Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Is Trump’s Iran Blockade About to Blow Up Your Gas Tank Even More?
Donald Trump’s war on Iran is now hitting you harder - where you fill up. On Wednesday the United States and Iran traded military strikes again, and American oil inventories fell to their lowest level in more than two decades. The president says his blockade of Iran could drag on all the way to Labor Day. The Strait of Hormuz carries one out of every five barrels of the world’s oil, and it’s been choked off for three months now. The American military has already turned back six ships and rerouted more than a hundred others trying to get through. The International Energy Agency says it’s the largest oil supply disruption the global market has ever seen. So why won’t this end? Because Trump keeps holding out for a grand finale, some trophy deal he can brag is better than Obama’s. He even told a reporter he “couldn’t care less” if the talks collapse. Think about that. A war that’s draining our oil reserves and squeezing every commuter and trucker in the country, and the man who started it is bored. So working families pay more at the pump while one man chases a headline.
Sanders Builds a Movement and the Establishment Should Be Nervous
Here’s some good news for working people. On Tuesday, candidates backed by Bernie Sanders swept Democratic primaries from New Jersey to Montana to California. One organizer called it “shaping up to be a clean sweep.” Sanders has now endorsed sixty one state and local progressives this cycle, part of what he calls “building a movement for the future.” And he’s blunt about the target. This movement isn’t just taking on the Republican Party. It’s taking on the corporate wing of the Democratic Party too, the donors and consultants who’ve spent decades telling us to settle for less. When candidates who refuse big money keep winning, it tells you regular folks are done waiting for permission. Sanders has been packing arenas on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, and now those crowds are turning into votes. That’s how you build power from the bottom up, one race at a time, and it scares the people who’ve owned both parties for far too long.
What Happens When a Tiny School District Refuses to Bend the Knee?
In Winooski, Vermont, the most diverse town in the state, more than a third of the schoolkids are still learning English. Their superintendent, Wilmer Chavarria, decided he wasn’t going to hand them over to anybody. His district was the first in Vermont to pass a sanctuary policy keeping ICE off campus without a judge’s warrant. He refused to sign Trump’s loyalty pledge on banning diversity programs. For that, his community got flooded with death threats, especially after they raised the Somali flag and Trump called Somali immigrants “garbage.” Chavarria knows the cost personally. He’s been a citizen since 2018, and federal agents still detained him at a Houston airport. One of his own second graders was grabbed by ICE over Thanksgiving. He’s risked federal money and his own safety to keep these kids feeling safe. And still he won’t back down. That’s what real courage looks like in a frightened country, and it ought to shame every politician who stayed quiet.
Why Did Trump Hand a 205 Billion Dollar Agency to the Epstein Family?
Donald Trump put a man named Ben Black in charge of a federal agency that controls two hundred and five billion dollars. Ben’s father is Leon Black, the Apollo billionaire who paid Jeffrey Epstein at least one hundred fifty eight million dollars and who Epstein privately called “Mr. Big.” Now the Guardian reports that newly surfaced emails show Ben Black himself had personal ties to Epstein, not just his father. The Senate confirmed him by a single razor thin vote last October, right before another pile of Epstein records came spilling out. So ask yourself why this White House keeps fighting tooth and nail to bury the Epstein files while quietly rewarding the people closest to that whole rotten circle. When the powerful protect each other, the rest of us are supposed to just look away. We won’t.
America Believes E. Jean Carroll Over Trump, Two to One
A jury already found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll and then defaming her, and the courts have upheld eighty eight million dollars in judgments against him. Now a new poll shows the country agrees with that jury. Forty six percent of Americans believe Carroll. Only twenty seven percent believe Trump. Among independents it’s fifty four to fourteen. Even six percent of his own MAGA supporters side with her. And how does Trump answer losing the argument? His Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into Carroll herself, and he’s still fighting the verdict in court. That isn’t justice. That’s a president turning the full weight of the federal government against the woman who told the truth about him, and daring the rest of us to do something about it. The country just answered. They believe her.
Will Washington Stand By and Let Your Social Security Check Get Slashed?
Here’s a number every working person should burn into memory. Five hundred dollars a month. That’s how much the average Social Security check could get cut starting in 2032, according to a new report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. When the retirement trust fund runs dry, benefits drop by twenty four percent automatically unless Congress acts. The report warns that “no state would be spared.” More than seventy million Americans count on these checks, money they earned over a lifetime of payroll taxes. This isn’t some accident of nature. It’s a choice. We could lift the payroll cap so billionaires finally pay the same rate you do, and the shortfall mostly disappears. But the same crowd that hands tax cuts to the rich suddenly swears we can’t afford to keep our promise to seniors. They’ve known this day was coming for forty years. The question is whether Washington protects your retirement or protects the wealthy. We already know which one they’d pick if we let them.
And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, June 3, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
