Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Did Two Republicans Just Trade Away The Justice Department?
Todd Blanche used to be Donald Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer. Now he’s acting attorney general, and Republicans are moving to make it permanent. For weeks, two Republican senators held up his confirmation. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina wanted one thing in writing. Kill the anti-weaponization fund. That’s $1.8 billion set aside to pay Trump’s allies who say they were politically persecuted, and the payouts could have reached January 6th rioters. Tillis called it a payout pot for punks. The money came out of a settlement of Trump’s own lawsuit against his own IRS, a deal that also shielded Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization from tax audits. Sunday night, Blanche signed an order killing the fund and narrowing that audit immunity to past claims only. Cornyn and Tillis folded within hours. Both men are leaving Congress in January. Congressman Dan Goldman said Blanche is “purely a vessel for Trump to punish his enemies and reward his allies.” So two retiring senators didn’t stop the corruption. They just got it in writing and went home.
Why Are Millions Of Americans Losing Their Health Insurance?
Enrollment in Affordable Care Act plans dropped by nearly three million people this year, down to about 19.2 million. Robert F. Kennedy Junior and Doctor Mehmet Oz say that’s a victory. They say they cleaned out fraud. Here’s what actually happened. Insurers jacked up premiums, and the Republican Congress refused to extend the tax credits that kept those premiums affordable. So the average person buying an ACA plan now pays $178 a month, up 58 percent from last year. Deductibles climbed 37 percent to almost $3,800. People didn’t get caught committing fraud. They got priced out. Every one of them is somebody’s neighbor, somebody’s parent, somebody working two jobs and doing the math on a kitchen table. An HHS report written mostly by Trump appointees claims 5.6 million people were fraudulently enrolled. Matthew Fiedler at the Brookings Institution says that top-level claim “is not remotely credible.” Analysts expect enrollment to fall as much as 26 percent by year’s end. And Trump’s regulators will call every one of those losses a fraud win. When you can’t afford the doctor, it’s not called fraud. It’s called unaffordable.
Two Americans Just Died From A Salad
Michigan health officials announced Monday that two people have died in the cyclospora outbreak. These are the first known deaths in what’s now the largest outbreak of this parasite ever recorded in the United States. Michigan alone has logged 11,234 cases and 193 hospitalizations. The CDC is tracking cases in 45 states and more than 18,000 illnesses nationwide. Only five states have escaped it entirely. The state said both people who died had “significant underlying health conditions.” Cyclospora spreads through food or water contaminated with human feces. It causes days and weeks of violent diarrhea, and it kills through dehydration. Doctors say the deaths almost always come when a body simply can’t hold onto water anymore. The FDA says overwhelming evidence points to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico, lettuce that ended up on Taco Bell menus. Taylor Farms issued a voluntary recall on July 17th. Both Michigan victims got sick before that recall. We should think about that word. Voluntary. We built a food system that stretches across a continent, and then we asked the companies running it to police themselves. Two families just paid the ultimate price for that arrangement.
Is America Murdering People At Sea?
Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia sent a letter to Donald Trump today, and it’s one of the most serious accusations a sitting senator has ever leveled at a president. Since last September, the US military has carried out more than 65 strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, killing more than 220 people. The White House calls them narcoterrorists, and says every strike hit designated narcoterrorists poisoning American communities. Kaine sat down and read the classified material. The execute order Trump signed. The targeting criteria. The Justice Department’s legal opinion. The classified notifications sent to Congress after each strike. And here’s what he concluded. The military killed people who don’t meet the criteria the administration itself wrote down. Fishermen. Migrants. People whose families will never get an explanation. Kaine says those people “are murder victims.” Trump claims 98.2 percent of ocean drug traffic has stopped. There’s no evidence for that. No trial. No charges. No name released. Just a video posted online of a boat exploding. That’s not law enforcement. That’s not war. That’s a president deciding who lives, and nobody checking his work.
Have Republicans Stopped Caring About Domestic Violence?
A new Politico poll conducted by Public First asked voters a simple question. Would you still vote for a candidate accused of domestic violence? Among self-identified MAGA voters, 72 percent said yes. Among Trump 2024 voters overall, 61 percent. Among Harris voters asked the same about a Democrat, 39 percent. On sexual assault accusations, 66 percent of MAGA voters said they’d stick with their candidate. And there’s a double standard baked right in. Among Republicans, 71 percent said a Democrat accused of sexual assault should quit the race. Only 52 percent said that about a Republican. The poll surveyed 2,061 adults from July 12th through the 15th. The pollsters tested a dozen scandals. Not one dropped MAGA support below a majority. Blackface photos, 74 percent. Antisemitic statements, 58 percent. Sharing classified information with a foreign government, 57 percent. Here’s the part that should chill you. This isn’t a thought experiment. Candidates are on ballots this November. Somewhere out there tonight, a woman is deciding whether to call the police on the man in her house. And she just watched a country tell her, out loud, that it wouldn’t much matter if she did.
Crazy Alert. Did Demons Just Get Somebody Kicked Off A Plane?
Whitney Lynn is a Florida evangelist who preaches on airplanes. Not at church. On airplanes, to people strapped into seats who cannot leave. Last week, an Alaska Airlines crew escorted her off a flight out of Orlando, and she filmed the whole thing for TikTok. She tagged the airline in the post, apparently expecting sympathy. The airline employee explained it about as gently as anyone could. “The passengers don’t feel safe with you,” he told her. Lynn was not persuaded. She informed him this was spiritual warfare, because demons don’t like the name of Jesus. Then she turned to the cabin and announced it’s the last days, people can’t talk about Jesus anymore. Then she told the poor man that hell is real and God should have mercy on his soul. She got a rebooking slip. She got back on social media and told her followers demons are real. Real enough to book a later flight, apparently. The Washington Post reports this is a whole trend now. Sky pulpits. And the internet’s response was about what you’d expect, with one person writing simply, this is why I drive. Buckle up.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, August 3rd, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
