Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Why Is Rubio Punishing Judges Who Investigate War Crimes?
Marco Rubio has sanctioned the president of the International Criminal Court. Tomoko Akane is a Japanese judge elected by her peers to lead the court at The Hague. Washington also sanctioned senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal, who’s been working the investigation into Israeli conduct in Gaza. The sanctions freeze any assets they hold that touch our financial system and bar Americans from doing business with them. Rubio said it’s part of “our unwavering mission to protect Americans from this sham of a court.” With these two, the administration has now sanctioned nine of the court’s 18 judges, both deputy prosecutors, and its former chief prosecutor. The court called it a flagrant attack on judicial independence. Japan called it very unfortunate. When a government punishes judges for applying the law, it isn’t protecting anyone. Marco Rubio is telling the world the law doesn’t apply to its friends.
Voters Reject Merging Our Pentagon With Israel’s Weapons Industry
A new poll landed on Capitol Hill yesterday and it should scare a lot of senators. Data for Progress surveyed 1,017 likely voters for Demand Progress and the IMEU Policy Project. Sixty-one percent oppose Section 219 of the defense bill, which would fold Israeli weapons companies into the Pentagon at a level no other country enjoys. That’s 78% of Democrats and 73% of independents. The House passed that $1.15 trillion bill in July by four votes. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna want the provision stripped. Nearly half of voters say Trump gives Israel too much support. Margaret DeReus of the IMEU Policy Project called it “the height of absurdity that Congress is even considering” the plan. The Senate votes next and someone should ask them who they work for.
Eight Million Americans Just Lost Their Health Care
Protect Our Care released fact sheets for all 50 states yesterday, and the numbers are brutal. Eight million Americans have lost Medicaid, children’s health insurance, or Affordable Care Act coverage since Republicans cut more than a trillion dollars out of those programs to pay for tax breaks. Congress also let the enhanced subsidies expire, so premiums exploded. In Alaska, more than 25,600 people lost coverage and premiums jumped 346% this year. In Maine, 20 health care providers have closed, announced cuts, or are hanging by a thread. Brad Woodhouse of Protect Our Care said Republicans “would rather hand out tax breaks to billionaires than protect working families.” Fifteen million are projected to lose coverage before this is over. That’s not an abstract policy debate. That’s a decision about who gets to see a doctor.
Will Your Social Security Check Lose Five Hundred Dollars?
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calls its new report “No State Spared,” and here’s why. The trust fund that pays retirement benefits runs dry in late 2032. After that, by law, Social Security can only pay 78 cents on the dollar. That’s an automatic 22% cut. In 29 states, retirees lose more than $500 every single month. Connecticut gets hit hardest at $556, then New Jersey and New Hampshire at $554, Delaware at $549, Maryland at $541. A typical newly retired working couple loses nearly $1,700 a year. In Maine, almost 23% of the entire population takes the hit. Congress could fix this tomorrow by lifting the payroll tax cap on millionaires. They just don’t want to.
Why Did Three Hundred Sailors Go Four Days Without Water?
On July 24, the destroyer USS Benfold lost all power in the South China Sea. Its generators failed and the lights went out. For four days, about 300 sailors had no drinking water, no hot meals, no working toilets, and no air conditioning in tropical heat. Another warship had to bring them food. Tugboats towed the Benfold to Subic Bay in the Philippines, where the crew was put up ashore. Full power didn’t come back until July 30. The Navy said nothing for nearly a month until USNI News broke the story. A Navy spokesman praised the crew’s “resilience, grit, professionalism and unwavering steadiness.” This lands while families demand answers about food rationing aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln and sewage failures on the Gerald R. Ford. We just passed a $1.5 trillion defense bill. Sailors shouldn’t be rationing water.
Is Trump Dumping Mexicans In Countries They’ve Never Seen?
CBS News broke this one yesterday. Two Homeland Security officials say the administration has quietly been flying Mexican deportees over their own country and dropping them in Guatemala and Honduras. Hundreds of people, over months, and Washington never announced it. Mexico has always taken back every one of its citizens. Its foreign ministry says flatly that it rejects sending Mexicans to third countries and has no such agreement. One official admitted the point is deterrence, pushing Mexicans farther from our border. Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America called it “almost entirely punitive.” Experts say nothing like this has been done before. Strand people in a country where they know nobody, and you’re not enforcing a law. You’re inflicting a punishment, and hoping everybody watching gets the message.
And that’s the way it is, Today Wednesday, August 19, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
