Good Evening, this is the Commonwealth Report. News for the public, not the powerful.
Trump Is Dismantling the One Office Standing Between Us and the Next Crash
The office built to protect us from the next Wall Street meltdown is being gutted. The Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research started this year with 196 employees. It’s now down to about 100. And layoffs hitting in May will slash it to just 70. That’s a 64% workforce reduction since Trump took office. Congress created this office after the 2008 financial crisis specifically to watch for hidden risks building up in the financial system. Now the Trump administration is killing it. And here’s the kicker. The office is funded by fees on big banks, not your tax dollars. This isn’t about saving a dime. Senator Elizabeth Warren says they’re “paving the way for another crash.” She’s right. Regulation isn’t red tape. Regulation is the guardrail between us and another Great Recession. Democracy depends on accountability, and accountability in our economy requires watchdogs with teeth. When you tear those watchdogs down, everyday Americans fall off the cliff while Wall Street walks away clean. Deregulation is always sold as freedom. It’s really just freedom for the powerful to loot without consequence.
Israel Just Passed a Death Penalty Law That Only Applies to Palestinians. The World Is Calling It a War Crime
Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed a law Monday making death by hanging the default punishment for Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis in terrorism cases. The vote was 62 to 48. But here’s the thing. The law applies to Palestinians tried in military courts. Israeli settlers who commit the exact same crimes are tried in civilian courts and face no such penalty. Two sets of rules. One for Palestinians, one for everyone else. The UN human rights chief called the law “deeply discriminatory” and a potential war crime. The EU called it a “grave regression.” Germany, France, Italy, and the UK jointly condemned it. Israel’s military courts have roughly a 96% conviction rate, based largely on confessions extracted under duress. Now those convictions carry mandatory hanging, within 90 days, with no pardon possible. Far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrated by popping champagne on the parliament floor and declared, “We made history.” When a government reserves its most extreme punishment exclusively for one ethnic group, the world has a name for that.
While You Were Struggling, Corporate America Just Pocketed $65 Billion in Trump Tax Gifts
We were told the big tax bill was for working families. The numbers are in. According to a Bloomberg analysis, nearly a dozen of the fifty largest US companies reported paying far less in federal income taxes last year, all thanks to Trump’s 3.4 trillion dollar tax law. Total corporate tax revenues dropped by 65 billion dollars after the law passed. Amazon. Walmart. Verizon. All cashing in. While working people watch their services get cut and their deficits balloon, Corporate America pockets 65 billion dollars a year. That money doesn’t fall from the sky. It comes from schools. From roads. From healthcare programs you and your family depend on. This is the oldest con in the book. Call it a middle-class tax cut, then write the fine print for the wealthy. And the bill always comes due on Main Street.
Bondi and Patel Are Getting Sued. And the List of Victims Keeps Growing
The FBI purge is backfiring in federal court. Three seasoned agents, Jamie Garman, Blaire Toleman, and Michelle Ball, have filed suit against Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, alleging they were fired in retaliation for working on Jack Smith’s Trump investigation. But this case goes way beyond those three. It’s a proposed class action covering at least 50 terminated agents, with more expected. Agents who displayed Pride flags. Agents who knelt during 2020 racial justice protests to prevent violence. Agents flagged by AI text reviews. Agents whose only sin was knowing the wrong people. The complaint accuses Patel and Bondi of turning law enforcement into a weapon of partisan revenge, firing career professionals simply for doing their jobs. This is the second such lawsuit this month against the Justice Department. When law enforcement becomes a loyalty test, it’s no longer law enforcement. It’s organized retaliation with badges. And the courts are starting to notice.
Alex Jones Invented an ISIS Attack That Never Happened. Welcome to How the Right Wing Operates
A new book by Josh Owens, a former Infowars video editor, reveals that Alex Jones once sent a crew to the border to find proof of an ISIS training camp in Juarez, Mexico. Something right-wing media had been swearing up and down existed. They found absolutely nothing. So Jones ordered them to dress a reporter in ISIS-style clothing, locate a stream that could pass for the Rio Grande, film a fake beheading with a severed-head prop, and post it. It got millions of views. Owens says flatly, it was lies. That video terrified people, stoked hatred of Muslims, and traveled everywhere online. This is the right-wing media playbook stripped naked. The ends justify the means. If the story you want doesn’t exist, manufacture it. Make people scared enough and they’ll believe anything, accept any cruelty, and vote for any demagogue who promises to protect them from threats that were invented in the first place. The lie isn’t a bug in their machine. It is the machine.
CRAZY ALERT! Is Matt Gaetz Exposing the Alien Breeding Program Because He Escaped From It?
Former Congressman Matt Gaetz, the one forced to withdraw as Trump’s attorney general pick after an ethics investigation into alleged sexual misconduct with a minor, went on a far-right talk show and claimed a uniformed US Army officer once gave him a personal briefing on a secret government program where captured space aliens are breeding with humans to create an intergalactic hybrid race. He says people snatched from migrant caravans were part of it. He says UFO crash sites contain, quote, “non-human biologics.” He provided zero evidence. Which raises an obvious question here at the Commonwealth Report. How does Matt Gaetz know so much about alien hybrid breeding? Could it be because he’s a participant? Could he be a Klingon? Check out his forehead. We’re just asking. The man couldn’t get confirmed for anything on this planet. Maybe his people have better opportunities out there among the stars. Or maybe, just maybe, a disgraced ex-congressman who can’t find work in Washington figured the alien beat was wide open. Either way, if the US government really does have a secret alien breeding program, the very last person they’d brief is Matt Gaetz.
And that’s the way it is, tonight, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
