Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Is Trump About to Declare an Emergency to Steal the Midterms? What’s the plan?
Donald Trump just left the door wide open to seizing control of the November elections. In a post-midnight interview on Real America’s Voice, far-right host Wayne Allyn Root told the president he has the right to declare a national security emergency for elections. Root claimed that if Trump does it in the next month, the country gets photo ID requirements, proof of citizenship rules, and hard limits on mail ballots. Trump’s answer? “Stranger things have happened. I’ll leave it at that.” Root has been pitching this on Steve Bannon’s show for months, calling it the holy grail and bragging that Democrats can’t stop it. He says the Senate’s failure to pass the SAVE Act means Trump should just do it by decree. CNN’s Jake Tapper wrote that there’s zero reason not to take Trump at his word about disrupting the midterms. Former CIA Director John Brennan said he wouldn’t be surprised. Republicans are staring down bad polling and a likely House loss. When you can’t win the votes, you rewrite the rules. That’s not called an election; it’s a coup.
Trump’s New Attorney General Just Made the President Untouchable
On day one, Todd Blanche dropped a 21-page memo that guts congressional oversight. It says conversations between Trump and private citizens are shielded from Congress under executive privilege. Not cabinet secretaries. Anybody the president feels like talking to. Former federal prosecutor Paul Butler laid out what that means on MS NOW. Executive privilege has always been narrow, covering the attorney general, the defense secretary, the handful of people at the top. Trump’s own first-term Justice Department said the privilege didn’t cover Steve Bannon on January 6th because he was a private citizen. Now it covers everyone. Butler says the reasoning would apply retroactively too, protecting conversations Trump already had. He called the memo seismic and warned that Blanche “is not only disregarding norms, he’s disregarding law.” Why now? Butler thinks it’s a preemptive strike in case Democrats take the House or Senate in November. Subpoena anybody, and Trump claims privilege. So one branch investigates and the other says no. The whole point of Congress is to check the president, but Blanche just said you can’t ask.
What If We Could Save 114,000 Lives and $1 Trillion Every Year?
Yale researchers released a new study today, and the numbers are staggering. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill would save 114,000 American lives every single year and cut national healthcare spending by more than $1 trillion. That’s nearly 20% off the total bill. Here’s where the money comes from. $377.5 billion saved by paying what other rich countries pay for prescription drugs. Another $286.3 billion saved by cutting insurance bureaucracy and waste. No premiums. No deductibles. No copays. No narrow networks. No prior authorization telling your doctor what you can’t have. The lives saved include 20,111 Americans who’d keep the coverage they’re losing under Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, 18,200 seniors who can’t afford their prescriptions, and 13,000 seniors who’d finally get decent nursing home care. The study comes from the Yale team led by epidemiologist Alison Galvani, whose earlier work in The Lancet found similar results. Sanders put it plainly. “What we cannot afford is a broken healthcare system based on greed.” Every year we wait, 114,000 people die so insurance executives can keep their yachts. There is no policy here, just a body count.
Why Are Americans Betting Their Homes on Credit Card Debt?
Americans are running out of ways to pay the bills, so they’re borrowing against the roof over their heads. The New York Fed reported today that credit card balances jumped $21 billion in the second quarter to $1.26 trillion, closing in on the all-time record. Home equity loan balances rose another $19 billion, part of a four-year trend. Auto loan originations hit a record $211 billion. Total household debt sits at $18.8 trillion. At the same time, home equity is at record levels. Roughly 47.5 million homeowners are sitting on about $11.7 trillion they could tap, around $212,000 apiece. With credit cards charging north of 21%, cashing out looks like a lifeline. LendingTree’s Matt Schulz says people are just “looking for ways to extend their budget.” Here’s the catch. Credit card debt can’t take your house. Mortgage debt can. Homeowners who cash out are trading unsecured debt for secured debt, stretching payments over 30 years, and often paying a higher interest rate to do it. We’ve seen this movie before, back in 2008. When wages don’t cover groceries, people mortgage the future. And the bank holds the deed.
Paramount’s Billionaire CEO Threatens to Take 30,000 Jobs and Run
David Ellison has a message for California. Settle the antitrust case or lose Hollywood. TheWrap reports that the Paramount Skydance CEO told his 12-member leadership team at a lunch on the Paramount lot that if Attorney General Rob Bonta won’t negotiate by October 1st, he’s moving the company out of state no matter what happens in court. Tennessee, Texas, and Georgia are on the list. His father Larry’s Oracle is already moving to Nashville. The plan would mean selling the Paramount lot and shipping executives, business functions, and thousands of the company’s 30,000 Southern California jobs somewhere cheaper and friendlier. Ellison says he wants to keep those jobs in Southern California. He just won’t unless he gets his way. This is about Ellison’s $110 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. 12 state attorneys general sued to stop it. A judge just set trial for March, which means Paramount eats a $7 million per day ticking fee while it waits. If the merger dies, Paramount owes Warner $7 billion. So a billionaire loses an antitrust fight and threatens to take the jobs hostage. Should this be called extortion?
Who Watches the Watchdog When Trump Picks a Project 2025 Author?
Trump has nominated Dennis Kirk to be inspector general at the Interior Department. Kirk co-wrote a chapter of Project 2025, made a training video for it, and wrote an essay warning about progressive ideology in the federal workforce. He worked at the Heritage Foundation, served in Trump’s first-term personnel office, and advised Tulsi Gabbard at national intelligence. Inspectors general are supposed to be independent watchdogs who root out fraud and protect whistleblowers. Eciks + 4 This one would oversee any investigation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Trump’s $16 million renovation that turned the water green and split the lining. Trump blamed vandals. His own prosecutor couldn’t make charges stick and pointed at a botched coating job instead. Senate Democrats have asked that same office to investigate. The Center for Western Priorities says Interior’s watchdog office is already sitting on at least five investigation requests, including document shredding and disappearing messages. Congressman Jared Huffman called Kirk a “fake and fraudulent watchdog.” Put your own man in the office that investigates you, and the investigations stop. There goes accountability, one nomination at a time.
And that’s the way it is, Today Tuesday, August 11, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
