Blog

US Actions Toward Cuba Are Criminal

A recent Wall Street Journal article recently outlined yet the latest attempts by the US government to bring down Cuba’s socialist government, a process that has been going on without much success for the past 65 years. Once upon a time, the US policy toward Cuba was part of the greater Cold War and it was front-and-center in the national news cycle. (Many of us still remember the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, wondering if we were about to face an all-out nuclear war).

When Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolutionaries took over Cuba’s government in early 1959, ousting the US-backed president Fulgencio Batista, many in this country cheered. Batista, after all, was seen as a corrupt dictator and Castro was popular with many Americans who had high hopes that he would do a better job of governing Cuba. After Castro, however, seized and nationalized US businesses, declared Cuba to be communist and turned toward the Soviet Union for his support, the US government since then has sought to overthrow him.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s latest efforts are making life almost unbearable for Cubans, who already are among the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere. (Before Castro’s revolution, Cuba was one of the wealthiest nations in the Americas). The WSJ reports:

Daily life in Cuba is grinding to a halt under a US campaign to block the island’s oil imports, drawing international criticism that the Trump administration is pushing the island toward a humanitarian crisis with no clear endgame.

The Caribbean island’s Communist authorities are rationing dwindling fuel supplies, curtailing public transportation and furloughing workers. Children are being sent home from school early, people can barely afford basic food like milk and chicken, and long lines have sprung up at gas stations.

Keep reading

Surprise: Basing College Admissions On Merit Instead Of Skin Is Good For Everyone

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), which banned affirmative action in college admissions, many experts, university officials, civil rights advocates, and government leaders warned about sharp declines in black and Hispanic enrollment. Yet a new report suggests that these predictions were overly pessimistic and failed to reflect the full scope of the situation. 

Unlike early analyses that concentrated solely on underrepresented minority (URM) enrollment at a handful of prestigious institutions like Harvard and MIT, James Murphy’s January 2026 report for Class Action — a nonprofit advocating equity in higher education — examined 2024 freshman enrollment at more than 3,000 colleges and universities using federal data, offering a more balanced view of the enrollment landscape after the Supreme Court decision.  

Before anyone accuses the report of being influenced by right-wing bias, it is important to note that Murphy professes his leftist views at the beginning of the report. He believes that race-conscious admissions are necessary for URM students and that the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ban harms long-term well-being of URM students. Despite his ideological stance, Murphy deserves credit for not omitting results that contradict his views, even if he attempts to rationalize them. 

The report highlights a significant trend: Highly selective colleges in the U.S. (which admit only 8 percent of the student population across all four-year institutions) have experienced a decline in enrollment of URM students — particularly black students. But many less-selective institutions (which account for more than 90 percent of four-year colleges and universities) are welcoming more URM students, leading to a remarkable increase in their enrollment. 

Flagship state universities especially experienced standout gains: Enrollment of black freshmen climbed 30 percent at LSU and 50 percent at the University of Mississippi; Hispanic freshmen were up more than 33 percent at Tennessee and South Carolina. Less-selective private colleges like Syracuse University also experienced 17 percent growth in black first-year students, and Hispanic freshmen increased 45 percent at the University of Miami. The only exception to this growing trend is a puzzling small dip in black enrollment at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).  

The overall increase of URMs at most colleges and universities suggests that the ban on affirmative action did not discourage URMs from seeking and obtaining higher education, as many critics of the ruling warned. Additionally, white and Asian enrollment remained stable during this period, indicating that the rise in URM enrollment resulted in organic growth rather than a zero-sum shift. Even Murphy had to acknowledge that colleges and universities have become more racially diverse than many anticipated after the Supreme Court’s decision. 

Instead of celebrating this trend, Murphy expressed concern about the cascading effect: The ban on affirmative action has resulted in more URMs attending less-selective schools instead of highly competitive ones. This shift could negatively affect their graduation rates and lifetime earnings. His argument is based on the observation that, historically, highly selective institutions have higher graduation rates than other schools, and graduates from these institutions tend to earn more over their lifetimes compared to graduates from less-selective schools. However, the data from California’s experience with the affirmative action ban suggests a corrective for this perspective. 

Keep reading

AOC Has Emotional Meltdown on Camera, Appears to Hold Back Tears, Blames Trump and Critics for Her Foreign Policy Disasters

Once again, the Radical Left’s favorite Squad member is substituting actual policy knowledge with absolute theatrical melodrama.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, AOC delivered one of the most humiliating performances by a U.S. politician in modern history at the Munich Security Conference. She made a host of mind-boggling gaffes in response to simple questions while botching basic geography.

In one instance, a moderator at the event asked AOC if the US should commit troops to defend against China, and she turned into a stuttering mess.

“Um, you know, I think that, uh, this is such a, uh, you know, I — I think that this is a, umm, this is of course a, uh, a very longstanding, um, policy of the United States – uh and I think what we are hoping for is we want to make sure that we never get to that point,” AOC said.

“And we want to make sure that we are moving all of our economic research and global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise,” she said.

In addition to the ugly episode, AOC also incorrectly stated that Venezuela was below the equator and called Secretary of State Marco Rubio racist for saying cowboys came from Spain.

AOC then called The New York Times and vented her fury over the coverage of her gaffes and the questions she was asked.

“This reporter came up to me and was like, ‘Is Munich the new New Hampshire?’ And I cannot say enough how out of touch and missing the point, genuinely, that is,” AOC whined during the interview with the Times.

“Global democracies are on fire the world over, and established parties are falling to right-wing populist movements.”

AOC continued to complain about the media clips that went viral, saying, “Any five-to-10-second thing” only serves to “distract from the substance of what I am saying.”

AOC later took to Instagram, her voice wavering and her eyes welling up, as she pushed back hard against claims that she lacks ‘serious foreign policy chops.’

Keep reading

The Household Items That Spy On You

I’m sure a lot of you saw the Ring Super Bowl commercial where they showed how Amazon’s Ring cameras surveil entire neighborhoods through a feature called Search Party. The feature allows users to upload an image of something and then all of the Ring cameras in its proximity comb through their own footage to see if that thing passed in front of them. The ad used the example of a user using Search Party to find a missing dog.

Critical observers were quick to point out that this could easily be used to spy on everyone, but it’s not just Ring that’s spying on you. Here are some common consumer items that you might not have realized are watching you right now.

Your TV. Modern TVs have something in the terms of service called Automatic Content Recognition, which basically means that your TV records everything you play on it, whether it’s Netflix, Youtube, video games or even something you watched by connecting your laptop. And disconnecting your TV from the internet doesn’t stop this. Just last month, major TV manufacturers were sued in Texas for screenshotting users’ TVs every 500 milliseconds.

Your car. New cars monitor everything from your location, how fast you drive, how hard you brake, but also things like your race, weight, health, taste in music, sexual activity and trade union membership. The HALT Drunk Driving Act mandates that by 2026, all new cars have to have a mechanism that automatically turns a car off if it deems someone unfit to drive.

Your router. Xfinity recently announced its Wifi motion feature which monitors the signal strength between the router and its connected devices like printers, phones or game consoles. If someone walks between the router and the device, the router will be able to see the signal being disrupted, effectively turning it into a motion tracker. Several ISPs are rolling out similar features and marketing them as home security tools.

Smart watches. Smart watches can be used to track your personal health like counting calories or monitoring your heart rate but that information can just as easily be used to create a detailed map of your life. It reveals when you eat, when you sleep, when you’re nervous, when you’re lying, where you were, if you were on drugs, etc. Smart watch data has already been used as evidence in criminal cases.

AI assistants. Tech companies are in a race to give their AI chat bots the power to execute real world tasks like sending emails, creating to-do lists, shopping, or planning vacations. The only catch is if you want it to shop, you have to give it your credit card information. If you want it to clean up your desktop, you have to give it access to your hard drive. AI assistant Clawdbot went viral after naive users installed it only to have their assistants taken over by hackers.

Keep reading

French Modelling Agent and Alleged Serial Rapist Jean-Luc Brunel Was Going to Testify Against Jeffrey Epstein Before He Was Found Dead in His Cell in La Santé Prison

Brunel contemplated flipping on Epstein.

We often hear analysts, politicians or victims complaining that Ghislaine Maxwell ended up being the only member of the Jeffrey Epstein trafficking ring to face justice.

But this complaint, while it has merit, is not completely accurate, because it ignores the sordid saga of French modeling agent and alleged serial rapist Jean-Luc Brunel.

Late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre said he ‘raped [her] repeatedly in New York and on Epstein’s island’.

From her 2015 testimony: ‘He was another of Epstein’s powerful friends who had many contacts with young girls throughout the world. In fact, his only similarity with Epstein and the only link to their friendship appeared to be that Brunel could get dozens of underage girls and feed Epstein’s (and Maxwell’s) strong appetite for sex with minors’.

Additionally, she said that ‘Jeffrey Epstein has told me that he has slept with over 1,000 of Brunel’s girls, and everything that I have seen confirms this claim’.

In her posthumous memoir ‘Nobody’s Girl’, Giuffre added: “I’ll never forget how Epstein and Brunel looked at one another as they abused girls side by side. They were truly gloating, taking a mutual malignant pleasure in our misfortune.”

Now, the DOJ-released files show Brunel contemplated flipping and testifying against Epstein, before he was found ‘suicided’ in his La Santé prison cell.

Keep reading

Feds Indict Six More in Venezuelan Gang’s High-Tech ATM Heist – Total Hits 93

A federal grand jury in the District of Nebraska returned an indictment Wednesday charging six individuals for their roles in a large conspiracy to deploy malware and steal millions of dollars from ATMs in the United States, a crime commonly referred to as “ATM jackpotting.” 

About 87 others have already been charged, bringing the total to 93 charged defendants. 

Wester Eduardo Dugarte Goicochea, 43; Mauro Angel Briceno Caldera, 37; Henry Rafael Gonzalez-Gutierrez, 37; and Giovanny Miguel Ocanto Yance, 26, Venezuelan nationals residing in the Houston area, were charged. In addition to Jelfenson David Bolivar Diaz, 38, and Arlinzon Jose Reyes Villegas, 21, both Venezuelan nationals, were charged. 

This indictment alleges five counts, including conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank burglary and computer fraud, bank fraud, bank burglary, and damage to computers.

The most recent indictment follows a previous one returned on Dec. 9, 2025, that alleged that Tren de Aragua, a designated foreign terrorist organization, conducted jackpotting attacks across America. The Dec. 9 indictment charged 22 individuals with offenses for their roles in the conspiracy: 13 individuals are charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, 10 with conspiracy to commit bank fraud, 10 with conspiracy to commit bank burglary and fraud and related activity in connection with computers, and 22 with conspiracy to commit money laundering. The indictment also alleges that TdA used jackpotting to steal millions of dollars in the United States and then transferred the proceeds among its members and associates to conceal the illegally obtained cash. The indictment alleged a national conspiracy to commit these offenses, with crimes committed all over the United States in furtherance of these conspiracies that generated millions in illegal proceeds for the combined defendants and the TdA organization.

Keep reading

Insanity: Professor Gets Rid of Finals, Assigns Editing Of “LGBTQ+” Wikipedia Pages Instead

In the latest lunacy on campus, according to Campus Reform, “A professor at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) has assigned students an alternative to traditional finals—creating and editing Wikipedia pages about ‘queer and trans people of color.”

Excellence and quality education continue to be replaced by Woke indoctrination at Berkeley.

The ‘Ethnic Studies’ professor had students defend and expand on Wikipedia articles related to ‘LGBTQ’ history and transgenderism, according to the report.

Somehow, this insanity is considered worth the price of tuition at Berkeley despite the fact that it does nothing to prepare students for real life.

According to The Campus Reform report, “The project is facilitated through Wiki Education, an organization that partners with college faculty to incorporate Wikipedia editing into coursework.”

This should never have been a thing, and it is hardly educational to begin with. The fact that the course is named, absurdly, Queer of Color, as if that is part of education, is even worse.

Among the pages they were assigned were such gems as “Queer Vampires,” “LGBTQ themes in horror fiction,” and more.

Another article was about “Lesbian bars,” as absurd as that sounds.

“Classes have made more than 300,000 edits and added 3,000 citations to Wikipedia articles, collectively amassing nearly 100 million views.”

The professor who assigned this framed the assignment as opposing the Trump administration.

“Right now, the Trump administration is trying to erase the very existence of transgender people, so having information about those histories, as well as present challenges facing queer and trans communities, is particularly urgent,” is what the professor in question told The Daily Californian.

This activist/professor unsurprisingly lists “transgender studies,” “queer activism in the Americas,” and “sex work” as her areas of expertise. In other words, she should not be in education.

These types of courses are pure leftist indoctrination and do not qualify as educational or helpful for real life.

Keep reading

U.S. Issues Shelter-in-Place Warnings for Popular Tourist Destinations in Mexico After Major Cartel Leader Is Killed

The United States Department of State has issued shelter-in-place warnings for Americans at several popular tourist destinations in Mexico.

The official alert was issued on Sunday, Feb. 22, for the Mexican state of Jalisco — which includes popular tourist spots such as Puerto Vallarta, Chapala and Guadalajara — as well as the states of Tamaulipas, Michoacan, Guerrero and Nuevo Leon.

“Due to ongoing security operations and related road blockages and criminal activity, U.S. citizens in the named locations should shelter in place until further notice,” the department said.

The alert additionally advised U.S. citizens in the affected areas to “avoid areas around law enforcement activity,” “avoid crowds” and “seek shelter and minimize unnecessary movements.”

The U.S. Department of State and Mexico’s Ministry of National Defense did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

The warnings come after the Mexican government initiated a military operation against the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), a major drug cartel in the region, on Feb. 22, per a press release from Mexico’s Ministry of National Defense.  

Keep reading

CIA Retracts 19 Different Intelligence Reports After Review Found Leftist Political Bias

CIA Director John Ratcliffe has ordered the withdrawal or major revision of 19 intelligence assessments after an internal review found they did not meet the agency’s standards for analytical rigor and political neutrality, the agency said Friday.

The CIA released unredacted versions of three of the affected reports, all of which had a strong left-wing political bias.

The topics covered included LGBT activists in the Middle East, women and white violent extremism, and access to contraception during the COVID pandemic.

The reports spanned multiple administrations, including one produced under Obama, one during Trump’s first term, and one during Biden’s tenure.

According to the agency, the reports “fall short of the high standards of impartiality that CIA must uphold and do not reflect the expertise for which our analysts are renowned.”

“There is absolutely no room for bias in our work, and when we identify instances where analytic rigor has been compromised, we have a responsibility to correct the record,” Ratcliffe said in a statement.

”These actions underscore our commitment to transparency, accountability, and objective intelligence analysis,” he continued.

The reports were identified during a broader review conducted by Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which examined hundreds of CIA analytic products from the past decade.

An internal review led by Deputy Director Michael Ellis reached the same conclusion, the agency said.

The move follows earlier efforts by Ratcliffe to revisit past intelligence work tainted by political bias within the agency.

Keep reading

Detroit Cops Suspended for Calling Border Patrol During Traffic Stops in Violation of Policies, Chief Says His Goal is to Fire Them

Two Detroit Police Department officers have been suspended without pay for 30 days after contacting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) during separate traffic stops, in violation of department policy.

Detroit Police Department Chief Todd Bettison has said his goal is to fire both officers.

The department’s policy prohibits officers from coordinating with federal immigration authorities for enforcement purposes.

The traffic stops in question took place in December and earlier this month.

In the first case, Officer James Corsi contacted Border Patrol during a traffic stop on the city’s west side while investigating a felony warrant.

In the second, Sgt. Denise Wallet called federal agents for translation assistance instead of using the department’s contracted 24-hour translation service.

Both contacts led to the individuals being detained by federal authorities.

Chief Bettison initially suspended the officers with pay and stated his intention to fire them. The Detroit Board of Police Commissioners voted unanimously on Thursday to suspend them without pay for 30 days.

Sgt. Wallet, a 27-year veteran, filed a federal lawsuit against the city challenging her suspension and claiming it violated her constitutional rights. The suit alleges that she contacted Border Patrol only for identification purposes, on her lieutenant’s instruction, and seeks to block further discipline.

Following the board’s decision and the lawsuit, Chief Bettison announced on Friday that he was scrapping his plan to fire the officers, stating that he was satisfied with the suspension, according to a CBS News report.

Keep reading