Hartmann Report

Or arrested and dragged off by ICE...at least not yet... This afternoon, our internet provider lost all functionality for much of the city of Portland for several hours, business service included, and took us entirely off the air about 20 minutes before the end of the show. A few listeners and viewers were freaking out on social media and in comments, wondering if I’d finally been arrested and dragged off by ICE or worse. And, in fact, I will be gone for a little while and intended to announce it at the end of the show but we crashed before I got to it. Our good friend Jefferson Smith will be filling in for me for the next week. Again, I am not in a detention center! (At least yet.) What’s going on is that I have a brand new book coming out on July 7, and Louise and I have a bunch of details we must take care of so we’re taking a few days off. But don’t worry, we’ll be back on the air a week from Monday.

From red deer to Mesoamerica to America today, the evidence is overwhelming: bottom-up systems endure, top-down systems fail… FCC Chairman and apparent Goebbels fanboy Brendan Carr is suggesting the radio and TV broadcasters he regulates should begin airing more "pro-America" content. What he means, of course, is pro-Trump. This illustrates a much larger reality: Republicans want a top-down, hierarchical political and economic system. Democrats want a bottom-up system with maximum participation and broad sharing of society's wealth. Who is right?

What he saw from inside the system, and why his departure signals that the guardrails are collapsing faster than anyone on the outside fully understands… Trump is dismantling our American democracy with alarming speed and the resignation of the Trump-appointed Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, is a symptom of it. Kent, a hardcore MAGA Republican who ran two failed, Trump-endorsed campaigns for Congress before Trump put him in charge of counterterrorism, was adjacent to the very highest levels of our national security apparatus, had all the inside information, and not only resigned but salted the earth on his way out, writing: "Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby." As I've noted in previous articles, Saudi Arabia and the UAE wanted America to strike Iran and had collectively given billions to Kushner and Trump. Netanyahu desperately needed a war with Iran to insure his re-election this year to keep him out of prison. And Putin wanted the Strait of Hormuz closed so the price of oil would go up and rescue his floundering economy.

How Reagan's secret betrayal of America during the Iran hostage crisis helped him win the presidency, killed Carter's clean-energy revolution, and helped create today's crisis in the Strait of Hormuz… On Sunday's State of the Union show, UN Ambassador Mike Waltz said that Trump was going to reach out to our allies to "demand their participation to help their own economies" by bringing in military hardware and troops to help us open the Strait of Hormuz. Yesterday, Trump whined about it at the White House, saying he is "testing" them. Much to their dismay, the other countries of the world are largely echoing German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who said on Monday, "This is not our war, and we didn't start it." It shouldn't have been our war, either, and wouldn't be if Reagan hadn't committed treason to become president and then sold the GOP to the fossil fuel industry. Today we're paying the price for that Republican perfidy.

As bombs fall and soldiers die, Jared Kushner is reportedly seeking billions from the same Gulf states pushing America toward conflict… There are several clear winners from Trump's attack on Iran: — Russia, who can again fund their violence against Ukraine with new oil revenue and now claims their unprovoked attack on that nation is consistent with this new Trump Doctrine; — Saudi Arabia, which has long hated Iran and lobbied since at least 2008 for the US to attack that country; — the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has similarly pushed America to attack Iran since at least 2010; — the American defense weapons industry, which is making additional billions; — Don Jr. and Eric who have taken a big position in a drone-manufacturing business, getting them in on the Pentagon gravy train; — Donald Trump himself, who's succeeded in largely pushing Epstein off the front page; — and Benjamin Netanyahu, who's called for American strikes against Iran since 1992 and will stay out of prison as long as the war continues.

Pope Leo XIV labeled AI one of the main threats facing humanity, saying it poses challenges to human dignity, justice, and labor. He’s right, but it’s even worse than that; AI represents, unless it’s rigorously regulated, a threat to democracy itself. In every generation, the enemies of democracy change costumes, nations, and languages, but their playbook remains eerily familiar. They lie, divide, intimidate, and exploit every available tool to consolidate power. In the 1930s they used newspapers and radio, in the 2010s it was social media, and now, in 2025, the newest and most dangerous weapon in the authoritarian arsenal is artificial intelligence. Make no mistake: AI isn’t just another “new technology.” It’s power, scaled. And in the hands of the hard right that is trying to end our republican form of government, it has the potential to become the most effective tool for dismantling democracy ever invented.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Trump chuckles as he admits Putin is helping Iran kill American troops. — The lie heard around the world: Trump told our allies Iran was surrendering, but Iran didn't get the memo. — The war comes home, as they always do. An Israeli strike in Lebanon killed two of Ghazli's (the attacker of of the Michigan synagogue) brothers and two of his brother's children. The FBI — what's left of it after Ka$h Patel fired the team responsible for tracking Iranian terror operations in the US — is also investigating the two separate attacks that happened this week. — Don't let Stephen Miller turn America into a surveillance state. — Is this what the Republican Party's future looks like? — Democrats are winning. Everywhere. And nobody's talking about it. — Did AI kill 175 children in an Iranian school?

The slogan that promised efficiency was really a blueprint to dismantle public government and hand its power—and money—to the billionaire class… The bombs are falling on Iran this week, Kash Patel has fired the FBI experts on Iranian sleeper cells in America, and people are speculating that Trump's trying to provoke an Iranian attack on the US to justify blowing up November's elections. Somewhere in the wreckage of what used to be America's functioning national security apparatus, the ghost of Ronald Reagan is grinning. I've been doing my progressive program on SiriusXM, Free Speech TV, and radio stations nationwide for over two decades, and every time a Republican runs for office promising to "run government like a business" — Reagan's favorite meme — I tell my listeners exactly what's coming next: — Tax cuts for the morbidly rich, — Gutted regulations that had been designed to protect average people, — Privatized (profitized) public services that will make billions for corporations and eat our tax dollars, — incompetent management of government agencies and our economy, — And, soon, a slow-motion disaster that the rest of us end up paying for.

If the road to Tehran required the sons and daughters of the billionaire & political class to march beside everyone else's kids, would we still be there? The drumbeats for expanding our (and Israel's) war with Iran are loud. Cable news panels talk about strategy. Politicians talk about deterrence. Pentagon briefings talk about targets and timelines. But there's one thing missing from almost every conversation in Washington. Risk.

From campaigning to destroy NATO to selling out Ukraine to letting Russia help kill American soldiers in the Gulf region, Trump's goal appears to be, to "Make America Russia"… Eight of our American service members are dead and over 140 wounded because Iran's military has suddenly gotten really good at targeting our soldiers, Airmen, and Marines. News reports say they've been able to hit us with such precision because Russia is using their extraordinary spy satellite, spy plane, and advanced radar capabilities to help Iran's military. The Washington Post, which first reported on this, quoted a Russian military expert as saying that Iran is now "making very precise hits on early-warning radars or over-the-horizon radars," seeming to validate the concern.