Hartmann Report

How "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime" is rewriting American justice… I'm not just worried; I'm enraged. We're watching our system of government being systematically, step-by-step refashioned into a surveillance-fueled engine of political vengeance. Even worse, the same chilling logic that ruled Stalin's courts — "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime" — has become this administration's sinister operating principle. It retrofits guilt to the target, not justice to evidence.

The last moments to resist are slipping away, and history shows once fascism's grip tightens, it rarely loosens… Trump's now raiding the homes and launching investigations into political insiders who've publicly criticized him; other former Trump administration officials are clamming up. We've entered the phase of this transition to fascism where objections to his actions are "chilled." Remember Jade Helm in 2015? The Obama administration was running a "joint realistic military training (RMT)" exercise led by the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), coordinated across several branches including Army Special Forces (Green Berets), Navy SEALs, Air Force Special Ops, Marine Corps forces, the 82nd Airborne, and other interagency partners. It was conducted across seven states — primarily in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado — and overseen from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The objective was to train special forces in maneuvering through civilian populations and operating in varied terrain to simulate overseas combat environments like in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it made rightwingers absolutely hysterical, with wall-to-wall coverage on Fox "News" and across the nation's 1500 hate-radio stations.

As I mentioned in the opening chapter of this book, when my Boomer generation was the same average age as the Millennial generation is today, back in 1990, our generation held 21.3% of the nation’s wealth. Louise and I shared in that wealth; although we were still in our 30s, in 1990 we owned a profitable small business (our fourth) and a nice home in suburban Atlanta. Millennials today, in contrast, are about the same number of people as Boomers were in 1990 but hold only 4.6% of the nation’s wealth and, if they’re the same age I was in 1990, they’re most likely struggling to own a home, are deeply in debt, and find it nearly impossible to start a small business. And the story for Zoomers is pretty much the same.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Last weekend, John Bolton told ABC News that he thought Trump’s FBI would be coming after him; yesterday, they did. — Now we see why Trump’s people moved Ghislaine Maxwell from a high-security women’s prison to the nation’s cushiest country club facility where she can leave during the day to take a job. — Tina Peters was a Colorado county clerk who criminally helped Trump partisans hack into voting machines in an attempt to prove he won the 2020 election and is now serving 8 1/2 years in prison for her multiple crimes involving that. — Trump goes after the only Black woman on the Fed’s Board of Governors. — The Republican war against science hits the Supreme Court and even John Roberts gagged on it. — Say what?! Trump wants to investigate all 55 million people with visas to make sure none are engaged in “support for terrorism,” which appears to be rightwing code for “critical of Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza and land thefts on the West Bank.” — Is a 100-seat permanent Republican majority Trump’s gerrymandering endgame? — A New York appellate court confirms that Trump and his real estate empire committed massive tax and insurance fraud.

Every gerrymander, purge, and press attack tightens the screw — until the system is locked and the tyrant holds the only key… With the raid on John Bolton's home, it looks like we may have reached that stage when fascist governments begin to turn against their critics, weaponizing the tools of a police state. Richard Nixon went after his enemies, too, and once said, in the depths of the Watergate scandal, that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." He discovered the hard way that wasn't true, at least back in the 1970s. More than 40 people connected to his White House and campaign were indicted, and many went to prison. Nixon's Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, Domestic Policy Advisor John Ehrlichman, White House Counsel John Dean, Attorney General John Mitchell, and special counsel Charles Colson all did time. So did several members of Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President, better known as CREEP, for their crimes of burglary, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy. Nixon himself escaped accountability only because Gerald Ford pardoned him. That experience left a permanent scar on America's political consciousness, but it also left a roadmap that Trump and his inner circle are determined not to follow. They have no intention of being, like Nixon and his people, crooks who lost their grip on power. They're apparently making plans to guarantee it never happens to them.

Republicans have mastered storytelling. Unless Democrats learn to fight on cultural ground, their policies will never matter… Gavin Newsom knows that politics isn’t just about policy papers or legislative roll calls; it’s about culture, imagery, and the stories people tell each other. That’s why he’s been trolling Trump online with parody memes and razor-sharp mockery that’s spread faster than any campaign ad ever could. The effect is unmistakable: Newsom is shifting the cultural battlefield, showing that Democrats can seize the same terrain of humor and symbolism Republicans have dominated since Nixon’s “law and order” days; he’s left conservative pundits — particularly on Fox “News” — sputtering. It’s the kind of cultural jujitsu that Antonio Gramsci imagined — flipping power by seizing the symbols and frames of your opponent — and it’s the kind of thing Democrats have needed to do for years but haven’t successfully pulled off since the days of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society.

Loyalty oaths, banned history, forced obedience: the right isn't hiding anymore. They're telling us exactly what kind of dictatorship they want… In his novel 1984, George Orwell warned, "Those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future." Today, Trump and the GOP have weaponized that prophecy, twisting it into the foundation of their crusade to Make America White Again. What they are building is not a political movement but a parallel nation — a MAGAstan — where loyalty oaths replace truth, history is scrubbed clean of slavery and racism, and authoritarian obedience is demanded in the name of patriotism. This is America's homegrown Taliban, and they're no longer pretending to hide their intentions.

From Putin's whispers to an executive order in the making, Trump openly declares his intent to shred America's electoral system for 2026 before our eyes… Yesterday, Donald Trump crossed another line that no president in our history has ever dared to touch. With the echo of Vladimir Putin's whisper in his ear, in front of President Zelenskyy and seven other European leaders, Trump announced he's preparing an executive order to ban mail-in ballots and even outlaw voting machines across America ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

He promised to drain the swamp — instead he filled it with billionaires, crooks, and fascists… Donald Trump represents the most recent — and destructive — iteration of the American right. The old Confederacy was built on rightwing oligarchy and racism; since the Democratic Party abandoned the Klan and the Lost Cause in the 1960s, the Republicans picked up that mantle. And Trump, a lifelong racist, was ideally suited to lead the new GOP movement. Trump exclusively serves whoever pays the biggest bribes, either in cash, 747s, or votes, who today are mostly big, monopolistic businesses, the morbidly rich, foreign dictators, so-called "Christian" hustlers, and the Republican base of male white supremacist racists. Lyndon Johnson famously said of Nixon's "Law and Order" racism campaign: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

When I was starting and building small businesses, I never relied on a member of Congress or a government agency to do me a favor or bend the rules. I have never given campaign contributions to politicians in hopes of getting favors that would help my business. I have never hired a lobbyist to try to amend laws that would serve my financial interest. And this is generally true of all the hundreds of thousands of sole proprietors and partnerships and small businesses across America. But that is not how big-time corporate America operates. To them making large campaign contributions and spending millions of dollars each year on lobbyists is just another investment that pays off handsomely. Their motto (in behavior, if not in fact) is You’ve got to pay to play.