Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Did The Post Office Just Build A Machine To Throw Out Your Ballot?
A federal whistleblower says the Postal Service has built a rushed, untested computer system that could keep millions of Americans from ever getting a mail-in ballot this November. The disclosure went to Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and was made public Tuesday. It describes a new federal ballot portal, thrown together in roughly three months, sometimes in defiance of court orders, to carry out Trump’s executive order limiting vote by mail. Here’s the part that should scare you. The system runs on what the whistleblower calls a zero percent failure policy. If one barcode on one ballot in a batch of 10,000 fails to scan, the entire batch gets rejected and shipped back to the state. Blumenthal put it plainly. “The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans,” he told reporters. A federal judge in Boston has temporarily halted the mandate, and 23 states and the District of Columbia are suing. About a third of us vote by mail. If this thing goes live before it works, the ballot you mail may never arrive at all.
Trump’s War On Iran Hits A Wedding, And Iran Fires Back At Our Troops
American warplanes struck near the village of Kuhestak in southern Iran on Tuesday. Iranian officials say the bombs hit a wedding, killing at least five people and wounding more than 60. Central Command denies it targeted civilians. Overnight, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard fired missiles and drones at American bases in Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq and Kuwait. Jordan said 13 ballistic missiles crossed into its airspace and 10 were shot down. US officials report no American casualties. Trump’s answer was short. “If they retaliate, they’ll be hit much harder,” he told Fox News. This war started on February 28th, when Trump launched it alongside Israel without ever asking Congress for authorization. Article One of the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war. Six months in, we’re bombing wedding parties, our troops sit under Iranian missiles in four countries, and gas is running above $4 a gallon after averaging $3.21 a year ago. Nobody voted for this. The Senate has voted again and again to rein this war in, and Trump has ignored it. A war nobody authorized, with no endgame, and working families pay for it at the pump and with their children.
Is This The Biggest Oil Deal In History Or A Robbery At Gunpoint?
Trump went on social media Friday night and announced what he called the biggest oil deal in world history. The United States, he says, now holds majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves. Here’s what’s underneath the headline. The arrangement reportedly hands the Pentagon a 35 percent stake in a private company holding 100-year leases on 17 Venezuelan oil fields, and gives Washington the right to buy oil at cost. It comes nine months after American forces seized Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in a raid on Caracas and flew him to the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio now effectively runs the country’s finances, and he promises nearly $100 billion in private investment. A Venezuelan economist who teaches at the University of Denver sees it differently. “We’ve replaced gunboat diplomacy now for gunpoint diplomacy,” he said. Think about that. We took a head of state, we installed a government, and then we signed a contract with that government for a fifth of its oil. If another country did that to us, we’d know exactly what to call it. Empire doesn’t stop being empire because somebody drew up paperwork.
Did Congress Just Punt Its Biggest Fight Until After You Vote?
The House voted Tuesday to extend government funding into December, averting a shutdown in the final stretch of the midterm campaign. The tally was 370 to 48, and it now goes to Trump, who’s expected to sign. That means no shutdown before Election Day, which is exactly the point. Funding would have run out September 30th, and Congress is scheduled to be out of session for nearly all of October so members can campaign at home. So they kicked every hard question past November 3rd. And they are hard questions. Republicans want hundreds of billions more for the military while cutting most non-defense programs. Democrats call that a non-starter. Last year federal workers lived through a record 43-day funding lapse and then a 76-day partial shutdown at Homeland Security. Congress hasn’t finished a single one of the 12 annual spending bills, and the national debt crossed $40 trillion last month. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro reminded her colleagues where the authority sits. “The power of the purse resides within the Congress,” she said. Right now Congress is using that power to dodge a fight until the voting’s over.
Did Massachusetts Just Prove You Can Beat Big Money With Ideas?
Here’s a result the consultants didn’t see coming. Senator Ed Markey won the Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary Tuesday night, beating Congressman Seth Moulton with about two-thirds of the vote. Markey is 80. Moulton is 47. Moulton ran on generational change, an argument that has cost a handful of House Democrats their seats in primaries this year. It didn’t work here, and the money tells you why it should have. Moulton and his allies spent $7.1 million on ads. Markey and his allies spent $3.9 million. Markey got outspent almost two to one and won almost two to one. He didn’t run on his seniority. He ran on the Green New Deal, which he authored, and on Medicare for All, with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren cutting ads for him. On election night he named what happened. “Tonight is a testament to the power of the progressive movement,” Markey said. He faces Republican John Deaton in November. Voters didn’t reject a young candidate. They rejected a vague one. Give people something concrete to vote for and they’ll show up, even against twice the money.
Seattle Teachers Threaten To Walk And Win A Contract Hours Before The Bell
Some good news to close on tonight. In Seattle, 6,000 teachers, paraeducators, counselors and school nurses were ready to walk picket lines this morning instead of opening their classrooms. Late Tuesday night, the district blinked. Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Education Association reached a tentative contract agreement, clearing the way for classes to begin on schedule for about 50,000 students. The union had voted 91% to authorize a strike, after 24 bargaining sessions since June, with special education support, pay and workload the sticking points. Union president Ibijoke Idowu said it plainly before the deal came together. “We don’t want to strike,” she said. They didn’t have to. The threat was enough. The contract still has to be ratified by the membership and the school board, and the district is staring at an $87 million shortfall. But here’s the lesson worth carrying home. Six thousand working people stood together, and a district that spent all summer saying it was broke suddenly found a way. That isn’t magic. That’s leverage, and it still works in 2026.
And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, September 2, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
