Commonwealth Report: Oil passes $100

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1:24$100 a barrel. Who's paying for Trump's war? You are. The price of oil shot back above $100 a barrel today for the first time since July and there's no end to Donald Trump's war on Iran in sight. A real-time tracker of Brown University's Watson school now puts the bill American consumers of paid in higher gasoline and diesel prices at more than $101 billion since the war began at the end of February. That works out to about $776 for every household in the country. Most of that is gasoline. But diesel just hit an all-time record of $5.90 a gallon, up about 60% from a year ago. Gas is running above $4.15 compared with $2.98 before the war. And this Labor Day was the most expensive one for gas ever recorded. Texans have eaten about $11 billion of the extra cost. California's $8 billion. Floridians $5 billion. Goldman Sachs Warren's prices could top $120 a barrel if Gulf output stays depressed. Trump's answer? He says Americans are willing to pay more.

2:26Diesel moves every truck train and tractor in this country. So this isn't just pain at the pump. It's attacks on everything you buy levied by a president who never asked Congress for a permission to go to this stupid war that has no end. Does anyone believe Washington anymore? A new poll says most Americans don't. A new AP NORC poll finds Americans trust their government less than two years ago and less than at the end of Trump's first term. About six and 10 adults say they have little or no trust in what the federal government tells them about elections, foreign affairs, the environment, abortion or immigration. Only 34% trust government certification of election results down from 40% in 2024. And among Democrats, that number is collapsed from 65% to 44%. Just under half of Americans are extremely or very concerned, the federal government will discredit results, tamper with them or lean on state officials to change how they certify the vote. Trump keeps repeating debunked 2020 fraud claims.

3:26He's tried to restrict mail voting before the midterms and Homeland Security Secretary and former plumber Mark Wayne Mullin has warned states they could lose funding or face investigations if they don't fall in line. One Maryland voter told pollsters, it's pretty hard to trust anything that's being communicated. Meanwhile, only about one in 10 Americans think either parties campaign messages are usually factual. When you got the agencies, fire the statisticians and threaten the referees, you drain the trust democracy runs on. It's not an accident. It's the Republicans plan. Medicare's $2,000 drug cap is working. So why is Washington sounding the alarm? The inflation reduction act capped what seniors pay out of pocket for prescription drugs at $2,000 a year. Last year at the week, Congress's Medicare advisors reported that more than one in five part D and rollies hit that cap in 2025. GLP1 weight loss drug spending jumped from 300 million in 24 to $2 billion last year.

4:26And cancer and diabetes drugs saw a double digit growth. Medicare's trustees now project part D will cost about $222 billion this year up from a $181 billion and $346 billion by 2035. Inflation seniors who used to skip cancer and diabetes medicine they couldn't afford are finally filling their prescriptions because of this cap. The American Enterprise Institute says the law gave insurers quote an incentive to control spending but few tools to do so. And so it's floating fixes. New copays above the cap, higher premiums, changing how the cap is calculated. And a Biden-Ara subsidy that holds down standalone drug plan premiums expires in December. So seniors will start paying more in January. Pre-Republican in Congress voted against that cap. Watch them try to hand the bill back to grandma after the midterms and set a negotiating harder with Big Pharma, which is the one thing that actually works. The Nebraska governor cheers ice raids. Guess who's working on his hog farm?

5:27Nebraska governor Jim Pillin turned a former state prison into an ice detention center now called the Karnhasker clink. He rails about criminal illegal aliens invading the country and he's visited Trump's White House 11 times. Now a joint investigation by the New York Times and the flat water free press finds that Pillin family farms, one of the biggest pork producers in America, has employed undocumented workers for more than a decade. At least 20 of his roughly 100 Nebraska hog farms hired undocumented immigrants according to court records and interviews with more than 40 workers, managers, prosecutors and lawyers. One former worker says a farm manager accepted the fake driver's license he bought. A former HR special is sued in 2021, claiming the company knowingly hired undocumented workers and falsified falsified verification forms. The company denied it in the case was dismissed. Ice has no record of auditing in Pillin farm in 15 years. Pillin spokeswoman says he never knowingly hired anyone here illegally.

6:29A former Pillin employee and Republican voter put a plainly quote, you can't hire illegals and then stand against illegals. This is the whole game. She played her for the boss handcuffs to the worker and a campaign ad for the governor. Vance raids the childcare fund who pays single working moms. The Trump administration is drawing up a rule change first reported by the New York Times and a top priority for JD Vance. They would pull federal dollars out of the childcare and development fund to create a new subsidy for married couples with a stay at home parent. The childcare fund helps out a million working families a month pay for their daycare. It's already so underfunded that waiting lists nearly doubled last year. About 80% of the families that serve are single working parents. Most of them single mothers unmarried couples who stay at home parents wouldn't qualify for the new money. Senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on appropriations calls it outrageous and backwards, illegal and immoral and a culture war griff that punishes people for not being married.

7:30Congressman Rosa, woman Rosa Deloro says it would force more families to fight over the same inadequate pot of money. Remember what Trump said about daycare this spring? We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. The Trump answer is to take from the waitress raising two kids alone and hand it to the family that already fits JD's picture of who counts. That's not pro family. It's social engineering with your tax dollars. Republicans waive the white flag. Why bother arguing with Trump anymore? Axios reports the top white house officials and elected Republicans all say the same thing in private. If stopped trying to talk John will Trump out of anything. As one long time advisor put it, why bother? He's the boss. For a decade, they rationalized going along by saying his instincts beat theirs. Many don't believe that anymore. So he launched a war with no end game and they said, fine. He posted a cartoon of himself towering over Canada's prime ministers sprawled on the ice and they said, fine. He built the first ever Republican midterm convention around himself. Gavling in today and Dallas with Trump speaking both nights, though endangered candidates don't

8:35want it. He's starring in ads with his approval near an all time low, turning the midterms into a referendum on himself. One donor summed it up. He's an 80 year old man who did it his way and what he wants he gets. Their pessimistic about the house worried about the Senate in 56 days. Trump is a lame duck. A party that won't say no to its leader isn't a party. It's a court. What's the plan when the king is gone? And that's the way it is today Wednesday, September 9th, 2026. I'm Tom Hartman.