Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Did Trump Just Use Your Tax Dollars To Run His Own Campaign Ad Again?
The White House just aired another pro-Trump commercial, and you paid for it. The 30-second black-and-white spot ran nationwide this weekend during Fox News Sunday, Saturday Night Live, and NFL and college football, just weeks before the midterms. It shows Trump walking down a hallway while his own voice vows to demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers, and win the final battle. The audio was recycled from his 2024 campaign. Then, in the last 10 seconds, white text appears reading paid for by the US Government. The New York Times reports the government has spent more than $1 million on these ads, right after last week’s spot declaring America will never be a communist country. Richard Painter, George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer, says this “could be an impeachable offense” because Congress expressly banned government-funded propaganda. Norm Eisen says Trump has gone from breaking the law to trampling it. Even Republican Senator John Kennedy called it probably illegal, and the Morning Joe crew noted Trump brags about avoiding foreign wars while fighting one in Iran. Senator Chris Murphy said it plainly. What a cult this party has become. When a president spends your money to sell himself before an election, that’s not a campaign. That’s what strongmen do.
Trump Rejects Iran Deal And The Bond Market Hits Its Highest Yields Since 2007
Over the weekend, Trump rejected an Iranian proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. By Monday morning the markets delivered their verdict. Brent crude jumped more than 3% to over $108 a barrel. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 5.23%, the highest since 2007, and the 30-year topped 5.5%, the highest since 2004. Before this war started, the 10-year sat at 3.97%. The Federal Reserve raised rates this month for the first time since 2023, and traders now expect two more rate hikes by January. Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid called the war a “stalemate” with no breakthrough in sight. And it isn’t just us. British borrowing costs are near their highest since 2008, Germany’s since 2011, France’s since 2008, and Japan’s 2-year bond is near 2% for the first time since 1995. Some strategists are already talking about a 6% Treasury yield, a level this economy hasn’t seen since 2000. Friday’s jobs report could push it there. Here’s the bigger picture. Every mortgage, every car loan, every credit card bill in America is priced off that 10-year yield. Trump’s war of choice isn’t just killing people overseas. It’s raising the rent on every working family at home.
Are Tourists Boycotting Trump’s America? Travel Chief Drops Bomb On Two Million Lost Visitors
Add tourism to the list of industries Trump has wrecked, right alongside farmers and manufacturers. Geoff Freeman runs the US Travel Association, and he laid it out to Axios in blunt terms. America hosted the World Cup this summer, and overseas travel still fell. We’re on pace to lose two million overseas visitors compared to last year, leaving us 20% below our 2019 peak. Freeman said “We’re the only major country in the world losing visitation” and called it mind-boggling. And it’s our closest friends staying away. Canada is down 23% over two years. Germany and France have each dropped double digits this year. Freeman says it’s largely out of protest and fear, not economics, as travelers shun a country whose tariffs and immigration crackdowns make headlines around the world. Meanwhile China is scooping up the visitors we’re losing by expanding visa-free entry, and Japan is riding a cheap yen to a tourism boom. This is an industry that supports millions of American jobs. The world isn’t just watching what Trump does to immigrants and allies. They’re voting with their wallets, and they’re choosing not to come.
CNN Fact Checker Breaks Silence After 10 Years Decoding Trump’s Lies
Ten years ago this month, Daniel Dale was a Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star. He started what he thought would be a quick side project, fact-checking a long-shot candidate named Donald Trump who was lying constantly and rarely being corrected. Like most people, he figured Trump would lose. Now he’s CNN’s fact checker, and he just wrote up a decade of lessons. First, nobody in Washington lies like Trump. Not as constantly, not as obviously, not about as many things. Dale calls him a “very possibly once-in-a-lifetime political liar.” Second, the bigger the crisis, the more Trump lies, even when the lying caused the crisis. Third, the tiniest lies are the tell. A phone call from the Boy Scouts that never happened. A Michigan Man of the Year award he never got. Empty seats he swore were full. Fourth, the lies never die. Dale can recite some debunkings half-asleep because he’s done them 100 times. And the harm is real. Rioters stormed the Capitol on a lie. Americans died on Covid lies. Dale says democracy itself is worse off for all of it. When lying carries no price, truth carries no weight, and a free people can’t govern without it.
Will Trump’s Big Bill Slam The Door On Medicaid Patients In 36 States?
A new peer-reviewed analysis in Health Affairs says Trump’s tax and spending law will force three dozen states to cut Medicaid payments to doctors and hospitals by more than $50 billion a year. Medicaid pays less than Medicare or private insurance, so many doctors just refuse Medicaid patients. Since 2016, states have used what are called state-directed payments to close that gap, and that spending grew from $27 billion in 2020 to more than $143 billion last year. Trump’s law guts it. Starting in 2028, states must slash those rates 10 percentage points a year until they hit Medicare levels or barely above. The 17 states with the highest rates will have to cut between 10% and 25% of their entire Medicaid budgets. The hardest hit include Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Iowa, Nebraska, Arizona, Nevada, Illinois, New Mexico and South Carolina. Researcher Debra Lipson says hospitals and nursing homes will start limiting Medicaid patients, making it “more difficult for people who are on Medicaid to get essential care.” Or they’ll shift costs onto everyone else’s premiums. So the billionaires got their tax cut, and a poor kid in Mississippi loses her doctor. That’s the trade
Can Mozart And A Virtual Forest Beat High Blood Pressure? Turkish Doctors Say Yes
Let’s end with good news for your heart. Doctors in Ankara, Turkey took 130 patients who showed up in the emergency room with dangerously high blood pressure, readings of 180 or more on the top number. Everybody got the standard medication. But half of them also got a gaming-style VR headset that dropped them into a peaceful forest with a flowing river and a wooden suspension bridge, while a smartphone played Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, Debussy and Tchaikovsky. Fifteen minutes later, the virtual forest group’s blood pressure had dropped 12%, compared to 8% for the medication-only group. Their anxiety fell twice as far. By the 1-hour mark both groups evened out, so this is about calming people down fast, not replacing their pills. It was a randomized controlled trial, presented this weekend at the European Emergency Medicine Congress in Paris, and not one patient dropped out. Lead researcher Dr. Safa Dönmez says if you’re frightened and in pain, “a few minutes in a peaceful virtual forest while listening to Mozart” would be a welcome thing. It’s a small study at one hospital, and the doctors want bigger trials. A cheap headset and centuries-old music beat noise, bright lights and fear. Sometimes the best medicine isn’t a pill. It’s peace.
And that’s the way it is, Today is Monday, September 28, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
