On today's BradCast: It seems like we've been here before. Donald Trump is out lying about his border wall, Congress is days away from another potential government shutdown over Trump's demands, and various scandals continue to rock Virginia's elected Democratic leadership with calls for resignations both continuing and waning. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

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

• During his State of the Union address, Trump offered false assertions about a border fence in El Paso, Texas, claiming it turned the state from one of the most dangerous cities in the country to one of the safest. The assertions have been debunked and re-debunked over and again since then by, among others, El Paso's sheriff and the city's mayor. Nonetheless, the President is holding a campaign rally in El Paso on Monday to repeat the lies;

• Potential Democratic 2020 Presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke --- whose hometown is El Paso --- holds a rally at the same time as Trump's to debunk the lies, after more Democrats (Senators Elizabeth Warren of MA and Amy Klobuchar of MN) announced their intention over the weekend to run for President;

• Congressional negotiations teetered on the edge of disaster over the weekend, as Republicans and Democrats work to avoid yet another federal government shutdown as of this Friday at midnight. That, even as many federal employees furloughed or working without pay during the previous shutdown that ended just two weeks ago are still waiting to be fully paid;

• Meanwhile, in Virginia, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax insists he has no plan to resign, even after a second accuser stepped forward on Friday to charge that he sexually assaulted her in the early 2000s when they were undergrad students. Fairfax is demanding "due process" in the form of, among other things, an FBI investigation into the serious allegations which he maintains were consensual incidents;

• At the same time, Virginia's Governor Ralph Northam insists he will not resign either, following the revelation of a racist photo published on his medical school yearbook in 1984, which he says he knew nothing about until it was recently publicized by a Rightwing website. Following fierce calls for Northam to resign last week and subsequent concerns about Fairfax's own fitness for office (he is next in line to succeed Northam if he steps down), some African-American leaders in the commonwealth have announced they have forgiven Northam and are calling for him to remain in office and make amends by working on policy and legislation important to the black community. Also, new polling reveals that a large majority of African-American voters in the state do not want Northam to step down;

• Also, I'm sad to report, iconoclastic Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) died Sunday, on his 76th birthday.

And, with all of those messes continuing concurrently, we open the phone lines today and receive some --- um --- fairly wild calls, including one from someone who claims to be black, but is calling for segregation in the U.S. (yes, really) and another from a guy who insists Trump should get due credit for a booming economy. (I disagree.)

All that and, yes, even more on today's BradCast...

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On today's BradCast we attempt to make sense of last night's State of the Union Address. Wish us luck. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

The New York Times described Trump's SOTU on Tuesday as "veer[ing] between two moods --- combative and conciliatory." Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer described it as "sort of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the excitement and the enthusiasm was all in the Mr. Hyde parts."

A majority of Americans who watched it, however, approved of the Trump's remarks, at least according to early polling weighted towards self-identified Republicans and right-leaning independents.

Our two excellent guests today, award-winning opinion journalist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and author and political media critic ERIC BOEHLERT formerly of ShareBlue and Media Matters, now a contributor for Daily Kos, join us to make sense of both parts (all parts?) of Trump's at-times disjointed, at-times collegial, and at-times aggressive remarks as they veered conversely between out-and-out lies to something more closely resembling facts but shamefully lacking in context.

Did Trump meet the bar set for him by his own White House aides who'd promised new calls for "unity" and "bi-partisan cooperation" in his speech? Is Trump capable or even interested in that?

"These State of the Unions are typically the least awful thing Trump does in any given week," Boehlert observes, "because it's a prepared speech, it's poorly written, he delivers it poorly. But there are moments where he does appeal to independents. And then he goes back to the crazies."

Says Parton: "If the idea was to unify the Republicans, then yes, it obviously worked. By their measure, I think they probably did what they wanted to do. ... [But] there is no President in American history who is less authentic-sounding than Donald Trump when he's calling for unity and bipartisanship. And they know it."

Beyond those optics, we also dig into, among many other things in today's lively, very fast-paced hour: Trump's ridiculous threats against "ridiculous partisan investigations"; The striking image of a sea of new and veteran female Democratic Representatives dressed in suffragette white; Nancy Pelosi's triumphant new-again role as House Speaker; Trump's obsessive (not to mention graphic and largely false or misleading) continuing advocacy for a southern border just days away from another potential federal government shutdown; The stunning number of important issues (from the climate crisis to gun violence to the recent record-long shutdown and much more) that Trump didn't bother to even mention, for some reason; The misleading use of Venezuela's ongoing political crisis as an attempt to smear "socialism" in the U.S. in advance of 2020; and Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams' very smart, spirited and inspiring response to Trump's dark, long, and largely fact and substance-free SOTU...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: From hellish heat to 'unprecedented' flooding, Australia hit with extreme weather whiplash; Meet the new Interior boss, even worse than the old Interior boss; Polar Vortex forces nuclear plant to shut down; PLUS: Trump Administration preparing to bulldoze National Butterfly Sanctuary to make way for his border wall... 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): At State of the Union, guests will signal growing ‘Green New Deal’ and climate momentum; Climate change is roasting the Himalaya region, threatening water supply for millions; Study warns self-driving cars may cause endless traffic jams; More US companies discussing climate in wake of hurricanes, wildfires; Former Koch official runs EPA chemical research; Canadian firm scraps plan to mine former Utah monument land; U.S. Navy wants to build a wall to stave off climate change; Company gets water permit for refinery near national park... PLUS: Teenagers emerge as a force in climate protests across Europe... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Why Donald Trump finally buckled in his demand for border wall funding and how the unprecedented government shutdown helped distract all of us from the Administration's new policy that endangers children by officially allowing blatant religious discrimination --- at least against religions other than Protestant. [Audio link to show follows below.]

On Friday, Trump caved. He finally agreed to reopen the federal government --- at least temporarily --- after five weeks and the longest shutdown in U.S. history. He pretended he'd made a "deal" with Democrats. In fact, he simply agreed to continue funding the government at its previous levels until February 15. He received zero dollars for his border wall in the bargain, while suggesting during bizarre, inaccurate and, at times, graphic remarks at the White House that, without some sort of "deal" for a wall, he would either shut the government down again in three weeks or declare a "national emergency" to take the money to build it from elsewhere.

There were many reasons Trump finally buckled today, including increasing anger from lawmakers in his own party, plummeting poll numbers, news that the IRS was in "panic mode" without enough workers as tax season begins, and flight delays up and down the Eastern Seaboard thanks to a shortage of Air Traffic Controllers, according to the FAA. But there were at least two stories that the Administration, no doubt, was eager to get off the front pages today and over the weekend.

One, a stunning report from NBC News Thursday night that Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner had been rejected for top secret clearance in 2017, for a host of reasons, by two career security professionals at the White House, only to have that security recommendation overruled (along with similar rejections for "at least 30" others!) and granted to him by a Trump appointee. Also, Trump's longtime supporter and dirty trickster Roger Stone --- who helped lead the "lock her up!" charge against Hillary Clinton with the release of hacked emails by WikiLeaks --- was arrested in Florida on Friday morning by FBI officials and charged with seven counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of justice by a grand jury convened as part of Robert Mueller's Special Counsel probe. Following the GOP's fake "outrage" about national security concerns related to Clinton's private email server, which Stone helped amplify, there's no small amount of irony here with his arrest on the heels of news that the Trump Administration appears to have forgone top level security concerns altogether in order to allow Kushner and others access to the nation's most closely guarded intelligence materials.

Trump's "deal" to temporarily reopen the government may have served to change the news cycle for a few hours, but it didn't endear him to Republican extremists like Ann Coulter, whose critiques late last year led Trump to break his agreement with lawmakers and demand $5.7 billion for a southern border wall resulting in the five week shutdown. Today she deried him as "the biggest wimp ever to serve as President."

While all of these nightmares have been unfolding in recent weeks, few noticed that the Trump Administration's Health and Human Services Department quietly approved a very controversial waiver to allow a Protestant South Carolina group called Miracle Hill Ministries to discriminate against Muslims, Jews, Catholics and atheists in the placement of foster care children. We're joined by criminal justice reporter AKELA LACY of The Intercept today to explain this very real and disturbing outrage which very few have noticed, and how the Administration's partnership with "Religious Right" Republicans under the guise of "religious freedom" is now officially sanctioning religious discrimination in the U.S.

"South Carolina is saying that the foster care statute in HHS rules and regulations does not specify religion as a characteristic on which they are not allowed to discriminate. They say that the foster care program statute says that agencies that receive federal funding can't deny parents based on race, color or national origin, but that because that statute does not specify religion, the request that Miracle Hill accept these families is outside of the law," Lacy tells me, noting that state law in South Carolina bars this sort of discrimination, as do federal non-discrimination laws that the Administration appears to be ignoring.

"The other really scary part of this," she notes, "is that, aside from these individual waivers, eighty Republican lawmakers signed a letter to the President in May asking for even further repeal of these federal protections against discrimination. So this is not just something that is being advocated for on a state-by-state basis. This is a quiet effort from the right to change these rules in the interests of mostly Christian organizations."

Describing a similar waiver request from Texas --- which also seeks to allow discrimination against LGBTQ families as well --- she says (real) advocates of religious freedoms and civil liberties fear the South Carolina precedent is likely now to spread to other states, other federal agencies, and other matters that reach well beyond foster care while much of the media continue to be distracted with the ongoing Trump chaos...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Tragedy in Mexico as leaking pipeline explodes; Trump's government shutdown threatens to make U.S. wildfires even worse; Federal judge halts permits for seismic testing during shutdown; Coal ash waste contaminating groundwater in at least 22 states; PLUS: Australia's historic heat wave is melting roads and decimating wildlife... 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): Greenland's ice melt nears 'tipping point'; U.S. military report warns climate change threatens key bases; Warm pole, cold continent: Polar Vortex settles on Eastern North America; 3 years later, no one is in jail over Flint tainted water; Critics slam WOTUS economics: 'In theory, pigs could fly'; Scientists warn of climate 'time bomb' for world's groundwater; Labor promises to 'supercharge' hydrogen industry as green groups say 'no role for coal'; Judge says uninsulated power conductors caused California fires... PLUS: The Trump Shutdown is an environmental crisis... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Donald Trump's federal government shutdown is the now the longest in U.S. history and landowners in Texas are fighting to keep the federal government from stealing their land even before Trump shakes down the U.S. Treasury somehow for $5.7 billion. Also, we might have avoided all of these messes had we only paid attention to a remarkably prescient warning from a 1958 episode of an obscure television show on CBS. [Audio link to show follows below.]

On Friday, some 800,000 furloughed federal workers missed their paychecks, after hundreds of them protested the shutdown, lockout, "shakedown" outside the White House as they are having trouble paying rents, mortgages and for food and medical needs. Nonetheless, Trump continues to threaten a "national emergency" declaration to force the funding of his long-promised southern border wall with money the Administration is considering taking from U.S. military disaster relief funding earmarked for hurricane and fire-ravaged states like Florida, Texas, California and dozens of others.

House Democrats (and a handful of Republicans) continue to vote to reopen the government --- or, at least, some of its various agencies which have nothing to do with immigration or a wall --- while Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to allow a vote on same in the upper chamber, even for identical bills to the those passed virtually unanimously there last year. Airports are being forced to enact closures for lack of TSA personnel, the nation's foods supply is going untested by the FDA for contamination, FBI agents are sending letters to the White House and Congress describing the furlough of thousands of special agents as a national security threat, and federally subsidized HUD housing for the elderly and poor is being forced to do without.

Meanwhile, down in Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, even before Trump receives the $5.7 billion he is demanding for hundreds of miles of new border wall/fencing, property owners are receiving letters from the federal government to begin the process of eminent domain. Families who have lived on the banks of the Rio Grande for generations are being threatened with having their homes taken away to pave the way for the construction of Trump's wall. Even an historic, 150-year old Catholic mission chapel on the banks of the river --- and on the city seal of Mission, TX --- finds itself in a legal battle with the federal government to remain in place.

We're joined today by RICKY GARZA, Rio Grande Valley native and staff attorney for the non-profit Texas Civil Rights Project. As Trump came to the area for another photo-op on Thursday, Garza is working to help hundreds of local property owners in the valley understand their legal rights to fend off a government takeover of their land and homes.

Garza scoffs at the President's claims of "crisis" conditions in what he describes as a "diverse region of over a million people that lives and dies by the water that comes from the river," but which may soon be cut off from it entirely. "The only crisis that exists now is artificially created by this administration," he tells me. "The only time I heard any talk about a crisis along the border was when I turned on cable news."

"Polling consistently shows that an overwhelming majority of people that actually live and work on the border oppose the border wall, and oppose the militarization of our communities," he says.

"What we're seeing on the ground is that people are having their lives interrupted by this intrusion into the borderlands by the federal government and border militarization. We've seen a decrease in apprehensions along the border, yet an increase in Border Patrol hiring, staffing and construction of things like the border wall, erections of things like security towers along the areas close to the river, and aerostat blimps that were formerly used in Iraq now deployed in some neighborhoods to surveil the border, and implicitly, all of us," Garza laments. "It's just another sad example of the federal government failing to understand the realities of life on the border, and what it's really like for us, just trying to live our lives in peace."

Finally today, a few minutes from a gob-smacking episode of the 1958 CBS Television series called Trackdown in which --- and this is for real --- a colorful con-man named "Trump" (seriously!) comes to town and tries to tell its gullible, terrified residents that only he can save them...by selling them on a "wall" to protect them from total destruction!!!...

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On today's BradCast, I'm in for Brad and Desi; they're on a well-deserved break til next week; I'm on my own holiday hiatus from In Deep with Angie Coiro, so doesn't that work out nicely?

It's early days in D.C., where Reps and Sens are shuffling back into their offices preparing for various swearings-in. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi --- retaking the leadership gavel Thursday --- is wasting absolutely no time letting Donald Trump know she plans to lead, not follow. He's wiped Mike Pence's offer to drop the border fund demand by some three billion bucks; Donny's back to demanding $5 billion, dismissing "someone" (um, Pence) who floated that lower figure. In both an appearance on the Today show and outside the White House following a border security meeting with Trump, Pelosi made it clear that taking the federal budget hostage cuts no ice --- he's getting no money for a wall.

Meanwhile, Apple is the latest company singed by Trump's tariffs. The company revised (lowered) its quarterly earnings estimate by 7.6%. Once that news went public, its stock dropped by nearly the same percentage. Apple CEO Tim Cook says it's not entirely a matter of the Trump/China trade war, but that was no small factor.

DAVE JOHNSON joins me to talk about how the 2020 presidential race is shaping up, starting with the news that Elizabeth Warren has officially gotten serious about running. Then, the tension between the Sanders and O'Rourke camps, and Beto's less-than-stellar track record with fossil fuel legislation. Has he just changed his tune because the record's gone public, or has he truly shifted his priorities?

By the way, Dave's a partner in the launch of what could be a very important site: We Can Have Nice Things, explaining modern economic theory in plain language, including how infrastructure and citizens' health and welfare get paid for in sane economic systems.

The New York Times Magazine has published Mark Leibovitch's profile of Harry Reid, who, as it turns out, is expecting to die soon. SARAH KENDZIOR says something critical is missing from that article: how Reid tried to get Comey to take Trump's Russian connections seriously, and how he pushed the media to pay attention to Trump's corruption --- both for naught.

Sarah's podcast, Gaslit Nation, has just moved from monthly to weekly production.

Finally, a few minutes deflecting attention from Mitt Romney's self-serving yabber in his anti-Trump op-ed to Lamar Alexander's much more productive, thoughtful exercise in how a willing Congress and a sane, savvy president can triumph over impasse together. Feels more like a fairy tale than a possibility in today's circumstances, but still - it's a worthy read.

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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.

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On today's BradCast, I'm in for Brad and Desi --- popping in here from my own show, In Deep with Angie Coiro.

So much for a budget compromise - although we really didn't expect one, did we? Ah well. The Dems are counting noses for January 3rd.

Hey, about that "discredited" dossier: not so fast. McClatchy has the tip that Michael Cohen was too in Prague, and that Robert Mueller knows it. Over at the Washington Post, Philip Bump explains exactly how heavy a domino this is - if it's true.

A bit more of the news roundup, then MARK KASTEL of Cornucopia explains a terrible trend --- why America's organic farmers are not only fleeing the business, but in some cases taking their own lives (more on that latter herefrom the Guardian).

Our conversation grew out of this column by his friend and colleague Jim Goodman, who's owned a family dairy farm for forty years. He knew the name of every one of his 45 cows. The reason he quit --- the reason so many are throwing in the towel --- is a complex tale of inadequate labeling, Big Ag masquerading as small producers of genuinely organic products, and the resulting glut of milk and produce that strangles the little guy.

Hang on to these handy-dandy scorecards, telling you which producers of eggs, dairy, grains, and more are truly organic and responsibly produced.

Finally --- in light of the White House occupant preening and playing the hero on his campaign swing through Iraq --- I bring you a genuine hero telling his own tale: JAMES HATCH, author of "Touching the Dragon" --- a heartily-recommended read...

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On today's BradCast, I'm in again for Brad and Desi, who are on the road for a bit of fa la la la la! I'm the host of In Deep with Angie Coiro, heard alongside the BradCast on many stations and streams.

Come along with me (please, I need all the company I can muster) as I traipse through the latest Trump-tinged headlines. I combine two stories that, on the face of it, have not much to do with each other: the latest child death under the watchful eye of the Border Patrol, and a grimly comical conversation about Santa Claus between Donald Trump and a young girl he just had to dominate. When you dig down, the latter reveals a lot about why we're witnessing the former.

Other headlines: Trump's hypocrisy in Iraq. I mean, the man stood in front of Americans serving us all overseas, and said "We're no longer the suckers, folks" --- addressing the very military he suckered by claiming "bone spurs" to stay home from Vietnam. The same day, ironically, the New York Times ran its story on how his exemption may have come about.

Then I'm so pleased to bring you extended excerpts of a recent onstage conversation with REP. JACKIE SPEIER. Her picture belongs in the dictionary under "indomitable" - undefeated by five gunshot wounds in Jonestown, by the persistent patriarchal hold on America's political power, by the politicians who want to paint late-term abortion as heartless murder - who she countered on the floor of the house with the heartbreaking truth of her real-life abortion.

Speier's account of her life is in her new book Undaunted: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back. I recommend it without reservation: it's honest, it's not self-aggrandization, and (I say this about very, very few books) genuinely inspiring.

Enjoy!...

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It's been a very busy news weekend (as usual these days), so we try to catch up with at least some of it, along with calls from listeners on today's BradCast. But, more importantly, we're already busy trying to save the next election from disaster, thanks to a move by folks on the right and left to make election results virtually impossible to be overseen and verified. [Audio link to today's show is posted below.]

States and counties all across the country are finally beginning to move to new "upgraded" voting systems. In many cases, however --- in both Republican and Democratic-leaning jurisdictions alike --- officials are now disastrously preparing to move to touchscreen computer Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) which are even less verifiable, in many cases, than systems currently in use!

In Georgia, a commission impaneled by Republican Brian Kemp, champion vote suppressor as former Sec. of State and now Governor-elect, is deciding whether to move from the state's 100% unverifiable Diebold touchscreen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines to similarly 100% unverifiable touchscreen BMDs made by ES&S before the next election. Here in Los Angeles County, the nation's largest voting jurisdiction, the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk has already announced plans to move to such an unverifiable system before the 2020 Presidential election, while (incorrectly) claiming that it produces a "verifiable paper ballot". BMD systems do not.

Proponents argue that touchscreen BMDs, which print out a computer-marked and barcoded "paper ballot" summary card of the voters vote, produce a "verifiable" record of the cast ballot. But, as Professor RICHARD DEMILLO of Georgia Tech and Verified Voting explains today, based on his recently published study, many voters (about half) do not bother to verify their computer-printed ballot summary cards before casting them to be tallied by a separate computer scanner. Of those who do, the study finds, they only glance at them for an average of 3.9 seconds before depositing them into the scanner (and that was during an election with some 18 races on the ballot!)

"Half of them don't look at the ballots at all," DeMillo tells me. "Those that do, give it by and large a cursory reading that wouldn't allow them to check it in any meaningful way."

Moreover, DeMillo's study finds, based on observation and testing at polling places earlier this year, most voters are unable to accurately verify --- just seconds after leaving the polling place --- whether an unvoted list of the races they just voted in accurately represents the races on the ballot they just cast! DeMillo --- a longtime computer security expert who formerly served as Hewlett-Packard's chief technology officer --- argues, the only way to ensure that ballots actually reflect the will of the voter is to use HAND-MARKED paper ballots, whether they are counted by hand or optical-scan systems.

"These are all problems we've created for ourselves" with some help from the private voting system vendors, he argues. "The only reason we're having this discussion is that someone decided that having an expensive pen to mark a ballot is more important than the transparency of the election process itself. As soon as you get rid of the Ballot Marking Devices, the universe goes back to normal, mathematics works out, we can conduct auditable elections in a much more verifiable way."

When I ask this longtime computer technologist and cryptography expert the best, most verifiable way to cast ballots, he answes directly: "Hand-marked paper ballots." His answer echoes that of longtime Livermore National Lab computer scientist and voting systems expert Dr. David Jefferson, who argued the same point during my interview with him in October.

Also today: What the federal court's questionable ruling in Texas on Friday finding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) unconstitutional, does (and doesn't) mean for all of us in 2019. The federal HealthCare.gov exchange's open enrollment period for 2019 ended over the weekend, but several states which run their own Obamacare markets, such as CA, CT, D.C., NY, MA, MN and RI, continue open enrollment through January.

Then, a thought or two from our own Desi Doyen on the long-overdue weekend announcement of the resignation of Trump's corrupt Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke.

And, finally today, we open the phones to callers with thoughts on, among other things, whether voting in the U.S. should (or shouldn't be) be compulsory and whether voting is a "right" or "privilege". Don't miss that lively debate with callers and much more on today's BradCast!...

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On today's BradCast, we fly through a mountain of incoming stories (with the help of a great guest!) as the news gods seem to be unleashing a tidal wave in advance of the Thanksgiving Day holiday. [Audio link posted below. Buckle up before clicking.]

Among the ridiculous number of stories covered today...

• Five are dead after three shootings in three different states over the past 24 hours;
• Despite warning of an "invasion" on the U.S. southern border by a migrant caravan from Central America prior to the midterm elections, now that the elections are done, the Trump Administration is reportedly withdrawing more than 5,000 military troops they had deployed to the border just weeks ago;
• The President's daughter and senior adviser Ivanka Trump reportedly sent hundreds of government related emails via a private email server over the course of 2017 in the months following her father's election in which he repeatedly called for his opponent, Hillary Clinton, to be "locked up" for doing the same thing. Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner, also a senior adviser to Trump, reportedly used the same private server for government-related communications.

On the election results front...

• Republican Rep. Will Hurd has reportedly squeaked out a victory over Democratic challenger Gina Ortiz Jones in Texas' 23rd Congressional District. The contest was among a handful of still-undecided races;
• At the same time, Democrat Ben McAdams appears to have pulled back into the lead over GOP Rep. Mia Love in Utah's 4th Congressional District, where it now appears McAdams will be the victor by fewer than 700 votes out of some 270,000 tallied, flipping yet another U.S. House seat from "red" to "blue". The final margin is reportedly 0.258%, just above the 0.25% that would have allowed Love to request a recount in the otherwise ruby "red" state.
• When the few remaining undecided U.S. House seats are called, Democrats appear on track to have picked up an extraordinary 39 seats in their "blue wave".
• One of the three still-undecided House races is in Georgia, where this year's Libertarian candidate for Sec. of State has now endorsed Democratic candidate John Barrow in the upcoming December 4th runoff against Republican Brad Raffensperger to replace GA's vote suppressing Sec. of State, now Governor-elect Brian Kemp;
• In Wisconsin, Democrats won every single statewide race on November 6th, including Governor (unseating Scott Walker) and U.S. Senate. They also outvoted Republicans in State Assembly races by 8 percentage points, 54 to 46 percent. Nonetheless, thanks to the GOP's extreme partisan gerrymandering in the Badger State, Republicans will hold 63 seats to the Democrats' 36 in the new Assembly;

The great (and newly wed!) MARK JOSEPH STERN, legal journalist at Slate, joins us to discuss how voters pushed back against gerrymandering this year by approving ballot initiatives --- and other measures --- in several states on November 6th, in an attempt to restore fair(er) elections in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court opting to not strike down partisan gerrymanders as unconstitutional in states such as Wisconsin and North Carolina earlier this year. Among the many other issues we fly through with Stern today, on which he offers his as-always cogent legal insight...

• Ivanka and Hillary's email issues (Stern hopes a Democratic House investigation will result in real reform to the "arguably improper" if not unlawful use of private email by officials like Trump and Clinton, though not in the opportunistic political fashion that GOPers previously dealt with the issue);
• Trump's appointment of GOP operative Matthew Whitaker as Acting Attorney General (which Stern describes as blatantly "illegal" and, he believes, very likely to be struck down by the Courts). He also describes the DoJ's legal defense of the maneuver as "laughable";
• A federal court on Monday night blocked the Trump Administration's new regulation denying asylum claims by immigrants who fail to present themselves at a port of entry (Stern explains the judge found the Administration's new rule to be in strict violation of federal laws, and predicts that even Chief Justice John Roberts, based on similar rulings he made against the Obama Administration, will be forced to agree when the case reaches SCOTUS);
• The decision by a Trump-appointed federal judge to order the White House to restore press credentials to CNN's Jim Acosta (Stern is impressed with the Trump judge's anti-Trump ruling, I remain a bit more skeptical);
• And how (and why) Trump's controversial new Justice Brett Kavanaugh has, so far, laid low by not yet fuly tossing in with the Court's nihilist right-wing caucus.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report as the catastrophic wildfires continue to burn in California, Trump shows up to make things worse, and a coming turn in the weather signals both good news and bad for firefighters and recovery workers amid the record disaster...

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On today's BradCast: Some brakes --- some --- may now finally be applied to our ongoing Trump-induced national emergency, in the wake of his election two exhausting years ago. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Despite shameful obstacles placed in front of voters across the country during Tuesday's midterms, Democrats managed to wrestle back control of the U.S. House of Representatives by flipping at least 27 seats, as of airtime, with the results of several other races still unknown, according to unverified computer tabulation in all 50 states. Setting aside partisan issues, women and diverse candidates were the biggest winners yesterday...along with the American people.

At the same time, the GOP reportedly picked up several seats in the U.S. Senate, even while Democrats racked up some very important (and, occasionally stunning!) wins at the gubernatorial level. Those wins and losses (including Scott Walker ousted and Kris Kobach denied!) are likely to reverberate for the next decade, as the next round of redistricting occurs after the 2020 census.

Today we review as many of the noteworthy reported results from House, Senate and Governor races as we can possibly jam into one single show....and then we hit several important ballot initiative results as well.

Moreover --- and, perhaps, as importantly --- we look at several "too close to call" races where no winner has yet been declared by media and/or a number of contests with outcomes worth questioning, including in Florida, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere. (If only every candidate sounded like Georgia's Stacey Abrams at the end of a reportedly very close election night!)

Election Day may be over, but the fight for public oversight of results may just be beginning.

Oh, and as we long predicted would happen if results didn't go Trump's way on November 6, today he fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions to begin his move against Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Nonetheless, for today at least, we won't allow Trump to hijack our news cycle on The BradCast...

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On today's BradCast: Who could have foreseen it? Oh, yeah, we did. For months. Years, actually. At this point, even decades. [Audio link to show follows below.]

American voters finally had their chance on Tuesday to respond to the ongoing, two-year national emergency precipitated by the 2016 election of Donald Trump and full Republican control of Congress. Control of the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House and dozens of governorships were up for grabs today. But Election Day 2018 was --- yet again --- marred by completely predictable disasters for voters, including hours-long lines and failing voting and registration computers at polling places across the country.

Today we cover just some of the worst reported messes (there are still more to come to light and many more that we simply couldn't get to)...

• In New York City, where paper ballot computer scanners failed leading to hours-long lines across city;

• In Georgia, where many voters in African-American precincts stood in line for hours due to failing electronic pollbook systems and too few 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting machines (amid the tight race between the vote-suppressing GOP Sec. of State and Gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp and his African-American Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams);

• In North Carolina, where high humidity and a very long ballot reportedly prevented scanners from accepting them in a number of precincts in Wake County (Raleigh);

• In South Carolina, where oft-failed, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems made by ES&S were reportedly flipping votes and officials were (outrageously) said to be making calibration adjustments to them in the middle of Election Day (a very dangerous idea!);

• In Kansas and Missouri where voters also reportedly fought with many problems, incluing long lines, voting systems that failed and poll workers unlawfully demanding Photo IDs to vote. In Kansas, Sec. of State and GOP "voter fraud" fraudster Kris Kobach is overseeing his own very tight race for Governor, and in Missouri, Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill is fighting for her life as Democrats hope to claw back a majority in the U.S. Senate or keep Republicans from expanding their current one.

Then, we're joined by Emmy award-winning journalist and documentarian LULU FRIESDAT with a troubling exclusive report for us out of Dallas County, Texas, amid the reportedly close contest for U.S. Senate between Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and his popular upstart Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke.

Friesdat reports on two different serious concerns out of the Long Star State's second-most populous county, where numbers reported by the County's ES&S tabulators from the state's March primary are still not adding up correctly (yes, months later, questions are still emerging), and from the County's counting room, where a Texas election integrity group is reporting today that a computer in the tabulation facility appears to be hooked up to WiFi. That Friesdat tells me, is highly unlawful and potentially very troubling for a number of reasons.

"It is not okay for it to be around voting machines and tabulators, because that is one of the easiest ways for election results to be hacked," says Friesdat, who has been covering concerns about voting systems for many years now. "So there are usually very, very clear laws regarding internet connectivity or Wi-Fi in a tabulating area. And that is the case in Texas. They have laws that forbid Wi-Fi or connectivity." That, in a county where their vendor is ES&S, the nation's largest voting machine vendor, which recently lied to the New York Times about whether their systems include remote access software. (Turns out many of them do, but that's not what they initially told the Times, even as it still remains unclear which counties use ES&S systems with such capabilities, and even with cellular modems.)

Friesdat does close on a positive note, however, noting that many in the public are becoming aware of these concerns and that observations by the public are helping. "The more people get involved and keep looking, down to the nitty gritty, what's going on in your elections --- it's helping, folks! Keep it up!"

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us today for our latest Green News Report, with some bad news about plastic and the air we breathe, but some good news from the U.S. Supreme Court (believe it or not) and from the World Bank, which has now said it will no longer help finance coal-fired power plants anywhere in the world, because renewables are now cheaper than coal.

Results --- as reported...probably --- tomorrow...

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On today's BradCast: Nobody said it was going to be easy. But the fight to vote in next Tuesday's crucial midterms continues, and beyond the House and Senate, there may be some very good news for Democrats in dozens of currently GOP-controlled states. [Audio link to show follows below.]

But first up: More trouble at the polls today reported out of Texas, where voter intimidation is said to be higher than seen in decades; In Georgia, where voters are still trying to overcome suppression in absentee Vote-by-Mail voting in DeKalb County (suburbs east of Atlanta) and with failing, unverifiable voting machines at all polling places across the state; And in Illinois, where voters are also reportedly encountering failures on DuPage County's similarly unverifiable touchscreen voting systems in the Chicago suburbs.

Meanwhile, there's been a fair amount of coverage of high profile gubernatorial races with Democratic takeover chances in Florida and Georgia (where Oprah is now lending a hand), and in a number of the similarly tight U.S. Senate races that will determine partisan control of the upper chamber in Congress for the next two years. But there has been far less national coverage of several other gubernatorial contests around the country where Democrats are also in very close "Toss Up" contests to take control of dozens of executive mansions.

These races are crucial not only between now and the next Presidential Election, but could well determine control of the U.S. House over the next decade. That's right. The way voters vote on Tuesday, November 6, 2018, may well help determine who is in charge of the U.S. House beginning in 2022, once redistricting takes place around the country following the 2020 Census --- and then for another ten years thereafter!

While Dems hope to win a majority in the House next week, control of Governorships by Democrats in a number of key swing states could help add anywhere from 15 to 30 more winnable seats in the U.S. House over the next decade, according to experts.

Political reporter DYLAN SCOTT of Vox.com joins us to detail which states will be most important to that decennial reapportionment and why state Governors are so crucial to the process.

"Republicans won a lot of governor seats in 2010," he explains. "That gave them a lot of control over redistricting in 2011. And even though in 2012, 2014 and 2016, the Democrats actually won more votes for their House candidates across the country, the maps were drawn as such that Republicans were still able to hold a majority for all of the last decade. I think the stakes should be pretty clear to people after what we've seen with GOP control across the country over the last ten years," Scott argues. But are they? We discuss.

Also, Scott breaks down what appears to be a host of very good opportunities for Democrats in more than a dozen states beyond Florida and Georgia, currently controlled by GOP Governors, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, New Mexico, Maine, Alaska and even South Dakota! We cover a lot of ground on this today --- along with the politics and polling involved --- and much of it should be very encouraging for Democrats.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with news on some potential accountability for Donald Trump's corrupt Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke, more disturbing indications that the effects of global warming will be much worse, much sooner than previously thought, and more related news underscoring why Tuesday's election is so crucial to the existential fight against man-made climate change...

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