Source: The American Prospect
by Robert Kuttner
“The fall of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), the now-suspended chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will produce many benefits, including the likely replacement of the corrupt Menendez with progressive Congressman Andy Kim, who won the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat. But one benefit that has not gotten much notice is that Menendez’s ouster will remove a prime obstacle to normalization of relations with Cuba. With Democrats having the narrowest of Senate majorities, Menendez, whose family emigrated from Cuba in 1953 before Fidel Castro’s revolution, has repeatedly used his power to warn Biden against any normalization. He bragged in a November 2021 interview with Telemundo that he had blocked the administration from liberalization of Cuba policy. ‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘President Biden has tightened our policy against the regime.'” (06/25/24)
https://prospect.org/world/2024-06-25-bob-menendez-bidens-cuba-policy/