Hartmann Report

The commons, unions, and a livable wage built the first mass middle class. Now younger voters want to reboot that machine at full throttle… The media is freaking out over a new Rasmussen poll that found: "A majority of voters under 40 want a democratic socialist to win the White House in the next presidential election. "… 51% of Likely U.S. Voters ages 18 to 39 would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election. Thirty-six percent (36%) don't want a democratic socialist to win in 2028, while 17% are not sure. … "Among the youngest cohort (ages 18-24) of voters, 57% want a democratic socialist to win the next presidential election… "Among those who voted for Kamala Harris in last year's presidential election, 78% would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election…" (emphasis added) I was on Ali Velshi's MSNOW show yesterday morning discussing this, along with Michael Green who recently wrote a thought-provoking article about how the official poverty line in America is completely out-of-date and out of touch with the needs of most Americans. I shared a few statistics from my recent book The Hidden History of the American Dream: the Demise of the Middle Class and How to Rescue Our Future:

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both." —Louis D. Brandeis, Other People’s Money. Jakelin Caal Maquin was only seven years old when she died in the custody of our government.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — How do we save journalism and democracy? — Is Our Gun Culture Grooming People to Kill? — Does Trump's Chief of Staff have Russia ties? — The Billionaire Protection Program at the Department of Justice rolls on — Jack Smith has the goods on Trump's criminal activity and Republicans in the House don't want you to hear the details. — How strange is it that the GOP has the urge to jump off the health-care cliff? — Bob Kennedy's Children's Health Defense anti-vax group is circulating disinformation at the height of a measles outbreak, according to reporting in The Guardian. — Geeky Science. Feeling awe and wonder actually improves your health, both mental, emotional, and physical.

A palace rising on public ground while the affordability crisis tightens its grip isn't just bad optics, it's a betrayal of the idea of America… The White House has always mattered because of what it represents. It was never supposed to be a palace; it was meant to be the people's house, a physical reminder that power in America is borrowed, temporary, and accountable. That's why the news that Donald Trump is turning it into a 400 million dollar monument to himself should stop every American cold. This isn't a routine renovation. What Trump first floated as a ballroom has ballooned into a massive two story complex with sweeping staircases, private residential quarters, and a secure bridge connecting it directly to the presidential residence.

A stark look at the speech that blurred the line between leadership and losing control on the world stage… Let me take off my psychotherapist hat and simply speak as a parent, an adult, a businessman, a citizen, and a human being. There is something deeply and fundamentally wrong with Donald Trump,

When politicians hand the gun industry a liability shield, they're not "protecting freedom,"they're protecting a business model built on body counts… America's 465th mass shooting in 2025, this one at Brown University in Rhode Island, should remind us all that it's insane that the GOP passed and Bush signed into law the so-called Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) in 2006 that largely gives immunity from liability lawsuits to the gun industry (and only the gun industry). It's time to end the predator-state coalition in America, of which this is just one glaring example.

Trump calls it "Trump Derangement Syndrome" when we object to cruelty and division. The real story is what that hate is doing to America's democracy, and when we finally push back… I have Trump Derangement Syndrome and so does much of America and much of the world. That's not a confession of mental illness: it's an indictment of a political era defined by cruelty, division, and the deliberate poisoning of democratic life. "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is the phrase Donald Trump and his followers love to fling at anyone who dares to object to his behavior. But the truth is simpler and far more damning: if millions of Americans and people across the globe are reacting with alarm, anger, and outrage, it's because Trump has spent years earning that reaction.

In 11 months, we'll have an opportunity to retrieve our democracy from the clutches of the morbidly rich, the ideologues who deify them (and have for millennia), & their bought-&-paid-for politicians… The idea is as old as western civilization: "The morbidly rich are born to rule the rest of us." And now, with a billionaire as president, 13 billionaires in his cabinet, and rightwing billionaires installing and spiffing Republican Supreme Court justices, it's become the operational assumption of the GOP.

"There is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with “the money touch,” but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers." —Theodore Roosevelt, 1913 letter to Sir Edward Grey Make no mistake: Trump wasn’t president because of his policies, his qualifications, or even primarily because of his base. He was president because America’s wealthiest class funded his rise, protected his power, and enabled his worst instincts, at least so long as he delivered the goods..

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The Trump Grinch that stole America! — MAGA, meet the pothole: Trump floats withholding road money and refusing to pave roads in the Red states of his own base. — Grand Theft Retirement: Trump’s GOP war on Social Security and Medicare rolls on. — “Who is Antifa?” FBI Director can’t say because it’s not a membership club. — Merry Christmas: the EU just kicked Trump and Putin in the nuts. — Detained for “looking Somali”: ICE goon grabs a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis. — What happened to Republican’s love of states’ rights? — Not a Palace: National Trust sues to stop Trump’s “Presidential Ballroom.”