The account tracking Donald Trump's stock trades has been suspended by Twitter. Funny how Elon Musk is a "free speech" absolutist until the speech is inconvenient for the politicians he supports.

One day before Trump paused tariffs and sparked a historic 10% market rally, his accounts bought 327 stocks worth up to $12.8 million. The trades were disclosed only yesterday, over a year late. His punishment: a $200 fine. readsludge.com/2026/07/01/t...

Sports betting resembles the early days of the opioid epidemic. Legalize an addictive product. Saturate a vulnerable population with predatory marketing. Normalize it through everyday culture. The industry profits, while society inherits the social costs and consequences.

If you're wondering why the Supreme Court sided with Trump and expanded his power over federal agencies, the answer is Unitary Executive Theory. It argues the president has total control over the executive branch, undermining agencies Congress designed to be insulated from presidential control.

The latest NYT investigation reports: • Trump & Lutnick helped broker a Kazakhstan mining deal. • Weeks later, the Trump sons & Lutnick family acquired financial interests connected to it. • The project later secured up to $1.6B in U.S. govt-backed financing. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/w...

Little did they know American society would eventually become 1984

The phrase "sanctions" sanitizes what is actually happening. In Cuba, a humanitarian crisis is unfolding. Essential medicines are becoming unavailable, infant health outcomes are worsening, and more families are struggling to secure adequate nutrition.

Regardless of whether your politics align with the Ellison family or not, everyone should be concerned by the principle of one family owning such a large share of the media. In the past year alone, the Ellison family have captured CBS, CNN, and control of the TikTok algorithm.

"Like Haiti having to pay back the “debt” to slaveowners from their lost property values after the revolution, Cuba is expected to pay for treating its assets as belonging to the people as a whole rather than belonging to a small moneyed elite." www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-u.s...

For decades, the dominant development model imposed on poor countries has been: Open your economy to foreign capital. Sell off public assets. Export raw materials. Compete through cheap labor. Cuba pursued a different path by investing heavily in social development through healthcare & education.

"The human rights office, OHCHR, cited alarming figures: infant mortality has doubled to 9.9 per 1,000 births; childhood cancer survival rates have fallen from 85 to 65 per cent; and essential medicines are available at only around 30 per cent of normal supply levels." news.un.org/en/story/202...

"Donald Trump could save Cuba." The headline reflects a familiar media framework: U.S. sanctions on Cuba are presented as a form of liberation, while the human costs of these sanctions are treated as secondary or ignored altogether.

This chart is absurd. Bush, Clinton, Obama, Biden: millions. Trump & family: $3.4 billion.

The graph is a visual representation of class power. The bottom 50% barely moved. The top 0.1% increased 501% When the wealthy fund campaigns, hire armies of lobbyists, and shape economic policy, redistribution upwards is the result.

One of the most depraved aspects of U.S. policy towards Cuba is the effort to coerce developing countries into expelling Cuban doctors. Ending these programs not only punishes Cuba, but it also harms some of the world's poorest and most medically underserved people.

"However, its best form of resistance has been not just the assertion of national sovereignty, but the creation of an alternative model of development that places human welfare and environmental concerns at its core." www.redpepper.org.uk/global-polit...

The Supreme Court revived a lawsuit claiming cruise lines “trafficked” confiscated Cuban property by docking in Havana. A lower court had thrown the case out because Havana Docks Corp.’s lease expired before the cruises ever operated there. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/u...

Ray Washburne, a Trump ally with ties to U.S. military and intelligence circles, just bought control of Sherritt, a Canadian company operating in Cuba’s nickel industry. Does this signal that well connected political insiders expect Trump will definitely launch an invasion of Cuba?

A story in three parts: 1) Trump's new sanctions push Sherritt to dissolve its Cuba venture. 2) Sherritt suddenly halts plans to leave Cuba. 3) A firm linked to a former Trump adviser buys a controlling stake in Sherritt

This is how the blockade on Cuba works in practice. Not just punishing Cuba directly — but intimidating shipping companies, banks, and foreign businesses into cutting ties with the island out of fear of US sanctions or lawsuits.

Media bias is often less about outright falsehoods and more about framing. Calling Cuba a “regime” instead of a government subtly delegitimizes it, while saying Cuba “rejected humanitarian aid” erases the possibility that the dispute was over the political conditions attached to the aid itself.

Conservatives: “Mail-in ballots can’t be trusted because the USPS is too unreliable and corrupt.” Also conservatives: “Yeah mailing handguns sounds fine actually.”

Private equity firms saw youth sports and thought: “How do we monetize this?” Now kids’ hockey is dominated by investors buying rinks, raising fees, and turning community sports into another profit machine. www.usatoday.com/story/news/i...

64% of Americans oppose a U.S. war with Cuba. Only 15% support it. There’s a massive gap between what the public wants and what the Trump Administration is pursuing in Cuba.

U.S. sanctions on Cuba have material consequences: A report from Center for Economic and Policy Research finds Cuba’s infant mortality rate jumped from 4.0 (2019) to 9.9 (2025)—a 148% increase. If rates held at 2018 levels, ~1,800 fewer babies would have died.

“Why don’t people trust the media anymore?” Meanwhile: A billionaire media owner is hosting Trump at a private dinner, while seeking approval for a $111B megamerger and CBS executives are literally at the table with him.

From “war on terror” to “parlay on regime change” www.nbcnews.com/business/bus...

This is The Washington Post using its opinion section to manufacture consent for U.S. intervention in Cuba. When every “opinion” piece points in the same direction, it stops being analysis and starts functioning as propaganda.

Most Global South economies are structurally pushed toward low-wage labor and resource extraction. Cuba took a different path—investing in science, healthcare, and education. The result: a biotech sector competitive with developed countries, built under sanctions.

War breaks out → oil spikes → prices surge → consumers squeezed Meanwhile: Wall Street banks report record profits from “market volatility.”

Poorest 20%: tax increase Middle class: tax increase Richest 1%: tax cut Don’t worry, they said it trickles down.

"Only six of the 202 articles covering Kushner’s diplomatic role mentioned his financial conflict of interest with the Saudi government. That means more than 97% of the coverage ignored Kushner’s conflict." popular.info/p/the-media-...

Cuba gets hit by an external shock → the U.S. escalates pressure: 1990s: Soviet Union collapses → embargo tightened by Clinton 2020s: COVID + Venezuela crisis → sanctions on tourism expand, oil blockade implemented by Trump Different decades, same strategy.

Since 2020, overall inflation is ~26%. But basic groceries? Coffee +109% Beef +70% Eggs +64%

If we can afford $1.5 trillion for the military, we can afford healthcare, education, and housing. The issue isn’t money—it’s priorities.

Late stage capitalism is where a potentially massive humanitarian catastrophe is viewed as a "market opportunity" for corporations to raise prices and maintain profit margins while the working class is lectured about making patriotic sacrifices during wartime.

Not talked about enough: many Cuban exiles celebrated as “freedom fighters” came from families that owned enormous wealth in pre-revolution Cuba. Their politics aren’t neutral—they’re about restoring an economic system that served them extremely well, prioritizing capital over social programs.

Every politician runs on “law and order.” No one mentions that the most financially destructive crimes in the country are prosecuted less and less each year.

"It's a 5 Leg Parlay" - Ground Troops in Iran by May 1st - The Strait remains closed through the summer - Oil hits $150 - Trump invades the Vatican by July 1st - Trump wins the inaugural Peace Prize awarded by the Board of Peace

Imagine any other country openly saying this—threatening to kill foreign political leaders if negotiations don’t go their way. It would be called terrorism. In the US political sphere, it gets printed as strategy.

Cuba built a model of medical internationalism rooted in solidarity, not profit. Now Washington is waging a pressure campaign to shut it down—undermining healthcare systems across the Global South just to tighten the blockade. The human cost is staggering. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Over time, corporate profits have surged dramatically. Corporate taxes? A slow climb at best. That widening gap isn’t just economics—it’s power dynamics. It reflects who writes the rules and who benefits from them.

"Goldman Sachs was also the former majority owner of a 470,000-square-foot vacant industrial warehouse in Roxbury, New Jersey, that was purchased by ICE in February for $129.3 million — 137 percent over value" substack.perfectunion.us/p/the-worlds...

Reminder: for over 30 years, the United Nations has overwhelmingly voted to end the embargo on Cuba. This isn’t a contested global issue—it’s a uniquely United States policy, maintained despite near-universal international opposition.

For over 60 years, US policy toward Cuba hasn’t been about “freedom”—it’s been about punishment for defiance. Sanctions, isolation, pressure—all to force regime change. The real story is an effort to dictate how developing countries pursue development—so it serves US economic interests.

Global news: progress, innovation, breakthroughs. U.S. news: “you’re not gonna believe this one…”

The top 1% didn’t just get richer—they pulled away at a historic scale while the bottom half stagnated. That divergence is artificially engineered through policy: lower taxes on wealth, weaker labor protections for the working class, and rules designed to transfer wealth upward.

First bit of good news for Cuba in months: a Russian oil tanker finally reaching the island, offering a temporary lifeline amid blackouts and a deepening fuel crisis. But one shipment doesn’t fix a structural shortage—unless more tankers follow, the situation remains precarious.

When a natural disaster occurs, the question should be who needs help—not who they voted for. This chart shows Trump turning federal aid into a loyalty test.

Beyond this UN vote, here are others the U.S. opposed or abstained on: - Clean Water as a Human Right - Food as a Human Right - Resolution on Combatting the Glorification of Nazism - Convention on the Rights of the Child - Global Health & Access to Medicines www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...