Comrades Gordon and Douglas with Cuban health officials
Communist Party leaders Alex Gordon and Lorraine Douglas deliver vital medicines in trip to besieged socialist island
ON THURSDAY a delegation from the Communist Party of Britain was received at Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health (Ministerio de Salud Publica) in Havana by Dr Henry Lopez Jimenez, Deputy Director of Public Health, a vetaran of Cuba’s Medical Brigades in Mozambique where he worked at the Central Hospital in Nampula.
The CPB delegation was led by general secretary Alex Gordon and party chair Lorraine Douglas and included Ben Woodward who is in Havana as part of a brigade organised by the Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos (ICAP), the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples.
Dr Henry Lopez Jimenez outlined the extreme privations that have been created in Cuba’s world renowned health system as a result of the US blockade and sanctions regimes.
Cuba’s infant mortality rate has increased as a direct consequence of the cruel and deliberate attack by the Trump administration on the Cuban people’s healthcare system. Cuban surgeons and nurses have been forced to complete medical operations using light from their own mobile phones during power cuts.
The CPB delegation presented the Cuban health service with over £2,000 of medicines including analgesic painkillers, anti-inflamatory tablets and other medical aid, an advance donation from the Aid for Cuba appeal recently launched by the CPB, which raised £32,000.
Activists from CodePink, including co-founder Medea Benjamin, kneeling center, and others hold signs as part of the ‘Nuestra América,’ or Our America Convoy after landing at the airport in Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2026. | Ramon Espinosa / AP
WASHINGTON—Federal investigators at the Justice and Treasury Departments have reportedly launched a sweeping inquiry into Cuba solidarity organizations, raising the danger of a revival of McCarthyite tactics to target Americans who oppose U.S. policy toward the island nation.
According to Fox News, the DOJ and Treasury are investigating U.S. non-profits and activist groups that do Cuba solidarity work. The Trump administration alleges the groups coordinate lobbying, messaging, fundraising, delegations, and political organizing efforts with Cuban government officials—activity the U.S. government frames as potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and Treasury sanctions regulations.
Fox News claims to have “identified 145 non-profits, labor groups, advocacy organizations, and activist collectives across the U.S. that are mobilizing in support of the Cuban government and the Communist Party of Cuba” with supposedly “$1 billion in combined annual revenue.”
The organizations targeted by Fox include CodePink, National Network on Cuba, Hands Off Cuba Committees, Nuestra América convoy organizers, People’s Forum, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the People’s Forum, BreakThrough News, the ANSWER Coalition, the African People’s Socialist Party, the Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the National Lawyers Guild, and labor unions, including SEIU affiliates and the International Association of Machinists.
The Venceremos Brigade, another of the groups now under scrutiny, traces its roots to 1969, when U.S. students and young people traveled to Cuba to participate in solidarity and labor work alongside the Cuban people.
For more than six decades, solidarity networks have operated openly, sending delegations, providing humanitarian aid, and advocating for an end to a blockade that the United Nations General Assembly has voted to condemn year after year.
The blockade of Cuba has failed for over 60 years in its goal of overthrowing the government there. It has, however, impoverished ordinary Cuban people and isolated the United States from its hemispheric neighbors.
Subpoenas meant to silence dissent
All of the groups are singled out by Fox News as part of what it brands a “pro-communist Cuba ecosystem,” but most of them are not linked to one another politically, organizationally, or ideologically. It is not clear how many among them are being actively investigated by the Justice or Treasury Departments at this time.
The factual basis for the investigations comes entirely from Fox News reporting, and no charges have been filed against any of the named organizations or individuals as of this writing. The escalation from investigations to formal subpoenas, however, makes the government’s intentions more obvious.
According to Fox News, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has served formal “Requests for Information”—administrative subpoenas—on CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker seeking financial, logistical, and communications records related to their participation in the March 2026 Nuestra América Convoy, which delivered desperately-needed humanitarian aid to Havana.
Subpoenaed: CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. | AP photos
Responding to the news, CodePink said that no subpoena has been received as of Sunday. Benjamin posted a personal statement on X, however, declaring: “I am guilty. Guilty of loving the Cuban people. Guilty of believing Cuban children deserve medicine instead of sanctions. Guilty of believing that trying to save lives should not be treated like a crime.”
Piker took aim at Democrats who are so far not challenging the attacks on him and other Cuba activists. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, for instance, boosted a video posted to Threads where an individual mocked Piker. “Kamala would have never. That’s what you get for telling people to vote third party,” the video author said.
In a post to X, Piker warned, in his typical style, that the attacks won’t stop with just Cuba solidarity activists. He wrote: “every centrist blue maga who celebrates these subpoenas is a fucking moron. they think you’re all communists. they’re coming for you too.”
He further stated that centrist Democrats, whom he refers to as “blue maga,” are worried because “left flank candidates” who support Medicare for All and oppose U.S. cooperation in Israel’s wars “are winning insurgent races.” The implication of Piker’s message was that some Democrats may feel Trump’s probes undermine left-wing voices and activists, thereby helping them maintain control of their own party.
Making the costs of activism too high to bear
Fox News claims the government probe extends to as many as 40 U.S. citizens who joined the Nuestra América convoy, with additional subpoenas expected. No charges have been filed against any of them, either.
The government’s legal theory is instructive for determining its possible course of action, though. Legal experts cited in the Fox News reporting note that the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control can impose civil penalties under a “strict liability” standard—meaning the government does not need to prove intent. A criminal case under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, by contrast, would require evidence that a defendant willfully violated the law.
In other words, the administration holds a loaded weapon: It can pursue public harassment campaigns against activists who traveled openly and publicly to Cuba, delivering aid, without having to prove they did anything more than go. This is precisely the kind of legal ambiguity that authoritarian governments exploit to neutralize dissent—not necessarily by winning in court, but by making the cost of activism too great to bear.
The pattern is chillingly familiar to past episodes in U.S. history. The Trump administration has been escalating a new McCarthyism—weaponizing federal law enforcement against the left, not to address genuine security threats, but to silence political opposition and intimidate movements that challenge the bipartisan foreign policy consensus. The Cuba “investigation” follows that blueprint precisely.
Fox News’s own reporting acknowledges a key legal fact: Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, advocacy itself is protected under the First Amendment, and registration under FARA doesn’t prohibit political activity. Yet the spectacle of federal subpoenas, Treasury Department probes, and multi-agency coordination serves a chilling function regardless of whether charges are ever filed.
Red Scare repeat
During the McCarthy era in the 1950s, the mere fact of investigation—of being named, scrutinized, and summoned—was enough to destroy careers, shutter organizations, and terrify entire communities of activists into silence.
A second Fox News report describes federal investigators examining a May 9 meeting in Wilmington, Calif., where a Cuban Embassy diplomat, David Ramírez Álvarez, addressed approximately 50 activists and union members. He briefed them on pending congressional legislation related to Cuba, including bills that would ease the decades-old trade embargo.
Sen. Joseph McCarthy conducting his anti-communist witch hunt. | AP
The Embassy of Cuba denied any wrongdoing, with a spokesperson stating that Cuban diplomats strictly comply with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and that engaging with civil society organizations is standard diplomatic practice.
What the government is essentially criminalizing is lobbying for a change in U.S. foreign policy.
The Fox News investigation frames the probe as flowing from National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, issued by President Trump in September 2025, which directed federal agencies to investigate “organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources” connected to political activity deemed adverse to the administration’s interests.
Accusations that the groups now facing federal scrutiny are agents of a foreign power repeat the Cold War pattern of labeling critics of capitalism and U.S. foreign policy as agents of the Soviet Union.
Subpoenas, financial audits, and threatened prosecution are not necessarily national security work and could be a cover for political repression, as they were in the past. This new McCarthyism does not yet feature Senate hearing rooms packed with television cameras. So far, it relies on news reports from media outlets friendly to the Trump administration and letters from the Justice Department.
Just like the past McCarthyism, though, the implicit message is that dissent comes with a price.
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People arrive with the first ship of the humanitarian convoy in solidarity with Cuba, in Havana on March 24, 2026. (Photo by Angelo Mastrascusa/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“It is outrageous that the US government would target people for bringing humanitarian aid… But even more disturbing is the cruel and deeply immoral policy the United States continues to impose on Cuba.”
The antiwar group CodePink it has yet to be served with any subpoenas after it was reported over the weekend that the Trump administration has opened an investigation into a recent humanitarian trip it helped organize to Cuba, but vehemently denied wrongdoing and said any government probe, if there is one, would only show that “this administration is beyond grotesque.”
“Taking medical supplies to pediatric hospitals in Cuba is now a crime?” asked co-founder Medea Benjamin on social media on Saturday after Fox News reported that organizers had been served subpoenas. “Saving the lives of babies is a crime?”
Fox reported that Benjamin and left-wing commentator Hasan Piker had been subpoenaed by federal investigators two months after they were among 40 Americans who sailed to Havana on the Nuestra America Convoy, which carried 20 tons of humanitarian aid to the island nation.
The Fox reporting claimed the subpoenas issued to Benjamin and Piker seek to obtain financial, logistical, and communications information related to the trip, which was organized in response to the Trump administration’s decision in late January to threaten to impose tariffs on any country that provided Cuba with oil.
The administration cut off Cuba’s main source of fuel at the beginning of the year when it sent US troops into Venezuela to abduct President Nicolás Maduro and took control of the country’s vast oil supply.
White House officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, have long desired regime change in the communist country, and rights advocates have warned the administration appears to be moving toward just that as it strangles the island’s oil supply—causing frequent blackouts and impacting the healthcare and food systems—and claims the Cuban government poses a threat to the US.
In organizing the Nuestra America Convoy, said Benjamin on Sunday, the advocates were acting “as moral US citizens trying to bring some relief to a population being deliberately starved by the cruel policies of our own government.”
“This policy has contributed to catastrophic shortages of medicine and electricity, massive blackouts, transportation collapse, and a public health crisis that has hurt the most vulnerable, especially children and the elderly,” said Benjamin. “It is a policy that is, literally, killing babies, as we have seen in the recent tragic doubling of the infant mortality rate. This is why we focused our donations on medical supplies for pediatric hospitals.”
The blockade is compounding the suffering caused by the trade embargo the US has imposed for decades, said Benjamin.
The Cuban Assets Control Regulations law prohibits US citizens from conducting unlicensed travel-related transations with Cuba, but the law makes exceptions for humanitarian endeavors and other activities aimed at supporting the Cuban people.
“We traveled to Cuba under the US government-authorized category of providing humanitarian aid to the Cuban people. We brought desperately needed medicines and medical supplies at a time when Cuba is suffering catastrophic shortages caused by the crippling US blockade,” said Benjamin.
Benjamin, Piker, and Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim emphasized that the group stayed in Spanish-owned hotels that are “explicitly permitted under” the US law—while right-wing influencer Nick Shirley allegedly stayed in a sanctioned hotel on a recent trip to Cuba.
This is amazing: “According to public statements, it's believed that delegation members stayed at a hotel the U.S. State Department has put on a "Cuba Restricted List," as businesses directly tied to the communist government of Cuba, designated a state sponsor of terrorism.”
“It is outrageous that the US government would target people for bringing humanitarian aid to suffering Cuban children,” Benjamin said. “But even more disturbing is the cruel and deeply immoral policy the United States continues to impose on Cuba—a policy designed to strangle the island economically, deprive people of food, fuel, medicine, and basic necessities, and make daily life unbearable.”
Piker said the reports of the investigation indicate that “the American government would rather try to criminalize delivering aid to a country we’ve starved, than punish the Epstein class.”
Benjamin emphasized that the reports of the probe come as the administration intensified its threats against Cuba, having indicted former President Raúl Castro last week on charges related to the shooting down of a plane operated by Cuban-American exiles in the 1990s. Trump and his allies have repeatedly mused about invading the country following his military attacks on Venezuela and Iran.
“President Trump already has his hands full trying to disentangle himself from the disastrous US war with Iran,” said Benjamin. “He should not start another one in Cuba. The American people are tired of endless wars, interventions, sanctions, and suffering imposed in our name.”
Members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces attend a rally in support of former President Raul Castro in front of the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, May 22, 2026
ROGER D HARRIS and SARA FLOUNDERS challenge propaganda against the blockaded socialist island
MAY Day is the most important public celebration in Cuba. This year, which marked the 100th anniversary of Fidel Castro’s birth, carried special significance in light of heightened US aggression. Over 5 million Cubans reportedly mobilised island-wide under the slogan of la patria se defiende (the homeland must be defended). The largest demonstration took place in Havana in front of the US embassy.
The symbolism of International Workers’ Day was not lost on the White House. President Trump chose that day, May 1, to impose yet more sanctions on top of the already draconian illegal measures immiserating Cuba. Cuban journalist Norland Rosendo Gonzalez called this latest escalation Trump’s “imperial order to kill the Cuban people without bullets.”
The world’s leading imperial power falsely claims that Cuba poses “threats to United States national security.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio subsequently announced additional measures to “defend” the US homeland from its peaceful neighbour.
Jill Clark-Gollub with the Americas Without Sanctions Campaign explains the underlying reason for Washington’s animosity: “Cuba is sanctioned for the crime of being a good example.” A small, formerly colonised country, Cuba simply claims its sovereign right to determine its own destiny without foreign interference.
…
In 1976, Cuban voters ratified a constitutional referendum with a reported 97 per cent approval rate and high voter turnout, which formally defined Cuba as a socialist state. Last year in the United States, the House of Representatives passed a resolution “denouncing the horrors of socialism” by a lopsided bipartisan margin of 285–98.
Capitalism itself, however, has never been subject to a democratic vote of the American people. Perhaps for good reason: recent polls show a growing popularity for socialism, especially among the youth.
Shortly before May Day, President Miguel Diaz-Canel addressed the Cuban nation: “The socialist character of our revolution is not a phrase from the past; it is the shield of the present and the guarantee of the future.” With characteristic Cuban humility, he acknowledged “our own mistakes in this process of social construction” but added that “the main cause of our problems is the genocidal blockade.”
Directly addressing Washington – “gentlemen of manipulation and lies” – Díaz-Canel proclaimed: “Cuba is not a failed state; Cuba is a besieged state.”
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Cubans hold photos of revolutionary hero and former President Raúl Castro outside the US Embassy in Havana on May 22, 2026 amid threats of attack by the United States. (Photo by Adalberto Roque/AFP via Getty Images)
“Here we are prepared to fight imperialism,” said Cuban lawmaker Mariela Castro, daughter of Raúl Castro. “Cuba is a small and poor country, but one with experience confronting US imperialism.”
Tens of thousands of Cubans rallied Friday in Havana to denounce the Trump administration’s indictment of former President Raúl Castro and threats to attack the island nation, whose socialist government has been preparing its citizens to defend their homeland and revolution against US aggression.
“No disrespect is shown to the heroes of the homeland!” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said as people flooded the streets outside the US Embassy in Havana. “History and traditions are not insulted without a response! That does not happen in Cuba!”
The massive rally followed Wednesday’s US Department of Justiceindictment of revolutionary hero Raúl Castro, who served as president for a decade after his older brother, Fidel Castro, stepped down in 2008. The DOJ indicted Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by the counterrevolutionary group Brothers to the Rescue after repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.
🇨🇺 Tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets of Havana to show support for the Cuban leader Raúl Castro. Cubans are rejecting the US accusations against former president, and US threats and hostilities against the Caribbean nation. pic.twitter.com/v9bHnClfDI
— Peoples Dispatch (@peoplesdispatch) May 22, 2026
Rallying under the slogan “Raúl is Raúl”—originally popularized during the transitional period of rule between the Castros to highlight the younger brother’s reforms—Cubans vowed to defend their revolution in the face of the latest US threats.
“This new aggression has united us more and elevated the honor, dignity, and anti-imperialist spirit of a people already recognized around the world for their brave resistance to any form of subordination to the empire,” Díaz-Canel said.
Cuban legislator Mariela Castro, Raúl’s granddaughter, told rallygoers that “we are prepared for combat.”
“No one is going to kidnap him. I can assure you of that,” she said, alluding to the US invasion and abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on dubious narco-terrorism charges earlier this year. “Neither him nor anyone else.”
“My father is very calm, watching and smiling,” Castro added. “Here, we are prepared to fight imperialism. Cuba is a small and poor country, but one with experience confronting US imperialism. We know that as long as there is an anti-imperialist revolution, there will be a gigantic and ruthless enemy.”
Critics noted the hypocrisy of the Castro indictment, given the ongoing illegal US bombing of boats that the Trump administration claims—without providing evidence—were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
“Washington has no moral authority to judge anyone,” Gerardo Hernández, coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, said, referring to the boat-bombing campaign, which has killed nearly 200 people in close to 60 reported attacks. “Cuba is a people of peace and reaffirms its legitimate right to self-defense.”
“Cuba does not constitute a threat to US security,” he continued. “On the contrary, Cuba is a state under attack by the United States.”
«Los aviones de Hermanos al Rescate derribados sobre Cuba formaban parte de la misma red terrorista con sede en Miami y respaldada por la CIA que mató a cubanos en atentados con bombas en hoteles y que voló el vuelo 455 de Cubana en 1976, asesinando a los 73 pasajeros
“The Cuban people reaffirm the unwavering decision to defend their homeland and revolution,” Hernández added. “With the greatest determination, they reaffirm their absolute and firm support for Army General Raúl Castro.”
Mariela Castro said that “my family, like all Cuban families, is waiting for instructions to know where we need to go” in the event of a US attack.
As US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—whose parents immigrated to the United States from Cuba during the US-backed dictatorship that preceded the Castro-led revolution—said Thursday that the chances of a “negotiated and peaceful agreement” with Havana are “not high,” Deputy Cuban Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío acknowledged that his country is preparing for war, asserting that “we would be naive not to.”
Cuban officials have been circulating a pamphlet titled a “Family Guide for Protection Against Military Aggression.” The publication warns that the US is preparing “to launch a military assault and destroy our society with the aim of perpetuating capitalism… and annihilating the dream of our Commander-in-Chief, Fidel Castro.”
The pamphlet instructs Cubans to pack survival kits and seek shelter in the event of air-raid alerts. It also contains life-saving first aid instructions.
“Should the enemy attack, our Revolution will defend itself until victory is achieved and the aggressor is expelled,” the pamphlet states.
US President Donald Trump recently tightened the internationally condemned 65-year US economic embargo on Cuba, imposing a fuel blockade that has exacerbated an energy emergency characterized by blackouts and deadly suffering among the most vulnerable Cubans, including sick people and children.
Last month, Trump said that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished” with the illegal US-Israeli war of choice against Iran. The president has also stated he believes he’ll “be having the honor of taking Cuba,” language echoing the 19th-century US imperialists who conquered the island along with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain in another war waged on dubious pretense.
“Whether I free it, take it—I think I can do anything I want,” Trump said of the island and its 11 million inhabitants.
BreakThrough News interviewed Havana residents earlier this week about the specter of US attack.
"We won't hand over Raúl to any foreigner."
Havana residents are rejecting the new indictments against Raúl Castro, dismissing the possibility of handover to the US. They also accuse the US of "inventing" another justification for military aggression against Cuba.
“We Cubans have to protect ourselves,” elderly Havana resident Juan Hernández said. “We’re not going to hand any Cuban over to a foreigner, because that would be immoral. It would be treason.”
Hernández accused the US of “provocation” in order to “justify invading the country,” adding “that would only lead to bloodshed on both sides.”
“Besides,” he added, “Cuba isn’t a threat to them at all. What does Cuba have? Do we have atomic bombs? Do we have anything? We have nothing.”
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Comrades Gordon and Douglas with Cuban health officials
