Hartmann Report

Why the destruction of public institutions, the middle class, and government itself may not be a mistake — but the mission… Neal deGrasse Tyson makes a very relevant point this week: "If a foreign adversary snuck into our Federal budget and cut science research and education the way we're cutting it ourselves — strategically undermining America's long-term health, wealth, and security — we would likely consider it an act of war." Trump's administration just said you can't get the Covid vaccine unless you're over 65 or sick, setting up America for more death and disease.

In a legal sleight of hand, Republicans want to strip judges of their power to enforce rulings — because holding Trump in contempt might actually work… With almost no mention by our mainstream corporate press, Republicans in the House of Representatives are proposing to end all checks on the power of Donald Trump, effectively ending the American experiment of a democratic republic. It's shockingly anti-American. Since the only branch of government standing against Trump right now is the courts, Republicans believe they've found a way to end that resistance. Here's the backstory. The grand invention of our Founders, cribbed from the Iroquois Confederacy and following an outline Montesquieu suggested (based on his reading about Native Americans), was a three-branches-of-government system where each branch would act as a check on the power of the other two.

When greed replaces justice, and cruelty becomes policy, democracy dies not in darkness—but in plain sight, cheered on by those in power… At its deepest level, government is a moral force grounded in a moral view of the world. It may not comport with morality as most of us view it; the Saudi oppression of women, the Russian violence against the queer community, and the Iranian brutal suppression of that nation's democracy movement are all examples of things most Americans consider immoral. But each is grounded in a particular moral worldview that those governments and their leaders have adopted.

In 1935, Congress passed, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed, the National Labor Relations Act, often referred to as the Wagner Act, legalizing labor unions in the United States for the first time. It was referred to as “the most radical piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress.”[lvii] New York’s Democratic Senator Robert Wagner was the new law’s main author, and his legislative aide, Simon H. Rifkind, told Theodore J. St. Antoine in 1986 that there were several reasons for the law. First, there was considerable labor unrest across the nation; it had been particularly bloody over the preceding fifty or so years since the labor movement first emerged in a big way in the 1880s. Employers would hire private security companies or pay off local politicians and police to harass, beat, and often even kill workers to prevent unionization. One of the most infamous examples was the Ludlow Massacre in 1914.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — "Huge scandal": Internal documents catch Trump administration in massive Social Security lie. — How Trump's "Emergency" Powers Could Become Permanent. — Trump orders the FBI to lay off white collar crime in favor of hunting immigrants...Plus, apparently they're now harassing American journalists. — Georgia is forcing a brain-dead woman to complete her pregnancy and making her family foot the bill. — Trump ordered 15K workers to snitch & not a one did. — Geeky Science: Does 7000 steps keeps cancer away? — Crazy Alert! Why is the DHS looking at producing a reality show where immigrants compete for citizenship? — Here's your moment of Zen which provoked an angry rant from Donald Trump yesterday (Bruce Springsteen)

This is no accident. It's a coordinated attack on science, safety, and the truth—just in time for hurricane season… This disaster has me so angry I can barely type straight. Elon Musk and his phony "Department of Government Efficiency" — which isn't even a real government department, by the way — are systematically destroying the agencies that keep Americans alive when Mother Nature comes calling. And for what? Some twisted ideological experiment that's going to cost lives. The National Weather Service is falling apart right before hurricane season. They have 155 empty positions that should be filled with forecasters working around the clock to track storms and save lives.

Republicans in the House of Representatives voted out of committee early yesterday morning legislation that would strip as many as 14 million Americans of their Medicaid-based healthcare, including millions of seniors in nursing homes and children living in poverty. Ironically, Red states will be hit harder by this than Blue states, as they’re generally less capable of making up the loss of federal funds (Medicaid is administered at the state level with block grants from the feds). Which provokes some serious head-scratching among the pundit class; why would Republicans kneecap their own people? Do they really think they can get away with it, just to fund tax breaks for Elon, Mark, Jeff, and Donald? And, for that matter, why is it that Red states are so vulnerable to this GOP perfidy?

As Republicans slash Medicaid to fund tax breaks for the morbidly rich, America must decide: Do we honor our social contract or abandon it to greed? Here we are again, my friend, watching the age-old story play out before our eyes. The Republicans are preparing to hand out trillions in tax cuts to their billionaire benefactors, and how do they plan to pay for this latest giveaway to the oligarchy? By ripping healthcare away from 13.7 million Americans, including millions of our most vulnerable seniors who depend on Medicaid for their very survival. But this isn't just about healthcare policy. This is about the fundamental question that's defined America since the New Deal: Are we a society that believes in the common good, or are we returning to the brutal Social Darwinism of the Gilded Age?

The numbers are in. The evidence is overwhelming. And the silence is deadly. It’s time Democrats started calling this what it is: a decades-long criminal conspiracy to seize power by any means… Trump is an illegitimate president, but he’s not the first. The last Republican who was elected president without fraud or naked treason was Dwight D. Eisenhower. And it’s damn well past time that Democrats started telling the story. But let’s start with Trump, and then go to Nixon, Reagan, and Bush.

AI is not just another tech revolution. It's the perfect storm of surveillance, manipulation, and digital obedience — and the far right already has a head start… Pope Leo XIV just labeled AI one of the main threats facing humanity, saying it poses challenges to "human dignity, justice and labor." He's right, but it's even worse than that: it represents, unless it's rigorously regulated, a threat to democracy itself. In every generation, the enemies of democracy change costumes, but their playbook remains eerily familiar. They lie, divide, intimidate, and exploit every available tool to consolidate power. In the 1930s it was radio, in the 2010s it was social media, and now, in 2025, the newest and most dangerous weapon in the authoritarian arsenal is artificial intelligence. Make no mistake: AI is not just another technology. It is power, scaled. And in the hands of the far right, it becomes the most effective tool for dismantling democracy ever invented.