Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Is Trump Ready to Punish Canada Because Doug Ford Won’t Bow?
Trade talks with Canada collapsed, and Trump spent Monday melting down on Truth Social. He went after Ontario Premier Doug Ford, calling him the less charismatic and unimpressive brother of the late Toronto mayor Rob Ford. Ford had threatened to cut off electricity to the United States over Trump’s tariffs on Canada’s auto industry. Ford says Ontario powers 1.5 million homes and businesses across the border, and everything’s on the table. He also told CTV that Trump could kiss his backside and called him the king of bankruptcies. Trump fired back that America’s been carrying Canada for decades, mocked Prime Minister Mark Carney as a governor, and warned that “the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE.” Here’s what matters. Our closest ally and biggest trading partner is getting bullied, and working families on both sides of that border pay the tariff bill.
Marco Rubio Moves to Revoke 200,000 Visas in the Biggest Purge Ever
The State Department is getting ready to cancel the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 people who’ve applied for asylum here. If it happens, it’s the largest single mass revocation of visas in American history. The AP got the documents. We’re talking about B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026, and the whole thing runs through Homeland Security. Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau says people are “fed up with bogus asylum claims.” Most won’t be deported right away, they’ll just be reclassified and stripped of their travel status. State’s already yanked about 175,000 visas in 18 months, including from people who criticized American foreign policy. Asylum is a legal right written into American law. Punishing people for using it turns a right into a trap.
Why Does ICE Need Twenty Million Dollars Worth of Electric Shock Gloves?
ICE wants to spend up to $20 million outfitting officers with gloves that deliver electric shocks on contact. They’re called GLOVEs, Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters, made by a Kentucky company called Compliant Technologies. Press a hidden button on the wrist, touch bare skin, and the current does the rest. Around 320 to 380 volts. The manual warns against using them on the elderly, small children, pregnant women, and disabled people. A pending lawsuit says a 43-year-old man died in a Richmond, Kentucky jail in 2024 after being shocked 27 times with the gloves and 13 more times with a Taser. Two of those shocks ran 45 and 99 seconds. The ACLU’s Jenn Rolnick Borchetta says ICE is “too quick to use force.” A concealed pain button on a federal agent’s hand isn’t de-escalation. It’s torture with a badge.
Hakeem Jeffries Scrambles After His Secret Sit-Down With Jared Kushner
The New York Times reported that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries met privately with Jared Kushner in New York, set up by a mutual friend, to talk housing, immigration, and the cost of living. Trump’s inner circle knows Democrats might take the House and wants a working relationship before that happens. Progressives went off. James Carville exploded. Others said Jeffries needs to go. Monday night he posted a video saying “No one from the Trump Cartel is getting a pass.” Kushner asked for the meeting, Jeffries says, and he took it to talk about an affordability crisis that isn’t a hoax. He promised Democrats will follow the facts and hold the crooks accountable starting day one, and pointed to Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem being gone. Voters didn’t ask for common ground with the family cashing in. They want accountability.
Is Trump’s EPA About to Hide Data Center Pollution From Your Neighborhood?
Right now the Clean Air Act makes minor polluters tell the public, through state agencies, how much pollution a new project will dump into the air. Trump’s EPA wants to kill that for data centers. Disclosure becomes voluntary, left to state and local officials who are busy competing for Big Tech money. Data centers pump out nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, and heavy metals from dozens of diesel generators and gas turbines. Developers already chop their permits up generator by generator to stay under the minor threshold and dodge federal review. Former EPA air chief Joe Goffman says the Clean Air Act was supposed to be “an ironclad promise.” If you can’t find out what you’re breathing, you can’t fight it in court. Looks like - that’s the point.
Mystery Alert. Whose Jet Just Landed in Moscow and Who Was on Board?
Here’s one that nobody in two governments will explain. Early Tuesday morning a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster, callsign RCH4555, lifted off from Riga, Latvia, and touched down at Vnukovo airport outside Moscow just after 10 in the morning local time. The flight plan listed no destination. Before Riga, the plane came from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, home of Air Force One. Russian accounts posted video of a motorcade racing through the city. Ask the Kremlin and you get nothing. Dmitry Peskov said he has “no information about the aircraft,” and no meetings are planned this week. Ask the Pentagon, the White House, or either embassy, and you get silence. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner just postponed a Moscow trip. So who flew a military transport into Vladimir Putin’s capital, and why won’t anybody say?
And that’s the way it is, Today Tuesday, August 25, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
