NPR News: 05-21-2026 7PM EDT
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🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 5 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton. President Trump is again threatening a U.S. military intervention in Cuba. He says past presidents have considered intervening in Cuba for decades, but that, quote, it looks like I'll be the one that does it. Yesterday, the Trump administration announced criminal charges against former Cuban president Raul Castro. |
| 0:21.2 | Many believe Trump is following the same playbook he did when the U.S. |
| 0:24.8 | ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, as NPR's Ryan Lucas explains. |
| 0:29.2 | The Trump administration also has ramped up pressure on the island, squeezed it economically, |
| 0:34.4 | and now we have the Castro indictment, which some people certainly see as a |
| 0:37.9 | prelude to potential military action. Cuba's president, in fact, yesterday accused the U.S. |
| 0:42.9 | of trying to create a pretext to attack the country. Now, potential U.S. military action could |
| 0:47.8 | target just Castro, or it could target Cuba more generally, but either way, experts say it's |
| 0:53.6 | unclear that the Cuban government |
| 0:55.3 | would respond the same way that Venezuela did. NPR's Ryan Lucas reporting, President Trump |
| 1:00.8 | wanted Congress to fund ICE and Border Patrol by June 1st. Then he started pushing lawmakers |
| 1:06.4 | to fund his White House Ballroom Project, and he created a nearly $1.8 billion fund that may grant |
| 1:13.3 | money to January 6 Capitol rioters. NPR's Eric McDaniel reports negotiations fell apart, and now |
| 1:19.8 | Congress is leaving town for a week-long recess. Asked about President Trump's fund that he says |
| 1:24.4 | will pay reparations to folks unjustly persecuted by the government. |
| 1:27.9 | Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, had this to say. |
| 1:30.9 | I don't like it. Here's Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune on the same issue. |
| 1:35.3 | I think that there are and will be, continue to be, a lot of questions around that, that |
| 1:41.7 | the administration is going to have to answer. |
| 1:47.7 | Thune said the fund concerns are linked to why these votes are delayed. |
| 1:51.6 | Republicans were all set to pass three years of funding for immigration enforcement. |
| 1:54.8 | They control both chambers of Congress, albeit with narrow margins. |
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