Finn Hartnett
Finn Hartnett covers how political power is exercised and abused, with a focus on the Trump orbit, Republican Party maneuvering, and the ways institutions - from the military to the media - are bent to serve those in charge. His reporting for The New Republic’s politics section combines close attention to the day’s headlines with an instinct for the underlying systems: donor networks, slush funds, foreign influence, and information war. He writes in a straight, news-forward style that surfaces hard details and sharp contradictions without drifting into personality coverage.
Trump’s donors, loyalists, and slush funds
Hartnett’s most consistent line of work follows Donald Trump’s inner circle and the money flows that bind it together.
In “Trump Brings Pam Bondi Back to His Team Despite Epstein Fury,” he traces how a longtime ally and former state attorney general returns to Trump’s camp despite public outrage, using the episode to show how scandal does little to weaken the former president’s network of loyalists. Pieces like “Trump’s Ballroom Donors Are Already Cashing In” pull on the thread of Trump’s fundraising operations, documenting how donors reap government contracts and other benefits once they are inside his orbit.
In “Trump’s $1.8 Billion Slush Fund Finds Its First Shady Applicant,” he follows a major pot of public money tied to Trump and identifies the first questionable figure seeking to tap it, framing the story as a test case for how lightly supervised funds can be exploited.
He also writes about moments that look trivial but expose Trump’s approach to public institutions. “Judge Demands Answers From Trump on Giant Tarp at Kennedy Center” treats a bizarre dispute over a tarp as a political story, detailing how a cultural institution becomes entangled in the administration’s decisions and a federal judge’s demand for accountability. Across these articles, Hartnett returns to the same question: who in Trump’s world gets paid, who gets protection, and how public authority is converted into private gain.
Republican Party, Congress, and the national security state
Another strand of Hartnett’s work examines Republicans in Congress and their relationship with the Pentagon and the broader national security establishment. In “Saudi’s MBS Secretly Pushes Trump to Take Iran War to Next Phase,” he reports on pressure from Mohammed bin Salman for Trump to escalate conflict with Iran, showing how foreign leaders and U.S. hawks try to steer American policy toward confrontation.
“Even Republicans Flip Out After Classified Pentagon Briefing on Iran” captures a rare moment when Republican legislators balk at what they are told behind closed doors, highlighting the gap between public messaging and private alarm over war plans.
Budget fights are another recurring subject. In “Trump Suggests Decimating NIH to Give Military Even More Money,” Hartnett sets the president’s proposed cuts to a key health agency against the push to swell defense spending, treating the proposal as a clear statement of priorities rather than a routine fiscal dispute. Taken together, these stories show him as a reporter who watches how Republicans handle war powers and military influence: he tracks classified briefings, foreign lobbying, and budget tradeoffs to map out where the party stands on conflict and security.
Information war, Gaza, and attacks on journalists
Hartnett extends his scrutiny of power to the treatment of journalists and the manipulation of evidence in wartime. In “IDF Releases Photoshopped Picture to Justify Killing Journalist,” he reports on the Israeli military’s use of altered imagery to defend an attack, laying out the technical details of the photo, the circumstances of the killing, and the implications for press freedom. The piece sits at the intersection of politics and media: it is a story about Gaza and the IDF’s conduct, but also about how official actors reshape facts to head off accountability.
This work complements his broader interest in the Gaza conflict and the political framing around it. By focusing on a single doctored image and its official circulation, Hartnett shows how propaganda functions at the level of evidence, not just rhetoric.
For communications about war, human rights, or press safety, his coverage is attentive to the way governments and militaries try to legitimize violence against reporters and civilians in the public record.
Features on resistance groups and nuclear reactors
In addition to fast-moving political stories, Hartnett has written longer magazine features that stretch beyond the daily cycle. He has reported on local resistance groups, following organizers on the ground and treating their work as part of the broader political landscape rather than a separate “activism” beat.
In another feature on nuclear reactors coming to small towns, he explores how energy projects and nuclear technology become political flashpoints, with local communities weighing promises of jobs and investment against safety concerns and skepticism about corporate and federal assurances.
These pieces show that he is comfortable shifting from Washington-centric politics to slower, more immersive reporting. He connects local actors and long-term infrastructure decisions back to national policy debates, which makes his feature work relevant for stories about grassroots organizing, climate and energy policy, and the politics of technological change.
Background and reporting style
Hartnett is an editorial intern at The New Republic, working on the magazine’s political coverage. Before joining the magazine, he reported for a small local newspaper where his investigative work on police misconduct contributed to an award for investigative reporting.
That background is reflected in his TNR pieces: he looks for documentary detail, is comfortable with public records and official briefings, and treats seemingly minor episodes as openings into deeper problems of governance and accountability.
Across beats - Trump’s donors, congressional hawks, foreign leaders, wartime propaganda, and community-level political struggles - Hartnett’s through-line is consistent. He is interested in how powerful people and institutions use money, secrecy, and narrative to get what they want, and he writes stories that expose those mechanisms in clear, compact prose.
For any story touching on the Trump world, Republican politics, national security, or attacks on journalists, his work suggests a reporter drawn to the structural stakes rather than the surface drama.
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