Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Will Trump End His War To Save His Party?
President Trump is now thinking about pulling the plug on his war with Iran, and not because it’s the right thing to do. According to The Atlantic, he’s weighing a clean break to stop gas prices from climbing and to keep his party from getting wiped out in the midterms. The war’s already cost us thirty-seven and a half billion dollars, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate, and now the Pentagon wants sixty-seven billion more. Eighteen American troops are dead and roughly four hundred and thirty are wounded. The ceasefire collapsed weeks ago, and now both sides trade strikes every single day. Congress still hasn’t gotten a classified briefing on the latest round. But sitting in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters, “We’re not finished at all.” So the killing goes on, the bill keeps growing, and the calendar decides when it stops.
Is The Whole Economy Riding On One Giant Bubble?
Here’s something that should scare you. The value of America’s AI companies has jumped twenty-seven trillion dollars in just three years. That’s thirty-six percent of the entire stock market, riding on a technology that barely turns a profit. Writing in The Atlantic, Annie Lowrey lays out how tech giants are borrowing billions and pouring cash into startups with no path to making money, while the same handful of companies sell to each other and call it growth. Goldman Sachs says justifying these numbers takes what it calls “Panglossian optimism.” Even Sam Altman admits we’re in a bubble. And the International Monetary Fund is warning what happens when it pops. Tighter credit. Less spending. Lost jobs. When Wall Street’s casino finally busts, it won’t be the billionaires cleaning out their savings. It’ll be you.
Why Do Americans Fear Politics More Than Anyone On Earth?
A brand new global survey just found something no other country can match. One in ten Americans now say politics is the single biggest threat to their personal safety. That’s ten times the global average across one hundred and forty countries. We’re the only nation on the planet where more people fear politics than fear their own health problems. “The U.S. figure of ten percent is unprecedented,” said a senior researcher at Gallup, which helped run the poll. Think about what that means. Three assassination attempts on Trump. The killing of Charlie Kirk. Death threats against election workers. The insurrection at the Capitol on January sixth. The only country that even comes close is Hungary. This is what years of stoking rage and division have done to us. We’re now afraid of each other, and that’s exactly how the powerful like it.
Republicans Hide Voter Suppression Inside A Stock Trading Ban
Watch closely, because this one’s a shell game. There was a real bipartisan bill to finally ban members of Congress from trading stocks on inside information. Then House Republicans quietly stuffed it with voter suppression, adding SAVE Act-style rules to force photo ID at the polls and gut mail-in voting. “Republicans are trying to pull a trick this week,” said Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who’s voting no. And here’s the kicker. The trading ban itself is toothless. It only stops new trades and lets lawmakers keep every share they already own. The chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Yvette Clarke, says Republicans just aren’t serious about a real ban. So they protect their own stock portfolios
Did A Judge Just Stop ICE From Deporting Its Own Witnesses?
A federal judge in Texas just slammed the brakes on something ugly. ICE agents rammed a van and shot the driver, a Mexican immigrant named Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, dead. The agents weren’t wearing body cameras. Three passengers survived and told a very different story than the government did. So ICE tried to rush those witnesses out of the country before they could talk. Judge Keith Ellison said no, and ordered one of them kept right here in Texas. “When Lorenzo stopped the van, the officer shot him anyway,” one witness wrote. That same week, ICE killed a Colombian immigrant up in Maine. In both cases, Homeland Security claimed its agents were only defending themselves. When a government tries to deport the people who watched it kill, that’s not law enforcement. That’s a cover-up.
RFK Junior Says Explosive Diarrhea Is Under Control
And finally, a story you’ll want to hear before your next salad. A parasite called cyclospora is tearing through the country, causing what doctors politely call explosive diarrhea. More than sixteen hundred confirmed cases across dozens of states, ninety-four people hospitalized, and Texas alone added thirty new cases in a single week. The FDA traced it to contaminated lettuce from a supplier called Taylor Farms, some of it served up at Taco Bell. And Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Junior says the whole thing is, quote, “under control.” Never mind that the cases keep rising, or that his own department made tracking this parasite optional last year. Senator Jon Ossoff says the administration is undermining food safety. So be careful about your greens, folks. Because the man in charge of your food is busy declaring victory over your bathroom.
And that’s the way it is. Today Wednesday, July twenty-second, twenty twenty-six. I’m Thom Hartmann.
