Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Is Trump Dragging Us Back Into War With Iran?
President Trump stood at the NATO summit in Turkey yesterday and declared the ceasefire with Iran is over. This is the same war he launched illegally back in February, without a single vote from Congress. He called Iran’s leaders scum and sick people and said talking to them is a waste of time. Hours earlier, the US military hit more than eighty targets inside Iran, and Iran fired missiles and drones back at American bases in Bahrain and Kuwait. Then Wall Street got the message. Oil prices jumped more than five percent, and Dow futures dropped five hundred sixty four points. Trump put it plainly. “For me, I think it’s over.” On top of that, the Treasury moved to cut off Iran’s ability to sell oil, and Tehran called the whole thing a gross violation of the deal both sides signed just last month. So here we go again. Another open-ended war in the Middle East, working families paying more at the pump, and nobody in Congress ever asked to sign off on any of it.
Why Is Trump Sending Election Monitors Into Democratic Cities?
Trump’s Justice Department says it’s sending election monitors into three Michigan cities for the August fourth primary. The cities are Detroit, Lansing, and East Lansing, and all three are Democratic strongholds. The DOJ claims it’s worried about long lines and paperwork problems from the last election. Local clerks say that’s just false. Detroit’s clerk called the government’s reasoning thin gruel and a pretext for more monitoring. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson says there’s little to no evidence behind any of it. Here’s why this matters. Michigan is a battleground state with races for governor, senator, and attorney general on the ballot this fall. Even the state’s own Republican Party chair admitted the point out loud, calling the August primary a good chance to pilot the process before the big general election. When a president who lost and lied about it starts putting federal agents inside the polling places of cities that vote against him, that isn’t election security. That’s intimidation, and it’s a test run for November.
Did The Post Office Just Throw Out Your Ballot?
Here’s a story out of Corvallis, Oregon that ought to worry everybody. On primary day back in May, a supervisor at the local post office told a mail carrier to switch to package delivery only. That meant ballots sitting in mailboxes never got picked up. A carrier with nearly ten years on the job said that on past election days the orders were always to prioritize the mail and get those ballots postmarked. Not this time. In Benton County, three hundred eighty eight ballots came in too late to count this year. The year before, that number was just seventy nine. Now this comes from local reporting and a carrier’s grievance, so we’re watching it closely. But if somebody’s quietly testing how to lose ballots without getting caught, they’re doing it in the state that invented voting by mail. And November is coming fast.
Commanders Ignored The Warnings And Bombed A School
CNN dropped a brutal report this week. Senior US commanders bypassed warnings that their targeting information on Iran was badly out of date, and they approved the strikes anyway. One of them hit an elementary school in the city of Minab on the very first day of the war. Iranian state media says one hundred sixty eight children and fourteen teachers were killed. The military’s own databases flagged the intelligence as years old and needing review. Two sources told CNN the warnings got ignored for one reason. “Expediency.” They were in a hurry. And it gets worse. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had already gutted the very teams whose whole job was preventing civilian deaths, cutting one unit from ten full-time staffers down to a single person. Months later, the Pentagon still hasn’t released its investigation. When a government bombs children and then buries the report, that’s not a mistake anymore. That’s a coverup, and somebody needs to answer for it.
FDA Slams The Door On Limiting Forever Chemicals In Your Food
The Food and Drug Administration just rejected a petition asking it to set limits on PFAS in the food you eat. Those are the forever chemicals linked to cancer, immune damage, and harm to developing kids. A group called the Tucson Environmental Justice Task Force asked the FDA to set enforceable limits on up to thirty of these chemicals in things like milk, eggs, fish, and produce. The FDA said no, claiming there wasn’t enough scientific evidence, and adding that it doesn’t even have to act at all. But the EPA and independent studies have found that food is the single biggest way most of us get exposed to PFAS. These chemicals don’t break down, which is exactly why folks call them forever chemicals, and they build up in your blood year after year. So the agency that’s supposed to protect your dinner table just decided to look the other way, and the chemical companies are the ones smiling. Your family keeps eating it, and Washington keeps allowing it.
And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, July eighth, two thousand twenty six. I’m Thom Hartmann.
