On today's BradCast: Just days from Alabama's mid-term primaries next week --- in which Sec. of State John Merrill (R) will be on the ballot himself --- we share a wild, and often inexplicable, string of bizarre emails sent sent to me over the past week by the state's chief election official. [Audio link to show follows below.]

The weird story begins late last year, with the contentious and closely watched December U.S. Senate special election in Alabama between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones. On election night, following the state's computer-tallied results reported a narrow victory for Jones, Merrill inaccurately stated on CNN that "any candidate can ask for a recount and if they pay for it, they can receive a recount."

After UC Irvine's highly-regarded election law expert, Rick Hasen, noted on Twitter that Merrill appeared to be in error, that AL's state election code appeared to allow only candidates in NON-federal races to request and pay for a recount if the margin was larger than 0.5%, Merrill blocked him, rather than correct his own error or cite a different section of the state law to support his assertions. That pattern would be repeated as Merrill blocked other election law experts on Twitter.

Days later, the Secretary of State injected himself into a Twitter exchange I was having with others, to insist, repeatedly and inaccurately that Alabama's computerized paper ballot scanners "do not capture or preserve digital ballot images." In fact, they do, as made clear during a successful state court action just before the election. (My interview at the time with one of the organizers of the lawsuit is here). Merrill, however, was able to have the ruling stayed by the AL Supreme Court the night before the election. (My election day interview, with one of the plaintiff attorneys is here.)

Rather than cite evidence during the, extremely bizarre Twitter conversation [PDF], Merrill ended up blocking me there as well.

All of which brings us to last week, when a federal court in New York determined that public officials --- in that case, the President of the United States --- was in violation of the Constitution's First Amendment for blocking perceived "political opponents" on Twitter. (My interview with one of the plaintiffs in that case is here.)

Before we covered the ruling on a BradCast last week with University of Kentucky College of Law constitutional expert Joshua A. Douglas, who had also been blocked by Merrill (my interview with him on that earlier last year is here), I sought comment from the Secretary as to whether he intended to restore those he'd blocked, given the federal court ruling.

The subsequent string of bizarre emails [PDF] and phone calls I then received from the state's top election official is remarkable, and we share those on today's show, in the interest of Alabama voters who head to the polls next week.

In addition to steadfastly refusing to unblock the election law experts and journalists he's blocked on Twitter, Merrill unleashes a number of unhinged and often inexplicable rants in response to polite queries about both the Twitter blocks and whether Merrill has asked county election officials to set their vote tabulation computers to preserve scanned ballot images in the upcoming primary, in order to make public oversight of results somewhat easier.

At several points, Merrill's Deputy Chief of Staff and Communications Director John Bennett attempted to intercede via both email and phone. As I explain on the show today, the call from Bennett was very pleasant and he seemed to me, in truth, somewhat embarrassed by his boss' behavior. But he promised to get back to me after looking into both the Twitter ruling and the issue of Alabama's ES&S computer tabulation systems capturing digital ballot images. A note he sent shortly thereafter confirmed that they do. (See the PDF linked above for details.)

But, then Merrill blew things up again, with another string of emailed rants. Among the odd attacks from the emails in which the first term Sec. of State describes himself as "a nationally recognized expert in the field of elections", Merrill charges that I have a "problem...bigger than one that I have the ability to solve" (but refuses to specify what that "problem" might be), that I live with my mother (I don't), "has absolutely no idea what [I'm] talking about" (despite some 15 years of covering elections and voting systems as a journalist), and should try to "get a job with an elections program system" so I can "contribute to the discussion as an expert in the field". That's just a taste.

As noted today, I didn't even want to cover this at all, in truth, because it's largely just embarrassing for Merrill. But when I realized he was actually on the ballot next week, it seemed this was information that voters in Alabama deserved to know before making their decision. For the record, Merrill is being challenged in the Republican primary by Michael Johnson. On the Democratic side, two candidates, Heather Milam and Lula Albert-Kaigler. (She ran unsuccessfully against Merrill in 2014, though I can't find an official campaign website for her now.)

Also today: A new book by a longtime senior adviser to President Obama reportedly reveals that he feared sanctions against Russia before the 2016 election might have resulted in hacked computer tabulation systems (despite public assertions by the Administration before and after that Presidential results could not be easily manipulated by foreign attack), and election officials in a number of states are now reportedly very concerned about hacking --- or the perception that results were tampered with --- in advance of the crucial 2018 midterm elections (just as we've been warning, non-stop, for more than a decade.)

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as climate change wreaks havoc with a number of deadly storms over the Memorial Day weekend...

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, Trita Parsi helps us make sense of the Israel/Syria attacks. I'm Angie Coiro of In Deep sitting in the host chair today.

Trita Parsi from the National Iranian American Council helps us get through the "they started it" claims around yesterday's attacks. We spend some time deconstructing media reports and voices on the issue. He talks, too, about the Americans still held hostage in Iran, and potential long-term consequences of Trump pulling out of the nuclear agreement.

Then Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch talks about the release of American hostages from North Korea. I ask him about Israel kicking a Human Rights Watch employee out, based on his support of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Then it's back to Gina Haspel, as more news came out today about inaccuracies in her Senate testimony. Daphne Eviatar of Amnesty International details Amnesty's call for Haspel's CIA bid to be rejected.

Finally, we dig to the source of all those troublesome Scott Pruitt emails with Elena Saxonhouse, senior attorney with the Sierra Club. It was the Sierra Club's dogged insistence on getting 24,000 pages of emails that opened up all those tales.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

On today's BradCast, I'm sitting in for Brad again on a very, very busy news day. Strap in!

Top of the hour we swing right into a conversation about Gina Haspel's Senate Intelligence Committee Hearing. Her best qualification to head the CIA might be her complete refusal to share any real information with anyone - including something as simple as whether she's met alone with Donald Trump. Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel is back on the BradCast, with her impressions from watching the hearing, and a lot of questions that didn't get asked - at least, in the short window between the first question and the doors closing for private interrogation.

We're running out of people who haven't given money to Michael Cohen. Add to previous lists AT&T, Novartis, and one of Vladimir Putin's close (and apparently quite dangerous) buddies. AT&T says it paid not for access, but to "learn how Trump's mind works" (note the "how" - "whether" didn't come up, apparently). Legal scholar Jed Shugerman, who blogs at Shugerblog, puts these new revelations into the long Russia/Trump timeline and says - while that elusive smoking gun isn't flashing on the horizon yet - collusion charges seem a little bit closer.

Digital strategist Beth Becker reads the tea leaves from this week's elections, to see what we can glean for the next go-round. She has a dismaying but all too likely prediction: some very good, highly qualified liberal candidate will have to go down in flames before the center-to-Left Americans will finally see the value in unifying. In other words, the Bernie Bros and Crooked Hillary contingents need to stand down and deal. She has a great albeit tentative prediction for Hillary, though. Beth conducts digital strategy bootcamps around the country. You can check out the next dates here.

Finally, something a bit bigger picture: whither ethics in the morass of politicians for sale, corporate lies, candidate lies, voter interference - where do we learn honesty? How? Who gets it and who doesn't? The show wraps up with excerpts from discussion all about honesty in America, featuring Stanford's Deborah Rhode. You can hear the whole one hour panel at website for my show, In Deep with Angie Coiro.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

On today's BradCast: Rudy Giuliani works his magic as he settles in as the newest attorney on Donald Trump's personal legal defense team --- and it appears to have exploded spectacularly. And Ohio's Sec. of State and two largest counties are slapped with an election transparency lawsuit just days before next Tuesday's primary in the Buckeye State. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

First up: On Wednesday night, the former NYC Mayor stunned Sean Hannity of Fox "News" when he told him on air that Trump reimbursed his embattled "fixer" and personal lawyer Michael Cohen for the $130,000 in hush money paid to Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 Presidential election. The payment, which Trump had long denied making himself, was meant to cover up an alleged affair Trump had with the porn star. Then, on Thursday morning, Giuliani dug the hole deeper by making clear, once again on Fox "News", that the payment was meant to protect Trump's candidacy.

All of which means that Trump is likely in even more --- and perhaps even criminal --- trouble, regarding serious campaign finance violations which Giuliani seems to have thought he was helping Trump avoid. We discuss and try to clarify the President's newly revealed legal peril on that front today, even as Trump (or his attorneys) took to Twitter to reverse his own previous denials by admitting that he did, in fact, reimburse Cohen for the payments to Daniels.

As Politico's Jack Shafer wryly tweeted today: "Having Giuliani in the mix is almost like having a second Trump."

Then, as we try to stay focused amidst all the noise, we're joined by election transparency expert JOHN BRAKEY and longtime election attorney CHRIS SAUTTER, both of Americans United for Democracy, Integrity and Transparency in Elections (AUDIT USA) about their lawsuit just filed in Ohio in advance of the state's 2018 mid-term primary next Tuesday.

The suit echoes a similar one filed last December in Alabama before that state's much-watched U.S. Senate Special Election between Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore. (That suit was successful in a lower court, before the state's woeful Sec. of State John Merrill convinced their Supreme Court to stay the ruling at the last minute.) The new complaint seeks to force Ohio's Secretary of State Jon Husted and its two most-populous counties, Cuyahoga (Cleveland) and Franklin (Columbus), to retain digital ballot images created by the counties' computer scanners as hand-marked paper ballots are initially scanned during tabulation.

Those images, as Brakey explains, allow the public to safely examine the accuracy of election results without disturbing the original paper ballots and, according to Sautter (and several court rulings in other states), complies with federal election law requiring the retention of all election materials for 22 months after federal elections.

The pair detail why preventing the destruction of the images in question is at the center of the multi-partisan suit filed in Ohio, and why they plan to continue pressing election officials in Ohio and in many other states and counties around the country to ensure that digital ballot scanners are set to retain all such images for public oversight after Election Day.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with still more bad news for corrupt EPA chief Scott Pruitt and for the planet itself, but also with a bit of good news for NYC, Hawaii, and even one of China's major cities...

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: Seventeen states sue the Trump Administration over rollback of car emissions standards; Still more new ethics problems for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt; Pakistan sets all-time world heat record for the month of April; Good news for breathers in NYC, China and Hawaii; PLUS: Russia launches world's first floating nuclear power plant... 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): The Last-Ditch Climate Strategy of Total Retreat Is Failing in America; Scott Pruitt’s top communications official is leaving the EPA; 9 Of 10 Air Pollution Deaths Occur In Developing Countries: WHO Study; Trump’s Solar Tariffs Cause a Scramble in the Industry; Hawaii Approves Bill Banning Sunscreen Believed To Kill Coral Reefs; New Vulnerability Found In Systems Used In Electric, Gas Industries; Earth’s atmosphere just crossed another troubling climate change threshold; Diseases Spread By Ticks, Mosquitoes And Fleas Tripled In Us Since 2004... PLUS: US-British Project Launches To Study The World’s Most Dangerous Glacier... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: The chaos that is the Trump Administration continues to move faster than anyone can possibly keep up with. But we try. [Audio link to show follows below]

First up today: Late last week a judge in Arkansas found the state's second try at a Photo ID voting restriction law to be as unconstitutional as the one struck down by the state Supreme Court four years ago. The new measure, adopted by Arkansas' Republican-majority legislature, has now been blocked in advance of the state's mid-term primaries coming up later this month. Leslie Rutledge, the state Attorney General who unsuccessfully defended the law, failed to demonstrate any evidence of voter fraud in court. The state is now appealing the lower court ruling. But, as we reported back in 2014, Rutledge herself committed actual voter fraud when she voted by mail in Arkansas even after registering to vote in Washington D.C.!

News out of Texas on this front is not as encouraging, as a split decision by a three-judge panel on the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to allow that state's new version of its voter-suppressing Photo ID law to be used in the 2018 mid-terms, though opponents are likely to appeal. Lower courts --- and even a unanimous panel on the 5th Circuit itself --- have repeatedly found both versions of the state's GOP-adopted state statute to be unlawful and/or in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Then, we're joined today by national security journalist MARCY WHEELER of Emptywheel to try and make sense of, among other things, the nearly four dozen questions said to be from Robert Mueller's Special Counsel probe for Donald Trump, as published by the New York Times on Monday night after apparently being leaked by someone on Team Trump. Those questions include queries on Trump's alleged obstruction of justice, as well as Team Trump's so-called "collusion" with Russia before and after the 2016 election.

Wheeler explains why she believes the information was leaked and how its being desperately used by Trump to (falsely) suggest the Special Counsel has found no evidence of "collusion", despite the many published questions in the list which cite issues related to a conspiracy between Russians and members of the Trump Campaign.

"These guys are incompetent at governing and most every other thing, but they are very competent at playing the press. And they have played the press for the last six months, making it seem as if the only risk to Trump has to do with obstruction," Wheeler argues. "More than a third of these questions go to the conspiracy. It was never just about just obstruction."

We also try to make sense of the bizarre, late-breaking story regarding Trump's infamous gastroenterologist, Dr. Harold Borenstein, who is now charging that Trump's longtime personal bodyguard Keith Schiller and a Trump Organization lawyer "raided" his office last year to take Trump's medical records without the required legal forms, shortly after Borenstein told the media that Trump uses a hair-loss drug.

Wheeler also offers her insights into the new evidence suggesting that Trump is now tossing his old business partner and personal lawyer Michael Cohen under the bus in the wake of the recent FBI raids on Cohen's office and residences. "There are so many weird things about the Cohen thing that I hesitate to settle on an explanation for what's going on there, aside from the fact that I think that yeah, Trump is worried about him flipping."

All of it is perhaps best summed up by Wheeler's comment today: "It's a mess. Trump is in trouble."

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report as an EPA whistleblower (and Trump supporter) charges that embattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt lied to Congress during recent testimony, and the Trump Administration is trying again to rollback fuel efficiency standards for vehicles. Both of those stories also have late updates today, as we now learn that two top (and controversial) EPA officials have recently resigned amid the mountain of Pruitt-related scandals, and as California and 17 other states sue the Trump Administration over its new attempt to rollback fuel efficiency...

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: As usual, the big headlines obscure the most disturbing ones. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

On Friday, the Democratic National Committee filed a surprise federal lawsuit against Donald Trump, his son Don Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, several other members of the Trump Campaign, as well as Russia and WikiLeaks, for what the DNC's characterizes in the complaint as a broad "conspiracy" to steal private documents and undermine the DNC and the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign in "an act of previously unimaginable treachery". If allowed to move forward, the suit could result in the President, and all of his men, being forced to turn over documents and give depositions under oath. (It could also set a troubling precedent for journalists.)

Also on Friday, Wells Fargo was slapped with a $1 billion fine by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for hoaxing more than half a million customers into purchasing car insurance they did not need. While it was the first major action by the CFPB since Trump muscled his own Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney into the dual role of Acting CFPB Director, the record fine is only a small percentage of what Wells is receiving from Trump's recent massive tax cuts.

Mulvaney, who, as a Tea Party Congressman had spent years trying to abolish the consumer bureau formed after the 2008 global banking and mortgage crisis, was upbraided by Sen. Elizabeth Warren during a recent hearing in the Senate, for his ongoing efforts to undermine the CFPB's critical assistance to consumers.

And, related to all of that, while the worst of the Trump/GOP's major legislative agenda under Trump was broadly considered to be behind us with Democrats believed likely to take over one or both chambers of Congress this November, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA, pictured above) recently came up with a scheme to twist the obscure Congressional Review Act (CRA), in order to gut decades of executive agency regulations with a simple majority vote in each house. While the CRA, only used once in its 21-year history before Trump took office, was meant as a way for Congress to roll back new formal rules enacted by executive agencies, it has been used over the past year to gut dozens of formal regulations enacted during the last 60 days of the Obama Administration.

Toomey, however, has now come up with a new interpretation of the law to allow Republicans to kill regulations from decades ago. This week, the GOP Senate began using his interpretation to do just that. They voted to kill a 2013 CFPB "guidance" document enacted to prevent racial discrimination in auto loans after hundreds of thousands of minority car buyers were found to have been charged higher interest rates for loans (resulting in more than $100 million in fines by the CFPB and money paid back to customers.)

Toomey's maneuver, however, allows such guidelines --- as opposed to only recently enacted formal rules --- to be killed under the CRA, which also prevents executive agencies from ever reinstating a similar regulation in the future. In the bargain, decades of established executive agency regulations could now be done away with, with simple majority votes, between now and the start of the next Congressional term in 2019.

We're joined today by JAMES GOODWIN of the Center for Progressive Reform to discuss this dangerous and insidious new scheme which has received disturbingly sparse media attention since its first time use this past week. Goodwin details what the CRA was meant to do, versus how Republicans have now decided to use, and the many ways in which the CRA might now be abused across the federal government with this new precedent. "One of the main dangers of this new precedent," he explains, "is we have all of these critical safeguards that we thought were in place, that now could simply vanish. And, really, the only limitation [Republicans] face is time."

Finally, the release of memos [PDF] written by fired FBI Director James Comey just after his several meetings with Donald Trump, confirm Comey's earlier descriptions of those bizarre encounters, and have received much coverage for the President's described concerns about Russian hookers and his former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who has pleaded guilty to felonies in Robert Mueller's Special Counsel probe. Less discussed, however, are the troubling details from the memos revealing that Trump was similarly obsessed with convincing the FBI Director to throw journalists in jail --- in stark violation of the First Amendment --- for reporting on embarrassing leaks coming out of his White House...

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: Bill Maher quipped Friday night that the U.S. attack, with France and Britain, on Syria was code-named "Operation Desert Stormy", an attempt by Donald Trump to force his legal and ethical nightmares off the front pages. It didn't work. [Audio link to show follows below.]

On Sunday night, fired FBI Director James Comey described Trump as "morally unfit" for the Presidency in a prime-time ABC News interview, and on Monday, just before air today, Sean Hannity of Fox "News" was revealed in federal court to be a secret client of Trump's hush money payoff "fixer" Michael Cohen, and Cohen and Trump's motion to review documents seized in the raid on Cohen's office and residences last week was denied (for now) by the federal judge.

Nonetheless, before it's forgotten entirely in the fog of Trump Scandal, we focus mostly today on the fact that the pre-dawn bombing of Damascus by US and its allies, said to be in response to an alleged chemical attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against his own people a week earlier in Douma, was done without any actual hard evidence of a chemical attack or who was actually responsible for it. Trump's Secretary of Defense James Mattis admitted as much during Congressional hearings just one day before more than 100 cruise missiles were unleashed on supposedly chemical weapons-related facilities in Damascus. (No proof was offered to buttress the claim about those facilities either.)

Moreover, there is absolutely no legal authority whatsoever for Trump's attack --- either domestically or internationally --- despite various claims to the contrary. Shamefully, most of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats alike, have so far failed to demand accountability for the unconstitutional use of military force (even after threatening President Obama with impeachment when he wanted to launch a similar attack in response to an alleged Syrian chemical attack in 2013).

For his part, the hapless Trump, who mercilessly derided Obama for calling for Syrian airstrikes in 2013, took to Twitter on Saturday to echo George W. Bush's infamous appearance on a U.S. Aircraft Carrier in 2003 after the ill-fated invasion of Iraq, to declare "Mission Accomplished" in Syria.

Friday's unlawful US attack, as we also discuss today, is believed to have cost some $200 million. That could have paid for the replacement of all of Flint, MI's lead water pipes some four times over, as new studies reveal that reading proficiency levels for third-graders in Flint has plummeted in the wake of the lead drinking water contamination crisis. That continuing crisis came about after MI's Gov. Rick Snyder (R), following his election in 2010, ordered an Emergency Manager takeover of the city and a subsequent change to its water supply.

As one caller observed today, some poisoned children, like those in Syria apparently, seem to be a larger concern for the Trump Administration than others...no matter the evidence or lack thereof...

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 like deja vu all over again. But with a Commander-in-Chief who is completely clueless about any of it and powerful adversaries who claim they are prepared to shoot back. [Audio link to show follows below.]

The President of the United States has no idea what he's doing, and is simply making up policy from minute to minute, according to a Washington Post report last night, detailing how White House aides are forced to scramble each day to either explain Donald Trump's actions "or clean them up."

"There is no proactive strategic thinking," one staffer told the paper. Another senior administration official conceded that aides are often forced to "reverse-engineer a policy process to match whatever the President said" on any given day. That may be workable, sort of, when it comes to something like Trump's announcement today that, after years of bashing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and pulling the U.S. out of it shortly after taking office, he is now considering rejoining the TPP after all.

But when it comes to sending the U.S. to war, Trump's erratic behavior poses a very serious danger. To that end --- as Trump has flip-flopped over the past week between demanding the U.S. pull its troops out of Syria within 48 hours, to publicly warning Syria's main ally Russia to "get ready" for incoming missiles, to reversing positions yet again to declare a U.S. attack on the war-torn nation "could be very soon or not soon at all" --- his Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis was busy conceding to lawmakers in the U.S. House on Thursday that the Pentagon lacks evidence of the alleged chemical attack in over the weekend, reportedly carried out by the Syrian government against its own citizens in one of the last rebel-held areas near Damascus.

While noting that he "believe[s] there was a chemical attack," Mattis told lawmakers on Capitol Hill today "we're looking for the actual evidence" and admitted that even if inspectors from the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) get access to the site of the alleged attack, "we will not know who did it. They can only say that they found evidence or did not."

It's not the first time that Mattis has conceded we've attacked Syria in response to purported chemical attacks for which the U.S. had "no evidence".

Nonetheless, the media continue to report the weekend attack in Syria --- said to have killed more than 40 civilians with some form of poison gas --- as having been carried out by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Even as Mattis was admitting the lack of evidence the U.S. has to support the charge, NBC News was busy reporting breathlessly and unskeptically, in an eerie echo of the run-up to the U.S. war(s) against Iraq, on claims from two unnamed "U.S. officials" citing "blood and urine samples from last Saturday's deadly attack in Syria that have tested positive for chemical weapons." It's like deja vu all over again, but with a clueless President and powerful countries like Russia and Iran already having warned that they are prepared to retaliate against any attack against the Syrian government by the U.S. or its allies.

In not-entirely-unrelated news today, as Trump continues to lie about "voter fraud" in the 2016 election (and about everything else), an alarming new study from Politico finds that voters with less access to local news voted in larger numbers for Trump in 2016 than they did for Mitt Romney in 2012. At the same time, the study reveals, those with more access to such news sources voted in higher proportion for Hillary Clinton.

The findings come as the rightwing Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the nation's largest owner of local TV news outlets, attempts to receive FCC approval to buy up enough local stations to reach some 72% of American households. While public push-back against the effort builds, the pro-Trump broadcast behemoth is revealed to be using the public airwaves at their own currently-owned stations (and websites) to lie about the mounting criticism against their practices.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on Shell's recently revealed decades long knowledge that their products cause global warming, and the mountain of scandal that continues to engulf Trump's embattled EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt...

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!)

We unpack alotta long cons on today's BradCast, some of them decades in the making. Among them: Trump's new position on U.S. war in places like Syria, versus his position before he became President; GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan's position on deficit spending before he and Congressional Republicans exploded the deficit and he announced on Wednesday he's retiring from the U.S. House; And, Royal Dutch Shell's position on the dangers of global warming before a new, recently revealed treasure trove of internal company documents going back to the 50's revealed their real position on the matter. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up today, Donald Trump prepares to go to war in Syria and, despite mercilessly criticizing previous Presidents for revealing their intentions before taking military action, does exactly the same today on Twitter, in order to give a warning to Syria's top ally, Russia. That, despite unanswered questions about who was actually behind a recent reported chemical attack in a rebel-held town in the war-torn nation, the U.S. Congress' failure to authorize any such military action, as per the Constitution, and the threat that both Russia and Iran say they will target a response to efforts by the U.S. and its allies in the region like Israel.

Next, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan decides to call it quits, rather than risk losing his re-election bid this November in a predicted "blue wave", just after a new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects trillion dollar budget deficits as far as the eye can see, thanks to the GOP/Trump tax cuts and their recent spending bill. So much for the long-time, so-called "budget hawk" that Ryan (and Trump) pretended to be, while spending years attempting to gut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security for Americans.

Then, we're joined by CARROLL MUFFETT, President and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law to discuss a remarkable trove of recently unearthed internal documents from Royal Dutch Shell, revealing that the oil giant, just like Exxon and Mobil Oil before them, have known for decades about the threat of global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

Muffett describes the newly unearthed documents, as detailed in their jaw-dropping new report, "A Crack in the Shell" [PDF], which shows that, as long ago as 1958(!), Shell was well aware of the dangerous consequences of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused by the burning of oil. And, as early as 1962, as the documents reveal, even urged internally "a "serious consideration of the maximum utilization of solar energy".

"The earliest document that we have with respect to Shell," he tells me, "was a report for the oil industry's Smoke and Fumes Committee that was reporting on research that the industry was funding into a variety of air pollutants. And even in 1958, one of those air pollutants was the pollution of the atmosphere by carbon from fossil sources."

"By 1962, we can demonstrate that Shell's chief geologist was very explicitly acknowledging the links between Shell's products and carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, and the potential for global warming," says Muffett. "So much so, that this scientist even highlighted the recommendations of other scientists that the switch to solar energy should begin as soon as possible."

Despite their scientific knowledge, as Muffett details today, the company eventually joined others in downplaying the threat of man-made climate change and now, according to the longtime attorney and leader in the newly emerging field of legal responses to global climate change, may face increased exposure for their part in our ever-worsening climate crisis.

"We see a remarkable transformation that goes on between 1988 and 1991, where the company is acknowledging these risks, and then by the mid-90s, Shell is, as with other oil companies, actively promoting uncertainty, and the need for inaction instead of action, in the face of mounting evidence," he explains, adding: "What we can now show, and this is very legally relevant, is that for decades, Shell was aware of those risks, and it continued to take those risks on the assumption that, ultimately, it would be consumers and governments that bore the cost, rather than Shell itself."

Please tune in for this remarkable discussion. It matters...

Finally today, a renewed bi-partisan effort emerges in the U.S. Senate to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by the President. But, with GOP leaders like Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Ryan still in the House, the legislation may not get very far, even as Trump continues to fume --- and lie --- about the ongoing probe.

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 is "a very dangerous time", as longtime White House reporter and historian Paul Brandus may have understated last night. "Objectively speaking," he observed in a "difficult to write" tweet, he has "never seen, or known of, a President as unhinged and unstable as" Donald Trump appeared during remarks at the White House before his Monday meeting with his military team.

On Monday evening, following FBI raids on the office and residences of his personal attorney Michael Cohen, President Trump lashed out at law enforcement, calling the court-approved searches "disgraceful", "an attack on our country", and falsely claimed that the search warrant approved by a federal judge and the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan, amounted to a "break in". Trump's remarks also included musings about the possibility of firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose office is said to have shared information with the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, leading to yesterday's raids.

Trump's friend, attorney and business partner Cohen is currently embroiled in the scandal involving a $130,000 hush money payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels, made just days before the 2016 election. The lawful raid, however, which may involve far more serious crimes, comes at a particularly precarious moment.

On Tuesday --- one day after Trump's new and extraordinarily hawkish National Security Advisor John Bolton's first day on the job --- longtime White House Homeland Security Advisor, Tom Bossert, was abruptly fired. His dismissal came after Bossert, while making clear that all options were on the table, had argued in favor of Trump's recent position on Syria over the weekend, in opposition to increased U.S. military action in the war-torn nation. But, after a recent chemical attack in the Syrian town of Douma, Trump has now cancelled a scheduled trip to Latin America and appears to be readying military action against the sovereign nation --- a close ally of both Russia and Iran --- even without authorization from Congress. Such action would likely, at a minimum, mirror the missile attack Trump unleashed on a Syrian airbase last year, which both Congressional Republicans and Democrats lauded at the time, even though Republicans had threatened President Obama with the possibility of impeachment when he considered doing the very same thing during his term in office. This time, however, the action could be much larger, more deadly, and far more dangerous for the region and the U.S.

At the same time, nobody seems to be certain as to exactly why Cohen was raided in the first place. Speculation ranges from the Stormy Daniels affair, to bank and wire fraud, to alleged schemes and payouts from Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, to Cohen's taxi business in New York.

We're joined today by the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog, to try and make sense of all of the above. Wish us luck. "It's like there's this unharmonic convergence happening with all this news," she tells me. "I don't know what it is, but it's not good."

"In this situation, when you've got Syria there and Trump under the gun, feeling Robert Mueller breathing down his neck, this is something that a guy like Bolton --- if he is smart enough to suss that out about Trump, and I have a suspicion that he might be --- he could be feeding that into Trump and we're going to see some kind of --- what do they call it these days? --- 'kinetic violence'. That's another word for war," she says.

We've got a lot to discuss about all of this on today's show with 'Digby', including what is likely to happen if (when) Trump moves to fire Mueller, as well as how this entire long national nightmare may finally end.

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as the scandals involving EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt continue to mount, and with some good news, once again, for pipeline protesters, this time in Canada, but more bad water news for Michigan. Also, we've got a bit some more late-breaking Pruitt/EPA news, as well...

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: The allegation made by adult film actress Stormy Daniels that someone associated with Donald Trump physically threatened her, appears to track quite well with decades of similar allegations made by those who Trump, at one point, believed to have cross him. [Audio link to today's show follows below.]

During her 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper on Sunday night, adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels, claimed she was physically threatened in 2011 in a Las Vegas parking lot, in front of her young daughter, by someone warning her to not to speak publicly about the sexual tryst she says she had with Donald Trump back in 2006. Immediately after the interview aired, an attorney for Michael Cohen (Trump's personal lawyer, fixer, and business partner) sent a "cease and desist" letter to Daniels' attorney, demanding she retract the "false and defamatory" claims made on the program, charging that Cohen "was responsible" in some way for the alleged threat. The attorney charged that Daniels' claims accusing Cohen "of criminal conduct" were "false", "libel[ous]" and "defamatory".

The only problem: Daniels didn't actually tie Cohen to the story about the thug who, she says, threatened her in 2011!

Cohen formed the LLC created to pay $130,000 in hush money to Daniels just weeks before the 2016 Presidential election, though he says he did not do so on behalf of Trump or the Trump Organization, that he was never reimbursed for the payment (which would be a violation of federal campaign finance law, if it was meant to help Trump win the election as Paul S. Ryan of Common Cause told us in January, just after he filed his complaints with the FEC and DoJ), and that, in any event, the tryst between Trump and Daniels never happened at all.

But, whether Daniels' tied Cohen to the alleged 2001 threat or not, it's hardly the first time the Trump Organization --- and Donald Trump specifically --- has been accused of physical threats against his perceived adversaries.

We're joined today by BuzzFeed investigative journalist and renowned "FOIA terrorist" JASON LEOPOLD to discuss three different incidents, revealed via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request documents he obtained from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies last year, detailing physical threats said to have been made against Trump business associates in the 80s, 90s and 2000s.

The details of the three different alleged incidents are chilling, including one terrifying and profane phone threat to an attorney, made on the day Trump's Casino business declared bankruptcy, from a payphone outside the Ed Sullivan Theater on the very same day that Trump was appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman, which is shot there. As Leopold explains, the incidents which he reported on exclusively last year at BuzzFeed, came immediately to mind upon hearing Daniels recount her own frightening tale on 60 Minutes.

Then, we open up the phone lines to hear from listeners on all of the above, as well as a number of other stories that we also cover on today's program, including: Saturday's massive March for Our Lives rallies for gun safety reform, as led by the students of Parkland, Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and supported by Pope Francis; the Trump Administration's announcement that they plan to expel 60 Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of a former Russian intelligence agent in Britain; and the Sunday announcement that, despite reports to the contrary last week, Fox "News" wingnut attorneys Joe diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing will not, in fact, be joining Trump's personal defense team responding the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller after all (precisely as predicted by Friday's guest on The BradCast, Marcy Wheeler!)...

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!)

Before Thursday's late bombshell news that Trump's National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster is being replaced by hard-right Fox "News" neo-con wingnut John Bolton, we covered a number of stories on today's --- at times maddening, sad, frightening (and occasionally humorous and encouraging) --- BradCast.

Among them...

• The Dow plunges more than 700 points after Trump announces his trade war with China;

• John Dowd, Trump's lead defense attorney responding to the Special Counsel probe, has had enough, quits, as hard-right Fox 'News' conspiracist/attorney Joe diGenova joins the team;

• U.S. House approves massive last-minute $1.3 trillion spending bill to keep the government open before Friday's midnight deadline for a government shutdown, and so they can get out of town before student protesters show up on Saturday for the "March for Our Lives" gun safety rally;

• Included in the massive, last-minute omnibus spending bill is hundreds of millions of dollars for cybersecurity "upgrades" to our nation's election systems. That funding comes on the heels of ill-considered new recommendations [PDF] from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, meant to protect U.S. elections by increasing, rather than decreasing, the amount of cyber hardware and software used in elections, and instead of increasing the ability for public oversight of elections. (I have just a few words to say about all of that,as you might imagine, if you can hear them over the sound of my brain exploding. You might hear me mentioning hand-counted, hand-marked paper ballots once or twice, since election officials and members of Congress still seem to have trouble hearing that phrase, despite what happened in 2016, and after some 15+ years of folks like me trying to warn them about the very vulnerabilities they think they are now trying to correct. P.S. Russia isn't the only serious and ongoing threat to U.S. elections...by a long shot. But my brain is exploding now again. So just listen to the show.);

• Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker is ordered by a judge (who he appointed) to immediately call special elections for two vacant state legislative seats. He's avoided doing that ever since a recent long-held Republican seat in the state Senate was lost to a Democrat in a January special election amid anti-Trump fervor;

• Trump-loving Republican U.S. House candidate Rick Saccone finally concedes last week's special U.S. House election in Pennsylvania's very Republican 18th Congressional district to Democrat Connor Lamb, who appears to have defeated Saccone by about 750 votes out of more than 225,000 cast;

• Republicans in the PA House of Representatives file articles of impeachment against four Democratic state Supreme Court Justices who mandated a new U.S. House district map before the 2018 mid-term elections, after finding the one drawn by Republicans in 2011 was an unlawful partisan gerrymander resulting in a 13 to 5 advantage in PA's U.S. House delegation over the last three elections (in an otherwise 50/50, slightly Dem-leaning swingstate);

Finally, just after the breaking news of McMaster out and Bolton in arrives...Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with some good news for the EPA, some disturbing news about bottled water, and some heartbreaking news for mankind...

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: An actual Nazi won the Republican Party nomination for a U.S. House seat on Tuesday in Illinois' 2018 mid-term primaries. But, while Democratic turnout was way up, progressive candidates on the 'blue' team did less well than hoped, according to the reported results. And, once again, there was another computer vote-counting disaster in a deep 'red' Illinois county. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

After an update on what Texas law enforcement officials hope will have been the dramatic late-night conclusion to the three-week long bombing spree in Austin (carried out, as it turns out, by a white domestic rightwinger), we tackle the results, fallout and concerns about the computer tabulation systems from Tuesday's primary. We're joined first today by longtime election integrity champ and government watchdog JEAN KACZMAREK, who is now, officially, the Democratic nominee for County Clerk in DuPage County, IL, where the computer tallies of hand-marked paper ballots just happened to collapse on Tuesday night.

Kaczmarek explains what is believed to have gone wrong, leading election officials in the county to halt all tallies in the very Republican county last night, until some 256 precinct-based optical-scan computers could be collected and brought back from the precincts to the County headquarters.

The failure, apparently, is being chalked up to "ender cards" that were said to be on paper stock too thick to run through the scanners, despite being supplied by a vendor the county had relied on for many years to print up ballots for use with their Diebold optical-scan systems first purchased in 2002. "Ender cards" are run through the scanners at the close of polls, to then allow the printing of results tapes before the scanners' sensitive memory cards are removed and returned to county headquarters for final tallying. The monumental failure, coincidentally, came on the same day voters were asked in ballot referendum about combining the County Election Commission with the County Clerk's office (as most counties already do in the state), and as the county was premiering its new, fancy election night results website.

County officials claim the system was "rigorously" tested before Election Day, even though they failed on Tuesday. "My guess is the ender cards won't be a problem in November," says Kaczmarek. That might be the one thing that they do really well in November. There seems to always be some type of problem going on in DuPage on Election Night."

Then, we're joined next by HOWIE KLEIN of Down With Tyranny to discuss the tough day for progressive Democrats in the Land of Lincoln, where a number of conservative establishment (and even far-right) Democrats were able to edge out their more progressive challengers. We discuss, among other races yesterday, the gubernatorial primary contests, which have resulted in a race that will now feature two billionaires going head-to-head this fall, and the much-watched and highly contentious U.S. House race in the 3rd Congressional District where rightwing Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski is reported to have barely defeated progressive candidate Marie Newman, who had been strongly endorsed by Klein's BlueAmericaPAC.

"Well, he's not a 'full-on Republican'," Klein says about Lipinski, countering one of Newman's claims during the campaign. "But he does tend to vote with Republicans on key, crucial issues. For example, he was one of the Democrats to vote against Obamacare. He literally votes against equality for gay people. He is so anti-choice that the Republican anti-choice organization, the Susan B. Anthony List, not only supported him, they spent $150,000 supporting him. This is a very, very serious, rightwing candidate and rightwing groups know that, and they gave him a lot of support."

There were, however, some bright spots for progressives on Tuesday in IL, which we discuss as well. Along with all of that, Klein also tells me why Congressional leadership chose to put their support behind the incumbent, anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-Obamacare Lipinski, rather than Newman, and how it may be difficult to keep Donald Trump from congratulating the actual Nazi who will be running against Lipinski this fall.

As if all of that isn't enough, we even have some conversation about the Talking Heads' David Byrne, whose new solo album has debuted at #1, and who Klein represented for years while a top Hollywood record executive, before ditching that life for the glamor and big bucks of independent progressive political blogging...

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: We have a lot to catch up from over the weekend, and callers with lots of opinions to go with it. [Audio link to show follows below.]

But, first up today, both a Republican federal court panel and the U.S. Supreme Court both rejected Pennsylvania Republican lawmaker's last ditch attempt to block a new U.S. House map forced upon them by the state Supreme Court in February after the previous map enacted in 2011 was determined to be an unlawful partisan gerrymander in violation of the state's Constitution. Those were the last chances for the state GOP to restore the unlawful maps --- which had given them a 13 to 5 advantage in U.S. House seats over the past three elections --- before the candidate filing deadline for the 2018 primary elections in the largely 50/50 swing-state.

At the same time, voters head to the polls in Illinois on Tuesday for the second primary of the crucial 2018 mid-terms. Among the contested races is a primary challenge by progressive Marie Newman to longtime, very right-wing Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski in IL's 3rd Congressional district. The race is said to be statistically tied, as Lipinski fights for his political life, and as the winner of Tuesday's primary in the very "blue" area of Chicago will likely go on to win in November, since the GOP, literally, has only a proud neo-Nazi running on the ballot for the Republican nomination.

But concerns about Illinois' computerized voting, tabulation and registration system continue to haunt officials and undermine democracy and voter confidence --- justifiably. The state's voter registration system was breached during the 2016 election, and remains wildly vulnerable along with the state's voting and tabulation systems. Despite purported concerns of "Russian interference", little has changed in any of our nation's easily hacked, oft-failed electoral systems following the 2016 election.

Then: On last Friday's show, we noted that nobody in the Trump Admin had yet been fired that day. But, shortly after airtime, FBI Deputy Director and former Acting Director Andrew McCabe was fired just two days shy of receiving his lifetime pension after 21 years of service to the Bureau.

We discuss the reasons he was said to have been fired and the fact that Attorney General Jeff Sessions (who officially fired him) was supposed to have recused himself from the matter. Nonetheless, Donald Trump rejoiced at the news via Twitter --- since McCabe is a witness against Trump's apparent attempted obstruction of justice in the firing of FBI Director James Comey --- before turning his wrath back against Comey and, for the first time on Twitter, Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Is a newly emboldened Trump preparing again to fire Mueller? If he does, will Congressional Republicans do anything to block him? And what, for that matter, will the American people do --- if anything --- in response to what many (over-confidently) believe would be a Constitutional crisis? We open the phone lines to talk about all of that and much more on today'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!)