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Posted at Hartmann Report on Jun. 5, 2026

Trump's Masked Goons are a Criminal's Dream

America spent two centuries learning that law enforcement should show its face. Now we're watching the consequences of ignoring that lesson… It was January 20, 2025, the day Donald Trump returned to the White House promising the largest mass deportation operation in American history, when a hooded man kicked down the bedroom door of a Mexican immigrant in Greensboro, North Carolina, shouting “ICE! ICE!” The man raised his hands. He thought he was being arrested. Instead, four assailants robbed the house at gunpoint, pistol-whipped one resident so hard that his split forehead required ten stitches and four staples, and pointed a gun at a baby while demanding cash from the infant’s terrified parents. They weren’t ICE. They weren’t police. They were criminals who had figured out that in Trump’s America, all you need to terrorize an immigrant family with impunity is a mask, a gun, a camo outfit you can buy on Amazon, and a loud enough shout.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Jun. 4, 2026

We Are All Scott Pelley

We must all become truth-tellers, whether our platform is radio, TV, Substack, social media, a local newspaper, or a protest sign raised in the town square… I started in radio news as a teenage reporter at WITL-AM/FM in Lansing, Michigan, then the number one station in the capitol city. I began reporting from the Capitol and City Hall, and was writing and reading the morning newscasts within a year. The station owner was a hardcore Goldwater Republican, our news director was a liberal but Libertarian-curious Democrat, and I was a long-haired anti-war hippie member of MSU SDS. I did the news there for years, and nobody ever told me how to spin it or what to insert or delete. I knew that I couldn’t bias it to reflect my own opinions: the news — accurate, factual, honest information — was sacred.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Jun. 3, 2026

What Would America Look Like Without Citizens United?

Imagine an America where elections cost less, voters mattered more, and public policy followed an honest path… It’s beyond time for some good-old-fashioned truth telling. There’s a singular cancer at the core of our democracy and it shows up in dozens of ways that don’t seem related to most Americans. It’s tearing our country apart, paralyzed our government, and has gutted our middle class. That cancer is big and dark money in politics.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Jun. 2, 2026

Why America is Falling Apart

America seems to be failing, both at home and around the world. But why? David French published a thoughtful op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times titled The Fire of Stupidity Can’t Be Contained, identifying many of the symptoms of our national decline and wondering out loud why this is happening now. His best guess is that we’re not remembering the horrors of both fascism and communism from the last century, which is why people — particularly young people — are embracing both. Read more at HartmannReport.com.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Jun. 1, 2026

Trump Has Rewritten America’s 250th Birthday Around One Person: Himself

The Founders fought a revolution against kings; Trump is turning their anniversary into a tribute to himself… Donald Trump looked at America’s 250th birthday and neurotically concluded that he’s the main attraction. A celebration intended to honor the founding of the United States is rapidly being repackaged as a celebration of Trump himself: his movement, his grievances, his white supremacy, his misogyny, and his power. Every new announcement, from the MAGA rallies to the vanity projects to the carefully choreographed spectacles on the National Mall and White House lawn, reinforces the same message: this is no longer about America turning 250. It’s about Trump making sure America spends its 250th birthday talking about Trump and the power of white men. And if that sounds familiar, it should. Washington has seen this kind of political pageantry before.

Posted at Hartmann Report on May. 31, 2026

Prologue: A Crime in Plain Sight: Who Killed the American Dream: The Greatest Political Crime Ever Told

Every law student in America learns the same story: “In 1886, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that corporations are persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. This single decision fundamentally transformed American democracy, business, and law. It granted corporations the same constitutional rights as human beings: free speech, due process, equal protection. Everything that followed, from unlimited corporate campaign spending to corporate control of our media, politics, and environment, traces back to that pivotal moment.” There’s just one problem: It never happened. The Supreme Court debated this issue and never made that ruling. Not in 1886, not ever.

Posted at Hartmann Report on May. 30, 2026

Saturday Report 5/30/26 — The Trump Administration says starving Americans are “moving into the American Dream.” When did hunger become part of the American Dream?

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Jared Kushner wants to make Tehran the next Trump Tower, and you're paying for it. — A federal judge just told Trump he can't pay himself $1.8 billion of your money — at least not yet. — Boom for the banksters, bust for everybody else: this is what 45 years of Reaganomics looks like. — Republicans, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that dying younger is a form of liberty. — Brooke Rollins, the Marie Antoinette of Big Macs, says starving Americans are "moving into the American Dream." — Speaking of starving the poor to feed the rich: Trump just handed Corporate America another $40 billion tax-dodge gift. — Say What?!?Alert! The Pentagon has issued a fatwa: no fatties at the President's birthday cage match.

Posted at Hartmann Report on May. 29, 2026

America Just Expanded Voting Rights To Corporations. Yes, Really.

From Citizens United to Delaware, the long corporate campaign to seize the rights of human beings just crossed a historic line… Corporations can now vote in Delaware. And they’re doing it. Seriously. Not dystopian science fiction or a new novel by an AI version of George Orwell. Actual corporations — what America’s first Supreme Court Justice, John Marshall, in 1819 called “an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law” — are today voting in elections for everything from the mayor and town council to referendums on corporate taxes and limits on corporate behavior. What could possibly go wrong?

Posted at Hartmann Report on May. 28, 2026

Reagan Burned Down the American Dream — Can We Still Save What’s Left?

We’re over it, Republicans; we want fun and meaning back in our lives, rather than just working ourselves to death so Bezos and Zuck can buy new yachts... A new national survey of Americans finds that almost half of us (48%) say our lives are “lacking in fun” with fully 12% saying they can’t recall the last time they had an entire day they could simply enjoy. More than half (57%) said this was because they couldn’t afford to have fun, which makes perfect sense when you consider how 45 years of Reaganomics have destroyed the union movement and progressive taxation, and thus gutted the American middle class. Like idiots, we Americans bought Reagan’s siren song hook, line, and sinker back in 1980. He told us prosperity would “trickle down” if we just abandoned the largely non-profit healthcare system we had nationwide (most states required hospitals and health insurance companies to be nonprofits), the unions that fought for us to have good pay and benefits, enforcement of anti-monopoly laws, free college, and subsidized housing.

Posted at Hartmann Report on May. 27, 2026

Trump’s Next Big Lie: Declaring Victory in Iran While America Loses

While Trump declares “total victory,” the world is watching American power, alliances, and credibility unravel in real time… The war Donald Trump started with Iran in February is now collapsing, slowly and predictably, into the same theater of fraud he’s run his entire life. So get ready for the next Big Lie: it’s coming as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning. Three months in, his bombing campaign has done less damage than he claims, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, gas is pushing five bucks a gallon, his own Pentagon admits Iran’s nuclear program was only set back a few years rather than “completely obliterated,” and the negotiations he’s been bragging about in Islamabad are, by Iran’s own foreign ministry’s careful phrasing, simultaneously “very far and very close” to a deal. Translation: there is no deal and it’s unlikely there will be one anytime soon, at least on terms Trump can honestly defend. And so, just as Wall Street learned to call his serial lies, bluffs, and retreats on tariffs the “TACO trade” — Trump Always Chickens Out — we’re about to watch the wartime version of the same play.