Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Is This What We Fought a King to Escape?
Two hundred and fifty years ago, Americans broke free from a monarch. This week, the man in the White House kicked off the anniversary with a campaign rally on the National Mall, his face hanging on banners from federal buildings all over Washington. He’s planning another rally on the Fourth of July, and he’s elbowed aside the bipartisan commission Congress set up to mark the moment. He’s sent Marines into an American city, ordered his Justice Department to chase his enemies, and used the office to fatten his own wallet. The resistance movement calls itself “No Kings” for a reason. As one organizer put it, “It looks like the same kind of tyranny we were rebelling against.” Princeton historian Julian Zelizer says his financial entanglements may be the most monarchical thing about him, a president cashing in on his own decisions. Two hundred fifty years on, that’s the question hanging over this republic.
What Is Donald Trump So Afraid We’ll Read?
Donald Trump was indicted on thirty-seven felony counts, thirty-one of them under the Espionage Act, after roughly three hundred documents with classified markings turned up at Mar-a-Lago. Special counsel Jack Smith wrote it all down in a two-volume report. You still can’t read the second volume. Judge Aileen Cannon sealed it, and now Trump’s own Justice Department, the one he controls, is fighting in court to bury it forever, calling it something that “belongs in the dustbin of history.” Think about that. The president is personally suing to stop current, former, and future officials from ever letting the public see what investigators found. When the most powerful man in the country fights this hard to keep you in the dark, you should ask yourself what’s in there.
Did the Supreme Court Just Hand Trump a Crown?
On Monday, the Supreme Court handed Donald Trump king-like power over the agencies that are supposed to watch out for you. In a six to three ruling in Trump versus Slaughter, the conservative majority tossed out ninety years of settled law and blessed his firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter for no cause at all. That wrecks the 1935 precedent that kept watchdog agencies free from a president’s grip. Now the same logic threatens the labor board, the product safety commission, and more. Justice Sotomayor warned in her dissent that the Court handed the president “a power unknown even to the English Crown.” Congressman Jamie Raskin said it took a wrecking ball to a pillar of American law. The referees who protect workers and consumers now answer to one man.
Is This Corruption Hiding in Plain Sight?
On February tenth, Donald Trump bought between one and five million dollars in stock in Axon Enterprise, the company that makes Tasers. Two weeks later, on February twenty-fourth, his own Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a notice for a two hundred twenty million dollar Taser contract for seventeen thousand eight hundred weapons, with specs that experts say only Axon could fill. The stock shot up as much as thirty-four percent in the week after the announcement. The White House swears it’s all in a blind trust run by his kids and there’s no conflict. Critics aren’t buying it. As one watchdog put it, “There’s a reason why Trump fired the ethics watchdog.” When the president profits from his own crackdown, that isn’t a coincidence. That’s the whole game.
A Big Yawn? Tell That to Families Going Broke
A bipartisan housing affordability bill sailed through both the House and the Senate. Trump’s own press secretary called it one of the most significant housing laws in American history. So what does the president call it? “Just about everything is a big yawn,” he said, refusing to sign it until Congress first passes his bill making it harder to vote. Let that sink in. Rent is crushing families, groceries cost a fortune, and millions are one paycheck from losing everything. Nearly eighty percent of Americans, including most Republicans, want action on housing costs. Trump shrugs and calls it boring. As one critic said, try telling families who can’t afford rent that it’s a yawn. This is a man telling you, out loud, that your struggle bores him.
And now, a little geeky science from the lab...
Could a Piece of Fruit Hold a Secret to Healing?
Scientists at the University of Louisville just mapped something quietly amazing. When your gut breaks down compounds found in pomegranates, walnuts, and berries, it makes a substance called Urolithin A. And that substance flips a tiny molecular switch in the cells lining your intestine, setting off a careful chain reaction that rebuilds the gut wall, thickens its protective mucus, and calms inflammation, all without shutting down your immune system. Published in Nature Communications, the work points toward a brand new way to think about Crohn’s disease and colitis, conditions that have no cure and torment millions. Now, this was done in mice and lab cells, not people yet, so don’t go raiding the produce aisle expecting miracles. But it’s a beautiful reminder that some of the most powerful medicine on Earth might already be growing on a tree.
And that’s the way it is, Today Tuesday, June 30th, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
