Critical State: The Odds of Trump Attacking Cuba Are Growing
If you read just one thing this week ... read about Trump 2.0's war plans for the blockaded island.
At Politico, Nahal Toosi’s new column explains that the Trump administration has grown increasingly willing to carry out military strikes against Cuba, a significant escalation from earlier months when officials were focused primarily on economic and diplomatic pressure to squeeze the communist government in Havana. A US official and a person familiar with internal discussions confirmed the shift.
The administration’s frustration centers on the failure of its pressure campaign, which includes starving the island of fuel, to force Cuba’s leaders into political or economic concessions. “The mood has definitely changed,” said a person familiar with the internal discussions. The initial theory that Cuban leadership is weak and would fold quickly has not played out as expected.
US Southern Command has in recent weeks “convened a planning series,” meaning it has begun drafting plans for potential military action. Options under consideration range from a single airstrike intended to scare the regime into concessions to a ground invasion aimed at removing it from power entirely. A White House official was careful to note that the preparation “does not mean the president has made a decision.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also hardened his public messaging in preceding weeks, shifting from an emphasis on economic reform to an explicit call for political change and the removal of “the people in charge.” The administration has framed military action partly as a national security necessity, citing Cuba’s ties to Moscow and Beijing. Former US officials and analysts, though, warn that treating Cuba as an easy target could prove a serious miscalculation.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel responded on Monday, writing on X that US military aggression “would provoke a bloodbath of incalculable consequences.” Former senior CIA official Brian Latell has also warned that a limited strike might not achieve its goals, arguing that the administration “may be overestimating again what they could accomplish.”
If You Read One More Thing: Orbán’s Payroll for the Global Right
At Átlátszó, Zalán Zubor has obtained contracts through public data requests showing that the Danube Institute, a key arm of the Orbán government’s international influence network, paid out record sums in public funds to foreign right-wing figures in the year before Hungary’s election that ended in Fidesz’s landslide defeat.
The Lajos Batthyány Foundation, which operates the Danube Institute and professes to offer “support for democratic public life in Hungary,” paid over 420,000 euros to international fellows since 2021, with spending rising to more than 1.1 million euros in 2025, the highest total on record.
Fellows’ contracts went beyond standard research grants. Fellows were “instructed to appear in foreign and Hungarian media” and to cultivate contacts in academic, media, and right-wing circles abroad. Their publications reflected a uniform message that Orbán’s government was a model for the rising international right.
The foundation invoked GDPR privacy protections to conceal the names of most recipients, even though they received public funds and their names appeared on the institute’s own website. Several names are still discernible from the contract details, including those of British Conservative politician Lord David Frost.
The 2025 contracts include agreements that extend beyond the election, meaning that even after Fidesz’s defeat, foreign recipients may continue to draw Hungarian public money. The foundation’s spending primarily targeted Anglo-American conservative figures, with the institute’s reach also expanding into Asian countries.
How Palantir Gets Paid to Spy on Federal Workers
At The American Prospect, Whitney Curry Wimbish looks at the Trump administration’s initial award of a $3.9 million contract to Palantir to track Department of Agriculture employees’ return to the office, with federal spending disclosures showing the surveillance program is set to expand to the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The USDA contract, which began May 1 and has the potential to grow to $13.3 million, tasks Palantir with designing a tool to “track USDA employees’ return to the office.” Union officials have said that similar programs at the VA and SSA appear designed to justify closing offices rather than to measure any genuine need for them.
AFGE Council 220, which represents SSA workers, has warned that the surveillance is being deployed against a workforce already gutted by DOGE, which pushed out 7,000 SSA employees last year. Council 220 President Jessica LaPointe said the agency is “stretched thin as we face a 59-year staffing low.”
The surveillance program fits within OMB Director Russell Vought’s broader campaign to hollow out federal agencies. Vought has said publicly that he wants “to put them in trauma.” Palantir, the primary beneficiary, reported $1.6 billion in Q1 2026 revenue, an 85% increase over the same period the prior year.
Deep Dive: The Ever-Growing Cost of Trump’s Military Operations
A new report from Brown University’s Cost of War Project has found that United States President Donald Trump’s administration cost American taxpayers at least $4.7 billion with its bombing spree in Venezuela, the Caribbean, and the Eastern Pacific. This steep price tag covers the period of August 2025 to March 2026 and does not include “long-term budgetary costs” such as veterans’ benefits, the report notes, though those “will also accrue into the future.”
During that period, the raid that led to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s capture and a slew of attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific killed nearly 240 people. The Maduro raid alone resulted in the deaths of 32 Cuban personnel, 23 Venezuelan officers, and at least two civilians. Military strikes on boats killed at least 163 people, while a collision between two US ships killed an American military service member in February.
The report breaks down the costs to US taxpayers by the type of military operation. The naval deployment alone racked up a bill of more than $3.8 billion. Aircraft deployment, on the other hand, cost north of $616.3 million, while special operation forces came in at more than $15.9 million. Operation Absolute Resolve, the raid on Venezuela and kidnapping of its president, clocked in at more than $206.6 million. The munitions involved in strikes on vessels ranged between $12.5 million and a little more than $50.3 million.
Congress has still not authorized military operations in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, according to the report, and the Pentagon “has not provided information about costs of Venezuela-related operations, even as they continue to mount.”
The Cost of War Project points out that this tally is a “conservative estimate,” explaining: Full data for several cost categories are not publicly available, and certain operations — such as the details of a CIA operation in Venezuela referenced by President Trump — remain classified or incompletely reported in the public domain.”
Nor does the tally include several other expenses, such as rebuilding US military bases in Puerto Rico, maintaining a military presence in the region, or procurement, research, and development costs.
The Ford Carrier Strike Group, one of the costliest components of these operations in the Western Hemisphere, left the region in February to support the Trump administration’s war in Iran. Still, the costs have continued to grow — and the report explains that the “greatest costs may be yet to come.”
The Pentagon’s internal watchdog recently opened an inquiry into whether the Trump administration’s attacks on boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific followed proper procedures. For their part, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have sounded the alarm on the legality of such attacks in the Western Hemisphere.
In recent months, the Trump administration has also ramped up pressure on Cuba. Although Trump initially insisted that the US would not have to use its military to oust the government in Havana, his administration has more recently floated the idea of enacting regime change on the island.
The president campaigned on ending forever wars, but since returning to office in January 2025, he has overseen air strikes and drone attacks targeting at least seven countries on several continents. Last year, the Pentagon budget topped $1 trillion for the first time in history.
Those costs could still spike significantly. For the 2027 fiscal year, the Trump administration has requested a record $1.5 trillion military budget. A recent poll conducted by ReThink Media and the Costs of War Project found that some 60% of Americans believe the budget proposal is too high.
Show Us the Receipts
At Inkstick, Taylor Barnes covers the first of five court-ordered public hearings on plutonium pit production at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Nearly 100 people recently gathered in North Augusta to weigh in on whether new nuclear warhead production made them feel safe. Supporters cited economic benefits, but critics far outnumbered them, raising concerns about worker safety, environmental contamination, and arms proliferation. A man named Pete LaBerge, for instance, challenged the government’s safety record: “Does the knowledge and expertise exist at SRS to build a facility which will be safe for workers? History suggests that the answer is no.”
Abdalla Najjar reports on the story of Eyad Ghannam, a Syrian refugee who fled military conscription in 2015 and has since lived in Turkey, Syria, and Libya while trying to find a path forward. Ghannam described the harrowing mountain crossing that brought him into Lebanon: “Anyone who deviated from our smuggler’s instructions was facing a bullet to the head.” After Assad’s fall in December 2024, he set his sights on returning home, but the road remains uncertain. Syria expert and scholar Joshua Landis warned that pushing Syrians to return too soon is “unfair and harmful,” with well over 60% of the population living in poverty.
At The World, Carolyn Beeler speaks with Ed Augustin on Cuba’s complete depletion of fuel oil and diesel reserves, producing the island’s worst blackouts in decades and widespread nightly protests. Journalist Ed Augustin, reporting from Cuba’s eastern provinces, describes conditions as bleak across nearly every measure of daily life. Cuba had already lost roughly 60% of its oil supply within a month at the start of 2026 after the Trump administration threatened tariffs against any country sending oil to the island. “We’re out of fuel oil, we’re absolutely out of diesel,” the Cuban energy minister acknowledged on national television. Augustin warned the crisis could become a full humanitarian emergency.
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Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.
The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.
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Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.