Posted at Hartmann Report on Jan. 18, 2026
Chapter 9: America Ungoverned: The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity". —W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”
On a blistering April morning in 2025, Elizabeth Aniskevich stood outside a community center in Washington, DC, filling out yet another job application. Just two months previously, she was an attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with what she thought would be a lifetime career in public service. Now, at thirty-nine, she’s watching her emergency savings dwindle as she struggles to make mortgage payments on her DC apartment.
“I was completely shocked,” she told a reporter for CNBC, describing the day she received her termination notice. “I didn’t expect it to unfold this way. There’s no information about what’s going on with my benefits, or what I need to do with unemployment.”