Home | The Hartmann Report

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 21, 2026

Did Ayn Rand Plant the Ideological Seed That Trumpism Is Harvesting Today?

From a killer she once called an “ideal man” to a political movement built around radical self-interest, the roots of today’s assault on government run deeper and darker than most Americans realize. Ka$h Patel’s (his preferred spelling) pathetic performance before Congress last week has left many Americans wondering what’s going on with our federal government.... The model here is straightforward: government is something to be exploited for personal gain not public service, because government is essentially an evil thing. So, load it up with incompetents, suck up as much money as you can, and leave the mess to the Democrats.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 20, 2026

Looking Backward: From 2000 to 1887. The Book That Launched a Movement (Chapters 15 through 21)

September’s book for Thom Hartmann’s Well-Read Troublemakers’ Book Club PART THREE. A Society That Rests on Its Base (Chapters 15 through 21) This is the part of the book where Bellamy stops dazzling Julian West with inventions and gadgets and starts filling in the civic machinery of America in the year 2000. Keep in mind, the book begins — and was written — in 1887, and is entirely speculating 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. In Chapter 15, Leete takes West into his library and shows him that Dickens is the country’s favorite author, even years after his death, because he always cared about the fate of the poor. He lays out the economics of publishing books and newspapers (subscribers elect their editors!), and most of the system is what today we’d call reader-supported media.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 19, 2026

Saturday Report 9/19/26 — Who Stole the American Dream...

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion. — Trump just banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, because apparently the First Amendment now needs his signature to be valid. — More American soldiers have died in Trump’s Iran war than Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is willing to admit. — Armed federal agents at polling places is a felony crime and has been for more than a century, but Trump’s people keep floating it — Senators Markey, Merkley, and Sanders are trying to stop Trump from shipping 5,000 one-ton bombs to the Saudi crown prince who had a Washington Post columnist dismembered. — Trump’s war of choice is about to come home to every oil tank in New England, so of course he spent last weekend at his shabby golf motel in Ireland — Saudi Arabia just told Europe there’s no oil for them next month. — Poland’s prime minister says Putin is planning rocket and drone strikes on NATO countries, so Trump wrote Putin’s alibi for him — Crazy Alert! A chatbot made up a nuclear smuggling plot, and Pete Hegseth’s military scrambled planes to board a Chinese ship over it. — Medicare for All isn’t dead, it’s waiting for us to do our part.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 18, 2026

Did Trump Just Make an Offer That Could Land His Lickspittles in Prison?

Give Republicans Congress and Trump promises you $5,000. That extraordinary bargain raises a question America confronted nearly 90 years ago: how far can government power reach into the voting booth? Trump has now repeatedly offered his voters $5,000 checks if Republicans hold onto the House and Senate this fall, calling it the “Trump dividend.” On Sunday he told a rally that it’ll “happen 100 percent” if enough people turn out to vote GOP. Since his own party controls both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, he could now get an appropriation passed for the ~$1.2 trillion this will add to the national debt; the fact that he’s not doing this is pretty much proof that what’s really going on here is a good old fashioned vote-buying scheme dressed up with some fancy language to make it seem less like the crime it is. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that “if the Republicans win” is quite simply a way of telling millions of Americans that there’s five grand riding on how they vote.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 17, 2026

America Lost Trust in Its Government. Now Comes the Dangerous Part.

With 89 percent saying corruption is widespread, history shows what can follow when citizens stop believing their institutions will hold criminals and the powerful accountable… A new Economist/YouGov poll of registered voters that just came out this week found that the top two words that Americans across the board endorse to describe Donald Trump are “corrupt” (53%) and “dangerous” (51%). Not even half of registered Republican voters were willing to call him “honest.” This is consistent with Gallup’s finding earlier this month that fully 89 percent of Americans now believe that corruption in our government is widespread, the highest number in the two decades the polling company has been asking, and a higher number than in any other advanced, industrialized democracy.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 16, 2026

Trump Took Control of Another Country’s Oil Fortune. Where the Hell Is the Money?

Trump boasts about billions from Venezuelan oil, but lawmakers are still fighting to learn where the money is, who controls it, and who’s getting paid… At any other time in American history, it would end the career of somebody like Scott Bessent, our limited-intelligence Treasury Secretary. It came out yesterday when Illinois Congressman Sean Casten was questioning him about the “billions of dollars” that Trump keeps claiming America is “getting” from selling Venezuelan oil. Bessent agreed with Trump, saying the oil and oil money we’ve seized from that country is “one of the largest assets to ever go on the U.S. balance sheet.” Billions and billions of dollars. So Casten asked him a simple question: Can you tell us who controls that money and where it is? Can you confirm “whether or not those [funds] are flowing to U.S. persons?” Bessent’s answer was a shocking single word: “No.” He ain’t talkin…

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 15, 2026

My Republican Dad Fought Fascism, Then Gave Me Kafka. Trump Just Made Me Understand Why.

He believed due process separated America from the authoritarian governments his generation fought. That line is now being tested… Last Friday, for the first time in American history, a brand new court in America deported to Afghanistan Nazira Haji Zada, a 47-year-old lawful permanent resident living in Fort Worth. She was never charged with a crime, and wasn’t allowed to see the evidence against her (and neither were her lawyers). Attorney General Todd Blanche called the whole thing “a win for national security and the rule of law.” This was possible because, in a moment of national hysteria following the Tim McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma City in the 1990s, Congress authorized the creation of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, something so counter to normal American concepts of the rule of law and fair play that no president before now had been willing to use it.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 14, 2026

Is America About to Get the Biggest “Special Assessment” in History?

The bond market is warning that 45 years of Republican tax cuts and exploding debt may finally force ordinary Americans to pay for a party the wealthy already enjoyed... Get ready to get your financial ass kicked. That’s the message the bond market sent last week, although almost nobody in the corporate press bothered to translate it into English. If you’ve ever lived in a condo or home with an HOA, though, you may understand what’s happening better than you realize.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 13, 2026

Looking Backward: From 2000 to 1887. The Book That Launched a Movement (Chapters 8 through 14)

September’s book for Thom Hartmann’s Well-Read Troublemakers’ Book Club PART TWO. His Title Is His Humanity (Chapters 8 through 14) Last week we left Julian West on Dr. Leete’s rooftop, demanding to know how a nation that employs everybody decides what and how to pay them. This week Bellamy answers with the most radical idea in the book. First, though, West has to get out of the house.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Sep. 12, 2026

Saturday Report 9/12/26 — Trump Snaps at Black Female Reporter as Questions Grow About His Combative Behavior

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion. — The for-profit Medicare Advantage giants are doing exactly what for-profit companies do, and a million or so seniors are about to find out what “advantage” actually means. — Diesel hit a record $6.05 a gallon Friday, and Trump’s insane war with Iran is entirely responsible for it. — Trump closed his midterm convention in Dallas by making the crowd raise their right hands and pledge they would cheat for him, then told them they’ll go to Hell if they don’t vote the way he wants. — A right-wing think tank has spent twenty years secretly building a database on thousands of Muslim Americans, and only admitted it when HuffPost started asking questions. — Trump got asked a simple question by a Black woman reporter on the tarmac in Dallas and responded by lunging and screaming at her. — An active-duty Navy sailor was trotted out on stage at the Republican convention as a prop, which is against Pentagon rules, and the Pentagon so far has nothing to say about it — The people building artificial intelligence spent the week telling Congress it might kill everybody, so Mikey Johnson decided the House should leave town for six weeks and avoid the topic. — Crazy Alert! Apparently Donald Trump isn’t the only one who can rename things.