Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report. News for the public, not the powerful.
Why Are Republicans Funding Trump’s Billion Dollar Ballroom While You Drown in Gas Prices?
Senate Republicans want you, the taxpayer, to fork over one billion dollars for security upgrades to Donald Trump’s gold plated White House ballroom. Yes, the same project Trump swore up and down would be privately funded by his billionaire friends. They’ve tucked the money into a reconciliation bill heading to the Senate floor this week, alongside tens of billions more for ICE raids. Senator Chris Murphy put it plain. “This week, Republicans will spend their time trying to get taxpayers to fund Trump’s parties.” And here’s the kicker. While Trump throws himself a billion dollar party, gas prices have rocketed past four dollars and fifty cents a gallon, up more than fifty percent since his Iran war kicked off in February. Eight in ten Americans say they’re straining just to fill up the tank. Sixty three percent blame Trump for the pain. So now he’s floating a federal gas tax suspension to save his political hide. Let them eat cake, indeed. This is what oligarchy looks like when the powdered wig slips off and working people get the bill.
Is Trump Plotting to Rig the Midterms With a Private Army?
Donald Trump took to Truth Social Sunday and called for what he labeled an “election integrity army” to descend on the 2026 midterms. He bragged it’ll be much bigger and stronger than the operation he ran in 2024. Translation, he’s openly threatening to send thugs to intimidate voters in November. This comes after Senate Democrats launched a task force, led by former Attorney General Eric Holder and election lawyer Marc Elias, to fight Republican voter suppression. Congresswoman Norma Torres of California fired back, blasting the president for “calling for a private army to hover over legal voters.” Why is Trump so panicked? Because Democrats are surging in the polls heading into the fall, with control of the House and Senate up for grabs. He knows the only way he keeps power is by stealing the vote. Remember, Trump’s FBI already raided a Georgia election office earlier this year. The man who tried to overturn 2020 is telling you, out loud and in advance, exactly what he plans to do in 2026. Believe him.
Is Putin Really Ready to End the War in Ukraine?
Vladimir Putin stood at the Kremlin this weekend and declared the war he started in Ukraine is, in his words, coming to an end. He said it just hours after Moscow staged its most stripped down Victory Day parade in living memory. No tanks rolled across Red Square. No missiles. Just video screens, because the Russian war machine has been bled dry by four years of fighting. A three day ceasefire brokered by Donald Trump is barely holding, and the two sides swapped a thousand prisoners apiece over the weekend. So is this peace? Don’t pop the champagne yet. Russia expert Oleg Ignatov of the International Crisis Group told Newsweek that Putin hasn’t budged an inch from his core demand that Ukraine surrender the entire Donbas region. That’s a flat out non starter for Kyiv, and Putin knows it. Meanwhile, Putin says the only European he’ll talk to is his old buddy Gerhard Schröder, the Russia friendly former German chancellor. The Russian economy is cratering, real incomes are falling, and ordinary Russians are growing restless. Don’t mistake Kremlin propaganda for actual peace.
Trump Eyes Venezuela as the Fifty-First State
You really can’t make this stuff up. Donald Trump phoned Fox News host John Roberts on Monday morning and said, with a straight face, that he’s “seriously considering making Venezuela the 51st state.” Why? Because, he told Roberts, there’s forty trillion dollars worth of oil sitting under Venezuelan soil. Back up a moment. In January, Delta Force commandos kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in the middle of the night and hauled them to a New York federal courtroom on narco terrorism charges. Trump’s been personally running Venezuela’s oil exports ever since, with the revenue flowing straight to Washington. Now he wants to annex the whole country and pocket the oil. Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez shot the idea down cold from The Hague, saying Venezuelans love their independence too much for that nonsense. And let’s be honest, no Venezuelan ever voted to become an American. Trump’s also floated grabbing Greenland, Canada, and the province of Alberta. This isn’t America First. This is American empire built on kidnapping presidents and stealing other countries’ oil. Twenty first century imperialism wearing a red MAGA hat.
Hegseth Hunts Mark Kelly for Telling the Truth
Pete Hegseth, the man Trump put in charge of what he now calls the Department of War, is demanding a second Pentagon investigation of Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. Kelly’s crime? Telling CBS News’ Face the Nation that American missile stockpiles are running dangerously low because of Trump’s Iran war. Kelly described it as “shocking how deep we have gone into these magazines.” Tomahawks, Patriots, ATACMS, THAAD interceptors, all depleted to the bone. Hegseth fired off a social media post accusing Kelly, a retired Navy captain and decorated combat veteran, of violating his oath. Kelly clapped right back, posting video of Hegseth himself saying the exact same thing at a public Senate hearing just a week earlier. That’s not classified. That’s just Hegseth getting caught. This is the second time he has tried to punish a sitting United States senator for doing his constitutional job. A federal appeals court already rejected the first attempt as illegal retaliation against a sitting senator. The pattern is unmistakable. Welcome to Trump’s America, where telling the American people the truth about a war gets you investigated, and the powerful walk off with a billion dollar ballroom and a personal pipeline to Venezuelan oil.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday May 11, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
