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.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 10, 2026

Saturday Report 10/10/26 — Where is the missing $50 million? Maybe look for piles of cash in the bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago?

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion. — Donald Trump woke up from a nap in the Oval Office this week just in time to remember Vladimir Putin’s birthday. — Time magazine interviewed the President of the United States, wrote down twelve things he said, and then had to publish a second article explaining that most of them weren’t true. — Trump’s meme coin buyers have lost 97 percent of their “investments,” so naturally he’s throwing another dinner to sell more of them. — The bond market, which doesn’t watch Fox “News,” is telling us what it really thinks of Trump’s America. — Somebody seems to have misplaced fifty million dollars, and nobody in Trump’s orbit is in any hurry to find it. — The people building artificial intelligence are holding private rehearsals for the day it hurts a whole lot of us. — Having lost at the Supreme Court, Trump has decided to hold his own trial of Lisa Cook at the White House, with his own appointees as the jury. — Hypocrisy Alert! The senator who sued new mothers over medical bills as small as $101 apparently doesn’t pay for his own cookies.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 8, 2026

Would Another 9/11 Be Trump’s Ultimate October Surprise?

Trump is escalating Iran while talking about American cities as collateral damage. History shows just how dramatically an attack can reshape both an election and a presidency… On Monday night in Grand Island, Nebraska, Donald Trump was trying to convince a tiny rally crowd to vote Republican when, as he is wont to do, he wandered off-prompter into a riff about what Iran could do to two American cities and the crowd cheered: “They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay and it’s going to be over very soon.”
Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 7, 2026

Democrats Can Put the Entire Republican Party on Trial With One Word: Corruption

Trump’s profiteering is only the latest chapter in a decades-long transfer of American wealth and political power into the hands of billionaires… In a nationwide poll conducted a few weeks ago and reported on by Axios, the majority of all registered voters surveyed said the number one word to describe Donald Trump is “corrupt.” This represents a massive opportunity for Democrats both now and for the next two years. And the experience of candidates in today’s Democrats’ position around the world validates the argument that this is the best way to both campaign and win elections and political power. Péter Magyar defeated Viktor Orbán in the Hungarian elections because he ran a Navalny-style playbook, calling Orbán’s and his billionaire buddies’ capture of the media and most other aspects of Hungarian life a “state capture system“ grounded in good old-fashioned “corruption.” From Orban’s son-in-law pulling a Jared and using his government position to become one of the richest men in the country, to his billionaire cronies buying up the media like the billionaire Ellisons are doing here now, corruption was Magyar’s singular through-line message. And it worked, producing an overwhelming turnout and undeniable victory. It will work here, too!
Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 5, 2026

Is Trump Building the Infrastructure of a Police State One Child at a Time?

For ninety years Americans fought to keep the government from building one master file on each of us. This week Trump and Scott Bessent started one for every child in the country... Imagine this Brave New World that Donald Trump and Scott Bessent just laid the foundation for last week: The year is 2041 and your daughter is now in her twenties; she’s had a federal financial account — a “Trump Account“ — since she was a child that was created for her by a billionaire Treasury Secretary she’s never heard of, and it’s tied to her Social Security number. The account also has become a central clearing space for everything else she does, from student aid to healthcare to her tax refund, housing assistance, and the disaster relief she got after her home was hit by a flood. One morning in October she tries to book an airline flight home for Thanksgiving, and her purchase is declined on the orders of the federal government. Her internet has slowed to a crawl, the apartment she was trying to rent just “vanished,” and the job she was interviewing for just stopped returning her calls. What happened? Three weeks earlier, she’d gone to a protest and an undercover ICE operative snapped her picture. As a result, the “responsibility score” she didn’t even know she had that’s been made part of her Trump Account dropped by forty points, and when she calls to ask why, she’s told it’s “confidential government data” and there’s no appeal.

Yearly Archive

more

Sites Archive

Listen to more »