Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Trump Demands Better Propaganda. Will Towns Swallow the Data Centers?
Donald Trump stood at a White House crypto event Wednesday and told America the problem with data centers isn’t the data centers. It’s the marketing. He said he’d absolutely want one if he ran a town or a state, because the jobs and the taxes are enormous. Then he allowed that the AI industry could use “a little public relations help.” Many of the plants, he said, are designed in a beautiful way. Here’s what he skipped. These things guzzle water, swallow electricity, and employ almost nobody once the concrete cures. Ohio alone has more than 200 of them, the fifth most in the country, and power bills there keep climbing. That same day, the National Republican Senatorial Committee circulated a memo begging AI companies to spend money reshaping public opinion. It warned the issue could cost Senator Jon Husted his seat in Ohio, where Sherrod Brown has built his whole campaign on opposing them. The memo called data centers the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck. So the president’s fix for a real revolt in towns from Wisconsin to Ohio isn’t cheaper power. It’s better propaganda. When your government answers your anger with a PR campaign, it’s picked a side.
Bring Back the Sears House. Can Washington Build Half a Million Starter Homes?
For decades, an American family could flip through a Sears Roebuck catalog, pick out a house, and have nearly everything needed to build it delivered at a price they could afford. Tens of thousands are still standing today. Now the Groundwork Collaborative wants the government to do it again, at scale. Their new report calls for a Modern Sears Home program delivering 500,000 factory-built houses in eight years, each priced between $170,000 and $215,000, combining large-scale factory production with permanent affordability protections and direct federal financing. Three economists who served under Joe Biden wrote it. One of them, Emily DiVito, said homeownership has gone “from a milestone to a mirage” for too many families. And the public is already there. New polling shows that three in four voters support the program, including 80% of Democrats, 74% of Republicans, and 72% of independents. That’s the rarest thing in American politics. A big, concrete idea that working people across every party actually want. The question is whether anybody in Washington has the nerve to pick it up before another generation gives up on owning anything at all.
House Democrats Open an Inquiry Into Trump’s Memo for Hunting the Left
More than twenty House Democrats have opened a congressional inquiry into how this administration is using National Security Presidential Memorandum Seven. Trump signed it last September under a title about countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence. Sounds reasonable, until you see the use. Representatives Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Delia Ramirez of Illinois led a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. They’re alarmed by the State Department’s new ideologically driven visa restriction policy and by Treasury’s pledged financial enforcement aimed at civil society. They wrote that they’re “deeply troubled by public commitments to deploy the full force” of both departments against loosely defined far left networks and their alleged enablers. They’re demanding every communication between State, Treasury, Homeland Security, Justice, and the White House about how the memo is being carried out. They also want the administration to abandon plans to export the framework to foreign governments. Defining political opposition as an existential threat, they wrote, doesn’t make communities safer. It expands state surveillance, degrades civil liberties, and mirrors the tactics of repressive regimes worldwide. Visa bans and financial investigations aimed at Americans for their politics isn’t law enforcement. It’s an enemies list and it has a large federal budget behind it.
Why Is the FBI Raiding Eric Swalwell Days After Trump Declassified His File?
Federal agents stopped former Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell at the San Francisco airport on Saturday and seized his electronics. The next day they executed a search warrant on his Washington home. CNN’s Pamela Brown reported it. Swalwell, who’s 45, resigned from Congress and suspended his campaign for California governor in April after a former staffer accused him of rape. He denies the allegation and calls it false. He’s already facing probes from the Manhattan District Attorney and the Los Angeles Sheriff. Then on Monday the White House released 2015 FBI documents Trump had declassified, detailing Swalwell’s interviews about Christine Fang, a suspected Chinese spy. Swalwell told agents he’d had physical relations with her on a handful of occasions and that they never dated. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe called the Bureau’s involvement “a huge development,” then said it isn’t clear to him why the FBI stepped into a sexual misconduct investigation at all. Those normally go to state or county authorities. To get those warrants, the FBI had to convince a federal judge there was probable cause of a federal crime. Nobody has said which one. When a president declassifies a file on an opponent and federal agents raid him the same week, the country should get an explanation.
Israel’s Ben-Gvir Films the Gallows and Calls It a Promise Kept
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, posted a gloating video this week of construction underway on a gallows complex, pointing at foundations being laid and boasting that this is where terrorists will be executed. He promised to worsen conditions for prisoners, he said, and kept it. He promised a death penalty law, and passed it. Now, in his words, “the death row and hanging facility are also starting to take shape.” The site will include viewing booths so families of victims can watch the hangings. The Knesset passed the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law in March, championed by Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party. It requires military courts to apply death as the only available sentence unless the court finds special circumstances. Those military courts try Palestinians. Jewish extremists accused of similar crimes aren’t covered. Ben-Gvir carries his own convictions, including incitement to racism, and several countries have sanctioned him for repeatedly inciting violence against Palestinians. Even the Jerusalem Post wrote that reasonable people don’t glorify executions or circulate videos of gallows under construction. Two peoples, one government, and only one of them faces the rope. Whatever you call that, you can’t call it equal justice.
Trump Moves to Drill Chaco Canyon. Is Any Sacred Place Safe Now?
The Trump administration is moving to erase the ten-mile drilling-free buffer around Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. That’s roughly 336,000 acres, closed to new federal oil and gas leasing for 20 years back in 2023 after years of tribal advocacy. Chaco earned World Heritage status in 1987, and Theodore Roosevelt protected it first, under the Antiquities Act in 1907. Between 850 and 1250 AD it flourished as a major cultural and ceremonial center, and for New Mexico’s nineteen Pueblo tribes and the Diné, its holy ground. The surrounding landscape already holds nearly 40,000 oil and gas wells, and nearly 90% of nearby federal land was leased before protections went into effect. What’s left is the last unleased ground. That’s what’s on the table. The Bureau of Land Management ran a seven-day scoping review, and Project 2025 instructed Trump to abandon withdrawals of lands from leasing. He’s following the script. Diné organizer Mario Atencio said these are “some of the few places in the world that shouldn’t be drilled.” You can drill for oil anywhere, but, you only get one Chaco.
And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday, August 20, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
