On today's BradCast, as we wait for the House to send Donald Trump's Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, and we wait for the Senate to begin his impeachment trial, and we wait for Tuesday's night final Democratic Presidential debate before the Iowa Caucuses, and we wait for primary voting to begin in earnest next month, the fight for voting rights and for the way voters will cast their votes has been long underway, and it cannot wait any longer. [Audio link to complete show is posted below summary.]

We've got several major court victories today in the fight for voting rights, and a follow-up to yesterday's exclusive revelations of the massive failures discovered in the new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems set for first-time use in the critical 2020 Presidential election cycle in Los Angeles County, the nation's largest voting jurisdiction.

First up today, a Wisconsin state courts of appeals panel has stepped in to put a freeze on the massive voter purge of some 200,000 voters, as demanded by a rightwing legal outfit and a state court judge who was apparently willing to do their bidding. A three-judge panel on Wisconsin's District 4 Court of Appeals put the brakes on Ozaukee County Circuit Court Judge Paul Malloy's order to immediately remove the voters and on his $250/day fine against each of the three Democratic appointees to the state's Elections Commission who oppose the purge.

The voters who failed to respond to a verification postcard sent by the Commission were disproportionately found to be located in the state's most Democratic-leaning jurisdictions. They had been initially set for removal from the rolls in 2021, until Wisconsin's so-called Institute for Law and Liberty filed suit and found a very friendly judge in Malloy. He recently ordered the immediate removal of the voters, despite opposition from both the Democratic Commissioners and the state's Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul. The ruling by the appellate court to protect as many as 200,000 voters is key in a battleground state said to have been won by Trump by just 23,000 voters in 2016.

Today's decision in WI somewhat echoes a ruling by a federal judge in New York State late last week, who ordered that voters determined to be "inactive" due to a failure to respond to mailings or bad information from the U.S. Postal Service, must be listed in poll books on Election Day. A failure of so-called "inactive" voters to appear in poll books at state precincts led to chaos and disenfranchised voters during the 2016 election in New York.

During the course of last year's trial in this matter, it was revealed that both members of the State Board of Elections and New York City Board of Elections found that many voters on the "inactive" list should not have even been on the list in the first place. Federal District Court Judge Alison J. Nathan ruled that State Board of Elections' procedures were in violation of both the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

Then, we turn to some of the fall-out from the hornets nest we helped kick over on Monday's BradCast, when we detailed major security defects discovered by state certification testers in Los Angeles' new "Voting Solutions for All People" (or VSAP) voting system. The brand-new $300 million system, as we discussed in details on yesterday's program, is yet to be certified for use in California by Sec. of State Alex Padilla, but he is expected to sign off of it despite the massive failures discovered by the analysts that could put the 2020 elections in jeopardy in the nation's largest voting jurisdiction, thanks to the completely unverifiable and highly flawed new touchscreen voting systems.

Today, we share some of the responses we've received following yesterday's blockbuster show and some of the public comments sent by listeners to the Sec. of State seeking rejection of the new system in favor of hand-marked paper ballots for all voters. Letters must be sent to VotingSystems@sos.ca.gov before the Public Comment period for certification ends this Monday, January 20, at 5pm Pacific Time!

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for the latest Green News Report, with some news on a family feud and potential climate change shake-up at Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp in the wake of the devastating Australian bushfires that have ravaged the country for weeks; new details on the extraordinary costs of our climate crisis; and the weekly arrests of climate action champion Jane Fonda...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 2020 race loses climate justice warrior; Last year, the U.S. saw 14 weather disasters costing a billion dollars or more each; Australia's catastrophic bushfires cause $2 billion in damages; 2019 was the second hottest year ever recorded globally; PLUS: 150 arrested at Jane Fonda's 'Fire Drill Fridays' climate protest... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 2019 was a record year for ocean temperatures; Make the fossil fuel industry pay the $2 billion Bushfire Recovery Fund; 3 supertrees can protect us from climate collapse. But can we protect them?; Seeking environmental justice in California’s ‘diesel death zones’; U.S. flood risk model to be made publicly available in boon to homebuyers; Emails reveal Trump DOJ working closely with oil industry to stop climate liability lawsuits... PLUS: SSP3: The nightmare climate scenario that keeps scientists up at night... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, after a necessarily quick news round-up today (on Cory Booker dropping out of the Democratic Presidential nominating contest and the Trump Administration's continuing attempt to lie about about Donald Trump's unlawful assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani), we get on to the most important business of the day --- at least for voters in the state of California, though all across the country as well.

Brand-new, 100% unverifiable computer touchscreen Ballot Marking Device (BMD) voting systems, which all voters at the polls will be forced to use for the first-time in the 2020 Presidential election in Los Angeles County, beginning with the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary, are currently undergoing the CA state certification process. The $300 million system is failing state security and certification testing miserably, according to documents buried at the CA Sec. of State website, and reported on today's program for the first time.

In addition to producing a computer-marked ballot that can never be verified as reflecting any voters' intent after an election, documentation of state certification tests of the new "Voting Solutions for All People" system (or VSAP), reveal a myriad of incredibly serious security failures and violations of state law, according to experts we've consulted.

As we detail on today's program, the testers have discovered, among other very serious concerns, more than 40 violations of California Voting System Standards, including findings that reveal:

• The VSAP system can be booted from a USB drive that would bypass all security and logging protections and that access to the master account is needed for too many things, meaning that "too many people have access to the root password," according to state testers. That means "The excessive root access and the ability to boot the system from a USB port give access to the system by unauthorized individuals. Either scenario can result in undetected changes to files and data...Both scenarios can allow functions to be executed in non-intended ways. The unrestricted access to, and the ability to boot from, the USB port allows access to voting data";
• Many problems were discovered with security regarding encryption and cryptography in the new system;
• The testers discovered "It is possible to insert or remove ballots from both the BMD and ballot transfer boxes without detection";
• "The printer cover allows access to the ballot box and can be opened without detection";
• "Seals, locks, labels and sensors can all be bypassed" without detection.

Those are just some of the many findings that led one national voting system and cybersecurity expert to wryly describe the results to us as "not good" and another to describe the system as "a security fail".

Nonetheless, CA Secretary of State Alex Padilla could still certify the systems for use in the 2020 primaries and general election anyway, following the passage of a law he championed in 2013 as a State Senator that gives the SoS the ability to approve the use of new voting systems, even if they fail both federal and state testing, for actual elections.

The very quiet Public Comment period regarding certification of the unverifiable, unsecure VSAP touchscreen computer voting system ends next Monday, Jan. 20, 2020 at 5pm Pacific Time. We are urging those concerned to contact the state at VotingSystems@sos.ca.gov immediately to ask them to not certify this dangerous, unverifiable system, and to require a HAND-MARKED paper ballot for all voters at the polling place in this year's crucial primary and general elections.

We offer much more frightening detail on all of this on today's program regarding the dangers of this type of voting system as they are proliferating not just in Los Angeles County, but also in key battleground states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and many others before the critical 2020 elections begin in just weeks time!

We appear to be the only media outlet, to our knowledge, reporting this important information on the failed VSAP tests out of California, so please share widely! We cannot afford to wait until corporate media bother to notice (such as NBC News, which just noticed on Friday a very serious concern about modems in voting systems in several battleground states that we had covered on The BradCast more than six months ago!)...

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On today's BradCast: There is one neat, simple trick that Democrats and opponents of Donald Trump can do to make sure that he is no more than a one-term President this November. But they may need to start thinking about it right now. JIM WILLIAMS, Issue Polling Specialist at Public Policy Polling, joins us to explain what that one thing is, as based on recent survey data collected by his firm in Arizona and Iowa. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Also today, a report by Washington Post reveals that the Department of Justice investigation of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation that Trump demanded after becoming President has yielded...nothing. No criminal charges or anything close to it will reportedly be brought after a review begun by Trump's former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017, as assigned to Utah U.S. Attorney John Huber, quietly wrapped up months ago. Even the matter regarding Uranium One, a Canadian company in which a Russian firm was allowed to purchase a controlling stake, reveals no wrongdoing, no bribes paid to the Clinton Foundation while she served as Secretary of State. No nothing.

In short, between this probe and a recent report by the State Department's Inspector General finding, after a three-year probe, no criminal wrongdoing in Clinton's use of a private email server, it turns out that all of the nonsense that Trump exploited to lead "LOCK HER UP!" chants and his calls for throwing her in jail during his 2016 rallies (and beyond) was entirely B.S. Or, to put it another way, it was all a witch hunt hoax. Who knew? Oh, yeah, we told you as much long ago.

All of that, even as the disgraced, now-impeached President has seen his own "charitable" foundation ordered shut down by a New York Court, which found a "pattern of illegality" in is fraudulent operations, ordering Trump to pay millions in penalties, and as the Dept. of Justice investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election has resulted in 199 criminal counts against 37 people and entities, seven of whom have pleaded guilty (many of whom were top officials in the Trump Campaign and Trump Administration], with six (so far) sentenced to prison and as many as 10 counts of obstruction of justice by Trump himself.

The phony "LOCK HER UP!" campaign which arguably resulted in Trump's Presidency was not only made possible, but actually enabled --- shamefully --- by corporate mainstream media which legitimized what was otherwise clearly little more than a bogus, orchestrated hit campaign by Trump and his Rightwing media machine in 2016. We have a word or two to say about all of that on today's program, even as Trump is currently using the same playbook to falsely discredit Joe Biden (and, undoubtedly, whoever else may win the Democratic nomination this year.)

For some slightly more encouraging news today, we turn to North Carolina, where a federal judge has, once again, shut down the state Republican legislature's latest scheme to enact Photo ID voting restrictions in 2020, finding it an attempt at discriminatory voter suppression. The ruling comes after a different federal judge had found the state GOP's previous scheme to restrict voting (by certain voters) in the very closely divided swing-state to have been written specifically to "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision."

But with all of that, the Iowa Caucuses are just weeks away now, followed by the New Hampshire primary and many others shortly thereafter. And while polls suggest there is no clear front-runner for the nomination, did we mention PPP's Williams is here to explain what the firm's data show to be an almost certain way to defeat Donald Trump once and for all this November, no matter who Dems choose as their nominee?...

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On today's BradCast, a whole lot of evidence as to why Desi Doyen calls us "your early warning system". [Audio link to show posted beneath summary below.]

Among the stories covered today...

• The deadly and dangerous fallout continues from Donald Trump's assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, with Democratic and Republican members of Congress from both the House and Senate, blasting the Administration for failing to provide evidence of an "imminent attack" which might have legally justified Trump's targeted killing of the second most powerful public official in Iran. Members who attended classified briefings by top Administration officials on Wednesday were outraged by the failure of those officials to provide the information they claimed they had regarding the killing. Without that information, Trump's targeted assassination of Iran's top military general was very possibly in violation of both domestic and international law. But are Democrats enraged enough to bring another article of impeachment over it?;

• Not all Congressional members were upset by the classified briefing. Some, like Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL), charged that members such as Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who claimed after the briefing that Trump "recklessly assassinated" Soleimani with "no evidence of an imminent threat or attack", was actually an "Ayatollah sympathizer" who was "divid[ing] our country" (Seriously. That's what he said. Rutherford's challengers this year are Donna Deegan and Christopher Eagle on the Democratic side, and 20-year Navy vet Dr. Erick Aguilar in the August Republican primary in the state.);

• In related matters, as we surmised based on available evidence during yesterday's BradCast, U.S. officials today are now confirming their belief that the Ukrainian Airlines passenger jet that crashed minutes after takeoff from the airport in Tehran on Wednesday was, in fact, shot down by an Iranian missile. The crash killed all 176 on board just hours after Iran's non-lethal ballistic missile revenge attack on Wednesday in response to Trump's killing of Soleimani last week. Officials in the U.S., Ukraine and Canada (which lost 63 residents in the tragic disaster) believe Iran might have mistaken the passenger flight for a military response from the U.S. that night. Along with the 56 killed during a stampede amidst the massive funeral processions for Soleimani, the death toll of Trump's action has been extraordinary. How any of this has made Americans safer is anybody's guess;

• In election news, a new, landmark study [PDF] was released this week by computer scientists, cybersecurity and voting systems experts at the University of Michigan. It finds that new, touchscreen computer Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) --- which we have long been warning about, and which are now proliferating the country in advance of the critical 2020 Presidential election --- are "extremely unsafe" and vulnerable to undetectable hacking.

  Most alarming (at least to those who haven't heard the same loud warnings from BradBlog.com and The BradCast for many years now) is that the researchers found that in a mock election, where they had rigged the new voting systems to misprint a voter selection on the computer-marked paper ballot printouts, more than 93% of voters failed to notice that their vote had been changed by the computer! 93%!

  And yet, these all-new, vulnerable, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems are now being deployed to battleground states like Pennsylvania and Georgia and North Carolina, and even to the nation's most populous voting jurisdiction, Los Angeles County, in advance of this year's elections! We explain the study's disturbing findings and what you can do to try and avoid having your vote lost to a touchscreen Ballot Marking Device in your home jurisdiction;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with some good news (coal plant shutdowns have save some 26,000 American lives!), scary news (new findings that Trump's EPA and FEMA are not prepared for disasters) and terrible news (the Trump Administration is announcing a new rule that would do away with most environmental impact studies before construction of major federal projects, such as roads, bridges and even oil pipelines!)...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump Administration weakens yet another landmark environmental law; Trump EPA and FEMA not ready to deal with disasters, according to new findings; Shutdown of coal plants has saved 26,000 American lives; PLUS: Disinformation campaign underway to deny role of climate change in Australian bushfires... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): In 2030, we ended the climate emergency. Here’s how; In Australia's burning forests, signs we've passed a global warming tipping point; It's not arson, you absolute f***ing morons; Trump's NEPA ambitions hinge on his reelection; U.S. billion-dollar weather disasters doubled in last decade;
US oil and gas industry's 5-Year Plan is a climate and health nightmare... PLUS: Earth posts second-hottest year on record to close out our warmest decade... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, while "all" is anything but "well", it may at least be a bit better than it was 24 hours ago at this time --- at least if the backing away from the likelihood of an apocalyptic military confrontation in the Middle East serves as any gauge. [Audio link to today's program is posted at end of summary.]

Shortly after air time on Tuesday, Iran launched a 22 ballistic missile fusillade at two Iraqi military bases housing thousands of U.S. troops in response to Donald Trump's assassination late last week of revered Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. And shortly after that, a Ukrainian Airliner made by Boeing fell from the sky and crashed after take off from Tehran's airport, killing everyone on board. While it's still early and unclear what exactly caused the disaster, some experts believe the plane could have been attacked either accidentally or on purpose. We discuss.

As to the Iranian attack on U.S. troops, thankfully there were no casualties, either American or Iraqi, as Iran announced there would be no more military reappraisals for Soleimani's killing, so long as America does not attack the nation again. What turned out to be a largely symbolic revenge attack for domestic consumption by Iran appears to have been an act of mercy to help deescalate a military confrontation touched off late last week by Trump that many feared had been spiraling out of control since the targeted drone strike against Soleimani.

After declaring "All is well!" on Twitter Tuesday evening, amidst the missile assault and deadly airliner crash, Trump offered mercifully brief remarks at the White House on Wednesday morning, flanked by the Vice President and top cabinet members and military officials, to suggest he was taking the off-ramp offered him by the grown-ups in Iran. In between several blatant lies told about the anti-nuclear pact struck with Iran and other leading nations during the Obama Administration and on other related matters, Trump promised new economic sanctions against Iran, but said the nation "appears to be standing down", that Iran and the US should "work together" against their mutual enemy of ISIS, and that the United States is ready to embrace peace."

Whether any of that turns out to be true, given a President of the United States who lies as easily as he breathes, is anyone's guess. But it may allow many of us to breathe a bit easier for the moment, at least until Trump's next unnecessary self-inflicted crisis.

We're joined today by former Deputy Asst. Secretary of State MICHAEL FUCHS, to try and help clear up much of the confusion and anxiety of the last 12 hours since Iran's attack and the six days since Trump's assassination of Soleimani. Among the questions discussed with Fuchs...

• Was Iran's missile attack, in fact, an "act of mercy"?;
• Should we take any comfort from Trump's response today?;
• Will there be additional responses from Iran (including cyberattacks) against the U.S.?;
• Why were there no grown-ups in either the State or Defense Departments to warn Trump off of his wildly ill-considered murder of Iran's second most powerful official?;
• What can and should be done to keep a President from being able to do something as irresponsible and dangerous like this in the future?;
• Haven't both Republicans and Democrats in Congress ceded far too much of their Constitutional war-making authority to Presidents of both parties in recent years?;
• What can Congress do to prevent this President and future ones from acting so dangerously?;
• While the deal with Iran to block their path to a nuclear weapon had been a success (Trump's demonstrable lies about it not withstanding), until he unilaterally pulled the U.S. from the deal, wouldn't Iran be within their rights, and indeed wise, to now pursue a nuclear weapon, given the behavior of the U.S.?;
• With Iranian and Iraqi leaders both demanding that U.S. troops leave the region, and Trump pretending for years that he wants the same, wouldn't this be a great time to find common ground and finally pull out of our many decades-long disastrous adventures in the Middle East once and for all?;
• Can U.S. diplomacy actually rise in the Trump Administration with his widly hawkish Sec. of State Mike Pompeo?;

Fuchs, a former senior State Department official turned Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Guardian columnist, gamely offers insightful answers to all of those questions and many others at the (hopeful) end of another series of exhausting, unnerving and confusing days during the horrific Trump Presidency.

"It is entirely possible that Iran might respond more to this most recent series of events. They might use cyberattacks, they might use their proxies throughout the region, which is a little bit hands-off, allows them a little bit of plausible deniability in their mind to attack US interests," Fuchs tells me. "But even if there is no immediate other response from Iran, we are still in this very dangerous and precarious moment where tensions between the two countries are incredibly high. And neither side seems, frankly, to have the ability nor the interest, at the moment at least, to finding a sustainable solution to these tensions. So for the moment, we want to hope for a very quick de-escalation, but the bigger problem is still very much there."

Finally, with the ability to breathe just a bit easier (at least for now) for the first time since the turn of the New Year, we turn to some quick coverage of some stories we've had to put off during Trump's latest world-threatening tantrum, beginning with the fact that two-thirds of Puerto Rico has been without power, and hundreds of thousands without clean water, since a major (and unusual) earthquake on Tuesday took out the U.S. island's largest power plant...

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On today's BradCast, the world remains on edge in the wake of Donald Trump's targeted assassination of Iran's top military general Qassem Soleimani. [Audio link to show is posted at bottom of summary.]

At least 56 mourners reportedly died during a stampede at funeral processions for the revered figured in Iran, were millions turned out to show their respects and to vow revenge against the U.S. Meanwhile, U.S. customs and border officials were reportedly detaining Iranian-American citizens for extended questioning as they re-entered the country; Trump's Secretaries of Defense and State each tried to walk back Trump's twice-threatened war crimes against Iran, should they dare to retaliate; And both Secretaries along with the White House continued to claim, without evidence, that an "imminent attack" that would have killed "hundreds" of Americans was prevented by the killing and served to justify the targeted drone strike against Soleimani and several Iraqi officials; Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell claimed to have the votes necessary to move Donald Trump's impeachment trial forward in the U.S. Senate (which Trump had clearly hoped to distract from with his attack on Iran) without allowing for either first-hand witnesses or subpoenaed White House documents to be presented as evidence; and the Foreign Minister of Iran described the assassination of Soleimani as "state terrorism" and President Trump as "lawless".

On that last point, and many related, we are joined today by KAREN J. GREENBERG, Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law and the author of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State. Professor Greenberg, an expert on national security, terrorism, and civil liberties, detailed in a New York Times op-ed today headlined "Killing Qassim Suleimani Was Illegal. And Predictable.," how American Presidents have been expanding their own executive authority for "targeted killings" and assassination since the post-Watergate Church Committee in the Senate called for reforms to ban such activity by the Executive Branch in 1975. President Gerald Ford, in 1976, issued an Executive Order to ban all political assassinations by the U.S.

Over the years since, however, as Greenberg documents, Presidents from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Barack Obama have each stretched the definitions of what amounts to an allowable "targeted killing" under certain restricted circumstances in order to prevent an "imminent attack". And while such killings eventually numbered in the hundreds under Obama (and included at least one U.S. citizen, albeit in a different country), Greenberg explains that no President, until Donald Trump, has broadened the definitions to include an out-and-out assassination of a state official, much less one as highly revered as Soleimani in Iran.

"President Obama attempted to expand the authority for targeted killing, excepting it from the category 'assassination', and giving many reasons --- including international law reasons --- for why this would be lawful. And tying it, however, to the War on Terror, which in a way, puts it in a different scenario than what we're now seeing. Because what we've seen this week is a successful attempt to attack a leading member of a sovereign state," Greenberg tells me. "It distinguishes in many ways from what the Obama Administration had done. But what the Obama Administration did was to open the window for that. They did it because they wanted to expand the targeted killing program of George [W.] Bush. Obama said it would cause less trouble, less reprisal on the ground, and therefore less violence against American troops. And they thought it would work in cases where they couldn't capture somebody who they thought was being tremendously detrimental to the United States."

The authority he and other Presidents granted to themselves, however, "essentially bypasses the idea of laws that restrain" and "comes down to 'trust me' government", in that the public must rely on classified evidence by the Intelligence Community --- and, hopefully, its review by members of Congress --- as legal justification for the actions. But Trump, she explains, while previously dismissing the assessments of the intelligence community as dishonest "Deep State" actors, is now citing what he claims to be their evidence and asking us to trust it.

The result of all of this is what Greenberg describes as "a lack of foresight to put in place policies, by any President or any administration that, should it get into the wrong hands, can prove truly dangerous. We've now crossed that threshold." She goes on to note that "The basic bottom line is this is not something that the United States has supported or allowed since the Church Committee" in 1975.

We discuss how Ford's Executive Order, the War Powers Act of 1973 (meant to constrain Presidents from acts of war without approval by Congress), and the Authorizations for Use of Military Force adopted by Congress after 9/11 and again before our invasion of Iraq, have all now been stretched to the point of near meaningless. At the same time, the U.S. has also pushed the boundaries of Geneva Convention restrictions against war crimes to fit its defensive/aggressive needs of the moment, with as little enforcement by international agencies as Congress has brought against U.S. Presidents from both major parties at home for violations of domestic laws and Constitutional mandates.

There is quite a bit in this conversation that can't adequately be summarized here, so I hope you'll tune in for much more.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our first Green News Report of the new year, which, sadly, picks up with the continuing, record, devastating Australian wildfires which also led our last GNR of the year in 2019, some two and a half weeks ago...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Australia grapples with unprecedented wildfires in a taste of its climate future; Climate-change intensified deluges flood Jakarta; PLUS: Buckle up - Trump's escalation of tensions with Iran is spiking global oil prices... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Australia's climate change prophecy is coming true and it's going to cost the nation billions; Shutdown of US coal power facilities saved over 26,000 lives, study finds; U.S. greenhouse gas emissions dip, but Trump politics put future cuts in doubt; FEMA threat report ignores climate change, sea-level rise; Backlog of toxic Superfund cleanups grows under Trump; Duke Energy agrees to remove coal ash pits in North Carolina... PLUS: Where is the Green New Deal headed in 2020?... and much, MUCH more! ...

We're back on today's BradCast after a much needed holiday break! (Thanks to the great Nicole Sandler for helping us to sneak in some down time!) Sadly, things are much worse --- and more dangerous --- now than they were before the end of the new year, thanks to Donald Trump's targeted assassination of Iran's Major General Qassem Soleimani, placing the U.S. --- and the world --- on the brink of yet another potential war. [Audio link to complete show is posted below.]

The Germans were right last year. Donald Trump is the greatest threat to world peace. Far greater than Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, or Iran's Ayatollah. By far.

The bulk of today's program is devoted to developments and fall-out since Trump's ill-considered attack on Soleimani late last week --- including the tens of millions of Iranians who Trump helped unify to turn out for Soleimani's funeral processions; Trump's threat of war crimes against Iran should they dare to retaliate against what is likely already a war crime; Iran's declaration that the 2015 anti-nuclear agreement which Trump pulled the U.S. out of is now all but dead; Iraq's Parliamentary resolution to throw all U.S. forces out of the country, and Trump threat of sanctions against them if they do; Trump's 2011 (and 2012 and 2013) false predictions that Obama would start a war on Iran to win reelection "because of his inability to negotiate properly"; and calls from listeners on all of the above.

Of course, the real reason Trump decided to kill Soleimani is almost certainly to distract from his end of year impeachment and upcoming trial in the U.S. Senate. On that front, we covered former National Security Advisor John Bolton's announcement today that he would testify as a witness in the trial, if subpoenaed by the Senate (which Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans are still blocking, along with all first-hand eye witnesses requested by Democrats).

And also, a few heads-ups regarding voter registration in California (and elsewhere) in advance of March 3rd's Super Tuesday Presidential primaries. If you live in California, and are registered as a "No Party Preference" voter, you will either have to request a Democratic, Libertarian or American Independent Presidential ballot, or register yourself as a Republican, Green Party or Peace and Freedom Party member if you wish to vote in one of their primaries. Otherwise, in California, if you are a permanent Vote-by-Mail voter, you will receive a ballot in the mail without any Presidential options. Tune in to today's show for more details on that and what you need to do about it....very soon! (At least if you wish to avoid voting on 100% unverifiable touchscreens here in Los Angeles County and elsewhere on Primary Election Day!)

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It's NICOLE SANDLER in one more time for Brad and Desi on today's BradCast, where I grappled with the news that Donald Trump is pulling out all the stops to take our attention off of impeachment and the unredacted documents that were released earlier this week that show he was the person directly responsible for holding back aid to Ukraine.

By pulling out all the stops I mean provoking Iran by assassinating that country's most revered military leader, General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Quds Force. This madman is pushing our nation toward war with Iran.

I reached out for an expert on the matter, and spoke with STEVEN SIMON of the Quincy Institute, a new foreign policy think-tank that focuses on peace and diplomacy. But when I asked him about the attitudes of regular Iranian citizens towards America, he said he couldn't really say, as we have no diplomatic channels open with Iran.

So, I decided to reach out directly. I've done this before during times of turmoil. I call hotels in other parts of the world. I choose hotels because it's more likely the person who answers the phone speaks English. I went on a human to human peace crusade to tell an Iranian citizen we don't want war. The result was very interesting.

Brad and Desi will be back for in time for the next BradCast. Thanks for hanging with me over the holidays. What a way to start the new year, huh?...

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It's NICOLE SANDLER, back again to guest host today's BradCast. It's not only a new year, but a brand new decade. So we decided to get a bit ethereal and start the year by looking at a unique way to deal with the insanity in our world, and to look back at how the hippies coped in the 60s and early 70s.

My first guest is JUDE MORFORD, founder of WomenStanding. She contacted me a few months ago to tell me about her treks to various border sites where children are held in cages by our government after being separated from their parents...by our government. She stands in silent vigils. And it works for her.

Also today: A visit with STEWART L. ROGERS, author and editor of the new book, What Happened to the Hippies: Voices and Perspectives, in which 54 people who lived through the Age of Aquarius shared their memories of how peace and love resonated during the Vietnam War and Watergate eras...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

While surfing the web I came upon an article posted on Christmas Eve by Jason Hopkins, of the rightwing outlet called "The National Interest." It cites a "study" by another rightwing outlet, the Center for Immigration Studies, as cause for alarm.

The article and the cited study falsely claim that the counting of illegal immigrants in the 2020 Census will result in a loss of 24 Congressional seats in states that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 --- Ohio (3), Pennsylvania (2), Michigan (2), and one each in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The only blue states to lose Congressional seats, according to the outlet's characterization of the "study", would be Minnesota (1) and Rhode Island (1).

The article also falsely claims that 19 Congressional seats would be gained by states that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 --- California (11), New York (4), New Jersey (2), Massachusetts (1), and Illinois (1). The only other states to gain Congressional seats, they report, would be the "red" state of Texas (4), and the swing state of Florida (3).

While conceding that non-citizens cannot vote, the article warns that counting them in the 2020 census will result in more Congressional seats for high-immigration districts, thus reducing political power in districts where almost everyone is an American citizen.

Predictably, almost all the more than 2,000 public comments in the version of the article republished by Yahoo News (the original version at National Interest does not allow public comments) allege that Democrats favor open borders and allowing illegal immigrants to vote. Almost nobody noticed that there is no basis for the statistical claims made by the Center for Immigration Studies...