Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Did Democrats Just Lock Republicans Out of the White House?
Politico’s Jonathan Martin says Tuesday’s landslide didn’t just cost Republicans Congress. It may have wrecked their map to the presidency. Texas, which Martin calls the GOP Alamo, finally fell. Democrats flipped a Senate seat there by double digits and took the state House. Without Texas and its 40 electoral votes, Martin says Republicans have “virtually no path to the presidency.” Jon Ossoff won Georgia by 18. Roy Cooper took North Carolina by 20. Kansas voters threw out a sitting Republican senator. South Carolina elected its first Democratic senator since 1998. And with Susan Collins gone, Republicans have no senator left in New England for the first time since the party was founded. Without a post-Trump reformation, Martin warns, this isn’t a bad night. It’s the new map.
World Leaders Cheer as Trump’s “Crumbling” Far Right Takes a Beating
The rest of the world watched Tuesday night too, and they’re not hiding their relief. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the far-right wave is “no longer growing” and is crumbling, and he predicted Spain is next. Norway’s Prime Minister called it a powerful political signal. A senior German conservative said Trump’s defeat could moderate his foreign policy, because Congress will now stand in the way of siding with Moscow or escalating the Iran war. Bernd Lange of the European Parliament called it a crushing blow to Trump and a major victory for American democracy. But he warned that a lame duck can turn into an angry duck. The world was holding its breath to see whether American democracy could still correct itself. On Tuesday, it did.
Will Democrats Use the Power of the Purse to End Trump’s Iran War?
Chuck Schumer says yes. The Senate Democratic leader said Wednesday that Democrats will defund Trump’s war with Iran when they take control in January. “We are going to end the war,” he said. Trump launched that war in February without a vote from Congress. Now Democrats will hold both chambers and at least 54 Senate seats, and Schumer says they’ll cut off Pentagon funding until Trump winds it down. Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski already voted for a war powers resolution this year. Even JD Vance admitted the war is why Republicans lost, and the gas prices that came with it. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war and the power to pay for it. For the first time in this war, somebody’s planning to use it.
Hegseth’s Wife Took Money From a Firm Working for Lockheed Martin. Surprised?
Politico reports that Jennifer Hegseth, wife of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, was paid last year by Watchtower Strategy, a Trump-connected consulting firm that worked for Lockheed Martin that same year. The payment shows up on Pete Hegseth’s own financial disclosure. The amount doesn’t. That same fiscal year, the federal government paid Lockheed more than $66 billion. Jennifer Hegseth is the daughter of a late Lockheed executive and has been described as her husband’s most influential adviser. She’s sat in on closed-door meetings with senators and Pentagon job interviews. Watchtower says she only helped them navigate conservative TV. The Pentagon says everyone’s in full compliance. Maybe so. But when the family of the man who signs the checks gets paid by the people representing the company cashing them, that’s not a conflict waiting to happen. It already did.
Can a Progressive Insurgent Topple a Big City Machine? Nithya Raman Just Did
Los Angeles has a new mayor. City Council member Nithya Raman is projected to defeat incumbent Karen Bass, according to Decision Desk HQ. Raman, a 45-year-old urban planner, jumped in just hours before the filing deadline and ran against the city’s Democratic establishment. Bass had nearly every elected official in the county behind her, plus Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi. Raman had the Democratic Socialists of America and a message about housing and affordability. She hammered Bass over the Palisades fire response and the exodus of film production. She’ll be the first Indian American mayor of Los Angeles, and almost nobody thought she could win. From New York to Los Angeles, voters are sending the same message. Fix what’s broken, or get out of the way.
Crazy Alert! Trump Called the Reflecting Pool “A Complete Job.” Then Reporters Took a Walk
The day before the election, Trump stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and declared his renovation “a complete job and we’re very proud of it.” Then Washington Post reporters walked the pool’s edge. They found cracking. They found peeling. They found at least 20 spots where the color was streaky light blue instead of Trump’s American flag blue. This is the same pool that flaked apart in June after the first repair, when an inspection found damage in 85 places and blamed rushed work and the wrong materials. The administration blamed vandals and prosecuted a former Olympian, until the Justice Department dropped the case and admitted the job was botched. Now Interior says the cracks are deranged vandalism. Is this cracking reflective pool symbolic of Trump’s cracking and peeling support? You betcha...
And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday, November 5, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
