So, did anything of note happen over the past week or so while we were taking a holiday break from The BradCast? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

As I've come to learn, a few things of note did happen. In fact, it was almost like coming back to a different nation today, largely thanks to the corrupt, radical, extremist, not-conservative-in-the-least U.S. Supreme Court's rightwing majority which invented new clauses in the Constitution out of whole cloth to appall the Founders by declaring Presidents to be Kings. I have a feeling we'll be catching up with the remarkable past 10 days or so for quite a while around here.

Today, however, at the top of the show, we first touch on a few of those news items of note from the past week, including, perhaps most notably for the immediate moment in history, remarkable pushback at the polls from the left in France, UK and even Iran against rising Rightwing fascism. Stunning democratic victories in all three nations serve as a valuable lesson in this country, at this time, particularly from France, where a broad coalition on the left came together to issue a surprise, blistering electoral upset to Marine LePen's far-right nationalist party which had been expected to win on Sunday.

That, it turns out, is helpful --- and hopeful --- context as we turn our focus today to the most immediate concern here: legitimate questions about the reelection candidacy of President Biden, one of the most effective (and, yes, progressive) Presidents in U.S. history, following his disastrous debate performance just after we signed off air before our holiday break about ten days ago.

With much of his party seemingly rallying behind him in Congress a week later, even as a number of noteworthy elected Democrats are calling for him to drop out --- and polling that is offering mixed messages --- we open the phones to our listeners today to learn where they are on this matter.

Should Biden stay in or drop out? And, if he drops out, who should replace him and how? All questions of great import given that, no matter who runs against Donald Trump this year, it is far more than a battle between Republicans and Democrats. It is now very clearly a battle between Fascism and Democracy, particularly after the corrupted Court has now horrified the Founders to decree that Presidents are above the law in virtually any action they choose to take while in office.

The Democratic National Convention begins in just over a month. Early voting begins for the November 5 election in about 90 days.

Needless to say, our phone lines lit up. To my surprise --- especially among our mostly progressive, live Southern California listeners --- they were almost all of a very similar mind. Truly. I would not have predicted the response.

You can listen to it in today's very lively BradCast linked below...

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It's our last BradCast before time off for travel over the holiday next week. Unlike years past, it looks like SCOTUS will be late in releasing all of their opinions for this term before its normal end this week, so we won't be here to comment immediately on some of the biggest decisions (or on tonight's Presidential Debate) until after our return. But we've got plenty to cover from the corrupted rightwing Court already this week, including with a guest today who suggests the analysis by many legal experts on yesterday's ruling striking down yet another part of federal public corruption law has been somewhat misleading. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the big SCOTUS decisions still to come, is a case regarding the "Chevron Doctrine" which, for decades, has given legal deference to federal agency experts over judges or corporate challengers, when it comes to the interpretation of federal laws through rules and regulations promulgated by those federal agencies. That could all be about to change, with enormous consequences first for the EPA, but also across the entirety of the federal government --- or, the so-called "Administrative State" as rightwingers have taken to deriding it. We explain the doctrine and some remarkable ironies behind the Court's upcoming ruling, whatever it may be, today.

But the corrupted, stolen and packed rightwing Supreme Court did manage to issue several rulings today. Among them....

• The Court rejected a multi-billion dollar nationwide opioid settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family.
• In a clear win for corporate interests, they gutted the SEC's ability to carry out in-house proceedings on civil fraud complaints, requiring federal jury trials instead in an opinion likely to have far-reaching effects on other regulatory agencies as well.
• SCOTUS also kicked a Presidential election year hot potato down the road for another day by allowing Idaho hospitals, for now, to perform emergency abortions under federal law, even though the procedure is barred under state law.
• And, as we also discuss with Desi, the High Court blocked, for now, to the EPA's "Good Neighbor" rule which limited air pollution from power plants and other facilities that pollute downwind states. While the regulation has already substantially lowered pollution --- and saved lives --- in the states where it is in place, the Court prevented the EPA from enforcing it until after lower court challenges by largely Republican-controlled states and several industries are completed.

NEXT... On yesterday's show we critically covered the Wednesday SCOTUS ruling in Snyder v. U.S. [PDF], an opinion which overturned the conviction and 21-month prison sentence of an Indiana Mayor who received a $13,000 check from a company just two weeks after his city had granted them a contract worth more than a million dollars. The Court's rightwingers determined that the federal statute in question only applies to out-and-out bribery cases, where a quid pro quo was agreed upon before a public action. After-the-fact "gratuities", the Court's six Republican-appointees ruled, are apparently just fine. Or, at least, not unlawful under their reading of the federal statute in question.

While many legal analysts and experts have derided the ruling since it was issued on Wednesday, our guest today, RANDALL D. ELIASON, former chief of the Fraud and Public Corruption Section at the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C., now a white-collar criminal law professor at George Washington University Law School, had a different take that he posted to Twitter yesterday: "I have no problem with the Snyder decision, that 18 USC §666 covers only bribes and not gratuities. I think that makes sense."

Really? Why? Today Eliason joins us to explain why the law --- which, as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson notes in her dissent with the Court's other liberals, "imposes federal criminal penalties on agents of those entities who 'corruptly' solicit, accept, or agree to accept payments 'intending to be influenced or rewarded'" --- can arguably be interpreted as applying onlyto before-the-fact bribes, as opposed to after-the-fact "gratuities", as they are described by the Court's majority.

"I'm not happy about the outcome," Eliason concedes today. "You're right that there's been a pattern of decisions over the last more than a decade narrowing public corruption laws, and I've been critical of a lot of them. And I've been on your program being critical of a number of them in the past."

"So I'm not happy about the outcome. But I don't think the majority is being unreasonable in this particular decision. Because what this decision is about is not whether the conduct of the Mayor is a good thing, or whether it should be prohibited. It's just about the language in this particular criminal statute that Congress drafted. And it's really a badly drafted statute. It's poorly written. It's confusing. And even though the lower court in this case had upheld his conviction, several other federal courts of appeals had said the same thing, that this law does not apply to gratuities, and agreed with Snyder."

He explains that there is "a real legal distinction between a bribery and a gratuity", and that other federal statutes prohibit them both. But in this case, §666 is less than perfectly clear. And, when there is a "tie" in legal interpretation, the tie is supposed to go to the defendant who, the Court noted, can still be held accountable for accepting a gratuity under state and local laws.

"You see a lot of headlines in the wake of this decision: 'Supreme Court says bribery is okay.' No, the whole point was it wasn't bribery. It was a gratuity, which is something far less serious. And the issue was does this particular statute cover this kind of gratuity? The answer is no. I think, based on the way that statute is written, it's a reasonable outcome."

While I'm not sure I fully agree --- and even he notes that Justice Jackson makes several good arguments in her dissent --- Eliason's expertise and insight into the laws in question shed welcome light on this otherwise seemingly corrupt ruling.

On a related note, we also discuss how all of this might apply to the arguable millions of dollars in "gratuities" that members of SCOTUS, like Clarence Thomas, have accepted over the years and whether that might play into the Court majority's opinion. And how Congress, had they not become completely dysfunctional in recent years, could easily clarify this issue through simple legislation.

On one other matter before we finish our conversation with Eliason today, he offers his thoughts on SCOTUS' upcoming Fischer decision regarding whether the statute used to charge hundreds of January 6 defendants --- including Donald Trump --- with "obstruction of an official proceeding" may be struck down by the Court. Eliason is "pessimistic" about what is likely to happen, though believes that even if the Court strikes it down for use against many of those charged for the J6 insurrection, that "there's a good chance that the charges against Trump would still survive."

FINALLY... Before we disappear for the next week, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest 'Green News Report', with more thoughts on the imperiled Chevron Deference Doctrine; Climate disaster upon climate disaster this week for a New Mexico town; and some very good news indeed for President Biden's job-creating climate law...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: New Mexico town grapples with cascading consequences of simultaneous weather disasters; Environmentalists on edge awaiting critical US Supreme Court ruling; PLUS: Good news! Biden's climate law has created more than 300,000 clean energy jobs... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Environmental rulings to watch at the Supreme Court; Summer heat brings new misery to Palestinians in Israel's war on Gaza; We've been accidentally cooling the planet - and it's about to stop; Rising sea levels will disrupt millions of Americans' lives by 2050, study finds; Second wave of devastating floods hits Bangladesh in less than a month; Next-generation geothermal will soon power Southern California's grid; Trump says clean energy is a scam, and that could benefit China... PLUS: Scientists found another way we're exposed to 'forever chemicals': Through our skin... and much, MUCH more! ...

Quite literally, as I signed off at the end of yesterday's show, a ton of alerts popped up on my iPhone with some pretty big and surprising news. News that turns out to be far more complex and/or nuanced than many seem to appreciate. So, that's where we pick things up on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... As voters headed to the polls today in New York, Colorado, Utah and South Carolina for the last group of Congressional Primary Elections before next month's Republican National Convention, we're still keeping our eyes on a primary election from last week in Virginia.

Far-right Republican Rep. Bob Good, Chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, is currently just about 375 votes, out of more than 62,500 tallied, behind the even farther-right Republican state Sen. John McGuire in the GOP primary contest in VA's 16th Congressional District. With a margin that slim --- less than 1% --- whoever is certified next week as the winner of the currently "too close to call" race has every right to seek a recount. But Good --- who was opposed in the race by both Donald Trump and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy for various offenses against them --- is already on the offensive, charging that "this race cannot and must not be certified." He is claiming (without evidence, to date) "inappropriate activity" related to drop box voting in Lynchburg City, the largest in the district, that should prevent all votes in the city from being certified. That, even before a recount, apparently.

Good's own colleagues (all largely 2020 election deniers themselves!) appear to be laughing at him. Or worse. "No one is buying it," one House Republican told Axios. "What a loser," said another. "F**k Bob Good," said still another. But a Republican-turned-independent who lost to Good in 2020 may have best summed things up: "I don't find it surprising that an election between an election denier and an election denier would end with one of them denying the election was fair based on conspiracy theories."

In any event, we'll be watching and doing our best to ensure a fair, transparent recount, hopefully by hand and overseen by the public. We'll also be popping a fair amount of popcorn as it all plays out.

THEN... News broke last night that WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange had, at long last, struck a plea deal with the U.S. Dept. of Justice after years in a British maximum security prison fighting extradition to the U.S. and, before that, seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Assange was facing charges filed in 2019 by Donald Trump's DoJ related to the release, beginning in 2010, of a trove of stolen classified documents, many of which related to alleged war crimes carried out by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan. But many of the documents were related to other things that were less than criminal or even newsworthy. And some, in fact, put a number of people in grave danger.

Moreover, as our guest --- a journalist who wrote a number of articles based on WikiLeaks documents herself --- details today, many of the documents were obtained via unlawful hacking that Assange himself appears to have participated in. Other documents published by WikiLeaks, such as a trove of emails from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's Campaign Chair, are believed to have been hacked by Russia and given to WikiLeaks for publication before the 2016 Presidential election with dubious or no news value whatsoever.

Still, Assange and his supporters have maintained that WikiLeaks is a journalism outfit and, as a journalist, he can't be held to account under U.S. law for simply publishing documents in the public's interest, even classified or stolen ones --- at least if he was not involved in the theft.

But there is far more to the story, as detailed on today's program by longtime, independent national security journalist MARCY WHEELER of EmptyWheel.net. As of airtime, the plea agreement detailing the single charge he agreed to plead guilty to --- reportedly related to the Espionage Act --- had not been released. But Wheeler attempts to clear up some of what she characterizes as propaganda that has long been circulated by Assange's supporters.

"His hacking into other countries started before he reached out to Chelsea Manning," the military intelligence analyst who turned over reams of documents to WikiLeaks, Wheeler tells me. Among the documents from Manning was the famous "Collateral Murder" video, revealing U.S. helicopter pilots gunning down 11 people in Iraq, including 2 Reuters journalists. Wheeler charges that Assange "tried to help Chelsea Manning break a password. Then the hacking conspiracy continued through 2016. In other words, the attempt to get other people to hack things. It was a larger hacking conspiracy that other people pled guilty to and went to jail for." All decidedly not the behavior of an actual journalist, she says.

She details the "very, very deliberate effort on the part of Wikileaks to hide the fact that the hacking conspiracy started before, and continued long after, the Chelsea Manning stuff," and notes, by way of another example, that, "in 2015, WikiLeaks helped Edward Snowden [a national security whistleblower] flee to Russia."

"That's not something journalists do," Wheeler asserts. "You might think it's honorable or heroic, but that's not something journalists ever do."

Of course, if the charge against Assange relates only to journalistic activity, but not hacking, then, Wheeler believes, it would be a serious threat to press freedoms, "this precedent of somebody being prosecuted for publishing something, especially if they've taken the hacking part away entirely."

Wheeler was "reasonably comfortable" if hacking was tied to the charges against Assange, "but once you take the hacking away, yeah, it is a terrible precedent we should all be worried about."

"Regardless of how much you hate Julian Assange, or regardless of whether you think what he did was newsworthy, just the precedent is a worrying precedent," she warns. "That may be what we're left with going forward."

UPDATE 6/26/2024: With the plea agreement [PDF] now released, Wheeler has a detailed article on the "Damaging Precedent of the Julian Assange Espionage Guilty Plea" that, as she explains, fails to focus "on the alleged hacking, which always distinguished Assange from journalists". She notes, "This plea could have been written in a way that limited the damage of the precedent. For reasons we have yet to discover (but which may have been dictated by Assange’s side, not DOJ’s), it was not.":

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with Climate Change Gone Wild as summer begins, with disastrous record flooding in the Upper Midwest compounding record heat and wildfires already over much of the country. And, with hurricane season heating up, FEMA warns of a shortfall in disaster funding if Congress doesn't act quickly...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Extreme heat and costly, historic flooding wreak havoc across U.S.; FEMA warns of disaster funding shortfall, as storm season is just getting underway; Climate change is making home insurance unaffordable; PLUS: Global warming turbocharged Mexico's deadly heat wave, and doubled the frequency of extreme wildfires... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Burn-off of toxics in Ohio derailment was unnecessary, NTSB investigators say; Escape from killer New Mexico wildfire was 'absolute sheer terror'; Southern China faces heavy floods, and landslides kill at least 9; GOP ramps up effort to block Biden rule that saves Americans $2 billion on energy; Oil lobby is stifling efforts to reform oil well cleanup in state after state; Joe Biden's climate law has created more than 300,000 clean energy jobs... PLUS: Hawaii settles lawsuit from youths over climate change... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast: Either Trump wins or the nation gets it, apparently. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

For months now, the Republican propaganda outlet known as Fox "News" has been leading the rest of the rightwing echosphere in misleading the public about this year's election. To listen to their 24/7 lockstep message, it is a metaphysical impossibility that Donald Trump could lose this November. If he does, it can only be because Democrats have stolen the election "again", as "they did in 2020."

While its hosts almost certainly know better, they have been characterizing Joe Biden as so old and feeble --- and Trump so wildly popular --- that there can only be one legitimate outcome this year: a Trump victory. A Trump landslide, in fact. Anything short of that is, as Fox is dangerously grooming its brain-poisoned viewers to believe, due to massive fraud carried out by Democrats.

We're joined today by MATT GERTZ, longtime Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, to discuss his research --- detailed in an op-ed last week --- on how "Fox News is helping Trump plan another Jan. 6-style assault on democracy."

"If you look at the last two presidential elections --- in 2016 Donald Trump won, in 2020 Donald Trump lost --- the one thing that they have in common is that in both cases, Donald Trump claimed to have been the victim of massive election fraud," Gertz tells me today. "He always does this. It is the most predictable thing in politics, that Donald Trump will claim he is the victim of election fraud with no evidence to that effect." But now, of course, Fox "News" is joining in on the scam and the "guard rails" that were in place in 2020 in the Republican Party are all now all but gone, warns Gertz.

"What Fox News, and the rightwing media more broadly, has been doing over the past several years, is prime their audiences to assume that any election that doesn't end with a massive Trump victory is the result of illegitimate votes being cast, that it is a rigged election against Donald Trump and they should respond with all possible action to prevent Joe Biden from being allowed to remain in office if he wins."

"What's different now is that they know what the result can be," charges Gertz. "They know that all of these claims about election fraud incite their viewers, that it leads them to even march upon the Capitol to try to prevent the peaceful transition of power. And they're doing it anyway."

I have been wondering aloud of late which outcome concerns me the most, a Trump victory or a Trump loss. It might be a toss-up right about now...

THEN... We've been covering the oppressive heat dome across much of the nation --- and elsewhere in the world --- for some time now. Last week, we added wildfires in several states to the mix, along with the first named storm of hurricane season spinning quickly up before slamming Mexico and the southern coast of Texas. Now we can add massive flooding to the mix, as several states in the Upper Midwest --- where South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota meet --- inundated over the weekend with as much as eight times their typical rain fall for this part of the year. In one town, the flood gauge was submerged!

Many of those states are run by Republican Governors who are also climate change denialists, reminding us, yet again, that the stakes this November could not be higher, as Trump has vowed to rollback all of the landmark climate achievements of the current President.

In related news, as temperature records are being shattered around the globe, at least 1,300 pilgrims at the annual Hajj in the Saudi Arabia's city of Mecca died from heat stroke as temperatures climbed above 124 degrees Fahrenheit. And, oddly enough, back here in California, on the central and northern coast, unseasonably cold ocean temps --- due to a bizarre weather pattern from Oregon --- have led officials to issue warnings to beach goers to stay out of the water for any length of time to avoid hypothermia, even as temperatures inland climbed over 100 degrees this weekend. More madness and chaos in our climate changed world...

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Given the rarity of the event, and what it said to portend, we're taking a few lessons, and warnings, from Lakota legend on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Last week, it was reported that a white buffalo calf was discovered to have been born among thousands of brown bison in Yellowstone National Park. That is never before known to have happened. And though no one is able to explain exactly how it did --- the calf is white, with a black nose, eyes and hooves, as opposed to albino, in which case the eyes would be pink --- its birth, in native American lore, is said to be akin to the second coming of Christ, according to Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota and the Nakota Oyate in South Dakota. He is also the 19th keeper of the sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman Pipe and Bundle. (All explained, as well as we can, on today's show.)

The birth of the rare white buffalo, according to Lakota prophecy, portends better times. That's the good news. It also is said to serve as a warning that more must be done to protect the earth and its inhabitants. We take both that encouraging news and its accompany warning to heart on today's program.

To that end, a few of the stories/warnings we cover on today's show...

• A new study finds nearly 2,000 children under five are now dying every day from air pollution. Yes, you read that correctly! That, and a number of other alarming new studies we've reported on in recent weeks --- such as the 50,000 Californians killed by chronic exposure to wildfire smoke from 2008 to 2018, and the $250 billion in climate and health benefits thanks to wind and solar over four years amid Joe Biden's renewable energy boom --- underscore the critical, life and death stakes of this year's Presidential election.

• If all of that isn't warning enough, perhaps the oppressive heat wave across much of the nation today --- and for at least the next week --- may help Americans appreciate the importance of this coming election, as Donald Trump has vowed to his fossil fuel industry donors that he will reverse all of President Biden's unprecedented, landmark climate achievements.

• Some good polling news today --- from Fox "News"(!) --- for Joe Biden, following Trump's 34 felony convictions last month in New York related to his rigging of the 2016 election with hush-money payments to a porn star. In short, Biden now narrowly leads Trump in a head-to-head contest, according to Fox' latest national survey, by 2 points, 50% to 48%. There are a whole lot of caveats on this, but the more noteworthy news is that the new numbers represent a 3-point swing in Biden's direction since Fox' last national survey in May, and a 7-point swing since March. There is other news of note from this poll, including that Biden also now tops Trump when polling is expanded to include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein and Cornel West, who will be on the Presidential ballot in a number of states as well this November.

• The stock price for former President's latest grift is tanking again. Bigly. The company known as Trump Media and Technology Group, which has just one wildly money-losing venture (his failing Truth Social site) has tanked in market value an astonishing 50% since his felony convictions last month. On Thursday alone the stock price, which trades as "DJT", plummeted by more than 14.5%, after skidding by about 35% over the past week. A lot of MAGA dupes dumb enough to invest in this loser have lost a whole lotta money this month.

• Next Thursday's first 2024 President Debate is now set, according to CNN. It will be a two-man affair between Trump and Biden only, with RFK, Jr. (and the others) failing to meet the polling and ballot criteria set by CNN. The debate will be 90 minutes long, will have no studio audience, and the participants microphones will be turned off when it is not their turn to speak. It will be moderated by CNN's Jake Tapper and Dana Bash...and we wish them well.

• Finally, as record wildfires, heat waves and the first named storm of this year's hurricane season explode across the nation (and world), Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report. On all of that, and the even more devastating impacts of our quickly worsening climate crisis...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Extreme heat intensifies across Eastern U.S. as Tropical Storm Alberto kicks off hurricane season; Deadly wildfires force evacuations in New Mexico; Delhi, India and Saudi Arabia hit astonishing record temperatures; PLUS: U.S. schools grapple with the impacts of extreme heat... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Summer of extreme heat could worsen FEMA disaster funding shortfall; UN food chief: Poorest areas have zero harvests left; Billion-dollar weather disasters are soaring again this year. Here’s why; Miami is entering a state of unreality; Dr. Michael Mann on heatwaves: 'No economy on a dead planet'; The delusion of advanced plastic recycling using pyrolysis... PLUS: US acknowledges Northwest dams have devastated the region’s Native tribes... and much, MUCH more! ...

There are just 140 days until the November 5 General Elections. Threats against them by adversaries both foreign and domestic are simmering and/or growing. We discuss some of them --- and much more --- on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• Kari Lake loses yet again. This time, it's the Arizona state Court of Appeals which has, again, rejected her claims that the 2022 gubernatorial election was stolen from her when she lost it by some 17,000 votes to Democrat Katie Hobbs.

• Unexplained mass texts, warning of voter intimidation, falsely suggesting they were sent by the Spartanburg County Elections Office during South Carolina's down-ballot primaries last week, should serve as a warning for this November's elections.

• U.S. officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are reportedly sending their own warnings, privately, to candidates in the U.S. who, they say, are being targeted with disinformation campaigns by foreign adversaries, including Russia, China and Iran.

• And, in what should serve as yet another warning before November, a pro-Kremlin hacker group, said to be closely allied with Russia's intelligence services, reportedly took down the websites of a number of political parties and other institutions on the first day of voting in Europe's recent parliamentary elections.

• New York's highest court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Donald Trump to lift the gag order barring him from attacking witnesses, jurors and the family members of prosecutors or the judge in the hush money/election interference case in which the disgraced former President was recently found guilty of 34 criminal felonies.

• And, speaking of, the Biden-Harris Campaign is finally using Trump's shameful court losses --- for both felony crimes and civil liabilities --- against him, in an aggressive television ad and mass emails to supporters taking him to task as a "convicted felon" as well as "a liar and a fraud". Of course, even now, Team Biden will have to overcome ridiculous reporting on the effort by the New York Times, whose headline yesterday (until it was changed) read "Biden Campaign Ad Paints Trump as a Felon". Um...."paints" him as a felon?! He is a felon!

• After telling us for months that President Biden is so mentally debilitated that "he can't string two sentences together," Donald Trump supporters like Sean Hannity at Fox "News" are now working overtime to try and lower expectations for him in advance of next week's first Presidential debate.

• Maryland's Democratic Governor Wes Moore on Monday pardoned about 175,000 convictions related to marijuana and paraphernalia possession over the years. The long-overdue pardons, following the state's full legalization of marijuana last year, will help tens of thousands of Black and Brown people who were disproportionately charged and convicted over the many decades of our failed, frequently racist "war on drugs". Moore's action follows President Biden's 2022 mass pardon of thousands charged under federal marijuana law and his request to state Governors to take similar action given that most cannabis related crimes were brought under state law.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with news on hundreds of millions in the U.S. now (or soon) facing record heat from the Midwest to the East Coast and an early wildfire season out West; Similarly oppressive heat has been bearing down from Greece to the Middle East; Calgary is facing a serious water crisis in Canada; France's nukes are being shut down by cheaper renewable energy sources like wind and solar; And a major rail company must cough up some $400 million for unlawful trespass against a native American tribe...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Heat and wildfires explode in the U.S., Greece, and Middle East; Calgary grapples with water crisis; Cheap renewable energy pushes out costly nuclear power in France; PLUS: Major railway ordered to pay $400 million to Native American tribe for trespassing... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Thousands evacuated as floods and deadly landslides hit southeast China; Singapore races to clean oil spill as luxury beach resort coated in slick; French renewable energy sector says far-right victory risks trouble for industry; Unchecked growth around Big Bend sparks debate over water; EU passes law to restore 20% of bloc’s land and sea by 2030... PLUS: Fighting climate change is powering the U.S. economy... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today's BradCast summary may be necessarily (or mercifully, depending on how you look at it) brief. As noted here yesterday, I've got COVID again. Did a show today anyway. For good or ill. There's just too much going on and standing down yesterday only made me feel like we were falling even farther behind. Plus, big news today out of SCOTUS. So bear with my gravelly, congested voice as we catch up with a few of things on today's show. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Among those things..,.

• Tuesday's down-ballot primary elections in Maine, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina didn't offer many surprises or problems, so far, for voters or tabulation. But the Special Election for the U.S. House in Ohio's otherwise deeply red 16th Congressional District was certainly of note. The Democratic candidate, Michael Kripchak, lost the race to Republican Michael Rulli, as expected. But, continuing a pattern we've seen quite a bit of on Election Days since 2020, the Democrat wildly over-performed expectations by some 20 points! It's another good reminder to take nothing for granted this year, with the November 5th General Election Day now less than 150 days away!

• The packed and corrupted U.S. Supreme Court did (mostly) the right thing for a happy change today. In an opinion [PDF] written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court unanimously shut down a ridiculous case brought by legal forum-shopping anti-abortion zealots in Texas seeking a nationwide ban on the use of Mifepristone, the most popular and safest method of abortion in the U.S. The challenge, based on false claims about the drug, was rejected 9 to 0 due to a lack of standing by the crackpot doctors who brought the case (with the help of a rightwing extremist legal mill, in a lower court jurisdiction where they were guaranteed to get a favorable finding from Trump-appointed anti-abortion activist judge, Mathew Kasmaryk.) Kavanaugh's ruling, however, left the door open for future challenges by other plaintiffs to the FDA's 20-year old approval of the drug. The executive agency has repeatedly found Mifepristone --- used in about two-thirds of abortion in the U.S. last year --- to be extraordinarily safe and effective.

• Then, we're joined by AMANDA MARCOTTE, Senior Political Writer at Salon and author of Troll Nation: How the Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself. We discuss today's SCOTUS ruling and a related matter which she recently wrote about at Salon, which also highlights the corrupt anti-abortion Texas-to-SCOTUS legal activist pipeline. This case, like the Mifepristone case, is being brought, specifically, in Kasmaryk's North Texas federal court, where he is the only judge overseeing cases filed there. It involves two University of Austin professors, Daniel Bonevac and John Hatfield, who are plaintiffs in a suit challenging Nixon-era federal law that prevents them from mistreating people, women in particular, who don't behave to the professors' liking. They are claiming a violation of their Free Speech Rights in federal laws that prevent them from flunking female students who go out of state to obtain abortions or block them from firing teaching assistants who have had one or forces them to consider the hiring of employees who may be transgendered. It is all of a piece, as Marcotte explains, with the corrupt SCOTUS decision that overturned 50 years of legal precedent for the Constitutional right to abortion back in 2022, and the subsequent total abortion ban in the Lone Star State. As Marcotte identifies, this and a number of other cases, are being brought by the same far-right interests, including former Texas Solicitor General and Federalist Society activist Jonathan Mitchell and legal mill outfits packed with former (and future?) Trump staffers.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for a Brad-free edition of Green News Report! With a warning for upcoming extreme heat across much of the country; seemingly unceasing extreme rainfall in Florida; a new law adopted by the New York legislature to hold Big Oil accountable for climate damage; and hundreds of billions of dollars in health benefits now being realized thanks to President Biden's renewable energy boom...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: In parts of the U.S., air conditioning can't keep up with extreme heat, and a big one is coming over the next week; Record rain triggers flash flooding from Sarasota to Spain to China; New York passes law requiring oil companies to pay for climate change damages; PLUS: Renewable energy in the U.S. has delivered $250 billion in health benefits... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Amid record-breaking heat wave, researchers step up warnings about risks extreme temperatures pose to children; Dangerous heat wave tests Puerto Ricans’ ability to survive the latest power outages; Biofuel refineries are releasing toxic air pollutants in the US farm communities; Air in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ likely more toxic than previously thought; How Biden beat the clock on big environmental regulations; The 'one simple trick' Paris used to reduce air pollution 40% ahead of Olympics... PLUS: Reported birth of rare white buffalo calf in Yellowstone park fulfills Lakota prophecy... and much, MUCH more! ...

Yup. They'll believe anything. As discussed on today's BradCast, the MAGA dupes even have a new, insane explanation for why President Biden "allowed" his own, supposedly "weaponized"-against-Republicans DoJ to bring felony charges against his own son. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

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

• The President's son, Hunter Biden, was found guilty by a federal jury in a Delaware courtroom on Tuesday, on charges that he had lied about his drug use on a federal background check form while purchasing a revolver in 2018, as he was overcoming his battle with drug addiction following the death of his brother. He never loaded the gun and owned it for just 11 days before his girlfriend thew it away. He was charged for something that nobody else has ever been charged with, unless they also committed an additional gun-related crime. Oddly enough, despite the "weaponization of the Justice Department" by Joe Biden to go after Trump and Republicans that we've heard so much about from Donald Trump and his MAGA minions, Hunter was found guilty on charges brought by a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor in a trial presided over by a Trump-appointed federal judge. President Biden said he "accepts" the jury verdict and does not plan to issue a pardon to his last living son.

• That news comes on the heels of yesterday's program, in which we heard from Donald Trump supporting listeners about why they still support him, even after his conviction on 34 felony counts in New York related to a hush money payment to help him successfully rig the 2016 Presidential election. If you heard the show, you know that the reasons those callers still support Trump is that they have been wildly disinformed about all manner of facts, including their belief that Biden and/or his DoJ orchestrated the NY state prosecution. Even Trump's own former defense attorney in the case has called the evidence-free claim "ridiculous". But the dupes believe it nonetheless, along with a whole bunch of other Republicans who buy that nonsense and many more evidence-free claims regarding the 2020 election, the 2021 insurrection and more.

• But, there is a bit of good news for Joe Biden and Democrats in recent polling following Trump's conviction in New York.

• There is also good news for all of us, in that some of the biggest rightwing disinformers, other than Donald Trump, are finally facing some real accountability. Last week, it was reported that rightwing radio/podcast propagandist Alex Jones was liquidating his businesses, including his InfoWars program, to begin paying off his $1.5 billion defamation liability to families of Sandy Hook victims after years of lying about the tragic 2012 mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school as a "hoax."

• And, at the end of May, the rightwing radio outfit Salem Media Group, apologized and retracted the hoax documentary called 2000 Mules, made by convicted rightwing election fraudster Dinesh D'Souza and the long-disgraced rightwing fraudster group called True the Vote. The film details a wholly debunked, wild conspiracy about Democrats scheming to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump through an insanely complex plot involving tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots deposited secretly into drop-boxes in battleground states. Salem pulled the film from distribution and apologies for it in response to a defamation suit filed by a man featured in the film via security camera footage and falsely described as committing election fraud. None of that, of course, will keep Trump and the MAGA dupes from continuing to cite the film as "evidence" of a stolen election --- even as it contains no actual, ya know, evidence of such any such scheme.

• On the other hand, we have more actual voter fraud documented as having been committed by Republican voters. This time, its an 85-year old GOP voter who was found guilty last month of double voting at two different houses he owned in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire during the 2016 election.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with disturbing news on gains by far-right, anti-climate action political parties in the European Union's parliamentary elections over the weekend; dumb news on New York Governor Kathy Hochul's much-criticized halt to New York City congestion pricing; and good news on new vehicle mileage standards by the Biden Administration that will save consumers money and combat climate change...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Far-right parties win big in European Union parliamentary elections, with climate action in the crosshairs; New York Governor halts first-in-nation congestion pricing in New York City; PLUS: Biden Administration tightens mileage rules to save consumers money and combat climate change... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Port of Baltimore shipping channel fully reopens more than 2 months after bridge collapse; The world agreed to ban dangerous pollutants known as HFCs, and it’s working; Water and chemical industries challenge Biden’s PFAS drinking water rule; Carbon Capture will extend oil production by 84 years, industry study finds; Tornadoes shifting east in the US, study finds, putting more people at risk... PLUS: The Plastics We Breathe: every time you take a breath, you could be inhaling microplastics.... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: May 2024 was the hottest May ever recorded globally; Earth just saw 12 straight months of unprecedented heat; Heat deaths in the U.S. hit a new record in 2023; The world's largest solar farm is now online --- in China; PLUS: The U.N. Secretary-General has a message for the world... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Big Auto and the death of traffic congestion reform; Misinformation poses a bigger threat to democracy than you might think; U.N. weather agency explains why it is "climate crunch time" after the hottest 12 consecutive months on record; Phoenix using ice immersion to treat heatstroke victims as Southwest bakes in triple digits; Sweden to ban bottom trawling in its waters; After Tesla, the surprising next best-selling electric vehicle in America is this electric bike... PLUS: Clean energy saves farms in bad years... and much, MUCH more! ...