The Trump administration is illegally using the Social Security email list to spew political propaganda. That email list likely includes everyone with an online Social Security account—over 100 million people, both current and future Social Security beneficiaries. The purpose of the list is for the government to share important information about Social Security benefits.

On July 2, the Trump administration sent an email from Commissioner Frank Bisignano, ostensibly to mark America’s 250th birthday. The email, like a similar one sent a year ago, is a fully political document.

Bisignano begins by bragging about President Donald Trump’s tax bill without mentioning:

1. Trump’s bill cuts over $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which is causing hospitals around the country to close—a disaster for seniors, especially those living in rural areas.
2. Trump’s bill gives massive tax cuts to the ultra wealthy, including trillionaire Elon Musk.
3. Trump’s bill does not end taxes on Social Security benefits, but does weaken Social Security’s long-term finances.

Bisignano then goes on to tout allegedly improved customer service. Widespread media reports show that customer service has massively deteriorated since Musk’s DOGE pushed out more than 8,000 of Social Security’s most experienced, knowledgeable workers. These reports include first-person stories where even highly educated people with Social Security expertise have faced months-long nightmares to resolve simple errors that cut themselves or their family members off from benefits.

Shortly after Bisignano was confirmed last year, Social Security removed longstanding customer service metrics from its website. Since then, Bisignano has cherry-picked his own metrics and used them to mislead.

Bisignano moved many of the remaining Social Security office workers to answering phones, while other essential work piles up. Then, he brags about shorter waits on the phone. What he doesn’t mention is that if you hang up in frustration, or talk to someone who can’t help you because they aren’t adequately trained, it still counts toward a short wait on the phone. The only metric that really matters is if people are getting the help they need. On that count, Bisignano is failing miserably.

The situation is particularly dire for people who need help in person. The country is dotted with Social Security “ghost offices” that aren’t officially closed (because that’s bad publicity for Trump and Bisignano) but have only a skeleton crew of workers remaining. These offices can’t meaningfully serve the community, and people are losing their hard-earned benefits as a result.

The same week that Bisignano sent out his political propaganda email, the Social Security Administration announced that the Freedom 250 logo will appear on the Social Security Cards of all babies born for the rest of 2026.

Freedom 250 is a semi-private, partisan entity. Trump and his allies are using it to turn the celebration of our nation’s 250th anniversary into profit for themselves. Freedom 250 has a history of harvesting data, and employs former DOGE operatives. Bisignano claims that the Social Security Administration isn’t paying Freedom 250 a licensing fee, or sharing data with it. But we already know that Bisignano lies as easily as he breathes.

Trump’s hijacking of Social Security is just the latest example of his corruption. Like the reflecting pool, the Kennedy Center, and the White House, Social Security is a sacred American institution that Trump is abusing for his own financial and political gain.

Social Security is a nonpartisan program, with overwhelming support from Democrats, Republicans, and independents. By using it for political purposes, Trump and Bisignano are betraying the American people.

On the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, a coalition of more than 500 veterans, active-duty military members, and military families gathered in the birthplace of the nation to reject what they called the “Trump administration's fascist vision for the country's future.”

Undeterred by 101°F heat that forced the cancellation of the official Philadelphia parade, the coalition—About Face, 50501 Vets, Veterans For Peace, Common Defense, Military Families Speak Out, Fayetteville Resistance Coalition, and Center on Conscience and War—marched under the banner “Veterans Against Fascism."

"We cannot continue the next 250 years as we have the last 250," proclaimed About Face organizing director Rebecca Roberts, a 12-year veteran of the New Jersey National Guard who resigned her commission in protest of US foreign policy.

“Our neighbors are being kidnapped by ICE and put into concentration camps; VA, Medicaid, and SNAP—vital services—are being cut to instead fund war crimes abroad, and for troops to occupy cities like DC, Memphis, and New Orleans,” said Roberts.

“So who is with me?” asked Roberts, as she led attendees in a call-and-response, asking marchers to raise their fists if they demand:

• No Troops and No ICE in the Streets or at the Ballot Box.
• An End to Endless Wars and War Crimes.
• Divestment From War and Funding Communities at Home.

Roberts noted the march returned to the same ground where veterans and military families gathered 50 years ago, led by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, to demand a country that took care of them as they suffered and healed from the wounds of war.

The Veterans Against Fascism coalition was the front contingent of the larger Peoples’ Parade, comprised of local Philadelphia groups and national groups such as the American Friends Service Committee, AFL-CIO Philadelphia Council, Juntos, and No ICE Philly. Over 1,000 people marched on July 4 in what the Peoples’ Parade called “an act of decisive opposition to the current state of American politics and material conditions, including mass deportation, forced displacement, climate crisis, and international war.”

Michael McPhearson, executive director of Veterans For Peace, invoked the Declaration of Independence signed 250 years ago in the same city:

On this anniversary, hundreds of veterans and military families have come to sound an alarm for democracy, as our national leaders ignore these basic truths, trample our rights, and treat us as subjects of the billionaire class, not as self-governing equals.

McPhearson reminded service members of "your duty to refuse illegal orders" and called on the public "to honor our service not with ‘thank yous’ but by organizing and acting to protect our elections and stop fascism.”

Largest Gathering of Service Members for Anti-War Protest since Vietnam

Hundreds of vets and military families marched through Philadelphia on the 250th anniversary of the United States, along with the People’s Parade, calling for common sense reforms on July 4, 2026 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Lisa Lake/Getty Images for About Face: Veterans Against The War)

Among the marchers were at least a dozen currently-serving members of the US military, part of the Service Members’ Anti-War Contingent. Cam White of the Center on Conscience and War, marching alongside active-duty members of the Army, Marines, Air Force, and Navy, said:

There are more active duty troops at this protest than there have been in generations, because people in uniform today are waking up. Many service members are facing the greatest crisis of conscience that they have ever dealt with in their lives.

White reminded attendees that "service members do not take an oath to a president or a government; they take an oath to the Constitution. Troops have a duty to disobey unlawful orders."

Maxine Rebeles, a Navy veteran and member of About Face and Common Defense, tied the march to her work with the No Border Wall Coalition and Frontera Federation in her hometown of Laredo, Texas, describing efforts to stop a border wall and river buoy obstructions that endanger riverfront communities' only water source:

We're watching militarized law enforcement like ICE and Border Patrol harass, intimidate, and outright murder people who were standing up for their neighbors. This is an alarm bell for the country. And we don't intend to be quiet about it.

"The future does not belong to billionaires, it does not belong to bulldozers, and it does not belong to fear," she said. "It belongs to our children, it belongs to our communities, and it belongs to us."

Johnny Odom, a retired US Army Sergeant First Class, combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and member of Military Families Speak Out, spoke as the father of a service member currently deployed to Jordan since the start of the war with Iran.

"Today I stand here before all of you as a father... to denounce this illegal and unjustified war against the people of Iran and the mis-utilization of American forces without congressional approval and, most important, the people's approval,” said Odom.

“In my multiple deployments, I honestly can't tell you why we were in Iraq or Afghanistan or what we achieved other than violence and trauma. Now my son is repeating the cycle in Jordan, and it tears me up inside to think he is in harm's way for no good reason."

Odom called on veterans and military families to help "restore the standards and traditions that make this country truly unique," warning:

We are at a crossroads. We can choose to build and fight for the country that we all deserve, or we can let a wealthy few steer us down a path of ruin.

Another participant, Savanna Rostad of Milwaukee, was full of praise for the marchers:

A key word I would use to define the July 4 Veterans Against Fascism march in Philadelphia is "care." From the medic team who worked tirelessly in the heat to distribute water to the crowd, to the leaders who centered our collective voice around a message of unity and hope, everyone demonstrated care for each other and for our collective future. Witnessing this community in action redefined what nationhood means to me. I now feel a sense of meaning and belonging.

As NATO convenes once again to double down on military spending, arms production, and the logic of deterrence through superior firepower—this despite the alliance’s own members having repeatedly used force in violation of international law in recent years, in Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Libya, Syria, and the open-ended War on Terror—it is worth asking: What kind of security are we actually buying?

These interventions, often justified under the guise of humanitarianism or collective defense, have in practice destabilized entire regions, fueled insurgencies, and visited immense suffering upon some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. The result is a perverse paradox of an alliance that presents itself as the guardian of a rules-based order but has, through its own actions, undermined that very order, deepening the insecurity it claims to combat.

The record is unambiguous: Militarized security is reactive, not preventive. It treats symptoms—territorial disputes, insurgencies, great-power rivalry—while ignoring root causes such as inequality, resource scarcity, political exclusion, and the erosion of trust in institutions. The post-1945 era, for all its flaws, demonstrated that stability is not the product of arms races, but of norms, institutions, and the rule of law.

The relative peace among liberal democracies, the decline in international armed conflicts, and the gradual expansion of human rights all occurred not because states built bigger arsenals, but because they built stronger frameworks for cooperation. International organizations—including the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization, and the International Court of Justice—have encouraged cooperation and stability, while aircraft carriers or hypersonic missiles have mainly spread terror and destruction. Yet as NATO attempts to expand its influence these very institutions of social cooperation are under attack by the same NATO member states who have cut funding and even withdrawn from the organizations in some cases.

What we require is a legal framework that serves as the foundation for a truly equitable international community—one that enforces cooperation over competition, shared development over extraction, and the rights of all people over the privileges of a few.

The opportunity cost of this militarized approach urged by NATO is staggering. The combined military expenditure of NATO members now exceeds $1.3 trillion annually according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Reports indicates this is a figure that dwarfs the estimated $40 billion needed to close the global gaps in education, healthcare, and food security.

For the price of a single nuclear-powered submarine, a nation could fund universal pre-kindergarten for its entire population for a year. For the cost of a new fighter jet squadron, it could eliminate malaria in an entire region. These are not moral abstractions; they are strategic failures.

Study after study has shown that spending on healthcare, education, and renewable energy generates far greater economic multipliers in terms of job creation and GDP growth than equivalent spending on defense. Military expenditure distorts economies, prioritizing a narrow industrial base of contractors and exporters over diversified, sustainable development. It exacerbates inequality by funneling public resources into capital-intensive sectors that benefit elites, while social services—hospitals, schools, public transit—suffer from chronic underfunding. When citizens see their tax dollars funding bombs rather than bridges, cynicism replaces civic engagement, and the very legitimacy of a country’s governance is undermined.

International law, which has been a strong impetus to cooperation in the world and which can provide fundamental rules of fairness, has been used as an instrument to promote militarization and violence in the world by the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world.

The path forward demands a radical reimagining of international law—not as it is currently wielded by powerful states to justify intervention, enforce economic dependency, or entrench global hierarchies, but as a tool for genuine equity, cooperation, and shared prosperity.

Today, international law is too often a weapon of the strong, invoked selectively to punish adversaries while ignoring the transgressions of allies. This is not the international law we need. What we require is a legal framework that serves as the foundation for a truly equitable international community—one that enforces cooperation over competition, shared development over extraction, and the rights of all people over the privileges of a few.

Such a system must prioritize binding agreements on climate change to ensure our natural environment is protected not as a luxury but as a fundamental right. A fair international legal system would mandate fair trade practices that prevent the exploitation of weaker economies, and it would guarantee economic rights—food, water, education, healthcare—as inalienable entitlements for every human being, not as charities doled out at the discretion of the wealthy. A rejuvenated international law would also hold all states, regardless of power, accountable to the same standards, ending the hypocrisy that allows some nations to flout norms with impunity while others are punished for far lesser offenses.

The argument for participatory governance is not merely moral but strategic. States that involve all their citizens in a meaningful way in the governance of their country are less likely to engage in external conflict because their leaders are accountable to electorates who bear the costs of war. But this participation must be substantive, not procedural. Holding elections means little if economic inequality allows elites to dominate policy, if media concentration distorts public discourse, or if voter suppression silences marginalized groups. True participation requires deliberative assemblies, workplace unionization, digital direct democracy, and local autonomy. When people feel ownership over their government, they are less susceptible to the siren song of populist demagogues and the xenophobic chants of nationalists.

The post-2008 austerity consensus has been a disaster for global stability. Neoliberalism’s core assumption—that unregulated competition drives progress—ignores the fact that markets produce winners and losers, and that losers, when abandoned, turn to extremism. The rise of far-right parties, the spread of extremist movements, and the surge in gang violence are all, in no insignificant part, responses to economic despair.

A global fair deal must prioritize universal basic services as human rights, not commodities. It must invest in green industrial policy to create high-wage, low-carbon jobs. It must cancel the crushing debts of the Global South and replace free trade with fair trade, ensuring that corporations cannot exploit weak regulations in developing States. And it must tax extreme wealth to fund the end of extreme poverty. These are not socialist or communist ideas; they are merely common sense policies.

Yet NATO’s current trajectory assumes that security is a zero-sum game, where one state’s gain is another’s loss. This ignores that the greatest threats of our time—climate change, pandemics, nuclear proliferation—respect no borders. Even China and the United States, despite their rivalry, have cooperated on climate accords and pandemic response when it served their interests. The Montreal Protocol succeeded because states realized ozone depletion threatened them all. Collective security, properly structured, can work. The question is not whether cooperation is possible, but whether we have the will to pursue it. NATO does not answer this challenge, but seeks to exploit it by setting people against each other in the name of militarization.

We have a choice. We can continue down the path of militarized security, where trillions are spent on weapons that guarantee mutual destruction, where inequality festers, and where the logic of competition ensures that no one is ever truly safe. Or we can invest in a future where no child goes hungry, no family lacks healthcare, and no nation lives in fear of another—a future where international law serves as an equalizer, ensuring that the rights and dignity of all people are upheld, and that our shared planet is preserved for generations to come. The former is the path of barbarism. The latter is the path of civilization.

NATO’s leaders would do well to remember that true security is not measured in the size of an arsenal, but in the strength of the societies it claims to protect—and that those societies are far weaker when their most vulnerable members are abandoned to the consequences of unchecked militarism.

Live 12 noon Eastern:

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.

MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.live https://x.com/tedrall https://x.com/JamarlThomas 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-ted-rall-and-jamarl-thomas/id1825379504

The post Q&A | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

For the second time since the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed, Washington and Tehran have slipped back into direct military confrontation. The United States struck “80 targets in Iran with precision munitions” after Iranian forces fired on several ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz without prior coordination with Tehran. The scale of the American strikes reportedly far exceeded the previous U.S.-Iran exchange, suggesting that Washington sought not merely to retaliate but to reestablish deterrence. The United States also reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil sales, reversing one of the central concessions of the MOU. The IRGC, in turn, claimed to have attacked 85 US military sites across the region, including the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait, and said eight were destroyed.

At the heart of the dispute are two competing interpretations of the MOU. Tehran's reading is that while the Strait of Hormuz is to remain open, all commercial traffic during the 60-day interim period must be coordinated with Iran as the parties negotiate a permanent maritime arrangement. Washington, by contrast, interprets an "open" Strait to mean that vessels may transit either the Iranian or Omani shipping lanes without coordinating with Iran.

For Tehran, this is not a technical disagreement but a strategic one. Iranian officials fear the United States is using the MOU to erode Iran's control over the Strait by rejecting any requirement for coordination and, in effect, establishing an alternative corridor that could remain open even if war resumes. Such an arrangement would deprive Iran of what many of its strategists regard as its single most important source of leverage in a future conflict: the credible ability to disrupt maritime traffic through Hormuz. From Tehran's perspective, commercial shipping can resume without surrendering that leverage—but only if all vessel movements continue to be coordinated with Iran, thereby reinforcing its nominal authority over the waterway.

Washington counters that the text of the MOU does not explicitly require ships to obtain Iranian authorization before transiting the Strait. Instead, it assigns Iran responsibility for ensuring the safe passage of commercial vessels, a distinction the United States argues falls short of granting Tehran operational control over all maritime traffic. Paragraph 5 of the MOU states:

Upon the signing of this MoU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles, and de-mining by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be instated within 30 days.

Following the previous round of fighting, the two sides explored a compromise under which commercial vessels would coordinate their transit with both Iran and a designated Gulf Cooperation Council state. Under such an arrangement, ships would notify Tehran while also reporting to a GCC maritime authority, balancing Iran's demand for oversight with Washington's desire to avoid granting Tehran exclusive control. The talks, however, appear never to have been finalized before they were suspended for the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

During that pause, several commercial vessels—with their AIS transponders switched off—attempted to transit the southern shipping corridor without notifying Tehran. Iran viewed these voyages as a direct challenge to its interpretation of the MOU and responded with force.

Both sides are clearly testing each other's red lines. If the dispute were solely about ensuring the safe passage of commercial shipping, vessels could simply transit through the Iranian shipping lane. Tehran has not prevented ships from using the northern corridor. Instead, the insistence on using the southern corridor without notifying Iran appears designed to challenge Tehran's claim that it exercises authority over the Strait—a claim the United States and most Gulf states have long rejected. Beyond questions of transit tolls or administrative fees, no country in the region is eager to legitimize Iranian control over one of the world's most strategically important waterways. The current confrontation is therefore less about navigation than about sovereignty and strategic leverage.

The compromise discussed before the talks were suspended offers a sensible way out. Requiring vessels to notify both Iran and a designated GCC maritime authority would defer the sovereignty dispute without prejudging its outcome, allowing commercial traffic to continue while negotiations over a permanent arrangement proceed. Sacrificing the entire MOU—and the far more consequential regional framework it could ultimately produce—over the question of who nominally manages the Strait for the next few weeks would be a costly and unnecessary mistake.

The question now is whether the dual-notification arrangement can still be revived after the exchange of fire over the past 12 hours, or whether this latest escalation has closed the diplomatic window altogether. The coming hours are likely to provide the answer.

One final observation: by responding with both military force and the reimposition of sanctions on Iranian oil exports, Washington appears intent on establishing escalation dominance—not merely deterring further Iranian action but demonstrating its willingness to raise the costs far more sharply than Tehran. The contrast with the first post-MOU confrontation in the Strait is striking. This time, the US response has been substantially more severe, suggesting that Washington is seeking to redefine the deterrence equation before negotiations can resume.

There is, however, a danger in Washington's decision to rescind the general license permitting the purchase of Iranian oil. The license was intended to serve as one of the MOU's principal incentives for Tehran to remain committed to the agreement. But an incentive is only as valuable as its credibility.

Even before this latest escalation, Iran had struggled to attract new buyers. Many governments and companies were reluctant to enter long-term arrangements because they feared negotiations would collapse and the license would expire without renewal. That uncertainty alone diminished the commercial value of the concession.

From Washington’s perspective, Iran’s alleged violation of the MOU is serious and warrants a response. But if the United States is seen as issuing and withdrawing the license too readily, potential buyers may conclude that access to Iranian oil is too politically volatile to justify the risk. That would weaken one of Washington’s most important sources of leverage. The less valuable the license becomes in the marketplace, the less valuable it becomes at the negotiating table—and the less the United States can demand in return for restoring it.

This article was republished from Trita Parsi's Substack

In today’s post-Roe world, the current landscape of abortion care is not defined by a single sweeping law or dramatic congressional vote. Instead, it is shaped by something far more subtle, sinister, and more consequential for millions of Americans. As we speak, every lever of government is being used to chip away at our reproductive freedom—and anti-abortion extremists are just getting warmed up.

This November, will the American people show up to the polls to defend reproductive freedom? Or, will our elected officials succumb to pressure from extremists seeking to ban abortion nationwide?

This year marks four years since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated federal protections for abortion care. As the lead plaintiff in Zurawski v. Texas, I have felt the full weight of the deadly Dobbs decision, and what happens when extremism infiltrates our democracy leading to devastating consequences for women and patients nationwide.

In a recent New York Times piece entitled “The Missing Middle in the Abortion Debate,” the author asserts that candidates need to find a “middle ground” and compromise when it comes to abortion laws in states like Texas. But the reality is that there is no “middle ground” when lives are at risk.

Protecting abortion access is still popular with Americans across the political spectrum, and yet, anti-abortion extremists and lawmakers continue to ignore what most Americans want.

As soon as Roe was overturned, states with anti-abortion legislatures quickly instituted trigger bans resulting in several women dying in states like Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina after being denied or delayed abortion care. In the years since we lost federal protections for abortion rights, many more women and patients from across the country have jumped through unimaginable hurdles just to seek care they needed.

Let me be clear, the piece treats abortion like a line on a chart. I know how being denied abortion care can mean the difference between life and death, and I also know that compromising on reproductive rights can cost women their lives.

My husband Josh and I always knew we wanted a family, so after trying for over a year, I found out that I was pregnant with my baby girl, Willow. However, at 18 weeks pregnant, our lives completely changed when we learned that my cervix had prematurely dilated, that amniotic fluid was leaking from my body, and that Willow was not going to survive to birth. Because of the Dobbs decision, which happened two months prior to everything I was experiencing, doctors sent me home because they could not legally treat me. Days later, I was in the ICU with sepsis, fighting for my life. Today, because I was denied the care I desperately needed, I am unable to bear children in the future.

My pregnancy was wanted. My daughter Willow was wanted. In a perfect world, I would be growing my family with my husband and daughter by my side. Instead, I turned my trauma into advocacy and have spent the last four years fighting for women across the country to be able to access safe abortion care.

Right now, anti-abortion extremists are leveraging every opportunity to ban abortion nationwide—no matter the cost. They are orchestrating a layered, coordinated effort to restrict abortion access through our judicial system, state legislatures, and federal agencies. Anti-abortion extremists are taking these measures to achieve several goals at one time: eliminate abortion care without further complicating their chances in the upcoming midterm elections.

And yet, anti-abortion politicians and lawmakers have been relentless in their efforts to chip away at abortion access. From Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-M. attacks on medication abortion, and Senate Republicans upholding President Donald Trump’s ban on abortion care for veterans or demanding anti-abortion riders in critical funding legislation—these extremists have demonstrated a clear commitment to enacting their anti-abortion agenda.

What’s alarming is that these attacks are not happening in isolation. Republicans are publicly avoiding discussion of abortion ahead of November. However, wherever they are governing, they are actively fighting to take away our freedom to choose.

Though the post-Dobbs landscape was initially framed as “a return to states’ rights,” the reality is that Trump and his administration have taken a number of covert steps to diminish abortion care, while allowing states to lead the charge in an all out assault on abortion rights. Republican-led state legislatures are advancing laws to block the mailing of abortion medication, criminalize its distribution, and even classify these medicines as controlled substances.

Furthermore, several states have taken up lawsuits similar to Louisiana v. FDA to challenge federal approval and distribution rules. In other words, state-level bans are being weaponized to attack all forms of abortion care and eliminate a patient’s ability to receive comprehensive reproductive healthcare.

As we look toward November, now more than ever we must be mindful of who will stand up for reproductive freedom—because lives are on the line. Abortion is on the ballot once again, and we deserve to know who will protect our freedoms without hesitation or compromise.

I recently traveled back to Washington, DC to tell my story alongside more than 150 abortion storytellers to talk about the impact of the Dobbs decision on our lives and in our communities. We met with both Democratic and Republican offices to stress the importance of fighting for reproductive freedom to save lives.

Protecting abortion access is still popular with Americans across the political spectrum, and yet, anti-abortion extremists and lawmakers continue to ignore what most Americans want. According to the latest data by Navigator Research, a majority of Americans continue to believe that abortion should be legal in most cases and that lawmakers who support anti-abortion policies, including banning or restricting contraception and abortion nationally, are deal-breakers.

The debate is no longer just about whether abortion is legal in a given state. It’s about who controls the systems that determine access: courts, agencies, supply chains, and Congress.

Extremists are weaponizing the machinery of democracy to erode our freedoms—not all at once, but piece by piece, at the expense of American lives. Now more than ever, we must use our voices at the ballot box and beyond to fight back.

Some of the most peaceful moments of my life were spent standing on the deck of a US Navy aircraft carrier just before dawn. It feels like looking over the entire ocean, into endless blue water. An aircraft carrier is massive—like a floating city on the sea—and yet you can still feel the gentle rocking from the ocean's waves through the soles of your feet. When you breathe into this moment—the salty air filling your lungs—you're reminded of how incredibly small you are in the grand scheme of things. The realization causes a sort of lightness and fluttering within the chest, an overwhelming sense of gratitude for all that you cannot understand.

Then the day begins. The launch of the first F/A-18 fighter jet tears a sonic hole through the silent morning. Naval airmen run around the deck, bracing themselves and clutching their headsets to evade the thundering sound. The whole ship shakes as it launches jet after jet, white and gray trails marking their courses across the serene blue sky. Fuel and oil cover the hands and faces of mechanics working throughout the day and into the night to make sure the jets keep coming and going, launch after launch. There is not enough ocean breeze to prevent the sweat that stains our coveralls. The mixture of stenches—salt, oil, sweat—sticks to the hair inside your nostrils. It is the same the next day and the next. Preparation for war—for terror—is a never-ending, completely mundane affair. We eat our oatmeal, we don our coveralls, we load the jets, we drop the bombs, we do it all again.

I currently work for the antiwar organization CODEPINK, but long before that, I was an enlisted member of the US Navy. My last job in the Navy was easy compared with others. I was the operations specialist for a squadron of fighter pilots. I worked with the commissioned officers, pilots whom I affectionately called "the frat boys of the Navy." They were young, zealous, mostly white men hyped about their jobs. I mean, they got to fly ultrafast planes and practice dropping bombs all day. Isn't this the American boy's dream? I sat in their lounge every day, making sure everything was documented and accounted for to get them launching and landing their jets with enough fuel, with the right parachutes, and at the right times.

I joined the military for the same reasons many young people do. My parents couldn't afford to send me to college. I was desperate to get out of the house, stuck in a place whose only immediate opportunities were casinos and hospitality work, and burdened with a brain and heart that were very eager to prove something. Along came Polly—or, in my case, a Navy recruiter. Travel? Free college? Free basic housing? A mission bigger than myself?! I thought about it for half a second before I signed up.

When I told the pilots about my studies and my evolving love of the sea, they laughed, saying, "Well, don't pay attention to how much fuel we dump in the ocean."

American war making is in the mundane. I'll say it again and again. Most of us are mere assembly workers in a war-making factory, so disconnected are we in this 21st-century age of war. Most of us are kept far away from the bloody realities of our jobs. At the end of the day, my job was to push paper. I saw a copy machine more than I did a gun. I don't have valiant stories of combating ISIS. I never leapt onto a grenade to save my comrades. And yet, my spirit and conscience would not let me get away with this blissful ignorance, this American-made delusion, for long.

My saving grace—and the start of my awakening—was the fact that I was a loner. I had a unique job; no one else did what I did. I was kept away from my peers and didn't care to belong. On the weekends, when many Naval airmen would go out partying, drinking, and building all that collective trauma and camaraderie together, I'd drive four hours from the coast of Virginia to its forest interior. I was always looking for a good hike, a mountain to climb, a waterfall to swim in. In my solitude, I felt an ancestral sense of connection to the land and stars. I could feel love in the light glow of the sun that somehow still reached me between the dense forest trees. Swimming at the base of a waterfall felt like a gentle cleansing—a return to the womb of the Earth herself. There was an innate sense of safety that would wash over me as I lay under the night sky, waiting for asteroids to streak across the stars and rain down on me.

I fell deeply in love. I started going to school while still on active duty. I decided to study Environmental Science. When I told the pilots about my studies and my evolving love of the sea, they laughed, saying, "Well, don't pay attention to how much fuel we dump in the ocean."

That statement stayed with me. It followed me onto that deck of the aircraft carrier, lingering with me on those quiet mornings when I looked over the sea. What kind of world was I actually building? What kind of destruction could I possibly be contributing to?

They say that if you're lucky, you can see dolphins swimming, leaping in the waves close to the ships. I was never blessed with such a sight. But I began to think about that fuel, clogging their blowholes, poisoning their lungs. I began to think about the places where we dropped boots and bullets and bombs. I thought of the people whom I deemed enemies and yet knew nothing about. Do they not deserve to enjoy the refreshing peace of a waterfall too? Do their lungs know the crisp, clean air of a mountain walk, away from bullets and the exhaust of aircraft engines? Something broke within me then—something irreparable. And I could no longer pretend to belong.

I don't think I am the only person feeling this way. And those who do, I invite you to sit with me in this feeling of brokenness, and to step outside of the American delusion of war making and "peace through strength"—the normalization of coercion and dominance. This is an invitation to see what you see, to let it wash over your conscience and compel you to change course. Yes, it is frightening to grapple with the truth, but to ignore it guarantees our collective death, both in spirit and in the material world.

I have seen nothing that so succinctly explains and connects the US military's active demolition of people with the destruction of the environment until I watched Abby Martin’s 2025 documentary film, Earth's Greatest Enemy. It offers thorough, undeniable evidence that our country’s ongoing military campaigns and occupations are destroying entire communities and ecosystems. To me, this film encapsulates both a sense of grief and of hope: grief over the horror that US militarism has inflicted upon us and the planet, and hope, embodied in the people who continue defending their homelands, waterways, and communities against the seemingly insurmountable force that is the US military. Earth’s Greatest Enemy is available now on major streaming platforms. I invite you to watch the film, to invite friends to watch the film, and then tell me what you saw, tell me what you felt.

In every person, there is a soldier or warrior spirit, long waiting for a direction worth fighting for. This Earth is a place worth protecting, and in its people is a common humanity worth putting your body on the line for.

I visited Omsk once, or at least its airport; we were en route from Moscow to Ulan Ade on the Mongolian border, and the Aeroflot flight landed there to refuel. (It was a memorable journey; this was still the Soviet Union, and on boarding for the full-day flight, the stewardess handed each passenger a baggie with a scrawny chicken drumstick). All of which is to say, I’m equipped to pronounce, with the gravitas proper to a pundit, that Omsk is long ways from anywhere else.

Including the Ukrainian border, which makes it remarkable that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s drone specialists managed to fly a whole squadron of their craft more than 2,500 kilometers from home and bomb the heck out of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s largest oil refinery. It was the high point of an ongoing campaign designed to highlight what may be Russia’s greatest weakness: that it, like a number of other countries, is heavily dependent on oil.

Just as US President Donald Trump has proposed building American prosperity on the back of “energy dominance" via “liquid gold,” oil was supposed to be Russia’s strength, the source of its greatest riches. (John McCain memorably called it a “gas station with nukes.”) And indeed in the early days of the war, Russia flexed its hydrocarbon muscle, threatening to cut off Europe’s gas supply. Throughout its invasion of its neighbor, Russia has relied on the often-covert export of oil via its fleet of “shadow tankers” to keep revenue flowing. Trump of course made this easier and more profitable for his buddy by temporarily lifting sanctions in the wake of our own ill-advised attack on Iran.

But if our attack on Iran has made other nations demonstrably more nervous about relying on the import of hydrocarbons, Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s petroleum network should make them nervous about depending on the stuff even if they don’t have to bring it in from afar. It turns out that in the drone age it’s a very risky business, because it relies on colossal pieces of infrastructure that can’t be easily defended.

Once you can run cars and heat pumps and cooktops off the power those panels and turbines generate, then you’re far more protected against attack.

One of those is the supertanker—there was one on fire Tuesday in the Gulf, apparently hit by an Iranian missile because it strayed from the Tehran-approved shipping lane. Ukrainian drones attacked another Monday in the Sea of Azov, crippling the vessel. There’s essentially no defense for these slow-moving giant ships if an adversary with a few drones wants to take one out—they are, after all, a floating pool of flammable liquid.

Another vulnerability is the terminal where you load and unload the crude—Ukraine got one of those Monday too, in occupied Crimea:

The facility serves as a major logistics hub for petroleum products on the occupied peninsula, handling the receipt, storage, and transfer of oil between rail infrastructure, storage tanks, and tankers

And a third—and perhaps most exposed—is the refinery. An oil refinery is one of the most specialized pieces of equipment humans have ever built; anyone who’s ever driven by one on the highway will recognize that the tangle of pipes and tanks that makes each so complicated. It’s an industry truism that no two are alike.

That means that they’re highly vulnerable. If you aim your drone well, maybe it will smash, say, the ELOU-AVT-11 Unit, which at Omsk is what they call the thing that does the initial distillation and desalination of the crude. Without it, the secondary units that produce, say, gasoline and jet fuel have nothing to work with. And this is highly complicated equipment not easy to replace—given Western sanctions, the current guess is six months to a year. And it’s not as if Ukraine has hit just that refinery—in fact, it was one of the last squares on a drone pilot’s bingo card. As Illia Kabachynskyi reports:

It's also worth remembering that Ukraine has already hit all 10 of Russia's largest refineries, some of them more than once. That means it's no longer a single plant waiting for repairs—it's effectively all of them at once, which piles additional pressure on repair crews and on the supply of replacement parts that are hard to source under sanctions.

Russia started this energy war, of course—over the years of the conflict it has targeted heating plants and the like, trying to freeze the fighting spirit out of the Ukrainians during their long winters. It’s been effective at producing cold, but not at winning the war; along with the attacks on schools, hospitals, and other civilian targets it seems to have helped reinforce the Ukrainian will to resist.

Now—with far more attention to avoiding civilian casualties—the Ukrainians are striking back, at defense plants, and especially at refineries. As Zelensky said Tuesday morning:

The very idea of Russia having a strategic rear is gone. For a long time, Russia believed it had territorial advantage no one else possessed, a deep rear, where it could safely keep everything its war depends on, believing no one could reach them. We have reached them.

But of course what’s at stake here is not just the oil that the Russian war machine runs on. In Russia, as in America, almost everything runs on oil. I remember that the one and only time that I sat down with former President Barack Obama, the first thing he told me was that “the price of gasoline is the most salient fact in American politics.” If that’s even close to the case in Russia, Putin better watch out: in occupied Crimea, gas prices are going above $10 a gallon. The government is desperately trying to import gasoline from as far away as India. As Pjotr Sauer reported Tuesday morning, police are having to draw guns to quell disturbances at gas stations where lines can stretch for kilometers, “fuel tourists” are crossing the borders with China and Kazakhstan to fill their tanks, and as a result:

“Mass fatigue with the war is turning into mass irritation,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst. Even so, he said the shortages were unlikely to trigger widespread protests in Russia’s tightly controlled political system. “There is certainly shock, but the lack of any real means of influencing the situation—and the risks associated with trying to do so—make protests unlikely.”

This seems likely to get worse. Here’s a social media post from an Omsk resident watching the drone strikes: "Don't waste any time right now. Anyone with a car who's watching me—head to the gas station! The lines are about to get crazy."

And here’s an account of how Russian horse breeders are reporting a surge in sales because a steed is now cheaper to maintain than a car; check out the video of the equestrian cantering past the endless line at the gas station.

Ukraine has stood up to Russia’s attacks on its energy infrastructure mostly by starting to diversify: as Paul Hockenos reported last winter, the country is undergoing a rapid renewables revolution:

According to estimates from the Solar Energy Association of Ukraine, the nation installed at least 1.5 gigawatts of new solar generation in 2025—enough to power roughly 1.1 million homes—and grid operators intend to almost double the country’s renewable energy production over the next four years.

“Ukraine’s energy transition is not a slogan,” says Ievgeniia Kopytsia, a Ukrainian energy analyst at the Institute for Climate Protection, Energy, and Mobility. “Since the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has added over 3 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity. It’s a security-driven transformation, unfolding under extreme constraints, that prioritizes decentralization, flexibility, and speed of recovery.”

In the most basic terms, a single missile can take out a gas-fired power plant. But as Jeff Oatham of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy company and its largest private energy investor, explains:

“You would need around 40 missiles to do the equivalent amount of capacity damage at a wind farm.”

Solar, too, makes an unattractive target. “Attacking decentralized solar power installations is not economically rational,” says Ukrainian energy expert Olena Kondratiuk. “Missiles and drones are expensive, and significantly disrupting such systems would require a large number of strikes, while the overall impact on the energy system would remain limited.” Both solar and wind parks can function even when parts of them are out of operation.

That’s because sun and wind and batteries are not like oil—they are small, interchangeable pieces of infrastructure, easily subbed in. There aren’t choke points like refineries and tankers and terminals; there’s no cascading failure. My roof is covered with solar panels, and I suppose a saboteur could put a ladder against the wall and climb up there with a hammer and do some damage. But it wouldn’t shut down the electric grid across New England; it would be a problem, not a crisis. Which in turn is why no rational saboteur would ever bother.

And once you can run cars and heat pumps and cooktops off the power those panels and turbines generate, then you’re far more protected against attack. If Vladimir Putin had an electrified Russia he would worry far less about Ukrainian drones. Of course, if the world ran on electricity Russia would never have built up the treasury required to act like a bellicose beast.

Look, world leaders should be moving quickly to clean energy because it’s the one scaleable weapon in the war against climate change. But I’ll take any motivation—and I’ll count it as a real bonus if a cleaner world is also one where it’s harder to attack your neighbors because they don’t have vulnerable infrastructure. The peace dividend from sun and wind could be very real.

Pressure is rising on Home Depot to do something—say something—about the raids taking place at its stores. In Washington, DC, over two dozen members of Congress signed a letter to the company in a letter requesting answers about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol raids that have taken place at its stores over the past year. In Sacramento, a state bill would require big box home improvement stores to report on the raids. And meanwhile, local neighbors of the company continue to show up at the store—for day laborers being targeted by President Donald Trump—and sending messages to the company in more creative ways.

One year ago, in June of 2025, Trump henchman Stephen Miller berated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and demanded they increase arrests by targeting Home Depot parking lots. The result has been hundreds of arrests at the stores, with militarized and masked agents carrying out violent and chaotic raids, racially profiling and brutalizing customers and neighbors, and utilizing the store as bait for day laborers looking for work.

In response, thousands of local volunteers have shown up at their local Home Depots to document the raids and to show solidarity and support for their neighbors and day laborers—and to protest the presence of ICE or Border Patrol police at their local home improvement stores. The protests have continued on a rolling basis, with a recent one showcasing two dozen store customers joining a colorful sing-song protest calling on Home Depot to “do the right thing.”

Meanwhile, the response from the company has been… silence. With so much attention on the home improvement giant—which has become a site of numerous human and civil rights abuses against its own customers—members of several state legislatures and the US Congress have taken notice. On June 25, U.S. Rep Judy Chu (-D-Calif.) led 25 members of Congress in a letter addressed to Home Depot and Lowe's, asking for the companies to answer questions about the raids taking place at their stores.

The Members wrote:

While we recognize that your companies do not control federal immigration enforcement operations and may not receive advance notice of such activity, these operations have occurred repeatedly at or near your stores across the country. As Members of Congress, we believe it is important to understand what information your companies possess regarding these incidents and what steps are being taken to protect the safety of workers, customers, bystanders, and surrounding communities.

Read the full letter here.

In California, Pasadena state Sen. Sasha Renee Perez (D-25) introduced the “REPAIR Act” (SB1103), which would compel big box home improvement stores to report when raids take place on their properties. The bill is a direct response to Home Depot’s refusal to give clear answers—or to share information with the public—about the arrests, abuses, and surveillance taking place on its properties, or to make clear its position on the raids. The bill has passed the state Senate, and on June 23 the legislation, known as the "ICE Out of Home Depot" state bill, passed the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee.

At this point, even Home Depot investors themselves are starting to ask questions. The only remaining question is whether Home Depot is listening to its neighbors, to its investors, or even its own customers.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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

Today we discuss:

• 95% of Americans say the US is suffering an affordability crisis, as many report trouble with the rising cost of groceries and gas, according to a Harris poll for the Guardian. More Americans believe the overall economy is getting worse (57%) than in February (46%), Fewer people today believe the economy is getting better (16%, compared with 28% in February) and more say their financial security has gotten worse. Half of all Democrats, Republicans and independents say they are having trouble affording everyday necessities like gas and groceries. Two-thirds of Americans – including 49% of Republicans – said they have little faith that the federal government will improve the cost-of-living crisis.

• Far-right leader Marine Le Pen says she’ll run for the French presidency next year despite being sentenced to wear a court-ordered electronic monitor for embezzlement.

• An ex-girlfriend of embattled Senate candidate Graham Platner told The Washington Post that he repeatedly removed protection without her consent when they were having sex.

• Trump says he believes the ceasefire and interim agreement to end the war with Iran are now “over.” Iran launched a wave of attacks against American bases in the Gulf in retaliation for U.S. strikes. Washington said this was because Tehran had earlier hit three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

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

https://x.com/tedrall

https://x.com/JamarlThomas

#tedrall #jamarlthomas #news #politics

The post Half of Americans Struggle to Afford Groceries and Gas | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

As democratic socialists secure primary victories across the country — from New York City to Colorado and beyond — many capitalists wonder why the electorate is shifting left. After decades of rising income inequality (the U.S. Gini coefficient has hovered around 0.41–0.49 in recent years, up significantly since the 1980s), limited expansion of social safety net programs, and Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund now projected to deplete by 2032 (with only about 78% of scheduled benefits payable thereafter without congressional action), the real surprise is that this leftward turn took so long.

The post Ghost of Revolution Future appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

As the Trump administration and the US Congress continues to ramp up rhetoric of “China is our enemy,” 2026 is the 30th year that the United States has organized the largest naval war practice in the world, called Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC. For 37 days from June 24 through July 31, the RIMPAC war “games” will be held in the waters off the state of Hawaii.

This year 31 countries have sent naval, air, and land military forces to Hawaii for RIMPAC.

50% of the Participating Countries are Members or “Partners” of NATO, the NORTH ATLANTIC Treaty Organization

Interestingly, 50% of the participating countries are members or “partners” of NATO, the NORTH ATLANTIC Treaty Organization. Eight of the 10 NATO countries are from Europe: Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Canada is the only other NATO member from the Western Hemisphere, along with, of course, the host country, the United States.

Five of the 6 NATO “partners” have Pacific Ocean coasts: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Korea, and Colombia.

Israel Is Participating and Weaving Itself Into the Fabric and Organization of the US Military

Invited from its wars in the Middle East, Israel, the US partner in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the destruction of southern Lebanon, and the war on Iran, will also have a presence in RIMPAC as it continues to weave itself into the fabric of the US military.

Although RIMPAC has not specified what the role of the Israeli military delegation is, one can surmise that its members will act as liaison officers, planners, observers, or staff officers participating in command-and-control and multinational planning activities and giving lessons learned in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

40 Ships, 200 Aircraft, 25,000 Personnel, and 5 Submarines

40 military ships, including 13 from the US, 200 aircraft, 25,000 military personnel, and five Submarines will practice their violent mission of war in this year’s RIMPAC, which will include live fire and bombings on the Pohakuloa range on the Big Island of Hawaii, sinking a large retired US navy ship off the island of Kauai and amphibious landings on the turtle hatching beach of Bellows on the island of Oahu.

Harm to marine mammals created by the large numbers of ships continues to be a major concern. The numbers of “takes” or deaths of marine mammals allowed by the US government permits are horrendous.

US Navy at Pearl Harbor Involved in the US-Israeli War on Iran

On February 28, 2026, the Trump administration allowed itself to get suckered into joining Israel in attacking Iran. The massive bombings and missile attacks from the US and Israel assassinated the Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and many other senior Iranian officials on the first day of the war on Iran.

Also killed on February 28, 2026, the first day of the US-Israeli attack on Iran, were 156 civilians, including 120 school children when a US missile destroyed the Shajareh Tayyebe Elementary School school in Minab, southern Iran.

USS Charlotte, the US Navy Submarine in RIMPAC, That Sunk an Iranian Ship 2,000 Miles from Iran

One of the five submarines in 2026 RIMPAC is the US Navy’s USS Charlotte.

On March 4, 2026, five days after the US-Israel war on Iran began, the USS Charlotte torpedoed and sunk the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena in international waters 19 nautical miles off the southern tip of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean.

The USS Charlotte torpedoing of the Dena killed 104 Iranian sailors. At the time of the attack, Dena had a crew of 136 personnel and only 32 survived. According to reports, the remains of 20 of the deceased were not recovered.

It is the only instance since World War II in which a United States Navy submarine sank a surface vessel using torpedoes.

The Iranian ship was 2,300 miles from Iran having participated in the multilateral naval exercise MILAN 2026, in February 2026, and in the International Fleet Review 2026, held at the Indian port of Visakhaptnam.

The US sent US Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Steve Koehler, the highest-ranking naval officer in the Pacific Command, to the International Fleet Review. Ironically, a US Navy release revealed that a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft took part and conducted anti-submarine warfare drills with other participating forces in MILAN 2026.

The United States Navy was to have sent the Arleigh Burke Class guided-missile destroyer USS Pinckney (DDG-91), but participation was cancelled at the last minute for “undisclosed operational reasons.”

According to an article in The Maritime Executive written before the US-Israeli war on Iran started, the Indian military was probably not concerned about the lack of US participation, “as the It would have been embarrassing for the Indian hosts to have had Pinckney moored alongside IRINS Dena, should war have broken out with Iran during the period of the fleet review.”

After the USS Charlotte sunk the Dena, India allowed Iranian warship IRIS Lavan to dock at the port of Kochi on March, 4 2026 with its 183-member crew housed at naval facilities. Sri Lanka allowed another Iranian warship IRIS Bushehr, to dock at Trincomalee port and housed its 208-member crew at the naval camp on March 5, 2026.

India's former chief of naval staff, Admiral Arun Prakah, commented: "It’s a bit of treachery of the US to attend a peaceful function side-by-side with Iranian navy, where there’s a lot of camaraderie, and then the moment the Iranian ship pops out of harbour, it’s sunk... They could have delayed this action to spare India this embarrassment."

That comment, and India allowing one Iranian ship to seek safe harbor in an Indian port after the USS Charlotte torpedoed the IRIS Dena, is probably the reason why the massive US military unified command “Indo-Pacific Command,” and host of RIMPAC, recently dropped “Indo” from its name and is now called the “Pacific Command,” even though its area of responsibility still includes the Indian subcontinent.

The US Central command said that the US has now sunk and destroyed 60 Iranian naval vessels.

Another Tragedy Involving Another US Submarine Homeported at Pearl Harbor

However, those of us who live in Hawaii and those from Japan remember another tragic incident with a US submarine homeported in Pearl Harbor.

On February 9, 2001, the US Navy’s USS Greenville conducted an “emergency” surfacing with 16 VIP civilians onboard as a part of the US Navy's Distinguished Visitor Embarkation (DVE) program. The USS Greeneville came up under the Japanese student training vessel Ehime Maru, 9 nautical miles off the island of Oahu, breaking the hull of the ship which quickly sank. Thirty-five people were aboard the Ehime Maru, of which 26 were rescued, one with serious injuries. Nine were killed, four high school students, two teachers, and three crew members, with US Navy and Japanese divers retrieving 8 of the 9 bodies from the sunken vessel which was raised from the ocean floor during October 2001.

Thankfully, the USS Greeneville is not participating in RIMPAC 2026 and is now homeported in San Diego.

Citizens Protest RIMPAC

Each edition of RIMPAC is protested by citizens in Hawaii. On June 24 a spirited ceremony and procession preceded the protest at the gates of the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Numerous persons will be at the gates of Pearl Harbor over the next weeks to continue the challenge to the war practice called RIMPAC.

Under the dictatorship of the Shah, Iran was a close U.S. ally. There are tantalizing indications that American policymakers are looking to recreate that Cold War-era partnership and kick Israel to the curb.

This seems crazy.

Just a few months ago, the Trump administration and Israel went to war together against Iran, assassinated its Supreme Leader and other top officials and attempted to decimate its military and spark a popular uprising against the government. Against the odds, Iran prevailed by leveraging its control of the Strait of Hormuz—through which 20% of the world’s oil (and thus much of its economy) flows. Iran flipped the script, transforming U.S. bases in the Gulf from encircling threats to convenient targets.

Lest there be any doubt, 92% of Israelis—in a right-wing apartheid state whose Left has been hollowed out and radicalized by Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack—say they believe that Iran has won.

The Islamic Republic has emerged with newfound respect not only from the Sunni Arab street but also its own restive population and its American attackers, as well as stronger economic alliances, the unwinding of sanctions, and hundreds of billions in war reparations. America is desperately suing for peace; demands that Iran give up its nuclear research and medium-range missiles have vanished into the “nuclear dust.”

Arguably the most significant transformation to come out of the 2026 Iran War has been severe damage to the US-Israeli alliance, which dates to 1948. For most of that time, the U.S. extended Israel a blank check. Whatever the Jewish state did—launch wars of aggression against its neighbors, capture territory it never intended to liberate or annex, build secret nuclear weapons, create an apartheid state, kill American sailors, undermine efforts at regional peace—the U.S. poured in arms, cash, intelligence support and U.N. security council vetoes whenever needed, no questions asked.

Like a kid with a permissive parent, Israel repeatedly tested its limits. Finally, they crossed the line.

Not only did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seduce President Trump into a military misadventure that failed overnight, bringing about a humiliating defeat. There is broad consensus in official Washington that Israel was either stupidly naïve or outright lied about the war’s chances of success.

In their book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan describe the extraordinary Iran War sales pitch Bibi delivered to Trump and his top officials at the White House on February 11th: “Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they portrayed as pointing to near-certain victory. Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed within a few weeks; Iran would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz; the likelihood that Iran would land blows against U.S. interests in neighboring countries was minimal. Besides, Mossad intelligence indicated that protests inside Iran would begin again and—with the Israeli spy agency helping to foment riots and rebellion—an intense bombing campaign could create the conditions for the Iranian opposition to overthrow the regime. The Israelis also raised the prospect of Iranian Kurdish fighters crossing the border from Iraq to open a ground front in the northwest, further stretching the regime’s forces and accelerating its collapse.”

All wrong.

Not everyone in the Situation Room was sold on a set of optimistic predictions that quickly proved disastrously mistaken. “Sir,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine told Trump, “this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that’s why they’re hard-selling.” Trump overruled Caine.

As the president sees it, Israel dragged him into a losing war. And now they’re sabotaging his efforts to end it.

“As far back as March, when the Trump administration began to explore diplomatic options for ending the war, U.S. officials told Israeli counterparts not to continue killing Iran’s political leadership,” The Washington Post reported. It’s hard to negotiate peace when your ally keeps whacking your enemy’s chief negotiators.

“Washington’s objection to killing Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the country’s parliamentary speaker, was so acute that this spring it took the extraordinary step of asking intermediaries to warn Iran,” the Post continued.

“Everybody hates you now,” Trump shouted at Netanyahu last month. “Everybody hates Israel because of this,” he said, referring to the IDF’s latest invasion of Lebanon. He could just as easily have been thinking about the genocide in Gaza and thuggish IDF-backed settlers in the West Bank.

The U.S. thinks Israel is feckless and ungrateful—vice president and likely 2028 GOP presidential nominee J.D. Vance said so in public. Israel’s support in the U.S. is at a record low and sinking.

We have good reason to start looking for a new Middle East bestie.

Iran would be a far more valuable ally in the region. As we’ve seen, Iran borders and controls the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. It offers vast strategic depth, access to Central Asia, and leverage over energy pipeline routes. Israel, on the other hand, is tiny and comparatively ill-situated.

Iran has enormous oil and gas reserves, the third largest on earth. As a stable ally, it could be a major, reliable supplier and stabilizer of Gulf energy. Israel has negligible oil or gas. Iran’s 92 million people (Israel has 10 million) and large landmass provide a much bigger consumer market and recruitment pool. Thanks to the U.S.-Israeli disaster, most analysts agree, Iran is now the regional hegemon in the Middle East.

Israel still offers advanced technology, intelligence and military innovation, but it is small, with few natural resources, politically toxic—especially post-Gaza—and keeps trying to manipulate us.

Still, inertia tends to rule (until it doesn’t).

“If Trump were to bring serious pressure on Israel, it would have to be in pursuit of a significant breakthrough that would make him look good,” a skeptical former diplomat, Aaron David Miller, told Al Jazeera. “There’s no issue out there—not Lebanon, Gaza, [or] Israeli-Saudi normalization—that’s close to a breakthrough that would warrant sustained pressure on Israel.”

What about US-Iranian normalization?

That would be huge.

The question then comes down to this: After 47 years of U.S.-imposed sanctions, proxy wars, isolation, assassinations, and two recent sneak attacks during peace talks, could the Iranians ever bring themselves to trust us?

(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 Can Iran Replace Israel? appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The Greeley Stampede 4th of July Parade is the largest Independence Day Parade in Colorado, and it is held deep in the soon-to-be-blue-again Congressional District 8. That is why I registered our walking unit in that parade. We wanted to make sure all the tens of thousands of people who turned out were reminded of the human and economic good our social safety net does in Colorado. It was an incredible experience fueled by love for one another and not love of Trump’s America. The 2026 Greeley Stampede Parade was the most uplifting and hopeful thing I have experienced in a long, long time. It proved to me that Republican Rep. Gabe Evans, of Colorado's 8th District, needs to get the boot in November’s general election.

Gabe Evans is currently barely representing his constituents in his diverse, incredibly beautiful district. And mostly, Evans seems to represent himself first and supports the Trump agenda. Immigrant rights? Are you kidding me? Stopping wars and the bombing President Donald Trump uses to distract everyone from those Epstein files? No, Gabe goes right along with the Trump agenda, the whole Project 2025 agenda, and mostly the me-first agenda. Greed and neglect are about to turn CD8 beautiful blue again, deep and lasting blue. And marching in this parade reaffirmed all those feelings of community and connection I know people hunger for in a post-pandemic world.

The crowd at the parade was so gorgeous. As we all saw in the stores for months, all that red, white, and blue was going to turn up somewhere. At the Greeley parade on the 4th of July, there were little tykes in adorable outfits, their older siblings in stars and stripes along with their parents and beyond. Many families had tents up for shade, and one creative group was misting their folks to stay cool. This was the sort of old-fashioned, community supported parade that once was so common in America. I saw US Navy sailors marching, local businesses, car clubs, cowboys and cowgirls, bands, floats, and people balancing on floats to see and absorb the whole moment. Life affirming community was on parade.

As we continued along the parade route, I kept thinking about how many of those beautiful people, how many at this celebration—how many of the children and how many of our disabled—will lose access to their healthcare because their Barely-Representative Gabe Evans thought voting for the Big, Beautiful Bill was cost cutting via the devastating cuts to Medicaid, SNAP benefits, and more, and has never told the truth about his lack of character and failure to represent his district. Evans knew he was hurting people with his vote, and his reality is that he did not care.

Barely-cares Evans cannot hide from his votes, and he cannot hide from his constituents.

People in his district see through his deep and abiding devotion to the cruel and community-killing, family-splitting and painful cuts to Medicaid coverage. After being a part of this parade, I know without a doubt that the people of Colorado’s CD8 are hardworking, decent, and kind people—and they will not stand for anyone destroying any part of what they are.

Evans needs to get the boot from these dear people before he does more damage by supporting huge, unnecessary cuts to Social Security when the change that needs making is to make sure billionaires pay their fair share in taxes—oh, and the almost-trillionaire too. It is ridiculous to have a representative like Barely-there Evans is this district since neighbors and friends rely on and deeply support Social Security—even the 9news announcer cheered when our unit passed by (maybe he is grateful his parents receive their earned benefits, I thought, since he was lots younger than me).

Barely-cares Evans cannot hide from his votes, and he cannot hide from his constituents. The patients, the nurses, the doctors, the healthcare techs, the housekeeping staff, the dietary crew, and all the lives impacted and damaged by his selfishness stand in stark contrast to what is alive and well in his own backyard—hardworking Colorado CD8 families and all the other residents who receive their earned benefits through Social Security and all who are lifted from despair and suffering through Medicare and Medicaid. We all showed up to celebrate 250 years as a nation. The ideal is still in sight in places like Colorado’s Congressional District 8, but only if we confirm that solidarity and give Evans the boot.

Just over a year ago, Republicans passed the Big Ugly Bill into law. The bill slashes over $1 trillion from Medicaid, SNAP, and the Affordable Care Act—even as it gives massive tax handouts to the wealthiest people in America. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are richer, while working families suffer and die without the health care they need.

Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) represents California’s 22nd district, where two-thirds of his constituents rely on Medicaid. That’s over half a million people! And it’s the highest number of Medicaid enrollees of any Republican-held congressional district in the country.

Before the vote, Valadao pledged that “I will not support a final reconciliation bill that makes harmful cuts to Medicaid.” Then, he turned around and voted for this cruel monstrosity of a bill.

The Big Ugly Bill passed the US House by one vote. That means Valadao’s vote was decisive. He could have stopped families in his district from losing their health care. He could have stopped hospitals from cutting services and even closing their doors. He could have stopped Affordable Care Act premiums from skyrocketing. Instead, David Valadao betrayed the people he represents and showed where his true loyalties lie—with billionaires and Donald Trump.

The good news is that Randy Villegas, a working-class champion, is running to defeat Valadao this November. Villegas just won the Democratic nomination. I was proud to stand alongside him last week as we rallied outside Valadao’s office to mark the one-year anniversary of the Big Ugly Bill.

Villegas electrified the crowd, reminding us that: “Rep. Valadao voted to cut Medicaid to give tax breaks to billionaires. Meanwhile, Valadao has a government-sponsored health care plan that we pay for as taxpayers. He needs to use that plan to schedule a physical — to look for the spine that he's been missing.”

Rep. Valadao voted to cut Medicaid to give tax breaks to billionaires.

Meanwhile, Valadao has a government-sponsored health care plan that we pay for as taxpayers. He needs to use that plan to schedule a physical — to look for the spine that he's been missing. - @villegas_CA22 pic.twitter.com/RE5iEWOhIC
— Social Security Works ❌

When the current presidential administration took office on January 20, 2025, the authoritarian firestorm they ignited was, sadly, rapid but somewhat expected.

Funding cuts to childcare, housing, healthcare, and food were swift, as were escalated and targeted attacks towards immigrants nationwide. Much of these reckless cuts were led by Elon Musk. Aside from Musk’s billions in government contracts and showering Trump’s campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars, he had no actual government experience. Musk’s tech bro ethos, and firestarter mentality resemble, in retrospect, that of a young Trump. A terrifying resemblance that made him the perfect actor to wreak total havoc on our federal government.

The proximity to Trump that Musk paved for himself laid the groundwork for creating the Department of Government Efficiency, better known by its tongue-in-cheek name of DOGE. The false promise that DOGE would save US taxpayers trillions was, of course, nothing but a disastrous ploy that cost us money, destroyed vital agencies, decimated regulation, and exposed the personal data of nearly every American. And to date, neither Musk or DOGE officials have been held accountable.

Americans from across the country were quick to protest outside of Tesla showrooms to show Musk that we wouldn’t stand by as DOGE callously dismantled our government. We immediately partnered with Tesla Takedown and organized our supporters to join Tesla showroom protests. We began building a network of activists across the country, and worked alongside Communications Workers of America (CWA), who were motivated by the idea of making Musk feel the real-time impact of the consequences of his actions.

We soon organized with activists from across the country to lead Divest Public Money from Musk campaigns aimed at hurting Musk's bottom line. We pushed local governments to pass resolutions instructing government agencies to not do business with companies owned by Elon Musk and urged public pensions to divest from Tesla or pause all new investments in Tesla.

Starting with the pension board of Lehigh County, PA, whose comptroller signed on to our campaign early on, they paused Tesla investments in their actively managed funds; the city of Davis, CA passed a resolution blocking contracts with Musk and his companies. And, as Musk eyes the launch of his own interagalactic mobile network, we have targeted T-Mobile with a boycott urging them to drop their contract with Starlink which resulted in thousands ending their T-Mobile contracts.

Accountability is necessary, and our elected officials have always held the power to step in and address the Doge destruction. This daily dumpster fire catalyzed our organization, Stop The Money Pipeline, to band together with thousands of other Americans, CWA, and Tesla Takedown, to call on Members of Congress to hold DOGE accountable. We are urging them to make public commitments to hold Congressional hearings and investigations into DOGE and Elon Musk’s role in potentially illegal and unconstitutional activities.

Our DOGE Accountability Campaign has garnered the support of more than 50,000 individuals who signed the Investigate DOGE petition. The campaign has also earned the backing of 54 unions and organizations. Just last month, we hand delivered our petition to the district offices of 26 Members of Congress. The goal is to get 75 Members of Congress to subpoena Musk and DOGE officials for hearings and investigations. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) recently called for an investigation; Rep. John B. Larson (D-CT) has also vocally called Musk out; Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) released an extensive report detailing many of DOGE's failures. We are hopeful more members will commit. Others can keep calling on members to commit, join our campaign, and get involved in upcoming actions and organizing.

There is no rhyme or reason for Musk’s rampage. He targets the vulnerable, and moves fast and breaks our government simply because he can. While at the helm of DOGE, he fired federal workers who had been regulating or investigating his companies. If he gets sued he can throw money at the problem. People believe the hype because of how hard he allegedly works—but in reality it’s quite the opposite. His work ethic is power and greed, pure and simple.

Our campaign is unrelenting because Musk will not stop anytime soon. We encourage others who want to be on the right side of history to do the same.

Historically, periods of widespread economic suffering have often seen a surge of left-wing organizing, and even notable victories. In 1789, desperation among the peasantry and urban working class helped catalyze the French Revolution. The 1880s and 1890s in the United States saw the Farmers’ Alliances and the People’s Party sweep the interior of the country, in a vast movement to overcome the exploitation and poverty of farmers and workers. During World War I, the miseries of the Russian peasantry and industrial proletariat provided the context for the overthrow of Tsardom and then, months later, the overthrow of an ineffectual parliamentary government. The Great Depression of the 1930s saw, in the US, the birth of the welfare state and the triumph of industrial unionism.

It is no surprise, then, that the suffering of a large proportion of Americans today is helping to bring forth a new left, which has lately been seeing electoral and policy victories. In just over a year, Zohran Mamdani has become a figure with national name-recognition, but it might not be long before more people have heard of Chris Rabb, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America in Pennsylvania who is headed to Congress this year; Janeese Lewis George, a DSA member who is set to become mayor of Washington, DC.; Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Claire Valdez, New York leftists entering Congress; Nithya Raman, a socialist who might be the next mayor of Los Angeles; Melat Kiros, a socialist from Colorado who won her primary; Abdul El-Sayed, a leftist who may soon be the newest senator from Michigan; and others.

There isn’t anything like a French Revolution or a Russian Revolution on the horizon, but in the coming years, as the American economy continues to leave working people behind, it is certain that we’ll see more left-wing victories. By the 2030s, the stagnant center will be in dire condition, faced with a well-funded far-right and a left stronger than at any point since the 1960s.

What are the economic trends that forecast such an outcome? Some of them are almost universally acknowledged. Most obviously, inequality continues to skyrocket. Even before Elon Musk became a trillionaire—a fact, incidentally, that itself proves the insanity of American capitalism—the top 1% of American households owned 32% of all US wealth, about equal to the bottom 90% combined. America’s billionaires own more than $8 trillion. The income of the richest 1% averages to more than 100 times that of the bottom 20%. It is hardly surprising, then, that among peer countries, the US has the highest rate of poverty, the highest rate of infant mortality, and the second lowest life expectancy. Nor is it a surprise that a majority of Americans think a middle-class lifestyle is out of reach, or that less than half of families were able to afford medical expenses in 2025.

The picture is clear. There are good reasons that Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist, is consistently one of the most popular politicians in the country. Mainstream liberal commentators fret that running leftist candidates may cost the Democratic Party votes, but such commentators are evidently far out of touch with voter sentiment. According to polls, three quarters of Americans think the country’s political and economic system needs major changes. The Democratic Party is viewed unfavorably by 59% of adults (not much different from the Republican Party’s 58%). Chuck Schumer, a veritable symbol of the centrist status quo, is disliked by 68% of voters. Left priorities like Medicare for All, a substantially higher minimum wage, strengthening unions, raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy, increasing affordable housing, doing more to protect the environment, and cutting the military budget regularly poll well.

Far from the left’s ascendancy being a threat to the Democratic Party’s power, it is more plausibly seen as the best way to save the party. From Franklin Roosevelt to Bernie Sanders, populism, especially economic populism, is popular. It is a little odd, therefore, to see a party’s leadership consistently doing everything it can to harm its own electoral prospects, by trying to crush populist insurgents and suppress a populist message.

Longer-term trends, too, look good for the left. It isn’t often enough remarked that the US is in many respects in a situation comparable to that of the late 1920s, just before the Great Depression. The soaring inequality is one parallel, as is the soaring stock market. It has become commonplace to observe that the AI boom has features of a bubble. Another parallel is the extreme weakness of organized labor both today and in the late 1920s. Actually, the union membership rate in the private sector today, 6%, is even lower than it was in 1929, about 10%. The weakness of unions has contributed mightily to the stagnation or decline of wages among the working class, and thus to the low purchasing power of consumers. In the 1920s, a huge expansion of consumer credit, such as installment buying, was necessary to maintain the economy’s rate of growth, because millions of people simply weren’t making enough money to buy the things they wanted. Today, likewise, total household debt is at a record level, over $18 trillion.

In fact, the top 10% of earners now account for half of consumer spending—which is reminiscent of the late 1920s. The economy, therefore, faces serious problems of aggregate demand. Altogether, these are ominous tendencies. Particularly because one of the major priorities of the Trump administration has been to accelerate the transfer of money from working people to the rich, thus further shrinking aggregate demand in the long run. One method of doing so has been to reduce taxes on the wealthy while increasing them on the lowest-income households. Another has been to slash the social safety net, for example SNAP and Medicaid benefits, which causes low-income households to cut back on their spending. Attacking unions and laying off hundreds of thousands of federal workers has been a third way Trump is harming the prospects of sustained economic growth. And the list goes on.

In short, it is virtually certain that in the not-too-distant future, very hard times are coming. Such times, of course, provide an ideal opportunity for left organizing and left politics. Millions of people will get “mad as hell” and they “won’t take it anymore.” A populism of class struggle will rise to the fore again, since it will resonate with people’s experiences and grievances. Organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, the Working Families Party, and Justice Democrats will continue to cultivate a new generation of left leaders, doubtless with ever-greater success. Far-right populism will probably see victories too, and it’s impossible to predict how the conflicts between left populism and right populism will play out.

But what we can predict is that the Democratic Party, as it exists today, is doomed. The era of Clintonite centrism is passing, at long last. The future is much more interesting than that.

I’m serious, and this is not just my disgust with everything Trump. There is no good reason for the overwhelming majority of people in the country to ever put a dollar in a Trump account for their kids.

To be clear, I’m not in favor of tax-sheltered accounts in general. They strike me mostly as a very inefficient way to accomplish public goals, in this case making education more affordable. The more efficient route would be to have more public funds go to support public colleges and community colleges.

The tax-sheltered account route also favors higher-income people. Over a quarter of households owe no income tax, meaning they would get no benefit whatsoever from putting money in a tax-sheltered account. Another 20 percent are in the 10 percent bracket, meaning the account would just save them just 10 cents on every dollar invested. By contrast, the highest income households save 37 cents on every dollar invested in a tax-sheltered account.

In addition, tax-sheltered accounts put a lot of money in the hands of the financial industry. Tens of billions of dollars go to the people and companies who administer these accounts, creating a pointless layer of wasteful bureaucracy.

To be fair, the Trump accounts limit fees to 0.1 percent of assets, far lower than is charged by many accounts. This is an important point. People can get low-cost funds in other accounts also. Stock index funds generally have the lowest fees, and most people would be wise to take advantage of them. People will tell you that they will beat the market, but most won’t, and you’ll just end up wasting money in higher fees and trading costs.

But that has nothing to do with individuals’ decisions on where to put their money. For better or worse, Trump accounts exist. The question is whether people will be helping their kids by putting money into them. And, as I said above, the answer for almost everyone is no.

The main reason is that we already have 529 accounts for the purpose of saving for a kid’s education. The big difference between the accounts for this purpose is that it is possible to withdraw money from a 529 account, if it’s needed, where it is not possible to withdraw money from a Trump account for any reason, until the kid turns 18.

People do pay a penalty for taking money out of a 529 early, but at least they can have access to it if they need it. And unexpected events do happen. People can lose a job, have serious medical expenses, or get divorced. These and other unanticipated situations can require people to dip into whatever savings they have. With a 529 plan, they can use the money if they really need it. With a Trump account, they are out of luck.

It is important to recognize that withdrawals for non-education purposes are fairly common. A recent study by Vanguard found that 2 percent of accounts had an unqualified withdrawal in an average year. If an account is open on average for 20 years, this would mean that 40 percent of accounts have an unqualified withdrawal. People don’t expect bad things to happen, but they do.

Also, since the penalty is based only on the earnings portion of the 529 plan, not the whole sum in the plan, in most cases it is likely to be small. Suppose someone pulls $5K out of a 529 plan, where earnings are currently 40 percent of the money in the plan. That means they would pay taxes on $2,000, plus a penalty of 10 percent. If they are in the 10 percent bracket, their taxes would be $200, and their penalty would $200. If they were in the zero bracket, say because they had lost their job, they would only pay the $200 penalty. That compares to being unable to touch their money at all in a Trump account. (The money in a 529 is not taxable at all if used for educational purposes. The earnings in a Trump account are taxable.)

It’s also worth mentioning that it’s not even possible to change asset allocations in a Trump account. Suppose your kid is 17, one year too young to make a withdrawal. If you’re worried there is an AI bubble likely to burst, and you would rather have your money in Treasury bonds, you’re out of luck. Trump accounts won’t let you make the switch; you have to go down with Elon Musk and the rest of the market.

The silliest argument given by proponents of Trump accounts is that they can be rolled over into an IRA to allow for lifelong wealth accumulation. So can the money in 529 accounts, up to a ceiling of $35,000.

The Trump gang makes a big issue of the $35,000 ceiling, but this is something only elite types with lots of money would care about. Very few people ever accumulate more than $35,000 in a 529 account, and the vast majority of people who do will find some education-related expense that would reduce the value of the account to less than $35,000. Remember, even food and housing can count as education-related expenses.

But let’s say someone ends up with an amount over $35,000 that they can’t use for education-related expenses. Suppose they have $40,000 that they want to roll over into an IRA. In this situation they would have to pay a 10 percent penalty on the amount over $35,000. That would be $500 on the $5,000 difference.

They would also have to pay taxes on the $5,000. The beneficiary is the one receiving the money, so they would be paying the tax. Since they are just beginning their working career, they likely have a relatively low income. This means they will almost certainly be in the 10 percent or 15 percent tax bracket, and quite possibly the zero bracket.

So, this is the bad scenario that Trump account proponents say it is important to avoid, and therefore skip a 529 and put your money in a Trump account instead? That seems pretty whacky, and why you need to fire your financial adviser if they suggest putting money in a Trump account.

To be clear, take the $1K that Trump wants to give newborn kids. It would be a much better use of tax dollars if we provided food and medical care to kids from low-income families than giving out $1K checks to millions of families that don’t need it. But you aren’t going to change the policy by turning down the money. If it bothers you, donate the money to a good cause, but do take the money and don’t ever put another penny in a Trump account.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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

Today we discuss:

• Hamas will dissolve its government and hand over power to a new, Palestinian technocratic governing authority. The move comes as a US-backed peace process, which resulted in a ceasefire last year, has largely stalled and as Israel’s bombardment of the Strip continues regardless. Hamas is looking to pressure Israel by appealing to Trump, and show that the group is committed to handing over governance and allowing the peaceful rebuilding of a devastated Gaza.

• A month after he captured the Democratic Senate nomination in Maine with a fiery populist message, Graham Platner is facing mounting pressure to leave the race after a woman accused him of rape.

• Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, faces a legal reckoning today that could disqualify her from running for France’s presidency next year. A French court will rule on her appeal of her conviction on charges of embezzlement stemming from her party’s use of European Parliament funds to pay its own staff. She was barred from running for public office for five years.

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

https://x.com/tedrall

https://x.com/JamarlThomas

#tedrall #jamarlthomas #news #politics

The post Hamas Dissolves Its Gaza Government | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

As the country and this administration launched its America 250 and Freedom 250 “Celebrations" over the holiday weekend, what we experienced in the nation’s capitol and a city of 700,000 residents replicated what the United States does to other parts of the world. The streets were invaded by the military, public spaces barricaded with multiple levels of security checkpoints, and the sky full of military flyovers, including a seven-hour schedule of flyovers on July 4th.

Military flyovers come at a devastating cost—economically, psychologically, and environmentally. The most recent ones came in the middle of a heatwave where even Trump’s American State Fair closed after people were baptizing themselves in the religious tent to prevent heat stroke. But flyovers are not new and have been used as a propaganda tool for military recruitment during NFL games and summer festivals. The militarization has been so normalized for so long.

This past weekend, thousands of people cheered on the flyovers, but many did not. The sounds of war shook windows, terrified children, animals, and those suffering from PTSD. Washington DC is made up of 700,000 people without statehood, leaving it little power to push back at the military occupation of the city, let alone the military playground.

In passing, I overheard folks sneering “Here’s where all our money goes,” and another asking “Is this what Iran sounds like right now?” These flyovers, an exercise of an illusion of force, domination, and strength. All to further prop up hyper nationalism and militarism. But we were lucky it was just for a “show”. The bombs did not drop on the occupied city of Washington, D.C., as they do from some of the same jets that fly over places like Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.

As an Iranian immigrant, as I watched my children tremble and cover their ears at the roar of bombers and fighter jets over our home, so loud the walls vibrated, I was struck by a haunting duality. My heart broke because I knew what that sound means to children just like them back in Iran. My children know they can cover their ears, cuddle in close to me, and wait it out. The planes will pass, the ground will stop trembling, and we can return to their bedtime routines. But for children just like them in my home country of Iran, for their families, for our brothers and sisters in Palestine, Lebanon, and so many other places devastated by Western imperialism, those same sounds mean something entirely different. They mean bombs falling on schools, neighborhoods erased in seconds, families torn apart before they can say goodbye. They also cuddle in close to their loved ones, but they do so knowing it may be the last time.

As they try to normalize the militarization of our streets and skies here, these displays, framed as celebration and "freedom," also serve another grim reminder. We, in the diaspora, are forced to fund our own oppression twice over: first with the bombs dropping on our families abroad, then with that same taxpayer money reverberating back to our doorsteps here. Hovering over our neighborhoods and our children's heads, and terrorizing our communities instead of feeding, healing, and sustaining them. We must not allow ourselves to grow desensitized to the reality of what our tax dollars could be funding instead of the spread of surveillance, destruction, and devastation. And we must make it clear that we will never mistake the roar of engines overhead for the promise of peace, whether that is abroad or here.

Every dollar spent on one of these performative fighter jet overpasses is a dollar stolen from our communities. The budget is a clear reflection of what the country values, and right now, our budget says we value genocide, destruction, and the theater of war over the substance of peace and the actual betterment of our communities, our country.

The America and Freedom 250 celebrations ask us to reflect on what our nation stands for, a nation started by genocide, carried out by slavery, fueled by exploitation, and exposing how militarism, racism, and fascism are on full display. Why do we spend trillions to destroy and destabilize the world, while spending pennies on investments to make our own communities actually safe?