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Blanche: Nations, Leaders Cannot be Permitted to Target Americans; DOJ Indicts Former Cuban President Raul Castro; Police Officers Who Defended U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 sue to Stop Trump's "Anti-Weaponization" Fund; IRS Barred from Investigating Trump or His Family for Past Tax Issues, Under Deal Reached in Trump's $10 Billion Lawsuit; U.S. Doctor Who Tested Positive for Ebola Now at Berlin Hospital; Surgeon General Advisory Warns of Too Much Screen Time for Kids 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 20, 2026 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[15:01:09]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We begin with breaking news. One of the most powerful and influential leaders in Cuban history is now facing justice here in the United States. The Department of Justice unsealing a historic indictment against former Cuban President Raul Castro. Prosecutors charging him with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, destruction of an aircraft and four counts of murder. During the historic announcement from Miami's Freedom Tower, considered the "Ellis Island of the South," Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said this.

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TODD BLANCHE, ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL: For the first time in nearly 70 years, senior leadership of the Cuban regime has been charged in this country, in the United States of America, for acts of violence resulting in the deaths of American citizens. Nations and their leaders cannot be permitted to target Americans, kill them and not face accountability.

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SANCHEZ: So, why is Raul Castro now being indicted? Why is this 94- year-old being charged with murder by the U.S. government? To explain, we have to go back to the early 1990s, an area -- an era in Cuba known as the "Special Period," where after the fall of the Soviet Union, Havana lost its main benefactor and conditions on the island deteriorated immensely with severe energy and food shortages.

After weeks of unprecedented anti-government protests in Havana, then- leader Fidel Castro lifted restrictions on any vessel leaving the island. Within weeks, over 21,000 Cubans of all ages fled the communist country, many of them on makeshift rafts fashioned out of rubber inner tubes. They were known as balseros or rafters. Though never at this rate, Cubans had been attempting to cross the Florida Straits for decades like this, with thousands believed to have perished on the 90-mile journey.

That's why in 1991, Brothers to the Rescue was founded, an anti-Castro organization headed by Cuban exiles that flew humanitarian missions over the Florida Straits searching for rafters, dropping them aid packages into the ocean and coordinating with the Coast Guard to rescue them. The group claims to have helped rescue more than 4,000 people. The Cuban government accuses Brothers to the Rescue of repeatedly violating its airspace to drop leaflets like this one, calling for Cubans to rise up against Castro.

Havana called these flights illegal and provocative, and U.S. officials warned the organization against these incursions into Cuban airspace.

Then, on February 24th, 1996, three planes carrying members of Brothers to the Rescue took off headed toward Cuba, and what happens next has been disputed. What is clear is that two of the group's planes were shot down by a Cuban-operated MiG-29. Four people were killed, including three American citizens, Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandro Jr, Mario de la Pena. A fourth, Pablo Morales, was a green card holder who just four years earlier had been rescued on a similar mission to the one that he was on.

A United Nations report said the Cuban pilots who shot them down were recorded celebrating, saying, "This one won't F with us anymore." Now, Havana argues that these planes crossed over into Cuban airspace, though a United Nations investigation concluded they were shot down in international waters, also noting that international law bars countries from firing at civilian planes even in their own airspace.

We should note Cuba also never attempted less drastic measures, as was pointed out by this U.N. investigation. In an interview with Time magazine after the shootdown, Fidel Castro himself took full responsibility, quote, "We gave the order to the head of the air force. They shot the planes down.

[15:05:05]

They are professionals, but I take responsibility for what happened. We warned U.S. officials again and again," he said. "We had been patient, but there are limits."

In response to the shootdown, the U.S. Congress codified the embargo against Cuba just weeks later, with President Bill Clinton signing "The Libertad Act," The Liberty Act, into law, saying at the time that the planes posed no credible threat to Cuban security. Years later, the U.S. convicted the leader of a Cuban spy ring that had infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue for murder conspiracy. He was later returned to Cuba in a 2014 prisoner swap. Two Cuban fighter pilots and the head of Cuba's air force were also charged with murder in federal court, though they were never tried.

As for Raul Castro, he was allegedly recorded months after the shootdown, describing how he directed Cuban fighter pilots to, quote "Shoot them down over the sea when they appear." The recording was first reported by El Nuevo Herald, the Miami Herald sister paper. We should note, CNN has not been able to verify this recording, but it is at the heart of this indictment, and prosecutors argue that it shows that Castro was directly involved in the decision-making process.

Now, the lingering question is, would the U.S. pursue these charges against Castro the way they did against Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, removing him from the country by force. Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, 2021, are suing to block the $1.8 billion so- called anti-weaponization fund for Trump allies. In the suit, lawyers for Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges write, quote "If allowed to begin payments, the fund will directly finance the violent operations of rioters, paramilitaries, and their supporters who threatened plaintiffs' lives that day and continue to do so."

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has not ruled out making payments to those who stormed the Capitol. We're joined now by CNN Legal Analyst Elliot Williams. He also served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at the DOJ.

Elliot, as you look at this case, I wonder what you think. It claims -- the lawsuit does -- that the fund is illegal, there's no statute authorizing its creation, and its design violates the Constitution, the 14th Amendment, it's a legend here --

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Right.

KEILAR: -- and federal law. Do they have a case?

WILLIAMS: I don't know, Brianna. It's tricky. Look, the -- the -- the lawsuit lays out a strong moral case for keeping January 6th in the public eye and not forgetting what happened on that day. But the legal bases here can be shaky, starting with what's called standing. In order to have standing to file a lawsuit, you have to be the person harmed by the thing that's happening.

And a lot of what the plaintiffs point to here is, quote "Well, look, we've been victims of violence before. If these -- these payments are made, people will have an incentive to treat, you know, to come at us with violence in the future.?

Well, that's not a harm, that's something that might happen to you in the future, and it's really hard to file a lawsuit over that. So, there are a few things like that where it's just speculative in terms of how they've crafted it.

KEILAR: Would they have better standing if they were currently police officers with the Capitol Police, or no?

WILLIAMS: Not necessarily.

KEILAR: Not necessarily.

WILLIAMS: No, not necessarily. It's just because of the speculative nature of that harms question, it's going to be really hard not to go there. Another one, you know, you mentioned the 14th Amendment. It -- the 14th Amendment says that no funds from the United States can be paid to insurrectionists, in effect. That follows the Civil War and why -- you know, we have the 14th Amendment in the first place. That requires a definition of insurrection that, to be quite frank, is still unsettled in the law. That's never really been resolved, what, how far we go in defining the term legally and whether January 6th applied to that.

Now, many people have very strong views about that, but a court hasn't made a finding on it, and so it's another tricky one.

KEILAR: Does the fact that the Vice President and the Acting Attorney General, when asked, we heard this yesterday, they would not say, "No people who injured or committed violence against police officers are not going to receive money here." Does that make this case any stronger?

WILLIAMS: No. The -- the tricky thing about the case is that it's purely -- when they've used the term, this open-ended, vague, to be clear, term, weaponization and lawfare, these plaintiffs have drawn from that that this is necessarily a payment for January 6th people. It could be a payment to anybody, right? And so, it is early, at best, for a lawsuit to be filed alleging that folks who stormed the Capitol on January 6th would necessarily be the people who would be getting payments here from this lawsuit.

It's just -- big picture in order to file a lawsuit, you've got to be harmed by someone in the immediate, and it's a little bit speculative here, even setting aside how important and how tragic and how real January 6th was.

KEILAR: You know, Dunn and Hodges claim the Trump family's original lawsuit against the IRS was frivolous. How do you see it?

WILLIAMS: It was -- I -- it's -- use all the adjectives you want, frivolous, baseless.

[15:10:02]

The President himself has said that he would be paying himself. They dismissed the case largely because there was no actual lawsuit there. In order to have a lawsuit, you have to have parties that are adverse to each other and the President admitted that he is in effect suing himself because as president of the United States he oversees the -- the IRS.

So yes, these plaintiffs are absolutely correct that it was a silly lawsuit in the first place for the President of the United States to be in effect suing his own secretary of the treasury. Now, several years from now, if the President were a private citizen and wanted to sue the government, yes, it would be a much different case, but I think, you know, this is one area in which these plaintiffs, these police officers are correct, I think, is the sort of oddness, oddity of the President overseeing a government that would be paying himself one day. KEILAR: If they have standing.

WILLIAMS: If they have standing.

KEILAR: All right. Elliot, thank you so much.

WILLIAMS: Thanks, Brianna.

KEILAR: Still to come, the U.S. government is working to send an experimental treatment to some Americans exposed to this new strain of Ebola virus as world health officials work to contain a deadly outbreak that is spreading quickly in Central Africa.

Plus, the IRS is now forever barred from investigating President Trump or his family for past tax issues.

And then later, how much is too much screen time for kids? A new advisory by the surgeon general is warning parents about the risks. We have that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[15:15:43]

SANCHEZ: Now to the latest on the worsening Ebola outbreak in Africa. An American doctor, Peter Stafford, caught the disease and started showing symptoms while helping patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Today he arrived at a hospital in Berlin, transported in a specially equipped vehicle under police escort. Five other people, including Stafford's physician wife, who had high-risk contact with him, will also be cared for in Germany. A sixth person will be treated in the Czech Republic.

The U.S. is now coordinating a shipment of a -- an experimental antibody treatment for those patients, according to Health and Human Services. Right now, there is no approved therapy or vaccine for this rare strain of Ebola. Let's get the latest from CNN Medical Correspondent Meg Tirrell.

Meg, what are you hearing?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we know that this antibody treatment, it's experimental right now because, as you noted, this is a rarer strain of Ebola than we've seen in the past. This was an antibody treatment that was actually developed for a different strain of Ebola, but it's shown promising data in animals and may be one of the best options from a limited tool set that we have right now.

So, we know that they're coordinating sending this for high-risk Americans. I've also heard from experts in this space that there are discussions about a clinical trial to start in the outbreak area in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are also, of course, questions about vaccine development. And we got a timeline update on that from the WHO this morning. They said essentially the most promising candidate could take six to

nine months to even get enough of sort of human-grade doses in order to start a clinical trial. So that's a bit of a long timeline, obviously. Two to three months for a different vaccine candidate that actually uses the same technology as the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, if folks remember that one, of course. That could be ready sooner, but it has less data to support it.

Overall, though, everybody asking what is the risk level right now. The World Health Organization saying the risk level nationally and regionally in DRC, where this is located, is, of course, very high. From a global perspective, the risk, they say, is low. They say this is not a pandemic potential right now. We, of course, know that this is centered in the northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Ituri province. And that's one of the reasons this is considered just so dangerous for further spread, because there's so much unrest in this area, so much conflict, a hundred thousand people recently displaced in this area. It's also a mining area, so there's a lot of population movement.

Now, if you want to look at why this strain poses so many problems, it's the yellow here, if you can see that, this Bundibugyo strain. There's only been two prior outbreaks. Often, what we see more frequently with Ebola is this red, which is the Zaire strain. And that's why we have existing vaccines and therapeutics for that strain, but not Bundibugyo.

Right now, with this outbreak, we are approaching about 600 cases, 139 deaths. These are the previous two largest outbreaks of Ebola in history, 11,000 deaths in that 2014 West Africa epidemic, 2,200 deaths in that 2018 DRC outbreak. And of course, you mentioned the American patient who has been moved to Germany, those six high-risk contacts also being monitored. Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes, we're hoping the best for his health and -- and the other six as well. Meg Tirrell, thank you so much for breaking that down for us.

Still ahead, a new official health advisory about the risk of screen time for kids and teens and the boundaries the government wants parents to set for them when we come back.

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[15:23:40]

SANCHEZ: Despite the fact that there is no confirmed Surgeon General right now in the Trump administration, today we got a new Surgeon General's advisory.

KEILAR: That's right. The advisory says by the time they're adolescents, kids are spending more time on screens than sleeping or going to school and that it can harm them. And too much screen time is now officially a public health concern in the U.S. CNN Health Reporter Jacqueline Howard has details on this. I think a lot of people are going to say, yes, I think we kind of knew

this, but it's also one of those things that may be very important to have codified this way. What's this advisory recommending?

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: That's right, Brianna. And for a lot of parents, they can think, you know, it's been a struggle getting my kids to put their screens away.

So, this advisory, it offers recommendations for parents, schools, policymakers, health care providers and kids and teens themselves. For parents, it recommends to create a family media plan. This plan can outline who can use what devices, where, when and for how long. So,, if your kids give you a hard time, you can point back to the plan.

The advisory also recommends to model healthy behavior yourself around screens and to delay access to screens at a young age. And then once your kids do use screens, look into what parental controls are available to you.

[15:25:03]

And this advisory also suggests screen time limits by age for your kids. Those recommendations are no screen time for babies under 18 months old, and then limit screen time to less than an hour a day for kids under six years old, and then two hours a day for ages six to 18. So, Boris and Brianna, as I was looking through the advisory, many of the recommendations and suggestions, they are similar to what the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended. But some experts I've talked to do say that for every household, your screen time can look different and your needs can be different. So, it really is a matter of looking at what works best for you and your family as well.

SANCHEZ: Yes, again, the advisory is being issued, even though there's no Surgeon General confirmed by the Senate.

HOWARD: Yes.

SANCHEZ: How does that work, Jacqueline?

HOWARD: Yes, a lot of people are wondering about that. But while we're waiting for a confirmed surgeon general to take that role, the Department of Health and Human Services can delegate surgeon general duties to someone. And that person right now is Dr. Stephanie Hardoff (ph) -- excuse me, Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos, excuse me there.

But Dr. Haridopolos, she has been delegated to carry out the duties of the surgeon general in the interim while we're waiting for a confirmed surgeon general. She is doing this with the title of Director of National Health Communications for the Office of the Surgeon General. We know that she has been a family medicine physician based in Florida. She's been practicing medicine for more than 20 years. And within the Department of Health and Human Services, she has been a chief of staff and senior advisor.

And Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. mentioned this in a letter to HHS staff, saying that Dr. Haridopolos will be carrying out the public health actions, advisories and guidance until the next surgeon general is sworn into office. Boris and Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Jacqueline, thank you so much. Really important. I like to come home with these stories, Boris. I say to my kids, do you know what a court just found about social media? Or I'll say, do you know what Australia just banned? Now I can say, do you know what the surgeon general advisory says?

SANCHEZ: Hopefully they -- they listen --

KEILAR: They actually do.

SANCHEZ: -- to the Surgeon General.

KEILAR: They place so much authority in these kinds of things.

Ahead, more on the historic indictment of former Cuban President Raul Castro, a prosecution in the works for three decades. Congressman Carlos Gimenez will join Boris live for an interview next.

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