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• Is ICE hiring maniacs? An ICE officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine this week is an Army veteran who has struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood and never should have been given a badge and gun to patrol American streets, his close relatives say. David Brouillette has a history of terrifying and violent behavior, attacking women in his life over the years, and one shared a voicemail from last winter in which he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.

• Trump delivered a primetime address where he repeated claims that the country’s voting systems are vulnerable to being “rigged and stolen” by, among other players, China. The president presented no evidence.

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted representatives from more than 65 countries at the State Department, hoping to rally global support against what he said was the resurgence of far-left political terrorism, such as the Antifa movement. The Trump administration’s push to convince officials of the dangers posed by far-left terrorism had been met with skepticism by some allies, who had said that their own security officials did not assess the threat with the same level of severity as right-wing or Islamist terrorism.

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As President Trump and the Right respond to the rising influence of Democratic Socialists by broadly labeling all Democrats as “communists,” a national conversation about socialism and communism has intensified. Conservatives often argue that “socialism never works,” pointing to economic struggles in various leftist-led nations. Critics counter that countries like Cuba and Venezuela, when pursuing socialist policies, have faced U.S.-backed invasions, bombings, coups, and severe economic sanctions that exacerbated their challenges—raising the question of what aspects of these systems truly threaten capitalist interests.

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• Man Up! The Department of Defense will subject soldiers 30 and older to testosterone deficiency screening. “As we know, the modern battlefield is brutal and unrelenting,” Pete Hegseth says. “It requires and demands maximum psychological and mental readiness, and by addressing these health markers early, we’re keeping you on the leading edge of lethality.” Treatment, including testosterone replacement therapy, is voluntary and aimed at “restoring and optimizing” natural capabilities.

• For the first time, China is now viewed more favorably than the U.S. in most of the 36 countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center. The U.S. leads only six countries: India, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and two others. U.S. favorability in Canada has fallen from 57% in 2023 to 33% this year, while China’s has risen from 14% to 44%. Many respondents view China as a more reliable partner and as more likely to promote peace and stability. Respondents in many middle-income countries also view China as the better partner.

• Trump addresses the nation tonight. He won’t talk about issues Americans care about, though. This is about the SAVE Act.

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Even as President Trump’s unpopular wars and perceived disregard for a flagging economy weigh on the GOP’s 2026 midterm prospects, critics argue that the risk-averse, corporatist-dominated Democratic Party has been slow to propose bold, transformative changes on key voter issues.

Democrats’ early policy blueprint group, Project 2029, recently unveiled its first major proposal—”Kids Over Clicks”—which calls for banning social media for children under 16, stronger privacy protections, and addressing mental health impacts of tech and AI on youth. While this aligns with bipartisan efforts on kids’ online safety, skeptics note the relative absence of equally prominent, detailed plans so far on major economic pain points like healthcare affordability or broad job growth amid ongoing inflation and war-related pressures.

This approach reflects a cautious strategy that prioritizes achievable, consensus issues while larger structural reforms remain underdeveloped heading into the post-2026 cycle.

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• Senator Mitch McConnell’s office released a photo Sunday night to answer weeks of questions about his health. In it, the 84-year-old Kentucky Republican smiles beside his wife, Elaine Chao, while holding what appears to be that day’s Washington Post Sports section. But the image did not end the speculation. Instead, it prompted more theories and even accusations that the image was fake, the latest reflection of public distrust in the age of artificial intelligence.

• Trump’s proposed 20% levy on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz could further reduce traffic through the vital waterway, which has already ground to a halt again in recent days, according to the Baltic and International Maritime Council, the world’s largest shipping association.

• The ICE shot that killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, last week in Houston was fired into the front passenger side window, according to a local congresswoman and a lawyer who spoke with witnesses who were in the vehicle. Meanwhile, another ICE agent shot and killed a Maine motorist, marking at least the ninth death since the start of Trump’s mass deportations campaign.

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Right-wing Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, former Senate Majority Leader and key senior legislator, went missing for weeks. No one—including President Trump and the governor of his home state—knew whether he was sick, wallowing in depression like a recently MIA congressman from New Jersey, on a wild incognito adventure, alive, dead, kidnapped, or in a coma. His office refused to clear up the mystery until this past weekend, when they released a “proof of life” photo, complete with old-school newspaper, that only aroused further suspicion.

Pressured to explain this bizarre situation, Republicans responded to their constituents and fellow citizens the way leaders of any major political party in the world’s oldest and most powerful representative democracy typically do when honesty and transparency are clearly called for: they plotted a cover-up.

A really stupid cover-up.

If you read GOP accounts on social media platforms like X, you know that Republican- and MAGA-related feeds are coordinated to a ridiculous extent. Whether talking points are distributed to the various politicians and media influencers or they are directly managed from a central right-wing boiler room operation—overseas in many cases—I do not know. The results, however, are clear. Images and words—exactly identical or lightly edited—are spammed out by dozens of accounts at the same time.

Clearly, the word went out to the MAGA-verse: we need “proof of life” for McConnell.

As usual, MAGA World slavishly complied.

As McConnell, 84 and hospitalized since June 14, faced growing speculation and rumors about his health—including unverified claims that he was in a vegetative or deceased state—Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY), and conservative commentator and former McConnell aide Scott Jennings issued a laughably coordinated set of public statements on July 6 and 7.

“Leader Thune spoke with Sen. McConnell yesterday by phone,” Thune’s office said. “They had a lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security.”

Then Barrasso:

“Senator Barrasso and Senator McConnell had a lengthy conversation early this afternoon. Their phone call lasted roughly 20 minutes. They caught up about the latest news impacting Senate races, the Graham Platner scandal, and the recent Supreme Court ruling on coordinated spending limits. They also discussed the Senate’s July work period, including the need to pass the NDAA and confirm President Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence. Senator McConnell was fully engaged and is eager to get back to the Senate.”

And Jennings:

“I spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning, the senior senator from Kentucky. He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 20 minutes … about Iran, Ukraine, the unfolding situation in Maine, my visit to the TR Presidential Library, and even a little bit of Senate history. I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible.”

Adding to the hilarity, Jennings’s employer, CNN, said it could not confirm its own employee’s statement. (Note for readers under age 70: CNN used to be a news-gathering organization on cable TV.)

If this were Japan, the shame of it all would drive these three clowns to do a swan dive in front of a bullet train. (Note for American readers: Industrially advanced nations have high-speed rail.)

Charades like this are hardly new in America. Political hacks covered up the fact that Woodrow Wilson, Dwight Eisenhower, and Joe Biden were physically and/or mentally incapacitated for parts of their presidencies. Culturally, however, we associate lying to the public about their political leaders’ fitness to serve with authoritarian regimes like Cuba, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and, most of all, the Soviet Union.

With this farce’s tragicomic, not-so-carefully coordinated lies, the McConnell mess is nothing if not Sovietish.

As is the American people’s lack of reaction. Like the Soviets, we are accustomed to being bullshitted by the authorities and their pet journalists who, once again, dutifully and unquestioningly transcribed official lies despite their outlandish improbability. We are experiencing “epistemic nihilism,” the belief that objective truth is fundamentally unknowable or does not exist. Americans are withdrawing into cynicism, concluding that searching for facts is pointless since everyone is lying.

A democracy requires a well-informed electorate in order to function well. That includes transparency. If you can’t believe the White House when it claims the president is 6’3″ and 224 pounds (6’0” and 290 pounds is more like it) and , how much will they lie about Israel or emoluments?

We would be terribly remiss if we omitted the nearly equivalent absurdity of the actual death (reportedly, probably true—who knows?) of another right-wing bold-face name, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who passed over the weekend after a “brief and sudden illness” (a burst aorta) at age 71.

Graham—never married, no kids, effeminate—fit the classic profile of the closeted rightist politician. D.C. insiders have long said that Graham’s homosexuality was an open secret.

I don’t know. I hardly care, except that if he was gay, it takes a terrible human being to vote against every LGBTQIA+ bill just to keep your job.

On the evening of Saturday, July 11, D.C. emergency services received a 911 call around 8:30 p.m., reporting a person suffering chest pains at Graham’s Capitol Hill residence. Who placed the call? An “unidentified woman in Baltimore,” about an hour’s drive away.

Graham may have been straight (or asexual), and that call may have been placed by a political aide or household staff member. The timing, opaqueness and likely cover-up of Graham’s sex life, in the midst of the McConnell story, naturally feeds the feeling that we are being lied to—as usual.

Does it matter? Only if we want to believe that we live in a democracy.

(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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• Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, ally of Trump/Netanyahu/Zelensky and a consistent neocon, dies of a “brief and sudden illness” at age 71.

• Speculation swirls as a “proof of life” photo of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a far-right stalwart of the GOP, emerges after weeks of cover-ups and misdirection about the 84-year-old’s health.

• U.S. and Iranian forces exchanged strikes over the weekend and issued conflicting accounts over whether the Strait of Hormuz remains open to shipping. Iran’s strikes targeted American military bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Oman and Qatar.

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The Democratic Party, including even its progressive left wing in recent years, has become fixated on recruiting hypermasculine candidates—particularly military veterans—to counter Republican narratives portraying Democrats as effete coastal elites. This strategy aims to project strength, patriotism, and relatability to working-class and swing voters. A stark illustration of the risks of this strategy emerged with Graham Platner, a Marine Corps and Army veteran, oyster farmer, and progressive-backed candidate who won Maine’s Democratic Senate primary with 72% of the vote. Platner, who emphasized his combat tours and working-class background, suspended his campaign in July 2026 after facing sexual assault allegations.

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• Federal prosecutors are already off to a bad start in their case against U.S. Olympian David Hearn, charged with “vandalism” for touching the DC Reflecting Pool after Trump’s renovation went wrong.

• In an echo of the killing of Renee Good by ICE, DHS said that Salgado Araujo had rammed an ICE vehicle and “weaponized” his white work van “in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.” But three men who were arrested during the botched attempt to arrest someone else said the ICE officer fired at them almost immediately after exiting his vehicle and that at no point did the driver veer in his direction.

• Is Mitch McConnell alive? What exactly are Republicans covering up?

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As recent polls show socialism viewed more favorably than capitalism among younger Americans and key demographics, and democratic socialists continue to defeat corporate-backed centrists in Democratic primaries across New York, Colorado, and other states, it is bizarre that Republicans are resurrecting McCarthyism-era red-baiting tactics to smear even moderate corporate Democrats.

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• 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.

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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.

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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.”)

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• 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.

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• As Americans take on a positive view of socialism — and more candidates who embrace that label win elections — Republicans are using a different label: communist. Right-wing influencers and Republicans used the words “communism” or “communist” in an average of about 626 posts per week, up from around 439 per week during the same stretch last year — a 43 percent increase.

• Two Tennessee National Guard members in Memphis kill Tyrin Johnson, 20, who allegedly turned toward the soldiers with a gun during a downtown pursuit, according to the police.

• American concerns about the targeting of two Iranian peace negotiators — Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Parliament — spiked during delicate cease-fire negotiations that began in April. Fearful that an Israeli assassination effort would doom the negotiations, the United States went so far as to ask other countries in the region to warn Iran about the possibility. For many in Israel, it appears inevitable that Trump will re-evaluate Washington’s ties with Israel.

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After Democratic socialists swept the June Democratic primary races, the centrist-controlled Democratic National Committee resorted to its usual tactics. Rather than unifying the party’s progressives and corporate liberals, liberal right-wingers declared the DSA insurgency an emergency that had to be stopped. They claimed—against all the evidence—that voters are in the mood for militant milquetoast moderation.

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