Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Does Donald Trump Really Love Your Skyrocketing Grocery Bill?
New numbers landed Wednesday and they’re ugly. The Consumer Price Index shows inflation hit four point two percent over the past year. That’s the highest in three years. Beef and veal are up almost thirteen percent. Tomatoes jumped thirty-two percent. Coffee, lettuce, and gas all climbing. Strip out food and energy and the core number sits near three percent, so this spike is being driven straight by the oil shock. So a reporter asked the president if he’s worried. His answer? “I love the inflation.” He said the numbers were great. He claimed prices will drop like a rock once his war with Iran is over. Tell that to the family staring at an empty fridge. Sixty-three percent of Americans already say he’s wrecking the economy. Inflation had been cooling before his tariffs hit last year, and the Iran war sent oil and gas soaring all over again. Even his own Republicans are sweating, terrified that angry voters will sink them in November. One Democratic governor put it plainly, saying your struggle is a joke to him. He promised to knock the hell out of inflation. Instead he’s cheering it on while working people pay the price. When the man in charge loves your pain, you know exactly whose side he’s really on.
Has Trump Turned America Into a Country Europe No Longer Trusts?
A brand new survey just delivered a gut punch to America’s standing in the world. Across fifteen European countries, only eleven percent now see the United States as an ally. Eleven percent. Two years ago it was twenty-two. Now it’s collapsed. The European Council on Foreign Relations released the findings just ahead of the G7 and NATO summits. Majorities in every single country doubt America would even defend them if they were attacked. So Europe is moving on. They’re voting to borrow money together to fund their own defense. They want to buy European weapons instead of ours, and Italy aside, country after country is backing bigger defense budgets of their own. And here’s the kicker. In nearly every country, people believe relations will only improve once Trump leaves office. That’s a verdict. Decades of alliances, the kind that kept the peace and powered our economy, getting torched in real time. When your closest friends start planning their lives around your absence, that’s not strength. That’s a flashing red warning.
Elon Musk Is Fanning the Flames as Belfast Burns
Belfast burned Tuesday night. After a Sudanese man was charged in a knife attack, racist mobs turned their rage on the entire immigrant community. Families fled their homes. Cars and buildings went up in flames. Masked men torched a city bus. And cheering it all on from his perch atop the world’s richest fortune was Elon Musk. On his platform X, Musk amplified the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson, promoting times and places for protests across the country. “Only by protesting repeatedly and loudly will there be any change,” Musk wrote. Britain’s Labour Party called his behavior appalling. Musk also boosted a post claiming the British government has no legitimacy because it won’t defend its borders. This is the same Musk who’s propped up neo-Nazi-linked parties in Germany, cozied up to Britain’s Nigel Farage, and bankrolled Trump here at home. A billionaire with a megaphone the size of a planet, using it to set neighborhoods on fire. That’s not free speech. That’s arson with a keyboard.
Who is the real “Pig” Dragging America Through the Mud?
From the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president of the United States went on a tear. His target was Graham Platner, the Democrat who just won Maine’s Senate nomination. Trump’s verdict? “He is just an outright pig.” Then he sneered that pigs would be upset by the comparison. Now hold on. Platner has owned his past mistakes, apologized, and worked to earn back people’s trust. And Trump? A civil jury found him liable for sexually abusing a woman. He’s a convicted felon. And his name keeps surfacing in the Epstein files he once promised to release. So when this president calls somebody a pig, it bounces right back. This is the bully pulpit reduced to a schoolyard. No policy. No vision. Just insults flung from the most powerful office on Earth. Voters can weigh Platner’s record. But you really have to ask who’s the actual pig dragging this country into the mud.
What’s So Scary About Social Security That a Congressman Fakes a Phone Call?
This one you have to see to believe. A reporter caught up with Virginia Republican Rob Wittman and asked a simple question about Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to cut Social Security. Wittman’s response? He whipped out his phone and pretended to take a call. “Yeah, I’ll be there in just a few minutes,” he said into a phone that wasn’t even connected. His screen was visible the whole time. His own cheek kept tapping the display. He kept the act going for ninety seconds and then walked away. And it wasn’t even his first time. He pulled the same stunt on another reporter just last week. His Democratic challenger, Shannon Taylor, pounced, saying Virginians deserve someone who tells the truth and protects the benefits they earned. So why the panic? Because Johnson admitted on the radio that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid all need to be, in his words, adjusted and fixed. That’s the quiet part out loud. They want to gut the benefits you paid for, and they’re too cowardly to say it to your face.
Is America Deliberately Starving the People of Cuba?
We close this afternoon with something the powerful would rather you never heard. The scholar Danny Shaw just returned from Cuba, and what he describes is harrowing. Families enduring blackouts up to twenty hours a day. Empty shelves. No clean water. No fuel. Gasoline so costly it can swallow three months of wages. Shaw says, “I witnessed an incredible amount of hunger and despair.” This isn’t an accident. After toppling Venezuela’s government, the Trump administration choked off fuel shipments to the island, indicted former president Raul Castro, and is now rattling sabers about invasion. For sixty-seven years Washington has squeezed this island. Cuba’s own foreign minister calls it economic genocide. A whole population pushed to the brink so Washington can force what Trump openly calls a friendly takeover. Schools shuttered. Hospitals running dark. Young people fleeing because there’s nothing left to stay for. Whatever you think of Cuba’s government, starving millions of ordinary people is a crime. And it’s being done in our name, with our tax dollars, while most Americans have no idea it’s even happening.
And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, June 10, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
