Biden to announce sanctions on Cuba officials
Category: News & Politics
Via: just-jim-nc-ttth • 3 years ago • 2 commentsBy: Marc Caputo and Sabrina Rodriguez (MSN)
AOC gonna be pissed??
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
MIAMI — President Joe Biden on Thursday plans to slap targeted individual sanctions on Cuba regime officials, bucking the progressive voices in his own party who called for an end to the embargo
© Evan Vucci/AP Photo President Joe Biden speaks at a podium.
Biden's response to Cuba — which also includes measures to bring increased internet access to the island and calls for more international pressure on the totalitarian government — was outlined Wednesday night in a call with Democratic Cuban-American activists in Miami who had been calling for more action ever since the July 11 uprisings on the island.
But it's the proposal to extend the targeted sanctions of the Magnitsky Act, originally passed in response to Russian government oppression and then extended to other governments such as Venezuela, that has encouraged critics of Cuba's government.
"This is huge," said Sasha Tirador, a top Miami political operative who was briefed on the plans Wednesday night.
"No administration has ever announced that they will hold each individual who violates human rights on the island of Cuba accountable," she said.
Tirado and others on the call had been initially frustrated that Biden didn't immediately react with a response plan for Cuba after the uprisings as Cuban-American Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio, also a Miami resident, began questioning the administration's resolve.
The conservative criticism of Biden's Cuba response has escalated significantly in recent days, with several high-profile commentators, congressional lawmakers and 2024 Republican White House hopefuls using the unrest to hammer the administration's foreign policy — all while galvanizing the GOP around anti-communist themes.
They've also called for Biden to greenlight a proposal to launch high-altitude balloons to beam internet access into the island, but the president and administration officials have been cool to the idea because they're not sure it works. Instead, on the call Wednesday night, officials with the administration said they're working on an alternative way to provide internet access or what are called Virtual Private Network, or VPN, to allow Cubans on the island to communicate freely without the regime spying on them.
Around the same time that Miami Democrats were being briefed, Fox News' Sean Hannity came to Miami's Little Havana neighborhood and devoted his hour-long, weeknight show entirely to Cuba's protests, hosting the program live from Calle Ocho and featuring guests that included Rubio, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.).
Accusing the president of "great cowardice," Hannity asked at one point in the broadcast: "What is the Biden doctrine? To kiss the ass of every single, solitary dictator in the world?"
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Individuals. What a concept.
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