Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful
Has Trump’s DOJ Just Declared War on His Accuser’s Friends?
The Justice Department just opened a criminal probe into the nonprofit that helped pay E. Jean Carroll’s legal bills. You remember Carroll. She’s the writer who took Donald Trump to court and won. A jury found Trump sexually assaulted her. Another jury hit him with an 83.3 million dollar verdict for defaming her. Now, federal prosecutors in Chicago are investigating LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman’s nonprofit, American Future Republic, looking at possible money laundering, obstruction, and conspiracy. They’re also weighing whether Carroll, who’s 82 years old, might be charged with perjury for what she said in a 2022 deposition. Trump’s own former lawyer, Todd Blanche, had to recuse himself from this one. Let that sink in. The president lost in court. Now his Justice Department is going after the woman who beat him and the donor who helped her afford a lawyer. This is what vindictive prosecution looks like.
Why Does the DOJ Want to Know Who’s Posting Mean Things About ICE?
The Justice Department is now subpoenaing Reddit and X for the names, addresses, and banking information of anonymous users who criticize ICE. That’s right. If you posted something rude about masked agents grabbing people off the street, federal prosecutors want to know who you are. The subpoenas were signed out of Jeanine Pirro’s US Attorney’s office in Washington. One of the targeted Reddit posts? According to the user’s lawyer, it was as simple as, quote, “expletive ICE.” Attorney Lauren Regan called it a bad-faith attempt to unmask dissenters. The First Amendment Coalition pointed out that the Federalist Papers were written anonymously by the founders for a reason. They understood that to speak freely against power, sometimes you need to hide your name. The whole point is to chill speech. And it’s working.
Did Don Jr. Just Get $620 Million of Your Money?
ProPublica blew the lid off a stunning act of corruption this week. Last November, the Pentagon announced a 620 million dollar loan to a tiny North Carolina startup called Vulcan Elements. The company had under 50 employees. Three months earlier, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm had quietly bought a stake in it. The Pentagon and Trump Jr. both swore there was no favoritism. But ProPublica found the request to fund Vulcan came directly from the White House. Specifically, from Peter Navarro, Trump Jr.’s close friend. Defense Department staff were told to ram the deal through in weeks. One source quoted said, “The call came from the White House.” After the loan, Vulcan’s valuation jumped from 200 million dollars to roughly 2 billion. Bush-era ethics lawyer Richard Painter put it plainly. He said this is corruption we pay for. That’s our tax money making the president’s family richer.
Netanyahu Tears Up the Ceasefire and Ordered 70% of Gaza Seized
Benjamin Netanyahu just announced he’s ordered the Israeli army to seize 70 percent of Gaza. Under the ceasefire deal brokered last October, Israel was supposed to hold 53 percent. Now they hold 60 percent and want more. Netanyahu said it from a stage in an illegal West Bank settlement, telling the crowd, “We’re squeezing Hamas.” Since the ceasefire began, Israeli forces have killed more than 900 Palestinians, at least 229 of them children. Gaza’s 2.2 million people are being squeezed into a sliver of land smaller than the city of Atlanta. Netanyahu is fighting for his political life before the next election. So he’s chosen to bulldoze a truce, defy a US-brokered deal, and accelerate what his own defense minister openly calls “voluntary migration.” Human rights experts call it ethnic cleansing. The world watches. Washington stays quiet.
Is Peter Thiel Building a Doomsday Bunker? You Betcha...
Billionaire Peter Thiel, the man behind Palantir and JD Vance’s political career, has packed up and moved to Argentina. The New York Times reported he’s enrolled his kids in school there and quietly bought a plot of land in neighboring Uruguay. Why Argentina? Thiel once said it would, quote, “hardly be affected” by a nuclear war in North America. Author Joyce Carol Oates called the news chilling. Other commenters online asked the obvious question. Are we about to get very bad news about AI? Or about something worse? When the people closest to power start running for distant continents and building bunkers, working Americans should pay close attention. The lifeboats are being lowered. And we’re not on them.
A King Bedazzles Statues. A Republic Feeds its People - What Has America Become?
And finally, the Trump administration is spending 5 million of your tax dollars to slather four bronze horse statues at the Lincoln Memorial in 24-karat gold leaf. Yes, gold-plated horses. While SNAP gets cut and kids in Gaza starve, the National Park Service signed a 5 million dollar contract with a Maryland gilder to make the horses shiny. It’s part of 95 million in DC beautification spending Trump has lined up. A king bedazzles statues. A republic feeds its people. We used to know the difference.
And that’s the way it is, Today Friday, May 29, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
