Hartmann Report

Posted at Hartmann Report on Jul. 10, 2025

Is Delusion the Right's New "Weapon of Mass Destruction"?

Militia attacks on weather radars aren't just crimes: they're symptoms of a deeper sickness that rightwing media, foreign trolls, and the GOP are using to devastate our democracy via lies and hate... In Oklahoma, a domestic militia calling itself "Veterans on Patrol" is systematically targeting weather radars. Their leader, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, claims the military is controlling the weather through Doppler radar systems and that these machines are part of a divine affront—a "weather weapon" — that is "mocking God Himself." He's encouraging his followers to sabotage these radars under an operation he calls "Leaning Tower." This isn't just fringe paranoia: it's part of a growing anti-reality insurgency that threatens our democracy itself. Let's be blunt: this is insanity. Not just in its content, but in its consequences. And yet, it's not isolated. It's one of many conspiracy-fueled campaigns that now animate parts of American life, often backed by violence or intimidation. From QAnon to flat-earth nonsense to vaccine "skeptics" now within the FDA, we're watching a dangerous erosion of truth, a collapse of shared facts, and an outright assault on the institutions that protect life and liberty. What's happening here isn't just about weather radars: it's about reality itself.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Jul. 9, 2025

This Isn’t About Pocketbook Politics — It’s About the Survival of the American Ideal

Every failed democracy has one thing in common: the people assumed someone else would save it... Donald Trump didn't just try to overturn an election. He's trying to overturn the very ideal — and reality— of what has historically made America great. While the media fixates on trade, Epstein, and floods, we're all missing the real story: Trump's "waste, fraud, and abuse" campaign is a direct assault on everything that once made this country a global leader and a moral force. His goal isn't to restore American greatness: it's to dismantle it, to trade it away to strongmen like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and to drag the United States into the emerging authoritarian axis that now includes Hungary, India, Turkey and others abandoning democratic norms.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Jul. 8, 2025

If the Truth Is a Crime, Then We Are All Criminals, Because Silence Is What Tyranny Depends On

If the Truth Is a Crime, Then We Are All Criminals, Because Silence Is What Tyranny Depends On Thom plus logo Now that Trump has threatened to prosecute CNN, what happens next will define the role of the press and the soul of this nation… History rarely announces itself. It creeps in quietly, cloaked in the language of "law and order," "national security," and "patriotism." But every now and then, it screams. Last week, it screamed.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Jul. 7, 2025

What If This is the Last Generation that Gets to Ask "What If"?

The Iroquois planned for seven generations. Our leaders can't plan past the next corporate quarterly report — and we're paying the ultimate price... We are the generation that broke the Earth, and now we're out of time to pretend otherwise. I know you don't want to hear this. Nobody does. Just like nobody wanted to hear that 9-year-old girl's screams echoing through the Texas Hill Country last week as floodwaters ripped through her summer camp. She was washed away before rescuers could reach her. Her story is heartbreaking, and emblematic. Trump cynically dismissed it as "a hundred year flood" and added, "Nobody saw it; nobody expected it." He lied.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Jul. 6, 2025

The American Dream requires a healthy populace who aren’t crushed by medical costs: The Hidden History of the American Dream

The United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn’t define healthcare as an absolute right for all of its citizens. That’s it. We’re the only one left. We’re the only country in the developed world where somebody getting sick can leave a family bankrupt, destitute, and homeless. A half-million American families are wiped out every year so completely that they must lose everything and declare bankruptcy just because somebody got sick. The number of health-expense-related bankruptcies in all the other developed countries in the world combined is zero. Yet the United States spends more on “healthcare” than any other country in the world: about 17% of GDP.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Jul. 5, 2025

Saturday Report 7/5/25 — Wild Killer Whales are More Empathetic than Trump & MAGA

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The toadies's Trump has installed to run our federal agencies, in this case Social Security, are apparently just as good at lying as is Trump himself. — Republicans are suing to stop American citizens from voting — Trump and DOGE/Musk gutted the National Weather Service and now people in Texas — including children camping — are dead and missing. — Never forget that this is that most catastrophic bill passed in our lifetimes: no Republican who voted for it should get reelected or forgiven. — Trump continues his regular phone calls with Putin, who's obviously now giving him instructions. — CBS/Paramount paid an extortionate bribe to Trump to seal a billion-dollar merger deal and Senator Ron Wyden wants them prosecuted for bribery. — The Six Republicans on the US Supreme Court are now officially complicit in Trump's corruption and destruction of American democracy. — Pam Bondi's Department of Justice is looking at prosecuting local and state election officials if they think too many Democrats are getting elected. — "Kill them!" A convicted (and pardoned) January 6th rioter is now helping the DOJ investigate Democrats who Trump alleges tried to "weaponize" the Justice Department when they prosecuted him. — Challenging the idea of free speech and the distribution of publicly-available information, Trump and his minions are investigating Joshua Aaron, the young man who created the ICEBlock app for smartphones that crowdsources details on ICE raids. — Wild Killer Whales are more empathetic than Trump and MAGA. — Hunter in a Farmer's World: Neurodivergence and the Climate Crisis: Are ADHD Brains Wired to Save the Planet? — Wisdom School: The Lost Gospel of the Kingdom: Why Jesus Was a Revolutionary, Not a Mascot
Posted at Hartmann Report on Jul. 4, 2025

James Carville Is Right to Panic — Because Trump’s Next Power Grab Doesn’t Need a Mob

Forget Jan 6th. Trump’s next move is smarter, and far more dangerous: use the courts, AI & right-wing militias to erase millions of Americans from the vote — legally. It’s not a theory. It’s a plan. James Carville isn’t a man prone to panic, but when he says, “I would not put it at all past [Trump] to try to call martial law or declare that there’s some kind of national emergency,” around next year’s elections it’s time to sit up straight. Speaking to NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo, Carville warned that as Donald Trump sees a political shellacking coming in the 2026 midterms — particularly in states like New Jersey and Virginia — he may try something extreme to hold onto power. “The hoof prints are coming,” Carville said, and he’s not wrong.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Jul. 3, 2025

Trump’s Tax Cuts Come with a Body Count — Starting with Grandma

Trump's "Big Ugly Bill" isn't just cruel: it's the latest salvo in the war against democracy and the "We" society… Societies are typically organized along one of two lines: "We" or "Me." We societies drive wealth and rights from the bottom up; Me societies do it from the top down, much like the kingdoms of old. It's a choice every nation must make. Franklin Roosevelt turned America into a We society with the New Deal; Reagan began the process of turning us into a Me society with the Reagan Revolution. And his and the GOP's efforts are now coming to full fruition.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Jul. 2, 2025

Alligator Alcatraz Isn’t Just a Prison. It’s a Mirror. And It’s Asking Us: Who Are We, Really?

The most dangerous thing about Alligator Alcatraz isn't the alligators. It's the message... When Louise and I lived in Germany in 1986/87, we visited Dachau with our family. The crematoriums shocked our children, but even more so because this was simply a "detention facility" and not one of Hitler's death camps. The ovens were for those who had been worked to death or killed by cholera. The death camps, it turns out, were all located outside of Germany so Dear Leader could deny responsibility for them. You know, like Gitmo. Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" (aka the "GOP Donor Fellatio Act") contains a 13-fold increase in ICE's budget, turning it into the largest single (secret, masked) police force in America, along with, in aggregate, close to $100 billion to build a new series of "detention facilities" all across America.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Jul. 1, 2025

Modernization Theory: The Key to Understanding the GOP’s Hatred of the Middle Class

Why Republicans want to destroy the hidden link between Middle Class wealth and democratic power… A Pew poll published last week finds that 59% of Americans say the GOP's "Big Beautiful Bill" that cuts taxes for billionaires and raises them for working-class people "would hurt lower-income people and 51% think it would hurt middle-income people." And they're right. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the bill will measurably reduce the income and spending power of low- and middle-income people while giving a ~$4 trillion gift to the morbidly rich. Americans have figured this out: according to a Fox "News" poll published last week and reported on by Newsweek: "Only 38 percent favored the bill, while 59 percent opposed it, a 21-point gap against the bill. About half of all voters believed the legislation would be detrimental to their families, and just a quarter thought it would deliver any benefit." So, why would Republicans want to further reduce the size and wealth of America's middle class?

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