Commentary Culture Investigations

MS NOW/SnapStream

On Monday’s Money, Power, Politics on MS NOW, after Maine Democrats selected Troy Jackson to be the new Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, host Stephanie Ruhle and former Bush advisor Mark McKinnon discussed the candidate and decided to talk about Jackson’s “rizz.” The discussion then turned into a bash of Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), who McKinnon called “rizzless.”After a glowing profile of Jackson from former MS NOW Reports host Chris Jansing in her new role as the channel’s “chief political reporter,” McKinnon talked about the state of the race after the Platner replacement ordeal. He stated Republicans with “a huge war chest” were “going to try and blow him up.”McKinnon, a 71-year-old man, then decided to delve into a discussion of rizz, a TikTok/Gen-Z slang term for charisma which was named Oxford’s Word of the Year in 2023:But this is the first time that I saw him, and what I liked about him is what Republicans are criticizing for. They say “he doesn’t have any rizz.” Well, I kind of think that appeals to Mainers, you know. On Monday’s Money, Power, Politics, Mark McKinnon praised new Maine Democratic candidate Troy Jackson and his “rizz” as the channel moved on from Graham PlatnerAmidst the discussion, Ruhle asked, “Does Susan Collins” have rizz, to which McKinnon replied, “She’s rizzless.” pic.twitter.com/JDRksYGCwT— Nick (@nspin310) July 27, 2026 After panel laughter, McKinnon continued and said Jackson “just seemed real plainspoken” before he concluded, “So, at the end of the day, if he can just be acceptable, I think he wins.”Ruhle interjected and had to bash Collins on her “rizz”: I’m waiting for them to come at me. But we keep saying this guy doesn’t have enough rizz. Does Susan Collins?After more panel laughter, McKinnon declared, “She’s rizzless.”Evan McMorris-Santoro, a reporter for NOTUS, also had praise for Jackson and played off Ruhle’s comments: “He sounds like a Maine guy. You know what I mean? He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.”Following his praise of the “plainspoken” Jackson, which sounded familiar to a certain disgraced former Maine Senate candidate, McMorris-Santoro wondered if Democrats could “memory hole what came before this.” He concluded, “That’s what they want to have happen. And the Republicans are trying to make sure that doesn’t happen, right?” For a channel that covered for Graham Platner before it became too untenable with all his sexual controversies, talking about the new candidate’s charisma seemed ironic, especially since he was recently been accused of “hitting a female colleague during an argument,” according to the Daily Wire.The transcript is below. Click “expand”:MS NOW’s Money, Power, PoliticsJuly 27, 202610:07:07 AM Eastern(…)MARK MCKINNON: Republicans have a huge war chest, and they’re going to try and blow him up. STEPHANIE RUHLE: Huge.MCKINNON: And they’re going to say he’s a worse version of Platner. But this is the first time that I saw him, and what I liked about him is what Republicans are criticizing for. They say “he doesn’t have any rizz.” Well, I kind of think that appeals to Mainers, you know [laughs].RUHLE: Kind of makes you lean in. MCKINNON: Yeah. You know, I mean. He just seemed real plainspoken. And, as Chris pointed out, he’s from northern Maine, which is a big deal. And I think the biggest problem for Collins is she’s an incumbent right now and, across the board, when you ask people if they’re better off or worse off for Trump policies, 58 percent say worse, 13 percent say better. So, at the end of the day, if he can just be acceptable, I think he wins.RUHLE: Okay.  I just – I’m waiting for them to come at me. But we keep saying this guy doesn’t have enough Rizz. Does Susan Collins?[Laughter]MCKINNON: She’s rizzless.RUHLE: I mean, like – I keep hearing, like “he doesn’t have” –MCKINNON: Great point. Great point.RUHLE: Like, for real.EVAN MCMORRIS- SANTORO: He sounds like a Maine guy. You know what I mean? He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Look, Democrats have passed the first big test here, which is we saw that overwhelming vote for Troy Jackson to get the nomination. That’s sort of okay. Like they have now come around and gathered around a guy, united around a guy. They still have the problem of how can they memory hole what came before this, right? They want to say, “Okay, don’t, you know, [inaudible] about Graham or any of that stuff that happened before? We’re moving on. That’s what they want to have happen. And the Republicans are trying to make sure that doesn’t happen, right?(…)

Screenshot via Fox News/Snapstream

On Saturday afternoon, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) posted a bombshell series of revelations from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s personal diary ahead of Wednesday’s blockbuster Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, which showed he not only believed the origins of COVID-19 likely emanated from the Communist Chinese lab in Wuhan, but reveled in the spotlight with liberal, elite media and expressed skepticism toward policies he demanded be enacted to shutter the country. Between Saturday night and Monday morning, ABC, CBS, and NBC made the decision to ignore the infuriating revelations on their flagship morning, evening, and Sunday political talk shows, hoping to further preserve the saintly image they helped Fauci concoct. On Monday morning, all three had time for plenty of fluff, including full reports about LeBron James signing with the Philadelphia 76ers, which happened back on Friday morning.The diary entries and the upcoming hearing fetched multiple mentions on the Fox News Channel, Newsmax, Newsmax2, and NewsNation.A Media Research Center search of SnapStream closed captioning found the first mention on Sunday’s Fox & Friends: Weekend.“Well, Dr. Anthony Fauci will be back in front of lawmakers this week when he testifies before Senator Rand Paul’s committee again on the origins of COVID-19…Fauci denies all wrongdoing, including claims he directed NIH employees to destroy federal records,” co-host Griff Jenkins began ahead of an interview with COVID whistleblower Jamie Metzl. 

ABC, CBS, and NBC have completely ignored the bombshell revelations from @SenRandPaul about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary entries about Everything from the lab leak to fawning over his newfound fame in 2020.Here was the first mention on TV — Sunday’s ‘Fox & Friends: Weekend’ pic.twitter.com/WIKa5XqxmF— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 27, 2026

 Since then (as of this post), Fox News has had it multiple times, starting on Monday’s Fox & Friends, America’s Newsroom, Outnumbered, and America Reports.Our friends at Newsmax and Newsmax2 also had multiple segments, beginning with Sunday morning’s Sunday Report: 

Our friends at Newsmax and Newsmax2 also had multiple segments, beginning with Sunday morning’s ‘Sunday Report’By Monday afternoon, it was on ‘National Report,’ ‘First Edition,’ and ‘John Bachman Now.’ pic.twitter.com/lbeab7lscj— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 27, 2026

 By Monday afternoon, it appeared on other shows such as National Report, First Edition, and John Bachman Now.NewsNation also covered the diary dumps, but dedicated only two news briefs to the issue thus far, both from Sunday.Here was one of them, which aired in the 2:00 p.m. Eastern hour: 

NewsNation has also been on the case, but has dedicated only two news briefs to the issue thus far, both from Sunday.Here was one of them, which aired in the 2pm Eastern hour. pic.twitter.com/d9YjVATfcy— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 27, 2026

 Finally, there was this doozy from Monday’s Squawk Box on CNBC with co-host Joe Kernen repeatedly pressing former Trump FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb about his friend Fauci: 

Finally, there was this doozy from Monday’s ‘Squawk Box’ on CNBC with co-host Joe Kernen repeatedly pressing former Trump FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb about his friend Fauci. pic.twitter.com/kE94uOAzLY— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 27, 2026

 Most notably for NewsBusters, he admitted to dining with CNN’s Jake Tapper, and was close with other CNN hosts: 

“Had dinner at my home with Jake and Jennifer Tapper. Relaxed, good time. Jake clearly believes that Trump is totally nuts” pic.twitter.com/WFPjHwlsyK— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) July 27, 2026

Fauci had been lying to press and claiming he hadn’t talked to Biden team, but after Biden told the truth Tony confirmed it to CNN “in order not to have a contradiction.” pic.twitter.com/nut9CcbcvY— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) July 27, 2026

 Another CNN host was Dana Bash, who now hosts Inside Politics and co-hosts State of the Union. She allegedly told Fauci that Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) “trips over his own asshole”: 

Which media personalities fare the worse in Fauci’s diary? Some standouts. We can start w/ professional CNN journalist @DanaBashCNN emailing Fauci quotes about how “Jim Jordan trips over his own asshole trying to debate Anthony Fauci.” pic.twitter.com/wz9GkoFxo3— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 26, 2026

 Fauci also denounced The Blaze’s Steve Deace and Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore, but was an ally to now-View co-host and faux conservative, Alyssa Farah Griffin: 

Congrats @SteveDeaceShow – you made the diary. pic.twitter.com/RwqrRKIUN3— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) July 27, 2026

Fauci told the White House they “need to shut up @StephenMoore.”Sorry Tony there was no shutting up Steve or @Comm4Prosperity! pic.twitter.com/F6s6cQpkkF— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) July 27, 2026

Alyssa Farah to Fauci: “I am so sorry that fool Scott Atlas keeps attacking you. I’m even more sorry I’m not in a better position of influence to see him out the door. I’m trying to make people see he’s a disaster.” pic.twitter.com/4WfwKrwdrY— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) July 27, 2026

 Here was how the New York Post broke it down on Sunday:Dr. Anthony Fauci became increasingly fixated on his newfound fame as pandemic deaths soared, reveal the former White House COVID adviser’s newly released diary entries.As early as April 2020, when more than 60,000 people had already died of COVID in the United States, the man in charge of America’s response to the pandemic was obsessing about his recent stardom, according to journals released by Kentucky Republican Sen. and long-term Fauci critic Rand Paul.“Press still hot and heavy about me. Multiple stories per day directly or indirectly involving me,” Fauci wrote in an entry dated April 7, 2020, amid intensifying media coverage around the White House Coronavirus Task Force.On May 21, 2020, the top doc wrote that his “national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable,” adding it was “not hyperbole” to describe his celebrity in terms of global recognition, according to the diary.On COVID’s origins, Paul reported on January 26, 2020 that Fauci believed “the [Wuhan wet] market was not the source,” of COVID, but “the amplifier.” A meeting six days later with 11 other scientists showed Fauci wasn’t alone, as per his notes, 10 of the 12 believed it came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.He also lied about asymptomatic spread, insisting to then-White House official Larry Kudlow on February 12, 2020 this wasn’t possible, even though nine days prior, he had heard it was the case from the head of China’s equivalent of the CDC.—————————————————————– To see the relevant transcripts from July 26 and 27, click here (for Fox & Friends: Weekend), here (for NewsNation), here (for Fox & Friends), and here (CNBC).

Over there at the site of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is a reminder of the Gipper’s wisdom in dealing with foreign adversaries.
The reminder is headlined: “Peace Through Strength.”
And it opens with this Reagan reminder delivered when accepting the 1980 GOP presidential nomination in Detroit on July 17. Said the freshly nominated Reagan: “We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.”
The Library goes on with a lengthy reminder of Reagan’s words that night. My younger self was there in person listening to the man who would, down the road, be my boss in his second White House term. And there was no mistaking his meaning that night in 1980.
Today the Reagan Library records this:
“The foundation of Reagan’s foreign policy, known as the Reagan Doctrine, was the support of freedom for all people around the world. His commitment to the idea of ‘peace through strength’ led to the modernization of our military forces. During Reagan’s administration, the size of the U.S. Army grew by two active divisions and saw the development of new weapons systems. The Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” was announced as a defense against a nuclear attack. It was President Reagan’s hope that his new military initiatives would not only contain communism but defeat it.”
That was indeed Reagan’s hope. And while all manner of supposed foreign policy wise men from the Washington Establishment insisted Reagan was getting things dangerously wrong, the new president was convinced he was right.
In fact, the staff of the day was told that Reagan had been asked by a staff member what his view of dealing with the Soviet Union in the Cold War was, and the president responded simply: “We win, they lose.”
This was a point of view that came close to terrifying the Washington and foreign policy establishment. After all, since the end of World War II and the beginning of what became known as the “Cold War,” the accepted “wisdom” of the foreign policy wizards was that peaceful “co-existence” was the fact of life in the new Cold War. Anything other than that was seriously dangerous and likely to provoke a World War III.
And while all manner of so-called “wise men” in the Establishment of the day insisted Reagan was wrong, in fact he was decidedly right on the money. He raised the budget of military spending and made clear that Soviet interventions in places like Central America and Europe were not to be tolerated.
And surprise, surprise, Reagan was right on the money. Shortly after he left office eight years later — an eight-year period where Reagan built up the U.S. military in massive fashion — the Soviet Union would in fact collapse, bringing to an end decades of Communist interventions around the globe. Not to mention the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.
Among much else, there was enthusiastic support from the people of Berlin when Reagan visited and encouraged the people of Berlin to heed Reagan’s call to “tear down this wall.”
And amazingly enough, that is exactly what happened.
What does this history have to do with President Trump?
In short, everything.
In today’s world, it is President Trump who is standing up with visible support of the “peace through strength” doctrine. This time an American president is dealing not with the adversary that was the Soviet Union — although Russia’s Vladimir Putin lurks in the shadows.  This time the out-front adversary is Iran, a country that has cast itself in an adversarial role with the United States since the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran way back there in 1979.
But while the U.S. adversaries may be different then and now, the hard fact is that dealing with both revolved and revolves around the same principle of peace through strength that Reagan relied on.
Is this easy to do? Decidedly not. In Reagan’s day, there was all manner of open opposition to his policies. Among other things, there were protests with thousands in different spots around the globe and America itself taking to the streets to protest Reagan’s policies.
As just one sample was this headline from The New York Times in June of 1984: “Thousands in London Protest U.S.A.-Arms Policy.”
The story reported this:
According to the organizers, more than 150,000 people took part in the march, including such well-known figures as Michael Foot, the former leader of the Labor party, and Susannah York, the actress. About 200 of the marchers carried irises as a symbol of peace. At the head of the line of march was an 18-foot-long cardboard model of a United States cruise missile and placards saying, ”Return to sender.” Britain to Get 160 Missiles
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament advocates the removal of all nuclear arms from this country, including the cruise missiles that were installed near London in December. Britain is ultimately to receive 160 of the 572 cruise missiles in Europe.
The point is crystal clear. As President Trump now deals with the serious adversary that is Iran, he is employing “peace through strength” as the key of his policy.
Which is to say, the president is using the time-tested principles of dealing with an adversary employed by American presidents whether the presidents were named Reagan, Nixon, Kennedy, Roosevelt or, going way back, Lincoln.
In short, President Trump gets it.
And America and the world are safer exactly because he does.
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Less than two years ago, President Donald Trump ran largely on a platform of mass deportations. Tariffs, tax breaks, affordability, crime control, election integrity, and a noninterventionist foreign policy also all featured, but immigration issues dominated Trump’s 2024 campaign, with the president pledging over and over to conduct the largest mass deportation program in the nation’s history. The gravity of delivering on that promise cannot be overstated.
During his campaign, Trump highlighted the brutal murders committed by illegal aliens ushered into the nation by then-President Joe Biden’s open-border policies. Twenty-two-year-old nursing student Laken Riley “would be alive today if Joe Biden had not willfully and maliciously eviscerated the borders,” Trump pointed out in a campaign speech. Instead, Laken was accosted by Venezuelan national José Ibarra, who attempted to rape her and, failing that, beat her to death with a stone, crushing her skull. Mother-of-five Rachel Morin was walking a family-favorite trail in Maryland when Salvadoran national Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez dragged her into a tunnel, raped her, and beat her to death. Mexican national Brandon Ortiz Vite shot and killed his girlfriend, 25-year-old Ruby Garcia, on the side of a highway in Michigan. Venezuelan nationals Johan José Martínez-Rangel and Franklin José Peña Ramos were encountered by U.S. Border Patrol agents and paroled into the U.S. in the first half of 2024. Weeks later, the two strangled, tied up, and sexually assaulted 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, later dumping her body in a ditch.
These crimes, and many others like them, outraged the American people, whose anger propelled President Trump back to the White House in a historic election, signaling an end to this era of lawlessness. But it will take more than a signal to restore safety, security, and sovereignty to the American people. Enacting mass deportations is not a pleasant task: it requires the mass arrest of millions of people and shipping them back to countries that many Americans would never even consider for a vacation, let alone a mission trip, in addition to resisting the emotional blackmail and propaganda of the leftist machine. But this must be done.
This article is from The American Spectator’s summer 2026 print magazine. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive the magazine.
In March of this year, more than a year after President Trump’s return to the White House, Honduran national Samuel Antonio Maldonado-Erazo beat a 3-year-old child to death in Florida. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, first responders found that the 3-year-old “had extensive bruising across his body, several burn marks, several broken ribs — one of which was detached from the backbone — a broken collarbone, and a transected pancreas, which raised concerns of possible sexual abuse.”
Mexican national Conrrado Ahuexoteco Atrisco sexually assaulted a 14-year-old high school girl in Utah. Honduran nationals Franquin Inestroza-Martinez and Gerzon Jose Chirinos-Munguia shot and killed the 24-year-old mother of Chirinos-Munguia’s son in California. Honduran national Bairon Posada-Hernandez shoved 83-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran Richard Williams onto the New York City subway tracks, killing him. Mexican national Ernesto Lopez-Gomez killed a 62-year-old man in a hit-and-run in North Carolina. Illegal alien Francisco Mendez-Martin murdered his wife of one month, 20-year-old Karla Rangel, in Texas. Guatemalan national Carlos Aguilar Reynoso raped a 5-year-old girl, who required surgery to repair the damage he did to her genitals. Illegal alien Misael Lopez Gomez murdered his 3-month-old daughter, whom he regularly abused, via what the Fairfax County chief medical examiner determined to be “blunt force trauma.” All of these incidents occurred in March 2026. The Federation for American Immigration Reform has tracked over one hundred serious crimes committed by illegal aliens since President Trump’s return to office.
Venezuelan national Jose Medina-Medina also shot and killed 18-year-old Loyola University Chicago freshman Sheridan Gorman in March. The Catholic college girl was out for a walk with friends when Medina-Medina, who had no prior criminal record, shot and killed Sheridan as she tried to run from him. In April, Nigerian national Olaolukitan Adon Abel shot and killed a 31-year-old woman and a 48-year-old man in two separate incidents in Atlanta before shooting and stabbing 40-year-old Lauren Bullis, who was out walking her dog. 
Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our summer 2026 print magazine.
There is a point to going into such gory detail when recounting all of these murders, rapes, and assaults: mass immigration (in particular, illegal immigration) poses an existential threat to the life of the nation. That isn’t a novel concept, it’s the very sentiment that propelled President Trump to a second term in the White House, even after Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media spent nearly a decade slandering him as Adolf Hitler reincarnate and hunting down and prosecuting his deputies and supporters.
That fiery sentiment is still alive and well. Millions of Americans have spent years watching their daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, grandchildren, classmates, roommates, coworkers, and friends be raped, stabbed to death, beheaded, set on fire, run over, and killed in countless other barbaric manners, knowing that the barbaric killers should have never been in the U.S.
Right now, the federal government has the opportunity to restore American safety, security, and sovereignty by expelling the foreign invaders who have transformed the nation into a violent, treacherous jungle, thus giving Americans back their home, the home that their ancestors founded, built, beautified, and preserved, always at the price of sweat and tears and often at the price of blood. Right now, this can be done in a humane manner. Despite the wailing and lamentations of unhinged left-wing activists, mass deportations are a kindness; they constitute returning those in the nation unlawfully to their places of origin — or even to safe third countries when their places of origin are inhospitable or dangerous. This is a sensible, feasible, and even respectful means of addressing the existential threat to the American nation and her people.
The window of opportunity, however, is rapidly closing. The kindest response would be shipping illegal aliens out of the country. The murders, rapes, sexual assaults, and horrors heaped upon the American people by mass immigration (again, especially illegal immigration) cannot continue, will not continue. 
Already, mass deportations are no easy matter. Leftist activists whine and cry, and media outlets incessantly post videos and pictures of weeping abuelas and little boys in Cookie Monster hats on the verge of tears. Legal and judicial activists are working overtime to halt the deportation of murderers, rapists, human traffickers, and drug dealers. That’s tough, but it’s far easier to deal with than whatever the situation will be in five years’ or 10 years’ time, if this matter is left unaddressed. At that point, even the cry-baby leftist activists will ask for mass deportations, but it will be too late.
Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our summer 2026 print magazine. 
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The Cold War did not end in Cuba so much as change patrons, technologies, and uniforms. The enormous Soviet listening station at Lourdes was closed more than two decades ago, but the infrastructure, trained personnel, intelligence culture, and geographic advantages that made the island valuable to Moscow survived under the control of a communist dictatorship that has now placed Cuban territory and technical capabilities at the service of the People’s Republic of China.
The presence of hostile electronic installations in Cuba has taken on new urgency following President Trump’s recent alarms over an upsurge in Chinese electronic espionage and Cuban subversion in the U.S. Fresh U.S. intelligence assessments, commercial satellite imagery and recently intensified American surveillance operations around the island indicate an extensive network of signals intelligence installations, some of which are controlled or operated by China and Russia, using Cuban territory, infrastructure, and intelligence capabilities. (RELATED: Cuba Is Prepared to Be a Second Iran)
Cuba is not merely an island from which China spies. It is a dictatorship that has once again rented its strategic geography to an enemy of the United States.
The relationship between Havana and Beijing is too often treated as an economic partnership between two distant communist governments or as an expression of Cuba’s chronic search for foreign subsidies. That interpretation misses the essential point. Cuba is valuable to China not because of the strength of its ruined economy, the productivity of its paralyzed industries, or the purchasing power of its impoverished population. Cuba is valuable because it lies at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, beside vital Caribbean shipping lanes, and approximately 90 miles from the most strategically concentrated region of the southeastern United States. (RELATED: Secretary Rubio Gets It)
According to U.S. intelligence assessments reported by the Wall Street Journal on May 22, 2026, 18 signals intelligence installations have been identified in Cuba. Three are actively operated by China, two by Russia, and the remainder formally operate under the Cuban military. China and Russia have reportedly tripled the number of intelligence personnel assigned to these operations since 2023, while several of the installations have received new and more sophisticated equipment.
The complete list of the 18 sites has not been publicly released. Nor has Washington declassified the identities of the five facilities attributed directly to China and Russia or the intelligence used to reach those conclusions. That secrecy limits the public’s ability to reconstruct every part of the network, but it does not erase the central finding of the assessments. China is not merely advising Cuba, selling it telecommunications equipment, or exchanging intelligence; it operates intelligence facilities on Cuban territory.
Florida, which lies just 90 miles from Cuba, is home to U.S. Southern Command, U.S. Central Command, Naval Air Station Key West, MacDill Air Force Base, Cape Canaveral, major military ports, aerospace facilities, submarine operations, extensive defense and communications infrastructure, and President Donald Trump’s summer White House in Palm Beach.
The Director of the Americas Project at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, Ryan C. Berg, told the House Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security in May 2025 that intelligence installations in Cuba could provide coverage of approximately 20 sensitive bases and facilities in and around Florida, including Cape Canaveral and the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command.
Signals intelligence, or SIGINT, does not depend only on breaking into the content of a particular conversation. It can collect frequencies, locations, transmission schedules, electronic signatures, communications patterns, and changes in operational behavior. When accumulated and studied over time, that information can reveal military exercises, aircraft and naval movements, changes in alert status, the activation of particular systems, and the technical characteristics of American defenses. Even encrypted communications can expose valuable metadata and operational patterns.
The installations also potentially place sensitive civilian activity within range. Commercial space launches, telecommunications providers, shipping companies, ports, and contractors may not possess the same communications protections as the military. Berg warned Congress that private companies operating near Cape Canaveral could be particularly vulnerable because they conduct strategically important activities while competing directly with China in space. Cuba offers Beijing a vantage point not only over military forces, but also over civilian technologies and logistical networks.
The Cuban regime runs extensive human espionage and subversive networks in the U.S. that complement China’s efforts to manipulate the U.S. political system, denounced by President Trump in his July 23 speech to the nation. Far-left groups with defined communist agendas such as Democratic Socialists of America maintain active ties with Cuba’s regime while receiving financial support from China. DSA activists regularly visit the island and meet with Cuban intelligence officials on trips arranged through the Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, currently under U.S. federal investigation for its financial ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Capabilities to hack into computer systems containing electoral information, eavesdrop on sensitive telephone conversations on unprotected private lines, and monitor internet traffic across the U.S. could crucially aid current efforts by communist groups to gain political power and leverage in the U.S. (RELATED: The Castroist Playbook Comes to America)
Defense analysts note that SIGINT and satellite tracking facilities in Cuba could double as a base for electronic jamming operations that could disrupt military tactical communications, GPS networks, and clandestinely support terrorist operations.
According to Congressional sources, during the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, U.S. intelligence agencies traced attempts to penetrate the signal codes of Air Force One carrying President George Bush back to Washington from Florida, triggering the decision to divert the presidential aircraft to Colorado. It’s strongly suspected that the operation was conducted from SIGINT installations in Cuba that could also now define targets and guide surgical strikes by Shahed drones recently acquired from Iran.
Successive U.S. administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have tended to downplay Cuba as a national security threat, influenced possibly by high-level Cuban moles in the intelligence bureaucracy such as a senior Latin America analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency and a State Department ambassador who served on the National Security Council, and who could be tried and convicted as Cuban spies. But the institutional sedation over Cuba appears to be ending under the Trump administration, which has authorized more than 20 surveillance missions by manned and unmanned aircraft around the island over the past six months.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the matter directly at Miami-Homestead Airport on May 21, describing the Russian and Chinese intelligence presence in Cuba as a national security problem. The Cuban dictatorship supplies territory, protection, local personnel, decades of intelligence experience, and the cooperation of its military and security agencies. Beijing and Moscow contribute technology, resources, specialists, and access to broader intelligence systems. (RELATED: The Son of Cuba Takes on the Last Communist Neighbor)
The State Department’s 2026 report, Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism, places those installations inside a broader diagnosis of Havana’s function within what the document calls an “Anti-American Internationale.” The report states that China actively operates three of the eighteen known SIGINT installations, notes that certain Russian and Chinese bases appear to be joint operations with Cuban agencies, and describes the Chinese presence as an acute danger to American military operational security. Cuba is presented not as an irrelevant failed state, but as a force multiplier that allows larger adversaries to operate from the strategic approaches to the United States.
The roots of that arrangement can be traced to a February 1999 visit to Cuba by Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Chi Haotian, who met with Raúl Castro, then Cuba’s defense minister.
According to Berg’s congressional testimony, the two governments reached an agreement granting China access to former Soviet listening stations, including Bejucal, located less than 10 miles from Lourdes. The same testimony cited reports that China helped transfer equipment intended to interfere with Radio Martí broadcasts, an early indication that the relationship combined foreign intelligence gathering with the internal and external information war conducted by Havana.
The military relationship continued to deepen. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission reported that Chinese and Cuban military officials held 33 meetings between 2003 and 2016. China assisted Cuba with communications equipment, air-defense modernization, maintenance of Soviet-era aircraft, and improvements to some MiG-21 fighters. The commission also reported a physical Chinese presence at intelligence facilities of Soviet origin at Lourdes, Bejucal, and Santiago de Cuba for the collection of signals intelligence.
Cuba’s importance to Beijing extends beyond the antenna fields. Chinese companies became central providers for the island’s telecommunications infrastructure. Congressional testimony has identified Huawei, ZTE, and TP-Link among the principal suppliers to ETECSA, the state monopoly that controls Cuban communications.
Chinese technology has helped Havana build not merely an internet network, but an architecture capable of surveillance, censorship, and politically motivated shutdowns. During nationwide protests in July 2021, the regime used its control over telecommunications to interrupt communications among demonstrators and obstruct the flow of images to the outside world. Beijing’s contribution to Cuba therefore serves two related purposes: protecting the dictatorship from its own population and expanding the technical infrastructure from which intelligence can be collected on the United States.
The Soviet precedent explains how this collaboration works. Lourdes, near Havana, was once the largest Soviet signals intelligence station outside the USSR. It reportedly housed approximately 1,500 operatives and supplied Moscow with an extraordinary volume of military intelligence concerning the United States. Cuba retained formal sovereignty over the territory, but no serious observer hesitated to call Lourdes a Soviet base because the Soviet Union supplied the personnel, equipment, technology, and operational command while Havana provided the land, political protection, and cooperation.
Vladimir Putin announced the closure of Lourdes in October 2001, and the complex ceased operating as a Russian intelligence station the following year. President George W. Bush welcomed the decision as the dismantling of a Cold War relic. Yet what disappeared was the Soviet operation at Lourdes, not Cuba’s expertise in electronic intelligence. The communist regime retained trained technicians, its own listening sites, relationships with foreign intelligence services, and an institutional culture developed through decades of monitoring the United States.
China gradually filled the vacuum left by the Soviets. In June 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that China and Cuba had reached a secret agreement to establish an electronic listening facility and that Beijing would provide Havana with several billion dollars.
The Biden administration initially challenged aspects of that report, but U.S. officials ultimately confirmed it, explaining that it was not new. They acknowledged that Beijing had been conducting intelligence operations from the island for years and had upgraded its collection facilities in 2019, the same year in which Chinese electronic espionage against the U.S. surged, according to President Trump’s July 23 speech.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the time confirmed that China had modernized its intelligence capabilities in Cuba during that year. Beginning in 2024, the public record moved beyond official declarations and press leaks. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies examined commercial satellite imagery and identified four principal locations considered highly likely to support Chinese intelligence collection: Bejucal, Wajay, Calabazar, and El Salao. Three are clustered around Havana. The fourth lies near Santiago de Cuba, close enough to observe activity in the eastern Caribbean and around the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo.
The satellite images cannot identify every technician inside a building or disclose the terms of secret agreements. They can show the construction of antenna fields, the movement and reorientation of dishes, protected compounds, technical buildings, possible underground facilities, and the development of specialized systems designed for the interception and geolocation of radio signals. When those images are considered alongside congressional testimony, government assessments, the history of Lourdes, and two decades of records describing Chinese involvement in Cuba, they reveal a coherent strategic progression.
The most consequential evidence is at Bejucal, where a large circularly disposed antenna array containing 32 antennas now appears complete and has begun operating. It is larger and potentially more capable than any previously observed Cuban system of the same type. At the opposite end of the island, El Salao presents a more complicated picture, with a strategically located project that has advanced slowly and may have been delayed or redesigned. Bejucal and El Salao are only two parts of the visible network. Wajay and Calabazar contain different antenna configurations and may perform complementary collection, transmission, or satellite-related functions.
Cuba is not merely an island from which China spies. It is a dictatorship that has once again rented its strategic geography to an enemy of the United States. Washington’s responsibility is to expose that bargain, raise its cost, establish enforceable limits, protect the infrastructure already within range, and ensure that Beijing understands that 90 miles from Florida is not an uncontested frontier for communist expansion.
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Martin Arostegui is a terrorism analyst who has reported from conflict zones around the world for various news organizations, including Voice of America, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Telegraph, Fox News, CNN, the Washington Times, the London Times, The Sun and Diario las Américas. He is the author of a book on Special Forces called Twilight Warriors (Bloomsbury, St. Martin’s).
Luis Leonel León, executive director of the Cuban Studies Institute, is a Cuban writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker living in exile in Florida. His work appears in media outlets across the United States, Latin America, and Europe. He has produced films and documentary series for several television networks.

When more than 100 Congressional Democrats — and a solitary Republican crossing the aisle — voted last week to strip military aid from Israel, it revealed a growing cultural undercurrent in which Israel, and increasingly, Jews themselves, are becoming the preferred scapegoats for a generation’s economic and moral anxieties.
Recent polling reveals that 29 percent of Americans aged 18-44 now view Jews as a “threat to the unity of American society.” Among Gen Z, the numbers are even more concerning, as only 52 percent believe Israel has a right to exist. A new Yale Youth Poll found that 27 percent of 18-to 22-year-olds say Jews have “too much power.” Another 21 percent support boycotting Jewish-owned businesses, and 18 percent of 18-to 22-year-olds said Jews have a negative impact on the United States. Among voters overall, 35 percent agreed with ending all foreign aid to Israel. That share rises to 55 percent of voters aged 18-22 and 52 percent of voters aged 23-29. (RELATED: Post-Identity Antisemitism: The New Obsession With Israel)
These numbers signal a growing hostility in which Jews are becoming the proxy for a generation’s financial fears and cultural chaos. There has been a growing temptation to locate a single group to blame as today’s pressures are pushing many younger Americans to channel their anger toward Jews, especially Jews associated with Israel. (RELATED: Democrats at the Crossroads)
René Girard — the French theorist who argued that societies under stress instinctively look for someone to blame — believed that scapegoats appear when social pressures reach a breaking point. His work on mimetic theory showed that communities often redirect their frustration toward a group that seems both visible and vulnerable. That dynamic is now resurfacing in the hostility toward Israel and the Jewish people. Scapegoating is beginning to thrive as young people feel both morally burdened and mimetically inflamed. Similar dynamics unfolded in the Weimar Republic when economic instability and cultural fragmentation created fertile ground for the identification of Jews as the obstacle to national harmony and societal progress. Once a society’s younger members start viewing a minority as uniquely powerful and responsible for its problems, the cycle of rivalry and blame intensifies.
When shared meaning collapses, scapegoats fill the void.
Today’s Gen Z — raised in an algorithmic environment that amplifies outrage and competitive victimhood online — has inherited a cultural script in which Israel is increasingly portrayed as the central impediment to global justice. It is precisely the kind of move Girard warned against — one that reduces a complex conflict to a single group to blame — something that Girard called the “surrogate-victim-mechanism.” This shift is not simply political. It is sociological, as the collapse of shared norms, the fading trust in institutions like the family, the church, and — most visibly — the government, combined with the rise of performative online outrage and virtue signaling, has created the kind of environment where younger Americans feel normless and overwhelmed.
In my book, Politics of Envy, I argued that envy-driven scapegoating rarely stays symbolic for long. Once a society begins funneling its frustrations onto a single group, the pressure to move from metaphor to action grows. We are seeing early signs of that pattern now. A generation raised amid economic uncertainty and cultural fragmentation is searching for clarity. In that search, Jews are increasingly cast as the obstacle to the world they believe they were promised. When shared meaning collapses, scapegoats fill the void.
What we are witnessing now is a breakdown in the shared cultural framework that once kept social tensions in check. As common norms erode and institutions lose credibility, people begin searching for meaning in more proactive ways — sometimes through violence. Social media accelerates that collapse by rewarding outrage and identifying the villains. Scapegoating becomes a kind of social shortcut — a way to make sense of chaos by locating a single group to absorb the blame. The move from online to real-world consequences can happen quickly, especially when a generation feels economically squeezed and convinced that someone must be standing in the way of the future they felt they were promised. (RELATED: The New Brownshirts?)
The antisemitism that permeated the culture of Germany in the decade before the Holocaust did not spontaneously originate with racist ideology or religious animosity. Rather, a growing number of scholars, including German historian Gotz Aly in his book, Why the Germans? Why the Jews?, suggested that the virulent hatred toward the Jews in Germany in the 1930s and 40s was rooted in envy of the advantages enjoyed by the Jews. The fact is that the National Socialist Party itself — the Nazi Party — was itself propelled by envy, and today’s Democratic Socialist movement similarly uses envy as the engine of its appeal. New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani has tapped into that same dynamic, using envy as the emotional fuel for his brand of Democratic Socialism — and antisemitism — in New York City. Mamdani has consistently referred to Israel’s retaliatory actions in Gaza as a “genocide” — a word he had used to describe previous Israeli military conflicts, long before October 7. He has also said that the United States, through its support of Israel, is “subsidizing a genocide.” (RELATED: Mamdani Peddles the Myths Fueling Democrats’ Antisemitism)
Gotz Aly pointed out that sociologist Werner Sombart documented the cultural milieu that reigned throughout the decades before the Holocaust. In a sociological analysis of academia during the pre-Holocaust period in Germany, Sombart found that on average, “Jews are quite a lot more clever and industrious than we are,” and he used that insight to justify prohibiting Jews from holding academic chairs in universities. Regretting that it was “regrettable” that most of the time, if there were two candidates, “the stupider one, not the Jew was chosen.” Aly pointed out that Sombart was “not a racist” even though the logic of racial antisemitism drove his arguments. Still, Sombart — like many German intellectuals — later embraced virulent antisemitic ideas. In his 1934 book, German Socialism, he deemed the Nazi regime a legal form of state, recommending that Jews be stripped of their rights. He warned that “In order to liberate us from the Jewish intellect, which should be a main task of the German people and above all of socialism, it is not enough to shut out all the Jews … the entire institutional culture should be reconfigured so that it can no longer serve as a bulwark of the Jewish intellect.”
Aly documents dozens of instances of antisemitic writings by envious Gentile professors during the decades prior to the Holocaust. He recalls that the economist Gustav Schmoller warned that “despite their obvious intellectual superiority,” he found it proper to admit only small numbers of Jews to the higher ranks of the military or civil service. As a result, dozens of brilliant Jewish scholars were excluded from academia just because they were Jewish.
University of Berlin historian Dietrich Schafer wrote a scathing evaluation aimed at preventing Georg Simmel, one of the founders of modern sociology, from being given an academic chair at the University of Heidelberg. The son of Jewish converts, Simmel, whose work is still studied and respected by sociologists, was denigrated by Schafer as “an Israelite through and through, in his external appearance, his demeanor and the character of his intellect.” Envious and resentful descriptions of Simmel’s talents were woven through Schafer’s evaluation of the popular lecturer, who was accused of possessing a “pseudo-intellectual manner that is greatly valued by certain circles of listeners in Berlin.” Schafer even mocked Simmel’s students who “flooded to and settled in Berlin from the eastern countries semester after semester … There’s not a lot that’s positive to be gleaned from his lectures, but people do get a momentary prick of excitement and intellectual enjoyment.” Obviously, Simmel was not hired at the University of Heidelberg.
Despite the discrimination, their intellectual advantage contributed to the growing envy toward what became known as the “Jewish advantage.” As Aly pointed out, the economic rise of entrepreneurial Jews was the main reason that hatred for Jews became part of the culture of the broad masses. Tax records reveal that in Frankfurt in the early 20th century, the average Jew paid four times as much in taxes as the average Protestant and eight times as much as the average Catholic. In Berlin, Jews accounted for 30 percent of city tax revenues, even though they constituted only 15 percent of the tax-paying population, and only 5 percent of the total population. In 1934, sociologist Jakob Lestschinsky noted that German Jews had more advantages than comparable classes in the non-Jewish population. Prior to World War I, German Jews earned five times the income of the average Christian.
History has shown that the kind of hostility directed toward the Jews in the past does not remain symbolic; it hardens into policy, exclusion, and eventually violence. That is the danger when Mayor Zohran Mamdani-style calls for envy become a political tool for mobilization. Once a society convinces itself that one group’s success is the source of everyone else’s frustration, scapegoating stops being symbolic and begins shaping real behavior. The lesson for us is not that history repeats itself, but that envy — when weaponized — can move quickly from resentment to action. It is a warning worth remembering.
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