On today's BradCast: With less than two weeks to go before this year's critical midterm Election Day, can the corporate media be convinced to take America's side in helping to save democracy itself? [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

We've devoted nearly two decades to calling out corporate media for their seemingly never-ending failures, the worst of which we may now be smack dab in the middle of, as they seem to have little to no appreciation for our endangered democracy and their no-small-part in helping bring us to this point.

Over the past two years, we've noted (among other failures) how the corporate media just can't seem to simply and clearly call out Donald Trump for having attempted to steal a Presidential election before our very eyes. Instead, as they report even now, he was simply trying to "overturn" or "undermine" or "challenge" or "question" the results, hoping to "roll them back" in order to "remain in the White House". But because they have failed to accurately and directly inform the American electorate that Trump and his minions attempted, repeatedly, to steal a Presidential election, a huge chunk of the citizenry continue to falsely believe the 2020 election was actually stolen from him, despite any evidence to support the false claim. Shamefully, hundreds of Republican candidates on this year's ballot continue to spread that lie and often go entirely unchallenged by the press.

"There's a journalism crisis in this country," charges our guest today, BRIAN HANSBURY, co-founder of the grassroots Media and Democracy Project. The media, he tells me, are "marching us towards fascism and a potential future where we're not able to have votes that have any meaning moving forward."

Hansbury's group recently penned an open letter to "American journalists, editors, producers and publishers" detailing the "urgent need for pro-democracy 2022 election coverage." In an op-ed this week at Salon, he warns that "Journalists who know the 2020 presidential election was free and fair still frequently describe those who lie about it as mere 'skeptics' who 'dispute the results.'" They are not "deniers," he insists. They are liars and should be described as such. He calls on "news media to urgently communicate" to the American public that the November 8 midterm is "not an ordinary election, but rather a contest between would-be authoritarians and candidates who defend the rule of law and the electoral system."

Hansbury's op-ed cites his group's open letter for more details in order to plead: "For the next two weeks, journalists must 1) make threats to democracy clear, 2) protect Americans against disinformation and 3) treat elections as if they are more important than the sports page."

We discuss what all of the above actually means and much more today, as Hansbury makes the case for the American media to, in fact, "take sides" at this point. "Media should be a partisan for democracy," he argues. "Ahead of the 2022 midterms, they should be picking a side, and that should be the side of democracy."

"When elected officials are lying to the public, that's a time when journalists and newsrooms should be taking the side of those who aren't lying to the public about something so fundamental to our rights, freedoms and democracy as elections."

"The 'both sides' thing," Hansbury asserts, is a "false equivalence that is constantly maintained in our national media between normal candidates --- and by 'normal' I mean those that don't lie to us about elections --- and these anti-democracy Republicans. And that normalizes the election lies. It allows for there to be this permission to continue to lie about elections."

The ability for so many candidates to continue to tell so many lies without being held accountable in the press, one can reasonably argue, is no small part of why so many races across the country are now believed to be so close this year. That, despite independently verifiable facts which contradict the candidates' lies...if only our media bothered tell the truth as clearly and relentlessly as the liars lie. It's only the future of American democracy at stake after all. Or, as Hansbury charges the media see it, just another way to "maximize profit, maximize engagement and deliver to advertisers."

Also today, in very related news...

• Jon Stewart --- yes, a comedian, rather than a journalist --- calls out Arizona's Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich during an interview for refusing to clearly say, even two years later, that Joe Biden won the battleground state fair and square in 2020...even though the A.G. clearly knows that to be the case.

• In Pennsylvania, Everett Stern, a little known Republican running as an independent write-in candidate in the state's critical U.S. Senate election, dropped out on Wednesday to endorse the Democratic candidate, John Fetterman. He cited the need to place "country over party," in the race against Trump-endorsed Republican nominee Mehmet Oz, which is considered to largely be a dead heat at this point. In leaving the race, Stern announced: "I am polling around 3% which places Democracy at risk. In the interest of protecting the United States I am dropping out of the U.S Senate Race in PA. I fully endorse John Fetterman. The Democrats must win. PA must be Blue."

Good for him! Nice that there are still some Republicans who appreciate the danger American democracy now faces and the importance of saving it...

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We are finally beginning to see the start of some real accountability for so many of the countless rightwing hoaxsters, fraudsters and scam artists who enjoyed their hey days during the Trump Era. Specifically on today's BradCast, we're beginning to see accountability for rightwing hoaxsters Steve Bannon, Alex Jones and the fraudsters calling themselves True the Vote. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

WE KICK THINGS OFF today with Donald Trump's former aide Steve Bannon, a guy willing to allegedly hoax millions of Trump's own supporters to raise money to build a border wall, while secretly keeping millions for himself and his fellow hoaxsters. He will face trial for those charges in New York. But this week he's facing sentencing after being found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress for failing to respond to subpoenas for documents and testimony from the bipartisan House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection and Trump's failed attempts to steal the 2020 Presidential election. The DoJ is recommending 6 months of prison time and a $200,000 fine. The sentencing hearing will be before a Trump-appointed federal judge this Friday.

NEXT UP, we're joined by award-winning broadcast journalist turned media activist SUE WILSON of Media Action Center to discuss the dangerous lies of rightwing hoaxster Alex Jones. Last week in Connecticut, Jones was ordered to pay $965 million in damages to parents of children killed in 2012's Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Jones was previously held liable in Texas in a separate defamation suit by other parents who also lost children in the mass shooting that resulted in the murders of 20 first graders and 6 adults.

Jones, as Wilson reported at The BRAD BLOG last week, denied that anyone was ever killed at Sandy Hook, claiming the parents of the children were "crisis actors" and that it was all a hoax by those who support gun safety measures. After years of using our public airwaves to repeat those false claims, many of the parents in question were traumatized, confronted by Jones' supporters and were forced to move, thanks to continuous harassment from some of Jones' deranged fans.

But the critical point Wilson asked in her piece was why it is that Jones is still broadcasting over our public airwaves at all? She notes today that some activists have complained to radio stations to successfully have his show removed from the air. But, she says he still remains on about 25 stations which are licensed to broadcast in exchange for "serving in the public interest". As Wilson details on today's show, there are still FCC regulations on the books barring the use of our public airwaves to promote hoaxes that involve crimes such as murder. Nevertheless, no action has been taken by the federal government against Jones or the stations who air him. We discuss why that may be, how listeners can take action to change that and the First Amendment issues surrounding the matter.

THEN, we've spent too much time on past shows already detailing how the GOP "voter fraud" fraudster group calling itself True the Vote (TTV) attempted to hoax the nation by creating a fake documentary with fellow hoaxster (and convicted election fraudster) Dinesh D'Souza called 2000 Mules.

The premise of the film is that TTV claims to have purchased third-party cellphone geolocation data that supposedly reveals thousands of phone users repeatedly visiting absentee ballot drop-boxes in multiple battleground states in 2020 to cast hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes. Moreover, the group claims they have thousands of hours of surveillance camera video footage revealing the same "mules" visiting these drop-boxes over and over to cast the phony ballots.

The film was thoroughly debunked as nonsense almost immediately upon its release earlier this year. In fact, it includes no actual footage of anybody casting fraudulent votes. But certain rightwing dupes, including the former President, falsely insist that it does. Just last week, for example, in response to the House J6 Committee voting to subpoena Trump, he responded with an absurd 14-page reply [PDF] citing dozens of (long-ago debunked) instances of fraud in the 2020 election. He cited TTV's 2000 Mules film, claiming the group "collected over 4 million minutes of ballot drop box video, showing ballot stuffing at a level not seen before." The result, he falsely asserted, proved that "millions of ballots were stuffed...an Election-changing number many times over."

All of it, of course, is nonsense. And, as it turns out, even the office of Arizona's far-right, voter-suppression friendly Attorney General Mark Brnovich has now noticed. On Friday, the Criminal Division in his office referred TTV to the FBI and IRS for investigation. The AZ A.G. explains in their two-page referral letter [PDF] that, despite multiple meetings with the group's founder Catherine Engelbrecht and researcher Greg Phillips, who both claimed to have video evidence of fraud they promised to turn over, they never actually did. Furthermore, as the letter explains, the pair also met with FBI officials in Phoenix and claimed to have turned over the data to Brnovich's office. They later met again with Brnovich's office and claimed they gave the data to the FBI!

"Given TTV's status as a nonprofit organization," the Chief Special Agent in Brnovich's criminal division office wrote to the FBI and IRS on Friday, "it would appear that further review of its financials may be warranted."

FINALLY, on one of our programs last week, I broke down the five Republican U.S. Senate seats (in PA, OH, WI, NC and FL) that appear to have a plausible possibility of flipping to Democratic in November's critical midterm elections, and the two Democratic seats (in GA and NV) that could plausibly flip to Republican. But over the weekend, the Des Moines Register poll --- considered the Gold Standard for political polling in Iowa --- released an eyebrow raising survey finding that the state's 89-year old seven-term Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, now running for his eighth term, is only three points ahead of his Democratic challenger, retired U.S. Navy Admiral Mike Franken, among likely voters. The poll shows Grassley leads with 46% of the vote to Franken's 43%. Could that seat really be up for grabs in the Hawkeye State next month?!...

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Very shortly before airtime today, we learned that our friend, longtime progressive media critic and frequent guest on The BradCast, ERIC BOEHLERT, was killed earlier this week at the age of 57, in a tragic bicycling accident when he was hit by a commuter train in Montclair, New Jersey. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

We were, and are, a bit shook up today. We had a very different program planned, but decided, at the very last minute, with the wind knocked out of us by the news, to change today's show into a tribute to Eric. He last appeared on this show on January 19th of this year, to discuss the one-year anniversary of President Biden's inauguration and the disturbing difference in the way the corporate media covers his Presidency, versus the guy in office before him. We decided to share that interview again on today's program.

Eric's influence, fighting spirit and sense of fair play has long echoed on both this program and at The BRAD BLOG over many years. He was an indefatigable champion for the truth and frequently supportive of our work, particularly during as we revealed the truth about Breitbart/O'Keefe "ACORN Pimp" hoax and called on the duped mainstream media to issue corrections to dozens of inaccurate stories. In the nearly two decades we've known, worked with, and admired him, he has never stopped holding feet to the fire, particularly those of liars on the right and the supposedly non-right corporate media which, as he long documented, have consistently failed in their critical mission over those critical decades.

His legacy will largely speak for itself --- at Salon, Media Matters, Daily Kos and his latest venture, the Press Run newsletter, "an unfiltered, passionate, and proudly progressive critique of the political press in the age of Trump," and, of course, in his many media appearances, including the dozens of times he's joined us on air over the years. His Twitter feed, I'd be remiss without mentioning, was always a must-follow, particularly as he took on the horrible Andrew Breitbart back in the day.

Eric began as a music critic at Billboard and Rolling Stone before turning to media analysis. He also published two books, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers On the Bus: How The Internet Changed Politics and the Press.

We discuss what happened --- and the outpouring of warm thoughts shared in his memory this afternoon by many in the media, and even folks like Hillary Clinton and Jon Stewart --- on today's show, along with his most recent and, sadly, final appearance on this program.

We also cover a few other things, including some accountability for a very Trumpy attorney who is (or was) representing a whole bunch of January 6th conspirators until he was disbarred late last week, and the 8-hour appearance on Tuesday by Ivanka Trump before the House Select Committee investigating Donald Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election. But really, today's show is mostly in tribute and in memory of Eric, who, in addition to a much better informed public, leaves behind his wife Tracy Breslin and two children, Jane and Ben.

As Eric always noted at the top of his Press Run newsletters: "Stay Healthy. Be Kind."

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Powerful record-breaking Hurricane Eta slams into Central America, and may head to U.S.; Cable news using rightwing framing to report on climate policy, new study finds; Trump Administration strips endangered species protection from wolves; PLUS: The world waits and watches to see if America will choose climate action --- or not... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): This election isn't about the next four years. It's about the next four millennia; Exxon's climate fix is algae. Experts say it won't work; The 'Petro-Masculinity' of This Weekend's Trump Highway Rallies; Climate Change Sets a Drought Trap for U.S. Corn; Which countries are responsible for all that ocean plastic?; Double Whammy of Warming, Overfishing Could Spell Disaster for Antarctic Krill... PLUS: Shell’s Twitter fail: We want YOU to solve climate change!... and much, MUCH more! ...

Baltimore's crowded TV market highlights the shell game that media goliath Sinclair Broadcasting plays across the nation to illegally dominate the information Americans can consume over our public airwaves. The agency tasked with overseeing those airwaves, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has long turned a blind eye to allow Sinclair, the very powerful purveyor of rightwing propaganda, to violate US law.

Congress passed the Telecommunications Act [PDF] so no single television company could dominate the news and information available to "We the People" in any single market or even nationwide. Under the law, a single TV company is permitted to reach no more than 39% of viewers in the United States over all. In a single local broadcast market, one company may apply to own two stations --- if there are nine or more stations in that market.

Baltimore has just eight stations, and three of them are actually owned by Sinclair: WBFF, WNUV, and WUTB.

Sinclair lawyers (who also represent Cunningham Broadcasting and Deerfield Media) will say Sinclair owns WBFF, Cunningham owns WNUV and Deerfield owns WUTB. But, in a September 1 legal Petition to Deny the renewal of all three stations' licenses, due to both the shell game and the lies Sinclair has told to protect its unlawful ownership, Republican attorney Art Belendiuk researched Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents to prove that both Deerfield and Cunningham are actually both controlled by Sinclair.

"Sinclair controls three television stations in Baltimore, while the FCC rules do not permit it to control more than one," the petition, filed on behalf of local viewer Ihor Gawdiak, argues, while detailing how the shell game of nominal ownership by the other two companies is simply meant to mask Sinclair's violation of federal law...

On today's BradCast, the news remains largely grim --- we'd expect no less during a global pandemic --- but there continue to be signs of light, way, way...way down at the end of the tunnel. For many in the journalism industry, however, the tunnel may be far too long and dark to make it out to the other side. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up, thanks to an entirely dysfunctional, entirely failed Presidential Administration, things that should already be getting better --- the easy stuff, like testing, personal protective equipment and ventilator shortages --- shamefully, do not appear to be getting better in many parts of the country. The death toll in the U.S. has now officially surpassed both China's and our own on 9/11.

But we see more and more signs each day that at least physical distancing appears to be working as hoped --- slowly, but with unmistakable progress in locations where it is being dutifully practiced. But there remains a long way to go, and a dark tunnel to get through until we see that full light.

With nobody on the federal level leading the way, states and cities continue to do so as best as they can. But it is difficult if not impossible for them, or the news media, to know what to even expect on a macro level as the economy heads into completely unknown territory. According to at least one new economic analysis from the St. Louis Fed, unemployment rates could end up dwarfing even the highest levels of the Great Depression, much less the Great Recession.

And with that cheery news, we're joined today by longtime media industry expert CRAIG SILVERMAN, BuzzFeed News' Media Editor, to discuss the troubling outlook for independent local media as well corporate media amid the coronavirus pandemic. The industry is one of the first to feel the brunt of a nearly national shutdown. Ironically enough, the readership for many news outlets has "skyrocketed across the board" online, he says. "People are hungry for the latest quality information about what's going on with the coronavirus, and they're going to news organizations to get that information."

At the same time, however, ad revenue has collapsed and the same outlets across the country (and world) seeing a spike in readership are being forced to shut down the print sides of their publications, lay off journalists, and otherwise scale back reporting at a time that good local journalism is needed more than ever.

A number of alt-weeklies have already gone under, as their ad revenue is based almost entirely on industries like restaurants, bars, movie theaters, concerts and live events that have all been forced to shut down. "The alternative weeklies are kind of canaries in the coal mine. A lot of alt-weeklies have already gone out of business in Canada and the United States," Silverman warns. "A lot of the very small newspapers, especially that are part of chains, or had debt, they may not be able to come back."

"Now, we've got some of the biggest newspaper chains in the US, like Gannett [publisher of USA Today and more than a dozen other major papers], yesterday they announced they're doing unpaid newsroom furloughs for one week a month. Los Angeles Times is significantly cutting back on its print sections Monday to Friday. Other newspapers are getting rid of print editions," he tells me.

Silverman explains what one journalism industry analyst is describing as a "full extinction event" for many outlets, and the millions of dollars in lost revenue for some of the largest ones, thanks to a bizarre ad blocking scheme that some major brands are instituting on coronavirus related news stories.

We also discuss what you, dear readers and listeners, can do to help. "This is the moment for you to pay for the media that you care about," he says. "It's about people deciding for themselves what media they want to support. It may not be a big national outlet. If you have money right now --- and that is a big 'if', a lot of people are struggling --- but if you have money and you can afford maybe $5, $10, $15 a month, this is the time to stand up and show that support. A lot of people in newsrooms who are getting laid off, furloughed, who are getting pay cuts, this can make a difference if enough people step up and start to do it."

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report as Trump's EPA, even in the middle of an unprecedented health crisis, has now officially reversed landmark Obama-era mileage standards for cars that, in addition to combating climate change and lowering gas prices, would have also helped prevent some 1,400 unnecessary American deaths per year. But that's not all the Administration is doing to undermine the planet's climate and the health of Americans while most folks are looking the other way, and as the plastic industry is hoping to find profit in a pandemic...

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On today's BradCast, we're experiencing a sense of deja vu from this very same fight the last time Congress allocated hundreds of millions for new electronic voting systems in the U.S. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

A serious "design flaw" in a previously certified computer voting system is finally acknowledged on Friday by New York State's top election official, after several different warnings on the matter were issued in recent months by computer security and voting systems experts at Princeton and Georgia Tech.

The vulnerability has resulted in Douglas Kellner, the co-chair of the NYS Board of Elections, calling for a reexamination of the ImageCast Evolution (ICE) computer Ballot Marking Device (BMD), which both prints ballot selection on a paper and then scans that ballot to record results after it, theoretically, has already been verified by the voter. "After you mark your ballot, after you review your ballot, the voting machine can print more votes on it!," [emphasis in original], Princeton's computer science professor Andrew Appel warned about the Dominion ImageCast Evolution system in October of last year.

Kellner cites that "ballot stuffing attack" vector first identified by Appel and then confirmed by Georgia Tech's former Dean of computing at Georgia Tech and director of its Information Security Center, professor RICHARD DEMILLO who joins us on today's show to explain the vulnerabilities. The very same design flaw appears to be present in systems currently in use or set for use before 2020 in parts of Kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania, Delaware and elsewhere, as jurisdictions scramble to spend federal dollars to "upgrade" their voting systems to new equipment in advance of the next, crucial Presidential election.

A similar system made by ES&S, currently being pushed for use across the entire state of Georgia by Republicans, vendors and elections officials, also appears to have the same flaw and even one that Appel describes as a disturbing "Permission to Cheat" feature (first observed by Election Integrity advocate Jenny Cohn in Kansas last September) that allows the machine to submit a ballot to the scanner without the voter ever verifying what the computer has printed on it. That, DeMillo explains today, allows ballots to be marked and printed by the computer and then scanned without any examination by the voter at all. Both "design flaws" make any post-election hand audit of those ballots "meaningless" [PDF] .

As Kellner explains in his letter to fellow Elections Board members in NY --- effectively decertifying the systems, for now, thanks to Dominion's failure to document these vulnerabilities before certification --- "If it was possible for the machine to add a voting mark to the ballot without verification by the voter, the audit is not meaningful because it cannot confirm that the ballot was counted in the manner intended by the voter."

"What they have is a single device that marks the ballot and scans the ballot. Just because of the way that they've designed this thing, there's a single path that the paper ballot travels --- under the print heads, and over scanning heads," DeMillo tells me. "What I think is a real issue is the design flaw that makes it possible to have the paper ballot printed out, verified by the reader, and then scanned, but in that scanning process, travel a second time undetected through the print heads. The voter could have chosen to vote for no one. But the machine could decide well, we really like the Democratic candidate for Public Service Commissioner, so we're just going to add that to every ten blank Public Service Commissioner choices that we see."

DeMillo breaks down what all of this means for New York and other states now using or set to use these systems, and how the vendor in question, Dominion, has responded [PDF] by attempting to marginalize the concerns and dismiss critics like DeMillo and Appel as "security maximalists."

DeMillo has been joining other cybersecurity experts in issuing similar warnings [PDF] to officials in his home-state of Georgia, where lawmakers are in the midst of rushing to approve at least $150 million for the purchase of similar devices from ES&S for use across the entire state before 2020 --- and not just for disabled voters who may require such a system to vote independently, but for all voters in the precincts. That, despite the systems appearing to have similar "design flaws" to those which have now served to effectively decertify the Dominion systems in NY.

All of this, of course, is of a piece with the warnings we've been loudly issuing for years at The BRAD BLOG and on The BradCast about the use of this type of unverifiable computer-marked "paper ballot" voting systems, rather than verifiable HAND-MARKED paper ballots.

Also on today's program: Donald Trump publishes his Fiscal Year 2020 budget proposal, including hundreds of billion in cuts to domestic programs such as Medicaid and Medicare (which he vowed, while a candidate in 2016, to protect), as well as to the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies. At the same time, the proposal includes record increases in defense spending and $8.6 billion more for his southern border wall (which Mexico is still not paying for). The result, if the aspirational proposal were to be adopted by Congress, would ensure annual budget deficits of at least $1 trillion over the next four years. That, on the heels of the Trump/GOP's $1.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy and corporations which has ballooned the deficit and national debt to go with it.

And, finally today, after WA Governor Jay Inslee entered the Democratic President Primary last week race based largely on his decades of raising the alarm about climate change, we share a few recently unearthed clips from Inslee's fellow Presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders warning about "the greenhouse effect" and the dangers of a warming climate as long ago as 1989 on C-SPAN and in 1987 with a class of middle-school children while then still serving as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont.

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On today's BradCast, it's like deja vu all over again. But with a Commander-in-Chief who is completely clueless about any of it and powerful adversaries who claim they are prepared to shoot back. [Audio link to show follows below.]

The President of the United States has no idea what he's doing, and is simply making up policy from minute to minute, according to a Washington Post report last night, detailing how White House aides are forced to scramble each day to either explain Donald Trump's actions "or clean them up."

"There is no proactive strategic thinking," one staffer told the paper. Another senior administration official conceded that aides are often forced to "reverse-engineer a policy process to match whatever the President said" on any given day. That may be workable, sort of, when it comes to something like Trump's announcement today that, after years of bashing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and pulling the U.S. out of it shortly after taking office, he is now considering rejoining the TPP after all.

But when it comes to sending the U.S. to war, Trump's erratic behavior poses a very serious danger. To that end --- as Trump has flip-flopped over the past week between demanding the U.S. pull its troops out of Syria within 48 hours, to publicly warning Syria's main ally Russia to "get ready" for incoming missiles, to reversing positions yet again to declare a U.S. attack on the war-torn nation "could be very soon or not soon at all" --- his Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis was busy conceding to lawmakers in the U.S. House on Thursday that the Pentagon lacks evidence of the alleged chemical attack in over the weekend, reportedly carried out by the Syrian government against its own citizens in one of the last rebel-held areas near Damascus.

While noting that he "believe[s] there was a chemical attack," Mattis told lawmakers on Capitol Hill today "we're looking for the actual evidence" and admitted that even if inspectors from the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) get access to the site of the alleged attack, "we will not know who did it. They can only say that they found evidence or did not."

It's not the first time that Mattis has conceded we've attacked Syria in response to purported chemical attacks for which the U.S. had "no evidence".

Nonetheless, the media continue to report the weekend attack in Syria --- said to have killed more than 40 civilians with some form of poison gas --- as having been carried out by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Even as Mattis was admitting the lack of evidence the U.S. has to support the charge, NBC News was busy reporting breathlessly and unskeptically, in an eerie echo of the run-up to the U.S. war(s) against Iraq, on claims from two unnamed "U.S. officials" citing "blood and urine samples from last Saturday's deadly attack in Syria that have tested positive for chemical weapons." It's like deja vu all over again, but with a clueless President and powerful countries like Russia and Iran already having warned that they are prepared to retaliate against any attack against the Syrian government by the U.S. or its allies.

In not-entirely-unrelated news today, as Trump continues to lie about "voter fraud" in the 2016 election (and about everything else), an alarming new study from Politico finds that voters with less access to local news voted in larger numbers for Trump in 2016 than they did for Mitt Romney in 2012. At the same time, the study reveals, those with more access to such news sources voted in higher proportion for Hillary Clinton.

The findings come as the rightwing Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the nation's largest owner of local TV news outlets, attempts to receive FCC approval to buy up enough local stations to reach some 72% of American households. While public push-back against the effort builds, the pro-Trump broadcast behemoth is revealed to be using the public airwaves at their own currently-owned stations (and websites) to lie about the mounting criticism against their practices.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on Shell's recently revealed decades long knowledge that their products cause global warming, and the mountain of scandal that continues to engulf Trump's embattled EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt...

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On today's BradCast: Good news for voters in two separate federal court cases concerning the National Voter Registration Act, and bad news for democracy, as a rightwing media outlet is using trusted local television anchors --- and our public airwaves --- to deceptively promote the Trump Agenda. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up, some breaking news as we go to air today on yet another mass shooting. This time, it was at the YouTube headquarters building in San Bruno, California, with few details known as of airtime, other than the news that four were known to have been wounded and the shooter appears to have been a women who killed herself after her spree.

Then, some happier breaking news out of Texas, where a federal court found in favor of the Texas Civil Rights Project on Tuesday, in their lawsuit against the state on behalf of plaintiffs who were denied voter registration via the online Department of Public Safety (DPS) website system when they obtained or changed their drivers' licenses. Under the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA or "motor voter" law), the judge ruled the state is required to process changes to drivers' licenses as voter registration applications when users click a box to confirm they wish to register to vote. Some 1.5 million Texans annually, according to the complaint [PDF], have attempted to do so, only to find out they were not actually registered to vote via the system when they showed up to the polls.

In further encouraging court news for voters, a federal judge in Florida on Friday found against a group of long-time Republican "voter fraud" fraudsters who sued, under a different provision of the NVRA, claiming that Broward County wasn't purging their voting rolls aggressively enough. That case was the first to come to trial among several similar cases filed by the rightwing groups calling themselves Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) and the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU). The judge's ruling seriously undercuts at least one of the major claims made by longtime GOP "voter fraud" fraudsters asserting evidence of massive "voter fraud" supposedly being carried out by Democrats.

Then, after a remarkable video mashup of dozens and dozens of local TV news anchors all robotically reading the same corporate-supplied script decrying "fake news" went viral over the weekend, there has been intense scrutiny of the rightwing Sinclair Broadcast Group, the company which forced the local stations it owns to produce the promos. Sinclair currently owns nearly 200 local TV stations and, despite already being the largest owner of stations nationwide, is in the process of purchasing at least 40 more that are owned by Tribune Media.

Media Matters' researcher PAM VOGEL, who has been reporting on Sinclair's misuse of our public airwaves via their local stations for several years, joins us to detail the concerns behind otherwise longtime trusted local media outlets becoming little more than propaganda outlets for the Trump Administration.

"Sinclair has been so successful for so long, because they kind of fly under the radar with smaller-scale local news," Vogel explains. The company uses it's stations --- affiliates of various networks, like ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox --- to "exploit the inherent trust that people have for their local news. You aren't necessarily aware of who is pulling the strings behind the scenes. There's no Sinclair logo on the screen."

Beyond forcing stations to run promos like the "hostage video" that went viral over the weekend, Sinclair also forces them to use regular "must-run" commentaries like those from former Trump Campaign official Boris Epshteyn.

Vogel also details what is known about the FCC Inspector General's reported investigation into whether Trump Administration officials and his FCC Chairman Ajit Pai improperly colluded with Sinclair executives to change long-standing FCC media ownership rules in order to accommodate Sinclair's attempted takeover of Tribune Media.

"They are already the largest owner of local television stations in the country, but this deal is completely unprecedented," she tells me. "And it wouldn't have actually been possible unless Trump's FCC --- now that it was under Republican-majority control, with Trump in office --- made some special moves to make that deal possible in the first place."

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, in which the EPA has reversed fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks enacted by the Obama Administration; EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt finds himself under renewed scrutiny in several corruption scandals; DoJ sues the state of California over federal lands; and ExxonMobil's attempt to block climate change lawsuits against them gets tossed by a federal judge...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Corporate media failed to inform the public on climate change right when we needed it most; Even Fox News pushing back on Trump Administration's climate denial; EPA sued for refusing to ban toxic pesticide that harms children and farm workers; PLUS: Scientific integrity on trial and under attack in the U.S. House of Representatives... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): National Geographic Articles in the Year 2030; Trump EPA Moves To Dismantle Programs That Protect Kids From Lead Paint; Trump Boosts Coal As China Takes The Lead On Climate Change; New York, Other States Challenge Trump Over Climate Change Regulation; Australia Could Be Set To Receive New Wave Of Climate Refugees; India's Ganges Clean-Up In A Shambles, Modi Intervenes; U.S. Would Slash EPA Vehicle Testing Budget Under Trump Plan; Lead Exposure Alters Course Of Children's Lives Decades Later: Study... PLUS: Just four years left of the 1.5C carbon budget.... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast: With Republicans in the U.S. Senate on the verge of completing their brazen and historically unprecedented theft of the U.S. Supreme Court majority for a generation --- and still grimmer news elsewhere around the world --- we're happy to cover an inspiring David v. Goliath story about a media activist who took on a major media conglomerate (and the FCC) and seems to have won! At least mostly. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Former award-winning broadcast journalist turned media reformer Sue Wilson of Media Action Center joins us today to detail an encouraging ending to what began ten years ago as an unspeakably tragic story. After the death of a listener, following a stunt contest on Entercom Communication's KDND 107.9 "The End" in Sacramento, and a trial finding the company liable for that death, Wilson decided to file a Petition to Deny renewal of the company's license with the FCC for its 50,000 watt powerhouse frequency.

The FCC has not revoked any corporate license to use our public airwaves in the federal agency's memory. What happened next, however, was detailed over the weekend by Dan Morain at the Sacramento Bee, by Wilson herself today at The BRAD BLOG, and, in person on today's BradCast, where she details the difficulties she had in finding any of the larger, more established media reform organizations or attorneys willing to join her effort.

This story is a remarkably encouraging (and timely) reminder that, yes, one person actually can make a difference by taking on both corporate giants and intransigent federal agencies --- and win! But, as importantly, it's also an important reminder that those for-profit corporations entrusted with controlling our public airwaves, still have a legal responsibility to use those airwaves in the public interest.

Also today: Breaking down the GOP lie at the center of their SCOTUS theft (and what you can still try and do about it); Steve Bannon dumped from the National Security Council; The first city council in the nation (that we know of) adopts a resolution calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump; a Republican Governor bans fracking in his state; some U.S. House special election news; and Desi Doyen joins us with the latest Green News Report...

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Over the weekend, Dan Morain, editorial page editor at Sacramento Bee, wrote an article about what I've been working on, and writing about here at The BRAD BLOG and elsewhere, for many years now.

Morain's article starts this way:

It's a very nice article, that begins with a tragic story. That story, however, now has at least a somewhat encouraging ending for, yes, We the People.

Here's what happened...

On today's BradCast, I'm in for Brad again. We start by pick up where we left off yesterday, with another review of fake news - this time, contrasting it with lazy, bad, or mistaken news reports.

And - about that reported book contract a flamboyant neo-Nazi is crowing about: why it's way too early to say, "We're boycotting Simon & Schuster!"

Then Natalie Blake with the California National Party explains how a state can secede from the US (hint: more than one option here). This is NOT the same California independence group allied with Russia, although you'd never get that from most media.

And an excerpt from a live conversation with author and culture critic Jeff Chang. Kind of fun to hear the Executive Director of Stanford's Institute for Diversity in the Arts explain how diversity is problematic.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

On today's BradCast, it's our Republican National Convention wrap up following Donald Trump's dark and dishonest acceptance speech at the end of a chaotic week for the GOP in Cleveland.

Salon's Heather Digby Parton --- who was with us on Day 1 of Trump's candidacy last year, when we largely predicted what has now happened (while most everyone else saw it as a joke) --- joins us to try and make sense of where things are now for the nation, for the nominee and for the future of the Republican Party's 'conservative movement', which she sees in its final death throes.

"This has been a sick and unhealthy party for a very long time," Parton (better known as just "Digby" of the Hullabaloo Blog ) tells me. "It finally succumbed to the illness. And the reason is not not because of bad leadership or they had terrible choices for President. It's really their ideology that they adopted --- starting back with Goldwater, reaching its zenith with Reagan --- [on which] this conservative movement was built. They called it 'the 3-legged stool'. There was social conservatism/family values, small government/free markets, and a strong national defense. All three of those collapsed within the last 15 years. They failed in spectacular fashion."

As I argue in turn today, as we dissect Trump's fear-mongering speech, his movement, the media coverage and everything else from the week in Cleveland, I am not quite as confident about the collapse of the Republican Party, whose imminent death, to paraphrase Twain, may still be greatly exaggerated. That, particularly given the continuing disservice to the electorate and the nation performed by our dreadful "both sides do it" corporate media, which, after decades, are still misleading and misinforming the country about the candidates, the parties, the facts and the dysfunctional state of American politics.

"The Republican Party isn't dead," she counters. "There will always be opposition. But the form that we're familiar with isn't operative any longer. I don't think it's ideological anymore at all. What's left is Trumpism. That's nationalism, xenophobia, nativism, and authoritarianism."

Okay. But mightn't that be enough to win another Presidential election given a dynamic, if sociopathic, TV-friendly GOP candidate, a not-terribly popular Democratic candidate, a misinformed electorate, and a divided nation? All of those questions asked, answered and debated on today's BradCast, including some listener e-mail and a few other odds, ends and thoughts on what Digby describes as this past week's "dystopian hellscape convention"...

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On today's BradCast, guest hosted by Angie Coiro, we discuss the revelations of Lies, Incorporated: The World of Post-Truth Politics, from Ari Rabin-Havt and Media Matters for America. Then an analysis of the court case that's garnered attention throughout and beyond the US: the conviction and sentencing of attempted rapist Brock Turner of Stanford.

Ari Rabin-Havt hosts The Agenda on Sirius XM. He collaborated with Media Matters for America on the book Lies, Incorporated: The World of Post-Truth Politics. He tracks to the source of lies that will not die, like death panels and climate change denial. Surprisingly, the shadowy, well-funded individuals that do this work aren't always motivated by the money. Remember Todd Akin's claim that "If it’s legitimate(!!) rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down?” Turns out he may have really believed that.

Also today: why did the judge in the trial of Stanford athlete Brock Turner ignore both mandatory minimum sentence guidelines and the prosecutor to bestow a sentence much lower than anyone expected? Guests Imani Gandy and Sajid Khan, both attorneys, weigh in on what it means in court to be white, male, upper middle class, and a jock.

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