The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3604 - Israel Escalates; How Cuba Endures; Tracking Anti-Trans Bills w/ Helen Yaffe, Erin Reed

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

It's an Emmajority Report Thursday on The Majority Report.   On today's program:   An Israeli strike on Iranian facilities in the South Pars gas field marked a significant escalation in the war, prompting Iran to attack major energy facilities of its Gulf neighbors. Trump took to Truth Social to claim the U.S. had no knowledge of Israel's plans to attack South Pars but if warns if Iran continues to retaliate then he'll blow up the entirety of the oil field.   A reporter asks Pete Hegseth why we are helping Israel prosecute this war if they are going to pursue their own objectives and Hegseth had no answer. Pete then ended the press conference with a prayer - but it's Iran that is theocratic terrorist state.   Helen Yaffe, Professor of Latin American Political Economy, University of Glasgow joins Emma to discuss her book We Are Cuba! How a revolutionary people survived in post-Soviet world.   Erin Reed, journalist tracking anti-LGTB+ legislation around the world at Erin in the Morning on Substack joins MR to discuss her Anti-Trans National Legal Risk Assessment Map: Feb 2026   In the Fun Half:   Brandon Sutton and Matt Binder join.   Senator Jon Ossoff presses the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on whether or not it was the assessment of the intelligence community that there was an imminent threat from Iran.   Jonathan Greenblatt continues to be one the leading causes of antisemitism in America.   The Wall Street Journal publishes an op-ed about Democrats getting too cozy to Hasan Piker in a piece that reads like a high school newspaper.   all that and more   New Yorkers if you live in Senate District 27 which includes the neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan, including the East Village, Tribeca, Little Italy, Chinatown, Soho, and the Financial District and Greenwich Village support Yuh-Line Niou for State Senate    To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: SHOPIFY: Sign up for a $1/month at shopify.com/majority NUTRAFOL: Get 15% off your first order by going to Blueland.com/MAJORITY.      SUNSET LAKE:  30% off all CBD tinctures for people and pets with code Spring26 at  SunsetLakeCBD.com  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show at join the Majority Report.com and get an extra hour of content daily. Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Thursday, March 19th, 2026. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar, and this is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live. from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Helen Yaffi, author of We Are Cuba,

How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in the Post-Soviet World will be with us to talk about how Cuba continues to endure U.S. brutality. And later in the show, Aaron Reid joins us again to help track the anti-trans legislation and ballot measures across the country. Also on the program, Israel bombs Iran's gas fields in a dramatic escalation, and Iran responds by bombing Gulf States' energy infrastructure. Oil prices begin to spiral out of control. Reuters reports that Trump is considering sending thousands of troops to Iran,

and now is asking Congress for $200 billion for this war. Up from $50 billion, Russia has been ramping up its intelligence and military assistance to Iran as it fights back against the U.S. and Israel. Tulsi Gabbard and CIA director Ratcliffe contradicted Trump's claims about Iran's imminent nukes in their Senate intelligence testimony yesterday. Curiously left some things out of prepared remarks. The FBI is investigating the counterterrorism official Joe Kent, who resigned over the Iran war,

saying he's a leaker. The Fed leaves interest rates unchanged, as February's inflation data shows a sharp rise in wholesale prices, and this is before. the Iran War was launched on February 28th. The FBI and IRS will investigate non-profit organizations that the Trump administration says are linked to domestic terrorism, which we know from Ken Klippenstein's reporting,

means anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity. Gender identity extremists. Yep. Elizabeth Warren endorses Mallory McMorrow. Why? And then endorses Grand Platner, so it's hard to stay that mad. But still, what is going on? Classic war.

I had just heard of the Platner thing when I entered the office today. I was feeling very... Angry. Oh, no, you heard the McMorough thing. I had not heard the McMorough thing until you told me. Yeah, so that's... She makes it so hard for me. Republican strip the newly independent representative,

Kevin Kiley, of his... his committee assignments. And lastly, Mark Wayne Mullins' hearing to lead DHS goes off the rails after his celebration of violence against Rand Paul comes back into focus. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It's an M Majority Report Thursday. Hello, Matt.

Hello, Brian. Hello, lovely audience. It is great to be back. be off for the next few days in my little jaunt out to l.A. I'll be on some shows while I'm out there, including Francesca Furentini's live show on Sunday. It's all sold out, sadly. It's at Dynasty typewriter, but if you want to see a recording of it, you can become a patron of the bituation room. So that's my little plug there. But we have a lot of news to get to. So let's just start here.

Yeah, yeah. Like, to say that this Iran war has been a disaster, every single step of the way would be a massive understatement. At least 13 U.S. service people have been killed, hundreds wounded. The new figures in terms of the death toll in Iran

is 3,000. And a reminder that we bombed that girl school, children, are among those dead. Israel's also been bombing Lebanon over and over again. They have bombed Central Beirut and killed around 1,000 people in Lebanon since February 28th. Just bomb an apartment complex. And now, apparently, more troops, U.S. troops, are a real possibility in this spiraling war,

the escalation trap that Trump has entered us into. Reuters reported last night, that Trump is considering deploying thousands of troops in addition to the around 2,000 Marines that are already on their way. They want to go to send ground forces or they're talking about options about sending them to Iran's Karg Island, which we just bombed. That's the hub for a lot of Iran's oil exports. That seems like boots on the ground. Island is a land, right? I guess they don't count boots on the ground if we have this entire naval armament.

a encircling Iran, but that's boots on the sea. I mean, look at a map. Carg Island, if any troops go there, they will be immediately, in my opinion, hit with missiles from Iran. There's no way Iran's going to allow them to take that island. And also, it looks a lot like Little St. James. Size-wise. Size-wise, well, I mean, I have a suggestion for how we could repurpose Little St. James

and send some people over there. An island prison. I don't know. Just an Australia-type thing. That's what I'm thinking. I'm just what I'm thinking, but no one is going to be able to repopulate there because it's all going to be like seven-year-old pedophile men, the ones that populate our administration. Who will be castrated if we see this through? If we see this through, of course.

I mean, and then like, you know, we don't know what's up with Netanyahu right now. I've got a lot of suggestions. But NATO allies refuse Trump's demands that they send their own troops into harm's way because Trump was towing with the idea, as we just said, of the U.S. Navy escorting these. oil tankers, but didn't want the political blowback of what would happen when inevitably Iran would bomb U.S. troops. So Trump's like, hey, Europe, can you put your bodies on the line? So I don't have to take the political hit. And I'll just say they're saying no with the language that we should use instead of this bullshit forever war thing, which opens the door to have short wars. They're saying no wars of choice. We're not going to participate in a war of choice. And that's much

clear language that can't be co-opted. Exactly right. This idea that more troops are going to be sent would fit into the insane request from the administration for $200 billion in supplemental funding for this criminal war in Iran. The initial request was $50 billion. And by the way, we're already in a major economic crisis. There was this atrocious inflation report that even had the financial press freaking out that came out this morning.

And Fed Chair Powell, who's a few months away from having to leave his position, Trump's going to appoint some crony, sounded the alarm at the press conference yesterday about this inflation data. But this is before the war in Iran. This is before oil prices are skyrocketing like this. And yesterday, Israel dramatically escalated. They bombed Iran's South Pars gas. gas field, which is the largest gas field in the entire world. It produces two-thirds of Iran's

natural gas. And this is an attack on Iran's economic infrastructure. So of course they retaliate. They lobbed missiles of Israel, Iran. They struck the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, and they struck their energy infrastructure as well. But most importantly, they hit Qatar's LNG site. And that is an enormously important liquid natural gas energy producer. So this is spiraling out of control in ways that obviously Trump did not foresee. He's trying to like fill in the gaps with removing sanctions on Iranian oil has been floated. Of course, you know, he's talked about waving the Jones Act. They waived the Jones Act for 60 days to try to slow the bleeding here.

But here is Trump's statement. on this, true social last night. He says, Israel, out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East, has violently lashed out at a major facility known as South Pars-Gasfield in Iran. A relatively small section of the hole has been hit. The United States knew nothing about this particular attack, and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape, or form involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen. Unfortunately, Iran did not know this or any of the pertinent facts pertaining to the South Pards attack. What are you talking?

Oh, okay. Okay. So he's trying to claim that Israel acted alone with all the weapons and the diplomatic cover and everything that we give them. And the license to act alone that we give them. Yes. But he's, the Qataris must have given them a call and said, are you effing kidding me? We gave you a $400 million plane free of charge. We appealed to you directly, not through, like, the Zionist lobby.

Buddy, we did it in the language that you usually appreciate, which is a literal gift to you. A luxury item. And you're still allowing your attack dog in the Middle East to target our energy infrastructure. This is, like, really, really scary and significant. But Iran's not the attack dog. Israel's the attack dog. Iran attack. That's what I meant to say. Yeah, yeah.

Did I... Qatar attack, Iran attack Qatar. You implied that Israel attack guitar by saying the attack dog. Oh, oh. Unless I misunderstood. Yeah, I'm... To be fair, Israel did attack Qatar earlier. I meant to say, Israel attacked Iran as our attack dog in the Middle East.

And then Iran retaliated, and that is the blowback for it. Thank you for clarifying my sentence structure there. But, like, I mean, in 24 hours, this is what we have to kind of get our hands around. And so, uh, so, like, the Gulf states here are kind of understanding that they're the little brother of the United States. They're feeling this because we're prioritizing Israel above all. Qatar gave Trump this plane. They're still bearing the brunt of this and they're not getting the defense that we provide to Israel. So they're obviously furious and Trump had to come out with this truth social statement and disavow what Israel did.

But like, I'm honestly so, I just am a little bit in disbelief when you see the, the discourse online about Trump's relationship with Israel versus Biden. Because here on the left, we're actually consistent. We talked all the time about how Biden could have reigned in Israel during this genocide over and over again. Cut off arms tomorrow. This is how you yank on the leash. And yet, you have Tucker Carlson, you have Republican comments. commentators, conservatives, what have you, blaming solely Israel for this war because we see where this is going. They're trying to make it into like a cabal of Jews that are running our foreign

policy and manipulating the somehow strong but also simultaneously incredibly weak president into this war. Is Trump the authoritarian with all of the power or is he the completely supplicant to Israel? Pick one. Because if we can blame Biden for aiding and abetting a genocide and not reexamining the U.S.-Israeli relationship, to put it mildly, then we certainly can put the blame on Donald Trump and not blame solely Israel for this incredible escalation. But the, here, hold on, let's pull up number two then here. asked about this very question about how, this is number two, right?

This is Pete Heggs at this morning, asked about this very question about Israel's involvement in this war. Take one more. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Jordan Conratson, with the gateway pundit. So with the strike yesterday on South Fars,

gas field, you know, if the U.S. didn't know about it, didn't approve of it. It kind of seems like a trend of Israel apparently pursuing their own objectives over U.S. objectives. I'm not sure if you agree with that, but the president has said he doesn't want to hit Iran's oil infrastructure right now. As you said, the U.S. avoided this on Park Island. Oil is nearing $120. Why are we helping Israel prosecute this war if they're going to pursue their own objectives? We hold the cards. We have objectives. those objectives are clear.

We have allies pursuing objectives as well. And the truth speaks for itself. I mean, President Trump was very clear about that. Iran has weaponized energy for decades. Israel clearly sent a warning, and POTUS has made it clear, very clear. Iran knows when you hit Carg Island and you hit military capabilities on Carg Island, which is the only thing we hit,

we can hold anything at issue, anything. the United States military controls the fate of that country. Iran has the ability to make the right choices. It should not going forward target Arab allies, Arab countries, trying to create pain, the pain that they created themselves. Thank you all very much. They should not? They should not?

Well, they're going to, and they've already done it. And that's the problem. That's why you have the GCC countries that are furious at the president right now. And we've played Pete Heggzeth. this old clip of him speaking about how we should be targeting Iranian energy infrastructure, economic infrastructure, and cultural sites, and saying things like the only thing that these people understand is strength. You know, perhaps the Islamophobia of the Secretary of War is getting in the way of him having

like a full understanding of how. say our supposed partners in the region are going to respond to the very simplistic language of violence that you're teaching these simple people. We're not thinking strategically, one, because we're led by a mad king, but two, everyone around him is like an ignorant racist that is, was unable to foresee Iran acting strategically and acting in their own interests. And so that's the same reason why I don't buy the fact that, like, a lot of people in the press are running with the administration's claim that they didn't know that they were bombing that girls' school. I think Hegset is perfectly capable of getting off on the idea of killing a bunch of little kids in Iran.

No reason to give them benefit of the doubt. And to underscore this, this is just another clip from this press conference here, where, you can see how there's the way that the West speaks about the Middle East and also Iran and other Muslim countries, as if they're operating based on religion and not logic. This is how our Secretary of Defense is speaking about our war on Iran. And I say the same to every American who wants peace through strength. May Almighty God continue to bless our troops in this fight. And again, to the American people, please pray for them. Every day on bended knee with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ.

Send him home. In the name of Jesus Christ. I mean, that's not a contradictory claim when looking at our. policy towards Israel. What's our objective? The Republicans are populated with a bunch of people that think that this is just a precursor to Christ coming back and the rapture happening and a majority of the Jews in Israel dying and going to hell on that basis. And it sure sounds like Pete Heggseth has embraced that with that statement. Hegseth is a lunatic. But as far as the question of like what is our objectives, America, there's nothing. There's nothing for America in this for you and me.

And I'll just go back to a Tony Jett quote from Israel, The Alternative, in a book that Emma's going to be reading on her. On the plane, thank you for that e-book. This is from, I think, the best essay in that. Here's just one section. It is now tacitly conceded by those in a position to know that America's reasons for going to war in Iraq were not necessarily those advertised at the time. For many in the current U.S. administration, that being the Bush administration, a major strategic consideration was the need to destabilize and then reconfigure the Middle East in a manner thought favorable. to Israel. That's Tony Jets saying that in the Bush administration. That's exactly what this war is about now. There's no other meaning for it. It's because Israel doesn't like their neighbors

and they want American might to crumble it for it. In America, missile companies are like, fine. Yeah, that's good business for us. The missile companies are also are Israel. I've also been slowly kind of rereading because I've recommended it so much, Anthony Lowenstein's the Palestine Laboratory. And there are estimates like, you know, even Thomas Friedman as a Jerusalem correspondent at the time was speaking about how like something like 10% or that was his estimate of Israelis are involved in the weapons industry. That's basically, you know, we're, we've, we've had a Gilderan on this show to speak about the nation or the, what does he call it, the network state and how there are all these techno, techno oligarchs, technologarchs, prologarchs, Peter Thiel,

envision a purely privatized surveillance state where they have full control over that. That's already Gaza. And Israel is like the death star where all the technology is. And so like when you think about it as a country, you should probably think about it more as a kind of corporate nation state that tests weapons and surveillance technology and does business with a lot of corrupt governments and namely is our military outpost or our intelligence military outposts in the Middle East.

So conservative media is going to try to blame Israel for this and pretend like the United States doesn't have control over our dog in the Middle East and we know what Trump could do and what he's not doing. In a moment we're going to be talking to Helen Yafi, but first a word from our sponsors here, you know, I'm all in for self-reflection and rethinking things this year, how to make a healthy impact.

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coaching link down below in the video and episode description and at majority.fm. Quick break when we come back we are going to be joined by Helen Yaffe. We are back and we are joined now by Helen Yafi, professor of Latin American political economy at the University of Glasgow, author of We Are Cuba, How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World. Helen, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thank you for inviting me. It's great to be here. Of course. It's great to have you. So I wish we were talking about Cuba in less dire

circumstances, but at the very least, over the past 24 hours, Cuba's been able to restore power due to, or after this blackout due to the U.S. blockade. The Trump administration has not even made an effort to manufacture a consent about Cuba being a threat to the United States because they just, they have nothing. Like, they have no evidence. They've got nothing to hang their hat on. So I guess the question is from a macro level, what about Cuba is so threatening if the United, is so threatening to the United States if it's not an actual threat. Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point. So actually, on the 29th of January, Trump issued this executive order saying that Cuba is a threat to the national security and foreign

policy of the United States. Now, if we think of that in terms of military or even sort of political confrontation, it's absurd. However, there is only one way that we can understand Cuba as a threat, and that is the threat of a good example. So, you know, when the United States is the sort of leading power of U.S., of, sorry, globally neoliberalism, of imperialism, of capitalism as a system, and, you know, the message is that the only way to have efficiency is through market mechanism and competition and so on and things like healthcare, housing, education,

you know, these are goods that you have to purchase through the market according to demand and supply. And then there's little Cuba, subjects of 400 years or hundreds of years of colonialism and imperialist domination, that after the revolution of 1959, within one generation, already had human development indicators

that could compete with the advanced capitalist countries, the imperialist countries. and then proceeded to overtake them in many areas. For example, by early 2000s, Cuba had more doctors per person than any country in the world, three times more than the United States and Britain. And, you know, it's done this with a GDP, which is minuscule, and it's done it because it has a socialist planned economy, which prioritises human welfare and the environment.

And in that sense, you know, the sort of demonstration effect for the global South is actually the route to development isn't through the international financial system and, you know, the loans you're going to get from the World Bank and the IMF that are going to entangle you in debt that are then going to give the lenders the leverage to say roll back the state to make structural adjustments to your economy to, you know, even determine the policy. political systems. Actually, you know, there is another way to do it with very few resources. You can create a society where, which is, you know, human-centered development. And can, well, you mentioned the history and the hundreds of years of the United States, you know, trying to get its talons into Cuba. But I'm wondering if we could just briefly go over that, really even speaking about, say, how Trump is invoking the Monroe Doctrine, for example, calling it the Donro Doctrine, his position about how the United States has inherent domination over the Western Hemisphere. Perhaps we can take a look at really, maybe even starting in the 1800s,

when Spain lost control of Cuba in 1898 and what came afterwards. Well, the thing to understand Cuba in the sort of battle, or the determination of first Spain, then the US to control Cuba, is you just need to look at a map. Cuba has a really key geostrategic location. It's kind of like a gateway. So it's got the Florida Straits on one side and the, you know, Caribbean Sea and the Gulf Coast.

So it's a sort of gateway where many trading routes, historical trading routes, have intercepted. And the United States, I mean, you talk about 1898, but already in 1823, we had this famous letter that said, you know, Cuba must fall to the United States as naturally as an apple, you know, falls from the tree to the ground, because it belongs to us. So this notion that Cuba belongs to the United States has a very long and deeply rooted history. And, you know, there have been elements in Cuban society, the old elite, the bourgeoisie, who supported that view. They believed that Cuba's destiny lay, or its prosperity lay with alignment with the United States. And there were those who supported its annexation. But there have also always been those who even while they were struggling against the Spanish colonial war and struggling for independence from Spain, you know, were aware of the expansionist burgeoning,

imperialism of the United States and warned against it. So the famous, you know, national hero of Cuban independence, Jose Marti, the night before entering battle against the Spanish, he wrote a letter to, as he called a comrade in, in Mexico, warning that, you know, the battle to prevent the United States taking control of Cuba was one that should concern the whole of the Americas because he recognized how the U.S. would use control over Cuba to launch its expansionism over the rest of the region. And if you look at Trump's language in the last few days, when he talks about being the one to take Cuba,

I'll take it whichever way, you know, some way or another, I will be the one to take Cuba. And it so reverberates with the sort of racist and sexist terminology that was used in you can see it in the cartoons in punch and other you know u.s media and the depiction of cuba as a sexualized black woman and the united states is the white male that's going to come and take it and you know rape rape cuba and it's not i mean this is the guy that said grab them by the p word and they'll let you do whatever you want so i just and has been found liable for sexual assault in courts and has dozens of accusers such

just putting that out there. It's a rapacious, really violent imagery, and it goes back hundreds of years. But one thing I will say is you are right that they have dropped the veil of a kind of liberal gloss on this effort to destroy the Cuban Revolution. I mean, nobody can talk about it being in favor of the human rights of Cubans when, you know, for three months Cuba hasn't had a drop of oil entering because, well, back in December they were hijacking and kidnapping, stealing Venezuel and oil tankers. And since then, you know, since their executive order, they have threatened to put, Trump has threatened to put tariffs on any country that sells or even donates oil to Cuba. So, you know, you are causing, you are weaponizing starvation. Hospitals are

running in emergency situations, they're only doing emergency treatments. More than 11,000 Cuban children are waiting for surgery with no prospect of that happening. Schools and universities have closed. Transport is, you know, totally at a standstill. Now, although Cuba has made an rapid and remarkable effort to speed up the transition to renewable energies, mainly solar panels, you know, there are limits to the benefits of that because the transport fleet is almost entirely, I mean, mostly dependent on what you call gas, petrol and diesel. So even when countries like Mexico, which has stopped sending oil,

sends a huge shipload of material aid of medicines and food, how do the Cubans get that from the port in Havana down to the, you know, through the long, thin island? that is Cuba, if they don't have fuel for transport. So he has created a total humanitarian crisis, and it's just testament to the Cubans that they are so resolved and so resilient that, you know, at the moment, they're just continuing life as they always do and always have done under this attack from the United States.

We should say that as of 20 minutes ago, this is some positive news. President Claudia Scheinbaum announced that Mexico seeks to, resume fuel shipments to Cuba. So we can at least hold our breath for a second about what, I mean, you know, we'll see how this shakes out, but hopefully the worst of this is over, but I don't know. Because, you know, the humiliation of Cuba being right off our shores and to United States capitalists, I think, is like a really important kind of point to hit on here. can you speak a little bit about how Cuba and you wrote about this in your book restructured its economy under global capitalist markets even after of course the fall

of the Soviet Union although their relationship is overstated by the West and and capitalists I understand but there still was you know it was difficult of course I would imagine for Cuba to kind of reset after the fall of the Soviet Union and say like how can we make our economy resilient in spite of this blockade right off our shores and the US trying to ice everybody out from doing business with us? Like, what were the difficulties, what were the different paths discussed, and where does that bring us today? Yeah.

So, I mean, the first thing to understand about Cuban socialism and, you know, it's resilience, why they continued when the Soviet bloc collapse, is that for Cuba, socialism is the system. that they've adopted in order to struggle against underdevelopment and for real sovereignty, right? So social justice and sovereignty are the keys that link the Cuban struggle for independence to the post-1959 socialist, the development of socialism. And it's that commitment that sees the Cubans, even today, you know, even Cubans in the street today who maybe don't support the government, maybe are full of criticisms, don't regard themselves as socialist. But

they, you know, really are committed to sovereignty and social justice. So with that in mind, the first point is that when the Soviet bloc collapse, the Cubans made a decision that they would stick with socialism. How are they going to do that when 87, 86% of all of their trade and investment was with the socialist countries? And remember that the United States has worked hard in the early 1960s, as it is again today, to make sure that all the governments of the America's cut-off relations with Cuba. Now, Cuba has made great progress in reversing that situation, but we're seeing the same happening today. So what Cuba had to do is go from having an economy which was based on the export of sugar, a good, to the Soviet bloc and their market

completely, well, more or less disintegrated. And they had to reinvent their economy while retaining the key tenants of a socialist system, right, with all the what they call the Logros, the achievements of the Cuban Revolution in healthcare, education, housing, culture, sport and so on. So the first step was to open up the economy to encourage tourism. And tourism became Cuba's biggest source of revenue from the 1990s. I mean, this is the period I first went to live in Cuba, not as a tourist. I went as a teenager to go and live in Cuba in not quite the worst year of what's known as the special period of economic crisis, but the year after 1995 and just saw for myself how an experience living with and among Cubans, how the Cuban people found collective and creative solutions to get through the hardships and scarcities of that period.

But what they then happened was that the Bolivarian revolution with Hugo Chavez as president of Venezuela dovetailed with a period in Cuba called the Battle of Ideas. And the two countries, Fidel Castro and Chavez had a famously close relationship. They set up this exchange where Venezuela, which has the greatest known proven supply of oil, could provide that oil for Cuba. And in exchange, the Cubans provided. medics and educators for the Venezuela masses whom Chavez represented, and, you know, that was the fulfillment of his promise to them as he was elected by an overall majority for that population.

So this was the famous oil for doctors program, and it then switched from, you know, Cuba being paid for their medical services and other development aid services from oil to being cash. By 2005, the greatest source of revenue for Cuba was the export of healthcare professionals. Then, you know, this coincided with the pink tide in Latin America, where other left-wing governments were brought to power, mainly by social movements, the Bolivia, Ecuador, and other places. And the Cubans expanded those projects to those countries. And, you know, this was a key part of how Cuba survived.

And it has subsequently, from literally the year after it became the greatest source of revenue, it came under attack from the United States. So this has happened. This is a recurring theme when Cuba, you know, turns to tourism. You have hotel bombs going off. You have legislation in the US to prevent tourism, people going as tourists to Cuba. You're still not allowed to go from the United States to Cuba as a tourist. You have to go under one of different more complicated categories. agrees. And what we're seeing now, part of the current attack on Cuba by the United States,

very much spearheaded by Marco Rubio, is this question of the earnings that Cuba gets from Cuban medical internationalism. But linking to the other question, the first question about what kind of threat is not just the earnings that Cuba gets, because in many of the countries it operates, it still gets no payment, is also the prestige that it gives Cuba. It gives Cuba. and the whole notion of socialism because they have achieved these extraordinary, this extraordinary public health care system, biotech system, their children in Cuba are vaccinated with 13 vaccines for your childhood vaccines. And of those eight vaccines for 11 diseases are produced by the Cubans themselves.

And these are, you know, kind of statistics that put to shame even a country like Britain, which is a very wealthy, old imperialist country. So, yeah. Well, you bring up Rubio, and this is probably a good place for us to round out our discussion. You know, we've been talking about, obviously, of course, this criminal war in Iran that our country has launched. And we've on our show been debating, like, what are the motivations? Does Trump have anything corrupt that's motivating him here? or is it just purely the Israel lobby?

And I think sometimes we can underestimate the desire to discipline nations that are outside of the sphere of Western capitalist influence. And I think that that story is perhaps the most present or the most acute in Cuba's case because there's no real threat other than its existence. and it's endurance. And Marco Rubio comes out of a very far-right Cuban diaspora in Florida, although I believe his parents fled Batista and not Castro doesn't mean that he can't, you know, use his heritage for his own kind of like self-enrichment and for some of this brutality. But that's, I guess, where I'm wondering if you could help us understand better. like the depth of the humiliation that Cuba inflicted upon the United States and how Rubio, who seems to be driving policy here on this issue, is viewing American foreign policy in that light.

Yeah, so Rubio built his career on taking a hard line against the Cuban government, against Cuban socialism. And, you know, that means he received incredible funding and lobbying support and so on from that sector. A new, talking of like recent news, a new survey has come out, a new poll, which looks at US attitudes towards the Trump policy, the Trump and Rubio policy towards Cuba right now,

and it shows that a minuscule percentage of the population actually support the oil blockade and the threats on Cuba or think that the United States should intervene. So, you know, this is a very small, very powerful, very vocal lobby of Cuban exiles, Cuban Americans. I mean, Rubio, as you said, his parents left Cuba under the Batista dictatorship. But he allowed that rumor to simmer that they were, you know, somehow victims of the Castro regime until the Washington Post exposed it not that long ago.

And these people, I think. you're right it's a question of principle right they cannot allow cuba to have you know be this audacious and intransigent country and because of the problem of example because it doesn't help them to discipline cuba and you know if you look at well actually i mean i think that fidel castro and the revolutionaries understood that in 1961 on the eve of the bay of pigs invasion which the Cuban's called Pliéharon, Fidel Castro said, what the imperialists will never forgive us for

is having made a socialist revolution right under the noses of the United States. So, you know, while they have restored relations and trade and so on with China, with Vietnam, with other countries, while they were socialist countries, they cannot forgive Cuba. the Cubans have not been, well, let's me rephrase that they've been unruly neighbours as well. We must be clear, right?

So, you know, we talk about the discussion of to what extent they're a threat. But they have supported national liberation struggles, newly independent countries. They have opposed US and imperialist interests all over the world. They're the only what used to be called third world country that projected itself beyond its own region. So, for example, they sent 400,000 Cuban soldiers to fight alongside the newly independent Angolan state when it came under attack from the apartheid South African forces, the racist apartheid forces that had occupied Namibia and tried to occupy Angola. And the United States was supporting enemies of that new government.

So the Cubans, I mean, we can't pretend that they have been passive victims. They are revolutionaries and they have supported in international forums relentlessly. They have expressed support for Puerto Rico for its independence, for Palestine, for the Central American guerrilla movements when they were underway. And for all sorts of causes, Western Sahara, they have opposed imperialism, vociferously. And you know, and they are, you wouldn't expect to see the kind of response we've seen in Venezuela very recently with, after the abduction of Maduro, where, you know, there is some

sort of deal that's been done between the Trump administration and the vice president, Delti Rodriguez. On the other hand, Miguel Vias Canal came out with a statement yesterday saying, we're threatened with new threat. every day. And the only thing that we can be sure of is if the US tried to come here, they will be met by unrestrained resistance. So, you know, in that sense, the Cubans, they know what they have to fight for. And till this point, there seems to be a lot of determination to not allow the Marco Rubios and the old cronies of Batista to return to Cuba to reclaim.

the wealth that they had misappropriated, this was the term the Cubans used after the revolution, they set up a ministry of misappropriated properties and goods. And this was the properties and goods of the, you know, the sort of the members of the Batista regime. So they also have very strong memories and they have no intention of being subjugated to that old elite. Well, Helen Yafi, really appreciate your time today. The book is called We Are Cuba, How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World. We'll link to that down below wherever people are listening to or watching this. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Helen, and giving us your expertise on this issue. Thanks very much. Of course. Quick break,

folks, and when we come back, we'll be joined by Aaron Reed, and we'll be speaking about the anti-trans measures cropping up across the country. be right back. We are back and we are joined once again by friend of the show, Aaron Reed, journalist tracking anti-LGBQ plus legislation around the world and in the United States at Aaron in the morning on Substack. She's been tracking some of these anti-trans measures across the country with her anti-trans national legal risk assessment map. Erin, thanks so much for coming back on the show. Thank you for having me on. Of course. So, um, Let's just talk about that map, that your newsletter, the do not travel advisory list that you have on your site.

And I would highly recommend that people subscribe to Aaron in the morning if they want to follow this really important reporting. You've recently added Kansas to that list. And we can talk about Kansas specifically in just a second. But which states are on that list? Yeah. So right now, Texas, Florida and Kansas are the three, do not travel states. the states that whenever transgender people ask me if it's safe to travel through, I say that you should take extra caution and avoid non-essential travel to those states.

And how do you make that assessment? Yeah. So starting in 2022, I started mapping out the risk assessment in each state for transgender people because increasingly I was getting messages from parents, from students, from friends, asking, hey, is this safe for me to travel to? Can I go to this state safely? And the laws have been changing, you know, every single month a new anti-trans bill passes in a different state, and I was the one keeping track of all of these laws. And so rather than answer each one of these questions individually, I started mapping them. I started saying the state is dark red. This is a state that you might have extra difficulty in bathrooms or whatnot. So the things that make a state do not travel,

the very first do not travel state that I added to my map was Florida in the end of 2023, is Florida passed a bathroom ban that was different from most other transgender bathroom bans. Florida's bathroom ban allowed you to be charged with a misdemeanor and put in jail for six months. And so that was a significant escalation because a trans person traveling through any other state could use the bathroom not be in risk of jail time for doing so. But in Florida, somebody who's unaware could find themselves the wrong side of the law. And so then in Texas, we added that one as well because Texas likewise had a similar bathroom provision, as well as some very concerning things from Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas where he was charged. getting driver's licenses, saying that it was fraud to have driver's licenses that don't match your assigned sex at birth. And then in Kansas, just this last, just a couple weeks ago,

Kansas passed a bill that immediately revoked all transgender people's driver's licenses in the state, which we saw that made national news, international news even, but it also created a bathroom bounty hunter system where every member of the public can, if you find a trans person in the bathroom that you think they don't belong in, can sue that trans person for $1,000. This is a copy paste of the bounty system, by the way, in Texas as well for abortions that we were talking about just a few years ago. The danger of what is happening in Texas with these driver's licenses is like, you know, can't be overstated. This has also come up in the context of the immigration debate where you have these psychotic Republicans that want to take away drivers licenses from people. if they're undocumented. They're like, this is literally a safety issue. If people are,

people need to drive and be behind the wheel. And you need to have people who have licenses and who have gone through some sort of DMV training. And now I, I, this is about making trans people subscitizens in the same way they're trying to make immigrants subcitizens. But it presents major safety issues for the general public. It does. And then let's also talk about how in Kansas, for instance, the bill that invalidated transgender people's identification documents, it had no waiting period. The immediate aftermath, the day after the bill passed, every trans person found themselves with revoked licenses.

And so all these people, you have to get to the DMV to update your license. How are you going to get there? You can't drive. You got to call a friend. What if you're in a rural area? What if you can't make your way to the DMV? And what's worse is if you travel to that DMV and you drive there and you get caught, they could revoke your license for even longer. They can say for 90 days, you cannot get a license. And so

people are struggling in Kansas right now. People are really struggling. I know people that have fled the state because of it. It's also a major safety issue if you're a trans person that has to present your driver's license in any setting, which is going to be in a lot of settings, because it immediately outs you as a trans person. And that's the goal is that there were steps away from genital inspections. That's what it seems like these bathroom bills are designed to gear our society towards. But the license plate thing is, I mean, it's about these like completely psychotic puritanical fears that, gosh, you may be attracted, particularly to a trans woman and not know that she wasn't assigned female at birth. And if you have a driver's license that tells you, then don't worry, your gay panic can be quick. weld for just a second. Just shove those feelings down deep.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It is about outing people. And you know, you mentioned like the genital inspection thing in Idaho, which I do believe will likely be the next state that gets added to my list if a certain bill passes. A bill just passed the house there that sets for a second defense using the bathroom a five-year prison sentence. It is the most extreme anti-trans bill that I've seen in any state. And in that bill, the fraternal order of police came and testified against the bill because they said, we don't want to have to inspect people's genitals and throw them in jail for five years. But that is how far they're going. I'll also add that that bill, you know, it's a second defense using the bathroom five years in jail. Idaho has three strikes law.

So if you get three felonies, you can get jail up to life. Like, that's how the Idaho criminal code works. So if you use the bathroom four times in Idaho, you could be in prison for life as a trans person if this bill passes. And so, yeah, I don't know, I don't know where the bottom is here. Like, what are they, where does this end? Where does this go? Like, what will be enough for them? And I just, I haven't seen it yet. It's also, we have did an interview a few weeks ago about the neo-Nazi contingent within the state of Idaho. It has, you know, some of the more far right elements in the entire country. And, but it's not unique to your point. Idaho, if this legislation goes through, they'd be the 10th state to also ban. Medicaid funding for gender affirming care for anybody. Can you speak a little bit about the efforts to ban gender affirming care across the country and where we're at in terms of like total states?

Yeah, absolutely. So roughly half of the states in the United States ban gender affirming care for transgender youth. And we are seeing an expansion of this as well into a new phase. So earlier, just last month, the Heritage Foundation president got into a podcast and announced that it was the Heritage Foundation's intent to ban gender affirming care for everyone, to outlaw it for everyone, he said. And immediately afterwards, we started getting news that, you know, the president was starting to target transgender care nationwide and that Republicans were starting to target transgender care nationwide through Medicaid bans. And we just got a

Fourth Circuit decision, which is the circuit that I belong to, I'm in the D.C. area. We just got a Fourth Circuit decision that specifically says that states can pass laws that can, make transgender people appreciate their sex in Medicaid bans. So these are gender affirming care bands for transgender adults, whereas you cannot get it covered through Medicaid. And we did see in just this last appropriations fight in Congress. I'm sorry, Aaron, can I just pause for a second when they say appreciate your sex? Can you explain what that means? That means that yeah, you've got to just be not trans. Like we are erasing your identity. Okay. So this is this is the thing is that the precedent is now set in court to where basically any law that you pass against the trans person could be considered

legal because you were helping them appreciate their sex. So right now it might be a Medicaid ban on transgender adults, but in the future, what if it's, you know, psychological commitment, which we have seen Republicans, certain Republicans, stand up and say that that's what they want for us. Nancy Mace has said that, for instance. And so again, I don't know where the bottom is here, but yes, there are increasing attempts to ban gender affirming care for transgender adults. We actually see this right now in incarcerated trans people who are currently being mass detransitioned in the federal prison system and where the new guidelines is to withdraw their gender affirming care and to put them on psychotropic medications. So this is basically psychotropic medication

conversion therapy that they are currently attempting in prisons right now. And it's terrifying as a transgender person who's not in jail who knows that if I drive through Idaho maybe in the future and they put me in jail, then I could end up on, you know, psychotropic medications trying to you transition me? And are these medications, are these prisoners in the prison that assigns with their gender or are in some of these instances are these trans and that, you know, you worry about trans women and the danger there being forced into, say, male prisons under these conditions? Yeah. So in many cases, they are forced into male prisons. There are several states that do this, as well as certain fights in the federal prison system where this is also occurring.

right now. And just so that your listeners understand how horrifying this is for a transgender woman, there is an unofficial practice called V-coding or V-carting, where they will place a transgender woman with an unruly inmate to basically quell them. And you can basically imagine what that means. Yeah. And once again, the focus on transgender women, I mean, it's over, it's overemphasized in this legislation because this is why homophobia and transphobia are. are intrinsically connected. This is why women's sports and girls' sports are the disproportionate subject of transphobia. It's because it all comes from a patriarchal, homophobic, traditional values, religious fundamentalism, and the people that try to extricate the two are aiding and abetting

fascism. Absolutely. And the same organizations like the Alliance Spending Freedom have already come out and said that it is their intent to overturn Obergefell. It is their intent to overturn gay marriage. And we are seeing bills in places again like Idaho targeting gay marriage next. They want to challenge Obergefell. Well, North Dakota was another state that was trying to target Obergefell and they

are included in some of the worst states categories in your risk assessment on your substack. Can you talk about how North Dakota and other states like Oklahoma and I'm forgetting perhaps the third one that are trying to prohibit changes

to birth certificates because right now on the federal level, the Republicans are trying to create a very difficult system to register to vote that doesn't just, you can't just use your driver's license. You would need to provide a secondary form of identification. That includes birth certificates. Now, 70 million women married women in this country would have trouble, cis women would have trouble with that category because they've changed their names. And now on the, like, for trans people, they're trying to prohibit birth certificate changes on the state level. Yeah, it would be an immediate disenfranchisement of, for one, basically every transgender person. And then for two, for many cisgender women who have changed their names after marriage.

And this is something that, you know, we saw in, again in Kansas, whenever they revoked the driver's licenses, Kansas has very strong voter ID laws. And they revoked these licenses immediately before. the primaries and the primaries happened and many trans people couldn't vote in the primaries. And so, yes, we do see these sort of voter, voter harassment techniques that are also being used and tied into the fight over transgender rights. This is actually very relevant right now with the SAVE bill that's happening in Congress, where they have, you know, inexplicably taken this bill that is focused on voter ID and on birth certificates and on mail-in voting.

And then they've just tacked on two anti-trans provisions. just on the on the end of it and so yeah we do see this fight very much connected um we had somebody right in and i have this i am somewhere about blue states wanted to ask here it is charlie she her says if you get to this during her interview can you ask erin if there are blue states she's worried about i know what in washington there's been pushes to implement sports bands and quote parental rights petitions yeah so there are four blue states that i'm concerned about based on what I'm seeing on the ground. California, Washington, I'm also seeing some concerns out of Maine and Colorado. All four of these states have various concerns. Three of them

have ballot initiatives moving based on sports and on other things. And then in California, we have seen, you know, a significant amount of attacking of transgender youth in the state. We've seen some support from Governor Gavin Newsom, for instance, on sports fans in the state. And then we have also seen forced outing happening in school systems in the state. And so these are things that I am concerned seeing in blue states. Blue states are not immune from any of this. And we've seen hospitals in several blue states capitulate to Trump administration demands that they drop gender affirming care. This is something that you can't run away from. You can't escape this by running to a blue state. You can maybe find yourself in a somewhat safer situation for a little while. But this is a federal

attack on transgender people as well as a state-based attack. Can you talk about how these attacks on Medicaid funding for gender affirming care and just generally the more barriers that are being created for gender affirming care, both for adults and for young trans people, are creating cost burdens or exacerbating existing cost burdens because it is not cheap to be trans in this country. Like, it's not cheap to be cis and get health care. Imagine if you're trying, I mean, of course you don't need to imagine, but people in this audience that are cis. imagine if you're trans and trying to access care. And this just, I would imagine, has exploded the costs of gender affirming care in just a short period of time. Yeah.

So the employment rate for transgender people is 18%. So this is much higher than the general public unemployment rate. And for those who are employed, transgender people typically receive much lower pay as than cisgender people. We are often put in jobs that are not very highly rewarding or lucrative. And so, yes, we do already have an enormous cost burden. And whenever you ban Medicaid coverage for transgender care treatments, in many places, it is like outlawing gender affirming care, period, because these people cannot afford medications.

It becomes extremely hard for them to get their medication. If you're in a major city, sometimes there are programs that can help you. But if you're a rural transgender person who, you know, is either suffering from unemployment or low income, these Medicaid bans make it enormously difficult to get your care. And this is especially true for transgender youth. Transgender youth have even heightened burdens because some of the medication and the extra care that they receive by virtue of being a trans youth, getting that care, it can make the cost prohibitive in many cases, especially whenever it comes to psychological care, which already isn't well covered by Medicaid and which already suffers from lack of insurance coverage in many cases. Lastly, can you just speak about the impact of what a ban on gender affirming care for youth looks like? Because the right uses sports and graphic imagery of surgery that no one wants to think about surgery.

It is difficult no matter what kind of surgery you're getting to scare people off or to spread misinformation about what gender affirming care for young people under 18 really looks like. We know that the surgery is exceedingly rare, and there's a very specific timetable of years long of therapy and care before you approach even, you know, hormones in sometimes some of these instances. Can you just myth-bust some of these things? Because we're up against the usage of, very cynical usage of graphic imagery from the right. Well, I want to actually start with the beginning of your question, which was what does withdrawing this care look like?

And so for a trans youth who has known about their gender identity since they were young, who went through the process, who made it to 11, 12, 13, 14, started puberty blockers, got on hormone therapy. They're 15, 16 years old. They, you know, let's just say it's a transgender girl. She might not be out to her peers. Everybody might know her as a girl. She looks like a girl. She has been living in her gender identity for years. And then suddenly the state takes away that medication.

That transgender girl will begin to grow facial hair. Her voice will drop. It will be terrifying for her. She is in a school. And everybody that has known her for who she is, her whole life, is suddenly going to see that. It's horrifying. You can imagine why this kind of thing leads to suicide. You can imagine why this kind of thing leads to horrific mental health problems.

And so that's what it looks like whenever you pull care from this population, as far as what it looks like for transgender youth. Right now, it's hard to get care, period, because of the fact that so many hospitals have been shut down by the Trump administration. But these families, the ones that I talk to, they have binders full of all of their psychological appointments, full of all of their endocrinology appointments, their levels that they've had measured. They do this so that if they're ever attacked by, you know, legal forces, they can have this to show them that they did their due diligence. You know, I think that the biggest thing that medical practitioners want for transgender youth, and I think that everybody wants for all medicine is individualized care that makes sense

between you and your doctor. Those are the only people that should be making these decisions. If you can talk to a doctor and you have come up with a plan and you have worked so hard on that plan individually for what works for that transgender youth, it's nobody's place to come in and say, we want to just blanket an it. Well, Aaron Reid, really appreciate your time today. Everyone check out Aaron in the morning. We will put a link to that down below wherever you.

people are listening to or watching this. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. Always a pleasure, Emma. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Thank you. With that, folks, we're going to wrap up the free part of this program and head into the fun half of the program where we'll talk about these topics, but perhaps with more of, humor involved, to be determined. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning and with the Jacobin Show?

Yeah, a new Jacobin Show tomorrow at our new time at 3 o'clock Eastern. We're going to be talking to Alex Brunel about Zoran and DSA and being serious about power and organizing for power and to win power and talk about some of these APAC election results. So that's tomorrow. Subscribe to the Jacob and Meg YouTube channel, folks. Do it? Do we have Brandon? No. We will.

You have made absolutely by the impression. Indeed. I heard about this. I heard about this this morning. Oh, my God. Indeed. Also, there's another one. We're pounding a certain area.

Okay. I like the first one because Alex Jones is so drunk, he sounds like Tom's impression of, I mean, Sam's impression of Tom Holman. Oh, yeah, that's right. Marbles in his mouth. We will see. Brandon and Binder in the fun half, they'll give us updates on their shows. As a reminder, this show relies on your support. Join the majority report.com.

Please helps us stay resilient in these uncertain times. All right, quick break. When we come back, we'll hang out in the fun half with you. That's not... The ladies of the view. Our police said, okay. Okay, Emma, please. Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report. Wait, what?

Look, Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World. So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday. I think you need to do a program for Sam. That's good. I'm going to pause you right there. Wait, what?

You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why. So it's offered a twerk, sushi and poker with sushi and that's what we call. And what you did to Tim Poole was mean. Free speech. That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible.

I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here. Dwerp? Ugh. Sushi and sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my fucking mind. Someone's offered a twerk. Yeah.

Sushi and Polk. I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but like, I absolutely think the U.S. should be providing me with a life and kids. That's not. what we're talking about. It's not a fun job. That's a real thing. Willie Walker. That's a real thing.

That's a real thing. And has like the weight of the world on the shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore. It was so much easier. When the majority report was just you, you were happy. Let's change the subject. I don't want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.

This is a pro-killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet. is best. Violet twirp. Don't be foolish. The way Emma is cocked. I'll see that's one policy. We already fund Israel, dude.

Theme song. I bumbleer. Emma Viglin, absolutely one of my favorite people. Actually, not just in the game. Like, period.