Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) on Wednesday said GOP lawmakers are manufacturing a “regime change” in Cuba amid the Trump administration’s oil blockade and charges against former President Raúl Castro.

“We’re seeing Republicans manufacture a reason for another regime change war in front of our very eyes—this time in Cuba,” Gallego wrote in a post on X.

“I was sent to fight abroad with other working-class kids by the same type of DC war hawks. We must say no to more forever wars,” he added.

President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have urged Cuban leaders to change the country’s economic structure and put “new people” in charge of its political affairs.

In March, Cuba’s deputy prime minister, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, told NBC News the country would move toward allowing more foreign investment.

However, the Trump administration has pushed for even more concessions from Cuban leaders as Cubans suffer from power outages and 20-hour blackouts due to the oil blockade.

On Wednesday, Rubio said the U.S. would offer $100 million in food and medicine under the condition that it be distributed by the Catholic Church or another trusted charitable group instead of a business conglomerate run by the Cuban military that controls much of the island’s commerce.

Leaders in Havana and Democrats in the U.S. have raised concerns that Trump will order some attempt at regime change for Cuba, similar to recent efforts to overthrow the Iranian regime or the U.S. military raid in Venezuela in January that resulted in the capture of President Nicolas Maduro.

“This is a political maneuver, devoid of any legal foundation, aimed solely at padding the fabricated dossier they use to justify the folly of a military aggression against #Cuba,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on the social platform X, commenting on Tuesday’s announcement of criminal charges in the U.S. against Castro.

The charges stem from the downing of two small planes in 1996 by the Cuban military, which Castro led at the time, that resulted in the deaths of four men.

The planes belonged to a Miami-based group of Cuban exiles known as Brothers to the Rescue. The men had been searching for people potentially seeking to leave the island and reach Florida’s shores.

“The U.S. lies and distorts the events surrounding the downing of the planes,” Diaz-Canel added, accusing Brothers to the Rescue of acting as a terrorist group.

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