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Foreign It's Thursday, May 21, 2026. I'm Albert Moeller, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Big day in history. Yesterday, the scene, a federal courthouse in Miami. And there the acting Attorney General of the United States, Todd Blanche, stood to announce that authorities had issued multiple indictments against Cuban leaders, including Raul Castro, the former president of Cuba. The direct indictments include four counts of murder, one count of conspiracy to kill US Nationals, also two counts of the destruction of aircraft. This goes back to an attack by MiG jets of the Cuban Air Force against civilian planes, unarmed planes on a philanthropic mission. And this led to the deaths of four of those individuals who were trying to help the Cuban people. And you had the Cuban Air Force shoot them down. The violence was such that the bodies of the four were never located. They were probably just destroyed. In terms of the attack, this is big news. It's just giant news. And by the way, the location, of course, was not an accident because Miami is so close to Cuba and Miami is the central point of identity for many Cuban Americans. And there were a good many Cuban Americans, a good many people who had suffered directly under the repression of the Castro regime, who were celebrating the event, declaring it to be a long delayed action of righteousness and a call to justice. Let's just remind ourselves of what is at stake. We're talking about the Cuban Communist revolution. And it began as a revolution that wasn't explicitly communist. It turned far more explicitly communist after Fidel Castro, the senior revolutionary and the older brother of Raul Castro, the man who was indicted. It was Fidel Castro who really formed the government. And, and it did quickly become a Marxist, a communist revolution. And Cuba quickly sided with the Soviet Union. And Cuba became something of a satellite, as it was called. It became an allied power to the Soviets. And of course, this led to all kinds of things, including under Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the determination to locate nuclear missiles, that is Soviet nuclear missiles. They are just 90 miles from the American border. And that was something that, of course created an enormous challenge for then President John F. Kennedy. This led to what was known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. It led to a blockade. Eventually the Soviets withdrew. But there have been and are even now accusations. And I mentioned on the briefing the fact that the CIA director recently made a public trip to Cuba, that's just big news in itself. But some of the concerns the CIA director mentioned explicitly in terms of the American problem with the Cuban regime, and that means the current Cuban regime is an ongoing platform for intelligence and espionage against the United States on the part of foreign powers. And in this case, it's not only probably Russia, but China that is involved. So let's remember again some of the history here. So the Cuban Revolution, which became a Marxist revolution, it was a guerrilla movement. It was definitely intended to overthrow the Batista regime that had been put in place. And yet it really took on an overtly, explicitly Marxist identity. And that just grew deeper the decades. And thus you had a direct worldview clash between the United States, the big nation to the north, and Cuba, the smaller island nation to the south. By the way, there's a long history here, a very long history here, going all the way back to the founding of the United States. Cuba, of course, was known to exist. And there were people, including luminaries, as significant as former President Thomas Jefferson, who simply thought that, of course, Cuba would one day become part of the United States. And the United States has at times occupied Cuba as a military power. And by the way, this comes right down to the date the indictments were announced, on May 20th of 2026. Why is that? A significant date takes us back to May 20th of 1902, when at that time the United States ended what had been an official military occupation of Cuba. So that's to say US forces were occupying Cuba. And yet in 1902, the Americans left. And that is the symbolism for why this indictment, series of indictments was released on the anniversary on May 20th of 2026. Now, because of Cuba's proximity to the United States, even when the US withdrew, and again, we're going back to 1902, even when the US withdrew, there was a very clear understanding that the United States could and would intervene at any point, if not national security became an issue for the United States. And that is because we are looking at a power. We're looking at what became, of course, under the communist insurgency, what became a hostile government less than 100 miles from American territory. And thus it became a major issue. I was a boy growing up in Florida at the time I was born in the year the Cuban Revolution took place. And I can just tell you this has been very much a backdrop of my entire life, particularly when I was just a boy growing up in Florida. By the way, that May 20 anniversary has to do not only with the Americans ending the occupation then in 1902, but also of the power of Spain being overthrown. And so it's something like an Independence Day, at least a long standing date in the heart of many Cubans and many Cubans were there in the courthouse, and there were also Cuban Americans very much present in celebrating this action undertaken by the United States. Juan Carlos Sopo, writing at National Review, put it this way. He says, quote, I was 12 when the MIGs went up. I remember it the way other kids remember the Challenger. Two Cessnas belonging to Brothers to the Rescue. Unarmed civilian aircraft were destroyed in international waters by Cuban migs. The men aboard were volunteers who flew the Florida Straits looking for Cuban rafters before the current of the water finished them. And we are told about those who died. Armando Alejandro Jr, Carlos Costa Rica, Maria de la Pena, and Pablo Morales. Three Americans were told an illegal resident, one a Marine and a Vietnam veteran of 45, the others in their 20s. He goes on to write, Judge James Lawrence King, finding the Cuban regime civilly liable the following year, recorded that the destruction was so complete that the four bodies were never recovered. End quote. Okay, so there you have a young man who grew up knowing about this event, remembering it when he was 12, and understanding just how horrible the events were. Okay, so the story is a lot broader than that, but it does remind us that when you're looking at legal issues in a criminal indictment, it has to be for specific criminal charges. And so the moral charges against the Castro brothers, the moral charges against the Communist regime in Cuba, they're virtually endless, and they're so massive, it's hard even to summarize them. We're talking about the repression of the people. We're talking about huge military crimes. We're talking about crimes against the United States. We're talking about the confiscation of. Of property. We're talking about the circumvention of justice. We're talking about a great deal of impoverishment and also even famine experienced by the Cuban people. And so you're just looking at mounting crimes. And Cuba is really one of those graphic examples of a Marxist revolution inevitably gone bad. And so you are talking about Fidel Castro, basically from 1959 to 2008, and then his brother, Raul Castro, who had been very much a part and actually had been in charge of the military. Military and also military intelligence. Raul Castro was already a very dark figure. And by the way, there are some interesting political parallels, and these have been underlined and identified before. So, for example, in the Kennedy administration, at President John F. Kennedy, his own brother, Robert F. Kennedy, was Attorney General. There were many who understood at the time and even more who understood later that it was the Attorney General, the President's brother, who was in many ways the Hatchet man for the administration. And almost the same thing was happening in Cuba. You had Fidel Castro, the revolutionary who was at the top of the regime, regardless of his title over time. He was in power until 2008. His enabler, his enforcer was actually his own brother, Raul Castro, who's now in his 90s, even as he has just been indicted. And Raul Castro followed his brother as the leader there in Cuba. And he was in office from 2008 to 2018. And in 2018, he also relinquished some of the titles. But he basically has held onto the power. And even now, when you have the CIA director just days ago go to Cuba, he met with the grandson of Raul Castro. The legacy of the family is still absolutely central and absolutely massive there in Cuba. Now remind yourself that we are talking about a failed experiment, a failed regime. And you have right now a US blockade basically of Cuba. And the Trump administration is taking the approach to Cuba that it took with Venezuela. By the way, under Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela was the enabler of Cuba. Basically. Cuba was a failed economic state virtually from the beginning. And by the way, that's what Marxism does. It's a failed system, but it requires all kinds of, say, well, money coming in the back door. And some of that money was quite illicit. Some of it was also coming in support from Venezuela. And you also have, it is now known, ties, as I said. Certainly the Soviet Union was helping to underwrite Cuba. The breakup of the Soviet union in the 1990s meant that Cuba lost a lot of its financial support. And by the way, you can go back to the breakup of the Soviet Union and understand that to some extent it was handwriting on the wall that the Cuban regime would eventually fall. Now, just remind ourselves it hasn't fallen yet, but it is incredibly weak. These indictments are likely to make it even weaker. Now, for Christians, looking at all this, we understand the worldview clash between the east and the west, between freedom and the atheistic Marxist oppression that took place in Cuba. And by the way, there was wide scale religious repression. And you really did have in Fidel Castro someone who had taken on the Marxist doctrine, including the atheism and all the rest of the. And you could just look at the crimes of the Cuban regime and you can say, and Christians do understand this. Yes, but the Cuban people were in so many ways victims of this from the start. That's true, that's true. There are different degrees of agency and responsibility. But the American people rightly see the Cuban people as suffering under this regime for far too long. Now there are arguments made that the financial and economic measures the US Is now bringing against Cuba, which would actually make the situation more difficult. We know that electricity is on even in Havana, the capital, for only about 4 out of 24 hours a day. There is undoubtedly a lot of suffering now being experienced by the Cuban people. And by the way, insofar as the United States is the agent of that, and to some degree, considerable degree, it is just in terms of the immediate crisis, the fact is that the moral justification comes down to the fact that it leads to a better future for the Cuban people. And if it doesn't lead to a better future for the Cuban people, then all of this will have been for naught. So let's just think about this as we bring this part to a conclusion. It's not only the giant worldview collision between rival worldviews. It's not just the long standing political and military opposition of the United States and Cuba. It is also very deep seated concern for the Cuban people. And I grew up with so many of those who had fled the Castro regiment in the beginning. And I can simply say that the Cuban people who have been demanding the end of the Castro regime are not doing so simply because they were mad at Fidel Castro. It is because they want something better for the Cuban people. That has to be our American purpose in this. And we do understand that one necessary step towards creating a better future for the Cuban people is toppling this Communist, Marxist, Castro identified regime once and for all. Finally, that does mean that this criminal indictment creates a context in which it is more rather than less likely, more likely that some kind of American action will be taken in order to bring Raul Castro from Cuba to the US to face the Court of Justice. Okay, now we come back to the United States and you know, we're talking about election season. These are the midterm elections. Eventually, in November, big issues will be decided, including the future party control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. And you also have state elections. Just a lot going on here. Every two years you have these elections. Now every four years you have a presidential election, a so called general election in which there is of course, widespread voting and just incredibly intense cultural attention when it comes to these midterm elections. Fewer Americans vote, fewer Americans are interested. I just want to say, in terms of Christian stewardship, the exercise of our Christian citizenship, we need to be heavily, directly involved in these issues. And once again, worldview issues are at stake. Huge issues are at stake. Convictional issues are very much at stake. And we're talking about the fact that Christians understand that politics is intensely personal. We're talking about people. And, boy, have there been some big people stories just in recent days. So let's go back to Saturday. On Saturday, Louisiana Republicans went into the primary election and they basically said, we don't want you anymore. To Bill Cassidy, the incumbent Republican senator, who, of course, is also a physician. Now, why did they say that? What is going on there? Well, understand that Bill Cassidy was a much respected man, but the big answer to the question is that he became identified as the enemy of Donald Trump. And Donald Trump has a very long memory. And Donald Trump is ardently about the removal of his opponents from within the Republican Party. And by the way, Bill Cassidy did not come in second. He came in third in the Republican primary in Louisiana. Now, that is just a stunning development. Let's just understand that for a moment. You have an incumbent US Senator. Massive political capital. Massive political capital. And when you are looking at this primary election, you had to produce someone, President Trump had to produce someone who could get more votes than Bill Cassidy. But Bill Cassidy didn't even come in second. He came in third. And so immediately, you have the national media saying, look at the influence of Donald Trump within the Republican Party. This is unprecedented. It is remarkable. And on and on. I want to say it is perhaps unprecedented to some degree, but not in general terms. In general terms, this is how political parties work. And especially when you have an incumbent president of the United States, and in particular, in a second term, that president is almost always ardently intent on creating that political party in his own image, creating a future that for his own agenda and his own style and his own understanding will be projected after the end of his second term. That is exactly what Donald Trump is doing. But Donald Trump as an outsized personality is doing it in an outsized way. And Bill Cassidy had not only voted against him in some crucial issues, Bill Cassidy had voted for his conviction in his impeachment trial. And for Donald Trump, that was simply a bridge too far. And one of the things that is simply true about Donald Trump is that he doesn't forget. Now, there were state legislators just weeks before in Indiana who discovered the same thing in the Republican primary. Donald Trump opposed them because they had opposed the retirement redistricting. He wanted many of them paid with their jobs. And then you look at the fact that on Tuesday here in the state of Kentucky, Representative Thomas Massie lost the Republican primary. And again, he lost it in a big way. He lost it by almost 10 points. He lost it against an insurgent who nonetheless was fully supported by Donald Trump, who wanted to bring about the electoral defeat in the Republican primary of Thomas Massie. Now, here are some interesting things. We're talking about Thomas Massie, who is not only a Republican, he's always been something of a free spirit, and he's a graduate of mit. He also built his reputation in terms of very clear libertarian principles. So he really wasn't a traditional Republican. He ran as what he just basically presented as his authentic self. And this became a major issue, became a major conflict with Donald Trump. So it's not just the fact that he and Donald Trump differed on, on a number of issues. It is the fact that they have a very different understanding of politics at the base level. So, once again, Christians know sometimes we're looking at politic distinctions, sometimes we're looking at political flavors, sometimes we're looking at deep issues of worldview distinction. And I think when it comes to politics, it's clear Donald Trump and Thomas Massie are really in two different parties. And in a very real sense, that's exactly what where they are. Thomas Massie is still registered as a Republican, but it was Republican voters because Kentucky has closed primaries. So Democrats and independents weren't voting in this primary. Republicans in his own district who had overwhelmingly supported him, basically overwhelmingly removed him from the Republican nomination going forward. Now, it was quite a fight even for the President of the United States, trying to topple Thomas Massie from office and from the Republican nomination. And one of the proofs of that is the fact that this became, by some accounts, the most expensive congressional primary race in American history. And we're talking about a district that includes an awful lot of rural territory here in the state of Kentucky. You don't expect and by the way, generally one major media market. So you're talking about an unbelievable expenditure of money. And that just shows you the high stakes in politics. Sometimes those high stakes are more personal than in other cases. This one for the president, very personal. And for Thomas Massie, I think in terms of his comments before and after the electoral result, also very personal. Massie was in office for seven terms. So we are talking about someone with a very established reputation. And this doesn't mean he's out of politics. It could be that he comes back up in a different context. But it's not just that Thomas Massie likely faced the opposition of President Trump, but after his term of a former President Trump and furthermore, of a Trump influence and Trump shaped party. Okay, so more on that in just a moment. But let's think about what's gone on in Texas, because in many ways, this might be a bigger story, because in Texas, we're not talking about someone who had really earned Donald Trump's ire. We're talking about the fact that the Republican nomination for the United States Senate seat had come down to Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney general, as the insurgent, and the incumbent, Senator John Cornyn, as the establishment candidate. And when it came to John Cornyn, you talked about someone who overwhelmingly had voted in ways that pleased Donald Trump. You had someone who used his office in such a way that there were times when he differed. But overwhelmingly, he supported President Trump in his agenda and right down to nominations and even many of the details of his policies. John Cornyn himself had been the Attorney General of Texas, and then he ran for the Senate in 2002 and was elected not only that year, but in four successive elections. So we're talking about 24 years in the United States Senate. That's a very long tradition. And by the way, usually that means that you're in that position until you decide to retire. And that's exactly what, under normal circumstances, John Cornyn could have expected. He had risen to the highest ranks of leadership among Republicans in the United States Senate. He was considered at least a strong possibility to be the Republican leader in the Senate. In any event, he has always been, at least since his first term, an enormously influential US Senator. And overwhelmingly, he had been supportive of Donald Trump. But Donald Trump nonetheless announced in a post on social media just days ago that he is going to support Ken Paxton in that primary race. Now, the interesting thing is that President Trump had not made a personal nomination, had not entered into this race one way or the other. And then early on Tuesday morning, that's just two days ago, President Trump posted at Truth Social, quote, ken Paxton has my complete and total endorsement to be the next United States Senator from the great state of Texas. He went on hailing Ken Paxton's loyalty. That's put in quotation marks. He used that word. Okay, so is this a huge surprise? Well, it is a surprise to some extent. It's also a huge disappointment to John Cornyn. But it also means that the likelihood that Ken Paxton gains the nomination is now much, much higher. Okay, so there are huge issues related to that. And, of course, there are issues of personal relationships, there are issues of partisan politics, all that. It is simply the fact we need to note that over time, presidents tend to remake the party in their image. And frankly, Ken Paxton, in terms of Temperament is a lot closer to Donald Trump than John Cornyn, very much the tall Texas traditionalist Republican. And it is just showing that the traditionalist Republican is becoming a minority in terms of certainly of elected office within the Republican world. This is a change. It's also really important to understand that gaining a partisan nomination is only part of the way towards getting elected, or at least that's the tradition in the American constitutional order. But we've talked about the fact that the partisan divide has grown so deep that overwhelmingly you have safe Republican seats and safe Democratic seats. You have states in which it's very unlikely that a Democrat can be elected to the United States Senate or to statewide office. And of course, the same thing's true. You have states in which anyone other than Republicans almost assuredly not going to be elected in a statewide election. Congressional elections are also overwhelmingly safe seats. So even the Republican redistricting is changing some, but not a whole lot. The California Democratic redistricting is going to change some at the expense of the Republicans, but not all that much. And that's simply because of the fact that you have this increased political polarization. And so the two parties now hold primaries. And the primaries are really determinative in many cases of who is going to be elected in the election in November. And that's simply because whoever is R is going to be elected. And most of those R states, red states. And if you're a Democrat in a blue state, you're also just likely to win by the time the election day in November comes around. Now here's something else for us to consider, and that is the fact that far fewer people vote in these midterm elections than in a general election. And then an even much smaller percentage of voters, eligible voters, vote in the primary elections in terms of these mid year elections. And so you really are looking at a very small number of people highly identified with one party or the other who overwhelmingly have the responsibility to decide who's actually going to win in November. Because in so many cases the R and the D, the red and the blue, are actually just baked in the cake. There are some fascinating things along these lines we need to watch. And one of the things we'll be talking about in days to come is some of the most interesting things taking place on the blue, the Democratic, the more liberal side of the equation, where to be honest, the big issue is that the more leftist candidates are now gaining ground. In many cases, you're going to see the Democratic Party, I think, overwhelmingly keep moving to the left. And I think the 2016 and especially the 2028 election cycles are likely to make that so. The Republican Party moving in a more Trumpian direction and in a more populist direction and just shifting, for example, from John Cornyn to Ken Paxton. If that's the way the primary works out, that's going to be a shift from a traditional conservative Republican to a more populist conservative Republican. And that's going to change the character not only of that particular senatorial office, but eventually it changes the character of the Republican contingent. Same thing on the Democratic side, probably further to the left. And thus American politics already experiencing this very deep partisan and ideological deep worldview divide, is likely, even before our eyes, even in just the days and weeks ahead, likely to become even more divided. And that is something we're going to have to watch. And that will be highly important. And I think listeners to the briefing understand why. The other big issue we have to watch is whether or not the shift, for example, if indeed the Texas primary turns out, you have Ken Paxton rather than John Cornyn. The big question is, can Ken Paxton win the general election? Because there are seats that are increasingly contestable, and the state of Texas is one in which it is possible that the Democratic nominee, James Talarico, who has huge problems, it may be nonetheless that he is able to garner support at the expense of Ken Paxton. And it may be that John Cornyn would have been in a much better position to defeat James Talarico in the fall. If so, you could end up with the president wanting a Republican nominee more like himself, only to find out that what he's faced with in the fall is a Democrat in that seat. Because in America we have not only red getting redder and blue getting bluer, but in some cases red turning to purple. And that's a big issue as well. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmohler.com you can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological seminary, go to sbts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.