Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Is Trump Selling America’s Birthday to the Highest Bidder? You Betcha?!
Our country turns two hundred fifty next year, and Donald Trump has turned the party into a cash machine. Back in twenty sixteen, Congress created a bipartisan group called America250 to plan the celebration. Trump scrapped that idea and built his own outfit, Freedom 250, then steered the money toward it. America250 now says it’s short one hundred million dollars while Trump’s group rakes in corporate checks from Palantir, ExxonMobil, Mastercard, and Lockheed Martin. Want a private reception with the President and a photo op? That’ll run you one million dollars. Watchdogs at Public Citizen are demanding a congressional probe. As one of them put it, “Everything is for sale to corporate and potentially foreign interests.” This is the founding of the country reduced to a fundraiser. The men who stood up to a king would be sick to their stomachs.
A Court Full of DeSantis Picks Just Torched Florida’s Constitution
Florida voters did something rare back in twenty ten. They amended their own constitution to ban partisan gerrymandering, plain and simple. This week the Florida Supreme Court, packed with Ron DeSantis appointees, looked at that ban and shrugged. In a six to one ruling, the court let a brand new map stand for this November, a map DeSantis himself ordered up to hand Republicans as many as four more seats. The only justice who dissented was the only one DeSantis didn’t appoint. And candidate qualifying ends Friday, so there’s no time left to fix it before the midterms. Voting rights groups call it “a blatant gerrymander to favor the GOP.” Think about what just happened. The people wrote a rule into their own constitution, and a governor’s hand-picked judges decided the people don’t get a say. That’s not law. That’s raw power dressed up in a robe.
Why Is Trump’s Cabinet Sweating Over Jeffrey Epstein?
The Epstein files keep landing, and they keep landing close to home. An NBC News review of more than three million documents found at least half a dozen top Trump officials with ties to the dead sex offender. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick planned a trip to Epstein’s island back in twenty twelve. Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon traded friendly messages with him for years, and Epstein once bragged the friendship kept Trump up at night. Trump’s own name shows up thousands of times. When a senator pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi about it, she snapped, “I’m stunned that you want to continue talking about Epstein.” Of course she’s stunned. Every new page raises the same question. If there’s nothing to hide, why are these people fighting so hard to keep the rest of us from looking?
A Red State Running Every Voter Through an Immigration Database, Say What?
Here’s how voter suppression looks in twenty twenty six. The Trump administration rebuilt a Homeland Security tool called SAVE and handed it to the states for free, letting them run entire voter rolls through it in bulk. Louisiana already pushed nearly all of its two point nine million voters through the system. The result? Out of millions, officials flagged just seventy nine people who maybe voted while not citizens, going all the way back to the nineteen eighties. Nationwide, more than forty seven million voters have been screened, and the catch rate is almost nothing. But here’s the real catch. Homeland Security keeps those queries on file for ten years. Maine’s Secretary of State warned it looks like “the beginnings of a national voter registration list.” A solution chasing a problem that barely exists, while quietly building a federal database of every voter in America.
Trump and His FCC Chairman Want to Kill Your Burner Phone So They Can Keep an Eye On You
If you’ve ever bought a cheap prepaid phone with cash and no questions asked, those days may be numbered. Trump’s FCC chairman Brendan Carr pushed through a proposal that would force every phone company to collect your full name, your address, and your government ID before they’ll turn on your service. They’re calling it a crackdown on robocalls. But read the fine print. The agency wants carriers to hang onto your ID for four years after you leave, and it’s asking whether they should run customers against law enforcement watchlists. The folks who actually rely on anonymous phones are domestic violence survivors, journalists protecting sources, and whistleblowers. One privacy expert warned the plan creates “an incredibly attractive honeypot for hackers.” Robocalls are annoying, sure. But this fix hands the government a map to track anybody it wants. That’s not consumer protection. That’s surveillance with a friendly name.
They Have a Plan to Forbid Federal Workers From Ever Blowing the Whistle
The Trump administration just proposed making every federal employee, new and existing, sign a nondisclosure agreement. The Office of Personnel Management says it’s all about stopping leaks. Refuse to sign, and you could be shown the door. Officials swear it won’t touch whistleblower protections, that workers can still go to Congress or an inspector general. But the largest federal union doesn’t buy it for a second, warning the government will pressure agencies to make it mandatory and then fire anyone who won’t sign. A lawyer for whistleblowers called it a move toward “a federal workforce loyal to the President above all else.” Remember who federal workers actually serve. They work for you, not for one man in the White House. When the people who could expose corruption are too scared to speak, the corruption wins by default.
House Republicans Hold Yet Another Hearing to Pretend Racist Extremism Isn’t Real
For years, the FBI and Homeland Security have called white supremacist violence the single greatest domestic terror threat this country faces. Officials under Biden said it. Officials under Trump’s own first term said it. So what did House Republicans do this week? They held a hearing to attack the people who track it. Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan went after the Southern Poverty Law Center, accusing it of manufacturing hate. He even sneered at the group’s CEO, Bryan Fair, asking whether the work was “all about the money.” Fair calmly noted the group’s donations jumped after Trump took office. This is what denial looks like in a suit and tie. Buffalo. El Paso. Charleston. Real people died in those attacks. And instead of confronting the threat, the majority would rather shoot the messenger. That tells you everything about who they’re really protecting.
And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday, June eleventh, twenty twenty six. I’m Thom Hartmann.
