Good Evening, this is the Commonwealth Report. News for the public, not the powerful.
Trump Bombs Iran’s Tallest Bridge and Brags About It
Donald Trump posted a ten-second video on Truth Social this morning of the B1 Bridge in Iran collapsing in smoke and fire. He wrote, “The biggest bridge in Iran comes tumbling down, never to be used again. Much more to follow!” The B1 Bridge near Karaj was the tallest bridge in the Middle East, standing 136 meters high. It’s a critical highway link between Tehran and Iran’s western provinces, and it had only recently opened. Iranian state TV reports at least two people were killed when U.S. and Israeli forces struck it twice in the same morning. Iran immediately threatened retaliatory strikes on bridges in Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Jordan. Trump then threatened to bomb Iran “extremely hard” for another two to three weeks unless Tehran makes a deal. This is week five of Operation Epic Fury. More than sixteen hundred Iranian civilians have been killed since the war launched on February 28th. Thirteen American troops are also dead. Bragging about bombing civilian infrastructure isn’t strength. It’s a war crime posted as a tweet.
Did Pete Hegseth Try to Cash In While Troops Were Dying in Iran?
The Financial Times broke a story this week that could land Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in serious legal trouble. His broker at Morgan Stanley reportedly contacted BlackRock in February about a multimillion-dollar investment in a defense industry stock fund, just weeks before Trump launched the war against Iran. Defense stocks surged when the bombs started falling. The fund held shares in Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing, and other top weapons contractors, all companies Hegseth is legally barred from investing in under his ethics agreement. Five Senate Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, and Richard Blumenthal, sent Hegseth a letter calling it a profound conflict of interest and demanding a full investigation. The Pentagon calls the report false. But BlackRock flagged the inquiry internally. The war costs American taxpayers over a billion dollars a day. And if this story holds up, the man running that war was trying to personally profit from it behind closed doors. That’s not just a scandal. That’s a betrayal of every service member he sent into harm’s way.
Is Trump Carrying Out Putin’s Dream? America’s NATO Allies Say Yes
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk didn’t mince words this week. He listed everything that’s happening right now: the threat of NATO’s breakup, the easing of sanctions on Russia, a massive energy crisis in Europe, Ukraine’s aid cut off, and Viktor Orban blocking the European Union loan to Kyiv. Then he said what many have been afraid to say out loud. It all looks like Putin’s dream plan. He’s right. European gas prices are up more than seventy percent since the Iran war began. Trump lifted sanctions on Russian oil at sea, handing Putin a financial lifeline. Trump told European allies to go get their own oil from the Strait of Hormuz by themselves or learn to fight without American help. He’s said he’s “beyond reconsidering” America’s NATO membership and called the alliance a paper tiger. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is openly talking about re-examining the U.S. role in the alliance. A key ally’s head of government is saying the president of the United States is executing Vladimir Putin’s wish list. That’s not a talking point. That’s an alarm from the front lines of democracy.
Trump Promised a Manufacturing Boom. He Delivered a Bust
One year ago today, Donald Trump stood in the White House and announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs. Jobs and factories would come roaring back, he said. April 2nd would go down as the day America began getting wealthy again. Here’s what actually happened. The U.S. lost 89,000 manufacturing jobs in the months that followed. Blue-collar employment overall fell by about 190,000 workers. The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs as illegal this past February, ruling six to three that he’d misused emergency economic powers. Prices are still rising. Inflation sits at two point four percent. Trump’s tariffs have cost the average American household fifteen hundred dollars this year alone. Trump replaced the struck-down tariffs with new duties set to expire in July, throwing more chaos at every business trying to plan its future. American workers were promised a golden age. They got layoffs, higher prices, and a president who changed the rules every other month and called it leadership.
Did CDC Just Make America Blind to the Next Pandemic?
What happens when a deadly disease starts spreading and nobody at the federal level is watching? We may be about to find out. The CDC this week posted a list of more than two dozen tests it has now paused. The list includes rabies, monkeypox, Epstein-Barr virus, chickenpox, COVID-19, and influenza A and B. The official line is that it’s a routine quality review. But the head of the Association of Public Health Laboratories says he’s never seen the CDC pause this many tests at once, and he doesn’t totally know why it’s happening. Experts are connecting the dots to the cuts. The CDC has lost twenty to twenty-five percent of its workforce over the past year. The poxvirus and rabies labs alone lost roughly half their staff. The malaria branch was gutted even harder. We built this public health infrastructure after hard lessons learned from pandemic after pandemic. DOGE didn’t drain the swamp. It drained the labs that protect our lives.
When the Wrestling Crowd Turns on Your Tariffs, You Know You’ve Lost the Room
And finally, you know a political movement is in trouble when the pro wrestling fans start booing. At an All Elite Wrestling event in Winnipeg, Canada on Tuesday night, the crowd broke into a loud chant against Trump’s tariffs that was, let’s say, direct and enthusiastic. This isn’t the first time AEW crowds have sent a political message. In February, fans at a Las Vegas show chanted against ICE during a live broadcast on TBS and HBO Max. AEW draws exactly the kind of blue-collar working-class fans Trump spent a decade courting. These aren’t focus groups or think tank panels. These are real people in real arenas, spending their hard-earned money on a night out, and taking time to tell you exactly how they feel about a policy that’s raised their prices, killed their jobs, and shattered their sense of economic security. When the wrestling crowd turns on your agenda, you don’t have a messaging problem. You have a reality problem.
And that’s the way it is, Tonight Thursday, April 2, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
