Apparently it's Fascism Week on The BradCast, as the former President's rhetoric and threats become increasingly dark, and as all warning signs continue to blink brighter and brighter red, no matter how few seem to notice. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST... before we get to our guest to discuss that today, a bit of mostly encouraging voting news out of two critical states...

• The first day of early voting on Tuesday in battleground Georgia smashed the state's record by more than doubling it, with at least than 328,000 ballots cast yesterday. Of course, that doesn't necessarily tell us who those voters were voting for. But the best news may be that lines were reportedly moving very quickly thanks to the state's new check-in procedure which is said to take seconds rather than minutes.

• More good news out of Georgia: After a state judge declared certification of results by County officials to be mandatory, as opposed to discretionary, in a ruling [PDF] released yesterday (they must do so by the deadline specified in state law, which is 5pm Monday following the Tuesday election), the same judge went on to temporarily block, at least for this election, a new rule instituted at the last minute by GA's MAGA-controlled State Elections Board mandating a hand-count of the number of ballots cast at the polling place at the end of the Election Day, before they are shipped off to the County. It's a smart rule, if poorly written. It's already done in many states. But the lateness of the adoption of that rule, according to the judge, threatens to result in chaos and confusion in an election that is already under way. (Late today, after airtime, a separate state judge blocked at least seven new SEB rules permanently, including the hand-count rule, declaring them "illegal, unconstitutional and void.")

• The Nebraska Supreme Court today spanked the state's Republican Sec. of State and Attorney General for their attempt to block a law adopted by the Legislature earlier this year mandating the immediate restoration of voting rights for people who have completed the terms of their felony sentences. That means hundreds or thousands of additional residents may now be able to vote this year in a state which could determine who wins the White House and which party wins control of both chambers of Congress.

THEN... we're joined by longtime domestic extremism expert, journalist and author, DAVID NEIWERT to discuss the increasingly fascistic and alarming rhetoric and threats by Donald Trump --- and his supporters --- as Election Day nears.

The disgraced former President and convicted felon has, in recent days, added "the enemy within" to his ongoing threats of mass deportation of millions of migrants, citing his perceived domestic political enemies as "more dangerous" than foreign threats and suggesting he might use the National Guard or active duty U.S. military to take them on, if elected to another term in the White House.

Retired top military officials are now warning about the threat that Trump poses to the nation, its people and its Constitution, with Trump's own Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, recently describing him as "a total fascist" and "the most dangerous person to this country."

"The road to fascism is lined with people telling you to stop overreacting," Niewert, who has been warning about Trump's fascist tendencies for at least 9 years (read this, for example, from his blog back in 2015), quips today. "But I think in the past year, the mask has really come off. Especially in the last few months --- the explicit eliminationism" and his suggestion of directing the military against "the enemies within."

And, yet, the race, according to pre-election polling averages, is said to be a tie. Does half of the voting public not take Trump's threats seriously? Do they not know about them? Or do they know and take him at his word, but don't care and actually want such a ruler for the U.S.?

"I would say about two-thirds of the population is in basic denial about it," Neiwert tells me. "The vast majority, both Democrats and Republicans, they don't acknowledge that this stuff is happening, that this stuff is being said, and is building force." But, in particular, he notes, "The Republican Party is now really wholly owned by this element of the right," after having "utterly failed to redeem itself from that horrific moment [on January 6th, 2021] and instead has just doubled down."

The prolific Neiwert, whose most recent book is The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right's Assault on American Democracy, has penned three books during the Trump-era, including 2018's Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump and Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us in 2020. After years of contributing to both major media outlets and smaller blogs alike, he also now writes on similar topics at his Substack page.

Today, he discusses how and when what was once describes as the "alt-Right" movement, eventually came to take complete hold of the GOP. "What we're really talking about here is authoritarianism," he argues. "It began really gathering steam in the early 2000s. Ultimately, the origins of that had to do with 9/11. The sheer flood-tide of fearmongering that erupted across the country and was sustained for years in the wake of 9/11. It had a really profound effect on the national psyche."

"You can actually jack up the levels of authoritarian personalities, the authoritarian response within the country, by fearmongering. That's why Trump's whole appeal all along has been fearmongering. He's fearmongering about the immigrants, the crime, Black people, whatever it is he can fearmonger on. That's how you get people to get into what I call an 'authoritarian crouch.'"

And that's where we now are, he explains, with Trump's first term "a practice run," Neiwert suggests we ain't seen nothing yet if Trump wins this year.

"I don't think Americans have any idea what that's going to look like, to have mass police raids, rounding up Latino families, taking people away and breaking up families and frequently deporting actual citizens. If Trump wins and he goes about doing the mass deportation, it's going to make America into a police state. And I don't think Americans are prepared for what that's going to look like."

Before we get there, of course, we've got to get past the election, which Neiwert predicts, if Trump loses, could look like "the Brooks Brothers riot times ten. Which, in a way, is what January 6 was about, too." But, aside from voting, what can be done to change the course this nation seems to be on? For that, tune in. Members of the mainstream corporate media may not like Neiwert's answer, given his argument that "the media plays a central role in all of this because they're the ones constantly telling us to stop overreacting" as they've spent years effectively working to "normalize Trump's behavior...normalize fascism."

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

We've got a number of encouraging news items on today's BradCast regarding both this year's elections in battleground Georgia and accountability for still more of those who lied about the 2020 contest there on behalf of the disgraced former President. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• The Biden-Harris economy continues to fire on all pistons, far outpacing that of Donald Trump when he was in the White House, no matter how little those facts seem able to break out above the noise of his increasingly authoritarian threats and related madness. Moreover, many major financial firms and experts have determined that Kamala Harris' economic plans will result in far more growth (higher GDP), lower inflation, more job creation and much lower government deficits and national debt than Trump's economic proposals. All of that is true no matter how little attention it receives from our corporate mainstream media. But we try to give that at least a bit of attention today, with some help from Rachel Maddow, as voting is now underway across the country and Election Day just three weeks away.

• Given all the attention Donald Trump is, paradoxically, enjoying for so many of his outrageous lies and threats of late --- not only against migrants in the country, but now to American citizens that the disgraced former President regards as "the enemy within" --- it's about time that the Harris Campaign (via ads) and Harris herself (during rallies) is calling him out for it. Especially now that he has begun vowing to unleash the National Guard and U.S. military against Americans if he is allowed back into the Oval Office.

• The parade of former top aides from the Trump White House speaking out against him and endorsing Kamala Harris this year continues to grow. On Monday, Trump's former Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews joined several of her former colleagues in endorsing the Democratic Vice President in order to help "ensure that Donald Trump never steps foot in the Oval Office again." She joins Trump's former Comms Director and Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, his former White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, and Cassidy Hutchinson, the top aide to Trump's former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, among others, in putting country over party to sound the alarm about the dangers of a second Trump term.

• Donald Trump's longtime buddy and former Fox 'News' reporter Geraldo Rivera has also now joined other previous pals and supporters of the former President, like billionaire Mark Cuban, to endorse Kamala Harris this year. Rivera charged, in a detailed Twitter post on Monday night, that Trump is a "sore loser" and that if you are a Republican who believes in his "Big Lie" that the 2020 election was stolen from him, "Donald Trump has made a liar of you."

• As noted, we've got several seemingly good pieces of news out of Georgia, where today's first day of Early Voting is, according to the Sec. of State's office, breaking 2020's record. The same officials also stated that absentee ballots have gone out in good order and were not adversely impacted by the recent hurricanes. That is good news for voters smart enough to take advantage of the ability to cast a verifiable hand-marked absentee paper ballot in the battleground Peach State. Those who vote at the polls, unfortunately, will still be forced to vote on the state's insecure, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting system. But please don't let that stop you from voting, no matter what, if it's your only option!

• A state judge in Fulton County, Georgia on Tuesday issued a no-uncertain-terms ruling [PDF] that county election officials must certify results before the deadline set by state law, which is at 5pm on the Monday following the Tuesday election. Certification, the judge made clear, is a ministerial duty, not a discretionary option. It is required even if a County election official may have concerns about fraud or error in the tally, or has not received certain public records which they may seek prior to certification. Questions about such results are to be adjudicated in open court after certification, not via private deliberations of county election officials. The unequivocal ruling comes in the wake of a number of new rules recently instituted by the newly-seated MAGA majority on the Georgia State Election Board that have alarmed a number of Democrats who worry the new rules may be used as a pretext by MAGA election officials at the county level to block the certification of results they don't like this year in the critical battleground state. Presuming the judge's very clear ruling today is not overturned by a higher court, it should put some of those concerns to rest, even as there is still much to be concerned about when it comes to GA's elections this year.

• The fallout from Georgia's 2020 election, when Donald Trump tried but failed to steal it from Joe Biden, continues. In good news out of a St. Louis, Missouri court last week, Fulton County, GA election workers Shaye Moss and her mom Ruby Freeman have struck a deal with the rightwing propaganda website called Gateway Pundit, its dopey, dishonest owner Jim Hoft and his dopey, dishonest brother Joe Hoft. The Hoft brothers had tried to avoid accountability for their defamatory lies about Freeman and Moss --- echoed by both Trump and his sleazy, disgraced attorney Rudy Giuliani --- that the women had committed fraud during the tabulation of ballots in 2020 at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta. Despite all related claims about them being quickly debunked by state officials, Gateway Pundit identified the two women by name and continued to lie about them for months and years after, resulting in death threats and the need for them to relocate from their homes. In July, an attempt by Gateway Pundit and the Hofts to shield themselves from the defamation lawsuit filed by Freeman and Moss by declaring bankruptcy was rejected by the judge in the lawsuit. The terms of the deal announced last week by the attorneys for both parties have not yet been disclosed. Freeman and Moss previously won a $148 million lawsuit against Giuliani and struck an undisclosed settlement with rightwing media outlet One America News which they had similarly sued for defamation.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with the ongoing aftermaths of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and some much better news about the long-overdue death of Old King Coal in the U.K....

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

As we go to air on today's BradCast, we're girding for the monster Hurricane Milton's direct impact on Florida's central Gulf Coast over the next several hours, even as millions in that state and five others struggle to recover from devastation following Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago --- and as all of us prepare for November 5th and whatever may come thereafter. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

This week, amid Helene recovery in North Carolina, the state Board of Elections, in a unanimous, bipartisan vote, approved a list of emergency measures for voters in the state's hardest hit counties. Naturally, Trump Republicans on social media are already lying and spreading disinformation about those measures and, of course, Fox "News" is playing along. That said, with the Trump Campaign itself calling for measures to expand access for voters in Republican areas of the state following Helene, it seems like Team Trump is also preparing to have legal (and political) complaints ready to go after the election --- if they lose.

That strategy, however, is not new for them. Even before Helene, the RNC says they are involved in scores of lawsuits across dozens of states. Many of them have been filed by groups like the American First Legal Foundation, founded by far-right Trump adviser Stephen Miller. One such novel suit filed by the group seeks a ruling in Arizona that judges may toss out election results over "failures or irregularities" by local officials. America First Legal is currently seeking such a ruling, however, only in counties where Kamala Harris is believed to be narrowly ahead of Trump.

Similar efforts are also underway by Republicans in other battleground states such as Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, even if they don't think they will actually win the suits. The strategy, according to election law experts, appears to be to have these complaints in place before the election so they can be cited afterward, and used by election officials at the state and federal level to try and overturn results --- only in the event that Trump loses, of course.

At the same time, the Government Accountability Project, a longtime whistleblower support organization, founded in 1977 in the wake of Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers, has published a new guide meant to support election officials and poll workers who may have legitimate reason to blow the whistle this year, particularly in battle grounds states. The 37-page booklet [PDF], entitled "On the Front Lines of Democracy: A Guide to Speaking Up for Election Officials & Workers," offers specific legal advice for those may have seen something and want to say something about it, but don't know exactly how to do so while protecting themselves in the bargain.

We're joined today by DANA GOLD, GAP's Senior Director of Advocacy & Strategy and the Director of the group's Democracy Protection Initiative, which was formed in advance of the 2020 election, "in anticipation of a highly partisan environment" when they were "very concerned about foreign and insider threat of illegal election interference," she explains today.

"We didn't have a lot of whistleblowers, though," says Gold. "We had a fire extinguisher ready. But, as we know, the 2020 election ended up being actually quite secure, fair and free, and administered safely." That said, as we discuss today, "the threat landscape has changed in 2024."

Gold outlines a number of "primary threats to elections" as identified by research in "this very hyper-partisan environment." She says foreign interference remains a concern, but also "the risk of disinformation being spread widely, which can have the result of suppression, delay, eroding confidence in the election results. And potential insider threats. People who are essentially election deniers who believe that the 2020 election was stolen despite every piece of evidence showing that the election was free and fair."

"This is a really volatile environment and election officials and workers are on the front lines, and may be in the best position to see efforts to suppress the vote. They may see insider threats. There are opportunities for election officials and workers who may see problems, and feel very scared and not clear about how to raise that concern, especially if the threat is their supervisor, someone in a position of power."

Given my own long history of reporting on election whistleblowers over the past two decades --- usually related to voting systems and their vendors --- the question of how to determine who are legitimate whistleblowers in this atmosphere, and who are not (but may even think they are) is a rich topic of discussion. Also, given that heroic whistleblowers like Reality Winner --- a national security official who exposed the fact that Russian intelligence operatives had actually infiltrated voter registration systems in several states before the 2016 election --- ultimately received a five-year prison sentence for having done so, Gold grapples with how to best encourage whistleblowers to come forward, while still protecting their legal and civil rights.

"That's why this is really important for us, in terms of a strategy of trying to disseminate this guide, to make election officials and workers, and any employee, aware of their rights, and their risks and options."

"Document everything," she advises those who may believe they have witnessed an election-related violation of law. "Write it down contemporaneously. Make sure that's secure. Check for allies in their co-workers. Note witnesses. Date things. There are ways to shore up the verification piece, which will be critical to both insulate them and make a difference." She adds, of course (citing Mesa County, Colorado's former MAGA County Clerk, Tina Peters, who just received a nine year prison sentence for tampering with voting systems, even as she uncovered nothing!), "they should not break the law to do so."

"Whistleblowers are such an important piece of democracy itself," Gold asserts. "The information provided by a whistleblower fuels those mechanisms of accountability that are our representative democracy. Very important tools in our collective efforts to ensure free and fair elections." To that end, she tells me, the group provides "legal and strategic support and advocacy, so we can protect them, in this environment particularly."

There is much more of note in our fascinating and lively conversation today. Please tune in!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

As discussed on today's BradCast along with some breaking news today, there is much more than simply voting and hoping for the best for your favorite candidates that you can do --- that we need you to do --- to help protect democracy this year. [Audio link to full program follows below this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Iran launched nearly 200 missiles into Israel on Tuesday in response to Israel's recent attacks on the leadership of the Iran-sponsored Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. Those attacks were in response to a year of Hezbollah rocket attacks over the border into northern Israel beginning the day after Hamas' deadly raid in southern Israel one year ago next week. Israel has now vowed retaliation for Iran's attack today, and Hezbollah vows to continue their own attacks until there is a ceasefire in Gaza, in what U.S. officials and others see as a potential escalation into full-scale regional war, or at least a rekindling of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.

• After midnight last night, some 45,000 dockworkers from walked off the job, shutting down ports on the East and Gulf Coasts in the first strike by the International Longshoreman's Association (ILA) in nearly 50 years. The workers are demanding what they describe as long-overdue wage increases and contract guarantees against job-killing automation at the nation's ports. The White House is said to be encouraging a quick resolution between the ILA and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents port and shipping companies who've seen record profits in recent years. If the stoppage continues for several weeks, it is likely to result in higher retail prices and supply chain shortages again, just weeks before the Presidential election.

• Amid ongoing devastation in six southeastern U.S. States following the monstrous Hurricane Helene --- now the second deadliest U.S. storm in the past 50 years --- officials at the North Carolina State Board of Elections have begun issuing guidance to voters and local election officials in the most devastated counties in the western part of the state. That support now includes emergency kits described as "election offices in a box" to help local officials register voters and process absentee ballots until Internet and cell service is restored in those communities. More details, for NC voters and election officials alike, is now available via ncsbe.org.

• But it's not only in storm damaged communities where the public is going to have step up this year help carry off successful elections. In fact, public oversight of our elections is the best and only way to ensure they are free, fair and accurately tabulated in a way that Americans can have confidence in the reported results.

  Republicans appear to have finally figured that out this year, as the RNC claims to be recruiting and training tens of thousands of poll workers and watchers. I explain, on today's program, why I think that's actually a good thing...presuming they don't intimidate voters or election officials...and presuming that Democrats, independents and third-party supporters all do the same thing.

  We're joined today by longtime election integrity and protection expert EMILY LEVY, founder and director of Scrutineers.org, to explain how her non-partisan, non-profit organization is helping to train folks like you to be both poll watchers and poll observers, particularly after the close of polls, when tabulation at precincts is formalized and when members of the public can play a key role to help ensure tallies are accurate. These efforts can also prove helpful in disproving false claims of fraud after the election!

  "We encourage people to observe the processing and counting of votes," Levy tells me, in describing some of the group's training sessions for volunteer observers. While acknowledging that it's impossible to see inside of tabulation computers, she notes "the processes around it and the output, and what's done with the output, can be observed. In most places, you don't need any special authorization."

  "In our training, we talk about what you'll be able to see when you observe, how to check out what you need to do, what kinds of things to look for and then, also, what to do if you see something that doesn't seem quite right to you."

  In addition to discussing how Scrutineers works and what they do, we also discuss the unique challenges for many of us longtime election integrity champions in the wake of the past four years or so of Trump's blatant lies about election fraud and our electoral system.

  Please stop by Scrutineers.org for dates on upcoming training sessions that you can participate in from home, anywhere in the country. And thank you in advance for your helping to protect our democracy! We really need you this year!

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for a special coverage edition of our Green News Report in the wake of the devastation and tragedy of Hurricane Helene, which --- no matter how obscenely longtime climate change deniers like Donald Trump and Florida's Sen. Rick Scott are now attempting to lie about it --- has been perfectly predictable and warned about by scientists for years. That, as Republicans pretend they have no idea how such a monster storm and horrific disaster could have come about...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Another BradCast necessarily, but not wholly, derailed today by our climate crisis. We were able to open the phone lines to hear from a number of callers with their thoughts in advance of Tuesday's Vice-Presidential Debate. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

We sidelined our planned coverage of Kamala Harris' address late last week on border security and immigration reform in Douglas, Arizona --- and Donald Trump's appalling response, calling her "mentally impaired" and "mentally disabled", before going on to lie (again) about crime statistics, and the fact that violent crime has plummeted under the Biden-Harris Administration --- in order to focus on the unspeakable disaster that continues to unfold in much of the U.S. Southeast.

The devastation and tragedy continues today, following Thursday's monster, Category 4 Hurricane Helene. It came ashore in the Big Bend region of Florida's panhandle, the third major tropical storm to do so in 13 months, and the second over the past two months alone. But Florida was hardly the only state affected, as death and destruction overtook parts of Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina as well. The latter, perhaps, having weathered the most damage, to date.

With over one hundred killed and more still missing, millions of survivors in the Southeast remain without power today. Some, particularly in Asheville, NC, remain physically cut off from the rest of the world, as the County's water treatment facility has failed and may be down for weeks.

Desi Doyen joins us for insight on the impacts and government response, and how denial of climate change by many elected officials from these states has exacerbated the destruction they are now hoping to claw their way out of today.

Then, there is the question of how this will affect the ability of voters in the most damaged areas --- particularly in NC, but in a number of other states as well --- to be able to cast their vote in this year's upcoming Presidential elections. In battleground NC, the U.S. Postal Service announced the suspension of service in a bunch of areas, making delivery of vote-by-mail ballots to voters and back again to the county, a question mark right now. That's particularly disturbing since state Republicans killed the the three-day grace period for ballots that were postmarked by Election Day to arrive at County to be counted after Election Day.

All of this also comes after NC Republicans spent years fighting to implement draconian Photo ID restrictions, despite a federal court describing the effort as targeting Black voters in the state with "almost surgical precision". So, what happens to those voters whose IDs blew away or were washed away in the wind and flooding? We've got a few details on all of the above today, and will continue to monitor the situation voters in the days and weeks ahead.

Then, we open up the phone lines to listeners in advance of Tuesday night's upcoming Vice Presidential debate between Democratic candidate Tim Walz and Republican J.D. Vance, asking what listeners expect and/or hope for from what appears to the last face-to-face debate between the Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance tickets. (Harris has agreed to another debate in October but, so far, Trump has declined. Probably smart considering the drubbing he took at their first and, so far, only debate in early September.) The debate host, CBS News, has announced good news for the Trump-Vance ticket, their moderators will not be fact-checking the candidates, both of whom, unlike Trump, are actually pretty good debaters...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

We continue our laser focus on the track conditions for the 2024 horse race on today's BradCast, with somewhat better than usual news in a couple of different states. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our many stories covered on today's program...

• Hurricane John made landfall on the west coast of Mexico overnight, after spinning up from a tropical storm to a full-on Cat 3 in a single day, before blowing ashore. That, thanks to the storm's rapid intensification over record warm waters due to climate change. With that ominous note, Tropical Storm Helene, currently in the Caribbean, is also spinning up quickly over record warm waters and could soon become a very large and very dangerous hurricane as it guns for landfall along Florida's Gulf Coast by Thursday night.

• It looks like the threat is over in Nebraska for now. As we reported last week, Republican lawmakers in the state --- one of just two which divvy up Electoral College votes by Congressional district, rather than winner-take-all --- were being hard-pressed by Team Trump to change the way the state apportions electoral votes before November's election, just six weeks away. Kamala Harris' "Blue Wall" strategy of reaching the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House by carrying battlegrounds Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania along with the other traditionally "blue" states, requires that she also win the one single Congressional district around Omaha, as Joe Biden did in 2020. It is, as a grassroots campaign in the district characterizes it, a "blue dot" in an otherwise very "red" state. Nebraska's Republican Governor said last week that he would be willing to call a special session of the state legislature to change the 30-year old law for apportioning electoral votes to advantage Trump, if Republican lawmakers had the votes to do it. On Monday, however, a former Democratic state Senator turned Republican announced he would vote against the scheme, all but killing the possibility for now, according to the Governor today. As we discuss, however, that Omaha Senator may have had ulterior motives above and beyond his seemingly altruistic decision to simply do the right thing for democracy.

• Good news late last week out of Arizona as well! Some 98,000 registered voters will not be blocked from voting in state and local elections and ballot measures this year. That, after a unanimous ruling from the state's Supreme Court on Friday. Republicans in the state have been working for years --- decades, in fact --- to purge voters from the rolls who failed to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote. There are a bunch of good reasons that registrants wouldn't have done so. (For example, if they registered prior to the state's 2004 requirement, or registered via the National Voter Registration Form which does not inform Arizona voters that proof of citizenship documents are required to vote.) But, last week, when the state announced that, thanks to a newly discovered glitch in the state registration database, nearly 100,000 voters were on the rolls without having submitted proof of citizenship --- due to some confusion with how the state motor vehicle office renews driver's licenses --- the matter ended up at the state Supreme Court. And, shockingly, the AZ Republican Party in this case, in a remarkable flip-flop from years of advocacy to the contrary, argued to keep those voters on the rolls! Why? Well, as it turns out, the voters in question, according to the state's Democratic Sec. of State (who also argued to allow the voters to remain fully registered), there were about 10,000 more Republicans on the list of voters than Democrats. Apparently, the GOP isn't that concerned about non-citizens voting after all --- as long as they're registered as Republicans. (Please note: Despite years of attempts by Republicans to mandate citizenship documentation or demand the purging of potential non-citizen voters, they have failed to offer evidence that more than a miniscule handful of non-citizens are actually registered to vote, much less actually voting in U.S. elections.)

• The only way to vote that is more dangerous and less publicly overseeable than touchscreen voting is Internet Voting. And, yet, as much as cybersecurity and voting system experts advocate strongly against it, more and more states are allowing online voting for overseas citizens and military voters. One such state, apparently, is Montana, whose online voting system was opened for the 2024 election on Friday. It took only a few hours, it seems, before one voter noticed that Kamala Harris' name wasn't on the ballot in the Presidential race.

• Joe Biden gave his final address as President of the United States to the U.N. General Assembly today. We're happy to share a few excerpts from his remarks on the need for the world to come together to end wars, take on the climate crisis, safeguard against the dangers of artificial intelligence and protect democracy...among other things.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Climate Week kicks off in New York along with the U.N. General Assembly; Microsoft announces plans to reopen Three Mile Island, the site of the nation's worst nuclear accident, to power its Artificial Intelligence program; and California's Attorney General files a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against ExxonMobil for their decades of lies about the viability of plastic recycling...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Today on The BradCast: Rachel Maddow is an excellent broadcaster. But, boy, did she fall --- along with a bunch of other mainstream corporate media outlets on Friday --- for a wildly misleading spin on a new rule adopted last week by the Georgia State Board of Elections in advance of this November's elections. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we get to an expert to help set the record straight on this matter today, to explain how virtually everyone from WaPo to New York Times to Atlanta Journal Constitution to, yes, Maddow got it wrong...a few quick news items of note...

• It's possible, with Hurricane John about to slam into the West Coast of Mexico in the Pacific, and a different storm to be named Helene quickly spinning up in the Atlantic, that by week's end --- if John crosses the Mexican peninsula and enters the Gulf --- we could have two major hurricanes, both threatening landfall in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time. Climate change is wacky fun, in't?

• Nearly 500 are confirmed killed and more than 1,000 injured near Lebanon's border with Israel on Monday, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the deadliest barrage on Hezbollah since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. All of which is meant to extend the Israeli PM's time in office and out of jail on corruption charges filed well before his war on Gaza --- and even war crimes charges that are likely to come his way if and when he is ever finally removed from office. Hezbollah reportedly fired thousands of rockets in return at Israel.

• Congressional leaders have reportedly reached a deal to keep the Government open after the end of this month, as the new fiscal year begins on October 1. The deal would continuing funding the Government until at least December 20. The agreement to prevent a government shutdown just weeks before the Presidential election --- when every member of the U.S. House and one-third of the U.S. Senate will be on the ballot --- comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson gave up on a measure Donald Trump was insisting on to make it a crime for non-citizens to vote (which is already unlawful under federal law). We'll see if the agreement is finalized by both chambers, and whether Republicans will then send us over yet another fiscal cliff this Christmas.

• Newly released FBI data find violent crime in America, including murder, dropped precipitously from 2022 to 2023.

• The U.S. economy continues to outpace the rest of the developed world and the stock market remains at all-time record levels under the Biden-Harris Administration, even as Donald Trump's failing media company, which trades on the NASDAQ as DJT, plummeted another 10% on Monday to a new all-time low since going public, as the race is on to meet my prediction that his loser of a company could become a penny stock by Election Day!

• And, speaking of Trump grifts, it looks like Melania Trump, who has barely appeared on the campaign trail this season, was paid nearly $240,000 to speak at a political fundraiser at her own home in Mar-a-Lago last April. Who wrote the check to her remains unknown at this time.

And then, it's on to the story which has apparently freaked out Democrats and voting rights advocates since it was first misreported by pretty much everybody on Friday. That was the day that three Trump-supporting MAGA election denialists on the Georgia State Elections Board adopted a new rule requiring hand-counting at each precinct at the end of election night.

But the new rule requires only the hand-counting of the number of ballots cast at the precinct --- not the actual results on those ballots, as many have misreported --- before they are sealed up and sent to county headquarters.

Similar reconciliation of the number of ballots cast against the number of voters who signed in to the poll books or to the number of pages reported as scanned by the precinct tabulators, are carried out in many of other states without problem at the end of election night.

According to our guest today, an expert in Georgia's terrible touchscreen voting and scanning system, the process is likely to take anywhere from 15 minutes to a half an hour after the close of polls. But you wouldn't know that from the mainstream media coverage, with Democrats and Republican election officials alike in Georgia, screaming bloody murder that this new rule would lead to inaccurate tallies, delays in the count, and potentially add "months" to the time it will take to tally up results in the Peach State this year!

We're joined again today by the great MARILYN MARKS, longtime voting system expert and Executive Director of the Coalition for Good Governance. Her non-partisan organization is responsible for the federal lawsuit that ultimately banned Georgia's unverifiable, insecure touchscreen voting systems made by Diebold, only to see them replaced by Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger with similarly unverifiable and insecure touchscreen systems made by Dominion. She is also the woman who discovered and exposed the MAGA breach, copy and distribution of statewide voting system software in Coffee County, GA that resulted in criminal charges against five people, including Sidney Powell, in the state's racketeering felony indictment against Donald Trump and many others.

As Marks explains today, the mainstream media outlets were misreporting on Friday's new hand-count of the number of ballots cast rule "out of hysteria for no good reason." She confirms that "it's simply a ballot counting rule that most states have," allowing them to "know how many ballots you have collected" and to confirm that number before ballots are moved anywhere. "That is a common-sense rule. It will take about 20 minutes at most to implement at most of the polling places in Georgia --- that's a rough estimate --- and it is a safeguard on a lot of different things."

"If there are major discrepancies," between the number of ballots and the number signed into the poll books, she says, "that's the time to figure it out, not after all the equipment and people get moved."

Many Democrats --- justifiably --- fear that, if Trump loses in the state again, some Republican officials on the election boards at both the state and county level are hoping to find ways to create havoc and chaos that could delay certification and ultimately place the actual election results in doubt, leading to challenges in Court or Congress on January 6th next year.

"We seem to be in such a hyper-partisan environment right now," says Marks, "that if we can throw some mud, true or not, on the other side, it's a way to build enthusiasm for our team." But that, she suggests, is short-sighted and unhelpful given the very REAL concerns about the election in Georgia (and elsewhere.)

We also discuss, some of the very good reasons that Democrats should be concerned about the reported results in Georgia this year, particularly given the software breach of statewide voting systems in Coffee County that Sec. Raffensperger has refused to mitigate in any way before the 2024 election, including with software patches distributed by Dominion.

Marks is concerned by the "chaos" that could be caused by someone exploiting the Coffee County caper. "It would be so easy for someone to shut down the system by just writing code that would shut down all the machines at 10am on Election Day," she offers by way of just one example. "There's nothing Georgia could do about it. They are not prepared." In response, I offer an even simpler and arguably more chilling scenario at how a tiny group of people can create utter havoc in the state by simply claiming that the state's touchscreen systems have misprinted their ballots --- whether that's true or not. There is no way, with the systems, to determine if they are telling the truth.

Tune in for more on those actually real concerns about GA elections, as well as Marks' tips for voters in both Georgia and other states, including North Carolina, California, and anywhere else that voters may be forced to vote on a 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems at the polling place this year...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

I don't know if they're gonna lose or not. But, as we report on today's busy BradCast, the disgraced former President and his Republican party this week sure do have the stench of losers on them. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our many stories covered today...

• Breaking just before air time: Turns out North Carolina's Trump-endorsed freak show Republican Lt. Gov and gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is even more of a freak show than previously known. And, by his own words on a porn site he frequented for many years, a "black NAZI!". Good luck this November in NC, Republicans!

• Stock market hits record highs today after the Fed lowered interest rates Wednesday more than expected, signaling post-pandemic inflation is back under control. Donald Trump's failing media company, however, which trades as DJT, hits record lows today and still appears to be on track to become a penny stock by November 5.

• The already terrible situation in the Middle East gets worse, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds news ways to keep the war(s) going to keep himself out of prison.

• House Republicans and Donald Trump stay on track to cause another government shutdown at the end of this month, just before the election, after House Speaker Mike Johnson's dead-on-arrival scheme, on behalf of Trump, to demand a new law to prevent already-unlawful non-citizen voting fails to get the support needed for passage from Republicans.

• J.D. Vance continues Trump's lies about "illegal" migrants taking over Springfield, Ohio. They're not "illegal". Trump, as President, gave them legal protected status. Vance says he gonna call them "illegal" anyway, as the Republican Mayor of the now-terrorized town begs them to knock it off, asking for "help not hate".

• New polling continues to look good for Kamala Harris in swing states. But the Democrats "Blue Wall" strategy of winning the White House by winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania --- along with all of the other traditionally "blue" states --- could hit a snag if Team Trump's newly reignited scheme, reportedly now being led up by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Pathetic) is successful. This week Graham was in Nebraska meeting with the state's Republican Governor and members of the legislature, encouraging them to call a special legislative session to change the way the state divvies up Electoral College votes.

  Currently, NE is one of just two states, along with Maine, that apportions Electoral College votes by U.S. House District. That means Harris is likely to win one of the state's votes, in the Omaha district, in the otherwise very "red" state. But Team Trump wants the state to change the law to move to a winner-take-all system just weeks before the election (and just 10 days before vote-by-mail voting begins!) in hopes of a scenario where, even if the Democrats' three-state Blue Wall strategy is successful, the Electoral College end in a 269-269 tie with NE's 2nd Congressional District vote given to Trump instead of Harris. That would send the decision of who will become the next President to the U.S. House, where the vote would be by state delegation, where Republicans are likely to hold a controlling majority even if Democrats win the House back in November.

  If this insane-but-theoretically-plausible scenario proceeds as Team Trump desperately hopes, however, Democrats may still have an ace in the hole...in Maine.

• A government watchdog group gets a hold of to emails among Georgia election denialists serving as county election officials, detailing their conversations about plans to block certification of 2024 election results in the Peach State if it looks like Donald Trump is going to lose it again.

• Texas' wildly corrupt Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing county election officials in state court to prevent them from sending voter registration forms to eligible but unregistered voters in several different Democratic-leaning Counties. The Counties are now, in turn, suing Paxton in federal court, charging his efforts amount to voter suppression in violation of longstanding federal laws.

• While the Lone Star State is busy suing its own election officials for daring to register voters, here in California, state lawmakers have passed a law, SB 299, to make the state's current automatic voter registration system even more automatic, potentially enabling the ability to vote for an additional 4.7 million eligible but currently unregistered voters. Politics Girl does the heavy lifting for us today. You can get more details from the grassroots coalition of more than 140 groups supporting the measure right here.

• Finally, at the end of a busy show, Desi Doyen joins us form our latest busy Green News Report, as the climate crisis rapidly worsens around the globe, despite new U.N. warnings; North Carolina estimates damage from a brutal, sudden tropical storm this week will top $7 billion; and as a new study finds Joe Biden's air pollution policies will save some 200,000 lives in the U.S...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

From darkness to light on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... As an increasingly panicked Team Trump continues to find new depths in which to sink and new, more dangerous lows to drill down into --- Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world turned virulent Trump supporter, has gamed his increasingly rightwing social media site (which we still call Twitter) to force his obnoxious, dangerous, wildly false political commentary even beyond the nearly 200 million followers he has. All while turning off the very limited, crowdsourced fact-check system, for himself, even as it is supposed to apply to everyone else on the increasingly trash-filled site.

Among the results, a tweet of his this week that suggested someone should try and assassinated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It became a rare incident where even he decided he had gone too far and deleted the tweet after tens, if not hundreds of millions, had already seen it. (And, upon deleting it, going to on to blame everyone else for not appreciating his brilliant sense of humor).

That came after dozens and dozens of tweets this year, which have reached billions of people, falsely claiming that Democrats are bringing non-citizens into the country to vote in this year's election. The Washington Post, last week, did a deep dive into how Musk's false tweets have translated into very specific threats against elections officials around the country. "He's by no means unique," Maricopa County, Arizona's Republican Election Recorder told WaPo. "He just happens to have a very, very large microphone."

He's not the only one.

Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have spent the last week endangering the residents of Springfield, Ohio by spreading false claims about legal Haitian immigrants there (who they falsely describe as "illegal") destroying the town and eating the pets of other residents. The results of those lies: dozens of bomb threats that shutdown City Hall, schools, hospitals and has turned the Republican-run city into somewhat of a police state, as OH's Republican Governor was forced to deploy state law enforcement officials to protect town residents.

Kamala Harris, who doesn't utter falsehoods that threaten the lives of Americans, was asked about all of this madness during an forum with the National Association of Black Journalists this week. We thought her answer to that question was worth sharing in full today. It ends with this assertion: "This is exhausting and it's harmful. And it's hateful. And grounded in some age old stuff that we should not have the tolerance for. So, let's turn the page and chart a new way forward and say 'You can't have that microphone again.'"

THEN... Despite all of the above, there remains a huge number of Americans who regard themselves as very religious and yet appear dead set on voting again for the most un-religious person who has ever run for the White House.

Recent polling, however, shows that at least some of Trump's support from the religious community may be falling, even as other polling makes clear that the thrice-married, philandering and felonious former President still dominates the white Christian evangelical vote. At least the male voters who describe themselves as such.

But, according to our guest today, a white evangelical pastor himself, it doesn't have to be that way. And he is devoted to changing it. We're joined today by DOUG PAGITT, Executive Director and co-founder of Vote Common Good, a non-profit focused on "energizing and mobilizing people of faith to make the common good their voting criteria."

In a recent opinion piece for MSNBC, Pagitt detailed how his group's bus tour through battleground states this year is helping Christians to understand they don't have to vote Republican, while helping to teach Democratic candidates how to reach those voters, particularly in swing-states and counties.

So how did we get to such a place in this country, where a guy like Trump --- who has never been seen attending a regular religious service, either before, during, or after his Presidency --- would be the preferred candidate for a huge part of the religious community? Pagitt has a bunch of thoughts on all of this today.

"What's really going on is that the Democratic Party has had a pattern and reputation for not wanting religious voters," he tells me. "Kamala Harris is changing that. Joe Biden was changing that. Barack Obama worked to change that. But what Donald Trump exploited was this idea --- you hear him say, 'Democrats hate you religious people' --- somehow making out evangelicals to be both the rightful heirs of this nation as Christian Nationalists, but then also the persecuted minority. And somehow they get to hold both of these views."

Pagitt asserts that many Christians have, just by dint of birth, become Republican voters over the years. Because, as he says, "We don't know how to talk about faith in politics in the United States. We've been struggling with it since the founding of the country. We've never been good at it."

"But it doesn't have to be that way," he says. "Forty-four years ago, Jimmy Carter was an evangelical pastor from Georgia. He got 60% of the evangelical vote. In a lot of ways, the Democratic structure said to Republicans, 'You can have the religious white voters, we'll take the other voters.' That would be fine with me if we didn't keep electing someone like Donald Trump."

"The only reason we are out here, trying to get faith voters to consider voting for a Democrat for the first time in their life, is because this country cannot stand having Donald Trump have the power of the Presidency in his hand ever again."

Pagitt and his group have arguably made inroads. They are able to show deeply religious communities where they spent time in 2020 that swung radically in favor of Democrats after voting for Trump in 2016. He tells me that he believes their work can be critical in helping to do that again elsewhere, including in some of the most religious communities, where winning over a small subset of the electorate may be key to winning in marginal races for Congress and even the Presidency.

"There's an awful lot of people who have been told their whole life that Democrats are the enemy, and they're realizing they're not. But behavioral change is extremely slow," he explains today. "We know that three things always have to be in place when someone makes a behavioral change, whether that's doing a new diet or changing your voting habits."

"You have to take in some kind of new information that makes you think, 'Maybe I should do something different.' You need someone to invite you to actually behave differently based on that information. And then you need a community to participate in where people like you do that new thing. So many of these people, they don't have that. So we try to create that for them and let them know it's okay. It seems so rudimentary, but I've watched people with tears in their eyes when we say to them, 'If you choose to vote for a Democrat, first of all, it doesn't make you one. But even if it did, you're going to be okay. Your faith is still going to be alive.'"

We had a lot to talk about with Pagitt on today's show around all of this that I suspect you'll find enlightening. I know I did!...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

We're catching up with a lot of news on today's BradCast, as climate change ravages the globe and the critical November general election nears. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our many stories on another busy program...

• The death toll following Vietnam's climate change-fueled Typhoon Yagi climbs to 200, with more than a hundred still missing following flooding and landslides since the devastating storm blew ashore last weekend.

• Climate change-fueled Hurricane Francine is dumping up to 9 inches of water over parts of Louisiana, leaving hundreds of thousands of customers without power as it moves northward through the state and into the Mississippi Valley.

• In preparation for next year's Electoral College certification on January 6th, the Dept. of Homeland Security has, for the first time, declared that day's joint session of Congress to be a "National Security Special Event", on par with Presidential Inaugurations, U.N. General Assemblies and Super Bowls. The new designation is meant to help avoid another deadly security crisis akin to the Trump-incited insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on the same date in 2021.

• The first new polling taken since Kamala Harris' crushing defeat of Donald Trump at Tuesday's Presidential Debate in Philadelphia finds the Vice President's lead over the disgraced former President growing to 5 points nationally, according to Reuters/Ipsos. The survey offers a number of other interesting findings.

• Less than an hour after Tuesday's debate, superstar Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, encouraging her tens of millions of fans to register to vote. More than 300,000 visited the Vote.gov site she recommended in her endorsement during the 24 hours that followed. And on Wednesday night, at MTV's Video Music Awards, she again encouraged followers that were 18 and over to do so. In advance of Donald Trump's rally in Tucson, Arizona tonight, legendary Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Linda Ronstadt also encouraged her fans to vote for Harris, explaining that she felt a responsibility to do so publicly before the disgraced former President's Thursday evening appearance at a venue named after her, the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, in her hometown.

• This week, Kansas' Republican Sec. of State Scott Schwab sent a blistering letter to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, sharply criticizing the Trump-appointee for the disenfranchisement of about 1,000 Kansans whose August primary ballots were mailed back before the Election Day deadline, but either failed to include a USPS postmark or arrived later than the state's three-day grace period following Election Day. Schwab suggested some ballots mailed back on time are still arriving at county offices weeks later. Schwab's concerns were echoed the following day in what NBC News described as "an unusually frank joint open letter" to DeJoy from the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), excoriating the Postmaster General for failures to address numerous, longterm shortcomings that have alarmed the election officials. The letter reads, in part: "We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance issues with USPS election mail service. Failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process." As vote-by-mail ballots are beginning to go out to voters around the country, this is a good reminder to send them back early, to hand deliver them when possible, or to vote in person on or before Election Day (unless you are forced to vote on touchscreen systems at the polls. In which case, fight like hell to vote via hand-marked paper ballot via absentee or vote-by-mail.)

• Good news for young voters in Tarrant County (Fort Worth), Texas today. After more than four hours of impassioned public comment at the Commissioners Court, a list of 51 early voting sites was approved by a 4 to 1 vote that would keep open a number of sites at colleges campuses, such as UT Arlington and four Tarrant Community Colleges, that Tarrant's Republican County Judge, Tim O’Hare, wanted to shut down in opposition to local election officials. More than 10,000 students voted at the UT Arlington campus --- which has a majority of Hispanic students --- during early voting in the 2020 election. Thanks in no small part to a public outcry by local citizens, O'Hare's effort failed today.

• But potentially bad news for voters elsewhere in Texas this week, thanks to the state's criminally indicted and wildly corrupt Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Last week Paxton filed lawsuits against Travis County (Austin) and Bexar County (San Antonio) after County Commissioners in each of the two populous and Democratic-leaning counties hired a non-partisan firm to help reach and register non-registered voters. Paxton also threatened a similar suit against Harris County (Houston), the state's most populous (and Democratic-leaning) if they did the same. Critics are accusing Paxton of intimidation and attempting to suppress the Latino vote in the state ahead of the November election. So far, officials in both Bexar and Travis are sticking to their guns. Last month, TX state officials raided the homes of voting rights advocates, including an 87-year old woman, who volunteer with LULAC, the nation's largest and oldest Latino voting rights group. No charges have been filed in what many are decrying as a blatant attempt at voter suppression and intimidation by the state's hard-right Attorney General.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with coverage of the failure by ABC News to adequately cover climate change during this week's Presidential Debate in Philadelphia, even as heat and fires raged in the West and Hurricane Francine came ashore as a Category 2 in Louisiana...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

I must try and keep today's BradCast summary short to finish up in time to watch tonight's Presidential Debate (which we will be covering in detail on tomorrow's program, natch.) [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

We start off with breaking news out of Missouri, where the state's Supreme Court has overturned a lower court ruling that had blocked an abortion rights measure from appearing on this November's ballot. Now the measure --- enshrining the right into the state Constitution, if approved by voters-- will be on the ballot this year in the Show-Me State, along with about eight others, including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota. That news is likely good for Democrats, who support the freedom for women and their doctors to determine their own medical procedures, and bad news for Big Government Republicans who don't. In the seven states where voters have been allowed to ring on reproductive rights since the corrupted SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, all of them have sided with freedom, even the normally "deep red" states.

NEXT... We cover another right being attacked by Republicans, of late: the right to vote. In this case, the right for former felons in Nebraska, who have fully completed their sentences, including parole, probation and restitution, to register and participate as voters.

Back in 2005, the state adopted a law allowing former felons the right to register and vote following a two-year waiting period after completion of their criminal sentences. Tens of thousands were immediately re-enfranchised. Earlier this year, in April, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of the state legislature, the two-year waiting period was removed. But in mid-July, just two days before the new law was to take effect, and advocates were gearing up to let folks know about it, the state's Republican Attorney General, Mike Hilgers, issued an advisory opinion that the new state law was unconstitutional and so was the twenty-year old measure adopted back in 2005! Furthermore, the state's Republican Sec. of State, Bob Evnen, used that opinion to notify election officials that registration for all former felons must immediately cease!

Voting rights advocates sued and the state Supreme Court is set to hear the case this week. In the meantime, however, chaos has ensued in the state, with former felons uncertain whether they can vote or even register to vote this year. Many, according to my guest today, journalist ALEX BURNESS of Bolts Mag, who recently penned an excellent deep dive article on this mess, are now afraid to register or vote at all, for fear of being sent back to jail for it. That, Burness explains, is largely the point of all of this.

Adding to all of it, as we discuss, is the fact that the Nebraska --- which is mostly a "red" state --- is one of just two that split up its Electoral Votes according to U.S. House Districts, rather than simply winner-take-all. This year, that means that, if Kamala Harris is able to win in all of the so-called Blue Wall States (MI, WI and PA) and all of the traditionally Democratic ones, she would wind up with exactly the 270 needed to win the White House...presuming she also wins the one electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd District, which leans "blue". Tens of thousands of disenfranchised voters, however --- or, even just fearful ones --- in Omaha, could decide the Presidency this year.

"If you wanted to skew the electorate --- even by a few thousand votes in what could be a very close 2nd Congressional District, that could literally decide the presidency --- if you were looking for levers you could pull at this late hour, that's one of them," Burness tells me. "In fact, it's a very good one."

There is much more to discuss on all of these points with Burness today, including the outrage of using a Jim Crow-era law to suppress the vote in 2024, and the irony that 34-time convicted felon Donald Trump is allowed to run for President of the United States, even while former felons who have served all their time are being prevented from even voting for or against him. A similar outrage is underway in a number of other GOP-controlled states, including Mississippi as Burness recently reported, this year.

THEN... We answer some very smart --- and, even, moving --- listener mail, including a snail mail letter we recently received, if you can believe it!

And FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with coverage of the extreme heat and wildfires broiling California and elsewhere in the Western U.S., even as Hurricane Florence spins up seemingly overnight in the Gulf of Mexico, where it is now threatening Texas and Louisiana, including, potentially, New Orleans...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

Today on The BradCast: What you may not know about the horrifying Trump-Vance scheme to fire hundreds of thousands of non-partisan career civil servants and replace them with Trump loyalists --- if Trump is elected in November. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

• But, first up, results from Congressional and state legislative primary elections in "deep blue" Massachusetts on Tuesday were completely unsurprising. Though one of our listeners discovered --- and learned more details about --- a tabulation problem that resulted in one of the Democratic races for the state House in the town of Essex needing to be counted by hand overnight after the optical-scan system was unable to tally it accurately.

  As discussed, the incident serves as yet another excellent reminder of the critical importance of hand-marked paper ballots to help ensure results that voters may have confidence in, even when there are problems with the optical-scan systems. Though the issue appears to have been caused by an error in the programming and printing of ballots by the Commonwealth itself, at least MA has enough respect for its voters to allow all of them to cast hand-marked paper ballots --- whether by mail or at the polls --- unlike some other states I could mention. (Hi, Georgia!)

• Then, a quick review of the likelihood of the narrowly divided U.S. Senate flipping majority control this November from Democratic to Republican, with all eyes on the great state of Montana, where control of the upper chamber may come down to the tough reelection battle being faced by three term Democratic Senator and Montana native, Jon Tester.

  Recent polling averages show Tester trailing the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee Tim Sheehy, a wealthy rancher who moved to Montana about 10 years ago. But now, audio recordings have emerged of Sheehy slurring Native Americans at Republican fundraisers, where he repeatedly used a racist trope to disparage "drunken Indians" on the reservation. The audio recordings were surfaced last week by Char-Koosta News, "The Official News Publication of the Flathead Indian Reservation," in a state that is home to seven reservations and 12 Native American tribes, representing about 6% of the state population. It's also a state where Republicans have repeatedly attempted to suppress Native American votes.

  The outcome of the Tester/Sheehy contest is very likely to determine majority control of the U.S. Senate and whether Kamala Harris, if she wins this year, will be able to carry out her agenda or see it blocked from Day 1 by Republicans. As Jonathan Martin notes today at Politico, if she does win, but the Senate flips to GOP control (or Dems can't win back the House), Harris "would be the first Democrat to enter the presidency since 1884 without majorities in both chambers."

• And, since we're recalling the 1800s, Donald Trump has a scheme to return to the 1800s "spoils system" of appointing federal government officials based not on their skills or talent, but on their loyalty to their party and President. That system was replaced following the 1881 assassination of President James A. Garfield after he was killed by a man who was furious that he was not appointed to a foreign service position that he believed he was owed based on his work for the Republican Party.

  As James Rainey reported at the L.A. Times last week, after the law was changed under President Chester A. Arthur in 1883 to mandate a merit-based civil service system instead, "The next 22 presidents would leave the basic principles of the civil service intact. That changed when Trump took office."

  In his final year in office, Trump used his executive powers to create something called "Schedule F" which would have converted hundreds of thousands of career civil servants into at-will employees who could be fired without cause. Before full implementation, Trump lost in 2020 to Joe Biden, who quickly reversed the Executive Order.

  But now, both the far-right Project 2025 and Trump himself have detailed plans to remove and/or replace at least half a million federal workers in dozens of federal agencies should the Trump/Vance ticket win in November. In addition to replacing those career officials with loyalists, the scheme would also serve to gut the federal government of an indescribable amount of expertise on science, agriculture, healthcare, national security, education, energy, the economy, the military and so much more.

  We're joined to discuss the ramifications of all of this today by JACQUELINE SIMON, Policy Director of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union representing some 750,000 federal and District of Columbia employees.

  As "horrible" as the Trump Schedule F/Agenda 47/Project 2025 scheme is, she explains, "it's the logical conclusion of something that has been going on in the federal government now for many years."

  "A good way to look at what the outline of what government would look like according to Project 2025," Simon says, "is politicizing the work of people who are right now performing all kinds of functions. Scientific research --- the research that underlays regulations that protect public health, clean air, clean water, safe food --- all of those kinds of things. They want to move everything to the states, or privatize, or defund. Those efforts can also be avenues to politicize the work of the federal government. When you privatize, you can specify exactly what the contractor will do and won't do."

  "They would take all testing and testing development away from the CDC. They would deregulate the inspection of meat and poultry that's performed right now in the Dept. of Agriculture. Completely privatize the work done by civilians at the Dept. of Defense, so that the government would be fully, fully at the mercy of its contractors. They make no bones that they would effectively shut down the VA healthcare system and privatize all of that. They would close hospitals and clinics all across the country. And basically turn the VA into a private health insurance program. There are so many ways that the operations of government, the functions of government would be corrupted, undermined, and politicized, by privatization, and by, of course, a personnel system that would allow them to hire people who aren't competent, who can't perform the duties of the position, and then hire them and fire them at will."

  "It's been the Republican playbook for decades," she tells me. "This isn't new. This is Ronald Reagan moving forward. Almost everything in this document [Project 2025] has either been tried before or is part of Republican dogma, the Republican agenda in Congress for decades." But it is, if Trump is able to return to the White House, Simon warns, likely "the final dagger in the heart of the civil service"...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

On today's BradCast: Democrats are appealing to voters with popular policies, while joyfully bringing down the rafters at the DNC in Chicago. Trump and Republicans, by contrast, are scheming to steal an election they sure seem like they are counting on losing at the ballot box. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage on today's program...

• Democrats are cleaning Donald Trump's clock of late on a number of quantifiable metrics: television ratings for their national convention, versus the GOP's last month; polling numbers; crowd sizes; fund raising; and volunteer get-out-the-vote efforts. As silly as it seems to compare some of those things between the two parties, it's more important than you may realize that we do so. Because Trump is now lying about all of them. It's part of laying the groundwork to use lies about all of those things in support of a post-election effort --- if he loses at the ballot box --- to claim it was stolen from him, "again". To then inject chaos into the certification of Electoral College votes in hopes of tossing the decision to state legislatures or the courts or, most likely, the U.S. House where Republicans are likely to control enough state delegations to install Trump into office, even if they don't hold a majority of seats in the chamber. Yeah, I realize it all sounds like conspiracy theory nonsense. But, we were told the same back in back in late 2020 and early 2021 when warning about what was likely to happen on January 6th. Plus, Trump and his allies are essentially explaining the ploy out loud each and every day at this point, as when Trump told supporters in North Carolina on Wednesday: "Our primary focus is not to get out the vote ... We have all the votes ya need."

• On Tuesday's show I detailed how Republicans were hoping that the corrupted, activist, rightwing U.S. Supreme Court majority, in an emergency ruling, would give them the okay to purge more than 40,000 voters from Arizona's rolls just weeks before early voting begins in the critical battleground state where Joe Biden won in 2020 by just over 10,000 votes. Today SCOTUS came back with their decision, which is mostly --- but not entirely --- good for the state's voters, blocking the worst of what the GOP had hoped to do. For now. We break down the, somewhat confusing (and poorly reported) details of their brief shadow docket ruling [PDF], along with the observation that Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch would have overturned decades of precedent to allow all of the voter suppression Republicans sought. And that Republican Justice Amy Coney Barrett, interestingly, voted along with all of the Court's liberal Justices (who are all now women) to block the worst of the purging, and who would have blocked the GOP scheme in its entirety if it was up to the four of them.

• It was another rollicking, superstar-studded Day 3 at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Wednesday night, where Minnesota Governor Tim Walz formally accepted the party's nomination as Kamala Harris' Vice-Presidential running mate. He brought down the house in his joyful, pitch-perfect acceptance speech, becoming both America's Dad and America's Coach in the bargain. But not before folks like Oprah Winfrey shook the rafters and even joined a number of Republican heroes, like Georgia's former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who was there on Wednesday to reach out to undecided, independent and even Republican voters to help, as Walz put it, "turn the page" on the Trump era. We share extended excerpts today.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as Democrats have woven issues of climate change and climate action into the very fabric of this week's DNC and, as she also reports, not a moment too soon...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

NOTE: We'll be standing down from The BradCast (and Green News Report) for a much-needed breather next week, before returning after the Labor Day holiday for the sprint to Election Day! (I might have said "sprint to the finish line", but for the fact, as suggested at the top of today's program, November 5 is very likely not even close to the finish line this year!)

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

I do realize The BradCast has been in occasional danger of late of becoming just giddy enough to, perhaps, become all but unrecognizable to some. Oh, well. Too bad. Those may be folks who are failing to realize they may be living through one of the most extraordinary moments in American political history. Lighten up. There's nothing wrong with appreciating the moment after so many years of darkness. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But to achieve the promise of this moment, there are still a bunch of very difficult weeks and months (not to mention years) ahead. A little-noticed reminder came from the state of Florida last night --- which voted in Congressional primaries on Tuesday along with Alaska and Wyoming --- when a number of county election result websites were failing to work as expected after the close of polls. They were websites run by a contractor named VR Systems, a little-known Tallahassee firm which also runs voter registration systems in several Florida counties and other states. If the name of the company is familiar, it is likely because we would eventually come to learn in 2017, thanks to whistleblower Reality Winner, that the firm was the victim of Russian-based spearphishing attacks in advance of the 2016 election. We still don't know the extent of those 2016 attacks, nor much about what happened to cause problems on Tuesday night with their websites in Florida. But, since nobody else seems to have connected those dots in the media, it seems worth sticking a pin in here for now.

After a few quick thoughts on that today, it's back to the political history underway in Chicago this week...

"Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn't it?," former First Lady Michelle Obama rhetorically asked the packed, roaring crowd at the United Center on Day 2 of this year's Democratic National Convention. "We're feeling it here in this arena, but its spreading all across this country we love. A familiar feeling that's been buried too deep for far too long. You know what I'm talking about. It's the contagious power of hope," she explained to a packed, raucous arena of Dems, who had just gone through what was absolutely the most electrifying roll-call --- to nominate Kamala Harris and Tim Walz --- in American political convention history.

"The anticipation, the energy, the exhilaration of once again being on the cusp of a brighter day," Michelle continued. "The chance to vanquish the demons of fear, division and hate that have consumed us, and continue pursuing the unfinished promise of this great nation, the dream that our parents and grandparents fought and died and sacrificed for."

"America, hope is making a comeback!," she declared. And the crowd of Democrats reached new heights of ecstasy. And all of that before her husband, former President of the United States, Barack Obama, tried to match her with his own unparalleled oratorical skills.

We've got much, much more for you today on all of the above, as we're joined again by old friends and fellow old school bloggers HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of his eponymous blog and his weekly Pro Left Podcast.

I'm not sure I can even try to summarize our conversation today. There is Parton describing how the DNC --- just half-way over this week as of airtime, mind you --- has "far surpassed my expectations ... And having it be this unusually, upbeat, joyful, happy, enthusiastic experience. I didn't expect it. And I have to say I am truly enjoying it, which I don't normally say about political conventions."

Says Driftglass: "The media has a story they want to tell, and that story is Dems In Disarray and protesters and cops in the street. And we are denying them that story. And that's what is freaking them out. Because that is not the fairy-tale they've been telling the public for forty years, which is that both sides are bad, there's no difference between the two parties. Only when there's a breach, a radical opening in that box, can people peek through that media filter and see the actual Democratic Party. ... The base of the party is finally getting heard. And the base of the party is pretty progressive. This weird filter that everything democratic had to flow through, the people who spoke for us in the media, were Maureen Dowd proclaiming, 'What the Democrats need is an open convention.' And the base said, 'Hell no. That is not what we need. Shut up.' It seems like the progressive base, almost as one, has reached out and told them to shut the hell up, the party is actually us!"

And then there is also Desi today: "I think part of what is going on is that hope is a moving thing for the human heart. It's moving to see Democrats articulate these common values that we all hold, no matter what your political party is --- of family, of patriotism, of opportunity, of equality for all. We've all been through a collective trauma over the last nine years. Seeing this kind of hope is like therapy."

Like I said, I can't even begin to summarize it. Perhaps this is why we don't necessarily realize we are going through historic moments until long after. But, tune in to today's show to hear a bunch of battle-hardened political muckrakers watching so much of what we've been advocating for, for so long, unfolding before our very eyes.

Maybe.

But, as Michelle said, there is a contagious power of hope...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

It was a very late night for us here at your friendly neighborhood BradCast. And it's only Day 1 of the DNC. Wish us luck to make it through the week. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The DNC kicked off with a mighty bang on Monday in Chicago, amid lively speeches from a joyful, rollicking cavalcade of Democratic Party superstars, both longtime and upcoming. Before we share a few of our favorite and/or most newsworthy moments today, however, we've got to focus on some "track condition" business for this November, rather than the horse race.

The Arizona Republican Party, now joined by the RNC, is asking the corrupted rightwing U.S. Supreme Court for expedited help in purging some 40,000 perfectly legal American voters from the rolls in the critical battleground state in advance of November's Presidential election. Early voting begins there in a matter of weeks, and ballots must be printed even sooner.

At issue is a fight that AZ Repubs have been waging --- and losing --- over and over again over the past two decades. But they're still trying, clearly hoping that the current, Trump-packed, rightwing activist SCOTUS may be more friendly to their pleas. When the state was almost fully controlled by Republicans back in 2004, they adopted a law to require "documentary proof of citizenship" for those newly registering to vote. That, even though some 13 million Americans do not have access to birth certificates, etc.

But the National Voter Registration Form --- created as part of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to make it easier to register to vote in all 50 states, particularly those with a history of suppression --- requires only an attestation to citizenship, rather than documents. Courts determined years ago that AZ's state law is preempted by the NVRA.

Despite the lack of any evidence of any non-citizens registering or voting in AZ, petulant Republicans in the state then instituted a two-track registration system after losing at SCOTUS in 2013. The new system would allow those who registered to vote with the federal form (without proof of citizenship) to vote only in federal races --- for President, for example --- but not in state or local contests.

In 2018, the state agreed to a consent decree that would allow those "federal only" voters to vote in all races where Arizona was able to determine the voters' citizenship status via their own records at the department of motor vehicles. But now, AZ Republicans are suing yet again, and are being joined by the RNC, to prevent those "federal only" voters --- more than 40,000 of them in the state --- from voting either for President or by mail. And they are asking SCOTUS to decide by this Thursday, given that ballots need to be printed shortly thereafter.

All of that idiocy in a state where Joe Biden won in 2020 by just over 10,000 votes and where Republicans (as in many states) would rather prevent (certain) people from voting, than actually offering popular policy ideas for them to vote in favor of.

Then, it's back to the horse race today --- or, at least the horses in the stable preparing for the race --- as we share a number of clips from Monday's rousing Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. There was a lot to choose from on the first night, but we share just a few of the highlights today, including Kamala Harris' surprise appearance on the evening's torch-passing from the current President; Reverend Sen. Rafael Warnock (D-GA) on taking care of our neighbors, including those in Gaza; Joe Biden's call to end Israel's war in Gaza once and for all; superstar Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Harris' support for the working class versus "two-bit union buster" Donald Trump; UAW President Shawn Fein bringing down the house again with his declaration that "Donald Trump is a scab!"; rising freshman superstar and former public defender Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) comparing resumes of the two Presidential candidates. ("She became a career prosecutor while he became a career criminal, with 34 felonies, two impeachment and one porn star to prove it."); Hillary Clinton blowing out the United Center with her impassioned recitation of the history of those women working toward finally breaking "the highest, hardest glass ceiling" of them all (amid unstoppable, if satisfying, chants of "LOCK HIM UP!"); and finally, Joe Biden's moving, heartfelt closing stem-winder, detailing an impossibly long list of accomplishments by the Biden-Harris Administration, and his vow to become the top volunteer for the Harris-Walz ticket...

And finally, as if that wasn't enough, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as environmental groups line up to endorse the Harris-Walz ticket; another catastrophic flooding event unfurls, this time in Connecticut; and new evidence finding that climate change has dramatically exacerbated both the likelihood and severity of wildfires around the globe...

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)