After another long (though important) fund drive at KPFK, our Pacifica Radio Network flagship station here in Los Angeles, we're finally able to open the phones to hear from listeners on today's BradCast. [Audio link follows below.]

It's been a harrowing and deadly week --- and weekend --- filled with Rightwing hate and hate mongering (coincidentally, one week before Election Day for the most important election most of us have ever lived through). So, today we kick open the phones to callers on all of the above to get a sense of where things stand at this point and to help answer a bunch of questions about the crucial midterms.

Listeners ring in with questions about reported voting problems and voter suppression around the country and failing voting machines. Also, we discuss what voters can do beyond voting to participate in democracy over the next week or so.

And then there's the caller who rang in to explain why he says he has never voted, and doesn't plan to this year either. As you might imagine, both I, and a whole bunch of callers, have a few thoughts for that guy on today's program. Enjoy!...

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On today's BradCast: Debunking the myth of "secure" Internet Voting schemes --- even with "blockchain" technology --- as West Virginia allows overseas military voters to use their mobile phones to vote for the first time in a general election. What could possibly go wrong? [Audio link to show follows below.]

But first up today, plenty is already going wrong for voters hoping to participate in midterm elections, whether via hand-marked paper ballot or, as in Georgia, where early voting began this week, on 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems at the polling place. We've been closely following voting in the Peach State recently, given the many voter suppression schemes that have come to light in the state this year, such as the recent purging of hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls, the suspensions of more than 50,000 registrations for failing to exactly match names or addresses, down to the letter or punctuation, and an abnormally high rate of rejected absentee mail-in ballots.

Thus, it was disturbing to see a busload of elderly African-Americans from a county-run senior center blocked from voting on Monday (someone didn't like the "Black Voters Matter" bus they were using) in Jefferson County, and three-hour long lines to vote near Atlanta, on just the third official day of advance voting in the state. While some may see the reportedly huge early turnout as good news, there are also reasons to be concerned that state election officials, led by Republican Sec. of State and Gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp, are under-prepared for what could be enormous turnout on Election Day. Several new lawsuits have now been filed against Kemp charging racially discriminatory election practices, as his race for Governor against Democrat Stacey Abrams, an African-American, is believed to be very tight.

Meanwhile, in North Dakota, Native American voting rights advocates say they will be posted outside of polling places with laptop computers in hand, ready to assign official addresses and new Tribal IDs to thousands of Native Americans who will now not otherwise be allowed to vote. The effort is in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week which permitted a last minute change to ID requirements sought by state Republicans hoping to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp this year. Some 5,000 voters who live on tribal reservations using P.O. boxes, rather than street addresses, are now blocked from voting under the new law, enacted in the wake of Heitkamp's 2012 victory by less than 3,000 votes.

But in West Virginia, officials believe they've got a sure-fire way to make sure overseas military voters are able to cast votes this year: Internet Voting via smartphone! The state is the first in the nation to allow such voters to cast a ballot via smartphone --- on a mobile app called Voatz, created by a private Boston-based technology firm --- in a live (and crucial!) general election. But, don't worry! The state and the Voatz company are quick to claim that their scheme is completely secure, since it "employs blockchain technology to ensure that, once submitted, votes are verified and immutably stored on multiple, geographically diverse verifying servers."

Blockchain, in short, is a widely distributed public ledger, or database, that is used to track Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But, as long time voting system expert and Internet Voting critic DR. DAVID JEFFERSON of Livermore National Laboratory and of Verified Voting explains on today's show, the technology solves none of the many problems with using the Internet to cast votes in American elections, as he recently detailed at the non-partisan Verified Voting site.

Jefferson, an internationally recognized expert on voting systems and elections technology, has spent much of the past two decades advising five successive California Secretaries of State on voting technology. He has also been instrumental in helping to block a number of attempted Internet Voting schemes, including one he helped analyze (and stop in its tracks) as devised by the Pentagon during the George W. Bush era.

Today, he explains why use of blockchain technology, which he describes as a "fad", fails to make the Internet any more secure or auditable when it comes to American democratic elections. "All of the most serious threats to Internet voting occur before the ballot even ever gets back to the database or the blockchain," he tells me, detailing how malware on smartphones can change votes, how the authentication of the voter is also endangered by the use of such schemes and how, despite claims to the contrary by advocates of such technologies, the accuracy of results based on votes cast via the Internet can never be audited by the public after an election.

He's hardly the only technologist to decry the scheme. TechCrunch for example, recently called the Voatz app "a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea", and Vanity Fair cited experts who describe the plan as a "horrifically bad idea". But, none of that has stopped either WV or Voatz from pressing ahead, even with this year's midterms (and potentially control of the U.S. House and Senate) on the line.

"The blockchain back end of it doesn't do anything more to secure an election than any of the other technologies do," Jefferson argues. "It doesn't even play a role until the very last stage of balloting --- after you've authenticated yourself, after you've made your ballot choices, after you've transmitted them back, only then does the blockchain play any role." And by then, he says, your vote may have been tampered with, and it's unlikely that you or anybody else would ever know.

"What if there is malware on the phone or the computer that the person is voting from? Malware that is exposing the person's vote to some third party, or is modifying the vote, or is just throwing the vote away without telling the voter, making him think he's voted but he hasn't voted. That malware is not affected by, and cannot be detected by, the blockchain or the back end at all."

"That vote may be blocked or thrown away, or otherwise disturbed by a denial of service attack, for example, on the server. A blockchain server is no more invulnerable to a denial of service attack than any other service," he warns, adding "there just isn't any possibility of auditability in any online voting system, and blockchains don't change that fact."

Jefferson's preferred technology for elections: "Hand-marked paper ballots." He details why on today's program, and also notes that newer technologies, such as Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) that require voters to use touchscreen computers to print out their selections on a paper ballot --- which many jurisdictions (including Los Angeles, the largest in the nation) are moving towards --- present similar dangers when it comes to the authentication and public auditability of election results.

"I endorse your idea that if you're going to vote in person at the precinct, the best system is to use is hand-mark a paper ballot," he explains near the end of our conversation, allowing --- as I do --- that some voters may need assistive technology to vote, but that most voters do not. And worse, as we saw today at early voting cites near Atlanta, when computers are needed to vote, it can result in long lines and suppressed votes at the precinct.

"Only three or four voters per precinct can be voting simultaneously when you only have three or four ballot marking devices. With hand-marked paper ballots, you can get twenty voters voting in parallel if you have cardboard privacy booths around, and twenty cheap pencils. There are far fewer lines built up, and the cost is so radically reduced."

Finally today, a word or two from some older voters who would really REALLY prefer if young people did not bother to vote at all this year...

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Lots of news (for a change?) on today's BradCast after a tremendously busy news weekend (for a change?) [Audio link to today's show is posted below.]

Among the stories covered on today's program: In a fairly transparent attempt to distract from all of his Administration's --- and his own personal --- scandals, Donald Trump announed today that he plans to pull the U.S. out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and is striking a new trade agreement with Mexico only. We caution to be very aware of that claim.

Then, we're joined by STUART NAIFEH, Senior Counsel at Demos to discuss the lawsuit recently filed by his group and a number of Hispanic-American organizations against 32 counties in the state of Florida. Following last year's catastrophic Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, more than 133,000 U.S. citizens living on the island relocated to the Continental U.S., according to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, which estimates [PDF] more than 54,000 of them now live in Florida. These U.S. Citizens, many of whom speak Spanish only, can now re-register and vote in the state, but the counties named in the lawsuit make election materials available in English only, in violation, the groups argue, of Section4(e) of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The groups are suing to force those counties to produce election materials in Spanish before the November 2018 midterms and argue that the English-only procedures have led to lower than expected registration by these potential voters in the Sunshine State. Naifeh says this has been a longstanding issue in Florida, but even more of an issue since Maria, since there are suddenly "a lot of people coming all at once with limited English," he says.

Naifeh also explains another lawsuit just filed by the group against the state of Arizona, where the Secretary of State is not properly re-registering voters who have changed their addresses on their drivers licenses through the DMV. That, he argues, means that some 500,000 registered voters, whose registrations should be automatically moved, may find themselves unable to vote or will have their provisional ballots tossed out this November, because "Arizona has been systematically failing to update voting addresses," as required by 1993's National Voter Registration Act. Voters in both states --- Florida and Arizona --- are heading to the polls on Tuesday for their state's midterm primary elections.

Then, some breaking news out of North Carolina, where a federal court panel has found the state's U.S. House Districts to be an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. That, after the federal courts found the previous maps were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. The court may order new maps to be redrawn in advance of the November election! If they do, and if the U.S. Supreme Court is deadlocked 4 to 4 on an emergency appeal by the state before a new Justice is seated, then the lower court's order to use new maps for the November 6th election would stand!

Next, over the weekend, the DNC voted to change their bylaws to restrict the role of so-called SuperDelegates (party insiders, activists and elected officials) in the nominating process for Presidential candidates. Under the new scheme, adopted by an overwhelming voice vote at the weekend's annual Summer meeting in Chicago, SuperDelegates would have no vote for the party's Presidential nominee on the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention, leaving the selection of the nominee (if he or she can get a majority on the first ballot) up to state primary and caucus voters, rather than party insiders, before the Convention.

Also today, the Government's student loan ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has resigned, charging in a scathing resignation letter that the Trump Administration is using the Bureau "to serve the wishes of the most powerful financial companies in America" by allowing private for-profit colleges, universities and student loan companies to run roughshod over American families, despite mandates from Congress to end the decades-long ripoffs by such companies.

Finally, we open up the phone lines today to calls on all of the above!...

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On today's BradCast: Some good news and bad for voters in New Hampshire and Georgia. Bad news for breathers. And Donald Trump has the worst. Attorney. Ever. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the many stories we cover on today show...

• A federal court has struck down New Hampshire's law that allowed local election workers, without expertise in hand-writing analysis, to toss absentee ballots, essentially, due to bad penmanship. The law had allowed officials to disenfranchise voters --- without notice or time to cure the problem --- if they judged a signature on an absentee ballot does not match closely enough with the signature on the voter's absentee ballot application form. We discuss the story of one of the plaintiffs in the case, 94-year old, legally blind Mary Saucedo, whose 2016 Presidential election ballot was tossed, without her knowledge, until she was contacted by the ACLU months after the election. This is a problem with absentee vote-by-mail ballots in many states. The good news is, it may stop in NH, at least.

• A two-person county election board in Randolph County, Georgia will vote this Friday on a scheme to close 7 of 9 precincts for this November's crucial midterm elections in the rural, poor, predominantly African-American county. There is no public transportation in most of the county, where many do not own cars. The closures would result in some voters needing to walk three and a half hours to cast their votes, the ACLU of Georgia argues. Voter registration at one of precincts to be shuttered is 97 percent black. That, in a year when Georgia could elect the nation's first African-American female governor, Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams.

• The blistering summer of record heat, fire, flooding and related deadly disasters continues around the globe. Monsoon rains have, so far, killed hundreds and dislocated more than 800,000 in the southern Indian state of Kerala. That story underscores, yet again, the horrible if expected news that...

• The Trump Administration is set to announce a plan this week which would roll back President Obama's "Clean Power Plan" which would have, in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement, greatly curbed carbon dioxide and other deadly emissions from coal-fired power plants. The Trump EPA scheme would allow states to devise their own plans for emissions reductions at coal plants. Where Trump's plan would result in the equivalent of 2 to 5 million cars being taken off the road, Obama's would have removed the equivalent of 75 million vehicles and more than 265 million metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. The reduction of carcinogens that cause diseases such as asthma and lung cancer in the Obama plan similarly dwarfs the toxins expected to be reduced by Trump's plan, which the dying (and deadly) coal industry is applauding today.

• Finally, Rudy Giuliani may be the worst lawyer ever. And his client, the President of the United States, deserves him. We discuss Giuliani's already-infamous "truth isn't truth" statement on NBC's 'Meet the Press' on Sunday, and what the documented truth actually is, regarding the Trump Campaign's 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian government-allied attorney said to have been promising dirt on Hillary Clinton that year. Giuliani's gob-smacking admissions that Team Trump committed a crime in 2016 by meeting with the Russian attorney "for the purpose of getting information about...Clinton" --- along with his evidence-defying claim that "she didn't represent the Russian government" and that Team Trump may not have known "that she was Russian at the time" --- will certainly be of note to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the alleged conspiracy to manipulate the 2016 Presidential election...

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On today's BradCast: The Election Administrator's (and Election Integrity journalist's) Prayer was decidedly not answered on Tuesday, based on reported results in at least two key races, and problems in the four states (Kansas, Missouri, Michigan and Washington) which held midterm primaries and the one (Ohio) which held the final major U.S. House Special Election of the year. [Audio link to complete show is posted below.]

But, first up today, Republican Congressman Chris Collins of New York, the first sitting member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump's candidacy, was indicted Wednesday morning, along with his son and the father of his son's fiancee, for an insider trading scheme, after he had tipped off his son to failed testing for a multiple sclerosis treatment by an Australian company in which Collins was the top shareholder and a member of its board. According to the indictment by the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, it sure looks like they've caught Collins red-handed. Though he vows to fight the charges and remain on the ballot this November, his once-safe seat is now believed to be in danger.

Then, onto yesterday's Election Day and the very long night that followed.

In the OH-12 special election, Democrat Danny O'Connor trails Republican Troy Balderson by about 1,700 votes out of some 200,000 cast, mostly on 100% unverifiable touch-screen systems across seven Ohio counties. About 3,500 uncounted provisional and late vote-by-mail ballots could change the outcome in the days ahead, or at least lead to a state-mandated "recount" in the district that, for decades --- until Tuesday --- had been solidly "red". In 2016, Trump carried the district by 11 points and the now-resigned House GOP incumbent had carried it by 36 points. That has clearly changed with a virtual dead heat contest on Tuesday, leading to growing confidence in a "blue wave" this November by many Democrats and, yes, a "RED WAVE" in the same crucial midterms, as predicted today by Donald Trump.

In Detroit, where voters cast hand-marked paper ballots, they were able to continue voting even during power outages at more than a dozen polling places on Tuesday, following storms the night before. We have results from MICHIGAN's closely-watched Gubernatorial primaries and the somewhat bizarre, two separate Democratic primary races (one normal, one special) to fill the U.S. House seat left vacant last year by Rep. John Conyers resignation. State Dems will now host an historic, all-female slate at the top of the ticket for Governor, U.S. Senator, Attorney General and Sec. of State, and Rashida Tlaib will become the first Muslim woman in Congress.

In KANSAS, $10 million wasted on new, unverifiable touch-screen voting systems didn't help voters as some of the brand new ES&S ExpressVote ballot marking devices failed to work at all on Tuesday morning, and electronic tabulation grounded to a halt all together in Johnson County, the state's most populous, due to a problem that remains unclear at this hour. All of it resulted in another "too close to call" race today, in the GOP's gubernatorial primary between current Gov. Jeff Colyer and the controversial Trump-endorsed Sec. of State Kris Kobach. He leads, according to unverifiable touch-screen results finally reported on Wednesday morning, by just 191 votes(!) out of some 300,000 cast. A "recount" (overseen by Kobach himself) almost certainly awaits, as do future failures on the ExpressVote systems which produce unverifiable barcoded "paper trails" instead of hand-marked paper ballots. Sadly, the same systems are also being adopted by many other jurisdictions around the country as well.

In MISSOURI, a few Republicans came up with a novel new way to stop voters from voting. But that didn't deter the state which voted for Trump by double digits in 2016 from soundly rejecting a GOP anti-union (so-called "Right-to-Work") measure by a 2 to 1 margin. And, in St. Louis County, in a triumph of democracy, Bill McCulloch, the 7-term Democratic prosecutor who failed to bring charges in the 2014 police killing of Ferguson's Michael Brown, was defeated by Wesley Bell, one of the African-American leaders of the 2014 protests there. Bell had become a City Council member in Ferguson in 2015 and he will now be St. Louis County's Prosecuting Attorney.

And finally today, in WASHINGTON state, results of several U.S. House primaries suggest incumbent Republicans previously thought to be in safe "red" districts --- including Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the highest ranking female in Congress --- may not be quite as safe in this November's midterms as they had thought...

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On today's BradCast: With Justice Anthony Kennedy retiring from the U.S. Supreme Court, is all hope lost for overturning partisan (and racial) gerrymanders that have helped to keep Democrats and their voters from enjoying appropriate and Constitutional representation at both the state and federal level?

But, before that today: What appears to be good news from a U.S. District Court striking down the Trump Administration's approval of Kentucky's cruel new work requirement for Medicaid recipients as "arbitrary and capricious", may not end up being quite as good news as it sounds. We explain why.

Next: Trump's tariffs and trade wars are beginning to cost jobs in the U.S., and the first jobs losses are to Trump supporters in Missouri. The next victims could be those who work in the U.S. automobile industry. Of course, all of this could be stopped in its tracks but, apparently, the Republicans who control both houses of Congress have no interest in putting the brakes on this out of control and dangerous Presidency.

Then: The final two weeks of the U.S. Supreme Court's term have been disappointing ones for many, including opponents of both partisan and racial gerrymandering. Federal courts in multiple states had determined that Republican-controlled states (and one Democratic one) had unlawfully and unconstitutionally created U.S. House and state legislative maps that impermissibly prevented voters from being appropriately represented in Congress and state legislatures.

Over the past two weeks, however, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling that had struck down several racial gerrymanders in Texas, and they also punted three different partisan gerrymandering cases, in Wisconsin, Maryland and North Carolina, back to the lower courts for rehearing. Perhaps the most disappointing such case was Common Cause v. Rucho in the closely divided swing-state of North Carolina, where a federal appeals court found a clear case of partisan gerrymandering and ordered the entire U.S. House map to be redrawn in time for the 2018 midterms.

In that case, the Republicans who drew the map admitted they did so in order to give the GOP a 10 to 3 partisan advantage in U.S. House seats, despite state voters narrowly supporting Obama in 2008, Trump in 2016, and with Democrats winning statewide elections for Governor and Attorney General that same year.

And all of those SCOTUS punts came just before Justice Anthony Kennedy, who gerrymandering opponents had hoped would finally be the swing vote to end the practice of partisan redistricting once and for all, announced his retirement instead.

We're joined today by Common Cause's National Redistricting Manager DAN VICUNA to explain the outcomes and current status of those cases in TX, WI, MD and NC, and how opponents of gerrymandering plan to move ahead now that Kennedy --- their greatest hope for ending the practice nationally, once and for all --- will no longer be on the Court when those cases ultimately return.

"Mind you," Vicuna points out, regarding the thumbs up, for now, that SCOTUS gave to NC to continue using their current partisan gerrymanders in 2018, "the reason why they redrew these maps in 2016, late in a Census redistricting cycle, is because their original map was struck down as an illegal racial gerrymander."

Finally, speaking of the extremist Republican legislature in NC, lawmakers there on Friday approved a statewide initiative for the 2018 ballot, on a partyline vote, that would, if supported voters, amend the state constitution to require Photo ID voting restrictions at the polling place. That, after a law they had passed to do the same thing was struck down in 2016 by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals because it was found to have targeted African-American voters "with almost surgical precision"...

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On today's BradCast: Primary elections for the crucial 2018 mid-terms were held on Tuesday in Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Texas (which held their primary runoffs following the first round of voting back in early March.) That, as hopes for a massive "blue wave" this fall could be fading, at least according to some new polling. [Audio link to show follows below.]

The results, as reported as of today, present a mixed bad for progressive Democrats who performed well in key races for Governor in Georgia (Stacey Abrams became the first female nominee in the state from either major party, and would be the nation's first African-American Governor, if she wins in November), and for the U.S. House in an upset win against the national Democrats' preferred candidate in Kentucky (Marine vet Amy McGrath defeated the DCCC-recruited, conservative Blue Dog Democrat Jim Gray, Mayor of Lexington).

The news was less good for progressives, if better for establishment Democratic candidates, in several of the Texas runoffs, where turnout was as low as it's been in nearly a century.

But it was, once again, another good day for female, minority and LGBTQ candidates in several races in all four states. (In Texas, Lupe Valdez, the former Dallas Sheriff became the first openly gay, Latina nominee for Governor, and Gina Ortiz Jones in the 23rd Congressional District, would become the first lesbian, first Iraq War vet and first Filipina-American to represent Texas in the U.S. House if she wins in the fall.)

Longtime progressive champion HOWIE KLEIN, co-founder of BlueAmericaPAC and creator of the "Down with Tyranny!" blog, joins us to help make sense of the good news and bad from a number of Tuesday's closely watched races, and offers a preview for several important contests in California's upcoming June 5th mid-term primaries.

Also today, we detail some of the good and bad news for Republicans, in Kentucky, where a high school math teacher unseated the state's current state House majority leader and particularly in Texas, where the GOP establishment seems to have held off most of the more extreme rightwing candidates in the run-offs, including one proudly racist, Christian homophobe in Dallas...

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On today's BradCast, we take a moment of silence to mourn Brad's late wisdom tooth. But not more than a moment --- a lot to cover with your guest host, me --- Angie Coiro of In Deep with Angie Coiro.

Daphne Eviatar, Director of Security with Human Rights at Amnesty International USA talks with me about Amnesty's reactions - both official and emotional - to the announcement of Gina Haspel's confirmation to head the CIA. No one there is happy, but they're experienced, ready, and standing by, lest Haspel's last-minute conversion to an anti-torture stance prove false.

Throughout the hour we check the news, with stories from Gaza, Washington DC, and the Kushner family's building at 666 (<--- not kidding) 5th Avenue in Manhattan - which is being bailed out of fiscal failure with a little help from Qatar. Also: ICE loses one in court as a Dreamer wins.

Long-time economic observer Dave Johnson explains the genesis, progress, and prognosis for a Federal Jobs Guarantee program.

A "racism roundup" - a summary of all the videos released the past few weeks showing white people working overtime to keep non-whites and Muslims in line. Finally, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky explores where all that hate and fear come from - it's all in your brain.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

On today's BradCast, guest hosted by me, Angie Coiro, it's Iran Iran Iran - today's developments and (with help from the BradCast archive) historical context. Then a changeup - the second of our interviews about growing up a black woman in America.

Israel is one of the few supporters of Donald Trump's move to disengage from the 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran. Up front in the show, a collection of less favorable - and sometimes frankly mystified - reactions from world leaders, mainstream media, and social media.

Then for invaluable context: Brad's October interview with Trita Parsi of The National Iranian American Council . They detail the runup to today's developments: how Congress addressed the issue, and the potential it has to start a war.

Finally, it's the second part of this week's look at growing up black and female in America. Today's perspective comes from academic and memoirist Julie Lythcott-Haims, with her book Real American. Her life with a black dad and a white mom makes an interesting contrast to yesterday's guest Morgan Jerkins, with Julie coming of age in the 1970s. That was a very different America (although not different enough, as you'll hear) from what Morgan experienced in the aughts.

You can hear both of those interviews uncut at the In Deep with Angie Coiro podcast page.

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On today's BradCast,

On today's BradCast, Brad is out and I'm in! Angie Coiro, of In Deep with Angie Coiro. Brad's on vacation this week.

Today was just another day when someone of talent, depth, grace, and style glowed in serious contrast to the Toddler in Chief.

On the same day Trump started whining and shrieking early on Twitter --- and his minions scrambled to regroup after Rudy Giuliani cut loose on Fox --- the rap alter-ego of Donald Glover dropped the video for the song he debuted on Saturday Night Live. It's shocking. It's a revelation about race and manhood and American pop culture. It's - oh, just go watch it.

If Trump finally gets around to thanking the Waffle House hero for saving lives, maybe then he'll commend Glover for this stunning piece of art.

Nah.

Then it's a quick review of the headlines, including a story almost lost in the roar: news from the CDC about a scary rise in sexually transmitted diseases. Maybe the grimmest bit: a twenty-eight percent increase in syphilis among newborns. Medical professionals who haven't be presidentially stifled yet are tying the rise to a lack of comprehensive sex education in schools.

My first guest after that rundown is author Morgan Jerkins with her book, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America.

A key voice from the Daily Stormer has been uncovered as an IT consultant living in Montreal. Good time to review a conversation I had earlier this year with author and investigative journalist Dave Neiwert. His book Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump traces the route of hate and white supremacy in America from the country's beginnings right up to today.

Enjoy! Insofar as one can...

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On today's BradCast: Finally, thanks in no small part to our guest today, some accountability for a white nationalist who beat a black man nearly to death following their "Unite the Rally" which turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia last August. Meanwhile, the nation's top elected Republicans --- from the White House to Kansas --- continue to avoid accountability and personal responsibility for just about everything. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up: One of the nation's foremost GOP "voter fraud" fraudsters, Kris Kobach, Kansas Sec. of State, a supposed front-runner for the state's Governorship, almost faced some accountability after being found, for the second time, in contempt of court by a federal judge. Last week, the Kansas House voted 103 to 16 for a provision that would prevent state funds from being spent to cover fines issued to statewide officials found in contempt, as Kobach has now been found twice during his embarrassing attempt to defend his suppressive "proof of citizenship" voter registration law. This week, however, despite the lopsided bi-partisan vote, the state legislature appears to have folded after Kobach's office threatened to cost the cash-strapped state even more in ridiculous legal fees fighting over provision. So much for GOP personal responsibility.

Then, we're joined by longtime independent Nation of Change photojournalist ZACH D. ROBERTS, following the guilty verdict on Tuesday of 23-year old white supremacist Jacob Scott Goodwin, for the "malicious wounding" of De'Andre Harris, a 20-year old black man viciously beaten by a group of neo-Nazis in a parking garage last year in Charlottesville. The incident occurred during a melee after the rightwing protest of the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in a city park (see one of Roberts' photos above). Goodwin now faces up to 10 years in jail and a $20,000 fine.

Roberts, who also co-produced Greg Palast's documentary Best Democracy Money Can Buy, photographed the beating as a journalist covering the rally that day, and was instrumental --- with independent journalists like Shaun King --- in helping to identify the perps who, Roberts tells me, both city law enforcement and the FBI appeared less than eager to track down.

"Charlottesville law enforcement officials testified in the Goodwin trial that they offered immediate medical attention to him. They lied, under oath. They did absolutely nothing, to the point that they were keeping people away who were offering medical attention." It was only thanks to the crowd-sourced efforts by King, using video from independent journalist Chuck Modi and photos from Roberts, that those who participated in the beating --- armed with helmets, body shields, sticks and poles --- were eventually identified.

The parking garage assault of Harris, for which three others also face trial, took place not long before 32-year old Heather Heyer was killed by another white supremacist who drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters at the rally that Donald Trump infamously claimed featured "very fine people on both sides".

"There are four people total that have been arrested for this, in particular, and there are still at least three more that actively attacked, actively assaulted De'Andre. And there's at least a couple more that stood by," Roberts explains. "I thought that that was going to be the worst thing that I saw that day. Thankfully, I wasn't on the street when the car was run through. But I was there almost immediately afterwards and I saw the people who were nearly murdered, a lot of them, by the white supremacists."

Roberts, who faced pepper-spray and, after helping Harris, was "immediately met with a gun in my face by another white supremacist", discusses what he saw and documented that day, how law enforcement officials looked the other way, and what he thinks of Trump's comments following the deadly rally. "Donald Trump talking about 'good people on both sides' and everything like that, he's actually --- shockingly --- lying. He also doesn't know what he's talking about, because obviously he was not there."

Finally, Trump is losing another key attorney who had been working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller on behalf of the Office of the President and is now reportedly hiring another one who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment and both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the years that followed. We discuss what this latest shake-up may portend for Mueller's ongoing probe of Team Trump...

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We've got a lot of news to cover from over the weekend, and breaking today on today's BradCast, even as we try to focus on the continued undermining of our electoral system, and the lack of accountability for certain lawbreakers versus others. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

Among the stories we cover today, along with some great calls from listeners...

• As we predicted last week, Republican Senator Rand Paul (KY), who had been pretending to oppose the nomination of CIA Director Mike Pompeo as the next Secretary of State, has flipped his position (as usual), and is now voting in favor of Pompeo, virtually guaranteeing the pro-war, anti-gay, climate science denier as the nation's next top diplomat.

• The alleged shooter who killed 4 and injured several others at a Waffle House in Nashville on Sunday morning is finally apprehended and taken in peacefully by local officials. But why was the suspect, a 29-year old white guy with a long record of mental issues and run-ins with police, even in possession of four semi-automatic weapons that were taken from him, for a short time, following his arrest by Secret Service outside the White House, where he is said to have identified himself as a "sovereign citizen" (a rightwing domestic extremist movement, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center and law enforcement officials.) The mass shooting was ended on Sunday morning, not by "a good guy with a gun" but, in fact, by a potential African-American victim without a gun. James Shaw Jr. burned his hand as he grabbed the muzzle of the shooters AR-15 and wrestled it away from him.

• Despite going to court to successfully stop Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein's attempted post-election "recount" in the state of Michigan after the 2016 election, state Republicans have now passed a number of bills in the state legislature to make it even more difficult for candidates and the public to oversee their own elections to ensure that computer-tallied results have been accurately reported. The measures heading to Republican Gov. Rick Snyder's desk follow Stein's attempted 2016 count, in a state which hadn't gone to a Republican Presidential candidate in nearly 30 years, where Trump is said to have won by just over 10,000 votes (out of more than 5,000,000 cast), and where terrible state "recount" laws prevented some 60,000 hand-marked paper ballots from even being considered for "recounting" in Detroit alone.

• Meanwhile, down in Fort Worth, Texas, a Tarrant County Justice of the Peace, after submitting fraudulent signatures to appear on the Republican primary ballot last March, resigned from office after pleading guilty and receiving, essentially, five years probation. It appears disgraced Judge Russ Casey won't won't spend a day in a jail, despite his guilty plea and a previous record of an "improper sexual relationship" with a former clerk. We also contrast the gentle treatment of Casey, a white elected Republican judge, with that of Crystal Mason and Rosa Maria Ortega, both of them in Tarrant County. Mason is a 43-year old African-American mother sentenced to five years in prison just last month for voting in 2016 while on supervised release from her three-year sentence on a 2011 fraud conviction for helping tax clients receive larger refunds than they deserved. She was not told by her probation officer, or anyone else, that she was not allowed to vote while on probation in Texas. Ortega, a mother of four, voted unlawfully in both 2012 and 2014, thinking she was allowed to do so as a Green Card holder from Mexico. She received an eight-year prison sentence for her crime (and likely deportation after it), despite testifying that she believed she was allowed to vote as a permanent U.S. resident. Too bad for the black woman and the immigrant. But fantastic news for the white elected Republican Judge, who had received a $125,000/year salary since his initial election in 2007, before he knowingly committed his election fraud crimes!

• Also today, speaking of accountability --- or, perhaps, lack thereof --- for powerful white Republicans, Missouri's embattled GOP Governor Eric Greitens was charged with a second felony late Friday, though he refuses to step down, despite the two charges. One is related to tying up a woman with whom he was having an affair, photographing her naked, and threatening to blackmail her, and the second for unlawfully using a veterans charity mailing list during his 2016 run for Governor. Top GOP lawmakers and the state's Attorney General have called for Greitens' resignation. But he, just like President Donald Trump, describes the investigation of his alleged felony crimes as nothing more than a "witch hunt...by the liberal media and their allies".

We discuss all of that, and more breaking news on today's very lively and/or busy BradCast, and also take callers on all of the above in the bargain!...

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On today's BradCast: What happens when the President of the United States blocks you on Twitter? How about when the President blocks a journalist? Does that violate an American's First Amendment free speech rights or Constitutional protections granted to the press? Our guest today thinks so, and is one of seven plaintiffs now suing Donald J. Trump in federal court for having blocked them on the social media platform from viewing or replying to his tweets or participating in discussion about them on the site. [Audio link to show follows below.]

But, first up today, a few breaking news items, beginning with the fifth package bomb to explode in Texas this month, as an apparent "serial bomber" continues to terrorize the Austin community in what may be a deadly spree targeting minorities in the area. Today, Donald Trump and his White House finally made their very first comments on the bombings, that have, so far, killed two and seriously injured several others.

Then, there was another school shooting today, the 17th since the beginning of the year, this time at a high school in Maryland where, just last week, many of its students participated in a national walkout to demand reform of our nation's gun laws. The shooter in today's incident is now dead after a school resource officer fired on him (though it remains unclear if the 17-year old student shot himself and if one of the victims may have been shot by the officer.) The two student victims, a 16-year old female and 14-year old male remain in the hospital. The girl is reportedly in critical condition.

But, we also have some encouraging news on that front out of Florida, where a recent gun safety reform package was adopted by the state in the wake of the Parkland, FL massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The new measure allows, among other things, law enforcement officials with a court order to temporarily seize weaponry from those judged to be a threat to themselves or others. The first such court order was granted last week in Broward County, resulting in four firearms and 267 rounds of ammo being taken from a 56-year old man who, under a separate state law, was involuntarily institutionalized by police after what the judge described as a series of delusional episodes by the man. Naturally, right-wingers are both freaking out about it and not informing their audience about why those steps were actually taken.

Next: My guest today, REBECCA BUCKWALTER-POZA, judicial affairs editor at Daily Kos and a contributor to Democracy Journal, is one of seven plaintiffs now suing Donald J. Trump in federal court for having blocked them on Twitter from viewing or replying to his tweets or participating in discussion about them on the site. The attorney and journalist turned plaintiff joins us today to discuss her lawsuit and the recent hearing in federal court on the landmark case.

As Buckwalter-Poza, who is still blocked by Trump on the social media platform, explains: "It turns out the President really doesn't like it when you suggest that Russia was involved in the 2016 election. He tweeted something about having won the White House, and I all I did was quote that and say, 'To be fair, you didn't win it --- Russia won it for you.'" She says there were "no obscenities, no threats, absolutely nothing more than a reference to Russia's involvement in the election."

As part of its defense case, the U.S. Department of Justice (yes, we, the tax-payers, are footing the bill to defend Trump in this case!) has admitted that plaintiffs were blocked for no other reason than they were critical of the President. "They've conceded that it's 'viewpoint discrimination', which is the legal term for when you are, in this case, blocking someone from Twitter because you don't like what they're saying. There's no other justification. It's just the content. It's a criticism. That definitely violates my First Amendment rights," she argues.

Explaining how she sees those rights as being violated, Buckwalter-Poza tells me: "As a journalist, there's the immediate fact of not being able to follow Trump, not being able to engage other people, not being able to respond. To put it into First Amendment terms, though, I have a right to be part of this public forum, to engage other people, and to have my point of view be heard. And I have a right to try and catch the President's attention. Unfortunately, in this case I did, but his response was to block me instead of to respond."

I can attest to the difficulties in covering stories when the focus of the story blocks you on Twitter, as I reported last week regarding recent false comments about torture made by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who now apparently blocks me on Twitter for reasons unknown, and an incident at the end of last year which resulted in Alabama's Sec. of State John Merrill blocking me as well, after I politely corrected [PDF] his inaccurate statements about the state's computerized vote tabulation systems.

After a recent hearing with an apparently very well-informed federal judge, Buckwalter-Poza says the case could now result in a settlement. But that still remains to be seen.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on the first day of spring, as extreme winter weather continues to pummel the nation, including with what could be a fifth back-to-back Nor'easter for the East Coast over the weekend (they are currently facing their fourth), and as the Trump Administration continues to make "climate change" disappear, even from FEMA's natural disaster recovery plans...

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On today's BradCast: It was a nail-biter on Tuesday night in the U.S. House Special Election in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District between Democrat Conor Lamb and Republican Rick Saccone. And there is much spinning on Wednesday morning. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Lamb has declared victory, (as has the NY Times, while AP still has it as "too close to call") in the district that went to Donald Trump by nearly 20 points in 2016. But Republicans are still holding out hope for a miracle, a "recount" and/or a lawsuit for their candidate who received a full court press from Donald Trump over the past week. That press included a weekend rally with Saccone and new steel tariffs announced by the President just last week, with an eye towards this bellwether race in "Steel Country", just outside of Pittsburgh.

We have full details on where the razor-thin results currently stand (just over 600 votes separate the two candidates, as of air time, in a race with more than 228,000 votes cast) and how such a "recount" would work in the state which still, shamefully, forces the vast majority of its voters to vote on 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems.

No matter the final results, Democrats are ebullient about what this huge "red to blue" swing may bode for their chances of taking back the House in November's crucial 2018 mid-term elections, even as GOPers from PA to Capitol Hill to the White House are offering some pretty remarkable spin in response.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, tens of thousands of students took to the streets from coast-to-coast with a massive school walkout to rally for gun safety legislation one month after the massacre which took the lives of 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The students stood up, even as a cowardly President Trump continues to retreat from earlier promises on reforms, while trying to spin his own personal fears of the powerful gun lobbyists at the NRA.

Then, speaking of failed spin, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency resigns in the wake of being asked to lie about claims recently made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump regarding an ICE raid in Northern California

Finally today, as the Administration continues to misrepresent the threat to the U.S. posed by immigrants, three American rightwingers are arrested for the bombing of a Muslim mosque in Minnesota last year, and for an attempted bombing of an abortion clinic in Illinois...

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On today's BradCast, on the day following Sunday night's Academy Awards show, we're joined in studio at KPFK/Pacifica Radio for the hour by our friend MIMI KENNEDY, Advisory Board Chair of Progressive Democrats of America and star of the CBS sit-com Mom (which also stars last night's Best Supporting Actress winner Allison Janney). [Audio link to show follows below.]

We've got lots to discuss today with Kennedy, a longtime progressive activist and leader (that's her and me in the photo above, just after today's show), and we also open up the phone lines to callers as well.

Among the many issues and items we chat and/or bicker about today:

• What Best Actress winner Frances McDormand was referring to when she, somewhat cryptically, called for "inclusion riders" Sunday night during her barn-buster acceptance speech;

• How Hollywood and its politics have changed very quickly over the past year or two in light of the #MeToo and #OscarsSoWhite movements;

• Whether Democrats chances to retake the U.S. House this November are as good as many Dems seem to think;

• Conservative Democrat Connor Lamb's chances of winning next week's U.S. House Special Election in the "Trump Country" of Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional district;

• Big turnout in advance of Tuesday's first-in-the-nation 2018 primary elections in Texas;

• Serious concerns about election integrity that still undermine democracy in 2018 (Mimi and PDA have been longtime champions for the cause!) and whether the solutions being offered by a number of states and large jurisdictions --- including a disturbing move to computer-printed and computer-counted paper ballots --- is a good idea, or if we'll be left with the same or worse lack of ability for the public to oversee election results that we already have in many places. (Among them, see the 100% unverifiable computerized touch-screen style voting systems used in much of Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, etc.);

• And whether elected Democratic officials and 2020 Presidential hopefuls are finally understanding the importance of single-payer "Medicare for All" (or, as PDA has been advocating for years: "Healthcare not Warfare!").

Also on today's show: More tentatively encouraging news on the Korean Peninsula (at least until Trump screws it up again); Trump's artificial DACA deadline hits, endangering hundreds of thousands of young immigrant 'Dreamers'; Another senior Republican U.S. Senator, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, announces that he is resigning, as of next month.

All of that and a bunch of great callers ringing in on all of the above on today's BradCast!...

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