On today's BradCast, we've got an exclusive interview with CHRIS VICKERY, Director of Cyber Risk Research at the cyber security firm UpGuard. Vickery revealed late last week on Twitter that he discovered files, including administrative master passwords for voting systems, at the North Carolina State Board of Elections website that were left vulnerable and available online for anyone to download, prior to the 2018 election. Today he explains the evidence that suggests these files may have been available as early as February of 2016, months before that year's controversial Presidential election. [Audio link to full show is posted at bottom of article.]

The files were found by Vickery unencrypted and with no password needed to retrieve them from the site. He tells me today that there were so many files and screenshots (see a redacted snippet from one of the password screenshots in the graphic above), that he's not even sure if they number in the hundreds or thousands.

The longtime cyber security researcher says he promptly notified state officials of the discovery last year, before the 2018 elections, and that the state, shortly thereafter, set the files in question and their directories to "private". In response to a commenter on his short Twitter thread revealing the potential security breech late last Friday, however, he notes that "someone would have had to actively choose to make the file repository available to the entire world. It is not unprotected by default."

He tells me today that he is "very concerned" about the exposure and would "like to know who the data was intended for. If you put it up somewhere, you're intending it to be accessed by somebody. So who did they aim this for? I would love to know that." Indeed, he also shared an email with me over the weekend that was posted in the same directory as the passwords screenshot, in which a State Board of Elections official notes: "The attached screen shots should show just about all of the settings you will need for contests and candidates" in the ES&S iVotronic Image Management program, part of the computer voting system which defines where candidates selected by voters are placed on the electronic ballots and optical-scan systems.

Vickery says he decided to go public with the disclosure following the Washington Post exclusive last week reporting that federal investigators at the Dept. of Homeland Security have finally agreed to work with NC on a forensic investigation of the state's voter registration computers which inexplicably failed during the 2016 Presidential Election, on Election Day, in parts of the state. That announcement via the Post comes on the heels of Robert Mueller's redacted report [PDF] (see Volume 2, page 50, "Intrusions Targeting the Administration of U.S. Elections"), in which the Special Counsel briefly details how Russian Military Intelligence operatives were able to penetrate the voter registration systems of "at least one" county in Florida. Just over a week ago, the new Republican Governor of Florida announced he was notified by the FBI that, in fact, two counties had, in fact, been penetrated via a spearphishing attack on VR Systems, the private vendor contracted to run those voter registration systems.

VR Systems also supplies similar systems in about half a dozen other U.S. states, one of them being North Carolina. But, as Vickery notes, the password files that he found exposed on the Internet last year were not for registration systems, but for the state's computer voting machines, scanners and tabulation systems made by private vendor ES&S (the nation's largest), as used across most of the state of North Carolina. And ALL of this comes after we have been trying to point out on The BradCast for the last two and a half years that nobody --- not the FBI, not DHS, not the states themselves, nor even Mueller's Special Counsel team, as he admits --- ever carried out a forensic investigation of the computer voting, registration or tabulation systems in use in any of the states in 2016, despite that election's surprise ending in which Donald Trump purportedly won by a razor thin margin.

In his first broadcast interview on these new revelations, Vickery explains how he discovered the files, how the state responded when he told them about the vulnerability last year, whether the DHS has contacted him since he revealed his findings on Friday, and how serious of a potential security breech this is, especially given the extraordinary effort that the U.S. Intelligence Community and the Mueller Report claim Russia expended in hopes of interfering in the 2016 Presidential election. "When you have computers, and software, and firmware updating passwords and modems all mixed in together, you have the capability to do a lot of crazy stuff," he says, in response to my question about whether these passwords could have been used to alter or upload false results. "It's not out of the realm of possibility, but I have no specific reason to believe that happened. But that is kind of a frightening concept to realize that all of the ingredients are there."

Disturbingly, Vickery's report is startlingly similar to one revealed last year by Kim Zetter at Politico in the state of Georgia, regarding a security researcher who found millions of voter registrations along with voting system administrative passwords online and vulnerable to download without a password, prior to the Peach State's 2016 elections.

Also today: The last many weeks of climate changed-fueled weather disasters move from the Central U.S. to the SouthEast, with a month's worth of rain falling in one day over this past weekend (yet the DNC still won't allow a 2020 Presidential candidate debate focused solely on climate change!); Donald Trump pretends that his backing off of a threat to tax Americans who purchase imported goods from Mexico is a great negotiation victory; And we take a few calls on our disturbing interview with Vickery, including from one listener who quips that NC "left the combination of the safe written on top of the door"...

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On today's BradCast: Remember when overturning Citizens United with a Constitutional amendment used to be a huge thing among progressives? Well, it still is. But something (or someone) came along who seems to be distracting much of the nation from the still-urgent need to get dark money and corporate funding out of electoral politics. We've got a bit of good news on that front today. Just a bit. But we'll take what we can get! [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

First up today, however, former Veep turned Democratic Presidential candidate and currently presumptive front-runner Joe Biden responded to pressure from his 2020 rivals and the party's base by flipping his position on the Hyde Amendment. Citing his belief that "health care is a right" and the GOP attacks on women's health care, Biden now says he opposes the measure, just hours after he'd affirmed his support for the 1976 law which bans the use of federal funding for abortion, other than in cases of rape, incest or the health of the mother. What should we learn about Biden from this flip-flop? We discuss.

Then, the auto industry appears to have flip-flopped as well. Twice. After working with the Obama Administration in 2009 to hammer out an agreement on new standards for vehicle mileage and carbon emissions, industry leaders begged the Trump Administration to roll back Obama's landmark standards. Trump promised to do the car company's bidding and plans to announce the official rollback over the summer (which, if it stands, will result in lower fuel efficiency and higher gas prices for consumers, increase pollution and lead to the premature deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.) Now the industry is begging Trump not to roll things back quite so far after all, but Trump doesn't care. The Administration plans to move ahead anyway and, as Desi Doyen explains, try to challenge California's long-established right under the Clean Air Act to impose its own higher air quality standards --- a state's right they have enjoyed under law for nearly 50 years now.

Speaking of our worsening climate crisis, the DNC nixed a proposal this week to hold a debate focused solely on climate change and the many different candidate proposals to take it on. The DNC has threatened to sanction 2020 Presidential candidates who may participate in such a forum on their own. We discuss that bizarre stance, particularly given the number of hopefuls who have put forward detailed and important policy proposals to offer an urgently-needed Green New Deal for Americans.

And, speaking of Biden, this week he became the 17th Democratic Presidential hopeful to sign on to the "No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge". But what does that pledge really mean and will it actually keep money from fossil fuel industry lobbyists, PACs and executives out of the race? For that matter, is it even possible to keep corporate PAC and other "dark money" out of our elections following the 2010 Citizens United ruling by the U.S. Supreme court, no matter how many pledges that Democratic candidates may make?

In related issues, the state of New Hampshire became the 20th state in the union this week to vote to overturn Citizens United with a Constitutional Amendment. The vote was a symbolic landmark for proponents of overturning the disastrous SCOTUS ruling, as it represents what would now be just over half of the 38 states that would be required to ratify such an Amendment. At the same time, the state of Montana, whose Governor Steve Bullock is also running for President on the issue of getting corporate money out of politics, is suing the U.S. Treasury Department and IRS to block the Trump Administration's new rule that would allow certain political action committees to keep their "dark money" donors a secret, even in confidential filings with the IRS, to whom donors previously were disclosed. The state was in federal court for hearings this week in response to the Administration's motion to dismiss the suit.

AQUENE FREECHILD, Co-director of Public Citizen's Democracy is For People campaign, joins us to explain both the good news out of New Hampshire and Montana's complaint against Treasury and the IRS. Freechild led Public Citizen's successful efforts to call for an amendment to overturn Citizens United in Vermont, New Jersey, Illinois, Delaware and Washington state. She offers an update on the current state of the fight to overturn the Supreme Court ruling that opened the floodgates to corporate spending in our elections; offers an explanation as to how the Trump era has effected activism on the issue; details what is involved in adopting such a measure; explains why Bullock's suit in Montana is important, even though IRS disclosures are confidential, and how efforts in Congress (including the House-passed H.R. 1, "For the People" Act) would kick-start the process of restoring American democracy to we, the people.

"We have to protect our democracy from the existential threat that an unaccountable, dictator-loving President poses," says Freechild. "At the same time, we have to show the country the vision that we have as reformers, as pro-democracy people, for a clean government that really truly does represent people, that has public financing in partnership with overturning Citizens United so that there is an alternative to a corporate money system."

Finally, we close today with some listener feedback on the Democrats' internecine debate in the U.S. House on whether to begin an official impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump....or not...

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It's an (almost) entirely Trump-free program today! You're welcome! If only he would always stay out of the country! [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Among the many (largely) Trumpless stories on today's BradCast...

• A 30-acre "coal-cleaning" facility has been left abandoned by its owners in Utah, with outstanding fines, unpaid taxes and a whole lotta toxic waste that tax-payers are left on the hook to clean up. Just another example of privatizing the profits and socializing the losses which the GOP has supported for years when it comes to the long-subsidized dirty fossil fuel industry;

• The U.N.'s Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights blasts the recent spate of anti-abortion laws adopted by GOP-controlled U.S. states. She describes the epidemic as a "crisis," equating the new restrictions as akin to "torture" and "gender-based violence against women". She describes measures such as rightwing-backed, so-called "Born-Alive Abortion Survivor Protection Laws" supported by folks like Donald Trump (because Fox "News" told him to) as "an assault on truth, science and universal values and norms";

• One such law, North Carolina's "Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act" was vetoed recently by the state's Democratic Governor Roy Cooper. The attempt to override the Governor's veto by the Republican-controlled state legislature failed on Wednesday, following the GOP's loss last November of the gerrymandered, veto-proof super-majority they've enjoyed for six years. Cooper, in his now-sustained veto message, said the bill was "needless" and would "criminalize...a practice that simply does not exist." Wisconsin's GOP-gerrymandered legislature also passed its own similar measure this week which that state's Democratic Governor has similarly vowed to veto;

• And, in Texas, where new evidence published this week reveals that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott may have been behind a push to create a phony "non-citizen" voter roll purge, the Governor may have earned new ire from Republicans and Democrats alike on Wednesday, after vetoing a widely supported bill to protect domestic violence victims;

• Meanwhile, in today's Constitutional Crisis and Impeachment Update, House Democrats are reportedly planning a vote next week to make it easier for Committees to bring contempt charges straight to court, without requiring a full House vote first, for Trump Administration officials who defy lawful subpoenas for documents and testimony. And, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continued to block her caucus from beginning an official impeachment inquiry against the criminal President of the United States, explaining that she'd prefer to see Trump "in prison". But nothing in the Constitution bars an impeached President from being indicted in a court of law after removal from office. In fact, it says just the opposite (see: Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6 and 7). So, Pelosi's claim only seems to muddy the waters as to what her strategy to continue investigation of the Administration --- but without an official impeachment inquiry, for now --- is actually meant to accomplish;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report detailing several new climate proposals from 2020 Democratic hopefuls, Trump's idiotic remarks regarding climate during his trip to the UK, and a disturbing new study about what will happen if the U.S. fails to meet the emissions reduction targets of the Paris Climate Agreement.

• Also, very quickly at the end of today's show, disturbing news on a record heat wave in India, where the mercury has topped 120 degrees Fahrenheit for a bunch of days in a row now, and a cheery warning from the U.S. Forest Service that some 1 billion acres are at risk of catastrophic wildfire this summer. (So, naturally, Trump wants to cut their fire fighting budget!)...

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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: On his trip to Britain, Trump proves he knows zip about climate science --- again; Meeting Paris Climate Agreement targets could avert thousands of deaths in the U.S.; PLUS: Climate change now a litmus test in the 2020 Presidential election (at least for Democrats)... 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): India roasts under heat wave with temperatures above 120 degrees; Judges give both sides a grilling in youth climate case against the government; Roundup's risks could go well beyond cancer; Companies expect climate change to cost them $1 trillion in 5 years; With state subsidies and a firm hand, China races ahead with electric transport; USFS: 1 billion acres at risk for catastrophic wildfires this summer; DNC rejects request to host climate change-only presidential debate; Satellites show Amazon deforestation rising under Brazil's Bolsonaro... PLUS: Massive ladybug swarm over CA shows up on radar... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Is the dam Nancy Pelosi has erected against the tide of impeachment finally beginning to crack? Does Donald Trump have Woodsy Owl as his environmental advisor? Was the Governor of Texas behind a bogus voter purge list? [Audio link to our full show is posted below.]

First up, with Trump overseas we'd hoped to be able to ignore him as much as possible this week. But, after newly absurd comments made regarding climate change during an interview with Piers Morgan following Trump's meeting with Prince Charles on the topic, we couldn't hold our tongues

Trump made clear that he doesn't really even understand the climate crisis or how pollution from carbon emissions is endangering livability on Planet Earth. He claims the U.S. has "the cleanest climate" ever and seems to think that "clean air and clean water", as he describes it --- not understanding that carbon dioxide in excess is a dangerous pollutant --- is all that matters. (It's as if his top Environmental Advisor is Woodsy Owl, observes WaPo's Philip Bump.)

He also seems to have no clue that our air and water has gotten dirtier since he took office, and that dangerous greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. But he is very able at newly parroting long-debunked Fox "News" talking points such as the notion that "it used to be called global warming, that wasn't working, then it was called climate change, now it's called extreme weather". Desi Doyen debunks the bunkery. (Hint: It was always called climate change --- the UN's IPCC or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed in 1988 --- and it was Republicans in the 2000s, during the George W. Bush Administration, who preferred that phrase over global warming which GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz found to be more "frightening" to voters!)

Then, Former Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid, who previously opposed impeachment, is now calling on Speaker Pelosi to begin an official inquiry in the U.S. House. And, on Tuesday, some thirty progressive groups who are usually allies to the Democrats published an open letter expressing "deep disappointment" in the Speaker for her blockade of impeachment proceedings against the President, citing her "refusal to use the full scope of your constitutional power to hold Trump accountable." The groups, which include CREDO, Indivisible, the Courage Campaign and Democracy for America among others, charge in their missive that "Voters gave Democrats control of the House of Representatives because they wanted aggressive oversight of the Trump administration" which requires "bold, moral leadership" they claim to be lacking. Though, they note, that Pelosi concedes "we are facing a constitutional crisis", they criticize her for failing to invoke the "remedy" handed to us by the Framers. "You have the power to ensure Congress exercises its constitutional obligation to hold this president accountable. But instead of using your power, you are giving us political excuses for why you shouldn't. Instead of leading, you and your colleagues have asked us to wait – wait for the Mueller report, wait for the unredacted Mueller report, wait for Mueller's testimony about the Mueller report, wait for more investigations, wait for bipartisan consensus, wait for impeachment to poll better, or wait for the 2020 election," the groups write in their open missive posted to WeCantWait.US.

We're joined today by CHARLES CHAMBERLAIN, Chair of progressive signatory Democracy for America, to discuss the letter and to respond to many of the reasons that Pelosi and other Democrats and strategists have cited for not taking action to begin official impeachment proceedings against this President. Is more information still needed from Mueller or his unredacted report before the House should begin? Are the multiple, ongoing investigations that Pelosi is encouraging in the House proving to be more helpful in detailing the high crimes and corruption of the Trump Administration? Should Dems wait until impeachment becomes even more popular among the public? Until more Republicans are willing to come on board? Would the effort endanger Democrats' chances of holding the House and taking back the Senate and White House in 2020? Should it be avoided because, as Pelosi claims, Trumps "wants" to be impeached? Or due to the conventional wisdom that, even if impeached, Senate Republicans would never vote to convict and remove Trump?

Chamberlain responds --- with gusto --- to all of those points and many other such excuses offered by party leadership for not (yet, anyway) beginning an official inquiry to consider Constitutional removal of this criminal President. He also discusses what you can do to help, and argues that impeachment will help, not hurt, Democratic chances in 2020. "It is our base that we need to be worried about. If Democrats don't follow through with what they were sent to do in 2018, then we have a high chance of them staying home," he tells me. "Let's be clear --- if there's one thing that helps people win politically, it's whenever when you're on offense, you're almost always winning. It's something that Republicans are experts at. It's something Donald Trump is expert at. And the more we can do it, the more likely we're going to win in 2020."

Finally today, newly published emails out of Texas reveal that Gov. Greg Abbott (R) appears to have been behind the push for a bogus list of some 100,000 "non-citizens voters" in the state which the Secretary of State used earlier this year to try and purge legal voters from the rolls and led the state's Attorney General to open criminal investigations. Thousands of voters on the list were, in fact, found to have been naturalized citizens and the list was withdrawn by court order, the Sec. of State (a former aid to and appointee of Abbott) was forced to resign, and the state is now paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements after being sued by several groups over the bogus purge list. Thanks to newly revealed details in the emails obtained and published this week by the Campaign Legal Center, it now appears that the Governor may have been behind the insidious voter suppression initiative the whole time...

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As usual, on today's BradCast, everything you need to know --- whether you want to know it or not --- in 57 minutes or less...or your money back! [Audio link to full show follows below.]

• First up today, Virginia's Democratic Governor Ralph Northam announces a plan to convene a special session of the state legislature this summer to respond to last Friday's massacre at a municipal building in Virginia Beach which killed twelve people. Republicans, who have long controlled both chambers of the gerrymandered state legislature, have nixed a panoply of popular gun safety measures year after year in subcommittees, such as measures to place limits on extended magazines like the type used in Friday's shooting, barring the purchase of more than one hand-gun per month, and background checks for all gun sales. Northam says he is asking for "votes and laws, not thoughts and prayers" from state lawmakers just months before the entire General Assembly will be on the ballot for the Commonwealth's November 2019 off-year elections;

• The GOP establishment appears to be pushing back hard today against Donald Trump's promised new tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico, which Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) recently predicted Trump won't actually implement. "He 's been known to play with fire, but not live hand-grenades," Kennedy opined regarding a new 25% tax that Americans would have to pay on all products from Mexico under the President's promised new scheme to, somehow, stop immigration across the southern border. Even members of his own Administration, however, don't appear to understand how Trump's proposed trade war would lead to an end of migration. But, in London today, Trump said it would be "foolish" to try and stop his plan to declare another "national emergency" to unilaterally impose the tariffs. Republicans are indicating they may have enough votes to override a Presidential veto. (We'll believe it when we see it.);

• Meanwhile, our Constitutional Crisis continues, as the White House has now instructed former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and former White House Counsel Chief of Staff Annie Donaldson to defy a Congressional subpoena for documents by claiming Executive Privilege over materials that have already been shared with Special Counsel Robert Mueller (and thus, have already had Privilege waived). With the persistent drumbeat calling for an official impeachment inquiry growing louder each day against the scofflaw President while the White House fights "all of the subpoenas" as per Trump's instructions, Democrats are preparing a number of votes in a number of Committees to hold current and former Administration members in contempt. In addition to possible votes of contempt in a number of committees, Dems have votes scheduled next week for the full House to declare both Attorney General William Barr and former White House Counsel Don McGahn in contempt;

• In 2020 Presidential election news today, Joe Biden released a 22-page, $5 trillion climate plan that includes $1.7 trillion in federal spending over the next ten years, to be paid for by reversing the GOP's 2017 $1.5 trillion tax cut and ending subsidies for fossil fuel companies. We share Biden's introductory video for the plan, which vows to create millions of jobs and protect the retirement and pensions of fossil fuel industry workers. And we compare it to those of other 2020 candidates, including Elizabeth Warren who released her own "aggressive" $2 trillion plan to take on our climate crisis today as well. Biden's new proposal to make America carbon neutral by 2050 is receiving mostly high marks from environmentalists and comes in the wake of a much-derided recently reported comment from a campaign spokesperson claiming that the former Vice President was seeking a "middle ground" on climate that might be joined by Republicans. Climate hawks and supporters of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' Green New Deal resolution characterized Biden's new proposal as an encouraging response to activism and pushback from their ranks;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news of Republican obstructionism finally giving way to a long-awaited $19 billion disaster relief package in Congress, the Trump Administration's newest scam to try and suppress climate science, Colorado's new plan to go big on renewable energy, and....yes...the Administration's promise of "freedom gas" for the world!...

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On today's BradCast, we really tried to talk about something other than impeachment...and we mostly did! You're welcome! But don't expect it to last. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up today, as predicted, during a very brief pause in the record severe weather that's been afflicting the central U.S. for weeks, flooding continues to be a major problem today and is getting worse. Mandatory evacuations are now in place in both Arkansas and Missouri after levees have breached, been topped or may do so soon both states. Thousands of homes are threatened there and elsewhere as some 80 different river gauges in 10 different states indicate the highest category of major flooding, with more severe weather predicted in the days ahead for rain soaked Oklahoma, Kansas, North Dakota, Louisiana and other Midwestern states.

In politics today, Republicans and major business groups are pushing back at Donald Trump's surprise announcement on Thursday evening that he plans to impose unilateral new taxes on all goods coming in from Mexico, in hopes of forcing our southern neighbor --- in some fashion --- to stop the flow of migrants coming into the U.S. from Central America. The new tariffs --- which are taxes paid by American importers and consumers (despite the President mischaracterization) --- would begin at 5%, and increase by the same amount until reaching 25%under Trump's scheme. A number of GOP lawmakers, particularly in farm states such as Iowa, are blasting the proposal, and warning that it is likely to derail Congressional ratification of Trump's updated NAFTA agreement with Mexico and Canada. It is also likely to cost billions to American businesses --- particularly in the automobile and agriculture sectors --- and threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Meanwhile, calls for official impeachment proceedings to begin against the President get louder each day following Special Counsel Robert Mueller's statement this week clarifying the evidence in his report of serious obstruction of justice crimes by the President and a need for Congress to take action. A stunning reported comment from an attendee at a town hall held this week in Grand Rapids by Michigan's Republican Rep. Justin Amash underscores the necessity to continue informing the public about Mueller's findings. (So, yeah, we're gonna have to continue doing so. Sorry.) Amash remains the only Republican member of Congress, so far, to call for impeachment proceedings and, perhaps, clearest and most effective voices among Rs or Ds in Congress as to why taking action to hold the President accountable is so crucial.

But outside of Congress, a group of former high-level GOP attorneys are also making their voices heard, with a new video detailing several of Trump's obstruction crimes highlighted by Mueller. The group, Republicans for the Rule of Law, says they plan to begin airing a shorter version of their new ad on TV outlets such as Fox "News", where --- at least according to that attendee at Amash's town hall --- only fake news, falsely claiming Mueller exonerated Trump, is being heard.

Finally today, after several months of relative calm during negotiations with Trump, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un began testing missiles again in early May. While Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton has described the tests as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, and South Korea sees the tests as a potential violation of recent agreements between the two Koreas, Trump has continued to downplay --- or completely deny --- Kim's actions.

At the same time, as the North fires ballistic missiles and continues to amass nuclear weaponry, Trump --- who spent the Memorial Day weekend in Japan to discuss this and other matters --- still seems more obsessed with Iran, who does not have nuclear weapons, but is now said to be increasing their fissile material enrichment program in the wake of Trump pulling out of the seven-nation anti-nuclear agreement struck during the Obama Administration. Trump now says he'd "like to make a deal" with Iran, but Iran says they see "no prospect" of such a deal with this American President.

We're joined today by VIPIN NARANG of MIT's Security Studies Program to try and make sense of what is or isn't going on on the Korean peninsula, and how the Trump Administration is or isn't responding to both North Korea and Iran. That, after Trump sided with Kim, while on foreign soil in Japan last weekend, to attack former Vice President and 2020 Presidential hopeful Joe Biden --- and amidst unconfirmed reports from South Korean media that Kim has executed his top nuclear negotiator and four other senior Foreign Ministry officials following the failed summit between him and Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam last February.

Among the very clarifying information from Narang on North Korea, he warns: "The risk now is that by [Trump] green-lighting North Korean tests short of ICBMs, it may encourage or embolden Kim Jong Un to continue testing more frequently, and maybe longer-range missiles. We've seen Trump flip very quickly, so if Kim Jong Un makes a mistake of pushing the line just a little bit too far, or testing one missile too many, President Trump can flip and feel betrayed very quickly." He adds: "If you get a missile test that really pushes a line, then we could end up back [like] in 2017 [with threats of 'fire and fury'], but without the possibility of a diplomatic off-ramp."

Narang, who focuses at MIT on nuclear proliferation, strategy and South Asian security, is the author of the award-winning Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era. Among the insights he offers regarding Trump's on-again, off-again chest thumping against Iran: "It's very difficult to envision a deal with Iranians that is better than the JCPOA ... You're not going to get everything you want in a deal, and that's what the Iranians were willing to accept. And then you have to ask yourself, is a world with the JCPOA in that incarnation better than a world without? And I think it was. It was working."

In both cases, in North Korea and Iran --- as well as the United States --- Narang warns that "dysfunction within the [Trump] Administration" is allowing hardliners to gain the upper-hand against peace initiatives. "The irony is that the hardliners in the United States that want to press Iran, and press North Korea, forget that those countries have hardliners, also." Our actions, he cautions, are now serving to embolden them.

"The horse is out of the barn in North Korea. You're not going to take away their nuclear weapons. The aim should be to avoid a war," he argues. "In the medium term, the risk with this strategy is that North Korea miscalculates, or that Iran miscalculates, and then Trump flips...In the long run, the problem is if this dysfunction isn't sorted out, we are setting ourselves up for crises in both areas."

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We begin, at least, on today's BradCast, with a bit of what we'll call good-ish news, as things get necessarily darker from there. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

Among today's stories...

• New Hampshire's legislature overrides a veto by Republican Gov. Chris Sununu to finally abolish capital punishment. The Granite State becomes the 21st in the union to ban the death penalty which is, as one state Senator accurately describes it, "archaic, costly, discriminatory and violent";

• More good-ish news from Israel, where a historic second election has now been called after rightwing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unable to form a governing coalition after what appeared a Likud party victory in April, when both they and the centrist Blue and White party both won 35 seats in the Knesset. With a new election now set for September, it may be even more difficult for the hard-line Netanyahu, already facing felony indictments, to win what he thought would be an historic 5th term as Prime Minister;

• Meanwhile, back here at home, the dispute over our own elections, two and a half years ago in 2016, continue, with our President seemingly growing more unhinged now by the day and the need --- and calls from Democrats --- to begin an official impeachment inquiry in the House, becoming louder by the hour following Special Counsel Robert Mueller's remarkable statement at the Dept. of Justice on Wednesday. As discussed in detail on yesterday's program, in his brief remarks, Mueller appeared to completely contradict earlier claims by Donald Trump's Attorney General William Barr that the DoJ's (absurd) guidelines barring criminal prosecution of a sitting President had nothing to do with Mueller's failure to file charges against Trump. In fact, as Mueller made clear (as he also did in his 448-page report [PDF], for those who bothered to actually read it), the Special Counsel's team of prosecutors never even considered criminal charges against the President, due to that dubious Departmental policy. Instead, they gathered evidence of criminal wrongdoing to be considered by Congress for purposes of potential impeachment. However, as Mueller said on Wednesday: "If we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so";

• Among the most persuasive and clarion voices to lay out the case in favor of impeachment in the U.S. House, ironically enough, is the only Republican who has come out in favor of such proceedings. Conservative Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash has been making the case for impeachment in a number of Twitter threads over the last week or so. We review another recent such thread today, in which Amash calls out Barr for having "deliberately misrepresented key aspects of Mueller's report" to Congress and the American people. That recent instructive commentary from Amash concludes by charging that "Barr has so far successfully used his position to sell the president’s false narrative to the American people," and warns: "This will continue if those who have read the report do not start pushing back on his misrepresentations and share the truth." While it's unclear if he's speaking to either his Democratic or Republican colleagues (or both) with that statement, it's also good advice for all Americans. We try do just that today (and every day, for that matter);

• To that end, we both respond to BRAD BLOG commenter "DonL", who seeks some clarity on the impeachable actions by this President, as well as rebut Trump's unhinged press avail on the White House lawn today where he manically contradicted one of his own tweets from earlier in the day when he claimed that he "had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected." While the tweet was the first known instance of Trump conceding, as the Special Counsel detailed, Russia's efforts to support Trump's 2016 election, he quickly reversed his position when asked about it by media this morning, shouting "No, Russia did not help me get elected! You know who got me elected? I got me elected!" He then went on to respond to a question about whether he thought he would be impeached by claiming he couldn't "imagine the courts allowing it." ("The courts" play no part in impeachment proceedings beyond the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding in the U.S. Senate over a trial for removal from office, should it come to that.) Trump also described "the word impeach" as "a dirty, disgusting, filthy word" as he stalked back and forth while parrying reporter's queries;

• All of which seems to underscore the need to impeach the criminal and unfit President, despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's increasingly unsupportable arguments against it. Following Mueller's statement on Wednesday and Trump's variously unhinged statements and lies in response to it, there are now about half a dozen 2020 Democratic contenders (many of them Senators) calling for impeachment proceedings, along with at least 50 Democratic members of the House (including 11 members of the House Judiciary Committee and a number of Committee chairs), along with Amash, the lone House Republican to favor impeachment;

• And, as if still more reasons are needed to bring impeachment proceedings against not only Trump, but other administration officials as well, new "bombshell" documents came to light on Thursday from the hard drive of a now-deceased, longtime Republican operative revealing that the Trump Administration's case for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census was built on lies from the jump. Experts say the addition of such a question would serve to disenfranchise urban and immigrant communities in favor of white Republican communities over the next decade, and the newly unearthed documents from the GOP operative say the same thing. The documents, found on the hard drive of the late GOP gerrymandering operative detail how such a question was needed by Republicans because it "would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats" and "advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites." The newly explosive evidence also reveals that Trump officials at the DoJ and Commerce Department (which oversees the Census Bureau), including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, lied to both Congress and prosecutors about their reasons for wanting to add the question. (They absurdly claim it is meant to help the DoJ better enforce the Voting Rights Act.) But with the Republican majority on the stolen U.S. Supreme Court already appearing to favor the addition of the question following recent oral argument, and their decision on the matter due next month, its unclear how the new evidence will be presented to or considered by SCOTUS;

• Finally, to finish where we started --- with a little bit more good-ish news (very little) --- we're joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report as the relentless extreme weather begins to ease in the central U.S. and as climate protesters in Europe helped to see big gains for Greens in last weekend's elections for the EU Parliament...

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On today's BradCast: For the first time before, during or since the completion of his two-year Special Counsel's probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election and Donald Trump's obstruction of that investigation, Robert Mueller offered a 9-minute statement at the Dept. of Justice today to announce his expected resignation and to clarify a thing or two...sort of. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

Mueller made clear, as did his 448-page report [PDF], that while current Dept. of Justice guidelines prevent the indictment of a sitting President, he and his team of investigators would have cleared the President of wrong-doing if they could have. "If we had had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so," he explained, adding, "we did not, however, make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime." Mueller noted that he was bound, from the beginning, by DoJ's guidance which finds that "the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing."

The statement, once again, both contradicts Trump's Attorney General William Barr and clearly places the matter of impeachment on Congress' doorstep. Whether Congress will take up that matter, however, still remains unknown. Following Mueller's remarks, House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler offered his strongest condemnation of Trump to date, charging that "the Special Counsel has clearly demonstrated that President Trump is lying about the Special Counsel's findings, lying about the testimony of key witnesses in the Special Counsel's report and, above all, lying in saying that the Special Counsel found no obstruction and no collusion." He further said that "all options were on the table", regarding impeachment, and vowed that "no one, not even the President of the United States, is above the law."

Nonetheless, while Mueller took no questions after his statement, Nadler avoided direct answers to several questions from the press as to whether his Committee would finally begin a formal impeachment inquiry or even subpoena Mueller to testify. We share both statements in full today before we're joined for analysis and insight by award-winning opinion journalist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo. She charges that Mueller's statement, once again, highlights how Barr misrepresented the Special Counsel's efforts and findings. He "entirely contradicts what William Barr has told the American people," she says, before moving on to charge that "Democrats are dithering" in the face of clear and convincing evidence of criminal obstruction by the President of the United States.

We also discuss the recent, noteworthy commentary and actions by libertarian conservative Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan on these matters. Amash, alone (so far) among Congressional Republicans, has offered a number of powerful, clear and to-the-point summary condemnations on Twitter of what he describes as Trump's "impeachable" behavior documented by Mueller and takes Barr to task for misrepresentations of those findings. Moreover, as evidenced by a clip from Amash's first town hall event since calling for impeachment, back home in Grand Rapids on Tuesday night, the Congressman, who was elected in the Tea Party wave election of 2010 and is an original founding member of the far-right Freedom Caucus in the House, is not backing down from his advocacy and calls for impeachment of the President.

Parton rings in with her thoughts on Amash and whether he should be considered for the job of House Manager (essentially, one of the "prosecutors") in any trial for conviction and removal of the President in the U.S. Senate, should the Democrats finally move to impeach in the House.

Also today: After several unceasing weeks of severe weather and at least 200 reported tornadoes wreaking havoc and death across more than half a dozen states, the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center predicts a few days of relative calm, finally, in the days ahead, as we head toward the weekend. Major flooding, however, is predicted to continue in many states throughout the central U.S. and, despite the months of catastrophic climate-changed fueled extreme weather, the federal government, headed by a scofflaw President and climate science denier, continues to otherwise ignore our worsening climate crisis...

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Someone needs to let the President of the United States know that Memorial Day is, at least in theory, a somber remembrance for the nation's war dead. It might have been nice if that someone had done so before Trump showed up in Japan over the weekend --- for talks with that nation's Prime Minister --- and wished U.S. troops stationed with our ally and former WWII foe a "Happy Memorial Day!" It certainly wasn't a happy one around many parts of the U.S. for a number of reasons. But, once again, we try to find the bright spots where we can.

Among the swarm of stories covered on today's BradCast [Audio link posted below summary]...

• The record swarm of tornado swarms continued on Memorial Day, with some 53 twisters touching down in eight different states on the same day. A man in Ohio was killed when a car flew into his living room and at least 130 were reportedly injured in the Buckeye State, where power was knocked out to more than 5 million residents as of Tuesday morning. "Catastrophic" destruction was seen across many states after Monday marked a record-tying 11th straight day with at least eight tornadoes in the U.S. according to NOAA. Whether media outlets connected the virtually unprecedented storms (and month of flooding in the Midwest and Central U.S. that preceded it) to our worsening climate crisis is another matter entirely;

• Speaking of Ohio, at least before the storms, a KKK rally on Saturday brought out 9 Klansmen and between 500 and 600 counter-protesters. At least the folks in Dayton got that one right, if not some of their responses to emergency interruptions during their favorite TV programs as tornadoes swept through the state on Monday;

• And, speaking of getting it wrong, there is the far-right evangelist Franklin Graham, son of the late, respected minister Billy Graham. Franklin, a Trump supporter who has attacked Indiana Mayor and 2020 hopeful Pete Buttigieg for being both gay and a practicing Christian at the same time, used his tax-exempt religious pulpit to call for "Christian leaders" to declare a "day of prayer" next Sunday for Donald Trump, who, Franklin says, has been "attacked" by his "enemies" more than "any President in the history of this nation". President Abraham Lincoln dissents;

• As the loony right rises, or tries to, we move out west to Fresno, California, which, as we reportedly exclusively back in 2013, single-handedly blocked an attempted statewide "recount" of Prop 37, a state ballot initiative that would have required the labeling of GMO foods. The wingnuttery in Fresno continued over the weekend, as its minor league baseball franchise, the Fresno Grizzlies, "celebrated" Memorial Day with a video tribute that featured a speech by Ronald Reagan and a montage of Americas "enemies" that included Kim Jong Un, Fidel Castro and....wait for it....New York's Democratic freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The team eventually apologized to AOC --- hours after their initial apology for the video itself --- though they never bothered to mention that, among other "enemies" shown in the 3 and a half minute video played at the ballpark, anti-fascism and anti-KKK marchers were also singled out. 'Happy' Memorial Day!;

• In voting news over the long weekend....the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday put on hold two different earlier rulings from lower federal appeals courts finding that Republicans in both Ohio and Michigan had unconstitutionally gerrymandered their Congressional maps for the past decade. The high court's action was issued without comment as we await their pending decisions on two similar cases the Justices heard earlier this year regarding unlawful partisan gerrymanders in North Carolina and Maryland. That may be a bad omen for those two cases. But, for now, the SCOTUS order blocks the lower court orders to draw new, fair Congressional maps for 2020 in Ohio by June 14 and in Michigan (where new state legislative districts were also ordered) by August 1;

• There was better news, for a change, in the state of Texas of all places. The state's legislative session ended on Monday without confirmation of the nomination of Gov. Greg Abbott's Secretary of State David Whitley, thanks to all Senate Democrats refusing to support him. Whitley was forced to resign without the confirmation, which was withheld after the unqualified former travel aid to Abbott had falsely announced in January that 100,000 non-citizens were registered to vote in Texas, with 58,000 of them having illegally cast votes since 1996. As it turns out, most of those voters had become naturalized citizens over that period. But that didn't prevent Whitley from instructing the state's County Clerks to purge voters in 30 days unless they could prove their citizenship or from referring the case to the TX Attorney General who promptly ordered criminal investigations for his own part in the attempted purge. The state was sued by three different voting rights groups and a number of naturalized citizens. They were forced to settle by changing voter roll purge rules for the future and paying some $450,000 to plaintiffs for their legal costs and fees;

• Finally today, with at least 24 candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and debates set to begin next month, voters have been sizing up how the hopefuls might take on Donald Trump next year (presuming he's the GOP nominee) if they win the nod. Last week, during a Washington Post forum, South Bend, IN Mayor Buttigieg, who was deployed to Afghanistan in the Naval Reserves, cited Trump's draft dodging due to a claimed "disability" during the Vietnam War. When asked about his comments over the weekend on ABC's This Week, rather than backing off of them, Buttigieg doubled-down, revealing a) Trump was, indeed, a draft dodger who now pretends to revere the military, but who was willing to let someone else take his place in Vietnam and b) Mayor Pete is not afraid to stand up, at least rhetorically, to the bully who has become the President of the United States, even after some in the media attempted (as they do) to try and call him out for it...

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The federal courts, so far anyway, are holding up well amidst the Constitutional Crisis foisted upon the nation with President Donald Trump's attempts to stymie all Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch and the potentially criminal record of its chief occupant. The Judicial Branch firewall, at least according to one renowned Constitutional law expert --- and at least on the matter of the Congressional subpoenas --- should hold up all the way to even the otherwise very divided U.S. Supreme Court.

On May 20, just seven days after hearing oral arguments, United States D.C. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta issued an erudite 41-page decision [PDF] in which he ordered Donald Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA, to comply with a subpoena issued by the House Oversight Committee. Both the subpoena and subsequent court order directs Mazars to provide financial records from Trump and several affiliated entities to the panel. Judge Mehta also denied Trump's request to stay the order pending appeal, reasoning that the President had failed to either cite "potentially persuasive authority" or "present serious legal questions" to overcome nearly 140 years of Supreme Court case law establishing the right of Congress to obtain the requested records as part of its broad investigative authority.

Judge Mehta's rationale was so compelling --- and the "legal" arguments advanced on behalf of the President so specious --- that, when Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, a preeminent constitutional expert appeared on MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell following the ruling, he predicted the President's appeal would not only be swiftly denied by the United States D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal, but that the Supreme Court would either deny the President's request that it hear the case or swiftly affirm the District Court decision. Tribe described the law in this realm as a "slam dunk" and said he'd "expect all nine Justices...would follow the law."

It took only one day for Tribe's sentiment to be echoed elsewhere. Citing Mehta's decision, Judge Edgardo Ramos at the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, issued a bench ruling immediately after oral arguments in a separate, if related case. Ramos directed Deutsche Bank and Capital One to comply with a Congressional subpoena to turn over the President's bank records. That subpoena, according to The New York Times, seeks "to elicit information on potential money laundering and bank fraud." Like Mehta, Judge Ramos refused to issue a stay pending appeal...

I'm Angie Coiro of In Deep Radio, here on today's BradCast to give Brad and Des a breather. They're back post-holiday!

As I note in the show (audio link below) you don't have to agree with Nancy Pelosi's tactics and goals --- hell, you don't even have to like her --- to still doff your cap to her rhetorical skills. Her press conference this week gives a sentence-by-sentence master class in piercing your opponent with a smile, undermining his bombast with grace, and evincing humility while kicking him where it hurts. I walk you through her best-landed blows in today's show.

Then I go over Trump's court losses this week, the specter of impeachment, and even the possibility of Trump pardoning himself with DAVID LEVINE of UC Hastings Law. Spoiler about the self-pardon: no one knows how that would play out, because it's never happened before.

Putting this week's slam on Harriet Tubman into perspective is ELIZABETH COBBS of Stanford. Bottom line: she was a better person and patriot than he could ever pretend to be.

Finally, I have some time with someone I deeply admire. KATE KENDALL did powerhouse work at the head of the National Center for Lesbian Rights for twenty-two years. Now she's heading up Pack the Courts, formed to expand the number of SCOTUS seats to give justice a fighting chance. She explains it all in depth, including that choice of 'potentially-inflammatory name'...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

Today's BradCast, not unlike today's news, goes from grim to grimmer...But we find a reason or two to smile every now again. Really! I promise! [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Among the tales told of our broken country on today's program...

• Breaking right at the top, Trump's Dept. of Justice announces 17 new charges filed against WikiLeak's Julian Assange, "including a virtually unprecedented move to charge him with publishing classified material," which serves as a very serious threat to the First Amendment rights of all journalists and media outlets;

• Breaking over night, 13 tornadoes were confirmed across Missouri, including a "violent" twister that ripped through its capital of Jefferson City. One near Joplin lead to the deaths of three, eight years to the day after a tornado, one of the deadliest in U.S. history, killed 160 in the southwest MO town. In total, there have been more than 130 tornadoes over about a half-dozen states in just the past week...for some reason;

• A breakthrough in the Senate on Thursday as the White House finally agreed to support a long-awaited disaster relief bill that does not include more money for Trump's border projects. But it does include $19 billion in actual disaster relief funding to hurricane, tornado, flooding, and wildfire ravaged states in the Southeast, Midwest, California, Puerto Rico and elsewhere after Trump held up the measure for months in hopes of border money and to block much-needed funds for Puerto Rico where communities were wiped out and thousands of Americans killed following 2017's Hurricane Maria;

• The Trump Administration announced another $16 billion giveaway to farmers --- on top of the $11 billion bailout they were given last year --- as compensation for Trump's ongoing trade war with China that has broken import/export markets around the world, hitting Trump supporters in farm country particularly hard. As it has become clear that President Stable Genius' trade war with China shows no sign of ending any time soon ("They're really easy to win!," he has repeatedly said) and as the cost of his import tariffs (new taxes on Americans) continue to add up, world financial markets are "buckling" again today;

• And, as all of that is ongoing, Trump appears to be coming even more unglued by the day, as the noose of his own criminality continues to tighten. Witness his insane tweets attacking his own former Sec. of State Rex Tillerson, who he described on Twitter today as "'dumb as a rock' and totally ill prepared and ill equipped to be Secretary of State." Maybe. But whoever would hire such an ill-prepared dolt for such an important job must be even dumber, apparently. Trump's comments were in response to testimony the former Secretary of State and Exxon-Mobil CEO gave to Congress this week, in which he detailed for hours how embarrassingly unprepared Trump was for a two-hour meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2017 G-20 summit;

• And yet, with all of that, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who charged on Wednesday that Trump was "engaged in a cover-up", vowed at her weekly press conference on Thursday that House Democrats were "not on a path to impeachment". She further suggested that Trump was too unstable to govern and offered prayers once again for him while "wish[ing] that his family or his Administration or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country." If only there was a way for CONGRESS to somehow "intervene for the good of the country". Maybe Pelosi will come up with something...anything that could be done on that score. In the meantime, she did note that the use of the Constitution's 25th Amendment, which allows a President's cabinet to remove a President who is, for any reason, "unable to discharge the duties of the office" would be "a good idea." But really, if only there was SOMETHING a majority led by Pelosi in the House could possibly do for the good of the country?! We discuss;

• Next, as if you didn't think this Presidency could get any grimmer, Trump is now said to be considering a Memorial Day weekend pardon of a passel of U.S. military war criminals who were either convicted of horrific crimes via military court-martial or who have been charged and are facing upcoming trials. We detail some of those horrendous crimes and the likely reason that Trump is now reportedly turning the Presidential pardon process on its head to grant unprecedented get-out-of-jail-free cards to war criminals while insulting his own military and breaking his own military justice system in the bargain. (Hint: Fox "News");

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with more on the week's terrifying tornado swarms and flooding in the beleaguered Midwest, a disturbing new study on sea level rise, Louisiana's plan to retreat from the coast, and some good news and bad (mostly bad) from Trump's EPA...

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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Beleaguered Midwest walloped by tornadoes and floods; New worst-case study finds Miami and other coastal cities could be inundated by century's end; Louisiana unveils ambitious plan to retreat from rising seas; PLUS: Good news and bad as Trump's EPA changes how it measures air pollution... 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): Deadly extreme weather is the new normal; Is modern life poisoning me? I took the tests to find out; 75+ business leaders lobby Congress for carbon pricing; Amazon investors reject proposals on climate change; An even more inconvenient truth: Why carbon credits for forest preservation may be worse than nothing; The challenge of lowering greenhouse gas emissions on farms; EPA curbs use of 12 bee-killing pesticides; ‘Mystery emissions’ of CFCs traced back to eastern China... PLUS: Trump’s love for infrastructure doesn’t extend to California’s high-speed rail project... and much, MUCH more! ...

Before we get to the "crapshow" in D.C. today and much more related to it on today's BradCast, a few quick, important points. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First, the St. Louis Blues, incredibly enough, are going to the Stanley Cup finals for the first time in 49 years. Okay, that's not all that important to most, but I've been waiting a really long time, so forgive me my momentary joy.

Second, and much more important (and disturbing): the City of Baltimore's computer networks have been crippled and shutdown by a ransomware attack for more than two weeks now, grinding all city services to a virtual halt and likely requiring a complete rebuild of everything from backup data onto new hardware. Baltimore is reportedly the 20th U.S. municipality to be hit by such an attack so far this year.

Among Baltimore city offices struggling to continue their work is their "dead in the water" Board of Elections, where all local computers are shut down with BOE employees now working remotely out of the State Board of Elections, as well as County Boards in Baltimore and Hartford. The ongoing disaster led the city Board of Elections' Deputy Director to opine: "Thank goodness it's not an election year." Um...yeah..."thank goodness" indeed. But what if it were? And shouldn't this be a much greater concern than, well, pretty much everyone is currently admitting, as city, county and state elections now rely, from top to bottom --- from voter registration to ballot programming to vote tabulation and election results reporting --- on similarly vulnerable computer networks? Without paper poll books at each precinct and HAND-MARKED paper ballots for all, it would be impossible to run an election under such circumstances. But...."thank goodness it's not an election year" and, otherwise, why worry about such crazy "conspiracy theories" as the ones we've been warning about for more than 15 years now?

In other, yes, related news: the Donald Trump Presidency continues to swirl still deeper into the bowels of its own disastrous making while the continuing stand-off with Congress intensifies and more bad news arrives from the federal courts for this President. Today, among too many other things, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Congressional Democratic leadership to discuss the growing cries for an official impeachment inquiry and emerged to declare that "the President of the United States is engaged in a cover-up". That completely unsurprising statement was used as a predicate for Trump to storm out of a planned meeting at the White House with Democratic leaders on an infrastructure bill after just three minutes. He then held what media falsely characterized as an "impromptu" news conferences in the Rose Garden where the President discussed "the i-word" and, with a straight face --- in front a pre-printed sign inaccurately declaring "No Collusion, No Obstruction --- claimed to be "the most transparent President, probably, in the history of this country" and that he doesn't "do cover-ups".

Hours later, his ongoing efforts to cover-up his financial records was dealt a second blow this week by a second federal judge who flatly rejected the Trump family's attempt to block Deutsche Bank and Capital One from turning over Trump financial records in response to a lawful Congressional subpoena. Earlier this week a different federal judge found similarly against Trump's attempt to cover up his financial records held by private accounting firm Mazars USA, which are also the subject of a separate lawful Congressional subpoena. And, all of that is related, as we explain, to the cover-up payments to Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen who was "directed" by Trump to give hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels just prior to the 2016 election to cover-up their alleged affair.

Of course, as Trump's administration continues to cover-up their own growing private email server scandals (remember that li'l problem they had with Hillary Clinton about that?), the man who has helped carry off Trump's greatest cover-up to date (at least that we know of, so far) is his new Attorney General, cover-up artist and personal fixer William Barr. Our guest today, author and media critic ERIC BOEHLERT argues Barr has not been appropriately held to account by the corporate media, even after being found in contempt by the House Judiciary Committee for failing to answer a lawful Congressional subpoena to hand over the full Mueller Report and its underlying evidence. Boehlert explains as he wrote this week, where and why he sees the corporate media dropping the ball.

"New York Times, Washington Post --- they haven't called for his resignation," Boehlert tells me. "It is inconceivable what Bill Barr could possibly do which would trigger major newspapers in this country to call for his resignation. People say, 'Well, who cares? He's not going to resign.' That's true, but, it sends this message that we are in a crisis. We are in a possibly defining crisis in American history. But these major news organizations don't want to go there. They don't want to raise the temperature."

The crisis he refers to, of course, has "been a problem since Inauguration Day 2017, [but] no one will break the glass on the alarm."

We also discuss whether Congressional Democrats are falling short as well, as the internecine debate among Democrats in the House over whether to begin a formal impeach inquiry continues to grow and intensify. Among the many points discussed in that conversation: whether the conventional wisdom that Senate Republicans would never vote to convict and remove Trump from office is actually true...

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