Welcome to From the Politics Desk, a daily newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, Andrea Mitchell examines the next chapter in U.S.-Cuba relations after Raúl Castro’s indictment. Plus, Allan Smith zeroes in on a handful of critical House contests that were set in yesterday’s primaries in battleground Pennsylvania.
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— Adam Wollner
President Donald Trump has been saying for months that the regime in Havana had to go, one way or another. Today, his Justice Department took a big step toward making that happen by indicting Raúl Castro — the 94-year-old former Cuban president and brother of Fidel Castro — in connection with the killing of four unarmed anti-Castro activists from Miami 30 years ago.
The Cuban exiles were piloting two small Cessna planes when they were shot down by Cuban Air force pilots flying Soviet-made MIG jets. Raúl Castro was defense minister at the time and allegedly ordered the attack. Five pilots were also indicted today.
Announcing the indictment at Miami’s Freedom Tower, an iconic landmark for Cuban Americans, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said there is a warrant issued for Castro’s arrest.“This isn’t a show indictment,” Blanche said. “This is an indictment because we expect that he will show up here either on his own will or by another way.” Pressed on whether the U.S. could extract Castro in a similar fashion as Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, Blanche said, “I would say to those who wonder, is this just an indictment and we’ll go away, we’re not.”
Military experts acknowledge that Cuba would be a more difficult target than Venezuela, where the U.S was tracking Maduro and had intelligence on his precise whereabouts. Venezuela had been Cuba’s chief source of oil. But since Maduro’s capture in January, the U.S. Navy has been blocking fuel and other supplies from reaching the island. Shortages have led to daily blackouts, and the lack of food and medicine is now critical.
In a social media post in Spanish today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, born to Cuban American parents, said that the U.S. is ready to open a new chapter in relations with Cuba, but the only thing standing in the way are those who control the country — the regime.
Families of the four Miami pilots killed and other community members cheered the indictments, which they had been demanding for three decades. It is a politically powerful decision and a strong hint of more to come. Florida’s large, politically active population of Cuban émigrés has exerted outsized leverage on presidents of both parties for a half-century.
Breaking with the past, Barack Obama as president re-established diplomatic relations with the communist regime, going to Havana for a state visit, holding a joint news conference with Raúl Castro and attending a baseball game with him in 2016. In his first term, Trump reversed many of the Obama initiatives, tightening the economic sanctions against Cuba. Now, Trump and Rubio are saying they want to force the regime to reform, without ruling out the use of force.
The National Security Archives, an investigative research institute, published declassified documents from the mid-90s, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, revealing that the Federal Aviation Administration had repeatedly warned the White House and the State Department for more than a year that the anti-Castro group was risking a confrontation with Cuba by crossing into what Havana claimed as its airspace and occasionally dropping anti-Castro leaflets. At the time, in 1996, two senior officials told NBC News the administration was not willing to oppose the Miami group while then-President Bill Clinton was seeking re-election.
According to another email, a month before the incident, an FAA official warned that “further taunting of the Cuban government” could lead to a “worst-case scenario,” and that “one of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes and the FAA better have all its ducks in a row.” Another memo reported that the White House had been warned the previous August of a “major fear” that a plane could be downed. For a year, the Cuban government had been issuing protests about the flights to the FAA.
Rubio has said that the administration will not tolerate a country only 90 miles away to be a national security threat. The Cubans say they are not a threat to the U.S. and accuse the administration of being the aggressor.
It appears that today is only the beginning of the next important chapter in U.S. relations with Cuba since the 1959 revolution.
Democrats turned out in unusually high numbers for Georgia’s primaries yesterday, but that did not help the party flip two state Supreme Court elections that were happening alongside the party contests. And an NBC News Decision Desk analysis of vote data shows how Democrats’ partisan turnout advantage broke down in certain counties.
👟 More for subscribers: Democrats are racing to one region ahead of the 2028 presidential primaries, by Jonathan Allen
Control of the House of Representatives could come down to four pivotal battleground races in Pennsylvania.
With an increasingly limited map of competitive seats, both Democrats and Republicans are emphasizing the importance of these campaigns, which are about to see a flood of money and investment from both sides.
A potential 2028 presidential contender, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has emphasized these four races, making primary endorsements in each contest and signaling he will be deeply involved in them as November nears. Help the battleground Democrats win, and Shapiro will be able to tell Democratic presidential voters about how he helped the party retake the House and defeat a broad spectrum of Republican House members. Fall short, and his political strength will come under further scrutiny.
And there’s the Donald Trump factor, too. Pennsylvania — a state critical to his 2016 and 2024 victories — is one of his most-trafficked campaign stops. Republican wins, including by one of his closest congressional allies, would bolster his own political strength amid what is shaping up as a difficult election cycle for the GOP. Unlike Shapiro, though, Trump has yet to signal how big a role he will play in these contests.
Yesterday’s primaries locked in the cast of characters in these districts, though most of the matchups were virtually assured beforehand.
In Pennsylvania’s 1st District, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick — one of the only congressional Republicans who won a district carried by then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 — will face Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie. In the 7th District, first-term Rep. Ryan Mackenzie will face state firefighters union head Bob Brooks in the state’s swingiest district. In the neighboring 8th District, another first-term Republican, Rep. Rob Bresnahan, will face off with Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti. And in the state’s 10th District, Rep. Scott Perry, the onetime head of the House Freedom Caucus, will face former newscaster Janelle Stelson in a rematch of a 2024 contest Perry narrowly won.
NBC News spoke with more than a dozen Pennsylvania political operatives, national strategists working on the races, and candidates running in them. The picture that emerged was one of a Democratic Party eager to zoom in on a tightly clustered group of pick-up opportunities and tag-team the races with Shapiro, while Republicans, aware of the challenges that lie ahead, hope that their battle-tested incumbents can withstand the onslaught.
And the candidates from both sides, meanwhile, are portraying themselves as above Washington, D.C., partisanship and in touch with working-class concerns.
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.
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