Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Trump is Laying the Groundwork to Reject the Midterms...
Last night Donald Trump took over primetime television to wage war on your right to vote. Standing in the East Room, he claimed America’s election security “falls catastrophically short,” recycled long debunked conspiracy theories about mail voting and voting machines, and demanded Congress pass his stalled federal elections takeover bill just four months before the midterms. Democracy advocates saw this coming. As one warned before the speech, “Trump is trying to end our democracy.” He’s already purged the Election Assistance Commission, sued to seize private voter data, and pushed to decertify voting machines used across the country. Understand what’s happening here. He knows Republicans are facing a wipeout in November, he’s said himself he could be impeached, and so he’s laying the groundwork to reject any election he loses. That’s not politics. That’s authoritarianism, live on television.
Trump Declassified The Proof That Putin Was Helping Him All Along
And here’s the kicker. In that same speech, Trump told Americans to go read the documents he’d just declassified. Somebody actually did. One of them is a National Intelligence Council assessment from August of 2020, and it says Putin and senior Russian officials personally oversaw a proxy operation to smear Joe Biden with a manufactured Ukraine corruption scandal. “Their aim is to defeat the former Vice President,” the assessment says, and ensure Trump’s victory. For years Trump swore Russia never lifted a finger for him. His own document release just proved that was a lie. He was so eager to sell his stolen election fantasy that he accidentally published the receipts on his own White House website. The man attacking our elections is the one foreign dictators keep trying to install. Let that sink in.
Why Did ABC, NBC, And CNN Refuse To Air Trump’s Speech?
For the first time in memory, ABC, NBC, and CNN all refused to carry a presidential primetime address live on their main channels, shoving it onto streaming platforms instead. CNN’s John King explained it plainly, saying this president has “a history of misleading, and in some cases, simply false statements” about elections. Trump had spent days pressuring the networks to air it, and afterward he exploded, demanding ABC and NBC lose their broadcast licenses. Think about that. The president of the United States threatening to destroy news organizations because they wouldn’t hand him a megaphone for his lies. The networks took a real risk with a vindictive FCC breathing down their necks, and they did it anyway. When a president has to threaten television stations into carrying his propaganda, that tells you everything.
Fired For Refusing To Break The Law At Trump’s Treasury
Assistant Treasury Secretary Kenneth Kies is out of a job. His offense? According to the Wall Street Journal, Kies warned White House officials that what they wanted would “violate Section 7217 of the Internal Revenue Code.” That’s the law making it a crime for the president or his staff to order the IRS to audit, or stop auditing, any particular taxpayer. Kies, who also served as acting IRS chief counsel, clashed with the White House behind closed doors and now he’s being shown the door. Remember, this is the same president who sued the IRS for ten billion dollars and tried to trade the lawsuit for a fund paying off his political allies. Nixon was nearly impeached for trying to weaponize the IRS. Trump’s doing it in the open, and firing anyone who says no.
Who Did ICE Hand A Gun And A Badge To - Who Then Killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero?
On Monday, an ICE agent shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a twenty five year old Colombian immigrant, during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine. His father says he was here legally. No footage confirms the government’s story, because agents weren’t wearing body cameras. Now the Associated Press has identified the shooter as thirty seven year old David Brouillette, and his record is horrifying. Ex-wives describe decades of violence, stalking, and abuse, including throwing boiling water at his wife while she held their child. In a voicemail he told her and her relatives, “you should have your f-ing throats cut.” A relative said Afghanistan “trained him to be a killing monster.” ICE hired him anyway in late 2025, and Homeland Security is still defending him. This is who’s patrolling American streets with federal guns and total impunity.
Trump’s Border Czar Threatens America With More Bloodshed
And how did the White House respond to two ICE killings in a single week? Border czar Tom Homan went on Fox News and threatened the country. He blamed Democrats for the deaths his own agents caused, then warned “there will still be more bloodshed unless they shut their mouth” and let ICE operate without criticism. Read that again. A senior White House official telling elected members of Congress that if they don’t stop demanding investigations, body cameras, and basic accountability, more people will die. That’s not law enforcement. That’s the language of a protection racket. In America, criticizing the government is the whole point of the First Amendment. When officials start treating dissent as a cause of death, we’ve crossed into territory this country was founded to escape.
And that’s the way it is, Today Friday, July 17, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
