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Jerry Springer, son of Jewish refugees whose eponymous talk show was known for conflict, dies at 79
(JTA) — Jerry Springer, the son of Jewish refugees who set aside a promising political career to become the ringleader of a circus-like syndicated talk show featuring feuding couples, angry exes and frequent fisticuffs, died Thursday morning at his home in the Chicago area.
A family spokesperson told TMZ that Springer, who was 79, had been battling a “brief illness.”
Over nearly 5,000 episodes beginning in 1991 and lasting until 2018, Springer transformed daytime television conventions with a program designed to encourage conflict among its guests. Where rivals like Oprah Winfrey and Phil Donahue were interviewing celebrities and tackling more serious issues, Springer would bring on everyday people and pit them against one another in shows about incest, adultery and polyamory.
In an interview last year, he acknowledged the critics — including prominent British rabbis — who decried his version of “tabloid television” and said it had fueled divisions in society. “I just apologize,” he said. “I’m so sorry. What have I done? I’ve ruined the culture.”
Springer’s path to television notoriety was not preordained. He was born in a London tube station in 1944 during a German bombing raid to parents, Richard and Margot Springer, who were German-Jewish refugees from the Nazis. They escaped from what was then Prussia (now present-day Poland) and arrived in Britain in 1939 just before the outbreak of World War II. Twenty-seven other members of Springer’s family were killed in the Holocaust.
The family moved to the United States in 1949, settling in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens in New York City. Springer’s first career after earning a law degree from Northwestern University was in politics. He worked on the 1968 presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy that ended with Kennedy’s assassination, then ran a failed campaign for U.S. Congress in 1970 before being elected to Cincinnati’s City Council in 1971.
Springer’s only electoral success came in 1977, when he was elected mayor of Cincinnati and, under a power-sharing arrangement between his Democratic Party and a third party, served a single one-year term — by most accounts responsibly and effectively.
After serving as mayor, he anchored the news for the NBC affiliate in Cincinnati for 10 years before making the leap to syndicated TV.
“The Jerry Springer Show” started with more high-minded intentions before, as ratings dipped, he embraced the sensational. The television series was produced and aired by NBCUniversal and CW, and earned Springer a fortune: In 2000, Broadcasting & Cable reported, Springer was given a five-year, $30 million contract extension paying him $6 million per year.
The show’s high ratings and queasy critical reception (“family values” groups such as the Parents Television Council and the American Family Association called for boycotts) also obscured his own sober and tragic Jewish family story.
In 2008, Springer investigated his relatives’ fates on the BBC1 program “Who Do You Think You Are?” He broke down in tears at the train station where his maternal grandmother was sent to her death in the Chelmno extermination camp.
In 2015, Springer visited London to support a British Holocaust refugee project preserving the archive of what was originally known as the Central British Fund for German Jewry and later World Jewish Relief. The group helped tens of thousands of European Jews escape the Nazis to Britain in the 1930s and 1940s — including thousands of children as part of the Kindertransport and Springer’s parents.
“We are immensely grateful to Jerry Springer for giving his time to us and supporting our archives,” World Jewish Relief vice-chair Linda Rosenblatt said at the time.
“I was deeply touched when I received the records of my parents’ immigration,” Springer said. “These papers are a piece of my family history which I will treasure forever.”
After his talk show went off the air in 2018, he attempted a comeback with a courtroom show, “Judge Jerry.” It ran for three seasons. His last TV appearance came last season on “The Masked Singer,” where he performed as “The Beetle,” singing a Frank Sinatra tune.
In 2018, an off-Broadway version of the musical “Jerry Springer: The Opera,” opened in New York. Originally staged in London 15 years earlier, it featured songs celebrating the Springer ethos: “Fat people fighting / Open crotch sighting / Pimps in bad suits / Mothers who are prostitutes.” Nevertheless, a reviewer said the musical was “surprisingly free of the sometimes savage cruelty that distinguished the [talk] show from its wimpy competitors.”
In 2009, Springer joined the cast of the Broadway revival of the musical “Chicago,” playing the part of a slick lawyer whose adulterous client is facing charges in a tawdry murder case. It echoed a notorious incident from the real-life “Springer” show: In 2002, a man was convicted of killing his ex-wife hours after they and another woman were featured on an episode about love triangles.
In a 2004 interview with the public radio program “This American Life,” Springer put his tumultuous career in perspective.
“Well, we certainly made a difference in television. I’m not sure people are happy about it,” he told Alex Blumberg. “I try not to think about it too much. Life is what it is. And you take what’s handed and you work as hard as you can and, hopefully, you’ll be successful. But I just don’t spend too much time worrying about that. I do my show. I’ve always said it’s a stupid show. I’ve had a wonderful life because of it and all that, but I’ve never, for a second, thought that it’s important. It’s trivial. It’s chewing gum, and I recognize that.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, his survivors include his wife, daughter, son-in-law, grandson and sister.
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US Hails Progress in Ukraine Peace Talks But Security Questions Unresolved
US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll and and other members of the US delegation, and Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak and other members of the Ukrainian delegation sit before closed-door talks on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, at the US Mission in Geneva, Switzerland, November 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Emma Farge
The United States said it had made significant progress on crafting a plan to end the war in Ukraine during talks on Sunday but no agreement was reached on how to guarantee Kyiv’s security amid concerns about the threat posed by Russia.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio led the talks in Geneva with a high-level Ukrainian delegation after Kyiv and its allies voiced alarm about a US-backed plan because of what they saw as major concessions to Russia, and pressed for changes.
Rubio said work remained to be done on questions including the role of NATO and security guarantees for Ukraine, but that his team had narrowed down unresolved issues in a 28-point peace plan for Ukraine championed by President Donald Trump.
“And we have achieved that today in a very substantial way,” Rubio told reporters at the US mission in Geneva.
Earlier, Trump said Ukraine had not been grateful for American efforts over the war, prompting Ukrainian officials to stress their gratitude to the US president for his support.
European officials joined the US and Ukrainian delegations for talks late on Sunday after crafting a modified version of the US plan for Ukraine that pushes back on proposed limits to Kyiv’s armed forces and mooted territorial concessions.
The European plan proposes that Ukraine be granted a larger military than under the US plan and that talks on land swaps should start from the front line rather than a pre-determined view of which areas should be considered Russian.
On Friday, Trump said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had until Thursday to approve the plan, which calls on Ukraine to cede territory, accept limits on its military and renounce ambitions to join NATO.
For many Ukrainians, including soldiers fighting on the front lines, such terms would amount to capitulation after nearly four years of fighting in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two. On Saturday, Trump said the current proposal for ending the war is not his final offer.
Rubio said the United States still needed time to address the pending issues. He hoped a deal could be reached by Thursday but suggested that it could also take longer.
US and Ukrainian officials were discussing the possibility of Zelensky traveling to the United States, maybe as early as this week, to discuss the peace plan with Trump, two sources familiar with matter said on Sunday.
The main idea is that they would discuss the most sensitive issues in the peace plan, such as the matter of territory, one of the sources said. There is no confirmed date for now, the source added.
ORIGIN OF U.S. PLAN STIRS CONTROVERSY
The main talks between US and Ukrainian officials got under way in a stiff atmosphere at the US mission, soon after Trump complained in a Truth Social post that Ukraine’s leadership had shown “zero gratitude” to the US for its efforts and Europe continued to buy Russian oil.
Rubio interrupted the meeting to speak to reporters, saying the talks had been probably the best the US had held with Ukraine since Trump returned to power.
He said changes would be made to the plan to work towards a solution that both Ukraine and the US could support.
“Obviously this will ultimately have to be signed off with our presidents, although I feel very comfortable about that happening given the progress we’ve made,” said Rubio.
Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian delegation, was at pains to thank Trump for his commitment to Kyiv during the brief interlude. Minutes later, Zelensky also thanked Trump.
Yermak did not reappear with Rubio when the talks ended.
Since the US plan was announced, there has been confusion about who was involved in drawing it up. European allies said they had not been consulted.
Before heading to Geneva, Rubio insisted on X that Washington had authored the plan after remarks from some US senators suggesting otherwise.
Senator Angus King said Rubio had told senators the plan was not the administration’s position, but “essentially the wish-list of the Russians.”
A PERILOUS MOMENT FOR UKRAINE
The draft US plan, which includes many of Russia’s key demands and offers only vague assurances to Ukraine of “robust security guarantees,” comes at a perilous moment for Kyiv.
Russia has been making gains on parts of the front, albeit slowly and, according to Western and Ukrainian officials, the advances have been extremely costly in terms of lives lost.
The transportation hub of Pokrovsk has been partially taken by Russian forces and Ukrainian commanders say they do not have enough soldiers to prevent small, persistent incursions.
Ukraine’s power and gas facilities have been pummeled by drone and missile attacks, meaning millions of people are without water, heating and power for hours each day.
Zelensky himself has been under pressure domestically after a major corruption scandal broke, ensnaring some of his ministers and people in his close entourage.
He has warned that Ukraine risked losing its dignity and freedom – or Washington’s backing – over the US plan.
Kyiv had taken heart in recent weeks after the United States tightened sanctions on Russia’s oil sector, the main source of funding for the war, while its own long-range drone and missile strikes have caused considerable damage to the industry.
But the draft peace plan appears to hand the diplomatic advantage back to Moscow. Ukraine relies heavily on US intelligence and weapons to sustain its war against Russia.
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Who Was Tabtabai, Hezbollah’s Military Leader Killed by Israel?
People inspect a damaged building, after Israeli military said on Sunday that it struck a militant from the Lebanese Iran-aligned Hezbollah group, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon November 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Yassin
The Israeli military on Sunday killed Hezbollah’s top military official, Haytham Ali Tabtabai, in a strike on the outskirts of the Lebanese capital that came despite a year-long ceasefire.
His killing was announced by Israel’s military. Hezbollah later confirmed his death, hailing him as “the great jihadist commander” who had “worked to confront the Israeli enemy until the last moment of his blessed life.”
Israel had already eliminated most of Iran-backed Hezbollah’s leadership during a war that raged between October 2023 and November 2024, when a US-brokered truce was agreed.
But Tabtabai, who was appointed as the group’s chief of staff after its recent war with Israel, was killed in a rare post-ceasefire operation against a senior Hezbollah figure.
MILITARY LEADER ROSE THROUGH HEZBOLLAH’S RANKS
Tabtabai was born in Lebanon in 1968 to a father with Iranian roots and a Lebanese mother, according to a senior Lebanese security source. He was not a founding member of Hezbollah but was part of its “second generation,” deploying with the group to fight alongside its allies in Syria and Yemen, the source said.
Israel’s military said Tabtabai joined Hezbollah in the 1980s and held several senior posts, including in its Radwan Force, an elite fighting unit. Israel killed most Radwan figures last year ahead of its ground invasion into Lebanon.
During last year’s war, Tabtabai led Hezbollah’s operations division and rose in rank as other top commanders were eliminated, the Israeli military’s statement said.
Once the ceasefire came into force, Tabtabai was appointed chief of staff and “worked extensively to restore their readiness for war with Israel,” according to the statement.
The Lebanese security source confirmed Tabtabai was swiftly promoted as other top Hezbollah officials were killed, and had been appointed chief of staff over the last year.
The Alma Center, a security research and teaching organization in Israel, said Tabtabai had survived other Israeli attacks both in Syria and during the war in Lebanon.
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Netanyahu, Smotrich to Meet on Israeli 2026 Budget that Faces Battle for Approval
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich during the weekly cabinet meeting at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, Israel, January 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/Pool
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and senior ministry officials will present Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later on Sunday with the state budget and planned structural reforms for 2026, Smotrich’s office said.
“The Finance Minister will present to the Prime Minister the necessary measures to ensure continued economic growth and to combat the high cost of living,” it said.
It added that cabinet ministers would vote on the budget on Dec. 4 but it is unlikely the budget would be approved by year end.
According to Israeli law, the budget must be approved by parliament by the end of March or new elections are triggered.
Its final approval faces an uphill battle that could ultimately lead to new elections.
The government has splintered in the past two years over the Gaza war, the ceasefire which has halted it and demands by ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties to exempt Jewish seminary students from mandatory military service.