Lee blocked from attending Cuba hearing
WASHINGTON — Rep. Barbara Lee was removed from a hearing on Cuba policy Thursday, a move she claims amounted to censorship by the Republican chairwoman.
The House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere Subcommittee hearing started with a request by Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, that two lawmakers who were not members of the committee be allowed to attend the hearing on the Biden administration’s Cuba policy.
Lawmakers are allowed to attend hearings by committees of which they are not members as long as they receive the permission of the majority party members. Lee was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee from 2001 to 2011 and has served on the House Appropriations State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Subcommittee since 2007.
It is uncommon, if not unheard of, for a lawmaker to be denied permission to attend.
The room immediately became tense as Chairwoman Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., the daughter of Cuban exiles, said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., was “more than welcome” and immediately added “Barbara Lee is not.”
When Castro asked her why, Salazar said that it was because Lee is “friends with the oppressors and not the Cuban people. She has been friends with Fidel Castro — there are many statements that we can’t repeat that indicates that she is just not with the people that I represent, who are the Cuban exile community in Miami.”
Salazar later repeated, “She is not welcomed on this committee.”
Lee met with former Cuban President Fidel Castro eight times while he was alive as part of her official duties and has worked on U.S. relations with Cuba since 1977. After his death in 2016, Lee told the Mercury News that she found Castro to be “a smart man. A historian. He wanted normal relations with the United States but not at the expense of the accomplishments of the revolution.”
Several Democrats were upset by the move to deny Lee permission to attend, and some said Salazar was censoring Lee.
Wasserman Schultz said that even though she and Salazar “share a position on the Cuban regime,” she would not attend the hearing unless Lee was also allowed.
“Barbara Lee is not a pawn or a puppet or part of a scheme of Cuba. She is a Black woman who was just silenced, denied her voice that she was rightfully elected to have,” Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Los Angeles, said during the hearing. “That was shameful to watch.”
Rep. Castro told Salazar that she was “suppressing somebody from even sitting here and participating in the same way that the Cuban government has suppressed opinion and perspective for decades.”
Lee said the action represented “the same silencing of alternative voices that occurs under undemocratic regimes & authoritarians like Trump,” she wrote on X after the hearing.
Salazar later wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “I exercised my authority as Subcommittee Chairwoman to not allow an off-Committee Member to spread communist propaganda during my Cuba hearing. … Letting someone as radical as Barbara Lee degrade a hearing on Cuban freedom would insult the Cuban exile community in Miami and amplify regime propaganda.”