Hartmann Report

When pundits blame tone instead of truth, they let one party weaponize threats and lies without consequence… As a guy who regularly gets death threats because of my media presence, I shouldn't have to say that killing people — or even threatening them — for their politics is wrong. But here it is, for the record: nobody in America should die for their politics. That said, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination — the guy who downplayed slavery, demonized Black and brown people, promoted the racist antisemitic Great Replacement Theory, attacked queer people, made degrading comments about women, said gun deaths were fine because that's the price we must pay for the Second Amendment — the media is afraid to say anything about the state of our politics other than "we need to stop violence-provoking political rhetoric on both sides." As if there were two sides here.

Scalia's Heller ruling — and the decisions that followed — didn't just reshape gun laws; they transformed political disagreements into open-season assassinations… "I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational." — Charlie Kirk Republican Charlie Kirk is dead. So is former Democratic Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. Two clearly political assassinations in the past four months.

But today, Americans tremble as elected leaders kneel to greed, fear, and authoritarianism's dark shadow… Because of the decision made this week by the doughiest white boy on the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, to allow racial profiling by ICE, 65 million Hispanic Americans now live in terror of the police, carrying their passports and dreading traffic stops or shopping at Home Depot. If you're not a criminal, you shouldn't fear government. Instead, as Jefferson often pointed out, government should fear you.

Senator Schmitt's words show fascism isn't lurking at the edges — it's leading from the center… Senator Eric Schmitt took the stage at the National Conservatism Conference this past weekend and declared that America is "a nation and a people." With those five words he threw aside the pluralism that has defined this country since before its founding and embraced an ideology rooted in blood and soil, in exclusion and hierarchy. He put it in context: "That's what set Donald Trump apart from the old conservatism and the old liberalism alike: He knows that America is not just an abstract 'proposition,' but a nation and a people, with its own distinct history and heritage and interests… "When they tear down our statues and monuments, mock our history, and insult our traditions, they're attacking our future as well as our past. By changing the stories we tell about ourselves, they believe they can build a new America—with the new myths of a new people. But America does not belong to them. It belongs to us." It's not new to hear Republicans peddling this kind of racialized "us versus them" rhetoric, but it's still shocking to see a sitting United States senator parrot phrases that would be more at home in the speeches of European fascists or Confederates in the years leading up to the Civil War than in the halls of Congress.

Could soldiers, not citizens, end up deciding our elections? Last week, Trump posted a stolen valor war meme on his failing, Nazi-infested social media site, with the bonespurs-draft-dodger wearing a US Army Cavalry hat and the slogan, paraphrased from the movie Apocalypse Now: "'I love the smell of deportations in the morning…' Chicago is about to find out why it's called the Department of War."

Back in 1938, a group of economists and philosophers met in Paris to consider how to save the world from itself.[iii] At the time, Mussolini, Hitler and Franco were turning their nations into fascist concentration camps while in Russia Stalin was killing millions of citizens he considered disloyal or unreliable, using everything from famine and gulags to firing squads. After those three European democracies had gone full fascist, and Russia had bypassed democracy altogether to embrace a tyrannical form of communism, the Paris delegates were understandably worried about the future of democratic governance both in Europe and around the world. And the rise of communism and fascism had impacted every one of their lives personally.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Trump seems to delight in the suffering and even deaths of others, a characteristic common among sociopathic dictators, so it shouldn't surprise us that he wants to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War. — Trump is preparing to hand Europe over to Russia if Putin decides to go for it. — "Weird Stephen" Miller, who Trevor Noah calls "Sméagol in a suit," is, according to The Washington Post, running Trump's militarized takeover of Washington DC. — Trump has some problems with his base; when James O'Keefe goes after you, look out. — CNN has uncovered audio of Bob Kennedy describing Trump supporters as "belligerent idiots," "outright Nazis," "cowards," and "bootlickers," while also comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler. — A Democrat introduces a bill to eliminate taxes on social security. Didn't Trump promise that? What will the GOP do now? — We're the only developed country in the world where we've handed our nation's healthcare off to massive for-profit corporations, and, wow, are they ever raking it in! — The economy continues to slide toward recession as Trump's tariff taxes bite and his attacks on the Fed cause the rest of the world to move away from US investments. — NATO's chief is warning that China and Russia are preparing for a "long-term confrontation." — Republicans are pushing a gun ban to create a national registry of Trans people they can harass and perhaps one day imprison. — Trump's newest nominee, the guy who he wants to take over the Bureau of Labor Statistics (because he fired the previous director for telling the truth about unemployment) turns out to behave like a racist, sexist bigot. — Hunters in a Farmer's World: Where are ADHD Traits Not Just Useful, but Essential? — Wisdom School: Should Lithium Become Part of the Standard Toolkit Against Alzheimer's?

By protecting him from accountability, the Court gave him power to end lives at will — and he’s wasting no time using it… When the Court says Trump is above the law, who speaks for the eleven dead on that boat? Their lives ended not in a battlefield crossfire or a clash between nations, but at the whim of one man emboldened by six justices who declared him untouchable. Trump simply ordered human beings erased, confident the Court had given him immunity from any consequence and the leaders of his military would obey an illegal order. Eleven souls were sacrificed not just to his cruelty, but to a judicial betrayal that transformed the presidency into a license to kill.

Trump's fear of exposure, his criminal past, and the GOP's refusal to stand up to him are unraveling 249 years of hard-won democratic progress… Could Trump's weakness and the GOP's cowardice mean the end of democracy around the world? Could Trump's apparent participation in the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell be the proverbial horseshoe nail that brings down majority rule and representative government worldwide? The world's first modern major confrontation between authoritarianism (in this case, a kingdom) and democracy was the American Revolution in 1776. Outside of tribal societies, democracy had been largely dormant all over the world for the previous two thousand years, but we installed an early version of liberal democracy here in 1789. Our first president, George Washington, not only fought the fascist forces of King George, but he was also a fanatic proponent of democracy itself, to the point that he refused to serve a third term in office so as not to set a "king-like" precedent. But 80 years later, America faced her second major confrontation with fascists who wanted to end our democracy and replace it with a strongman autocracy.

Voters don't rally behind policy papers: they rally behind leaders they can see and believe in. Democrats must end the era of weak, divided messaging and rise with a chorus of commanding voices… Illinois Governor JB Pritzker isn't pulling any punches. Yesterday, he gave a speech calling out Trump's and Miller's fascist cosplay, their lies and distortions, and predicting federal troops will soon be on the streets of Chicago. He came right out and said Trump is doing all this for his own wealth and power.