Hartmann Report

In last year’s election fully six Red states used illegal maps in defiance of the courts, keeping the House of Representatives and state legislatures in GOP hands through the 2022 balloting… Republican election theft used to be covert and was almost never covered by the press. Now they’re doing it out in the open and defying federal courts to stop them, while ignoring press coverage that outs what they’re up to. As Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers, the courts have neither sword nor purse: they don’t have any mechanism to force compliance with their rulings. So it appears that multiple Republican states have chosen to simply ignore their own courts, as well as the federal courts and the Supreme Court. This is a big step up from how they used to steal elections.

Understanding how they got here — and dragged the rest of us with them — may give us some clues to how to get out of this mess… "Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason." — Sir John Harington (1560-1612) Now that Donald Trump is openly calling for fascism in the United States, complete with concentration camps "for millions" including "Democrats" and "the media," it's a good time to look at how the GOP became so badly corrupted. Understanding how they got here — and dragged the rest of us with them — may give us some clues to how to get out of this mess. I was thirteen years old in 1964 when my dad, a Republican activist, gave me a copy of John Stormer's book "None Dare Call It Treason." The Goldwater campaign had sent it to him, and its claim that the State Department was filled with communists intent on handing America over to the USSR had his friends buzzing. Ironically, Stormer's book and the movement it ignited within the GOP is largely responsible for that party today standing on the precipice of fully endorsing fascism as an alternative to democracy in the US.

If the GOP's price for aid for Ukraine and Israel is to stop the flow of immigrants into this country for year or so, I say pay the ransom… It may be time for Democrats to engage in some good-old-fashioned backroom dealmaking. If they do it right, they can strip Republicans of one of their most potent electoral issues while setting the stage for true reform of what has become a true American crisis. Russian President Putin has ordered Donald Trump to sabotage US aid to Ukraine, and Trump has passed the word along to Republicans that anybody who doesn't go along with the two of them will face a primary challenger. Trump just doubled down on it this weekend in New Hampshire, praising Putin up one side and down the other while quoting Orbán and Hitler that immigration by nonwhite people "poisons the blood" of a nation. In an attempt to appease Trump and Putin, Republicans in the Senate claim they're putting together a "security" deal to send foreign and military aid to Ukraine and Israel while also "securing" our southern border from immigrants and asylum seekers.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party: it happened exactly 250 years ago. And once again there’s a growing movement in America to push back against monopolistic corporate power. So, here’s an edited excerpt from my book Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People”…

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Are conservatives trying to clean up "Tricky Dick" and convince you that Watergate was a set up because it helps Trump and other Republican con-men and look less extreme? — Where is the missing binder filled with top-secret super-highly-classified intel including the names of our spies in Moscow, last seen on Trump's desk? — Morbidly rich billionaires in America haven't just been buying Supreme Court justices — they've also purchased over 100 federal judges... — How Trump screwed working people to pay for his tax cuts for the rich... — Are "manosphere influencers" promoting abuse and violence against women? — Anti-abortion groups are attacking Kate Cox for getting an abortion, likening the procedure to eugenics....say what?! — Crazy Alert! The Pizzagate crowd have a crazy new conspiracy theory about Etsy and it involves photos of pizza being clever messages…you can't make this stuff up!

While Zelenskyy was meeting with Biden for help defending his democracy against the brutal aggression of Putin, GOPers were meeting behind closed doors at the Heritage Foundation w/ Orban's people... Want to know what Republicans have in mind for America's future? Just visit Hungary. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was meeting with President Biden this week to ask our help defending his democracy against the brutal, violent aggression of Russia, Republican lawmakers in DC were meeting behind closed doors at a Heritage Foundation event with representatives of Hungary's strongman president Viktor Orbán. It got almost no press coverage at all, other than The Guardian. Orbán has been cozying up to Putin for years and is now blocking EU aid to Ukraine on Putin's behalf (the EU is meeting today about the crisis he's provoking); his representatives were reportedly trying this week to get Republicans in Congress to join them so, together, they can hand Europe's largest country over to Russia. At the same time, Orbán himself was overseeing a new round of laws in Hungary criminalizing any sort of free press in that nation. Under the rubric of "defense of national sovereignty," Orbán's new law, as Barron's reported Tuesday, "could be used to crack down on dissent against nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's government."

Anthony Comstock's fingers are about to reach up out of the grave & with the help of Alito, Coney Barrett, and Thomas, wrap themselves around the necks of every American woman of childbearing years... The saga of Kate Cox in Texas is making it clear to every American that GOP opposition to abortion isn't just about abortion: it's ultimately about controlling every aspect of women's bodies and lives. When the Supreme Court agreed yesterday to hear arguments in the Texas case where a rightwing judge tried to nationally outlaw the abortion drug mifepristone, it was greeted by most in the media and among the political class with a big yawn. Some even suggested it was a good thing, because it would finally settle the issue. But there's a grenade buried in the lawsuit that's now before the Court (two of them, actually) that could go off in all our faces and hand the GOP the final, total control over women's bodies that they've been seeking ever since Reagan changed the party's policy to oppose women's rights generally (opposing the Equal Rights Amendment) and the right to abortion specifically.

If their plan works, these Republican toadies of the billionaires who fund and own them will rewrite our Constitution & state governors, the US Congress, and the President will have no say whatsoever… One of the right's favorite fever dreams over the years has been to gut the US Constitution of many of its checks and balances and officially turn America into a legal oligarchy with a strongman presidency, nearly bulletproof legal immunity for the morbidly rich, and full personhood for corporations. As of this month, it's no longer just a dream.

If Democrats don't figure out a way to match the passion & fervor of Trump's MAGA movement with their own passionate and action-driven movement, things could get very ugly for next year's elections… Most people, particularly Democrats, would never speak of Donald Trump and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the same breath or context. But the very strategy that King used to help end legal discrimination in America is what Trump is today using to try to win back the White House in 2024: movement politics. And if Democrats don't figure out a way to match the passion and fervor (and organization) of Trump's MAGA movement — yes, it's as real a movement as was the Civil Rights movement — with their own passionate, broad-based, slogan- and action-driven movement, things could get very ugly for next year's elections. As of this moment, the biggest mistake the Democratic Party and most Democratic politicians are making is not realizing that political movements and political parties are very different things.

The bottom line here is that Republicans in the House and Senate who are dancing to Trump's pro-Putin tune are playing a dangerous game that could lead to unimaginable disaster… Last week, Senate Republicans refused to even allow that body to debate whether or not America should continue funding our commitment to the Ukrainian European democracy that is now under a brutal, violent, and sustained attack by Donald Trump's friend, Russian President Putin. The nations of the world are aligning themselves into alliances reminiscent of the 1930s. The dangers associated with this are radically compounded by the Senate Republicans' intentional decision to play politics and suck up to Vladimir Putin's protégé, Donald Trump, who is now demanding we throw the millions of people in Ukraine into the arms of a Russian army made up in part of freed professional murderers, rapists, and convicted criminal psychopaths. The GOP, bowing to the demands of Vladimir Putin via Donald Trump, is playing with fire. A fire that could destroy civilization itself.