‘China is not our enemy’: Inside the DSA’s foreign travel now in Florida’s crosshairs

EXCLUSIVE — A Florida investigation into the Democratic Socialists of America’s foreign connections will examine details dating back to Jan. 1, 2023, state Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office told the Washington Examiner.The newly-reelected Republican announced a subpoena to the DSA for records on Tuesday to find out if it formed illegal financial ties to adversarial countries through foreign travel or other arrangements. The investigation’s nearly three-year scope means it could scrutinize numerous trips to China and Cuba that DSA members promoted publicly.Uthmeier specifically referenced delegations to China and Cuba, nations that Florida law considers “countries of concern,” which restricts transactions or partnerships between them and Floridians. His quest for documents will determine whether the DSA took illegal funds from countries of concern and whether donations paying for travel were properly disclosed. The influential socialist group drew attention in April for joining a “convoy” to Cuba ostensibly to distribute humanitarian supplies, months after its other similar Cuba delegation. But DSA activists’ public materials detail these trends much earlier, including meetings with Cuban government officials and visits to Chinese Communist Party institutions. Those participants touted their experiences as evidence that America should take a friendlier approach toward the nations. Today my office issued a subpoena to the Democratic Socialists of America. We’re examining foreign contributions—including from Cuba and China—tied to their delegations and travel fund solicitations.FL law requires transparency. We will hold those who break the law accountable. pic.twitter.com/Xu8MUoDwZb— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) November 10, 2026 Florida is looking into “something that a lot of people have been questioning, and that is, ‘How do these people get away with this stuff?'” Dr. Emilio Gonzalez, a retired U.S. intelligence officer and Military Academy instructor, told the Washington Examiner. “How do you plan a convoy of 30 or 40 people to Cuba and meet with their government officials? Cuba is still a state sponsor of terrorism, whether they like it or not … how does this happen?”“First of all, do they have the licenses to go?” said Gonzalez, a Cuban-born American and longtime Miami resident who fled the communist regime. “What comes out of these meetings?”The DSA’s national chapter declined to comment to the Washington Examiner. It is unclear how many foreign delegations may have involved DSA officials or funds in Florida, where Uthmeier has jurisdiction to take action.Friends in red places America’s tensions with China and Cuba are heating up under President Donald Trump amid increased pressure on Cuba’s ruling elite and fears of China one day invading Taiwan, a source of crucial technology for the United States.The U.S. should simply accept the CCP’s talking point that “Taiwan is part of China,” said a DSA International Committee member in his writings about traveling to China in November 2023. He titled the report “Traveling to Prove China Is Not Our Enemy” and described visiting the CCP’s “history exhibition” and other sites.“It’s really only the US neocon leadership that wants to isolate China by cutting off trade with its east Asian partners,” wrote Dee Knight, the member. “So far the effort hasn’t worked, and is likely to backfire the way US and European sanctions against Russia have, harming US ‘partners’ much more than the targeted ‘enemy.'”The trip also included Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans, who is married to China-based Marxist and CCP ally Neville Singham.More recently, Knight and another DSA leader joined a September 2025 event in China that celebrated the “80th Anniversary of its victory over Japanese fascism,” according to their summary on the DSA publication Socialist Forum.Chinese President Xi Jinping also attended with a powerhouse of adversarial leaders: Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. The DSA report called their presence “an impressive display of ‘unity in multi-polarity'” countering Western influence.Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, China, Monday, Sept. 1, 2025. (Alexander Kazakov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) Conservatives in Florida, Cuba’s closest U.S. neighbor, have taken particular aim at the island’s influence in recent years. Legislation passed by outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) on “countries of concern” has created legal hurdles between state universities and relations with Cuba, the Washington Examiner previously reported.“They harbor terrorists, they give them travel documents, they give them medical support,” Gonzalez told the Washington Examiner about Cuban communists. “Cuba is tight with Iran, Cuba is tight with Russia, with North Korea, with every conceivable enemy that the United States has at this point in time. The Cubans are close to them, and they want to get closer.”“As far as China goes, remember Cuba’s a platform,” said Gonzalez. “The Chinese use Cuba as a platform to conduct electronic and signals intelligence against the United States.”Before their controversial April “convoy” to Cuba, the DSA also sent a delegation to the island in October 2023 through which tourists met top officials, including Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel. One DSA delegate, Florida native Danny Valdes, went on to create an advocacy group now lobbying Congress for softer relations, the Washington Examiner previously reported.The 2023 delegates received a guided tour from the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples, or ICAP, according to Valdes. Such trips with ICAP are not out of the ordinary; the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro created ICAP precisely to propagandize visitors about life under his communist party’s reign. Trump’s State Department later sanctioned ICAP and the convicted regime spy leading it over intelligence ties.Meeting Cuba’s president in 2023 meant that “the Cuban government took our organization seriously and saw us as potential partners in the work of ending the US blockade,” Valdes wrote.Cuba and China pose a major foreign influence threat to the U.S. because “they play the long game, and we don’t know how to play the long game,” Gonzalez said. Historically, Cuba has especially seen success planting sympathetic agents in American institutions and top echelons of the U.S. government before getting caught, Gonzalez noted.“The fact that it’s, you know, Cuba and they have nice beaches and it’s sunny there — we shouldn’t turn a blind eye to any of this stuff,” Gonzalez told the Washington Examiner.FLORIDA PROFESSOR VISITED CUBA SEVERAL TIMES BEFORE DESANTIS APPOINTEE’S SECURITY WARNINGSOther regimes of concern under Florida law include former dictator Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government in Venezuela. The country hosted the DSA and others as international “election observers” in 2024 to validate Maduro’s widely disputed election win — before the U.S. deposed him last January. However, Uthmeier did not mention Venezuela as a topic of his investigation.To lift the veil on the DSA’s foreign tourism, “I would start looking for the money,” Gonzalez said.