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Cubans Suffer in Darkness as Trump Plots Coup – The Tuesday AM Quickie 6/9/26

By Whitney Curry Wimbish —

A doctor in the Washington Post recommends no coffee after 1 p.m. for better sleep. I hear what they’re saying, I understand where they’re coming from. But I can’t agree to it. -Whitney

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ON THE SHOW TODAY

6/9: Sam and Emma are in the studio today, and their guest for the entire show is David Dayen, journalist and editor of The American Prospect.

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Today you’ll read about the next city ICE plans to target, how the DOJ lied under oath to target trans kids, and how a publication nixed Meta’s attempt to sneak facial recognition technology into its perv glasses.

THE BIG NEWS

Cubans Suffer in Darkness as Trump Plots Coup

Trump’s energy blockade on Cuba has drained the island “in almost every way,” the Guardian reported yesterday. Four months in and gas stations are empty, so cars are sitting idle. Those relying on gas canisters to cook now have only charcoal or wood. The electrical company can only turn on power for a few hours a day, so most people have no way to run their fans in the heat and humidity of summer. As a result, hardly anyone is sleeping. Hyperinflation is destroying peoples’ savings; one resident in a poor part of Havana told the Guardian that her monthly pension is now worth just $10. “I want to tell you we’ve been four days without light,” said another person, a doctor in Havana. “And without electricity, water is also a problem. And there are mosquitoes everywhere.”

Trump has been tightening his screws as far as they can go. His Department of Justice issued a federal indictment against former Cuban president Raúl Castro, brother of Fidel Castro; his armed forces moved the naval aircraft carrier Nimitz into the southern Caribbean Sea. Late last week, he added to the pressure with new sanctions against prominent people, including President Miguel Díaz-Canel and his family, Castro’s family members, and the solidarity nonprofit Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos, or Cuban Institute of Friendship with the People. 

Cuban officials are bracing for an attack that “will cause a bloodbath with incalculable consequences,” as Díaz-Canel put it. Per the Guardian: 

Anti-aircraft radars have been spotted around Havana, while national television shows images of soldiers training.
In theory, Cuba’s response to a US attack would be a “war of all the people,” in which the entire population joins armed resistance without waiting for orders. Even sympathetic voices say that’s no longer realistic, given the antiquated nature of the military equipment.
“The most surprising thing is that morale is still high within the very small regular force,” said Hal Klepak, professor emeritus at the Royal Military College of Canada. “But the reserve forces have been atrophying, because there’s no new equipment, no money, and not even any petrol.”

So-Called Border Czar Threatens NYC With ICE Surge  

Tom Homan is sending “more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen” to NYC, he said yesterday, just as millions of people are expected to come to town for the NBA Finals and the FIFA World Cup final, according to Bloomberg and the Guardian. Homan said he’s making good on a “promise” to Gov. Kathy Hochul that he’d flood her state with agents if she passed a law forbidding state and local cops from working with immigration agents in state jails. “I just reviewed an operational plan,” Homan said. Already, immigration rights groups are warning people against coming to the US, where at least 19 people have died in ICE custody this year as of Sunday evening, when the agency said Georgian national Mamuka Artmeladze, 43, was found unresponsive in his cell on June 4 and died less than an hour later. Homan refused to give any details about the surge, AMNY reported, saying,  “I’m not going to tell you exactly when it’s going to happen, but it’s coming.”

DOJ Abused Subpoena to Target Trans Kids, Lied Under Oath

Lawyers for the Department of Justice abused their subpoena power “for an improper purpose in bad faith” when they issued an administrative subpoena to the Rhode Island Hospital demanding the records of all of their minor transgender patients, US District Judge Mary McElroy found, according to Assigned Media and LGBTQ Nation. The lawyers then lied under oath, McElroy further found, telling a judge in Texas that hospital officials had stopped communicating with them, when they had done no such thing. “As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary,” McElroy wrote. “DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case. McElroy, a Trump appointee, referred the lawyers for discipline.

QUICKEST QUICKIES

  • At Least 37 Dead in Philippines Earthquake, 500 Injured The 7.8-magnitude quake struck Monday morning off the coast of the island of Mindanao and was followed by smaller shocks; it collapsed buildings, ruined roads, caused a landslide that killed 13 villagers, and sent a 3-foot tsunami to nearby coasts, including as far away as Japan. via the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal. 
  • Meta Tried to Sneak Facial Recognition System Onto Perv Glasses App Zuck put an unreleased face-recognition system into an app for his gross camera glasses, which is installed on more than 50 million phones, but then Wired reported on it and he took it out the next day. via Wired. 
  • Court Rejects $100,000 Visa Fee, Calling It an Unauthorized Tax Trump wanted to force employers to pay the fee on new H-1B visas to stop foreign workers from coming into the country and a federal judge said no because it constitutes a tax that Congress would have to approve. via the AP and Politico.
  • Insurers Continue Vaccine Coverage Through Next Year, Despite Pro-Disease Trump Admin “They understand that there is a benefit there to people being vaccinated, especially kids, and I’m sure they’ve run the numbers and they know that it will cost them a heck of a lot more to treat kids with measles who are hospitalized than it is to pay for vaccines,” said Elizabeth Jacobs, University of Arizona professor of epidemiology and a founder of nonprofit Defend Public Health. via the Guardian.   

SOME NUMBER

1 in 14

That’s how many remote workers spend any given workday with no human contact, according to new research published in Science.

DON'T MISS MR CLIPS‌

Dave Rubin Fact-Checked Into Oblivion By Jubilee

Scientists developed the Covid vaccine during Trump’s first administration under his Operation Warp Speed, and Trump was proud of that achievement. But he couldn’t talk about it at his big racist rallies because it angered his base. He tried a couple times and got booed so hard that he stopped bringing it up. Real monkey’s-paw fact pattern. Deal-with-the-devil type stuff.

Nick Shirley Goes Full Moron

Nice lil troll imo.

PARTING WORDS

“If we’re forced to strike, those $100,000 FIFA suites will have nothing but bottled water and Doritos.”

– Kurt Petersen, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, whose members work at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA. Just days before the venue is set to hold the US men’s soccer team for the World Cup opening match, workers voted to authorize a strike demanding better pay and protection from federal immigration agents, who will be at the games. “What good is the World Cup for Los Angeles when workers don’t earn enough to pay the rent and must choose between showing up and being kidnapped by ICE?” Petersen asked. Good question. Solidarity to all the stadium workers.

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