Hartmann Report

How a fake "Board of Peace," billion-dollar tribute payments, and hereditary succession could replace the United Nations with a Trump dynasty… This isn't merely scandalous or unethical: it's impeachable on its face and dangerous to the survival of democracy worldwide. Donald Trump is trying to use a United Nations resolution to justify making himself King of the World via a new "Board of Peace" that Trump says "might" replace the UN, with the ability to pass the title along to his son, Don Jr., if he continues to please his father. No, this isn't an exaggeration.

When future historians ask what Putin wanted from Trump, the answer may be painfully simple: "Everything America once stood for." Trump went to Davos this morning and gave the speech that Vladimir Putin wanted him to, lying and pissing off Europe and shaking the North Atlantic alliance to its core. Our president has refused to help out Ukraine in any meaningful way for a year now, giving Russia the room to destroy much of that country's electric and heat infrastructure so badly that President Zelenskyy had to cancel his trip to Davos to deal with the crisis. Trump's now invaded Venezuela and is threatening the same with Greenland, legitimizing Putin's land-grabs in Georgia and Ukraine. Trump's ICE goons are destroying the rule of law in America, running amok in Minneapolis, punishing — and killing — the residents of that city for having elected politicians who'd dare advocate democracy over autocracy.

How the Language of Morality Became a Cover for Fear and Power For decades, Americans have been told that "conservative values" stood for restraint, responsibility, and respect for the rule of law. The rise of Donald Trump forces an unavoidable question: were those values abandoned, or were they a generational lie that made his authoritarian takeover possible? The billionaires and CEOs funding Trump and the Republicans in Congress believe they're invincible. They believe the GOP's abandonment of the principles that animated John McCain and Mitt Romney in favor of authoritarianism and oligarchy will keep them fat and happy. They're wrong. Former Republican congressman Joe Walsh said something on my radio program yesterday that would have been shocking just a few years ago but now is becoming increasingly self-evident to anybody with a conscience and an honest view of American politics and history.

This isn't alarmism: it's the historical pattern, repeated across dozens of countries and thousands of years. I've seen it, repeatedly, with my own eyes… Nebraska mom Jamie Bonkiewicz filmed her interaction with Secret Service agents and police who came to her door because of a tweet. "The Secret Service came to my door today because of a tweet. No threats. No violence. Just words. That's where we are now." Meanwhile, the Justice Department is going after multiple Democratic members of the House and Senate, the governors of two states, and the mayor of Minneapolis. And any Republican who speaks against Trump or his lickspittles: Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook, Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Chris Christie, Jack Smith, Christopher Krebs, James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, Miles Taylor… Are we really losing our fundamental freedoms under Donald Trump?

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity". —W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming” On a blistering April morning in 2025, Elizabeth Aniskevich stood outside a community center in Washington, DC, filling out yet another job application. Just two months previously, she was an attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with what she thought would be a lifetime career in public service. Now, at thirty-nine, she’s watching her emergency savings dwindle as she struggles to make mortgage payments on her DC apartment. “I was completely shocked,” she told a reporter for CNBC, describing the day she received her termination notice. “I didn’t expect it to unfold this way. There’s no information about what’s going on with my benefits, or what I need to do with unemployment.”

The Best of the Rest of the News. — While Putin attacks Europe from the outside, Trump dismantles NATO from within. — Renee Good's death sparks MAGA deplorables' wrath: small Minneapolis charter school under siege. — Trump offers a phony "healthcare plan" that does nothing to fix our healthcare system and has virtually no details, but Fox and rightwing media lap it up as if it were real. — Trump has suggested multiple times in the past few weeks that we shouldn't have an election this November, and now it's becoming clear why. — The Minneapolis battlefield continues: an infant needed CPR after ICE flash-banged and then tear gassed the family van with 6 kids inside. — Big baby Trump steals a Nobel like a toddler grabbing a trophy. — Crazy Alert! Man trains crows to steal MAGA hats.

For working families, recessions mean job loss and debt; for billionaires, they mean discounted assets and record wealth gains… Get ready. Something truly awful may be happening to our economy — at least for average Americans — as the result of Trump's billions in tax breaks for billionaires, looting of our treasury and economy, $38 trillion national debt, and his corrupt embrace and promotion of foreign autocracies and digital currencies. If it happens, it's going to hurt many of us, all while making Trump's billionaire buddies massively richer. I remember the look on Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's face when the economy crashed in 2008. The former Goldman Sachs CEO's hands trembled as he stood at a podium and confessed that the GOP's banking deregulation had blown up the American financial system and very nearly the global economy.

Why the largest-ever ICE operation isn't just about immigration, but about who gets to walk freely in America's cities and who pays with their lives… Yesterday, Mayor Jacob Frey basically took a Fox "News" host down, pointing out that Trump's own federal prosecutors just quit their jobs rather than investigate and prosecute Renee Good's wife for "domestic terrorism." Which raises the question: what is ICE really doing in Minneapolis?

How ICE moved from enforcing immigration law to deciding which people belong in America and which people do not… When Joe Rogan starts referring to the Trump regime as if they’re Nazis, you know ICE and the GOP have a problem. Yesterday, he said: “Are we really going to be the Gestapo? Where’s your papers? Is that what we’ve come to?” At the end of this month, funding for the Department of Homeland Security runs out. Congress is going to have to act and that makes this a very important moment, politically.

The masks are off, the excuses are gone, and the regime is testing how much terror the public will tolerate. What happens when the public finally refuses to be afraid? "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…" —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities They're doubling down because they know their time is limited. Their attempt to turn America into a Russia-like police state is suddenly failing, and a reckoning is coming. Trump and his lickspittles look at the horizon and see mushroom clouds rising against a red sky, suggesting their season of power and brutality is about to turn on them. As Mike Brock notes over at his excellent Notes from the Circus newsletter: "The United States is experiencing the greatest political emergency since the Civil War. Right now." Sunday, masked ICE goons were going house-to-house in Minneapolis kicking in doors without search or no-knock warrants in clear violation of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, federal law, state law, and local law. When a woman — a US citizen — whose home was being invaded and was trying to protect her children from the assault asked the secret police who'd just destroyed her front door to show her a warrant, they shot her with a Taser and zapped her with tens of thousands of volts of electricity.