Yesterday the Murillo-Ortega's National Assembly gutted what was left of Nicaragua’s democracy in the second constitutional rewrite in two years. The U.S. will implement measures at the next @OAS_official Foreign Ministerial to ensure our hemisphere stops business as usual with this dictatorship.

The Trump Administration and the international community will not stand by as the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship deepens repression at home and manufactures instability that threatens U.S. national security. Ortega’s pledge to abolish elections in Nicaragua proves his cowardice and fear of the Nicaraguan people’s will.

For 250 years, America has been the greatest nation on Earth — and with God’s grace, it will be for 250 more. Happy Independence Day!

The situation in Cuba is devolving as the island’s corrupt, brutal and anti-American Communist regime continues to prioritize its own total control over the freedom, opportunity and basic wellbeing of the Cuban people. The Cuban military-controlled conglomerate GAESA has persistently served as the main vector for regime elites to steal the island’s few resources, diverting them for repression, anti-American subversion and spying instead of schools, power plants, and basic necessities for the Cuban people. Today, I designated additional GAESA network entities associated with moving both its money and its physical assets, as well as entities responsible for exploiting Cuba’s mineral and metal reserves for ill-gotten profit. Anyone providing services to these sanctioned actors is at risk of being sanctioned themselves. Foreign banks and other companies that provide services to these entities should freeze those activities immediately.

Today, I am sanctioning Cuba’s state-owned energy company, Unión Cuba-Petróleo (CUPET), under President Trump’s EO 14404. Cuba’s Communist elites have weaponized energy as a tool of social control and kleptocratic profit. For decades, the regime has stolen and hoarded available fuel — using it for the Castros’ private jet, the security services forces used to repress the Cuban people, to keep empty tourist hotels lit up, and to bus people in for fake protests and political stunts — all while the Cuban people have suffered blackouts and waited weeks to fill their cars. President Trump wants a new future for the Cuban people with greater economic and political freedom and opportunity. Until then, we will continue to target the Communist regime’s ability to leverage its energy trade to further its corrupt agenda and violently repress the Cuban people.

The Murillo-Ortega dictatorship is an enemy of humanity. The Trump Administration will not ignore their crimes and brutality, including the dictatorship’s singular role in the death of political opposition leader Brooklyn Rivera. Today, @StateDept took steps to impose visa restrictions on over 100 Nicaraguan officials who continue to carry out Murillo and Ortega’s malign agenda.