Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report. News for the public, not the powerful.
The Lie Heard Around the World: Trump Told Our Allies Iran Was Surrendering. Iran Didn’t Get the Memo.
While the world was watching tankers burn in the Persian Gulf, Donald Trump was on a private call with G7 leaders telling them everything was fine. Iran was “about to surrender,” he said. Three officials from three countries confirmed it to Axios. He called Operation Epic Fury a success. Said he’d gotten rid of a “cancer threatening us all.” Then in the same breath admitted that nobody knows who Iran’s leader is, so there’s no one who can even announce a surrender. Hours later, Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei went on state TV and said Iran would avenge its martyrs, keep the Strait of Hormuz shut, and hit U.S. military bases. That same night, two oil tankers were set ablaze off the coast of Iraq. Oil is north of a hundred dollars a barrel. Every other G7 leader on the call pushed Trump to end the war fast. Officials described him as “ambiguous and noncommittal” on objectives and timeline. He told them the U.S. needs to “finish the job.” When the leader of the free world privately tells allies the war is won while tankers are literally on fire, that’s not spin. That’s a lie. And lies in wartime cost lives.
Who Gave the Order to Bomb a School Full of Little Girls?
A hundred and seventy-five people died when a U.S. Tomahawk missile hit Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran on February 28th. Most of them were girls between seven and twelve years old. A Pentagon investigation has now preliminarily confirmed what Trump spent weeks denying, that it was a U.S. strike, based on what investigators believe was outdated intelligence. Trump first blamed Iran. Then he claimed Iran must have used a Tomahawk. Iran doesn’t have Tomahawks. More than 120 House Democrats sent a letter to Pete Hegseth demanding to know how this target was chosen, whether the military’s AI targeting system called Maven was used, and whether any human being actually verified the coordinates before that missile launched. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand didn’t mince words. She said Hegseth should resign. The head of U.S. Central Command confirmed on video this week that AI tools are being used to select targets in this war. Hegseth declared there’d be “no stupid rules of engagement” from day one. You strip out the safeguards. You hand targeting decisions to an algorithm running on outdated data. And children die. That’s not a tragic accident. That’s what a war without accountability looks like.
Stephen Miller Wants to Read Your Texts. Will Democrats Let Him?
Section 702 of FISA expires April 15th. That’s the law that lets the government conduct warrantless backdoor searches of your phone calls, texts, and emails, and it’s been abused hundreds of thousands of times. It was used to surveil Black Lives Matter protesters. Judges. Journalists. Members of Congress. A sitting U.S. senator. Stephen Miller is pushing hard to renew it with no new safeguards, no warrant requirement, nothing. Trump is backing him up. Now more than 90 civil society groups have sent a letter to congressional Democrats drawing a line in the sand. Don’t give Miller what he wants. As one advocate put it, no president should have the power to hoover up Americans’ private communications, force people to spy on each other, or bypass courts by buying data from brokers. This fight matters because AI is about to supercharge government surveillance in ways we can barely imagine. Congress has one chance before the deadline to put guardrails on that power. If Democrats cave and hand Miller a clean renewal, they’ll own what comes next.
28 to Zero: Democrats Are Winning Every Race Trump Touches
The numbers don’t lie. Since Trump took office, Democrats have flipped 28 state legislative seats. Republicans have flipped zero. Not one. This week in New Hampshire, Democrat Bobbi Boudman won a seat in Carroll County that Trump carried by 13 points just 16 months ago. She beat the Republican with $12,000 to his $55,000. Democrats have now won or overperformed in 254 of 284 key elections since inauguration day. They’ve flipped seats in Texas, Arkansas, Iowa, Georgia, Mississippi, and now New Hampshire. CNN’s Harry Enten puts Democrats’ odds of retaking both chambers of Congress at 46 percent and climbing. The war in Iran has tanked Republican messaging on the economy. Gas prices are up. Grocery prices are up. The base is restless. Trump’s answer to all of it is to demand a law banning mail ballots. Republican House leaders didn’t even put it on their priority list. A wave doesn’t announce itself. It just keeps coming.
Inside the Rally That Should Scare Every American Who Cares About Democracy
New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg went to a Florida campaign rally for James Fishback, a 31-year-old Republican running for governor, and she came back with a warning that reads like a five-alarm fire. The crowd was standing-room-only. Mostly young men. Some still in high school. They were cheering antisemitic provocations and wearing the branded hats of Nick Fuentes, a man who openly describes himself as a Nazi sympathizer. Fishback is polling at 32 percent among Republican primary voters aged 18 to 32 in Florida. One attendee told Goldberg his political awakening came through Kanye West’s antisemitic social media posts. A registered Democrat in the crowd said she’s thinking about switching parties to vote for Fishback. These are young people who can’t afford rent, can’t move out of their parents’ homes, and are being handed antisemitic conspiracy theories on Instagram and TikTok as the explanation for why their lives are so hard. Fishback is a fringe candidate today. He’ll probably lose the primary. But the crowd that’s showing up for him doesn’t disappear after the election. That crowd is a preview. And what it’s previewing is dangerous.
And that’s the way it is, Today is Friday, March 13, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
