United States | News & Politics

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The move comes as President Trump is ratcheting up his rhetorical assault on Cuba’s leadership.

March 6, 2026

https://archive.ph/4CqUN

The U.S. attorney in South Florida has ordered a broad-ranging inquiry into Cuba’s leaders and Communist Party officials for drug, immigration, economic and violent crimes with a goal of bringing fast indictments, according to three people with knowledge of his actions.

The move comes as President Trump is ratcheting up his rhetorical assault on Cuba’s leadership, and has gone so far as to recently suggest that he might attack the island nation 90 miles off the Florida coast after he is finished with the Iran war.

Bringing criminal cases against Cuban leaders could provide a legal and political pretext for such action, just as the Justice Department’s indictment against Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, was used to justify his capture and extradition.

If the administration does in fact seek charges against Cuba’s leaders to facilitate a snatch-and-grab operation inside Cuba like that against Mr. Maduro, it would be an extraordinary use of the criminal justice system to advance the White House’s geopolitical agenda.

...The administration’s removals to date have included stripping information about climate change, slavery, the civil rights movement, and the mistreatment of Native Americans from national park sites, according to court filings from the National Parks Conservation Association. NPCA sued the Interior Department this month over its decision to remove content from park sites.

The organization said in the suit that the content removals “erase the history of countless people and communities from public spaces” and “limit the availability of scientific information relevant to ensuring the long-term preservation of the parks themselves."

"...we can’t talk about times in American history where people in power hurt other people. We can’t talk about times in American history where people’s civil rights were violated..."

...In at least one report, a park service employee suggested the administration review a sign and possibly change it even though they acknowledged changes could run afoul of legal requirements.

“Text addresses slavery as the primary cause of the American Civil War,” the report from a staff member at Stones River National Battlefield in Tennessee said. “This is both historically correct and legislatively mandated but we ask for further review to confirm it is aligned with SO 3431.”...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The sound of the school nurse’s office door opening. Light reflecting off a stained-glass window. Tearful outbursts and fear of getting on the school bus.

For many survivors of clergy abuse, memories like these linger for decades.

A report released this week by the Rhode Island attorney general detailed decades of abuse inside the state’s Catholic Diocese of Providence, identifying 75 clergy members who sexually abused more than 300 children since 1950. The investigation drew on thousands of church records and years of interviews with victims and witnesses. Officials said the true number of victims is likely much higher.

Joel Swanson March 5, 2026

Too many Jewish organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and American Jewish Committee (AJC) have suggested that this is the time to get behind the war effort and not to ask questions. But to say that Americans should not ask questions about the relationship between Israel and the United States because it might raise antisemitic conspiracy theories means handing over the tools of democratic accountability. That is too high a price.

And yet. The questions are not being asked only by sober foreign policy analysts. They are being asked, in far cruder form, by people who have never needed a pretext to believe that Jewish power secretly governs American foreign policy. In the days since the strikes, social media has been awash in the language of “puppet masters”, “dual loyalties” and insinuations that Jewish money bought American blood. The phrase “Israel first” – often wielded as an insinuation that US politicians are controlled by Jews – has surged across platforms. Far-right influencers have recycled rat imagery in ways that consciously echo Nazi propaganda.

March 6, 2026

The moment 19-year-old Emely Agustin spotted the group of masked immigration agents tackling a woman facedown on the pavement, her heart dropped.

She saw the woman’s red jacket.

“Oh my fucking God. That’s my mom!” she screamed.

It was the morning of 5 November in Cottage Grove, in central Oregon, and masked officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had dragged Juanita Avila out of her van. The agents pinned her down as she cried out for her daughter, who started filming. Juanita, a 47-year-old legal permanent resident, had her green card in her pocket, but officers handcuffed and detained her.

Tensions are rising between US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the US’s approach to the war on Iran, three former US officials and a senior regional official familiar with the matter told Middle East Eye.

Rubio and Hegseth were described as “at each other's throats” over the question of whether the US should deploy troops to Iran at Israel’s request, the sources told MEE.

Hegseth is supportive of the position, while Rubio is deeply wary of entangling the US in a long war, the sources told MEE.

The US has mainly confined its operations to air strikes and standoff strikes using cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, but CNN reported this week that the CIA has begun training and arming Kurdish fighters to operate in Iran.

One Gulf official told MEE that US officials have discussed sending special operations teams into Iran to target senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials and people familiar with Iran's nuclear programme.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43916300

The executive order, issued in December, prevented the Council on American-Islamic Relations from receiving government benefits.

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' order to classify a prominent Muslim civil rights group as a terrorist organization, calling the Republican's action "a political statement at the expense of others’ constitutional rights."

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a preliminary injunction against the governor's actions related to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

DeSantis issued an executive order on Dec. 8 calling CAIR a "terrorist organization," which prevented the organization from "receiving any contract, employment, funds or other benefit or privilege."

"The First Amendment bars the Governor from continuing the troubling trend of using an executive office to make a political statement at the expense of others' constitutional rights," Walker wrote.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted that the U.S. was forced into the war with Iran by Israel while speaking with reporters on Monday. He explained that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had effectively boxed in the Trump administration, taking the decision out of American hands.

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” Rubio explained. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

GOP Sen. Steve Daines made the last-minute decision to to prevent Democrats from fielding a top recruit for the open Montana seat, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Daines was aware that if he withdrew too soon then Democrats would have a chance at fielding one of several potential Democrats — namely former Sen. Jon Tester or former Govs. Brian Schweitzer or Steve Bullock. Any of those Democrats could have put the state on the map in the midterms and likely have sucked up enormous cash, as Democrats have done in red states like Alaska and Ohio, scrambling the race for the majority in the fall.

Instead, Daines withdrew from the race minutes before the Wednesday evening filing deadline. Kurt Alme, who was US attorney in Montana, filed to run eight minutes before the deadline. With the deadline closed, no top-tier Democrat can now jump in the race.

Tl;dr: It went down party lines with the exceptions of Rand Paul & John Fetterman. The two independents, Angus King & Bernard Sanders, caucus with the Dems and voted yea.

Stupid dog, you made me look bad!

Barb, a 74-year-old retired mental health counsellor based in North Carolina, wrote in to the Guardian: “We can be sure that Trump has launched this war for selfish purposes.

“Whether to flaunt his power, to control the headlines (away from Epstein), or to entertain himself, this needless war is not for the benefit of the Iranian people,” she continued.

Press F to Fistbump Barb

Mission? Hostilities? Don’t call it a war, say G.O.P. lawmakers grappling with the political and legal challenges of the operation in the Middle East.

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