NYT, CNN, WaPo Must Call State Dept. Report a Red Scare

The State Department has published an official government report singling out American citizens — including a political streamer, a labor organizer, a college student, and the daughter of a sitting U.S. congresswoman — as alleged sympathizers of the Cuban government, based on nothing more than their political beliefs and travel to the island. The report, titled "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism," labels the Democratic Socialists of America — an organization with over 120,000 members — as ideologically aligned with a foreign regime. The administration has simultaneously escalated a de facto oil blockade of Cuba under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, refused to rule out military intervention, and declared left-wing organizing a form of "political terrorism."

This is not foreign policy. It is a government blacklist — and the historical parallel is not subtle. In the 1950s, McCarthy-era committees did precisely this: published the names of American citizens, accused them of communist sympathies based on associations and beliefs, and used the apparatus of the federal government to intimidate, discredit, and silence political dissidents. The targets change; the playbook does not.

We call on The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, NBC News, ABC News, and other mainstream outlets to cover the State Department's Cuba report not as a foreign policy document, but as what historians and civil libertarians would immediately recognize it as: a modern Red Scare targeting American citizens for their political views. The public deserves reporting that names the precedent and sounds the alarm before the next step follows.