Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Who Pays When Oil Blows Past $100 A Barrel?
Oil crossed $100 a barrel Thursday for the first time since May, and stock markets tumbled right along with it. Brent crude hit about $100.60, up roughly 29% in a single month. Here’s why. Yemen’s Houthi militia says it struck two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea with missiles and drones, setting one of them on fire. They’ve declared a blockade of Saudi ports. That comes on top of Iran shutting the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s oil used to move in peacetime. Five Saudi tankers have already turned around. The United States just finished its 12th straight night of airstrikes inside Iran, and Trump is threatening “major military punishment” if the Houthis keep firing. Goldman Sachs says Brent could reach $120 by the fourth quarter. Now think about who eats that. Not the oil traders, who are having a spectacular month. It’s the guy driving 40 miles to a warehouse job, and the woman deciding between filling the tank and filling the fridge. War gets sold to working people as patriotism. It always shows up at their door as a bill.
Is Trump Dismantling Medicaid Piece By Piece?
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services just dropped the third in a series of new rules, and together they add up to the deepest cuts Medicaid has seen in its 60-year history. The newest one goes after how states raise money to pay for care. States like North Carolina and Idaho have been plugging Medicaid holes with insurance premium taxes. This rule slams that door shut. CMS itself estimates the change strips $198.7 billion out of state Medicaid funding over 10 years. Add the new work reporting requirements and a proposed rule slashing provider payments, and Anthony Wright of Families USA calls it “a coordinated dismantling of the Medicaid program.” States get squeezed from both ends. They lose the revenue, and they’re forced to spend new money building paperwork systems, some as much as $30 million apiece, to kick people off. Medicaid turns 61 next Thursday. This is the birthday present. Fewer people covered, providers paid less, and public dollars shoveled into red tape instead of care. That isn’t reform. That’s demolition with a press release attached.
Did Susan Collins Hand ICE A Blank Check?
Maine Democrats have found their issue, and it’s wearing a badge. An ICE agent shot and killed 26-year-old Colombian immigrant Sebastián Durán Guerrero outside his home in Biddeford after agents boxed in his vehicle. His three-year-old daughter was seen crying afterward. Susan Collins chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee. She cast the deciding vote on $70 billion in new ICE money. “Susan Collins is directly responsible for handing ICE a blank check,” said Devon Murphy-Anderson of the Maine Democratic Party. Collins did ask Homeland Security to pause non-urgent vehicle stops. Trump overruled her the next morning on Truth Social. That’s the whole story of Susan Collins in a single news cycle. She votes for the money, then sends a strongly worded request, then gets ignored. Trump’s ICE forces have now shot around two dozen people and killed six. A new poll has challenger Troy Jackson leading her 49 to 46, which in Maine counts as a dead heat. Independence you can’t cash isn’t independence. It’s a costume.
Trump Just Gutted The Endangered Species Act - Nature is losing to naked capitalism and Trumpism...
Here’s something worth sitting with. According to Jane Davenport on Commondreams, you don’t have to fire a shot to wipe out a species. You only have to bulldoze the place it lives. For 50 years the Endangered Species Act understood that. The word “harm” in the law covered destroying habitat, and the Supreme Court upheld that reading in 1995. On July 10th the Trump administration erased it. Harm now means only killing or injuring an animal directly. Log the forest, drill the wetland, mine the hillside, and as long as you don’t shoot the owl on your way out, you’re clean. Habitat loss is the number one driver of extinction on this planet. Aaron Weiss of the Center for Western Priorities calls it “a gift to the oil barons and foreign mining companies.” Writing today, Jane Davenport of Defenders of Wildlife says we’re closer than we think to losing our wild neighbors, and she’s right. The bald eagle, the American alligator, the California condor, the humpback whale, every one of them came back because Americans decided some things simply aren’t for sale. That law has kept 99% of listed species from going extinct. It took this country 50 years to build that consensus and one Friday afternoon rule change to auction it off. The lawsuits are already filed. Extinction, though, doesn’t have an appeals process.
Where On Earth Is Mitch McConnell? Is he alive?
The 84-year-old senator from Kentucky hasn’t been seen in public for weeks and hasn’t cast a single roll call vote since June 11th. His office put out a photo of him in a hospital bed and a statement blaming a fall and mild pneumonia. Nobody has been able to independently verify any of it. His staff won’t answer questions. Majority Leader John Thune couldn’t say for sure when he last spoke with him. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear says he’s received two calls from separate agencies suggesting McConnell had died. “Let’s end the crazy speculation. Just tell us what’s going on,” Beshear posted. Here’s the part that actually matters. Under Kentucky’s 2024 law a special election requires 63 days notice, and election lawyers point to August 3rd as the practical cutoff. Step down after that date, and his people can run out the clock and fold the seat into November on their own terms. So this may not be a medical mystery at all. It may be a calendar.
Geeky Science Alert. Earning More Than Mom And Dad And Still Renting as Owning is Unaffordable.
Neighbors Bank surveyed 1,011 middle-income renters, people pulling down between $40,000 and $125,000 a year. 44% said they now make more than their parents did at the same age and still can’t afford the same life. 57% agreed with a single blunt sentence. “The dream of homeownership feels out of reach for people like me.” 60% said the mortgage industry simply isn’t built for buyers at their income level. Nearly 1 in 4 have stopped saving for a down payment or never started at all. Then comes the twist. 84% overestimated what a down payment actually requires, and 94% had no idea some loans go as low as 3% to 3.5% down. They guessed you need $88,000 in income. They average $63,000. So part of that wall is real and part of it is rumor. Worth noting who paid for the survey, though. A mortgage lender that sells those very loans. The rumor is fixable with a phone call. The prices are not. When a whole generation out-earns its parents and still can’t buy a house, that isn’t a personal failure. That’s a rigged market.
And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday, July 23, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
