Ted Rossi

[Gerald Posner @geraldposner]

Why is Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal — chair of the Democratic Party's Progressive Caucus — peddling a false narrative about Cuban healthcare being better than the U.S.?

From my research on my book PHARMA, I know what she says is WRONG. But she keeps repeating it and I am sure many progressives believe it. No legacy journalist is calling her out so let me do the job.

Most recently, she stood at a Capitol Hill press conference on July 1 — flanked by Reps. Delia Ramírez, Jonathan Jackson, and Ro Khanna, under a banner reading "Demanding an End to the Blockade Against Cuba and International Medical Solidarity" — and told the crowd that Cuba, despite all its difficulties, had done admirable work preventing “maternal mortality, neonatal mortality, and cancer,”in her words, "areas in which we in the United States are still struggling to make progress."

It wasn't an ad-lib. It was a return engagement. In an April interview after her own delegation trip to Havana, Jayapal said Cuba has "the lowest infant mortality, maternal mortality — sort of the opposite of what the United States has." When the reporter mentioned Cuba's higher life expectancy, she agreed with that too. The Washington Post's editorial board flagged it then as a flawed diagnosis. She said it again in front of National Nurses United two months later. So it's worth actually running the numbers, one at a time.

Maternal mortality. The U.S. rate was 18.6 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023, and it fell further to 17.9 in 2024. Cuba's own Ministry of Public Health reported its maternal mortality rate at 40.6 per 100,000 in 2024 and rising to 44.1 in 2025 — better than two-and-a-half times the American rate, and climbing. There is no version of the current data where Cuba is "the opposite" of the U.S. on this metric. It's far worse.

Neonatal/infant mortality. Cuba's official infant mortality rate did fall to a low of 4.0 per 1,000 live births in 2018 — a genuinely low number, and one Cuba has kept touting. But two things complicate that figure. First, a peer-reviewed study in Health Policy and Planning found evidence that Cuban physicians have been pressured to reclassify early neonatal deaths as late fetal deaths (effectively, miscarriages) to hit government mortality targets — a known method of statistical manipulation, flagged by demographers going back to the 1990s. Corrected for that, researchers put Cuba's real infant mortality rate somewhere between 7.45 and 11.16 per 1,000, not the sub-5 figure the government published.

Second, and more damning for Jayapal's live claim: Cuba's own current numbers show infant mortality at 9.9 per 1,000 as of the end of 2025 — up 148% from that 2018 low, and now well above the U.S. rate. Havana's maternity wards are reporting sewage leaks in neonatal units and adolescent pregnancy rates spiking past 20% in some provinces. Whatever Cuba was doing right in 2018, it isn't doing now, and the 2018 number itself was likely inflated by data manipulation to begin with.

Cancer. This is the claim with the least data behind it and the most against it. The most recent regional analysis of Latin America and the Caribbean, using 2022 GLOBOCAN figures, found Cuba has the highest age-standardized cancer mortality rate in the entire region — 136.6 per 100,000 for men, 91.6 per 100,000 for women — ahead of Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia.

There is no dataset I could find, from PAHO, WHO, or IARC, showing Cuban cancer outcomes outperforming the United States. Cuba's president, Díaz-Canel, touring a Havana maternity hospital the same week Jayapal spoke, said the healthcare system currently can't get lifesaving treatment to more than 100,000 cancer patients, including 1,200 children, due to shortages.

That's not a system beating American oncology. That's a system in collapse, by the Cuban government's own telling.

The bigger problem with the claim. During my reporting for PHARMA I learned that Cuba's low mortality figures have functioned as propaganda for an authoritarian government for over 30 years — repeated uncritically by public health researchers, NGOs, and now members of Congress, because the story fits a preferred narrative about what a "resource-poor" country can accomplish with universal healthcare. But the country producing those numbers has no free press, no independent statistical audit, and a documented history of reclassifying deaths to hit targets. That's not a minor asterisk. It's the whole ballgame if you're going to hold a press conference built on the premise that Cuba is quietly outperforming America.

Does @PramilaJayapal know she is selling a disproven story or does she not care so long as it fits her narrative that a communist universal healthcare system is better than the one in America?

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

Yes. Hey white Brits, work a bit harder so that the Noble Migrant of Color gets your spoils. And please tell him where your daughter is sleeping. Be empathetic.

[Ted Rossi @TeddyRossi]

@KenGardner11 How do you propose we do this?

[Ted Rossi @TeddyRossi]

@BfloSportzBro @spittinchiclets I know being a Buffalo fan means you don't make it to the playoffs very often and you never win a championship. But when you win you're expected to have some grace. Save the bitterness for when you lose the next round.

[Russ Latino @RussLatino]

Multiple things can be true at once:

1. It is true that Alex Pretti raised the risk of a negative outcome by intervening after an ICE agent pushed a female protester. It is true that he heightened the risk further by conceal carrying a firearm, and even further by resisting once he was thrown down and pummeled.

2. It is true that “he should have stayed home” is not legal justification for him being shot, nor is the fact that he was carrying. Conservatives should be very careful about repeating Kristi Noem’s suggestion that the mere act of carrying a weapon, however ill-advised in the circumstances, is proof of intent to harm law enforcement or “massacre.” Adopting that train of thought is a very slippery slope attack on the Second Amendment.

3. It could be true that the ICE agents who killed Pretti today believed their lives were in danger even if they weren’t. One agent can be heard saying “gun!” The agent who removed the gun from Pretti’s waistband appears to have had a ND of the gun (fired by accident). Either of those two things could have set off panic in the chaos of the moment.

4. It could be true that even if justified, agents acted less than ideally. Again, there is a difference between justified and necessary (or appropriate). It seems pretty apparent now that the agents weren’t actually in danger. The gun had been removed from Pretti’s waistband prior to shots being fired.

5. It could be true that Antifa and other agitators are engaged in tactics to deliberately provoke agents. And also that ICE agents should be trained to better handle that threat.

All of these things could be simultaneously true.

[Ted Rossi @TeddyRossi]

@arttavana Why does she?

[Drew Holden @DrewHolden360]

With Congress debating further subsidies for Obamacare, I found myself thinking back to some of the initial claims of what the ACA would do.

Remember when CBO alleged — and the press dutifully repeated — that it would shrink the deficit?

How’d that turn out?

[Mike Solana @micsolana]

I almost defended malcolm gladwell, as it takes courage to admit you're wrong. but then I remembered his debate with matt taibi, where he repeatedly implied matt was racist for no longer trusting the media. gladwell wasn't "cowed" by the system. he was part of it.

[Ted Rossi @TeddyRossi]

@mcsquared34 If California can't build it the rest of the country has no chance. Too much corruption.

[Noam Blum @neontaster]

This guy is doing a really bad job of convincing me that him not being at the CDC is a bad thing.

[Ted Rossi @TeddyRossi]

@ATRightMovies Big X

[Ian Miles Cheong @ianmiles]

The rape of Britain would be swept under the rug if not for this platform. This is also, not coincidentally, one of the worst things I’ve ever read.

[Steven Crowder @scrowder]

A few facts about the UK that are indisputable.

- Foreigners are 71% more likely to commit sex crimes than native Britons

- Afghans and Eritreans specifically are 20x more likely to commit sex crimes.

- Since 2002 the amount of rapes in England and Wales has increased from 12,295 to 71,677 (+482%)

But sure, keep importing third-worlders that hate your culture.

[ethan @evilcloneofyou]

John Lennon was doing Cumtown bits to the Beatles gay manager

[Stephanie Bice @stephaniebice]

In the Navy Yard where I stay when I’m in DC, a member of Congress was carjacked, staffers have been assaulted and robbed, an Uber eats driver was killed by two 15-year old girls in a botched carjacking and retail stores closed because they were robbed so many times.

Believe me when I tell you, DC isn’t safe and the President was right to stop this chaos.

Did you know a juvenile is anyone under the age of 25 in DC? And if you’re a youth caught by local PD, they don’t charge you with any crimes, instead they call your parent(s) to pick you up; so you can do it again the next night.

Christopher’s story is NOT unique, sadly. I bet every single person in DC knows someone personally who has been a victim of a crime, or they themselves have been a victim. It must stop.

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

If this is a "culture" that doesn't understand that it's wrong to abduct and rape a child, nobody from that "culture" should be allowed into this country ever under any circumstance.

[Coming Soon @MDNtalk]

EXCLUSIVE: Boston left its entire 911 fire dispatch in the hands of one woman.

She warned it was dangerous.

Mayor Wu’s fire commissioner suspended her for speaking up.

Read the full story at Mass Daily News:
https://t.co/XFdNqxGGjJ

[Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_]

To recap:

- Federal agents conduct massive op at Camarillo marijuana farm.
- Politicians push false narrative food workers & children are being raided.
- Feds disclose they have criminal judicial warrant for harboring aliens.
- Protester appears to shoot gun at agents.
- Protesters throw rocks at federal vehicles.
- 8 unaccompanied migrant children recovered at the cannabis farm, child labor investigation initiated.

Situation there is still ongoing & active.

[WomenAreReal @WomenAreReals]

“Gender” was the original lie. @glennagoldis goes to the heart of the problem at the FTC today.

If we hadn’t accepted the premise we would never have ended up giving double mastectomies to 13 year-olds & putting male rapists in women’s prison.