'BradCast' 6/23/2026 (The Horses Races AND the Track Conditions; Why Trump endorsements matter; SCOTUS v. VRA Again)

I just want to speak directly to New Yorkers. A year ago, you shocked the world. You took a chance on me. And for that, I will be forever grateful. Tonight, I come to you asking you to take a chance again. Now, the names may be different, Dalia Lisa, Brad, Claire, but the fight is the same. A fight to reject a broken status quo. Wow. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate that. Thanks for the name check. I'm so scared in case I'll fall off my chair. And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you. Yep. From Pacifica Radio and Los Angeles, this is the broadcast as heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. And on dozens and dozens of other fine affiliate stations. Over both the public airwaves and the internets around the country and the world. Blanketing planet Earth. I'm Brad Friedman. Your friendly investigative blogger, journalist, troublemaker, muckraker, and all round, swell fellow says me from bradblog.com. Thank you very much for joining us today for another thrilling edition of the Bradcast kicked off. By the good Mayor Zohran Mamdani there, Desi Doyen. Is that nice of him to mention me like that? Yes, it was nice of him to mention you, although I don't know that that's quite what he meant. Okay, moving on to the later this hour, Desi Doyen and her world famous Green News Report, touching on, among many other things. Another absolutely brutal and yes deadly heat wave in Europe. Yes, sadly. Where many people do not have air condition because they never needed air condition prior to our quickly climate-changing world. Also, in that report, the still-still looming threat of oil price shock despite the ongoing talks between the U.S. Iran. Which you should view, by the way, with great skepticism. Whenever you hear something coming from supposed lead negotiator, JD Vance, who, for example, told the world on Monday that Iran had agreed to allow nuclear inspectors from the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency. that Iran had agreed to allow them back into the country to inspect Iran's nuclear stockpile. Well, that sounds great. But in fact, inspectors had been making regular checks as part of the 2015 nuclear deal made by under during Obama, the Obama administration. And even after Trump violated the deal back in when he took office in 2016, those inspections continued this whole time. Nonetheless.

All the way up to last year in June when Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Iran's nuclear sites. So when JD Vance announced the agreement as a big deal or that part of the agreement, as a big deal for the world, I think he called it, naturally he didn't mention that it had already been a big deal for the world. when it had been in place over the last 10 years until his administration screwed it up. But more to my point for the moment, as we noted yesterday, JD Vance made the announcement that inspectors that Iran has agreed to have the inspectors back, but Iran did not make that announcement. And in fact, on Tuesday, Iran said that they had agreed to no such thing. So... Do regard whatever you hear coming from the wildly untrustworthy U.S. side of these negotiations with a tremendous amount of skepticism, at least until you hear, actually hear, Iran confirming any particular claim being made by the sociopathic liars that now run the U.S. administration. Is that good advice? Oh, I think it's excellent. I would say more than a grain of salt, maybe like a whole block of salt. Yep. Meanwhile, voters in four states took to the polls on Tuesday for primary and primary runoffs for this year's absolutely critical November midterm elections in Maryland, New York, and Utah, which, just like left-leaning Colorado, Oregon, and Washington and Hawaii, I will note, Utah now runs all vote-by-mail elections with ballots sent to all voters, even though. I bet most people listening to my voice right now. have not heard Donald Trump or his fellow Republicans complaining about Utah running their elections that way. It's only a problem here in California and Colorado and Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, etc. We will see if Republicans do start complaining about it now that there is a new court-ordered U.S. House district centered right smack dab in bluish Salt Lake City this year. where Democrats have their first real chance to pick up a U.S. House seat in many years since the GOP gerrymander back in 2021 unlawfully split Salt Lake City into four different overwhelmingly Republican House districts. So we shall see if all of a sudden they have a problem with Utah's mail ballots. In addition to statewide primaries in those three states,

on Tuesday. Primary runoffs happened on Tuesday in South Carolina with quite a few eyes on the Republican gubernatorial race there in a statewide race that Cook political report ranks as solidly Republicans. So the winner of the GOP runoff on Tuesday will almost certainly become the state's next governor. One of the reasons for the many eyes on the race on Tuesday is because, as Daily Kosas, Emily Singer describes it today, Trump pulled an endorsement switcheroo there to avoid looking like a loser. Donald Trump, she writes, desperate to avoid looking like a loser is pulling a last-minute endorsement switch, as his preferred candidate appears on track to get walloped. At the end of May, just prior to the state's original June 9 primary this year, Trump endorsed Lieutenant Governor Pam Evett in the Republican gubernatorial contest, the decision she says that served as a snub. to Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who had pressed to force the release of the Epstein files, getting on Donald Trump's bad side, his endorsement of Yvette over Mace, who at the time, at least briefly, for a moment, Mace had been the frontrunner in that race, but Trump's endorsement of Yvette likely factored into Mace's humiliating fifth-placed finish in the primary, argues singer. So she's not even in the runoff on Tuesday. Quote, Pam Yvette is a good friend, fighter and winner, and she will be a terrific governor of South Carolina, wrote Trump in a social media post just the week before the original primary, adding Pam has my complete and total endorsement. And in all caps, she will never let you down. Well, that seems to have done the trick enough. That ended up taking the first place spot back in the June 9 primary, but only with 29% of the vote. in that race is a crowded primary, so that's not completely a surprise. But in South Carolina, you need 50% plus one to win a gubernatorial primary, and she did not get enough at 29% to avoid the runoff, despite her first place finish. Earlier in the month, pre-runoff polling showed a vet likely to lose the runoff to South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson held this week. No poll of the runoff showed a vet leading, and one survey released Monday showed Wilson ahead of a vet by a stunning 61 to 29 percent margin.

We'll see if that's right. Anyway, so what did Trump do with his candidate looking like she was set up to lose? Well, on Monday, the day before the runoff primary, he pulled that switcheroo. He claims he now endorses both Yvette and Wilson. And now he can claim victory no matter the outcome. See what he did there? So why do we care so much about who Trump endorses in any of these races? You may have noticed that, you know, that point has often helped to frame our coverage of this year's primary election results over the past few months. Because while there is certainly a great deal of, you know, Schadenfreude in seeing Trump's endorsements rejected by voters, as has happened several times so far this cycle, particularly, you know, being rejected by Republican voters in Republican primaries, it's also a sign of an indication in any event of his political strength or weakness, which then... reverberates back to Congress, specifically to decisions by Republican members of Congress, who are now more often deciding whether or not it's okay, whether it's now safe to go ahead and buck Donald Trump. I hope to get to a story a little bit later this hour that offers an example of that. But when other Republicans see that Trump is, you know, no longer has a stranglehold on the electorate, if that's what we end up seeing this cycle, well, they are more likely to try and do what is right as opposed to doing what, whatever it is that Trump is ordering them to do. To that end, on Tuesday, the U.S. Senate voted 50 to 48 to adopt a resolution, in this case a non-binding resolution, but never mind that, directing Trump to remove military forces from the conflict in Iran, which CNN characterizes as a significant rebuke to Donald Trump. After the U.S. House also previously adopted this same resolution, Republican senators Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Bill Cassidy all joined all of the Democrats other than John Fetterman of Pennsylvania in passing that bill 50 to 48 on Tuesday afternoon. It previously passed in the U.S. House 215 to 208 with four. House Republicans voting with all of the Democrats, similarly angering Donald Trump. So, you know, what happens in these races, and that's one of the reasons why we look at the, you know, whether there's an endorsement from Donald Trump and whether that actually helped or ended up meaning nothing. In other words, it's safe to go against the president. Right.

So back to the South Carolina matter, it's pathetic, yes, to see him actually trying to pick the person who is going to win. With his endorsement, rather than him choosing who is the best candidate for the job, he's not trying to do that. He's trying to, you know, name the person that he thinks is going to win. That's why he often waits until just before the election day in order to make his announcement. But that's what he does. And then when, if that person wins, well, they are in thrall to him in return. If they get elected. As Singer describes it, Trump's 11th hour dual endorsement in South Carolina is in naked efforts to avoid losing one of the biggest sources of power the fear Republicans have of defying him. GOP elected officials and candidates are often worried that if they do not do, as Trump says, he will endorse their opponents and nuke their political careers. That fear has kept Republicans in line since he retook office in January of 2025. But every time a Republican candidate wins, despite Trump endorsing their challenger, well, Trump's grip on his party slips. If Yvette loses... On Tuesday, note Singer, she will be the third Republican in as many weeks to lose their gubernatorial primaries even with Trump's backing. On June 2, Iowa Congressman Randy Feenstra lost the state's Republican primary for governor. And a week or so ago, Georgia, Lieutenant Governor Bert Jay Jones, lost his runoff to be the Peach State's GOP gubernatorial nominee. So this week, he's taking care of that. He can't lose. Because he's endorsed both of the Republicans in the runoff because that's how desperately pathetic losers with broken and twisted egos like Donald Trump apparently operate. Trump's endorsement. His endorsement losses come as his approval rating keeps dropping, including among Republican voters. That singer writes likely terrifies him since he both hates looking like a loser and sees that his grip on his own party is weakening.

Well, Trump's endorsements have been framing many of the GOP primaries in the cycle this year. Tuesday's elections this week may test the kingmaking power of popular Democratic socialist New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who, as you heard at the top of the show, is apparently endorsing me. But this was actually him. choosing a slate of endorses for U.S. House races in the city this week, including a progressive and two Democratic socialists who are challenging more established Democratic candidates, including those backed by party leadership. Does Zohran Mamdani have enough political muscle, enough juice to unseat an establishment Democrat, like, for example, New York Congressman Dan Goldman? who represents lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn to replace him with his ally Brad Lander. Oh, that's the Brad he must have been talking about. Damn it. Anyway, you know, we will see. In that case, we've got two Jews who are battling over whether Goldman has been critical enough of Israel's war crimes in Gaza. Will the mayor's help there be enough to put Brad Lander, who was very supportive of Zohran Mamdani during his own election over the top? We will see. And we will find out on our next thrilling broadcast, perhaps with noteworthy available results from all four of those states. But as longtime listeners know, we cover the track conditions on this program just as close or closer than we cover the actual horse races themselves. Since a muddy track, for anybody who knows anything about horse racing, a muddy track can as much help decide who wins any particular horse race as the strength or the record or the speed of the horse itself. So to that end, the fight to prevent a muddy track, that fight continues. every day here on the broadcast and, of course, at bradblog.com. And, of course, the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court majority keeps adding as much water and slush and mud as they possibly can to the track in hopes that it will help Republican horses, essentially. And they did so again on Monday this week, as NPR reports. By declining to take up a lower court ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt another blow to the Voting Rights Act. On Monday, the court announced that it will not review an Arkansas-based lawsuit, leaving in place a 2025 appeals panel ruling that ends a long-used tool for protecting minority voters from discrimination.

Under the Landmark Voting Rights Act, in this case, in seven mainly Midwestern states, that ruling found that in the states covered by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, that would be Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, private individuals and groups. Do not have the right to sue to enforce what's known as Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which generally allows voters with a disability or an inability to read or write to get help with voting from a person of their choosing. So this ruling from the Supreme's in and of itself does not answer the question of whether Section 208 is valid anymore or not, but rather whether private citizens or voting rights groups themselves may sue to ensure that that section is actually enforced, a so-called private right of action. And, you know, they have used that private right of action, both voters and groups, since the original adoption of the Voting Rights Act. So that's what this is about, that question of whether there is a private right of action, or if only, the U.S. Attorney General. may sue to stop any particular violation of the Voting Rights Act. That despite the clear originalist intentions of the framers of the Voting Rights Act and more specifically the hundreds of cases. if not thousands of cases that have been heard over the years brought by private plaintiffs, brought by voters and voting rights groups, including cases very recently before the Supreme Court. And they said nothing about it. So at this point, it's clear that the corrupted 6 to 3 Republican majority on the court is now going to simply kill the Voting Rights Act in every case in which they get any chance whatsoever to do so. In May, shortly after their undermining of Section 2 protections against racial discrimination in redistricting last month, the High Court, according to NPR, decided not to weigh in on what the legal world calls a private right of action, sending back to the lower courts two cases brought by black voters in Mississippi and Native American voters in North Dakota.

For decades, enforcement of these sections of the Voting Rights Act has mainly been driven by lawsuits, by private individuals and groups. But after far-right activist justice, Neil Gorsuch issued a single paragraph opinion back in 2021 questioning a private right of action, Republican officials in multiple states, Well, they snapped right to it, didn't they? They have raised this novel legal argument wherever they could, which is basically only the U.S. Attorney General has the right to bring lawsuits under these parts of the Voting Rights Act. Such an interpretation of the law is likely to lead to a dramatic decline in voting rights lawsuits because of, as NPR describes it, the Justice Department's limited resources and shifting priorities under different presidential administrations. Well, that's a very nice way to put it, isn't it? Yeah. So, yeah, don't hold your breath waiting for Trump's personal defense attorney turned attorney general Todd Blanche to bring lawsuits against Republicans in Mississippi and North Dakota because they made it harder for minorities to cast their votes. The case that the justices decided not to take up was brought by Immigrant Advocacy Group, Arkansas United, which has provided Spanish language interpreters at polling sites to assist voters with limited English proficiency. The group challenged a new Arkansas law that bans a person who is not a poll worker from helping more than six voters to cast ballots. So, you know, if you want to station someone at each of the polling places to make sure that somebody can be helped, well, you can't do it. Well, they can only do six voters. They can only help six voters at all, period, in any particular election. In 2022, a federal judge ruled that the state law violates Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, but after GOP state officials appealed. An Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel found last year that private groups like Arkansas United do not have the right to bring this kind of lawsuit. Didn't decide that, oh, whether Section 208 applies or not, they just said you don't have the right to bring this lawsuit at all to even ask that question. Only Pam Bondi does last year, or Todd Blanche now, apparently. because such a right is not explicitly spelled out in the words of the voting rights act even though that is exactly how it has been used for decades and has never been questioned

Until now, until the partisan Justice Gorsuch decided to do so in that one paragraph back in a separate case altogether, sending the signal to Republicans, you know what to do. Bring us these cases. And we'll make sure that the Voting Rights Act can never be enforced again, at least until a Democrat is serving as the U.S. Attorney General. So far, the Eighth Circuit, which also found that there is no private right of action under Section 2 either. So far, the Eighth Circuit is the only federal appeals court to break with decades of precedent on this legal issue. And on Monday, the Supreme Court... which must be reformed the second, the very minute the Democrats find themselves, if they ever do again, with the political power to do so. So far, the Eighth Circuit is the only one to find this. To find that there is no private right of action. It's the only court, the brief unsigned order. that the High Court released on Monday did not explain why the justices decided not to review the Eighth Circuit's ruling in the Arkansas case. But in a court filing last month, Republican officials in Arkansas pointed out that no other federal appeals court has issued a ruling that specifically addresses whether private groups and individuals can sue under Section 208. that the Arkansas Republican officials argues means that there is no disagreement between appeals courts for the Supreme Court to resolve. So they don't need to review this at all because there is no disagreement with any other circuit. Oh, that's some sleight of hand. And, well... The corrupt SCOTUS agreed on Monday, it seems. We don't need to look at it. Nobody disagrees with its opinion. Well, of course, we should point out the corrupt right-wing supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Arkansas's United's attorney in response at the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, or Maldef. argued, countered, that there is in fact a clear conflict between the Eighth Circuit's decision and this unbroken line of hundreds of cases allowing private litigants to vindicate their rights under Section 208. Quote, the limited case law regarding private enforcement of Section 208 does not mean that the circuit split is non-existent or that the issue is unimportant, Malduff attorneys wrote in their filing. Instead, it demonstrates just how much of an anomaly the Eighth Circuit's decision is.

Oh, but there's no other court who disagrees with them. Well, the other courts apparently do disagree with them because they've let hundreds and hundreds of these cases go through from private plaintiffs. The other case led by Missouri Protection and Advocacy Services, which advocates for voters with disabilities, challenges a state law that bans a person from helping more than one disabled voter. or voter who cannot read or write for each election unless the person providing assistance is a poll worker or the voter's immediate family member. So you also can't have people at the polls ready to help disabled voters or those who can't read. Well, we will attempt to move it forward, and these precedents will be cited to stop us. Thomas Sands, the Maldaf's president and general counsel, said we will move up and hope that the Supreme Court will see that it needs to stop this situation where only one circuit in the entire country has taken a contrary view to everyone else and foreclosed private enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. Though, and this is just me talking, I'm not sure that this is the best case in which to do that, you know, to go to the Supreme Court and say, hey, just because, you know, only one court has said it doesn't mean you can't look into this case. I'm not sure this is the best case to do that, given how much this Supreme Court wants to kill every last remaining protection for voters. In the landmark, in the constitutional protection for voters, in the landmark yet damn near entirely dead voting rights act at this point. In a little bit of brighter news, before we get to a break, some brighter election track condition news, I guess, at least for now. A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool. central to the Trump administration's efforts to unlawfully nationalize unlawfully and unconstitutionally nationalized elections can no longer be used. U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle Suknananin A Joe Biden nominee cited with voter advocacy groups that argued that the recent upgrades to the program called systematic alien verification for entitlements or save database, aggregated Americans sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls. Now, save is the database that Trump has been pushing, suing in fact, suing states to force them to compare their voting roles against that database. But voting rights advocates have long been against that because the federal save database is often, well, not fully up to date.

And it can identify a U.S. citizen as not being a U.S. citizen, even though they have already been naturalized. So it can produce false positives. And if used without further investigation, it can result in people being incorrectly purged from the voting rolls for being non-citizens when they are, in fact, actually citizens. But here the court is blocking use of save, really for an entirely different reason. Quote, all in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote. Judge Sukhnan said in an order explaining the decision, this court cannot stand idly by while that happens. Good. She said Congress had expressly prohibited the government from centralizing Americans' personal identifying information and that the federal agencies that created the SAVE program, quote, knew that the database violates those statutory protections. That's why they keep all the different information for Social Security, separate from the information from the IRS and so on and so forth. And this violated those laws. The decision, as AP reports, it is a major legal setback for Donald Trump in his efforts to use federal agencies to encourage a nationwide crackdown on having non-citizens illegally on state voter rolls. The modified save system. Which critics had referred to as an unlawful, centralized federal database of voter information had been a key pillar of the second election executive order that the Republican president signed earlier this year. The ruling leaves its future uncertain. Well, just give his Supreme Court a few minutes with it. They'll figure out what to do here. James Percival, the General Counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, said of the ruling in a social media post, quote, It's amazing how hard the left will fight to stop us from solving problems that they insist do not exist. Well, no, Jim. Voting rights advocates, which, by the way, are not all from the left, just mostly, sadly, it seems these days. But this isn't a matter of trying to stop you from solving problems they insist do not exist, though it is that too. Because there's zero evidence of any appreciable fraud being carried out by non-citizen voters anywhere in the nation. But what they are trying to do in cases like this is to stop you from creating problems, such as disenfranchising perfectly eligible voters. Or specifically in this case, from unlawfully misusing private information of voters to do so.

And please tell me that you wouldn't have felt the exact same way if Barack Obama or Joe Biden wanted to use the private information of Americans to decide who could or could not cast a vote. Tell me, Republicans. My email address, Bradcast at bradblog.com. Tell me you would be fine with Barack Obama or Joe Biden looking at all the private information and deciding who does or doesn't get to vote. The plaintiffs in this case included the League of Women Voters, oh, those lefties, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, of Pinkos, and five unnamed U.S. citizens. They had alleged that the revamped save program that was put together by Elon Musk and the Doge Bros. that that violated Americans' privacy and voting rights. And yet, it turns out it did. As the judge ruled, quote, the agencies were scrambling to comply with an executive order by Trump aimed at reshaping federal elections, which directed them to create a system for mass voter verification. So they haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data, that they knew to be. unreliable. The plaintiff's attorney said Monday that he sees the judge's ruling as quote and across the board victory and noted the plaintiffs were pleased that the judge's ruling enforced their argument that the federal government does not have implied authority to freely share sensitive data across all of the federal agencies. Mark Johnson, who teaches at the University of Kansas Law School and pursues lawsuits over election laws, said, quote, it couldn't be more clear that the SAVE program violates federal privacy laws. He said an executive order from Donald Trump cannot override a federal law. It's an illegal idea. He said, plus it's a bad idea. In her ruling, Judge Sukhnan said the plaintiffs had shown that the updated system had indeed been identifying some lawful voters as non-citizens, and that states using a quote are actively removing United States citizens from voter roles based on inaccurate information. So see, it's not all bad. In fact, I think it's all good. I think that every positive voting rights ruling like that is good for voting rights, obviously, no matter who or which party it might affect. And I think that every bad voting rights ruling from the corrupted Supreme Court is going to make Americans...

who see themselves on the downside of those rulings work even harder to make sure that they and others like them can, in fact, cast their votes and have them counted this year. And the result, well, it should end up in a bloodbath for the anti-voting, anti-democracy, anti-constitution party, but we will see. There are many dirty tricks. yet left to come. Let's take quick break here and we will come back with a few of those dirty tricks to fraudulently game our elections and you'll never guess which party is doing it. I'm Brad Friedman. You're listening to the Bradcast. The Bradcast and the Green News Report are 100% independent, 100% listeners supported. But we can't do it alone. We need you. Please help us bring real facts to listeners at independent stations around the nation. Please drop by bradblog.com slash donate. That's bradblog.com slash donate. And thanks.

And in fact, they're actually not all that cheap. They're kind of expensive, but Republicans have a whole lot of money thanks to all of those tax cuts. Welcome back to the Bradcast, Brad Friedman from bradblog.com. A Republican-linked group, as Politico describes, it was the sole funder of two... pop-up super PACs that spent more than $4.3 million across a swath of Democratic congressional primaries to support candidates that they see in any event as less electable. As Politico reported over the weekend, Democrats had speculated that the two groups named Real Change Pack and Lead Left. We're actually Republican meddling, as they have spent heavily across Democratic primary races in Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Nebraska, and Maine in recent months. Well, new filings submitted to the Federal Election Commission late Saturday night this past weekend show that both of those groups, Real Change Pack and Lead Left, got all of their money so far. from a group named conservative Americans pack. So the left-leaning pack is actually funded entirely by a conservative group. That's right. Apparently, this is a super PAC. Conservative Americans Pack was founded in 2023. And this cycle has also sent money. In addition to sending money to lead left, they've also sent money to the Senate Leadership Fund. That's the Senate Republicans Super PAC. as well as a host of other Republican groups. The meddling super PACs, real change, and lead left have spent entirely in open Democratic primaries. They have a mixed record of success so far. But really, even succeeding in one election is bad enough, given how, you know, what they're doing amounts to little more than a dirty trick, as I see it. even if our campaign finance laws are now so lax, so non-existent, to be frank, that there's almost nothing other than letting people, you know, know about what's going on, shining a light on this that actually can be done about it for the moment. At least until we have a legitimate government again. And a legitimate Supreme Court, frankly, because it's the Supreme Court rulings that have led us to all of this. In Maine's second U.S. House District, for example, Democratic State Auditor Matt Dunlap.

who benefited from a bit over $500,000 in spending from Real Change Pack, boosting him and attacking one of his primary rivals, he was declared the winner in recent days following a ranked choice voting instant runoff in Maine and will now be the Democrats nominee in a light red seat that they are hoping to hang on to in November. Dunlap A progressive defeated the establishment Democrats' choice for the seat, so I'm not necessarily unhappy about the result here, other than the idea that Republicans are trying to influence the election, Democratic elections, and are doing so with sleazy, fake groups, like one called lead left. trying to influence Democratic primaries. Why not, you know, have conservative Americans pack give the money to or, you know, for or against any particular Democrat that they want? At least we'd know who they are instead of going through all of these, you know, dark money groups to try to hide it. And that seat, by the way, Maine's second house district. That's the House seat where the state's former governor. And at the time, the dumbest governor in the U.S., Paul LePage, is now hoping for a political comeback this year. He's running in the state's second of two U.S. House districts. One is very democratic leaning. The other, however, is very rural. District 2. It's been a bit of a swing district, even as it tends to lean Republican. in presidential races. And in Nebraska, second district lead left spent $435,000 to oppose state senator John Brett Kavanaugh, who in fact lost to political activist Denise Jerome Powell in a very close race in that primary. lead left was opposing John Brett Kavanaugh. Even lead left is a right-wing group. Jerome Powell will now face Republican Brinker Harding in November for a chance to replace retiring GOP rep Don Bacon, just one of three districts that former Vice President Kamala Harris actually won in 2024 that is currently represented by a Republican. perhaps not for long. Jerome Powell, she ran a pack herself in Nebraska supporting women for elected office. She was supported by Emily's List and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. whose affiliated groups combined to spend more than a million dollars for her in the race that pitted them against the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which backed Brett Kavanaugh and was opposed by this right-wing group. As Politico reported back in May, as the results came in, Jerome Powell...

who ended up winning, benefited from millions of dollars in outside spending, quote, both supporting her and attacking Brett Kavanaugh. That came from groups backed by dark money nonprofits or showed signs, characteristics of yes, Republican meddling and now FEC records only after the election. have borne that out. But these sleazy Republican groups, they came up short. They did those two. That was what they wanted. That was the outcome they wanted. They came up short in other races. In fact, Real Change Pack spent more than $650,000 against Navy veteran Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey's 7th District. And lead left spent $1.7 million. Fighting Union Leader Bob Brooks in Pennsylvania's 7th District, and they spent just over $1 million to boost Maureen Galindo. She's a sex therapist who faced criticism over perceived anti-Semitic comments, and these Republican groups were backing her in Texas's 35th District. Galindo ultimately lost. to sheriff's deputy Johnny Garcia. Yeah, now that was one of those that had risen to national attention because of her remarks. And I remember at the time wondering, is this somebody who's actually not really a Democratic candidate, but more boosted by Republicans trying to be spoilers in the race? Well, your concerns were well-founded. Conservative Americans PAC. has received all of its funding so far this year from a Virginia-based nonprofit called the American Prosperity Alliance. And I looked into it a little bit. That group is not apparently aligned with the Koch brothers well-established and funded Americans for Prosperity Group, despite their similar names. But... You see what we've got here. This group called American Prosperity Alliance funds this group called the Conservative American PAC, which then funds these smaller groups called Real Change Pack and Lead Left Pack. And who knows where any of this money actually came from? Because free speech, am I right, Supreme Court? Anyway, this pop-up super PACs notes Politico, which take advantage of timing of FEC reporting deadlines to avoid reporting their sources of funding before primary elections. have become increasingly common in recent years. So they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew that none of this would become official or come to light until after those elections were already done. All right. One more real quickly. Before we take a break, come back with Green News report I mentioned earlier in the show that Republicans at least are beginning to push back a little bit on Donald Trump gently.

As his political power appears to continue to wane, I also mentioned in the previous block that the Republican effort to use that database called Save to try and identify non-citizens unlawfully on the voting rolls and how a federal judge has ordered them to knock it off due to false positives. that could knock legitimate voters off the rolls and has, in fact, and due to privacy concerns. Well, this story also from Politico today sort of combines both of those stories into one. Donald Trump, they write, is about to come face to face with one of his frequent punching bags, Senate Republicans. They might just be in a mood to punch back this time. argues Politico. The president was invited to GOP Senators Wednesday lunch this week to push for his number one priority, the GOP election bill known as the Save America Act, but... Several outgoing Republicans who have clashed with Trump said on Monday that they will be there to deliver a reality check on Wednesday. The bill isn't passing and it's time to move on, they said. Quote, I'm going to be there front and center, said John Cornyn of Texas, who Trump just knocked out of a job in the recent Texas primary elections by endorsing his opponent. That states unspeakably sleazy and criminal attorney general, Ken Paxton. John Cornyn said it will be important if it actually is a constructive exchange of different opinions, and hopefully we can all get on the same page. Right now, we are not in a great place, he said. He recently lost his bid for a fifth term to a Trump-indorce challenger. He reiterated that the votes just are not there to pass that elections bill. He says he's been around long enough and he's been through enough battles and counted enough votes to know that it just doesn't magically occur no matter how much you wish that it would. Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who are also departing the Senate, thanks to Donald Trump, said Monday that they too will be at the closed door lunch and urge Trump to turn the page on the Save America Act. Bill Cassidy said, I'm a co-sponsor, but it doesn't have the vote, so it's time to talk about something else. This after Donald Trump has been telling them he would not sign any other legislation for anything if they didn't pass the Save Act first. He's insisting that Republicans do away with the filibuster in order to pass it, which by the way would be fine by me because...

He called what was his dumb social media. Trump said, anybody who doesn't want to terminate the filibuster is a fool. A very stupid one at that. Oh, a stupid fool. Okay. Well, in fact, Republicans, it would be stupid for them to get rid of the filibuster. Because when it comes to the filibuster, all it does is, you know, it helps them keep Democrats when they're in power from passing stuff that they don't want to see past, like voting rights legislation, protection of abortion, reform of the Supreme Court. The only thing that Republicans give a damn about is increasing taxes or is cutting taxes, which they can do. via the reconciliation process that works around the filibuster and appoint judges, which they've already done away with the filibuster process for that. So, of course, is Donald Trump doing himself in with all of this, but he's not really doing himself in with all of this. What he's doing is creating a whole bunch of scapegoats for this November. If he gets his ass kicked, he can blame it all on those Senate Republicans who wouldn't stop to fight all of those invisible non-citizens from voting. And that's the only reason they left. It's not because Donald Trump is a terrible president. Quick break, and GNR is next.

Hey, this is Bradd, here at the Bradcast and Bradblog.com, we fight for election integrity all year around, like no other media outlet in the nation. But, of course, we need your help to help us remain on your public airwaves and completely independent. Please help us continue that fight over your public airwaves by stopping by Bradblog.com slash donate. And thanks. Welcome back to the Bradcast running late, as usual. Let's get to it. Our latest Green News report. Now that the oil is coming down, you're going to see everything follow. Everything follows the cost of energy. Oil prices gyrate as Trump's Iran deal sputters. Red alerts across a continent, a threat stemming not from terror or political protest, but soaring temperatures. Historic deadly heatwave broils Europe. Plus, Trump administration reverses plan to dismantle critical ocean monitoring network. So it's not all bad? Right. All of those terrible stories and more straight ahead from bradblog.com. I'm Bradfried. And I'm Desi Doyen. Stand by for six minutes of independent green news, politics, analysis, and snarky comment. Also, we run out of reserves in about four weeks, and there'll be a time when you wouldn't be able to. able to get it and you want to see bedlam? No, I don't. If I wanted to see bedlam, I'd watch footage from your insurrection on January 6th. This is your Green News Report.

Okay, Tessie Doyen, now that the war is completely over in Iran and has no chance of ever restarting, and the prices of oil are coming way down, what are you complaining about today? Well, as we go to air, turns out global oil and natural gas prices are actually gyrating again, and the critical strait of Hormuz, the world's most important oil supply choke point is either open or not, with U.S. and Iranian leaders telling conflicting stories as they resume high-stakes talk. aimed at finalizing an agreement to end the war. Donald Trump's renewed threats to obliterate Iran probably didn't help. Shipping experts say the strait is not open in any meaningful way and is nowhere near pre-war levels of transit. Oil industry experts say that the oil really needs to start flowing soon because nations have severely drawn down their strategic stockpiles. Here's oil market expert Dan Dicker on Bloomberg News. That physical market is going to assert itself. in a way that we've never seen asserted itself before. And what that drives, of course, is it drives a price that doesn't go from $75 to $85. It's a price that goes in the space of a month from $75 to $135. When these stockpiles reach the physical reality of the futures markets, you're going to see a spike like you never saw before. We don't see reality anymore in these markets. What is he talking about? Good question. Persian Gulf nations are slowly restarting production in case a concrete deal is reached. But in Qatar, an attempted restart of a massive natural gas facility triggered a massive explosion, killing 18 people and injuring more than 50. Here in the U.S., Washington Post reports that the temporary deal with Iran comes too late for cash-strapped. farmers who have seen their fuel and fertilizer bills soar while also grappling with punishing drought. In other news, in Europe, an unprecedented extreme heat wave has parked over the continent shattering records, particularly hazardous because most of Europe's building stock is not air-conditioned. In France, at least 18 people have died due to the extreme heat. Paris set a new all-time high heat record of 100%. And it's only June. Is it my imagination? Or has this been happening now more and more year after year in Europe? That is not your imagination. It is happening more frequently and more intensively. Here in the U.S., the Midwest is cleaning up after another round of intense storms and severe tornadoes. Illinois has set a new record. Illinois has seen more tornadoes in just the first half of 2026 than in any full year. on record, and it's also only June. Well, congratulations, Illinois. Research shows that man-made climate change is intensifying heat waves and storms, but the influence of climate change on tornadoes is inconclusive, mostly due to lack of data. However, climate studies show that Tornado Alley has shifted away from the plane states because warming temperatures are making the planes hotter and drier. It has instead moved further into the Midwest and south.

where conditions are increasingly more conducive for tornado outbreaks. Some better news in the U.S. Southwest, the biggest clean energy infrastructure project yet built in the United States, the Sunsea Wind Farm and Transmission Line in New Mexico is now fully operational and online, delivering clean, renewable electricity to more than a million customers across the Southwest. Nice. And finally, the Trump administration is abandoning its efforts to dismantle a $370 million ocean monitoring system that is... critical to understanding climate change and marine ecosystems. That comes after bipartisan backlash from Congress. Scientists around the world rely on the ocean observatories initiative to track everything from ocean circulation to extreme weather to commercial fisheries. The Trump administration has been working hard to squash climate research and data as if somehow ignoring climate change will make it go away. It won't? Nope. For much more on all... of those stories and the ones we couldn't get to today, check out our website at greennews.bradblog.com. I'm Brad Friedman. And I'm Desi Doyle. And this has been your Green News Report. Under the Sea. Under the Sea. Darling, it's better down where it's better. Take it from me. Thank you very much, Jesse Doyen, our producer. Thanks to all of you for spending a portion of your day or night with us. If you missed any portion of today's program or any other, download them now from the completely redesigned bradblog.com. While you're there, please consider hitting a donate button to help us stay on your public airwaves. And drop me email if you like. I'm Bradcast at bradblog.com and on the social media's eyes. I am the Brad Blog. See you there. Until we see you here next time tomorrow, primary election results, Maryland, New York, Utah, and South Carolina. I'm Brad Friedman. Good luck, world.