From Trump's taco bowl to the nation's vital and crumbling infrastructure --- are the corporate media up to the task of adequately informing the U.S. electorate in one of the most crucial election years in our history? Signs aren't encouraging.

Today on The BradCast, why gleeful Democrats and Hillary Clinton supporters are nuts to be celebrating and underestimating the presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. Multiple recent polls, today's breaking news, our nation's recent history, pathetic corporate media coverage, a flawed and vulnerable front-runner and an incredibly frail electoral system should give Dems serious pause.

In the meantime, President Obama's comments on Trump, our aging infrastructure crisis and anti-government sentiment at a press briefing in Washington D.C. on Friday and in Flint, MI on Wednesday are cause for reflection on the notion of good government of, by, and for 'we, the people'.

And then Desi Doyen joins us for what may be our grimmest Green News Report ever before we finish up today with a laugh, some good and bad news about "Boaty McBoatface", and a bit of listener mail...

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Are Republican voters 'warming up' to the science of climate change? A new study suggests as much, as CNN columnist and environmental reporter John D. Sutter details on today's BradCast. [See link to audio of today's show at end of article.]

That news comes not a moment too soon, as record high temps in Alberta, Canada's tar sands oil region (ironically enough) sets the town of Fort McMurray on fire and sends some 80,000 residents scrambling for their lives amidst "apocalyptic" devastation. But are the attitudes of GOP voters on the planet's climate crisis changing quickly enough to prevent the worst effects of global warming, even as the Republican Party's apparent standard-bearer this year, Donald Trump, regards the science as little more than a massive "hoax"?

"I think there's a lot less division on this issue than gets made out in the media," Sutter tells me on today's show. "The skeptical voices, especially on the conservative side, are often heard the loudest. They come through the loudest on blogs. They have big media platforms and they get attention. But I don't think that's representative of what the actual American public thinks, and what the voters think. I do think there's a lot more room for agreement on climate change between conservatives and liberals than is often made out in the media."

In fact, as Sutter notes in his column on the new survey from the Yale and George Mason University's programs on on Climate Change Communication, "The percentage of conservative Republicans (not just Republicans but conservative Republicans) who believes climate change is happening has jumped 19 percentage points in the last two years, to 47%." He goes on to explain why that movement seems to be occurring now and to offer his explanation for the apparent contradiction between a huge majority of GOPers who support research into clean, renewable energy, even as so many of them remain climate crisis deniers.

"I think there's a disconnect between what people believe out there in reality and what politicians are willing to say. Because for them to propose regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, for example, they'd have to go up against some pretty monied special interests," he says. "There's a difference between real people and what politicians are willing to take up."

We also discuss Sutter's very encouraging recent reporting on the upcoming Washington state Initiative-732, which would put a price on carbon emissions --- "this often gets called the 'Holy Grail' of climate change policies," he says --- so that polluters will no longer be allowed to pollute for free. Just over the border in British Columbia, where a carbon tax was implemented in 2008, he explains, "the sky didn't fall" as predicted by fossil fuel industry opponents. In fact, "their economy has actually been out-pacing the rest of Canada" and "the level of support for the carbon tax has grown over time."

While Sutter's reporting on these issues at the CNN website is fantastic, I felt I still needed to ask him about the dearth of climate reporting on CNN's airwaves where, as a study last month found, viewers "see far more fossil fuel advertising than climate change reporting."

Also on today's BradCast: The U.S. Dept. of Justice notifies of North Carolina that their new law to discriminate against the LGBT community is a violation of the federal Civil Rights Act and may cost the state more than $2 billion in federal education funding; and Donald Trump, who will desperately need Hispanic voters if he hopes to win the Presidency this November, offers a remarkably offensive tweet on Cinco De Mayo. Because, of course he does.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Massive wildfire forces evacuations in Canada's tar sands oil country; FL's coral reefs are dissolving; 'Widespread and persistent' fracking contamination in ND; CA's massive natural gas leak will cost more than half a billion dollars; PLUS: President Obama promises Flint, MI water crisis will not be forgotten... 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): Here's what it would take for the US to run on 100% renewable energy; Brazil Files $44 Billion Lawsuit Against Vale, BHP For Dam Spill; New Federal Rule Would Permit Thousands of Eagle Deaths; Federal Court Rejects US Plan For Restoring Embattled Northwest Salmon; Unstoppable Sudden Oak Death Kills a Million California Trees; Controlling Zika Mosquitoes May Be 'Lost Cause'; Harvard Scientist, Longtime Solar Skeptic, Now Sees the Light... PLUS: New Record Set for World's Cheapest Solar, Now Undercutting Coal... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 'Presumptive' GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump goes nuclear over climate; CNN airs more ads for the fossil fuel industry than news stories on climate change; Volkswagen documents reveal scheme to defraud emissions tests; Mitsubishi admits cheating on fuel economy tests; PLUS: One major U.S. city is the first to mandate solar panels on all new buildings... 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 story behind Prince’s low-profile generosity to green causes; Punishing heat wave sets records across Asia; EPA launching new water infrastructure effort after Flint; Water Wars: GA Gov. Nathan Deal to Marco Rubio: ‘Maybe senators ought to have gag orders as well’; Exxon Mobil loses top credit rating it held since depression; Indian villagers have found a way to bottle the fragrance of monsoons; CO struggles with marijuana's huge carbon footprint... PLUS: “There is no doubt”: Exxon knew CO2 pollution was a global threat by late 1970s... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 30 years after the world's worst nuclear accident, new efforts to contain it; Record number of nations sign Paris Climate Agreement on Earth Day; World Bank and IMF launch push for global price on carbon; PLUS: Solar-powered plane goes halfway around the world... 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): China is world’s largest investor in renewable energy; China Curbs Plans for More Coal-Fired Power Plants; Wall Street places its energy bets; CNN Viewers See Far More Fossil Fuel Advertising Than Climate Change Reporting; Is Washington Ready For The Next Big Oil Spill?; Feds Deciding If Coal-Export Project Violates Tribal Rights; Central bankers may succeed where activists failed to kill nuclear energy... PLUS: U.S. Habitat Protections Denied For Endangered Bat Species... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, 200k former felons get their voting rights back in Virginia, even as one protester for campaign finance reform loses his right to vote after being sentenced for a federal felony.

In a surprise announcement today, citing long-standing post-Civil War restrictions meant to keep African-American voters away from the ballot box, VA's Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) issued an executive order to re-enfranchise more than 200,000 former felons who have completed their prison sentences as well as their parole and probation periods. That good news comes even as former felons in Maryland are voting for the first time in decades, in advance of next week's primary, following that state legislative override of a veto by Gov. Larry Hogan (R).

Meanwhile, Brooklyn's top Board of Elections official is suspended amidst the NY Attorney General's new investigation into the still-unexplained purge of more than 100,000 Democratic voters in the months leading up to last Tuesday's disastrous Presidential Primary in NY.

Then, we are joined again by Florida postal worker Doug Hughes, who was sentenced on Thursday to four months in federal prison as part of a plea deal following his infamous demonstration for campaign finance reform last year when he landed his homemade gyrocopter on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol to raise awareness for the problem of money in politics following disastrous U.S. Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United and other related cases.

Hughes tells me, as he told the U.S. District Court Judge in federal court yesterday, that he has "no regrets" for his protest, despite the high costs he is being forced to pay, including, ironically enough, the loss of his voting rights in the state of Florida.

"I will never do this again, but I have no regrets over having done it," he says. "Judge Kotelly said my flight was a stunt. And it was a stunt, because it didn't change anything as far as the laws were concerned. It didn't do anything. Except it changed the perception that resistance is futile. People now believe that they can change [the campaign finance system], and a lot of people are getting engaged in changing it."

Hughes shares his thoughts on the 'Democracy Spring' protests for election and campaign finance reform that have resulted in more than 1,000 arrests over the past two weeks at the nation's capitol, even as the mainstream corporate media barely covered any of it. He describes his remarkable conversation with a CNN producer who called him yesterday after his sentencing. He says he told the CNN staffer that Democracy Spring protesters "were chanting 'Where is CNN?' You get thousands of people together and not a single CNN camera! There was no coverage of what was going on. I said, 'What kind of ghouls are running the organization that you've got to have to have somebody dead before the media will cover it?'"

The colorful and impassioned Hughes also comments on the absurdity of big banks and other major corporations getting away with tax-deductible financial settlements for actual crimes (including murder), while their executives get off scot-free. But, he argues, there is a way to change what seems like an unbeatable system, and he says it involves taking on both Democrats and Republicans alike in primary elections if they refuse to join forces to move campaign finance reform forward. "Like 4% of the population of any district is more than enough to beat the incumbent in the primary."

There is much more to hear from my discussion with Hughes (his website is here if you'd like to help him), before I am finally joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report. This one, on Earth Day --- and a very significant one at that...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Criminal charges for officials in Flint lead poisoning crisis; Louisiana residents protest new offshore drilling leases on anniversary of BP Oil Spill; Deadly oil facility explosion kills 3 in Mexico; More than half the nation lives with dangerous air pollution; PLUS: This Earth Day, world leaders gather to sign historic Paris Agreement... 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): How Earth itself has upped the stakes for the Paris climate accord; How Earth itself has upped the stakes for the Paris climate accord; 'And then we wept': Scientists say 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef now bleached; VW, Justice Department reach diesel emissions deal; Ecuadoreans jostle for food and water in earthquake zone; San Francisco is requiring solar panels on all new buildings. But here's a much greener idea; Caution: New Sea Level Story May be a Step too Far; Study reveals greater climate impacts of 2C temperature rise... PLUS: Solar Impulse 2 sun-powered airplane takes off for the first time in 9 months... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, we begin with a late update on the weekend's devastating earthquake in Ecuador and the failure of oil producing nations to reach an agreement to cut production (in hopes of raising worldwide oil prices).

Then, we move on to domestic politics, with Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz once again skunking Donald Trump out of another delegate contest over the weekend, this time in Wyoming, while concerns continue to emerge among Democrats about voting hours and "mysteriously switched" voter registrations in New York state in advance of Tuesday's big Presidential Primary there.

We've got some answers to at least some of those concerns from an election official or two in NY, which may ease concerns a bit...maybe...about voting hours not beginning until noon in many counties around the state tomorrow, and about what may be happening to some of those reported party affiliation changes on voter registrations in the Empire State.

Then, BradBlog.com legal analyst Ernest A. Canning joins us with updates from two states in the fight to overturn Republicans' unlawful, unconstitutional, disenfranchising Photo ID voting restrictions both in the state of Texas and in Wisconsin where, believe it or not, we've actually got a bit of good news from the courts!

Finally, Hillary Clinton's campaign undermines the Democrats' argument to overturn the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision. I explain that and much more on today's BradCast! Enjoy!

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: World's largest coal company declares bankruptcy; Utility CEO foresees an end to coal entirely; U.S. Government Accountability Office dings the EPA; Sardine fishing banned off West Coast --- again; PLUS: Pesticide company ends use of bee-killing pesticide... 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): CO2's Role in Global Warming Has Been on the Oil Industry's Radar Since the 1960s; Are southern resident killer whales too screwed up to survive?; True: Barack Obama says wind power cheaper in Texas than power from 'dirty fossil fuels'; Wildfires, Once Confined to a Season, Burn Earlier and Longer; If You Eat Fast Food You’re Getting a Big Helping of Toxic Chemicals; Chicago's Upgrades To Aging Water Lines May Disturb Lead Pipes; Great Lakes Oil Pipeline in Violation of Operating Agreement... PLUS: How much do Western state budgets rely on extractive industries?... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast, we take a brief if blessed break from 2016 Presidential politics madness (mostly) to look at what could be a moment, last week, when everything changed, though few may have actually noticed.

But first, Republican U.S. House Paul Ryan absolutely, positively, definitely (maybe) says he will not run for President and we have a number of updates from 'Discrimination Nation' where Republicans just can't seem to get it through their thick skulls that the "free market" really doesn't like that they continue to pass discriminatory, anti-LGBT laws. North Carolina's Governor is now scrambling to make changes (sort of) to his state's new pro-discrimination law, even as Tennessee is enacting their own, which arguably goes even further.

Then, Steve LeVine, energy analyst, Washington correspondent for Quartz and author of The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World, joins us to discuss what may well be the "iPhone Moment" --- or, "Nokiafication", if you prefer --- of the auto industry, in the wake of the introduction of Tesla's Model 3 last week and the thousands around the world who lined up overnight to purchase it before they had even seen it.

While LeVine reports that other automakers are still downplaying what just happened, the unprecedented pre-sales of this new, all-electric car (which will offer more than 200 miles on a single charge and won't even be available until late 2017 at the earliest), suggests this may be a moment akin to when Nokia, once a cellphone goliath, suddenly disintegrated, virtually overnight, after the introduction of Apple's iPhone. By "getting people lined around the block and 115,000 orders sight unseen --- and then, once people saw the car, another 200,000 orders," Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk "demonstrated there is a very sizable group of people in the world who are prepared to pay $35,000 for an electric car. This was notice to the whole industry that the incumbent car companies who, themselves, even now, are sitting on the sidelines waiting to see whether Musk will pull this off --- they could end up like Nokia."

"Hello! 325,000 orders!," LeVine observes, adding "there's going to be blood on the floor" for those companies that don't take quick action to respond to a market inflection point that may now finally be occurring. He also explains, however, that Musk could still blow it, before we then move to the "momentous geo-political shift" that will soon occur with the proliferation of battery-powered vehicles and a world beyond petro-dollars.

"Oil has made the world go around now, literally, for 150 years...But, hang on to your hats!," he warns. Countries whose influence is built on oil could see "their whole economic and power structure pulled out right from under them. It's going to be fascinating to watch."

Finally, in a brief return to 'Discrimination Nation', we close with President Obama's designation today of the nation's newest national monument honoring women's suffrage and 'Equal Pay Day'.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Judge rules children's federal climate change lawsuit may go forward; Big Oil spends $100 million a year on climate denial propaganda and obstruction; Some good news for wolverines, tigers and bees; PLUS: Probe into what Exxon knew about climate change science expands beyond Exxon... 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): Unable To Compete On Price, Nuclear Power On The Decline In The U.S.; Lawsuits Charge that 3M Knew About the Dangers of Its Chemicals; Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists; Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists; For The Navajo Nation, Uranium Mining's Deadly Legacy Lingers; Drowning History: Sea Level Rise Threatens US Historic Sites; Water With Unsafe Lead Amounts Found In Hundreds Of Schools; In Iowa Corn Fields, Chinese National's Seed Theft Shows Vulnerability... PLUS: Lousiana Tribe May Move Entire Community North In First-Of-Its-Kind Test Case... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, we catch up on a lot of news, polls, twists and turns --- most of which underscore, yet again, why elections and representative democracy matter...no matter what the corporate "news" media tries to tell ya.

Among the stories covered on today's thrilling episode!...

• New polls find, once again, that Bernie Sanders leads Hillary Clinton in match-ups against all potential Republican opponents (and even among Democrats nationally); Also, that the front-runners in each party are remarkably unpopular within their own parties.
• Bruce Springsteen cancels a North Carolina concert Sunday due to the state Republicans' new pro-discrimination law;
• The GOP in Nebraska is attempting to 'swipe' a potential electoral college vote from Democrats;
• San Francisco (where the economy is booming, as it is elsewhere here in California, now under Democratic control), becomes the first U.S. city to mandate paid parental leave;
• More clear evidence that thinking big about policies and progressive ideas pays off when the people bother to fight for them and turn out to vote (when they are allowed to vote, anyway), rather than turn cynical and stay home.

All of that and much much more on today's program, including new evidence that the Keystone pipeline leak in South Dakota is far worse than originally reported by TransCanada, the company which owns it, and Desi Doyen joins us with the latest Green News Report which also includes some very encouraging news today...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Coal boss convicted in deaths of 29 miners is sentenced to just 1 year in prison; Sec. of State John Kerry tells private sector to pick up the pace on clean energy; Saudi Arabia planning ahead for world without oil; BP's $20b Gulf oil spill settlement now tax-deductible; PLUS: Dam good news for salmon and people on the Klamath River in Oregon... 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): Wind and Solar Are Crushing Fossil Fuels; Frack Wastewater May Be Messing With Hormones; Oklahoma Governor Declares State of Emergency Over Wildfires; Soil Could Be The Key To Fighting Climate Change; Banned Chemical From Hospital IVs Linked To Attention Deficit Disorder; PFOA Testing Expanded To Include 11 More Vermont Sites; Almost Half Of Natural World Heritage Sites Are Threatened By Industry; Smithsonian Gives Nod to More 'Dark Money' Funding for Willie Soon... PLUS:Big Seed: How Industry Turned From Small-Town Firms To Global Giants... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: New report finds climate change is going to kill a lot of Americans; The Keystone Pipeline springs a leak; Good news and bad news for California's epic, historic drought; Another heat wave hits Alaska; PLUS: Customers flock to reserve Tesla's Model 3, which doesn't even exist yet... 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): Can Coal Companies Afford To Clean Up Coal Country?; ‘Fractivists’ Increase Pressure on Clinton and Sanders in New York; Climate Change Puts Trillions in Financial Assets At Risk: Study; Federal Judge Approves $20 Billion Settlement From BP Oil Spill; Chicago To Start Testing Water In Homes of Children Poisoned By Lead; New Study: "Acidic Pacific: Act Now, or West Coast Pays Dearly; Judge: Climate Change Imperils Wolverines And Feds Must Act...PLUS: Australia: No 'science for science sake'... and much, MUCH more! ...

Fighting to keep our eyes on stuff that matters, on today's BradCast we cover several new concerns for voters in upcoming Presidential primary elections in WI, NY and D.C., as well as some surprising new poll numbers, before moving on to the most important story of our time. [Audio link to complete show at bottom of article.]

Climate scientist and author Dr. Michael E. Mann joins us to discuss, among other related matters, the new temperature records that have stunned even folks like him, as new data was released this month on an increase in global heat that scientists are describing as "staggering", "astronomical" and like "something out of a sci-fi movie".

Professor Mann, who heads up the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, tells me that, with this year's El Niño event finally subsiding, scientists had expected global temperatures to decline along with it. "But, instead, the February numbers came in and not only did we not see a cooling off, we saw unprecedented warmth. It was the largest departure from the average for a given month that we've ever seen."

"What was so surprising was just the magnitude of that warmth, basically taking us now into the territory of more than 2 degrees Celsius warming," years earlier than expected, he says, referencing the amount of warming that scientists, worldwide, believe to be a threshold for dangerous and potentially irreversible impacts on humanity and our climate systems. "We're still on track for the globe to exceed that permanently in a matter of decades. What we didn't expect was that we'd actually cross that threshold so soon."

The creator of the infamous "hockey stick graph", and author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines explains the new "warning sign" represented by the latest data which, he says, looks like "maybe we accidentally took a temperature from February 2030 from a climate model simulation."

Mann goes on to explain the details of another stunning new report finding that the amount of carbon now being introduced by man into the atmosphere by no parallel on Earth, even going back 66 million years when the planet was 5 degrees Celsius warmer than it is now. That was due to a still-unexplained yet massive carbon release of about 1 billion tons each year for some 4,000 years, resulting in 100,000 years of warming. Now, however, humans are emitting about 10 billion tons of carbon annually and changing the planet much more quickly than during that Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (or PETM) period some 56 million years ago.

"You can think about it as a medical experiment," says Mann, "where a dose was given to a set of patients, and that dose led to near-death. The biosphere nearly died in the sense that we had mass extinctions during the PETM. That was for a dose of one unit. What we're doing now is we're giving the patient ten times that dose. And to expect that we're not going to see similarly bad things happen as a result would be foolhardy. We are literally hitting the system harder than Nature, to our knowledge, has ever hit it."

The good professor, who has long been personally targeted by the Rightwing climate denialist industry also offers a few thoughts on the "bad faith" arguments on climate change by the Koch Brothers and the various Republican Presidential candidates, as well as the corporate mainstream media's (lack of) coverage of this existential threat. And, I'm happy to add, he also shares "a little bit of good news" along with all of this, including details of some tentative new studies suggesting our ability to overcome the looming disasters may not be "as bleak as we once thought."

So there's that, before we finish up today's show with some rather encouraging news about electric cars that might just help a bit with all of the above...

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