On today's BradCast, the last one before Election Day(!), we debunk a lot of nonsense --- and out-and-out lies from the Donald Trump Campaign, in several instances --- from over the weekend and in to today. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Among the stories and avalanche of news covered on today's BradCast:

• FBI Director James Comey confirms there is nothing in newly discovered emails (most of them duplicates they'd seen before) that would lead to an indictment of Hillary Clinton;
• And, no, there is no "murdered FBI agent" involved, no matter what you saw on Facebook over the weekend;
• There was also no "assassination attempt" on Trump in Reno, NV over the weekend by a Republican sign-holder despite his campaign suggesting otherwise;
• There was, however, a Trump supporter with a gun intimidating voters outside a VA polling location;
• There appears to be record early voting turnout in dozens of states, and notably in Hispanic areas, where Trump's campaign blatantly lied over the weekend about polls being kept open "illegally" after hours;
• Nathan Sproul, a long-time GOP operative whose companies have a checkered past related to voter registration fraud in several states, was secretly hired by the RNC in 2012 and then fired once more fraud allegations became public. He's now been quietly hired again by the RNC and Trump camp in 2016;
• Dems lose several 'voter intimidation' lawsuits against Trump (but may have actually won anyway);
• There will be at least 868 fewer places to vote in 2016, thanks to SCOTUS gutting Voting Rights Act
• Kansas Sec. of State Kris Kobach is ordered (yet again, and hopefully once and for all!) to allow all registered voters to vote in both state and federal elections;
• North Carolina is ordered by a federal court to restore all unlawfully purged voters to the rolls before Election Day;

And, much more, as we head into Election Day together, near the end (hopefully?) one of the darkest and most insane cycles in U.S. history...

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On today's BradCast: Rightwing extremist groups are reportedly plotting to wreak potential havoc on Election Day, as Donald Trump's candidacy has helped to mainstream previously fringe organizations. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Despite Trump's repeated claims that millions of 'dead people' are voting, the evidence --- reported many years ago by The BRAD BLOG and more recently even by a mainstream corporate news outlet investigation in Wisconsin --- continues to show otherwise.

But while the threat of zombie voters has long been wildly overstated by Republicans, rightwing extremist groups --- neo-nazis, the KKK, militia organizations and others --- are claiming they have plans to mobilize a "show of force" at polling places across the country next Tuesday. That, as another black church in Mississippi is set on fire this week with the words "Vote Trump" spray painted onto it.

So, do these radical groups pose a real threat for chaos and disenfranchisement on Election Day? Or are they just latching on to Trump's racist coat tails in hopes of intimidating American voters? Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremists and hate groups, joins us to answer those questions and much more related to this extraordinary election and the not-coincidental emergence and rise of the so-called "Alt-Right".

Potok, who tells me he believes "there's a real possibility of sporadic violence" next week, says "the Radical Right in America today has a hero, in the [Republican] nominee for President of the United States. They see Donald Trump as the best thing, politically, that they've seen in a half-century or more, going back to at least George Wallace and probably further. They're thrilled. They are very energized."

He tells me that in his 25 years on this beat, he has never seen the radical right play such a key role in an American Presidential election, and explains that the term "Alt-Right" is little more than "a re-branding of white supremacy for the digital age."

"Trump," he explains "has taken the lid off Pandora's Box in a very real and substantial way." But will the threat that they pose to the nation be worse if Trump wins or if he loses? Tune in for that and much more (including --- make sure you are sitting down for it --- my defense, of sorts, of the late, rightwing propagandist Andrew Breitbart! Yes, there's another example of how insane this election year has become.)

Also on today's BradCast: In North Carolina, a federal judge finds the state's statute allowing challenges to the voter rolls to be "insane", and the state's incumbent U.S. Senator who is locked in a close re-election battle, apologizes for disturbing comments about 'targeting' Hillary Clinton, but vows to keep anybody from being seated on the U.S. Supreme Court for the next four years if she wins.

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On today's BradCast: While the national media is obsessed with Trump, a record amount of dark money from undisclosed corporate sources is being spent on judicial elections at state Supreme Courts. Also: A whole lotta other breaking news today, from a new development in the Hillary Clinton email probe, to some white, armed hooligan wingnuts getting off the hook for an armed federal takeover, to one U.S. Senator likely killing his own re-election chances during a debate last night. [Audio link to complete show posted below.]

On today's interview, Alicia Bannon, Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center's Democracy Program, joins us to explain the flood of outside spending from corporate, dark money sources now pouring in to state Supreme Court elections around the country, as detailed in her new analysis published this week. We also discuss the disturbingly increasing politicization of judicial elections and why it is that judges are selected by elections at all in some 38 states.

"Around the country, we've been seeing these elections become higher cost, more politicized, and attracting a lot of special interest attention," she tells me. And that's worrying, because, among other reasons, "a judge needs to be deciding cases based on their understanding of what the law requires and the facts that are in front of them, and not out of fears of what that's going to mean for fundraising in the next election cycle, or what's going to be the subject of their next attack ad."

While judicial elections "were actually a reform measure," when originally introduced in the 19th century because "there was a concern that those judges were too closely aligned with the political branches," Bannon explains, in the wake of Citizens United and other measures that have increased the flow of money into politics, judicial elections, "are putting even more pressure on judges because of the money involved and the conflicts of interest that get created."

We go on to discuss a number of such judicial conflicts of interests, from the remarkable case of the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin to the election that will determine the balance of the Supreme Court in North Carolina next week, to the judicial campaign being funded in no small part by fossil fuel interests in Louisiana, where the same corporate funders are facing legacy environmental cases to be decided by the very same court.

Bannon, who also clerked for Sondra Sotomayor when she was an appellate judge on the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, also shares a bit of personal insight on the U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Also today: The FBI notifies the U.S. Senate that they have found some additional emails in a separate investigation that may relate to their probe of Hillary Clinton's email server and the cable "news" industry predictably freaks out; The Bundy Brothers are acquitted at trial, for some reason, after their six-week armed takeover of a federal wildlife facility in Oregon earlier this year; Donald Trump fails to put up the $100 million he had promised to his own campaign; and Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk (R) offers an outrageously obnoxious racial slur during a debate with his opponent, double-amputee Iraq War veteran Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D)...

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Today on The BradCast, voters are fighting to cast their vote, as voting machines, election officials and GOP suppression efforts continue to work against them. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

The RNC may now be facing another 8 years of court-ordered restrictions against targeting minority voters, as the DNC files to have a federal Consent Decree from the early 80s extended, charging that the RNC and Trump campaign have colluded to unlawfully suppress the vote through so-called "ballot security" schemes and other intimidation tactics.

In the meantime, confidence in accurate election results is plummetting nationally and voter suppression seems to be working against voters in North Carolina, where early voting has been shortened in many counties and some voters --- including a 100-year old African-American woman --- are finding themselves threatened with being purged from the rolls after being challenged by Republican "caging lists".

In Wisconsin, Democratic lawmakers are begging the U.S. Dept. of Justice to send poll monitors after the state's GOP Photo ID voting restrictions are said to be resulting in havoc, confusion and disenfranchisement.

In Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Illinois (so far) 100% unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, touch-screen style) voting systems are reportedly flipping votes from R to D and from D to R and, once again, election officials are blaming voters, rather than themselves.

Also today: Militarized troops in North Dakota clear out Dakota Access Pipeline protesters near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation and the owners of the pipeline are revealed to be big Trump funders while the GOP nominee is revealed to have large stock holdings in the companies that own it; The Yale Record does "not" endorse Hillary Clinton and neither does Libertarian Party Veep nominee Gov. William Weld (wink); and Desi Doyen joins us to "blame the cows", among other things, in our the latest Green News Report...

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According to a Los Angeles Times "Debate scorecard," the opening segment of last week's third and final Presidential debate, concerning the respective nominees plans for appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court, was a "draw."

Three of the paper's pundits each proffered what at best could be described as a superficial one-paragraph explanation for their verdict: It was a "draw" because 1) an ordinarily unhinged Trump was "calm" and "sedate," and 2) by describing what they would look for in a nominee to SCOTUS, both candidates had appealed to their respective conservative Republican and liberal Democratic bases.

The "Debate scorecard" presents a classic example of what Bill Moyers derides as the "charade of fair and balanced --- by which two opposing people offer competing opinions with a host who assumes the viewer will arrive at the truth by splitting the difference" --- an unacceptable "substitute for independent analysis." Combined with the "draw" assessment, this form of irresponsible punditry lends itself to the false equivalency separately offered by FiveThirtyEight's Oliver Roeder, who suggested that both candidates were "promising an extreme candidate" to fill the vacancy left by the death of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In truth, the differences between the two Presidential nominees are profound. They represents the difference between oligarchy (Trump) and democracy (Clinton). Trump's preference for a judiciary that would protect the privileged few at the expense of the vast majority of ordinary Americans is both extreme and unpopular. Clinton's egalitarian criteria for judicial nominations is immensely popular and decidedly mainstream. There is nothing "extreme" about a jurist who is committed to the words that appear above the entrance to the U.S. Supreme Court: "Equal Justice Under Law."

What is especially troubling is that media pundits have erected a false equivalency on an issue of vital importance to the American electorate. Outside of global climate change, which threatens the very survival of humanity, the issue of what could turn out to be as many as three lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court over the next four years is amongst the most monumental that voters will face on Nov. 8. As we previously reported the fate of democracy itself is at stake.

Roeder and the three L.A. Times pundits would have understood that if they had bothered to either consult constitutional scholars or specific issue polls before erecting their false equivalency in their respective debate analyses...

On today's BradCast, the savior of the working class and "Great Negotiator" refuses to even sit down with union workers at his own property in Las Vegas, even as his party comes apart at the seams and the South-Eastern U.S. buckles up for another deadly storm. [Audio link posted at bottom of article.]

In advance of tonight's Vice Presidential debate, we speak with Bethany Khan of the UNITE HERE Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Nevada, where workers at the Trump Hotel Las Vegas voted to unionize last December. Nonetheless, the Trump Organizations has refused, to date, to even begin negotiations with some 500 now-unionized workers at his 1,200-room, 64-story five-star luxury tower in Sin City. The union is therefore calling for a North American boycott of all Trump properties (hotels, casinos, golf courses, etc.), using the hashtag #BoycottTrump.

Khan explains the action and how the GOP nominee for President has been using every available tool to challenge the lawful union vote, despite claims to represent the working class in the course of his campaign.

"Mr. Trump and his company is legally required to bargain with the Culinary Union and with the workers. The workers are fighting for fair wages, job security, good health benefits," she tells me. "They filed a series of objections --- the way the vote was counted, or who voted --- a host of things to try and tie this up in court. This practice of expansive litigation is one the union workers have beat --- soundly --- and we won. So there are no more objections they can file on the election. The hotel is certified as a union hotel. It's a union property. The only thing that's missing is a union contract."

While the Culinary Workers have endorsed Hillary Clinton, Khan says their organizing campaign started "before Donald Trump announced he was running for President," but adds that "The path to the White House goes through the Las Vegas Strip."

"There are 550 workers in his hotel here in Nevada. They're working people, living paycheck to paycheck. Culinary Union members comprise a majority of the middle class in Nevada. Mr. Trump, who says he wants to make America great again, has a great opportunity to start here in Las Vegas with his workers and give them a contract."

Also today: Tonight's Veep Debate offers an excuse to reminisce about the first BRAD BLOG story to make into the national press and get under the White House's skin back in 2004; The 2016 election is driving the country mad, but particularly the Republican Party (we've got some of the latest insane examples); And, finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report' with two massive and unusual hurricanes making landfall today and the Paris Agreement on climate change meeting key thresholds at the U.N. in record time, in hopes of "Trump Proofing" the landmark pact before the U.S. Presidential election...

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On today's BradCast, another Republican run state appears to be blatantly violating federal court requirements on voting rights, just over one month from Election Day. [Audio link to show posted below.]

While Donald Trump and his businesses have continuously violated state and federal law, even as he calls for 'Law and Order' on the campaign trail as detailed, yet again, on yesterday's program, Republican controlled states continue to violate federal court orders on voting rights. The latest appears to be Wisconsin who, as Ari Berman at The Nation reported, is systematically failing to supply voters with Photo IDs at Departments of Motor Vehicles as the state had promised the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in late August. That promise prevented the court from weakening or killing the GOP's Photo ID voting restriction which has been found, over and over (and over), to disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Joining us to discuss the news --- which has resulted today in a federal judge, on his own motion, ordering the state back in to court to explain themselves --- is Kathleen Unger, President of VotersRiders.org. Her non-profit, non-partisan organization, as Berman detailed, visited 10 DMVs around the Badger State and found only 3 of them prepared to provide Photo IDs to voters who need them to vote within the promised 6 days. Many of the others said the process would take anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks at best, long after Election Day is over and after tens of thousands of voters will have lost their right to vote.

"These Voter ID laws are an unfunded mandate on citizens," Unger explains, for minorities as well as seniors, students, low income voters and others who must take time off work and travel to get the very narrow type of IDs now required to vote in states where these laws have been allowed by courts to stand.

She offers details on the disturbing revelations discovered by her group during visits to WI DMVs with otherwise eligible voters, and what --- if anything --- can now possibly be done to correct the situation less than 40 days out from Election Day and with early voting already under way. She also hopes to point folks towards VoteRiders' downloadable, wallet-sized Photo ID information cards detailing the laws in each state. Informed voters may be the only hope, as chaos in many such states on Election Day is, yet again, a very serious concern.

Wisconsin, as Unger and I discuss, is just the latest scofflaw "red" state to blatantly violate recent federal court requirements concerning voting rights, following on the heels of Texas, Kansas, Ohio and others.

Also today: Yet another major newspaper breaks with years of tradition by asking readers to vote against the Republican nominee; Trump unleashes a bizarre overnight Tweetstorm railing against (and lying about) his former Miss Universe, and Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report recapping what little climate discussion there was at Monday's Presidential debate...

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Follow @GreenNewsReport...

(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hillary Clinton promotes climate and clean energy, while Donald Trump denies his denial, in the first Presidential debate; PLUS: Coal industry tries to kill Obama's landmark power plant emissions standards in federal court... 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): ExxonMobil sued over polluted river, ignored climate change; No quick fix for Canada’s energy industry from OPEC deal; MSNBC's Morning Joe Features Experts To Explain "Warning Signs" Of Climate Change; U.S. intelligence community warns climate change is already destabilizing communities worldwide; U.S. looks to restrict China coal imports from North Korea; Coal electricity generation falls to record U.K. low this spring; New Wind Turbines Could Power Japan for 50 Years After a Single Typhoon... PLUS: As Norway's Arctic draws visitors, more polar bears get shot... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, updates, racism, lies, voting rights and video tape. [Audio link posted below.]

We've got several updates on the situation in Charlotte, NC following the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott, including the release of an eyewitness video of the shooting said to be from his wife's cellphone. While the tape is heart-wrenching in and of itself, it also appears to show something that looks like a gun seemingly appearing from out of nowhere on the ground next to the victim's body. As noted on the show, I'm not sure what to make of this. It could somehow be a trick of light, shadows, editing, camera angle or...it might not be a gun at all. Others (NBC's Joy Reid, Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson) seemed to be wondering about it as well.

See it for yourself in both the New York Times version of the video as well as the NBC News version. (Enlarge the videos and watch the ground to the right of the body, just next to one of the cop's feet from appx 1:43 to 1:44 in the NBC version and appx 2:01 to 2:02 in the NYTimes version. The NBC version is a bit easier to see, since they have crop/zoomed-in the cellphone framing a bit.) Strange. No real comment. So, I'll just leave that here for now. (But, yes, police do get caught planting guns and falsifying police reports.)

Also today, more blatant and rather jaw-dropping racist statements from the (now former) Trump campaign chair in Mahoning County, OH, Republican U.S. Congressman Robert Pittenger (who represents Charlotte!) and, of course, from Trump himself.

Then, in advance of Monday's Presidential debate, a new non-partisan analysis finds the GOP nominee's proposed elimination of ObamaCare and replacement healthcare plan would result in 20 million Americans losing health coverage. We also review his repeated lie that he opposed the Obama/Clinton actions to intervene in Libya and take out Qaddafi (with audio from 2011 in which he declares the opposite in no uncertain terms.)

Next, troubling e-voting and hacking news and new court rulings and cases concerning voter suppression in the states of Ohio, Georgia and Texas. Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for an important Green News Report, as well as some disturbing, recently unearthed remarks from Libertarian Presidential nominee Gary Johnson concerning global warming...

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Today on The BradCast, startling revelations from the massive document dump of emails and other materials from the currently-quashed state criminal investigation into Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's 2012 recall election fundraising. [Audio link to show posted below.]

The Guardian's remarkable 1,300 page leak of documents from the so-called "John Doe investigation" of Walker's illegal collusion with "independent" third-party non-profit groups is, in many ways, jaw-dropping. As we discuss on today's show, in addition to that collusion, the leaked emails also reveal state GOP operatives preparing to declare massive Democratic voter fraud, without a shred of evidence in support, in order to try and win a very close 2011 election for state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser. The rightwing Justice would ultimately ensure a Walker-friendly majority on the court to support the Governor's controversial union-busting law.

"Do we need to start messaging 'widespread reports of election fraud' so we are positively set up for the recount regardless of the final number? I obviously think we should," writes one of the GOP operatives in one of the emails as results from the tight race came in. "Talk radio needs to scream the Dems are trying to steal the race...We need to declare victory first so it appears that the results are being overturned if they go the wrong way." Sound familiar?

[You can see what came of that recount, which we covered extensively back in 2011, including exclusives revealing, among other irregularities, ballot bags ripped and discovered "wide open" with mismatched or missing serial numbers as well as ballots found completely unsecured and other similar messes and mistallies across the state. My 2011 interview with Prosser's challenger, then Asst. Attorney General Joanne Kloppenburg, after she was ultimately forced to concede, thanks in no small part to the dishonest scheming applied by the operatives cited above, is right here.]

Attorney Brendan Fischer, Associate Counsel at the Campaign Legal Center in D.C., joins us to help unpack the breathtaking smoking guns revealed by these newly-disclosed documents, after the state's probe of Walker was shut down by the very same elected Justices on the state Supreme Court whose elections were funded by the exact same corporate millionaire and billionaire donors and illegal mechanisms revealed by the quashed documents. Yes, it makes my head spin too.

"These documents show the breadth of the coordination scheme that Walker was engaged in," Fischer tells me. "It shows that what the Republican and Democratic prosecutors in Wisconsin were looking into with this investigation was really significant. It was a broad scheme to evade the state's corporate contribution limits and disclosure requirements. And that was very explicit. The purpose of Walker coordinating was to evade disclosure laws, to allow corporations and controversial donors to support Walkers' re-election without any sort of public disclosure or public accountability. That was not a bug in this coordination scheme, that was the purpose from the beginning. And the emails show that very clearly."

You really need to listen to today's show to get the full picture of what happened, and how this scheme has served as a template for GOP elections all over the country now (including the very same donors behind Donald Trump's campaign and, indeed, as we learn, including Trump himself who gave money to the "independent" Wisconsin Club for Growth on the very same day he met with Walker in NYC.) Fischer also describes, for example, the lead paint manufacturer who secretly donated $750,000 to the tax-exempt, non-profit "social welfare" group before state Republicans slipped in a provision to a budget bill that granted immunity to his company in the face of lawsuits from hundreds of children poisoned by the paint. "The public was unable to connect the dots between the secret three-quarters of a million dollar contributions to Wisconsin Club for Growth and the later policy decisions that Walker took" on behalf of the donor, explains Fischer.

"Bigger picture, this is one of those rare snapshots into how 'dark money' works," he says. "When you look at these documents, the two [Walker and WCfG] are interchangeable. This was not an instance where Walker's campaign had a few conversations here and there with Wisconsin Club for Growth Officials...Wisconsin Club for Growth was an arm of the Walker campaign."

Fischer also goes on to explain what we might expect as the U.S. Supreme Court considers a motion that could re-open the state's criminal probe later this month. Even if I say so myself, it's a must-listen BradCast today...

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It's not for nothing that North Carolina Republicans are working so hard to keep certain people out of the voting booth this November.

North Carolina's Republican Governor Pat McCrory's chances for re-election took a direct hit after the U.S. Supreme Court recently denied his emergency request to stay a unanimous decision by the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeal. The 4th Circuit three-judge panel struck down a massive NC GOP voter suppression law that, the court found, had targeted Democratic-leaning African-American voters "with almost surgical precision."

McCrory now faces a reelection bid against a strong Democratic opponent who is not shy about calling the longtime Duke Energy CEO turned Governor to task for an environmental scandal (Ash-gate) that likely ranks second, in recent times, only to the poisoning of Flint, Michigan's drinking water.

McCrory's Ash-gate vulnerability was previously touched upon by Desi Doyen in a February 2015 Green News Report. After covering both a massive spill of 39 tons of toxic coal ash into North Carolina's Dan River in February 2014 and criminal charges leveled by federal prosecutors against Duke Energy for violations of the Clean Water Act in relation to the company's North Carolina projects dating back to 2010, Doyen quoted a report from WRAL-TV Raleigh (emphasis added):

McCrory's Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper, has served as NC's elected Attorney General since 2001. He is not only well-positioned to appeal to those whose very right to participate in our democracy had been threatened by McCrory's failed, Jim Crow-like voter suppression scheme, but has also launched a powerful TV ad (video posted below) highlighting the latest revelations concerning whether the McCrory administration may have fraudulently concealed the dangers to public health posed by the presence of Duke Energy's toxic coal ash in their drinking water...

On today's BradCast, I'm back after the holiday weekend, but you should tune in anyway! We're live today from the KPFK/Pacifica Radio studios in Los Angeles, as I try to catch up on stuff we missed over the long weekend, and breaking news today.

Among the stories we cover on today's program...

* Tightening Presidential polls [PDF] as pollsters change their methodology to move from "registered" to "likely" voters, as Donald Trump has taken a lead or is tied with Hillary Clinton in a couple of national polls and gaining in some swing states. Nonetheless, Clinton maintains her lead in the Electoral College and even remains competitive in a number of "red" states where she is receiving support from some surprising corners.

* North Carolina's vote suppressing Republican Governor Pat McCrory believes states should have "voting rights", as opposed to people/voters.

* We're reminded today, once again, that every vote counts (or, at least, should), as Helen Purcell, the controversial election chief in Maricopa County (Phoenix), appears to have won her Republican Primary by just over a hundred votes out of more than 300,000 cast, after trailing by just a few hundred votes following last week's state primary in Arizona. The exact percentage flip (she was reportedly losing the day after the election 49.93% to 50.07% against her challenger Aaron Flannery, before defeating him 50.07% to 49.93% as of today, according to Purcell's optical-scan computers reported on Purcell's website) reminds us once again of the need to publicly hand-count paper ballots on Election Night. Purcell, Maricopa's Republican County Recorder since 1988, was roundly criticized for reducing polling locations from more than 200 in 2012 down to 60 during the Presidential Primary in March. Flannery, her challenger last week, has said he cannot afford to mount a challenge to ask for a hand count, but will consider running again in 2020. If the current results hold, Purcell will face Democrat Adrian Fontes in November.

* Then, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest on the growing protests and emergency legal battles by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota against the desecration of sacred sites with the construction of the massive, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-approved (and EPA-opposed) Dakota Access Pipeline and the bad faith actions of its supporters.

Finally, we take listener calls on all of the above! Enjoy!...

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On today's BradCast, the Primary season is still going (believe it or not), and we've got several important results from Arizona and Florida's contests on Tuesday. Also, important breaking news for the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Obama Administration gets sued to stop new leases to oil and gas companies on federal lands. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

First today, Donald Trump goes to Mexico for a brief visit with the Mexican President. Our coverage is mercifully even briefer.

Then, the Scalia-free U.S. Supreme Court splits 4 to 4 in response to North Carolina's emergency attempt to stay a blistering ruling from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal in late July, where the state Republicans' massive voter suppression law was struck down after being found to have been enacted with "racially discriminatory intent" that "target[ed] African-American with almost surgical precision". The tie at SCOTUS means the lower court's ruling, nixing the law, will stand, even though four Justices (guess which ones) on the highest court in the land would have preferred to keep a law broadly seen as the nation's worst voter suppression law since the Jim Crow era in place for this November's Presidential election!

Speaking of elections, we review the results of several key races from Tuesday's state primaries in Arizona and Florida, where the reelection battles of Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio may determine the balance of the U.S. Senate this November. Also, the controversial Democratic FL Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz survives, as does controversial Republican Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, AZ. But the news for Helen Purcell, Maricopa's Republican County Recorder in Phoenix, who many blame for the disastrous Presidential Primary in the state earlier this year, may have reached the end of her 30-year career, with just a few hundred votes (out of more than 25,000 cast) now hanging in the balance.

Then, why is the Obama Administration, which has placed a moratorium on new federal land leases to coal companies, still selling millions of acres of leases to oil and gas companies? Jeremy Nichols, Director of the Climate and Energy Program at WildEarth Guardians, who, with Physicians for Social Responsibility, filed a suit last week seeking a moratorium from the Administration's Bureau of Land Management on such auctions, joins me to discuss the landmark federal lawsuit.

"What we're seeing here is a pattern and practice of the Administration continuing to hand over rights to our public lands to the oil and gas industry," Nichols explains. "By leasing these lands, they basically convert them to the ownership of the industry, and industry can hang on to these lands for as long as they want. It really is what we call an irreversible commitment of public resources here."

He goes on to tell me that while, in many respects, the Obama Administration has been a champion for the climate and the environment, on this issue, it seems, they appear to have "a very serious blind spot."

"We feel that it's high time for this administration to apply the same scrutiny to the oil and gas program that is has applied to coal-fired power plants, its coal mining program, and other aspects of our fossil fuel consumption," says Nichols. "We are in essence condoning the release of a lot more carbon into our atmosphere and, at this moment in time, pumping more carbon into the atmosphere is the last thing that this administration --- and we as the American public --- should be condoning."

At the same time, he says, the fossil fuel industry is actually suing the Obama Administration for not making more land available to them. "It's really a shocking filing on their end," Nichols argues. "They're basically saying that even though they've gotten everything they want on our public lands --- 10 million acres of our public lands since President Obama has taken office --- that it's not enough for them."

Finally today, a few follow-ups on a number of stories we've been covering over the past week, from Maine Gov. Paul LePage's mental and political breakdown to the reports of an official law enforcement investigation into more high-level GOP voter registration fraud in Florida, this time by Trump's top campaign chief. Oh, and Vladimir Putin has been arrested at a supermarket in Florida! No, really!

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On today's BradCast: As several polls tighten in advance of the Presidential election, the FBI issues a new warning to states about voting system intrusion and last minute battles continue in federal courts over voting rights access to the polls.

First up, a new report today from investigative journalist Michael Isikoff warns of recent intrusions, believe to be by foreign entities, into voter registration systems in both Illinois and Arizona. The report cites an "FBI Flash" warning [PDF] from its Cyber Division, recently issued to state election officials in hopes of warding off similar intrusions to electronic registration and voting systems in advance of the November election.

The latest news on the completely foreseeable vulnerabilities in our voting and registration systems underscores (yet again) what we've been warning about for so many years at both The BRAD BLOG and The BradCast. Unfortunately, as usual, reporting on this issue from mainstream corporate media comes too late to make much of a difference before the next election, after which the warnings are likely to be all but forgotten...until just before the next election.

Then, BradBlog.com's long-time legal analyst, attorney Ernest A. Canning joins us for an update on the roller coaster-like voting rights battles still waging in federal courts across the country, including the latest disturbing news on Photo ID voting restrictions in Wisconsin and why something known as "The Purcell Principle" will, once again, play a key role in all of those legal fights this year.

Canning, who also wrote about the just the latest example of GOP "voter fraud" hypocrisy over the weekend, summarizes the latest dispositions in a number of key court fights against racially discriminatory Photo ID voting restrictions in Wisconsin, Texas and North Carolina, and related legal battles over access to the polls in states such as Kansas, Arizona and the swing-state of Ohio. All of those cases are likely to have an impact on results up and down the ballot this year.

Finally, we say goodbye to the hilarious Gene Wilder today, a regular presence --- in both voice and spirit --- on The BradCast...

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On today's BradCast, Trump turns to a Rightwing 'news' blogger with no experience in national elections to help him save his campaign, and North Carolina Republicans further reveal their desperation to keep Democrats away from the voting booth this November. [Audio link posted at bottom of article.]

But first, California continues to pay the huge, early costs of climate change as brand new wildfires explode in bone-dry Southern California, leading to evacuations of more than 80,000 residents today and the destruction of an untold number of structures, including at least one Route 66 landmark.

Then, Donald Trump responds to plummeting poll numbers with a staff shake-up that taps a Rightwing media huckster with no political experience, from far-right propaganda/conspiracy website Breitbart 'News', to head up his campaign. Eric Boehlert from Media Matters joins us to explain how the GOP establishment's demand that the Republican nominee begin running a more traditional campaign has been answered by Trump's decision to do the complete opposite, as illustrated by the new hires.

"This is someone who has no campaign experience," Boehlert, a longtime Breitbart watcher explains, describing Trump's new campaign chief Stephen Bannon. "The Trump campaign, which has been hit hard for being amateurish, for having no ground game, for having no advance teams, poor fund-raising, no surrogate operation --- they decided what they really need is someone at the top of the campaign who's never been on a campaign, let alone a presidential campaign."

"There's already this raging civil war within the conservative media. We've never seen anything like it," he says. "In terms of that civil war, people were already pointing to Breitbart as the problem. So, for Trump to now go to Breitbart to get a new campaign chief, for the rest of the conservative movement, it's just proof positive that everyone in the Trump campaign is just completely off the rails and have no idea what they're doing."

"There's going to be so many reckonings after November," Boehlert predicts. We'll see if he's right about that.

In the meantime, desperate North Carolina Republicans have now filed an emergency petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to help them keep the state's "racially discriminatory" voter suppression law in place through November, even as GOP officials around the state work to adopt new restrictions on voting in lieu of the sweeping election law recently struck down by the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals for having "target[ed] African-Americans with nearly surgical precision".

At this point, for unpopular Republicans in NC --- and, similarly, around much of the rest of the country --- voter suppression may be one of just a very few ways they have left to save their bacon this November.

Finally today, we say "Bye-Bye!" to legendary broadcaster John McLaughlin, who changed the political media landscape (for both better and worse), following news of his death this week at age 89...

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