Once again, the debate over capital punishment is raging, driven by the staggering incompetence of Tennessee’s would-be prison executioners, who have repeatedly failed to kill Christa Pike for a murder she committed 30 years ago, and by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s shocking announcement that the military plans to livestream the firing-squad execution of Fort Hood mass shooter Major Nidal Hasan.

Largely missing, as usual, is the question that ought to be paramount in the mind of any citizen considering the wisdom of a government practice or policy: what is the death penalty for?

Clearly, killing killers is not about keeping society safe from convicted murderers. Serial killer Ted Bundy escaped from jail twice in 1977. The 2015 Dannemora break by Richard Matt and David Sweat in upstate New York, Danelo Cavalcante’s escape in Pennsylvania in 2023 and parts of the Texas Seven escape in 2000 all made news precisely because 99.999% of murderers remain behind bars. A 2024 study found that about 91% of overall escapees were back in custody within a year, most within a week.

Proponents repeatedly argue that the ultimate punishment serves as a deterrent. But if you visit a prison and talk to murderers—as I have—you will quickly learn that the vast majority of heinous crimes are committed by young men in their teens and 20s, typically under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, and often driven by the need for money to buy more drugs. By the time these offenders are in their 40s or 50s, they are entirely different people who would never do anything like that again if they were released.

Murder, by the way, has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the criminal justice system.

For a deterrent to work, a person considering a violent act has to be in a reasonably calm and rational state of mind. When Christa Pike and her two accomplices committed murder in the 1990s, she had convinced herself that the victim was plotting to steal her boyfriend. She was a drug addict at the time. It is fair to surmise that she never stopped to consider the possibility that she might end up behind bars, much less subjected to lethal injection. Like most murderers, she did something crazy while she was crazy.

There is no credible evidence that executions prevent murders—by reoffenders or anyone else—that long imprisonment would not prevent. There is also no good evidence for the opposite, liberal claim that executions cause more murders by cheapening life. The data do not support treating deterrence as a demonstrated benefit of the death penalty.

Retribution, then, remains the sole credible justification for executing citizens who commit murder or treason. Some killings are so disgusting, some people believe, that death is the only appropriate punishment. Families of some victims argue that it is an offense to them that their loved one is gone forever while the person who killed that loved one continues to draw breath; they yearn for closure.

Should the feelings of victims’ families trump serious political and ethical considerations—such as whether the state, an entity that is supposed to exemplify, embody, and define the best rather than the worst behavior among human beings, should kill other human beings? We cannot ignore the well-established historical record of a country that repeatedly convicts people of capital offenses, only to determine later that they were innocent all along.

Even if the state were to become incredibly efficient and effective at identifying guilty parties and executing them in a more civilized fashion than in the Pike and Hasan cases, the much-wanted closure argument collapses upon inspection.

A study analyzing news accounts of 138 executions carried out between 2006 and 2011 found that only 31% of relatives quoted said the execution brought closure, healing, or a step toward either, and 35% said they felt it represented justice. About 19% said it brought neither closure nor positive feelings. Thirteen percent said capital punishment was too easy.

A separate 2014 study of relatives who witnessed executions found that only 23% even mentioned closure, and those who did were evenly split on whether they had gotten it.

For those who subscribe to the Old Testament structure requiring an eye for an eye, the justification for state-sanctioned vengeance seems self-evident. If you are a practical American citizen fairly weighing the usefulness of this practice, however, there is not much point to the death penalty.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas.”)

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LIVE 11 am Eastern Fridays, and then streaming whenever you wanna hear/watch it:

Ted sits down with editorial cartoonist Steve Breen to discuss politics and political cartooning.

Steve Breen, 56, was born in Los Angeles and raised in Orange County as the second oldest of eight children. He earned a political science degree from the University of California, Riverside, in 1992. He began drawing cartoons for the campus paper, The Highlander, and in 1991 won the Charles M. Schulz and the John Locher Awards.

He was nearly a high school history teacher when the Asbury Park Press hired him in 1994; he became its editorial cartoonist in 1996 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1998. In 1999 he launched the syndicated strip Grand Avenue. He joined The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2001, won a second Pulitzer in 2009, and left in 2023 after drawing more than 5,500 cartoons. His work remains nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

Steve has also written and illustrated children’s books, including Stick and Violet the Pilot, and created the animated series Powerbirds.

Scott is off today.

Live Fridays at 11 am Eastern/10 am Central. Streaming after on YouTube and the usual podcast apps.

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The post Here Come the Midterms (with Steve Breen) | DMZ America Podcast | Ep 261 appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

LIVE: MWF 9-11 am Eastern time & 9-10 am Tues-Thurs & Streaming Anytime

The firing squad execution of 2009 Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed December 3rd.

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we also discuss:

• Unidentified ICE agents using unmarked cars surrounded a Dominican man and his 5-year-old child in his car in the Marble Hill section of The Bronx and shot him multiple times.

• The Pentagon has developed plans to strike Iran’s drone and missile arsenal, energy facilities and other military sites. But Trump has repeatedly decided not to relaunch heavy combat operations against Iran. And the U.S. military response to Iran has been more muted in recent weeks. Several explosions were heard in the Saudi capital, including one at the Riyadh airport. A recent Congressional Research Service report shows that at least 81 U.S. military aircraft, drones, and helicopters were lost or damaged during the war with Iran—Senator Chris Murphy calls it a cover-up.

• The Trump Administration suspended major tech companies, including Microsoft and Adobe, as well as IT outsourcing firms from a green card program. J.D. Vance said that the companies had “abused” H-1B visa and green card processes in order to “replace American workers with what is effectively foreign indentured servants.” Officials announced probes into 9 universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, that the Administration accused of misusing a program meant for temporary educational and cultural exchanges.

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Customer service has never been worse or more irritating to American consumers, who must suffer countless indignities like A.I. phonemail trees that don’t recognize their voices. The only way out, for those who are willing to publicize their plight, is to go public on social media.

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Live at 9 AM Eastern & Streaming 24-7 Thereafter:

• Israeli settler-terrorists attacked and fired at two Agence France-Presse journalists as they were reporting on settler violence against Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank. Photographers Jaafar Ashtiyeh and John Wessels were taking pictures of an IDF soldier detaining a man when a driver on a quad bike opened fire with at least six other colonists and stole their camera equipment. Ashtiyeh tried to escape into a car marked “Press,” but two men assaulted him and beat him with the butts of their rifles.

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM Eastern time.

Today we also discuss:

• María del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whose eviction from her home two weeks ago prompted widespread protests in Spain and spurred the prime minister to call national elections, died.

• Italian lawmakers approved a law that awards bonus seats in Parliament to election winners, a move supporters say will help prevent governments from collapsing and that detractors denounce as unconstitutional and antidemocratic. Championed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had threatened to resign should the legislation not pass, the new law gives a bonus to the winning party or coalition of an election: 70 seats in the lower house of Parliament and 35 in the Senate, provided the party or coalition reaches 42 percent in both houses. Italy has a 600-seat Parliament, with 400 seats in the lower house and 200 seats in the Senate.

• Krista Pike is talking and walking. Maj. Nidal Hasan will be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood, Texas, on Dec. 3, for fatally shooting 13 people and wounding 32 in 2009 at the same base. Gov. Gavin Newsom is seriously considering whether to spare the lives of all 563 prisoners on death row in California as one of his final acts in office.

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IVE: MWF 9-11 am Eastern time & 9-10 am Tues-Thurs & Streaming Anytime

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• As the Gaza War begins its fourth year, Israel has lost. Israelis are reeling from new revelations in Israeli and U.S. media that the country had been repeatedly warned by its regional allies that Hamas was planning to attack. The war has lifting public debt. Lost output, reserve call-ups, and the departure of about 100,000 skilled Israelis have strained the economy. Hamas is not disarmed, and Israel’s diplomatic isolation has deepened: Palestinian recognitions, settlement sanctions, ICC warrants, arms-embargo pressure, and much less support in Europe and the U.S. What happens next?

• Former CIA officer David J. Rush pleaded guilty in Alexandria, Virginia, to one count of wire fraud that could bring up to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors said his schemes exceeded $193 million: a fake classified program used to buy about $145 million in Palm Beach luxury real estate, 298 gold bars costing the government more than $46 million, and roughly $1.8 million in unjustified charter flights. He also admitted disclosing a clandestine human source to a foreign official. Sentencing is set for January.

• The European Commission proposed measures to prepare the EU to take in countries such as Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova in coming ​years. The proposals by the European Union’s executive body reflect a renewed interest among EU members in expanding the 27-nation bloc. The proposed ⁠reforms include a measure ⁠to allow other EU countries to suspend a new member’s voting rights during the first 15 years of membership if it stops adhering to the bloc’s values

• Trump’s plan to fence in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House would deter the free speech activities that have long defined the seven-acre park and make it easier for the administration to curb protests at will. It is the latest example of President Trump’s use of executive measures and legal maneuvers to clamp down on dissent.

• Christa Pike, who survived two doses of a lethal injection drug during a botched execution in Tennessee, is conscious and speaking. The prognosis remains unclear, they said, but lawyers expect a long recovery. Pike, 50, is believed to be the first person to have survived doses of a lethal injection drug.

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After World War II, the United States argued at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials—and directly to the German people themselves—that the whole nation bore collective responsibility and guilt for the crimes of Nazi Germany because, despite the risks of resistance in a totalitarian state, they could and should have risen up and overthrown Adolf Hitler. Now the same country, the United States, cannot even be bothered to hold a single substantial protest when its out-of-control president threatens to use nuclear weapons against Iran, despite the fact that Iran poses no danger to us.

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Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• Trump said the U.S. is willing to help Russia after the State Department announced it was monitoring a reportedly fatal case of “pneumonia of an unknown etiology”—pneumonic plague—linked to a Russian plague research laboratory in Irkutsk Oblast.

• 1,800 high schools and 90% of universities in France are currently blockaded or closed. The wave of protests started with 15 to 18-year-old lycéens and has now spread to their parents, university students and the biggest union, the CGT. The Interior Ministry estimates about 86,000 protesters have taken to the streets across France, not including the Paris region.

• Leaders in California have denounced Donald Trump as “reckless” and “deranged” after the US president suggested Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Trump’s approval rating at a record-low 32%. That polling included the president losing support among independent voters and Latinos, who had backed him in 2024.

• China has opened its first overseas air force base in its home continent of Asia—in Laos—where the US already maintains several military bases and access arrangements, marking a new phase in Beijing’s military expansion nearly a decade after establishing its first overseas military base in Djibouti, Africa, in 2017.

• The German federal prosecutor’s office announced it had detained the former spy chief, August Hanning, 80 — who led Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, from 1998 to 2005 — but did not say which foreign countries he was accused of spying for. Adding to the drama was the revelation that the investigation had origins in an alleged attempt by a German steakhouse heiress to kidnap her children from her estranged husband.

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Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• Polls predict a major defeat for Republicans as voters angry about the economy prepare to hand the House and Senate back to Democrats. Yet Trump continues rallying for Republican candidates while visiting Ohio, proposing a defiant outlook on his party’s chances in the November 3 midterm elections. Trump told a rally in Vandalia, Ohio, that he believes there will be a “big surprise” in the upcoming elections, claiming his Democratic opponents do not know what is happening.

• Wanying “Heather” Zhang, an Irvine, California, realtor, was arrested by the FBI yesterday before she boarded a flight to Shanghai from LAX, on a charge of acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. Zhang and an accomplice stand accused of traveling to Seattle, Washington, in September 2025 and taking pictures at the suburban home of Ting-Yu Lai, the son of Taiwanese President Ching-Te Lai.

• The Supreme Court considers whether the case of Boulder, Colo., which is suing two big energy companies, Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil, arguing they deceived people about the harms of fossil fuels and contributed to disasters that cost Boulder a lot of time and money, may move forward.

• Authorities in the United Arab Emirates shared with Israel a list of passengers and crew ahead of the FlyDubai flight on which a pilot attempted to seize control of the Israel-bound aircraft and crash it, regional officials said Sunday, raising new questions over how the attacker evaded detection.

• As programmers make more and more use of generative AI in the workplace, their responsibilities are quickly transitioning from creating new products from scratch to babysitting a large language model that cobbles together code. It’s gotten to the point where some engineers are no longer able to make sense of the code being spat out by an AI.

•  NASA asked contractors to prepare to build a nuclear reactor that could survive a space voyage and run without maintenance near the moon’s south pole. That may sound like science fiction, but the agency wants it ready to be launched by December 2030. Russia aims to have a lunar reactor running by 2036 as part of a secretive partnership with China. The United States and China want to be first to establish a moon base, to search for resources like frozen water and to launch missions deeper into the solar system. Both superpowers believe a nuclear reactor is the centerpiece of this ambition.

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The U.S. war against Iran, and the resulting closing of the Strait of Hormuz, exposes America’s Achilles’ heel—its dependence on foreign oil and gas—more starkly than ever before. Looking back at previous examples of the supposedly “invincible” American military, perhaps the adversaries destroyed by the United States should have found some way to hit us where it hurts: at the gas pump.

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Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• Murtaza Hussain, senior national security and foreign affairs journalist at Drop Site News, joins “Deprogram” to discuss the latest reporting on the US massacre of schoolchildren and educators at Minab during the opening days of the Israeli/US war against Iran.

• Tennessee’s prison chief, Frank Strada, presided over the fifth “botched” execution under his leadership across two states since 2022. Krista Pike, 50, was heard choking and struggling an hour after receiving the first injection of pentobarbital, a sedative, and after a second dose failed to kill her, she was hospitalized in critical condition.

• Riot police clashed with high school students across France on Friday and unions called for teachers to strike as President Emmanuel Macron’s government battled to contain increasingly violent protests over classroom conditions and education funding. Tear gas choked the streets in the eastern city of Strasbourg, ​fireworks were aimed at ‌police lines in Marseille in the south and rubbish bins set ablaze in Rennes in the west. Rights groups have accused the police of using heavy-handed tactics against minors, including the use of batons, tear gas and non-lethal flash-ball guns.

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IVE: MWF 9-11 am Eastern time & 9-10 am Tues-Thurs & Streaming Anytime

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• Christa Pike is in critical condition and receiving “lifesaving care” at a hospital, after two failed attempts to execute her using the drug Tennessee (tries to) use to kill prisoners.

• National protests by French high-school students over long hours (8am-6pm), teacher shortages and decaying facilities has escalated into “urban violence”, the French government warns, as many schools switch to online classes.

• A new AP-NORC poll is the latest ugly data point for Trump. It showed Americans disapprove of the president on cost-of-living by a stunning margin: 82% to 17%. That’s more than disapproved of presidents for wars gone wrong, botched crisis responses and even major scandals like Watergate. Trump faces a map where “the fires are everywhere,” and Democrats are competitive in states such as Alaska, Iowa and Kansas, all of which voted for Trump by double-digit margins in 2024.

• The Supreme Court will consider whether immigrants subject to deportation can be held in detention indefinitely while their cases are adjudicated. The focus is whether such immigrants should have a chance to be released while the deportation process moves forward, which was standard practice under previous presidents.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues his strident campaign of misdirection and outright denial of the facts in the Middle East conflict at the United Nations General Assembly. You have to give him credit for moxie, if nothing else.

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Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• Crisis in Romania: After the PSD Socialists joined with the right-wing AUR to bring down Liberal Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan’s coalition, in protest at austerity, Bucharest parliamentarians turned down independent moderate President Nicușor Dan’s candidate MEP Mureșan and now PM Siegfried Mureșan’s attempt to form a government. A snap election would likely benefit the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) party.

• Tortured by Tennessee: A woman convicted of murder survived two doses of lethal injection last night before state officials gave up and had her taken to a hospital. It was the second botched execution in the state this year. The horrifying fiasco came after dueling court rulings delayed the execution of the woman, Christa Pike, by nine hours.

• SkyNet: The Pentagon is creating a new Autonomous Warfare Command to oversee the military’s push into autonomous warfare.

• Resistance: The FBI is charging a Michigan nurse, Chloe Renae Freeman, 33, accused of illegally helping an undocumented immigrant, who was being treated in a hospital, escape from immigration officials. She faces 1 year in prison and $100,000 fine.

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It’s that time again, and I know you’re excited: time to start handicapping the 2028 presidential campaign.

First, for my left-of-the-Democrats readers—in other words, my fellow travelers—a disclaimer: handicapping the dancing bears of electoral democracy should never be construed as an endorsement of the two-party trap, the Democratic Party in particular, capitalism, or the current system. Those things suck and should be destroyed. I do this for the same reason sports fans try to predict which list of current players wearing the uniform of a city they’ve never lived in will defeat which other team. Like sports, American politics is fake and corrupt and relies on blind team loyalty, and it’s fun to predict the outcome.

Okay.

This time, I’m turning my attention to the contest for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.

The person to beat, I believe, is former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

As we know from the past, even the best of the exceedingly bad candidates who have a shot at major-party presidential nominations enjoy no advantage whatsoever. Electoral politics is determined by process of elimination. Whoever survives scandals—and has the fewest, least serious, and shortest-lasting scandals and gaffes—will prevail.

First, let’s dispose of major women pundits will claim are in the running, but who really are not: AOC, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is too young. Clinton is retired and has been clear that she isn’t coming back. Harris has made none of the overtures to major fundraisers, put out a new policy book, or appeared at the kind of public gatherings one would expect from someone exploring a run. Which is smart, because she would likely perform even worse in the general election than she did last time. The progressive wing of the party hasn’t forgiven her for failing to confront Israel and its genocide in Gaza; the corporate types think she ran an incompetent campaign and had no charisma.

Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Jon Ossoff of Georgia don’t stand a chance with the progressive base because of their support for the regime of Benjamin Netanyahu. Reports that J.B. Pritzker of Illinois is slimming down with Ozempic or whatever aside, he’s too ugly for television and the internet to run for president. Governor Andy Beshear has the temperament, clean record, and ability to bring the populist and corporate wings of the party together, but it’s hard to imagine anyone from Kentucky becoming a major player in a game where electoral votes are king—though I can easily see him as a vice-presidential running mate.

Arizona’s Mark Kelly is beloved by the media but not the people; he’s the kind of weasel who can’t stop talking about the dangers of an Iranian nuclear weapons program even as he claims to oppose Trump’s war.

Any of the remaining boldface names are major contenders who could wind up with the nomination.

Third most likely to win, I think, is Gavin Newsom. Like John McCain in 2008, however, I think he’s about eight to twelve years past his expiration date. His main problem is California: Democrats are going to win those 54 electoral votes no matter what. Worse than that, the Golden State is no longer the loopy, albeit trend-setting, colossus it was during the 1970s and 1980s under Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. Los Angeles and San Francisco currently have a fairly well-deserved reputation as filthy, dangerous, corrupt, wildly dysfunctional, and hopeless. Fairly or not, a governor will always be judged by the economic and social health of the state of which he served as executive. (Bill Clinton was an exception in 1992; had the national press bothered to visit Little Rock, he never would have stood a chance.)

No one, moreover, knows what Newsom believes or stands for. That’s a problem when you’ve been in national politics as long as he has. Right now, the only thing we can say about him is that he’s kind of good at trolling Donald Trump on social media—pretty useless in a cycle when the only thing people are going to care about is the economy.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan is my pick for second likeliest to prevail. She has undeniable leadership tone, gravitas, and—important for a woman—voters, including men, could probably imagine seeing her on their television sets for the following four to eight years. Voting is a casting call more than anything else.

I would put her first over Mayor Pete if not for two factors. First, the Democratic Party has run two women, both of whom have lost. Electability is going to be at the front of Democratic voters’ minds when they head to the primary polls. And there’s the silly kidnapping plot, which, to be charitable, doesn’t hold a lot of water. The truth is, it was a clear case of entrapment, and she was in about as much danger as my cat, but the problem here is that she continues to talk up this silly episode, even laying it at Trump’s feet. Had she shut up about it over the past few years, she’d have an even chance with Buttigieg. If she becomes a serious contender, she’d better be prepared for some tough questions during a Democratic debate.

Now I can hear you thinking: Pete Buttigieg? Really? He seems so… insubstantial. After all these years of the overweight, bombastic attention slut Donald Trump, I have a feeling many voters will be in the mood for someone with the exact opposite personality: cautious, well-spoken, articulate, a little intellectual—the opposite of butch.

Particularly after two-term presidents, Americans tend to switch personality types in what political scientists call the pendulum effect. Bush the preppy fake yokel was the opposite of Bill Clinton the trailer-trash Ivy Leaguer; the cold-fish Obama was the opposite of the spastic Bush; Trump couldn’t have been more different from Obama.

Buttigieg, of course, would be making a kind of history that will require him to overcome some historical prejudice: he’s gay. Remember, though, I’m not handicapping the general election, only the Democratic primaries. And Democratic voters love to feel like they’re making history, even if they lose while doing it: Geraldine Ferraro, the first female vice-presidential contender in 1984; Obama; Hillary; Kamala. (Bernie would have been the first Jewish nominee, but it was his willingness to actually care about the real problems of ordinary people that did him in with the DNC, not his faith.)

An important factor in the deliberations of both the ruling elites and ordinary Democratic primary voters: J.D. Vance, the likely Republican nominee. They’re going to want and need someone at least as smart as Vance in the debates. I probably wouldn’t vote for Buttigieg in the general election or in the primary, for that matter, but I bet he could hold his own against Ohio’s favorite son (who pretends to be from Kentucky by way of West Virginia).

So right now, it’s Pete Buttigieg’s nomination to lose. He’s got something for everyone except, as usual, progressives. The identity-politics crowd will love the fact that he’s gay and sort of a combat veteran; he doesn’t talk about it much, though. Corporate donors will feel safer with a straight-presenting gay guy than a straight woman. As for the lefties, he’s smart enough to know not to say too many of the wrong things (I doubt he’ll support Israel in any meaningful way, if at all), even if he doesn’t say many of the right things about Medicare for All or a $25-an-hour minimum wage.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas.”)

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Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• Caving to right-wing Zionists, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani releases a report claiming that American Jews have reported a marked rise in antisemitism in the past decade. It also states that antisemitism, and acts of antisemitic violence, have grown in recent years. It makes no mention of acts motivated by anti-Israel sentiment since the war in Gaza began. In fact, there is no data supporting these claims, which conflate criticism of Israel with ant-Semitism.

• Excerpts of text messages reportedly exchanged by a defendant in the Cornell University gang-rape case and the woman who claims she was assaulted were reportedly sent within days of the alleged October 2024 assault at a campus fraternity house in which a female student said she was drugged and repeatedly raped over the course of seven hours by multiple men who were alerted to her presence on the social media platform Snapchat. The texts highlight the complications that have often presented themselves in investigations centering on rape on college campuses in the US.

• Trump sought to loot Venezuelan gold to the United States to be refined. As a consequence of the administration’s hasty approach, all that gold — hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth — sits untouched in warehouses. Refiners would need to guarantee, under international rules, that the gold has not funded gangs, environmental destruction or corruption.

• The Supreme Court allows Trump to resume rapidly deporting immigrants to countries other than their own. Meanwhile, ICE is preparing for another hiring surge to support President Trump’s deportation campaign, with a goal of bringing on 5,000 new employees by the end of the year.

• The Trump administration is preparing to add a question on next year’s tax returns asking people whether they are a citizen or legally authorized to work in the US, expanding an attempt to cut tax refunds for legal immigrants or push them out of the tax system entirely—trapping them as tax evaders.

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The post NYC Mayor Targets Fictional Anti-Semitism | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Trump is famous for his lies, but increasingly he is not only lying about matters of little or no importance; he is lying when telling the truth would be more personally and politically advantageous.

The post The Lie Master appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

LIVE: MWF 9-11 am Eastern time & 9-10 am Tues-Thurs & Streaming Anytime

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• A theft by the criminal hacking group ShinyHunters of reams of sensitive personal data involving potentially tens of thousands of former and current F.B.I. employees is emerging as one of the worst breaches of sensitive government information, leaving the bureau scrambling as an uncertain deadline loomed.

• Counterterrorism police in Britain say that 5 men arrested Sunday near an air base were being released on bail, in what officials originally said was a major incident involving a possible terrorist act. “Deprogram” called it yesterday.

• A person who said they had spoken with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed and another person who said they had been briefed by someone on the call between the two leaders told The New York Times that the Emirati leader had reported to Netanyahu that Hamas was preparing a major attack. The warning from the Emirati leader, however, never reached the leaders of Israel’s security establishment.

• Soon after returning to office, Trump signed an executive order directing that imprisoned trans women be housed in men’s facilities. It also barred transgender inmates from receiving gender transition medical treatments for gender dysphoria. Lower courts blocked the policy. Now Trump is asking the Supreme Court to let it move forward.

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The post I Die (for the FBI) | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

LIVE: MWF 9-11 am Eastern time & 9-10 am Tues-Thurs & Streaming Anytime

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• A growing number of Republicans scramble to disown the costly Iran war. Trump’s conflict has sent the prices of gasoline, diesel and heating oil upward, and cost increases have spilled across the economy. Mortgage rates have also climbed to 7%, squeezing the struggling housing market.

• Trump rejects Iran’s recent proposal to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz because the president thinks Washington has more to gain by waiting than by accepting Tehran’s terms at this moment. Tehran, meanwhile, also is no rush to cut a deal.

• British police arrests 5 men on suspicion of preparing acts of terrorism after receiving a call about 3 suspicious vehicles headed toward an air force base used by the American military, R.A.F. Fairford, to deploy some of its largest bombers.

• Protesters outraged by the eviction of an 87-year-old woman camped overnight in Madrid’s historic Puerta del Sol plaza, where more demonstrators — including multigenerational families — joined them for a second day of protests over Spain’s housing crisis. Abascal issued a video recorded from her hospital bed after the eviction. Images of the eviction spread widely across Spain, fueling outrage and criticism of public authorities and real estate investment companies accused of pricing residents out of their homes. Critics often refer to such companies as “vulture funds.”

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LIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShow

https://x.com/tedrall

https://x.com/JamarlThomas

#tedrall #jamarlthomas #news #politics

The post GOP Running Scared of Trump’s War | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

President Trump delivered a startling speech at the United Nations General Assembly in which he threatened to annihilate Iran with nuclear weapons. Even more shocking, journalists and international statesmen largely greeted this insane outburst with a shrug.

The post Just Trump Being Trump appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.