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- Cuba May Be in Shambles, but Miami’s New Museum Keeps the Bay of Pigs Alive
Eduardo Zayas-Bazán was a 24-year-old lawyer when he left Cuba for the United States and joined about 1,400 other Cuban exiles, who were known as Brigade 2506, to participate in the Bay of Pigs invasion, the botched 1961 mission to overthrow Fidel Castro’s communist regime. Always a gifted swimmer, he was a frogman, and when he stepped on the shores of Playa Girón on the southern coast of the island, he was shot in the right knee by friendly fire. When the US government-backed incursion failed —largely due to President John F. Kennedy’s decision to withdraw plans to strike Castro’s airfields—the human cost was significant: about 100 exiles died during the attacks, and Zayas-Bazán was arrested along with hundreds of others. He had served for about a year when the Kennedy administration negotiated for the return of exiles from the island to the US. Fast forward more than half a century, and Zayas-Bazán is now a 90-year-old retired professor who taught at East Tennessee State University. His experience has become memorialized in the new Bay of Pigs Museum and Library in Miami’s historic Little Havana, which opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on April 17, the 65th anniversary of the disastrous invasion. After five years of planning, the 11,000 square foot building was erected on the site of the original Brigade 2506 meetinghouse, a one-story building with a Spanish-tile roof where veterans gathered regularly. At a cost of more than $8 million, the new two-story facility contains numerous glass displays, multiple screens playing interviews of veterans, and a towering mural of the Cuban flag that greets visitors near the entrance. Eduardo Zayas-Bazán, a Brigade 2506 veteran and retired professor, stands in the Bay of Pigs Museum and Library, which opened in Miami this year. Laura C. Morel/Mother Jones The museum has been a rare point of unity for Florida Democrats and Republicans. President Donald Trump stopped at the original house during his 2016 campaign, and the site has also been visited by politicians like Marco Rubio and Florida Sen. Rick Scott. Eileen Higgins, who was elected last year to be Miami’s first Democrat mayor in nearly 30 years, secured funding for the museum. “We’ve got to put party lines aside,” Carlos Luis, the museum president, told me. “This is so important for the Cuban community, and overall, this is the identity of the county and the city.” “We’ve got to… [TheTopNews] Read More.10 hours ago - Administration’s Fuzzy Math Will Undermine Energy Efficiency SavingsThis story was originally published by Canary Media and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Energy efficiency standards can make it more expensive to construct new buildings, but they save money for residents in the long run. In a new analysis, the Trump administration ignored the second half of that equation—a move that energy experts fear could undermine efficiency efforts nationwide. Late last month, the US Department of Energy announced it found that if every state adopted the model 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) instead of following a 20-year-old building code, the move would drive up housing construction costs by $9.2 billion annually. It’s a break with decades of DOE analysis, spanning Republican and Democratic administrations, which has reported significant energy and financial savings under each iteration of the code. “The Energy Department is completely contradicting its own findings,” said Donna Stanley, vice president of communications at the nonprofit International Code Council, which develops the model code. “The DOE’s new methodology is a deep mystery.” The moves to crush efficiency measures could exacerbate the country’s affordability problems. The DOE did not respond by Monday to Canary Media’s question of why it chose to exclude energy bill savings in its analysis. The IECC, which is updated every three years, has cut energy use in new homes in half since it was first enacted in the late 1970s. While the code is fuel-neutral, meaning that builders can install fossil-fueled equipment, it still has a positive impact for the climate because it reduces energy demand that would be met at least in part by burning fossil fuels. Most states adopt the IECC or an amended version rather than create their own rules from scratch. Some states, like Alabama, don’t impose statewide standards. In those cases, local governments may choose to use the IECC themselves; as the city of Montgomery does, for example. Depending on the code-adoption cycle, there can be a lag of several years before a state or local jurisdiction takes up the latest iteration of the IECC. To date, 10 states have adopted the 2024 code, per the International Code Council. The DOE’s analysis could have a chilling effect on other states still in the process of locking in the 2024 code, including Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Ohio. Lawmakers who have sought to restrict more-efficient building codes—such as those in the Missouri House of Representatives—could use the analysis as fodder for their arguments, according to Ben Rabe, associate director of codes and policy at New Buildings Institute. The analysis comes as the Trump administration has sought to squelch energy-efficiency efforts across the country. In 2025, it sued two California cities… [TheTopNews] Read More.12 hours ago
- Whitewashing History
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry while reading the White House report entitled Saving America’s Story, wherein the current leadership of the Smithsonian Institution stands accused of ignoring the glories of the founding fathers and “abandoning historical scholarship for political activism.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Here are the first four examples of alleged political advocacy in the 162-page report’s indictment: 1. Advocacy for extending citizenship to illegal aliens; 2. Partnership with illegal alien activists who campaigned to oust a North Carolina Sheriff from office; 3. Indoctrinat(ing) middle and high school students into opposing the enforcement of federal immigration law; 4. Created a video highlighting protestors demanding to “abolish ICE.” Indeed, nearly half the 28 examples of alleged political activism lodged against the Smithsonian involved alleged support for “illegal immigration” and “illegal aliens.” The remainder included “rejecting biological reality, “anti-woman activism,” “turn(ing) America’s youth into anti-gun activists,” and transforming its museums “into anti-white institutions.” In other words, this White House wants an American history purged of all references to its diversity, its proud immigrant tradition (of which most of us owe our citizenship), and any references to the equity promised in the original Declaration of Independence. They would rewrite that document to say all white men are created equal, which is what the original Constitution guaranteed since most states placed property restrictions on the right to vote in the early years of the Republic. One of the alleged incidents of anti-white bias involved the Smithsonian forming a partnership with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which the report claimed was “found to be manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” The footnote “proving” this allegation cited an April 2026 Justice Department press release from acting attorney general Todd Blanche and FBI director Kash Patel, which touted their grand jury indictment in Alabama accusing the SPLC of encouraging the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the American Nazi Party and the other hate groups to engage in violate acts in order to facilitate fundraising. The paragraph started by accurately stating it was an indictment. But then used language that claimed they had already been “found” guilty. For the record, SPLC pled not guilty in May. Its interim CEO Bryan Fair said: “The charges against the SPLC are provably wrong; they are based on inaccurate facts and a misapplication of law. Our informant… [TheTopNews] Read More.14 hours ago - Platner’s Conspiracy-Laden, Bitter Farewell
Hey, everyone, Graham Platner here. While I fervently deny the latest allegations against me, it’s time for me to withdraw. We need a progressive Democratic nominee from Maine who can run unimpeded by any baggage or controversy. I’m confident that will happen and we will defeat Susan Collins come November. I want to thank those who supported me not just in Maine but around the country. Don’t give up the fight. I may be stepping away from this race, but the causes we believe in demand that you stay involved and not be discouraged. Change is possible. I do believe the arc of history bends toward justice. The 41-year-old oyster farmer could have said something like that in his withdrawal statement on Wednesday evening. Instead, Platner went down a dark hole, self-pitying, conspiratorial, solipsistic, blaming “those in power” and “entrenched forces” for his withdrawal. No specifics were offered. Platner is just a victim, you see. “The brutal political reality is that they are going to take everything away from us,” he said; the “they” refers to the end of Democratic support for his race. In what he must have intended to be an uplifting moment in his brooding self-pitying tirade, Platner said. “We went toe to toe with one of the most entrenched political systems in the world. And we won.” In the world? Oh, please. This is Maine, not Moscow or Pyongyang. The gruff one didn’t take on the butchers of Tehran, just Janet Mills. In his 11-minute self-referential farewell, Platner extolled the people of Maine (because the people are always wise) and laid into a conspiracy so immense—“a system that is built structurally to make sure that movements like ours cannot flourish.” I’m not a professional cartographer, but Vermont is, I think, pretty close to Maine, and it managed to elect the OG Democratic Socialist, Bernie Sanders, just fine, just like the voters in the Bronx and Boulder who fueled socialist victories in June. There’s no sinister conspiracy against Platner; quite the opposite. From the first glowing New Yorker profile of Platner to the last Michelle Goldberg column (where she apologized for not scrutinizing him better), he got as good a run from the media as you can get. The problems were all of his making. Just days ago, the party rallied around Platner despite the allegations of his former girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, a Republican, that he had… [TheTopNews] Read More.20 hours ago - GOP Sen. Makes Bananas Comparison Between Socialism And ‘King Kong’s Gen...
Sen. John Kennedy went wild as he railed against the left while talking about Senate candidate Graham Platner's political demise. [TheTopNews] Read More.22 hours ago - Trump Says Graham Platner Allegations Come Down To Whether You ‘Believe The Wo...“It’s really a question of whether or not you believe the woman,” Trump said. [TheTopNews] Read More.22 hours ago
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