The Trump administration is actively trying to collapse Cuba’s government by punishing its people—starving them of fuel, food, and basic necessities. It’s a growing catastrophe that multiple media outlets say have put the country on verge of collapse, and is hitting vulnerable populations first and hardest.

WHAT’S GOING ON: Since kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, Trump has vowed to block any Venezuelan oil or money from reaching Cuba and threatened tariffs on any country that dares sell oil to the island nation. Venezuela previously provided Cuba with roughly 70,000 barrels of crude oil daily. Now? Nothing.

The result is catastrophic. Bus stops are empty. Families are cooking with wood and coal. Power outages are near-constant. Cuba’s deputy prime minister announced emergency measures last week—cutting transportation, shortening work and school hours, prioritizing fuel only for hospitals, food production, and defense.

Trump signed an executive order in January declaring that Cuba “constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security. Somehow, a small island nation 90 miles away with a GDP smaller than many US cities is somehow an existential threat to the world’s largest military power.

THE REAL STORY: This isn’t about national security. It never was. Cuba’s real crime is ideological: for nearly seven decades, it has represented the possibility that a society could be organized differently—where healthcare, education, and basic necessities aren’t commodities you buy, but rights you’re guaranteed regardless of your ability to sell your labor.

That’s terrifying to the ruling class. Not because Cuba is a military threat, but because it’s a symbolic one. If people see that things can be run a different way—where human needs come before profit—it endangers the whole system. So Cuba must be crushed, its people starved, its example erased.

ZOOM OUT: Mexico is now sending military-protected humanitarian relief to Cuba—over 800 tons of food and supplies aboard Navy vessels. Let that sink in: our neighbor has to protect aid shipments from the US while Americans stuff their faces during the Super Bowl. As journalist Ryan Grim put it, this “has to rank among our low moments.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned last week that Cuba’s humanitarian situation “will worsen, if not collapse, if its oil needs go unmet.” The US blockade has been illegal and globally condemned for decades. The UN General Assembly has voted against it for over 30 consecutive years. The Trump administration’s response? Make it worse.

BOTTOM LINE: This is economic warfare against 11 million people whose only crime is living under a system that suggests capitalism isn’t the only way to organize a society. The cruelty is the point.

Ghislaine Maxwell appeared via video from prison for a congressional deposition Monday and invoked the Fifth Amendment—but her lawyer made it crystal clear she’d “speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump.” So basically, Jeffrey Epstein’s monster accomplice, currently serving only 20 years for helping recruit and abuse underage girls, is openly auctioning favorable testimony in exchange for a get-out-of-jail card. Read the full story.

Trump’s Department of Justice got caught covering up an email proving Trump lied about his Epstein timeline. Turns out his lawyers told Epstein’s lawyers that Epstein was “a guest at Mar-a-Lago” and “had never been asked to leave,” contradicting Trump’s claims he cut ties in 2004 and kicked Epstein out for “stealing” spa workers (one of whom was literal child trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre). Read the full story.

While America’s most powerful men—including a sitting U.S. president—skate on their Epstein connections, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is on the brink of losing his job for appointing someone linked to Jeffrey Epstein. Peter Mandelson, the UK’s former ambassador to Washington, was fired after it emerged he stayed friends with Epstein even after his 2008 sex crime conviction—and now British police are investigating whether Mandelson passed government secrets to the pedophile financier. The contrast couldn’t be starker. Read the full story.

San Francisco teachers launched their first strike in nearly 50 years Monday, shuttering schools for 48,000 students after months of failed negotiations over wages and health care. The union is demanding 4.5% annual raises and full coverage for dependents’ health benefits—but the district counters it can only afford 3% raises and 75% dependent coverage. This is happening while new teachers earn $80,000 in a city where living “comfortably” requires $122,000 a year. Read the full story.

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