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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Toxic coal ash waste found contaminating groundwater in 39 states; Plastic pollution contaminating deepest ocean trenches; Heatwaves sweeping the oceans 'like wildfires'; Former U.S. military and intelligence officials slam Trump White House for ignoring military on climate change; PLUS: Senate Democrats go on offense as Republicans lie about the Green New Deal... 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): Who will be the 2020 climate candidate?; There really, really isn’t a silver bullet for climate change; Trump EPA report touts that vehicle CO2 emissions are at a record low; Access to green parks in childhood associated with happier adulthood; Trump again seeks deep cuts to renewable energy funding; Climate change deniers target climate science education in schools; Trump Administration plans to end endangered species protections for wolves; Awash with plastic bottles and lacking a law, Kenya struggles to recycle... PLUS: The Michael Bloomberg bombshell the media missed... and much, MUCH more! ...

That headline will make sense once you listen to the show. With the news "only" turned up to 11 today (as opposed to its usual 12 or 13), we're able to catch up on a whole bunch of important stories, breaking and otherwise, on today's BradCast. [Audio link is posted below.]

Among those many stories...

• Oregon U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Senator, Sec. of State and 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton all announce they will not be running for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2020. That's mostly good news, as we discuss;

• A southern Indiana election board is considering using hand-marked and hand-COUNTED paper ballots in an upcoming local primary election. That's definitely good news;

• North Carolina's State Board of Elections announces the dates for the redo election(s) in the state's 2018 U.S. House race for the 9th Congressional District. The first one was nullified a week or so ago, due to Republican absentee ballot election fraud by a GOP contractor on behalf of the disgraced candidate and Baptist preacher Mark Harris. The Democratic candidate, Marine vet and businessman Dan McCready, has already announced he will be running again, and only one Republican, so far, has announced his intention to run in the do-over contest. That one candidate, Union County Commissioner Stony Rushing --- endorsed by Harris (ouch) --- turns out to be a real peach, as we explain with some help from Daily Kos' Jeff Singer;

• Also in NC, the judge who nullified two state Constitutional Amendments, one of which would have imposed disenfranchising Photo ID voting restrictions, stands by his recent ruling to nix the measures on the basis that the state legislature that placed them on the ballot had been "illegally constituted" by unlawful racial gerrymanders in several NC legislative districts;

• And, speaking of GOP election fraud, in Virginia, the criminal investigation into (now-former) Republican Rep. Scott Taylor and his paid campaign staffers who forged petition signatures to place an independent candidate on the ballot in 2018, continues. The GOP scheme, exposed before the election last year, included what a judge described as "out-and-out fraud" via forged signatures from people who had long ago died or moved. The failed scheme was meant by the Republicans to dilute the votes of Taylor's Democratic challenger, now-freshman Rep. Elaine Luria, in VA's 2nd U.S. House District;

• A huge majority of American voters now believe, 64 to 24%, that Donald Trump committed crimes before becoming President, with a smaller plurality believing he also has committed crimes since becoming President, according to new polling from Quinnipiac.

• Meanwhile, Trump characterized the new House majority Democrats' several burgeoning investigations into his and his associates myriad apparent crimes as a "big, fat, fishing expedition", "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!", "nonsense" and "a disgrace to our country" today. He charged the "real crime is what the Dems are doing." But, as we discuss today, the long, LONG overdue exercise of Congressional oversight into an unprecedentedly corrupt Presidency is anything but. We list an astonishing number of potential crimes now under the Democrats' microscope thanks to the House Judiciary Committee's massive document requests sent Monday to more than 80 Trump associates, family members, organizations and institutions. That, as we also note, is just the tip of the iceberg for what is still to come, thanks to voters who put Democrats back in charge in the House last November;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with tragic news out of Alabama, stupid news out of CPAC, and important news at the EPA and from the latest Democratic candidates entering the 2020 Presidential contest...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Heartbreaking tragedy as powerful tornadoes rip across Alabama; Down Under shatters its record for hottest summer nationally; Republican rhetoric increasingly unhinged about the Green New Deal at CPAC; Senate confirms former coal lobbyist as permanent EPA chief; PLUS: The 2020 Democratic presidential race keeps growing, with pledges to act on climate change... 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): Troubling discovery in the world's deepest ocean trenches - plastic pollution in marine animals' stomachs; The potency of Republicans’ hamburger lie: history shows why it might work; Heatwaves sweeping oceans ‘like wildfires’; Trump’s "A Plus treatment" tweet highlights political approach to disaster relief; A look into Big Oil's fight against electric cars; Pipeline explosion rocks rural Missouri; Plastic Mardi Gras beads could soon be a thing of the past... PLUS: The good news about a Green New Deal... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's happening way too slowly. But, if you haven't noticed --- it's unclear whether Republicans have yet --- their "strategy" of simply ignoring and denying very real problems, from a wildly failed and corrupt Presidency to Earth's climate now on the brink of disaster, is no longer working. You can only ignore and deny and delay for so long before things just fall apart. It's a theme that comes up in a number of stories on today's BradCast. [Audio link to show posted below.]

Among the stories we cover today...

• Fallout continues from Wednesday's bombshell Michael Cohen's testimony in the U.S. House Oversight Committee. According to conservative WaPo columnist Max Boot, evidence of at least five felony crimes by the President of the United States was offered under oath by Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer. Yet, Republicans don't seem to have a clue, according to Rightwing former NJ Governor Chris Christie, how to substantively respond. Describing it as a "fake hearing", as Trump did and hoping to tar Cohen as a "liar" only gets ya so far, particularly since Cohen already pleaded guilty to lying to Congress --- on behalf of Donald Trump! --- and is soon going to prison for it. His life would only gets worse if he lied to Congress again. So why would he? On the other hand, Trump has yet to face consequences for his unprecedented lies, cover-ups and felony crimes both before and after becoming President;

• Speaking of Trump and lies, his second Summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam abruptly collapsed on Thursday, ending early with no deal and no agreement signed as planned. Trump claims it was because the North insisted the U.S. lift all sanctions in exchange for the closure of its main nuclear site. The North claims Trump is lying. Who to believe? It should also be noted that Trump, the self-described great deal maker, continues to fail to make virtually any deals at all with anybody over the two years of his woeful if tumultuous Presidency.

  He also failed, once again, to condemn North Korea's brutal and atrocious human rights record, and even publicly sided with Kim over U.S. intelligence agencies (yet again), this time regarding the death of 22-year old American student Otto Warmbier after his imprisonment there. Trump said Kim told him he knew nothing about Warmbier's death and "take[s] him at his word" on that. But, as long as the unbalanced Trump still believes he's friends with Kim, we'll take that over the "fire and fury like the world has never seen" that 2017 Donald Trump had been promising when he threatened to wipe North Korea off the map;

• Also today, in Israel, recommendations for felony indictments were announced by the Attorney General after a two year investigation of the dishonest, corrupt, Trump-supported, right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently facing a tough upcoming election. Despite the corruption allegations, Netanyahu says he won't step down as PM amidst what he describes as an "unprecedented witch hunt" by "the left". (Sound familiar?);

• Meanwhile, on Wednesday, while Cohen was testifying to Congress, McCrae Dowless and a number of his accomplices were arrested in North Carolina on charges related to absentee ballot election fraud on behalf of Republicans in the state. The long overdue accountability comes on the heels of last week's State Board of Elections hearing and unanimous vote for a new election in NC's 9th Congressional District. That, after Republican candidate and Baptist minister Mark Harris hired Dowless to run his absentee ballot campaign last year and lied about his knowledge of Dowless' tactics. The District Attorney who indicted Dowless and friends says more charges for "others", regarding the November 2018 general election, could be coming. Harris may want to do some heavy praying. The Board of Elections meets Monday to determine a date for the new election to fill the still-vacant U.S. House seat tainted by GOP fraud last year. Democrat Dan McCready says he plans to run again. The disgraced Harris says he won't;

• And, more good news for voters on Wednesday, this time in Texas. A federal judge has ruled the state may not purge as many as 98,000 voters from the rolls after Secretary of State David Whitley and (criminally indicted) Attorney General Ken Paxton declared them to be non-citizens fraudulently registered to vote in the state. As became apparent just hours after Paxton announced Whitley's flawed list in a "VOTER FRAUD ALERT!", tens of thousands of those listed were revealed to have been citizens after all. That didn't prevent Trump from tweeting out the fake news as "just the tip of the iceberg", in order to falsely declare that "voter fraud is rampant". But it has now earned a reprimand from a federal court and will likely block Whitley's state Senate confirmation as SoS, if Democrats in the chamber keep their vow to block Governor Greg Abbott's former aide turned nominee. The federal judge found that just 80 of the 98,000 names were actually non-citizens;

• Finally today, with the GOP's long-held Ignore and Deny strategy also falling apart on man-made climate change, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with news on that and much more, including some good news for solar power in Arizona for a pleasant change...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Britain basks in warmest February ever recorded; New House Democratic majority unleashes wave of oversight on climate, energy, and environment; A turning point for solar power in Arizona; PLUS: Republicans shifting away from outright climate change denial?... 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): This is an emergency, damn it: Green New Deal critics are missing the bigger picture; Senate confirms ex-coal lobbyist to lead EPA; Flood-prone cities like Houston may need to start buying people out; Scientists pull CO2 from the air, turn it into coal; Evidence for global warming passes physics' gold standard threshold; CPAC: The Green New Deal "is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved"; Russia orders firms to release captive whales after outcry; Personhood for Lake Erie?... PLUS: You can’t take on climate change without tackling sprawl... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: EPA's 'action plan' on toxic chemicals in drinking water? Take action...later; Australian court blocks coal mine on climate change grounds; January was the third hottest January ever recorded; BP predicts renewable energy will be world's main source of power within 20 years; PLUS: Trump Administration wants California's high-speed rail funding back... 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): The Green New Deal: a centuries-old idea could revolutionize climate policy; >'Moment of reckoning': US cities burn recyclables after China bans imports; How EPA Wehrum’s former law firm profited from the fight to roll back air rules; Polar Vortex showed how much renewable energy storage may be needed; Is the 'insect apocalypse' really upon us?; MI Gov. Whitmer's new environmental order leaves 'polluter panels' in place— for now; Supreme Court Clean Water Act case could have big impact on coal ash disposal... PLUS: Video: 'We are entering into an unprecedented climate', say authors David Wallace-Wells and Dr. Michael Mann... and much, MUCH more! ...

The federal government continue to spiral towards utter dysfunction under a President on the precipice of (take your pick). But one freshman Congresswoman provides a bit of a light at the end of the Trump tunnel. [Audio link to today's complete BradCast is posted below.]

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

• Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen admits he paid a guy from Jerry Falwell Jr.'s Liberty University to rig online polls for Trump before he announced his candidacy in 2015. That, as Cohen is reportedly reconsidering his decision to testify to Congress next month in advance of his three year prison sentence, due to threats (witness tampering? intimidation?) by the President against him and his family. Trump failed to report the $50,000 payoff to rig polls to the FEC, which is yet another potential federal felony and/or article of impeachment for the sitting President. While the story should surprise no one at this point (remember, he also paid extras to cheer him on while announcing his candidacy at Trump Tower that year), its somehow still stunning and disturbing as yet another indication of just what Trump was likely willing to do, at any cost, to win in 2016;

• Speaking of what Trump and his campaign were willing to do, his new personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, may have broken the Internet after his appearance on CNN Wednesday night, in which he moved the "collusion" goal posts by falsely claiming that neither he nor the President ever claimed his campaign --- if not Trump himself --- "colluded" with Russia. In fact, contrary to Giuliani's ridiculous assertions, both men claimed repeatedly that nobody on the Trump Campaign was involved in such an activity. As of Wednesday night, it seems, Trump's lawyer is officially backing off that claim on behalf of the President...for some reason;

• Reverberations and consequences of Trump's nearly-month long federal government shutdown continue. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a Congressional delegation were preparing to leave today for a secret trip to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Trump, in retribution for Pelosi's threat to postpone his scheduled State of the Union Address during the shutdown, rescinded permission for the use of a military plane set to take Pelosi and the others on the overseas trip. You'll also be shocked to hear he lied about it all too;

• Meanwhile, as more Congressional Republicans --- and even a top former Administration official --- are questioning the wisdom of shutting down the federal government over Trump's demand for $5.7 billion to begin building his southern border wall, senior citizens and people with disabilities are facing the threat of potential eviction in HUD and USDA subsidized housing across the country;

• At the same time, the Administration is calling some 50,000 furloughed federal employees back to work without pay at agencies such as the FDA, FAA, and at the IRS as tax season begins;

• But, speaking of taxes, there is a reason that Republicans are freaking out --- and lying --- about the recent proposal floated by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to raise the nation's top tax bracket to 70% on those earning more than $10 million: the proposal is wildly popular --- by double-digit margins --- across virtually every demographic and every area of the country. Thus, folks like Wisconsin's failed former GOP Gov. Scott Walker was out bragging on social media this week about lying to school children about how AOC's proposal would actually work, who would and wouldn't be affected by it, and by how much;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as Dems grill the Administration's new nominee/coal lobbyists tapped to head an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) where pollution prosecutions have plummeted since Trump took office, while Australia faces yet another record heat wave, and as the business world slowly begins waking up to the mounting threat of climate change...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Senate Democrats grill Trump EPA chief nominee Andrew Wheeler in confirmation hearing; 'Code red' as historic heat wave grips Australia; EPA criminal actions against polluters hit 30-year low; Antarctica's ice sheets melting 6 times faster than in 1980s; PLUS: The business world is waking up to climate change impacts... 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): Some of the biggest green groups have cold feet over "Green New Deal" document; Cement: the massive CO2 emitter you may not know about; Permafrost melt, the most dangerous climate feedback loop, is speeding up; Trump replacement for Obama Clean Power Plan worse than doing nothing; Shutdown threatens to make this year's fire seasons even worse; Experts warned this floating garbage collector wouldn’t work. The ocean proved them right; Climate change is making it harder for young people to become farmers; Most coffee species at risk of extinction due to climate change, scientists warn; Indonesia lands remarkable victory with aggressive conservation measures... PLUS: Less beef, more beans - experts say the world needs a new diet... and much, MUCH more! ...

Good news and not-terrible news on today's BradCast, along with an interesting proposition for the state of California in a climate changed world. [Audio link to show follows below.]

We start off with the good news today, courtesy of a federal court in Manhattan, where a U.S. District Court Judge blocked the Trump Administration's attempt to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 Census. Judge Jesse Furman's 277-page ruling [PDF] slammed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for violating the federal Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and for offering "pretextual" reasons for adding the question against the wishes of career Census Bureau administrators. Ross had falsely claimed the question was "well tested" and needed by the Dept. of Justice to better enforce the federal Voting Rights Act.

In fact, Republicans have long sought to add the rig the census by adding the question in hopes that it would decrease responses from immigrant communities to help shift the balance of power during decennial redistricting from Democratic-leaning urban areas to more Republican-leaning rural areas. Furman's ruling called out Ross for lying and even responded to an earlier statement on the case from Supreme Court Justice Neal Gorsuch. Several other legal challenges await, however, including a separate case on the same matter that will be heard by the Supreme Court in February.

Meanwhile, William Barr, Trump's nominee for Attorney General, testified at his confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. He claimed he wanted to allow Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who he cited as a friend, to complete his investigation into Trump/Russia, though would not fully commit either to publicly releasing Mueller's full report, nor to recusing himself from oversight of the probe, even if DoJ ethics officials recommended that he should. Barr, a former AG under George H.W. Bush, wrote and helped circualate a lengthy memo [PDF] last year undercutting the validity of Mueller's investigation.

All of that, as Trump's record-length federal government shutdown continues today, with so-called moderate Democrats in Congress declining invitations to the White House in response to Trump's latest effort to drive a wedge between them and Speaker Nancy Pelosi on funding for his southern border wall. The shutdown grinds on as hundreds of thousands of federal employees are furloughed or forced to work without pay, with travelers now facing long lines at TSA checkpoints at major airports, and as some federal employees are being forced to turn to charity food banks to help feed their families.

Next, with California's largest privately run utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) announcing plans to seek bankruptcy protection this week, after facing some $30 billion in potential liabilities for massive, deadly wildfires across the state over the past two years, some have suggested the state should simply buy up the company, which was found to have been responsible for sparking many of the recent record fires by failing to adequately maintain its equipment and power lines.

Los Angeles Times' Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and business columnist MICHAEL HILTZIK joins me today to discuss the issue, as PG&E seeks state protection from liability in hopes of passing costs on to rate-payers. The company, which serves some 16 million customers in Northern California, was once valued at more than $30 billion, but with its stock price now gutted after the bankruptcy announcement and previous criminal convictions it is currently valued at just about $3.5 billion. California could end years of repeated company mismanagement, Hiltzik explains, by purchasing the company or its most valuable assets, at --- pardon the pun --- fire sale prices.

"I wrote a column a year ago saying, 'it's time to take the franchise away from PG&E and put it out for bid.' Let somebody else come in and show that they can operate all of these functions much better, more efficiently, cheaper, and without these constant [failures]. PG&E is like the Wells Fargo of the utility business. It can't seem to do anything right, and scandals continue to crop up," Hiltzik tells me. "My case against PG&E goes way back to the proposition they tried to sneak across through the voters many, many years ago to basically eliminate competition from public power consortiums. So PG&E has just been a bad actor. They have been absolutely atrocious operators."

Hiltzik discusses the pros and cons of what would be a radical, if potentially profitable, investment by the state of California, and how the company's failures and need for public bailout portend similar threats to other fossil fuel-reliant firms, insurance companies and states as the increasingly brutal impacts and costs of climate change undercut profitability.

"We really need to have a debate --- and a debate in the near term --- about who should own these utilities and how they should be operated," he argues. "California has probably done more than most other states in starting to come to grips with [climate change], because at least we've been developing information about what those impacts will be. But nobody has done enough planning up to this point."

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with, as usual, no shortage of disturbing news...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Intense winter storms wreak havoc from coast to coast; Trump's ongoing government shutdown threatening public health and safety; 2018 was the hottest year on record for the world's oceans, putting the planet in hot water; PLUS: California's largest electric utility to file for bankruptcy in wake of catastrophic wildfires... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Are we living through climate change’s worst-case scenario?; EPA criminal action against polluters hits 30-year low; Australia extreme heatwave: 'code red' issued; How China’s big overseas initiative threatens global climate progress; Detroit Auto Show has SUVs, horsepower, but electric cars are few; Water desalination plants harm environment, U.N. report finds; New industry group pledges $1B to combat plastic pollution; One fight the Green New Deal should avoid for now; Trump’s executive order will aggressively cut more forest trees... PLUS: Air pollution is as bad as smoking when it comes to miscarriage risk... and much, MUCH more! ...

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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! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: While we were out: Trump's government shutdown is seriously impacting national parks and federal scientific research; Trump EPA launched another serious attack on public health; PLUS: New Democratic U.S. House majority pledged to act on our climate crisis... 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): Democrats are shockingly unprepared to fight climate change; U.S. greenhouse gas emissions spiked in 2018;
U.S. Supreme Court rejects Exxon in climate change document dispute; US Interior Dept. plans to skirt FOIA requests; Colorado could save $2.5 billion by rapidly shutting down its coal power plants; Sharp drop in monarch butterflies in California; PG&E could be prosecuted for murder in record CA wildfires; Waste Management's 20-year path to 'moonshot' climate goal... PLUS: 10 easy ways to reduce your plastic use in 2019... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, you have me as your host - Angie Coiro - as Brad and Desi catch some breath over the holiday.

In our first few minutes, stay with me while I connect some dots: Trump's wall demands, and the opioid death toll in America. What he's willing to spend on those two issues tell us a lot about him: time, money, interest, commitment, and especially honesty. It's a bit numbers-heavy, but worth the time, I think.

Robert Mercer is stepping back into the shadows, putting out less to buy elections and reportedly losing influence as a result. Then the latest in the eternal riddle: why the hell does anybody trust Wells Fargo with their money?

We take a good long look at abortion today - starting with the latest from Ohio - and tomorrow, as ROBIN MARTY discusses her new book, A Handbook for Post-Roe America. She makes a good case that it doesn't really matter if Roe gets overturned in court; we're fighting a system that's biting away at it so efficiently and relentlessly, we need to prepare anyway.

And we wrap with the second part of my interview with JAMES HATCH, Navy Seal and survivor of the effort to free Bowe Bergdahl in Afganistan. He tells his story - and that of his charity, Spike's K9 Fund, in his book Touching the Dragon.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Very bad news in the latest Arctic Report Card; Coal state Democratic Senator gets top energy committee position; Washington state Governor unveils ambitious climate change legislation; PLUS: Trump EPA rolls back yet another major water protection rule... 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): Welcome to the Eocene, where ice sheets turn into swamps; Big Oil's covert campaign to rewrite American car emissions rules; The race to understand Antarctica’s most terrifying glacier; Democrats shift toward impact on jobs as climate change moves to front of 2020 agenda; California is turning farms into carbon-sucking factories; Radical fixes get a boost at climate talks; California wildfires take toll on insurance industry; Minneapolis moves to eliminate mandatory parking... PLUS: More floods and more droughts: climate change delivers both... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Good news for Democrats out of Maine, a mixed bag (at best) out of the Florida "recounts", and more shameful news from Georgia's illegitimate Governor's race...

First up, a federal judge in Maine allowed computer vote counting to continue today under the state's new Ranked Choice Voting scheme, denying a Constitutional challenge, for now, by an incumbent Republican Congressman. With the computer tally allowed to move forward based on the RCV algorithm, two-term GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin, who won the first tally (but without receiving a majority of first choice votes), is said to have been defeated by Democrat Jared Golden after the second choices of voters who had selected other candidates for the first choice were then added to the totals until one candidate, the Dem in this case, received a majority of votes.

If you're confused by that, it's just one reason why I've long been no fan of Ranked Choice Voting (sometimes called Instant Runoff Voting). Nonetheless, Golden's reported win results in a total pick-up, so far, of 35 U.S. House seats for Democrats, with several more undecided races pending that is likely to boost their "blue wave" to as many as 39 new seats in Congress.

A federal judge in Florida on Thursday observed that the state's elections have become a "laughingstock" which state officials "choose not to fix". He's right. In fact, the Republicans who have run the state for years now have chosen to make voting and counting ballots accurately --- and in a way that the public can know they've been counted accurately --- just about as difficult as humanly possible. U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker issued an order today finding Florida's absentee ballot "signature matching" scheme to be unconstitutional. The order allows some 4,000 voters whose Vote-by-Mail or provisional ballots had been rejected due to certain signature issues a few more days to try and cure those problems in their counties by Saturday at 5pm.

Sen. Bill Nelson's campaign, however, in his razor-thin re-election contest with Gov. Rick Scott, had wanted those ballots added to the count sight unseen. (Scott is appealing the ruling nonetheless.) With the explosion of Vote-by-Mail across the country, signature matching problems are becoming a big concern, particularly with votes cast by younger voters who use computers and don't develop personal signatures and for older voters whose signatures have changed over time. Add to that the problem of the awful computer touchscreens used to record those signatures at DMVs and polling places.

In a separate case today also brought by Nelson's campaign, Judge Walker denied an extension for statewide "machine recounts" in the U.S. Senate and Governors races across the state, despite the absurdly short statutory deadline to complete them by today. That, even after Palm Beach County --- one of the state's largest Democratic strongholds --- explained that they were physically unable to complete their "recount" even for only the U.S. Senate race due to their aging and failing computer tabulators which overheated during the process and can only tally one race at a time.

Immediately following the end of the "machine recount," Scott's Secretary of State ordered what suffices for a "manual hand-count" in Florida to begin in the U.S. Senate race, where the margin remains less than 0.25% percent. That limited hand-count of ballots for which the computer scanners reported no vote in the U.S. Senate race must be completed by Sunday --- another arbitrarily short deadline that seems designed to stymie a real hand-count of votes.

The reported 0.41% margin of Republican Ron DeSantis over Democrat Andrew Gillum in FL's Governor's race remains too large to merit an automatic hand count. But, given the "systematic machine failure during the machine recount" in Palm Beach, Democrats filed a new lawsuit today seeking a full hand count of all votes cast in the County.

In Georgia, meanwhile, more counting of absentee and provisional ballots ordered by federal courts to be included in the tallies continued, as Republican Gubernatorial candidate and vote suppressor Brian Kemp called again for counting to end. He remains just 0.22% above the mark that would trigger a December runoff with Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams. Her campaign continues to decry Kemp's horrific administration of the election while Secretary of State, and many outside the state --- including Ohio's Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown --- now see a Kemp victory, if it happens, as illegitimate. Brown went so far as to say: "If Stacey Abrams doesn’t win in Georgia, they stole it. I say that publicly, it’s clear."

The maddening story of 92-year old African-American voter Christine Jordan's fight to even cast a provisional ballot this year in Georgia (after voting in the same place for the last 50 years!), underscores that argument, as we discuss today.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with grim news on the rising death toll in California's record wildfires, some accountability for a top EPA official who was arrested today, and new Democrats in the U.S. House are already moving for bold action on climate change...

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