On today's BradCast, more Republican efforts to keep (certain) voters from voting in several states where demographics are quickly moving against them, and they're beginning to get very worried, for good reason, in advance of 2018 --- but even ahead of the important U.S. House special election run-off election set for June in Georgia! [Audio link to show is posted below.]

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

• The Republicans' stolen U.S. Supreme Court helped Arkansas kill a man on Thursday night;
• Trump sold millions of dollars of access to corporate giants during his inauguration in January;
• Nevada's Republican Sec. of State invents a "non-citizen" voting scare in the state;
• Georgia's GOP Sec. of State is sued for blocking new voter registrations in violation of federal law, in advance of June's high-profile U.S. House special election run-off in GA-06;
• Yet another federal court finds that Republican legislators in Texas intentionally discriminated against Hispanic voters when drawing up statehouse districts. (The 4th finding by a federal court of intentional racial discrimination by the TX GOP in the past two months, making the state more than eligible for special oversight under the Voting Rights Act!)
• Sen. Ted Cruz (and other Republicans) may find themselves in big trouble in 2018;
• Britain goes coal free for the first time since the industrial age;
• Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report as Saudi Arabia invests $50 billion in renewable energy and scientists prepare to march for science;
• U.S. Treasure Dept. rejects ExxonMobil's request to lift sanctions against Russia so that the company can drill for oil in the Arctic...

Enjoy!...

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On today's BradCast: If those friendly to America are rising up against Donald Trump's disastrous Presidency, imagine what our actual enemies think! Well, we don't have to imagine quite as much as of today, even as Republicans in Congress continue their work to undermine American democracy. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Donald Trump's Yemen raid last week --- the first special ops mission he approved after becoming President --- was an unmitigated disaster during which a U.S. Navy SEAL was killed along with a number civilians, including an 8-year old American girl. The target was reportedly meant to be the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who is still alive and well and mocking Trump this week, even as White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer ridiculously declared the failed mission "a successful operation by all standards."

Also mocking Trump today is the Supreme Leader of Iran, who thanked the new President for "showing the real face of America" after Trump banned Iranian travelers and put the country "on notice" in a Tweet last week, threatening military action and emboldening Iran's hardliners in the process of an increasing alarming drumbeat toward war. (Corporate media chasing all of Trump's idiotic statements may want to start paying much closer attention to this. Please?)

Back at home, the President's wildly controversial and wholly unqualified nominee for Education Secretary, billionaire Betsy DeVos, became the first cabinet nominee in history to be approved by the U.S. Senate after a tie vote in which the Vice President had to cast the decisive vote. At least this time the Democrats finally stood unified in voting against DeVos, along with two Republican Senators who joined them.

In the meantime, while The Netherlands announces that, due to hacking fears, they will do away with computer tabulation machines in favor of hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots ("Democracy's Gold Standard") for their upcoming election, Republicans in the U.S. House moved to abolish the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the only federal agency tasked with setting standards for our nation's oft-failed, easily-hacked electronic voting and tabulation systems.

As explained in detail on today program, the EAC has been a disaster on several levels since its creation following the 2000 Presidential election debacle in Florida. Among countless BradBlog.com stories highlighting their failures over the years, was our 2006 exclusive on the un-aired network interview with the EAC's first Chair, the Bush-appointed Rev. DeForest Soaries. He described the agency in the interview as a "charade" and warned that our computerized voting and tabulation system is "ripe for stealing elections and for fraud." (Also, as mentioned today, see the chapter I contributed with Michael Richardson and John Gideon to Mark Crispin Miller's Loser Take All, revealing how, in 2004, Nevada's then Sec. of State, now U.S. Senator Dean Heller illegally certified and lied about his state's touch-screen voting systems, which are still in use today, with an assist from the corrupt EAC.)

Nonetheless, despite its many failures, the answer to the EAC's problems is not to abolish the agency, but to fund it properly and make it work. That the GOP is prepared to eliminate it entirely --- even amidst Trump's false claims of millions of fraudulent votes cast in the 2016 election --- is quite telling.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, along with today's late breaking news that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced in court papers that it plans to grant the final permit needed to complete the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, despite former President Obama's order to conduct a full environmental impact study before construction is completed on the $3.8 billion pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota...

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It's another very busy day today on The BradCast with terror attacks in Europe, the Electoral College vote in the U.S., and our continuing attempt to figure out if the votes in Election 2016 were actually tallied as per voter intent. [Audio link to show posted below.]

Despite thousands of protesters at state capitols around the nation today, there were only a few defectors (so-called "faithless electors") for both for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, as the Electoral College finally cast its votes today in 50 states and the District of Columbia. As of airtime, despite receiving a almost 3 million fewer votes than Clinton nationally, Trump had just received the requisite 270 votes, a majority of the Electoral College, needed to win the Presidency today. Presuming all state totals are certified by the U.S. Congress on January 6th (and I see no reason they wouldn't be), Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States on January 20th.

In the meantime, late last week, we learned that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) --- the federal agency responsible for certifying the accuracy and security of electronic voting and tabulation systems used across the U.S. --- was, itself, recently hacked, with about 100 user names and passwords put up for sale on the black market. The well known vulnerability exploited was one that experts say could have been easily patched (it has now been) and would have allowed access to a database of vulnerabilities in the nation's voting and tabulation systems.

The Commission might have patched its own system earlier, but its Commissioners were very busy before the election and after, ensuring the nation (in an op-ed that was incorrect and misleading on innumerable levels) that "election officials have been working to secure our voting systems for years," so concerns about any such manipulation of results "are overstated".

Then, my guests today are Lulu Friesdat, filmmaker of the award-winning election integrity documentary Holler Back: [not] Voting in American Town (which I am in, but it is excellent anyway) and longtime election integrity advocate Emily Levy of RecountNow.org. Both are just back from attempting to help oversee the statewide Presidential election "recount" in Wisconsin, as requested (and paid for) by Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Friesdat shares her short, disturbing new video released on Friday, revealing what appear to be machine mistallies noted by observers during the statewide "recount" of ballots by computer optical-scanners in Racine County, WI, and a stymied attempt by one observer there, Liz Whitlock, to get a hand-count of the paper ballots in question. Citing the 5% error rate by the machines that observers tallied in one small precinct in WI, Friesdat notes: "A similar error rate applied across all of Wisconsin’s 2,976,150 votes --- could produce an error of 140,000 votes. Trump won Wisconsin by 22,000 votes."

Levy explains a troubling report from the attempted Presidential "recount" in Nevada (yes, there was one there too!), as filed by independent candidate "Rocky" De La Fuente. There, in the state said to have been won by Hillary Clinton, Clark County Clerk Joe Gloria appears to have admitted to secretly "recounting" votes prior to the lawful, public count of votes cast on the county's absentee paper ballots and completely unverifiable touch-screen voting systems. (In the 2004 Presidential "recount" in Ohio, two election officials were convicted and sentenced to the max for doing something similar in that state.)

As both explain on today's program, the long list of failures in the "recount" cases (and they describe many more such failures) have left both Friesdat and Levy even more concerned about the accuracy, security, reliability and ability to oversee our own election system than they were even prior to Election 2016. So, what can we all do about it? How can the system be improved to allow more transparency and oversight? We discuss all of that on today's show as well --- and it starts with you...

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On today's BradCast, we cover an enormous amount of news, breaking and otherwise, on both the Presidential "recount" story in three different states, as well as the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. And we speak to Green Party candidate Jill Stein's campaign manager, David Cobb, about the ongoing and "escalating" legal battles and fights for citizen oversight of election results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. [Audio link to show posted at bottom of article.]

First today, the latest on the breaking news over the weekend in the story of the denial of a permit for the controversial pipeline in ND, where thousands of native Americans have been protesting for months against its construction near tribal lands. On Sunday, in a huge victory, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied an easement to Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners that would have allowed them to complete the pipeline by building on disputed land near and beneath Lake Oahe, the Standing Rock Sioux's source of drinking water. The victory, while monumental --- even as the protests and violent attempts by law enforcement to stop them have been almost entirely ignored by mainstream corporate media --- may be short-lived, depending on legal actions and decisions made by the next President. Desi Doyen joins us for the latest.

At the same time, over the weekend, the corporate media was busy misreporting and misleading the legal maneuvers of Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein, who has dropped just one of the statewide voter-initiated suits demanding a PA "recount", in favor of a federal filing [PDF] today, on Constitutional grounds, seeking federal intervention for a statewide count and forensic analysis of 100% unverifiable voting systems used there. Stein and her attorneys held a press conference and rally today outside of Trump Tower in Manhattan, to explain the efforts.

Also, a federal judge this morning ordered [PDF] the state of Michigan to being counting ballots today, after successful maneuvers by Team Trump delayed the start of that effort late last week and had hoped to further delay or deny citizen oversight of results entirely. MI's Attorney General (a Trump supporter) falsely argued in his filing and during an unusual emergency hearing in federal court on Sunday, that the count might endanger the state's Electoral College votes. U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith ordered the counting to begin at noon today, however, finding that any further delay "would likely violate [plaintiffs'] right to vote under the First and Fourteenth Amendments" and that "there is a credible threat to the voters' right to have a determination made that Michigan's vote for president was properly tabulated." The MI GOP has vowed to appeal both the federal and state cases against counting ballots.

My guest today, Stein's campaign manager David Cobb, the Party's 2004 Presidential nominee --- who, himself, called for the partial statewide count that happened after that year's Presidential contest in Ohio --- joins us to discuss the latest developments in the ongoing counts and court cases in all three states, and to explain why Stein and the Green Party "are demanding integrity in the election system."

In PA, he explains (as we long have as well), that "there is no way to properly verify the DRE --- direct recording electronic --- equipment, otherwise correctly known as 'black box voting'. It's terrible to begin with and they should never be used. ... The real gain here is forensic experts getting an opportunity to get their hands on these machines --- and that is exactly what we are seeking in all three states --- but, in Pennsylvania, in federal court specifically, because of the completely outrageous system of recount provisions in the state." (To get an idea how horrific they are, check out my interview with VotePA's Marybeth Kuznik from last week, or read today's filing [PDF] in federal court.)

"I really want to underscore," he tells me, "we are escalating the fight into federal court in Pennsylvania precisely because the Pennsylvania laws are so horrible."

"These black box voting machines are hackable," he continues. "If any nefarious individual can get their hands on them, there are ways to manipulate them. That's the reason it's so important to have these forensic studies done. So that we can literally verify the vote. What is Donald Trump afraid of?"

We also discuss the efforts of the Green Party going back to Cobb's own attempted "recount" in Ohio, when two top election officials in the state's largest county, Cuyahoga (Cleveland), were found guilty and sentenced to the maximum sentence in prison for having rigged the 2004 Presidential "recount".

"We are demanding that every vote counts, so count every vote! It's just that simple. At the end of the day, if we do not have confidence in the election system, we cannot have confidence in our government itself," he argues.

Finally, speaking of counting votes (or not), North Carolina's abhorrent Republican Gov. Pat McCory has announced he is giving up his own battle for a statewide recount (which we supported) and has conceded the race to the state's Democratic candidate Attorney General Roy Cooper, becoming the first Governor to lose a re-election bid in state history...

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On today's BradCast: Documenting trouble for voters at polling places from coast to coast today on Election 2016 (Yes, it's finally arrived!) as Americans struggle to take part in their own democracy. [Audio link to today's program is posted below.]

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

• After Hillary Clinton wins the first contest of Election Day...
• Broken voting machines, electronic pollbooks and shamefully long lines are reported in parts of Arizona, New York, North Carolina, Illinois, Kentucky, Texas, Ohio and elsewhere.
• Misinformation about ID needed to vote and polling place closing times and registration requirements in a number of states is being reported as well.
• North Carolina's NAACP calls for poll hours to be extended in Durham County.
• A judge in Nevada firmly rejects the Trump campaign's claim that polls were improperly left open during Early Voting over the weekend (in Hispanic areas.)
• The woeful Governor of Maine Paul LePage lies about student voting requirements in his state, hoping to intimidate them, after fliers are posted at a local college doing the same.
• An Idaho county elections office also wildly misleads to discourage student voting.
• Trump and his campaign misinform voters.
• Rightwing disinformation expert and dirty trickster James O'Keefe pretends to find "voter fraud" in Pennsylvania.

And many other developing shameful stories (and occassional hopeful ones) from Election Day 2016 --- as a glimmer of light may be shining at the end of our long national tunnel...or is that just an oncoming train?...

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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: Will Hillary Clinton's apparent lead in national polling and turnout to date translate into a Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate? Poll watchers and analysts, at least Democratic leaning ones, seem to think so. For now. But just barely. [Audio link for show posted below.]

More early voting numbers in several states continue to suggest a potentially banner year for Democrats. In addition to those new indicators today, Hillary Clinton's poll numbers continue to rise, even as Donald Trump argued over the weekend that all the polls are "phony", not to be believed, and are meant to do little more than suppress the vote. (Though someone may want to let his own campaign manager know about that.)

But, will the hints of success for the Clinton campaign translate into Democrats taking back control of the U.S. Senate? David Jarman, editor of Daily Kos Elections, joins me to explain what the polls currently suggest about the likelihood of a Senate majority for Dems, the races in 9 states that he believes will determine that balance and, specifically, the 3 states he believes will ultimately be the tipping points for control of the upper chamber of Congress over the next two years.

While Daily Kos is a website meant to support Democrats, Jarman explains the roll of the analysts at Daily Kos Elections: "We're sort of the quantitative side of Daily Kos, but we also do more qualitative analysis of where we feel the chances are in the Senate and the House, looking at it race by race, doing the sort of old-fashioned scouting approach of 'this is a toss-up, this is lean-Democratic', that kind of thing. We also compile a lot of the data that eludes other people, about where the ad dollars are going, what the topics of ads are, every poll, we collect those in our daily digest."

Jarman and I also discuss, among other things, how and if things like voter suppression are included in his predictions; how large a majority Democrats would need in order to be able to bypass some of the more conservative/corporatist members of its caucus; whether Democrats could also retake a majority in the U.S. House, and some serious havoc that may occur for House Speaker Ryan even in the likelihood that they don't; and, also, some of the gubernatorial races that may end up going "blue" this year as well.

Finally, Bernie Sanders responds to Wikileaks' release of emails from Clinton staffers painting him in a less than favorable light, and Donald Trump says that he has plans to rethink freedom of the press, as defined by the Constitution's First Amendment, should he become the next President.

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On today's BradCast, we await the (mercifully) final Presidential Debate of 2016 to get under way in Las Vegas, as Donald Trump's poll numbers continue to plummet --- even in some surprising states --- but the GOP nominee continues to say all is well ("peachy dory", in fact)...except that the election is being "rigged". [Audio link posted below.]

Among the many other related (and unrelated) stories covered on today's show...

• Some good news today for voters in Kansas and Florida and maybe in Georgia (where there has been huge turnout for Early Voting);

• Some disturbing and, so far, mysterious news about potential voter registration fraud in Indiana. (This is a good reminder to check your registration to make sure it's accurate!);

• Some listener response to the former New Hampshire GOP official who told me on The BradCast earlier this week that he doesn't believe "the party has been pushing" phony voter fraud myths. "Please don't blame the party for institutionalizing this nonsense," he said. (Elizabeth Warren doesn't agree with him either.);

• The amazing story of how a new "voter fraud" myth became "fact" this week amongst gullible Republicans, with the aid of rightwing;

• Another example of how theoretically non-rightwing corporate news outlets help spread the same mythical "voter fraud" bullshit;

• Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on a major new international global warming agreement and some harsh words for environmentalists from Hillary Clinton, as revealed by a new Wikileaks document;

• And a bit of amusing listener mail. #FreeDesi!

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There's been a lot of talk of "rigged" elections this year, but not only from Donald Trump and his supporters. Democrats, until recently, have also been warning that our electoral system was under threat of manipulation by outsiders. But, today, the President offered a very different message to voters, arguing that "there is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America's elections."

Huh? Well, that's confusing. So, we try and get a bit closer to the facts on all sides of this issue on today's BradCast. [Audio link to show posted below.]

While Hillary Clinton appears to be opening up a substantive lead in a number of nationwide polls, Trump's rhetoric of a "rigged" election grows more desperate and incendiary each day. Oddly enough, however, his message does not appear to be winning over many converts. In fact, evidence suggests his own supporters are not growing less confident in the election, but his rhetoric may actually be improving confidence among Dems that votes will be counted as cast.

But, is that confidence warranted? Just weeks ago Democrats were warning us about the possibility of voting, tabulation and voter registration systems being hacked by foreign entities like Russia. But now, many Democrats and Republicans alike, including the President in the Rose Garden today, are making the case that our election systems are secure and cannot be hacked. So which is it?

I'm joined today, to try and figure it all out, by Pamela Smith, president of VerifiedVoting.org, a non-partisan organization which closely tracks voting and registration systems --- and their well-documented vulnerabilities to manipulation --- in all 50 states and at the federal level.

As longtime BRAD BLOG readers know well, yes, our voting and registration systems --- in every state --- remain vulnerable to error and tampering by outsiders and, more directly, election insiders. Because we use computer tabulation systems, it's often impossible (as with touch-screens) or unlikely (as with op-scans) to know that results accurately reflect voter intent. That alone remains a threat to confidence in our electoral system, no matter how confident many would like voters to be today.

"The challenge we have when we use electronic systems is that some problems that can be introduced into those systems are difficult or impossible to detect," says Smith. "Evidence-based elections is a really important standard for us to have nationwide. It builds confidence when jurisdictions can demonstrate that votes were counted correctly."

Smith and I discuss all of that, examine some of the most vulnerable areas (Hello, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada!), and talk about what, if anything, can be done to try and assure that votes will be counted as cast in Election 2016 for President, Congress, the U.S. Senate, state and local contests as well as ballot measures and everything else. Much more detail than I can effectively summarize here. So, please give it a listen for yourself.

Near the end, however, with voting already under way in many states and Election Day just three weeks from today, Smith adds this important thought: "The one way we know for sure that your vote won't count is to not show up. And, whether or not you have full confidence in the voting system you're going to use, you still need to make the effort to make your voice heard."

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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, a witness to Wednesday night's shooting during protests in Charlotte, North Carolina. [Audio link posted at end of article.]

On the second night of demonstrations following the police killing of an African-American man, Keith Lamont Scott, in Charlotte, one of the peaceful demonstrators was gunned down in cold blood. The City of Charlotte quickly announced that he was killed by "civilian on civilian" gunfire. As it turns out, the man wasn't killed, he was in critical condition on life support at air time (AP has now since reported he has died), and several ministers who were witnesses to the shooting, including the Charlotte Clergy Coalition for Justice, believe that it may have been carried out by police, not by a civilian.

"I saw the man go down on the pavement," said Minister Steve Knight of Missiongathering Christian Church in Charlotte, according to a statement released last night by the Coalition. "It was an ambush. The victim was shot while he stood between two ministers, and we believe he was shot by police. We would like to see surveillance video from the surrounding area that may have captured the shooting to determine who was responsible for the deadly shooting."

As the Charlotte-Mecklenberg Police Dept. --- which currently refuse to release video from the first shooting --- say they are reviewing tapes of the Wednesday night shooting, one of the witnesses, Linda Flynn, Executive Director of the Charlotte Spirituality Center, joins us to explain what she saw from just "feet away" from where victim was gunned down.

"I was about ten feet away from the gentleman who was shot. We heard a loud bang, it sounded like a gun shot, nobody knew where it was coming from, and we saw the man go down...Of course there was a pool of blood there. People who were directly next to the gentleman started vomiting because they had such a graphic view of everything."

Flynn goes on to say it's "unclear" whether or not he was shot by police or not, but adds: "I think at this point even the police have understood that it is completely unclear as to how the shooting happened. There are questions there. It would be very normal for all of us to have some suspicion because we're not receiving transparency. That's what we're calling for. But I do firmly believe, as a person of faith in this community, that it was a peaceful protest until police decided not to make it not so. And that is our concern."

She argues that it was the ramped-up militarized police presence that sparked violence during Wednesday night's demonstrations and explains her concerns about the history of race relations with the police in Charlotte, where she says it now looks like a "war zone", and we also discuss her concerns about "seeing shooting after shooting after shooting" nationwide.

Also today: Even Donald Trump says he is "very troubled" by video of the police shooting of Terrence Crutcher, an unarmed African-American man seen with his hands up in in Tulsa, OK, as he was gunned down, but his Veep candidate Mike Pence thinks there's just too much talk of "institutional racism". A Trump campaign official from Ohio insists she doesn't believe racism existed at all, until Barack Obama was elected President. (Seriously.)

Then, new polling from Fox finds Trump's lead over Hillary Clinton growing in three key swing states (along with disturbing Democratic denial). And, finally, a huge gasoline pipeline is reopened in Alabama, following a massive spill. We take a look at the Colonial Pipeline company's dreadful history of both spills and cleanups across the country...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: President Obama urges climate action from Tahoe to Hawaii to Midway to his final presidential visit to Asia; Not one but two rare hurricanes threaten Hawaii as Obama visits; PLUS: Global insurance industry tells G20 to 'kick away the carbon crutches'... 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): Colombia: Three Environmental Activists Assassinated; Corps Approved Dakota Pipeline Over Objections of 3 Federal Agencies; Al Gore: The Clean Energy Revolution Is ‘A Dramatic New Reality’; Africa's elephants rapidly declining; Thousands of Homes Keep Flooding, Yet They Keep Being Rebuilt Again; Floridians Overwhelmingly Support Solar In Tuesday Vote; Colorado voters won't get to decide on new fracking rules... PLUS: Fuel economy: Want to know your car's true mileage? It's complicated... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's a very 'green' show on The BradCast today, on a number of levels, from marijuana policy to the Green Party Presidential candidate's position on environmental issues, to another rather disturbing Green News Report.

But first up today, some news about 'third-party' Presidential candidate troubles getting on the ballot and being kept out of Presidential debates, and a Republican governor who has now vetoed a law that would have added millions of voters to the rolls in his state.

Then, Michael Collins, Deputy Director for the Drug Policy Alliance's Office of National Affairs in Washington D.C., joins us to discuss the recent announcement by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) that it will not reclassify marijuana from its current 'Schedule I' narcotic status --- which, like heroin means that it's classified as having "no accepted medical use" --- despite some 25 states which currently allow its sale and use for either medicinal or recreational purposes.

Collins explains what that classification actually means and how rescheduling it as a Schedule II drug wouldn't have been much more than a "symbolic victory" for proponents, particularly "in terms of prosecutions --- people getting arrested, the racial disparities we see because of the war on marijuana --- that would not have disappeared had the DEA rescheduled marijuana."

He goes on to describe the DEA as a "rogue agency", "rotten to the core", and long working against President Obama's "steps to unwind the war on drugs". "They're still fighting the drug war of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon," he tells me, in opposition to the advocacy of a number of elected Democratic (and even Republican) officials in Congress who were furious at the federal agency's decision.

"I think the DEA gets its science from the same people as climate change denialists," Collins quips. "To say that marijuana has no recognized medicinal value contradicts decades of scientific research and is a huge slap in the face to the thousands of people who use medical marijuana every day to alleviate their illnesses."

It's not all bad news, however. Collins notes that the DEA has announced they will allow an expansion of federal marijuana research facilities, ending what had been a monopoly, with just one facility in Mississippi, and that states are moving forward nonetheless, with expansive pot initiatives on the ballot in at least six states (California, Arizona, Maine, Nevada and Massachusetts) this November. "The question isn't 'Should we legalize marijuana?', but more 'When should we legalize marijuana?' The end is nigh," he tells me.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with breaking (and disturbing) news on more historic, deadly flooding in Louisiana and fires in California, July 2016 as the hottest month ever recorded on Planet Earth, and the official position on climate change action from Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party's freshly minted 2016 Presidential nominee...

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On today's BradCast: Day One of Donald Trump's Republican National Convention in Cleveland was insane. But it was all going well enough until it became apparent late on Monday night that portions of Melania Trump's headliner speech was plagiarized directly from Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic convention speech.

Incredibly, the man who made 'You're fired!' a catch phrase can't seem to muster up the ability to hold anyone in his own campaign accountable for it. As such, the oratorical fraud and, more importantly, how its being handled (and denied) by Team Trump, offers a stark warning to voters as to how a Trump Presidency might handle the actual serious issues and difficult decisions that need to be made.

Or, at least, it should.

Speaking of warnings, new national polling remains tight between Trump and Hillary Clinton, who continues losing ground in several of them. That, as several new cases and disturbing allegations of voter registration fraud by Republican election insiders in a number of states, along with some very troubling news from the U.S. Dept. of Justice concerning their plans to no longer send observers to polling places in certain jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination, should serve as yet another stark warning for American voters...

But will it?

All of that and Desi Doyen with today's Green News Report on the latest BradCast...

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On today's BradCast, Paul Ryan gets on board the 'Trump Train', polls remain tight before the California Primary (and continue to give a big edge to Sanders against The Donald), and sudden changes to public policy by both Democratic and Republican elected officials continue to undermine the otherwise booming rooftop solar market across the country. [Audio link to show posted at end of article.]

First up: It's official! U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan is now all in on the 'Trump Train' after weeks of pretending that maybe he wouldn't be. Then, still more polls in California show Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders virtually tied in the state in advance of next Tuesday's Primary, while the same polls continue to show Sanders doing far better against Donald Trump than Clinton does.

Next, after an electric utilities district in the desert near Palm Springs suddenly closed off an important 'net metering' program for new residential rooftop solar customers (which had allowed those residents to recoup their investment by selling back unused clean energy to the utility company), CA Democrats in the state Assembly quietly kill a bill that would have corrected the problem. There is still no explanation from Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), the Appropriations Committee Chair, as to why she shelved AB 2329 last Friday before the holiday weekend, despite the problem which has left some residents on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in solar investments.

But a similar problem is happening in states all over the country, as utility companies begin to freak out at the plummetting cost and growing popularity of residential rooftop solar energy. We're joined today by the Brookings Institution's Mark Muro, whose new report finds that, despite utility company and fossil fuel industry claims to the contrary, "the economic benefits of net metering actually outweigh the costs and impose no significant cost increase for non-solar customers."

"We do think it is a canard to say there is this huge shift of costs to non-solar people," Muro tells me. "If anything, solar households are benefiting the grid."

We covered some similar territory on The BradCast in January, after "catastrophic" new fees on solar owners, levied by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval's appointees on the state's Public Utilities Commission, crushed the industry and killed hundreds of jobs there. Brookings' reports solar installations have "plunged 92 percent in Nevada in the first quarter of 2016," thanks to the sudden policy change after remarkably booming growth in sunny Nevada's market in the years prior.

"The uncertainty created by the Nevada decision absolutely shut down solar installation in Nevada," Muro explains. "But it's also been part of a chilling nationally. In the first quarter of this year, there's been, for no apparent reason, a massive slowdown in permitting and installation. I think the uncertainty that's been created here --- and especially the retroactive effect in Nevada --- has created a real question mark nationally for homeowners. So, I think we do have a problem. Installation depends on stable policy, and now policy is looking unstable."

We discuss what and who may be behind this "chill throughout the entire system" and what residents and voters can do to help restore stabilitity to the politics and policy currently harming an otherwise booming residential solar market amidst our planet's worsening climate crisis.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with coverage of Donald Trump's recent, amazing, "everything but the unicorns" energy speech and his remarkable explanation for why he believes there's not really a drought at all in the state of California...

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