IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Northern California's record-breaking Camp Fire now the most destructive, and the most deadly, in state history; State investigating utilities' role in sparking latest round of deadly wildfires; Kids' landmark climate lawsuit against the federal government placed on hold, again; PLUS: Judge halts all work on controversial Keystone XL pipeline... 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): Climate research scrapped from goals in EPA draft plan; A Democrat ran on climate change in a Republican stronghold—and won; US climate politics just got even more polarized. Here’s how Democrats can move forward; Amid global outcry, China decides not to legalize rhino horn; Zinke is the cabinet official most vulnerable to Democratic probe, White House fears; Americans voted overwhelmingly to protect wild places; New Mexico weighs options for reusing oil and gas wastewater; Canada eyes new ways to move stranded crude... PLUS: Why is the Gulf of Maine warming faster than 99% of the ocean?... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: Some brakes --- some --- may now finally be applied to our ongoing Trump-induced national emergency, in the wake of his election two exhausting years ago. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Despite shameful obstacles placed in front of voters across the country during Tuesday's midterms, Democrats managed to wrestle back control of the U.S. House of Representatives by flipping at least 27 seats, as of airtime, with the results of several other races still unknown, according to unverified computer tabulation in all 50 states. Setting aside partisan issues, women and diverse candidates were the biggest winners yesterday...along with the American people.

At the same time, the GOP reportedly picked up several seats in the U.S. Senate, even while Democrats racked up some very important (and, occasionally stunning!) wins at the gubernatorial level. Those wins and losses (including Scott Walker ousted and Kris Kobach denied!) are likely to reverberate for the next decade, as the next round of redistricting occurs after the 2020 census.

Today we review as many of the noteworthy reported results from House, Senate and Governor races as we can possibly jam into one single show....and then we hit several important ballot initiative results as well.

Moreover --- and, perhaps, as importantly --- we look at several "too close to call" races where no winner has yet been declared by media and/or a number of contests with outcomes worth questioning, including in Florida, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere. (If only every candidate sounded like Georgia's Stacey Abrams at the end of a reportedly very close election night!)

Election Day may be over, but the fight for public oversight of results may just be beginning.

Oh, and as we long predicted would happen if results didn't go Trump's way on November 6, today he fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions to begin his move against Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Nonetheless, for today at least, we won't allow Trump to hijack our news cycle on The BradCast...

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Nearing the final stretch, voters fight to overcome suppression; a few potential nightmare scenarios for Election Day voting preview themselves as Early Voting wraps up; and we look at a number of Secretary of State contests on Tuesday that could have big (and good!) consequences for voting rights before the 2020 Presidential election.

Among the stories covered on today's BradCast [Audio link to show posted below]...

Internet outages across Wisconsin are causing problems for voters hoping to get information on candidates and polling places from the state website. And voters in Rutherford County, Tennessee were unable to vote for an hour on the final day of Early Voting, due to the reported failure of a "primary data storage system" in the county that left polling places unable to verify registrations on electronic-pollbook systems which access voter files across the Internet. These situations, including reliance on the Internet voting at the polls, would result in havoc if they occur next Tuesday. What could possibly go wrong?

A federal judge in North Dakota denies an emergency motion filed by Native American voting rights groups to lift the state's new law requiring street addresses on IDs. Thousands of Native Americans living on reservations do not have such addresses. The George W. Bush-appointed judge claims federal precedent bars most last minute changes to election laws in order to avoid chaos, though the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the new GOP law to stand just weeks ago, despite it having been stayed during the state's primary in June (by the same judge). Chaos has reigned ever since, as tribes scramble to assign addresses and print new IDs, and the GOP Secretary of State refuses to say whether those new addresses will be accepted for voting purposes on Tuesday;

Georgia's Republican Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp loses again in court, as a judge rules he may not bar thousands of voters wrongly flagged by the state as non-citizens from voting on a normal, non-provisional ballot, when they present documents proving their citizenship at the polls.

Then, we're joined by Mother Jones' voting rights journalist ARI BERMAN to discuss his recent New York Times article on the extraordinary voter suppression playing out across the country in several GOP-controlled states, and a potentially available antidote for some of those problems before 2020: electing Secretaries of State who will expand the right to vote rather than restrict it.

Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, details a number of Democratic candidates who could pick up SoS offices next week in several key states, including Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia and others where Republicans currently enforce (and abuse) voting laws. Of course, voters will have to overcome voting roll purges and other suppression methods at the polls on Tuesday in order to see those important changes before 2020.

He suggests the scope of the suppression we're seeing this year is broader, because "it's happening in so many states," in no small part because there are "a lot of elections in states that normally aren't competitive." Add to that bad laws in many of those states which have "created a really toxic combination for suppression."

Much of it, Berman explains, would have been blocked from ever happening, had the U.S. Supreme Court not gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. "Texas, Georgia, a bunch of these Southern states, basically they kind of feel like they can do whatever they want. You can try to stop them if you want, but they don't have to worry about the federal government or the Voting Rights Act anymore" when it comes to federal preclearance for racially discriminatory laws.

"If Democrats are able to take back Governor's seats and Secretary of State races, and all of these other important down-ballot offices in key states, they can do the reverse. They can start passing things to expand voting rights, and that sort of takes the Supreme Court out of the ballgame somewhat," he tells me, before we wade through some of the currently held GOP Secretary of State seats that may see Dem takeovers this year, and in some surprising places. "I hope all this focus on voter suppression --- because it's been getting a lot more coverage in 2018 than 2016 --- will actually lead to some changes in policy, especially if some of these key states flip."

We also discuss some of the initiatives on the ballot next week in several states that could dramatically help to expand the electorate, make registration easier, and end partisan gerrymanders entirely in some states.

Finally today, third-party candidates pull out of two different closely watched and very tight U.S. Senate races in Arizona and Montana. That's likely good news for Democrats in one state, good news for Republicans in the other. But, in both cases, those former candidates will remain on Tuesday's actual ballot, since they dropped out so late in the game...

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On today's BradCast: There is no small amount of irony in the fact that the first people of this country, Native Americans, are now being forced in North Dakota to go through extraordinary measures to prove their residency in order to vote in America in next Tuesday's crucial midterm elections. [Audio link is posted at bottom of article.]

But, first up today, a small measure of good news from a federal court in Georgia regarding Republican Sec. of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp's continuing legal battle to throw out Vote-by-Mail ballots based on dubious hand-writing analysis made by partisan election officials. Kemp insists he has the right to toss out ballots without offering Constitutional due process to voters and continues to appeal the U.S. District Court judge's ruling, meant to avoid the disproportionate rejection of votes cast by African-Americans in Kemp's deadlocked race against African-American Democrat Stacey Abrams.

But while that race, which could turn the state "blue", has received a good deal of attention this year, the "toss-up" gubernatorial contest between Oregon's Democratic incumbent Gov. Kate Brown and her GOP challenger, Knute Buehler, has received far less notice. Despite an expected increase in Democratic turnout this year, the progressive Brown is facing a surprisingly close re-election contest in what is otherwise considered to be a very "blue" state, as the GOP and its corporate supporters are pouring millions into the effort to defeat Brown.

Next, we head to North Dakota, where an astonishing effort by state Republicans to disenfranchise Native Americans was recently approved by the U.S. Supreme Court. The effort to prevent the state's tribal members from voting began almost immediately after Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp's razor-thin election by fewer than 3,000 votes back in 2012. Now that she's running for re-election against Republican Kevin Cramer, state Republicans have changed the state's Voter ID law to require physical street addresses rather than the P.O. Box addresses used by many Native American voters living on reservations. In early October, SCOTUS allowed the new requirement to stand, even though the restriction was not in place during primaries last June, giving tribal members less than a month to figure out how to assign addresses to thousands of eligible voters and help prevent chaos and confusion.

Chaos has reportedly reigned, however, even as the state's tribes have been banding together to assign street addresses and create new tribal IDs as quickly as they can, vowing to create such IDs outside polling places even on Election Day on November 6th. On Tuesday, a new lawsuit [PDF] was filed charging that election officials have been rejecting addresses on absentee ballot requests, since newly assigned addresses do not exist in some state databases, and the state's Secretary of State refuses to say whether IDs with new street addresses assigned by Native American voting rights groups will be allowed for use on Election Day.

We're joined today by longtime Native American voting rights advocate OLIVER "OJ" SEMANS, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and co-founder of the non-partisan Four Directions, which focuses on Native American voter engagement and access. He explains his group's extraordinary (and expensive) efforts being taken to help organize against the suppression of ND's shameful new law, why he believes it was enacted, and whether he feels that indigenous Americans in the state will be able to overcome it.

"The rulings by the 8th Circuit and by the [U.S.] Supreme Court was basically severe spinal damage to the backbone of democracy," he tells me. "The backbone of democracy, which is voting, can only take so many kicks in the back like that before it's broken. Native Americans, who have basically enlisted in the United States services, percentage-wise, more than any other race, and have fought for freedoms for the country, have decided that we're going to fight for our own country for awhile and stop this madness."

Semans explains how claims of "voter fraud" used to justify these restrictions by the GOP, in a very Republican state, have no evidence to support them. "More than likely there is fraud --- but it's not by the Native American Indian," he says. "How can you have one party being re-elected, ten years, sixteen years, twenty years, over and over, without some type of fraud being committed. So, yeah, there's probably fraud, but it's not in Indian Country."

He also details how this new voting restriction would never have been allowed to stand at all, had not the U.S. Supreme Court, in 2013, gutted the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 which previously had protected tribal members and other racial minorities from this sort of disenfranchisement. Semans has testified several times in D.C. on behalf of the VRA, going back more than a decade now.

I hope you'll tune in for this, at times, heart-breaking conversation.

Finally today, some listener mail and a bit of a rant against a laughably misleading report on voting systems in St. Louis County, MO, where the most powerful radio station in the state, the 50,000 clear-channel watt blowtorch, KMOX NewsRadio 1120, has misinformed voters that the County's oft-failed and easily-hackable 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting machines and optical scanners are "tamper-proof" and never connected to the Internet. Both assertions --- made by election officials and their private vendor, ES&S, and passed on this week by KMOX (the station I group up listening to) and reporter Kevin Killeen --- are patently false and wildly misleading. As I mentioned on Twitter today, it's a terrible disservice to Show Me State voters that the once-great KMOX would credulously echo such long-ago debunked misinformation to their millions of listeners and readers. I discuss both that, and the woeful response I received from Killeen on Twitter today, to his irresponsible "reporting"...

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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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On today's BradCast: If you think the way the Republican Party has rigged and stolen the U.S. Supreme Court is appalling, just wait until you see what they're trying to do of late at a few of the state Supreme Courts! [Audio link to show is posted below.]

But, first up today: Donald Trump says the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia told him he had nothing to do with the disappearance --- and, likely, murder --- of Washington Post journalist, Saudi citizen and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Turkey. The Prince's word appears to be good enough for Trump, who went on to compare the situation to the allegations of sexual assault against now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh

Meanwhile, the midterm elections are now exactly three weeks away and early voting got underway on Monday in Georgia where, you'll be shocked to learn, it didn't go well. After our previous coverage of ongoing racially disproportionate voter suppression schemes under the command of GA Sec. of State and Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp (who is in a tight election contest with Democrat Stacey Abrams), and after very serious and years-long concerns about their completely unsecure, wildly hackable, and 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems, it appears that the electronic pollbook systems failed across Fulton County (Atlanta) on the first day of early voting.

In not entirely unrelated news, the GOP appears to now be a wholly owned subsidiary of Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Then, we move to some of the insanity of several attempted state Supreme Court coups this week with Slate's legal reporter MARK JOSEPH STERN. Stern joins us to detail both some good news from the Florida state Supreme Court, regarding that state's Supreme Court, and an apparent Constitutional Crisis in West Virginia after a decision by that state's Supreme Court, regarding their state Supreme Court. If it all sounds nuts, it's because it is.

First, in Florida, outgoing Republican Gov. Rick Scott had vowed to name three new Justices to the Court, even though the Democratic-appointed Justices he planned to replace will not be vacating their seats, because of term limits, until after Scott officially leaves office in January. Stern reports the largely good news --- with a caveat or two --- regarding the Sunshine State's Supreme Court's unambiguous ruling last week that will leave the job of appointing three new Justice to Scott's successor instead (who will be either Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum or Republican Ron DeSantis, depending on how things go on November 6th.)

Then, things get far crazier at the West Virginia state Supreme Court, where the Republican state legislature, along with Republican Gov. Jim Justice, have been attempting a coup by impeachment of all five Justices on the state's 3 to 2 Democratic-majority Court. This story has more jaw-dropping twists and turns in it than I can possibly describe here --- including five temporary replacement Justices determining that at least one of the impeachments was unconstitutional under state law and the GOP-majority state Senate which hopes to move forward with a trial anyway...if only they could only find a Justice willing to preside over it, as required by the state Constitution.

Just tune in for the insane details on how, as in Florida, West Virginia Republicans are doing anything and everything they can to blatantly steal a Democratic-majority high court.

And, as if that's not enough, Stern then reports on the wildly hypocritical decision by the U.S. Supreme Court last week that will leave a new voter suppression law --- enacted by North Dakota Republicans --- in place for the November midterms. The ruling effectively changes the state's election law at the last minute before this year's general election and is likely to disenfranchise thousands of Native American voters. The ruling threatens to undermine this year's re-election chances of Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who won her previous election in 2012 by just 3,000 votes, and could assure Republicans hold their control of the U.S. Senate along with it.

Yes, elections and Supreme Courts --- be they at the federal or state level --- matter!

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as the long road to recovery begins and the death toll increases after the catastrophic Hurricane Michael, and as a bought-and-sold Republican Party --- from Marco Rubio in Florida to Donald Trump in the White House --- continue to deny the deadly and costly impacts of climate change on behalf of their fossil-fueled corporate owners...

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Among the many stories covered on today's BradCast, with vigor and no small amount of occasional vitriol. [Audio link to show follows below.]...

• The catastrophic and climate change-fueled Hurricane Michael made landfall in Florida on Wednesday as a deadly and unprecedented Category 4, the strongest ever to strike the Panhandle since record keeping began in 1851;

• In not unrelated news, another major coal company, one of the nation's oldest, declares bankruptcy. It's the fourth to do so in the past three years;

• ExxonMobil gets some great publicity from Bloomberg by spending just $1 million (which they generated every two minutes in 2017) in pretending to support a carbon tax scheme (that would benefit them anyway);

• The U.S. Supreme Court allows a lower court's voter ID ruling to stand in North Dakota, despite the fact that the rule is a change from voting laws used during the April primary and is now likely to result in the disenfranchisement of thousands of Native Americans in a state where Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp faces re-election after winning by just 3,000 votes in 2012. (Here's the ridiculous effort that thousands of Native Americans without a residential address, as now required by ND law to vote, must now go through to get one registered somehow before November 6th.);

• A state court in Missouri blocks part of their new voter ID law for being "contradictory and misleading" and "impermissibly infring[ing] on a citizen's right to vote" in the state where Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill is in a very close re-election battle. Her opponent, Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley is defending the law and is likely to seek an appeal from a higher state court;

• After Georgia's Republican Sec. of State Brian Kemp was found to have purged hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls over the past several years, AP finds that some 53,000 voter registrations are currently in a suspended state due to GA's "exact match" rule, which allows election officials to block registrants whose names aren't listed identically to the way they are on found on file at either the state's Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. A missing hyphen or a typo by officials entering a name into one of the databases is enough to result in a suspension which, the AP finds, is disproportionately keeping black voters off the rolls. 70% of those blocked are African-Americans, even though GA’s population is just 32% black. Kemp is currently running for Governor against Stacey Abrams who, if successful on November 6th, would become the nation's first African-American female Governor;

• Some listener mail on a recent show regarding West Virginia's Sen. Joe Manchin, who voted in favor of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court last weekend, as the coal state Democrat faces re-election after WV voted for Trump by 42 points in 2016;

• And, finally, a viral musical ditty to close us out today on the "very scary time for young men," as Donald Trump appallingly described it, following the multiple credible allegations of sexual assault by now-Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh...

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On today's BradCast: It's kind of amazing that Trump's wildly corrupt Interior Dept. Secretary Ryan Zinke is still in office. Now that the EPA's Scott Pruitt is gone, and Interior just accidentally released a whole bunch of revealing information, maybe Zinke is a bit closer to the exit door. [Audio link to show follows below.]

But first up today, results from Tennessee's primary elections on Thursday, and the outlook for November in the key U.S. Senate race to replace the state's outgoing Republican Sen. Bob Corker. Popular former Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen is now set to face off against the very Trumpy GOP nominee Rep. Marsha Blackburn in a race is central to Democrats' chances of winning back a majority in the upper chamber of Congress in this year's midterms.

Following up our preview yesterday of next week's important U.S. House Special Election in Ohio's 12th Congressional District --- where Democratic candidate Danny O'Connor could very well flip that seat from "red" to "blue" on Tuesday --- our stable genius President tweeted out an endorsement yesterday for a Republican who is not even running in the race.

Also today, some encouraging news out of Texas, where the corporate owners and manager of the Arkema Chemical plant near Houston were indicted on Friday, following the "reckless" release of toxins into the air during an explosion at the plant amid Hurricane Harvey flooding last year.

Then, we're joined by AARON WEISS, Media Director of the Center for Western Priorities (and host of its Go West, Young Podcast), to explain the "monumental" screw-up last month when the U.S. Department of Interior accidentally released unredacted documents regarding the agency's deliberations over the unprecedented lifting of federal protections for a huge portion of the Grand Staircase-Escalante monument in Utah.

"We'd always suspected that the outcome was preordained. But this really makes it crystal clear that the fix was in from the beginning," Weiss tells me, detailing the Department's subsequent redactions in the documents, revealing what Zinke's agency hoped the public wouldn't find out. Namely, that priceless archaeological treasures, native American relics, and a huge tourist and recreational industry benefiting the local economies, are now endangered by the unprecedented closure of nearly half of the Grand Staircase and some 85% of Bears Ears monument (also in Utah). The two monuments are the first to be scaled back in response to Donald Trump's executive order calling for the review of some 27 national monuments established by previous Presidents.

Weiss explains the how the screw-up came about in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests: "Under the Freedom of Information Act, you're allowed to redact certain things. But then you also have this very broad exception, it's called the 'B-5 deliberative process exemption.' And it's supposed to be so that officials can discuss policy options candidly. But oftentimes we see that B5 redaction being used as what's called the 'because I want to' redaction. And that's exactly what happened here, because they wanted to redact stuff that didn't look good for them, they called that stuff 'deliberative'. even though many of these sections were not discussing policy options, they were just basic facts."

"If you look at what got mistakenly unredacted in just this one document, and think about the tens of thousands of other pages already released and yet to be released, it does raise huge questions about the way they're abusing that B5 deliberative exemption."

He goes on to offer an update on the several legal challenges facing the unprecedented closures by the Trump Administration, and how the unredacted revelations underscore Team Trump's pretty clear aim of aiding their friends in the fossil fuel extraction industry at the expense of all others. Weiss also highlights a newly emerging scandal regarding what appears to be a wildly corrupt development deal in Zinke's hometown of Whitefish, Montana, involving the Secretary, his wife, and the CEO of oil services giant Halliburton.

Finally today, we share a portion of a short video rant unleashed yesterday by Ring of Fire co-host Farron Cousins, regarding concerns about election system security and hacking in the upcoming election. In the clip, he argues that these worries might have been avoided entirely had both Democrats and Republicans listened "to people like Brad Friedman at The BRAD BLOG" who have been warning about these concerns "for more than 14 years". "If we would have listened to them years ago," Cousins argues, "we wouldn't even be having this conversation today." [Fact-check: Mostly true!]

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Whistleblower says EPA chief Scott Pruitt kept secret calendar to hide industry meetings; Minnesota regulators approve controversial new tar sands pipeline; Record overnight heat temperatures in Oman, drought-fueled riots in Iran; PLUS: Rhode Island becomes first U.S. state to sue fossil fuel companies for knowingly contributing to climate change... 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): Big Oil, utilities are lining up for an electric vehicle war; China carbon emissions in retreat after 'structural break' in economy; China carbon emissions in retreat after 'structural break' in economy; Solar is saving low-income households money in Colorado, and could be a national model; Alaska Gov. Walker urges suspension of Pebble Mine project; U.S. Navy is taking climate change seriously; Seattle becomes first major U.S. city to ban straws; Mexico’s new president promises more nationalistic energy approach; China has refused to recycle the West's plastics. What now? ... PLUS: Decarbonizing the not so low hanging fruit... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement is bad news for the climate; New wildfires hit California and five other states; Federal judge dismisses San Francisco's climate liability lawsuit; Natural gas industry leaking far more methane than previously estimated; PLUS: Bright spots in the primaries as progressive climate hawks win upset victories... 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): 2 city lawsuits against Big Oil dismissed, but that's not the end of it; Tropical forests suffered near-record tree losses in 2017; Huge stretch of Arctic Ocean is rapidly turning into the Atlantic Ocean; Federal court becoming impatient with EPA over Clean Power Plan; Coral reefs prevent $4.3 billion in flood damage annually; TX Supreme Court strikes down plastic bag bans; 11 states sue Trump Administration over climate super-pollutants used in cooling; Pruitt acts to surrender some EPA veto power over mining, development; Young will pick up climate change bill, advisers warn; Justices give Florida another chance to prevail in water war... PLUS: Kennedy is gone. Now vote... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, we've got a bunch of mostly encouraging news today for a happy change --- particularly for progressives, women, and women progressives! [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up, the least encouraging part of today's program, as some voters in Pennsylvania were once again prevented from voting when 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems at a York County precinct failed for the first hour of polling during Tuesday's statewide mid-term primaries. With just 10 --- that's right, just 10 --- emergency paper ballots on hand for each party, voters were turned away because the electronic voting systems failed. That completely predictable problem (which we've been warning about for well over a decade now), may well get even worse around the country, as states adopt new voting systems with the same problems, under the deceptive premise that they produce "paper ballots".

Other than that, the news was largely good for progressives (and bad for Congressional Republicans) following Tuesday's primaries in Oregon, Idaho, Nebraska and, of course, Pennsylvania, where Democrats hope to pick up as many as 6 seats from Republicans in their bid to retake the U.S. House this November. The news was particularly good for female candidates in PA and elsewhere, and for progressives who won in a number of places against candidates preferred by the national Democratic party.

We detail the key races and upsets in question, some of which will be pose an interesting test for progressives this fall, who have long argued that bolder progressive candidates --- calling for universal health care for all, higher wages and other progressive priorities --- will perform better in general elections than so-called "Republican lite" candidates. We'll see if they're right in just under six months.

Then, we're joined by Constitutional law expert and author IAN MILLHISER, to discuss the stolen U.S. Supreme Court's ruling this week striking down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), a 1992 federal ban on sports betting in, largely, all states other than Nevada. But, the reason why the finding in the case (Murphy v. NCAA) is of note to progressives is not due to the specific issue of sports gambling, as he argues, but what it likely means for other federalism issues, such as the Trump Administration's attempted immigration crackdown on so-called "sanctuary cities".

Millhiser explains why progressives should be very happy about the Court's ruling this week --- even with the majority opinion written by far-right Justice Samuel Alito --- and why the Court unanimously found the law to be an unconstitutional "commandeering" of state's rights.

While the holding in that case may be bad news for Trump, so is another decision from a lower federal court this week. Millhiser also details a federal judge's ruling on Tuesday knocking down an attempt by Paul Manafort, Trump's indicted former campaign chair, to toss one of the two criminal cases filed against him by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Finally today, a bit more on Tuesday's primaries in Idaho, where a progressive female Democrat became the first native America woman to win the party's nomination for Governor, defeating the national Democrats' preferred candidate in a race seen as a long-shot for this fall. But, in a nation where thousands of teachers in yet another so-called "red" state (North Carolina) on Wednesday shut down schools to march in support of higher pay and more money for schools, anything may now be possible...if voters get out to the polls, are allowed to vote, and are able to make sure their votes are counted as cast this November...

Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below...

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!)

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Rising tide of ethics scandals continue to engulf EPA chief Scott Pruitt; Canadian Trans Mountain pipeline's future in doubt amid relentless opposition; November's Keystone pipeline spill was twice the size of previous estimates; PLUS: Michigan gives Nestle the greenlight to pump groundwater, while it ends bottled water deliveries to Flint... 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): Scott Pruitt’s civilization-threatening lie; How “effective” is Scott Pruitt, really?; VA Gov. Northam vetoes bill opposing cap-and-trade plan; Hog waste in NC has been an untapped fuel resource, until now; Shell knew fossil fuels created climate changer risks back in the 1980s; California could back some emissions rule changes, with pre-conditions; Energy Sec. Perry declines to declare 'grid emergency' to save coal, nuclear plants --- for now; Interior Sec. Zinke sees 'little' demand for new U.S. offshore drilling; Indonesia seizes illegal fishing boat with 18 mile-long nets; Good news and bad news for 2018 hurricane season... PLUS: The US is winning the climate fight in electricity — and losing it just about everywhere else... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump doesn't want you to know his own report shows that benefits of environmental regulations far outweigh the costs; Colorado Republicans kill bill prioritizing public health in oil and gas development; Interior Secretary Zinke pulls lands in his own home state from oil and gas auction; PLUS: 3rd major storm in 10 days pummels the Northeast, underscoring need to invest in electric grid resilience... 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): Mike Pompeo may be the first climate-denying secretary of state; Schwarzenegger to sue Big Oil for ‘first degree murder’; EPA is openly promoting a climate denial think tank; Federal court orders EPA to implement smog rules; Trump Administration eliminates animal welfare rule; Where does all the leaking coal waste go?; WI wants break from ozone rules in advance of Foxconn; Dakota Access Pipeline leak technology can't detect all spills; Almost all sea turtles born in Florida are female... PLUS: Supreme Court asked to open public lands near the Grand Canyon to uranium mining... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: A reprieve for renewable energy, but not for disaster victims, in Republicans' massive tax cut bill; GOP achieves their dream of drilling in Alaska's pristine National Wildlife Refuge; Australia finds renewable energy more reliable than coal; PLUS: California's Thomas Fire now 2nd largest in state history... 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): Trump signs executive order to expand critical minerals production; EPA delays implementing ban on toxic chemicals; Trump EPA pick for Chicago cut enforcement in WI; Plastic ocean pollution now found in seafood; France law bans all oil and gas production by 2040; Mistral declared in Bundy Ranch armed standoff; Jakarta is sinking fast; Beavers emerge as agents of Arctic destruction (besides humans, that is); Electric trucks quietly report for duty across U.S. without all the fumes; Ottawa plans to declare deadly hydrogen sulfide gas is non-toxic; Nebraska regulators deny TransCanada request on Keystone XL route... PLUS: Republicans blow their chance to pass a carbon tax... and much, MUCH more! ...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Southern California's Thomas Fire now 5th largest in state history; Trump Administration attacks private company over national monument lawsuit; Trump to open up East Coast to offshore drilling; PLUS: Surprise! Trump's EPA has slowed down enforcement actions against polluters... 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): GOP tax cut bill's fossil fuel provision would personally enrich GOP lawmakers; In CA, mixed results for regulations meant to help stop fires; GOP tax cut bill would penalize CA firefighting victims; France’s Macron takes lead in climate change battle; World leaders gather (without Trump) for One World climate conference; Judges skeptical of DOJ bid to dismiss kids' climate lawsuit; Alaska oil lease sale draws just 7 bids; Trump slashes NASA climate research funding; FERC seeks delay on coal-nuclear bailout; Recycling chaos as China bans 'foreign' waste; After tax cut, Trump looks to localities to fund infrastructure... PLUS: Build, flood, rebuild - Flood insurance program's expensive cycle... and much, MUCH more! ...