Fox News recently published a list of 145 organizations it believes should be investigated for their work related to Cuba. Global Exchange is on that list.
The Justice Department and Treasury Department have reportedly announced investigations into whether solidarity organizations coordinated activities with Cuban government officials without registering as foreign agents. Organizations have begun receiving extensive requests for records, travel documentation, receipts, donor information, and communications.
The purpose is not difficult to understand. Investigations, subpoenas, and information requests consume time, resources, and attention. They are designed to make solidarity expensive, humanitarian work exhausting, and ultimately to convince people that helping is no longer worth the risk.
We’ve seen this before.
In March, Global Exchange delivered cancer medicine to hospitals in Havana. When we returned in May, doctors told us that every shipment had already been used. They had received no new supplies since our previous visit. More than 100,000 people in Cuba are currently waiting for surgeries they cannot access. More than 12,000 of them are children.
The real scandal is that sixty years of a cruel blockade are now being escalated by the Trump Administration into a genuine humanitarian disaster — deliberate, unnecessary, and entirely preventable. And it is being done in your name.
On May 1, President Trump signed a new executive order further tightening sanctions on Cuba, deepening the island’s energy crisis and worsening daily blackouts, food shortages, water shortages, and mounting medical emergencies. That was just one month ago. Yesterday, the U.S. government imposed another round, this time targeting Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, members of his family, the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), an important bridge between Cuba and international solidarity movements, and Amistur, our longtime partner in organizing legal travel to the island, along with other Cuban institutions.
This is not policy. This is punishment — designed to tighten the economic strangulation of the island, collectively punish 11 million Cuban people, and intimidate those around the world who choose solidarity over silence. By targeting the very institutions that facilitate international engagement and people-to-people exchange, the message is clear: isolate Cuba, deepen the suffering, and criminalize anyone willing to stand with the Cuban people against these policies
Marco Rubio and Donald Trump are discussing military intervention. After decades of economic warfare, the answer cannot be more escalation. The answer cannot be more suffering for a population already struggling to obtain food, medicine, electricity, and fuel.
We have traveled to Cuba for decades — and we intend to keep doing so.
We are tired, in the way people become tired after watching the same cruelty administered in new forms for decades. But we are not done. And we will not be silenced.
Medicine is still needed. Doctors are waiting. Patients are waiting. Thousands of children are waiting. No investigation, executive order, or political attack changes that reality.
That is why we are moving forward with the next shipment of cancer medicine to Cuba, and why we are asking for your support today. Join us in this crucial battle to save lives and end policies that continue to inflict hardship on Cuban families. Whatever lists are published, whatever threats are made, and whatever obstacles are placed in the way, our responsibility remains the same: to stand with the Cuban people, ensure that lifesaving medicine reaches those who need it, and continue the fight for peace, sovereignty, and an end to policies that cause needless suffering.