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One Racist Batshit Christo-Fascist Homeland Under God
In retrospect, Sunday's taxpayer-funded blasphemy fest to "rededicate" America as a Christian nation though it's not and never was looks ever more obscene amidst an unholy regime's mounting crimes and abuses. Its sectarian circus - ICE milled, vendors urged "WIVES SUBMIT," zealots screeched "We welcome Jesus!", speakers attested God is eager for the ballroom - just queasily re-shaped a 250-year-old America into the kind of country it once sought freedom from.
"Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving," a "constitutional abomination wrapped in layers of blasphemy and demagoguery," sought to proclaim America "One Nation Under God," but only a white male evangelical God; Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, commies, Jews, atheists, agnostics, black, brown, queer, Native people and even mainline Protestants need not apply. As such, it attacked what Jefferson deemed an unalienable right of conscience "which lies solely between Man & his God," defied the core constitutional tenet of separation of church and state, and "torpedoe(d) the best of American traditions - inclusivity and diversity" with, essentially, "a Jubilee of Christian Nationalism."
Its state-sponsored, right-wing fever dream marked the successful MAGA hijacking of Congress’ bipartisan, 2016 America250 commission, meant to honor the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and its core values of equality and agency before the law. Instead, Trump concocted his own Christo-fascist Freedom 250 to celebrate a racist, corporate, jingoistic narrative of America, rewriting history to create an imaginary, monolithic, jingoistic, white, male, Christian national identity that celebrates "God’s presence in our national life throughout 250 years of American history," and what is this inequality or oppression of which you speak?
Freedom 250 swiftly collected most of the $150 million appropriated by Congress, along with support from patriotic sponsors like ExxonMobil, Mastercard, Palantir, Amazon, Coinbase. Year-long festivities have included a weekly America Prays initiative; a series of Interior Department events celebrating “the triumph of the American spirit” plastered with flags, logos, Trump National Park passes; a fleet of nationwide “Freedom Trucks,” mobile museums offering right-wing takes on US history created with PragerU; a national Freedom 250 Patriot Games - Hunger Games anyone? - competition for high school athletes; a revamped Great American Farmers Market in DC with a "MAHA Monday."
On social media, meanwhile, DHS has begun declaring itself "One Homeland Under God," complete with image of church and cross and highlighted Bible verse; for April 19, it urged, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." The Washington Monument was transformed into “the world’s tallest birthday candle," with projections celebrating historic achievements by white men like Christopher Columbus and Henry Ford, with no black, Native, female people in sight. To re-enforce the white-centric narrative, organizers have also promised a Summer Surge of thousands more ICE and DHS thugs to make the nation still whiter.
Sunday's Jubilee continued the rebrand of a newly pristine, godly history, with 14 of 15 speakers Christian, arched stained-glass windows and a looming white cross all "glorifying the name of Jesus over our nation’s capital." "Our nation more than any other was shaped by the idea that faith brought freedom," said Marco Rubio in a prerecorded speech. "This is who we are." Virginia pastor Gary Hamrick concurred, but added the imaginary threat of a "spiritual war," perhaps best personified by the scary scattered signs of protesters urging, “Celebrate Democracy, Not Theocracy.” "This is a battle in our day between good and evil," he said. "Our hope is built on Jesus' blood."
Also, Jesus merch. As the faithful braved three-hour lines in the heat and prayed, arms lifted to the sky, vendors handed out "Jesus Saves" bracelets and buttons that said, “WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.” There were "Thank you Jesus!" signs, a huge "Jesus Make America Godly Again" banner, $47 Freedom 250 baseball caps, t-shirts that read, "God Guns Family Freedom" and "Forever In Our Hearts, Charlie Kirk." "We welcome Jesus into this place!" declared one speaker. Another noted, "It's hard to believe it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom to stand where it needs to stand." (Jesus.)
Pete Hegseth,on video, was typically unshy about praising Jesus. He dubiously zeroed in on The Prayer at Valley Forge, a 1975 painting by Arnold Friberg of George Washington praying in the snow widely deemed a romanticized legend, not fact. Historians argue Washington was a deist and freemason who rarely mentioned God or Jesus, whose favorite Biblical quote - "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid" - symbolizes peace, safety, religious freedom, and who always prayed standing. Still, Hegseth ran with it: Washington "did not lose faith," and "let us pray as he did...without ceasing...on bended knee, for our Lord and savior Jesus Christ."
Trump took an even more sketchy approach: He went golfing and sent in a slurry, pre-taped Bible reading recycled from the last fake Christian event three weeks ago. Then, moments after it aired, the self-described peace president went on a frenzied, genocidal social media spree, posting on his crappy app over 30 times in two hours. He threatened Iran: "The Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them." He posted bizarre, AI, warmongering images: Manning a spacecraft, firing away with massive explosions and mushroom clouds, personally arresting an alien, a real one. Say what? Praise Jesus.
Still, spineless, smarmy, unholy Mike Johnson was the worst. Having already whined about "naysayers" who view Christian Nationalism as "a derogatory term," he gave a long hollow prayer about his task to "bring us straight to the Lord, whose mighty hand has been upon our (freest and most benevolent) nation since the very beginning." But now "sinister ideologies sow confusion among our people," attacking our history as "one of oppression and hypocrisy and failure." So "grant us the moral clarity to rise above partisan differences," says the guy who keeps shutting down Congress to block Dem policies. Finally, unconscionably, he prayed for “mercy upon our land.”
Mercy. He seeks mercy.
Mercy for the hundreds of people in the Congo and elsewhere dying of an Ebola outbreak after Trump gutted USAID and its dedicated outbreak response team because it helped people who aren't white, thus triggering what could be over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030?
Mercy for those killed at San Diego's biggest mosque amidst a Trump-fuelled rising tide of Islamophobia? Mercy for those ripped off or otherwise betrayed in a rabid mob by a $1.8 billion slush fund, or "pardon on steroids," in the "most brazen act of presidential corruption this century."
Mercy for the estimated 145,000 U.S. citizen brown children who had a parent detained by ICE and are now scattered across the country, or the 22,000 who lost both parents? Mercy for the woman, a domestic violence victim, detained and deported whom ICE is now blaming for the murder of her own child by her ex-partner?
Mercy for the 21-year-old Honduran with no criminal record just arrested and detained by ICE outside a New York immigration court less than 24 hours after a federal judge's ruling such arrests are illegal, because, as one ICE thug responded when shown the ruling, "We don't care"?
Mercy for 18-year-old, Chicago-born, Mexico-raised Kevin González, being treated in Chicago for metastatic stage-four colon cancer when his health began failing? His parents in Mexico sought emergency visas to travel to the US to say their final goodbyes; when DHS denied them, citing “previous unlawful entries into the US," in desperation they tried to cross the border without permission and were detained by ICE in Arizona. Kevin pleaded in vain for their release; ultimately, he checked himself out of the hospital and flew to his grandmother's home in Mexico to be with family at the end. Finally, in Kevin's last hours, a judge in Arizona ordered their release. They arrived at his bedside on the afternoon of May 9. His sobbing mom called him, “Chiquito," "little one”; his father knelt by his son's bed, asking for forgiveness if he ever let him down. Kevin died the next day.
Mercy? Does Mike Johnson want mercy for Kevin and his parents?
Fuck Mike Johnson and all his fucking odious cohort. Fuck their prayers, and their Jesus, and their cruelty, and their fucking despicable hypocrisy, which knows no bounds. What would Jesus do? Not this, any of it.
May 21, 2026
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Fuel Prices Have Spiked More in ‘Energy Independent’ US Than in Nations That Have Moved Away From Oil and Gas
Average gas prices in the United States are quickly climbing toward $5 per gallon this week as US President Donald Trump's war with Iran shows little sign of resolution.
Where average prices were about $2.98 the day before the war's launch, they had shot up to $4.48 as of Tuesday, according to AAA's gas price tracker, as Iran's restriction of ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz has squeezed global oil shipping and the shipping of other fuel sources like liquefied natural gas (LNG), causing global price hikes.
And while Trump has touted America’s supposed “energy independence” as an ace in the hole, achieved by ratcheting up fossil fuel production while canceling solar and wind power projects, data shows that the US has been hit harder by the price shocks than any other major economy in the world, with those that have embraced renewable energy being especially resilient.
Although the US leads the world in oil production by a large margin, data from JP Morgan Commodities research, analyzed Friday by MarketWatch, showed that between February 23 and April 27, the US experienced about a 42% increase in gas prices, the fifth-highest in the world.
"The spike in US gasoline prices over the past two months has outpaced everywhere except Southeast Asia, the region most dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf," explained Yahoo Finance geopolitics reporter Jake Conley.
Rebecca Babin, senior energy trader and managing director at CIBC Private Wealth, explained to MarketWatch last week that while increased fuel production gives the US a "buffer," oil is a global market and "it doesn’t operate in a vacuum." She said, "Global tightness and domestic bottlenecks still show up in gasoline prices."
Meanwhile, some of the countries that have best survived the price hikes include France and Spain, which derive large shares of their power from nuclear energy and renewables, respectively.
Craig Hanson and Jessica Isaacs, a pair of researchers at the World Resources Institute, explained last month that while a mix of factors is at play, countries less reliant on fossil fuels generally "find themselves in a better position to withstand the current crisis."
"Every country has homegrown access to at least two clean energy resources—the sun shines, and the wind blows just about everywhere at some point," they said. "The same cannot be said of oil and gas, where production is concentrated in a small number of countries and exposed to geopolitical disruption."
"Renewable resources like wind, solar, and geothermal have zero fuel costs, and the fuel cost of nuclear power is quite low. Again, the same cannot be said of fossil fuels, which have costs set by volatile global markets," they added. "These two advantages are why some of the world’s clean energy frontrunners are faring better than other countries amidst the Iranian energy crisis."
As Reuters reported in late April, the contrast between Europe's biggest gas guzzlers and green energy adopters is particularly stark.
While Albania has kept energy prices in check and even lowered them compared to last year by using its large system of hydroelectric dams, which supply much of its power, countries like Germany and Italy, which still rely heavily on gas, have seen electricity prices spike.
Hanson and Isaacs noted that while clean energy investments have helped soften the blow of global price shocks, the effects are not the same across the board. While price hikes for the electricity used to power factories, homes, and cars have been blunted by the availability of alternative energy sources, others, like heat—which are more reliant on natural gas—have still been affected.
Still, though, they said the crisis has shown that in addition to environmental sustainability, "clean energy systems’ greatest benefits today might actually be price stability and domestic energy resilience."
While Trump has continued his efforts to choke off any federal investment in renewable energy and double down on oil and gas production, other nations have taken the war’s price hikes as a sign to further accelerate their transition away from fossil fuels.
Germany and several other European Union members, for example, have announced expedited timelines to expand offshore wind and solar investments, explicitly citing the volatility in oil markets caused by the war.
Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the energy price shocks showed that "the only real energy independence from the Middle East is renewables."
May 05, 2026
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Amid Fury Over AI Data Centers, Watchdogs Denounce ‘Absurd’ $67 Billion NextEra-Dominion Merger
Seeking to cash in on spiking energy demand from the expansion of artificial intelligence data centers across the US, the Florida energy giant NextEra announced a $67 billion deal on Monday to acquire Virginia's Dominion Energy.
But while the deal is expected to be lucrative for the massive new entity, with national power demands projected to spike perhaps by as much as 25% over the next five years, consumer advocates fear that the proposed merger will be bad for consumers, creating an unaccountable corporate behemoth that will raise costs on ratepayers.
According to Utility Dive, the new entity created by the merger will serve a combined 10 million customers across Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
With a market cap of $250 billion, the companies said they'd be the “world’s largest regulated electric utility business by market capitalization and one of the world’s largest energy infrastructure companies.”
But the deal still needs to be approved by federal regulators, a process that will likely pose minimal difficulty given the Trump administration's friendliness toward other corporate megamergers across industries, from media to railroads.
It will also be required to obtain local approvals, including in Virginia, where the recently elected Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger has made lowering utility costs and requiring data centers to "pay their fair share" central campaign promises, as massive new projects have been met with furious local backlash around the country.
Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program for the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen, said that "this absurd proposal to merge two massive, well-capitalized utilities should be dead on arrival for state and federal regulators." He added that "household customers have everything to lose and nothing to gain by allowing two behemoths, NextEra and Dominion, to merge."
The company’s combined rate base—the value of assets recognized by regulators when setting rates—are valued at about $138 billion, according to the deal announcement. It said they plan to expand that value by 11% by 2032 with major infrastructure expansions.
Though the company has proposed offering $2.25 billion in credits to customers for two years after the deal closes, consumer advocates fear it is simply meant to ease upfront investment costs, leaving the real rate hikes to show up later once the credits expire.
The group Clean Virginia argued that the proposal needed to be subject “to the most rigorous scrutiny possible," given NextEra's "deeply troubling track record" in Florida.
The company and its subsidiaries in Florida have faced criticism for profiting from a $1.5 billion rate hike on Floridians and for pocketing $1 billion in tax savings without passing it on to consumers.
The company is also renowned for its extensive use of dark money to influence legislators in both parties, as well as Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, to kill clean energy and other policies that disfavor its business.
David Pomerantz, the executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, told The New York Times that "a megamonopoly of this size, with the kind of money to buy political influence that NextEra will have, will be nearly impossible to regulate.”
NextEra CEO John Ketchum has said the deal is necessary to accommodate “America’s golden age of power demand.”
“Electricity demand is rising faster than it has in decades,” Ketchum said. “We are bringing NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy together because scale matters more than ever.”
But Slocum called this "a false narrative."
"The merger will do nothing to increase generating capacity, let alone desperately needed renewable generating capacity," he said. "These megautilities are merely using rising concern about data centers as an excuse to concentrate political and economic power of two giant utilities to maximize financial returns to shareholders."
He said federal and state regulators "should reject this outlandish, unnecessary merger as completely contrary to the public interest.“
May 18, 2026
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'Narrow-Minded and Xenophobic' Nancy Mace Ripped for Proposed Ban on Naturalized Citizens Serving in Congress
US Rep. Pramila Jayapal called on her colleagues from both sides of the aisle to condemn legislation proposed by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace on Wednesday, which would bar naturalized citizens from serving in Congress, on the federal judiciary, and as Senate-confirmed Cabinet members.
“Instead of working to help the American people, as so many cannot keep the lights on, keep food on the table, or pay their rent, Nancy Mace is instead introducing racist legislation that denies the very history of a country that has been proudly shaped by immigrants," the Washington Democrat said in a statement. "This is also insulting to the hundreds of thousands of constituents who elected naturalized citizens into office."
Jayapal was one of three Democratic members of Congress who were specifically called out by Mace (R-SC) when she posted about her proposal on social media Wednesday. She also named Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a frequent target of openly racist Republican attacks, and Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.).
Mace claimed that the foreign-born elected officials make clear "every single day their loyalty is not to America," without naming any examples to back up the spurious and hateful allegation.
"The people writing America's laws, confirming America's judges, and representing America on the world stage should have one loyalty: America," said Mace. "Not any other country. For too long we have allowed foreign-born members to hold seats in this government while making clear they are America last, not America first. We see it every day."
The proposed legislation would amend the US Constitution to say only people who were citizens at birth can serve in Congress.
The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus was quick to point out that several Republican members of Congress, including President Donald Trump ally Reps. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who was born in Colombia, and Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), would be forced out of Congress if the legislation passed.
Mace announced her proposal a day after Vice President JD Vance said the US Department of Justice is investigating Omar, who came to the US as a refugee from Somalia as a child, for alleged immigration fraud. There is no evidence the congresswoman committed fraud to come to the US.
Jayapal issued a reminder that "with the exception of Native Americans, every person in this country—including Nancy Mace—is descended from immigrants. And America is made stronger by the people from across the world with diverse talents who come here to live and work."
“This narrow-minded, xenophobic legislation has no place in Congress, and I call on all my colleagues—including my Republican colleagues who are naturalized citizens—to condemn this.”
May 20, 2026
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Top Democrats Demand DOJ and IRS Answer for Trump 'Taxpayer Shakedown' and 'Super-Pardon'
Top Democrats on a pair of panels in the US House of Representatives on Wednesday demanded that Justice and Treasury department leaders answer for how they settled President Donald Trump's $10 billion "sham" lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax records.
In their letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and IRS CEO Frank Bisignano, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Richard Neal (D-Mass.) slammed the settlement as "one of the most brazen acts of public corruption and self-dealing in American history."
"Rather than protect the public fisc from obvious plunder, this DOJ and IRS caved," the lawmakers argued, condemning the creation of a $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" as a "taxpayer shakedown" intended to line the pockets of the president's allies, including pro-Trump rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
"This massive slush fund will be governed by a sham commission of the president's cronies," Raskin and Neal noted—and due to the terms of the agreement, "the public and members of Congress may never know who received payments."
CNN reported Tuesday that longtime Trump adviser and former administration official Michael Caputo has filed the first known claim, describing his family as "survivors of the illegal Russiagate investigations" and seeking $2.7 million.
"Congress and Congress alone has the power of the purse under the appropriations clause of the Constitution. But Congress never authorized or appropriated funds for a $1.776 billion political slush fund," the House Democrats stressed. "This settlement is a transparent attempt to circumvent the separation of powers and use the judgment fund for a scam Congress never contemplated: rewarding the president’s political allies at the expense of American taxpayers."
Additionally, under the settlement, the IRS is "forever barred" from pursuing any other actions against Trump and his relatives.
"Essentially, the federal government threw in a super-pardon for the president, his family, and related and affiliated entities, freeing them not only from any accountability for any taxes they may have dodged, but other pending federal criminal or civil investigations like insider trading, antitrust violations, false statements, or even sexual harassment," the lawmakers wrote.
Raskin and Neal called on the federal departments to "retain all documents, including both hard copies and electronically stored information (ESI), related to the settlement and establishment of the fund," including messages sent via "private email addresses, text messages, mobile applications (e.g., Signal), or other forms of electronic communications."
They also directed the agency leaders to send over the IRS memorandum on the settlement, other related records, and answers to their list of questions by next week, before Bessent’s scheduled appearance before the Ways and Means Committee.
Blanche was on Capitol Hill Tuesday to testify about the DOJ budget request. However, he faced various other questions, and attempted to counter Democrats' framing that, as Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (Wash.) put it, Trump is using "tax dollars to set up a slush fund to enrich his own friends."
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) questioned Blanche about public disclosures of payouts and measures to ensure Trump family members don't get any fund money, while Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) asked about the eligibility of January 6 rioters, including those who assaulted Capitol Hill police or committed sex crimes against children.
A pair of police officers who helped defend the Capitol during the 2021 attack filed a lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday with the aim of dissolving the fund, arguing that "no statute authorizes its creation, the settlement on which it is premised is a corrupt sham, and its design violates the Constitution and federal law."
After the House Democrats' letter was released Wednesday morning, Raskin introduced the No Taxpayer-Funded Settlement Slush Funds Act of 2026 to block Trump's fund. He also moved to subpoena Blanche, Bisignano, Bessent, and other individuals involved in creating the fund: Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward and Treasury Department General Counsel Brian Morrissey.
"Mr. Blanche orchestrated this outrageous slush fund as part of the settlement with Donald Trump, which was also signed by Mr. Woodward, and Mr. Bessent will oversee the payout of these funds. Mr. Bisignano signed off on this settlement for the IRS, and Brian Morrissey remarkably resigned as this deal was being announced," Raskin said. "These individuals all possess critical insights into Trump's self-dealing scheme with his own agencies to create this fund and reward his supporters and friends."
The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee rejected the proposed subpoenas in a party-line vote.
This article has been updated to include Rep. Jamie Raskin's bill and the results of the subpoena vote.
May 20, 2026
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Cuba Denounces ‘Cruel and Ruthless Aggression’ of US as White House Indicts Raúl Castro
As the US Justice Department indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro on Wednesday in what could be a prelude to military action, the Cuban government denounced the US for "cruel and ruthless aggression."
The 94-year-old Castro, who served as Cuba's leader until 2021 after taking over for his brother Fidel in 2008, was indicted on one count of conspiracy to kill US nationals for his alleged role in the shooting down of planes operated by the anti-Castro Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue in 1996, which resulted in the deaths of four Cuban Americans.
“For nearly 30 years, the families of four murdered Americans have waited for justice,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said as he announced the charges at Miami’s Freedom Tower. “My message today is clear: The United States and President Trump does not and will not forget its citizens.”
While Blanche described the four men as "unarmed civilians," the Cuban government said the group had repeatedly violated its sovereign airspace and that it had warned the US government before shooting down the plane.
Declassified documents from a month before the incident show that officials in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) viewed the Brothers' activities as "taunting" and feared the Cuban government might shoot a plane down.
"Is a sovereign state like Cuba obligated to tolerate illegal and continuous incursions into its territory? Under no circumstances," the Cuban embassy in the US said in a statement published on Wednesday on social media. "International law and global civil aviation conventions protect the sovereignty of nations over their airspace."
"When formal warnings to the [International Civil Aviation Organization], the FAA, and political authorities are sustainedly ignored, the defense of borders and national security becomes an unavoidable duty for the protection of the country."
The indictment comes as the Trump administration issues threats that have been widely interpreted as signals that another military regime change operation could soon be on the horizon, following the administration's attacks on Venezuela and Iran already this year.
"CUBA IS NEXT! Thank you [President Donald Trump] and [Secretary of State Marco Rubio]!" cheered US Rep. Carlos Giminez (R-Fla.), one of many Miami-based politicians who have called for aggressive action by the Trump administration against Cuba in recent days.
He was responding to a video posted by Rubio on Wednesday directed at the Cuban people in which he again denied that the crippling oil blockade imposed on Cuba by Trump bore any responsibility for the economic ruin the island's population currently faces.
After effectively cutting off Cuba’s primary supplier of oil in January when the US conducted its illegal operation to abduct Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, Trump threatened to impose steep tariffs on any country that provided oil to Cuba, scaring off its other main suppliers, including Mexico, Russia, and Algeria. Last week, Cuba’s energy minister announced that the country had “absolutely no fuel oil, no diesel.”
But Rubio told the Cuban people in Spanish on Wednesday: "The reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil 'blockade' by the US. As you know better than anyone else, you have been suffering from blackouts for years. The real reason you don't have electricity, fuel, or food is that those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people."
He specifically laid the blame at the feet of the accused, the military-run company Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), founded by Raúl Castro in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The company has come to control large swathes of the Cuban economy, from hotels and grocery stores to gas stations and banks, and is estimated to control between 40-70% of Cuba’s overall economy, according to a recent New York Times report—though the secrecy of the organization makes it difficult to determine its true value.
Rubio said that the entrepreneurs running GAESA "have $18 billion in assets and control 70% of Cuba's economy," which was first reported by the Miami Herald last year based on balance sheets obtained from the company. But the Cuban government and other critics have disputed this figure, arguing that it actually refers to Cuban pesos, which would make its holdings closer to about $746 million.
Regardless, Rubio omitted any mention of the fact that even prior to the oil blockade enacted in January by Trump, the US still had a strict trade embargo in place against Cuba for more than 60 years, which the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America has estimated cost the country more than $130 billion since it was imposed—more than the total gross domestic product of the entire country in 2020.
Rubio said on Wednesday the US was ready to open a "new chapter" with Cuba, but that the thing getting in the way was "those who control their country."
In light of Trump’s persistent suggestions that he wants to “take” Cuba and “do anything I want with it,” the Cuban government described Rubio’s message as one meant to justify further US coercion.
“The reason why the US secretary of state lies so repeatedly and unscrupulously when referring to Cuba and trying to justify the aggression to which he subjects the Cuban people is not ignorance or incompetence,” said Carlos Fernández de Cossío, the deputy minister for foreign affairs in Cuba, in a social media post on Wednesday. “He knows full well that there is no excuse for such a cruel and ruthless aggression.”
Last week, the US offered to give Cuba $100 million in humanitarian assistance to deal with the crisis it has imposed through its oil blockade, but only if it agrees to “meaningful reforms” and “fundamental changes” to its government that would allow greater access to US companies.
Cuba’s current president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, contended that an easier way to alleviate Cuba’s suffering would be "by lifting or easing the blockade, as it is well known that the humanitarian situation is coldly calculated and induced.”
Update (2:00 pm ET): This story was updated to include comments from acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche following the announcement of a formal indictment on Wednesday.
May 20, 2026
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‘A New Level of Corruption': DHS Bought ICE Warehouses From Trump Cronies For 10x Markup
"Folks very close to the White House... were sitting on properties that were causing them losses every year," said a journalist tracking the purchases. "The decision was made to buy them at taxpayer expense."
May 21, 2026
In what More Perfect Union described as a "new level of corruption" for the Trump administration, an investigation by the progressive news outlet revealed how members of the president's inner circle are cashing in on the Department of Homeland Security's purchase of warehouses for immigrant detention.
It was reported earlier this year that under then-Secretary Kristi Noem, who has since been fired, DHS was planning to spend nearly $40 billion to buy up dozens of warehouses around the US to convert them into makeshift detention camps that could each hold anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 people arrested as part of President Donald Trump's mass deportation effort.
But when Mae Ryan, a reporter at More Perfect Union, looked into the contracts, she said she "noticed something weird."
"Many of these warehouses had been sitting on the market for years," she explained in a video posted Wednesday. "Now DHS was buying them at a massive markup."
She pointed to one warehouse in Socorro, Texas, recently valued at $11 million, which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) purchased from the company El Paso Logistics II LLC for $123 million—more than a 1,000% profit.
According to Michael Wriston, an ex-military analyst and investigative journalist who tracked the enormous markups for several of these warehouse purchases for his website Project Salt Box back in March, "across more than a dozen warehouse acquisitions, ICE paid prices that exceeded both prior property valuations and recent market comparables at nearly every site."
For one warehouse in Surprise, Arizona, previously valued at just under $12 million, ICE paid over $70 million. For another in Social Circle, Georgia, valued at about $30 million, the agency paid nearly $130 million.
(Graphic by Project Salt Box)
Many of the warehouses that raked in obscene taxpayer-funded purchases by DHS were owned by financial institutions with deep connections to the Trump administration, Ryan explained.
One warehouse in Roxbury, New Jersey, valued at about $54.6 million in 2025, inexplicably sold to ICE for over $129 million, more than double. Its majority owner was the investment bank Goldman Sachs, where many Trump appointees during his first term—including former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Trump financial adviser Gary Cohn—were formerly employed.
ICE paid double for another warehouse in Tremont, Pennsylvania, buying it for nearly $120 million despite a valuation of about $60 million. It was owned by the private capital firm Blue Owl, where at least 33 members of Trump's administration have investments in its funds, including the president himself, who has about $5 million invested in the firm.
Another in Salt Lake City, valued at just $97 million, was purchased by ICE for $145 million, and the agency now plans to convert it into a 10,000-bed facility. It was owned by Deutsche Bank, which has loaned Trump about $2.5 billion over the past two decades.
Wriston told More Perfect Union that the financial payout to Trump allies was top of mind for DHS as it drew up the controversial warehouse plan.
"ICE doesn't necessarily want to be using warehouses," he said. "The plan came from folks very close to the White House who were sitting on properties that were causing them losses every year. And the decision was made to buy them at taxpayer expense."
It's part of a larger pattern of ICE contracts being distributed to companies that have given major financial support to Trump.
According to an investigation in March by OpenSecrets, the GEO Group and CoreCivic, two private prison companies that have collectively received more than $2.8 billion in ICE contracts, each donated $500,000 to Trump's inaugural committee. The GEO Group's employee-funded political action committee contributed $1 million to the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again, Inc. during his reelection campaign in 2024.
The vast majority of those who have been detained during Trump's second term have had no criminal records, despite claims by the administration that they are targeting "the worst of the worst" criminals for deportation.
Those who have been held in ICE detention centers—often without any due process or access to a lawyer—have consistently reported being held in horrendous conditions, denied access to basic food, sanitation, and medical care, and subject to torture and sexual assault by guards.
DHS has reportedly spent only about $1 billion of the more than $38 billion allotted for immigration detention warehouses so far. According to The New York Times, the administration is hoping to build a mass detention system that could stuff these warehouses with over 100,000 detainees at a time across more than 20 facilities.
According to Wriston's running tracker of ICE warehouse sales, at least 13 purchases have been canceled, in many cases due to public backlash. Still, the administration has already purchased enough warehouse space to hold more than 41,500 people at once.
"What we're seeing happen now—I never in a million years envisioned seeing this happen on US soil," Wriston said. "Never. Never once."
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Tony Carruthers Receives 1-Year Stay After 'Outright Barbaric' Botched Execution in Tennessee
"Tennessee has effectively made the case against the death penalty," said one opponent of capital punishment.
May 21, 2026
A Tennessee man set to be executed on Thursday got a temporary reprieve—but not due to any intervention by the US Supreme Court.
As reported by The Associated Press, the execution of Tony Carruthers was called off after medical officials struggled to locate a vein during the scheduled lethal injection procedure.
After the failed execution, Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee ordered a one-year stay for Carruthers, who has been on death row for three decades after being convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1996.
Maria DeLiberato, an attorney representing Carruthers, told the AP that she saw her client "wincing and groaning" during the botched procedure, which she described as "horrible" to watch.
DeLiberato, who is also senior counsel at the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, later issued a statement describing the execution attempt as "outright barbaric," and reiterated demands for state investigators to examine potentially exculpatory forensic evidence before proceeding with any future attempt.
"We are incredibly relieved Gov. Lee issued a reprieve," DeLiberato said. "We will also continue to push the governor to use this moment to allow the forensic testing that should have happened long ago. Tennessee cannot continue torturing a man while refusing to answer serious questions about his innocence."
The ACLU on Wednesday had called for the US Supreme Court to block Carruthers' execution until all potentially exculpatory evidence had been fully examined.
Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, legal director of the ACLU of Tennessee, said the state had a duty to ensure that it had convicted the right man, and he pointed to troubling aspects of the case that should give courts pause before signing off on his execution.
“Mr. Carruthers was forced to represent himself at trial, and now faces death based on flimsy circumstantial evidence, and unreliable witnesses,” Cameron-Vaughn said. “Forensic evidence the state refuses to test could change everything."
Laura Porter, executive director for US Campaign to End the Death Penalty, argued that the botched execution shouldn't just give Carruthers a one-year reprieve, but should push the US to end capital punishment all together.
"Tennessee has effectively made the case against the death penalty," said Porter. "They forced Tony Carruthers to represent himself at his own capital trial, failed to test DNA and fingerprint evidence and now they have failed to execute him. It is time to end the death penalty."
Stacy Rector, executive director for Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, described the failed execution as "horrifying but not surprising," adding that her organization "has sounded the alarm for years about the serious problems with lethal injection and urged our state toward greater transparency so these problems can be addressed."
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Big Tech GOP Donor Marc Andreessen Claims AI Better Than Human Workers: 'Never Gets Sick... Never Files HR Complaints'
"Having to hire human workers who might have pesky demands for more pay, better hours, or better working conditions is but a nuisance to them," one software engineer wrote about tech industry bosses.
May 21, 2026
A leading billionaire right-wing donor and tech evangelist raised eyebrows during a podcast appearance this week with a blunt explanation for why he believes artificial intelligence is superior to human workers.
The past few months have seen a wave of tech industry layoffs that companies have acknowledged were driven wholly or in part by AI: From Meta, which slashed 8,000 jobs on Wednesday and reassigned thousands of other workers to AI roles; to Intuit, which announced a cut of about 17% of its workforce the same day to put more focus on the emerging technology.
The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who leads one of Silicon Valley's most powerful venture capital firms, Andreessen Horowitz, declared as recently as last month that despite report after report of mass layoffs, "‘AI job loss’ narratives are all fake,” and the industry would facilitate a "massive jobs boom" because it allows individual workers to be "endlessly more productive."
But during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience on Tuesday, he seemed to suggest that he viewed the human workforce as not only inferior to AI but also an expendable nuisance that employers would be better off without.
He imagined the programmer of the future "overseeing an org chart of bots" numbering in the thousands, which would go on to exponentially increase productivity.
This, he said, is preferable to the current, inefficient model of hiring human laborers. He used the example of the graphic design work on Rogan's set to illustrate the point.
"You hire somebody... and you tell them you want a screen display and you want it to be an animated version of the thing you got back here," he said. "They spend, you know, two weeks doing it. It's like, 'Okay, that's pretty good, but I actually want the whole thing to be whatever, purple and green.' And they spend a week doing that. And they come back, and you're like, 'I actually prefer the old version.'"
“The guy gets, like, pissed at you because he’s like, ‘I just wasted my time.’ The bot’s like, 'No problem,' you know, no sweat, like whatever you want, and we can try it 12 more times if you want. Or you tell it, you know, this is terrible. Like, I can’t believe you came back to me with this. It has all these bugs. It’s like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll go fix these.’"
"By the way, [it] never gets drunk, never gets sick, never gets high," he continued.
"Never gets depressed because his girlfriend broke up with him," Rogan interjected.
"Never files HR complaints," Andreessen added.
Andreessen said this mass adoption of "armies" of AI workers would begin in tech fields like coding, but would quickly expand out to other fields like writing, medicine, and law.
He described artificial intelligence as technology that would grant workers a "universal basic superpower." But while some proponents of AI expansion imagine it as a tool to liberate workers from long hours by automating menial tasks, Andreessen said it was actually doing the opposite for workers in the coding world.
He said one would assume that “if AI coding makes them four times more productive... then maybe they’re working only a fourth the time and now they’ve got a great life,” but “what’s actually happened is virtually to a person, they’re all working more hours than ever to the point where there is a new term of art that’s used in the valley called the ‘AI vampire.’”
“You’re up all night doing AI coding because you are so productive," Andreessen said approvingly. "You’re getting so much done that you can’t turn off. The opportunity cost of going to sleep is too high because if you go to sleep, you won’t be with your 20 AI coding agents, keeping them working on all the projects that you have them working on. And so people stop sleeping.”
"They're clearly, clearly, clearly not taking care of themselves, and they're absolutely ecstatic," Andreessen said, "because they are able to produce five times, 20 times more code per hour than they could in the past."
The comments drew widespread backlash from critics across the political spectrum, who noted Andreessen's cavalier disregard for the fate of human workers in his imagined future scenario.
His mention of "HR complaints" in particular raised red flags for those who noted that the male-dominated worlds of Silicon Valley and venture capitalism have had many high-profile sexual harassment scandals.
But more broadly, it was interpreted as an expression of contempt for workers who demand a modicum of dignity from their jobs.
One software developer, who writes the Substack blog Dialectics of Decline on Substack under the name Scarlet, described Andreessen's comments as an encapsulation of an attitude that she recently said was "destroying the career I once loved."
I noticed that my bosses were getting infected with the mind virus sold to them by the AI hype men. They started to believe we weren’t needed anymore, or, if we were, we were now capable of producing 10x the amount of code in the same amount of time...
Having to hire human workers who might have pesky demands for more pay, better hours, or better working conditions is but a nuisance to them. They want to streamline their businesses by—ideally—not needing to hire humans at all. They are being sold a dream of a 100% agent-operated business where they purchase tokens instead of labor hours, and at a fraction of the cost. After all, agents won’t ever try to unionize. They don’t need weekends off. They don’t get sick or fall pregnant. They can’t strike. They won’t fight back.
It’s a mindset that Andreessen—one of the most prominent fixtures of the so-called “tech right” that spent big to elect Trump in 2024—is apparently seeking to export to the entire country.
Andreessen Horowitz and its billionaire founders have dumped an unprecedented $115 million to influence elections in the 2026 midterm cycle, more than other more prominent donors like Elon Musk and George Soros.
According to a report last week from the New York Times:
Already Andreessen Horowitz has put $47.5 million into the crypto super PAC network, Fairshake, since Election Day 2024. And the firm’s interests have expanded beyond crypto. It helped found Leading the Future, a super PAC network focused on electing pro-artificial intelligence legislators, which is modeled on Fairshake, and donated $50 million to it. Fairshake and Leading the Future both back Republicans and Democrats.
Andreessen Horowitz and its co-founders have also together donated $12 million to MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC, including $6 million in March. A trust linked to Mr. Andreessen donated nearly $900,000 to the Republican National Committee that same month.
Andreessen's comments on Rogan's show inspired calls from progressive legislators, including Silicon Valley's Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who said it was an example of why Washington should "tax agentic AI more than workers" rather than providing tax breaks to companies that invest in AI infrastructure.
But the influence of tech oligarchs like Andreessen is also starting to unnerve some on the right, like the influential conservative pundit James Lindsay, who said he was getting "really sick of anti-human tech weirdos leading anything."
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