Their bet is that they'll get away with letting tens of thousands of their citizens – and thousands of their citizens' children – die and the people of their states will simply forget and move on.

Hospitals are filling up and children are near death across a swath of Red states from Texas to Florida. The governors of those two states are leading a movement.

Republican Governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas have gone all-in on a high-stakes bet, and the example of Donald Trump suggests they may just win it. Win or lose, though, they're both tenaciously hanging onto their bans on mandated masks in schools.

Their bet is that they'll get away with letting tens of thousands of their citizens — and thousands of their citizens' children — die or get "long Covid" and the people of their states will simply forget and move on.

Read more at HartmannReport.com.

-Thom

Thursday's Daily Stack

Article: "DeSantis & Abbott : Will They Be Held Responsible for Mass Dying of Adults & Children?" by Thom Hartmann.

Letter: "The Reopen Our Schools Act of 2021" (S.L. 2021-4)" by ABC Science Collaborative.

Article: "COVID-19 cases among kids overwhelming Florida hospitals: doc" by Jackie Salo.

Book: "REIGN OF TERROR: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump" by Spencer Ackerman.

Article: "Baby girl with Covid-19 airlifted 150 miles because of Houston hospital bed shortage"Ray Sanchez and Kay Jones.

Article: "Ministers of death: Republican governors leave kids 100% defenseless against delta surge" by Kerry Eleveld.

Article: "Dr. Deborah Birx says thousands of U.S. Covid deaths were preventable" by Yasmin Vossoughian.

Article: "'Full-on Surge': Tarrant County Leaders Worry About Children's Health, Hospital Capacity" by Katy Blakey.

Article: "5-year-old Georgia boy dies of Covid as cases surge nationwide" by Daniella Silva.

Article: "Children with long covid" by Helen Thomson.

Article: "Florida sets COVID hospitalization records again, including highest in nation for children" by Nikki Ross.

Article: "We Studied One Million Students. This Is What We Learned About Masking" by Kanecia Zimmerman and Danny Benjamin Jr.

Article: "Texas Hospitals Are Already Overloaded. Doctors Are 'Frightened by What Is Coming'" by Edgar Sandoval and Giulia Heyward.

Article: "Young people hit hard by long COVID as Delta variant surges" by AFP.

Article: "New Simulations Show How Donald Trump Let Hundreds of Thousands of Americans Die of COVID-19" by Brandon Gage.

Article: "Lancet Study Finds 40 Percent of U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Could Have Been Avoided" by Elliot Hannon.

Article: "Bubonic plague" by Wikipedia.

Article: "1347 - 1351: BLACK DEATH kills over 1/3 of Europe population (jan 16, 1347 – jan 1, 1351)" by Time Graphics.

Article: "Spanish flu" by Wikipedia.

Speech: "Great Society" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Vietnam Veterans Memorial" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Florida Governor Ron DeSantis promises to fight any Biden federal funds being sent to mask-mandated schools and says he 'doubts' administration sent 300 ventilators to deal with COVID surge" by Katelyn Caralle.

Article: "Cruz calls for 'zero' Covid mandates as his kids safely attend school requiring masks" by MSNBC.

Article: "COVID In Florida: Gov. DeSantis Launches Monoclonal Antibody Treatment Centers" by CBSMiami.com.

Video: Rachel Maddow: Next Level Disaster' As Hospital Capacity Runs Out Due To Covid Crisis In Mississippi.

Article: "Joseph Stalin" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Powell Memo: Attack On American Free Enterprise System" by Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Book: The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "It's been exactly one year since Trump suggested injecting bleach. We've never been the same." by Meridith McGraw And Sam Stein.

Video: Teachers Union President Randi Weingarten on Why She Now Supports Vaccine Mandates for Teachers.

Article: "'Long Past Time to Fire DeJoy': Postmaster General's Ex-Company Gets $120 Million Contract" by Jessica Corbett.

Article: "The Postal Service Presses Forward With Unpopular Plan To Slow Some Mail Delivery" by Brian Naylor.

Article: "Howard Hughes" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Standard Oil" by Wikipedia.

Article: "AT&T" by Wikipedia.

Book: The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream by Thom Hartmann.

Book: The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "Milton Friedman" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations" by Our World in Data.

Video: Covid: We Are Never Returning to Normal (w/ Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding).

Article: "From smallpox to polio, vaccine rollouts have always had doubters. But they work in the end " by David Isaacs .

Article: "Over half the deer tested in Michigan have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2" by John Timmer.

Article: "Secret IRS Files Reveal How Much the Ultrawealthy Gained by Shaping Trump's "Big, Beautiful Tax Cut"" by Justin Elliott and Robert Faturechi.

Article: "Gov. DeSantis unveils Jacksonville site for getting Regeneron treatment of COVID infections " by David Bauerlein.

Article: "32,800 new cases in florida diagnosed" by TribLIVE.

Article: "Joe Manchin just threatened to derail Biden's big win. Please proceed, Senator." by Greg Sargent.

Article: "Why Conservatives Want Government To Fail Everywhere" by Thom Hartmann.

Do We Need an Emergency Billionaire Tax To Vaccinate the World?
- Chuck Collins, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, Director of the Institute for Policy Studies' Program on Inequality and the Common Good and the Co-Editor of Inequality.org / Author of the new book, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions

Article: "One-off emergency tax on billionaires' pandemic windfalls could fund COVID-19 jabs for entire world".

Article: "Updates: Billionaire Wealth, U.S. Job Losses and Pandemic Profiteers" by Chuck Collins.

Article: "Global Billionaire Pandemic Wealth Gains Surge to $5.5 Trillion" by Chuck Collins.

Article: "Tax on billionaires' Covid windfall could vaccinate every adult on Earth" by Amanda Holpuch.

Article: "New Sanders Bill Would Tax "Obscene" Pandemic Windfall of Billionaires" by Jake Johnson.

Article: "Codetermination in Germany" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Federal government sends ventilators to Florida as DeSantis says he's unaware of shipment" by Kaitlan Collins and Devan Cole.

Article: "Texas Gov. Abbott seeks out-of-state help against COVID-19" by Terry Wallace.

Article: "We will find you': Anti-maskers harass parents after school meeting in Tennessee" by Josh K. Elliott.

Article: "The TRIPS Waiver as a recognition of public health concerns in the WTO" by Andrew D. Mitchell, Tania Voon.

Article: "Angela Merkel rejects US move to waive patents on vaccines" by Guy Chazan, Erika Solomon, Hannah Kuchler and Jim Brunsden.

Site: Public Citizen's Trade Watch

Friday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 12-3pm ET

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Governors That Cause the Deaths of Children & Adults?

Will the Authoritarians & Their Useful Idiots Win?

Reign of Terror: How 9/11 Produced Trump (w/ Spencer Ackerman)