SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
Oh man. Same old clown show, awash with boondoggles, each more cringey than the last. As the mad man-child deconstructs DC and slaps his hideous face and name everywhere - historic buildings, fascist arches, garish statues, possibly imaginary gold phones - others have taken his lead with their own patriotic spinoffs. Cue "Fuck You" upgrades, a Strait to Hell arcade for a video-game war, and a Trump/Epstein "Memorial Reading Room" packed with 3.5 million pages of files, where "the truth is hard to deny."
Trump's narcissistic vandalizing of D.C. - couldn't his KKK dad have just hugged him now and then? - is "something dictators have done throughout history," noted Bernie Sanders of his proposed SERVE Act, or Stop Executive Renaming for Vanity and Ego. Co-sponsored by six Senate Dems, the bill would bar any sitting president from naming federal properties after themselves, an act both "arrogant" and illegal. At this rate many weary Americans would likely argue, "Let the chiseling off begin," but for now the bill sits in legislative limbo and we're stuck with the resulting atrocities; they continue to multiply like locusts, even as he's proposed a $10-billion fund for more "beautification" projects around "the capital of the greatest Nation in the history of the world."
Though he increasingly nods off in public - or per the White House, blinks - he still clutches at a farcical show of dominance he's leaned on in the endless self-glorification campaign that is his execrable life. There are posts quoting fictional "fans": "Remarkable leadership,” "Master of the Deal,” "THE GREATEST PRESIDENT WE HAVE EVER KNOWN." From the guy who's "confused the country for his living room," there's D.C's re-branding: the plaques, name changes, razed East Wing for a billion-dollar "albatross" nobody wants. There are new massive Stalin-esque banners at construction sites proclaiming, “Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP”- "like Michael Scott buying himself a World’s Best Boss coffee mug" we paid for - to which unenthused residents added, "Fuck You Cunt."
Snug in a delusional bubble where his approval is def not in the toilet, he feels free to rant, lie, melt down online without consequence. In one manic night, he posts 55 times in three hours: “Arrest Obama the traitor” and “DEMONIC FORCE,” also Hillary, Brennan, Comey, Kelly. Asked how much he thinks about the cost to Americans of his calamitous war, he blurts, “Not even a little bit.” His lackeys follow suit: Ka$h Patel yells, lies, hustles bourbon, pads his stats and takes a "VIP snorkel" in Pearl Harbor around the tomb of 900 U.S. soldiers as Sean Duffy takes his nine offspring on a "patriotic," seven-month Great American Road Trip filmed for YouTube and complete with "head-spinning" corporate sponsorship, both on the taxpayers' now-rapidly-shrinking dime.
Meanwhile, another project nobody asked for - draining and repainting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, aka "reflective pond," from traditional grey to garish blue - has shockingly veered off course. After boasting his bestest golf course pool painters could easy-peasy do a no-bid, $1.8 million, "smart and beautiful construction" that Dems stupidly opposed - "Dumacrats love sewage" - the cost has soared to $13.1 million, it's now by a contractor he "did not know and have never used before,” staff are worried the job is behind schedule, with "uneven application" leaving bubbles, holes and "mottled shades of blue" in the pool, and a judge has set a May 21 hearing for a lawsuit charging the project wasn't properly vetted, ditto a color "more appropriate to a resort or theme park."
More winning in Miami, where another lawsuit charges three acres of multi-million-dollar waterfront land were illegally grifted by DeSantis to Trump for $10 for his presidential “library,” actually a gaudy hotel with no books but more vitally two gold statues of, you know. They will presumably join in grotesque kinship with the $300,000, crypto-bro-funded, bronze and gold leaf Don Colossus just unveiled at Doral Miami, "where the Republic is currently moldering." Before "a robotic chorus of evangelical functionaries who (have) transformed themselves into the most theologically humiliated cohort in modern memory," the statue was honored as, not an idolatrous golden calf, insisted Pastor Mark Burns, but "a celebration of life" and symbol of "the hand of God over (Trump’s) life." Definitely not a cult.

Despite being heralded as God's second favorite son - one who "understands the Scriptures better than the Pope" - Trump is also widely deemed "an economic serial killer" presiding over an "America First Corporate Graveyard," skyrocketing inflation, national debt, farm bankruptcies, and energy costs, and possibly "the largest single act of grand larceny in American history" with a $10 billion payout by his own DOJ against his own IRS to settle his bullshit lawsuit for their leak of his tax returns, which every other president has released. Still, because grifting chutzpah thy name is, and because there's never enough money to fill the ugly gaping hole where a soul should be, he's still running penny-ante scams. Up next: Trump Mobile, "for the forgotten MAGA man."
Last June, his huckster spawn announced the launch of "a sleek, gold smartphone engineered for performance.” The T1 Phone, "proudly designed and built in the United States,” would be available in August at $499. For almost a year, they urged followers to make $100 "deposits" to "pre-order" the beauties; over half a million did, ponying up about $59 million. Then, the bait and switch. The terms of service quietly changed: The "deposit" provided "a conditional opportunity" to buy if Trump Mobile chose to sell. Pricing, production schedules, shipping costs were "non-binding." "Made in the USA" became "Proudly American Designed." "Delivery" dates got pushed back. Unexplained charges appeared. A reporter who called "Customer Service" got “Omega Auto Care." To date, no fantasy Trump phones have shipped. Cheap Crooks 'R Us.

Also, liars. With even neo-cons now deeming the Iran War potentially more of a debacle than Vietnam, the good folks at Secret Handshake, creators of the Trump/Epstein bestie statues, decided that with the regime hyping war like a video game, they might as well turn it into one. Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell , which is also online, features three working, arcade video games set up inside DC's War Memorial; they promise "high-octane, flag-waving, boots-on-the-ground...pure pixelated patriotism," or, per Hegseth, "laser-focused maximum reps annihilation mission crushing (with) sustained unrelenting pressure." Battles - by tweet, not gun - pit US forces against ”Iranian schoolgirl,“ "DEIyatollah,“ low-flow shower heads, the Pope and other "threats to American freedom."
Games open with Trump declaring, “Another big, beautiful day as the best President ever.” Options for the prompt, “Ready to ROCK Iran back to the Stone Ages?” are “Not Yet...” “Yes” and “Hell Yes.” Yells Pete, “Let’s liberate some oil!” Trump can order a Diet Coke or bomb Iran; search for barrels of oil, ideas for Truth Social posts, or endless threats that lead nowhere; he vows to “fight this war and win it by hamburger o’clock.” Melania: “I WAS NEVER ON THE EPSTEIN JET...Did you burn the files yet?” JD, fat-faced: “I love couch.” The only way you can lose is by trying to hold Melania’s hand, which abruptly ends the game; otherwise, it’s impossible to end or win it. Irony never dies: Images have surfaced of bored National Guardsmen - a $1 million a day deployment - playing.
Another piece of protest art brings the truth of "one of the most horrific crimes in American history” to Trump's hometown. "The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room,” in New York's Tribeca, is a first-of-its-kind, 5,000-square-foot installation containing all the unsealed Epstein files - 3.5 million pages printed and bound into 3,437 volumes weighing 17,000 pounds, "a physical, undeniable record of corruption, cover-ups, and crime." The pop-up project in the Mriya Gallery was created by the non-profit Primary Facts; it took them about a month to print the files. The exhibit is on view through May 21; admission to groups for a one-hour session is free; organizers are raising funds to cover the New York premiere and bring it to other cities.
The Trumpsonian installation is built around a candlelit tribute to Epstein's more than 1,200 victims and survivors, whose names are all redacted here in closed binders - unlike at the DOJ, where they were badly, only partly redacted, a failure adding insult to injury along with an ongoing, multi-pronged cover-up. The Trump and Epstein Reading Room also includes a timeline documenting the decades-long crimes, legal proceedings and intersections between the two men's lives, all underlining the criminal absurdity of federal claims "there's nothing left to investigate." The vast trove of information, organizers say, is "what 3.5 million pages of evidence looks like." Trump, as deeply complicit as he is narcissistic, "wanted his name on stuff." Now, here it is.

"We know that if this project goes through, our land and our water are in danger. Our future is in danger," warned Krystal Two Bulls, one of many community, conservation, and Indigenous group leaders speaking out after President Donald Trump granted a cross-border permit to what critics called "nothing more than an attempt to resurrect the unpopular Keystone XL pipeline."
Trump's permit for the Bridger Pipeline Expansion Project authorizes various "petroleum products, including gasoline, kerosene, diesel, and liquefied petroleum gas," The Associated Press reported Thursday, but Bridger spokesperson Bill Salvin said the company is currently focused on crude oil—550,000 barrels of which could flow daily from Canada, through Montana, to Guernsey, Wyoming, if the pipeline is completed.
"Water protectors are standing up again, like we have always done against all those who threaten Mother Earth," Two Bulls, an Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne organizer from Lame Deer, Montana, and executive director of Honor the Earth, said Friday. "We fought against the Keystone XL pipeline proposed for these very same lands and won back in 2021. We will fight and win again against the Bridger pipeline."
Shortly after entering office in 2021, then-President Joe Biden revoked the presidential permit for Keystone XL—which Trump had signed during his first term—as part of the Democrat's efforts to combat the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
While Biden faced criticism from climate advocates for the oil and gas projects he did allow, Trump took a swipe at him on Thursday, telling reporters: "Slightly different from the last administration. They wouldn't sign a pipeline deal, and we have pipelines going up."
Trump—who campaigned on a pledge to "drill, baby, drill" and returned to the White House last year with financial help from Big Oil—also dismissed safety concerns about pipelines, saying: "By the way, they're way underground. They're not a problem. Nobody even knows they're there. It's so crazy. But they wouldn't approve anything having to do with a pipeline."
As the AP detailed:
Bridger Pipeline and other subsidiaries of True Company have been responsible for several major pipeline accidents including more than 50,000 gallons (240,000 liters) of crude that spilled into the Yellowstone River and fouled a Montana city's drinking water supply in 2015, a 45,000-gallon diesel spill in Wyoming in 2022 and a 2016 spill that released more than 600,000 gallons (2.7 million liters) of crude in North Dakota, contaminating the Little Missouri River and a tributary.
Subsidiaries of True agreed to pay a $12.5 million civil penalty to settle a federal lawsuit over the North Dakota and Montana spills.
Salvin said Bridger Pipeline in the years since the Yellowstone spill developed an AI-based leak detection system that allows it to be notified more quickly when there are problems. It also plans to bore 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12 meters) beneath major rivers including the Yellowstone and Missouri to reduce the chances of an accident. The 2015 accident occurred on a line that was constructed in a shallow trench at the bottom of the river.
A public comment submitted to the Trump administration by the legal group Earthjustice on behalf of Honor the Earth, Sierra Club, WildEarth Guardians, and a dozen other organizations acknowledges concerns about this pipeline's potential impacts to water, land, the climate, air quality, cultural resources, recreation, and more—and called for an intense federal review of the project.
"We know how this system works: More pipelines mean more drilling, more waste, and more spills. And when spills happen, it's communities, landowners, and tribes who are left dealing with the contamination, not the companies profiting from it," Rebecca Sobel, climate and health director at WildEarth Guardians, said Friday. "Oil and gas infrastructure fails every day in this country, and expanding that system only increases the likelihood of spills and long-term contamination."
Sierra Club Montana chapter director Caryn Miske stressed that "while the Trump administration kills affordable energy projects and jobs across the country, it is continuing to side with wealthy corporations and oil executives looking to increase profit regardless of the risks to Montana's treasured waterways and to families and businesses struggling with high energy costs. These policies aren't about fair or free markets, it's welfare for corporations and pollution for everyone else."
Earthjustice is also representing 350 Montana, Center for Biological Diversity, Families for a Livable Climate, Montana Environmental Information Center, Montana Health and Climate, Mountain Mamas, Red Medicine LLC, Western Environmental Law Center, Western Organization of Resource Councils, Western Watersheds Project, Wild Montana, and Wyoming Outdoor Council.
"The proposed Bridger tar sands pipeline is an environmental disaster waiting to happen," declared Jenny Harbine, managing attorney with Earthjustice's Northern Rockies office. "The Trump administration appears more than willing to limit public engagement to force this project through."
"Communities and tribes in the Northern Rockies have a right to know how this could impact their water sources, historic resources, and ways of life," Harbine added. "If the administration attempts to sidestep that legal obligation, we’ll see them in court."
Separately on Friday, Anthony Swift, a longtime leader in the fight against the pipeline and current senior strategist for global nature at Natural Resources Defense Council, said that "no matter what you call the project, the environmental concerns that animated the fight over Keystone XL are no less acute today. Keystone Light will threaten water supplies and exacerbate climate change. This is the moment to get off the oil roller coaster, not double down on the dirtiest oil on the planet."
"The Trump administration has been lobbing gifts to Big Oil since its first day in office. This is the latest in a long, long, long list of favors that show the oil industry is getting a great return on its billion-dollar investment in the president's campaign," Swift added. "President Trump has repeatedly said that America does not need Canada's oil, so we certainly don't need Keystone Light."
In announcing New York City's executive budget for the 2027 fiscal year on Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani proved that when city governments "stand with working families, not billionaires, there is nothing they cannot accomplish," said US Sen. Bernie Sanders, an early backer of the democratic socialist leader.
"Congratulations to Mayor Mamdani," said the Vermont independent senator. "He inherited a huge budget deficit, brought it down to zero, and still invested in childcare, housing, and city infrastructure."
Sanders was among the progressives applauding the announcement by Mamdani and Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul of new agreements between the city and Albany that, along with savings found by Mamdani's administration in the city budget and new taxes on wealthy households, resulted in a balanced budget for the city just four months after the mayor "inherited a $12 billion budget deficit" from former Mayor Eric Adams.
"We didn’t close the gap on the backs of working people," said Mamdani. "We closed it while funding parks, libraries, safer streets, and making historic investments in public housing. Call it pothole politics. Call it democratic socialism. It's government that delivers for the people who make this city run. That’s what New Yorkers deserve. And that’s what we will keep fighting for every single day."
Mamdani emphasized that negotiations with Albany and "months of painstaking work" to analyze the city's spending had allowed the city government to arrive at a "fully balanced budget" without slashing essential services for working New Yorkers.
"Many said the only way out of this was slashing services and passing an austerity budget," said Mamdani in a video his office posted on social media. "We rejected that."
When we came into office, we uncovered a $12 billion budget deficit.
Today, I’m proud to say we brought it down to zero.
We didn’t close the gap on the backs of working people.
We closed it while funding parks, libraries, safer streets and making historic investments in public… pic.twitter.com/TbNu6fhvjs
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) May 12, 2026
Mamdani and Hochul announced that negotiations between the city and state had resulted in an additional $4 billion in funding from Albany, building on $1.5 billion the governor had committed to providing in February and funding for the city's universal childcare program.
The budget—which is still subject to negotiations with the City Council and final resolution with the state budget—includes the pied-à-terre tax Mamdani announced last month, with second homes valued at over $5 million subject to the tax, as well as a proposed unincorporated business tax on sole proprietorships and LLCs. Those new taxes are set to raise an estimated $500 million and $68 million, respectively, reported David Dayen at The American Prospect.
As Common Dreams reported in March, Mamdani's government found $1.77 billion in savings by combing through the city's spending and finding ways to cut expensive software and technology contracts, shrink the government's "physical footprint" and rental expenses by giving up excess property, and reduce unnecessary overtime. The savings, Mamdani noted, were not achieved by slashing programs for New Yorkers in need.
Dayen reported that the deficit was also closed by delaying a class size reduction law, primarily affecting higher-income schools; restructuring the timing of certain pension payments while making no changes to benefits and continuing to fund city pension funds above the national average; centralizing support funds and making other changes to a rental assistance program; and reducing the use of Carter cases, which allow students with disabilities to have private school education expenses reimbursed by the city.
"Despite endless speculation that a socialist couldn’t manage a budget, Mayor Zohran Mamdani helped close a $12 billion deficit without major cuts to public services—all while continuing investments in parks, libraries, safer streets, public housing, and continuing to inspire millions of people that government can work for the people," said the grassroots progressive political advocacy group Our Revolution.
Olivia Leirer, co-executive director of the local grassroots organization New York Communities for Change, applauded the proposed budget and said the group plans to work with the mayor's office and the City Council to push for a $10 million investment to help low-income families replace inefficient and polluting oil and gas boilers, as well as more investments in childcare for the city's lowest-income families.
"Mayor Mamdani was always going to have to contend with the gaping $12 billion hole that Eric Adams left in our city budget," said Leirer. "While this budget proposal falls short in some areas, it shows that it’s possible to balance the budget without balancing it on the backs of working people. We commend the mayor for pushing Governor Hochul to tax luxury second homes, and we also appreciate the administration’s meaningful investments in childcare and the city’s workforce."
"This commitment is exactly why New Yorkers voted Mamdani into office last fall," she added, "For real, commonsense solutions to alleviate our city’s cost-of-living crisis."
With the Trump administration refusing to take substantive antitrust action—reaching a recent deal with a meat company accused of price fixing and settling a Biden-era lawsuit that accused Live Nation of monopolizing live entertainment—New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is using his influential position to urge the blocking of a corporate merger that he says would harm working families across the city.
Mamdani wrote to the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) late last month, outlets are reporting this week, urging the state financial regulator to block Western Union's $500 million merger with International Money Express, or Intermex.
With 4.5 million users, Intermex has a small fraction of Western Union's customer base of 150 million people who use wire transfer services. But Mamdani wrote that over the past decade the smaller company has "nearly tripled its share of remittances sent from the United States"—transfers of money that immigrants send back to their families in their home countries.
"In the US-to-Ecuador and US-to-Nicaragua corridors, Intermex’s market shares are 34% and 36%, respectively," wrote the mayor, showing that it is "winning customers away from Western Union, the historic market leader."
With immigrants increasingly using remittances to secure financial stability in case they are swept up in the Trump administration's mass deportation operation, "remittances are a crucial lifeline for New Yorkers and their communities abroad," wrote Mamdani.
On social media Thursday, Mamdani added that "families shouldn’t pay the price for corporate monopolies."
He told DFS that maintaining competition between providers of the service keeps prices for families "more competitive, encourages compliance with relevant consumer protection and disclosure requirements, and incentivizes reliability."
"The proposed merger would change that. By eliminating competition between Western Union and Intermex, the deal could lead to
higher fees (including those the businesses may fail to disclose), disadvantageous rates, worse terms, poorer service, and other impacts to these communities," wrote Mamdani, who has centered his agenda as mayor on making New York City more affordable for working families. "In short, it would represent a direct wealth transfer—one that would further strain the already challenging economic circumstances facing New York City’s immigrant communities."
The mayor noted that immigrants' access to affordable remittance services are already under threat, after the Republican Party's One Big Beautiful Bill Act imposed a 1% excise tax on cash remittance transactions.
"Now, this merger threatens to impose a new private tax on these same remittances, in the form of higher, supracompetitive prices that will flow directly to Western Union’s corporate coffers," said Mamdani.
Responding to the mayor's call for the merger to be blocked, Western Union claimed in a statement to DFS this week that the companies, should they be permitted to merge, would still provide "accessible and affordable" remittance services.
The mayor cited several US Supreme Court rulings that have found corporate mergers that would substantially lessen competition to be illegal and said that despite legal precedent, "the Trump administration has declined to challenge the merger on antitrust grounds."
"But that is not where the story ends," wrote Mamdani. "Instead, the deal still requires a series of money transmitter license approvals, including from the New York State Department of Financial Services."
"The conditions for disapproval are clearly met here," the mayor continued. "The transaction is manifestly against the public
interest, as it would lead to higher fees and worse rates for hard-working, disproportionately immigrant families, across New York City and the state—all to inflate Western Union’s balance sheet."
Semafor and The New York Times suggested that the influence of former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan may have pushed the mayor to lobby DFS to reject the merger. Khan is an outside adviser to Mamdani and served as co-chair of his transition team.
While working in the Biden administration, Khan blocked and challenged major corporate mergers including Kroger's attempt to acquire Albertsons, Meta's bid to buy virtual reality app company Within, and JetBlue's proposed merger with Spirit Airlines.
Daniel Hanley, a senior legal analyst at the anti-monopoly group Open Markets Institute applauded Mamdani's decision to wade into the debate over Western Union's proposed merger.
"State and local officials can supplement law enforcement," said Hanley, "while the federal government abdicates its fiduciary responsibilities."
A federal judge in Washington, DC on Wednesday temporarily blocked Trump administration sanctions targeting United Nations Palestine expert Francesca Albanese, ruling that the punitive measures violated her First Amendment rights.
"Albanese has done nothing more than speak!" wrote US District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, in his 26-page decision granting a preliminary injunction against the sanctions, which US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last summer. Rubio said the sanctions, which barred the UN expert from entering the US and banking in the country, were justified because "Albanese has directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries."
But Leon wrote in his ruling that "it is undisputed that her recommendations have no binding effect on the ICC's actions—they are nothing more than her opinion."
The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed in February by Albanese's husband and her daughter, who is a US citizen. They argued the US sanctions against Albanese were "effectively debanking her and making it nearly impossible to meet the needs of her daily life."
Albanese is an Italian national who currently lives with family in Tunisia. Leon wrote in his ruling that "while the speech at issue occurred outside the United States, defendants have responded by taking action against Albanese's extensive connections to the United States—including Albanese's property within the United States and her ability to maintain professional and personal connections within the United States—because of her speech."
"Accordingly, Albanese (or plaintiffs standing in her shoes) may claim the protection of the First Amendment to challenge defendants' actions," the judge continued.
Albanese, who has vocally condemned Israel's genocide in Gaza and the countries and private corporations that have been complicit, welcomed Leon's ruling, writing in a social media post that "the interim decision by the US judge gives me respite."
"But the battle is not over," she added. "ICC judges and Palestinian NGOs remain sanctioned with no recourse to justice. The stakes are incredibly high."
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the US-based Center for International Policy, called Leon's ruling "the right decision" and said Albanese "was wrongly sanctioned for constitutionally protected speech."
"War criminals should be held accountable for their crimes," Williams wrote on social media. "Making it a crime to say that is what is illegal. We must not sacrifice our rights or the rule of law for Israel."
A group of more than 30 Democratic lawmakers in the US House is imploring the Trump administration to abandon any plans for a military assault on Cuba and end the decades-old blockade that has deprived the island nation of fuel and sparked a grave humanitarian crisis.
In a letter dated May 12 and addressed to top Trump administration officials, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) and other House Democrats wrote that the US "must not respond to a crisis it is creating with policies that deepen suffering, undermine the rule of law, and repeat the gravest failures of its past."
The members of Congress demanded that the Trump administration immediately end its use of the notorious Guantanamo Bay military prison for migrant detention, lift all "coercive economic measures" currently strangling Cuba, and "abandon reported plans for US military action against Cuba."
"Such action," the lawmakers warned, "would be unlawful, deeply destabilizing, and catastrophic for the Cuban population, while further increasing displacement, exacerbating mass suffering, and undermining US interests in the region."
"It must be unequivocally rejected," they added.
Through sanctions and unlawful threats of military action, the Trump administration is deepening the humanitarian crisis in Cuba. At the same time, they are once again threatening to use the Guantanamo Base, a prison with a history of dehumanizing and abusing people, to detain… pic.twitter.com/cXbCFfds4W
— Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez (@repdeliaramirez) May 13, 2026
The House Democrats' letter was released shortly before Cuba's energy minister said the country has "absolutely no fuel" and "absolutely no diesel," blaming the oil blockade that the Trump administration imposed earlier this year after kidnapping the president of Venezuela—previously Cuba's primary supplier of oil.
"This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country, threatening irrational tariffs against any nation that supplies us with fuel," Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote Wednesday on social media. "What the spokespeople of the U.S. regime try to portray to the world as the direct consequence of poor management by the Cuban government is, in reality, the result of a perverse plan aimed at driving the people’s shortages and hardships to extreme levels."
US President Donald Trump has said publicly that his next military target is Cuba, which he has threatened to "take" by force.
Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Cuba's foreign affairs minister, posted the House Democrats' letter to social media on Thursday, writing that "the government that claims to defend democracy should listen to the majority voices that oppose the current escalation of threats, aggressions, tightening of the blockade, and energy siege against our country."
Last month, nearly every Republican senator and one Democrat—Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania—voted down a legislative effort to prevent Trump from launching an attack on Cuba without congressional authorization.
"Trump again says the quiet part out loud—America entered the Iran war to support a genocidal ethno-state and brutal absolute autocracies, all of whom are his political and commercial financiers."
During his campaign for reelection, one of President Donald Trump's central pitches was that the US needed to stay out of foreign wars in order to prioritize "America first."
But his decision to join Israel and launch a massive war with Iran, which has caused turmoil across the American economy, has left many voters rather skeptical of these motivations, believing the war benefits other nations—particularly Israel—more than the US.
That perception has not been assuaged by statements from officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who acknowledged in the early days of the war that a so-called "imminent threat" to the US only existed because Israel had planned to attack, or by the president's recent comment that he doesn't "think about Americans' financial situation" regarding the war.
In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday, Trump appeared to further affirm that the Iran invasion's impact on his own country is far from top-of-mind.
Trump was asked by Hannity about his weekslong effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran closed in response to the war's launch, causing a spike in global oil prices that has hit the US. Reopening the strait has become one of Trump's main demands as he pushes for a deal with Iran, even though it was open before the war began.
But Trump said on Thursday that other countries "need the strait more than we need it open." He cited his administration's aggressive expansion of oil drilling, which he has claimed would make the US more resilient to the oil shock, although it hasn't been enough to stop gas prices from soaring above $4.50/gallon on average.
"We don't need it at all," Trump said, to which Hannity responded incredulously, "We don't need it at all?"
"We don't need it at all," Trump reiterated. “I mean, you could make the case, you know, like why are we even, we’re doing it to help Israel, and to help Saudi Arabia, and to help Qatar and [the United Arab Emirates] and, you know, Kuwait and other countries, Bahrain—”
Hannity interjected: "It also helps China."
Speaking of his summit this week with Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping, Trump said: "Actually, I told him today, I said, 'You know, we're helping you, and we're helping you in another way,' because I don't think they want, I don't think China wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon either.'"
Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified in a written statement to Congress in March that Iran had not tried to rebuild its nuclear enrichment capability after earlier US and Israeli attacks last June, which undercut one of the administration's primary rationales for war.
Trump's former National Counterterrorism Center director, Joe Kent, said last week that the US intelligence community agreed in the days leading up to the war that "Iran wasn’t developing a nuclear weapon,” but said that these assessments were undermined by persuasion from "a foreign government—Israel," which "won the argument and forced us into this war."
Many of the US's Persian Gulf allies have publicly tried to distance themselves from the war, especially in the face of retaliation from Iran. But The Associated Press has reported that countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain have pushed Trump behind the scenes to continue escalating the war in an effort to weaken Iran militarily and force more permanent changes to the regime.
Some have noted the Trump family’s close personal ties to the Gulf regimes—from his family’s cryptocurrency venture which is buoyed by a $500 million investment from a powerful member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family; to his son in law Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, which has received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund; to his real estate empire which has lucrative Trump-branded properties popping up across the region.
Independent journalist Borzou Daragahi said that with his latest comments, "Trump again says the quiet part out loud—America entered the Iran war to support a genocidal ethno-state and brutal absolute autocracies, all of whom are his political and commercial financiers."
Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal called for an immediate end to the US blockade, warning that "we are contributing to immense suffering in Cuba and a worsening humanitarian crisis."
The director of the US Central Intelligence Agency met with Cuban officials in Havana on Thursday after the island nation's government said it had completely run out of fuel due to the Trump administration's oil blockade.
The CIA's X account posted photos of some of Director John Ratcliffe's meetings, blurring the faces of US intelligence officials who accompanied the agency chief. In a statement, the CIA said it met with Raúl Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of former Cuban President Raúl Castro; Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas; and the head of Cuba's intelligence services.
Havana, Cuba pic.twitter.com/7S7TtJPyf5
— CIA (@CIA) May 14, 2026
"This is one of the most sinister and ominous social media posts I've ever seen," legal scholar Maryam Jamshidi wrote in response to the CIA photos.
Ratcliffe, the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit Cuba, decided to visit "to personally deliver President Donald Trump's message that the United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes," the CIA said.
A CIA official told NewsNation that "while the director emphasized that President Trump prefers dialogue, the Cubans should have no illusions that the President will not enforce red lines."
Trump has repeatedly threatened to seize Cuba by force, describing the island country as his next military target after Venezuela and Iran. Fears of an imminent military attack have grown in recent weeks amid Trump's belligerent rhetoric and surging US surveillance flights off Cuba's coast.
"I think I can do anything I want with [Cuba], if you want to know the truth," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in March. "A very weakened nation."
"This failed policy needs to end immediately. Every day, we are contributing to immense suffering in Cuba and a worsening humanitarian crisis."
The spy chief's trip came a day after Cuba's energy minister announced that months after Trump imposed an oil blockade on the island, "we have absolutely no fuel oil, absolutely no diesel."
The same day, the US State Department dangled "$100 million in direct humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people." Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said Cuba's leadership is "willing to hear the details of the offer and the manner in which it would be implemented."
"We hope it is free of political maneuvers and attempts to exploit the shortages and suffering of a people under siege," he added. "The best aid that the US government could provide to the noble Cuban people at this or any time is to de-escalate the measures of the energy, economic, commercial, and financial blockade, intensified as never before in recent months, which severely affects all sectors of the Cuban economy and society."
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel echoed that sentiment, writing in a Thursday social media post that "the damage could be alleviated in a much easier and more expeditious way by lifting or easing the blockade, as it is well known that the humanitarian situation is coldly calculated and induced."
Progressive lawmakers in the US are imploring the Trump administration to end US economic warfare against Cuba, engage diplomatically with the country, and drop any plans for a military assault.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who has come under attack from Republican lawmakers for visiting Cuba in April, said Thursday that "Cuba has run out of diesel and fuel oil and is enduring some of the worst blackouts in decades because of the US’ cruel oil blockade."
"This failed policy needs to end immediately," said Jayapal. "Every day, we are contributing to immense suffering in Cuba and a worsening humanitarian crisis."
“You can only decrease consumption so much, and when inventories run out, they are going to run out,” said one energy industry expert.
The global energy crisis caused by President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran is set to worsen in the coming months, as The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the world is "burning through its oil safety net."
Even though oil prices surged at the start of the war, which led Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz to commercial ships, that increase was temporarily mitigated by crude surpluses that allowed countries to add more petroleum to the market.
However, the Journal reported that those reserve stocks are being depleted at an unprecedented pace, with inventories declining by nearly 250 million barrels in just the first two months of the conflict.
This rapid drawdown has led oil executives and analysts to warn that "a harsh reckoning is set to upend the relative calm in energy markets" as "acute shortages of key fuels and soaring prices could emerge within weeks if the Strait of Hormuz remains shut," according to the Journal.
The Journal cited a report from consulting firm Eurasia Group estimating that, at the current rate of depletion, US diesel reserves are set to fall below 100 million barrels for the first time in 23 years by the end of this month.
Ellen Wald, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, told the Journal that while the increased price of oil would be partially offset by a decrease in consumption, the sheer scale of the coming supply crunch is so big that prices will continue to spiral upward.
“You can only decrease consumption so much, and when inventories run out, they are going to run out,” Wald explained. “At some point the market is going to collide and prices are going to shoot up.”
This problem could be exacerbated further if Trump decides to renew attacks on Iran, which could lead to devastating Iranian counterstrikes on oil production facilities throughout the region.
Zeteo reported on Thursday that "preparations for an imminent new phase of Trump’s Iran war have accelerated," as the president "has grown increasingly frustrated by the state of peace talks."
According to Zeteo's sources, the US military campaign is set to ramp up shortly after Trump returns from his visit to China, with options that include "a potential massive new bombing campaign against the Iranians."
The US military bombed Iranian military targets and civilian infrastructure throughout the early weeks of the conflict, but the country has still refused to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
With peace talks stalled and the prospect of renewed hostilities on the table, the price of Brent crude futures surged on Friday, topping more than $108 per barrel.
Average gas prices in the US remained above $4.50 on Friday, and petroleum industry analyst Patrick De Haan estimated on Thursday that prices could soon jump to over $5 per gallon if the Strait of Hormuz isn't opened soon.