On today's BradCast: While voters head to the polls today in Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Kansas and Washington state (results and problem reports from those states on tomorrow's show), we look at some of the problems still emerging from primary races earlier this year, and new documentation on Donald Trump's now-disbanded hoax "voter fraud" commission, headed up by Kansas' con-man Secretary of State Kris Kobach (who is on the KS ballot seeking the GOP nomination for Governor today). We also look at some of the Trump voters who say they've had enough, and the "idiots" still with him, even as he continues to undermine them, the economy and small business across the country. [Audio link to today's show follows below.]

Among the stories covered on today's program...

• Maine's Democratic Sec. of State Matt Dunlap who, as a Commissioner on Trump's so-called "Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity" was forced to sue the Commission to get documentation on what they were actually doing, calls his time on the panel "the most bizarre thing I've ever been a part of". After finally receiving some 8,000 documents by court order, Dunlap concedes the Commission was little more than a scam to try and prove Trump's evidence-free theory that anywhere from 3 to 5 million illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election (in which some 3 million more votes were cast for Hillary Clinton than Trump.) Long-time GOP "voter fraud" fraudster Kris Kobach responds to Dunlap today, by citing two easily-debunked "reports" on "voter fraud" created by rightwing outlets to hoax the nation into instituting disenfranchising Photo ID voting restrictions at the polls.

• New evidence and testimony submitted with a new court filing in a lawsuit against Georgia and its Sec. of State (and, now, GOP gubernatorial nominee) Brian Kemp, reveal massive problems during the state's May primaries and July primary runoffs, including voters given the wrong ballots, the wrong precincts at which to vote, and, in at least once precinct, 670 ballots cast despite only 276 registered voters in the precinct. (The lawsuit challenges GA's use of 100% unverifiable voting systems and seeks to force the state to move to hand-marked paper ballots before November. My most recent interview with plaintiff Marilyn Marks, the Exec. Dir. of the non-partisan Coalition for Good Governance, is here.)

• Los Angeles County finally has an explanation for why more than 118,000 names were left off the printed polling place voter rosters during California's June 5th statewide primary. The County's official explanation is posted here, along with a link to the Executive Summary [PDF] of the report by IBM Security Services, the group commissioned to carry out an independent probe of what happened. The County has chosen to not share the full investigative report with the public.

• Trump's trade war is continuing to take its toll. Toyota recently announced that as much as $3,000 could be added to the sticker price of some of its most popular models, and thousands of U.S. jobs may be imperiled in the bargain. And, as NBC News finds Trump's anti-immigration policies are costing small businesses dearly --- particularly in "Trump Country" from the Midwest to Texas to Maryland --- CNN finds that some, but not all, Trump voters are regretting their 2016 votes and deeply embarrassed by this President.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as record heat takes its toll across the globe, thousands of fire fighters in California are battling some 16 wildfires, including the largest in state history, toxic algae is stinking up the state of Florida, and something really stinks in North Carolina.

Enjoy!...

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A whole lotta stuff happened over the long holiday weekend, much of which the Trump Administration hopes you don't notice at all. We try help you notice them on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

But we start with some of the very few bits of good news we could find, as November's elections --- and our only hope --- loom large. First up: A petition drive in Michigan to place a host of election reforms on the ballot appears to have been successful. With 430,000 signatures submitted (far more than the 316,000 required), it looks like Michiganders will be able to vote for automatic voter registration, same-day registration, no-fault absentee voting and much more this Fall.

In Kansas, following a trial and federal court order, Kris Kobach, the state's embarrassing Sec. of State, has finally added some 25,000 voters to the rolls who had been denied access for lack of "Proof of Citizenship" documents. The court struck down the state law requiring the documentation as unconstitutional after Kobach monumentally failed in his defense of the law during the recent trial on behalf of voters who had challenged it. That hasn't stopped the GOP's top "voter fraud" fraudster, however, from claiming --- you guessed it --- fraud during a recent GOP straw poll in advance of the August primary in the state, where Kobach hopes to win the Republican nomination for Governor. (He lost the straw poll to Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer...by a lot.)

In other (largely) good news, Starbucks says they plan to do away with plastic straws to help save the planet (and comply with local governments who are banning them.)

Then, to the much less good news, as all-time heat records were shattered, by double-digits, here in Southern California over the holiday. Though the wildly corrupt fossil-fueled tool Scott Pruitt was finally forced to resign over the holiday weekend as chief of the Environmental Protection Agency (his resignation letter is amazingly creepy!), his second-in-command, Andrew Wheeler, an actual coal industry lobbyist, will now take over the EPA.

Also in recent days, two issues that Trump claims to have fixed (which he broke in the first place), have proven not to have been fixed at all. Despite Sec. of State Mike Pompeo describing recent "denuclearization" talks with North Korea as "productive", the North's Foreign Ministry characterized the U.S. attitude at negotiations as "gangster-like" and "cancerous" just after he left. That, after Donald Trump recently declared: "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea".

And, the chaos continues as the Administration is reportedly nowhere near being able to reunite some 3,000 children with their parents, as required by a federal court order and deadlines, after they were separated at the southern border by Trump's immigration goons. That, after identification documents for many of the children were reportedly lost or destroyed, and despite Trump signing an Executive Order two weeks ago which he said would solve the tragic separations that he caused in the first place.

Finally today --- along with a ton of phone calls from listeners on all of the above and much more throughout today's show --- a few words, and some personal remembrances, on the sad passing last week of progressive radio and television broadcaster, and workers' champion, Ed Schultz...

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Desi and I are ducking out for a short breather over the Independence Day holiday. But, before we go, I appeared recently on Free Forum, hosted by longtime broadcaster and great interviewer TERRENCE MCNALLY.

So, with McNally's kind permission on today's BradCast, we bring you that recent interview, originally recorded in studio on June 24, 2018 at KPFK, our flagship Pacifica Radio Network station in Los Angeles, in which the tables are turned a bit on me.

I respond to his questions about my background, the bizarre circumstances --- and, yes, election chicanery --- which helped lead me deep into the world of investigative blogging, broadcasting and muckraking some 15 years ago.

We also discuss detailed concerns about the reported (and still unverified) results of the earth-shaking 2016 Presidential election, how jurisdictions around the country are now moving to new computerized voting and tabulation systems in its wake (even as those systems, with computer-marked, barcoded ballots will only sever to make public oversight of results worse, not better) and what Americans can do right now to fight like hell to assure they are able to vote and have their votes counted as per intent in the crucial 2018 midterms.

Much thanks to Terrence for allowing us to re-purpose his program for today's BradCast! Please see and download his many years of insightful interviews with tons of fascinating and much smarter folks than I, and sign up for his weekly email announcement list, at his website, AWorldThatJustMightWork.com! You can also hear his show on weekends at ProgressiveVoices.com and TuneIn.

We'll be back with ya after the holiday weekend! Please stay safe and, somehow, cool, until our return!

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The crazy train continues. And gets crazier. Among the stories covered on today's BradCast. [Audio link to show follows below.]...

• The stolen Republican 5 to 4 majority [PDF] on the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday found in favor of Ohio's radical voter purge scheme that begins to remove voters from the rolls for failing to vote in one single federal election, in what voting rights advocates (and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) found to be a direct violation of the National Voter Registration Act. According to a 2016 Reuters analysis, the scheme resulted in 144,000 voters being removed from the rolls in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus alone, and affected voters in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods at roughly twice the rate as in Republican neighborhoods. Other GOP-controlled states are now believed likely to adopt similar voter purge schemes;

• The Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters says he cannot yet rule out hacking as the cause for 118,000 voters being left off the printed rosters at the polls during last week's midterm primaries in California. Registrar Dean Logan has announced that an independent analyst will be hired to try and determine why it happened and how to prevent an even worse disaster this November;

• Seemingly bowing to public pressure, The Trump Administration's Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has now said he plans to back off his proposed scheme to increase rents by more than 20% per year on more than 8 million low-income Americans --- including millions of children, elderly and the disabled --- who live in federally subsidized housing for the working poor; (Our guest on this topic last week, former Obama HUD official Diane Yentel, warns that pieces of this proposal may find its way into other legislation being moved by Congressional Republicans to gut the social safety net for the poor.);

• Then, on to the crazy train: Trump arrived late and left early from the Group of Seven (G7) summit with our top allies on Saturday, pulled the U.S. off of the G7's traditional summit-ending communiqué, which he'd previously agreed to, and then turned against mild-mannered Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for daring to keep his promise to respond (as he'd previously announced) to Trump's trade tariffs imposed on imported steel and aluminum from Canada and other close allies last week. In turn, Larry Kudlow, Trump's top economic adviser, took to the Sunday news shows to describe Canada's response as a "betrayal" and his top trade adviser, Peter Navarro went on to charge there was a "special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad diplomacy with president Donald J. Trump.";

• All of which served as a precursor for Trump's historic summit set for Tuesday in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. On Monday, Trump announced he planned to leave that summit --- with the potential denuclearization of North Korea and an end to the 70-year old conflict between the North and the South on the table --- early as well. What could possibly go wrong? And how bad does this all get before it gets better?

Callers ring in on all of the above on today's busy BradCast, focusing on the election failure last week in Los Angeles, and how Trump is likely to try and use the results from Singapore, whatever they may be, to his political advantage...accurately, dishonestly, or otherwise...

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On today's BradCast: We continue our coverage of fallout following this past Tuesday's midterm primary elections in eight states, as the counting and canvassing moves forward. [Audio link to show follows below]

In California on Wednesday night, Sec. of State Alex Padilla (D) sent a stern letter to Los Angeles County's Registrar Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan demanding answers and actions following a still-unexplained "printing error" that resulted in the names of more than 118,000 registered voters (including Fonzie!) being left off the printed rosters at more than 1,000 polling places.

Voters found missing from the rolls were to have been given provisional ballots on Tuesday, according to Logan, but there are questions as to whether all of them were. Also, there are concerns about whether those provisional ballots will all, in fact, be counted (or tossed for bad reasons, as some provisional and vote-by-mail ballots are), and if those ballots will be included in the county's 1% post-election manual "spot check", meant to determine whether hand-marked paper ballots were tallied as per voter intent by the county's computer tabulators. A new state law adopted last year exempts both provisional ballots and late vote-by-mail ballots post-marked by Election Day (which may arrive several days after the election and still be included in tallies) from that mandated 1% "random audit". We've got a bit of exclusive news on that front today.

That disaster was not the only problem for voters on Tuesday in L.A., the nation's largest voting jurisdiction. One blind voter reports on her failed attempt to vote on four separate audio voting systems for disabled voters at three separate polling places. All four machines failed to work, echoing a very similar problem that I had while attempting to vote on those very same systems in L.A. ten years ago. In a 2008 primary, 4 out of 12 of my own votes were misprinted by the computer-marked paper ballot audio voting system. (Luckily, I'm not blind, so was able to notice the computer-printed failure before casting the ballot!) Two years later, in 2010, when I tried the system again, it failed to work altogether on two different machines.

Also in CA on Tuesday, voters in a recall election successfully removed a state judge who had issued a controversially lenient sentence to a Stanford University athlete last year following his sexual assault of an unconscious woman. Another recall election, engineered by state Republicans, resulted in the removal of a Democratic state Senator for having voted in favor of a gas tax hike last year. The successful recall strips Dems of their two-thirds super-majority in the state Senate, which is required for the passage of any new state taxes or fees.

In Alabama, the unbalanced Republican Sec. of State John Merrill --- who blocked me on Twitter last December for being correct about the state's computer tabulation systems, before sending a barrage of insanely bizarre emails to me last week --- won his primary for re-election on Tuesday.

And Joseph Siegelman, son of the former Democratic AL Gov. Don Siegelman, (both guests on the show over the years) won his primary for Attorney General in the state. Depending on the results of a primary runoff on the GOP side, Siegelman may be running this November against a former AL Attorney General who was part of the GOP cabal who helped imprison his father on seemingly trumped up bribery charges more than a decade ago. (Tune in for a wild summary of the incredible GOP corruption in that state around all of that, which still echoes throughout state politics today. And, with all of the madness I quickly summarized on the show, I now realize I forgot to mention, incredibly enough, that the George W. Bush-appointed federal judge who convicted and sentenced Gov. Siegelman was later forced to resign after being arrested for beating his wife!)

And, in South Dakota, some remarkable fallout from a Sheriff's race in one county, underscoring, yet again that elections have consequences and that so-called "Right-to-Work" states are anything but.

Then, after a smart observation from longtime BRAD BLOG reader "Dredd", who points out that more Americans appear to have been killed by one climate event --- Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico --- than in our (so far) 17-year long war in Afghanistan, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report. Among other things in today's report, still more outrageous corruption news revealed from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. But, we had more on that front than we could fit into our GNR today --- and more that has broken since recording it Wednesday morning --- so we follow up with that additional news about Trump's kleptocratic EPA chief, including a Republican U.S. Senator who has some choice words for the shockingly still-employed Pruitt...

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On today's BradCast: It was a wild ride on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, particularly in California, as eight states (CA, AL, IA, MS, MT, NJ, NM and SD) all held their held their mid-term primary elections, along with another special election for MO's state legislature.

Most eyes were on the Golden State Tuesday, as Democrats see as many as seven U.S. House seats currently held by Republicans that they may be able to flip this November. But, thanks to California's "Top Two" or "Jungle Primary" system, where all candidates, from all parties, run in the same primary --- with the top two vote-getters going on to compete in November --- there was a very real chance that Dems could have been shut out of some of those flippable races altogether, due to the sheer number of Democrats on yesterday's ballot. That bullet appears to have been dodged, so far. As of Wednesday afternoon, it appears that Dems will place in the two top in each of those races, though votes are still being tallied across the state, and a number of Election Day concerns have muddied some of the water.

One such concern is the more than 118,000 voters whose names were left off of the printed voter rosters at the polls in Los Angeles County, due to a "printing error". Though voters were all supposed to have been given provisional ballots if their names did not appear, the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which leads the national Election Protection coalition, reported in a statement last night that "many were not".

Meanwhile, in the northern part of the state, it was a failure of electronic pollbooks in CA's San Mateo County that forced some voters to cast hand-marked paper provisional ballots (arguably better than the county's 100% unverifiable electronic voting system, however!) And a similar failure of computerized e-pollbooks from a private vendor in eight different South Dakota counties also jeopardized that state's election on Tuesday.

We're joined today by JIM DEAN, longtime chair of Democracy for America (DFA), which has has been fighting to build a broad, progressive grassroots coalition since Dean's brother Howard famously ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination back in 2004. Dean, whose DFA-endorsed candidates won some and lost some on Tuesday, excoriates the national, "institutional" Democratic Party for meddling in state primaries, including in CA, where, he argues, voters, not the party, should be allowed to decide who will run in November.

"If we aren't good enough to expand the electorate in these districts, to have enough support so that one of the Democratic candidates is going to survive this top two 'jungle primary' system --- if we're not good enough to do that, then it doesn't matter whether they engineer a Democratic second place finisher or not," he contends.

He also suggests that this week's primaries in CA, may signal that it's time to end the state's "experiment" with the Top Two system, while otherwise observing that Tuesday, overall, was a very good day for Democrats and progressives alike. Dean tells me he is "celebrating" the "plethora of candidates that are out there running and putting themselves out" in response to the nation's "little Fort Sumter moment in 2016."

We also discuss what effect the 2nd place finish by Republican businessman John Cox to take on Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom in the Gubernatorial race this November in CA is likely to have on Dems chances of flipping several House seats from "red" to "blue" and how the U.S. Senate contest between two Democrats, Sen. Diane Feinstein and the more progressive (DFA-endorsed) second-place finisher, state Senate President Kevin de León, might effect voter turnout across the state as well.

As to the party's national message, such that there is one to date, Dean believes the candidates who are running this year will force the party in the right direction. "Last year, canvassers were being told not to talk to voters about immigration and gun control," he says. "It's time for us to start standing up. The thing that is so great about these candidates, they're pushing this out. You may not agree with their positions, but they are pushing this stuff out. We are having a lot of progressive positions that do have traction. $15 an hour is another one. Medicare For All. A lot of things are going to come out in the primary process, and we just have to make sure the leadership doesn't buckle that down" as they have in years past.

"I think the candidates are going to change that. I'm confident their aggressive style is going to force the leadership to actually say what they're for, and not say 'you gotta vote for us because the other guy's really bad', which is not a winning message."

There was more good news elsewhere for Democrats and progressives on Tuesday, including in New Mexico where Debra Haaland now appears poised to become the first Native American woman ever in the U.S. House after winning her primary. And progressive grassroots upstart Susan Herrera unseated a long-serving, rightwing corporatist Democrat in the state's House of Representatives, making reform in NM for things like automatic voter registration and gun safety legislation now much more likely. There is no Republican running against her for the seat this fall.

Finally, in Missouri, Democrat Lauren Arthur won a special election for the state Senate, in a district that has been held by Republicans for more than a decade. Her whopping 19-point victory (a nearly 25-point swing since Trump won the district by 5 points in 2016), appears to be freaking out many Republicans in MO and elsewhere, who worry about the potential "blue wave" that Dems hope to see crashing ashore this November...

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On today's BradCast: As voters head to the polls in eight states (CA, AL, IA, MS, MT, NJ, NM and SD) on Tuesday, we cover a few "sorta victories" elsewhere for now, including at the U.S. Supreme Court. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Reports of problems at the polls have already cropped up, however, in South Dakota, where electronic pollbooks failed in eight counties, and here in Los Angeles, where a "random issue with the print job" on paper rosters at polling places, according to the County Clerk, has led to some voters needing to cast provisional ballots.

As we await election results and likely reports of more problems elsewhere, a "sorta victory" for Twitter users who had sued the President after he blocked them on Twitter. Those seven plaintiffs were finally unblocked by Trump after a federal court found last month that he was violating their Constitutional First Amendment free speech rights. But, on the same day those seven were unblocked, the Dept. of Justice appealed the court's ruling anyway.

In Alabama, another "sorta victory" as the story of Sec. of State John Merrill blocking folks on Twitter for pointing out his errors as the state's top election official, has finally been picked up by the corporate media in the state. That, just hours before voters headed to the polls, with Merrill himself on the ballot. The coverage comes after we first reported on Merrill's behavior months ago (when he blocked me for being right about the state's computerized election tabulators), and again last week after he sent me a flurry of insane emails [PDF] in response to a simple query as to whether he planned to unblock followers now that a federal court has found his behavior to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The Montgomery Advertiser's weak coverage, however, largely serves to offer the Sec. of State a platform to call election experts and journalists "trolls" (for being correct and polite), while still refusing to unblock them.

In Arizona, a lawsuit against the state for keeping tens of thousands of registered voters off the rolls for failing to provide "proof of citizenship" before being allowed to vote has now been settled with a consent decree that will enfranchise many voters, even if it will still result in thousands being disallowed from voting in state and local contests. So, a "sorta victory" there as well.

And, at the U.S. Supreme Court this week, a "sorta victory" for both anti-gay bigots and civil rights advocates as the long-awaited ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. CO Civil Rights Commission, a case involving a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex couple's wedding reception is finally decided by a narrow 7 to 2 ruling in favor of the baker...sorta.

Slate legal reporter MARK JOSEPH STERN joins us to explain how Justice Anthony Kennedy, with his majority opinion. tries to "have his cake and eat it too," by largely kicking the can down the road for another day, while ostensibly siding with the baker against the state Commission on rather dubious religious freedom grounds.

The decision, however, also appears to strengthen the existing right of states to bar discrimination by similar businesses on the basis of sexual orientation. So much so, that, under the ruling, the two plaintiffs, according to their ACLU attorney, should be able to walk into Jack Phillip's Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, CO today and purchase a cake for their wedding anniversary, if they wished. If they are blocked, that would be in violation of the Constitution. Nonetheless, a definitive opinion from SCOTUS on the issue of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation will have to wait for another day.

"If the Supreme Court applied the same standard to the [Trump] travel ban case as they have applied to Masterpiece, the Court would have no trouble striking down the travel ban as a violation of First Amendment religious freedoms," Stern tells me, when I ask whether Kennedy's weak religious liberty argument here may apply more to some religions than others. "Unfortunately, I do not think the court is going to be consistent. I think, instead, the Court's going to wind up applying a much stricter standard when it's Christians' rights on the line, than when it's Muslims' rights on the line. And we're all going to be very disappointed in this kind of inconsistent religious liberty --- 'for me, but not for thee.'"

Stern offers smart insight on the Court's opinion(s) --- which were widely misreported elsewhere on Monday --- as well as another decision this week from the Court on the Trump Administration's failed attempt to punish the ACLU for supporting a teen immigrant who sought a lawful abortion after being detained at the border. That ruling, at least, was a complete victory, he explains, not just a "sorta" one.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with news on two deadly volcanoes in Guatemala and Hawaii, the Administration's new scheme to bail-out the coal industry, Canada's new scheme to nationalize a controversial pipeline, and more distressing fossil fuel and climate change news...

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On today's BradCast: Great news for a change, with a big victory for voters in Georgia! [Audio link to show is posted below.]

After what seemed impossibly long odds just days ago, a bill that would have moved the state from 100% unverifiable touch-screen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting devices to just-as-bad-if-not-worse 100% unverifiable computer-printed and barcoded "paper ballots", failed to pass in the state's General Assembly before the legislative session ended for the year on Thursday at midnight.

That, despite a powerful lobbying effort by the nation's largest private voting machine vendor, ES&S, which stood to make millions on the deceptive "paper ballot" scheme being pushed by elected officials --- including GA's Republican Sec. of State candidates State Rep. Buzz Brockway and State Sen. Josh McKoon --- in both chambers of the legislature.

In recent days, however, Election Integrity advocates on the ground in Atlanta and via social media have been rallying like crazy and mounting an extraordinarily impressive effort to inform the public in hopes of blocking this dangerous bill. The effort was focused on detailing the many dangers of unverifiable barcoded ballots as produced by the type of touch-screen Ballot Marking Device (BMD) computer voting systems that GA lawmakers were hoping to move to after 15 years of using easily-hacked, oft-failed DRE voting systems statewide.

We're joined again today, for a bit of a victory lap, by election integrity expert MARILYN MARKS who has been tirelessly fighting the bill and rallying the social media troops on Twitter, along with Jenny Cohn and others in recent days. (Cohn was on the show several weeks ago to discuss the GA bill and her must-read article documenting the many dangers of unverifiable BMD "paper ballot" voting systems.) Marks was also on the program just days ago, when overcoming the "incidious" vendors' last minute push for SB403 in the GA legislature seemed all but impossible.

"It is because of the hundreds of people that called, wrote, tweeted...just so much pushback from the citizens," that the effort to kill the bill was successful, she tells me today.

After citing the many who made Thursday's late night victory possible, Marks turns our attention to several continuing related battles. Among them, the lawsuit her organization, Coalition for Good Governance, filed months ago in hopes of ending GA's use of DREs in favor of a verifiable HAND-MARKED paper ballots. GA already uses such a system for absentee vote-by-mail balloting and, Marks argues, the same existing system could easily and inexpensively be expanded for use by all voters at the polling place before this fall's crucial mid-terms.

She also offers a warning for voters around the nation, where unverifiable computer-marked and barcoded paper ballot BMD schemes, like the ones being pushed in GA, are already being deceptively sold to the public as "paper ballot" systems by Republicans and Democrats alike. PLEASE NOTE: Paper ballots or "voter-marked" paper ballots are not enough. Demand nothing less than HAND-MARKED paper ballots as your state or county "upgrades" its system with the hundreds of millions of dollars that have just been allocated for this by Congress!

Marks tells me she's hopeful that the broad social media effort on SB430 has resulted in lessons that can be used around the country "when --- it's not an 'if', but 'when' --- the barcode balloting comes to them. And they better be watching carefully, because this money is about to start flowing from the federal government like now, literally now, and you know exactly what the vendors are going to do."

Also on today's show: A recently leaked memo reveals how Administrator Scott Pruitt's EPA is now instructing employees to use false talking points regarding the science of climate change in order to create doubt and confuse the public about the broad scientific consensus finding the human burning of fossil fuels as the main cause of global warming; A new AP survey of young voters finds huge majorities see Donald Trump as "racist", "dishonest" and "mentally unfit" for office; Judge Stephen Reinhardt, "liberal lion" on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, died suddenly on Thursday, after nearly 40 years on the court; And, finally, a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds some 75% of Americans now support a "Medicare-for-All" style, single-payer, national health care insurance program...

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On today's BradCast: The fight for Election Integrity is often one step forward and two steps back. Don't be fooled by what many are deceptively describing as a move to "paper ballots", when those "paper ballots" aren't really what they are being sold as. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up today: A quick preview of the U.S. House Special Election in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District on Tuesday, where voters will, shamefully, once again cast their votes in the crucial race on 100% unverifiable touch-screen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems.

At the same time, lawmakers in the state of Georgia, which has disastrously used similarly unverifiable DREs for the past 15 years, are moving a deceptively described "paper ballot" bill forward in the legislature. However, what those lawmakers are not making clear (and some may not even understand) is that the bill would fund new computer-marked paper ballot systems, known as Ballot Marking Devices (BMD)s, across the state. Such systems also require voters to use a touch-screen device to vote and, like DREs, also cannot be verified after an election as reflecting the intent of any voter.

Worse still, rather than use the human-readable information printed out by the computers onto the "paper ballot" at the end of the process, BMDs use optical scanners which tally results read from barcodes or QR codes printed on the ballot that are NOT human readable!

And, it's not only Republican-leaning Georgia that is quickly hoping to move to such unverifiable systems. So is the largest voting jurisdiction in the nation, Los Angeles County! Also, counties in Texas and Tennessee are already using them and other states are looking to purchase them as well. Indeed, many supposedly progressive organizations and Democrats are actually recommending them, without understanding the very real dangers of BMDs!

We're joined today by attorney-turned-journalist JENNIFER COHN to discuss her well-researched and documented concerns, as detailed by voting system and computer security experts, regarding the nation's dangerous and disturbing lurch towards what she describes as expensive "electric pencils", otherwise known as BMDs. Cohn explained those concerns in simple, layman's language in a recent post at The BRAD BLOG.

As we discuss on the show: No, "paper ballots" are not enough! We need HAND-MARKED paper ballots that are known to have been verified by the voters, if we are going to even have a chance of restoring publicly verifiable democratic elections in the U.S.

Cohn details both in her article and on today's show, a number of academic studies finding that most voters do not check computer printouts and summaries at the end of the voting process, and of the minority who do, some 60% or more don't even notice when the computer has flipped their vote!

PLEASE tune in for this important conversation, because Americans must begin to understand the dangers presenting by these deceptively described "paper ballots", which are coming to a voting jurisdiction near you!

Then, we open up the phone lines today to callers on that issue, as well as some of my thoughts from last Friday's show regarding the supposed face-to-face meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and even crazier U.S. leader Donald Trump, regarding the North's nuclear weapons program...

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[An earlier version of this article was originally published by Jennifer Cohn at Medium. She joined me on The BradCast to discuss it. - BF]

A Ballot Marking Device ("BMD") is a touchscreen computer that generates a computer-marked paper ballot or printout, which is then tallied on a computerized optical scanner. (Those computer-marked ballots can also, in theory, be counted by hand, but generally are not, as most election officials rely on optical scanners instead.)

BMDs were initially designed for people who are unable to hand-mark paper ballots due to disability, old age, etc. But the state of Georgia and Los Angeles County, California are now at the forefront of an unfortunate new trend, which is to consider buying these expensive hackable "electronic pencils" for use by all voters at the polls, regardless of need.

The Georgia legislature is quickly working to adopt a bill to fund such new systems to replace their similarly 100% unverifiable, 15-year old Diebold touchscreen systems used across the entire state. L.A. County is in the late process of a years-long development program to deploy these systems in time for the 2020 Presidential election.

Should Georgia and Los Angeles proceed on their current course, it would introduce a second unnecessary and insecure computer system in the polling place above and beyond already insecure optical scanners, creating twice as many opportunities for electronic programming errors, paper jams, and hacking. For example, some BMD systems have already had problems with:

• Vote flipping (when election integrity advocate and journalist Brad Friedman used such a device in Los Angeles in a 2008 election, the device flipped 4 out of 12 of his selections on the computer-marked paper ballot);
• Inability to display all candidates on one screen (a problem reported by the state of Maryland, which had acquired such systems for all voters, but changed its mind even though the screen problem was eventually fixed); and
• Vendor breach of certification requirements (as occurred with vendor Election Systems & Software, "ES&S", the nation's largest voting system vendor).

Meanwhile, two of the most popular BMD's --- the ES&S ExpressVote and the Dominion ImageCast --- produce bar-coded (or QR-coded) printouts, which cannot be read by human beings, in lieu of traditional, hand-marked paper ballots.

This is alarming, according to experts --- including some who describe BMDs as "Son of DREs" --- for a number reasons...

On today's BradCast, on the day following Sunday night's Academy Awards show, we're joined in studio at KPFK/Pacifica Radio for the hour by our friend MIMI KENNEDY, Advisory Board Chair of Progressive Democrats of America and star of the CBS sit-com Mom (which also stars last night's Best Supporting Actress winner Allison Janney). [Audio link to show follows below.]

We've got lots to discuss today with Kennedy, a longtime progressive activist and leader (that's her and me in the photo above, just after today's show), and we also open up the phone lines to callers as well.

Among the many issues and items we chat and/or bicker about today:

• What Best Actress winner Frances McDormand was referring to when she, somewhat cryptically, called for "inclusion riders" Sunday night during her barn-buster acceptance speech;

• How Hollywood and its politics have changed very quickly over the past year or two in light of the #MeToo and #OscarsSoWhite movements;

• Whether Democrats chances to retake the U.S. House this November are as good as many Dems seem to think;

• Conservative Democrat Connor Lamb's chances of winning next week's U.S. House Special Election in the "Trump Country" of Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional district;

• Big turnout in advance of Tuesday's first-in-the-nation 2018 primary elections in Texas;

• Serious concerns about election integrity that still undermine democracy in 2018 (Mimi and PDA have been longtime champions for the cause!) and whether the solutions being offered by a number of states and large jurisdictions --- including a disturbing move to computer-printed and computer-counted paper ballots --- is a good idea, or if we'll be left with the same or worse lack of ability for the public to oversee election results that we already have in many places. (Among them, see the 100% unverifiable computerized touch-screen style voting systems used in much of Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, etc.);

• And whether elected Democratic officials and 2020 Presidential hopefuls are finally understanding the importance of single-payer "Medicare for All" (or, as PDA has been advocating for years: "Healthcare not Warfare!").

Also on today's show: More tentatively encouraging news on the Korean Peninsula (at least until Trump screws it up again); Trump's artificial DACA deadline hits, endangering hundreds of thousands of young immigrant 'Dreamers'; Another senior Republican U.S. Senator, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, announces that he is resigning, as of next month.

All of that and a bunch of great callers ringing in on all of the above on today's BradCast!...

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On today's BradCast: The government shutdown ended just last week. Next week, the next deadline for funding the government is upon us, along with the same fight to protect some 800,000 "Dreamers" from being deported. Do Democrats have any better plan to stand up to Trump and the Republicans this time? [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up, some important news headlines that are likely to disappear among all of the madness in D.C. and much of the corporate media: There was yet another school shooting today, following the one in rural Kentucky just last week. This time it was a middle school in Los Angeles, where a 12-year old girl is said to be in custody after two 15-year olds were shot.

In Pennsylvania, the Republican President of the Senate, Joe Scarnati, is blatantly refusing orders by the State Supreme Court to turn over districting documents after the court found last week that the GOP-controlled legislature in the largely 50/50 swing-state had gerrymandered U.S. House districts in violation of state law. Republicans currently hold 13 seats to the Democrats' 5 under the GOP-drawn maps. The Court has ordered the maps immediately redrawn, but Republicans are trying to prevent that, and are now defying the court in doing so. Scarnati's behavior continues a growing and disturbing pattern by Republicans across the country --- and now all the way up to the White House --- to simply refuse to follow the rule of law and orders of the court.

Meanwhile, some very good news for voters in Florida, as a federal court, just before airtime, finds the "scheme" employed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott to consider restoration of voting rights for some 1.5 million former felons in the state, to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution's 1st Amendment Free Speech clause and 14th Amendment Equal Protection clause. Currently, the process to overcome Florida's lifetime ban on voting rights for former felons who have long ago completed their sentences, finished parole and paid off all restitution, requires personally groveling to the Governor and hoping rights are restored, at his standard-free whim, according to the federal judge. That may now, finally, change (unless the ballot initiative to restore such rights to former felons is adopted first this November, after the measure's proponents successfully gathered nearly 1 million signatures in support last week!)

Then, it was only last week that Senate Democrats caved to Donald Trump and the Republicans following just two days of a government shutdown. After promising to vote against any government spending bill unless it included protections for some 800,000 "Dreamers" --- Obama-Era DACA recipients who, thanks to Trump, now face deportation as soon as March 5 --- the Dems folded and reversed course.

That, as our guest today, DAVID FARIS, Roosevelt University political scientist and The Week contributor, argues, has now further weakened what had previously been a fairly strong hand for Democrats.

Now, the next funding deadline and possible shutdown looms just one week from today, as the previous reversal by Democrats has likely bolstered Republican resolve and afforded time for Trump to move the goal posts even farther right on his immigration demands. He detailed those demands during his offensive remarks on the matter in his State of the Union Address Tuesday night.

"It highlights to me way it was such a huge mistake for Democrats to cave and come back to the table and reopen the government. Because what it did was it allowed the President and his allies to seize the initiative here, and to release this plan to the public. It's just shocking to me that Democrats didn't think ahead, 'What's coming up? The State of the Union.' This will allow the President to set the parameters of the debate," Faris says.

He charges that Democrats "went from a situation where they were fighting for one issue that they had a 53 point advantage on --- and that's DACA and the Dreamers --- to a situation where now we have multiple immigration proposals thrown together, and they all, at least, have good plurality polling for the President."

Faris, author of the upcoming book, It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics, argues the fate of the "Dreamers" may now, unthinkably, be left up to the hope that Trump decides to simply do the right thing for those 800,000 children brought here illegally as children decades ago by their parents.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with some good news (for a change) for Puerto Rico, some very good news for the state of New Jersey under their new Democratic Governor, and some more bad news for the planet and the state of Maine under their dumbest Governor in the nation...

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On today's BradCast: Are Democrats falling for all of these rightwing traps? Or are they willingly walking right into them...because they want to? [Audio link to show follows below.]

After a few news headlines today --- Australia's parliament finally adopts marriage equality; the white Charleston, SC cop who killed unarmed black man Walter Scott receives a 20 year sentence; another school shooting, this time in NM --- we move on to Sen. Al Franken (D-MN)'s announcement today on the floor of the U.S. Senate that he plans to resign "in the coming weeks".

The stunning announcement by the popular and dogged comedian-turned-Senator comes after fellow Democrats this week called for him to step down in the wake of several allegations of sexual misconduct said to have occurred before he became a U.S. Senator. Franken, who has been a champion for women's rights during his time in the Senate, maintains he either doesn't recall the incidents at all or remembers them quite differently than reported. He has described the most recent charge leveled against him this week by an unnamed victim, said to have been a Congressional staffer in 2006, as "preposterous". Nonetheless, while expressing confidence he would have been cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee of any wrongdoing, he says he will now step aside before that probe was even able to begin in earnest.

We share excerpts of Franken's remarks on the floor today, which include, as he notes, "some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate [in Alabama] with the full support of his [Republican] party."

So, did Democrats fall for another right-wing trap in pushing Franken out? It wouldn't be the first time. We discuss several such traps --- including one that MSNBC seems to have fallen for this week regarding progressive radio host Sam Seder, before wisely changing course two days later --- with longtime progressive writer and blogger GAIUS PUBLIUS, who wrote earlier this week about Democrats falling, yet again, into the Republicans' "deficit trap" regarding federal spending on military and social programs. We debate why and whether Democrats fall into these rightwing traps or if they willingly choose to walk into them, for some reason.

"Why is it that Democrats seem to be one foot in the Republican camp and afraid to be too much in opposition, and one foot in the Democratic camp and not so fully pro-democratic values as we'd like them to be?," Publius observes as we discuss Franken, the 'deficit trap' and more. "I would argue that it's not fear. We're not dealing with cowards here. We're dealing with people who are, in some sense, compromised by their own values. Their own values are putting them in this position where they can't please anybody."

There's lots to chew on in today's conversation on these topics!

Finally, Desi Doyen offers our latest Green News Report as wildfires continue to rage near us here in Los Angeles, and as several breaking news items, related to all of the above, break late during today's show...

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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Southern California wildfires continue to rage out of control amid record wind and dry conditions; Interior Secretary proposes shrinking even more national monuments; New study warns even more public lands are at risk due to fossil fuel exploitation; PLUS: Good news for renewable energy - it's now cheaper than both coal and nuclear plants... 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): Are humans in invasive species?; To prevent climate catastrophe, Democrats need to learn a ruthless lesson from Senate GOP; How a group of friends saved a stranger's house in Ventura; Alaskan oil lease sale brings few bids; VW officials gets 7 years in prison for emissions-cheating scandal; House moderates opposes ANWR drilling in tax cut bill; The most accurate climate models predict greater warming; Trump administration exceeding the energy industry’s wildest dreams; Asthma hotspots more profitable to neglect for hospitals; US mayors sign climate charter; Only 60 years of farming left if soil degradation continues... PLUS: Hurricane Harvey could leave Texas $1 billion short... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: With the Thanksgiving holiday upon us, we take a short break from the grimmest of news on today's show to dig deep and find at least a few things to be thankful for this year. Sort of. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

With every bit of good news we find, there seems to be some less-than-good news to go along with it. Still, we do our best today to keep both your heads and mine from exploding for a change. Among the manystories covered on today's show...

Sign-ups for the Affordable Care Act ('ObamaCare') are actually up this year, despite the Trump Administration's work to undermine the federal law and keep Americans from knowing about the Open Enrollment period at all. (It runs through December 15 at Healthcare.gov). But, given the shortened Open Enrollment period, there would need to be a far higher number of signups to match last year's totals. Still, a surprising number of "free" policies are available this year and Trump supporters finally appear to be realizing that he is the one undermining their health care.

While temperatures are breaking records out here in Los Angeles (it hit a record 93 degrees today, and broke the century mark in a nearby coastal town), a new report presented at the recent U.N. climate talks in Bonn, Germany finds that the world could move to 100% renewable electricity with existing technologies by 2050, and it would be less expensive than continuing to generate power with fossil fuels and nuclear energy!

There's even some good-ish news regarding guns in the U.S. A bipartisan measure to improve background checks for gun purchases, following a number of recent mass shootings, has been introduced in the U.S. Senate. Also, new polling finds that an incredible record of 94% of gun owners support universal background checks for all gun sales (and a majority of them would also support a ban on the sale of assault weapons entirely!)

In Australia, a nationwide referendum results in overwhelming majority support for marriage equality. In Palm Springs, CA, voters have just elected the first all-LGBTQ City Council in U.S. history. And, in related-ish news, Sec. of State Rex Tillerson appears to disagree with his boss, Donald Trump, regarding rights for transgender people.

And, finally, a recent demonstration by Nazis and White Supremacists in Tennessee was met by a huge resistance of counter-protesters that effectively shut down the demonstration (and another one scheduled for later in the day) entirely. Documentary filmmaker David Earnhardt was on the scene in Shelbyville, TN, and spoke to counter-protesters who stood up to shut down the Nazis. We share some of his interviews on today's show. You can watch his entire short film here.

So, see? There are quite a few things to be thankful for this year after all...Sort of...

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