As the Cuban government celebrates the July 26 Day of the National Rebellion — a public holiday commemorating the 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks that is considered the precursor to the 1959 revolution — U.S. groups are calling on the Biden administration to end cruel sanctions that are creating such hardship for the Cuban people. In particular, they are pushing President Joe Biden to take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism. 

Being on this list subjects Cuba to a series of devastating international financial restrictions. It is illegal for U.S. banks to process transactions to Cuba, but U.S. sanctions also have an unlawful extraterritorial reach.  Fearful of getting in the crosshairs of U.S. regulations, most Western banks have also stopped processing transactions involving Cuba or have implemented new layers of compliance. This has hampered everything from imports to humanitarian aid to development assistance, and has sparked a new European campaign to challenge their banks' compliance with U.S. sanctions.

These banking restrictions and Trump-era sanctions, together with the economic fallout from Covid-19, have led to a severe humanitarian and economic crisis for the very Cuban people the administration claims to support. They are also a major cause of the recent increase in migration of Cubans that has become a major political liability for the Biden administration.