It’s always been about Cuba. And it’s not Trumps plan, it’s Marc Rubios plan.

I just left the Venezuela briefing. It's worse than you thought. Oil company executives seem to know more about Trump's secret plan to "run" Venezuela than the American people. We need public Senate hearings NOW.

This is what all his shit-eating was for, this is the endgame for Rubio

So excited for my new mayor, @wilsonforseattle.bsky.social! "The address was, at its core, anticapitalist. 'I want to live in a city that honors what you're doing when you're not making money,' she said[...] 'Because we need bread, but we need roses too.'"

Someone should write a history of the syllabus. You could learn so much about higher ed just from the changes in these documents.

This is the kind of big thinking we need. The Democratic world should be going through Supreme Court precedents. Here the key date is the 2000 GWB election, which @raskin.house.gov called effectively stolen — and the Court’s work after that the fruit of a poison tree.

And New Orleans’s new mayor, Helena Moreno, is from Xalapa.

Flash of the Spirit

“The island seems to be sinking, just as Raúl warned it might 15 years earlier. It is doing so bc he and others delayed true reform. Change will come with steep costs thanks to years of economic policy waffling & the state’s refusal to give Cubans a meaningful political voice in shaping their future

At his inauguration today prior to Zohran Kwame Mamdani's inauguration,Jumaane Williams cited the Brazilian movement slogan, "Ninguém solta a mão de ninguém" -- no one lets go of anyone's hand. He also quoted Maurice Bishop, "Revolutionaries do not have the right to be cowards."

This is really good. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

🧵

This is the battle of 2026

Happy New Mayor!

Here’s some of the writing I was proudest of this year. I dove to the wreck of Brazil’s last slave ship and reported on the fraught desire, throughout the diaspora, for traces of the Middle Passage www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

¨For the first time since the early 1960s, private businesses are importing more food and goods to Cuba than the communist government. Likewise, private retailers on the island are now selling more than government-run businesses since the early days of the Cuban Revolution.¨

Carel Pedre is in ICE custody, apparently being held at the brutal Everglades detention camp. M sezi. haitiantimes.com/2025/12/26/c...

Remembering Alex Chilton on his birthday. Lovely 1973 photo by William Eggleston

Tomorrow's Substack article explains what this book gets wrong about African history

At breakfast, after snow.

Monument to the immigrant in the fog, New Orleans

CDMX: Danzón at Salón Los Ángeles. Don’t miss it

Film ICE activity. If you feel ICE agents were doing anything inappropriate, send the video to AG Letitia James using this link: ag.ny.gov/federal-acti...

Greg Grandin: “the White House is implicitly globalizing the Monroe Doctrine . . . the United States intends to deal with the rest of the world as it deals with Latin America, to seize, sanction and kill with impunity.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/o...

vimeo.com/1033719536/e... Recorded at Zinc Bar, NYC. Zaccai Curtis, piano; Luques Curtis, bass; Mark Whitfield, Jr., drums.

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum was dubbed one of NYT’s 67 Most Stylish People of 2025. Sheinbaum was the only sitting head of state to make the list, and told reporters credit should go to the Indigenous artisans whose embroidered garments she often wears, calling them “the pride of the nation”

Postmambo Official Anthem of Navidad for all time. Remembering Rafael Ithier. open.spotify.com/track/1aK5JA...

professional associations asking for donations 3-10x a year is 😭😭😭, my $ is going a million different directions to mutual aid, STOP emailing

This is not what I thought “I Will Survive” meant

I've avoided all Rama Duwaji discourse up to now because none of it is any of our business, but now that this big cover profile has dropped: What a lovely, grounded, and intelligent young person — just like her husband. NYC, we're lucky. www.thecut.com/article/rama...

“In 2006, he recorded a Ned Sublette song called “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other.” “I’ve known straight and gay people all my life,” he told Texas Monthly. “I can’t tell the difference. People are people where I came from.””

Bob Dylan attempts to explain Willie Nelson in The New Yorker's profile of Willie: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Organ-tuning books in English churches provide notes on a warming climate

Anybody got a gift link? www.wsj.com/world/americ...

Earlier I bleeted about how AI cannot do historical research for you. There's something else it can't do: write. Sure, it can follow rules and process data to string words into coherent sentences. But it cannot *write.* An excerpt from a piece I wrote for WaPo years back on biography as art.

“Parece una rumba.”

This clown came back to town, now it's about to go down. See you there, NOLA! #freetheswamp #nokingsnola #indivisiblenola #fuckice

Tabou Combo, SOB’s, NYC, right now

Shame on this country.

Mood: open.spotify.com/track/38LOCW...

It’s not quite channeling the spirit of Desalin, but it’s a start www.fox8live.com/2025/12/17/i...

There’s an engaging chronological but undated biography of Joe Ely on his website ely.com/bio

It gets even more pathetic— x.com/RepBeatty/st...

If Trump announces a new and illegal regime change war against Venezuela tonight pay attention to which elected Democrats stay silent and don’t vociferously oppose and condemn him for it - and then make sure those Dems are subjected to primary challenges next year.

It’s the day of San Lázaro / Babalú-Ayé. The 11th anniversary of the ill-fated Obama opening to Cuba. open.spotify.com/track/6AJwRC...