Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Why Are Navy Families Begging To Bring Their Sailors Home?
More than five thousand sailors and Marines have been stuck on the USS Abraham Lincoln since November 21. That’s more than eight months at sea. The carrier’s been parked in the North Arabian Sea backing Trump’s war with Iran, a war that started February twenty-eighth and shows no sign of ending. Last week families sat down with Navy officials in San Diego and described what they’re hearing from onboard. Clogged toilets. Mildew in the showers. Food running short. And sailors breaking down. One parent said their daughter believed she’d die on that ship. Now the Navy Times reports multiple sailors have tried to go overboard. Annabelle Loma says her husband, a 13 veteran, is on medical hold and terrified his career’s finished. “He’s scared,” she said. Another spouse says her husband grabbed a shipmate and pulled him back from the edge. The Navy didn’t respond to questions. Here’s the thing. Politicians start these wars from air-conditioned offices. Working-class kids pay for them with their bodies and their minds. Eight months parked at sea looks more like abandonment than service.
Is Marco Rubio Inventing A Terror Threat To Silence Charities?
On July 20, the State Department dropped a report called Cuba, The Capital of Twenty-First Century Communism. Rubio hosted a global counterterrorism gathering in Washington four days before it dropped. Its argument? Havana secretly built the American left. Antifa. Anti-ICE collectives. Leftist nonprofits. Registered charities. The report lists the dangerous activities these groups engage in. Organizing meetings. Political advocacy. Aid convoys. Work stoppages. Running for office. Watching cops. Raising bail money. Not one of those is a crime. Tom Joscelyn helped write the January sixth committee’s final report. He says there’s no foreign nexus here at all. “They’re inventing one because they don’t have one,” he told Raw Story. The report flags a National Rapid Response Plan as a terror blueprint. What’s actually in it? Rallies, flyering, art builds and banner drops. Since the report landed, House Republicans subpoenaed the People’s Forum, Treasury’s targeting nonprofit tax status, and Code Pink got a letter demanding details about a medical aid trip for Cuban children’s hospitals. This is the Red Scare playbook, dusted off. Once dissent gets labeled foreign subversion, surveillance and de-banking become tools against Americans, and the First Amendment goes POOF...
Where’s The Day One Price Relief Trump Promised You?
New inflation numbers just landed. Prices climbed again in July, one-tenth of one percent, putting annual inflation at three point four percent. Republicans will call that cooling. Look at what’s underneath. Shelter costs drove about two-thirds of the monthly increase. Energy costs are up 14.7% from a year ago. Gasoline’s up nearly twenty-five percent, with the national average back above $4 a gallon. Airfares jumped more than 25% over the year. And wages? Growing at 3.2%, slower than prices. Economists say inflation’s been eating workers’ raises for four straight months. Alex Jacquez at Groundwork Collaborative puts the blame squarely on the White House. “Trump’s catastrophic mismanagement of our economy means more spikes in the months ahead,” he said. He points to Trump admitting he’s only semi-negotiating an end to the Iran war while slapping tariffs on 99% of imported goods. Meanwhile Chuck Schumer notes the administration’s spending $900 million on a gilded White House ballroom. Day One was the promise. Nineteen months later, families are paying more for gas, groceries and rent while the ballroom goes up.
Hospitals Now Demand Your Cash Before They’ll Touch You
Thomas Zordani flew from Denver to Phoenix to see a Mayo Clinic neurosurgeon about debilitating headaches and worrying brain scans. He’d been told Mayo took his insurance. When he arrived, staff sent him to the financial office and demanded a $5,000 deposit before anyone would see him. His estimate days earlier had been $565. He refused. They canceled the appointment. An arbitrator later found Mayo violated Arizona consumer fraud law and awarded him $47,500. Zordani’s case isn’t an outlier anymore. Johns Hopkins says it collects everything owed before non-emergency care. MD Anderson asks cancer patients for a deposit based on their type of cancer. Hospitals now collect about a quarter of what they think you’ll owe before you walk in. Why? Because deductibles keep climbing. The average family plan deductible runs $3,762 a person, and Affordable Care Act deductibles jumped 37% this year. One health finance executive put it plainly. “People are basically being asked to self-insure,” he said. Our health care system is looking more and more like a racket.
Will Roberto Mosquera Ever Walk Out Of That African Prison?
Roberto Mosquera came to Florida at 12 years old on the Mariel boatlift. He ran with a Miami gang as a kid, took a plea deal, served his nine years. Then he built a life. Specialty plumber. Born-again Christian. Four daughters whose names he tattooed on his neck. He checked in with immigration every single year for two decades. He also told his daughter to vote for Donald Trump. Last June he showed up for a routine appointment and vanished into detention. Weeks later he was flown through Djibouti to Eswatini, a tiny African kingdom he’d never heard of, and locked in a maximum-security prison. That was more than a year ago. No charges. No hearing. No way home. He’s gone nearly blind from untreated glaucoma. He went a month on hunger strike just to see a lawyer. “Do you think I’ll ever get out of here?” he asked a reporter. Eswatini took five point one million dollars to hold men like him. At least thirty-five countries have signed similar deals. This is Guantanamo logic applied to immigration, and it’s building a class of prisoner nobody has to answer for.
Progressives Just Beat The Money Again In Minnesota
Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan won Minnesota’s Democratic Senate primary Tuesday night, beating Congresswoman Angie Craig. Craig had the establishment. Hakeem Jeffries. Nancy Pelosi. Battleground senators. And a massive spending advantage from allied outside groups. Flanagan had Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, retiring Senator Tina Smith and a refusal to take corporate or AIPAC money. “The many just won,” Flanagan told supporters in Minneapolis. The race turned on immigration. Craig voted for a Trump-backed immigration bill, then federal agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Craig walked the vote back. Voters didn’t forget. She’ll face Michele Tafoya, the former NFL sideline reporter, in November. Minnesota hasn’t elected a Republican statewide since two thousand six. And on the Republican side, Trump personally blessed Mike Lindell for governor. The MyPillow guy lost anyway to House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who now faces Amy Klobuchar. Flanagan’s win comes a week after Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan. Democratic voters keep sending the same message. They want fighters, not fundraisers. Will the party’s donor class listen?
And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, August 12th, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
