2025 Archives

Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 6, 2025

A Republic, If You Can Count to 51: Why the Filibuster’s Demise Could Save Democracy

Let debate rage for days, then vote, as the founders intended; end the antique veto and force both parties to own their visions before the people… Emperor Trump saw this wipeout election coming and he knew who to blame in advance: the Senate. On Tuesday (election day) morning, he posted to his Nazi-infested social media site: "TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER NOW, END THE RIDICULOUS SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATELY, AND THEN, MOST IMPORTANTLY, PASS EVERY WONDERFUL REPUBLICAN POLICY THAT WE HAVE DREAMT OF, FOR YEARS, BUT NEVER GOTTEN. WE WILL BE THE PARTY THAT CANNOT BE BEATEN – THE SMART PARTY!!!" Republicans yawned and ignored him; they've been hiding behind the filibuster for decades to avoid having to actually take a serious vote on the crazy crap that Republicans in the House keep sending them, like bills to outlaw abortion nationally, end voting rights for married women, or end climate protections and deregulate the fossil fuel industry. Ending the filibuster — even now with King Crazy in the White House — would be a good thing for both Democrats and America. And Trump may actually pull it off.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 5, 2025

The SNAP Scam: How Billionaires and Politicians Built a Welfare System for the Rich

Behind the rhetoric about 'lazy freeloaders' lies a stunning truth: America's largest corporations depend on food stamps to prop up their low-wage empires... Democrats won big in last night's election, and it's a great sign for the future of American democracy. Voters rejected racism, fear, and cruelty. They said in a loud and singular voice — overwhelmingly voting for moderate Democrats, progressive Democrats, and even a ballot initiative without a single person on the ballot — that they want their democracy back. Nonetheless, Mike Johnson is still keeping the House on vacation and John Thune is still refusing to break a Senate filibuster and reopen the government. And, crucially, Trump is still refusing to fully fund SNAP/food stamps, even though he can easily put his hands on the money.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 4, 2025

The Great American Heist: How Reagan, Trump, and Their Billionaire Backers Stole the Middle Class

A 50-year project to turn the world’s strongest democracy into a playground for the rich... It’s election day in much of America, although the biggest races are in California, Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine, and New York City. As a bellwether for next year’s midterms that could define the fate and future of Trumpism, the stakes are enormous, and are bleeding through into social media. One of the most viral Facebook posts yesterday was from a MAGA mom complaining that her Democratic mother-in-law won’t loan her grocery money. She explains that she can’t feed her family because Trump’s government shutdown has frozen her SNAP (Food Stamps) and WIC benefits, and, she wrote: “He asked his mother to buy a can [of baby formula] until our WIC comes in. Her response was, ‘We voted for this.’” The largest percentage of comments were variations on, “That’s what you wanted when you voted for that orange asshole, but you must have thought he’d only do it to Black and Hispanic people. FAFO!” Along those same lines, Trump went on 60 Minutes this weekend and lied to Leslie Stahl’s face multiple times, including a whopper about grocery prices when she pointed out that they’re going up, up, and up.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 3, 2025

Healthcare for All: The Democratic Promise That Could Heal a Broken Nation

When politics becomes personal, policy becomes powerful, and there's nothing more personal than survival… When politics becomes personal, policy becomes powerful. And there's nothing more personal than survival. Every election cycle, candidates talk about "freedom," "security," and "opportunity," yet ignore the most basic measure of all three: whether ordinary Americans can afford to stay alive. In the richest nation in the history of planet Earth, millions of Americans are dying from treatable illnesses, rationing insulin, and running GoFundMe campaigns for chemotherapy. This isn't just a policy failure, it's a moral collapse. And it's the one issue that could unite the country, reshape the Democratic Party, and finally prove that compassion is not weakness, but strength.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 2, 2025

Introduction: The End Begins with a Smile: The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all. —John F. Kennedy It didn’t look like the end of democracy. It looked like a Tuesday. I remember watching the television that day, January 6, 2021, as a man stood on the Capitol lawn. Red hat, blank expression, that thousand-yard stare people get when something fundamental breaks inside them. His face was flushed crimson against the winter cold, fists clenched like he was holding onto the last threads of a reality rapidly unraveling, and his voice—already sandpaper-rough from hours of shouting—cracked as he howled into the January wind: “They’re stealing my country!” Inside those historic halls, American police officers were being beaten with the very flagpoles that once carried our stars and stripes.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 1, 2025

Saturday Report 11/1/25 — Tear gassing trick-or-treaters: Noem’s new definition of American values...

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion… — The GOP's dirty little secret exposed, courtesy of Donald Trump: Republicans in the Senate could have ended the shutdown anytime they wanted. — Epstein, Rubio, or ego? What's really behind Trump's Venezuela madness? — Trump's new refugee policy: white, wealthy, and welcome. — Hispanics not welcome either, unless they worked for one of Trump's shabby golf motels. — "Judge Boxwine" Pirro, recently recruited from Fox "News" for a federal judgeship, apparently demanded prosecutors delete the word "mob" to describe a member of the mob that attacked the US Capitol on January 6th. — Tear gassing trick-or-treaters: Noem's new definition of American values. — From firebrand to outcast: Marjorie Taylor Greene's midlife MAGA crisis. What's happening with MTG? — Hunter in a Farmer's World: Rethinking ADHD: It's Not Forgetfulness, It's a Different Kind of Seeing — Wisdom School: The Silent Conversation Between You and Your Bones

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 31, 2025

Will the 2028 Election Even Happen? Is There a Plot to Use the Insurrection Act to End Democracy?

From John Adams to Kent State to the Insurrection Act, history warns us what happens when power fears the people more than the enemy… Will the 2028 election even happen, or are we watching the slow-motion rehearsal for its cancellation? Every signal from Trump's orbit points to a deliberate strategy to turn fear, chaos, and manufactured crisis into political weapons. History tells us how these stories end. From John Adams jailing his critics under the Alien and Sedition Acts to Nixon's troops gunning down students at Kent State to crackdowns by Orbán and Putin, authoritarians have always wrapped repression in the language of patriotism. Today, with talk of "domestic enemies," "rapid reaction forces," and "nuclear demonstrations," the groundwork is being laid again, not to protect America, but to control it. Why is it that dictators and wannabe dictators — both historic and now Trump — always attack their own countries' people while saber-rattling about war against other countries?

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 30, 2025

Is the Algorithm the Single Greatest Threat to Humanity at this Moment?

Algorithms are not tuned for what is best for society. They don't follow the rules that hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution have built into our cultures, religions & political systems… Some data points for your consideration: — On Saturday in Chicago's affluent Old Irving Park neighborhood, Trump's secret, masked police violently pulled a 67 year old U.S. citizen — a member of a local running club returning to his home from a run — out of his car and threw him to the street, where they assaulted him with such force that they broke six ribs and left him with internal bleeding. — Donald Trump is openly taking bribes, publicly ordering political prosecutions, murdering people in naked violation of both US and international law, all while claiming the Supreme Court gave him absolute immunity from prosecution for any crime. — An MIT study finds that lies presented as news travel six times faster across social media than truths. — While over 75% of Americans trusted the news fifty years ago, today that number is a mere 28%, with only 8% of Republicans believing what they see or read in mainstream outlets. These are all the same story, and they all largely derive from a single source, a mind poison that was introduced into the American (and world) mindstream in a big way about two decades ago.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 29, 2025

What If Trump Is Weaker Than We Think—and America’s Finally Figuring It Out?

The strongman act is cracking, but as the cops, the crowds, and even the cult start to walk away, is this finally the moment his empire begins to fall? “No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” —Edward R. Murrow Kids and cops got tear-gassed in Chicago, a judge is holding ICE/CPB officials to account, Americans are horrified by the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, and even UFC fighters are starting to turn away from Trump. What’s going on? Is he really as strong as he appears to think?

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 28, 2025

Is the Assault on Democracy Stronger than We Think — and Nearing Permanent Control?

Dark money, captured courts, and media empires are quietly doing what dictators once could only dream of... Trump and the billionaires and foreign fascists he's aligned with are both stronger than most think and weaker. Today I'll deal with the stronger part; tomorrow, the weaker. We're living in a moment when the line between democracy and dictatorship is far less clear than we like to believe. As a recent analysis by Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die, puts it, we've already moved onto the midpoint along the spectrum between democracy and dictatorship where "competitive authoritarianism" lives. That's the world of regimes that hold elections but use their control over the nation's systems to skew the rules, restrict opposition, weaponize institutions, vandalize the truth, and destroy/ignore democratic norms. We're more than halfway down that road in just ten short months.