Hartmann Report

The Gunshot That Ended Reconstruction "If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle [of ending slavery] . . . I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it." —Abraham Lincoln, speech in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 22, 1861

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Geeky Science! Scientists call out Ron DeSantis. — How the GOP is legally paving the way for the Proud Boys and extreme right-wingers to threaten people on election day. — Are Nazis & white supremacists are now deciding which books can be read in Red states? — Why isn't the Justice Department looking at the sketchy relationship between Trump & the Saudis? — What can America do about being drowned in religion? — How Alabama is using a chemical endangerment law to lock up pregnant (and even not-pregnant) women... — Good News! Minnesota joins the national compact to elect the president by the popular vote instead of the Electoral College. — Five Republicans on the Supreme Court deliver a “catastrophic loss for clean water protections” in a decision so hideous that even Brett Kavanaugh dissented. — Crazy Alert! Lauren Boebert wants to make America safe for antisemitism.

Republicans are dropping their Two Santas bomb right onto President Joe Biden’s head. It worked against Clinton & Obama and the media never caught on. Why wouldn’t they use it again? As the Fitch credit rating service puts the United States on “watch” for a possible downgrade and Democrats dither about the 14th Amendment, Republicans just declared the House of Representatives in a break because, from their point of view, there really is no crisis. In fact, from the GOP’s perspective, it’s all going according to plan.

Today’s climate crisis dwarfs the 1940s threat of Nazism, the 9/11 attack, or the massive bank robberies that took place during the Reagan & Bush administrations. It threatens all life on earth… If somebody had set your house on fire, killing your child and pets, and then your city demanded that you give that somebody hundreds of dollars a year for the next decade, how would you feel? That’s pretty much the situation of families across America who’ve lost their homes, family members, and livelihoods to wildfires, floods, extreme heat and cold, mile-wide tornadoes, bomb cyclones, heat domes, hurricanes, and drought caused by today’s climate emergency, but nonetheless have to pay taxes that subsidize the fossil fuel industry executives who helped caused it all.

This Court is out of control, and if Durbin, Schumer, and Biden don’t get together and do something about it now, there may not be another chance… Clarence and Ginni Thomas want to stay on the Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo gravy trains (among others), and Crow’s lawyers are essentially claiming Thomas has every right to continue to act like a corrupt third-world autocrat who’s accountable to nobody, not even the voters and citizens of the United States or — more importantly — the very Congress that created the Supreme Court in the first place.

There is a solution and we need your help. Do it for the planet, for your children and grandchildren, and to prevent Putin and MBS from teaming up with the GOP again to screw Democrats in 2024… Russia and Saudi Arabia — or, more specifically, Putin and MBS — are desperate for Donald Trump or another autocrat like him to take the White House in 2024. America’s largest fossil fuel company executives share their goal, as we saw in the run-up to the 2022 election when gas prices topped $5/gallon. Putin, of course, wants a compliant American president who will look the other way as he continues his attempted rape of Ukraine, his infiltration of Moldova and Georgia, and his plans to take Poland and the Baltic states back into the Russian empire. Like with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, he’s eager to have more allies willing to help him make the world safer for billionaire autocrats. Mohammad Bin Salman was so pleased with the top-secret intelligence that Jared Kushner is alleged to have given him — that let him stage a successful coup to take over Saudi Arabia and its trillions in wealth — that he gave the Trump family billions and continues to subsidize Donald Trump himself by laundering what appears to be hundreds of millions of dollars through the LIV golf tournaments at Trump properties.

Our country has been poisoned, and if we don’t remove the poison and start using the antidote, America may soon be completely unrecognizable as a “free” nation: tag, you’re it! This past weekend The New York Times busted Ron DeSantis for traveling around the country on the private jets of morbidly rich rightwingers, often in ways that prevent the public from ever finding out who’s showering these gifts upon him presumably in expectation of future government favors. Our country has been poisoned, and if we don’t remove the poison and start using the antidote America may soon be completely unrecognizable as a “free” nation. It’s taken 50 years, but we’re now at the point of maximum crisis. First came the poison of big money corrupting politics.

The Myth of the Well-Armed Cowboy. Leave Your Revolvers at Police Headquarters, and Get a Check. —Signs posted throughout Wichita, Kansas, in 1873 and typical of other Wild West towns of the era

The Best of the Rest of the News. — No Labels is a group almost entirely funded by dark money, generally supporting what I consider the most corporate-sold-out politicians and policies. — Can Democrats count on Zoomers and Millennials? — China agrees with DeSantis and other Republican governors: library books should not contain “unhealthy ideas.” What’s unhealthy? Whatever the dictator decides. — Speaking of China, have they given DeSantis another idea? — Can Gerrymandering get worse? — Have you been arguing with machines on social media, thinking they’re humans? — Is the EPA finally waking up from the Trump disaster? — Geeky Science! Why our modern lifestyLe is leading to brain shrinkage & what can be done. — Crazy Alert! Jesse Watters wants you to be afraid of black people not white supremacists. — Video of the Day: A bit of humanity hits the war in Ukraine.

He was so ignorant of sex & reproduction that he believed a visible human-like fetus developed “within seconds” of sexual intercourse. Here's how he could shut down every abortion facility in America… You’ve probably never heard of Anthony Comstock, a Civil War Union soldier and New York Postmaster, who died in 1915. You need to learn about him and his legacy, however, as his long fingers are about to reach up out of the grave and wrap themselves around the necks of every American woman of childbearing years.