Cuba's entire national power grid shut down Monday, plunging 9.6 million people into darkness as President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he intends to "take" the island nation.
Newsmax reported that Cuba's Union Nacional Electrica de Cuba confirmed a "complete shutdown of the national grid" and said work had begun to restore electricity.
The collapse caps months of cascading energy failures linked to a de facto oil blockade maintained by the Trump administration. No oil has been imported to the island since Jan. 9.
Trump, speaking to reporters, framed the moment in sweeping terms:
"You know, all my life I've been hearing about the United States and Cuba. When will the United States do it?"
"I do believe I'll be having the honor of taking Cuba. Whether I free it, take it, think I could do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth. They're a very weakened nation right now."
The timeline tells the story. On January 3, the U.S. ousted Cuba's top ally, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. Six days later, oil imports to the island stopped entirely. By early March, daily power outages of up to 20 hours were the norm in parts of Cuba. The government rationed gasoline sales and some hospital services due to the fuel shortages.
Then came Monday's total blackout.
After nearly seven decades defying the United States, Cuba's communist government is now struggling to keep the lights on, let alone project strength. Demonstrators vandalized a provincial office of the Cuban Communist Party last weekend.
President Miguel Diaz-Canel took to X to acknowledge "the discontent our people feel because of the prolonged blackouts" after an outage in early March, then added a warning:
"What will never be comprehensible, justified or admitted is violence."
That's the playbook. Acknowledge suffering just enough to avoid looking deaf, then criminalize the people suffering. Havana wants sympathy from the international community while threatening its own citizens for daring to protest a government that cannot provide electricity.
The signals out of Cuba on Monday were unmistakable. While the grid collapsed, the regime opened a door it had kept bolted for decades.
Oscar Perez-Oliva, Cuba's foreign trade minister and deputy prime minister, announced that Cuban exiles would now be able to invest and own businesses on the island. Speaking to NBC News, Perez-Oliva said:
"Cuba is open to having a fluid commercial relationship with U.S. companies, also with Cubans residing in the United States and their descendants."
Read that carefully. A communist government that spent generations seizing private property and driving its own people into exile is now inviting those same exiles back to invest. Not because Havana discovered the virtues of free enterprise. Because the regime is desperate.
Diaz-Canel acknowledged last week that his government had held talks with the United States. Trump, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, said Cuba wants to make a "deal." He described Cuba as an "extraordinary threat" and added:
"I think we will pretty soon either make a deal or do whatever we have to do."
The pattern here is worth noting. Trump's approach to Cuba follows the same logic he has applied elsewhere: apply maximum pressure, wait for the other side to come to the table, and negotiate from a position of overwhelming strength.
The oil embargo did not create Cuba's dysfunction. Nearly seven decades of communist mismanagement did that. The embargo simply removed the last external lifeline propping up a failed system.
Cuba's government rationed hospital services. It cannot generate electricity. Its people are protesting in the streets. And yet some will argue that American pressure is the problem rather than the catalyst forcing a reckoning that was always inevitable.
The regime's decision to suddenly welcome exile investment is not a reform. It is a concession extracted under duress. There is a difference. Reforms come from conviction. Concessions come from running out of options. Havana has run out of options.
The Cuban government now sits at a crossroads it spent decades pretending didn't exist. It can negotiate seriously with the United States, which means genuine structural change, not cosmetic gestures dressed up as openness.
Or it can try to ride out the pressure and hope the blackouts don't spark something its security apparatus can't contain.
Trump has made clear which outcome he expects. The question is whether Havana's communist leadership is capable of accepting a deal that, by definition, means admitting the system they built does not work.
Nine and a half million people sitting in the dark already know the answer.
