Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Is Trump’s Inner Circle Cashing In on the Iran War?
Iran’s negotiators sent a private warning to Vice President JD Vance. According to a senior Iranian official who spoke to Drop Site News, Tehran told Vance that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were more interested in exploiting insider knowledge of the negotiations to profit in financial markets than in reaching a deal. Iran says it sent written documentation to mediators showing people close to Trump manipulating oil futures and energy stocks around war announcements, calculating those profits at nine billion dollars. Tehran even demanded half. The Iranian official said the pair were “effectively disrupting the overall negotiating atmosphere.” The White House flatly denies any message was ever sent. But think about what’s being alleged here. A war where working families pay at the pump while insiders allegedly trade on the bloodshed. That’s not diplomacy. That’s a casino built on corpses.
FCC Commissioners Took Lavish Gifts From the Company They Regulate
ProPublica reports that FCC Chair Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty accepted pricey Kennedy Center gala tickets from Paramount while the company had billion-dollar deals awaiting their approval. Five months after Trusty cast the deciding vote approving Paramount’s eight billion dollar merger with Skydance, Paramount gifted her tickets worth over twelve thousand dollars. Carr sat in a private skybox with Paramount’s CEO, seats that sell for one hundred twenty five thousand dollars each. Carr has taken at least sixty three thousand dollars in tickets since 2017. All this while Paramount seeks approval for its one hundred ten billion dollar takeover of Warner Brothers. Former ethics chief Walter Shaub said “the appearance of taking gifts like that is terrible.” When regulators party with the regulated, the public doesn’t stand a chance.
Who Gets to Own Your Local News?
And that same Brendan Carr just announced the FCC will vote August sixth to kill the national broadcast ownership cap, the rule that stops any one company from reaching more than thirty nine percent of American TV households. Carr wants case-by-case review instead, which means his FCC decides who gets to grow. Sinclair and Nexstar, both friendly to this administration, are cheering. Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez says only Congress can lift the cap, warning this will “destroy local newsrooms, silence community reporting” and hand the public airwaves to billionaires. Remember, Nexstar and Sinclair are the companies that yanked Jimmy Kimmel off the air. Now imagine two or three giant corporations controlling nearly every local station in America. That’s not a free press. That’s a megaphone for the powerful.
Did American Missiles Kill 120 Children? Trump Says Maybe It’s AI
More than one hundred fifty people died when a school in Iran was bombed on the first day of the war. One hundred twenty of them were children. U.S. officials first blamed Iran, but the New York Times reported the administration believes American missiles hit that school. Tuesday night on Fox News, Trump was asked about images showing fragments of U.S. Tomahawk missiles at the site. His answer? “It’s also possible that those images that you have are AI generated.” Asked if he’d release the investigation’s findings, he shrugged that nobody will ever be able to say what happened. One hundred twenty dead children, and the answer from the White House is a shrug and a conspiracy theory. When a president can wave away evidence of a war crime by calling it fake, accountability dies. And when accountability dies, every atrocity becomes deniable.
Is Cuba Next on the War Menu?
CBS News reports senior Pentagon officials have been quietly examining military options against Cuba, including an air assault by thousands of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division. Officials stress no decision has been made, and the military is already stretched thin by the restarted war with Iran. The Justice Department has indicted ninety five year old Raul Castro, and the CIA director flew to Havana with a paramilitary operator from the Maduro snatch operation, introducing him as the man who “killed their people in Venezuela.” Behind the scenes, Trump is reportedly frustrated with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the stalled Iran campaign. One war going badly, so they’re shopping for another. Congress hasn’t declared war since 1941, and yet here we are again, planning invasions nobody voted for.
Speaking of Hegseth, the Pentagon’s New Weapon Is...Testosterone?
While American troops fight an actual war, the Secretary of Defense spent Wednesday filming a slick two-camera video announcing free testosterone replacement therapy for soldiers over thirty. He calls it the “High-T Department of War.” Critics pounced on the irony. This is the same Pete Hegseth who banned gender-affirming hormone care for transgender troops, and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal noted his plan “is gender affirming care” by any honest definition. Army veteran Fred Wellman called it a complete clown show and the dumbest possible focus for a wartime defense secretary. It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad. We’re asking young Americans to risk their lives overseas while their boss plays wellness influencer. Our troops need armor, rest, and leaders who take war seriously. Instead they’ve got a TV host injecting the military with machismo while the real problems go untreated.
And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday, July 16, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
