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.
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.
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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