Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Did Trump Just Threaten to Bomb a Country He Says He’s Making Peace With?
We were told there was a deal. A peace deal with Iran. Done. Settled. Then Trump stood in front of reporters at the Group of Seven summit in France and threw what can only be called a temper tantrum. A reporter asked if the agreement is final. Trump said no, it isn’t. And then this. “If I don’t like it, we’ll go back to dropping bombs.” If he doesn’t like it. If they don’t behave. Like a ten year old threatening to flip the board the second he loses. So which is it? Did he have a deal, or did he lie to us again? A fourteen point agreement is supposedly set to be signed Friday. And he wasn’t done. He ripped Barack Obama over the old nuclear deal and sneered that the Iranians called Obama a name we can’t say on the air. When a president treats war like a toy he can throw across the room, everybody should be scared.
What’s a Payback Squad, and Why Is Kash Patel Paying One With Your Money?
Dean Blundell is reporting - The FBI director is now the subject of a formal congressional investigation. On official House Judiciary letterhead, Congressman Jamie Raskin accuses Kash Patel of funneling more than one million of your tax dollars to a hand picked crew of loyalist agents. They’ve got a name for them on Capitol Hill now. The Payback Squad. According to the letter, some agents pulled in as much as eight thousand dollars every pay period on top of their salaries, allegedly blowing past the legal limits. Raskin says, “your office may be knowingly breaking federal law.” At the same time, Patel fired decorated agents like former acting director Brian Driscoll, a Medal of Valor recipient now suing him. Pay the loyal, fire the honest. Patel hasn’t answered the charges. He’s got until June twenty ninth. That’s not law enforcement. That’s a protection racket with a badge.
Can a President Cancel a Senate Hearing Because He Lost a Vote?
At three fifty four in the morning, Trump fired off a Truth Social post canceling the Senate confirmation hearing for his pick to run national intelligence, Jay Clayton. Why? He’s furious that Democrats won’t back FISA, the warrantless spying power that expired on June twelfth. He claims, in his words, the Democrats “broke the Deal.” So now he says he won’t sign any FISA extension unless Congress also passes his voter suppression bill, the so called SAVE America Act, demanding photo ID and gutting mail in ballots. Here’s the thing. A president has no power to cancel a Senate hearing. None. He can pout. He can post at dawn. But this is a man who thinks the government is his property, and the law is whatever he posted last.
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Should a Sitting President Own a Bank the Government Has to Back?
Trump’s own crypto company, World Liberty Financial, co-founded with his three sons, is about to get federal banking privileges. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is expected to approve a national trust charter any day now. And who runs that office? Jonathan Gould, appointed by Trump. Former staffers say a rejection is all but impossible. The charter lets Trump’s firm pump out its own digital coin and dodge state regulators. Trump’s already reported pocketing fifty seven million dollars from this thing. Senator Elizabeth Warren puts it plainly. “The OCC’s review is a sham.” Think about what this means. The president is using a federal agency he controls to hand his private business the backing of the United States government. That’s not capitalism. That’s a king cashing in.
How Do You Vote for the Man Who Helped Kill Roe and Have No Regrets?
Senator Susan Collins of Maine was asked this week whether she regrets voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh, of course, was part of the majority that overturned Roe versus Wade and ripped the right to choose away from millions of women. Collins says she has no regrets. She told reporters, “I do disagree with Justice Kavanaugh’s vote.” But she’d do it all again. Remember, back in twenty eighteen, Collins looked America in the eye and promised us Kavanaugh saw Roe as settled law. She was wrong, or she wasn’t honest. Now she’s in the fight of her political life, trailing Democrat Graham Platner. When a senator won’t own the consequences of her own vote, the voters get to own it for her in November.
DOGE Just Cost You a Billion Dollars and Your Steak.
Here’s where the chainsaw approach to government lands. A flesh eating parasite called the New World screwworm has crossed into Texas for the first time in decades. They found it in a three week old calf near the Mexican border. The larvae burrow into living flesh and can kill an animal in a week. Last year, Elon Musk’s DOGE cut the program that monitored and contained this exact parasite. It cost about fifteen million dollars a year. Penny pinched. Today the administration says it needs more than one billion dollars to fight the outbreak. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal calls it “peak incompetence.” Beef prices are already up more than twenty percent since Trump took office, and they’re about to climb higher. They saved fifteen million and torched a billion. And DOGE itself cost taxpayers an estimated one hundred sixty five billion dollars. You’ll pay for it at the grocery store.
And that’s the way it is. Today Wednesday, June seventeenth, two thousand twenty six. I’m Thom Hartmann.
