Home | The Hartmann Report

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 2, 2026

Did Trump’s Iran War Just Blow a Hole in Big Oil’s Future?

The surest way to escape oil shocks, dictatorial petrostates, and endless energy wars is brutally simple: stop consuming and subsidizing their oil…. The price of oil has come down marginally this past week, largely because the Iranians are letting oil tankers transit the Gulf of Hormuz (presumably in an effort to work out a peace deal with Trump). Meanwhile, though, the big lesson the world seems to have learned because of Trump’s fiasco — other than that our military is under the control of an irresponsible alcoholic and a narcissist and unreliable wannabe king — is that it’s high time to get off fossil fuels.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 1, 2026

Trump’s $500 Checks Reveal the GOP’s “Billionaire Theory of Democracy”: Everything Has a Price

The deeper story isn't the $500. It’s what happens to democracy when politicians steeped in pay-to-play politics start treating ordinary citizens like one more constituency to be won over with money… They’re at it again. The billionaires who own and run the GOP — including the billionaire in the White House and the billionaires in his cabinet — are throwing out another desperate “let’s buy some votes” scheme by sending a million Americans their own money. According to the White House, over the next few days about a million Americans will get a check for $500 in the mail, prominently signed by Donald Trump, along with a letter telling them a naked lie about it being money Joe Biden kept from them.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 30, 2026

The Final Stage of a Strongman’s Takeover Is Turning the Law Against the People Who Defended It

The attacks on Jack Smith expose something far bigger than one ugly Senate hearing: a collision between personal political loyalty and America’s constitutional system… Watching yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee spectacle was like watching a group of Made Men in the Mafia taking on the witness who broke omertá and talked. It wasn’t always this way: there was a time when Republicans cared whether our democracy survived. Yesterday’s disgraceful performance, however, proved that today’s GOP only serves the Orange Caligula who squats in the White House like a malignant toad.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 29, 2026

Trump Has Trotted Out the Old Republican “Chicken in Every Pot” Scam Again: Who Will Fall For It This Time?

From Harding’s trickle-down promises to Hoover’s prosperity pitch to Reagan’s tax cut hustle to Trump’s factory announcements, Republicans have a long history of pushing scams before Election Day… It was October 13, 2018, just 24 days before the midterm election, and then-President Trump held a rally in Richmond, Kentucky for Republican candidates. He told the crowd: “Thanks to our strong trade and economic policies, Braidy Industries recently broke ground on a new billion-dollar aluminum mill that will create up to 1,500 jobs right next to Ashland, Kentucky.” Kentucky Republicans thanked him effusively and built the promise of a new Russian-financed Russian-oligarch-owned aluminum plant into their remaining campaign ads, getting a big boost from the announcement. And then, of course, after the election the whole scheme collapsed.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 28, 2026

The Republican Playbook: Break America, Blame Democrats, Then Promise to Save It

Create the crisis, make working Americans suffer, reward the billionaires, blame Democrats for the wreckage, then campaign as the only people who can fix it. It’s not working any more, this scam Republicans have been running for 45 years, although Trump and many others are trying their best to revive it. Their strategy has always been simple: break things here in America, create chaos and a mess, hurt working class people while making billionaires richer, and then campaign on fixing what they screwed up.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 27, 2026

Looking Backward: From 2000 to 1887. The Book That Launched a Movement (Chapters 22 through 28)

September’s book for Thom Hartmann’s Well-Read Troublemakers’ Book Club PART FOUR. Stood Up Straight Before God (Chapters 22 through 28) The final quarter of Looking Backward is where Bellamy makes his economic case, preaches his sermon, and lays out his ending and its suggestions for the future. Keep in mind, the book begins — and was written — in 1887, and is entirely speculating about what life in our country will be like in the year 2000. It became the foundation and inspiration for most of the progressive movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. If you only read one section closely before we meet, make it this one. Chapter 22 answers the question “Where does all the money come from to run the 2020 American economy?” Leete notes that there’s no longer any national debt, no “idle rich” people, no “army of men employed in finance,” and thus no meaningful criminal class.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 26, 2026

Saturday Report 9/26/26 — Crazy Alert. Trump Rewrites His Own Presidential Moment, Melania Vanishes and Natalie Harp Takes Center Stage?

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion. — Six Justices Just Handed Trump a Voter-Purge Machine, but Told Him to Wait Until the Next Election to Use It. — Money In, Regulation Out: How $50 Million Bought the AI Industry a Get-Out-of-Oversight-Free Card — Americans Feel Worse About the Economy Than at Almost Any Time Since Harry Truman, and Trump Wants to Know Why Nobody’s Grateful — JD Vance Found 760,000 “Phantoms” on Obamacare. Funny How Many of Them Are Just Poor People. — Test Scores Hit a 25-Year Low. Trump’s Answer — Just Like With His Economic Numbers — Was to Fire the People Who Count Them. — Trump’s FDA Pick Can’t Say Whether an IUD Is an Abortion. That’s Not a Slip, It’s the Plan. — Geeky Science! Your Aging Brain Isn’t Failing, It’s Being Promoted. — Crazy Alert! Trump Posted an AI Picture of Xi’s Arrival and Somehow Lost His Own Wife.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 25, 2026

Trump Orders America to “Love Me” and Sends Us Taxpayers the Bill

Taxpayers are footing the bill for a Fox “News” ad glorifying the president, as lawmakers question whether federal law has been crossed… Turn on Fox “News” at night this week and you’ll see something no American has ever seen before but Russians would immediately recognize. Images of the American president flash across the screen while a singer repeats the words “love me” over and over, Trump’s voice promises to defeat “communism, socialism and Marxism,” UFC boss Dana White calls him “the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met,” and then, at the bottom of the screen, six words appear: “Paid for by the U.S. government.“

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 24, 2026

The Biggest Lie About America’s Affordability Crisis Is Hiding in Your Paycheck

Prices didn’t leave working Americans behind all by themselves. Decades of weakened unions, stagnant wages, billionaire tax cuts, and policies favoring capital changed who gets the money… The “affordability crisis” that Democrats are running on and Trump calls a “scam” is almost always framed as being about prices being too high. But that’s only half of the equation, and the other half — income being too low — is almost never discussed outside of Bernie Sanders’ circles. There’s an insidious reason for that, which I’ll lay out in just a moment. Politicians promise to “bring prices down” as if prices exist in some sort of economic or political vacuum. But prices are set in dollars, and the true definition of inflation isn’t that prices go up (that’s a consequence of inflation) but that the value of the dollar goes down. Inflation, in other words, doesn’t quantify the rising cost of living so much as it measures the declining purchasing power of the dollar. And inflation never reverses (except in true depressions).

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 23, 2026

Rightwing Billionaires Aren’t Just Buying CNN and CBS: They’re Seizing the Power to Shape Reality

When Trump-aligned billionaires control the networks Americans trust for news, they don’t just own the cameras. They gain the power to decide what the entire country sees, hears, and never learns… “The Freedom of the Press is one of the great Bulwarks of Liberty, and can never be restrained...” — Founder George Mason, 1776 A CNN insider told Variety magazine yesterday that the mood inside CNN right now is “like a funeral.” Nepo-baby David Ellison, bankrolled by his father who’s one of the richest men in the world and a major Trump suck-up and donor, is on the verge of taking over the company that owns the news network. The day-before-yesterday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a group of Democratic state attorneys general rolled over and agreed to stop trying to block the $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, now to be almost 50% funded by rightwing dictatorships in the Middle East who’ve given billions in gifts, loans, and investments to Trump and his family. California Governor and presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom hailed the agreement, saying it would both protect California jobs and preserve CNN’s “editorial independence.” If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge for you in Brooklyn.