Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report. News for the public, not the powerful.
Did Trump Lie to America About Winning the Iran War?
While Donald Trump was telling America he’d crushed Iran, his own intelligence community was telling a very different story. CNN reports Trump’s intel agencies have determined Iran still has roughly half its missile launchers intact and thousands of attack drones ready to fly. That directly contradicts Trump’s Wednesday address, where he claimed Iran had been completely decimated. Sue Gordon, Trump’s former principal deputy director of national intelligence, told CNN the new report alarmed her. She wants to know why it wasn’t raised before the assault began. Former envoy Brett McGurk was blunt about it. His takeaway is that escalation, not an exit, is what’s coming. When a president sells a war on false claims and his own intelligence contradicts him, every American deserves the truth about what we’ve gotten into.
Vance Targets Blue States as Trump’s New Fraud Czar
Trump officially named JD Vance his fraud czar on Friday and gave him one assignment. Go after Democratic-controlled states. California, Illinois, Minnesota, Maine, New York and others are all in the crosshairs. Trump said raids have already started in Los Angeles. The task force was created by executive order in March, but now Vance has a title, a mandate, and a target list. Trump claimed stopping the alleged fraud could balance the entire federal budget. That’s an extraordinary claim with no evidence behind it. Using the vice president’s office to target states that voted against the president isn’t law enforcement. It’s political retribution. This is authoritarianism in practice.
Is Vance Now the Vice President of Hungary?
JD Vance flies to Budapest April 7th and 8th, four days before Hungary’s election. His mission is clear. Boost Trump ally Viktor Orbán, whose Fidesz party is trailing in the polls for the first time in sixteen years. Trump has already endorsed Orbán on social media, calling him a truly strong and powerful leader. Secretary of State Rubio visited Budapest in February. Now Vance goes in for the close. Political analysts say the American intervention won’t shift the outcome since Hungarians are focused on kitchen-table issues. But the principle matters. For generations, American presidents stayed out of foreign elections. Orbán has gutted Hungary’s democratic institutions and earned repeated EU sanctions. When the United States campaigns for a foreign autocrat, we’re not spreading democracy. We’re exporting its opposite.
Is Pete Hegseth Purging the Military of Black and Female Officers?
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has blocked promotions for more than a dozen high-ranking officers across all four military branches, and nearly all of them are Black or female. NPR and NBC News have confirmed he personally struck the names of two Black men and two women from an Army promotion list, all recommended for brigadier general by their peers. Hegseth spent months pressuring Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to remove the names. Driscoll refused. Hegseth did it himself. One officer was targeted for a paper he wrote fifteen years ago. A Hegseth aide reportedly told Army leadership that Trump wouldn’t want to stand next to a Black female officer at public events. Senator Jack Reed says if accurate, those moves are illegal. Purging decorated officers by race and gender corrupts the military from within.
The Iran war just showed up in your Amazon shopping cart
How Much Will Trump’s Iran War Cost You? Starting April 17th, Amazon is adding a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge to millions of sellers who use its fulfillment service. The company says it can’t absorb the rising fuel costs any longer. Brent crude has surged past 107 dollars a barrel as the Strait of Hormuz stays blocked. UPS, FedEx and the Postal Service have all added their own war-related surcharges. Grocery prices are heading up next, driven by rising diesel and fertilizer costs. One grocery executive was direct about it. For people spending every dollar they have, a five-dollar grocery price hike has to come from somewhere else. Trump started this war. You’re paying for it at the checkout line.
The West Is Drying Up and Washington Looks Away
Scientists are sounding a full alarm about a snowpack collapse across the American West unlike anything in the historical record. The Great Basin is at just 16 percent of average snowpack. The lower Colorado River basin, which supplies water to more than 40 million people, is at 10 percent. The Rio Grande is at 8 percent. During a California survey Wednesday, officials found zero measurable snow at a Sierra Nevada site where they’d normally stand knee-deep in snowpack. March 2026 was the warmest March on record, and that heat wiped out snowpack that should have lasted into summer. Salt Lake City is already urging water conservation. Colorado and Wyoming are moving toward outdoor watering bans. Wildfire season is arriving weeks early. As one climatologist put it, the changes we’ve set in motion are going to be catastrophic. The West is running out of water and time.
And that’s the way it is, Today Friday, April 3rd, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
