Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Did Trump Just Burn Through America’s Weapons And Hand Russia And China An Opening?
Trump’s war on Iran has drained our weapons stockpiles to levels that have senior military officials alarmed. The New York Times reports the Pentagon’s been yanking ships, aircraft, and air defense units out of Europe and Asia and rushing them to the Middle East. The numbers are ugly. The Center for Strategic and International Studies says we had about 2,330 Patriot interceptors before this war started. Now we’re down around 800. THAAD interceptors fell from 452 to fewer than 280. CNN reports commanders calling the stockpile dangerously low. One defense analyst called it a “generational annihilation of the means of conventional deterrence.” Rebuilding takes years, because every one of these missiles is a handmade machine with parts from a dozen countries. Trump insists America has far more munitions than anyone in the world and more than we need. The Hill reports the shortage is gutting Trump’s leverage with Iran, and Tehran already knows it. Trump’s response has been to threaten jail time for the leakers. Here’s the bigger picture. A president who sold himself as strength itself spent down the arsenal on a war he can’t finish, and Moscow and Beijing have taken notice, no doubt.
Why Is Your Tax Money Funding White Grievance In South Africa?
Congress set aside billions for foreign aid, and by law that money has to be spent. So ProPublica went looking for where it goes now that Trump has gutted the old programs. What they found inside the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor should turn your stomach. Officials proposed spending $1 million on research into crime against Afrikaners, the white ethnic group that built apartheid. Staff had been told to start awarding money to a group whose founder wants Afrikaner self-rule and is now raising funds to plant 3,000 white crosses on the National Mall. Another $5 million was floated for a British outfit that fought bans on gay conversion therapy. Research keeps showing white South African farmers aren’t targeted at higher rates than anybody else. One former official called it “laughable” to treat white South Africans as Africa’s top human rights concern. Former diplomats warn we’re driving a wedge between Washington and a country we need. Money that used to buy HIV medication now buys racial grievance. Is our foreign aid now a white nationalist slush fund, and you’re the one funding it?
Can One Man In Washington Ban Abortion In All 50 States?
Todd Blanche wants to be your attorney general. While his confirmation hearings were still going, he joined a private call with the White House Faith Office and made a promise. A Christian right group posted the recording. Blanche told them the Justice Department is working with HHS, the FDA, and Trump’s team so the Dobbs decision becomes “permanent in every single state.” Sit with that. Dobbs already handed abortion back to the states. What Blanche is describing is using federal power to reach into states where abortion is legal and choke off the mail-order pills that millions of women depend on. The Justice Department confirmed that’s exactly what he meant. The weapon sitting on the shelf is the Comstock Act, an obscenity law from 1873 that Christian nationalist lawyers say a federal prosecutor could start enforcing tomorrow. Blanche thanked the callers for their prayers and told them they’re doing God’s work. The top law enforcement job in America is promising a national abortion ban through the back door.
Why Is Our FBI Director Flying To Moscow Weeks Before The Midterms?
Kash Patel is reportedly traveling to Moscow and St. Petersburg on October 14th and 15th, hosted by the FSB, the successor to the KGB. That’s three weeks before Americans vote. He’d be the first FBI director to set foot in Russia since Robert Mueller in 2013. Now a Russian paper with long-standing FSB ties has run an article openly musing about what Moscow might hand him. A Kremlin-friendly analyst said Russia may be holding kompromat on Democrats and could pass it to the American side. Then he asked, “What will we get in return?” He floated Patel as a liaison officer to Putin and said FBI and FSB contacts probably already happen quietly in Turkey, the Balkans, or Switzerland. Patel told Reuters last week that the bureau has spent 15 months building new relationships with Russian and Chinese security services, including intelligence sharing. Before the FBI, Patel took $25,000 from a filmmaker who spent a decade running Kremlin influence operations. In 2016 the Russians stole the emails in secret. Is no one looking into this more? Say what?!
Same Knee, Twice The Price. Who’s Getting Rich Off Your Surgery?
Here’s a number that explains American health care. A knee replacement at Catawba Valley Medical Center in Hickory, North Carolina runs about $16,000 this year under a Blue Cross plan. Drive an hour west to Mission Hospital in Asheville and the same surgery under the same plan costs around $40,000. Same operation, same state, more than double the price. Mission was built by merging the two largest hospitals in the region, and it has almost no competition. That’s the whole story. Between 2002 and 2020 this country saw more than 1,000 hospital mergers, and the FTC moved to block about 1% of them. A Yale economist says hospital prices have risen faster than any other sector of the economy, and consolidation is a main driver. When Mission quoted one Asheville nurse over $9,000 for knee surgery, she shopped around and paid less than a third somewhere else. A local restaurant owner suing the hospital put it plainly. “We are where we are because we don’t have a choice.” A monopoly is really just a toll booth, and your premium is the price of the toll.
Trump Team Slams The Brakes On ‘DEI Bike Lanes’
And then there’s this. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the former MTV reality star, went on Elon Musk’s platform and declared war on Joe Biden’s DEI bike lanes. A bike lane is just a strip of paint on a road. It has no race. It has no gender. It’s paint. But that’s the trick. Call something DEI and you can kill it, and nobody has to explain why. Duffy said the money would go to roads, bridges, and shipping ports instead, in all capital letters. Then bike safety guidance started vanishing from federal websites. 2 weeks later the administration’s own CDC said building places where people can walk and bike keeps Americans healthy. So RFK Jr. tells you to get off the couch while Duffy rips up the path. Follow the money. Boeing and Toyota each put a million dollars into Duffy’s road trip show, and Forbes reports those sponsors spent $100 million lobbying Congress last year. A department spokesperson sneered about the left wanting everyone to “eat crickets.” DEI is just the word they use when they want to take something from you.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, August 10th, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
