Follow @GreenNewsReport...




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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hottest January on record globally surprises scientists; Trump Administration halts all funding for national EV charging network; Trump tries to cancel paper straws; PLUS: Super Bowl ads take a break from electric cars... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Click here to listen or download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): New data shows giant petrochemical plant has failed to boost local economy; More solar and battery storage were added to Texas’ grid than any other power source last year; Trump's freeze stalls federal firefighter hiring; Trump killed a major report on Nature. They're trying to publish it anyway; US-funded group attacking pesticide critics shuts down... PLUS: 'Backsliding': Most countries to miss vital climate deadline as COP30 nears... and much, MUCH more! ...

Follow @GreenNewsReport...




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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump nominates climate science deniers and fossil fuel profiteers to head key federal agencies; Winters are warming up quickly across the U.S.; PLUS: President Biden offers hope for climate action, the first U.S. President ever to visit the Amazon Rainforest... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Click here to listen or download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The climate fight will continue; Trump might nix America as a climate tech leader. 5 charts show China winning that race; Weather extremes influence illegal migration and return between the U.S. and Mexico, study finds; Why hydropower is failing in Zambia --- and could fail others; To protect the ozone layer and slow global warming, fertilizers must be deployed more efficently, UN says... PLUS: EPA in Elon Musk's crosshairs... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast: He hasn't even been sworn in and he's already violating federal law. Surprised? In this case, the law that he's violating is one that he himself signed into law in 2019. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The flood of wholly-unqualified appointments to cabinet level posts and other top appointments, since Donald Trump barely won a plurality (not a majority) of the national popular vote two weeks ago, continues. You're probably well familiar by now with the nominations of alleged child sex trafficker Rep. Matt Gaetz for U.S. Attorney General, the nation's top law enforcement official, and of Fox "News" weekend host Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary.

Neither have any experience leading huge organizations (or even medium-sized ones) with millions of employees --- or even any experience at all at the organizations they have been tapped by Trump to lead. And Hegseth, who was disqualified from serving in the National Guard during Joe Biden's 2021 inauguration as a potential "insider threat" due to his White Supremacist tattoos, was also revealed over the weekend by Washington Post to have paid off a woman to settle her accusations of sexual assault. He reportedly denies the rape allegation, if not the settlement.

The Trump Transition team claims they knew nothing about any of it when they selected Hegseth to head DoD. That should give you chills. Perhaps that's because the Transition team hired a private firm to vet Trump's nominees, rather than rely on the FBI, as they would be doing, had Trump complied with the bipartisan amendment to the Presidential Transition Act that he himself signed into law during his first term.

The measure also requires Presidential candidates to sign agreements with the White House and General Services Administration by October 1 before an election to begin the transition process with a publicly disclosed ethics policy and a public statement of how the future President plans to avoid conflicts of interest while serving, if elected. It allows for FBI vetting of incoming officials to grant access to classified documents and other material from the previous Administration at the nation's 438 Executive Branch agencies that they will control. Signing the agreement, as required by law, also includes a vow that Transition teams may take no more than $5,000 from any one person for certain transition costs, and that they will publicly disclose the names of those donors, among other things.

Donald Trump has, so far, refused to sign any of those agreements, alarming ethics, national security and legal experts as he begins defying federal law (again) even before taking office for a second term as President.

Joining us to explain the national security and other serious consequences and ramifications of all of this is LISA GRAVES. She is uniquely qualified to discuss these issues, given her service in all three branches of the federal government, as a Former Deputy Asst. Attorney General at the U.S. Justice Dept.; former Chief Counsel for nominations in the U.S. Senate; and former Deputy Chief for the Article III Judges Div. of the U.S. Court system. She now heads up the government watchdog and political research organization, True North Research.

We've got a lot to discuss with Graves today, beginning with what alarms her most about Trump's refusal to sign the Presidential Transition Act agreements. She identifies the avoidance of the FBI background investigation process as a "huge red warning flag."

"He does not want his cabinet appointees to go through the regular clearance process. The FBI background process is a long-standing part of the process," she tells me. It's "designed to help look at whether you have any issues that could made you blackmailable. That's part of it. For people who are seeking access to our most sensitive information, there are additional national security assessments. The investigators are looking at: do you have stability, trustworthiness, reliability, discretion. Do you have good character and judgment, honesty, and unquestionable loyalty to the United States to ensure that people who get positions of trust, with access to our most sensitive information, have unquestioned loyalty to the United States and not a foreign power."

Graves argues that "many" of Trump's nominees "have serious deficits in more than one of those categories." She also tells me that Trump's own "track record would raise serious concerns about his trustworthiness, his reliability, about his fitness for having access to information."

As to Trump's plans to force the U.S. Senate into recess, so that he may avoid the Constitution's mandate for "advice and consent" on top-level appoints, she describes the scheme as "un-American, unconstitutional, and unprecedented."

Tune in for much more insight from Graves on all of this on today's program.

FINALLY TODAY... A few more items related to the U.S. House Ethics Committee's ongoing deliberations into whether to release their report on the alleged paid sex trafficking by Gaetz of at least two different 17-year old girls. And then Desi Doyen joins us for details on Trump's newly announced nomination of fracking company CEO and climate change denier Chris Wright as the next chief of the Dept. of Energy. She also has some thoughts on Trump's Interior Dept. nominee, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, and on former Rep. Lee Zeldin who has been nominated to head the EPA, and how ALL of those men spell very bad news for our world's quickly-worsening climate crisis...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Follow @GreenNewsReport...




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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Toronto crippled by extreme storms and floods; Economic losses from extreme heat escalate in U.S.; More frequent severe floods raise concerns over 4,000 aging dams across the country; PLUS: Marathon Oil to pay record fine for oil and pollution in violation of the Clean Air Act... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Click here to listen or download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 'We built our world for a climate that no longer exists'; With sewage gushing into sea, US and Mexican border towns plead for help; Prisoners are uniquely vulnerable to extreme heat and flooding; Biden BLM to add protections against drilling in Alaska Petroleum Reserve; Record salmon migration runs into hot water --- literally; Deadly floods engulf parts of South Asia... PLUS: Britain faces 'age of trade-offs', warned new climate adviser... and much, MUCH more! ...

As noted on today's BradCast, CBS News' legendary radio and TV broadcaster Charles Osgood has passed away at age 91. Other than that, we've got some arguably much brighter news throughout the bulk of today's program. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the many stories covered today...

• Last night, just after midnight, Nikki Haley won every single vote cast in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, the first town in the state to vote in the state's first-in-the-nation Primary on Tuesday. They had a 100% turnout. Haley won all 6 votes. Donald Trump won 0. We discuss why that matters (and doesn't). Voters across the entire state are voting today on hand-marked paper ballots. In Dixville Notch --- and about 40% of towns in the state --- ballots are publicly hand-counted by human beings after polls close. The rest of the towns, the larger ones in general, are tallied by 15 or 20-year old computerized optical scanners. Though, due to a write-in campaign for Joe Biden in the state, where there is no officially sanctioned Democratic primary, most of those towns will be hand-counting a lot of ballots as well. We'll have full reported results out of NH --- and why they matter (or don't) --- on tomorrow's show, of course.

• For years, Republicans have been citing evidence of miscounted votes in Prince William County, Virginia as evidence of massive fraud in the 2020 Presidential race. The state's Republican A.G., after taking office in 2022, even filed criminal charges against the County's Registrar. Recently, however, the charges were unceremoniously dropped. And now we learn that, due to largely understandable tabulation errors, Joe Biden should have received 1,648 more votes than he was credited for, and that Donald Trump was given 2,327 votes that he shouldn't have, in a county that Biden won by more than 60,000 votes --- in a state where the Democrat won the Presidential race by some 450,000 votes. Races for U.S. Senate and U.S. House were also affected by the counting errors, though none of errors would reportedly have changed the results of any contest. We explain the whole mess.

• We've got quite a bit of good news for you today when it comes to redistricting and rolling back GOP racial and partisan gerrymanders! In North Dakota, a federal judge has ordered new state legislative map after Republicans, following the 2020 Census, cracked two Native American reservations into different districts in order to flip both state House and Senate seats from D to R. It worked in 2022. But now, the judge has ordered not only new maps, but also new elections this fall in the districts found to have been in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

• Louisiana's new Republican Governor approved a new U.S. House map for the state this week, after the GOP state legislature finally adopted it last week, following a federal court order to draw an additional majority-Black voting district in the state. The Republican-controlled legislature previously had just 1 such district out of its 6 Congressional seats, despite African-Americans accounting for nearly a third of the statewide population. GOP lawmakers only agreed to do so after many appeals, and after realizing that if they didn't draw up their own maps, the court would do it for them. The new map will likely result in an additional Democratic member of Congress from the Bayou State next year.

• And, in Wisconsin last week, voters filed a motion with the state's newly liberal-leaning Supreme Court seeking a new U.S. House map in time for the 2024 elections. Last month, the state's high court agreed with petitioners that the state GOP's state legislative maps for the Assembly and Senate, in place for more than a decade, were unlawful gerrymanders in violation of state Constitutional requirements. The new motion filed last week asks the same Supreme Court to order a new U.S. House map as well, on the same basis that the Justices determined the state legislative districts were unconstitutional. Petitioners argue that the unconstitutional and politically gerrymandered map resulted in Republicans winning 75% of the state’s Congressional seats despite winning just 50% of the statewide vote in the 2022 election. That year, the closely divided, if Dem-leaning Presidential battleground state also re-elected its Democratic Governor in the same statewide election.

• Finally today, San Diego was deluged on Monday with a year's worth of rain in a matter of three hours, overwhelming infrastructure in the usually mild Southern California city. But, as discussed in our latest Green News Report today with Desi Doyen, it was just one of dozens of cities across the U.S. in recent weeks where infrastructure has been hammered by climate change-fueled extreme Winter weather. Nearly 100 have been killed in the recent storms in a number of states as of airtime. That, as Big Oil gears up a multi-million ad blitz to hoax Americans into supporting fossil fuel friendly candidates in 2024, as the unstoppable transition to clean, renewable energy is finally underway...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

It's impeachment madness on today's BradCast! Also, a whole bunch of Republicans are otherwise quitting, backing down or facing jail time. In other words, Tuesday. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

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

• Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), a U.S. Senator and grown man who goes by the name Tommy, finally backed down from his pointless, one-man, months-long blockade of promotions for more than 400 U.S. military officials. He had been protesting a Pentagon abortion policy that none of the officers in question had anything to do with. The Senate quickly promoted all of them by simple voice vote shortly thereafter.

• House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announces he has "no choice" but to hold a floor vote for a (revenge) Impeachment inquiry of President Biden next week. The announcement follows the latest bombshell disclosure by Oversight Committee Chair and supergenius Rep. James Comer (R-KY) that Republican investigators have discovered secret monthly payments made by China to Joe Biden and laundered through his son, Hunter! Err...Three monthly payments of about a $1,400 each from Hunter Biden to his dad in 2018 to repay him for the purchase of a used truck the then former Vice President helped him buy. (Yes, the same bombshell loan repayment reported almost two years ago by the New York Post.)

• The bow-tied, far-right, but not-insane-enough-for-today's-House-Republicans Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has had enough. He joined a growing number of colleagues announcing they will be quitting at the end of this term.

• An important CORRECTION following my mention yesterday of North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum dropping out of the GOP 2024 Presidential race, and the RNC announces the four candidates who have qualified to appear at Wednesday's night's "Presidential Primary Debate" in Alabama. (Neither Burgum nor Trump will be there. DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy and Christie will, for some reason.)

• The three top officials for Ron DeSantis' "Never Back Down" super PAC have backed down. They quite over the weekend, joining a growing number of other Never Back Downers who have exited the Florida Governor's losing 2024 campaign in recent days.

• Two Republican Cochise County officials, Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, have been indicted on state charges in Arizona for conspiracy and interference of an election officer after refusing to certify the county's 2022 election results because...well, tune in.

• Kim Taylor, the wife of Republican Woodbury County, Iowa Supervisor and failed GOP Congressional candidate has been convicted on 52 counts of election fraud-related charges for falsifying voter registrations and casting dozens of fraudulent votes in the names of others in the 2020 election. Her husband, Jeremy Taylor, named as a co-conspirator, has yet to be indicted for some reason.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report (and our only one this week, due to our coverage of this week's dumb GOP "Presidential Primary Debate") with a bit of surprisingly good news out of the U.N.'s COP28 climate conference this week in Dubai, and more good news on the Biden EPA's new rule that will eliminate all 9 million toxic lead water pipes across the entire nation...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Woah, Nelly! Today's BradCast may arguably be both the dumbest and most fun ever! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The subject material --- Wednesday night's ridiculous GOP 2024 "Presidential Primary Debate" (if it's even worth calling it that) at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library out here in Simi Valley, California --- is what makes it dumb.

It featured seven "candidates" --- former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, supposed businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum --- but not the much-indicted guy who Republicans apparently intend, for now, to actually nominate for the job next year.

Our excellent special coverage panelists --- award-winning blogger and columnist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and "DRIFTGLASS" of the Professional Left Podcast from "Flyover Country, Illinois" --- are what make it fun.

Hear Digby discuss the GOP's "Bizarro World alternet universe" and the "big orange elephant in the room"! Hear Driftglass explain the "Doomsday machine with no off switch" and "the smelly wet sock of the mainstream media"! Also, Doug Burgum!

To paraphrase Haley last night, hearing us today may help you "feel a little bit dumber." I'd tell you more, but that would ruin all the fun...and most of the dumbness! Enjoy!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

On today's BradCast, it's special coverage of the first GOP Presidential Primary debate of the 2024 campaign. It featured eight candidates, none of which were named Trump, But he was there anyway. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

The raucus two-hour debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was sponsored by Fox "News" and held before a rowdy audience of booing and cheering Republicans who, at times, resembled a pro wrestling crowd --- or a lynch mob --- more than supporters of an American political party.

The actual participants on the stage were (in order of polling popularity before the debate): Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; 38-year old entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (who, if you hadn't heard of him before last night, you probably have now); Former Vice President Mike Pence; Former South Carolina Gov. and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley; Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; South Carolina U.S. Senator Tim Scott; Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson; North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (who, if you hadn't heard of him before last night, you may still have no idea who he is today.)

We're joined today by some favorite BradCast special coverage guests to try and make sense of it all. (Which was no easy feat, frankly!) HEATHER DIGBY PARTON is a longtime, award-winning columnist at Salon and founder of Digby's Hullabaloo blog; "DRIFTGLASS" is otherwise known as both @Mr_Electrico on the site formerly known as Twitter and occasional as just "Bill" back at home in "Flyover Country, Illinois" where he produces the weekly Professional Left Podcast.

Among the questions asked, answered and/or discussed today...

• Who and what is Vivek Ramaswamy? And why was he both the target and obnoxious star of the evening?
• What did all those red ties worn by everyone but Christie, Hutchinson and Haley actually mean?
• What happened to Great White (Non-Trump) Hope DeSantis? Why was he largely ignored? And why was he screaming?
• Holy crap! Was that a question about Climate Change on a Fox 'News' sponsored debate?!
• Has Pence been underestimated after so many years in Trump's shadow?
• Did Haley help or hurt herself in calling for a "new generation" of GOP leaders (while clearly being part of the old generation of GOP leaders)?
• Wait, they all think Pence did the right thing on January 6, 2021, but almost all of them would support Trump next year even if convicted on felony crimes?
• Have Christie and Pence figured out how to use the Constitution as a weapon against Trump?
• Remember when even Republican debates included actual policy issues?
• Who on that stage would be more likely than Trump to defeat Joe Biden next year?
• If Trump is somehow removed from contention, who becomes the party's front-runner?
• Was Trump right or wrong to stay out of the debate?

All of that and many more questions asked, answered, discussed or dodged on today's special edition of The BradCast, as Trump heads to a jail in Atlanta to be booked on his fourth criminal indictment of the year and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asks the Court [PDF] to begin his racketeering trial just two months from now in October(!) and as the once Grand Ole Party continues its long, dangerous descent into madness.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: The judge quickly approved Willis' request for an October 23 trial, but only for Trump attorney Ken Chesebro (alleged architect of the fake electors scheme), who invoked Georgia's speedy trial law. The other defendants do not yet have a trial date. So The Cheese stands alone...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

PROGRAMMING NOTE: The BradCast and Green News Report are standing down until after the Labor Day Holiday! See you in September!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

We're back! And with good news on today's BradCast...whether the media have been reporting it that way over the past week, as we've been on a break, or not. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST UP, some notable quick news headlines today --- and some from last week --- which we'll undoubtedly jump deeper into in the days and weeks ahead. Including...

• Cartoonishly corrupt Republican Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, is impeached by the hard-right Texas legislature.
• Cartoonishly corrupt Republican activist and pretend journalist James O'Keefe is sued by Project Veritas --- his own ironically named nonprofit --- for waste, fraud and abuse.
• A bunch of new Republicans entered the fray for the 2024 Presidential nod (the unhung Mike Pence, the disgraced Chris Christie and some guy named Doug Burgum).
• One Republican, popular New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, smartly announces he's not running.
• And progressive activist and academic Cornel West announces he's running for President under a third-party banner.

THEN, its on to the one story that made me wish I wasn't on vacation last week (well, a little, anyway.) And that's the story of President Biden outfoxing the GOP to take three Republican-engineered fiscal cliffs off the table over the next two years, all for the price of less than one, in his ingenious debt ceiling deal with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy...who got hosed in the bargain.

As you may know, we were all in favor of Biden avoiding negotiations entirely, invoking the 14th Amendment to declare the dumb Debt Ceiling law unconstitutional, and ordering the Treasury Department to simply pay our bills without disruption to avoid a first-ever U.S. default. If anyone had a prob with that, they could sue him --- or try to --- in order to force the global economy meltdown that would have come with such a default.

But Biden, and his lead negotiator, Steve Richetti, came up with a much better idea. In the bargain, they took not one, not two, but three GOP fiscal cliffs off the table for the price of less than one budget negotiation this fall. And it all would have been much more difficult if Biden had taken the leverage of invoking the 14th off the table.

In short (much more detail on today's show), the President outfoxed Republicans. Bigly. And where they had demanded some 18% in cuts to government spending, they got a measly 0.2% over the next ten years. In the bargain, the Debt Ceiling is suspended until 2025 and spending will largely stay flat over the next two years on a few non-defense matters.

Make no mistake. There are some cuts in the deal that suck. But nothing more than Biden would have been forced to give away anyway in order to avoid a protracted Government shutdown with obstructionist Republicans when a new budget would be needed at the beginning of the next fiscal year this October.

As British columnist Will Hutton correctly opined on Sunday, while "It is easy to write off President Joe Biden as a senile, 80-year-old duffer," the deal was "massively weighted in his favour" and represented an "extraordinary victory".

It's a shame that so many in the U.S. media --- on the Right, Left and Other --- seem incapable of reporting it that way, in order to properly educate the American electorate about what actually just happened.

We try to balance the scales a bit on that score on today's program before opening the phones to callers in the second half of the show to hear why they believe we might be wrong about all of this. (SPOILER ALERT: We're not!)

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

It's another one of those elections-have-consequences episodes of The BradCast. Happily, most of those consequences are good ones today! [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

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

• On Friday, Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill that will re-enfranchise more than 50,000 formerly incarcerated felons in Minnesota. That very good news for voting rights and democracy follows on the recent adoption of several other critical progressive measures in the state, including protecting abortion rights and mandating 100% carbon-free electricity. The new laws were all passed and since January, after Democrats won a trifecta in the state last November, winning the Governor's mansion and taking control of both chambers of the legislature for the first time in nearly a decade.

• After flipping a stunning 12 seats in the Pennsylvania statehouse in last year's midterms, Democrats in the chamber now have a majority for the first time in more than a decade and have finally seated Joanna McClinton as the state's first African-American female House Speaker. The months-long roller coaster ride toward between last year's elections and McClinton becoming Speaker includes the unexpected death of a lawmaker and three special elections since last November, the surprise election of a different Speaker earlier this year, and the thinnest possible one-seat margin for Democrats in the House. We 'splain the full crazy story.

• In Colorado, former Mesa County Clerk and aggressively gullible election fraud conspiracist, Tina Peters, has been found guilty of obstruction, after she refused a lawful warrant to turn over an iPad containing courtroom videos a judge instructed her not to take. While she could face several months in jail on that conviction, there is likely much more trouble ahead for the disgraced Republican and last year's failed GOP Sec. of State candidate. Peters faces a separate trial later this year on seven criminal felonies and three misdemeanors related to sneaking into her county's secured voting system room in the middle of the night while still serving as County Clerk, turning off the security cameras and making illicit copies of sensitive Election Management System software with two accomplices following the 2020 Presidential election. That proprietary software was subsequently leaked to the public while she was on stage at an election denier's conference in 2021. As all of this plays out, Peters --- who has become somewhat of a hero to some equally duped knuckleheads on the Right --- is hoping to become the next Chair of the Colorado Republican Party.

• As discussed on one of our programs last week, we are now waiting to hear whether the corrupted, stolen and packed U.S. Supreme Court will allow President Biden's lawful program to forgive up to $20,000 to federal student loan borrowers making less than $125,000 in annual income. In the meantime, receiving much less news coverage is the Administration's program to refund billions to students ripped off by for-profit schools which lied about their credentials, hoaxed students into enrolling and/or who have gone out of business in recent years. The program, begun during the Obama Administration, was largely put on ice by Donald Trump's Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Following a court settlement last year against DeVos, the program has now begun refunding students, many of whom owe hundreds of thousands of dollars for their scam diplomas.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our 1,300th Green News Report! Including long overdue good news for the world's oceans; good news for solar energy in France; another train derailment in Ohio, and a legal threat to Minnesota's new law mandating 100% clean electricity by 2040...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Follow @GreenNewsReport...

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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: After 20 years, world governments reach historic deal to protect marine biodiversity on the high seas; France to cover parking lots with solar panels; North Dakota may sue to stop Minnesota's new clean electricity standard; PLUS: Another Norfolk Southern train derails in Ohio... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Click here to listen or download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Winter storm will stretch 1,800 miles from Plains to Northeast; Meat, dairy and rice production will bust 1.5C climate target; 'Silicon Valley of Lithium': controversial Nevada lithium mine breaks ground; Carbon dioxide emissions reached a record high in 2022; What is 'Cop City?'; Oil CEO who will head 2023 climate talks calls for change [but not phaseout of fossil fuels]; Billion-dollar power lines finally inching ahead to help US grids; What to know about the 'Red Tide' hitting Florida beaches ... PLUS: Mapping California’s ‘Zombie’ Forests ... and much, MUCH more! ...

With the bipartisan January 6 Committee having postponed today's hearing, we take the opportunity on today's BradCast to spend some time rebutting the disgraced former President's supposed rebuttal to the two damning hearings held to date. But, of course, we've got much more as well, including election results from Tuesday and evidence of both voting system problems and bad faith elected MAGA officials already trying to disenfranchise 2022 voters. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

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

• An error caused by paper jams during ballot scanning on Election Day at the precincts on the state's computer tabulators in Iowa during their June 7 primaries has reportedly resulted in a whole bunch of recounts across the state. Cedar Rapid's KCRG cites an email from the Sec. of State's office which has lead to those recounts, in hopes of reconciling the number of ballots misreported by the scanners as cast with the number of voters who actually signed in to vote.

• Noteworthy election results from four states which held primaries on Tuesday (Maine, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina) and one (Texas) which purposely held a low-turnout U.S. Special Election yesterday, instead of at the same time as their regular primaries in March or primary runoffs in May. While we cover a lot of Tuesday's races, and why they matter (or don't), the most disturbing one is likely the Secretary of State's race in Nevada, where a 2020 election denialist by the name of Jim Marchant has apparently won a 38% plurality to become the GOP's nominee to become the critical swing-state's chief election official in advance of the 2024 election.

• The dangers of an election denier like Marchant, who served as one of the state GOP's fake electors in 2020, and who has said he wouldn't have certified Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump that year had he been SoS at the time, is a stark warning of what lies ahead. But we're already seeing the dangers of brain-poisoned MAGA Mobsters in positions of elected authority. The three-person County Commission in a very right-leaning rural county in New Mexico, is refusing to certify results from their June 7 primary. Even though votes are cast on hand-marked paper ballots across the state, the County Commission unanimously voted against certification of primary results, citing distrust of the County's digital ballot scanners made by Dominion Voting. They have no evidence of fraud, which might otherwise allow a court to order the hand-count they are seeking. They just don't trust the results in the County where Trump won 62% of the vote in 2020. The Republican County Clerk is furious and the Democratic Sec. of State is now suing the County Commission ahead of this Friday's deadline for County certification. Expect much more of this in the months and years ahead. We've long warned about exactly this type of fallout from our irresponsible rush to the use secret vote casting and counting systems made by private vendors and the avenues it opens for opportunists to claim fraud without any evidence of same.

• On Monday night, after the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and other efforts by Trump to steal the 2020 election, our corrupt former President issued a 12-page rebuttal [PDF] to the Committee's first two hearings. We rebut his dumb rebuttal today. It leans heavily on tired, long-ago debunked nonsense, such as his lead in some swing-states on Election Night "inexplicably" disappearing (after heavily-Republican polling place ballots were quickly tallied before the arduous task of opening and verifying and counting heavily-Democratic vote-by-mail ballots one-by-one) and how thousands attended his rallies, while Biden chose not to hold super-spreader events during the worst pandemic in 100 years. Much of Trump's (ghost-writer's) claims were already debunked during the Committee hearings to date, which he seems to presume that his supporters didn't watch or are too dumb to understand.

  Trump's ghost-writer spends most of the rebuttal ink citing what is laughably described as "indisputable proof" of "Ballot Trafficking" presented in the repeatedly debunked 2000 Mules movie. That's a pretend documentary film created by a long-discredited GOP "election integrity" group named True the Vote and a rightwing activist named Dinesh D'Souza who actually pleaded guilty himself to several federal election fraud crimes before he was later pardoned by Trump.

  As noted, the film has been repeatedly debunked, including by us, several times by now. Months before it was even released, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) and FBI concluded the group's claims about cell phone data purporting to reveal evidence of "ballot harvesting" by "mules" of tens or hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots cast in drop-boxes, in fact, reveals no crimes at all. A GA state Board of Elections investigation after the movie's release found that supposed "ballot mules" in Atlanta, shown via security camera footage in the film, were just regular voters legally casting their own ballot and those of direct family members. None of the "mules" are ever seen in the film visiting a drop-box or multiple boxes more than once.

  But, perhaps the most stinging rebuttal came from Trump's own Attorney General, Bill Barr this week. During sworn testimony to the J6 Committee, shared by the panel on Monday, Barr laughed out loud at even the mention of the name of the film, before going on to explain how he found it to be "singularly unimpressive," "indefensible," and that it failed to "establish widespread illegal harvesting." That, of course, is a long way from the "indisputable proof" Trump's dumb rebuttal claimed it to be.

• Finally, speaking of the House J6 Committee, Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney released a video teaser on Tuesday for its next upcoming hearing scheduled for Thursday. This one will focus on the pressure Trump placed on Vice President Mike Pence to help him steal the 2020 election by tossing out valid Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021. Cheney's teaser video includes testimony from one of Trump's top White House attorneys who says he warned outside lawyer John Eastman, who developed the scheme for Pence to toss out the votes, to "get a great f'ing criminal defense lawyer," adding "you're gonna need it."

Special Coverage of tomorrow's J6 Hearing, of course, on tomorrow's BradCast!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Follow @GreenNewsReport...

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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Climate change is changing Western U.S. forests, and altering mountain snowpack; December heat wave breaks records, sparks unusual late-season fires; Climate change is coming for Christmas trees; PLUS: Oil giant Shell ditches controversial Cambo drilling project in Scotland... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Click here to listen or download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): A fraught and rocky energy transition pathway; CO2 tax at Europe's border: Revolution or protectionism?; One U.S. state consumes half the oil from the Amazon rainforest; Gambling 'America’s Amazon': toxic coal ash waste pit in one of America’s most biodiverse river systems; How state and local governments can leverage landfill solar; Norway rules out 2022 oil licenses in unexplored areas... PLUS: Desertification: How to stop the shifting sands... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Even though creepy liars like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz "guaranteed" we'd no longer be talking about "COVID! COVID! COVID!" after Election Day, it turns out they were wrong. Who could have predicted it? And what else are we still talking about after the election? The election! Because Trump is continuing his desperate efforts to try and steal it from the voters and Joe Biden, the candidate they elected. But it would be a mistake to ignore what Trump is trying to do. We think. [Audio link to show is posted below summary.]

Among the many stories covered on today's show, we begin with the pandemic...

• U.S. hits a grim official milestone, with quarter of a million now dead from COVID-19, most of them unnecessarily so, thanks to our deranged President, experts now predict we may see 400,000 fatalities by February. The President of the United States remains in his bunker and has offered no comment;

• The CDC implores Americans to limit travel and gatherings over next week's Thanksgiving holiday;

• As the pandemic surges out of control in all 50 states, those with denialist leaders who failed to implement serious restrictions are now the ones with the highest per-capita infection, hospitalization and death rates. So, yeah, the highest rates are, by far, in "red" states by and large, while "blue" states, like California and New York have among the lowest rates. (Note to Republicans: Election Day is over. You don't have to lie about COVID anymore to try and help Trump get re-elected. You can now start protecting the lives of your fucking constituents like you should have done months ago.)

Then it's on to the, yes, still-uncertified election...

• While the bulk of the GOP remains in as much denial about the Presidential election as they are about the coronavirus, and the pathetic Trump Administration continues to delay important transition work to a Biden Administration, a few cracks in the wall are beginning to form, even visible from the wingnut couch on Fox & Friends crew and even by Mitch McConnell;

• But the two Wayne County, Michigan wingnuts --- who held out for three hours with phony claims about "voter fraud" in Detroit before agreeing to certify the County's results --- are also having trouble letting go. They want yet another do-over vote to rescind the certification following a call from Trump. The state says that won't happen. But state certification is still to come next Monday and the state Board of Canvassers is constructed the same way the Wayne County Board is: a four-person Board with two Ds and two Rs. So anything could happen by the time they are set to vote to certify results in the state next week, where, by all available evidence, Biden trounced Trump by nearly 160,000 votes;

• Michigan is not the only state where some GOP dead-enders are hoping to somehow block certification of the November 3rd election. Similar (if likely similarly futile) efforts are afoot in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada;

• Failure, however is not a roadblock for Trump, a man for whom the idea of simply doing the right thing has never occurred. On Thursday, he invited the Republican legislative leaders of the gerrymandered Michigan state House and Senate to the White House for a meeting on Friday, where it's expected he will try to convince them to convene a vote of the state legislature to override the popular democratic will of the voters and award the state's elector to The Loser instead;

• And for those who say The Loser's scheme could never EVER actually happen, I tend to agree with you (Desi may not). But I would also urge you, by all means, to NOT read this article today by Democratic strategist Chris Marshall headlined: "Are you sure Trump's plan to steal the election has failed? You shouldn't be".

Finally, for some less terrifying news, ironically enough...

• Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the UK accelerates its phase out of gas cars to 2030; Major U.S. automakers are revealed to have known about the dangers of global warming 50 years ago and lied about it; Trump's Interior Dept. reverses a conservation project that Trump bragged about on the campaign trail; and a major city moves to phase out all fossil fuels in all new buildings...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Follow @GreenNewsReport...

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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Big and bad news for pipelines, good news for those who oppose them; Japan reeling from another round of record rains and catastrophic floods; Warren Buffett bids to control nearly 20 percent of nation's natural gas storage; PLUS: House Democrats unveil comprehensive proposal to reach net zero emissions by 2050... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Climate Activists See ‘New Era’ After Three Major Oil and Gas Pipeline Defeats; Climate change denial expands on Facebook as scientists face restrictions; Grim Day for Pipelines Shows They’re Almost Impossible to Build; US signs order for first West Coast gas-export terminal; Rapid Arctic Meltdown In Siberia Alarms Scientists... PLUS: Think Covid-19 Disrupted the Food Chain? Wait and See What Climate Change Will Do... and much, MUCH more! ...