Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Did Trump Just Reject Peace With Iran to Keep Bombing After the Midterms?
Iran put a real deal on the table this week. Reopen the Strait of Hormuz, restart talks, end the war. Trump flatly said no. He told reporters Saturday, “I’m rejecting their deal,” and claimed Iran is losing badly. But the Wall Street Journal reports he’s told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told Meet the Press Sunday his country stands ready for diplomacy or for war, and that only a negotiated solution ends this deadlock. He noted that twice the US offered talks and then attacked in the middle of them. Congress never authorized this war. Seven months in, American troops are dead, and one man decides whether it continues, based on an election calendar. That’s not how a republic is supposed to work.
Bill Gates Warns AI Could Kill a Billion People, So Why Won’t Washington Act?
Bill Gates went on Meet the Press Sunday and said something chilling. Artificial intelligence, he said, is powerful enough to drive events that cause a billion deaths. As he put it, “There’s never been a weapon as powerful” as bad actors armed with AI. Gates says self-regulation by the industry isn’t enough, that Congress and law enforcement have to set the safeguards and monitoring, and that it would be a little overhead, not a dramatic slowdown. Bernie Sanders has already proposed pausing advanced AI development until guardrails are in place. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s own AI tools are being used by Homeland Security to track and deport immigrants and by Israel’s military in Gaza. So when the man who built Microsoft says regulate this now, and Washington shrugs, ask yourself who’s profiting from the delay.
Gas Nears Average of $4.50 and Mortgages Top Seven Percent, So Why Is Trump Bragging?
Gas hit nearly $4.50 a gallon Friday, more than a dollar higher than a year ago - on average. Diesel, which moves your groceries, topped $6.50, almost $3 higher. Inflation fears pushed government bond yields to their highest level in over 20 years, which sent 30-year mortgage rates above 7%. The Fed raised rates this month for the first time in three years and may do it again in October. And Trump? He spent the week at the UN bragging about AI investment and construction, and said of the election and Iran, “It doesn’t even enter my mind.” Even a former Trump Treasury official admits gas prices track the generic ballot. Working people are paying for this war twice, at the pump and at the ballot box. In November they get to send the bill back.
GAO Catches Trump’s ICE Burning Millions on Detention Camps It Never Used
The Government Accountability Office went looking for waste, fraud, and abuse. It found ICE. Congress handed ICE $45 billion for detention under Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill. The GAO says ICE spent it with no plan, no bed count, and no idea if it can afford what it bought. ICE paid $1.07 billion for 11 detention warehouses, decided to sell 7, and burned over $20 million it can’t get back. At Guantánamo, the Pentagon built tents for thousands, then spent $2.85 million tearing them down as substandard. Daily population? 16. More than 50 people have died in ICE custody under Trump. Senator Dick Durbin said it best, “GAO continues to uncover incompetence and waste at the highest levels of ICE.” That’s your money, buying cages nobody uses, while people die in the ones they do.
ICE Shot a Delivery Driver in the Back, So Why Is the Driver in a Cell?
Wilber Garcés Pérez, 28, was delivering DoorDash in Austin when an ICE officer shot him in the back. The officer, a new recruit, reportedly had no body camera on. Garcés Pérez was discharged in four hours with the bullet lodged near his spine and driven 135 miles to a detention center in Pearsall. His wife and lawyer weren’t told he’d left. Congressman Greg Casar visited and says a specialist told him he needs surgery to avoid losing feeling on his left side. DHS insists it was a targeted stop and that he had a removal order. He came legally in 2024 with an asylum appointment. As Casar put it, “This person needs a doctor, not a deportation or a detention center.” Shooting a man and hiding him isn’t law enforcement. That’s something else.
Supreme Court Kills Missouri’s Rigged Map a Third Time, Voters Get the Last Word
On Friday the Supreme Court, with no dissents, blocked Missouri Republicans’ rigged map for the third time. Trump pushed the legislature to redraw it to erase Congressman Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City district. More than 305,000 Missourians signed petitions to force a referendum, which suspends the law until voters decide. Missouri’s secretary of state tried to use it anyway, and a federal appeals court tried to revive it. The justices said reverting now, with ballots mailed, would usher in electoral chaos. So November runs on the 2022 map, and a NO vote on Proposition A kills the gerrymander outright. As organizer Richard von Glahn put it, “people, not politicians will be the final deciders.” The same court, the same day, greenlit Trump’s voter purge database. Missouri won a round. The war’s not over.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, September 28, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
