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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Yet another heat dome broils much of the U.S., so hot even corn is sweating (literally); Senate Democrats propose classifying extreme heat as a disaster to free up federal funding; Oregon grapples with the first mega-fire of 2025; PLUS: Analysis finds U.S. spent nearly $1 trillion on climate damages last year... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): E.P.A. says it will eliminate its scientific research arm; US to withdraw from UN scientific and cultural agency UNESCO again, White House says; Trump radically overhauls EPA mission and scope in first six months; Dismantling of EPA’s scientific arm fulfills key chemical industry goal; Weather extremes caused by climate change are driving up food prices: report; US wetlands 'restored' using treated sewage tainted with forever chemicals... PLUS: Texas flood protest goes to D.C.: ‘No more kids lost to climate disasters'... and much, MUCH more! ...

Yikes. On today's BradCast, Trump's fascistic lawlessness is really taking hold this week in several areas...with a lot of help from his fellow corrupt Republicans. A few GOPers, however, who serve as election officials in Colorado, aren't having it. And we are grateful to them. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Lots of news today, and not much of it encouraging amid America's existential fight against Donald Trump's rising tyranny...

• Late last night, for the first time since 1999, in a simple majority vote that avoids the filibuster, Senate Republicans approved a Trump-requested package to rescind some $9 billion dollars in federal spending that had been previously approved through the bipartisan appropriations process. About $8 billion was to have been for foreign aid, and more than $1 billion was slashed from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting which helps fund NPR and PBS stations around the country. That is likely to kill a number of public radio and TV stations around the country entirely, particularly in rural areas which heavily rely on CPB support to continuing broadcasting over our public airwaves. After one more vote in the GOP House tonight or tomorrow, the bill heads to the President for his signature.

• Perhaps in hopes that it will somehow make up for Trump's refusal to release the "Epstein Files" (that he is almost certainly named in, many times), the Dept. of Justice in DC on Wednesday night ordered the firing of a top career federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York (SDNY). The longtime, very well respected prosecutor is Maurene Comey, prosecutor of the late Jeffrey Epstein's case, as well as his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell (who is currently serving 20 years for her part in Epstein's child sex trafficking scheme.) Comey --- whose "fear is the tool of the tyrant" statement to colleagues upon leaving is here --- also happens to be the daughter of Trump's imagined enemy, James Comey, the Republican FBI Director fired by Trump during his first term for his refusal to violate the law on Trump's behalf.

• In the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Democrats walked out after Republicans prematurely ended debate on the Appeals Court nomination of Emil Bove, one of Trump's criminal defense attorneys who is currently serving as a top DOJ official. Trump has nominated him for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. Since being tapped for a top job at DOJ, Bove has played a key role in the Department's dismissal of corruption charges against NYC's mayor; headed up weaponized mass revenge firings at the Department; threatened officials who resisted Trump's agenda; and, according to a mountain of on-the-record evidence from a DoJ whistleblower, instructed prosecutors to defy court orders in immigration cases. His nomination is opposed by hundreds of bipartisan prosecutors and judges. So, naturally, Trump wants him to have a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge and Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were happy to approve his nomination today in a 12 to 0 vote after Dems walked out in protest.

• With unpopular Republicans desperate to hold on to their very narrow majority rule in Congress, so they can continue to abuse it, some are now turning to voter suppression schemes in advance of next year's critical mid-term elections. In Wyoming, where it is already unlawful for non-citizens to vote, its MAGA Sec. of State Chuck Gray is implementing a new requirement for physical proof of citizenship for voting. Voting rights advocates --- some of whom are suing --- argue that the new law is certain to disenfranchise thousands of otherwise eligible voters (particularly women, whose married names may not be reflected on papers such as passports, REAL IDs, birth certifications) in a state which, with the recent help of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, has been able to uncover exactly ZERO cases of noncitizen voting in the state's most populous county.

• But the most alarming news this week regarding the Trump White House's assault on voting rights and voters and elections and democracy itself this week, comes out of Colorado. On Thursday the Washington Post reported on what appears to have been a --- so far --- failed scheme to breach sensitive voting systems in 10 counties across the state. The Denver Post subsequently confirmed and added to the report. The clumsy plot appears remarkably similar to the one that resulted in the unlawful copying and theft of proprietary statewide voting and tabulation software by Trump allies in Coffee County, Georgia in early 2021. (We covered that story closely, and helped break some of it, on this show.) In Colorado, however, where Republican County election Clerks say they were contacted last week by someone said to be working for the White House, seeking access to the voting systems by DHS, all of them say they rejected the attempt. No doubt, memories are fresh in the state of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who is currently serving 9 years in prison related to having breached her own County's voting system hardware and software following the 2020 election. Much more on all of this on today's program.

• And, finally, as the "Summer of Floods" continues, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report on that; a new NASA analysis on the dramatic, climate-fueled increase in extreme weather events; and on the Trump Dept. of Defense decision to cut off access to key satellites used in the forecasting of hurricanes...

Told ya today's news wasn't great. So..."enjoy" today's BradCast!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Summer of Floods continues with deadly flash flooding in the Northeast; NASA analysis finds a dramatic increase in the severity of extreme weather events in the U.S.; PLUS: Trump Defense Department cuts off access to satellites used for hurricane forecasting... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Power prices projected to soar under new tax cut and spending law; Amid politics, research on harmful health impacts of wildfire smoke piles up; Trump hails $90 billion push to make Pennsylvania a natural gas hub; OSHA just reduced the value of a worker's life; Texas failed to spend millions in federal aid for disaster protection... PLUS: The nightmare mess left by one closed paper pulp mill... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Like everywhere else in the federal government, the Trump Administration's IRS seems determined to undermine decades of the rule of law. Specifically, 75-years of tax law as it regards elections and the separation between church and state. But why would he stop there? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

A few headlines before we get to today's main story...

• A lively Democratic primary election was underway on Tuesday in Arizona's 7th Congressional District for a Special Election to fill the vacant seat of Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who passed away in March. Among the five candidates running are Grijalva's 54-year old daughter and a 25-year old political influencer. Both are progressives, as the race appears more about generational change than ideology. Republicans are holding a three-way primary as well today, in the geographically large and otherwise very "blue" district stretching into Tucson and across the southern border of the state.

• New figures from the Dept. of Labor out today find consumer prices rising again, as Donald Trump's inflationary tariffs begin to take hold, just as pretty much all legit economists had long warned. The overall rate ticked up to 2.7% in June after clocking in at 2.4% the month prior. Trump has promised still larger tariffs in the weeks ahead, even as he pressures the Fed to lower interest rates --- which could further spike inflation.

• Both the New York Times and Washington Post recently filed stories focused on implementation of new tax policy by the Administration following the Trump/GOP budget law that is now set to slash more than $4 trillion in taxes, mostly for the wealthy. The Times highlights Ken Kies, the longtime corporate lobbyist who Trump has tapped to head-up tax policy at the Treasury Department. After decades helping the ultra-rich and major corporations dodge taxes, Kies --- who was approved last month on a party-line vote in the Senate --- will now be able to adapt those tax-cheating skills to writing policy for the federal government itself.

• THEN... Speaking of both taxes and election, we're joined by Professor ELLEN APRILL, longtime, recently retired tax law expert at Loyola Law School, now Senior Scholar in Residence for Philanthropy and Nonprofits at the UCLA School of Law.

  Last week, lawyers for Trump's Internal Revenue Service filed a stunning settlement agreement [PDF] in court, in a case filed against the government by several Texas churches and a group of religious broadcasters. The agreement, if accepted by the court, would allow houses of worship to endorse political candidates, despite their tax-exempt nonprofit status.

  The settlement would, at least for the specific challengers in this case, block the 75-year old Johnson Amendment which mandates that churches and other nonprofits may not participate in "any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office."

  That news was reported last week with much fanfare, suggesting the Trump Administration's IRS had declared it lawful for churches to endorse political candidates from the pulpit. The truth is not quite as awful...thought it's close. And it could quickly get worse if this agreement is approved by the judge in this case.

  "Technically, it is not a new statement of general application from the IRS," Aprill tells me today. "It is simply a settlement of a particular case involving two plaintiffs --- two churches and the National Religious Broadcasters --- and if the judge were to rule the way that the government and the plaintiffs have asked, it would enjoin enforcement of the Johnson Amendment for statements during worship [but] only for these two churches."

  But, as Aprill told the New York Times last week, "Even Las Vegas doesn’t stay in Las Vegas these days." The agreement on its own, if finalized, does not set legal precedent, she explains. But it may help to clear that path moving forward. And, in the meantime, she notes, it wouldn't just apply to places of worship communicating with their members --- like “a family discussion concerning candidates --- as the IRS motion characterized it. It could be used to endorse candidates on web sites run by churches with tens of thousands of members and, of course, millions of viewers across the country.

  Moreover, non-religious 501(c)(3) nonprofits are likely to soon say, "I don't know why you can do it for them, and not for me," warns Aprill. "They are really arguing for expanding the rule, not taking it away from houses of worship."

  It could also lead, she worries, to "faux churches, faux houses of worship, being formed just to get the tax deductible contributions" since "unlike other 501(c)(3)s, houses of worship do not have to file to become tax exempt, they do not have to file the annual information return that other 501(c)(3)s do."

  As if we don't have enough Dark Money in our electoral system already, this Administration --- led by a President who, in 2017, vowed to "get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment" --- seems hell bent (pun intended) on corrupting what's left of our democracy even further.

• FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as deadly flash flooding spreads throughout the U.S.; as Kristi Noem and FEMA faces questions about their failures during horrific July 4th flooding in Texas; and as a National Park treasure is lost in a wildfire over the weekend that park officials allowed to burn on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Outrage grows over Trump Administration's delayed FEMA response to deadly Texas flood disaster; As new flash flooding strikes around the U.S., new data reveals inadequacy of FEMA flood maps; PLUS: Wildfire allowed to burn at Grand Canyon National Park's North Rim, destroys a National Park treasure... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Why Kristi Noem hates FEMA; Dangerous weather predictions will get tougher after these Trump administration actions; The Trump admin just hired 3 outspoken climate contrarians; Texas Flood Survivors: "Trump Knows Best"; Trump admin says it won't publish climate report on NASA site as promised; Recurrent wildfires across the Mediterranean region are changing the landscape; An Ohio solar project overcomes local opposition and misinformation... PLUS: 10 Ways to keep your home cool this summer... and much, MUCH more! ...

Yes, we are under a fascistic, authoritarian takeover of the United States. Yes, it can be frightening. But our wannabe authoritarians also happen to be clowns and fools and incompetent buffoons, and should be called out at such. And so we do on today's BradCast, even while our best chance to kick these degenerates to history's curb remains at the ballot box. Which is why they are fighting so hard to game it. Again. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Trump's EPA reverses its position to do the right thing after all regarding the Biden Administration's ban of cancer-causing asbestos? Can it really be true?

• Donald Trump meets with African leaders at the White House, admires the Liberian President's excellent English and wonders how he learned to speak it so "beautifully". (Spoiler: English is the official language of Liberia.)

• As recovery efforts continue following deadly flash flooding last Friday in Texas (and on Sunday in North Carolina, and on Tuesday in New Mexico), dullard DHS Sec. Kristi Noem convenes a meeting to discuss the Admin's stated plans for dismantling FEMA entirely. Her argument for doing so this week? A report that she claims reveals that FEMA's response to the 2023 wildfires in Maui, Hawaii was so bad that "one in six survivors were forced to trade sexual favors...for just basic supplies." But that's not what the report claims at all, and one of its authors calls Noem's interpretation a "gross manipulation" of their work.

• Native American voters won a 2023 trial challenging North Dakota's racially gerrymandered legislative maps. But then the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out their 2023 victory, claiming the challengers lacked standing to sue because Article 2 of the Voting Rights Act doesn't explicitly allow individual groups or voters to challenge violations of the Act. Only the Dept. of Justice may do so, according to the 8th Circuit, despite decades of rulings to the contrary in the 60 years since passage of the VRA. The court's ruling last year now prevents private suits against discriminatory election laws in the seven states (Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota) comprising the 8th Circuit. On Wednesday, the tribes announced they were filing for a stay at the Appeals Court, as they intend to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

• Speaking of racial gerrymandering, on Wednesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott --- even as recovery efforts continue on the Guadalupe River where more than 100 are now dead and 160 still missing following Friday's flash-flooding --- wants the state legislature to convene a special session to...redistrict U.S. House seats in the state. TX Republicans already hold twice as many Congressional seats as Dems in the already-gerrymandered state. But the Trump White House and its corrupted DOJ have been pressuring TX to carry out a rare, mid-decade redrawing of its Congressional map in order to make four Democratic, minority-held seats around Houston and Dallas less...um...colorful. Abbott appears happy to oblige...

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with more on flash flooding in four U.S. states, in the North, South, East and West over the past week alone; thousands now dead from an extreme heat wave in Europe; and new warnings from experts that no country is currently prepared for the climate impacts to come...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Yet another deadly flash flooding event, in the third state in five days, this time in New Mexico; Extreme heat wave killed thousands in Western Europe; PLUS: 'We need to adapt' --- Climate experts warn no country is prepared for climate impacts... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): As Texas Flood Raged, Camp Mystic Was Left to Fend for Itself; As Trump slashed weather agency, his appointees have ties to companies that stand to benefit from privatizing forecasts; Trump Hires Scientists Who Doubt the Consensus on Climate Change; Trump Wants to Kill a Chemical Safety Board. Chemical Makers Object ... PLUS: EPA employees sweat through workplace discomfort that some worry may be more than disrepair... and much, MUCH more! ...

The Madness of King Donald's massive, recently signed tax cut and spending law continues to be a focus on today's BradCast. As does his madness and non-stop lying, in general, and the deadly climate disasters that continue to worsen by the day, coincidentally, following adoption of the Republican anything-but-beautiful bill that guts U.S. investment in cheap, clean, climate saving, renewable energy. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Before we get to our guest today, some quick news items, including...

• A few independently verifiable fact-checks on the mountain of a lies told by Donald Trump during Tuesday's ridiculous, televised "Cabinet Meeting" at the White House, including several of his falsehoods regarding inflation, his tariff policy, his massive spending bill, China's use of wind energy, California's clean and reliable power grid, and more.

• The climate chaos continues seemingly unabated this week. First it was record deadly flash-flooding in Texas on Friday. Then record deadly flash-flooding on Sunday in North Carolina. And, on Tuesday, deadly flash-flooding in Ruidoso, New Mexico, in an area scarred by wildfires and flooding just last year. (Also, Chicago saw a months worth of rain in about 90 minutes on Tuesday, stranding vehicles, triggering rescues, etc.) The Fox "News" Weather website had fairly good coverage in their story headlined: "Deadly walls of water pummel communities across three states in just one week, spawn unprecedented devastation". But, can you guess what they forgot to even mention in their coverage of all of that deadly climate-fueled chaos in less than one week? Right. Not a single mention of the manmade global warming and climate change which exacerbated the chaos, made it more likely, more intense and, sadly, more and more deadly.

THEN... We are joined by RYAN COOPER, Managing Editor at The American Prospect, who (presciently?) filed a story late last month about how climate-fueled disasters cost the U.S. almost a trillion dollars over the past year, far outpacing estimates even by Nobel Prize winning economists. And that was before the seemingly non-stop disasters of the past week.

It was also before Donald Trump gutted much of Joe Biden and the Democrats' landmark Inflation Reduction Act investments in clean, renewable energy, as Trump did when he signed the GOP budget monstrosity last Friday. Imagine how much farther the trillion dollars of damage from last year alone could have gone if it had been used to combat climate change instead.

"This is the real irony of what is happening here," Cooper explains today. "President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act was expected to cost about a trillion dollars in spending over ten years...a really big policy. But economic analysis now indicates that repealing that and replacing it with coal subsidies and whatnot [as the Trump/GOP law does] isn't going to boost GDP, it's going to reduce it. It's going to hurt economic growth." And, of course, the climate.

"Now that solar panels and batteries have gotten so cheap, this is the best way to drive economic growth. So we're cutting off our nose to spite our face. We're allowing China to monopolize the industries of the 21st century, while the American auto industry is going to be stranded, using obsolete technology, while China takes over the rest of the world with dirt cheap electric vehicles. So much for America First."

Cooper argues: "It's just completely senseless in way that's almost impossible to describe what Republicans have done to America and to the American economy. And the world, too."

But the gutting of clean energy investment is hardly the only under-reported absurdity in Trump's big bill. While there has been much coverage of its trillion dollars worth of cuts to health care via Medicaid, much less reportage has been given to the fact that --- unless Congress adopts a fix, and quickly --- as much as $500 billion will be cut from MediCARE as well over the next ten years, including $50 billion over the next year alone.

All of that to help pay for $4 trillion in tax cuts to mostly wealthy people, at the additional cost of $3 trillion added to the national debt.

Cooper and TAP's David Dayen this week rounded up even more under-reported idiocy from the Trump/GOP megabill, that we finally find time to cover today, including ten bizarre items hidden in the bill, such as its perverse incentives for states to defraud the SNAP food stamp program; a provision that exempts oil and gas drilling companies from paying taxes at all; and something that Cooper and Dayen refer to as "The Mass Shooter Subsidy". (Yes, it's as outrageously stupid as it sounds...)

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Today on The BradCast: Trump's authoritarianism receives yet another greenlight from his corrupted SCOTUS just days after he signed a budget bill that makes ICE larger than the entire militaries of many countries. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Sorry in advance for the less than cheery news on much of today's program. We don't invent it. We just report it...

• Last week, the Trump Administration's Environmental Protection Agency took a huge swing at the First Amendment's Constitutional free speech "guarantees" when it placed about 140 staffers on leave. Their crime? Signing their names on a letter to EPA chief Lee Zeldin, detailing concerns about the current direction of the agency, including its use of misinformation and implementation of a dangerous partisan agenda that contradicts science and "undermines the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment". A Trump EPA spokesperson described the dissenters, now facing investigations, as "unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda."

• Today, just before air, in an unsigned opinion [PDF] issued on the so-called "shadow docket", Donald Trump's corrupted SCOTUS overturned lower district and appeals court rulings that had previously blocked the Administration's mass layoffs of hundreds of thousands of government workers across dozens of agencies. The ruling came as part of a lawsuit filed by dozens of unions, non-profits and local governments which argue that only Congress, not the President, can order agency-crippling layoffs. The challengers had won injunctions in the lower courts to prevent the layoffs until after the suit had been fully heard. Today, SCOTUS said there is no need to wait because, contrary to the lower court rulings, the Justices believe the Government "is likely to succeed on its argument." Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of workers at the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Labor, Treasury, State, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, the EPA and elsewhere are now expected to be permanently laid off, even as the trial continues to play out in the lower courts.

• On Monday, scores of fully-armed and camouflaged federal immigration agents --- apparently led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CPB) --- along with members of the U.S. military, descended upon MacArthur Park here in Los Angeles in armored vehicles and on horseback to take over the nearly empty park. It's unclear if any migrants were actually detained at all. But the ridiculous display was code-named "Operational Excalibur" and meant as a conspicuous "show of presence", according to internal Army documents obtained by national security journalist Ken Klippenstein.

  The ostentatious show of force comes just days after Donald Trump signed a massive spending and tax cut bill that will gut health care and food assistance to millions of Americans; slash renewable energy initiatives meant to combat climate change; give huge tax cuts mostly to wealthy people; while increasing the national debt by about $3 trillion.

  But the new law will also, as JOSH KOVENSKY, investigative journalist at Talking Points Memo joins us to explain today, massively expand the nation's immigration enforcement infrastructure by, among other things, supersizing ICE. The agency currently operates on an annual budget of around $9 billion. That will now tripled to about $27 billion annually, as the Trump/Republican bill pumps around $170 billion in new spending into detention and deportation efforts through 2029.

  As Kovensky reported on July 4th, when Trump signed the bill into law, the ICE budget will now be larger than the U.S. Bureau of Prison, the FBI, and even the U.S. Marine Corps. This new, virtual military branch, will unleash its newly gained power not in foreign lands, but right here in the good ole' U.S.A.

  Much of the funding will go towards a "drastic expansion" of detention, Kovensky reports, as the Trump Administration continues to "push people to voluntarily leave the country."

  "If you think about MacArthur Park, it was one park," he tells me, citing the obnoxious Monday incident in L.A. "But now, with all this money, they can try to replicate this across the country. With all of these new officers they're hiring to detain people, all these camps they are going to be building to hold them, you're going to be seeing scenes like this play out nationally. I think that's the real risk, and something people should be expecting."

  With the massive budget increase, Kovensky warns of the ongoing threat of increased militarization, not just against migrants (much less the few that can be found with criminal records), but political opponents of the Administration in the wake of recent questionable arrests against Democratic judges, mayors, and other elected officials.

  "More than half the people who are currently in immigration detention awaiting removal have no criminal record," Kovensky observes. "I think that's a tell. The resources they're putting into this dramatically exceed what would be needed to focus only on criminal aliens."

  Tune in for much more.

• Finally, as if things aren't dark enough today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with coverage of the ongoing, heartbreaking --- and avoidable --- tragedy from Friday's flash flooding in Texas Hill Country, as the confirmed death toll reaches 111, including dozens of children, and more than 160 people still said to be missing; Record flooding in North Carolina from Tropical Storm Chantal; and details on the massive (and effective) climate and clean energy investments just gutted by Trump and the Republicans in their new spending bill...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Historic storm and flooding results in tragedy in Texas; Tropical Storm Chantal slams into North Carolina, triggering record-breaking floods; PLUS: Trump and Republicans narrowly pass massive budget bill gutting climate and clean energy investments... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Poisoned Water And Scarred Hills: the toll of China's dominance of rare earth market; Increasingly Acidic Seas Threaten Oyster Farming; Trump’s EPA Pulling Back on Promise to Crack Down on Forever Chemicals; Sewage Treatment Plants Channel ‘Forever Chemicals’ Into Waterways Nationwide; How Denver’s trash, recycling and compost system works: They’d rather teach you than fine you... PLUS: Underwater Turbine Spins For 6 Years Off Scotland’s Coast In Breakthrough... and much, MUCH more! ...

We're back live for today's BradCast after our 4th of July break last week. I wish we were back with better news. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

It was bad enough when we presumed we'd be covering last week's final passage and signing of the Trump/GOP Big Budget Boondoggle bill today. The law that will now strip health care and food assistance from tens of millions (including from the Obamacare exchange here in California; from rural hospitals already shutting down in Nebraska; and to MediCARE recipients across the country); super-size ICE into Trump's virtual private army; and gut landmark climate change initiatives and clean energy tax credits for consumers and businesses that had previously resulted in a U.S. manufacturing boom. All in order to help pay fore more than $4 trillion dollars in tax cuts mostly to the wealthiest Americans, at a cost of spiking the national debt by $3 trillion.

All of that would have been bad enough today. But the heartbreaking and completely predictable tragedy still unfolding in Texas is simply soul crushing. We know it was predictable, because, despite lies from officials to the contrary, it was predicted. Making it all the more horrific, the deadly flash flooding took place on the very same day that Trump and Republicans were high-fiving each other at the White House for their tax cuts to rich people and the gutting of landmark climate initiatives to help keep us safe by moving away from the burning of fossil fuels that has intensified and increased weather disasters like the one we are watching unfold in Texas Hill country today.

With more than 100 now confirmed dead as of airtime --- including dozens of little girls at a Christian summer camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River, where water rose 25 feet in less than an hour --- the blame game is already underway with Texas officials (and the chief of Trump's U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security), charging that the National Weather Service somehow failed to issue proper forecasts and warnings.

In fact, as we discuss in detail today, though the NWS is now dangerously under-staffed thanks to Trump's layoffs, early retirement buyouts and hiring freezes, agency meteorologists did, in fact, predict and warn about the flash flooding emergency. Multiple times. But many of the NWS positions which, prior to the second Trump Administration, would have prepped with and communicated warnings to local officials are now vacant.

Of course, all of that can be added to the years of warnings from climate science experts about exactly the type of disaster that unfolded on Friday night in Texas, where Republican officials --- like Trump in D.C. --- continue to ignore the lessons of our climate crisis and refuse to take action in response. In fact, they are actively working to make it worse.

Our own Desi Doyen spent much of the holiday weekend digging into all of this with academics and meteorological experts. She joins us today to clarify what we knew, what we didn't, and who is now lying about what in her old home state of Texas and beyond...

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It's our last BradCast before we head off for a 4th of July respite next week. Which means we're trying to fit in a whole bunch of stuff into one single show today before we go. Which means we call in two of our (and your) fave guests to help us out before hitting the road. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

Longtime OG blogger friends --- HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo and 'DRIFTGLASS' of his eponymous blog and the Professional Left Podcast --- are back with us today as we wrap up another absurdly overstuffed news week, on another absurdly busy news day.

The top story we tackle with Digby and Driftglass today is the remarkable news and various fallout following 33-year old Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani's upset defeat of New York's disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo to win this week's Democratic Mayoral election in NYC.

Digby describes Mamdani, who ran a relentless campaign focused on affordability issues for New Yorkers, as "a real generational talent". Driftglass agrees, saying he represents "a generational change" for the party, even as older establishment Dems have issued bizarre broadsides since the Tuesday election, while Republicans have turned to outright ugly attacks, including on his Muslim background and a call from a member of Congress for the 33-year old Ugandan-born, naturalized citizen and likely next mayor of NYC to be stripped of his citizenship and deported!

But, it's the calls coming from inside the house that may be the most peculiar. "Dudes, he did what you're telling everyone to do. 'It's the economy, stupid,'" Parton pushes back at the establishment types now wringing hands and clutching pearls since Mamdani's victory. "He talked about that incessantly. And now you're saying that was the wrong message for America? Give me a break. Make up your mind."

Driftglass concurs. "He ran an exemplary campaign. He checks every box that all of these worrywart centrists say you have to check. He did exactly what people asked and they are terrified of him," he explains today. "He won by coalition-building. By being smart, articulate and naming his enemies. The next hurdle is going to to be your own party."

That's just a taste. We've got much more today on that and what Mamdani's Primary win means for the party going forward into next year and beyond. But, we've also got more today with Digby and Driftglass on Donald Trump's weekend bombing of Iran and his twisted behavior since; his terrorizing the U.S. with ICE assaults on migrants across the country; and whether Republicans will actually be able to pass their "One Big Beautiful Bill" --- which steals trillions from the poor to give tax cuts to the rich --- before (or even after!) July 4, as Trump has demanded.

Also, Desi Doyen closes with our latest Green News Report with both good and bad news for forests and other public lands amid a record sweltering week for the much of the nation, as we considering skipping the fireworks this year, given how many we have to deal with every day just to produce The BradCast during the ongoing, nightmarish, seemingly unending Trump Era...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Heat dome shatters records, with a side of worsening air pollution; Senate parliamentarian blocks Republicans' massive fire sale of the public's lands; PLUS: Trump Administration moves to repeal landmark 'Roadless Rule' to open 58 million acres of your national forests to logging and development... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Heat waves are getting more dangerous with climate change, and we may be underestimating them; Senate Republicans’ climate-wrecking corn ethanol payout; Cities lose hope for restarting disaster projects killed by Trump; Trump’s OSHA nominee has a history of opposing workplace heat protections; Study tracks pollution disparities between Latino and White communities in Los Angeles; Remote Alaska village turns to solar and biomass to cut diesel and save money... PLUS: The climate is broken. Have you tried turning it off and then on?... and much, MUCH more! ...

Today's BradCast is best understood --- and felt --- by listening to it. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But, in short, here are some of the topics we cover along the way...

• 27-year old White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who told Fox "News" yesterday that Trump "came up with" the "motto and foreign policy doctrine" known as "Peace Through Strength", is a living breathing monument to how much Donald Trump disrespects Americans, American values, and the Free Press.

• Trump's unlawful, unconstitutional bombing of Iran's nuclear cites over the weekend did not "completely and totally obliterate" them, as he lied to the American people on Saturday night. But it did set the use of those facilities back "a few months" according to an early, classified U.S. assessment reported on by several outlets today.

• Trump's self-declared "cease-fire" between Israel and Iran yesterday apparently never happened. So, he went "absolutely berserk" used the "f-bomb" to the media today instead.

• "Heatwave Shell", as veteran meteorologist Guy Walton has named it (he names heatwaves after Big Oil companies whose products have made heatwaves more and more deadly each and every passing year) is causing misery, and danger, across much of the eastern half of the nation this week.

• Among the locations hardest hit by Heatwave Shell today is New York City, which is also holding its Democratic Mayoral Primary today. Normally, such contests might very well determine who will become the City's next Mayor in the very Democratic city. This year, the politics --- a corrupt incumbent Mayor who plans to run as an independent in November, a disgraced former Governor who may do the same if he loses today, and two very progressive candidates who could win, but would cause freakouts from the Right and maybe even the supposed center --- could shake things up. Beyond the politics, however, we focus today on the voting method now used in NYC's Mayoral elections, specifically Ranked Choice Voting, how it works (and/or doesn't), its dangers (as I see them) to American democracy, and an alternative form of voting (Approval Voting) that solves many of the concerns that RCV proponents care about, without risking disenfranchisement and loss public oversight of election results. Tune in for this one, if you ever wondered what RCV was all about, liked the idea, or hated it.

• The corrupt Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrated their corruption and Republican activism again on Monday, by issuing an obnoxiously terse ruling --- without comment or explanation --- that not only allows the Trump Administration to endanger migrants by deporting them to countries from which they did not come, and which the State Dept. advises against traveling to, but also fails to mention a word about the Trump DOJ's repeated, lawless, intentional violation of lower federal district court orders in this and related cases. The three liberal Justices issued a blistering, 20-page dissent, while the corrupt majority couldn't be bothered to write a word to explain their full approval of "legalistic noncompliance" in yet another "disastrous" decision that undermines the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution itself.

• And with that corrupt ruling on the Court's emergency docket --- the so-called "Shadow Docket" --- nearly full-blown Authoritarianism arrives in the U.S. But I carefully use the word "nearly" because --- guess what? --- we in the media are still here, for now, and are still reporting on what the authoritarian tyrants are doing. Today's latest example...

• A hard-working migrant landscaper here in Southern California was descended upon by a bunch of masked and armed ICE and/or CPB goons on Saturday while trimming weeds outside of an IHOP. Narciso Barranco, as the viral video of his arrest revealed, was then pepper-sprayed, thrown to the ground, repeatedly punched in the shoulder and face, before being shoved into an unmarked van for detention and, presumably, deportation after some 25 or 30 years in the U.S. Barranco has no criminal history and is the proud father of three sons, all U.S. Marines. And no, as the video shows, he did not "assault" federal agents with his weed-whacker, as DHS lied in response to their shame after the video of his violent arrest went viral. He did, however, when he was finally able to speak from detention more than 24 hours later to his eldest son (who served in Afghanistan), ask him to go finish the landscaping job at the IHOP that he was unable to complete himself on Saturday.

• And finally today, speaking of the dangers to all of us by the tyrannical Right and their corporate sponsors, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with more on this week's heatwave; dangers now posed to the food supply, thanks to climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels; and the window for us to forestall the worst of our climate crisis quickly closing...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

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Follow @GreenNewsReport...




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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Summer heat wave broils most of the U.S.; Climate change will hammer the food supply, new study warns; Spain's nationwide blackout caused by aging grid equipment, not renewables; PLUS: The window for limiting warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius is closing... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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

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

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): US Forest Service to repeal roadless rule to promote logging; Bees are collapsing in the U.S. as Trump closes the bee-focused federal science office; Intense weather means rethinking your home construction — and insurance; Extreme heat is exacerbating air pollution, a 'double whammy' for health; Judge rules EPA termination of environmental justice grants was unlawful... PLUS: National park visitors are not impressed with Trump's revisionism... and much, MUCH more! ...