Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Are Democrats Really Communists, Or Is The GOP Just Scared?
Republicans have dusted off an old smear and slapped a new label on it. For years they called Democrats socialists. Now, as more Americans warm up to socialism and more socialist candidates win primaries, the right has switched words. They’re calling them communists. President Trump told a North Dakota rally that democratic socialists are hiding their true colors. “They’re actually communists,” he said. He called communism a bigger threat than World War One, World War Two, Pearl Harbor, and September eleventh combined. House Speaker Mike Johnson cast the fight as common sense versus communism and compared the Democratic left to the Bolshevik Revolution. A Republican strategist admitted the quiet part out loud. The old socialist attack stopped stinging, so they needed a scarier word. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shrugged it off, saying voters care about groceries, not labels. When your best argument is name calling, you’re not winning the argument.
Why Did Masked Fascists March Through Washington On July Fourth?
While the nation marked two hundred and fifty years since the Declaration of Independence, hundreds of masked men took over the streets of the capital. They belonged to Patriot Front, a white supremacist group the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and George Washington University all call a hate group. They wore khaki and blue, covered their faces, carried shields and drums, and waved American and Confederate flags. They chanted “Reclaim America” as they marched past the Capitol toward Union Station. About four hundred showed up. A Georgetown law professor who spotted them asked, “What kind of fascist hellscape is happening?” The group formed in twenty seventeen after Charlottesville and wants a white ethnostate. Washington police said they were tracking First Amendment activity. When Nazis feel safe marching on our birthday, something has gone badly wrong.
The Pacific Ocean Is Running A Fever, And That’s Bad News
Out across the Pacific, there’s a marine heat wave so enormous it covers an area more than eight times the size of the lower forty eight states. That’s about thirteen and a half percent of the entire surface of the Earth, stretching from the Philippines all the way to Peru. It formed when two hot spots merged, one in the North Pacific and one tied to a building super El Niño near the equator. Scientists say it’s already fueling a super typhoon in the western Pacific and could bake the western United States under a heat dome in mid July, raising wildfire risk. Sea levels near California could jump two to three feet this fall. That heat could turbocharge the jet stream and turn the South into a storm highway. One climate scientist warned, “Months and months of warmth could mean stark impacts.” What happens in the ocean doesn’t stay in the ocean?
Did Trump Just Admit The Whole Game Is Rigged?
President Trump attacked a pro-democracy resolution written by the leaders of the Progressive, Black, Hispanic, and Asian Pacific American caucuses. The measure would restore the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court gutted, add term limits and possibly more justices to that court, and end the Senate filibuster. Trump posted that if Democrats pass it, the Republican Party is dead. Texas Congressman Greg Casar pounced on that admission. “At least he admits it,” Casar wrote, saying Trump just confessed the court’s voting rulings are about rigging elections for Republicans. The Court’s six to three decision in Louisiana versus Callais cleared red states to redraw maps and wipe out majority-Black districts. Trump wants the SAVE America Act jammed through to add strict voting rules. Speaker Johnson vowed to attach the voting crackdown to a filibuster-proof budget bill. When the president says protecting your vote would kill his party, believe him.
Geeky Science Alert. Do You Really Need Eight Hours Of Sleep?
Here’s some good news for anyone who lies awake worrying about sleep. That eight hour rule you keep hearing might be wrong. Daniel Lieberman, a Harvard evolutionary biologist, wrote in the New York Times that scientists have pinned down how much sleep adults really need. A new study in the journal Nature found the sweet spot sits between six hours and twenty four minutes and seven hours and forty eight minutes. Sleeping much less or much more got tied to faster aging in the brain, heart, and liver, plus more heart disease and depression. But Lieberman says don’t panic. “You can now relax,” he wrote. About thirty five percent of Americans get less than seven hours, and stressing about it only makes insomnia worse. So stop counting the hours and start counting how good you feel.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, July sixth, twenty twenty-six. I’m Thom Hartmann.
