<p class="p1">Last month, Karen and I welcomed our sixth grandchild — a beautiful baby girl — into our family and into the world. Looking into her big blue eyes, we are filled with an inexpressible joy for another precious gift from God.</p>
<p class="p1">But holding her in my arms also makes me think about the country she and all our grandchildren will inherit.</p>
<p class="p1">I remain profoundly optimistic about our nation’s future. America is still the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world. Yet I am deeply concerned by one troubling development: ideas that history once discredited are finding new life among young Americans and an increasingly influential place within today’s Democratic Party.</p>
<p class="p1">I was born in 1959, two years after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit and the Cold War entered one of its most dangerous chapters. My generation grew up practicing duck-and-cover drills in case of nuclear attack while half of Europe lived behind the Iron Curtain. We understood that freedom was neither inevitable nor free.</p>
<p class="p1">I watched America meet the Soviet threat with courage and confidence. From President John F. Kennedy’s declaration that we would “<a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/inaugural-address-19610120"><span class="s1">pay any price</span></a>” for liberty to President Ronald Reagan’s <a href="https://civicsforlife.org/ronald-reagan-berlin-wall-speech/?civicsforlife.org/community&amp;utm_term=&amp;utm_campaign=CFL+App+2026&amp;utm_source=adwords&amp;utm_medium=ppc&amp;hsa_acc=2833943392&amp;hsa_cam=23485849150&amp;hsa_grp=&amp;hsa_ad=&amp;hsa_src=x&amp;hsa_tgt=&amp;hsa_kw=&amp;hsa_mt=&amp;hsa_net=adwords&amp;hsa_ver=3&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=23481209192&amp;gbraid=0AAAAACWbQCiWlYU7J2wI0OGnAg5IWxAla&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjwguLSBhDLARIsAH-yPrF-SchgJYu1G7KOXM_T9Q1mkmTWinVUTcTOnarEk2gOqXzV71FAsIwaAp4zEALw_wcB"><span class="s1">command</span></a> that Mikhail Gorbachev “tear down this wall,” presidents of both parties understood the moral stakes of confronting communism.</p>
<p class="p1">Communism ultimately collapsed because it denied the most essential of truths: our rights come not from government, but from God. When government claims ultimate authority over the individual, freedom inevitably gives way to coercion.</p>
<p class="p1">Communism’s record of death and destruction is carved into human history.</p>
<p class="p1">Josef Stalin’s forced collectivization starved millions, while millions more met death in the Soviet gulags. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward produced the deadliest famine in recorded history, killing some 50 million people.</p>
<p class="p1">Castro imprisoned dissidents while generations of Cubans fled in search of freedom.</p>
<p class="p1">Hugo Chávez transformed one of Latin America’s wealthiest countries into an unmitigated economic and humanitarian disaster. Today, Nicaragua’s Marxist dictator Daniel Ortega openly declares there will be “no more elections.”</p>
<p class="p1">This is the inevitable outcome of socialism. Yet, despite the clear lessons of history, socialism is finding an audience among the American Left.</p>
<p class="p1">Far-Left candidates are gaining ground, winning elections, and shaping the direction of the Democratic Party. Politicians who once would have been dismissed as ideological outliers are increasingly treated as the party’s rising stars. In New York City, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) standard-bearer and Mayor Zohran Mamdani has publicly endorsed “<a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/look-mamdanis-economic-ideas"><span class="s1">seizing the means of production</span></a>.” In Michigan, Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed — backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — has the Democratic establishment on the ropes. Across the country, progressive candidates are aggressively challenging longtime Democratic incumbents, while many of the party’s traditional moderates have retreated, accommodated, or simply lost influence.</p>
<p class="p1">The success of these candidates has come from selling government as the cure for every hardship to a generation that never learned the truth about communism and socialism.</p>
<p class="p1">DSA’s <a href="https://program.dsausa.org/"><span class="s1">national program</span></a>, which declares capitalism a failure and states that “complete victory will require building a new society from the ground up,” promises a utopian socialist future without bills for “food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation.”</p>
<p class="p1">Of course, they conveniently omit that bills do not disappear. Government can pay them only by seizing the payment from someone else.</p>
<p class="p1">As <span class="s2">government</span> acquires the power to provide everything, it acquires the power to decide everything.</p>
<p class="p1">Conservatism begins with a different understanding. We believe every man, woman, and child is endowed by our Creator with rights that no government gave and no government may rightfully take away. Government exists to protect those rights, and to preserve the conditions for families, churches, communities, and free citizens to flourish.</p>
<p class="p1">That conviction has produced results no central planner could match. Free enterprise has lifted billions from poverty, unleashed innovation that has improved countless lives, and made America a beacon of hope for generations.</p>
<p class="p1">There is a bitter irony in socialism’s renewed appeal. America has been so successful that many young people can scarcely imagine the misery that would result from its absence. They never waited in a bread line, feared a knock on their door in the middle of the night, or wondered whether speaking their minds might cost them their freedom. They inherited liberty without having witnessed the price that previous generations paid to preserve it.</p>
<p class="p1">When I think about my newest grandchild, I pray she inherits an America where faith remains free, where honest work is rewarded, and where government remembers that it serves the American people — not the other way around.</p>
<p class="p1">My generation watched communism lose its claim on the world because free people stood firm against it. This generation must now show the same confidence in the enduring truths that made America exceptional.</p>
<p class="p1">If we do, our grandchildren will inherit not merely a more prosperous nation, but a freer one.</p>
<p class="p1">That is the inheritance they deserve. And it is our responsibility to preserve it.</p>
<p class="p3">***</p>
<p class="p3"><i>Mike Pence served as the 48th Vice President of the United States. He is founder of Advancing American Freedom and author of “What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience.”</i><i></i></p>


U.S. Präsident Ronald Reagan in Berlin

Mike Pence: The Failed Creed Our Grandchildren Should Never Inherit

Communism

Democratic Socialists Of America

DW Opinion

Fidel Castro

John F. Kennedy (JFK)

Ronald Reagan

Socialism

Zohran Mamdani

<p class="p1">On July 19, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega commemorated the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, which brought him to power in 1979. To celebrate, he publicly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/world/americas/nicaragua-ortega-abolish-elections.html"><span class="s1">declared</span></a> that there will never again be elections in Nicaragua.</p>
<p class="p1">Subtlety has apparently gone out of style in Managua.</p>
<p class="p1">He didn’t attempt to preserve appearances as dictators usually do. The Soviet Union held elections. Cuba holds them. Venezuela stages them. Russia votes. Iran votes. Even North Korea stages single-candidate elections that produce near-unanimous results. None of these contests offers voters a genuine opportunity to remove those in power, but the ritual of voting survives because even the most ruthless dictators like to claim that the people have spoken.</p>
<p class="p1">Not Ortega.</p>
<p class="p1">Standing before thousands of supporters, he asserted that the Sandinistas will never again be voted out of power. Elections were scheduled for November 2027. Instead, lawmakers in his captive National Assembly are now working on a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/22/nicaragua-daniel-ortega-congress-work-plan-suspend-elections"><span class="s1">plan</span></a> to implement this order.</p>
<p class="p1">Ortega is 80 years old. He has been abusing and terrorizing his citizens longer than I have been alive. Ronald Reagan called him out. He is the last of the Mohicans, the only Cold War “caudillo” still clinging to power in the Americas.</p>
<p class="p1">But this is not the conduct of a confident man; it is the behavior of a coward. Elections are only dangerous to rulers who know they will lose.</p>
<p class="p1">If Ortega believed his people supported the revolution, he’d let them vote for it. If socialism had delivered the prosperity, dignity and justice it promised, the regime would be confident of getting re-elected. Instead, Ortega has concluded that the only safe election is one that never takes place.</p>
<p class="p1">Ortega is no fool. He can read the writing on the wall. For years, he looked across Latin America and saw ideological buddies almost everywhere he looked: the Castros and now Díaz-Canel in Cuba, Chávez and then Maduro in Venezuela, Petro in Colombia, López Obrador in Mexico. That landscape has changed. Argentina, El Salvador, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Costa Rica, and, most recently, Peru and Colombia have all demonstrated that even long-entrenched political movements can be defeated.</p>
<p class="p1">No one abolishes elections because they think they can win them; they abolish them because they’re scared they can’t.</p>
<p class="p1">It would be easy for Americans to shrug this off as just another faraway crisis from another small Central American country. Let Nicaraguans worry about Nicaragua. However, putting America first means we can’t turn a blind eye to developments that directly affect America’s security, prosperity, and sovereignty.</p>
<p class="p1">One of Washington’s enduring mistakes has been treating authoritarianism in Latin America primarily as a humanitarian concern. It is certainly that. But it is also a national security concern. Dictatorships are more likely to produce displacement, drive migration, weaken regional stability, and create opportunities for hostile foreign powers to establish a foothold in our hemisphere.</p>
<p class="p1">The State Department has <a href="https://www.laprensani.com/2026/06/03/english/3710887-u-s-announces-zero-tolerance-toward-ortega-murillo-regime-over-russia-and-china"><span class="s1">described</span></a> the Ortega-Murillo regime as receiving assistance from Russia, China, and Cuba. <a href="https://www.southcom.mil/Portals/7/Documents/Posture%2520Statements/SOUTHCOM_2019_Posture_Statement_Final.pdf"><span class="s1">U.S. Southern Command has repeatedly warned</span></a> that China and Russia support the authoritarian regime in Nicaragua. Russia has made <a href="https://www.southcom.mil/MEDIA/NEWS-ARTICLES/Article/3843808/russia-china-vying-for-influence-in-southern-hemisphere-with-us/"><span class="s1">port visits</span></a> to Nicaragua. America’s competitors are uniquely interested in gaining access to America’s backyard.</p>
<p class="p1">The Cuban Missile Crisis was not terrifying just because the Soviet Union possessed nuclear missiles. It was terrifying because the missiles were only 90 miles from Florida. A threat does not always have to become larger to become more dangerous; it only has to come closer.</p>
<p class="p1">Ortega has done Americans one unintended service: He has reminded us that we ignore our own hemisphere at our peril. Americans have learned this hard lesson before, but Washington has a habit of forgetting lessons once the people who learned them retire.</p>
<p class="p1">For much of the past generation, the American foreign-policy establishment became expert in the politics of places thousands of miles away while treating its own neighborhood as an afterthought. Many in Washington can tell you all about the politics of Eastern Europe or the South China Sea but can’t even point to Nicaragua on a map.</p>
<p class="p1">The Monroe Doctrine was a recognition that foreign powers establishing influence in this hemisphere could eventually threaten America’s “peace and safety.” We must pay attention to our own neighborhood.</p>
<p class="p1">America does not have to solve every country’s problems, but we can’t afford to ignore a hostile dictatorship that just installed itself permanently next door.</p>
<p class="p1">Every hemispheric problem eventually becomes an American problem. We learned that from Venezuela. We are learning it from Cuba. We have learned it from migration crises, criminal cartel organizations, and foreign adversaries seeking influence in the region most important to our national security.</p>
<p class="p1">We can’t afford to forget it again.</p>
<p class="p1">What happens in Managua does not stay in Managua.</p>
<p class="p1">***</p>
<p class="p1"><i>Melissa Ford Maldonado serves as director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First Policy Institute.</i></p>


Nicolas Maduro Takes Office As President Of Venezuela For A Third Consecutive Term

Ortega’s ‘Revolution’ Threatens America And We Ignore It At Our Peril

Cuba

Cuban Missile Crisis

Daniel Ortega

Dictatorships

Managua

Nicaragua

Sandinistas

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Democratic Socialists of America are raising money to send members to Cuba so they can learn how to &#8220;dismantle [the] U.S. empire.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The group set up the “Venceremos Fund,” named after a slogan popularized by Fidel Castro that translates to “We will overcome,” to raise money for the trips. The DSA has sent two <a href="https://www.dsausa.org/news/oct2025_npc_newsletter/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">delegations</a> to learn about what the organization calls “the achievements and challenges of Cuban socialism.” </span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1142263" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-21-at-2.09.45-PM.png" alt="" width="2096" height="1442" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-21-at-2.09.45-PM.png 2096w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-21-at-2.09.45-PM-300x206.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-21-at-2.09.45-PM-837x576.png 837w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-21-at-2.09.45-PM-768x528.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-21-at-2.09.45-PM-1536x1057.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-21-at-2.09.45-PM-2048x1409.png 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2096px) 100vw, 2096px" /></div>
<p>According to the DSA, two delegations have already traveled to Cuba, including one this past October that included about 40 chapter leaders and rank-and-file members.</p>
<p>During the five-day visit, delegates met with <a href="https://reformandrevolution.org/2024/02/17/cuba-between-imperialism-and-socialism/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">leaders</a> of Cuba&#8217;s Communist Party, learning how the country&#8217;s one-party government drafts legislation, selects representatives, and conducts its parliamentary proceedings.</p>
<p>The DSA says the trips are designed to counter what it describes as American misinformation about Cuba.</p>
<p>&#8220;One of the most powerful ways to counter U.S. propaganda about Cuba is to see the country firsthand,&#8221; the organization said. &#8220;These delegations are crucial in dispelling misinformation, strengthening our movement, and equipping participants with the knowledge to advocate for change back home.&#8221;</p>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1142285" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-3.16.32-PM.png" alt="" width="1130" height="652" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-3.16.32-PM.png 1130w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-3.16.32-PM-300x173.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-3.16.32-PM-998x576.png 998w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-3.16.32-PM-768x443.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1130px) 100vw, 1130px" /></div>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">After returning to the United States, participants hosted a webinar to share what they learned after meeting with Cuban workers, students, and officials about &#8220;the challenges and achievements of Cuban socialism under the U.S. blockade.&#8221; </span></p>
<p>The DSA also <a href="https://international.dsausa.org/cuba-solidarity/our-work/">advocates</a> removing Cuba from the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list, ending travel and trade restrictions, building relationships between American and Cuban labor unions, and sending humanitarian aid to the island.</p>
<p>The organization&#8217;s outreach to Cuba is not new. A DSA delegation also traveled there in 2023, where members reportedly held a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20251016213647/https://through.blog/2023/11/09/cuba-diaries/">two-hour private meeting</a> with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel.</p>
<p>One delegate, <span style="font-weight: 400;">Maria Franzblau, acknowledged Cuba&#8217;s food, medicine, and fuel shortages but argued those problems should be viewed in the context of being located </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">&#8220;90 miles away from the most powerful capitalist empire in the world.&#8221;</span></p>
<p>Secretary of State Marco Rubio has argued that Cuba&#8217;s outreach to American leftists, including Hasan Piker, reflects a strategy dating back to Castro, whom Rubio said sought to wage a &#8220;much wider and bigger war&#8221; against the United States following the Cuban Revolution.</p>
<p>&#8220;Cuba matters to us because it&#8217;s 90 miles from our shores, and it has a direct impact on our national security — be it the things they&#8217;ve been involved in in the past, the countries they&#8217;ve aligned with in the past and currently,&#8221; he <a href="https://ebs.publicnow.com/view/46CC64098F83F68730FDCA078DD654308FF8741B?utm_source=chatgpt.com">said</a>.</p>
<p>The State Department has similarly <a href="https://www.aol.ca/articles/front-groups-fellow-travelers-state-225046000.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com">argued</a> that many far-Left activists are not directly controlled by Cuba, but support for the communist regime has become &#8220;de facto policy orthodoxy&#8221; among parts of the American Left.</p>


Screenshot 2026-07-23 at 3.42.23 PM

DSA Sends Activists To Cuba To ‘Dismantle The U.S. Empire’

Democratic Socialism

Hasan Piker

Marco Rubio

Socialists

State Department

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, one of the last surviving commanders of the Cuban Revolution and a longtime ally of Fidel Castro, </span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/cuban-revolution-death-menendez-ef5629cc82a1bdce9d4c21ad1b01ee49"><span style="font-weight: 400;">died Sunday at 94 years old</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Cuban authorities announced.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Valdés was one of the few remaining figures who connected Cuba’s current communist leadership to the original revolutionary movement that brought Castro to power in 1959. He joined Castro’s 1953 attack on the Moncada barracks, the failed assault that marked the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, and later fought under Ernesto “Che” Guevara. He became one of the few rebels to receive the title “Commander of the Revolution” and was also named a “Hero of the Republic of Cuba,” according to the Associated Press.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Cuban Communist Party did not disclose a cause of death. President Miguel Díaz-Canel mourned Valdés publicly, saying his death felt like losing a father and praising his loyalty to Fidel and Raúl Castro.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Valdés held some of the most powerful positions in the Cuban state. He served as interior minister, telecommunications minister, vice president, and eventually became the Communist Party’s third-ranking official. Though he rarely appeared in public and did not speak to the press, he remained a symbol of the revolutionary generation that shaped Cuba’s political system for decades.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">His career also reflected the internal politics of the Castro era. According to the Associated Press, Valdés fell out with Fidel Castro while serving as interior minister in 1986 and spent years outside the center of power before returning to the Council of State in 2003. In 2006, Raúl Castro chose him to lead the telecommunications ministry after taking over presidential powers from his ailing brother. Valdés was promoted to vice president t</span>hree years later.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Valdés’ death comes as the Trump administration has escalated pressure on Havana. The United States </span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/us-sanctions-cuba-gaesa-rubio-831adf749af121c0d2627b0501980ee8"><span style="font-weight: 400;">announced new sanctions this week</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> against Cuban state-run companies, including entities tied to GAESA, the military-run conglomerate that plays a major role in Cuba’s economy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Cuba’s ruling elites of using the country’s resources for repression and espionage instead of serving the Cuban people.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The administration has described the sanctions as part of a broader effort to target the communist regime’s military-connected economic network.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The greater pressure campaign has also included </span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/05/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-imposes-sanctions-on-cuban-regime-officials-responsible-for-repression-and-threats-to-u-s-national-security-and-foreign-policy/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">sanctions on Cuban officials the White House says</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> are responsible for repression and threats to U.S. national security.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The timing places Valdés’ death against a familiar struggle over Cuba’s future. For Havana, he was remembered as a loyal revolutionary who remained faithful to Fidel and Raúl Castro. For critics of the regime, he represented the generation that built and defended a one-party communist state that has ruled the island for more than six decades.</span></p>
<p>Valdés was born April 28, 1932, in Artemisa, west of Havana. His career spanned more than seven decades, from the early days of the Cuban Revolution to senior leadership roles in the communist government, making him one of the last prominent figures directly tied to Fidel Castro&#8217;s rise to power.</p>


TOPSHOT-CUBA-MAY DAY-DEMO

Infamous Castro Ally Dies As U.S. Ramps Up Pressure On Cuba

U.S.

<p>The exiled daughter of the late communist revolutionary and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro fanned the flames of theories involving her father&#8217;s relationship to former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.</p>
<p>During an interview with NewsNation host Katie Pavlich on Tuesday, Alina Fernández — one of Castro&#8217;s 11 known children — was asked about rumors that Castro had another child, who grew up in one of Canada&#8217;s most powerful political families.</p>
<p>&#8220;For years, we&#8217;ve heard rumors that Justin Trudeau, the former prime minister of Canada, could be your half-brother. What do you think of that?&#8221; Pavlich asked.</p>
<p>&#8220;The only thing I can say is that his mother used to visit the country very often,&#8221; Fernández replied.</p>
<p>Pavlich said the answer seemed like a &#8220;tell&#8221; and asked whether Fernández would call Trudeau to &#8220;maybe find out.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;No, no. I won&#8217;t do it,&#8221; she said. &#8220;If he wants [to], he&#8217;s going to be welcome, but I won&#8217;t. I think he keeps that to himself, and you have to respect that.&#8221;</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="Fidel Castro’s daughter WARNS Cuba will only &#039;implode&#039; if there’s change | Katie Pavlich Tonight" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ldbpEPs7qns?start=348&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>The Canadian government has sought to put the Castro-Trudeau rumor to rest for years, but the claim continues to resurface.</p>
<p>Many people have linked Trudeau to Castro because of similarities in their facial features, and because Trudeau&#8217;s parents traveled to Cuba in the 1970s. Trudeau&#8217;s parents, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau, had one documented trip to the island country in 1976, five years after Trudeau was born. Pierre Trudeau also struck up a friendship with the communist leader.</p>
<p>The Canadian government has denied claims that Trudeau is the love child of the Cuban dictator, stating that Margaret&#8217;s first and only trip to Cuba occurred during a highly publicized affair in 1976, five years after Trudeau&#8217;s birth. The Cuban government has never claimed that Castro had a child with Margaret Trudeau.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s widely speculated that Castro had far more children than the 11 kids known to the public. Of Castro&#8217;s 11 known children, at least five were conceived during his relationship with a secret partner. Two of his other children were born out of wedlock with two different women, and Fernández was born from an extramarital affair that Castro had with Cuban socialite Natalia Revuelta Clews.</p>
<p>Fernández, who became an anti-communist activist, fled Cuba in 1993 and was granted asylum in the United States.</p>


Justin Trudeau/Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro’s Daughter Has Very Interesting Answer When Asked If Justin Trudeau Is Her Half Brother

Justin Trudeau

<p>The Justice Department unsealed a federal indictment Wednesday against former Cuban President Raúl Castro, accusing the 94-year-old communist leader of playing a central role in a 1996 attack that left three Americans and one United States resident dead.</p>
<p>Castro, the younger brother of the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, faces charges including conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, destruction of aircraft, and murder, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced in Miami to a cheering crowd. The Trump administration hopes to try Castro on United States soil.</p>
<p>The charges stem from a 1996 incident wherein Cuba shot down two planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue. The organization attempted to search for Cubans fleeing the communist country by boat. Four people were killed in the attack.</p>
<p>&#8220;For nearly 30 years, the families of four murdered Americans have waited for justice,&#8221; Blanche said.</p>
<p>&#8220;Raul Castro and five codefendants participated in a conspiracy that ended with Cuban military aircraft, firing missiles at those civilian planes and killing four Americans,&#8221; he added. &#8220;My message is clear: The United States and President Trump does not and will not forget its citizens.&#8221;</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="zxx"><a href="https://t.co/zQTF6Gb591">pic.twitter.com/zQTF6Gb591</a></p>
<p>— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/2057095396896207077?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 20, 2026</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>The Trump administration&#8217;s latest action is part of a broader pressure campaign against Cuba. Just hours before the announcement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a video message in Spanish to the Cuban people.</p>
<p>&#8220;The reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil &#8216;blockade&#8217; by the United States. As you know better than anyone, you have been suffering from blackouts for years,&#8221; Rubio said.</p>
<p>&#8220;The real reason you don&#8217;t have electricity, fuel, or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people,&#8221; he added.</p>
<div id="attachment_1098653" style="width: 234px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1098653" class="wp-image-1098653 size-medium" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/GettyImages-675441982-224x300.jpg" alt="" width="224" height="300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/GettyImages-675441982-224x300.jpg 224w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/GettyImages-675441982-430x576.jpg 430w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/GettyImages-675441982.jpg 764w" sizes=" (max-width: 224px) 100vw, 224px" /><p id="caption-attachment-1098653" class="wp-caption-text">(Photo by ADALBERTO ROQUE / AFP via Getty Images)</p></div>
<p>Rubio also mentioned Castro and the military-run business he founded, GAESA, and Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, whom the United States captured in January.</p>
<p>Cuba&#8217;s energy crisis only worsened after American Special Forces captured Maduro in a midnight raid and brought him to the United States to face multiple charges, including narco-terrorism. Venezuela was once Cuba&#8217;s main oil exporter.</p>
<p>&#8220;Today, while you suffer, these businessmen have $18 billion in assets and control 70% of Cuba&#8217;s economy,&#8221; Rubio said. &#8220;They profit from hotels, construction, banks, stores and even from the money your relatives send you from the United States.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Instead of using the money to buy oil, like all other countries in the world, they depended on free oil from Hugo Chávez and Maduro to keep the money. But now that the free oil has stopped coming, they buy fuel for their generators and their vehicles while the people are asked to sacrifice,&#8221; he added.</p>
<p>During Wednesday&#8217;s press conference, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier slammed American politicians who &#8220;looked the other way&#8221; and took aim at former President Barack Obama for attending a 2016 baseball game in Havana alongside Castro.</p>
<p>&#8220;And yet for too long leaders in Washington looked the other way. They sat by idly, they even attended baseball games with the very man that directed the murders,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>In March, President Donald Trump floated a potential “friendly takeover” of Cuba.</p>
<div>
<p>“It may be a friendly takeover,” Trump said. “They’re really in, they’re down to, uh, as they say, fumes. They have no energy. They have no money. They’re in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis.”</p>
<p>Trump weighed in after Wednesday&#8217;s announcement, saying, &#8220;We have Cuba on our mind. This was a very big moment for, not only Cuban Americans, but people who came from Cuba, they want to go back to Cuba, see their family in Cuba.&#8221;</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">.<a href="https://twitter.com/MaryMargOlohan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MaryMargOlohan</a>: Should we expect any escalation with Cuba?</p>
<p>TRUMP: “No. There won’t be escalation…The place is falling apart…They’ve really lost control of Cuba.” <a href="https://t.co/urrb5HhLnO">pic.twitter.com/urrb5HhLnO</a></p>
<p>— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/2057176285424631817?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 20, 2026</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>The Commander-in-Chief told Daily Wire&#8217;s Mary Margaret Olohan that &#8220;there won&#8217;t be escalation&#8221; in Cuba.</p>
<p>Castro formally stepped down as Cuba&#8217;s president in 2018 and as head of the Communist Party in 2021, though he is still widely viewed as influential within the communist regime.</p>
</div>


Inside The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit

Raul Castro Just Faced A Reckoning Decades In The Making

Donald Trump

Raul Castro

<p>January 20, 2009. That was the day Barack Obama was sworn into office as the 44th President of the United States.</p>
<p>When I got home from school, my family was gathered in the living room, and like millions of other homes across the country, our television was turned up to its highest volume. I was defeated, having lost every Facebook argument in defense of John McCain, but in reality, I didn’t care. What could go wrong anyway? We’re in America, for crying out loud — this is the greatest country on earth. We had just elected the first black president in the country’s history, and it seemed to make most of my friends happy.</p>
<p>My grandparents, far smarter than I, watched in anguish. My Abuelo Ernesto was tapping his foot uncontrollably, and my Abuela Norma had one tear lightly streaming down her face. Then she leaned over to me and said something I will never forget: “That sounds exactly like Fidel Castro.”</p>
<p>I thought she was absolutely insane. To me, the comparison was absurd. I assumed their experiences had made them overly sensitive to anything that even remotely resembled the rhetoric they had once heard in La Havana. This was America. America had institutions. America had a Constitution. America had safeguards that made something like Castro’s revolution impossible.</p>
<p>I would eventually realize just how right they were. But to understand why my grandparents reacted the way they did, we need to backtrack.</p>
<p>Both sides of my family escaped Cuba in the 1960s as Castro consolidated power and transformed the island into the Western Hemisphere’s first communist regime. They left before the system fully tightened its grip, but not before they saw the warning signs.</p>
<p>For them, it happened all at once. One day, nearly every newspaper and radio station parroted the same narrative. Russian influence began appearing all over the island — even on television — where the Soviets were suddenly portrayed as heroes rather than adversaries. Oh, and the Americans — their northern neighbors just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, who were, until Castro’s rise, Cuba’s dominant trading partner? Evil, greedy, capitalist pigs.</p>
<p>At school, children were encouraged to report their parents if they owned a gun or spoke critically of the government. Friends and families were torn apart over political differences, private farmland was ripped from their owners, and the universities were completely taken over by Marxism as propaganda ran rampant through the island.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://youtu.be/VDr3CwXJXd8?si=GyWCRmJnKokZF85Q&amp;t=777" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Castro denied</a> that his revolution had anything to do with Marxism. Instead, he warned Cubans that the real threat was capitalism — that the real threat was America.</p>
<p>Obviously, history has proven otherwise.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/05/07/10-facts-about-cubans-in-the-u-s/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pew Research Center</a>, a quarter of a million Cubans arrived in the United States in the 1960s following the revolution, with another quarter million arriving in the 1970s. As of 2024, there were 2.9 million people of Cuban origin in the U.S. — 23% more than in 2019, a reality that cuts through any romanticized narrative. People don’t fling themselves on rafts in the middle of the night, leaving their families and lives behind, to escape a purportedly prosperous and egalitarian society.</p>
<p>My Abuela Norma arrived in Miami with just $2 in her pocket and a small box of cigars, leaving her husband and eight-month-old baby on the island. She sold the cigars so she could afford a bus ticket to apply for a job. My Abuelo Ernesto had been an accountant in Cuba. In the United States, he started over by cleaning toilets and bussing tables as a janitor. My Abuelo Hernan escaped to Spain to follow his dreams of becoming a doctor, with Abuela Zoraida by his side, hauling their children and leaving everything behind.</p>
<p>When I heard these stories as a little girl, they were never imparted to me with bitterness — they were told and retold with gratitude. My upbringing in Miami filled me with stories of sacrifice, faith, and resilience. In my house, America was never something to apologize for. It was the country that gave my family the opportunity to rebuild everything they had lost. That perspective stayed with me even after I left Miami.</p>
<p>Many Americans travel to Cuba today and see it as a kind of frozen museum: vintage cars, crumbling buildings, and colorful streets perfect for an Instagram feed. What they often don’t realize is that Cuba once looked very different. Before Castro, it was one of the most advanced societies in Latin America. It was the first country in Latin America to implement a railroad system, broadcast television in color, and have centralized air conditioning in a hotel.</p>
<p>Now, in America, I turn on the news and hear the same slogans that I was raised to fear.</p>
<p>I hear politicians speak about “equity” in ways that sound less like opportunity and more like coercion. I hear capitalism blamed as the root of all injustice, as though the very system that lifted millions out of poverty is something to be dismantled rather than improved. I hear America described not as a force for good, but as something inherently oppressive — something to be apologized for, rewritten, even torn down.</p>
<p>And I think back to my grandparents, sitting on that couch in 2009, recognizing something I could not.</p>
<p>At the time, I dismissed their reaction as fear rooted in trauma. But history has a way of repeating itself — not always in identical form, but in familiar patterns. Revolutions rarely announce themselves as such. They don’t begin with declarations of tyranny. They begin with promises: fairness, justice, equality. They begin by identifying a villain — usually wealth, success, or an entire economic system — and convincing people that their suffering can be traced back to it.</p>
<p>Fidel Castro didn’t seize power by openly declaring, “I will install a communist regime.” He spoke of helping the poor. He spoke of justice. He spoke of dignity.</p>
<p>Today, in cities like New York, we hear voices like Zohran Mamdani echo similar themes — framing capitalism as exploitation, portraying America as fundamentally unjust, and offering sweeping government control as the solution. The language is modernized, the tone more polished, but the underlying premise is strikingly familiar: that the system itself must be torn down in order to achieve fairness. Ideas do not always need a violent revolution to take hold.</p>
<p>There’s a reason why The Daily Wire fights so hard against both big government censorship and the onslaught of Leftist propaganda in our culture. I take great pride in being able to contribute to that fight each day. <b></b></p>
<p>But as Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro recently pointed out in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJb5aEJ8FA0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">speech</a> at the University of Austin, there’s a reason why young people are taught to see their country primarily through the lens of its flaws — when success is reframed as oppression and economic freedom is recast as evil, the foundations of our country begin to shift.</p>
<p>In Cuba, my grandparents watched as universities became centers of Marxist thought and as dissent became dangerous. It didn’t happen overnight. It happened step by step, justified at every stage by appeals to fairness and progress.</p>
<p>That is why their reaction in 2009 was not irrational — it was informed.</p>
<p>They had seen how language can be used to reframe reality, how patriotism can be turned into suspicion, and how economic systems can be dismantled under the guise of compassion.</p>
<p>And they had lived the consequences.</p>
<p>I’m not saying America is on the brink of becoming Cuba. But no nation is immune to the influence of ideas — especially when those ideas are presented in ways that sound virtuous on the surface.</p>
<p>Socialism does not arrive all at once. It seeps in through rhetoric that reshapes how people think about success, fairness, and their own country. It gains ground when people forget history, or worse, when they are never taught it at all.</p>
<p>In 2009, my grandparents did not have the luxury of ignoring those warning signs. They recognized them because they had lived them.</p>
<p>As I listen to the conversations happening in America today, I find myself hearing the echoes I had once dismissed. And this time, I’m the one sounding the alarm.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p><em>Savy Dominguez Morris is senior producer of </em>The Ben Shapiro Show.</p>


Untitled design – 2026-05-15T151525.123

My Cuban Grandparents Warned Me It Would Happen To America

Barack Obama

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Comedian Bill Maher went off on Sean Penn, who was a guest on his “Club Random” podcast uploaded to YouTube on Sunday, for his refusal to dine with President Donald Trump despite having met with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Venezuelan Marxist President Hugo Chavez.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">During their conversation, Maher said, “But you do, I hope, think I did the right thing to have dinner with him.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Absolutely, you’re so smart,” Penn said, but then clarified he would not accept a dinner invitation from Trump.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Really, you meet with f***ing Castro and Hugo Chavez, but not the President of the United States?” Maher shot back.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I saw good results come out of some of those things,” Penn said of meeting with the controversial world leaders. “I just personally wouldn’t trust anything that was said in the room [with Trump], including the personality.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“It’s like saying, ‘I don’t want this medical test because I don’t want to know.’ I want to know,” Maher replied.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Penn also said he wished Maher’s dinner with Trump had not been perceived as “successful.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Well, it was less successful because I never stopped saying all the things I’ve always said about him,” Maher responded. “It would’ve been successful if he had somehow seduced me into supporting him, so it wasn’t successful.”</span></p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" title="Sean Penn | Club Random" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2c3CGVCHgFs?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Maher has been under attack from leftists for dining with Trump. He said earlier this year that while he “didn’t go MAGA,” all of the things he disliked about Trump’s more public persona had been “absent” when they met in person.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“And I know as I say that, millions of liberal sphincters just tightened. ‘Oh, my God, Bill, you gonna say something nice about him?’ What I’m gonna do is report exactly what happened. You decide what you think about it, and if that’s not enough pure Trump hate for you, I don’t give a f***,” Maher said of the meeting, as The Daily Wire previously </span><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/larry-david-whines-about-bill-maher-giving-donald-trump-a-chance-with-trite-hitler-comparison"><span style="font-weight: 400;">reported</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about, but it must have been something with the 2020 election because I know he used the word ‘lost,’ and I distinctly remember saying, ‘Wow, I never thought I’d hear you say that,’” Maher added. “He didn’t get mad. He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Everything I’ve ever not liked about him was — I swear to God — absent, at least on this night with this guy,” the “Real Time” host said. “He mostly steered the conversation to, ‘What do you think about this?’ I know: your mind is blown. So is mine.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House,” he added. “A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there, which I know is f***ed up. It’s just not as f***ed up as I thought it was.”</span></p>


Bill Maher Sean Penn

Bill Maher Scolds Sean Penn For Refusing Hypothetical ‘Dinner With Trump’

Bill Maher

Celebrities

Entertainment

Sean Penn

<p>The U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/cuba-spy-ana-belen-montes-released-after-20-years-behind-bars-2023-01-07/">Reuters</a> that officials released a high-ranking federal official from prison Friday after serving over two decades for leaking information and identities of some American spies to Cuba.</p>
<p>Ana Belen Montes, 65, a former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst, pled guilty in 2002 to conspiracy to commit espionage and was sentenced to 25 years in prison after prosecutors accused Montes of using her status to leak classified information and four U.S. spy identities to Havana.</p>
<p>The Associated Press wrote that court records showed Montes leaked documents that revealed details about U.S. surveillance of Cuban weapons.</p>
<p>According to Reuters, Ricardo Urbina, the sentencing judge, ruled Montes had put U.S. citizens and the &#8220;nation as a whole&#8221; at risk.</p>
<p>Urbino noted on her release from prison that Montes should be placed under supervision for five years, monitored Internet access, and banned from working with governments and contacting foreign agents without permission.</p>
<p>The Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-cuba-government-prisons-4ae7a19962520edbd043ce06287bb8c0">reported</a> that Montes was released from a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas.</p>
<p>Montes said at the time of her sentencing that she had obeyed her conscience, believing U.S. policy toward Cuba was cruel and unfair.</p>
<p>&#8220;I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it,&#8221; she said, according to Reuters.</p>
<p>Retired FBI agent Peter Lapp, who The Miami Herald <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article270308667.html">reported</a> led a covert operation to obtain the contents of Monte&#8217;s computer, said she also passed classified information about a U.S. secret satellite program to Cuba.</p>
<p>&#8220;That was the most damaging non-human intelligence she provided to the Cubans and likely to other adversaries,&#8221; Lapp told The Miami Herald. &#8220;And I found it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Lapp and journalist Kelly Kennedy co-authored the forthcoming book &#8220;Queen of Cuba: The Inside Story on How the Perfect Spy Evaded Detection for 17 Years. &#8221;</p>
<p>He said he believes Montes spied for Cuba out of deep anti-Americanism, considering the information she leaked to foreign officials did not necessarily help protect Cuba instead it helped former Cuban revolutionary president Fidel Castro gain insider knowledge to trade with other U.S. enemies for his advantage.</p>
<p>&#8220;She is anti-American; she hates our country,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Cuba was just the conduit of that hate.&#8221;</p>
<p>Montes, a U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent, began working as an analyst for the DIA in 1985, where she became the agency&#8217;s top Cuba analyst.</p>
<p>Author Jim Popkin, who wrote about Montes in his book &#8220;Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America&#8217;s Most Dangerous Female Spy―and the Sister She Betrayed,&#8221; told <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ana-montes-former-us-defense-analyst-arrested-spying/story?id=96297793">ABC News</a> that his family believes she would move to Puerto Rico.</p>
<p>&#8220;She served her time and [is] free,&#8221; Popkin, who spoke with her family, said. &#8220;She&#8217;ll have the opportunity to rebuild her life,&#8221; adding a large community in Puerto Rico consider Montes &#8220;a hero and, in some cases, a martyr.&#8221;</p>


Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florid

Ex-Pentagon Official Who Spied For Cuba Released From Prison After Two Decades

Defense Intelligence Agency

Espionage

World

<p class="p1">Cubans are migrating to the United States at the highest rate since <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/fidel-castro" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fidel Castro</a> was in power in 1959. Migrants are escaping political repression<b> </b>under the communist regime<b> </b>and the economic crisis plaguing the island nation.</p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The numbers are staggering. </span>Over 175,000 Cuban <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuban-migrants-head-to-the-u-s-in-large-numbers-11661353200?st=q3fasulpwuyxh5e&amp;reflink=article_copyURL_share" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span class="s2">migrants</span></a> have been <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/illegal-immigration-arrests-hit-record-reasons-for-border-crossings-changing-11660599304?mod=article_inline" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span class="s2">apprehended</span></a> in the country between October of last year and July of this year, which is six times higher than what occurred in the prior 12-month time span, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.</p>
<p class="p1">Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez (R-FL) recently commented on the influx of migrants from Cuba, saying Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) would be <a href="https://floridapolitics.com/archives/549410-nikki-fried-slams-jeanette-nunez-ron-desantis-for-plan-to-move-cuban-migrants-to-delaware/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span class="s2">sending</span></a> illegal immigrants to Delaware, President Joe Biden’s home state. Her comments faced criticism, but she <a href="https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/florida-lt-governor-under-fire-for-comments-on-sending-cuban-migrants-to-delaware/2840797/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span class="s2">said</span></a> they were misrepresented.</p>
<p class="p1">“We talked about how it’s bigger than the Mariel boatlift and then he asked in terms of the state and what the state is doing, so it was a general discussion around illegal immigration not targeted at Cuban migrants that are fleeing [a] dictatorial regime. I think I know that best, the daughter of Cuban immigrants,” Nuñez <a href="https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/florida-lt-governor-under-fire-for-comments-on-sending-cuban-migrants-to-delaware/2840797/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">clarified</a>.</p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">At least one reason for the surge in Cuban migrants can be traced to a nearby country. </span>In November, Nicaragua got rid of visa standards for Cubans to fly into the capital of Nicaragua, which had essentially allowed many Cubans to enter the U.S. through Mexico and Central America, with the majority of them using “coyotes” or human smugglers to do so.</p>
<p class="p1">A State Department spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal the U.S. is very troubled about this rise of Cuban migrants. “Predatory businesses are taking advantage of their desperation, charging Cubans and their families exorbitant fees to leave the island,” the spokesperson said.</p>
<p class="p1">The migrants are mainly young, single adults, and a lot of them are fairly well educated. A lot of Cubans turn themselves over to Border Patrol to seek asylum, and then are usually let go in the United States with documentation informing them to come to immigration court. However, at least 1.8 million cases are currently waiting in immigration court, according to government statistics, and Cubans are usually getting court dates for 2024.</p>
<p class="p1">These levels of Cuban migration are historic, and numbers from the past can give an idea of just how high they are. In 1980, Castro let Cubans leave Cuba and get picked up at Cuba’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/06/25/325236967/cubas-mariel-port-once-an-escape-now-a-window-to-the-future" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span class="s2">port</span></a> of Mariel, known as the Mariel boatlift. At that time, around 125,000 people <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/castro-announces-mariel-boatlift" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span class="s2">came</span></a> to the U.S. An additional 30,000 Cubans escaped to Florida on rafts in 1994 when Castro let them leave after there was rioting in Havana.</p>
<p class="p1">Recent <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuba-cracks-down-on-protests-amid-worst-economic-crisis-in-decades-11626108212?mod=article_inline" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span class="s2">protests</span></a> occurred last year across the country because of the drastic economic situation. Government authorities cracked down on protesters, charged 930 of them, and issued prison sentences to 675, according to Laritza Diversent, director of Cubalex, per the Journal.</p>


62C042BC-FA4F-47A7-A5F3-B1F1FBCE499F_1_201_a

Historic Numbers Of Cuban Migrants Are Coming To The U.S.

Historic Numbers Of Cuban Migrants Come To U.S. To Escape Political Regime, Economy

Immigration

Migrants

United States

<p>Famed neurosurgeon <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/ben-carson">Ben Carson</a>, who served as former <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump">President Trump’s</a> secretary of Housing and Urban Development, blasted the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/fbi">FBI</a> raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday, comparing the action to those of infamous communist tyrants Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro.</p>
<p>Prior to serving under Trump, Carson had become famous for leading surgeons in the first known separation of conjoined twins who were joined at the back of the head and performing the first successful neurosurgical procedure on a fetus inside the womb.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Never in my lifetime did I think I would see an American law enforcement agency be run and weaponized like the FBI this evening. This is a frightening development in our modern political arena. This is the way of Mao and Castro, not Washington and Lincoln.</p>
<p>&mdash; Ben &amp; Candy Carson (@RealBenCarson) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealBenCarson/status/1556835194799329282?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 9, 2022</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>“Never in my lifetime did I think I would see an American law enforcement agency be run and weaponized like the FBI this evening,” Carson tweeted. “This is a frightening development in our modern political arena. This is the way of Mao and Castro, not Washington and Lincoln.”</p>
<p>Mao Zedong, who ruled communist China with an iron fist, murdered roughly 45 million people between 1958 to 1962 with his “Great Leap Forward” policy, The Washington Post has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/08/03/giving-historys-greatest-mass-murderer-his-due/">noted</a>. His “Anti-Rightist Campaign” between 1957 and 1959 featured the persecution of people who favored capitalism or opposed one-party rule and state-run collectivization.</p>
<p>As for Cuban tyrant Fidel Castro, Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/26/cuba-fidel-castros-record-repression">asserted</a>, “As other countries in the region turned away from authoritarian rule, only Fidel Castro’s Cuba continued to repress virtually all civil and political rights. Castro’s draconian rule and the harsh punishments he meted out to dissidents kept his repressive system rooted firmly in place for decades.”</p>
<p>In contrast, Abraham Lincoln exhorted in his timeless first Inaugural Address: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”</p>
<p>“Our Republic is one where we have the freedom to think, say, and believe what we want without fear of government intimidation, that includes the President. If we lose those basic freedoms, we lose it all,” Carson stated. “I am praying for our country right now because I’m not sure anything else can fix what is transgressing.”</p>
<p>“Pray for our country this evening. It can and will be saved because We the people are waking up,” he warned.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I am praying for our country right now because I’m not sure anything else can fix what is transgressing. Pray for our country this evening. It can and will be saved because We the people are waking up. <a href="https://t.co/PzYR8xiXM3">pic.twitter.com/PzYR8xiXM3</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Ben &amp; Candy Carson (@RealBenCarson) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealBenCarson/status/1556835212306391041?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 9, 2022</a></p></blockquote>
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Virtual Speakers On Day Four Of Republican National Convention

Ben Carson Compares FBI Raid To Communist Tyrants: ‘This Is The Way Of Mao And Castro’

Ben Carson Compares FBI Raid To Communist Tyrants: 'This Is The Way Of Mao And Castro'

Ben Carson

Mar-a-Lago

<p>Actor <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/john-leguizamo-upset-latinx-talent-not-represented-at-oscars/">John Leguizamo</a> lashed out at Hollywood and streaming platforms on Friday, accusing them of &#8220;cultural appropriation&#8221; after he learned that actor <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/james-franco-digitally-erased-vanity-fair-cover-paul-bois/">James Franco</a> had been cast as dictator Fidel Castro in the upcoming film &#8220;Alina of Cuba.&#8221;</p>
<p>Sharing a screen shot of an article announcing the casting decision on Instagram, <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/john-leguizamo-latino-republicans-suffer-from-self-hate/">Leguizamo</a> added a caption <a href="https://pagesix.com/2022/08/06/john-leguizamo-slams-james-francos-casting-as-fidel-castro/">complaining</a> that both Hollywood and streaming platforms often cast non-Latino actors to play iconic Latino roles.</p>
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<p>&#8220;How is this still going on? How is Hollywood excluding us but stealing our narratives as well? No more appropriation Hollywood and streamers!&#8221; Leguizamo said. &#8220;Boycott! This F’d up! Plus seriously difficult story to tell without aggrandizement which would b wrong! I don’t got a prob with Franco but he ain’t Latino!&#8221;</p>
<p>The filmmakers defended the decision by pointing out the fact that Franco, whose ancestry includes Portuguese along with Russian, Jewish, and Swedish, actually shared a similar facial structure to Castro — who was born in Cuba but of Spanish (European) descent.</p>
<p>&#8220;To get there on such a tough look to cast, we used Fidel Castro’s ancient Galician heraldry as our focal compass, and then combed through the entire ranks of actors with Latin roots in Hollywood to find someone who has a similar facial structure,&#8221; John Martinez O’Felan <a href="https://deadline.com/2022/08/james-franco-fidel-castro-alina-of-cuba-movie-1235085397/">told Deadline</a>, adding, &#8220;In executing a close search into our hopefuls through the eye of Spanish and Portuguese genealogy which the Galicians held, we found that James, by far, had the closest facial likeness.&#8221;</p>
<p>Castro&#8217;s own daughter Alina Fernández approved the casting decision as well, saying, &#8220;James Franco has an obvious physical resemblance with Fidel Castro, besides his skills and charisma.&#8221;</p>
<p>Fernandez also touted the fact that nearly the entire project — both in front of the camera and behind — is Latino.</p>
<p>&#8220;I find the selection of the cast amazing,” she said. &#8220;Ana Villafañe is extraordinarily talented, and not only as an actress because she is also a great singer, a very complete performer. I’m sure that Mía Maestro, an actress I admire, will understand and interpret Naty, my mother, in a unique way and I can’t wait to see her building her character.&#8221;</p>
<p>Leguizamo followed his first complaint with a video explaining that his complaint had arisen out of his own experience with what he described as &#8220;brown face&#8221; — white actors like Charlton Heston and Ben Affleck being made up to look Latin in order to play certain roles.</p>
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<p>&#8220;Brown face in Hollywood ain’t new! Imagine all the Latin stars who could’ve been made in these roles!!! But we weren’t allowed. We have been the largest ethnic group in America since the birth of the Nation and the most excluded from the good and riches of our labor and sacrifice!&#8221; he added in a second follow-up, along with a list of &#8220;White actors playing Latino!&#8221;</p>
<ul>
<li>Anthony Hopkins as El Zorro in &#8220;The Mask of Zorro”</li>
<li>Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer as Maria and Tony in &#8220;West Side Story&#8221; (1961)</li>
<li>Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez in &#8220;Argo&#8221; (2012)</li>
<li>Will Ferrell as Armando in &#8220;La Casa de mi Padre&#8221; (2012)</li>
<li>Jack Palance as Fidel Castro in &#8220;Che&#8221; (1969)</li>
<li>Eli Wallach as Tuco in &#8220;The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly&#8221; (1966) and as Calvera in &#8220;Magnificent Seven&#8221; (1960)</li>
<li>Hank Azaria as Agador in &#8220;The Birdcage&#8221; (1996)</li>
<li>Marlon Brando as Emiliano Zapata in &#8220;Viva Zapata!&#8221; (1952)</li>
<li>Catherine Zeta-Jones as Elena in &#8220;The Mask of Zorro&#8221; &amp; &#8220;The Legend of Zorro&#8221; (1998 and 2005)</li>
<li>Johnny Depp as Bon Bon/Lieutenant Victor in &#8220;Before Night Falls&#8221; (2000)</li>
<li>Cliff Curtis as Pablo Escobar in &#8220;Blow&#8221; (2001) and as Emilio Restrepo in &#8220;Colombiana&#8221; (2011)</li>
<li>Madonna as Evita in &#8220;Evita&#8221; (1996)</li>
<li>Armand Assante as a Cuban in &#8220;Mambo Kings&#8221;</li>
<li>Al Pacino as Tony Montana in &#8220;Scarface&#8221; (1983)</li>
<li>John Turturro as Jesús in &#8220;The Big Lebowski&#8221; (1998)</li>
<li>Jack Black as Nacho in &#8220;Nacho Libre&#8221; (2006)</li>
<li>Ingrid Bergman as María in &#8220;For Whom the Bell Tolls&#8221; (1943)</li>
<li>Robert Downey Jr. as Steve Lopez in &#8220;The Soloist&#8221; (2009)</li>
<li>Jared Leto in Lonely Hearts as Raymond Martínez (2006)</li>
<li>Pacino in Carlito’s Way 1993</li>
<li>Marisa Tomei in The Perez Family</li>
<li>Barry Miller in Fame movie playing Puerto Rican kid named Ralph</li>
</ul>


“for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf” Broadway Opening Night

‘Boycott!’: John Leguizamo Insta-Rants After James Franco Lands Role Of Fidel Castro

John Leguizamo Claims Cultural Appropriation When James Franco Lands Role Of Fidel Castro

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