Hartmann Report

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

Senator Alex Padilla asked a question. The regime answered with fists, lies, and a chilling promise: "We're not going away." We're now living in an early-stage police state. After California Senator Alex Padilla was assaulted for saying, "I'm Senator Alex Padilla and I have question for the Secretary," DHS Secretary and notorious puppy murderer Kristi Noem went on Fox "News" and lied to the American people, saying that he hadn't identified himself, she didn't know who he was, and that he was "lunging into the room." The violence inflicted on Padilla was the point. And it's being celebrated in real time by MAGA, Fox, and the Trump administration.

By rewriting history, staging propaganda events, and testing the military's loyalty, is Trump laying the groundwork for a future coup attempt? Robert E. Lee killed more Americans than Hitler. More than Khrushchev. More than King George III, Ho Chi Minh, or Kim Il Sung. He killed more Americans than we've lost in every war since the American Revolution, combined. He was the largest mass murderer of Americans in our nation's history. General Lee was not a good man: he was a morbidly rich oligarch who not only bought and sold enslaved human beings but delighted in whipping and torturing them.

Step by Step, MAGA Is normalizing repression and setting America up for tyranny. Will we wait, like so many before us, until the knock comes to our own door? "The fog crept in on little cat feet." — Carl Sandburg, Fog (1916) Eventually, people in countries that are in the process of flipping from democracy to fascism figure out that they're now living in a dictatorship; by then, however, it's usually too late. For people in Hungary, it was May, 2020 when Orbán started arresting people for their Facebook posts. For folks in Russia it was when Navalny and his supporters were first assaulted in public and then arrested and sent to brutal gulags in Siberia. For Germans, it was July 14, 1933 — six months after he became chancellor — when Hitler outlawed all political parties except his own.

Helicopters, uniforms, and flags used like weapons. Now Marines are prowling American streets. This is how democracies die — in prime time… Trump wants blood. The spectacle is the point. The helicopters. The uniforms. The rumble of armored personnel carriers down the boulevards of Los Angeles. The former president of the United States — now reinstalled in the White House through a judicial (Citizens United) and electoral (Musk's money and X) sleight-of-hand that would make Orbán proud — is sending U.S. Marines into an American city. Marines who are trained in killing people. Quickly, efficiently, ruthlessly. Not crowd control, not defending the Constitutional right to protest, not arresting and Mirandizing: just shedding blood. Blowing things up and killing people is what this most lethal fighting force in the world does so well. And Trump just sent them into our civilian streets.

If you think this ends with L.A., you haven't been paying attention. This is Portland 2.0 — but scaled up, and aimed at the soul of American democracy… Trump: Well, we're going to have troops everywhere. Reporter: What's the bar for sending in the Marines? Trump: The bar is what I think it is. The 2026 and 2028 elections may have just gotten a lot more distant. First, the backstory. It was around 2 a.m. on July 15, 2020, when Mark Pettibone, then 29, was walking home from a relatively calm Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Portland. He hadn't done anything more provocative than wearing a black shirt; no slogans, no mask, no glimmers of violence. Yet moments later, an unmarked minivan pulled up alongside him. Out jumped several armed men in camouflage, with no insignia, slipped a bag over his head and kidnapped him.