A new report issued by the State Department lays out an alarming blueprint for criminalizing dissent against the Trump administration through a dubious link to Cuban foreign subversion, critics say.
The July 20 release of the State Department report "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism" comes on the heels of a global gathering of counterterrorism officials in Washington hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to enlist U.S. allies in cracking down on a perceived global left-wing terrorism threat.
The Cuba report posits that “a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States” by the beleaguered communist nation through espionage and terrorism is responsible for sustaining and shaping the political left in the United States today, including “antifa” and a host of “leftist nonprofits, anti-ICE collectives, social groups and Marxist militant organizations.”
In a chapter titled “Front Groups & Fellow Travelers,” the report spotlights an array of domestic leftist groups calling on the U.S. to lift the embargo against Cuba and opposing the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort through militarized surges by federal agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.
While raising the specter of terrorism and espionage in two chapters dedicated to each subject, the report highlights a range of activities by U.S. activist groups, including registered charities.
None of the activities are criminal. They include organizing initiatives, political advocacy, aid convoys, work stoppages, campaigns for political office, monitoring of law enforcement, and raising bail funds to support protesters.
Rubio asserted a link between Cuba and domestic protest groups during his remarks at the opening of the July 16 Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Violence.
"The Cuban regime’s sprawling intelligence and ideological network helped to build the far left in our country and in our hemisphere,” he said. “And it remains inextricably linked to the far-left groups and movements across and beyond the West."
Critics charge that the report, coupled with Rubio’s effort to mobilize a global counterterrorism coalition against the left, poses a threat to Americans’ constitutional rights. By tying domestic dissent to national security, critics say, the Trump administration could justify more robust surveillance measures, along with sanctions, that aren’t available under the constitutional safeguards that typically limit domestic law enforcement.
“I think the concern is they’re hyping fears of a foreign threat to tie in actors here on domestic soil,” Tom Joscelyn, who served as a senior professional staff member on the House Jan. 6th Committee and helped write its final report on the attack on the U.S. Capitol, told Raw Story. “Whether they can do that with Cuban communists or a foreign antifa group, they can use counterterrorism tools on American people: surveillance, de-banking, and other strong counterterrorism tools.”
Joscelyn added that there is no evidence of an actual “foreign nexus” to justify deploying counterterrorism measures against domestic opponents of the Trump administration, so “they’re inventing one because they don’t have one.”
The State Department did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Among other U.S. organizations, the State Department report targets the National Network on Cuba, which it describes as “a key node for coordination between the Cuban regime and the American far left.” The report raises an alarm about a “National Rapid Response Plan” distributed by the network in June, which the State Department describes as “a detailed strategy for activating and launching ‘coordinated nationwide actions’ against federal institutions, U.S. military bases, and ICE detention centers and field offices in the United States within 24 hours of U.S. military action… against Cuba.”
But the State Department report omits any mention of the types of actions that are outlined in the plan. Far from being terrorist strikes as the report insinuates, they are familiar protest activities, including rallies, meetings, art builds, flyering, and banner drops. Also belying any notion of a call for criminal violence, the document recommends: “Make your plan now and start publicizing it.”
In another example, the report targets the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, a registered charity which has a history of sending humanitarian aid and solidarity delegations to Cuba. The report claims that the foundation “facilitates radical agitation within the United States” through a separate fiscal sponsorship program.
The report lists five groups accused of “radical agitation” that receive donations through the fiscal sponsorship program. One, a Black women-led organization, advocates for Haitian refugees, currently facing deportation following the Supreme Court decision upholding the Trump administration’s decision to end temporary protected status. Another is described as advocating for the abolition of the police, ICE and prisons, and fighting “gentrification” and “police violence” in Brooklyn. Yet another group, described as a “Black Queer Feminist led, abolitionist organizing project,” is engaged in a mission of “reimagining and rebuilding our own systems towards liberation.”
Nowhere in the short bullet points for each group, which appear to be drawn from their websites, does the State Department allege any specific criminal misconduct.
The anti-ICE, police abolitionist and pro-LGBTQ+ positions of the targeted groups mirror the focus of National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, a directive issued by President Trump last September to “investigate and disrupt” leftist movements motivated by, among other things, “extremism on migration, race and gender.”
The report assails the People’s Forum for partnering with the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America “to recruit up to 4,000 ‘rapid response’ activists to counter ICE enforcement operations in the city” and helping to organize a “nationwide anti-ICE school and business shutdown” in January.
Following the State Department report, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), subpoenaed the People’s Forum to probe it for alleged foreign influence.
The People’s Forum decried the State Department report as advancing “false and sweeping allegations that everyone opposing the criminal blockade of Cuba or supporting social justice movements are left-wing terrorists.” The organization went on to describe the State Department report and congressional probe as being “part of an escalating crusade against all progressive organizations and any group or person who expresses opposition to the ultra-right, racist, and pro-war policies of the Trump White House.”
The National Lawyers Guild, itself a target of the State Department report, flagged the document as a signal that the administration is “consolidating its legal architecture of fascist repression,” part of an escalation that also includes stiff sentences handed down to anti-ICE activists in Texas who were present at a protest that turned violent and the ongoing prosecution of 15 anti-ICE activists in Minneapolis charged with conspiracy for blockading a federal facility and tracking immigration agents in the field.
The Global Project Against Hate & Extremism, meanwhile, said the State Department’s recent moves appear to build on previous efforts by the Trump administration to punish perceived enemies by ordering investigations of former officials such as Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, and prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey.
“None of these actions required the pretext of the ministerial or a report about Cuba,” the group said in a recent report. “Instead, those just serve as justification for the administration to dig deeper. The administration appears to be creating a framework that recasts constitutionally protected speech, protest, and association as foreign-directed extremism, making the next round of investigations and prosecutions easier to sell to the public.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the July 16 ministerial on leftist political violence that, following Trump’s direction in NSPM-7, the Treasury Department is “expanding its efforts to identify organizations that abuse charitable and nonprofit structures as vehicles for illicit finance.
“We are examining where tax-exempt status has been exploited, where charitable entities have become financial conduits for foreign-influence activity and how those entrusted with stewardship of these organizations have instead enabled violence,” Bessent said.
Code Pink, another registered charity and one of the groups named in the State Department report, received a “Request for Information” letter from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control seeking information about a humanitarian trip to Cuba in March to deliver medical supplies for children’s hospitals, the group confirmed to Raw Story.
The State Department accused Code Pink of “brazen and overt propagandizing on behalf of several hostile regimes” while describing it as exemplifying “domestic American ‘anti-imperialist’ and Third Worldist organizations” serving as “vectors of subversive foreign influence.”
Melissa Garriga, a spokesperson, told Raw Story, “Code Pink does not work on behalf of any foreign government; our actions and campaigns are influenced by deadly U.S. foreign policy funded by our tax dollars.”
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate & Extremism, told Raw Story the most troubling aspect of the State Department report is that it vilifies First Amendment-protected activities.
“Solidarity trips, aid convoys, and anti-embargo advocacy are constitutionally protected speech and association, not evidence of foreign control,” she said. “By blurring compassion for Cubans into ‘being directed by Cuba,’ the report revives a familiar Cold War tactic, effectively demonizing dissent as foreign-directed subversion.”