To mark another anniversary of the death of Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá on Tuesday, the National Endowment for Democracy honored the late Cuban opposition leader in a ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington, an event that highlighted U.S. promotion of democracy and human rights in Cuba and around the world amid questions about the funding for such programs.

Payá is one of the best known Cuban dissidents. He was the founder of the Christian Liberation Movement, which spearheaded the Varela Project — a signature-gathering effort for a plebiscite on the country´s political system to use the Cuban constitution to challenge Fidel Castro’s rule. He was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European parliament and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by former Czech president and dissident Václav Havel.

Payá and the young activist Harold Cepero were killed in 2012 in a car crash provoked by Cuban state security agents, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States, concluded in a 2023 report. Payá’s wife, Ofelia Acevedo, and his daughter, Rosa María Payá, who continued his human rights activism in exile in the United States, received the endowment’s 2025 Democracy Service Medal on his behalf.

“My father’s fight was a deeply Cuban project inspired by faith, rooted in non-violence and centered on the dignity of the human person,” said Rosa María Payá. “My father’s vision was a vision for a free Cuba but also a vision for freedom and democracy in the Americas.”

This project of “liberation,” she said, lives on in the people who took to the streets on the island on July 11, 2021, to protest against the government. “The Cuban regime is on the brink of collapse, and that means a great opportunity for the Cuban people, but it also brings a great deal of suffering,” she added in reference to the ongoing economic crisis and increased repression on the island.

“Despite misery, despite repression, despite the forced exile imposed on millions of Cubans, the Cuban people are still demanding freedom and protesting in the streets because we are convinced that the only way out of the crisis is to get rid of the dictatorship. The night will not be eternal,” she said, quoting her father.

Acevedo recalled how her husband’s vision for liberation, rooted in Christian faith, was centered around the idea that people needed to understand they had rights in order to overcome the paralyzing fear that totalitarian regimes instilled in the population. “This was not an intellectual path,” she added. “This is why they silenced his voice, killed his body and that of Harold Cepero.”

Several speakers – including Michael Kozack, the top State Department’s official for the Western Hemisphere; former U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, and Kenneth Wollack, the vice chair of the National Endowment for Democracy, recalled their encounters with Payá and the impression he left on them. “A humility, a quiet confidence and a sense of faith that made him different, a sense of knowing where he was going, regardless of what was in front of him, regardless of the fear,” Martinez said.

That Payá secured 25,000 signatures for the Varela Project from Cubans who were willing to attach their names to the petition exemplifies “the kind of courage that he instilled in people,” Martinez added.

Wollack said Payá “will be remembered as a founding father of a free and democratic Cuba.”

“He frequently reminded us that the human desire for freedom is universal,” he added. “He exposed the fiction that democracy can only grow in certain latitudes and the falsehood that liberty must be preceded by prosperity.”

Awarded by the endowment’s board of directors, the Democracy Service Medals pay tribute to individuals who have made an exceptional personal contribution to the cause of freedom, human rights and democracy. Notable past recipients include the Dalai Lama, Taiwan’s former President Tsai Ing-wen, and Poland’s former president, dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa.

Over the years, U.S. policy supporting human rights defenders in Cuba has garnered bipartisan support, as reflected in the lineup of speakers at the event that included senators Ted Cruz, a Republican, and Dick Durbin, a Democrat, as well as Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Florida U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, a Republican, was scheduled to speak but could not attend.

Díaz-Balart and Wasserman Schultz reintroduced a bipartisan bill Monday that would rename the street in front of the Cuban Embassy in Washington as “Oswaldo Payá Way.” Cruz and Durbin said they will support a similar measure in the Senate.

Support for Cuba democracy programs

For different reasons, U.S. support for human rights and democracy in Cuba has been in the spotlight recently.

In a twist, after pushing the Inter-American Commission for years to complete the investigation into her father’s death, Rosa Maria Payá won a seat on it, after the United States nominated her to serve as a commissioner. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban American, campaigned on her behalf and praised her in a statement, calling her a voice that “would strengthen the Commission’s ability to speak out clearly in defense of those facing repression, censorship and abuse.”

Following her election, Payá vowed to make the human rights situation in Cuba and other countries under dictatorships in the Americas a pressing issue for the commission. “The Americas have paid a very high price for tolerating the Cuban regime for so long,” she said in a statement after her election.

“Our region faces profound crises that seriously affect human rights: the crisis in Haiti, millions of forced migrants, increasing violence by non-state actors, and political persecution, often caused or exacerbated by the three dictatorships established on the continent,” Payá told the Miami Herald. “The Commission can and should realign its priorities to respond to these grave challenges and offer OAS states concrete and actionable recommendations in defense of democracy in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, whose regime is at the head of the authoritarian octopus affecting the continent.”

Since taking office, President Donald Trump and Rubio have taken actions to restore what they called “a tough Cuba policy,” designating Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism and imposing more sanctions on entities controlled by the Cuban military. The State Department has also expanded visa sanctions to officials linked to the Cuban medical official missions abroad.

To mark the fourth anniversary of the islandwide July 11 uprising in 2021, the State Department imposed visa restrictions on Cuba’s leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and other top officials for what it called their involvement in “gross violations of human rights.” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau also met virtually with Cuban activists in Havana to advocate for political prisoners and support democracy amid heightened diplomatic tensions and Cuban government accusations against the U.S.

At the same time, some early cuts to democracy programs in Cuba have created controversy, particularly in Miami, where many of the affected groups operate. Broader administration efforts to reduce U.S. foreign aid and dismantle the Voice of America have impacted several institutions providing support to Cuban activists and independent media, as well as the transmissions of Radio Martí and its website, Martí Noticias. While some of those decisions have been reversed, questions remain about the future of the programs amid ongoing legal battles.

A recent State Department reorganization that reduced the size of its Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, known as DRL, has also sparked broader questioning of the administration’s commitment to advancing democratic values worldwide.

The State Department denies that’s the case.

“DRL was not eliminated and many of their Cuba programs remain,” a State Department spokesperson said. “The State Department undertook a significant and historic reorganization to better align our programs with the America First foreign policy priorities. The reorganization does not signal a retreat from promoting democracy or supporting human rights in Cuba.”

The spokesperson said the promotion of democracy and human rights in Cuba are “top priority” for the U.S. Embassy in Havana.

Given Díaz-Balart’s prominent role in the making of the government’s budget –as vice chair of the House Appropriations Committee and chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee on National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs – it is likely Congress will continue to fund at least some Cuba-related democracy promotion programs.

His appropriation bill to fund the State Department and other foreign operations for fiscal year 2026 allocates $40 million “to promote democracy and strengthen civil society in Cuba, including supporting political prisoners.” It requests $40 million to fund the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which manages the Martí stations, despite the administration being involved in a legal battle to shut down the office’s parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media. The $40 million is part of a $681 million budget for “international communication activities.”

The State Department requested only $153 million “to enable the orderly shutdown” of the agency’s operations.

Against this background, Wasserman Schultz called on maintaining U.S. support to democracy promotion at Tuesday’s event.

“Solidarity must be matched with action, and that’s where the National Endowment for Democracy plays such an essential role,” she said.

“At a time authoritarianism is resurgent, when regimes grow bolder in their censorship, surveillance and suppression, the United States must meet the moment,” she said. “That means fully funding democracy assistance efforts, protecting NED, its core entities, from short sighted cuts, and that means recognizing support for democracy, not as security, but as strategic necessity, as moral imperative (and) an indispensable component of our national security.”

Cuts to NED’s funding

For NED, the opportunity to highlight its work on supporting pro-democracy and human rights activists in Cuba comes at a time when the organization is trying to make a case to the administration that promoting democratic values worldwide is key to U.S. national interests.

The NED is an independent foundation directly funded by Congress annually. Just around 5% of its funds come from the State Department’s foreign assistance budget. Still, the organization was targeted in early efforts by the Trump administration to freeze foreign assistance funds, and for several weeks, the administration withheld NED’s funding, including money directly allocated by Congress. After NED sued the administration, funds were made available again. However, the organization announced in June that it had reduced its workforce by 35% as part of a “transformation driven by financial pressures.”

After a review, the State Department ultimately canceled some of the foreign assistance funds allocated to the endowment, including funds the organization had budgeted for new grants to Cuba-focused organizations this year. That forced NED to cut back on some programs to maintain its support to about 30 Cuban independent media and human rights organizations, a source with knowledge of the cuts said.

The State Department did not request a budget for NED, nor did it request money for the agency’s democracy fund for the upcoming fiscal year 2026, which starts in October.

But Díaz-Balart’s chief of staff, César González, said Tuesday there is “robust funding” for the endowment in the State Department’s appropriations bill under discussion. Díaz-Balart’s bill maintains NED’s funding for fiscal year 2026 at similar levels to previous years, setting aside $315 million for the organization and its core institutes, including approximately $105 million specifically for democracy programs.

There’s an additional $345 million “democracy fund” for the State Department, and instructions for the agency to use $2.3 billion from different budget allocations “for democracy programs in adversarial, anti-American countries, countries whose malign activities pose a national security threat to the United States, or countries seeking to strengthen democratic institutions and processes.”

The bill still needs to be approved by the full House and then the Senate before it is sent to Trump for final approval.

Tying the two themes of the night, NED’s President Damon Wilson said that “honoring Payá tonight affirms all of our commitment to stand with human people until they are free. So we are so grateful for the congressional support that ensures the American people will continue to stand by those who risk everything for the cause of liberty.”

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