Hartmann Report

From the founding of our republic, protecting the power of the press to call out anti-democratic behavior has been a firewall, protecting our form of government. It is their job. Donald Trump and many of his supporters have explicitly promised to overturn American democracy, using Viktor Orbán's "illiberal democracy" Hungarian model — where the press is controlled, political opposition sidelined or imprisoned, and oligarchs run the government — as their model. But you rarely hear that from our media.

The billionaires and polluters who bribed SCOTUS Republicans just legalized poisoning our children and grandchildren... In 1904, O. Henry coined the phrase “banana republic” to describe a country where the government supports big business for the exclusive benefit of the morbidly rich. A government of, by, and for what that generation called the “fatcats” or the “robber barons.” The banana republic-ication of America just kicked into high gear, and, curiously, there’s been a virtual mainstream media blackout about it.

So, to answer the question about why Trump is polling better than Biden regardless of the realities in the fact-based world: “It’s the media, stupid.” Watching and reading American media, a certain bias becomes immediately evident: stories proliferate about pundits and a handful of Democrats calling for President Biden to drop out of the race, but they are almost never “balanced” by pointing out the massively larger number of Republicans (many now “former” or “never Trump” Republicans, but Republicans nonetheless) who are calling for Trump to drop out or be defeated. Why would this be?

As the drama of writing the Constitution for a new nation was going on during the summer of 1787 in Independence Hall in Philadelphia (then the home of the Pennsylvania Legislature), a different kind of drama was playing out in the streets of that city. It was, according to the newspapers of the day and the letters sent home from delegates to the Convention, a brutally hot, muggy, mosquito-infested summer in Philadelphia. This was during a time when the mechanisms of weather were largely unknown, and superstition was thickly merged with Christianity. Thus, on May 5, when a boy of about five years died of an apparent heatstroke, an elderly woman in town was accused of being the witch who’d cast a spell upon him.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The double standard — Louise and I are traveling and, over the past few days, have visited Sweden, Estonia, and Latvia — Wisdom School alert: How a Bacteria Almost Destroyed All Life on Earth — Hunter in a Farmer’s World Alert: ADHD: The Perception of Time

That's what's really going on here: for the zealots in the most extreme parts of the forced birth movement — which has taken control of the GOP — it's all about the punishment of women... Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and Project 2025 have some very specific plans for nationally resetting the legal status of half the American population, and they're using religion and "sin" to justify their bizarre imposition of 18th century values.

Tragically, for the third time in our nation's history, patriots who believe in the ideals of July 4, 1776 must defend America against those who don't... It's July 4th, the day we celebrate the founding of our nation and the values proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that was signed (more or less) on this day. But does today's America reflect the belief that all people "are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"?

The only remedy at this late stage in this 50+ yearlong campaign to remake America is a massive revolt this fall at the ballot box, turning Congress over to Democrats while holding the White House. Kevin Roberts, who heads the Heritage Foundation (largely responsible for Project 2025) just implicitly threatened Americans that if we don’t allow him and his hard-right movement to complete their transformation of America from a democratic republic into an authoritarian state, there will be blood in the streets.

In other words, Clarence Thomas says Jack Smith should go back to the Hague and prosecute European war criminals, because American war criminals and fascists are now officially immune... Now that the Supreme Court has made any president into a king who chooses to corruptly use the power granted them by six Republicans on the Supreme Court, the next step will be to end all prosecution of Donald Trump, now and for forever. Clarence Thomas — writing on behalf of the billionaires who have been bribing tipping him, Alito, Cavanaugh, and Gorsuch — initiated the process with Friday's "the president is a monarch" decision, reversing the Revolutionary War.

Six Republicans on the Supreme Court just gave Trump - should he become president again - Putin-like powers... They did it. The Supreme Court handed a massive victory to Donald Trump in this so-called “immunity” case, and it will probably take a year or more before there’s even a chance he’ll be held to trial for trying to overthrow the 2020 election and, thus, the government of the United States. As feared, the six Republicans on the Court essentially threw Trump’s sedition case back to the lower court (with caveats) where there will be numerous decisions to make — which are all further appealable, resetting the case so Trump can drag things out for another year or more — about whether the crimes he’s committed are “official” or “private/personal” acts. But that’s not the worst of it. They also turned Trump or any future fascist president into our first American king or führer.