Trump Admin Invents Foreign Threat To Link The Left To Terrorism
By harnessing this fake threat of terrorism, the Trump Administration opens avenues to use counterterrorism tools, including surveillance and de-banking.
On July 20, the US State Department released a report titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism" directly following an event that gathered global counterterrorism officials in Washington, D.C., hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The purpose of the meeting was to enlist allies of the United States to assist in cracking down on what Rubio and the State Department claim is a serious and severe threat of genuine terrorism against the United States from the American left-wing.
The only problem? This massive “terror threat” appears to be completely made up by the Trump Administration as a ploy to launch counterterrorism tactics against American citizens who dare to dissent from Donald J. Trump.
The Cuba Report
The Cuba Report asserts that Cuba, a beleaguered communist nation, is actively engaged in “a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States” and is solely responsible for shaping and subsequently sustaining America’s political Left via espionage and outright terrorism. According to the report cited at the global meeting in D.C., Cuba is responsible for the creation and sustainment of “Antifa,” one of Donald Trump’s most pronounced, perceived enemies, as well as a whole host of “leftist nonprofits, anti-ICE collectives, social groups and Marxist militant organizations.”
Essentially, the Trump Era State Department is openly claiming that any organization, charity, or even vaguely organized individuals who are publicly speaking out and protesting against the Trump Administration are directly involved in a terrorism scheme stemming from Cuba and, as such, should be treated like terrorists on American soil.
In fact, the Cuba Report, at its core, is truly little more than a blueprint criminalizing any public dissent against the Trump Administration under the accusation of a dubious and terroristic link to Communist Cuba.
Front Groups and Fellow Travelers
Two chapters of the report are dedicated solely to the subjects of terrorism and espionage, with one chapter, titled Front Groups & Fellow Travelers, specifically targeting a variety of American leftist groups that have publicly called for a lift of the Trump Administration’s embargo against Cuba while openly and vehemently criticizing the administration’s cruel mass deportation platform that Trump has carried out via the militarization of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents.
The report specifically highlights numerous U.S. activist groups and their activities, including several registered charities, essentially labeling the various entities as terror cells on American soil under the purview and control of Cuba and evil Communism.
Yet, none of the activities outlined in the report as so-called “proof” of these so-called “terroristic” activities are actually criminal in any way. The organizations and entities are engaged in political advocacy, aid convoys, political campaigns, organized and lawful initiatives, close monitoring of law enforcement agencies, and crowdsourcing bail funds for unfairly prosecuted protesters across the nation.
Everything that Donald J. Trump hates. Nothing that is illegal, let alone even within the realm of terrorism. In fact, it's the very epitome of what the United States of America is supposed to look like — a nation in which American citizens are free to organize, protest, and work to ignite change under the rights afforded to them by the United States Constitution.
Donald Trump and his Administration have now stooped to outright lying in fabricated reports to strip the opposite political side of those rights.
During his opening remarks at the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Violence last month, Secretary of State Rubio openly asserted a tangible link between Cuba and left-leaning domestic protest groups in the US, stating: “The Cuban regime’s sprawling intelligence and ideological network helped to build the far left in our country and in our hemisphere. And it remains inextricably linked to the far-left groups and movements across and beyond the West.”
The Trump Administration is actively working to criminalize any political dissent from the MAGA platform via allegations of domestic and foreign terrorism against the left contained in a report that critics are already sounding the alarm on.
Rubio Organizes Global Counterterrorism Coalition
Coupled with the report, Rubio has made a concerted effort to mobilize a global counterterrorism coalition meant to specifically target the American left, openly threatening the Constitutional rights of an entire political party in this country, according to critics who warn that the Trump Administration is all but ensured to cite this report as justification for unconstitutional means of surveillance and sanctions against US citizens — the accusations of terrorism affording them the ability to skirt the constitutional safeguards meant to limit and control domestic law enformcent against Americans.
Tom Joscelyn, who served as a senior professional staff member on the House Jan. 6th Committee and played a large role in writing the final report on the infamous Capitol attack that actually qualified as domestic terrorism, spoke with Raw Story on the matter of the Cuba report:
I think the concern is they’re hyping fears of a foreign threat to tie in actors here on domestic soil. Whether they can do that with Cuban communists or a foreign antifa group, they can use counterterrorism tools on American people: surveillance, de-banking, and other strong counterterrorism tools.
Joscelyn went on to further add the worst part: there is absolutely no evidence of a legitimate “foreign nexus” that would even come close to justifying the deployment of global counterterrorism measures against United States citizens who openly oppose Donald Trump. So, “they’re inventing one because they don’t have one.”
Among the US organizations targeted in the State Department’s Cuba report is the National Network on Cuba, an organization that the report describes as “a key node for coordination between the Cuban regime and the American far left.” The report claims that a “National Rapid Response Plan” was distributed by this network in June, with the State Department describing this alleged “Response Plan” as “a detailed strategy for activating and launching ‘coordinated nationwide actions’ against federal institutions, U.S. military bases, and ICE detention centers and field offices in the United States within 24 hours of U.S. military action… against Cuba.”
However, the State Department’s Cuba report conveniently leaves out even a mere mention of any of the types of actions that are actually outlined in the plan that they’re citing as terroristic activites.
When you actually look at the details contained in this plan, the entire notion of domestic and/or foreign terrorism completely falls apart, as all that’s contained within it are constitutionally protected actions, ranging from protests, rallies, and meetings to art builds, flyers, and banner drops. Absolutely nothing calls for political or criminal violence of any kind and actually encourages individuals and organizations to “Make your plan and start publicizing it now.”
All of the other examples pointed to by the Trump Era State Department in the Cuba report are in a similar vein — targeting left-leaning organizations and charities in the United States with absolutely no tangible evidence that they are actually engaging in any criminal activities.
Among those was the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, a registered charity in the US with a long-standing history of providing humanitarian aid to Cuba. The report accuses the foundation of facilitating “radical agitation with the United States” through a separate fiscal sponsorship program, listing five different groups that have received donations through that program while standing accused of “radical agitation.”
All of those groups are left-leaning organizations with left-leaning missions, and not a single one of them is being accused of a single shred of legitimate criminal behavior by the State Department. Their only crime, at this point, is quite literally the audacity to not only publicly dissent from Donald Trump, but to actually organize and work against his horrific policies and actions.
“Investigate and Disrupt” The Left
Last September, Donald Trump issued a directive, the National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, that instructed his agencies to “investigate and disrupt” leftist movements within the United States that were motivated by “extremism on migration, race and gender.” The positions of the organizations and groups being targeted with the Cuba report are well within the same scope of anti-ICE, police abolitionist, and pro-LGBTQIA+ positions that Trump has been targeting his entire presidential term.
The People’s Forum, one of the groups specifically targeted with the Cuba report, has recently been subpoenaed by the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Smith, standing accused of foreign influence. The group vehemently decried the report as propping up “false and sweeping allegations that everyone opposing the criminal blockade of Cuba or supporting social justice movements are left-wing terrorists.” They went on to openly describe the State Department’s report and the subsequent congressional probe as “part of an escalating crusade against all progressive organizations and any group or person who expresses opposition to the ultra-right, racist, and pro-war policies of the Trump White House.”
The National Lawyers Guild and The Global Project Against Hate & Extremeism have both been targeted as a result of the Cuba report and have released respective statements openly criticizing the State Department’s “fascist repression” and accusing the Trump Administration of “creating a framework that recasts constitutionally protected speech, protest, and association as foreign-directed extremism, making the next round of investigations and prosecutions easier to sell to the public.”
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate & Extremism, said that she is most troubled by the Trump State Department’s efforts to vilify and criminalize activities that are undeniably protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution:
Solidarity trips, aid convoys, and anti-embargo advocacy are constitutionally protected speech and association, not evidence of foreign control. By blurring compassion for Cubans into ‘being directed by Cuba,’ the report revives a familiar Cold War tactic, effectively demonizing dissent as foreign-directed subversion.
Please make no mistake here. The party that claims to be champions of the Constitution, true American patriots, is actively working to strip Americans of those very Constitutional rights.
This is fascism, plain and simple, in all its horrifying glory.