Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Is Scott Bessent’s Economic D-Day Walking Us Into Catastrophe?
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went to the Financial Times over the weekend and declared an economic D-Day against Iran. He promised the single greatest financial offensive ever aimed at an adversary. Monday afternoon he laid it out. Secondary sanctions hitting five lifelines. Digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping. Any country whose banks, businesses, or airports help Iran gets punished too. Bessent called it economic asphyxiation. Robert Pape at the University of Chicago has spent 30 years studying blockades and sanctions. His verdict is blunt. “Maximum economic pressure alone has not won a single major war since 1918.” Pape says this won’t break Tehran’s will. It’ll back Iran into a corner, threaten the shipping lanes, and spike oil prices overnight. He calls it walking straight into the escalation trap. Iran’s national security chief already warned that any country joining this is committing an act of war. Iran’s currency hit a record low Monday. Here’s the thing about starving a country into submission. It doesn’t hurt the men in the palaces. It hurts the mothers buying bread. We’ve squeezed Cuba for 66 years and it never toppled anybody.
Trump Restarts the Boat Bombings and the Death Toll Reaches 223
The killing at sea is back. US Southern Command announced Monday that it blew up another boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing 2 people. It’s the first strike since June 21st, after a two-month pause nobody at the Pentagon has bothered to explain. That brings the total to at least 223 people killed in more than 67 strikes since Operation Southern Spear began in September of 2025. SOUTHCOM said intelligence confirmed the vessel was running drugs. They offered no evidence. They never do. Just a grainy black-and-white video of a small boat, and then a fireball. Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group has tracked this from the beginning. “The term for premeditated killing outside of armed conflict is murder.” Senator Tim Kaine calls the dead murder victims. UN experts call them unlawful killings ordered by a government with no legal process at all. And we learned in December that the very first strike included a follow-up attack on survivors clinging to the wreckage. Understand what’s being built here. A President claiming the power to execute people he suspects of a crime. No charge, no trial, no judge. If he can do it to a fisherman off Ecuador, that principle doesn’t stop at the water’s edge.
Doug Ford Tells Trump to Kiss His Backside
Trump went on Truth Social Monday and announced 50 percent tariffs on all Canadian cars, trucks, auto parts, and steel starting January 1st. He wrote that Canada’s been ripping off America for years, that Canadians feel entitled, and in all capital letters, that we don’t need Canada, they need us. Ontario Premier Doug Ford heard that and went off on CTV. “Well, he can kiss my a** as far as I’m concerned.” Ford said Canada needs to throw everything and the kitchen sink at him. He called Trump arrogant and cocky, invoked Ronald Reagan on standing up to bullies, and then threatened the thing that actually bites. Ontario can shut off electricity to American factories and cut off critical mineral shipments. “I’ll cut them off,” Ford said. Prime Minister Mark Carney walked out of trade talks Friday, saying Washington made last-minute demands that were unfair and uneconomic. The 50% tariffs hit $28 billion in Canadian goods Saturday, and Carney’s matching them dollar for dollar. Canada sold us more than $380 billion in goods last year. This isn’t a negotiation anymore. It’s a wrecking ball swinging at our oldest ally, and American autoworkers are standing right underneath it
Can Democrats Actually Take Back the Senate?
We’re 70 days from the midterms and something’s shifting. Republicans hold 53 seats. Democrats need to net four. A year ago that looked impossible. Today the prediction markets call it a coin flip. Maine and North Carolina are the obvious targets. In North Carolina, former Governor Roy Cooper leads Michael Whatley by 11 to 13 points. In Maine, Troy Jackson is up two to four on Susan Collins. But Democrats also have to win two states Trump carried by double digits, and that’s where this gets interesting. In Alaska, Mary Peltola’s running even or better against Dan Sullivan. Iowa, which Trump won by 13, is now a toss-up. Sherrod Brown’s up 8 in one Ohio poll. And in Texas, James Talarico is inside the margin against Ken Paxton. Stephen Farnsworth at Mary Washington puts the odds at 50-50. “Most voters say he has made things worse.” Gas prices are up. Groceries are up. Tariffs are gutting Iowa farmers and Maine’s tourist towns. Voters are connecting the war in Iran to what they pay at the pump, and they’re doing the math. The math isn’t good...
Did the Ocean Just Break a Record That Stood for Thousands of Years?
On August 22nd, the average sea surface temperature across the world’s oceans outside the polar regions hit 21.1 degrees Celsius. That’s nearly 70 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest daily reading Copernicus has ever measured, and possibly the hottest in thousands of years. What makes it frightening is the calendar. Ocean temperatures normally peak in March and April, after the southern hemisphere summer. This record got set in August, when the water should be cooling. Marine heat waves now cover 42 percent of the planet’s oceans, and a strong El Niño is still building. Samantha Burgess at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts didn’t hedge. “This record is another clear signal of an ocean under growing stress.” Marine heat wave days have more than tripled since the early 1990s. Coral bleaches. Seagrass dies. Fish move and fishing towns go broke. Warm water expands, so seas rise. And warm water absorbs less carbon dioxide, which means the ocean that’s been quietly saving us for a century is getting worse at the job.
Racist Alert. Who Handed Trump the Video Calling the Obamas Apes?
Now we know. The New York Times reports that Trump’s executive assistant Natalie Harp is the one who fishes content out of the social media gutter and hands it to the President. That includes the video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, which Trump posted to his own account. Greg Greene ran Obama’s political social media in the first year of that presidency. He’s stunned this isn’t a bigger story. “It is not only a firing offense, in my view, but it’s unspeakable.” Harp is a 34-year-old former One America News anchor with no gatekeeper between her and Trump’s send button. She texts world leaders on his behalf. She flew with him on a secret military jet out of Turkey while Cabinet officials rode a decoy plane. Michael Wolff reported she wrote Trump letters calling herself unworthy, and the Secret Service flagged her as a security concern. Depicting a Black former President and First Lady as apes is the oldest racist trope in this country. Under any other administration, that staffer is fired within the hour. Here, she’s still on the plane, and by his side...
And that’s the way it is, Today is Monday, August 24, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
