Hartmann Report

Our elections, our media, even our justice system, are all owned by the few. The Powell Memo lit the match; Citizens United poured on the gasoline. The fire of corruption is now a national inferno... "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” — Frédéric Bastiat, Economic sophisms, 2nd series (1848) With so little pushback to Hegseth’s murders in the Caribbean and ICE’s cruelty and violence that highlight Trump’s brutality, we’re watching the final fulfillment of a 50-year plan. Louis Powell laid it out in 1971, and every step along the way Republicans have followed it. It was a plan to turn America over to the richest men and the largest corporations. It was a plan to replace democracy with oligarchy. A large handful of America’s richest people invested billions in this plan, and its tax breaks and fossil fuel subsidies have made them trillions. As any advertising executive can tell you, with enough money and enough media — particularly if you are willing to lie — you can sell anybody pretty much anything.

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed . . . corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." —Thomas Jefferson It was October 10, 2016, and the world watched as the last credible, integrity-bound Republicans surrendered. Just three days earlier, the infamous Access Hollywood tape had played on TVs worldwide. Donald Trump bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy,” claiming that “when you’re a star, they let you do it.” The footage triggered a political firestorm. House Speaker Paul Ryan distanced himself, canceling a planned appearance with Trump. Senator John McCain withdrew his endorsement entirely. Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz declared he could no longer support Trump while looking his fifteen-year-old daughter in the eye.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Trump released his new National Security Strategy and it looks like the focus is based on the racist "Great Replacement Theory" that posits "international Jews" are funding immigration of Black and Brown people into "European" (ie white) countries including the United States to replace the white population. — When the government can kill without consequences, what's left of democracy? — Bob Kennedy delivers a lifetime of disease and death to babies? — Has Kash Patel ordered his agents to act as Uber drivers and deliver one his girlfriend's "inebriated" pals home? — Is Trump going to let big corporations loot America via the tax code? — Is Trump's conspiracy machine turning anger into pipe bombs? — Is Trump's Christmas greeting "Daddy's Home" an authoritarian warning?

Expect a fight for healthcare access, debt relief, affordable housing, and a living wage that doesn't require two full-time jobs… Young people are furious. A survey released this week by the Harvard Institute of Politics finds that under-30 Americans are "a generation under profound strain" who've lost pretty much any confidence in government or corporate institutions. By a 57% to 13% margin they told pollsters America is on the wrong track, and only 32% agree that the US is a healthy democracy or even one that's "somewhat functioning." Fully 64% of young American adults say the system is either in trouble or has completely failed. Pollster John Della Volpe summarized the Institute's findings: "Young Americans are sending a clear message: the systems and institutions meant to support them no longer feel stable, fair, or responsive to this generation." Which raises the urgent question: How the hell did we get here from the widespread prosperity of the postwar years?

If a Ukraine proposal was shaped to benefit a foreign power tied to Kushner’s money, that’s not diplomacy: it’s corruption… I don’t know why this wasn’t above-the-fold news all across the country over the past few days as the details of the “peace plan” Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff took to Putin this week came out. Kushner, it appears, had added in a provision that would have forced both Ukraine and Russia to take actions that would specifically benefit Saudi Arabia, a country that is paying the presidential son-in-law at least $25 million a year.

A government that celebrates cruelty, weaponizes culture, and mocks due process is telling you exactly what it plans to become... The Trump White House just showed us something every American should find chilling, no matter what music they listen to or what party they vote for. They took a video of aggressive ICE arrests, slapped Sabrina Carpenter's song on top of it, and posted it like it was a victory lap. Then, when Carpenter objected and said the video was "evil and disgusting" and told them not to use her music to benefit an "inhumane agenda," the White House hit back with a statement that sounded like it came from a playground bully, not the seat of American government. They didn't debate her point. They didn't defend policy with facts. They went straight to dehumanization and insult, calling people "illegal murderers, rapists, and pedophiles," and saying anyone who defends them must be "stupid" or "slow." That's not just ugly: it's a warning. Because the biggest story here is not a celebrity clapback; it's that the White House is using the power of the state to turn human beings into a violence-normalizing punchline, and using America's culture as a weapon to spread it. This is what rising authoritarianism looks like in the age of social media.

Why every era ruled by the morbidly rich ends the same way: corruption, collapse, and ordinary people paying the bill.... One of the greatest gifts Donald Trump and the thirteen billionaires he pulled into his administration have given America is the reminder, finally and once and for all, that just because somebody is rich doesn't mean they're smart. Particularly if they inherited their starting capital from daddy, like Trump and Musk both did. Wealth in this country has become so intertwined with our mythologies of genius, destiny, and merit that we've ended up elevating into near-sainthood (and electing to high office) some of the least thoughtful, least competent, and least self-aware people ever to walk a boardroom floor. It's a dangerous confusion, and one with deep roots.

What elite isolation reveals about the fragility of modern democracy and the cost of unchecked billionaire power… In a recent Wall Street Journal report, "The Ultrarich Are Spending a Fortune to Live in Extreme Privacy," reporter Arian Campo-Flores pulls back the curtain on a disturbing new reality: our country's wealthiest citizens now inhabit a parallel America of private jets, members-only restaurants, "sky-garage" condos, and luxury wellness centers they can rent out entirely for themselves. These aren't just perks; they're a full-blown escape from public life. The ultrawealthy no longer wait in lines, navigate public institutions, or share community space with ordinary Americans. And that's the real danger: once the richest begin living outside the civic sphere, they stop caring whether the rest of society works at all. A nation where the wealthy secede into a private realm is a nation confronting oligarchy.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power. —Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938 message to Congress As Louise and I watched Trump descend that golden escalator in 2015, we felt what millions of Americans did: disbelief, followed by dismissal. Surely this reality TV showman, this serial bankrupt, this carnival barker would quickly fade. Yet as the years passed and my radio listeners increasingly reflected his worldview back to me, I confronted a haunting truth: Donald Trump didn’t happen by accident. He wasn’t, as so many have suggested (particularly Democrats) just some political anomaly or a weird, media-driven glitch in American democracy. He was, instead, the inevitable product of political structures meticulously constructed by morbidly rich ideologues and the fossil fuel industry over decades; all systems designed to concentrate power in the executive branch, weaponize the historic grievances that have haunted American politics for three centuries, and systematically dismantle the democratic guardrails that, up until now, have kept us a free nation.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Trump in mental decline or has he always behaved like an ass? — Big Brother tries to get bigger. — Judges are getting seriously pissed at Trump's illegal orders flooding their courts. — Trump is now literally hiding the economic scoreboard because the numbers are a disaster. — Is a cornered party as dangerous as a cornered rat? — What's happening in Tennessee — the state that brought us the Scopes Monkey Trial — is not careful "parental oversight," it's raw censorship. — Two new developments expose a country sliding into fear-driven reaction and abrupt scapegoating. — The Republican war on education, culture, and the American Way.