Screenshot from video recorded on X with Florida GOP U.S. Reps. Carlos Giménez, Jose Díaz-Balart, and Maria Salazar on Jan. 14, 2024.
The Biden administration has lifted the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, igniting a furious response from a number of Florida congressional Republicans.
The move could prove short-lived, however, with the Donald Trump likely to rescind the designation when he assumes the office of president next week.
In a “Certification of Recission of Cuba’s Designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism” (SSOT), President Biden wrote that he was certifying that “[t]he government of Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding 6-month period; and [t]he Government of Cuba has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the near future.”
The move by the president comes with just six days left in his term in office. Somewhat similarly, incoming President Trump placed Cuba on the terrorist list in the last days of his first term in January 2021. That decision reversed former President Barack Obama’s removal of Cuba from that list during his second term.
The decision was blasted by a host of Florida Republicans in Washington.
“Joe Biden’s parting gift to dictators and terrorists around the world: taking Cuba off the State Sponsor of Terrorism List and making it easier for them to threaten our national security,” U.S. Sen. Rick Scott wrote on X. “This is reckless and dangerous. Biden’s appeasement is feeding right into the hands of Cuba’s dictators, who fuel terrorism and oppress their people. I’ll be working with President Trump on DAY ONE to hold the Communist Cuban regime accountable and free the Cuban people.”
Three South Florida Cuban American Republican members of Congress — Carlos Giménez, Maria Salazar, and Mario Díaz-Balart — recorded a video denouncing the decision.
“They’ve taken them off the state sponsor of terrorism designation list, despite that regime harboring terrorists, harboring fugitives from American law, and despite the damage to the national security interests of the United States,” said Díaz-Balart. “This is shameful, and an aggression to the national security interests of the United States.”
Salazar said that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had promised “repeatedly that he was not thinking of taking Cuba off the list of terrorist countries, and now he called my office and said that Biden — directly from the White House — he had been directed that he had to take Cuba off the list.”
“Never listen to what the Biden administration tells you, watch what they are doing,” warned Giménez. “And this is the last act of watching what they’re doing, which is helping our enemies and trying to destroy our friends.”
Democratic objection
It wasn’t just Florida Republicans who criticized the president, however.
“I am disappointed at the Biden Administration’s plan to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism,” said Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried in a statement.
“While any return of political prisoners from the clutches of Communist Cuba is cause for celebration, the regime’s treatment of the Cuban people continues to be one of the biggest human rights violations of the last century. It would be naive to think that this negotiated exchange would signal a change in treatment for the Cuban people.”
Fried’s remark about “the return of political prisoners” was mentioned on Tuesday by White House press secretary Katrine Jean-Pierre, who said at a briefing that the administration had “been informed by the Catholic Church that the Cuban government will soon begin releasing a substantial number of political prisoners.”
After a group of House Democrats sent a letter to Biden in November urging immediate sanctions relief for the Cuban people amid widespread blackouts and an escalating energy crisis, Scott issued a statement saying such a move would be not only “ignorant, but dangerous.”
Texas Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz issued a statement on Tuesday calling the move a “rank appeasement of the Cuban regime.”
“Today’s decision is unacceptable on its merits. The terrorism advanced by the Cuban regime has not ceased,” Cruz said on X. “I will work with President Trump and my colleagues to immediately reverse and limit the damage from the decision.”
The State Department did remove Cuba from a short list of countries that the U.S. alleges are “not cooperating fully” in its fight against terrorism in May, which some observers said could foreshadow a broader review of that nation’s status, but no announcement had occurred until Tuesday.
‘Political malpractice’
John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, said in a written statement that the removal of Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list “only serves to increase a negative focus on Cuba six days before the Trump-Vance administration begins.”
He went on to call the move “political malpractice.”
“The government of the Republic of Cuba antagonizes, marginalizes, and ignores individuals and groups who influence the public sector and private sector in the United States while devoting resources towards individuals and groups in the public sector and private sector in the United States who not only have no influence, but whose voices when heard serve only to antagonize individuals and organizations in the public sector and private sector who have influence,” Kavulich said.
Al Fox, the Tampa-based founder of the nonprofit Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy Foundation and a longtime advocate for normalizing Cuban American relations, maintains that “there’s not one example that Cuba has ever committed an act of terrorism against the United States or any country in the world. Not one example of that.”
“My reaction is that it clearly shows how political this is and how it has nothing to do with foreign policy,” Fox said, referring to how Trump put Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism during his last week in office and how Biden is countermanding that move late in his term.
Last month, a group of locally elected officials and activists from around the country, including St. Petersburg City Council member Richie Floyd, wrote a letter calling on the president to remove Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list and to ease the additional economic sanctions imposed on the nation during the previous Trump administration.
“These measures restrict Cuba’s access to essential financial resources, deepening the island’s economic struggles,” the letter said. “Lifting Cuba from the SSOT list and easing these punitive sanctions would be bold, necessary steps toward reversing these harmful policies and rekindling the diplomatic spirit we saw during the Obama years.”
Floyd did not immediately return a request for comment.
The White House also announced today that it had issued a waiver for Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, otherwise known as the Libertad Act, for a period of six months. And that Biden had “rescinded the 2017 National Security Presidential Memorandum 5 on Cuba policy to eliminate the so-called ‘restricted list’ and by extension the additional regulations on engagement by U.S. persons and entities with Cuban persons and entities, beyond that which is currently prescribed in U.S. legislation.”
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