Angry over President Barack Obama’s decision to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba, key Senate Republicans are promising to do everything in their power to keep it from happening.
According to Politico, members of the GOP are vowing to “deny Obama funds to reopen an embassy in Havana, stall the nomination of a potential ambassador, vote down a bill to open up travel more widely and ignore requests from the White House to lift a decades-old embargo.”
During a nationally televised speech on Wednesday, Obama told Americans that he is re-establishing, as soon as possible, an embassy in Havana. Travel restrictions will be rolled back and the U.S. will increase remittance levels, expand commercial sales and exports.
And Secretary of State John Kerry has been directed to “review Cuba’s place on a list of state sponsors of terrorism.”
Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz immediately derided Obama’s plans and vowed to keep them from coming to fruition.
“I will do all in my power to block the use of funds to open an embassy in Cuba. Normalizing relations with Cuba is bad idea at a bad time,” Graham wrote on Twitter, adding that it was “an incredibly bad idea.”
Rubio, a Cuban-American, said he finds Obama’s actions “inexplicable,”
according to Time.
“Cuba, like Syria, Iran, and Sudan, remains a state sponsor of terrorism…Appeasing the Castro brothers will only cause other tyrants from Caracas to Tehran to Pyongyang to see that they can take advantage of President Obama’s naiveté during his final two years in office,” he said. “As a result, America will be less safe as a result of the President’s change in policy.”
Fellow Cuban-American Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said President Obama has given the Castro brothers “international legitimacy and a badly-needed economic lifeline.”
“We have seen how previous Obama administration attempts at rapprochement with rogue regimes like Russia and Iran have worked out, with our influence diminished and our enemies emboldened,” said Cruz. “Now they are revisiting this same disastrous policy with the Castros, blind to the fact that they are being played by brutal dictators whose only goal is maintaining power. And if history be our guide, the Castros will exploit that power to undermine America and oppress the Cuban people.”
Even New Jersey Democrat Sen. Robert Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants, is outraged,
according to NJ.com.
“I think it stinks," said Menendez, the outgoing Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman. "I think it's wrong. I am deeply disappointed in the president."
He added that "it’s a reward that a totalitarian regime does not deserve. I reject the notion that somehow it is the United States that has created hardship on the Cuban people."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.