Author: Thom Hartmann

Some say the Republican Party has gone nuts. In reality, they have simply reached the endpoint toward which they have been moving for 62 years: Fascism. Republican politicians since Barry Goldwater’s 1960 campaign have trash-talked “big government” in the United States. Like Reagan’s assertions that cutting taxes on rich people would “trickle down” benefits to poor people, or his claim that destroying labor unions would increase take-home pay for working people, this one’s just another lie. Since the 1980s, in fact, the GOP has been the ultimate “big government” party. And now we are learning that Republicans in Congress...

Politico reported that the Supreme Court has already voted to strike down Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey, and possibly even Griswold v Connecticut. The decision is in draft form, but expected to be released this summer. The GOP first set this as a goal in 1981 with the election of Ronald Reagan who, prior to cutting a cynical deal with Jerry Falwell for church help in the 1980 election, had signed the most liberal abortion law in the nation as California governor. Now it appears their 41-year campaign has reached its fruition. This is the first...

“Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.” — Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale If you are the family of a 12-year-old girl in Texas who has been raped and impregnated, or the husband of a 50-year-old Oklahoma woman who is at higher risk of death from pregnancy after a failure of birth control, your only truly safe option right now is to move to Canada. That is because individual states in the U.S. generally enforce each other’s court...

Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has declared war on Disney, while his colleague in Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott, is on a jihad against the parents of trans children. This is how fascism progresses through its later stages toward tyranny. Democracies typically do not turn into fascist oligarchies by being invaded or losing wars. It usually happens from within, and is driven by an alliance between demagogic politicians, corrupt religious leaders, bigoted street brawlers, and some of the wealthiest people in society. First, fascists identify groups of people they believe are both vulnerable and sufficiently powerless that they won’t...