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! ...

We've got a bit of a contrarian view on today's BradCast on a few recent, reportedly alarming election developments in the battleground state of Georgia. But that contrarian view happens to come from one of the nation's most knowledgeable experts when it comes to the way the Peach State runs their elections. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First up, a few news headlines today, including a potential breakthrough in the Israel/Gaza war, with Israel reportedly agreeing to terms for a cease-fire and hostage release, according to U.S. Sec. of State Antony Blinken on Monday. There are few specifics available, and Hamas has yet to agree to the terms, so we will see if it actually comes to pass this time. I remain hopeful but dubious, for reasons discussed on today's show.

Then, you may have heard in recent days, about loud concerns from Democrats regarding new rules for this November's elections being promulgated by the Georgia State Board of Elections. The SEB is a five-person board with four appointed Republicans, three of whom are dyed-in-the-wool MAGA election deniers, and just one Democrat. The three MAGA members were recently called out by name by Donald Trump during one of his recent rallies in Atlanta, where he described the three as "on fire", "doing a great job", and "pit-bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory."

Of course, state elections boards are supposed to be largely neutral facilitators of state election law, as opposed to fighting for "victory" for any particular candidate or party. But, apparently, that's not the case in Georgia these days, where the SEB has adopted a number of new rules --- pushed by some notorious GOP "voter fraud" villains --- which critics on the left describe as a threat to the integrity of this year's elections in the state.

In short, the critique is that the new rules, allowing the state's 159 county boards of election to carry out a "reasonable inquiry" into allegations of fraud, error or miscount during the canvass before certifying results as "true and accurate" in their county this November, could end up delaying the ministerial and mandatory certification of results beyond the state and even federal deadlines. That would result in chaos that could take the decision of who won the election away from voters, and hand it to the far-right Republican-majority state legislature to determine, or to the Trump-packed courts, or even to a GOP-majority in the U.S. House to determine who will become the next President.

As Rolling Stone recently reported, there is reason to be concerned about MAGA election officials who may try to block certification --- in the event Trump loses again --- in a bunch of battleground states. Moreover, a bunch of otherwise respectable media outlets --- from The Guardian, to the New York Times to the Washington Post to even ProPublica and Rachel Maddow --- have all been misreporting in recent days that these new rules would allow election official to delay certification beyond Georgia's deadline for county certification of 5pm on the Monday following the election.

But my guest today says that is not only inaccurate, but that Democrats may ultimately be shooting themselves in the foot by putting up such a fight against the notion that a "reasonable inquiry" may be in order in a number of counties this year, given the opaque, unverifiable, insecure touchscreen voting systems forced on voters at the polling place by Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger and the terrible way in which he runs elections in the state.

We're joined once again today by MARILYN MARKS, Executive Director of the non-profit Coalition for Good Governance (CGG). Her organization successfully sued the state of Georgia in federal court in 2019 to ban the state's 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems made by Diebold back, only to see Raffensperger replace them with newer 100% unverifiable and insecure touchscreen voting systems made by Dominion. (CGG's lawsuit continues, following a trial earlier this year to ban the new systems as well. They still await a verdict from the same federal judge who banned the older systems, and hope to seem them finally replaced with verifiable hand-marked paper ballots. Marks is also the one who first exposed Team Trump's unlawful breach, copy and distribution of Georgia's statewide voting system software in Coffee County, resulting in the indictments of five co-conspirators, including Sidney Powell, in Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis' sprawling conspiracy case against Donald Trump for his attempts to steal GA's 2020 election.)

Marks argues today that the SEB's new administrative rule language, allowing for "reasonable inquiry", cannot be used to block certification. She says the worries are unwarranted, as administrative rules cannot be used to overcome statutory deadlines for certification. (Law professor Derek Muller recently appeared to agree with her.) She concurs that Republicans are likely to try and bollocks up this year's election any way that they can --- in Georgia and elsewhere --- but that the SEB's new rules for "reasonable inquiry" about election results, and a similar one allowing county election officials to review "election-related documentation" before mandatory certification, are not quite as alarming as many Democrats are warning.

Marks tells me that many of the organizations and media outlets misreporting the rule and state law "are from out of state. They are assuming that Georgia is like a normal state, and that Georgia actually has good elections, that numbers reconcile, that ballots are counted well. The problem is that Georgia does not have a reasonable system for counting ballots." She argues that Dems may want to be careful about what they wish for when fighting against "reasonable inquiry" regarding results this year.

"What these rules actually do is help the Democrats," Marks argues. "Because they are going to need to do everything possible to protect --- if Harris wins, and you know it's going to be close --- if Harris wins, they'll have to do everything possible to protect that win. And without some of these transparency measures, they would have a hell of a fight."

If she's right, why then are so many respectable media outlets misreporting the actual rules changes? "I think it's a game of telephone, that somebody started this, saying, 'Oh, they adopted a rule to delay certification...' And then nobody is going back and looking at the actual words of the rules that were actually passed. The rules that were passed actually reinforce the deadlines." CGG makes that abundantly clear in a detailed fact-check newsletter sent to members on Sunday night.

And why, then, are so many of the GOP "voter fraud" fraudsters --- from Trump to Cleta Mitchell to Hans von Spakovsky --- pushing these measures so hard at the State Elections Board in Georgia?

"Yeah, it's worrisome who is promoting it," Marks concedes. "But the Democrats should be one-upping them, and promoting these very same concepts, but doing it with better legal language, with more precision. And doing do it to be certain that they, the Democrats, are not sitting outside with their noses pressed against the windowpane, not able to figure out what's going on with the vote-counting" in November. "Let's don't make it easier for the people who have already told us, 'We are going to try to upend the election if we don't like the results,'" she warns.

As CGG concluded their fact-check newsletter last night: "In Georgia, it should be clear that more election transparency, citizen oversight, accuracy, and accountability are essential—not less!" Tune in to today's show for much more on this topic, from someone who knows Georgia elections better than just about anyone at this point. You may feel somewhat better about what the SEB is doing...or you may not...even if there is still plenty of reason to be concerned about this year's elections --- in Georgia, and everywhere else...

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Was the Trump Campaign really hacked as they've recently claimed? If so, was it actually by Iran, as they also claim? And, If so, isn't that a far greater threat to national security than the corporate media reporting on it seem to understand, so far? Those are just some of the questions asked and answered on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... before we get to our guest today with answers to those questions, another tropical storm has spun up very quickly this week in the record hot Atlantic Ocean. Desi Doyen has the latest today on the climate change-fueled Hurricane Ernesto as it blows by Puerto Rico, which is still rebuilding its crippled power grid from previous storms, and heads toward Bermuda.

NEXT... it was primary Election Day on Tuesday in Connecticut, Vermont, Minnesota and Wisconsin with Congressional and state primaries and even some ballot initiatives for good measure. We've got several noteworthy reported results from all four states after what appears to have been a smooth Election Day in all of them, along with a look ahead and what a number of the contests may portend for November.

THEN... You probably saw the headlines over the weekend about someone calling themselves "Robert" approaching Politico, New York Times and Washington Post with what they claimed to be internal Trump Campaign documents, such as vetting documents for GOP Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance. You probably also heard that the Trump Campaign is claiming they were hacked by Iran, and that Microsoft, just one day earlier, had issued a security bulletin [PDF] stating that a hacking outfit tied to Iran had "sent a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor." (That "former senior advisor" appears to be federal convict, Republican dirty trickster and longtime Trump buddy, Roger Stone.)

So, are all of those things actually connected, as the Trump Camp is claiming? And, after Donald Trump repeatedly lauded the publication of internal campaign email documents hacked from the Clinton Campaign by Russia in 2016, how hard should we now be laughing at his own 2024 Campaign spokesperson warning: "Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America's enemies"?

It's difficult not to chuckle at how the worm has turned, but for our guest today, national security journalist MARCY WHEELER of Emptywheel, joining us to explain what is seemingly being missed by the mainstream coverage of the events --- accurate or not --- as noted above.

First, we try and sort out with Wheeler what is actually known versus still speculative, and how much of it could amount to Team Trump conflating events in hopes of playing the victim and/or protecting themselves from the publication of documents said by "Robert" to be marked as "privileged & confidential". It's certainly interesting to compare how the media have treated these internal campaign documents versus Hillary's in 2016.

But the larger concern, as Wheeler reports this week, is that since Trump doesn't seem to firewall his Campaign documents from the legal documents related to the many criminal cases against him, there are very serious concerns that whoever hacked his campaign emails --- if, in fact, they did --- may also have gained access to highly classified information related to those cases, such as the felony charges he is facing in Florida for having stolen highly classified national security information when leaving office in 2021.

"Donald Trump has not firewalled his campaign from his crimes," Wheeler tells me today. "If you were to hack their computer, it would be a gold mine. It would be a gold mine that would make all of us less secure."

"Remember, we know one of the documents charged against Donald Trump [in the stolen documents case] summarizes the 2019 plans against Iran if they attacked us," she warns. Also, there were documents pertaining to what we know about Iran's nuclear program. She says that, if in fact you have hacked email accounts from the law firm that was vetting J.D. Vance, "then you're getting a lot closer to things that go to Trump's stolen documents case. That's one of several reasons where, if the Iranians were successful, as Russia was [in 2016], you could have a snowballing effect on the national security implications here."

"Most normal humans beings firewall these things," Wheeler asserts, while detailing the way Trump's campaign business is known to have been co-mingled with his legal defense funding and more. "Donald Trump has never kept those separate. We know he hasn't kept them separate. Those are the reasons why the fact that Donald Trump may have been hacked raise additional concerns."

And, oh yeah, there is the newly revealed evidence, via the Dept. of Justice, that someone linked to Iran was recently working on an assassination plot against the former President. That, too, as she details today, plays into this initially hilarious and, on second thought, potentially horrifying turn of events...

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It was another not good day on The BradCast for entitled rightwingers working hard to undermine our American democracy. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Disgraced 2020 election denier, former Mesa, Colorado County Clerk and failed Republican Sec. of State candidate Tina Peters was found guilty by a jury of her peers on Monday for seven crimes related to her 2021 breach, copy and unlawful distribution of Mesa County's proprietary Dominion voting system software that she was elected to protect.

  BACKSTORY: Peters' breach in CO, which set off alarm bells at the time among voting system experts across the country, was one of several similar schemes apparently organized, in part, by former Trump attorney Sidney Powell in a futile effort to prove the 2020 election was stolen from him. Similar breaches were carried out in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where some of the breachers are also facing state criminal charges. Deadbeat fellow election denier and reportedly nearly bankrupt MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who is being sued for defamation by several voting machine companies, aided and abetted Peters' crimes in various ways after the Mesa County voting software was released while she was on stage at Lindell's silly "cyber-symposium" in South Dakota.

• Former-Democrat-turned-independent Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was found by a New York judge on Monday to have used a "sham" address to establish residency in the state where he doesn't actually live. As a result, after a four-day hearing, he will not be allowed to appear on NY's Presidential ballot. Moreover, the ruling may threaten his eligibility for some of the 19 state ballots where he has already qualified to appear and/or the 20 or so states where he is still hoping to do so.

  BACKSTORY: Back in 2011, we reported on then Utah U.S. Senate candidate Mitt Romney having done damn near the same thing. He had owned mansions in both New Hampshire and California, but, in 2010, he fraudulently registered to vote for a U.S. Senate Special Election in Massachusetts, where he had previously served as Governor, using his son's unfinished basement as his voting address. Nonetheless, despite their pretend opposition to election fraud, the Republican Party would later go on to nominate the fraudster Romney as their Presidential nominee in 2012.

• Longtime opponents of workers and organized labor unions, Donald Trump and Tesla/Twitter owner Elon Musk, held what the New York Times described as a "two-hour ramble" on Monday night, on Musk's rickety, now largely rightwing social media site. It didn't seem to go well for either of them. It began about 45 minutes late after Musk's streaming audio platform kept failing. (He blamed a cyberattack. Trump blamed China. Evidence and folks who work at Twitter/X suggested there was no cyberattack at all.) But, at some point in the conversation, Trump and Musk began cackling approvingly about the idea of firing workers who threaten to strike or join unions. On Tuesday, the United Auto Workers, who have been encouraging Tesla workers to unionize, filed legal complaints against each man charging violations of the National Labor Relations Act.

  BACKSTORY: The UAW, and almost every other major labor union, has endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. UAW President Shawn Fain appeared at a rally with Harris and her running-mate Tim Walz in Detroit last week (the one with 15,000 attendees who Trump claims were not there, but were all A.I.) and described Trump as "a scab" who "doesn't know shit about the auto industry and doesn't give a damn about the working class in this country."

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, after the hottest July ever recorded; millions of gallons of raw sewage spills across parts of Florida following Hurricane Debby; and Republicans scheme, via Project 2025, to delete all federal government references to "climate change" if Trump is able to win back the White House in November...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hurricane Debby left a parting gift --- tons of raw sewage spills; July 2024 was the hottest July ever recorded globally; PLUS: Republicans' Project 2025 calls for deleting all references to climate change from the federal government... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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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): More than 47,000 people died in Europe last year due to heat, report says; 'It's Torture': Brutal heat broils Texas prisons, killing dozens of inmates; How to stay safe in the Texas heat; In Pennsylvania's competitive Senate race, fracking takes center stage; Climate change is making us sick, literally, as extreme rainfalls overwhelm outdated sewer systems; Taxpayers on the hook to protect high-end beach communities; 'Massive disinformation campaign' is slowing global transition to green energy... PLUS: How close are the planet's tipping points?... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: After the recent Republican National Convention, LULAC has decided they've had enough. They are coming off the sidelines for the first time in their nearly century-long history to endorse a Presidential ticket. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Over the past week, Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris, with her "joyful warrior" running mate, MN Gov. Tim Walz, have been barnstorming battleground states with rallies attracting 10,000 or 15,000 people at every stop. Her poll numbers are soaring (the NYT/Sienna poll, which has been very friendly to Donald Trump in recent months, now puts the Harris up by 4 points in each of the Democrats' key, must-win "Blue Wall" states (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) and both major labor unions and civil rights groups are jumping on board the train to endorse the Democratic Presidential ticket.

But, on Friday, the political arm of one such civil rights group, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the nation's largest and oldest Latino advocacy group, did something they haven't done in their nearly 100 year history: they endorsed a Presidential ticket. In this case, they are tossing in for the Harris/Walz ticket.

We're joined today by former LULAC President and current Chair of the LULAC Adelante PAC, DOMINGO GARCIA, to explain why the group finally decided, through a unanimous vote, they had to get off the sidelines and get into this fight against the menace posed to the nation --- and specifically to Latinos --- by Donald Trump.

"We saw the rhetoric coming from ex-President Trump saying that he was going to deport 15 million people; he was going to build these mass concentration-deportation camps; he was going to have the Army go door to door and ask people for their papers. These are just bizarro, weirdo ideas," Garcia tells me. "Then we saw the visions of the Republican National Convention, of people [holding signs] saying 'mass deportations'. We were saying, 'Whoa, these guys have gone to the extreme far-right, with almost neo-Nazi Klan mindsets that need to be stopped."

Garcia explains why the group, which was founded after WWI, and considered one of the more conservative civil rights groups, finally learned to believe Trump after his campaigns in 2016 and 2020.

"We take Trump at his word now," says Garcia, noting they didn't believe Trump in 2016 that he was going to separate children from their parents. "And he did! We did not believe him. We did not think there was anybody capable of that kind of cruelty," he explains, recoiling from the sight of two and three-year olds in prison buses. "It was so shocking that that was happening to America. To have a repeat this cycle --- we support securing the border; we support opening up legal immigration and cracking down on illegal immigration --- but doing it in this sort of evil, cruel way, using immigrants for fear-mongering, scapegoating, and as his political pinatas, we said we have to put a stop to that."

Garcia believes that LULAC has the reach to stop Trump, particularly in battleground states like Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where the Latino populations easily overcome the margins in the Presidential races over the last two cycles.

Among the other points Garcia speaks to on today's program...

• The Trump Campaign's response to their endorsement by charging LULAC is out of touch with Latino voters.
• What might explain the apparent increase in Latino support for Trump over the past two cycles.
• What LULAC thinks of the very conservative border security bill agreed to by the Biden-Harris Administration with Senate Republicans, but then scotched by Trump to keep the so-called "border crisis" alive as a campaign issue for him.
• What his group hopes to see Harris do moving forward from the current Administration's policies as they apply to Latino voters and their families.

FINALLY, as Harris/Walz continue to climb in the polls with their hopeful, positive campaign --- in contrast to Trump's dark, dystopian message --- listeners ring in on the addition of Walz to the ticket, and the madness of Trump, who now says that the tens of thousands turning out for Harris/Walz rallies is actually fake and being done by Artificial Intelligence. Yes, he is really claiming that the numbers that the Democratic ticket is drawing for rallies --- and caught on video by thousands of people --- is actually somewhere between zero and 1,000 or so, but for the use of A.I. to hoax the public into believing tens of thousands were there instead. Seriously. That's what he now says...

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"Thank you, Madame Vice President, for the trust you put in me," he said as he began his remarks during their first public appearance together as running mates on the 2024 Democratic ticket. "But, maybe more so, thank you for bringing back the joy." We send our thanks in return on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

But, very quickly before we get there today, we've got a few of the noteworthy reported results from Tuesday's largely problem-free (so far) Congressional and state primary elections in Michigan, Missouri, Kansas and Washington state. And a few thoughts on Donald Trump's latest pathetic attempt to remain relevant by endorsing more than one --- sometimes all of the top contenders --- in the same Republican primary race. What a loser.

THEN... it's on to our roundtable guests today, who seem to be in a very good mood for some reason, after the Democrats' now official 2024 Presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, tapped Minnesota's progressive Governor Tim Walz as her VP candidate on Tuesday.

Walz, as we discuss, has a life and political biography that, if he was a fictional character in a political miniseries, you'd think the writers had laid it on a little thick. But, sure enough, Walz' extraordinary career and accomplishments --- born in rural Nebraska; 24 years of decorated service in the Army National Guard; 20 years as a high school teacher and state champion football coach; 12 years in the U.S. House; and two wildly effective terms as MN Governor, including the passage of a slew of popular progressive priorities --- all seem quite real. AND, it has all been carried out, it seems, with much of the same "joy" he thanked Harris for "bringing back" during their first joint appearance on Tuesday in Philadelphia.

Now, as the Dem ticket's poll numbers continue to surge, the pair is off and running with joint appearances in at least five battleground states this week, while Trump is set to appear in, well, just Montana for some reason.

We're joined again today for another one of our weekly roundtables with two very smart and fellow old school bloggers, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of The Pro Left Podcast. They were last on the show together just three weeks ago. But, boy howdy, was that a different world, as Dems were still trying to figure out how to survive with Joe Biden at the top of their ticket following his disastrous late-June debate performance. What a difference three weeks makes.

Today, we are focused on the selection of Walz as VP and what all of that means for both the electrified Dem and seemingly stultified GOP tickets. By way of just a quick sample from our conversation today, from both guests in response to Harris' selection of Walz...

There is much more where all of that comes from today, on how the progressive AOC and rightwing Joe Manchin are actually in agreement that Walz is an "excellent decision" and "the real deal"; on Team Trump's hilariously flatfooted response; on the one option the GOP could (but won't) deploy to turn things around; on "mind[ing] your own damn business"; on Minnesota/San Francisco/American values; on whether Trump could ever dump Vance; on whether the Dem momentum can continue for another 90 days; on Trump's bizarre post-Walz meltdown; and much more...

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Late last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and 34 fellow Senate Democrats introduced legislation that would not only overturn the "Presidential Immunity" ruling invented by the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority last month in Trump v. United States, but would also strip both federal appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court of the jurisdiction to so much as stay criminal proceedings based upon a claim of "presidential immunity".

The proposed No Kings Act [PDF] cites provisions of Article III, §2, clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which expressly authorizes Congress to carve out "exceptions" to the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction. The newly introduced Act declares that "a President or Vice President is not entitled to any form of immunity from criminal prosecution for violations of the criminal laws of the United States unless specified by Congress," and then invokes the Article III clause to prevent federal courts from blocking any such prosecution on the basis of the Trump v. U.S. ruling.

Moreover, as the Democrats' announcement explains, the Supreme Court would also be barred from reviewing the Constitutionality of the No Kings Act itself. While the bill would allow Presidents and Vice Presidents to challenge its constitutionality, any such challenge would be ultimately decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rather than by SCOTUS.

According to Schumer's statement:

The legislative Act, as proposed by Democrats, is manifestly different from President Biden's proposal to overturn the presidential immunity decision by way of a Constitutional Amendment...

Ain't democracy grand? Messy, unpredictable, maddening, sure. But also grand. And we've got a lot of it to talk about on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

ARIZONA PRIMARY RESULTS

Republicans were turning on fellow Republicans during Congressional and local primaries in the Grand Canyon State on Tuesday. We know, however, there was absolutely no fraud or tabulation error anywhere in the state, because perennial election denier and loser, Kari Lake, actually won her primary for U.S. Senate. She'll run against Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in November for the seat vacated by rightwing former Dem Kyrsten Sinema.

In Maricopa County, where 60% of AZ votes are cast, far-right Republicans sadly took down a bunch of not-crazy Republican officials, including the County's very good elections chief, County Recorder Stephen Richer, along with several other not-insane Republicans on the Maricopa Board of Supervisors. Their crime: telling the truth about the fact that Trump lost the County in 2020. All of that, on the other hand, may give Democrats, many of whom ran uncontested on Tuesday, a chance to turn the County even bluer this November.

Also sadly, Republican former Sec. of State and (real) election reform champion Ken Bennett was unseated in the state Senate by Trump loyalist, election denier loon and 2022's failed GOP Sec. of State nominee Mark Finchem in a rather red district. (See my interview with Bennett on his very good, bipartisan, election transparency bill last year on this program right here.) Nonetheless, Dems now have a very real chance of flipping both chambers of the AZ State Legislature this fall.

VENEZUELA ELECTION STANDOFF

President Nicolas Maduro's National Election Council is still claiming that Maduro won Sunday's Presidential election. The broadly supported opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez is still claiming that Maduro lost --- in a landslide. But Maduro has so far refused to release actual election results from tens of thousands of polling places, so it's impossible to know who actually won.

We don't have a political dog in this hunt, other than in favor of democracy and the notion that the candidate who received the most votes should be declared the winner of the election. Now, the Carter Center, which was allowed to observe the election, the U.S. Government (longtime Maduro opponents) and Presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Gustavo Petro of Colombia (both allies of the Venezuelan President) are all demanding that Maduro transparently release all polling place election results. They are all correct to do so.

KAMALA V. TRUMP

Finally, as Democratic Party delegates prepare to officially certify their new nominee without any challengers this weekend, and as more new polling finds Kamala Harris surging against Donald Trump both nationally and in swing states, we take some time once again today to try and make sense of the state of this extraordinary race.

We're joined today by two longtime old school bloggers and podcasters, our friends 'DRIFTGLASS' of his eponymously named blog, and his wife FRANCES LANGUM, also known as BlueGal, who serves as Associate Editor at the Crooks & Liars blog. They both produce and co-host The Professional Left Podcast each week from their home in "Flyover Country, Illinois."

And they've both got lots of smart insight today, as we discuss....

• The remarkable emergence of Harris at the top of the Dem ticket just 10 days ago.
• The surprising unity behind her by rarely united Democrats. (Fran: "I think there is a permanent state of PTSD among Democrats after 2016. It's why we've won every election since then.")
• Where, if anywhere, Harris may diverge on policy from Biden.
• Trump's crash and burn during his appearance today at the National Assoc. of Black Journalists conference. (Driftglass: "I really do appreciate Donald Trump giving [Harris] a boost today by going to Chicago and absolutely crapping the bed. It was delightful.")
• What Trump really meant when he told Christians they wouldn't need to vote again in four years.
• What Trump really meant when he said Russia and China will "walk all over" Harris, though he didn't want to say "as to why, but a lot of people understand it."
• Why Trump appears to be trying to wriggle out of debating Harris.
• Who might be Harris' Veep selection, and does it matter in the slightest?

All of that and much more --- including words from Drifty's "Crazy Uncle Liberty" and Fran's insistence that the Trump Campaign is now desperate because they are all but broke --- on today's BradCast!...

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If you haven't begun already, as detailed on today's BradCast (along with much else), now is a good time to start keeping your eyes on the many ways that Republicans are planning to "legally" steal the November election in the event that, once again, they can't win it the old fashioned way by receiving more votes and an electoral Electoral College victory with them. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Recently, Kevin Roberts (pictured above), the President of the far-right Heritage Foundation, creators of "Project 2025" --- an extremist 900-page manifesto designed to repeal the 20th century the next time a Republican wins the White House --- told supporters: "We are winning. There are a lot of victories that have been secured. Some of them are partial. Some of them in ways that the other side doesn't yet know, are foundations for what's coming. And that's just the beginning. And we're not gonna tell ya everything that's coming."

Today, after weeks of focus on that Project 2025 by Democrats and media, it's nominal operational director, Paul Dans, stepped down to assuage Donald Trump, who both doesn't like the fact that Project 2025 makes him look like the puppet of more than a hundred far-right organizations and his own former Administration officials (which he is), and because the document is so extremist that he'd prefer to keep all of its atrocities under wraps until he's safely back in office. But those plans to gut the government as we know it and place a Republican President in direct autocratic control of every government agency, aren't going away, even if Heritage and friends have now been ordered to tone it down for a while until Trump can be installed back into the Oval Office.

As corporate media outlets are finally reporting on Project 2025, Roberts' plans for "victories...that the other side doesn't yet know...and [he's] not gonna tell" us about for now, are becoming clearer by the day, nonetheless. Largely, they are about stealing the election in advance by voter suppression assisted by corrupt friends now seated on the courts; stealing it during the tabulation by the many Trump-supporting election denialist who now serve as county election officials in battleground states, where they plan to prevent certification of a Trump loss; and, in doing so, create enough havoc after the election to toss the Electoral College certification on January 6 to the U.S. House, where Republicans hope to control a majority of state delegations in order to name Trump the "winner", even if he loses again, as he did in 2020.

We detail just some of those plots and plans, along with much more, on today's program. Among our many stories today...

• After hundreds were killed amid downpour-triggered landslides last week in Ethiopia, at least 70 93 were killed by mudslides under similarly climate change-fueled conditions in southwestern India today.

• More than 1 million union workers have now had their pensions saved by the Biden-Harris Administration and Congressional Democrats, thanks to their American Rescue Plan, which not one single Republican voted for in the House or Senate. That now includes some 600,000 Teamsters, many of them in the rust belt, the midwest and New England, as celebrated on Monday in Manchester, New Hampshire.

• Kamala-mentum continues, as new polling shows her favorability rate skyrocketing and her unfavorability rate plummeting, following President Biden's decision to drop out of the 2024 race and endorse his Vice President instead. Favorable/unfavorable numbers for Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have done the exact opposite according to polling numbers from the week after the assassination attempt on the former President and the Republican National Convention as compared to the week after, following Biden's endorsement of Harris for the top of the ticket.

• Rolling Stone detailed on Monday how at least 70 pro-Trump conspiracists who now hold positions as election officials in a number of counties in six battleground state "are poised to make a giant mess" by refusing to certify election results in hopes of preventing state results from being certified if Trump doesn't win them. The magazine's Justine Glawe's deep-dive report warns that "Republicans have refused to certify election results at least 25 times since Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden"...because practice makes perfect. You have been warned. You may want to keep your Jan. 6 open next year. There may be something dramatic on television, depending on how things go.

• Early legal efforts by Republicans to bollox things up for the Kamala Harris Campaign do not appear to be going well. An FEC complaint filed last week in hopes of preventing Harris from being able to use the money from the former Biden-Harris Campaign account isn't likely to get very far, UC Irvine Election Law professor Rick Hasen notes. Though he does recognize that the complaint will at least give Trump the opportunity to falsely claim on the stump that what Dems are doing is a muchworse campaign finance violation than his own in 2016 which resulted in his 34 felony convictions in New York. Good luck with that.

• Also, recent claims by Republican House Speaker and Trump tool Mike Johnson (who is, theoretically, an actual attorney) that there are legal "impediments" preventing Democrats from putting Harris on state ballots instead of Biden, turn out to be 100% wrong. At least according to CNN, which surveyed all 50 states to find that there will be legal impediments for Harris in (...checks notes...) ZERO states!

• In the meantime, expect a mountain of frivolous legal complaints by Republicans about election laws in hopes of suppressing the vote with favorable rulings from corrupt, Trump appointed federal judges. One such effort in Mississippi, filed earlier this year, seeking to block the counting of mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day but received up to five days afterward, as per state law, failed on summary judgement on Sunday. But you should expect both appeals and more such voter suppression cases to flood the courts between now and Election Day (and beyond).

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report as the climate change-fueled Park Fire in Northern California explodes to become the fifth largest in state history; the death toll from heat exhaustion amid power outages following Hurricane Beryl in Texas continues to climb; Extreme heat and water pollution complicate the Paris Olympics; and the U.N. warns that the nations of the world are not moving fast enough to avoid the far worse effects of climate change that are coming...

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