The stakes seem high enough on every level that it remains remarkable, as we muse at one point on today's BradCast, that mainstream corporate media barely mentions, much less reports on any of it. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Kamala Harris has clawed back a lot of ground that voters were initially giving to Donald Trump when it came to the question of who they trusted most to handle the economy. Recent polling finds the two largely tied on the issue, despite the fact that, under the Biden-Harris Administration, GDP is at record highs, unemployment at 50-year lows, there has been record job creation (above and beyond the restoration of jobs lost during the pandemic), middle-class wages are rising substantively for the first time in decades, inflation is largely back to pre-pandemic levels, interest rates are finally being lowered by the Fed, energy prices are dropping and major Wall Street indexes continue to meet and beat all-time record highs.

Sounds like a pretty good economy. You'd think the incumbent Administration might be rewarded for it. But, oh, well. Trump says nobody can afford to buy back anymore. So there's that.

Harris has already put forward a host of new economic proposals [PDF] in her campaign, including $6,000 child tax credits for families with newborns; $25,000 to help first-time home buyers afford down payments; increasing the amount that new, small businesses can deduct for startup costs from $5,000 to $50,000. She detailed still more plans for what she describes as her "Opportunity Economy" in Pittsburgh today.

By way of contrast, Trump wants to give another trillion dollar tax break to the wealthy and huge corporations, institute and enormous national sales tax for consumers on all imported goods, adopt some gimmicky, ill-defined schemes such as "No Tax on Tips" (which Harris favors as well) and otherwise "Drill, Baby, Drill" to pay for it all (even though oil and gas drilling, for good or ill, is already at record highs under Biden-Harris). I'd link to those proposals but they don't appear to be detailed anywhere, other than, perhaps, in Project 2025.

Corporate mainstream media does a lousy job of highlighting economic facts and the starkly different visions of the candidates. But they do an even worse job when it comes to educating the electorate about some of the landmark legislation that the Administration was able to get through extraordinarily narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, all of which are transformational for the American economy, American jobs and the global climate.

The poorly-named bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, while including some measures for lower inflation, is also the largest ever single investment in climate action in world history, clocking in at as much as $1.2 trillion in size. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, offers about $500 billion to upgrade our rail and road systems, build out a national EV charging network, upgrade the electric grid and much more. The CHIPS and Science Act authorizes $280 to onshore manufacturing factories and jobs in high-tech industries. All of which, though they are just barely getting started, will amount to millions of new jobs and a cleaner, renewable, electrified future that will slash global warming emissions in half by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050...if they stay on the current trajectory.

Trump has promised to end that trajectory and kill as many of those programs as possible, despite the cost to the economy, jobs and a livable climate for all.

We're joined today by RYAN COOPER, Executive Editor of The American Prospect, to discuss the economic and climate stakes of this year's election, as he recently reported on for The Prospect, as our two potential futures are now starkly divergent, with trillions of dollars, millions of jobs (in all 50 states) and a clean, renewable energy future hanging in the balance.

As Cooper explains at The Prospect, a recent independent analysis comparing best-case scenarios for Harris versus Trump and his Project 2025 plan find that by 2020, "she would actually beat the 50 percent emissions reduction target slightly (and hit net zero by 2050), add 2.2 million jobs, save $7.7 billion in yearly household energy costs, increase GDP by $450 billion per year, and prevent 3,900 early deaths from air pollution."

"For Trump, they estimated that by 2030, he would stall out emission cuts (meaning an increase relative to Harris by 1.75 billion metric tons [of climate choking emissions] per year), destroy 1.7 million jobs, increase household energy spending by $32 billion, decrease GDP by $320 billion per year, and increase early deaths caused by air pollution by 2,100."

And yet, according to pre-election polling, the two candidates are largely tied when it comes to who voters believe will best handle the economy!

Cooper says blame not only falls on mainstream corporate media, but on Democrats who "really haven't been selling" their climate and economic agenda. Also, he tells me, I may be "imagining a much more rational and grounded political party in the Republicans than actually exists. This is a cult of personality," he emphasizes, with members who are "brain-poisoned" at this point. Despite the "overwhelming popularity" of federal government programs that help assure clean air and water, "the idea that [millions of renewable energy and manufacturing] jobs are going to cause a realignment among Republicans against liberal, clean energy, Toyota Prius-type stuff, is somewhat wishful thinking. Maybe in five or ten years it may be a different story."

These are, in fact, enormous, economy-shifting projects that take time to fully play out and integrate into society and the American psyche. "Under Biden, only about 17 percent of the $1.6 trillion authorized in his climate bills and the American Rescue Plan had gotten out the door as of this April," Cooper reports at The Prospect. "More has been done since then, but much more remains."

Despite those obstacles, the media really are failing to educate the electorate on this, failing to explain the extraordinary breadth of the Biden-Harris climate achievements which would likely be exceedingly popular if Americans fully understood them. "Nobody wants their air and water polluted outside of hard-core 'rolling coal' truck owners. Nobody wants to give their kid brain cancer so a chemical company can make more money," Cooper says, chalking up much of the lack of understanding among the electorate to "the incredibly biased information space in political media. Ordinary people are just not hearing about this stuff. When you tell swing voter panels about this stuff, most of them refuse to believe you!"

"We are talking about the industries of the 21st century," he stresses. "The whole world is re-gearing everything around renewable energy --- the cheapest energy in most of the world that has ever been produced. The whole industrial supply chain, everything, how we live, is being transformed. It's significant. I think it will be seen as the Industrial Revolution was."

True. Unless America elects Donald Trump, who has promised to gut it all. There is much more worth tuning in for in my conversation with Cooper today.

ALSO TODAY... Speaking of Trump's Project 2025, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) explains how Team Trump's promise to "dismantle the administrative state” includes dismantling and/or privatizing dozens of federal agencies, putting as many as one million jobs at risk; Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) cites the menace of Project 2025 in a U.S. House subcommittee hearing on whistleblowers today; And Jason Kravits wraps it all together in a brilliant Schoolhouse Rock-style satirical tune to end today's BradCast on a high note...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Among our many stories covered today...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He's not the only one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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On today's BradCast, a focus on the challenges ahead for election officials in what is likely to be the most closely watched state in the country, in the most closely watched Presidential election of all time. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The endorsements for Kamala Harris keep rolling in. From the right (George Will for crying out loud?!) and from the non-right, as Scientific American revealed on Monday what is only their second Presidential endorsement in the well-respected magazine's 179-year history.

Also, today is National Voter Registration Day! We've got a few thoughts on a few tips, several of which come courtesy of our friends at the non-partisan group Vote Riders, who recommend not only registering to vote, with many states deadlines for that coming up very shortly, but also checking your voter registration status even if you believe you are already registered. Many states have purged a lot of voters since the last general election. The group also warns that Voter ID requirements have changed in many states since 2020. So today is also a great moment to make sure you have the sometimes very specific ID now required by your state to vote in this year's critical election. You can do that at their site as well.

THEN... The great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is likely to be the "tipping point" state for this year's election. If Dems win it, along with Michigan and Wisconsin (and the other traditionally "blue" states) Kamala Harris will almost certainly become the next President. But, while Harris currently leads in those so-called "Blue Wall" states, according to pre-election polling averages, her lead in PA remains the tightest of the three.

So, with all eyes likely to be on PA this year, we thought it would be a good moment to check in with our old friend MARYBETH KUZNIK, a longtime Election Integrity advocate and champion as founder and Executive Director of VotePA, and now as the Director of Elections and Voter Registration at the Fayette County, PA Election Bureau.

Fayette is in the southwestern part of the state, not too far geographically from Pittsburgh, though seemingly farther and farther away politically over the years, as the once reliable Democratic-leaning rural county has turned much more Republican in recent Presidential elections.

But, no matter their politics, all voters there need to be able to vote and have their votes counted as cast --- and in a way that they can know they have been counted as cast. Kuznik tells me that she sees her current job as an election official not terribly differently from her work as an Election Integrity advocate.

"I view this work that I'm doing now as an extension of everything else I've ever done," she tells me. "We, as election officials, as well as election activists, want --- or should want --- the same thing, which is to make sure every vote is counted accurately as cast. And that is without regard to party, or candidate, or whatever. You vote, and we count it the way you voted it."

Kuznik explains that her office is now in the final throes of finalizing ballot design and tabulator programming, following the last of the rulings from the state's Supreme Court as to which candidates will be allowed to appear on the ballot. Vote-by-Mail absentee ballots will very soon be going out to voters.

There is always an extraordinary amount of pressure on election officials to get everything exactly right. But there will be more than ever this year, given the many false claims that Republicans have brought in recent years after Donald Trump falsely claimed to have won the 2020 election. And nowhere is the pressure likely to be higher than in a state like PA, whose voters may decide the winner of the 2024 Presidential contest.

While Kuznik is confident in her and her staff's ability to get the job done well, there are still a number of concerns, some of which we've recently discussed on this program. For example, a bipartisan group of election officials across the country in recent days have expressed grave worries to Trump-appointed U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy regarding delays and other problems in the delivery of Vote-by-Mail ballots back to county officials. While Kuznik says she has a good relationship with the regional mail handler, she notes that a tiny handful of ballots from the state's primaries this year, "postmarked in April" were not finally delivered back to the County until August! "That's two or three" ballots, she says, "but that's two or three people's precious vote. Somebody died for the right of those people to vote. Hopefully we figure it out because I don't want it happening in this election."

PA also has some unhelpful rules for when officials can even begin tallying Absentee/Vote-by-Mail ballots. Unlike most states, PA officials are barred from beginning their VBM tallies until Election Day. That can lead to a number of problems. Among them, the "red mirage" issue that we saw in some states in 2020. Democrats tend to vote much more heavily by mail than Republicans. That means that, with the more laborious job of opening, verifying and tallying VBM ballots only beginning on Election Day, the results from more heavily Republican ballots cast at the polls that day may be reported first, giving the false impression that Republicans are ahead when some go to sleep on Election Night, only to see absentee tallies added in later, resulting in Democratic candidates overtaking the Republican.

We also discuss the fact that most voters in the Keystone State are now, thankfully, allowed to vote on verifiable hand-marked paper ballots at the polls; the concerns that many have reported about some conspiracy-minded GOP election officials in swing states scheming to hold up certification of results for dubious reasons --- in the event that Trump loses --- in hopes of wreaking chaos that can then be used to challenge the final Electoral College votes in the courts or in Congress on January 6th; and concerns about security threats against her office, staff and the many pollworkers required to pull of a successful election.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news on a natural gas pipeline explosion on Monday in suburban Houston; record deadly storms and flooding in Central Europe, West Africa and North Carolina this week; and the disgraced former President and wannabe mobster's recent visit to California, when he threatened to allow the entire state to burn down if he is allowed to become President again...

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I think we've got a humdinger for ya on today's BradCast. At least if you, like me, are still scratching your head every day as to why --- after all these years and all we now know about the disgraced former President and cognitively declining convicted criminal, and after last week's crushing debate defeat --- about a half of the nation's voters are still supporting this guy. Yes, his supporters are even out here in theoretically "liberal" Southern California, as our callers demonstrate today! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

First, we catch up a bit on some of the weekend's news, including the little that is currently known about the second attempted assassination of Donald Trump at one of his golf courses on Sunday; the many lies Trump told about immigration, the economy and wildfires during an appearance out here in Los Angeles on Friday (when he threatened to let the state burn to the ground if California Gov. Gavin Newsom --- who he called "Newscum" --- refused to do Trump's bidding if he becomes President again); and as Trump ignored and exacerbated the number of bomb and terror threats now being made against the residents of Springfield, Ohio.

After nearly a full week of Trump (and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance) making false claims that Haitian immigrants in the town are "illegally" there --- (They aren't. Both President Biden and then President Trump granted them the right to be there under a 1952 law) --- and that they are eating the dog and cat pets of other residents, Trump continues to double-down and make things even more perilous for the folks of Springfield, both old and new.

The Ku Klux Klan and other neo-Nazis have now descended on the town. The state's Republican Governor Mike DeWine has decried the rhetoric and false claims by Trump and Vance as "disgusting". The woman who made the initial Facebook claim, highlighted by Vance, about a neighbor's cat disappearing has admitted she had no first-hand knowledge and says she regrets her post. And the city has had to shut down or lock down city hall, elementary schools, college campuses and hospital facilities over the past week, thanks to Trump supporters threatening political violence.

Despite all of that, Trump had the temerity on Sunday night to blame the "rhetoric" of Biden and Harris for a mentally unstable guy's failed attempt to shoot the former President at one of his Florida golf courses. While both Biden and Harris immediately condemned the thwarted attack, noting "there is no place for political violence in America", Trump charged that it was the President and Vice President's words that that has put HIM In danger. He went so far as to tell Fox "News" that it was "their rhetoric [that is] causing me to be shot at," in the same breath that he charged they "are destroying the country --- from both the inside and out."

So, with all that we know about this guy, how can it be that he is still largely neck and neck with Kamala Harris in pre-election polling just 50 days out from this year's critical election?!

I thought I'd open the phones today specifically to Trump supporters (and, yes, we have them here in Southern California) to answer that question, by inviting them to let us know why they are still on board with him. They don't get a free pass. I challenge them a bit, but let them explain themselves in the bargain.

And, yup, if we can believe the very first caller, "Luther," who says he is from Arkansas, it is for at least one of the very worst reasons you can possibly imagine. You'll decide if he's for real or not. He was rather convincing. But the callers that followed didn't necessarily have much better reasons for their support of this guy.

Anyway, you'll be the judge. And I welcome your comments in response. Give it a listen. I think you'll "enjoy" today's program...

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

Among our many stories on another busy program...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I'm not sure I've ever declared a "winner" or "loser" in any Presidential debate, after covering them here for twenty years. They generally just don't work like that. But, as discussed on today's BradCast special coverage of last night's showdown in Philadelphia, there was one clear winner and one very clear loser. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Kamala Harris absolutely dominated her, perhaps one and only, face-off with Donald Trump from the moment she knocked him back on his heels by invading his space to reach out to shake his hand at the top, until she scraped up his lifeless husk of a soul off the debate stage at the very end.

Am I overstating the murder that some 67 million Americans witnessed with their own eyes during the ABC News debate on Tuesday night moderated by David Muir and Linsey Davis? CNN's post-debate flash poll of those who watched it said Harris outperformed him by 63% to 37%. Other snap polls found similar. We'll see what the broader polling finds in the coming days. And, of course, none of that ultimately means anything. Only votes do. But I can't think of anything that Harris could have done better, particularly given Trump's years-long record of surprise successes at these things. Finally, someone figured out how to get under his skin and stayed there for 90 minutes, as we all got to enjoy his, at times hilarious, meltdown in the bargain.

Our roundtablers today --- two of our favorite fellow old school bloggers, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of his eponymous blog and the weekly Pro Left Podcast --- seemed to concur with the bulk of my assessment.

"This was a really great debate for those of us who care about the future of this country, because she absolutely decimated him. And it was beautiful," observed Digby. "All she was doing was telling him facts to his face, and calling him what no one in his circle will ever call him, which is a disgrace, a criminal, and creepy and old. He doesn't know how to deal with that."

"She rolled in there prepped to be a prosecutor of a person who is morally and legally unfit to hold any office in this country, and she prosecuted her case brilliantly," echoed Driftglass. She used "all the keywords that will trigger this lunatic into making dumb mistakes, because we know he can been provoked. Every time, he didn't just take the bait, he swallowed the hook."

I'd share more, but it might take some of the joy out of listening to today's special coverage. Among some of the many specific points we focused on:

• Was Trump catfished by Team Harris' "unsuccessful" pre-debate ploy to keep the microphones open all night?
• Does he actually even know how the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) works?!
• Are undocumented immigrants in Ohio really eating American pets? (Someone said they were "on television" after all.)
• Are those immigrants getting government-funded sex change operations in prison?
• Does Donald Trump know anything about either fracking or solar energy?
• What does that "late great Hannibal Lecter" rally joke actually mean?
• Is Trump being catfished yet again by Team Harris' immediate post-debate call for a second debate?

All of that and much, much, MUCH more on today's BradCast...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Well, we had a few technical disasters during today's BradCast. But that's what makes live radio fun, right? [Audio link to full show --- minus a minute or two of dead air --- follows this summary.]

At the top of the show, Desi and I began coverage of this weekend's deadly Typhoon Yagi in Vietnam, Tropical Storm (soon to be Hurricane) Francine in the Gulf of Mexico, and wildfires raging and heat records shattering in the Western U.S., including right here in our local Southern California listening area. But, almost immediately, we were hit with a few technical snafus as wiring (or something) went haywire during our live show from the KPFK studios.

Apologies for that, and for the minute or two where my mic appears to have gone dead entirely. (We've excised most of that dead air from the version we're posting below. But there are plenty of gaffes along the way to enjoy nonetheless. Don't worry!)

Most of the studio tech issues were largely under control by the time I got to some of my planned news coverage of the Cheneys (both Liz and Dick) and their remarkable endorsements last week of the Democratic Presidential nominee, Kamala Harris; the fact that Bernie Sanders agrees with them; and that Liz even announced she would also be backing Democratic Rep. Colin Allred in his race against Ted Cruz for the U.S. Senate in Texas this year!

Then there is Donald Trump's twisted weekend tweet/threat vowing to prosecute and jail "Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials" if he wins in November (he said "WHEN I WIN" in the tweet) "at levels...never seen before in our Country."

In other words, while he used to vow to imprison political opponents, he is now promising to jail Democratic donors, attorneys and elected officials if he wins in November (or if, as he and the GOP are clearly planning, they are able to steal it this year in the event they lose.)

And, with all of that (and more) we get to today's listeners ringing in with thoughts on all of the above on the eve of Tuesday's first and only Presidential debate between Harris and Trump. That rounds out a quick summary of today's tech-error-riddled, but-otherwise-pretty-lively BradCast. Please enjoy!...

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We're all over the place on today's BradCast, as things seem to be speeding up exponentially as Election Day draws near. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• On Wednesday, the Dept. of Justice filed an indictment against two members of the Russia's state media outlet known as RT for their part in a scheme that covertly paid some $10 million to rightwing media influencers to help spread Russian propaganda via an American-looking website media company based in Tennessee. Among the willing dupes or useful idiots, take your pick, who profited from the scheme to the tune of millions of dollars: popular rightwingers like Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin (who actually used to call himself a "progressive" when we worked with him years ago at The Young Turks!) Their Kremlin-approved-and-encouraged lies about Russia and Ukraine and much more were spread far and wide from them to Elon Musk, Donald Trump and many others (including far too many on the Left!), in a far-reaching plot meant to cause division in the U.S. and disrupt our electoral system to the benefit of Trump. It was all helped along by those who are apparently all too willing to sell out the U.S. in exchange for power and/or money and/or just to be one of the cool anti-establishment rebel kids out there. We break it all down for ya today.

• Lifelong rock-ribbed Republican conservative, former top member of House GOP Leadership, and daughter of Dick, Liz Cheney announced her intention in North Carolina on Wednesday to do the right thing by voting for Kamala Harris this year. I say "right thing" because, for those Republicans who truly oppose Donald Trump, if they really want to help keep him out of power, the best way is to cast their vote for Harris, as opposed to feebly writing-in Ronald Reagan or some such cowardly measure that only ultimately serves to help Trump regain power.

• Aside from standing up for democracy, the rule of law, and the Constitution by voting for Harris, Cheney might also have noticed that Kamala Harris popular economic policies are more likely to grow the economy than Trump's various schemes. His poor economic showing during his term in office makes that clear enough. But, if you need further encouragement that Harris' policies will be better for the economy than Trump's moving forward, check out what the economists at that lefty, pinko outfit Goldman-Sachs had to say about it this week. Turns out, "Comrade Kamala" (as Trump absurdly likes to call her), is the worst communist ever!

• The U.S. House returns from its August break on Monday for a short session before breaking again for the election. But they've got another "fiscal cliff" ahead of them, with a government funding deadline at the end of this month. Apparently, Donald Trump is encouraging House Speaker Mike Johnson to threaten another shutdown before the election, unless Dems agree to adopt the SAVE Act, a bill that would require proof of citizenship when registering to vote, despite the fact that it is already unlawful for non-citizens to vote in federal elections (and ID is already required for all voters who register in all 50 states under federal law). But, sure, go for it, Mike! I'm sure it'll work out just fine for you guys.

• Pretending there is massive voter fraud being carried out by non-citizens appears to be the GOP's fake news claim of this election year (helped along by all of those folks getting sweet sweet Russian money to lie to that end, and those who choose to believe them). In North Carolina last week, the state and national Republican Party filed yet another lawsuit in hopes of popularizing that claim, despite the complete lack of evidence for it. In this suit, they are claiming that some 225,000 voters in the state's voter registration database did not supply a driver's license or social security number when they registered and, therefore, might be "illegal aliens" voting. They want them all to be removed from the rolls and forced to re-register, even though the election is now just weeks away and Mail-in voting begins this weekend in NC. But there are a few (a whole bunch, actually) problems with their claims and suggested remedy, as we explain on today's program. That said, Republicans know about those problems --- and don't care. They aren't filing these lawsuits to win them. They are filing them to help them try and steal the election, if necessary, next January 6th.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, amid a sweltering heat wave here in Southern California; a record heat wave in Phoenix; record humidity recorded over much of the rest of the country all summer long; and other both good and terrible climate and environmental news items, as usual...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Yup. We're back! And we've got lots to begin getting caught up with on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among the many stories reported and discussed on today's program...

• Donald Trump's recent flip-flops on abortion, pandering on IVF and his desecration of Arlington Cemetery for political purposes. (By the way, Dems should embrace Trump's pandering promise to have the Government pay for anyone's fertility treatments. It's the GOP's first baby step toward universal healthcare/Medicare-for-All after all! Sounds great! Hold them to it!)

• More than 10,000 hotel workers celebrated Labor Day by going on strike for better wages and working conditions across the U.S. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden campaigned together, speaking to a packed house of union workers in Pittsburgh on Labor Day, touting the most pro-union, jobs-creating Admin in history and promised to continue it under a Harris-Walz Administration. Trump, apparently unable to find any union workers who wanted to hear from him, stayed home yesterday.

• More than a hundred thousand demonstrators took to the streets in Israel to protest against their far-right Benjamin Netanyahu-led government, demanding a deal for a cease-fire and the release of hostages in Gaza, after six of them were found dead in a tunnel beneath Rafah on Sunday. Twenty-three year old Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin was among those found dead, just days after his parents spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, calling for a cease-fire and the release of more than 100 hostages who remain in Hamas custody following their horrific attack on Israel last October. As we have been arguing for months, however --- and as Israeli protesters are noted as mentioning in this Guardian piece --- Prime Minister Netanyahu is unlikely to ever agree to a deal that would effectively end Israel's war on Gaza, because it would also result in the end of his governing coalition. After that, he will have to face corruption charges filed against him from which he is currently immune...as long as he remains Prime Minister. If all of that sounds like a deal that Donald Trump hopes to win for himself in November, you are right. Tune in for much more on all of this today.

• Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Russia launched another deadly, long-range missile assault on Ukraine, this time on a military academy and nearby hospital. More than 50 were killed, more than 200 wounded. That as Ukraine has finally taken possession of land inside Russia's Kursk region, including some 500 square miles along the Ukrainian border, and continues to plead with the U.S. and Europe to send weapons to help them defend themselves against the two-and-half-year onslaught by its imperialistic Russian neighbor.

• Massachusetts is holding its Congressional and state legislative primaries today, just days after its Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin warned residents in the state about scam text messages being sent to some voters, falsely telling them that they are ineligible to vote. It is just one of the many dirty tricks we will be seeing between now and Election Day, the period of time that I am calling PHASE 1 of this year's general elections.

• And, speaking of, Labor Day is a good moment to mark where things are in the horse race toward Election Day, following the unprecedented plot-twist of the last 6 weeks following Kamala Harris taking over at the top of the ticket. She has surged in the polling averages against Donald Trump --- particularly in the seven critical battleground states --- since then. But, she remains just barely ahead of Trump in the states she most needs to win. Her slim lead nationally and in the most critical battleground states she would need to get to 270 electoral votes, in a system that advantages Republicans, has resulted in, as Politico colorfully describes it today, "the equivalent of a knife fight in a phone booth."

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us today to begin catching up on much that we missed in climate and environmental news after being off just one week, including the role of climate action in the 2024 contest; new data on deadly extreme heat in the U.S.; China meeting its renewable electricity targets six years early; and the Klamath River, now finally running free again along the California/Oregon border after being dammed up for more than 100 years!...

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

Among our coverage on today's program...

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

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

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

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

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

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