Hartmann Report

Every raid, every body slammed to the pavement, is a public ritual meant to teach us obedience. The goal isn't enforcement — it's submission... For the Trump regime, the brutality is the point. It's the means to the end of a violent, single-party state that they're openly proclaiming, even though our media insists on turning away from it. Back in the 1980s, I lived with my family and worked in Germany for a bit short of two years. The international relief agency I worked for (and lived at the HQ of) jumped through all the necessary hoops to get me a work permit, but if I'd overstayed my permit/visa nobody would have kicked in my front door or invaded my home with flash-bangs and automatic weapons drawn. Nobody would have smashed in the windows of my car, or shot me with pepper balls or rubber-coated bullets, or snatched our three children and put them into a privatized "Christian" foster care system from which thousands of kids simply vanish.

Pay attention to this professional liar: "I'm the only president in modern history who left office with a smaller national debt than when I came into office." That's quite a whopper. Fact check: "During Trump's presidency, the national debt actually increased by $7.8 trillion, nearly 40 percent and more than any president in history." The fact check is courtesy of Thom Hartmann. Indeed, Hartmann's new book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party and a World on the Brink, is one giant fact check on the Whopper-in-Chief, and much more — a disturbing dive into the roiling miasma of self-aggrandizing, self-deluding, psychologically shattered, wailing man-child who is Commander-in-Chief.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — When Justice Becomes Revenge — Trump and the GOP are losing the shutdown war. — Meanwhile, rumor has it that the reason Johnson is refusing to swear Adelita Grijalva into office is because she’d be the 218th vote for a discharge petition to force a floor vote on releasing the Epstein files — About those “Democrat” agencies that Trump wants to lay people off from. — Norway could feel a chill of revenge soon, now that Donald Trump didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize. — Deep Red Oklahoma’s governor rips Trump and Texas for sending troops to Chicago. — According to reporting by Reuters, Trump is targeting progressive nonprofits for intimidation and punishment. The good news is that they’re fighting back. — Alarm is setting in as Trump mulls “antifa” foreign terrorist designation. — Geeky Science: Find out what the Planetary Health Diet (PHD) proposed to help optimize human health globally: you’ll be shocked. — ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer’s World: ADHD: Hunter's Rest? Hah! — Wisdom School: When the Body Forgets to Ask for Water

How the Insurrection Act could become the 21st-century Enabling Act, with six justices and the GOP standing by… The endgame for Trump, Vance, Noem, and Bondi is coming into clearer focus, and it's nearly a one-for-one, step-by-step implementation of Nazi jurist/philosopher Carl Schmitt's ideas that created and sustained the early Third Reich. Vance has even gone so far as to directly quote Schmitt. The concepts aren't particularly complicated, and it's easy to see how Trump and his enablers are implementing them

As Americans lose faith in capitalism, Trump’s economic nationalism looks less like free enterprise and more like state control… Trump and Miller say they’re coming for the “communists” in America, and they need the military on the streets of our cities to do it.

Conservatives call Anderson's film "irresponsible" because it dares to show what happens when power turns its guns on the powerless... This week has felt like one battle after another. We all watched video after video of ICE agents dropping from helicopters onto a Chicago apartment, kicking in doors and terrorizing Black and Hispanic American and immigrant families, then trashing and stealing their possessions without ever presenting a warrant signed by a judge. The GOP pushed the country to the brink again with another government shutdown threat while right-wing legislatures redrew districts to erase the votes of millions. We heard more talk of arresting journalists for doing their jobs, and watched as the military rolled through American cities as if people here are the enemy. Each day has felt like a slow-motion assault on democracy itself. Louise and I went to see Leonardo DiCaprio's new movie One Battle After Another last weekend, and I was stunned. It's a film of rare courage and artistry. From the first scene to the last, Paul Thomas Anderson reminds us that cinema can still tell the truth about power and conscience. It's a film that demands attention, not permission.

From concealed identities to sanctioned violence, the echoes between ICE raids and Klan terror are too loud to ignore… Masked, armed law enforcement agents who regularly violate the law and strip people of their constitutional rights is nothing new in America. They have, in fact, a long and well-documented history, including states — after years of abuse by masked men — passing laws specifically to prevent them from concealing their identities when performing law enforcement operations. In this era, we call them Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents; during the late 19th and early- to mid-20th centuries they called themselves the Klu Klux Klan. They often operated with the blessing of both federal and state governments, often deputized and given badges and guns, and “enforced the law” while wearing their famous white hoods to conceal their individual identities.

Raids without warrants, kids in zip-ties, and officials who say "F** the children": this is the moral collapse of the American state. It's time for state authorities to start making arrests... Remember the old TV crime/drama shows? A cop would bang on a suspect’s door and the suspect would say, through the door, “Do you have a warrant?” The officer would then walk away, promising to come back later with the requisite paper signed by a judge. No more. Now they’re kicking in doors, shooting pepper-gas balls into the open windows of cars driven by reporters, smashing windows and furniture, and concealing their faces and identities like the Klan did in days of old. In Chicago, they’ve shot two unarmed people, killing one. And there wasn’t a warrant signed by a judge to be seen anywhere.

To say that Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek were both traumatized and influenced by their respective brushes with Nazism would be an understatement. Mises suffered the indignity of Hitler’s gestapo rummaging through his apartment in March of 1938, seizing 21 boxes of his papers and taking over his apartment. Two years later, Mises fled to the United States, where, ironically, he advocated many of Hitler’s racial ideas and even integrated them into his economic ideology. “It must be emphasized,” he wrote, “that the destiny of modern civilization as developed by the white peoples in the last two hundred years is inseparably linked with the fate of economic science.”

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Swing district voters are increasingly upset with Trump and the GOP about exploding grocery prices. — Over the past decade Republicans have voted at least 70 times to repeal Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act or ACA), and they took a major whack at it again with the Big Billionaires’ Bill this year; most Americans agree with Democrats that its worth shutting down the government to force them to repeal the cuts. — Speaking of the shutdown, Congressional Progressive Caucus Vice Chairman and California Congressman Ro Khanna, a twice-monthly regular on my radio/TV program, echoed the point yesterday on Fox News that I made here on Hartmann Report a few days ago and have been discussing on the air: Republicans in the Senate don’t need a single Democratic vote to re-open the government. Not one! And they could do it tomorrow. — As the wealth of the top 1% of Americans hit a record $52 trillion last month (up 6% over the previous quarter), young people’s support for the Trump administration is in free-fall. — Portlanders laying flowers in front of the ICE building, planning a naked bike ride as a protest, and Portland’s bicycle police arresting a rightwing influencer (and two others) for trying to get into a fight with anti-ICE protesters are apparently getting to the White House. Now they’re threatening to cutting federal funds to Portland. — Elon speaks, the FBI leaps. — “Whiskey Pete” Hegseth orders our military to kill four more Venezuelan civilians in defiance of both US and international law, and the naval airmen comply. — Hunter in a Farmer’s World: The Superpower Hidden in ADHD: Hypercuriosity — Thom TV: Sue's Daily Stack, Monday, 29 September, 2025 — Wisdom School: The Hidden Power of Gratitude and Forgiveness