Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Is Elon Musk Buying Another Election?
Elon Musk is jumping back into politics with a checkbook. Axios reports he’s reviving his dormant super PAC, America PAC, the same operation that spent $260 million to put Donald Trump in the White House in 2024. That made Musk the largest individual donor in a single election cycle in American history. This time the money buys door knocking, digital ads, and direct mail, all aimed at dragging Republican base voters to the polls in a year they skip. Trump adviser James Blair says the PAC’s return is “a huge boost for Republicans across the country.” Republican super PACs already hold a $300 million advantage, before the $400 million in Trump’s MAGA Inc. Trump’s approval is underwater on the economy and his Iran war, so Congress is in play. And one man richer than most countries has decided he’ll fix that. That’s not democracy. That’s an auction.
Who’s Watching The Watchers Now?
The Senate just handed America’s spy apparatus to a Wall Street lawyer who won’t say who won the 2020 election. Jay Clayton was confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, 51 to 47, straight party line. He now oversees all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies and writes the president’s daily briefing. His resume is securities law. He chaired the SEC and ran the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office. At his hearing he swore under oath he isn’t an election denier, then refused to say out loud that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. Four hundred former intelligence professionals signed a letter calling his nomination a danger to the country. Adam Schiff asked how a man who can’t answer that can be trusted to tell a president what he doesn’t want to hear. He inherits an office gutted by thirty percent under acting director Bill Pulte. Intelligence agencies that serve one man instead of one country can end a republic.
Did ICE Really Threaten To Beat A Man Into Signing?
Senator Patty Murray says federal agents tried to beat a deportation out of a Seattle small business owner. Eduardo Aguirre Esparza has lived in Seattle for 23 years. He runs a remodeling company. He’s married to an American citizen. He has no criminal record and was pursuing legal residence. ICE grabbed him anyway, held him in a Tukwila room ten hours, and according to Murray, threatened to beat him unless he signed a so called voluntary departure form. Then at two on a Saturday morning, ICE flew him to Texas without telling his wife or his lawyer. His family believes the plan is a fast hearing with no attorney. Murray says there were cameras in that room and she wants the video. In her words, “What ICE is doing is illegal and disturbing.” Our new immigration policy appear to be beating a signature out of a man. It’s called confession taken by force.
How Did Germany Beat The Fossil Fuel Industry?
Here’s proof it can be done. New numbers from the Energy Institute show wind and solar generated 24% of Germany’s power last year, beating fossil fuels. Coal, the dirtiest fuel we burn, collapsed from more than half of German power to 21%, and experts think Germany kicks it well before the 2038 deadline. They did it after shutting their nuclear plants, which everybody called impossible. Across the whole European Union, wind and solar beat fossil fuels for the first time. There are headaches. Germany makes so much clean power that prices sometimes go negative and operators shut turbines off, and the government just killed a law pushing households off gas boilers. Even so, heat pumps outsell them. So Germany’s building the future while Washington hands out coal permits and kills wind farms. Somebody’s grandchildren will pay for that.
Why Is Washington Calling Bike Lanes Woke?
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy bragged online that he’d redirected $1.73 billion away from what he calls Biden era DEI bike lanes. Not one dollar went to bicycle or pedestrian projects. Then his Federal Highway Administration quietly deleted bike lanes, speed cameras, and road diets from the federal list of proven safety countermeasures, along with the tool researchers use to track dead cyclists. The science didn’t change. More than 36,000 Americans died on our roads last year, at six times Britain’s death rate. Duffy’s asking Congress to restrict bike lane grants and tear out lanes he claims cause congestion, though research says they ease it. Painting a stripe so a kid can ride to school safely isn’t diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s a guardrail. And they’re ripping it out to win a culture war
Jetson’s Alert. Is Your Burrito About To Fly?
DoorDash just became an airline. The company earned Part 135 air carrier certification from the FAA and launched DoorDash Air, an in house drone program from its robotics unit, DoorDash Labs. That makes DoorDash the eighth operator in the country cleared to fly commercial deliveries, joining Amazon, Zipline, and Google’s Wing. They’re building the aircraft themselves, mostly with American parts, for three to five mile orders. There’s no launch date, no cities, no drone yet. What they have is a certificate. Between drones overhead, sidewalk robots below, and self driving cars in between, DoorDash is quietly building a delivery network with nobody in it..yet. We were promised flying cars. We got a flying enchilada and more humans out of work. But...perhaps dinner will be hot instead of cold soon.
And that's the way it is, Today Thursday, July 30, 2026. I'm Thom Hartmann.
