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Latest Featured Reports | Thursday, March 28, 2024
BRAD BLOG Spring Breaking
And not a moment too soon...
Sunday 'Roll Out the Barrel' Toons
FEATURING: Rich Con, Poor Con!...Sex-Havers!...March Madness!...More! Have a barrel of fun with our latest collection of the week's best toons!...
It's Up to You, New York: 'BradCast' 3/21/24
Trump staring down barrel of both civil and criminal accountability in NY; Also: Biden forgives another $6B in student loans; U.S. seeks 'sustained ceasefire' in Gaza; Scientists baffled by spike in record global heat...
'Green News Report' 3/21/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
Biden EPA issues biggest climate regulation in U.S. history; Rio hits 144°F heat index!; Exxon CEO blames YOU for climate change; PLUS: U.N. issues climate change 'red alert'!...
Previous GNRs: 3/19/24 - 3/14/24 - Archives...
'It All Comes Down to Brett and Amy': 'BradCast' 3/20/24
Guest: Slate's Mark Joseph Stern on another stunning week of federal judiciary debacles; Also: Primary results from AZ, FL, IL, KS, OH, CA; Biden EPA's 'biggest climate move yet'...
American 'Bloodbath':
'BradCast' 3/19/24
Trump is promising political violence whether he wins or loses; Also: Navarro goes to prison; Scofflaw MI MAGA attorney arrested; SCOTUS allows TX to override federal law, Constitution; Biden's SOTU success...
'Green News Report' 3/19/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
EPA finally bans all uses of asbestos; Biden unveils billions for rebuilding communities broken by highway construction; Extreme heat in Africa; PLUS: MA coastal town follies...
Previous GNRs: 3/14/24 - 3/12/24 - Archives...
Corporations 'Taking a Bazooka' to NLRB, Hoping to Declare it 'Unconstitutional': 'BradCast' 3/18/24
Guest: Labor journo Steven Greenhouse; Also: Putin's 'election'; Trump can't find $450M...
Sunday 'Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya' Toons
FEATURING: Moses Mike...Trump II Terror...TikTok Truth...and more in our latest collection of the week's most secular toons!...
Schumer Steps Up; Trump Associates Paid Biden 'Bribe' Liar $600k: 'BradCast' 3/14/24
Also: TikTok foolishness; NY hush-money trial delay?; Navarro must go to jail; Trump owes $400k for failed 'Steele Dossier' suit in UK...
'Green News Report' 3/14/24
FL bans heat protections for workers; Methane leaks continue; GOP Project 2025 would ban Paris Agreement; PLUS: CA snowpack is back, but too late for salmon...
After Accountability for Fraud, What's Next for the Corrupt NRA and Gun Safety Reforms?: 'BradCast' 3/13/24
Guest: Brady Center's Kelly Sampson; Also: Biden, Trump clinch; GA judge nixes 6 counts...
How to Media Better and Other Smart Ideas:
'BradCast' 3/12/24
Press quietly resets weeks of misreporting on Biden; Suggestions for NYT; Stephanopoulos v. Mace; Also: Buck quits; RNC 'bloodbath'; WI's MAGA Speaker Recall...
'Green News Report' 3/12/24
Biden touts climate jobs boom at SOTU; Feb. obliterated global temp and ocean heat records; PLUS: Great Barrier Reef hit with yet another 'mass bleaching event'...
BARCODED BALLOTS AND BALLOT MARKING DEVICES
BMDs pose a new threat to democracy in all 50 states...
VIDEO: 'Rise of the Tea Bags'
Brad interviews American patriots...
'Democracy's Gold Standard'
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
Brad's Upcoming Appearances
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'Special Coverage' Archives
GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...

DOJ PROBE SOUGHT AFTER VA ARREST
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...

Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...

ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
His Super-PAC, his voter registration (fraud) firm & their 'Americans for Prosperity' are all based out of same top RNC legal office in Virginia...

LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

'Fired' Sproul Group 'Cloned', Still Working for Republicans in At Least 10 States
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...

FINALLY: FOX ON GOP REG FRAUD SCANDAL
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...

COLORADO FOLLOWS FLORIDA WITH GOP CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
Repub Sec. of State Gessler ignores expanding GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, rants about evidence-free 'Dem Voter Fraud' at Tea Party event...

CRIMINAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL IN FL
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...

Brad Breaks PA Photo ID & GOP Registration Fraud Scandal News on Hartmann TV
Another visit on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture with new news on several developing Election Integrity stories...

CAUGHT ON TAPE: COORDINATED NATIONWIDE GOP VOTER REG SCAM
The GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal reveals insidious nationwide registration scheme to keep Obama supporters from even registering to vote...

CRIMINAL ELECTION FRAUD COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GOP 'FRAUD' FIRM
Scandal spreads to 11 FL counties, other states; RNC, Romney try to contain damage, split from GOP operative...

RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...

VIDEO: Brad Breaks GOP Reg Fraud Scandal on Hartmann TV
Breaking coverage as the RNC fires their Romney-tied voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting...

RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...

EXCLUSIVE: Intvw w/ FL Official Who First Discovered GOP Reg Fraud
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...

GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
State GOP fires Romney-tied registration firm after fraudulent forms found in Palm Beach; Firm hired 'at request of RNC' in FL, NC, VA, NV & CO...
The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...


Conventional wisdom and corporate media proven wrong. Again.; Also: Big midterm wins, losses, surprises as voters hold the line for democracy, Congressional majorities remain up in the air...
By Brad Friedman on 11/9/2022 6:17pm PT  

Republicans and corporate media appeared to be shocked on Tuesday night. But it looks like we had it right all along on BradCast regarding this year's midterm elections. And, once again, the corporate media didn't. But, good news for them! As usual, they'll pay no price for being wrong, no matter how many times they ill-serve the nation with their failures. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

There was no "red" wave. Conventional wisdom, as we've been advising since early Spring, was to be ignored before this year's midterms in these decidedly UNconventional times. If we could see that data --- sometimes via polling from some of the very same media outlets --- why couldn't the corporate media? Maybe its group think. Maybe its because whatever Republicans tell them they believe to be the truth, or simply report it as such.

In any event, while there was no "red" wave, it is still quite possible that Republicans win majorities in both the U.S. House and the Senate --- if just barely in each case. And while Dems, as we go to air today, have an apparent edge to hold on to their Senate majority, it'll almost certainly require another win in another U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia next month to nail it down. There even remains a long-shot chance that Dems can keep a majority in the House as well, and that, as we explained yesterday, it all may come down to the effect of unusually large downpours on Tuesday's Election Day in both Northern and Southern California.

Either way, for the moment, American democracy, while still on life support, has lived to see another day. For now. In similarly encouraging news, our previous President may even finally face some accountability from his own infuriated party. They were deprived of what should have been a huge and easy win on Tuesday, but for the rightwing loons that Donald Trump helped push into the Party and onto ballots across the nation. Many of them, if not all, lost bigly.

On today's program, we discuss all of the above and, based on what we know as of airtime, run through a ton of critical victories and losses --- including both inspiring surprise wins and several disappointments --- in dozens of states, at both the state and federal level.

As of yesterday's election, anyway, American voters (including many young ones, thankfully!) appear to have held the line for democracy. It is not dead yet. For that, I hope you'll take a minute or two to breathe a small sigh of relief. But not too many minutes. The good fight ain't over yet. Not by a long shot...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Media lends GOP a hand; Tabulator failures in NJ and AZ, very different responses; Touchscreen vote disenfranchisement in TX; Much more...
By Brad Friedman on 11/8/2022 5:02pm PT  

On today's Midterm Elections Day 2022 BradCast: Unspooling the media's midterm mess and the high price of failed computerized voting and tabulation systems in several states.

Among the many stories covered today as voters across the nation headed to the polls...

  • What is the possible connection between today's otherwise much-needed downpours in both Northern and Southern California and potential partisan control of the U.S. House? We 'splain!
  • Major corporate media outlets have done another irresponsible job in their coverage of this year's midterms, particularly in their bizarre Doomsday-for-Dems coverage in recent weeks. While Tuesday's elections certainly could prove to be a "red" wave for Republicans --- after all, conventional wisdom (which we've been advising you to ignore all year) would certainly predict as much --- a fair reading of both pre-election polling and other available early voting data, suggests Dem strength could be greater than most outlets have been reporting. Some are even ignoring their own polling numbers to report a coming apocalypse for Dems. (Also: Compare and contrast NYT's front pages from day before the midterms in 2018, when Dems picked up 41 seats in the House, with the day before this week's midterms.) Of course, the polls are tight enough that a minor polling error in either direction could lead to either a "red" or "blue" wave, or simply a maddeningly close contest all around. But the problem is, the doom and gloom reporting can either become a self-fulfilling prophecy by depressing Dem turnout or, more dangerously, yet another misleading basis for Republicans to falsely declare "FRAUD!" in the event that Dems do better than expected on Tuesday night. Either scenario suggests another mainstream corporate media failure in 2022. We 'splain that too.
  • Donald Trump big footed Ohio's Republican U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance at his rally on Monday night by announcing that he's got a big announcement coming next week. Reportedly, Republican officials had to beg Trump to not declare his candidacy to run again for President before today's midterms. He wanted to do it last night. Of course, facing as many legal perils all at once as he now is, I'd want to try and change the subject as quickly as possible too. It won't work.
  • A tale of two voting system failures. In Mercer County, New Jersey today, hand-marked paper ballot optical scanners used across the county and made by Dominion failed to work. Luckily, they are one of only two counties in the state that offer voters hand-marked paper ballots. So, voters were instructed instead to place their ballots into the scanning system's locked box to be tabulated later at County headquarters. Voters did so. Voting continued. Life went on. Everything was fine. Meanwhile, at a bunch of polling sites in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona, the scanners, also made by Dominion, were failing as well. Instead of following the same procedure to vote and place their ballot in the box to be scanned later, the wingnuts went crazy. Howls of "FRAUD!" followed, with demands to recall the County's Republican election officials and for paper ballots to be used from now on! (Someone please let GA's lunkhead Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene know that Maricopa already uses paper ballots.) Sigh. This in a county where Reuters reported over the weekend that elections officials faced more than 100 threats in the lead up to today's elections, including calls to "kill them all" and worse. (The reason eventually discovered for the scanner failures in Maricopa was pretty mundane).
  • Meanwhile, actual voter disenfranchisement took place for hours in Harris County (Houston), Texas, on Tuesday morning, thanks to the fact that, like much of the Lone Star state, they don't allow voters to use verifiable hand-mark paper ballots at the polls. Instead, after a poll worker quit before today's Election Day, touchscreen voting systems made by Hart Intercivic were not properly set up until four hours after polls opened in a heavily-Hispanic part of the heavily-Democratic County. An unknown number of voters were turned away, unable to vote. Marjorie Taylor Greene has yet to say a word about it.
  • Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the U.N.'s big COP27 climate conference kicks of in Egypt; a new report finds major glaciers will soon disappear entirely; and a late-season hurricane spins up and takes aims at Florida's east coast...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Pandora, TuneIn, Google, Amazon or our native RSS feed!

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On climate, natural gas, 'junk fees' and other substantive issues worth knowing about ahead of our critical midterm elections...
By Brad Friedman on 10/27/2022 6:18pm PT  

The element of surprise plays a central role in several of the stories covered on today's BradCast.

Among them...

  • SURPRISE! Natural gas prices actually went negative (companies paying to give it away) in parts of Europe this week, as the EU now has a glut of natural gas with Winter approaching and storage facilities reaching capacity. That's particularly surprising after earlier concerns earlier this year that folks could freeze to death after Russia's Vladimir Putin cut off much of its supply in retaliation for sanctions against his brutal invasion of Ukraine. So, why the glut? Several reasons: EU nations scrambled to make up for the gas cut off by Putin with sources from elsewhere while also working toward a quicker transition to renewable sources of energy. Also, mild, climate changed weather in the region has eased demand so far this Autumn.
  • SURPRISE! The price of natural gas in parts of west Texas also plummeted to nearly zero recently, thanks to over-production and a lack of storage there as well. All of which is "surprising", if only because Republicans have been telling (lying to) Americans that Joe Biden had crippled fossil fuel energy production in the U.S. (he hasn't), which has lead to increased prices...which is actually largely due to price gouging that every Republican in Congress recently voted against prohibiting.
  • SURPRISE! Russia's war in Ukraine is hastening, not slowing, a global shift away from fossil fuels and towards cleaner, renewable energy sources like wind, solar and EV's, according to a new International Energy Agency (IAE) report on Thursday. Global investment in renewable sources is quickly rising, as nations seek energy security in response to Putin's war and in hopes of improving their economies by grabbing a chunk of the trillions of dollars being spent on development and manufacturing in the burgeoning clean energy industry. Nonetheless, while the shift will reportedly result in peak fossil fuel usage by 2025, the current pace of the transition is still nowhere near what climate scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.
  • SURPRISE (FEES)! The Biden Administration's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced on Wednesday that it is cracking down on unlawful corporate junk fees --- for checks you deposit at your bank from someone which ends up bouncing; for changing plane tickets after an airline cancelled your flight, etc. --- amounting to billions of dollars in savings for American consumers. The President's announcement at the White House on Wednesday comes just days after three Trump-appointees on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with part of a lawsuit from the sleazy Payday Lending Industry lobby charging that the funding mechanism for the CFPB --- created during the Obama Administration in response to the Great Recession as the only federal agency created to protect consumers rather than corporations --- was somehow unconstitutional. And after Biden's announcement to end junk fees, Republicans in both the House and Senate released statements vowing to end the new consumer protections...which will be much easier for them to do if they win majorities in either chamber in the November midterms.
  • SURPRISE (NOT)! After Amazon indignantly pretended to cut off political donations to Republicans who voted against certifying Joe Biden's Electoral College victory after the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection, the monopolistic retailer apparently restarted them...just as soon as the nation's next major election got under way.
  • Finally, it's no surprise that Desi Doyen has both good news and bad in our latest Green News Report, as drought deepens across the U.S.., the U.N. warns about catastrophic consequences of climate change; Australia builds a really really big battery; and as the Biden Administration rolls out a national fleet electric school buses...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Good news on green energy, even from fascists; Disturbing news on Election Integrity and hand-counting, especially from fascists...
By Brad Friedman on 10/25/2022 6:45pm PT  

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...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Poll workers needed!; Ian threatens FL; Scofflaw TX A.G. flees process server; Congress nears Electoral Count Act update; Listener mail...
By Brad Friedman on 9/27/2022 5:48pm PT  

We've got a grab bag of items on today's BradCast, as the critical midterm elections loom and a potentially catastrophic storm threatens the Sunshine State. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among the potpourri of news on today's program...

  • Some listener mail in response to yesterday's lively call-in show focused on expansion of the Supreme Court and the necessity of electing Democrats this November in hopes of saving American democracy.
  • NASA scientists successfully fired a vending machine sized projectile last November toward a 560-foot wide moonlet orbiting around an asteroid traveling at thousands of miles per hour nearly 7 million miles away. They hit it on their first try. But, other than that, when it comes to things like our climate crisis and fighting infectious diseases here on Earth, scientists don't anything about anything and should be completely ignored, right?
  • Texas' top law enforcement official, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, was indicted for securities fraud felonies seven years ago. He has been dodging a trial for those crimes ever since. In the meantime, he's facing a whistleblower lawsuit from former top deputies charging he abused his office and a criminal probe by the FBI regarding similar allegations. On Monday, his state Senator wife Angela (the one he was cheating on with a girlfriend who was given a job by one of his wealthy donors), served as a getaway driver for Paxton after he ran out of the house and fled by to dodge a process server attempting to serve the state's top attorney with two subpoenas. Cause that's what "the rule of law" looks like in the Lone Star State. Paxton will face Democratic A.G. nominee Rochelle Garza during his reelection contest this November.
  • False claims of fraud in the 2020 election and threats against poll workers by Donald Trump and his flying MAGA monkey are resulting in a surprising number of folks signing up to be poll workers on both the Left and the Right. That's actually a very good thing! But many more poll workers are still needed to help protect democracy this year! Please contact your local elections office to consider becoming one!
  • And, speaking of protecting democracy, last week, the House passed a bipartisan bill to update the Electoral Count Act of 1887. That is the arcane and confusingly written law that Trump and the MAGA monkeys tried to exploit in hopes of stealing the 2020 Presidential election on January 6, 2021. A similar bipartisan bill to the one passed by the House with little GOP support is now quickly moving through the U.S. Senate. And today, republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell came out in support of it. That means the measure is likely to get the 10 Republican votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the undemocratic upper chamber. This much-needed reform to help prevent just one of the ways that Republicans could steal the 2024 Presidential election may see passage in the full Senate before the end of this year.

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Pandora, TuneIn, Google, Amazon or our native RSS feed!

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Also: Beer shortage?!; More on DeSantis' migrant scam; Electoral Count Act reform news; Good (and bad) news for disabled voters...
By Brad Friedman on 9/20/2022 6:38pm PT  

Today's BradCast starts off with a show-stopper! Everything else thereafter, well, you'll decide for yourself. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

On today's program...

  • Since it's, apparently, National Voter Registration Day today (yes, that's a thing), we thought we'd celebrate by starting off with a fantastic new lyric rewrite video from the cast of Broadway's Hamilton. They've updated a song from the show called "The Election of 1800" to a new version called "The Election of 2022" to raise awareness of the importance of voting this year. Their effort is in partnership with Michelle Obama's When We All Vote and Vote Riders. But for help in registering to vote, checking to make sure your registration still exists (and is at the address where you actually live), and for information on the type of ID required to vote where you live, I recommend either the DNC's IWillVote.com app or the federal government's Vote.gov. Both sites allow you to check your registration or register to vote without having to give information to a third party. And, since merely voting is no longer enough, we are officially enlisting you to spread the word to others on all of this! Ask your friends, co-workers, neighbors etc., if they are registered to vote; help them do so, if not; make sure they get to the polls to vote by November 8 this year, etc. etc. Yes, it's that important this year!
  • There is a weird beer shortage looming! Why? Lack of carbon dioxide due to contamination at an extinct volcano in Mississippi. Yes, I realize that sounds bizarre --- especially given the deadly over-abundance of CO2 in our atmosphere, causing our deadly climate crisis --- but, well...tune in for the full bizarre explanation.
  • On yesterday's program, we detailed some of the apparent federal criminal statutes, such as kidnapping, that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to have violated when he shipped 48 Venezuelan migrants from San Antonio, Texas to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts on behalf of the state of Florida. We noted that requests had been made to the MA Attorney General U.S. Attorney's office in the state to investigate whether laws were violated. But shortly after airtime yesterday, news broke that Bexar County (San Antonio), Texas Sheriff's office has opened a criminal investigation into the matter. Good news!
  • As to what actually happened --- versus what DeSantis is claiming --- TPM's Josh Marshall has been trying to do some digging, after first noting that the initial story "Doesn't Add Up". Why did DeSantis hunt down migrants in Texas seeking asylum to entice (with false promises) to go to Massachusetts? Are there no migrants in Florida that could have been similarly abused, since the Florida state legislature has set allocated some $12 million to use to transport migrants out of the state (as opposed to out of the state of Texas)?! Who is this mysterious "Perla" character who has been identified as having recruited the migrants and organized luxury corporate jets to fly theme to MA? And, though the Florida Governor and Presidential hopeful is refusing to offer specifics, what clues can be gleaned about all of this from some of the statements that he has made, referencing a "contractor" or "vendor" who seems to have been hired for all of this, rather than government workers. In other words, what the hell is really going on here?
  • Then, in some election law related news today, the House January 6 Select Committee Vice-Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) and committee member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) detailed proposed reforms to the Electoral Count Act, over the weekend. The Committee, they explain, hopes to make it more difficult in the future to steal elections via the Electoral College, as Donald Trump attempted to do on January 6, 2021. The new measure, officially introduced by the Committee in the House on Monday, is called the Presidential Election Reform Act. It would clarify the role of the Vice President on January 6 as purely ministerial; increase the number of Representative and Senators required to challenge any state's Electoral College votes; offer legal options to Presidential candidates in the event that a state fails to certify its Electoral Votes (as a number of GOP candidates for Governor and Sec. of State this year have said they would have done in 2020, had they been in office at the time); and prevents state legislatures from changing the rules for determining election results after the election has already started. The House measure is similar to one recently introduced by a bipartisan group in the Senate, and would need to be reconciled with that version if both versions are successfully brought to a vote in each chamber.
  • Some good news --- and some troubling news --- for disabled voters. New voting restrictions adopted by Republicans in several different states have made it literally impossible for some disabled voters to vote at all without breaking the law. For example, a Wisconsin law had mandated that nobody other than the voter him or herself could place an absentee ballot in a mailbox. That means that those without use of their arms --- such as voters suffering from advanced multiple sclerosis or who may have been injured --- might not be able to vote absentee at all. A recent federal court victory in WI will at least allow disabled voters in that state to receive assistance when casting their ballot. But several other states, such as Kansas, Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri, still have measures in place that could make it impossible --- and/or illegal --- for some disabled voters to vote at all in 2022 and beyond.
  • Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as three major storms made simultaneous, catastrophic landfall in Puerto Rico, Alaska and Japan over the weekend; a new report finds climate change made Pakistan's recent catastrophic flooding much much worse; better news in Australia where the nation, until recently controlled by climate change deniers, is finally moving to reduce carbon emissions; and, in Louisiana, a court has blocked the construction of a massive, toxic plastics plant in area of the state known as "Cancer Alley"...

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Also: Media still pulling punches on GOP authoritarianism; Queen Elizabeth finally buried, so will CNN finally cover the weekend's THREE hurricane landfalls?!; Plus, callers!...
By Brad Friedman on 9/19/2022 5:49pm PT  

Well, that was a lively BradCast today. Especially the caller segment! Please tune in! [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

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

  • Despite a bizarre, very much Nazi-like rally in Ohio held by our former President over the weekend, mainstream corporate media are still pulling their punches in calling out the Republican Party for having gone full bore authoritarian at this point under their far-right MAGA cult leader Donald Trump. Democracy itself is now very much at stake in this nation, and we really need a professional media corps which isn't afraid to start acting like it, calling it out, and reporting it to the American people.
  • While the death and funeral of Queen Elizabeth in Great Britain has received virtual wall-to-wall coverage from outlets such as CNN since her death 11 days ago, three major climate change-fueled hurricanes made landfall over the weekend. Puerto Rico had its power knocked out island-wide by Hurricane Fiona (almost 5 years to the day since Hurricane Maria did the same), with as much as 30 inches of rain falling catastrophically in some areas. In Alaska, remnants of Typhoon Merbok resulted in the state's most intense storm in 50 years, leading to widespread flooding across a thousand miles of coastline. And, in Japan, over the same weekend, Supertyphoon Nanmadol resulted in widespread flooding and power outages, while clocking in as the fourth most intense typhoon to make landfall in the nation's history. As Desi Doyen reports today, all of those storms were super-charged by our warming climate and all seemingly quite newsworthy. Then again, Queen Elizabeth died 11 days ago, so...ya know.
  • As you have heard by now, Ron DeSantis, Florida's ambitious Republican Governor, has taken credit for coercing 48 migrants from Venezuela, who were lawfully seeking asylum in San Antonio, Texas, onto to two chartered private jets to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Neither the people of Martha's Vineyard, nor even the state's Republican Governor, were notified in advance before the migrants were left stranded. While DeSantis claims the migrants boarded the planes "voluntarily", a brochure, obtained by Popular Information today, citing "Massachusetts Refugee Benefits," appears to have falsely informed the migrants that they would be eligible for "8 months cash assistance," "assistance with housing," "food," "clothing," "transportation to job interviews," "job training," "job placement," "registering children for school," "assistance applying for Social Security cards," and more in MA. That brochure, according to attorneys for 30 of the 48 migrants, is now evidence of a crime --- specifically, as former life-long Republican attorney Keith Barber describes, the federal crime of kidnapping (18 U.S.C. § 1201).
  • So, what will or should be done about DeSantis' apparent political stunt that actually appears to have been a pretty straightforward federal crime? Will he be held accountable by MA's Democratic Attorney General or by the U.S. Dept. of Justice? Callers ring in with their thoughts (several of whom, by the way, support DeSantis' crime!), on today's very lively program!...

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Also: The corruption of Zinke in MT; The ridiculousness of Walker in GA; Much more...
By Brad Friedman on 8/25/2022 6:44pm PT  

Until (and unless) Democrats can pick up at least two seats in the U.S. Senate this November in order to reform the filibuster --- while retaining their majority in the U.S. House and control of the White House --- the fight for personal freedoms, such as reproductive rights and voting rights, is going to remain a grueling, state-by-state slog. That's where we are right now. But we can change that this November if we ALL turn out and fight like hell to cast our vote. In the meantime, on today's BradCast, we've got some good news in at least some of those state-by-state battles.

Among the many stories covered today...

  • New evidence of the unapologetic corruption of Donald Trump's disgraced former Interior Dept. Secretary Ryan Zinke, who, incredibly enough, is currently the front-runner to win a new U.S. House seat in Montana. Voters in Montana would be wise to reconsider that idea.
  • New evidence of the unspeakable ignorance of former NFL great Herschel Walker, who is now the embarrassing Trump-backed nominee for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, where he is running against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. Despite lying about his past, and offering inane, barely comprehensible comments on the campaign trail, not to mention his latest ridiculous response to the Democrats' landmark new climate bill, investing $370 billion to take on our climate crisis, Walker remains very much in the running to unseat Warnock. Voters in Georgia would be wise to reconsider that idea.
  • Newly triggered abortion bans went into effect in three more states on Thursday, in Idaho, Tennessee and Texas. That brings the number of states where reproductive rights and personal freedoms are now completely banned or severely restricted to 14. Many of those states do not allow exceptions for rape, incest or even the life or health of the mother. As the President of the Center for Reproductive Rights told HuffPost, "Vast swaths of the nation, especially in the South and Midwest, are now abortion deserts that, for many, will be impossible to escape." There was a small bit of good news on this front on Wednesday in federal court, however, regarding Idaho's draconian restrictions, as challenged by the Biden Administration's Dept. of Justice. Voters in all of these states are going to need to show up in unprecedented numbers to make their voices heard in November.
  • There was also some good news on this front following this week's elections in New York and Florida, even beyond the political earthquake of Democratic candidate Pat Ryan's win in a special election for the U.S. House in a NY swing-district that would almost certainly have been won by the Republican candidate prior to the U.S. Supreme Court's corrupt GOP majority overturning Roe v. Wade earlier this summer. In FL, the sole Democrat in the state House to vote in favor of new restrictions on abortion and in favor of the Republicans' "Don't Say Gay" law was booted from his job on Tuesday. Also, a judge in FL's Hillsborough County, who made himself infamous earlier this year by denying an abortion to a 17-year old girl because he didn't think her grades were high enough, was also tossed out of his job. Good work, Florida voters! More like that on November 8, please!
  • And then there's the state-by-state fight for voting rights. Here, we've got several encouraging pieces of news from the court in recent days. Earlier this month, a federal court in Texas rejected a state voter suppression law that would leave those who do not live permanently in the state (for example, those who may attend school there) from being able to register to vote in either that state or their own home state! "The part-time and off-campus college students are undeniably disenfranchised because they are unable to register to vote both where they have moved and where they have moved from," the U.S. District Court Judge wrote when issuing his summary judgment [PDF] in favor of plaintiffs. "The court is likewise unable to discern where college students should register as the Temporary-Relocation Provision [of Senate Bill 1111] is written. And the possible repercussions are not just complete disenfranchisement, but also criminal liability. The Temporary-Relocation Provision does not overcome any degree of constitutional scrutiny," he found in tossing out the provision. Naturally, the state's criminally-indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton is appealing the matter to the rightwing 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
  • Late last week, there was good news for voters in North Carolina, as the state's Supreme Court determined that two state Constitutional Amendments --- one to impose Photo ID restrictions on voters, the other to lower taxes --- were unlawfully adopted by a racially gerrymandered state legislature. Some 28 seats in the GOP-majority General Assembly were found by a federal court to have been unlawful racial gerrymanders. But, after that finding and before a new election to correct the gerrymanders, the state Assembly rushed a vote to put the Amendments onto the state ballot. Without the illegal gerrymanders, they likely wouldn't have had enough votes to do so. NC's high court last week ruled, as WRAL summarized, "lawmakers who won their seats through unconstitutional racial gerrymandering cannot then submit constitutional amendments that would permanently disadvantage the same groups discriminated against in the racial gerrymandering process." The state's Republican House Speaker vows to appeal to SCOTUS.
  • And, also late last week, a federal judge determined that Arkansas violated the Voting Rights Act by restricting the number of people who could receive assistance in voting --- such as help in translating an English language ballot --- by any one person. The state law said no single person could help more than six voters. The court found that to be arbitrary and in violation of federal law. "Arkansas has determined that voters should only get the assistor of their choice up to a point," the Judge wrote in his ruling, "but there is no evidence Congress contemplated this numerical restriction on the right.” A similar suit has been filed in Missouri, where state Republicans have limited the number of voters who may be helped by any one person to...one!
  • Finally, before we get to today's Green News Report with Desi Doyen --- in which compelling reason is offered to Virginia voters to vote out their GOP climate change denying Congressman Bob Good --- some breaking news out of California, where regulators have finalized a requirement that will allow only new, zero-emissions vehicles (for example, all-electric vehicles) to be sold in the Golden State as of 2035. Desi explains why that's very good news for both the state and the world. Then, she closes out today's program with our latest GNR, including disturbing news on the worst draught in Europe in at least 500 years; the surprising popularity of climate action among Americans; troubling news about fracking and children's health; and oil giant Saudi Arabia's plan to break into the emerging EV market...

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Guest: ACLU's Ben Wizner; Also: Results from KS abortion amendment recount; Dems quietly outsmart GOP/SCOTUS on climate; More...
By Brad Friedman on 8/23/2022 6:23pm PT  

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...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 8/23/2022 10:02am PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Dallas-Fort Worth latest in the U.S. to be hammered by record rains and floods; China rationing energy supplies due to record heat and drought; Unprecedented number of U.S. homeowners at financial risk from flooding; PLUS: Bad news and good about PFAS 'forever chemicals'... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 'Game-changer': Democrats' IRA law locks in EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions; The IRA's hidden effect: destroy fossil fuel demand; Lakes are drying up everywhere. Israel will pump water from the Med as a solution; TVA is dumping a mountain of coal ash in Black South Memphis; How state climate action could be supercharged by the Inflation Reduction Act; Study shows warming oceans could bring spike in seabed methane emissions; 'There's simply not enough water': Colorado River cutbacks ripple across Arizona; Manchin-linked company could reap millions from climate law... PLUS: Here’s every electric vehicle that qualifies for the current and upcoming US federal tax credit.... and much, MUCH more! ...

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One more reason why voters MUST expand progressive majorities this November; Also: Callers ring in on all of the above and more...
By Brad Friedman on 7/18/2022 6:03pm PT  

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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Corrupt WV Dem still undermining Dems, nation, planet; Secret Service deleted Jan. 6 texts; Arrest warrant issued for indicted CO GOP election official; NY's GOP Guv nom submitted 13,000 fraudulent signatures...
By Brad Friedman on 7/15/2022 6:29pm PT  

I don't relish saying "I told ya so" on The BradCast. But, in today's lead story, unfortunately, I have to yet again. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

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

  • We've been telling you for months that West Virginia's corrupt Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin --- whose family makes millions from the coal industry and campaign rakes in millions from the fossil fuel industry --- never had any intention of allowing any environmental measures to pass that might actually help reduce the deadly emissions that are causing our climate crisis. Nonetheless, his fellow Democrats and corporate media, like Charlie Brown, seem to keep buying his BS claims that he really really wants to adopt environmental provisions and raise taxes on the wealthy to help pay for them. After months of more pretend negotiations, Lucy pulled the football away from Charlie Brown yet again on Thursday night.
  • Gas prices are finally falling. Will Joe Biden get credit for that, since he was inappropriately blamed for Big Oil's record profits from war profiteering and price gouging? (Which all Republicans in Congress refused to outlaw recently?)
  • Texas' privatized, unregulated electric grid is on the brink of collapse yet again, thanks to record heat (which is thanks to a fossil fuel industry-sponsored climate crisis that all Republicans and Democrat Joe Manchin refuse to do anything about.) Will Lone Star State voters this November finally figure out who is to blame for the outages --- and hundreds of deaths that continue to come with them --- during both extreme heat and cold in the state?
  • Oh, look! The Secret Service seem to have accidentally erased all of their text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, even after the Dept. of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General asked to see them. Luckily, not much happened over those days that the American people would very much like to know about.
  • Oh, look! A D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer has reportedly testified to the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection and Donald Trump's other attempts to steal the election that there was a physical altercation with Secret Service officials inside Trump's limo when he wanted to go to the Capitol instead of back to the White House that day. The alleged under-oath corroboration has so far received much less corporate media notice than the anonymous, still-unnamed person at the Service who claimed that Cassidy Hutchinson was lying during her explosive public testimony late last month about what she'd been told about the incident just after it happened. And the Secret Service officials who were supposed to come forward to dispute her story to the Committee have still failed to do so. (Sure would have been helpful if the Service hadn't erased their text messages from that day.)
  • Mesa County, Colorado's disgraced County Clerk (and recently failed GOP candidate for Secretary of State), Tina Peters, is in yet more legal trouble. The easily-duped MAGA election fraud conspiracy theorist --- now charged with 7 felonies and 3 misdemeanors related to her orchestrating an illicit scheme to unlawfully copy and publicly distribute very sensitive voting system software last year --- had a warrant issued for her arrest by a Judge on Thursday after she left the state without court permission to speak at another evidence-free MAGA election fraud conspiracy conference in Vegas.
  • But the actual election fraud perpetrated by GOP officials running for office continues. Just a few short weeks after 5 of the 10 Republicans running for the Gubernatorial nomination in Michigan were struck from the ballot for turning in tens of thousands of fraudulent petition signatures, it's happened again. This time in New York. The GOP nominee for Governor, U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin --- who voted against confirming Joe Biden's 2020 Electoral College victory and whose website features a "Team Zeldin Election Integrity Task Force" page, vowing to work "around the clock now and into November to ensure we have fair elections" --- apparently turned in nearly 13,000 fraudulent petition signatures, including 900 pages of photocopies of signatures, in hopes of appearing on the Independent Party ballot line this fall. The Libertarian Party challenged the fraudulent signatures and the state Board of Elections confirmed the fraud, denying Zeldin a third line on the November ballot.
  • Finally, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report, with a passel of climate related stories that are so grim, we can't even bring ourselves to tease them here. On the other hand, she does have one pretty good piece of news out of California...so there's that!

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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GOP TX Reps threaten law firm for out-of-state abortions; Facing contempt trial, leaked Bannon audio reveals Trump scheme to steal 2020; DoJ sues AZ for vote suppression; WI's GOP Supremes ban drop-box voting; GA GOP Senate nom's sad climate change remarks...
By Brad Friedman on 7/13/2022 6:24pm PT  

We've got a grab bag of news items on today's BradCast, though almost all of it ends up making the same case: 'Both sides' are decidedly not the same. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We kick off with some listener mail, critical of our recent show discussing why it's so deadly important to elect Democrats in 2022 in order to have any chance of saving American democracy itself --- and much more along with it --- before 2024. The listener argues that, in fact, democracy no longer exists in the U.S. following 2010's Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court. He argues that "both of the two major parties" are now so corrupted that "the chances of non-corporate funded candidates" being elected to national office are now "equivalent to nil". While that may come as a surprise to folks like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders, just to name a couple, there are many other reasons our correspondent couldn't be more wrong. We explain why.

The bulk of the news items in the rest of today's program underscore why that lazy "both sides are the same" notion (while founded in fragments of cynically misreported truths) is dangerously wrong. They also underscore how those on the Left who buy into that self-defeating nonsense are being played as assuredly as Donald Trump and his MAGA buddies have played their own gullible supporters.

Among those news stories covered today...

  • Elected Republicans members of the Texas state House, ironically calling themselves the "Texas Freedom Caucus," have sent a letter to a Dallas law firm threatening them with legal "consequences" including "felony criminal prosecution and disbarment" for reimbursing their own employees for out-of-state travel as needed to obtain an abortion, now that Texas Republicans have ended such rights and personal freedoms for residents of the Lone Star State.
  • A Donald Trump-appointed federal judge has laughed Steve Bannon's attempt to delay his pending federal trial out of the courtroom. The trial, on two counts of Contempt of Congress in response to the former Trump aide's unlawful refusal to respond to subpoenas from the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection and Trump's many failed attempts to steal the 2020 election, is scheduled to begin next week and could result in up to two years in prison for Bannon.
  • At the same time, Mother Jones has obtained leaked audio of Bannon speaking to supporters of his Chinese billionaire pal/funder three days before the 2020 election, explaining that Trump planned to declare victory, whether he won the election or not, and pretend to be the victim of fraud. "He's gonna say they stole it...he's not going out easy...Trump is gonna do some crazy shit," Bannon promised (sound familiar?), as they all laughed about what would become the most dangerous assault on American democracy in our history.
  • DoJ has sued Arizona for violations of the National Voter Registration Act and Civil Rights Act, following the signing of a new voter suppression law earlier this year. Adopted by the state's GOP-dominated state legislature and signed by its Republican Governor, the new measure would block voters from voting in the 2024 election without first presenting documents proving their citizenship.
  • Wisconsin's GOP-dominated state Supreme Court finds absentee ballot drop-boxes are now illegal in the Badger State. Donald Trump declares the ruling to be proof that he actually won Wisconsin in 2020! (He didn't.) And a Republican state lawmaker running for Governor vows to reverse the state's election results in response.
  • In Georgia, a pathetic audio clip from the Republican Party's U.S. Senate nominee, Hershel Walker, discussing climate change --- ("Since we don't control the air, our good air decided to float over to China's bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then...now we got we to clean that back up.") --- underscores, once again, the sad, cynical (and ill-considered) scheme by GOPers to push this seemingly mentally ill former football star as their candidate to run against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock this fall.
  • And finally, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report, as wildfires once again threaten California's iconic Giant Sequoias; Utah's Great Salt Lake is drying up; and offshore wind power is booming...in China...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 7/12/2022 9:18am PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Wildfires again threaten iconic Giant Sequoias, this time in Yosemite; Offshore wind power is booming --- and China is leading the way; PLUS: Utah's Great Salt Lake is drying up... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Europe’s new heat wave is going to be expensive; Dems eye deal with Manchin on clean energy package; EPA describes how it will regulate power plants after SCOTUS setback; 'Disturbing': weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples; Russia’s war in Ukraine forces Arctic climate projects to pivot; Summer in America is becoming hotter, longer and more dangerous... PLUS: If Republicans retake Congress in November, here’s what their agenda will look like... and much, MUCH more! ...

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Special coverage with former DoJ fraud prosecutor Randall D. Eliason, Salon's Heather Digby Parton...
By Brad Friedman on 6/16/2022 6:15pm PT  

On today's BradCast: Special coverage of Day 3 of the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee hearings investigating the Trump-incited Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the disgraced former President's multiple attempts to steal the 2020 election from the American people. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Before diving into details with our two guests today, I want to cite the must-read written statement [PDF] submitted by one of today's live witnesses, the very conservative, oft-cited and well-respected (if extremely slow-talking) former Judge J. Michael Luttig. Appointed by George H.W. Bush to the appellate court in 1991, Luttig was considered several times during his decades on the federal bench for the Supreme Court. He is often compared to Justice Antonin Scalia and virtually all of his law clerks eventually went on to clerk for Scalia or Clarence Thomas. He was one of several advisors who then Vice President Mike Pence turned to as he was being pressured hard by both Donald Trump and his corrupt attorney John Eastman to toss out legitimate electoral votes on January 6 in an effort to steal the election for Trump.

In short, Luttig is no lefty. He advised the Vice President that he had no legal or Constitutional authority to do anything but essentially read the Electoral College votes aloud during the joint session of Congressional to certify the final results of the 2020 election. Despite extraordinary pressure not to, Pence did the right thing and followed Luttig's advice.

But in Luttig's written statement to the Committee, as I note at the top of today's show, he describes the Republican Party's "war on democracy" and correctly characterizes what so many Democrats and most in the corporate media seem to have a problem saying outloud: "The former president's accountability under the law for the riot on the United States Capitol on January 6 is incidental to his responsibility and accountability for his attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election from the American People and thereby steal America's democracy from America herself."

Was that so hard? Go read his statement in full.

Among the many new items revealed during Thursday's hearing, at which Pence's top attorney Greg Jacob was also a live witness, along with a boatload of videotaped testimony and more disturbing, previously unseen footage from the day of the Insurrection...

  • All of Trump's top White House and Campaign attorneys knew the scheme to have Pence invalidate the election was unlawful and/or unconstitutional, describing it as "nuts", "crazy" and worse.
  • Trump knew as well, because they told him as much. Repeatedly.
  • Even John Eastman, credited with devising the scheme, is known to have conceded its illegality on several different occasions.
  • Eastman said he would have seen Al Gore or Kamala Harris using the same scheme to nullify an election as unlawful, but wanted Pence to do it anyway.
  • Eastman invoked the Fifth Amendment 100 times during his video-taped, subpoenaed testimony with the Committee.
  • After his scheme failed miserably, Eastman sought a pardon from Trump. (He didn't get one.)
  • Jan. 6 insurrectionists came within 40 feet of Pence after he had been removed from the House chamber.
  • One of the Proud Boys cooperating with the Feds has testified that the white nationalist extremist group would have killed Mike Pence or anyone they got their hands on, including Nancy Pelosi, if given a chance.

We've got a lot to cover once again today and are joined by George Washington University law professor, WaPo contributor and blogger RANDALL D. ELIASON, a former Asst. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he served as Chief of the Public Corruption/Government Fraud section. And, as always during our J6 coverage, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo. Both offer important insight on today's hearing and the ones that preceded it, as the damning case against Donald Trump continues to come smartly together.

Among the issues discussed, the "outlandishly blatant partisan hackery" of Eastman, as Parton correctly characterizes it and the criminal liability Trump (and Eastman) now face, as Eliason details. In particular, given his background in criminal fraud as a federal prosecutor, Eliason notes that the scheme detailed in Monday's hearing regarding a fake "Official Election Defense Fund" that Trump used to raise $250 million from his duped supporters is classic criminal wire fraud that should spawn an entirely separate criminal investigation from the one now underway at DoJ. He also speaks to the bogus notion that Trump can't be charged because he truly believed that the election was fraudulent and that the Vice President had the authority to overthrow the election. Both of those points have been decimated by the Committee over the past two hearings.

We also hash out the "controversy" over whether the Committee should issue a formal criminal referral to the DoJ at the end of their proceedings; the absurd, and rather pathetic, whining defenses offered by both Trump and Fox "News" in response to the gripping revelations emerging from these hearings; and much more.

And, as if all of that is not enough, we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report as the nation (and globe) swelters; Texas thanking its lucky stars right now for renewable energy; the U.N. begging the world to knock it off already with fossil fuels; and a potentially game-changing way to produce emissions-free concrete comes to light...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Pandora, TuneIn, Google, Amazon or our native RSS feed!
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