us congress

On September 2, 2026, Democratic Congresswomen Delia Ramírez of Illinois and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota hosted a shadow hearing in Congress on “Breaking the Blockade: Reassessing the Moral and Legal Failures of US-Cuba Policy.” A shadow hearing, called by the minority party, has all the formalities of an official hearing of Congress. Four distinguished witnesses gave testimony about the current state of life in Cuba under the oil blockade imposed by the Trump administration in January, and additional coercive measures that have been steadily imposed since then.

Dr. Tania Zakrison of the University of Chicago Medical Center described a “humanitarian catastrophe” due to cumbersome licensing and state overcompliance with sanctions, which mean that supplies are not available to prevent loss of limbs in diabetes patients, for example, and that children and cancer patients are dying due to lack of medicines. The lack of oil to fuel the electrical grid and pump water has caused a severe water shortage. “One-third of the population now has no water at all and are digging into the ground to drink muddy, untreated water,” said Dr. Zakrison. This, coupled with a lack of supplies such as IV fluid bags, is contributing to the recent doubling of infant mortality; research clearly attributes the causality of thousands of excess child deaths to the blockade. Food production is down 60% since January. Doctors “are bearing witness to the preventable deaths that we in the US are causing.”