Saturday Report 10/4/25 — As the wealth of the top 1% of Americans hit a record $52 trillion, young people’s support for the Trump administration is in free fall...

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— Swing district voters are increasingly upset with Trump and the GOP about exploding grocery prices. Two-thirds of Americans earning less than $30,000 a year describe the increases as a “major source of stress” in a recent Navigator Research poll. Over half (54%) blame Trump himself. When wannabee Brazilian dictator Jair Bolsonaro was indicted for imitating Trump’s January 6th attack with his own followers (at his suggestion) storming Brazil’s capitol building on January 8th, 2023 after losing the 2022 presidential election, Trump retaliated against Brazil by slapping a punitive 50% tariff on their exports to the US. The result has been a 21% explosion in the price of coffee, exacerbating the impact of the 13% increase in the price of ground beef and 11% rise in the cost of eggs. When asked who’s responsible for these far-above-the-inflation-rate increases in food costs, the majority of all Americans blame Trump himself for his random, incoherent, and destructive (my words, not theirs) economic policies. Republican elected officials seem to be seeing the same polls and are taking action, although not to lower prices but instead to get ready for this fall’s electoral races: with a pivotal race coming up this November for governor of Virginia, Republicans in charge of that state — according to reporter Greg Palast — are vigorously purging thousands of voters from that state’s rolls. The practice of purging fully legal citizens from mostly democratic cities off the rolls under the guise of “list maintenance” was legalized in Virginia recently by six Republicans on the US Supreme Court. (Check out the Brennan Center report titled “Supreme Court Helps Virginia Illegally Purge Voters.”) Palast claims that Virginia purges of massive numbers of Blue voters over the past decade are the only reason that state is still in GOP hands. Expect to see a virtual tsunami of purges in Blue parts of Republican-controlled states in the coming months, particularly as we head to the November 2026 midterms.

— Over the past decade Republicans have voted at least 70 times to repeal Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act or ACA), and they took a major whack at it again with the Big Billionaires’ Bill this year; most Americans agree with Democrats that its worth shutting down the government to force them to repeal the cuts. A new KFF Health Tracking Poll discovered 78% of Americans want Congress to extend the enhanced tax credits that made ACA policies more affordable during the pandemic, with only 22% agreeing with the GOP that average and low-income Americans should see their insurance premiums increase as much as 100%. Fully 92% of Democrats, 82% of Independents, and an astonishing 57% of MAGA-aligned Republicans side with Democrats on the issue. Looks like Schumer and Jeffries picked the right horse to ride into this shutdown.

— Speaking of the shutdown, Congressional Progressive Caucus Vice Chairman and California Congressman Ro Khanna, a twice-monthly regular on my radio/TV program, echoed the point yesterday on Fox News that I made here on Hartmann Report a few days ago and have been discussing on the air: Republicans in the Senate don’t need a single Democratic vote to re-open the government. Not one! And they could do it tomorrow. Senate Democrats are filibustering the Republican Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government open under current funding levels (aka the Big Billionaires’ Bill’s provisions), meaning Republicans would have to muster 60 votes to break the filibuster and pass the legislation necessary to re-open the government. But with a simple parliamentary procedure, Republicans could get around the filibuster and pass their CR. All they have to do is vote on a resolution to suspend or alter the Senate filibuster rules to provide an exception for this particular CR — a process that only requires 50 votes and the VP’s vote (and they have 57 votes including the VP right now: 53 Republicans, the VP, and the three caucusing with the Democrats who’ve wimped out including Fetterman, Cortez-Masto, and independent King). Republicans have been doing this routinely to install the past 3 Supreme Court justices, lower court nominees, and Trump administration positions that require Senate confirmation. Democrats tried to do this, you’ll recall, in 2022 for their For the People legislation to reverse Citizens United and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and they would have passed with a mere 50 votes if Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin hadn’t taken piles of money from rightwing billionaires and corporate interests to stab us all in the back. The simple reality — which no media seems willing to report — is that Republicans can re-open the government any time they want without a single Democratic vote. The first mention of this simple reality in the media was yesterday around 3 pm when Khanna pointed it out on Fox. But don’t hold your breath: Republicans actually want the shutdown, as Trump, Vance, and Voight have all either said outright or strongly implied in public statements. They’re still betting they can blame it on Democrats, and they have hundreds of millions in advertising dollars (they’re saturating TV in states where Democratic senators are up for re-election next year) and the support of their massive rightwing media infrastructure to keep this new Big Lie going. Will their bet pay off? Stay tuned…

— As the wealth of the top 1% of Americans hit a record $52 trillion last month (up 6% over the previous quarter), young people’s support for the Trump administration is in free-fall. Forty-four years of Reaganomics keeping taxes on the morbidly rich absurdly low, shipping jobs overseas, exploding the cost of college and housing, and letting health insurance company profiteers rape American consumers have devastated the prospects for young people, and they’re starting to figure it out. Although an army of rightwing podcasters and the rightwing-tweaked algorithms running Facebook and X had succeeded in cranking Trump and GOP support all the way up to 43% among voters ages 18 to 29 in the 2024 election (a nine-point increase from 2020) with 49% of men in that cohort supporting Trump last year, cracks appear to be forming, according to Daily Beast and Raw Story. The survey was small and mostly anecdotal, but between Trump’s racist, brutal ICE raids, his incoherent tariffs, his ending Biden’s student debt relief, and his attacks on the queer community, young people are increasingly figuring out that the GOP has never been on their side (unless they’re the children of billionaires). Expect this trend to continue, and hopefully these young people will continue to wake up and realize Democrats have always been on their side.

— Portlanders laying flowers in front of the ICE building, planning a naked bike ride as a protest, and Portland’s bicycle police arresting a rightwing influencer (and two others) for trying to get into a fight with anti-ICE protesters are apparently getting to the White House. Now they’re threatening to cutting federal funds to Portland. Trump’s 27-year-old Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, apparently freaked out by the naked bike ride (or maybe it was her 59-year-old husband who objected, given that he’s from an older generation that is more likely to be offended by nudity?), as well as the arrest of a rightwing influencer who was also “reporting” from Maui when he was trying to exploit the fires there, laid it out yesterday, saying, “This incident [the influencer’s arrest] is part of a troubling trend in Portland, where left-wing mobs believe they get to decide who can visit and live in their city. It is not their city. It is the American people’s city and President Trump is going to restore that. I just spoke with the president about this, and he has directed his team here at the White House to begin reviewing aid that can potentially be cut in Portland.” Waitaminute. I live in Portland. It’s not our city, it’s Trump’s? Whatever happened to Republicans’ love of local control, that’s been their mantra ever since the Brown v Board decision in 1954. Hypocrites. They’re so desperate to gin up a conflict that Fox “News” can run 24/7 on a loop (like they’re still running footage from the 2020 BLM protests here) and Trump can use as an excuse to have his troops use live ammunition against protestors (like he tried to talk General Milley and Defense Secretary Esper into in 2020) that they’re starting to sound hysterical. Portlanders, in response, are laying flowers in front of the ICE building and largely refusing to engage with these pathetic rightwingers try to pick their little fights. Leavitt highlighted that, saying, “We will not fund states that allow anarchy. There will also be an additional surge of federal resources to Portland immediately.” Will they get their war here? Hopefully, they won’t, but it won’t be for a lack of trying.

— Elon speaks, the FBI leaps. When notorious South African immigrant Elon Musk attacked the Southern Poverty Law Center on his Nazi-infested social media platform, FBI director Kash Patel leapt into action, ending any communication or coordination with the anti-fascist, anti-racist organization that regularly suffers from death and arson threats. SPLC is one of the nation’s premiere nonprofits defending our civil rights; their original name when they started out was Klanwatch, which explains why the Trump regime hates them so much. I’m a monthly donor and I encourage you to join me here.

— “Whiskey Pete” Hegseth orders our military to kill four more Venezuelan civilians in defiance of both US and international law, and the naval airmen comply. The allegedly alcoholic Defense Secretary, who cosplays as a “War Secretary,” is bragging that he’s killed another four Venezuelans yesterday. No evidence was offered suggesting they were anything other than fishermen or whale-watching tourists, and even if they were smuggling drugs toward Caribbean islands (they were too far from America to reach our shores) that’s not a capital crime for which America or any country in the region has a death penalty. Senator Jack Reed, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee was blunt, saying: “There is no evidence – none – that this strike was conducted in self-defense. That matters, because under both domestic and international law, the US military simply does not have the authority to use lethal force against a civilian vessel unless acting in self-defense.” Twenty Democratic senators sent a letter to the administration demanding answers, writing: “The Trump Administration has yet to provide Congress or the American people with any legitimate legal justification for the strike, or any evidence to support its claims regarding the basis for this strike or the future strikes it has openly threatened to launch across the region.” Keep in mind, this is the same administration that regularly violates the Hatch Act — which calls for 2 years in prison per violation — by hustling Teslas in front of the White House and trash-talking Democrats for the shutdown on government websites. They don’t give a