Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Are Trump’s Own Commanders Warning That The Iran War Is Breaking Our Military?
Six months into the war with Iran, the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force have told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to stop. Their warning appears in a classified Pentagon orders book dated August 14th. One official summed up the mood as the operation being “too much for too long.” The Navy’s top admiral reportedly said barely a quarter of the destroyer fleet is ready to deploy. Commanders in Europe, Asia, and Latin America filed a formal non-concur, meaning they think Hegseth’s wrong but they’ll follow orders anyway. A quarter of the Pentagon’s Reaper drones are gone. American bases have taken billions in damage. The generals are not the peace movement. When they’re the ones raising their hands, the war has already outrun whatever plan anybody had for it.
Trump Hands Venezuela’s Oil Fields To His Billionaire Friends
On Friday, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that his government had secured majority American control of Venezuelan oil reserves holding 65 billion barrels. Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez says private corporations will develop seventeen strategic fields. Economist Francisco Rodriguez ran the numbers and found the deal pays Venezuela about $3.22 a barrel, under 5% of the market price, less than half the royalty a Venezuelan dictator charged a century ago. Senator Chris Van Hollen didn’t mince words. “Putting our soldiers’ lives on the line for private profit is a gross dereliction.” Eight months ago American forces invaded Caracas and hauled off Nicolas Maduro. Trump said then he’d get the oil flowing. Now we are clear on why Trump invaded, and it wasn’t democracy.
Is Homeland Security Using A Customs Law To Spy On Reporters?
Federal judges twice refused the government a warrant for the YouTube accounts of journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon. The judge found no probable cause of any crime. So Homeland Security went around the judge. Less than a month later it served Google an administrative summons under 19 USC 1509, a customs statute written for import duties. It needs no judge, just a sign-off from a DHS official, and it ordered Google to stay quiet. T-Mobile handed over six months of Fort’s phone records, more than 10,000 calls and texts. She was never told. DHS used the same tool to pull financial records on unions and nonprofits in Minneapolis. Former DHS Inspector General John Roth called it “outrageous conduct on so many levels.” A warrant requirement the government can skip whenever it likes should be a warning to all.
Judge Tells Trump He Can’t Deport Students For Speaking Out
A federal judge in California just told the Trump administration it can’t deport people for what they say. Judge Noel Wise ruled Friday that two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the ones Marco Rubio used personally to target Columbia’s Mahmoud Khalil, Moshen Mahdawi, and Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk, violate the First and Fifth Amendments. The case was brought by student journalists at the Stanford Daily, who watched noncitizen writers pull their own stories out of fear. In ninety pages, Wise wrote that “in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people.” Khalil, who spent months in ICE detention while holding a green card, said nobody should be afraid to speak up. It’s the first ruling in the country to hit those statutes head on. The First Amendment protects everyone standing on American soil. Period.
Is The FBI Now Hiring People It Once Turned Away?
CBS News reports the FBI quietly loosened its background check standards in June. Hiring a sex worker used to be an automatic disqualifier. Now it isn’t, as long as it happened fewer than three times and more than ten years ago. Stealing from an employer is fine if it was more than three years back. Past acts of bestiality no longer disqualify you either, provided they happened before you turned 18. The bureau says the changes cover rare childhood abuse cases. Former agents say something simpler is going on. The FBI lost more than 1,100 special agents in 2025 alone, some of them fired off cases this administration didn’t like. Attorney Mark Zaid asked how this isn’t proof of a recruiting problem. Gut an agency for political loyalty and you don’t get a better FBI. You get a desperate one.
Could Breaking Up Big Medicine Put $6,000 Back In Your Pocket?
The American Economic Liberties Project put out a report this week with a number that sticks. Break up the healthcare conglomerates and American families would save $795 billion a year. That’s more than $6,000 per household. Six companies, Cardinal Health, Cencora, Cigna, CVS Health, McKesson, and UnitedHealth Group, now sit in the Fortune 15 and pull down nearly $34 billion in annual profit. More than four out of five American doctors now work for one of these giants. Your doctor fills out about 40 prior authorizations a week instead of treating you. The fix is a Glass-Steagall for healthcare, so one company can’t take a cut at every step. Here’s the thing. Seventy-one percent of voters already want it, including 70% of Republicans. This isn’t a left-right fight. It’s a top-bottom fight.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, August 31, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
