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The US State Department on Wednesday publicly restated its offer to provide $100 million in direct humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people after Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla denied that the Trump administration had ever made such an offer.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, the entire dispute kicked off last Friday when Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed during a press appearance in Rome that the US had privately offered Cuba $100 million in humanitarian aid (in addition to the $6 million in hurricane relief the US had already sent through the Catholic Church) and that the Cuban government had refused to accept it. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla denied the offer existed at all, calling it “a fable” and “a $100 million lie” in a series of posts on X over the weekend and into this week. “The U.S. Secretary of State, knowing for a fact that he needs to resort to lies to justify his criminal abuse against the Cuban people, fabricates the fable of an alleged offer for assistance that is worth $100 million or more, in an attempt to fool the people of Cuba and U.S. citizens themselves.” Rodríguez doubled down Tuesday, questioning what the aid would actually entail. “Will it be a donation, a deception or a dirty deal to curtail our independence? Wouldn’t it be easier to lift the fuel blockade?” The back-and-forth is happening as Cuba endures one of the worst energy crises in its modern history, with blackouts knocking out power across 65% of the country at once on Tuesday. The country has struggled to import fuel since the Trump administration removed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January (Venezuela had been Cuba’s main fuel supplier, accounting for about half of the country’s imports) and imposed an effective oil blockade by threatening tariffs against any country supplying Cuba.

What’s going on now: State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott released a statement Wednesday restating the aid offer and framing the Cuban government’s denials as a refusal to allow assistance to reach ordinary Cubans.

He said, “Today, the Department of State is publicly restating the United States’ generous offer to provide an additional $100 million in direct humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people that would be distributed in coordination with the Catholic Church and other reliable independent humanitarian organizations. The decision rests with the Cuban regime to accept our offer of assistance or deny critical life-saving aid and ultimately be accountable to the Cuban people for standing in the way of critical assistance.”

The statement said the proposed aid would include both direct humanitarian assistance and funding for “fast and free” satellite internet access. The State Department also stressed that the aid would flow through the Catholic Church and independent organizations rather than through Cuban state institutions.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has pushed back against the broader US pressure campaign throughout the week. After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth labeled Cuba a national security threat during his Tuesday testimony before Congress, Díaz-Canel responded: “Cuba does not threaten; Cuba is constantly threatened.”

Díaz-Canel posted again on X Wednesday as a protest unfolded in the Havana neighborhood of San Miguel Del Padrón during prolonged blackouts. “This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country, threatening with irrational tariffs any nation that supplies us with fuel. It is a perverse design whose primary objective is the suffering of the entire population, in order to hold them hostage and turn them against the government.”

This all comes as Trump has repeatedly said that Cuba is “next” on his list after the war with Iran wraps up. Recently, the US declared Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security earlier this month and began stepping up surveillance flights around the island in what some analysts say may be preparation for a broader military buildup in the Caribbean.