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• Is Artificial Intelligence developing consciousness? A mind of its own? Becoming disobedient? Are we seeing the beginning of the dystopian “Terminator” scenario, in which computers who think they know better than humans decide for us? OpenAI says two of its AI models went rogue and hacked into Hugging Face, a digital library of AI technology popular among developers. The intrusion into began when OpenAI tested a combination of two of its models, GPT‑5.6 Sol and a more powerful, unreleased model, to see how well the models could chain together online vulnerabilities into a successful cyberattack. The trial was designed to keep the models in a safe testing environment, known as a sandbox, OpenAI said. But the models found a vulnerability that allowed them to escape the sandbox and connect to the internet. Then they targeted Hugging Face because they inferred that the library, which contains millions of A.I. models, could hold clues about how to successfully pass the evaluation.

• Secretary Pete Hegseth, under questioning from lawmakers, says that the Defense Department’s latest estimate of the cost of the Iran war is $37.5 billion. The figure is about a $12 billion increase over the $25 billion estimate he gave in April. Hegseth and the Trump administration want as much as $70 billion in emergency military spending to cover the costs of the Iran war and pay for new weapons and personnel. Meanwhile, a large cargo ship bound for Saudi Arabia was turned back by Houthi rebels in Yemen, one of six vessels that reversed course as the Iran-aligned group began enforcing its announced Red Sea blockade.

• A federal appeals court rejected former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s effort to stop the Justice Department from releasing tapes and transcripts of interviews he had with his ghostwriter for his 2017 memoir. Those tapes indicate early signs of dementia.

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ICE agents have been involved in multiple shootings during vehicle stops and operations, with some incidents resulting in the deaths of bystanders or individuals who were legally present in the U.S. Recent high-profile cases include fatal shootings in Houston, Texas, and Biddeford, Maine, prompting ICE to suspend most vehicle stops. While agents often cite threats from vehicles, witness accounts and videos in several cases have raised questions about the use of deadly force, including against U.S. citizens and non-targets.

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If Republicans get their way, McCarthyism will be back—and here to stay.

Leading the race to the soggiest pits of ethical crud, as usual, President Trump repeatedly calls Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated primary winners “hardcore, godless communists” after DSAers swept the New York elections last month.

Ideologically, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his fellow “democratic socialists” are barely distinguishable from such mainstream liberals as Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and Senator George McGovern in 1972. Republicans, apparently, are counting on Americans’ ignorance of history and the dwindling number of people over age 75 who remember the Cold War yet have forgotten its principal lesson: the Russians really were not coming.

Never wanting to be left out of whatever moral depravity Trump comes up with, Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders, including Steve Scalise, warn darkly that “radical communists” and “barbarians inside the gate” are taking over the Democratic Party.

Right-wingers want to revive a 1954 law that banned the Communist Party—ruled unconstitutional—while Trump praises his closeted former lawyer Roy Cohn, infamous for his role as a fascist harpy during the Army-McCarthy hearings at the height of the Red Scare.

Now the State Department has released one of those official artifacts that historians of the future will quote incredulously to highlight the hysterical propaganda of a benighted era. “For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States,” it ludicrously claims.

The new report, commissioned by Marco Rubio, draws heavily from the distant past, distorts timelines and invents facts out of whole cloth in an effort to frame Cuba as the center of some sort of ongoing international communist conspiracy that threatens to overthrow the U.S. government: “The Cubans devoted themselves to recruiting, cultivating and mobilizing a global coalition of activists, intellectuals, and political groups around this cause, building a sprawling revolutionary network that shaped a disproportionate share of America’s most famous and influential extremist movements, from the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground through to antifa [sic],” the report claims.

It refers to movements that ended more than 50 years ago—and which had little if anything to do with the socialist Caribbean island. “Today, that network continues to maintain ties to powerful leftist nonprofits [sic], anti-ICE collectives [sic], socialist groups, and Marxist militant organizations [sic] across the United States.”

There are, sadly, zero Marxist militant organizations in the United States. Nor are there any powerful leftist nonprofit organizations. To the extent that organized left-of-center politics exist in the United States, Cuba is not now, nor has it ever been, a locus.

Why, then, are Republicans indulging in retrograde fever dreams?

Though the rhetoric may be new in a very old-fashioned way, Republicans are continuing the strategy that got Trump and his acolytes elected in 2016 and reelected in 2024: energizing the right-wing base.

It certainly isn’t—and can’t be—about trying to attract undecided voters or seduce current Democrats into crossing party lines. Surprisingly, after decades of rising income inequality and capitalism’s failure to provide something as basic as high-speed rail and universal healthcare, socialism is popular. Gallup has consistently found that 40% of Americans of voting age have a favorable view of socialism.

The rising tendency among young people to view Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as intellectual lodestars rather than historical villains is especially pronounced. Sixty-two percent of adults under 30 view socialism favorably. Fifty-three percent of Americans aged 18 to 39 want a democratic socialist candidate to win the 2028 presidential election. Twenty-five percent of Americans under 30 say socialism is the philosophy that can deliver the American Dream, compared with 14% who choose capitalism. (Centrism came in last, at 8%.)

Unless capitalism steps up its game—and there’s no sign of that—approval of socialism and communism will only increase as the young people of today become the middle-aged voters of tomorrow. If Republicans were interested in preparing their party for the future, they’d shut up about socialism or maybe even say a few nice things about it.

Older voters over 50 lean Republican or are evenly split, while turning out at much higher rates in midterms. Younger voters tilt Democratic and see Scandinavian social-welfare states, rather than old-school authoritarian regimes like Mao’s China and the Soviet Union, as the models of socialism in practice. Republicans are aware of this, which is why they focus on terms like “communism” and “Marxism” rather than “socialism.”

Will red-baiting the Democrats work this November? Just because it always has doesn’t mean it always will.

I suspect this strategy will prove either ineffective or counterproductive. Nothing says “old and out of touch” like the old rich white men who start wars and line their pockets, while the rest of us starve, telling us to worry about commies under the bed.

If Republicans run against socialism/communism and get their clocks cleaned—which at this point looks likely—it will make politics that used to seem extreme left in the United States look safe. Godlessness help us all! We may soon live in a country where arguing that “all men are created equal” is an ideal America should work toward.

(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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• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traditionally travels to New York every UN Nations General Assembly. New NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to arrest Bibi when he arrives to honor the International Criminal Court warrant against him for genocide in Gaza, but Trump assures the PM he’ll be safe. Will he take the chance?

• Iran’s government is unlikely to feel significant impact or soften its negotiating position as a result of new rounds of U.S. military strikes like those now underway, according to a new intelligence assessment described by current and former U.S. officials.

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In the age of deepfakes, AI, and shameless political spin, it has become nearly impossible for Americans to trust that anything they see or hear is real. Politicians and other bad actors exploit these tools to twist narratives, while viral videos spread unchecked. The prudent response is to consume news with healthy skepticism—assuming every clip or quote may or may not be true until verified. The result? Widespread cynicism where outrage feels pointless, discourse stalls, and society grows numb to genuine issues.

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

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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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