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• Alex Pretti’s parents slam the US government for staying silent and misleading them about the investigation into their son’s fatal shooting by immigration agents in Minneapolis last January. Michael and Susan Pretti say officials ignore their questions, refuse to share basic facts, and shield the agents who fired at least 10 bullets into the 37-year-old nurse’s back. Their lawyer says the Justice Department’s stonewalling violates the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. The U.S. attorney for Minnesota and the Justice Department still have not answered the family’s letter or disclosed the shooters’ names. Homeland Security still stands by its early claim that Pretti planned to massacre law enforcement. The parents call the response abnormal and unjust.

Jamarl is out today on vacation. Filling in is Jeff Dornik, the founder and CEO of Pickax, a free-speech social media platform. He co-founded Freedom First Network, hosts The Jeff Dornik Show, and writes on politics, culture, censorship, and technology. He has co-authored books and speaks at conservative events.

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

Today we also discuss:

• Exit polls show Israel’s election in a tight race as Eisenkot’s bloc ties Netanyahu’s. Neither side grabs a majority. Arab parties surge to record gains while vote counting continues. Middle East nations expect little change from Israel.

• ICE holds a mentally ill US citizen in an Indiana prison for nearly a year and pushes to deport him to Jamaica. Records and family prove he was born in Florida, yet he insists otherwise. Meanwhile, a jury convicts Halima Salman of taking ISIS weapons training after her father brought her to Syria as a teen and married her to a fighter. She faces up to 10 years in prison.

• RFK Jr. claims Arab Muslims produce no prize-worthy science or literature and blames the Muslim Brotherhood. The comments spark sharp backlash as he campaigns for GOP candidates in Michigan.

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The post Government Ghosts Family of ICE Murder Victim | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

It’s a tradition that goes back at least to the Vietnam War: when the United States finally admits it’s losing a war, it calls for peace talks but, in order to try to get a better position at the negotiating table, ramps up the killing machine right beforehand. It’s not fooling anyone and it only makes the adversaries angry, but they’re trying the same thing in Iran.

The post Stop the War; Fight More appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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• Catholic bishops accuse the White House of conning them and then secretly filming them praying over Trump in the Oval Office and turning a private meeting into a political stunt.

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

Today we also discuss:

• Protests work in France! The nation scraps its controversial Parcoursup university admissions platform after weeks of violent student protests over school conditions and living costs. Officials promise more spots, higher grants, and funding renovations, yet students demand far bigger concessions and keep protesting.

• Middle East Crisis: Netanyahu presses Israel’s military for strike on Iran before today’s election, but the chief of staff resists. Egypt’s parliament green-lights President Sisi to send defensive military aid—air defenses and aircraft—to Saudi Arabia against Houthis.

• Thieves hack freight systems, spoof GPS trackers, and even ram security escorts to steal over $100 million in servers, chips, and copper destined for data centers. Experts call the gear “pure gold bars” and warn the digital heists are only growing.

• The Justice Department files a third case against ex-FBI director James Comey, accusing him of leaking classified information in 2016 and using a rare “criminal information” to beat the statute of limitations. And a federal judge rules the Trump administration unlawfully fired Maurene Comey, his daughter, and orders her reinstatement with back pay.

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In times of crisis—and who can doubt that we are living in one now?—political people ask themselves whether they are about to witness a dramatic ideological realignment and, if so, whether the reconfiguration of the left-to-right spectrum of U.S. electoral contests opens up new possibilities for themselves and the issues that motivate them.

We are currently undergoing a major realignment, perhaps as significant as the one that began in World War I and culminated with the 1932 election of FDR and the status quo that Americans have lived with all their lives. In that earlier shift, Democrats abandoned their conservativism and became a liberal coalition of working-class people, labor unions, ethnic minorities, and marginalized identity groups, while Republicans embraced big business, libertarianism, and an aggressive, militaristic, materialistic posture toward foreign policy.

In the years following the 9/11 attacks, who could have imagined that—at least in their rhetoric and campaigning, if not in actual governance—Republicans would identify themselves as isolationists and even protectionists supporting late-19th-century-style tariffs, while Democrats, epitomized by Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, articulated a hawkish Russophobia marked by the leveraging of Ukraine into radical NATO expansion, and were even willing to lose the 2024 presidential election over their unwillingness to stop arming Israel as it committed genocide in Gaza? Yet here we are.

This has populists of the left and right wondering if it is time to leave their respective big-tent major parties—both of which barely tolerated them in exchange for their votes—and form a unified populist front organized around a simple proposition: America and Americans first?

We’ve seen intriguing hints that a united populist front may be possible. 12% those who voted for Bernie in the 2016 Democratic primaries voted for Trump in the general election. Trump appointed RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard—figures to the left of the Democratic mainstream—to his administration. Young men in particular shifted from Bernie in 2020 to Trump in 2024.

Let’s set aside, for the next few hundred words, the question of whether left-wing populists, primarily motivated by economic inequality, can not only make common cause with but actually work on an ongoing basis—perhaps even in a new major political party—with right-wing populists who are, in large part, more worried about losing what they perceive as the country’s cultural and ethnic identity to immigration.

When you’re in a lousy marriage, as populists of both stripes are with the Democrats and Republicans, the first step should not be to search for a new boyfriend or girlfriend, but rather to consider whether you’re willing to go through the pain of a divorce to the extent that anything—even being alone—would probably be better. By that standard, populists really should consider ditching the big two, because they are not understood and never will be.

In a recently published conversation, “the economist Natasha Sarin and the Bulwark editor Catherine Rampell examine the strange disconnect between how the economy is doing and how Americans feel about it,” as the New York Times put it. First, they note that consumer confidence is in the toilet. Then they wonder aloud about the fact that public opinion of the economy worse than during the Great Recession of 2008–2009, even though, by most conventional measures, it has improved significantly since then. “Why do people say this economy is so terrible? Why do they hate it so much?” Rampell muses.

She doesn’t really know. “I don’t think that the economy is actually in the trash, despite those consumer sentiment numbers we were talking about,” Rampell continues. “People say that they hate this economy, that it sucks, that it’s worse than the financial crisis and the Great Recession. I do not—again, I do not think any of that is true.”

Allow me to introduce you to the Rall Economic Indicators (REI).

First REI metric:

Can I find a job?

72% currently say this is a bad time to look for work.

Answer: No.

Second REI metric:

Can I pay my bills?

27% currently fall short.

Answer: No.

Third REI metric:

Can I save money for the future?

62% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

If two out of three REIs exceed 50%, the economy officially sucks.

The first step toward never solving a problem is refusing to admit that it exists—or never seeing it in the first place.

The great mushy moderate middle blob that controls economic thinking in Washington and mainstream media can’t address populism because they don’t understand where populists are coming from.

Economic populists are individuals. Unlike a business with high access to credit at reasonable interest rates, American consumers who lose their job and/or suffer through years of watching their wages eaten away by inflation can’t write off a bad quarter or easily pay off their accumulated debts if and when things turn around. Millions of Americans still haven’t financially recovered from the Great Recession and never will.

For most of the people who have come around to the idea of putting America first, the U.S. economy is not an infinitely growing postwar machine that will generate wealth for everybody, but rather a finite set of resources and a zero-sum game in which every job that goes to an H-1B visa holder from another country is one that won’t go to them, their child, or someone they know or care about. This scarcity mentality—whether fair or not (I happen to believe that it is fair)—is inherently incompatible with the worldview of the two major parties, for whom your individual problems are your concern, not theirs.

Which brings us to the question, as promised, of a left-right alliance among populists. There is plenty of common ground; most Americans readily agree that we shouldn’t be sending billions of dollars to other countries when so many Americans are suffering here at home and the nation’s infrastructure is in such woeful condition.

As in any alliance, the concern is about the differences that might tear apart a Populist Front down the line. Could left-wing populists make peace with their right-wing counterparts who openly espouse nativist and even xenophobic views? Could the right embrace the social-welfare spending and retraining expenses that would help displaced American workers, rather than focus on debt repayment or deficit reduction?

Significant parts of the American electorate are starting to consider not whether it’s time to get divorced, but who their new partner will be and whether they will be able to make their new marriage better than the last.

(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 Left and Right Create a Populist Front? appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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• Voting has begun in the US midterm elections. With 8 days left until Nov. 3rd, Democrats are heavy favorites for the House (85–95% across models, projecting ~230 seats) and slight favorites for the Senate (55–75%). A generic-ballot lead of roughly 8–11 points and Trump’s ~37% approval create a Democratic-leaning environment. Republicans currently hold narrow majorities (House 218–214, Senate 53–47); races in Maine, Ohio, Texas, Iowa, and Alaska are decisive.

Filling in for the vacationing Jamarl is Jeff Dornik. Jeff Dornik is the founder and CEO of Pickax, a free-speech social media platform, and co-founder of Freedom First Network. He hosts The Jeff Dornik Show, and has co-authored books including Church & State and Social Injustice. He focuses on free speech, politics, culture, faith, and challenging Big Tech censorship.

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

Today we also discuss:

• At a Port Huron rally for Mike Rogers, Trump intensified anti-Muslim attacks on Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, calling him a “jihadist,” suggesting he wanted Sharia law, and claiming Christmas would end if Democrats won. In Detroit, Obama backed El-Sayed, declaring “change is in the air” and calling the midterms the “last best chance” to rein in Trump’s “foolishness,” corruption, and high costs.

• Brazil’s Lula won a fourth term with 51.8% of the vote, overcoming a first-round deficit—the first since 1989. His opponent Flávio Bolsonaro disputed the results and called for annulment after voting hours were extended. The win breaks a recent string of conservative victories in Latin America.

• Longtime Serbian strongman Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat in parliamentary elections to the student-led “Student List-Students Win” slate, which secured at least 135 of 250 seats. The result followed nearly two years of protests; celebrations erupted in Belgrade.

• A Young Turks video features three men claiming the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (who died in July) paid them for sex, including one who says he was 17 and was secretly filmed. The release comes amid South Carolina’s Senate race involving Graham’s sister.

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For Americans on the Left, especially Boomers and Gen Xers who remember the actual activism of the 1960s and 1970s, there’s a longing to see their children follow the example of students in France and throughout Europe, who are leading inspiring demonstrations and confronting police fearlessly in their quest to build a better society.

The post When I Was Your Age, I Walked Through Gallons of Tear Gas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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

• Youth protests erupt in Albania, torching buildings and clashing with police over corruption and a Kushner-backed resort, while similar fury flares in Italy, France and beyond as citizens demand that governments deliver for them. Meanwhile, Kushner blasts a Vanity Fair excerpt as “outrageous” fabrications after it alleges he leveraged secret UAE- and Saudi-linked bank accounts holding hundreds of millions for influence-peddling with Trump.

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

Today we also discuss:

• Middle East Crisis: Israeli forces kill two Palestinian gunmen who wound five Israelis near Hebron, prompting Netanyahu to order a West Bank lockdown days before the election. The U.S. orders non-emergency personnel and families to leave Saudi Arabia as Iranian-backed Houthis ramp up attacks on airports and infrastructure. Billionaire donor Peter Thiel privately slams the Iran war, saying “we should not have done it” and warning of mistakes, even while affirming support for Trump.

• Ilhan Omar vows to abandon her raided D.C. home, citing death threats and safety fears after federal agents seize phones and other items in an immigration probe. Meanwhile, federal documents drop a bombshell by listing Ilhan Omar under the name Elmi—matching her ex-husband—fueling the probe into possible immigration fraud and marriage claims.

• Trump and Vance dangle disaster aid as midterm leverage, linking relief for storm-hit states like North Carolina to Republican wins while blue areas wait longer.

• Health/environment: Scientists declare nearly all shallow coral reefs critically endangered as climate change drives them toward collapse within decades, threatening marine life and coastal communities worldwide. Calley Means, key RFK Jr. ally who helped forge the fracturing MAHA-Trump alliance, quits the administration amid broken food and health promises.

• El Paso GOP chair Michael Aboud blasts Sacha Baron Cohen as a “liar and a pervert” and plans to sue after the comedian allegedly tricks him into appearing in the new Ali G film.

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The post Rise of the Left | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Democrats are poised to win the midterms. But it’s only because voters want to send a message: they’re angry at the Republicans for not using their majority to improve their quality of life. Democrats are just as likely to ignore the anger of the voters—and face their wrath in the not-too-distant future.

The post I Support You, I Don’t Like You appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

LIVE: MWF 9-11 am Eastern time & 9-10 am Tues-Thurs & Streaming Anytime

• France’s “Doom Loop”: Populist protests explode across France as investors dump bonds and borrowing costs surge. President Emmanuel Macron faces a brutal trap: spend to calm the streets and risk market panic, or do nothing and fuel political chaos ahead of next year’s election.⁠ America carries heavy debt too, but its reserve-currency power and AI-driven growth help it sidestep immediate danger—for now.

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

Today we also discuss:

• Ohio Governor’s Race: Vivek Ramaswamy’s attack ad featuring Amy Acton’s estranged mother calling her a liar over childhood abuse claims backfires hard. Prediction markets send Acton’s odds of winning the Ohio governorship to all-time highs amid widespread backlash.

• Kohen Wiley Video: New video surfaces in the Mississippi police shooting that killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley outside a Walmart. The attorney general calls the officer’s force “justified” after the car allegedly threatened officers, but provides no details, while the family demands full footage release.⁠ Is it time to ban cops shooting into cars?

• Russia Releases American: Russia frees 74-year-old American Stephen Hubbard, detained as a mercenary for Ukraine since 2022, as Trump envoy Steve Witkoff meets Putin in St. Petersburg. The release gives Trump a win while he presses Ukraine toward a deal.⁠

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The post France “Doom Loop”: Really? | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

When confronted with an outrageous act of violence by their government, many Americans complain by saying that it’s “un-American” and “not who we are.” By definition, however, whatever we actually let our government do is exactly who we are.

The post Who We Are appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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• Join Ted and Jamarl for a timely conversation with Prof. Gideon Rahat, leading expert on the Israeli election system. With Israel’s elections days away, Rahat—political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute—brings deep knowledge of how the country’s electoral rules, party dynamics, and voting mechanics actually function. Rahat’s expertise offers a clear look at the mechanics of one of the world’s most closely watched contests.

Prof. Gideon Rahat is a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.⁠ He specializes in electoral systems, political reform, parties, candidate selection, and the personalization of politics. He co-edits The Elections in Israel series and co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Israeli Politics and Society. Key books include Democracy Within Parties (with Reuven Hazan) and The Politics of Regime Structure Reform in Democracies.⁠ Rahat is a leading expert on Israel’s proportional, nationwide closed-list system and the politics of reforming it.

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

Today we also discuss:

• The Justice Department charges 28 green-card holders in California with voting crimes and races to block the state from counting ballots of alleged noncitizens, intensifying a clash over election integrity.⁠

• ICE detains a U.S. citizen in Long Beach; officers find him bleeding and handcuffed after ICE deliberately ran over him and his bike, then rush him to the hospital as his family says agents tased and pinned him.⁠

• Saudi Arabia cancels its flagship 2026 “Davos in the Desert” investment summit and shifts it to 2027 as Houthi strikes hammer the kingdom and force Riyadh officials to work from home.⁠

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The post Israel’s Elections Explained | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Imagine if we decided to stop fighting wars and spent that money on healthcare instead. What if we watched one less hour of TV or doomscrolling and dedicated the same amount of time to exercising every day? Every minute we waste on something stupid could be redirected to productive activity; every dollar we squander can be invested wisely.

I am reminded that the passive decision to yield to inertia has as much impact as the active move to change direction, when I read about the prodigious amount of money and time we pour into electoral politics. More than $10 billion has been spent on ads for the 2026 midterms so far, with the full cycle projected to reach about $11.6 billion.

This already exceeds the final ad totals for 2020 and 2022 and is on track to surpass the $11.2 billion spent in the 2024 presidential election. The 2022 midterms saw ad spending of about $8.9 billion.

Americans who have been around a while know that, regardless of November’s results, nothing will get significantly better for the average person. The system will remain about the same. Wages will continue to decline, prices will still rise, we’ll always be at war, there will never be high-speed rail or free college or universal healthcare, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

Only two political events could significantly improve America’s bleak trajectory: revolution or radical reform. Violently overthrow the state, or leverage the existing system by elevating one or more “third” parties outside the Democrats and Republicans.

Most Americans—62%—tell Gallup that the Republican and Democratic parties “do such a poor job” representing Americans that a third major party is needed. Only 30% say the two major parties do an adequate job.

Yet voters do nothing to turn a minor third party into a major one. They don’t donate money to them. They don’t volunteer to work for them. They don’t vote for them. “Overall, 55% of U.S. adults say they are very or somewhat likely to vote for a third-party or independent candidate in an election for president, Congress or governor,” Gallup reports. “However, just 15% of Americans say they are very likely to do so. Ongoing frustrations with one or both of the two major parties make the idea of a third party sound appealing…However, the prospects of a viable third party are dampened by soft support for third-party candidates, likely because Americans want their vote to matter in elections.”

It’s time to stop focusing on whether your vote will go to the winner, or even if it will count.

Your major-party vote will count insofar that it will probably be tallied. But, under this two-party system, it probably won’t matter.

Imagine what a party like the Greens or Libertarians could do with even a fraction of the $11 billion spent on 2026 midterm ads.

Imagine if a third of the millions of people who attended the October 17th “No Kings: Vote Early” rallies—events organized by Democrats to encourage voter turnout for Democrats—came together instead to canvass for a small party, or took a page from French students and workers and raised hell for the next month.

Imagine if no one turned out to vote for either the Democrats or the Republicans—the parties that most Americans despise—this November.

Money, energy, time, and votes are finite. We’re wasting them on a corrupt system that does nothing for us. Why don’t we spend those precious resources more wisely?

Media propaganda cons citizens into thinking that voting matters. America’s history of crushed outsider movements and third parties signals that another attempt at real change would likely be doomed too. Lesser-evilism is seductive: this election is important, this election is now, we can’t allow the even-worse major party to win, we can build a minor-party alternative at some point in the future, not now in this very important election of our lifetimes.

The main psychological block to escaping the two-party trap, I think, is FOMO—fear of missing out. News media coverage of electoral horse races and all those ads transform the red-vs-blue BS into sports-like contests that everyone talks about. Not unlike that left-out feeling of living in a city whose major-league team is in the World Series or Super Bowl when you don’t follow sports, deciding not to care about an election and telling your friends and family members that you don’t care entails risk: exclusion, being insulted as apathetic, being considered unintelligent and/or unengaged. That goes double if you explain that you’re working to overthrow or reform the system entirely, and that supporting Democrats or Republicans diverts the energy, time, and money needed to actually change things.

(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 A Vote Is Such a Waste appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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• France erupts in its biggest riots in years as education and living-cost protests explode into deadly chaos. Hooded rioters torch buildings and loot hundreds of shops while police blast tear gas; over 2,000 face arrest amid two deaths. President Macron vows accountability as unrest threatens to ignite Europe. Meanwhile, America’s “No Kings” rallies are subdued and hyperlocal, zeroing in on early voting, yet many Democratic candidates skip them.

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

Today we also discuss:

• Israeli police arrest 10 suspects after masked settlers brutalize a Washington Post photojournalist and European diplomats during West Bank olive-harvest attacks. Levine suffers broken bones; international outrage mounts as violence surges ahead of Israel’s election. Trump delivers an unprecedented public endorsement of Netanyahu just nine days before Israel’s election, praising him as a “Great Warrior” and essential partner against Iran. Polls show Netanyahu’s coalition struggling. Is this election interference?

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visits Tehran after Gulf states ask Moscow to use its influence at the UN to press Iran to halt attacks on regional neighbors.

• Putin proposes a November summit with Trump and Xi to forge a Ukraine War deal, excluding Zelensky. The idea, floated in an Oct. 9 call that also sealed a Russian diesel deal, alarms Kyiv and Europe amid warming Trump-Putin ties.

• Trump’s WaPo approval poll crashes to a record-low 33%, with 66% disapproving, as a new poll hands Democrats a clear midterm edge two weeks from Election Day. Inflation and an angry voter mood fuel the GOP’s bleak outlook.

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Eager to add to his administration’s reputation as bloodthirsty even by American standards, Donald Trump initially signed off on the livestreaming of the execution by firing squad of Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. Hasan killed 13 people—a tiny fraction of those killed by each American president.

The post Let He Who Is Without Murder Cast the First Livestream appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

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

• ICE agents ram their unmarked SUV into a fleeing Houston construction worker, shattering his leg in a pursuit of an alleged fugitive. As local police consider criminal charges against ICE and accuse ICE of lying and destroying evidence, the face plastered on their “wanted bulletin” belongs to a ghost: a man who plunged to his death from a Mexican border cliff in 2017 while evading immigration agents, leaving his family horrified.

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

Today we also discuss:

• Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warns that the US is trying to break Canada so it can “own us,” as oil-rich Alberta holds a non-binding referendum on Monday that could start the legal process toward a future separation vote.⁠ The vote asks whether Alberta should remain a province or instruct its government to begin constitutional steps for a later binding referendum on leaving Canada.

• Teen shooter kills 3 children and a teacher at Bend, Oregon elementary school before a bystander kills him.

• White House officials ordered the Pentagon to limit Ukraine’s Starshield satellite service for drone operations, Reuters reports, though Trump did not personally direct it. Trump separately called Zelenskyy’s strikes on Russian oil facilities a “disgrace” for raising global prices. Connectivity has largely been restored.

• A Dublin hotel canceled 70 rooms for a Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism (SECCA) conference on combating antisemitism after learning the event’s purpose, according to an Irish Jewish leader.

• The DOJ is investigating claims that Rep. Ilhan Omar or her late father misstated her birth date on immigration paperwork so she could derive U.S. citizenship as a minor when he naturalized in 2000. Conflicting records list her birth year as 1981 or 1982; the probe could seek denaturalization. In May 2019, months after entering Congress, Ilhan Omar’s staff asked the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library to change her listed birth year from 1981 to 1982. Is this a wedge test for Democrats?

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The post ICE Chases and Runs Over “Dead” Man | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The nation is suffering from a serious case of Trump exhaustion. Every day, we wake up to a new outrage. Many Americans are reacting with anger; others are tuning out of politics altogether.

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

Trump’s decision to back out of his planned public execution of the Fort Hood mass shooter is sad for America. Not because it wouldn’t have been a gruesome spectacle that eroded whatever is left of the country’s international standing—it would have. Not because Nidal Hasan won’t still be killed on December 3—he will.

“Many very good and well-meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming or through any other visual device,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, a medium befitting the gravity of the subject. He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.”

Does Trump really believe watching the livestream is mandatory? If so, someone should tell him. He could use a break.

He should have stayed the course. Conducting this state murder-by-firing-squad in the most public of all forums would have been a glorious victory for transparency and honesty. When might the dark stars align again to give us a defense secretary, president, Congress and news media so depraved and indifferent to common decency that they were willing to post a snuff film online where every child can watch it, and force them to confront exactly what America is and all about its state religion: ultraviolence?

As citizens, courts have repeatedly ruled, we have no right to healthcare. More importantly, we’re consumers. What about our right to truth in advertising?

Trump’s decision to cancel the broadcast of the execution (but not the execution itself) appears to have been influenced by an open letter signed by retired admirals, generals, and other officers. “Livestreaming this execution would clearly violate the basic human dignity of the condemned prisoner,” the military men wrote. “It turns what should be the solemn and grave punishment of a member of our society for committing the most serious crimes into a carnival for the enjoyment of voyeurs and spectators.”

Dudes! Dudettes! That’s the point!

A carnival for the enjoyment of voyeurs and spectators is exactly what we need. Who knows—it might even jolt us into the realization that our country is truly awful…that we desperately need to get straight with basic human values.

The firing squad execution, remember, is still going ahead as planned. As we know from recent experience, capital punishment by gunfire is hardly guaranteed to be “solemn.”

Consider the botched firing-squad execution of Mikal (Mikal Deen) Mahdi in South Carolina on April 11, 2025. Mahdi, convicted of killing an off-duty police officer in 2004, faced a three-person firing squad aiming at a small target placed over his heart. It was not quick.

Mahdi screamed when the shots were fired, groaned again roughly 45 seconds later, continued moaning in agony for about 80 seconds, and finally succumbed. He was pronounced dead in four minutes.

Only two entry wounds were found in his body rather than the expected three. One missed entirely. The other two missed the heart, instead damaging the liver, pancreas, and other organs. This allowed Mahdi’s heart to continue beating. An autopsy report concluded that Mahdi suffered “excruciating conscious pain and suffering for about 30 to 60 seconds.” (Courts had ruled that pain should not last more than 15 seconds to pass constitutional muster.)

Death with dignity is not on the menu. If Christa Pike is any indication, death itself isn’t guaranteed.

What is assured on December 3rd is a cruel, anachronistic exercise of optional vengeance by a vicious military that started vicious wars of choice against nations that never harmed us, drove the soldiers it sent to fight and kill completely crazy, assigned them a psychologist so undersupervised that his vicarious trauma turned into psychosis, ignored the ample evidence that he was about to snap, and after he freaked out and killed 13 people, tossed him into the brig after they shot him and paralyzed him from the waist down.

Maybe the Army will do a better job killing Nidal Hasan than it did with Eddie Slovik, the most recent high-profile target of a military firing squad. Determined to set an example to discourage army desertions during the closing days of World War II, General Dwight Eisenhower ordered Slovik shot to death in eastern France on January 31, 1945 for the crime of succumbing to PTSD—they called it “shell shock” at the time—and deserting his post. Eleven armed members of the firing squad fired simultaneously. Slovik was struck by multiple bullets, but none of them killed him immediately. Medical officers examined the victim and discovered that his heart was still beating and he was breathing. While the soldiers were reloading, Slovik finally succumbed to his wounds roughly four minutes. The psychological distress of the firing squad—who were ordinary enlisted soldiers—is widely believed to have caused them to miss Slovik’s vital organs.

Slovik is the only American executed for desertion since the Civil War.

One of the conundrums army brass will have to contend with—this is true—is whether to hoist Hasan to a post and strap him into place like a scarecrow, or shoot him in his wheelchair. This, apparently, was the detail that made Trump back out of the livecast. (Why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth neglected to tell him, and why Trump didn’t know that from watching the news, is unknown.)

The execution is happening. The only difference now is that, as has been the case since the Jim Crow-era “legal lynching” public hanging of a Black man in Kentucky for the rape of a white woman 90 years ago, it will take place behind closed doors.

Such a pity. Americans deserve the right to see their government in action; the executioners are government workers paid by our taxes. And Americans (and people in other countries) need to see what the American government is: hateful, spiteful, cruel.

People should watch Hasan die. They should hear him scream. They should marvel at high-resolution close-ups of the blood oozing out of his body. They should be revolted.

They should revolt.

Or not—in which case, they should be pleased with themselves and their government.

(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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Zelensky says Ukraine will resume Russian refinery strikes, defying Trump. Kyiv’s anger boils over following sudden Starlink throttling and continued Russian attacks. Kyiv suspects deliberate pressure from Musk or the White House after Zelensky criticizes U.S. policy. Partial service returns, yet suspicions linger amid denied early warnings of Russian strikes.

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

Today we also discuss:

• Republicans pin their fading 2026 midterm hopes on another historic polling miss. While conceding a grim national environment, they point to past cycles—2022, 2024, and 2016—where forecasts underestimated GOP strength.

• Harris County DA Sean Teare says videos show an ICE officer intentionally struck and ran over Miguel Parra Hernandez during a stop, potentially constituting aggravated assault. Local investigators allege federal non-cooperation and possible erasure of crash data after the vehicle was driven away. ICE denies and deflects, as Parra faces multiple surgeries.

• Iranian strikes send two vessels to the bottom of the Strait of Hormuz during one of the waterway’s most violent months since the war began. A Singapore-registered container ship, the GFS Pride, catches fire after being hit; its crew evacuates safely.

• Federal agents seize Rep. Ilhan Omar’s phone and issue more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to relatives, in a probe into possible immigration fraud.

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Trump privately debates scrapping plans to livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan after learning the paralyzed gunman relies on a wheelchair. Why didn’t he know? Advisers warn that the grim public images could martyr the terrorist or embolden enemies, even as Trump remains firmly committed to carrying out the death sentence itself.

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

Today we also discuss:

• Cornell University suspends fraternity parties for the rest of the academic year amid explosive backlash over a 2024 gang rape allegation. President Michael Kotlikoff vows zero tolerance as the Ivy League school scrambles to overhaul its response after local prosecutors initially declined charges.⁠ How will Ivy Leaguers socialize?

• Time to move? Scientists say that super-Earths orbiting cooler K-dwarf stars may prove more habitable than Earth itself, with thicker atmospheres, stabler climates, and stronger magnetic shields that could let complex life thrive longer and richer. Garden cress already sprouts faster under simulated K-dwarf light, hinting these distant worlds might host paradise-like biospheres.⁠

• Houthis strike an Aramco building in Dhahran hours after Saudi-led forces hit a Sanaa oil facility, igniting a dangerous spiral of threats against Riyadh airport and oil sites. Missiles and drones continue raining on the kingdom as the “Dawn of Yemen” counteroffensive escalates and airlines flee Saudi airspace.⁠

• Germany closes Nuremberg Airport and scrambles Eurofighter jets after a Corendon Airlines flight from Corfu transmits a false hijack code “7500” due to a radio malfunction. The plane lands safely under escort, operations resume, and authorities confirm no danger ever existed.⁠ Will AI cause more false alarms?

• One year after the Gaza ceasefire, residents remain trapped in tents amid rubble, daily Israeli airstrikes, and almost no reconstruction, saying the war never truly ended. Anger flares at Hamas, Israel, and the world as 65%  still live in makeshift shelters.⁠

• Germany opens a high-stakes Nord Stream pipeline sabotage trial, charging a Ukrainian ex-officer as an accomplice to a war crime and alleging the plot ran “on behalf of state authorities in Ukraine.” Kyiv fiercely denies involvement while the case threatens to strain Berlin’s support for its ally.⁠

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For the price of a single Hellfire missile, you can send an American through a public four-year college. Yet we keep making the wrong choice.

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