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The TMI Show Ep 30: “Meet the Lawmakers”

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Ted Rall

Tomorrow the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case with broad potential implications for transgender people in the United States. US v. Skrmetti, brought by the Biden administration for trans youth, seeks to overturn Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender children and slaps doctors who provide that care with civil penalties. The government argues that transgender people are covered under the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

A win for the Volunteer State defendant would likely set a precedent that would support restrictions on transgender people in health care whether they can use restrooms or play sports on teams corresponding to their gender identity.Meanwhile, transgender politics have been prominent in the recent election. Missoulans returned transgender Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr, who was blocked from speaking on the floor of the state legislature, to her office.

And in January, Delaware Rep.-elect Sarah McBride will make history in congressional representation, becoming the first openly transgender individual to serve in Congress. House Speaker Mike Johnson subsequently issued a ban on transgender women like McBride from using women’s bathrooms in the Capitol.

As America heads into conservative-dominated government, what will the clash between the MAGA movement and an increasingly assertive transgender movement look like?

The Final Countdown – 4/18/24 – Critical Vote for Ukraine, Israel Funding Approaches as Congress Remains at Odds

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Ted Rall

On this episode of The Final Countdown hosts Angie Wong and Ted Rall discuss a variety of topics around the globe, including Congress divided over aid funding to Israel and Ukraine. 

Nebojsa Malic – RT Journalist 

Mitch Roschelle – Media Commentator

Scott Stantis – Political Cartoonist 

Aviv Bushinsky – Former Chief of Staff for Israeli PM Netanyahu

RT journalist Nebojsa Malic joins The Final Countdown in the first hour to discuss Congress remaining at odds over a critical vote for Israel and Ukraine funding.

Then, media commentator Mitch Roschelle joins the show to discuss the latest out of the Trump hush money trial. 

Political cartoonist Scott Stantis weighs in on the NYPD arresting over 100 pro-Palestine protesters at Columbia University.

The show wraps up with Aviv Bushinsky, who shares his perspective on reports of Israeli strikes inside Iran. 

Would Default Really Be so Bad?

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Ted Rall

Unless congress raises the debt ceiling, the government will run out of money and be unable to pay its bills as early as June 1, according to Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen. Would it really be so bad?

You Know the Drill

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Ted Rall

Another week, another mass shooting. Well, actually a bunch of them in California, all at the same time. It’s very clear that the American political system has no motivation or ability or drive to do anything about this problem.

DMZ America Podcast #74: Post-Election Analysis and Pre-Election Prediction Mea Culpas

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Ted Rall

Two of America’s top cartoonists perform their postmortem on the 2022 midterm elections. Ted Rall and Scott Stantis discuss what happened and, more importantly, what will happen going forward into 2023 and divided government, and a certain former president’s plans for the near future. They also revisit their pre-election predictions which were, (as Bob Uecker might say), juuuust a little outside.

 

 

How a Bill Becomes a Law, 2023

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Ted Rall

Divided government and wild dysfunction has completely decimated the traditional idea of how the United States government is supposed to pass and enact legislation. Look for nothing of value to get through Congress or, for that matter, from the President’s desk.

Either Way, Guys Lose

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Ted Rall

New York City congressional candidate Carolyn Maloney is running a gender-based campaign arguing that she will always put women first. What are male voters supposed to think about that?

Want Abortion Back? First, Women Have to Die.

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Ted Rall

            The Supreme Court has sent a message: we’re no longer in the business of ratifying social change. No more legislating from the bench. If Americans want abortion, same-sex marriage and contraception legalized as opposed to merely tolerated, they should look to Congress.

            Distraught over the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many women are searching for a quick fix—and they’re right. A 20,000-abortion-per-week nation can’t go to 10,000 overnight without dire social, economic and medical consequences. But the system won’t give us the rapid remedy we need.

            Women will have to die. They’ll have to die in ugly ways. Their deaths will have to be public.

            Congress won’t help. Bless her heart, Elizabeth Warren articulated the Democrats’ plan, which is magical thinking at its finest: “If we pick up two more senators [in November], we can ditch the filibuster and make Roe the law of the land.” Odds of Democrats losing seats and Senate control are solid; odds that they’ll gain two or more seats are slim to none.

            Neither will the Supreme Court. Only one justice, Clarence Thomas, is likely to die in the next year or two. He’s 74, overweight and rumored to be in poor health. Even if Mitch McConnell allowed Biden to hold a vote and the president were to replace Thomas with a liberal, the conservative majority would remain 5-to-4. Adding new (liberal) justices to the Supreme Court is a pipe dream that would require a 60-vote Democratic supermajority, not to mention changing Biden’s mind about packing the court.

            We the people won’t act either. Now that Roe is no more, look at what has happened in the streets: Nothing, unless you count a few sporadic, easily-ignored, low-attendance protest demonstrations. Pro-choice groups like NARAL are still fundraising, not mass-mobilizing.

            Want abortion back? Women are going to have to die hard, ugly, public deaths.

            A 2021 study estimates that 140 additional women will die each year in the U.S. due to complications from pregnancies that otherwise would have been terminated in abortions.

            Vaguely- and carelessly-written statutes allowing for abortions in case of medical emergencies will kill even more. Women with heart conditions and diabetes are at higher risk of death during childbirth, but what level of risk rises to an emergency? Who makes the call, a doctor or a judge? How many doctors will take the safest course—for themselves—and refuse to perform a needed abortion? Some abortion bans are so sweeping that the procedure isn’t permitted even in case of a miscarriage, which can lead to fatal sepsis unless the fetus is removed.

“What does the risk of death have to be, and how imminent must it be?” University of Michigan reproductive health professor Lisa Harris asked in The New England Journal of Medicine. “Might abortion be permissible in a patient with pulmonary hypertension, for whom we cite a 30-to-50% chance of dying with ongoing pregnancy? Or must it be 100%?”  Doctors in states where abortion is now illegal will probably “wait to that very last minute when it’s clear that a patient will die to do the procedure, and that’s just not an ideal time to do any kind of intervention.”

Pathetic and absurd and wrong, yet plainly true, is that the quickest and likeliest route toward codifying abortion rights into federal law will begin with one, or more likely several, highly-publicized cases of women who suffer hideous deaths because Roe is no more. If enough of those tragedies go viral on social media, there may eventually be enough horror and outrage across the political spectrum to persuade some Republicans to join Democrats into passing an abortion-rights law.

            This, of course, is no guarantee. Many thousands of innocents have been slaughtered in mass shootings, all caught in gruesome high-definition video and spread via social media, yet Congress has barely begun to act on gun control measures. Cops routinely murder Black men on video yet the police remain woefully un-defunded. Women’s deaths may be like that, piling up with nary a “thought and prayer” for a generation or more until the United States rejoins the developed world and restores Roe.

            Without the Supreme Court, a functional Congress or sustained, energetic grassroots activism, however, outrage prompted by social media and high-profile martyrs are all we can hope for under this current system.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of a new graphic novel about a journalist gone bad, “The Stringer.” Order one today. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

1% Solution Deserves 1% Reward

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Ted Rall

The muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens pointed out that a half-measure in politics can actually make a problem worse. Media and voters believe that a problem has been addressed or that Congress has done as much as it is able or willing to do about it. That reduces the chance of a real, complete solution. Congress appears to be moving to a possible 1% solution on mass shootings with assault weapons.

The Real Question

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Ted Rall

Regardless of how you feel about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the fact that Congress quickly allocated $13.5 billion for military aid to a country which is not even an American ally while over half a million Americans are sleeping outside should make us reconsider our national priorities.

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