This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Since January, the Trump administration has effectively blockaded nearly all oil shipments to Cuba, causing conditions on the island to deteriorate dramatically. Electricity is becoming more unreliable, food is spoiling, and a collapsing medical system now risks creating a major health crisis. Some hospitalized Cubans have reportedly already died as a result of the blockade. According to my colleague Vivian Salama, a staff writer who has been reporting on Cuba, it’s all part of the White House’s plan to choke the island, destabilizing Cuba’s top leadership and forcing its government into diplomatic talks with the United States. In today’s Daily, she and I discuss the Trump administration’s possible intentions for the country, and consider who stands to gain from such a sharp escalation.Will Gottsegen: What is the White House’s plan for Cuba right now?Vivian Salama: Late last year, the administration started clamping down on Venezuela economically and militarily with the forward-looking objective of doing the same thing to Cuba. For decades, Cuba has been highly dependent on Venezuela for economic purposes, primarily oil. By cutting off Venezuela’s ability to export oil, the administration was also hoping that it would inflict intense pain on and ultimately spur dramatic change in the Cuban government.What the White House wants to happen remains sort of opaque. It says that Venezuela’s leaders need to go, but it doesn’t explicitly talk about regime change. It’s important to put Venezuela into that context, because even though the administration forcefully removed Nicolás Maduro in January, it did so while still maintaining, for now at least, his regime. Trump is working with Maduro’s vice president in Venezuela, and would potentially do something similar in Cuba. Will we see ground incursions, or a dramatic raid like we saw in Venezuela? That is a big question mark.Will: The Trump administration has indicated that it’s more interested in changing Cuba’s leadership than it is in toppling the current regime. Why might that be the administration’s goal, as opposed to ending communism on the island?Vivian: The goal is to pursue commercial and economic interests for the United States. That is really what President Trump is all about. The ideological element is not a primary factor for him, as it is for many Cuban Americans. Trump will have achieved something historic and significant if he is able to put in place a Cuban government, or a Cuban leader, at least, who is more compliant with the U.S. so that the U.S. can go and invest in Cuba. Anything beyond that is sort of in the weeds for him.Will: Why is Trump choosing this moment to act?Vivian: Every president, Democrat and Republican, has mused over the idea of regime change in Cuba. It has just been a matter of how they would achieve that.This has been one of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s primary objectives since he took public office. He has long called for regime change in Cuba. He has long called for a democratic transition in Venezuela, and he was able to convince Trump that this is tied to two things: his immigration and anti-narcotics crackdown and his broader ambitions for the U.S. to reassert its dominance in the Western Hemisphere. Trump is also very much focused on his legacy. He’s a second-term president, and, barring a dramatic change to the Constitution, he will leave office. He wants to do things that other presidents talked about and didn’t do. The Iran war is among those. And so is a dramatic realignment of the Cuban government.Will: What has the current oil blockade done to Cuba?Vivian: Garbage is accumulating in the streets because there’s no gas for the trucks to go around and pick it up. People are reportedly dying or in very, very bad conditions because hospital generators are now failing. The city of Havana—and the country in general—has plunged into darkness multiple times because its power grid has completely failed. This is exactly the impact that the Trump administration was looking to achieve in order to bring the Cuban regime to its knees.Cubans have gone through periods similar to this in the past. They are used to sort of hunkering down and relying on the bare minimum to function. But in this case, it’s been so bad that it seems the government has at least been forced to start negotiating with Washington.Will: What has Russia’s role been here, as Cuba’s longtime ally? I know the Kremlin has said it’s going to continue sending aid to the island.Vivian: After the blockade started, a Russian oil tanker set sail for Cuba. That was before the United States eased sanctions on Russian oil last month to help mitigate the Iran war’s effects on the global economy. And the tanker didn’t turn around, even when Trump later amended those sanctions to bar Russia from supplying oil to Cuba specifically. Russia’s move was seen as a sign that its relationship with Cuba remains pretty tight, but this wasn’t a purely humanitarian gesture. It was also an attempt to poke at the United States, and there were questions about whether or not there would be a confrontation.Then Trump said on Sunday that he would allow the tanker to reach Cuba, effectively breaking his own blockade. The sense among administration officials that I talked with was that they have inflicted enough pain for the Cuban government to want to talk—they do not want the situation to reach a point where it spurs an exodus of Cubans, or leads to a pandemic of some kind on the island. There are worries that there could be an outbreak of cholera because of conditions there.Russia always looks to benefit when there is geopolitical disarray. With the U.S. so focused on the war in Iran, Russia has stood to benefit both with regard to its own conflict in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world. Cuba is a very small example of that. The fear is that if the U.S. continues to grant permissions to Russia, or turn a blind eye to Russia, the country could rebuild, once again, to be the kind of global menace that we saw in the years leading up to its invasion of Ukraine.Related:Trump’s eye is already on Cuba.The Iran war’s next threat is to food and water.Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:The Epstein spectrumTom Nichols: Hegseth’s war on America’s militaryTrump’s purge may be just beginning.Today’s NewsThe Trump administration asked Congress to approve a $1.5 trillion defense budget for the 2027 fiscal year. The administration also asked for about $73 billion in cuts to domestic programs.Democratic Party leaders sued to block President Trump’s executive order tightening mail-in-voting rules, arguing that the order is unconstitutional and interferes with state-run elections.One U.S. crew member has been rescued after a fighter jet was shot down over Iran. The status of the second crew member remains unclear as search efforts continue.DispatchesThe Books Briefing: Boris Kachka on unconventional novels about conventional people.Explore all of our newsletters here.Evening ReadIllustration by The Atlantic. Source: Netflix.Twilight of the ‘Cougar’By Anna HolmesNo label really existed to describe my mother when in 1965, at the age of 27, she met the man who would become my father, a baby-faced guy who had just turned 18. But there were plenty of stereotypes. In The Second Sex, first published in France in 1949, Simone de Beauvoir had written of the older woman who pursues “fresh flesh” because young men are the “only ones” she can hope will feel desire for a “maternal mistress.” The woman does so, too, to combat the anxiety of aging, de Beauvoir wrote, felt by “the one whose life is already finished, even though death is not imminent.” Ouch.Read the full article.More From The AtlanticAn Army shake-up in the middle of a warThe AI industry wants to automate itself.Trump’s Stone Age threat will lead to tragedy.The next attorney general has an impossible job.Pam Bondi couldn’t possibly succeed.Don’t mess with the housewives of Ukraine.Culture BreakSi MelberWatch. Lily Allen’s West End Girl tour isn’t a live concert so much as epic theater, Sophie Gilbert writes.Explore. Everyone thinks they need a NeeDoh, but no one can find one, Olga Khazan writes.Play our daily crossword.Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.