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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hurricane Debby left a parting gift --- tons of raw sewage spills; July 2024 was the hottest July ever recorded globally; PLUS: Republicans' Project 2025 calls for deleting all references to climate change from the federal government... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): More than 47,000 people died in Europe last year due to heat, report says; 'It's Torture': Brutal heat broils Texas prisons, killing dozens of inmates; How to stay safe in the Texas heat; In Pennsylvania's competitive Senate race, fracking takes center stage; Climate change is making us sick, literally, as extreme rainfalls overwhelm outdated sewer systems; Taxpayers on the hook to protect high-end beach communities; 'Massive disinformation campaign' is slowing global transition to green energy... PLUS: How close are the planet's tipping points?... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: After the recent Republican National Convention, LULAC has decided they've had enough. They are coming off the sidelines for the first time in their nearly century-long history to endorse a Presidential ticket. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Over the past week, Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris, with her "joyful warrior" running mate, MN Gov. Tim Walz, have been barnstorming battleground states with rallies attracting 10,000 or 15,000 people at every stop. Her poll numbers are soaring (the NYT/Sienna poll, which has been very friendly to Donald Trump in recent months, now puts the Harris up by 4 points in each of the Democrats' key, must-win "Blue Wall" states (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) and both major labor unions and civil rights groups are jumping on board the train to endorse the Democratic Presidential ticket.

But, on Friday, the political arm of one such civil rights group, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the nation's largest and oldest Latino advocacy group, did something they haven't done in their nearly 100 year history: they endorsed a Presidential ticket. In this case, they are tossing in for the Harris/Walz ticket.

We're joined today by former LULAC President and current Chair of the LULAC Adelante PAC, DOMINGO GARCIA, to explain why the group finally decided, through a unanimous vote, they had to get off the sidelines and get into this fight against the menace posed to the nation --- and specifically to Latinos --- by Donald Trump.

"We saw the rhetoric coming from ex-President Trump saying that he was going to deport 15 million people; he was going to build these mass concentration-deportation camps; he was going to have the Army go door to door and ask people for their papers. These are just bizarro, weirdo ideas," Garcia tells me. "Then we saw the visions of the Republican National Convention, of people [holding signs] saying 'mass deportations'. We were saying, 'Whoa, these guys have gone to the extreme far-right, with almost neo-Nazi Klan mindsets that need to be stopped."

Garcia explains why the group, which was founded after WWI, and considered one of the more conservative civil rights groups, finally learned to believe Trump after his campaigns in 2016 and 2020.

"We take Trump at his word now," says Garcia, noting they didn't believe Trump in 2016 that he was going to separate children from their parents. "And he did! We did not believe him. We did not think there was anybody capable of that kind of cruelty," he explains, recoiling from the sight of two and three-year olds in prison buses. "It was so shocking that that was happening to America. To have a repeat this cycle --- we support securing the border; we support opening up legal immigration and cracking down on illegal immigration --- but doing it in this sort of evil, cruel way, using immigrants for fear-mongering, scapegoating, and as his political pinatas, we said we have to put a stop to that."

Garcia believes that LULAC has the reach to stop Trump, particularly in battleground states like Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where the Latino populations easily overcome the margins in the Presidential races over the last two cycles.

Among the other points Garcia speaks to on today's program...

• The Trump Campaign's response to their endorsement by charging LULAC is out of touch with Latino voters.
• What might explain the apparent increase in Latino support for Trump over the past two cycles.
• What LULAC thinks of the very conservative border security bill agreed to by the Biden-Harris Administration with Senate Republicans, but then scotched by Trump to keep the so-called "border crisis" alive as a campaign issue for him.
• What his group hopes to see Harris do moving forward from the current Administration's policies as they apply to Latino voters and their families.

FINALLY, as Harris/Walz continue to climb in the polls with their hopeful, positive campaign --- in contrast to Trump's dark, dystopian message --- listeners ring in on the addition of Walz to the ticket, and the madness of Trump, who now says that the tens of thousands turning out for Harris/Walz rallies is actually fake and being done by Artificial Intelligence. Yes, he is really claiming that the numbers that the Democratic ticket is drawing for rallies --- and caught on video by thousands of people --- is actually somewhere between zero and 1,000 or so, but for the use of A.I. to hoax the public into believing tens of thousands were there instead. Seriously. That's what he now says...

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Our initial plans for today's BradCast were somewhat sullied by the disgraced former President's last minute announcement of what he called a "press conference" down at his resort home this afternoon. But he's also somewhat sullied the last 10 years or so of life in America, so we should be used to it by now. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our coverage today...

• Donald Trump spewed a remarkable tsunami of lies and nonsense during an hour-long presser this afternoon, stacked with questions from mostly rightwing media outlets. It was ostensibly called to announce he had "agreed" to three Presidential Debates in September on Fox "News", ABC News and NBC News, and for a Vice-Presidential debate moderated by CBS News. The only one of those actually confirmed or agreed to by his opponent, as of air time, was the one on ABC that had long been agreed to by Kamala Harris, even as Trump had previously tried to duck out of it. We share just a few of his many weird lies told today, most of them stale and/or hilarious. Beyond that, we were just happy to see that his right ear (as seen in a close-up at right, from the photo above, taken today at Mar-a-Lago) appears to have healed up so well that it almost looks as if he had never been shot at all by a bullet from an AR-15 military-style assault rifle just over three weeks ago.

• Trump's Vice-Presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, is a piker when it comes to spewing ridiculous lies and nonsense, compared to his running mate. But he's working on it. And he was happy, over the weekend during a rally in Atlanta, to repeat several of the lies Trump and Fox 'News' love to tell. Among them, that Kamala Harris wants "to take away your gas car" and that "she even wants to take away your ability to eat red meat." Both are complete fabrications, of course, and we might have let them slide, but for his claim that "the fake news will fact check. They'll fact check it 'true'. She actually said that." We're not fake news, of course, but that Vance/Trump lie has already been fact-checked. I don’t know how to couch this, nor cushion the blow for Vance, but, as it turns out, it's not actually true in the slightest.

• Then there are the Vice-Presidential candidates, like MN Gov. Tim Walz, who has this annoying habit of telling the truth about stuff. It doesn't give us much to fact-check, but it does free up time to learn about the possible future Veep by sharing some fantastic video from 2022, in which he explained how to fix a burnt-out headlight harness from his 2014 Ford Edge with a $7.99 part from NAPA Auto Parts ("Just clip off the back, use some shrink-wrapped connectors on there, tape it back together and put it back in. It's about a five-minute fix and you're back on the road safe and sound.") And some rousing remarks from State of the State Address in 2023, before the passage of a slew of popular gun safety measures in MN like red flag laws and universal background checks. ("The time for hiding behind 'thoughts and prayers' is long gone. What we need is action and we need it now! So here's what's gonna happen: We've got a gun safety bill on the table, and we're gonna get it passed, and I'm gonna sign it." And they did and he did.)

• The polls continue to surge for Kamala Harris since she took over at the top of the ticket just over three weeks ago. With most of the major polling averages (538, NYT, RealClearPolitics) now putting her up over Trump nationally by give or take 1 or 2 points. That's a huge swing from where Joe Biden was polling just before he dropped out and endorsed Harris. But for a separate indication of how things are going for the Harris-Walz ticket, the UK betting site Oddschecker observed today, that "For the first time since Kamala Harris stepped in for Joe Biden, she has overtaken Donald Trump as the betting favourite to win the US election. A wild swing in odds over the past three weeks." That's all great news for democracy fans, of course. But, as Desi likes to warn (and as a listener reminds us via email today), neither the polling numbers nor betting odds take the GOP's plans to "suppress the vote and contest the vote" by blocking certification into full consideration.

• Finally, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report with news on Hurricane Debby coming back to the Carolinas today for a catastrophic second helping, and on Dem VP candidate Tim Walz' proven record as a climate champion, having adopted, as Minnesota's Governor, nearly 40 "cutting edge climate and clean energy laws and policies" that could be seen as a national policy template, as he cast "the fight against climate change" in his state "as an economic win for residents and an imperative for the state's children"...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Tropical Storm Debby isn't done with the East Coast yet; Hottest oceans in 400 years endanger Australia's Great Barrier Reef, scientists warn; PLUS: Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate, Gov. Tim Walz, is a proven climate champion... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Harris faces racial attacks for promoting climate policies; July ends 13-month streak of global heat records as El Nino ebbs, but experts warn against relief; Fossil fuel industry's 'massive disinformation campaign' is slowing global transition to green energy; Tropical weather brings record rainfall. Experts share how to stay safe in floods... PLUS: Death toll for birds may be more than 1 billion a year in U.S.... and much, MUCH more! ...

"Thank you, Madame Vice President, for the trust you put in me," he said as he began his remarks during their first public appearance together as running mates on the 2024 Democratic ticket. "But, maybe more so, thank you for bringing back the joy." We send our thanks in return on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

But, very quickly before we get there today, we've got a few of the noteworthy reported results from Tuesday's largely problem-free (so far) Congressional and state primary elections in Michigan, Missouri, Kansas and Washington state. And a few thoughts on Donald Trump's latest pathetic attempt to remain relevant by endorsing more than one --- sometimes all of the top contenders --- in the same Republican primary race. What a loser.

THEN... it's on to our roundtable guests today, who seem to be in a very good mood for some reason, after the Democrats' now official 2024 Presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, tapped Minnesota's progressive Governor Tim Walz as her VP candidate on Tuesday.

Walz, as we discuss, has a life and political biography that, if he was a fictional character in a political miniseries, you'd think the writers had laid it on a little thick. But, sure enough, Walz' extraordinary career and accomplishments --- born in rural Nebraska; 24 years of decorated service in the Army National Guard; 20 years as a high school teacher and state champion football coach; 12 years in the U.S. House; and two wildly effective terms as MN Governor, including the passage of a slew of popular progressive priorities --- all seem quite real. AND, it has all been carried out, it seems, with much of the same "joy" he thanked Harris for "bringing back" during their first joint appearance on Tuesday in Philadelphia.

Now, as the Dem ticket's poll numbers continue to surge, the pair is off and running with joint appearances in at least five battleground states this week, while Trump is set to appear in, well, just Montana for some reason.

We're joined again today for another one of our weekly roundtables with two very smart and fellow old school bloggers, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo, and 'DRIFTGLASS' of The Pro Left Podcast. They were last on the show together just three weeks ago. But, boy howdy, was that a different world, as Dems were still trying to figure out how to survive with Joe Biden at the top of their ticket following his disastrous late-June debate performance. What a difference three weeks makes.

Today, we are focused on the selection of Walz as VP and what all of that means for both the electrified Dem and seemingly stultified GOP tickets. By way of just a quick sample from our conversation today, from both guests in response to Harris' selection of Walz...

There is much more where all of that comes from today, on how the progressive AOC and rightwing Joe Manchin are actually in agreement that Walz is an "excellent decision" and "the real deal"; on Team Trump's hilariously flatfooted response; on the one option the GOP could (but won't) deploy to turn things around; on "mind[ing] your own damn business"; on Minnesota/San Francisco/American values; on whether Trump could ever dump Vance; on whether the Dem momentum can continue for another 90 days; on Trump's bizarre post-Walz meltdown; and much more...

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Today on The BradCast: Well, the past 24 hours have turned out to be rather historic. At least I hope. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

After having become the nation's first female Vice President, Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Asian immigrants, was officially selected on Monday night by Democratic National Party delegates via an online roll call vote to become the first woman of color to lead a major party's Presidential ticket.

But the California Democrat stepped on her own history-making moment by Tuesday morning when announcing her selection for Vice President: 24-year Army National Guardsman, former high school teacher and football coach, 12-year Congressman and two-term Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

In the hours since, the affable, blessedly normal, very progressive 60-year old, union-supporting Nebraska native --- who flipped a rural Minnesota Congressional seat from red to blue in 2006 --- became a bit of a national sensation, it seems to me. He was, after all, the one who appears to have cracked the code of how to attack the Republicans' standard-bearer Donald Trump and his Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance with a simple, and even "Minnesota Nice" dismissal by referring to them as just plain "weird".

But, as our guest today, The Nation's progressive journalist, author, longtime Walz fan and native son of MN's neighboring rust belt state of Wisconsin, JOHN NICHOLS, makes clear, Walz didn't just come from nowhere. He has a history that Nichols has been sharing for days --- well before today's announcement --- on his Twitter feed, with links to some great Walz moments over the years. His incredibly moving radio ad when first introducing himself to run for Congress in 2006; his sweeping video ad announcing his gubernatorial run in 2018; an impassioned, ass-kicking speech at the MN Legislature as Governor in 2023, as the 2nd Amendment supporter and 24-year veteran, deployed both domestically and overseas, promised (and then delivered) long-overdue gun safety laws to finally help stop the massacre of school children; being hugged by school children after signing a bill to ensure free public school breakfast and lunches for all; a telling moment when the Governor, in well-worn blue jeans, bends over to tie the shoe of a little girl.

"He is kind of an outsider on the national political scene," Nichols tells me today, when explaining why he's been posting Tweet after Tweet in support of Walz in recent days. "As of a couple of weeks ago, it's safe to say that 99 out of 100 Americans couldn't have identified him out of a lineup. So in a very short amount of time, this guy has come not from the mainstream, inner circle of the elite Washington Democratic Party, but from way outside, up on the border with Canada."

"So I think there was a lot that people needed to understand quickly about the guy, and that's one of the reasons why I posted a lot of those old campaign ads and videos --- so people could understand that he didn't just appear out of nowhere. This is kind of an amazing political figure."

America is certainly learning that as of today, after what Nichols reported at The Nation this afternoon as the Paul Wellstone disciple who rose to the top during "a two-week 'virtual campaign' in which [Harris' Veep contenders] would present themselves to the party and to the candidate and to the nation. ... And, in so doing, she freed herself up to the prospect that the final pick might not be a predictable insider, or, to be more precise, the predictable choice of the predictable insiders."

"There's nothing radical about Tim Walz," Nichols tweeted today, "except for his faith in the American people. He believes in an America where we treat one another as neighbors, lift one another up and build a future where no one is left behind. Walz is the opposite of JD Vance."

Nichols has a lot to share about Walz' background, Harris' courageous selection, and how he believes that Trump has been "destabilized" by all that has happened over the past two weeks following Joe Biden stepping aside to make way for Harris. "Trump really does believe in a cult of personality. So, he couldn't possibly imagine that Biden would ever give up the leadership of the party, never give up the candidacy. Well, Biden isn't a cult of personality guy. He did give it up. That threw Trump off. I think Trump is still destabilized simply by that reality."

"And then comes this good-humored guy out of the Midwest. Somebody who really does speak to a lot of the people Trump has tried to speak to, but instead of Trumpish-language --- 'I'm a billionaire from New York who knows things you don't know.' Tim Walz comes along and says, 'I'm a teacher from Mankato. I know a lot of things you know. I get you. I get what you need. And I'm telling you, you're not getting it from a weirdo.' Suddenly, it's like the whole conversation has changed. ... And the Republicans are frankly going crazy."

Nichols also explains how Walz on the ticket from neighboring MN, will "absolutely" have an effect on voters in the "Blue Wall" state of WI and beyond, and why the Trump Campaign's laughable attack on Walz as a "West Coast wannabe...obsessed with spreading California's dangerously liberal agenda far and wide" is probably going to miss by a California mile.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the climate change-enhanced Hurricane Debby wreaks havoc across Florida, Georgia and South Carolina; as climate change changed the Paris Summer Games; as victims of the climate change-exacerbated wild fires in Maui get a small measure of justice; and as oil major BP is now all but conceding that fossil fuels will soon be on their way out...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hurricane Debby brings astonishing rains and flooding to Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina; Climate change is a partner in the Paris Summer Olympics; PLUS: Plaintiffs in last year's catastrophic Maui Fires reach a settlement with Hawaiian Electric... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Meet Tim Walz: Kamala Harris's vice-presidential pick, a surprising Green New Dealer; As U.S. Heat Deaths Rise, Some Landlords Oppose Right To Air Conditioning; Sudan's Famine-Stricken Zamzam Camp Hit By Devastating Floods; More Americans Are Moving Into Flood And Fire Hot Spots; Minnesota Settles ‘Deceptive Environmental Marketing’ Suit Over Plastic Bags... PLUS: Wyoming Offers To Sell Land To Grand Teton Park — Or Developers... and much, MUCH more! ...

We've got a flood of news on today's BradCast. Unfortunately, some of that reference is also literal. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our many stories today...

• Last week's primary elections in Tennessee (which they hold on Thursdays in the state, because they hope voters don't turn out for them!) saw state Rep. Gloria Johnson win the Democratic nomination for U.S Senate to run against the far-right Sen. Marsha Blackburn. Johnson was one of the "Tennessee Three" who state GOP lawmakers tried to expel after Johnson and two others state Reps participated in a gun safety protest on the House floor following a deadly mass shooting at an elementary school shooting in Nashville. Johnson, who is white, was spared expulsion by one vote. Her two colleagues, Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, both black, were expelled (though were subsequently returned to the House by their local constituents).

• Hurricane Debby made landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida Monday morning, just 20 miles or so from where Hurricane Idalia came ashore less than a year ago. Desi Doyen joins us with details on the storm surge and catastrophic flooding that is expected in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina as the storm moves to the north painfully slowly. She also explains why these disasters are made worse and more frequent thanks to man-made climate change.

• Also today, Wall Street weathered its own storm, as investors have begun to panic that the U.S. could be headed into a recession and/or that the Federal Reserve waited too long to lower interest rates. In Japan on Monday, investors really panicked, as the Nikkei 225 plunged more than 12%. The major U.S. indexes, however, "only" fell by about 2 or 3% today. Still, it was a bloodbath. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

• After a months-long pause, Donald Trump's federal indictment for his several failed attempts to steal the 2020 election returned to the D.C. court of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. The pause was thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's absurd ruling that Presidents enjoy immunity from most crimes they carry out while in office. That ruling, of course, though contrary to any non-corrupt reading of the Constitution, could still further derail the case. For now at least, after receiving the case back on Friday, Chutkan issued several rulings almost immediately over the weekend, finding mostly against the Defense in several outstanding motions. The case is, nonetheless, not expected to come to trial before this November's Presidential election, since her eventual rulings in regard to "presidential immunity" will almost certainly need to make their way back up to the corrupted SCOTUS.

• In breaking news shortly before airtime today, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced that she was dropping charges against Jenna Ellis after the former Donald Trump attorney agreed to cooperate with prosecutors against her 18 co-defendants. They were all charged earlier this year with fraud, forgery and conspiracy related to the Republicans 2020 fake electors plot in the state. Among those charged along with Ellis and still facing indictments are former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, as well as his former Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows. This could be very bad news for all of them.

• Also today, the corrupted SCOTUS did the right thing for a rare change in declining to halt Donald Trump's sentencing on 34 felony crimes in New York related to his successful scheme to cheat in the 2016 election by paying hush-money to a porn star with whom he was said to have had a sexual tryst. Trump's criminal sentencing will now move forward --- unless something else derails it again (which is always a good possibility) --- next month on September 18th.

• Over the weekend, Donald Trump backed out of the Presidential debate he previously agreed to participate in next month, as moderated by ABC News. He is proposing that he and all-but-certain Democratic nominee Kamala Harris debate before a live crowd on Fox "News" instead. The New York Times' coverage of that news over the weekend was wildly misleading and subsequently changed to eventually become accurate.

• In Virginia last week, a machine recount determined that far-right Republican state Sen. John McGuire did indeed defeat the far-right Republican Chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Bob Good, by just over 300 votes out of some 63,000 cast during the GOP's June state primary. Good, a 2020 election denier, ultimately abandoned his evidence-free claims of massive fraud via drop-box and conceded the race to McGuire.

• Down in Venezuela, Socialist Party strongman Nicolas Maduro still refuses to release election results from tens of thousands of polling places after the nation's Presidential election just over a week ago. The National Electoral Council --- heavily stacked with Maduro loyalists --- announced on Election Night that Maduro defeated opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez by about 7 percentage points. Both the U.S. (a longtime Maduro adversary) and Maduro allies such as the leaders of Brazil and Columbia, have called for Maduro to release all precinct-based results from the election. Without the ability for the public to oversee the full results, however, analysts are citing the limited number of Election Night precinct results tapes obtained by opposition-aligned groups from about 1,000 polling sites. Separate analyses of those poll tapes --- by New York Times, Associated Press and Washington Post --- suggest that Maduro not only didn't win by 7 points, he appears to have lost to Gonzalez in a 20-point landslide. We specifically detail the convincing NYTimes analysis and explain how Maduro could refute their findings by simply releasing the data that the voting public deserves to see. Democracy relies on the ability of the public to oversee its own elections. A fact that is equally true here in the U.S.

• While we ran long with all of today's breaking news, we still had time for a caller or two, one of whom who clearly hates democracy --- and is, apparently, no fan of me either!

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Late last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and 34 fellow Senate Democrats introduced legislation that would not only overturn the "Presidential Immunity" ruling invented by the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority last month in Trump v. United States, but would also strip both federal appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court of the jurisdiction to so much as stay criminal proceedings based upon a claim of "presidential immunity".

The proposed No Kings Act [PDF] cites provisions of Article III, §2, clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which expressly authorizes Congress to carve out "exceptions" to the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction. The newly introduced Act declares that "a President or Vice President is not entitled to any form of immunity from criminal prosecution for violations of the criminal laws of the United States unless specified by Congress," and then invokes the Article III clause to prevent federal courts from blocking any such prosecution on the basis of the Trump v. U.S. ruling.

Moreover, as the Democrats' announcement explains, the Supreme Court would also be barred from reviewing the Constitutionality of the No Kings Act itself. While the bill would allow Presidents and Vice Presidents to challenge its constitutionality, any such challenge would be ultimately decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rather than by SCOTUS.

According to Schumer's statement:

The legislative Act, as proposed by Democrats, is manifestly different from President Biden's proposal to overturn the presidential immunity decision by way of a Constitutional Amendment...

Lots of good news and/or bad news on today's BradCast depending on how you may choose to see any of it. [Audio link to full program follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The mid-level appeals court in New York (just below its highest court) rejected Donald Trump's attempt to lift whatever remains of the gag order against him in his hush-money case on Thursday. That's the case where he's been convicted of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to hide a sexual tryst with a porn star in order to help him win the 2016 Presidential election. The gag order --- preventing him from attacking family members of the judge, etc. --- is likely to be lifted once Trump is sentenced on September 18, if in fact he sentenced at that time. The judge on the case, Justice Juan Merchan will decide on September 6th whether the case must be tossed entirely, given the corrupt U.S. Supreme Court's ridiculous, but still binding, recent ruling that Presidents are immune from prosecution for almost any and all crimes committed while serving in office.

THEN... Big news today from the White House as President Biden announced a multinational prisoner swap with Russia, that includes prisoners released from six different countries. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Marine vet Paul Whelan are among those Americans released by Russia today, along with a number of other journalists and political dissidents wrongly held by Russia, according to the U.S. Some of the prisoners, in fact, have been held for years, including Whelan who had been imprisoned since being arrested while attending a wedding in Russia in 2018.

Some critics, however, have charged that such deals --- often including the release of serious criminals --- merely incentive the taking of "hostages". The lead U.S. hostage negotiator, however, responds that, despite 70 Americans whose releases were won by the Biden Administration, the number of those taken captive has fallen. When asked by a reporter at the White House today about Trump's repeated comments that he could have brought these people whom without "paying" anything, Biden responded: "Why didn't he do it when he was President?"

NEXT... Earlier this week, President Biden detailed his three-part proposal for long-overdue reform of our corrupted, packed, stolen and activist U.S. Supreme Court. His proposed reforms include 18-year term limits for Justices, allowing every President to name a new Justice every two years; an enforceable, binding code of conduct, to prevent Justices from accepting undisclosed gifts and requiring them to recuse themselves from cases in which they have conflicts of interest; and a call for a Constitutional Amendment to roll back the Court's recent, absurd ruling that Presidents --- like kings --- enjoy near absolute immunity for all crimes committed while in office.

Biden has referred to his proposed Constitutional amendment as the "No One is Above the Law" Amendment. And on Thursday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and 34 other Democratic Senators, released their own proposal for legislation they are calling the "No Kings Act". It is similar to the Constitutional Amendment sought by Biden, but, according to Schumer today, "would be the fastest and most efficient method to correcting the grave precedent the Trump [immunity] ruling presented." Schumer describes that ruling as a "dangerous and devastating" one, adopted by "the MAGA Supreme Court".

We're joined today by attorney JAY WILLIS, editor-in-chief of the Balls and Strikes website, which focuses on the Courts and court reform. Willis recently described Biden's proposal as "a nice first step", while explaining why doesn't go far enough. "The only way to solve the problem of a Court controlled by a conservative supermajority is to add justices to it," he wrote, charging that the benefits of Biden (and Schumer's) current proposals are swell, and broadly popular, but won't be truly felt for generations. "Backing term limits without also backing Court expansion is like explaining the concept of a life preserver to a person who is actively drowning," he quipped.

Today, Willis tells me: "My attitude towards Court reform is basically that it's difficult to go far enough to repair an institution this broken." He cites the broad bipartisan support for both term-limits and a binding ethics code, calling them "not particularly controversial policy ideas." But without expansion of the Court, he argues --- which is also popular, if not quite as much so for the time being --- the Constitutional damage that these current rightwing activist Justices will be able sow is virtually limitless.

We also discuss the difference between Biden's call for a Constitutional Amendment to overturn SCOTUS' immunity ruling and Schumer's push for legislation instead, and why some believe that any attempt by Congress to impose term-limits on Justices would be found to be unconstitutional. Ironically, it would be the Justices themselves, in theory, who would be the ones to make that ultimate finding. (Though shouldn't they all recuse themselves from such a case? If so, then what?)

"As long as John Roberts is in charge of this Court," Willis says that he expects any ruling on these matters would contain "a lot of, 'Thanks for playing Congress. Thanks for your opinion on what the Constitution means. But this is really our job, not yours.'"

In a follow-up piece, Willis detailed where Vice President --- and the Democrats' presumptive 2024 Presidential nominee --- Kamala Harris stands on the various elements of Court reform as sought by Biden, as well as for expansion of the Court to help UNpack it after the damage done during the Trump years.

FINALLY... Desi Doyen joins us for today's particular grim Green News Report today, though one that ends on a high note, at least!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Vermont slammed by second catastrophic flood in three weeks; As wildfires rage in the West, new study finds wildfire smoke is more dangerous than we knew; PLUS: Wind and solar energy overtake fossil fuels for electricity generation in Europe... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): One in 11 people went hungry last year. Climate change is a big reason why; Global methane emissions rising at fastest rate in decades, scientists warn; Texas utility would raise rates to pay for Beryl 'restoration'; Harris grabs Green New Deal network endorsement that eluded Biden; Manchin-Barrasso energy permitting bill advances to full Senate; Central US is paying higher cost of burning coal, report says; Last 25 years in US West were driest in 1,200 years... PLUS: The very hungry urchins gobbling up the algae smothering coral reefs... and much, MUCH more! ...