U.S. Lawmakers: Sanctions Are “Like Dropping Bombs”

Liz’s interview with the two lawmakers was featured and cited in international media coverage, from CBS News Miami to Spanish outlet El Salto, and sharedby Jayapal herself.

“We are strangling the Cuban people”

The lawmakers’ trip comes as Cuba grapples with the most severe phase yet of a protracted energy crisis precipitated by ramped up U.S. economic warfare over the last eight years.

Last January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order threatening tariffs on any country supplying oil to Cuba. Venezuelan shipments, which had provided a large portion of the island’s fuel, had already stopped following President Nicolás Maduro’s abduction earlier that month. Mexico, a major supplier of fuel to Cuba, also ceased oil deliveries due to U.S. pressure.

Until a Russian-flagged tanker docked at the port of Matanzas on March 31, the island had gone some three months without receiving significant oil deliveries.

Jayapal, a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who visited Cuba in February 2024, said the change since her last trip was striking. “Even then so many of the streets of this beautiful city were deserted. People were already lining up for food. But now you see it even more clearly.”

The moment that seemed to hit hardest for the two members of Congress was a visit to the neonatal intensive care unit of a Havana maternity hospital, where premature babies as light as two pounds lay in incubators dependent on electricity to survive. Power cuts — a daily reality across Cuba — put those machines at risk.

“It was heartbreaking,” Jayapal told Liz. “I don’t think that any American wants to create this kind of devastation for the Cuban children, for the babies, for the moms.”

The lawmakers described the cascade of consequences flowing from the fuel shortage: collapsed food production, water pumps failing, children unable to get to school and cancer patients cut off from treatment.

“We are strangling the Cuban people,” Jayapal said.

“A new moment”

Jayapal and Jackson said they met with a wide range of people during their visit, including President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, members of the Cuban parliament, religious leaders, civil society organizations, entrepreneurs, humanitarian groups, dissidents, and Latin American and African ambassadors.

During the delegation’s visit, the Cuban government announced the release of more than 2,000 prisoners in what it described as a humanitarian gesture. Cuba has also received an FBI team to conduct an independent investigation into a fatal shooting involving a U.S.-registered speedboat. Both, Jayapal argued, signal the Cuban government's openness, a sentiment she said Cuban leaders had echoed in their meetings. 

“This is a new moment,” said Jayapal.

“We can talk to Russia, we can talk to China,” said Jackson. “Of course we can talk to the Cubans.”

In late March, Jayapal introduced legislation alongside Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to block Trump from using federal funding to use military force against Cuba without congressional authorization.

In recent years, Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly introduced legislation to ease restrictions on Cuba or lift the embargo. But those efforts have not led to new laws or meaningful changes in policy. Still, Jayapal said she sees signs of growing momentum, driven by wider recognition that decades of sanctions have hurt people both in Cuba and the United States.

“The more we tell the stories of people who are suffering, the more Americans will understand that sanctions don’t just target governments — they hurt ordinary people,” she said.