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Slamming Trump’s Cuba Report as ‘McCarthyite Attack’ on Free Speech, Dems Vow to Fight Back
"We stand firmly against this report and other efforts by the Trump administration to weaponize the federal government against dissent, which is a patriotic tradition."
Jul 24, 2026
President Donald Trump's escalating claims that Cuba and its supporters poses a threat to US security have been denounced as "laughable" and "crazy," but progressive lawmakers are warning that the State Department's report alleging that the country of roughly 10 million people aims to "conquer" the United States and is backing "left-wing terrorism on American soil" represents a genuine attack on Trump's perceived political enemies.
"Trump appears hell-bent on taking America back 70 years to the height of Cold War McCarthyism, when hawkish foreign policy was paired with unsubstantiated accusations of communist subversion and political repression against dissidents at home," said a group of Democrats led by progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Peace and Security Taskforce. “We condemn this report’s attack on Americans’ constitutional rights to free speech and assembly."
Omar on Thursday was joined by 10 other lawmakers, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), in speaking out days after the State Department released its report titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism."
The report, said the lawmakers, was a "McCarthyite attack on Americans’ free speech rights."
The 100-page document claims that Cuba's communist government "has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States" and recruited "generations" of activists in the US, listing by name people who have participated in solidarity campaigns in support of Cuban people as the Trump administration has imposed a destructive oil blockade on the island nation.
"Trump appears hell-bent on taking America back 70 years to the height of Cold War McCarthyism."
In January, Trump issued an executive order declaring that Cuba posed an "extraordinary threat" to US national security and threatened countries with tariffs should they provide oil to the Cuban government. The administration had already cut off Cuba's top source of energy by taking control of Venezuela's vast oil reserves. The blockade has left the Cuban healthcare and education systems and other daily public services struggling to operate.
US groups and citizens named in the report as having spoken out against the administration's blockade and its threats of military action against Cuba include commentator Hasan Piker, Amazon Labor Union founder Christian Smalls, the National Lawyers Guild, and campus activist Isra Hirsi—Omar's daughter.
"We denounce this administration’s irresponsible attacks against civil society organizations, activists, journalists, labor leaders, members of Congress, elected officials, and private individuals based on their advocacy for peaceful foreign policy and social justice at home," said Omar and the Democrats who joined her in the statement.
The lawmakers said they would use their "full oversight power as members of Congress and elected officials to stop the persecution of Trump’s perceived political enemies," including those who speak out publicly against the president's policies in Cuba—activity that is protected by the First Amendment.
"We stand firmly against this report and other efforts by the Trump administration to weaponize the federal government against dissent, which is a patriotic tradition," they said.
The report is the administration's latest attack on the free speech rights that are integral to the US Constitution and American history. The White House has pushed to deport foreign students who protested the US-backed Israel war on Gaza, designated anti-fascist organizers as "terrorists," and, nearly a year after issuing a presidential memo demanding a strategy to "disrupt" left-wing networks, recently convened a summit to launch a "global offensive against the transnational threat of Radical Left terrorism."
Meanwhile, said Omar on Thursday, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants and a long-time proponent of regime change on the island—"are intensifying decades of economic war" against the people of Cuba and deliberately depriving "the entire island’s population of adequate food, fuel, and medicine."
Along with ending his attacks on those who oppose his policies, said Omar, "it is past time for Trump to obey the Constitution and end the dangerous, cruel, and illegal naval blockade causing collective punishment against Cuba.”
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Trump Admin Has Taken $13 Billion in Oil Wealth From Venezuela, But Congress Is 'In the Dark' About Where It Went
"The picture now coming into focus is that the intervention has been... little more than a pretext for extracting economic wealth that rightfully belongs to the people of Venezuela," said one economist.
Jul 23, 2026
Since President Donald Trump's operation in January to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the US has taken more than $13 billion in revenue from Venezuelan oil sales. But nobody, including Congress, is entirely sure where the money has gone.
The Financial Times, which reported the figure on Wednesday based on estimates of oil sales out of Venezuela since January, pointed out that the Trump administration has given vague and contradictory answers about who currently controls the revenues from the Latin American nation's largest export and source of wealth.
Trump said in the days after the US attack that Venezuela's oil wealth would be "controlled by me." At a rally on Wednesday, he boasted that the US "won in Venezuela" and had paid for the operation "many many times over" by "taking tremendous amounts of oil" from the country.
He added that "Venezuela is doing better than they've ever done before." But economic data from the country tells a very different story.
According to economist Francisco Rodríguez of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in the first quarter of this year, Venezuela had just 2.5% growth in its gross domestic product—its worst in five years. This is despite the fact that its oil exports grew by 25% during the first quarter.
He said this was likely "because the US didn’t transfer to the Venezuelan government the totality of its increased oil revenues."
While the executive order signed by Trump in January describes the proceeds from oil sales as nominally belonging to Venezuela, they are being held in accounts controlled by the US Treasury Department. It prohibits Venezuela from independently withdrawing from the accounts without approval from the secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
At a Congressional hearing this week, Michael Kozak, a senior State Department official, acknowledged that "it's their money, but they have to get our permission" to receive it.
While the State Department has claimed that “billions of dollars have been disbursed to the Venezuelan economy” and that “financial monitoring is under way to ensure funds benefit the Venezuelan people," the FT found little evidence that this is the case.
A website set up by the Venezuelan government to track exports from US-run oil sales shows just a single transfer of $300 million in March.
The administration has made explicitly clear that it is using the oil revenues as a tool to exert leverage over Venezuelan policy. In January, Vice President JD Vance said that the administration would allow Venezuela to sell oil as long as its policies "serve America's national interest."
A senior US official told The New Yorker that the administration has authorized about $6 billion to be disbursed to the government of Venezuela's interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, though there was no indication it had actually been transferred or spent.
Francisco Rodríguez said that even if it was, this "leaves an obvious question: where are the remaining $7 billion?"
He speculated that some of it might have been paid directly to joint venture partners, but noted that this would only account for a "fraction" of the difference and said there could be "other more complex explanations, beyond the possibility that the US is simply sitting on the money."
However, he said, "what is becoming increasingly clear is that the main reason Venezuela's economic recovery has been so sluggish is that, while the country is generating more oil revenue, it is not collecting on it."
In April, Kozak said the administration would provide quarterly reports on where the funds have gone. But Democrats on the Foreign Affairs Committee said they had not received them.
The lack of transparency has drawn concern from members of both parties in Congress, which Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said has been “kept in the dark.”
“Trump’s invasion of Venezuela has been about oil, power, and graft from the very beginning, with billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil revenue being controlled by the Trump administration without transparency or safeguards,” Castro told the Financial Times.
Even María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.)—who promoted a Trump-led regime change effort in Venezuela by saying it would be a "field day" for US oil companies—has called for the administration to publicize reports on where the money is going.
The question of what has happened to Venezuela's wealth is made more urgent by the twin earthquakes the country suffered in June, which killed about 5,000 people, injured 17,000, and left 18,000 homeless, according to government figures.
A World Bank report released Thursday estimated that reconstruction could cost close to $50 billion.
The earthquake has been met with calls for the US to lift its harsh sanctions on Venezuela, which have cost the country tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars in lost revenue since 2015 and which advocates have said are further hobbling the nation’s recovery.
Trump ratcheted up these sanctions in the months leading up to his operation to overthrow Maduro, and many have remained in place following the earthquake.
The US has provided more than $386 million in earthquake-related assistance to Venezuela. But it's just a fraction of the oil wealth it appears to be holding.
Francisco Rodríguez said the apparent hoarding of Venezuela’s oil wealth does further damage to Trump’s claim that his intervention was meant to benefit its people, as well as the US.
“The bottom line is that this arrangement is not proving advantageous to Venezuelans,” Rodríguez said. "The picture now coming into focus is that the intervention has been, as its critics have long accused such actions of being, little more than a pretext for extracting economic wealth that rightfully belongs to the people of Venezuela."
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'McCarthyite' Rubio Report Ripped as Attempt to Justify Trump Invasion of Cuba
Critics panned the publication for not only its warmongering but also "unfounded claims seeking to tar domestic movements for social change as agents of a foreign government."
Jul 20, 2026
While some Republicans in Congress cheered the US Department of State's Monday report titled "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism," American and Cuban critics blasted it as part of both President Donald Trump's push to invade the island and his authoritarian crackdown on domestic dissent.
"For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States," the report begins, "that has infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history."
Sharing the document on social media, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants and a longtime advocate of regime change on the island—similarly claimed that Cuba's government "has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States. The State Department is exposing the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country. The American people deserve to know."
Some of the critics responded directly to Rubio, calling the report "justification for the military invasion of Cuba and the new COINTELPRO," a reference to the Federal Bureau of Investigation program targeting US organizers over half a century ago.
Defense Priorities fellow and Chicago Tribune foreign affairs columnist Daniel DePetris wrote: "This report actually states, in all seriousness, that Cuba's main goal is to conquer the United States. It's about as dumb as dumb gets. Don't be fooled: This is the State Department trying to build the foundational case for US military action, should Trump decide to do it."
Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at King's College London and fellow at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, urged Rubio, "Before building another casus belli for Cuba, try to solve the strategic disaster that is the Iran War you started but cannot win."
Trump in recent months has ramped up the United States' decadeslong and deadly economic assault on Cuba and suggested that he may try to take over the island. However, he's also signaled such action may come only after an end to his illegal war on Iran, which has been revived in recent days following a failed ceasefire.
In an apparent show of support for Trump taking military action against the island nation, Congressman Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) declared on social media Monday, "Cuba is next!"
Meanwhile, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said in Spanish that "the latest fallacy from the US Department of State against Cuba forms part of the construction, by the secretary of state, of a pretext for sustaining its cruel and criminal economic war that punishes every Cuban family, and its aspiration to militarily aggress Cuba, for which it desperately seeks the support of US citizens. It is further evidence of the macabre plan designed by that US politician from South Florida, who only satisfies the interests of those who have always paid him."
US Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), who recently traveled to Cuba to hear firsthand accounts of the humanitarian crisis, said that "Secretary Rubio's deranged 'analysis' leaves out the fact that for more than six decades, the United States' policies have destabilized our neighbors in Latin America—including Cuba—through sanctions, embargoes, military coups, land control, and colonization."
"Today, the Trump Department of State, led by Rubio, continues that imperialist tradition while doing what authoritarians do by criminalizing dissent," she continued. "US foreign policy is responsible for death, destruction, and destabilization. We can change that. We CAN become good neighbors."
About halfway through the State Department report, it complains about a "constant stream of Western left-wing activists, influencers, and organizers" participating in "solidarity delegations" as well as events such as the March 2026 "Nuestra América Convoy," which delivered humanitarian aid to everyday Cubans suffering due to the Trump administration's intensified blockade.
"Participants included a suite of influential progressives from the United States and across the world, including Hasan Piker; Amazon Labor Union founder Christian Smalls; a delegation from the Democratic Socialists of America; former UK Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn; former Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias; several other current and former members of European Parliament; and Isra Hirsi, campus activist and daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)," the report states. Elsewhere, it takes aim at groups including the peace organization CodePink, Communist Party USA, the National Lawyers Guild, and others.
Some targeted individuals and groups responded to what CodePink called a "conspiracy theory that masquerades as a report on Cuba," full of "baseless smears and imaginary, contrived links to Russia, China, and Iran."
"The report attempts to paint the tiny island as a threat but says nothing about the US blockade that starves and punishes 10 million people," CodePink said. "This latest attempt by the State Department is just one of many politically motivated witch hunts designed to silence anti-war voices who dare to challenge US militarism. It's about justifying even more aggression against Cuba while turning advocates for peace into suspects. We've seen this playbook before. It's McCarthyism, plain and simple."
"CodePink is currently under investigation by the Treasury Department simply for bringing medical supplies to serve children's hospitals in Cuba. We live in a world where, sadly, the people delivering medicine—not those who are enforcing the policies that deprive Cubans of medicine, food, fuel, and electricity—are under investigation," the group noted.
The organization also nodded to the dozens of United Nations General Assembly votes against the decades of American sanctions, saying that "we stand proudly with the global majority, including 187 UN member nations, who oppose the inhumane US blockade of Cuba. We will not be intimidated for delivering humanitarian aid and advocating for diplomacy over war."
"End the blockade. End the sanctions. End the economic warfare. End the threats of military intervention," CodePink declared. "Let Cubans determine their own future. Hands off Cuba."
Although not mentioned in the administration's new document, Defending Rights & Dissent joined the organizations publicly lambasting it, with policy director Chip Gibbons saying that his group "objects to the State Department's McCarthyite report on Cuba, which makes unfounded claims seeking to tar domestic movements for social change as agents of a foreign government."
Throughout its 100 pages, the publication "goes so far as to cite reports from the long-discredited House Un-American Activities Committee, in order to revive absurd Cold War conspiracy theories and update them for the present," noted Gibbons the author of The Imperial Bureau: The FBI, Political Surveillance, and the Rise of the US National Security State.
"The report smears activists, organizations, and even elected officials using guilt-by-association techniques. It appears designed to justify both domestic political repression and regime change in Cuba," he added. "Congress must not only condemn the report but hold hearings examining its authorship and to determine if the claims behind it have been used to facilitate the surveillance of American activists."
This article has been updated with comment from Congresswoman Delia Ramirez.
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'Fascism Is Here': Rubio, Miller Say More Terrorist Designations Coming for 'Far-Left' Groups
"If you’re not alarmed you’re not paying attention."
Jul 16, 2026
Trump administration officials on Thursday hyped up plans to carry out mass political arrests and prosecutions of people whom it deemed far-left terrorists.
In a speech given at the US State Department, Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump's deputy chief of staff, described left-wing political violence as a "fatal cancer to civilization," and boasted of plans to use state power to suppress people whom he called "political terrorists."
Miller said that the administration would be carrying out this operation under the guidance of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), a directive signed by Trump in September that demanded a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
Miller bragged that "for the first time in American history," NSPM-7 would direct "all of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work together to disrupt, identify, defund, de-bank, arrest, prosecute these political terrorists that are operating within our country."
Santa Monica Goebbels is doing his weird and creepy gyrations while delivering a speech smearing Democrats as violent radicals pic.twitter.com/PaeDcD55jw
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2026
Miller said that the mass arrest of left-wing radicals was necessary to prevent them from carrying out mass arrests of their own.
"Inevitably, left to its course, it always becomes a gulag," said Miller. "It always becomes the mass imprisonment of political enemies, the stripping of their rights and freedoms, inflicting immense pain, humiliation, suffering, in order to establish complete and total control, control through psychological and physical and actual terror."
The social media account of independent progressive publication The Tennessee Holler expressed alarm at Miller's speech.
"Fascism is here," The Tennessee Holler wrote. "If you’re not alarmed you’re not paying attention. 'Left-wing political terrorism' will mean those who oppose the regime—while actual right-wing extremism is allowed to grow and thrive. We are very far off the cliff, folks."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also spoke of the event, noted last year that his department "designated four violent far-left extremist groups as foreign terrorist organizations, and there will be more designations soon."
Secretary of State Rubio says there will be more terrorist designations of left-wing groups "soon." pic.twitter.com/RmZjBgQXas
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) July 16, 2026
The administration's declaration of war against left-wing political violence comes despite decades of research showing that political violence is more commonly carried out by right-wing groups.
A report published last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that, while left-wing political violence has grown since Trump’s first election in 2016, it “remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers.”
The report also noted that violence carried out by left-wing individuals or groups was "remarkably less lethal" than violence carried out by right-wing or jihadist individuals or groups.
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US Provides $300 Million in Earthquake Recovery Money to Venezuela While Sitting on $8 Billion in Stolen Oil Wealth
"Will these funds be released for the disaster response?” asked a former US ambassador to Venezuela.
Jul 06, 2026
The Trump administration has seized at least $8 billion worth of Venezuela's oil wealth since it overthrew President Nicolás Maduro in January, according to the New York Times.
Now, as Venezuela struggles to cope with a catastrophic pair of earthquakes late last month that killed at least 3,300 people and left tens of thousands more injured and homeless, and 41,000-50,000 people are reported missing, the US is providing just $300 million in humanitarian aid, a small fraction of the money it purloined.
The Associated Press reported on Monday that international rescue teams have begun to pull out as hopes of finding missing loved ones alive dwindle each day after the disaster.
Shortly after deposing Maduro, US President Donald Trump declared that the US "took over Venezuela... and the oil is flowing.”
Economist Francisco Rodriguez has found that during the first quarter of 2026, after Trump overthrew Maduro and the US began expropriating Venezuelan oil, the country experienced the lowest rate of economic growth since 2021, even as oil exports rose.
As Roxanna Vigil, a former senior sanctions policy adviser at the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, explained in an article for the Council on Foreign Relations last month, "almost 100 million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight."
"While the Trump administration has repeatedly framed this control as benefiting both countries, it has not publicly disclosed how much Venezuelan oil it has sold, how much revenue it has collected, or how it has used those funds," she added.
According to an initial report by the United Nations Development Program, the quakes caused $6.7 billion worth of damage.
Former US Ambassador to Venezuela Jimmy Story credited what he said was a “robust” US effort to provide aid. But he told Reuters that it called into question "the transparency over the oil fund," and asked, "Will these funds be released for the disaster response?”
The Times noted that the Trump administration's response to the Venezuela quakes is dwarfed by the humanitarian response to the earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, when the US launched a more than $3 billion relief effort and deployed more than 7,000 troops.
Just 900 US troops are on the ground in Venezuela, with another 800 positioned in Puerto Rico and Curaçao to support the operation.
The Times' Simon Romero, who has reported on earthquakes in both countries, noted that the Haiti earthquake was more destructive, but said:
The parallels between the disasters are also haunting: Pancaked multistory concrete buildings, bodies flooding into overwhelmed morgues, survivors disparaging government responses, and civilians leading desperate rescues of people trapped in the rubble.
Viewed against cityscapes clouded by dust from pulverized structures, the images speak to hollowed-out first responder agencies, generalized impoverishment, and political dysfunction in both Haiti and Venezuela.
Beyond the $8 billion taken out of Venezuela since January, anti-war and human rights groups in the US have urged the Trump administration to lift the economic sanctions that have crippled the Venezuelan government, arguing that they have hobbled the recovery effort.
The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) estimated that during just four years, between 2017-20, US sanctions caused the Venezuelan state to lose between $17 billion and $31 billion in revenue.
A more recent report by the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research found that between 2017-24, Venezuela suffered an estimated $226 billion in lost oil revenue due to US sanctions, equivalent to 213% of its total gross domestic product.
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As Post-Quake Misery Mounts in Venezuela, Demand Grows for Total End to US Sanctions
"Anything short of a full lifting of sanctions will hobble the overall response before it gets off the ground," said a letter sent to Trump and Rubio by a coalition of advocacy groups.
Jul 01, 2026
As death and injury tolls from Venezuela's pair of devastating earthquakes last week continue to rise, a coalition of human rights and anti-war groups called on President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday to lift the US sanctions that have crippled the nation's economy.
"As long as sweeping economic sanctions remain in place and Venezuelan assets remain frozen abroad, reconstruction will be unnecessarily delayed, and millions of people will continue to suffer," said the letter, which was written by Just Foreign Policy, the Latin American Working Group, and Venezuelan American Community Action and shared exclusively with Common Dreams.
It has been signed by more than a dozen other groups, including the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Peace Action, and the Presbyterian Church's Office of Public Witness.
The earthquakes have killed nearly 2,300 people as of Wednesday, a death toll that is expected to rise, with the number of missing people greater than 40,000, according to an unofficial estimate. The United Nations' resident coordinator said the UN was preparing more than 10,000 body bags for the country "in anticipation of the death toll rising further."
The quakes caused $6.7 billion in damage, the equivalent of 6% of the country's gross domestic product, the UN Development Program estimated last week.
In the letter sent Wednesday, the groups welcomed the State Department's mobilization of support for Venezuela, which has included search and rescue teams, military personnel for disaster relief, and at least $150 million in humanitarian assistance through aid partners and the UN.
But they said, “It is clear that emergency relief alone will not be enough.”
"Venezuela’s recovery will require access to its own financial resources and the ability to import the equipment, construction materials, medicine, fuel, spare parts, and other goods needed to rebuild homes, hospitals, schools, roads, ports, and critical infrastructure," they said.
They said acquiring these needs has been made vastly more difficult by US sanctions that have "deliberately crushed Venezuela's economy, restricting the government's ability to import goods, maintain infrastructure, and deliver basic services to its population."
Even before the earthquakes, they pointed out, nearly a third of Venezuela's population was in need of humanitarian assistance in May, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
They said US "responsibility" for the state of Venezuela's economy has only grown since Trump's operation in January to topple and abduct President Nicolás Maduro.
Despite Venezuela's oil exports rising 25%, its economic growth plummeted to an annual rate of just 2.5% in the first quarter of 2026, according to an analysis of bank data by Francisco Rodríguez, a senior research fellow at CEPR, who said it was "the lowest rate of growth observed since the second quarter of 2021."
"The data suggests the US may be holding Venezuelan oil revenues in deposit accounts and not disbursing them to the Venezuelan government," the letter said, "currently leaving ordinary Venezuelans with too little of the promised economic improvement and directly contradicting the Trump administration's claim that Venezuelans are doing better than ever."
Given the US role in creating these conditions, as well as the role of US sanctions in turning Venezuela's economic crisis in the 2010s into one of the worst depressions of the last 50 years, the coalition said the Trump administration must not continue using economic warfare to force political concessions.
They also condemned calls from Democrats, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (NH) and House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (NY) earlier this month, for the Trump administration to "exercise its leverage" on Venezuela's current government, led by President Delcy Rodriguez, to push for democratic elections.
"The primary leverage the US has long held over Venezuela includes indiscriminate economic sanctions, alongside threats of military action that are illegal under US and international law," the coalition said.
"Using economic pressure against a civilian population as a political tool was unconscionable before this earthquake," they continued. "In its aftermath, any call to tighten that leverage, or to attach political conditions to aid or in exchange for a lifting of economic sanctions must be recognized for what it is—an act of collective punishment against long-suffering civilians who should not face further indiscriminate harm due to US policy."
The coalition said that the Trump administration's limited, temporary unfreezing of some sanctions to allow humanitarian relief transactions was "wildly insufficient," as it did not unfreeze other sanctions that have hamstrung Venezuela's economy.
"The Venezuelan government must be free to receive and allocate earthquake relief and to direct humanitarian support to those who need it most," the letter said. "Anything short of a full lifting of sanctions will hobble the overall response before it gets off the ground."
They called for the US to provide "massive humanitarian assistance" without political strings attached.
They also said the US must release Venezuelan oil revenues held in US accounts and pressure other countries like the UK and Portugal to do so as well.
"This is Venezuela’s money, and it is now urgently needed," the groups said. "Withholding it during a national catastrophe of this magnitude is indefensible."
They also called on the US to lift all sanctions on Venezuela, which they said "impede the delivery of humanitarian goods, reconstruction materials, and financial transfers needed for disaster response and economic recovery."
"The United States has a short window to demonstrate that its relationship with the Venezuelan people is not merely transactional," the letter concluded. "The scale of aid must match the scale of the harm the United States has played a role in creating. Anything less would confirm what many Venezuelans already fear: that American concern for their welfare begins and ends where American geopolitical and economic interests do."
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'Bureaucratic Temper Tantrum': Trump White House Pilloried Over Reported Effort to Deport Iran War Critic Trita Parsi
"Irony is if the Trump admin had listened to Parsi, they'd be in much better shape now," said a fellow anti-war writer.
Jun 11, 2026
The Trump administration is once again being accused of using immigration enforcement to silence speech after it reportedly launched an investigation into one of the most prominent critics of the president's war in Iran, Trita Parsi, as part of an effort to deport him.
Parsi, an Iranian-Swedish citizen who holds a green card in the US, is the co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and co-founded the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
Since February, when the US and Israel launched a war against Iran that has killed more than 1,700 civilians, wracked the global economy, and spiraled out across the Middle East, Parsi has been a highly cited anti-war voice in the media.
But according to an exclusive report from The Free Press published on Thursday, which quotes senior Trump administration officials, the State Department views Parsi, who has lived in the US for 25 years, not as "another Washington pundit eager to share his point of view," but as someone seeking to nefariously spread "Iranian influence."
“The secretary has been very clear,” an unnamed Trump administration official said, referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Anyone who seeks to undermine the US, we’re taking a hard look at.” That includes “people who support adversaries of ours and whose work furthers their agenda and undermines our security.”
Since attacking Iran, the Trump administration has brought the hammer down on other Iranians living legally in the US due to their alleged sympathies with their nation of origin.
In April, the State Department arrested two women alleged to be the niece and grandniece of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, who was extrajudicially assassinated in an airstrike ordered by President Donald Trump in 2020. Rubio accused the two women of promoting "regime propaganda," revoking their green cards, though documents later revealed that the women had no connection to the slain general.
The administration also canceled the visa belonging to the daughter of Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who was assassinated in March.
The administration has similarly wielded its powers against foreign-born critics of Israel, including Columbia University student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was snatched off the street by immigration agents and detained for weeks over an opinion piece she co-wrote calling on her school to divest from Israel. The White House's deportation effort against her was thrown out by an immigration judge in February.
Documents unsealed in January showed that five pro-Palestine student activists singled out by the State Department, including Öztürk and Khalil, were targeted for deportation for no other reason than their speech and were not accused of any wrongdoing.
Relying on a previously rarely used provision in the McCarthy era Immigration and Nationality Act, the administration has defended its right to strip legal residents of their status on the grounds of speech alone that was adverse to a "compelling United States foreign policy interest.”
In the case of Khalil, Rubio acknowledged in a memo that his speech was “otherwise lawful,” but claimed that allowing him to remain in the country would undermine the Trump administration's foreign policy goals of supporting Israel and "combating antisemitism."
A similar justification appears to be undergirding the administration's attacks on Parsi. According to The Free Press, the administration has highlighted his and his organization's public warnings against escalation against Iran, his role as an informal adviser to negotiations for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, opposition to US sanctions against the country, and correspondence with Iranian officials as evidence that he is working to further Tehran's influence.
While Parsi has not yet publicly confirmed that an investigation is underway, The Free Press reported that the Quincy Institute has prepared for legal action if the government attempts to have him detained or deported.
The outlet cited a memo from Quincy CEO Lora Lumpe, who noted that Parsi had recently come into the crosshairs of the notorious pro-Trump influencer Laura Loomer, who accused him of being “a mouthpiece for the Iranian regime" and threatened that his “days in our country are numbered.”
The State Department has previously appeared to make decisions directly in response to Loomer's online outbursts. Loomer was the first to erroneously claim that the two women detained in April were relatives of Soleimani. She also took credit for the department revoking the visa of the British commentator and Israel critic Sami Hamdi, who was abducted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the middle of a speaking tour.
The State Department has also appeared to follow her lead after she called for it to block children injured during Israel's genocide in Gaza from entering the US on medical humanitarian visas to receive desperately needed surgeries and rehabilitative care.
News of the State Department's pursuit of an investigation against Parsi was described as the latest attempt by the Trump administration to use the threat of deportation to bully critics into silence.
"Trita Parsi is a courageous and outspoken critic of the US-Israeli war on Iran, alongside whom we’re proud to have worked in opposition to war and injustice for many years," said the civil liberties organization Defending Rights & Dissent. "The Trump administration’s investigation of Parsi is an outrageous attack on free speech. Government officials are explicit that they are exploring deporting Parsi specifically for his advocacy—a blatant affront to the First Amendment."
Branko Marcetic, another prominent war opponent who writes for Jacobin magazine, called the attack on Parsi "contemptible."
"Irony is if the Trump admin had listened to Parsi, they'd be in much better shape now," he added. "Instead, they put their political futures in the hands of people Trump himself called warmonger idiots, and now they're left throwing this bureaucratic temper tantrum."
Drop Site News, which has often interviewed Parsi as an expert, also noted the significance of the fact that the "exclusive" report was being published by The Free Press, a hawkish right-wing publication that "has repeatedly published articles that amplify official pressure on critics of Israel, US wars, and aggressive foreign policy, contributing to a chilling effect intended to deter others from speaking out."
Some of Parsi's ideological opponents have also warned against the government's efforts to punish his speech, like Kaveh Shahrooz, a prominent Iranian-Canadian advocate for regime change in Iran.
"You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who, over the past decade, has been more aggressively outspoken against Trita Parsi and NIAC than I have," Shahrooz said. "But I’m deeply uncomfortable with what’s being reported."
"Unless the [US government] can demonstrate that Parsi violated US law... deporting him would amount to targeting someone for their speech and political beliefs," he continued. "An abuse of government power directed at someone you despise today can very easily be directed at you, or at someone you support, tomorrow."
Update (6/13/2026): Following the publication of this piece, the US State Department issued a statement that it "has no plans to revoke the green card of Mr. Parsi at this time."
Parsi has responded to the reports with a post to his Substack, in which he said, "I don’t believe there was any investigation against me," but that "some elements within the State Department wanted to start one and thought external pressure," via The Free Press' report "could help move things forward." Parsi's full response can be read here.
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Palestinian UN Ambassador Drops Bid for VP of General Assembly Following US Threats
“A Palestinian vice presidency at the General Assembly would not change power realities on the ground, but it would normalize Palestinian statehood claims... That is precisely what the United States is attempting to block.”
May 22, 2026
The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations withdrew his bid to become a vice president of the UN General Assembly on Thursday following threats from the Trump administration to strip the visas of the entire Palestinian delegation, according to NPR.
The Palestinian envoy, Riyad Mansour, has been an outspoken critic of Israel's actions toward Palestinians, particularly since the beginning of the genocidal war in Gaza, which he said has entailed "the collective punishment of over two million Palestinians."
He has been Palestine’s permanent UN observer for more than two decades and had earlier this year planned to run for president of the General Assembly, though he bowed out following US pressure.
The Guardian reported that on Tuesday, the US State Department sent a diplomatic cable to the US embassy in Jerusalem instructing it to pressure the Palestinian Authority (PA)—the governing body of the occupied West Bank—to withdraw its bid for one of the 21 vice presidencies of the General Assembly as well.
General Assembly vice presidents have a role in setting the body’s agenda and filling in when the president is absent. The UN is scheduled to hold elections amongst Assembly members on June 2.
The US cable said Mansour “has a history of accusing Israel of genocide"—as leading human rights groups and experts have—and that his presence would “undermine” the objectives of President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” in Gaza, which a recent Human Rights Watch report said has fallen fall short of its promises to provide aid to Palestinians and has allowed Israeli forces to continue killing them with little pushback despite a ceasefire.
The cable said, “We will hold the PA responsible if the Palestinian delegation does not withdraw its [vice presidential] candidacy” by Friday, “and consequences will follow.”
The cable threatened to revoke the US visas of all Palestinian officials. The US already revoked most of them back in August, but rolled back the ban on those who were visiting as part of the annual UN summit. “It would be unfortunate to have to revisit any available options,” the cable said.
It also threatened that Israel would continue to withhold tax revenue that it owes to the Palestinian Authority, which was blocked by Israel's far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, at the beginning of the war in October 2023. The money being withheld by Israel accounts for 60% of the PA's revenue.
A person familiar with the matter told NPR that Mansour specifically would refrain from running for the position for the next two years, which was interpreted as a reference to the end of Trump's term as president.
The US is prohibited from blocking UN officials from visiting the body's New York headquarters under a 1947 agreement. However, the US has blocked visas for officials from enemy countries, including Russia and Iran, as well as the former leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat.
Hady Amr, who served as a senior State Department official on Palestinian affairs under the Obama and Biden administrations, told NPR that expelling diplomats is extremely rare outside of "extreme situations like Russian espionage or election interference."
Amr said, "Generally, it's counterproductive because you need diplomats to work out problems between countries, and by expelling diplomats, you're undermining not only their ability to solve problems, but the abilities of the United States as well."
Tawfiq Al-Ghussein, a London-based researcher who specializes in modern Middle Eastern history and the displacement of Palestinians, said on social media that "the significance of this is not merely procedural."
"Washington is effectively trying to prevent even symbolic Palestinian institutional visibility within the UN system because it understands that international legitimacy matters politically, legally, and diplomatically," Al-Ghussein said. "A Palestinian vice presidency at the General Assembly would not change power realities on the ground, but it would normalize Palestinian statehood claims within the architecture of international governance itself. That is precisely what the United States is attempting to block."
“The irony is extraordinary: The same power that lectures the world endlessly about democracy and international order is reportedly threatening visas and diplomatic consequences to stop Palestinians from holding a largely ceremonial UN role,” he continued. "It reveals once again that the issue was never 'peace negotiations' as such, but control over who is permitted institutional legitimacy in the international system."
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State Department Pushes Human Rights Watchdog to Ignore Deadly, Illegal Boat Strike Campaign
As the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was advised not to investigate the bombings, Pentagon officials expressed support for strikes on land, ostensibly against drug traffickers.
Apr 14, 2026
The former president of a top international human rights watchdog views the United States' monthslong campaign of bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean as a clear-cut case of "murder," he told The Intercept Monday, but he warned that pressure from the Trump administration may stop the body from investigating the Pentagon's actions.
Juan Méndez, a former president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, noted that a month after the IACHR held a hearing on the boat bombing campaign, officials "may well feel that this is a very delicate situation, and if they take the initiative, they’re going to incur the wrath of the United States."
The hearing last month was the first of its kind and included testimonies from the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, International Crisis Group, and Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights. The groups presented evidence that the US has been violating both domestic and international law by bombing vessels that it has claimed—without making any evidence publicly available—are involved in drug trafficking. Nearly 170 people have been killed in dozens of strikes, and legal experts worldwide have asserted the US is violating international law and has committed extrajudicial killings—potentially making those involved in the strikes liable for murder.
The hearing was followed by a statement from Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesperson, who said the IACHR had "strayed far outside its mandate” by looking into the boat attacks—as the family of one man killed in a bombing requested it to—and accused the ACLU of trying to manipulate the body.
"The United States calls on the commission to adhere to its statute and rules of procedure in the future and avoid inserting itself into matters that are in active domestic litigation and fall outside the human rights sphere," said Pigott. "Convening hearings under these circumstances risks undermining—not strengthening—the credibility of the inter-American human rights system."
Pigott also called on the commission to "redirect its focus toward the individual petitions languishing on its docket, sometimes for decades." He did not mention specific petitions or issues the IACHR should focus on.
Carl Anderson, a legal adviser at the State Department, also rebuked the commission for holding the proceedings.
"If the United States cuts the funding, they probably would have to shut down—at least for a while.”
A person with close ties to the IACHR told The Intercept that Pigott's demand that the commission focus on other topics pointed to a pressure campaign aimed at stoking fear that the IACHR could lose its funding.
President Donald Trump's zeroed out US contributions to the commission during his first term in 2018, and withdrew some funding the following year due to its support for abortion rights. The administration terminated funding last year for at least 22 programs under the IACHR's parent body, the Organization of American States, of which the US is the largest international funder.
“They are stretched for funding," Méndez told The Intercept. "And if the United States cuts the funding, they probably would have to shut down—at least for a while.”
Stuardo Ralón, the IACHR's current president, denied that there is "pressure from the United States on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights," but suggested it may not conduct a comprehensive investigation into the Trump administration's boat bombings—saying the body "does not conduct investigations."
The Intercept noted that the IACHR has conducted numerous investigations that it has publicly acknowledged and described as such, including into US immigration detention centers and the kidnapping and apparent killing of 43 students in Mexico in 2014.
Ralón told the outlet that it has not yet taken any steps to launch an investigation into the strikes following the hearing, and said it "will continue to monitor the situation in accordance with its mandate."
Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s human rights program, emphasized that "the commission is within its competency and its bounds to fully investigate the egregious violations of international law happening in its own backyard.”
“We have asked the commission to fulfill its responsibilities as the premier regional human rights body to conduct a fact-finding investigation of these heinous killings," Dakwar told The Intercept, "and to ensure that no country can act in this fashion because that will have severe implications on human rights in the region and beyond."
As the State Department has pushed the IACHR away from probing the legality of the boat bombings, administration officials like Joseph Humire, acting assistant secretary of war for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, have warned that the attacks at sea are "just the beginning" of what officials claim is an effort to defeat drug cartels—against which Congress has not authorized any military action.
US Southern Command announced a joint ground operation with Ecuador last month to defeat "narco-terrorists."
Humire said the Pentagon supports "joint land strikes," while Gen. Francis Donovan, the head of US Southern Command who has been directing the boat attacks, told the Senate Armed Service Committee that the Pentagon is moving toward "a counter-cartel campaign process that puts total systemic friction across this network."
"I believe," he said, "these kinetic [boat] strikes are just one small part of that.”
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On Conspiracy Theorist Laura Loomer's Orders, Rubio Announces Arrest of 2 Women for Supporting Iran
The State Department said the women were related to the assassinated Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, but Iranian media said they had no connection to him.
Apr 04, 2026
With a majority of Americans including President Donald Trump's own base demanding a swift end to the war in Iran—and Iran's military capabilities proving difficult to overpower—observers suggested on Saturday that the White House was looking elsewhere to score "victories," as Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that federal agents had arrested relatives of the late Major General Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian military commander who the US assassinated in 2020 during President Donald Trump's first term.
Rubio accused Soleimani's niece, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, of promoting "regime propaganda" and voicing support for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and said she had been living a "lavish lifestyle" in the US. Afshar's husband has been barred from entering the US and the lawful permanent resident status she and her daughter had has been terminated, said the State Department.
"Are we losing so badly we need to arrest the distant relatives of long-since-dead Iranian commanders?" asked Ryan Grim of Drop Site News.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council noted that the administration had used the same legal authority to arrest Soleimani's reported family members as it did to detain former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University scholar Rümeysa Öztürk for speaking out against US support for Israel—a tactic which is being challenged in court as unconstitutional.
Far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who has wielded influence in the White House during the second Trump administration, claimed credit for the arrest of the two women, saying that in communications with the State Department, she had "exposed the fact that Qasem Soleimani’s Niece Hamideh Soleimani Afshar has been living in the United States (Los Angeles, California) where she posts pro-Iranian regime and pro-IRGC content on her social media while she lives a life of luxury."
"She has been arrested and will be deported back to Iran!" she added. "Over the last few months, I have quietly been documenting all of Hamideh Soleimani Afshar’s social media activity. I uploaded it all to a secure file and shared it with [the Department of Homeland Security] and Department of State, and now she has been arrested and she will be deported from our country."
In Iran on Saturday, media outlets were reporting that the two women arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement were not related to Soleimani—who had no nieces, according to journalist Kourosh Ziabari.
Soleimani's daughter told the news outlet Jamaran that "none" of her extended family has ever lived in the US.
Regardless of the women's relation to Soleimani or lack thereof, journalist Ryan Grim said the arbitrary arrest "actively puts innocent Americans around the world at risk."
Rubio's explanation for the detention and his move to revoke the women's green cards is the latest evidence that "the US is now deporting people for thought crimes," said historian Zachary Foster.
Journalist Sana Saeed said the case shows that constitutional protections for due process and free speech, which are supposed to apply to green card holders, "no longer mean anything."
"People cannot lose their green card status simply because of familial relationships, so the justification shifts here to their alleged support for the Iranian government," said Saeed. "But supporting a foreign government is not a criminal offense. And if you begin to treat it as one—as the US government effectively is in this case—then expect a lot more of this."
"It will not stop here, and it will not remain limited to Iranians," she said. "The logic does not contain itself, it expands."
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