On today's BradCast, experts are worried about Donald Trump's summit this week with North Korea's Kim Jong-Un. But, given the overall menace to the world that our President represents, are those experts too worried about a deal that could, at least, keep Trump believing that he is "winning"? [Audio link to show follows below.]

But, first up today, the (non-nuclear) fallout continues in North Carolina, after the state Board of Elections last week voted unanimously for a new election in the state's 9th Congressional District following a Republican absentee ballot election fraud scandal tainted last November's never-certified 905-vote "victory" margin of Trump-endorsed Republican candidate and preacher Mark Harris over Democrat Dan McCready. State prosecutors on Friday disclosed their intentions to bring the matter --- along with evidence of similar GOP fraud allegedly carried out in the same district back in 2016 --- before a grand jury. It's still unclear who might be charged and for which crimes, given that GOP contractor McCrae Dowless is said to have carried out the scheme paid for by Harris, who also appears to have lied about it all under oath last week on the witness stand during the Board's week-long public hearings on the matter.

After last week's decision to hold a new election, McCready quickly announced his plans to run again, but the disgraced Harris has remained mum. During a press avail at the White House on Friday, after months of not mentioning it, Trump was finally forced to comment on the unprecedented election fraud scandal engulfing the candidate he campaigned for in NC last year. In world salad remarks, he offered a bunch of false, disproved, or otherwise evidence-free claims about supposed "voter fraud" in California, Texas, and Florida last year.

Meanwhile, on Monday morning, the President took off to Vietnam for his second nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. Diplomatic, military and atomic experts --- and even senior Administration officials --- have reportedly been expressing concern for what Trump may give away during the upcoming meeting, as the North has only increased its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities following the pair's first meeting last June in Singapore, after which Trump falsely declared: "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea."

Given Trump's 2017 "fire and fury" threats against Kim, however, are experts overly worried about whatever "deal" Trump may try to make with Kim in order to walk away with something he can pretend to be a "win"? In exchange for promises of eventual "denuclearization" or less, they worry Trump, could "give away", among other things, a permanent end to U.S. military exercises in the region; a peace treaty to once and for all end the Armistice struck between the North and South at the end of the Korean War in 1953; or even a promise to bring U.S. troops home from South Korea, where they have been stationed for decades during the long, if tenuous truce in Northeast Asia.

But are those things bad, in and of themselves? And, more to the point, with a U.S. President as wildly unbalanced and unqualified as our current one --- along with the need for "nuclear security triage", given that fact --- should we all just be happy that at least he now believes Kim is his best buddy?

Analyst STEPHEN SCHWARTZ, former publisher and executive director, now Senior Fellow at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists --- keepers of the so-called "Doomsday Clock" --- joins us to offer his insight and perspective on all of this in advance of this week's summit where, as I argue a bit today, a bad deal for the U.S. may be better than no deal, given the greater danger that Trump, with his finger on the nuclear button, presents to the world.

"In general, it's almost always a good thing when world leaders who are not seeing eye-to-eye on issues are talking rather than not talking, or arguing with each over Twitter, or setting up military confrontations up to and including war," Schwartz, who is also former editor of the Nonproliferation Review at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, tells me. "With Donald Trump, however, you can't really be sure, because he's very much a captive of the last person that he spoke with and tends to take their perspective. He's also pretty mercurial. He can turn on a dime and he's desperate for attention, desperate for a win, and therefore that makes it more likely he will try to strike some sort of deal that allows him, at least on the face, to come out of this looking like he accomplished something. And that could be problematic."

He goes on to explain why he believes "Kim Jong Un has Trump right where he wants him;" charges that Trump "in this instance, is both the arsonist and the fireman," having "inflamed an already tense situation with North Korea and made it much worse;" but seems to agree with my general theory that a placated Trump results in an ultimately safer world --- at least during the short term while he's still in office.

Schwartz also responds to Trump's repeated insistence that the U.S. would be at war with North Korea by now, had Hillary Clinton been elected in 2016 ("No, in a word," he tells me), and also comments on Trump's "very foolish and counter-productive" recent decision to withdraw from the otherwise successful, decades-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, struck by Ronald Reagan with Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, and much more.

Finally, before leaving for Hanoi, Trump found time to tweet in response to Sunday night's Academy Awards Ceremony in Hollywood, where director Spike Lee won his long-overdue first Oscar for the screenplay of the remarkably timely BlacKkKlansman. Even though Lee never mentioned him by name during his acceptance speech citing 400 years since slavery began in America, our racist President found a way to inject himself into the proceedings by tweeting out today that Lee, a descent of slaves, was actually "racist". We close by discussing both that and a few of the must-see films that got robbed by the Academy this year...

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On today's BradCast: Some maddening facts about what awaits when Robert Mueller's Special Counsel report is handed over to the Attorney General and what will and won't likely be in it. [Audio link to show follows below.]

But, first up today...in "lighter" news...some followup to our detailed coverage yesterday of the remarkable events leading up to the unanimous 5 to 0 vote by the North Carolina State Board of Elections for a new election in the state's 9th Congressional U.S. House District. The action was in response to what the board described as a "coordinated, unlawful, substantially resourced absentee ballot fraud scheme" in last November's election by the campaign of Trump-endorsed Baptist minister Mark Harris. The decision followed on stunning surprise testimony against Harris by his own son at the Board's public hearings on the matter this week.

Among our follow-up coverage today: the (not-at-all-shocking if wildly-hypocritical silence from GOP "voter fraud" fraudsters who've made their living for years lying about phony fraud to encourage laws that suppress the Democratic-leaning vote, while hoaxing Fox "News" brain-addled clowns like Donald Trump into believing there's an epidemic of Democratic voter fraud, rather than the insider election fraud which can easily flip the results of an entire election --- as seen in North Carolina. It was also nice to hear the NC Democratic Chairman finally explain the difference between "voter fraud" and "election fraud" to NPR's Steve Inskeep on today's Morning Edition. We'll see if NPR can remember that difference in the future.

And, speaking of GOP hypocrisy, long-time Trump-supporting billionaire and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was charged today by Florida police for two instances of soliciting prostitution, as he was caught amidst a probe into human sex trafficking. Ironically enough, human trafficking has long been disingenuously used by Trump to support his "National Emergency" declaration to steal money from the military for use in building his border wall with Mexico. The news of the warrant for Kraft's arrest today raises a panoply of interesting issues which Desi and I take a few minutes to discuss.

Then, with several media outlets reporting this week that a report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller may be coming as soon as next week (and, at least one outlet today reporting that's not so), the question of what happens whenever that report is finally delivered to the Attorney General is coming to the forefront.

My guest today, Professor STANLEY M. BRAND, Distinguished Fellow in Law and Government at Penn State University, recently argued in a column at The Conversation that those hoping the public may see this report after it's turned over, by statute, to Trump's newly-minted AG William Barr may be in for some disappointment. Brand, who formerly served for eight years as General Counsel to the U.S. House, now teaches a course on the Independent Counsel at Penn State, explains how it differs from the Special Counsel statute that replaced it after the Clinton era. He suggests the public may never see any of Mueller's "confidential" report.

More frustratingly, he tells me why he believes that Mueller is unlikely to indict the President or recommend such an indictment and how the by-the-book prosecutor is similarly unlikely to recommend impeachment in his report. Unlike the old Independent Counsel statute in effect under Nixon and Clinton, the new statute, he explains, as written by a Democrat, is limited to criminal matters only (not legislative matters such as impeachment) and requires Mueller largely to issue a "confidential" report with little more than details on who was prosecuted and who was not, and what, if any, actions were blocked by the Attorney General overseeing the probe. What Barr then does with that report, he explains, is a separate matter.

Brand, who says he has worked with both Mueller and Barr in the past, says "you may see portions of it, or you may see selected excerpts, or representations of what it contains, if Bill Barr --- and I take him at his word --- wants to be as transparent as he can within the rules and regulations."

In somewhat more comforting comments, he also contends, in response to my query about the curious timing of Barr being seated just days before news (accurate or not) of the report's imminent release: "I have no notion why it's wrapping up --- if it is --- at this particular point, but I have confidence that, if it is wrapping up, it's because Mueller has decided he's finished." He adds, "Nobody is going to push Bob Mueller around. So if there's a conclusion to this, it's because Mueller has determined in his judgment that it's time and he has no further actions to bring."

Brand also offers his insight on whether Mueller would testify to Congress, if subpoenaed, about what was in the report if it's not released to the public or even to Congress. The central frustration at the core of this conversation, at least for me, is that Brand essentially argues that Mueller can't indict Trump (thanks to very debatable, if long-held DoJ "guidelines") and wouldn't cite evidence of impeachable offensives in his report, since that is not part of the new statute's mandate, as written in the wake of "excesses" under the old statute.

"Leon Jaworski, who was the Independent Counsel in the Nixon case, decided that he had sufficient evidence to indict but determined it was not something he should do, given the ongoing investigation into impeachment by the House of Representatives," Brand explains. "Ken Starr, for his part, determined that he could indict a sitting President but determined as a matter of discretion not to do that, because the statute provided a specific mechanism for referring that type of evidence to the House for impeachment, which he did, and which resulted in an impeachment proceeding of President Clinton."

But now, If Mueller can't indict or recommend impeachment, how is this current process supposed to bring accountability for a scofflaw President? There is a lot more to dig into in our discussion, as maddening as it may be at times. It does, however, raise the clear need for a long-overdue Congressional Hearing in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee into whether a sitting President can, under the Constitution, be criminally indicted (a hearing that would, on its own, likely bring some accountability for our current Executive). It also raises the question of why the hell Democrats are waiting for the Mueller Report to be issued before taking action to bring accountability through impeachment, especially since even they may never see this report! If not this President, then what President would ever merit impeachment proceedings in Congress?!

Finally, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that a vote will be held in the U.S. House on Tuesday to block Trump's "National Emergency" declaration under the National Emergency Act. It'll likely pass in the Democratic-controlled House, but what are its chances in the GOP Senate, which much also hold a vote within 18 days of a resolution being adopted by the House? And, will EITHER chamber be able to overcome an almost-certain veto by the President?

That all remains to be seen, but satirist Randy Rainbow has a few musical thoughts on Trump's "Border Lies" to play out us out today at the end of another impossible week...

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On today's BradCast: It looks like it'll be several more months before we actually have a member of Congress seated in the 2018 U.S. House race in North Carolina's 9th Congressional district. But, as of dramatic developments last night and again today, at least we now know that a new election is finally on the way. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

After a stunning past 24 hours, the NC State Board of Elections voted 5 to 0 on Thursday to hold a new election, following dramatic, surprise testimony on Wednesday at a public hearing over the disputed results of last year's NC-9 House election. Republican Mark Harris is said to have defeated Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes out of more than 275,000 cast, but evidence of absentee ballot fraud by a Contractor hired by Harris prevented the Board from certifying the results.

On Wednesday, John Harris, an assistant U.S. Attorney and son of the Republican candidate, took to the stand at this week's public hearings to turn against his father by detailing warnings he had given his dad about the Republican absentee ballot contractor, McCrae Dowless, whose record of defrauding elections was clear long before he was hired by Harris for his 2018 campaign.

Today, we break down both the backstory from 2016 through the 2018 contest, as well as the astonishing key events from the past 24 hours in which John's testimony brought his father to tears in the hearing room [see photo above], and also stunned the McCready campaign which similarly not known in advance of John Harris' plan to take the stand to testify against his father's claims of innocence. "I thought what he was doing was illegal, and I was right," said John, discussing Dowless' record. In his own teary closing statements, he testified: "I love my dad, I love my mom, O.K.? I certainly have no vendetta against them, no family scores to settle, O.K.? I think they made mistakes in this process and they certainly did things differently than I would have done."

And with that, and a few other comments about the need to "transcend our partisan politics, and the exploitation of processes like this for political gain," we're happy to offer John Harris our coveted if more-rarely-than-ever-bestowed BRAD BLOG Intellectually Honest Conservative Award. We haven't given one of those out in years!

Moreover, just minutes before the testimony, emails and texts between father and son were released, detailing the warnings John had given his father Mark (a Baptist minister!) about Dowless, which undercut the Republican candidate's long-repeated, if never-believable public insistence that he'd known nothing about Dowless' penchant for forging absentee ballots.

In 2016, Harris lost the Republican primary by a very slim margin after losing an impossible number of absentee votes in Bladen County to the another candidate who had hired Dowless. In 2017 the state Board of Elections referred the election fraud case to the U.S. Attorney at Trump's Dept. of Justice. But the DoJ took no action, despite the mountain of election fraud evidence uncovered by state investigators from the 2016 GOP election fraud scheme. All before Harris hired him for his 2018 campaign and what state officials described earlier this week as a "coordinated, unlawful, substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme".

The 5 to 0 vote of three Democrats and two Republicans on the Board to hold a new election followed Mark Harris' own testimony in which he tried to distance himself from his son's damning testimony and attempted to defend his months of demands he be seated, before finally declaring today: "It's become clear to me that the public's confidence in the 9th District seat general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted."

Buckle up for the entire sordid and remarkable tale as it unfolded today and the many subsequent unanswered questions raised by this entire shameful mess.

Then, how hand-marked paper ballots were instrumental to uncovering the NC fraud scheme, how the recent report that Trump's DHS has moved resources from election oversight to immigration/border matters in advance of the 2020 race, and the disturbing story of the long-time Coast Guard official who, according to federal prosecutors on Wednesday, was a White Supremacist domestic terrorist plotting to murder "leftist" Democratic members of Congress (many of whom have been singled out by Donald Trump), along with MSNBC and CNN media figures "on a scale rarely seen in this country." That, on the very same day that Donald Trump tweeted, yet again, in all caps, that journalists are the "ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!"

Finally, Desi Doyen brings us the latest Green News Report on the Trump Administration punting on action to prevent incredibly toxic chemicals in our drinking water, another global heat record last month, and even a bit of good news out of Australia for a change....

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On today's BradCast: The crowded Democratic 2020 field gets crowded-er; The GOP's years of phony concerns about "voter fraud" are revealed as even phonier; And our own Green News Report meets another remarkable milestone. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

First up today, 2016 Democratic primary election second-place finisher Bernie Sanders announces he's running in 2020 and immediately raises a "yooge" amount of money in just hours. But the progressive independent Senator from Vermont faces a new set of challenges in his bid to win the nomination this year among a very crowded and already-quite-progressive field of candidates.

Then, the North Carolina State Board of Elections finally began their public inquiry into the Republican absentee ballot fraud scheme that apparently resulted in the 905-vote "victory" for Republican Mark Harris [pictured above at today's evidentiary hearing] in the state's 9th Congressional District race over Democrat Dan McCready last November. Neither candidate has yet been certified by the state Board as its investigation has been ongoing for months and as NC's Elections Director Kim Strach charged this week that GOP operative McCrae Dowless, a contractor hired by Harris and Bladen County Sheriff Jim McVicker, ran a "coordinated, unlawful and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme" in two counties, with enough questionable ballots to have called the Harris/McCready 905-vote margin (out of some 275,000 votes cast) into doubt.

Dowless' scheme, according to public testimony at the hearing this week by Lisa Britt, one of his team of workers, included illegally collecting and modifying absentee ballots; paying workers to harvest those ballots; changing votes with attempts to match the ink used on each voters ballot; falsifying witness signatures and more.

While the state GOP is still backing Harris, national Republicans have remained mum about the coordinated election fraud conspiracy --- despite years of false claims about Democratic voter fraud. It's still unknown whether the 3-2 Democratic-majority State Board of Elections will ultimately certify Harris, call for a new election, or end in deadlock, since 4 votes are needed for either action. If deadlocked (or even if Harris is certified), the issue will be investigated and decided by the Democratic-majority U.S. House of Representatives. Shamefully, after state investigators found that Dowless ran a similar absentee ballot fraud scheme in 2016 and sought prosecution from the Dept. of Justice at the time, Trump's U.S. Attorney in the state ignored the matter, choosing instead to prosecute a handful of alleged non-citizen voters instead of the blatant fraud conspiracy that appeared, once again in 2018, to have stolen an entire election (or more.)

Finally today, we celebrate 10 years of the Green News Report! Desi Doyen joins us for the latest GNR in which we cover both the environmental news of the day and our milestone of a full decade of independent green news, politics, analysis and snarky comment over YOUR public airwaves!

As discussed, Desi has been covering dire warnings about global warming and connecting the climate change dots before even I fully appreciated the dangers. I learned thanks to her important, repeated coverage of these issues as I hope listeners around the globe have as well over these past 10 years. If so, it's all thanks to those of you who have supported our efforts to help get the word out over your public airwaves by donating to our work via BradBlog.com/Donate.

If you haven't done so lately, or haven't signed up for a monthly subscription of any amount you like, please consider doing so now, as we rely only on listeners (not corporate ads, foundational grants or political groups) to continue our work here after 15 years of The BRAD BLOG and a full decade of GNR! Thanks in advance for whatever you can spare to help keep us going!

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Donald Trump was busy 'making American great again' today by extending the longest federal government shutdown in the nation's history, intimidating and threatening federal criminal witnesses and their families, lying about Democrats and calling the U.S. House Speaker silly names. And --- oh, yeah --- continuing to do nothing about a very clear case of election-flipping fraud.

By and large, the only good news we could find for today's BradCast comes from the states. But we'll take what we can get. Among the stories covered on today's program:

• Los Angeles teachers returned to work after a six day strike was settled with a new contract that increases pay and decreases class size, among other things;

• In D.C., in the meantime, the government shutdown continued as new polling from AP-NORC finds Trump's approval numbers plummeting over the last month in the bargain;

• After the President insisted on Wednesday that he was coming to Congress next week to deliver his State of the Union address amid the shutdown, Speaker Pelosi called his bluff and announced she was officially postponing it until after the government was reopened;

• Also cancelled for now, the public testimony of Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen before the U.S. House Oversight Committee that had been scheduled for the first week in February. The cancellation, according to Cohen's attorney, comes after the President's attempts to intimidate the federal witness by calling for his family to be investigated. Intimidating or threatening Congressional witnesses is a federal crime, not unlike the felony Cohen says Trump "directed" regarding hush-money payoffs before the 2016 election to women with whom Trump had allegedly had sexual affairs. Cohen could still be subpoenaed to testify before he begins a three year sentence in March;

• The U.S. House seat from North Carolina's 9th Congressional District remains vacant today, after a state judge on Tuesday declined to order the certification of Republican Mark Harris amid the ongoing investigation into absentee ballot fraud by a GOP contractor hired by Harris. The apparent fraud by the contractor, McCrae Dowless [pictured above with Harris], appears to have flipped the race in Harris' favor by 905 votes. The State Board of Elections investigating the matter was dissolved earlier this month by a court, in an unrelated case which found that Republican state lawmakers had unconstitutionally changed the make up of the Board to disadvantage the Democratic Governor elected in 2016. That was the same year that Dowless was reported to have committed absentee ballot fraud on behalf of a number of other Republicans.
  
  Despite the State Election Board's referral for prosecution to Trump's U.S. Attorney in the state in 2017, action was never taken by federal prosecutors in response to the mountain of evidence of actual election fraud discovered by the Board. That, as Trump falsely claimed that same year that massive "voter fraud" was the reason for his 3 million vote loss to Hillary Clinton in the popular vote. While Trump was lying about massive voter fraud, his U.S. Attorney in North Carolina was prosecuting a handful of cases of unlawful votes allegedly cast by some non-citizens, while ignoring the election-flipping GOP absentee ballot fraud scam and allowing it to be repeated in the 2018 contest;

• One of Trump's longtime partners in false claims of non-citizen "voter fraud" was then-Kansas Sec. of State --- and top GOP "voter fraud" fraudster --- Kris Kobach, who lost his race for Governor last year to Democrat Laura Kelly. Now, KS state lawmakers have introduced measures to revoke the prosecutorial powers they had granted to Kobach, at his years-long insistence. (He was the only Sec. of State in the nation to enjoy such powers.) The new GOP Sec. of State in Kansas wants to return the office to its original purpose of administering elections, after years of claims by Kobach that "illegal aliens" were stealing Kansas elections by unlawfully voting. The disgraced former Sec. of State failed to prosecute any such cases. But he did nab less than a dozen voters, mostly for casting ballots in two different states while owning property in each;

• Finally today, some Dems floated the idea of giving Trump some of the billions he's demanding for a border wall, but only for other forms of border security. At the same time, Republicans supporting the President's demands have never once demanded to known how that spending would be paid for, despite repeatedly telling Americans we simply can't afford money for healthcare or education or infrastructure or the environment or verifiable election systems unless we cut spending elsewhere. With that in mind, we close with a noteworthy observation by HBO's Bill Maher last weekend on what Americans should really be learning from the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history...

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Follow @GreenNewsReport...

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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Fiat-Chrysler to pay big fines for using secret software to cheat on U.S. emissions tests; Three costliest natural disasters in the world in 2018 all occurred in the U.S.; Trump threatens to cut off FEMA disaster aid for California wildfires; U.S. greenhouse gas emissions spiked in 2018; PLUS: Democrats push back, and push ahead, on climate action... 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): “Innovation”: the latest GOP smokescreen on climate change policy. It does not mean what they think it means; Dr. Michael Mann: A commentary on the politics of climate denial and 'Vice'; Food inspections by the FDA have been sharply reduced, alarming critics; Shutdown means EPA inspectors aren't on the job; California governor Newsom proposes wildfire investments; California set a goal of 100% clean energy, and now other states may follow its lead; Trump nominates Andrew Wheeler as permanent EPA Administrator; Federal judge strikes down Iowa law on undercover ag workers... PLUS: How mountains of U.S. plastic waste ended up in Malaysia, broken down by workers for $10 a day... and much, MUCH more! ...

The effects of the federal government's partial shutdown, now in its third week, continue to worsen, even as the effects of last year's 'blue wave' election continue to make things much better for Americans across the country. Among the stories covered on today's BradCast [audio link is posted below]...

• The shutdown is causing "a mess" for potentially tens of thousands of American families who live in properties subsidized by the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development. They may soon face rent increases or eviction due to HUD's failure to renew thousands of contracts before and during the agency's closure;

• Vice President Mike Pence made the media rounds in advance of Trump's Tuesday night prime-time Oval Office remarks (which TV networks didn't allow for Obama), in hopes of drumming up support for the Administration's false claim there is a national security crisis on the border which may precipitate a Presidential declaration of a "national emergency". Pence offered a number of false claims in the bargain, which even some GOPers were scoffing at today;

• With Trump having boxed himself into this protracted shutdown mess, a "national emergency" declaration may be his only face-saving way out of it. It would likely result in Republicans allowing a vote in the Senate for reopening the government, even as the declaration would face court challenges over its legality and, essentially, do little more than steal tax-payer money from national defense as U.S. troops are tasked with building Trump's southern border wall;

• The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear two partisan gerrymandering cases this session (from Maryland and North Carolina), which may not be good news following the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy;

• But, in better news from SCOTUS today, the Court rejected a plea from Virginia Republicans to delay a lower-court mandated remapping of districts for its House of Delegates in advance of this November's off-year legislative elections in the state. Twelve of those districts were previously found by the lower court to be unconstitutional racial gerrymanders;

• Meanwhile, last year's midterm 'blue wave' is already yielding dividends for the nation. In Maine, the nation's dumbest now-thankfully-former Governor Paul LePage certified what he declared to be a "stolen election" for the U.S. House on his way out the door, and the state's new Democratic Governor Janet Mills signed legislation on her first day on the job that will finally give access to healthcare to some 70,000 Mainers under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) Medicaid Expansion that had been blocked for some eight years by the former Republican Governor;

• And, in further good news following last year's midterms, Florida's Amendment 4, adopted by nearly 65 percent of voters in November, kicked in on Tuesday to allow as many as 1.4 million former felons the right to vote in a state that is notorious for its close elections. Despite claims by some Republicans that "implementing language" may need to be enacted, County Supervisors of Elections began allowing registrations under the new Amendment for most former felons who have served their time. The result could be a sea change for the state in 2020, not to mention for the rest of the nation where Florida's electoral votes are key to Presidential elections;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the first Green News Report of 2019, where last year's 'blue wave' is also being positively felt on the environmental front at both the state and federal level, even as Trump's shutdown is trashing national parks and blocking important scientific research...

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Every great Reality TV show needs a dramatic and gripping season finale. So too, apparently, does does every horrible Reality TV Presidency! [Audio link is posted below]

Today is our last new BradCast before Christmas (Angie Coiro will be filling in for us, along with a few "evergreens" over the next week or two), but, as has become clear today, Trump! The Presidency! has certainly delivered in the shocking and suspenseful season finale department! Including...

TWISTS AND TURNS! Acting AG Matthew Whitaker did not, as misreported earlier today, get approval from a DoJ ethics review to oversee Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe. In fact, the ethics review determined he should recuse himself. But, apparently, he plans to ignore that finding;

SURPRISES! Trump defies his military advisers, not to mention stuns and infuriates members of Congress on both sides of the aisle along with experts in the region, by declaring "victory" on Twitter over ISIS and that he plans to now pull U.S. troops out of Syria! But when? Nobody seems to know. Is Afghanistan next? (Apparently so!);

MAIN CHARACTERS 'KILLED OFF'! Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis, the last of Trump's "My Generals", and none too happy about the Syria decision, submits his surprise resignation, charging the President is anything but "clear-eyed" about the need for U.S. alliances and the threats faced from its adversaries;

SUSPENSE! Will Trump shut down the federal government over Christmas? Last week he said he would. Earlier this week he indicated he wouldn't. But, today, it looks like he will! And all over $5 billion in funding for a southern border wall (now "steel slats") he promised that Mexico, not tax-payers, would be paying for;

CHRISTMAS VILLAINY! Trump's USDA, in defiance of Congress's newly passed farm bill, announces they will now make it more difficult for the poor to receive food stamps. That'll show 'em!;

NUCLEAR CLIFF-HANGER! North Korea bluntly declares that "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula" actually means what it sounds like, and what those of us in the reality-based world (as opposed to the Reality TV world) already knew. They will not denuclearize unless the U.S. removes its own troops and nuclear weapons at the same time. Will Trump return to his threats for "fire and fury like the world has never seen"?! Stay tuned for the thrilling 2019 season!

Also today: The DNC announces its planned schedule for a dozen 2020 Presidential primary debates beginning in 2019, even though we're not yet even done with the 2018 election around here yet!

As we await the scheduled January 11th evidentiary hearing over the GOP's 2018 Absentee Ballot Election Fraud Scandal that has prevented Republican Mark Harris' 905-vote U.S. House "victory" over Democrat Dan McCready from being certified in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District, the state Board of Election's stunning 279-page 2016 investigative report [PDF] on apparent absentee ballot fraud by McCrae Dowless, the same GOP contractor hired in 2018 by Harris, is released. And it includes some jaw-dropping evidence begging the question: How can it be that Dowless not already prosecuted after 2016, but allowed instead to carry out the same unlawful election fraud scams in 2018?!

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with a number of climate crisis Christmas gifts from states around the country and hardly any lumps of coal at all!...

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Today was the first day that it really began to feel like things are finally falling completely apart for Donald Trump and his administration. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the mountain of stories covered on today's BradCast amid an astonishing day of news on several fronts...

• The New York state Attorney General entered an agreement with the Trump Foundation to permanently shut down the supposed charitable organization. Her investigation and prosecution of alleged fraud, campaign violations and self-dealing via the organization by Trump, his three adult children and his 2016 campaign will continue, despite the Foundation's dissolution;

• The Trump Administration blinked on Tuesday, at least a bit, following Trump's previous televised threats to shut down the federal government this Friday over funding for his border wall with Mexico (which, we were repeatedly told during the campaign, they, not tax-payers, would pay for.) Last week, Trump said on camera he would be "proud" to shut down the federal government before Christmas if Democrats didn't agree to $5 billion for wall funding in a budget agreement that must pass by this Friday. Today, Trump's Press Secretary suggested they'd find the money elsewhere, even as Congress remained at a standstill with Republicans not having enough votes to pass a bill that meets Trump's demands;

• At the same time, in a federal court room in D.C., Trump's disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators last year, had been expected to walk away from his sentencing hearing a free man today following his cooperation with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team. They had requested no jail time for Flynn after his help in several known and unknown probes. But, thanks to Flynn's attorneys falsely suggesting in a sentencing memorandum last week that he had been duped, tricked and entrapped by FBI investigators into lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, the sentencing was mercifully postponed until March. In a remarkable colloquy with U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Ronald Reagan appointee, Flynn quickly backed off his attorneys claims. In blistering remarks from the bench, Sullivan railed that he could not "hide my disgust, my disdain" for Flynn's behavior, and upbraided the former top Trump official and retired Lt. General for having "arguably sold out your country". A reportedly shaken Flynn then asked for his sentencing to be delayed, so that the could further cooperate with the Special Counsel in hopes of being credited to avoid jail time. All of that, after Trump had wished Flynn "good luck" via Twitter prior to today's hearing;

• In Arizona, the loser of November's U.S. Senate contest, Republican Rep. Martha McSally, was appointed by the state's GOP Governor to take the seat of Sen. Jon Kyle, who had temporarily replaced the late Sen. John McCain earlier this year. McSally narrowly lost her Senate bid in November to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who she had described as a "traitor" during the campaign. McSally also tried to make amends with McCain's family after insulting the ailing Senator before his death;

• In the North Carolina GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal, state Republicans reversed their position for a second time regarding the certification of Republican Mark Harris. State Republican leaders demanded that he be certified in the state's 9th Congressional District House race, despite an ongoing fraud investigation. The current results show that Harris defeated Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes in November. The State Board of Elections, however, has refused to certify the race due to the allegations of absentee ballot fraud and has postponed it's planned evidentiary hearing from December 21 to January 11, thanks to what the Board describes as delayed document production by subpoenaed parties. Harris has now admitted that he hired the GOP contractor accused of altering or withholding perhaps thousands of absentee ballots in the race;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with a surprising amount of actually encouraging news for a change.

Yes, it really is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...

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On today's BradCast: Lock him up! Plus a whole bunch of November 6 midterm fallout, follow-up and fraud. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Yes, despite his many desperate and ever-shifting attempts to explain (lie) his way out of it, all evidence demonstrates that Donald Trump quite clearly committed a major, indictable, campaign finance felony in his hush-money payoffs before the 2016 election to women with whom he had had sexual affairs. We're joined today by longtime campaign finance expert CRAIG HOLMAN of Public Citizen for a very sober, clear, point-by-point explanation of Trump's apparent crime in this matter and what can (or, at least should) be done about it.

Holman methodically debunks each of Trump's various claims --- offered via both Fox "News" and on Twitter --- in the wake of the criminal sentencing in federal court on Wednesday, of his longtime personal attorney and "fixer" Michael Cohen. Cohen pleaded guilty for, among other things, facilitating the illicit, covert payoff scheme "directed" by Trump to cover up the trysts so they wouldn't adversely effect his 2016 election chances. Holman elaborates on how any other elected federal official would "absolutely" be indicted for the exact same unlawful scheme.

"Every other government official is subject to the laws of the nation, just like you and I. And we have seen many members of Congress, for instance, and other Executive Branch officials face indictment, prosecution and even imprisonment for this type of felony behavior," he tells me.

The only thing preventing similar accountability for Trump, Holman argues, is the controversial opinion from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) which states that a sitting President may not be indicted on criminal charges. But, Holman says, citing recent arguments from Richard Nixon's former counsel John Dean, that's precisely what the U.S. Constitution's 25th Amendment was already designed to handle.

"The entire rationale behind [the OLC opinion] it is that indicting a President would incapacitate the Executive Branch, and therefore you just can't indict a sitting President," he says. But "we've got the 25th Amendment in the Constitution, and that sets up an entire transition period if the President becomes incapacitated. So there is no incapacitation. We know the transition. So the president should be subject to indictment."

Beyond the protection of the OLC opinion, Holman notes one very narrow potential argument that Trump might otherwise be able to use to avoid try and avoid legal accountability. But, he concludes, "The evidence is overwhelming that our President committed a felony."

In other news today, Wisconsin's rejected Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed a sweeping host of bills --- adopted with lightning speed by the gerrymandered GOP state legislature in an extraordinary lame duck session --- designed to undermine the Executive powers of incoming Democratic Governor-elect Tony Evers, and Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul, as well as the state's voters. At least one lawsuit in response has already been announced to challenge the new provision that restricts Early Voting in the state. A similar provision was ruled unconstitutional by the federal courts in 2016 (as we discussed recently with the plaintiff in that case.)

In Michigan, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, also soon to be replaced by a Democrat, signed several bills on Friday that similarly undermine voters.

In North Carolina -- where Republicans invented these very types of unprecedented lame duck power grabs back in 2016 --- the GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal that has, so far, prevented the certification of Republican Mark Harris' reported 905-vote "victory" over Democrat Dan McCready in the state's 9th Congressional District, may be spreading to a completely different U.S. House District. In Columbus County, in the state's 7th CD, there was reportedly an even larger percentage of mysteriously unreturned absentee ballots from Democratic voters than that which originally sparked the 9th CD's ongoing election fraud probe. In Columbus, a Republican candidate for Sheriff is said to have unseated the Democrat Sheriff by by just 37 votes after hiring the same GOP contractor at the center of the NC9 absentee ballot fraud allegations. As we've been reporting, evidence revealed during the ongoing investigation in NC9 will, almost certainly at this point, result in a new U.S. House election there.

Finally today, in Maine, incumbent Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin saw his Constitutional challenge to the state's new Ranked Choice Voting system rejected by a Trump-appointed federal judge on Thursday. On Friday, he called off the ongoing hand-count he had requested in his 2nd Congressional District race. Poliquin, after winning the most votes in the first computer tally by more than 2,200 votes, failed to win a majority. In the next round of counting, after voters' second place choices were redistributed to other candidates according to the computerized RCV algorithm now used to tally ballots in the state, Democrat Jared Golden was declared the winner of the November 6th contest. The complicated RCV hand-count began last week and, until ended by Poliquin today, was otherwise expected to continue for several more weeks. The outgoing Republicans says he is still mulling an appeal to the federal court ruling.

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Among the many messes covered on today's BradCast [Audio link to full show is posted below]...

• Trump can't seem to find anyone who wants to be his new Chief of Staff. So, his son-in-law Jared Kushner now appears to be in the running;

• Trump finally responded (on Fox "News", naturally) to Wednesday's news that his former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen received a three year prison sentence after cooperating with federal investigators and pleading guilty to a number of felonies. The charges include an illegal 2016 hush-money payout scheme to women said to have had sexual affairs with Trump, which Cohen and the prosecutors describe as having been "directed" by Trump in violation of campaign finance laws. Trump now says it wasn't unlawful, but if it was, it was only a civil, not criminal violation --- and that he didn't do it in any case, but if he did, it was all Cohen's fault --- and that Cohen only pleaded guilty to it as a favor to federal prosecutors in order to "embarrass" Trump. Or something. Got it?;

• Meanwhile, a federal government shutdown next week before Christmas is looking increasingly likely. After Trump's televised Oval Office tantrum with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer earlier this week over funding for his Border Wall, it's become apparent that Republicans in Congress currently have no plan to avoid a shutdown next week after Trump declared during the meeting that he would happily take the blame for such a shutdown. Even in the House, where Republicans still hold a large majority until January, they seem unable to pass a version of a spending bill that includes funding for the wall that Trump repeatedly promised Mexico would pay for;

• In Kentucky, taking a page from Trump, Tea Party Republican Governor Matt Bevin released a bizarre video on Twitter Wednesday night, attacking the Louisville Courier-Journal for their new partnership with independent, non-profit investigative reporting outlet ProPublica. Bevin charges ProPublica is a "far-left" organization secretly funded by "George 'I Hate America' Soros" and, therefore, everyone should "disregard" the reporting from the Courier-Journal. ProPublica responded to the charges, and suggests a recent damning exposé by the paper finding Bevin hired an old friend for a top IT job in the state and gave him a $215,000 raise after less than a year, is just one of the reasons Bevin may be hoping Kentuckians stop reading the paper;

• In North Carolina, the mess created by the GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal in the state's 9th Congressional District continues. Republican lawmakers, on Wednesday, passed legislation that would allow the State Board of Elections to call not just a new general election for the U.S. House in NC9, but for a new primary as well, following evidence of absentee fraud in both elections this year by a GOP contractor hired by Mark Harris, the Republican candidate. Harris is said to have defeated incumbent Congressman Robert Pittenger by just over 800 votes in the May GOP primary and his Democratic opponent Dan McCready by just over 900 votes in the November midterm. State Republicans seem to now be conceding that both races were tainted with fraud by their candidate and will now require a do-over;

• In Michigan, GOP lawmakers are scrambling to pass a measure in the lame duck session that would make it much harder for voters to place statewide initiatives on the ballot. That's just one of several ongoing efforts by Republicans in the state to strip power from voters and the Executive Branch before Democrats can be sworn in as Governor, Attorney General and Secretary of State next month.

• And finally, in The Arctic....well, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report to detail that frightening and worsening mess, along with several others...

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On today's BradCast: Trump appears now to be in very big trouble. So do Republicans in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District. But President Obama's Affordable Care Act soldiers on, even as signups are down as the open enrollment period for 2019 on the federal HealthCare.gov exchange quietly nears its close on Saturday, December 15th.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and 'fixer' Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison and some $2 million in fines after cooperating with federal prosecutors following guilty pleas to several felonies in August. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team noted that Cohen has been helpful in their probe of Trump's still-unexplained relationship with Russia, but it was the charges brought by federal prosecutors against Cohen in New York's Southern District related to hush-money payoffs to women with whom Trump was said to have had sexual affairs that most immediately appears to cook Trump's goose.

Both Cohen and the federal government now allege that Trump, in the waning days of the 2016 campaign, "directed" a conspiracy to pay off the women in order to buy their silence in an illicit scheme to "influence the election". Those payoffs of $130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels and $150,000 to Playboy model Karen McDougal (via National Enquirer publisher AMI) are considered illegal campaign contributions.

Also on Wednesday, prosecutors announced a non-prosecution agreement with AMI, run by longtime Trump pal David Pecker, in exchange for their cooperation in the case. As discussed on today's show, Trump now appears to be in very VERY big trouble, at this point. If the man who helped make the payoffs at Trump's "direction" --- who had also cooperated with investigators --- received three years in prison for his crimes, imagine what may happen to the man who actually directed the conspiracy.

While there are still a number of potential escape hatches such as the Presidential pardon power for Trump, his associates, his family members and his businesses, a new interview with incoming New York state Attorney General-elect Letitia James suggests she has that base covered as well. James says she intends to "use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well" at the state level, including "anyone" in his circle who may have violated state law. Trump's businesses and campaign are based in New York. James tells NBC she intends to bring state charges in an attempt to ensure Trump, his associates, his family and his various organizations are unable to evade accountability with Presidential pardons at the federal level.

In North Carolina, meanwhile, fresh revelations continue to emerge regarding the 9th Congressional District election which is at the center of an ongoing GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal. New details in that matter today include the state Republican Party's admission that a new election will most likely be needed, following news this week that Early Voting results in Bladen County were reportedly leaked, illegally, in advance of the November 6th election.

Moreover, a new affidavit from a Republican now charges that McCrae Dowless, the GOP contractor hired by Republican Mark Harris to run his absentee ballot campaign in Bladen, where the fraud scheme appears centered, told him that he (unlawfully) had as many as 800 absentee ballots in his possession prior to the election. What came of those ballots we don't yet know, but Harris is said to have defeated Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes in the 9th District last month. At this point, I see no way that a new election in the district can be avoided, other than simply naming McCready the winner.

Also today, we're joined by ALICE OLLSTEIN, formerly of Talking Points Memo, now a congressional reporter at Politico, to discuss the nearly 10 percent drop off in signups this year for the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), as the federal open enrollment period comes to a close this weekend. "It's not high prices that are deterring people," Ollstein argues, citing a key piece of data to back that up, before explaining the several different reasons why signups are down this year so far, and how that may affect the future stability of the federal exchanges.

With Democrats set to take the majority in the U.S. House in January, Ollstein also details their dilemma in how to best defend against a federal lawsuit brought by several Republican-controlled states (and now supported by the Trump Administration) hoping to kill the landmark ACA and its vital protections for those with preexisting conditions...

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On today's BradCast: A preview of the unimaginably worse dysfunction that awaits us all after Democrats take over the U.S. House majority in January and Donald Trump becomes even worse and more dishonest at his job? [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up today, some quick news headlines, including Time Magazine's announcement that several journalists, killed or imprisoned, are "Person of the Year" for 2018, and a life sentence plus 419 years recommended by the jury for the neo-Nazi who murdered activist Heather Heyer by plowing a car into counter-protesters during the August 2017 "United the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Also, the Washington Post Fact Checkers have been forced to create a new category to describe Donald Trump's dozens of endlessly repeated lies, such as his claims that Mexico would pay for his border wall (he's demanding U.S. tax-payers do so instead) and that his tax cuts were the largest in U.S. history (they weren't. They were the 8th largest.) The new category will be called "Bottomless Pinocchio" and will apply to lies that repeated more than 20 times after they've long been debunked by the fact-checkers as a falsehood. To date, Trump is the only politician to merit such a rating. At least 14 of his most frequently repeated lies have already earned the dubious new distinction.

Then, Trump's bizarre on-camera pageant in the Oval Office today with presumptive, soon-to-be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer. During a media avail before what was to be a meeting regarding the impending federal budget deadline, the three bickered about Trump's threat to shut down the U.S. Government if a budget deal fails to include billions for his southern border wall. "If we don't get what we want," Trump threatened the Democrats during the lengthy and bizarre televised negotiation, "I will shut down the government."

Pelosi and Schumer tried to convince the President to accept one of two bi-partisan deals they say could be immediately passed by both the House and Senate. But Trump, the great deal-maker, failed to budge --- so far. Trump's threat to shutdown the U.S. Government despite the costs to Americans and the economy, comes even while Republicans still control both chambers of Congress. Things are likely to get much uglier once Dems take over the House with their (at least) 40-seat majority on January 3.

Speaking of which, we've got a few more new details today on the GOP election fraud scandal in North Carolina's still-uncertified 9th Congressional District race. Republican Mark Harris is said to have won the election in November by just 905 votes over Democrat Dan McCready. But evidence of absentee ballot fraud by a GOP contractor hired by Harris (in both the general election and Republican primary) has delayed certification of the race by the State Board of Elections. They will decide whether to order a new election or declare one of the two candidates the winner. The Board had planned to review evidence from the ongoing investigation by December 21, but has now told a state court they they may need more time, given that the Harris Campaign has been slow in responding to documents subpoenaed by the Board.

Also, new evidence this week reveals that election workers in Bladen County (one of two NC counties at the center of the probe), illegally tabulated early vote results and leaked them to non-election officials (the Harris campaign?) several days prior to the close of polls on November 6th.

Meanwhile, election officials in Florida have now revealed that more than 6,600 vote-by-mail absentee ballots sent and post-marked by Election Day went uncounted in the Sunshine State's midterm election. Those numbers don't yet include ballots from Palm Beach County, a Democratic stronghold. The untabulated ballots might have effected a number of close races in FL, including those tallied in statewide "recounts" for U.S. Senate, Governor and Agricultural Commissioner. While state law allows ballots post-marked by Election Day from overseas military votes to be included in the tally if they are received up to ten days after the election, all other "late" ballots are ignored.

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with news from COP24, the U.N. climate conference in Poland, where the U.S. has joined Russia and Saudi Arabia in an "Axis of Oil" and is, literally, being laughed at for pushing coal while youth protesters demand fossil fuels be kept in the ground. Back home, the Trump Administration is now planning to reclassify high-level nuclear waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state (and other facilities) in order to avoid billions of dollars in clean-up at the nation's most polluted former nuclear weapons site...

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On today's BradCast: The boondoggles continue --- from the Pentagon to the U.S. House and American elections --- as we can't look ahead to the new year without the continuing unresolved muck from this year. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

When Democrats take the majority in the new Congress after the first of the year, one of their first orders of business will be determining who actually is allowed to be seated following the November 2018 midterm elections. There could be as many as three (and possibly more) seats challenged in the 116th Congress, thanks to the burgeoning GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal in North Carolina, an admission by a newly-elected Florida Republican that he "may have" violated federal campaign finance laws, and a lengthy hand-count process in Maine's first-ever Ranked Choice Voting election for a U.S. House seat.

In NC's 9th Congressional District, Mark Harris --- the GOP candidate whose uncertified 905-vote "victory" is now being probed by state and federal officials after the emergence of evidence of absentee ballot fraud by a GOP contractor Harris hired in both the primary and general elections --- has said he'd agree to a new election, but only if evidence surfaces that the fraud in question would have changed the final results. That's a much higher bar than called for by state law, which allows the State Board of Election to take any necessary actions to "assure that an election is determined without taint of fraud or corruption."

In FL, Ross Spano, the Republican who is said to have won the race in the state's 15th Congressional District, now admits he received nearly $200,000 in personal loans for his campaign from two friends, in violation of the $2,700 per person federal contribution limit. One of those friends, despite having no official government role, is today reported to be helping to select Spano's Congressional hires. In both the NC and FL cases, it's not just Democrats crying foul. Tthe Republicans who were defeated in the primaries by Harris and Spano are also joining the public outcries.

In ME, a "recount" request by ousted Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin in the 2nd Congressional District could result in a vacant seat for a while, as a hand-count of the complicated RCV counting process --- initially carried out after the election by a computer algorithm --- is a lengthy and onerous one that could stretch beyond January 3, when the new Congress is sworn in.

In non-election related news today, Donald Trump will reportedly call for an unprecedented $750 billion budget next year for the Pentagon after his previous increases to military spending. That, despite his description of Defense Department spending last week as "crazy" and previous vows to cut DoD's budget by 5 percent. The Administration's proposal for $750 billion is reported to be a "negotiating tactic" to ensure the $733 billion requested by the Pentagon, which is a far cry from the $700 billion Trump had called for previously and a substantial bump from the "crazy" $716 billion allocated for the current fiscal year.

We're joined today by investigative journalist DAVE LINDORFF to discuss the decades-long "accounting fraud" being carried out by the Pentagon, as detailed in his new exclusive exposé for The Nation. Citing whistleblowers, Inspector General's reports and a recent admission by the private accounting firm Ernst & Young that the Pentagon's books were so poorly documented that they simply cannot be audited, Lindorff explains how the DoD continues to seek --- and receive --- more tax-payer dollars year-after-year, even without needing or spending all they received in previous years. Rather than returning unpsent funds to the federal Treasury, DoD accounting gimmicks ("nippering" and "plugs") ensure endlessly increasing budgets and payments to Defense Contractors. The unchecked spending --- which amounts to trillions of dollars --- also helps to ensures that services Americans may actually need and want --- like healthcare, education and maintenance for infrastructure --- continue to be on the chopping block every fiscal year, even as Defense spending now accounts for 54 cents out of every federal tax-payer dollar collected.

"What the Pentagon does is they ask for more money than they need. They don't spend it all, and then they tuck away what isn't spent in ways that it won't be found --- violating the Constitution, by the way --- then that unspent money becomes a slush fund that's available to use however they want," Lindorff tells me.

"They've known about this stonewalling by the Pentagon for 26 years, which includes a lot of Democratic Congresses. Nobody has ever called them to the carpet on this," he charges. Despite Inspector General reports detailing the gimmicks and unaccounted for budget holes, "Nobody has been prosecuted for this. Nobody has been fired for this....If it's signed off on by the proper authority in the chain of command then it's 'supported' whether or not there's evidentiary material to back it."

Lindorff also argues that, with one recent exception, Democrats --- including progressives from Bernie Sanders to Beto O'Rourke --- have been largely silent on what he describes as a massive account fraud.

Finally today, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who will chair the U.S. House Intelligence Committee after Dems take over Congress next year, argued over the weekend that new filings from federal prosecutors on Friday suggest "There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him" and "that he may be the first President in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time." Schiff was referencing, among other things, details from a sentencing memo filed by federal prosecutors in New York on Friday charging that Trump "directed" a criminal conspiracy with his former attorney Michael Cohen to pay hush money to two women with whom Trump had affairs, in order to effect election results in violation of federal campaign finance laws...

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No, Iraq hasn't (yet) announced plans to invade North Carolina to help spread democracy. But, on today's BradCast, it's starting to look like it might not be a bad idea. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Just before air today, Dan McCready, the Democratic candidate in NC's 9th Congressional District U.S. House race tainted by evidence of GOP absentee ballot election fraud, withdrew his concession offered last month. McCready charges that Republican Mark Harris "bankrolled criminal activity" in the district in the hiring of contractor McCrae Dowless who appears to have gamed absentee ballots in Bladen and perhaps Robeson Counties, resulting in the 905-vote margin by which Harris had previously been thought to have won.

At the same time, NC-9's incumbent Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger, who Harris reportedly defeated in the primary last May, tells Washington Post that his concerns about fraud during that race --- when he lost to Harris by just 828 votes (more than half of them absentee ballots from Bladen) --- were shared with both state and national GOP officials at the time. Nonetheless, despite years-long claims of concern about fraud leading to passage of often unconstitutional GOP laws that restrict the ability of many Democratic-leaning voters to cast ballots, Republicans took no action after the primary. In fact, similar concerns about absentee ballot fraud by the same contractor surfaced after the 2016 election in the state as well.

The Charlotte Observer has now called for the 2018 election in NC-9 to be started over, from scratch, beginning with the primary. "Evidence demands it," their editorial board opined this week. We've got a whole bunch of late-breaking news related to the burgeoning NC-9 election fraud scandal today (along with my completely irresponsible prediction about how this entire thing ends).

Also, in related news, a newly emerging election fraud scandal in New York, where Republican and Independence Party leaders have now been charged with forging signatures on nominating petitions in order to boost chances for GOP candidates. (If that sounds familiar, it's because Republicans, apparently --- including very high-profile ones --- do that quite a bit.)

Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers in Wisconsin and Michigan this week continued their efforts to undermine the will of the midterm voters in the wake of disastrous performances in the November elections. In Wisconsin, where the GOP-gerrymandered legislature on Wednesday adopted unprecedented measures during an extraordinary lame duck session to remove power from the Governor, the Attorney General and voters in advance of Democratic Governor-elect Tony Evers and AG-elect Josh Kaul taking office next month, state lawmakers also confirmed 82 appointees of outgoing Republican Governor Scott Walker to state positions in one single day. Several of the positions had reportedly been vacant for as long as a year, and more than 30 of the new appointees have had no public hearing whatsoever in the state Senate. That power grab is particularly hypocritical for Walker, who warned his Democratic predecessor in 2010 to avoid all new appointments in the final two months of his term.

In Michigan, GOP lawmakers have proven similarly disdainful of voters during the lame duck session. Earlier this year, they adopted two voter-initiated ballot measures concerning increases to the state's minimum wage and paid sick leave for workers in order to prevent the proposals from appearing on the November ballot. But, this week, during the lame duck period before Democrat Gretchen Whitmer can be sworn in, Republican lawmakers gutted the measures they had just adopted in September. They would not have been able to do that had they been voted on by voters. The controversial --- and perhaps unconstitutional --- effort was given the green light by outgoing Republican AG Bill Schuette, who lost his bid for Governor in November to Whitmer.

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with a bunch of very bad news on global carbon emissions and climate change, but a bit of encouraging news from several major companies in response to it...

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