It's another 10-pound show in another 5-pound BradCast today. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among the many stories covered...

• A state police detective in Michigan, according to email obtained by Reuters, recommends criminal charges be brought against Stephanie Scott, a Republican Michigan township clerk, for yet another breach of yet another voting tabulator and for allegedly giving a database of confidential voter data to a fellow 2020 election conspiracist. The media outlet reports there have been at least 18 similar breaches or attempted breaches of voting systems across the country by sore loser election deniers, including 12 in MI alone. Separately, a state Special Prosecutor is currently investigating nine people "for an alleged conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment in a case that involves alleged breaches across the state." One of those under investigation is the GOP's Attorney General nominee Matt DePerno.

• Speaking of 2020 election conspiracists, pillow salesman Mike Lindell's petition to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected on Monday. He was seeking to challenge one of two defamation suits filed against him by a voting machine company, in this case, Dominion, which he baselessly accused of helping to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump. Lindell had been hoping to change long-standing federal law regarding defamation suits brought by public figures. SCOTUS rejected him. So the previous ruling in the matter, by a Trump-appointed federal District Court judge in D.C., means that Dominion's $1.3 defamation suit against Lindell may now move forward to discovery and trial. (Along with several other defamation lawsuits against a bunch of Lindell's fellow GOP election fraudsters and rightwing media outlets.)

• Speaking of SCOTUS, Monday was the first day of their new term. It included oral argument in a case challenging the EPA's authority to regulate the waters of the United States under the Clean Water Act. It was also the first oral argument to feature the Court's newest member, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. By all reports and audio evidence, she kicked ass. We detail the case and explain KBJ's awesome first day performance.

• Speaking of asses, Donald Trump filed an emergency request to SCOTUS on Tuesday, seeking their intervention in his dispute over hundreds of pages of stolen documents marked as classified that were retrieved by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago as part of the DoJ's criminal probe into the former President's apparent violations of the Espionage Act and other federal statutes. Trump's filing comes just days after a three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals (featuring two Trump appointees), dismembered a lower court ruling by another Trump judge who is corruptly attempting to stall the investigation with her appointment of a Special Master to review the documents in question.

• Next up, the pathetic story that broke over the last 24 hours regarding Republican U.S. Senate nominee, former football hero and seemingly mentally unstable liar, Herschel Walker. He is running to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia next month. On Monday night, The Daily Beast's Roger Sollenberger reported that Walker --- who is running, in no small part, on claims to oppose abortion in every instance, without exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother (which he called "excuses") --- paid for a girlfriend to have an abortion in 2009. Sollenberger appears to, literally, have the receipts to prove it. But, even as Walker was flatly denying the charges on Fox "News" on Monday night and vowing to sue The Daily Beast for defamation, one of his adult children lit up a Twitter storm with an astonishing rant, characterizing his father as a liar and hypocrite and anything but a "family man." Christian Walker charged, among many other things, that his father committed "atrocities" against his mom. She charged years ago, on CNN, that Walker held a gun to her head "and said he was gonna blow my brains out." Incredibly enough, prior to the hectic revelations of the last 24 hours, and despite a long list of proven lies told by Walker, the GOP nominee was virtually tied in pre-election polling with Warnock in GA, for reasons that, as we discuss, are difficult to even fathom.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with updates on Hurricane Ian's catastrophic damage and death toll in Florida; Biden's visit to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Fiona; and the SCOTUS case heard on Monday challenging the EPA's power to enforce the Clean Water Act...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Florida residents face the catastrophic damage and death toll of Hurricane Ian; Community specifically designed for climate resilience passes Ian's test; President Biden pledges timely, full aid for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Fiona; PLUS: Next on the U.S. Supreme Court's chopping block: the Clean Water Act... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Deep State of Denial: Far right furiously rationalizing Hurricane Ian; Ian exposes messy politics of disaster spending; Pakistan disease outbreaks after floods spur calls for crisis plan; Carbon capture project faces local pushback in Louisiana; Free shipping isn't free for everyone; The EV boom is about to begin - does the U.S. have the power to charge it?; California suffers driest 3 years on record, with no end in sight... PLUS: Memories of the end of the last ice age, from those who were there.... and much, MUCH more! ...

With unspeakable devastation from Florida to Ukraine, the stakes couldn't be higher for our upcoming midterm elections. We cover all of that on today's BradCast, even while tending to some long overdue accountability and grotesque conflicts of interest in Congress. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

The horrifying death toll from last week's climate change-fueled Hurricane Ian continues to rise. More than 100 were confirmed dead in Florida alone as of airtime. That number is likely to keep growing, along with the growing questions about why state officials did not call for evacuations before they finally did. Put those questions into the same file that may explain the state's years of climate crisis denial and its now collapsing insurance industry.

At the same time, corrupt authoritarian regimes elsewhere are similarly ill-serving their citizens. We get caught up a bit today on Russia's sham referendums and unlawful annexation of four regions in eastern Ukraine last week. That, as Russia's military offensive continues to collapse and lose ground to Ukrainians defending their sovereign homeland; as Vladimir Putin faces growing unrest after announcing the forced draft of hundreds of thousands of Russians; and as he continues to threaten the use of nuclear weapons as his political and military fortunes devolve.

Then, we move to Brazil, where far-right President Jair Bolsonaro lost in the first round of voting on Sunday to the nation's former leftist President known to the people simply as "Lula". While Lula defeated Bolsonaro over the weekend, neither candidate received the votes necessary to avoid a run-off later this month. Lula's victory was much narrower than expected based on pre-election polling showing that he was likely to defeat Bolsonaro by about 14 points. He won by just less than 6 points in what should serve as another object lesson for U.S. voters before our own critical midterm elections in just 35 days.

Next, we're joined by longtime government affairs and ethics lobbyist CRAIG HOLMAN of Public Citizen to discuss the Combatting Financial Conflicts of Interest Act that he had hoped to see passed in the House before next month's midterms. Holman helped shepherd passage of 2012's STOCK Act. It was hoped that the decade old measure --- requiring immediate disclosure of stock trades by members of Congress and ending their exemption from insider trading laws --- would shame members into avoid conflicts of interest when trading stocks in companies which they also oversaw in Congressional committees.

As Holman details today, the STOCK Act failed in that regard for several reasons. As a New York Times analysis found last month, at least 97 members of the House and Senate, of both parties, continue to hold stocks in companies that they oversee on Congressional committees. But it is hoped that the new measure will end that as well. It would bar members and their direct family (spouses and children) from buying and selling stocks at all, and require them to divest their portfolio entirely or place such assets into blind trusts.

"Prior to the STOCK Act in 2012," Holman explains, "insider trading was illegal for you and I and Martha Stewart, but it was perfectly legal for members of Congress. And they were making use of it. There was one economist who came out with a study that showed members of Congress enjoy a 12% higher rate of return than the rest of us on the stock market. Which means either they're geniuses at trading in the stock market, or they know something that we don't know. Quite obviously, it's the latter."

While the STOCK Act did reduce members' trading in stocks by about two-thirds, he says, the other third "are still out there trading. They are sitting on the same committees and in their same official capacities overlooking the same businesses that they're buying and selling stocks in."

The new bill, however, would finally end those bipartisan conflicts of interest, and/or the appearance of same, once and for all. But, Holman also explains how the bill he had hoped to see passed by both chambers before this year's midterms was derailed last week He tells us whodunnit and how he hopes to see the measure adopted nonetheless in the lame duck session after the elections. Here's hoping!

Does Holman have any concerns that this new law would prevent qualified folks from running for Congress in the first place? "Not on my end," he responds. "That is one argument that you always run into. But, quite frankly, if you've got a huge financial conflict of interest with your official duties of serving in Congress, I don't want you here. If you're not going to get rid of that conflict of interest, you pose more of a threat to the integrity of our legislative process, no matter how competent you are."

Finally, President Biden visited Puerto Rico on Monday in the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Fiona (the storm that took out power across the island, yet again, just two weeks before Ian's devastation in Florida). He didn't throw paper towels at residents, as the former guy did following Hurricane Maria, though he did vow to help get their infrastructure back up and hardened to withstand many more of these storms that will be coming their way as the climate crisis worsens. We share some of Biden's remarks today...

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Even before Hurricane Ian devastated the state, Florida's insurance industry was collapsing. As discussed on today's BradCast, decades of climate denialism by the Republicans who run the state hasn't helped. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to have a very different perspective on federal hurricane disaster aid than he did while a freshman in Congress in 2013, when he was an adamant "no" vote on sending federal aid dollars to New York and New Jersey after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. He also seems to have a different opinion of President Biden than he did just a week or so ago, when the ambitious GOP Presidential hopeful was threatening to use state taxpayer dollars to fly undocumented immigrants to Biden's home in Delaware. Suddenly, the DeSantis swagger is gone. At least for now, as the Sunshine State Guv has little choice after Ian but to crawl hat in hand to the same federal government he has pretended to abhor for political benefit.

But that's not DeSantis' only problem. As our guest today, THOMAS FRANK, longtime climate change impact journalist at E&E News, explains, the insurance industry in Florida has been in big trouble for some time. Major insurers left the state after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and six of the regional mom and pop outfits who took their place have gone insolvent over the past year alone.

"There's not the kind of robust, private sector [in the insurance industry] you have really everywhere else in the country," Frank tells me today. "What happened the last few days is going to make a bad situation --- pick your adjective --- horrendous. The truth is nobody knows exactly how bad it's going to be, because that's going to take weeks, months to figure out as people try to start filing claims and so forth. But I don't anyone thinks it's going to be anything but bad."

Frank has been reporting on --- and warning about --- the state's failing insurance industry long before Ian may have finished it off. Premiums for homeowners insurance cost about 3 times more than the national average and, at the same time, Florida's Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-backed insurer of last resort, has been under-pricing homeowner policies for years, he says. They are unlikely to have enough money to pay out the claims that will soon come flooding in.

Moreover, homeowner policies don't cover flood insurance. That's left to a federal government program and most Floridians who have flood coverage live on the coast, even as hundreds of thousands of homeowners who have been flooded out this week live nowhere near it. They are unlikely to be insured for flooding at all.

As Frank writes today at E&E, "Hurricane Ian is expect to financially ruin countless people" in the state, including both homeowners and insurers. As he wrote yesterday at Politico, "Profit drove a 30-year boom" in the state, particularly near the coast, where the population has doubled or tripled amid a building boom in recent years, despite warnings from climate experts about sea rise and the intensification of hurricanes. "Ian smashed" that boom "in a day," writes Frank.

This, in a state controlled by climate change denialist politicians who have gone so far as to ban the use of the phrase "climate change" in state reports, and where DeSantis, as recently as last month, began an effort to bar the state's pension fund from even considering environmental factors when investing billions of dollars belonging to teachers, firefighters and other state workers.

Please tune in for today's enlightening conversation.

Finally today, Democrats in the House Oversight Committee recently obtained and released a trove of internal documents from fossil fuel industry insiders from ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. The communications reveal that Big Oil execs, staffers and lobbyists admit to "gaslighting" the public regarding their public claims to be fighting against the climate crisis. (Who could have guessed it?!) For example, while Shell has publicly claimed they are working toward "net-zero" greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a missive to employees in 2020 instructs them to never "imply, suggest, or leave it open for possible misinterpretation that (net zero) is a Shell goal or target," adding that the company has "no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio" over the next 10 to 20 years.

Republicans on the House Committee are furious that their friends and campaign donors have been exposed (again) as liars. And the companies argue the Committee's selective release of documents doesn't offer a full picture of their very very concerned stance on the climate crisis. So, as a public service, we close today with a new ad from Chevron that may help clear the air a bit. You're welcome!

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hurricane Ian causes widespread damage, smashes records as it pummels Florida; Sen. Joe Manchin's controversial permitting reform bill collapses in the U.S. Senate; PG&E under investigation for sparking yet another deadly fire in California; PLUS: Massive, mysterious breaches erupt on Russian natural gas pipelines to Europe... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Maps Show How Millions Of People Have Moved Into Hurricane Ian’s Path; Mexico Is World's Deadliest Spot For Environmental Activists; Pivotal Supreme Court Term Begins With WOTUS War; Gulf of Mexico’s largest coral sanctuary faces an extreme threat that’s mystifying scientists; Number of Americans Exposed to Harmful Wildfire Smoke Has Increased 27-Fold... PLUS: Feeling Overwhelmed About Going All-Electric at Home? Here’s How to Get Started.... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today on The BradCast: Our cruel climate crisis Summer continues, as we head toward a more hopeful Fall...maybe... [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

First up, Hurricane Ian crashed ashore on the southwestern coast of Florida shortly before air time on Wednesday, as a Category 4 storm. It had intensified in record time, falling just shy of a Cat 5, after knocking out power overnight to the entire island of Cuba and its more than 11 million residents. As we went to air, more than a million Florida residents were already without power.

Given Ian's landfall near Fort Myers, it is hoped that a "worst case scenario", had there been a direct hit on Tampa, may have been averted. But that's small comfort right now. It is feared Ian may result in catastrophic damage. Not just from its wind speeds, but from a record storm surge as high as 18 feet and rainfall that the National Hurricane Center warns could be as high as 24 inches in some locations over the next day or two. The storm is now set to crawl up Florida in a north-easterly direction. On its current track, Ian will emerge as a Tropical Storm in the Atlantic after crossing the state and potentially make a second landfall in Georgia and/or the Carolinas toward week's end. Desi Doyen joins us for the latest available details and the potentially devastating climate change-related impacts for the Sunshine State.

Next, new polling finds that while Democrats are still favored to lose their current slim majority in the U.S. House this November, their margin of loss continues to decrease with each passing month. The latest midterm elections forecast from CBS/YouGov suggests Dems would fall short of a House majority by just 6 seats if the elections were held today. But, that's half the size of the margin predicted by the same polling outfit in July.

The U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade's well-established privacy and reproductive rights is, of course, still seen as the primer mover in this and other recent polling. That ruling has also been cited as the reason that Democrats have either won or increased their percentage versus Joe Biden's 2020 numbers in every single special election for the U.S. House since Dobbs. All of that in contrast to so-called Conventional Wisdom earlier this year that Dems were set to face a shellacking in the midterms.

Beyond snap-shot best-guesses from pre-election polling, however, we now have some hard election data to help us better understand the post-Dobbs electorate, as our guest today, TOM BONIER of TargetSmart, a Democratic data analysis firm, joins us to detail today.

Last month, Bonier was here to discuss what he had found at the time to be "jaw dropping" spike in new voter registration numbers following the High Court's controversial late-June ruling on abortion rights. He cited was he described as an unprecedented gender gap favoring new voter registration for woman in dozens of state after Roe was overturned. Moreover, as Bonier reported at the time, the increase in newly registered voters was not only for women, but for young, Democratic women. Nowhere was the spike more striking than in the Republican-leaning state of Kansas. There, in August, voters thoroughly rejected a state Constitutional referendum --- by landslide numbers of 59% to 41% --- which would have allowed GOP lawmakers to institute restrictions on reproductive freedoms and even an outright ban on abortions in the state.

Today, we're joined again by Bonier with new, similarly striking data based on how voters actually voted in that KS referendum, where, he notes, women accounted for 56% of all ballots cast. "Usually women account for maybe 51, maybe 52% of ballots cast in these elections," he tells us today. "Women accounted for 56%! That's a huge difference. That just doesn't happen in elections. I haven't found an election in Kansas where women have accounted for this high of a share of the vote."

Based on the KS data, he estimates that as much as 20% of Republicans there turned out to vote against the measure. "It wasn't that men stayed home. It's just that women surged in turnout so far above and beyond what we've seen in prior elections, that they accounted for such a large share of the votes cast."

His research suggests "we've been underestimating the extent to which this issue has engaged women in this election. Especially younger women." Moreover, he does not believe that this surge is being accounted for in models currently used by most of the major polling outfits.

"One of the biggest difficulties for a pollster is figuring out who is going to vote. Because if you don't have an accurate prediction of turnout, then you can't have an accurate poll," says Bonier. "But, when you have what we call an outlier election like in Kansas, where you just don't have a precedent for it, you're not going to find many pollsters who will do what they feel is going out on a limb by predicting turnout that defies past precedent."

He cites, by way of just one example, a recent poll out of Georgia where just 49% of respondents included in the poll were women, even though "in Georgia, on average, women account for 55% of votes cast. Women account for a larger share of the electorate in Georgia than any other state." Why would this pollster be so off the mark? And what does all of this mean for so much of the polling that many are following closely in advance of midterms just six weeks away? Tune in for his answers. We cover a lot of ground.

Bonier cautions, however: "All the different factors that were in place that would have led to a Republican 'red wave' election --- them being the party out of power, the gerrymandering, the voter suppression, the historical precedent for midterm elections --- none of that has gone away." He emphasizes that we are likely to see "two waves side-by-side." The question is how big each "wave" will ultimately be. Either way, he predicts, one or the other is likely to win by very narrow margins.

"I certainly hope no one is seeing this data and thinking that it means Democrats have it wrapped up and can sit this one out, because that is certainly not the case," Bonier warns.

Finally, as you may recall, last month Donald Trump was reportedly having trouble finding any legitimate attorneys willing to represent him in the DoJ's criminal investigation into the thousands of documents he stole from the White House. He finally found who reportedly cost him $3 million to be paid up front. But now, according to CNN anyway, that attorney, Chris Kise, has already been "sidelined" by the disgraced former President. Who could have predicted it?...

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We've got a grab bag of items on today's BradCast, as the critical midterm elections loom and a potentially catastrophic storm threatens the Sunshine State. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among the potpourri of news on today's program...

• Some listener mail in response to yesterday's lively call-in show focused on expansion of the Supreme Court and the necessity of electing Democrats this November in hopes of saving American democracy.

• NASA scientists successfully fired a vending machine sized projectile last November toward a 560-foot wide moonlet orbiting around an asteroid traveling at thousands of miles per hour nearly 7 million miles away. They hit it on their first try. But, other than that, when it comes to things like our climate crisis and fighting infectious diseases here on Earth, scientists don't anything about anything and should be completely ignored, right?

• Texas' top law enforcement official, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, was indicted for securities fraud felonies seven years ago. He has been dodging a trial for those crimes ever since. In the meantime, he's facing a whistleblower lawsuit from former top deputies charging he abused his office and a criminal probe by the FBI regarding similar allegations. On Monday, his state Senator wife Angela (the one he was cheating on with a girlfriend who was given a job by one of his wealthy donors), served as a getaway driver for Paxton after he ran out of the house and fled by to dodge a process server attempting to serve the state's top attorney with two subpoenas. Cause that's what "the rule of law" looks like in the Lone Star State. Paxton will face Democratic A.G. nominee Rochelle Garza during his reelection contest this November.

• False claims of fraud in the 2020 election and threats against poll workers by Donald Trump and his flying MAGA monkey are resulting in a surprising number of folks signing up to be poll workers on both the Left and the Right. That's actually a very good thing! But many more poll workers are still needed to help protect democracy this year! Please contact your local elections office to consider becoming one!

• And, speaking of protecting democracy, last week, the House passed a bipartisan bill to update the Electoral Count Act of 1887. That is the arcane and confusingly written law that Trump and the MAGA monkeys tried to exploit in hopes of stealing the 2020 Presidential election on January 6, 2021. A similar bipartisan bill to the one passed by the House with little GOP support is now quickly moving through the U.S. Senate. And today, republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell came out in support of it. That means the measure is likely to get the 10 Republican votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the undemocratic upper chamber. This much-needed reform to help prevent just one of the ways that Republicans could steal the 2024 Presidential election may see passage in the full Senate before the end of this year.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for both our latest Green News Report and the latest worrying news on Hurricane Ian, a storm that is currently on a potentially catastrophic path toward Tampa Bay, Florida...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hurricane Ian takes dead aim at Florida; Hurricane Fiona was strongest storm on record to hit Canada; Super Typhoon Noru pummels The Philippines; Americans to pay even more for fossil gas this winter; PLUS: Pacific Island nations call for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Sabotage suspected as Russian natural gas leaks from ruptured Nord Stream Pipelines; As irreversible 'tipping points' loom, scientists are trying to figure out how to communicate the risks; Many in Puerto Rico remain without power, 9 days after Fiona hit; Bolsonaro election loss could cut Brazilian Amazon deforestation by 89 percent; Nigeria suffers widespread blackouts after electricity grid fails; Compared to oil and gas, offshore wind is 125 times better for taxpayers; Legal pot is causing a new plastic pollution problem ... PLUS: MIT’s new battery could shock industry ... and much, MUCH more! ...

It was another lively call-in show today on The BradCast, even with one caller accusing me of "professional, managerial class gate-keeping for the Democrats." (Okay. But, if so, where do I pick up my managerial class paycheck?!) [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to the listener calls, however, some important news items today...

• Good news: Italy has just elected its first female Prime Minister! Bad news: She represents a far-right authoritarian party with its roots in Italian World War II neo-fascism.

• Warning: Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro is up for re-election this weekend and is likely to get trounced, according to pre-election polls. But, like the former far-right President of the United States, Bolsonaro has already declared that if he loses, it can only be due to massive fraud. Bolsonaro blames the nation's electronic voting system. Buckle up, Brazil!

• Last week began with three enormous climate change-fueled storms simultaneously slamming Puerto Rico (which is still largely without power or clean water), Alaska and Japan. This week begins similarly, with three huge storms. One (the same one that hit Puerto Rico) slamming eastern Canada and another super-typhoon that spun up from tropical storm to Cat 5 in 24 hours before ravaging The Philippines. The third storm, Hurricane Ian, is now building strength as it edges Cuba as a Cat 2. It's expected to make potentially catastrophic landfall somewhere in Florida in the next day or two, potentially as a Cat 4. Exact landfall location is still unknown, but Desi Doyen joins us to explain how insanely dangerous Ian could turn out to be, particularly for the city of Tampa Bay.

• Then, new polling from the Marquette University Law School, considered the "gold standard" for polling on the U.S. Supreme Court, finds, for the first time, that a majority of Americans are either "strongly" or "somewhat" in favor of expanding the the number of Justices on the Court. As you'll recall, the Republican majority Senate during the Trump Administration, packed and stole the Court majority, first by holding a vacant seat open for a full year (effectively, changing the number of seats from 9 to 8 in 2016); then by a blowing up the Senate filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to seat Justices for lifetime positions on the bench. They did that for three controversial far-right Justices who have since helped the corrupted Republican majority on the Court turn the Constitution and nation upside down by ignoring precedent, making up new "doctrines" from thin air, and overturning critical Constitutional rights established by half-century old SCOTUS opinions like Roe v. Wade.

  For many of the reasons discussed on today's show, expansion of the Court is --- at least in my opinion --- the number one reason for voting for Democrats in this November's critical midterm elections. Everything else --- codifying Roe's protection of reproductive rights into federal law, protecting democracy and the planet itself --- are all ultimately subordinate to the High Court. As corrupted as it currently is, expanding the Court to rebalance it is a must...even if many Democrats in Congress and the White House don't yet seem to understand that. Happily, a majority of Americans, across virtually every demographic sector, now agree.

• Then, we open up the phones to callers on all of the above and more. With, as usual, a bunch of folks calling in to disagree with me, and at least one who correctly identifies the "Big Lie of the Left," that "both parties" are equally bad. They aren't. Not by a demonstrable long shot, as we discuss. Which, apparently, is proof enough that I'm a "professional, managerial class gate-keep[er] for the Democrats!" Who knew? But check please!)

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If you're dumb enough to fall for the disgraced former President's evidence-free claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, you probably deserve whatever nightmares are coming for you. We cover at least three of those dumb dupes on today's BradCast. [Audio link to today's full show follows below this summary.]

• It's been a really really bad week for failed President and 2020 election conspiracist Donald Trump. His hand-picked Special Master in the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case has been doing him no favors. And, yesterday, Trump and his kids and his company were slammed with a massive $250 million fraud lawsuit by the state of New York which may end his ability to do business in the state ever again. And, just a few hours later, a three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, including two Trump-appointed judges, unanimously sided with the Dept. of Justice in a no-uncertain-terms rebuke of Trump's claim's that the classified documents he stole from the White House somehow belong to him, and to the dumb and/or corrupt U.S. District Court Judge who facilitated his ridiculous legal challenge. And no, despite what The Former Guy tried to tell Sean Hannity last night, a President can't simply declassify documents with his mind. But, even if he could, as the 11th Circuit Court helpfully pointed out in their scathing ruling [PDF], the classified status of the stolen documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago is little more than a "red herring".

• It's also been a really really bad week for pillow salesman and 2020 election conspiracist Mike Lindell. On Monday, a federal court in Minnesota denied Lindell and his company's motions to dismiss the massive defamation suit filed against them by Smartmatic, a voting system vendor. The next day, Lindell tried to get himself a similar deal to the one that Trump got in that destined-to-fail Mar-a-Lago lawsuit by filing a lawsuit against the Dept. of Justice, seeking to get his cell phone back. FBI official seized Lindell's phone last week while he was at a fast-food restaurant drive-thru, based on a probable cause search warrant. Lindell's own destined-to-fail lawsuit filing included a copy of the FBI's search warrant, revealing that the bedding magnate is being investigated for identity theft and intentional damage to a protected computer related to the breach of Dominion voting system software in Mesa County, Colorado by its indicted County Clerk, Tina Peters. Lots to explain here. We give you the full story.

• As to 2020 election conspiracist and far-right Republican activist Ginni Thomas, wife of far-right Republican activist Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, her bad weeks may just be beginning. Hopefully. Four months ago, it was revealed that that she actively lobbied Trump's then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, a corrupt Trump lawyer named John Eastman, and several state lawmakers in battleground states to help steal the 2020 election for Trump. On Wednesday, Ginni's attorney announced that she has finally agreed to give testimony to the bipartisan U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection and Trump's multiple failed attempts to steal the election. It is unclear when Thomas' will be interviewed, though the agreement comes months after she had originally claimed to be eager to "clear up misconceptions" about her role in trying to help steal the 2020 election. In related news, the J6 Committee is currently scheduled to hold what may be their last public hearing next week, before releasing their final report at year's end.

• In news that is far less stupid, though also related to much of the above, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland offered incredibly moving remarks (video, transcript) at Ellis Island in New York last week at the swearing in ceremony for 200 new American citizens. The A.G. had a difficult time holding himself together as he recounted his family's history of coming to America while attempting to escape the Holocaust. But it was his telling remarks on "the rule of law" and "the promise of equal justice under law" that may offer clues about what is likely to happen in the days ahead, at a moment when he is almost certainly deciding whether or not to indict a former President of the United States for the first time in history.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Climate Week unfolds in New York during the United Nations General Assembly. She has coverage of the UN Sec. General's call for the fossil fuel industry to pay up for its unspeakable damage across the globe; the continuing toll of Hurricane Fiona in Puerto Rico; and some good news on the first climate change treaty in decades to actually be adopted by the U.S. Senate.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: U.N. Secretary-General calls for fossil fuel industry to pay for climate damages; New initiative takes on plastics and the petrochemical industry; Most of Puerto Rico still as no power or clean water after Hurricane Fiona; PLUS: U.S. Senate approves the first climate treaty in decades... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Manchin's permitting reform is a decoy for ramping up gas; Manchin releases permitting reform package; Fracking won't work in U.K., says CEO of fracking company; Gas, a 'bridge fuel,' dominates U.S. power at any price... PLUS: Rescue efforts are beginning in Tasmania to save more than 200 beached whales.... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today's BradCast starts off with a show-stopper! Everything else thereafter, well, you'll decide for yourself. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

On today's program...

• Since it's, apparently, National Voter Registration Day today (yes, that's a thing), we thought we'd celebrate by starting off with a fantastic new lyric rewrite video from the cast of Broadway's Hamilton. They've updated a song from the show called "The Election of 1800" to a new version called "The Election of 2022" to raise awareness of the importance of voting this year. Their effort is in partnership with Michelle Obama's When We All Vote and Vote Riders. But for help in registering to vote, checking to make sure your registration still exists (and is at the address where you actually live), and for information on the type of ID required to vote where you live, I recommend either the DNC's IWillVote.com app or the federal government's Vote.gov. Both sites allow you to check your registration or register to vote without having to give information to a third party. And, since merely voting is no longer enough, we are officially enlisting you to spread the word to others on all of this! Ask your friends, co-workers, neighbors etc., if they are registered to vote; help them do so, if not; make sure they get to the polls to vote by November 8 this year, etc. etc. Yes, it's that important this year!

• There is a weird beer shortage looming! Why? Lack of carbon dioxide due to contamination at an extinct volcano in Mississippi. Yes, I realize that sounds bizarre --- especially given the deadly over-abundance of CO2 in our atmosphere, causing our deadly climate crisis --- but, well...tune in for the full bizarre explanation.

• On yesterday's program, we detailed some of the apparent federal criminal statutes, such as kidnapping, that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to have violated when he shipped 48 Venezuelan migrants from San Antonio, Texas to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts on behalf of the state of Florida. We noted that requests had been made to the MA Attorney General U.S. Attorney's office in the state to investigate whether laws were violated. But shortly after airtime yesterday, news broke that Bexar County (San Antonio), Texas Sheriff's office has opened a criminal investigation into the matter. Good news!

• As to what actually happened --- versus what DeSantis is claiming --- TPM's Josh Marshall has been trying to do some digging, after first noting that the initial story "Doesn't Add Up". Why did DeSantis hunt down migrants in Texas seeking asylum to entice (with false promises) to go to Massachusetts? Are there no migrants in Florida that could have been similarly abused, since the Florida state legislature has set allocated some $12 million to use to transport migrants out of the state (as opposed to out of the state of Texas)?! Who is this mysterious "Perla" character who has been identified as having recruited the migrants and organized luxury corporate jets to fly theme to MA? And, though the Florida Governor and Presidential hopeful is refusing to offer specifics, what clues can be gleaned about all of this from some of the statements that he has made, referencing a "contractor" or "vendor" who seems to have been hired for all of this, rather than government workers. In other words, what the hell is really going on here?

• Then, in some election law related news today, the House January 6 Select Committee Vice-Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) and committee member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) detailed proposed reforms to the Electoral Count Act, over the weekend. The Committee, they explain, hopes to make it more difficult in the future to steal elections via the Electoral College, as Donald Trump attempted to do on January 6, 2021. The new measure, officially introduced by the Committee in the House on Monday, is called the Presidential Election Reform Act. It would clarify the role of the Vice President on January 6 as purely ministerial; increase the number of Representative and Senators required to challenge any state's Electoral College votes; offer legal options to Presidential candidates in the event that a state fails to certify its Electoral Votes (as a number of GOP candidates for Governor and Sec. of State this year have said they would have done in 2020, had they been in office at the time); and prevents state legislatures from changing the rules for determining election results after the election has already started. The House measure is similar to one recently introduced by a bipartisan group in the Senate, and would need to be reconciled with that version if both versions are successfully brought to a vote in each chamber.

• Some good news --- and some troubling news --- for disabled voters. New voting restrictions adopted by Republicans in several different states have made it literally impossible for some disabled voters to vote at all without breaking the law. For example, a Wisconsin law had mandated that nobody other than the voter him or herself could place an absentee ballot in a mailbox. That means that those without use of their arms --- such as voters suffering from advanced multiple sclerosis or who may have been injured --- might not be able to vote absentee at all. A recent federal court victory in WI will at least allow disabled voters in that state to receive assistance when casting their ballot. But several other states, such as Kansas, Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri, still have measures in place that could make it impossible --- and/or illegal --- for some disabled voters to vote at all in 2022 and beyond.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as three major storms made simultaneous, catastrophic landfall in Puerto Rico, Alaska and Japan over the weekend; a new report finds climate change made Pakistan's recent catastrophic flooding much much worse; better news in Australia where the nation, until recently controlled by climate change deniers, is finally moving to reduce carbon emissions; and, in Louisiana, a court has blocked the construction of a massive, toxic plastics plant in area of the state known as "Cancer Alley"...

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

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

Well, that was a lively BradCast today. Especially the caller segment! Please tune in! [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

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

• Despite a bizarre, very much Nazi-like rally in Ohio held by our former President over the weekend, mainstream corporate media are still pulling their punches in calling out the Republican Party for having gone full bore authoritarian at this point under their far-right MAGA cult leader Donald Trump. Democracy itself is now very much at stake in this nation, and we really need a professional media corps which isn't afraid to start acting like it, calling it out, and reporting it to the American people.

• While the death and funeral of Queen Elizabeth in Great Britain has received virtual wall-to-wall coverage from outlets such as CNN since her death 11 days ago, three major climate change-fueled hurricanes made landfall over the weekend. Puerto Rico had its power knocked out island-wide by Hurricane Fiona (almost 5 years to the day since Hurricane Maria did the same), with as much as 30 inches of rain falling catastrophically in some areas. In Alaska, remnants of Typhoon Merbok resulted in the state's most intense storm in 50 years, leading to widespread flooding across a thousand miles of coastline. And, in Japan, over the same weekend, Supertyphoon Nanmadol resulted in widespread flooding and power outages, while clocking in as the fourth most intense typhoon to make landfall in the nation's history. As Desi Doyen reports today, all of those storms were super-charged by our warming climate and all seemingly quite newsworthy. Then again, Queen Elizabeth died 11 days ago, so...ya know.

• As you have heard by now, Ron DeSantis, Florida's ambitious Republican Governor, has taken credit for coercing 48 migrants from Venezuela, who were lawfully seeking asylum in San Antonio, Texas, onto to two chartered private jets to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Neither the people of Martha's Vineyard, nor even the state's Republican Governor, were notified in advance before the migrants were left stranded. While DeSantis claims the migrants boarded the planes "voluntarily", a brochure, obtained by Popular Information today, citing "Massachusetts Refugee Benefits," appears to have falsely informed the migrants that they would be eligible for "8 months cash assistance," "assistance with housing," "food," "clothing," "transportation to job interviews," "job training," "job placement," "registering children for school," "assistance applying for Social Security cards," and more in MA. That brochure, according to attorneys for 30 of the 48 migrants, is now evidence of a crime --- specifically, as former life-long Republican attorney Keith Barber describes, the federal crime of kidnapping (18 U.S.C. § 1201).

• So, what will or should be done about DeSantis' apparent political stunt that actually appears to have been a pretty straightforward federal crime? Will he be held accountable by MA's Democratic Attorney General or by the U.S. Dept. of Justice? Callers ring in with their thoughts (several of whom, by the way, support DeSantis' crime!), on today's very lively program!...

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Apologies in advance for all of the encouraging news on today's BradCast! I'm sure things will be terrible and outrageous tomorrow. [Audio link to full show is below this summary.]

Among the many stories covered today, however...

• Joe Biden's approval rating spikes nearly 10 points in new AP/NORC polling.
• Retail sales grew yet again in August as unemployment falls yet again, finds new federal data.
• Biden Administration hashes out last minute deal between rail workers and companies to avert crippling rail strike.
• New York A.G. Letitia James reportedly rejects Trump's attempt to settle a fraud lawsuit against him, his company and maybe one of his kids (that she has yet to file.)
• Pillow magnate and election denier Mike Lindell's phone is confiscated by FBI in federal grand jury probe of unlawful Colorado voting system breach.
• Special Prosecutor is named to investigate Republican state Attorney General nominee Matt DePerno (and several other top GOPers) involvement in unlawful Michigan voting system breach.
• Instead of committing election fraud crimes after the 2020 election, under the guise of looking for them, Republicans might have looked a bit closer to home. Rensselear County, New York's Republican Election Commissioner is the latest GOP official to be arrested and charged for absentee ballot voting fraud in a sweeping federal probe.
• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, including a new U.N. warning that we are entering "uncharged climate territory"; Summer 2022 clocks in as the hottest ever recorded; Transitioning quickly to clean energy could save the world $12 trillion; and President Biden touts his historic climate bill and our new national EV charging network...

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