Isaac SchorrMay 6th, 2026, 5:52 pm

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) revealed that she’s been working with other countries to get oil to Cuba at an event on Monday evening, even as the Trump administration enforces a de facto oil embargo by threatening to impose tariffs on imports from any country that “directly or indirectly sells or otherwise provides any oil to Cuba.”

“In January, Trump issued an executive order threatening tariffs on any countries supplying fuel to Cuba. This was this January, just a few months ago. And oil shipments from Venezuela — that’s where Cuba had been getting its oil — were halted after the U.S. operations to kidnap Nicolás Maduro. Since January, only one Russian tanker of oil has made it to Cuba, In fact, it landed just a couple of days before I landed, and one tanker has enough oil basically for 10 to 14 days of Cuba’s oil needs — so it’s a very limited amount of time,” explained Jayapal, who visited Cuba last month. “Now Russia has said they’re going to send another tanker. I was in conversations with the ambassadors from Mexico and some other places, and I know other countries in Latin America are trying to figure out how to get oil there. But it is a crisis beyond imagination. Just this past Friday on May 1, Trump signed a broad executive order that widens sanctions and allows for new penalties, similar to what we have for Iran and Russia, against foreign banks and firms that are dealing with Cuba, and it also reinforces the ban on U.S. tourism.”

“I have called these sanctions an economic bombing of the infrastructure of Cuba. It is illegal, it is against the war — we’ve been talking about this in Iran, obviously — to bomb the infrastructure of any country. That is against international law. This is essentially doing the same thing. It is bombing the infrastructure of Cuba with economic sanctions that essentially ensure that the infrastructure collapses,” she continued.

President Donald Trump has ratcheted up the pressure on Cuba’s communist regime in recent months, even going so far as to assert that would have “the honor of taking Cuba” back in March.

“Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth. They are a very weakened nation,” mused the president after Fox’s Peter Doocy sought clarification.

Watch above via Representative Pramila Jayapal on YouTube.

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