Cuban Coast Guard Kills 4 Americans in Move Sure to Piss Off Trump

Cuban officials have confirmed that the country’s Border Guard troops killed four people aboard a speedboat registered in Florida Wednesday morning.

The speedboat was one nautical mile from a small island northeast of Cuba when Cuban troops approached the boat, requesting identification for venturing into Cuban territory. As it drew near, occupants aboard the U.S.-registered vessel opened fire on Cuban authorities, injuring the Cuban boat’s commander.

“As a consequence of the confrontation, as of the time of this report, four aggressors on the foreign vessel were killed and six were injured,” reads a statement by Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior. “The injured individuals were evacuated and received medical assistance.”

The identities of those killed or injured were not specified. The ministry did note that the boat’s registration number was FL7726SH, and that it was detected near Cayo Falcones, in the country’s central Villa Clara province.

American boats face significant legal restrictions with regard to travelling in Cuban waters—in no small part because of the regulations imposed by the U.S. government.

The U.S. has maintained a comprehensive embargo on Cuba since 1962, restricting trade and travel between the two countries, a policy that has effectively choked Cuba’s economic growth for more than six decades.

U.S. law prohibits any form of tourism to the island, and boats cannot enter Cuban waters without direct permitting and authorization from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Commerce. Failure to comply with U.S. regulations could result in the government seizure of one’s boat, fines up to $25,000 per day the boat is in Cuban waters, or even imprisonment.

“In the face of current challenges, Cuba reaffirms its determination to protect its territorial waters, based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar of the Cuban State in safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region,” the Cuban statement continued.

The violence comes just weeks after Donald Trump softened an oil trade ban on the island in the wake of the U.S.’s recent ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a Cuban ally, and its subsequent takeover of Venezuela’s oil supply. Washington allowed shipments of Venezuelan oil for “commercial and humanitarian use” after Caribbean leaders claimed the regional economy would be devastated if they were frozen out of the nearby oil reserve.

This story has been updated.

The Trump administration is blocking Congress from seeing the classified intelligence report that prompted a whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Gabbard’s office emailed Democratic congressional staffers on February 13 and said it couldn’t send the unredacted intelligence behind the complaint, which concerns an intercepted conversation two foreign individuals had about President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, “due to the assertion of executive privilege to portions” of the information.

The Journal learned earlier this month about the complaint, which was filed with the DNI’s inspector general back in May. Gabbard’s office was supposed to disclose the complaint to Congress but didn’t for eight months, prompting an attorney representing the whistleblower to write a letter in November accusing Gabbard of burying the complaint, which has reportedly been locked in a safe.

Gabbard’s office eventually relented and shared a redacted version with some members of Congress earlier this month, using executive privilege to justify the redactions. What is known about the complaint is that it accuses Gabbard of limiting the sharing of intelligence for political purposes.

After the intelligence, which partially has to do with Iran, was gathered last year, Gabbard met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. Following that meeting, Gabbard worked to limit who saw the intelligence, unnamed sources told the Journal.

Another part of the complaint is that NSA lawyers failed to report a possible crime to the Justice Department that came up in the conversation between the two individuals for political reasons.

The leading Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, Senator Mark Warner and Representative Jim Himes, are now asking who asserted executive privilege and why, as it is rarely used to prevent sharing intelligence with Congress.

“The request and provision of intelligence reports have been longstanding practice between the [intelligence community] and its congressional oversight committees,” Warner and Himes wrote in a letter to Gabbard’s office Tuesday.

But writing a letter is all Democrats can do as the minority party in the House and Senate. Kushner doesn’t have a formal job in the Trump administration, but he has been involved in its key foreign policy decisions, such as Middle East negotiations, including the rebuilding of Gaza by the new Board of Peace. If he is compromised internationally, then it’s a matter of national security, and the public should know. The cover-up suggests something of that nature that would be publicly damaging to Trump. What does Gabbard know?

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy on Wednesday joined a growing list of federal judges ruling that the Trump administration’s mass deportation tactics are illegal and unconstitutional.

Murphy was the judge for a class action lawsuit filed against the Department of Homeland Security “on behalf of migrants facing deportation to countries not previously named in their removal orders or identified in their immigration court proceedings,” Reuters reported.

The suit contended that DHS was aggressively deporting noncitizens to dangerous areas where they had no connections, in violation of their constitutional rights. On Wednesday, Murphy officially concurred, issuing a scathing write-up of the government’s actions.

“This case is about whether the Government may, without notice, deport a person to the wrong country, or a country where he is likely to be persecuted, or tortured.… The Department of Homeland Security has adopted a policy whereby it may take people and drop them off in parts unknown … and, ‘as long as the Department doesn’t already know that there’s someone standing there waiting to shoot … that’s fine,’” Murphy wrote. “It is not fine, nor is it legal.”

Murphy added that the Trump administration gave him false information twice and ignored one of his court orders when it deported six men to South Sudan in May 2025.

The judge’s ruling will almost certainly be appealed by the federal government to the Supreme Court, which features three Trump-appointed judges and has consistently been sympathetic to the federal government’s actions. “I am well aware I’m not going to be the final voice on this,” Murphy said in December 2025.

The White House’s next immigration target: a pair of Democratic lawmakers and famed actor Robert De Niro.

The Academy Award–winning performer headlined Defiance.org’s “State of the Swamp” counter-address Tuesday evening, speaking to America at the same time that the president appealed to both chambers of Congress. But De Niro’s message of love, unity, and kicking Donald Trump out of office did not sit well with the president.

In a post on Truth Social Wednesday, Trump said that De Niro should be shipped out of the country, alongside Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who protested Trump’s State of the Union address in person the night before.

“They should actually get on a boat with Trump Deranged Robert De Niro, another sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely Low IQ, who has absolutely no idea what he is doing or saying—some of which is seriously CRIMINAL!” Trump wrote.

“When I watched him break down in tears last night, much like a child would do,” Trump continued, referring to a moment in which De Niro was visibly choked up as he spoke about the amount of hate and distrust that Trump has planted in American communities, “I realized that he may be even sicker than Crazy Rosie O’Donnell, who is right now in Ireland trying to figure out how to come back into our beautiful United States.”

The bombastic alumna of The View moved to Ireland last March to avoid Trump’s glaring attention (the two have shared a vicious public history, in which the president has repeatedly referred to O’Donnell as a “loser,” a “wacko,” a “mentally deranged person,” and a “big, fat pig”). Earlier this month, O’Donnell revealed that she had made a secret sojourn to the U.S. to visit her family, and to see how difficult it would be to navigate in and out of the country, though she noted to SiriusXM’s Chris Cuomo that she did not regret leaving America “at all.”

“The energy that I felt while in the United States … it was scary,” O’Donnell told Cuomo. “There’s a feeling that something is really wrong, and no one is doing anything about it.”

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission revealed that it was investigating The View over whether it had violated the broadcast regulator’s “equal time” rule after James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Texas, appeared on the show.

Trump also took swings at Omar and Tlaib in the same post, condemning their State of the Union protest while describing the progressive duo as having the “bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people.”

“LUNATICS, mentally deranged and sick who, frankly, look like they should be institutionalized,” Trump wrote, adding that anyone who behaves like Omar and Tlaib should be sent “back from where they came—as fast as possible.”

The person behind the massive, deeply biased MAGA X account appears to actually be White House staffer Garrett Wade, according to recent reporting from Wired.

Wired revealed that one of Wade’s phone numbers was connected to the “Johnny MAGA” account, and a source later corroborated that information.

The account, which boasts nearly 300,000 followers, is essentially scheduled pro-Trump shitposting. But it never disclosed that it’s actually on the administration’s payroll—raising serious questions regarding ethics and transparency. The account frequently amplifies administration talking points.

“They’re burning the American flag right now in Minneapolis. And they really expect you to believe that ICE shot an innocent civilian,” the account wrote in January, after Renee Good was shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis.

“Gavin Newsom attempts to act hood while meeting Usher in Atlanta,” the account wrote on Tuesday. “Absolute cornball.”

“Democrats are actually refusing to stand for our gold-winning US men’s hockey team,” Johnny MAGA wrote during the State of the Union. “Unbelievable.”

Neither Wade nor any White House staff have commented.

“People have a right to know who is trying to manipulate public opinion, and they have a right to know whether or not they’re experiencing astroturf politics,” University of Pittsburgh media ethics professor told Wired. “This lack of transparency and the conflict of interest surrounding this account and the lack of disclosure all amount to a breach of public trust.”

A guest of Democratic Representative Seth Moulton at Tuesday night’s State of the Union address left midway through the speech after the Department of Homeland Security directly threatened him on social media.

Marcelo Gomes da Silva, 19, was enjoying his time in the visitors’ gallery in the House of Representatives, watching Donald Trump’s speech. But when Trump honored the gold medal–winning U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team, Moulton’s chief of staff, Neesha Suarez, escorted Gomes out of the chamber. She had seen a post from the DHS and worried about Gomes’s safety in a room with a heavy law enforcement presence.

The post on X, part of a thread where the department mentioned the named immigrant guests that Democratic members of Congress brought to the address, called Gomes “an illegal alien who has no right to be in our nation.”

“We are committed to enforcing the law and fighting for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens like him,” the post stated.

Gomes was detained by ICE in June while driving to volleyball practice in Milford, Massachusetts. A high school junior at the time, his arrest sparked protests in the town over the fact that he had no criminal record and took honors classes, played varsity sports, and played the drums in his church band.

The teen legally came to the U.S. from Brazil when he was 6 with his parents, but his visa later expired. ICE said they were looking for his father, claiming that he had a history of speeding in residential areas, including driving over 100 miles per hour. The Boston Globe only found that Gomes’s father ran a stop sign in 2023.

Gomes was released from ICE detention in Burlington, Vermont, a week after his arrest, still wearing his volleyball shorts and Crocs, and was greeted by Moulton and Representative Jake Auchincloss. He then applied for asylum.

Suarez had driven Gomes to Washington and knew that he didn’t have his phone, so she took him to Moulton’s office to watch the rest of the speech. He checked social media, texted his friends, and called his mother.

“I can’t believe they still want to chase after me,” Gomes, dressed in a gray suit, told the Globe. “I’m just disappointed in the ignorance. It’s really inhumane, and there’s a lack of empathy.”

After the speech, Moulton met Gomes in his office and told him to “keep fighting.”

“We’re obviously concerned about it, but sometimes in America, you have to do brave things,” Moulton said, regarding the DHS’s post. “Sometimes when you really believe in freedom, you actually have to risk it.… Sometimes you have to fight hardest for your country when your country lets you down.”

Gomes was happy to be in Washington, spending two days in the city, getting a tour of the Capitol, and meeting politicians such as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey. Before his arrest, he wanted to be a plumber, but now he wants to be a congressman.

“Things are going so good, and then all of a sudden you remember that you could get taken at any time,” Gomes said. “I truly believe everything in my life is in God’s hands. If he wants me to be here and work for the people and help immigrants as much as I can, I’ll be here. But if he doesn’t, then I’ll go back.”

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is resigning from his Harvard University professor job amidst increased scrutiny regarding his ties to deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

“Professor Summers has announced that he will retire from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of this academic year and will remain on leave until that time,” Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton said in a statement.

Summers, who went on leave from Harvard in November, previously served as treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton.

Summers and Epstein exchanged text messages frequently in 2018 and 2019, well after Epstein was a convicted sex offender.

“We talked on phone. Then ‘I can’t talk later’. Dint think I can talk tomorrow’. I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy’. I said awfully coy u are,” Summers wrote to Epstein in March 2019, seeking advice on a young female “mentee” he was trying to seduce at the time (he was married then, and still is). “And then I said. ‘Did u really rearrange the weekend we were going to be together because guy number 3 was coming.’ She said no his schedule changed after we changed our plans.”

“Shes smart. making you pay for past errors. ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh,” Epstein wrote back, just months before his death in prison.

Summers even addressed the disgraceful revelations in front of a class full of students back in November.

“Some of you will have seen my statement of regret expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein,” Summers told a class. “But I think it’s very important to fulfill my teaching obligations.” Now, those engagements are coming to a close.

Summers joins a short list of Americans who have resigned over their ties to Epstein, including former Obama White House lawyer Kathy Ruemmler, CBS News’s Peter Attia, Hyatt Hotels heir Thomas Pritzker, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison chairman Brad Karp, and New York School of Visual Arts department chair David A. Ross.

This story has been updated.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s blanket fiasco may not have been about a blanket at all.

The so-called ICE Barbie allegedly had her rumored beau, expired-special-employee Corey Lewandowski, fire a Coast Guard pilot last May after Noem neglected to bring her favorite weighted blanket onto the second flight of one of her trips.

But three DHS insiders that spoke with the Daily Mail indicate that the spectacle may not have been about an abandoned blanket, but rather a mysterious bag with potentially embarrassing contents.

“This was never about a blanket,” one insider with knowledge of the incident told the Mail. “The blanket was a cover story for what really happened. The whole thing was really about the bag that was left.”

The insiders were unable to shed light on what was in the bag.

Reports of the episode began to circulate earlier this month. A maintenance issue on one of Noem’s planes had forced her to land and deboard to another aircraft. The sudden switch inspired Lewandowski to fire the pilot responsible for flying the first plane—Keith Thomas, a commanding officer for the Coast Guard—after they discovered the blanket was missing.

Thomas was told to take a commercial flight home when they reached their destination.

But moments later, Lewandowski had to backtrack on the pilot’s terminated employment, though he didn’t do so in any admission of wrongdoing. Instead, Noem tapped the pilot to fly her around again because “no one else was available to fly them home,” reported The Wall Street Journal.

Noem’s alleged affair with Lewandowski is one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington. The pair are practically inseparable, and have been spotted grinding on each other at parties and leaving each other’s apartments, despite the fact that they are both married to other people.

The arrangement has become such a MAGA meme that the DHS secretary was actually mocked for taking her husband to a black-tie White House event over the weekend instead of Lewandowski.

Newly revealed text messages from the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein reveal that he had a long-standing relationship with the governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, including getting help in a legal dispute over construction on his private islands.

In 2019, months before he was arrested, Epstein was facing possible fines over unauthorized construction on one of his islands. So he turned to Albert Bryan Jr., the Democratic governor of the territory, who reassured Epstein that he’d handle the matter. Bryan informed Epstein that he told the islands’ top environmental official to pause enforcing the infraction until they could speak.

Epstein complained further about the fines and negative media attention, to which Bryan replied that he asked the commissioner in charge of the case to recuse himself and approve all of Epstein’s previous permit requests. “We got u,” Bryan texted the billionaire.

Epstein’s vast connections are further exposed with every trove of files the government releases, and this batch shows how he was able to operate and commit crimes in the U.S. Virgin Islands: by throwing his money around to sway the people in charge. We don’t know if Bryan, who is currently in the last year of his second term as governor, actually took action to help Epstein, but further text messages indicate he was willing to keep advocating for the billionaire.

The two would meet privately, and Epstein claimed that enforcing the law against him could “kill all interest and send investors to puerto rico instead !!” Effectively, he implied that he and his friends would take their money elsewhere if he had to follow the rules.

Bryan and Epstein knew each other since at least September 2018, when Epstein, his tax attorney, employees at one of his financial services companies, and his personal assistant arranged a meeting with Bryan, then a candidate challenging the islands’ incumbent governor, and his campaign manager.

Their communications would continue through the next year, even after May 2019, when the Miami Herald exposed Epstein’s activities. The paper examined the light plea deal Epstein received in 2008 over soliciting prostitution, including from a minor. Bryan was questioned in 2023 as part of a civil lawsuit about his relationship with Epstein.

Bryan testified at the time that he thought the billionaire’s 2008 charges were settled after Epstein “copped a plea to having sex with a hooker who was under age,” and said he “wasn’t really interested” in learning about new charges from Epstein’s 2019 arrest. He denied giving Epstein special treatment but later apologized for the wording of his remarks through a spokesperson.

“I believe that we should honor and support all victims of human trafficking. That was a terrible use of language, and I should never had said that. It was disrespectful,” Bryan said in a statement.

That doesn’t change the fact that, even indirectly, Bryan helped enable Epstein far away from prying eyes in the Caribbean. It’s not known if the governor broke any laws, but at the very least, his reputation is ruined, as the U.S. Virgin Islands is another place where Epstein escaped scrutiny, investigation, and prosecution. Not a single agency on the island ever looked into him.

It’s unsurprising, but disappointing nonetheless: The president’s pick for surgeon general is a vaccine skeptic.

During her Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, Casey Means was caught in a bind between party loyalty and medical truth after Senator Tim Kaine repeatedly asked her about a CBS article in which Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said there is “no evidence” that the flu vaccine prevents serious disease, hospitalizations, or death among children. The overwhelming medical evidence shows that the flu vaccine is safe and effective.

Means, a wellness influencer and author aligned with RFK Jr, first dodged the question by trying to generalize. “I believe vaccines save lives,” she said.

Kaine then pushed Means to answer the question about the flu vaccine specifically.

“I have not personally seen that quote or that article.… I believe that all patients should talk to their doctors,” she replied.

But Kaine wasn’t done, asking again: “Do you believe there’s no evidence that the flu vaccine has no efficacy in reducing serious injury or hospitalization?”

This time, Means paused for four seconds.

“This is an easy one, doctor,” the senator said.

“I support the CDC’s guidance on the vaccine,” Means eventually said.

“Do you think the flu vaccine reduces the risk of hospitalization or serious injury?” Kaine said.

“At the population level, I certainly think it does,” Means stammered.

Kaine then lambasted Means for her filibustering: “Three minutes in, you answered a question that had a very simple yes, or it had a very simple no.”

Means’s hesitancy to go against the conspiratorial anti-vaxxer serving as health secretary exposed the depressing ironies of her being tapped to be America’s leading public health spokesperson. As an entrepreneur and influencer, Means has profited by sowing distrust in the medical system. As The New York Times pointed out, one chapter of her best-selling book is titled Trust Yourself, Not Your Doctor.

Earlier in the hearing, Means said that while she “accepts” evidence that vaccines do not cause autism, she wants to see more research done on the matter.

“Science is never settled,” she added.

For decades, medical studies have shown that there is absolutely no link between vaccines and autism, but Means, like Kennedy, continues not to trust the work.

Means was questioned by Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican physician who voted to confirm RFK Jr. but has been outspoken in his belief that vaccines are safe.

Cassidy asked if Means thought mothers should get their children vaccinated against measles. The modern measles vaccine was created in 1954, and seven years later, was declared “100% effective” by the World Health Organization. The Centers for Disease Control reported that measles had been entirely eradicated from the U.S. in 2000, but that has changed since Trump’s second term. American communities have faced multiple measles outbreaks this year due to rising anti-vax sentiment.

Means stoked that sentiment further by declining to encourage use of the vaccine. “I do believe that each patient, mother, parent needs to have a conversation with their pediatrician about any medication they’re putting in their body, their children’s bodies,” she said.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, then asked Means about a recent American Medical Association statement. “An abundance of evidence from decades of scientific studies shows no link between vaccines and autism,” the statement reads.

Sanders once again asked her if she believed vaccines caused autism; Means once again wouldn’t give a straight answer. “I am not going to sit here and say we should not study something in the future,” she said, pointing to rising autism rates among children.

A graduate of Stanford School of Medicine, Means previously dropped out of a surgical residency at Oregon Health and Science University. She has been criticized for repeatedly using the “Dr.” honorific though her medical license, granted in 2014, has been inactive since 2019. Without an active medical license, Means is unauthorized to practice medicine or prescribe medication.

This story has been updated.