As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House in one month, some economic signals are blinking yellow. Investors unsettled by the Fed's forecast for fewer cuts in 2025 pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 1,123 points, or 2.6%, while the Nasdaq composite dropped 3.6%. The Dow has lost 2,900 points since December 4th. It’s a tale of two economies: consumer sentiment among Republican voters is at its highest since late 2020, whereas Democrats feel the same as they did in the summer of 2022 when inflation was raging.

What are the prospects for a Trump economy during the next few years? Is DOGE real and, if so, will austerity prime the pump or tank the economy?

The TMI Show’s Ted Rall and Manila Chan discuss the economic picture with market maker Todd “Bubba” Horwitz.

Defeated presidential candidate Kamala Harris says it's time for Democrats to roll up their sleeves and start the resistance to Donald Trump. But the party appears to be in disarray, totally dispirited and unable to find a way forward. How should Democrats prepare for the 2026 midterm elections and an open race for 2028? More than 10 million progressive voters stayed home, which allowed Trump to win; can the party do something to bring them back? Is there a way to reconcile symbolic political correctness and identity politics on the left with the parties pro-censorship and militarily aggressive foreign policy, which appears to be more on the right?

Earlier this year President Biden signed a rare law that passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan approval: by January 19th, TikTok must be sold to an American company or shut down its American operations. Democrats and Republicans alike were concerned that the Chinese-owned company might be pressured by the Chinese government to turn over Americans private user data. However, there's no evidence that this has ever occurred. Now ByteDance, TikTok’s parent, is asking the United States Supreme Court for a reprieve. What's more important, the First Amendment or a theoretical threat to national security?

The TMI Show’s Ted Rall discusses the issue with Manila Chan, who is back on the air after an illness.

The United States is among the 32 countries, mostly in the Americas, that have birthright citizenship. If you are born here, you get a US passport. Conservatives have long complained that the 14th Amendment provides a loophole for so-called "anchor babies,” of whom there are at least 4 million born to illegal immigrants. But those numbers are dropping annually. Jus soli, or the right of the soil, is in the crosshairs of the incoming second Trump Administration, with the president-elect threatening to eliminate it by executive order. Without it, however, hundreds of thousands if not millions of people could be forced back into the shadows, refusing to call the police or the fire department for fear of deportation, and become stateless. In France, there are second and even third-generation stateless people who couldn't go back "home" even if they wanted to.

The TMI Show’s Ted Rall debates the issue with guest co-host Robby West, filling in for Manila Chan.

Donald J. Trump is about to become the first president since Grover Cleveland to serve one term, lose a reelection bid and then run a third time successfully for a second term. What has Trump and his team learned from his first term? How will he govern differently? This time he has added progressives like Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to his team, drawing from the left of the Democratic Party in a way that he didn't do the first time around; how will they impact his policies? As a lame duck with no possibility of running for reelection, his only real concern for the future is for passing the torch of the MAGA movement, potentially to JD Vance. Is Trump now more free to do what he wants, and if so, what does he want?

TMI Show co-hosts Ted Rall and Robby West (filling in for Manila Chan) are joined by Angie Wong for an inside view into the new administration by an old president.

The shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson has sparked a national conversation about the state of healthcare in the United States. The accused shooter, Luigi Mangione, allegedly wrote a manifesto in which he pointed out that the U.S. has low life expectancy despite paying the highest costs for healthcare in the world. And he appears to have lit a fuse as “Wanted” posters have gone up on the city streets depicting other health insurance company executives accused of putting profits before their clients’ health at the same time Thompson’s bereaved family laid one of the most despised dead people in America to rest. “The TMI Show”’s resident leftist Ted Rall, guest co-host Robby West and guest Steve Gill, a conservative talk host, discuss Health Insurance Horror Stories, the future of for-profit healthcare under Trump and what, if anything, could be done to reduce Americans’ anger at a system that ought to be helping them.

Ties between Syria and Russia go back not only through the Soviet Union but even to Czarist Russia. Now, presumably because Russia is so focused on Ukraine, it was unable to save its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, from being deposed by Islamist insurgents. Assad is safely in Moscow but Damascus is a different matter. Americans who remember the optimistic coverage of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 know better than to take similar images and coverage seriously now. Senior Research Fellow at the Global Policy Institute George Szamuely joins Ted Rall and guest co-host Robby West (filling in for Manila Chan) on “The TMI Show” to talk about the broad international implications of the collapse of the Syrian state, rising instability, and where Russia and Iran go now when it comes to influence in the Middle East.

This feels like a movie you've seen before: a secular socialist government where women and ethnic minorities have rights that are respected is targeted by the United States and its allies in large part because it shows that left-wing politics can be successful. The Carter administration armed the mujaheddin in Afghanistan, setting the stage for Al Qaeda and 9/11. The Bush Administration overthrew Saddam Hussein in Iraq, creating a failed state that became a vassal of Iran and a home for ISIS. Obama killed Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, creating a failed state where slave markets have reappeared and radical Muslim fundamentalists hold sway. Now an officially designated terrorist organization has, with the help of the US and Israel, overthrown Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Will Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its reformist leader Ahmad al-Sharaa keep their promise to limit their ambitions to Syria? Will they impose radical Taliban-style sharia law on Syria? What are the implications for Russia, which accepted Assad but did not provide sufficient air support to protect his regime? Israel has already started bombing Syria, saying that its 1974 peace deal was with the Assad government which no longer exists; will the war in Lebanon and Gaza spread into Syria even more? What are the security implications for Israel, which wanted this regime change, right next-door?

The assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson has shocked the nation, not because of the killing itself, but rather due to the widespread and gleeful public reaction to it. As the manhunt continues, social media and mainstream media comment sections are full of horror stories of desperately-ill people and their loved ones attempting to navigate a byzantine health insurance system designed to thwart easy access to medical care and payments to doctors.

Co-host Manila Chan is out today, suffering from pneumonia as well as the vicissitudes of the healthcare system—she got worse because she couldn't get easy access to antibiotics. Holding down the fort with co-host Ted Rall is TMI Show producer Robby West, who “enjoys” a front row seat amid the chaos and cruelty that is America's healthcare system.

Yesterday morning the 50-year-old CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson, was shot to death on the sidewalk in midtown Manhattan by an unknown assailant. Even including the reaction to the death of Osama bin Laden, it's hard to think of another high-profile murder that has been greeted with as much glee and schadenfreude by the American public. Comments sections in news stories and social media were filled with comments about how Brian Thompson had it coming, hopefully this is the first of many, and countless jokes about the bullet that killed him being a pre-existing condition. Almost no one expressed sympathy. TMI Show co-host Ted Rall and, filling in for Manila Chan, producer Robby West, explore this remarkable phenomenon. United Healthcare is one of the most hated big companies in the United States, in large part because it denies its customers claims at a higher percentage rate than any other insurer. Thompson, paid over $10 million a year, was a poster boy for an industry whose profit model relied upon making people sick and dead to maximize earnings. The hatred was internal as well as external: even as company executives raised their own pay, they laid off thousands of their own workers. Adding to the intrigue, Thompson was being investigated by the Justice Department over a $15 million sale of United stock suspected as insider trading, and which caused a selloff. What was the motivation behind the assassination? Will other healthcare executives reconsider their business practices? Or will they just hire additional security? Could this help to spark a national conversation about for-profit healthcare? One thing is for sure: it is 100% clear of that Americans of all political stripes hate the healthcare industry. Because in America, whether you have insurance or not, you don't get healthcare.