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Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 20, 2026

No Kings? Then Why Are We Letting Billionaires Rule What America Can See and Hear?

Millions march against authoritarianism while a handful of powerful men control the digital public square, shape our news, and decide which voices Americans get to hear… As many of us were showing up this past Saturday for our local No Kings marches, with over 3,000 of them underway, the movement’s organizers suddenly found themselves locked out of their Instagram account for hours. Meta blames it on a software glitch or something close to that, but that episode illustrates exactly the concern progressives and anti-fascists have been voicing for years: that Big Tech and the billionaires behind it have way too much power, and that they are using it to control public opinion to their own benefit. Then yesterday morning Christiane Amanpour announced that after reporting for CNN for 43 years she’s leaving the network. While she didn’t mention nepo-baby David Ellison who now owns the network, she didn’t have to: back in May at a journalism summit in London she said she was “concerned” about Ellison ownership and how it might bring about the same kind of “ideological realignment” that he’d already imposed on CBS News. What we’re seeing here with these two companies in microcosm is that the men who own the social media digital square where a near-majority of people get their news, and the people who own the TV networks and papers like The Washington Post, are the same handful of billionaires with political and financial axes to grind that fit nicely with Trump’s vision of a strongman state run by a ruling elite. Whether it turns out that Meta did something for politics or it was just an error doesn’t change the fact that one company run by one man can switch off a national movement’s megaphone and doesn’t legally owe anybody an explanation.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 19, 2026

Tom Cruise's Digger Exposes the Climate Fools, the Billionaires, and the Biggest Lie of All

The explosive new film reveals how fossil fuel billionaires concealed the truth, bought political protection, and then blamed ordinary Americans for the destruction they helped create… Louise and I went to see Digger this weekend. Don’t believe the negative reviews coming from the rightwingers; this is a brilliant movie about one of the most important issues of our day, climate change, and the fossil fuel industry’s complicity in knowingly destroying our planet and our culture. That Tom Cruise made the movie at all blew my mind; this guy has spent his entire career being the most apolitical no-issues superstar in Hollywood. Something has shifted when that guy puts on a fat suit and a tangle of white hair to play a Texas oil baron who wrecks the planet.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 18, 2026

The Hidden History of American Healthcare: How Prudential killed healthcare for all

Part two of the Frederick Hoffman story. The industry playbook against universal coverage was written in 1917, and it’s still in use... Last Sunday you met Frederick Hoffman, the Prudential statistician who spent his life “proving” that helping Black Americans by giving them access to free healthcare would only hasten their extinction. This week’s chapter is about what he and his colleagues did with that belief once real money was on the line. When 200,000 people showed up in Los Angeles to hear President Teddy Roosevelt speak, he pitched a platform that included “social insurance” for all Americans that included comprehensive health coverage. By 1915 the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) was demanding that every state enact comprehensive, universal, government-funded health insurance. By 1916 eight states, New York and California among them, had taken up its model bill, which used government money to cover all medical costs and up to 26 weeks of paid sick leave. The American Medical Association had even endorsed it.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 17, 2026

Saturday Report 10/17/26 — Could a $100,000 Amex Scandal and a Secret Recording Bring Down Trump’s Administration?

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion. — Trump’s Epstein Ballroom is increasingly looking like another giant bribe quid pro quo machine. — The Pentagon has figured out how Hegseth and Trump blew up an elementary school for little girls in Iran, but won’t let you read about it until after you’ve voted. — A Kentucky Trump donor says Kimberly Guilfoyle hit him up for $100,000 to pay off her American Express card, and now he’s suing her and promising a recording he claims could “bring down the entire Trump administration.” — The AI bubble has started making the sound bubbles make right before they pop, and the bond market seems to have heard it. — Crazy Alert! The people building artificial intelligence are now telling each other to stock up on canned goods and hand-cranked radios before their product takes down the banking system. — Three people are dead at the largest ICE Concentration Camp in America: the government’s own inspectors documented more than 40 violations, and then stamped the place “compliant.” — Trump and wrestling billionaire Linda McMahon have a secret plan to yank the Federal Student Aid office out of the Education Department, and their own people admit it’s illegal. — Geeky Science Alert! Cynics aren’t the smartest people in the room: they just sound like it.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 16, 2026

What If America Could Break the Power of Big Oil and Escape the Wars It Helps Fuel?

What if we could break the grip of oil and gas companies, slash electricity bills, and unleash an American energy revolution that starts on our own rooftops? Over the next three weeks, Colorado voters will get to vote on an amendment to their constitution giving one single industry the ability to largely prevent any regulation of itself or its pollution. Amendment 82 says that the state would establish a “right” for the natural gas industry to sell its products. It’ll be the only industry in any state to have a state constitutional right assigned to it. Things like pollution controls to protect air and water that might reduce consumption would violate that right. So would local communities trying to limit or ban gas wells or pipelines. Even during a dry fire time, an effort to ban gas-fueled camp stoves and outdoor grills or lights would be a violation. The amendment is being pushed by a dark money group called Advance Colorado; the original donors behind it are hidden, but it’s not hard to guess. And if it passes in Colorado, expect similar amendments and laws to pop up in every state in the union. This is, frankly, nuts. Instead of increasing the power of the fossil fuel industry and encouraging more consumption of their planet-destroying products, we should be helping Americans tap into nuclear fusion power that’s free, compliments of that giant reactor 93 million miles away that we call our Sun.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 15, 2026

Could the Next Election Be Decided Before a Single American Casts a Ballot?

Republican officials can remove eligible voters through bureaucratic procedures that would never be tolerated if the government were confiscating guns… With virtually no mention or reporting in the corporate press, Republican-run states are again running the voter purge of millions that gave Donald Trump the White House in 2024. Yesterday morning, Reuters published a special report on the ways the Trump administration could “interfere” with the midterms, noting that a lawyer in Idaho’s Republican attorney general’s office bragged that his state had “taken a leading role in ensuring its voter registration list is purged….” Yep, they used the word “purged.” They’re not even bothering with the polite terms anymore.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 14, 2026

Trump Is Teaching America the Most Terrifying Lesson Every Dictator Knows

You don't have to imprison a nation to control it. Destroy a handful of critics, make sure everyone sees it, and watch the rest fall silent… When we think of strongman dictatorships we often imagine tanks in the streets, but those usually come in the later stages of repression (think Tienanmen Square) and often are never even needed (think today’s Russia). Instead, as every dictator on Earth can tell you, you don’t have to silence the entire country; all you have to do is shut up a few strategically-selected people visibly and publicly enough and the rest of the country will get the message and back away. That’s the message of this week’s raid on Ilhan Omar’s home, and so many other atrocities committed by Trump’s eager fascist lickspittles over the past 21 months. He and his advisors are simply repeating a long and well-trod history.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 13, 2026

Is Gavin Newsom Repeating the Billionaire Mistake That's Tearing France Apart?

France's unrest exposes the consequences of failing to tax the wealthy. California's billionaire-tax fight raises the same fundamental question about who should pay to make a nation succeed... Three weeks from today, California voters will have their ballots tallied on Proposition 40 (and 41 and 42, which would negate 40) that will impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets — the wealth — of the state’s 200+ billionaires. The money will be used to make up for the massive almost-trillion-dollar cuts to Medicaid, called Medi-Cal in that state, that hits in January because the Republican’s Big Beautiful Billionaire’s Bill used it to pay for their trillions in tax cuts for billionaires.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 12, 2026

Benedict Arnold Sold Out America Once. Is Trump Doing It Again, This Time for Putin?

Trump's latest Russia decision threatens to enrich a hostile dictator, undermine American sanctions, and leave Ukraine bleeding. Congress must confront the question Republicans keep avoiding... Is Putin running America through Trump, is Trump just a “useful idiot” for the Russians, or is he the worst traitor America’s seen since the days of Benedict Arnold? Yesterday morning, Trump took to his Nazi-infested social media site to announce to the world (and a bit earlier to people who give him $100,000 a month for market-moving information) that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an “energy ceasefire,” telling the world “Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!”

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 11, 2026

The Hidden History of American Healthcare: The Man Who Made Racism a Science, and Killed Healthcare for All

Part one of the story of Frederick Hoffman, the Prudential statistician nobody remembers, from The Hidden History of American Healthcare... When you ask most Americans why we’re the only developed nation on Earth without a national healthcare system that covers everybody at low cost, saves trillions, and saves hundreds of thousands of people from unnecessary death and disability every year, most will tell you about the AMA, the insurance lobby, or Reagan. And, indeed, they’re all part of the story. But the deeper answer, one I discovered — to my shock — when I was writing this book, is that it’s almost all because of a guy nobody in modern America has ever heard of.