Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Grieving Oklahoma Mothers Drag State Into Court After Abortion Ban Drives Them Out
Two Oklahoma mothers just took their state to court. Magon Hoffman and Sheena Hamlin both wanted their babies. Both got the worst news a parent can hear. And both learned Oklahoma law wouldn’t let their own doctors help them. Hoffman’s daughter, Lottie, had anencephaly. A specialist told her the baby had no skull and no chance of survival. Oklahoma only allows abortion to save the mother’s life, so she traveled 8 hours to New Mexico and paid about $3,000 out of pocket. “Oklahoma turned the hardest day of my life into weeks of needless suffering,” she said. At 21 weeks, Hamlin’s daughter, Ellie, showed signs of Meckel-Gruber syndrome. Doctors said her lungs were so underdeveloped she’d suffocate almost as soon as she was born. Hamlin and her husband went to Illinois and spent about $4,000. The Center for Reproductive Rights filed the suit Wednesday in Oklahoma County District Court. Two of the women’s OB-GYNs and Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice joined as plaintiffs. Attorney General Gentner Drummond is a defendant. They want the court to recognize a state constitutional right to abortion after a fatal fetal diagnosis. When politicians climb into the exam room, grieving families become refugees in their own country.
Why a Florida Republican Just Turned on Trump in Her Own Campaign Ad?
Here’s something you don’t see every day. Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar of South Florida dropped a campaign ad today aimed squarely at Donald Trump, taped right in front of the White House. Speaking straight to the president, Salazar says some of his immigration enforcement has gone too far. She says that in July, half of the 50,000 people detained had no criminal record. She warns him to be careful what his advisers are telling him. Then she tells him the same “Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.” She tells Trump he could be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism. She says she isn’t asking for amnesty, just a dignified life for people already here. Political reporters were floored. CNN’s Abby Phillip called it a true wow moment in today’s GOP. Semafor’s David Weigel pointed out that Trump carried Salazar’s district by 15 points. And ICE took about 51,000 people into custody in August, a new high for this administration. When a Republican that safe decides to run against Trump’s deportations, the ground is moving. Cruelty has a price, and the bill just came due.
Are Republicans Quietly Giving Up on Georgia as Deep Red States Come Into Play?
Less than 7 weeks from the midterms, the New York Times reports Republicans are spending money to defend places Trump won three times, often by double digits. In Georgia, GOP strategists are privately debating whether to pull resources from Mike Collins, who’s trailing Senator Jon Ossoff. Trump’s super PAC network has set aside just $2.2 million there, against $29 million for Michigan and New Hampshire. At a Dallas donor meeting, a slide listed the party’s quality Senate recruits. Collins was in the room. His name wasn’t on the slide. JD Vance just campaigned in Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932. A new super PAC reserved $3.7 million in Nebraska to attack independent Dan Osborn. Trump’s operation bought ads in a Kentucky House district he carried by 15. A Times and Siena poll gives Democrats a nearly 9 point lead, about where they stood in 2018’s blue wave. The Fed just raised rates, and voters are furious about prices, tariffs and the Iran war. Hakeem Jeffries says “Republicans are panicking and are on the brink of losing the House.” But Republicans have booked over $140 million in ads since Labor Day. Waves don’t just happen. People make them.
Did Trump Just Defy a Federal Judge by Locking the Doors of the Kennedy Center?
A federal judge wants answers fast. Judge Christopher Cooper ordered Trump and the Kennedy Center board to respond by 10 a.m. Eastern this morning to an emergency motion from Ohio Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, who sits on that board. In May, Cooper barred the board from closing the Center until it approved a shutdown plan that followed his ruling and he lifted the freeze. He hasn’t lifted it. On Tuesday, right after Cooper blocked a new scheme to put Trump’s name back on the building, Trump’s handpicked board voted to close anyway. Trump posted that the closing would happen immediately. Wednesday morning a staffer from Beatty’s legal team found the front door locked. A guard told her, “No, we’re closed.” Black metal gates soon wrapped the whole building. And in a sworn declaration, she says she watched a forklift hauling fencing run into the building’s pillars several times. The Center’s spokesperson blames decades of neglect and safety concerns. Beatty’s lawyers say it looks like a violation of a clear court order. This isn’t about a theater. It’s about whether a president can ignore a judge when he doesn’t get his way. If he can, the rule of law is just a suggestion.
Senate Panel Votes 18 to 10 to Let Americans Sue Officials Who Bully Broadcasters
Here’s a rare bit of bipartisan backbone. The Senate Commerce Committee voted 18 to 10 Wednesday for a bill that lets citizens sue federal officials who pressure private companies into suppressing speech the First Amendment protects. Senator Maria Cantwell, the panel’s top Democrat, said that under this bill Jimmy Kimmel could’ve sued last year after FCC chair Brendan Carr pressured station owners to pull his show over remarks about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The ACLU says it would’ve stopped Carr from threatening stations’ licenses. Republican chairman Ted Cruz made his case by pointing at the Biden administration and Big Tech. But last year even Cruz called Carr’s threats “dangerous as hell” and compared them to a mobster out of Goodfellas. In April, a day after Trump urged ABC to fire Kimmel, Carr ordered early license reviews for all eight ABC owned stations, something the FCC hadn’t done in over 50 years. This month Trump pushed the FCC to punish NBC’s Kristen Welker. And this bill still has to clear the full Senate and the House. A free press can’t do its job with the government’s hand on its license. When a president decides who stays on TV, that’s not democracy.
Is the FBI Really Warning ICE Agents That Fake Tradwives Are Coming for Them?
You can’t make this one up. The Guardian reports the FBI’s Chicago field office sent a memo to law enforcement nationwide in February warning about a new menace. Women on dating apps. According to the memo, a small group of women were allegedly building fake dating profiles with a traditional wife look to lure in agents doing immigration enforcement. The supposed plan was to land a date, then expose the agents online. Here’s the catch. The memo didn’t name a single dating site. It didn’t say where these women were. It didn’t say whether even one agent had been exposed. And the FBI itself stamped it as not finally evaluated intelligence. So where’d it come from? Weeks earlier, the New York Post ran a story about lefty TikTokers, built on a screenshot from the right-wing account Libs of TikTok. No interviews with organizers. No confirmed victims. No mention of tradwives. Former FBI agent Mike German reviewed the memo and summed it up. “They must have run out of other threats.” It’s funny until you remember this is the FBI, apparently taking its cues from a right-wing meme account.
And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday, September 17, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
