Marco Rubio’s State Department Report Targets U.S. Activists and Pushes Regime Change in Cuba

The U.S. State Department just released a 100-page report accusing Cuba of influencing virtually every major progressive movement, organization, protest and activist over the last 65 years.

Cuba is allegedly responsible, at least in part, for the Black Panthers, the National Lawyers Guild, Black Lives Matter, George Floyd “riots,” Angela Davis, university activism, anti-ICE organizers, Antifa, and the list goes on.

Cuba’s “subversive” influence has even allegedly reached mainstream liberal politicians like Barack Obama and institutions like Harvard University.

The report serves two purposes:

1. Justify repression at home. It delegitimizes progressive activists, organizations, journalists, academics and politicians as part of a hostile foreign influence network.

2. Justify regime change in Cuba. It builds the case that Cuba is a national security threat to justify economic war and possible military intervention.

Goal #1: Red-bait dissenting voices in the U.S.

The report casts protest movements, journalists, academics, solidarity organizations and activists in the United States not as independent actors, but rather products or instruments of a hostile foreign government. 

It provides a pretext for repression in the United States, making it easier to smear, discredit, persecute and silence critical voices.

Goal #2: Build the case for Cuba regime change

The report says Cuba has tried to attack the United States from within, turning “Americans into instruments of their own nation's undoing” by “persuading the children of the West to turn against their own inheritance.” By portraying Cuba as an existential threat — not just to U.S. security, but to U.S. society itself — the Trump administration further strengthens its case for economic warfare and military intervention.

The report is an absurd hodgepodge of distorted history and sweeping, conspiratorial conclusions. But its political implications are real. It helps the Trump administration manufacture both domestic and foreign enemies, justifying repression at home and aggression toward Cuba.