Hartmann Report

The Trump presidency is the most corrupt in American history — and now it's openly breaking laws, ignoring judges, and threatening us all with the power of the state… Criminals always gonna crime. The Trump administration is the most corrupt in, arguably, the entire history of the United States. Never before has a president charged $1 million a head for people to have dinner with him, openly catered to campaign donors or offered to gut regulations in exchange for a big donation, and ran a scam crypto operation out of the White House. He's also the first convicted felon and accused rapist to serve as president. And now he's threatening to put people like you and me in prison or even deport us to a foreign torture chamber. The highest levels of the Trump administration are embracing their boss's criminality full-on right now, refusing to acknowledge a legal court order to not deport people to El Salvador. Judge Boasberg has scheduled a hearing for next week to determine if he's going to hold any of Trump's lawyers in contempt, a process that could see them incarcerated, fined, and/or facing the loss of their law licenses.

A nuanced look at real trade policy vs. political cosplay with global stakes… Are we liberated yet? People of a certain age will remember Yosemite Sam chasing Bugs Bunny around with a shotgun, blasting holes in walls, ceilings, and windows while completely missing his target. It's the perfect metaphor for Trump's tariff policy announced yesterday. Trump is acting as if tariffs were a form of warfare, and he's "fighting back" against the countries that have "taken advantage of us." This is how he's behaving like Yosemite Sam with his blunderbuss, shooting everywhere and just making a mess while missing the target altogether. He's not only throwing wild tariffs on every country that trades with America (except Russia), but he also put a flat 10% tariff on every product imported into the United States (except from Russia).

Last night, the richest man on Earth lost his first high-profile political test — and the American people won a small but significant victory for democracy. Elon Musk poured money into Wisconsin in an effort to handpick a state Supreme Court justice, but voters rejected his candidate and, with that, sent a clear signal: the morbidly rich don’t own us. Not yet, anyway. But the fight has only just begun.

The GOP Built a Propaganda Empire. Democrats Built a Consultancy Firm. For at least a few decades, Republicans and Democrats have been following two very different strategies when it comes to political messaging. And the GOP is doing it effectively — making big, bold statements — while cautious Democrats are getting wiped out. Republicans are leading public opinion while Democrats are trying to chase it. That does not work. The essence of the problem is that the corporate wing of the Democratic Party tells their politicians and ad people that they need to pay careful attention to public polling and calibrate their positions around "where the public is at." And, of course, don't take positions (like Medicare for All) that would offend donors (insurance companies, in this case). The results are "safe," focus-grouped policies that fail to inspire or move voters. And, even more importantly, don't change public opinion itself.

Undermine democracy. Destroy institutions. Divide the people. Loot the country. Collapse it from the inside out… If Putin wanted to kill America, how would he best do it? Exactly like this: — Install a puppet or ally inside the government; as Lincoln foresaw, a tyrant doesn’t need to invade. He just needs to rise from within. Trump has repeatedly echoed Kremlin talking points, undermined NATO, attacked Ukraine, praised autocrats, and created chaos at home. If Putin picked a candidate, it would be Trump — and the intelligence community has confirmed Russian efforts to help him win in both 2016 and 2020...

The Democratic Party is facing a crisis that it’s experienced only once before in its history: the near-complete loss, for multiple generations, of control of the Senate—and thus the loss of any say in the makeup of the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court. Within the next two decades, half of the population of the United States will live in just eight states and be represented by only 16 (out of 100) senators.37 Right now, about two-thirds of the US population lives in just 15 states, represented by only 30 senators (and thus 30 percent of the Senate). There’s history here, and Democrats need to learn from it fast.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — DOGE plans to re-program Social Security. — Are Trump and Putin carving up the planet? — Trump’s message to America: Scam the people, get a pardon. — The resistance in America is alive and doing well: stay engaged! — Bribe the president, get an exemption from pollution rules? — Georgia police jailed another woman for having a miscarriage. — Scientists are alarmed as the Trump administration goes to war against mRNA science. Seriously folks? — Crazy Alert! Tucker Carlson Says He Doesn’t Want to Fly on a Plane with a Vaccinated Pilot: “It’s Too Dangerous.” — Hunter in a Farmer’s World: ADHD: Can You Find Your Positivity Patterns? — Wisdom School: Can Humans Truly Perceive the Future?

How the GOP's war on empathy turned America into a playground for billionaires and psychopaths... "In my work with the defendants [at Nuremberg], I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men." — Captain Gustave Gilbert, the US army psychologist assigned to observe the Nazi defendants at the Nuremberg trials.

Masked ICE agents are now snatching dissidents off the streets like a scene from Stalin's Russia. This isn't speculative fiction. It's happening right now, in America… This is how it begins. Tuesday night, Tufts University PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk was going out to a restaurant to meet friends when masked federal ICE agents dressed in street clothes seized her off a public sidewalk and disappeared her. Her apparent crime was co-authoring an op-ed critical of Trump and Netanyahu. Where is she now? At first, nobody knew. As her attorney told The New York Times: "We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her." Then it was revealed last night — as the video of her kidnapping went viral — that she's been transported to a violent ICE facility in Louisiana. Yeah, that place. Without any legal due process that anybody can identify.

No matter how hard you try, the world won't forget. The lies, the corruption, and the betrayal are etched into history, a stain that will follow your party for generations… Dear Republicans, Here we go again. A large chunk of Trump's cabinet and our national security leaders just endangered our country and our pilots who were flying over Yemen with their arrogance and frank stupidity. Their lies about it were so egregious that Jeffrey Goldberg published the actual transcript in The Atlantic this morning. Only the best people, right?