The Dictatorship

Havana syndrome advocates press Trump, Rubio and Ratcliffe to seek answers from Cuba

Published

4 weeks ago

June 4, 2026

Jun. 3, 2026, 5:41 PM EDT

A decade after U.S. personnel in Cuba began reporting unexplained neurological incidents, a phenomenon that came to be known as Havana syndrome, victims are arguing that the Trump administration has a rare opportunity to use its vast new leverage over the Cuban government to force it to hand over any information it has about what happened.

“There is an enormous opportunity here for the Cubans to come clean,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA official and MS NOW contributor who was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury in 2021. “This would be an ideal chance to show their seriousness and that they are interested in improving relations with the U.S. It’s a perfect test.”

Polymeropoulos and other victims called for CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who met with senior Cuban officials last month in Havanaand Secretary of State Marco Rubio to pressure the Cuban government to turn over any information it has regarding what may have caused the illnesses. Now is the time, they contended, with Cuba’s economy near collapse.

A spokesperson for Ratcliffe referred MS NOW to the White House, and the White House declined to comment. A State Department spokesperson said Rubio and the administration continue to prioritize the issue.

“As the Secretary said, ‘there is no doubt that something caused our people to be suffering. It is a top commitment of the United States to support those who serve our country,’” the spokesperson said. “President Trump will always act to protect Americans, our interests and our homeland from any threats.”

The 2021 HAVANA Act established medical and financial support for U.S. government employees and their families who were affected by what are formally known as anomalous health incidents, or AHIs. The law was designed to streamline access to care and ensure long-term support while the U.S. government investigated the cause of the reported symptoms.

Despite years of investigations across multiple administrations and agencies, U.S. officials still have not determined a single definitive explanation to account for the hundreds of reported incidents in various countries.

CNN reported in January and “60 Minutes” reported in March that the Department of Defense has spent more than a year evaluating a backpack-sized device obtained through a covert Homeland Security Department operation that may have played a role in the attacks. DOD officials have been testing the device, described as capable of emitting pulsed radio-frequency energy and containing components of Russian origin, but it has not been linked to any confirmed cases.

Scientists remain divided over whether the reported symptoms stem from environmental exposure, psychological factors, preexisting medical conditions, some kind of directed energy weapon like the backpack-sized device or some combination of causes.

But victims and lawmakers are once again questioning what progress, if any, has been made to account for the pattern of unexplained neurological incidents.

U.S. officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence the Cuban government carried out attacks against U.S. personnel in Cuba. But victims’ attorneys and some lawmakers argue Cuban authorities could hold relevant surveillance or intelligence information regarding the incidents in Havana.

“No one seriously believes the Cuban government was behind the AHI attacks on our diplomatic and intelligence personnel in 2016, but that doesn’t mean that rogue officials did not play a role and that they do not have valuable evidence of what did transpire,” said Mark S. Zaid, a lawyer who represents multiple affected personnel. “That it appears CIA Director John Ratcliff failed to raise the issue on his recent visit is an absolute betrayal of those who have been victimized and injured.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also called for the Trump administration to increase its efforts.

“It’s imperative that we do everything we can to take care of those who served our country, and that includes the hundreds of diplomats, intelligence officers and military personnel who suffer from anomalous health incidents,” Shaheen told MS NOW.

Polymeropoulos expressed disappointment with Ratcliffe and Rubio for not pursuing the issue more aggressively. He said Rubio was more robust in his support for victims during his time as a senator.

“I’m incredibly disappointed that he has been silent so far as secretary of state and national security adviser,” said Polymeropoulos, who testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee when Rubio served on it. “At the end of it, he hugged me. His staff was integral in helping us.”

As a senator, Rubio long framed the incidents as potential targeted attacks and repeatedly pushed back against skepticism from parts of the scientific and intelligence communities. In 2018Rubio rejected suggestions that the cases could be due only to psychological causes, saying, “This is not simply a case of mass hysteria.”

More recently, Rubio has adopted a more nuanced position. He has continued to emphasize the uncertainty, saying, “There’s still much work to be done,” and he suggested in February 2025 that in some instances “the only logical explanation is that some external mechanism caused them to suffer brain injuries.” At the same time, Rubio has stressed that affected personnel should be treated as having experienced legitimate harm, even as agencies continue to lack a confirmed cause.

As part of the broader government response authorized by the HAVANA Act, the DOD established an internal Pentagon unit known as a cross-functional team, or CFTthat was tasked with coordinating the government’s approach to AHIs. The CFT’s role includes overseeing medical response and victim care coordination, supporting scientific and intelligence community research into potential causes and facilitating communication between defense, intelligence and civilian agencies involved in the investigation.

On Feb. 6, 2026, Shaheen and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to urge the Pentagon to pause a proposed restructuring and relocation of its CFT. In their letter, the senators warned the move could disrupt ongoing work to support victims and impede research into possible causes.

According to a Senate aide, concerns have intensified as the unit has undergone internal restructuring with little public explanation of what is driving the change.

The administration is seeking roughly $667 million in classified funding tied to CFT-related activities, along with $84 million in an unclassified line. That compares with roughly $24 million in fiscal 2025 — a jump that has prompted new questions on Capitol Hill about what programs, research efforts or operations the money is intended to support.

Last month lawmakers expected to get additional clarity on the government’s ongoing investigation during a classified congressional briefing.

The day before the briefing, Shaheen publicly pressed officials on whether Congress was still being denied key information and was told she would receive additional details during the session. Shaheen told MS NOW she needs additional information from the administration.

“I am committed to continuing to push the Administration to ensure the care of affected individuals,” she said. “As well as delivering much-needed transparency by focusing on conducting fulsome investigations into the source of these incidents, including possible malign actions from foreign adversaries.”

David Relman, a Stanford University professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology who has investigated the attacks, said he was skeptical that Cuban officials would provide significant information.

“I agree that Cuban Intelligence almost certainly knows much more than they have made public or previously shared with the U.S. But I also think it is unlikely that they will ever reveal closely held information on this matter,” Relman told MS NOW. “In fact, it was probably tightly compartmented even within leadership of the Cuban government. To reveal it now would severely and fundamentally jeopardize their relationship with Russia, which I doubt they are willing to do.”

David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.

Lily Becker is a producer on “The Weeknight” for MS NOW.

The Dictatorship

Could feds’ changes put more people with disabilities in institutions?

Published

29 minutes ago

July 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Could feds’ changes put more people with disabilities in institutions?

WASHINGTON (AP) — For decades, disabled people have fought for their rights to go to school and live alongside peers without disabilities — rights that some fear could be losing ground under the Trump administration.

Last month, the Department of Education announced it would shift oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose comments on the limits of disabilities such as autism have drawn sharp rebukes from advocates and lawmakers.

Meanwhile, after a White House push to police homelessnessthe Department of Justice released guidance that lowered the barrier to institutionalizing any person with a disability.

Taken together, the actions signal a worrying return to a reality where people with disabilities are pushed to the margins of society, advocates said.

“It’s a direct, frontal assault on the rights of people with disabilities to live their lives the way that people who are nondisabled live their lives,” said Selene Almazan, legal director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. “I can’t imagine that as a country, that would be something that we would agree we should go back to.”

Whitman Althaus, 12, who has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, poses for a portrait at his home Wednesday, July 1, 2026, in Luckey, Ohio. (AP Photo/Nic Antaya)

The move away from confining people with disabilities

Since the 1960s, legislation and court decisions have expanded supports and protections for people with disabilities to go to school with nondisabled peers and to live and work in their communities. Before that, people with mental illnesses or developmental and intellectual disabilities were largely confined to institutions.

Advocates have pushed back on what is known as the “medical model,” where an individual’s disability is viewed as a defect to be cured. Instead, under a “social model” of disability, differences can be accommodated and supported, as people with and without disabilities learn and work alongside each other.

Families and advocates have warned that moving special education to a health department marks a return to the medical model. They also have been angered by Kennedy’s attempts to link vaccines to autismgoing against decades of research that show no such link, and his framing of autism as a debilitating disease.

Kennedy’s comments last year, where he said children with autism would never write a poempay taxes or hold a job, raised questions about how he would oversee an agency meant to help students develop those skills. Kennedy later said he was referring to people with ” severe autism ″ or those who are nonverbal.

“Many of the things he said autistic people will never do, (special education) is in charge of making sure students with disabilities have the opportunity to do,” said Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “Will he execute that faithfully, or does he consider disabled students a lost cause until we find some medical cure?”

The Supreme Court weighs in on disabilities

In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that segregating disabled people who are otherwise able to live in their community with proper supports was a form of discrimination. The Olmstead v. L.C. decision led to requirements that government agencies provide disability services in the most integrated setting possible — in mainstream schools, homes and workplaces.

But in a memo issued in June, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel upended that guidance. It argued that neither the Americans with Disabilities Act nor Section 504, two major disability rights laws, requires states to provide services in the most mainstream setting. While the memo does not change the law, it signals how federal agencies may interpret and enforce civil rights issues related to the topic. It could embolden states or school districts to decline to support people with disabilities in mainstream environments.

The White House has already acted on a similar philosophy. Last year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on homelessness that endorsed civil commitment, where a court orders individuals into involuntary hospitalization or treatment programs. Trump directed HHS to reduce barriers to institutionalizing people with mental illnesses.

In its memo, the Justice Department acknowledged its interpretation of the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision is “out of step” with the common understanding. If a state starts to provide services in institutional settings, legal challenges likely would follow, the department said.

The Republican administration’s steps fit a worldview in which the government has no obligation to support people with disabilities, said Claudia Center, legal director at Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.

“It’s dark, and it’s awful,” Center said. “And I think it’s contrary to the majority view in our country. … It’s out of touch with where our society is.”

The application that Whitman Althaus, 12, who has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, uses to communicate is seen on a phone Wednesday, July 1, 2026, in Luckey, Ohio. (AP Photo/Nic Antaya)

Families say their kids thrive in mainstream classes

The moves have created a deep sense of uncertainty for students with disabilities.

Lindsey Althaus says home and community-based services in northwest Ohio have been instrumental to her family. Her 12-year-old son, Whitman, has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, in which the brain struggles to tell muscles how to move to form words or perform other motor skills. For some of his school career, with proper support services, Whitman was able to spend much of his school day in a classroom that included kids without disabilities.

Through a Medicaid waiver program, Althaus pays her mother to care for Whitman in her absence. That allows him to spend time out in the community with his grandmother while Althaus and her husband are working or away with their daughter.

Under the Justice Department’s new interpretation of Olmsted, states would have fewer obligations to fund and support those programs. Kennedy, in testimony to lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year, criticized similar programs as subject to fraud.

“We want to be able to have him in the community,” said Althaus, who works as a disability rights advocate. “It’s just starting to feel like Whitman’s not going to be welcome anymore. We’re going back to this: You’re either perfect, or you’re not in the light.”

For many students with disabilities, schools are where they receive the majority of support services and where they are integrated among their peers. Before Magda Nakassis’s 8-year-old son, who is autistic and nonverbal, started public school in Maryland, his preschool experience had largely been defined by being kicked out of things, she said.

In school, Nakassis said, she found teachers and staff members who understood her son’s needs and told her to stop apologizing for them. A program at his school called Fantastic Friends teaches mainstream fifth graders about autism and they spend recesses with children in the autism program. Every year, Nakassis said, there is a waitlist to be a Fantastic Friend.

Nakassis said that it has been difficult to see the ways autism in particular has become politicized. Every child is entitled to a public education in this country, Nakassis said, and special education is a response to the fact that some children have differences that require additional support.

Regardless of his diagnosis, his right to an education is not a medical issue, she said, but rather a question of equity and access in a society that often pushes disabled people to the margins.

“There are lots of kids like him out there, and I sometimes wonder, ‘what did we use to do?’” Nakassis said. “I can’t believe it was better.”

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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The Dictatorship

Trump filing shows he took in about $1.2 billion from crypto businesses last year

Published

8 hours ago

July 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump filing shows he took in about $1.2 billion from crypto businesses last year

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump took in nearly $1.2 billion from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released Tuesday shows, locking in profits while his investors were socked with losses.

Mere startups when he took the oath of office, the new ventures have now eclipsed in revenue much of his vast property portfolio that took him decades to accumulate. Fueling their rise were billionaire investors and Trump’s own move to quash a federal crackdown on the industry.

Trump got more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products, including “governance tokens,” according to the required annual disclosure report with the Office of Government Ethics. It also showed another crypto business, CIC Digital LLC, took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his face.

Both the tokens and the coins have plunged in value since the sales.

Trump also took in millions last year from selling Trump-branded Bibles, sneakers and other small items in another unprecedented move for the presidency. The sale of Trump-branded watches alone brought in $4.7 million.

The 927-page disclosure form paints a stark, if incomplete picture of the massive growth of the president’s wealth since taking office last January through a web of business interests — many of which have benefited from the policy moves of Trump’s own government. Trump has insisted that his sons direct his finances but the arrangement rejects the conflict of interest protections that his recent predecessors in office had instituted.

Forbes estimates Trump’s net worth at $6 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2024.

The Trump business is growing abroad

The rise of crypto relative to Trump’s property is especially noteworthy because he first rode to office boasting of his property wins. It’s also remarkable because that mainstay business also boomed last year. Trump took in tens of millions in fees from a flurry of new hotel, resort and condo deals overseas that amounts to the biggest property expansion ever in the century since the family business was founded.

Many of those countries were negotiating with the U.S. over tariffs, military aid and other important matters while the family business was striking the deals.

A property in the United Arab Emirates generated $10.4 million for the Trump business last year. One in Saudi Arabia being built by a real estate developer close to the ruling family sent the president’s company $9 million. And one in Bucharest, Romania, and another in Qatar sent him $5 million each.

One of his prominent domestic properties, Mar-a-Lago in Florida, notched big growth last year, too.

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Trump took in $77 million from the property, a 50% jump from the year earlier when he was just another citizen, as heads of state and business people flocked to it in his new term.

The disclosure report doesn’t give profit figures, just revenue, so it’s impossible to know how much he is earning.

Trump is now the billion-dollar crypto man

Trump said Wednesday that most of his gains last year came from the stock market and he’s just riding along with everyone else.

“We’re all profiting,” he said. “I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash.”

But crypto was clearly the big revenue generator last year in part due his own moves since taking office — pushing policies friendly to the industry and reversing a Biden administration regulatory crackdown.

The regulators are still worried. Before Trump’s World Liberty began selling “governance tokens,” they issued warnings about this new kind of crypto asset, saying that unlike stocks, the tokens offer no ownership stake in the issuing company, just voting power on certain corporate policies, and are difficult to value.

Buyers pounced anyway, including a Chinese billionaire who spent $75 million on the tokens and $200 million on the souvenir coins. In February last year, a federal lawsuit charging him with duping investors was paused before being settled for a $10 million fine.

The billionaire, Justin Sun, has repeatedly denied his spending on Trump businesses had anything to do with his federal case, while World Liberty has dismissed the notion of a conflict of interest.

Meanwhile, investors have seen the value of their Trump-tied holdings drop significantly.

The price of World Liberty tokens has fallen 80% since they started trading in September. And the Trump souvenir coins that spiked to more than $74 in the days after launching in January 2025 now sell for $1.68.

The White House says Trump only acts in the public interest

The White House has repeatedly said Trump put his business in a trust managed by his sons and is not involved in its decisions and that there are no ethics issues to discuss.

“Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”

The Trump umbrella company, the Trump Organization, has said its deals overseas were with private companies, not with governments.

Still, it is difficult to know what is truly private in countries ruled by authoritarians, royal families and one-party governments.

For a new Trump resort in Vietnam, the report shows Trump took in $5 million last year after the ruling Communist Party sent its deputy prime minister to sign off on the deal and, according to The New York Times, pushed farmers off the land to make way for the construction.

Whether the deals played any role in changing U.S. policies in ways these countries sought is nearly impossible to know, but the countries did get what they wanted.

Vietnam got tariff relief. Qatar got access to advanced U.S. technology previously off limits, and Saudi Arabia got U.S. fighter jets it had coveted for years.

___

AP White House reporter Josh Boak contributed from Washington.

The Dictatorship

‘REGIME CHANGE’ sold 300,000 copies…

Published

8 hours ago

July 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

It turns out readers still want to learn more about President Donald Trump after all.

“Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” the l atest book on the Trump presidencywritten by political journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, has sold more than 300,000 copies in its opening week, according to publisher Simon & Schuster.

They’re the kind of sales that numerous works about Trump reached during his first term, but had been rare during his second term. Publishers had speculated that the public had tired of Trump books, believing there was little left to know.

The total figures include preorders, print book sales, ebooks, and e-audiobooks and orders that have yet to be fulfilled because of demand, the publishing house said. Simon & Schuster said the book is into its third hard copy printing, with 200,000 copies on order, after it sold out quickly in bookstores and on Amazon. It’s the best first-week clip of any hardcover nonfiction book in 2026.

The book covers the first 14 months of Trump’s second presidency and takes readers inside the West Wing, White House residence and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, aboard Air Force One and on foreign trips with the president.

Trump, who has a long history with Haberman from her days covering him as a New York City business and society figure, has trashed the book as “mostly made up.” Haberman and Swan are now New York Times reporters.

Their manuscript depicts meticulous details of Trump’s military decisions, how he’s wielded the power of the Justice Department against his political opponents, his conversations with other power players, and the time and attention he’s devoted to remaking the aesthetics and structure of the White House.

The book spells out a thesis that Trump himself believes: Had he not lost the 2020 election, he would not be as powerful in his second term as he is now — emboldening him to trample norms, dismantle established institutions and push the limits of presidential power.

Haberman and Swan have been featured regularly across news talk shows promoting the book and sharing details of their reporting, including a sit-down with Trump in which he boasted about being compared to some of history’s great villains.

Sean Manning, vice president and publisher at Simon & Schuster, said the book “has entered the national conversation” and will hold up as “a work of historic importance.”