Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Why Did the Secret Service Just Strip Its Own Spokesman of His Security Clearance?
Three Secret Service officials are on administrative leave this morning, and one of them is the agency’s chief of communications, Anthony Guglielmi. All three work in that communications office. All three lost their security clearances and their government devices. The agency confirmed they’re out “pending an investigation into potential misconduct,” and said its Office of Professional Responsibility is handling it. That’s all they’d say. RealClearPolitics reported the three were escorted out of Washington headquarters Monday and formally barred from entering agency buildings. One source said the FBI and the CIA are both involved, which tells you this isn’t a routine personnel squabble. It looks like a leak hunt. Guglielmi has been the public face of the Secret Service since 2022. He handled the press through the Butler shooting, the resignation of Director Kimberly Cheatle, and two assassination attempts on Trump. Earlier this summer an agent on JD Vance’s detail was pulled after investigators suspected him of leaking travel plans, and Kash Patel helped launch an earlier leak probe from inside the White House. This is a huge concern because when an administration starts hunting leakers inside the agency that guards the president, the mission stops being protection and starts being message control.
Trump Bombs Another Boat, Kills Four More, and Congress Says Nothing
Southern Command announced Tuesday that under General Francis Donovan, American forces struck what they called a go-fast vessel in the Caribbean. 4 people dead. That came a day after a bombing in the Pacific killed 2 more. Since these strikes began last September, at least 227 people have been killed. No trials. No charges. No names. The Pentagon says intelligence confirmed the boat was trafficking narcotics. We can’t verify that, because they won’t release the evidence. Amnesty International USA responded by asking where Congress is. That’s the question. Republicans control both chambers, and both have refused to pass war powers resolutions to stop this. Angelo Guisado, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, accused Southern Command of “delighting in the slaughter of innocents while the world burns,” and noted there’s still no proof any of this has dented drug trafficking. A DEA analysis found cocaine flows haven’t slowed at all. The Constitution is clear about who declares war. It’s Congress. Not the Pentagon, not a general, not a president with a social media account. When 227 people can be blown up in international waters and Congress won’t even vote, you can just kiss checks and balances goodbye. We just have a monarchy with great big weapons.
Should an OpenAI Executive Get to Decide Your Grandmother’s Social Security Check?
Dean Ball runs strategic futures at OpenAI. Before that he worked in Trump’s White House. On Tuesday he called Social Security “a kind of accounting fraud” on social media. He said it made sense for Americans who lived through a depression and a world war, but the debt is coming due fast. Then he told younger Americans that unwinding the great fraud is their job, whether they want it or not. The backlash was immediate. David Segal of Demand Progress caught the contradiction. These same executives promise AI will make us all so rich we’ll never work again, then say we can’t afford $2,000 a month for seniors. Henry Burke of the Revolving Door Project noted Ball isn’t calling decades of tax cuts for the wealthy a fraud, just the retirement checks. Polling analyst Lakshya Jain noted that attacking Social Security is the fastest way to unite the country against you. Let’s be clear. Social Security isn’t a fraud. It’s insurance that 70 million Americans paid for out of every paycheck they ever earned. Its trust fund holds Treasury bonds, the safest asset on earth. The only thing broken about it is a payroll tax cap that lets millionaires get away with not paying their damn share.
Are Christian Nationalists Already Running the Government?
Congressman Jared Huffman of California is the only member of Congress who openly identifies as a humanist. He co-founded the Congressional Freethought Caucus with Jamie Raskin. And he’s just published a book called No Prophets, The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism. Huffman watched January 6th from his office on Capitol Hill. What most Americans saw as a political riot, he saw as something else. He says that movement grew “in militancy and power my whole time in Congress,” and hardly anybody noticed because hardly anybody understood it. His argument is that Christian nationalism is now the most dangerous political movement in America, and it got stronger, not weaker, when Trump came back. These aren’t people outside the gates. They’re inside, running federal agencies, shaping foreign policy, rewriting what schools teach, and reworking how elections get run. Huffman points to Russell Vought at the Office of Management and Budget, and to Pete Hegseth, whose church ties and crusader rhetoric show where this is headed. The endgame he describes is an authoritarian theocracy enforcing one narrow reading of scripture by force of law. His answer isn’t secular Americans fighting alone. It’s a broad interfaith coalition, because most religious Americans want religious freedom for everybody.
Can Iowa’s Attorney General Hand Paramount a £111 Billion Merger?
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird wants to take California to the Supreme Court. Not over abortion. Not over guns. Over a media merger. Back in July, California, New York and 10 other states sued to block Paramount’s $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing it kills competition in movies and cable television. Paramount agreed to pause the deal until trial, set for March of 2027. On Tuesday, Bird published an op-ed in the Daily Wire announcing she’d sue California at the Supreme Court. She and Montana’s Austin Knudsen filed a motion naming California and 11 other states as defendants. Bird wrote that California “doesn’t get to decide what Americans can choose to watch or stream.” Here’s the money part. Starting October 1st, Paramount owes Warner shareholders $7 million a day until this closes, roughly $1.3 billion by the time the trial wraps. Paramount also demanded a $1.88 billion bond from the states suing it. And who’s bankrolling the deal? Larry Ellison, the Oracle billionaire and close friend of Donald Trump, whose son David already runs CBS News. So a Trump-allied attorney general is racing to the Supreme Court to help a Trump-allied billionaire swallow another piece of American media. That’s not antitrust. That’s a favor.
Good News Alert. Talarico Clobbers Paxton in Three Texas Districts Trump Won
Texas Southern University just polled the three most competitive congressional districts in Texas, and Republicans should be nervous. In the 15th district, which Trump carried by 18 points in 2024, Democrat James Talarico leads Ken Paxton 50 to 42. In the 28th, which Trump won by 10, it’s Talarico 51, Paxton 41. In the 34th, another 10-point Trump district, Talarico leads 53 to 42. The poll ran August 18th through the 22nd among likely voters, with samples of 700 and 600. It gets better. Gina Hinojosa leads Governor Greg Abbott in all three. Nate Silver now rates the Texas Senate seat Lean D. Fox News just moved it from Likely R to Toss Up. Cook Political Report calls it a Toss Up too. Silver said “a rebound here is also essential to any pathway that Talarico has to victory.” No Democrat has won statewide in Texas since the 1990s. Paxton got the nomination by knifing John Cornyn in a primary that drained Republican money and dragged every scandal he’s ever had into daylight. Voters in South Texas are looking at an indicted attorney general and choosing somebody else.
And that’s the way it is, Today is Wednesday, August 26, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
