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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 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) Cuba’s Government Has Lasted 67 Years. Will It Fall Under Trump?
The Trump administration, which has tightened the U.S. chokehold on Cuba by cutting off foreign oil, is betting that this is the Cuban communist revolution’s last year.
By Frances Robles and David C. Adams, Reporting from Florida, Feb. 8, 2026
Fidel Castro, who led Cuba from the 1959 revolution until he formally stepped down in 2008, speaking in Santa Maria Del Mar in 1964. Credit...Jack Manning/The New York Times
Celebrations broke out in front of Miami’s Versailles restaurant nearly 20 years ago after Fidel Castro announced that he was so sick he had to temporarily step down as president of Cuba.
Cuban exiles rejoiced again two years later when he quit for good — and once more when he died in 2016, though his brother Raúl Castro was president at the time.
Now, the country’s economy is in free fall, its electric grid is failing, millions of its citizens have left and the Cuban government is facing off against perhaps its most menacing foe: President Trump.
Mr. Trump has closed off Cuba’s access to oil shipments, helped cripple its vital tourism industry and declared that Cuba’s government is “going down for the count.”
The Trump administration and the many Cuban exiles who have been waiting nearly seven decades for the fall of Cuba’s Communist government said they believed this might finally be their moment.
After years of U.S. presidents trying various economic pressure tactics to hasten the demise of the Cuban government, the Trump administration’s cutoff of fuel has raised the ante drastically because oil keeps the country — from public transit to factories to farms — running.
Predictions of the demise of Cuba’s government have been made before, notably after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which had been Cuba’s main benefactor, only to be proved wrong.
But this time, experts say, the survival of Cuba’s government appears very much in doubt.
Members of South Florida’s Cuban exile community say Trump administration officials have been assuring them that the Cuban government’s days are numbered.
The U.S. government “has determined that Cuba must be free before the end of 2026,” said Marcell Felipe, a prominent Cuban exile leader in Miami who chairs the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora and said he had met with U.S. diplomats. “This is a plan in motion.”
Besides oil, Mr. Trump’s plans have also largely centered around eliminating Cuba’s access to hard currency from tourism and the country’s medical missions abroad, said a senior State Department official who spoke on the condition that his name not be published in order to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters.
Cuba’s tourism industry never recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic in part because of measures by the Trump administration making it harder for Europeans to travel to the United States after visiting Cuba.
After the U.S. military captured the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Mr. Trump halted Venezuelan oil to Cuba. Venezuela had long kept Cuba afloat with 35,000 barrels of oil a day in exchange for medical services by Cuban doctors.
Mr. Trump also announced tariffs against any country that sends oil to Cuba. Taken together, the measures effectively cut off the only two suppliers of oil to Cuba — Venezuela and Mexico — just as Cuba has been enduring island-wide power outages. Cuba does produce its own oil, but only enough to meet 40 percent of its daily needs, and a lack of international shipments would eventually paralyze the country, analysts said.
Mr. Trump says the United States is in talks with top Cuban leaders, but has not elaborated.
“Cuba is a failing nation,” Mr. Trump told reporters recently. “It has been for a long time, but now it doesn’t have Venezuela to prop it up. So we’re talking to the people from Cuba, the highest people in Cuba, to see what happens.”
The Cuban government declined to comment for this article.
Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos Fernández de Cossio, told the EFE news agency that “messages had been exchanged” with the Trump administration, but denied any dialogue was taking place.
He ruled out any discussions of political or economic change, noting that the United States has no more say in such matters than Cuba would dictating how ICE agents should conduct migrant raids in Minneapolis.
“If people are thinking that there is division within the Cuban government, division within the political forces in Cuba, and a willingness,” he was quoted as saying, “to capitulate to the unjustified and immoral pressure and aggression of the United States, that’s a mistaken interpretation.”
Juan Triana, a professor at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy, at the University of Havana, noted that Cuba did not collapse even in the 1990s during the crisis known as the “Special Period” after the fall of the Soviet Union.
“Everyone looked to Cuba expecting it to fall, and they lost the bet,” he said. “President after president of the United States has lost it.”
Still, a rare news conference that Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, held last week seemed to acknowledge the severity of the country’s problems. He described plans to ration Cuba’s limited supply of domestic oil, and to expand solar and wind-powered energy, but made no mention of securing new oil imports.
The Cuban government has sent mixed messages to the Trump administration, posting sharply worded message on social media, but also issuing a more tempered statement.
Cuba proposed renewing cooperation with the United States on issues like counterterrorism, anti-money laundering, drug trafficking prevention, cybersecurity, human trafficking and financial crimes.
At the same time, Cuba has also targeted Mike Hammer, the head of the U.S. Embassy in Havana, with small groups of government supporters heckling him and calling him a “murderer.” Mr. Hammer’s diplomatic vehicle was surrounded by protesters five times as he left meetings in various Cuban cities, episodes known in Cuba as “acts of repudiation,” the State Department said.
A U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the administration’s interactions with Havana said Cuban officials were nervous because they were starting to realize their revolution was coming to an end.
The senior State Department official who discussed the White House’s strategy said most of the talks with the Cuban government were around technical issues, like repatriation flights, and were not substantive.
The problem is not that the two sides do not talk, but that there is a fundamental disagreement about what should be on the table, the State Department official said.
If Cuban officials were to approach the Trump administration with significant offers, such as allowing more private enterprise and competing political parties, the administration would be willing to engage more actively, the official said.
The Trump administration, the official said, was seeking discussions similar to talks taking place in Venezuela, where the interim government has agreed to take steps toward economic transformation and democracy.
But that approach would be difficult because there is no Cuban official in place like Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, who has been willing to placate the Trump administration, said Ricardo Zúniga, a former Obama administration official who helped lead secret negotiations with Cuba. Cuba’s government has sidelined any government official who appeared to have political aspirations.
Many experts point out another key challenge if Cuba’s government were to fall: It is unclear who would lead the country because the government has imprisoned most opposition leaders or driven them into exile.
Peter Kornbluh, an author of a history of secret negotiations between Cuba and the United States, said he believed talks were already underway.
“It makes sense that the U.S. and Cuba are engaged in back channel talks, even if they are the result of criminal coercion from the Trump White House,” said Mr. Kornbluh, a critic of U.S. hard-line economic policies. “Dialogue, even under duress, is preferable to overt U.S. aggression and offers a potential off ramp for both sides."
The 2013 talks during the Obama administration were so secret that not even the State Department knew about them. The discussions, brokered by the Vatican and held there and in Canada, led to the renewal of diplomatic relations and a brief period of increased travel.
The discussions centered around the notion that opening Cuba to more private business and improving living conditions would lead to regime change, but the Cuban government ultimately stifled economic opportunities. Mr. Trump’s thinking, Mr. Zúniga said, is the opposite: that economic and social collapse will make the government fold, too.
“I think they are trying to create a condition of extraordinary stress, similar to a war, in Cuba to try to shake loose offers out of the Cuban government side,” he said. “But the Cubans have no vision for a plan that cuts them out of power.”
Ada Ferrer, a history professor at Princeton University whose book “Cuba, an American History” won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in history, said it was true that past predictions of the fall of the Cuban government had been wrong. But now there is no benefactor waiting in the wings to save Cuba’s crashing economy like Venezuela did after the fall of the Soviet Union.
“This time,” she said, “feels different.”
Jack Nicas contributed reporting from Mexico City.
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2) How Bad Bunny Gives Voice to Puerto Rico’s ‘Crisis Generation’
Young Puerto Ricans say the star has opened the world’s eyes to their challenges, and to the island’s fraught territorial relationship with the U.S. government.
By Patricia Mazzei and Laura N. Pérez Sánchez, Feb. 8, 2026
Patricia Mazzei reported from Miami, and Laura N. Pérez Sánchez from San Juan, P.R.
Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known as the superstar Bad Bunny, is a proud product of what Puerto Ricans call the “crisis generation”: those who grew up on the island in the 1990s and 2000s and have little memory of its better days.
He was 12 when Puerto Rico’s economy spiraled into an economic recession from which it has never recovered. By 2016, when he was 22 and started recording music, the island’s government was bankrupt. Hurricane Maria hit the next year, devastating the island and killing nearly 3,000 people. Then came political unrest, the coronavirus pandemic and rapid gentrification.
Members of his generation say that Bad Bunny, now 31, has given voice to their experiences and fears, all while opening the world’s eyes to Puerto Rico’s fraught territorial relationship with the U.S. government.
In making music about young Puerto Ricans’ shared challenges, “he has been able to put us on the map,” said Alejandro Bracero, a 23-year-old studying political science and economics at the University of Puerto Rico’s main campus in San Juan.
Bad Bunny sings and raps about the crisis generation’s struggles in many of his lyrics and talks about them in interviews and on social media. Entire industries in Puerto Rico shut down after a federal corporate tax break expired in 2006, which led residents to leave in droves to find jobs in the states. Severe budget cuts during the debt crisis led to school closures, streets pocked with potholes and frequent power blackouts.
The island’s population declined by 11.8 percent from 2010 to 2020, according to the census. Bad Bunny, an outspoken critic of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, dedicated his win at the Grammys for album of the year to “all the people who had to leave their homeland, their country to follow their dreams.”
Mr. Bracero remembers his grandmother, who was born in 1946, telling him stories about how Puerto Rico boomed in the decades after World War II thanks to a corporate tax break intended to foster industry. “There was a sense of prosperity,” he said, much different from the Puerto Rico he grew up in.
Mayra Vélez Serrano, the chairwoman of the University of Puerto Rico’s political science department, coined the term “crisis generation” in 2016. Since then, it has only become more apt, she said, describing a group of Puerto Ricans who are better educated than their predecessors, yet plagued by stagnant salaries and an unaffordable cost of living.
On average, a teacher in Puerto Rico might make $32,000 a year, Dr. Vélez Serrano said, compared with about $50,000 in Orlando, Fla., where many Puerto Ricans fleeing the island settle. But the average house in Puerto Rico costs about $300,000, compared with about $367,000 in Orlando.
“This huge gap between what we’re earning as professionals and the cost of living has led to the massive outflow of professionals of this generation,” she said, adding that most “are between 20-something and 40,” an age group that includes Bad Bunny.
In Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” the album that won at the Grammys last Sunday, the title track talks about wishing you had taken more photos of people before they left. Another song mentions not wanting to be forced to move. A third is defiant about not wanting to experience “what happened to Hawaii,” with lyrics about losing property to wealthy outsiders and the potential pitfalls if Puerto Rico were to become a state.
“There are people from the United States now living in Caguas,” Abdiel Vargas Sánchez, 24, said with astonishment about his hometown. Caguas, a city of about 120,000 in a mountain valley south of San Juan, was once hardly a destination. But an influx of mainlanders that accelerated during the pandemic, some of them most likely drawn by tax breaks for wealthy investors, has priced out local residents and driven up housing prices across the island.
“Bad Bunny could be the start of something beautiful” for Puerto Rico, Mr. Vargas Sánchez said. Yet he also worried that the artist’s commercial success would ultimately be “only that.”
There have already been signs that the crisis generation is changing Puerto Rican politics.
In 2019, young people, including Bad Bunny and other artists, were instrumental in organizing street protests that forced the resignation of Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló after offensive chat messages between him and his aides, some of which mocked victims of Hurricane Maria, were leaked. Bad Bunny ended a tour early to join the protests, and he and two other artists recorded a song that became a street anthem.
Camila Herrera Biaggi, 24, was still a teenager at the time of the demonstrations but thinks of it as the start of her political awakening. “That was my first protest,” she said, recalling how Bad Bunny and others inspired her to participate. “I told myself that I needed to go.”
New political parties gained traction in the years that followed, as younger voters questioned whether establishment parties wanted to solve the island’s problems. In 2024, Bad Bunny paid for prominent billboards criticizing one of the old parties, the New Progressive Party, and called it corrupt. The party has been in power since 2017 and supports Puerto Rican statehood. He has supported candidates that favor Puerto Rican independence and included many pro-independence symbols in his music videos and lyrics.
Puerto Rico has been a territory of the United States since 1898, after U.S. forces invaded it during the Spanish-American War. In 1917, Congress extended American citizenship to Puerto Ricans, but residents of Puerto Rico cannot vote in presidential elections, have only symbolic representation in Congress and do not have equal access to federal benefits.
Above all, young Puerto Ricans appear intent on re-examining Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States, in light of two defining events of the past decade.
In 2016, Congress passed a law empowering a board appointed by the president to oversee the island’s finances, taking away much of its financial independence and stirring accusations that it was treating Puerto Rico like a colony. The bungled response to Hurricane Maria further eroded Puerto Ricans’ trust in the federal government.
Bad Bunny worked with Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a Puerto Rican historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on text-based videos for his album last year, explaining crucial periods in Puerto Rican history. Some were displayed on big screens during Bad Bunny’s concert residency in Puerto Rico over the summer.
Dr. Meléndez-Badillo called the artist’s Super Bowl performance an opportunity for Puerto Ricans — and everyone else — to have more conversations about the island’s current state and its future.
“I’m seeing this as a pedagogical thing that Benito is doing,” he said. “He’s not simply repping the Puerto Rican flag. He’s also inviting people to grapple with the beauty and messiness of Puerto Rican-ness. A lot of people in the United States don’t really know Puerto Rico’s relationship to the United States.”
Nathalia Méndez Rodríguez, a 23-year-old graduate student in public administration and law at the University of Puerto Rico, said she wanted Bad Bunny to keep explaining to the world what she and her peers want most: “to preserve our homeland and our culture and our country and our community.”
“Bad Bunny,” she said, “represents the anxieties of the Puerto Rican people.”
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3) Mexico's Sheinbaum aims to send humanitarian aid to Cuba by Monday
By Reuters, February 6, 2026
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum speaks during her daily morning press conference, at the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, February 4, 2026.
MEXICO CITY, Feb 6 - Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Friday that her government is aiming to send humanitarian aid, including food and other basic supplies, to Cuba by Monday.
"We are planning to send this aid either this weekend or on Monday at the latest," Sheinbaum said at her morning daily press conference.
Sheinbaum also said that her administration is working "on all diplomatic efforts to be able to resume oil shipments to Cuba," as Mexico halted shipments of crude and refined products to the island in mid-January under pressure from the Trump administration.
Washington subsequently threatened tariffs on countries that supply oil to the communist-ruled island, saying that Cuba poses an "extraordinary threat" to U.S. national security - a claim Havana denies. "Obviously, we do not want sanctions against Mexico, but we are in the process of dialogue and, for now, humanitarian aid will be sent," Sheinbaum said.
Sources told Reuters this week that Mexican officials are seeking ways to send fuel to Cuba to help meet basic needs without the retaliation of tariffs from Washington. It remains uncertain whether Mexico will find a solution.
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4) Keir Starmer’s Allies Rally Around Him Amid Pressure to Resign
The leader of the Scottish Labour Party called on Mr. Starmer to quit as Britain’s prime minister amid turmoil over an ambassador with close ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Potential successors to Mr. Starmer quickly backed him.
By Stephen Castle, Feb. 9, 2026
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain. Credit...Toby Melville/Reuters
The leader of the Scottish Labour party, Anas Sarwar, urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to stand down on Monday, intensifying pressure on the British leader over his role in making Peter Mandelson the ambassador to the United States despite his close ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
“I have to be honest about failing wherever I see it,” Mr. Sarwar said at a news conference in Glasgow. “There have been too many mistakes.”
While not a member of the cabinet, Mr. Sarwar is the most senior figure in Mr. Starmer’s Labour movement so far to call on him to quit, deepening a crisis within the government that threatens the prime minister’s grip on power.
Mr. Starmer had fired Mr. Mandelson from his diplomatic post in the United States in September, citing new information about his contacts with Mr. Epstein. But thousands of pages of additional emails released as part of the latest tranche of Epstein files on Jan. 30 revealed a much closer friendship than Mr. Mandelson had acknowledged. The messages suggested that Mr. Mandelson, while in a senior government role in 2009, passed on confidential and market sensitive information to Mr. Epstein on several occasions.
Mr. Sarwar is a well-known figure within the party and, before the last general election in 2024, appeared on course to lead Labour to victory in elections to the Scottish Parliament in May. But the government’s loss of popularity nationally under Mr. Starmer’s leadership has damaged the Labour Party in Scotland, which now trails in the opinion polls well behind the Scottish National Party.
In response to Mr. Sarwar’s call, a succession of cabinet ministers posted social media messages voicing their loyalty to Mr. Starmer, in an attempt to stabilize his position. John Healey, Britain’s defense secretary, said that Mr. Starmer had “my fullest support in leading this government and this country,” while Rachel Reeves, Britain’s top finance official, said that “we are turning the country around” with Mr. Starmer.
Mr. Sarwar called Mr. Starmer “a decent man,” but said that the turmoil in Downing Street had become a “huge distraction.” He said he was not part of a plan to oust the prime minister and that there had been “no coordination” with others.
“It’s for those in No 10, those around the cabinet table and those in the U.K. Labour Party to decide what comes next,” Mr. Sarwar said.
Here’s what else to know:
· Starmer aides resign: Tim Allan, Mr. Starmer’s director of communications, resigned on Monday, adding to a sense of crisis for the government. Mr. Allan, a longtime friend of Mr. Mandelson’s who worked with him when Tony Blair was prime minister in the 1990s, quit less than 24 hours after Morgan McSweeney stepped down as Mr. Starmer’s chief of staff.
· Financial markets reaction: Reflecting the political uncertainty, the yield on Britain’s 10-year government bonds rose 0.07 percentage points, to 4.58 percent on Monday. Investors tend to sell Britain’s government bonds, pushing up borrowing costs, when there are signs of political risk. Some investors have concerns that a new Labour leader from the left of the party could loosen the government’s fiscal policy and make it harder to bring down the country’s heavy debt burden.
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5) Bad Bunny’s Halftime History Lesson
The superstar showcased Puerto Rican pride during a 13-minute set that turned a global opportunity into an intimate, personal performance.
By Jon Caramanica, Feb. 9, 2026
Bad Bunny made history on Sunday, with a Super Bowl halftime show performed almost entirely in Spanish. Loren Elliott for The New York Times
There is perhaps no stage more visible than the Super Bowl halftime show, viewed each year by upward of 100 million people. And there are few, if any, performers in pop more popular and embraced than Bad Bunny, the 31-year-old Puerto Rican superstar who has been one of music’s dominant global innovators for a decade.
It would seem like an ideal match — an epic platform for an epic performer, an alignment of grand-scale ambition and execution.
And yet Bad Bunny did something quite novel with his Super Bowl LX performance in Santa Clara, Calif., on Sunday night, turning it into an extended presentation on how to make a global opportunity intimate, personal and historically specific. Like his sixth solo album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” which a week ago made history as the first Spanish-language album to win the Grammys’ top honor, and his 31-show residency in San Juan, Puerto Rico, last summer, he assiduously brought people to him, on his terms.
Here, it started in the sugar cane fields — once Puerto Rico’s cash crop, and a source of rampant labor exploitation. Bad Bunny began his show with the frisky “Tití Me Preguntó” from 2022, walking amid laborers in pavas chopping at stalks and tall plants forming something of a labyrinth. He strode past vendors of coco frio, tacos and piraguas; a pair of boxers sparring; a table of older gentlemen playing dominoes; women at a nail salon.
Loren Elliott for The New York Times
There is perhaps no stage more visible than the Super Bowl halftime show, viewed each year by upward of 100 million people. And there are few, if any, performers in pop more popular and embraced than Bad Bunny, the 31-year-old Puerto Rican superstar who has been one of music’s dominant global innovators for a decade.
It would seem like an ideal match — an epic platform for an epic performer, an alignment of grand-scale ambition and execution.
And yet Bad Bunny did something quite novel with his Super Bowl LX performance in Santa Clara, Calif., on Sunday night, turning it into an extended presentation on how to make a global opportunity intimate, personal and historically specific. Like his sixth solo album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” which a week ago made history as the first Spanish-language album to win the Grammys’ top honor, and his 31-show residency in San Juan, Puerto Rico, last summer, he assiduously brought people to him, on his terms.
Here, it started in the sugar cane fields — once Puerto Rico’s cash crop, and a source of rampant labor exploitation. Bad Bunny began his show with the frisky “Tití Me Preguntó” from 2022, walking amid laborers in pavas chopping at stalks and tall plants forming something of a labyrinth. He strode past vendors of coco frio, tacos and piraguas; a pair of boxers sparring; a table of older gentlemen playing dominoes; women at a nail salon.
This was Bad Bunny’s private Puerto Rico, a place of cultural joy and political complication. The first two minutes of his 13-minute show took place largely within that maze, an almost-protected space that projected safety and ease, just before he emerged on the roof of La Casita, the replica of a traditional Puerto Rican home that served as the centerpiece of his set here (and also his residency performances), and began serenading the world.
Almost every minute that followed — performed almost entirely in Spanish, a Super Bowl first — featured a combination of musical astuteness, familial exuberance and sociopolitical statement. This combination was most vivid leading up to and during “El Apagón” (“The Blackout”), a 2022 song that has become something of a resistance anthem in part because its video includes a minidocumentary about inequities in Puerto Rico. The Super Bowl rendition began with workers falling from utility poles in a flash of sparks, a nod to the blackouts that crippled the U.S. territory for several months following Hurricane Maria in 2017.
Just before that, the Puerto Rican pop star Ricky Martin sang — huskily, perhaps pushing beyond his vocal limits — part of “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii,” a 2025 song warning about modern-day colonialism. Martin was a star of an earlier Latin pop wave, and Bad Bunny’s inclusion of him was a sharp nod to how Puerto Rico has long been interwoven into American music.
Bad Bunny underscored that further by playing quick snippets of early to mid-2000s breakthrough reggaeton songs from Don Omar, Tego Calderón, Héctor El Father and Daddy Yankee, whose 2004 hit “Gasolina” was a foundational track of the genre’s global explosion. (Sadly, none of those stars were present.) He also showcased Toñita, the matriarch of a long-running Puerto Rican social club in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which Bad Bunny appeared at last year and shouted out on his “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” track “NuevaYol.”
“Debí Tirar Más Fotos” is a narratively and sonically ambitious album about restoring one’s connection to home, and to heritage. Part of understanding history is honoring it, and part of understanding history is knowing when to call attention to its tragedies. Which is why early in his set, Bad Bunny performed an ecstatic “Yo Perreo Sola,” an anti-misogyny statement from 2020 that’s one of his most popular songs, and also one of his most provocative, taking the reggaeton community to task for its dismal treatment of women.
His delivery of it here, on the roof of La Casita, was emphatic, and also the soundtrack to a party. At his residency, La Casita was a place for the well-known to watch the show while also being a part of it. Members of the porch crowd on Sunday included Cardi B, who has collaborated with Bad Bunny, and is partly of Dominican heritage; the Colombian superstar Karol G, another collaborator; the Hollywood star Pedro Pascal, who was born in Chile; the Mexican American actress Jessica Alba; the Venezuelan baseball star Ronald Acuña Jr.; and the rising Puerto Rican star Young Miko, something of a Bad Bunny protégé. It was a quietly pointed array of cultural forces across media, a statement of Latin American unity and independence. (The influencer Alix Earle and the nightlife impresario David Grutman were there, too.)
The night’s only hiccup was Lady Gaga’s fine but arbitrary performance of “Die With a Smile,” a song with no true connection, thematic or musical, to Bad Bunny’s catalog, and the only one performed in English. It was something of a mystery, notwithstanding the added salsa rhythm section provided by the Puerto Rican outfit Los Sobrinos. (For what it’s worth, Cardi B was literally right there — a version of “I Like It,” their genre-crossing pop smash with J Balvin, would have been welcome.) The blue of Gaga’s dress was perhaps a nod to the Puerto Rican independence flag, which, later in the show, Bad Bunny hoisted over his shoulder while he delivered “El Apagón.”
There are many modes of political positioning: outright sloganeering, encoded messages, visual cues. Freedom and joy themselves can be acts of resistance. All of those were present during this performance, though there was no moment as direct as Bad Bunny’s “ICE out” call at the Grammys a week ago. Instead, he led dozens of dancers in ornate choreography, pointedly including same-sex pairings.
There was a narrative through line which went from a proposal to a wedding (an actual one) to the appearance of a child watching Bad Bunny’s Grammy acceptance speech, though that thread was slightly muddy. Online, people speculated the young boy was Liam Conejo Ramos, the child at the center of a recent contentious federal immigration action in Minnesota. He was, in fact, an actor, but the confusion underscored the urge to apply an unwieldy political literalism to Bad Bunny’s performance.
For some, the mere fact of Bad Bunny’s selection for the halftime show could only be read as a political statement. It even inspired a counterprogramming event: the “All-American Halftime Show,” presented by the right-wing organization Turning Point USA and headlined by the rabble-rouser Kid Rock, along with the country stars Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett. That lineup purported to place a tent over musical styles deemed sufficiently American, an act of exclusion masquerading as an embrace of unity.
But Bad Bunny’s tent was, and always has been, far bigger, far more musically generous and far more imaginative. Near the end of his performance, he shouted “God bless America,” then ran through a list of the countries that make up South, Central and North America, from Chile all the way up to Canada. He held out a football that read “Together, We Are America,” and then spiked it before his final song, “DtMF.” Dozens of people surrounded him, waving flags of the countries he’d just named, virtually swaddling him as they ushered him off the field and back to protected, private space.
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6) Death, Undocumented
By Giuliano Beniamino Fleri, Feb. 9, 2026
Dr. Fleri is a historian of migration. He wrote from Lampedusa, Italy.
Vincenzo Livieri/Reuters
Many residents of Lampedusa, a small, rocky island in the center of the Mediterranean, have told me that they’re used to getting phone calls from people across the sea. Mothers, fathers, siblings and friends call searching for someone who left to try to reach Europe but has not been heard from since. Was a son among the rescued? Did a daughter’s name appear on a list? Does any trace remain? The answer is often no.
A decade or so after the peak of Europe’s migrant crisis, one of the busiest and deadliest entry points to the continent has devolved from crisis to something more chronic.
European migration policy hardened in the ensuing years. Some arrivals are now automatically excluded from refugee status. There are plans to return those whose applications fail more quickly, and the European Union has paid other countries to prevent boats carrying migrants departing in the first place. The policy is as advantageous to Europe as it is exploitative. It permits migration at great personal risk, strips migrants of rights upon entry and turns them into instruments for reproducing a racialized and exploitative economic order.
The phone calls reveal a final cruelty: The border doesn’t only take lives; it also erases them. Sometimes even death is undocumented.
Lampedusa, situated between the North African coasts of Libya and Tunisia and Italy, has been a node along irregular migration routes to the European Union since the 1990s. In the early 2010s, as crossings intensified, international and Italian media avidly followed the passage of boats, people and bodies, as well as the pressure that the growing number of arrivals was placing on the island.
Then on Oct. 3, 2013, more than 300 people died when a packed boat caught fire and sank just off the island’s coast. Photographs of rows of coffins inside the hangar of Lampedusa’s airport circulated globally, consolidating the island’s status as a symbol of the cruelty of the Mediterranean border.
The island no longer commands the attention it once did. This summer, I watched scenes of arrival at the Favarolo Pier on Lampedusa unfold quietly. Coast Guard ships glided into port carrying people who had been rescued at sea. They disembarked, were counted and transferred to the island’s reception center. Most seemed in good health, or visibly exhausted but alive. A few were brought ashore in body bags. Just a few hundred yards away, tourists moved along the waterfront, seemingly unaware. I saw no journalists or photographers.
Within days, most of those migrants would be transferred to Sicily or the Italian mainland, and subsequently dispersed across Italy’s centers for asylum seekers and migrants. Many of the dead would be subject to the same logistical sequence: their remains transported onward and ultimately interred in cemeteries in Sicily, often in unmarked graves. The system for arrivals on Lampedusa — run jointly by Italian and European authorities and the Italian Red Cross — has become a well-oiled machine.
In December, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said in a speech that Europe is “managing migration responsibly.” “The figures speak for themselves,” she said.
What do those figures say? That arrivals via land and sea to Europe, while down from a high of more than a million in 2015, have averaged around 180,000 each year, with around 3,000 deaths each year, according to estimates. The central Mediterranean is still one of the primary routes people use to try to reach Europe, and it’s one of the deadliest. More than 1,300 people were recorded as dead or missing on that route alone in 2025 — likely a significant underestimate because many shipwrecks are undetected or unreported.
In other words, dangerous and often deadly illegal sea crossings on small, packed, rickety boats have become established routes to Europe. Carrying people from far-flung places and very different contexts, Bangladesh and Pakistan, Eritrea and Guinea, those boats are now a mechanism of movement that has become an integral, structural part of migration to Europe.
Many of these (mostly) young, working-age people continue to reach Europe without clear legal status and in deeper need than when they left home. They join a class of undocumented workers who pick tomatoes, harvest oranges, clean hotel rooms and care for the older people across states that reject them politically while depending on them materially.
In January, a storm battered Tunisia, Malta and the southern coastline of Italy. There were reports of multiple shipwrecks. Three people were confirmed to have died en route to Lampedusa, including twin 1-year-old girls. Hundreds of others were feared dead. Like so many others, they will probably never be found.
Lampedusa is the critical but deadly entry point to a continent that fears immigration but cannot live without it. It should be where the paradox of European migrant policy is most visible, but it’s disappearing from view.
Giuliano Beniamino Fleri is a historian of migration.
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7) San Francisco Teachers Walk Out for the First Time Since 1979
The strike closed public schools for more than 50,000 students in the city and had no end date. Health care costs are a key issue in negotiations.
By Soumya Karlamangla, Laurel Rosenhall and Shawn Hubler, Soumya Karlamangla reported from San Francisco, Feb. 9, 2026
“David Goldberg, the California Teachers Association president, said that teachers have watched their colleagues win sizable pay increases by going on strike. Teachers in Richmond, Calif., across the bay from San Francisco, negotiated an 8 percent raise over two years after a nearly weeklong strike in December. ‘Folks, frankly, are learning from each other,’ Mr. Goldberg said in an interview. ‘It’s something we’ve never done, and it’s a very exciting model for how to really build power in a huge state like ours.’”
San Francisco teachers went on strike Monday for the first time since 1979. The walkout has no end date. Credit...Stephen Lam/Reuters
San Francisco teachers went on strike on Monday for the first time in nearly half a century, closing public schools for roughly 50,000 students in the city.
The teachers walked out after their union, United Educators of San Francisco, could not reach an agreement on raises and health care costs despite nearly a year of negotiations with the San Francisco Unified School District. The union represents about 6,000 educators, counselors and nurses who work in more than 100 schools in the city.
The strike has no set end date. The last teachers strike in San Francisco, in 1979, lasted for nearly seven weeks, making it one of the longest in state history.
San Francisco’s closure could be a harbinger in California, as teachers unions have made a concerted effort to pressure districts for more compensation in recent months. Besides the walkout in San Francisco, teachers in Los Angeles, San Diego and two Sacramento-area school districts have authorized strikes as part of their ongoing contract negotiations.
In San Francisco, the local labor union said that rising health care premiums had driven many employees to leave the school district, California’s sixth largest, resulting in vacancies that hurt student instruction.
The union pushed forward with the strike despite a plea from Mayor Daniel Lurie on Sunday to postpone it.
“The affordability crisis for those of us devoted to San Francisco’s next generation is real,” Cassondra Curiel, the president of United Educators of San Francisco, said in a statement. “Enough is enough.”
San Francisco parents said they empathized with teachers struggling to make ends meet in one of the nation’s most expensive cities. But they were frustrated that the two sides couldn’t reach a deal — and that their children would pay the price.
Some said the strike brought back memories of closures during the pandemic. San Francisco Unified had one of the nation’s longest Covid shutdowns, and students did not have full in-person instruction for more than an entire school year.
Autumn Brown Garibay, 40, said that campuses were closed when her daughter, currently in fifth grade, was a kindergartner in 2020.
“She literally looked at me and said, ‘This again?’” said Ms. Brown Garibay, who works in marketing technology and lives in the city’s Mission District. “How long will it last? Just like with Covid, I don’t know, nobody knows.”
The California Teachers Association, the statewide teachers union, launched a campaign last year called “We Can’t Wait” to encourage and support local unions taking more forceful actions in labor negotiations.
David Goldberg, the California Teachers Association president, said that teachers have watched their colleagues win sizable pay increases by going on strike. Teachers in Richmond, Calif., across the bay from San Francisco, negotiated an 8 percent raise over two years after a nearly weeklong strike in December.
“Folks, frankly, are learning from each other,” Mr. Goldberg said in an interview. “It’s something we’ve never done, and it’s a very exciting model for how to really build power in a huge state like ours.”
In San Francisco, health care costs for teachers have been the biggest sticking point. While the district completely pays for individual coverage, a teacher with family health care coverage pays about $1,200 a month. That could soon increase to $1,500 a month, according to the union.
Employers in various sectors have charged more for dependent coverage to offset health care inflation.
“Some of us only ever see half of our paychecks after health care premiums are taken out. This is not acceptable or sustainable,” Teanna Tillery, a member of the union’s bargaining team, said at a press briefing last week announcing the strike.
The union has asked the district to cover all medical premiums for its members and their dependents, as well as provide a 9 percent raise over two years. The district’s most recent offer included a 6 percent raise over two years, as well paying a large portion of family health care costs for three years, using funds from a local tax. After three years, the district could either stop paying the additional coverage or secure funding to extend it.
“This is a win-win proposal,” said Maria Su, district superintendent, at a news conference on Friday.
Ms. Su said that the strike left her with no choice but to close schools. The union that represents 253 district administrators, including principals, launched a sympathy strike as well.
“I know this situation is distressing for families and students,” she said.
Even though California is providing a record amount of funding per student — and its school funding has been above the national average for the last several years — some school districts are still struggling to balance their budgets. Student enrollment continues to decline in California, and districts receive less money overall when they educate fewer students.
Many districts have not been able to close schools because of community and labor opposition, and they have not cut staff in parallel with their loss of students.
At the same time, districts are seeing higher rates of absenteeism than before the pandemic, which further hurts their funding because they receive money based on how many days students attend, said Tony Thurmond, the state superintendent of public instruction.
Mr. Thurmond, an ally of teachers unions, has proposed legislation to change how California funds its schools — to base the formula on the number of students enrolled in a district, rather than the average daily attendance — but, at an estimated cost of more than $3 billion, it has stalled in the legislature.
“Even though California’s legislature and governor have provided a lot of funding to our schools, it’s just proving to not be enough,” said Mr. Thurmond, who is running for governor.
In Southern California, the teachers union in the Los Angeles Unified School District, California’s largest, declared an impasse in contract talks in December, and last month authorized a strike if an agreement could not be reached through mediation.
The union, United Teachers Los Angeles, is seeking to increase starting teacher salaries to $80,000 and asking for smaller classroom sizes in some grades. District officials say that Los Angeles Unified cannot afford the union’s proposal.
Julie Van Winkle, a vice president at United Teachers Los Angeles, said that the coordination was inspired by the 2018 “Red for Ed” movement, in which thousands of teachers in politically conservative states walked off the job to demand higher pay and more school funding.
“The specifics of what San Francisco is fighting for and what we in Los Angeles are fighting for are not completely the same, but there’s a big overlap in that Venn diagram,” Ms. Van Winkle said.
U.T.L.A. teachers went on a sympathy strike in March 2023 when support staff walked out, shutting down schools for three days. The last teachers-only strike in the district was in 2019, when teachers walked out for six days. Before that, the last strike by Los Angeles Unified teachers was in 1989.
In San Francisco, Ryan Alias, a high school English teacher, pays $1,500 per month for health care coverage for his wife and two daughters. That’s a large portion of his annual salary that could otherwise help them buy a house and pay off their student loans, he said, and not have to consider moving to somewhere cheaper.
“This is a life-changing amount of money,” said Mr. Alias, who has been teaching for 12 years. “For my family and many of us, this is a stability issue for this district. We need to know we’re comfortable putting down roots in this district and growing our skills here and continuing to be part of the community.”
Meredith Dodson, executive director of the San Francisco Parents Coalition, said that she believes teachers deserve higher pay and benefits.
But she also worried about lower-income parents who couldn’t afford child care or to take days off work to watch their kids during the strike. Her group, a nonprofit that was formed in 2020, surveyed 700 parents last week and found that nearly a quarter would have to miss work if a strike took place. Many parents were very concerned about disruptions for their children, including learning loss, she said.
Ms. Dodson, who has a second-grader and a fourth-grader, said she was particularly frustrated by what felt like a statewide push for strikes.
“We don’t want to see our district and our students pulled into something that is broader than our local situation,” she said. “Our local situation could be very different from what’s happening in Santa Cruz or L.A. or Monterey or Fresno.”
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8) When Trump Officials’ Claims About Shootings Unravel in Court
Before the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, allegations against four others shot at by federal immigration agents failed to withstand scrutiny.
By Alexandra Berzon and Allison McCann, Feb. 10, 2026
The reporters reviewed court records, police reports and videos and interviewed people who were shot at by federal immigration agents over the last year.
Phillip Brown was charged with a felony after ICE agents shot at his car in Washington last year. Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times
The reporters reviewed court records, police reports and videos and interviewed people who were shot at by federal immigration agents over the last year.
The Trump administration was quick to pin the blame.
Days after a federal immigration agent shot at Phillip Brown, a U.S. citizen, last October at a busy commercial intersection in Washington, D.C., a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security claimed Mr. Brown had made a “deliberate attempt” to run officers down with his car. Mr. Brown, 33, was arrested, charged with a felony — fleeing from law enforcement — and spent three days in jail.
In court, however, the case against Mr. Brown quickly unraveled as a judge found that the government failed to present any evidence supporting its claims. The judge dismissed the charges and said the agent had fired his weapon “for reasons that are completely unclear to me.”
Mr. Brown’s case is among the 16 shootings by on-duty federal immigration agents patrolling in U.S. cities and towns over the past year, including those that took the lives of Minnesota protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
The Trump administration’s rush to declare Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti at fault for instigating violence was quickly undercut by a barrage of viral videos. But a New York Times review of the other shootings found that similar claims by officials fell apart more quietly when the cases went to court.
In four of the shootings where prosecutors brought assault or other charges, including against Mr. Brown, the cases fizzled after evidence emerged that contradicted the administration’s initial description of events. The charges were either dismissed or prosecutors dropped the case.
Charges against six other people who were shot at by immigration agents are pending. Five of the defendants have denied aspects of the D.H.S. accusations or presented differing accounts in court. Two cases are going to trial in April.
Tricia McLaughlin, a D.H.S. spokeswoman, stood by past statements in which she and the agency blamed people shot by officers, including labeling some of them “domestic terrorists.”
“We work every day to give the American people swift, accurate information on evolving, challenging law enforcement operations as federal law enforcement officers are facing a highly coordinated campaign of violence against them,” Ms. McLaughlin said.
She also defended the charges that have been brought by the government after violent encounters.
“Assaulting and obstructing law enforcement are felonies and federal crimes,” she said, adding that anyone “who assaults or obstructs law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Ms. McLaughlin referred questions about the four cases where charges were brought and later dropped or dismissed to the Justice Department, which declined to comment.
While the administration has been quick to investigate those who were shot or fired upon, there are only two cases in which civil rights or criminal investigations into the officers’ conduct have been announced.
The two officers who shot Mr. Pretti were placed on leave. D.H.S. declined to say whether officers involved in any of the other shootings have been disciplined or suspended from their duties.
It is not unheard-of for prosecutors to bring assault charges against people shot by federal law enforcement, especially after incidents that involve people brandishing weapons or directly striking officers. But lawyers who investigate police misconduct said that consistently filing charges against people who are shot by officers can be a sign of abusive practices.
“It’s a way to discredit individuals and tip the scales so that the use of force seems more reasonable from the outset,” said Christy Lopez, a Georgetown University law professor who led such investigations at the Justice Department during the Obama administration.
“When you look at cases and it doesn’t seem like the charges are valid or that many are quickly dismissed, it’s definitely a red flag that they are misusing criminal charges,” she added.
These are the four cases that fell apart in court:
Francisco Longoria
Around 8:45 a.m. on Aug. 16, Francisco Longoria was driving a pickup truck in San Bernardino, Calif., after making a delivery for his party supply rental business when he was directed to pull over by officers in unmarked cars.
He refused demands to roll down his window. Within about 30 seconds of the officers approaching his car, they began smashing both front windows, according to videos of the incident.
As Mr. Longoria peeled away, an officer shot at the truck. A surveillance camera at a nearby business captured the encounter; Mr. Longoria’s son and his daughter’s fiancé, who were in the pickup with him, also filmed it on their cellphones.
Within a day, D.H.S. had issued a statement saying that Border Patrol officers had been injured during “a targeted enforcement operation” when Mr. Longoria “attempted to run them down with his car.” Calling him a “suspect,” the statement said he “drove directly at the officers” and then fled.
Nearly two weeks later, a team of agents went to Mr. Longoria’s house around 4 a.m. to arrest him. The agents broke the locks on the doors and aimed assault rifles at the people inside, family members later recounted. Officers detained Mr. Longoria and charged him with assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon, a crime that can carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
But when prosecutors took the case to court, they were unable to support the D.H.S. description of events.
Mr. Longoria, who is originally from Mexico and had been living in the United States for more than two decades without legal status, was not said to be the subject of a specific immigration enforcement action targeting him. Instead, court records show, federal immigration agents were conducting what Cory Burleson, a Justice Department lawyer, called a “compliance check.”
Mr. Burleson also said that he knew of no evidence showing that officers had been hurt during their interaction with Mr. Longoria. “I’m not aware of any injuries,” Mr. Burleson said at the hearing.
After viewing the video filmed from inside the truck, U.S. Magistrate Judge Joel Richlin said he could understand how, from Mr. Longoria’s perspective, “it’s quite scary.” Judge Richlin also questioned why Mr. Longoria was being pulled over. “I don’t see an allegation that there was a lawful basis to stop the vehicle,” he said.
On Sept. 17, a month after Mr. Longoria was pulled over, the government withdrew its case. Mr. Longoria remained in an immigration detention center until December, when a judge ordered him released on bond.
Marimar Martinez
The government also backed away from its case against Marimar Martinez, 31, a U.S. citizen who was shot by federal agents during an Oct. 4 encounter in Chicago and accused by the Trump administration of trying to attack the officers.
Federal immigration agents had been patrolling in Chicago for over a month as part of Operation Midway Blitz when Ms. Martinez saw a silver Chevrolet S.U.V. that she assumed belonged to immigration agents. She began following the S.U.V., honking her horn and shouting, according to footage she live-streamed on Facebook at the time. After several minutes, other motorists started following the S.U.V., too.
Ms. Martinez’s car collided with the S.U.V. Moments later, a Border Patrol agent stopped his vehicle, climbed out and fired five shots. She was struck by multiple bullets.
Later that day, in a statement posted on the D.H.S. website, Ms. McLaughlin said Ms. Martinez and another motorist had “rammed federal agents with their vehicles.” She also called them “domestic terrorists” and said that Ms. Martinez had a gun in her car. Both were charged with assaulting a federal officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
In court, the facts were not so clear.
The agent who shot Ms. Martinez, Charles Exum, described the collision differently than Ms. McLaughlin had: “So this was side to side,” he testified. “So I would describe it more of, I guess you’d say hit and not rammed.”
Text messages that emerged in court proceedings appeared to show Mr. Exum bragging about shooting Ms. Martinez. “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys,” Mr. Exum wrote in a group message with other agents.
Mr. Exum drove the S.U.V. to his home in Maine, which Ms. Martinez’s legal team said raised concerns about the preservation of evidence. When reached by phone for comment, Mr. Exum hung up.
Ms. Martinez had a permit for the handgun. The government’s lawyers said in court that the firearm was not visible to the agents, and that Ms. Martinez did not brandish the weapon during the encounter.
In November, federal prosecutors moved to dismiss the indictment against Ms. Martinez and the other motorist. Government lawyers told a judge in January that there was an open criminal investigation into Mr. Exum.
Despite the dismissed charges, D.H.S. has continued to call Ms. Martinez a “domestic terrorist.” At a congressional hearing last Tuesday, Ms. Martinez said she wanted to hear the administration apologize. “Just a ‘Sorry, you’re not a domestic terrorist. We were wrong,’” she said. “A simple sorry. That’s all I want.”
Phillip Brown
On the night he was shot at, Mr. Brown, a father of three, was on his way to his cousin’s house in Northwest Washington to catch some of the night’s N.B.A. games. He did not realize that he had driven into a joint operation between the local police and federal agents aimed at fighting crime in the capital.
Two D.C. police officers and two federal agents had decided to pull him over for a missing front license plate and “heavily” tinted windows, according to the arrest report.
In court, a D.C. police officer later testified that he had heard Mr. Brown’s engine rev and then come to a stop after colliding with a motorist in front of him, followed by the sound of gunshots. No officers were positioned in front of Mr. Brown’s car, he testified, and he made no mention of Mr. Brown driving at any of them.
The shots had been fired by an agent from Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of ICE. The agent had jumped out of the moving police car and fired at least three times at Mr. Brown. Two bullets struck the front passenger seat. One grazed the top collar of his jacket.
“When it finally got quiet and I realized it was cops shooting at me, I asked them, ‘What is all of this for?’” Mr. Brown said in an interview. “They were looking around and saying, “‘We’re trying to figure that out.’ And I’m like, ‘How do you not know why you just shot at me?’”
Although Mr. Brown was uninjured, he said he was still traumatized and angry about what happened.
“If I would’ve died, how many angles would they have tried to spin on me, to say I was the bad guy?” he said. “How are they able to draw weapons on U.S. citizens and not have no type of repercussions?”
A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington said in an email that “there could be no prosecution” of the officer who fired at Mr. Brown “because no one was struck.”
Carlitos Ricardo Parias
The statement from Ms. McLaughlin made it sound as if the government’s case against Carlitos Ricardo Parias would be open-and-shut.
Mr. Parias, 44, had entered the country from Mexico more than 20 years ago without authorization. He built a following as a social media content creator under the name Richard LA and had posted about the presence of immigration agents in Los Angeles. In June, he was briefly handcuffed by ICE agents and then let go, video of the encounter shows.
A few months later, on Oct. 21, ICE agents again tried to arrest him while he was driving in Los Angeles. The agents smashed his car windows, and one agent shot him. He was taken to the hospital, where he had surgery and was detained.
In a statement later that day, Ms. McLaughlin said Mr. Parias had “weaponized his vehicle and began ramming the law enforcement vehicle in an attempt to flee.” The officer had fired “defensive shots” because he “feared for the safety of the public and law enforcement,” she said. Mr. Parias was charged with assaulting a federal officer.
Then the case went to court, and the evidence revealed a different story.
An officer’s body-worn camera footage showed that Mr. Parias’s car had been boxed in by vehicles driven by the federal officers. As he tried to maneuver his car away, several officers approached on foot and smashed the car’s front windows. An ICE officer aimed a gun through the passenger-side window at Mr. Parias, who held up his hands. The officer tried to open the passenger-side door, the video shows, and shifted the gun to his left hand, where it immediately went off, hitting Mr. Parias in the arm. The officer reacted with an expletive.
The F.B.I. conducted a use-of-force review, a government lawyer disclosed in court in December, but the outcome was unclear.
As the case against him proceeded, Mr. Parias was moved to a detention center in Adelanto, Calif., a couple of hours away. His lawyers have said he remained in severe pain from the gunshot wound and did not have access to medication except ibuprofen.
At the end of December, a judge dismissed the case against Mr. Parias, finding that the agency had detained him without ready access to his lawyer. The judge also noted that the government had delayed producing documents and other evidence as required, including submitting the body-camera footage after a court-imposed deadline. The Justice Department has appealed.
Mr. Parias remains in the detention center. Last month, a judge denied his request to be released.
Mr. Parias’s son, Ulises Parias, 19, said he had distraught conversations with his mother over how best to help his father. He has considered taking legal action against the federal government or the officers.
“They’re basically free while they shot my dad,” Ulises Parias said. “How is that fair?”
Arijeta Lajka and Matt Schwartz contributed reporting. Georgia Gee contributed research.
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9) ‘We’ve Found Our Voice’: Many in Twin Cities Emerge With a Sense of Power
Two months after federal agents began operations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, residents say they have found strength in uniting as a community.
By Sabrina Tavernise, Reporting from the Twin Cities, Feb. 10, 2026
Dozens of people hold messages for Renee Good on sticks during a public day of memorial and mourning on Saturday in Minneapolis. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
In the month since Renee Good was shot and killed on Portland Avenue, life at the impromptu street-side memorial to her memory has taken on a gentle rhythm. Well-wishers walk quietly around its circumference, reading the signs, looking at the artwork and laying down bouquets. Caretakers come too, chipping away ice with hammers and sweeping up old flowers to make room for the new.
On Saturday, Sandy Zaic, a 59-year-old teacher, came with two friends to pay her respects.
“It’s very overwhelming,” she said, looking at a blue painting of Ms. Good and holding a bouquet of yellow flowers.
In four days of interviews in Minneapolis and St. Paul, people reflected on the two months since the federal immigration operation began. Almost everybody interviewed in the heavily Democratic region opposed the federal presence. Some also worried that protesters would destroy property; many had not attended any of the protests.
But almost all of those interviewed said they had learned a lot about each other in the past two months, as the Twin Cities have been confronted by an immigration sweep that, by the government’s own account, has been the largest in the nation. Along the way, not only was Ms. Good killed, but a nurse, Alex Pretti, was too. Federal agents also arrested a 5-year-old boy, Liam Ramos, whose picture in a bunny hat became a symbol for many of all that had gone wrong.
They learned that they are willing to be outdoors for hours on one of the coldest days of the past 25 years to march in protest. They learned they will deliver food to complete strangers after long days at work, so families who need meals don’t have to risk a trip to the store, where immigration agents may be waiting.
And they learned that these efforts bring a new sense of their own power, that they have come together, made themselves heard and, if they have not prevailed against what they see as unjust federal action in their cities, then at least they have held their ground.
“I’m super proud to be a Minnesotan,” said Ms. Zaic, who lives in the suburbs and delivers food to families in the Columbia Heights school district, where Liam Ramos went to school. “I’m proud to watch all these people stand up for what they know is right.”
Not all Minnesotans disagree with the deportations. Republicans nationally still tell pollsters they support President Trump’s actions on immigration, and Republicans in Minnesota do not appear to be any different. But a small but growing minority of Republicans nationwide say the enforcement tactics have gone too far.
Minnesota has experienced mass protests before, most notably in 2020 when George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer less than a mile from where Ms. Good was shot. But the two situations are not alike, multiple people said in interviews. The Floyd killing was an argument that the state was having with itself over the nature of policing. It divided people, while the killings of Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti have had a unifying effect.
“This is something different,” said Craig Wilson, 54, a landscape architect who helped organize a candlelight vigil for Ms. Good on Saturday evening, and was standing in the cold with his two dogs, Harper and Huck, both whippets in jackets. “This is the federal government. This is an invasion.”
He added: “We feel like we have a common purpose.”
The federal sweeps began almost two months ago, but since Mr. Pretti’s death on Jan. 24, the dynamic appears to be shifting.
The Department of Homeland Security has pulled 700 of its 3,000 agents from the streets, and Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar, was sent to Minnesota to strike a more conciliatory tone. In an interview on Friday with KSTP, a television station in the Twin Cities, Mr. Homan said one of the first things he did after arriving was to have more oversight of federal agents and “to hold anybody who acts out of policy, hold them accountable.” He said that several agents are under investigation and no longer part of the operation in Minnesota.
Immigration agents have continued to circle neighborhoods, driving their vehicles in the south and the north ends of the city, and residents who have taken it upon themselves to watch them continued to follow them. Photographers from The Times who spent the past week monitoring the streets said they still saw many ICE vehicles, but fewer arrests and confrontations.
“It feels like an ebb, but at any moment someone else could get killed and it will just pick up again,” said Jeremy Stadelman, 42, a local government worker who was out walking his dog on Thursday. “We are on pins and needles. But we are also very resilient people.”
He said the people opposing ICE may have “won the propaganda battle, but the changes are pretty superficial.”
Many people interviewed said they did not believe the government had changed its tactics. But as the government continued to defend its actions in a federal courtroom in Minneapolis on Friday, it found a Trump-appointed judge pushing back.
A legal group called Democracy Forward was arguing that detainees were not given access to lawyers inside the Whipple Federal Building, where many of those arrested are being taken.
“OK, so I weigh this, against this,” said U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel, picking up a stack of papers filed by the plaintiffs and then the slim government response, and looking at the government lawyer. “And that’s a tough sell, right?”
Judge Brasel said she would rule on Thursday.
Saturday marked one month since Ms. Good was killed. Her partner, Becca Good, spoke for the first time, through a spokeswoman, at a memorial that began with a Native American ceremony in snowy Powderhorn Park. A large crowd stood in the cold for several hours, many wearing an item of sparkly clothing as the invitation had instructed. One man wore a crown of green tinsel. A little girl wore a pink armband with sequins.
Some people interviewed compared the last few weeks in the Twin Cities with the first few weeks after 9/11.
“There’s something really heartwarming about looking a complete stranger in the eye and saying, ‘I’m here for you,’” said Nebiyu Meseret, 28, a business administrator.
Lindsey Gruttadaurio, 62, an insurance claims adjuster, had never been to a protest before. A centrist Democrat, she grew up in a military family, and often disagrees with progressives. But watching the ICE raids on the news motivated her, so on Jan. 23, she bundled up and went.
She immediately felt comfortable.
“It’s like a Lutheran potluck — just go and you’ll be fine,” she said.
“It was thrilling. There was a lot of cussing. It was fantastic, actually.”
The thrill, she said, came from being together with all those people and the power in that.
“We’ve found our voice and it’s never going away now.”
Owen Deneen, a nurse who was walking downtown in hospital scrubs at lunchtime on Friday, said it was as if “a natural disaster happened and it’s neighbor helping neighbor.”
He and his wife also went to the Jan. 23 protest, also his first. He said he felt “a mix of anger and resolution” during the demonstration.
When the couple broke away from the crowd to walk back toward their car, he said the temperature felt like it dropped by 15 degrees. They looked at each other and realized that it was because they had left “the closeness” of the crowd.
“It’s much colder when you’re alone,” he said.
David Guttenfelder Jamie Kelter Davis
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10) Trump’s Threats to Cuba’s Oil Suppliers Put Mexico in a Bind
The longstanding alliance between Cuba and Mexico is under mounting pressure from the United States, forcing President Claudia Sheinbaum into a precarious balancing act.
By James Wagner, Reporting from Mexico City, Feb. 10, 2026
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico now must juggle two competing priorities: honoring long‑standing ties to Havana while navigating an essential but increasingly strained relationship with Washington. Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York Times
When President Trump declared a “national emergency” last month, accusing Cuba of harboring Russian spies and “welcoming” enemies like Iran and Hamas, it came with a warning: Countries that sell or provide oil to the Caribbean nation could be subject to high tariffs.
The threat seemed to be directed at Mexico, one of the few countries still delivering oil to Cuba. Earlier this month, he even said that he had specifically asked President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico to cut off its supply.
Mexico and Cuba’s long alliance — rooted in economic and cultural cooperation and a shared wariness of U.S. intervention — survived and even deepened after the Cuban Revolution, when Mexico preserved ties with Havana even as much of the region aligned with Washington.
Ms. Sheinbaum now faces a fraught balancing act: upholding her country’s historical alliance with Havana, while managing its vital yet increasingly tense relationship with the United States.
The Sheinbaum administration has been careful not to provoke Mr. Trump, who has strained Mexico’s economy with tariffs and threats of military action to stop fentanyl from crossing the border. He has also threatened to withdraw from the free trade deal with Canada and Mexico, the U.S.’s largest trading partner.
Ms. Sheinbaum has largely held to her country’s commitment to Cuba, a Communist country, where people are struggling with surging food costs, constant blackouts, a lack of critical medicine and dwindling fuel. But Mexico has not sent any oil to Cuba since early last month.
“No one can ignore the situation that the Cuban people are currently experiencing because of the sanctions that the United States is imposing in a very unfair manner,” she said during a news conference on Monday. She added that Mexico had deployed two Navy ships carrying more than 814 tons of humanitarian aid — mostly staple foods and hygiene supplies — to Cuba.
Cuba, whose main oil provider was Venezuela, has faced chronic fuel shortages for years, but the situation has become far more severe since last month, when President Trump took control of Venezuela’s oil supply. He halted deliveries to Cuba, which now only has a fraction of the oil it needs.
Mexico had been sending about 22,000 barrels a day, but that figure dropped to about 7,000 toward the end of 2025 — which was still far less than Venezuela was sending, according to Jorge Piñon, a University of Texas oil expert who tracks the shipments closely. The last delivery from Mexico arrived in early January, he said, days after President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela was captured by U.S. forces.
To navigate the crisis, Ms. Sheinbaum has tried to distinguish between commercial contracts between Mexico’s state-owned oil company Pemex and the Cuban government, and humanitarian aid, which she insists must continue. She has also called for a diplomatic talks between Mexico and the United States, and has offered her country as a mediator for discussions between Washington and Havana.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba said on Thursday that his government was open to negotiations with the United States. Mr. Trump has warned that Cuba should strike a deal, which he has not elaborated on, “before it is too late.”
With the taps effectively running dry, Ms. Sheinbaum seems focused on keeping Mexico’s historical loyalty alive.
Hers is the only Latin American country that has consistently opposed the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba since it began more than 60 years ago, even as the tenor of the relationship between Mexico and Cuba has varied under different presidents.
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, two key figures of the Cuban Revolution, first met while in exile in Mexico City in 1955, and began planning a guerrilla war that would sweep the island and change the course of Latin American history. They followed in the footsteps of José Martí, a Cuban national hero who lived in Mexico before returning to his land, where he died in 1895 fighting for independence from Spain.
The Cuban Revolution was also an inspiration for anti-government movements in Mexico in the 1960s, said Rafael Rojas, a Cuban historian at the College of Mexico.
He said that Morena, the leftist governing party of Ms. Sheinbaum, has “a nostalgic, very sentimental view of Cuba.” To a significant part of the party’s leadership and base, he added, “Cuba appears as a victim of the empire and must be helped.”
Mexico has long been a refuge and transit point for Cubans, especially since the United States ended its policy in 2017 of allowing Cubans who arrived without visas to stay, and as the island’s economic crisis has deepened in recent years.
After Cuban leftists planned their revolution in Mexico in the 1950s, Manuel Antonio de Varona, founded an anti-Castro movement in Mexico City in 1960. Generations earlier, during the Mexican Revolution, Mexican figures fled to Cuba.
Since the revolutionaries took control of Cuba in 1959, Mexico has proved useful as a negotiator between the United States and Cuba, said Ricardo Pascoe, the former Mexican ambassador to Cuba under the conservative president Vicente Fox in the early 2000s.
During parts of the Cold War, Mr. Pascoe said, Washington kept tabs on Cubans through intelligence shared by Mexico, but Mexico also was Cuba’s gateway to the rest of the world. And though past right-wing Mexican presidents did not share Cuba’s political or economic policies, Mexico maintained friendly diplomatic ties and trade partnerships.
Under the Morena party — founded by Ms. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who built closer ties with Mr. Díaz-Canel of Cuba — Mr. Pascoe said that the Mexican government has become more ideologically aligned with Cuba.
“That has placed Mexico and the president of Mexico in a very complicated position,” he said. “Because Mexico’s economy continues to depend on its relationship with the United States yet it wants to have a privileged political relationship with a recognized adversary of the United States.”
Ricardo Monreal, who leads the Morena legislators in the lower house of congress, said there is a conservative sentiment in Mexico that does not agree with the country’s current relationship with Cuba. But he insisted that Mexico “cannot accept” a policy that affects essentials such as food and energy.
“I feel that this is the worst crisis in Cuba’s modern history because of the pressure of the blockade and the strangulation it is suffering at the hands of the United States,” he said. “We cannot assume a position of contempt or indifference toward what Cuba is suffering.”
Miriam Castillo, Frances Robles and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.
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11) Canadian Airlines Cancel Flights as Cuba Runs Out of Jet Fuel
The Trump administration’s crackdown on oil shipments to Cuba is beginning to wreak havoc on the Caribbean island’s travel industry.
By Frances Robles, Reporting from Florida, Published Feb. 9, 2026, Updated Feb. 10, 2026
Jose Marti International Airport in Havana last year. Yamil Lage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Disruptions to Cuba’s travel industry began this week after the government notified airlines that it would run out of aviation fuel, part of a crippling energy crisis triggered by the Trump administration’s strict measures, which have largely cut off the communist country’s access to foreign oil.
Air Canada announced that, starting Monday, it had suspended its 16 flights per week to four Cuban cities.
WestJet Group, which operates WestJet, Sunwing Vacations, WestJet Vacations and Vacances WestJet Quebec, said it had begun an “orderly wind down” of its operations in Cuba in order to lessen the strain local resources.
Both airlines said they would send empty jets to Cuba from Montreal and Toronto to bring back roughly 3,000 Canadians currently visiting the island.
Before the pandemic, at least 1 million Canadians visited Cuba each year, according to the Canada foreign ministry.
Canada has been a top source of tourists to Cuba. and the loss of Canadian tourists will be a hard hit to an already struggling industry.
Though Russian airlines said their flights would continue as usual, Interfax, the Russian wire service, said a Rossiya Airlines flight Monday was canceled, but the empty plane was flown to Cuba to pick up Russian tourists.
According to the Association of Tour Operators of Russia, there may currently be between 4,200 and 4,700 tourists traveling on package tours from Russia in Cuba.
The lack of jet fuel was the first major blow to Cuba’s economy since President Trump announced on Jan. 29 that he was taking additional steps to stop the flow of oil to Cuba. Mr. Trump, claiming without providing evidence that Cuba harbored terrorist groups, said he would impose tariffs on any nation that provided Cuba with oil. The move largely affected Mexico, which had been one of the few remaining sources of oil for the island.
Cuba had long relied on Venezuela for a majority of its fuel needs. But after the Jan. 3 U.S. attack on Venezuela that ousted its president, the Trump administration took control over Venezuela’s oil industry and stopped shipments to Cuba.
The measure is widely seen as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to exacerbate Cuba’s economic free fall and prolonged blackouts and force an end to the country’s 66-year-old communist revolution.
Cuba produces about 40 percent of the oil it needs, but experts say that is not enough to keep the country functioning. They predict that Cuba will likely run out of reserves by the end of March.
Cuba does not keep much reserves of jet fuel, so it was not surprising that it ran out of that first, said Jorge Piñón, an expert on Cuba energy issues at the University of Texas.
“This only impacts long-haul flights; the flights from Miami historically come with enough fuel to go back and forth,” Mr. Piñón said. “If we don’t see a smoke stack from an oil tanker arriving somewhere in Cuba during the second half of March, we’re in bad shape.”
Long haul flights to Cuba would probably have to schedule refueling stops in other countries, possibly in the Dominican Republic, he said.
American Airlines, which operates 11 daily flights from Miami to Cuba, said its planes could travel with enough fuel for the return flight.
Air Canada said that the planes bringing back Canadians in the coming days would fly in with extra fuel to Cuba and then make stops as necessary to refuel on the return journey. WestJet said it would fly to Cuba with enough fuel for the return trip.
Other airlines, including Iberia, announced changes to their cancellation policies to allow passengers more flexibility to leave Cuba. Air Europa said it would stop in Santo Domingo to refuel.
News of the jet fuel crisis was first reported by the Spanish news agency EFE, citing a NOTAM notification, a telecommunications message used by aviation authorities to alert pilots and airlines to immediate issues or hazards.
Cuba’s vice prime minister told Cuban state television that fuel resources would be redirected to essential services.
In a news conference last week, Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel insisted that Cuba is not and will not be a failed state.
“I am not an idealist. I know we are going to live through difficult times; we have before,” he said. “But we will overcome them together.”
Local state-run Cuban media outlets published news of a series of austerity measures.
Cimex, Cuba’s state-owned conglomerate, announced Saturday that it had suspended gasoline sales in Cuba’s local currency, as well as diesel sales in U.S. dollars.
Banks will operate on shorter schedules, and some hospitals canceled elective surgeries. Some nurses would be assigned to work near their homes, because they probably would not be able to make it to work because of the fuel shortage, the Tribuna newspaper reported.
Tourists were beginning to be transferred to other hotels so that Cuba would save energy by having fewer partially filled hotels, Canadian media reported.
Fabio Nina, a vice president of Air Century, a Dominican airline that flies to Cuba six times a week, said Cuban aviation authorities told him they could find fuel for his 50-seat jet this week but were less confident about next week.
“Eventually, if they don’t sort things out with Washington, they are going to run out of fuel completely,” Mr. Nina said. “Right now we don’t know what’s going to happen after this week. It’s a crazy, crazy, crazy situation.”
Reporting was contributed by David C. Adams in Miami, Niraj Chokshi in New York and Valerie Hopkins in Berlin.
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12) Donald Trump, Pagan King
By Leighton Woodhouse, Feb. 11, 2026
Mr. Woodhouse is a documentary filmmaker and the author of the newsletter Social Studies.
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada recently described the world that President Trump is dragging us into with this aphorism: “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
The quote comes from Thucydides’ fictionalized account of a negotiation between Athens and the rulers of the island of Melos, in the Peloponnesian War. The Melians, who were no match for the Athenians, wished to remain neutral. They complained that Athens’s demand that they submit to its rule was unjust. The Athenians responded that matters of justice exist only between equals. Between those who are strong and those who are weak there is only force.
The dialogue is famous for its stark portrayal of the dictates of political realism. The world is not guided by ideals and values, it demonstrates. It is brokered only by power.
The Trump administration has adopted this philosophy as its own. In a recent interview with Jake Tapper, Stephen Miller said, “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
To sympathetic ears, Mr. Miller sounded refreshingly unsentimental and cleareyed. But the “niceties” he disparaged aren’t just some naïve fantasy. They are the values of Christianity, the faith the Trump administration purports to defend and uphold.
After defeating Melos in a siege, Athens slaughtered the island’s men and enslaved its women and children. Such was the nature of the ancient world, a world that was, to borrow Mr. Miller’s words, devoid of “niceties” and “governed by power.”
In his book “Dominion,” the historian Tom Holland describes how it wasn’t until Christianity came along that Western civilization derived the popular conception that the weak and the vanquished had any inherent moral value at all. Telling an ancient Greek or a pre-Christian Roman that their treatment of slaves was morally wrong would have inspired not argument but bewilderment, as if you had told them they were evil for the way they treated their kitchen utensils. These pagans generally believed that their gods favored the strong and were indifferent to the weak.
Christianity upended these assumptions. Christianity took the Jewish God, who cared for the weak and knew the difference between good and evil, and made his message universal. It taught that all humans are God’s creation. To oppress any person, even a slave, is an offense before him. Even more than that: the weak are closer to God than the rich and the powerful.
This moral instinct is so ubiquitous today that we barely recognize it as Judeo-Christian, or even as religious. Adherents of the world’s other great religions have largely integrated it into their ethical frameworks even if this tenet is not central to their faith. It is the basis for the American Declaration of Independence and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As Mr. Holland noted, even anti-Christian revolutionaries, from the Jacobins to the Communists, owe their secular claims of human equality to Christianity; indeed, they are the most radical expressions of it.
That’s not to pretend that those lofty principles have effectively restrained great powers. Mr. Carney is correct that international law has always been, in part, a lie. International norms haven’t stopped the U.S. military from carrying out atrocities all over the world. Christian morality didn’t prevent medieval kings and the Catholic Church from massacring civilians, persecuting Jews and committing genocides in the New World. The American founders, so proud of their Christian piety, betrayed their religion in the most profound way: many of them owned slaves.
Unlike the pagans of antiquity, however, those rulers had to answer to charges of hypocrisy, which corroded their credibility in a way that the Athenians never had to contend with. Purportedly Christian great powers could do what they wanted to, just as the Athenians declared. But unlike the ancients, they did so at a cost to their political legitimacy.
George W. Bush felt obliged to sell his invasion of Iraq in part on the righteous Christian premise that it would liberate oppressed Iraqis from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the United States cast their mujahedeen adversaries not just as tools for U.S. foreign policy goals but as “freedom fighters.” American leaders, unlike Vikings or Spartans, had to make a moral case for the exercise of our power. It wasn’t enough to simply say that we, as the strong, can do what it is in our interest to do. We had to couch it all, however unconvincingly, in a framework that made it palatable to the Christian conscience. This may not have determined the shape of American foreign and domestic policy, but it was the impossibility of making that case that ultimately contributed to the end of slavery, and of European imperialism and American segregation. The moral framework mattered.
That is the world we are leaving behind. By brazenly jacking Venezuela for its oil and threatening to acquire Greenland against its will, the U.S. is acting as the ancient Greeks, the ancient Persians and the Germanic tribes conducted themselves: brutishly, without shame or apology. And the abdication of Christian values is already shaping the conduct of our government toward its citizens, as in Minneapolis, where immigration agents have killed two protesters. The Trump administration appears unconstrained not only by the limits imposed by the Constitution but by the standards of an average American’s conscience. Federal agents’ treatment of both immigrants and U.S. citizens in Minneapolis is the reflection of a government that has abandoned the moral instinct that it is wrong for the powerful to abuse the weak.
JD Vance never tires of pointing out that America is a philosophically Christian nation, and that Christianity is under attack from his political enemies. Such statements get big applause from the Trump-loving crowds he panders to. But the administration he serves in is doing more than any antifa foot soldier to dismantle that philosophy as the fundamental basis of our government’s political legitimacy. To the people leading this administration, Thucydides’ famous aphorism isn’t just an acknowledgment of reality. It is the image of the world they wish to make.
Leighton Woodhouse is an independent journalist, documentary filmmaker and author of the Substack Social Studies.
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13) We Have to Look Right in the Face of What We Have Become
By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, Feb. 11, 2026
Paola Chapdelaine for The New York Times
On Oct. 4, Marimar Martinez, a teacher’s assistant at a Montessori school, was driving in Chicago when she observed federal immigration agents on patrol. She had begun to honk her horn to warn her neighbors about their presence when she collided with a Border Patrol vehicle. Moments later, the agent in the vehicle, Charles Exum, fired multiple shots into Martinez’s car, hitting her again and again. (Later, Exum would brag to colleagues that he had “fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes.”)
Prosecutors for the government charged Martinez with assaulting a federal officer and accused her of trying to ram Exum with her car. The Department of Homeland Security described her actions as domestic terrorism, a charge the agency would repeat after the death of Renee Good in January at the hands of another immigration agent.
The government’s case unraveled, however, when it became clear that its story did not fit the evidence — evidence that officials with Customs and Border Protection tried to hide. The government dropped its case against Martinez a month later, and on Friday a federal judge authorized the release of the body camera footage so that the public could see the incident for itself.
Recently, Martinez joined with other Americans brutalized by federal immigration agents to tell their stories to a forum of congressional Democrats led by Representative Robert Garcia of California and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrats on the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Garcia and Blumenthal convened the event to collect testimony on — and highlight — “the violent tactics and disproportionate use of force by agents of the Department of Homeland Security.”
The people who testified spoke to the terror of their confrontations with masked, armed and often trigger-happy federal agents. “I will never forget the fear, and having to quickly duck my head as the shots were fired at the passenger side of the car. Any one of those bullets could have killed me or two people I love,” said Martin Daniel Rascon, who was stopped by agents who broke the windows of the vehicle he was in and began firing when the driver, frightened, tried to escape.
If democracy rests on mutual recognition, on our capacity to see one another as full and equal persons, then the power to speak and be heard lies at the foundation of democratic life. It is when we speak — when we argue, appeal, explain and testify — that we put into practice our belief in the ability of others to understand, reason and empathize. Or as Thomas Jefferson remarked in 1824, “In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.”
Thus far, growing public opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection has been a function of the power of the image — of videos of shootings and abuse — but the testimony of Martinez, Rascon and others should remind us of the power of words and personal experience to also move the public. Crucially, there is the power inherent in giving victims of wrongdoing a chance to tell their stories, not as one perspective among many but as part of the official record.
Two examples of this dynamic stand out in American history.
In 1871, Congress convened the Joint Select Committee to Inquire Into the Conditions of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, better known as the Klan hearings, on account of its focus: vigilante violence against the formerly enslaved. The committee, the historian Kidada E. Williams writes in “I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction,” “traveled to hot spots of southern disorder, where they solicited testimony from officeholders, voters, accused participants and their victims.” Overall, the hearings “yielded 13 volumes of firsthand testimonies, including from Black victims.” Hundreds of Black men and women spoke of terror, intimidation, wanton killings and sexual violence. “African Americans,” Williams writes, “told their stories of world-unraveling violence and asked federal officials and their fellow citizens to respect their rights.”
A little more than a century later, in 1980, Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, an official federal investigation into the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The commission held 20 days of hearings in cities across the country and heard testimony from more than 750 witnesses, many of them on the West Coast, including “evacuees, former government officials, public figures, interested citizens and historians.” The evacuees, or rather victims, spoke in their testimony to deep feelings of injustice and a powerful sense that the federal government had robbed them of their dignity. “We took whatever we could carry,” said one person interned as a child. “So much we left behind, but the most valuable thing I lost was my freedom.” Victims also spoke about conditions in the camps that should sound familiar to anyone who has read recent accounts about ICE detention facilities. “The garbage cans were overflowing, human excreta was found next to the doors of the cabins and the drainage boxes into which dishwater and kitchen waste was to be placed were filthy beyond description.”
The public attention associated with the Klan hearings helped suppress anti-Black vigilante violence in the South, but only for a time. Ultimately, the hearings did not produce the kind of legislation or federal effort that would have secured the promise of equal citizenship for the formerly enslaved. The more recent commission and hearings on Japanese internment, on the other hand, did lead to congressional action, and in 1988 President Ronald Reagan signed a law that acknowledged and apologized for the injustice of internment, which gave reparations to surviving internees or their heirs.
In her book, Williams observes:
Societies experiencing atrocities struggle to put a stop to and then meaningfully address them. Perpetrators want to advance their aims to the end and propagate baseless lies to do it. Victims want violence to stop, and they want justice. A small cadre of observers believes in justice and accountability. The rest, especially those who are safe from being targeted, and atrocities’ passive beneficiaries, simply want to move on and wipe the historical slate clean.
This was true of the violence suffered by Black Americans during Reconstruction. It has been true, in fact, for all manner of violence either committed or sanctioned by the federal government. But while the odds are somewhat against a serious reckoning with the brutality and wrongdoing of Trump’s mass deportation effort, it does not have to be true of the atrocities of ICE and the Border Patrol. If it is, it is because we made it so.
With that in mind, any serious push to account for the actions of this government — to abolish the president’s private army, restructure immigration enforcement and punish anyone responsible for wrongdoing — must include recompense and repair for its victims. And looking ahead to a Democratic-led House, Senate or both, the first step in that journey must be more of the kind of public investigation and testimony we’ve already seen in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago and wherever else the administration has made its mark. The American people need to know the full story of what has been done in our name. And the people we’ve wronged deserve their chance to speak and be heard.
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14) Don Lemon Hires Federal Prosecutor Who Quit Over Immigration Crackdown
Facing charges over his role at a church protest, Mr. Lemon, a journalist, retained a veteran litigator who recently resigned from the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota.
By Ernesto Londoño, Reporting from Minneapolis, Published Feb. 10, 2026, Updated Feb. 11, 2026
Journalist Don Lemon outside federal court in Los Angeles last month. Credit...Mario Tama/Getty Images
The federal prosecution of the journalist Don Lemon took an unlikely turn on Tuesday.
Facing charges over his presence at a church protest challenging the immigration crackdown in Minnesota, Mr. Lemon has hired as one of his defense lawyers a veteran criminal litigator who, until just weeks ago, was helping lead the prosecutor’s office that has charged Mr. Lemon with felonies.
Joseph H. Thompson, a former senior federal prosecutor who resigned from the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota in mid-January over the Justice Department’s handling of the immigration operation, has joined Mr. Lemon’s defense team, according to a court filing.
Mr. Thompson’s appointment is the latest plot twist in a high-profile case that has been anomalous from the start. By representing the most prominent of nine defendants charged in the church protest case, Mr. Thompson will face off against a department that employed him for nearly 17 years. Mr. Thompson will work alongside Mr. Lemon’s lead defense lawyer, Abbe Lowell.
The government’s investigation began after Mr. Lemon, a former CNN anchor who now works as an independent journalist producing content for a YouTube show, accompanied protesters who disrupted the Sunday morning service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., on Jan. 18. Demonstrators targeted the church because one of its pastors, David Easterwood, is a senior official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the state. Mr. Easterwood was not at the service.
Mr. Lemon, 59, met with protest organizers at the parking lot of a grocery store, followed them into the church and live streamed as they chanted “ICE out!” and “Hands up, don’t shoot!”
In a video of the protest Mr. Lemon posted on social media, he is seen interviewing worshipers as well as protesters inside the church, at one point saying, “We are not part of the activists, but we’re here reporting on them.”
That night, Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, issued a statement calling Mr. Lemon’s role in the protest “pseudojournalism” that was not protected under the First Amendment.
Days later, a federal magistrate judge signed arrest warrants for three of the protesters but declined to sign off on warrants for the arrest of Mr. Lemon and four other people. The chief federal judge in Minnesota, Patrick J. Schiltz, agreed with the magistrate judge, saying the government had not produced evidence that Mr. Lemon had broken the law.
Senior Justice Department officials took the unusual step of appealing Judge Schiltz’s refusal to sign off on Mr. Lemon’s arrest by asking an appeals court to do so, calling the possibility of future protests during church services a “national security emergency.” The appeals court declined that request.
Late last month, a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Lemon along with another independent journalist, Georgia Fort, and seven other individuals who attended the demonstration.
The nine defendants are charged with conspiring to violate religious freedoms at a house of worship, and with injuring, intimidating and interfering with the exercise of religious freedoms at a place of worship. Both charges are felonies under a 1994 law passed mainly to protect abortion clinics from violence.
Attorney General Pam Bondi called Mr. Lemon’s conduct unlawful, referring to the demonstration as a “riot” that terrified congregants. After Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of the protest organizers, was arrested late last month, the White House posted a photo of her arrest that was manipulated to make Ms. Levy Armstrong, who is Black, appear to have darker skin, and to falsely portray her as disheveled and crying.
According to the indictment, Mr. Lemon “stood in close proximity” to a pastor during the protest “in an attempt to oppress and intimidate him.” At one point, it adds, Mr. Lemon “caused the pastor’s hand to graze” his. The indictment says Mr. Lemon and the demonstrators did not immediately leave the church at the request of its leaders.
Mr. Lemon, who has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s deportation push, has called the charges against him “an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and a transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration.”
The aggressiveness with which the Justice Department has pursued the church protest case has unsettled career prosecutors, according to several people familiar with events at the U.S. attorney’s office in recent days. Several of them, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, have noted that the indictment does not include the names of any career prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota as would be common in a civil rights criminal case.
Mr. Thompson, who had been the second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, resigned on Jan. 13 along with several colleagues after clashing with leaders at the Justice Department over its handling of the investigation into the killing of a Minneapolis woman, Renee Good, by an ICE agent.
Mr. Thompson and other career prosecutors sought to investigate the legality of the shooting of Ms. Good. But senior department leaders overruled him and instead sought to investigate Ms. Good’s partner, examining her possible links to groups protesting ICE operations in the state.
Mr. Thompson, who kept a low profile since resigning, this week started a law firm with Harry Jacobs, a fellow former federal prosecutor who also resigned in protest.
Mr. Thompson’s move to represent a defendant prosecuted by his former office reflects the wider tumult at the Justice Department, which has seen an exodus of career prosecutors as they said they found themselves pressured to investigate and prosecute President Trump’s perceived enemies.
Other surprising partnerships have emerged. Last year, Rascoe Dean, the deputy chief of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney’s office in Nashville, joined the legal team representing Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant who has come to symbolize Mr. Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.
Alan Feuer and Seamus Hughes contributed reporting.
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