Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Did Secret Donors Pour $33 Million Into a Law Firm Packed With Clarence Thomas’s Clerks?
A new Raw Story investigation drops a bomb on the Supreme Court. A boutique law firm called Consovoy McCarthy has taken in more than $33.5 million from dark money nonprofits, according to tax filings dug up by the watchdog True North Research. More than $29 million of it came from groups tied to Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society boss who built the Court’s right-wing supermajority. Nearly $8.8 million came from Ed Blum’s Students for Fair Admissions. That’s the group that killed affirmative action in 2023, with Consovoy McCarthy arguing the case. Koch-linked Speech First kicked in over $7.3 million. Stephen Miller’s America First Legal paid them too. This is the same firm that fought to hide Trump’s tax returns. And here’s the kicker. Six of the firm’s 11 partners clerked for Clarence Thomas. Another clerked for John Roberts. Alyssa Bowen of True North says Leo is “seeking to impose his agenda on all Americans by weaponizing the court system.” We don’t know who the real donors are, and that’s the whole point. Billionaires pay the lawyers, the lawyers know the justices, and the rest of us live with the rulings. That’s not justice. That’s a business model.
Did California’s Attorney General Just Hand CNN to Trump’s Billionaire Buddies?
California Attorney General Rob Bonta threw in the towel today. Bonta led a coalition of 12 blue states suing to block Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN. Bloomberg reports the states have now settled, after 4 holdout states gave in over the weekend. That clears the way for one of the biggest mergers in Hollywood history, a deal worth roughly $110 billion. Paramount is run by David Ellison, whose father Larry Ellison is one of the richest men on Earth. Both are close Trump allies, and Trump’s regulators already waved the deal through. The Ellisons put Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News a year ago, and CNN’s Brian Stelter reports there’s talk of folding CNN into CBS News. All this comes just days after Trump banned CNN from the White House over coverage he didn’t like. Jessica González of Free Press called it a new low, saying the merger will “cut jobs and raise prices” while concentrating media power. Bonta says settling isn’t an endorsement, and the fine print isn’t out yet. But when Democratic watchdogs fold in front of billionaires, who’s left to guard the free press? A democracy can’t survive when a handful of oligarchs own the news.
Will Trump’s Budget Boss Seize a Veto Over America’s Medical Research?
Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order creating a political board with power over grants at the National Institutes of Health. The Washington Post and Politico report it came out of an Oval Office meeting Friday, where top officials accused the NIH of funding what they call woke research. The plan comes from Russell Vought, Trump’s budget director. His outside committee could veto any biomedical research award that doesn’t line up with Trump’s agenda. Politico says the board would include Vought and NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, and every decision would have to be unanimous. That means Vought alone could kill any grant. Bhattacharya reportedly defended the NIH’s process in that meeting. For generations, the NIH, the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, has picked projects on scientific merit. Now researchers represented by the ACLU are suing, saying the administration is already killing grants to silence views it doesn’t like. Their complaint says the First Amendment doesn’t let government “target or silence the expression of disfavored viewpoints.” Studies flagged for words like equity, gender and climate change have already been targeted. Billions in federal grants have been cut or frozen. When politicians decide which diseases get studied, science stops being science. And it’s your family’s health that pays the price.
Why Is Pete Hegseth Barking Bible Verses at College Kids During a War?
While a war rages in Iran and gas prices squeeze families across America, the Defense Secretary spent his Saturday yelling on a football field. The Pentagon’s own rapid response account posted the videos. There’s Pete Hegseth in a T-shirt reading THIS IS WAR, tucked into his gym shorts, working out with Texas A&M students who serve in the National Guard. He ran the bleachers. Then he preached, quoting Isaiah and shouting, “Send me to go fight the redcoats, send me to go fight the communists.” He added the Islamists to the list too. The redcoats, for the record, went home in 1783. Tom Nichols of The Atlantic said a Defense Secretary is supposed to advise the President on strategy, not bark Old Testament passages at kids while losing a war to a third-rank Gulf power. Veteran and activist Mike Prysner pointed out the guy in the WAR shirt is the one sending these young people into an unpopular disaster. This is what happens when a Fox News weekend host runs the most powerful military on Earth. Our troops deserve a strategist. They got a cheerleader with a slogan on his shirt.
Fox News Accuser Jennifer Eckhart Dies at 36 After Years Fighting the Network
We end today with a sad story. Jennifer Eckhart, the former Fox News producer who accused host Ed Henry of rape, has been found dead in Florida. She was 36. TMZ reports local authorities say it appears she died by suicide. Eckhart sued Henry and Fox News in June 2020, two weeks after the network fired her. Her lawsuit alleged Henry, roughly twice her age, groomed her starting when she was 24, assaulted her on Fox property, and raped her at a hotel in 2017. Henry denied it, saying through a lawyer that the relationship was consensual. Fox fired him after an internal investigation. Eckhart told CBS News she was “paralyzed by fear” working at the network, and said Fox kept fostering a culture that rewards predators. Last year a federal judge dismissed her claims against Fox itself. Think about what it takes for a young woman to stand up to a media empire with bottomless money and armies of lawyers. This is the network of Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly. Women who speak out against powerful men pay a price most of us never see. If you or someone you love is struggling, call or text 988. You’re not alone.
And that’s the way it is, Today is Monday, September 21, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
