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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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In Leaked Audio, Zuckerberg Tells Meta Workers He's Been Using Them to Train AI Ahead of Mass Layoffs
Meta employees reported Wednesday that in the company's offices on the day mass layoffs hit thousands of their colleagues, fliers were taped to walls urging workers to sign a petition in support of stopping the company's new artificial intelligence data tracking program—which CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted late last month as a way for its new AI models to "learn from watching really smart people do things."
A day before about 8,000 Meta employees began receiving emails notifying them that they were being laid off—a process that began in Singapore at 4:00 am local time Wednesday and continued in European and US offices in their respective time zones—the labor-focused media organization More Perfect Union shared a leaked audio file in which Zuckerberg was heard explaining how the AI training program worked.
"The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks," said Zuckerberg. "So if we're trying to teach the models coding, for example, then having people internally build tools or solve tasks that help teach the model how to code, we think is going to dramatically increase our model's coding ability faster than what others in the industry have the capability to do, who don't have thousands and thousands of extremely strong engineers at their company."
LEAKED AUDIO: In an all-hands meeting on April 30, Mark Zuckerberg tells employees that he's training AI on them ahead of mass layoffs.
"The AI models learn from watching really smart people do things... The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is… pic.twitter.com/lt9eeJ3cwh
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) May 19, 2026
He assured the company's 78,000 employees that "no human is looking at or watching what people are doing on their computers... None of the data is being used for looking at what people are doing or surveillance or performance tracking or anything like that. It's purely just that we are using this to feed a very large amount of content into the AI model so that way it can learn how smart people use computers to accomplish tasks."
Zuckerberg explained how the employees have been used to train the model that could potentially replace many of them days after Meta announced it was planning to lay off about 10% of its workforce as the company invests heavily in AI, spending $125 billion to $145 billion on the technology—more than double what it spent last year.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that employees "revolted" when they learned about the AI tracking program, and expressed fears that they had unknowingly been training a model that would ultimately replace them.
An engineering manager asked on the company's internal communication platform how workers can opt out of having their computer activity monitored to train the AI model, only to be told by chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, "There is no option to opt out on your corporate laptop."
Another employee told Bosworth, “Your callousness to the concerns of your own employees is concerning."
On Monday, The New York Times reported, employees learned that in addition to the layoffs, another 7,000 workers will be reassigned to help develop AI tools.
About 2,000 employees began working this month on a new Applied AI and Engineering team, which is set to use the data gathered by the AI tracking program Zuckerberg described to build AI tools. Those who volunteered to join the group would not be included in this week's layoffs, the Times reported.
"Every company is training AI on their employees," said Chen Avnery, an independent adviser on AI governance and data platforms. "Meta just said it out loud. The question stopped being, 'Will AI replace you?' a year ago. Now it's whether you're building the agents or generating their training data."
More than 1,000 people in the company have signed the petition calling to halt the AI data program, according to the newspaper.
Software engineer Mack Ward urged his colleagues to sign on earlier this month, telling them in an internal post that "AI is a freight train, but the future is not a foregone conclusion."
"It’s not too late to pump the brakes and consider how we, society, want to go about this,” Ward said. “Speaking up is never easy, but ‘easy’ isn’t what you were hired to do.”
May 20, 2026
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Sanders Endorses Trey Martin to 'Fight for Working People' of Oklahoma in Congress
Amid a wave of progressive primary victories and growing support for working-class congressional candidates—from Democrat Graham Platner in Maine to Nebraska Independents Austin Ahlman and Dan Osborn—US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday threw his support behind Trey Martin in Oklahoma.
"Now more than ever, Oklahoma needs leaders willing to fight for working people and take on the powerful corporate interests that are making life harder for families across the state," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "Trey understands these struggles firsthand and is running a campaign focused on raising wages for working people, expanding healthcare, protecting Social Security, and building a strong labor movement. That's why I'm proud to endorse Trey Martin for Congress in Oklahoma's 5th District."
An eighth-generation Oklahoman who has served as the president of Ironworkers Local 48 for nearly a decade, Martin is facing off against fellow Democrat Jena Nelson in the June 16 primary. In addition to the policies Sanders highlighted, he is campaigning on a congressional stock trading ban, honoring tribal sovereignty, funding public schools, ending blank-check wars, and more.
Martin welcomed the support of Sanders, who twice sought the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, has traveled the country for his Fighting Oligarchy Tour over the past year, and has been using his national platform throughout this election cycle to promote progressive and working-class candidates running for federal, state, and local offices.
"Sen. Sanders has spent decades fighting for working families in Washington," said Martin. "Sen. Sanders has been one of the loudest, strongest voices in our country's most important fights—from making the most wealthy in this country pay their fair share, to standing up to corporate power, to bringing down healthcare costs. It's a true honor to have his support."
In a social media post, Martin added that "I remember sitting on the couch with my wife in 2016, hearing Bernie for the first time. It inspired me to get more involved in my local, to organize and build power for working people in Oklahoma. He was the first politician who made me truly believe someone in Washington was genuinely committed to standing up for the working class."
Martin and Nelson are competing to challenge Republican Congresswoman Stephanie Bice, who is seeking a fourth term in November—after considering a run for the Senate seat vacated by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
As The Frontier executive editor Dylan Goforth reported last week, "Redistricting has made the path to victory steeper in Oklahoma's 5th Congressional District since the last time a Democrat was elected to the seat in 2018."
However, Oklahoma Democratic Party Chair Erin Brewer told Goforth that "CD-5 is absolutely flippable," and "a win here not only shifts the power dynamic in our state, it would also expand the votes in Congress to hold the president in check."
Polling by CNN on the first year of President Donald Trump's second term showed a majority of Americans were dissatisfied with his mass deportations, aggression toward other countries, and gutting the federal workforce rather than cutting costs. More recent surveys have made clear that the US public is frustrated with the high prices stemming from Trump's tariffs and Iran War.
Last week, when Trump told reporters that he does not think about Americans' financial situation "even a little bit" when it comes to his illegal war on Iran, Martin responded, "That tells you everything you need to know about where his priorities are, and that's exactly why I'm running to focus this conversation on working-class issues and real relief for families, not endless wars."
Earlier this week, another working-class champion and union leader, Bob Brooks, won a Democratic primary for Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District, setting up the retired firefighter to challenge Republican Congressman Ryan Mackenzie in the midterms.
Congratulating Brooks, Sanders noted that "his win follows the recent progressive victories of ironworker and union leader Brian Poindexter in Ohio, and union organizer Analilia Mejía in New Jersey. We're making progress!"
On the other side of Pennsylvania, in the 3rd District, democratic socialist Chris Rabb also won his primary on Tuesday. After his win, Kendra Brooks and Nicolas O'Rourke, co-chairs of the state's Working Families Party, stressed that "the question in this race was not whether we would elect a Democrat, but what kind of Democrat we would choose."
"The people of Philadelphia made their choice clear: Bold, working-class leadership, and an end to the broken status quo," the pair continued. "They chose a message of real affordability that resonated with working-class voters. They chose a fighter who is not afraid to ruffle feathers and stand up for working people to fight back against Trumpism."
May 21, 2026
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Tony Carruthers Receives 1-Year Stay After 'Outright Barbaric' Botched Execution in Tennessee
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."
May 21, 2026
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Mask or No Mask? Retired Navy Admiral's Fox News Interview Puts Focus on Pro-War Propagandist
"Are we going to pretend dude isn't wearing a mask?"
Retired US Navy Vice Admiral Robert Harward appeared on the Fox News show "America's Newsroom" with Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino earlier this week to defend US President Donald Trump's war in Iran, but clips of the interview have now gone viral—sparking wild conspiracy theories and people desperate for an explanation—as it looks like Harward was wearing a high-quality silicon or latex mask the entire time.
One really has to see it to believe it, especially in an age of deep fakes and other online misinformation. However, as people pulled recordings from their own devices and verified that the circulating clip of the broadcast had not been doctored, the questions only deepened.
WTF pic.twitter.com/LUjli4de6U
— Mr. Sausage (@MrSausageGet) May 21, 2026
"What in the Jim Carey have I just been looking at?" asked one social media user in response to a clip highlighting the appearance of what looks like the seam of a mask at Harward's neckline.
Harward is a regular guest on Fox News and other right-wing media outlets, using his status as a former Navy SEAL to add credibility to his hawkish views on foreign policy.
Here is the full 10-minute and unedited segment that includes Harward as it was posted to YouTube by Fox News:
- YouTube www.youtube.com
With so many images and previous clips of him available, online sleuths were providing side-by-side comparisons to make the case for the mask theory—even as they poked fun at the absurdity of the situation.
Meanwhile, skeptics like Adam Keiper, editor of The Bulwark, insisted that what appeared to be a mask was actually just an optical illusion caused by the particular lighting in the Fox News production setup.
"Dying of laughter seeing so many [online commenters] taking seriously the notion that this Fox News guest was wearing 'a very realistic face mask'—because they see his neck and they apparently have no idea how lighting and shadows work," said Keiper.
"I laughed too," said one respondent to Keiper's post. "Then I watched the actual Fox clip. Either they manipulated the clip before uploading, or he had neck surgery. I try hard not to fall for conspiracies and vet everything I can. But something strange is going on here."
"It's just a shadow!" Keiper exclaimed as others remained unconvinced.
Following original publication of this story, a Fox News Media spokesperson reached out to offer the network's explanation of what happened.
"Vice Admiral Robert Harward appeared on FOX News Channel earlier this week via a remote, mobile camera operated by an outside vendor," the spokesperson said. "During the interview, lighting conditions in the van contrasted with the vice admiral’s jacket, which caused a shadow to appear on his neck."
May 22, 2026
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Tens of Thousands Rally in Havana Against US Aggression as Cuba Prepares Citizens for War
“Here we are prepared to fight imperialism," said Cuban lawmaker Mariela Castro, daughter of Raúl Castro. "Cuba is a small and poor country, but one with experience confronting US imperialism."
May 22, 2026
Tens of thousands of Cubans rallied Friday in Havana to denounce the Trump administration's indictment of former President Raúl Castro and threats to attack the island nation, whose socialist government has been preparing its citizens to defend their homeland and revolution against US aggression.
“No disrespect is shown to the heroes of the homeland!" Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said as people flooded the streets outside the US Embassy in Havana. "History and traditions are not insulted without a response! That does not happen in Cuba!"
The massive rally followed Wednesday's US Department of Justice indictment of revolutionary hero Raúl Castro, who served as president for a decade after his older brother, Fidel Castro, stepped down in 2008. The DOJ indicted Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by the counterrevolutionary group Brothers to the Rescue after repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.
Rallying under the slogan "Raúl is Raúl"—originally popularized during the transitional period of rule between the Castros to highlight the younger brother's reforms—Cubans vowed to defend their revolution in the face of the latest US threats.
“This new aggression has united us more and elevated the honor, dignity, and anti-imperialist spirit of a people already recognized around the world for their brave resistance to any form of subordination to the empire,” Díaz-Canel said.
Cuban legislator Mariela Castro, Raúl's granddaughter, told rallygoers that “we are prepared for combat."
"No one is going to kidnap him. I can assure you of that," she said, alluding to the US invasion and abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on dubious narco-terrorism charges earlier this year. "Neither him nor anyone else."
"My father is very calm, watching and smiling,” Castro added. "Here, we are prepared to fight imperialism. Cuba is a small and poor country, but one with experience confronting US imperialism. We know that as long as there is an anti-imperialist revolution, there will be a gigantic and ruthless enemy."
Critics noted the hypocrisy of the Castro indictment, given the ongoing illegal US bombing of boats that the Trump administration claims—without providing evidence—were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
“Washington has no moral authority to judge anyone,” Gerardo Hernández, coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, said, referring to the boat-bombing campaign, which has killed nearly 200 people in close to 60 reported attacks. “Cuba is a people of peace and reaffirms its legitimate right to self-defense."
"Cuba does not constitute a threat to US security," he continued. "On the contrary, Cuba is a state under attack by the United States."
Observers have pointed to the decadeslong US-backed campaign of anti-Castro terrorism against the Cuban people, including the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, a commercial airliner with 73 people aboard, including 11 Guyanese nationals and 24 teenage members of Cuba's junior Olympic fencing team. Perpetrators of the attack enjoyed safe haven in the United States, mainly in Miami, where the city celebrated a day in honor of one of the bombing's alleged masterminds.
“The Cuban people reaffirm the unwavering decision to defend their homeland and revolution," Hernández added. "With the greatest determination, they reaffirm their absolute and firm support for Army General Raúl Castro."
Mariela Castro said that "my family, like all Cuban families, is waiting for instructions to know where we need to go" in the event of a US attack.
As US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—whose parents immigrated to the United States from Cuba during the US-backed dictatorship that preceded the Castro-led revolution—said Thursday that the chances of a "negotiated and peaceful agreement" with Havana are "not high," Deputy Cuban Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío acknowledged that his country is preparing for war, asserting that "we would be naive not to."
Cuban officials have been circulating a pamphlet titled a “Family Guide for Protection Against Military Aggression." The publication warns that the US is preparing "to launch a military assault and destroy our society with the aim of perpetuating capitalism... and annihilating the dream of our Commander-in-Chief, Fidel Castro.”
The pamphlet instructs Cubans to pack survival kits and seek shelter in the event of air-raid alerts. It also contains life-saving first aid instructions.
“Should the enemy attack, our Revolution will defend itself until victory is achieved and the aggressor is expelled," the pamphlet states.
US President Donald Trump recently tightened the internationally condemned 65-year US economic embargo on Cuba, imposing a fuel blockade that has exacerbated an energy emergency characterized by blackouts and deadly suffering among the most vulnerable Cubans, including sick people and children.
Last month, Trump said that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished" with the illegal US-Israeli war of choice against Iran. The president has also stated he believes he’ll “be having the honor of taking Cuba,” language echoing the 19th-century US imperialists who conquered the island along with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain in another war waged on dubious pretense.
“Whether I free it, take it—I think I can do anything I want,” Trump said of the island and its 11 million inhabitants.
BreakThrough News interviewed Havana residents earlier this week about the specter of US attack.
"We Cubans have to protect ourselves," elderly Havana resident Juan Hernández said. "We're not going to hand any Cuban over to a foreigner, because that would be immoral. It would be treason."
Hernández accused the US of "provocation" in order to "justify invading the country," adding "that would only lead to bloodshed on both sides."
"Besides," he added, "Cuba isn't a threat to them at all. What does Cuba have? Do we have atomic bombs? Do we have anything? We have nothing."
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Trump Admin's Insistence That Ebola Is Other Countries' Problem Is 'Opposite' of Successful 2014 Response
"Unsure how any US citizen would feel comfortable deploying" to help fight the outbreak, said one doctor, "knowing our government would not make sure they are okay if something happened."
May 22, 2026
The United Nations' emergency relief office on Thursday was mobilizing $60 million to fight the rapidly spreading Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the body's under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs saying relief teams are "fully mobilized" and "applying lessons from previous outbreaks," with a focus on building community trust and communicating with governments.
But with the Trump administration having dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and slashed funding and staffing for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) global efforts, the response is largely missing a key feature that helped with containment during the 2014 and 2019 outbreaks—the involvement of the US government and public health teams—and Secretary of State Marco Rubio signaled on Thursday that was unlikely to change.
In comments to the press, Rubio said the Trump administration's top priority is that Ebola doesn't reach the US—even if that means imposing travel restrictions against the guidance of the World Health Organization (WHO)—and described an approach that one disaster relief leader said was antithetical to the actions the US took in previous Ebola outbreaks.
"Our number-one objective on Ebola, before anything else, and we think it's terrible what's happening there to the people... Our number-one thing has to be, we can't have it affect the United States," said Rubio. "We can't have Ebola cases coming here."
Rubio: "We can't have ebola cases here. In fact, I think we had a flight last night headed to Detroit that was diverted." pic.twitter.com/S84FmWIq5b
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 21, 2026
The secretary of state noted that an Air France flight that had been headed for Detroit was diverted to Montreal on Wednesday after a passenger from Congo was found to have boarded the plane "in error."
The Department of Homeland Security announced new restrictions this week saying that all travelers who have been in the DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan in the past 21 days—including US citizens and permanent residents—can only enter the US through Washington Dulles International Airport.
When WHO declared the Ebola outbreak a public emergency of international concern last weekend, the agency noted that "no country should close its borders or place any restrictions on travel and trade."
"Such measures are usually implemented out of fear and have no basis in science," said WHO in its guidance, which also noted "state parties should be prepared to facilitate the evacuation and repatriation of nationals (e.g. health workers) who have been exposed" to Ebola.
Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and a former USAID disaster relief official, said the message sent by Rubio was "insanely counterproductive."
By sending the message that the US is prioritizing that Ebola stays outside US borders above all, said Konyndyk, the Trump administration is telling "any US health workers that if they get infected trying to contain the outbreak, they won't be allowed home."
"In the 2014 outbreak we did the opposite, because we knew that posture would undermine the response and extend the outbreak," he said.
Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, who specializes in infectious diseases and deployed to West Africa in 2014 to help fight the Ebola outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people, said she did so "with the understanding that if something happened my government would take care of me."
"Unsure how any US citizen would feel comfortable deploying, knowing our government would not make sure they are okay if something happened," said Kuppalli.
The Trump administration's refusal to directly help US healthcare workers impacted by the outbreak has already resulted in two doctors being sent to European countries including Germany and the Czech Republic for treatment.
As he emphasized that Ebola cannot reach US shores, Rubio sent out messages of thanks to German and Czech officials for admitting the two medical workers to their hospitals.
With more than 170 deaths and about 750 infections suspected in the "rapidly" spreading Ebola outbreak and cases reported in Uganda as well as the DRC, public health experts are warning that the crisis is likely to "get worse before it gets better" and that its impact has likely already reached farther than initial numbers show due to a lack of surveillance on the ground.
Former CDC Director Robert Redfield told NewsNation on Thursday that "normally when we have these Ebola outbreaks, and I had three of them when I was CDC director, all of which were in the DRC, normally we recognize them when we have five, 10 cases, you know, at most."
"This one really wasn’t picked up until there was over 100 cases," he said.
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday that the risk assessment for Ebola is "very high at the national level, high at the regional level and low at the global level."
As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, experts have pointed to President Donald Trump's cuts to foreign assistance and public health initiatives as reasons the outbreak had already spread as far as it did when the emergency was declared this week.
The State Department announced on Monday it was mobilizing $13 million in assistance to help contain the outbreak; the US spent more than $5 billion to fight to 2014 epidemic that hit several countries in West Africa.
"The United States cannot quickly reverse our abdication of leadership on the global health stage," wrote Dr. Craig Spencer, an emergency medicine physician who helped treat Ebola patients in 2014 and survived the disease himself. "But we can bolster our response to this crisis. There should be a steadfast commitment to working closely and coordinating with essential partners like the WHO. We need to mobilize funding and experts, speed up the development of new treatments, and increase resources for protective equipment and expanded testing."
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'Everything That's Wrong With the Democratic Establishment': Wasserman Schultz Slammed for Florida District Move
"She is no different than the Jim Crow Republicans that are eviscerating Black Representation across the South," said another District 20 candidate.
May 22, 2026
Less than three weeks after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a congressional map rigged for his fellow Republicans into law, Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz came under fire on Friday for switching districts.
First elected to Congress in 2004, Wasserman Schultz currently serves the 25th District, a target of Florida Republicans' recently redistricting—which is part of President Donald Trump's national push to retain control of the House of Representatives.
DeSantis split up the Democrat's District 25 "into five different districts in his newly approved maps, leaving her with complicated options as Black Democratic leaders and candidates fight to keep her out of at least one of those districts," the Miami Herald reported earlier this month.
Despite that opposition, Wasserman Schultz announced in a Friday video featuring various local figures that she is indeed running there—in District 20.
"I've fought for the people of Broward County my whole adult life, and you've always been able to count on me to deliver results for our community," she said. "And I've waged these battles when our values were on the line, all while still raising a family, beating cancer, and answering President Barack Obama's call to lead our national party."
Wasserman Schultz chaired the Democratic National Committee from 2011 until her 2016 resignation—after WikiLeaks published her emails showing bias in that year's presidential primary. She didn't acknowledge her scandalous departure from DNC leadership in the video, but she did speak in front of an Obama poster and an American flag.
"I'm announcing my candidacy for reelection in Congressional District 20, because we cannot let Trump destroy Broward County's power. And we know Republicans couldn't care less about lowering your healthcare, gas, or grocery bills," she continued. "But I'll use all my seniority and influence in Washington to continue to make our lives more affordable, and make Broward a safer, less expensive place to live, raise a family, and retire. This district deserves a representative who won't be learning on the job and has a proven record of results."
As the Herald detailed last week:
Only two of the five districts her voters were split into favor a Democratic candidate—and both of those districts were created in 1992 under the Voting Rights Act to ensure Black voters could elect a candidate of their choice.
Rep. Frederica Wilson's district, the 24th Congressional District, was drawn to pack an even larger Black majority into the district in the new maps. But DeSantis' office intentionally broke up Black neighborhoods in District 20 as a justification for redrawing surrounding districts in a way that favors Republicans.
Black candidates and party leaders in that district say a well-funded, white Democrat jumping into the race would work to further weaken Black political power.
Elijah Manley, one of the Black Democrats who was already running in District 20, criticized Wasserman Schultz's potential run to the newspaper earlier this month, and again on Friday, after she confirmed her decision, calling her "Jim Crow Debbie."
"Debbie Wasserman Schultz is carpetbagging to FL-20, a Black opportunity district, instead of running in her own," Manley said on social media. "DWS is everything that's wrong with the Democratic establishment. From insider trading to payday lenders."
"She is no different than the Jim Crow Republicans that are eviscerating Black Representation across the South," he added in a statement. "I look forward to retiring her from public office permanently."
As Politico reported Friday:
The district Wasserman Schultz is seeking to represent was previously held by Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who resigned from her seat in April following ethics and legal deliberations over allegations she denies that she stole federal emergency funds and routed them to her campaign.
Cherfilus-McCormick is running again. The seat was held by a Black lawmaker for more than 30 years—a fact often raised by existing CD-20 Democratic candidates, all of whom are Black, as Wasserman Schultz was weighing whether to run for the seat...
The other candidates in the race include Manley, Luther Campbell, a former 2 Live Crew member who won a landmark free-speech Supreme Court case, physician Rudolph Moise, and former Broward County Mayor Dale Holness. Several of the candidates have accused Wasserman Schultz of counting on the county’s African American and Caribbean American voters splitting their allegiances, drawing an advantage to her candidacy despite the 20th District having been historically drawn to help with Black representation.
The Florida Legislative Black Caucus said in a lengthy statement that Wasserman Schultz's "decision to pursue reelection in this historically Black district, despite explicit requests from the Black community to seek candidacy in a neighboring district, is disheartening," and stressed that "this is more than a political issue; it is a pressing voting rights and civil rights issue."
"The residents of District 20 deserve transparency, engagement, and genuine commitment to listening," the caucus continued. "Building trust with Black leaders and constituents should be paramount for anyone seeking to represent a majority-Black district. Unfortunately, the actions taken by Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz suggest a failure to prioritize these essential values, perpetuating a narrative of performative allyship rather than meaningful connection."
Wasserman Schultz also faced criticism for her move beyond Florida. Nina Turner, a former Democratic Ohio state senator and congressional candidate, declared: "Time to retire her. Where are you DNC? Her run illustrates her clear disregard and disrespect for the Black community, especially in this moment. This is just as bad as what the GOP is doing across the country."
Mason Pressler, a national committeeman for Young Democrats of Michigan, said that "as progressives field Black candidates for majority-Black seats (PA-03, MO-01, MI-13, etc.), establishment Democrats like DWS are showing their true colors when it comes to protecting black representation. They don't care, and voters must reject this at the primary ballot box."
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