Jan 3rd, 2026, 1:51 pm President Donald Trump torpedoed the idea that Nobel Peace Prize recipient María Corina Machado could assume leadership in Venezuela, saying she “doesn’t have respect” in her country. News broke after midnight Friday that the United States struck Venezuela’s capital of Caracas early Saturday morning, and at 4:21 AM, Trump announced on Truth Social that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured and flown to the United States. Tyler Pager of The New York Times sc ...

Saturday 03 January 2026 10:52 EST The Department of Justice has unsealed a sweeping grand jury indictment accusing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of leading a massive cocaine trafficking operation. A 25-page document from federal prosecutors in New York City claims Maduro, his wife and Venezuelan officials have “abused their positions of public trust and corrupted once-legitimate institutions to import tons of cocaine into the United States.” The four-count indictment, unsealed hours a ...

01/03/2026 02:35 PM EST American oil companies have long hoped to recover the assets that Venezuela’s authoritarian regime ripped from them decades ago. Now the Trump administration is offering to help them achieve that aim — with one major condition. Administration officials have told oil executives in recent weeks that if they want compensation for their rigs, pipelines and other seized property, then they must be prepared to go back into Venezuela now and invest heavily in reviving its sha ...

Updated Jan. 3, 2026, 12:48 p.m. ET President Donald Trump on Jan. 3 released the first photo of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima after his capture in an overnight U.S. military operation. The photo, posted to Trump's social media network Truth Social, shows Maduro in a gray sweatsuit, holding a water bottle and wearing what appeared to be sound-suppressing earmuffs and a dark covering over his eyes. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were both captured in the ...

01/03/2026 11:38 AM ESTUpdated: 01/03/2026 04:37 PM EST Sen. Tim Kaine said he will force a vote next week to block further military action against Venezuela without congressional approval in the wake of President Donald Trump’s operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Kaine, who has so far been unable to get Congress to stop Trump’s Latin American military operations, called the move to oust Maduro without congressional approval “a sickening return to a day when the United St ...

(CNBC) President Donald Trump said the U.S. is going to temporarily take over governing Venezuela after launching a large-scale surprise attack on the country overnight. “We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said in a press conference Saturday morning from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, said the mission involved “more than 150 aircraft launching across the western hemisphere in political coordination, all coming together in time and place to layer effects for a single purpose, to get an interdiction force into downtown Caracas, while maintaining the element of tactical surprise.”

(MS NOW) The Trump administration’s months-long campaign against Venezuela culminated Saturday in a series of strikes in Caracas and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro — an extraordinary escalation that makes the administration’s refusal to publicly explain its legal justification for military involvement even more urgent. President Donald Trump announced the operation in a 4:21 a.m. Truth Social post, revealing that U.S. forces had seized Maduro and flown him out of the country to face criminal charges in the United States. The action, which Trump did not seek congressional authorization for, represents the most aggressive use of military force against a foreign head of state in a generation.

Updated 5:29 AM EST, January 3, 2026 CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- The United States hit Venezuela with a "large-scale strike" early Saturday and said its president, Nicols Maduro, had been captured and flown out of the country after months of stepped-up pressure by Washington -- an extraordinary nighttime operation announced by President Donald Trump on social media hours after the attack. Multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas, the capital, as Madu ...

Sat, January 3, 2026 at 5:48 AM EST WASHINGTON (AP) -- Utah Sen. Mike Lee says Trump administration has briefed him that Maduro will face criminal charges in U.S. ...

01/02/26 4:42 PM ET Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) on Friday called on President Trump to expand the administration’s seizures of Venezuelan oil tankers to tankers coming from Russia. “He’s been using our military to interdict oil tankers because there is this ghost fleet that helps keep Venezuela’s regime alive,” Coons told Jonathan Lemire of “Morning Joe” on MS NOW. “He should be using those same tools to interdict the ghost fleet that helps fund Russia’s brutal war machine, that helps keep the ...