Hey everyone. Happy Thursday.
Today’s big question: How many unauthorized wars is one president allowed to start before the country says no?
Yesterday, Donald Trump took the first formal step toward an invasion of Cuba. He did this while we are still fighting the war he started in Iran. War one is not over. But it appears that Trump is trying to start war number two.
That is our top story.
We’ll also go deep into the growing Republican revolt against Trump’s slush fund, and the Capitol Police officers suing to block it. Big Tobacco buying its way back into American health policy. And the mystery of a missing congressman.
Quick reminder before we get going. Please like, subscribe, and share this with someone who needs to see it. It really does help push this out to more people.
1. Trump Lays Legal Groundwork to Invade Cuba
Yesterday acting Attorney General Todd Blanche unsealed a federal indictment in Miami charging Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president of Cuba, with conspiracy to kill US nationals, destruction of aircraft, and four counts of murder. The charges stem from the 1996 shootdown of two civilian planes operated by a Miami-based group called Brothers to the Rescue. Four American citizens died in that attack. That is a horrific event, and worth saying so up front.
But here is what makes this an escalation, not a reckoning. The Justice Department charged Cuban military officers for the same shootdown back in 2003. This is not new evidence. This is a 30-year-old crime being re-indicted on Cuban Independence Day, at the exact moment the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group sailed into the southern Caribbean.
The US Southern Command posted on social media yesterday afternoon: “Welcome to the Caribbean, Nimitz Carrier Strike Group.”
The choreography did not stop there. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recorded a Spanish-language video addressed to the Cuban people, telling them, “the only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country.”
CIA Director John Ratcliffe was in Havana less than a week ago. And Republican Carlos Gimenez, the only sitting Cuban-born member of Congress, went on CNN to say the indictment gives the United States “the legal basis to go and remove” Castro.
We have seen this movie before. The Trump administration indicted Nicolás Maduro on drug charges. Then sent the USS Gerald R. Ford to the Caribbean. Then sent commandos into Caracas in January, captured Maduro, and brought him to New York to face the indictment. The Wall Street Journal wrote yesterday that Trump is, quote, “applying the playbook he used to upend Venezuela’s leadership” in Cuba.
And the White House is not hiding what comes next. Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, went on television and laid out the case:
We are still fighting a war in Iran. Gas is climbing toward five dollars a gallon because of that war. And yesterday, by a vote of 50 to 47, the United States Senate told the president he does not have authorization to keep doing this.
Before the ink on it was dry, Trump was on a different stage, building the legal cover story for war number two. A different country. No congressional authorization. No debate.
Donald Trump treats the part of the Constitution that says only Congress can declare war like drywall. He punches through it whenever it gets in the way of what he wants. And he keeps getting away with it because just enough Republicans in Congress decide that going along is easier than doing their job.
We cannot keep doing this. The longer we let him, the harder it gets to take any of it back.
2. Republicans Revolt Against Trump's January 6 Payout Fund and Capitol Police Sue
It started yesterday on Capitol Hill, when Republican Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a former FBI agent, told a reporter that: “We’re going to try to kill it.”
And he is not alone.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he is “not a big fan.” Lisa Murkowski says she would have “serious and significant problems” if January 6th rioters end up getting paid. And inside Wednesday’s closed-door GOP lunch, one Republican senator described it to Axios as “kryptonite for Republicans.”
But the Republican who put it best was Thom Tillis of North Carolina:
So when you have Republicans across both chambers saying this is corrupt, this is illegal, this is stupid on stilts, you would think the administration might at least try to walk it back. Or at least pretend to listen.
Instead, the acting Attorney General of the United States, Todd Blanche, gave us his read on what the American people actually want:
And others who have a direct stake in the fight are not sitting by quietly. Yesterday, two Capitol Police officers, Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, filed a federal lawsuit calling the fund, quote, “the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century,” and asking a court to enforce a section of the Fourteenth Amendment that bars the United States government from paying any debt incurred in aid of insurrection.
And I want to be very clear: Officers Dunn and Hodges are not being paranoid. The applications to the fund are already pouring in. The family of Ashli Babbitt filed a thirty million dollar wrongful death claim and just cashed a five million dollar settlement out of it. The Proud Boys are suing for one hundred million. CNN went out this week and talked to pardoned rioters across the country who are excited about getting paid:
$30 million!?
Look, when Republicans are on the record calling it kryptonite, that should tell you what this fund actually is. It is a reparations program for an insurrection. Officers Dunn and Hodges are right to fight it. And every member of Congress, of either party, who looks the other way owns what comes next.
3. FDA Commissioner Resigns After Trump Reverses Flavored Vape Ban Following Donation from Big Tobacco
On April 30th, Reynolds American, the tobacco giant that makes vapes and Camel cigarettes, donated five million dollars to MAGA Inc., the Trump super PAC. Two days later, on May 2nd, a Reynolds executive and the company’s lobbyists sat down for lunch with Donald Trump at his golf club in Jupiter, Florida. They complained about the FDA blocking flavored vape sales. Trump picked up the phone right there at lunch and called the head of HHS and the head of CMS to chew them out.
One week later, the FDA issued new guidance allowing flavored vape sales. The FDA commissioner, Marty Makary, resigned over it. So did a senior spokesman at HHS. Makary told colleagues he could not, “in good conscience,” approve flavored vapes for the American public.
In 2019, during his first term, Donald Trump said, “we can’t allow people to get sick and allow our youth to be so affected,” and supported banning flavored vapes. In 2026, after Reynolds gave him a total of fifteen million dollars across two campaigns and chipped in for his White House ballroom, that policy reversed itself in nine days. Pay to play used to be the kind of thing we sent politicians to prison for. Now it happens at lunch. And I bet Reynolds even picked up the lunch tab too.
4. New Jersey's Vanishing Congressman: Tom Kean Jr. Hasn't Been Seen in Months
Republican Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey’s seventh district has not cast a vote in the United States Congress since March 5th. Eleven weeks. He has made no public appearances. He has filmed no video statements. NBC News knocked on his door this week and nobody answered. His neighbors say they have not seen him in months. He has missed more than eighty votes.
His office says it is a personal medical issue and that he will be back soon. They will not say what the issue is, or provide an actual timeline of Kean returning. Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters yesterday that he spoke to Kean a few weeks ago:
Meanwhile, Keane’s office is tweeting about the Congressional Crypto Caucus and sending out a newsletter with a photo of him from two years ago. His primary is in two weeks, but he has no challenger. However, the general election in November is one of the most competitive House races in the country.
Look, people get sick. And I genuinely hope everything is okay. But a public servant has a duty to tell the people he represents whether he is actually able to serve them. Voters deserve more than a stock photo and a crypto tweet.
Tomorrow we’ll be tracking the House version of the Iran war powers resolution and the first court hearings on the slush fund lawsuit.
If you learned something today, please like, share, and subscribe so more people see this. See you tomorrow.
