It's a grab bag on today's BradCast, as we cover a ton of stuff from around the world and here at home, just over two weeks before another critical Election Day. [Audio link to today's show follows below.]

Among our many stories covered today...

• With one disgraced, failed Conservative Party Prime Minister after another in Britain since they fell for that whole rightwing BREXIT scam, perhaps the good citizens of the UK might want to consider leadership from amongst the liberal Labour Party instead? Just a thought, but surely they couldn't perform any worse than the Torries, could they Lizz Truss, the third Tory PM to resign amid financial chaos and disgrace in as many years (she lasted just 44 days!) exited stage right today as the financial markets look to downgrade the the UK's credit rating amid continuing fiscal havoc and political uncertainty.

  It's all "self-immolation" and it echoes financial and political chaos repeatedly sown by our own "conservative" party here in the U.S. And yet, for some reason, a majority of the American public reportedly remain disinformed enough to believe, somehow, that Republicans are better on economic issues than Democrats. It's yet another sign of a failed corporate U.S. media, frankly. More thoughts and details in today's actual show, of course.

• There was better than expected news on global CO2 emissions this week! Despite a temporary return to coal, oil and gas by some in the EU in response to Russia's horrific war on Ukraine, the growth in fossil fuel emissions this year is far lower than previously predicted. This year, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), growth in emissions from fossil fuels was just 300 million metric tons, compared to nearly 2 billion tons last year. New renewable energy coming on line from wind and solar and other sources of clean energy, along with the world's move to Electric Vehicles, is helping to counter a temporary return to fossil fuels in some parts of the world. Much of this is attributed to the acceleration of major clean energy policy plans around the world, some in response to Russia's war, but also to nations' effort to meet goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. That would include efforts here at home by Democrats and President Biden who enacted the world's largest single investment in climate --- nearly $400 billion --- in the Inflation Reduction Act, adopted without one Republican vote.

• With just over two weeks until the critical midterm elections with so much on the ballot, from democracy itself to all manner of Constitutional rights and freedoms, Democrats, progressives and other anti-authoritarians are pushing hard to win over voters. VoteVets, the nation's largest progressive veterans support group, released a blistering ad this week targeting Wisconsin's Republican Senator and insurrection enthusiast Ron Johnson, as a "traitor". And California's Rep. Eric Swalwell released a bone-chilling ad illustrating a dystopian future where police are knocking on doors to round women who've had an illegal abortion.

• Swalwell's fictional ad is hauntingly echoed by actual video footage obtained and published this week by the Tampa Bay Times in Florida, revealing law enforcement officials rounding up and arresting residents for what even the confused officers describe as "some sort of voter fraud thing". In August, GOP Governor and Presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis --- who is on this year's ballot against Democrat and former Gov. Charlie Crist --- held a dramatic news conference announcing 20 arrests by his new "Office of Election Crimes and Security". As we have since learned, those arrested were former felons who believed their voting rights had been restored after the landslide 65 to 35% passage of a statewide ballot initiative in 2018. But, the initiative had a few exceptions that the former felons weren't told about when they registered and when those registrations were approved by DeSantis' own State Department.

  “Voter fraud?," said one perplexed man as he was told he was being hauled off to jail for voting illegally years earlier. "Y’all said anybody with a felony could vote, man." Other arrestees, nabbed out of the blue at their homes just hours before DeSantis' news conference, were similarly stunned. Local law enforcement officials participating in the arrests also seemed unable to explain exactly why any of this was happening. The majority of the arrestees, according to the paper, were black and/or Democrats, "a throwback to the worst images of the Jim Crow South and a preview of a dystopian future under GOP authoritarianism," writes the Philly Inquirer's Will Bunch today.

  Yes, the authoritarian dystopian future envisioned by Swalwell's fictional video of cops rounding up a woman who had an abortion is shockingly similar to the videos published this week by Tampa Bay Times.

• Speaking of Florida and dystopia, GOP Sen. Marco Rubio and his Democratic challenger for reelection, Rep. Val Demings, squared off in a debate this week. Among the embarrassing moments for the two-term Republican Senator: his claim that absentee ballot drop-boxes shouldn't be used because someone could "put some explosives in it and blow it up and burn all of those ballots' and his explanation for why he previously claimed, after the 2018 Parkland high school massacre that killed 17, to support a ban on the sale of semi-automatic assault weapons to those under the age of 21 --- but he no longer does. "You've done nothing, nothing to help address gun violence," charged Demings, the former Police Chief of Orland in response. "How long will you watch people being gunned down in first grade, fourth grade, high school, college, church, synagogue, a grocery store, a movie theater, a mall and a night club and do nothing?!”

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the President releases more oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve; New Jersey sues Big Oil for decades of climate lies; and as the November 8 midterm elections are set to determine the course of climate action for decades to come...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Three simultaneous major storms --- in Puerto Rico, Alaska and Japan --- underscore climate crisis impacts; Climate change juiced Pakistan's catastrophic flooding, study finds; South Australia set to become first major grid to run on 100% renewables; PLUS: Court blocks massive plastics plant in Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley'... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Permitting overhaul in peril as funding deadline looms; Gas Exports Boost Prices for US Consumers; California governor signs recycling and waste bills as part of climate change package; Wildfires are burning away the West's snow; Climate Law Spurs CCS At New West Virginia Gas Plant; GAO: Government Must Boost Climate Resilience... PLUS: World's oldest winged insect is in trouble, and its message for humanity is grim.... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: New U.N. report warns the world is heading into 'uncharted climate territory'; Summer 2022 was the hottest ever recorded globally; Fast transition to clean energy will save the world $12 trillion, study projects; PLUS: President Biden touts historic climate bill and national EV charging network... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Judge tosses air permit for giant Formosa Plastics Complex; New documents from oil industry show internal deception; Potential rail worker strike caused by erratic scheduling; Where this ice sheets in Antarctica meet the ground, small changes could have big consequences; Global ‘Stilling’: Is climate change slowing down the wind?; Focusing on the climate actions that can make a real difference; Can solar panels be super-charged?; House Dem leadership scrambles permitting reform effort... PLUS: Billionaire No More: Patagonia founder gives away the company... and much, MUCH more! ...

On some days, there is more huge news than others. This is about 10 of those days. With not one, but two absolute blockbuster stories jammed into today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show posted below this summary.]

On Friday, a federal judge unsealed the warrant obtained by the FBI and DOJ to search Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound for classified documents earlier this week. We have now learned that law enforcement officials collected some 11 sets of classified documents from the former President's Florida residence on Monday. Several of them were marked "TOP SECRET/SCI" (Sensitive Compartmented Information), the highest level of security classification. That's an even higher level of secrecy than merely "Top Secret". In all, agents collected four sets of "top secret" docs, three sets of "secret" docs and three marked "confidential", the lowest classification. (The latter, akin to the classification level of a handful of emails sent to Hillary Clinton's private email server when she served as Sec. of State.)

It is currently unknown if any of the sensitive and highly classified documents regarded nuclear secrets or not, as Washington Post reported exclusively on Thursday night.

But the arguably larger blockbuster part of this news is the specific crimes detailed in the warrant, for which DOJ officials sought it in the first place and for which they were required to show "probable cause" to the federal judge. Specially, the warrant reveals that Trump was being investigated for at least three different violations of the United States criminal code. As the Times' Charlie Savage summarizes: "Section 793, better known as the Espionage Act, which covers the unlawful retention of defense-related information that could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary; Section 1519, which covers destroying or concealing documents to obstruct government investigations or administrative proceedings; and Section 2071, which covers the unlawful removal of government records."

"Notably," Savage adds, "none of those laws turn on whether information was deemed to be unclassified." That is important, of course, because the Trumpers have been claiming over the last day or so that the disgraced former President declassified all the materials before he stole them from the White House. In fact, whether he did or didn't (and that is likely to be of MUCH dispute), it may not matter when prosecuting the Espionage Act, as well as Obstruction, and the Unlawful Removal of Government Documents.

For the record, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death in 1953 for violations of the Espionage Act.

While all of that is blockbuster enough for one show, receiving much less coverage today is a another of arguably even greater consequence: Democrats (and ONLY Democrats) in the U.S. House on Friday passed the Inflation Reduction Act, including a landmark $370 billion investment to battle climate change. It is the largest such single investment in history by any nation. Moreover the Act includes a ton of other longtime progressive priorities, such as the ability to negotiate Medicare drug prices with Big Pharma, price caps on prescriptions for the elderly, the expansion of Obamacare premium subsidies, new taxes on hugely profitable corporations currently paying zero in taxes and much more. It even puts hundreds of billions toward deficit reduction.

The historic measure, the central pillar of Joe Biden and the Democrats' economic agenda, was passed last weekend in the Senate, also with zero Republican votes, and now heads to the President for his signature.

We are joined today by the great DAVID ROBERTS, who has spent too many years writing about the confluence of politics, climate and energy for many different publications. He now publishes the Volts newsletter and podcast after having joined us at various times over the past 15 years or so to discuss climate matters and what, until now, had been a bevy of failed federal climate and energy policies. Today, however, for the first time, we've got something very real to celebrate which, he suggests, is likely to be a game changer in the fight to mitigate climate change.

"The shortest way to put it," he tells me, in response to my request for his top-line reaction to this bill, "If you recall Obama's stimulus bill, it contained about $90 billion for clean energy. That bill is responsible for kicking off an absolute firestorm of growth in both those markets [solar and wind], basically helping to bring their costs down below fossil fuels and revolutionizing the US energy landscape. That was $90 billion mostly on wind and solar. Now we're talking about $370 BILLION on wind, solar, hydrogen, batteries, go on down the list. So just the math of it, this is going to spur another revolution in US energy."

We discuss the various mechanisms by which this sprawling new law will reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 which he sees as likely a minimum of cuts in the deadly pollution driving our worsening climate crisis. All of which, he describes as "miraculous," given the surprising way it all came about just days ago.

"As you know, about a week ago we were staring in the face of a big goose egg from Congress, a big nothing," Roberts recalls. But that changed when Majority Leader Chuck Schumer struck a deal after secret negotiations with, of all people, Sen. Joe Manchin from the coal state of West Virginia. "So this really is the difference between almost total failure on climate and something very close to the level of success that I would have hoped for and dreamed for."

Roberts walks through several of the key points in the bill that he believes will make the greatest difference in our efforts to cut emissions at the federal as well as state and local level.

"One of the most important aspects of this bill is the transformative effects it's going to have on our political economy. It's going to change politics," he argues. "I like to draw the analogy with the defense industry in the US. They are horrific and evil, but they are very savvy in one way, which is that they spread their investments across all 50 states. So then you have 50 states defending defense spending --- which is obnoxious, but it's a good strategy." It's one that he believes will now be echoed in the renewable energy industry, making it much harder to kill in the future, even in --- and, perhaps especially in --- "red" states.

Roberts also concurs with the explanation climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann offered on this show earlier this week, when explained how the bill's incentives work, largely by turning "carrots" (financial incentives) to encourage renewable energy production into "sticks" that will ultimately take down the deadly fossil fuel industry now that they will face real, cleaner and cheaper competition.

"It's a giant bag of carrots," Roberts quips. "The idea, the theory of change, is that these carrots will accelerate the development of renewable energy even further, even faster, and it's going to undercut the economics of fossil fuels even further, even faster. And so fossil fuels are just going to lose on the market." He goes on to add this key point: "One of the things the models find is this bill is going to cause a net reduction in US demand for oil and gasoline for the first time ever. Ever!"

Of course, there are some progressives who have been critical of the bill's giveaways to the fossil fuel industry, included in the 755-page measure in order to win the needed 50th vote in the Senate of Joe Manchin. Those measures "suck," Roberts concurs, even as many on the left have been (purposely?) misinformed about some of those provisions.

"In the grand scheme of things, in the big picture, they are relatively marginal compared to the massive, massive boost that this is going to give clean energy, and the massive amount of emissions it's going to reduce. There is no credible argument otherwise. This is absolutely a net win."

So, yeah. An absolutely historic day --- on at least two remarkable stories...

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We've been joined countless times over the years on The BradCast by renowned Penn State climate scientist DR. MICHAEL E. MANN. Given the circumstances, he is always remarkably optimistic. Today, there was really something for him to be optimistic about. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

The U.S. Senate held its first hearings on climate change 36 years ago --- led by a Republican Senator from Rhode Island at the time --- and attended by a then new Senator from Tennessee by the name of Al Gore. They were warned, as Washington Post's front page reported at the time, that pollution from the burning of fossil fuels would result in a "greenhouse effect" that would cause the globe to warm "to a level which has not existed on Earth in the past 100,000 years."

Two years later, in 1988, they were warned again by NASA scientist, Dr. James Hansen, that evidence was found that the warming had already begun. "The global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe, with a high degree of confidence, a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect."

"There is no longer any significant difference of opinion within the scientific community about the fact that the greenhouse effect is real and already occurring," Gore made clear at the time, following a conference held in 1985 in Austria which concluded that "as a result of the increasing greenhouse gases it is now believed that in the first half of the next century (21st century) a rise of global mean temperature could occur which is greater than in any man’s history."

Long story short, pretty much everything the scientists warned about has come to pass, much of it even sooner than predicted. And yet, over the ensuing decades the fossil fuel industry has fully captured the Republican Party to the extent that not a single one of them voted over the weekend for the most substantive climate bill ever adopted by the U.S. Senate. The only such bill ever adopted by the Senate, in fact. It only took 36 years, and a tie-breaking vote from the Democratic Vice President, but they did it.

On Sunday, after 16-hours of overnight debate and attempted amendments, the Senate passed the dubiously-named Inflation Reduction Act, so named largely to win the vote of coal state Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. The spending bill will do a lot, including allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices; put a $,2000 annual cap on prescription drug costs for seniors on Medicare; put a $35/month cap on insulin costs for those on government insurance who have diabetes (Republicans forced Dems to kill that provision for those with private insurance); add a new 15% minimum tax on corporations whose annual profits are more than one billion dollars; tax major corporations for buying back their own stock instead of investing in their companies; and it will also pay down the deficit by hundreds of millions of dollars over the next ten years.

But, most importantly, the Act will invest at least $370 billion to combat climate change with incentives for individuals, states and business alike. It will, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Manchin --- and several independent analyses --- cut the greenhouse gas emissions we were warned about decades ago, by about 40% by 2030.

"It is a good day, let's not make any bones about that," says Mann today on the show. "This is, by far, the most aggressive climate legislation --- in fact, the only meaningful climate legislation that has ever passed the U.S. Senate."

"Let's be clear: this isn't the solution. It's not like we've solved the climate crisis. There's a whole lot more work that's left to be done," the author of more than160 peer-reviewed and edited scientific publications and author of more than half a dozen books on the climate crisis tells us. "We need at least 50% reductions by [2030] if we are to stay on course to keeping warming below a really catastrophic 3 degrees Fahrenheit. So there's a lot more work to be done, and there are some things in the bill that some of us wish weren't there. There are some incentives for fossil fuel interests when it comes to drilling leases and pipeline construction, a few bones that were thrown in to get the support of a coal-state Democratic Senator in Joe Manchin." Nonetheless, the bill --- which still must pass the Democrat-controlled House on Friday --- "represents significant progress."

"If you want more progress, if you want more aggressive legislation --- and I certainly do and I think we should expect it --- then we need a larger majority in the U.S. Senate that can pass more aggressive climate legislation," Mann explains. In fact, not one single Republican voted for the measure. It was passed with the barest of majorities. All 50 Senators who caucus with the Democrats (and who, shockingly, stayed unified), plus the vote of the Vice President Kamala Harris.

Mann discusses both the upsides and downside of the bill, including the measures that could expand the use of fossil fuels in order to win the vote of Manchin. But, he asserts, the "carrots" to get off of fossil fuels, as included in the bill, are likely to become "sticks". "If the carrot works, it becomes a stick. Which is to say, if we incentivize renewable energy enough, then fossil fuel energy is no longer competitive."

Of course, he's got much more insight on the measure and what needs to be done moving forward. But it's a start that is "real" and "tangible." he argues. And it only took 36 years to get here --- not a moment too soon.

We open up the phones to some thoughts from callers on all of this today and, of course, our own Desi Doyen has a few as well. A "good day" indeed. We'll take it.

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It appears to be Climate Week on The BradCast. Who knew? Simultaneous record-smashing heat waves across the globe (as discussed in some detail on our previous show) from Asia to the U.S. to Europe (where more than a thousand have already died because of it) will apparently continue to continue all week and, likely beyond. Especially after recent actions by our corrupt Supreme Court and the corrupt Sen. Joe Manchin. But there is still plenty that President Biden and you can do about it. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

In Britain, unlike these United States, they have kept records of temperatures for hundreds of years. And never, until today, has the thermometer broken 40 degrees Celsius. Today it did. Smashing 2019's record of 38.7C (or 101.7 Fahrenheit) to hit a remarkable and sweltering 40.3C (or 104.5 Fahrenheit). As Desi helps to put that into perspective today, Britain is more northern in latitude than Calgary, Canada!

While many meteorologists thought, when they saw 40C predicted by computer models a few weeks ago, that it must have been in error, turns out it wasn't. The Chief Scientist at the U.K.'s Met Office today said this kind of temperature in Britain was "virtually impossible" before human-caused climate change.

Here in the U.S., temperatures in much of the country are also breaking records this week, with heat alerts in more than 20 states. All of that on the heels of the corrupt U.S. Supreme Court, last month, making up a pretend "doctrine" to declare that the EPA may not regulate carbon emissions, even though both the Clean Air Act and the Court's own previous ruling mandate that they must. And on the heels of West Virginia's corrupt "Democratic" Senator Joe Manchin, who makes millions --- both personally and to his campaign coffers --- from the fossil fuel industry.

So, what now? Following Manchin's latest Lucy with the football stunt late last week, President Joe Biden declared he would "use every power I have as President to continue to fulfill my pledge to deal with global warming." That pledge includes cuts to man-made greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming to bring carbon emissions down to 50% of what they were before 2005 by 2030 and to reach net-zero by 2050. But with 50 obstructionist Republicans and (at least) one obstructionist Democrat in the Senate, and a corrupt Supreme Court, what tools are available to Biden at this point?

Plenty, suggests our guest today, DR. LEAH STOKES, author, podcaster, and climate policy expert at U.C.-Santa Barbara. Before we get there today, she offers her thoughts on the corruption of both Manchin and the High Court.

Democrats, she explained, when discussing how far they were willing to go to get Manchin to "yes" on a climate deal, pretty much offered him everything he could have wanted through what amounted to 18 months of his bad faith "negotiations."

"It wasn't far-fetched that he would get to 'yes,' because they were willing to give him a lot of things that he wanted --- things that would have helped invest in jobs in West Virginia. For example, there's a program that helps create manufacturing jobs in coal communities. That was in this package. There was also money for things like carbon capture and sequestration, a technology that Manchin really wants to see happen, as well as hydrogen," explains Stokes. "The [Chuck] Schumer team gave him everything he wanted and he still couldn't get to 'yes' --- claiming that somehow it was inflation, when the reality is that economists have told us that the package would fight inflation."

But, of course, Manchin personally makes millions from his family's coal business. So, as Stokes observes, "It's really not that complicated" as to why he was never negotiating in good faith. "There's that Upton Sinclair quote, 'It's hard to get a man to understand something when his paycheck relies on him not understanding it.' Senator Manchin personally profits from the fossil fuel industry. He's making half a million dollars a year --- that's three times more than his Senate salary --- directly off of fossil fuels. So he is lining his pockets when it comes to the fossil fuel industry. He is in bed with the fossil fuel industry both for his personal profit and for his role as a Senator."

As to the Supreme Court, she notes that, even after their recent opinion, "trying to delay progress from the Biden Administration, just like Sen. Manchin," there are still options left for the President. She explains how "the EPA still retains a lot of authority" and that "the Biden Administration retains very important tools, and they need to start using them right now."

We discuss the potential Executive Actions that Biden can now take --- including the declaration of a National Climate Emergency, which may free up even more actions that he could take --- as well as how his Administration is also now free to block many of the programs that they had been holding out as fig leaves for Manchin (and his fossil fueled GOP pals) on hopes of making a deal, including something called the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia.

But could the Supreme Court subsequently block Biden's Executive Actions as well? We discuss that too. Ultimately, however, as Stokes wrote in her New York Times op-ed over the weekend, despite Manchin, despite SCOTUS, she ultimately remains bullish. "In the long run," she argued, "fossil fuels are just too expensive, dirty and dangerous."

Whether or not humanity will survive that long, remains a separate question, but Stokes cites actions that not only the President can take, but that Governors across the country are already taking, and actions that we can all take which she explains, make an important difference in this fight.

"We should not underestimate the power that we all have," she says, before detailing a long list of things that individuals should be looking at in "our own lives, looking at the fossil fuels that we use," from moving to electric cars and e-bikes, to induction stoves and heat pumps. Especially in states like California, where "a lot of us are going to need air conditioning who haven't had it in the past, and a heat pump is a clean, electric appliance that both heats and cools your home." She notes that CA's Gov. Gavin Newsom recently passed incentives in the budget "that will pay people $3,000 through their contractors to help them afford to put an electric heat pump into their home."

"The solution is not about sacrifice," argues Stokes. "We're talking about cleaner and better technology. It's not about sacrifice, it's really about better solutions. And that's why we're going to win."

Also today, a preview of the closely contested primary races being held today in Maryland, particularly the race for Governor, in one of the few states where Democrats believe they may have a chance of flipping the seat from Red to Blue.

And finally, as our accidental "Climate Week" continues, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with much more on all of the above...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• We've been telling you for months that West Virginia's corrupt Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin --- whose family makes millions from the coal industry and campaign rakes in millions from the fossil fuel industry --- never had any intention of allowing any environmental measures to pass that might actually help reduce the deadly emissions that are causing our climate crisis. Nonetheless, his fellow Democrats and corporate media, like Charlie Brown, seem to keep buying his BS claims that he really really wants to adopt environmental provisions and raise taxes on the wealthy to help pay for them. After months of more pretend negotiations, Lucy pulled the football away from Charlie Brown yet again on Thursday night.

• Gas prices are finally falling. Will Joe Biden get credit for that, since he was inappropriately blamed for Big Oil's record profits from war profiteering and price gouging? (Which all Republicans in Congress refused to outlaw recently?)

• Texas' privatized, unregulated electric grid is on the brink of collapse yet again, thanks to record heat (which is thanks to a fossil fuel industry-sponsored climate crisis that all Republicans and Democrat Joe Manchin refuse to do anything about.) Will Lone Star State voters this November finally figure out who is to blame for the outages --- and hundreds of deaths that continue to come with them --- during both extreme heat and cold in the state?

• Oh, look! The Secret Service seem to have accidentally erased all of their text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, even after the Dept. of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General asked to see them. Luckily, not much happened over those days that the American people would very much like to know about.

• Oh, look! A D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer has reportedly testified to the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection and Donald Trump's other attempts to steal the election that there was a physical altercation with Secret Service officials inside Trump's limo when he wanted to go to the Capitol instead of back to the White House that day. The alleged under-oath corroboration has so far received much less corporate media notice than the anonymous, still-unnamed person at the Service who claimed that Cassidy Hutchinson was lying during her explosive public testimony late last month about what she'd been told about the incident just after it happened. And the Secret Service officials who were supposed to come forward to dispute her story to the Committee have still failed to do so. (Sure would have been helpful if the Service hadn't erased their text messages from that day.)

• Mesa County, Colorado's disgraced County Clerk (and recently failed GOP candidate for Secretary of State), Tina Peters, is in yet more legal trouble. The easily-duped MAGA election fraud conspiracy theorist --- now charged with 7 felonies and 3 misdemeanors related to her orchestrating an illicit scheme to unlawfully copy and publicly distribute very sensitive voting system software last year --- had a warrant issued for her arrest by a Judge on Thursday after she left the state without court permission to speak at another evidence-free MAGA election fraud conspiracy conference in Vegas.

• But the actual election fraud perpetrated by GOP officials running for office continues. Just a few short weeks after 5 of the 10 Republicans running for the Gubernatorial nomination in Michigan were struck from the ballot for turning in tens of thousands of fraudulent petition signatures, it's happened again. This time in New York. The GOP nominee for Governor, U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin --- who voted against confirming Joe Biden's 2020 Electoral College victory and whose website features a "Team Zeldin Election Integrity Task Force" page, vowing to work "around the clock now and into November to ensure we have fair elections" --- apparently turned in nearly 13,000 fraudulent petition signatures, including 900 pages of photocopies of signatures, in hopes of appearing on the Independent Party ballot line this fall. The Libertarian Party challenged the fraudulent signatures and the state Board of Elections confirmed the fraud, denying Zeldin a third line on the November ballot.

• Finally, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report, with a passel of climate related stories that are so grim, we can't even bring ourselves to tease them here. On the other hand, she does have one pretty good piece of news out of California...so there's that!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Rightwing U.S. Supreme Court strikes major blow to EPA's ability to regulate carbon emissions; Residential natural gas stoves leak carcinogens, even when off, study finds; PLUS: Clean energy jobs are booming! Fossil fuel jobs not so much... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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

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

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

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: U.N. warns four key climate change indicators broke new records in 2021; Cutting air pollution from fossil fuels would save 50,000 lives a year in the U.S.; New initiative invests $242 million for clean energy in ten developing countries; PLUS: National forests forced to close as wildfires rage... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): US traffic deaths soar to highest total in 16 years; Australian Greens hope election focus on climate will bring their biggest ever representation; The small, local GA election with major climate significance; Air Pollution Can Mean More, or Fewer, Hurricanes; EV sales see exponential growth curves; Environmental groups oppose extending life of CA nuke plant; Carbon Dioxide pipelines are going dangerously unregulated... PLUS: Vast swath of US at risk of summer blackouts, regulators warn... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Russia cuts off natural gas to two NATO countries; 'Unprecedented' water restrictions on tap for Southern California; Record-breaking heat wave broils India and Pakistan; PLUS: Ford officially launches the all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): U.S. Identifies Possible Wind Power Areas Off Oregon, Atlantic Coasts; Biden Administration Allows Additional Natural Gas Exports; UN Report Says Humanity Has Altered 70 Percent of the Earth’s Land, Putting the Planet on a 'Crisis Footing'; Mystery fires at sensitive facilities compound Russia’s war challenge; How U.S. Gas Exports to Europe Could Lock in Future Emissions; 50bn tonnes of sand and gravel extracted each year, finds UN study... PLUS: Too many new coal-fired plants planned for 1.5C climate goal, report concludes' ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Four solutions to mitigate climate change, from the IPCC; The climate crisis is supercharging rainfall in hurricanes; U.S. solar expansion stalled by rural land-use protests; Why a ban on Russian energy is hard for Germany; US wind energy just hit a major milestone; Advocating inaction: a historical analysis of the Global Climate Coalition; The US needs a better lithium plan... PLUS: In an exception to the Clean Air Act, Biden will allow E15 gas to be sold this summer... and much, MUCH more! ...

A bad day for Donald Trump is generally a good day for America. Today on The BradCast (after horrible and tragic news unexpectedly swept over our show yesterday), it's one of those days. And, if our guest, a former federal prosecutor is correct, there may well be many more such bad days ahead for our disgraced former President. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

FIRST, history was made toward "a more perfect union" on Thursday when the U.S. Senate voted 53 to 47 to confirm Joe Biden's nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, as the nation's first black female Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. She will officially be sworn in and seated in July, at the end of the Court's current term, when Justice Stephen Breyer officially resigns.

SECOND, three more 2022 ballot eligibility challenges were filed today against three more Republican insurrectionists, courtesy of good government group Free Speech for People, this time on behalf of voters in Arizona against Congressmen Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, as well as AZ State Rep. Mark Finchem, the Trump-endorsed candidate for Secretary of State. The new Constitutional challenges follow on similar ones currently being litigated against Rep. Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina and Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia. All are based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment which bars those from holding office who have sworn an oath to support the Constitution, before subsequently, as per 14.3, having “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

THIRD, yet more good news today, as New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a state Court to hold Donald Trump in civil contempt for refusing to comply with a court order to turn over documents, as part of her investigation into bank, tax, and insurance fraud by the former President and his family members, Ivanka and Don Jr. Shortly after that court filing on Thursday, Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg told CNN that his criminal probe into many of the same matters is "very much ongoing," despite the two lead prosecutors in the years-long probe recently resigning after charging that Bragg was not willing to move forward with indictments against Trump.

THEN, we get to our guest today, who may --- depending on how you look at it --- have the best news of all for those hoping to see actual federal prison time for the disgraced former President. It could take a while, but he's here to tell us today that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland's investigation of the January 6th insurrection is proceeding in precisely the way he would expect it to proceed if, in fact, the AG was investigating possible criminal indictments of Trump for his part in inciting the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Writing at Washington Post late last week, RANDALL D. ELIASON, a former Asst. U.S. Attorney in D.C., where he served as Chief of the Public Corruption/Government fraud section, argued that legal critics of Garland, mostly on the left, are wrong. He sees progress by the Department as moving "impressively fast" and "unfolding at an increasingly rapid clip" just over one year into the investigation. (Eliason penned a similar argument late last year at WaPo.)

To date, independent investigative journalist Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel has made one of the loudest cases, in the face of skeptics, that Garland is, indeed, working his way up the legal food chain toward Trump in the DoJ's huge investigation of the J6 insurrection. (She's joined us on the show a number of times in recent months to argue as much.) Today, Eliason says he believes she's absolutely right.

"There's this huge debate on Twitter and elsewhere, whether Garland's doing nothing at all or whether this is just what we should expect [if working toward a potential Trump indictment]. I agree with Marcy Wheeler here that this is exactly what we should expect," he tells me. "The signs are this is in fact what's happening."

"The alternative is you rush, you put together a case without doing it properly just to bring some charges, and you lose. You don't want to bring a half-baked case in something that's this significant or this important. If you're going to bring a case at all, you've got to do it properly."

"Garland's role here is to not be swayed by political pressures, but to take the case wherever the facts and the law lead them, as he said. Which, to me, appears to be exactly what he's doing," argues Eliason, who now teaches white collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School in D.C. "And the suggestions, frankly, from some of the critics, that Biden should replace him, or fire him, or lean on him to do something --- that's exactly what everybody was outraged about when Trump and Barr were doing it. That kind of politicization of the Justice Department --- the idea that Biden should lean on Garland or fire him because he's not moving fast enough --- is the exact opposite of what we want. And the exact opposite of what Biden and Garland promised to do to get away from the Trump era, where Bill Barr was running around and doing favors for Trump cronies, interfering in the administration of justice, and politicizing the Justice Department. That is the last thing we want."

Eliason speaks to how and if DoJ and the House January 6 Committee may be coordinating their efforts, and why some members of that Committee have recently called on the Departments to do more, faster. He also offers insight on why it may be that Mark Meadows, Trump's last Chief of Staff, has yet to be indicted for Contempt after Congress, after being referred for the charge months ago by the House, even as Steve Bannon was indicted within weeks after a similar referral.

In our broad discussion on these matters, we also discuss the unique time elements involved here, in regard to the possibility that Trump could declare his candidacy to run in 2024; what DoJ guidelines mandate regarding investigations or indictments to close to an election; and whether a federal indictment by Biden's Justice Dept. in such a case would be seen by the former President and his cult-like followers as little more than a political vendetta

There's a lot to tune in for here, particularly if you are a Garland skeptic or frustrated with the pace of his investigation. As Eliason reminds us, the Enron indictments came a full four years after the collapse of the company and their scam was exposed. Even Watergate took at least two years before major charges were brought. We are now just over one year out from what has become the largest probe in DoJ history. By far.

In addition to discussion about Trump accountability for his attempts to try and steal the 2020 election, we also discuss Trump's NY legal threats, and what should be done about corrupt, far-right activist Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas following the recent news that his corrupt, far-right activist wife Ginni was relentlessly texting Meadows in the days following Trump's election loss to encourage the Administration to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden, the winner of the 2020 Presidential election.

FINALLY, Desi Doyen joins us for a bit more accountability talk, this time for Big Oil CEO war profiteers who testified this week in Congress, in our latest Green News Report. Also on the GNR rundown today, Europe's move to ban Russian coal, the EPA's plan to finally ban deadly asbestos and the increasing cost to tax-payers --- in dollars and lives --- of increasing power outages during increasingly powerful climate change-fueled storms...

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