Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Who Guards the Guards When ICE Investigates Itself?
Federal agents got word this week that the FBI will stop investigating violent confrontations involving ICE. According to The New York Times, the guidance went out to FBI managers on Thursday. Here’s why it matters. When an ICE agent shoots somebody, the FBI has been the one gathering evidence, and that evidence sometimes ends up implicating the agent. Take that away, and the job falls to Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE itself. That’s the fox guarding the hen house. This comes after two people were shot dead by ICE agents in Texas and Maine in just two weeks. Journalist Sam Stein said the change grants “pure impunity for ICE to do horrible things.” The Justice Department and Homeland Security both deny anything changed. But Homeland Security Investigations doesn’t even have the power to look into civil rights violations. When the police investigate themselves, accountability dies.
Are Republicans Running on Nothing But Hate?
Republicans are staring down a brutal midterm forecast, and their plan is fear. One Republican tied to Trump told Axios flat out, “It’s going to be a hate election.” The strategy is simple. Get voters to hate Democrats more than they hate Republicans. Their own pollsters say Trump made things worse by launching the Iran war, spiking gas prices and inflation, instead of talking about people’s wallets. One pollster admitted their research shows people just want the president to make their lives better, and they don’t believe he has. Trump’s approval sits ten points underwater. Democrats could take a seven seat House majority. When a party has nothing to offer working people but somebody to blame, that tells you they’ve run out of ideas and they know it.
Where Did Trump’s Millions Disappear To?
Big Tech paid Donald Trump a fortune to make his lawsuits go away, and now nobody can say where the money went. ABC, Meta, Paramount and X handed over as much as sixty four million dollars, funneled toward Trump’s future presidential library. This week Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, along with Representative Melanie Stansbury, said as much as twenty one million of it is missing or spent with no explanation. The fund that was supposed to hold it got quietly dissolved in Florida. No board members were ever named. Warren said “tens of millions of dollars are unaccounted for.” These settlements looked like shakedowns from the start. Now the shakedown cash has vanished into thin air, and the American people are left holding nothing but questions.
Did the FDA Just Blow a Nationwide Diarrhea Scare?
For days, Taylor Farms was the villain in one of the biggest food poisoning outbreaks in years. The parasite is called cyclospora, and it causes long lasting, watery, sometimes explosive diarrhea. The outbreak has sickened more than sixteen hundred people across thirty four states, with Michigan alone counting over five thousand cases. On Saturday, the FDA said a lettuce sample from Taylor Farms tested positive. By Sunday night, they took it all back. The agency said the result “should be considered a false positive” and apologized to the company. Taylor Farms had already pulled its lettuce from twenty seven states. So the source of a massive outbreak is now a total mystery again. When the government’s food safety testing whipsaws like this, people lose faith right when they need it most.
Dr. Doom Says Robots Are Coming for Your Paycheck
Nouriel Roubini is the economist who called the 2008 crash before almost anybody. They call him Dr. Doom. Now he says artificial intelligence and robots will replace a huge chunk of the workforce over the next twenty to twenty five years. His answer is universal basic income, a monthly check for everyone whether they work or not. He got there answering a question about Social Security, whose trust fund runs dry by 2032. Raising the retirement age won’t cut it, he says, when the jobs themselves are gone. Speaking on Bloomberg TV, Roubini said “we need some form of universal basic income for everybody.” He figures the winners get taxed to pay for it, or the government takes ownership stakes in the big tech firms getting rich off all this. And get this. He calls that the optimistic version. The question working people should be asking is who owns the robots, because whoever owns them owns the future.
Crazy Alert! Trump Says Diet Soda Kills Cancer Cells
And finally today, straight from the President’s own doctor. Dr. Mehmet Oz, who now runs Medicare and Medicaid, went on Donald Trump Junior’s podcast and shared the president’s medical theory on diet soda. According to Oz, “your dad argues that diet soda is good for him because it kills grass.” The logic goes like this. If pouring diet soda on your lawn kills the grass, then drinking it must kill cancer cells inside your body. Oz even described walking into Air Force One and finding Trump with a Fanta, insisting it was fresh squeezed. Now, diet soda can stress a lawn because of the acid. There is zero evidence it does a thing to cancer. This is the man running the country’s health agenda. Maybe drink some water.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, July 20, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
