2026 Archives

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 23, 2026

Can Freedom Exist Without "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"?

Freedom isn't a slogan (although Republicans have abused it as one for decades): it's found in the lived experience of average people… Tennessee Republican State Rep. Monty Fritts, who's eyeing running for Governor, has proposed legislation that would put women in that state who've had abortions in the electric chair. Republican policy has already killed hundreds of pregnant women: those who live in a Red state with an abortion ban (almost all of them) are more than twice as likely to die during pregnancy or immediately after childbirth than women who live in states that allow abortion. The founding principle of America is freedom, a word that's been a touchstone for the GOP since the days of Reagan. Jefferson identified what his generation meant when using that word when he wrote in the Declaration of Independence

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 22, 2026

Chapter 13: The Empathy Deficit: The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink

"The social compact would dissolve, and justice be extirpated from the earth, or have only a casual existence, were we callous to the touches of affection." —Thomas Paine In January, as another brutal Maine winter gripped the Northeast, Dwayne LaBrecque faced an impossible choice. The diabetic father of five, who’d lost several toes and part of his foot to infection, stared at his most recent heating bill with a growing dread. After losing his job as a shipping manager, Dwayne’s income had collapsed. For years, he’d relied on LIHEAP—the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program created by Congress in 1981—to keep his family warm through Maine’s harsh winters. But soon after his inauguration, Trump and congressional Republicans had put LIHEAP on the chopping block.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 21, 2026

Saturday Report 2/21/26 — The Dick-Tatorship Hangs a Banner

The Best of the Rest of the News. — “I can destroy the country…” says Trump, as he continues destroying the country (and Ukraine, both on behalf of Putin). — Why won’t the FCC go after Fox “News” or Sinclair for partisan programming? — As the DOJ hails authoritarian Trump with a banner only dick-tators would love, Trump just green-lit removing legal brown-skinned refugees from America. — Four FBI interviews of an underage girl who said Trump sexually assaulted her and then beat her were removed from the DOJ documents Congress has access to, as Trump claims he is “totally exonerated.” — Here comes the Trump Recession. — Bob Kennedy, who won a lawsuit proving Roundup™ causes cancer, now celebrates Trump’s executive order demanding that more of its main chemical be produced in America and then used on our crops. — Trump is pissed off that Obama scooped him on saying aliens are real.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 20, 2026

Is the Trump–Epstein Scandal Nearing the Critical Mass that Turned "Watergate" Into a White House Collapse?

The coverup is widening, the documents are missing, and history suggests the collapse comes faster than anyone expects… We've only had one genuinely failed presidency in the modern era: Richard Nixon's. I believe we're on the verge of the second, and for very similar reasons. If it plays out the way I expect, the consequences could be world-changing, and will certainly alter how our politics work for decades to come. The tipping point began in a big way when Attorney General Pam Bondi went before Congress to defend Trump. When asked how many of Epstein's co-conspirators she'd indicted, she refused to answer and instead completely lost it, going off on a bizarre rant.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 19, 2026

Silencing Dissent Without a Single Raid: The Billionaire Capture of America’s News

When strongmen can’t crush the press outright, they simply get their billionaire friends to buy it, bend it, and cash in… Stephen Colbert joked that Donald Trump wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about him on television because “all Trump does is watch TV.” It was a punchline, but it also revealed something darker: when political power becomes obsessed with controlling the screen, the most effective way to silence dissent isn’t through raids or arrests. It’s through ownership. In today’s America, the battle over free speech isn’t happening in courtrooms, it’s happening in quiet White House dinners with greedy billionaires. And it’s following an old script.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 18, 2026

History Shows How the Transition to Tyranny Begins: By Punishing the Weak and Defying the Courts

From Hitler to Putin to Orbán and Trump, the first step is always the same: act illegally, dare anyone to stop you, and behave like losing in court is only a delay… Donald Trump's Crusade against Kilmar Abrego Garcia is "on life support" as it may finally be dismissed this week or next by District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Tennessee. But will that be the end of this father's and husband's ordeal? ... Today we look at how a country finally, fully crosses from being a self-correcting democracy into a rigid tyranny like those two countries, and how average people like us can identify that moment in time to do something about it before it is utterly too late.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 17, 2026

The American Revolution Started Over This Kind of Abuse: Have We Forgotten?

Once the government decides who qualifies for Fourth Amendment protection, rights stop being rights and start being privileges handed out by those in power… This fight isn't really about immigration. It's about whether the Constitution still restrains government power at all. When elected officials call it a "nonstarter" to require federal agents to get a judicial warrant before kicking in doors, to give people bail or a trial before they face long-term prison, and to allow protests, they're not debating border policy, they're testing whether the Bill of Rights is still binding or has become merely decorative. The Bill of Rights was written to put friction between the state's power to use force and the people it governs. To restrain government.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 16, 2026

The Sound of Freedom Shattering at 3 AM

The danger the Bill of Rights was written for isn't the one Americans usually watch for.… At 3:07 in the morning the pounding started. Not a knock or a doorbell: it was the kind of impact meant to wake the neighbors and erase any doubt that resistance would be pointless. Within seconds armed men were inside the house, shouting orders, refusing questions. No explanation, no warrant presented, no charges read. Just urgency, intimidation, and removal. The people taken that night would eventually learn something chilling: under the legal theory being used, what happened to them wasn't considered a violation of their rights at all. It was 1773 in Boston.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 15, 2026

Chapter 12: The Nightmare Scenario: The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink

Louise and I watched on MSNBC as President Trump, on April 9, 2025, signed executive orders targeting two former officials who dared to defy him during his first term. “I think he’s guilty of treason, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said as he signed an order stripping security clearances from Miles Taylor, the former Department of Homeland Security official who had written critically about the Trump administration under the pen name “Anonymous” in 2019. Next came an order targeting Christopher Krebs, whom Trump had fired by tweet in November 2020 when, as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA, now gutted by Musk), Krebs had declared the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history” and refuted Trump’s claims of fraud. In an act of pure malice, in April 2025 Trump stripped Krebs of his access to the Global Entry system that lets people speed through Customs when entering the United States.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Feb. 14, 2026

Saturday Report 2/14/26 — One of Trump’s top allies and private-White-House-dinner guests is now calling for all American women to be imprisoned in the ICE Concentration Camps...

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Corrupt adjudicated rapist brags that he's going to rig the November elections to prevent millions of women and minorities from voting, even if Congress won't help him. — Convicted felon brags that he's willing to destroy our grandchildren's lives in exchange for a few hundred million dollars from the fossil fuel industry. — Cruel psychopaths in the Trump regime have figured out a new way to waste taxpayer dollars to make the lives of migrants miserable. — One of Trump's top allies and private-White-House-dinner guests is now calling for all American women to be imprisoned in the ICE Concentration Camps and only let out when he and his friends personally approve of them. — The Trump Housing Crisis is now officially here. — A Congressman who examined the Trump/Epstein Files (why don't we all start calling them that? After all, Trump's name is in them more than a million times according to Congressman Swalwell) says there's a report of allegations that Trump and Epstein raped and murdered a young girl. — Once again, we have evidence that DHS/ICE has lied about an American citizen they shot five times trying to kill her. — Crazy Alert! Bob Kennedy boasts that he's "not scared" of germs because he "Used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats."