Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Did Voters Just Turn Climate Into a Pocketbook Issue?
Tuesday’s blue tsunami flipped the Senate, the House, and a string of governors’ mansions, and the Guardian reports the winning formula was tying the cost of living to energy prices, data centers, and the climate crisis. The Climate and Community Institute found candidates running hardest on green economic populism won 39 of 56 federal races, including six of seven Senate contests. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown hung datacenter tax breaks around Jon Husted’s neck in a state where electricity bills have jumped 34 percent since 2022. Abdul El-Sayed beat Mike Rogers in Michigan on a data center moratorium and 100% renewables. Georgia flipped its Public Service Commission to Democrats after power bills rose $516 a year. Bill McKibben called data centers the one issue pulling Republicans, Democrats, and independents the same direction. The oil and gas industry spent at least $182 million to elect Republicans and lost. When your power bill is on the ballot, the fossil fuel lobby can’t buy the outcome.
Will Trump’s EPA Keep a Million Families in the Dark?
Two federal judges, one a Trump appointee, have now ruled the EPA broke the law when it killed the $7 billion Solar for All program in August 2025. Now a group of former EPA officials, the Environmental Protection Network, says restarting it would save American families $458 million in the first year, about $456 per household, and cut power bills for a million homes by 25%. Executive director Michelle Roos says EPA should “help a million households cut their electricity bills.” The clock matters. If the restart slips past the end of 2027, the commercial solar tax credit expires, the cost per household jumps 70%, and 410,000 families lose nearly $500 a year for good. This comes as 21.5 million households are behind on their energy bills and one in five families is skimping on groceries to keep the lights on. The courts have spoken. All that stands between working families and cheaper power is an administration that would rather appeal than comply.
Doctors Storm Congress and Deliver a Verdict on RFK Jr.
The group 3.14 Action, which elects Democratic doctors and scientists, is calling Tuesday night the “Stem swing” and the revenge of the nerds. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Dr. Annie Andrews in South Carolina are headed to the Senate, the first Democratic physicians to sit there since 1969. Dr. Amy Acton, Ohio’s Covid-era health director, won the governor’s race. Executive director Erik Polyak says 2026 was a healthcare election, and the numbers agree. Democrats ran more than 158,000 healthcare ads to Republicans’ 61,000. Voters rejected the Make America Healthy Again movement after the CDC lost a third of its staff during a record measles outbreak, and on election day New York reported its first child measles death in 30 years. Polyak calls this “the beginning of the end” for Kennedy. The deepest Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill hit January 1, 2027, and 17 million people stand to lose coverage. Voters chose science. Now Congress has to deliver the medicine.
The news you need. Twice every weekday.
Is America Becoming Ground Zero for the Next Pandemic?
Leading virologists told the Telegraph America is closer than ever to spawning a new flu pandemic. H5N1 is spreading through dairy herds, three people in Washington state just got infected and one died, bringing US human cases since 2022 to 75. The biggest fear is reassortment, bird flu swapping genes with seasonal flu inside one person as flu season arrives. Guardian columnist George Monbiot says the next global pandemic could be brewing at a Utah fur farm, where bird flu has killed roughly 80% of thousands of mink since mid-August. Mink lungs look a lot like ours. Spain and Finland culled theirs. Utah hasn’t ordered a cull and isn’t testing workers, thanks to a 2025 deal that lets agriculture officials share outbreak data only if health officials don’t track workers. ProPublica found a worker with a red eye, a classic symptom. One expert called it “playing with fire.” That’s fur profits over public health, with RFK Jr. running HHS. We’ve seen this movie, and it ended with a million dead Americans.
Scientists Crack the Code to Regrow Tooth Enamel
Some good news with your coffee. Researchers at the University of Nottingham have created a gel that regrows tooth enamel, something the human body can’t do once your adult teeth come in. Published in Nature Communications, the fluoride-free gel is painted on like a fluoride treatment and mimics the proteins that built your enamel as a child, pulling calcium and phosphate from your saliva to grow new crystals aligned with the old. In tests simulating brushing, chewing, and acidic foods, it “behaves just like healthy enamel,” says lead author Dr. Abshar Hasan. It also coats exposed dentin, which could end that jolt from ice cream. Dental disease affects nearly half the world’s population and is tied to diabetes and heart disease. Their startup, Mintech-Bio, hopes to ship a product next year. Patient university science, quietly solving a problem as old as teeth. That’s what nerds do when we let them.
And that’s the way it is, Today Friday, November 6, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
