On September 2, 2026, Democratic Congresswomen Delia Ramírez of Illinois and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota hosted a shadow hearing in Congress on “Breaking the Blockade: Reassessing the Moral and Legal Failures of US-Cuba Policy.” A shadow hearing, called by the minority party, has all the formalities of an official hearing of Congress. Four distinguished witnesses gave testimony about the current state of life in Cuba under the oil blockade imposed by the Trump administration in January, and additional coercive measures that have been steadily imposed since then.

Dr. Tania Zakrison of the University of Chicago Medical Center described a “humanitarian catastrophe” due to cumbersome licensing and state overcompliance with sanctions, which mean that supplies are not available to prevent loss of limbs in diabetes patients, for example, and that children and cancer patients are dying due to lack of medicines. The lack of oil to fuel the electrical grid and pump water has caused a severe water shortage. “One-third of the population now has no water at all and are digging into the ground to drink muddy, untreated water,” said Dr. Zakrison. This, coupled with a lack of supplies such as IV fluid bags, is contributing to the recent doubling of infant mortality; research clearly attributes the causality of thousands of excess child deaths to the blockade. Food production is down 60% since January. Doctors “are bearing witness to the preventable deaths that we in the US are causing.”

Rev. Dr. Robert Turner of Empowerment Temple in Baltimore, Maryland visited Cuba in July: “What I found was not a hostile, defeated, nor broken people. I found peaceful, loving, resilient, ingenious people surviving decades of a US embargo and now a blockade that has turned survival itself into a daily act of will.” Our government “has decided that disagreement over the political and economic system justifies collective punishment. That is more than reprehensible,” said Rev. Turner. “It is sinfully wicked and an abuse of the power God has allowed America to possess… What I saw was a constructed crisis, suffering manufactured by policy—our policy.”

Attorney Suzanne Adely, president of the National Lawyer’s Guild, listed several ways in which the US blockade of Cuba violates international law and is repeatedly condemned by the international community. Yet it escalates and is now accompanied by threats of illegal US military aggression. She stated: “The US justification—that Cuba poses an ‘extraordinary threat’ to national security—is legally untenable. A small island subjected to six decades of economic warfare cannot credibly threaten the United States. Likewise, Cuba’s designation as a 'State Sponsor of Terrorism' is arbitrary and politically motivated. It contradicts objective counter-terrorism criteria and ignores documented violations by other states, undermining the credibility of the list itself.”

“We have to talk about Cuba every single day........

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