Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Why Did House Republicans Run From an Iran War Vote?
For the second straight day, House Republicans yanked a vote on a war powers resolution that would force Donald Trump to end his military campaign against Iran. Why? Because they were going to lose. Eight Republicans were absent. Retiring Democrat Jared Golden of Maine had said he’d vote yes this time. Speaker Mike Johnson did the math and panicked. They even held open a vote on a women’s museum for forty-five minutes while they tried to whip the conference. House Minority Whip Katherine Clark put it plainly. The GOP doesn’t care about your skyrocketing costs for gas and groceries. They only care about appeasing Trump. Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks introduced the resolution and said Republicans are feeling the pressure back home as constituents look at the cost of food and gas. Rep. Jim McGovern got shouted down on the House floor when he tried to ask what was happening. The Senate already advanced its own war powers resolution this week with four Republicans on board, and three more were absent. Congress has the constitutional power to declare war. Right now, House leadership is using procedural tricks to make sure they never have to use it. They’re protecting Trump from his own party.
A New Level of Corruption. ICE Warehouses Bought At Ten Times the Price
A bombshell investigation from More Perfect Union just exposed what may be the most brazen self-dealing of the Trump era. The Department of Homeland Security has spent a billion dollars this year buying warehouses to convert into ICE detention camps. And it’s paying enormous markups to investors tied to Trump’s inner circle. One warehouse in Socorro, Texas, valued at eleven million dollars, sold to ICE for one hundred twenty-three million. More than a thousand percent profit. A Goldman Sachs property in New Jersey, valued at fifty-four million, sold for one hundred twenty-nine million. Another warehouse owned by Blue Owl Capital, where Trump himself holds about five million dollars in investments, sold for double its valuation. At least thirty-three Trump administration officials have money in Blue Owl. This isn’t policy. This is looting the Treasury to bail out cronies stuck with bad real estate.
Will Your Airport Get Punished for Your City Politics?
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin pulled airline executives into a private meeting at DHS headquarters and told them he’s preparing to cut customs and border processing at major airports in so-called sanctuary cities. We’re talking about Portland, Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Newark, Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Dulles. If Mullin pulls the trigger, international flights would be canceled or rerouted. Cargo would back up. Airline executives told DHS the disruption would be devastating and the damage would spill far beyond the targeted cities. Why is Mullin doing this? To force local police to do Trump’s deportation work. This is collective punishment. Hold a city’s economy hostage until elected officials bow down. That’s not law enforcement. That’s a mob shakedown wearing a federal badge.
A Bombshell Out of Ukraine. Russia is Now Firing Uranium Missiles
Ukraine’s security service says it has detected harmful radiation from an unexploded Russian missile in the village of Kamka, in Chernihiv Oblast. The warhead was packed with depleted uranium. Investigators measured gamma radiation at twelve microsieverts per hour, dangerous with cumulative exposure. The missile was an R-60 strapped to an Iranian-designed Geran-2 kamikaze drone. Depleted uranium is dense enough to punch through tank armor, and when it strikes, it bursts into a burning cloud of toxic vapor. Ukraine has opened a war crimes investigation. And the timing matters. This comes as Vladimir Putin reportedly offered to store Iran’s enriched uranium for the regime. While Trump pretends to broker phony three-day ceasefires that collapse within hours, Putin escalates with weapons that will poison Ukrainian land for generations.
Is John Fetterman, thinking he could be VP 2028, completely delusional?
According to New York magazine, Senator John Fetterman called his senior staff into a meeting last summer and floated the idea that he should be the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2028. One person in the room said jaws were on the floor. Another reportedly thought, are you out of your mind? Fetterman’s net approval among Pennsylvania Democrats has collapsed by one hundred eight points since 2023. He just lost his third chief of staff. An unpaid outside adviser named David Safier, with no government experience, reportedly sits in on his calls with Benjamin Netanyahu. Republicans are openly trying to flip him. Fetterman ran as a working-class fighter from Braddock. Now his own staff thinks he’s lost touch with reality. When a senator can’t see how far he’s fallen, voters always will.
Holy Moly. Can Denver really heat a whole downtown with sewage?
Here’s some good news for a change. Denver is launching one of the most ambitious clean energy projects in the country. The city plans to heat and cool a cluster of downtown buildings using a thermal energy network that draws heat from wastewater and from geothermal boreholes drilled more than a thousand feet underground. Right now, more than a hundred Denver buildings burn natural gas through the world’s oldest commercial steam system, which dates to the late eighteen hundreds. The new system would replace that with zero fossil fuel pollution. As one engineer put it, geothermal sounds sexier than wastewater thermal, but both can decarbonize a city. With Trump shutting down federal climate action, cities like Denver are stepping up. Mayor Mike Johnston says the project can be both pollution free and affordable. Similar networks already run in cities around the world, and if Denver pulls it off, it could become a model for how to decarbonize a dense urban core. This is what democracy in action looks like. Local people solving real problems while Washington burns. Hope, it turns out, sometimes comes bubbling up from unexpected places.
And that’s the way it is, Today Friday, May 22, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
