Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) tore into House Democratic leadership after Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) openly described her efforts to speak with foreign ambassadors, including Mexico's, about getting oil to Cuba in defiance of U.S. sanctions. Scott called the conduct a direct attempt to undermine American foreign policy on behalf of a communist adversary.
The Florida senator responded on X, directing his remarks at House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and the broader Democratic caucus. His charge was blunt: a sitting member of Congress was coordinating with foreign governments to circumvent sanctions the president imposed to hold Cuba's regime accountable.
The confrontation follows a press briefing in which Jayapal laid out, in her own words, how she had engaged foreign diplomats to find ways around the economic pressure campaign President Donald Trump has built against Havana. That a member of Congress would describe such activity publicly, and frame it as routine, landed like a grenade in the ongoing debate over how far lawmakers can go in freelancing on foreign policy.
During the briefing, Jayapal described the scope of Trump's sanctions campaign against Cuba in detail. She said Trump signed an executive order in January "declaring a national emergency over the threats to America posed by Cuba," and that it established a process to impose tariffs on any country supplying fuel to the island.
She then described the results. Oil shipments from Venezuela, Cuba's primary source, stopped after what Jayapal characterized as "the U.S. operations to kidnap Nicolás Maduro." Since January, she said, "only one Russian tanker of oil has made it to Cuba." That single tanker, she added, carried enough oil "for 10 to 14 days of Cuba's oil needs."
On May 1, Jayapal said, Trump signed a second, broader executive order widening sanctions and authorizing "new penalties similar to what we have for Iran and Russia, against foreign banks and firms that are dealing with Cuba." She said the order also reinforced the ban on U.S. tourism to the island.
Jayapal called these sanctions "an economic bombing of the infrastructure of Cuba." And then came the admission that set off the firestorm: she said she had been "in conversations with the ambassadors from Mexico and some other places... trying to figure out how to get oil there," as the New York Post reported.
That is not a paraphrase. Those are her words.
Scott wasted no time. In a post on X, the senator wrote:
"DISTURBING: @RepJeffries and @HouseDemocrats, members of your party are OPENLY admitting to aiding a communist adversary in coordination with foreign countries to VIOLATE American sanctions."
He followed up: "@POTUS put those sanctions in place to keep Americans SAFE and to hold the Castro/Díaz-Canel regime accountable for their crimes."
Scott represents Florida, home to the largest Cuban-American community in the country, a population with deep, personal knowledge of what the Castro regime has done to families, dissidents, and political prisoners over six decades. For those constituents, watching a member of Congress lobby foreign governments to prop up the regime is not an abstraction. It is an affront.
The episode is the latest in a pattern of House Democrats facing scrutiny over conduct that critics say crosses the line between policy disagreement and active interference with U.S. interests.
Jayapal's briefing came after she and Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-IL) completed a five-day congressional delegation trip to Cuba. AP News reported that the lawmakers met directly with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, and members of Cuba's Parliament.
After returning, Jayapal and Jackson issued a joint statement calling U.S. sanctions "cruel collective punishment, effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country, that has produced permanent damage." They urged the Trump administration to roll back its economic pressure campaign and enter "real negotiations" with Havana.
Jayapal said it was time "to reverse the failed U.S. policy of decades."
This was not Jayapal's first trip to the island. Newsmax reported that she and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) traveled to Cuba in February 2024, met with Díaz-Canel and other officials, and afterward called on the Biden administration to ease restrictions on U.S.-Cuba relations. At the time, Jayapal told Reuters: "The reality is a lot of people in the United States want to engage with Cuba. And we should figure out a way to do that."
A pattern emerges: visit the island, meet with the regime's leadership, return home, and lobby for policies that benefit Havana.
The Trump administration did not mince words. White House spokesperson Olivia Wales told Fox News Digital:
"The Democrats continue to show Americans who they really are, the America Last party who sip margaritas with terrorists, advocate for illegal alien criminals, and undermine the United States to aid a failed, communist regime."
The language was sharp, but the underlying point tracks with what Jayapal herself described. She met with the leader of a designated state sponsor of terrorism. She then publicly stated she was working with foreign ambassadors to find ways to get oil to that country, oil the United States has deliberately cut off through lawful executive orders and a declared national emergency.
Questions about whether Jayapal's conduct raises legal issues, including potential Logan Act concerns or sanctions violations, have surfaced in the wake of her remarks. The New York Post noted that former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said there would be no criminal case unless she took action that violated or aided a violation of U.S. sanctions. Jayapal herself pushed back on X, writing: "Breaking news: Members of Congress meet with ambassadors of other countries every day. That's literally our right and responsibility."
Meeting ambassadors is one thing. Coordinating with them to circumvent a sitting president's sanctions against a hostile regime is another. The distinction matters, and Jayapal's own words make the distinction hard to blur.
The sanctions Jayapal opposes are not arbitrary. Breitbart News's Christian K. Caruzo reported in January that Trump's executive order was designed to put "maximum pressure on Cuba's Communist Castro regime and to counter its malign influence." The order's text stated that "The President is addressing the depredations of the communist Cuban regime by taking decisive action to hold the Cuban regime accountable for its support of hostile actors, terrorism, and regional instability that endanger American security and foreign policy."
Trump himself declared: "THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA."
The May 1 order widened that pressure, imposing penalties on foreign banks and firms dealing with Cuba, a framework modeled on the sanctions regimes against Iran and Russia. It reinforced the tourism ban. And it sent an unmistakable signal to countries like Mexico and Venezuela: helping Cuba means facing consequences from Washington.
That is the policy a sitting House Democrat is now openly working to undermine, not through legislation, not through a floor vote, but through private conversations with foreign ambassadors aimed at finding workarounds.
The broader question of foreign actors influencing U.S. political dynamics has been a recurring concern. But here the dynamic is inverted: it is an American lawmaker reaching out to foreign governments to help an adversary evade American policy.
The Washington Examiner reported that after their Cuba visit, Jayapal and Jackson said "the main obstacles to progress in Cuba now rest with the United States changing its policy" and urged immediate negotiations between Washington and Havana. That framing, placing blame on the United States rather than on the regime that has imprisoned dissidents, crushed free speech, and driven hundreds of thousands of its own people to flee, tells you everything about where these lawmakers stand.
There is a legitimate policy debate to be had about the effectiveness of sanctions. Members of Congress can argue for engagement. They can introduce legislation. They can hold hearings. They can vote.
What Jayapal described is different. She described active coordination with foreign governments to get around sanctions a president lawfully imposed through declared national-emergency powers. She did so publicly, apparently without concern that it might look like exactly what Scott said it looks like: aiding a communist adversary.
The internal divisions within the Democratic caucus on foreign policy are real. Some Democrats, like Sen. John Fetterman, have broken sharply with their party on questions involving hostile regimes. Others, like Jayapal, have moved in the opposite direction, toward engagement with, and advocacy for, governments the United States has formally designated as threats.
Scott's challenge to Jeffries and House Democrats is straightforward: Do you stand behind this? Is this your party's position, that members should freelance with foreign diplomats to help a sanctioned communist regime get oil?
Jayapal's defenders will call it diplomacy. But diplomacy conducted by the executive branch, through authorized channels, with the backing of declared policy, is diplomacy. A backbencher calling ambassadors to work around her own government's sanctions is something else entirely. And debates over national loyalty and security within Congress are only intensifying.
When a lawmaker tells you she is trying to help a hostile regime get around American sanctions, believe her. The question now is whether anyone in her own party will say so out loud.
