Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report. News for the public, not the powerful.
How Trump is Spiraling After Xi Wrote America’s Obituary?
Donald Trump’s in Beijing this week kissing Xi Jinping’s ring, and he’s losing it. After The New York Times reported Xi increasingly views Trump’s America as an empire in decline, Trump fired off a frantic late-night Truth Social post trying to spin it. He claimed Xi was only referring to damage done by “Sleepy Joe” Biden, not him. But here’s the truth. Xi has been preaching the rise of the East and the decline of the West for years, and Chinese state-controlled media now openly mocks American collapse, citing Trump’s chaos as proof. Official Chinese sources doubled their use of “American decline” language last year. One top Asia expert said Xi’s “getting the United States he always wanted, and the America he most feared, at the same time.” That’s not Biden’s America. That’s Trump’s. And our adversaries can smell the weakness oozing off him.
Trump Exposes His New Grift: $1.7 Billion in Hush Money From the Treasury?
This one will make your blood boil. Trump’s about to drop his ten-billion-dollar lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for a one-point-seven-billion-dollar taxpayer-funded slush fund. The money goes to his political allies who claim Biden wronged them. That includes the nearly sixteen-hundred January 6th insurrectionists Trump pardoned. The Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, every thug who beat cops bloody on the Capitol steps could collect a check from your tax dollars. Trump handpicks the commission himself. They don’t have to disclose anything to anyone. Trump can fire them at will. He even admitted last year, “it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.” Yeah, no kidding, Donald. Congressman Jamie Raskin called it a “massive and unprecedented presidential plunder of the American people.” This is naked corruption on a scale we’ve never seen. The federal government’s now a personal piggy bank for one criminal man and his violent cult.
Did Clarence Thomas Just Threaten Birth Control and Porn? You Betcha.
The Supreme Court kicked the Mifepristone case back to the Fifth Circuit yesterday. That means the abortion pill stays available by mail for now. But Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, and Thomas’s dissent was a flashing red warning light. He cited the Comstock Act, the long-dead 1873 anti-vice law that banned mailing anything used for abortion, contraception, or pornography. Thomas called mifepristone manufacturers a “criminal enterprise.” Alito called telemedicine abortion a “scheme” to undermine Dobbs. Make no mistake. These two robed extremists are laying the groundwork to resurrect a dead Victorian morality law and use it to ban abortion pills, birth control, condoms, sex toys, and porn nationwide. No vote of Congress required. Just a president willing to enforce it, and Trump’s interim FDA chief is already on the phone with anti-abortion zealots promising he’s on their side.
Will a Super El Niño Cook America in 2026?
The National Weather Service just raised the odds of a rare super El Niño hitting late this year. The chance jumped from twenty-five percent last month to thirty-seven percent now. There’s an eighty-two percent chance El Niño takes hold by July, and a ninety-six percent chance it lasts through winter. A super event means more Pacific hurricanes slamming Hawaii and the Southwest, a colder, wetter winter across the southern U.S., drought in the Caribbean, and it could make 2026 or 2027 the hottest year ever recorded, beating 2024. Some models say this one could be the strongest on record. Meanwhile, Trump’s dismantling NOAA, gutting climate science, firing meteorologists, and restarting offshore drilling in California. The planet is screaming bloody murder. The grownups left the room.
Trump’s Cringe-Fest at Xi’s Banquet Humiliates America
And finally, a story that physically hurts to watch. Trump and his entourage of billionaire buddies trekked to Beijing to bow to the ascendant global superpower. At Thursday night’s lavish state banquet inside the Great Hall of the People, Trump strained to summon a meaningful compliment about China — and this was the best he could do. “Chinese workers helped lay the railroad tracks that connected our Atlantic coast to the Pacific.” Yes, Chinese laborers built those railroads while enduring brutal exploitation, racist terror, and deadly mob violence incited by the same toxic anti-immigrant hatred Trump now weaponizes against Latino, Arab, and African families across America today. And then came the one-two punch of ignorance and arrogance. “Chinese restaurants in America today outnumber the five largest fast-food chains in the United States, all combined! That’s a pretty big statement!” Sure is, Donald. You just told Xi to his face that Americanized Chinese food is China’s dominant cultural export in America. Insulting and ignorant at once. There were Olympic stars, Eileen Gu and Alysa Liu. Oops, they’re liberals. Nope - no mention of them. Don’t worry though. Xi will forgive all. Trump’s already handed Xi the best present ever: the systematic dismantling of American power, the reckless abandonment of global leadership, and the staggering public humiliation of the United States before the eyes of the entire planet.
And that’s the way it is, Today Friday, May 15, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
