Columns Archives - Ted Rall's Rallblog

What Is the Death Penalty For?

October 9, 2026•

Once again, the debate over capital punishment is raging, driven by the staggering incompetence of Tennessee’s would-be prison executioners, who have repeatedly failed to kill Christa Pike for a murder she committed 30 years ago, and by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s shocking announcement that the military plans to livestream the firing-squad execution of Fort Hood mass shooter Major Nidal Hasan. Largely missing, as usual, is the question that ought to be paramount in the mind of any citizen considering the wisdom of a government practice or policy: what is the death penalty for? Clearly, killing killers is not about keeping society safe from convicted murderers. Serial killer Ted Bundy escaped from jail twice in 1977. The 2015 Dannemora break by Richard Matt and David Sweat in upstate New York, Danelo Cavalcante’s escape in Pennsylvania in 2023 and parts of the Texas Seven escape in 2000 all made news precisely because 99.999% of murderers remain behind bars. A 2024 study found…

It’s Pete Buttigieg’s Nomination to Lose

September 30, 2026•

Ted Rall

It’s that time again, and I know you’re excited: time to start handicapping the 2028 presidential campaign. First, for my left-of-the-Democrats readers—in other words, my fellow travelers—a disclaimer: handicapping the dancing bears of electoral democracy should never be construed as an endorsement of the two-party trap, the Democratic Party in particular, capitalism, or the current system. Those things suck and should be destroyed. I do this for the same reason sports fans try to predict which list of current players wearing the uniform of a city they’ve never lived in will defeat which other team. Like sports, American politics is fake and corrupt and relies on blind team loyalty, and it’s fun to predict the outcome. Okay. This time, I’m turning my attention to the contest for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. The person to beat, I believe, is former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. As we know from the past, even the best of the exceedingly bad candidates who have…

The Death of Sarcasm

September 21, 2026•

Ted Rall

In 2002, I drew a six-panel political cartoon titled “Israel vs. Palestine: Where Do You Stand?” Each panel shows a different speaker making a statement about the conflict, with a bold label underneath that sarcastically identifies the speaker’s supposed position. In the first panel, a man labeled “MODERATE HONEST BROKER” says, “The Arab killers must be killed before they get the chance to kill.” Next, another man says, “It’s always sad when innocent women and children die, but hey—that’s war!” Then a woman identified as a “GARDEN-VARIETY ANTI-SEMITE” says, “i can’t help noticing that Israel kills more Palestinians than vice versa.” The labels escalate, culminating with a person called “THE LIVING INCARNATION OF ADOLF HITLER” saying, “Surely Israel could find a better way to keep itself safe?” The cartoon’s joke is that any statement short of a blank-check endorsement of the IDF is recast as anti-Semitic. At the time of publication, reaction was predictable: supporters of Israel disliked it; those…

Grand Theft A.I.

September 8, 2026•

Ted Rall

Last week there occurred a watershed moment in the history of American political cartooning. A major American newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, published an editorial cartoon created not by a cartoonist or graphic artist, but by unidentified staffers using artificial intelligence. One year ago, the Sun fired its Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher. (Disclosure: KAL and I are friends.) Which AI model was used was not disclosed, but more likely than not it was ChatGPT by OpenAI. Why do I think so? I asked various AI models. I’m not a Luddite! As a cartoonist, my reaction was similar to that of most of my colleagues. I checked out the cartoon. It sucked. What the Sun published as a cartoon sucked worse than any cartoon ever drawn by any professional cartoonist could or ever has sucked, which is to say, a lot. This lickspittle slop sucked up to the mayor—no good political cartoon ever supports a politician, only criticizes them—and it…

Death From Above

September 1, 2026•

Ted Rall

If you think the Langtang Lirung glacier disaster on the Tibet-Nepal border was bad, wait for Lake Sarez. There is no reason to downplay the August 26th catastrophe, when a large section of glacier and underlying rock at 17,000 feet of elevation failed and plunged almost 4,000 feet into the valley below. The impact registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event. Thousands of people died. Himalayan glaciers have been melting at an accelerating rate due to climate change, causing ice avalanches, rockfalls and glacial-lake outburst floods. And the worst is yet to come. A thousand miles northwest across the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt from Langtang Lirung in the Pamir mountains of Tajikistan is Lake Sarez, 10,700 feet above sea level. Experts call it Central Asia’s Sword of Damocles. Lake Sarez formed in 1911 when a massive earthquake (estimated at 7.7) triggered a massive rockslide that blocked the Murgab River, creating the Usoi Dam—at over 1,500 feet high, the world’s tallest natural…

Better to Lose as Leftists Than Lose as Corporatists

August 18, 2026•

Ted Rall

People who follow the news are familiar by now with the general dynamic of the civil war within the Democratic Party that has been raging with greater intensity since 2016. Most of the party’s voters lean progressive, which is to say significantly to the left of its ruling elites, members of the Democratic National Committee, and the most powerful Democratic members of Congress. The battle between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton for the 2016 presidential nomination has largely defined this struggle. Tracking polls consistently found that Sanders would have defeated Trump in the general election. Trump himself, and his internal pollsters, believed Sanders, who had pushed for change within his party for decades, would have beaten him. Party elites ignored and denied the evidence, cheated to make sure Sanders was unable to overcome the institutional barriers the party had created through its anti-democratic superdelegate scheme, and we all know what happened that November. The DNC got its way. We got…

Why Socialism Now?

August 10, 2026•

Ted Rall

Why is socialism a growing force in American politics for the first time in over a century? It’s not happenstance. Socialism meets the historical moment. The Socialist Party of America founded in 1901 reached its apex of organizational strength, membership, electoral success and national visibility just before World War I, during the 1912 election. The SPA had well over 100,000 dues-paying members, but perennial socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs received about 900,000 votes (6% of the popular vote) in 1912, indicating significant penetration into the broader electorate. Socialist candidates were elected to over a thousand local and state offices, including dozens of mayors, in more than 300 cities—and two U.S. House seats. Why then? The Gilded Age was American capitalism at its worst. Underpaid workers and exploited immigrants joined a socialist movement that drove a wedge through a civil war in the Republican Party caused by Teddy Roosevelt’s third-party run against his protégé, incumbent President William Howard Taft. Child…

We’re Screwed

July 28, 2026•

Ted Rall

I’m screwed. You’ve had that thought. You’ve had that feeling: short breaths, panic, hollow chest. This is big. I may not ever be able to get out of this. No one can or will help me. The doctor closes the door. I don’t like what I see in these lab results. Firetrucks blocking my street. What’s going on? Ohhhh. Many events that leave you with that “I’m screwed” feeling are nobody’s fault. Diseases happen. Many can’t be helped. Some diseases are incurable. There are, however, crises that society can come together either to avoid, mitigate, or even solve. In a high-functioning society with responsive politics, humans marshal their collective resources in order to help individuals who suffer misfortune. Some cultures respond to those among them who are in trouble out of ethical or legal duty. There but for the grace of God go I. If I ignore her cries, I might be arrested for negligence. Others come together as a…

New Red Scare. Why?

July 21, 2026•

Ted Rall

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…

Can Iran Replace Israel?

July 7, 2026•

Ted Rall

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…

What Is the Death Penalty For?

It’s Pete Buttigieg’s Nomination to Lose

Grand Theft A.I.

Death From Above

Better to Lose as Leftists Than Lose as Corporatists

Why Socialism Now?

New Red Scare. Why?

Can Iran Replace Israel?

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What Is the Death Penalty For?

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