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San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan has pledged not to accept support from “AIPAC or its lobbyists and representatives” in her bid for California’s 11th congressional district, but federal campaign records show that the pro-Israel organization is working behind the scenes to funnel money to support her candidacy.

The money from AIPAC and its offshoot Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), which is approaching $500,000, has taken a circuitous route to San Francisco. Following the money trail requires sifting through several layers of complexity, but the picture that emerges at the end is clear.

On April 13, DMFI sent $22,500 to a super PAC called EDW Action Fund, which has been used in previous campaigns as a front for AIPAC spending. Ten days later, on April 23, it gave another $15,250, bringing the total month’s transfer $37,750.

AIPAC sponsors its own super PAC, called United Democracy Project, and UDP got into the game too, dropping $250,000 into EDW Action on April 14, a day after DMFI’s initial dump. EDW Action thus received $287,750 from AIPAC-aligned super PACs that month.

But EDW Action had previously been exposed by Drop Site and others as a known AIPAC pass-through. On May 1, a new PAC was formed, called Pro-Choice Majority Action. That PAC is legally affiliated directly with EDW Action.

Given that Pro-Choice Majority Action registered with the FEC on the first of the month, its first disclosure date falls on June 20, allowing the organization to evade filing requirements until more than two weeks after the California primaries conclude on June 2. Such vehicles are known as “pop-up PACs,” since they can pop up right before an election, spend huge sums of money, and avoid disclosing donor records until it’s too late to matter to voters.

Pro-Choice Majority Action has already spent a total of $475,000 supporting Chan, with much more likely to come through Election Day on Tuesday. Because the new PAC is formally affiliated with EDW Action, the two can transfer unlimited sums of money between themselves. As of April 30, EDW Action’s largest contribution had come from the “Kimbark Foundation,” a nonprofit that itself popped up just before moving money to EDW, which has raised only $1.25 million for the cycle. Kimbark’s only other contribution, also for $500,000, was to 314 Action Fund, another known AIPAC vehicle, which spent heavily to support Ala Stanford in her failed bid against Chris Rabb in Philadelphia. AIPAC has consistently denied it played a role in that race.

Though AIPAC’s Twitter account spent much of Saturday complaining about Drop Site News, the organization did not respond to a request for comment on its newly discovered spending. On Twitter, AIPAC argued that scrutiny of its shell PACs was “[p]art of an orchestrated campaign to single out and demonize individual pro-Israel Americans for supporting candidates of their choice,” representing a “level of scrutiny not applied to any other group of citizens.”

In a statement issued Sunday, Chan said she urged any PACs supporting her to abide by her values and eschew pro-Israel money. “Connie has also been clear from day one of this campaign that she would not accept a dime from AIPAC and she has stayed true to this throughout,” said a campaign spokesperson. “PACs act independently of our campaign and we would urge any organization supporting Connie to respect the very clear values she has laid out not to accept donations from AIPAC.”

EDW Action Fund previously spent just over $500,000 supporting Laura Fine in a Chicago-area congressional race. Fine had the backing of AIPAC but lost. EDW Action used Symmetry Media LLC to make its ad buy in that race; the documents show that Symmetry Media was also used to make the new expenditures on behalf of Connie Chan.

Lenny Young, listed in public filings as a representative of EDW and Pro-Choice Majority, said that “Pro-Choice Majority Action is not a ‘pop-up’ it’s just an affiliate and will be active for cycles to come. Launching it has been in the works for months.”

He did not directly address questions about AIPAC, but said that in general it makes sense to team up if multiple groups support the same candidate. “Obviously there are groups out there who have their own priorities, who also happen to support the same women candidates we support. In those cases, it’s clearly much more effective to combine resources to carry a message,” he said.

Chan, who has the endorsement of outgoing Rep. Nancy Pelosi, faces state Sen. Scott Wiener and Saikat Chakrabarti, a co-founder of Justice Democrats and the former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Chan’s campaign recently picked up momentum after receiving the key endorsement from Pelosi, whose retirement opened up the vacancy. For most of the race, Chan has been polling in third place behind Wiener and Saikat Chakrabarti. Recent polling, however, shows Chan moving into a close contest with Chakrabarti for second place and a spot in the general election against Wiener.

The latest poll from EMC Research places Wiener firmly ahead of the pack at 38% support, with Chan and Chakrabarti trailing behind at 22% and 21% respectively.

While serving as Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Chakrabarti clashed privately and publicly with Pelosi, urging her and the party to move faster and push harder. Animosity toward Chakrabarti among the party leadership remains intense. An advisor to Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Drop Site the party brass was glad to see him go, and isn’t interested in seeing him return as a member of Congress. “Frankly, the problems we had with her in the beginning were more her chief and not her,” he said, referring to AOC and Chakrabarti. “Then he left and everything got much better.”

This story was updated to include comment from Chan and Lenny Young.

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Ricketts, for his part, also claimed to have drawn a short straw when it came to one of the reporters assigned to this article, Drop Site’s new congressional reporter Julian Andreone. As a college student, Julian excitedly celebrated the launch of Osborn’s campaign, forecasting his victory. If I was Ricketts, I’d complain about Julian covering me too, but now that he’s out of school and working as a reporter, let’s judge him by his work rather than a past tweet. They’re probably not super excited about my own involvement either, but Ricketts himself may find something valuable in what Julian found during his recent trip to Nebraska, and we present it below with neither fear nor favor, as they say. And we encourage Ricketts himself, of course, to take the same opportunity Osborn availed himself of to answer questions and make his case to voters. As you’ll see from his campaign spokesperson’s comments to us, that’s unlikely to come about, but the door remains open.

—Ryan Grim

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The Iran War Is Crushing Nebraska Workers. Dan Osborn Is One of Them

Story by Julian Andreone and Ryan Grim

OMAHA, Nebraska—Dan Osborn pulled his beat-up 2012 Honda Accord into the Anderson Convenience Market gas station in southwest Omaha. It was May 5, and gas had climbed to over $4 a gallon amid the U.S.-Iran war. But as he filled his tank and the digits on the display surged rapidly higher, a pair of thoughts struck him: His mortgage was still unpaid and he had just quit his steamfitter job two weeks earlier so that he could campaign for Senate full time. He quickly popped the lever to staunch the bleeding.

“For the first time I can remember in my adult life, I had to stop the pump short at 30 bucks,” Osborn recalled. “My mind was floating, then I looked and I thought, ‘Oh crap, my mortgage is coming out this week.’ So I’m like, boop, and I popped it, and I looked at my bank account, and I’m like, ‘Okay, 30 bucks is gonna get me through the week.’”

Osborn is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, scion of a billionaire father who founded a financial firm that became TD Ameritrade. Ricketts, the former governor, was appointed to fill the seat vacated by Sen. Ben Sasse in January 2023—a week after current Gov. Jim Pillen, whose campaign raked in a $100,000 direct contribution from Pete Ricketts and roughly $1.3 million in Ricketts family-funded ad spending from Conservative Nebraska PAC, was sworn into office.

Polls dating back to April 2025 consistently show Osborn trailing Ricketts by one or two points, within the margin of error, until a statewide Tavern Research poll this month showed Osborn surging ahead to take a 47% to 42% lead over Ricketts. The same poll from the Democratic-leaning firm had Osborn boasting a +11 net favorability among Nebraska voters to Ricketts’ -7. Days later, a Zenith Research poll conducted only in Nebraska’s first congressional district showed Osborn leading Ricketts by 6%, with even higher favorability ratings among independent voters.

Osborn in 2024 came within 7 points of knocking off Sen. Deb Fischer, the best overperformance of any Senate candidate in the country. The difference in 2026 isn’t just the opponent—the son of a billionaire makes a useful foil for a union mechanic—but also Trump’s war and the pain that it is bringing to Nebraska. “Short term pain, long term gain,” Trump promised recently, once again defending his remark that he does not take Americans’ financial interests into account when waging the Iran war with Israel.

Since the Strait of Hormuz closed, Nebraskan farmers have faced surging fertilizer costs. The price of urea, a nitrogen fertilizer and one of the main inputs for corn and soybean production, jumped from roughly $455 per ton on February 27, the day before the Iran War began, to almost $700 per ton in late April, a stunning 54% spike. Agriculture and adjacent industries related to food production make up 44% of the state’s economic output, according to the Nebraska Farm Bureau.

“I’m feeling what people are feeling. And that’s not ‘authenticity,’ that’s just real, and it’s hard. It’s hard out there,” Osborn told Drop Site in a recent interview in Omaha. “If you’re 22 or 23 years old, you kind of expect it, right? It’s tough. You’ve got to make your way in the world first. But when you’re 51 and you’ve already worked your tail off your whole life, and you’re starting over, that becomes extremely and increasingly more difficult.”

Kennard farmer Scott Thomsen, who grows corn, soybean and alfalfa and maintains a cow calf herd, told Drop Site that normally he and his peers buy fertilizer for the upcoming year in July or August, but they are all now scrambling to plan for 2027 with the uncertainty and costs of the Iran War.

“Every single one of my neighbors, we cut back on urea this year because of the price, which will inevitably impact the yield of the grass,” Thomsen said. “We’re two months away from where we usually lock in nitrogen at a cheaper price and it’s through the roof right now because of this Strait of Hormuz deal. So I don’t know if it’s a situation where we don’t lock in our nitrogen this summer or hope the price goes down or what we do, because the price of corn isn’t at a place where we can hedge our corn crop for ‘27 and lock in our nitrogen for ‘27 and pencil it out to be profitable.”

A Marist poll conducted in early May revealed that 60% of Americans and 22% of Republicans disapprove of President Trump’s handling of the Iran War, with a May 20 American Research Group poll showing Trump’s approval rating cratering at 31% and handling of the economy lagging even further behind at 29%. More than 80% of those surveyed also said they, like Osborn, are feeling financial strain due to prices at the gas pump. Nevertheless, Sen. Ricketts, since the war began in late February, has voted seven times against War Powers Resolutions that would have asserted Congress’s constitutional authority to debate, and potentially end, the war. Once, he simply missed the vote.

Drop Site contacted the Ricketts campaign with a request for comment on the senator’s Iran War voting record. They declined to address it, instead lashing out at Drop Site. “It is reprehensible that Dan Osborn would welcome an outlet to cover his campaign that has served as a mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda, including denying sexual violence against women on October 7th,” Ricketts campaign spokesperson Will Coup said.

The Cost of Campaigning

Before he walked into his employer’s office at Grunwald Mechanical for the last time on April 17, Osborn had been squeezing his campaign to unseat his billionaire incumbent senator into the hours before, after, and between his shifts.

He dedicated his lunch breaks each day of his 40 to 50 hour work weeks to “call time,” ringing potential donors to ask for their support. According to the campaign, Osborn has raised roughly $4.5 million to date, with more than $1.25 million of that sum coming from the first quarter of 2026, during which he outraised Ricketts by roughly $200,000.

But that fundraising success hasn’t immediately translated into Osborn’s day-to-day well-being. Now, he’s uninsured, and his wife Megan has started meeting with their bank to refinance the mortgage on his family’s home.

“I need that paycheck,” Osborn said. “My insurance was tied to my employment, so I knew: ‘As soon as I quit my job, I am not insured.’ My family is now insured, since I quit, but I am not. I’m rolling the dice. I was told I could go to the VA, but now I’m finding out I can’t because I don’t have a disability rating, so I have to go try to find some time to do that, and if I don’t get any disability, then I guess I’m just out, which I’m fine right now. I think I can make it to November without a doctor, hopefully. Fingers crossed.”

The average Bronze plan in Nebraska costs over $500 a month. Roughly 27 million Americans, 8% of the population, are uninsured with 41% of those insured qualifying as underinsured in 2025.

Ricketts and Republican-aligned organizations, like the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), have painted a different picture in a series of ad buys, however, alleging that Osborn is using his campaign to enrich himself after FEC records revealed that the campaign and its accompanying PAC had been paying one LLC that his wife co-owns and another she had done work with, recruiting and training other independent candidates to run for office.

Americans for Public Trust, a right-wing watchdog group, filed a complaint with the FEC requesting an investigation into his finances, which led the Osborn campaign to formally hire his wife full time as Director of Operations, a role that comprises the responsibilities that fall within the scope of the work she had been receiving payment for prior. From April to December 2025, the Osborn campaign paid Megan Osborn about $43,000 in compensation, now the family’s only stream of income.

Osborn himself is not currently taking a salary from the campaign, though it is legal for non-incumbent candidates to do so. He is, according to Vilaseca, acutely focused on dispelling any allegations of financial wrongdoing. The campaign has maintained that the method by which they have staffed and compensated team members for their work is not particularly unusual.

“Megan and Dan are a team who are committed to giving working people a voice in our politics,” Vilaseca said. “Megan has helped working class candidates run for office across the country, and she currently serves as the Operations Director for Dan’s campaign. She gets compensated for that work, as any campaign staffer would.”

The accusations against Osborn hint at the added layers of difficulty working-class candidates face running for office. Ricketts, as the son of a billionaire, does not draw such scrutiny.

Changing Headwinds

Osborn lost his previous bid for the U.S. Senate in 2024 to Fischer, a far less controversial candidate than Ricketts, by more than 5 points in an election year that swung heavily in favor of Republican candidates—and, more specifically, against Democratic and left-aligned candidates. The political headwinds, however, have changed dramatically across the country approaching the two-year mark of President Trump’s second term, with costs soaring across the board for working people and tens of billions of dollars dedicated to a new regional war in the Middle East.

Cindy Burbank, who won the Democratic primary on May 12, reportedly intends to drop out of the race to clear the path for Osborn to face Ricketts one-on-one. Ricketts crushed Burbank handily by 48% to 39% in the aforementioned Tavern Research poll. But, when tested against Osborn, independent voters polled broke against Ricketts by a whopping 62% to 20%.

Osborn is betting that his support will increase as the war with Iran continues to put pressure on struggling farmers already up against inflationary pressure and still recovering from Covid-19 pandemic supply shocks.

Bill Armbrust, another longtime Nebraska corn farmer from Elkhorn, told Drop Site that he and his neighbors are experiencing higher prices now and expect them to either remain high or even rise for “quite a long time.” He added that farmers like him are “really hurting right now” because they’ve endured exorbitantly higher input costs on phosphorus, nitrogen and fuel for more than five years now with little systematic relief.

“This [war] is like having your house on fire already, and you turn the water hose on a little bit and you find out gasoline’s coming out of it,” Armbrust said. “Right now, we’ve dug a hell of a hole already. And if we just ended it, not thinking about any of the other ramifications of the fact that we’re already deep into it and what do we do about it, if we stopped it right now that would be the start of fixing all of this, of getting this all put back into some sort of normal. Chaos is the worst enemy to farmers.”

Osborn has focused the blame for this confluence of factors on antitrust enforcement—a throughline, he argues, and the best option for bringing down prices in industries across the economy.

The corn seed and nitrogen fertilizer markets are each dominated by the four largest companies in the sector. Corteva, Bayer, AgReliant, and Syngenta, the four largest producers in the seed market, control 83% of the market share, while CF Industries, Nutrien, Koch Industries and Yara, the four largest nitrogen fertilizer corporations, are hogging 84% of the field. Four companies—John Deere, CNH, AGCO and MTD products—also control more than 60% of the agricultural machinery market.

Thomsen cited the consolidation of the agricultural industry as a contributing factor in the years-long price strain and blamed monopolies for profiteering at the expense of farmers.

“The input prices for farmers have been a huge problem from before this war started, and a lot of that is because the industries we do business with are monopolized,” Thomsen said. “They need to break up some of these monopolies and create some competition for us to buy fertilizer and seed and equipment at a competitive price.”

The same is true in meatpacking, where Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef operate between 80% and 85% of the industry.

In late January, the Tyson plant in Lexington closed down and more than 3,200 Nebraskans lost their jobs in a town with a population of roughly 11,000 because the corporation refused to simply sell the compound to a competitor. Factory workers immediately raised alarm bells about violations of the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, which protects rural communities and consumers from abuses of corporate power by making it illegal for meatpackers to engage in any business practice with specific intent to manipulate prices or inhibit commerce.

One day after Ricketts promised to “look into” the impending closure of the Tyson plant roughly six weeks before it ultimately shut down, he accepted a $1,000 donation from Tyson. Drop Site approached Ricketts on Capitol Hill in early February, less than two weeks after the plant’s closure, and asked what he did to try to save the thousands of jobs lost. He responded that Tyson is “not violating Stockers and Packyards,” butchering the name of the law he claimed to be examining, and said “this is one of those things where we have a private sector.”

Armbrust said Nebraska voters choosing to vote down party lines has led to the current disconnect between working people in the state and their congressional delegation led by Ricketts, who he said does not substantively “react or talk about” agriculture.

“I think most everybody voted for Ricketts only because he was a Republican not because they liked him or they liked what he did,” Armbrust reflected. “He keeps talking about [how] the market itself will fix all of these things. Well the government has screwed a whole lot of stuff up right now, and so I have no idea how the market is going to function to fix this.”

The Ricketts campaign did not answer Drop Site’s request for comment on the Tyson plant and the Packers and Stockyard Act.

Whose Ally?

Ricketts, Osborn and his supporters note, has broadly been an ally of corporations in the Senate. In October 2024, Ricketts came out in defense of the Biden administration’s antitrust targets with a letter demanding an investigation into the FTC for “leaks” that he and two Senate colleagues argued “resulted in negative headlines” for the corporate monopolies. He also vehemently opposed the PRO Act, reintroduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders a month after Ricketts took office in February 2023, which would have strengthened workers’ rights to organize in their workplaces.

Before becoming a senator in January 2023, the billionaire also repeatedly opposed Right to Repair legislation as governor of Nebraska, turning complete control over agricultural equipment parts and software to corporate manufacturers and refusing to allow independent farmers to repair their own machinery for lower costs.

By contrast, Osborn is trailed by a paid “tracker” employed by America Rising LLC at nearly every campaign event he attends. America Rising is a GOP-aligned opposition research organization, whose PAC has received funding in the past from billionaire donors like Paul Singer and the Ricketts family itself. The tracker follows, records, and confronts Osborn with oppositional questions. America Rising includes the clips in advertising campaigns against Osborn. (Osborn and members of the campaign often greet the tracker, asking him how he’s been doing and offering him snacks or waters at campaign events.)

Armbrust, a former conservative, told Drop Site he used to listen to legendary conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh every morning in his car, until one day Limbaugh began pontificating about farming and made several statements that “made no sense.” That, Armbrust recalled, is the first time he considered that conservative media may have been deliberately lying to him about other issues too.

The lifelong corn farmer said when Ricketts speaks about issues facing Nebraskans, he sees a lot of the same inauthenticity he came to recognize in Limbaugh and the right-wing media ecosystem more broadly.

“We honestly do not see Pete Ricketts, at this point, understanding farm culture and rural culture,” Armbrust said. “Even though he has been in office long enough to get it, we still keep hearing things that make us cringe.”

Osborn has earned a different reputation among the working voters Drop Site spoke with in Nebraska. Janet Banks, a 16-year breast-cancer survivor and pastor who started working 40-hour weeks in coal mines as a 22-year-old single mother, said she thinks Ricketts is out of touch and she relates far more to Osborn’s story.

“When [Osborn’s] wife talked about him working 28 days straight, I know what hard work is as well,” Banks said. “Ricketts knows nothing about hard work. When everything is given to you, you don’t have to go knock on doors. You don’t have to talk to people. He doesn’t do that. He’s not doing what Dan’s doing. Dan takes the time.”

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Over the weekend, the U.S. leaked “intelligence” to the news organization Axios claiming that Cuba had obtained some 300 Iranian drones and was making plans to attack the United States. Further down in the Axios article, the reporting clarified that the plans only existed in case of a United States attack. But the article served its purpose, and was shared by Cuban-American politicians in South Florida as a rationale to launch a war.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice is expected to indict the 94-year-old Raúl Castro, prompting fears of a Venezuela-like scenario via leadership decapitation. The U.S. is reportedly charging the former president in connection with the downing of two planes carrying “Brothers to the Rescue” anti-government activists in exile, killing four, back in 1996. The incident was the culmination of months of provocations, with regular incursions into Cuban airspace by Brothers to the Rescue planes.

There are many signs the situation Trump has imposed on Cuba are coming to a head. Earlier this month, the U.S. imposed yet another set of sanctions on the country that UN experts warned risk triggering the “energy starvation” of the island nation. Protests have flared in recent days, as frustration with the collapsing economic condition has been aimed at the government—the precise goal the U.S. has been pursuing with its policy of immiseration. And reports indicate that the number of U.S. military surveillance flights taking place near the island have skyrocketed in recent weeks, raising fears of an impending operation.

The Cuban government has survived decades of enmity from the United States, both overt and covert. The Brothers to the Rescue planes, in fact, were contracted by José Basulto, a self-confessed CIA operative who admitted to engaging in terrorist activities aimed at overthrowing the Cuban government. Cuba had regularly approached the U.S. via diplomatic channels to stop the flights but the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) took corrective action only after the downing of the two planes. According to declassified documents published by the National Security Archive, the White House was aware of the danger represented by these provocations, warning of a “worst case scenario” that eventually came to fruition.

Trump’s recent threats to “take” Cuba, however, coupled with the recent loss of energy supplies from Venezuela and the Castro indictment, may mark the most serious threat to the country’s independence since its 1959 revolution.

In an interview with Drop Site News in April, Gerardo Hernández Nordelo—who was himself imprisoned for 16 years in the U.S. for involvement in espionage work aimed at infiltrating radical Cuban exile groups, including those behind the “Brothers to the Rescue” operations—questioned the role played by hardline factions in Miami in developing U.S. policy towards Cuba, especially Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Hernández argued that they portrayed a biased and inaccurate picture of Cuban society and that their interests ultimately run contrary to those of the broader U.S. population.

“If the United States listens to that small group of advisors who spread misinformation about what is really happening in Cuba, they are destined to fail,” he said. “It would be a massacre that would not be good for any of the people.”

A conventional war with the U.S. military would inevitably be lopsided: Years of blockade and the loss of the Soviet Union as a defense partner at the end of the Cold War have severely degraded the official Cuban military. A recent analysis by the U.S. military publication SOFREP assessed that Cuba today maintains less than two dozen serviceable military aircraft—mostly holdovers from the Soviet-era—along with similarly small and outdated naval and anti-aircraft capabilities.

Groups such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies maintain that both Russia and China still maintain signals intelligence installations on Cuban soil that Washington has denounced for being used for spying on the U.S., but concrete military assistance to Havana from either country is believed to be limited.

Cuba does not publicize the size of its armed forces. But its standing army has been greatly reduced over the last decade as the country has endured forced austerity under sanctions. The Cuban military is estimated to have tens of thousands of active duty soldiers and reservists, but their state of readiness and access to equipment has been impacted by years of economic breakdown in the country that would impede their ability to directly face off against an invasion.

Cuba’s elite special forces units, known as the Avispas Negras, or “Black Wasps,” enjoy better training and weaponry and could pose a threat to an invading force. But their numbers are limited—nearly three dozen of the specially trained commandos were also killed in Venezuela during the U.S. operation to capture Nicolás Maduro.

Asymmetric Warfare

This asymmetry of power does not mean that Cuba is defenseless, however. Faced with the reality of a hostile, wealthy, and powerful adversary just 90 miles from its coastline, the Cuban government has embraced a doctrine of asymmetrical warfare—drawing on its own population as a form of strategic depth to resist an invasion.

“Foreign aggression, no matter where it comes from, would only unite the people of Cuba,” Gerardo Hernández Nordelo told Drop Site News. Hernández, who is now national coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. “Even those who do not yet agree with this government, those who complain about the scarcities, those who criticize, would unite to defend the sovereignty of their country.”

The Cuban defense strategy is based on a doctrine known as “People’s War,” with specific wartime roles assigned to every able-bodied adult citizen, and training provided to help wage a non-conventional popular war aimed at wearing out an adversary. The country has organized eleven “National Defense Day” exercises aimed at promoting this doctrine and preparing to mobilize Cuban society as a whole for a potential military conflict. Concern over a potential U.S. operation has grown so large that Cuba’s Civil Defense recently published the “Family guide for protection against military aggression” that includes first-aid tips to advice on how to avoid suspicious artifacts.

Despite sharp divisions in Cuban society, the government is still believed to enjoy the deep loyalty of the armed forces, while running a far more consolidated ruling system than existed in Venezuela. These factors could complicate any U.S. military operation—ranging from an attempted decapitation of the system to an outright invasion of the island—while risking triggering an insurgency by powerful elements of society that remain loyal to the Cuban state.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Trump administration is at least reviewing military action in Cuba as an option,” said Daniel DePetris, a fellow at the Defense Priorities think tank, told Drop Site. “As the war in Iran has shown, boasting a military advantage doesn’t necessarily translate into strategic victory.”

Many pro-government Cubans have also expressed willingness to resist a military occupation of the country—potentially complicating plans by Trump to enact a regime change by force in Havana.

“Cuba poses no threat to either the government or the people of the United States [but] if there is one word that has been erased from the Cuban vocabulary, it is precisely the word ‘surrender,’ there will be no surrender here; no one is going to come here and plant an American boot on our soil and tell us what to do in our own country,” Lizara Corona, a member of one of Cuba’s volunteer civilian militias from the Diez de Octubre neighborhood, told Drop Site News in an interview in Havana in April.

Corona had just finished celebrating—alongside thousands of other militia members in Havana—the anniversary of the proclamation of the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution. The celebration took place at the very same site in the Vedado neighborhood of the city where Fidel Castro had made the proclamation 65 years earlier during a funeral service for victims of U.S. bombings of Cuban airfields—events that preceded the failed 1961 CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of the country.

Speaking at the event, dressed in dark green fatigues, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel drew parallels between the Cuban Revolution’s resistance to U.S. imperialism in 1961 and the island’s current standoff with Washington—while issuing a defiant message indicating that the government is at least preparing for the possibility of an armed confrontation. “The moment is extremely challenging and calls upon us once again, as on that April 16, 1961, to be ready to face serious threats, including military aggression,” Díaz-Canel told the crowd.

The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution are an institution that could theoretically play a key part in any organized resistance to a U.S. military operation, or in the aftermath of an attempted regime change or state collapse. The committees play a pivotal role in the political life of Cubans at the local level and are one of the key instruments created in the aftermath of the revolution to ensure its continuity in the face of both internal and external threats, while serving as a focal point for local organizing and mobilization.

During a visit to the Fanguito neighborhood in Havana organized by a local committee, Cubans who spoke with Drop Site News acknowledged the very serious challenges the country is facing but also complained intensely about the economic impact of the U.S. blockade on the country.

“They have us by the neck trying to strangle us, and on top of that they criticize us for not being able to breathe,” said Hernández.

Boxes of Starlinks

The six-decade-long blockade, escalated by Trump, has led to major impacts on daily life in a country once revered in much of the world for its public services. Havana is almost completely dark at night, with its aging electrical grid reliant on fossil fuels and the little gas there is reserved for essential services like hospitals. The Cuban government has reported that the medical system has been forced to postpone surgeries for over 100,000 patients, including 12,000 children.

A recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that Cuba’s infant mortality rate—viewed as a barometer of the population’s overall health—had risen from 4 per 1,000 live births in 2018 to 9.9 in 2025—a 148% increase. The authors’ concluded that U.S. sanctions are “very likely the primary cause of the current economic and humanitarian crisis in Cuba.”

The United States in recent days has repeatedly made a public offer of $100 million of humanitarian assistance to the people of Cuba, as the island has fully exhausted its fuel reserves amid an oil blockade implemented by the same country offering the assistance.

“The decision rests with the Cuban regime to accept our offer of assistance or deny critical living-saving aid and ultimately be accountable to the Cuban people for standing in the way of critical assistance,” a statement from the State Department read on Thursday, reiterating a message offered publicly by Rubio.

Two sources with knowledge of the American offer, however, say that it amounts largely to—and is contingent upon—the shipment of millions of Starlink devices to the island. The statement on Thursday alluded to the offer, indicating that the U.S. aid included “support for free and fast satellite internet and $100 million in direct humanitarian assistance.” The Spanish-language news agency EFE reported that U.S. officials initially pressed Cuba to begin accepting Starlink units in April; the new $100 million offer is a way to push the issue forward.

While U.S. officials maintain that the offer of Starlink equipment is aimed at breaking the state’s monopoly on internet service and expanding access, the same equipment formed part of the destabilization strategy ahead of the attack on Iran, with the U.S. smuggling thousands of units into the country according to the Wall Street Journal.

Asked for comment regarding the Starlink offer, a State Department official did not discuss internet access but instead said aid was dependent on distribution through the Catholic Church: “We are encouraged to see that the regime appears willing to accept the latest of our offers of assistance, but the question is whether they will let it be distributed by the Church and respected independent organizations to people in need, or require aid to be channeled through corrupt state instrumentalities and seek to steal it, like they have everything else in Cuba for seven decades.”

Cuban officials have said that they have a cooperative relationship with the Catholic Church in Cuba and do not object to such an arrangement, which puts the onus on the offer back on the United States. “If there is truly a willingness on the part of the United States government to provide aid in the amounts it announces and in full conformity with the universally recognized practices for humanitarian assistance, it will encounter no obstacles or ingratitude from Cuba, however inconsistent and paradoxical the offer may seem to a people that the United States government itself punishes collectively in a systematic and ruthless manner,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said on Twitter.

“The priorities are more than evident: fuels, food, and medicines,” he said. “Our experience of working with the Catholic Church is rich and productive.”

In an interview with NBC News last week, Rubio claimed the offer included “food and medicine” but that Cuba wouldn’t take it, though Cuba has consistently said they are willing to accept a serious offer of aid. “The Cuban people should know there’s $100 million of food and medicine available for them right now, and the only reason it’s not reaching the Cuban people is because of the regime,” he said.

The Cuban government has worked together with the Catholic Church via the aid group Caritas to receive U.S. humanitarian assistance, with a shipment valued at $3 million in January and a second shipment valued at $7 million announced in February. This assistance, intended for those affected by Hurricane Melissa that struck Cuba in late October 2025, has not been completely delivered. Cuban Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Fernández de Cossío said only 2.5 million worth of goods have actually been delivered. In the same interview with NBC, Rubio said the aid was “held up.”

Drop Site asked Caritas about progress on the distribution of the aid sent earlier this year and whether they had been approached by the U.S. with details of the $100 million package, but Caritas did not respond.

If the U.S. did deliver food and medicine, the Church would have enormous difficulty distributing it—not just due to a lack of organizational infrastructure, but the lack of gas makes shipping it around the island impossible.

“In the same manner that Cuba provides free healthcare for its people, but cannot conduct surgeries due to lack of electricity, we should expect that delivering aid to millions of people without fuel becomes extremely difficult,” said Reverend Claudia de la Cruz, executive director of The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) / Pastors for Peace.

De la Cruz says her organization speaks from first-hand experience; IFCO / Pastors for Peace has over three decades of experience working in Cuba, having sent a contingent to Cuba twice in the last five months to deliver humanitarian aid.

The New York-based reverend and community leader took exception to the notion that an aid package of that size would ever be done without the support of the local government and called on the Catholic Church to “denounce” the U.S. blockade, which she called “the root cause of misery in Cuba.”

“The reality is that if the U.S. is sincere about helping the Cuban people, then collaboration with the government of the Cuban people is the only path forward,” de la Cruz told Drop Site News. “The refusal of the U.S. to do so is part of the larger plan of having the ‘offer of humanitarian aid’ be a failure or not materialize at all, to then justify further aggression.”

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Previous events have drawn protesters and counter-protesters, leading to charges of antisemitism leveled at the protesters for demonstrating near a synagogue. The protesters have countered that it is inappropriate to use a religious institution to shield such a contentious practice. A spokesperson for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani declined to comment on the Israeli real estate expo. In the wake of previous protests, the New York City Council, with a veto-proof majority, in March passed legislation restricting such demonstrations.

This week in Washington, meanwhile, saw the launch of Israel Advocacy Day, a high-profile lobbying campaign led by Eagles’ Wings, a New York-based Christian Zionist organization.

What we can reveal today is that the campaign is secretly financed by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, implicating foreign agent registration laws in a serious way. That story, by journalist Nick Cleveland-Stout, is below.

If you agree that you’re unlikely to find this kind of reporting anywhere but in Drop Site News, consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support the work. When we launched, we aimed to grow to 20,000 paid subscribers by our two-year mark, which comes this July. But we’re already at 19,818. If you can hit that target two months early, we’ll be that much closer to long-term sustainability. If you’re already a subscriber, or just want to make a one-time contribution, we’re grateful for that as well.

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—Ryan Grim

Prominent Christian Zionist Group Is Lobbying U.S. Lawmakers on Israel—Without Revealing It’s Funded by Israel

Story by Nick Cleveland-Stout

WASHINGTON, D.C.—On Monday night, over 500 people packed into the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown D.C. to kickoff Israel Advocacy Day—a major pro-Israel lobbying push on Capitol Hill spearheaded by Eagles’ Wings, a New York-based Christian Zionist organization. During a break in the evening’s programming, a list of sponsors of the event appeared on screen. The list included the National Religious Broadcasters, the Jewish Federations of North America, and Israel365, a group that organized a trip of MAGA influencers to Israel last year.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs was not advertised as a supporter—despite funding upwards of half of the lobbying push. Eagles’ Wings was secretly paid a total of $700,000 by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, $245,000 of which was allocated for its lobbying efforts this year, according to a previously unreported Israeli procurement document.

Robert Stearns, a pastor and the founder of Eagles’ Wings, did pause to thank Tammy Ben-Haim, a Ministry official, for attending—but left it at that.

The lobbying campaign plans to hold more than 100 meetings across Capitol Hill this week. “We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss the U.S.-Israel relationship,” reads a meeting invite sent to a Democratic Congressional staffer obtained by Drop Site.

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The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs notes in the contract that it is funding Eagles’ Wings in order to prevent churchgoers and priests “from adopting pro-BDS and anti-Israeli positions.” In the contract, an Israeli official conveyed that the campaign has support from high-ranking officials within the Israeli government. “The Eagles’ Wings project is very important to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Office of the Director General in particular.”

Eagles’ Wings, the official added, is trying to invite the “most important among the attendees to more intimate meetings in order to improve their views on the State of Israel and to fight against the lies [people] are spreading about the country.”

When contacted for comment about the funding, which Eagles’ Wings does not disclose anywhere on their website, Eagles’ Wings did not respond. A spokesperson for the Israeli Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Eagles’ Wings, which has about 30 employees, is not a registered foreign agent. Craig Holman, an ethics expert and government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, told Drop Site that Eagles’ Wings’ lobbying campaign raises serious questions about the organization’s compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the U.S.’ preeminent law for regulating foreign influence. “They should register as a foreign agent, declare how much money they’ve been paid, what they’re using the money for, and what offices they are lobbying on behalf of Israel,” said Holman.

Religious organizations can avoid registering as a foreign agent if they are solely engaged in religious pursuits. However, Jonathan Winer, a Washington D.C.-based attorney who has worked on FARA issues for decades, explained that if an organization engages in “political activities”—an activity intended to influence the U.S. government to change its policies—they are required to register.

“If you’re doing public relations work for a foreign government, that’s what FARA registration is for,” said Winer. “It’s not a gray area.”

The goal of Israel Advocacy Day, according to the organizers themselves, is to shape U.S. policy towards the Middle East. This year’s agenda will focus on “reinforcing US support for Israel’s security, addressing the sharp rise of anti-semitism, and advancing protections for faith-based institutions facing increasing threats.”

Last year’s Israel Advocacy Day featured speeches by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). It also included a performance from musician Yair Levi, who is a registered foreign agent of Israel and oversees a cohort of social media influencers paid by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Israel Advocacy Day is co-hosted by the American Christian Leaders for Israel, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), the Israel Allies Foundation, and the Israel Christian Nexus, another organization led by Stearns.

By not registering as a foreign agent, lawmakers are left in the dark about who is funding the pro-Israel lobbying effort. “Members of Congress will want to know if the person they are talking to is a foreign agent who is being paid to represent Israeli interests,” said Holman. “That shouldn’t be used to discriminate against the lobbying effort, but it’s useful knowledge to weigh the merits of the messages they’re receiving from that lobbyist,” he added.

The Israeli government also gave funding to Eagles’ Wings for major events with Evangelical Christians in Orlando, Washington D.C., and Memphis, a solidarity event for Israel featuring speakers from the Israel Defense Forces, and a music tour led by Christian singer-songwriter Jordan Feliz. Eagles’ Wings’ revenue was about $6 million in 2024, the most recent year available. If its revenue in 2025 is similar, the Israeli government will account for over 10% of its funding last year.

The Israeli government has poured money into other ventures to win back support from American evangelicals. In September, the Israeli Foreign Ministry greenlit a $3.2 million plan to pay pastors, hire celebrity spokespeople, and target attendees of major evangelical churches in the American southwest during worship hours with ads. After significant backlash, much of that plan was scrapped.

Anne Nelson, author of “Shadow Network: Media Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right,” explained in an interview with Drop Site that Israel is spending an “unprecedented amount of money to cultivate relations with Evangelical Christians” who have broken with Israel over Gaza. “Israel is going to be facing headwinds among younger Evangelicals who have been increasingly critical of Israel due to human rights and America First concerns,” she said.

Stearns, the founder of Eagles’ Wings, acknowledged to the Jerusalem Post in October that his work bringing Evangelical leaders to Israel is partially funded by Israel. “We’ve brought 900 leaders so far…I’m so grateful for the visionary support Gideon Sa’ar and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are giving in funding toward this project,” said Stearns.

The Israeli government frequently sponsors trips to Israel; in December, 1,000 evangelical pastors flew to Jerusalem as part of a fully funded trip backed by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

However, he has not acknowledged the funding appropriated for the lobbying campaign. According to annual IRS filings, other donors to Eagles’ Wings include the Christian Broadcasting Network and the 85 Fund, an organization co-founded by conservative legal activist Leonard Leo.

Stearns, who founded the organization in 1994, has said he is willing to die for Israel because he sees it as a “crucial ally in a war against Islamic extremists.” A week after the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran began, Stearns authored an article in the Jerusalem Post asking Christians to stand with Israel and visit the country. In a video on his YouTube channel, Stearns criticized the lack of American support for the war, blaming what he called the “dumbed down American public.”

Stearns has spent years sounding the alarm about declining Evangelical support for Israel. “Support for Israel doesn’t just seem to be weakening; it is weakening, and at a concerning, alarming rate,” he told the Jerusalem Post.

Support for Israel among evangelical Christians, a historically staunch pro-Israel stalwart in the U.S., has dropped in the past few years as Israel carried out attacks in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. Among white evangelicals, approval of Israel dropped ten points from February 2024 to September 2025, according to Pew Research.

Last year, the Israeli government also gave more than $300,000 to create a show on Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the largest Evangelical television network in the world, according to a separate Israeli government procurement document. The payment was made to Shar-El Media and Productions, the official representative of TBN in Israel, to produce and broadcast a television program called “Insights.” The show, historically, has done several episodes dedicated to highlighting Israel’s military, artificial intelligence, and drone industries.

Meeting with evangelical leaders in Palm Beach in late 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Christian Zionists to help fight Israel the “eight front,” the public relations battle. Stearns, for his part, sees himself as a foot soldier in this new “propaganda war.”

At the gala on Monday night, Israel’s public relations crisis was a central theme. “According to recent statistics, less than 38% of young Americans, ages 18 through 34 hold a favorable view of Israel,” said Stella Inger-Escobedo, an anchor with One America News and one of the emcees of the night. “Their views are the result of lies, misinformation, propaganda that they have been exposed to by the media, academia, literally like 15 second TikTok videos.”

Two IDF reservists from the U.S. and Canada, Noy Leyb and Max Long, delivered a video message at the gala echoing her concerns about Israel losing the eighth front. “What was happening on the ground was one thing. What the world was hearing was very different,” said Leyb and Long, who co-founded an organization that brings Israeli soldiers to American churches and schools. They credited Stearns with helping facilitate the partnership.

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AIPAC has been funneling money into the campaign of Dr. Ala Stanford in Pennsylvania’s 3rd congressional district, before the next slate of Democratic primaries, new federal campaign filings reveal.

Stanford has denied taking AIPAC money in the race for an open Philadelphia seat, but the records show the pro-Israel group has been secretly routing money directly to her campaign and into a super PAC supporting her that backs candidates who are involved in science or medicine. The structure allows Stanford, a pediatrician, to distance herself from the group’s increasingly toxic political reputation with the American public, while still benefiting from its cash outlays.

The super PAC is called 314 Action Fund, and as of April 21, had spent more than $2.6 million boosting Stanford, according to the latest filings. The group’s most recent monthly filing reveals a $500,000 donation from Kimbark Foundation, a group whose only other donation is $500,000 to EDW Action Fund, another PAC that has previously acted as an AIPAC shell organization. In the 2024 cycle, AIPAC used EDW Action to secretly funnel money to support Maxine Dexter, also a pediatrician, in her race against Susheela Jayapal in Oregon. It’s stated purpose is to elect pro-choice Democratic women. 314 Action has reported just $2.8 million in independent expenditures, meaning their support for Stanford represents the bulk of their independent spending so far.

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Stanford has also taken in more than $27,000 through Democracy Engine from major AIPAC donors in the first quarter of 2026; Democracy Engine is a vehicle used by AIPAC to bundle donor money and funnel it to preferred candidates.

Stanford raised eyebrows when she made the argument that referring to Israel’s genocide in Gaza as a genocide was tantamount to using the “N-word,” calling it “the G-word.”

“I know when you use the G-word how hurtful it is to a group of people,” she said. “It’s like someone saying the N-word around me.” She was recently pressed on her answer, and doubled down, saying, “For Israelis who’ve been accused of committing it, it’s hurtful for them.”

Neither Stanford nor AIPAC responded to requests for comment. Asked about reporting from 2024 that AIPAC was using 314 Action as a subsidiary to donate to candidates outside of its name or ideological affiliation, Stanford denied taking any money from AIPAC, whether directly or funneled through 314 Action, in a candidate forum on March 30: “That’s not me. Not to my [campaign].”

Erik Polyak, 314 Action executive director, declined to respond to detailed questions from Drop Site, and instead spoke generally about its pro-science mission, while noting accurately that the group has on occasion gone up against AIPAC. While that’s true, it doesn’t speak to the Philadelphia race. “314 Action’s only mission is to elect doctors and scientists,” Polyak said. “Founded in 2016, we have existed for ten years and provide operational, financial and communications support to help STEM candidates run winning campaigns.”

Polyak noted that 314 Action had supported Daniel Biss in the recent Chicago race, while AIPAC was backing Laura Fine. That 314 Action is not always aligned with AIPAC can make them more useful when they are.

In 2024, Polyak vociferously denied 314 Action was funneling money from AIPAC. “The day before the May 21 primary election in Oregon, 314 Action’s executive director Erik Polyak wrote on Twitter that he was waiting on [Drop Site] reporter Ryan Grim to issue a retraction,” reported the news outlet Sludge. “The tweet showed a screenshot of 314 Action’s FEC filing information for April, which did not show an AIPAC-affiliated group. When 314 Action’s next monthly FEC filing was released on June 20, it showed the $1 million donation from UDP.”

Polyak this cycle is not attempting such a strident denial, as campaign finance records will continue to be released, though many of them will be too late to inform voters ahead of the primary.

Stanford on Thursday announced endorsements from Democratic Reps. Madeleine Dean and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania. She faces Sharif Street Jr., a local machine-backed state legislator, and State Rep. Chris Rabb, who has the support of DSA-Philly, Justice Democrats, and a growing number of progressive Democrats like Reps. Jamie Raskin and Ro Khanna.

EDW was created on December 22, 2023 and in May 2024 was given $100,000 by United Democracy Project (UDP), AIPAC’s official super PAC, which it spent in the Dexter-Jayapal race. That same month, UDP sent $1 million to 314 Action and $1.3 to “Voters for Responsive Government.” The three super PACs combined to swamp Jayapal, making Dexter a member of Congress. In the 2026 cycle, AIPAC funneled more than $10 million into Illinois Democratic primaries, spending heavily to back Fine in one primary. But AIPAC’s shell PACs—called “Elect Chicago Women” and “Affordable Chicago Now”—were outed as fronts for the pro-Israel group. In swept EDW Action Fund.

The Kimbark Foundation registered as a Delaware nonprofit on December 19, 2025. On February 23, 2026, Kimbark transferred $500,000 to EDW Action Fund, which in March disclosed it was spending on behalf of Laura Fine. In March 2026, Kimbark transferred $500,000 to 314 Action Fund.

On March 10, according to the new FEC filings, 314 Action transferred $2,000,000 to 314 Action Fund, further obscuring the origin of the money. (Not all of 314 Action Fund’s money comes from AIPAC or its donors, of course; for instance, Nobel Prize winner Drew Weissman gave $240,000 in March to the group and also donated directly to Stanford. What makes 314 Action valuable as a pass-through vehicle is that some of its money is authentically related to pro-science politics, while at other times it disguises money for AIPAC. Other AIPAC shells act only as shells.)

Margot Pritzker, wife of Tom Pritzker, recently ousted from his role as head of Hyatt due to his links to Jeffrey Epstein, gave $50,000 to 314 Action Fund on January 21, 2026.

This tactic, also used in the New Jersey 11th district special election—in that race a popup group called the Guzman Foundation did the work— involves creating new 501(c)4 organizations that previously didn’t exist specifically in order to hide money and its ideological ties, giving cover to pro-Israel Democrats who want to avoid the group’s toxicity.

In NJ-11, that strategy ultimately failed, sending former Bernie Sanders’ aide Analilia Meijia to Congress. The Guzman foundation was eventually linked to the billionaire financier Robert Granieri, of Jane Street Capital. An entity called Article One Inc. had spent $350,000 to back the AIPAC candidate in that New Jersey race. Article One Inc. had previously formed a joint fundraising committee with Article One Victory, which was also funded by Granieri.

In April 2024, Granieri participated in the AIPAC play against Jayapal in Oregon, giving 314 Action Fund $350,000. The fall before, he gave $250,000 to AIPAC’s super PAC UDP.

Not enough information exists yet about the Kimbark Foundation to identify its donor.

Stanford has also received 27 individual donations through the Democracy Engine donation platform. The Guardian exposed Democracy Engine for covertly distributing AIPAC money in 2024, describing the group as “a donation platform that allows unpopular PACs to obscure their donations and lists AIPAC as a client on its LinkedIn page.”

AIPAC has ended up being a lucrative client for Democracy Engine at that. FEC reports show that in 2025 to 2026 alone, AIPAC paid Democracy Engine more than $1.42 million for “processing fees” and “technological services.”

AIPAC is not the only organization able to use Democracy Engine, but the donors who used it for Stanford have also been major donors to AIPAC. A number of the individuals financially backing new AIPAC-aligned shadow PACs have also been repeat donors directly to AIPAC, other shadow PACs and AIPAC-endorsed candidates. Jeffrey Snyder, a member of the AIPAC Board of Directors, donated $2,000 to Ala Stanford through Democracy Engine, $25,000 to United Democracy Project and $5,500 directly to AIPAC in February 2025. Real estate executive Scott Copeland followed suit, donating $1,500 to Stanford through Democracy Engine, $8,500 directly to AIPAC in 2025, and he too contributed to other passthrough organizations like United Democracy Project and Elect Chicago Women during the March Illinois primaries.

Andrew Milstein, president of the Bacchetta Foundation, a nonprofit organization that has issued philanthropic grants to the Anti-Defamation League and other pro-Israel groups, donated $3,500 to Stanford through Democracy Engine and $25,000 to Democracy Engine itself. He also made maximum contributions to AIPAC candidates including Laura Fine, Rep. Haley Stevens, Donna Miller, and Melissa Bean.

AIPAC donors’ secret attempts to continue propping up pro-Israel candidates through obfuscated methods comes as Democratic primary voters, in poll after poll, have rejected Israel’s influence over U.S foreign policy and bribery tactics on Capitol Hill. A new poll in Michigan commissioned by Drop Site and Zeteo and conducted by Data For Progress found that 64% of likely Democratic primary voters are less likely to support candidates who receive donations from AIPAC, while just 10% said they are more likely. A CNN poll recently found that Democratic voters who identify as “liberal” have a -74 point net favorability of Israel, as compared to -26 points in 2022, and those who identify as “not liberal” have a -55 point net favorability of the country, as compared to +3 in 2022.

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Two Iranian women remain in immigration detention, arrested earlier this month on accusations of being the niece and grandniece of Qasem Soleimani, despite no connection to the late Iranian military commander. Drop Site reviewed Iranian birth records, identification papers, a family will, and other personal documents and found no connection whatsoever to him or his extended family. One of the women is now seriously ill in a Texas facility, her chronic blood condition left effectively untreated.

On March 8, right-wing activist Laura Loomer posted on X calling for the deportation of a woman she claimed was Soleimani’s niece. The commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Soleimani was assassinated by a U.S. drone strike, ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, in Baghdad on January 3, 2020. The day after Loomer’s original post, she tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio on X, claiming to have reported the woman to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for “posting content sympathetic to the Iranian regime and Ayatollah.”

On April 3, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter, Sarina Hosseiny, were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at their home outside Los Angeles. Rubio issued a statement headlined, “Secretary Rubio Revokes Green Cards of Foreign Nationals with Ties to Iranian Terror Regime,” identifying them as “the niece and grand niece of deceased Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qasem Soleimani” and describing them as “green card holders living lavishly in the United States.”

The claims made headline news in the U.S., while triggering immediate denials from Soleimani’s family that the two women were relatives of the military commander. The Trump administration has gone largely quiet about the women’s cases since their arrest, as they remain in ICE detention pending deportation to Iran.

As attention has faded, the situation for the women has turned dire at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in San Antonio, particularly for Hamideh, 47, who lives with autoimmune hemolytic anemia, which requires regular treatment and blood transfusions she isn’t getting.

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As a student in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hamideh was active in protest movements in Iran, and, she says, even spent a week in prison after getting arrested at one demonstration. Sarina, in a phone interview from the ICE facility where they are being held, said that her mother—not one to hold back her opinions—was most looking forward to having “freedom of speech” when she moved here to the United States. She remains opposed to the son of the former Shah, Reza Pahlavi, as well as Trump’s current war. “She’s kind of a passionate person overall, and she thought that she was going to come here and be able to talk freely when she’s been threatened and imprisoned in Iran for speaking about politics, and now she’s again in prison for speaking out about politics,” she told Drop Site.

They were forced to leave Iran under duress after Sarina took part in a dance performance on vacation in Turkey at the age of 12. The dance competition was filmed and later aired by the satellite channel “TV Persia” and her dance went viral. (Two of her performances are still viewable on YouTube.) The channel is illegal in Iran but many residents have access to it. She said she was expelled from her public school, only to enroll in a private school and later to be expelled from that one, too, when the scandal recirculated. Some of her more conservative family members, who had connections to the government, beat and threatened her mother, Hosseiny said, and the situation became increasingly unbearable. At 14, she came to the United States on a student visa and the two of them applied for asylum.

In terms of its alignment with how the United States professes to see its place in the world, and the claims it makes about Iran’s treatment of women and girls, it’s hard to think of an asylum claim that would more neatly fit into the American agenda.

Sarina translated for her mother, who added that she doesn’t know where to turn if the U.S. isn’t safe either. “We came to America to seek calm and to feel safe and protected from that regime,” Hamideh said, according to her daughter’s translation. “And now we’re being treated almost the same—even worse than there. We’ve been here for three weeks now. I don’t know where to go from here.”

Sarina, 25, has also spoken with friends outside the detention facility, conveying that her mother has been denied the treatment she needs, is regularly in and out of consciousness, with dangerously low hemoglobin levels. Her mother recently passed out and was left unconscious on the floor for over ten minutes, Sarina reported to her friend Shawna Ruhland.

“She’s basically just trapped in there watching her mom die,” Ruhland said of Sarina. Ruhland, who served for eight years in the U.S. military, has set up a GoFundMe to help cover the family’s legal bill, which Drop Site verified is legitimate. (Update: GoFundMe had not yet approved the fundraiser, so she started a different on here.)

The South Texas ICE Processing Center, where the women are being held, declined to provide information on them other than to confirm they were in custody; their attorney, Sam Faragalla, did not respond to requests for comment.

Both were legal permanent residents until Rubio revoked their legal status. A State Department spokesperson, in an odd statement, said the government stood by its determination. “While we do not comment on matters of classified intelligence, we remain certain of the Secretary’s determination,” said Assistant Secretary Dylan Johnson. “If ‘Drop Site News’ is aware of anti-American green card holders with ties to terrorists presently in the United States, we would gladly investigate those individuals for possible termination of legal status and deportation.”

A review of personal documentation undercuts the allegation of a personal connection to Soleimani. Birth certificates from Iran, collected by the family, lay out a documented family tree spanning multiple generations with no connection to Qassem Soleimani, or even to relatives of the late general. Drop Site also reviewed other personal identification documents, including passports, family photographs, and work documentation from both Iran and the U.S. that strongly contradict the allegations that the two women were connected to the late Iranian military commander, or living lavishly from any connection to the Iranian government.

In order for Qasem Soleimani to be Hamideh’s uncle, based on her last name, he would need to be the brother of Hamideh’s father, Ali Soleimani-Afshar, who was born in Tehran in 1947. Yet according to the documents, Soleimani-Afshar had no brothers at all and his father died in the early 50s. Gen. Soleimani was born years later—in 1957—in a small village in the southern province of Kerman. Ali Soleimani-Afshar’s parents died in his childhood. Historical passport documents also show that Soleimani-Afshar’s family origins go back generations to the city of Yazd in central Iran, a province away from the roots of Gen. Soleimani.

The late general is also known to have two brothers, Sohrab and Hossein, who have previously given interviews about their upbringing in rural Kerman that identify themselves as his only brothers and make no mention of a connection to Ali Soleimani-Afshar.

Qassem Soleimani’s own family in Iran issued numerous strident denials that they had any relation to the late general. Soleimani’s youngest daughter, Zeinab Soleimani, a well-known political figure inside Iran, said in Iranian media that the State Department’s allegations were “false” and that “the individuals arrested in the United States have no connection whatsoever to our family.” Another daughter, Narjes Soleimani, went further in a separate statement, adding that, “To this day, no member of the Soleimani family, nor any relative of General Soleimani, has resided in the United States.”

To be clear, even if the women were in fact distantly related to Soleimani, such a link would not, under any version of justice, make them guilty of anything. While the U.S. says spouses and children of alleged terrorists can be detained, the law deems arresting other relatives inadmissible. The U.S. recently took immigration action against leading Emory University cancer researcher Dr. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, simply for being the daughter of Ali Larijani, a top Iranian official and Kantian scholar assassinated by the U.S. and Israel in March, along with his son. She was out of the country at the time her legal permanent resident status was stripped and barred from re-entering. Emory fired her.

In the wake of their detention, the State Department said that the asylum claim filed by the two Los Angeles women was undercut by the fact that they had visited Iran in subsequent years.

In general, a grant of asylum is indeed called into question if the asylum seeker travels back to the country where they have claimed they are unsafe, immigration lawyers say. Hosseiny said that because they are not political dissidents wanted by the government, but rather a girl and her mother who had pushed the boundaries of gender politics in a repressive environment, they deemed the trips home safe enough. She said that she had informed the government about the trip and there was no objection until they were arrested years later. “They’re about to lose everything that they’ve built here, because no one’s willing to help,” said Demi Uredi, a friend of Sarina, who is figuring out how to pay the mortgage for their house or sell it entirely.

Patrick Taurel, an immigration attorney at Grossman Young & Hammond, questioned the merits of the arrest. “Based on what I have seen firsthand as an immigration lawyer… I would not be surprised if the recent targeting of Iranians is based on shoddy and unreliable evidence,” he said. “That was true in the Mahmoud Khalil case and the cases of the other Palestinian dissidents; that was true with my client, Reginald Boulos; and that could well be true here. Congress must rein in this power.”

Sarina’s friends also disputed characterizations by the State Department that the family had been living lavishly in the United States, pointing out that they had been behind on mortgage payments and that they had been relying on the support of friends to pay for legal support in ICE detention. The jewelry and handbags flaunted on Instagram and highlighted by the U.S. government were, like much else in North Hollywood, entirely fake, her friends said.

“They’re not blood money, like regime trust fund kids, none of this is true whatsoever,” said Uredi.

In the meantime, Sarina’s mother is at severe risk. “The only thing that they can do is a blood transfusion with a match, because she has a severe anemia,” said Uredi. “And Sarina might be a match, but they’re like, we don’t even have the equipment here to do this for you. And that was two weeks ago, and now this week, they’re like, Yeah, we still don’t have the equipment. They just put her on antibiotics. That’s not going to save her life.”

Loomer, reached for comment, was unmoved, insisting the women were indeed related, but that it didn’t matter either way. “I want all Islamic immigrants deported. I don’t support any of their asylum claims,” she said.

Areeba Fatima contributed reporting.

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On the eve of the tenuous ceasefire reached between the United States, Israel, and Iran, the number of ballistic missile interceptors left in Israel’s arsenal had dwindled to “double digits,” according to a Trump administration source with knowledge of the situation.

The critical shortage had led Israeli military officials to be significantly more selective when confronting ballistic missile attacks from Iran as well as from Yemen, which recently entered the conflict in a limited fashion. “They’re having to pick and choose what they shoot down,” the official told Drop Site.

The White House referred questions about the dwindling stockpile to the Israeli military. “Refer you to the IDF,” said a White House spokesperson. The IDF told Drop Site “we are checking” but was still working on an answer by the time this article was published, and couldn’t estimate when such an answer might come. When it does, we will update this article.

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The number of missile defense interceptors that a country has remaining is typically treated as highly classified information because of what it reveals about their capacity to continue a war. Despite not being forthcoming about these figures, it has still been possible to estimate Israeli reserves based on knowledge of prewar stockpiles and estimates of expenditures during the current conflict.

A recent analysis by The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, a London-based think tank with ties to British intelligence, spells out the difficulty facing Israeli defenses. Drawing on data from the Payne Institute for Public Policy to calculate pre-war stocks, RUSI did the basic math to find that by March 24, Israel had expended 122 of its 150 Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 missiles, as well as 22 of its 48 THAAD missiles.

These interceptors are both expensive and time-consuming to replace. Each Arrow interceptor costs $2-3 million dollars and takes months to produce, whereas a THAAD interceptor, which can stop a ballistic missile in its terminal descent phase, costs a staggering $12 million per unit. In many cases, multiple interceptors are required to confront a single ballistic missile. Iran is also believed to be deploying their missiles in a strategy deliberately aimed at draining Israeli defenses—firing older models in earlier waves to help eliminate interceptor stockpiles, and effectively putting a “down payment” on the impact of future attacks that can take place with more advanced models once interceptor capacity is depleted.

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Information about missile impacts and damage in Israel during the current war is subject to intense military censorship, making it difficult to verify the effect of Iranian attacks on the country. But an April 6 research paper published by JP Morgan and citing figures from the Jewish Institute for National Security (JINSA) stated that missile impact rates targeting Israel had risen from 3% during the first two weeks of the war to 27%. That increase is believed to be in part due to an Iranian decision to begin deploying missiles with cluster warheads at Israeli targets, leading to smaller, dispersed impacts, but also forcing Israel to expend more interceptor munitions defending against each attack.

On Monday, the Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli Ministry of Defense planned to hasten its production of new Arrow missiles. But replenishing stockpiles is a matter of years, not weeks. Iran also fired more than 500 ballistic missiles at Israel during the 12-Day War in June 2025, significantly depleting Israeli inventory even before the current war.

On the same day that JP Morgan issued its report, a ballistic missile struck a residential building in the city of Haifa, killing four people. The victims of that attack were killed by the kinetic energy of the missile itself which did not actually detonate—likely sparing the lives of many more people in what would have been its blast radius.

The decreasing supply of interceptors has also meant that Israel is becoming increasingly dependent on the missile defense capabilities of the U.S. Navy, which has stationed destroyers in the region. The recent departure of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford carrier strike group has hampered that capacity.

The U.S. is believed to have fired 431 of its 2,500 Navy Aegis missiles, designed for ballistic missile interception, making them a savior of last resort when it came to Israeli defense, according to RUSI.

In addition to defending Israel, the U.S. military has been forced to allocate huge amounts of its own limited interceptor stocks to defend the Gulf Arab states. This has meant drawing down from munition stockpiles intended to support deterrence against China as part of the “Asian Pivot” long-planned by the U.S. defense establishment. The drain on interceptors comes after the U.S. also reportedly used up roughly 25% of its THAAD interceptor inventory—between 100 to 150 missiles—along with an unknown number of Patriot and SM-3 missiles defending Israel during the 12-Day War.

Apart from being expensive, missile interceptors are notoriously slow to produce. Earlier this year, Lockheed Martin signed a deal with the Pentagon to increase its annual production from 96 per year to 400. But this increase is expected to be staggered over the next seven years, and will do little to improve capacity in the short-term. The U.S. procured only 12 THAAD interceptors in 2025, and was scheduled to receive a paltry 37 this year.

Israel has insisted throughout the war that it is not running low on interceptors, even as a greater number of Iranian missile attacks have impacted targets inside the country or been allowed to fall in “open areas” of the country.

The Israeli theory of war had been based on a quick victory that rapidly diminished the rate of Iranian missile launches by hitting stockpiles and missile launch vehicles to knock them out of the fighting. Despite those efforts, and the tremendous assistance of the U.S. in this campaign, Iranian missile launches have remained steady for weeks, as launchers and underground missile bases have proven difficult to destroy by aerial attacks. The addition of Hezbollah and Ansar Allah to the war has added a further strain on Israeli defenses.

This week, in the face of escalating questions about its missile defense stockpiles as the war has dragged on, the Israeli defense ministry announced plans to scale up production while denying it had a problem. “Israel has sufficient interceptors to protect its citizens, and the current move is intended to ensure continued operational freedom and the necessary endurance,” said defense minister Israel Katz in a statement.

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Gulf sovereign wealth funds are undertaking a sweeping review of American investments, driven by a combination of commercial necessity and political recalibration driven by the Iran war, according to sources familiar with deliberations around the high-level financing deals.

In particular, the planned merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Brothers Discovery, made possible as a result of Gulf financing, is getting a new look. A postponed meeting of the board of the Qatar Investment Authority will reconvene within the next week as the fund recalibrates its investment approach, a source with knowledge of the deliberations said. “Even from a purely, purely numbers perspective, you have to look at this again,” said the industry source, asking for anonymity to speak freely about investment matters rarely discussed publicly.

No announcement from the meeting is expected, the source said, as the Qataris are unwilling to unilaterally back out of the deal without Saudi Arabia also doing so. Withdrawing from the deal would be seen as a political shot against both Israel and the United States, which Qatar feels it can not undertake alone under the current circumstances.

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The merger between the two media conglomerates was announced on February 27, 2026. The next day, the U.S. and Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, which responded, as promised, by attacking Gulf countries hosting U.S. bases. Those same Gulf countries are the primary financial backers of the merger, according to documents on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Wealth funds connected to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates pledged $24 billion to back the deal, which cost nearly $111 billion.

Under the current scenario, the Paramount deal remains likely to go through, but that could change if the war goes on for another month or longer and Gulf oil and gas assets come under even greater attack. Trump has turned his attention to Iran’s oil infrastructure, and Iran has pledged to retaliate by targeting Gulf oil and gas assets in response. Yet even the current circumstances are forcing a deeper look at the entire suite of deals in the sovereign wealth funds’ portfolios. A Paramount spokesperson declined to comment. Spokespersons for the Public Investment Fund (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), L’imad Holding Company PJSC (UAE), and Qatar Investment Authority (Qatar) did not respond to requests for comment.

At risk is the heart of the U.S. economy, which is currently fueled by the growth of AI companies and the data centers that power them. Harvard economist Jason Furman calculated that more than 90% of GDP growth in the first half of 2025 was driven by AI and related investments. Much of the data center buildout is powered by Gulf financing, while U.S. companies are also building out heavily in the Gulf.

All of that is now uncertain. “The story is not just deals specifically, but if you look at all the AI data centers and all that growth that’s coming in the next few years, where’s most of that capital coming from?” he said. “A lot of it is coming from the Gulf. And if the Gulf—not politically, but even just from a financial perspective—cannot commit that, what’s the knock on effects on those companies and the U.S. economy? I don’t think anyone has done that math, but there is something there absolutely.”

“Hyperscalers”—referring to major companies like OpenAI—“are fine, those guys are huge, they can afford it, but what about the next level?” he said, referring to a sweeping class of companies that could go under without Gulf support.

A second source with close relationships to key Gulf leaders said that Gulf countries are looking closely at all of the deals that have struck, given the new financial realities at play.

In early March, the Financial Times reported that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait were collectively reviewing investments with an eye toward canceling some, citing a Gulf official. “A number of Gulf countries have begun an internal review to determine whether force majeure clauses can be invoked in current contracts, while also reviewing current and future investment commitments in order to alleviate some of the anticipated economic strain from the current war,” the official told the FT. “Especially if the war and related expenses continue at the same pace.”

The war and related expenses have not merely continued but accelerated. The industry source said that divestment would likely happen quietly, but it was an inevitability. “Just mathematically, it will have to happen,” he said. “I don’t think it will be obvious, I don’t think it will be messaged that way. But I think it will just happen. And then as things build up again, then people are gonna wonder, if it’s the same people that are involved now or later, you’re gonna question, are they gonna do the same thing again? Are they gonna think about diversifying? That’s the question.”

Gulf investors, he said, “just won’t be able to do the scale they were committed to.”

Paramount is run by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, one of the world’s wealthiest men and the largest donor to the nonprofit Friends of the IDF. Larry Ellison put up billions to cover his son’s merger with Warner Brothers. The Ellisons bought Bari Weiss’s The Free Press and handed her the reins to CBS News, driven by David Ellison’s admiration for her support for Israel. Weiss has cheerled the war, disturbing journalists in her newsroom, even as it threatens her patron’s media empire. The acquisition of Warner Brothers will also give Ellison control of CNN.

Ultimately, even if QIA’s preference in the end is to exit the deal, the fund will stay in unless Saudi also departs.“It’s not a Qatar decision. It’s not a Saudi-UAE decision. It’s a Saudi decision, because all three countries have to commit for the deal to make sense, unless you can find other investors from Asia,” the industry source said. Chinese wealth fund Tencent had previously been involved, but dropped out so that the transaction would not have to undergo U.S. federal scrutiny on national security grounds.

The most likely outcome of the upcoming meeting, the industry insider said, will be for the fund to continue a wait-and-see approach, knowing the political and economic situations are rapidly evolving. “If Saudi goes in, Qatar will follow. If Saudi doesn’t go in, Qatar won’t follow, they’ll just delay, delay, delay, and see what happens. Everyone can still say, ‘No, no, we’re committed, we’re committed.’ And there’s a million ways, if this continues another month, you could force majeure, you could do whatever.”

A Qatari source with insight into the process also said that the deal was still heavily likely to go through.

Trump’s decision to humiliate MBS publicly has thrown a wrench into the relationship with Saudi Arabia. At a Saudi-backed investment conference, Trump riffed on his relationship with the crown prince. “A short time ago we were together and he looked at me and he said, ‘You know, one year ago you were a dead country. Now, you’re the hottest country anywhere in the world,” Trump said. “He didn’t think this was going to happen. He didn’t think he’d be kissing my ass, he really didn’t. He thought it’d be just another American president that was a loser with a country that was going downhill, but now he has to be nice to me. You tell him he better be nice to me, he’s gotta be.”

At the same conference, Saudi’s wealth fund announced a 15% cut in capital investment.

Trump ally Steve Bannon piled on. “Maybe we can get a couple or three of those princes in uniform,” he said on his podcast, The War Room. “Got any kids in special forces? Let’s line up those royal families and see how big they’re talking.”

The insult has contributed to the air of uncertainty surrounding the Paramount financing, the industry source said. “Look, that thing that happened a couple days ago is not a small thing. I mean, we know MBS. That was a pretty insulting move. I don’t know if the word’s ‘petty,’ but he’d be willing to move drastically based on emotions,” he said.

He said that most in the industry were still stuck in a fog-of-war scenario and hadn’t gamed out longterm scenarios. Trump, he said, didn’t seem to have thought things through either, particularly as it related to the president’s promise to supply Europe energy. “The knock on effects are tremendous, because who will supply the LNG and the gas to Europe the next few years? It’s the U.S. But who also needs that gas to grow the data centers? It’s the U.S. So something has to give.” Access to helium, an essential component for the AI industry, is also at risk as a result of the war.

The major players—China, Russia, and even Saudi Arabia—are all incentivized to keep it going, he said.

Saudi Arabia is “not as affected by this war as people may think, their spot prices went up, they, logistically, they’re the hub for everything now,” he said. “It’s making up the difference.”

“If you think about who’s really incentivized to deescalate right now, not many. Iran’s happy for this to continue. Israel’s happy for it to continue. U.S. doesn’t seem to care. It doesn’t affect them. And you have China, China maybe doesn’t want it but Russia is benefitting like more than anybody. So it’s really Qatar that needs to just deescalate for their own security. Kuwait’s fucked. Bahrain’s fucked, but they’re not really players.”

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Justice Democrats is endorsing two new candidates on Monday, throwing its weight behind Saikat Chakrabarty in San Francisco and Adam Hamawy in New Jersey. Both candidates, for their own reasons, threaten to have outsized importance if they make it to Congress, and both are running in open seats vacating by a retiring Democrat.

Chakrabarti was himself a co-founder of Justice Democrats and went on to be the first chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Chakrabarti was driven out of Washington by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who objected to his hard-charging approach, which had included helping to organize an occupation of Pelosi’s office during freshman orientation. Chakrabarti initially filed to challenge Pelosi directly, but Pelosi has since announced her retirement. Ocasio-Cortez has not yet endorsed Chakrabarti; winning the backing of Justice Democrats could be a step in that direction. Chakrabarti faces state legislator Scott Wiener.

Chakrabarti being thrown out of Washington by Pelosi for being too aggressive as a chief of staff and returning as a member of Congress replacing Pelosi would rattle the lower chamber in a major way. Chakrabarti is also unusual among Democrats in presenting a full-spectrum populist economic agenda that goes far beyond checking the boxes of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

In New Jersey, Dr. Adam Hamawy is running in an open seat to replace retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman. Hamawy, a renowned surgeon, served as an Army doctor in Iraq, where he treated countless wounded veterans. By happenstance, one of them was Tammy Duckworth, who is now a senator from Illinois. Duckworth lost both legs when her helicopter crashed. As a senator, she worked to come to Hamawy’s rescue when he and a delegation of American and British doctors were trapped by Israel in European Hospital in Khan Younis in May 2024. As supplies of food and water ran low, Duckworth joined global calls for Israel to allow the medical workers to leave.

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Hamawy was among three of the 20 doctors who refused to evacuate until Israel agreed to allow a new rotation to replace them. Leaving without being replaced would leave the hospital short on staff, but importantly, Hamawy understood that Israel would be less likely to attack the hospital with Western doctors inside it. “A decision for some of us to stay was consistent with our American values,” Hamawy said at the time. “We came in as a team and we do not leave anyone behind. If all and only the Americans left at once, what would that say about us as a nation?”

Hamawy was invited to be Watson Coleman’s guest at the State of the Union, and spoke with members of Congress about what he saw in Gaza. Now a candidate for Congress, he represents a particularly powerful threat to Israeli propaganda narratives, as he can speak from direct experience and, by virtue of his status as a celebrated Army veteran, can’t easily have his patriotism questioned.

Hamawy is facing Sue Altman, who previously ran in a nearby district and benefited from significant support from the AIPAC-linked group Democratic Majority for Israel. She has now distanced herself from the pro-Israel organization, and her time as head of the New Jersey Working Families Party gives her some progressive credibility in the district. Whether that reputation can survive growing awareness of her previous alliance with AIPAC will likely determine the outcome of the race, as the district is heavily Democratic. Justice Democrats and the WFP often work in coalition to support the same candidates; JD’s decision to endorse against a top WFP official will put WFP’s independent expenditure arm in a tricky situation, leaving them either to abandon their longtime ally or spend money against another ally—potentially landing them on the same side of the race as AIPAC’s money.

Justice Democrats Executive Director Alexandra Rojas, a co-founder of the group, and a key figure in the election of Ocasio-Cortez, announced this week she would transition out of her role as ED to become chair of the board at the end of this cycle.

Chakrabarti, meanwhile, has the personal capacity to mostly self-fund his campaign. As I covered in my book We’ve Got People, Chakrabarti was the second engineer at Stripe, and his stock options made him an extremely rich young man. Repulsed by the wealth inequality he saw around him, he quit Stripe before he was fully vested—an extraordinarily rare move—and volunteered for the first Bernie Sanders campaign, becoming a key player in the organization’s distributed volunteer operation. After the campaign, he co-founded Brand New Congress, an effort to oust every member of Congress, which then birthed Justice Democrats.

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I learned then how much went into it—the permits, making all the signs, finding enough port-a-johns, getting the word out, the bus coordination—and it turned into the largest antiwar demonstration the city had seen since Vietnam. The next morning I raced for the Washington Post—the print version was still all that mattered—and was stunned to see it buried on something like page A17. (It’s still online, you can read it here.)

The media’s refusal to cover antiwar sentiments with the seriousness I thought they deserved, combined with their credulous coverage of weapons of mass destruction, drove me to consider becoming a journalist myself for the first time. Somebody needed to do it honestly, I remember thinking. (I also did not think Saddam Hussein had WMDs, and all I had to go on was what I read in The Nation or heard on Democracy Now. So anybody who tells you it was impossible to know is just wrong.)

Reporting honestly on war is, of course, essential to what we’ve built here at Drop Site, and the last month we’ve seen the largest growth in subscribers since the month we launched in 2024. If you’re one of those new subscribers, thank you, and welcome, we hope you appreciate what you’ll be reading, though it certainly won’t be enjoyable.

If you haven’t yet made the leap from unpaid to paid, consider doing that today as a signal of support for the work we’re doing. You can also, as always, make a one-time or recurring contribution that is tax deductible (to the fullest extent of the law).

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Amodei, meanwhile, took a different path after the war. The student newspaper reported that someone dressed as Saddam Hussein at a spring 2003 frat party mocked Amodei by thanking him for his support. He transferred to Stanford, and his antiwar activity seems to have heavily tapered off. Instead, he threw himself into developing what he has promised will be an ethical AI. (The jury is still out on whether that’s possible.) That commitment clashed headlong with the Pentagon recently; after Amodei inquired as to whether his tech was used to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, our “War Secretary” lashed out at him. Anthropic and the Pentagon then battled over whether the company’s product could be used for autonomous armed drones or for mass surveillance.

Amodei refused, and the Pentagon severed its links with Anthropic—with a six-month period of conscious uncoupling. In the meantime, the former antiwar organizer’s tech is playing a critical role in another U.S. war in the Middle East. Owen Lavine’s story on this odd chapter of Amodei’s life is below.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on February 19, 2026. Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP via Getty Images.

The Untold Story of Dario Amodei’s Antiwar Past, as His AI Tech is Used for a New Middle East War

Story by Owen Lavine

It was March 3, 2003. The Bush administration was beating the drums of war. An invasion of Iraq was certain. Dario Amodei was in his second year at Caltech where he was studying physics. After penning a column pushing back on an “unfair” student flier claiming Martin Luther King Jr. was supportive of Zionism, Amodei came out swinging against the looming invasion of Iraq, and his “apathetic” fellow students.

“Anti-War Protest: Most Students Apathetic Towards World Politics by Dario Amodei” read the top of page 5 of The California Tech.

Amodei opens the column referencing social critic Neil Postman’s theory that “the greatest danger American democracy faces is not an Orwellian dictatorship but a culture that makes politics and public discourse irrelevant.”

“Living at Caltech is a forceful reminder that Postman was right,” Amodei went on.

Amodei lamented that, as the Bush administration saber-rattled over Saddam’s regime, he “rarely heard the subject mentioned in casual conversation.”

Driving deeper, Amodei pointed out that “several hundred” people are on the “interest list” for an anti-war campus organization named the Peaceful Justice Coalition, yet, a leader of the group told him “only a handful of them are consistently active.”

“The problem isn’t that everyone is just peachy with the idea of bombing Iraq; it’s that most people are opposed in principle but refuse to give one millisecond of their time to the issue,” Amodei added.

Amodei gives a crystal clear forecast of how the invasion of Iraq will be a complete failure too, quoting then-NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark who told a CNN interviewer in 2002 that a war in Iraq could “supercharge recruiting for Al Qaeda.”

“We should never let ourselves be reduced to amoral technicians who run the machines of war as casually as we do our computations,” Amodei went on.

Amodei ends the article by asking proponents of the war to “challenge us” at an anti-war action the following Wednesday.

The March 10 paper described the action as a “small group” with counter-protestors, according to Amodei, who was identified as an “organizer” of the Peaceful Justice Coalition. Across from the Peaceful Justice Coalition, proponents of the war held signs reading “Give War a Chance,” and, “Go back to work, hippies.”

“As scientists, we’re not in some ivory tower,” Amodei was quoted in the paper saying at the protest.

Ten days later, coalition forces invaded Iraq. Amodei and the Peaceful Justice Coalition vented their frustration at a “peace forum” on March 30, hosted by then Congressman Adam Schiff. The article states Schiff, who voted in favor of the Iraq war, gave a “controversial speech.”

“He further noted that while war can be cruel, peace can be terrible as well,” it added. “In addition, he asserted that ‘never has diplomacy deterred a tyrant.’”

Schiff was reportedly interrupted by “outbursts.” Amodei maintained the need for “civility” but “understood ‘how frustrating it is to have your heartfelt pleas fall on deaf ears.’” Amodei qualified that protests were “especially important,” though, noting the “connection of science with the military.”

As the school year drew to an end, Amodei didn’t pen another column nor did The California Tech note him at any other actions against the Iraq war.

In late spring, at a Caltech frat party, a character dressed as Saddam Hussein shook “anti-war advocate” Amodei’s hand and “thanked” him for his “support” as student paper’s 2003 commencement issue retells.

The next semester, Amodei would transfer to Stanford. As legendary Caltech Physics Professor Tom Trombello recalled when asked about Amodei leaving Caltech, “With Dario, it was very important that he not stick it out. This is a national treasure.”

In March, Anthropic was labelled a “supply chain risk” by the Pentagon after the company missed a deadline to meet the Pentagon’s demands to allow them to use Anthropic’s Claude large language model for autonomous weapons systems and mass surveillance.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement that Anthropic could not, “in good conscience,” accede to the Pentagon’s demands that his company drop safeguards embedded in its large language models. Amodei also drew redlines around Anthropic’s products being used for mass domestic surveillance technology and fully autonomous weapons systems by the Pentagon.

Anthropic was already a prime target for White House AI Czar David Sacks who claimed “Anthropic’s agenda” was to “backdoor Woke AI and other AI regulations through Blue states like California,” in an October X post.

“This is not surprising since Anthropic hired the Biden AI team, which gave us Biden’s Woke AI executive order and the Biden Diffusion Rule,” Sacks added, referring to a Biden-era rule issued by the Commerce Department which restricted some advanced computer chip sales to China.

Amodei pushed back on Sacks’ characterization of Anthropic, indirectly calling out the “recent uptick in inaccurate claims about Anthropic’s policy stances.” Amodei added that the Trump administration and Anthropic were aligned on “key areas of AI policy.”

Amodei has also been critical of “authoritarian” governments in the Middle East, and the Trump administration’s decision to sell some advanced computer chips to China.

In a leaked memo from last year, Amodei reportedly said the company had “vociferously pushed for not allowing big data centers in the Middle East.” Amodei added that “without a central authority blocking them, there’s a race to the bottom where companies gain a lot of advantage by getting deeper and deeper in bed with the Middle East.”

“The basis of our opposition to large training clusters in the Middle East, or to shipping [NVIDIA] H20’s to China, is that the ‘supply chain’ of Al is dangerous to hand to authoritarian governments,” Amodei went on. “These governments can use it to gain military dominance or to gain leverage over democratic countries.”

Amodei’s criticism has been echoed by Democratic lawmakers, such as Democratic Senator from Virginia, Tim Kaine.

“We do not sell our most advanced security critical technology to adversaries,” Kaine told the Senate floor in a December speech, referencing President Trump’s greenlight on NVIDIA H200 chip sales to China.

However, Anthropic’s relationship with the Trump administration really soured after the January raid to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Following the raid, Anthropic reportedly had consternations about their products being used during the raid—Claude, the company’s flagship model was used. Anthropic had previously signed a $200 million contract with the Department of Defense.

“Anthropic asked whether their software was used for the raid to capture Maduro, which caused real concerns across the Department of War indicating that they might not approve if it was,” an official with knowledge of the situation told Axios in February.

The Pentagon then initiated a “review” of Anthropic, which culminated in the frontier AI lab being

labelled a “supply chain risk” on March 4. Anthropic has now sued the Pentagon, claiming the relevant statute, 10 USC 3252: Requirements for information relating to supply chain risk, “exists to protect the government rather than to punish a supplier.”

In another leaked memo from the same day the Pentagon labelled Anthropic a supply chain risk, Amodei reportedly stated, “The real reasons DoW and the Trump admin do not like us is that we haven’t donated to Trump (while OpenAI/Greg [Brockman] have donated a lot), we haven’t given dictator-style praise to Trump (while Sam [Altman] has).”

Anthropic recently gave $20 million to Public First Action, an AI-safety focused group led by former Congressmen Brad Carson and Chris Stewart. One of their key issues is blocking a Republican-led push—that was nearly snuck into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—to block state level AI regulations. Public First Action hasn’t endorsed a slate of candidates, but they are dumping $450,000 into former Palantir employee and New York State assemblyman Alex Bores’s bid for New York’s 11th congressional district. Bores is facing $1.1 million in attack ads from pro-AI PAC, Leading Our Future, which is backed by Marc Andreessen, an unofficial adviser of the President, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who donated $25 million to pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc., among others.

A spokesperson for the Bores campaign declined to comment when asked for Bores’ position on the Biden administration’s diffusion rule, another issue Public First Action and Anthropic are aligned on.

It’s noteworthy, too, that Public First Action’s platform—and a key Amodei criticism of the White House—is Trump’s decision to allow China to buy some NVIDIA chips that could be used to run artificial intelligence models.

“There are some elements of the government, some government officials who are not aware, who don’t seem to get it, who still think this is an economic race to diffuse our technology to different parts of the world,” Amodei said at the Anthropic Futures Forum last year, referring to export controls on chips. “Some of the elements in government don’t get it, and are doing exactly the wrong things.”

Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.

The company scored an early victory in federal court on Tuesday as they sue the Pentagon.

“It looks like an attempt to cripple Anthropic,” District Court for the Northern District Of California Judge Rita F. Lin said of the Pentagon’s labeling of Anthropic as a supply chain risk. Lin appeared to concur with Amodei’s reading that the Pentagon’s labeling of Anthropic as a supply chain risk wasn’t motivated by a concern the company posed a genuine “risk” to the supply chain.

Lin said the Pentagon’s actions “don’t seem to be really tailored to a stated national security concern.”

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HAVANA, Cuba—The Cuban government is prepared to discuss offering “lump sum” compensation to Americans and American firms that saw property nationalized after the 1959 revolution, Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio told Drop Site News in an interview.

The “lump sum” agreement—meaning that Cuba would pay the U.S., which would then handle the claims—would need to be a part of a broader “holistic” deal that would address U.S. sanctions and the blockade and also allow for an amount of American investment in Cuba that previously had been forbidden, he said.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel revealed last week that his government was in direct talks with the United States. After the New York Times reported that the U.S. officials are pushing for the ouster of Díaz-Canel, Cuba rejected outright the possibility that the Cuban president’s role or the Communist-run political system is up for negotiation.

After the revolution, Cuba negotiated lump sum compensation agreements with countries such as Canada, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Spain, and France, but the United States refused to participate, planning to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government instead.

“[Cuba made] lump sum agreements with the six governments whose property was nationalized in Cuba, all of them had compensation schemes, all of them were compensated with the exception of the U.S.,” said Cossio.

Had compensation been accepted by the United States in the 1960s, Fernandez de Cossio said, studies show the final payments would have been made by the 1980s. The Cuban government today lacks the reserves to make major compensation payments, but with the lifting of the embargo, economic growth could produce revenue that could finance such an arrangement.

Nearly 6,000 American individuals and businesses have filed claims for nationalized property, according to U.S. government data and industry estimates gathered by Bloomberg. With interest, the certified claims are now estimated to total approximately $9 billion.

Compensation, he added, should not just go one way.

“We’re ready to sit down with the United States and discuss these issues; but Cuba also has claims,” Cossio told Drop Site. “We believe the Cuban people and the Cuban nation requires, or deserves, to be compensated for the damage done by the economic blockade, by the invasion, by terrorism, by assassinations, by actions, violent actions against the economy.”

Cuban Vice Prime Minister Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga announced Monday a sweeping package of measures expanding the economic role of Cubans residing abroad that would allow them to own and invest in private business for the first time since the revolution, including the possibility of large-scale investments by foreign capital in key sectors of the economy, as well as the participation of Cubans residing abroad in the national financial system.

“We are not talking about specific businesses. The doors of our country are open to the participation of the Cuban community residing abroad,” Pérez told the Cuban news program Mesa Redonda in an interview.

Fernandez do Cossio said in his interview with Drop Site, that the scope of what is now being offered far exceeds what has been possible in the past. While it’s hard to imagine Costco or Starbucks on the island, he said that the freedom of political movement that would come from a lifting of the embargo would open up new possibilities in terms of economic and political reforms. Trump himself long ago registered the trademark for Trump Hotel Havana, according to Cuban government records, and a new agreement would pave the way for such a development.

Pérez, who also serves as minister of foreign trade and investment, said in his comments that Cuba was taking steps to reduce red tape for foreign investment and added that Cubans abroad would also be afforded the opportunity to invest in development projects and funds in Cuba.

The official said Cuba would welcome investment by U.S. firms but specified that it is U.S. law that does not permit this.

“It would take a very bold step by the U.S. government to overhaul that legislation and let American companies trade freely with Cuba and invest in our country,” said Pérez.

“The U.S. government, if it wants, can make exceptions so that whoever wants to invest specifically or in general would never go to court,” Cossio told Drop Site News.

Both Cossio and the Cuban deputy prime minister made reference to the Helms-Burton Act, a key piece of U.S. legislation that strengthened and codified the economic blockade against Cuba. This legislation allows U.S. citizens, including Cuban-Americans, to file lawsuits in U.S. federal courts against any company that “traffics” in property confiscated by the Cuban government after the 1959 revolution. Cuban-American judges in Miami have interpreted the law extremely liberally in a way that has staunched investment for fear of litigation.

By putting compensation on the table in talks with the U.S., Cuba is looking to assuage concerns from elements of the Cuban exile community who may seek to scuttle a potential deal by threatening lawsuits. Cuba’s olive branch to Cubans living abroad aligns with recent rhetoric from U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly talked about Cuban Americans who want to “return and assist” their homeland.

Any diplomatic agreement between the United States and Cuba is likely to face fierce opposition from hardline exile factions who prioritize regime change over all. Danny Valdes from Cuban Americans for Cuba, an upstart organization that was formed to challenge the hardline exile narrative, told Drop Site he expects this faction of the Cuban community to attempt to “sabotage” any diplomatic breakthrough.

“My experience with these folks is that their number one priority is revenge against the regime,” said Valdes, who grew up with his Cuban family in Miami, a hotbed of radical counterrevolutionary activity and the home of notable regime-change advocates in Trump’s orbit.

The organizer and activist, who travelled to Cuba as part of the “Nuestra America Convoy” to deliver humanitarian aid, said the current discussions that would allow for U.S. investment would nonetheless align with U.S. aims for the island country.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that the goal of the United States is to build a private sector that can also contest for political power down the road,” said Valdes.

Trump has talked about a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, while Francis Donovan, head of U.S. Southern Command, recently told lawmakers in a Senate hearing that the military was not actively planning an attempted invasion of Cuba. Valdes argues that given the quagmire the U.S. already finds itself in its aggression against Iran, the military option in Cuba seems less likely.

Cossio, for his part, says that despite Trump’s penchant for attacking countries in the midst of talks, the Cuban government sees “no alternative” to direct dialogue with the U.S. “We believe it’s the only way in which we can find solutions to the issues between Cuba and the United States; and we truly believe that they could be found, we don’t think that our two countries should live forever in hostility,” Cossio told Drop Site.

The State Department referred Drop Site to Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s remarks in the Oval Office. Rubio—a long-time advocate of regime change in Cuba—said the economic measures announced Monday were insufficient and suggested that what the country needed was “new people in charge.”

The U.S. has fully blocked oil from reaching the island for three months—both an act of war and a war crime—producing dire shortages. On Friday night, power went out throughout much of Havana, and on Saturday night, power went out again, this time across the entire nation. On Sunday, as power was being restored, Drop Site’s Ryan Grim visited William Soler Pediatric Hospital, and spoke with doctors, nurses, and the parents of children in intensive care about what it’s like to suffer a blackout in an ICU.

William Soler Pediatric Hospital. Photos: Ryan Grim

Hospitals by design are the last to lose power in Cuba, but with a nationwide blackout, even they go down. Each hospital has a generator, but there’s a dangerous lag between the power going out and the generator kicking in, and the nurses described racing to the babies and children on ventilators to hand pump the machine until the generator kicked in.

A nurse explains the ventilator in William Soler Pediatric Hospital’s ICU.

A special thanks to independent U.S. news organization Belly of the Beast, whose reporters based in Cuba helped us get access to hospitals and other facilities so we could get a better understanding of how the full-spectrum oil blockade is impacting the health system. (Sign up for their newsletter here and/or join their Patreon and send them a donation.) I’ll be back home tomorrow and will have more to say on what I saw here in the coming days, but for now I wanted to share the dispatch below.

Reporting like this isn’t cheap, but if it can help stave off a war on Cuba and bring the people of our two countries closer together, it’s worth it. If you can support it by becoming a paying subscriber, please do. Or if you’re already a subscriber, consider making a one-time or recurring contribution. Thanks as always for your support.

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But all of this polling, done by reputable survey companies and paid for by mainstream media outlets, has conspicuously avoiding asking tough questions about the motivations behind the war. Or, at least, we found it conspicuous.

Nobody, for instance, has surveyed the American public to ask them whether they believe this war is being fought in the interests of the American public or on behalf of Israel. And nobody has asked whether Trump launched the war to distract the public from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Indeed, anybody at an American news organization who even suggested asking such questions would at best never be invited back to the Zoom call, and more likely would find their key card no longer working at the front desk.

Doing sophisticated polling that follows best practices is an expensive endeavor, which is why it’s usually left to major media with major budgets. But thanks to the generous support of our readers, we decided it’s something we can afford, too, and we teamed up with our friends at Zeteo to split the costs of a national survey of likely American voters, one that allowed us to ask the kinds of questions we’re interested in, and that we believe you’ll be interested in too.

We hope to do more of these in the future, particularly if there’s reader interest. In fact, one way we gauge that is by looking at how many readers decide to become donors or paying subscribers after reading a particular article.

So if you’d like to see us do more of these, vote by upgrading to a paid subscription or, if you’re already a subscriber, throw us a few bucks as a one-time or charitable contribution.

If you have suggestions for future survey questions, post them in the comment section below, which is reserved for paid subs.

A majority of likely American voters believe that Donald Trump launched the war on Iran at least in part to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal that had engulfed his presidency, according to a new survey.

The survey found that a solid 52-40 majority of voters agreed with the statement, with the other 8% saying they were unsure as to his motivations. The findings will come as little surprise to a public that has morphed Trump’s codename for the war, Operation Epic Fury, into “Operation Epstein Fury.”

The belief that Trump is trying to knock Epstein off the front pages by going to war with Iran is most strongly held, unsurprisingly, by Democrats, who agree with the statement by an 81-14 margin. For those under 45, it is approaching an article of faith, with a 66%-26% majority agreeing with the idea. But even a quarter of Republicans told pollsters Trump launched the war as a distraction from Epstein.

The survey of 1,272 likely voters, using a national web panel of respondents, was conducted from March 6 to March 8 by Data for Progress, and paid for by Drop Site News and Zeteo. We put the survey into the field in order to be able to ask the American people the kind of questions mainstream news organizations shy away from. The precise wording of the questions can be found here, with breakdowns among party, race, gender, and age.

The public’s belief that Trump waged the ongoing war to distract from the Epstein scandal was branded as antisemitic this week by the Anti-Defamation League and the Washington Post, which said the viral claim owed its popularity to a “pro-Iran propaganda network.”

“Pretty quickly after the conflict began, this conspiratorial rebranding of Operation Epic Fury into ‘Operation Epstein Fury’ started circulating on social media platforms,” Oren Segal, the ADL’s “senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence,” told the Post. An ADL report said the phrase “Epstein Fury” has been mentioned more than 90,000 times by roughly 60,000 accounts. The Post did not explain why it was antisemitic to believe that Trump launched the war to distract from the Epstein scandal beyond noting that Epstein was Jewish.

The Post recently laid off its entire Middle East team. Nevertheless, according to the Post, Iranians are trying to undermine American support for the war by linking it to Epstein. “To erode public support for the joint U.S.-Israel military operation, Iranian state media has sought to portray those countries’ leaders as part of a corrupt and depraved ‘Epstein class’ or ‘Epstein regime,’” the paper reported, claiming that the “the message is spreading through generically named ‘news’ accounts” shilling for Iran. The term “Epstein class” was in fact first used by American Democratic politicians such as Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is Jewish, and Rep. Ro Khanna, who is not.

Israel’s Influence

The survey also probed the question of Israeli influence over Trump’s decisionmaking. Americans were split over the question of Trump’s loyalty, with 47% saying he is more responsive to the American people than to Israel, and 46% saying he was more responsive to Israel.

Among independents, a crucial voting block that swung the election to Trump, half—50-44%—said that Trump prioritizes Israeli interests over Americans’. Among Republicans, 17% said the same. Democrats overwhelmingly held that view, 75-17%.

Asked if the Trump administration was pursuing its war with Iran “primarily for American interests” or “primarily for Israeli interest,” the public was also divided, but half—50-41%—said that he was considering America first. Another 9% said they didn’t know.

Still, no president has ever gone into war with 41% of the country convinced he was doing so on behalf of a foreign country, putting Trump and Israel’s war in uncharted territory.

Electoral Backlash

The survey found that Americans are sour on it, with 55% saying they disapproved; among those 39% said they strongly disapproved, while just 42% approved. This result is in line with other polls on the war.

Overwhelmingly, voters believe the war will make their lives worse. The survey was in the field before the wild volatility in the oil market, but even then, 49% of voters said the war “will make my life more difficult” compared to just 10% who said they’d see an improvement. One third said it would have no impact.

More pressing for Washington, however, may be the public’s attitude toward politicians and candidates who support the war or support emergency supplemental funding for the war, which Trump has requested. The survey asked whether voters would be more likely or less likely to vote for a congressional candidate in 2026 or a presidential candidate in 2028 if they support the war or support new war funding.

For Democratic voters, the question is existential. A candidate who supports the war will be badly punished by primary voters in the 2026 congressional elections, with voters saying they’d be 79% less likely to support them, a number that held roughly the same for 2028 presidential candidates.

Republicans, however, would be more likely to support a pro-war candidate by a net 39 points, with only 20% saying it would make them less likely to back the candidate for president.

In the general election, this means voters would be less likely to support a congressional candidate by 19 points; roughly the same result holds for candidates who vote for war spending. Among presidential candidates, the number is negative 19.

Ballistic Missiles

Still, the poll found contradictory views among Americans. By a net margin of 70 points—83-13%—voters said it was important to them that Iran be prevented from possessing ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel. (In hindsight, the word “prevent” may have been the wrong one to use, since Iran already possesses such weapons.)

Asked if Iran should be allowed to possess ballistic missiles “because countries have a right to defend themselves,” only 13% agreed, while 14% said it’s “not a concern of the United States.” The remaining two-thirds said that they should be prevented from having them.

Girls’ Elementary School Strike

Finally, we asked how much voters had read, seen, or heard about the attack on the girls’ school in southern Iran, which killed more than 180 people, mostly young girls.

A full 32% said they had heard nothing at all, and another 23% said they had heard “a little.” Some 29% said they’d heard “some,” and 16% had heard “a lot.”

Of those who had heard of it, 70% believed it was the work of either Israel, the U.S., or the U.S. and Israel together. A quarter of Americans believes Iran hit the school—a theory that was promoted by Trump and a cadre of war defenders without evidence. Republicans are the only demographic where a substantial portion holds that view, with 45% blaming Iran, 45% blaming the U.S. and/or Israel, and 10% unsure.

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House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries will whip votes in support of the War Powers Resolution this week, multiple Democratic sources told Drop Site News.

Whipping the vote means that Democratic leaders will apply pressure to colleagues to vote in support of the resolution to constrain Trump’s war ambitions, making defections more costly internally. The whip team is run by the party’s number two in the House, Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts.

The decision comes after a group of progressive Democrats urged leadership to break with their recent practice of allowing Democrats freely to back Trump administration policies, which began when 46 Democrats broke ranks to support the Laken Riley Act and set the stage for Trump’s mass deportation.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), told Drop Site that leadership should not allow the WPR to be “a vote of conscience”—a term used to describe a vote that isn’t whipped in the House—because it goes to the core of the powers of Congress. “This is not a vote of conscience, this is a vote about the Constitution and Article 1 responsibilities for members of Congress,” she said.

The House is tentatively scheduled to begin debate on Wednesday and vote on Thursday.

On Saturday, CPC members were briefed privately on Iran by Ben Rhodes, formerly the national security adviser for President Barack Obama, and a host on the popular Pod Save the World, according to a CPC source.

The resolution from Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie is being publicly opposed by at least four Democrats: Jared Moskowitz of southeastern Florida, Josh Gottheimer of northern New Jersey, Tom Suozzi of Long Island, and Greg Landsman of Cincinnati. Republican Warren Davidson, also of Ohio, however, has signaled he may break ranks and support it.

Moskowitz is facing a primary challenge and Gottheimer may also face one if he bucks his party on the war resolution; the deadline to file as a challenger to him is March 23.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a co-author of the parallel War Powers Resolution in the Senate, said that none of the classified intelligence he’s received as a senior member of both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate Armed Services committee has revealed an imminent threat to the United States that would justify the war President Trump started in Iran.

After Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed lawmakers on Monday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) concurred with Kaine, saying there was no evidence that Iran was going to strike the U.S. first. Warner, one of the most pro-Israel Democrats, said that “there was a threat to Israel” and so “we were in uncharted territory.”

Pentagon officials within the Trump administration have, per Reuters, privately corroborated Kaine’s assertion, acknowledging in closed-door briefings with congressional staff that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack U.S. forces first.

Nevertheless, Sen. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has become notorious in Washington for bucking his party on foreign policy, has joined the aforementioned war supporters in the House in also publicly announcing his intention to oppose the War Powers Resolution. He appears to be alone among Democrats in the Senate.

Fetterman baselessly asserted in a Sunday appearance on CNN that Trump exhausted diplomatic efforts to arrive at firm agreements barring Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons, despite Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Albusaidi, who was mediating negotiations with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, suggesting a peace agreement was within reach when the U.S. struck Iran.

“They could have possibly acquired a [nuclear] bomb if we weren’t [to] bomb back in June,” Fetterman said. “So yeah there is a threat. It’s not imminent that could happen right now but it’s one that I think it’s entirely appropriate to deal with it.”

Prominent anti-war progressives in Congress have issued scathing criticisms of the American-Israeli joint operation and both called upon Congress to reconvene and assert its war powers to end Operation Epic Fury.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called President Trump’s strikes “unlawful” and “unnecessary,” committing to vote “Yes” on the War Powers Resolution, while Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said these actions constitute an “illegal war of aggression,” emphasizing that the Trump administration has already killed children and risks igniting a catastrophic regional conflict.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, also issued a more sweeping condemnation of U.S. foreign policy, rejecting the framing of the war as an effort to usher in democracy, attacking U.S. sanction policy, chiding President Trump for ignoring public opposition to a new war, and saying “you cannot ‘free’ people by killing them.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told Drop Site on Monday, “Israel should not be directing American war policy. That’s something the American Congress should be doing.” Rubio on Monday claimed that Israel had indeed forced the U.S. to attack. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces,” said Rubio. That left Trump no choice, he said, but to join Israel in the attack.

Correction, March 3: Ben Rhodes is a host of Pod Save the World, not Pod Save America.

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Javier Milei Is Set to Roll Back Argentina’s Historically Strong Labor Rights

Story by Sam Carliner

Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies passed a bill Friday that would massively overhaul the country’s labor relations in an unprecedented rollback of workers’ rights. The 135-115 vote came after a marathon midnight session lasting from Thursday into Friday as trade unions again wielded their ability to bring out striking workers across Argentina and shut down ports, public transit, schools, and hospitals to protest the bill.

The lead-up to the vote was marked by the country’s fourth general strike since President Javier Milei took office. The CGT, the country’s largest federation of trade unions, called the 24-hour work stoppage following weeks of growing outrage as more and more workers learned of the severity of the attacks in the labor reform. The country, which has a unionization rate of around 27% nationally, was brought to a standstill.

Julián Aguirre, Director of the International Relations Secretariat from the CTA Autómoma labor federation which represents workers in industries ranging from healthcare to sugar production, told Drop Site that the reform has broader implications for labor in Latin America.

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“It sets a worrying precedent for the region,” Aguirre said. “Argentina today is a laboratory for a project that is not only economic but also social and cultural. In this case it aims to dismantle 100 years of labor rights in Argentina.”

The bill will return to the Senate on February 27 and labor leaders have pledged to maintain their protests. Although the bill is expected to become law, the right-wing Argentine government will have to face off with an increasingly mobilized and militant labor movement.

Argentina has generally been considered to have some of the strongest labor rights in the region. The bill includes a barrage of pro-big business measures which would make it cheaper and easier for employers to fire workers, standardize a 12-hour workday, reduce overtime pay and severance, and restrict paid time off. This is characteristic of the “Chainsaw Agenda” which is at the center of president Javier Milei’s economic policy. The bill also restricts workers’ rights to strike and engage in collective bargaining. The lower house eliminated one of the more controversial proposals that would have reduced by half the salaries of workers on leave due to injury or illness.

Businesses have already begun laying off workers in anticipation of the law. Just days before the vote, FATE, the largest tire factory in the country, announced it would be closing after over half a century of operations, firing hundreds of workers in the process. In response, a group of workers entered the factory and set up an occupation on the roof, which is ongoing at this time of writing.

Victory Ottobino, a FATE worker of three years who is participating in the occupation, told Drop Site that the closure is connected to Milei’s larger agenda.

“There are already hundreds of thousands of people who have been laid off across the country, mainly as a result of this government’s economic policy, a government that is totally aligned with the Trump administration in the United States, with the policies of financial capital, the IMF, etc.”

The occupation at FATE draws from recent history in Argentina. At the start of the 2000s, there was a wave of occupations in which workers took control of factories throughout the country, fighting for several years to bring them under workers’ control. Raúl Godoy, a labor leader who led the worker takeover of Zanon, a ceramics factory, told Drop Site that this history still inspires workers.

“This is a fight that is open and etched in the historical memory of the workers of our country,” Godoy said. “They are a very important achievement and a symbol in the face of closures: to occupy, to produce, to resist, and to have an alternative from the workers.”

Milei’s U.S.-Backed Agenda

Milei campaigned in 2023 as an outsider who would improve the living conditions of workers. His campaign took advantage of economic concerns in a country plagued by runaway inflation, fueled largely by an imposing debt from the International Monetary Fund.

As president, he has been attempting to completely reorganize Argentina’s economy for the benefit of big business by gutting long-standing protections for workers, privatizing public services, and opening the country to foreign capital, with a focus on attracting U.S. investment. Milei’s policies have not only worsened living conditions for most Argentines but have also gutted the country’s small and medium businesses. The new labor reform is the most extreme measure to date.

While many workers and small business owners voted for Milei, his administration has seen growing discontent reflected in plummeting approval ratings and large protests.

Despite this, Milei’s party received a boost in recent parliamentary elections. The win was largely the result of direct interference by the United States, with Trump announcing days before the election that he would condition $40 billion in aid to Argentina on Milei’s party La Libertad Avanza (Freedom Advances) winning sufficient seats to push forward liberalization of the country.

Milei’s party did not have enough votes in the Chamber of Deputies to pass the labor reform on their own. The vote passed with the support of other right-wing parties including Propuesta Republicana (Republican Proposal) and Unión Cívica Radical (Radical Civic Union).

In addition, several Peronist deputies provided the numbers needed to pass the bill. Some voted in favor of the bill after modifications had been made; others didn’t vote for it, but their presence allowed for the necessary quorum needed for the debate to commence. Peronism is the country’s longstanding populist movement which ranges from center-right to center-left. Many different groups, often with conflicting interests, make up the base of Peronism, which partially explains some of the representatives helping to advance the bill.

Aguirre told Drop Site that there is a “divorce” between the growing opposition in the streets and the political representatives in Congress.

“In all these demonstrations that have been massive on many occasions—whether to repudiate the attack on the university system, to repudiate the attack on the public health system—they have been massive marches, but they have perhaps not yet found a national leadership with a proposal that represents them.”

Worker Opposition

Along with the strike, workers, socialists, and broader activist sectors engaged in combative protests. On the morning of February 19, protesters set up several roadblocks at major transit arteries including the Pan-American Highway and the Pueyrredón Bridge. Early in the afternoon, a large crowd convened outside of Congress, enduring a militarized police presence which has been a staple of Milei’s repressive response to opposition. Later into the night neighborhoods were filled with the sound of cacerolazos, a popular protest in which people bang on pots and pans.

The day marked the culmination of outrage that had grown in waves since Milei first began preparing to pass the labor reform at the start of January. Just one week before the Deputies held their vote, the public became aware of Article 44, a section of the bill which undermined sick leave, rapidly increasing outrage over the reform.

Godoy told Drop Site that more left-wing sectors of the labor movement had launched a campaign to inform workers about the impact of the labor reform and organize for unions to take action against it.

“Campaigns were held in plazas, on beaches, in vacation spots, on trains, in subways, in public squares to inform the union leadership, the official union offices, especially the CGT, about the seriousness of this situation,” said Godoy.

Unlike previous work stoppages, the latest strike saw all of the country’s trade union confederations “set aside partisan and ideological differences in pursuit of a common goal,” according to Aguirre, with chatter among trade unions that the time has come for an indefinite general strike.

The ongoing occupation at FATE shows another side of the labor movement, in which some workers are responding spontaneously to the impact of Milei’s policies. In January, Lustramax, a cleaning and paper goods manufacturer, tried to illegally fire several workers known for their union activity, which resulted in a factory occupation and ended in the workers getting their jobs back.

Ottobino, the FATE worker, told Drop Site that these initiatives play an important role in activating the labor movement.

“All these sectors and movements that exist and are being monitored and attacked by the government must join forces to develop a widespread struggle to impose on the union bureaucracy until we bring down the economic plan of the government of the big bosses and the IMF,” said Ottobino.

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LEWISTON, Maine—The day after Janet Mills launched her Senate campaign in mid-October, she made a major announcement that spoke to the energy behind her effort to blunt the momentum of oysterman Graham Platner: She had raised a million dollars in the first 24 hours, with “98 percent of the donations $100 or less.”

But Mills has now filed her fundraising records publicly, and the numbers paint a different picture.

According to records filed with the Federal Election Commission, Mills raised $465,000 in what are known as “itemized contributions” within the first day of her campaign. To be itemized, the contribution is generally at least $200. That would suggest 46.5% of her $1 million came from larger contributions—and not those giving less than $100.

The clever ambiguity in the wording of “percent of donations,” however, could also mean that out of every 100 donors, only two were donations over $100. In other words, when Mills’s campaign wrote that only 2 percent were from those giving over $100, she’s counting a donation of $5 and a maximum contribution of $3,500 as one each. In Mills’ case, she raised the maximum allowable amount from 36 people on the first day.

But if the million-dollar claim is true, it also suggests her campaign has sputtered out. Let’s assume that she raised, as she claimed, at least $535,000 in small contributions in the first 24 hours. That’s not bad at all, even if it’s not the million from small donors that was strongly implied.

The problem is that for the entire fourth quarter of 2025, she raised just $822,000 in small contributions. That would mean that, after raising more than a half million in one day from regular people, she raised just $287,000 more over the next two and a half months. As a candidate, some drop off after launch day is expected, but to drop that far and that fast raises major concerns about how much momentum there is behind her bid, especially considering that the Democratic Party in Washington has turned on its small-dollar fundraising program for Mills. The party has carpet-bombed inboxes on her behalf, but people seem not to be responding.

The Mills campaign did not respond when asked to clarify these day-one fundraising issues.

In-state fundraising data this quarter tells a similarly worrying story for the Mills campaign. It’s nice to get money from California, but that doesn’t tell you anything about how popular you are in Maine. While the governor leads her U.S. Senate opponent Graham Platner in total dollars from within Maine, about $700,000 to $500,000, Platner has a significant advantage in volume of small-dollar donations across the state.

The quarterly report shows Platner with 2,119 donations below $150 this quarter. Gov. Mills had 1,075 small-dollar donations, about half of Platner’s base. So Mills is beating Platner when it comes to the wealthiest Mainers, while Platner is beating her handily among regular people. The problem for Mills is that she will quickly run out of rich people at the polls.

In southern Maine counties, where more than 53% of registered Democratic Primary voters live, Platner had almost three times as many small-dollar contributions as Mills. In the remaining central and northern Maine counties, Platner nearly doubles Mills in small-dollar donations, despite—or perhaps because of—Mills’s long history in the state.

“25,609 Mainers have already volunteered for or donated to our campaign,” the Platner Campaign said in a February 5 post on Twitter. “For context: Only 63,384 people voted for Janet Mills in the 2018 primary.”

The lack of enthusiasm gleaned from Mills’s fundraising data matches on-the-ground accounts from Maine. During the ICE surge, Gov. Mills’s approach to opposing the federal agency’s presence left community leaders feeling unaligned with her campaign.

Mills Out

On January 24, the morning that federal agents murdered VA nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, more than 500 Mainers packed into the former St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, a towering gothic brick structure overlooking Lewiston’s Kennedy Park.

Despite sub-zero conditions, the crowd gathered for the state’s first large-scale ICE protest, an “ICE THEM OUT” rally. That week, masked federal agents launched “Operation Catch of the Day,” a mass deportation campaign aimed at the nearly 6,000 Somalis who live in Maine. By operation’s end, the administration claimed to arrest over 200 “immigrant offenders.” Many of these Mainers are now being held at a Massachusetts facility attorneys found to have “inhumane” conditions.

The Lewiston event featured many of the state’s prominent Democratic politicians.

Speakers included Platner, as well as gubernatorial candidates Shenna Bellows, Troy Jackson, Hannah Pingree, and Angus King III; Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline and Portland Mayor Mark Dion, the leaders of Maine’s two largest cities; and Rep. Chellie Pingree.

Gov. Mills was notably absent.

“Governor Mills did not reach out to me, or to the organizing team ahead of the January 24 rally, and none of her staff contacted us either,” Former Lewiston city councilor and lead organizer of the ICE THEM OUT protest Safiya Khalid told Drop Site News. “There was no indication of interest from the Governor or her team.”

The day ICE launched its Maine operation, Mills was caught jetting off to California. Dinner invitations obtained by Axios reveal Mills planned to attend a trio of big-money Senate fundraisers in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley on Wednesday, and the East Bay on Thursday. The Wednesday invitation described an “intimate dinner” in San Francisco’s financial district. Suggested donations ranged from $1,000 to $7,000—the maximum donation for both the primary and general.

“Governor Mills has been focused on leading our state through this moment by standing up to Donald Trump, calling out Susan Collins’ failures, and most importantly working to defend Maine people,” said campaign spokesperson Tommy Garcia in a statement. Garcia was also employed by the state Democratic party. “Maine people know Janet Mills has their back and is focused on keeping Maine safe, not scoring political points.”

The campaign also provided Drop Site a bulleted list with links to several press statements highlighting actions Gov. Mills has recently taken against ICE. This list included details on requesting a meeting with Trump, writing a letter to the administration, and “slamming” Congress for advancing DHS funding without any reforms or measures.

For Khalid, who in 2019 overcame waves of racist smears to become the first Somali-American and youngest person ever elected to the Lewiston City Council, more meaningful actions would involve a structural “end to militarized enforcement models that destabilize communities.”

“We need leaders who are unequivocal in defending marginalized and vulnerable communities, not leaders who remain within the comfort of the political establishment,” Khalid said, “If you are running for office, you should be clear about whether you support dismantling an agency that has caused documented harm across this country.”

Platner, who spoke in Lewiston alongside Khalid, similarly believes the agency’s “institutional culture and total lack of accountability” cannot be reformed. He described the ongoing Chuck Schumer-led DHS negotiations as “acquiescence.”

“It just goes to show how out of step leadership in the Democratic Party is with membership,” Platner told Drop Site News. “I’ve been going all over the state of Maine. Every Democrat I talk to thinks ICE needs to be dismantled. People don’t think this agency deserves a single dime.”

“We watched Renee Good and Alex Pretti get shot from effectively every single possible angle,” Platner continued. “The idea one more camera would change that is insane.”

On January 30, six days after Mills was a no-show at the Lewiston rally, a city-wide service worker strike took place in Portland, Maine’s largest city. Almost 200 businesses shut their doors to protest ICE. Thousands of people marched through the city, ending at the Sailor and Soldier statue, a monument honoring Mainers who died defending our country during the Civil War, clearly symbolic of the current political moment.

At this event, one of the largest protests in Portland’s history, Mills was again absent. That evening, Mills was photographed dining at Scales, an upscale seafood restaurant in Portland’s gentrified Old Port District. The pictures from Mills dinner have now been viewed millions of times across platforms.

“Statements are not the same as standing with impacted communities. If elected officials say they oppose aggressive ICE tactics, that opposition should be visible and consistent,” Khalid said. “Right now, many people do not feel that level of alignment from the governor.”

Correction, February 14, 2026: Tommy Garcia, the Mills spokesperson, is no longer employed by the state Democratic party.

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Read his dispatch here.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, President Trump claims that negotiations are underway to resolve the standoff. That, it turns out, is simply false—a lie being told to him by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as part of his ambitious play to overthrow the Cuban government.

The story below is written by Noah Kulwin, who reported from Havana; Granados Ceja, who reported from Mexico City; and myself. This kind of reporting isn’t cheap, but is made available to the public for free thanks to readers who fund Drop Site News.

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To hear President Donald Trump tell it, the United States is deep in negotiations with Cuban government officials as the U.S. applies maximum pressure to the island. “We’re talking to the people from Cuba, the highest people in Cuba, to see what happens,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Sunday, February 1. “I think we’re going to make a deal with Cuba.”

Cuban leaders, meanwhile, have said they are open to negotiations on everything from human rights to democracy to tourism and direct foreign investment. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said in a recent press conference that Cuba is willing to engage in dialogue with the United States on any issue, provided talks take place without pressure or preconditions, on the basis of respect for Cuban sovereignty. Senior Cuban leaders reiterated to Drop Site that the government is serious about being open to wide-ranging talks. And Trump is no stranger to the island’s potential for American companies, having himself long held a registered trademark for a Trump Havana property that he has annually renewed.

All the evidence would seem to suggest that the opportunity for Trump to strike a historic deal is at hand. But, despite the president’s claims, there are and have been no negotiations involving high-level officials between Havana and Washington, according to five Cuban and American officials, all of whom asked for anonymity given the sensitivity of the Cuba-U.S. relationship.

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When it comes to Trump’s claims of those talks, it turns out he isn’t lying. Instead, sources tell Drop Site, he’s being lied to. “He’s saying that because that’s what Marco is telling him,” said a senior Trump official, referring to an internal effort by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to make Trump believe that the U.S. and Cuba are engaged in serious negotiations without ever doing so. The idea, the source said, is that in a few weeks or months, Rubio will be able to claim that the talks were futile because of Cuban intransigence. With diplomatic off-ramps being blocked, this would make Rubio’s vision of regime change the only path forward for an administration loath to reverse course on anything.

Asked about the fact that Rubio is misleading Trump about talks that aren’t going on, the State Department’s press office stood by the claim that such negotiations are indeed happening, forwarding along comment from an administration official: “As the President stated, we are talking to Cuba, whose leaders should make a deal. Cuba is a failing nation whose rulers have had a major setback with the loss of support from Venezuela and with Mexico ceasing to send them oil.” The statement offered no evidence the talks are taking place, named no officials participating, no dates of any meetings, nor did it identify a location where the supposed talks are happening.

Trump, meanwhile, has indicated he isn’t interested in an ideological confrontation with Cuba. This, sources suggest, is one way to understand why, after kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. has made Venezuela roll back key Chávez-era oil legislation via a reform that opens up the country to foreign investment instead of changing its regime. Rubio, meanwhile, pushed hard internally for a full regime change in Venezuela, but had to settle for merely removing Maduro. Ultimately, though, for Rubio, the real prize has always been Cuba.

The Cuban-American Rubio answers to a political base in south Florida that would revolt if he struck any deal normalizing relations with the communist government—and who, ultimately, would have the power to undo him. Rubio’s rise through Florida and national politics — which now has him on the cusp of the Oval Office — has been accompanied by a string of corruption scandals, yet with unified support back home, he has managed to emerge with a relatively clean reputation nationally. If Trump successfully lands a deal with the Cuban government that Rubio would have to sign off on, Rubio would be left to either betray his life’s cause and that of his backers in Miami, or resign in protest.

For Rubio’s opponents inside the administration, the moment represents an opportunity to make Cuba into his Waterloo.

No Dialogue

In the wake of Trump’s claims of high-level talks, confused Cuban officials insisted to Drop Site that no such talks were then underway, but that they were eager for them to start. Misinformation in the media, however, has muddied the situation.

On February 2, the day after Trump’s comments, Politico highlighted a report that the son of Raúl Castro had traveled to Mexico City for talks with the Central Intelligence Agency and asked in a headline: “Could a Castro become our man in Havana?”

The article, however, is sourced to 14YMedio, a news outlet run by Havana-based dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez, which itself based its reporting on a single, fantastical Facebook post made by a Spain-based Cuban journalist. Yet the Politico report began circulating in Washington and has been accepted as fact. Senior Cuban officials tell Drop Site there are no talks going on in Mexico or anywhere else.

“At the moment, we’ve had some exchanges of messages, but we cannot say we have set a bilateral dialogue at this moment,” Cuba’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Fernandez de Cossio affirmed in a CNN interview this past Wednesday. “Most things in Cuba dealing with the United States are linked to the highest level. It’s a large issue for us, so there’s no decision, no action taken that doesn’t involve the high level of government in Cuba.”

A “senior State Department official” told the New York Times recently that contact between the Cuban and U.S. government was “not substantive” and merely discussed migrant repatriation. Elaborating, a senior Cuban official told Drop Site that the contacts are purely technical, with the U.S. telling Cuban officials when flights with deported migrants would be heading to Havana, and Cuban officials acknowledging receipt of the message.

An article on Wednesday in the Spanish outlet ABC Internacional added to the confusion, claiming that Mexican official Efraín Guadarrama is facilitating the talks. A well-placed source with direct knowledge tells Drop Site Guadarrama is doing no such thing.

In the wake of the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, top Cuban government officials have become increasingly interested in wide-ranging talks with the Trump administration—talks that could even include Rubio, a longtime foe of the government, multiple Cuban officials tell Drop Site. The only red line, they said, is that the island’s sovereignty is not up for negotiation.

Havana’s desire for talks, bordering on desperation, has been signaled to the United States through a variety of channels, including through press statements and recent interviews with the Associated Press and CNN. “Cuba reiterates its willingness to sustain a respectful and reciprocal dialogue with the Government of the United States,” the Cuban foreign ministry said in a February 1 release, “directed toward concrete outcomes, grounded in mutual interest and international law.”

The ministry added that Cuba was willing to “broaden” the scope of talks, saying the country “firmly rejects being portrayed as a threat to the security of the United States. It has never engaged in hostile actions against that country, nor will it permit its territory to be used against any other nation. Cuba, on the contrary, is prepared to resume and broaden bilateral cooperation with the United States in addressing shared transnational threats, while unwaveringly defending its sovereignty and independence.”

In an interview with Newsweek, Cuban Permanent Representative to the U.N. Ernesto Soberón Guzmán said Cuba would be happy to work with Trump on immigration, drug interdiction, health research—he noted Trump’s praise for Cuba’s relatively lower rates of autism—and other areas.

In addition to the ongoing economic crisis, the proximate cause for Cuban concern is an executive order issued on January 29 by President Donald Trump threatening heavy tariffs on “any other country that directly or indirectly sells or otherwise provides any oil to Cuba.”

Though not mentioned by name, the tariff threat is aimed at Mexico, whose state oil company has in recent years been the primary supplier of oil to the small island nation located 90 miles off the southern coast of Florida. In response, Mexico’s state oil company, PEMEX, has reportedly suspended at least one planned shipment of oil to its Cuban ally, leaving Cuba with an estimated two to three weeks’ worth of oil to keep the country running.

Overburdened, underfueled, and obsolete, Cuba’s electricity grid is barely hanging on, while the Cuban government publicly says it is preparing to administer life in the country with almost zero power. On Friday, ministers began to roll out a nationwide energy rationing plan. The measures include cutting mass transit, slashing individual gasoline allotments, and reducing in-person days for secondary school students. While Americans sat down for Super Bowl Sunday, Cuban authorities told airlines there was only one day’s supply of aviation fuel left in the country. On Monday, the U.S. intercepted an oil tanker as far away as the Indian Ocean for allegedly planning to ship fuel to Cuba.

Read more from Drop Site on Cuba’s oil crisis here.

At a lengthy press conference this past Thursday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel reiterated his country’s emphatic openness to negotiation with the United States without “pressure” or “preconditions.” Broadcasted on TV and radio around the world, Díaz-Canel’s comments were made, as one Wall Street Journal reporter observed, “with an audience of one in Washington”—Donald Trump.

“We are a country of peace,” Díaz-Canel said. “We are not a threat to the United States.”

Noah Kulwin reported from Havana, José Luis Granados Ceja reported from Mexico City, and Ryan Grim reported from Washington, D.C.

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With Israel’s reputation reaching record lows among Democrats, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is resorting to ever more sophisticated methods to support its preferred candidates while cloaking its own involvement.

The amount of money that the premier pro-Israel organization is able to spend in elections is extraordinarily valuable to candidates who would otherwise have little chance of winning. But it now comes with a catch: If voters know the money comes from an organization advocating on behalf of Israel, it can do more harm than good.

AIPAC road-tested its stealth approach in a 2024 House primary in Oregon that pitted Susheela Jayapal, the sister of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), against physician Maxine Dexter. Dexter raised relatively little money throughout much of her campaign, then saw a last-minute deluge organized by AIPAC coupled with outside spending through super PACs, which themselves turned out to be funded by AIPAC. The timing of the donations meant that there was no meaningful transparency before voters went to the polls, and Dexter expressed a mixture of ignorance and umbrage when her opponents suggested the money actually came from AIPAC.

The main super PAC in question (named 314 Action) explicitly denied that any funding came from AIPAC—a claim revealed as a flagrant lie once disclosure records finally became public. But by then, Dexter had triumphed and was on her way to Congress.

Campaign staffers expect AIPAC to continue using the tactic in this year’s primaries. “In these districts where we have a progressive primary fight, you’re going to see AIPAC put out a network of shell PACs, putting money into races without putting their name on it,” said Usamah Andrabi of the progressive campaign group Justice Democrats.

And indeed, the same pattern is emerging in three competitive House primaries in Illinois. The pieces of the puzzle can be found in the campaign disclosures of House candidates Laura Fine, a state legislator running in Illinois’s Ninth Congressional District for the open seat vacated by Rep. Jan Schakowsky on the North Side of Chicago and its northern suburbs; Donna Miller, a Cook County commissioner running in Illinois’s Second District to replace Rep. Robin Kelly on Chicago’s South Side and southern suburbs; and Melissa Bean, a banker and former member of Congress making a comeback in Illinois’s Eighth District in the western suburbs of Chicago. Bean is also running for an open seat to replace Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who like Kelly is running for Senate.

Putting the pieces together, it is clear that AIPAC is again funding super PACs in order to secretly funnel money to its preferred candidates, while also coordinating donors to give to those candidates directly.

Miller is running in a race that features an attempted political comeback by Jesse Jackson Jr., and Fine is squaring off against progressive Daniel Biss and Kat Abughazaleh, who became a national figure after she was indicted by the Trump Justice Department for her role in anti-ICE protests. Bean is facing Junaid Ahmed, who supports ending all military aid to Israel.

A look at Miller, Fine, and Bean’s filings betrays an impressively coordinated operation at work. Sixty-five donors who previously gave to AIPAC or its affiliated super PAC United Democracy Project (UDP) have given to both Miller and Fine. These donors delivered $88,066.66 to the Fine campaign. They also contributed $119,746.33 to Miller. A whopping 237 former AIPAC/UDP donors have given to both Miller and Bean, contributing $396,288.01 to Bean and $429,083.00 to Miller. Forty-four of these donors have given to all three candidates, sending a total of $208,753.33 to them.

Several of the donations were given to the candidates on the same day, by the same donors, for the same amounts.

“This coordinated effort by Trump and AIPAC donors to buy multiple congressional seats in Illinois should be alarming to anyone who cares about the integrity of our democracy,” said Matthew Fisch, campaign manager for Robert Peters, who is running against Miller in IL-02.

ALL THREE OF AIPAC DONORS’ Illinois candidates are benefiting from new pop-up super PACs with anodyne-sounding names. Affordable Chicago Now! is supporting Miller, and Elect Chicago Women is supporting Fine and Bean.

The super PACs, whose donors are currently secret, were both organized in January and began rolling out television ads in the last week. The spots (here’s Fine’s, here’s Miller’s, and here’s Bean’s) are generic positive biographical ads. The total ad buys appear to be in the millions of dollars. Illinois primaries will be held March 17, and the names of the funders of the super PACs will not have to be released until near or even after that date.

The ads do not mention support for Israel. Neither AIPAC, UDP, nor indirectly associated PAC Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), which often supports the same candidates, have endorsed or spent money in these three races. But Jewish Insider and several others have reported that AIPAC appears to be behind the pop-up super PACs. AIPAC, United Democracy Project, and the two shell PACs did not return requests for comment.

The need to hide the super PAC ball was made more apparent on Thursday night, after the results of a special congressional primary election in New Jersey to replace Mikie Sherrill, who was elected governor last November. Former Rep. Tom Malinowski faced a direct onslaught of $2 million in UDP ads, and DMFI quietly endorsed former Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way. But with most votes in, Malinowski was a close second to Analilia Mejia, the least-friendly candidate to AIPAC in the race, who benefited from the attack ads on her top opponent. Way finished a distant third.

The same ad buyer handling the Illinois super PAC ads bought ads for AIPAC in that Thursday election in New Jersey.

In Donna Miller’s case, the support, both direct and indirect, came not a moment too soon. In the 11-candidate field in IL-02, she was something of an afterthought, having raised only around $242,000 for her campaign prior to the fourth quarter of 2025, not enough to be taken seriously. Suddenly, she took in over $1 million last quarter, according to her Federal Election Commission report filed on January 31, much of it coming in toward the end of the quarter. The haul immediately made Miller a leading contender in the race.

As with the case of Dexter, Miller’s opponents quickly suspected something unusual was going on. Her opponent Peters’s campaign found that 83 percent of her total haul in the fourth quarter, about $875,000, came from people who gave to AIPAC or UDP within the last four years, a fact that’s confirmed by the raw data at the FEC website.

Miller’s donors were feeling particularly generous on New Year’s Eve: 198 of those donations came on December 31, 2025.

Miller has not made any statements about Israel on her website, and the “red box” on her site that identifies preferred messages for outside campaigns to use does not include foreign policy or Israeli foreign aid, either. But something is obviously attracting longtime AIPAC donors to her campaign.

“The fact that the people who want Donald Trump to be president also want Donna Miller in Congress says a whole lot about Donna Miller,” said Matthew Fisch, the campaign manager for Peters.

Those donors come not just from Illinois but from across the country, including Arizona, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, Washington, Kansas, Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Tennessee, Missouri, Nevada, and Michigan. Nearly $39,000 came from donors who also contributed to Donald Trump in his elections.

By cross-referencing this data with data from Laura Fine’s FEC disclosures, you can see that many of Miller’s donors have also given to Fine’s campaign. Fine has also lagged her primary opponents in fundraising; her campaign touted an internal poll this week showing her in a tie at the top of the race, though other campaigns’ polls and independent polling show her behind.

A substantial number of Fine’s donations also come from AIPAC donors, and AIPAC has done a bit less to obscure its support for her, even if the super PAC backing her is called “Elect Chicago Women.” In December, AIPAC board president Michael Tuchin held a fundraiser for Fine and multiple emails from AIPAC asking donors to give money to Fine have been leaked.

Five AIPAC donors—Timothy Wuliger, Gadi Maier, Susan Hammer, William Silverstein, and Mark Gerstein—gave maximum donations of $3,500 to both Miller and Fine. Two other donors—the husband-and-wife team of Jerry and Alexis Bednyak—“double-maxed” to Miller and Fine, meaning that they gave a maximum $3,500 donation for both the primary and the general election. The Bednyaks are major donors to AIPAC, according to the website Track AIPAC, with $100,000 in lifetime donations to the organization. Jerry Bednyak co-founded ticket reseller Vivid Seats and is a managing partner with Skybox Capital.

Other crossover donors gave varying amounts ranging from $250 to $3,500 to each candidate. In all, 65 donors contributed to AIPAC, Laura Fine, and Donna Miller. Some, like Moises Woldenberg of San Antonio, Texas, Rachel Albert of Middlebury, Connecticut, and Jeffrey Drake of Evanston, Illinois, gave the same amounts to Fine and Miller on the same day (December 31, 2025).

“This is the same right-wing dark-money machine that has spent years attacking our democracy and propping up January 6 insurrectionists for office,” said Kat Abughazaleh, one of Fine’s leading opponents.

There are even more significant crossovers between Miller’s donors and donors to Melissa Bean, who was once called Wall Street’s favorite Democrat when she served in Congress from 2005 to 2011. Her name recognition and massive fundraising ability as a former banker have vaulted her to the top of the pack in the crowded race. She has the support of the centrist New Democrats, along with a substantial number of AIPAC donors.

An incredible 45 AIPAC donors maxed out to both Miller and Bean, while Bednyak and his wife double-maxed out to both of them, as they did for Fine. Aside from the Bednyaks, only Gadi Maier of Paradise Valley, Arizona, maxed out to Bean, Miller, and Fine.

The vast majority of Bean and Miller donors gave the same amounts to both candidates, even with weird numbers like $613 (the number of mitzvot in the Torah, from Martin Lurie of Newton, Massachusetts) or $1166.67 (Rada Burdeen of Winnetka, Illinois). That suggests that these donors were encouraged to split their donations to Bean and Miller through some sort of email communication. To have 237 donors shared by both campaigns, with hundreds of thousands of dollars contributed, is hard to write off as a coincidence.

“This is the AIPAC playbook on how to control Congress,” said Bean opponent Junaid Ahmed in a statement. “They’ll spend big money now and then expect my opponent to send billions in aid and weapons to Israel when she’s in Congress. This is exactly what’s wrong with our politics.”

The Fine, Miller, and Bean campaigns have not yet responded to a request for comment. But Daniel Biss confronted Fine about her AIPAC support at a candidate forum on Wednesday. Biss has claimed that nearly $60,000 in Fine donations come from Trump donors, more money than she raised last quarter from constituents inside the district. Fine responded, “I don’t know who a Trump donor is who’s donating.” After the forum, Fine told reporters that she would “love to know who’s funding” the ads.

DONATIONS TO INDIVIDUAL CANDIDATES can be more powerful than super PAC donations. Though candidate donations have limits ($3,500 for both the primary and general elections) relative to unlimited and secret super PACs, candidates get much more favorable ad placement rates, sometimes by a factor of ten, thanks to a 1972 law.

Therefore it makes sense for organizations that want to influence elections to use all channels—including super PACs, outside spending, and funneling donors directly to candidates—to give their preferred candidates resources.

AIPAC has coordinated donor support for its candidates in the past, beyond Maxine Dexter. In 2024, it was the largest source of Republican donors for Democratic candidates in primary races, according to Politico. In addition to Miller and Fine, AIPAC donors are supporting another candidate for an open seat in Illinois, Jason Friedman in the Seventh Congressional District, who is trying to replace retiring Rep. Danny Davis.

There’s nothing illegal about organizations encouraging donors to support certain candidates. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee this week endorsed Peters in the Second District race and Biss in the Ninth District, and is “mobilizing its national grassroots network” to support those candidates by asking its supporters to donate to them directly.

The PCCC is doing this publicly, however, whereas AIPAC has not even endorsed these particular candidates publicly as of yet. And the potential amount of money AIPAC can funnel from big donors with the ability to max out to campaigns is much bigger than a grassroots mobilization.

Combined with the suspected shell super PACs, it represents an all-out effort by AIPAC to get their candidates who presumably agree with their desires for unconditional support for Israel into Congress.

Hannah Riddle, director of candidate services for the PCCC, said in a statement, “These early primaries are indicative of the exact fight we’re seeing for the future of the Democratic Party. Are we going to nominate candidates who are paid for by corporations and special interests, or are we going to invest in candidates who will inspire voters, name those special interests, and fight against them?”

Riddle added, “If Miller and Fine have any integrity, they should return the money and denounce these dark money Super PACs.”

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Flights to and from Iran were canceled en masse last week, as the country prepared for another round of U.S. airstrikes. Those attacks may still be in the offing, but have yet to materialize.

Now, flights have resumed, and one protestor, who had spent the last month in Iran, and has participated in previous rounds of protest, agreed to sit down for an interview on the condition that we protect her identity. We reviewed travel documents and verified other elements of her account where we could, including with footage she and her friends took at the marches. Much of the footage, some of which is included in the interview, shows overturned dumpsters and tires set aflame. The Financial Times reported that witnesses to the uprising observed groups of black-clad, well-organized men going from dumpster to dumpster, setting them on fire, while the woman we interviewed did not see that directly. Videos of the uprising, as well as testimony reported by FT, show “armed agitators” firing into crowds and at security services.

Her account does not claim to be comprehensive; no single account could be. She is not part of a professional activist network, but she was visiting Iran in order to spend time with family. The interview presents a first-hand perspective of a person directly involved with the protests—from someone who is opposed to the government there, but is also opposed to the bombing of Iran and is not a supporter of the U.S. or Israel, countries that have played a role in the unrest and have made no secret of their designs toward Iran. The New York Times has reported that “a ragtag network of activists, developers and engineers pierced Iran’s digital barricades” and with the help of the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA-adjacent American funding mechanism, managed to build a transnational network that smuggled some 50,000 Starlink devices into Iran, which is about $40,000,000 of hardware for that “ragtag” band.

In our interview, the woman recounts a massive march in Tehran of nearly unprecedented size on Thursday, January 8, which she saw meet very little security service resistance. Elsewhere in the city, reports suggest it did turn violent. That march was followed by another on Friday, at which her friends saw people fall from gunfire but she did not. On Saturday, the government sent text messages to the public warning that another demonstration would be met with force. “Saturday was – I don’t think I’ll ever forget Saturday,” she told me. After the massacre, the city went quiet. Since then, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that “several thousand” people were killed in the protests. The death toll includes demonstrators, some armed and, Khamenei argued, trained by foreign adversaries, as well as personnel from Iran’s security services.

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Watch her first-hand account here.

Give him a warm welcome by following him on Twitter if you still use that godforsaken platform. (Speaking of Twitter, last night Vice President J.D. Vance used his account there to come after me as somebody “incapable of not lying” about the killing of Renee Good. Of course, he lied himself in the same post.)

This week on Breaking Points, if you missed it, we talked about the history of Cuba’s defense of Angola against an invasion by apartheid South Africa, their largest foreign intervention by far. U.S. funding for Angolan insurgents wound up becoming an under-appreciated piece of Iran-Contra, where Jeffrey Epstein cut his teeth. Watch our interview with Blowback podcast host Noah Kulwin here.

Today’s story is written by Ed Augustin and Reed Lindsay, and published in collaboration with the news outlet Belly of the Beast, an independent media organization that covers Cuba and U.S.-Cuba relations. Augustin and Lindsay examine the history and future of the relationship between Cuba and Venezuela in the wake of the U.S. kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro. Read some of Ed’s previous reporting for Drop Site here.

In listening to Blowback’s season on the history of the Angolan civil war in order to prepare for the interview with Kulwin, I was struck by how significant a role corrupt news coverage played in allowing U.S. policy there to unfold as it did and how critical it was when good coverage intervened – such as by Seymour Hersh and others, who exposed the CIA’s dirty war or the war crimes and use of child soldiers by Jonas Savimbi, our man in Angola. If the U.S. role had been documented more thoroughly, and if the genuinely deranged nature of Savimbi had been exposed early, hundreds of thousands of Angolan lives may have been saved and the country could have gotten on with its economic development.

Good, honest, and timely journalism can change history. Being reminded of that made me that much prouder of the work we’re doing here at Drop Site, and that much more grateful to the tens of thousands of you who have donated your hard-earned money to make it possible.

Now that it’s a new year, forgive us as we come back asking again. If you haven’t yet become a paid subscriber, please consider doing so.

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If you can make a separate tax-deductible contribution of any amount, that helps immensely, too.

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The Cuban government has now confirmed that 32 of its nationals were killed in Venezuela trying to protect Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores when they were abducted by U.S. Special Forces on Saturday. Below, we break down what we know so far and talk to Cubans about how they’re reacting to the news.

We also take a deep dive into why these Cubans were in Venezuela in the first place — and why claims that they were an army “propping up” Maduro don’t hold up.

—Ryan Grim

In Havana, Hope That a Lack of Oil Staves Off a U.S. Attack

Story by Ed Augustin and Reed Lindsay

Cubans observed two official days of mourning earlier this week after a contingent of its security forces were massacred guarding Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Flags were flown at half-mast, and concerts were canceled.

“No country has the right to invade another,” one woman told us on the streets of Havana. “Those Cubans were there at the request of the Venezuelan government to protect Maduro…The blood we’ve shed unites us.”

Are people on the island afraid that Cuba could be next?

“I’ll be honest with you…a little,” said one.

“Everyone knows it’s about oil. I don’t think they’ll come and bomb Cuba,” hoped another.

“We’ve lived under threat our entire lives, even [of] an invasion. And we defeated them,” said a third. (Watch the interviews here.)

“What's happening to Venezuela could happen to any Latin American country,” said a 19-year-old studying microbiology at university to work in healthcare. “I want to graduate. But you never know what will happen in three years, even if Donald Trump will still be president.”

One hundred people, including civilians and security forces, were killed in the U.S. attack on Venezuela, according to the country’s interior minister, Diosdado Cabello.

The Guardian reports it took the U.S. two hours and twenty-eight minutes from the time its helicopters touched down in Maduro’s compound in Caracas at 2:01 a.m. to seize the president and his wife. Maduro, the paper reported, had tightened his security measures leading up to his abduction and was relying on Cuban bodyguards.

But the lack of a response from the Venezuelan military and the disparity in the death toll—the U.S. reported no casualties—have fueled speculation abroad about betrayal.

Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez fired General Javier Marcano Tábata, who headed the Directorate General of Military Counter-Intelligence and was responsible for Maduro’s security. Rodríguez herself has come under question due to a report that she and her brother and head of the National Assembly Jorge Rodríguez had been leading talks in Qatar with the Trump administration about a “more acceptable” alternative to Maduro in the months leading up to the U.S. attack.

The imbalance in casualties, however, may have more mundane explanations.

“The Americans obviously came in with a great deal of firepower and simply overwhelmed them,” said Hal Klepak, Professor Emeritus of History and Strategy at the Royal Military College of Canada. “That’s an American tactic throughout Latin American history over almost two centuries. You don’t go in with the minimum; you go in with the maximum.”

Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladímir Padrino on Sunday read a statement from the Bolivarian Armed Forces, accusing the Trump administration of “murdering in cold blood a large part of their security team, soldiers and innocent citizens.”

On Tuesday, Cuba published the headshots, names, ranks, and ages of the 32 Cuban officers killed by the U.S. The list included colonels, lieutenants, majors, captains, and reservists ranging in age from 26 to 60.

What Were Cuban Security Forces Doing in Venezuela?

After the election of socialist President Hugo Chávez in 1998, Venezuela quickly became Cuba’s closest ally. Very early in his term, Chávez signed alongside Fidel Castro the Cuba-Venezuela Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement that saw Cuban specialists lend their expertise inside of Venezuela in the fields of culture, education, health, and more. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, but its healthcare system had always faced medicine and staff shortages. Cuba sent thousands of doctors and nurses to work in Venezuela, where they were paid many times the tiny salaries they earned in Cuba. In exchange, Venezuela shipped oil to Cuba.

This relationship, in the hands of hardline forces in South Florida, became fodder for longtime advocates of regime change in Havana and Caracas. Venezuela was routinely accused of propping up Cuba and, when it was necessary for the narrative, Cuba was accused of doing the same for Venezuela.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has tried to depict the Cuban medical missions as “forced labor” and expanded an existing visa restriction policy relating to Cuba’s overseas medical missions targeting foreign government officials to dissuade countries from signing similar agreements with Cuba.

For years, U.S. officials complained that oil-rich Venezuela was propping up Cuba with subsidized oil. Then, in 2019, the first Trump administration flipped the script.

That year, Trump called Maduro a “Cuban puppet.” Then-Vice President Mike Pence accused Cuba of keeping the Venezuelan people “hostage.” U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela Elliot Abrams said Venezuela was a “colony” of Cuba, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed the island was “the true imperialist power in Venezuela.”

Then National Security Adviser John Bolton, who oversaw a failed effort with Rubio, then a senator, to bring about regime change in Venezuela, claimed there were as many as 25,000 Cuban “thugs” propping up the Maduro government. “Maduro would fall by midnight” if not for the Cubans, Bolton told reporters in April 2019. (For more see the second episode of Belly of the Beast’s award-winning documentary series, The War on Cuba).

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado likened the presence of Cuban advisors inside Venezuela to an “invasion” and made it part of her push for U.S. military intervention inside her country. No credible evidence was ever presented that Cuba had thousands of troops in Venezuela.

“I don’t think it’s any mystery that we are not big fans of the Cuban regime, who, by the way, are the ones that were propping up Maduro,” Rubio told NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday.

The vast majority of Cubans who have gone to Venezuela have served as doctors and nurses, as well as teachers and sports coaches. One of them is Dr. Lyhen Fernández Baez, a urologist, who was recently interviewed by her daughter, Belly of the Beast journalist Liz Oliva Fernández, about her experience serving on a medical mission in Venezuela.

Manufacturing a Security Crisis

For months, the Trump administration said its deadly boat strikes and military build-up in the Caribbean were aimed at fighting “narcoterrorism.” The Justice Department claimed Maduro was leading a drug cartel called “Cartel de los Soles.”

But this week, the administration quietly dropped that claim in a revised indictment, acknowledging that the so-called cartel isn’t a real drug-trafficking organization—even as Maduro still faces narcoterrorism and drug trafficking charges in a federal court.

Concocting far-fetched accusations to legitimize hostility has been the U.S. government’s playbook for decades when it comes to Venezuela—and Cuba. For example, the island occupies multiple State Department blacklists, accused of carrying out human trafficking via its medical missions and even sponsoring terrorism despite consensus to the contrary in the U.S. intelligence community.

The two countries’ close relationship has also provided fodder for neoconservatives like Abrams and Bolton, who both have decades of experience scheming up ways of overthrowing governments around the world.

Abrams, convicted for “withholding information from Congress” during the Iran-Contra Affair, was “the crucial figure” in Washington during the bungled Venezuela coup d’état that briefly deposed President Hugo Chávez from power in 2002, according to The Guardian. (The New York Times on Wednesday released a 52-minute interview with Abrams to help their readers understand “what is actually happening in Venezuela.”)

Bolton, who once falsely claimed that Cuba was developing biological weapons, argued in 2019 that Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela form a “troika of tyranny” and a “triangle of terror” in the Western Hemisphere, reminiscent of the “axis of evil” rhetoric he employed during the George W. Bush years.

Led by Bolton and Abrams, the Trump administration did not abandon the claim that Venezuela propped up Cuba; it simply doubled down on its inverse. U.S. officials have toggled between portraying Caracas as Havana’s benefactor and Havana as Caracas’s puppet master—contradictory narratives that nonetheless converged on the same policy goal: sweeping “maximum pressure” sanctions on both countries, including measures aimed at cutting Venezuelan oil exports.

“Patently False” Claims

Security experts say U.S. government claims about Cuba’s influence in Venezuela are grossly exaggerated. Ben Rhodes, a former U.S. deputy national security advisor who played a key role in negotiating the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations during President Barack Obama’s second term, has disputed the claim that Cuban military personnel in Venezuela numbered in the tens of thousands.

“The only way you get to those numbers is to count doctors as security officials,” Rhodes told us in an interview back in 2019.

“The number of Cuban security officials alleged by the U.S. government was patently false,” said Fulton Armstrong, who served as the National Intelligence Officer for Latin America from 2000 to 2004. “The vast majority are civilian doctors, teachers, and coaches, and many are women.”

“We know that there were indeed Cubans in Maduro’s security detail, but perhaps now, we can also put to rest that the Cubans ‘ran’ Venezuela’s security plan because they apparently didn’t have any indication of the attack until it was upon them,” he added.

Cuban-Venezuelan cooperation deepened after the 2002 coup, with the Cubans assisting in the creation of security services and military intelligence capacity in Venezuela, according to Klepak, the former NATO analyst who also served as an advisor to the foreign and defense ministers of Canada.

He added that Cuban officers have long been posted in limited numbers within the Venezuelan armed forces’ command system, and that in recent years they’ve been connected to natural disaster relief efforts.

“The UN has often hailed Cuba’s [disaster response] system as the best or one of the best in the world and a model for other countries. Venezuela is prone to natural disasters, but its forces had a dismal record for dealing with them. Thus, asking Cuba for assistance was obvious,” he said. “But the idea that this tiny military presence is in any way an occupying army or that it is anything like 1,000 people, never mind 25,000 people, is simply politically motivated.”

“Bolton’s continued emphasis [of Cuba’s presence] says more about the Trump White House than Venezuela,” Rhodes said in 2019. “They have an agenda to go after both Venezuela and Cuba…their approach seems to be nakedly political and ideological — using regime change in Venezuela as an entry point to pursue regime change in Cuba.”

This approach is unchanged with Rubio steering U.S. policy in the region.

Cuba’s Long History of Resisting U.S. Intervention

It’s not surprising that Venezuela would turn to Cuba for help in defending itself from U.S. aggression.

The island has weathered a U.S.-backed invasion, acts of sabotage, repeated terrorist attacks, and numerous assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. Cuba’s intelligence service is renowned, in particular for repeatedly outmaneuvering the CIA.

Decades ago, Cuba was also known for an “internationalist” military that punched above its weight, sending military contingents to face off against U.S.-backed forces in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

While Abrams was secretly arming right-wing paramilitaries to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s, Cuba sent their Marxist allies military advisors.

When the leftist New Jewel Movement came to power on the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada after it won independence from Britain, Cuba sent intelligence operatives and troops to support the fledgling government. The Reagan administration called Grenada a “Cuban-Soviet colony” in 1983 and invaded it.

Cuba’s most successful foreign military intervention was in Angola, where Cuban soldiers fought with the left-wing People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola. From 1975 to 1991, Cuba deployed hundreds of thousands of troops to the country—by far the largest overseas military engagement ever conducted by a Latin American country. Cuba was credited with helping bring about the fall of apartheid in South Africa.

“The Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence, freedom and justice unparalleled for its principled and selfless character,” said Nelson Mandela during a visit to Cuba in 1991.

But when the Soviet Union disintegrated, Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin, and the foreign military interventions ended.

“The Cuban armed forces were cut massively from between 270,000–290,000 in the 1980s to between 55,000–60,000,” said Klepak, adding that the armed forces have been reduced to a home defense force with little to no capacity to project force beyond the island.

An Inconvenient Truth for Regime Changers

Over the years, Cuba has become one of the U.S. government’s most reliable security partners in the Caribbean.

Since the 1990s, Cuban and U.S. armed forces have collaborated closely on counternarcotics operations and efforts to stop illegal migration, according to Klepak. Cuba’s strategy, Klepak argues, has been to build confidence, “to create a body of people in the U.S. government who see Cuba as a natural and effective ally in security issues.”

With the days of large-scale Cuban military internationalism long gone, regime changers are left with an inconvenient truth. According to Klepak, “however much both sides try to downplay it, until the [first] Trump administration, the closest security relationship that Cuba had was with the United States of America.”

Now, with Maduro out of the picture and nearly three dozen Cubans dead, the claims that Cuba is propping up Venezuela appear more absurd than ever.

The opposite claim—that Venezuela is propping up Cuba—may also no longer be true.

In 2025, Venezuela was shipping less than 30,000 barrels a day to the island, about 70% less than what it was sending a decade earlier. This fuel lifeline has been further cut in recent weeks as the Trump administration ordered “a total and complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers. In recent years Mexico has become the primary supplier of oil to Cuba, with President Claudia Sheinbaum portraying the shipments as part of her government’s humanitarian efforts in the Caribbean and a longstanding policy of Mexico.

The U.S. is placing extraordinary pressure on the interim administration in Venezuela to cut ties with Cuba and it is not clear yet what will happen to other aspects of the two countries’ relationship, and whether the Cuban doctors, nurses, and teachers who are serving on humanitarian missions in Venezuela will be forced to return home.

If they are, they may be replaced by U.S. oil executives. Rubio said on Wednesday that the administration was about to finalize a deal with the Venezuelan government to “take all the oil,” adding that the U.S. had “a lot of leverage” because of its continuing blockade on Venezuelan oil exports.

Meanwhile, the heads of ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips met with Trump Friday to discuss his plans to “run” Venezuela and control its oil industry.

At the meeting, Trump continued to vex those looking for an end-game behind his assault. “We are open for business,” he said. “China can buy all the oil they want from us, there or in the United States. Russia can get all the oil they need from us.”

Amba Guerguerian and Liz Oliva Fernández contributed to this article.

At a recent military technology conference in Tel Aviv, Israeli weapons companies made some of their most explicit remarks yet connecting the value of their products to the real-world testing of that firepower on Palestinians in Gaza. A recording of the conference remarks was obtained by Drop Site News and includes comments from the president and CEO of the Israel Aerospace Industries as well as executives at Elbit Systems, RAFAEL Advanced Defense Systems, and others. The conference was called DefenseTech Week and was held in early December. Drop Site shared the audio with independent news outlets in Brazil, Ireland, Australia, and elsewhere; those outlets will be producing their own investigations.

The Israeli weapons industry has previously come in for criticism for its willingness to boast that its products are “lab tested” on human beings under occupation, most prominently by Australian journalist Anthony Lowenstein. His book, The Palestine Laboratory, was adapted into a Drop Site podcast last year.

The newly uncovered remarks suggest that, rather than having been chastened by global condemnation for the genocide in Gaza, the nation’s weapons industry is emboldened by it. “The war that we faced in the last two years enables most of our products to become valid for the rest of the world,” boasted Boaz Levy, head of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), on day one of the conference. “Starting with Gaza and moving on to Iran and to Yemen, I would say that many, many products of IAI were there.”

The military itself was well represented at the gathering. Major General (Res.) Amir Baram is director general of the Israel Ministry of Defense and also gave remarks on the first day. “These are not lab projects or powerpoint concepts,” he said. “They are combat proven systems. This is what defense tech means in Israel and this has redefined Israel’s global identity. For years, Israel was known worldwide as a cyber nation. Today, we have evolved into a true defense tech nation.”

Gili Drob-Heistein, executive director of the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center, said that the two years of unleashing Israeli weapons technology on Palestinians had helped transition Israel from a “startup nation” to a global player in the defense industry. “Israel is known for being the startup nation and we all believe that defense tech has the potential to become the next big economic engine for Israel and beyond,” he said. “Israel’s technological leadership combined with smartness, boldness, and out of the box thinking continues to yield astonishing results, as we’ve seen recently on the battlefield during a war that was forced upon us on multiple different fronts simultaneously. Many of the technologies have both military and civilian applications.”

Data on global arms sales suggests the boasting at the conference reflects genuine upward trends for Israel’s weapons industry, with three Israeli arms companies increasing their combined weapons revenues by 16 per cent to $16.2 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). “The growing backlash over Israel’s actions in Gaza seems to have had little impact on interest in Israeli weapons,” said Zubaida Karim, researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.

Elbit Systems, the Israel weapons company that reportedly signed a multi-billion deal with the United Arab Emirates, was also heavily represented at the conference. Executive Vice President Yehoshua Yehuda boasted of “combat proven technologies” that allowed people to be struck even when “the targets are less than a pixel.”

The UAE is financing and arming the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, a militant group carrying out a campaign of mass slaughter that is on track to eclipse the genocide in Gaza if it hasn’t already.

Israeli weapons are playing an increasing role in global conflict, Levy told the audience. “Eighty percent of our activity is really for export—only 20 percent of our activity goes to the Israeli market,” he said. “I think that all of the things that we learned during this war in Israel impacts our future business capabilities. And IAI as of now has $27 billion of new orders and has something like $7 billion of sales every year.”

At the same time, the weapons makers did acknowledge that a growing boycott was a threat to their business. “I think Israel is experiencing a boycott,” said Shlomo Toaff, executive vice president of the General Manager Air & Missile Defense Systems Division of RAFAEL Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. “We’ve seen it in the Paris air show last June where we were shut down by the French.”

“This is something that we have to take into account when we’re talking about what we’re doing here in the industry,” he said.