Hartmann Report

Trump may or may not be the GOP’s nominee this time next year, but, whoever it is, now is the time to harden our democracy against a neofascist MAGA Republican rising to that office... Americans need to seriously consider, right now, what life and government in America would look like if a MAGA Republican became president. The lead story across much of the media last night was that Donald Trump might bring Jeffrey Clark — the crackpot lawyer who hatched the phony electors scheme — into the Department of Justice as Attorney General, should he get reelected in 2024. That would be bad, but it’s not where people need to be looking for the most severe danger in a second Trump presidency.

In addition to stepping up to mitigate climate change & green the world’s economy, the free nations must harden our democracies against reactive rightwing violence & hate-based political movements... The government of the Netherlands fell last week. The issue that tipped it over the edge was immigration driven by climate change. If Putin wanted to destroy democracy in Europe (and he does), back in 2015 he couldn’t have picked a better strategy. Odds are, though, he was just trying to protect his deepwater ports; it wasn’t until the crisis developed that he realized how he could exploit it to overthrow liberal democracies in the EU. The way it’s played out gives us a glimpse into our future — and the future of democratic republics all across the world — as the global climate emergency and the refugee crisis associated with it grows more severe over the next few years. The current rise-of-rightwing-fascism crisis building in Europe began in 2010 and started with global climate change.

"The Court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons, and to authorize this Court to use the common-law process of case-by-case judicial lawmaking to define the contours of acceptable gun control policy. Absent compelling evidence that is nowhere to be found in the Court’s opinion, I could not possibly conclude that the Framers made such a choice." —Justice John Paul Stevens’s dissenting opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Republicans on the Supreme Court are just not that into you… — The true story of an armed assassin. Inspired by a terrorist leader. On a mission to kill an American President — Finally, white women have a hate group of their own and the mainstream media loves them. — Antiabortion groups are going to love this Sacramento sheriff who’s turning license plate data over to anti-abortion states. — And by-the-way: They are coming for your birth control! — Trump is Screwed Alert! Mar-a-Lago photos reveal classified docs were unguarded and spilled out during Trump party. — Congress is next? — Crazy Alert! Oklahoma Superintendent says about infamous Tulsa massacre, “Let's not tie it to skin color…”

As the Economy Recovers, Republicans Want to Destroy Your Generation, too. Don't Let Them... Is it just that they’re evil? Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was pulling no punches in calling out her six Republican colleagues on the Supreme Court in the student loan case, Biden v Nebraska. None of the Republican states suing would have lost a penny had Biden’s student loan forgiveness program gone forward; there was no injured party and therefore no standing to even be before the Court. “[T]he Court,” she wrote, “by deciding this case, exercises authority it does not have. It violates the Constitution.” Additionally, the law being debated (the HEROES Act) specifically gave the administration the power — it’s literally spelled out in the statute — to forgive student debt. Which is why Kagan called out the radical Republicans for rewriting a law authored by Congress and signed by a president, a power that is not found anywhere in the Constitution.

With the help of a Trump-appointed federal judge, who was the perfect patsy, because he’d previously drunk the Kool-Aid on Covid, masks, and vaccines... First off, if you have access to a Netflix account, watch the short documentary Eldorado as soon as you possibly can. Then re-read this article. It will take on a new meaning. President Biden and a large swath of the federal government have been legally barred — under threat of federal prison — from communicating with Twitter, Facebook, and other social media about lies and misinformation that “conservatives” may have posted on those sites.

Media consolidation that’s happened since the Reagan Revolution makes our overall media landscape much easier to seize, control, and manipulate should our government ever flip fully fascist... Last week’s holiday weekend gave Louise and me an opportunity to take a week off to visit a few friends and take a break from American politics. Instead, we got a splash of cold water in the face; it’s an amazing story... ... in Portugal, at the home of an old friend who spent much of his career as a reporter and then senior-level media executive... he told Louise and me about the new project he’s working on with a loose group of people scattered across several EU countries. It involves preparing for something that, I confess, hadn’t even been on my conscious radar: helping safely smuggle American reporters and opinion writers — and their families — out of the US in the event of a sudden fascist takeover and press crackdown by a figure openly hostile to reporting like Trump or DeSantis.

Tragically, for the third time in our nation’s history, patriots who believe in the ideals of July 4, 1776 have to 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”?

Student debt is a crime, weakening our intellectual infrastructure while maintaining and rigidifying racial and class caste systems inherited from the eras of slavery and indenture... Six Republicans on the Supreme Court just killed President Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness program. Republicans, predictably, are giddy, celebrating another Supreme Court victory in which, on behalf of their neofascist billionaire owners, they’re again “owning the libs.” They’re ecstatic that poor and working class people — particularly Black women who, as ABC News noted, “hold nearly two-thirds of the nearly $2 trillion outstanding student debt in the U.S.” — will find it ever harder to climb into the middle class, which increasingly requires a college degree.

"The War on Drugs employs millions—politicians, bureaucrats, policemen, and now the military—that probably couldn’t find a place for their dubious talents in a free market, unless they were to sell pencils from a tin cup on street corners." — Science-fiction author and political activist L. Neil Smith