Hartmann Report

War is the deadliest distraction in the authoritarian's playbook… Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war. — Mark Anthony in Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar In the modern era, it was probably George W. Bush who first said it out loud and then acted on it: When you're unpopular and losing politically, just start a little war that's easily winnable and you'll be back on top. As he told his biographer, Mickey Herskowitz, in 1999 about his plans for an Iraq war as a strategy to get himself re-elected in 2004: "One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of (Kuwait) and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." It worked for Bush, although history hasn't been kind to him as a result. Trump's second presidency, meanwhile, has been an unmitigated disaster, both in real terms and politically as his approval ratings have slipped so far underwater they're in late-years Nixon territory

The American Dream of owning your own home is the opposite of homelessness: housing is one of the primary essentials of life. A functioning society requires sufficient affordable housing, something that is more and more slipping away from Americans every day. It seems that everywhere you look in America you see the tragedy of homelessness. Rarely, though, do you hear that Wall Street is helping cause it. Thirty-two percent seems to be the magic threshold, according to new research funded by the real estate listing company Zillow.[cvii] When neighborhoods hit rent rates in excess of 32 percent of neighborhood income, homelessness explodes. And we’re seeing it play out right in front of us in cities across America because a handful of Wall Street billionaires want to make a killing.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Will we regret Trump being able to use a nuclear weapon? — A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals backed Trump's National Guard deployment to LA: what will this mean for other Blue cities Trump is trying to provoke to riot? — Racist Alert! Did Trump ever complain before about too many holidays? Why just on Juneteenth? — Look out! Retirees being forced into privatized, for-profit, rip-off Medicare "Advantage" plans. — Astonishing: Give Trump a million dollars and you get to become an Army officer, complete with uniform and everybody must salute you! You, too, can play warrior if you're a large enough Trump donor! — Geeky Science. Will Children born now live in a world where the US can only produce half as much of its key food crops? — Bob Kennedy and his anti-vaccine freaks were just caught lying to Congress again about the COVID-19 vaccine, just as a new variant touting a "razor-blade sore throat" arrives.

Autocrats follow a predictable playbook. Learn how we can disrupt their rise before revolution or civil war become the only solutions... The Trump administration has arrested a mayor, a judge, a member of Congress, and beaten a United States Senator to the ground. They've deployed the military, over the objections of the governor and mayor, into a major American city. We just experienced a political assassination. The nation's chief law-enforcement officer, DHS Secretary Noem, asserted: "We are staying here to liberate the city [of Los Angeles] from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city." The president demanded a military parade for his birthday and is threatening to revoke broadcast licenses from television networks. The Trump regime is ignoring court orders, including one from the Supreme Court, and Trump's press secretary says: "The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process." What does all this mean?

A sinister Republican bond scheme could price you out of justice — forever... Right now, the only thing that's preventing Trump from going full dictator is the federal court system and our ability to challenge his unlawful, unconstitutional behavior in it. Republicans in the Senate think they have a fix for that, though. It's a good-news, bad-news scenario, although the bad is far worse than anything most of us could have imagined. The good news is that Republicans in the Senate have removed the provision in their Kill Medicaid To Pay For Tax Cuts For Billionaires ("Big Beautiful Bill") legislation that would have prevented courts from being able to hold Trump's people from being held in contempt of court when they refuse to follow court orders. The bad news is that they've replaced it with a provision in Section 70302 of the bill that will make it all but impossible for anybody — other than billionaires and giant corporations — to sue the Trump administration for dictatorial behavior (or anything else) in federal court.

Why America must confront the corrosive force that Trump is trying to use to tear us apart... Yesterday, I spoke with you about the importance of our government embracing free speech and not trying to stifle it or intimidate (or deport) people for unpopular political writings. Today, let's examine the flip side of that argument: hate speech, the power and danger of hate itself, and how we defeat it as Trump tries to use it to manipulate us. Hate is poison; it never makes anything better. It's corrosive like an acid, eats away at our empathy and reason, and eventually destroys our very humanity. When nations are consumed by hate — like Germany was in the 1930s, or the American South was during Jim Crow — the result is invariably the destruction of civil society and its replacement with political, economic, and legal systems based in and dependent upon violence.

A chilling tale of detention, interrogation, and exile for the 'crime' of writing a blog. "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." — Benjamin Franklin The Trump administration just refused to allow an Australian writer entry to America because he'd penned articles on his personal blog critical of the administration's support for the Netanyahu government's Gaza policies. Whether you support or oppose those policies, this should shock every American.

We stand at the tipping point — one decision will define our future… House Speaker Mike Johnson says that California Governor Gavin Newsom should be "tarred and feathered" because he's going along with protestors who object to Trump's fascist behavior. The vast majority of political violence over the past 15 years has been committed by rightwing goons and assassins, culminating in Minneapolis last weekend. Trump is inserting Marines into an American city against the will and wishes of the mayor and that state's governor and just rolled out a North Korea-style military parade. Next, he wants to give billionaires another $5 trillion tax gift funded by borrowed money you and your children will have to pay back. And now he's changed the veterans administration rules so doctors and nurses can refuse to provide services to veterans who are registered as Democrats. Seriously, not making that up. How did we get here?

Free education built America’s middle class; it’s the foundation of the American Dream. Taiwan and Japan — island nations with few natural resources that have both used the brainpower of their people to become among the richest in the world — demonstrate the importance of a nation having a large number of well-educated citizens. Don’t tell that to the GOP, though. In early 2023, six Republicans on the Supreme Court killed President Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness program. Republicans, predictably, were giddy, celebrating another Supreme Court victory in which, on behalf of their billionaire owners, they were again “owning the libs.”

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Today is No Kings Day — Federal District Judge Charles Breyer (the brother of former SCOTUS Justice Stephen Breyer) just ruled Trump's deployment of the National Guard to LA illegal. — Trump's border czar says, "We'll flood liberal cities with ICE raids." — The FBI took down Senator Padilla when he tried to ask a question of Cosplay Kristi, but the FBI had escorted him into the room with her in the first place. — Speaking of the press, it appears that police in LA are intentionally targeting reporters with "non-lethal" rounds that can cause severe and permanent damage. — Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman reports on the new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) evaluation of the GOP's "Big Beautiful" tax cut for billionaires and it's shocking. — California Governor Gavin Newsom takes down Trump. — Hegseth has apparently come up with a plan to invade Greenland