CUBA LIBRE: The Justice Department unsealed an indictment against Cuba’s former president, 94-year-old Raúl Castro, charging him with murder and a conspiracy to kill US citizens in shooting down two US passenger planes 30 years ago.

   Four people died in 1996 when Cuban jets shot down two planes run by Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban exile group that flew over the sea looking for fleeing Cubans on the water. Cuba’s original revolutionary leader Fidel Castro,  Raúl’s brother,  claimed credit, saying that the organization had dropped anti-regime leaflets over Havana in earlier flights.

  The Trump administration is ratcheting up pressure for regime change in Cuba, including cutting off the supply of oil to the island country. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a video calling on the Cuban people to align with the Trump administration as it seeks to weaken the regime.

  “The reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil blockade by the US,” Rubio said in Spanish. “The real reason you don’t have electricity, fuel or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people.”

  Speaking to reporters yesterday, President Trump denied raising pressure on the Cuban regime. “No, there won’t be escalation,” Trump said. “I don’t think there needs to be.” He said,  “Look the place is falling apart, it’s a mess.”

STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLE: The Justice Department creation of a special fund to compensate people prosecuted by the Biden administration has crossed a police line.

  Two cops who defended the Capitol during the January 6^th insurrection sued the Trump administration to block establishment of the nearly $1.8 billion fund that they say will be used to reward the rioters and right-wing militia groups.

 Former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Officer Daniel Hodges of Washington’s Metropolitan Police charge that the Trump administration created a “slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name.” It names as defendants President Trump, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

  The lawsuit says that, “Although Trump and his cronies have been secretive about the fund’s ends, reporting leaves no doubt that it will be used, among other purposes, to pay the nearly 1,600 people charged with attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”

INFINITE SCROLL:

— Executives of Reynolds tobacco donated $5 million to a Trump super pac and had lunch with the President just days before the Food and Drug administration  approved candy-flavored vaping products, the NY Times reports. FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, who was opposed to the vaping products that would appeal to children, then resigned.

— Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, said in an interview that President Trump is “more mature, more disciplined” in his second term. “Trump has lots of good ideas, and he’s been right about a lot of things,” Bezos said in the interview with the journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” 

  He did not elaborate and to his shame Sorkin didn’t ask.

  Bezos paid $40 million for the vanity documentary about Melania Trump but claimed he had no involvement. “The idea that somehow that is a way of buying influence is just not correct.”

— The Trump administration says it does not need congressional approval to build the President’s triumphal arch in view of Arlington cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial because Congress approved a similar project 100 years ago that was never built.

  Plans in 1924 called for two 166-foot columns on Columbia Island as part of the Arlington Bridge project. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a hearing that, “President Trump believes that this year’s celebration of 250 years of American independence is the perfect moment to finally realize this long-standing, over-century-old vision, but yet unfilled vision for Columbia Island.”

  Trump’s arch would be 250-feet tall. 

THE OBIT PAGE: Former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, the lumpy and sharp first openly gay member of Congress who steered a re-write of the country’s financial regulations, died of congestive heart failure at age 86 in Ogunquit, Maine.

  Frank represented a suburban Boston district for 32 years and was the first member of Congress to come out voluntarily as gay. Others who had lived in the closet had been “outed,” but Frank declared that homosexuality was nothing to be ashamed of  and helped to normalize being openly gay in public life.

  In Washingtonian magazine’s annual poll of Capitol Hill staffers, Frank more than once was voted the “brainiest,” “funniest” and “most eloquent” member of the House.

THE SPIN RACK: A record 274 climbers reached the peak of Mount Everest yesterday. It’s like visiting Venice in summer. — Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers at age 42 says the coming NFL season will be his last. 

BELOW THE FOLD: The last episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” airs tonight. While the show itself might be funny, the event is not.

  CBS cancelled the show just days after the company agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit over the “60 Minutes” editing of an interview with then presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

  Paramount, which needed administration approval for a merger with David Ellison’s Skydance, paid the money and the merger was approved. Colbert called the payment what it was, “a big fat bribe.”

  CBS said they cancelled the show for financial reasons without making any effort to trim costs. Critics say they cancelled the show because Paramount and the President can’t take a joke.

  Paramount now owns CBS and CBS News. It is moving on a deal to take over Warner Brothers and CNN. The company has demonstrated that it needs the approval of Donald Trump more than the independence of its voice. Paramount killed satire about Trump … what will it do to truth?