday;

Georgia's Republican Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp loses again in court, as a judge rules he may not bar thousands of voters wrongly flagged by the state as non-citizens from voting on a normal, non-provisional ballot, when they present documents proving their citizenship at the polls.

Then, we're joined by Mother Jones' voting rights journalist ARI BERMAN to discuss his recent New York Times article on the extraordinary voter suppression playing out across the country in several GOP-controlled states, and a potentially available antidote for some of those problems before 2020: electing Secretaries of State who will expand the right to vote rather than restrict it.

Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, details a number of Democratic candidates who could pick up SoS offices next week in several key states, including Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia and others where Republicans currently enforce (and abuse) voting laws. Of course, voters will have to overcome voting roll purges and other suppression methods at the polls on Tuesday in order to see those important changes before 2020.

He suggests the scope of the suppression we're seeing this year is broader, because "it's happening in so many states," in no small part because there are "a lot of elections in states that normally aren't competitive." Add to that bad laws in many of those states which have "created a really toxic combination for suppression."

Much of it, Berman explains, would have been blocked from ever happening, had the U.S. Supreme Court not gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. "Texas, Georgia, a bunch of these Southern states, basically they kind of feel like they can do whatever they want. You can try to stop them if you want, but they don't have to worry about the federal government or the Voting Rights Act anymore" when it comes to federal preclearance for racially discriminatory laws.

"If Democrats are able to take back Governor's seats and Secretary of State races, and all of these other important down-ballot offices in key states, they can do the reverse. They can start passing things to expand voting rights, and that sort of takes the Supreme Court out of the ballgame somewhat," he tells me, before we wade through some of the currently held GOP Secretary of State seats that may see Dem takeovers this year, and in some surprising places. "I hope all this focus on voter suppression --- because it's been getting a lot more coverage in 2018 than 2016 --- will actually lead to some changes in policy, especially if some of these key states flip."

We also discuss some of the initiatives on the ballot next week in several states that could dramatically help to expand the electorate, make registration easier, and end partisan gerrymanders entirely in some states.

Finally today, third-party candidates pull out of two different closely watched and very tight U.S. Senate races in Arizona and Montana. That's likely good news for Democrats in one state, good news for Republicans in the other. But, in both cases, those former candidates will remain on Tuesday's actual ballot, since they dropped out so late in the game...

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