Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Oil Blows Past $100 a Barrel. Who’s Paying for Trump’s War? You Are
The price of oil shot back above $100 a barrel today for the first time since July, and there’s no end to Donald Trump’s war on Iran in sight. A real-time tracker at Brown University’s Watson School now puts the bill American consumers have paid in higher gasoline and diesel prices at more than $101 billion since the war began at the end of February. That works out to about $776 for every household in the country. Most of that is gasoline, but diesel just hit an all-time record of $5.90 a gallon, up about 60% from a year ago. Gas is running above $4.15, compared with $2.98 before the war, and this Labor Day was the most expensive one for gas ever recorded. Texans have eaten about $11 billion of the extra cost, Californians $8 billion, Floridians $5 billion. Goldman Sachs warns prices could top $120 if Gulf output stays depressed. Trump’s answer? He says Americans are willing to pay more. Diesel moves every truck, train and tractor in this country, so this isn’t just pain at the pump. It’s a tax on everything you buy, levied by a president who never asked Congress for permission to go to war, that has no end...
Does Anyone Believe Washington Anymore? New Poll Says Most Americans Don’t
A new AP-NORC poll finds Americans trust their government less than two years ago, and less than at the end of Trump’s first term. About six in 10 adults say they have little or no trust in what the federal government tells them about elections, foreign affairs, the environment, abortion or immigration. Only 34% trust government certification of election results, down from 40% in 2024, and among Democrats that number has collapsed from 65% to 44%. Just under half of Americans are extremely or very concerned the federal government will discredit results, tamper with them, or lean on state officials to change how they certify the vote. Trump keeps repeating debunked 2020 fraud claims, he’s tried to restrict mail voting before the midterms, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has warned states they could lose funding or face investigations if they don’t fall in line. One Maryland voter told pollsters, “It’s pretty hard to trust anything that’s being communicated.” Meanwhile only about one in 10 Americans think either party’s campaign messages are usually factual. When you gut the agencies, fire the statisticians and threaten the referees, you drain the trust democracy runs on. That’s not an accident. It’s the plan.
Medicare’s $2,000 Drug Cap Is Working. So Why Is Washington Sounding the Alarm?
The Inflation Reduction Act capped what seniors pay out of pocket for prescription drugs at $2,000 a year. Last week, Congress’s Medicare advisers reported that more than 1 in 5 Part D enrollees hit that cap in 2025. GLP-1 weight-loss drug spending jumped from $300 million in 2024 to $2 billion last year, and cancer and diabetes drugs saw double-digit growth. Medicare’s trustees now project Part D will cost about $222 billion this year, up from $181 billion, and $346 billion by 2035. Translation? Seniors who used to skip cancer and diabetes medicine they couldn’t afford are finally filling their prescriptions. The American Enterprise Institute says the law gave insurers “an incentive to control spending, but few tools to do so,” and it’s floating fixes. New copays above the cap. Higher premiums. Changing how the cap is calculated. And a Biden-era subsidy that holds down stand-alone drug plan premiums expires in December, so seniors pay more in January. Every Republican in Congress voted against that cap. Watch them try to hand the bill back to grandma after the midterms, instead of negotiating harder with Big Pharma, which is the one thing that actually works.
Nebraska Governor Cheers ICE Raids. Guess Who’s Working in His Hog Barns?
Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen turned a former state prison into an ICE detention center now called the Cornhusker Clink. He rails about criminal illegal aliens invading the country, and he’s visited Trump’s White House 11 times. Now a joint investigation by the New York Times and the Flatwater Free Press finds that Pillen Family Farms, one of the biggest pork producers in America, has employed undocumented workers for more than a decade. At least 20 of his roughly 100 Nebraska hog farms hired undocumented immigrants, according to court records and interviews with more than 40 workers, managers, prosecutors and lawyers. One former worker says a farm manager accepted the fake driver’s license he’d bought. A former HR specialist sued in 2021 claiming the company knowingly hired undocumented workers and falsified verification forms. The company denied it and the case was dismissed. ICE has no record of auditing a Pillen farm in 15 years. Pillen’s spokeswoman says he never knowingly hired anyone here illegally. A former Pillen employee and Republican voter put it plainly. “You can’t hire illegals and then stand against illegals.” This is the whole game. Cheap labor for the boss, handcuffs for the worker, and a campaign ad for the governor.
Vance Raids the Childcare Fund. Who Pays? Single Working Moms.
The Trump administration is drawing up a rule change, first reported by the New York Times and a top priority for JD Vance, that would pull federal dollars out of the Child Care and Development Fund to create a new subsidy for married couples with a stay-at-home parent. The childcare fund helps about 1 million working families a month pay for daycare, and it’s already so underfunded that waiting lists nearly doubled last year. About 80% of the families it serves are single working parents, most of them mothers. Unmarried couples with a stay-at-home parent wouldn’t qualify for the new money. Senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on Appropriations, calls it outrageous and backwards, illegal and immoral, and a culture-war grift that punishes people for not being married. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro says it would force more families to fight over the same inadequate pot of money. Remember what Trump said about daycare this spring? “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare.” The Trump answer is to take from the waitress raising two kids alone and hand it to the family that already fits JD Vance’s picture of who counts. That’s not pro-family. It’s social engineering with your tax dollars.
Republicans Wave the White Flag. Why Bother Arguing With Trump Anymore?
Axios reports that top White House officials and elected Republicans all say the same thing in private. They’ve stopped trying to talk Donald Trump out of anything. As one longtime adviser put it, “Why bother? He’s the boss.” For a decade they rationalized going along by saying his instincts beat theirs. Many don’t believe that anymore. So he launched a war with no endgame, and they said fine. He posted a cartoon of himself towering over Canada’s prime minister sprawled on the ice, and they said fine. He built the first-ever Republican midterm convention around himself, gaveling in today in Dallas with Trump speaking both nights, though endangered candidates didn’t want it. He’s starring in ads with his approval near an all-time low, turning the midterms into a referendum on himself. One donor summed it up. He’s an 80-year-old man who did it his way, and what he wants, he gets. They’re pessimistic about the House, worried about the Senate, and in 56 days Trump is a lame duck. A party that won’t say no to its leader isn’t a party. It’s a court. What’s the plan when the king is gone?
And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, September 9, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
