Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Trump Erases Nearly 400 Federal Datasets and Buries the Proof
The Guardian dropped a report this morning that is worth taking a look at. Over the past year and a half, at least 28 federal datasets have been deleted outright. Another 338 got quietly modified. That’s data from more than 60 agencies covering the environment, labor, and law enforcement. Health data took the worst of it, roughly 40% of everything the tracker DataIndex.us has flagged. Gone is the database of federal law enforcement misconduct. Gone is a survey measuring violence against children. Gone are pollution readings from American embassies overseas. Denice Ross, chief data scientist under Biden, said, “We’re at a very vulnerable point as a nation.” Here’s what that means. You can’t fight what you can’t count. Erase the numbers and you’ve killed the argument before anybody gets to make
Trump’s DOJ Deploys 1,000 Poll Watchers and Americans Smell a Setup
The Justice Department says it’s sending about 1,000 monitors to polling places this November. Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Civil Rights Division, called it “probably going to be a historic number for a Republican administration.” Compare that to the record. Biden’s DOJ sent monitors to 86 jurisdictions in 2024 and 64 in 2022. Trump’s first term sent them to 44 in 2020. The department won’t say where these thousand people are going, and the Civil Rights Division isn’t anywhere near a thousand people, so they’ll be pulling from U.S. attorney’s offices. Now remember what Trump said this year. Republicans should nationalize the voting and take over the voting. This same DOJ has lost all 23 court cases trying to pry unredacted voter rolls out of the states. Federal agents at your polling place is just intimidation with a badge when you go to vote
Republican Senator Breaks Ranks as Trump Guts the South Korea Alliance
Trump ordered the Pentagon to scale way back on joint military exercises with South Korea. Those drills have run since the 1950s. They’re the whole point of deterrence on that peninsula. The reason he gave was his good relationship with Kim Jong Un, and the fact that his war with Iran has stretched American aircraft carriers thin. Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on Armed Services, called it “another inane, haphazard decision by President Trump.” Reed says Trump is flattering a dictator and punishing Seoul for refusing to join a war Trump started. Republican Thom Tillis broke ranks and criticized it too. And Reed warned that China and Russia are watching how fast this president walks away from an ally. Seventy years of alliance, traded for a photo with a dictator.
Trump Panics Over Ballroom Ruling and Rebrands It a National Security Structure
Trump tore down the East Wing last October to build himself a 90,000 square foot ballroom. Estimated cost, somewhere between $300 and $400 million, paid for by private donors. He said he needed it to entertain VIP guests. A district judge and a divided appeals panel both told him to stop until Congress authorizes it. Construction halts Friday unless the Supreme Court steps in. So Trump changed his story. On Truth Social he never used the word ballroom once. He called it a “desperately needed National Security structure” and called the preservation group that sued him treasonists who revealed top military secrets. Judge Richard Leon already answered that. He said the security problem was the president’s own making. Moby Dick was one man’s obsession sold to the crew as the mission. Is the “national security ballroom” Trump’s white whale
Texas Families Drag Ten Commandments Law to the Supreme Court
More than two dozen Texas families filed with the Supreme Court yesterday. They want Senate Bill 10 struck down. That’s the law requiring every public school classroom in Texas to post a state-selected Protestant version of the Ten Commandments. These families are Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Baha’i, Unitarian Universalist and nonreligious, spread across 22 school districts. The Fifth Circuit ruled in April that the law is fine, even though the Supreme Court struck down a nearly identical Kentucky law back in 1980. Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation said the First Commandment is “the antithesis of our First Amendment.” Rabbi Joshua Fixler of Houston says these displays force kids to defend their own families’ beliefs. Public schools exist to educate, not to convert and that used to be settled law.
Racist Alert. Fox Contributor Attacks Muslim Immigrants and Calls It Facing Facts
On Fox Business Monday morning, contributor Liz Peek drew a line between the immigrants she likes and the ones she doesn’t. The Italians and the Irish, she said, came here and joined the social fabric. Then came the turn. “Let’s face it, more and more Muslim countries sending people toward the United States.” Sending. Like cargo. Within 30 months, she claimed, they decide they hate America. Her proof was one streamer, Hasan Piker, born right here in the United States. One American man, stretched into a verdict on millions of believers. Then she reached for Iran jailing its critics, as if a foreign government’s cruelty rides along in the suitcase of every Muslim who lands here. According to Fox-so-called-news, Millions of Americans woke up Monday and found out they’re the suspects.
And that’s the way it is, Today Tuesday, August 18, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
