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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Unprecedented, deadly December tornado swarm plows path of destruction in the Midwest; Yes, man-made global warming is increasing the risk of massive tornado outbreaks; PLUS: Biden Administration unveils ambitious strategy to build national network of EV charging stations... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Lower 48 states could have warmest December on record; How rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities; Farallones poison drop would put Bay Area wildlife at risk; The controversies at the heart of California's solar net-metering fight; Crucial Antarctic Ice Shelf Could Fail Within 5 Years; Plant Has Been Spewing Sulfur Dioxide For Years; Now EPA Will Act... PLUS: Coal Powered Industrial Revolution, Left Behind Environmental Catastrophe... and much, MUCH more! ...

We've got a lot to catch up with on today's BradCast, after a weekend lost to recovery from our Moderna booster shots. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

First up, we discuss how things went following Friday boosters for both Desi and myself. For me, as after the second shot, not so good (though much better than actual COVID!) For Desi...it was pretty much business as usual beyond a bit of fatigue. Either way: Go get your shots! Also, just before air, California announced they are re-instituting a statewide mask mandate for indoor, public spaces amid another surge in COVID cases.

Next, 74 people are now confirmed dead in Kentucky alone, and more than a dozen were killed in four other Midwestern states on Friday night after a swarm of very late season tornadoes devastated an eight-state area, as unusually warm December air met with a cold front. Predictably, a climate change-fueled disaster ensued as the states, particularly Kentucky, now wrestle with mass power and water outages amid freezing temperatures for tens of thousands of residents while trying to sift through rubble and continue recovery efforts. Desi details the extreme weather's known connections to climate change and how (and if) corporate media are bothering to cite the causes for yet another deadly, intense, out-of-season extreme weather event.

Then, also breaking over the weekend, the release of a PowerPoint document called "Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for JAN 6". It was obtained by the U.S. House Select Committee investigating January 6, from Donald Trump's former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The document was turned over to the Committee as part of a tranche of email and text message documents from Meadows before he decided he would stop cooperating with them. He will now almost certainly face federal criminal contempt charges, just as Trump's former aide Steve Bannon is now facing for also failing to answer lawful subpoenas from Congress.

This latest "smoking gun" document --- a 38-page version of which was circulated after the election last year, and a very similar 36-page version dated on Jan. 5 --- further cements the details behind the broad criminal conspiracy to steal the 2020 election from Joe Biden and the American people by Donald Trump and his minions. In this case, those cronies include the bulk of his Campaign staff and attorneys, much of his White House staff, members of the Dept. of Justice and a whole bunch of elected officials both in Congress and in the states.

We walk through a number of the evidence-free assertions made in the PowerPoint presentation which, according to Meadows, was to be shared with people "on the Hill" on January 5. Among those assertions, that China and Venezuela had "systematically gained control over our election system constituting a national security emergency," after "electronic voting machines were compromised."

Of course, there is zero evidence included in the document for those extraordinary claims. And those referencing Venezuela are known to be nonsense, since they are directly based on my own exclusive reporting at The BRAD BLOG from 2008 to 2010, which Team Trump subsequently lifted, twisted, mangled and bastardized to somehow support their false, easily-disproven and evidence-free narrative.

As to the "national security emergency" cited by the document, Trump was encouraged to declare one in order to then order ballots collected by the National Guard and U.S. Marshalls in all 50 states, to be counted by them once "invalid" and "fraudulent" ballots were somehow removed. Those same National Guard members, Meadows' documents also assert, according to the House Committee, were also to be tasked to "protect pro Trump people" on January 6 during the attack on the U.S. Capitol after Pence refused to go along with the plan to declare the Electoral College votes invalid. The last effort by Team Trump to steal the election was, as we all know, to hurl thousands of his gullible supporters at the Capitol itself in hopes of preventing the Constitutional certification of Joe Biden's legitimate election victory. The subsequent deadly attack was exactly what Bannon blatantly teased on his "War Room" podcast on January 5th. They were all in on it, including a bunch of members of Congress, as the Jan 6 Committee has recently been suggesting.

We explain much more detail on what is revealed by the ridiculous claims in the PowerPoint presentation on today's program, and how the guy --- retired U.S. Army Colonel Philip Waldron --- who reportedly circulated it among the dupes on the Right, actually met with Meadows at the White House as many as 10 times in the run-up to January 6th.

But the main point is this: Donald Trump and his minions employed a coordinated attempt to steal the 2020 Presidential election. It was not haphazard and it was not just low level operatives. And it was not, as media and many Dems still mis-describe it, an attempt to overturn or reverse or question or subvert the results. It was not an attempt to ferret out "voter fraud" or "election fraud". Donald Trump tried to STEAL the 2020 election and this was the "Rosetta Stone" road map for it. It would help the nation understand how close we came to losing what is left of our democracy entirely if it was described in those simple, basic and absolutely accurate terms.

What do about it? That will, no doubt, be the subject of future programs. But, at least today, hopefully, you will understand what happened and what didn't --- along with what they tried to do, and what they failed to do --- so we can all take action to make sure, somehow, something like this can never happen again...

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We covered a whole bunch of stories on today's BradCast. You'll have to tune in to find out what I have to say about most of them. Suffice to say there was a lot of both good news and bad. Often at the same time. [Audio link to full show is posted at end of this summary.]

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

• The full U.S. House voted to recommend criminal contempt charges to the DoJ for Steve Bannon's refusal to answer his subpoena for documents and testimony from the House Select Committee investigating Trump's January 6th insurrection.

• Texas' wingnut Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, who offered $1,000,000 for evidence of voter fraud after the 2020 election, is forced to pay out $25,000 to a progressive Democrat who caught a Republican voting twice in Pennsylvania.

• California certifies the results from last month's GOP Gubernatorial recall election, with the state's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom winning by the exact same percentages --- to the decimal --- that he won his first term back in 2018. Money well spent, Repubs! And thanks for wasting $300 million taxpayer dollars.

• Five veteran advisors to Arizona's Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema have had enough. They quit her advisory board for service members with a blistering letter citing her obstruction of democracy and the Biden agenda. The progressive veterans group Common Defense has now turned the letter into a TV ad with a seven figure buy to condemn the obstructionist Dem.

• MoJo's David Corn reports that West Virginia's obstructionist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has a plan to quit the Democratic Party altogether. Manchin disputes the report. Corn stands by it. Either way, it should serve as a reminder of how fraught things are in the Senate right now, how narrow the Democratic majority is, and how the Senate could see Mitch McConnell and the GOP back in control, literally, at any moment. That, of course, would immediately end any hope of passing any part of the Biden, Democratic and/or progressive agenda. Perhaps there's good reason that President Biden isn't calling out Manchin by name for failing to reform the filibuster as many progressive voting rights activists have been demanding?

• The GOP's ongoing assault on American democracy continues apace, as they plan to gerrymander their way into the House majority in 2022, and then use that control --- along with new election subversion laws in states they control --- to try and steal the 2024 Presidential election in a way they weren't prepared to do in 2020. All of which should serve as a reminder to every democracy loving American that it's time to step up --- even if it means reconsidering long-held, rock-solid beliefs. For example, that extreme partisan gerrymandering is wrong. It is. But is it wrong if it's needed to actually save American democracy? In Texas, new Republican-adopted Congressional (and state legislative) maps steal seats from minorities, despite the fact that the state's population growth --- and two new U.S. House seats to go with it --- is due almost entirely to minorities. Happily, states like Illinois are not taking the matter (entirely, anyway) lying down.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report and, as usual, we'll take her good news with the bad...or vice versa...

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Now, even the Cyber Ninjas agree that Donald Trump lost, and by more than originally thought. The full, final, long-awaited report is set to be released on Friday in three different "volumes" in which they hope to bury the lede. But we've got the breaking skinny, exclusively reported for you on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

According to a months-long, so-called "forensic audit" and hand-count of more than 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona from the 2020 election, not only did Joe Biden defeat Trump, as previously reported by the County and the state, the private partisan company hired by the GOP state Senate to carry out the exercise, found that Biden actually received more votes over Trump than originally reported.

Information obtained just minutes before airtime today, reveals that the months-long "audit" by the far-right, partisan, conspiracy-promoting Florida company named Cyber Ninjas, headed up by CEO Doug Logan, determined that Biden's vote total in the state's most populous county was actually larger, by about 100 votes, than the certified numbers, while Trump's total decreased by more than 200.

The certified results in Arizona determined that Biden defeated Trump by about 10,000 votes statewide, and by some 45,000 votes in Maricopa.

The Ninjas' "clown show" hand-count was paid for partially with Arizona taxpayer dollars, along with millions in private donations raised from duped Trump supporters who believed his claims that the election was somehow rigged in the state with the help of Dominion's voting and tabulation computers. The post-election review was carried out largely without public or media oversight, but it found numbers remarkably similar to those initially tallied by the County's Dominion tabulators, as previously reported by Maricopa County and certified by the state.

Similarly, the Ninjas' hand-count of the U.S. Senate race between Democrat Mark Kelly and then Republican Senator Martha McSally --- the only other statewide race won by Democrats last year --- found an increase in the margin of the Democrat over the Republican. In the Senate contest, both candidates lost a small number of votes compared to the County's certified computer tally, according to the numbers the Ninjas are set to report publicly on Friday. While Kelly lost fewer than 100 votes in the private hand-count, McSally lost more than 500.

The final report, scheduled for its long-awaited release tomorrow, will include three different volumes. Volume I is said to include the Ninjas' "Executive Summary & Recommendations". Their recommendations, as we have learned, are fairly standard recommendations for ways to improve local procedures, similar to recommendation often made by actual longtime Election Integrity advocates in previous elections in both Arizona and other states. The second volume of the report details "Operations and Methodology" claimed to have been used by the Ninjas. And the third, by far the largest and most detailed, is titled "Results Details".

It is not until the third volume of the report that the Ninjas finally get around to detailing the actual results of their hand-counts as compared to the County's tally. They almost precisely confirm the originally reported official results of both the 2020 Presidential and Senatorial races in Maricopa County. There still may be some changes made to the report before the final version is released on Friday.

I suspect we'll have more details on all of this in the coming days, since today's program began just minutes after we obtained a large amount of the data, which we work through on air.

What is clear, however, is that Republicans who were told that the election in Arizona was somehow manipulated, were lied to. From our review of the Ninja's information, there remains zero evidence of fraud that might have altered the ultimate results in either the county or the state. Nonetheless, based on the theatrical performance put on by the Ninjas beginning in April and continuing over the past five months, Republicans in states across the country are now planning similar, taxpayer funded exercises to review the results of the 2020 election. They may be as disappointed as the Ninjas and those who gave them their money.

If the Arizona findings are echoed elsewhere, the Republican Party is on the verge of wasting a whole lot more taxpayer money, along with millions in private donations that their "forensic audit" proponents are currently raising to fund those similar investigations.

Beyond that on today's program, we cover, in some detail, the Congressional GOP's dangerous threat to force a default on the good faith and credit of the U.S. Government. Senate Republicans are currently vowing to block an increase in the nation's allowable statutory debt limit before the U.S. runs out of borrowing power to cover bills for stuff approved by Congress (both Republicans and Democrats) long ago. That, as Republicans in the Senate also threaten to force a full government shutdown as the new fiscal year begins on October 1.

We've got a lot of detail on that shameful, reckless and under-reported mess today, as Republicans, once again, hold a nation hostage to their demands...even if, this time, they don't seem to actually be making any. They appear to simply be causing havoc and potentially costing the U.S. economy trillions, simply because they can.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us today with our latest Green News Report, as President Biden calls for unified climate action at the U.N. and as China vows to end international financing of coal plants, and much more...

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CORRECTION 9/23/2021: In the article above, I initially misidentified Cyber Ninjas' CEO Doug Logan as Doug Jones, who, unlike Logan, is an actual voting system and cybersecurity expert. Another Doug Jones is the former Senator from Alabama. Also, while going through the just obtained information live on air, I misspoke at one point to say there were some 4 million ballots cast in Maricopa. In fact, as I noted elsewhere during the show, there were 2.1 million ballots cast in the County last November. I had misread, on the fly, some of the data showing 2.x million votes tabulated by the County originally and 2.x million tabulated by the Ninjas. I read that on the fly on air as 4 million votes total (incorrectly seeing those numbers as one row for Trump and the other for Biden, when they actually were for each of the two different tallies.) My apologies for both errors!

UPDATE 9/24/2021: National media picks up this story several hours after our scoop. Full details now here...

UPDATE 10/5/2021: Election audit expert tells us that even the results reported above by the Cyber Ninjas are not to be trusted. "The Ninjas made up the numbers out of whole cloth." Full details now here...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: President Biden pushes for unified climate action at U.N.; China vows to end international financing of coal plants; 2021 wildfires set new record for carbon dioxide emissions; OSHA will protect workers from extreme heat; PLUS: Illinois passes landmark clean energy and climate justice law... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): EPA to cut HFCs, thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide; Entergy Resisted Upgrading New Orleans' Power Grid. Residents Suffered; WHO Slashes Guideline Limits on Air Pollution From Fossil Fuels; California's Reliance on Dams Puts Fish in Hot Water; Will Taxpayers Bear Cost Of Cleaning Up America's Abandoned Oil Wells?... PLUS: Nitrogen: The Environmental Crisis You Haven't Heard Of Yet... and much, MUCH more! ...

I'm back! It's Nicole Sandler, filling in for Brad and Desi for a couple of days so they can celebrate Desi's birthday. Any excuse for some downtime. Welcome to today's BradCast.

It was another busy news day, as confirmation hearings continue for Biden's cabinet picks.The Equality Act passed the House today, but not before Rand Paul went on a homophobic rant, aimed at the first transgender woman to be nominated for a Senate-confirmed federal position. In this case, it was a confirmation hearing for Dr. Rachel Levine, the nominee for Assistant Secretary for Health, and Dr. Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General Nominee. And Rand Paul just couldn't help himself. He went off on her. And in the House, Marjorie Taylor Greene put up an ugly sign to counter her across-the-hall neighbor Marie Newman, who put out an equality flag to celebrate her transgender daughter and the Equality Act, which would be voted on later in the day. So much for unity.

This country has been through some trying times, and we've survived. Today, we went back to the beginning with historian ALEXIS COE, author of You Never Forget Your First: A History of George Washington.

And before she left to celebrate her birthday, Desi left us with a new edition of the Green News Report...

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On Thursday, by way of a 13-page Order [PDF] issued in State of Washington v. Trump, U.S. District Court Judge Stanley A. Bastian not only enjoined the United States Postal Service (USPS) from continuing to implement the "transformative" nationwide changes to its mail delivery capacities effectuated since July under the direction of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, but also ordered USPS to "replace, reassemble or reconnect" all of the high-speed sorting and labeling machines that had previously been decommissioned.

In his decision, Judge Bastian found that the 14 State Plaintiffs --- Attorneys General in WA, CO, CT, IL, MD, MI, MN, NV, NM, OR, RI, VT, VA, WI --- "established a likelihood that they will prevail on their claims that the [USPS] and Postmaster General violated 39 U.S.C. §3661". He characterized DeJoy's mandates as an "attack on the Postal Service [that] is likely to irreparably harm the states' ability to administer the 2020 general election."

As we explained last month when covering the States' complaint, under Section 3661(b), DeJoy had a "non-discretionary duty" to request and obtain an advisory opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) before instituting "a change in the nature of postal services which will generally affect service on a nationwide or a substantially nationwide basis." Under that statute, the PRC cannot issue that advisory opinion "until an opportunity for a hearing on the record...has been afforded to...users of the mail." At that hearing, "an officer of the [PRC]...shall be required to represent the public interest."

DeJoy's failure to comply with those statutory requirements, Judge Bastion noted, "suggests" the USPS "acted ultra vires" --- beyond its power --- when it effectuated DeJoy's "transformative" changes.

The court also found that the Plaintiffs established a likelihood that the USPS "actions have infringed" upon the "States' constitutional right to appoint presidential electors and set the time, place, and manner of elections; that the current changes are the result of an effort by the current Administration to use the [USPS] as a tool in partisan politics, which violates the spirit and purpose of the Postal Reorganization Act and the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act."

In his written ruling, Judge Bastian blasted the USPS actions, charging they would result in "voter disenfranchisement"...

Even if several multi-state legal challenges result in a federal court order directing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to repair the damage wrought by his allegedly "illegal" sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service's mail delivery capabilities, absent significant additional funds, it's unlikely DeJoy could fully comply with that order.

The facts laid out in one of the recently filed cases and echoed in the others, along with subsequent developments, suggest that DeJoy was, at best, disingenuous when, in an August 18 formal statement [PDF], he claimed he was "suspending" his nationwide mail sorting, labeling and delivery changes until after the Nov. 3 Presidential Election.

The complaint describes how, pursuant to an Equipment Reduction Plan [PDF], Defendants removed, dismantled and/or destroyed 671 high-speed sorting and labeling machines that had a combined hundreds of millions of dollars in value. As a result, the States allege, "some major cities have already had their ability to sort mail reduced by hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail per hour." (Emphasis in original text).

On the same day that DeJoy issued his "suspension" statement, emails were submitted by Kevin Couch, the USPS Director of Maintenance Operations, informing Maintenance Managers that, irrespective of instructions from their plant managers, they must not reconnect or reinstall sorting machines that had previously been disconnected absent approval from USPS HQ.

Last Friday, while testifying before the U.S. Senate, DeJoy made it clear that he has "has no intention" of reinstalling the sorting machines, even as he claimed that election related mail would receive top priority from the Postal Service. Contrary to DeJoy's rosy predictions, however, the USPS's own Service Performance memo reflects a significant drop in overall performance which precipitated a USPS warning to 46 states that their deadlines for Vote-by-Mail ballots "might impede the timely delivery of mail-in ballots, possibly disenfranchising millions of voters"

While there's ample reason for a court to order reinstallation, absent significant additional USPS funding, which Trump opposes, it is doubtful that DeJoy could fully undo the damage even if he were ordered to do so.

VOTERS BEWARE: Do not be lulled into a false sense of security by DeJoy's "suspension" of changes at the USPS until after Election Day, or by his unsupported assurance that USPS can timely process and deliver every ballot. The wiser course, as laid out in our previously related article, is to deposit your mail-in ballots in secure, state-supplied drop-boxes (where available) or at designated drop-off locations. Check your local jurisdictions to learn what options may be available where you live. In some jurisdictions, voters can deposit their mail-in ballots at the polls either during early voting or on Election Day. In some jurisdictions, voters can link to election official websites to track the processing of their own ballots as well...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Ohio's GOP House Speaker arrested on bribery charges in corrupt utility company conspiracy; Gonzalo breaks new record in already historic 2020 Atlantic hurricane season; Global methane emissions hit record high; PLUS: Burger King cuts the methane... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Congress passes sprawling plan to boost conservation, parks; Global heating: best and worst case scenarios less likely than thought; Arctic sea ice is in a downward spiral, and may break a record in 2020; Leaked DNC platform draft shows the party is improving on climate"”just not enough;
How the United States fails its most important fish habitats; EU considers tax, emissions trading for carbon border plan... PLUS: The Sierra Club faces its white-supremacist history... and much, MUCH more! ...

Seriously, at some point American officials will need to be prosecuted for mass murder for their criminal delinquency and deceit in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, which has, so far, in just four months, cost the lives of more than 122,000 Americans. Those prosecutions should begin (if not end) with the man currently serving as President of the United States. That is particularly true in the wake of his criminal admission at his Death Rally in Tulsa last week, when he admitted that he told his "people...slow the testing down, please!" The White House later said Donald Trump was just joking, but when asked if he was kidding, he publicly admitted otherwise. "I don't kid," he said, "let me just tell you, let me make it clear." And we now have hard evidence on today's BradCast to prove that, perhaps for the first time, he was finally telling the truth. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

On Wednesday, confirmed new coronavirus cases in the U.S. set a single day record of more than 38,000. At the same time, hospitalizations are rapidly increasing in a number of states around the country, including states such as Florida, Texas, Arizona and Oklahoma, where denialist Republican Governors reopened for business far too quickly, in direct contradiction to almost all health experts.

As states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut --- hit hardest and earliest at the beginning of the pandemic --- have seen case numbers and hospitalizations plummet, they've instituted quarantine restrictions on travelers from some of the currently hardest hit states. As of Wednesday, the list included Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Texas.

When asked what he would say to the leaders of some of those states, including Florida, whose Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had issued a quarantine on travelers from the NY metro area early in the pandemic (while failing to mandate appropriate restrictions in his own state), New York's Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo said today: "You played politics with this virus and you lost. You told the people of your state and you told the people of this country, White House, don't worry about it. Just open up, go about your business, this is all Democratic hyperbole. Oh, really? Now you see 27 states with the numbers going up. You see the death projections going up. You see the economy going down. It was never politics, it was always science. And they were in denial."

Well, many of them are still in denial. And not just denial, but taking purposeful, affirmative efforts to lie to their people about COVID-19 numbers in their own states. The expert who ran Florida's once-lauded COVID-19 tracking website, but was fired because, she says, she refused to manipulate the data, sent out a warning this week. She charges that officials have been "instructed this week to change the numbers and begin slowly deleting deaths and cases so it looks like Florida is improving next week in the leadup to July 4."

In West Virginia, the state's Republican Gov. Jim Justice, a billionaire coal baron, has forced out the commissioner of the state's public health bureau because he didn't like the numbers she was reporting, as cases rise in at least 11 counties. He had previously lauded her at regular COVID-19 press briefings where she spoke. She was not at his latest briefing on Wednesday and released a statement upon her forced resignation that night, urging state officials "to stay true to the science".

Meanwhile, as the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), conceded that the infection rate in the U.S. is likely 10 times higher than the number of cases currently reported (that's 23 million probably infections, instead of the official 2.3 million reported as of today), states like Texas are seeing not just increased cases, but spiking hospitalizations, which have doubled over the past week. In Houston, ICU beds were 97 percent full by Wednesday. (In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has barred hospitals from reporting those numbers anymore.) Even Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is now warning of the state's "massive outbreak", while still failing to mandate masking or even allowing local officials in Houston or anywhere else to do so on their own.

And yet, with all of that, Donald Trump really has told his "people" to "slow the testing down." Talking Points Memo's Josh Kovensky has been documenting the refusal by the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to approve extensions for federally funded testing at 13 sites across five states, including Texas. Where more than 40 such sites were once funded by the federal government across the country, only 13 sites remain, and they have been told by the Trump Administration that those resources will end on June 30th, despite desperate requests from officials in Texas, Illinois and Pennsylvania for the much-needed aid to continue.

That's just a taste of today's program, which raises the very serious question: Should these people be held accountable for the thousands --- perhaps tens of thousands --- of American citizens who are likely to die, thanks to their purposeful efforts to ignore science and health officials for purely brazen political purposes?

The deadly denial about the coronavirus is a fast-motion mirror of the Republican denial, for brazen political purposes, regarding climate change. Today we close with some accountability and/or attempts at accountability on that front in our latest Green News Report, in which Minnesota's Attorney General has now filed a consumer fraud lawsuit against Exxon, Koch, and the American Petroleum Institute, citing, by way of just one example, a "proprietary" document from Exxon warning about the dangers of "CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere...due to fossil fuel combustion" that "will cause a warming of the earth's surface" and "dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050." That prescient, on-the-money document is dated October 16, 1979, before Exxon went on to spend millions of dollars over decades to misinform the public that climate change due to the burning of fossil fuels was little more than a hoax. Desi Doyen joins us for that attempted accountability and a bit more that has actually succeeded in a refreshingly encouraging GNR today. And it comes not a moment too soon...

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On today's BradCast: Governors in California, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania are among the first to issue statewide "stay-at-home" orders, though more are likely to do so very soon as the nation begins to self-quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic. But is it possible, legal or Constitutional that Donald Trump could exploit this serious public health crisis to postpone or cancel this November's critical Presidential election? We gets some legal and Constitutional answers to that question today and the answers are both comforting and not comforting at all. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

But first, CA Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a letter to Donald Trump, warned that, without mitigation efforts, including help from the federal government, as many as 56% of the Golden State's population (or 25.5 million people here) could become infected over the next two months.

At the same time, a shortage of personal protective equipment for health care workers has led to price-gouging by the nation's medical supply companies, according to a GA healthcare CEO who says he is being charged $7 a piece for critical masks that usually cost .58 cents each. But why do we even have a shortage, given that we've known about this matter for months and Trump has now supposedly invoked the Defense Production Act, allowing the federal government to commandeer manufacturing facilities to meet critical needs for the nation's security?

At the same time, just days after the Republican Party had been tarring the Democratic Party as "socialists", Republicans are now calling for major socialist giveaways to combat the COVID-19 crisis. In fact, Trump is even calling for the federal government to take ownership in private corporations that may soon be receiving yet another socialist bailout. That's right, according to the President, Republicans like him now support the very definition of socialism wherein the government takes control of the means of production.

Then again, based on the President's unhinged behavior at today's White House press briefing, which we share on the show, he may be losing track of reality even faster than previously.

All the while, states around the nation continue to postpone previously scheduled Presidential primary elections, with Connecticut and Indiana over the past 24 hours joining more than a half dozen states who have already done so. But, never mind the primaries. With a desperate, already-unbalanced President like Trump, would anybody be surprised if he attempted to invoke national emergency powers amid a global pandemic to try and cancel this November's Presidential election all together? And, if he wanted to, does either federal law or the U.S. Constitution allow him to do so?

Slate's ace legal and court reporter MARK JOSEPH STERN has been looking into that point which, he tells us, might have seemed crazy just a few weeks ago, but no longer. The short answer is no, Trump can't do it on his own, not without Congress agreeing. But there are enough "red" states with a mechanism for doing so that, under this Presidency, you'd be ill-advised to keep your guard down. He explains the no-longer-unimaginable circumstances that could occur.

He also details how the Trump Administration recently ordered immigration judges to remove CDC posters warning about the coronavirus epidemic from their courtrooms, as crowded detention centers become breeding grounds. Stern says that, at this point, with this crisis and some 50,000 jammed into crowded, unsanitary detention camps, "the entire system is in total disarray."

Stern has also been reporting of late on how it's not only the Executive Branch that has monumentally failed to take appropriate action for weeks to prevent the spread of the virus --- the Judicial Branch, headed up by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, has failed mightily on that score, as both courtrooms and prisons have turned into viral petri dishes over the past several weeks. "It is a mess, because the chief judge of every different district court is making these decisions on the fly," he tells me. "Unfortunately, people are still being exposed to this virus in federal courtrooms right now. "

But at least Roberts has cancelled oral arguments before his own Court this month, including cases regarding whether Trump must release his taxes to law enforcement officials and whether or not Presidential Electors in states across the country must, in fact, vote the way their state's have when those electors cast their lot with the Electoral College. That question --- if SCOTUS ever reconvenes and issues an opinion on it --- may play a key role in the question regarding the ability of this President to effectively cancel this year's Presidential election.

All of those issues, and many others today, in another don't-miss, news-packed BradCast!...

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On today's BradCast: Former Vice President Joe Biden trounced Bernie Sanders in three more states on Tuesday. The coronavirus pandemic continued to spread as all of the stock market gains since Donald Trump's inauguration were finally wiped out. And the nation's elections officials --- at least some of them --- began eyeing the need to move to Vote-by-Mail elections as a temporary mitigation for the foreseeable future. But is that a good idea? Are we ready for it? [Audio link to show is posted below below.]

First up, however, some good news, believe it or not! Marie Newman, a progressive challenger to far-right anti-abortion Democratic U.S. House Rep. Dan Lipinski, appears to have won her primary race against the conservative eight-term Congressman in Illinois 3rd Congressional district. The victory in the very "blue" suburbs of Chicago virtually guarantees Newman's election to the House in November, mirroring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' 2018 defeat of longtime (if less execrable) Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley in New York.

Beyond that, Biden appears to have delivered a thumping to Sanders in Florida, Illinois and Arizona, increasing his lead in the nominating contest to a seemingly insurmountable 300 delegates. All three states held low-turnout primaries on Tuesday amid warnings from health officials to avoid large gatherings, polling places that were closed or moved at the last minute, and a shortage of pollworkers due to cancellations in the wake of coronavirus concerns. Ohio, which was also supposed to vote on Tuesday, postponed its Presidential primary until June at the very last minute.

Both Biden and Sanders addressed supporters on Tuesday night via live Internet streams due to the cancellation of live rallies. They both focused mostly on actions needed to address the pandemic. Despite rumors throughout the day on Wednesday, and the cancellation of online digital ads, the Sanders campaign maintains that they are not suspending, but reassessing their campaign with three more weeks until the next scheduled primary, given all of the various states which have now postponed elections amid the COVID-19 crisis.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate finally passed an emergency relief measure adopted by the U.S. House last week to guarantee paid sick leave and expanded unemployment benefits to certain workers, while extending some food security programs, even as a FAR larger stimulus package will be required in response to the ongoing crisis, as markets fell again on Wednesday, reversing all of the gains since Trump took office. For his part, the President vowed to invoke the Defense Production Act to allow the federal government to commandeer private U.S. facilities to manufacturer various needed medical supplies such as masks and ventilators. With the economy in tatters and after weeks of bungled responses, Trump has now declared himself a "wartime president", even as he continues to attack his perceived political enemies and employ racist terms to describe the coronavirus pandemic.

Amid all of this, the nation's elections officials are turning their efforts toward quickly devising ways to safely hold upcoming primary elections as well as the general election in November. On Tuesday, the Governor of Maryland postponed the state's April 28 primary elections until June 2, but allowed the scheduled U.S. House Special Election to fill the Baltimore seat of the late Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings to proceed as an all-mail contest. Joining us today to discuss the efforts now underway to quickly move to Vote-by-Mail elections in Maryland (and elsewhere) is ALYSOUN MCLAUGHLIN, longtime Deputy Election Director for Montgomery County, MD. She also serves as Secretary on the Board of Advisors to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and as Vice Chair of the National Association of Counties.

Following her Governor's executive order postponing the statewide primary while calling for an all-mail U.S. House Special Election next month, McLaughlin explains some of the many challenges officials face in turning to VBM elections in the state. "The way we see it, we don't have a choice. The way we see it, there's a whole lot of really challenging problems in conducting an election under these circumstances right now, and the best way for us to serve everyone --- and to serve everyone avoiding the kinds of stresses and strains that we saw on polling places on Tuesday --- is for us to mail everyone a ballot. And immediately that takes the pressure off of the polls. That allows us to deal with the fact that our workforce is so significantly diminished in staffing a polling place election."

She tells me that officials in all 24 counties in the state feel the move to mail every registered voter a ballot is necessary for the newly-reschedule primary, though the state Board of Elections will still need to approve the plan. At the same time, there are many challenges and concerns in turning to such a system, particularly in such short order. We discussed a number of them on yesterday's program and Washington Post's Cybesecurity 202 column detailed several more. I've laid out even more such concerns over many years counseling caution, as I have long opposed VBM elections except where voters were unable to vote at the polls on Election Day or where a jurisdiction forces voters to vote by unverifiable, unsecure --- and, yes, germy --- touchscreen voting systems at the polls. (Thankfully, Maryland, which, with Georgia, was first in the nation to adopt statewide touchscreen voting in 2002, no longer does so, having moved recently, and sensibly, to hand-marked paper ballots for all.)

My conversation with McLaughlin today highlights some of those concerns, including questions about signature verification which, she says, her state does not use at all in determining if absentee ballots are to be included in the tally or rejected from the count. It's an eye-opening and important discussion that we will, necessarily, continue to have, in hopes that states adopt new temporary election practices in line with recommendations from health experts, even while observing best practices required to make sure VBM elections are secure, inclusive and publicly overseeable...

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On today's BradCast: America continues to adjust to the pandemic, as the most critical election in our nation's history is now threatened by a virus, even as voters in three major states hit the polls on Tuesday. At least some of them did. [Audio link to show is posted at end of summary.]

We begin another bizarre day in the Coronavirus Era with just a spot of good news. California's wildly corrupt GOP Congressman Duncan Hunter, Jr., who, with his wife, was charged with more than 60 felonies, but pleaded guilty to just one in a deal last December after it became clear his wife would testify against him, was sentenced to 11 months in prison today. The couple had stolen as much as a quarter of a million dollars in campaign funds for personal luxuries during Hunter's six elected terms before he finally resigned in disgrace in January. He, along with New York's GOP Congressman Chris Collins (who was recently sentenced to 26 months for insider trading), were the first two members of the U.S. House to endorse Donald Trump's run for the Presidency.

And with that somewhat good news out of the way, it's on to the more disturbing news we must try and make sense of today. Even as Florida, Illinois and Arizona all decided to hold their Presidential primary elections on Tuesday amid quarantines, closures, lock-downs and social distancing directives, other states continued to take more responsible measures.

Ohio, which was also scheduled to vote on Tuesday, postponed their primary election today amid no small amount of chaos, with the state's Governor taking extraordinary measures to do so late Monday night after initially being blocked by a state court.

Maryland's Governor today announced that his state would join others, such as Louisiana, Georgia and Kentucky in postponing their primary until June. It was previously scheduled for April 28. They will, however, still hold the April 28 Special Election to fill the U.S. House seat left vacant by the late Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings in Baltimore. That election, however, will now be an all Vote-by-Mail (VBM) election. That as other states consider either postponing or changing to all-VBM elections for the foreseeable future during the virus outbreak.

The affects of the pandemic were seen in all three states which voted today, including poll closures, low turnout, and shortages of poll workers, many of whom are elderly and the most susceptible to the worst affects of the virus. Hundreds of them in South Florida, for example, decided to cancel at the last minute rather than be exposed to hundreds of people all day in crowded polling locations left open despite the CDC's recommendation to avoid all crowds larger than 10 at this time.

We're joined today by a guest well-accustomed to both chaos and elections. ION SANCHO is Leon County (Tallahassee), Florida's former longtime Supervisor of Elections as well as a champion voting rights advocate and opponent of private voting system vendors. During his nearly 30 years as one of the state's (and nation's) most respected election officials, he has held elections amid hurricane catastrophes and political ones. He was tapped by his fellow state officials in 2000 to oversee the eventually-aborted Presidential election recount between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Sancho has plenty of thoughts and insight to offer today amid the current chaos and challenges now faced by elections officials and voters alike. We discuss the likely necessity of all states moving to VBM elections for the duration of the crisis, and the steps that need to be taken to ensure such elections are carried out with integrity.

"The entire primary and elections process is going to have to be re-examined, given this crisis," he tell me. "This pandemic provides a challenge like no other in my lifetime. Mail ballots may be the way out of this, but mail ballots require machinery. Mail ballots require high-speed counting devices. It can be done, and it can be done excellently, but it can't be done cheaply. So if that's something we're going to need to go to, we're need to prepare for that." He warns that voters, many of whom do not bother to change their address on their registration when they move within a county, should check their registration record to assure it's up to date immediately, or else they risk not receiving a ballot at all, when and if states begin moving to VBM.

And while money will need to be spent to transition to high-speed optical-scanners to tally hand-marked mail-in paper ballots in many locations, the cost and benefits would still be far greater for voters than in jurisdictions such as Georgia which recently spent more than $100 million dollars for new equipment that will force all voters at the polls to vote on new, germy, unverifiable, touchscreen voting systems which violate voters' privacy by revealing secret ballots to everyone in the polling place. "The COVID-19 virus may be a blessing in disguise for the citizens of Georgia," Sancho explains. "Using a hand-marked paper ballot system is not only more secure, it's three to ten times more inexpensive to operate and maintain."

But in addition to money, guidance will be needed on the federal level to ensure a move to mail-in voting is done in a way that doesn't disenfranchise voters, since, he explains, it is so much easier for VBM ballots to be rejected by officials for dubious reasons and without notifying voters so that they have sufficient time to cure any perceived deficiencies on their ballots. VBM would be a "fair solution [during this crisis] if you have fair elections administration. Jurisdictions like Oregon, for example, which has pioneered mail voting in the United States, provide 14 days for an individual to present themselves to cure a problem, a deficiency, in the mail ballot. States like Arizona, Washington and California provide 2-3 weeks of days to allow the voter to cure a problem. Then you run into states like Florida, that had to be sued to allow voters to cure their ballot after the election. The deadline for Florida to cure all deficiencies --- so how could you know about it? --- is the day before the election."

While some elections officials, he believes, would be careful to institute best practices, others, he warns, would not. "They don't concern themselves with how actual machinery is working in other places. They just depend upon their voting vendor to tell them what to do. We don't really have any kind of mechanism nationally to provide the best practices, to give guidance. Our national elections administration is a debacle," he says, along with much more that you'll want to hear.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as the coronavirus epidemic has now cleared the air in both China and Italy, at least as far as toxic greenhouse gas emissions go, and has given Donald Trump yet another excuse to try and shore up the oil industry amid crashing prices. And, though much of it has now been lost to time and the global pandemic, we also examine the substantive debate on Sunday night between Democratic Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders regarding our climate crisis...

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To quote Donald Trump when he thought the cameras had stopped rolling after his disastrous Oval Office address last week: "Oooookaaay...." So, we are now living in a new world. For the time being. Millions are being instructed to stay home from work. Markets are tanking. Major states and cities are shutting down schools, restaurants, bars, clubs, theaters and casinos. Some are instituting full "stay at home" lock-down orders. And Congress is scrambling to pass emergency legislation to try and help displaced workers and families as the coronavirus crisis threatens to shut down the nation entirely for weeks, months or longer. All of this amidst a Presidential election under the most dangerously inept and dishonest Administration in the history of the nation.

On today's BradCast, we try to get you caught up with the unfolding, bizarre and disorienting mess that we are all going through together in hopes of "flattening the curve" of the rate of infections to try and ensure that the U.S. hospital system doesn't become overwhelmed with patients. Like you, we have no idea how this is supposed to work, but we're all working through it together, even as Trump literally told the nation's Governors today they are on their own in coming up with enough respirators and other medical equipment to keep their residents alive, and as he continues to lie to the country about the availability of testing and eventual arrival date of a vaccine (which is most likely more than a year from now, even as a single live test began today).

And, speaking of that Presidential election, states --- particularly those which are touchscreen-voting heavy, like Louisiana, Georgia and Ohio --- are beginning to announce postponements of their primary elections. Ohio's Governor has attempted to do so before tomorrow's planned election that was to be held along with Florida, Illinois and Arizona. But a state judge, late today (minutes ago, justt after we got off air) has now blocked the Republican Ohio Governor's attempt to postpone. So, full-on chaos for a change in the Buckeye State tonight. The other three big states (at least at this hour) are planning to go through with their own elections tomorrow, even as polling sites at senior citizen centers are requiring last-minute relocation and frequently-elderly poll workers are (justifiably) calling in to cancel.

Other states, such as New York are considering postponement, while Maryland considers moving to all-Vote-by-Mail primaries. More than a dozen states, such as Texas, do not even currently offer no-excuse absentee voting. That needs to change. [CORRECTION: I had initially cited Pennsylvania as one of those states that do not allow no-excuse absentee voting. In fact, no-excuse absentee voting was instituted late last year as part of a package of election reforms in the Keystone State. My apologies for the error!]

We cover all of that AND wave very briefly at Sunday's Presidential Debate (which we hope to revisit in a bit more detail soon - but we'll see) before opening the phones to check in with callers today, including one from Minneapolis who describes the situation there as dire, others from Southern California who wonder where the head of the CDC has disappeared to, and another who questions both the threat and infection numbers currently being reported. All of that and way too much more on today's BradCast...

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