Hartmann Report

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion. — Trump has figured out a way to grift off the plight of immigrant kids — Trumponomics is even worse than Hoovernomics or Reaganomics. — Over at Montana Dispatch, Ryan Busse lays out the five Big Lies Republicans are using to steal our public lands. — Trump has figured out a new grift to let his oil company donors profit from his drawing down the National Oil Reserve. — America’s oligarchs and the Republican Party they own know how to hold onto potentially wayward members of Congress. — The solar industry claims a scalp. — Is Israel using rape, electric shocks, and beatings to discourage activists from bringing food and medicine to Gaza? — Is that a squirrel on Trump’s head?

Third Way's multimillion-dollar offensive threatens Medicare for All, labor rights, climate action, and the progressive movement driving the party's energy… The Third Way has functionally declared their intention to purge the Democratic Party of progressives. They will not, in my opinion, get us the things progressive are working for and most Americans and the large majority of Democrats want: — A national healthcare program that covers everybody — Free or affordable college — A clean environment and relief from climate wilding — Reasonable taxation for billionaires and corporations — Affordable housing and groceries — Widespread unionization and an increased minimum wage — An end to the brutality of ICE and the frantic construction of concentration camps. These corporate Democrats just formally declared war on those candidates who eschew corporate money, and that has the potential to destroy our chances this fall. But to understand how this tear in the Democratic Party came about and why, a bit of history is vital: In 1961, President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson had been pushing hard for expansion of the New Deal, with their centerpiece being a new program to provide healthcare for seniors that could eventually serve all Americans.

Americans aren't embracing socialism—they're rejecting 45 years of Reaganomics, billionaire rule, and an economy rigged against the middle class… Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan, declared yesterday morning, seems to have broken the brains of Republicans and the chattering class. Donald Trump’s pathetic bleats notwithstanding, people voting for progressive Democrats and “democratic socialists” aren’t voting for communism or even socialism; they’re trying to get America to the same sort of economy and form of government that works for everybody — a system somewhat like the one a majority of us had before Reaganism —that most other developed countries enjoy right now.

So, what the heck is the Comstock Act and why is Todd Blanche so enthusiastic about it? Todd Blanche is campaigning to become our real, confirmed Attorney General, presumably so he can better help Donald Trump, his corrupt family, and the 13 billionaires in his cabinet make off with as much of our money as they can. Most recently, his campaign took him to the rightwing “religious” group Intercessors for America. When he was asked about progress in totally ending legal abortion in America, or at least Red State America, he told them: “We don’t have complete victory yet, but we will have victory, and victory will be soon, and and it will be permanent.”

Since Nixon, Republicans have shifted wealth from working Americans to the morbidly rich. Dems should repeat that simple affordability message everywhere, every day, without apology or hesitation… “Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.” — Abraham Lincoln A July 2026 CNN/SSRS poll found that 71 percent of Americans believe Trump and his regime have not gone far enough to lower the price of everyday goods, leaving the middle class screwed. A Trump-voting caller to my show yesterday, along these same lines, tried to mansplain to me that things really aren’t that bad, and that the numbers I’ve been using to describe the economic destruction by Reaganism are exaggerated. For years I’ve been documenting the destruction of the American middle class at the hands of the GOP and neoliberal politicians (including some corporate Democrats). I wrote about it extensively and did a deep dive into the problem and its causes in my books Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class, The Hidden History of the American Dream: The Demise of the Middle Class, The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America, and, just last month, Who Killed the American Dream? As a result of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society “socialist” programs, about two-thirds of American families were in the middle class with a single paycheck by 1973 as reported by The New York Times; today that number could be as low as a third of us, depending on your definitions. And that’s where things get confusing, with statistics flying fast and furious (although everybody agrees Reaganomics has whacked working people), raising the question: What actually constitutes the middle class?

They didn't rob a bank. They robbed entire generations by dismantling the one institution powerful enough to stand up to corporate America… Yesterday I published Chapter 9 from my new book Who Killed the American Dream? detailing how nearly a half-century of Reaganomics have left the middle class in this country in tatters.

Measuring the Death of the Dream The destruction of the American Dream isn’t just an abstraction; it’s measurable. (See Chart 9.1) In 1980 when Reagan was elected president, at the peak of the American Dream, fully two-thirds of American families were in the middle class. A single income could support a family, buy a house, take an annual vacation, send the kids to college, and even retire with dignity. Today, only 43 to 47 percent of Americans qualify as middle class (depending on whose numbers and what criteria you use). And it takes two full-time incomes today to achieve what a single union job gave a family in 1980.

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion. — Welcome to Trump’s latest billion-dollar scam, this time in the Middle East — A third of Democrats now call themselves democratic socialists, according to a new CNN poll. — Trump wants his $100 million from the IRS and free grifting for his friends and family members for life and, by G-d, he’s going to get it. — Is Trump taking Iran’s side because Putin told him to? Or to prepare us for our losing this war to Iran by saying it’s not such a big deal? — “Elect a clown, expect a circus” alert! — Trump is asking cops to help him continue grifting with crypto. — FCC Chief evokes howls of laughter across the country. — To live long, adopt these habits.

The goal isn't to prove Anthony Fauci lied. It's to convince Americans that the racist decisions that cost hundreds of thousands of lives were somebody else's fault… Republicans went totally nutso on Dr. Anthony Fauci this week, trying to catch him with a perjury trap before the US Senate. They called him names, citied lies and pseudoscience, and attacked his integrity. He withstood asinine statements like Josh Hawley, in an extraordinary bit of projection, saying: “You became a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar! You’ve done more to harm science than anybody in my lifetime!” Throughout it all, he retained his composure and refused to take any of their bait. But the larger story here is what these white supremacist MAGA Republicans were trying to cover up with this deflection strategy.

Trump's Smithsonian purge follows the same roadmap used by Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and every strongman who came before… Share “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell, 1984 It seemed so trivial. Trump ordered the Interior Department to post signs along the walkways leading up to several of the museums that make up the Smithsonian system in Washington, DC warning people that they’d find “inaccurate information” therein. It was based on a bizarre “report” written by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council and released without fanfare on the 4th of July.