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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: March 2024 was the hottest March ever recorded, continuing a 10-month record hot streak; European court rules Switzerland's climate inaction violates human rights; Norfolk Southern settles East Palestine lawsuits for $600 million; PLUS: EPA cracks down on airborne pollution from chemical plants and toxic 'forever chemicals' in drinking water... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): World Bank must take 'quantum leap' to tackle climate crisis, UN expert says; Russia and Kazakhstan evacuate tens of thousands amid worst floods in decades; FirstEnergy gave secret $1 to Ohio Lt. Governor campaign in scandal; Protesters slam gas group’s use of customers’ money to thwart climate efforts; US agrees with Native American tribe that Line 5 Pipeline is trespassing; How the essential, dirty steel industry is going green; Here’s how EVs could get 200 miles per gallon... PLUS: Big Oil could face homicide charges... and much, MUCH more! ...

And we thought the real news sites were bad enough. Now, as discussed on today's BradCast, fake ones, aided by Artificial Intelligence and funded by shadowy rightwingers to surreptitiously promote candidates and rightwing propaganda, are springing to life across the country in advance of this year's critical election. Ain't that all that we need? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But first up, a few news headlines of note today...

The Trump Organization's long-time Chief Financial Officer, Allen Weisselberg returned to Rikers Island today after serving a 100 day sentence just last year on tax fraud charges related to unreported perks he received over many years from the company. Today, the 76-year old Weisselberg was sentenced to five more months in the pen after pleading guilty to perjury for lying to state prosecutors in testimony and on the witness stand in Donald Trump's recent $454 million civil fraud trial about the size of the disgraced former President's New York apartment. The lie inflated the value of the Trump Tower penthouse on financial statements by some $200 million.

And, in Arizona, the state's all-Republican Supreme Court unleashed havoc on Tuesday --- for both abortion supporters and opponents alike --- when it reinstated a 160-year old near-total abortion ban originally adopted in 1864, before Arizona was a state or women had the right to vote. Many state Republicans, like U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, are now in full panic mode on the heels of the Court approving the law she previously claimed to support. Now, for some reason, she doesn't, as revealed in an incoherent (and hilarious) statement demanding that AZ's Democratic Governor somehow roll it all back, even while Lake also still claims to oppose abortion.

For his part on Wednesday, Donald Trump, who on Monday bragged yet again about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade, both claimed that the abortion issue was now settled to everyone's satisfaction as a states' rights matter, while calling out the AZ Supreme Court for "going too far" in reinstating the 1864 ban on all abortions in the state, with an exception only for saving the life of mother. He insists that the GOP-controlled (for now) state legislature will repeal the ban. But Republicans leaders in both the state House and Senate on Wednesday insisted otherwise, thwarting attempts by Democrats to repeal the antiquated law.

It is all as mad as it sounds. But, despite the havoc this is causing for women and doctors in the state, all of it may turn out to be very good news for Democrats in the battleground state this November. Arizona, and other states, will see ballot initiatives to protect reproductive rights. That is likely to have a remarkable effect on turnout by angry voters.

Of course, that also depends on an educated --- not disinformed --- electorate. And, right now, as the Financial Times recently reported, there is a well-funded scheme underway by rightwing billionaire activists, the Republican Party and fossil fuel interests, among others, to confuse as many people as possible about real news by using real looking "pink slime" websites that push political propaganda while masquerading as legitimate local news sites.

According to media watchdog NewsGuard, as of April 1, there were as many fake "pink slime" websites operating in the U.S., pretending to be real local news outlets, as there were actual, real, local news sites!

We're joined today by ALEX MAHADEVAN, Director at the non-profit Poynter Institute's MediaWise project, which seeks to "empower diverse communities with the skills to identify misinformation."

"The word 'pink slime' encompasses a lot of different types of these algorithmically-generated or poorly reported news websites," Mahadevan tells me. "To me, the 'pink slime' news websites that worry me the most are the ones that aren't necessarily fake news, but have a lot of real news in it. Most of it has been scraped by algorithms from press releases, but then within some of those articles are very biased, misleading articles that favor one candidate or another candidate."

The websites have names like "Chicago City Wire", a cite which doesn't disclose its funding or political purpose other than to say, "Funding for this news site is provided, in part, by advocacy groups who share our beliefs in limited government." At least if you bother to dig deep enough on the site to find that statement.

One of the largest networks of "pink slime" sites is run by an outfit named Metric Media, which claims to feature about 1,000 "local" sites, most of which, according to FT, "do not disclose any political funding or partisan stance, saying that they provide 'data-driven information without political bias.'" Metric Media is reportedly run by a web of shell companies, non-profits and corporate entities linked to three men, "conservative businessman and publisher Brian Timpone, Texas oil billionaire Tim Dunn, and Republican Party adviser Bradley Cameron."

Creation of these sites, according to researchers, is now easier than ever thanks to Artificial Intelligence apps, and comes at a time when social media outlets have cut back on their moderation teams that might otherwise prevent links to such propaganda outlets from proliferating. Instead, the "pink slime" sites are spending millions to advertise on those same social media sites like Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.

Mahadevan explains how he was able, in February of last year, to use the free version of the AI app, Chat-GPT, to create such a fake cite. "In about a half hour I was able to generate fake news articles, along with fake news reporters, fake editors, and fake publishers --- along with their headshots --- and create the code and launch a fake news website completely out of thin air. To me, that was really frightening."

All of it, in fact, is frightening --- not only the fake news that is taking the place of real local news reporting, but the loss of those critical local outlets in the first place and what happens to "the soul of these communities when we lose local news outlets," laments Mahadevan, who goes on to warn that all of this is "terrible for democracy."

So what, if anything can be done about it? We discuss that as well on today's somewhat disturbing, if hopefully eye-opening, BradCast...

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Keep hope alive. We've got a bunch of mostly good news stories for you on today's BradCast! [Audio link to full program is posted at the end of this summary.]

Among those stories today...

• EVERY VOTE MATTERS: The great state of California has finally wrapped up its month-long tabulation and canvassing following its March 5th Super Tuesday primaries. And, in one race, there's a bit of a first-of-its kind surprise. Ever since 2012, the state has run a top-two primary system, where candidates from all parties run in the same primary race and the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, go on to compete in the general election. This year, however, in a U.S. House race for an open seat in the state's 16th Congressional District, there was an exact tie among the 2nd and 3rd place candidates, who each received exactly 30,249 votes. So, three candidates --- in this case, all Democrats --- will go on to the November general election and its anybody's guess who may win.

• BIDEN RISING: After months of polls showing Joe Biden trailing Donald Trump in national polling, now that the general election is in sight with Americans finally beginning to understand that --- like it or not --- it will almost certainly be a Biden v. Trump match-up, the polls are finally turning in favor of the President. It's a fairly small shift, but a meaningful one, with a bevy of high quality polls almost all finding Biden either ahead of or tied with Trump. There are lots of caveats for these numbers, as discussed today (for example, it's only April and these numbers could change, and they don't include third-party candidates, etc.), but the general news should come as an encouraging turn of events for those who have been freaked out for months about Biden's performance against Trump in early polling.

• RIGHTWING DIRTY TRICKSTERS PAY THE PRICE: Bufoonish rightwing clowns Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, who sent misleading robocalls to thousands of Black voters, lying to them about being arrested and more if they voted in the 2020 election, continue to pay a price for their dumb, offensive, dirty tricks. The pair will now have to pay as much as $1.2 million for their violations of civil rights laws in New York, according to a consent decree struck with the state's Attorney General Letitia James. That follows previous penalties for the pair of a more than $5 million fine by the Federal Communications Commission last year, and two years of probation plus 500 hours of voter registration to which they were sentenced in Ohio, another of several states where their scam played out.

• MORE RIGHTWING DIRTY TRICKSTERS PAYING A PRICE: A woman named Aimee Harris who pleaded guilty to stealing a diary belonging to President Biden's daughter Ashley Biden before the 2020 election, when she sold it for $40,000 to rightwing dirty trickster James O'Keefe and his nearly-defunct fake "news" outfit called Project Veritas, was sentenced to a month in prison, three in home confinement, two years of probation and to return the money she raised from her crimes. Her partner in the scam, who was smart enough to cooperate with federal authorities, will be sentenced later this year, suggesting that criminal charges may still be in the offing for the disgraced Republican operative O'Keefe. His home was searched by the FBI after the crime initially came to light. Keep hope alive.

• NOPE: Yet another New York appeals court judge has rejected yet another last-ditch legal attempt by Donald Trump to delay his trial on 34 felony fraud counts related to his hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to help him cheat to win the 2016 election. That criminal trial is now still set to begin with jury selection this coming Monday. In this latest court denial, the NY appellate judge dismissed Trump's motion regarding the partial gag-order against him --- expanded after he identified and attacked the daughter of trial Judge Juan Merchan on social media --- charging the order was somehow "unconstitutional". The bad news for the disgraced former President comes just one day after his bid for a change of venue for the trial was similarly denied by a different appellate judge.

• YOUR MONEY IS NO GOOD HERE: Last week it appeared that Trump successfully avoided, for now, the seizure of his property as he appeals his liability in New York's $454 million civil fraud judgment against him. He was allowed to file a reduced bond for just $175 million with the state. As it turns out, however, there are a lot of problems with that bond, as secured from a sleazy California outfit known as Knight Specialty Insurance Company. A LOT of problems. More and more of which have been coming to light ever since NY A.G. Tish James, last week, informed the judge in the case that Trump's bond appears to be deficient. Among those problems: the surety company is not licensed to issue bonds in New York; the company does not have enough "capital and surplus" to meet state standards (or even cover the amount of the bond!); and the bond itself appears to suggest Trump is responsible for the $175 million dollars, rather than Knight, which is not an actual bond at all. A hearing on the matter is scheduled in NY civil court for April 22.

• HAPPY ENDING: Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news on what scientists suggest could be a terrifying hurricane season; good news for California's mountain snowpack; disturbing news about the Colorado River water supply; and some long-overdue good news from the Happiest Place on Earth...

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The warnings came from safety experts, insurance companies and environmentalists. Years ago. So, of course, they were all ignored by both the then Republican Governor and big business, including Big Oil, who all got their way over safety concerns and the public interest, as discussed on today's BradCast. [Audio link posted below this summary.]

But first up, some other news of note...

• Ohio's Republican Secretary of State informed Democrats on Friday that they must change the date of their party's national convention this summer or Joe Biden will not qualify to be on the state's 2024 ballot under state law. Or, of course, the state's GOP legislature could simply change the law, as they did in 2020 when the Republican National Convention was scheduled too late for Donald Trump to qualify for that year's ballot. But the state legislature will have to do so by May 9. Mark your calendars.

• On Monday in Wisconsin, President Biden unveiled yet another plan, this a very big one, to relieve hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt, this time for 30 million Americans after the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court, last year, blocked his original plan to do so for 40 million borrowers.

• Also on Monday, Donald Trump released a rambling video on his social media cite purporting to be his new position on abortion rights. He takes credit for his SCOTUS majority overturning Roe v. Wade, but says nothing about whether he would sign a national abortion ban; have his FDA block the use of abortion medication; or allow his DoJ to block abortions entirely if he is re-elected this November. So, how did pretty much every single corporate mainstream media outlet headline the "news"? By falsely claiming that "Trump Says Abortion Law Should be Left to the States". But, of course, he didn't. And you wonder how it can be that so many Americans are so misinformed about the threat to the nation and world posed by Donald Trump? There's your answer.

Then, we're joined by investigative journalist HELEN SANTORO of The Lever, who has been digging deep into the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster ever since its deadly collapse two weeks ago, after being struck by a massive, 980-foot mega-container-ship in the Port of Baltimore.

We discuss two of her recent articles on the tragedy today, both of which underscore how corporate greed and industry lobbyists have been allowed to run roughshod over common sense, public safety, and corporate responsibility.

The first story, filed shortly after the tragedy which killed six bridge workers and has shut down all traffic in or out of one of the East Coast's largest shipping ports ever since, focuses on Maryland's Republican former Governor --- now U.S. Senate Candidate --- Larry Hogan, who ignored multiple, repeated warnings, year after year, in his continuing efforts to bring ever larger vessels into the Port. In doing so, he discounted safety warnings from an insurance giant and an international transit group, while accepting millions in federal funding from the Trump Administration to expand the port and push for still-larger cargo ships. Environmental groups also sounded the alarm about Hogan's efforts, as did a top state engineer as long ago as 1980, when he warned that the Key Bridge could not withstand such a crash, even by smaller vessels, without falling down.

"It seems very clear that [Hogan] really prioritized private interests again and again, wanting Maryland to be this point of business," Santoro explains. "And, it seems like, with prioritizing these private interests, the safety of the bridge was clearly not considered."

The second of Santoro's investigative articles that we discuss today focuses on the 173-year old federal Limitation of Liability Act which caps the amount that shipping companies may be held liable for in such disasters. It earned the nickname "The Titanic Law" back in 1912, when White Star Line, the British-owner of the doomed ship, invoked the Act to pay no more than $430 for each of the more than 1,500 passengers who were lost in that fatal tragedy.

The Act has seen some small reforms over the years, but most attempts in recent years to finally modernize the 1851 law have been stymied by Congressional Republicans at the behest of lobbyists from Big Oil and other industries in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster and the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling that same year.

"It was pretty crazy going back and seeing that people have been complaining about this law since the Titanic crashed in 1912," Santoro tells me. "And yet the reforms have been, I would argue, pretty minimal, in terms of upping the amount that a company has to pay."

"Big Oil has really latched on to the Limitation of Liability Act to get themselves out of paying a lot of money for the Deepwater Horizon fiasco and other issues," she says. "There's a lot of industry funding and interest that is big on keeping damage control and the amount they're paying out for damages as low as possible."

Will Maryland's popular former Governor Hogan face accountability in his Senate race to fill the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin this fall for dismissing years of warnings about the very tragedy that has now befallen his state (and the national economy along with it)? Will Congress finally update the antiquated Titanic Law when they return this week, so that major corporations --- which, unlike in the 1850s, are well insured to cover the costs of such disasters --- can be held to real account for the damage they cause in the name of greater and greater profit? Those are just some of the many questions we discuss with Santoro on today's program...

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It was yet another busy news day and, thus, it was another very busy BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among the many stories covered today...

• It has been a very very bad 24 hours for our disgraced former President in three of his four criminal cases, as he's now received rejections from three different judges to three different motions to dismiss or delay in three different jurisdictions over that period. Last night, Juan Merchan, the judge in his New York hush-money fraud case rejected his last minute motion to delay his April 15th trial until after SCOTUS rules on his laughable "Presidential Immunity" claim. The judge in his Georgia election theft conspiracy case, Scott McAfee, rejected Trump's effort to dismiss on ridiculous First Amendment "protected political speech" grounds. And even Aileen Cannon, the corrupt Trump-appointed federal judge overseeing his case in Florida for stealing national security documents upon leaving the White House, finally issued an order rejecting his absurd Presidential Records Act defense as cause for pre-trial dismissal. Sad!

• The secretive, supposedly "centrist" No Labels group announced they will not be running a third-party candidate for President in 2024 after all.

• Kim Taylor, the wife of an elected Republican official in Iowa who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator, will get just four months in prison after being found guilty last year of 52(!) election fraud crimes, including registering and casting votes for her husband in the names of others. (Tip for vote fraudsters looking to get off easy: Be a Republican.)

• Wisconsin's newly progressive Supreme Court majority will now decide whether to reverse the previous right-wing majority's ban on the use of absentee ballot drop-boxes in the critical battleground state this year.

• An out-of-the-blue call on Tuesday by a rightwing extremist on Twitter to change the way Nebraska will allocate its Electoral College votes in 2024 --- in hopes of awarding an extra vote for Trump this year --- gained support just hours later from the state's Governor and the desperate former President before failing in a vote by the state legislature Wednesday night. Bigly. The measure still could come back up for another vote, however, before the legislative session's end on April 18, or in a Special Session thereafter if called by the Governor.

• Following a reportedly tense call on Thursday between the nation's two leaders, the White House announced that President Biden issued a warning to Israel's far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Change course in Gaza or...else. The White House said the President demanded swift changes to Israel's war on Gaza to allow much more food and humanitarian aid to reach starving citizens and protection for both civilians and relief workers. Though it remains unclear how U.S. support may change, an Administration spokesperson said they expected to see action from Israel "in hours or days" before reassessing current policy.

• On Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders joined President Biden at the White House to tout their successful efforts at lowering the cost of healthcare and, specially, prescription drug prices following the adoption of the Inflation Reduction Act which every Republican in Congress voted again. After forcing Big Pharma to lower the cost of insulin and certain asthma medication for Medicare recipients to no more than $35/month, both men called for still more cuts in the price of overpriced prescription drugs sold in America to everyone, not just those on Medicare.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with news on a looming, climate-change fueled hunger crisis in Southern Africa; the Biden Administration's largest-ever investment to decarbonize American manufacturing; how melting polar ice is bending time itself; and the opening of America's first commercial-scale offshore wind farm...which is decidedly not killing whales (insists Desi.)

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On today's BradCast: When democracy works as it's supposed to. And when it doesn't. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

First up, encouraging news from Tuesday's elections out of the small town of Enid in supposedly "deep red" Oklahoma. After electing a guy by just 36 votes last year to the City Council --- a guy who turned out to be a neo-Nazi --- progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans in Enid rallied to remove Judd Blevins from office by nearly 20 points in a recall election. Republican Cheryl Patterson was elected to take the seat instead.

“We did it!,” said Kristi Balden, chair of the group called the Enid Social Justice Committee, which organized the signature drive to trigger Tuesday's recall after learning about Blevins' background as a participant in the White Supremacist riots in Charlottesville in 2017 and as an Oklahoma chapter head for a well known white nationalist group. Following the win for democracy in Enid on Tuesday night, she told NBC News that folks in the rural town discovered that even a small group can join together to effectively defeat extremism. “You can do this because we did this,” she said. “We didn’t even know what we were doing, and we did this. This is possible.”

In other election related news from Tuesday, Presidential Primaries were held in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Wisconsin despite the leading candidates for both major parties already having secured the delegates needed to clinch the 2024 nominations at their respective party conventions this summer. But there were still some interesting revelations from Tuesday's results.

While President Biden continues to see a small, if noteworthy, number of protest votes against him in Democratic primaries, largely in response to his position on Israel's war in Gaza, Donald Trump continues to do far worse among his own Republican party voters. Biden is still defeating challengers on the ballot as well as those registering votes for "uncommitted" by margins from the high 60s to the high 80s. Trump, on the other hand, is still having trouble topping a 70% percent margin on the GOP side, with Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race weeks ago, still winning double-digit percentages in all four state primaries held on Tuesday.

In Wisconsin, for example, after an organized effort to encourage Dems to register a protest vote for "Uninstructed", the state's equivalent of "Uncommitted", approximately 48,000 (8.3%) of Democratic voters did so. That is certainly a concern in a state he won in 2020 by only about 21,000 votes --- and where Trump won by just 23,000 votes in 2016. On the other hand, about 125,000 voters in that state's Republican primary voted against the disgraced former President yesterday.

But the biggest news out of Tuesday's contests was arguably the fact that voters in Wisconsin approved two different Constitutional Amendments involving elections administration in the state. Both were placed on the ballot by Trump-allied Republicans in the GOP's still wildly gerrymandered state legislature after both measures were previously vetoed by the Democratic Governor.

Question 1 bans private funding of elections and Question 2 (the more troubling of the two), mandates that "only election officials designated by law" may perform election-related "tasks". Both measures sound fairly innocuous on paper. That, and a lack of organized opposition to either measure is undoubtedly why both were adopted by large margins statewide on Tuesday.

Some 27 other states won by Trump in 2020 have already adopted legislation similar to WI's Question 1, after Republicans decided to lie to themselves about private funding from non-profit organizations to help run elections during the pandemic as somehow related to Trump's loss. But Question 2 is a new idea and could, according to our guest today, result in chaos for election officials in the Badger State's nearly 2,000 decentralized election jurisdictions this November; frighten voting rights advocates away from helping voters at the polls; and spread to other states controlled by GOP election deniers, conspiracists and vote suppressors.

"These offices, even in better times, are chronically underfunded [and] understaffed," says my guest today, veteran voting rights journalist ALEX BURNESS, who published a deep dive warning about the dangers of these two ballot measures several weeks ago at the progressive Bolts Magazine. "It's hard to quantify what exactly the damage is going to be" regarding the ban on private funding of elections, "but if you can't afford to pay pollworkers, if you can't afford to recruit pollworkers, if you can't afford the extra dropboxes or those modern voting machines or tabulators, that's a problem," warns Burness.

But Question 2's vaguely worded requirement that "only election officials designated by law" may perform election-related "tasks" is what could really wreak havoc for voters and officials this November in the critical battleground state. Election-related "tasks" remains undefined in the new Amendment. It could relate to contractors who help design and program ballots for voting systems; outside experts who help officials analyze voting patterns to ensure the proper number of polling sites and printed ballots; voting rights groups who help disabled voters at the polls; municipal workers who are drafted by election officials to help set up tables at polling places; local volunteers who help officials in small towns seal envelopes to send voters absentee ballots, and many others.

It is all "straight out of the Big Lie," Burness explains today. "And in the absence of organized opposition to educate people about this, in the absence of much information from the media on this," he argues that it was easy for voters to look at these measures and think they make perfect sense --- as they apparently did on Tuesday. And yet, he asserts, the measures may turn out to be "a wolf in sheep's clothing."

"There is so much vagueness baked into that word 'tasks,'" Burness explains. "If 2020 is any indication, we can definitely expect that Wisconsin is going to play host to any number of election lawsuits. So, I think the passage of this measure kicks off many months of confusion and potentially chaos, of added stress for local election administrators, and added stress for the kind of people who would be inclined to assist in local election administration. The final word on what exactly Question 2 even means is probably yet to come."

"I can't say why this didn't get more attention, why folks didn't spend on it," he tells me in response to my question about why there was little warning from media and virtually no organized opposition to these measures from Democrats or voting rights advocates. "I could dream up reasons, such as fatigue," Burness says, summing up his guess as "the general normalization of Big Lie politics."

Unlike last night's story out of Enid, OK, that is decidedly not good news for democracy...

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As it is said, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." It continues to bend mostly in that direction on today's BradCast.

Among our many stories today...

• Donald Trump finally coughed up a bond for $175 million --- of the $454 million plus interest that he still owes in full --- in his New York civil fraud case as his appeal continues.

• The judge in Trump's New York criminal trial related to hush-money payments to a porn star to help him win the 2016 election, has expanded his gag-order [PDF] against the disgraced former President to cover family members of jurors, witnesses, prosecutors and the judge himself, whose daughter had been repeatedly (and fraudulently) attacked in recent days by the GOP's Presidential front-runner. His trial, on 34 felony counts, begins on April 15.

• Gov. Ron DeSantis' packed state Supreme Court in Florida tossed out decades of state constitutional precedent to allow his Big Government 6-week abortion ban to take effect. At the same time, the court also narrowly allowed a Constitutional Amendment to protect reproductive rights on this year's general election ballot in the Sunshine State. It, like a measure to allow the sale of recreational marijuana that the Justices also approved for the ballot on Monday, will need to receive support from more than 60% of voters this year to take effect. Democrats are hopeful that the ballot measures could help them win back the former swing-state for the first time in years this November.

• GOP state legislators in Arizona are on the verge of adopting a ballot measure for this November which would end most early voting and vote-by-mail in the state where more than 80% of voters currently take advantage of such conveniences as well as end the use of convenient Voting Centers in the state's two largest (and most Democratic-leaning) counties. Since the resolution will result in a ballot measure, if passed next by the state Senate, it can't be vetoed by the state's Democratic Governor. On the other hand, it'll be something for voters to think about as Dems are now just two swing-seats away from flipping each chamber of the state legislature from "red" to "blue".

• Ever since Republicans decided to pretend the Presidential election was stolen from them with massive --- if evidence-free --- voter fraud in 2020, almost every case of such fraud that has been found has been carried out by Republicans. Today, we've got two more examples of GOP officials caught having committing such fraud. One is from a state Representative in Alabama who was forced to step down after lying about his residency (his seat was filled last week by a Democrat in a Special Election), and another was by a high-ranking state Republican Party official and rightwing talk show host in Georgia who was voted illegally 9 times. Both got off with largely slaps on the wrist.

  Whenever these stories have come to light in recent years, we've found ourselves comparing the velvet glove treatment of white, Republican voter fraud criminals to the years-long hell on Earth faced by Crystal Mason, the black Texas woman [pictured above] who was sentenced in 2018 to five years in prison for unknowingly casting an unlawful provisional ballot that was never even counted back in 2016. Last week, at long-last, Mason was acquitted of the charges she never should have never faced in the first place.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is back with our latest Green News Report, as an iconic cliff-side coastal road collapses amid heavy climate-change fueled rains in California; Republicans protest federal funding to rebuild the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore; a new report finds our man-made climate crisis is taking a brutal toll on the economy; and the Biden Administration's EPA makes some major moves on methane leaks and truck pollution...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: President Biden vows to rebuild Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, Republicans say 'maybe'; New study confirms economic toll of man-made climate change; Heavy storms collapse a portion of California's iconic Highway 1 near Big Sur; PLUS: Biden Administration clamps down on Big Oil methane leaks, truck pollution, and more... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Bird flu has spread to dairy cows in ID, MI, and NM; Extreme drought in southern Africa leaves millions hungry; Hay for cattle consumes nearly half of the water drawn from Colorado River; Thousands of abandoned wells in Louisiana threaten to leak CO2 from storage projects; Fish & Wildlife Service reverses Trump-era erosion of endangered species protections; Sinking coastal lands will exacerbate the flooding from sea level rise in 24 US cities; Ice loss and sea level rise are affecting Earth's rotation... PLUS: Antarctic sea ice 'behaving strangely' as Arctic reaches 'below-average' winter peak... and much, MUCH more! ...

It may be April Fools Day, but its no joke that we are back on today's BradCast after a half-planned, half-doctor-advised Spring Break week off! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we left, it seemed like last week might prove to be a slow news week, with Congress on vacation, no primary elections last Tuesday and Trump's New York felony hush-money trial postponed a few weeks until this month.

Boy were we wrong about that. Last week was anything but a slow news week, and we've got the headlines today to prove it! To add some actual context, depth and insight to those headlines --- and to hold my hand after I'd been trying to look away for the past week --- we're joined by two old friends, though only one who you may have heard on this program before.

Our friend known mostly as 'DRIFTGLASS' is back with us again today. He is co-host, along with his wife, of The Professional Left podcast recorded each week from "Flyover Country, Illinois." He is also, today, celebrating his 19th blogiversary at the Driftglass blog, so we're honored he agreed to spend it with us!

And, as if that's not swell enough, his Pro Left Pod co-hosting wife, FRANCES LANGUM, who is also a longtime Associate Editor over at the Crooks & Liars blog, joins us as well today for a romping, rollicking, breathless review of much that we missed last week and why most of it still matters this week!

Among the huge number of topics from last week covered on today's program...

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)'s vow to call for removing House Speaker Mike Johnson for his daring to work with Democrats to keep the government from shutting down by passing a long-delayed 2024 spending bill just over a week ago.

• The failed attempted conspiracy theories forwarded by Russia and its supporters following the horrific massacre by ISIS-K at a concert venue in Moscow a week ago Sunday.

• Donald Trump's failure to cough up a $454 million bond during the appeal of his New York civil fraud case and the various lifelines thrown to him (for now) by the Appeals Court in NY.

• Trump's scammy, just-in-time merger of his failing social media site with a public company that could result in billions of dollars --- including "straight-up bribery" as Driftglass describes it --- for the disgraced former President.

• Trump's New York criminal trial on 34 felony charges related to hush-money payments to porn-star Stormy Daniels to help him win the 2016 Presidential election is now set to begin on April 15. And, as Fran believes, Trump "will do anything to make the evidence that's going to appear in this case not come to trial." Including, she argues, even if he must "spend two or three nights in jail, violating the gag orders, in order to make this case not happen."

• What the Biden Administration's decision last week to abstain from a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza may mean for Israel and for some on the Left in the U.S. And why, if you don't like what Israel is doing, Fran advises: "Don't elect Bibi Netanyahu President of the United States --- which is what Trump is."

• Why NBC News' ill-considered hiring and then firing of former RNC Chair and attempted election thief Ronna Romney McDaniel matters.

• What Arizona's failed 2022 Republican Gubernatorial candidate and election liar turned 2024 Senate candidate Kari Lake's decision not to contest the claims in an election fraud defamation lawsuit filed against her by Maricopa County's Republican County Recorder (and chief election official) Stephen Richer means and how Lake is hoping to be saved --- somehow --- by a victorious Trump this year. (We wish her the best of luck with that.)

• The remarkable, 25-point Special Election victory last week by Democrat Marilyn Lands in Alabama who focused her campaign on reproductive rights and subsequently flipped a state legislative seat from "red" to "blue" after losing her race for that same seat by 7 points in the 2022 general election. What will a post-Dobbs, post-IVF general election look like in supposedly "deep red" AL and elsewhere this November?

• The desperate-for-quick-cash former President and huckster-in-chief is now selling bibles for $59.99 a piece. Though, to be fair, this version also includes the U.S. Constitution. Has Donald Trump ever read either of them? Says Driftglass today: "Good thing he did this to raise money to pay for the court costs of paying off a [porn star] that he was sleeping with while his wife was nursing their child. So the circle of absolute blasphemy is now complete."

• Joe Lieberman died last week.

• Independent 2024 Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., currently on the ballot in 8 states, thrilled dozens with his announcement of his running mate last week, the former wife of one of Google's founders, Nicole Shanahan. Or, as Driftglass describes her, "a big bag of money who is as crazy as he is".

That's just some of the firehose of news from both last week and this that we cover in today's very lively BradCast...

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On today's BradCast, some much needed "context" for what will absolutely be the most important election in U.S. history this November. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Donald Trump is now running on the promise of political violence --- whether he wins or loses. He made that clear (again) during this past weekend's rallies, interviews and social media postings as he continues to up his violent rhetoric with each passing day, embraces strongman tropes and celebrates his supporters' deadly attempt to overthrow the Constitution and U.S. Government on his behalf on January 6, 2021.

The real context of Trump's weekend rally in Ohio, threatening a "bloodbath for the country" if he loses this November, should be clear by now to anyone who hasn't already drunk his Kool-Aid. If it isn't, we attempt to rectify that today. And it has little to nothing to do with cars from China as his Kool-Aid drunk cultists and apologists are attempting to argue. Historians like Timothy Snyder (author of On Tyranny and The Road to Unfreedom) and Jason Stanley (author of How Fascism Works) are shouting from the rooftops to make that clear. So are folks like conservative attorney George Conway and progressive journalist Josh Marshall.

In other largely related news today...

• Former Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro, a key player in the disgraced former President's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, reported to a federal corrections facility in Miami today to begin a fourth month sentence, becoming the first Trump White House official to go to prison on charges related to Trump's failed attempt to steal the 2020 election from the American people.

• Election denying Michigan MAGA attorney Stefanie Lambert, charged on four counts related to the unlawful breach of voting systems in the state, was arrested in D.C. on Monday after a hearing in a separate case in which she is defending billionaire election denier Patrick Byrne who is being sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems. Her arrest by U.S. Marshals was related to her failure to show up for a hearing in her own case back in MI, even as she improperly released discovery documents from the Dominion case to the public.

• The corrupted U.S. Supreme Court allowed a Texas law to take effect today that overturns more than a century of federal immigration authority and the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution which has long held that federal law trumps state law. The TX statute, which allows state and local police to arrest people they suspect have violated federal immigration law, is similar to Arizona's 2012 "Papers Please" law that was blocked at the time by SCOTUS. But neither Court precedent nor the Constitution appear to mean much anymore to the current, far-right supermajority on the High Court.

• There is a movement among Congressional Republicans to prevent Joe Biden from giving a State of the Union Address to Congress next year under the premise that his speech two weeks ago was "divisive" and "hyper-partisan". (And you know how much Republicans hate that sort of thing, especially at SOTU!) At the same time, Republicans are pretending that polls suggest Biden's SOTU was not "well received". Actual numbers from viewers of the speech before and after strongly suggest the contrary.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with the EPA finally banning all uses of toxic asbestos; extreme heat in Africa; the Biden Administration's investment of billions of dollars to rebuild under-privileged communities that were broken into pieces decades ago by highway construction; and the remarkable climate change deniers in a wealthy coastal community in Massachusetts who want millions of dollars from the state, in perpetuity, to save their beaches and property values, despite the ravages of global warming and rising seas.

All of that and a whole lot more on today's BradCast!...

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Lots (and lots) of news on today's BradCast, from Israel to TikTok foolishness to lots (and lots) of Trump accountability news. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our lead stories today...

• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, an ardent, longtime supporter of Israel, called on Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold new elections. New York's Schumer, a Jew who happens to come from NYC, which has the world's largest Jewish population, cited the far-right Prime Minister as an obstacle to peace who is turning Israel into the world's "pariah". In a 40-minute floor speech, the Senate's top Democrat charged that the unpopular Netanyahu, who is avoiding facing felony charges while remaining in office and avoiding a new election until his war against Hamas in Gaza is over (which it will never be, as long as these are the stakes), "has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel." This is a very big deal in a whole bunch of ways. We discuss some of them today.

• There has been a bipartisan push this week to adopt a bill that would result in the banning of the TikTok app in the U.S. if the company which owns it does not divest from China. Donald Trump, who, as President, issued a failed Executive Order to ban the popular social media video app (it was blocked by the Courts for violating First Amendment free speech rights) has recently flip-flopped to support the app, after meeting with a billionaire hedge fund manager heavily invested in the company. But, despite the popularity of the bill which has now passed in the House, we discuss why it is a terrible idea. Social media regulations are long overdue. But the menace of China's (theoretical) ownership of TikTok is no worse than Elon Musk's actual ownership of Twitter/X. And, in case Democrats failed to notice today, Trump's former Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, announced that he is trying to bring together an investor group to purchase the company. Still think this is a good idea, Dems?

• The UK's Guardian, in an excellent piece today, details the Trump business associates who prosecutors say paid Alexander Smirnov $600,000 in 2020, the year that Smirnov, now charged with lying to the FBI, fed them false claims that Joe Biden accepted bribes from the Ukrainian energy company named Burisma. Prosecutors have also charged that Smirnov met with Russian Intelligence officials before passing on the lie to the FBI, which House Republicans cited at the center of their doomed impeachment probe of the President. So, Smirnov passed on disinformation from Russian intelligence to the FBI and was paid by longtime business associates in the U.S., UK and Dubai of the then-President who was running for re-election that year. And, after losing the election, those lies were used to try and impeach the guy who defeated him. This movie keeps getting worse and worse.

In Trump accountability news today (there is lots of that as well)...

• U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, appointed by Trump after he lost the election, but before he left the White House, rejected a Team Trump motion, for a happy change, in the case of the highly classified documents he stole when leaving the White House, and then hid from prosecutors seeking to get them back. Cannon turned down his attempt to dismiss the felony charges based on his claim that the Espionage Act he is charged under is too vague.

• Meanwhile, the one criminal case that Trump is facing which had not yet been derailed by Trump's various delay tactics --- his New York state hush-money case --- may now be delayed following a tranche of thousands of documents from a previous federal investigation recently turned over to Manhattan prosecutors. We explain what happened here and why the NY D.A.'s office cites the defendants actions for this surprise revelation. Prosecutors have agreed to a 30-day delay before the start of the trial, which was previously scheduled to begin on March 25. The judge overseeing the case, however, Judge Juan Merchan, has yet to decide how much, if any, delay he will allow.

• Trump's former White House trade advisor, and one of his top 2020 "voter fraud" fraudsters, Peter Navarro must report to federal prison in Miami next Tuesday, according to a federal appeals court panel today. Navarro was charged with criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to answer subpoenas from the House January 6 Committee. Like former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who has managed to remain free pending appeal, Navarro was sentenced to four months for his crimes.

• And, in a bit of Trump accountability news that appears to have slipped through the cracks, last week, a judge in the UK ordered Trump to pay some $382,000 in attorneys fees to the lawyers of former British spy Christopher Steele and his private intelligence company. Trump had filed sued in the UK, charging that the "shocking and scandalous" allegations in the so-called Steele Dossier had harmed his reputation. (Please hold your laughter.) The British judge determined the claims were "bound to fail" and ordered Trump to cough up legal fees to cover the frivolous suit. In 2022, Trump lost a similar case he filed in Florida against Steele, Hillary Clinton and a number of top former FBI officials. That case was also tossed and he was ordered to pay nearly a million dollars for that fiasco. I guess he's still not tired of winning.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with cruel news out of Ron DeSantis' Florida; disturbing news about the fossil fuel industry's continuing methane leaks; terrifying news about GOP plans if Trump retakes the White House; and sad news for California salmon...

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Corporate media failure and a small, if noteworthy, success (for a change) are just part of today's BradCast, which also includes a 'bloodbath', more House GOP dysfunction, a wingnut Recall, and plenty of rape victim shaming...by a rape victim. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

• Colorado's far-right Republican Rep. Ken Buck, who announced he would not be running for reelection earlier this year due to party dysfunction, announces he is quitting Congress entirely next week instead, further narrowing the House GOP's razor-thin majority. Buck says he has another "job to do out there", claims that voters are unhappy with both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and vows to find "the right organization to join" and "start working on the issue" of "hav[ing] better candidates up and down the ballot." Is he on his way toward joining the supposedly bi-partisan Presidential "Unity Ticket" promised by secretive, Republican-funded, third-party group No Labels?

• Donald Trump's personal takeover of the Republican National Committee is now complete, with his inexperienced daughter-in-law as co-chair, his Campaign's information officer as RNC Chief of Staff, and a "bloodbath" of firing as many as 60 longtime officials on Monday, their first day of operational control. The fired will be replaced with Trump loyalists (or with nobody, so Trump can pocket more RNC cash?) If you are wondering what he will do to tens of thousands of federal agency workers on his dictatorial Day One if he's allowed to win the Presidency this year, what he is doing to the RNC right now should be considered Exhibit A. Don't say you weren't warned.

• More eating their own, this time in Wisconsin. A Trump-endorsed MAGA group says they've submitted more than enough signatures to the state to schedule a Recall Election for the far-right, longtime Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos for, apparently, not being Trumpy enough. Or, at least being unwilling to break the law to steal the 2020 election in the state for the disgraced former President. [UPDATE since air time: Looks like the effort is not going well so far.]

• Mainstream corporate media outlets begin quietly resetting their dozens of misleading reports last month on Special Counsel Robert Hur's findings about Joe Biden's "faltering memory" after the release of the actual transcripts of recorded interviews with the President by Hur (a Trump-appointee at DoJ) reveal a pretty different story. The interviews were part of Hur's probe of classified documents found by Biden's attorneys in one of his old offices and elsewhere. Hur determined "no criminal charges are warranted," but slimed Biden in the bargain and media ran with it. Now, they are quickly revising the earlier misleading reports. NYT: Biden was "clearheaded". WaPo: Biden "doesn't come across as absent-minded as Hur made him out to be." WSJ: Biden was "not stumped on basic factual questions". That after each paper published dozens of stories each in the days following the release of Hur's report questioning Biden's mental faculties and fitness for office...just as Republicans had been hoping they would.

• George Stephanopoulos deserves kudos for refusing to fold or be intimidated by the ridiculous and relentless attack from South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace who claimed that the ABC reporter, during his interview with her on Sunday, was attempting to "victim shame" her by asking her to justify her endorsement of Donald Trump after he was found liable for rape and repeatedly defaming the victim by two separate juries in New York. Mace bizarrely charged that, because she was a rape victim herself, Stephanopoulos' question was a "disgusting" attempt to "shame" her. In the bargain, she offered a mountain of victim shaming for Trump's rape victim, E. Jean Carroll and suggested that rape wasn't real because Trump's nearly $90 million liability for the rape and defamation came from civil trials instead of criminal ones.

• Longtime media critic Dan Froomkin accuses the New York Times of "repeatedly abus[ing] the English language in its political reporting," and offers some really good suggestions for much-needed additions to their style guide. Smart suggestions from the former, longtime Washington Post, HuffPost and Intercept columnist include the proper use of words such as "baseless", "Congress", "conservative" and "moderate".

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with climate related news from Joe Biden's State of the Union Address; horrific global temp and ocean heat records from February; and more terrible news for Australia's Great Barrier Reef (and, in fact, coral reefs everywhere!)...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: In State of the Union Address, President Biden highlights economic and jobs boom from his climate policies; February 2024 obliterated global temperature and ocean heat records; PLUS: Great Barrier Reef hit with yet another 'mass bleaching event'... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): No big North Sea fossil fuel country has plan to stop drilling in time for 1.5C goal; Adapt, Move or Die? Plants and animals face new pressures in a warming world; How to recycle the giant magnets inside wind turbines? These scientists have a few ideas; CA salmon season to be restricted or shut down, again; Microplastics may be new risk factor for cardiovascular disease, researchers say; Has geothermal's moment finally arrived?... PLUS: Biden’s State of the Union address should give us hope on climate... and much, MUCH more! ...

We were able to open up the phones today to listeners regarding last week's State of the Union Address, the GOP's stunningly failed Rebuttal, and what has become a seemingly annual debate on The BradCast over Daylight Savings Time --- about which I am right and everyone else, of course, is wrong. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to those phones, we review and/or discuss...

• How I hacked Daylight Savings Time over this past weekend --- and how you can (and should!) next year too!
• Joe Biden's new budget proposal for fiscal year 2025 calls for the expansion of social programs and new taxes on corporations and the wealthy to pay for it and to shave $3 trillion off the national debt.
• Biden's new post-SOTU ad: "Look, I'm not a young guy. That's no secret! But, here's the deal..."
• How Donald Trump welcomed, and praised, Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, celebrating the rightwing strongman's rule: "He said this is the way it's gonna be and that's the end of it, right? He's the boss."
• 1,000 protesters against Israel's attack on Gaza marched near the Sunday's Academy Awards at the Dolby Theater here in Hollywood --- whether you heard about them or not.
• A few key points from Biden's rousing, lively, feisty SOTU Address (video | transcript) that drove the GOP crazy, and...
• The outrageous lie, told amidst Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL)'s incredibly bizarre SOTU Rebuttal, regarding a 12-year old girl who was held captive and repeatedly raped by drug traffickers at the U.S. southern border during the Biden Administration which, as we have subsequently learned, didn't actually happen during the Biden Administration nor even in the U.S. at all. (Here's journalist Jonathan Katz' full, well-documented evisceration of Britt's incredible border lie.)

Then, we open up the phones to callers on all of the above, including on the never-ending DST debate and the almost-as-important debate over the importance of re-electing Joe Biden to save democracy and, yes, Gaza...if either can be saved at this point...

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The cynical "Say the Name Laken Riley" State of the Union stunt by MAGA Republicans underscores the hypocrisy of the longtime NRA-funded GOP.

Last Thursday, President Joe Biden entered the House Chamber and, moments before he delivered an elegant demolition of MAGA cult madness during an historic State of the Union Address, the 46th President of the United States was confronted by the QAnon conspiracy supporting wing-nut, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

In violation of House Rules, not to mention basic decorum, Greene wore a red MAGA cap, a white T-shirt reading "Say Her Name", and a red jacket on which she'd pinned a white button bearing the name "Laken Riley" and another bearing her photo. She handed Biden a "Laken Riley" button and, later, interrupted the President's SOTU Address --- screaming a demand that Biden "say her name"!

In response, Biden, who lost his first wife and daughter in a tragic car accident, not only said her name, while holding up the "Laken Riley" button, but expressed his condolences to Riley's parents.

The President's display of empathy towards the parents of the 22-year old nursing student, who was allegedly murdered last month by an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant, was appropriate. But the GOP's cynical effort to exploit the young lady's death in order to bolster Donald Trump's effort to create "hysteria" over an imaginary "immigrant crime wave" represents the height of hypocrisy...