On today's BradCast we're hoping to help you get acclimated to the tsunami of "fraud" claims --- both real and fake, and what they mean and don't --- that are most likely about to come our way over the next few days and weeks...at least if Donald Trump loses to Kamala Harris in 2024 as he did to Joe Biden in 2020. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Pardon us, however, for beginning with a brief victory lap following our L.A. Dodgers' big World Series win last night, and a related sidebar as to what history tells us (or doesn't) about who is going to win the Presidential election based on who won the World Series.

Then, as to the coming "fraud" storm...among the many stories cited along the way today...

• A Minnesota woman this week was charged with three felony counts of voter fraud after forging her dead mother's signature on an absentee ballot to vote for Donald Trump.

• Six people were charged over the summer for submitting nearly two dozen fraudulent absentee ballots on behalf of a Republican City Council candidate in New York. How they got away with it and how they got caught. The candidate's 19-year old daughter was among those charged.

• In the battleground state of Michigan, election officials in August indicted four voters who allegedly voted twice --- first by absentee and then again at the polls --- in the state's Presidential primary earlier this year. Once again, as in all of these cases, they were caught and charged thanks to safe-guards built into the system. Of the more than 11.7 million votes cast in the state over the past several elections, according to Michigan's State Auditor General, 99.99% of ballots cast were NOT from double voters.

• In Mesa County, Colorado this week, officials announced they blocked an effort in the very Republican-leaning county to cast about a dozen absentee ballots, apparently stolen out of mailboxes in the Vote-by-Mail state. The state's signature-matching procedures uncovered the fraud scheme, though three fraudulent ballots slipped through the system before the crime was discovered. Mesa is the same county where former County Clerk, Tina Peters, was earlier this month sentenced to 9 years in prison on felony charges related to helping her MAGA friends break into the County's voting systems in the middle of the night after the 2020 election to copy proprietary software and distribute it across the Internet to other Trump supporters.

• Last month we reported on the story out of Arizona where both the RNC and the state Republican Party went to court to argue against the removal of some 98,000 voters from the state voting rolls who, due to a years-old glitch in Maricopa County's voter database, had no record of presenting Proof of Citizenship with their registrations, as required by state law. In that case, Republicans opposed the systematic voter purge that the state's Democratic Sec. of State didn't want to do, but felt he had to under state law. The Republicans correctly argued to the AZ Supreme Court that such purges, within 90-days of an election, were in violation of federal law. They made that argument after the SoS revealed that the majority of the potentially "non-citizen" voters to be removed were registered Republicans.

  Yet, this week, on Wednesday in Virginia, after a U.S. District Court Judge and federal Appeals Court last week blocked an attempt by the state's Republican Governor to purge some 1,600 registered voters under the premise that some might be non-citizens, the corrupted Republican U.S. Supreme Court majority allowed the unlawful systematic purge, ordered by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, to move forward. All three Democratic-appointed SCOTUS Justices dissented. One of the purged Virginians, a U.S. citizen who has lived there her entire life, called it "a very bad October surprise."

All of these stories today help us understand the difference between real and fake fraud claims; the difference between voter fraud and election fraud; how easily most such penny-ante fraud is caught and often prevented before it happens; and how Republicans this year, from Donald Trump on down through his minions and back up through his corrupted SCOTUS, are hoping to use phony or exaggerated fraud claims to help sow the seeds to steal the election, if necessary, as of Tuesday night.

Get ready! Because that is coming --- if Harris is declared the winner.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with horrific "welcome to the future" news out of Spain this week, where extreme drought was followed up with a year's worth of rain and deadly flash flooding this week that swept through one town in a matter of hours, killing more than 150 so far; and some words of warning about Tuesday's election from Sen. Bernie Sanders regarding our climate changed future in the event that Trump is allowed back into the White House in January...

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As we go to air on today's BradCast, we're girding for the monster Hurricane Milton's direct impact on Florida's central Gulf Coast over the next several hours, even as millions in that state and five others struggle to recover from devastation following Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago --- and as all of us prepare for November 5th and whatever may come thereafter. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

This week, amid Helene recovery in North Carolina, the state Board of Elections, in a unanimous, bipartisan vote, approved a list of emergency measures for voters in the state's hardest hit counties. Naturally, Trump Republicans on social media are already lying and spreading disinformation about those measures and, of course, Fox "News" is playing along. That said, with the Trump Campaign itself calling for measures to expand access for voters in Republican areas of the state following Helene, it seems like Team Trump is also preparing to have legal (and political) complaints ready to go after the election --- if they lose.

That strategy, however, is not new for them. Even before Helene, the RNC says they are involved in scores of lawsuits across dozens of states. Many of them have been filed by groups like the American First Legal Foundation, founded by far-right Trump adviser Stephen Miller. One such novel suit filed by the group seeks a ruling in Arizona that judges may toss out election results over "failures or irregularities" by local officials. America First Legal is currently seeking such a ruling, however, only in counties where Kamala Harris is believed to be narrowly ahead of Trump.

Similar efforts are also underway by Republicans in other battleground states such as Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, even if they don't think they will actually win the suits. The strategy, according to election law experts, appears to be to have these complaints in place before the election so they can be cited afterward, and used by election officials at the state and federal level to try and overturn results --- only in the event that Trump loses, of course.

At the same time, the Government Accountability Project, a longtime whistleblower support organization, founded in 1977 in the wake of Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers, has published a new guide meant to support election officials and poll workers who may have legitimate reason to blow the whistle this year, particularly in battle grounds states. The 37-page booklet [PDF], entitled "On the Front Lines of Democracy: A Guide to Speaking Up for Election Officials & Workers," offers specific legal advice for those may have seen something and want to say something about it, but don't know exactly how to do so while protecting themselves in the bargain.

We're joined today by DANA GOLD, GAP's Senior Director of Advocacy & Strategy and the Director of the group's Democracy Protection Initiative, which was formed in advance of the 2020 election, "in anticipation of a highly partisan environment" when they were "very concerned about foreign and insider threat of illegal election interference," she explains today.

"We didn't have a lot of whistleblowers, though," says Gold. "We had a fire extinguisher ready. But, as we know, the 2020 election ended up being actually quite secure, fair and free, and administered safely." That said, as we discuss today, "the threat landscape has changed in 2024."

Gold outlines a number of "primary threats to elections" as identified by research in "this very hyper-partisan environment." She says foreign interference remains a concern, but also "the risk of disinformation being spread widely, which can have the result of suppression, delay, eroding confidence in the election results. And potential insider threats. People who are essentially election deniers who believe that the 2020 election was stolen despite every piece of evidence showing that the election was free and fair."

"This is a really volatile environment and election officials and workers are on the front lines, and may be in the best position to see efforts to suppress the vote. They may see insider threats. There are opportunities for election officials and workers who may see problems, and feel very scared and not clear about how to raise that concern, especially if the threat is their supervisor, someone in a position of power."

Given my own long history of reporting on election whistleblowers over the past two decades --- usually related to voting systems and their vendors --- the question of how to determine who are legitimate whistleblowers in this atmosphere, and who are not (but may even think they are) is a rich topic of discussion. Also, given that heroic whistleblowers like Reality Winner --- a national security official who exposed the fact that Russian intelligence operatives had actually infiltrated voter registration systems in several states before the 2016 election --- ultimately received a five-year prison sentence for having done so, Gold grapples with how to best encourage whistleblowers to come forward, while still protecting their legal and civil rights.

"That's why this is really important for us, in terms of a strategy of trying to disseminate this guide, to make election officials and workers, and any employee, aware of their rights, and their risks and options."

"Document everything," she advises those who may believe they have witnessed an election-related violation of law. "Write it down contemporaneously. Make sure that's secure. Check for allies in their co-workers. Note witnesses. Date things. There are ways to shore up the verification piece, which will be critical to both insulate them and make a difference." She adds, of course (citing Mesa County, Colorado's former MAGA County Clerk, Tina Peters, who just received a nine year prison sentence for tampering with voting systems, even as she uncovered nothing!), "they should not break the law to do so."

"Whistleblowers are such an important piece of democracy itself," Gold asserts. "The information provided by a whistleblower fuels those mechanisms of accountability that are our representative democracy. Very important tools in our collective efforts to ensure free and fair elections." To that end, she tells me, the group provides "legal and strategic support and advocacy, so we can protect them, in this environment particularly."

There is much more of note in our fascinating and lively conversation today. Please tune in!...

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Tick-tock. Time is running out for all of the Trump scams, as detailed on today's BradCast. Unless, of course, he wins on November 5th --- or has more success stealing the Presidential election this year than he did in 2020. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the Trump scams, rackets and accountability for having fallen for them on today's program...

• Melania Trump, according to her new book, is virulently in favor of abortion rights. According to her publisher, she also wanted $250,000 to be interviewed by CNN.

• You know about many of Donald Trump's legendarily failed rackets from the old days: Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Water, Trump Vodka, Trump Casinos, just to name a few. More recently, during the time he's been running for President again, there's been Trump Sneakers, Trump Bibles, Trump Digital Trading Cards, Trump Coins, Trump Cryptocurrency and, introduced just last Friday, "Swiss-made" Trump Watches. He's selling them for $100,000 a pop! Even though, according to experts, they appear to be Chinese-made crap, if they even exist, and appear just as likely to be an open invitation to foreign influence peddling and money laundering. We explain.

• All of the above enumerated rackets, by the way, are private rackets. Any profits from them do not go to his Presidential Campaign, but straight into Donald Trump's pocket. And so --- according to the new 165-page filing [PDF] by Special Counsel Jack Smith, unsealed by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan on Wednesday afternoon --- was Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election. New evidence in the filing from prosecutors in his 4-count federal indictment in D.C., further details how the disgraced former President and convicted felon was fully aware that he'd lost the election in 2020, but didn't care. He was going to fight to steal it anyway. He also knew he had put Vice President Mike Pence's life in grave danger on January 6th, 2021. His response: "So, what?" And all of that, as prosecutors argue in their brief, was done in Trump's capacity as a private candidate for office. It was not done as part of his official duties as President. Smith's motion is meant to make that case in hopes of preventing the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court from dismissing the case on the basis of their absurd, anti-American, anti-Constitutional, made-up-from-whole-cloth ruling in Trump v. U.S. declaring criminal immunity to sitting Presidents for crimes committed as part of their "official" duties.

• In Colorado today, a state judge unleashed a brutal, if accurate, take-down of disgraced former Mesa County Clerk, Tina Peters during her sentencing hearing. Once a MAGA superstar, she is now a convicted felon on charges related to a criminal scheme to breach voting system software in her own County, based on false claims that fraud software was implanted in them to flip votes from Trump to Biden in 2020. The judge told Peters today: "I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen. You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan." He called out her continuing claims of evidence-free fraud as "just more lies. No objective person believes them. No, at the end of the day, you cared about the jets, the podcasts and people fawning over you." He then sentenced her to nine years in prison before she was handcuffed and hauled out of the courtroom to immediately begin serving her time. See ya, Tina! May she be the first of many.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the deadly disaster in six states continues to unfold in the U.S. Southeast following Hurricane Helene, which at least succeeded in finally helping to bring the issue of climate change to the top of Tuesday's Vice Presidential debate between Democrat Tim Walz and Republican J.D. Vance...

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Non-profit government watchdog, Citizens for Ethics in Washington (CREW) has detailed what they describe as an illegal plot among Trump-supporting county election officials to sabotage the certification of the 2024 election results.

The scheme has been reported elsewhere in recent days, including in an excellent deep dive by Justine Glawe at Rolling Stone, reporting on "nearly 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials [in battleground states] who have questioned the validity of elections or delayed or refused to certify results."

In a lengthy and detailed State-by-State Analysis [PDF] released this week, CREW is offering a roadmap of legal remedies in each of eight battleground states that, if followed, they believe can defeat the looming threat posed by such a scheme and ensure timely certification of results in this November's Presidential election...

It was another not good day on The BradCast for entitled rightwingers working hard to undermine our American democracy. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Disgraced 2020 election denier, former Mesa, Colorado County Clerk and failed Republican Sec. of State candidate Tina Peters was found guilty by a jury of her peers on Monday for seven crimes related to her 2021 breach, copy and unlawful distribution of Mesa County's proprietary Dominion voting system software that she was elected to protect.

  BACKSTORY: Peters' breach in CO, which set off alarm bells at the time among voting system experts across the country, was one of several similar schemes apparently organized, in part, by former Trump attorney Sidney Powell in a futile effort to prove the 2020 election was stolen from him. Similar breaches were carried out in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where some of the breachers are also facing state criminal charges. Deadbeat fellow election denier and reportedly nearly bankrupt MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who is being sued for defamation by several voting machine companies, aided and abetted Peters' crimes in various ways after the Mesa County voting software was released while she was on stage at Lindell's silly "cyber-symposium" in South Dakota.

• Former-Democrat-turned-independent Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was found by a New York judge on Monday to have used a "sham" address to establish residency in the state where he doesn't actually live. As a result, after a four-day hearing, he will not be allowed to appear on NY's Presidential ballot. Moreover, the ruling may threaten his eligibility for some of the 19 state ballots where he has already qualified to appear and/or the 20 or so states where he is still hoping to do so.

  BACKSTORY: Back in 2011, we reported on then Utah U.S. Senate candidate Mitt Romney having done damn near the same thing. He had owned mansions in both New Hampshire and California, but, in 2010, he fraudulently registered to vote for a U.S. Senate Special Election in Massachusetts, where he had previously served as Governor, using his son's unfinished basement as his voting address. Nonetheless, despite their pretend opposition to election fraud, the Republican Party would later go on to nominate the fraudster Romney as their Presidential nominee in 2012.

• Longtime opponents of workers and organized labor unions, Donald Trump and Tesla/Twitter owner Elon Musk, held what the New York Times described as a "two-hour ramble" on Monday night, on Musk's rickety, now largely rightwing social media site. It didn't seem to go well for either of them. It began about 45 minutes late after Musk's streaming audio platform kept failing. (He blamed a cyberattack. Trump blamed China. Evidence and folks who work at Twitter/X suggested there was no cyberattack at all.) But, at some point in the conversation, Trump and Musk began cackling approvingly about the idea of firing workers who threaten to strike or join unions. On Tuesday, the United Auto Workers, who have been encouraging Tesla workers to unionize, filed legal complaints against each man charging violations of the National Labor Relations Act.

  BACKSTORY: The UAW, and almost every other major labor union, has endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. UAW President Shawn Fain appeared at a rally with Harris and her running-mate Tim Walz in Detroit last week (the one with 15,000 attendees who Trump claims were not there, but were all A.I.) and described Trump as "a scab" who "doesn't know shit about the auto industry and doesn't give a damn about the working class in this country."

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, after the hottest July ever recorded; millions of gallons of raw sewage spills across parts of Florida following Hurricane Debby; and Republicans scheme, via Project 2025, to delete all federal government references to "climate change" if Trump is able to win back the White House in November...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Vermont slammed by second catastrophic flood in three weeks; As wildfires rage in the West, new study finds wildfire smoke is more dangerous than we knew; PLUS: Wind and solar energy overtake fossil fuels for electricity generation in Europe... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): One in 11 people went hungry last year. Climate change is a big reason why; Global methane emissions rising at fastest rate in decades, scientists warn; Texas utility would raise rates to pay for Beryl 'restoration'; Harris grabs Green New Deal network endorsement that eluded Biden; Manchin-Barrasso energy permitting bill advances to full Senate; Central US is paying higher cost of burning coal, report says; Last 25 years in US West were driest in 1,200 years... PLUS: The very hungry urchins gobbling up the algae smothering coral reefs... and much, MUCH more! ...

Stand by for news --- some good-ish, some not-ish --- on today's BradCast! [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

First up today, some noteworthy results from yesterday's primary elections. Among a bunch of races covered today from four different states...

• Progressive New York "Squad" member Rep. Jamaal Bowman was soundly defeated in his 16th District U.S. House primary race by longtime local Democratic official George Latimer in what was, notoriously, the most expensive House primary ever run. The cost of the contest was largely due to the American Israeli Political Affairs Conference (AIPAC)'s investment of millions of dollars to defeat Bowman, who, among other sins, described Israel's war in Gaza as a genocide. That said, as many pointed out before Tuesday and as we detail today, Bowman, as a movement progressive, was likely to have lost this race anyway in a very diverse "normie Dem" district, even without the flood of AIPAC money.

• Far-right Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert's carpetbagging jump from her right-leaning, but swingy-ish 3rd District to the farther right 4th district --- after barely winning in the 3rd in 2022 by just a few hundred votes --- paid off as she managed to beat off three other Republicans to win the GOP nomination in the new district on Tuesday and, with it, most likely, another term in Congress this November.

• U.S. Rep. John Curtis, a not-insane, Mitt Romney-like, pro-climate action Republican from Utah, defeated a Trump-endorsed opponent to win the GOP nomination to fill the seat being vacated by the retiring Romney in the very red, but not completely Trumpy state this November.

• Another Trump-endorsed Republican lost, if narrowly, on Tuesday to Republican Sheri Biggs in South Carolina's primary runoff election for the U.S. House in the state's solidly red 3rd Congressional District.

And, some noteworthy news today from the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court, where a number of still-outstanding decisions remain, suggesting they may still be releasing opinions after the usual end of term in June, after we'll be on break over the Independence Day holiday week. Among the still-unreleased opinions are two that relate to criminal accountability for Donald Trump. It's up to you if you want to check out the (seemingly encouraging) abortion-related opinion that the Court appears to have accidentally released prematurely on their website for a few minutes on Wednesday morning. Beyond that, the two they meant to release today include...

• A seemingly absurd finding that federal law does not prevent payoffs by private parties to public officials after an official has done something --- such as award a multimillionaire contract --- to the private party. The case overturns a conviction against an Indiana Mayor who received $13,000 after fixing the bidding process to award a million-dollar contract to a local trucking company. A payoff, or an agreement for one before such the contract was awarded, in a direct quid pro quo, would be considered unlawful bribery. But a payoff after the action in question, no matter how much, is considered a "gratuity" that, the Court ruled [PDF] in a 6 to 3 partisan decision today, is not barred by federal law. State and local jurisdictions may still prosecute such payoffs under their own laws, however, if they wish.

• In a slightly more encouraging 6 to 3 ruling [PDF] today --- with three Republican-appointed Justices joining all three Liberals in the majority opinion --- the Court sided with the Biden Administration to reject claims by several Republican states and private plaintiffs that federal officials were unconstitutionally forcing social media sites to remove posts by so-called conservatives. The Court ruled that Plaintiffs had no standing here, since they all failed to demonstrate they faced any Constitutional harms by actions taken by federal officials --- in both the Trump and Biden Administrations --- to advise social media companies like Twitter and Facebook about potentially dangerous or misleading posts regarding COVID-19, election integrity and more.

And finally, on his HBO show last week, Bill Maher lauded Maryland's Democratic Governor Wes Moore for recently announced pardons to tens of thousands convicted over the years under state marijuana laws that have since been lifted. Maher then lamented how sad it was that Joe Biden wasn't smart enough to do the same thing at the federal level...even though Biden did exactly that two years ago when he also encouraged state Governors like Moore to do the same, as most marijuana convictions are at the state level. Of course, we covered both Biden and Moore's pardons as they happened. But, since Maher apparently never heard about it, I also want to make sure that at least you know about the new set of pardons issued today by the Biden White House...

• As the military news outlet Task & Purpose reports: "U.S. troops who were convicted under a now-defunct military law that targeted gay service members will receive formal pardons, the White House announced Wednesday." The pardons will apply to thousands of LGBTQI+ troops who were discharged, going back to 1951, for military rules that have since been removed and/or found unconstitutional. Said President Biden in a statement: "Today, I am righting an historic wrong by using my clemency authority to pardon many former service members who were convicted simply for being themselves." I hope someone tells Bill Maher before he misinforms millions yet again...

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In case I haven't mentioned it lately on The BradCast, the U.S. Supreme Court is wildly corrupt. They proved that again on Monday in their ruling on whether Donald Trump, who they don't dispute in their ruling is an insurrectionist, should be disqualified from the 2024 election for having "engaged in insurrection", as barred by the simple text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We knew this ruling from the corrupt Court was coming, based on their questions at Oral Argument last month. We also knew that the packed, stolen and rightwing SCOTUS majority was corrupt. But their hypocrisy was what shined through most in today's relatively brief 13-page ruling [PDF] and the additional dissenting opinions that followed it. The one by the Democratic appointees was fairly seething.

After years of pretending to be "conservative Constitutionalists"; pretending to be "textualists" who are focused only on the simple meaning of what the words in the founding document say; who pretend to be "originalists", concerned only with what the framers were trying to accomplish at the time they adopted the Constitutional amendment in question, the Court, once again, gave away the ghost. They don't care about any of that. They are an activist rightwing Court finding stuff in the Constitution that doesn't exist to arrive at the political result they wanted in the first place.

On Monday --- in their 9 to 0 opinion (which, the dissenters made clear, was actually a 5 to 4 ruling, but for Democrats on the Court trying to go along to get along in an election year) --- the High Court reversed the Colorado Supreme Court's 213-page ruling [PDF] in December barring Trump from this year's ballot for having violated the Constitution's "Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause". So much for states rights as well, apparently.

But, not only did the SCOTUS majority twist itself into pretzels to come up with "logic" for doing so, they further perverted Section 3 of the 14th Amendment beyond recognition in order to do so. In the bargain, they have killed 14.3 to the point that it can likely never be used to bar insurrectionists from public office --- at least at the federal level. (That's another distinction they made up from whole cloth that appears nowhere in the actual Constitution.)

Congress, the Court decided, must pass a law before the 150 year old 14.3 may be used. It is not self-executing, they ruled, unlike all of the other sections of the 14th Amendment and the other Amendments adopted with it following the Civil War that prohibit slavery, guarantee due process and equal justice under the law for all. But only the two-sentence Section 3, apparently, is not self-executing. At least at the federal level. It can still, apparently, be used by states to bar state and local officials from public office for insurrection for some reason. That, even though Section 3 itself requires a two-thirds super-majority in Congress for the disqualification to be lifted for any insurrectionist to serve in office.

We're joined today by two experts on this matter, former Asst. Deputy Attorney General at the DOJ, LISA GRAVES of True North Research, and "recovering lawyer" and longtime legal journalist CHRIS GEIDNER of Law Dork to try and make sense of what the corrupt, hypocritical Justices did.

Geidner details how the dissenters in this case, the Court's three Democratic Justices, Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson --- but also, in part, even Justice Amy Coney Barrett --- "explained how the majority had basically cut off the use of Section 3 going forward."

And they did so, according to Graves, in the most cowardly way, with a per curiam decision that speaks for the whole court, without saying who actually wrote it. "Like Bush v. Gore," they didn't sign their names to, she observed, noting that "issuing a per curiam opinion is an act of cowardice by these rightwing justices."

Geidner adds: "It truly is just an example, like 'Bush v. Gore', of 'Let's work backwards from the principle that we want, and we're going to shoehorn in some principle of law that clearly can't make sense in light of the interpretation of these amendments over the past 150 years.'"

"The Colorado Supreme Court's decision was so well-reasoned," Graves argues about the ruling overturned by SCOTUS today. "It sought to vindicate the plain language of the 14th Amendment. But here you had the Supreme Court not wanting to allow Colorado to make that independent determination based on the plain language. It really shows how outrageous this anonymous Republican-appointee decision --- how outrageous and wrong --- that decision is." She also notes, given what was actually a 5 to 4 ruling, how outrageous it is that Justice Clarence Thomas --- whose wife actually participated in the insurrection --- didn't bother to recuse himself.

Last Summer, Geidner tells us, when he wrote about this case, he says he argued, "It's pretty clear that Trump is barred from being President again. Will it matter?" He adds: "That was the right question to ask, and we got our answer today."

As usual, there is much more covered in today's program on all of this, so please tune in for the full show.

Also today, a wrap-up of of the weekend's GOP nominating contests in which Nikki Haley finally notched her first primary victory after Trump actually threatened the voters participating in it. And we close with a preview of tomorrow's 15-state Super Tuesday primaries in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and American Samoa. If you live in one of those states and have yet to vote, NOW is the time!...

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I should be in bed nursing my illness (whatever it is), rather than doing today's BradCast. But given the firehose of news, some of it huge, that broke after yesterday's guest-hosted show with Nicole and Desi (thank you, guys!) and today, I felt I had to come in for this one. Nasal congestion be damned. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Back in 2018, as Trump-nominated Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was lying his way through his Senate Confirmation hearings, he made what sure sounded like a threat at the time. "This confirmation process has become a national disgrace," he whined through angry tears. "And as we all know, in the United States political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around."

There has been a boatload of important news over the past 24 hours. But what may have been Kavanaugh's long-promised "comes around" moment may have finally occurred last night. The U.S. Supreme Court came up with at least 4 votes to hear Oral Argument of Donald Trump's ridiculous claim that Presidents enjoy "absolutely immunity" for any and all crimes they may commit while in office --- including ordering Seal Team Six to murder domestic political opponents, as Trump's lawyer's argued in this case at the lower D.C. Court of Appeals.

The federal appellate court, as well as the trial court below it, unanimously rejected the argument. But, rather than taking up the case three months ago, when Special Counsel Jack Smith asked them to, the corrupt SCOTUS waited more than two months before deciding, in a terse, one-page order [PDF], to "expedite" the matter by hearing it...seven weeks from now. The question will be: "Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office." --- Which "official acts" they may be referring to are uncited.

In the bargain, Trump's previously scheduled May 4th federal trial date for attempting to steal the 2020 election remains on on pause and may not now even begin before the 2024 election.

At the same time, in New York state court on Wednesday, an appellate judge, within hours after Trump's filing, rejected his attempt to offer a $100 million bond to prevent Attorney General Letitia James from beginning seizure of his assets in about 30 days for failure to post cash or a bond for the full $454 million penalty he faces for a decade of massive fraud via his corrupt real estate company. And Trump's criminal trial in the state, on 34 charges related to cheating to win the 2016 election with hush-money payments to a porn star, is set to begin at the end of next month.

Given my physical condition of late, we called in our good friends and very wise longtime fellow bloggers HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of The Professional Left Podcast, to help make sense of these key, historic events. They each offer context and analysis of what appears --- to them at least --- to be one of the most corrupt actions ever taken by our corrupted, far-right, Trump-appointed supermajority on the High Court.

Driftglass argues the news from the Court on Wednesday is that "It's a corrupt court. And that corrupt court has rendered a corrupt decision," underscores his belief that Trump will never see a day in prison. Digby reminds us that true accountability was always going to come from only one place: the voters at the ballot box this November. "I'm sorry to have to tell you," she tells me, "but it's going to have to be a grinding out of a Presidential campaign and people are going to have to vote this guy out."

We've got a lot of ground to cover on today's program, with smart insights from both of them as usual, even if I don't have the energy to document much of it here for you today. So, please tune in.

There's one point, however, that I didn't get to on the show --- blame the cold medicine --- in response to the somewhat grim and arguably cynical (if accurate) assessments from Digby and Driftglass. That is, that even if Trump's federal trial for attempting to steal the 2020 election had moved forward, as scheduled, well before this November's election, I think the magic bullet moment that had been applied to that trial --- as if a guilty conviction would be an elixir that finally woke up the nation to how corrupt he truly was, leading supporters to abandon him --- was always, in my estimation, somewhat overblown.

When (not if) Trump is found guilty on any of the 91 criminal counts he is currently facing at both the state and federal level, his supporters will find a way to justify it and continue their support nonetheless. It'll be a evidence of a "corrupt system" or "Joe Biden's witch hunt" against Trump, etc.

I have never quite bought into the prodigious polling which suggests his 2024 support would crater once he was finally found guilty of a crime. His supporters know what he did. We all do. It's obvious. A criminal conviction is unlikely to change many opinions of him either way. This was and still will be --- as both Digby and Drifty point out --- about the VOTERS showing up and VOTING to save our democracy from the clutches of a fascistic, sociopathic, narcissist hell-bent on destroying it for revenge. Whatever happens between now and November 5, nobody else was ever gonna do it for us.

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as winter heat in the center of this nation blew away records for February, topping out in the 80s and 90s in huge swaths of the region over the past week. That helped touch off what is now the largest wildfire in Texas history. In February! That, and much more on today's GNR.

Now I'm going back to bed. I'm sure the last 24 hours have been nothing more than a bad Nyquil-induced fever dream...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Historic winter heat smashes records across U.S., sparks massive wildfires in Texas; Groundbreaking Colorado lawsuit seeks to force oil companies to clean up abandoned wells; PLUS: Shifting to EVs and clean electricity will dramatically improve children's health, study finds... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Exxon CEO blames public for failure to fix climate change; Marine heat wave kills thousands of humpback whales in the North Pacific; Boiling tap water may be solution to microplastics; Microplastics found in every human placenta tested in study; 'Nobody really knows what you're supposed to do': Leaking, abandoned wells wreak havoc in West Texas... PLUS: The Butterfly Redemption: How scientists, volunteers, and incarcerated women are finding hope through supporting a struggling butterfly... and much, MUCH more! ...

We've been telling you for years on The BradCast that most rightwingers who claim to be "Constitutional Conservatives" --- such as the corrupted bunch now packed onto the Republican U.S. Supreme Court supermajority --- are nothing of the sort. Today's oral argument at SCOTUS, on whether Donald Trump must be disqualified from the 2024 ballot under the very clear text of the Constitution's "Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause", appear set to prove that point yet again. [Audio link to full program is posted below this summary.]

In December, the SCOTUS Appears Set to Ignore Text of Constitution's 'Insurrectionist' Clause: 'BradCast' 2/8/2024 found Trump had violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars from office public officials who, after taking an oath to support the Constitution, "have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same". The mandate applies, according to the actual text of the clause, to "any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State". The Colorado Supremes compiled an airtight, 200+ page ruling [PDF] that was both "textualist" (adhering to the simple text of the clause) and "originalist" (carefully hewing to the original intent of its post-Civil War framers) in order to appeal to the legal principles supposedly most important to the Republican majority at SCOTUS.

The CO court, finding that Trump had indeed "engaged in insurrection" and was thus barred from holding the office of President of the United States, disqualified him from the state's 2024 Presidential ballot. Trump appealed their ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard the case on Thursday. (Transcript, audio)

While we can't know for certain from questions asked at the hearing, the Justices appear set to simply ignore the clear meaning of the text of 14.3 in order to allow Trump to run for President this year. Arguments put forward today for doing so --- some of them preposterous and in direct conflict with the framer's intent, according to the Congressional Record at the time the 14th Amendment was adopted --- include that the President is not an officer of the United States; that 14.3 bars insurrectionists from holding office, but not from running for office; and that the clause, unlike every other section of the 14th Amendment, is not "self-executing". Rather, Congress must create legislation before it can be used against a federal official. (Never mind its history over the past 150 years or so.)

We're joined today to somehow make sense of all of this by former U.S. Deputy Asst. Attorney General LISA GRAVES, now of True North Research, and retired attorney KEITH BARBER, who writes on legal and Constitutional matters as 'KeithDB' at Daily Kos. They both joined us just after Trump filed his appeal to the High Court earlier this year and do so again today to discuss how it all appears to be working out for him.

A fair amount of time during Thursday's hearing was spent on the argument that Section 3 allows Congress, by a two-thirds majority vote in each chamber, to waive disqualification for insurrectionists. Thus, the argument goes, Trump can still run for President, even if he cannot "hold" the position if elected. That's because Congress could, ya never know, decide to grant him amnesty after he is elected and before he is sworn in to office.

Graves characterizes the argument as "absurd", describing it as "counter to the plain-language, commonsense argument on its face." It could also, as the attorney for the challengers (a group of Republican and independent voters), noted today, result in the same Congressional chaos on January 6, 2025 that we saw in 2021. If Trump were to win, but Congress fail to grant him an insurrectionist's waiver, he would be barred, according to 14.3, from actually being sworn in to office. SCOTUS seems to be begging for this scenario based on much of today's questioning.

Barber suggests it is likely "that challenges are raised in the electoral certification process" if Trump wins in November, "saying that Trump is not eligible for the office, and any Electoral College votes for him must not be counted for that reason."

"The meaning" of Section 3 of the 14th "could not be clearer in the intent of the drafters," argues Graves. "These supposed 'originalists,' these supposed 'strict constructionists' claim to be so devoted to it when striking down access to abortion, marriage equality, our ability to regulate corporations. But here, suddenly they're confused. It's not confusing if you look at the history and read it."

Indeed, the Justices --- including at least two of the Court's liberals --- appear set to come up with a reason or set of reasons that the Constitution doesn't say what it actually says. Why, for example, does Section 3 --- unlike the other sections of the landmark 14th Amendment, such as the requirement for Due Process under the law for all U.S. persons --- suddenly require a law to be written by Congress before it can be executed? (But only against Trump, apparently. It's been used without issue many times in the past.) "In this case, it's because the Supreme Court needed it to be," says Barber, a former lifelong Republican. "I don't have a better explanation than that."

"Are we living under the Constitution or not?," asks Graves. "It seems we are, only to the extent that this faction of the Court wants to impose it. And when it doesn't, it does not apply."

We discuss much more on all of this today's, including why Clarence Thomas (and, perhaps three other Justices on the Court) have not recused themselves from this case given their extraordinary conflicts of interest; whether there is a "grand bargain" in the works to strike down the CO Supreme Court's mandate while upholding the D.C. Court of Appeals' ruling this week on "Presidential Immunity"; and how the attorneys arguing on behalf of Colorado voters missed the opportunity to underscore that, as bipartisan majorities in both chambers of Congress have already voted, Donald Trump is an insurrectionist.

ALSO TODAY: Brighter news, believe it or not, in our latest Green News Report with Desi Doyen! Yes, another one of them shows where the GNR actually offers more encouraging news than the rest of the program. Apologies in advance!...

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Only a month has passed since the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear, on an expedited basis, a legal challenge to the Colorado Supreme Court's determination that Donald J. Trump is disqualified from holding any state or federal office by reason of §3 of the 14th Amendment.

Both the CO trial and state Supreme Court expressly found that Trump "engaged in" an "insurrection" on January 6, 2021. The CO Supremes ordered Trump's name removed from the Centennial State's Republican presidential primary ballot. However, the CO Supreme Court stayed their order pending the outcome of a final determination by SCOTUS.

A final SCOTUS decision will likely have profound electoral and constitutional impacts, irrespective of whether our nation's highest court upholds or overturns the CO Supreme Court's ruling...

As a poll-obsessed media focuses on what many see as a seemingly inevitable contest next November between the former and current Presidents, it has become easy to look past the distinct possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court might bring about a swift end to the 2024 Presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.

By way of a Jan. 5 decision, in Trump v. Anderson, SCOTUS agreed to hear the former President's Jan. 3 legal challenge to the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling, in Anderson v. Griswold. In that case, the high court in CO ruled that, by reason of §3 of the 14th Amendment, Trump is an insurrectionist and, therefore, disqualified from running for the Office of President of the United States. The CO ruling has been stayed pending a final decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.

There are multiple reasons why the SCOTUS decision to hear this landmark case may not bode well for the former President, even if the many pundits are inclined to believe that a majority of Justices on the High Court will concoct some extra-Constitutional reason to allow him off the hook. Neither the facts, the law, nor published opinions advanced by conservative constitutional scholars support a decision to overturn the CO Supremes' landmark ruling.

While widely overlooked by most in the media, the identity of the parties could also be critically important. The Anderson Respondents --- 4 Republicans and 2 independents eligible to vote in the Colorado Republican Primary --- essentially represent the dwindling number of honest conservatives, who make up what might be described as the Liz Cheney Wing of the GOP.

Unlike Congressional Republican cowards, who know better, yet shamelessly embrace the dangerous Orwellian lies of a would-be dictator, GOP-appointed, life-tenured members of the federal judiciary need not fear being removed from the bench during a primary election by the MAGA base. While Trump sycophants in the U.S. House have demonstrated a willingness to initiate baseless, partisan impeachment inquiries, the prospect of impeachment of any Justice who voted to uphold Colorado's §3 disqualification decision, followed by a 2/3 vote to convict in the Senate, are so remote as to not even be worthy of consideration.

The lightning fast scheduling set forth in the Court's order to hear the CO matter reflects a recognition that, if it upholds the state trial court's factual finding that Trump "engaged" in an "insurrection" and the Colorado Supreme Court's legal determination that Trump is therefore disqualified by reason of §3 of the 14th Amendment, SCOTUS can both prevent the former President from running for office and afford voters --- especially Republican primary voters --- the opportunity to make an informed choice between qualified candidates.

The facts of the case --- if not necessarily the media punditry or courage of our Republican-appointed Supremes --- reflect that reality...

Apparently, the Colorado Republican Party does not dispute that Donald J. Trump "engaged in" an insurrection on January 6, 2021.

That's interesting. Perhaps astounding. Or perhaps they just don't want the U.S. Supreme Court to officially agree as much.

In asking SCOTUS to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court decision, in Anderson v. Griswold --- which directed the CO Secretary of State not to place the name, Donald J. Trump, on the Colorado Republican Presidential Primary Ballot --- the CO GOP, in its Petition for Writ of Certiorari, failed to contest the factual findings, initially made by a trial court and later upheld by the CO Supremes, that what took place on January 6, 2021 was an "insurrection" and that former President Donald J. Trump "engaged" in that insurrection.

(Those currently uncontested findings also provided the basis for the administrative law ruling [PDF] issued by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows on Thursday, determining that the name Donald J. Trump may not appear on Maine's Republican Presidential Primary ballot.)

Instead, the CO GOP confined its legal arguments to (1) whether a "President falls within the list of officials subject to disqualification under §3 of the 14th Amendment", (2) whether §3 is "self-executing", and (3) whether a court-ordered disqualification violates the Party's First Amendment right of association.

As observed by Harvard's constitutional scholar, Lawrence Tribe, the claim that a President is not an "officer" subject to §3 disqualification is "as baseless textually as it is off base intuitively."

The 1st Amendment right of association argument is also remarkably weak.

The U.S. Constitution mandates anyone running for President must be at least 35-years old at the time they enter office. If a refusal to place the name of a 25-year old on a Presidential primary ballot doesn't violate 1st Amendment associational rights, then surely the refusal to place the name of someone disqualified by reason of §3 of the 14th Amendment doesn't violate the 1st Amendment either.

Nonetheless, despite weak arguments, absent a swift SCOTUS denial of cert, it's likely the name Donald J. Trump will appear on the CO Republican Primary ballot...

Tonight's breaking news about the disgraced former President and insurrectionist being barred from the 2024 ballot in Colorado under the U.S. Constitution's "Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause" came just minutes before we were finishing up today's BradCast --- our last one of the year! But I suspect we'll have plenty to discuss when we return in 2024. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the stories we did have time to cover in full on today's program...

• We open with a homerun public comment from a young man at a meeting of the Sarasota County, Florida School Board last week, calling for the resignation of Board Member and co-founder of Moms for Liberty, Bridget Ziegler. That, following the rape allegations against her husband, Christian Ziegler, Chair of the Florida Republican Party, by a woman who says she was involved in a threesome relationship with Christian and Bridget, a supposed "conservative" who rocketed to rightwing national fame as her Moms for Liberty group worked with FL Gov. Ron DeSantis to adopt the state's "Don't Say Gay Law" and to ban books from schools on LGBTQ-related issues. That, even as Bridget was allegedly involved in a sexual affair with another woman. But the guy's comment at the Sarasota School Board --- from which Bridget is still refusing to resign --- was killer.

• Good news at the end of the year for voting rights out of --- of all places --- the very far-right 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in two different opinions issued on Friday, in fact. In one, the full court allowed a lower court ruling to stand mandating a new U.S. House map for Louisiana before 2024, after finding that the current map was an unlawful racial gerrymander by state Republicans under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The other decision by the 5th Circuit allows a Texas voter suppression law --- which bans online voter registration, in a state with the lowest voter turnout in 2020 --- to stand. That's not good. But both decisions re-affirmed that voters and private organizations do have a legal right to sue to block racist voter suppression laws under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Those affirmations come after the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled just last month, for the first time since the creation of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, that only the U.S. Attorney General can sue to enforce Section 2 of the VRA. If allowed to stand at SCOTUS, the 8th Circuit's ruling would be an extraordinary blow to the landmark Act. So the 5th Circuit's rejection of those arguments, filed in both cases by Republicans, is a very encouraging sign.

• On Monday, Texas' authoritarian Governor Greg Abbott signed a new state law allowing state police to arrest --- and local judges to deport --- anyone suspected of being an undocumented immigrant. On Tuesday, civil rights groups sued to block the almost certainly unconstitutional new law. At least it used to be unconstitutional, back when SCOTUS overturned a similar "Papers, please!" law out of Arizona in 2012. But that was before there was a packed, stolen and corrupted 6 to 3 Republican majority on the High Court.

• Very bad news for both Donald Trump and Mark Meadows out of the also very conservative 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, as a three-judge panel rejected Meadows' attempt to remove his Georgia state criminal indictment related to 2020 election interference from state to federal court. As Law Professor Lee Kovarksy of the University of Texas explained last night, the ruling, written by the court's Chief Judge and very close Clarence Thomas ally, is very bad news for appeals of the "immunity" defenses filed by both Trump and Meadows in several different cases where they are attempting to use that legal gambit to skirt accountability.

• We received a lot of email following yesterday's lively call-in show, in which I asked folks who'd voted for Joe Biden in 2020, but who were planning on not doing so again in 2024, to call in and tell me why. Today we share a few of those notes in response.

• But, for something for nervous pro-democracy Americans to consider over the holidays until we return after the new year, we share a recent column from University of Illinois' Political Science Professor Nicholas Grossman, explaining why folks should not (yet) be freaked out about polls showing Trump defeating Biden next year, and why "pro-democracy Americans [should] approach the 2024 election with enthusiasm, not only dread."

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our final Green News Report of the year! She includes a boatload of details on why, though we may be done with 2023, 2023 ain't yet done with us yet! But she also has some encouraging news on how long-overdue actions to tackle our climate crisis by the Biden Administration are finally beginning to take root as we move into the new year...

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