Donald Trump

Hartmann Report -   Trump’s fascist plan to militarize Blue cities to intimidate voters and flip states Red in the 2026 and 2028 elections takes clearer shape. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said it again on Thursday: “He [Trump] wants to have troops on the ground to stop people from voting, to intimidate people from going to the voting booth, so take note, that is what this is all about.” Both Trump and Pritzker know that if Trump can disrupt enough voting in Chicago, the Blue dot in mostly otherwise-Red Illinois, the entire state can flip Red. And now Trump is reaching out beyond just the National Guard in his effort to turn America into a police state in advance of the upcoming elections, an effort made even more urgent for Republicans after the drubbing they took this past week in Iowa where a district Trump won by 12 points went to Democrat Catelin Drey 55% to 45%. It was the fourth special election this year where Democrats wiped out the GOP, provoking Texas Republicans to gerrymander their state even more aggressively. Trump has now asked the Navy to get involved, reaching out to Naval Station Great Lakes to provide logistical support for, as the AP noted, everything “from troops assisting in immigration arrests to patrolling in the streets.” As longtime Republican strategist Rick Wilson said this week: “He is also, you know, [borrowing] from the dictator’s playbook. He wants to desensitize people to the presence of those folks out there all the time. ICE now has a bigger budget than the Marine Corps, and he loves this gigantic force that is answerable only to him. And he is certainly putting it to maximum effect. I would not be shocked if he did try to apply it as an intimidation tactic in the 2026 election season.” Get ready: Trump and his booklickers are playing for keeps and this time — unlike January 6th — have no intention of ever relinquishing power, regardless of election outcomes. 

Hartmann Report -  Trump’s plan to destroy Medicare goes into effect. The Social Security Commissioner, Frank Bisignano, is a former Wall Street executive who’s now planning to have private for-profit Wall Street-type corporations look at things like tests and procedures your doctor wants for you. The more claims they can deny using new AI-based tools, the more the companies will be paid as “commissions” for the “savings” they can produce for Medicare. The “experiment” will roll out in January in Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Washington State. Trump’s goal, of course, is to use pre-authorizations to make real Medicare suck as much as the Medicare Advantage scam does, so people won’t care when they privatize the entire system. Arizona Republican Congressman David Schweikert has proposed legislation mandating that every person turning 65 must be automatically enrolled in the Medicare Advantage scam; his H.R. 3467 is awaiting action in the House of Representatives, but Bisignano’s plan to wreck real Medicare in these six states may well make it unnecessary. Republicans have hated Medicare ever since it passed Congress in 1965 with GOP majorities voting “No” in both the House and Senate. Now it looks like the dream of the billionaires on Wall Street and those running Big Insurance getting their hands on the $800+ billion that passes through the system every year will be realized before the end of the Trump administration.

Dan Froomkin - Donald Trump is counting on his “tough-on-crime” message to carry him and his party through the midterm elections and even to 2028, when it seems increasingly likely that he will seek an unconstitutional third term. It's clear that he sees crime as the key to his continued authoritarian rule.

“So the line is that I'm a dictator, but I stop crime,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “So a lot of people say, ‘You know, if that's the case, I'd rather have a dictator.’”

He returned to the topic of dictatorship again a bit later: “And most people say… ‘if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants.’ I'm not a dictator, by the way. But ‘he could be whatever he wants’.”