Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report. News for the public, not the powerful.
Pentagon Readies Sledgehammer to Pound Iran Again?
The Pentagon’s cooking up a new name for the Iran war, and that’s a flashing red light. NBC News reports Trump’s Defense Department is preparing to rebrand “Operation Epic Fury” as “Operation Sledgehammer” if the ceasefire collapses. Two U.S. officials say the rename isn’t just marketing. It would reset the 60-day clock under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, giving Trump fresh authority to bomb Iran without going back to Congress. The war has already cost twenty-nine billion dollars. Trump’s calling Iran’s latest proposal “totally unacceptable” and says the truce sits on “massive life support.” Iran’s blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices keep climbing. And now the Pentagon’s hunting for a legal trick to keep the bombs falling without democratic accountability. This is how endless war happens in America. Quietly. Through paperwork.
Did the FBI Build a “Payback Squad” for Trump’s Enemies?
NOTUS broke a chilling story Tuesday. The FBI now operates a unit of special agents that insiders are calling the “payback squad.” Four sources say it’s built from agents willing to chase political targets handed down by the Trump White House. Their job is to manufacture cases like the recent criminal prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey. The squad works out of an off-site location, rotating in agents who know exactly what they’re signing up for. Director Kash Patel denied the squad exists, but bureau personnel describe a Director’s Advisory Team coordinating with Trump loyalist Joseph diGenova on the John Brennan investigation. This is the FBI weaponized against political enemies. The bureau that built its reputation on independence is now Trump’s personal grudge factory. Democracy doesn’t survive this.
Mamdani Slams the Door on Austerity in New York
Mayor Zohran Mamdani just pulled off what the billionaires said couldn’t be done. He inherited a twelve-billion-dollar budget hole from Eric Adams, and Tuesday he announced he’s closed it down to zero. No property tax hikes. No service cuts. No raiding the rainy day fund. Mamdani taxed the rich with a pied-à-terre levy on second homes worth over five million dollars. He squeezed nearly two billion in agency savings. And he got four billion in fresh aid from Governor Hochul. The new budget invests historic money in public housing, parks, libraries, and safer streets. “We didn’t close the gap on the backs of working people,” Mamdani said. He called it pothole politics. He called it democratic socialism. Whatever you call it, he just proved progressives can govern. That’s the lesson Democrats nationwide better learn fast.
Will Trump Erase His Own IRS Audits Forever?
The New York Times dropped a bombshell. The Justice Department is quietly negotiating a settlement of Trump’s ten-billion-dollar lawsuit against the IRS, the very agency Trump himself controls. One option on the table would let the IRS drop all audits of Trump, his sons, and his businesses. Permanently. Trump sued the IRS over a 2020 leak that revealed he paid just seven hundred and fifty dollars in income tax. A loss in a pending audit could cost him over one hundred million dollars. Now he’s using his own government to make those audits vanish. Federal Judge Kathleen Williams is racing to stop a settlement that legal experts already call collusive. This would be the most corrupt presidential self-dealing in American history. He’s robbing us blind.
Utah Hands Mr. Wonderful a Datacenter Bigger than Manhattan
The Guardian reports Box Elder County, Utah, just approved a forty-thousand-acre AI datacenter pushed by Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary. That’s more than two-and-a-half times the size of Manhattan. The facility will demand more electricity than the entire state of Utah uses right now. It’ll guzzle water in a region already gripped by drought, threatening the shrinking Great Salt Lake. Hundreds of residents showed up chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” Nearly four thousand Utahns filed formal protests. A Utah State physics professor compared the heat footprint to twenty-three atomic bombs a day. The commissioners approved it anyway. Critics call the deal “irresponsible.” Governor Spencer Cox’s family fiber-optic company stands to profit. This is the AI gold rush. Working families pay the price. Billionaires cash in.
Crazy Alert! Has Jesse Watters Finally Lost His Grip on Reality - claiming woman are born “bad?”
Folks, this one’s deeply worrying. Fox News host Jesse Watters went on the air Tuesday and announced that women are ruining the American criminal justice system because they suffer from what he called a “savior complex.” Watters declared, “Some of these people you can’t change. They are born bad.” Yes, “born bad.” That’s eugenics talking. Watters then accused white women specifically of “deep-seated guilt” that lets criminals run loose. The whole rant claimed our justice system has been “feminized” because women dare to believe in rehabilitation. We’re genuinely concerned Jesse’s gone off the deep end here. Telling millions of viewers that some humans are genetically evil is unhinged stuff. This is the dehumanizing language that has preceded every authoritarian crackdown in modern history.
And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, May 13th, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
