Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Why Is Trump Handing Iran Three Hundred Billion Dollars? Can We Get the Obama Deal Back?
Donald Trump says he’s ended his war with Iran. The framework he announced reopens the Strait of Hormuz and pauses the fighting for sixty days, with a signing ceremony set for Friday in Switzerland. But here’s the part that’s blowing minds. Vice President JD Vance told CBS that Iran could get access to a three hundred billion dollar reconstruction fund, paid for by Gulf states. And the loudest objection isn’t coming from the left. It’s coming from Fox News. Marc Thiessen, the columnist who reportedly has Trump’s ear on foreign policy, torched the plan on Monday. He compared it to rebuilding Germany while the Nazis were still in charge. Thiessen said “three hundred billion dollars to Iran under any circumstances is a disaster.” And he’s not wrong to be alarmed. This deal doesn’t dismantle Iran’s nuclear stockpile and it doesn’t end enrichment. It just winds the clock back to the day before the war, when gas was around three dollars a gallon and the strait was open to traffic. Iran’s hardliners are already calling it a victory. Trump started a war he couldn’t win, and now he wants somebody else to pay to clean it up.
Did Trump Just Turn the White House Into a Crypto Casino? You Betcha.
This weekend, Donald Trump hosted a cage fight on the South Lawn of the White House. UFC Freedom Two Fifty, staged for his eightieth birthday and the nation’s two hundred fiftieth anniversary. And the whole spectacle doubled as an infomercial for the Trump family’s crypto empire. World Liberty Financial, the venture Trump and his sons own, paid two hundred fifty thousand dollars in fighter bonuses using its own stablecoin. Trump’s financial disclosures list more than fifty million dollars in that company. Seventy-five percent of the token money flows to a Trump-controlled entity. A Reuters investigation found the family has pocketed at least two point three billion dollars across four crypto ventures, while ordinary investors lost roughly the same amount. And it gets worse. A firm tied to a top official in the United Arab Emirates bought forty-nine percent of the company for five hundred million dollars. For good measure, the family is hawking physical Trump coins for up to twelve thousand dollars apiece. Trump marketed them as “the only official coin designed by me.” This is corruption in broad daylight, served up with a body slam.
Sigh...Are America’s Allies Quietly Walking Away?
The G7 summit kicked off Monday in France, and the mood has shifted hard. For a decade, Europe’s leaders tried to manage Donald Trump. Now they’re building safeguards against him. The Washington Post reports that allies are quietly preparing for a world where they can’t count on the United States. They’re working to wean themselves off American security, American markets, and American goodwill. One foreign policy expert put it plainly, saying Europeans are “beginning to think about a life with less America.” Let that sink in. French President Emmanuel Macron even moved the summit dates so Trump could host his birthday cage match first. This is Macron’s last G7 as president, and he’s spent it watching the alliance fracture. Trump skipped out early on last year’s G7. He’s slapped tariffs on allies, threatened to take Greenland, and dragged the West into a war with Iran. So our oldest friends are doing the only rational thing. They’re hedging their bets. When the most powerful alliance in the world starts treating America as the risk to be managed, that’s not strength. That’s the price of a president who treats diplomacy like a shakedown.
Albanians Tear Down Kushner’s Fences
On Saturday, about two hundred protesters in the Albanian village of Rrjoll ripped down the metal and razor wire fences around a luxury resort site. The development is linked to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and his investment firm Affinity Partners. Locals call it the Trump villas. The Albanian government handed the project special investor status, and residents say their land was seized to make room for it. Two hundred families say they were never paid a dime. The site sits near Vlora, on protected coastline that’s home to flamingos and a sea turtle nesting ground. Waving flags and shouting Revolution, one landowner summed up the fury, saying “what is happening in this country is madness.” This is part of a bigger pattern. Kushner’s firm is pushing a one point six billion dollar plan on a nearby Albanian island and another project in Serbia. The family that ran American foreign policy is now cashing in on the same countries it once courted. And working people, halfway around the world, are paying the price for the Trump name.
Judge Orders Trump to Restore Erased History
A federal judge just slammed the brakes on Donald Trump’s effort to whitewash American history. Judge Angel Kelley in Massachusetts ordered the Interior Department to put back every sign, plaque, and exhibit it stripped from the national parks. Back in March of last year, Trump signed an executive order he called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Under it, the administration scrubbed mentions of George Washington’s enslaved workers in Philadelphia, climate threats at Fort Sumter, and history at the Stonewall monument. More than four hundred thirty park sites were targeted, and dozens of signs were quietly pulled. The lawsuit came from park rangers and conservation groups who said the government was erasing history and undermining science. In a scathing sixty-three page ruling, the judge said the removals set “a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization.” She gave the government twenty-one days to fix it, in time for the country’s two hundred fiftieth birthday. This is what they mean by making America great. Erase the hard parts, sand off the truth, and hand the next generation a fairy tale. A judge just said no.
Really?! Texas Politicians are Fighting Over Using Napkins at a Barbecue
And finally, hold onto your wet napkins and wet wipes. The race for a United States Senate seat in Texas has collapsed into a war over napkins. Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton challenged Democrat James Talarico to a barbecue duel to prove he’s a real Texan, after spotting a photo of Talarico daring to dab his mouth with a napkin while eating a rib. The horror. Paxton declared “we eat with our hands, and we don’t eat with a napkin.” A grown man, running for the Senate, staking his campaign on grease management. Talarico fired back that he’s an eighth-generation Texan who’s “been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment.” And there’s the tragedy under the comedy. Paxton’s been dogged by indictments for years, and Talarico says he cut Epstein-style sweetheart deals for child sex offenders. But sure, let’s argue about napkins. This is the seat Trump opened by dumping Senator John Cornyn. So that’s Texas manhood now, grease and indictments.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, June fifteenth, twenty twenty-six. I’m Thom Hartmann.
