Hartmann Report

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. —Abraham Lincoln In the late 1960s, while working as a DJ and news reporter at WITL radio in Lansing, Michigan, I saw firsthand how a democratic government can rapidly erode when it’s corrupted by official lies. As a teenager who’d been expelled from high school for starting an anti–Vietnam War newspaper, and then a member of Students for a Democratic Society at Michigan State University, I was subjected to police surveillance and arrest, experiences that to this day color my understanding of government. Which is why when Louise and I watched the Confederate flag being paraded through the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, I felt a chill. This wasn’t just an insurrection; it was the culmination of institutional erosion I’ve documented for decades on my radio show and in my books, beginning with Johnson and Nixon during the Vietnam era.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Donald Trump calls our concern over the cost of living a "con," but the real con is being foisted on working Americans by the billionaires and corporate monopolies that bankroll him. — Consumer confidence collapses in the face of Trump's incoherent economic and tariff policies that seem driven more by threats he can use to get bribes from foreign dictators than what's best for America and American citizens. — Nothing, it seems, gives "Whiskey Pete" Hegseth a bigger hard-on than threatening war and bloodshed (and sharing it with friends and family on an insecure Signal chat). Unless, of course, it's beating up a woman, as his former sister-in-law alleged in a sworn affidavit. — The election was bigger than we thought: we even won school boards in Texas! — Health insurance prices are exploding: where is all that money going? — ICE agents dragged off a Portland green-card holder — a legal resident of the US — in front of his wife and three children, ignoring his screams that he had documentation and was in the country legally. He's still missing in their byzantine prison system weeks later. — How New York City is quietly preparing for a possibly violent Trump takeover. — U.S. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson published a scathing dissent after six bought-off right-wingers on the Court issued a ruling trashing trans rights.

From eugenics and AIDS denial to border kidnappings, the same cold logic endures: if the victims suffer enough, the powerful can call it order… America has always been proud of its ingenuity: our capacity to invent, to innovate, to solve. But among our most consistent inventions is one we never admit to but the Trump administration is now proudly highlighting: the machinery of cruelty. Generation after generation, we refine it, disguise it, and call it something noble: "law and order," "family values," "national security." Each era congratulates itself for its moral progress while quietly perfecting the tools of human suffering.

Let debate rage for days, then vote, as the founders intended; end the antique veto and force both parties to own their visions before the people… Emperor Trump saw this wipeout election coming and he knew who to blame in advance: the Senate. On Tuesday (election day) morning, he posted to his Nazi-infested social media site: "TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER NOW, END THE RIDICULOUS SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATELY, AND THEN, MOST IMPORTANTLY, PASS EVERY WONDERFUL REPUBLICAN POLICY THAT WE HAVE DREAMT OF, FOR YEARS, BUT NEVER GOTTEN. WE WILL BE THE PARTY THAT CANNOT BE BEATEN – THE SMART PARTY!!!" Republicans yawned and ignored him; they've been hiding behind the filibuster for decades to avoid having to actually take a serious vote on the crazy crap that Republicans in the House keep sending them, like bills to outlaw abortion nationally, end voting rights for married women, or end climate protections and deregulate the fossil fuel industry. Ending the filibuster — even now with King Crazy in the White House — would be a good thing for both Democrats and America. And Trump may actually pull it off.

Behind the rhetoric about 'lazy freeloaders' lies a stunning truth: America's largest corporations depend on food stamps to prop up their low-wage empires... Democrats won big in last night's election, and it's a great sign for the future of American democracy. Voters rejected racism, fear, and cruelty. They said in a loud and singular voice — overwhelmingly voting for moderate Democrats, progressive Democrats, and even a ballot initiative without a single person on the ballot — that they want their democracy back. Nonetheless, Mike Johnson is still keeping the House on vacation and John Thune is still refusing to break a Senate filibuster and reopen the government. And, crucially, Trump is still refusing to fully fund SNAP/food stamps, even though he can easily put his hands on the money.

A 50-year project to turn the world’s strongest democracy into a playground for the rich... It’s election day in much of America, although the biggest races are in California, Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine, and New York City. As a bellwether for next year’s midterms that could define the fate and future of Trumpism, the stakes are enormous, and are bleeding through into social media. One of the most viral Facebook posts yesterday was from a MAGA mom complaining that her Democratic mother-in-law won’t loan her grocery money. She explains that she can’t feed her family because Trump’s government shutdown has frozen her SNAP (Food Stamps) and WIC benefits, and, she wrote: “He asked his mother to buy a can [of baby formula] until our WIC comes in. Her response was, ‘We voted for this.’” The largest percentage of comments were variations on, “That’s what you wanted when you voted for that orange asshole, but you must have thought he’d only do it to Black and Hispanic people. FAFO!” Along those same lines, Trump went on 60 Minutes this weekend and lied to Leslie Stahl’s face multiple times, including a whopper about grocery prices when she pointed out that they’re going up, up, and up.

When politics becomes personal, policy becomes powerful, and there's nothing more personal than survival… When politics becomes personal, policy becomes powerful. And there's nothing more personal than survival. Every election cycle, candidates talk about "freedom," "security," and "opportunity," yet ignore the most basic measure of all three: whether ordinary Americans can afford to stay alive. In the richest nation in the history of planet Earth, millions of Americans are dying from treatable illnesses, rationing insulin, and running GoFundMe campaigns for chemotherapy. This isn't just a policy failure, it's a moral collapse. And it's the one issue that could unite the country, reshape the Democratic Party, and finally prove that compassion is not weakness, but strength.

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all. —John F. Kennedy It didn’t look like the end of democracy. It looked like a Tuesday. I remember watching the television that day, January 6, 2021, as a man stood on the Capitol lawn. Red hat, blank expression, that thousand-yard stare people get when something fundamental breaks inside them. His face was flushed crimson against the winter cold, fists clenched like he was holding onto the last threads of a reality rapidly unraveling, and his voice—already sandpaper-rough from hours of shouting—cracked as he howled into the January wind: “They’re stealing my country!” Inside those historic halls, American police officers were being beaten with the very flagpoles that once carried our stars and stripes.

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion… — The GOP's dirty little secret exposed, courtesy of Donald Trump: Republicans in the Senate could have ended the shutdown anytime they wanted. — Epstein, Rubio, or ego? What's really behind Trump's Venezuela madness? — Trump's new refugee policy: white, wealthy, and welcome. — Hispanics not welcome either, unless they worked for one of Trump's shabby golf motels. — "Judge Boxwine" Pirro, recently recruited from Fox "News" for a federal judgeship, apparently demanded prosecutors delete the word "mob" to describe a member of the mob that attacked the US Capitol on January 6th. — Tear gassing trick-or-treaters: Noem's new definition of American values. — From firebrand to outcast: Marjorie Taylor Greene's midlife MAGA crisis. What's happening with MTG? — Hunter in a Farmer's World: Rethinking ADHD: It's Not Forgetfulness, It's a Different Kind of Seeing — Wisdom School: The Silent Conversation Between You and Your Bones

From John Adams to Kent State to the Insurrection Act, history warns us what happens when power fears the people more than the enemy… Will the 2028 election even happen, or are we watching the slow-motion rehearsal for its cancellation? Every signal from Trump's orbit points to a deliberate strategy to turn fear, chaos, and manufactured crisis into political weapons. History tells us how these stories end. From John Adams jailing his critics under the Alien and Sedition Acts to Nixon's troops gunning down students at Kent State to crackdowns by Orbán and Putin, authoritarians have always wrapped repression in the language of patriotism. Today, with talk of "domestic enemies," "rapid reaction forces," and "nuclear demonstrations," the groundwork is being laid again, not to protect America, but to control it. Why is it that dictators and wannabe dictators — both historic and now Trump — always attack their own countries' people while saber-rattling about war against other countries?