MEMPHIS, Tenn, (AP) — A Tennessee man pleaded guilty on Friday in the shooting death of Young Dolph during a daytime ambush at a Memphis bakery, marking an end to courtroom battles stemming from the rapper and music label owner’s shocking killing in his hometown more than four years ago.

Cornelius Smith Jr., 36, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a Memphis courtroom under an agreement with prosecutors that dropped other charges against him, according to a press release from the district attorney’s office. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison as part of the plea deal.

Smith and another man, Justin Johnson, were charged with first-degree murder in the November 2021 killing of Young Dolph at his favorite cookie shop, located near his childhood home in a working-class Memphis neighborhood.

Smith was the main witness in the trial of Johnson, who was convicted of first-degree murder in 2024 after Smith named him as the second shooter. Johnson was sentenced in September 2024 to life in prison. Johnson was later sentenced for two other convictions from the trial: conspiracy to commit murder and possession of a gun as a felon.

Smith also testified at the trial of Hernandez Govan, who was acquitted in August of charges that he organized the killing.

Young Dolph, whose legal name is Adolph Thornton Jr., was a rapper, independent label owner and producer who grew up in Memphis and was admired in the city for his charitable works. The 36-year-old was in his hometown to hand out Thanksgiving turkeys to families when he was killed.

The shooting stunned the entertainment world as another death of a rap star killed in their prime, like Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G. and Nipsey Hussle.

Authorities said two men exited a white Mercedes-Benz and began shooting at the rapper at the bakery. He died after being shot about 20 times, according to a medical examiner’s report.

After the killing, the bakery, Makeda’s Homemade Cookies, turned into a memorial to Young Dolph. He was also honored at a Memphis Grizzlies game and the city named a street after him. Murals of the rapper have been painted around the city.

Prosecutors have portrayed the killing as part of an effort by Anthony “Big Jook” Mims to get revenge on Young Dolph for diss tracks aimed at Big Jook and the record label he helped run for his brother, rapper Yo Gotti. Smith has testified that Big Jook put out a $100,000 hit on Young Dolph as well as smaller bounties on all the artists at Young Dolph’s record label, Paper Route Empire.

At the trial of Justin Johnson, a prosecutor told jurors that Cocaine Muzik Group (now known as Collective Music Group), a rival record label founded by Yo Gotti, wanted Young Dolph to work for them, but he turned them down.

Big Jook was shot and killed outside a restaurant in January 2024. No arrests have been made in his death, and he was never charged in Young Dolph’s killing.

Smith has testified that, “I didn’t know anything about Paper Route having no hits,” before Govan told him about them. He said Govan hired him to “do the hits” and was going to take $10,000 as his cut.

But the jury in Govan’s trial was not convinced that he organized the killings.

After Young Dolph’s death, social media was filled with messages of respect and love for the rapper, whose music discussed Memphis street life and his crack-addicted parents, alongside hard-earned lessons of strength and perseverance in the face of difficult circumstances. His legacy as a fiercely independent artist and businessman was cemented in the hip-hop universe.

Young Dolph began his career by releasing numerous mixtapes. His studio albums include his 2016 debut, “King of Memphis.” He also collaborated on other mixtapes and albums with fellow rappers Key Glock, Megan Thee Stallion, T.I., Gucci Mane and 2 Chainz, among others. Young Dolph had three albums reach the top 10 on the Billboard 200, with 2020′s “Rich Slave” peaking at No. 4.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Pick one up. Be seduced by its glossy cover. Gaze upon the impossibly muscular body clad in a skin-tight suit. Our hero or heroine will surely be soaring, shouting, blasting a villain into next week.

They are ridiculous. They are addictively great. Comic books, of the superhero variety, are 100% American.

Compare the thin comic book to Europe’s graphic novels, and they come off looking flimsy, infantile. Compare the American comic to Japanese Manga and they appear innocent in their fixation with heroism; they hark back to a departed American age.

Once a nickel, a dime, a quarter, now the price of a latte, they are objects of American consumer capitalism. The comic is literature in junk-food version. Candy for the eyes, candy for the mind.

Yet what truly makes them American objects is what plays out in their 32 pages month after month, decade upon decade.

When the Fantastic Four took their fateful space journey in 1961 and “cosmic rays” transformed the quartet into unwilling superheroes, comics entered a weird realm where the all-powerful were also the unwilling, decidedly modern victims of science and circumstance.

Spider-Man, the Hulk, Wolverine (the list goes on) were given supernatural abilities that made them outcasts, obliging them to be flawed messiahs.

They were, by some quirk of the American character, bound to Peter Parker’s moral imperative: “With great power comes great responsibility.” They are versions of an American Sisyphus, bound to saving us over and over again.

What could be more American — that might, when lashed to a sense of justice, eventually, makes right? So honorable, so naïve.

To this day, though the tone is darker, Marvel and DC, the two mammoths of comics, continue to reimagine the American character.

Once side attractions in a world of leading white men, Gwen Stacy, Jean Grey and Susan Storm have in recent years emerged as leaders to reinvigorate the Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four sagas. Absolute Wonder Woman has broken ground with beautiful art. Miles Morales is Spidey for a new generation.

Yet the central fissures remain.

Bruce Wayne can’t connect with anyone other than his butler; he is the lonely individual in an atomized America. Steve Rogers bears the burden of representing the “Greatest Generation” from World War II. He is a Captain America forever out of place, even in his own land.

And could there be a more iconic tech magnate toying with humanity’s fate than Superman’s nemesis Lex Luthor and his delusions of grandeur? If only our world had a bespectacled Clark Kent keeping an eye on things. Just in case.

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Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is drawing down thousands of troops in Europe by canceling deployments to Poland and Germany as opposed to yanking forces already stationed there, U.S. officials say, as President Donald Trump has tussled with allies over the Iran war and called for changes.

Several U.S. officials confirmed that 4,000 troops from the Army’s 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division were no longer en route to Poland this week. The Trump administration had previously said it was cutting U.S. forces only in Germany, and the decision spurred questions and criticism in both Warsaw and Washington.

Two officials told The Associated Press the Poland deployment was canceled after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo directing the Joint Chiefs of Staff to move a brigade combat team out of Europe. One of them said the choice of which unit was left to military leaders.

Besides the Army combat team based in Fort Hood, Texas, the memo also led to the cancellation of an upcoming deployment to Germany of a battalion trained in firing long-range rockets and missiles, according to the two officials, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.

Three U.S. officials said the canceled deployments were part of an effort to comply with a presidential order issued at the beginning of May to reduce the number of troops in Europe by about 5,000. The reasoning does not appear to have been well communicated because others based in Europe said they did not know if the halted deployment to Poland was part of the previously announced reduction in troops.

Trump and the Pentagon have said in recent weeks that they were drawing down at least 5,000 troops in Germany after Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized what he called a lack of strategy in the war.

The drawdown reflects a growing rift between the administration and traditional European allies, with the U.S. leader repeatedly criticizing fellow NATO members for a lack of support for the Iran conflict.

Polish officials on Friday insisted that the canceled U.S. deployment to Poland, which was reported earlier by The Military Times and other outlets, was not targeted directly at their country but was a consequence of Trump’s decision to reduce the number of troops in Germany.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he “received assurances” that the decision was of a logistical nature and said it does not directly impact deterrence capabilities and Poland’s security.

Joel Valdez, a Pentagon spokesman, said “the decision to withdraw troops follows a comprehensive, multilayered process” and he argued that it was “not an unexpected, last-minute decision.”

Speaking to Congress in a hearing Friday, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army’s chief of staff, said discussions around the halted deployment to Poland occurred over the past two weeks but that the decision itself was made in the past couple days.

Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said he spoke with Polish officials Thursday and they were “blindsided.”

The move also left some U.S. military personnel in Europe in the dark about how the Trump administration was reducing forces. A U.S. official based in Europe said a meeting was called with 20 minutes’ notice on Monday to discuss the cancellation of the deployment to Poland.

At that time, troops had already been sent to Poland and some still in the U.S. were told shortly before departure not to travel to the airport, that official said. Another official said most of the Army unit’s equipment had already made it to Europe and was sitting in ports.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers criticized the reductions as sending the wrong signal both to allies and Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose forces this week have launched one of the deadliest attacks on the Ukrainian capital in the 4-year-old war.

At the House Armed Services Committee hearing Friday, LaNeve said he worked with U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander in Europe of both American and NATO forces, after Grynkewich received the instructions for the force reduction.

“I’ve worked with him in close consultation of what that force unit would be, and it made the most sense for that brigade to not do its deployment in theater,” LaNeve said.

Bacon called the decision “reprehensible” and said it was “an embarrassment to our country what we just did to Poland.”

Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, who chairs the committee, said the military is required to consult with lawmakers and that did not happen.

“So we don’t know what’s going on here,” Rogers said. “But I can just tell you we’re not happy with what’s being talked about.”

A State Department official said Friday at a security conference in Tallinn, Estonia, that the U.S. reductions in Europe were “right there in black and white” but also noted that “the U.S. isn’t going anywhere.”

“We’ll continue to work with the Pentagon and work with our partners to make sure we get the right fit and right mix of what’s happening here on the ground,” said Thomas G. DiNanno, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

With the halted deployments, the U.S. military presence in Europe will now be at pre-2022 levels, before Russia commenced its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one U.S. official said.

Europe has been bracing for a reduction since Trump returned to the White House, with the administration warning that Europe would have to look after its own security, including Ukraine’s, in the future.

A NATO official said the U.S. decision to cancel its rotational deployment to Poland would not impact NATO’s deterrence and defense plans. Canada and Germany have increased their presence on the alliance’s eastern flank, which contributes to NATO’s overall strength, the official said, insisting on anonymity in line with NATO regulations.

Ben Hodges, former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, said the move “reinforces the perception that the United States just does things without consultation with allies,” which ultimately “damages cohesion inside the alliance.” The decision would in the long run harm the U.S. defense industry as it reduces the trust of partners, he said.

Around 10,000 U.S. troops are typically stationed in Poland, the majority of them present in the country on a rotational basis. Only about 300 troops are permanently stationed in the country, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Polish officials had hoped they would be spared from any cuts as Poland spends the most in NATO on defense as a proportion of its economy — around 4.7% in 2025. Hegseth has called it a “model ally” in NATO for spending so much on defense.

When Poland’s conservative president, Karol Nawrocki, visited the White House in September, Trump said he didn’t intend to pull U.S. troops out of Poland. “We’ll put more there if they want,” Trump said at the time.

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Burrows reported from Tallinn, Estonia, and Ciobanu from Warsaw, Poland.

CLEVELAND, Ohio (AP) — The largest collection of Paul McCartney’s personal artifacts ever publicly displayed is part of a new exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame centering on his life after The Beatles.

“Paul McCartney and Wings,” which opened Friday in Cleveland, explores the musician’s reinvention after leaving the iconic British rock band through displays of instruments, handwritten songwriting notes and photographs taken by his wife, Linda McCartney, who was keyboardist and harmony vocalist for Wings during its decade-long run from 1971 to 1981, when the band produced hits including “Band on the Run,” “Silly Love Songs” and “Live and Let Die.”

After the breakup of The Beatles, Paul McCartney was no longer just the musician who had been known around the world since his teenage years, but a husband and father of a young family. What he built with Wings reflected that new stage of life, said Andy Leach, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s senior director of museum and archival collections.

Leach said the band’s embrace of domestic life — bringing children on tour, having a married couple perform together and writing songs inspired by his wife, who was also a member of the group — was “remarkable and unusual” for the era, when rock music remained overwhelmingly male-dominated and family life was rarely incorporated so visibly into a band’s public identity.

“What’s interesting about Wings is that they were formed around the idea of reinvention, renewal, risk-taking, experimentation, but collaboration,” Leach said. “And family was at the center of it, too.”

Leach traveled to London to work with McCartney and his team to prepare and transport guitars along with clothing worn during performances to Cleveland. The vast majority of the artifacts are from McCartney’s personal collection.

Leach said Wings helped pioneer the large-scale production that came to define 1970s arena rock, using increasingly elaborate lighting and stage design on tours such as Wings Over the World and Wings Over America.

Leach said it was amazing to see and handle guitars that “I’ve heard on record my whole life.”

Visitors will also be able to step into a recreation of the farmhouse that McCartney still owns in Scotland, where Paul and Linda retreated after The Beatles’ breakup in 1970 and set up a recording studio.

In the home, photos of Paul and Linda McCartney and their children line the walls. Linda’s camera sits inside a case on the makeshift kitchen table.

The photographs taken by Linda, an acclaimed artist in her own right and the first female photographer to have a photo featured on the cover of Rolling Stone, in 1968, showcase her role “at the center of the family, and in some ways, at the center of the band,” Leach said.

Linda McCartney was married for three decades to Paul, who taught her to play the keyboard after The Beatles’ breakup. She died in 1998 of breast cancer.

Another of Leach’s favorite artifacts is the handwritten scores by famed Beatles producer George Martin for the songs “Uncle Albert” and the James Bond theme “Live and Let Die,” which became one of Wings’ most enduring songs.

Other items were lent by longtime Wings roadie John Hamill, former band members and the widow of Denny Laine, the co-founder of Wings and The Moody Blues, who played guitar, bass and keyboards and contributed both lead and backing vocals.

The Hall of Fame said the exhibit will be open for at least a year with the hope of keeping it open through the summer of 2027.

Leach said the exhibit is “perfect timing” because of what he described as “a nice kind of renaissance or at least a new appreciation for them among fans and a new understanding about how remarkable and important” Wings’ musicians were.

He pointed to the release of the Amazon Prime documentary Man on the Run, a new box set and the 2025 book Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, co-written by Paul McCartney and historian Ted Widmer.

__ Willingham reported from Boston.

By Ahmed Aboulenein

WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday moved to strip U.S. Department of Health and Human Services workers of civil service job protections, according to an email reviewed by Reuters.

HHS employees at several agencies received the email, which said members of their teams would be affected by the reclassification, known as Schedule P/C and formerly as Schedule F.

At HHS the reclassification will initially apply to employees “on the order of hundreds, not thousands,” the email said, with additional tranches to follow.

An HHS official confirmed the email’s authenticity and said it “reflects the finalization of previously announced RIFs,” referring to reductions in force or mass layoffs. The official said no new RIFs were planned.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by David Gregorio)

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Michael Erman

WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) – The White House and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are receiving daily briefings on the U.S. response to an Andes hantavirus outbreak that killed three people aboard a luxury cruise ship this month, a top health official said on Friday.

No cases have been reported in the United States and the risk to the general public remains very low, said U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Acting Director Jay Bhattacharya.

Forty-one U.S. residents are being monitored for possible infection, 18 of whom were passengers on the ship and returned to the United States before the outbreak was ⁠identified. They are now quarantined in Nebraska and Atlanta.

Some public health scientists have criticized the initial U.S. response to the hantavirus outbreak as sluggish. Kennedy has also drawn criticism previously for his handling of a measles outbreak.

“The Secretary is getting daily detailed updates, as is the White House, and I’ve participated in several of those. I can tell you firsthand, they’re both following this outbreak very, very closely,” Bhattacharya, who is also director of the National Institutes of Health, told reporters on a media call.

The CDC issued guidance for identifying and monitoring people with potential exposure, said Dr. David Fitter, the incident manager for the agency’s hantavirus response.

A person is considered high risk if they were on the ship between April 6, when the first person got sick, and May 10, when the last person disembarked, Fitter said.

Other high-risk contacts include those who reported close contact exposure to a person sick with hantavirus or their bodily fluids, or were seated in close proximity to a person sick with the virus during air travel, he said.

“I want to reinforce that Andes virus does not transmit easily,” he said, noting that it was spread through close, prolonged contact.

High-risk contacts should stay home and limit contact with others for six weeks, he said. They should also coordinate any essential travel with their state health department and be ready to self-isolate immediately if they start developing symptoms.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington and Michael Erman in New York; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

By Jana Winter and Andrew Goudsward

May 15 (Reuters) – The Trump administration plans to announce criminal charges against former Cuban president Raul Castro next Wednesday, according to a U.S. Justice Department official, in a move that would escalate the pressure campaign against the island’s Communist government.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said federal prosecutors expect to unseal an indictment against Castro, 94, in Miami on May 20, based on a 1996 incident in which Cuban jets shot down planes operated by a group of Cuban exiles. 

The prosecutors’ office in Miami will host an event that day to honor victims of the incident, according to an invitation seen by Reuters. The office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The indictment would need to first be approved by a grand jury.

The planned announcement was first reported by the Miami Herald.

Castro is the brother of the late Fidel Castro, the revolutionary and longtime foil of the United States who led the island’s communist government for decades. Raul Castro stepped down as Cuba’s president in 2018 and handed over leadership of its communist party in 2021.

He was defense minister during the 1996 incident. The Cuban government has argued the strike was a legitimate response to the planes intruding on Cuban airspace.

The U.S. condemned the attack and imposed sanctions, but did not pursue criminal charges against Cuban officials. 

PRESSURE ON HAVANA

The development comes amid heightened tensions between Washington and Havana. The ⁠Trump administration has described Cuba’s current communist-run government as corrupt and incompetent and is pushing for a regime change.

President Donald Trump ​has heaped pressure on the island, effectively imposing a blockade by threatening sanctions on countries supplying it with ⁠fuel, igniting power outages and delivering blows to its economy.  CIA chief ​John Ratcliffe delivered a message from Trump during a rare visit to Havana on Thursday that the U.S. would engage with the  government on economic and security issues “only if it makes fundamental changes.” 

The criminal case against Castro recalls the earlier drug-trafficking indictment of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, which the Trump administration cited as justification for the January raid that captured Maduro and brought him to the U.S. to face charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

Trump in March threatened that Cuba “is next” after Venezuela.

The top federal prosecutor in Miami, Jason Reding Quiñones, is a Trump ally who is also overseeing an investigation of former CIA Director John Brennan, a longtime Trump adversary, along with a wider effort to examine whether prior investigations of Trump amounted to a conspiracy.

(Reporting by Jana Winter, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff and Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Sanjeev Miglani)

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A large fire and explosion at a lumber mill in Maine’s midcoast region injured at least 11 people Friday.

Flames tore through Robbins Lumber in Searsmont, a town of about 1,500 people about 95 miles (153 kilometers) from Portland, authorities said.

“There’s been a huge explosion. The silo just exploded. Multiple firefighters injured,” a first responder said, according to scanner traffic from Kennebec, Somerset and Waldo County fire departments recorded by Broadcastify.com.

MaineHealth Maine Medical Center in Portland, which has a Level 1 trauma designation, was waiting for 10 patients who had been treated at local hospitals to be transferred, a spokesperson said. Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center was treating one patient who was in critical condition, a spokesperson for the Bangor hospital said.

Authorities said they are investigating the cause of the blast.

“We have dumped all of the resources from the whole county over to that area,” Waldo County 911 director Mike Larrivee said.

Maine State Police and fire marshals responded to the fire, state police spokesperson Shannon Moss said.

A call to Robbins Lumber was not immediately returned Friday. The company’s website states that it has been a family-owned firm for five generations and has been in existence since 1881. The website describes the company as a “a high-tech lumber manufacturer.”

Lumber and wood products are a critical and historic industry in Maine, especially in rural parts of the state. The Maine Forest Products Council said the industry contributed more than $8 billion to the state’s economy in 2024 and provides about 29,000 jobs.

Public officials including Gov. Janet Mills said Friday that they were monitoring the response to the blaze.

“I urge folks to stay clear of the area, follow the instructions of law enforcement, and allow emergency personnel to respond. I ask Maine people to join me in keeping all those affected in their thoughts,” Mills posted on X.

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Associated Press writer Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., contributed.

An adolescent owl that was found stuck in a concrete mixer in southwestern Utah is finally on the mend, flying free and maybe a bit wiser from the ordeal.

The great horned owl somehow made his way into the truck-mounted mixer in late October and was discovered by workers pouring concrete at a resort construction site. Lucky for him, a series of people gave a hoot about his predicament.

Workers hosed the bird down before it was wrapped in a towel. It took days for employees at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab to pick the concrete from the bird’s face, chest and right wing, using forceps to carefully crack the dried debris and cleaning the feathers with toothbrushes and dish soap.

The owl started its long recovery at an aviary run by the organization, and employees anxiously waited for it to grow new feathers. But the bird didn’t molt as predicted. In early May, he underwent a procedure called imping, which uses adhesive to graft donor feathers onto existing shafts.

“The first few feathers were extremely nerve-wracking, but as we got into the groove, the imping became more comfortable, and everything went smoothly,” said Bart Richwalski, a supervisor at the sanctuary.

Great horned owls typically have tufting on the edges of some of their feathers that allows them to fly quietly as they hunt. But the concrete frayed the rescued owl’s feathers and caused it to make a whooshing sound while flying.

To prepare for the imping procedure, sanctuary staff examined the owl’s feather patterns every few weeks and snipped damaged shafts in advance. The owl was anesthetized and the donor feathers from a similarly sized owl that had died were laid out nearby to replicate each wing. The staff then cut the feathers to the necessary length, lined them up and adhered them to the bird.

By the end of the 90-minute procedure, the owl had 10 new primary feathers and a secondary feather on his right wing. But then came the real test: could he fly silently?

The bird was placed in a large aviary to recover from the anesthesia and quickly took flight after awakening. Richwalski used a decibel meter to measure the sound of the owl’s wingbeat and determined its flight was quiet enough for it to safely be released. The owl hovered for a moment while the aviary roof was retracted, gained speed and then flew out into the wild.

“It feels so, so good. I think my heart finally started beating again. The nervousness was starting to overtake the excitement, but once I saw him fly out that opening in the roof, it just was, it was a sight to see. It was so fun,” said Richwalski, who has cared for the owl since picking him up at the construction site.

Karla Bloem, executive director of the Minnesota-based International Owl Center, said imping has been practiced by falconers “for eons” and is a very effective treatment.

“I’ve never heard of it not lasting, because you use some pretty good stuff when you’re doing imping,” said Bloem, who has studied great horned owls for nearly three decades.

She added that it would be OK if a couple of the grafted feathers fell out. The bulk of them just need to stay put until the owl can grow new ones in the coming summer months.

“And now it just needs to figure out, ‘whoa, I’m back in the big world again, hunting,’” she said. “Find a territory … you know, find one of the opposite sex and settle down and have kids.”

MIAMI (AP) — The Justice Department is preparing to seek an indictment against former Cuban President Raúl Castro, three people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday, as President Donald Trump threatens possible military action against the communist-run island.

One of the people told the AP that the potential indictment is connected to Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of four planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue. Castro was defense minister at the time.

All three people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. The Cuban government did not respond to a request for comment on the potential indictment, which was reported earlier by CBS.

Any criminal charge against Castro, which would need to be approved by a grand jury, would dramatically escalate tensions with Havana. Following the U.S. military’s brazen capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, the Trump administration quickly turned its attention to its ally Cuba and ordered an economic blockade that choked off fuel shipments to Cuba, leading to severe blackouts across the island, increasing food insecurity, and heightening ongoing economic woes across the island.

But the U.S. war in Iran gave Cuban leaders something of a reprieve from U.S. talk of regime change.

Richard Feinberg, a professor emeritus specializing in Latin America at the University of California-San Diego, said that any indictment of Castro will play well with voters in south Florida but is unlikely to persuade members of the U.S. military to pursue a second war of choice — this time just 90 miles from Florida.

“There’s no easy Venezuela copy,” said Feinberg. “There’s no clear line of succession and it’s hard to imagine regime change without U.S. boots on the ground.”

The AP reported in March that the U.S. Attorney in Miami had created a special working group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement to build cases against top Cuban officials amid calls by several south Florida Republicans to reopen its investigation into Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 shootdown.

As Trump seeks to wind down the war in Iran, speculation has been growing that he may soon turn his attention back to Cuba after pledging earlier this year a “friendly takeover” of the country if its leadership didn’t open up its economy to American investment and kick out U.S. adversaries.

Trump declined to discuss a potential indictment on Friday, deferring to the Justice Department.

“But they need help, as you know, and you talk about a declining country — they are really a nation or a country in decline, so we’re going to see,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “We have a lot to talk about on Cuba, but not maybe for today.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials, including Castro’s grandson, during a high-level visit to the island on Thursday.

Castro, 94, took over as president from his ailing brother, Fidel Castro, in 2011, and then handed power to a handpicked loyalist, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in 2019.

While he largely has avoided the spotlight since retiring in 2021 as head of the Cuban Communist Party, he is widely believed to wield power behind the scenes, a fact underscored by the prominence of his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, who previously met secretly with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Cuba’s shootdown in 1996 of two Cessna aircraft operated by the Brothers to the Rescue was a watershed moment in decades of hostilities between the two countries.

At the time, President Bill Clinton had been cautiously exploring ways to reduce tensions with a Cold War adversary but faced stiff opposition from exiles who organized publicity-seeking flyovers of Havana, dropping anti-Castro leaflets, and aiding Cuban rafters fleeing economic deprivation and single-party rule.

The Cubans had warned the U.S. government for months that it was prepared to defend against what it considered deliberate provocations. But those calls went unheeded and on Feb. 26, 1996, missiles fired by Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets downed two unarmed civilian Cessna planes just beyond Cuba’s airspace, according to an investigation conducted by the International Civil Aviation Organization. A third plane, carrying the organization’s leader, narrowly escaped.

“With hindsight, it appears the Castros’ motive was to slow down the Clinton outreach because they needed the U.S. as an external enemy to justify their national security posture,” said Richard Fienberg, who worked on Cuban issues at the National Security Council at the time.

They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, said Feinberg.

Shortly after the shootdown, Congress passed what became known as the Helms-Burton Act, which codified a U.S. trade embargo enacted in 1962 and made it far more complicated for successive U.S. presidents to engage with Cuba.

To date, the U.S. has convicted only a single person of conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown. Gerardo Hernández, the leader of a Cuban espionage ring dismantled by the FBI in the 1990s, was sentenced to life in prison but was released by President Barack Obama during a prisoner swap in 2014 as part of an attempt to normalize relations with Cuba.

Two fighter jet pilots and their commanding officer have also been indicted but are outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement while living in Cuba.

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Tucker and Durkin Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed.