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:

• Are government goons at “shithole countries” on Trump’s payroll? Four journalists, including reps of the New York Times, AP and the BBC, investigating a secret Trump plot to deport migrants to Cameroon—none of them Cameroonian, all of them under strict protection by US court orders not to deport them—were arrested and roughed up in Yaoundé. The AP reporter was beaten up by the police, who also confiscated their phones, cameras and laptops.

•  Trump announced a $10 billion U.S. contribution to rebuilding Gaza at the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace, describing the organization as the premier world body for international peace and harmony. What of the UN? Where will the money come from?

• Backed by the IDF, Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank shot and killed a Palestinian American man, 19, during an attack on the village of Mukhmas.

• Rarely has the U.S. prepared to conduct a major act of war with so little explanation or public debate as Trump prepares to attack Iran again.

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APPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall/id1825379504

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

As America spins into fascism, with masked goons terrorizing citizens and the Administration clearly plotting to subvert or cancel elections, the real left and moderate left are bickering over who is to blame. Maybe it’s time to fight the Right first, and fight one another later.

The post Bickering at the Death Camp appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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:

•  Is Big Tech about to be finally be held accountable for their toxic products? Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified at trial about whether his company designed Instagram to be addictive. Parents who traveled from across the country for the trial brought by a girl who said bullying and addiction turned her suicidal, saying their kids were hurt or died because of social media. The outcome in the “Kaley” trial could put Big Tech on the hook for billions in damages and forced to make changes to platforms that have shaped how we live.

•  Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the perv formerly known as Prince Andrew, is arrested at his home in Great Britain.

• Trump plans to turn eight warehouses into “large-scale detention centers” and 16 facilities into processing sites, according to ICE, with at least 100,000 beds. ICE also intends to buy 10 detention facilities where they already operate. Cost will be about $38 billion, which will be drawn from the billions of dollars Congress for ICE approved last summer. But community opponents include pro-deportation Trump voters.

• Bernie wants a Billionaire Tax in California. Gavin does not.

•  Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was found guilty of leading an insurrection and sentenced to life in prison for his brief imposition of martial law in 2024.

•  The beating death of Quentin Deranque in Lyon has quickly become a flashpoint between the far right and far left as France prepares for local elections next month and presidential elections next year.

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

“Move fast and break things,” Mark Zuckerberg famously ordered his employees at Facebook. His thought wasn’t original. “Inaction is death,” Benito Mussolini wrote nearly a century earlier. “Fascism is action in which doctrine is immanent.” Do first, think later—or perhaps not at all.

Clearly, the Trump Administration subscribes to rapid-fire governance. Not a day passes without some dramatic statement, shocking policy pronouncement or reversal, or a half-dozen of them. It’s not boring. Post-Biden, a White House that said and did things isn’t nothing. Whether and when the thrill ride yields to exhaustion remains to be seen.

The inspiration for the aggressive style of Trump’s second term derives from the George W. Bush years, when an anonymous White House official (reputed to be Karl Rove, who denied it) was quoted in The New York Times saying: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Triumph of the will, to coin a phrase. Bullies can bomb fishermen, kidnap the Venezuelan president, steal Gaza…who’s going to stop them, the Times editorial board?

The rub is, someone—dissident Republicans, the press, SCOTUS, street protests, something—would stop them, eventually. Which is where the second essential ingredient of the regime comes into play: Zuck’s breakneck speed, Il Duce’s cult of action. By the time your enemies begin to respond to today’s and tomorrow’s and the next day’s reality-creations, you’re on to new ones. What just happened and what is happening now is what people care about. Our overloaded brains can’t process last month’s outrages and the new shocks and the imminent horrors. New stuff gets thought about more than old stuff.

Authorized by a pile of executive orders and enabled by Democratic disarray, as well as a compliant Congress and Supreme Court, President Trump’s manic aggression has resulted in a year of policy changes whose number and sweep arguably match the scale of FDR’s first 100 days. He fired hundreds of thousands of federal employees through DOGE, declared war against DEI, transformed ICE from an immigration enforcement agency into a personal anonymous goon squad bigger and better-armed than most national armies, normalized paramilitaries and assassinations of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, abolished EPA regulations of greenhouse emissions and fuel efficiency for automobiles, launched a multifront trade war against scores of other countries, gutted the Affordable Care Act—I could go on, but you’re living it.

Trump’s agenda is as radical as Roosevelt’s. FDR told the American people they were entitled to basic social safety guarantees from their government; Reagan said we weren’t; Trump told us to be afraid, that it isn’t our government at all.

Democratic voters fantasize that President Newsom or Buttigieg or whoever will hit a hard reset on January 20, 2029, returning to the status quo ante Trumpus, but continuity is the norm. French revolutionaries moved into Louis XVI’s palaces, the Bolsheviks snatched the Czar’s digs and Joe Biden kept Trump’s Space Force and de facto tax hikes on homeowners living in Democratic states. Governments come and go, but their works endure.

Even the Nazis, a regime so thoroughly destroyed and discredited that it’s still illegal to display a swastika in Germany, live on through their works. No postwar German government suggested demolishing the autobahn or dismantling such Nazi-affiliated businesses as BASF, Hugo Boss, Allianz, BMW, Audi, VW, Porsche, Bayer or Mercedes-Benz. Aside from the remarkable fact that Germany was allowed to remain a nation-state, reunited and to assume a dominant position in the European Union (one of Hitler’s ideas), the 70 million-plus people killed by the Nazis, and the 400 million or more theoretical people who would otherwise have been descended from them, represent the ultimate fait accompli. The Nazis lost. Yet they’re still with us.

However his presidency ends, we will be living with Trump’s works long after he’s gone. Democrats will look more favorably upon an imperial presidency and more expansive presidential power once it’s their White House. Trump’s wars will become theirs. Turning their ideas and policy prescriptions into law will take precedence over knocking down Trump’s triumphal arches and scraping his name off public buildings. Democrats certainly won’t invite the undocumented immigrants deported by Trump to return to the United States.

Inertia wins.

(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.”)

The post Trumpism Is Forever appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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 “alternative homeland” – the notion that Jordan should become the Palestinian state – is rocking the Hashemite Kingdom, following Israeli measures to register swaths of the occupied West Bank as sovereign Israeli soil. Mamdouh al-Abbadi, Jordan’s former deputy prime minister, says: The fear in Amman is not just about military invasion, but about making life in the West Bank impossible to force ethnic cleansing into Jordan.

•  Senate Republicans are under increasing pressure from the hard right to do whatever is necessary to break through a filibuster and ram through the Save America Act on a simple majority vote over Democratic opposition.

• Last year, between 200,000 and more than 1 million immigrants in the United States stopped working, according to analyses of Census Bureau data. But as immigrants left, unemployment for native-born Americans jumped to 4.7% in January from 4.1% a year before. That not only exceeds the overall unemployment rate of 4.3%, but also the 4.6% rate for foreign-born workers. Removing people from the country led to fewer workers and fewer people to buy the goods and services those workers produced, argues Stan Veuger, senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Plus: tariffs and AI are having a depressing effect, and low-wage employers are refusing to pay more.

The post Jordan Is Next | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

For 1,900 of the last 2,000 years, Jews represented a tiny minority, usually in the low single digits of the population of what is today Israel. Zionists argue that they, and only they—not the other ancient peoples who lived and ruled there—are entitled to live in and dominate the region and expel those who lived there throughout their absence.

The post Back After 1,900 Years appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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:

• France has its own Charlie Kirk. The centrist Macron administration blames the “ultra-left” LFI party and the Jeune Garde of Jean-Luc Melenchon for the fatal beating of 23-year-old Quentin Deranque, a right-wing extremist, in Lyon—a notorious hotbed of right-wing violence. Macron calls for patience and calm. Will France listen?

• Local police, sometimes seen as a bulwark against ICE goon squads on city streets, are signing deals to cooperate with and deport immigrants for the aggressive agency. There were 135 such deals a year ago; now there are 1,168.

• Persian Gulf Showdown: As US-Iran/Israel talks stall and another carrier heads to the Gulf, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards drill in Strait of Hormuz.

• BlanketGate: Corey Lewandowski, an unpaid special government employee who acts as chief of staff for and lover to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, fired a Coast Guard pilot for leaving Noem’s blanket on a plane — but was forced to rehire them upon realizing there was nobody else to fly the party home. Lewandowski has overseen a reign of terror over DHS.

• Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who made history as a third-party presidential candidate, dies at 84. Robert Duvall, the actor, passes at 95.

MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.live

https://x.com/tedrall
https://x.com/JohnKiriakou

LIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShow
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8Zu
APPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall/id1825379504

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

Today we discuss:

•  France has its own Charlie Kirk. The centrist Macron administration blames the “ultra-left” LFI party and the Jeune Garde of Jean-Luc Melenchon for the fatal beating of 23-year-old Quentin Deranque, a right-wing extremist, in Lyon—a notorious hotbed of right-wing violence. Macron calls for patience and calm. Will France listen?

•  Local police, sometimes seen as a bulwark against ICE goon squads on city streets, are signing deals to cooperate with and deport immigrants for the aggressive agency. There were 135 such deals a year ago; now there are 1,168.

• Persian Gulf Showdown: As US-Iran/Israel talks stall and another carrier heads to the Gulf, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards drill in Strait of Hormuz.

•  BlanketGate: Corey Lewandowski, an unpaid special government employee who acts as chief of staff for and lover to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, fired a Coast Guard pilot for leaving Noem’s blanket on a plane — but was forced to rehire them upon realizing there was nobody else to fly the party home. Lewandowski has overseen a reign of terror over DHS.

• Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who made history as a third-party presidential candidate, dies at 84. Robert Duvall, the actor, passes at 95.

MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.live

https://x.com/tedrall

https://x.com/JohnKiriakou

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

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8Zu

APPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall/id1825379504

The post Je Suis Charlie Kirk | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

After ICE shot peaceful protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti to death in Minneapolis, right-wing supporters of the ICE surge terrorizing Americans in their cities argued that those who interfere with law enforcement and/or attend protests inherently risk their lives. If you want to stay alive, stay home.

The post Stay Safe, Stay Home appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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:

•  In the worst-case climate scenarios from unchecked greenhouse gas emissions (high-emission pathways like SSP5-8.5), global temperatures could rise 4–5°C or more by 2100 or beyond. This unleashes catastrophic threats: widespread ecosystem collapse, including near-total loss of coral reefs and Amazon dieback into savanna; irreversible multi-meter sea-level rise from melting ice sheets, flooding coastal cities and displacing hundreds of millions; intensified extreme weather—deadly heatwaves, mega-droughts, super-storms, and wildfires—causing mass crop failures, famine risks, and water wars. President Trump announces he is erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather.

•  There’s no deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security — so a partial government shutdown starts today. Who will make you take off your shoes at the airport?

• The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has claimed victory in the country’s first election since the 2024 uprising. The BNP is headed by 60-year-old Tarique Rahman, who returned to Bangladesh in December after 17 years in self-exile in London. He is the son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who died in December.

• South Korea’s spy agency says Kim Jong Un’s teenage daughter, Kim Ju

Ae, is close to being designated as North Korea’s future leader.

• Gallup will stop tracking presidential approval ratings after 88 years. Trump’s last Gallup approval rating, in December, was 36%. Why the drastic decision?

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The post King of Crud | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Ironically, the Republican Party that insists on Voter ID laws requiring would-be voters to fully identify themselves at the polls supports ICE agents who refuse to show their faces, present ID, or stick around after they gun down American citizens in the streets of American cities. Privacy rights are for them, not for we the people.

The post I.D. For Thee But Not For Me appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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:

•  In a bizarre episode of epic incompetence and lack of coordination, the Trump Administration shut down El Paso’s airspace—originally for 10 days—over a party balloon. First, it turns out the Defense Dept. lent a high-powered anti-drone system to the Border Patrol. Who turned it on without permission. To shoot down a “Mexican cartel drone.” Which didn’t exist. Fearing passenger jets would tumble out of the sky, a panicked FAA—who never got a call from the Border folks playing with their borrowed toy—ordered a shutdown. Organ transplant recipients may die as a result. Then the Trump Administration reflexively spun tall tales to cover it up. We’ll try to peel away the many layers of insanity here.

•  Asked about the Epstein Files under oath, AG Pam Bondi helpfully points out that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a record high.

• As Trump dispatches a second carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf, he tells Netanyahu he prefers to negotiate with Iran, rather than bomb it—for now.

• House Republicans advance the SAVE America Act, which would pass Americans’ voter information to the Dept. of Homeland Security, require proof of citizenship to vote and require special paperwork for people who have changed their names, like women and trans people.

• Russians are being evacuated from Cuba.

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

Conservative syndicated editorial cartoonist and comic strip creator Steve Kelley, formerly of the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, joins DMZ America co-hosts and colleagues Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) to break down the current state of the Trump Administration in its second year.

A partial government shutdown looms, Trump’s approval ratings on immigration–a good issue for the president usually–are tanking and the nation increasingly looks and feels a lot like the chaotic late 1960s. MAGA world appears to be coming apart at the seams, yet Democrats seem unable to seize the moment. What IS the real State of the Nation?

The post “Steve Kelley on the State of the Nation” | DMZ America Podcast | Ep 228 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.

Scott Stantis, editorial cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune, fills in for John today.

Today we discuss:

• Cuban Gas Crisis: The Cuban economy hangs on the brink as Trump’s sanctions, including cutting off Venezuelan fuel shipments, force flight service cancellations and school closures. Russia expresses solidarity, exploring ways to ship fuel to the socialist Caribbean island. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel says he’s willing to talk.

• It took Pima County, Arizona law enforcement officials almost two weeks to access Nancy Guthrie’s Google Nest footage from the notoriously-hard-to-reach company, revealing a creepy masked man at the door. Should Congress mandate direct phone customer service for big tech?

• The Federal Aviation Administration is closing the airspace around El Paso International Airport in Texas for 10 days, grounding all flights to and from the airport.

• After a Border Patrol agent shot 30-year-old Marimar Martinez, a US citizen/Chicago teacher assistant 5 times, Gregory Bovino, congratulated him. “In light of your excellent service in Chicago, you have much yet left to do!!” he wrote to the agent.

• As Netanyahu arrives in DC, Trump says he opposes Israel’s moves to annex the West Bank.

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The post Cuba on the Ropes | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

ICE agents and their supporters portray them as big and brave. The truth is, they’re fragile snowflakes who complain about being called names, the cold in Minnesota, and having demonstrators throw empty water bottles and snowballs at them. Most absurdly, they wear masks for fear of being doxxed, while every other state and local cop and federal LEO has their identity in open view. ICE are vicious. But they’re also cowards.

The post Snowflakes in Minnesota appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Ten years ago, the shuttering of The Tampa Tribune shocked Media World. Last month, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette disappeared, turning western Pennsylvania into a news desert. Now The Washington Post is entering a death spiral. Hell, D.C. never got over the Washington Star.

We remember what we lost recently, not what we lost in total. When Jeff Bezos bought the Post in 2013 (with promises not to do what I’m about to describe), his newsroom employed 2,500 people. Last week, there were 800. Thanks to Bezos, they’re down to 500.

The print newspaper model that drives American journalism has been in crisis all my life. I was born in 1963, the year that daily newspaper circulation peaked. It’s been all decline ever since—first due to television, then corporatization, and competition from the now-defunct alternative weeklies, bean counters’ obsession with short-term profits over long-term investment, and now the Internet.

This is a problem, partly because “democracy dies in darkness,” and also because dead tree papers generate most of the original local reporting that gets picked up online and by broadcast outlets. No print, no news. No news, and people die because they don’t get tornado warnings and businesses die because they can’t rely on accurate information when they make decisions.

So—what to do?

Most journalists devote their careers to one or two aspects of our profession. I have watched the collapse from more front-row seats than perhaps anyone else: reporter, pundit, spot illustrator, syndicated cartoonist and columnist, art director, newspaper editor, magazine editor, syndicate executive, radio and television commentator.

Everyone who works in and cares about journalism has thought long and hard about what they’d do differently (better) than the publishers and editors who’ve proven themselves unable or unwilling to steer the business of selling news, opinion and features through the shoals of the online era into the calm seas of profitability. Many of those observers are smarter than me. Few have the insight you can only acquire from having observed a situation from many different perspectives, as I have.

One of my unusual journalistic experiences was my role as plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit against a major newspaper. Cynical from birth, I was nevertheless shocked by the depth of institutional corruption I encountered at the Los Angeles Times.

In brief: I was the Times’ cartoonist. Broke and desperate for cash, the Times’ parent company sold a controlling interest in itself to the LAPD police union’s multi-billion-dollar pension fund. The police chief—effectively the boss, even though most of us at the Times didn’t know that yet—took umbrage at my cartoons about him, which portrayed him as a corrupt, mustachioed lout, which he was, and ordered the paper to fire me. They did, and tried to smear me so I couldn’t work elsewhere. I sued.

When this mess hit the headlines, one prescient commentator observed that the story was at least as much about the meltdown of print media as a story about corruption. Had the Times been profitable, he pointed out, they wouldn’t have literally sold out to the cops. Money corrupts; poverty corrupts absolutely.

            Rall v Times was a rollercoaster. All the experts said getting past the cesspool of intertwined political interests in the LA courts would be tough, but if I won, I’d be awarded millions. Maybe tens of millions.

One judge advised them to settle because “the damage award could be catastrophic.”

“Define ‘catastrophic,’ your Honor,” their lawyer asked.

“Requiring dissolution.”

During one of the high points of my battle, my team entertained what they considered a possibility: that, like Hulk Hogan and Gawker, I might get a jury verdict so massive that the Times would go bankrupt—and I would wind up owning the fourth biggest paper in the country.

I didn’t want the paper; I wanted justice. But this scenario did force me to consider, more thoughtfully than a random media nerd musing over drinks, how to save a print dinosaur.

One of my Big Ideas was unique to the Times. If the New York Times was the national newspaper of news and culture, The Washington Post was the national newspaper of politics, and The Wall Street Journal was the national newspaper of finance, The Los Angeles Times should be the national newspaper of entertainment. Movies, obviously, but also music and the gaming industry. Entertainment, along with war, is what America still does best.

My other Ideas apply to just about any major legacy paper, including LA and, the outfit currently and most disturbingly on the ropes, the Post.

Print pays newspaper owners many times more per subscriber than online, yet legacy publishers refuse to give their best customers a premium product. If you’re enough of a news junkie to still subscribe to print, you keep up with all the breaking news as it pops up on your phone—and you usually get the online edition for free, included. Stupidly, tomorrow’s print edition is today’s online paper—basically word for word.

No! Not a single article should be duplicated between digital and print. Online news should only be for breaking news—what just happened. Print newspapers should only be for long-form explainers and analysis—why what happened yesterday and last week matters and what it means. Print and online are two different media products that serve entirely discrete purposes. Your cellphone is perfectly suited for short bursts of information. When it’s time for a 5,000-word essay about the civil war in Sudan, readers prefer paper they can take to the bath.

Why don’t press barons give the people what they want? In my experience, there are people with money and people with brains and they are rarely the same. Jeff Bezos figured out how to scale a delivery business from his garage to a transnational multibillion corporation, but he couldn’t figure out how to transition a legacy institution like the Post into the 21st century, beginning by resisting the urge to interfere with its editorial alignment.

Some papers have moved from noble old Art Deco palaces to modest boxes in the suburbs, but I ask: why must a newspaper have an office at all? Production can be done in the suburbs. Reporters can write from homes and cafes and wherever their stories are; use the saved funds to hire foreign correspondents and regional reporters.

Newspapers have been grappling with newsroom diversity (or lack thereof) for decades. They’re missing the perspective of the working class, which is why they were stunned at Trump’s win and still don’t understand their own readers in their own country. Readers cancel publications they can’t relate to culturally. Newsflash: a Black graduate of Harvard typically has more in common with a white classmate than with a Black high school dropout.

I’d stop requiring that new reporters have a master’s degree from top journalism schools that give little financial aid and only attract children of the wealthy, and work on socioeconomic diversity that truly reflects the demographics of the community. This may mean laying off some rich kids, but hey, they’ve got trust funds to fall back upon.

I’d learn from the Internet. It’s opinionated, profane, wild, unrestrained because that’s where the clicks—the people—are. The hoary conceit of the “family newspaper” where you can’t print an F-bomb even when the president says it is embarrassing; worse, it conveys to everyone under age 75 that your publication is not for or about their real lives.

About opinion: Social media proves that readers engage with strident, abrasive, loud, controversial expression. As if to disabuse us of any possibility that papers aren’t run by idiots, newspapers are getting rid of their opinion sections entirely, judging them to be too much for our tender little souls.

Which is why publishers won’t read this.

(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.”)

The post How To Save Newspapers appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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:

•  Will a raging measles outbreak in South Carolina, which has infected more than 900 people and become the largest U.S. outbreak in recent history, become another pandemic?

•  Tech is messing with the search for Nancy Guthrie: Before AI, proof of life could be established by having a hostage take a picture holding a newspaper or talking on the phone. Now you can mimic someone’s voice or image in photos, videos and audio, known as “deepfakes.” You can also devise fake documents, like passports.

• A U.S. immigration court terminated the Trump administration’s attempt to deport Tufts University student and pro-Palestinian activist Rümeysa Öztürk, a Ph.D. student from Turkey, for her essay criticizing Israel. Meanwhile, ICE is arousing the ire of judges across the country for willfully defying their orders.

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The post Measles-26 | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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:

•  Investigators are confounded by the lack of a recognizable ideological agenda in a wave of high-profile killings and political violence — shootings, a bombing, a planned drone attack — by assailants who were not Democrat or Republican, or Islamist militant, or antifa or white supremacist. They declare their contempt for humanity and a desire to see the collapse of civilization. It’s a contemporary strain of nihilism, the philosophical stance that arose in the 19th century to deny the existence of moral truth.

• The Sun Rises Also: Right-wing LDP Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi won a landslide victory in a snap election, marking a historic turnaround for her party. Japan’s first female leader enjoys sky-high approval ratings and a glowing endorsement from Trump. She has also signaled the return of Japan as an aggressive military power in the Pacific.

• Israel to allow settler-colonists to purchase Palestinian land in the West Bank without Palestinian approval. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “We will continue to bury the idea of a Palestinian state.” “We are anchoring settlement as an inseparable part of Israel’s government policy,” said Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz. Is annexation inevitable?

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The post Nihilism Is It | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

After ICE agents gunned down peaceful protester Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the government smeared him (and previously, Renee Good) as a terrorist. In truth, he never drew, much less brandished, his gun. If he had a chance to come back to life and do it again, would he avail himself of his Second Amendment right to defend himself against random masked goons who might or might not be government agents?

The post Renee Good Meets Alex Pretti appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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 is fully funded but Democrats are holding up other Homeland Security funding over demands that paramilitary forces occupying Democratic cities be demasked. A DHS shutdown looms, impacting air travel, but negotiations haven’t even begun. Meanwhile, Trump wants to rename Dulles Airport and Penn Station after himself in exchange for unfreezing $16 billion in funds for the Gateway Development Project.

• Healthcare: TrumpRx website offers discounted meds for uninsured Americans. Texas surgeon Stevenson Bynon Jr., 66,  is charged with manipulating his patients’ medical records to make them ineligible for organ donations between February 2023 and March 2024. Of five patients, three died. The other two received liver transplants at different hospitals.

• NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorses center-right Democratic New York governor Kathy Hochul. Has the sellout begun?

JOIN US LIVE ON RUMBLE!

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FOLLOW TED:

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FOLLOW JOHN:

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https://x.com/JohnKiriakou

LISTEN ON SPOTIFY:

https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8Zu

LISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC:

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

Right-wingers and other defenders of ICE decry the “dehumanization” of the immigration goon squads. Perhaps it really is true that, under all that Kevlar and cruelty, there are human beings just like us. Then again, perhaps not.

The post Don’t Dehumanize ICE appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.