Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Trump Calls Killer ICE Agents “GREAT” While Families Bury Their Dead
Two innocent men are dead, shot by ICE agents, and Donald Trump’s response was to hand out a gold star. On Truth Social Wednesday, Trump declared that “The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job,” one he insists has to be done. In Maine, twenty-six-year-old father Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was shot and killed by ICE agents. Immigration advocates say the Colombian immigrant was legally working in the United States, and Democratic members of Congress from Maine have confirmed he wasn’t the target of the operation that killed him. Days earlier in Houston, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot dead by an ICE agent, and his family was forced to watch video of their relative dying in the street. Human Rights Watch reports more than fifty people have died in ICE detention since Trump took office in 2025. And the public sees it. A June YouGov poll found fifty-three percent of Americans say ICE is using too much force, and fifty-six percent say these killings prove a fundamental problem with the agency itself. When a president praises the killing of innocent people, that’s not law enforcement. That’s a warning to all of us.
Whose Streets Are These, Anyway?
The fear is the point. That’s what communities from Biddeford, Maine to Houston, Texas are saying as they demand ICE be pulled off American streets entirely. Neither Durán Guerrero nor Salgado Araujo was the target of any warrant. Both were driving. Both are dead. In both shootings, the agents involved weren’t wearing body cameras, despite promises to Congress and funding already approved. After nationwide outrage, DHS blinked. The department ordered a pause on most ICE traffic stops on Tuesday. That pause lasted about a day. On Wednesday morning, Trump personally intervened to overturn the suspension and reinstate the practice, demanding agents get back out there and keep pulling people over. Think about that. The one small step toward stopping the killing, and the president himself reversed it. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is calling for ICE to be dismantled, with Congressman Joaquin Castro warning, “Otherwise, these killings will continue.” Trump isn’t tolerating the fear and the deaths. He’s demanding them. Terror is his enforcement strategy. Fear, intimidation, and violence, delivered by federal agents with no cameras and no accountability, backed personally by the President of the United States. Every family in an immigrant neighborhood now checks the rearview mirror on the way to work, wondering if an unmarked car is the last thing they’ll ever see.
Can a President Legally Bomb Bridges and Power Plants in Iran?
The short answer from the experts is no. The United States launched a fresh wave of strikes on Iran Wednesday morning, with Central Command saying it hit coastal defense systems and cruise missile sites after seven hours of overnight strikes on dozens of targets. But it’s what Trump promised next that should stop every American cold. He told Fox News, “We’re going to knock out all their power plants,” and all their bridges too, unless Iran negotiates. Here’s the thing. Legal experts say attacks on civilian infrastructure can constitute a war crime. Power plants keep hospitals running. Bridges carry ambulances and food. Deliberately destroying what civilians need to survive is exactly what the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war were written to prevent, and no press conference bravado changes that. Iran’s government says at least thirty civilians have been killed in recent days, and the war has already killed thousands and displaced millions. None of this was authorized by Congress, the only body with the constitutional power to declare war. A president openly threatening war crimes on television, with no vote and no debate, is a constitutional crisis hiding in plain sight.
Will the Senate Let an AI Machine Deny Grandma’s Healthcare?
Advocates are demanding the Senate kill Trump’s scheme to put artificial intelligence in charge of denying care to seniors on traditional Medicare. The program is called WISeR, and it’s already running in six states, including Washington, Texas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Jersey. Here’s the rotten core of it. The American Heart Association says the participating vendors get paid ten to twenty percent of the savings from care denials. The more care the AI denies, the more the companies make. Washington hospitals report patients are now waiting two to four times longer for care their doctors already recommended, from about two weeks to as long as eight. The Government Accountability Office ruled the program should have gone through Congress in the first place, and Democrats have introduced resolutions in both chambers to repeal it. Senator Ron Wyden put it plainly, saying “The last thing seniors need is even more AI denying the care they need.” Seniors paid into Medicare their whole working lives. Handing their care decisions to a profit-hungry algorithm, one that gets richer every time it says no, is theft with extra steps.
Is Giving to Charity Now a Crime in Trump’s America?
An American citizen sits in a Spanish jail cell right now because he gave money to feed starving people. Fergie Chambers, heir to the Cox family fortune, was arrested in Ibiza on a US extradition request alleging money laundering. He’s donated more than one million dollars to humanitarian projects in Gaza, and his money helped build a bakery producing thirty-six hundred free loaves of bread a day, a desalination plant supplying one hundred fifty thousand liters of clean water daily, and a free medical clinic treating up to three hundred patients a day. The Grayzone reviewed the sealed indictment and reports it offers no evidence he donated to any terrorist organization, citing only bank transfers to Tunisia, where he lived. He faces up to thirty years in prison. His associates call the arrest “an overt act of political repression by the Trump administration” against a supporter of Palestinian human rights. When feeding the hungry gets you extradited and the powerful walk free, the law has stopped being law. It’s become a weapon.
“They Want to Break Our Will”
A warning here, this story includes an account of sexual violence. Anna Liedtke, a twenty-five-year-old German activist, has filed a criminal complaint in Israel alleging that female prison guards raped her during a strip-search while she was detained after joining a Gaza aid flotilla last autumn. Israeli forces intercepted her boat in international waters and held her for five days. She says the abuse was meant to intimidate and silence campaigners. More than a dozen other flotilla participants have reported sexual assault. Australian police are investigating rape and torture allegations, and French prosecutors have opened a war crimes inquiry into the treatment of their citizens in Israeli detention. Israel’s prison service categorically denies the allegations. Liedtke refuses to be silent, saying “Whenever we are silent, they will do it to another person.” Her lawyer calls the complaint a challenge to a culture of impunity. Courage like hers is how impunity ends, one voice refusing to look away at a time.
And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, July 15, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
