Hartmann Report

The maintenance and growth of a middle class depends on wages rising over time, both to keep up with inflation and to steadily improve the lot of working people, as America saw between 1933 and 1981. But working-class wages have been steadily declining ever since the Reagan Revolution, and it can’t entirely be attributed to the GOP’s war on organized labor. It turns out that income taxes are another way conservative and neoliberal policies have taken a chunk out of the income and wealth of working people, but not in the way you probably think. In fact, income taxes affect working class people in a completely different way than they impact the morbidly rich.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Has The Supreme Court dealt a "deathblow to the rule of law?" — Trump has decided that it's a crime to be unpatriotic and has also proclaimed the you have to be loyal to him to be patriotic. The good news is the fightback. — Have Republicans reached the point of no return, no matter what they do? — California Governor Gavin Newsom goes to war against Fox and Trump. — Now that Musk, Big Balls, and his merry band have fired so many people from the Social Security Administration that people are experiencing days-long wait times to sign up for benefits, the agency has stopped reporting wait times. — Goodbye to a hero: Bill Moyers (1934-2025). — Self-censorship: Don't let this happen to us.

Once constrained by grown-ups in the room, Trump now surrounds himself with suckups. The result? A perfect storm of immaturity, cruelty, and power… Claiming that Donald Trump is a sociopath has become so common it’s pretty much a cliché these days. That said, most people don’t know what sociopathy is or what they can expect from — or how to identify — a sociopath. I did a deep dive into Trump’s childhood and history to discover the roots of his behavior — and how we can deal with it and repair America from it — in my newest book The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink. What I found was fascinating and provides an easy way for people with no training in psychology to identify not only Trump’s problem but to figure out who else in their lives may incline toward sociopathy (CEOs are particularly notorious; some suggest it’s what makes them ruthless but successful). The easy way to describe sociopathy to a lay person is to explain that if young children were tested for the condition they’d often test positive for the disorder, which is referred to by professionals (and the DSM) as “Antisocial Personality Disorder” (ASPD).

When cruelty is moved out of sight, it's easier to pretend it doesn't exist — until history writes it down in blood… The American people just got a taste of authoritarianism wrapped in judicial robes. In a stunning 6-3 ruling this week, the Supreme Court greenlit the mass deportation of immigrants, not to their home countries but to third nations where they have no legal status, no family, and often no hope. In her dissent, Justice Sonja Sotomayor, calling the shadow docket ruling "inexcusable," pointed out how destructive this is to the rule of law (both US and international law largely prohibit this) and to the lives of the people who may be deported without due process

The morbidly rich hide behind patriotism, drown us in lies, and strip the nation bare while we're told to blame our neighbors... An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. —Plutarch People wonder out loud why the Trump administration would lie to us so frequently and so egregiously when the truth is so obvious. Just in the past few days... The dirty little secret about fascism, authoritarianism, or whatever else you want to call the form of government Trump's trying to impose on the United States is that it's not even remotely legitimate governance on behalf of We the People but instead is merely a setup to steal everything that's not nailed down.

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.