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Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a mem-ber of the National Honor Society when he graduated from Marietta High School.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army, Howard fought in the Pacific Theater in World War Two, during which he participated in the Battle of Okinawa as a Corporal. The 96th U.S. Army Division, which Howard trained with, had casualty rates above 50%. The incompetence and racism of the military command, the destruction of the capital city of Naha and the deliberate killings of tens of thousands of Okinawan civil-ians – a third of the population - made Howard a committed anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and anti-racist for the rest of his life.
Upon returning to the United States, Howard enrolled in the College of the Pacific, but dropped out to support Filipino agricultural workers in the 1948 asparagus strike, working with legendary labor leader Larry Itliong. He became a longshore worker in Stockton in 1953. As a member of the Communist Party, Howard and his wife, Evangeline, were attacked in the HUAC (McCarthy) hearings in San Francisco. Later, Howard transferred to ILWU Local 10. In 1971 he, along with Brothers Herb Mills, Leo Robinson and a ma-jority of Local 10’s members, opposed the proposed 1971 contract which codified the 9.43 steadyman sys-tem. This led to the longshore strike of 1971-1972, which shut down 56 West Coast ports and lasted 130 days. It was the longest strike in the ILWU’s history.
In Local 10 Brother Keylor was a member of the Militant Caucus, a class struggle rank-and-file group which published a regular newsletter, the “Longshore Militant”. He later left the Militant Caucus and pub-lished a separate newsletter on his own, the “Militant Longshoreman.” Howard advocated deliberate defi-ance of the “slave-labor” Taft-Hartley law through illegal secondary boycotts and pickets. Running on an open class-struggle program which called for breaking with the Democratic and Republican Parties, form-ing a worker’s government, expropriating the capitalists without compensation and creating a planned economy, Howard won election to the Executive Board of Local 10 for twelve years.
The Militant Caucus was involved in organizing protests and boycotts of military cargo bound for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1975 and 1978 and again in 1980 to the military dictatorship in El Sal-vador. The Caucus also participated in ILWU Local 6’s strike at KNC Glass in Union City, during which a mass picket line physically defeated police and scabs, winning a contract for a workforce composed pri-marily of Mexican-American immigrants.
In 1984, Brother Keylor made the motion, amended by Brother Leo Robinson, which led to the elev-en-day longshore boycott of South African cargo on the Nedlloyd Kimberley. In 1986, Howard again partici-pated in the Campaign Against Apartheid’s community picket line against the Nedlloyd Kemba. When Nel-son Mandela spoke at the Oakland Coliseum in 1990 after his release from prison, he credited Local 10 with re-igniting the anti-Apartheid movement in the Bay Area.
Other actions Brother Howard initiated, organized or participated in included the 1995-98 struggle of the Liverpool dockworkers; the 1999 coastwide shutdown and march of 25,000 in San Francisco to de-mand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal; the 2000 Charleston longshore union campaign; the 2008 May Day anti-imperialist war shutdown of all West Coast ports; the shutdown of Northern California ports in pro-test of the murder of Oscar Grant; the blockades of Israeli ships to protest the war on Gaza in 2010 and 2014; the 2011 ILWU struggle against the grain monopolies in Longview; Occupy Oakland’s march of 40,000 to the Port of Oakland, and countless other militant job actions and protests. Throughout his life, Brother Keylor always extended solidarity where it was needed. He fought racist police murders and fas-cist terror, defended abortion clinics, and fought for survivors of psychiatric abuse. Having grown up in Appalachia, he has always been an environmentalist, and helped shut down a Monsanto facility in Davis in 2012, as well as fighting pesticide use and deforestation in the East Bay.
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) The C.I.A. director travels to Cuba as the U.S. intensifies pressure.
By Julian E. Barnes, Michael Crowley and Frances Robles, Julian E. Barnes, Michael Crowley and Frances Robles have been covering the escalating tensions between the Trump administration and Cuba, May 14, 2026
John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A
John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, traveled to Cuba on Thursday, a day after Havana admitted that its fuel oil supplies have been exhausted for consumers and businesses.
Mr. Ratcliffe made the visit to deliver a warning to the government that it had to make economic changes and stop allowing Russia and China to operate intelligence posts in Cuba, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
Mr. Ratcliffe is the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit Cuba. His trip is part of a multifaceted campaign to escalate pressure against the Communist government and fulfill President Trump’s demand for regime change.
In a statement, the C.I.A. said that Mr. Ratcliffe had traveled to Havana to personally deliver President Trump’s message “that the United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes.”
The C.I.A. said Mr. Ratcliffe had met with Raúl G. Rodríguez Castro, known as “Raulito” or “El Cangrejo” (the Crab), the influential grandson of former president Raúl Castro. Mr. Ratcliffe also met with Lázaro Álvarez Casas, the minister of the interior, as well as the head of Cuba’s intelligence services, a C.I.A. official said.
At the same time, federal prosecutors in Miami were working toward securing an indictment of the elder Mr. Castro, who remains a force in the country’s politics, according to several people familiar with the matter. The scope of the indictment and the number of defendants is being debated, but it could include drug trafficking charges and accusations connected to Cuba’s downing in 1996 of planes run by the humanitarian aid group Brothers to the Rescue, two of the people said.
Mr. Ratcliffe arrived in Cuba the day after Vicente de la O Levy, the minister of energy and mines, announced that oil supplies for domestic use and power plants had been exhausted.
“We have absolutely no fuel oil, absolutely no diesel,” he said. “In Havana, the blackouts today exceed 20 or 22 hours.”
The lack of oil has forced people to rely on charcoal or even wood to cook, and some people have taken to the streets, banging on pots and pans to express their frustration.
The Cuban government has been grappling with a severe energy crisis for more than two years because of crumbling infrastructure and a dwindling oil supply from Venezuela, its longtime benefactor.
Venezuelan fuel stopped flowing to Cuba entirely in January, after the United States seized Venezuela’s leader and took control of its oil industry. Later, the Trump administration imposed an effective blockade barring all foreign oil from reaching Cuba, which had also received shipments from Mexico.
A delivery of an estimated 730,000 barrels of oil from Russia last month permitted by the Trump administration provided a brief reprieve.
The administration also has been working on the Castro indictment for months. The effort is being led by Jason A. Reding Quiñones, a Trump ally who serves as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
The Cuban government said the United States had requested Thursday’s meeting. Cuban officials stressed that their country did not constitute a threat to U.S. national security and should not be included on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, Cuba’s state-controlled newspaper, Granma, reported.
“Once again it was made clear that the island does not harbor, support, finance or permit terrorist or extremist organizations; nor are there any foreign military or intelligence bases on its territory, and it has never supported any hostile activity against the U.S. nor will it allow any action to be taken from Cuba against another nation,” the Cuban government said.
The Trump administration has not explicitly said what political or economic changes it wants to see in Cuba, but the broad goal is apparently to end the Communist Party’s lock on political and economic control. A C.I.A. official did not outline the economic steps the United States is seeking.
The visit was particularly remarkable because of the longstanding animosity between Cuba and the C.I.A. In 1961, the C.I.A. organized the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and in subsequent years was known to have made several attempts to kill Fidel Castro.
“A visit by the C.I.A. director is astounding in the present setting of the Trump administration’s regime-change efforts,” said Peter Kornbluh, who co-wrote a book on the history of secret talks between the two nations. “At the same time, the gravitas of such a high-level delegation signals that a dialogue between Washington and Havana is continuing and could still yield nonviolent results.”
He noted that the visit was not unprecedented: John Brennan, who ran the C.I.A. during the Obama administration, visited Cuba during secret talks to restore diplomatic relations.
William LeoGrande, who wrote the book with Mr. Kornbluh, said that Mr. Ratcliffe’s visit was “extraordinary given the unprecedented level of hostility the Trump administration has demonstrated toward Cuba.”
“The strategy of previous negotiations with Cuba have has been to offer Havana carrots,” Mr. LeoGrande said. “Trump’s strategy is to beat the Cubans with a stick until they cry uncle.”
Mr. Trump has flexed American power to cut off foreign oil shipments to Cuba, whose ramshackle economy has been thrown into crisis. The United States has also increased military and intelligence reconnaissance flights around the island as part of what is expected to be a larger U.S. military buildup.
American officials, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have had private talks with Cuban leaders in the hope that economic desperation will force them to make concessions they have long resisted.
In late April, a delegation of State Department officials visited Havana to press Cuban leaders, including Mr. Rodríguez Castro, on a potential diplomatic deal.
In public remarks, Mr. Rubio has suggested that the United States might settle for broad economic reforms to Cuba’s socialist system rather than dramatic changes to its political structure.
But in an interview on Wednesday with Fox News, Mr. Rubio said he doubted it was possible “to change the trajectory of Cuba as long as these people are in charge in that regime.”
During his visit, Mr. Ratcliffe’s most concrete demand was for Cuba to close the intelligence listening posts that Russia and China operate there, and that Mr. Trump has singled out. According to a C.I.A. official, Mr. Ratcliffe also held out Venezuela as an example of a collaborative relationship with the United States.
In the executive order on Cuba that Mr. Trump issued in January, he criticized the Cuban government for hosting “Russia’s largest overseas signals intelligence facility, which tried to steal sensitive national security information from the United States.” The executive order was less direct on China.
Russia opened the intelligence post during the Cold War, but temporarily shut it a quarter century ago, only to reopen it in 2014. The Russian post is in Lourdes, and the Chinese station is in Bejucal.
While Russia, China and Cuba have denied they operate intelligence posts on Cuba, current and former American officials say the facilities exist and allow for the interception of some U.S. communications.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba did not comment on Mr. Ratcliffe’s visit, but publicly accepted an offer of humanitarian aid in a social media post on Thursday.
A day earlier, he acknowledged that the energy situation was “particularly tense.”
“This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country,” he said on X.
The blackouts have forced Cubans to wake up at odd hours when the power is briefly on to make coffee, charge telephones and cook the next day’s meals. If the electricity goes out in the midst of cooking, they must turn to charcoal.
Eliannis Urgellés López, 40, of Guantánamo, also in eastern Cuba, uses an electric stove to cook but has a ready supply of charcoal for when the power goes out.
Ever since oil deliveries from Venezuela ended, she said, a good chunk of her government salary goes to buying charcoal.
“Venezuela was the lifeline for everything,” she said.
Hermes Marian, 53, who drives refinery employees to work each day in Santiago de Cuba, a city in the eastern part of the island, said the United States’ oil blockade was unjust.
“It can’t be right — it’s not right,” Mr. Marian said. “Here, it’s the people who are suffering.”
Reporting was contributed by Ed Augustin from Cuba, and Alan Feuer, Glenn Thrush and Tyler Pager.
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2) Stop Looking for an ‘Offramp’ in Iran
By Carlos Lozada, Opinion Columnist, May 15, 2026
Photo Illustration by Evan Hume for The New York Times
The war with Iran had barely been joined when the search for an offramp began.
“Exclusive: Trump Floats ‘Offramps’ After Attacking Iran,” Axios reported on Feb. 28, the same day that the United States and Israel started bombing targets. “It’s Too Soon for Iran ‘Offramps,’” the Wall Street Journal editorial board countered the next day, suggesting that Iran’s military capabilities needed to be destroyed before the Trump administration looked for an exit sign.
Other news outlets soon adopted the metaphor. “As the Iran War Continues, What Are the Potential Offramps for Trump?” NPR asked. BBC News reported that “Trump’s Iran Strategy Is to Pursue Two Offramps at Once,” a driving strategy I would not recommend. The Times described the eventual cease-fire agreement in early April as “an 11th-hour offramp,” and PBS’s “Washington Week With The Atlantic” convened last week to discuss “Trump’s Struggle to Find an Offramp From the Iran War.”
It is a seductive image. An offramp implies a safe and easy exit from a highway, an especially appealing option if it turns out the highway isn’t taking you where you’d originally hoped. Too many traffic jams, accidents or potholes in this “little excursion,” as President Trump called the conflict with Iran? Just take the offramp back to normality — and leave the war behind.
Even the administration uses the term. “Iran is looking for an offramp following your powerful threat,” Steve Witkoff, a U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, said to Trump in a March cabinet meeting, referring to the president’s warning that he would “obliterate” the country’s power plants if Iran’s leaders did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. (They didn’t comply, and he didn’t follow through.) And David Sacks, a venture capitalist and influential White House technology adviser, has argued that Trump should just claim victory and “get out” of the conflict. “We should try to find the offramp,” Sacks said.
Except an offramp from war rarely returns you to the roads you once drove or the world you once knew. The United States will find no offramp to a prewar status quo. The conflict has changed the maps, and all roads now lead somewhere new.
The war has revealed the Iranian regime to be far more resilient and capable than American authorities, enamored with the speed of the operation against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, had expected. Iran may emerge not just emboldened by standing tall against a superpower but also empowered with new leverage over a global economy as vulnerable as ever to fragile supply chains and vital choke points. The war has depleted the American weapons arsenal, rendering us less ready to respond to potential crises elsewhere; it has also shown how cheap drone technology is changing the nature — and raising the costs — of modern warfare.
The conflict has also delivered an economic windfall to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, increasing the country’s oil revenue and loosening sanctions. It has strengthened the hand of China — expanding its influence in regional energy markets, enhancing its global sway and perhaps whetting its appetite for an excursion of its own in, say, Taiwan. Two decades ago, the United States lectured China on the need to become a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. Now, as Trump and President Xi Jinping meet in Beijing, which country has the more credible claim to that role?
By weakening the already feeble ties between Washington and its traditional allies, the war has undercut any remaining American pretensions to global leadership. Trump is abandoning NATO, de facto if not de jure, and the “rupture” to the global order that Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada warned about this year is now evident to all.
We are now in the third month of a war that Trump pledged would last only a few weeks, a fight that he often bragged was “ahead of schedule.” Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel signaled in recent interviews that the battle is hardly over, and Iran’s maximal demands — reparations from Washington, sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, an end to sanctions — show how far-off any offramp really is.
Just ask Vice President JD Vance, reportedly an early skeptic of war with Iran, who was recently reduced to calling the conflict “a little blip” during a speech in Iowa. Pretending the war doesn’t matter much may be the most foolish version of an offramp; Trump, too, has dismissed the conflict as a “miniwar.”
American leaders have long fantasized about offramps from war, even if they have used different terms. Richard Nixon promised “peace with honor” as a path out of Vietnam; Barack Obama pledged a “responsible transition” of U.S. forces out of Afghanistan. The Clinton administration listed an “exit strategy” as an essential component of planning for any military deployments in its National Security Strategy of 1994. “Do we have timelines and milestones that will reveal the extent of success or failure, and, in either case, do we have an exit strategy?” it asked.
In a 1998 Foreign Affairs essay, Gideon Rose decried the “delusion” of the exit strategy. “The idea of an exit strategy contributes to a false notion that military interventions are mechanical tasks like building a new kitchen,” he wrote, “rather than strategic contests marked by friction and uncertainty.” The fixation on the exit strategy can signal a lack of resolve to the enemy; if America’s leadership is focused on getting out, our opponents can dig in their heels, as Iran is doing, and just wait us out.
The exit-strategy imperative also makes the departure of U.S. forces an objective — rather than a consequence — of a successful military operation, thus mixing ends and means. “The key question is not how we get out,” Rose argued, “but why we are getting in.” And that is a question that the Trump administration, with so many competing explanations and justifications, has not clearly answered in Iran.
An offramp is an even weaker version of an exit strategy. At least the exit strategy carries the pretense of strategic consideration, of a goal that is articulated and weighed alongside others. But when you just want to get off the highway as soon as possible, any ramp will do. It is as unsurprising as it is appalling that, according to Reuters, the administration has asked its intelligence agencies to assess how Iran would react if Trump simply declared victory and moved on from a war he reportedly finds boring.
Trump promised no more forever wars; Iran could be his whatever war.
Any offramp looks distant today. The president has called Iran’s latest list of demands a “piece of garbage,” derided the Iranian leaders as “stupid people” and declared the cease-fire struck in early April to be on “life support.” Next month it will be one year since Trump affirmed that Iran’s nuclear program had been obliterated by Operation Midnight Hammer, yet he remains stuck in neutral in a war that has accomplished virtually none of his stated objectives and that risks leaving Iran in a stronger geopolitical position and less damaged militarily than the administration has claimed.
Even some face-saving agreement — one that allows Trump to say he won and to assure Americans that his deal is better than the one the Obama administration negotiated and Trump ripped up during his first term — will not undo the damage the conflict has caused or the weakness it has revealed.
In war, offramps are rarely well marked or well paved.
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3) Deported Despite DACA: Dreamers Face Uncertainty Under Trump
The administration has said DACA isn’t a right to stay in the United States “indefinitely.” One man with DACA was detained and deported to Mexico in a matter of days.
By Miriam Jordan, May 15, 2026
Miriam Jordan has been reporting on DACA since the program was established in 2012 for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
Martin Padilla’s wife, Cynthia, relocated for several months to be closer to the border so she and the couple’s children could visit Mr. Padilla after he was deported. Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The New York Times
There had to have been a mistake, Martin Padilla recalled telling the immigration agents.
An inspector in the oil and gas industry, he was about to fly to Sacramento for work when the agents pulled him aside at Corpus Christi International Airport in Texas last August. Stopped at the security X-ray scanner, he told them he had DACA status, referring to the Obama-era program designed to protect undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as young children. His DACA card, he said, was in his wallet.
It didn’t matter.
Within hours of the Aug. 5 encounter, Mr. Padilla had been detained. Days later, he was deported to his native Mexico, leaving behind his American wife, their three children and the family’s new home.
Mr. Padilla, 35, is among about 500,000 people enrolled in DACA — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — which is supposed to shield them from deportation and allow them to work legally. And he is one of the dozens of DACA recipients who have been expelled from the country by the Trump administration.
The swift effort to deport Mr. Padilla underscores the tenuous state of many immigration protections under President Trump as he seeks to deliver on his pledge to deport millions of people and remake the country’s immigration system.
The federal government has all but ended the resettlement of refugees. The system for weighing asylum claims has been brought to a near standstill. And the Supreme Court will soon decide whether the Trump administration can end Temporary Protected Status for more than a million people from some of the world’s most troubled nations.
Mr. Padilla’s lawyers challenged his deportation, arguing in a federal court filing that his due process rights had been violated. After seven months, Mr. Padilla was allowed to return to the United States.
“My focus is getting back to work and providing for my family,” he said in an interview.
But Mr. Padilla is hardly out of jeopardy. There is an outstanding deportation order that was issued to his family when he was a child. The Department of Homeland Security said that order was a basis for his detention last year, even though DACA was intended to protect him. And the agency also cited two D.W.I.s over the last 14 years, which can be considered by immigration authorities even though neither led to a criminal conviction.
With the Trump administration working to weaken a wide range of protections, DACA recipients are realizing that the program, born of bipartisan support for a generation of young undocumented immigrants, is no longer the reliable shield it seemed to be for most of the last two decades.
Mr. Padilla’s experience makes clear just how much has changed and just how uncertain the future may be for the half million people who currently have DACA.
Since Mr. Trump took office last year, 650 DACA recipients have been taken into custody by ICE, and nearly 90 percent of the people arrested had previously been charged with or convicted of a U.S. crime, according to D.H.S. Lawyers contend the Trump administration is relying on minor infractions and decades-old deportation orders to justify detentions and removals of a protected group.
Neither Mr. Padilla or his lawyer received an official explanation for his deportation, they said.
“It seems so arbitrary that they decided to pick him up,” said his lawyer, Danielle Claffey. “The whole purpose of deferred action is to defer someone’s removal, even if they have a removal order.”
In response to an inquiry from The New York Times, D.H.S. said Mr. Padilla was a “criminal,” citing two D.U.I. charges and a deportation order from 2003, when he was 12. Records show that a D.W.I. charge in 2012 was dismissed. A 2023 guilty plea for another D.W.I. was discharged by a judge without a conviction.
The case challenging his deportation never reached a hearing in court, Ms. Claffey said, because the Department of Homeland Security chose to resolve the matter by facilitating Mr. Padilla’s return.
Created by the Obama administration in 2012, DACA was intended as a stopgap until Congress could pass legislation, known as the Dream Act, to provide legal status for a generation of young immigrants who were brought to the United States through no choice of their own.
For many so-called Dreamers, the United States is the only home they’ve known. Former President Barack Obama described them as “Americans in every way but on paper.” DACA enabled them to obtain driver’s licenses, pay in-state college tuition and build careers. Many are now in their 30s.
But the program has been legally vulnerable because it was established by executive action, not by Congress. Arguing that Mr. Obama had overstepped his authority, opponents have been challenging DACA in federal court since the program’s inception.
Still, across the previous three presidential administrations, recipients were assured “deferred action,” meaning the government would not pursue their deportation.
In a letter to Senate Democrats in February, Kristi Noem, then the homeland security secretary, justified the arrest and deportation of DACA recipients by saying that the program “comes with no right or entitlement to remain in the United States indefinitely.”
In a statement, D.H.S. said that any person covered by DACA “may be subject to arrest and deportation for a number of reasons including if they’ve committed a crime.”
Last month, the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Justice Department and oversees immigration courts, ruled that DACA status doesn’t prevent recipients from being deported.
The decision deepened the fear and uncertainty gripping Dreamers.
Many were already facing delays in renewing their “deferred” status and accompanying employment authorization. Historically, these renewals, required every two years, have taken weeks to process. But monthslong waits have become common, and that is costing some recipients their livelihoods. Lawyers and advocacy groups report a surge of calls from panicked nurses, teachers and others forced out of jobs.
Yadira Valles, a nurse in Albuquerque awaiting her renewal, cared for patients recovering from brain and spinal surgeries — until her work permit expired a month ago.
“I left my unit short a nurse, not because I wanted to but because I was forced to,” she said. “Without help from my family, I couldn’t keep my home, pay utilities and buy groceries.”
While a lapsed work permit can mean a career on hold and earnings lost, for DACA recipients like Mr. Padilla, the Trump administration’s approach meant sudden expulsion.
In the early hours of Aug. 18, he stood on the tarmac at an airport in Harlingen, Texas, a deportation hub. Chained at the waist, wrists and ankles, he tried once again to plead his case. His DACA was current, he told the people transporting him, to no avail.
“I was like, oh my God, I have been here all my life, I have a home, I have a U.S.-citizen wife and three U.S.-born kids,” he recalled thinking as he shuffled up the stairs to the plane.
He landed in southeastern Mexico disoriented, a stranger in the country of his birth. His wife sent him money, and he flew north to Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas, to be closer to his family.
Mr. Padilla and his wife, Cynthia, have been married since 2015. But it was not until June 2024 that she started the paperwork to sponsor him for a green card, a process that can take years.
As his lawyer worked to have him returned to the United States, Mr. Padilla found a job at an American-owned manufacturing plant.
His wife locked up their house near Corpus Christi and moved in with relatives near McAllen. Relocating allowed her and their children, 10, 7 and 4, to cross the border on weekends to visit Mr. Padilla. Their youngest, a girl, cried every time she parted ways with her father.
Mr. Padilla’s lawyer filed a complaint in federal court in December. Before the judge ruled, government lawyers agreed in February to admit Mr. Padilla back into the United States. A week later, an ICE official emailed Ms. Claffey, saying that Mr. Padilla would be detained on arrival. This led to several more weeks of limbo, until ICE agreed not to immediately detain him.
On April 24, Mr. Padilla was admitted through the port of entry at Brownsville, Texas.
When U.S. agents dropped him off at a bus stop, they wished Mr. Padilla good luck, he said. One reminded him to keep his DACA active. Mr. Padilla remembers thinking, “It was active.”
With Mr. Padilla able to earn only a fraction of what he had been making before his deportation, his family relied first on savings, then on credit cards, to keep up mortgage and car payments during his absence.
“If this had gone on another month or two, we would have been in serious trouble with our home,” he said.
He and his wife are aware his immigration saga won’t be truly over until he has a green card.
“All I want to do is fix his status,” Ms. Padilla said. “He is a great husband, father and worker.”
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
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4) U.S. Migrants Deported to Congo: ‘Where on Earth Is This Place?’
They were shackled and sent to Kinshasa by the Trump administration. Now they face a dangerous choice: Go back to Latin America or stay in Africa.
By Ruth Maclean, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, Pranav Baskar and Justin Makangara, May 15, 2026
Ruth Maclean reported from Dakar, Senegal, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega reported from Mexico City, Pranav Baskar reported from New York and Justin Makangara reported from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.
“Many accuse the Congolese government of granting President Trump too many favorable deals, including preferential access to Congo’s abundant minerals.”
Hugo Palencia was deported from the U.S. to Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, last month. Justin Makangara for The New York Times
Hugo Palencia said he was delivering meals in Aurora, Colo., for DoorDash and Uber around this time last year. Now, he is in a hotel in the Democratic Republic of Congo, dazed by a journey that he said took him in shackles from the United States to a Central African country that he had barely heard of before last month.
Mr. Palencia was deported to Congo on April 16 along with 14 other migrants from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, he said. They were all taken to a large hotel outside Kinshasa, the capital city.
“I’m on the other side of the world,” Mr. Palencia said.
The migrants’ odyssey was suddenly thrust in front of the courts this week when a judge ruled that one of them, Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata of Colombia, was likely deported to Congo illegally. The judge said Ms. Zapata had been sent to the African nation even after it told the Trump administration it could not accept her because of a medical condition. The judge has ordered immigration officials to return Ms. Zapata to the United States.
Mr. Palencia, 25, and other deportees who spoke to The New York Times in interviews at the hotel said they were presented with a choice when they arrived. Officials from the United Nations’ migration agency, or I.O.M., told them they could return to their home countries in Latin America or stay in Congo and hope for the best, he said.
They were given seven days to decide.
The Trump administration’s so-called third-country deportation policy has sent thousands of migrants from the United States to far-flung nations other than their own. In many cases, migrants are stripped of their passports and phones, locked in foreign detention centers and kept in legal limbo.
The administration is counting on the threat of being sent to a country like Congo, South Sudan or Cameroon to act as a deterrent for those planning to come to the United States illegally. In some cases, these nations may be more dangerous than the migrant’s home country, making that threat all the more palpable.
A lawyer for the deportees, Alma David, said several of them had U.S. protection orders making it illegal for the U.S. to repatriate them, for fear of their safety. Though the Trump administration has described U.S. deportees as “barbaric criminals,” none of the migrants at the hotel in Congo has a criminal record in the United States, according to the Congolese government.
The Department of Homeland Security did not comment on the 15 Latin American migrants deported to Congo. In a statement to The Times, the agency said, “Anyone who has been deported received full due process.”
Another woman from Colombia, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, said that she and the other migrants had been told that if they agreed to go home, they would be protected by the I.O.M. and allowed to stay in the hotel for “as long as necessary.”
If they did not accept the offer, she and Mr. Palencia said, agency officials told them they would be on their own and would have to pay for their own accommodations. The deportees are currently on a three-month tourist visa, which does not allow them to work in Congo, the woman said. But they have been allowed to leave the hotel, with supervision.
In a statement to The Times, the I.O.M. said it does not force anyone to return to their home countries. It added that the seven-day deadline is the I.O.M.’s minimum period of support, and that the agency could extend assistance beyond those days.
Sitting on a plastic chair by the pool bar on his first night at the hotel, Mr. Palencia spent some of the little money he had on a Corona to remind himself of home in Colombia.
“We’re all wondering whether we’re more afraid to return to our countries, or to be here in a country like this,” Mr. Palencia said. A U.S. judge had ordered his deportation in 2023 after he entered the country illegally twice, he said, but the judge shielded him from being sent back to Colombia, citing the risk of torture. Instead, the authorities sent him to Congo.
The I.O.M. deadline expired more than two weeks ago and most of the migrants have agreed to go home, Mr. Palencia said.
While they wait inside the hotel’s high, barbed-wired walls, the migrants can swim, play tennis, lounge and walk the tree-lined grounds. The electricity and water are sporadic and the occasional rat scurries past, but there is air conditioning, as well as en suite bathrooms and three meals a day, all paid for by the I.O.M. and the U.S. government, according to Congolese authorities.
But the hotel is not luxurious, and the atmosphere was sometimes tense. The Times saw dozens of Israeli military instructors and Congolese soldiers on site.
Navigating Congo outside the hotel would also be a challenge. Kinshasa is one of the continent’s biggest and most high-energy cities, but with aging, inadequate infrastructure and multiple languages. Its traffic is legendary; the yellow minibuses that bounce over its potholed roads are known as the Spirit of Death.
Congo is also grappling with one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, and many Congolese have questioned why their government has agreed to accept United States’ deportees when the country’s own urgent problems include millions of displaced people.
“This decision is detrimental to the interests of the Congolese,” wrote Jean-Claude Katende, a prominent human rights lawyer and commentator who has been highly critical of the agreement.
Many accuse the Congolese government of granting President Trump too many favorable deals, including preferential access to Congo’s abundant minerals.
In a rare news conference held last week, Félix Tshisekedi, the Congolese president, said he had imposed certain conditions on the United States before accepting the migrants; the deportees couldn’t be “bad boys.” But he had agreed to take them, he said, “simply because it’s what the Americans wanted.”
“They dreamed of living the American dream, and now they’re living the Congolese dream,” he joked.
It did not take long for Mr. Palencia to agree to go back to Colombia, having judged that the risks in Congo were higher than those he faced at home, he said. “I know nothing of Congo, except the music, which Colombian musicians sometimes cover, translated into Spanish,” he said. “Ideally, I would have been sent straight home.”
“This country is three times as insecure and dangerous as my native country,” he added.
While the migrants are unlikely to feel the effects of the ongoing conflict in eastern Congo, they could face threats largely associated with some of world’s poorest countries: a crumbling health system, dangerous roads, entrenched corruption and tropical diseases like malaria.
The woman from Colombia said she could not go back home. She described being kidnapped and tortured by an armed group, with the complicity of an ex-partner who worked for the government. Seeking asylum in the United States, she crossed the border alone from Mexico in September 2024, and was immediately arrested by U.S. authorities, she said.
She said she had spent a year and a half in Eloy Detention Center in Arizona, trying to navigate the immigration process without a lawyer. She was granted a protection order by a judge last year, she said, but was arrested by I.C.E. officials in March during a routine immigration appointment. (The Times verified the woman’s immigration history and torture protection order with government documents and court records.)
“Where on earth is this place?” she remembered thinking when she found out she was being sent to Congo. “I said, ‘I’m scared to go there. I don’t want to be sent to Africa. You can’t do this to me. What you’re doing isn’t legal.’”
Ms. David, the lawyer, said I.O.M. officials had informed the Colombian woman that she will continue to receive assistance from the agency based on her circumstances, even though she has refused to go back home. The lawyer also said that U.N. migration officials have offered to put her in touch with a separate U.N. agency that processes asylum claims.
The deportees have grown close in the few weeks they have spent together in Congo. They take walks and stay up late waiting to call their families back home. Most spend their days indoors, to escape the tropical heat and the thunderstorms. “We are united,” the Colombian woman said. At night, they danced and sang together to vallenato — accordion-heavy Colombian folk music — or Latin trap.
To pass the time, Mr. Palencia plays Christian Nodal and Yuri Buenaventura songs on YouTube. When he talks to his family members, they sometimes cry over the phone, he said. He finds it difficult to comfort them.
“No human should live in this kind of unspoken prison,” he said. “You don’t know how your child or your spouse woke up, how your family is. It’s very hard when your family depends on you.”
Stranded in Congo, the Colombian woman is terrified of what’s next. Every night, she speaks to her 10-year-old daughter, but has not yet told her that she’s in Congo. She doesn’t want the child to worry, she said. For now, she pretends that she is still living a normal life in the United States.
Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting from Washington.
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5) The Secretive Conglomerate That Controls Cuba’s Economy
By Maria Abi-Habib and Lazaro Gamio May 15, 2026
Some of what GAESA controls in Cuba
Photos by Yamil Lage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, Todd Heisler/The New York Times, Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters.
John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, visited Cuba on Thursday to demand major economic and security changes from its government. His visit came just as the Cuban government admitted that its oil reserves have run dry and coincides with efforts by federal prosecutors to secure an indictment against Raúl Castro for drug trafficking and the 1996 downing of humanitarian planes.
Earlier this month, President Trump signed an executive order to expand Cuban sanctions to target GAESA. The order says the conglomerate’s revenues “are likely more than three times the state’s budget.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio ratcheted up the pressure, calling GAESA a tool of Cuba’s political elite to repress the population while enriching themselves.
GAESA “is this private company that has more money than the government does,” said Mr. Rubio during a trip to the Vatican last week. “None of this money goes to build a single road, a single bridge, provide a single grain of rice to a single Cuban other than the people that are part of GAESA.”
“It’s a sanction against this company that is stealing from the Cuban people to the benefit of a few,” he said, before adding “we’re going to be doing more.”
President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba decried the executive order as “coercive.”
GAESA was born out of desperation following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but its roots trace back to the 1980s. Raúl Castro, then the defense minister, convinced his older brother, President Fidel Castro, to allow him to make changes to the military’s business interests, according to Frank Mora, who served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration.
When the U.S.S.R. fell, Cuba lost its largest trade partner and financial patron. The military was in shambles and struggled to pay its troops. Fidel allowed the military to take over state-run sectors of the economy, like tourism, in a bid to save the country.
At first, the experiment worked, analysts say, and the military proved to be a more efficient business manager than other arms of the state. The economy recovered by the late 1990s, with the military reinvesting its profits into the country to support hospitals, education and government food rations.
GAESA’s control grew more dominant when Raúl took over the presidency from his brother Fidel in 2008. It now oversees many parts of the economy, big and small. GAESA also has companies in Angola, pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual profits from education, health care, construction and more.
Critics say GAESA is now just another tool for the Castro family to consolidate its power.
Today it is now more powerful than ever, yet poverty on the island has never been worse.
“The military has been the more pragmatic arm of the revolution, but that doesn’t mean they embrace political liberalization,” said Mr. Mora. “This is as much of an economic enterprise as a military institution,” he added. “So they have less incentive to disturb the status quo, unless it's beneficial to them.”
GAESA’s finances are secret and do not appear anywhere in the government’s budget, making it unclear whether the state receives any of its profits. When the government’s comptroller admitted in a 2024 interview that she had no insights into GAESA’s finances, she was fired after 14 years of service.
The Castro family has leveraged its authority over GAESA to maintain a firm grip on the broader Cuban economy. In 2011, shortly after becoming president, Raúl put his son-in-law, Gen. Alberto Rodríguez Lopez-Calleja, in charge of GAESA.
After General Rodríguez died in 2022, a person unrelated to the Castro family was appointed to lead GAESA: Brig. Gen. Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, who was sanctioned by Washington this month. But the former GAESA chief’s son and Raúl’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, appears to have ties to Brigadier General Lastres, likely preserving the Castros’ influence.
Flight records show that in 2024 they flew together on a private jet to Panama, where GAESA has registered multiple companies in order to evade U.S. sanctions, according to an investigation by a group of local media outlets.
The younger Mr. Rodríguez Castro, known as el Cangrejo, Spanish for crab, has emerged as a key player in talks with Washington, meeting with Mr. Rubio’s team earlier this year. Another Castro family member acting as a point man for those talks is Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, a grandnephew of the Castro brothers. He is currently Cuba’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign trade and foreign investment — an important pillar of the economy.
The presence of two Castros at the negotiating table casts a long shadow of doubt on whether the regime is truly willing to surrender its economic monopoly as the Trump administration demands.
While the Cuban government often blames Washington’s sanctions and trade embargo for its financial woes, GAESA’s investment strategies have also contributed to the island’s economic demise, analysts said.
“The government complains about the embargo when it’s convenient, but then they build these hotels as if there was no embargo,” said Ricardo Torres, an economist at the American University in Washington who specializes in Cuba.
After the 2015 deal between Cuba and the Obama administration restored diplomatic relations and eased travel restrictions, GAESA bet heavily on tourism, expecting an influx of Americans. At first the bet paid off and Americans flocked to the island. GAESA went on a spending spree: By 2025, it built 121 hotels, up from 56 a decade earlier, adding 22,000 new rooms.
But the tourism boom was short-lived.
In 2016, President Trump reimposed sanctions and barred American tourists from visiting the island. Cuba’s economy faced another blow in 2020 when the pandemic ground tourism to a halt.
Yet GAESA kept building hotels, even as it neglected other parts of the economy. Cuba’s once-famous sugar cane industry — which financed the early days of the Communist revolution — collapsed, as government spending on the sector plummeted. Cuba has had to import sugar in recent years for domestic consumption, and even imports from the United States.
According to the latest government figures, in 2024, Cuba spent nearly 40 percent of its budget on tourism and hospitality, or some $1.5 billion. Yet hotel occupancy rates that year hovered at a dismal 30 percent.
The tourism budget was about 11 times that of education and health care combined in 2024. Spending on education decreased by 26 percent that year compared to 2023. That the government is spending more on tourism while Cubans go without basics shows how far the Communist revolution has devolved, observers say.
“The Cuban constitution says that we, the people, are the owners of all the means of production,” said Mr. Torres, the Cuban economist. “But there is no oversight into GAESA’s finances or business decisions, there is no social control.”
Last year, GAESA inaugurated the Iberostar luxury hotel in Cuba’s tallest building. The five-star hotel towers over Havana’s skyline of dilapidated homes. Yet some tourists say that the hotel is mostly empty when they visit.
“These military guys have profits that have been hoarded for a rainy day,” said Ricardo Zúniga, a former U.S. official who helped broker the Obama-era deal. “Well, it’s about as rainy as it gets in Cuba. So where is GAESA?”
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6) With Possible Raúl Castro Indictment, U.S. Eyes Venezuela Playbook
Amid stepped-up surveillance flights, a visit of the C.I.A. director and an energy embargo, the White House is trying to increase pressure on Cuba.
By Julian E. Barnes, Tyler Pager, Eric Schmitt, Michael Crowley and Frances Robles, May 15, 2026
The reporters have been covering the intensifying U.S. pressure campaign against Cuba.
“The planes were operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based Cuban exile group founded several years earlier to assist Cuban refugees and support the Castro regime’s overthrow.”
Raúl Castro is the former president of Cuba and younger brother of Fidel Castro. Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
The unstated warning behind the possible indictment of the 94-year-old former president of Cuba could not have been clearer: Just look at what happened in Venezuela.
This week, the Trump administration dramatically ramped up pressure on Cuba. The American embargo has left the country’s oil reserves empty. The U.S. military and spy agencies have stepped up surveillance flights around the island. Officials privately spoke of a coming buildup of armed forces in the region.
And John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, visited on Thursday to deliver a stark demand: shut down Russian and Chinese listening posts and take steps to open the economy.
Then came word, from people familiar with the U.S. government’s deliberations, that federal prosecutors in Miami were working on an indictment of Raúl Castro, the brother of Fidel.
It cannot be lost on anyone in the Cuban government that the Trump administration used a federal indictment against Nicolás Maduro, the authoritarian leader of Venezuela, as the pretext for a raid to swoop into Caracas in January and seize him.
Whether the U.S. military is moving toward a similar raid in Cuba is not known, though an operation is probably not imminent. A large number of American Special Operations Forces are deployed in the Middle East, in case hostilities against Iran flare again.
But other people briefed on the administration’s thinking say that senior officials at least want the option of running the Venezuela playbook again.
While the war in Iran has staggered to an unsatisfactory stalemate, the military operation in Venezuela remains in President Trump’s view an unalloyed success.
Others close to the Trump administration believe that even if such an option is never approved, the threat of the United States trying to seize Mr. Castro, one of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution, will pressure the Cuban government to give in to the U.S. demands. But experts say that may be a misreading of the Cuban government.
“The indictment is one more element in the pressure campaign Trump and Rubio are using to try to force the Cuban government to surrender to U.S. terms at the bargaining table by creating this threat of military action in the hope that it will force the Cubans to back down,” said William LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University. “But the Cubans are not good at backing down.”
Mr. Ratcliffe’s precise message on Thursday to Mr. Castro’s grandson, Raúl G. Rodríguez Castro, known as “Raulito” or “El Cangrejo” (the Crab), is not known. But one demand was clear: Shut down China’s and Russia’s intelligence stations on the island, which the two countries use to intercept U.S. communications.
Exactly what else the administration wants from the Cuban government is less clear. But the primary goal of Mr. Trump and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, is unambiguous. They want to be able to assert that the United States ended communist control of Cuba, but not push the country into complete chaos.
While C.I.A. directors are often tasked with secret diplomatic missions, the very public nature of Mr. Ratcliffe’s visit — complete with photographs and accounts of his message to the Cubans — was a departure. Frank O. Mora, the former ambassador to the Organization of American States and a former senior defense official, said the visit was a way to send an ultimatum to the Cuban government.
“The president is frustrated that he is not getting the results he wanted, or maybe he was promised in Cuba,” said Mr. Mora, who is now a professor at Florida International University. “They are tightening the screws to try to push the Cubans to make concessions they have been unwilling to do.”
While technically out of power, the elder Mr. Castro remains one of the most influential voices in Cuban politics. The state of his health is not completely understood, but he is frail, and has poor hearing and difficulty speaking. He has not made public remarks for some time. The optics of having an elite military special operations team seize a nonagenarian are likely to be poor, but that may not matter to the White House.
Mr. Mora said it was unlikely that the United States would try the same kind of military operation against Mr. Castro as it did with Mr. Maduro. But the indictment, he said, is a kind of “psychological operation.” Threats of a military operation or a legal indictment probably will not intimidate Mr. Castro, but they could send a message to the Cuban government, and to the Cuban American community in Miami, that has long pushed for an end to Communism on the island.
“The indictment’s more about trying to either instill fear to intimidate the regime and to make it seem, particularly in Miami, that the president is serious about changing Cuba,” Mr. Mora said.
Prosecutors are still discussing the scope of the possible indictment. Like the indictment against Mr. Maduro, it could include charges connected to drug trafficking. The indictment could also revolve around charges related to Cuba’s downing in February 1996 of planes run by the humanitarian aid group Brothers to the Rescue.
In a Feb. 13 letter to Mr. Trump, four Republican members of Congress requested that the Justice Department consider indicting the elder Mr. Castro, who served as Cuba’s defense minister at the time of the attack. The letter cited news reports indicating that Raul Castro approved the shoot-downs, which the members called “coldblooded murders.”
“We believe unequivocally that Raúl Castro is responsible for this heinous crime,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is time for him to be brought to justice.”
The episode hardened the U.S. stance toward Havana in lasting ways. President Bill Clinton, who had hoped to liberalize relations with Havana, called the downings “an appalling reminder of the nature of the Cuban regime — repressive, violent, scornful of international law.”
Four men were killed when a Cuban Air Force MiG fighter jet shot down two Cessna aircraft over the Straits of Florida in 1996. Three were U.S. citizens and one a legal permanent U.S. resident. The planes were operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based Cuban exile group founded several years earlier to assist Cuban refugees and support the Castro regime’s overthrow.
The group said the planes were on a humanitarian mission in search of Cuban refugees en route to Florida by raft who might have needed assistance. Cuba insisted the planes had violated its airspace, a claim disputed by international aviation authorities. But after the group dropped anti-regime pamphlets over the island during earlier missions, Cuba had threatened to use force against the flights.
The downing enraged Cuban exiles in Miami, and loudly resonated in Washington. Within days, Congress passed long-stalled legislation known as the Helms-Burton Act, perhaps its toughest action against Cuba. Among other things, the act conditioned the removal of U.S. sanctions on the fall of the Castro regime and gave new rights to Americans and Cuban Americans with claims to Cuban property seized after the 1959 victory in the country’s revolution.
Mr. Clinton’s opposition to the act vanished overnight, and he signed it into law on March 12, 1996. That remains a date of infamy in Havana: This year, on the 30th anniversary of the law’s signing, President Miguel Díaz-Canel denounced it on social media as a monstrosity.
David C. Adams in Florida contributed reporting.
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7) The Day Cuba Shot Down Two Civilian Planes
With Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former president, possibly facing charges in the 1996 killings, here’s a look back at what happened that day.
By Frances Robles, Frances Robles has covered Cuba for nearly 30 years, Published May 15, 2026, Updated May 16, 2026
“José Basulto, a pilot, former C.I.A. operative and veteran of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, founded the Brothers to the Rescue. He raised millions of dollars to purchase small planes and regularly took flights over the Straits of Florida in search of people lost at sea. He would then summon help from the U.S. Coast Guard.”
Former President Raúl Castro of Cuba attending a May Day parade in Havana this month. Norlys Perez/Reuters
In the early 1990s, tens of thousands of Cubans were taking to the sea aboard rickety handmade rafts in a perilous quest for a new life in the United States. Pilots from Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban American humanitarian aid group, made it their mission to save them.
On the afternoon of Feb. 24, 1996, eight volunteers left a small airport north of Miami aboard three Cessnas. Only one plane made it back.
The Cuban military scrambled MiG fighter jets and blew two of the planes out of the sky, killing four people, including three American citizens, and setting off international outcry. The MiG pilots were recorded on radio traffic rejoicing.
“They were pulverized in the sky in international airspace in broad daylight before the eyes of the world,” said Sylvia G. Iriondo, who was a passenger on the third plane. “It was a heinous crime committed against defenseless and unarmed small planes.”
The killings remain one of the most significant tragedies in the nearly 70-year history of the Cuban exile community in Miami. For three decades, Cuban American lawmakers, exile activists, survivors and family members of the victims have called for criminal indictments against Raúl Castro, who was Cuba’s defense minister at the time and later became president.
In what is perhaps the worst kept secret in South Florida, federal prosecutors in Miami are working toward securing an indictment of Mr. Castro, who is no longer president but remains a key decision maker in Cuba, according to several people familiar with the matter.
The number of defendants and the exact charges are still under discussion, but it could include drug trafficking charges and accusations connected to the ill-fated Cessnas, the people said.
A criminal case in an episode of such public heartbreak would raise the stakes in ongoing secret negotiations between the two countries and bring relief to Cuban Americans who have long sought justice.
“We’re looking forward to this,” Ms. Iriondo said.
Brothers to the Rescue was founded in 1991, during an extraordinary migration and economic crisis in Cuba. Cuba’s economy was in ruins after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and people were desperate to leave by any means possible.
In the summer of 1994, some 35,000 people fled aboard rafts, inner tubes and any other ramshackle vessel, most of them barely seaworthy.
José Basulto, a pilot, former C.I.A. operative and veteran of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, founded the Brothers to the Rescue. He raised millions of dollars to purchase small planes and regularly took flights over the Straits of Florida in search of people lost at sea. He would then summon help from the U.S. Coast Guard.
But migration agreements between the Clinton administration and Cuba’s communist government largely ended the rafter crisis. According to the accord, Cubans caught at sea would be turned back.
Brothers to the Rescue, the Cuban government has long asserted, ceased having a reason to exist.
The group turned to not just looking for migrants stranded at sea but sometimes to poking then-President Fidel Castro by flying over Cuba or even dropping leaflets containing excerpts from the U.N. universal declaration of human rights. In 1995, the Federal Aviation Administration announced that it was investigating the organization for violating Cuban air space.
Ms. Iriondo, who took her first flight with the group the day of the attack, said there were “certainly” no leaflets dropped that trip.
But to the Cuban government, Mr. Basulto was a provocateur and terrorist, firing a cannon from an offshore boat in 1962 at a Cuban hotel said to be frequented by Fidel Castro, he acknowledged under oath.
As a pilot, he had been warned not to cross the 24th parallel, a line about 40 to 60 miles north of Cuba’s coast. While still part of international waters and airspace, Cuba considers the area stretching to the line its defense zone. Cuban airspace extends 12 miles off its coast.
On the day the planes were shot down, Mr. Basulto had filed a flight plan with the F.A.A., planning a five-hour trip to the edge of that line.
He announced himself to Havana’s air traffic control, saying he would cross the 24th parallel and fly north of Havana for several hours. He sent warm greetings.
“Roger, sir,” Cuban air traffic control responded, according to transcripts later made public. “We inform you that the area north of Havana is activated. You are taking a risk by flying south of 24.”
At 2:58 p.m., Mr. Basulto responded: “We know that we are in danger each time we fly into the area south of 24, but we are ready to do so as free Cubans.”
At 3:20, Mr. Basulto remarked that it was a beautiful day. “Havana looks just fine from up here,” he said.
A minute later, Brothers to the Rescue pilots spotted fighter jets.
“They’re going to shoot at us?” Ms. Iriondo was recorded saying.
Without following customary protocols under international aviation conventions of issuing a direct warning of “imminent destruction” or escorting the civilian aircraft out of the area, the first plane was shot down at 3:21 p.m., 18 miles from Cuba’s shore, according to a report by the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights.
Killed were Carlos A. Costa, 29, a pilot, and his passenger, Pablo Morales, 29.
Mr. Morales was a former Cuban rafter who himself had been saved by Brothers to the Rescue and went on to volunteer for the group. He was the only one of the four men killed who was not an American citizen.
Seven minutes later, the second plane was destroyed, more than 30 miles from Cuba’s shore.
The second plane had been piloted by Mario Manuel de la Peña, 24, who was in his last semester at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. His passenger, Armando Alejandre, 45, was a Vietnam veteran who worked as a consultant for a local transit authority.
The MiG pilots rejoiced. “Cojones, we got him!”
“This one won’t screw with us anymore,” the pilot said, according to the audio transcripts.
Mirta Mendez, Mr. Costa’s older sister, said she remembers warning her brother about the perils of working with Brothers to the Rescue, but her brother needed the flight hours to be certified as a pilot and enjoyed saving people, she said.
“I remember telling him, ‘listen, stop flying,’” Ms. Mendez, 69, who lives in a suburb of Miami, said. “His words to me were: “‘I am an American citizen. I do not break the law, and they cannot do anything to me.’”
The bodies of the four men were never found.
The Cuban government has long maintained that Brothers to the Rescue had plotted armed excursions into Cuba and that Mr. Basulto was a terrorist, which the organization has denied.
Cuba’s diplomatic mission had filed several complaints about the group with the U.S. State Department.
Cuban diplomats on Friday did not respond to messages seeking comment on the potential indictment of Mr. Castro.
“That organization had carried out premeditated acts, which were not civil in nature and which violated both international law and Cuba’s sovereignty,” Ricardo Alarcón, Cuba’s foreign minister at the time, told the United Nations shortly after the killings. “They were also related to very serious crimes against the Cuban people.”
He claimed people had used airplane models like the type used by Brothers to the Rescue to commit acts of sabotage, such as burning sugar cane fields and dropping “biological substances.”
Mr. Basulto could not be reached for comment Friday, but in an interview this year, he said U.S. prosecutors had all they needed to file charges against Mr. Castro.
“U.S. authorities have all the documentation, including radio transmissions between the MiG pilots who shot our airplanes,” said Mr. Basulto, now 85. “Bring Raúl Castro to court, bring him physically here.”
In 2003, a U.S. grand jury indicted two Cuban fighter pilots, who were brothers, and their commanding general on murder charges. The three men were never extradited.
In an interview on Cuban television shortly after the killings, one of the pilots, Lt. Col. Lorenzo Alberto Pérez, said he had dipped his wings to warn the planes, but since they did not respond, he followed orders and shot them down.
Prominent Cuban exiles had prodded federal officials for years to indict Mr. Castro.
“The community’s been asking for the last 30 years to get this done,” said Marcell Felipe, a wealthy businessman who chairs the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora. “But there’s always a political reason why it doesn’t.”
Members of Congress wrote to the Department of Justice in February requesting it consider indicting Mr. Castro. The letter cited a news report of an audio recording of a conversation in which Mr. Castro could supposedly be heard discussing giving the orders to shoot down the aircrafts.
The families of the slain airmen sued the Cuban government in U.S. federal court, and in 1997 were awarded a $187.6 million judgment. The Treasury Department released some funds from frozen Cuban assets to make a partial payment.
Marlene Triana, Mr. Alejandre’s widow, said that she was reluctant to talk about a possible indictment before anything was made official.
“We’ve been talking about this for a long time now, and nothing ever actually happens,” she said.
“It’s about time someone finally had the guts to do it,” she added. “Miracles do happen, so let’s keep our hopes up.”
@Patricia Mazzei and David Adams contributed reporting from Miami.
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8) The Countries Profiting From the War Oil Shock, as Others Lose Out
By Amy Fan and Rebecca F. Elliott, May 16, 2026
A tanker carrying Russian oil in Gujarat, India. At least one analyst expects Indian imports of Russian crude to hit record levels next month. Amit Dave/Reuters
The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran thrust the world into its worst-ever energy crisis, slashing oil production and sending prices soaring. Those much higher prices have generated windfalls for companies that operate outside the Persian Gulf — especially in the United States, which has been selling a lot more energy than usual.
But inside the Persian Gulf, the story is much more complicated. The effective closing of the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point between the Gulf and the rest of the world, has forced the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and other countries to slash production and exports. Some are hurting worse than others. Those that can use pipelines to reroute their oil to ports away from the strait have fared a lot better than countries without such options.
This energy crisis affects everyone, but not evenly. The New York Times analyzed months of export and pricing data from S&P Global Energy Commodities at Sea and Argus Media to assess how much some of the world’s biggest oil producers have been selling and at what price. The analysis looked specifically at oil and related products exported by sea, which have been most affected by the closure of the strait.
Understanding who is winning and who is losing in that group helps explain why some countries are better positioned to withstand the economic consequences of this war. It also provides clues about the future. If the strait is no longer a reliable conduit, today’s winners are likely to remain dominant. If it the strait reopens, countries’ ability to recover will be informed by how painful the shutdown has been for them.
“The longer the strait stays closed, those who have gained from this will continue to gain,” said Jim Burkhard, who leads global oil research for S&P Global Energy. “Those who are challenged by it, it could get more serious for them.”
The United States is the world’s biggest producer of oil and natural gas, cushioning the economic blow from a war that it and Israel started. By late March, U.S. companies were exporting much more oil, diesel and other fuels than normal. That helped make up for a small portion of the energy the world has lost and kept prices from rising even further.
But unlike many other big oil producers, the United States does not have a state-owned oil company. That means big oil companies are receiving the large majority of this extra revenue. So far, there is little sign they will reinvest those proceeds to drill more or to hire more workers. That means there is unlikely to be a big war-related economic boom in Texas, New Mexico and other oil-producing states.
Instead, much of that extra revenue is likely to benefit investors in the form of higher stock prices and dividends. Many state governments will also earn more because they will receive bigger tax and royalty payments, as will landowners who have allowed oil drilling on their property.
Russia has been another big beneficiary — not because it is selling more oil, but because it is being paid more for its oil. The main reason is that the war has caused oil prices around the world to soar. The United States also temporarily lifted sanctions on some Russian oil in March, an abrupt policy shift that most likely helped Russia receive more for its oil than it otherwise would have. In early April, for example, the price for Russian oil sold off the Gulf of Finland approached $120 a barrel, up from $41 before the war. That said, Ukraine has sought to limit Russia’s ability to capitalize on higher prices by attacking the country’s oil infrastructure.
Most producers in the Persian Gulf have not been as fortunate. If anything, the war has underscored the importance of having export outlets other than the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have fared relatively well because they invested years ago in oil pipelines that go around the strait, an expensive form of insurance that is paying off. Saudi Arabia’s exports have fallen by over 150 million barrels during the war, compared with a year earlier, but its revenue from those sales rose by an estimated $9.2 billion.
Iran, which has been controlling access to the strait, also fared relatively well through mid-April. But the country’s exports plunged after the United States imposed a naval blockade targeting vessels linked to Iran, further straining the country’s economy.
Nearby countries that have neither control over the strait nor alternative export routes have been hit especially hard. They include Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar.
Officials in some Gulf countries have begun exploring building or expanding pipelines that would bypass the strait. But such projects are likely to cost billions of dollars and take years to complete. For the foreseeable future, these countries will probably remain at the mercy of whoever exerts control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Methodology
The New York Times analyzed weekly export data from S&P Global Energy Commodities at Sea that showed seaborne shipments of crude oil and an array of related products, from gasoline and diesel to naphtha, which is often used to make plastic. The Times paired those export volumes with pricing data from Argus Media, using regional benchmarks like Brent, a price for oil produced in the North Sea in Europe, and Urals, the main Russian price.
The Times also estimated revenues from the sale of exported oil products. It grouped products into broad categories, using prices for what the industry calls “gasoil,” a category that includes diesel and heating oil, to estimate the value of certain products and crude oil prices for others, partly because it was not always evident what fuels were being exported.
To analyze exports and estimated revenue, The Times reviewed data from Feb. 28, the day the war started, to May 8, 2026, as well as the comparable period a year earlier: from March 1 to May 9, 2025.
Aaron Krolik contributed reporting.
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9) Hamas’s Top Leader in Gaza Is Killed in Israeli Strike
Izz al-Din al-Haddad took over the group’s military wing in Gaza last year. Hamas officials confirmed Mr. al-Haddad’s death in an Israeli attack.
By Alan Yuhas, Jonathan Rosen and Iyad Abuheweila, Published May 15, 2026, Updated May 16, 2026
Hundreds of Palestinians at a funeral procession in Gaza City on Saturday for Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the leader of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
An Israeli airstrike killed the leader of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, the Israeli military said on Saturday. He was the most senior Hamas official to be killed by Israel since a cease-fire began last fall.
The Hamas commander, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, took over the group’s military wing in Gaza last year, after Israeli forces killed Muhammad Sinwar, the brother of Yahya Sinwar, an architect of Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Salama Maaroof, the director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, confirmed Mr. al-Haddad’s death in a post on social media. Hamas’s official broadcaster, Al-Aqsa TV, said hundreds of Gazans had borne Mr. al-Haddad’s body in a funeral procession in Gaza City on Saturday.
Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, said in a statement on Saturday that the killing of Mr. al-Haddad was “a significant operational achievement.”
Israel’s prime minister and defense minister announced the strike against Mr. al-Haddad in a joint statement on Friday, describing him as another architect of the October 2023 attack. They said that he had “refused to implement the agreement” brokered by President Trump “to disarm Hamas and demilitarize the Gaza Strip.”
The airstrike hit a building in Gaza, and the Israeli Air Force also struck around the structure in order to prevent an escape, according to two Israeli defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operations in Gaza.
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defense, an emergency service under the Hamas-run interior ministry, said on Saturday that at least six people had been killed in the attacks, without specifying whether Mr. al-Haddad was among them.
Experts, as well as a senior official of Mr. Trump’s Board of Peace, say that Israel has repeatedly violated the October 2025 cease-fire with almost daily airstrikes in Gaza. Experts also say Israel has violated the agreement by taking control of territory beyond the truce lines and by hampering the delivery of humanitarian aid and rubble removal equipment.
Israeli officials have accused Hamas leaders, including Mr. al-Haddad, of violating the cease-fire by trying to restore their military abilities and planning new attacks.
Mr. al-Haddad, in his mid-50s, was believed to be firmly opposed to Israeli efforts to dislodge Hamas from power in Gaza, and was thought to be based in Gaza City. Since the Oct. 7 attack, he has been the only senior Hamas commander to give an on-the-record interview, appearing in an Al Jazeera documentary that aired last year.
Known to his Hamas compatriots as Abu Suheib, he was one of the few remaining living commanders who was a member of the militant group’s high-level military council on Oct. 7, 2023. A Hebrew speaker, Mr. al-Haddad also spent time with Israeli hostages in northern Gaza, according to Israeli officials. He rose into higher leadership positions as Israel killed one senior Hamas leader after another, including Muhammad Deif, the leader of the military wing; Mr. Deif’s top deputy, Marwan Issa; and the Sinwar brothers.
Records from the Gaza health ministry indicate that Mr. al-Haddad’s eldest son, Suheib, was among the people killed during the war, which has left tens of thousands of Gazans dead. In April, the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, announced the killing of Mahmoud Abu Hiseira, whom it described as Mr. al-Haddad’s right-hand man.
So far, Hamas has resisted demands that it relinquish its military wing’s weapons. A top official of the Board of Peace, Nickolay Mladenov, accused Hamas this week of blocking efforts to help Palestinians, and urged it to surrender its weapons and make room for the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, a U.S.-appointed group of Palestinian technocrats waiting to enter Gaza and assume control over government functions.
A Hamas spokesman, Hazem Qassim, said this week that the Hamas-run government in Gaza was ready to hand over the administration of the territory to the National Committee, without saying whether the group’s military wing was willing to give up its weapons.
Ronen Bergman, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Adam Rasgon, Aaron Boxerman and Lynsey Chutel contributed reporting.
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10) They Fled to Safety in Palestinian Territory, Then Settlers Attacked Again
Violent settlers are not merely clearing Palestinians from land under Israel’s control. They are attacking areas where Israel agreed to Palestinian self-governance
By Azam Ahmed, Photographs by Ivor Prickett, May 16, 2026
Reporting from Al-Awsaj, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
Muhammad Gawanmeh, 45, sat outside his family’s tent with his wife and two of his young sons soon after the attack in Al-Awsaj, northeast of Jericho, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank this past week.
Muhammad Gawanmeh, 45, sat outside his family’s tent with his wife and two of his young sons soon after the attack in Al-Awsaj, northeast of Jericho, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank this past week.
Muhammad Gawanmeh recognized the black pickup when it first pulled in front of his tent, trailed by an ATV carrying Israeli settlers he also recognized.
In January, he had fled his home of more than 40 years in the Israeli-occupied West Bank after violent settlers repeatedly attacked his village, wielding assault rifles and even setting up a base of operations in the middle of his neighborhood. Mr. Gawanmeh held on until the very end before he uprooted his wife, children and extended family, the last of more than two dozen households to abandon hope.
With nowhere else to go, he erected a tent in the safest place he could find in the hamlet of Al-Awsaj, a sun-bleached stretch of land carved from stony hillsides, deep in territory that is indisputably under Palestinian administration.
And yet last weekend, here were the same settlers again, seven men in all, sending a current of fear through the recently displaced families who cowered in their tents as Mr. Gawanmeh, 45, stood outside.
The attack began right away.
Settler violence has grown commonplace in the West Bank in recent years, part of a campaign of harassment, abuse and forced displacement. Since Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, more than 700,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank among more than three million Palestinians.
Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, violent settlers, emboldened by a right-wing government, have forced thousands of Palestinians from their homes, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The Palestinians are forbidden from carrying weapons, while the settlers are often heavily armed.
The Israeli military and police not only routinely fail to stop the violence, but a New York Times investigation found that they also often intervene on behalf of the Jewish settlers.
In the attack last weekend, the masked settlers used pepper spray on Mr. Gawanmeh, he said, temporarily blinding him. A few of them beat him while others stood on lookout, according to a video of the attack captured by his family and shown to The New York Times.
When Mr. Gawanmeh’s eldest son, Ahmad, 22, began to shout for help, the settlers fled the scene.
But the assault was not over.
They circled the area in their vehicles, watching. When they realized the family was alone, with the other men working in the farms nearby, they returned.
Mr. Gawanmeh said he considered fighting back. But he knew better.
“They would shoot me, or I would be the one to go to jail,” he said hours after the attack, his shirt and pants still covered in blood. “So I let them beat me.”
The settlers hurled a stone that struck Mr. Gawanmeh in the back of the head, he said, knocking him nearly unconscious. Afterward, he said, they used a baton with nails driven through it to batter him on the ground, tearing a large wound in his leg. Both injuries required multiple stitches.
Family members said the settlers also threw stones at Mr. Gawanmeh’s wife, Alia, 43, injuring her foot, and even struck their 4-year-old son, Obaida.
The settlers fled, firing gunshots in the air, only when they spotted Mr. Gawanmeh’s brothers racing up the hill, the family said.
Asked about the attack, the Israeli military said it strongly condemned the violence. The statement added that Israeli soldiers were deployed to the area following a report of violence involving several Israeli civilians who entered privately owned Palestinian territory, threw stones and fired into the air.
When they arrived, the soldiers searched the area, but found no suspects, the military said.
Israel police, forensic teams and soldiers collected testimonies and evidence and the military was investigating, the statement said.
In the past, some Israeli officials have minimized the seriousness of settler violence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has dismissed some perpetrators as a “handful of kids” from broken homes.
Settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have grown worse since the start of the most recent war with Iran, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which recorded an average of seven attacks a day in the past few months.
The past weekend was particularly brutal, with Palestinian media reporting nearly 20 different attacks, a territory-wide blotter of arson, invasion and beatings.
On Wednesday, Israeli military forces fatally shot a teenage Palestinian amid a new rampage by violent settlers in the West Bank zone under Palestinian administration, Palestinian witnesses said.
The settlers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, stormed several villages near the city of Ramallah. The settlers beat residents, stole livestock and tractors and smashed car windows, the witnesses said.
When some of the Palestinian residents tried to stop them, Israeli soldiers opened fire at them and killed the youth.
The Israeli military said soldiers opened fire after “a violent riot” with stone-throwing. Its statement said the Israeli forces were trying to prevent confrontation, extract the livestock, and escort all Israeli civilians out of the area.
Ayad Jafry, a witness, said no one was throwing stones.
But last weekend’s assault was a notable escalation, particularly in territory ostensibly under Palestinian control.
The settlers’ message could not have been clearer.
“There is nowhere safe for us,” said Naif Gawanmeh, Muhammad’s brother.
The Oslo Accords signed in the 1990s divided the occupied West Bank into three zones. Much of the violence in recent years has been concentrated in land designated as Area C, where the Israeli military is responsible for overseeing civilian administration as well as security.
Much of the land is rural, home to Bedouin communities whose villages of trailers, tents and corrugated sheepfolds are often draped along the undulating terrain. As more and more of that land is cleared of Palestinian life, the violent settler movement is pressing into once-unthinkable areas, along the edges of major Palestinian cities and into regions supposed to be under total Palestinian autonomy under the Oslo agreement.
Al-Awsaj, where the attack occurred last weekend, was designated as part of Area A, land that the Palestinian Authority administers — as close as it gets to sovereign territory.
The family of Yusuf Kaabna, the teenager killed on Wednesday, had also been displaced to Area A after their homes in another zone came under settler attacks, according to Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli activist who knows the family and documented the attacks where they previously resided.
The site where the Gawanmeh family now lives, a treeless mountainside northeast of the West Bank city of Jericho, is populated with recently displaced people.
Last summer, settlers moved into and then evicted hundreds of Palestinians from the village of East Muarrajat, which sits just a few miles southwest in the central Jordan River valley. The Palestinians’ abandoned homes and livestock shelters remain in the sloped valley like ghostly ruins.
But the settlers did not stop at East Muarrajat. Instead, they moved on to mount another offensive, in Ras Ein al-Auja, the family home of the Gawanmehs, which sits within sight of East Muarrajat. Over several visits to the area, New York Times journalists witnessed repeated harassment by settlers.
Residents said the settlers deployed the same terror campaign in both places, brutalizing villagers day and night, until residents had no choice but to flee.
This was how Mr. Gawanmeh said he recognized the settlers who attacked him last Saturday, and their vehicles. Even with their masks on.
The family had called for help as soon as the attack started, running down a list of agencies. The Israeli police did not answer, they said, nor did the Palestinian Authority, whose security forces have a large base a few miles away.
Asked about the incident, the Palestinian Authority said it does not respond to settlers attacks, citing the potential for political repercussions if the Palestinian authorities were to get into a confrontations with the settlers or the Israeli army.
When Israeli soldiers eventually turned up, they questioned witnesses. Mr. Gawanmeh’s son Ahmad told them he saw everything and had been attacked himself.
Rather than take Ahmad’s statement on the spot, however, the soldiers handcuffed and took him away for questioning, according to the family and activists who arrived on the scene immediately after the assault.
Her son’s fate uncertain, Mr. Gawanmeh’s wife limped out from under a makeshift awning, her right foot wrapped in gauze.
What will we do, she asked aloud. The settlers had stolen half their sheep before the family fled Ras Ein Al-Auja, she said, and she was certain they now wanted the rest.
“They will come back,” she said. “And they will keep coming until they’ve stolen everything we have.”
Her son was later released and returned to the camp.
David M. Halbfinger, Natan Odenheimer and Fatima AbdulKarim contributed reporting.
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11) Trump Says a Top ISIS Leader Was Killed in a U.S.-Nigerian Mission
The leader, whom the State Department designated a terrorist in 2023, had been hiding in Africa, President Trump said.
By Francesca Regalado, May 16, 2026
President Trump announced the operation in a late-night post on Truth Social, his social media platform. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
President Trump said late Friday that U.S. and Nigerian forces had killed a top leader of the Islamic State who was hiding in Africa, where the United States has been targeting Islamic militants whom the president says are killing Christians.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump said he had directed U.S. forces in an operation on Friday night with the Nigerian military to eliminate the leader, Abu-Bilal al-Minuki.
Mr. al-Minuki was designated a terrorist and one of the leaders of the Islamic State by the State Department in 2023. He was a Nigerian citizen, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which had sanctioned him.
Mr. Trump said Mr. al-Minuki had been hiding in Africa but did not specify where he was killed or provide details about the mission, which he said was “very complex.”
“He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans,” Mr. Trump said in the post.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria said in a statement on social media that the mission had struck Mr. al-Minuki’s compound near Lake Chad, which is at the intersection of four countries, and killed several of his lieutenants. He did not specify the location of the compound.
Both Mr. Trump and the Nigerian military identified Mr. al-Minuki as the second-most-senior leader in ISIS, a position the military said he might have received “as recently as February 2026.” He had earlier overseen “ISIS-linked operations across the Sahel and West Africa,” the military said.
Nigeria’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Mr. al-Minuki had been responsible for recent attacks against the military in the country’s northeast. A spokeswoman for the United States Africa Command said it did not have anything to add to Mr. Trump’s statement.
The U.S. military has launched a number of attacks against Islamic jihadists in Nigeria since December, when a U.S. missile strike killed terrorists in two ISIS camps in the country’s northwest. That operation was done in coordination with the Nigerian military, the United States Africa Command said at the time.
Thousands of Christians and Muslims have been killed in Nigeria in land disputes, sectarian violence and terrorism, which Christian activists and Republican lawmakers in the United States have viewed as the persecution of Christians. There is no clear evidence to show that Christians are attacked more frequently than any other religious group in Nigeria, analysts say.
Earlier this year, a U.S. official said that the Pentagon would send about 200 troops to Nigeria to help train its military to fight Islamic militants but that U.S. forces would not be involved in combat operations.
Saikou Jammeh contributed reporting.
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12) Long Island Rail Road Strike Shuts Down Busiest U.S. Passenger Rail Service
This is the first strike on the service in more than 30 years. It comes after three years of failed contract negotiations, two federal interventions and a volley of last-minute bargaining.
By Stefanos Chen and Ashley Southall, May 16, 2026
The last Long Island Rail Road strike was in 1994, when a two-day suspension shut down the service. Ryan Murphy for The New York Times
Thousands of workers for the Long Island Rail Road walked off the job early Saturday morning, staging the first strike in more than 30 years for America’s busiest passenger railway and grinding service to a halt.
After three years of failed contract negotiations, two federal interventions and a volley of last-minute bargaining, unions representing about half of the work force decided to take to the picket line to protest what they called insufficient wage increases.
Five unions representing more than 3,500 workers — including engineers, signalmen and machinists — called the strike after contract discussions with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the railroad, fell apart.
Kevin Sexton, a vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, one of the unions, said the two sides could not agree on raises in 2026, or on issues like health care contributions.
“We are truly sorry that we’re in the this situation,” Mr. Sexton said at a midnight news conference outside of M.T.A. headquarters. “But this is why you have to take collective bargaining seriously.”
More than 270,000 daily riders rely on the service to travel between New York City and Long Island, a sprawl of suburbs and bedroom communities where many of the region’s workers live.
At the Kew Gardens-Union Turnpike subway station, a transfer point for passengers traveling from Long Island, there was no sign of the strike’s affecting travel on Saturday morning.
Alex Najjar, 56, who owns the All Star Newsstand next to the station entrance, said none of his customers were talking about the strike. That was in contrast to the noisy early-morning scene at the railroad station near his home in the Richmond Hill neighborhood in Queens.
“There were people walking down the street holding signs and people driving by honking their horns,” Mr. Najjar said.
The strike comes as Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, seeks re-election later this year. The governor, who lost Long Island in the previous election, is being challenged by the Nassau County executive, Bruce Blakeman, a Republican with close ties to the region.
Ms. Hochul said in a statement that while her administration has made investments in the Long Island Rail Road, the unions’ demands could force her to increase taxes or raise fares by as much as 8 percent.
“The L.I.R.R. is more stable now than it has been for generations,” she said. “The decision by some unions to strike over demands that would threaten that progress is reckless.”
Janno Lieber, the chief executive of the M.T.A., said the authority was willing to increase its offer for higher wages but the unions were unwilling to compromise. He said the M.T.A. could not make a deal that “implodes” its budget.
To mitigate the shutdown, the M.T.A. said it would provide free shuttle buses between six locations on Long Island and two subway stations in Queens.
But the service will be unable to accommodate all the riders who rely on the railroad, and it won’t begin until Monday, leaving many scrambling for weekend travel alternatives.
On Saturday, the New York Mets are set to face the Yankees at Citi Field in Queens, where thousands of Long Island-based fans are expected to arrive by rail.
If the strike does not end by Monday morning, buses will shuttle riders between the Bay Shore, Hicksville and Mineola L.I.R.R. stations, as well as Hempstead Lake State Park near the Lakeview station, and the A train stop at Howard Beach-JFK Airport. And buses from the Huntington and Ronkonkoma stations will take riders to and from the F train stop at Jamaica-179 Street.
The buses to Queens are expected to run every 10 minutes from 4:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., and afternoon shuttles back to Long Island could run from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. They will be able to handle up to 13,000 riders during the morning rush and another 13,000 in the evening.
There will be a limited number of buses running in the non-peak direction at some of the stations.
Mr. Najjar, the newsstand owner, said he thought the unions should settle instead of inconveniencing riders.
But Rashad Morshed Delvalle, 35, an M.T.A. bus driver, was more sympathetic. He compared the striking workers to bus drivers who were treated poorly during the coronavirus pandemic while doctors and nurses were showered with praise.
“They don’t feel appreciated enough,” he said. “The M.T.A. and the union reps had enough time to negotiate. They should’ve come to an agreement. They had three months.”
The Long Island Rail Road carried 82 million customers last year. Most were weekday commuters on their way to jobs in New York City, but an increasing number of passengers were using the service on weekends.
This is the first strike on the railroad since 1994, when a two-day suspension shut down the service.
The state comptroller’s office said on Friday that the strike could cost the region $61 million a day in lost economic activity.
Discussions between the unions and management broke down on the final day of negotiations.
The unions were seeking a retroactive 9.5 percent wage increase covering the last three years — the same deal the M.T.A. offered several other transit and civil service unions in recent months. But they were also seeking a 5 percent raise in the current year, a demand that exceeded what the M.T.A. has offered to other unions.
The M.T.A. countered with a 3 percent raise for 2026, plus a lump-sum cash payment, which it said would avoid upending negotiations with more than 80 other unions.
By Friday afternoon, the two sides were about 1 percentage point apart on wage increases, but were unwilling to compromise further.
Leaders of the negotiating unions have argued that their workers don’t make enough money to keep up with the cost of living in one of the country’s most expensive metro areas. They have not received raises since 2022.
Cash compensation for members of the five holdout unions averaged over $136,000 in 2025, according to M.T.A. figures, making them among the highest-paid rail workers in the nation.
Earlier in negotiations, the M.T.A. had also sought to eliminate a number of work rules that often require higher pay for certain tasks. The unions declined to do so.
For instance, if an engineer drives a diesel train at the start of a shift but is asked to switch to an electric train in the same day, the M.T.A. must compensate that worker with two days’ pay. If, on the same day, the engineer is asked to switch from driving passengers to driving a train back to a yard for maintenance or storage, that worker is entitled to a third day of pay.
These penalty payments added almost 15 percent to the average engineer’s compensation in 2024, the M.T.A. said.
The Long Island Rail Road has an annual operating budget of $2.2 billion, and labor accounts for nearly three-fourths of that budget.
Unlike much of the M.T.A. work force, which is prevented from striking because it is governed by different rules, Long Island Rail Road workers are covered by a 1926 federal law called the Railway Labor Act.
The law was designed to prevent major service disruptions by requiring mediation and an extended review period before a strike is authorized.
But in an unusual move, the federal agency that oversees such disputes, the National Mediation Board, last year released the unions from mediation, a decision that cleared the path for a possible walkout.
Ms. Hochul said on Saturday that she blamed the Trump administration for cutting the mediation short, and increasing the likelihood of a strike.
A strike was postponed twice within the past year, after the unions requested the intervention of two federally appointed review panels. The three-person panels, which were appointed by President Trump, said the unions should be paid more than what the M.T.A. was offering, but their suggestions are not binding.
The unions on Saturday declined to say how long the strike might last. Workers were preparing to picket at a number of stations over the weekend.
“This is an open-ended strike,” Gilman Lang, the general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said in a statement.
“We don’t know when it will end. It shouldn’t have begun.”
Ellen Yan contributed reporting.
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13) Rival Protests Begin in London, With a Major Security Effort
The police have deployed thousands of officers, partly to keep far-right and pro-Palestinian marchers apart. The events are expected to draw tens of thousands to London.
By Megan Specia, Reporting from London, May 16, 2026
The streets of the British capital hosted an ideological split-screen on Saturday as separate, far-right and pro-Palestine demonstrators competed for attention in dueling protests.
Marching through central London, tens of thousands of far-right protesters wearing “Make Britain Great Again” hats and draped in Union flags demanded support for white culture and an end to migration.
Along another route, similar numbers of pro-Palestine and anti-fascism demonstrators decried racism as they carried signs and banners calling for freedom for Palestinians in Gaza and an end to the genocide they said was taking place there.
The groups largely stayed separate, with few reports of arrests or violence, after what London police said was an “unprecedented” security operation designed to keep the protests from descending into a riot.
Police said 4,000 police officers, as well as helicopters, armed vehicles and drone teams, were deployed Saturday. By 5 p.m., the police had reported 31 arrests but said the groups had largely stayed on their assigned routes and “both protests have proceeded largely without significant incident.” The FA Cup final, a major soccer competition, was also held on Saturday afternoon, bringing large crowds to the city and adding to the complexity.
“The scale of the operation is unprecedented in recent years,” said Cmdr. James Harman, the deputy assistant commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, in a Wednesday news briefing ahead of the protests. “The planning for it has been ongoing for months.”
Protesters carrying flags and banners began arriving early in the morning as they made their way along London’s streets to the meeting points for the competing marches.
The far-right demonstration was organized by Tommy Robinson, an anti-Islam agitator whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, under the banner, “Unite the Kingdom.” Mr. Robinson, who has several criminal convictions and has served several stints in prison, has said it was a demonstration for “national unity, free speech and Christian values.”
“We have been in a culture war for a long time,” Mr. Robinson told the crowd on Saturday. He said the march represented a movement that was “thinking about how we can create a cultural revolution in this country.”
Along the protest route, several marchers echoed that sentiment.
“I’m just supporting being British,” said Corina Short, who came to the rally from Kent, about an hour away from London. “It means I can fly my flag with pride without feeling as though it’s a crime.”
Marchers waved signs that said “Stop the Boats,” a reference to asylum seekers who arrive on Britain’s shores, and chanted derisive slogans about Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a center-left politician and the head of the Labour Party.
“He says we’re causing division, he’s causing division,” Paul Gibson, from Nottingham, said of Mr. Starmer. “He protects the criminals, the Muslim gangs, the Islamic extremists, but when it comes to us, he blames us.”
In a video posted on Friday on social media, Mr. Starmer said the organizers of the march, “including convicted thugs and racists, are peddling hatred and division.”
The competing protest on Saturday was an annual Nakba Day demonstration, commemorating the mass displacement of Palestinians from their homes in 1948 during the Arab-Israeli War.
Organizers said it also stood “united against Tommy Robinson and the far right.” That rally was organized by a coalition of groups, including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Stop the War Coalition and others, and was joined by “Stand Up To Racism,” a group opposing Mr. Robinson’s march.
Protesters carried signs declaring that “It’s Not a Crime to Stand Against Genocide,” “Stop Gaza Genocide” and “Freedom For Palestine.” Many waved the black, white, green and red Palestinian flag.
At one point, the crowd broke out into chants of “We are all Palestinians.”
Apsana Begum, a Labour member of Parliament who spoke at the rally, told the crowd that there were differences between the two marches.
“We know that the far right marches because our solidarity with the Palestinian people threatens their cause,” she said, according to PA Media, the British press association. “We will not be divided by the far right. We will not be silenced by any government, and we will not go quietly while crimes against humanity continue and are committed with impunity.”
Many people in the march appeared to be as focused on British politics as they were on the Middle East. Several carried signs that said “Stop Racist Reform U.K.,” a reference to the right-wing populist political party in Britain headed by Nigel Farage. His party made huge gains in elections in England, Scotland and Wales last week.
Both London demonstrations took place against an increasingly tense political backdrop, with the country’s terrorism threat level increased in recent weeks amid rising antisemitism, Islamophobia and extreme right-wing sentiment.
The bulk of the policing operation on Saturday was on keeping the two marches apart. At one point, the rallies converged on the same area of the city, near government buildings — at their closest, separated by just over 500 yards.
“We can’t ask a counterprotest to be in a completely different area of London,” Commander Harman said during the briefing on Wednesday. “They have to have an amount of proximity in order to make their point. We think we’ve come up with the right policing plan to keep people safe on the day, although it’s challenging.”
Protesters were required to stick to prearranged routes and to disperse by a designated time, or face arrest. The police also extended powers to arrest any speakers who used the events “as a platform for unlawful extremism or for hate speech,” Commander Harman said, noting that it was the first time these restrictions had been imposed for a rally of this type since the powers were enacted recently. It was not clear on Saturday whether any speakers had been arrested under these restrictions.
Live facial recognition technology was used for the first time in policing a protest, in a part of the city where people taking part in the right-wing rally are expected to gather beforehand. The technology compared those walking by with “the faces of those on a specific watchlist” of people wanted for suspected criminal offenses, Commander Harman said.
Officials said two of the 31 arrests occurred near the train station where the far-right demonstration began.
“One of the two men was arrested in connection with the incident in Birmingham where a man was run over,” the police wrote on X. “The second arrested man was wanted for a separate offense which involved encouraging people to attack a police officer.”
Some foreign far-right activists were also barred from entering Britain for that demonstration, the government announced this week.
“We will not allow people to come to the U.K., threaten our communities and spread hate on our streets,” Mr. Starmer said in a speech on Monday. “This is nothing less than a battle for the soul of our nation.”
Britain late last month raised its national terrorism threat level to “severe” from “substantial,” the fourth of five levels on its scale, meaning officials assessed that an attack was highly likely in the next six months. The Joint Terrorism Analysis Center, which is responsible for the assessment, announced the change after a stabbing attack on two Jewish men in the north London neighborhood of Golders Green and a series of other antisemitic attacks.
The center said the increase was “not solely a result of that attack,” but also of broader concerns about an “increasing threat of Islamist and extreme right-wing terrorism in the U.K.”
Ahead of the protests, “fears in Jewish communities are particularly heightened, but we’ve also seen increased concern more broadly, including in Muslim communities,” Commander Harman said.
The police are well aware of the risks the opposing demonstrations could pose. In September, Mr. Robinson and his supporters gathered in London in a protest that devolved into violence when several people involved clashed with the police. At that time, antiracism protesters had also gathered in a counter-demonstration elsewhere in the city, and around 1,000 police officers had set up barriers between the dueling protests.
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