What happened
Cuba’s aging electrical grid collapsed yesterday, leaving the island nation of some 11 million people without power amid a U.S. oil blockade. President Miguel Díaz-Canel on Friday blamed the U.S. embargo for Cuba’s economic problems, saying no oil shipments had arrived for three months. But in a national broadcast, he acknowledged for the first time that his government was in talks with the Trump administration to “identify the bilateral problems that need a solution.” Trump yesterday told reporters he believed he would have “the honor of taking Cuba.”

Who said what
“I think Cuba sees the end,” Trump said at a White House news conference. “Taking Cuba in some form, yeah, taking Cuba — I mean, whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it.” The Trump administration’s opening demand in negotiations is Díaz-Canel’s ouster, The New York Times said, citing four people familiar with the talks. That would “topple a key figurehead while keeping in place the repressive Communist government,” giving Trump a “symbolic win” he can sell to the American people and “Cuban exile community,” though the lack of regime change would “likely disappoint many conservative Cuban exiles.”

Cubans “have grown accustomed to power outages,” Reuters said, but the current crisis “sparked a rare violent protest” over the weekend. The oil blockade has crushed tourism, fueled unaffordable gas prices, forced hospitals to ration care and left garbage piling up in the streets.

What next?
Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga told NBC News in a clip broadcast yesterday morning that Havana was “open to having a fluid commercial relationship with U.S. companies, also with Cubans residing in the United States and their descendants.” Government officials “had planned to announce the economic changes on an evening television program” but did not, the Times said, possibly as a “result of power outages.”

What happened
The roughly 200,000 immigrant truck drivers in the U.S. began losing their commercial driver’s licenses yesterday as a new Trump administration rule took effect. The Transportation Department rule bars asylum seekers, refugees and DACA recipients from obtaining a commercial license, though those who already have a license can continue using it until it expires. 

Who said what
The new rule “will weigh on the beleaguered trucking industry,” already “plagued by high turnover rates” amid “long hours, low pay, dangerous road conditions and extended periods away from home,” The Washington Post said. Immigrants, who currently hold about 5% of commercial driver’s licenses, are “critical to transporting goods across America at a time when energy costs are surging due to the war in Iran.” 

America has “allowed dangerous foreign drivers to abuse our truck licensing systems — wreaking havoc on our roadways” — for “far too long,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement announcing the rule last month. “The Trump administration has conceded that there’s no empirical relationship between a person’s nation of domicile and safety outcomes,” said Wendy Liu, a lawyer at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which is suing to block the rule. Immigrants have to pass the same tests after attending the same driving schools as nonimmigrants.

What next?
The new rule is part of President Donald Trump’s “widening campaign against immigrant truck drivers following several high-profile accidents last summer,” the Post said. In his State of the Union speech, Trump urged Congress to codify in law his restrictions on immigrant truckers, though no votes have been scheduled. The trucking industry warned that such bans would “ripple through the supply chain,” KABC Los Angeles said, potentially “costing Americans more at the store.”