Hartmann Report

Republicans have mastered storytelling. Unless Democrats learn to fight on cultural ground, their policies will never matter… Gavin Newsom knows that politics isn’t just about policy papers or legislative roll calls; it’s about culture, imagery, and the stories people tell each other. That’s why he’s been trolling Trump online with parody memes and razor-sharp mockery that’s spread faster than any campaign ad ever could. The effect is unmistakable: Newsom is shifting the cultural battlefield, showing that Democrats can seize the same terrain of humor and symbolism Republicans have dominated since Nixon’s “law and order” days; he’s left conservative pundits — particularly on Fox “News” — sputtering. It’s the kind of cultural jujitsu that Antonio Gramsci imagined — flipping power by seizing the symbols and frames of your opponent — and it’s the kind of thing Democrats have needed to do for years but haven’t successfully pulled off since the days of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society.

Loyalty oaths, banned history, forced obedience: the right isn't hiding anymore. They're telling us exactly what kind of dictatorship they want… In his novel 1984, George Orwell warned, "Those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future." Today, Trump and the GOP have weaponized that prophecy, twisting it into the foundation of their crusade to Make America White Again. What they are building is not a political movement but a parallel nation — a MAGAstan — where loyalty oaths replace truth, history is scrubbed clean of slavery and racism, and authoritarian obedience is demanded in the name of patriotism. This is America's homegrown Taliban, and they're no longer pretending to hide their intentions.

From Putin's whispers to an executive order in the making, Trump openly declares his intent to shred America's electoral system for 2026 before our eyes… Yesterday, Donald Trump crossed another line that no president in our history has ever dared to touch. With the echo of Vladimir Putin's whisper in his ear, in front of President Zelenskyy and seven other European leaders, Trump announced he's preparing an executive order to ban mail-in ballots and even outlaw voting machines across America ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

He promised to drain the swamp — instead he filled it with billionaires, crooks, and fascists… Donald Trump represents the most recent — and destructive — iteration of the American right. The old Confederacy was built on rightwing oligarchy and racism; since the Democratic Party abandoned the Klan and the Lost Cause in the 1960s, the Republicans picked up that mantle. And Trump, a lifelong racist, was ideally suited to lead the new GOP movement. Trump exclusively serves whoever pays the biggest bribes, either in cash, 747s, or votes, who today are mostly big, monopolistic businesses, the morbidly rich, foreign dictators, so-called "Christian" hustlers, and the Republican base of male white supremacist racists. Lyndon Johnson famously said of Nixon's "Law and Order" racism campaign: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

When I was starting and building small businesses, I never relied on a member of Congress or a government agency to do me a favor or bend the rules. I have never given campaign contributions to politicians in hopes of getting favors that would help my business. I have never hired a lobbyist to try to amend laws that would serve my financial interest. And this is generally true of all the hundreds of thousands of sole proprietors and partnerships and small businesses across America. But that is not how big-time corporate America operates. To them making large campaign contributions and spending millions of dollars each year on lobbyists is just another investment that pays off handsomely. Their motto (in behavior, if not in fact) is You’ve got to pay to play.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Vlad gets red carpet, and Trump gets Epstein off the front pages. — Fascism is all about "performances of strength" and masked ICE agents just blew it outside Gavin Newsom's press conference. — California Democrats light the fuse: gerrymander bill rocks the GOP. Newsom's proposed legislation to allow California to gerrymander is called the "Election Rigging Response Act," and it has a few Republicans terrified. — Is the lid coming off inflation? — The hostile takeover of DC is seeing cracks. — Trump tries to strongarm Norway into giving him a Nobel Prize. — Weird Alert! More Than Two Dozen People Linked to Jeffrey Epstein Have Died Under Mysterious Circumstances?

When governments rewrite reality and the press goes along, cruelty becomes invisible and the public becomes complicit… We're all familiar with Trump's famous deportation flights of Venezuelans and Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a concentration camp in El Salvador in violation of a court's order. But did you know there have been over 1,000 such flights in the past few months, some to absolute hellhole countries?

Are Trump and Putin Using Gaza as the Blueprint to Shackle Ukraine? This is what happens when cynical, greedy, amoral billionaires and psychopaths run a country. The Times of London (Murdoch-owned) is reporting that billionaire Steve Witkoff, billionaire Donald Trump, and billionaire Vladimir Putin have worked out a model behind the scenes to solve the Ukraine problem: just make it like Gaza. They’re planning, according to this reporting, to fully respect the borders of Ukraine and the country’s sovereignty, but with one catch. Just like Israel did with Gaza, Ukraine can “self-govern” but all political and economic decisions will be made or approved by Moscow, all funds flowing through Moscow, just like the governments of Gaza and the West Bank are subservient to the whims of Netanyahu and the Israeli Knesset.

Deploying troops without police training, defying the courts, and threatening the media, Trump is importing dictator tactics in plain sight and daring Americans to stop him... He says he's deploying the military to Washington DC because of a "crime emergency," but armies don't do policing: Their job, and their training, is to blow things up and kill people. They have no training in evidence-chain-of-custody, arrest procedures, civil rights protections, criminal investigation, or any other aspect of policing. Sending a militia to do policing is like inviting the neighborhood butcher to perform your brain surgery. In America, it's also illegal. Under Posse Comitatus, the American military is explicitly forbidden from engaging in any police activities against civilian populations. Even though the Trump administration is bragging that the National Guard arrested almost 50 people yesterday in DC, the Posse Comitatus Act consists of just one sentence: "Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both." Armies are really good, however, at facing down large crowds of protestors.

If Republicans are winning by rigging elections, can Democrats really afford to stay 'ethical' and still win? Democrats are at least 17 years late to the party and damn well better catch up soon if they want to win the House (or Senate) in next year's election. The history — and lack of Democratic response — is shocking. While a state must go to court to take away your gun, five Republicans on the US Supreme Court have refused to enforce the "right to vote" provisions of the National Voting Registration Act of 1993 so states don't even have to notify you when they steal take away your vote. And, wow, are Republicans committed to taking away your vote!