Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Could Texas Really Turn Blue This November?
Nate Silver dropped his new midterm forecast Tuesday, and he’s calling Texas lean Democrat. Let that sink in. Texas. Silver gives Democrat James Talarico a sixty-three percent shot at flipping that Senate seat. Talarico’s running against Ken Paxton, the state attorney general who knocked off John Cornyn in a brutal primary with Trump’s endorsement. Paxton comes with baggage. An impeachment, lawsuits, and a messy public divorce. Republicans warned this would happen if he won the nomination. Karl Rove warned it. Cornyn warned it. Silver ranks only two states as better Democratic pickups. North Carolina, where Roy Cooper’s got a ninety percent chance, and Maine, where Troy Jackson’s at 69% against Susan Collins. Here’s what matters for you. When the reddest big state in America is in play, the map isn’t fixed. Voters change it. If anyone tells you your vote doesn’t count, just think of Texas.
Judge Blocks Trump’s Mail Ballot Power Grab Again
Federal Judge Indira Talwani blocked Trump’s election order again on Tuesday. This is the one that would’ve handed the Postal Service the power to decide who gets a mail ballot. Trump signed it in March. Talwani already gutted it in June for more than 20 Democratic led states. Now she’s granted a preliminary injunction for the League of Women Voters that stops the Postal Service cold, nationwide. She wrote that we’re less than ninety days from the November third election, and you don’t rewrite the rules on the eve of a vote. Here’s the part nobody should skip. Talwani says the administration hasn’t even bothered defending the order as constitutional. They just want it running. Trump’s asking the Supreme Court to lift the first block. Mail voting is how millions of working people, seniors, and rural voters cast their ballots. That’s why it’s the target.
Who’s Paying Third Way To Fight Medicare For All?
Third Way is the centrist group launching a $15 million campaign against the left wing of the Democratic Party. Its president, Jonathan Cowan, says the group is “preparing for war” against candidates who back Medicare for All. So who’s writing the checks? Sludge reporter David Moore went digging through tax filings. He found an insurance industry outfit called Better Solutions for Healthcare handed Third Way’s advocacy arm fifty thousand dollars. Its members include the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and the insurance lobby AHIP, and it runs out of a Republican strategy firm’s offices in Arlington. CVS Health and Johnson and Johnson show up as donors too. Third Way doesn’t disclose its funders. And when the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post all quoted Third Way attacking Abdul El-Sayed after his Michigan Senate primary win, not one of them asked who pays the bills. Follow the money.
Why Did Minnesota Push Federal Agents Away From The Polls?
Trump’s Justice Department sent about 20 federal monitors into Minnesota’s two biggest counties for Tuesday’s primary. Hennepin and Ramsey said no. Under state law counties can refuse, and they did. So those federal staffers had to stand outside the hundred foot line around the polls, same as everybody else. Secretary of State Steve Simon didn’t stop there. He and Attorney General Keith Ellison sent state observers to watch the watchers. The Justice Department says it’s about ballot security and federal law. Fair enough. Simon noted federal observers came here under presidents of both parties. But this administration has deployed more than 50 monitors across seven counties this primary season, and Trump keeps insisting he won Minnesota three times when he lost it three times. Federal agents showing up uninvited at your polling place isn’t oversight. That’s pressure. Minnesota’s answer was simple. Stay back
Guess Who Refuses To Concede In Minnesota?
And of course he did. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, lost Minnesota’s Republican primary for governor and won’t concede. State Representative Lisa Demuth beat him forty-three percent to thirty-two, with more than ninety-five percent of the vote counted. Lindell’s argument? He’s only down twenty thousand votes with two hundred seventy-seven thousand left to count, so why quit? A St Paul reporter says he’s claiming anomalies his team will study overnight. Anomalies. This from the man who already owes two point three million dollars for defaming a Dominion Voting Systems employee. Hours before the polls closed, Trump told Minnesota that Lindell “will not let you down.” Apparently free and fair elections are free and fair right up until the pillow man loses. Demuth faces Senator Amy Klobuchar in November.
Can One Month Of Eating Vegan Rewind Your DNA Clock?
Geeky Science. Researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Freiburg took forty-eight healthy adults. Twenty-four went strict vegan for a month, 24 ate meat heavy, and calories stayed the same so weight loss wouldn’t muddy things. Then they read more than 800,000 chemical switches on the participants’ DNA. The vegan group’s biological age dropped about 1.7 years on a clock called PhenoAge. Inflammation markers fell. Immune cells that keep the body balanced went up. Genes tied to repair and longevity switched on. Now the honest part. Twenty-four people per group is small, one month is short, and most of the gene findings didn’t survive statistical correction. A longer study’s already planned. But the direction looks good, and beans are a lot cheaper than pills and better for you!
And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, August 12, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann
