Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Six Million Dollars A Day. Who’s Really Draining The Swamp?
The man who promised to drain the swamp just turned out to be the biggest creature in it. Donald Trump’s latest financial disclosure shows an eye-popping two point two billion dollars in gains during his first year back in office. Do the math and that’s about six million dollars a day. One point four billion of it came from cryptocurrency alone. His net worth nearly tripled since the election, from two point three billion to six point five billion. And here’s the rot at the center of it. The money flows from industries his own administration regulates and from foreign players his administration deals with. Former White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen put it plainly, saying the corruption is staggering. And it doesn’t stop at crypto. Watchdogs say Trump insiders diverted tens of millions of dollars that Congress set aside for the nation’s two hundred fiftieth birthday and funneled it into a company run by his own people. This isn’t a president. It’s a cash register with a flag pin.
Judge Blows Up The Trump Slush Fund. Was It Ever About The Law?
A federal judge just torched one of the most brazen schemes of this administration. Judge Kathleen Williams nullified the settlement between the IRS and Trump that was used to set up a one point seven billion dollar fund to pay so-called victims of government weaponization. Critics called it a slush fund to reward Trump’s allies with taxpayer money, and the judge agreed the whole thing was a sham. She found the case was brought for an improper purpose, to hand a settlement the legitimacy of a court when it had no basis in law or fact. She called out Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche by name, Trump’s former personal lawyer, and even recommended discipline for the attorneys involved. The whole mess started when Trump sued the IRS after news outlets got hold of his tax records, and the judge said the two sides were never really adversaries at all. When the president sues an agency and his own lawyer settles it, that’s not justice. That’s a magic trick.
Federal Agents At Reporters’ Doors. Is This How A Free Press Dies?
New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman isn’t mincing words about what the Trump Justice Department is doing to her paper. The DOJ subpoenaed four Times journalists who reported that Trump ditched the new Air Force One over security problems. Haberman said the goal is very clearly intimidation. The subpoenas landed within forty-eight hours of the first story, which is not how a real leak investigation works. Federal agents showed up at reporters’ homes. The order came from Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan who Trump just nominated to run national intelligence. Four reporters are expected before a grand jury this week. The Justice Department insists the reporters aren’t the targets, only the people leaking classified information. But Haberman notes the Biden administration had stopped hauling in journalists, and Trump has brought the practice roaring back. When the government sends armed agents to a journalist’s front door, the message isn’t about leaks. It’s about fear.
Shot In The Street. Did These Men Really Deserve To Die?
Two more killings by immigration agents, and in both cases the official story is falling apart. In Biddeford, Maine, agents shot a twenty-six-year-old man from Colombia. A neighbor watched agents pull him from his car and heard him say, I tried to stop, before he died in the road. The witness said he doesn’t plan to talk to ICE because they’ll sweep it under the rug. Down in Houston, agents killed fifty-two-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. ICE claimed he weaponized his vehicle to run down an officer. The three men riding with him say that’s a lie, that agents fired into the van from the side while it barely crept along. There were no body cameras. Nationally, at least ten people have been killed by immigration agents since January of last year, all while this administration pushes agents to arrest two thousand people every single day. Mexico’s government now says it’s done sending polite letters and is preparing legal action. These weren’t fugitives. They were workers on their way to a job.
Two Giants Want To Become One. Will Your Movie Night Cost More?
A coalition of eleven states just sued to stop Paramount from swallowing Warner Bros. Discovery in a one hundred eleven billion dollar deal. The states say the merger violates antitrust law and would throttle competition, meaning higher prices, fewer movies in theaters, and less variety for the rest of us. California’s attorney general warned it would hit audiences on every sofa and every theater seat in the country. Here’s the part that should worry you. The Trump Justice Department already waved this deal through in June with no conditions at all, and critics say that’s because David Ellison, the buyer, has family ties running straight to Trump. The merger would also hand CNN to the Ellison family, and the combined company would haul around an estimated seventy-nine billion dollars in debt. When the referee roots for one team, working people pay at the box office and lose a newsroom.
Geeky Science Alert. Can A Bowl Of Chili Really Buy You More Birthdays?
And now for something that won’t get anybody shot, sued, or subpoenaed. Science says the secret to a longer life might be sitting in your salsa. Researchers looking at studies of hundreds of thousands of people found that folks who regularly eat hot chili peppers were about thirteen percent less likely to die at any given moment than the poor souls eating plain rice. The hero here is capsaicin, the stuff that sets your mouth on fire and makes your nose run at the dinner table. It tickles little heat sensors called TRPV1 receptors scattered through your skin, your gut, and your immune cells, and somewhere in that spicy chaos your heart and your gut bacteria seem to come out ahead. Now, the scientists are careful. They haven’t proven the peppers cause it, so nobody’s prescribing vindaloo just yet. But if you’ve ever cried into a plate of extra-hot wings and questioned every life choice that led you there, take heart. You may have been marinating your way to immortality, one ridiculous sweat-soaked bite at a time. Pass the hot sauce.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, July thirteenth, twenty twenty-six. I’m Thom Hartmann.
