Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Is Trump Dragging Us Into A Forever War With Iran?
The White House is bracing for a long fight with Iran. Israel’s Channel Twelve reports Trump pulled his national security team into the Oval Office this week to plan the next round of strikes. A US official told the network the fighting could last anywhere from a couple of days to a month, depending on whether Iran keeps hitting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. That same official said, “We’re going to slap them a bit.” Washington is now weighing a naval blockade of Iranian ports. Nobody voted for this. Congress never authorized it. Oil prices are climbing, markets are sliding, and the men running this thing talk about slapping a country of ninety million people like it’s a bar fight. Wars started this casually don’t end quickly.
Who Referees An Election When The Referees Get Fired?
Reuters reported Thursday night that Trump has fired the remaining three members of the Federal Election Commission. Four months before the midterms. The FEC enforces campaign finance law. It was already crippled by vacancies, too few members to even meet quorum. Now nobody’s home at all. This comes right after the Supreme Court threw out ninety years of precedent and handed the president near unlimited power to fire the heads of independent agencies, the very agencies Congress built to be independent from him. Reuters also reported the commission helps guide states on voting procedures and voting machine updates. And Trump, who has never let go of his rigged election fantasies, wants federal control over mail-in voting and investigations of local election workers. He’s firing the umpires. Then he’ll tell you who won.
Why Won’t Trump Sign The Housing Bill On His Desk?
The median price of an existing American home just hit four hundred forty thousand, six hundred dollars. An all-time record, according to the National Association of Realtors. And the bipartisan bill written to bring those prices down is sitting on Trump’s desk, unsigned. Congress passed the ROAD to Housing Act by crushing margins. Eighty nine to ten in the Senate. Three fifty eight to thirty two in the House. Trump canceled his own signing ceremony, demanded Congress pass his voter ID bill first, and dismissed the housing bill as a big yawn. Elizabeth Warren, who wrote it with Republican Tim Scott, had a simpler message. “Sign the damn bill.” Amy Klobuchar said it’s been sitting on his desk long enough. The bill becomes law Friday night whether he signs it or not. Remember that he never wanted it.
Weekend at Mitch McConnell’s?
Mitch McConnell hasn’t cast a Senate vote since June eleventh. He went into a Washington area hospital on June fourteenth, and nearly a month later his office still won’t say why, how he’s doing, or when he’s coming back. A Republican congressman from Indiana went on television Thursday and asked out loud whether the eighty four year old is even alive. Emergency call audio, first reported by journalist Desiree Townsend, described responders giving CPR to someone in cardiac arrest at McConnell’s address that day. His name isn’t in the recording. His office won’t discuss it. Kentucky’s governor wrote asking for answers, saying officeholders owe voters “clear communication about one’s ability to serve.” The Senate comes back Monday, and McConnell still chairs the defense spending panel. A man can vanish for a month and nobody in power blinks.
They Indicted An Olympian For Touching Water. Free Davey!
Davey Hearn is sixty seven years old and a three time Olympic canoeist. He stopped at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool during a sixty four mile bike ride, reached in, and touched a chunk of peeling blue sealant. National Guard troops and Park Police held him five hours. A grand jury indicted him on a felony. He faces up to ten years in prison. Thursday he pleaded not guilty while supporters packed the courthouse, chanted his name, and waved signs renaming it the Deflection Pool. Trump’s multimillion dollar renovation has been peeling, blooming algae, and running green for months. They’re draining it again, second time in three months. Hearn’s attorney Norm Eisen put it plainly. “It is not a crime to touch the Reflecting Pool.” The pool fell apart on its own. The only suspect they could find was a guy on a bike.
Crazy Alert. Is Sharing Cupcakes The Gateway To Communism?
On Fox News Thursday night, guest host Charlie Hurt warned viewers about commie radicals surging through Democratic primaries. His Exhibit A? A campaign ad where Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed sits with a circle of schoolkids. He tells them that if you have something, you ought to share it. Then he asks them to imagine owning a billion cupcakes. Could they eat all billion? The kids say no. They’d get a stomach ache. That’s the whole clip. Hurt says El-Sayed is “already hard at work indoctrinating your kids,” then gives the camera a sour look. A grown man watched a kindergarten lesson about sharing dessert and saw Karl Marx. Laugh, then stop laughing. Millions of Americans are being trained to hear basic decency as a foreign ideology. Sharing your cupcakes isn’t communism. It’s kindergarten.
And that’s the way it is, Today Friday, July tenth, two thousand twenty six. I’m Thom Hartmann.
