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• Trump’s Justice Department charged the SPLC civil-rights group with a financial crimes, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The indictment focused on its past use of paid informants to infiltrate far-right groups. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, accused the SPLC of “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”

• When is a Blockade not a Blockade? Lloyd’s List Intelligence says “a steady flow of shadow fleet traffic” has passed the U.S. blockade, including 11 tankers with Iranian cargo that have left the Persian Gulf since April 13. “The dilemma for the U.S. is: The tighter the blockade, the greater the pain is in the global oil market, so there are conflicting priorities there, and it seems there is a policy of not intercepting every single shipment of Iranian oil,” Torbjorn Soltvedt, principal Middle East analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, says. Almost all that oil is going to China, and the U.S. has to manage that relationship as well, with Trump planning to visit from May 14 to 15.

• Navy Secretary John Phelan is fired.

• For the first time in decades, the U.S. could be experiencing negative net migration — more people leaving than entering. Brookings estimates net migration turned negative in 2025, the first time in at least half a century. People born in the U.S. who move abroad make up a small portion of those numbers, but influencers on social media are helping bring wider visibility to the shift.

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LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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

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• So, there IS more “Mr. Nice Guy.” Trump blinked again by extending the ceasefire with Iran. His critics are mocking another TACO Tuesday. But the derision is better than risking more Iranian and US lives by doubling down to preserve his tough-guy persona. Inside Iran, though, Trump’s threats of military escalation lack credibility. The challenge for diplomats, from Pakistan and elsewhere, will be to find a way for Trump to claim some kind of win.

• Leaked documents reveal details of a secret Saudi Arabia–Pakistan Mutual Defense Pact, now that Pakistan is playing a key role mediating the US-Israel-Iran War. We dig into this entanglement with journalist Murtaza Hussain, who broke this story for DropSite News. Hussain is a journalist specializing in national security and foreign policy. A former Intercept reporter now at Drop Site News, he offers commentary on U.S. interventions, human rights, and global affairs. He appears regularly on CNN, BBC, and MSNBC.

• Trump asks Congress to increase the Defense budget by 42% (2/3 over Biden’s last one), to $1.5 trillion. Trump is seeking a 10% cut in discretionary domestic spending, chopping medical research, job training, home heating assistance, environmental protection and disaster relief after hurricanes. At a private Easter luncheon, Trump said: “We’re fighting wars,” he said. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare.” Will Trump get his way?

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The post Same Time Next Year | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Once again, the US government is issuing a highly dubious sales pitch to American voters about why they should risk life and treasure overseas.

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

The Left is extreme, the Right is extreme. In the middle lies truth and reason.

None of this is true—but it is taken for granted, even by many of those on the Left and the Right. The Left is right about some things, as is the Right, and centrists are frequently, perhaps usually, proven wrong. But moderates control news and entertainment media and thus the narrative. In their telling, which even those of us who don’t believe when we stop to think about it, buy into because we are soaking, nay, drowning in their framing, the range of normal/sane/calm political debate lies in the middle. All else is kookery.

So we are told.

We have so poisoned our planet that a third of all species alive today will be extinct by 2100. We are the poorest developed country. Most people can’t afford healthcare. These are radical problems. They don’t call for a compromise, or splitting the difference, or good-enough solutions. Radical problems call for radical solutions. Oncologists don’t prescribe half chemo.

Radical left environmentalists deserve center stage in any discussion about pollution and ecocide for the simple reasons that they alone understand that the issue is enormously important, the crisis is grave, and anything less than a comprehensive global solution that totally transforms capitalism has a chance of addressing it. They are so sidelined from corporate media that they receive less of a fair hearing in the news than white supremacists.

Centrism is a political leaning. In the U.S., moderates are typically liberal technocrats or center-right pre-Trump Republicans. They have biases and prejudices and they succumb to shibboleths and bigotries. Yet the mainstream media labels centrists/moderates as “objective” or neutral—i.e., they don’t notice those biases because they agree with them. (This is analogous to how Fox News and other Murdoch-owned right-wing media outlets characterize mainline Democrats as “far left.”) Centrist or technocratic talking heads from thinktanks like the Brookings Institution are often identified solely by their professional credentials rather than their political stance.

I listen to a lot of NPR. So many writers from The Atlantic magazine appear as guests on the network that it’s jarring. It’s almost as if there are no journalists working anywhere else. So, while researching this piece, I looked into whether there was a formal partnership between the two organizations. It turns out that there is one with PBS, the staid analysis round-up “Washington Week with The Atlantic” TV show, and there is predictable cross-pollination between NPR and PBS, but no formal deal.

The Atlantic leans center-left—by American standards, which is what we’re discussing here. These days, it cultivates that ideological positioning with domestic news and analysis that reliably criticizes Republican positions. Flying under the radar are foreign policy positions that echo neo-conservative and unreconstructed Cold Warrior views so far right that Trump is to their left on some issues. Because The Atlantic is “moderate,” and adheres to baseline grammatical and editorial standards, its writers go on NPR every day to express opinions that are right-wing by any objective standard but are not only not labeled as such, they are not identified at all.

Say hello to the secret “neutral” right-wing extremists.

Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic espouses a set of retrograde views of the world that place her firmly in the camp of Bush-era neoconservatives like Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz. She hates Russia, hates socialism and communism, favors NATO expansion into the former Soviet space, rarely criticizes U.S. actions overseas, supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and pushes for more weapons to Ukraine.

My biggest problem with neoconservatives is not that they’re warmongers. It’s that they’re always wrong. Invading Iraq was never going to set off democratic dominos across the Middle East, there were no WMDs, Ukraine was not a democracy and has become a dictatorship, the people of Iran are in no position to overthrow their government. Left, right, or middle, political analysts should be good at prognosticating.

Like her fellow neoconservative and bestie William Kristol, Applebaum can almost always be counted upon for a right-wing foreign policy take that turns out to have been mistaken. Because she’s at The Atlantic, however, she’s identified as an anodyne “historian and journalist.” Her agenda—an extreme one at that, one espoused by only a tiny minority of voters—is concealed from NPR’s bourgeois audience. She’s entitled to her opinions. And readers are entitled to be informed about the fact that she’s opinionated.

Even when centrism is truly centrism, centrism is not neutral. Nor, when 63% of the electorate self-identifies as liberal or conservative, is centrism normal. It is high time to stop conflating moderation with neutrality.

(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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• Between Pete Hegseth, Kristin Noem and Kash Patel, the Trump Administration was staffed with some real party animals! Now Lori Chavez-DeRemer is out at Labor for boozing it up on the job while boning a subordinate. How did teetotaler Trump wind up with such a posse of wild right-wingers?

• The US State Department will host a second round of ambassador-level talks between Israel and Lebanon on Thursday. Joining “Deprogram” to explain the latest in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is Dmitri Lascaris. Dimitri Lascaris is a Canadian lawyer, journalist, and activist based in Montreal and Kalamata, Greece. A former Wall Street and class-action securities litigator, he now reports independently on foreign affairs, human rights, and global politics via his YouTube channel Reason2Resist, often from conflict zones, including Lebanon.

• Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf says Iran is “prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield” after Trump threatened Iran with “problems like they’ve never seen before” if the two-week ceasefire expires tomorrow without a deal. There is no official confirmation on whether Iran will take part in talks in Islamabad.

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Have a question for Ted and/or co-host Jamarl Thomas? Join the hosts of “DeProgram” for a full hour of nothing but LIVE Q&A! Any topic, any question, goes—it’s up to you.

Q&A extras are every Monday and Wednesday at 12 noon Eastern time.

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LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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• Hours after the US and Iran announced a ceasefire deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Trump took to social media with insulting, triumphantalist messaging that reneged on America’s promise to suspend its own blockade of Iranian ships. The Strait closed again, Iran attacked two ships and the U.S. attacked and took over an Iranian cargo vessel. Peace talks are supposed to start Wednesday—but will US envoys be talking to themselves?

• Republicans have few days left to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). But Trump, GOP leaders and White House officials have failed to come up with a workable framework for months—and there is no agreement.

• Progressive Bulgaria, the party led by former President Rumen Radev, wins general elections in Bulgaria with 44.7%, a better-than-expected performance and one of the largest parliamentary mandates by any party in recent years. Warmer relations with Russia are likely.

• Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says that Canada’s strong economic ties to the US were once a strength but are now a weakness that must be corrected.

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Conservatives are decrying New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to impose a pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes, calling it the beginning of a slippery slope that could eventually affect us all.

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• Pope Leo XIV says the world is being “ravaged by a handful of tyrants” with nothing for “healing, education and restoration.” “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” Leo said, presumably about Trump and Netanyahu.

• Progressive Democrat Analilia Mejia won a special election in New Jersey’s 11th District, by a landslide, allowing Democrats to further narrow Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House to 217-214. AIPAC had interfered in the primary by going after incumbent Tom Malinowski, a self-described Zionist, because he wanted conditions on aid to Israel.

• House conservatives, concerned that warrantless government surveillance of foreign individuals could sweep up data on Americans, shot down an 18-month extension Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They have 10 days to talk.

• Disgruntled employee Chamel Abdulkarim, 29, of Highland, California, is accused of causing $500 million in damage by setting an April 7 fire that destroyed a 1.2 million-square-foot Kimberly-Clark distribution center in Ontario. Abdulkarim, who worked through a third-party logistics provider, filmed himself setting pallets of paper goods ablaze, says the DOJ. “If you’re not going to pay us enough to [expletive] live… at least pay us enough not to do this,” he allegedly says. “I just cost these [expletive] billions,” he texted. “Luigi popped that mutherf—er,” Abdulkarim said in a call, “a lot of people are going to understand.”

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Right-wing supporters of President Trump’s war against Iran have pivoted from bragging about low gas prices to saying that the high prices caused by the conflict are a small price to pay to liberate the people of Iran (assuming this war can do that). Will voters buy that pitch this fall?

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The first quarter of this century in the United States saw the rise and triumph of “team politics,” in which voters view the Democratic and Republican parties less as representatives of an ideology or set of policies than as opposing teams defined by culture, style and aesthetics. Democrats follow TikTok or Threads, shop at Trader Joe’s, drive Volvos, support their children when they come out as gay and live in big cities; they vote Democratic whether the candidate is a pro-Gaza progressive like AOC or a Zionist corporatist like Josh Shapiro. Republicans display American flags, wear heavy eyeliner, shop at Wal-Mart, follow X and stay up late worrying about transwomen in sports; they vote Republican whether the candidate is a libertarian like Rand Paul or an interventionist like Lindsey Graham.

Voters increasingly view members of the opposing party not just as people with different ideas, but as a direct threat to the country. Reduced engagement across the party divide makes long-term problem-solving nearly impossible. Within each party, partisan leaders who know their polling floor is assured feel little pressure to be responsive to the needs and desires of their own base.

Which explains why American voters don’t pressure winning candidates to fulfill their promises after they become officeholders. “If all I care about is the game and my side winning, then what happens between games? I am not paying much attention to policy after the election. I’m only tuning back in at game time to find out who my team is fielding in the election,” said Patrick Miller, a University of Kansas assistant professor of political science who co-authored the 2015 study “Red and Blue States of Mind: Partisan Hostility and Voting in the United States.” And when they check in two to four years later? Odds are, they’re disappointed.

Twenty-five years ago, in 2001, 87% of Democrats and 90% of Republicans—essentially identical numbers, within the polling margin of error—said they were proud to be American. The GOP number has held steady, hanging at 92% last year. The Democratic figure has fallen off a cliff, to 36%. That quarter century, of course, has been defined by hard-right Republican presidents—Bush and Trump—and soft-left Democratic ones—Obama and Biden. (Even under Biden, Democrats believed their side was losing; 60% of Republicans think their side is winning in politics.) As the nation has shifted right, Republican voters are emboldened, Democratic voters feel unmoored and dispossessed, and Republicans interpret Democratic despair as disloyalty.

The good news is, team politics have run their course. The bad news is, something even more radical is replacing it: politics as religion.

Where team politics is/was about identifying with a group of people who think and act and maybe even dress like you, politics as religion is a phenomenon observed in societies governed by extreme ideologies of the far left, like Soviet and Chinese communism, and the far right, like Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

Like religion, politics as religion is centered around faith—not in God or his prophet, but in a politician.

Hebrews 11:1 sets out the classic Biblical definition: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction (or evidence) of things not seen.” Faith is essential to religion. In politics, it represents the ultimate danger to rationalism, checks and balances and sanity. When citizens blindly place their trust in the judgment, benevolence and competence of a fallible human being, no matter how honorable or well-intentioned, to control all the biggest decisions of a nation, that’s dictatorship or absolute monarchy. Disaster usually ensues.

Social media posts increasingly express professions of faith that allow no space for the possibility that “their” politician might on occasion make a mistake, much less betray them.

I trust President Trump. I know his heart…his instincts are very, very good.

Trump never makes a mistake.

Trump is playing six-dimensional chess.
I trust Trump no matter what.

I will refrain from criticizing the president. The point is, Trump says tens of thousands of things a month and makes scores of decisions a day about a constellation of issues and policies. He will, inevitably, let down the supporters who vote Republican 94% of the time. Over time, he will disappoint all of them. Even if Trump is Santa Claus, there is no Santa Claus. Unlike religious faith, which can never be disproven, the fact that politics as religion will be proven to have been misplaced is as immutable as the bullet Hitler fired through his skull.

Lest Democrats reading this be tempted to feel superior, many of your party’s flock are equally deluded. Let us proclaim some liberal articles of faith:

Biden was mentally fit, or fit enough, and if not fit enough he was better than any Republican.

He is not senile. He has a stutter.

Obama epitomized personal decency and ethical behavior.

Hillary and Kamala were defeated due to their sex.

Both major parties’ denizens call each other cultists. They are right.

“Vote Blue No Matter Who” liberals who hope and pray and trust that the DNC has their best interests and those of the nation paramount in their minds, and vote Democratic 96% of the time, will wind up just as disappointed as Team MAGA.

What follows politics as religion? When an intensive belief regime collapses, true believers who derived their core identity and meaning from it suffer brutal psychological disruption. A totalizing worldview provides clear rules, a sense of purpose and belonging, and stripped-down moral reasoning. A sudden end removes that mental scaffolding.

Alienation, anxiety and helplessness abound.

At last: liberals and conservatives have something in common.

(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.”)

The post Politics as Religion appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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

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• Immigration advisers in the UK are charging up to £7,000 to fake asylum claims for Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals to pretend they are gay.

• Senior diplomats from Lebanon and Israel met in Washington as their host, Marco Rubio, tried to reach a ceasefire. It was attended by Lebanon’s ambassador to the US, Nada Hamadeh Moawad, and her Israeli counterpart, Yechiel Leiter. Leiter said they had agreed on a long-term vision that there should be a “clearly delineated border between our countries.” Trump says leaders of the two nations will talk today; Lebanon denies that.

• The U.S. launches an online portal next week that lets businesses request refunds for tariffs ruled illegal by the Supreme Court. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), will boot up CAPE, for Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries — so companies can submit claims for up to $175 billion. Customs is putting the burden on the importer. Customs is not figuring it out.

• In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest. In April 2025, ICE sent Google an “administrative subpoena”—not issued by a judge—requesting his data. The next month, Google gave Thomas-Johnson’s information to ICE without giving him the chance to challenge the request, breaking a nearly decade-long promise to notify users before handing their data to cops.

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Have a question for Ted and/or new co-host Jamarl Thomas? Join the hosts of “DeProgram” for a full hour of nothing but LIVE Q&A! Any topic, any question, goes—it’s up to you. Q&A extras are every Monday and Wednesday at 12 noon Eastern time.

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LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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• We can’t decide to make nice, or kill you. President Trump told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo he views the war with Iran “as very close to over.” The U.S. and Iran could begin a fresh round of peace talks as soon as tomorrow after Trump’s administration imposed a blockade on Iranian ports.

• Can Lebanon expel Hezbollah? Following the first direct talks between Israel and Lebanon since 1993, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter hailed what he called a convergence of opinion about removing Hezbollah’s influence from Lebanon. “The Lebanese government made it very clear that they will no longer be occupied by Hezbollah,” he said. “Iran has been weakened. Hezbollah is dramatically weakened. This is an opportunity.” But nothing can happen without regime change in Iran—and maybe not even then.

• Hampshire College, a small liberal arts school in Amherst founded in 1965, is set to close permanently due to low enrollment and financial problems.

• Gov. Kathy Hochul proposes a tax on second homes in New York City worth $5 million and more, dubbed a pied-à-terre tax, aimed at the ultra-wealthy. It would affect roughly 13,000 homes, and would bump for homes valued at $15 million and again at $25 million.

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Those who back Trump’s war against Iran argue that the United States has defeated Iran because it has killed many Iranians and destroyed so much of its military and civilian infrastructure. As we’ve learned in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, however, outkilling the other side is hardly a guarantee of military victory.

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• Trump is trying to choke off the country’s lifeline with a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. But the Iranians are betting that his tolerance for political pain is limited.

• Iran is waging the conflict in the global markets. If no Iranian oil gets through the strait, prices could keep rising over time — some companies say they are planning for $175 a barrel. The Iranians understand the potential political effects of continued inflation in the U.S. less than seven months before midterms.

• For expert analysis about the energy markets showdown, we will be joined by Mark Barteau, a renowned chemical engineer and expert in heterogeneous catalysis for fuels, chemicals, and energy processes. He serves as Vice President for Research at Texas A&M University, holding the C.D. Holland ’53 Chair in Engineering with joint appointments in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry. Previously, he directed energy institutes at the University of Michigan and University of Delaware. A National Academy of Engineering member with over 250 publications, his work advances clean energy and carbon management.

• Ramsey County, Minnesota is investigating the arrest of a Hmong American man by ICE as a case of kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment, officials announced Monday. On Jan. 18, ICE agents bashed open the front door of the St. Paul home of ChongLy “Scott” Thao, 56, at gunpoint — without a warrant — then led him outside in just his underwear and a blanket in sub-zero conditions. Thao is a U.S. citizen. The City of St. Paul is also investigating.

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• In one of the most bizarre gambits in military history, Trump responds to Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz with his own blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. You can’t blockade—I blockade! Oil futures are soaring; stocks are down. (Tune in Tuesday as oil-markets expert Prof. Mark Barteau of Texas A&M joins to explain the economics of global oil markets and this game of economic brinkmanship.)

• Peace talks in Islamabad collapse over the U.S. “take it or leave it” demand that Iran stop enriching uranium and surrender its stockpile, Israel’s war against Lebanon, sanctions, reparations, and control of the Strait of Hormuz. Is there still hope?

• The 55-to-38 defeat of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, by Peter Magyar, leader of the center-right Tisza party, should deliver a sharp jolt to one of America’s two major political parties—the Democrats.

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After President Trump posted a social media message threatening to destroy Iranian civilization, his defenders and supporters argued that words are meaningless, that he wasn’t serious, and that nothing he says is meant to be taken seriously. If true, should such a man be president?

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• In today’s Bonus Show, Ted and producer Robby debate whether climate change is real.

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