Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report. News for the public, not the powerful.
IS TRUMP’S WAR ABOUT TO COST YOU $5 A GALLON?
Iran is threatening to push oil to $200 a barrel. And if that happens, analysts say gas at the pump could blow past five dollars a gallon. Iran’s military spokesperson told Washington to “get ready” for that price shock, saying the instability in global energy markets is the direct result of what the U.S. and Israel have done. And the numbers back that up. Oil has already blown past a hundred dollars a barrel for the first time since 2022, peaking near $120 before settling back around $90 on Wednesday. West Texas Intermediate crude — the American benchmark — was trading just under $86. To stop the bleeding, the International Energy Agency, representing 32 nations, agreed to release 400 million barrels from global strategic reserves. The U.S. is piling on with another 172 million barrels from its own Strategic Petroleum Reserve, starting next week, to be delivered over 120 days. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the reserves will be replenished with 200 million barrels over the next year at no cost to taxpayers. The national average at the pump is $3.57 right now. But Iran isn’t done threatening. Tehran warned Wednesday that any ship belonging to the U.S., Israel, or their allies that passes through the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint that carries roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply — is now a legitimate military target. At least 14 merchant ships have already been struck since the conflict began. The IEA has only released emergency reserves five times in its entire history. We’re now in that territory. When a president launches a war without an exit strategy, it’s working people who pay for it — at the pump, at the grocery store, everywhere.
DRONES OVER CALIFORNIA? THE FBI SAYS IRAN WAS PLANNING IT.
The FBI quietly sent a bulletin to California law enforcement agencies at the end of February warning that Iran had been planning a surprise drone attack on the West Coast. The alert, first reported by ABC News, said that as of early February, Iran allegedly aspired to launch unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel positioned off the U.S. coast, with unspecified targets in California. The warning came just as the Trump administration launched its bombing campaign against Iran. Governor Gavin Newsom confirmed that his office received the warning and said California has elevated its security posture since the war began. His office said it has been working with state, local, and federal security officials since the conflict started. Trump, asked directly if he was worried about Iran striking U.S. soil, told reporters flatly, “No, I’m not.” Some officials say the threat has not been deemed credible. But former DHS intelligence official John Cohen told ABC News he’s concerned about threats originating from both the Pacific Ocean and from Mexico, where Iran has an extensive presence. A recent attack in Austin, Texas — where a gunman opened fire on a bar, killing two and wounding fourteen, wearing clothing with Iranian insignia — and a shooting at an Iranian-Canadian activist’s boxing gym in Toronto have raised alarm bells about possible lone-wolf attacks and sleeper cells. We launched a war on the other side of the world. Now security officials are worried the other side of that war could show up here.
WHERE DID SIXTY-THREE MILLION DOLLARS FOR TRUMP’S LIBRARY GO?
After the 2024 election, four major corporations — ABC, Meta, Paramount, and X — each settled lawsuits brought by Donald Trump by agreeing to direct money toward his planned presidential library in Miami. The total pledged was at least $63 million. Let’s be clear about what that was. Companies with billions in regulatory exposure paid a sitting president to make his legal complaints go away. That’s not settlement money. That’s a bribe with extra steps. But now, the organization created to receive that money — the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund — was quietly dissolved by Florida officials last fall after it failed to file a required annual report. Just gone. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, along with Representative Melanie Stansbury, have now sent formal letters to all four companies demanding to know what happened to the funds. A second nonprofit reported receiving $50 million in donations in December, but nobody will confirm whether that includes the original settlement money. Federal law doesn’t require these library nonprofits to disclose their donors — making them a perfect backdoor for corporations to funnel money to the president with zero accountability. Trump has also talked about using the library to house the $400 million Boeing 747 gifted to him by Qatar. When $63 million in corporate payoffs to the president just vanishes into the air and nobody in power seems bothered, that’s not a mystery. That’s how corruption works.
ARE YOU SKIPPING MEALS TO PAY YOUR MEDICAL BILLS?
One-third of Americans — that’s more than 82 million people — said they’ve had to cut back on at least one daily living expense just to cover their health care costs. That’s not a statistic from a think tank. That’s from a West Health and Gallup survey of nearly 20,000 adults, conducted last summer. People are driving less, cutting back on utilities, skipping meals, and borrowing money. And it’s not just the poor. Even middle-class and upper-middle-class Americans are making these choices, according to the research director at West Health. More than a quarter of respondents said they’ve delayed surgical or medical treatment because they can’t afford it. Fourteen percent held off buying a home. Nearly one in ten pushed back retirement. All because of medical costs. And it’s about to get much worse. Republican lawmakers last year passed over a trillion dollars in cuts to federal health care support. Congress let the enhanced Affordable Care Act premium subsidies expire at the end of last year. Millions more Americans are expected to lose coverage in the coming months. We spend more on health care per person than any country on Earth, and a third of us can’t afford to use it. Every other wealthy country has figured this out. We just keep letting the insurance and pharmaceutical industries write the rules.
YOUR PUBLIC LANDS ARE FOR SALE — AND THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION THINKS YOU’RE TOO DUMB TO KNOW IT.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum stood before a BlackRock investment summit in Washington on Wednesday and told the room — packed with Wall Street money managers — that Americans who want to protect public lands are simply not “financially literate.” A BlackRock executive complained about how long permitting takes on public land. Burgum reassured him that the private sector are the administration’s partners, that lease sales generate revenue, and that people who oppose drilling and mining on public land just don’t understand how money works. Let’s think about what just happened there. The man in charge of managing 500 million acres of land that belongs to every single American walked into a room full of investors and told them the people who want to protect that land are ignorant. These aren’t abstract acres. These are national forests, wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, public rangeland — places that generations of Americans have hunted, fished, hiked, and called their own. Under the Trump administration, Burgum has already restricted the Land and Water Conservation Fund, rolled back the Public Lands Rule that gave conservation equal footing with industrial use, and initiated reviews of national monuments for resource extraction potential. The administration has cut staff at both the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. And now, at a BlackRock summit, Burgum is calling the people pushing back financially illiterate. The land belongs to the public. The profits would go to the corporations. When the secretary of the interior is taking his cues from the biggest asset management firm on Earth, you have to ask — who exactly is he working for?
And that’s the way it is, Today is Thursday, March 12, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
