President Obama is planning a trip to Cuba in March, marking the first time in more than 80 years a sitting U.S. president will visit the country, according to sources with knowledge of the plan. 
 
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 The president officially announced his trip via Twitter on Thursday morning. 
 
 Next month, I'll travel to Cuba to advance our progress and efforts that can improve the lives of the Cuban people. — President Obama (@POTUS) February 18, 2016 
 
 In a post detailing the trip on Medium, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said the president is traveling to Cuba to press for more reforms, noting that while advancements have been made, "still, this progress is insufficient." 
 
 "There is much more that can be done -- by the United States, and by the Cuban government -- to advance this opening in ways that will be good for Cubans, and good for the United States. That is why President Obama is traveling to Cuba," Rhodes wrote. "We want to open up more opportunities for U.S. businesses and travelers to engage with Cuba, and we want the Cuban government to open up more opportunities for its people to benefit from that engagement." 
 
 The trip is planned for March 21-22 before the president flies to Argentina on March 23-24. During the trip to Cuba, President Obama is set to meet with Cuban President Raul Castro. The two men first met face-to-face during a summit in Panama last year. 
 
 First Lady Michelle Obama will travel with the president to Cuba, and the First Family will join him in Argentina. 
 
 The move comes roughly 15 months following the president's pledge with Raul Castro to reopen diplomatic channels following a prisoner exchange and the humanitarian release of U.S. contractor Alan Gross in December 2014. 
 
 Since the announcement, the two countries have had a series of diplomatic talks, leading to the reopening of embassies last summer and the recent deal restoring commercial air traffic. 
 
 The last and only sitting U.S. president to visit the island nation only 90 miles south of the Florida keys was Calvin Coolidge, in 1928, to address the Sixth Annual International Conference of American States in Havana. 
 
 He met with Cuba's President Gerardo Machado, who was in office from 1925 to 1933, until he was forced into exile. 
 
 President Jimmy Carter traveled to Cuba in 2002, 20 years after leaving office, at the invitation of President Fidel Castro. 
 
 Carter also made a trip in 2011. 
 
 This is a developing story. Please check back in for updates. ||||| Washington (CNN) President Barack Obama will become the first sitting U.S. President to visit Cuba in 88 years, when he visits Havana in March, White House press secretary Josh Earnest announced Thursday. 
 
 The visit, which is scheduled for March 21-22, is another big step by the administration in ongoing efforts to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba. 
 
 The President announced the news via Twitter on Thursday. 
 
 "14 months ago, I announced that we would begin normalizing relations with Cuba - and we've already made significant progress," he tweeted. "Our flag flies over our Embassy in Havana once again. More Americans are traveling to Cuba than at any time in the last 50 years." 
 
 Our flag flies over our Embassy in Havana once again. More Americans are traveling to Cuba than at any time in the last 50 years. 
 
 "We still have differences with the Cuban government that I will raise directly. America will always stand for human rights around the world," he tweeted. "Next month, I'll travel to Cuba to advance our progress and efforts that can improve the lives of the Cuban people." 
 
 We still have differences with the Cuban government that I will raise directly. America will always stand for human rights around the world. 
 
 The White House also announced Thursday that the President will meet with Cuban President Raul Castro, as well as entrepreneurs and different members of Cuban society. 
 
 The President aims to continue to "chart a new course" for U.S.- Cuban relations by connecting U.S. and Cuban citizens through travel, commerce and access to information, according to Earnest. 
 
 The President will be joined by the first lady on his trip to Cuba, after which they will visit Argentina for two days. 
 
 The last sitting U.S. President to visit Cuba was Calvin Coolidge in 1928. 
 
 "President Coolidge traveled to Cuba on a U.S. battleship, so this will be a very different kind of visit," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes wrote in a post on Medium 
 
 In the Medium post, Rhodes cited the progress made between the two countries since Obama took office, but also acknowledged there is more to be done especially on human rights and added that the President will continue to raise those issues to Castro. 
 
 "As the President has said, Cuba will not change overnight, nor will all of the various differences between our countries go away," Rhodes wrote. "But the guiding principle of our Cuba policy -- our North Star -- remains taking steps that will improve the lives of the Cuban people." 
 
 The trip, long expected, comes after Obama's administration formally reopened ties with Havana in late 2014, following a half-century of enmity. 
 
 Cuban officials reacted positively to the announcement Thursday. 
 
 "U.S. President Barack Obama will be welcomed by the government of Cuba and the Cuban people with our traditional hospitality. It will be an opportunity for (the) President to appreciate the Cuban reality," Josefina Vidal, the general director for U.S. affairs at the Cuban Foreign Ministry said at a news conference in Havana Thursday. "His visit will represent a step forward in relations between Cuba and the US." 
 
 At the news conference, Vidal also called for the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba to be lifted and the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo to be returned to Cuban control. 
 
 Speaking at CNN's GOP town hall on Wednesday night, presidential candidate Marco Rubio slammed the announcement. 
 
 The Florida senator said that if he were president, he would not visit the island nation -- unless it were a "free Cuba." 
 
 The Cuban government is "an anti-American communist dictatorship," said the Cuban-American senator, who has been an outspoken critic of Obama's Cuba policy. "They're a repressive regime." 
 
 Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose father emigrated from Cuba, also disparaged the prospect of a presidential visit. 
 
 "I think it's a real mistake. I think the President ought to be pushing for a free Cuba," Cruz said at the same town hall. "My family has seen firsthand the evil and the oppression in Cuba. We need a president who stands up to our enemies." 
 
 The American embassy was reopened and a U.S. flag raised at the compound on Havana harbor in August. 
 
 Since then, high level U.S. officials have traveled to the island, including Secretary of State John Kerry and transportation chief Anthony Foxx. 
 
 Travel restrictions have been loosened and economic channels revived. Obama shook Cuban leader Raul Castro's hand during an historic face-to-face meeting last spring. 
 
 That meeting, which transpired during a summit in Panama, was regarded as a breakthrough. But images of the American President stepping onto Cuban soil will provide Obama a lasting illustration of his adage that diplomacy with traditional U.S. foes can yield concrete results. 
 
 Last week, U.S. air carriers entered a bidding war to secure routes to Cuba after both nations signed an agreement to resume flights between the island and the United States. 
 
 U.S. travelers, who previously were required to adhere to strict conditions for visits to Cuba, are now able to apply for a broad range of travel licenses, included trips for cultural exchanges and humanitarian work. 
 
 But travel purely for tourism won't be allowed until the U.S. Congress lifts a longstanding embargo, which also restricts most trade with Cuba. 
 
 Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat who launched a bipartisan Cuba Working Group in December, said Obama's trip would help "close the book on the outdated Cold War policy that divided us for so many years." 
 
 Many lawmakers stand opposed to such a move, arguing the regime in Cuba restricts dissent and tramples on citizens' freedom of expression. 
 
 Leading up to the announcement of Obama's trip, White House officials said Cuba would need to demonstrate human rights reforms before the President would travel there. 
 
 Rhodes said in a briefing that Obama will meet with dissidents when he visits Cuba in March. 
 
 He noted Obama met with dissidents at the Summit of the Americas in Panama last year -- where he shook Raul Castro's hand -- and said Obama engages with a "broad range of actors" around the world, and that Cuba is no different. 
 
 He said Obama was not likely to meet with Fidel Castro on the island. 
 
 Officials say Obama could visit the island to witness a signing of a peace accord between the government of Colombia and the FARC rebel group. Obama committed $400 million to the Colombian government in his most recent budget proposal to implement the deal. ||||| President Barack Obama talks to media in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016, at the bottom of a meeting, where he announced that former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, former... (Associated Press) 
 
 President Barack Obama talks to media in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016, at the bottom of a meeting, where he announced that former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon are being appointed as the Chair and Vice Chair, respectively,... (Associated Press) 
 
 President Barack Obama talks to media in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016, at the bottom of a meeting, where he announced that former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon are being appointed as the Chair and Vice Chair, respectively,... (Associated Press) President Barack Obama talks to media in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016, at the bottom of a meeting, where he announced that former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, former... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will pay a historic visit to Cuba in the coming weeks, senior Obama administration officials said Wednesday, becoming the first president to set foot on the island in nearly seven decades. 
 
 The brief visit in mid-March will mark a watershed moment for relations between the U.S. and Cuba, a communist nation estranged from the U.S. for half a century until Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro moved to re-launch more than a year ago. Since then, the nations have reopened embassies in Washington and Havana and moved to restore commercial air travel, with a presidential visit seen as a key next step toward bridging the divide. 
 
 Obama's stop in Cuba will part of a broader trip to Latin America that the president will take next month, said the officials, who requested anonymity because the trip hasn't been officially announced. The White House planned to unveil Obama's travel plans Thursday. 
 
 Though Obama had long been expected to visit Cuba in his final year, word of his travel plans drew immediate resistance from opponents of warmer ties with Cuba — including Republican presidential candidates. 
 
 Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose father fled to the U.S. from Cuba in the 1950s, said Obama shouldn't visit while the Castro family remains in power. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, another child of Cuban immigrants, lambasted the president for visiting what he called an "anti-American communist dictatorship." 
 
 "Today, a year and two months after the opening of Cuba, the Cuban government remains as oppressive as ever," Rubio said on CNN. Told of Obama's intention to visit, he added, "Probably not going to invite me." 
 
 With less than a year left in office, Obama has been eager to make rapid progress on restoring economic and diplomatic ties to cement the rapprochement with Cuba that his administration started. Following secret negotiations between their governments, Obama and Castro announced in late 2014 that they would begin normalizing ties, and months later held the first face-to-face meeting between an American and Cuban president since 1958. 
 
 But Obama, facing steadfast opposition to normalized relations from Republicans and some Democrats, has been unable to deliver on the former Cold War foe's biggest request: the lifting of the U.S. economic embargo. Opponents argue that repealing those sanctions would reward a government still engaging in human rights abuses and stifling of democratic aspirations. 
 
 Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican born in Cuba, called the visit "absolutely shameful." 
 
 "For more than 50 years, Cubans have been fleeing the Castro regime," said Lehtinen, the longest-serving Cuban-American in Congress. "Yet the country which grants them refuge — the United States — has now decided to quite literally embrace their oppressors." 
 
 Obama and supporters of the detente argue the decades-old embargo has failed to bring about desired change on the island 90 miles south of Florida. Still, while Obama has long expressed an interest in visiting Cuba, White House officials had said the visit wouldn't occur unless and until the conditions were right. 
 
 "If I go on a visit, then part of the deal is that I get to talk to everybody" — including political dissidents, Obama told Yahoo News in December. "I've made very clear in my conversations directly with President Castro that we would continue to reach out to those who want to broaden the scope for, you know, free expression inside of Cuba." 
 
 Officials didn't immediately specify what had changed in the last few weeks to clear the way for the trip, first reported by ABC News. But on Tuesday, the two nations signed a deal restoring commercial air traffic as early as later this year, eliminating a key barrier to unfettered travel that isolated Cuban-Americans from their families for generations. 
 
 Hundreds of thousands more Americans are expected to visit Cuba per year under the deal, which cleared the way for the U.S. Department of Transportation to open bidding by American air carriers on as many as 110 flights a day. Currently, there are about one-fifth as many flights operating between the two countries — all charters. 
 
 For Obama, the diplomatic opening with Cuba reflects one of the crowning achievements of a foreign policy rooted in a belief that the U.S. should test opportunities to ease hostilities with its historical enemies. Last month, the Obama administration lifted economic sanctions against Iran's nuclear program, following a diplomatic deal that has raised hopes about warmer ties between the U.S. and Iran. Yet those achievements have been offset by deepening security challenges in Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere as Obama nears the end of his term. 
 
 President Harry Truman visited the U.S.-controlled Guantanamo Bay on the southeast end of the island in 1948, and former President Jimmy Carter has paid multiple visits to the island since leaving office. No sitting president has visited Havana since President Calvin Coolidge traveled there in 1928. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP and Kevin Freking at https://twitter.com/APkfreking ||||| Next month, I'll travel to Cuba to advance our progress and efforts that can improve the lives of the Cuban people.
– President Obama next month will become the first sitting US president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge's trip to Havana in 1928. Obama announced the trip on Twitter Thursday, and ABC News reports that he'll be there March 21-22. The visit will mark a watershed moment for relations between the US and Cuba and will be part of a broader trip to Latin America, reports the AP. (President Harry Truman visited US-controlled Guantanamo Bay on the southeast end of the island in 1948, and former Jimmy Carter has paid multiple visits to the island since leaving office.) Word of Obama's travel plans drew immediate resistance from opponents of warmer ties with Cuba—including Republican presidential candidates. Ted Cruz, whose father fled to the US from Cuba in the 1950s, said Obama shouldn't visit while the Castro family remains in power. Marco Rubio, another child of Cuban immigrants, lambasted the president for visiting what he called an "anti-American communist dictatorship." "Today, a year and two months after the opening of Cuba, the Cuban government remains as oppressive as ever," Rubio said on CNN. Told of Obama's intention to visit, he added, "Probably not going to invite me." (An Alabama tractor-maker is the first US firm to set up shop in Cuba since the revolution.)