On today's BradCast, I'm in for Brad and Desi again.

I review the news of the day, including Stanford University's changes in sexual assault procedures, George Takei's plea to Donald Trump to take nuclear weapons seriously, flying accusations of false news, and a new book contract for Milo Yiannopoulos.

Then RJ Eskow joins me to talk Russia and Israel --- including why he uses the word "alleged" when referring to Russian email hacks. Finally, Susie Madrak on a story falling between the cracks: the GOP effort to undercut Medicaid.

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On today's BradCast, yours truly, Angie Coiro, picks up the reins from Nicole Sandler, in our joint effort to keep Brad and Desi on vacation.

First up: a look at the Professor Watchlist and one of its targets: a Costa Mesa college professor afraid to leave her home. Then an Atlantic story on the economic revival of Elkhart Indiana, where even a vast upswing in manufacturing and employment leaves residents still in denial that Barack Obama has been good for the economy.

Author Meg Elison joins me to discuss her trek through the US class system and its mythology, and her novel The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, with its dystopian world of male dominance and destroyed class distinctions.

Finally, a contrast: how Carrie Fisher's openness about her bipolar diagnosis helped America, while Donald Trump's almost certain Narcissistic Personality Disorder might doom it.

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On today's BradCast: Enough playing defense. It's time for Democrats to go on the offense, in states all across the country, to expand the franchise, in numerous ways, rather than simply defending against increasing Republican efforts to restrict voting rights. And where they won't, it's time for progressives to hold them accountable for it. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Today I'm joined by Daniel Nichanian, election expert and post-doctoral fellow in political science at the University of Chicago to discuss his "Voting Rights Manifesto: A State-by-State Plan to Defend Democracy", as recently published in Vox.com's "Big Ideas" series.

Nichanian explains where and how Democrats can and must take action, right now, even during the Trump years, to expand voting rights and access to the polls. Yes, it can (and must) be done in states across the country where Democrats still have control of legislatures and governorships. In many cases, as he describes, Dems don't even need to control both.

No need to wait for and hope that Congressional Republicans to restore the Voting Rights Act, which they probably will never actually do. There are many ways for Democrats to expand voter registration (such as automatic universal registration and other reforms), expand the pool of those eligible to vote (restoring millions of felons' voting rights, for example), ways to make it easier to vote (early voting and easier access to absentee voting), and many other tools to take a proactive stand in the new year.

"The Democratic Party has not been at the forefront of the voting rights issue in the past two years," Nichanian observes. "The issue has really come to a head since the wave of Republican takeovers of state houses in 2010 and 2014, when the Republican Party really prioritized, in state after state, putting in place a very ambitious and consistent agenda of its own to curtail voting rights. The extent to which the Republican Party has prioritized this issue, it keeps taking Democrats by surprise." But, he explains, "when the Democratic Party has power, in many places, they really don't get their act together to think about what has to be done on this issue, and actually get it done."

We discuss how Democrats can do so. We also try and hold them accountable for not having done so to date in so many places where they should have by now --- even in places like New York and California. I'm hoping the conversation, and Nichanian's piece at Vox, might give us all something positive to work for in the new year, even at the same time as progressives build the resistance against the destructive, anti-democratic agenda of Donald Trump and the GOP.

Also on today's show: Fox "News" wingnuts continue their climate change hoax; Democrats in North Carolina end up playing Charlie Brown to the state Republicans' Lucy --- again. And, finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our year-end Green News Report as Obama, on his way out the door, bans off-shore oil drilling in large parts of the Atlantic and the Arctic, and not a moment too soon. The Arctic has turned freakishly warm over the past two months of what is likely to be the warmest year ever recorded on the planet (for the third year in a row). She also has some good news as the year wraps up, however: A new poll finds that Trump's voters actually support regulations on the burning of carbon that causes global warming and, something that even Trump can't change, solar power is now the world's cheapest form of energy. Take that, Big Oil, Big Coal and 2016!...

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On today's BradCast, it's not much discussed by the media, but the cost of killing "ObamaCare" is more than simply a political one for millions of Americans. And the brazen GOP coup in North Carolina's state government is not only a fait accompli, but likely a model for Republican controlled states everywhere. [Audio link to show posted below.]

There's a lot of talk of late about the politics of "repealing and replacing" the Affordable Care Act by the incoming Republican Administration and GOP majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate. But there's not as much discussion in the media about the very real costs --- to actual human beings --- of repealing the measure, or of those who will be devastated by its loss, both medically and financially. All of this comes with more than 20 million more Americans now enjoying access to healthcare thanks to the ACA, and, just last week, the largest single day of sign-ups ever for the federal program.

But Republicans may no longer fear any political ramifications for anything with their gerrymandered stronghold of Congress and control of the nation's public airwaves.

That argument seems to be bearing itself out in North Carolina right now, where the GOP state legislature --- which already enjoys a super-majority in both chambers of the state assembly --- has successfully carried out a brazen power grab to strip power from the Executive Branch now that a Democrat has narrowly won election as Governor.

In NC and in Wisconsin alike, Republicans have recently been found by federal courts to have unconstitutionally gerrymandered state election districts. And, in both states, the GOP has passed wildly radical laws that hurt Democrats and progressive, no matter how unpopular (or unconstitutional) those laws may be or the ensuing uprisings at both state capitols. Both states are likely to be a model for GOP legislators in the rest of the country.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for some late-breaking news concerning new Obama Administration restrictions on off-shore drilling and for our latest Green News Report, with new attempts to keep drinking water safe from coal and lead, and to keep science safe from Donald Trump...

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On today's BradCast, Republicans are flexing their muscles and demonstrating their willingness to break all norms --- and even laws and the Constitution when necessary --- in order to take power and hold onto it at all costs, while Democrats continue to be caught flat-footed. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

An unprecedented attempted power grab is now underway at the capitol in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Republican lawmakers, stinging from having lost the Governorship and their majority on the state's Supreme Court last month, have suddenly convened an emergency "special session" to strip power from the incoming Democratic Governor.

The naked lame duck coup attempt by the GOP --- which already enjoys a super majority in both chambers of the statehouse --- would take away Executive Branch powers previously granted to the outgoing Republican Governor. If successful, the "sore loser power grab" as some are calling it, strips the incoming Democrat of control of state and county boards of election(!), limits his ability to make appointments, shifts power from the newly Democratic-majority high court back down to the Republican-controlled state court of appeals, and keeps Republican state employees in place across many state agencies.

All of those attempts to effectively undo the will of millions of voters also comes on the heels of a federal court order for new special elections for the state legislature in 2017, after finding that Republicans had unconstitutionally gerrymandered 28 statehouse districts following the 2010 census. (And that, not long after a federal court found Wisconsin Republicans had also done so.)

With a similarly unprecedented coup at the federal level --- for example, a stolen U.S. Supreme Court majority --- Republicans in a number of other states are also quickly working to pass newly restrictive laws to make it harder for Democrats to even take part in elections around the nation.

It's difficult to win a war when you're fighting against a dishonest opponent who has no interest in playing fairly. The questions then remain: When will Democrats figure that out? What do they intend to do about it? And who, if anyone, will emerge to lead the way in the current Democratic power vacuum more than a month since Election Day?

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with details on Trump's disturbing new appointments at federal agencies, the EPA's admission that fracking can harm drinking water supplies, and the Arctic unraveling before our eyes...

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On today's BradCast, state and federal court rulings, shameful 'recount' laws and other outrageous obstacles preventing citizen oversight of Presidential election results in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and elsewhere. And, as if that's all not disturbing enough, wait until you hear who Trump is reportedly tapping to head up the Environmental Protection Agency! [Audio link posted below]

Our "Recount" 2016 coverage continues today, on the heels of "dueling" federal and state court rulings on Tuesday night in Green Party candidate Jill Stein's fight to continue hand-counts in Michigan, hundreds of precincts across the state (including tens of thousands of ballots) are being declared "unrecountable" by state officials --- for often absurd reasons. We explain those rulings as we await what is likely to be a federal court order ending all counting in the state by tomorrow, despite Trump's razor thin 10,000 vote statewide margin of just one-tenth of one-percent over Hillary Clinton.

Another court ruling comes down today against Stein's suit for a forensic analyses of 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems used in Philadelphia, prompting plans to seek same in state court. And the counting (and computer re-scanning) continues in Wisconsin, despite efforts by Team Trump to stop counting and oversight immediately in all three states.

We're joined today by author, former attorney and longtime election integrity advocate Paul Lehto to discuss all of the above and much more, including how failed tabulation systems, woeful election law, and extraordinary legal challenges in at least six courts in three states to block all oversight is little more than an invitation for future fraud.

On MI's "outrageous" law resulting in hundreds of "unrecountable" precincts in Detroit alone, Lehto charges: "All you need to do is add an extra ballot without adjusting the poll books, which makes it easier to do fraud or easier create an error. And that error or fraud is insulated from ever affecting the results. If somebody did want to do fraud, it's like a dream for them."

"But here's the thing: it doesn't really matter, from the perspective of democracy, whether it's an error or whether it's a fraud. Because we're only interested in the true vote count," he tells me. "But in this case, Michigan law itself is protecting and creating 'safe harbor' for both errors and fraud."

"Don't count on anything happening after Election Night," Lehto has long warned. "Why? Number one: everybody wants to avoid embarrassment. Nobody wants to be the next Florida. So everybody in the state government and the elections bureau is working really, really hard not to be embarrassed, and that's a non-partisan interest that really goes against transparency. The other thing is that 100 percent of all election law is made by election winners, who absolutely do not want their victories to be questioned. So that's another factor why you can never really count on getting good election laws for post-election remedies, because everybody that's voting on it is a winner and they don't want losers --- or what they would call 'sore losers' --- questioning their great victory. So basically that leaves democracy defenseless."

As he describes the evolution of the Election Integrity movement over the past decade, Lehto concludes our system amounts to "basically: certify first, ask questions later." He says post-election audits or "recounts" are ultimately "not sufficient, no matter who you are. The only option is to get it right on election night."

Also on today's show, in case you still don't believe elections and democracy matter: Trump will reportedly nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt --- a climate change denier, opponent of environmental regulations, and long-time fossil-fuel industry tool --- to head up the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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On today's BradCast, the latest breaking news on how broken optical-scan tabulation computers may have undermined the ability to count tens of thousands of ballots in Michigan --- specifically in or near Detroit --- and much more "recount" 2016 related news, even from Vermont! [Audio link to show is posted below.]

With a reported margin of just over 10,000 votes for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in MI --- out of some 5 million votes tallied in the state --- the ability to hand-count tens of thousands of votes in Green Party candidate Jill Stein's federal court-ordered [PDF] "recount" may be at risk of "chaos" under state law, thanks to the failure of computerized paper-ballot optical-scanners which may have mistallied ballots in some fashion on Election Day.

Hopefully, hand-counts can reconcile mismatches between poll book signatures and computer printouts from "610 of 1,680" precincts in Wayne County, which includes heavily Democratic-leaning Detroit, where "392 of 662" or 59% of precincts may now be uncountable. That's a major concern, obviously, not just due to the state's razor thin margin, but also, as Stein points out today, since some 75,000 ballots --- until now, completely unexamined by human beings --- were reported by the computers to have no vote at all for President. That's a 70% increase from 2012 in the number of ballots reported to have Presidential undervotes, a number that is more than seven-fold the margin of votes that could flip the state from Trump to Clinton.

All of that as Team Trump ups their efforts in both state and federal court to stop the counting in MI entirely and as Stein pushes back in both court cases, including a move to force the recusal of two state Supreme Court judges named by Trump as potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees.

Also, while a recent change to state law by Republicans in WI has resulted in many of the largest counties simply running paper ballots through the same computer scanners that tallied them (either correctly or incorrectly, who knows?) the first time in that state's "recount", it's not just Republicans who prefer unverified computer tallies over hand-counts. In Vermont, the will of the voters may never been known in two exceedingly close state legislative races, thanks to a 2014 state law supported Democrats, requiring that computers, not people, tally ballots during ongoing "recounts" there. Two incumbent Democratic lawmakers who supported the new law may now be undone by it, as one is set to lose a "recounted" race by just six votes, and the other is facing a tie, depending on whether two questionably marked paper ballots were tallied by the scanner or not. (I wonder how they could figure out if they were?)

All of that may be good news to the Washington Post, however, which published an op-ed yesterday explaining why the authors believe, in contravention of computer scientists and voting systems experts, that "computers are better than humans at counting ballots." Of course, to know that for certain, the authors suggest...um...counting ballots by hand.

Also on today's BradCast: Al Gore meets with Donald Trump to discuss Climate Change and Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on the weekend's victory for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, on Trump reportedly eying Native American lands for energy development and Exxon Mobile's CEO for Sec. of State, and a bit of good renewable energy news out of Texas (of all places)...

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On today's BradCast, Team Trump takes a page from the George W. Bush 2000 playbook by attempting to stop the "recounts" in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, just as his margin over Hillary Clinton plummets in PA. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Over the past 24 hours, Donald Trump or his surrogates have filed multiple legal complaints in three different states in an effort to stop the "recounts" (hand-counts, machine counts and/or forensic analyses of computerized voting and tabulation systems) as lawfully sought by Green Party Presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein. As the Stein camp noted today, the sudden interest by Team Trump comes as Trump's margin over Hillary Clinton has dropped from about almost 70,000 votes to about 46,000 votes (out of some 6 million tallied) as PA counties finally complete their initial tallies. The Stein camp notes today: "With his margin of victory in the state nearly halved as of last night, and now within 0.2% of triggering an automatic statewide recount, Donald Trump is desperately fighting to stop the recount in Pennsylvania." His attorneys filed a suit [PDF] late Thursday to dismiss her filings in the Keystone State.

He is also attempting, somewhat successfully, to stop hand-counting from moving forward in MI, where he reportedly leads Clinton by just over 10,000 votes out of about 5 million tallied, including more than 75,000 ballots with no vote reported for President at all, many of those cast in or near Detroit. That figure, Stein charges, "is double the number [of undervotes] from 2012." After Trump filed an objection to the "recount" request in MI last night --- claiming that a count would "risk having the Electoral College door knocked off its hinges" and delaying the start of counting for as many as five days --- the state Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Trump supporter, filed a separate complaint [PDF] today on behalf of the state in federal court, seeking to prevent votes from being counted as well. His claim supports Trump's objection filed yesterday and argues that counting ballots is "frivilous" and is meant by Stein to delay final certification of the results. She describes his action as "nothing more than party politics that needlessly delays what should be a routine verification of the democratic process."

In Wisconsin, pro-Trump outfits calling themselves the Great America PAC and the Stop Hillary PAC filed a complaint [PDF] in federal court to immediately stop the counting of ballots, which is now in its second day in the Badger State. That complaint, citing Bush v. Gore from 2000, argues that counting ballots violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the U.S. Constitution and "may cast an unjustified pall over the election of President-Elect Trump, undermining public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process." Sounds familiar, ironic and, yes, hypocritical.

Just before airtime today, a federal Judge in Wisconsin denied the plaintiffs' motion in that case seeking an immediate restraining order to halt the ongoing counts, but has set a hearing on the matter for December 9th. For her part, Stein, pushing back, has announced a press conference for Monday, December 3, across from Trump Tower in Manhattan.

So, why are Trump and the GOP against verifying election results? We discuss that, the ongoing and not-ironic-at-all fight of the GOP Governor in North Carolina to verify his own election results(!) and much more, including Desi Doyen and her latest Green News Report, on today's BradCast!...

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On today's BradCast, the attempt at verifiable citizen oversight of election results from the 2016 Presidential race gets underway in Wisconsin, and gets stopped dead in its tracks by a Trump legal filing in Michigan. All of that, even as more actual Republican voter fraud (yes, real voter fraud) is revealed by media and rewarded by Donald Trump. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

The state of Wisconsin officially began its *"recount" of some 3 million ballots cast in the 2016 Presidential election today, in the state where Trump reportedly defeated Hillary Clinton by just over 22,000 votes. Unfortunately, several of the largest jurisdictions have decided to simply re-tally their hand-marked paper ballots by the same optical-scan computers which tallied them (either correctly or incorrectly) in the first place. That, despite a host of computer science, security and voting systems experts who continue to argue as loudly as they can (including in recently filed court documents), the only way to know for certain how voters voted is to hand-count those ballots.

Meanwhile, in Michigan late today, where Trump reportedly won by just over 10,000 votes out of nearly 5 million counted, the Trump Campaign filed an objection to Green Party candidate Jill Stein's request for a "recount" there. That legal maneuver will successfully delay the start of counting, which had been scheduled to begin on Friday in the state, until sometime next week. That's a disturbing development, given that all states are federally mandated to have final certified numbers completed by December 13th. It's an echo of the successful GOP efforts to stall and then block entirely, the statewide Florida "recount" in 2000. In a statement in response late today, Stein describes the Trump filing this way: "The Trump campaign's cynical efforts to delay the recount and create unnecessary costs for taxpayers are shameful and outrageous."

At the same time, Trump's brain-addled supporters are buying his lie about "millions" having "voted illegally" in the 2016 election. They have fallen for it thanks, in no small part, to so many years of irresponsible reporting on the matter by corporate media over our publicly-owned airwaves. And yet, so far, the only "illegal" votes that have been found in the 2016 election (four cases in total) were all documented to have been cast by Republicans.

Nonetheless, as we have reported on very high profile Republicans like Ann Coulter and Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich and many others committing actual voter fraud and voter registration fraud over the years, Trump has now hired a voter fraud felon (see this from 2006) for a top White House national security advisory role. All of that American madness and much more on today's BradCast...

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* NOTE: The BRAD BLOG generally uses quotes around the word "recount" to denote post-election hand-counts of ballots which have never actually been counted by human beings, but rather, only tabulated by computers during the official tally. It's impossible to know whether those computers actually tallied votes accurately unless paper ballots are examined by hand.

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On today's BradCast: The newly insane cost for a "recount" in Wisconsin and the even more jaw-droppingly insane voting system and "recount" laws in Pennsylvania. [Audio link to today's show is posted below.]

Barriers against citizen oversight of 2016 Presidential election results continue, even as the campaign of the Green Party's Jill Stein works with tens of thousands of citizens to try and overcome them in three different states where she is seeking "recounts". (For the record, if you're wondering, The BRAD BLOG generally uses quotes around the word "recount" to denote post-election hand-counts of ballots which have never actually been counted by human beings, but rather, only tabulated by computers during the official tally. It's impossible to know whether those computers actually tallied votes accurately unless paper ballots are examined by hand.)

The WI Election Commission informed the Stein campaign (and independent candidate Rocky De La Fuente, who has also filed for a "recount" there) yesterday that she will have to pay $3.5 million to even begin counting paper ballots in the state. I've confirmed with her campaign that she intends to do so, even after state election officials had originally estimated the fees to be $1 million for a statewide recount. That, even as state law has recently changed to allow counties to use computers to "recount" ballots, rather than public hand-counts. As we've long reported, similar barriers are often erected to block citizen oversight of elections, begging the question again: What good are hand-marked paper ballots if nobody is actually allowed to count them?

But the situation is far worse in Pennsylvania, where voters in most of the state are forced to vote on 100% unverifiable touch-screen systems and the state's arcane "recount" statutes require tens of thousands of voters to file affidavits (3 in each precinct) asking for such counts.

Longtime election integrity champion and VotePA.us founder Marybeth Kuznik joins us with details on what is now going on in the Keystone state towards that end, and to help explain the insanity of the state's unverifiable voting systems and the near-incomprehensibility of its "recount" laws.

"Pennsylvania election law is so convoluted," she tells me, while explaining the requirements for three voters in each of the state's 9,163 precincts (that's 27,489 voters!) to file a complaint in order to have a statewide voter-initiated count. She also explains the second route towards such a count, which requires 100 voters to file in the Commonwealth Court.

In either case, since much of the state uses unverifiable touch-screens, there is often nothing at all to count, even if a count is allowed! "They'll print out the Election Night tapes. They'll bring out some sort of a printout from the central tabulator. Usually they just bring out results. They look at the precinct tape, they look at the precinct printout, they go 'Hmm, that looks the same to me!', and everything's good. That's the recount!," Kuznik explains. "The thing is, of course it's going to be 'good'. The same software that counted on Election Night and printed out that tape is what's counting and printing out this result paper that they compare. It's nuts. It's just crazy."

As you'll hear, it's even worse than I've described it here. But, that's how it still works (or doesn't) in PA, after all of these years, and even in light of a forensic analysis by computer scientists of just one PA county voting system in 2011, after vote-flips were reported and candidates received zero votes in several elections in heavily-Republican Venango County. (See our exclusive special report and documents here.) That landmark study found, among other disturbing things, as we reported at the time: "unexplained, out-of-sequence activity log entries in the computer tabulation system, indications that the system was mounted several times with a 'USB flash drive' device, and, perhaps most troubling, evidence that the system was repeatedly accessed by an unidentified remote computer, for lengthy periods of time, on 'multiple occasions.'"

Those same systems --- and even worse ones --- are still used today across the state in 2016, as the fate of the world relies on them. Yes, as we've been warning you for more than a decade: "It's just crazy."

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On today's BradCast, my exclusive interview with Dr. Jill Stein, the 2016 Green Party Presidential candidate, on her announcement earlier today that her campaign plans to file for hand-counted paper ballot "recounts" and forensic audits of the Presidential election results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. [Audio link to show and full interview posted below.]

"We have to move really fast in order to basically verify the vote and be confident our votes were actually counted," she tells me, citing the many concerns brought to her by computer scientists and voting systems and election integrity experts, all questioning whether paper ballots were counted accurately by error-prone and easily-hacked computer tabulators in WI and MI, and whether touch-screen systems were manipulated in some fashion in PA.

Across those three states alone, as we have been reporting, just 50,000 votes flipped from Trump to Clinton --- out of more than 13 million ballots cast in those states, where a number of anomalous results have been found --- could change who becomes the next President of the United States.

There is plenty of reason to question whether the results as reported are accurate. And not only because of the surprising results. As I note again on today's show, University of Michigan computer science and voting systems expert J. Alex Halderman, one of those urging the candidates to call for a hand-count, has cracked many electronic voting systems in recent years. He offered still more reasons to examine both the reported results and the systems used in WI, MI and PA earlier today.

Stein, explaining that some $2 million must be raised to meet the deadline to file in WI by Friday (and another $4 million or so for the other two states next week), tells me that it's an "outrage we have to go to extraordinary lengths to verify the vote," adding she is doing so, due to her "interests as a citizen, as a person in America, that the vote be valid." (The campaign has set up a fund raising page for the effort right here.)

"Why would anyone in their right mind not want to have a secured and verified vote?," she asks. "It’s long been demonstrated that our system of voting, relying on these machines, has virtually no security. They’re hack-friendly [and] tamper-friendly."

"People have felt such anguish during this election," Stein notes. "This is a joint effort, and there are many election advocates who are involved. A lot of the grassroots election integrity experts. If ever there was a time to stand up and demand an accountable and secure vote, this is the time to do it. If we don't do it now, when exactly, what would be the cause to do it?" She also details the attempt by the scientists and advocates to encourage the Clinton campaign to take up the effort as well. (I can confirm that effort happened and that the campaign was still considering doing so as of earlier today.) She says she welcomes other campaigns, such as the Libertarian Party and independent candidates with standing, to join the effort as well.

"It feels really good to be standing up right now," she tells me. "It’s time for us to take control of our democracy to start with. To give ourselves a gift on this Thanksgiving." We discuss all of that and the many concerns about the reported results, take a few calls afterward, and actually find a bit more to be thankful for on today's harrowing program --- including, believe it or not, today's Green News Report with Desi Doyen!...

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On today's BradCast, Donald Trump is well on his way to becoming the most corrupt U.S. President in history. And he's not even in office yet. For that matter, he's not even the officially winner of the election yet, as ballots are still be tallied and we're keeping an eye on three key battleground states (Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania) where less than 50,000 votes total (out of more than 13 million cast) remain the difference between a President Trump or a President Clinton. We continue to call for full hand-counts in those states and others to determine who actually won them. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

Then, after Trump agreed to pay $25 million in a massive fraud settlement concerning his 'Trump University' scam late last week, the U.S. corporate media became immediately distracted by a his tweets about Mike Pence being booed at a Broadway play over the weekend.

We discuss today how the media --- and GOP politicians --- would have reacted differently if it was Hillary Clinton who had agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle multiple fraud cases after the election. At the same time, word comes in from the foreign press that Trump has been cashing in since the election, on business deals in India, the Philippines and Argentina, while unconstitutionally receiving payoffs from foreign diplomats via his new Washington D.C. hotel.

So, what explains, if anything, the U.S. media's deferential treatment of Trump? Author Eric Boehlert of Media Matters joins us to discuss the extraordinary disparities between how the media cover Republicans versus Democrats and how they utterly failed the nation in the lead-up to the election.

Also today: Police unleash water cannons and tear gas in North Dakota overnight, against Native American protesters gathered to try and stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and climate scientists are freaking out (for very good reason) as the Arctic is now an "insane 36 degrees" warmer than usual for this time of year and as global sea ice area is now way lower than it has ever been in recorded history. It is, in fact, off the charts from even previous record low years.

This is all very not good...

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On today's BradCast: Did the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and new restrictions on voting in more than a dozen GOP-controlled states give the election to Donald Trump --- who is now staffing up his new administration with a swamp full of corporate lobbyists? [Audio link to show posted below.]

"Drain the swamp" of lobbyists and insiders in Washington D.C.? Who did Trump think he was kidding with that oft-repeated line during his campaign? Apparently, he was kidding a lot of folks, including both his supporters who fell for it and the corporate mainstream media which helped facilitate it. With the transition now underway, it is being led by dozens (hundreds?) of corporate lobbyists and former politicians, all staffing up federal agencies that will pretend to oversee their clients from the very same industries --- banking, communications, the environment, defense --- that they are supposed to be regulating. Sadly, many in the corporate media, like the New York Times' Richard Fausset, continue to fail in educating the electorate about Trump's big con. It's gonna be a rough bunch of years.

In the meantime, are the reported election results trustworthy? A few words on whether we can (or should) "trust" the results as reported by electronic voting tabulation systems (which, once again, fail to match reported pre-election or Exit Polling results), before a look at whether new restrictions on voting in more than a dozen GOP-controlled states after SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act, may have affected the results.

Journalist Ari Berman of The Nation, author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, has been relentlessly and heroically covering this beat for years now, while most of the corporate media have regarded voting rights as a fringe issue. He joins me today to discuss what we know so far --- and what we don't --- about why the turnout was reportedly the lowest since the 2000 election, and if suppression may have flipped any states from Hillary Clinton to Trump.

For example, as Berman reported this week: "27,000 votes currently separate Trump and Clinton in Wisconsin, where 300,000 registered voters, according to a federal court, lacked strict forms of voter ID" as now required by state Republicans to vote there at all. "Voter turnout in Wisconsin was at its lowest levels in 20 years and decreased 13 percent in Milwaukee, where 70 percent of the state’s African-American population lives."

"I talked to a lot of voters who jumped through lots of different hoops to be able to vote, or didn't vote at all because they didn't have the right documentation or they couldn't get the right documentation, or they got so frustrated with the entire process," he tells me. "How many people didn't show up because they didn't want to deal with it? How many people thought they wouldn't be able to vote?"

"The head of elections in Milwaukee said he believed voter ID had an impact, that the parts of the city where voter ID was going to have the biggest impact, that turnout there declined there the most," he says. "The fact that we made it harder for people to vote, for no good reason, to me, is a scandal." And all of that is before we even get to states like Florida in our discussion, where, Berman reminds us, the state recently "blocked 1 in 5 African-Americans from voting by taking away the right to vote for ex-offenders."

"Isn't the right to vote the most fundamental aspect of a democracy? And if you're not disturbed by people being turned away from the polls, there's something wrong with how you're approaching this," he says, before we turn to the media's role in ignoring this issue, which he describes as "an unbelievably huge failing, particularly by cable and broadcast news."

There is much more in today's conversation with Ari than I can adequately summarize here, so please give today's show a listen.

Finally, a few closing thoughts, for now --- from The Daily Show, from Stephen Colbert, and finally from me --- on what the horrific and painful news of this week means to the nation and the world and how we will need to survive (and resist) together...

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Donald Trump has now been declared President-Elect of the United States. The unthinkable has happened. Except that we've been thinking it --- and warning about it --- virtually day in and day out on The BradCast since the moment he descended that escalator to call Mexicans rapists and declare his candidacy in June of 2015.

On today's show [audio link posted below] we look briefly at how voter suppression may have affected the reported results that even the RNC didn't see coming. "For example", as Ari Berman points out, "27,000 votes currently separate Trump and Clinton in Wisconsin, where 300,000 registered voters, according to a federal court, lacked strict forms of voter ID" as now required by state Republicans to vote there at all. "Voter turnout in Wisconsin was at its lowest levels in 20 years and decreased 13 percent in Milwaukee, where 70 percent of the state’s African-American population lives," he adds. Oh, and there is the also the non-transparent voting machines and tabulators that may have effected the stunning reported results --- as we have also been warning for years.

Then, we open the phone lines to a lot of callers on this very grim day, to ask who and what they blame or credit for what happened on Tuesday. Was it racism? Sexism? Xenophobia? Third-Party voters or candidates? The Constitution and its electoral college scheme? Citizens who didn't bother to vote at all? FBI Director James Comey? Wikileaks? The corporate media? The independent media? The pollsters? The voter suppression? The voting machines? The candidate (Hillary Clinton)? The Democratic Party for putting its thumb on the scale against Bernie Sanders? The Republican Party for not doing more to keep its party from becoming the party of Donald Trump? Something else I haven't thought of?

Listeners ring in with many thoughts on all of the above, as we all go through this national nightmare together...

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On today's BradCast: Documenting trouble for voters at polling places from coast to coast today on Election 2016 (Yes, it's finally arrived!) as Americans struggle to take part in their own democracy. [Audio link to today's program is posted below.]

Among the breaking news stories covered on today's program...

• After Hillary Clinton wins the first contest of Election Day...
• Broken voting machines, electronic pollbooks and shamefully long lines are reported in parts of Arizona, New York, North Carolina, Illinois, Kentucky, Texas, Ohio and elsewhere.
• Misinformation about ID needed to vote and polling place closing times and registration requirements in a number of states is being reported as well.
• North Carolina's NAACP calls for poll hours to be extended in Durham County.
• A judge in Nevada firmly rejects the Trump campaign's claim that polls were improperly left open during Early Voting over the weekend (in Hispanic areas.)
• The woeful Governor of Maine Paul LePage lies about student voting requirements in his state, hoping to intimidate them, after fliers are posted at a local college doing the same.
• An Idaho county elections office also wildly misleads to discourage student voting.
• Trump and his campaign misinform voters.
• Rightwing disinformation expert and dirty trickster James O'Keefe pretends to find "voter fraud" in Pennsylvania.

And many other developing shameful stories (and occassional hopeful ones) from Election Day 2016 --- as a glimmer of light may be shining at the end of our long national tunnel...or is that just an oncoming train?...

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