Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Did A Bank Just Flag Trump For Money Laundering?
Capital One dropped a bomb in federal court Friday night. The bank says it closed more than 300 Trump Organization accounts in 2021 after a months long review by its anti money laundering team. That’s the first time a bank has formally tied money laundering concerns to Donald Trump’s family business. Eric Trump and the Trump Organization sued, claiming they got debanked over woke politics after January sixth. Capital One calls that misguided. The closures, the bank told the judge, were “the result of months of analysis and a careful review.” Those transaction patterns, it says, are exactly what federal banking guidance tells banks to flag. Capital One never accused Trump of a crime, but, take a look at this. The president’s own bank ran him through the financial crime filter and shut down 300 accounts. Have you heard about this in the media?
Two Republicans Just Killed Trump’s Slush Fund
Todd Blanche caved. Sunday night, Trump’s acting Attorney General and former personal lawyer signed an order formally killing the $1.8 billion anti weaponization fund. That was the pot of money Trump wanted to hand out to people claiming they were unfairly prosecuted. That could have included the January sixth rioters who beat cops with flagpoles. The fund came out of Trump’s settlement with the IRS, the same deal that shielded his family from tax audits. Blanche wants the job permanently. Two Republicans, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, blocked him until he put it in writing. “This order establishes, beyond any doubt, that there is no fund,” Blanche wrote. Here’s the part that matters. Cornyn lost his primary. Tillis is retiring. Neither one answers to Trump anymore. The other Republicans? They’re still clucking, scratching, and hoping nobody notices they’re afraid to leave the coop.
What’s In The Chapter Democrats Left Out?
Remember that autopsy of the 2024 election the Democratic Party finally coughed up in May? Turns out a chapter went missing. Paul Rivera, the operative who wrote it, says the version the DNC released left out his sharpest questions. That chapter asked whether Joe Biden should have run for reelection at all. And it went after a consultant class Rivera says got “generationally wealthy off politics” while steering party strategy. DNC Chair Ken Martin released the draft in May saying it wasn’t ready and he wouldn’t put his stamp on it. Now the author says the hardest pages never made it in. Working people keep getting told to trust the party that’s supposed to fight for them. But a party that can’t stomach its own diagnosis is never going to write itself a cure. And the midterms are 90 days out
Why Are Democrats Whispering About Climate Change?
There’s a name for it now. Climate hushing. Democrats who once called global warming an existential threat have gone quiet, because consultants told them voters only care about affordability. Mentions of climate in congressional press releases have fallen off a cliff since 2025. Now activists are done being polite. During the summer recess, demonstrators organized by the Climate Action Campaign are showing up at lawmakers’ home offices demanding they say the words out loud. Bill McKibben, who founded 350.dot.org, says the movement moves fastest “when there’s real pressure from the grassroots.” In Michigan they’re targeting Republican Bill Huizenga, who voted for Trump’s big bill that supercharged fossil fuels. Here’s what the hushers miss. Your homeowners premium, your grocery bill, and your flooded basement are the same story. Silence doesn’t cool the planet
Racist Alert. Trump Puts A Price Tag On Visiting America
Starting today, the visa bond program becomes permanent. Travelers from 50 countries now have to post a bond of up to $20,000 to apply for a tourist or business visa. Officers can demand it “as a condition of visa issuance.” Thirty of those 50 countries are in Africa. Let’s call this what it is. It’s racist. There’s no polite word for a policy that puts a price tag on the door and aims it at Black and brown nations. The pilot was supposed to cover 2,000 applicants. It caught 20,000. Nearly half walked away rather than pay. Visas to those countries dropped 83 percent. Officials call that a success. Twenty thousand dollars beats a year’s income for families across much of that list. That’s not vetting. That’s a wall built out of money, aimed at Africa
Is RFK JR Building The Next Big Lie?
Robert F. Kennedy Junior spent 22 minutes brawling with CNN’s Dana Bash Sunday. Then CNN did something rare. It fact checked its own guest before the credits rolled. The Health Secretary pinned pandemic lockdowns on Anthony Fauci, revived debunked claims tying vaccines to autism, and said RSV came from gain of function research. Doctor Ashish Jha, who ran the White House Covid response, said Kennedy’s claims were “factually not true.” Jha added that the last two years produced more measles cases than the rest of this century combined. Watch what’s happening. This is a big lie being built in real time, one Sunday show at a time, from inside the federal government. Rewrite a pandemic’s history and you clear the way to repeat it. Except this time the man rewriting it runs the agency that’s supposed to stop it.
And that’s the way it is, Today is Monday, August 3, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
