2025 Archives

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 4, 2025

Could Russia Win a War Against America Without Ever Firing a Shot?

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.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 3, 2025

The Empire Strikes First: Trump, Putin, and the Global War on Democracy

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.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 2, 2025

The Electoral College and a National Popular Vote: The Hidden History of the War on Voting

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.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 1, 2025

Saturday Report 3/1/25 - The plan to “demolish” Social Security is underway: Who will stop them?

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.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 28, 2025

Small Government, Big Chains: The Lie of Trump’s Libertarian “Freedom”

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.”

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 27, 2025

Adopt a Red State: How Democrats Can Expose Republican Cowards

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.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 26, 2025

How Trump and the GOP Fixed the 2026 Election — Yes, 2026

By Greg Palast for The Hartmann Report Greg Palast is a forensic economist and recipient of the Global Editors Award for Data Journalism. Watch Palast's latest film, "Vigilantes Inc: America's New Vote Suppression Hitmen," produced by George DiCaprio and Martin Sheen. You can ignore Trump slyly hinting to the Lord's chosen that he just might call off the next election. "Four more years, you know what? It'll be fixed, it'll be fine, you won't have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians." But don't ignore this: Trump won't be calling off the election because he doesn't have to. The Fix for 26 is already in. The Republican plan is to win next year's election this year. Yes, the voting will be bent, jacked and hammered this year, 2025, one year before the official voting. Because this is the year of The Great Purge. And if The Great Purge doesn't do the trick, Republicans are ramping up other vote suppression tactics they rolled out to win 2024, including a private army of MAGA-nauts who challenged over a million voters' ballots in 2024 and plan on way more by the 2026 midterm.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 25, 2025

SCOTUS Republicans Legalized Election Rigging—Why Aren’t Democrats Playing the Game?

Gerrymandering, voter purges, and signature rejections aren't fair—but they're legal. Why are Democrats refusing to use them? Imagine that the NFL made a rule change that allowed every team to have an extra three men on the field during the game — but half of the NFL teams, protesting the new rule as "wrong" and "too much of a deviation from fairness and norms" refused to add the three players to their own lineups. Who'd be winning almost every game? Who'd be going to the Superbowl?

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 24, 2025

Reichstag Fire 2.0: Will Trump Use a Crisis to Kill Democracy?

History warns us: When authoritarians seize power, they often light the match themselves... Get ready. The resistance to billionaires running our government is growing. Bernie Sanders is touring the Red State Midwest and drawing massive crowds. Federal workers are pissed. Republican politicians are in hiding, refusing to do town halls even when their constituents demand them or try to set them up.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 23, 2025

Extend Early Voting & Paper Ballots: The Hidden History of the War on Voting

Vote by mail can overcome the physical hurdle of getting voters to polling places, but we can also make polling places more available to voters than just during polling hours on a Tuesday in November. Extending early voting helps to address the time constraints that voters in the real world face. Real voters have families, children, jobs, and other pressing demands that make it difficult to drop everything on a Tuesday in November to stand in line potentially for hours. Even after standing in line for hours, many legitimate voters have been told they are not properly registered and offered a provisional ballot to cast—which may or may not be counted.