On today's BradCast, things are not looking good for Republicans and Donald Trump's second nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

But, first up, before we get to our guest today, a quick update on the damage wrought by Hurricane Florence on the East Coast and the huge expected costs for rebuilding that is being exacerbated by Trump's trade wars, including his announcement on Monday that the Administration is imposing a 10% tax (which may be raised to 25% next year) on another $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. That, home construction experts in the Carolinas charge, will raise the costs of rebuilding and repairs following the damage from the record rainfall and flooding of Florence, as it continues to wreak havoc and death on the East Coast.

Then, late last night, a federal court in Georgia issued a ruling, following a full hearing last week, on the Motion for Preliminary Injunction filed by the non-partisan Coalition for Good Governance, seeking to force the state to switch from the unsecurable, 16-year old, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems used in all precincts across the state, to the hand-marked paper ballot systems already used by every county for absentee voters. While U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg made clear [PDF] she was very sympathetic to the concerns of the plaintiffs --- and that they have the legal standing to sue --- she appears to have bought into the defendants argument that a switch to paper ballots this late before the November midterms would result in chaos at polling places.

Next, the Republican panic to save the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh before the November midterms continues to evolve by the hour, on the heels of the revelation of the allegation by Palo Alto University psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh and a friend by the name of Mark Judge sexually assaulted her during a party more than thirty years ago when they were all high school students. Kavanaugh denies the allegation completely, says neither the attempted rape nor anything like it ever happened, and that he was never at the party in question (even though Ford hasn't identified the specific party).

We're joined by Salon and Hullaballoo's HEATHER DIGBY PARTON today to try and make sense of the charges, the GOP's ham-handed response to it, Kavanaugh's ugly history as a Republican operative, and the newly announced hearing scheduled by Senate Republicans in the Judiciary Committee for next Monday. The Committee's chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) insists that only Kavanaugh and Ford will be allowed to testify, even before there has been an FBI investigation of the charges and, apparently, before Grassley even bothered to hear back from Ford as to whether she's willing or able to show up.

"The idea that they're saying, 'Oh, we have to hurry up, there's a deadline on this,' it's an arbitrary one," says Parton. "And they're trying to say now that 'this accuser, this alleged victim, if she doesn't show up at a moment's notice, sorry, there's nothing we can do about it, what choice do we have but to put an accused sexual assaulter on the Supreme Court?' It's absurd on its face."

With Kavanaugh's complete denials, the matter is no longer really even about a sexual assault 36 years ago. It's about a nominee for a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land seemingly lying about it today. Can this nomination even survive at this point...much less make it to Monday?! We discuss.

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with more news on the ongoing fallout from the deadly Florence, the even larger and deadlier Typhoon Mangkhut currently ravaging The Philippines and China, and an update on the chain of natural gas pipeline explosions in dozens of homes near Boston late last week...

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On today's BradCast, I (Angie Coiro) am sitting in for Brad and Desi!

My guest is CHRIS HEDGES --- yes, that Chris Hedges --- journalist, minister, prison instructor, war correspondent. We talk about his new book, America, the Farewell Tour. It's a conversation recorded for my own show, In Deep with Angie Coiro; the excerpts here are kind of a sneak preview, as the whole thing hasn’t been edited for the In Deep stations yet.

A vote on the Kavanaugh nomination will at least momentarily take a back seat to a Senate hearing on the sexual assault accusation against him. In my commentary on why I believe her and not him, I mention Lisa Graves, a long-time campaigner for truth and integrity in public processes. The two on-point columns of hers you must read are "Brett Kavanaugh Can’t Be Trusted. We Know Because We Worked as Counsel to Senators When He Was in the Bush White House" for Time magazine, and "I Wrote Some of the Stolen Memos That Brett Kavanaugh Lied to the Senate About" for Slate, the latter of which she discussed with Brad on a recent BradCast.

In short: we have a man with an established track record of lying, documented by a reliable source; and a woman who fought to keep her anonymity, who knew her suffering would be for naught, whose life now will be damaged irreparably. I know who I believe.

Brad and Des are back tomorrow. Thanks for listening!

Download MP3 or listen online below...

On today's BradCast, as my producer Desi Doyen likes to say, we once again attempt "to squeeze a 10 pound show into a 1 pound bag." [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up, the latest on Hurricane Florence, now downgraded to a tropical storm but wreaking extraordinary havoc, storm surge, flooding, hundreds of rescues and now at least five deaths. The monster storm has largely stalled over the Carolinas to dump, according to one meteorologist, 10 trillion gallons of rainfall, or enough to fill more than 15 million Olympic-size swimming pools.

Also today, Donald Trump's former campaign chair Paul Manafort finally pleaded guilty in a deal to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller that requires him to cooperate on the Trump/Russia investigation and, as Marcy Wheeler describes, is "pardon proof".

Next, an update on the still-unexplained natural gas explosions that set dozens of homes ablaze north of Boston, a story which broke at the very end of yesterday's BradCast.

Then, a brief followup on the reported widespread problems with voter registrations in New York during their state and local primaries on Thursday, the final primaries of the season before the crucial 2018 midterm elections in November. Those reported failures for some voters at polling places helped underscored at least one of the important outcomes from Thursday's contests.

We're joined by The Intercept and New Republic contributor DAVID DAYEN to discuss reported results out of New York, where progressive actress and activist Cynthia Nixon challenged two-term Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and progressive Fordham University law professor Zephyr Teachout vied for the Democratic nod to become the state's next Attorney General. Alas, those underdog progressive upstarts on the statewide ballot were unsuccessful, though, as Dayen reports, Teachout was undermined by a rightwing Democratic Congressman who, he tells me was likely "placed in there to depress Teachout's upstate numbers on behalf of Wall Street special interests."

Still, he says, both challenges managed to force Cuomo and his party to the left on a number of important matters already. That move to the left was more of a lurch, however, at the state Senate level, where 6 of 8 members of the so-called Independent Democratic Conference (or IDC, a group of corporate Democrats who had caucused with Republicans in the Senate, giving the GOP control of the otherwise Democratic-majority body) were turfed out by progressive challengers. That, Dayen argues, is likely to result in a huge difference in the legislation enacted by a state legislative body that has been blocked for years, with Cuomo's help, from adopting a number of long-overdue progressive reforms on everything from healthcare to fiscal matters to New York's antiquated election laws.

"There was this host of progressive legislation that was clogged in the state of New York because of Republican control of the state senate, which was facilitated by Democrats. It's confounding that this went on for so long!," he observes."Andrew Cuomo is a throwback to the New Democrats, the Clinton era. And he believes that if he was forced to sign progressive legislation, it would hurt his ultimate ambition, which is the presidency. He's still stuck in a 1990s mindset that you can't go any further left than, I guess, 'midnight basketball' laws in order to win the Presidency."

And, as primary season voting is finally now wrapped up, we discuss the various ways in which voters and broadly diverse candidacies have helped to redefine the Democratic Party over the past year. "The Democratic Party is one of the more diverse parties at this point in history that we've seen, certainly ever in America, maybe elsewhere. Representation absolutely matters. The people who are the workhorses of the Democratic Party --- women, people of color --- want to see themselves represented in the leadership that is going to carry the party forward."

Also, on this week's 10th anniversary of the 2008 global financial meltdown, Dayen, author of the widely acclaimed Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud, explains how even a decade later no real accountability has ever been brought to the elite who caused the crisis and how even Barack Obama's own Treasury Secretary was allowed to undermine him in a way that is not dissimilar to the actions discussed in the recent anonymous New York Times op-ed regarding a "resistance" inside the Trump Administration.

Dayen also discusses several other way in which the ramifications of the Wall Street bank bailouts still reverberate throughout the American body politic, by "set[ting] the table for demagogues. And that's what happened in 2016."

Finally today, some details from concerned scientists on the nuclear plants currently threatened by the massive flooding of Florence, specifically, the Duke Energy-owned Brunswick plant in North Carolina which houses two reactors almost identical to the GE-designed reactors which melted down after power-outages following the 2011 tsunami-caused flooding in Japan...

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Perhaps our title for today's BradCast, which is a quote from North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper in advance of Hurricane Florence, should have its apostrophe removed. "Disasters at the Doorstep" may better describe the multiple disasters, breaking and otherwise, covered on today's show. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

It was the final primary election day of the year today, before the crucial November midterms, and we've got coverage of results out of Rhode Island, which voted on Wednesday, and problem reports out of New York, which voted on Thursday. But first, the latest on Hurricane Florence as she begins to make landfall on the U.S. southeastern seaboard and, while downgraded to a Category 2 as of air time, still poses an extraordinary and potentially catastrophic threat to millions of Americans from not just winds, but massive storm surge and rainfall (and a host of toxic threats to go with it.) That's the first, but hardly the only disaster covered on today's program.

Then, reported primary results from the final federal primary election of the year in Rhode Island on Wednesday, where a "computer glitch" via a third-party vendor who runs the state's DVM website imperiled thousands of voter registrations this week. Thankfully, in what may be one of the only disasters averted, as covered today, the problem was discovered in time for those voters to be properly added to the rolls before polls opened for Wednesday's elections. The largely "blue" state saw victories for both centrist and progressive Democrats alike. We report on a number of the noteworthy results.

The news may be less good for voters in New York, which is holding the final primary contests of the year for state and local offices --- their federal primaries were held in June. Problems are being reported today by voters in New York City who said they did not appear on the rolls at precincts today as expected or whose party registrations were inaccurate. Several closely watched contests by progressives are on the ballot, including actress Cynthia Nixon's Democratic primary challenge to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and progressive activist Zephyr Teachout attempt to win the Dem nod for state Attorney General.

We discuss what we know (and don't yet) about those widespread voter registration problems being reported today, which echo massive disenfranchisement problems during the 2016 Presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the Big Apple. That 2016 disaster was due to an unlawful purge of more than 100,000 voters by the NYC Board of Elections. However, despite persistent claims by many Sanders supporters to this day, no evidence exists to tie the illegal purge to either Clinton or the Democratic Party itself. The cause for what may --- or may not --- have happened today, remained even murkier as of airtime.

Next --- after disturbing breaking news out of Massachusetts where fires have exploded in at least 60 homes in three communities north of Boston, for still-unknown reasons, and out of Hawaii, where Tropical Storm Olivia has nearly topped an earthen reservoir, threatening thousands who live below its dam --- a brief, if angry rebuttal to Donald Trump's twisted and wholly fabricated claim today that some 3,000 Puerto Ricans did not die due to last year's Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

Yes, the President of the United States is now a Maria Denier, claiming that Democrats are somehow behind the officially confirmed numbers --- which are higher than 2005's Hurricane Katrina or the 9/11 attacks --- and simply made them up to "make [him] look as bad as possible". We share the actual facts behind the (conservatively low!) numbers and some of the broad condemnation in response to his false claim from both Democrats and Republicans alike today.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with more on the many threats posed by Florence, Trump's latest undermining of action meant to curb global warming, and a new dire warning from the U.N. Secretary General regarding the quickly growing threat of climate change...

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On today's BradCast: A multitude of terrifying threats from Hurricane Florence loom large across at least four states in the Southeast, as millions of Americans hunker down or evacuate on the final week of primary elections in the U.S. before the crucial 2018 midterm elections. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up, after a quick warning to ignore the President of the United State's assertion that the federal government is "totally prepared" for the damage that awaits the still-growing Hurricane Florence (while citing his Administration's response to last year's Hurricane Maria that killed nearly 3,000 citizens in Puerto Rico as "an incredible unsung success"), we head to New Hampshire for the penultimate federal primaries of the season. (Rhode Island voted today and New York holds state and local primaries on Thursday.)

On Tuesday, voters in the Granite State went to the polls with, happily, few problems reported so far, beyond the larger than anticipated turnout, particularly in a number of the state's many college towns. That may signal good news for Democrats, at least until the state GOP's new law making it much harder for college students to register to vote kicks in in 2019 (unless its blocked by courts before then). We fill you in on the noteworthy reported results today, including the single mom, Molly Kelly, who won the Democratic primary for Governor, the openly gay man, Chris Pappas, who defeated 10 other Democrats (including Bernie Sanders' son) to win the U.S. House nomination in one of the swingiest swing districts in the country, and 27-year old refugee from Afghanistan, Safiya Wazir, who unseated a four-term incumbent Democrat and appears poised to become a NH state Representative just 9 years after leaving her war-torn country for a better life in these United States.

Then, all eyes (pun intended) on the disturbing amount of cyclonic activity churning across the globe --- not just off the Eastern U.S. seaboard --- at the peak of hurricane season. The "monster" storm, Hurricane Florence grew in size today, as its movement continues to slow, and as it's trajectory appears to have taken a slight turn toward the southwest. The storm's brutal winds, surging waters and threat of days of unforgiving rainfall, now pose a grave threat to some 10 million residents of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and, as of Wednesday's latest predictions, Georgia.

But, while Florence may be the fiercest and most immediate threat to Americans, it's hardly the only storm worth keep an eye on, as nine --- count 'em --- nine storms across the globe are now either hurricanes, typhoons, tropical storms or depressions, or otherwise threatening to become one of the above at any moment. Among the most immediate non-Florence threats are Tropical Storm Olivia, slamming into Hawaii today (just two weeks or so following Hurricane Lane's record 50 inches of rainfall dumped on some parts of the island), Category 5 Typhoon Mangkhut, which just slammed Guam and now heads toward The Philippines and Hong Kong, and another storm currently brewing in the record warm Gulf of Mexico waters that could visit Texas and/or Louisiana by this weekend, even as Florence wreaks its own separate havoc on the East Coast. (Is Trump's FEMA "totally prepared" for all of that also?)

According to our guest today, 30-year veteran Weather Channel meteorologist, "Climate Guy" GUY WALTON this amount of cyclonic activity is not normal, and much of it is attributable to warming waters and highly unusual weather patterns in a climate-changed world.

"As you get more heat, you'll get more storms, and that's exactly what we're seeing," says Walton who points to sub-tropical storm Joyce, which was just named today, taking its place along with Hurricanes Helene and Isaac behind Florence in the Atlantic. "That will make four in the Atlantic basin alone. And if you look at the Gulf of Mexico, there could be a potential fifth, I guess named Kirk. If we have five simultaneous named systems in the Atlantic basin, that would be a record."

As to Florence, he warns: "Meteorologically, the greatest concern is the slowing of the storm and stalling right off the Carolina coast, right around Wilmington, and then very, very slowly moving south or southwest back towards Charleston. If that's the case, you could have winds and waves for many, many hours, if not for two or three days, just lashing at the shore. And that could produce more damage than, say, a Category 4 Hugo," in 1989, which killed 27 in South Carolina, left nearly 100,000 homeless and wreaked nearly $10 billion in damage.

"These things usually move northeast, they don't move southwest or west. If it does, that would be highly unusual. And devastating," he tells me.

Walton explains how climate change-fueled weather patterns are resulting in slower moving storms causing much more rainfall and flooding in recent years and why he believes some broadcast meteorologists --- versus climatologists --- are still either climate deniers or simply fail to connect the dots of increasingly extreme weather to global warming. He also discusses his upcoming children's book on climate, with Nick Walker, The World of Thermo: Thermometer Rising.

Finally today, we bounce off of Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News today with a few thoughts on talking about the rapidly increasing dangers of climate change, even while a major storm imperils millions of American citizens. As Bunch observes, many of them live in southern states with political leadership that has ill-served their residents by lying to them about climate change science over a shameful number of years, even as they now find themselves at the center of some of its most threatening and deadly effects...

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We catch up with quite a bit on today's BradCast, after being buried for much of last week in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for dishonest and disingenuous GOP operative, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, as Donald Trump's pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy in the "swing vote" seat on the GOP's already-stolen U.S. Supreme Court. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

We discuss that as well today (and whether Democrats should pack the Court if they ever return to power, as we discussed with David Faris on last Wednesday's show) and much more with tons of callers.

But first, we lead off with the latest on the fearsome Category 4 Hurricane Florence now barreling toward the U.S. Eastern seaboard, fueled by record warm waters, and currently projected to slam the Carolinas with, potentially, as much as four feet of rain as the storm is predicted to stall near the coast.

At the same time, Hawaii is facing down Hurricane Tropical Storm Olivia this week, just two weeks or so after Hurricane Lane dumped record rainfall on the islands, in the second worst rainfall event in recorded U.S. history (second only to Hurricane Harvey in Houston just last year.)

We also have some much brighter news, however, for our climate-changed world out of California today, as Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB-100, a landmark measure to require the state (with the world's fifth largest economy) to transition to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045. Along with it, Brown also signed an executive order that would result in carbon-neutral energy production and use for the entire state (including cars!) by 2045 as well!

With that bit of brief, albeit very good news out of the way, we turn to catching up with an Administration (still) in crisis upon the release of Bob Woodward's new book, FEAR: Trump in the White House and the anonymous op-ed purported to have been penned by a senior Trump Administration official last week, claiming that senior insiders have been secretly blocking the worst of Trump's most dangerous impulses and, last year, even considered invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the President.

We open up the phone lines today to all of the above, for tons of interesting thoughts from listeners on the op-ed (is the writer a hero or a coward --- or a scammer?), the Kavanaugh hearings and the Democrats' surprisingly unified response to the GOP rush to confirm him before they may lose their slim Senate majority in the upcoming midterms, and much more, as Hurricane Donald continues to lay waste --- or, at least, tries to --- to much of our nation...

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On today's BradCast: Some encouraging election news. More disturbing news about the Republican's "sham" rush rob to ram through another GOP activist onto the U.S. Supreme Court before they could lose their slim majority in the U.S. Senate. And the re-emergence of Barack Obama before the November midterms. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up today, noteworthy reported results from Thursday's midterm primary elections in Delaware and some largely good election news elsewhere.

In Florida on Friday, a federal judge ordered 32 counties sued by a number of voting rights and Latino advocacy groups to immediately publish election materials in Spanish, in addition to English, in compliance with the Voting Rights Act. As we discussed with Demos' Senior Counsel Stuart Naifeh on a program last week, the groups had sued after the counties failed to comply with the VRA, despite some 50,000 U.S. citizens who were dislocated from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria having trouble re-registering and voting in the Sunshine State's "English only" counties. The judge's ruling, suffice to say, suggests he was VERY unhappy with the defendants in the case.

In Kansas, a Republican candidate for the state's House of Representatives has been arrested on election fraud charges. Notably, the Sec. of State Kris Kobach, a longtime GOP "voter fraud" fraudster and now the state's Republican nominee for Governor, had no comment on the arrest after having failed to bring the charges himself, despite convincing the state legislature to give him prosecutorial powers (the only SoS in the nation with such powers) and despite having made claims of a massive "voter fraud" epidemic central to his role as the state's chief election official.

Then, the week-long circus at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings for Donald Trump's U.S. Supreme Court nominee, former Republican activist turned D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh, wrapped up on Friday, with still more late disclosure's about Kavanaugh's record while serving as an operative in the George W. Bush Whitehouse. The disclosures come from documents from during that period which Republicans had attempted to keep "confidential" from the American public.

Salon's political reporter AMANDA MARCOTTE, who's been reporting on the proceedings, joins us to discuss what we've learned --- and haven't --- about Kavanaugh and the Democrats' surprisingly united and aggressive attempt to block his confirmation. "The Senate Democrats came at this in a way that I don't think I've ever seen them do anything of this sort before. They had an organized strategy, and they executed it pretty well," she explains.

We focus specifically today on Kavanaugh's "threat to women's health and safety" with his disingenuous and misleading statements to the Committee (and to potential swing voting Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski) about Roe v. Wade's Constitutional right to an abortion as "settled law". Several lines of questioning from Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) this week, as well as so-called "committee confidential" documents released by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) --- at threat of Senate expulsion --- underscore the con that both Republicans and the activist Judge Kavanaugh are attempting to pull off on the American public.

"If you were a space alien and you just dropped in to watch these hearings, you would get the impression that the Republicans think of Brett Kavanaugh as a liberal lion. All they do is talk about how anti-racist he is, how pro-equality. The cases that he's ruled on that they've highlighted were the three or four extremely rare ones where he sided with working people or oppressed people or people trying to get healthcare. The tiny minority of his cases. They barely go a minute without talking about how much he loves women, and he's practically a feminist," Marcotte says. "It's been kind of surreal, because obviously they don't believe a word of it, because if they actually thought he was any of the things they were presenting him as, they wouldn't have nominated him."

She charges Kavanaugh has been trying to "imply that he's going to uphold Roe", though "he clearly has no intention of doing it. That's why the leaked emails were such a big deal...These hearings should be understood as an elaborate theater to give Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski cover while they vote, to claim that they're pro-choice while voting to overturn to Roe v. Wade."

We also take a few minutes to discuss Marcotte's recently published book, Troll Nation: How the Right Became Trump-Worshiping Monsters Set on Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself --- not that she has particularly strong opinions on such things.

Finally, after another tough week --- almost a year and a half of them, in fact --- former President Barack Obama reemerged on Friday with a speech at the University of Illinois that unloaded on Trump as, among other things, "a symptom, not the cause" of our current woes. More importantly, he offered some advice and inspiration regarding the necessity of voting in this November's midterms and elections beyond them. We close out the week with some excerpts from his address...

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Everything --- EVERYTHING --- is not normal right now. From an imploding Presidency to the GOP's unprecedented withholding of documents for a SCOTUS nominee, to the more "normal" abnormalities we've become shamefully accustomed to, like mass shootings, election fraud and voter suppression in advance of another huge election and, yes, a global climate in crisis. Among the related stories covered on today's very busy BradCast [Audio link to show follows below.]...

• At least four were killed, including the shooter, in another mass shooting today, this time in downtown Cincinnati. Shamefully, the bloodbath barely cracks today's national headlines."This is not normal, and it shouldn't be viewed as normal. This is abnormal. No other industrialized country has this level of active multiple shootings on a regular basis," Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley said at a news conference today;

• It was day 3 of U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Republicans continue to rush through his confirmation while withholding tens of thousands of documents from both the Senate and the public, leading Democratic U.S. Senators Cory Booker (NJ), Mazie Hirono (HI) and others today to risk expulsion by releasing several "committee confidential" documents which are being withheld from the public. The documents being withheld, as suggested by several of the Senators, either reflect poorly on Kavanaugh or show him as having misled Congress in previous Senate testimony during his years as a George W. Bush staffer. "We are in uncharted and unprecedented territory here that the process has broken down, reflecting what is happening in our nation generally," warned Sen. Richard Blumenthal (CT);

• The White House is reported to be in "total meltdown" and the President "absolutely livid" after Wednesday's publication of a bombshell New York Times op-ed said to have been written by "a senior official in the Trump administration". The explosive piece claims the President is unstable, out of control, and that a group of Administration insiders have been working to contain the worst of his impulses. One top Administration official after another on Thursday denied penning the column, as Trump has suggested it to be "TREASON", called for the Times to turn over the writer's identity to "government at once", and as a former CIA Director (and Trump critic) John Brennan warns the situation is "dangerous" and "will get worse before [it] gets better."

Then, after a short remembrance for the late Burt Reynolds, who died today at 82, we move to the one thing Americans can and must do to try and restore a semblance of normality to the nation: participate in the November 6th midterm elections! To that end, we have several items of note regarding election integrity...

• In Texas, the 2018 dirty tricks are officially under way. An infiltrator into Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D)'s surging campaign to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R) used the campaign's text messaging system to send fraudulent messages regarding bringing "undocumented immigrants to polling booths" and "the dangers of socialism";

• In Michigan, two white, male, Republican-appointed federal appeals court judges overturned a lower court judge who, after a full trial, blocked the state GOP-majority legislature's ban on straight-ticket voting, finding the measure "a disproportionate burden on African Americans' right to vote". Both the lower court judge who previously blocked the measure and a third appeals court judge who dissented from her fellow appeals court panelists, were African-Americans appointed by a Democratic President. The U.S. Supreme Court, in the recent past, has blocked a host of court rulings that change election law just before elections, even when they might have protected thousands of voters from disenfranchisement. Will they step in to block this late federal court ruling?;

• In Virginia, Shaun Brown, an independent candidate for the U.S. House in the Commonwealth's 2nd Congressional District, was removed from the November ballot after a judge determined fraudulent petition signatures were used to place her on the ballot in hopes of peeling off votes from Democratic candidate Elaine Luria. Staffers from the office of first-term incumbent GOP Rep. Scott Taylor are said to have submitted many of those fraudulent signatures. Five of Taylor's staffers invoked the Fifth Amendment in the case, refusing to answer whether they were acting on Taylor's instructions. (We also take the opportunity to review just a few of the similar cases of election and signature petition fraud from former top GOP officials, such as Newt Gingrich, Thaddeus McCotter and Mitt Romney).

And, finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our 900th(!) episode of the Green News Report! In which we cover the dangers posed by Kavanaugh to the environment as illustrated during his Senate confirmation hearings, and a round-up of the latest havoc being wreaked around the globe from our climate in crisis.

If you are able and/or haven't done so recently, please consider a donation to support our work on both The BradCast and in celebration of the 900th Green News Report! We rely only on you to keep going! Really. Please stop whatever you are doing and take about 60 seconds to help us continue! It's greatly appreciated and much needed!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Supreme Court spells big trouble for environmental standards and climate action; PLUS: Extreme weather slams into Japan, and the Gulf Coast, and Wisconsin... 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): 8 states fight Trump’s attempt to declaw Migratory Bird Treaty; Farm bill proposal could wipe out communities’ power to ban pesticides; ACLU: Government plotted to surveil, disrupt Keystone XL protesters; 8 bird species are rirst confirmed avian extinctions this decade; Dozens of elephants killed near Botswana wildlife sanctuary; Zinke hires critic of Endangered Species Act for senior post; Dire climate change warnings cut from Trump power-plant proposal... PLUS: A global shift to sustainability would save us $26 trillion... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: A stunning political upset in MA's primary on Tuesday, the Kavanaugh hearings continue, and a senior Trump Administration official drops an anonymous late day bombshell in the New York Times. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

First up today, primary election results out of Massachusetts, including the stunning, double-digit defeat of 10-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano by progressive challenger Ayanna Pressley. With no Republicans running in the state's 7th Congressional District this November, Pressley is set to become the first African-American woman to represent MA in the U.S. House.

Then, Judge Brett Kavanaugh dodges many questions as "hypothetical" --- including on whether a sitting President must respond to a subpoena and whether the Constitutional allows one to pardon to themselves-- from Democrats in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on the second day of confirmation hearings for Donald Trump's nominee to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat of retired Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kavanaugh also stumbled a bit when seemingly taken by surprise by a line of questioning from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) regarding about his knowledge of stolen emails from the Democratic Senator's office during the mid-2000s when, as a GOP operative, Kavanaugh was helping to shepherd George W. Bush nominees through Senate hearings. Leahy indicated that a number of emails still being protected as "committee confidential" for no legitimate reason, demonstrate Kavanaugh was aware of the ill-gotten information and lied about it during Senate testimony some years ago.

"There's a reason that Republicans don't want all of these documents released," argues my guest today, Roosevelt University political scientist DAVID FARIS, columnist at The Week and author of the recently published book It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He joins us to discuss all of the above, including his thoughts on the Democrats' strategy to oppose Kavanaugh's nomination and to continue his call, first published in his book this Spring, for Democrats, once they eventually regain control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, to "pack" the U.S. Supreme Court with enough new seats to create a Democratic majority to replace the one stolen from them by Republicans in 2016.

"We're still living in the dream palace of the previous normative order," he tells me. "And there's a lot of Senate Democrats who are clinging to the fantasy that if they adhere to Senate norms, then at some point in the future, we will return to what they see as regular order."

Faris discusses how Democrats might have fought harder or more effectively against Kavanaugh's nomination, while conceding they are most likely powerless to block his seating. "I think what's being revealed over the past two days is that they are stuck with a much worse nominee, with much greater baggage, than anyone understood," he says, before adding: "I wish I could say those revelations would be enough to have a couple of Republican senators vote against him, but I've really, over the last couple of years, just lost faith that there are even two people, two Republicans, in the US Senate who are willing to take a political hit to do the right thing."

He is optimistic, however, in describing what he sees as an incredible "generational transformation" of the Democratic Party over the past year or so, highlighted by the rise of more progressive, diverse and younger candidates vying for office, and details what he feels Democrats should do after the November midterms if they are able to regain control of one or both houses of Congress.

Finally today, just before we go off air, stunning breaking news of the anonymous op-ed by "a senior official in the Trump administration" published in the New York Times late on Wednesday. The remarkable column from a self-described member of a "quiet resistance within the administration" charges that Trump is unmoored from reality, that top officials must work to counter his "impulsive," "half-baked," "ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions" in order "contain" the worst and most dangerous of them. The author also asserts that cabinet officials had, at one time, considered "invoking the 25th Amendment" to remove the Trump from office given "the instability many witnessed", but decided against it in order to avoid "a constitutional crisis". Wow.

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On today's BradCast: The first day of hearings in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump's very unpopular nominee to fill the U.S. Supreme Court by "swing vote" Justice Anthony Kennedy last month, started with tens of thousands of documents withheld by the White House over the weekend, kicked off Tuesday morning with pandemonium from Democratic committee members objecting to the proceedings, and continued with protests and arrests of some 70 observers in the chamber throughout the day. Just another unprecedented day in the U.S. Senate in the Trump Era. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Today we cover much of the havoc with extended excerpts from the hearings, and then a visit with columnist, Zero Hour radio host and former Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign writer RICHARD ESKOW, who joins us to try and help us make sense --- any sense --- of it all.

With some 100,000 documents from Kavanaugh's time in the George W. Bush White House (where he served as legal adviser and Staff Secretary during some of Dubya's most consequential decisions, on everything torture to marriage equality) being withheld at the instruction of the Trump Administration late on Friday night and some 42,000 documents dumped on Committee members on the Labor Day Monday evening before hearings were to begin on Tuesday morning, we discuss whether Democrats should have shown up at all for today's hearings for the longtime Republican Party operative turned federal judge turned SCOTUS nominee.

Kavanaugh, who appears to have lied to the U.S. Senate during his 2006 Senate hearings for the D.C. Court of Appeals, is now being rammed through in what appears to be a desperately mad dash by Republicans to seat him with a bare majority before they may lose control of the U.S. Senate after this November's midterms. So, should Democrats have even played along with what some are describing as an "illegitimate" process or should they simply have refused to show up altogether?

"Even the strongest statements [from Democrats] today were not strong enough. They were good, they were fine, but every debater knows that as long as you allow your opponent to establish a phony premise or a phony setup for the debate, you're going to lose," Eskow argues. "By showing up --- even by voicing their objections --- the Democrats, by the way they are handling this, are legitimizing the process, in my opinion."

We also discuss the media coverage of the nomination and subsequent hearings, and the dilemma we in the media face in how (and if) to cover the substantive issues and related concerns about Kavanaugh's hard-right record as a jurist. On one hand, we are legitimizing an illegitimate process in doing so. On the other, if seated on the GOP's already-stolen U.S. Supreme Court, Kavanaugh will almost certainly serve as the fifth vote to rollback and/or reverse decades of hard-fought civil rights victories and much more for at least a generation. So, we do need to cover it, right? (That's a very real question that I've been debating for quite a while. Would welcome your thoughts in comments below!)

And all of this, mind you, for a potential Justice nominated by a President facing a serious criminal investigation, and who will almost certainly, if seated, sit in judgment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the same President who nominated him for a lifetime position on the nation's highest Court.

"It's Alice in Wonderland," charged Vermont's Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, who has been in the Senate for 44 years, overseeing the Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings for every single Justice currently on the Court, during his opening remarks on Tuesday: "Today, the Senate is not simply phoning in our vetting obligation, we're discarding it. It's not only shameful, it's a sham...And any claim that this has been a through transparent process is downright Orwellian...This is the most incomplete, most partisan, least transparent vetting for any Supreme Court nominee I have ever seen...and I've seen more of those than any person serving in the Senate today."

Also on today's show (albeit very quickly!): Voters head to the polls for primary election day in Massachusetts on Tuesday, Delaware on Wednesday, and fast-moving Hurricane Gloria now threatens the Gulf Coast...

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On today's BradCast: Details on the extraordinary court ruling out of North Carolina on Monday, and the judicial coup being staged in West Virginia. But first, voters went to the polls for Tuesday's primary elections in Arizona and Florida and in Oklahoma for primary runoff elections. It did not go well in Arizona. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

Maricopa County (Phoenix)'s paper ballot optical-scan computer systems failed in at least 100 precincts, according to the County Recorder. Many polling places were closed entirely this morning, and it was nearly noon before the systems were said to finally be working in all precincts. It's still unclear what the precise failure was, but the new County Recorder Adrian Fontes (who won his election after the previous, long-time Recorder was booted out for shutting polling places during the 2016 Primaries), tied it to pre-election tests that failed on Monday, and then a lack of contractors from the voting machine company (Dominion Voting) on hand to properly set up the systems before polls were to open today. "The contractor responsible for the voting machines was supposed to provide more than 100 technicians to assist with issues, but only 70 were available," the Arizona Republic reports Fontes as telling them at a news conference this morning. If we learn more, of course, we'll share it on tomorrow's show along with noteworthy problems and results in all three states holding elections today.

Then, following up on a story that broke minutes before airtime on Monday, we're joined today by Slate's excellent legal reporter MARK JOSEPH STERN to detail the extraordinary ruling issued by a three judge federal court panel finding all of North Carolina's U.S. House districts --- for a second time --- to be partisan gerrymanders in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Remarkably, the judges are considering ordering new maps to be drawn up before this November's elections, after already having found last January that Republicans had unlawfully gerrymandered the state's U.S. House districts. That ruling, however, was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which punted in June by ordering the lower court to review matters of standing. After having done so, the three-judge panel found the same Constitutional infirmities.

"The real villain here, in a sense --- aside from the Republicans, who obviously drew these incredibly gerrymandered maps --- is the Supreme Court and Justice Anthony Kennedy," says Stern. "A virtually identical ruling came down in January, at which point the US Supreme Court could have and should have acted on this question of partisan gerrymandering. Instead, the Supreme Court punted [and] sent this case back down for reconsideration. Now the [lower] court has reached the same conclusion it did in January."

The map in question was the one drawn up in 2016 after the state's previous GOP-drawn map, used in 2012 and 2014, was found to have been an unlawful racial gerrymander. So, Stern explains, the federal judges in North Carolina seem to have had enough and may now order new maps "on this incredibly compressed timetable where the election is looming" in just over 70 days, ballots need to go out to overseas voters 45 days in advance, and the state's primaries were already been held in May.

The unconstitutional maps have resulted in a wildly unbalanced 10 to 3 GOP majority in the state's Congressional delegations, despite North Carolina's status as a very divided swing state which narrowly elected Obama in 2008, Trump in 2016, and a Democrat to be its Governor in that same election. If the matter is appealed to SCOTUS by the state (as it almost certainly will be), the Supremes could deadlock 4 to 4, if Justice Kennedy's seat has yet to be filled, and the lower court ruling would stand. We could be in for a lot of chaos ahead (as if we need any more this year.)

Stern also explains the astonishing situation in West Virginia, where that state's Republican-majority House of Delegates recently impeached all four sitting members of the state's Supreme Court. (Its 5th member had already resigned after been charged with a felony crime.) The move, Stern reports, was timed in such a way to avoid allowing voters to replace the justices at the ballot box this year. That means the previously 3 to 2 Democratic-leaning court may soon become a 5 to 0 Republican court, and stay that way through 2020. Following impeachment trials of the justices in the state Senate, any vacancies will be filled by the appointments of Trump-loving Republican Gov. Jim Justice, a Democrat when he ran and won the Governor's race in 2016, but who flipped parties shortly thereafter.

"There are no good guys, per se, in this story," Stern notes. However, it serves as yet another example of Republicans blatantly hoping to pack the courts, and could prove to be another useful example that Democrats could cite in the future. If they ever re-take control of the U.S. House, Senate and White House, they'll be able to cite such moves when and if they decide to move to add seats to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to restore a majority that should have been theirs, until Senate Republicans stole a vacant seat in 2017 after holding it open for nearly a year following the early 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

Speaking of that stolen U.S. Supreme Court, Stern also offers his thoughts on whether Senate Democrats will be able to block --- or even stall --- the seating of Donald Trump's second nominee to the Court. Judge Brett Kavanaugh's Senate Judiciary Confirmation hearings are currently scheduled to begin next week and, Stern argues, "he owes an explanation as to why he thinks it's perfectly valid and legitimate and acceptable to be nominated by a racist and openly corrupted President to the Supreme Court."

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report on, among other things, the record rainfall in Hawaii following Hurricane Lane over the weekend, and the complicated climate legacy of the late Republican U.S. Senator and former GOP Presidential nominee, John McCain.

(And, on a related note, next week will be our 900th episode of the GNR! If you have not contributed lately to our efforts to continue connecting the climate change dots over your public airwaves for the past 10 years --- along with all else that we do --- please consider doing so now by stopping by BradBlog.com/Donate! Thanks! We rely only on you to keep going! But, don't do it for me! Do it for Desi! Pretty please?)

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hawaii dodges direct hit from record-breaking Hurricane Lane, but receives a warning about global warming; Australia's conservative prime minister ousted over climate policies; PLUS: The complicated climate legacy of Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona... 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): Air pollution is making us dumber, study shows; Pesticide studies won EPA trust, until Trump team scorned so-called ‘secret science’; The most vulnerable Texans never recovered from Harvey; Kansans drank contaminated water for years. The state didn’t tell them; In the rural West: more oil, more gas, more ozone; Houston voters approve $2.5 billion flood infrastructure funding; Secret life of an EV battery; Electric car revolution is unstoppable thanks to Elon Musk; Arizona clean-energy ballot measure can go on Nov. ballot, judge rules... PLUS: Climate change report: California to see 77 percent more land burned... PLUS:

... and much, MUCH more! ...

Before we get to our guest on today's BradCast, a number of news items (and that may be an understatement) of note. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

• First, the latest in the quickening collapse of the Trump Presidency, as his darkest week gets darker by the day, now including the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization reportedly being granted immunity to cooperate with federal prosecutors in their ongoing probe(s) of all manner of criminality by Donald J. Trump and his 2016 campaign;

• Hurricane Lane is already wreaking havoc in Hawaii as it very slowly sweeps near the islands, dumping catastrophic amounts of rain (35 inches in 48 hours on the Big Island!) in its wake; And, speaking of Hawaii, listeners answer our call in response to a question we had yesterday regarding a slang Hawaiian term used by Sen. Mazie Hirono's (D-HI) in cancelling her planned meeting with Trump's U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, charging that "an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal matter, does not deserve the courtesy of a meeting with his nominee --- purposely selected to protect, as we say in Hawaii, his own okole";

• Senator John McCain's family announced on Friday that he will no longer accept medical treatment in his year long battle against terminal brain cancer. We discuss, a bit, what that could mean for Trump's Supreme Court nominee in advance of Arizona's midterm primaries, with Gov. Doug Ducey (R), who would appoint McCain's successor, on the ballot next Tuesday. Also, we note, the President's appalling recent behavior towards the ailing Senator;

• In Ohio's 12th Congressional District, Troy Balderson (R) is finally officially declared the winner over Danny O'Connor (D) in the U.S. House Special election held nearly three weeks ago. Balderson is said to have won by a razor-thin 1,680 votes out of more than 200,000 votes cast on the 100% unverifiable touchscreen systems used on Election Day in the previously very Republican district. The margin is just over the amount that would have triggered an automatic, state-sponsored "recount". The two candidates will face off yet again in November's general election, when a number of factors, as we discuss, could tip the advantage to O'Connor;

• And, in Georgia, as we predicted on yesterday's BradCast, the Randolph County Board of Elections quickly rejected a proposal to shutter 7 of 9 precincts in the majority African-American county in advance of the November midterms. The scheme, which used the pretext of violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), was proffered by a consultant hired by the County at the recommendation of GOP Sec. of State Brian Kemp. The plan had drawn national outrage in a year when Kemp is running for Governor against Stacey Abrams, who could become the nation's first female African-American chief of state;

Then, as the nation is justifiably distracted by a Presidency quickly spiraling out of control, his policies continue to move forward nonetheless, including this week's major new (if little covered) Trump EPA proposal to "repeal and replace" Obama's landmark 2015 "Clean Power Plan", which would otherwise reduce deadly and climate change causing emissions from coal-fired power plants with something the Administration is calling the "Affordable Clean Energy Rule". By the Administration's own admissions, the Trump scheme would lead annually to at least 1,400 premature American deaths over Obama's plan, and result in tens of thousands of news cases of respiratory illness each year.

CONRAD SCHNEIDER, former U.S. Dept. of Justice trial attorney and current Advocacy Director at the non-profit Clean Air Task Force and lecturer on Environmental Law and Policy at Maine's Bowdoin College, joins us to explain the dangers --- and coal-industry corruption --- of what he calls the EPA's new "Dirty Power Plan".

"Thousands and thousands of Americans would die prematurely under the Trump plan whose lives would have been saved under the Obama plan," Schneider warns. "And that's just the tip of a pyramid of health effects that include hospital visits, emergency room visits, asthma attacks, children missing school days and adults missing work as a result of the pollution that would occur here" in what he describes as "just the latest of [Trump's] efforts to try to resuscitate the coal industry."

But, he also cautions, "this political promise" to the industry "runs headlong into the requirements of the Clean Air Act" and so, Schneider predicts, the plan may well face problems in court, where he promises, "we'll be arguing that as much as they might want to throw a lifeline to coal, the Clean Air Act is not the appropriate venue to do that."

"What we are doing here is we are fiddling while the planet burns. We're fighting things in court, when we really don't have the time to waste," he tells me, as we discuss why it is that the Trump Administration's many attempts at reversing Obama Administration environmental protections --- from water rules, to chemical plant safety regulations, to the Keystone XL pipeline (to name only a few from the past few weeks) --- continue to be blocked, overturned or delayed, by one federal court after another...

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Like the news cycle, we're all over the place on today's BradCast with politics, accountability and corruption news, democracy and voting news, green news and court news and much much more. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the many stories covered today...Some Democratic Senators are now refusing to meet with Donald Trump's U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, following the convictions of Trump's campaign chair Paul Manafort and the guilty pleas of his personal lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen, implicating the President himself in a conspiracy to commit serious criminal campaign finance felonies.

On related fronts today: Trump has now finally admitted (after years of lies about it by him and his staff) that he did, in fact, make hush-money payouts to women before the 2016 election; Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis offers more details on what his client may know regarding Trump's early knowledge of hacked DNC emails before they were released in 2016; and Trump's longtime friend David Pecker [pictured above], who runs the National Enquirer and helped kill stories about Trump's mistresses, is reportedly now cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller after being granted an immunity deal.

Also, a Trump-supporting juror from the first Manafort trial says there was only one person on the jury who prevented him from being found guilty on all 18 counts of tax and bank fraud, versus the 8 on which he was found guilty. A mistrial was declared on the 10 other counts.

A new Reuters poll today finds that more than 70% of Americans now support a "Medicare for All" styled universal healthcare program, including a majority of Republicans. And a new poll from Fox "News" offers an avalanche of bad news for Trump and Republicans in advance of the 2018 midterm elections. (For example, Mueller is more popular than Trump by double-digits, and other numbers that may spell trouble in November.)

Speaking of which, following a public outcry, Randolph County, Georgia, whose two-person Board of Elections is set to vote on a proposal to close 7 of 9 polling places before the November election in the majority African-American county, now admits it has no evidence to support the claim that those precincts need to be closed due to violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Moreover, it has now fired the consultant --- hired on the recommendation of GA Sec. of State Brian Kemp (the Republican nominee for Governor this year) --- who urged the poll closures at, what he initially said, had been Kemp's recommendation.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report on the Trump EPA's deadly new proposed rule to replace Obama's landmark "Clean Power Plan", the Administration's spate of recent court failures blocking their attempts to overturn environmental protections, and the latest news on Hurricane Lane which is bearing down on Hawaii and threatening record rainfall among other potential dangers which, the Governor warns, could cripple the island for several weeks...

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