Current poverty (living below half the median income in a given year) is associated with approximately 183,000 deaths among Americans aged 15+ per year (about 6.5% of total deaths in that age group). Cumulative/long-term poverty (persistent over 10 years) is associated with around 295,000 deaths in the same year (about 10.5% of deaths), making it the fourth-leading contributor to mortality, behind heart disease, cancer, and smoking. This places poverty ahead of factors like obesity, diabetes, drug overdoses, suicides, firearms, accidents, stroke, and homicide.

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LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss:

• ICE Queen Kristi Noem is out at Homeland Security. Not because she unleashed thugs on Americans or covered up their murders. Because she blamed Trump for her own self-aggrandizing ad campaign and got caught in her on-the-job affair. Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma will replace her. And what’s this Shield of the Americas thing she’s going to do next?

• 1,300 Iranians have been killed by the U.S. and Israel. The death toll from Israeli attacks on Lebanon rose to at least 123, as a new wave of strikes pounded the Lebanon and Hezbollah warned Israeli residents to evacuate towns within 3 miles of their northern border. Yesterday, Israel threatened residents that they should leave Beirut’s southern suburbs, prompting a huge exodus from a swath of the capital’s densely populated area known as Dahiyeh, home to half a million Lebanese.

• Trump tells Axios he needs to be personally involved in selecting Iran’s next leader—just as he was in Venezuela. Khameini Jr. is pre-nixed. Freedom, it seems, isn’t very free.

• No money for high-speed rail, new schools, the homeless, or healthcare subsidies—but the U.S. government has $2 billion a day for the Iran War.

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LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss the US/Israeli War Against Iran:

• The U.S. bombing of the Iranian elementary school that killed 165 people, many of them schoolgirls, included more targets near the school than has been initially reported. Satellite images suggest that the school was hit as part of an airstrike on a neighboring military complex — and that it may have been struck as a result of outdated targeting information. Satellite images show that the school and clinic buildings were both once part of the base. The school was separated from the base by a wall between 2013 and 2016. The clinic was walled off between 2022 and 2024. Did the U.S. ignore signs of scores of girls going to class?

• Did the U.S. commit a war crime by torpedoing an uninvolved Iranian frigate, IRIS Dena, returning from a diplomatic visit to India, in the Indian Ocean, and failing to rescue its crew—something Nazi U-boat commanders did during World War II until the Laconia incident?

• Europe is transferring assets from Ukraine to the Mideast as rising oil prices benefit Russia’s economy. Are the U.S. and Israel indirectly defeating Ukraine?

• Likely 2028 presidential contender Gavin Newsom, criticized Israel, suggesting that the U.S. should reconsider its military support for the country, which he compared to an apartheid state.

Also:

•  The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed attorney general Pam Bondi, to testify about the Epstein files. The 24 to 19 vote was a rebuke to the Trump administration.

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LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss the US/Israeli War Against Iran:

• Iran’s overriding goal is regime survival amid overwhelming military superiority from the United States and Israel. Rather than seeking outright victory, Tehran aims to impose high costs on President Trump—through American casualties, surging global energy prices, inflation, and economic disruption—to pressure him into declaring victory and withdrawing. Iran pursues asymmetric endurance by expanding the battlefield regionally: targeting oil/gas infrastructure in Gulf neighbors, attempting to close the Strait of Hormuz (disrupting ~20% of world oil/gas flows), limiting air traffic, and depleting expensive missile interceptors with cheap drones.

• If war is good for business, what’s going on? The New York Times reported that Iranian operatives have sued for peace to the CIA. U.S. stock index futures edged higher after a major sell-off, but $75/barrel oil fuels worries about global inflation. Financial expert Aquiles Larrea joins us to discuss the economic impact of the war.

•  The son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mojtaba Khamenei, is the front-runner to rule Iran.

Also:

• Texas Two-Time? Aggressive Democrat Jasmine Crockett is claiming election cheating—credibly—as her huge 56-44 polling lead evaporated overnight into a 53-46 loss to moderate James Talarico. Why? The Supreme Court against her campaign’s request to give voters from Dallas County an extension to sort out confusion about Republican-led changes to polling locations. The GOP side heads to a runoff.

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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sports neo-Nazi tattoos yet holds a top job in the cabinet. ICE officers routinely murder, rape, and assault people they kidnap, with impunity. Prisoners who commit the same crimes must be wondering whether they can get jobs working for the government.

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It’s common sense, Republicans say. You have to show ID to buy a beer, board a plane, or land a job as a snow shoveler. Why not require proof of identity from those who seek to exercise our most sacred civic right, casting a vote?

According to the polls, the GOP has won the argument. Most Americans favor a Voter ID law.

What Republicans are currently pressing for, the SAVE Act, however, is not a Voter ID law, a requirement that registered voters prove who they are when they go to the polls. SAVE is a Prove You’re a Citizen law.

Why is the GOP pushing SAVE? Republican voters will be hit hardest. Clearly, neither President Trump nor the Republican Party knows what’s good for them.

A Voter ID law—something most states, especially red ones currently have—passes the common-sense test for most Americans because it requires a form of identity nine out of ten people have, or can obtain fairly easily, like a driver’s license or non-driver’s state identification card. Some states even take non-photo IDs. Voter ID laws have been promoted by Republicans primarily because they limit or eliminate mail-in voting, which they wrongly assume benefits Democrats.

The SAVE Act goes much further than Voter ID. In an attempt to improve Republican candidates’ chances under the guise of protecting voting integrity, it tries to disenfranchise Democratic voters.

Ironically, it will have the opposite effect.

Voter ID attempts to verify who you are. SAVE requires you to show proof of citizenship in the form of a passport or a birth certificate with your current name on it. (Non-citizens can get a driver’s license.) Far more Democrats have proof of citizenship than Republicans.

Fewer than half of U.S. citizens hold a passport. For these elites, the SAVE Act would be a breeze. 64% of Americans with a household income above $100,000 have a passport, while only 21% of those earning under $50,000 do. Upper-middle-class voters lean Democratic; poor ones lean Republican.

Roughly half of Trump 2024 voters have passports, compared to two-thirds of Harris voters.  The 13 states with the lowest passport rates all voted Republican in 2024. Congressional districts with low passport ownership are overwhelmingly GOP-held, rural and/or southern. Rural voters (a GOP stronghold) face longer drives to election offices for in-person verification. Older voters, military personnel, tribal citizens, and working-class Americans—Republican-leaning demographic groups—are less likely to have the required documents.

A substantial number of voters don’t have a physical copy of their birth certificate. Research by the Brennan Center “indicates that more than 9% of American citizens of voting age, or 21.3 million people, don’t have proof of citizenship readily available. There are myriad reasons for this—the documents might be in the home of another family member or in a safety deposit box. And at least 3.8 million don’t have these documents at all, often because they were lost, destroyed, or stolen.”

Poor voters—who vote Republican—live more disorganized, mobile lives. They’re less likely to know where their birth certificate is, how to obtain a new one, or be motivated to find out.

SAVE would effectively repeal women’s suffrage. “84 percent of women who marry change their surname, meaning as many as 69 million American women do not have a birth certificate with their legal name on it and thereby could not use their birth certificate to prove citizenship,” notes the Center for American Progress. “The SAVE Act makes no mention of being able to show a marriage certificate or change-of-name documentation.”

Women who change their names—twice as likely to be Republican—would have to present themselves at their county board of elections office, which is only open during business hours, when most people work.

There, local election workers—overwhelmed by a sudden surge of applicants—would have to sort through each individual’s marriage and divorce decrees and other miscellany to determine whether Mrs. Jane Doe, née Jane Smith, is eligible to vote. Given that SAVE mandates a fine and prison time for an election official who wrongly allows someone to vote, even someone who is a citizen but without the right documents, the path of least resistance for a beleaguered, poorly-paid local election clerk would be to reject rather than approve name-change voters, including trans people.

After decades of easing voting with same-day registration, automatic registration with driver’s license renewals, early and mail-in voting, SAVE would make voting much harder. Many people will choose not to vote rather than jump through so many bureaucratic hoops for the right to choose between a center-left and center-right party, neither of which delivers for them. Here is the purpose of SAVE—to radically reduce the number of voters.

Most of whom, hilariously, are Republican.

It’s bizarre that the Right is fighting for SAVE. Democratic worries about discouraging working-class voters are sweet but run counter to their interests. As the 2024 election proved, poor and lower-middle-class voters are no longer theirs to lose. If Democrats were smart, they’d be the party pushing the SAVE Act—or getting out of its way.

The GOP wants SAVE because they haven’t internalized the class reversal in the American electorate. Republicans have become the party of the working poor (even if they don’t care about them) while Democrats are now the party of coastal elites (though they pretend to champion Joe and Jane Sixpack).

If passed, and signed into law, the SAVE Act is likely to backfire for its Republican sponsors in the same way that Trump’s advice to MAGA followers not to use write-in ballots contributed to his loss in 2020.

(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 John Kiriakou.”)

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LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss the US/Israeli War Against Iran:

• Once again, the U.S. has decapitated the leadership of a country without a reasonable plan to fill the power vacuum it created. Trump tells Iranians to “take over your government,” but there’s no organized opposition. “The plan,” a German official worries aloud, “is to have no plan.”

• Escalation: Israel, the U.S. and Iran are poised to hit more targets with more powerful weapons. At least 787 Iranians and 6 Americans have died.

• Iran threatens to blow up ships attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, a major oil-exporting nation, watches oil prices soar. Gas prices are already rising. Today will be a rough day on Wall Street. Financial expert Aquiles Larrea joins us to discuss the economic impact of the war.

• Marco Rubio explains the “imminent threat” behind the war: Israel, he says, was going to attack. Iran would have retaliated against US bases. Why didn’t he tell Israel not to attack, or notify Iran of the danger from Israel?

Also:

• In Texas John Cornyn, a four-term incumbent, is facing off against the state’s attorney general, scandal-plagued MAGA darling Ken Paxton.

Democrats are facing a choice between Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who plays to the party’s base, and state representative James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian preaching a blend of Christianity and liberal values.

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Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss the US/Israeli War Against Iran:

• Iran was more prepared for war than the Trump administration anticipated, U.S. officials admit. Three American service members were killed and five seriously wounded by Iran at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. Flights across the Middle East came to a standstill after Iran struck at least four airports, including Dubai. Bahrain sustained minimal damage from a drone. Airports in both Kuwait and the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Irbil, were also hit. Iran hit Zayed Port in Abu Dhabi, where the French navy has a base. Two drones struck a port in Duqm, a port town in Oman. An Iranian bomb struck a shelter in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, killing at least nine people. Residential towers in Bahrain were also hit. Kuwait accidentally shot down three F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets—$100 million each—down late last night. Six crew members ejected.

• The war expanded into Lebanon after Hezbollah claimed a rocket and drone attack on Israel. Israel struck the group’s HQ in Beirut and targeted weapons storage facilities. PM Keir Starmer is reversing his decision to bar the U.S. from using U.K. bases. The war has only sped up the deterioration of the trans-Atlantic relationship.

• Trump is publicly warning Americans to gird for a sustained, costly war.“Sadly, there will likely be more [U.S. deaths] before it ends,” the president said. “America will avenge their deaths and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against, basically, civilization.”

• Oil futures surged. Brent crude, the international benchmark, spiked 6.2% to trade at $77 a barrel, having briefly surpassed $82 earlier in the trading session. Meanwhile, stock futures fell. Futures for the S&P 500, the Nasdaq and the Dow were all down more than 1%. But Exxon and Chevron shares rose pre-market. Defense stocks, like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, were also up strongly.

Also:

• Pakistan bombed Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The Taliban is firing at Pakistani fighter jets over Kabul.

• A man who fatally shot two people and wounded 14 others at a popular bar on Austin’s Sixth Street, 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, wore a hoodie that read “Property of Allah” over a T-shirt bearing an Iranian flag.

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The post The Republic Strikes Back | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The Washington Post reports that Trump’s allies are encouraging him to declare a national state of emergency using alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election. The pretext would be used to nationalize the midterm elections this fall—which are constitutionally supposed to be run by the states—with ICE guarding and potentially blocking polling stations. It’s essentially a putsch attempt, or soft coup.

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Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss the US/Israeli War Against Iran:

• In the run-up to the U.S. and Israeli attacks, the CIA assessed that if Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated along with other top officials—which he was yesterday—he could be replaced by hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, though its commander died yesterday. An interim council led by Ayatollah Alireza Arafi was announced today.

• Insiders tell The New York Times the Trump Administration’s maximalist demands, along with constantly shifting priorities and Israel’s refusal to believe Iran on anything, doomed negotiations from the start.

• Only 21% of Americans support the war.

• Trump is largely in hiding.

• Oil futures are soaring.

• Key members of Congress are pushing a war powers resolution. “Has President Trump learned nothing from decades of U.S. meddling in Iran and forever wars in the Middle East?” said Sen. Tim Kaine. House Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie are demanding a public vote. Massie said: “This is not ‘America First.’”

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The US and Israel launched strikes on Iran after what the Israeli military said was months of “close and joint planning.” Israel said its strikes targeted Iran’s supreme leader, president and head of the armed forces. The US is planning for several days of attacks. President Donald Trump described the US military campaign as “massive and ongoing,” warned American lives may be lost, and called on Iranians to “take over your government.” Iran launched an unprecedented wave of strikes toward Israel and US targets across the Middle East. Explosions were reported in the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar and in Dubai, where all flights to and from airports have been suspended. The attacks sparked global responses. The leaders of some US allies expressed concern, while some Arab nations condemned Iran’s retaliation.

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Today we discuss:

• America’s least popular government agency, ICE, is under fire after another wild day of brutality. Another Columbia student was illegally abducted from campus housing by agents, with no warrant, who used fake NYPD badges and a forged NYPD missing persons poster to lie their way past university security. Reuters reports that ICE is hiring career criminals and members of violent street gangs as they lower standards and skip vetting procedures, as the top federal judge in Minnesota threatened to jail ICE officers who routinely defy court orders. A nearly blind refugee from ethnic violence in Myanmar, a father of two, died after Border Patrol goons dumped him at a Buffalo doughnut shop and he tried to walk home five miles in arctic weather, after BCE confiscated the cane he needed to walk.

• “Open War Between Us”: Pakistan bombed Kabul and Kandahar and assaulted Taliban border posts.

• Anthropic, which created Claude AI, will not allow the Pentagon to use it for fully autonomous armed drones or AI-assisted mass surveillance that could track dissent. Pete Hegseth is giving Anthropic until 5 pm today to cave in, or he’ll take it for free under the Defense Production Act.

• For the third year in a row, Israel is the top killer of journalists who have managed not to get laid off.

• Texas airspace was closed after the DoD used a high-energy laser to shoot down a HomeSec drone near El Paso.

• The Washington Post reports that activists with close ties to the White House are urging Trump to declare a national emergency to justify to placing midterm elections under his control, with mail-in voting canceled and ICE “protecting” polling stations.

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Protests against ICE prompted Republicans to revive their hoary 1960s-era complaints—utterly unsourced and demonstrably false—that protesters are “outside agitators” paid to march around and get beaten up by the police.

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Today we discuss:

• Filet of Pigs: Four US-based Cuban nationals who entered Cuban waters on a US-registered speedboat have been shot dead by border patrol after the speedboat’s armed passengers opened fire on a coast guard vessel. Six additional passengers were wounded. Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied the infiltration was a US covert operation. James Uthmeier, Florida’s attorney general, said he would direct local law enforcement to investigate the incident. “The Cuban government cannot be trusted, and we will do everything in our power to hold these communists accountable,” he said.

• #EpsteinToo: Forced out of Harvard, Lawrence Summers became the latest public figure to be impacted but their implication in the Epstein Files. Others include Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp, longevity expert Peter Attia of CBS News, former Obama counsel Kathy Ruemmler, mind behavior scientist Richard Axel of Columbia, ex-Prince Andrew, UK ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson, as well as Slovak and Norwegian officials. Who’s next? Hillary testifies today at the House, Bill tomorrow.

• Senate in Play: With just days until Texas’ primary, Republicans are alarmed that their increasingly vicious intraparty contest could cost them a must-win Senate seat. Sen. John Cornyn appears to be headed to an expensive and nasty 10-week runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, with a strong chance that Paxton wins the nomination even after national Republicans spent months airing his filthy laundry all over the Texas airwaves in an effort to boost Cornyn. If Cornyn loses the primary, Senate Republicans could be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars that could otherwise go toward key battleground races in expensive states like North Carolina, Georgia or Michigan, complicating their path toward holding Senate control.

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Will there be another election?

Americans have asked that question before, and when they did, the reassuring answer has always landed on a variant of “why wouldn’t there be?” Even in 1864, in the throes of the Civil War, Lincoln submitted to a challenge from a long-forgotten Democrat, General George McClellan, albeit in a deeply flawed campaign in a rump Union where troops faced pressure to vote Republican.

There have been hiccups in the electoral road since then—worries about Islamist terror attacks in 2004 after 9/11, logistical concerns during the pandemic, New York’s 2001 mayoral primary in which a delay denied a Democrat a likely victory—but fear of a canceled election is at a fever pitch not seen in living memory.

60% of respondents to the Feb. 9-12 Yahoo/YouGov poll believe President Trump is “not likely to accept” a scenario in which Democrats “win enough seats in November to take control of the U.S. House or U.S. Senate.” How far might he be willing to go to preserve the status quo?

The president has repeatedly suggested that elections ought to be canceled—“when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election,” he said last month—or, if held, their results annulled should he or his party lose. From the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021 to pushing for novel efforts at state gerrymandering to the Save America Act (which would make it difficult for women who change their surnames when they marry to vote) to directing the FBI to seize voting records to demanding that states turn over their voter rolls to his paramilitary Department of Homeland Security, Trump has done more than any American living or dead to subvert and undermine confidence in the system.

Trump ran for re-election in 2024 in large part because victory was his best path to avoid imprisonment. Sentencing for his felony convictions, in suspended animation as sitting president, will hang over his neck again when he returns to civilian life on January 20, 2029. Thus, schemes to subvert the constitutional two-term limit by, for example, having him run as JD Vance’s veep with the intent of taking over when Vance submits his planned resignation.

If I were Trump or paid to advise him how to stay in office beyond current legal limits and political traditions, however, I’d tell him not to wait until 2028.

I’d cancel the 2026 midterms.

Trump’s approval ratings are so low that the Republicans appear to have coerced Gallup into abolishing presidential approval ratings, by threatening to boycott it as a supplier of internal polling for campaigns. Voters say the economy is poor. ICE’s viciousness has destroyed Trump’s best issue, immigration.

As things stand, Democrats will take back the House of Representatives—probably by dozens of seats—and possibly the Senate. Hakeem Jeffries and his colleagues will regain committee chairmanships along with investigatory powers they can use to drag Trump and his cronies through endless depositions and subpoena dramas. Trump tells friends he’ll be impeached again; he’s probably right. Republicans might lose the Senate too, opening the (unlikely) possibility of removal from office.

If you’re Donald Trump, 2027 will be unpleasant.

Unless you do something radical.

Consider the counterfactual: no election, no losses, no committee hearings. Without 2026 elections, it’ll be easier to cancel 2028. No 2028, no prison. All Trump needs is a pretext—a “national emergency”—to cancel the midterms. Not forever…like an African coup leader, there will be solemn promises to hold elections at some unspecified point in a future that will never come.

The excuse part is easy. Terrorist threats. War with, for example, Iran. Cyberattack. Anti-ICE protests/riots. Illegal immigrants will try to vote.

Overcoming institutional guardrails would be more challenging, but still achievable. Under martial law (which has been declared 60 times in U.S. history), the Supreme Court and federal court system will be closed by the current rubber-stamp GOP Congress, so no redress there. Congressional Republicans, happy to keep their majority status and still in thrall to MAGA, will bite their tongues. The military is trained to follow orders from civilian political leaders.

Trump’s ace in the hole is ICE: his tens-of-thousands-strong paramilitary goon squad, personally loyal to him. They are unaccountable and unidentified, licensed to kill. And they’ll be in charge of a sprawling gulag archipelago of detention centers perfect for holding protesters and dissidents, and they have new partnership agreements with local police departments.

Who can stop an election cancellation? Not leftist street protesters; there is no organized socialist party or other activist organization open to or capable of sustained, daily, mass-scale hell-raising. If such a formation were to miraculously materialize for the first time since 1968, it would feed Trump’s narrative about the need to quash civil unrest.

If you’re looking to the media to lead the charge against Trump, let me point you to Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post, Bari Weiss’s CBS News and the other voluntarily self-defanged news outlets who have sold themselves out to the GOP for pennies on the dollar. The revolution will not be live-blogged.

Those weighing what to do (or not) after the suspension of the election will ask themselves: am I willing to place my body in the line of fire over the right to choose between two corporate political parties, neither of which cares about me and neither of which has had the guts to stand up against Trump or his fascists?

In a midterm election?

(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 John Kiriakou.”)

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Today we discuss:

• Angry due to alleged Ukrainian disruption to the Druzhba pipeline, which delivers Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia via Ukraine, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban blocked the EU’s big cash package to Ukraine and new sanctions against Russia.

• SOTU: With his approval at 37%, Trump did what presidents shouldn’t do when the public is pissed off at them—he took a victory lap and told them everything is awesome. Blowing off the opportunity for a reset, Trump hammed the State of the Union Address like a gameshow host, cheering the olympic hockey team, pinned medals and ribbons on heroes, trolled Democrats, insulted the Supreme Court and presided over a Jerry Springer-like Venezuelan family reunion.

• Trump also claimed Iran are developing ICBMs “that will soon reach the U.S.”

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The post Or-Ban Ukraine | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

If you were around in 2002–2003, you remember that the George W. Bush Administration bent over backwards to get public support for their wars, even making up lies about weapons of mass destruction. Weirdly, Trump makes no effort whatsoever to convince or explain to the public why we should attack Venezuela or Iran or wherever.

The post Skip To the Fun Part of the War appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss:

• Mideast on Alert: As the US has gathered 150 planes and a dozen military ships in the Middle East and may be preparing for a bloody, extended attack against Iran, the US Embassy in Beirut evacuated dozens of personnel. The US has two destroyers in the Mediterranean, one in the Red Sea, four in the Persian Gulf, and an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, accompanied by four destroyers, in the Arabian Sea. Another carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, arrived in the Mediterranean Sea on Friday, accompanied by warships. CJCS Gen. Dan Caine worries about high casualties and stockpiles depletion.

• Is Afghanistan becoming a safe haven for Islamist terrorists?  Pakistan carried out airstrikes against seven camps belonging to the Pakistani Taliban – also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), as well as ISIS-K.

• U.S. ambassador to France Charles Kushner has been banned from meeting members of the French ‌government after ghosting the Foreign Affairs ministry earlier, where he had been summoned over his comments on the killing of ​Quentin Deranque.

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The post Mideast on Alert | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss:

• Mike Huckabee, U.S. ambassador to Israel, prompted condemnation from Arab leaders after he suggested approval for a Greater Israel stretching across the Middle East from Egypt to Iraq. Asked if Israel had the right to the lands from Egypt to the Euphrates River he replied, “It would be fine if they took it all. But…they don’t want to take it over, they’re not asking to take it over,” he added. What if Israel were to ask?

• U.S. stock futures fell after Trump said he’s raising his global tariffs to 10%, and then 15%, following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the president’s “reciprocal” tariffs. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures dropped 250 points, or 0.5%. Gold prices jumped.

• It’s the fourth anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

• France summons the US ambassador to express harsh displeasure at a State Department statement about Quentin Deranque. Foreign affairs minister Jean-Noel Barrot said: “We reject any instrumentalization of this tragedy, which has plunged a French family into mourning, for political ends. We have no lessons to learn, particularly on the issue of violence, from the international reactionary movement.”

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The post US to Arabs: Huck You | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Congress has handed $38 billion to ICE in order to build massive detention centers across the United States as processing facilities for illegal immigrants to be deported. When you crunch the numbers, however, it’s clear they don’t need all those beds for their supposed purpose. What’s the real reason they want them? Hint: it’s not to deport them—it’s to deport you.

The post What Big Gulags You Have appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.