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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: U.K. accelerates phase-out of gasoline and diesel cars to 2030; U.S. carmakers knew 50 years ago that burning fossil fuels causes global warming and then lied about it; Trump Interior Department allows states to veto federal conservation projects; October 2020 only the fourth hottest October on record; PLUS: San Francisco upgrades building codes to phase out fossil fuels... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Iota’s devastation comes into focus in storm-weary Nicaragua; GM announces plans for 30 new EVs by 2025; An Unlikely Alliance of Farm and Environmental Groups Takes on Climate Change; No Senate? No problem, progressive group New Consensus tells Biden; Amazon road-building could deforest millions of hectares: report; Trump pushes new environmental rollbacks on way out the door; Loeffler-Warnock Ga. Senate Runoff Offers Extreme Contrasts on Climate; Klamath: Historic Deal Revives Plan For Largest US Dam Demolition... PLUS: RoboCop Sets Sail: A new generation of autonomous vessels is looking to catch illegal fishers in the act... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: We wouldn't blame you if you felt like averting your eyes from the desperate, usually-sad, often-hilarious, chaotic and so far failed attempts by the incompetent Team Trump to somehow try and steal the 2020 election any way they can. Yes, that's still going on. It's our job, however, to keep our eyes on it, and so we do again today, as things continue to fall apart in all new ways with each passing hour for Donald and what's left of his legal team. [Audio link to show follows summary below.]

Today, we cover the ongoing chaos the Trump Campaign is attempting to wreak in at least four different states. So far, only in Georgia has an election official who has buckled to pressure from Trump and fellow Republicans. Of course, he's a Republican himself and is doing a lousy job of it. But, in almost every case, the strategy --- such that there is one --- now seems to be to target the votes of African-Americans to be tossed out.

In Wisconsin today, the Trump Campaign plunked down $3 million to pay for a partial recount in the state. A full count would have cost the cash-strapped campaign $7.9 million. They have asked for counts only in heavily African-American Milwaukee County and Dane County, in a state where Joe Biden currently leads Trump by about 20,000 votes. In requesting the partial count they are doing what Republicans were outraged by in Florida in 2000 in the Bush v. Gore case, when Gore sought recounts only a few counties. The GOP, at the time, succeeded in forcing a statewide recount instead, which they were able to convince the U.S. Supreme court to block entirely. (Extra fun and irony today for those who noticed that Eric Trump complained in 2016 about the Presidential recount that year in the same state because the cost "Could Have Saved at Least 5,000 Children's Lives." He also falsely claimed that Hillary Clinton had anything to do with that recount. In fact, it was sought and paid for by the Green Party's Jill Stein for less money than the Trump Campaign sent to the Badger State today.)

In Pennsylvania, where Biden appears to have won by almost 82,000 votes, Rudy Giuliani made an absolutely hysterical jackass of himself during a federal court hearing on Tuesday. He hasn't argued a case in federal court for 30 years, and boy did it show! Just part of the fun included his opening argument in which he declared the case was about "widespread nationwide voter fraud!," before later admitting under questioning from the U.S. District Court Judge during the same hearing that "this is not a fraud case." That was hardly the only way in which he beclowned himself, especially as he focused on leveling baseless claims against the voting in heavily-minority Philadelphia. But it should also be noted that he declared his evidence-free case "a classic violation of equal protection....This is exactly Bush v. Gore!" That's fun, considering his campaign then violated a basic tenet of that 2000 case with their request for a cherry-picked partial recount in WI today.)

In Michigan on Tuesday night, the two Republicans on the Board of Canvassers in Wayne County refused to certify the November 3rd results due to claims of irregularities in the county's largest city, Detroit. (Seeing a pattern here yet?) The irregularities in question, apparently, regard small inconsistencies between the number of ballots cast and the number of voters signed into the pollbooks in a number of precincts in the county, in a state where Biden appears to have won by almost 160,000 votes. Despite a higher number of inconsistencies during primaries in the County earlier this year --- and a larger percentage of inconsistencies in majority white cities in the same County --- the Republicans on the Board certified the spring primaries without a problem. Their refusal to certify the general election deadlocked the Board at 2 to 2 and prevented certification for a few hours on Tuesday night. Brutal public comments at the Board's hearing and agreement to ask the Democratic Sec. of State for an audit of Wayne County's discrepancies, resulted in certification after all, by a unanimous 4 to 0 vote in a new vote by the Board held just three hours later.

But much of today's show is focused, however, on the absurd clown show that has been underway in Georgia for the past week, where the Republican Sec. of State, Brad Raffensperger, buckled to pressure last week from Trump and fellow Republicans who hold him responsible for the fact that Trump appears to have lost there by about 13,000 votes.

Last week, when Raffensperger announced an unprecedented statewide "audit, recount and a recanvass all at once," we explained on the program how that's not actually possible or even legal. This week, Raffensperger quietly admitted as much, sending out a letter to County Elections Officials [PDF] to notify them that "after evaluating the audit procedures...the original results...tabulated on and after election day, and certified by the county election superintendent, should be the results that your county certifies as the November 2, 2020 General Election Totals."

In short, the so-called "Risk-Limiting Audit" of 100% of the ballots cast in GA's Presidential race was not a "hand recount" as many media outlets have been misreporting it, but a largely meaningless exercise meant to try and appease our cry baby President, as my guest today, JEANNE DUFORT of the Coalition for Good Governance, describes it. Dufort has been on the ground in the state where she has also been a voter plaintiff in some of the Coalition's lawsuits. They are plaintiffs in a long-running federal case seeking to ban the state's use of new, unverifiable touchscreen voting systems made Dominion Voting Systems. (The same lawsuit succeeded in obtaining an order from the federal judge that banned the state's previous, 20-year old, unverifiable touchscreen systems made by Diebold. Despite recommendations from cybersecurity advocates and voting systems experts, Raffensperger chose to move to the new $100+ million touchscreens that are similarly unverifiable.)

Over the past 48 hours, two Republican-leaning counties discovered about 2,700 votes each that had gone either unscanned or unreported to the state previously. Those would have been discovered in the normal course of regular post-election canvassing, and netted about 1,000 votes for Trump overall. That will decrease Biden's final state certified margin from about 14,000 votes to about 13,000 votes. He will still be declared the official winner. After state certification on Friday, Team Trump will then have an opportunity to seek an official "recount" (as opposed to Raffensperger's pretend one) in which, by state law, the ballots will scanned again by the same computers that scanned them the first time. So that is also unlikely to change the final results.

Dufort explains today what she was able to observe over the past week during Raffensperger's "audit"/"recount"/"recanvass" which amounts to little more than Election Integrity Kabuki Theater. But, she tells us, there were still a few lessons to be learned from it all, as elections officials, poll workers and count observers who have been working for weeks amid a deadly pandemic, will now have to prepare very quickly for the two January 5 U.S. Senate runoffs in GA that will determine which party controls the Senate next year. Early voting begins on December 14th, not long after some municipal elections are also held in some counties on December 1st. All while carrying out another "recount" which Trump will almost certainly request after Friday's state certification. After all, there were a lot of --- you-know-whos --- that cast ballots against Trump in the city of Atlanta. That can't stand, right?

"The big thing is this is theater," says Dufort, speaking for herself, not the Coalition. "We've been calling for this [unverifiable Dominion Voting] equipment to be banned in the same way our lawsuit got the last Georgia system banned. So we are not fans of this equipment. But it's really ironic to see the same legislators who forced this $100 million purchase on the state to now be saying, 'Hey let's return it to the vendor! Let's get rid of it! It's a terrible system!', because they didn't get enough for their money. They didn't get a President for their money, and it's not clear they're going to get two Senators for their money. So it's kind of a funny time in Georgia."

Finally, we close with some listener mail that may hit the nail on the head: Trump isn't trying to getto 270 electoral votes. He's trying to take enough votes away from Biden so that he gets less than the required 270, so the election must be thrown to the House where the Constitution allows for minority (Republican) rule to win the day. With Rudy Giuliani now leading Team Trump's efforts, how could the plan fail?!

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On today's BradCast: Dozens of top, bi-partisan experts in government, national security and media predicted this moment last Summer, as they gamed out the various scenarios that might occur after Election Day. At the same time today, it's wildly amusing to watch Republicans continue to pick up on so many of our reports on election integrity at The BRAD BLOG over the years and suddenly pretend to be concerned about it, after years of scoffing at such "libtard, sore loser conspiracy theories" regarding the dangers of computerized vote tallies and private voting system vendors in control of our public elections. [Audio link to today's show is posted below summary.]

First up, the experts who predicted this moment. Most of the scenarios that the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) gamed out, they feared, would result in at least some level of violence and a potential Constitutional crisis. Donald Trump is largely proceeding as they'd predicted. But the co-founder of TIP, which organized the exercises to examine what Trump might do in the wake of a Joe Biden victory, tells me today that while "it's like poison into the veins of the body politic...they're not going to be able to get away with actually stealing the election."

Dr. NILS GILMAN is an historian, Vice President of Programs at the Berggruen Institute and TIP co-founder and joins me again on today's show. Earlier this year, in table-top exercises he helped to organize, the TIP group gamed out the various ways that Election 2020 might play out [PDF]. When we spoke with Gilman in August he cautioned that "all signs appeared to be flashing red," as the experts found that all potential scenarios other than a "Biden landslide" could result in "both street-level violence and political impasse".

So, with Trump's continuing unwillingness to concede the election two weeks later; his false claims of massive "voter fraud" in at least half a dozen states failing to include any actual evidence; at least two dozen lawsuits challenging the election being tossed out of court or withdrawn by plaintiffs; along with the Administration's refusal to work with the Biden Transition team, it seemed a good time to check back in with Gilman to see if the current scenario was predicted and, if so, how experts believed it would play out from here.

"We looked at four different scenarios" last summer, Gilman explains. But now, he says, "the world we ended up in was somewhere between the 'Biden landslide' and the 'Biden clear-but-close-victory'. So you see the moves that Trump is trying to do that we anticipated when we ran these exercises last Summer. They are very similar to the ones we saw. He's trying to convince people that there was cheating going on in the election, that there was electoral fraud. He's trying to get state legislatures to potentially consider throwing out the results of the popular vote and instead putting in place a slate of Republican electors even though the people voted for Democratic electors."

"I don't think any of that is going to end up working," says Gilman. "We're not quite in 'Biden landslide' territory, but we're not in a close election either. That's why I don't think Trump is going to be able to pull off what he was probably scheming to do."

While he says "there's a lot of crazy stuff happening in the fever swamps" and, indeed, there was some violence after Trump supporters and counter-protesters clashed over the weekend, Gilman believes that the conditions that would lead to worst of the scenarios examined have yet to materialize. And that's a very good thing. So far. He explains why that is and what is, so far, missing from one of those worst case scenarios examined by his project.

Also today, Republicans --- yes, even Sean Hannity! --- is suddenly very troubled by secret software made by private voting system vendors like Dominion Voting, a company that we've been reporting on (along with all of the other equally shitty vendors) for years. In the past, the folks at Fox "News" like Hannity and now dead Breitbart "News" founder Andrew Breitbart, scoffed at our reporting. Breitbart took particular glee in attacking me personally over my reporting on the now defunct Diebold Elections Systems, Inc. (It seems unlikely that Breitbart "News", with their "reporting" on Dominion today, even realize that the company now owns many of Diebold's assets!)

But, over the past week or two, our traffic here has gone through the roof as the Rightwingers have suddenly become concerned about these issues for some odd reason, after years of dismissing them. Thanks, Rightwingers! (Yes, for example, if you are hearing misleading murmurs from the fever swamps --- including from Hannity and Trump himself --- tying Dominion to Venezuela in order to claim the company secretly stole the election for Biden, it's due to this exclusive BRAD BLOG story that we broke more then 10 year ago! Glad ya'll have finally decided to notice and become alarmed about our reporting! Just wait until you hear what George W. Bush did in Iraq!)

Then, we open up the phone lines to answer some more questions about all of this, including one caller who wonders what's up with what she's been seeing all over YouTube about Venezuela and Dominion?! And another who picked up on part of my conversation with Gilman about whether the Biden Administration intends to hold the criminal Trumpers accountable or whether, like the Obama Administration with the Bushies, they will make the mistake of "looking forward, not back."

"People have to look close at what created the mess we're in now," says our wise caller Kelwin. "Trump is a bed sore on a sick, cancer-ridden political body of the United States. And getting rid of Trump is going to be like fixing a bed sore on a dying body. I like to say that charging and going after these people, that IS looking forward. It's looking at stopping the pattern."

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

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On today's BradCast: Georgia's embattled Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger made a surprising --- and somewhat bizarre --- announcement at a press conference on Wednesday morning. He declared that the state would be carrying out a full, statewide hand-count in the Presidential race of "every single piece of paper, every single ballot, every single lawfully cast ballot." As of airtime, Joe Biden leads Donald Trump in that race by more than 14,000 votes out of nearly five million votes cast this year in the Peach State, with very few ballots reportedly left to tally. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

"With the margin being so close, it will require a full, by-hand recount in each county," Raffensperger declared. "This will help build confidence. It will be an audit, a recount, and a recanvass all at once." But, as our guest today explains, an audit, recount and recanvass all very different things that can't and don't actually happen at the same time.

The announcement has resulted in a lot of questions today, that we both ask and try to answer.

For a start, recount laws in Georgia only appear to allow the Sec. of State to declare a recount in the event that there is evidence of fraud that could change the final results. He has offered no such evidence. Otherwise, if the margin of difference between the two leading candidates is 0.5% or less, a candidate may then petition the Secretary for a recount. To my knowledge, however, neither candidate has yet petitioned for such a count, even with the margin currently at 0.28% and still rising for Biden. One reason is likely because a recount can't be petitioned until after the race has been certified. County certification in the state is due this Friday, with the deadline for certification by the state not until next Friday (November 20th.)

Earlier this year, however, Georgia announced a new pilot program for a post-election Risk-Limiting Audit (or RLA) process. An RLA, in short, is a process and protocol invented in recent years by UC-Berkley Prof. Philip Stark (who has been a guest on our show) in which hand-counts of small, randomly-selected samples of ballots in a race are carried out to determine, supposedly with 95% scientific certainty, that the results reported by the computer tabulators accurately reflect voter intent. The larger the margin in a race, the fewer ballots need to be counted to achieve that certainty under the mathematical RLA protocol. In very close races, or if mistallies are found along the way while hand-counting, a larger sample is then counted, all the way up to a full hand-count of all ballots, when necessary.

In Georgia, Raffensperger had previously announced that the state's pilot RLA program would be carried out on just one single race every two years. The race would be personally selected by the Secretary. Until today, that race was not expected to be the Presidential race in Georgia. In fact, in the first outing for the state's pilot RLA program after their June primaries earlier this year, just 27 ballots were counted in total in the RLA. Today, however, for reasons still unknown, Raffensperger declared that the Presidential race would be selected for the RLA and that, due to its tight margin, all ballots would be hand-counted.

Raffensperger has long been under fire from Election Integrity advocates for his recent selection of the Dominion Voting Systems touchscreen Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) for in-person voting. That, after a federal judge last year ordered the state to get rid of its 20-year Diebold touchscreens which she determined to be unsecure, unverifiable and, therefore, unconstitutional. The new systems chosen by Raffensperger may eventually face the same fate, according to the judge.

The new touchscreens print out a computer-marked paper ballot summary, supposedly to be reviewed by each voter at the end of the touchscreen process. But they are 100% unverifiable after an election. Nobody can know if the summaries were reviewed or not, much less accurately. Studies show that most voters do not review them, and that 93% of voters do not notice when the computer has changed one of their votes. RLAs of paper ballot summaries produced by BMDs, according to Stark, cannot possibly confirm voter intent. They can only confirm whether the computerized optical-scan tabulators tallied them correctly as per the QRCode printed on each ballot summary. (Yes, voters who do bother to review the printouts will review the human-readable summary printed on them. That portion of the ballot is not actually tallied by the scanners --- the QR barcode is tallied instead.)

And while Election Integrity folks have long been critical of Raffensperger (and, in fact, are suing the state of Georgia to get rid of the BMDs and move to a less expensive, verifiable hand-marked paper ballot system for all voters at the polling place, as recommended by cybersecurity and voting systems experts), this week, many on the Right have suddenly decided that they are also now also critical of Raffensperger's selection of the Dominion systems and his administration of the Presidential election that Trump appears to have lost in the state. On Monday night, the state's two incumbent Republican U.S. Senators called on Raffensperger to resign in advance of the two U.S. Senate runoffs set for January 5th, which which will determine whether Democrats are able to take back control of the upper chamber in Congress. (For my part, I've invited Republicans to join my call for all hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots for those easy to count runoffs, as that would provide full transparency that even the GOP shouldn't complaint about, since it would remove Dominion's hardware and software from the entire process.)

At the same time, millions of hand-marked paper ballots were also cast in this year's election in Georgia, due to the COVID pandemic. A hand-count of those ballots under the RLA process may or may not reveal errors in the tabulation, but --- presuming the chain of custody has been secure --- would help confirm the accuracy of the reported results...at least for the hand-marked ballots.

None of this, meanwhile, will change the ultimate results of the Presidential election nationally --- at least not on its own. Even if the results in Georgia were to somehow flip to Trump, Biden would still have more than enough Electoral College votes, even without Georgia, to win the Presidency if his current leads in all of the other states remain.

If all of this sounds like a confusing mess, that's because it is. And, to be frank, it's unclear, at least to me, whether Raffensperger even knows what the hell he is talking about in declaring this simultaneous RLA/Recount/Recanvass. Nonetheless, we try to make sense of what is known and unknown today --- and both ask and answer many more questions --- with my guest EDDIE PEREZ, Global Director of Technology and Standards at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Open Source Election Technology (OSET) Institute. Before joining OSET, Perez spent some 15 years as the Director of Product Management at Austin, TX-based Hart-Intercivic, the nation's third-largest private voting systems vendor.

Jump on in to today's full show for what I hope is an invaluable, detailed conversation about all of this, if you want to know what the hell is now going on in Georgia and whether any of it can actually work or otherwise ultimately effect the Presidential results. Perez has a lot of experience and insight to share while he expresses his own concerns that what may be going on here is "a kind of election integrity theater" being carried out by Raffensperger, "where neither side is particularly satisfied" by the ultimate result....whatever it may turn out to be.

Also on today's program: The latest updates on several election results elsewhere; 28 election officials in one Missouri County have contracted COVID, most likely from voters during the election; A new poll from Reuters finds that nearly 80% of the electorate --- including Republicans --- believe Biden is the winner...

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The unfortunately necessary debunkery of Donald Trump and his GOP's various embarrassingly desperate efforts to steal the election from Joe Biden continues on today's BradCast, even as the U.S. Secretary of State manages to shock with an extraordinarily offense comment and Republicans are now turning on their own in Georgia to appease the soon-to-be-former President. [Audio link to show is posted below this summary.]

Among the too-many stories covered on today's show...

• Even Fox 'News' is beginning to refuse to air the White House's "voter fraud" BS. It's not the first time Fox has refused to play along with GOP "voter fraud" lies since Election Day;

• Mitch McConnell supports Trump's right to legal challenges in the election (and so do we, as we explain);

• Sec. of State Mike Pompeo makes a wildly unfunny, dangerous and un-American "joke" from the lectern at the Dept. of State about a "smooth transition to a second Trump Administration";

• Corporate media continue to do a rather competent job of quickly debunking the endless and so-far evidence-free claims being made by duped Trump supporters and shameless Trump attorneys in court regarding "voter fraud". CNN's Donie O'Sullivan deserves special credit for one of his reports taking on Trump supporters directly at a "Stop the Steal" rally in Pennsylvania, with facts to debunk their false conspiracies regarding "Trump ballots being burned in bags" (they weren't), vote totals being inflated overnight for Joe Biden (they weren't), and much more;

• Separately, CNN also debunks Trump's latest Twitter tantrums regarding his evidence-free claims of fraud in Pennsylvania (no, GOP observers were NOT prevented from watching the ballot count), Nevada (no, 3,000 voters did NOT vote unlawfully from other states), Georgia (no, Trump did not "win on Election Night") and Wisconsin (no, Trump's campaign is not "looking very good" in the state they appear to have lost by more than 20,000 votes);

• Team Trump files yet another embarrassingly lame lawsuit in Arizona, falsely charging that 180 voters (out of 155,860) who cast Election Day ballots in Maricopa County (Phoenix) improperly had their ballots rejected as overvotes;

• Democrat Cal Cunningham concedes his U.S. Senate race in North Carolina to the very unpopular incumbent Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, in a race that Democrats should have won (and that his progressive primary opponent Erica Smith --- featured as a guest on our show earlier this year --- arguably might have);

• Short of an unlikely shocker in the still-uncalled Alaska U.S. Senate race, the last chance for Democrats to take back majority control of the U.S. Senate will now be in Georgia's two U.S. Senate runoff elections on January 5th. They will have to win both of them. And now, both of the state's Republican U.S. Senators, Kelly Loeffler (who is running against Rev. Raphael Warnock) and David Perdue (who is running against Jon Ossoff) are sucking up to their demented sore loser President by turning on GA's Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, hilariously "citing no evidence" in calling for his resignation.

  Longtime listeners of The BradCast will recognize Raffensperger as the corrupt dope who purchased the state's new, wildly-expensive, easily-manipulated, 100% unverifiable computer touchscreen Rube Goldberg voting systems made by Dominion Voting and forced on every county in the state for first time use this year. That, instead of a cheaper, verifiable, hand-marked paper ballot system urged by cybersecurity and voting systems experts alike.

  Republicans have been falsely accusing Dominion in recent days of being controlled by Democrats and responsible for "stealing" the election from Trump in Michigan and Georgia. While there is no evidence to support their claim, I have invited those Republicans worried about Dominion to join me in my call for getting the company out of Georgia's critical U.S. Senate runoffs altogether by turning to all hand-marked paper ballots to be publicly hand-counted in both races. The statewide election will feature just two races, with only two candidates in each, so hand-counting them on Election Night would be very simple and completely transparent.

  While my invitation to Republicans has become quite popular on Twitter, so far they have failed to join the effort to prevent the "Software from hell!" that folks like Eric Trump are pretending to be the cause for his father's humiliating re-election loss. Sad!

  While Raffensperger says he will not resign, a comment from former Republican Sec. of State turned illegitimate Governor Brian Kemp, along with an article from the far-right Federalist, suggests that state Republicans may try and move to ban mail-in voting altogether for the runoffs, despite the spiking deadly pandemic and the requisite reliance on unverifiable Dominion voting systems at the polling place, in hopes of returning to their years-long glory days of GOP voter suppression in the Peach State;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report filled with (almost all) actually good news for a change, in the wake of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' apparent election victory last week...

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On today's BradCast: SLAP-SLAP! Wake up, people! Joe Biden is the next President of the United States! [Audio link to today's show follows below.]

But first, in not wholly unrelated news: Ya know that widespread systemic election fraud that Donald Trump has been lying about by falsely accusing Democrats of stealing the election from him by "casting votes after Election Day"? They aren't. But, as it turns out, we now have hard evidence that the Trump Campaign and Republican Party actually are doing exactly that! Or, at least trying to do so in Pennsylvania. We've got both the audio and email evidence to prove it today, via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Beyond that: Hey, Media! Hey, Democrats! Wake up! Yes, Joe Biden should have already been declared the winner of Tuesday election!!! By the standards the corporate media usually apply to such things, the state of Pennsylvania should already have been called by the media, as of Friday morning, for Biden (if not sooner), based on the unofficial vote counts there, where the former Veep has now surpassed Trump and continues to increase his totals over the soon-to-be-former President at this point. Biden continues to do so today at a similar rate to that which we've seen in the Keystone State since the day after Election Day.

With Pennsylvania's 20 electors, that means --- very conservatively speaking, even without the other currently uncalled states where Biden is also leading, including Nevada, Arizona and Georgia (where Biden also overtook Trump in the vote count on Friday morning) --- the former Vice President now has 273 electoral college votes under his belt. Only 270 are needed to win the Presidency.

In any other Presidential election in any other year, all of the media would already have banner graphics up describing Joe Biden as the "PRESIDENT-ELECT" and characterizing him as the 46th President of the United States! We know why Fox "News" is not doing so (thanks to CNN's Brian Stelter), and while there may be (weak, pathetic) reasons for the media to pull their punches (because they are cowards who kowtow to fear of Republicans), what is the Democratic Party's excuse at the point?!

Hell, Donald Trump and the Minority Leader of the U.S. House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, have already declared that Trump "won", even though he absolutely hasn't! Meanwhile, all available evidence shows beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Biden actually has won. Dems should be dancing in the streets at this point, but they aren't. Lord knows, had the tables been turned, they would have conceded as of Friday morning.

(Note: As an election integrity advocate, I have historically objected to the media or any candidate declaring victory --- or even conceding a loss --- before all votes are counted and, where possible, votes counts are verified as accurate. But, the cowardly double-standard being displayed by the media in this case and the political malpractice being exercised by Dems right now is a separate matter.)

So, what's actually going on here and why? Well, for answers on that we turn first to a few words of wisdom from Josh Marshall at TPM and, for many more such words, to our guest today, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo, who --- at least since the day Trump descended that escalator at Trump Tower to call Mexicans rapists and announce his candidacy for President --- we have been checking in with at landmark moments during his Presidency. Today, as Trump should be declared a loser by everyone, is certainly such a moment.

Is it still PTSD from 2016 that is keeping Democrats in their stupor today? Is it because Trump has some completely unknown, but super-genius scheme to overturn the Electoral College somehow? Or is it because, no matter the results of the Presidential race, Dems appear to have under-performed expectations when it comes to both U.S. Senate and House races this year?

Beyond all of that, we also discuss with Digby what all Democrats should be spending their time working on and discussing right now, including how Dems and Joe Biden will have to figure out how to govern even if they are unable to win a still-possible longshot bid to pick up enough Senate seats to win back a majority there. And how best to begin processing whatever lessons, so far, can be gleaned from what happened on Tuesday and from the last four years of the Trump Era.

Lots to talk about today! But, hey people! You WON! Start acting like it! Cause you know Republicans certainly would be in the exact same scenario and, in fact, they LOST, but are still acting like they won anyway! Snap out of it, people!!!

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The future of U.S. climate policy following the 2020 Presidential election; Heads up, Florida --- Hurricane Eta may be headed your way; PLUS: As Trump officially exits the Paris Climate Agreement, U.S. states say they are still in... 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): Local elections are changing America’s energy mix, one city at a time; GOP Climate Denier Prevails In Critical Texas Energy Regulator Race; Dakota Access Pipeline Fate Uncertain After Court Hearing; Oregon Allows a Controversial Fracked Gas Power Plant to Begin Construction; Nevada Voters Approve Renewable Energy Mandate; India's capital suffers most toxic air in a year... PLUS: Surge In COVID-19 Cases Could Slash Emissions... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Powerful record-breaking Hurricane Eta slams into Central America, and may head to U.S.; Cable news using rightwing framing to report on climate policy, new study finds; Trump Administration strips endangered species protection from wolves; PLUS: The world waits and watches to see if America will choose climate action --- or not... 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): This election isn't about the next four years. It's about the next four millennia; Exxon's climate fix is algae. Experts say it won't work; The 'Petro-Masculinity' of This Weekend's Trump Highway Rallies; Climate Change Sets a Drought Trap for U.S. Corn; Which countries are responsible for all that ocean plastic?; Double Whammy of Warming, Overfishing Could Spell Disaster for Antarctic Krill... PLUS: Shell’s Twitter fail: We want YOU to solve climate change!... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, on the final day before the deadline for casting a ballot in this year's elections (previously known as Election Day), we open the phones to listeners with their questions and concerns about this remarkable election, in which the President of the United and his party are actively filing lawsuit after lawsuit to try and have legally cast ballots thrown out. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

The Republican Party and Trump Campaign are hoping those cases make it all the way to Donald Trump's packed and stolen U.S. Supreme Court, where four Justices have already indicated they are willing to buy into a radical extremist legal theory that only state legislatures may create any rule or law when it comes to voting.

Thus, Republicans have filed in federal court in Texas to toss some 127,000 ballots already legally cast via drive-thru sites in Harris County (Houston), despite previous approval for this innovate voting plan (during a pandemic!) from the Republican Sec. of State and from several challenges heard by the state's all-Republican state Supreme Court. Nonetheless, the federal lawsuit filed by GOP activists late last week, seeking to toss those ballots, was dismissed today by a very rightwing U.S. District Court judge. The Republicans who filed the case, however, have announced they are appealing to the very rightwing 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

This comes as top Trump Campaign spokesperson Jason Miller over the weekend, lied on ABC's This Week on Sunday about how electoral votes worked, and declared that Democrats plan to "steal" the election after Election Day. We explain his brazen lie and how even a number of his fellow Republicans are calling him out for it.

Also today, power outages following Hurricanes Zeta and Laura are still imperiling voting in a number of vote centers across the southern U.S., including in Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Sadly other than in Alabama, the vast majority of voters in those states (and in LA and GA, all of them, shamefully) are forced to use 100% unverifiable touchscreen computer voting systems when voting at the polling place, which require power in order for voters to vote at all. Just another reason why using computers instead of hand-marked paper ballots at the polls is idiotic.

After that, we open the phones to callers with questions about problems voting, concerns about the electoral college, and explanations as to why some of them are either planning to not vote at all or have decided to vote third-party this year (which also seems insane, given the situation this country, and planet along with it, are now in.)

And we also share one comment from this weekend from longtime, non-partisan Election Integrity champion Jim Soper of CountedAsCast.org and the National Voting Rights Task Force that is worth taking note of: "If you are finding it difficult to vote, vote on behalf of the 225,000 who can no longer vote. Or vote on behalf of our murdered brothers and sisters. Or vote on behalf of the billions of people world-wide who would love to have your American privilege, but don't. Or vote on behalf of Mother Earth. She's dying. ... Vote in their place. Think of it as their vote. A proxy vote, not your vote. Ask, how would they vote? Then honor them. Please vote, because they can't."

Well said, Jim. Thank you...Please vote. And don't fall for Trump's gaslighting about results at the end of Election Night. Thank you.

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On today's BradCast: Election 2020 is coming down to the wire, with the deadline for voting just days away and no small amount of chaos unleashed on the entire process by federal courts over the past several days. While the U.S. Supreme Court has invoked their so-called "Purcell Principle" in recent years, to prevent last-minute changes to even bad, suppressive election laws in order to avoid chaos, both SCOTUS and lower federal courts have been busy this week invoking invoking election chaos in several key battleground states. [Audio link to full show posted at bottom of summary.]

On Thursday night, two Republican federal appellate court judges reversed a rule enacted with a Minnesota state court's approval in July, in a radical ruling that follows on the heels of another decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in a Pennsylvania case that has resulted in elections officials in both states now being forced to segregate late arriving mail-in ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day, but that don't arrive until the days following it. We explain the reason for the extraordinary disruption and the potential invalidation of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lawfully cast ballots in both states --- and maybe others --- based on a radical interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Elections Clause that has never been blessed by a majority on the Supreme Court, but which could be very soon, depending on the vote of Donald Trump's newest appointment to the GOP's stolen Court, Amy Coney Barrett.

We try to make sense of the chaos that has now been unleashed by...

• that late Thursday night ruling by two Republican judges on the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals --- just five days before Election Day --- finding it unconstitutional for MN to count late arriving ballots lawfully cast and postmarked on time, despite a months-old state court-blessed settlement between MN's Sec. of State, voting advocates and even agreed to by the Trump Campaign;
• the SCOTUS decision to wait until after Election Day to decide if similar ballots in PA will be discarded as well;
• and a seemingly counter-intuitive SCOTUS decision to allow late-arriving ballots in North Carolina to be counted following a state court blessed settlement nearly identical to the one just struck down on Thursday night by the appeals court judges for MN.

As noted, chaos now reigns in several of the most important battleground states in the most critical election in U.S. history.

Meanwhile, in the new battleground state of Texas, where early voting numbers have now surpassed the total turnout for all of the 2016 election, officials in Tarrant County (Fort Worth) are dealing with chaos caused by what they describe as a printing error by their absentee ballot contractor. Roughly one-third of mail-in ballots cast in the County are being seen as unreadable by their computer optical-scan tabulation system. Rather than count those hand-marked paper ballots publicly by hand, state law calls for the potentially tens of thousands of unscannable ballots to be "remade" by elections officials by hand onto new, scannable ballot pages.

All of this should serve as a reminder of the necessity of citizen-based public oversight of our elections, which are not owned by unelected judges or elections officials or private vendors or contractors, but by we the people. If you've already voted and are now looking for a way to help between now and Election Day (and, as importantly, beyond), there are many opportunities! Check out some of them at Scrutineers.org, ProtectOurVotes.com, SmartElections.us and ValidateTheVoteUSA.org.

Our guest today is, herself, a longtime champion of public oversight of elections. MARYBETH KUZNIK is the founder of the election integrity group, VotePA.us and, as of September, also the Election Director in Armstrong County, PA, a somewhat rural, Republican-leaning county just north of Pittsburgh. She is kind enough to offer us some time amid the mayhem of her new job today, where she concedes "it's pretty crazy here."

Among the many topics we discuss...

• the new order to segregate late-arriving absentee ballots in PA so they can, potentially, be nullified by the U.S. Supreme Court after the election;
• the fact that the state legislature does not allow pre-processing, much less tabulation, of mail-in ballots until Election Day;
• How many days it is likely to take her county and the state as a whole to tabulate them ("We are in unchartered water here...But, we're not going to know Election Night, that's for sure." She is still looking for volunteers to help! Though they must be from Armstrong!);
• the type of voting systems in use in Armstrong (Optically-scanned hand-marked paper ballots. "I wouldn't be working here --- I would not be administering unverifiable touchscreen ballot-marking devices. You know that, Brad!");
• her concerns about voting in Philadelphia this year amid both civil unrest and the strongly Dem-leaning County's foolish decision to use new, unverifiable, computer touchscreen Ballot Marking Devices which failed spectacularly during their first use last year. ("Philly worries me," she says, adding that she has "zero confidence" in the systems which she describes as "the most expensive and the most wasteful voting system ever developed. Every voter does not need a $9,000 touchscreen to cast a ballot.";
• and some of the lessons she's learned in her transition from longtime Election Integrity advocate to Election Director...

Don't forget to exhale between now and Tuesday!...

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As I discuss near the top of today's BradCast, we are now in what amounts to a Cold Civil War on Democracy in this nation. The greatest direct threat we have ever faced to our Constitutional Republic since the Civil War is now playing out in our ongoing election. [Audio link to show is posted below this summary.]

As it turns out, that threat to what Joe Biden describes as "the soul of our nation", does not come from a foreign power, but from the President of the United States himself and his party of henchmen and supporters who are now attacking the very core of our Republic: the right to vote and to have that vote counted as cast. That right is now under direct assault in a way not seen since the Jim Crow era. And while the GOP has been using the guise of preventing "voter fraud" to wage similar battles in recent years, they aren't even trying to hide their direct assault on democracy anymore. They are simply using every (so far, peaceful) means possible --- legal and extra-legal --- to try and prevent legal voters from voting and lawfully cast ballots from being counted.

Unfortunately, they have packed enough stooges onto their stolen U.S. Supreme Court at this point, that they may pull it off...unless the pro-democracy forces simply overwhelm them between now and the close of polls next Tuesday night. Get busy, people. Only the fate of the Republic and...yes, human civilization, as Desi Doyen highlights yet again in our Green News Report today, are at stake.

Among the stories reported on today's show, as our trench warfare coverage continues...

• The very Trumpy Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, goes to vote and finds someone has changed his address in the state's voter registration database. As Governor, he is able to order the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to take swift action to find the alleged culprit within hours. Of course, no such swift action was taken when Ann Coulter committed voter fraud in Florida years ago, nor when Donald Trump himself did the exact same thing this year;

• Good news for democracy in Minnesota! A federal judge has ordered a mercenary contractor hiring armed para-militia to stalk polling places to stand down after violating federal voter intimidation laws. The company, Atlas Aegis, must also reveal who has been funding their program. The case is a victory for plaintiffs including the Minnesota chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and League of Women Voters, as well as the group Free Speech for People (FSFP) whose lawyers brought the case. We spoke with FSFP attorney Ron Fein last week on the show, the day after the voter intimidation suit was filed in federal court;

• Good news for voters in Texas! A Trump-appointed federal judge has found Gov. Greg Abbott's exemption for voters and pollworkers to his statewide mask mandate to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Masks must be worn inside of all polling places across the Lone Star state of today's ruling. The victory comes not a moment too soon, after several polling officials have already become sickened, poll sites were closed due to sick workers, and maskless poll watchers were said to have been using their presence to intimidate minority voters. That, in a state where the Republicans who have long controlled it went all the way to the Supreme Court to deny almost all voters under the age of 65 the right to request an absentee ballot due to fear of the spiking coronavirus pandemic. It's also another victory --- and a reversal of fortunes --- for the good folks at FSFP, including Senior Counsel Courtney Hostetler, who spoke with us on the show about their case in September, when its outlook then appeared grim;

• More good news for democracy in Texas! A $31 million effort to improve access to the polls in the nation's third-largest voting jurisdiction, Harris County, which includes Houston, appears to have paid off big time. NBC News reports that more voters have now cast ballots there during early voting than were cast in the entire 2016 election. The increased turnout is thanks to expanded and innovative voting options, such as Early Voting sites that stay open later, some that stay open for 24 hours, and drive-thru polling places. The County's stunning turnaround in a state with notoriously low voter turnout comes after Dems won every countywide office in 2018, increased the elections budget from $4 million under GOP control to $31 million now, and with the hiring of innovative, 33-year old County Clerk Chris Hollins in late summer. Naturally, state Republicans have been challenging virtually every innovation to make it easier for voters to vote in the state's largest county. And while Gov. Greg Abbott has succeeded in limiting ballot drop-off locations to just one per county (from a dozen previously planned for sprawling Harris County, which is larger than Rhode Island), GOP attempts to block drive-thru voting have been denied by the state's all-Republican Supreme Court. Another new case was filed by Republicans this week, however, seeking to actually invalidate the votes of more than 100,000 voters who lawfully cast drive-thru votes during Early Voting.

• On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court's issued an appalling ruling that blocks tens of thousands of lawfully cast mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day from being counted in Wisconsin if they arrive after Election Day due to, for example, slowdowns in U.S. Postal Service delivery by Trump's new Postmaster General. Criticism from legal experts and voting rights advocates of the embarrassingly error-riddled concurring opinion filed by GOP operative turned GOP activist Justice Brett Kavanaugh was swift. We discussed that factually deficient and laughable concurrence with Slate legal journalist Mark Joseph Stern in detail on yesterday's show. Among the egregious errors in the opinion was Kavanaugh's citing of Vermont's election laws. The Sec. of State of Vermont has now written a letter to the Court in response, demanding that the opinion be corrected to include actual facts about the state's voting laws, instead of the phony claims Kavanaugh made as he works toward using his lifetime appointment on the Court to steal this year's election on behalf of the man who appointed him to it;

• Finally, as mentioned, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as a record fifth hurricane in a single season slams storm-weary Louisiana today; Trump opens the nation's last protected tropical rain forest to commercial logging; China and Japan vault ahead of the U.S. in their pledges to reach net-zero carbon emissions; and the case is made for Joe Biden to expand the Supreme Court if we are to have any chance of combating our swiftly worsening climate crisis.

• P.S. The charming animated video of the Lincoln Project "Fairy Tale" we played at the top of today's show is here.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hurricane Zeta slams into Louisiana, its fifth storm in a single season; Logging begins in pristine Tongass National Forest; China vaults ahead of U.S. on international climate pledge; PLUS: The case for court reform to protect climate legislation... 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 most important climate ballot initiatives to watch on Election Day; Trump Administration hardens its attack on climate science; No matter who wins, US exits Paris Accord the day after the election; Wyoming is using dark money to keep coal plants open in othe states; Trump Interior Dept. 'propaganda' video and tweets may violate ethics laws; St. Augustine, FL struggles to save historic landmarks from increased flooding; EPA OKs soybean, dotton farmers’ use of dicamba weedkiller... PLUS: Trump Administration buries dozens of clean energy studies... and much, MUCH more! ...

Not long after we got off air from yesterday's BradCast, Senate Republicans kept their promise of breaking their previous promise that they would never ever ever --- because it would just be plain wrong and an insult to the voters! --- seat a new Supreme Court Justice during a Presidential election year. Their original promise held for exactly one Presidential election in a row, when it was Obama's nominee to the high court that they blocked for more than a year in 2016. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

Donald Trump's third appointment to the high court, Amy Coney Barrett, now has the dubious distinction of being the first Justice in U.S. history to have been confirmed without a single vote from the minority party in the U.S. Senate. (Even rightwingers like Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy were both unanimously confirmed.) She will also be notorious for having been seated closer to an Election Day (just one week before it) than any other Justice in history, leading Democrats to correctly describe the entire affair as an "illegitimate" "power grab".

But, even before Barrett was officially sworn in as the newest Justice on the GOP's already-stolen Court on Tuesday morning, the five Republican Justices on Monday night --- (with five of six of them now seated by GOP U.S. Senate majorities elected by a vast minority of American voters) --- had already ordered the state of Wisconsin to reject what is likely to be well over 100,000 timely cast and postmarked mail-in ballots simply because they are delivered by the USPS after polls close on Election Day in the Badger State. The anti-democratic order overturns a lower court judge who allowed the counting of ballots postmarked by Election Day, even if they arrive up to six days afterward --- just as Republicans agreed to during the state's primaries earlier this year. But now that they're competing with Democrats, apparently vote suppression is necessary. More on that particular outrage hopefully tomorrow, because the ruling was even worse than it sounds.

But, for today, the outrageous hypocrisy, perfidy and appalling dishonesty of the Senate Republicans' latest court-packing stunt with the illegitimate now-Justice Barrett --- after well over 60 million American have already voted in an election that may very well cost the Republican Party control of both the Senate and White House --- needs to be highlighted today. For that, we're joined by AARON BELKIN, Director of Take Back the Court, the nation's oldest organization formed specifically to call for expansion and reform of both SCOTUS and lower federal courts following the GOP's original theft of the high court in 2016.

While the need to save democracy itself by unrigging the Republicans' packed federal courts is quite clear, the question remains as to whether Senate Democrats understand that, and whether they will have the courage to do so --- presuming they are able to win back control of the chamber amid years of new voter suppression laws enacted by states and activist GOP jurists.

Belkin details the existential stakes and necessity of doing so, and offers his thoughts on whether Democrats will muster the strength to end the Senate filibuster as required to accomplish it next year.

"It's not just about the theft of the court from Barack Obama, but it's also that we are facing planetary emergencies like climate change, with effectively no time left on the clock," Belkin argues. "And we're also facing what you could call 'democracy emergencies,' where the Court itself has worked hard to keep black and brown voters from the polls. This Court, even the Court as it was configured in 2017, was highly unlikely to allow the next President to deal with those emergencies."

"To have robust judicial reform, you need to expand lower federal courts commensurate with the number of seats that Mitch McConnell prevented President Obama from filling during the last two years of his presidency," he tells me. "Then you need to expand the Supreme Court just by enough Justices to get the job done, to deliver a Court that will allow the next administration to address the emergencies we face." His group also calls for term limits "to try to minimize some of these problems moving forward" and "a code of ethical conduct" for Justices who, unlike lower federal court judges, have no such requirements for recusing from cases in which they have conflicts of interest, or even "situations where, for example, Justice Thomas' wife is lobbying President Trump and the White House the same week that President Trump is a party to a lawsuit in front of Justice Thomas."

Belkin also offers his reaction to Joe Biden's recent vow to create a bi-partisan panel of legal scholars to make recommendations for such reforms after six months of study, and what Americans must do to help make sure any of this happens, in the event that Democrats win both the Senate and White House. He also responds with a very compelling argument to those who charge that these reforms would simply be escalated the next time Republicans take control of both houses of Congress and the White House.

Finally, speaking of just some of the stakes, we're joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report on yet another record hurricane now barreling toward the Gulf Coast, yet more hurricane-winds and record wildfires in Colorado and California, and then Trump's lies and Biden's truth about action on our climate crisis at last week's final Presidential Debate of 2020...

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As new coronavirus infections spike to an all-time daily record in the U.S. on Thursday (and again today), with cases now on the rise in nearly 75% of the nation and hospitalizations increasing again in 38 states, our infected President, Donald Trump, and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, faced off in Nashville, TN for the (mercifully) final debate of the 2020 season.

We've got full special coverage on today's BradCast with a very smart panel, including RICHARD "R.J." ESKOW of The Zero Hour; HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullaballoo; and, of course, our very own Desi Doyen.

It's a rather lively hour today as we try to make sense of our collective Nightmare Before Halloween, which continued to play out on Thursday night at Belmont University, even while deftly moderated (with a helpful mute button) by NBC's Kristen Welker. As CNN's great fact-checker Daniel Dale explained on Twitter last night: "Biden was again imperfect from a fact check perspective. He made at least a few false, misleading, or lacking-in-context claims. Trump was, as usual, a serial liar," adding: "From a lying perspective, Trump is even worse tonight than in the first debate."

For our part, along with a bit of fact-checking, among the many issues we cover on today's program...

• Eskow offers insight --- as a former health insurance industry executive and Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign writer --- on the facts about both Biden and Trump's plans for healthcare coverage amid the worsening pandemic and a threat by the GOP's stolen U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act just days after the election. ("He keeps saying that 'my plan is that I'm going to have a plan.'");
• Parton, no stranger to deep dives into wingnut rabbit holes, helpfully decodes Trump's ginned-up Fox "News"-fueled "scandals" regarding Biden's family. ("This is about harassing Biden once he's elected. This isn't really about the election. Trump doesn't know that.")
• And Desi helps us make sense of Biden's newsworthy dose of reality offered near the end of the debate that, yes, we will have to transition away from oil and other fossil fuels, toward renewable, job-creating, emissions-free alternatives in the very near future...if we hope to survive on this planet.

You may also wish to buckle up for a bit of a scary ending today, as all three offer their thoughts to voters who may be under the impression that Biden has this wrapped up, and as Desi sagely warns: "The margin of victory [for Biden] must be greater than the margin of theft, suppression, and litigation." And that's not even the scary part!

Anyway, that's a tiny sample of today's offerings, during which you'll laugh, cry, and maybe even go to bed with nightmares. You're welcome! Please enjoy today's special coverage on The BradCast!...

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Last week, Trump's new "sham" nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to not know if voter intimidation was even a violation of federal law. This week, as we report on today's BradCast, Trump and his henchmen find themselves facing a federal lawsuit over exactly that. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the many stories covered on today's show...

• First up, Joe Biden has finally stated his position on expanding the U.S. Supreme Court. That position? A bi-partisan commission to study reforms for the federal court system, to offer recommendations after six months...if Biden wins the White House and Dems take the Senate. We discuss what is probably a pretty smart political position for the former VP to take right now, considering that corporate media can't stop using the words "court packing" to describe long-overdue reforms after years of actual court packing by the GOP.

• Speaking of which, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, led by South Carolina's increasingly vulnerable Sen. Lindsey Graham, broke their own rules today to ram through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett without a single Democrat present, after Dems refused to allow a quorum for today's vote. If she is confirmed by the full Senate on Monday, as Republicans currently plan, it will be one of the shortest confirmation processes and the closest to a Presidential Election Day for the seating of a Supreme Court Justice in the nation's history. That, after just 4 years ago Republicans blocked a Democratic SCOTUS nominee entirely for a full year, while vowing that a new Justice should never be seated during a Presidential election year. Republicans also changed the rules in the middle of that game as well, when they killed the filibuster for SCOTUS nominees after failing to get enough votes to pack Neil Gorsuch, Trump's first nominee, onto the Court. Over the past five years, Republicans have succeeded at completely delegitimizing the U.S. Supreme Court.

• The GOP's already-stolen Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with Alabama's dishonest, lying, somewhat deranged, unlawfully Twitter-blocking, Republican Sec. of State John Merrill to nix curbside voting in counties that wished to use it to help keep disabled voters safe during the COVID crisis, as recommended by the CDC and approved the U.S. Dept. of Justice as a way to prevent violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). All three remaining Democratic appointees on the Court dissented, siding with the U.S. District Court and federal appeals court which, after a three day trial, found the now-scrapped accommodation to be a "modest" and "reasonable" way to avoid a potentially fatal illness for some voters.

• In recent days, Democratic voters in Florida and several other battleground states have been receiving threatening warnings via email, instructing them to "Vote for Trump or else!" The body of the emails, which appear to come from a Trump-supporting extremist group, cite the recipient's name and addresses and promise to "come after you" if they do not change their party affiliation to Republican and vote as instructed. Incredibly, and with zero supporting evidence, Trump's "partisan hack" Director of National Intelligence John Ratclifffe hastily convened an absurd press conference on Wednesday night to declare that Iran was actually behind the threatening emails to Democrats. He claimed they were designed to "damage President Trump". He also muttered something about Russia. But, again, no actual specifics and no actual supporting evidence for his claim that both countries accessed voter registrations systems to obtain the data (most of which is publicly available without actually hacking into election-related systems). Suffice to say, I believe absolutely nothing from this Administration at this point, about any of it, and, short of independently verifiable information, neither should you.

• Then, we are joined by the Legal Director at Free Speech for People, RON FEIN, to explain the federal lawsuit his non-partisan good government organization filed on Wednesday on behalf of the Latino civic engagement group Mi Familia Vota Education Fund and several voters, charging that Donald Trump, Attorney General Bill Barr and Acting Sec. of Homeland Security Chad Wolf are violating federal laws against voter intimidation.

  The complaint [PDF] and accompanying request for a preliminary injunction, as Fein details, alleges defendants have exhibited a pattern of intimidation against voters that violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, and the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

  As FSFP explains in their announcement of the suit, the complaint is "based on the defendants’ violent suppression of public protests opposing police brutality, the encouragement of white supremacist 'vigilantes,' threats to send 'sheriffs' and other law enforcement to the polls, the undermining of mail-in voting, and the rejection of the peaceful transfer of power, which, the complaint alleges, constitute illegal voter intimidation."

  Fein offers more details on what he describes as a "threatening pattern of conduct stretching over the past few months," that has resulted in the suit. "People understand what it means when the President talks about sending law enforcement...When he tells the Proud Boys to 'stand by,' people understand what that means...This is not one piece of conduct, one isolated statement. This is a months-long pattern that the President and his top officials have been involved in, that has the purpose and effect --- hopefully not successfully --- but it certainly has that effect, of intimidating people from voting either in person or by mail."

  Explaining the relief sought by the complaint, he tells me: "First of all, we want relief prohibiting the defendants from deploying armed federal agents at or near polling places; from ordering federal agents to block the delivery of ballots or interfere in the counting of ballots; from taking any actions that could limit with the speed or reliability of mail delivery. And specifically to Trump, prohibiting him from encouraging his supporters to bring weapons to polling places, block access to polling places, to question voters, or from using official government public communications channels --- which now includes his Twitter account --- to suggest that lawful votes will be scrutinized or challenged."

  He also discusses a somewhat related federal case also filed this week by FSFP on behalf of the Minnesota chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and League of Women Voters against a private mercenary contractor who has posted job listings, reported recently by the Washington Post, seeking to hire and deploy armed former special ops troops to patrol polling sites in the state.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news on yet another record hurricane in an already-record season; the death of half of Australia's Great Barrier Reef and the return of the Hummer, this time as an all-electric "supertruck"...

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