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Transcript: Rep. Jamie Raskin on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” April 26, 2026

2026-04-26T12:14:00-0400 / CBS News

Updated on: April 26, 2026 / 1:40 PM EDT / CBS News

The following is the transcript of the interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on April 26, 2026.

*

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re back now with Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin. Congressman, you were there last night.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: Yes, indeed.

MARGARET BRENNAN: One of the guests in the ballroom. Unfortunately, this is not your first encounter with political violence. For many people in that room, the president, Steve Scalise, who survived a shooting himself, Charlie Kirk’s widow was there, RFK Jr. as we mentioned, and you were at that Capitol on January the sixth, sheltering in fear for your life at that period of time. How did that influence what happened last night? What did you do?

REP. RASKIN: So I just entered the room, and I was talking to some reporters who approached me from the Boston Globe. Their table was right near the perimeter. As I was entering the ballroom. Kerry Kennedy was their guest, and we were in conversation when there were three loud booms. Heard some screams, plates, glasses, silverware hitting the ground, and then everybody was yelling, get down. Somebody kind of pushed me from the back, and we all ended up on the floor. When it was over, Kerry, who, of course, lost her father to an assassin gunman and her uncle, President Kennedy, she said, I can’t believe that school children are dealing with this all across America and don’t have the resources to process their trauma. And so that launched a conversation about gun violence and how you know, somewhere between 275 and 300 people are shot every day in our country, and we lose more than 100 of them every day. So even as this nightmare was unfolding at the White House Correspondents Dinner, dozens and dozens of people had been shot and killed in our country. And so I hope this isn’t just an inside the beltway story. I hope we talk about the conditions for school children and people all over the country who are dealing with this.

MARGARET BRENNAN: No, it’s a good point. We had- we benefited from all that security. Those children across the country don’t have a sliver of it.

REP. RASKIN: Well, that’s right. And you know, I heard President Trump talk about this demonstrating the importance of the new ballroom, and he sent out some messages about the ballroom, and that might help people who are visiting the White House, but what about people who are in shopping malls and movie theaters and high schools and elementary schools across the country? So I hope we can have a serious bipartisan national conversation about what we can do to improve public safety for everybody.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, to that point, I mean, we’re in the 10th week of a partial shutdown of Homeland Security, which, by the way, Secret Service, falls under the umbrella of Homeland Security, so do many essential workers. This has been just tangled up in this policy standoff in Congress. Do you think things change after last night?

REP. RASKIN: I certainly hope so. I mean, we, you know, of course, we had a unanimous vote out of the Senate, all the Republicans, all the Democrats, and then all the Democrats in the House vote to restore all of the funding, except for ICE. And of course, it was about ICE killing innocent people in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti and Renee Good that led to this standoff over this so I hope we can improve public safety for everybody.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But it was in the house, and Republican leadership wasn’t willing to do that. But do you think it changes now that Democrats and Republicans will say, let’s fund everything fully?

REP. RASKIN: Yeah, again, we’ve got three quarters of Congress all together on moving forward, resolving the remaining issues and getting everything funded. Fortunately, you know, there’s no interruption in any of ICE’s funding because it was so super, hyper funded originally. So that’s why it’s kind of a made up controversy, because they have the money that they need, but we still have to deal with the underlying issues that led to this in the first place.

[CROSSTALK STARTS]

MARGARET BRENNAN: It was the Democrats’ position to hold that up–

REP. RASKIN: –to hold up?

MARGARET BRENNAN: To make the argument over changes, policy wise, to ICE and CBP

REP. RASKIN: Right, after the killings in Minneapolis, yes, absolutely.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood, because you said it was made up–

REP. RASKIN: –The vast majority of the American people agree- well no, what’s made up is the idea that ICE somehow isn’t getting its money.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Got it.

REP. RASKIN: It’s been getting, I mean, it’s got the money for a long time because of the original, you know, the “big, beautiful, bill.”

MARGARET BRENNAN: The president. I want to make sure that I recognize what he said, because we don’t hear him speak this way very often. He said, I asked all Americans to recommit with their hearts, to resolve our difference peacefully, and he talked about being unified with members of the press.

REP. RASKIN: Yes. Well, that certainly- that’s a new message from him. That’s great. He had called the press, of course, the enemy of the people, and he’s been engaged in a lot of lawsuits against your profession.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, yes. We are going into this politically charged midterm season. There’s going to be campaigning around the country with lawmakers out there. I mean, does something change? He said, this, does something change? Does democratic language need to change as well?

REP. RASKIN: We have said all along that we need every politician in the country, every leader in the country, every citizen IN the country denouncing political violence across the board, regardless of where it’s coming from. So, you know, I find this a welcome change in rhetoric. But you know what happened last week, they brought a lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose whole purpose is to or is to investigate violent right wing extremism in the country, and now they’re prosecuting them for having used undercover agents, which, of course, the FBI uses and the government uses all the time.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood. And there is, across party lines, some political violence, way too much of it right now. And actually, Speaker Emerita Pelosi on this program said to me recently that she thought the threat or the concern about violence or threats to your family is what is hurting recruitment of people to run for office, particularly mothers, particularly women. Are you seeing that? That people are afraid to even join public life because of this?

REP. RASKIN: Sure, anybody who’s thinking about running for office undoubtedly thinks about that. Anybody who’s thinking about running for president undoubtedly thinks about that. And those people have the most protection with the Secret Service, and other people don’t have the same kind of protection. So look, we’ve got to rediscover the great American tradition of nonviolence and Dr. King and the civilizing movements that have always opposed violence versus the violent groups that have used violence historically, beginning with the Ku Klux Klan, in order to terrorize other people.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Congressman Raskin, thank you for joining us, and we’re glad you were able to do so. We’ll be right back.

Tillis says he’s prepared to move forward with Kevin Warsh’s nomination for Fed chair

April 26, 2026 3:42 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said Sunday that he is prepared to move forward with the nomination of Kevin Warsh for chairman of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, bringing an end to his blockade on nominations to the central bank.

Tillis, a Republican who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, had vowed not to support any nomination to the Fed while the Justice Department continued its investigation into the current chairman, Jerome Powell. But U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced Friday that her office would be ending the probe into Powell and the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of its Washington, D.C., headquarters.

In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Tillis said he had received assurances from the Justice Department that the investigation is closed and would only be reopened if the Fed’s inspector general, which is examining the renovation project, made a criminal referral.

“I am prepared to move on with the confirmation of Mr. Warsh,” he said. “I think he’s going to be a great Fed chair.”

In a statement shared to X, Tillis said “it is time for the Federal Reserve to move beyond this distraction and return its full attention to its mission.”

“I have been clear from the start: the U.S. Attorney’s Office criminal investigation into Chair Powell was a serious threat to the Fed’s independence, and it needed to end before I could support Kevin Warsh’s confirmation,” he wrote. “I welcome the Inspector General’s investigation. This is a necessary and appropriate measure, and I have confidence it will be conducted thoroughly and professionally.”

Powell’s term as Fed chairman ends May 15, and Mr. Trump announced in January that he had selected Warsh to lead the central bank’s board. Warsh appeared before the Banking Committee last week. During the hearing, Tillis reiterated that while he supported Warsh’s nomination, he wouldn’t vote to confirm him until the Justice Department ended its investigation.

The Banking Committee is set to convene Wednesday to vote on Warsh’s nomination. There are 13 Republicans on the committee and 11 Democrats.

Powell revealed in January that the Fed had received grand-jury subpoenas as part of the criminal probe involving the years-long project to renovate the central bank’s headquarters. But in March, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg blocked the subpoenas, finding they were part of an effort to pressure Powell into voting to lower interest rates or resign.

Pirro has vowed to appeal the decision. Tillis said Sunday that the Justice Department assured him any appeal would be focused on the judge’s basis for quashing the subpoenas rather than a vehicle for resuming the investigation.

Mr. Trump frequently vents his frustrations with Powell over his interest-rate decisions and suggested last year that the construction at the Fed could be grounds to fire Powell. The renovation project, which encompasses two buildings, was first approved in 2017 and is set to be completed next year. The estimated cost of the project ballooned from $1.9 billion to nearly $2.5 billion, which the Fed said was the result of several factors, including a rise in the cost material, equipment and labor. The central bank is self-funded.

The Fed’s inspector general’s office, which is led by Michael Horowitz, has twice conducted audits regarding the bank’s renovation projects, and Powell told the Senate last year he had asked the watchdog to take another look at the ongoing overhaul of its headquarters.

The inspector general’s office said Friday that it is “actively working” to finish its review of the project and would make its findings available to the public and Congress.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/end-justice-department-powell-probe-could-clear-way-kevin-warsh-confirmation-fed-chair/

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Visualizing the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting incident in maps

2026-04-26T16:51:48.262Z / CNN

By Renée Rigdon, Gillian Roberts, Kevin Liptak, Rhyannon Bartlett-Imadegawa

Published Apr 26, 2026, 12:51 PM ET

A suspected gunman was apprehended Saturday after blowing past a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton just as events were getting underway for the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, first lady Melania Trump and many Cabinet officials were ushered to safety after shots were heard outside the ballroom at the iconic Washington, DC, hotel.

Many of CNN’s Washington press corps were in attendance at the event, and immediately flung themselves into reporting on the shooting incident, which acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday morning was likely a targeted attack on Trump administration officials.

CNN mapped what we know about the suspect’s movements and apprehension inside the hotel.

Trump, several of his Cabinet members and many White House journalists made their way after the event’s cancellation back to the White House, about 1.5 miles south of the Hilton, where Trump and Blanche shared details about the incident in the press briefing room.

— CNN’s Alayna Treene, Matthew Philips and Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.

What is driving political violence? | CNN Politics

2026-04-26 1:06 PM EDT / CNN

What is driving political violence?

By Dana Bash, CNN

Published 1:06 PM EDT, Sun April 26, 2026

Former Trump Campaign Adviser David Urban and the panel debate whether overcharged political rhetoric from the right and left is leading to political violence and the targeting of elected officials.

8:39 • Source: CNN

Who Killed Roxanne Sharp? podcast leads to 4 arrests in decades-old murder of girl in Louisiana

2026-04-26T11:57:00-0400 / CBS/AP

Louisiana police say a podcast helped them solve the decades-old killing of a 16-year-old girl and announced Friday that four men now face criminal charges in connection with her rape and murder.

In 1982, teenager Roxanne Sharp was killed in the woods of St. Tammany Parish, about 30 miles north of New Orleans. Police struggled to solve the case due to a lack of evidence and witnesses willing to come forward. But then, investigators approached a local media company, which agreed to produce a podcast, “Who Killed Roxanne Sharp?” renewing public interest in the case after its six-part series aired last year.

Louisiana State Police spokesperson Marc Gremillion credited the podcast with generating crucial tips from the public and prompting new witnesses to approach investigators.

“It helped our investigators piece together where Roxanne was days before to the time she died, to where we’re at now,” Gremillion told The Associated Press. “It was a very large help with getting that message out to the public, and then, therefore, those witnesses getting back to us.”

Over the past few days, police charged four men with aggravated rape and second-degree murder: Perry Wayne Taylor, 64; Darrell Dean Spell, 64; Carlos Cooper, 64; and Billy Williams, Jr., 62.

Cooper and Taylor were already in prison on unrelated charges, and Williams and Spell were arrested earlier this week. Sharp was an acquaintance of the four arrested suspects and was known to frequent the neighborhood where they lived, Gremillion added.

“We appreciate the hard work and love that has been shown to Roxanne Sharp’s case,” Sharp’s niece, Michele Lappin, said in a statement on behalf of her family. “We hope that with justice will come healing and closure for our family, her loved ones, and the community.”

This photo provided by Michele Lappin shows Roxanne Sharp in Covington, La., in 1980. AP

Billy Williams Jr.’s son, Billy Williams III, said his father is innocent of the crime.

“He thinks they’re putting him in for something he didn’t do,” the younger Williams said. “He says he would never in his life hurt anyone.”

The St. Tammany Parish clerk of court did not have attorneys listed for any of the suspects. Family members of Spell, Cooper and Taylor did not respond to requests for comment via phone numbers associated with them.

“When we started the podcast, we kind of thought nobody cared – we were quickly corrected,” said Charles Dowdy, vice president of Northshore Media, which produced the podcast. “A lot of people stepped up and said they knew Roxanne, they remembered her, they were friends with her.”

Dowdy recorded audio as investigators recreated the crime scene using measuring tapes to mark the exact locations where Sharp’s body was found and where other pieces of evidence were uncovered.

“It clearly showed that she’d been grabbed on the street and dragged into the woods,” Dowdy said.

Police had once thought the case solved after serial killer Henry Lucas claimed responsibility for Sharp’s murder. But Lucas, known for making false confessions, later retracted his claim, and other evidence disproved his connection to the murder.

St. Tammany Parish resident Justin Joiner, 39, told the AP that his father, a Covington police officer, had been one of the first law enforcement to arrive at the scene of Sharp’s death and remained frustrated about the lack of closure for the rest of his life. He kept a briefcase full of his notes on the case until he passed away last year.

“It’s been a big black cloud on the community,” Joiner said. “Nobody would talk about it — it was hush, hush, you talk about it in your house, not in public.”

Joiner added that the podcast opened up discussion about the case across generations and throughout the community.

“Cold cases don’t close themselves,” Covington Police Department Chief Michael Ferrell said in a statement. “They close because people show up, year after year, and refuse to quit. That is exactly what our agencies did, and today, Roxanne and her family finally have the justice they have waited so long for.”

District Attorney Collin Sims echoed that sentiment.

“This case is a powerful example of what persistence, collaboration, and advancements in investigative technology can accomplish. For more than four decades, this victim and her family have waited for answers,” Sims said in a statement. “Today’s arrests reflect our unwavering commitment to pursue justice—no matter how much time has passed—and to hold those responsible fully accountable.”

Podcasts have helped law enforcement solve other cold cases recently. Last year, detectives in Illinois solved a missing person’s cold case and credited the podcast “Somebody Knows Something,” which the Elgin Police Department itself launched. In 2024, a sheriff in South Carolina credited a podcast with helping to identify a 1975 cold case victim, formerly known as “Mr X.”

Artist Jenny Saville on the body as landscape

April 26, 2026 / 9:29 AM EDT / CBS News

By
Elizabeth Palmer Senior Foreign Correspondent
Elizabeth Palmer is CBS News’ senior foreign correspondent. She is based in the CBS News London Bureau, and reports on major events across Europe and the Middle East. Palmer was previously based in Tokyo, and before that in Moscow, for CBS News.

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Colossal heads, with luminous faces – intense and inscrutable – line the walls of Jenny Saville’s studio in Oxford, England. She described the portrait’s inner glow: “I’ll just rub the paint in and make it have a sort of inner light that’s left here. It’s a special thing that only paint can do actually.”

And what is it that she hopes to convey? “To distil a sort of essence of what we are as human beings,” she replied. “I mean, I think that if you paint figuratively, that’s what it’s about really. It’s some sort of communication of the unspoken.”

Artist Jenny Saville at her studio with one of her oversized portraits. CBS News

Saville’s breakthrough came in the early 1990s, with her audacious self-portrait “Propped,” which would later sell for more than $12 million at auction. It had initially caught the eye of collector Charles Saatchi, who saw it at her art school degree show, and commissioned more.

“Propped” by Jenny Saville (1992). Oil on canvas. © Jenny Saville

“It’s incredible opportunity for a 21-year-old,” Saville said. “He just said, ‘Make whatever you like.’ And I stood in the space, I saw the back wall and thought, I’m gonna make a triptych. And I just got to work, really.”

Like “Propped,” that triptych, titled “Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face),” was a bold rendering of a woman’s body.

Asked where her fascination with flesh began, Saville said, “There’s not a sort of start point. Freud, Bacon, Auerbach, Picasso, Degas, they were all artists that I liked. Egon Schiele, De Kooning – people that painted the body. Old master painters like Titian, Velasquez. They were painters that I just was drawn to looking at. You just develop along a certain way and build your language.”

Saville’s own gaze was both curious and clinical. From her first solo show, the painting “Planned” depicts a torso marked up for liposuction. “If you have a cosmetic surgery book or a plastic surgery book, it will show you how flesh is moved around the body in order to keep it alive for reconstruction of a breast, for example,” she said. “And I found that fascinating to extend my knowledge really of the body.”

But she says she doesn’t see treating the body as a landscape as a way to objectify the body: “I didn’t see it as objectifying. I just saw it as the relationship with nature.”

An installation view of the recent exhibition “Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting,” at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. CBS News

A recent retrospective at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth exhibited more than three decades of Saville’s work, with a real focus on those arresting heads, most of them female. She said, “It was never a sort of conscious decision: ‘Okay, I’m only gonna paint women.’ I just did. And that became a language. I did a lot of self-portraits.”

That language tackled the universal experience of motherhood, too. “The kind of wriggling, the sense of growth – it’s a particular period in a woman’s life that’s just absolutely amazing and poignant and full of abundance,” she said of her 2011 painting “The Mothers.” “I wanted to communicate that.”

Saville’s latest exhibition, which opened in Venice this weekend, features her newest work. At 55, she is a giant in the modern art world, with the kind of success few living artists achieve.

Asked if she finds it gratifying that her paintings can sell in the millions, she replied, “I find a studio is the purest space for me, and I leave all of that at the door. So, when I come in here, I just don’t think like that. You know, this painting isn’t gonna get better because it’s gonna be worth more money.”

“Drift, 2020–22” by Jenny Saville. Oil and oil stick on canvas. © Jenny Saville. All rights reserved. DACS 2024

Asked if she would spend millions of pounds to buy a painting, Saville laughed: “I’ve never thought about that! Of course it’s absurd. A painting can be the price of a house that a family can live in, and when you look at it like that you think, this is absurd. And on the other flip side of that, if you look through the history of art, art tended to get very good in moments where there have been financial support of artists and art, whether that’s the Renaissance, through the papacy or commissions. And we are living through one of those times where we value art financially and culturally. Whether you can take those two things apart, I just don’t know.”

But she says she definitely feels lucky. “Oh my gosh. Absolutely!” she said. “You know, I’ve lived my life doing the activity that I loved when I was a kid. It’s really who I am. I think you can ask any painter or sculptor or filmmaker or anybody creative, a dancer, a musician, it’s a good way to live.”

Kacey Musgraves on writing lyrics: “There is no greater drug”

April 26, 2026 / 10:11 AM EDT / CBS News

When singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves went home to East Texas a couple of years ago to heal from a breakup, she saw a sign: “Golden, Texas, somewhere in the middle of nowhere.”

“And I was like, ‘That’s a song,’” she said. “Okay, a record called ‘Middle of Nowhere,’ I feel like I’m in the middle of nowhere right now.”

Soon the rest of an album started to spill out, such as the song “Dry Spell.” “I had that title written down in my phone, ’cause quite literally I was going through a dry spell!”

_It’s been a real long

Three-hundred and thirty-five days

And the last time

It wasn’t good anyway …_

_Ain’t nobody’s tool up in my shed

Ain’t nobody’s boots under my bed

Ain’t nobody’s truck up in my drive

For a late-night call, for a real good time

Ain’t no new notches on my belt

And I’m tired of keeping my hands to myself

911, it’s officially a cry for help

Y’all, I’m going through a dry spell, yep_

To hear Kacey Musgraves perform “Dry Spell,” from her album “Middle of Nowhere,” click on the video player below:

Kacey Musgraves – Dry Spell (Official Music Video) by KaceyMusgravesVEVO on YouTube

Asked if she gets excited writing a great lyric, Musgraves replied, “There is no greater drug, yes! Mostly I’m always in competition with myself. Can I beat myself? Can I make this better? Leaving that day and playing it in your car, you’re like, ‘Okay, I have not lost it.’ You’re like, ‘That was good!’

“I remember, like, back in the day with ‘Space Cowboy,’ I was on the treadmill one day. And I heard the words ‘space cowboy’ in my mind. But then I heard it, like, Space comma cowboy. You know like, you can have your space, cowboy! But when people see the title they’re gonna think that it’s space cowboy. Ooh, got you!”

“Space Cowboy” won Musgraves a Grammy for best country song in 2019. The same year, she won album of the year for “Golden Hour.”

Musgraves started out performing the Texas circuit at spots like Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth.

“It’s a really big deal, I don’t know if you know this, but when you sell out Billy Bob’s you get to put your hands in the concrete,” she said, showing off her handprints on the wall. “These are my hands. They still fit!”

Kacey Musgraves shows off her handprints on the Billy Bob’s Wall of Fame. CBS News

Musgraves started playing publicly when she was eight or nine. She grew up a couple hours’ drive from Fort Worth, in a “little bitty town” called Golden.

Thirteen years ago, “Sunday Morning” visited Musgraves and her family at her parents’ house. “We all sat around the table, we all had very interesting hair choices at that point in time,” Musgraves said. “I re-watched it recently. and I was like, ‘Wow! My bangs, I don’t know what’s happening.’”

From the archives: Anthony Mason’s profile of Kacey Musgraves from 2013 (Video)

From 2013: Kacey Musgraves on her debut album 06:31

“And my grandparents were there. You took a visit to, I think, my grandpa’s record collection, which he still has,” she said. “And it’s still just as unorganized. It’s a little treasure hunt!”

One of Musgraves’ earliest influences was John Prine. “I like to think he’s a bit of a little guardian angel,” she said. “He was a mentor for sure to me.”

Prine died of COVID in 2020. Musgraves’ song “Cardinal,” on her last album, was a tribute to Prine.

_I saw a sign or an omen

On the branches in the morning

It was right after I

Lost a friend without warning_

_Cardinal

Are you bringing me a message from the other side?_

She said, “I really do feel like he sent me messages. And the cardinal kept visiting. I know that was a major symbol for him.

“We actually tried to write a song one time,” she said. “I went to his house in Nashville, and we didn’t end up even finishing anything, ’cause I was just listening to his stories all day. He said, ‘Well, we’re probably not gonna write a song, are we?’ I’m like, ‘No, probably not!’” Still, it was, she said, an “awesome day.”

“Middle of Nowhere” is Musgraves’ sixth album. Her first five albums all hit #1 on the country chart. Her sister, Kelly, took the cover photo, of Kacey posing with a bull. “I called my friend Evan, I was like, ‘Do you have any bulls that you could bring?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, actually I’ve got a really sweet one. His name is Tex.’ And at one point like, the police come over. They’re like, ‘Do you guys have a permit for this?’ And we’re like, ‘No?’ And they were like, ‘All right.’”

Lost Highway Records

In writing her new record, Musgraves says she learned how to embrace being alone: “It’s nice just to be able to stop the tape and kind of evaluate, like, ‘Okay, why do I make these choices? How am I drawn to certain archetypes of people? What does that say about me?’”

What did she realize when she asked those questions? “Well, I don’t have all the answers,” she replied. “Do we ever? Yeah, we really don’t know. Now, I realize that there’s nothing more lonely than being in a relationship that isn’t right for you. It’s way more lonely than being actually just by yourself.”

Correspondent Anthony Mason with Kacey Musgraves. CBS News

And after 335 days, she isn’t in the middle of nowhere anymore. “The dry spell was broken, I’ll just say that,” she laughed. “The dry spell is broken, I’ve got everything I need!”

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Kacey Musgraves (Video)

Extended interview: Kacey Musgraves 14:38

For more info:

• The album”Middle of Nowhere”by Kacey Mugraves (Lost Highway Records) will be released May 1 and is available for pre-order
• kaceymusgraves.com (Official site)
• Billy Bob’s Texas, Fort Worth

Story produced by Jon Carras and Lucie Kirk. Editor: Lauren Barnello.

https://youtu.be/NlohfwTunwU
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/from-2013-kacey-musgraves-same-trailer-different-park/
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/extended-interview-kacey-musgraves/

The long history of America’s conflict with Cuba

April 26, 2026 / 11:13 AM EDT / CBS News

With so much attention on Iran in recent weeks, you may have missed the news about the increasingly tense situation with another longtime adversary of the United States – one closer to home.

On April 13, while making remarks about the war in Iran, President Trump said, “We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this.”

The U.S. has blocked nearly all oil shipments into Cuba, pushing it to the brink of collapse. Meanwhile, high-level talks between the two countries are underway.

Mr. Trump hasn’t offered details, but has said this: “All my life I’ve been hearing about the United States and Cuba: when will the United States do it? I do believe I’ll be the honor, having the honor of taking Cuba.”

• Why is Trump talking about action on Cuba and what could that look like?

The island nation just 90 miles from Florida has indeed played an outsized role in our foreign policy for close to 70 years. But back in the 1950s, most Americans thought of Cuba as little more than a hedonistic paradise.

It was “a playground where anything goes, where there are casinos, where there’s prostitution … and to a great extent, that was true,” said Jorge Malagon Marquez, a Cuban-American, and a professor of history at Miami Dade college. “You had celebrities like Frank Sinatra coming down. It’s party time.

“What Americans weren’t seeing was the dissatisfaction amongst regular Cubans running just below the surface,” he said.

Many Cubans were subsisting, and working in industries outright owned by Americans. “Cubans loved Americans coming as tourists or what have you, but it was the control of the economy that really bothered them,” Marquez said. And for many Cubans, memories were still fresh from half a century earlier when, after the Spanish American War, the U.S. won a “sort of” independence for Cuba in 1902.

But was Cuba really independent? “It’s independence like independence I gave my teenage kids,” laughed Marquez, “which means like, ‘Sure, you’re independent, so long as you’re home by 10 o’clock.’”

Mo Rocca with Miami Dade College history professor Jorge Malagon Marquez, whose family fled Cuba in 1967. CBS News

Yes, Cuba was a sovereign nation, but the United States could intervene anytime its interests were at stake – which it did repeatedly, until the 1930s. And so, by the late 1950s, conditions were ripe for revolution.

But if other Latin American countries had grievances against the United States, what was it about Cuba that allowed a decades-long communist dictatorship to take root there? “It’s Fidelismo,” said Marquez. “It’s a cult of personality. If it had been anybody else, this would’ve fizzled out within the first couple of years.”

Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. CBS News

The late Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, and became a central actor in the Cold War, sparking fears of Communism spreading in the Americas. His authoritarian regime has survived a decades-long trade embargo … a missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war … and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s longtime patron.

Marquez still remembers the hold Castro had over a five-year-old growing up in Cuba: “I was, like, in first grade or just starting first grade. And they have something called the Pioneers for the Revolution – you wear a red scarf. And they would ask, ‘Bow your heads and pray to God for candy.’ And the children would bow their heads and pray to God for candy … and open your eyes.”

After no candy appeared, the children would be told, “‘Bow your heads, close your eyes, and ask Fidel for candy.’ … I wish I were making this up! And lo and behold, there will be the candy.”

Marquez and his family fled Cuba in 1967, among the more than 1.5 million who have left the island for the U.S. since the early 1960s.

Elsa and Becky Cobo’s late father, Arturo, was a teenager in Havana in 1960 when he witnessed his own father’s bank being seized by the regime. “He saw the military come and take basically the keys from my grandfather and tell him, ‘Go,’ and that’s when he said, ‘We gotta do something,’” said Elsa.

A group of U.S.-backed Cuban exiles who attempted an invasion at the Bay of Pigs are seen after being captured by Castro’s soldiers, on the Playa de Giron, Cuba, April 1961. Three Lions/Getty Images

Arturo escaped to the U.S., and enlisted in the CIA-trained brigade of Cuban exiles who, in April 1961, landed at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs in a secret operation meant to overthrow the Castro regime. The soldiers were expecting air cover from the Americans. At the last minute, though, Democratic President John F. Kennedy pulled the plug – a turn of events Cuban-Americans never forgot.

“They were basically left there to die,” said Elsa.

Asked why so many Cuban-Americans are so staunchly Republican, Marquez replied, “Bay of Pigs. That’s it. You don’t have to go further than that.”

• How Fidel Castro stood up to the U.S., and won (“Sunday Morning”)

Arturo Cobo spent nearly two years in a Cuban prison. When he was released, he settled in Key West, Fla., where his daughters still live today.

There, Arturo helped wave after wave of refugees arriving from his home country. Many didn’t survive the voyage.

At the Key West Botanical Garden, you can see evidence of their desperation – makeshift rafts used by Cubans to reach America, some made of Styrofoam.

Some examples of makeshift Cuban refugee boats, or “chugs,” that made the 90-mile crossing to Florida. CBS News

Arturo Cobo died in 2019. He, like so many others who fled Castro’s Cuba, never returned. “They came over hoping that one day Cuba would be free,” said Becky, “and never imagined … they would not see the day that that would happen.”

• As Trump continues to strike a deal with Cuba, exiles in South Florida hope to recuperate seized property

Jorge Malagon Marquez says those waves of migration have remade South Florida. But their absence in Cuba may also help explain the regime’s longevity: “Those that would have been willing to rise up? Gone. I mean, you gotta give it to Fidel Castro. He was brilliant, you know, in a sort of, like, evil way. He was the evil genius.”

But Castro died in 2016, and the Cold War is long over. Few believe Cuba poses the threat that it once did to the U.S. The Cuban economy, never robust under communist rule, has been in freefall since the pandemic, with nearly a fifth of the population leaving since 2021.

A deepening energy and economic crisis, fueled in part by economic sanctions by the United States, has left Cuba dependent on foreign assistance and oil shipments from allied countries, including Mexico and Russia. CBS News

And now the Trump administration is turning the screws on an already-failing state, worsening its humanitarian crisis. Mr. Trump said of Cuba, “Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it.”

Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits are pondering what comes next.

White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect sent “manifesto” to family, who alerted police, source says

2026-04-26T11:07:00-0400 / CBS News

By Jennifer Jacobs, Jennifer Jacobs Senior White House reporter
Jennifer Jacobs is a senior White House reporter at CBS News.
Jennifer Jacobs, Nicole Sganga
Nicole Sganga Homeland Security and Justice Correspondent
Nicole Sganga is CBS News’ homeland security and justice correspondent. She is based in Washington, D.C., and reports for all shows and platforms.
Nicole Sganga

Updated on: April 26, 2026 / 11:39 AM EDT / CBS News

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect wrote a “manifesto” which stated he wanted to specifically target administration officials, law enforcement and White House officials told CBS News.

Authorities also found anti-Trump and anti-Christian rhetoric on the suspect’s social media accounts, the official said.

Cole Allen, 31, sent some of his writings to members of his family before the attempted attack on Saturday, and one of them alerted police about the writings. The writings sent to family members apparently did not specifically mention the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Another family member who was interviewed by investigators after the attack said Allen made radical statements and that he constantly referenced a plan to do “something” to fix the issues with today’s world.

Family members told investigators Allen would regularly go to the shooting range to train with his guns. He legally owned two guns, one of which was used in the shooting at the Washington Hilton Hotel, law enforcement officials told CBS News.

Allen’s family members also said he was part of a group called “The Wide Awakes” and attended a “No Kings” protest in California.