Some good news, some bad news, and the most difficult news of all for talk radio: nuanced news on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

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

• Texas has finally figured out that home solar panels and battery storage can help save the state's brittle, failing electric grid this winter. That's good news for Texas, Tesla and homeowners who can make money selling excess energy back to the grid.

• There is actually quite a bit of good news for renewable energy according to a new report this week from the International Renewable Energy Agency, as per the New York Times' Ivan Penn today. Top line: As solar and wind production are now cheaper sources for electricity than fossil fuels, renewables now dominate all new electric energy capacity (81% last year) and, if the current trajectory continues, are likely to very soon generate more electricity globally than fossil fuels.

• Even the Brothers of Italy --- the actually fascist right-wing party which recently won a Parliamentary majority in Italy --- and its far-right leader Giorgia Meloni (soon to become Prime Minister) appear to be more progressive on climate change concerns than the Republican Party in the U.S. It's kind of remarkable really and, yes, a bit nuanced.

• Speaking of fascists, with early voting now under way in many states for the critical 2022 midterms, so is the voter intimidation and suppression by disinformed rightwingers. MAGA Republicans in Arizona appear to be taking the early lead nationwide when it comes to reported intimidation, as armed and masked vigilantes in tactical gear are now camping out in parking lots near absentee ballot drop boxes because they've been duped into believing they are used for massive voter fraud. While some of the few remaining GOP officials in the state who haven't become brain poisoned are trying to lower the temperature, others, including MAGA Republican Gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and MAGA State Sen. Kelly Townsend continue to fan the flames with lies about the 2020 election.

• Meanwhile, however, in defending against Donald Trump's lies about election and voter fraud, Democrats may have backed themselves into a corner when it comes to their own ability to challenge election results themselves. In their ill-considered efforts to force Republicans into answering gotcha questions about whether or not they will accept election results for elections that haven't even happened yet --- which could include outcome determinative problems like voter suppression or problems with voting and tabulation computers --- Dems may have short-circuited their own ability to challenge results that legitimately need challenging. We discuss.

• At the same time, MAGA rightwingers in several rural (heavily GOP-leaning) Nevada counties are certain that Dominion Voting Systems done them wrong in 2020. So now they're demanding hand-counted paper ballots. While hand-counting is, in fact, the only way to know for certain if computers actually tallied ballots as per voter intent, the NV GOPers who bought into Trump's evidence-free fraud conspiracies are doing it all wrong. One county has even been given permission by the state Supreme Court to begin hand-counting early ballots beginning this week. That is a recipe for all sorts of disaster, including unlawful leaks about early results.

  And here comes more nuance: While we have spent nearly two decades decrying computer-tabulated ballots, we have called not for hand-counting, but for hand-count pilot projects to determine its feasibility in each jurisdiction and to develop simple, efficient and publicly-overseeable protocols to do it safely and transparently at the precinct on Election Night, in front of everyone, before ballots are moved anywhere. (Similar to how it has been successfully been done for many years now by about 40% of the towns in New Hampshire.)

  Ad hoc hand-counting (for example, like the kind that took NV's Esmerelda County more than seven hours to tally 317 ballots after their June primary!) is a disaster in the making and one that is likely to end up discrediting real hand-counting for years to come. I hope I'm wrong.

  In the meantime, there are critical contests in the state this year, including a very tight race between incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican Adam Laxalt. If she is reported to have lost and there are any questions about the results, good luck to the Dems after shortsightedly decrying any and all concerns about elections when they may need to challenge an election themselves.

• Finally, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report, including news on the Biden Admin EPA opening a civil rights probe into Jackson, Mississippi's water crisis; Big Insurance moving away from Big Oil; and Republicans taking credit for renewable energy projects built with incentives that they voted against...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Biden EPA opens civil rights probe into Jackson, MS' water crisis; Big insurance companies begin to back away from Big Oil: PLUS: BMW to build massive E.V. battery plant in U.S. --- Republicans who voted against incentives take credit... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Only 5 percent of plastic waste generated by US last year was recycled, report says; Secret files suggest chemical giant feared weedkiller’s link to Parkinson’s disease; Russia is destroying water/power infrastructure in Ukraine; Utilities sticking with fossil fuels despite climate pledges; How coal producers legally dodge cleanup obligations; Will new UK PM Sunak rebuild green agenda torn up by Truss?; More than half of bird species in the U.S. are in decline; Deforestation slowed last year, but not enough to meet climate goals; New European pipelines are hydrogen ready... PLUS: Inside the fantastical, pragmatic quest to make "hybrid" meat.... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's another 10-pound show in another 5-pound BradCast today. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among the many stories covered...

• A state police detective in Michigan, according to email obtained by Reuters, recommends criminal charges be brought against Stephanie Scott, a Republican Michigan township clerk, for yet another breach of yet another voting tabulator and for allegedly giving a database of confidential voter data to a fellow 2020 election conspiracist. The media outlet reports there have been at least 18 similar breaches or attempted breaches of voting systems across the country by sore loser election deniers, including 12 in MI alone. Separately, a state Special Prosecutor is currently investigating nine people "for an alleged conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment in a case that involves alleged breaches across the state." One of those under investigation is the GOP's Attorney General nominee Matt DePerno.

• Speaking of 2020 election conspiracists, pillow salesman Mike Lindell's petition to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected on Monday. He was seeking to challenge one of two defamation suits filed against him by a voting machine company, in this case, Dominion, which he baselessly accused of helping to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump. Lindell had been hoping to change long-standing federal law regarding defamation suits brought by public figures. SCOTUS rejected him. So the previous ruling in the matter, by a Trump-appointed federal District Court judge in D.C., means that Dominion's $1.3 defamation suit against Lindell may now move forward to discovery and trial. (Along with several other defamation lawsuits against a bunch of Lindell's fellow GOP election fraudsters and rightwing media outlets.)

• Speaking of SCOTUS, Monday was the first day of their new term. It included oral argument in a case challenging the EPA's authority to regulate the waters of the United States under the Clean Water Act. It was also the first oral argument to feature the Court's newest member, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. By all reports and audio evidence, she kicked ass. We detail the case and explain KBJ's awesome first day performance.

• Speaking of asses, Donald Trump filed an emergency request to SCOTUS on Tuesday, seeking their intervention in his dispute over hundreds of pages of stolen documents marked as classified that were retrieved by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago as part of the DoJ's criminal probe into the former President's apparent violations of the Espionage Act and other federal statutes. Trump's filing comes just days after a three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals (featuring two Trump appointees), dismembered a lower court ruling by another Trump judge who is corruptly attempting to stall the investigation with her appointment of a Special Master to review the documents in question.

• Next up, the pathetic story that broke over the last 24 hours regarding Republican U.S. Senate nominee, former football hero and seemingly mentally unstable liar, Herschel Walker. He is running to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia next month. On Monday night, The Daily Beast's Roger Sollenberger reported that Walker --- who is running, in no small part, on claims to oppose abortion in every instance, without exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother (which he called "excuses") --- paid for a girlfriend to have an abortion in 2009. Sollenberger appears to, literally, have the receipts to prove it. But, even as Walker was flatly denying the charges on Fox "News" on Monday night and vowing to sue The Daily Beast for defamation, one of his adult children lit up a Twitter storm with an astonishing rant, characterizing his father as a liar and hypocrite and anything but a "family man." Christian Walker charged, among many other things, that his father committed "atrocities" against his mom. She charged years ago, on CNN, that Walker held a gun to her head "and said he was gonna blow my brains out." Incredibly enough, prior to the hectic revelations of the last 24 hours, and despite a long list of proven lies told by Walker, the GOP nominee was virtually tied in pre-election polling with Warnock in GA, for reasons that, as we discuss, are difficult to even fathom.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with updates on Hurricane Ian's catastrophic damage and death toll in Florida; Biden's visit to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Fiona; and the SCOTUS case heard on Monday challenging the EPA's power to enforce the Clean Water Act...

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It was another lively call-in show today on The BradCast, even with one caller accusing me of "professional, managerial class gate-keeping for the Democrats." (Okay. But, if so, where do I pick up my managerial class paycheck?!) [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to the listener calls, however, some important news items today...

• Good news: Italy has just elected its first female Prime Minister! Bad news: She represents a far-right authoritarian party with its roots in Italian World War II neo-fascism.

• Warning: Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro is up for re-election this weekend and is likely to get trounced, according to pre-election polls. But, like the former far-right President of the United States, Bolsonaro has already declared that if he loses, it can only be due to massive fraud. Bolsonaro blames the nation's electronic voting system. Buckle up, Brazil!

• Last week began with three enormous climate change-fueled storms simultaneously slamming Puerto Rico (which is still largely without power or clean water), Alaska and Japan. This week begins similarly, with three huge storms. One (the same one that hit Puerto Rico) slamming eastern Canada and another super-typhoon that spun up from tropical storm to Cat 5 in 24 hours before ravaging The Philippines. The third storm, Hurricane Ian, is now building strength as it edges Cuba as a Cat 2. It's expected to make potentially catastrophic landfall somewhere in Florida in the next day or two, potentially as a Cat 4. Exact landfall location is still unknown, but Desi Doyen joins us to explain how insanely dangerous Ian could turn out to be, particularly for the city of Tampa Bay.

• Then, new polling from the Marquette University Law School, considered the "gold standard" for polling on the U.S. Supreme Court, finds, for the first time, that a majority of Americans are either "strongly" or "somewhat" in favor of expanding the the number of Justices on the Court. As you'll recall, the Republican majority Senate during the Trump Administration, packed and stole the Court majority, first by holding a vacant seat open for a full year (effectively, changing the number of seats from 9 to 8 in 2016); then by a blowing up the Senate filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to seat Justices for lifetime positions on the bench. They did that for three controversial far-right Justices who have since helped the corrupted Republican majority on the Court turn the Constitution and nation upside down by ignoring precedent, making up new "doctrines" from thin air, and overturning critical Constitutional rights established by half-century old SCOTUS opinions like Roe v. Wade.

  For many of the reasons discussed on today's show, expansion of the Court is --- at least in my opinion --- the number one reason for voting for Democrats in this November's critical midterm elections. Everything else --- codifying Roe's protection of reproductive rights into federal law, protecting democracy and the planet itself --- are all ultimately subordinate to the High Court. As corrupted as it currently is, expanding the Court to rebalance it is a must...even if many Democrats in Congress and the White House don't yet seem to understand that. Happily, a majority of Americans, across virtually every demographic sector, now agree.

• Then, we open up the phones to callers on all of the above and more. With, as usual, a bunch of folks calling in to disagree with me, and at least one who correctly identifies the "Big Lie of the Left," that "both parties" are equally bad. They aren't. Not by a demonstrable long shot, as we discuss. Which, apparently, is proof enough that I'm a "professional, managerial class gate-keep[er] for the Democrats!" Who knew? But check please!)

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On today's BradCast: Based on the FBI's unsealed warrant for their recent court-approved search at Mar-a-Lago, we now know that our disgraced former President is being criminally investigated by the Dept. of Justice for violation of at least three federal statutes. One of them --- the one which has arguably received the most headlines --- is the Espionage Act. But that very broad federal statute has been wildly misused by the government over the years to target free political speech and, in modern days, both whistleblowers and journalists. Today, we speak with national security whistleblower Edward Snowden's lead ACLU attorney in hopes of better understanding the controversial law, what's wrong with it, how it needs to be amended, and if it is now properly being applied against Donald Trump. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First up, however, as primary elections are underway in New York, Florida and Oklahoma today (noteworthy results and problem reports for voters on our next 'BradCast'), we wanted to close a loop on a story we reported last week. Anti-abortion activists in Kansas had hoped for a statewide hand recount of the ballot measure for a state constitutional amendment that failed so thoroughly during their primary elections earlier this month. The measure, trounced by about 18 points, would have allowed state Republicans to ban abortion rights in Kansas. Activists vaguely claimed there was evidence of fraud and asked for a hand-count of 9 of the state's largest counties after failing to raise enough money to count the whole state. That hand-count was completed over the weekend and very few votes changed at all. The "Yes" campaign netted an additional 63 votes out of more than 556,000 tallied by hand in those counties.

We've got some thoughts on that hand count to share today, including a response to the Kansas Sec. of State who claims the hand-count "proves once and for all that there is no systemic election fraud in our state's election process" (it doesn't) and for Democrats who decry lawful, public hand-counts --- paid for by challengers, even if they are loony ones --- as undermining our election system. They don't. In fact, they add confidence to it. Tune in for more.

Next, on Monday night, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump stole at least 300 documents marked as classified, many of them said to be incredibly sensitive national security documents. (Contrast that with the total of 3 documents found to have been sent to Hillary Clinton via her private email address marked as classified, for which Trump and his supporters railed to "LOCK HER UP!" for so many years.) All told, it took a year and a half to get those stolen documents back, after a year of negotiation and pleading by the National Archives, a grand jury subpoena from the DoJ, a personal visit to Mar-a-Lago by its top counter-espionage official, and, ultimately, the FBI search earlier this month.

Throughout that time, the paper reports, "Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021," before failing to turn them all in and, even now, it is unknown if all of the stolen documents have yet been returned. Whether marked as classified or not --- and whether Trump declassified them or not (he didn't) --- it was still illegal for Trump to have any of them in his possession.

The federal search warrant revealed that he is being investigated for, among other things, violation of the Espionage Act. Writing last week at Politico, the Knight First Amendment Institute's Jameel Jaffer, formerly of the ACLU, argued that the Act has been abused over the years in its application against whistleblowers and journalists, such as Chelsea Manning (who released classified documents revealing war crimes by the U.S. Military), Reality Winner (who released a classified document revealing Russia's 2016 breach of U.S. voter registration systems) and, more recently, WikiLeak's Julian Assange.

But, Jaffer writes, while the overly-broad law desperately needs to be amended or even scrapped entirely, its use against Trump appears to be perfectly appropriate.

We're joined today by BEN WIZNER of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. Wizner serves as the principal legal advisor for Edward Snowden, the national security whistleblower who, charged with Espionage Act crimes, is currently living in Russia to avoid prosecution.

Wizner explains the many problems with the more than 100-year old law as it was originally used --- before being somewhat amended decades later --- to prosecute thousands of Americans for legitimate political speech. "In fact, the abuses of the Espionage Act at the outset really had something to do with the formation of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920," he tells me. "It was used by Woodrow Wilson's administration to go after pacifists and anti-war activists, labor activists. Eugene Debs was prosecuted and imprisoned under the Espionage Act. So in its early years, it really is associated with all of the excesses of the first Red Scare and the crackdown on dissent, and immigrants and other radicals." (Debs ultimately ran for President from his prison cell, as Trump may now wish to take note.)

"In it's modern history, the core critique of the Espionage Act has been that it doesn't distinguish between selling the country's secrets to a foreign adversary for personal gain and sharing those same secrets with respected journalists in the public interest," Wizner explains. "In the Snowden case, you have somebody who shared information with news organizations. Those news organizations won the highest awards in journalism, a public interest Pulitzer Prize [based on documents from Snowden.]

But the most egregious part of the Espionage Act, as Wizner notes regarding Snowden's case and his exile abroad: "He's not able to argue, if he's brought to court under this law, that he was acting in the public interest, [and] that in fact the law [was] changed as a result of his actions. All of that would be irrelevant and inadmissible under an Espionage Act prosecution."

In other words, Snowden would be disallowed from even offering a defense for what he did. "The first person ever prosecuted under the Espionage Act for leaks to the press in the public interest, rather than trying to provide secrets to a foreign entity was, of course, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, in 1971," Wizner reminds us. (We discussed Snowden's case with Ellsberg on the show back in 2013. Audio and transcript here.)

There is much more to discuss about this bad law and the need to amend it, as several lawmakers from both major parties have long been trying to do. Tune in for that.

As to whether Wizner agrees with his former ACLU colleague, Jaffer, regarding the Espionage Act's correct application against Trump? While he argues "there's no good justification for what Trump did here," Wizner says he is keeping powder dry" regarding Trump's alleged Espionage Act violations. "I am very open to the possibility that when we find out why they cited that statute, I will be a full-throated advocate of what they did in this case. I'm just saying I don't have the information yet to be that full-throated advocate...It matters what those documents were. The fact that they were marked classified is a key fact. I still want to know what was in them."

"I believe Jameel Jaffer is correct that the concerns that the ACLU and other have raised about the Espionage Act are not implicated here," Wizner tells me. "We've been saying you shouldn't equate two different categories --- spies and whistleblowers. What we have here is a third category."

Finally, after some breaking news on President Biden reportedly deciding to forgive up to $10,000 in student loans for some federal borrowers, and Desi Doyen's explanation of how Democrats may have quietly and ingeniously outsmarted both Republicans and their stolen U.S. Supreme Court majority by declaring carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses to be "pollutants" in their recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, she joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the summer of extreme extreme weather continues...

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It was a very hot BradCast today --- in most every way you might imagine. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

This week, a billion or so in China are suffering under record extreme heat and humidity. The death toll from relentless record heat, drought and wildfires in Portugal and Spain has now topped 1,000, as the heat spreads to France and the rest of Europe where Ireland and the U.K. are likely to see triple digit temperatures and a red flag extreme heat advisory for the first time.

Here in the states, as AccuWeather reports, sweltering highs approaching 110 degrees Fahrenheit will continue as temperatures "reach their highest levels of the year so far from Rapid City, South Dakota, to Wichita, Kansas, as well as Oklahoma City and Dallas" and everywhere in between. Electric grids, particular in Texas, are under extraordinary stress (the power went out during a Houston TV station's live weather forecast, as they warned of possible power outages) with little immediate relief in sight.

Apocalyptic conditions are now being experienced across the globe thanks to a climate crisis caused by the burning of fossil fuels. That, even as the corrupt, U.S. Supreme Court at the end of last month made up a pretend "doctrine" (the "major questions doctrine", found nowhere in the Constitution or American case law) to bar the EPA from regulating carbon emissions, as mandated by federal statute in the Clean Air Act.

At the same time, corrupt, fossil fuel industry-funded "Democratic" Senator Joe Manchin continues to undermine any and all environmental initiatives agreed to by every Democrat in the U.S. House and all but him (and, to a slightly lesser extent, corrupt AZ Democratic Sen. Kirsten Sinema) in the Senate, designed to curb deadly greenhouse gas emissions.

In short, as Sen. Bernie Sanders made clear over the weekend, Manchin --- whose family literally makes millions from the coal industry, and whose campaign takes in millions from the fossil fuel industry --- "has sabotaged the President's agenda" as our existential climate crisis quickly worsens.

Manchin and all 50 Republican Senators in the upper chamber and every single Republican in the U.S. House continue to prevent Democrats from all efforts designed to save humanity. But, somehow, to some on the Left, it is the fault of Democrats?! And it is Democrats who may be voted out of their majorities in both chambers this November? Really?! What gives?

We open the phones today to some of those very questions, as there are a whole bunch of folks calling themselves progressives out there who are, somehow, blaming Democrats for this mess and many others. We try to have a conversation with a few listeners about that. Tune in to today's lively BradCast to see how it goes!...

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We have a very serious warning for voters about elections and American democracy and the corrupt U.S. Supreme Court on today's BradCast. Please tune in and listen! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

To quickly summarize my half-hour or so long rant at the top of today show...On Thursday, as discussed on our previous show with legal expert Mark Joseph Stern, the corrupt, radical, illegitimate, not-conservative-in-the-least U.S. Supreme Court used a made-up, phony legal doctrine --- the "Major Questions" doctrine --- to justify gutting the Environmental Protection Agency's statutory mandate to protect the environment by regulating climate warming carbon emissions. The so-called doctrine, not found anywhere in the Constitution or historic case law, was made up for use by the Court's rightwing extremists. They are now about to do something very similar in order to gut federal elections and American democracy as we know it in advance of the 2024 Presidential election.

In their last order of business, before the end of this past year's term on Thursday, the Court announced that next term they would take up the North Carolina case of Moore v. Harper. The case involves a voter challenge to the state GOP's newly-drawn U.S. House maps. The NC state Supreme Court agreed the map was an unlawful gerrymander under the state constitution and drew up a fairer map. But North Carolina Republicans sued, charging that state Supreme Court was not allowed, according to the U.S. Constitution, to nix the GOP gerrymander due to the so-called "Independent State Legislature" theory. In short, it's a made up "doctrine" --- not unlike the "Major Questions" doctrine used to justify gutting the EPA --- that has been pushed for a number of years by fringe Republicans.

The ISL doctrine cites some lines from the U.S. Constitution to argue that state legislatures and only state legislatures --- not Boards of Elections or Secretaries of State or Governors or even state courts or Constitutions or popular ballot initiatives adopted by voters --- may dictate how federal elections are run. That is a job solely granted to state legislatures, according to this previously-fringe theory.

It was one of the failed arguments under which Donald Trump supporters tried to claim that emergency pandemic voting rules adopted by state officials (other than the state legislature) were unlawful in 2020. It was also one of the arguments pushed by rightwingers that state legislatures could have simply voted to name Trump electors in states where the voters actually chose Joe Biden's electors.

The "Independent State Legislature" doctrine has never been granted legitimacy by a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. But, earlier this year, four of the Court's six radical Republicans --- Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh --- called for the Court to examine the issue more closely. They now need just one more vote to recognize this controversial Constitutional claim as "legitimate", which is why so many in the election law world are freaking out today after SCOTUS announced yesterday that they will hear 'Moore v. Harper' next term.

Usually, quite staid UC Irvine law professor Rick Hasen's argues "It's hard to overstate the danger" of this case. Vox's Ian Millhiser describes the "grave threat to US democracy" it presents. You --- and elected Democrats(!) --- should be freaking out at this point as well. Or, at least, understanding what is about to happen to what is left of our representative "democracy" if this switch gets thrown by the newly emboldened and radicalized Court.

Given the many radical, not-conservative-in-least rulings over the past several weeks by the six far-right extremists on this stolen and packed Court --- overturning Roe v. Wade, blocking the ability for states to well-regulate firearms, eroding the separation of church and state, all but gutting Miranda rights, further gutting the Voting Rights Act, and torching the EPA's ability to regulate deadly carbon pollution --- we should all be very concerned about what this Court is likely to do regarding Moore in 2023...in advance of the 2024 Presidential election.

We put the case in full context on today's BradCast, and detail why its so important to elect enough Democrats this November --- love them or hate them --- to hold the majority in the House and add enough Democrats to the Senate to finally reform or end the filibuster in order to codify Roe and respond to many of the other matters mentioned above, as well as finally expand SCOTUS to re-legitimize the de-legitimized Trump/McConnell/Roberts Court before they unleash every manner of electoral chaos --- and outright "legalized" stolen elections --- in advance of 2024.

PLEASE. PAY. ATTENTION. TO. THIS. CASE!

Beyond that red flag warning at the top of today's show, and before standing down for a few much-needed days off next week, we also catch up on several other news items of note that we've had to put off over the past week or so due to Congressional hearings, primary elections, and wholly corrupt Supreme Court opinions. Among them...

• After rightwing activist Ginni Thomas, wife of rightwing activist Justice Clarence Thomas, was revealed to have been deeply involved in Trump's effort to steal the 2020 election, she was invited to testify to the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection. She received much coverage when she announced she would be happy to do so, declaring, "I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them.” You'll be shocked to learn that Ginni was lying. This week, her attorney said she will not testify because there is "not...a sufficient basis" for the Committee to interview her under oath.

• A judge in Delaware has found that Dominion Voting Systems has presented sufficient evidence to determine that Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan of Fox "News" may have acted with "actual malice" when causing their Republican propaganda station to broadcast false claims that the voting system vendor helped steal the election for Joe Biden. The judge ruled that the billion dollar defamation suit against Fox may now proceed toward trial.

• Here in California, where we recently reported on the attempt by some Democrats in the state legislature to adopt an insane Internet Voting scheme, we've got some good news. After passage in the state Senate, the matter was killed in the state Assembly following critical work by grassroots voting system and cybersecurity experts in opposition and a letter from the Sec. of State opposing the measure as well. But CA Dems keep trying to this, year after year, so watch out for another attempt in future sessions.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report on the heels of SCOTUS gutting the EPA's ability to regulate carbon emissions amid our deadly climate crisis and much more...

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On today's BradCast: It was the grand finale at the end of a U.S. Supreme Court term like no other. Now that its packed with rightwing extremists, the unleashed activists on the GOP's illegitimate 6 to 3 U.S. Supreme Court pretended on Thursday that the text of the written law doesn't say what it actually says, in order to offer a parting gift for the year to the fossil fuel industry --- as the nation and globe burn.

The Clean Air Act, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote [PDF] on behalf of the three dissenters, "directs the EPA to regulate stationary sources of any substance that 'causes, or contributes significantly to, air pollution' and that 'may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.'" She made clear that, as the Court has determined on multiple occasions, the Environmental Protection Agency "serves as the Nation's 'primary regulator of greenhouse gas emissions.'"

But, never mind all of that. On Thursday, writing for the Court's far-right majority in West Virginia v. EPA --- and ignoring its own precedents --- Chief Justice John Roberts pretended none of those mandates existed in the law adopted by Congress in 1963 and amended a number of times over the years. Despite any actual existing Administrative rule to regulate carbon emissions by coal and gas-fired power plants --- Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan was put on hold by the Court years ago, and Donald Trump's scheme to restrict the EPA's power to do so was rejected by lower courts --- SCOTUS took up this coal-industry sponsored law suit and gave them pretty much everything they sought, text of the written law be damned.

As they did when striking down the Administration's vaccine-or-test mandate, the Court once again invoked their newly invented "Major Questions" doctrine in order to declare that any issue that may be controversial in any way may not be decided by the scientists and experts at the federal agencies created to handle such things. Instead, they must be specifically directed, by Congress, to do so. Because the Clean Air Act, which tasks the EPA with regulating dangerous pollutants --- such as carbon released by coal-fired power plants, currently exacerbating our deadly climate crisis --- doesn't actually cite "carbon" specifically, the Trump/McConnell/Roberts Court has now declared the federal agency may take no action to help reduce it. Never mind their own previous findings and, of course, the number of Americans who will die because of this ruling.

The opinion was as predictable as it is corrupt. We're joined today by the great MARK JOSEPH STERN, legal journalist and Constitutional law expert at Slate, to discuss the opinion that will not only limit the EPA from doing the job it has already been tasked with by Congress, but prevent many other federal agencies from carrying out their mandates as well. It's all part of the corporate rightwing's long "war on the Administrative State". And it's a war they are now winning --- and we are all losing.

"Massachusetts v. EPA held that the federal government must --- not can, but must --- regulate and limit carbon emissions in the United States because carbon is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, and thus the EPA has a legal obligation to institute guidelines that reduce the level of greenhouse gases the US is emitting," Stern emphasizes, noting that today's opinion in West Virginia v. EPA "involves a regulation that does not exist."

Nonetheless, "the Supreme Court decided to take it up just to stop Joe Biden from trying" to regulate the greenhouse emissions now warming our planet at an alarming rate. "The Supreme Court," Stern adds, "decided to simply slap limitations on [the Clean Air Act] that do not exist in the text because they do not like it as a matter of policy."

As to the so-called "Major Questions" doctrine, argues Stern, "It's hard to define, because it is made up." It's not in the Constitution and, as far as he can tell, "it comes from Brett Kavanaugh's brain. This was his idea when he was on the lower court, to try to smuggle in a kind of anti-regulatory agenda into what looks like statutory interpretation."

"The basic idea is that if an agency tries to take some kind of very consequential action, that has a serious and vast impact on the people, or the economy, or private industry, then that is a 'major question', and the Congress has to give the Agency an extremely granular and explicit permission slip to do what it wants to do, otherwise the courts will block it. The problem with this test that should be clear, is that it is totally subjective. What looks like a major question to you may look like a frivolous question to me, and it really shifts policy-making over to unelected judges from experts in federal agencies."

Of course, this is just one of the many reasons I don't refer to these people as "conservatives". They don't merely interpret the law and the Constitution, as they claim. They make shit up to justify their politics. They are the "activists legislating from the bench" that Republicans pretend to oppose --- when they are trying to block Democratic appointees from positions on the bench.

There is much more today from the wise and colorful Mr. Stern, on this matter; on a separate (largely good news) ruling from the Court today on immigration policy; on the Court's opinion last week that begins to gut the famous Miranda Rights (the right to remain silent, to an attorney, etc.) for people who are detained by law enforcement (a "sleeper case" overlooked because it came on the same day that the Court overturned Roe v. Wade); on what will or can happen once the illegitimacy of this Court becomes clear to all; and on Justice Stephen Breyer's last day on the Court today before Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as its first-ever black female jurist.

As if that's not enough, a ruling this week by SCOTUS overturned a lower federal court that found Louisiana's newly gerrymandered Congressional District map to be an unconstitutional violation of the Voting Rights Act. The lower court ordered another black majority District to be created, as state Republicans had only one among six, in a state where one-third of population is black. The ruling was similar to another in Alabama, which SCOTUS also struck down recently, ordering both states to use the gerrymandered and unconstitutional House maps drawn by Republicans for this year's critical 2022 midterm elections.

Does this signal the Court intends to overturn the entirety of the landmark Voting Rights Act, as they did with Roe? "Yes," Stern answers, before explaining how "really, they've already done it."

And then there's the new case that SCOTUS announced today they will take up in their next term, as their destruction continues. It's an election case out of North Carolina to allow the Court to create another pretend legal notion that the Right calls the "Independent State Legislature" Doctrine.

"I am terrified about this case," Stern says, as it will almost certainly be decided to allow "state legislatures to appoint electors in the Electoral College to the losing candidate in a Presidential race. Which is exactly what Donald Trump wanted them to do in 2020, and what Ginni Thomas was urging legislators to do while her husband was trying to institute this theory."

"The American people are in deep, deep, DEEP trouble," he warns.

Please "enjoy" today's program!...

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Supreme Court limits historic McGirt ruling; John Oliver on water, drought in the West; Utilities eye electric transition; Environmental groups sue Biden Administration for resuming oil and gas lease sales; Coca-Cola among brands greenwashing over plastic packaging; Shrimp aquaculture is causing a huge problem; Biden aims at China in new illegal fishing policy framework; Court kills Flint water charges against ex-governor, others; EU countries reach climate-crisis deal; NATO moves to tackle military greenhouse gas emissions even while girding against Russia... PLUS: The Green Revolution sweeping Sweden... and much, MUCH more! ...

Please pardon the whiplash on today's BradCast, from our special coverage of the blockbuster J6 hearing in the U.S. House yesterday to coverage of election results in eight states today, and what they both may mean for November. But that's our world right now. [Audio link to full show is posted after this summary below.]

Critical midterm primary elections (and runoffs), and one Special Election for the U.S. House were held on Tuesday in Illinois, Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah, New York, Mississippi, South Carolina and Nebraska.

We've learned of a few reported problems for voters at the poll yesterday in several of those states (IL, MS, UT, NY) which we cover first today. Thankfully, they were fairly limited --- at least so far --- and not terribly egregious.

Then it's on to our curated and wholly incomplete coverage of noteworthy races in a number of those states, some of which may be quite telling regarding November and the so-called "Conventional Wisdom" that Democrats are due for a drubbing. That's what history tells us, of course, about the party in power for midterm elections during the first term of an unpopular President. But, given these exceedingly unconventional times, it'd be a sucker's bet and political malpractice --- for Democrats and democracy itself --- to simply presume history will repeat itself this fall.

Among the many results of note covered today: losses for 2020 election deniers and alleged criminals (like Tina Peters, the indicted County Clerk in Mesa County who lost her GOP primary for Sec. of State bigly, even in her own home county) in CO; losses for corrupt climate change deniers and disgraced former Trump officials (like his scandal-plagued EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt who came in fifth in a GOP primary for the U.S. Senate) in OK; both wins and losses for loyalist Trumpers and anti-choice zealots in IL and CO (with Dems hoping they'd win their GOP nominations, because they'd be easier to defeat in November); a crushing, if satisfying loss for Rudy Giuliani's son in NY; victories and losses for progressive candidates in several states; And, perhaps most notably today, some telling results from the one D vs. R race on Tuesday, a U.S. House Special Election in NE.

As expected, the Democrat lost that special U.S. House race in NE in an exceedingly Republican district in which the GOP candidate won by 22 points in 2020. But on Tuesday, the Republican won by just over 5 points. More interestingly, in the one Democratic-leaning County in the District held by Republicans since 1964, support for the Democrat spiked from +1 in 2020 to +13 on Tuesday, in the first head-to-head election between the two parties since 'Roe v. Wade' was struck down by the radical rightwing U.S. Supreme Court on Friday. Hopefully, Democrats have taken notice.

There are many mitigating factors that could result in this year's midterms defying history and expert predictions. That doesn't mean they will, but they certainly could, particularly if Democrats figure out how to appropriately activate both their base and those who are furious about SCOTUS stripping away a Constitutionally-protected individual right for the first time in our nation's history.

Initial polling in the wake of Roe's demise find the SCOTUS opinion to be exceedingly unpopular with Democrats, of course, but also with independent voters and even a fairly large chunk of Republicans. We take a look at some of those very interesting tea leaves on today's program and what they could mean for November.

Finally, we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, in advance of what is probably very bad news indeed for both the climate and the EPA coming from our corrupt Supreme Court tomorrow! But, for today, we've got news about what sparked New Mexico's largest-ever wildfire; Japan's electric grid facing stress under historic record heat; a new leftist climate hawk President for Colombia; and much more....

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He didn't help steal the 2020 Presidential election for Donald Trump, but that doesn't make Georgia's Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger a hero. As discussed on today's BradCast, he did the right thing, sort of, but, as our guest explains today, but for the wrong reasons. Worse, he now appears to be involved in an outright cover-up of wrong-doing by Trump supporters and GOP election officials in the Peach State.

First up today, on the heels of the gripping series of hearings by the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee investigating Trump's January 6, 2021 insurrection and his multiple attempts to steal the 2020 election, the Dept. of Justice is reportedly broadening their ongoing criminal investigation. Washington Post reports tonight on new subpoenas dropped in a number of states on Wednesday to several of the fake Trump electors who tried to join the disgraced former President in his efforts to rob the American people.

Meanwhile, Tuesday's hearing, as discussed during yesterday's special coverage, was gripping and emotional at times, as it focused on state officials and local election workers who refused to go along with Trump's election theft schemes and were targeted and terrorized in the bargain by the former President and his mob of MAGA thugs.

While there were a number of folks who testified on Tuesday that reacted heroically in the moment, two of them, Raffensperger and his Deputy Sec. of State Gabe Sterling (who served as Georgia's Voting Systems Manager in 2020), should not necessarily be included among them.

The three separate tallies of Presidential election results in the state that both men testified about on Tuesday --- the original machine count, a second statewide hand-count "audit", and a third tally by machine, as requested by the Trump Campaign --- are not quite as pristine as they would have the nation believe. Moreover, Raffensperger's office appears to be carrying out a months long cover-up of a serious breach of the state's voting system by Trump supporters and GOP election officials in GA's rural, right-leaning Coffee County.

As promised on yesterday, we're joined today by MARILYN MARKS of the non-partisan, nonprofit Coalition for Good Governance for a bit of a rebuttal to Raffensperger and Sterling's testimony before the House J6 panel, and an update to a stunning and troubling story of corruption we initially reported here last month, which could have very serious ramifications for elections in both 2022 and 2024.

Marks, who's Coalition has two long-running federal lawsuits against Georgia and Raffensperger --- one, filed in 2017 to block the use of his 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems made by Dominion, and the other challenging the state's SB 202 voter suppression bill (I am a named plaintiff, representing media) --- has been analyzing the state's 2020 election results with a fine-toothed comb as part of her group's voting machine case. She explains today that the numbers reported by Raffensperger's hand-counted "audit" and machine-tallied recount, are nowhere near as aligned with the original tally --- and each other --- as Raffensperger and Sterling represented to the Congressional panel.

In fact, hand-counted numbers were tallied in secret and "fudged" by the state to match the original tally from Raffensperger's hand-chosen touchscreen voting systems, she charges.

That still doesn't mean that Trump won the state, as he pretends that he did. The mountain of errors discovered in the tallies, she takes pains to note, went randomly both ways. But they did not match up as perfectly with the original count as the two state officials claimed on Tuesday.

"We have found nothing that would suggest that Biden should not have been declared the winner. However, there are massive problems with the audit, the recount, and probably the original count, as well," Marks describes. "What really happened here, it appears, is that the audit, as well as the machine recount, were fudged, if you will. That may be a strong word for me to be using right now, but I will just say that the numbers are not straightforward at all, that there are many adjustments that they needed to make to try to arrive at claiming that the numbers matched the original count. They do not."

Why didn't the numbers match up? "It's hard to know," she tells me. When he was asked about it during his deposition in CGG's federal lawsuit, Sterling "just shrugged it all off as 'human error.' He did not try to tell us the same thing he tried to tell the Congress yesterday. He did not try to say it's only off by a little bit. We took him through the numbers and he said, 'It's all human error.'" He was certain that the machine results must have been correct and any count that differed "had to be human error. How many years have we heard, across the nation, about how the machines have to be right?"

While Raffensperger's hand-count audit was ostensibly carried out in public view, the public couldn't actually oversee it or follow along. All of the numbers throughout the process were kept secret and sent back to the SoS' office. By contrast with, say, the fully transparent statewide recount of the 2008 Al Franken/Norm Coleman U.S. Senate race in Minnesota, when the public and media were allowed to follow along and track every step and the tally of every ballot, there is no way to know if Georgia's 2020 numbers were right or wrong. Shamefully, as Marks observes, the media didn't raise a peep about it.

She offers much more on that during today's program before we turn to the related topic of the disturbing matter in Coffee County. There, as we reported last month --- along with exceptional investigative coverage from Washington Post and Daily Beast (but not, curiously enough, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which hasn't covered it at all) --- Trump supporters, in cahoots with Republicans on the Coffee County Board of Elections, made illicit and illegal copies of the sensitive Dominion voting system software used across the entire state the day after the January 6 insurrection.

You may have heard of similar breaches by Trumpers that occurred in Michigan and Colorado (where the Republican County Clerk in Mesa County, Tina Peters, is now facing criminal charges for having done so.) The breach in GA occurred in January, as one of the apparent ring leaders actually confessed to Marks during a phone call, which she was smart enough to record. (We play part of that phone call confession on today's show.)

Though none of this was publicly known, Raffensperger's office, several months after the breach, seized and exchanged the voting server in Coffee, claiming that someone had changed the password so that the system could no longer be accessed. But it wasn't until late last year, when Sterling was asked about all of this during his deposition in Marks' lawsuit that any of it was confirmed. He claimed, at the time, that the matter was being investigated by his office. But, as Marks details today (and in a recent post at Medium), there is absolutely no record of any investigation over the past year and a half by Raffensperger's office. In fact, as Marks suggests today, it appears the Sec. of State is involved in a straight up cover-up of the entire matter.

"This is awfully hard to put together," she concedes when I ask why the SoS, who helped block Trump's efforts to steal the election, would now work to protect those very same people. "It doesn't make much sense at all. So why would Raffensperger do that? Again, we go back to he needs to defend the system more than he wants to defend democracy." He's also running for re-election this November.

Making things worse, as she points out, serious vulnerabilities were discovered and documented in Georgia's Dominion touchscreen systems (which her suit hopes to ban) by one of her lawsuit's expert witnesses. The vulnerabilities were then reviewed and confirmed by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Administration (CISA), which issued a warning to states about it late last month.

But the SoS office has responded in the lawsuit to say that those vulnerabilities are not of concern, since someone would have to spend a lot of times with the system software to know how to exploit them. Well...guess what happened over a year and a half ago in Coffee County?

Raffensperger's "defense is not that the system doesn't have any vulnerabilities," Marks notes. "His defense is, 'Look, you can't get to those vulnerabilities because the software is entrusted in insider election officials' hands.' Not anymore."

It's a big show today, concluding with our latest Green News Report. Please tune in for the full, stunning story...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Extreme heat in Europe smashes records, sparks wildfires and water rationing; Severe U.S. heat wave killed thousands of cattle; Catastrophic flooding in India, Bangladesh; AMA calls climate change 'a public health crisis'; PLUS: Rightwing U.S. Supreme Court majority poised to hand down the most consequential --- and corrupt --- environmental ruling in decades... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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For years, as I told my guest on today's BradCast, I've wondered if we were being too alarmist during his many appearances on the show. But now I'm starting to wonder if we haven't been alarmist enough. "I would say that you and I have been the exact right amount of alarmist," he tells me in response. "Time and time again, the Court has proved that it is going rogue, that it is lawless, that it is really corrupted by partisan politics." If the nation hasn't noticed by now, it is likely about to. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Before we get to that cheery conversation, a couple of quick news items today, as voters in Maine, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina headed to polls on Tuesday for critical mid-term elections. (Also in Texas, where there is a special election to fill a vacated Democratic U.S. House seat.) Results of note on tomorrow's program.

Wednesday's scheduled hearing in the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection and related Donald Trump crimes has been postponed until, presumably, next week. The Wednesday hearing had been set to focus on Trump's failed effort to decapitate the Dept. of Justice in order to install a low-level flunky with a scheme to help him steal the 2020 election by lying to state legislatures that the DoJ had found massive fraud in swing-states. Committee members claim the delayed hearing is only due to a need to give time to their over-worked understaffed video crew. Meanwhile, Thursday's scheduled hearing, focused on the pressure Trump placed on Vice President Pence to help steal the election for him on January 6, is still said to be on track.

In Congress today, the House passed a bill previously adopted by the U.S. Senate to extend security protections to family members of Supreme Court Justices. It's remarkable how quickly Republicans can act to pass laws to protect certain people that they give a damn about from gun violence. Every other family in America is on their own apparently. Best of luck.

And, speaking of SCOTUS, as their term comes to a close over the next two weeks, we catch up with the great MARK JOSEPH STERN, legal journalist and Supreme Court expert at Slate.com, on a whole passel of recent and coming-soon opinions that are currently shaking and set to shake the American legal and judicial system to its core

The outlook, as suggested by my opening graf above, is not encouraging. "I don't know what to tell you except that madness is coming," warns Stern. Tune in for real facts and hard truths about what is coming. But, by way of preview of some of the cases and issues discussed today...

• The tragic case of Terence Andrus, soon to be put to death, and what could represent the end of the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of competent legal representation, particularly in death penalty cases. Perhaps even more astounding, the Court's ruling on Monday directly contradicts their own ruling on the very same case in 2020 when, just two years ago, they sent the matter back down to the Texas State Court, which has since apparently decided that they needn't follow SCOTUS orders. And now, incredibly, with the loss of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, SCOTUS agrees! "There can be no 'settled law' when SCOTUS lets rogue judges flout its own rulings and get away with it," Stern wrote in his coverage on Monday. Today he warns that with the Supreme Court failing to enforce its own precedents, "it really does send this message, a kind of wink and a nod, to lower courts that they can start defying these disfavored precedents, start nullifying these disfavored Constitutional rights, and get away with it. And that is a scary new phase."

• The coming-soon overturning of Roe v. Wade. We haven't spoken to Stern since the unprecedented leak of a draft opinion by the GOP's corrupt, packed and stolen majority which is set to end 50 years of Constitutional freedoms and privacy rights established by the landmark 1973 opinion. He explains that the Court has since cracked down on all such leaks, but that even in a best-case scenario where the final opinion is somewhat softened, the ruling is certain to be "tragic". Moreover, he warns that overturning the privacy rights of Roe will "cast a lot of doubt on decisions protecting the right to privacy --- for gay people, for interracial couples, for people who use contraception --- and lower courts will seize upon that language and use it to start overturning those rights." That is just one reason why the Andrus ruling described above is so wildly dangerous.

• Ending local government's right to protect residents from gun violence. The Court is set to issue its opinion on a challenge to New York's more-than-100-year old requirement that those seeking to carry concealed firearms apply for a special permit to do so. As soon as next week, despite the Second Amendment's mandate that the right to bear arms should be "well-regulated," the NY law is likely to be struck down by SCOTUS. "We should expect the Supreme Court to declare that there is a Second Amendment right, in every state in the country, to carry a concealed weapon in public spaces, even if you have no particularly good reason to want one. And that right cannot be infringed without a very strong interest from the government, which the Court will then explain does not really exist. And, in doing so, will unleash, I think, a wave of violence --- in states like California and New York that have pretty strict limits on concealed carry --- that will be attributable to the Supreme Court," Stern predicts. "But of course the Court will be in its own palace, surrounded by guards and fences, and the Justices will not have to face the lethal consequences of their own ruling."

• West Virginia v. EPA The courts, long ago, placed a stay on President Obama's Clean Power Plan, which would have incentivized the transition from polluting coal-fired power plants to clean, renewable energy production. Then those regulations were replaced entirely by Trump's energy plan. And now, despite absolutely nobody required to follow the Obama EPA's regulations on this, the corrupted SCOTUS decided to take up WV's original challenge to the Obama plan. "This case is incredibly bizarre," Stern rails. "Because right now there is no rule --- I repeat, no rule --- no regulation, that is limiting carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. None. And yet, the Supreme Court is deciding whether the Biden Administration can issue a rule limiting carbon emissions. You might be asking how could it possibly be that the Supreme Court will rule on a regulation that does not yet exist, that may in fact never exist? The answer is that the usual rules about actually taking a live controversy do not seem to apply when the conservative super-majority really wants to kneecap the Biden Administration's regulatory agenda. So, even though the Court has nothing to strike down, it will almost certainly issue a decision purporting to strike down a regulation that doesn't even exist."

As to what Stern has to say about some cases that the Court is likely to pick up for its next term, particularly on something called the Independent State Legislature doctrine --- which doesn't actually exist either, but may very well soon, and will "either limit or abolish the ability of anyone other than a state legislature to set the rules for federal elections" --- well, I don't have the heart to go into the details here. But tune in if you want to be informed about what is coming next...and just in time for the 2024 Presidential election.

Stern has been warning about the opinions set to drop shortly for a very long time on this program. I leave it to you if you want to know what he warns is coming next.

"I don't know what to tell you except that madness is coming, and all we can do is try to prepare for it as best we can," he tells me. "Because this is the direction that the conservative Justices are moving in. They have telegraphed it very clearly, and they are moving us there just on schedule."

I wish I could say we close out today's show by cheering you up with our latest Green News Report, but we pride ourselves in telling listeners the truth, no matter how grim...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Great news for Big Oil! Gas prices and profits to remain high all summer; Oil and gas producers under-reporting methane emissions; Snow-covered Alps are losing their snow; PLUS: Biden proposes new ocean monument, while Interior moves to end single-use plastic in national parks... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): As the Great Salt Lake dries up, Utah faces an 'environmental nuclear bomb'; Energy experts sound alarm about US electric grid: 'Not designed to withstand the impacts of climate change'; Global reaction to energy crisis risks zero carbon transition; Gas crunch boosting clean energy; Colorado River is in crisis, and it's getting worse; Wildfires in U.S. West match climate projections 'eerily well'; Farmed pink salmon hatchery fish are upending marine ecosystems; After heat dome deaths, B.C. report recommends building code changes to keep people cool... PLUS: In Nigeria's disappearing forests, loggers outnumber trees... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: While we were out --- Hurricane season kicks off on both coasts with Alex and Agatha; CO2 levels in the atmosphere hit highest level in human history; PLUS: Biden makes big moves on solar tariffs and clean energy under the Defense Production Act... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Cambridge engineers develop zero carbon cement; Biden delivers a 'break glass' moment for clean energy; Judge greenlights more NEPA reviews on Western oil leases; Undoing Trump, EPA to empower states and tribes to oppose pipelines; Meet the group lobbying against climate regulations — using your utility bill; Ship pollution rising as world waits for leaders to act; Ukraine migration maps 'what's possible' for the climate displaced; Avian flu takes growing toll on wildlife; Glyphosate weedkiller damages wild bee colonies; PLUS: Ninth Circuit orders fracking moratorium off California coast... and much, MUCH more! ...