Hartmann Report

I can hardly wait... Donald Trump has seemed so larger-than-life to so many Americans for so long that it's almost impossible to not think of him as a perpetual, ongoing threat. And, indeed, he has already tried to mount one coup against our nation which was largely ignored by our Attorney General for two long years, setting up the virtual certainty of a second attempt this fall should he lose by a small margin. That, however, is not what current trends, an innovation in political science, and world history tell us will most likely happen over the next four months.

The GOP's desperate election ploy: disenfranchise women to win… Republicans don't want women to vote. They now think they may have a strategy that could help make that happen. House Speaker Mike Johnson and former president Donald Trump were pushing the SAVE Act (Safeguard American Eligibility Act), demanding it be part of must-pass legislation to fund the federal government for another year (the funding runs out at the end of this month and then the shutdown begins). It died in the House last night, but, like a bad penny, you can bet it'll return. Now they're pushing for it in the Senate, with a version authored by Joe Manchin, his final goodbye kiss to — or future bet on — the Republicans. Trump, on his failing, Nazi-infested social media site, ranted Tuesday that Republicans must get "every ounce" of the SAVE Act passed or shut down the government "in any way, shape, or form." He said it was necessary because Democrats are "registering Illegal Voters by the TENS OF THOUSANDS, as we speak," ranting the vicious lie that, "They will be voting in the 2024 Presidential Election." Trump, Vance, and Johnson claim that the SAVE Act is necessary to prevent people who aren't citizens from voting, but are entirely unable to prove that any meaningful number of noncitizens have ever illegally voted in any American election. After all, it's a felony for a noncitizen to vote, and few are stupid enough to take that sort of a chance.

Congressional Republicans push to keep drug prices sky-high, defying voters, and fueling corporate greed… Congressional Republicans are enthusiastically doubling down on the corruption openings five Republicans on the Supreme Court gave them when they legalized political bribery with Citizens United. Their newest scam is trying to stop Medicare from negotiating drug prices. A new study this year by the RAND Corporation found that Americans pay 4.22 times more for brand-name drugs than the citizens of any other developed country. That's a 422% markup against the (already profitable) prices people in other countries pay for the same drugs, with the entire burden borne by citizens of the US, directly or indirectly. And that price-gouging has been on hyperdrive since the Bush administration got legislation passed in 2003 that forbade Medicare from negotiating drug prices like the Pentagon, big hospital chains, and drug store chains do routinely: Between that year and 2020, retail prescription drug spending exploded by 91 percent in the US.

Just because Trump was conceptually right about tariffs (but terribly wrong in how he executed them) doesn't mean we should all freak out at any mention of them... Over at the Financial Times, Global Business Columnist and Associate Editor Rana Foroohar writes about the mistake Kamala Harris is making by visiting Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania and not mentioning "industrial policy," aka the need to bring factories back to America and to protect the manufacturing jobs we still have. Even worse, Foroohar notes, Harris is refusing to engage about tariffs, simply referring to them as a "sales tax."

From ancient lies to modern slander, the GOP's toxic rhetoric is weaponizing fear and tearing America apart… With European antisemites from the Middle Ages right up through WWII, the blood libel was to claim that Jews were using the blood of Christian children to make their matzo bread for Passover. In 1890s America, east coast German and Dutch immigrants were slandered with claims they were making sausage from local pets; the assertion was even made into a then-well-known folk song. Chinese immigrants suffered the same sort of defamation with white Americans spreading rumors of pets being served in their restaurants from the 19th century through last year. Now it’s Donald Trump and JD Vance turn telling the vicious, racist lie that legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are both here illegally (they’re not) and are eating the pets of local white people (also a lie). Most recently, Don Jr. has repeated his father’s frequent claim that Black people have lower IQs than white Americans

In the spirit of the 1971 Powell memo, the Supreme Court, in its 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision, made it legal for wealthy people to own politicians and spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections and policy. Two years later, it extended the logic that such spending was protected by First Amendment “human rights of free speech” to corporations in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti. Buying politicians was not only legal but astonishingly cheap: for a few hundred thousand dollars, a captive politician could shepherd through Congress legislation that would ensure billions of dollars in profits for his overlord corporate and billionaire donors.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Will Trump’s people embedded in our election systems disrupt this year’s vote? — Conservative billionaire Leonard Leo announces his plan to “crush” liberals. — Germany talks back to Trump’s debate lies. — Should we unleash Ukraine? — Trump and Vance are trying to make political hay out of the death of an 11-year-old boy, and his parents are having none of it. — Senate Budget Chair Ron Wyden says the uber-wealthy are dodging over a trillion dollars in taxes every decade, enough to make Social Security solvent forever. — Crazy Alert! Donald Trump brought a 9/11 truther and self-proclaimed white nationalist conspiracy theorist to a 9/11 memorial event — and the media yawned. — Wisdom School Alert: The Amnesia of Healing. — Hunter in a Farmer’s World Alert: Are people with ADHD carrying genes that insured survival in earlier times? — Herbs to take on viruses! — Good News Alert! A judge overturned North Dakota’s abortion ban.

Will we finally feel safe and optimistic enough that romance will return to the big screen in a big way? Movies are a window into our culture. What do they tell us about the impact Trump and MAGA have had on our society, and how might they change if these malevolent, misogynist men are defeated this fall? I subscribe to over 100 Substack newsletters, but one of the most thought-provoking that I look forward to in my inbox is from Ossiana Tepfenhart. Earlier this week, she wrote about the death of romantic comedies ("rom-coms") and the impact the genre had on an entire generation when it dominated the 1990s: "I believe romantic comedies damaged an entire generation's expectations of dating. … There's an entire generation of men and women who think dating should be like a romance movie. … Rom-coms were great at tricking women into seeing the best in awful men and tricking decent men into being total losers. These movies (and their toxic messages) wrecked the love lives and dating mentalities of millions of people." Those excerpts lose a lot of the nuance Ossiana brought to her excellent article (so you should read the original!), but hopefully illustrate some of the brilliant points she made. Her "micro" view into the average personal impact rom-coms had on individuals growing up in the '90s, however, got me thinking about the "macro" implications of such changes in our overall entertainment culture, and what it might mean in terms of their larger societal and political ramifications.

Orbán’s Hungary is the GOP’s dream for America’s future… In Tuesday night’s debate, ABC’s host David Muir asked Harris about Trump: “This was a post from President Trump about this upcoming election just weeks away. He said, ‘When I win, those people who cheated,’ and then he lists donors, voters, election officials, he says ‘Will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which will include long-term prison sentences.’ One of your campaign’s top lawyers responded saying, ‘We won’t let Donald Trump intimidate us. We won’t let him suppress the vote.’ Is that what you believe he's trying to do here?” Harris responded by saying that Trump was “fired by 81 million people” and is a “disgrace” who she would not allow to intimidate her, adding that “the world’s leaders” are “laughing” at him. Muir then turned to Trump for his response, and he was blunt: “Let me just tell you about world leaders. Viktor Orbán, one of the most respected men -- they call him a strong man. He's a tough person. Smart. Prime Minister of Hungary. They said why is the whole world blowing up? Three years ago it wasn’t. Why is it blowing up? He said because you need Trump back as president. They were afraid of him. China was afraid. ... North Korea was afraid of him. … Look, Viktor Orbán said it. He said the most respected, most feared person [in the world] is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president. …” So, who is this Viktor Orbán — the prime minister of Hungary — the guy who Trump holds in such high esteem and loves to quote at length?

Trump thought his “firehose of lies“ strategy would work last night. It’s called the Gish Gallop: Throw so many lies out all at once in a single sentence that your opponent is forced to spend all of their allotted minute or two rebutting your lies and never gets to her own issues. While many of his lies went unrebutted, and the moderators kept giving him the last word in violation of the rules (he took 42 minutes versus her 37), it still didn’t work out for him last night. In prepping for the debate, Trump apparently embraced Bill Clinton’s comment that: ”When people are feeling insecure, they’d rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right.” In that, Trump and his advisors miscalculated. Trying to project strength, he merely came across as rattled, angry, and weird.