UN Votes to Condemn US Embargo on Cuba
Left 67%
Center 0%
Right 33%
2 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday held its 34th annual vote on a resolution condemning the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, first imposed in 1960 after Fidel Castro’s revolution toppled Fulgencio Batista and nationalized properties belonging to U.S. citizens and corporations; the resolution passed with 130 votes in favor, down from 165 the previous year, when seven members voted against and 12 abstained. During Tuesday’s debate, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez walked to the podium while U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz was speaking, called Waltz a liar, and sought a point of order; Waltz told him to “back away from this podium,” saying he would not be intimidated. The United States expelled a Cuban diplomat after an incident in which a Cuban diplomat allegedly confronted Waltz’s spokesman J.P. Freire and tried to take his phone, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio signing the expulsion paperwork. In late January, President Donald Trump announced tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba, and last week he said U.S. warships could stop over in Cuba on their way back from the Iran war.
Sourcing check · Mostly on the record · 3 articles
2 of 3 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
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- On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: Mike Waltz, Bruno Rodríguez and United Nations General Assembly
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Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage never reports this year’s yes count, so the embargo vote still reads as another expected landslide. The last left-leaning tally is last year’s 165-7, paired in ABC News with a forecast that the resolution is still expected to pass by a large margin. Right-leaning coverage leads with the opposite fact: 130 countries voted yes, which Breitbart treats as the lowest support since the 1990s.
The two sides do not even agree on what to call the policy under vote. Left-leaning coverage describes a decades-long U.S. economic embargo now pushing Cuba to a breaking point, while right-leaning coverage labels the same policy an alleged American "embargo".
What reason did the governments that left Cuba’s column this year give for switching their votes?
Bottom line
The drop to 130 yes votes on the Cuba embargo resolution is absent from left-leaning coverage, which leaves readers with ABC News’s pre-vote promise of another large-margin win.
The receipts — 4 facts one side's coverage lacks
- 130 countries voted in favor of the resolution
- 14 countries voted against the resolution
- The U.S. policy includes exceptions for food and medicine
- Trump announced tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba
The Left View
Left-leaning outlets framed the session as the world again calling out Washington’s “maximum pressure policy,” with ABC News presenting the Trump administration as intensifying a campaign “to undermine Cuba’s socialist government, including by threatening military intervention.” They tied the oil tariffs to a humanitarian emergency, reporting that the warning had “effectively cut off fuel to the island, leading to widespread power outages that affect basic activities such as cooking, the water supply and internet and telephone services,” and described Cuba as “weathering deepening financial crises” under an “already punishing economic campaign.” Rodríguez, in a post on X quoted by ABC, called Waltz’s remarks “crude lies” and “another desperate attempt to justify its economic aggression against Cuba and its criminal energy blockade.” ABC stressed that although the resolutions are not legally binding, they “reflect world opinion,” and the New York Times cast the floor clash and diplomat expulsion as the product of an administration effort “to force the island’s Communist government to make drastic changes.”
The Right View
Right-leaning coverage cast the outcome as a “dramatic turn against the communist state,” citing the lowest yes total since the 1990s and Waltz’s claim that “nearly triple the number of nations voted no, abstained, or just chose not to vote — turning their back on Havana’s sham resolution.” Breitbart argued the U.S. policy “does not limit Cuba’s access to the global market and includes exceptions for food and medicine,” making America “one of the largest providers of basic food goods to the island,” and that Havana “blames the ‘embargo’” for poverty the outlet attributed to “communist authoritarianism.” It highlighted Waltz’s presentation of Castro-family wealth, including a private luxury island and a Rolex collection, as evidence that “widespread theft” rather than sanctions explains Cubans’ hardship, and described Cuban diplomats as staging a “mob scene” to shout Waltz down and as attacking a sidelines event, “Cuba Libre: The Oppression that Havana Hides.” The outlet also pointed to no votes from countries such as Argentina, Paraguay, and Ukraine — the last linked to Cuban troops supporting Russia’s invasion — as signs the “world is starting to push back on Cuban regime propaganda.”
Our Take (balanced)
The left’s strongest argument is that U.S. pressure, especially the oil tariffs ABC reported have cut off fuel and caused blackouts affecting cooking, water, and communications, inflicts civilian hardship that much of the world has long rejected as “economic aggression,” a view Rodríguez summed up as a “criminal energy blockade.” The right’s strongest argument is that the embargo leaves Cuba free to trade globally and already exempts food and medicine — with the United States among the island’s largest food suppliers — so the drop to 130 yes votes, a larger no/abstain/absent bloc, and evidence of Castro-family luxury support the claim that elite extraction and communist governance, not U.S. commerce limits, explain the poverty. The central unresolved tension is whether Cuba’s economic collapse is caused primarily by U.S. sanctions or by the Cuban government’s own system, and whether this year’s weaker support for the resolution reflects a genuine shift in international judgment or coercion by Washington.
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