Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Is Trump About to Steal 2026 With a Fake 2020 Bombshell?
Donald Trump plans a Thursday speech unveiling what he calls newly declassified intelligence about foreign interference in the 2020 election. The claim that more than sixty courts and his own intelligence community rejected. The real 2021 assessment found no foreign actor altered a single vote. So who’s running this declassification? Bill Pulte, a housing regulator with zero intelligence experience, now installed as acting spy chief. Trump told him, “You can declassify whatever you want.” The task force, staffed by right-wing writer John Solomon and recycled Trump aides, was reportedly encouraged to limit redactions, even leaving in the names of private citizens, and former intelligence officials say the NSA and CIA are alarmed. Critics warn the real play is pushing the SAVE Act, a voter suppression bill, and pre-delegitimizing November. Remember, Utah audited two million voters and found exactly one noncitizen registration. This is a manufactured crisis with a manufactured cure.
Rubio Declares War on the War Crimes Court
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday a campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court, the tribunal that prosecutes genocide and war crimes. He accused the court of waging war on America and threatened to teach it “the full meaning of American resolve.” The State Department plans increased sanctions on the court, visa revocations and travel bans for its personnel, and pressure on other nations to pile on. Omar Shakir of the rights group DAWN asked the obvious question. Is the secretary worried because he knows American personnel committed war crimes in Iran? Kenneth Roth, who used to run Human Rights Watch, says Rubio can’t even make an honest case, since the court only acts where sovereign nations invite it. When you’re tearing down the war crimes court, people start wondering what you’re hiding.
Is Trump Turning a Trillion Dollars Into a Political Spoils System?
The public comment period closed Monday on a rule from Russell Vought, the Project 2025 architect running the Office of Management and Budget, that would require every discretionary federal grant to demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities. Civil servants and peer-review panels get pushed aside. Political appointees get final say over more than a trillion dollars, they can kill multi-year grants at will, and they’re explicitly forbidden from deferring to scientific peer reviewers. They can even bypass public notice using national security exemptions the rule never defines. The watchdog group PEER says it’s “a blueprint for a spoils system” for federal science funding, arriving just as the administration guts the inspectors and auditors who’d catch the corruption. Your tax dollars, handed out as political favors. That’s the plan, in writing.
Are We a Banana Republic Yet?
Rapper Boosie Badazz paid six hundred thousand dollars to MAGA operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman to secure a Trump pardon on a gun charge. The pardon never came, and now he’s in arbitration trying to claw back half his money. Boosie says the pair were “talking like they had Trump on speed dial.” Wohl and Burkman are convicted felons who already paid over a million dollars for a robocall scheme targeting Black voters. They claimed endorsements from people who deny even knowing the rapper, and a White House official says the clemency team never heard from them at all. When presidential mercy becomes a marketplace, grifters set up shop, and justice goes to whoever can pay the toll. That’s not a republic. That’s a racket.
Are Trump’s Lawyers About to Get Their Comeuppance?
A federal judge just blew up the legal foundation of Trump’s one point seven seven six billion dollar slush fund. Judge Kathleen Williams nullified the settlement in Trump versus the IRS, ruling the lawsuit was collusive because “the Lead Plaintiff and the Government are one.” The deal would’ve funneled billions to Trump’s political allies and shielded him from more than one hundred million dollars in tax penalties. Williams went further. She flagged ongoing bar discipline proceedings against Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, whose former clients stood to cash in, and referred Trump’s personal lawyer Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar. Thirty-five former federal judges triggered the inquiry. Blanche faces his Senate confirmation hearing for attorney general this week. The rule of law isn’t dead yet. It just needed a judge with a spine.
They’re Blinding Americans for Protesting ICE
A new report from Physicians for Human Rights and Berkeley’s Human Rights Center documents four hundred twelve incidents of crowd-control weapons misused against immigration protesters between June of last year and this May. One hundred nineteen people suffered visible injuries, two hundred three injuries in all, including permanent blindings and traumatic brain injuries. The researchers say the true toll is far greater, since chemical exposure and hearing loss don’t show up on video. More than ninety percent of the incidents happened in just five metro areas, including right here in Portland, plus Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Newark. Dr. Rohini Haar says these harms are “almost always foreseeable” when weapons get fired point-blank, against manufacturers’ guidance. These are Americans exercising their First Amendment rights, maimed by their own government, with almost no official accountability. That should chill every one of us.
And that’s the way it is, Today Tuesday, July 14, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
