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marco rubio
Is It (Still) Un-American to Care?
I don’t think it’s inherently un-American to care about suffering in Gaza or Cuba. It is just an American expectation to get threatened by the State Department for giving a fuck.
Aug 09, 2026
I initially wrote this piece in 2024 during the student uprisings that took place around the United States. The content was focused on Gaza and the people who made up the movement for Palestine in the belly of the beast. I've rewritten some of it and replaced Gaza with Cuba. The arguments needed no editing at all.
In March, a delegation traveled to Cuba to bring medical aid to Cubans who were suffering under the fuel blockade imposed on them by the United States of America. In recent months, people and organizations who took part, including my own organization, have been targeted by the Trump administration via investigations, subpoenas, and threatening reports such as Marco Rubio's 100-page report "The Capital of 21st Century Communism." In this report, people who bring aid to Cuba or merely speak out against the unilateral policy of starvation that the US implements upon Cuba are accused of being foreign agents and linked to terrorism. People in the comment section of our videos echo the smears because if the accusation is coming from someone powerful like Marco Rubio, it must be true.
I’ve seen them suggest that CODEPINK and other organizers are acting on behalf of someone other than ourselves and perhaps paid to do so. And Rubio has even gone on record saying that the people he is targeting might even be "unpaid" agents of Cuba, which just sounds like he might be going after people for simply having their own opinions that are different from his.
Cuba has dealt with rolling blackouts, fuel, food, and medicine shortages as well as a looming threat of US invasion or attacks as threatened by the Trump administration. People are not getting the medicine they need or the nutrition, which can and will lead to a slow genocide in Cuba if the US starvation policy stays intact. That is what people are so against: the deliberate slow starvation of 11 million human beings, just 90 miles away from our own border. This recent escalation comes after 60 years of aggressive US policy toward Cuba that has punished its people for pursuing an economic and political system that strays from the US model of capitalist exploitation. Cuba, once existing as a playground for the wealthy elite of the US, is now a representation that not only can a small country overthrow US-backed puppets like Fulgencio Batista, but also pursue socialism.
How do we, in the greatest interest of preventing future wars, stop reproducing this accusation so much that it becomes the dominant narrative about anti-war activists?
The accusations of being foreign agents or affiliated with terrorist groups aren’t new or innovative accusations levied against anti-war activists. This narrative has been used since there were wars and people against them. So there are a few questions to be asked: Is it so un-American for regular people (not policymakers) to care about the disastrous loss of human life? Who is levying these accusations that some malign foreign entity pays (or doesn't pay) Americans who care about death and destruction to do so? And lastly, how do we, in the greatest interest of preventing future wars, stop reproducing this accusation so much that it becomes the dominant narrative about anti-war activists?
Is It So Un-American to Care About the Loss of Human Life?
There have been massive resistance movements to every single war, and whether politicians like it or not, many of the people who have participated have been Americans. If it’s un-American to disagree with our government, then we might as well pack it all up and call it a day on this whole democracy schtick. The accusation of being foreign agents or terrorist sympathizers denies the basic trajectory of social life at this present moment. In the United States, our neighbors are truly from all over the world, and humans are social animals. If we are, enjoyably, living our lives, then we will meet our neighbors, we will become their friends, and we will care deeply for them. Friends introduce each other to other friends, and we learn to care for people who live in places we have never been. Some forces seek to squash that diversity and others use it merely symbolically without accepting the fact that it might challenge who our country does or does not bomb. But both forces use the “foreign agent” accusation to destroy the lives of activists and squash movements into the curb until they have no teeth anymore. It has happened over and over again.
If we move ahead with the idea that it is not inherently un-American to care about massacres or blockades, what we are left with is that the accusation is a tool to get everyone to shut the hell up about what the pigs in power are doing to our families and friends far, far away from here. Or in some cases, right here at home when some of the most powerful people in the Trump administration launch First Amendment chilling investigations into regular people to attempt to stop them from talking about the massacres our country facilitates.
If the peace movement was such a well-funded foreign apparatus, we would never have a war ever again. We would never have blockades and embargoes that starve people to death. The war industry is far better funded than those of us in opposition to it.
So, I don’t think it’s inherently un-American to care about suffering. It is just an American expectation to get threatened by the State Department for giving a fuck. And the inverse is true: it’s also quintessentially American to remain apathetic to the massacres and not utter a word about them and be awarded some temporary comfort. For example, the quiet may have no subpoena in the mail this week or next. If you fall into the latter category, congratulations on your unthreatening inboxes, but I have some bad news for you: One day our country might do something that will anger you. Or, god forbid, your children become adults who decide to care. Then you or your children will become vulnerable to the same accusation and subsequent treatment, including repression, arrest, and murder (like we've seen in the cases of Alex Pretti and Renée Good). Unless we stop reproducing this narrative about protesters at this very critical moment, disagreeing with the government will continue to get you investigated, thrown in jail, or your life ruined by red scare tactics the US government continues to rinse and repeat.
Who Is Levying These Accusations That Some Malign Foreign Entity Pays Americans Who Care About Death and Destruction to Do So?
The short answer is the American elite. The politicians and rich have a vested interest in keeping us at war and attempting to drive communist countries like Cuba into the gutter. The US is the largest weapons dealer in the world, and the companies that make the weapons are the biggest donors to many of our politicians. Politicians are bought and sold by the war profiteers, but also by private equity that sees investment opportunities in Cuba. The ruling class has done a great job of making war a profitable industry for themselves. So they built up militarized domestic surveillance to protect the war industry from dissent. If the accusation of being foreign agents scared people into silence about what our country was doing to Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on, why wouldn’t this repression tactic work for what’s happening in Cuba? Besides the fact that the tactic has worked in the past, there’s also a part of it that might be a telling projection: that because the elite need to get paid for their morals and opinions, maybe everyone else does too.
So, their tactic of accusing people of being terrorists or foreign agents works at repressing the masses. They’ve learned this over and over again. Can we say the same, that we’ve learned the same lesson over and over again? It appears that we cannot. But we have the opportunity to do things differently right now.
How Do We, in the Greatest Interest of Preventing Future Wars, Stop Reproducing This Accusation So Much That It Becomes How We All View Anti-War Activists?
The longer we go without challenging this narrative, the longer it gets passed down to the war resisters after us. We don’t remember the US wars on Vietnam or Iraq kindly. So why do we still write off the people who resisted those wars? Maybe a lot of the Vietnam War protesters were communists, but they were also right when it mattered. It doesn’t matter if you disagree with the war in Vietnam now. Over 2 million Vietnamese people were killed by our government. It is long over. It only matters if you’re right when it’s actually happening or before it happens, not when the blood is already dried on the pavement.
And as it so happens, being a communist might be the most American thing you can do as more and more people feel like everyone around them somehow got the short end of the stick. Who has the long end of the stick? We’ve never met them.
Americans happen to have their own opinions, and many of us are not paid to have them. You can tell that is a fact by how few of us have healthcare. If the peace movement was such a well-funded foreign apparatus, we would never have a war ever again. We would never have blockades and embargoes that starve people to death. The war industry is far better funded than those of us in opposition to it.
If you ever disagree with the war machine, the titles of “foreign agent” or “terrorist sympathizer” will be waiting for you at your doorstep. It’s really just a matter of time.
Some of us can shake these accusations off. Two years ago, we all saw a photo of a young Palestinian girl with her face falling apart and her father trying to press her back together. We decided her life was worth more than any job or future opportunity we could ever lose from saying something. Her life was worth more than any threat I could ever receive—but the stakes don’t need to be so high for us to stand up for what’s right if we collectively decide right now that they don’t need to be. We can get it right when it comes to Cuba before it's too late. Power is reproduced in every single one of us. The accusations stick every time we don’t refute them on behalf of others. The accusations work every time it isn’t shot down or called out. So we must.
I am proud to be the national co-director of CODEPINK. I am called a foreign agent or terrorist sympathizer every time I post about a child being murdered in Gaza. Or that I don't agree with a policy of collective punishment in Cuba. Or when I dare suggest that the United States shouldn’t be stoking a war with China. The US and China both have nukes. I don’t have to be paid off by a foreign government to have the opinion that a confrontation between two nuclear powers would be a disaster.
Right now, CODEPINK, along with other organizations, are the subject of a smear campaign to discredit our work toward peace. We were accused of being funded by a deep and large web of interests that led back to the Chinese Communist Party, and now we are accused of being agents of the Cuban government. I am sorry to our haters and clickbait journalists, but that is just completely untrue. It is a disrespect to the fearless leadership of women in North America who don’t like blockades being imposed in our name and to our thousands of donors who make our work possible. Now, as the Trump administration escalates its hybrid war on Cuba and people are standing up for what they believe in, the same accusation is coming down on each and every one of us who happens to care about the 11 million Cubans who will go into this fall and winter without electricity, or without the medicines they need to survive. If you ever disagree with the war machine, the titles of “foreign agent” or “terrorist sympathizer” will be waiting for you at your doorstep. It’s really just a matter of time. If we want history to stop repeating itself, if we want to stop the senseless slaughter carried out by our government, we have to stop falling for the same tricks.
When the American elite make the inevitable pivot, and start telling you what country to hate: See through it. And when they start pointing fingers at people who think we shouldn’t go to war—ask if their accusations are actually admissions about their own integrity. You are not bought to care about Cuban life; your comrades aren’t either.
This moment, and every moment of resistance that comes after we are gone, requires us to learn this lesson and fast. The movement and the people sympathetic to it must stand up for themselves and reject the notion that it is fundamentally un-American to care about people or despise massacres.
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'Bay of Pigs Reloaded': New CIA Task Force to Further Destabilize Cuba Revealed
The revelation comes as the State Department "has been on a full-throttle media blitz," noted one writer, "painting Cuba as an espionage superpower and a threat to US national security."
Aug 05, 2026
After months of President Donald Trump threatening a US takeover of Cuba and ramping up a decadeslong economic assault of the island, The New York Times revealed Wednesday that the Central Intelligence Agency created a related task force, "setting in motion plans for a more concerted campaign to pressure the Cuban government to make the economic, political, and leadership changes."
"In 1960, the CIA established an earlier Cuba task force, whose members oversaw the failed, agency-backed invasion of Cuba the next year known as the Bay of Pigs," the newspaper noted. "The people briefed on the new task force said its mandate is more limited: to create fissures among the Cuban political elite, in hope of pressuring the Cubans to replace perceived anti-American hard-liners with more practical leaders more amenable to Mr. Trump's demands."
Despite the anonymous sources' claims about the differences from over a half-century ago, Eva Golinger, an American lawyer who wrote multiple books about former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, simply responded, "Bay of Pigs reloaded."
The Times article—on which the CIA declined to comment—came a day after Politico reported that "the US has increased its intelligence assets in Cuba in recent months as it pushes the country's communist regime to reform or fall from power, according to two people familiar with the Trump administration's plans for the island."
The agency also declined to comment on Politico's piece, which pointed out that "US military operations are often preceded by increased American intelligence activity. CIA efforts to track the whereabouts of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro reportedly played a critical role this January in the successful US operation to capture him."
Sharing Politico's coverage on social media, Andrés Pertierra, a Cuba historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that it is "hard to say at this point to what degree this is theater aimed at rattling the cage in Havana or performing strength to Miami, on the one hand, or some kind of prelude to an actual escalation, on the other, given recent months of warnings of escalation that went nowhere."
Enrique "Ric" Prado, a Cuban exile who served in various posts at the CIA, "is convinced that Washington is preparing a definitive blow against the island regime," El País reported early Wednesday. He predicted, "Cuba is the next apple to fall from the tree."
This week's reporting followed the July release of a "McCarthyite" US Department of State document that was widely decried as an "attack on Americans' constitutional rights to free speech and assembly," as well as an attempt to justify an invasion of Cuba, where the Trump administration has fueled a humanitarian crisis.
"For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States," the department's report begins, "that has infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history."
Promoting the publication on social media, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants and a longtime advocate of regime change on the island—claimed his department was "exposing the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country."
During a Sunday interview with Fox News host Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, Rubio repeated claims from the report and called the island nation, about 90 miles south of Florida and home to roughly 10 million people, "an influence and espionage superpower." His comments drew criticism from Democrats in Congress, the Cuban foreign minister, and other experts.
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Marco 'McCarthy' Rubio Is Wrong on Cuba and Where 'Terrorism' Is Coming From
Those who challenge and protest US policies are not terrorists, and they are certainly not paid by other governments.
Aug 05, 2026
Thin-skinned and heavy-handed, the Trump administration apparently feels like it is being singled out by those who dissent from its policies. As a result, Trump appointees are taking drastic "McCarthy" tactics to stop dissent.
In less than one month, alleging that dissent and protests are part of attempts of other governments “to overthrow the government of the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio has sponsored two major initiatives to frighten those who oppose the Trump administration's policies. The first salvo was orchestrating a conference with 60 countries participating over “Threats From Left-Wing Terrorists.” The second was the report on Cuba that alleged virtually every group that has ever visited Cuba is paid by the Cuban government.
No One is Paid to Protest—If One Is NOT Outraged Then You Aren’t Watching
These allegations of paid protest and travelling on the dime of another country are unfounded, untrue, and fly in the face of the history of protests in the US and travel by US citizens to see the effects of US polices on other countries.
President Donald Trump’s erratic foreign policy, including the disastrous attacks on Iran as a favor to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli war machine; attacks domestically cutting health and education; horrific treatment of migrants; daily outlandish statements on just about every subject; and disregard for facts in virtually every issue all provide good reasons for protests by outraged US citizens.
I have not been paid by any country to protest US policies, nor do I know anyone who has been paid.
No one needs to be paid to be outraged!!!
Dissent is Not Illegal and Is Not Paid by Other Countries
In particular, Secretary of State and National Security adviser Marco Rubio, who has authored the latest "McCarthy" report to quell opposition to illegal, immoral policies of his department and the Trump administration in general, seems to have lost his grasp on the history of dissent in the US.
From his 15 years in the US Senate, he should remember that many of each administration's domestic and international policies have been lawfully and non-violently protested by US citizens in the US Congress.
Having been a part of many protests since I resigned from the State Department in March 2003 in opposition to a war policy, President George W. Bush's war on Iraq, I know that these protests are NOT a part of attempts of other governments to “overthrow the government of the United States,” but are legitimate shows of concern about specific policies. Rubio’s allegations of other countries’ influence in these protests are unfounded and untrue.
I was not paid by a foreign government to resign. I resigned because I felt the war on Iraq was illegal, immoral, and a dangerous action jeopardizing the national security of the United States.
I have not been paid by any country to protest US policies, nor do I know anyone who has been paid. Protest is a legitimate, time-consuming act of outrage about a policy that people use to bring attention to the policy, and hopefully effect change in the policy.
Marco “McCarthy” Rubio’s Tactics: Blame the Left When the Right Has Violently Attacked the US Government
The first attack against legitimate protest came in the US Department of State sponsored conference on “Far-Left Terrorism” held in Washington, DC in July 2026, where Rubio and White House pit bull Stephen Miller harangued the representatives of 66 nations about terrorists from the left wanting to overthrow the US government.
In his opening statement Rubio railed: “This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always been driven by a hatred above all else, a hatred for civilization itself. It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called left-wing extremism a growing threat aimed at “the overthrow of our system and form of government” that officials previously failed to sufficiently address. Miller railed: “We must stay the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization. If the left is allowed to use the real or actual threat of violence to destabilize our institutions, then those institutions cannot and will not succeed.”
A White House press release stated, “Under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump, far-left extremism will be treated with the same seriousness and ferocity the world has long reserved for jihadist terrorism.”
Oops, Trump and Rubio Forget to Mention the Violent Attempt at Overthrow of the US Electoral Process by the Trump-Inspired, Right-Wing January 6 Mob
Of course, neither Rubio nor Miller mentioned President Trump’s pardon of the over 1,500 persons who did try to violently overthrow the United States electoral process on January 6, 2021 as they attacked the Capitol police and broke into and destroyed many offices in the US Capitol.
The attempted overthrow of the 2020 election by seeking to nullify the election results through lawsuits in 62 federal and state courts was attempted by Trump’s loyal personal lawyers including the current acting US Attorney General and head of the US Department of Justice Todd Blanche and disgraced and disbarred lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Their cases of election fraud were stopped by rulings in all 62 federal and state lawsuits that no election fraud had occurred.
Rubio and the State Department’s Untruthful, Dishonest Report About Cuba and Paid Protesters
The most recent and most ludicrous allegations of left-wing violence and protests being funded by other countries is in Secretary of Rubio's 10- page report on “Cuba: the Capitol of 21st Century Communism.” Rubio accuses the National Network on Cuba, National Lawyers Guild, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, the People's Forum, IFCO/Pastors For Peace, and the Democratic Socialists of America of being paid by the Cuban government whose goal, the report states, has been for 60 years the overthrow of the US government.
Talk about turning the facts on their heads! As is well-documented, 13 successive US presidential administrations since 1959—Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama (first term when CIA policies were still in effect, but changing in Obama’s second term with diplomatic recognition), Trump 1, Biden, and Trump 2—have attempted to overthrow the Cuban government in the 60-plus years of its existence.
The current attempt of overthrow of the Cuban government by the United States is centered on the brutal total blockade of fuel going to Cuba, which has left Cuban citizens without electricity for operations in hospitals, for food preparation, for the ability to conduct normal life activities. Making life so miserable for the Cuban citizenry that they overthrow their government would fulfill the longstanding hopes of Cuban-American Rubio.
Rubio Is Not Honest About His Background as a Cuban American
Marco Rubio has been less than forthright about his heritage as a Cuban American in his quest for the overthrow of the Cuban government.
Marco Rubio, “Mr. Righteous against birthright citizenship,” is a "birthright citizen" born in the US of noncitizen parents who had immigrated in 1956 from Cuba under the Batista dictatorship, not under the 1959 revolutionary government.
Marco Rubio, “Mr. Tough on illegal immigrants,” ignores that his own grandfather entered the US illegally and was ordered to be deported but was saved from deportation by an amnesty during the Cuban missile crisis.
Despite these brutal, heavy-handed attempts to silence us, dissent is spreading to regular citizens.
Marco Rubio, “Mr. Kill the Boat Drug Runners of the Caribbean,” disregards that his own brother-in-law was convicted of drug running and his sister implicated but never charged.
Marco Rubio, “Mr. I Know All About Cuba Because I Am Cuban American,” has been to Cuba only once—where in Cuba did he go? A few hours at the US prison on the U. Naval base at Guantánamo.
No doubt, more will come in the next two years as Rubio, Miller, and others in the administration seem to think they can get away with outrageous bullying of individuals and organizations that do not agree with them and that challenge them in non-violent ways, in contrast to the January 6 gang.
In particular, there are always protests against the horrific effects of brutal sanctions that the US government uses to make life so difficult for citizens of other countries that they will overthrow their own governments, whether it be Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, or Nicaragua.
Israel’s Paid Influence on US Citizen Perceptions Seems to Be OK With Rubio
However, Rubio no doubt is thinking that since his buddies in the Netanyahu government have paid Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, millions of dollars in a specific program to influence US public opinion to stop the massive decline in Israel’s “likability,” that other countries have paid off US persons to work clandestinely on the same scale.
Parscale's firm was hired by Israel for $6 million in September 2025 and then signed a $15 million contract with Israeli firm Havas to conduct a digital campaign on behalf of the State of Israel according to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Parscale and his team sent conservative influencers suggested positive language about Israel for posts on social media sites such as X, Instagram, and TikTok. The influencers are then compensated based on how many “likes” each post gets from readers.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has dramatically increased spending on influence operations. Earlier this year, Israel increased by four times its “public diplomacy” influence budget from $150 million in 2025 to $730 million in 2026.
But even The Times of Israel says it’s too late for a “face lift” as a Pew Research Center poll reported that 60% of Americans now view Israel unfavorably, up seven points in a single year, with only 37% viewing it favorably after Israel has committed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza; pillaged and plundered homes, farms, animals in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian West Bank; destroyed southern Lebanon; and got the Trump administration up to its neck in the war on Iran.
Keep Challenging Illegal, Immoral, and Criminal Policies
The two recent major attempts of the Trump administration to quell dissent show how serious challenging illegal, immoral, and criminal policies has become and how important it is that we push back hard against these attempts intimidating citizens to silence their dissent.
However, despite these brutal, heavy-handed attempts to silence us, dissent is spreading to regular citizens. In a recent letter to the editor of my hometown newspaper Honolulu Star Advertiser, which serves a large US military population, a resident of Hawaii summarized the challenge very well: “The true domestic enemy includes those who monopolize political and economic power. The real enemy includes individuals who misinform, threaten, and disenfranchise the less powerful. The true enemy are those who are antidemocratic, have little or no concern regarding the welfare of others, and enrich themselves, family, and a few friends at the expense of the general population.”
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Rubio's Latest Claims About Cuba Spying Powers Decried as 'Completely Batshit Insane'
The country's foreign minister called Rubio's claims a "desperate attempt to justify the current genocide of the Cuban people through collective punishment."
Aug 03, 2026
Officials in the Trump administration have spent the past 18 months insisting the US has the right and the military might to take over any country it chooses in order to secure US "interests" in the Western Hemisphere, and it has already moved to take control of Venezuela's oil reserves and cut off the energy supply to Cuba.
But to hear Secretary of State Marco Rubio tell it in an interview with Fox News on Sunday, the US is in some ways at the mercy of the latter country—an island nation of approximately 10 million people whose healthcare system, social services, and energy grid have ground to a halt recently as President Donald Trump has escalated economic warfare and threatened other nations with tariffs, should they provide oil to Cuba's communist government.
Rubio told Fox News host Lara Trump—the president's daughter-in-law—that "when it comes to things like espionage and influence operations," Cuba is "an influence and espionage superpower."
The secretary of state, who is the son of Cuban immigrants who came to the US years before the Cuban Revolution, and who has long called for regime change on the island, pointed to just two examples of spies that he said Cuba has "consistently implanted and embedded" in the US: former US Ambassador to Bolivia Victor Manuel Rocha, who was arrested in 2023 and admitted to working as a secret agent for Cuba's government; and Ana Belén Montes, a former analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage in 2002.
.@SecRubio: "To the average American, you see Cuba, a small country 90 miles off our shores, 9.5 million people population — but people forget that when it comes to things like espionage and influence operations, they actually are an influence and espionage superpower." pic.twitter.com/iWN0xkYhtv
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 2, 2026
"If you look at the history of espionage in the United States, Cuba is the only country that consistently implanted and embedded spies in our system without even paying them," said Rubio of the two spies.
"It is not, and we shouldn’t go to war to settle family feuds of the 1960s," replied US Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) on social media, referring to Rubio's family history with the island.
Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, pronounced Rubio's claims about Cuba's purportedly expansive and dangerous espionage powers "completely batshit insane."
Both Rubio and Trump also repeated claims that were central to a report released by the State Department in July, which alleged that Cuba's government, led by President Miguel Díaz-Canel, has "waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States," including by backing "an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil."
Like the report, which called Cuba "the Capital of 21st Century Communism," Trump named the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and "the surge of radical activism that we've seen all over college campuses"—with students protesting in recent years against US support for Israel—as protest movements that Cuba is "influencing."
"Absolutely," said Rubio, adding—with no evidence—that Cuba has organized "the same network of protesters around the country" to protest against police brutality and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and in support of Palestinian rights.
Rubio says Radical Left protests are not spontaneous but funded organized and linked to a wider network involving Cuba that can be weaponized against the United States#NYI pic.twitter.com/C1opqLZAKH
— NewYork-Insight (@NewYork_Insight) August 2, 2026
Bruno Rodríguez, the minister of foreign affairs of Cuba, accused the secretary of state of once again spreading "a ridiculous and clumsy lie, which neither he nor his corrupt colleagues believe," about the island.
The report cited by Trump and Rubio, and the diplomat's comments, amounted to a "desperate attempt to justify the current genocide of the Cuban people through collective punishment," said Rodríguez.
He added that they served as a "fantastical pretext for a military aggression, which would provoke a bloodbath of Cuban and American citizens."
The Trump administration has previously claimed in recent months that Cuba plans to wage drone attacks against the US—drawing from intelligence that actually said Cuban officials were determining how they could use the weapons defensively, not in preemptive strikes.
The White House's "patently absurd" claims about Cuba, said former Florida Democratic Party staffer Max Steele, surpass the George W. Bush administration's "most fever dream propaganda about Iraq" in the lead-up to the US war there.
Rubio's latest comments came just before the entire island was plunged into darkness Sunday night after the country's state-owned power grid collapsed due to the strain caused by the US oil blockade.
"The extremity of the economic warfare being waged by the United States on Cuba is WILDLY out of proportion to the 'threat' that they pose to the United States," said financial crime expert Brett Erickson. "To be abundantly clear, Cuba poses ZERO threat to the United States."
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said Rubio's comments were the latest evidence that the Trump administration is eager to claim Cuba poses a threat to national security as a pretext for an invasion of the country.
"This is a set-up to go in," said Pocan.
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Nicaragua Banned US-Backed Coup Leaders From Elections, and Corporate Media Lost It
In his national address on July 19, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega stated that when the country’s next elections take place, none who promoted a violent anti-government insurrection in 2018 will be allowed to stand for office. Western media outlets reported this as a total ban on voting.
Aug 01, 2026
July 19 is a key date in Nicaragua’s calendar—the anniversary of the victory of its Sandinista revolution in 1979 and the overthrow of the vicious US-backed Somoza dictatorship that terrorized Nicaraguans for 43 years prior. Every year, huge crowds gather in celebrations across the country, culminating in a nationally broadcast speech by President Daniel Ortega. In recent years, Ortega has used the moment to discuss the country’s successes in the year prior, and lay out the agenda for the following year, while lauding not just the Sandinista Revolution’s triumph in 1979 but also the country’s resistance to the 2018 coup attempt—and lamenting the death and destruction it caused before peace was restored.
This July 19, while discussing that violence, Ortega proposed a blanket electoral ban on candidates who participated in fomenting the riots which plagued Nicaragua for months in a violent, US government-sponsored coup attempt that left hundreds dead:
There will be no elections like that again here—no more elections through which they can try cheating their way to government or cheat their way to taking power. We need to create laws that will put up a wall, a barrier, against the coup-plotters, against those who are traitors to their country. And no matter how much money the Yankees give them, they won’t succeed!
Even for casual observers, it was clear that the head of the Nicaraguan government was proposing restrictions on candidates funded and directed by a hostile foreign power situated in the US. But in corporate newsrooms across the country, editors pounced on the phrase “there will be no elections.”
Only days before Ortega’s speech, Trump railed against foreign interference in US elections, promising measures to protect their integrity.
Quoting the president’s statement completely out of context, The New York Times shrieked that Daniel Ortega planned to abolish elections completely, strengthening his “authoritarian grip” on the country. A headline in business journal Bloomberg blared: “Nicaragua’s Dictatorship Should Be Marco Rubio’s Next Problem.” Right on cue, Rubio issued a statement accusing the Nicaraguan government of “thwarting the basic tenets of our democratic hemisphere.”
At US legacy media outlets, clarification was sought not from the government or its supporters, but from right-wing apparatchiks financed and directed by Washington. The Times went to Felix Maradiaga, leader of an opposition group which “operates in secret in Nicaragua,” who claimed that “Ortega buried Nicaraguan democracy a long time ago.” Unmentioned by the NY Times was that Maradiaga is aligned with the far-right Atlas Network and was a key actor in the 2018 coup attempt, for which he received copious US funding.
As Max Blumenthal revealed in The Grayzone in 2018, the Yale-trained Maradiaga’s Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP) had received at least $260,000 from the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy since 2014.
The BBC, falsely asserting that Nicaragua’s next elections were now “cancelled,” rolled out another opposition activist, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, who labelled Nicaragua “the North Korea of Latin America.” Chamorro and his oligarchic family have historically been the biggest recipients of US funding directed at regime change in Nicaragua and almost certainly still are.
During the 2018 coup, Juan Sebastián Chamorro promoted the strategy of erecting tranques, or roadblocks, where opposition hooligans kidnapped, brutalized, raped, and even killed common Nicaraguan citizens in a failed bid to strangle the country’s economy and ultimately take over its cities.
It’s no secret that Maradiaga and Chamorro are competing to be Washington’s favored candidate if regime change were to ever occur. Reuters described Maradiaga as a “presidential hopeful,” while Chamorro is joint author of a new Atlantic Council report calling for Washington to back his “transition plan” for Nicaragua. Opposition media put this pair at the top of a list of eight potential candidates.
Washington’s plans for regime change in Nicaragua are hardly a secret, either. The National Endowment for Democracy’s president, Damon Wilson, bragged to a House committee in February that his organization is funding media in Nicaragua with an eye to undermining its Sandinista government. Commenting on latest developments, he said: “The Ortega-Murillo regime may seek to abolish elections, but it cannot abolish the Nicaraguan people’s desire for democracy. We will stand with them until that right is restored.”
The NED, a CIA cutout, currently spends over $2 million annually on Nicaraguan opposition groups—its highest funding level for any country in the region. And of course, the NED is only one source of US regime-change support for political groups who failed to overthrow Nicaragua’s government in 2018 and intend to try again.
In Nicaragua itself, figures such as Maradiaga and Chamorro have little credibility. Opinion polls consistently show that the government has significant popular support. For example, its approval levels ranged from 40-60% in Argentina’s CB Global Data polls over the course of 2026. This is hardly surprising in a country which now has the most modern and extensive public health system in Central America, the region’s best highways, and is building over 7,000 homes each year for those on the lowest incomes, all the product of 19 years of Sandinista rule.
Most Nicaraguans are well aware of what a government headed by the likes of Maradiaga or Chamorro would entail. Not only do they recall the violence and destruction of the coup attempt, but many remember that the last US regime-change operation—a heavily manipulated election in 1990—resulted in 16 years of neoliberal government which left the country with barely functioning schools, potholed highways, and only intermittent electricity supply. Ortega’s call for elections that bar the golpistas (coup mongers) from taking part was therefore met with cheers from the July 19 crowds.
Next-door Honduras provides a lesson of US electoral interference. Not only did President Donald Trump threaten Hondurans with aid cuts if they failed to vote as he wanted in last December’s poll, he also freed the convicted, narco-trafficking former president, Juan Orlando Hernández. To the horror of most Hondurans, he is returning to the country as I write this.
Now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is being pushed by Florida Republicans such as Reps. María Elvira Salazar and Carlos Giménez to ensure that “after Cuba, Nicaragua is next.” Yet he must be aware the opposition has virtually no support in Nicaragua itself. This week, one of Ortega’s most prominent critics, Manuel Orozco of the Inter-American Dialogue, admitted to CNN, “Nobody is thinking about what it would mean for the United States to remove these people from power when there is no opposition, the public does not know who the leaders in exile are, and there is economic stability.”
While proclaiming “the statement by Daniel Ortega that under his family’s dictatorship Nicaragua will never again hold elections lays bare their true authoritarian nature,” Rubio threatened, “The Trump Administration and the international community will not stand by as the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship deepens repression at home and manufactures instability that threatens US national security.”
Nicaragua has already been included in a fresh round of US tariffs, and economic sanctions and attacks on its trade with the US will certainly continue. However, the political focus is likely to stay on electoral interference, now that Nicaragua’s National Assembly president has repeated earlier assurances that elections will indeed take place.
This brings us back to Daniel Ortega’s declaration during the celebrations in Managua. His government has the sovereign right to fight foreign interference in its electoral process. The US exercises the same right itself: Only days before Ortega’s speech, Trump railed against foreign interference in US elections, promising measures to protect their integrity.
Rubio’s statement supporting Trump’s address seems especially ironic in light of his escalation against Nicaragua. “Under @POTUS,” Rubio declared, “the Trump Administration will rout out foreign interference in our elections and safeguard our democracy. America’s future belongs to Americans.” Change the wording to refer to Nicaragua rather than the US, and you have a summary of what Daniel Ortega promised to Nicaraguans just two days afterward.
The original version of this piece appeared in The Grayzone.
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'Idiot Reich': US State Department Map Mislabeled African Nations
"This is what happens when the US Department of State fires career experts and tries to have AI conduct diplomacy."
Jul 30, 2026
"AI use gone wrong." "Utter embarrassment." "Stupid empire." "Idiot Reich."
Those were just some of the responses to Thursday reporting on a US Department of State map presented at a global conference in Brazil that mislabeled every African country it included.
"Reuters viewed a video of the presentation given at the AIDS 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro, which shows the errant map displayed halfway during a presentation about the State Department's new health agreements," the news agency reported.
"A Reuters analysis found the image of the map included in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence watermark that signals it was made with OpenAI tools," the outlet noted. "The company said it was investigating the report."
While Jeff Graham, who oversees the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and was speaking at the conference, did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment, the State Department said that "we take full responsibility for the confusion and misrepresentation it caused for attendees, including our African partners."
Critics around the world, including Democrats in Congress, blasted the department under Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump, who have reduced staff by 3,000 between layoffs and voluntary departures.
A recent Financial Times article headlined "RIP the US State Department" noted that "as of late June more than half of American ambassadorships were vacant, including high-status posts from Germany to Saudi Arabia," and nearly 80% of American embassies across Africa lack an ambassador.
Sharing the Reuters reporting on social media Thursday, Nick Cleveland-Stout, a research associate in the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, commented, "Checking in on the whole defund the State Department thing."
Former US Ambassador to Jamaica Luis Moreno said that "this is the pathetic result when you fire career, nonpartisan diplomatic personnel and replace them with unqualified partisan hacks who rely on faulty AI."
US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) declared: "What an embarrassment. This is what happens when the US Department of State fires career experts and tries to have AI conduct diplomacy."
Congressman Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) stressed that "Trump's Department of State showed up to a global conference with an AI-generated map that mislabeled nations across Africa. Every. Single. One. This isn't just an embarrassing mistake."
"It's a symbol of an administration that has treated a continent of 1.5 billion people as an afterthought while China is deepening engagement across the African continent," he argued. "That's what happens when you hollow out expertise and stop taking diplomacy seriously. Our African partners and the American people deserve better."
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Really, Rubio? Mamdani, DSA, and More Are Terrorist Agents of Cuban Intelligence?
While Rubio has spent much of his political career fighting the Cuban regime, it is almost unbelievable that even he would lend his name to such a report filled with lies and threats against American citizens.
Jul 29, 2026
Marco Rubio's State Department has just issued a frightening 99-page report accusing many prominent liberal and progressive organizations and individuals of being agents of Cuban government intelligence.
The report claims that the liberal groups and individuals it names "have been involved in a disproportionate share of the total left-wing political activity in the United States over the past decade, organizing hundreds of protests and street actions, from anti-ICE clashes in Minnesota to the 'No Kings' demonstrations across the nation... At the same time, many of the network’s nodes have become fused with the Cuban influence infrastructure... modern Cuba plays a key role in supporting major foreign terror networks. At the same time, the regime continues to operate an extensive hard intelligence network in the United States, with significant penetration into sensitive civilian and military institutions on American territory."
Among those named in the report as de facto or de jure Cuban agents are Mayors Zohran Mandami and Karen Bass; Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.); Ben & Jerry's founder Ben Cohen; liberal journalist Karen Goodman; the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA); The National Lawyers Guild; and organizers of Black Lives Matters, anti-ICE, and No Kings demonstrations.
Cuba, with a population of 10.9 million people which can barely keep electricity running or provide basic nutrition presents a danger of conquering the US?
The Report describes DSA as "a mass membership organization operating openly in American electoral politics, with chapters across the country, a growing bench of elected officials, and real influence inside the Democratic Party coalition. The DSA has built a national infrastructure dedicated to moving extreme-left politics from the margins into the mainstream—and with it, a deep and abiding devotion to the Cuban regime."
It describes the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) as "one of the most persistently relevant—and insidious—organizations in Cuba’s US network. The association of extreme-left lawyers and radical street activists has played a key role in a disproportionate share of the far-left terror and violence that has plagued the United States from the 1960s up to today. Throughout its history, it has maintained intimate ties to Cuba and other communist regimes and has explicitly sought to advance the causes of the international far left, including by working to defend and facilitate terrorism and extremist violence."
It describe he NLG's mission as "manipulating and undermining the law to keep far-left terrorists and other violent 'revolutionaries' on the streets. Through its Mass Defense and Legal Observer programs, the NLG trains and deploys so-called 'legal observers'—easily recognizable in their distinctive neon-green hats or helmets at many of today’s notable left-wing demonstrations—to radical protests and 'direct actions.' In this capacity, Guild lawyers serve as an on-demand jailbreak force, capable of providing immediate support for arrested rioters and militants, mobilizing a network of bail funds and allied NGOs to secure their quick release... Today, the NLG is actively involved in radical anti-ICE street actions."
At a meeting last week about "far-left" extremism with 60 foreign government officials, Secretary of State Marco Rubio proclaimed, "The Cuban regime's sprawling intelligence and ideological networks helped build the far-left in our country and in our hemisphere... It remains inextricably linked to far-left groups and movements across and beyond the West."
The State Department Report concludes, "These various threads can only be understood through the prism of the Cuban regime’s ideological foundation, imbued by its founder with the singular goal of conquering the neighboring United States."
REALLY??? Cuba, with a population of 10.9 million people which can barely keep electricity running or provide basic nutrition presents a danger of conquering the US?
I must admit that, while Rubio has spent much of his political career fighting the Cuban regime, I find it almost unbelievable that even he would lend his name to such a report filled with lies and threats against American citizens. Is it part of a campaign to gain support for a US invasion to overthrow the Cuban government and attack all opponents as "communist agents"?
In response, ten US Congresspeople issued a statement denouncing the report as "an attack on Americans' constitutional rights to free speech and assembly. We denounce this administration's irresponsible attacks against civil society organizations, activists, journalists, labor leaders, Members of Congress, elected officials, and private individuals based on their advocacy for peaceful foreign policy and social justice at home."
"We stand firmly against this report and other efforts by the Trump administration to weaponize the federal government against dissent, which is a patriotic tradition."
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'McCarthyite' Rubio Report Ripped as Attempt to Justify Trump Invasion of Cuba
Critics panned the publication for not only its warmongering but also "unfounded claims seeking to tar domestic movements for social change as agents of a foreign government."
Jul 20, 2026
While some Republicans in Congress cheered the US Department of State's Monday report titled "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism," American and Cuban critics blasted it as part of both President Donald Trump's push to invade the island and his authoritarian crackdown on domestic dissent.
"For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States," the report begins, "that has infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history."
Sharing the document on social media, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants and a longtime advocate of regime change on the island—similarly claimed that Cuba's government "has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States. The State Department is exposing the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country. The American people deserve to know."
Some of the critics responded directly to Rubio, calling the report "justification for the military invasion of Cuba and the new COINTELPRO," a reference to the Federal Bureau of Investigation program targeting US organizers over half a century ago.
Defense Priorities fellow and Chicago Tribune foreign affairs columnist Daniel DePetris wrote: "This report actually states, in all seriousness, that Cuba's main goal is to conquer the United States. It's about as dumb as dumb gets. Don't be fooled: This is the State Department trying to build the foundational case for US military action, should Trump decide to do it."
Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at King's College London and fellow at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, urged Rubio, "Before building another casus belli for Cuba, try to solve the strategic disaster that is the Iran War you started but cannot win."
Trump in recent months has ramped up the United States' decadeslong and deadly economic assault on Cuba and suggested that he may try to take over the island. However, he's also signaled such action may come only after an end to his illegal war on Iran, which has been revived in recent days following a failed ceasefire.
In an apparent show of support for Trump taking military action against the island nation, Congressman Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) declared on social media Monday, "Cuba is next!"
Meanwhile, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said in Spanish that "the latest fallacy from the US Department of State against Cuba forms part of the construction, by the secretary of state, of a pretext for sustaining its cruel and criminal economic war that punishes every Cuban family, and its aspiration to militarily aggress Cuba, for which it desperately seeks the support of US citizens. It is further evidence of the macabre plan designed by that US politician from South Florida, who only satisfies the interests of those who have always paid him."
US Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), who recently traveled to Cuba to hear firsthand accounts of the humanitarian crisis, said that "Secretary Rubio's deranged 'analysis' leaves out the fact that for more than six decades, the United States' policies have destabilized our neighbors in Latin America—including Cuba—through sanctions, embargoes, military coups, land control, and colonization."
"Today, the Trump Department of State, led by Rubio, continues that imperialist tradition while doing what authoritarians do by criminalizing dissent," she continued. "US foreign policy is responsible for death, destruction, and destabilization. We can change that. We CAN become good neighbors."
About halfway through the State Department report, it complains about a "constant stream of Western left-wing activists, influencers, and organizers" participating in "solidarity delegations" as well as events such as the March 2026 "Nuestra América Convoy," which delivered humanitarian aid to everyday Cubans suffering due to the Trump administration's intensified blockade.
"Participants included a suite of influential progressives from the United States and across the world, including Hasan Piker; Amazon Labor Union founder Christian Smalls; a delegation from the Democratic Socialists of America; former UK Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn; former Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias; several other current and former members of European Parliament; and Isra Hirsi, campus activist and daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)," the report states. Elsewhere, it takes aim at groups including the peace organization CodePink, Communist Party USA, the National Lawyers Guild, and others.
Some targeted individuals and groups responded to what CodePink called a "conspiracy theory that masquerades as a report on Cuba," full of "baseless smears and imaginary, contrived links to Russia, China, and Iran."
"The report attempts to paint the tiny island as a threat but says nothing about the US blockade that starves and punishes 10 million people," CodePink said. "This latest attempt by the State Department is just one of many politically motivated witch hunts designed to silence anti-war voices who dare to challenge US militarism. It's about justifying even more aggression against Cuba while turning advocates for peace into suspects. We've seen this playbook before. It's McCarthyism, plain and simple."
"CodePink is currently under investigation by the Treasury Department simply for bringing medical supplies to serve children's hospitals in Cuba. We live in a world where, sadly, the people delivering medicine—not those who are enforcing the policies that deprive Cubans of medicine, food, fuel, and electricity—are under investigation," the group noted.
The organization also nodded to the dozens of United Nations General Assembly votes against the decades of American sanctions, saying that "we stand proudly with the global majority, including 187 UN member nations, who oppose the inhumane US blockade of Cuba. We will not be intimidated for delivering humanitarian aid and advocating for diplomacy over war."
"End the blockade. End the sanctions. End the economic warfare. End the threats of military intervention," CodePink declared. "Let Cubans determine their own future. Hands off Cuba."
Although not mentioned in the administration's new document, Defending Rights & Dissent joined the organizations publicly lambasting it, with policy director Chip Gibbons saying that his group "objects to the State Department's McCarthyite report on Cuba, which makes unfounded claims seeking to tar domestic movements for social change as agents of a foreign government."
Throughout its 100 pages, the publication "goes so far as to cite reports from the long-discredited House Un-American Activities Committee, in order to revive absurd Cold War conspiracy theories and update them for the present," noted Gibbons the author of The Imperial Bureau: The FBI, Political Surveillance, and the Rise of the US National Security State.
"The report smears activists, organizations, and even elected officials using guilt-by-association techniques. It appears designed to justify both domestic political repression and regime change in Cuba," he added. "Congress must not only condemn the report but hold hearings examining its authorship and to determine if the claims behind it have been used to facilitate the surveillance of American activists."
This article has been updated with comment from Congresswoman Delia Ramirez.
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'Fascism Is Here': Rubio, Miller Say More Terrorist Designations Coming for 'Far-Left' Groups
"If you’re not alarmed you’re not paying attention."
Jul 16, 2026
Trump administration officials on Thursday hyped up plans to carry out mass political arrests and prosecutions of people whom it deemed far-left terrorists.
In a speech given at the US State Department, Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump's deputy chief of staff, described left-wing political violence as a "fatal cancer to civilization," and boasted of plans to use state power to suppress people whom he called "political terrorists."
Miller said that the administration would be carrying out this operation under the guidance of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), a directive signed by Trump in September that demanded a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
Miller bragged that "for the first time in American history," NSPM-7 would direct "all of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work together to disrupt, identify, defund, de-bank, arrest, prosecute these political terrorists that are operating within our country."
Santa Monica Goebbels is doing his weird and creepy gyrations while delivering a speech smearing Democrats as violent radicals pic.twitter.com/PaeDcD55jw
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2026
Miller said that the mass arrest of left-wing radicals was necessary to prevent them from carrying out mass arrests of their own.
"Inevitably, left to its course, it always becomes a gulag," said Miller. "It always becomes the mass imprisonment of political enemies, the stripping of their rights and freedoms, inflicting immense pain, humiliation, suffering, in order to establish complete and total control, control through psychological and physical and actual terror."
The social media account of independent progressive publication The Tennessee Holler expressed alarm at Miller's speech.
"Fascism is here," The Tennessee Holler wrote. "If you’re not alarmed you’re not paying attention. 'Left-wing political terrorism' will mean those who oppose the regime—while actual right-wing extremism is allowed to grow and thrive. We are very far off the cliff, folks."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also spoke of the event, noted last year that his department "designated four violent far-left extremist groups as foreign terrorist organizations, and there will be more designations soon."
Secretary of State Rubio says there will be more terrorist designations of left-wing groups "soon." pic.twitter.com/RmZjBgQXas
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) July 16, 2026
The administration's declaration of war against left-wing political violence comes despite decades of research showing that political violence is more commonly carried out by right-wing groups.
A report published last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that, while left-wing political violence has grown since Trump’s first election in 2016, it “remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers.”
The report also noted that violence carried out by left-wing individuals or groups was "remarkably less lethal" than violence carried out by right-wing or jihadist individuals or groups.
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Ilhan Omar Takes Marco Rubio to Task With Call for US to Finally Join International Criminal Court
"America is strongest when we lead with our values, not when we demand immunity from them."
Jul 15, 2026
Days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed to "dismantle” the International Criminal Court, Rep. Ilhan Omar hit back on Wednesday with a resolution urging the US to join the international war crimes tribunal for the first time.
The Democrat from Minnesota was the first member of Congress to push back against the Trump administration's pledge that it would “systematically disable” the ICC's “ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty.”
“The ICC is a crucial tool for justice in places where victims have nowhere else to turn,” Omar told The Guardian. “If we truly believe in human rights and the rule of law, we should strengthen international justice—not undermine it. The United States should lead by example and show that no one is above the law.”
The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC in 1998. But during President Donald Trump's second term, his administration has waged war on the body, specifically over its investigations into Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and investigations into US personnel over alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.
It has imposed sanctions on most of the court's leadership, as well as on those who have "materially assisted" ICC investigations it opposes, including lawyers and human rights groups that have provided evidence.
The administration has also reportedly demanded that the court amend the Rome Statute to ensure that Trump and members of his administration, as well as Israeli officials, cannot be investigated or prosecuted.
Rubio's pledge to dismantle the court has drawn widespread condemnation from human rights advocates.
Agnès Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said that “in trying to discredit the court, Rubio instead highlights its very purpose: ensuring accountability when those with the power to act choose not to.”
"His arguments read like a tacit admission of wrongdoing," she said, "suggesting concerns that US officials could one day be held accountable for actions that may amount to crimes under international law, including deporting people to torture in El Salvador’s prisons or the campaign of extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific."
She said, "The only reason he would have to fear the ICC is if US officials have committed such crimes outside the United States and the US government is unwilling to hold them genuinely accountable.”
Omar's resolution came as a pair of advocacy organizations launched a lawsuit against Trump and other top administration officials alleging that they illegally "muzzle[d] Palestine advocacy" in violation of the First Amendment when they sanctioned human rights groups that called for investigations into US and Israeli nationals over war crimes in Gaza.
While Rubio has denounced the court's very existence as a threat to “every aspect of [America’s] political and legal system," and argued that it could lead to the prosecution of US soldiers simply for serving in the military, Omar said this was "simply not true."
"The ICC is an international court of last resort, intended to prosecute only the most horrific crimes—war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity—when countries are unable or unwilling to do so themselves," she said. "The best way to avoid ICC scrutiny is simple: don't commit atrocity crimes, and if credible allegations arise, investigate them transparently and hold those responsible accountable."
Omar has introduced two previous resolutions calling on the US to ratify the Rome Statute and join the ICC in 2020 and 2022. Neither of them was brought to the floor for a vote, though the latter one had nine Democratic cosponsors.
Announcing plans for a new resolution on Monday, she said, "I urge my colleagues who believe in justice and human rights to join me."
She said: "America is strongest when we lead with our values, not when we demand immunity from them. If we respect human rights, uphold the rule of law, and hold ourselves to the same standards we ask of others, we have nothing to fear from the ICC.”
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