Hartmann Report

Why does a lie that has never been proven, never worked, and never been real still hold the power to undermine an entire democracy? Get ready. At yesterday's hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee, Arizona Republican Congressman Eli Crane lied through his teeth, saying of Democrats' opposition to the SAVE Act: "They let millions of illegal aliens into the country. They set up sanctuary cities so you can't enforce these federal laws that are on the books that Congress has passed. "Now they won't vote to stop these illegals from voting in our elections. If the American people don't understand what this is about, it's about one word. It always has been. That is power. "They want power and they need illegals to vote in our elections. That's why they don't care about fraud either. They need those votes as well." And it's not just a lone crackpot congressman from Arizona.

If this feels uncomfortable to read, that's good. It should. From Colombia's death squads to America's detention camps, this is how societies relearn the cost of calling some lives disposable… Donald Trump's presidency now has a human body count. "We really feel like we're being hunted, we're being hunted like animals," an undocumented farm worker in Ventura county, California, told a reporter for The Guardian. I've seen this movie before. Or at least where it leads.

The NFL proves that rules, referees, and "redistribution" are the only way any game, including the American economy, actually works… Last night's NFL Super Bowl game was great. The guys wearing blue beat the guys wearing red, and Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga made MAGA snowflakes cry. But the NFL can also teach Americans a huge lesson about economics, "socialism," and the differences between Republican "free market" nuts and FDR's re-regulation of the American economy that created the largest middle class in history and the first in the world to include more than half of a nation's citizens.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". —Edmund Burke. "Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness." —Desmond Tutu. May 2, 2025, was a bad day for the news. Trump proudly announced his executive order kneecapping NPR and PBS, both trusted sources of independent journalism, in a brutal rhetorical attack.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — These people are monsters. — Trump's racist attack on the Obamas highlights his alleged lifelong racism. — Senator Gallego calls for a national strike when Trump tries to steal this November's election. — Non-citizen voting is a GOP scam the NY Times just busted wide open. — Let's not forget the Epstein files! — Trump killed the Voice of America, our messenger to the world, and is replacing it with US taxpayer money for racist rightwing think tanks in Europe. — Incompetence Alert! — Surprise, Surprise?! TrumpRX is a fake: read the fine print. — Crazy Alert! 'Mortifying': Fury as Trump demands Dulles and Penn Station renamed after himself.

This wasn't a joke or a mistake but a warning about how racism, silence, and abuse of power are eating away at democracy… I've been talking into microphones since I did the morning news on WITL in Lansing Michigan in the late 1960s, and I've seen a lot of ugly moments in American politics. But every so often something happens that still takes your breath away, not because it's surprising, but because it's so painfully revealing. This latest racist stunt by Donald Trump — reposting a meme on his Nazi-infested social media site in which the Obamas' faces are superimposed onto the bodies of primates in the jungle set to the 1961 song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens — is one of those moments. That a popular pro-Trump account on X created this video and it has lived on that platform without consequence is disgusting in and of itself. But Trump — as our president, speaking in our voice — made it infinitely worse last night by promoting it to millions around the world.

A historical warning about how presidents escape, aides go to prison, and "just following orders" has never saved anyone... Dear Trump Administration Official, I'm writing to you not as a political opponent, but as a historian who's spent a lifetime studying what happens when democracies flirt with strongmen and otherwise decent people convince themselves that loyalty to Dear Leader today will be rewarded by safety and protection tomorrow. It almost never is. You're out there defending Donald Trump's lawbreaking, cheering his attacks on judges, prosecutors, immigrants, journalists, and even the Constitution itself. You defend his bribe-taking, the jet from Qatar, the violence of ICE, and his hotel and crypto grifts. You say it's necessary for him to abuse power to "get things done," that the other side is worse, that he's strong and that's what the American people need.

ICE's nationwide detention system continues to expand under plans that would double its size while shielding it from meaningful accountability… As people testified before Congress yesterday about the brutality and violence they'd suffered at the hands of ICE, that massive paramilitary organization was shopping for giant warehouse-style facilities they can retrofit into what they euphemistically call "detention centers." Cable news people call them "prison camps" or "Trump prison camps," but look in any dictionary: prisons are where people convicted of crimes are held. As Merriam-Webster notes, a prison is: "[A]n institution for confinement of persons convicted of serious crimes." Jails are where people accused of crimes but still waiting for their day in court are held, as Merriam-Webster notes: "[S]uch a place under the jurisdiction of a local government for the confinement of persons awaiting trial or those convicted of minor crimes." But what do you call a place where people who've committed no criminal offense (immigration violations are civil, not criminal, infractions)? The fine dictionary people at Merriam-Webster note the proper term is "concentration camp":

A warning from history about oligarchy, terror policing, and the death of democracy… ICE thugs dragged a Minnesota woman out of her car and assaulted her, stopping only when local police showed up, leaving her with cuts and bruises from being dragged on the ground. Her "crime" was following and tracking Trump's violent, racist, masked federal modern-day Klan goons. Joe Scarborough expressed the shock and outrage of most Americans, when he said: "This is so out of control, and it looks like a paramilitary force from the third world! And so [the] police chief – not Antifa, Republicans, not Antifa, liars on the right – she calls the police to ask for help in America from paramilitary-type officers. It's disgusting!" What Scarborough and most Americans probably don't know — particularly since Reagan gutted Civics education — is that this is nothing new for America.

Debt, ego, sexual compromise, and fear: why Trump's behavior makes sense only when you realize he's been in Putin's pocket for years… The British newspaper Daily Mail is out with a deeply researched investigative report, the result of a long collaboration between columnists Glen Owen and Dan Hodges, along with Mark Hookham (Assistant Editor Investigations), and Daisy Graham-Brown (Investigative Reporter). It's shocking in its detail and its implication that Putin has basically owned Trump for years, even before he ran for president in 2016. They note of last week's partial (about 50%) Epstein document release: "The files include 1,056 documents naming Russian President Vladimir Putin and 9,629 referring to Moscow. Epstein even seems to have secured audiences with Putin after his 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution." Essentially, they're arguing that Epstein was running an operation on behalf of the KGB/Putin that lured wealthy and powerful men to Epstein's New York and Palm Beach mansions and his island where they were surreptitiously filmed having sex with underage girls.