Good Morning, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful
Will Trump And Hegseth Bury The Truth About A School Full Of Dead Children?
Four months ago, on the first day of the Iran war, an American missile slammed into a girls’ elementary school in Minab. At least one hundred seventy five people died, most of them children between seven and twelve. Now the Pentagon’s investigation is finished, and the fear is that it’ll never see daylight. Trump already lied once, claiming Iran did it. The evidence says otherwise. Investigators found outdated intelligence and a U.S. Tomahawk missile. When a reporter asked Trump if anyone would be held accountable, he shrugged. “Mistakes are made,” he said. Pete Hegseth, who gutted the office meant to protect civilians, controls whether the report stays secret. Senators are now threatening to freeze his travel budget until he turns it over. Human rights groups call it possibly the deadliest civilian killing by the American military in decades. When the most powerful military on earth kills a classroom of little girls and nobody answers for it, that’s not war. That’s impunity.
Trump Admits We Were (Are?) Four Weeks From Bedlam
Here’s a confession you weren’t supposed to hear. Standing at the G7 summit in France, Trump admitted the world was about four weeks from running out of oil. Four weeks. That’s why he caved and signed a deal with Iran his own advisers reportedly hated. “We run out of reserves at about four weeks,” he told reporters, warning of bedlam if the ships stopped moving. Remember, this is the same man who told you back in April that America didn’t need Middle Eastern oil at all. Then Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz, prices exploded, and our Strategic Petroleum Reserve dropped to its lowest level since nineteen eighty three. So Trump folded. Call it a deal if you want. It looks a lot more like a surrender, dressed up for the cameras. And he’s already threatening to start bombing again the moment it suits him.
What Did The Iran War Actually Teach Us?
Historian Timothy Snyder has a warning, and it’s a chilling one. He calls what drove this war a utopia of violence. The fantasy that bombs and missiles can make all your dreams come true. Trump felt it. Hegseth preached it. And it blew up in their faces. We didn’t end Iran’s nuclear program. We strengthened the regime, and now we’re paying billions. But Snyder’s real fear isn’t about Iran. It’s about what comes next, right here at home. He argues that men who believe violence solves everything don’t quit when they lose abroad. They turn inward and blame an enemy at home. With midterm elections five months away and Trump deeply unpopular, Snyder warns of soldiers and ICE at the voting booths. The way you stop that nightmare, he says, is by naming it out loud before it happens.
Did A Sixty Seven Year Old Cyclist Really Sabotage The Reflecting Pool?
You can’t make this up. Trump spent fourteen million dollars refurbishing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The White House first said it would cost under two million. Then the new blue paint started peeling and floating, and the algae turned the water bright green. So he blamed Radical Left Lunatics for vandalism. Park Police arrested a man named David Hearn, a three time Olympic canoeist, sixty seven years old, who’d stopped during a fifty two mile bike ride to look at the pool. He says he touched a piece of liner that was already detached. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything,” he said. He’s due in court next month. Trump’s even accusing an ABC reporter of ripping rubber off the surface. A botched paint job becomes a vast left wing conspiracy. That’s where we are.
Is The American Consumer Running Off A Cliff?
A big bank just compared you to a cartoon character, and not in a good way. Société Générale strategist Albert Edwards says the American consumer looks like Wile E. Coyote, running off the cliff and hanging in thin air right before the fall. Here’s why. Total household debt has swelled to a record nineteen point nine trillion dollars. At the same time, the savings rate has collapsed to two point six percent, near a record low. People are borrowing more and saving less, propped up by a soaring stock market. But if that market stumbles, spending crashes with it. Working families are already drowning in credit card and auto loan debt. When the economy runs on money people don’t have, the ground underneath us is thinner than it looks.
Are They Turning Your Kids Into Gamblers?
There’s a new kind of casino in your pocket, and it doesn’t call itself one. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket let you bet real money on almost anything. Elections, ballgames, even the weather. And because they’re regulated as financial exchanges instead of gambling, anyone eighteen and older can play. That’s three years younger than most state gambling limits. Kalshi’s trading volume jumped roughly thirty times in a single year. Slick ads featuring influencers sell it as a money hack and a side hustle. Public health advocates are sounding the alarm, especially in places with almost no resources for people with gambling problems. The brain’s impulse control isn’t fully formed until twenty five, and young men are already getting hooked. The Trump family has a financial stake in these platforms, which tells you why Washington’s in no hurry to act. They built a slot machine and called it the stock market.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, June 22st, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
