You can see their response and my unkempt hair here<\/a>.)In the briefing, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., inquired as to the status of the review. In order to remove Cuba from the list, statute requires at least a six-month review period. The news that the State Department had not even launched the review came as a surprise to McGovern and others in the room, and meant that the delisting couldn\u2019t occur before mid-2024 at the earliest. McGovern pressed Jacobstein, noting that Congress had previously been assured that a review was underway. Jacobstein, according to sources in the room, said that perhaps there had been some misunderstanding around a different review of sanctions policies that State was undertaking.\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t think they were prepared to respond to how upset members were,\u201d said one Democrat, who was granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting. \u201cThey were furious.\u201d\u00a0Vedant Patel, a spokesperson for the State Department, declined to comment on a closed-door meeting in Congress, and additionally declined to directly confirm or deny whether a review was ongoing. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to comment on the deliberative process as it relates to the status of any designation,\u201d said Patel. \u201cAny review of Cuba\u2019s status on the SST list \u2014 should one ever happen \u2014 would be based on the law and criteria established by Congress.\u201dMcGovern, however, had already been told that such a review was ongoing, according to multiple sources who heard directly from McGovern about the State Department\u2019s messaging.\u00a0Biden\u2019s refusal to even review Cuba\u2019s status marks a strong rebuke of one of the Obama administration\u2019s signature foreign policy achievements, the move toward normalizing relations with Cuba.\u00a0The Trump administration\u2019s rationale for redesignating Cuba as a sponsor of terror relied heavily on the country having hosted representatives from FARC and ELN, two armed guerrilla movements designated by the U.S. as terror groups. But in October 2022, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, in a joint press conference with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, noted that Colombia itself, in cooperation with the Obama administration, had asked Cuba to host the FARC and ELN members as part of peace talks. The move by the Trump administration was \u201can injustice,\u201d he said, and ought to be undone. \u201cIt is not us [Colombia] who must correct it, but it does need to be corrected,\u201d added Petro, himself a onetime guerrilla.\u201cWhen it comes to Cuba,\u201d Blinken said at the press conference, \u201cand when it comes to the state sponsor of terrorism designation, we have clear laws, clear criteria, clear requirements, and we will continue as necessary to revisit those to see if Cuba continues to merit that designation.\u201d Blinken\u2019s public claim \u2014 \u201cwe will continue as necessary to revisit\u201d the designation \u2014 coupled with private assurances from the State Department left members of Congress certain that a review was underway.\u00a0Blinken was also asked about Cuba\u2019s status in a hearing in March 2023 and said that Cuba had yet to meet the requirements to be removed from the list. \u201cIn both of these instances the Secretary was reiterating what we\u2019ve said previously \u2014 should there be rescission of the SST status, it would need to be consistent with specific statutory criteria for rescinding a SST determination,\u201d Patel said.The terror designation makes it difficult for Cubans to do international business, crushing an already fragile economy. The U.S. hard-line approach to Cuba has coincided with a surge in desperate migration, with Cubans now making up a substantial portion of the migrants arriving at the southern border. Nearly 425,000 Cubans have fled for the United States in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, shattering previous records. Instead of moving to stem the flow by focusing on root causes in Cuba, the Biden White House has been signaling support in recent days for Republican-backed border policies.\u00a0Hopes for a shift on Cuba policy have not just been fueled by the State Department\u2019s misleading pledges about a review, but also by a semi-public moment picked up by a hot mic ahead of the previous State of the Union, in which Biden approached New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, one of the chamber\u2019s leading Cuba hawks, and told him the two needed to chat. \u201cBob, I gotta talk to you about Cuba,\u201d Biden told him. Menendez has since been indicted as an alleged intelligence asset of Egypt, and there is no indication the two have talked about Cuba.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ryan Grim December 16, 2023 (theintercept.com) If there was\u00a0any issue that dominated more air time during the Trump administration than immigration, I don\u2019t remember what it was. From The Wall, to the Muslim ban, to the kids in cages, there was universal recognition within the Democratic coalition that Trump\u2019s… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[388,1627,335],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30649"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30650,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30649\/revisions\/30650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}