Hartmann Report

Who was J.C. Bancroft Davis? And why would he commit such an audacious fraud? The answer lies in his connections to the railroad oligarchs, his own ambitions within America’s elite power structure, and—most importantly—whose interests he was really serving when he wrote that fraudulent headnote. Davis wasn’t just helping the Southern Pacific Railroad win a tax case. He was helping an entire class of oligarchs acquire a constitutional weapon they could use against democracy itself, against the Progressive Era reforms that threatened their power, against the labor movement that demanded dignity for workers, and ultimately against every democratic effort to build what would later be called the American Dream.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Trump just handed America’s spy agencies to a man with no intelligence experience and no security clearance and that’s the whole point. — The head of the Justice Department cannot bring himself to tell a federal judge the truth in writing. — Trump’s closest friend in Europe just learned the lesson everyone who has ever worked with him eventually learns: flatter the man-child or get smeared — Washington, D.C. just elected a democratic socialist mayor, and the pearl-clutchers are missing the point so completely it’s almost impressive. — A scientist looked at Trump’s new research rule and said the quiet part right out loud: “the purpose of the rule is fascism.” — Good News Alert!

I've spent enough years behind a microphone to know the difference between entertainment and a sales pitch dressed up as entertainment, and I know which one this was. Rogan does, too... It takes a particular kind of hubris to stand on the South Lawn of the White House, on a sitting president’s 80th birthday, calling the fights for a cage match that the president personally dreamed up, hosted, sat ringside for, and bought stock in, and then go on your podcast a day later and tell the rest of the country that anybody who noticed the politics of it all should just: “Shut the f*ck up!” But that’s what Joe Rogan said this week, complaining that “so many people are trying to make it a partisan thing” and pleading with everybody to just please settle down and stop. It would be funny if it weren’t such a perfect little distillation of how the whole GOP con works. There’s nothing accidental or apolitical about erecting a structure taller than the White House itself on the patch of grass where Marine One usually lands, all so two men can choke each other bloody in front of America’s Caligula on the day he happens to turn eighty.

The pre-crime apparatus is no longer theoretical. Americans are now being prosecuted for meetings, messages, and protest activity… Back in April I wrote here about what I called the Department of Thought Crimes, the pre-crime apparatus the Trump regime had quietly stood up inside the FBI and DOJ to hunt for Americans who might someday break a law because of what they believe. Ken Klippenstein first identified the GOP’s hit list in Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, often referred to as “NSPM-7,” which is apparently the basis for these arrests. It identified as potential “domestic terrorist” threats those Americans who espouse: “[A]nti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, … extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.” Klippenstein then, three months later, discovered that the Trump regime — specifically, Bondi’s DOJ and Patel’s FBI — was already busily compiling lists of such potential terrorists, sharing the responsibility with some 200 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) working collaboratively with local police departments across America.

For half a century, the evidence surfaced after the winners took office. This election may be the first where the public sees it beforehand… Republicans have gotten away with it four times now, in a big way. Each time it was because Democrats didn’t realize — until it was too late — the crimes the GOP was willing to perpetrate just to seize and hold power. In August of 1968, President Lyndon Johnson and Vice President Hubert Humphrey negotiated an end to the Vietnam War with both the North and South Vietnamese. Humphrey was running against Richard Nixon for president in that year’s election and planned to announce the deal in September or early October. He was running ahead and would’ve easily won the presidency with the peace deal.

As federal investigators knock on doors tied to California's governor, critics warn America is sliding toward the politics of Nixon, Richelieu, and Stalin… Trump and his legal lickspittles appear — if what Governor Newsom is saying publicly right now turns out to be true — to be playing a very dangerous game with our democracy. Federal agents have been knocking on the doors of Gavin Newsom’s family, friends, and former employees. Not, according to the Governor yesterday, because they’d found a crime, but because they’re trying to find one.

History leaves behind a pattern: attack the courts, discredit elections, intimidate opponents, rewrite the rules, and cling to power at any cost. The question is whether America recognizes it in time… Donald Trump is already telling us he’s going to try to steal the 2026 election, and the fact that he’s saying it now, months in advance, is the whole tell. Back in February he stood up and declared that “Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” floated taking over the vote in fifteen states his party doesn’t control, and returned to the lie he’s been pushing for a decade, that mail-in ballots are crawling with fraud.

The Old Senate Chamber in Washington was warm for January, the heavy air thick with coal smoke and anticipation. On January 26, 1886, two men prepared to argue before the most powerful court in America. One represented the largest corporation on the continent. The other represented a small California county fighting to collect its taxes. The outcome would shape American democracy for the next century and a half.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Forty-five years of Reaganomics finally rolled off the assembly line this week with its crowning achievement: the world’s first trillionaire. — The Trump administration has a bold new idea for Americans who can’t afford their medical bills: borrow the money from the very insurance company that’s already refusing to pay them. — It turns out the “Advantage” in Medicare Advantage belongs entirely to the insurance companies. — A federal judge just slammed the brakes — again — on Trump’s $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund for his violent, murderous cult members. — Nothing says “law and order” quite like masked federal agents tackling a man to the pavement at his kid’s preschool graduation while toddlers scream. — Citizens United Alert! — Strange Alert!

You don't need to win the case when the raid, the indictment, the legal bills, and the public humiliation have already delivered the message to everyone else… Earlier this week, a Cable TV host did an extended rant about how many cases Trump has lost in court, arguing that “these guys are really bad at what they do” or words to that effect. I beg to differ: they know exactly what they’re doing, and getting convictions to imprison protesters isn’t (yet — they haven’t yet finished building out their network of concentration camps) their real goal. Stop thinking of it as law enforcement and start thinking about it as punishment and intimidation. That’s their real goal, at least for the moment.