Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Trump’s Borrowing Binge Pushes the National Debt Past the Size of the Whole Economy. Who Gets the Bill?
The federal debt held by the public just hit 100% of everything America produces in a year. That’s $32.4 trillion, and the Wall Street Journal says it’s the highest ratio since 1946, when we were still paying off World War Two. Back then we’d just beaten Hitler. This time we bought tax cuts for billionaires. Washington ran a $2 trillion deficit last fiscal year, more than 6% of GDP, with $7.4 trillion going out and only $5.4 trillion coming in. Interest payments alone now run about $3 billion a day and are on track to top $1 trillion a year, more than we spend on the Pentagon. The Congressional Budget Office says we’ll blow past the all-time record of 106% by 2030, and the debt will hit 120% of GDP within a decade. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calls it “a total bipartisan abdication of making hard choices.” Here’s the part they don’t say out loud. Every dollar of that interest goes to bondholders, and bondholders are mostly rich people and foreign governments. Working people pay the taxes. The wealthy collect the interest. And when the bill comes due, Republicans won’t tax the rich, so guess whose Social Security and Medicare they’ll come after next. Starve the beast is working exactly as designed.
Voters Around the World Keep Firing the People in Charge. Is Trump Next?
The Washington Post looked at election results around the globe and found trouble for Trump and the Republicans everywhere it looked. Voters keep throwing out whoever’s in power. In 2024, incumbent parties lost ground in every developed country that held an election, the first time that’s happened since records began in 1905. Canada’s Justin Trudeau was pushed out. Germany’s Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote. And this week Netanyahu’s far-right coalition lost its majority in Israel after four years in power. Here at home, Gallup says only 43% of Americans think their own member of Congress deserves another term. NPR’s new poll puts Trump’s approval at 38%, with 61% disapproving. Twice as many likely voters say their midterm ballot is a vote against Trump as say it’s a vote for him. And 55% say it’s more important to vote for new ideas and change than for experience. The Post’s verdict was blunt. “Troubling signs for President Donald Trump and Republicans abound.” Trump’s answer is to say his name isn’t on the ballot. That’s true. But his tariffs are. His ICE raids are. His Epstein cover-up is. Anger at the powerful is a worldwide fever, and next Tuesday Republicans are the ones holding the thermometer.
Netanyahu Loses His Majority, Then Cries Stolen Election. Sound Familiar?
Benjamin Netanyahu lost his majority Tuesday after four years running Israel’s most extreme government ever, and within a day he was claiming the election was stolen. His Likud party says Arab Israeli parties used foreign money, supposedly from Qatar, to buy votes, forge ballots and threaten voters. The police say there’s no evidence. The election committee says there’s no basis for any of it. Qatar flatly denies it. And Israel’s own president scolded him for “tarnishing an entire community.” The numbers show why he’s panicking. His bloc has 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, the opposition led by former army chief Gadi Eisenkot has 48, and the two Arab parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, won a record 19. That makes Arab citizens, a fifth of Israel’s population, the kingmakers. Record Arab turnout was driven by fear of another term for openly racist ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Ben-Gvir’s response was to call for the arrest of Arab party leaders. Eisenkot calls the whole thing a coordinated campaign to delegitimize the results. Former prime minister Naftali Bennett pointed out the irony of Netanyahu suddenly discovering Qatar, when his own advisers are under investigation for taking Qatari money. Netanyahu learned this trick from his buddy in Washington. Lose the vote, call it rigged, hang on anyway. Watch closely what Trump does next Tuesday night.
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Heritage-Linked Group Gloats as Purged Black Federal Workers Stay Jobless
Remember the DEI Watchlist? Early last year the American Accountability Foundation, an outfit tied to the Heritage Foundation, posted the photos, salaries and work histories of 93 federal workers, two thirds of them Black, and called them divisive bureaucrats. Most got purged. The Washington Post now reports two out of three who lost their jobs still can’t find work, and Black workers are struggling the most. When the Post told the group’s president, Tom Jones, he wrote back that “we cannot overstate our joy.” His only regret, he said, was not having the resources to target more people. Asked why Black workers were faring worse, he sneered that hiring managers must be racist. Dia Harris, the first chief equity officer at the Administration for Children and Families, grew up on Head Start, the very program his agency ran. He was fired despite top performance ratings. After 560 applications he’s bagging groceries for $16 an hour and paying his mortgage out of his 401k. One recruiter told him privately his company couldn’t hire him because it depends on federal contracts. Several people on the list had cash-on-delivery pizzas sent to their homes, a message that says we know where you live. The Post estimates Black federal employment fell 30 last year. Other races, 4%. This isn’t efficiency. It’s a purge, and they’re proud of it.
Trump Superfan Front Row Joe Faces 10 Felony Child Abuse Counts
Adam Radogna is one of the Front Row Joes, the superfans who follow Trump from rally to rally. He was outside the Capitol on January 6th. He was a special guest at Mar-a-Lago when Trump launched his 2024 run. He went viral refusing to take off a Let’s Go Brandon mask on a Spirit Airlines flight. When Trump promised revenge after his felony conviction, Radogna told NBC News he agreed with him. Wednesday a Cuyahoga County grand jury indicted the 37-year-old Ohio restaurant owner on 10 felony counts for allegedly possessing dozens of files of child sexual abuse material. Nine of them are second-degree felonies. The Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force searched his Brook Park home on October 22nd. He’s out on $75,000 bond under home detention and had to surrender his passports. His restaurant calls the charges “baseless and false allegations.” He’s innocent until proven guilty, and he’ll get his day in court like anyone else. But the party that built its whole brand on protecting children, the party that still won’t release the Epstein files, keeps finding this in its own front row.
Bryan Adams Drops a Song Calling Trump a Baby...
Bryan Adams just released a song called Lake Ontario, and it’s got progressives on both sides of the border grinning. Trump signed an order in August renaming the lake Lake America. Adams, who grew up in Kingston, Ontario, answers that it’s a First Nations name, not an executive order. Then he sings about a leader whose war in Iran wasn’t going his way, so like a baby tossing toys from the pram, he cooked up a distraction while the Epstein files were getting traction. The song is a bonus track on his new album, a love letter to Canada that also includes a protest song called 51st State. Adams says it’s for “all the sane people on both shores.” Empires and dictators come and go. Lake Ontario is forever.
And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday, October 29, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
