Hartmann Report

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Donald Trump continues to ignore and violate multiple court orders regarding the funding of various congressionally mandated programs, while Elon Musk‘s DOGE teenagers continue to invade federal agencies, sometimes with armed muscle who appear to be pretending to be federal marshals. — Is Trump seriously trying to seize Canada as our 51st state? — Trump is seriously trying to screw Ukraine on behalf of Putin, and ‘Liddle Marco and the terrified Republicans in Congress are being forced to go along with it. — Want to send a few bucks to Texas Congressman Al Green by way of supporting his defiance of Trump‘s lies at the State of the Union? — Supreme Court Associate Justice Sam Alito is at it again, lying in a dissenting opinion while laying out a road map for Donald Trump to violate our Constitution. — Elon Musk sure does know how to manipulate Donald Trump: just spend a million bucks on TV advertisements flattering him and he’ll roll over like a dog wanting his tummy scratched. — Crazy Alert! Is the Pentagon really going to decide that they can’t mention the name of the Air Force plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima? — Wisdom School: The Pervasive Universal Consciousness Model: A New Frontier in Understanding Reality — Hunter in a Farmer’s World: ADHD: Learn to Postpone Gratification

How fake patriots are betraying their own country... Former Democratic Senator Joe Manchin accused Congressman Al Green and other Democrats of “disrespect” and — absurdly— “inhumanity” for standing up and pointing out Donald Trump’s over-100 lies in his State of the Union address. This is the same on-the-take Senator Joe Manchin who refused to break a filibuster and thus blocked legislation that would have reversed Citizens United and established an absolute right to vote in America. The same sellout-coal-baron Senator Joe Manchin who opened the door for Elon Musk to buy the election for Donald Trump and Republicans to throw around 4 million mostly-Democratic voters off voting rolls or refuse to count their votes.

America’s safety net is their next profit scheme — and you’re the target… Tuesday night, Donald Trump stood before the nation and, with the full backing of billionaires like Elon Musk, laid the groundwork for the biggest heist in American history — the rapid, systematic destruction of Social Security, disguised as “reform.” We saw the formal announcement of it during Trump’s State of the Union address, and the DOGE announcement earlier in the week that 7,000 employees at Social Security are to be immediately laid off — with as many as half of all Social Security employees (an additional 30,000 people) — soon to be on the chopping block. Republicans and their morbidly rich donors have hated Social Security ever since it was first created in 1935. They’ve called it everything from communism to socialism to a Ponzi scheme.

The last time American fascists tried this, FDR and Wallace took them down. Will we? Last night, we were treated to a litany of grievance, political bullshit, and lies. Of particular note was Trump’s declaration of war against the government of the United States, particularly Social Security, which I’ll discuss at more length tomorrow. But the larger issue, given the GOP’s adoption of neofascism, is how far Trump and his Republican enablers have dragged America from the form of government on which America was founded.

Russia’s cyber attack on Ukraine and subsequent invasion, it turns out, may just have been dress rehearsal… Tonight is Trump‘s first State of the Union speech of his second term. Observers all around the world are wondering how deferential he will be toward Putin. Already, there are ominous signs that he and Musk intend to bring America to its knees on behalf of the Russian dictator and to destroy our defenses against a possible Russian attack, should Trump lose Putin’s love or the next American president directly challenge Russia.

What happens when the country that once led the free world becomes the enemy of Democracy? Elon Musk just called for the United States to withdraw from NATO, leaving Europe to Putin’s tender mercies. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Hegseth ordered our federal operations to detect and stop Vladimir Putin’s infiltration of American cyber security — from our nuclear facilities and dams to our news and social media spaces — to cease.

Stopping Politicians from Choosing Their Own Voters As noted earlier, the Supreme Court in 2019 threw open the door to political gerrymandering by whichever party can gain control of a state in an election year ending in 0 (the Constitution requires a census and reapportionment every decade). Legislation should be passed explicitly overturning this decision and providing for “good government” nonpartisan commissions to draw legislative districts.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Donald Trump and JD Vance betrayed America yesterday. — Wealthy Republicans poised to write their own tax cuts. — The plan to “demolish” Social Security is underway right before our eyes: who will stop them? — Is the flu shot for next year getting canceled along with the developing plans for a bird flu vaccine? Is a diseased population “easier to control”? — How Trump and the GOP Fixed the 2026 Election — Yes, 2026. — Good luck if you’re flying. — Crazy Alert! Proof Trump runs Fox-So-Called-News.

Welcome to the Hunger Games: This is what happens when government shrinks... They’re lying to us again. The American government isn’t too big or too bloated: it’s too small. And the result of it being too small is a steady erosion of Americans’ freedom over the past forty-four years. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his March, 1933 inaugural address: “A necessitous man is not a free man.”

GOP lawmakers are running from their own voters — Democrats should take their place! Republicans have a new strategy to deal with town halls that are going poorly: Run and hide. Democrats have a great opportunity here. Congressman Mark Pocan has been doing it for years. Representative Ro Khanna is doing three of them this coming month. Bernie Sanders is doing it, too. We should all be reaching out to our members of the House and Senate to ask them to do the same. I'm talking about elected Democrats traveling to Red districts (House members) or Red states (Senators) to hold town halls in those places where Republicans refuse to show their faces.