The United States maintains the world’s largest military budget (with recent proposals around $1.5 trillion). Despite this, recent analyses and reporting highlight ongoing shortages of key munitions—such as Tomahawk missiles, Patriot and THAAD interceptors, and 155mm artillery rounds—driven by high consumption in conflicts (including the war with Iran), prior transfers to Ukraine, limited industrial surge capacity, and long production lead times of two to four years or more.

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The victory of progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic primary for one of Michigan’s seats in the United States Senate was a dramatic upset over a coalition of establishment corporatists, the right-wing media infrastructure and AIPAC, the vicious Israel lobby that influences American elections without identifying itself. Rather than take stock of the fact that they lost to a guy they outspent 12 to 1, however, the powers that be who gave you Presidents Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris are framing the next two months as a test of the progressive left wing of the Democratic Party—specifically, its electibility.

OK, Abdul, you can beat us. But can you beat the Republicans in November?

El-Sayed and his allies and supporters certainly hope so. But he’s not the only one being tested.

Like El-Sayed, the national Democratic Party establishment needs to decide how much they care about building a stronger, bigger tent with an inclusive approach to ideological varieties and heresies.

The DNC that kneecapped Bernie Sanders, not once but twice, will reflexively want to on their hands, with support that ranges between dutiful and nonexistent for their unwanted nominee from Michigan. If El-Sayed loses, after all, they’ll point to his defeat as scientific proof that progressives can’t prevail in general elections in flyover country. Moreover, this is a national party that is exceedingly cash-strapped, with a current negative bank balance of $2 million.

On the other hand, the balance of the U.S. Senate may well hinge on the outcome of the Michigan race, where the seat is currently held by an incumbent Democrat. This in the age of Trump—who threatens democratic norms.

Even many conservative Democrats won’t view this as the year for such reindeer games. The civil war within the party could heat up even more dramatically if the DNC refuses to tap its donors and leaves El-Sayed to the tender mercies of his AIPAC-backed Republican opponent.

No one has ever gone broke betting against the national Democratic Party doing the smart or farsighted thing. But this high-profile Senate race has the opportunity to unite the Democratic Party at the very time Republicans appear to be seconds away from ripping apart at the seams. Will they grab this rare chance?

Progressives are already anticipating party perfidy. How, for example, some are asking, did a guy who was 11 points ahead in the polls the day before the election barely squeak by with 1.5%? Others half-expect a replay of the scenario from a couple of decades ago, when neoconservative Senator Joe Lieberman lost his Connecticut primary to a progressive, only to launch an independent bid supported by the Democratic establishment against its own nominee.

No one on the left believes the national Democratic establishment will send its big guns to Michigan to campaign for El-Sayed, as they did for his primary opponent Haley Stevens, much less throw him some significant campaign funding.

It is an article of faith among the left base of the party that centrists would rather lose to Republicans than to progressives. “Blue no matter who,” after all, has always been a one-way street. When the nominee is a corporatist, progressives are successfully bullied into falling in line. When the primary winner turns out to be progressive, however, stabbing them in the back is standard operating procedure.

The Clintonite corporatist organization, Third Way, has already announced a $15 million spending spree to fight a “war” against left-leaning Democrats in order to sabotage their candidates, allow Republicans to win and discredit the young voters who support the DSA. Among Third Way’s complaints: young voters aren’t pro-war enough. “How this discrediting campaign will affect the current midterm cycle—potentially undercutting Democratic nominees in swing-state races and undermining the party’s chances of retaking Congress—remains unclear,” The New York Times reports.

Establishment Democrats could do something that establishment Democrats rarely do: surprise us. Embrace their own voters.

They could send Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Obama and Chuck Schumer and Bill Clinton to Michigan to campaign hard next to AOC and Bernie Sanders to convey to everyone, including the reluctant Black voters who supported centrist Stevens in the primary, that it’s both safe and important to vote for El-Sayed. They could shake down George Soros for a hefty campaign contribution. They could pull out all the stops in order to convey the message that this Democratic Party prioritizes electing Democrats more than it cares about centrist/corporatist control of the party apparatus.

If there was ever a time to break the ugly tradition of DNC conservatives shivving the progressives who provide all of the energy and ideas for the party, El-Sayed is a surprisingly safe option. For one thing, he’s not a self-declared democratic socialist. For another, he’s not all that left. For example, he supports the authoritarian government of Ukraine, a favorite beneficiary of neoconservatives from both parties. He also opposes “defunding” the police.

True, he’s not on Team Genocide. And he’s Muslim. But this is Michigan, where the 2024 pro-Palestinian “uncommitted” movement was centered in a state with the biggest Arab population in the country. No one who supports Israel is a viable Democratic Party nominee in Michigan. El-Sayed is as easy a progressive to embrace as corporate Democrats will ever find; they should grab him and hold him in a bear hug if they want to keep their party together in the near future.

I do not, of course, expect national Democrats to take my advice. They rarely do. Should there be some wild impulse among those elites to allow sanity to prevail, however, here it is.

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

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• We almost got a new president! The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating why an American Airlines jet came dangerously close to a helicopter carrying President Donald Trump—an incident taking place as the presidential helicopter approached the same airport where an Army helicopter collided with a regional jet over the Potomac River in 2025.

• The CIA has covertly established a Cuba task force for the first time since 1960. The task force has begun adding case officers who recruit and manage spies, intelligence analysts, officers who conduct cyberoperations and officers who specialize in covert influence operations, the people said. It aims to create fissures among the Cuban political elite, in hope of pressuring the Cubans to replace perceived anti-American hard-liners with more practical leaders more amenable toTrump.

• The Clintonite group Third Way will spend at least $15 million in a “war” against left-leaning voters to drive them out of the Democratic Party. Third Way plans to target the Democratic Socialists of America movement, which they call a “mortal danger” for Democrats. The war will include opposition research into DSA, polling, social media programs and propagandizing Democratic activists and leaders. It would target both proud democratic socialists and those such as Abdul El-Sayed—and try to defeat them.

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• In a stunning development, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed wins a fiercely competitive Michigan Democratic Senate primary race in a big victory for the Left, and a humiliating defeat for AIPAC, which spent about $60 million—which turned off voters, most of whom oppose Israel. Bitter corporatist Haley Stevens refuses to concede.

• Iran and Oman progress toward a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a potential breakthrough that could help wind down the war in the Middle East. Ships would enter the Persian Gulf through an Iranian-controlled route and exit through a route controlled by Oman, with service fees charged for providing security and preserving the maritime environment. Any deal is linked to lifting the U.S. blockade on Iran’s ports. Any agreement formalizing Iran’s control of the strait would mark a significant strategic victory for Tehran.

• Europe Climate Crisis: The drought is so severe that it is jeopardizing countries’ economic growth and forcing them to take extreme measures like blowing up riverbeds. Gripped by a summer of weather extremes, Romania recently shut down its sole working nuclear reactor cooled by the Danube for the first time, deploying naval forces to carry out underwater detonations to improve water flow. The drought has impacted two of Europe’s major river routes — the Danube and the Rhine; both rivers are popular cruise routes, so the drought has disrupted travel for passengers. Some tourists have been bussed to other ships farther down the river. Farmers facing restrictions on irrigating their crops are warning of smaller fruit harvests and rising prices this season. Dutch dikes are leaking.

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The DOJ used the occasion of a quiet midsummer weekend to drop embarrassingly trumped-up charges against an Olympic athlete falsely accused of vandalizing Trump’s renovated DC Reflecting Pool.

David Hearn, a three-time Olympic canoeist, had been accused of deliberately damaging the newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C. Prosecutors now say newly obtained Interior Department documents show the peeling liner and other damage resulted from a “botched” and rushed contractor installation (tied to the America 250 celebrations), not vandalism.

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• Trump summons DC’s US Attorney Jeanine Pirro to the White House, saying that she had “choked” when she undermined Trump’s narrative that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was the work of vandals, and dropped charges against those charged with “vandalism.” She has not been fired, nor did she offer her resignation—yet.

• The world ablaze: Aaron Farinacci, a 37-year-old Spokane resident, is arrested for arson related to the Old Trails Fire, which sprang up on Saturday alongside two other major fires. The fires, which began in the Spokane, Washington, area, have burned more than 8,000 acres and remained 0% contained. 65,000 people were under evacuation orders. Hundreds of structures, including homes and businesses, have been destroyed. Three lions die of heatstroke at Tama, the largest zoo in the Tokyo metropolitan area following a severe heatwave, up to 40 degrees Celsius in recent weeks. In their natural habitat in Africa, the animals are accustomed primarily to dry heat.

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• Jewish militants are increasingly attacking Christians—particularly clergy and pilgrims—in Israel. Six suspects are arrested after throwing rocks and spitting at the Armenian Cathedral of St. James in Jerusalem’s Old City. Five of the suspects are minors, and one was an adult. Suspects threw rocks at the window of an Armenian woman filming the event, while shouting “Get back inside, you daughter of a whore!”

• Trump is now almost the most unpopular second-term president at this stage of their tenure in the history of polling going back to the 1940s. Only Nixon had less but at that point he was days away from resigning. He has just 34% in CNN’s latest poll, 33% in a new AP-NORC survey, and 32% from Quinnipiac, falling to an all-time low in that poll.

• Russian ballistic missiles rain down on Kyiv Saturday, killing at least nine people and injuring more than 30, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country has run out of air defense interceptors.

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For the umpteenth time in recent months, Trump has announced a big peace deal—this one between Israel and Hamas. The terms, however, seem completely unacceptable to Hamas: under the proposal, they would disarm first before Israel would begin to withdraw from Gaza.

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• Trump’s announcement of a Gaza deal, in which Hamas disarms and hands over its weapons to a Board of Peace first, raises unanswered questions. Neither Hamas nor Israel has issued an official statement acknowledging the deal, makes one wonder if this is real, or Trump dissembling?

• Hackers attack more than 30 community water systems across Minnesota, forcing some utilities to switch to manual operations. Investigators are blaming Iran.

• Colin Gray, whose son killed four people at a Georgia high school in 2024 with a gun Gray bought him, gets sentenced to 15 years in prison. The elder Gray had given his son an AR-15-style rifle and left it in the boy’s bedroom even though the teenager had psychological problems and an obsession with school shootings.

• 49,000 migrants cross into Spain’s North African colony of Ceuta from Morocco in 24 hours via land and sea. 18 have died. Spain’s Supreme Court ruled this month that migrants stopped at sea while trying to reach Ceuta or Melilla, another Spanish exclave, cannot be summarily returned to Morocco.

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If the trillions spent on wars and the military were divvied up among Americans, no one would have any trouble getting by. But that’s not our system.

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• Bill Clinton’s aborted “Star Chamber” is up-and-running, thanks to Trump. The Justice Department is seeking to deport a Texas-based Afghan woman, Nazira Haji Zada, 47, of Fort Worth, Texas, who prosecutors allege is an “alien terrorist” with ISIS, in the first-ever test case before a secretive Alien Terrorist Removal Court that has never convened since it was created in 1996. Taargets of noncitizen terrorist removal proceedings — including legal permanent residents — are not permitted to review the evidence against them, and unlike in criminal proceedings, they are barred from legally challenging how the evidence was collected by the government.

• An explosion at a port on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast set fire to two ships, including a U.S. gas storage tanker, according to maritime tracking firms. The war has widened quickly, with Saudi Arabia joining U.S. forces in striking Iranian proxies in Iraq, an American tanker in Egypt set ablaze from an apparent drone strike and tensions rising between Ukraine and Iran. The war, which Trump has been trying to bring to a diplomatic conclusion since April, is now threatening to grow bigger at the very moment the United States wants to move past it.

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• Iran’s foreign ministry said Iran would not allow Washington to determine “the timing of war and peace,” as Trump claimed the Islamic Republic had requested negotiations and mediators sought to revive the collapsed interim deal. Also, the US military said worked with Saudi Arabia to kill at least 20 members of the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.

• The Trump administration wants to channel asylum seekers directly into deportation proceedings. In the past, asylum seekers who entered the U.S. legally or were never charged with an immigration violation had the opportunity to apply for refuge in an office before a trained asylum officer. The officer could refer them to immigration court for removal proceedings if they were rejected, or allow them to continue proceedings and potentially get on a path to obtaining U.S. citizenship. 450,000 cases could be transferred directly to one of the Justice Department’s immigration judges. It is possible that many asylum seekers will be deported without a chance to be heard.

• New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has published a searchable online database listing the names and addresses of property owners who could be affected by the city’s new pied-à-terre tax. Do the rich have a special right to privacy?

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Half of Americans say they’re having trouble paying for gas and groceries. Their president and the ruling Republicans don’t seem to care much, much less be willing to do anything about it.

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I’m screwed.

You’ve had that thought. You’ve had that feeling: short breaths, panic, hollow chest. This is big. I may not ever be able to get out of this. No one can or will help me.

The doctor closes the door. I don’t like what I see in these lab results.

Firetrucks blocking my street. What’s going on? Ohhhh.

Many events that leave you with that “I’m screwed” feeling are nobody’s fault. Diseases happen. Many can’t be helped. Some diseases are incurable.

There are, however, crises that society can come together either to avoid, mitigate, or even solve. In a high-functioning society with responsive politics, humans marshal their collective resources in order to help individuals who suffer misfortune. Some cultures respond to those among them who are in trouble out of ethical or legal duty. There but for the grace of God go I. If I ignore her cries, I might be arrested for negligence. Others come together as a form of insurance motivated by self-interest: our nation is a hot desert full of dangerous reptiles. If my car breaks down in a sandstorm, I will need someone to offer me shelter; in order to maintain this useful social compact, I will open my door to someone who knocks during a sandstorm.

For a myriad of reasons, we Americans increasingly live in a country that gives more people an increasing number of reasons to conclude that they’re screwed, and that there’s nothing anyone can or will do to help them.

Let’s say that, through no fault of your own, you lose your job. “Not for cause” is, by the way, the main reason most Americans who get fired wind up with no income. Long-term tenured workers lose their livelihoods to “restructuring” and “reorganization,” because their employer moves far away, or there is an economic slowdown. Only a few people get canned for incompetence or misconduct.

Consequences of job loss range from substantial—stress and lost income while job searching—to fatal. Being out of work increases your odds of committing suicide by 60% to 100%. Job loss is also tied to higher rates of death from cardiovascular disease, alcohol-related liver disease, and “deaths of despair” like drug overdoses.

The United States doesn’t offer much help to people who might die because they can no longer afford food or shelter for themselves or their families. An American worker who loses their job through no fault of their own can expect to collect a national average of $532 per week in unemployment insurance benefits. In most states, these benefits expire after a maximum of 26 weeks.

That’s $18,800 total. And, thanks to Ronald Reagan, you pay taxes on that.

And if you can’t find a job? You’re screwed.

Let’s say you get sick. Really, really sick. As in, hospitalization and operations.

Again, the consequences of a severe medical crisis range from bad—weakened health, lost income, etc.—to fatal.

Again, the United States doesn’t have much to offer those who don’t happen to have the average $30,000 “chargemaster” rate that the uninsured—that’s about one out of ten Americans—are expected to shell out for a three-day hospital stay. Both misfortunes—your health setback and the ginormous bill—are your burdens to bear alone.

The U.S. is the only high-income industrialized country without universal healthcare. The U.S. is alone among OECD countries in lacking paid leave for parents. The U.S. does not, unlike most advanced countries, offer free or low-cost college. As discussed, unemployment benefits exist here, but they’re much lower and shorter than in European systems.

America’s penurious social policies would be easier to accept were it not for the Brobdingnagian chasm between what we pay in taxes and what we collect as benefits if—as we often do—we get in trouble. We shell out roughly 12% to 15% less of our income in taxes than Western Europeans, while receiving very few direct payouts from social programs.

We’re politically polarized. Right-wingers want smaller government, lower taxes and fewer services. Lefties want bigger government, higher taxes and more services. What we have instead makes no one happy, and everyone angry.

As a leftist, I would like to live in a country whose citizens were often mistaken when they believed and said that they were screwed, because they had a system that cared about them enough to want to help.

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

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• The Trump administration’s deadly military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific have not reduced the amount of cocaine entering the US, but they’re prompting criminal organizations to develop new strategies and tactics and undermining traditional investigative methods, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

• Russian entrepreneurs have been devastated by Ukrainian drone strikes targeting warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest e-commerce company and the country’s answer to Amazon. At least nine Wildberries warehouses have been struck in the last week, as well as logistics centres from southern Russia to the outskirts of St Petersburg, killing at least nine people and destroying inventory worth billions of dollars.

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• The Civil War inside the Democratic Party turns spectacularly ugly over the Michigan Primary next week. Desperate to defeat insurgent DSAer Abdul El-Sayed, AIPAC throws $30 million-plus at centrist Haley Stevens in a race that quickly turned to racist Islamophobic slurs, and the involvement of Bernie-shivving North Carolina party boss James Clyburn. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party are far behind Republicans when it comes to money. Trump controls a $400 million super PAC, and the RNC is sitting on nearly $130 million. The DNC is $2 million in debt.

• So much for fleeing the U.S. to Europe. Firefighters in France and Spain are battling wildfires close to the cities of Bordeaux and Madrid. Spanish authorities said fires close to Madrid remain “active and uncontrolled.” The wildfires raging in southwestern France—where 250,000 people have been evacuated—are so intense they have created “fire clouds,” a phenomenon never previously seen in the country. Temperatures in hard-hit areas in both Spain and France are expected to rise in the coming days.

• Ukraine attacked an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, killing a sailor and injuring others, as the war in the Middle East threatened to overlap with the Ukraine conflict. Ukraine implied that the ship carried Iranian-designed Shahed drones destined for Russia. Meanwhile, the US—low on munitions—unilaterally paused bombing Iran.

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As the US-Israeli war against Iran expands throughout the Middle East, involving the Houthis and resulting in the closure of the Red Sea as well as the Persian Gulf, oil and gas prices are rising.–oil prices have hit a six-week high amid the conflict.

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• A study finds that dependence on food stamps and Medicaid for gig economy workers has spiked since the start of the pandemic. A U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that the number of Amazon workers relying on federal assistance programs tripled between February 2020 and September 2025. Ride-hailing and delivery apps — Uber, Lyft, Grubhub, Instacart and DoorDash workers included — rank among the top three employers with workers receiving assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid.

• A day after the United States signed a landmark nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, President Trump added a new condition to the sale of nuclear reactors to the kingdom, declaring it now depends on the Saudi willingness to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.

• The Trump administration imposed tariffs of around 10% on goods from more than 80 countries on Friday, its latest effort to put in place an expansive protectionist policy that has been repeatedly challenged in court.

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Employers frequently complain they cannot find qualified Americans to fill job openings, yet the ranks of the long-term unemployed continue to swell. Over 1.8 million Americans were long-term jobless in 2026—up sharply since 2019—according to recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data. This paradox highlights a persistent skills gap. Many companies hesitate to invest in training, preferring to wait for perfectly matched candidates amid economic uncertainty, automation shifts, and demographic changes. Yet experts note that upskilling existing or available workers could quickly close mismatches in sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, and trades.

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Jeff Dornik, CEO of Pickax, joins to discuss the Freedom News Network, AI data collection, how the social media industry silos Americans for rage clicks, and whatever else comes up!

Today we discuss:

• Will Trump start his 8th war? His administration is weighing military action against the West African country of Mali to target an al-Qaeda-affiliated group known as JNIM. So much for ending global strife and redirecting U.S. resources to Americans.

• Could New Jersey cost us our democracy? A furious Gov. Mikie Sherrill announces that, under the former governor, a “serious software error” within the system used to issue New Jersey drivers’ licenses and ID cards registered 6,600 people who said that they were not U.S. citizens to vote. 400 of them actually cast ballots. This feeds directly into Trump’s election-fraud narrative.

• Donald Trump signs a nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia that could enable the kingdom to enrich its own uranium for nuclear reactions. Safeguards? Not so much.

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