On today's BradCast, the grifts continue --- huge new ones that few yet know about --- but too many are focused on Donald Trump's latest distractions to notice. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up today: Please stop taking Trump's bait. His tweet on Thursday suggesting the postponement of the November election was little more than an attempt to distract from the day's very real news, including the horrific numbers from the Commerce Department (finding that the U.S. economy had plunged a record, unprecedented, staggering annualized 33% in the second quarter.). It worked. Media fell for it, and so did you, even though the President of the United States has no power to change the date of the Presidential election. The tweet not only helped to flip the entire day's news cycle, it also further terrorized the nation and helped to reinforce his desperate narrative that the 2020 election will be "the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history."

Democrats need to stop cowering in fear at Trump's wannabe dictatorial pronouncements. As Josh Marshall correctly wrote in response, "I understand everyone is afraid. But this is loser talk." The anti-Trump Republicans at the Lincoln Project ain't buying it. And the co-founder of the far-right Federalist Society has called for Trump's immediate impeachment because of it. Media need to learn to stop allowing Trump to hijack the news cycle and Americans need to learn to stop cowering in fear of Trump, despite his only actual talent: masterfully tricking both you and the media into falling for his pathetic manipulation.

Next up, the powerful Republican Speaker of the House, Larry Householder, who was arrested and charged last week by federal prosecutors in a massive, $60 million bribery, money laundering and racketeering scheme, has now been removed from the Speaker position in a unanimous bipartisan vote of the Buckeye State's House of Representatives. Householder and four others (including a senior aide, a former state GOP chair, and two top energy industry lobbyists) were charged in a racketeering scheme funded by FirstEnergy. The scheme was used to force a wildly unpopular bill through the state legislature last year that raised electricity bills on Ohio ratepayers to bail out two failing, hyper-polluting coal plants and two failing nuclear plants, while gutting the state's successful renewable energy and efficiency programs.

Despite the felony charges and lost speakership, Householder has yet to resign, the corrupt $1.5 billion House Bill 6 is still on the books, and Ohio's Republican Governor, Mike DeWine, who quickly signed the measure, still has some explaining to do. But while that scheme, described by federal prosecutors last week as the "the largest bribery, money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio," allegedly netted Householder some $60 million in bribes from FirstEnergy, laundered through a non-profit front group, it may pale in comparison to what one good government group now charges the Trump reelection campaign is doing.

Earlier this week, the non-partisan watchdog Campaign Legal Center (CLC), headed up by a former Republican Chair of the Federal Elections Commission, filed a new complaint with the FEC charging that the Trump Campaign and a joint fundraising committee is violating federal law by "laundering" nearly $170 million in campaign spending through firms headed up by Trump's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale (pictured above). The money, according to my guest today, CLC's Director of Federal Reform, BRENDAN FISCHER, is secretly being funneled to Trump associates and even family members.

"We've never seen anything like this. The scope and scale of this secrecy scheme is unprecedented," Fischer says, explaining how tens of millions of dollars in campaign ad buys and other large campaign expenses are all being run through two companies created by Parscale. One is called American Made Media and the other is Parscale Strategies. The campaign has claimed the companies are being used to save money by cutting out middle-man vendors, but CLC has discovered that the companies are being used as pass-throughs, and that sub-contracted vendors are making ad buys on behalf of the Trump Campaign anyway. Moreover, those vendors are not being disclosed, as required by campaign finance law, on the Campaign's financial disclosure forms. That, as Fischer tells me, means that payments are being hidden for campaign work, including potentially millions of dollars siphoned to groups with whom it is unlawful for the Campaign to coordinate efforts, and even to Trump associates and family members like Lara Trump (Eric Trump's wife) and former Fox "News" host Kimberly Guilfoyle (Donald Trump Jr.'s girlfriend).

"These two Parscale firms are being used only as pass-throughs to disguise the ultimate recipients of the money," Fischer and the CLC complaint alleging civil violations of campaign finance laws charge. "If the Trump Campaign gets away with this, it's just going to become a common practice. It's going to get replicated by campaigns, both Democrat and Republican, to disguise all of their political spending," he warns, adding that "if there was evidence that the violation was knowing and willful, there potentially could be criminal penalties."

Fischer offers many more details on what CLC knows and, due to the purposeful obfuscation through campaign finance records, what they still don't know, but hope that FEC investigators will be able to find out. We also discuss the dysfunction of the impossibly broken FEC and how that may affect action on this new and very serious complaint.

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report on Trump's visit to Texas to help sell dirty oil while undermining the state's growing wind industry and lying about Joe Biden. Also, we cover the latest storm now barreling towards Florida as this year's record Hurricane Season continues and those "mystery seeds" that many are reporting as showing up in the mail from China...

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 some weeks ago that we warned listeners to "buckle up" for what was to come over the next several month in the lead up to Election Day (and for whatever nightmares are likely to come thereafter). Today's BradCast provides ample evidence that we were right to issue that warning --- which remains in effect for the foreseeable future. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

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

• Breaking at top of show - Trump cancels plans for Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, Florida due to out-of-control coronavirus surge in the Sunshine State. That, after previously moving the convention from Charlotte, North Carolina because the state's Democratic Governor wouldn't allow a maskless deathtrap convention;

• Federal Judge orders former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to be released from prison, citing "retaliation" by the federal government after he was removed from home detention and locked back up for refusing to sign a document vowing he wouldn't write a book or speak to the media about Trump. Cohen had previously been furloughed from prison and placed into home detention after one year of his three year sentence for lying to Congress to protect Donald Trump and participating in a hush-money conspiracy "directed" by the President, according to both him and federal prosecutors. Trump remains uncharged and at large despite running the conspiracy Cohen was imprisoned for in paying off porn star Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal to keep quiet before the 2016 election sexual affairs with Trump. The judge excoriated the DoJ and Bureau of Prisons for violating Cohen's First Amendment right to free speech;

• Two White House cafeterias are shut down due to one staffer, reportedly, testing positive for COVID-19;

• Trump sycophant and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis finally begins to wobble on his demand that schools in the state reopen next month for five days a week in-person classes, despite explosion of coronavirus cases. Tells Fox "News" that parents should have the "option" of sending kids to class, but offers no such "option" to teachers, whose union is now suing DeSantis;

• New jobless claims continue to shatter pre-COVID records for the 18th straight week. Media continue to misreport the unprecedented numbers;

• Republicans are in disarray in Congress and at the White House after denying (for months) the need for additional emergency economic relief amid the pandemic. That, as expanded unemployment benefits --- one of the few actions taken by Congress that has successfully helped to avoid a complete economic collapse over the past 6 months --- are set to run out at week's end;

• Breaking mid-show - New Fox "News" poll finds Joe Biden leading Trump, beyond the margin of error, in the key battleground states of Michigan (by 9 points) , Minnesota (by 13 points) and Pennsylvania (by 11 points);

• Portland, Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler was among those tear-gassed by Donald Trump's federal stormtroopers on Wednesday night. The Mayor, whose local police force had previously tear-gassed protesters who have been gathering nightly for more than a month following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, now claims to be rethinking his own tactics while decrying "flat out urban warfare, being brought on the people of this country by the President of the United States";

• In response to the violence being perpetrated by Trump's federal goon squad, John McCain's former Campaign Manager and longtime Republican campaign consultant Steve Schmidt unleashes a Twitter thread calling for Congressional investigations, cites Trump's use of the military against phony threats by "caravans" at the U.S. southern border before the 2018 election, and compares Trump's tactics, applauded by rightwing media, to those of Hitler's Nazi brownshirts;

• Finally, a delightfully light-hearted Green News Report with Desi Doyen! Sort of. Other than a story about cow farts and Burger King, we also highlight the stunning arrest this week of Ohio's Republican House Speaker Larry Householder, nabbed as the ringleader of a $61 million conspiracy to funnel a $150 billion bailout to utility company FirstEnergy to prop up two failing nuclear plants and two aging, hyper-polluting coal plants at the expense of the state's rate-payers and renewable energy and efficiency initiatives in the Buckeye State. In a quick follow-up today, the company's stock price has plunged following the federal arrests this week, but questions remain about the company's own complicity in the scheme and the involvement of Ohio Governor Mike DeWine in last year's passage of HB6, the controversial boondoggle of a bill that resulted in Householder lining his pockets with millions in dark money from FirstEnergy and other utility company interests.

Hopefully your seatbelt is still on and will remain locked and in place until the chaos comes to a complete and full stop...if it ever does...

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: Five arrests and a massive, $61 million criminal bribery scheme allegedly headed up by Ohio's Republican House Speaker in cahoots with GOP lobbyists and dirty energy company payouts help explain, yet again, why we can't have nice things. That's especially true for residents of the Buckeye State who keep electing Republican officials who play them for chumps, take all their money, and make them sick in the bargain. It's also true for Floridians, Georgians, Texans and now Missourians, but we'll get there as well today. [Audio link to show follows below.]

"We're here today to announce the arrest of Larry Householder, the speaker of the House of the state of Ohio and four other defendants for racketeering in relation to what is likely the largest bribery, money laundering scheme every perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio," announced U.S. Attorney David DeVillers during a news conference in Columbus on Tuesday afternoon. "The conspiracy was to pass and maintain a $1.5 billion bailout in return for $61 million in dark money that was used for various things. One: to line the pockets of defendants. Two: to build a power base for Larry Householder. And three: to further the conspiracy. That is to further the affairs of this Enterprise."

The explosive story is rocking Ohio today, though many should have seen it coming. A year ago, in July of 2019, Vox's longtime energy and climate reporter David Roberts wrote a must-read deep-dive article on the passage of House Bill 6 (HB 6) --- the legislation at the center of this massive con --- describing it at the time as "the most counterproductive and corrupt piece of state energy legislation I can recall in all my time covering this stuff."

The measure forced Ohio's ratepayers to subsidize bailouts of two supposedly failing nuclear plants (the Davis-Besse plant near Oak Harbor and the Perry plant east of Cleveland) owned by FirstEnergy and two failing coal plants owned by the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation (a collective owned by several large utilities), while wiping out previously successful state incentives for renewable energy and efficiency projects that saved the state's ratepayers both money and lives.

"Despite a tsunami of dark money supporting the bill," Roberts reported last year, "HB 6 was overwhelmingly opposed by ratepayer groups, business groups, free market conservative groups, environmental groups, and Ohioans generally. Its only support came from its only beneficiaries: the utilities that own the bailed-out plants, the employees of the bailed-out plants, the communities where the bailed-out plants are located, and possibly President Trump, who doesn't want to see coal plants closing during his reelection campaign."

Well, apparently there were a few more "beneficiaries": Ohio's House Speaker Householder and his political allies inside and out of the state legislature. That "tsunami of dark money", as it turns out, was used to blanket the airwaves with propaganda in support of HB 6 --- describing it misleadingly as a fight for jobs and "clean energy" in a battle between "Big Oil and Ohio" --- by a group calling itself Generation Now. That dark money group, as it turns out, was run by Householder himself with "bags of cash" from the nuke plants' supposedly bankrupt owners, FirstEnergy of Ohio. According to today's criminal complaint [PDF], his "Enterprise" used a series of unregulated passthroughs to move millions and "freely spent the bribe payments to further the Enterprise's political interests and to enrich themselves" with "unlimited" funds that came in to Generation Now from FirstEnergy in payments described by one of the defendants as "Monopoly money."

Despite the wildly unpopular HB 6's narrow passage in the state legislature, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed it quickly after passage. He was not indicted today, though he did cancel a scheduled COVID-19 press conference after the announcement, before calling for Householder's resignation.

It's an incredibly sordid story which we report in detail today. It's also one that should remind everyone exactly what they can expect when they put corrupt politicians like this in power who did the bidding of major corporate interests, rather than the public's.

In not entirely unrelated news today, Couy Griffin, the idiot who heads up a group called "Cowboys for Trump", is calling for Americans to take their masks off because they --- as opposed to the coronavirus --- are making everybody sick. And while we'd love to ignore Griffin and the "Cowboys," it turns out he's also an elected Republican official in New Mexico and the same jerk who posted a video back in May which began by announcing that "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat." And while we'd love to ignore that as well, that video was then retweeted by the President of the United States that month, along with the message "Thank you Cowboys. See you in New Mexico!"

Idiot elected "cowboys" and Presidents of the United States may be one thing we've come to expect by now. But with the coronavirus smashing records in at least 31 states, we'd hoped we'd get better from the Governors who have been left to handle the pandemic after Trump decided he had better things to do, despite some 4 million infected Americans and 144,000 U.S. deaths now from COVID-19 over the past six months.

But our hopes have been dashed. By Florida's very Trumpy Governor Ron DeSantis who's made a jackass of himself over the past month as cases, hospitalizations and deaths skyrocket in his state --- now overwhelming hospitals with at least 50 having run out of ICU beds --- while ordering kids back to in-person classes next month; By Georgia's Trumpy Governor Brian Kemp, who is suing cities in the state for instituting mask mandates as the Peach State also breaks single-day case records and death records; By Texas' Trump-loving Governor Greg Abbot, who wonders where he went wrong in reopening up the state so early, now that hospitals in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and elsewhere are overwhelmed and calling in refrigrator trucks to serve as overflow morgues to hold all of the extra dead bodies.

But now we now have Missouri's woeful Governor Mike Parson declaring he's just fine with kids in his state becoming infected in the classroom. "These kids have got to get back to school," Parson told a local radio station recently. "They're at the lowest risk possible. And if they do get COVID-19, which they will --- and they will when they go to school --- they're not going to the hospitals. They're not going to have to sit in doctor's offices. They're going to go home and they're going to get over it."

Whether Parson, who replaced the state's previous Republican Governor after he resigned in a sexual coercion, abuse and blackmail scandal, realizes that those kids go home to parents and grandparents who they will infect in turn (not to mention all of the teachers and staff at those schools) is unclear. Hopefully Missourians, however, understand it by now, and will consider replacing Parson this November with state Auditor Nicole Galloway, the Democratic candidate for Governor. Maybe then the good folks of Missouri can begin to have nice things again.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with a few too many disasters than we can possibly detail at the end of a summary like this one...

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: We've got a boatload of news and more listener calls from the Coronaverse today, as Republicans continue to try and game this year's elections, even amid a global pandemic. (Priorities, ya know!) [Audio for today's show is posted below.]

We start with a quick review of some of the news from over the weekend, as Trump finally gave up the ghost on his idiotic threat of reopening the country on Easter (April 12), even though has no authority to reopen something that he hasn't closed in the first place. Instead, it appears he's finally heard the advice from his medical experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx that 100,000 to 200,000 Americans will die even "if we do things almost perfectly" and shut everything down (which we haven't yet in many places, though a number of additional states, under pressure, finally issued stay-at-home orders on Monday, including Arizona, Maryland and Virginia.) So Trump has reluctantly extended "federal guidance" to call for social distancing through the end of April for now.

But, there are a few glimpses of potentially good news --- as thin as the threads may be --- coming from South Korea, Seattle and California today, if otherwise grim case numbers and death continue to increase across the country and world. That "good news" finds that yes, social distancing does appear to be working. At least for now.

All of which underscores that this is likely to go on much longer than officials are currently making clear, or have any really plans for, particularly with absolutely nobody --- nobody --- steering the ship at the national level.

And, in turn, that underscores the importance of this year's Presidential election, as if Trump's appearance on Fox "News" this morning saying the quiet parts out loud didn't already give the game away. In complaining about the $4 billion that Democrats had hoped to include for improved security for running elections during a global pandemic in last week's $2.2 trillion stimulus/corporate bailout package, Trump told Fox: "They had things, levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." Well, there ya go. He just said out loud that if everyone was allowed to vote in this country, Republicans would be in big, big trouble. He gets something right every now and again, but its usually the things that he's not supposed to be saying.

New York, with the most concentrated health emergency and most cases in the nation right now, has finally postponed its planned April 28 Presidential primary to June 23. But, as Wisconsin Republicans are cool with the state's plan to hold its election next week (April 7!), and as Georgia's Republican Sec. of State has come up with a scheme to pretend to be doing the right thing by sending absentee ballot applications to "active" voters (not all voters, just ones he deems as active), Ohio's GOP legislature and Governor aren't even trying to hide their contempt for democracy.

Despite OH's Republican Sec. of State Frank LaRose stating clearly that "No date before June 2nd is logistically possible" to hold Ohio's rescheduled primary, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill last week to hold it a month earlier on April 28. Moreover, LaRose's suggestion to send a postage-paid absentee ballot application to all registered voters was also ignored. Instead, the legislation --- now signed by Governor Mike DeWine --- requires the Sec. of State to send a postcard to every voter letting them know how to get an absentee application themselves (and, unconstitutionally, find postage needed to mail it back in.) Furthermore, all of that has to happen, plus ballots must get to those voters with time to send it back postmarked by April 27. Good luck Ohio voters! It wouldn't be an election year with a voting disaster in the Buckeye State! That, even after the Republican Sec. of State has already stated that plan is not "logistically possible"! In short, Ohio is demonstrating to the country how NOT to reschedule elections during a pandemic...unless your actually hope, like the President's, is to keep "levels of voting" as low as possible in hopes of helping Republicans win elections. Voting Rights groups in Ohio: Start your lawsuits!

Finally, we open up the phones to stay-at-homers to say hello and for any good news stories they may have to offer. We find a "Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" instead, a bit of good news, and some much less than good news. But we hope you find it to be a good show nonetheless, to help keep you company at home while become a smarter world citizen in the bargain...

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, it's unclear if Donald Trump's hope for making America great again is to see foreign countries warn their citizenry against traveling here due to the risk of gun massacres and racist hate crimes, but that's now how "great" we are. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Uruguay and Venezuela issued alerts to travelers following recent mass shooting in the U.S., and Mexico is considering legal action following the murder of seven of their citizens in the shooting at the El Paso Walmart on Saturday which took the lives of 22 in all.

At the same time, the U.S. cities which endured mass shootings by domestic terrorists over the weekend don't really wish to have a visit from the man who has inspired so much hatred and death. But the White House says that Trump will be going to El Paso and Dayton on Wednesday anyway. That, despite locally elected officials who wish he wouldn't, as they mourn their dead and protest the racist hate-mongering President who continues to sow the ground for even more rightwing violence. (And as El Paso waits for Trump's campaign to pay them the more than $400k for security that they are still owed following his last campaign rally there months ago.)

While the El Paso shooter is being investigated on Domestic Terrorism charges after echoing Trump's "Hispanic invasion" language prior to the massacre, the FBI announced on Tuesday that the mass shooting at the Gilroy, California, Garlic Festival just over a week ago is now also being probed as a Domestic Terror incident. So why is it so difficult to bring Domestic Terror charges against white male American citizens who committed these acts of terror and others like them? Federal statutes make prosecution of foreign terror charges easy, but domestic charges have a much higher bar and fewer options for law enforcement to choose from.

So, there are now calls to beef up federal Domestic Terrorism statutes, but do they stand any better chance of changing than the very-low-hanging-fruit gun safety laws that Ohio's GOP Gov. Mike DeWine is now calling for in the Buckeye State? (Laws that Dems have been calling for for years? And that even Donald Trump is now pretending to call for at the federal level?) Don't hold your breath. Fox News Presidential adviser Sean Hannity's breathtakingly stupid idea for protecting schools and malls from gun violence may have a better chance of actually become reality.

But at least one former GOP U.S. House Member, Rep. David Jolly, who quit the party last year over Trump, predicts his former Republican colleagues will not change any laws even after the recent string of gun massacres. He is now calling for every Republican in the U.S. House and Senate to be voted out of office next year. "Beat 'em. Beat every single one of them," he now says.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as Greenland experiences historic ice melt raising world sea levels; we all just lived through the hottest month ever recorded on Planet Earth; and CNN actually gave substantial time for 2020 Democratic Presidential candidates to discuss their ideas for saving the planet at last week's debate in Detroit...

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!)

Both Democrats and Republicans alike --- on Capitol Hill and in the media --- are trying to make sense of Wednesday's landmark testimony by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller and where things go from here. We do a bit of the same ourselves on today's BradCast. Though I hope we are a great deal more honest about it than Donald Trump and Fox "News", and less confusing than Fox' Ainsley Earhardt who announced this morning that Mueller's testimony "didn't change anything", before going on to tell viewers that "it changed everything". [Audio link to show our full program is posted below.]

For full coverage and extended excerpts from Mueller's nearly seven hours of hearings before the U.S. House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, see yesterday's special coverage show. For analysis and the fallout since the Republican former FBI Director confirmed the multiple and repeated felonious and impeachable crimes by the President of the United States detailed in his 448-page report [PDF], we're joined by the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo today. As usual, we attempt to cut through the media drama and partisan positioning to get to the actual facts and important content that matters.

Among the issues discussed with Parton....

• The fact that only Republicans are ever allowed to be Special Counsel/Prosecutors, no matter whether the President being investigated is a Democrat or a Republican;
• Content of note from Wednesday's hearings that was both damning to Donald Trump and at risk of being lost amid frequently lousy corporate media coverage (and, wholly dishonest coverage from rightwing outlets);
• The proper context for making "sense" of some of the conspiracies offered on Wednesday by Republicans, even as Trump's AG/fixer Bill Barr and other GOPers may have done harm lately to the prospects of their own conspiracy-based argument about the origins of what would eventually become the Mueller investigation;
• How House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still dropping the ball on impeachment in Congress, at least for now, and setting the country up for even more Presidential corruption in both the near and distant future in the bargain;
• And, where all of this madness may and/or should go next.

"It seems obvious to me that we have a criminal in the White House. And an abuser, a corrupt leader, and a barbarian and an ignoramus," Parton explains, cutting to the chase. "He's an unfit President and he should be impeached. To me, this is obvious."

But, she goes on, in struggling to make sense of why impeachment proceedings have not already been triggered, "One of the reasons that the dial is not being moved is the way that the press is covering this. There was a lot of criticism, during and after the testimony, about the fact that they covered it like a sporting event. 'He didn't put on the best show', etc. etc. The theater criticism. This is a big problem because this is a complicated story. People are seeing it as a game, as this is a strategy, instead of what it really is --- which is a fundamental threat to our democracy.

"If Donald Trump gets away with this, if he gets off scot-free --- re-elected or not --- if he gets away with doing these things while in office, it has changed everything. The President is no longer accountable. If Donald Trump cannot be impeached, then nobody can be impeached. Impeachment no longer exists as a stop on a President like this. And that's very scary," warns Parton.

Also on today's BradCast: "Unprecedented" heat and wildfires in the Arctic; Ohio's "socialist" Republicans give the planet and Ohio residents the finger by going all in on Big Government bailouts of coal and nuclear power companies; U.S. automakers give Trump the finger by working out a secret deal with California to lower vehicle emissions; The Trump Administration gives humanity the finger by deciding to "Make America Kill Americans Again"; A federal judge in California gives the finger to the Administration's new, unlawful southern border asylum ban; And Kim Jong Un gives his friend Donald the finger by firing off a few ballistic missiles to celebrate Mueller's testimony.

And, finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for the latest Green News Report on some of the above, and much much more...

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!)

Follow @GreenNewsReport...

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

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Europe grapples with second historic heat wave in a month; Trump EPA drops restrictions on pesticide known to be lethal to honeybees; Disappearing glacier in Iceland gets a memorial plaque; PLUS: Lucky Ohioans get to to bail out unprofitable nuclear and coal plants... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): California signs deal with 4 automakers to raise gas mileage; Ancient global climate events rippled unevenly across the globe; U.S. Soldiers Falling Ill, Dying in the Heat as Climate Warms; PG&E expects $4.8 billion of initial contribution to California wildfire fund... PLUS: Greta Thunberg: ‘They see us as a threat because we’re having an impact’... and much, MUCH more! ...

Yes, Ohio Republicans are still barred from limiting the early voting period and still required to restore the days and hours they had, yet again, tried to cut off. At least they are barred, again, for now.

On Wednesday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeal issued a 50-page ruling [PDF] in which it upheld a lower court's preliminary injunction from three weeks ago that prevented Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State John Husted from implementing a Feb. 19, 2014 GOP-engineered statute, and his own further Directive, which would have drastically reduced the number of early voting days and hours and eliminated same-day registration and voting during the first five days of a previously established 35-day period of early voting in the Buckeye State.

Reflecting the fact that he anticipated an adverse ruling, Ohio's Republican Attorney General Michael DeWine filed an Emergency Appeal for a Rehearing [PDF] by the full 6th Circuit, on the very same day the three-judge panel handed down their decision. His appeal presents essentially the same arguments that have now, repeatedly, been rejected by the courts, first in a 2012 case, Obama for America v. Husted, and now, again, in Ohio State Conference of the NAACP v. Husted...