Former President Obama and Michelle Obama called on Americans to recognize the dangers of the increasingly violent Immigration and Customs Enforcement crack-downs in the wake of the deadly shooting of an ICU nurse in Minneapolis.
“The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy,” the Obamas wrote in a lengthy statement posted on social media. “It should also be a wake up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.”
Pretti, a 37-year-old Department of Veterans Affairs nurse, was seen using his cellphone to record ICE members deploying Saturday morning in a snowy Minneapolis neighborhood. Witness videos show federal immigration agents shoving a woman and Pretti coming to her assistance. He was then pushed and doused with a chemical spray, then tackled to the ground. He was shot 10 times.
On Sunday, demonstrations occurred across the country to protest the tactics of federal immigration agents and comments by President Trump and others in his administration. Several administration officials seemed to blame Pretti for his death because he was carrying a weapon during a protest.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara on Sunday almost begged for calm for his city that has witnessed hundreds of ICE agents moving in. O’Hara told CBS News “this is not sustainable,” and that his officers were stretched thin trying to contain “all of this chaos.”
“This has to stop,” the Obamas wrote.
“Federal law enforcement and immigration agents have a tough job,” the Obamas wrote. “But Americans expect them to carry out their duties in a lawful, accountable way, and to work with, rather than against, state and local officials to ensure public safety.
“That’s not what we’re seeing in Minnesota. In fact, we’re seeing the opposite,” the former first couple wrote.
On Sunday, protests grew as people watched cellphone video captured by bystanders of Pretti’s shooting.
Pretti’s parents, Susan and Michael Pretti, in a statement reported by the Associated Press, described their son as “a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital.”
His shooting comes less than three weeks after an ICE agent shot an unarmed mother, Renee Nicole Good, in another Minneapolis neighborhood. The agency said she was attempting to harm an ICE agent although video of the incident appears to show her turning the wheel of her SUV away from the agent when he shot her in the face.
“For weeks now, people across the country have been rightly outraged by the spectacle of masked ICE recruits and other federal agents acting with impunity and engaging in tactics that seem designed to intimidate, harass, provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city,” the Obamas wrote, describing such methods as “unprecedented tactics.”
“The President and current administration officials seem eager to escalate the situation, while offering public explanations for the shootings of Mr. Pretti and Renee Good that aren’t informed by any serious investigation — and that appear to be directly contradicted by video evidence,” the Obamas wrote.
They called on Trump administration officials to “reconsider their approach” and work constructively with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and other state and local authorities “to avert more chaos and achieve legitimate law enforcement goals.”
“In the meantime, every American should support and draw inspiration from the wave of peaceful protests in Minneapolis and other parts of the country,” the Obamas wrote. “They are a timely reminder that ultimately it’s up to each of us as citizens to speak out against injustice, protect our basic freedoms, and hold our government accountable.”
Reba McEntire is reflecting on a traumatic moment from her past.
In a recent interview with Garden & Gun, the 70-year-old musician spoke about the 1991 plane crash which resulted in the death of eight members of her band and the famous friends who helped her cope.
“It was really hard for me to get back onstage, but Vince Gill called and said, ‘Buddy, I’ll be there for you,’” she recalled. “Dolly Parton said, ‘Here, take my band.’ It was such a gift to see how many people stepped forward to help, and to reassure, because so many of us had hearts that were broken.”
Her band and crew members were flying out of San Diego after a concert when their charter jet plane crashed. The singer was not on the plane, and instead was scheduled to leave San Diego the next morning.
McEntire shared that Parton and Gill helped her after the plane crash which killed eight of her band members.(Trae Patton/NBC via Getty Images)
The crash claimed the lives of McEntire’s tour manager, Jim Hammon, keyboardist and bandleader Kirk Cappello, keyboardist Joey Cigainero, drummer Tony Saputo, guitarist Michael Thomas, guitarist Chris Austin, bassist Terry Jackson and vocalist Paula Kaye Evans as well as the two pilots Donald Holmes and Christopher Hollinger.
“I didn’t know if I was going to be able to continue,” McEntire told People magazine in October 2022 about the crash. “But it showed me how precious life is, and by the grace of God and my faith, I realized that they went on to a better place.”
Following the loss of her friends, McEntire wrote “For My Broken Heart,” which was released around eight months after the crash and honored those who died. The album featured hits such as “Is There Life Out There,” “The Lights Went Out In Georgia” and “The Greatest Man I Never Knew.”
Also in 1991, McEntire met her fiancée, Rex Linn. However, they didn’t start a romantic relationship until 2020, after the country singer appeared on his show, “Young Sheldon.”
Linn and McEntire met in 1991 but didn’t start dating until 2020.(Amy Sussman/Getty Images))
“We didn’t get to see each other from January till June 16 [due to COVID], but we created an intimacy by texting and talking over the telephone that we wouldn’t have gotten if we’d have been together all of that time,” she told E! News in April 2024. “It was very special. It was a great way to find out about each other without ever touching.”
They publicly confirmed they were engaged when a reporter for E! News referred to Linn as McEntire’s fiancé ahead of the 2025 Golden Globe Awards, and they did not correct it. A representative for McEntire later confirmed the news to Fox News Digital.
When speaking with Fox News Digital in May 2025, McEntire said the two of them “get along in every aspect.”
McEntire said she loves her cowboy lifestyle with Linn.(Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Roc Nation)
“He’s a better cook than I am, so I like that, for sure,” she said. We love Longhorns, we love the cowboy way of life, cowgirl way of life, and we both got into the entertainment industry.”
“He’s an actor. I’m a singer. I love to act. Now we act together,” she added. “So it’s just the perfect union, absolutely. And we get along great. We do argue now. We argue a lot, but we have fun doing that too.”
Lori Bashian is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital.
Did you learn it in school, read it in a newspaper? Did you get your information on social media or though chatter with friends?
Even in an age of misinformation and disinformation — which we really need to start clearly calling propaganda — we continue to rely on old ways of knowing. We take it for granted that if we really need to get to the truth, there’s a way to do it, even if it means cracking the pages of one of those ancient conveyors of wisdom, a book.
But we are entering an era in America when knowledge is about to be hard to come by. It would be easy to shrug off this escalation of the war on truth as just more Trump nonsense, but it is much more than that. Authoritarians take power in the short term by fear and maybe force. In the long term, they rely on ignorance — an erasure of knowledge to leave people believing that there was ever anything different than what is.
This is how our kids, future generations, come to be controlled. They simply don’t know what was, and therefore are at a great disadvantage in imagining what could be.
The original photo shows Armstrong in handcuffs being led away by a federal officer with his face blurred out. Armstrong is composed and steady in this image. A veteran of social justice movements and a trained attorney, she appears as one might expect, her expression troubled but calm.
In the photo released by the White House, Armstrong is sobbing, her mouth hanging open in despair. In what is clearly nothing more than overt racism, it appears her skin has been darkened. Her braided hair, neatly styled in the original picture, is disheveled in the Trump image.
On the left, a photograph from the X (formerly Twitter) account of U.S. Secretary Kristi Noem, showing Nekima Levy Armstrong being arrested. On the right, the photo has been altered before being posted to the White House’s X (formerly Twitter) account.
(@Sec_Noem via X/@WhiteHouse via X)
A strong, composed resister is turned into a weeping, weak failure.
“YET AGAIN to the people who feel the need to reflexively defend perpetrators of heinous crimes in our country I share with you this message: Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your attention to this matter,”
The same week, the Trump administration began ripping down exhibits at the President’s House in Philadelphia that told the story of the nine Black people held in bondage there by George Washington. I’ve been to that exhibit and had planned to take my kids this summer to learn about Joe Richardson, Christopher Sheels, Austin, Hercules, Giles, Moll, Oney Judge, Paris and Richmond.
They are names that barely made it into American history. Many have never heard of them. Now, this administration is attempting to erase them.
How do you know what you know? I learned most of what I knew about these folks from that signage, which is probably in a dump somewhere by now.
The information we once took for granted on government websites such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is gone. Climate change information; LGBTQ+ information; even agricultural information. Gone (though courts have ordered some restored).
The Smithsonian is undergoing an ideological review.
And now, our government is telling us it will alter in real time images of dissenters to create its own narrative, demand we believe not our own eyes, our own knowledge, but the narrative they create.
He was speaking specifically about an incident in his town in which a corrections officer recruit was detained by ICE this week. In video taken by a bystander, about five agents pull the man from his car as he drives home after work. They then leave the car running in the street as they take him away.
Joyce told reporters the man had a clean background check before being hired, had no criminal record, and was working legally in the country. The sheriff has no idea where the man is being held.
Joyce’s sentiment, that what we are being told isn’t what’s happening, applies to nearly everything we are seeing with our own eyes.
A woman shot through her temple, through the side window of her car? You don’t understand what you are seeing. It was justified, our vice president has told us, without even the need for an investigation.
Goodbye Renee Good. They are attempting in real time to erase her reality and instead morph her into a domestic terrorist committing “heinous” crimes, and maybe even worse.
“You have a small band of very far left people who are doing everything they can … to try to make ICE out to be the ultimate enemy, and engage in this weird, small-scale civil war,” Vice President JD Vance said this week.
Protesting turned into civil war.
Next up, artificial intelligence is getting into the erasure game. Scientists are warning that those who wish to destroy truth will soon unleash AI-run operations in which thousands if not millions of social media posts will offer up whatever alternative reality those in control of it wish. Under the pressure of that avalanche of lies, many will believe.
The message the White House is sending with Armstrong’s photo is that they control the truth, they decide what it is.
Our job is to fight for truth, know it when we see it, and demand it not be erased.
NUUK, Greenland — One year ago, days before Donald Trump reclaimed power, the head of Denmark’s People’s Party took a trip to Mar-a-Lago. Morten Messerschmidt thought he and Trump shared a common view on the perils of European integration. Together, he told local media at the time, they could make the West great again.
In Europe, just as in the United States, Messerschmidt thought it was “nationale suverænitet” — national sovereignty — that had over centuries given countries large and small the tools to build their culture, traditions and institutions. Those were the values that conservative movements across the European continent are fighting to protect.
But Messerschmidt now finds himself on the defensive. The far-right politician is suddenly distancing himself from an American president who, off and on over the last year, has made aggressive plays to annex Greenland, targeting Danish borders that have existed for roughly 300 years.
Trump pulled back from military threats against the island this week. “It’s total access — there’s no end,” he said in an interview on Thursday with Fox Business. Asked whether he still intended on acquiring the island, Trump replied, “It’s possible. Anything is possible.”
Despite Trump’s fixation on Greenland since his first term, he declined to meet with Messerschmidt at Mar-a-Lago last January. Instead, the Danish politician found himself discussing the matter with Marla Maples, the president’s ex-wife.
“Portraying me as someone who serves a cause other than Denmark, and who would sympathize with threats to our kingdom, is unhealthy,” Messerschmidt wrote on Facebook this weekend. “It is slander.”
The Danish People’s Party is one of many far-right groups across Europe, which aligned with Trump’s MAGA movement in their fervent opposition to immigration and related issues, suddenly in rebellion against an administration it once thought of as an ideological ally.
The president’s moves are now compelling them to reconcile their alliance with Trump with a core tenet on the political right, that nationalism is largely defined by people and place over historic stretches of time — or as Trump often said on the campaign trail, “without a border, you don’t have a country.”
“Donald Trump has violated a fundamental campaign promise — namely, not to interfere in other countries,” Alice Weidel, co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany Party, or AfD, said in Berlin. Her colleague added: “It is clear that Wild West methods must be rejected.”
The rupture could jeopardize the Trump administration’s own stated goals for a future Europe that is more conservative and aligned with the Republican Party — a plan that relied on boosting the very same parties now questioning their ties to the president.
In its national security strategy, published in November, the White House said it would “cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” hoping to restore “Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”
And it is not clear whether the president’s decision to walk back his most aggressive threats is enough to contain the diplomatic damage. “The process of getting to this agreement has clearly damaged trust amongst allies,” Rishi Sunak, former prime minister of the United Kingdom and leader of its Conservative Party, told Bloomberg on Thursday.
Trump’s pressure campaign urging Ukraine to accept borders redrawn by a revanchist Russia had already strained relations between his inner circle and Europe’s far-right movements. But several prominent right-wing leaders say his aggressive posture toward Greenland amounted to a bridge too far.
On Wednesday in Switzerland, addressing growing concerns over the plan, Trump still left threats lingering in the air, warning European leaders that he would “remember” if they blocked a U.S. takeover.
“Friends can disagree in private, and that’s fine — that’s part of life, part of politics,” Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform UK party in Britain, told House Speaker Mike Johnson in London earlier this week. “But to have a U.S. president threatening tariffs unless we agree that he can take over Greenland by some means, without it seeming to even get the consent of the people of Greenland — I mean, this is a very hostile act.”
In France, the head of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, National Rally, said the United States had presented Europe “with a choice: Accept dependency disguised as partnership or act as sovereign powers capable of defending our interests.”
With overseas territories across the Pacific, Caribbean and Indian oceans, France has the second-largest maritime exclusive economic zone in the world after the United States. If Trump can seize Greenland by force, what is stopping him, or any other great power, from conquering France’s islands?
“When a U.S. president threatens a European territory while using trade pressure, it is not dialogue — it is coercion. And our credibility is at stake,” said the party’s young leader, Jordan Bardella.
“Greenland has become a strategic pivot in a world returning to imperial logic,” he added. “Yielding today would set a dangerous precedent.”
President Donald Trump will deliver a speech today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, focusing on a plan to make housing more affordable, while his comments about acquiring Greenland continue to stir tensions with European allies.”This will be an interesting trip. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but you are well represented,” Trump told reporters before departing the White House for Switzerland.The speech comes shortly after he threatened to impose tariffs on Denmark and seven other allies due to their opposition to his interest in acquiring Greenland. Trump announced that the tariffs would start at 10% next month and increase to 25% by June. The tensions over the U.S. interest in the Danish territory have already affected Wall Street, with stocks rattled on Tuesday.In Davos, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney warned global leaders that the world is “facing a rupture,” emphasizing the risks of countries trying to avoid conflict by compliance. “There is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety. Well, it won’t,” Carney said.Carney also added that Canada opposes tariffs over Greenland. Trump’s speech is expected to focus largely on housing, and following his address, he will meet with leaders at the forum, according to the White House.Home sales in the U.S. are at a 30-year low with rising prices. Reports show elevated mortgage rates are keeping prospective home buyers out of the market. Rent, for several years, has been the largest contributor to inflation.This comes as Trump announced his plan to buy $200 billion in mortgage securities to help lower interest rates on home loans. He’s also called for a ban on large financial companies buying houses. Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:s
WASHINGTON —
President Donald Trump will deliver a speech today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, focusing on a plan to make housing more affordable, while his comments about acquiring Greenland continue to stir tensions with European allies.
“This will be an interesting trip. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but you are well represented,” Trump told reporters before departing the White House for Switzerland.
The speech comes shortly after he threatened to impose tariffs on Denmark and seven other allies due to their opposition to his interest in acquiring Greenland.
Trump announced that the tariffs would start at 10% next month and increase to 25% by June.
The tensions over the U.S. interest in the Danish territory have already affected Wall Street, with stocks rattled on Tuesday.
In Davos, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney warned global leaders that the world is “facing a rupture,” emphasizing the risks of countries trying to avoid conflict by compliance.
“There is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety. Well, it won’t,” Carney said.
Carney also added that Canada opposes tariffs over Greenland.
Trump’s speech is expected to focus largely on housing, and following his address, he will meet with leaders at the forum, according to the White House.
Home sales in the U.S. are at a 30-year low with rising prices. Reports show elevated mortgage rates are keeping prospective home buyers out of the market. Rent, for several years, has been the largest contributor to inflation.
This comes as Trump announced his plan to buy $200 billion in mortgage securities to help lower interest rates on home loans. He’s also called for a ban on large financial companies buying houses.
Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:
As Congress returns from recess this week, Sacramento Congressman Ami Bera says Republican lawmakers have privately expressed growing concern over President Donald Trump’s recent decisions.“I think they are very worried about what they’re seeing coming out of the President,” Bera said. “Even the actions with Venezuela — they weren’t consulted about any of this.”Bera, a Democrat who serves on the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees, returned Sunday from South America, where he met with Peru’s foreign minister. He said it was too dangerous for him to travel to Venezuela, describing the country as fragile following U.S. military action that led to the capture of President Nicolás Maduro.“They’re happy Maduro is gone,” Bera said of Peruvian officials. “They want to see a stable Venezuela, but they’re cautious because you still have the Maduro regime in place, and a lot could go wrong.”He added that while Peru welcomes Maduro’s removal, leaders there are concerned that ongoing instability could lead to increased migration into neighboring countries.Back in Washington, Congress faces a potential government shutdown at the end of the month. Bera said lawmakers must address unresolved issues, including healthcare subsidies and immigration policy, after the action in Minneapolis. He also pointed to President Trump’s recent remarks about taking control of Greenland, which Trump has said is necessary for national security.“President Trump is not listening to anyone,” Bera said. “Now he’s talking about invading Greenland, and our closest allies in Europe are pissed off with us. He’s alienating everyone. I hope when I get back there tomorrow, Republicans will say enough is enough — let’s go around the president and get some of this stuff done.”Despite the challenges, Bera said he remains optimistic that a shutdown can be avoided.“I do not think the government will shut down because we saw how it hurt Americans,” he said. “We should negotiate. There’s going to be give and take. As Democrats, we’re not going to get everything we want. That’s how we’ve passed the appropriations bills so far, and I hope we get it done this week.”Bera also highlighted bipartisan support for extending health care subsidies, noting that 17 Republicans joined Democrats to back the measure, despite opposition from President Trump.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
As Congress returns from recess this week, Sacramento Congressman Ami Bera says Republican lawmakers have privately expressed growing concern over President Donald Trump’s recent decisions.
“I think they are very worried about what they’re seeing coming out of the President,” Bera said. “Even the actions with Venezuela — they weren’t consulted about any of this.”
Bera, a Democrat who serves on the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees, returned Sunday from South America, where he met with Peru’s foreign minister. He said it was too dangerous for him to travel to Venezuela, describing the country as fragile following U.S. military action that led to the capture of President Nicolás Maduro.
“They’re happy Maduro is gone,” Bera said of Peruvian officials. “They want to see a stable Venezuela, but they’re cautious because you still have the Maduro regime in place, and a lot could go wrong.”
He added that while Peru welcomes Maduro’s removal, leaders there are concerned that ongoing instability could lead to increased migration into neighboring countries.
Back in Washington, Congress faces a potential government shutdown at the end of the month. Bera said lawmakers must address unresolved issues, including healthcare subsidies and immigration policy, after the action in Minneapolis. He also pointed to President Trump’s recent remarks about taking control of Greenland, which Trump has said is necessary for national security.
“President Trump is not listening to anyone,” Bera said. “Now he’s talking about invading Greenland, and our closest allies in Europe are pissed off with us. He’s alienating everyone. I hope when I get back there tomorrow, Republicans will say enough is enough — let’s go around the president and get some of this stuff done.”
Despite the challenges, Bera said he remains optimistic that a shutdown can be avoided.
“I do not think the government will shut down because we saw how it hurt Americans,” he said. “We should negotiate. There’s going to be give and take. As Democrats, we’re not going to get everything we want. That’s how we’ve passed the appropriations bills so far, and I hope we get it done this week.”
Bera also highlighted bipartisan support for extending health care subsidies, noting that 17 Republicans joined Democrats to back the measure, despite opposition from President Trump.
MEXICO CITY — Hugo Chávez called the United States “the empire,” and President George W. Bush “the devil.” Denouncing capitalism as “the road to hell,” he pushed an alternative economic model that nationalized key industries and redistributed wealth.
During his 14-year presidency of Venezuela, Chávez warned of a CIA plot to kill him and steal his country’s vast oil reserves, declaring: “Fatherland, socialism or death!”
Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, insists her country “will not be a colony” of any imperial force, but appears willing to tolerate President Trump’s demands that the U.S. get “total access” to Venezuela’s oil.
Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, has called for reforms to Venezuela’s energy sector to attract foreign investment and has freed dozens of dissidents once deemed enemies of the Chavista revolution.
“Venezuela is entering a new political era, one that allows for understanding despite political and ideological differences and diversity,” Rodríguez said last week. On Thursday, she sat down in Caracas, the capital, with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, whose agency helped plot Maduro’s abduction.
“It’s pretty interesting to see how a hard-line Chavista like Delcy has taken a 180-degree turn just one week after assuming the presidency,” said Imdat Oner, a former Turkish diplomat in Caracas.
Some analysts now wonder whether the days are numbered for Chavismo, which allowed Chávez to concentrate power under a banner extolling nationalism, populism and what he described as “socialism of the 21st century.”
“I think it’s in intensive care, and I don’t think it will leave the operating room,” said Enrique Krauze, a Mexican historian who wrote a biography of Chávez. The movement has been undermined by the U.S. attack, Krauze said, and discredited by authoritarianism, widespread corruption among leaders and an economic crisis triggered by falling oil prices and U.S. sanctions that prompted a quarter of the population to flee.
The ideas of Chávez, a charismatic figure who inspired a generation of Latin American leftists, have been irrevocably tarnished, Krauze said.
“Venezuelans are exhausted after 26 years of Chavismo,” Venezuelan journalist Boris Muñoz wrote in Time magazine. “Understandably, many are willing to accept American tutelage as the price to pay.”
Other political analysts say Chavismo remains strong, even if aspects of its identity have shifted since its namesake died of cancer 13 years ago.
Chavismo is not a fad. It is a lifestyle and a conviction with principles.
— Wilson Barrios
“What is left of Chavismo? Everything,” said Javier Corrales, a political science professor at Amherst College. Except for the removal of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who now face drug-trafficking charges in the U.S., “not a single person has been displaced,” Corrales said. “The inner circle, the military generals, the colectivos, the governors, the mayors — they’re all there.”
He noted that Chávez, despite his fierce anti-U.S. rhetoric, maintained extensive oil trade with the United States. The current deal-making with the Americans, he said, “isn’t a departure from anything that Chavismo ever represented.”
In Caracas, where scattered faded portraits of Chávez still grace walls, there is a sense that little of substance has shifted since U.S. bombs jolted residents awake in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 3. For the many Venezuelans who despised Maduro and his rule, that is disappointing. For those who support the government, it’s a relief.
On a sunny morning last week, about 2,000 Chavistas rallied on a downtown street.
“It won’t be easy to erase socialism overnight with a few bombs and the kidnapping of a president,” said Wilson Barrios, 37, who works at the Education Ministry.
“Chavismo is not a fad,” he said. “It is a lifestyle and a conviction with principles.”
Leader of the Pink Tide
Chávez, a former army officer inspired by Marxist thinkers and revolutionaries such as Simón Bolivar and Fidel Castro, was one of the most consequential political figures in recent Latin American history.
His election in 1998 helped unleash Latin America’s “pink tide,” in which leftist leaders swept into power from Argentina to Brazil to Ecuador.
His populist rhetoric and mixed-race background appealed to the masses in a nation long run by an elite minority of mostly white pro-business politicians with close ties to the U.S. and foreign oil giants.
At a rally in Caracas in 2024, a supporter holds a statue of late President Hugo Chávez as his successor, Nicolás Maduro, delivers a speech formalizing his candidacy to run for reelection.
(Getty Images)
Buoyed by record oil prices that inflated state coffers, Chávez launched social programs that cut poverty rates. His government built homes for the poor and provided free and subsidized staples for those in need. It opened hospitals and schools and slashed infant mortality.
An outspoken critic of U.S. intervention in Latin America and what he saw as rampant materialism in the “imperialist” United States, Chávez forged alliances with Washington’s adversaries, such as China, Cuba and Iran.
Addressing the U.N. General Assembly in 2006 a day after Bush gave a speech about the Iraq war, Chávez declared: “The devil was here yesterday … this place still smells of sulfur!”
Venezuela’s unhappy elites tried to unseat Chávez — mostly notably during a short-lived coup d’etat in 2002 — but he continued to win elections.
The tide began to shift after his 2013 death and the ascension of Maduro, a former trade union leader who lacked the charisma of his mentor. Then came a dramatic decline in oil prices — inevitable in an industry prone to boom-and-bust cycles.
As revenue sank, the economy collapsed amid soaring inflation. Bread and medicine lines stretched for hours. Malnutrition and infant mortality rose. Millions fled the country.
Support for Maduro plummeted, and the opposition handily beat his party’s candidates in 2015 parliamentary elections. Sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry during Trump’s first term made things worse for Maduro.
From the beginning, Maduro had been deepening the authoritarianism that had begun under Chávez, a model Corrales said was “based on the idea that the revolution will never relinquish power.”
Maduro claimed he won a disputed election in 2018, although the U.S. and other countries refused to recognize the results. In 2024, Maduro declared victory again, though tally sheets from voting machines collected by the opposition showed he lost by a wide margin.
Maduro clamped down on dissent, jailing hundreds of activists, ordering government forces to fire on protesters and triggering another exodus of migrants.
These days, the pink tide is far in the rear-view mirror, with conservatives winning recent elections in Ecuador, Argentina and Chile.
John Polga-Hecimovich, a Latin America expert at the United States Naval Academy, said emigration from Venezuela to neighboring countries in recent years has colored many people’s views of leftist politics in general and Chavismo in particular.
Across the region, it is now common for right-wing candidates to accuse left-wing opponents of being like Chávez and wanting to turn their country into “another Venezuela.”
True believers or pragmatists?
Rodríguez has deep revolutionary roots. Her father was a Marxist guerrilla who was killed after he abducted an American businessman in 1976. Rodríguez, an early disciple of Chávez, whom she still refers to as “comandante,” said constructing a socialist state was “personal revenge” for her father’s death.
But in recent years, as she rose in the ranks of Maduro’s government, Rodríguez showed a pragmatic side.
To help right the economy, she made deals with business elites and pushed a reform that allows Venezuelans to use the dollar instead of the bolívar. She helped change laws to make the energy industry more attractive to foreign capital.
Her efforts attracted the attention of White House officials last year as they weighed a possible operation to remove Maduro.
Now Rodríguez must walk a fine line, continuing to signal her revolutionary bona fides to hard-line Chavístas while placating Trump, who has warned that she will “pay a very big price” if she does not comply with U.S. demands.
She denounced the “terrible military aggression” carried out by U.S. forces, but also had what she called a “long and courteous phone conversation” with Trump, saying that with “mutual respect” they discussed a bilateral agenda to benefit both nations. He, in turn, called her “a terrific person.”
A pro-government supporter holds paintings of late President Hugo Chávez during a campaign rally on Nov. 18, 2021, in Caracas.
(Manaure Quintero / Getty Images)
Oner, the former diplomat, said her coziness with Washington does not mean Rodríguez has abandoned her revolutionary ideology. He believes she and other leaders have sacrificed some key tenets of Chavismo in order to save it.
“They are doing this for the regime’s survival,” Oner said. “They have to be flexible to stay in power, or they’ll lose everything.”
Still, there’s little doubt, Oner said, that Chávez would be disappointed.
“He would feel deeply betrayed by Delcy’s actions.”
Linthicum and McDonnell reported from Mexico City and James from California. Special correspondent Mery Mogollón contributed from Caracas, Venezuela.
While discussing his personal sauna and intermittent infrared sauna use, Kenny Chesney revealed this week he “does a lot of witchcraft stuff to my body.”
“Cold plunge, heat and ice. I do a lot of IV stuff. I do plasma exchange,” the country star told Rob Lowe on his “Literally!” podcast Thursday.
He explained that plasma exchange is “really intense, but you feel fantastic.”
Lowe joked that Chesney should start selling plasma exchanges, saying, “I’ve got my homework. Kenny Chesney’s plasma exchange. ‘Hi, I’m Kenny Chesney, get your very own bag.’”
While discussing his personal sauna and intermittent infrared sauna use, Kenny Chesney admitted he “does a lot of witchcraft stuff to my body.”(Michael Buckner/Billboard via Getty Images)
Plasma exchange involves blood being taken from a patient and the plasma removed and exchanged for a replacement fluid, usually donor plasma or another protein solution, according to the Cleveland Clinic. It is often used in blood cancers, disorders or after organ transplants.
In 2015, Chesney partnered with the Love Hope Strength Foundation’s Get on the List Campaign while on tour to create locations at his shows where fans to do cheek swabs to see if they were matches to be bone marrow donors, according to Cat Country 107.3.
Chesney said he does plasma exchange. (Erika Goldring/Getty Images for BMI)
“When Kate McMahon, with our tour promoter, explained it to me, it seemed not only so simple, but the kind of thing the No Shoes Nation is all about,” Chesney said in a press release at the time. “Give back to others, help where you can, live to the fullest and make a difference. I can’t believe they’ve found 25 matches, but I couldn’t be prouder for the fans who come out and live these songs with us.”
“There’s no plugging it in,” he told the magazine of the treadmill. “Your body does the work and moves the belt. Walking on it is hard, much less sprinting. Running on the Curve got me in better shape than I’ve ever been in.”
On giving up beer, the 57-year-old said: “Once I make up my mind to do something, that’s what I’m gonna do. I have that mental makeup. I can go down and hang out on the boat in the island and stay for an overextended vacation, enjoy it, then come home and cut it off.”
MEXICO CITY — Andrea Paola Hernández has one sister in Ecuador and another in London. She has cousins in Colombia, Chile, Argentina and the United States.
All fled poverty and political repression in Venezuela. Hernández, a human rights activist and outspoken critic of the country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, eventually left, too.
Since 2022 she has lived in Mexico City, working odd jobs for under-the-table pay because she lacks legal status. She cries most days, and dreams of reuniting with her far-flung relatives and friends. “We just want our lives back,” she said.
One of Maduro’s darkest legacies was the exodus of 8 million Venezuelans during his 13-year rule, one of the largest mass migrations in modern history. The flight of a third of the country’s population ripped apart families and has shaped the cultural and political landscape in the dozens of nations where Venezuelans have settled.
The surprise U.S. operation to capture Maduro this month has prompted mixed feelings among the diaspora. Relief, but also apprehension.
From Europe to Latin America to the U.S., those who left are asking whether they finally can go home. And if they do, what would they return to?
‘An ounce of justice’
Hernández was distressed by the U.S. attack, which killed dozens of people and is widely seen as illegal under international law. Still, she celebrated Maduro’s arrest as “an ounce of justice after decades of injustice.”
Andrea Paola Hernández, 30, an Afro-Indigenous, queer, feminist activist and writer from Maracaibo, Venezuela, stands for a portrait on the roof of her building on Friday in Mexico City. Hernández left Caracas in 2022.
(Alejandra Rajal / For The Times)
She is wary of what is to come.
President Trump has repeatedly touted Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, saying little about restoring democracy to the country. He says the U.S. will work with Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has been sworn in as Venezuela’s interim leader.
Hernández doesn’t trust Rodríguez, whom she believes is as responsible as anyone else for Venezuela’s misery: the eight-hour lines for food and medicine, the violent repression of street protests and the 2024 election that Maduro is widely believed to have rigged to stay in power.
Hernández blames the regime for personal pain, too. For the death of an aunt during the pandemic because there was no electricity to power ventilators; for the widespread hunger that caused her mother to tell her children: “We can have dinner or breakfast, but not both.”
Hernández, who believes she was being surveilled by Maduro’s government, says she will return to Venezuela only after elections have been held. “I’m not going back until I know that I’m not going to be killed or put in jail.”
‘Our identity was shattered’
Many in the diaspora are trying to reconcile conflicting emotions.
Damián Suárez, 37, an artist who left Venezuela for Chile in 2011 and who now lives in Mexico, said he was surprised to find himself defending the actions of Trump, a leader whose politics he otherwise disdains.
“We were fragmented and demoralized, and then someone came along and imprisoned the person responsible for all of that,” Suárez said. “When you’re drowning, you’re going to thank the person rescuing you, no matter who it is.”
Damián Suárez at his studio in the Condesa neighborhood on Friday in Mexico City. He arrived from Venezuela in 2011 and works as an artist and curator.
(Alejandra Rajal / For The Times)
Many countries have denounced the attack on Caracas and Trump’s vow to “run” the country in the short term as an unacceptable violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty.
For Suárez, those arguments ring hollow. For years, he said, the international community did little to mitigate the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.
“A cry for help from millions of people went unanswered,” Suárez said. “The only thing worse than intervention is indifference.”
One of the first embroidery art works made by Damián Suárez as a child on display in his studio, in la Condesa in Mexico City. To this day, he uses string as his primary material, a form of resistance and defiance rooted in the hand-labor traditions of the community he comes from.
(Alejandra Rajal / For The Times)
Suárez, who is organizing an art show about Venezuela, blames Maduro for what he sees as a “spiritual void” among migrants who lost not just their physical home but also the people who gave meaning to their lives.
“Our identity was shattered,” he said, comparing migrants with “plants ripped from their soil.”
And though Maduro now sits in a jail in Brooklyn facing drug trafficking charges, Suárez said he will not go back to Venezuela.
He has a Mexican passport now and helped his family migrate to Mexico City. After years of feeling stateless, he’s finally planted roots.
Building lives in new countries
Tomás Paez, a Venezuelan sociologist living in Spain who studies the diaspora, says that surveys over the years show that only about 20% of immigrants say they would return permanently to Venezuela. Many have built lives in their new countries, he said.
Paez, who left Venezuela several years ago as inflation spiraled and crime spiked, has grandchildren in Spain and said he would be loath to leave them.
“There isn’t a family in Venezuela that doesn’t have a son, a brother, an uncle, or a nephew living elsewhere,” he said, adding that 50% of households in Venezuela depend on remittances from abroad. “Migration has broadened Venezuela’s borders. We’re talking about a whole new geography.”
Migrants left Venezuela under diverse circumstances. Earlier waves left on flights with immigration documents. More recent departees often take clandestine overland routes into Colombia or Brazil or risked the dangerous journey across the Darien Gap into Central America on their way north.
The restriction of immigration law across Latin America has made it harder and harder for migrants to find refuge. One fourth of Venezuelan migrants globally lack legal immigration status, Paez said. And a majority don’t have Venezuelan passports, which are difficult to acquire or renew from abroad.
‘So tired of politics’
Throughout the Western Hemisphere, enclaves of Venezuelans have sprouted up, such as one in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, a Mexican town near the border with Guatemala.
Richard Osorio ended up there with his husband after a stint living in Texas. Osorio’s husband was deported from the U.S. in August as part of Trump’s crackdown on Venezuelan migrants. Osorio joined him in Mexico after a lawyer told him that U.S. immigration agents might target him, too, because he has tattoos, even though they are of birds and flowers.
The pair are undocumented in Mexico and work for cash at one of the Venezuelan restaurants that have sprung up in recent months.
On the day of the U.S. operation that resulted in Maduro’s arrest, hundreds of Venezuelans cheered the news in a local square. Osorio was working a 14-hour shift and missed the party. It was fine. He didn’t have the energy to celebrate.
“I’m so tired of politics, of these ups and downs that we’ve experienced for years,” Osorio said. “At every turn, there’s been suffering.”
Richard Osorio poses for a portrait in Juarez, Mexico, in July.
(Alejandro Cegarra / For The Times)
He had a hard time conjuring warm feelings for Trump given the U.S. president’s war on immigrants, including the deportation of more than 200 Venezuelans that he claimed were gang members to an infamous prison in El Salvador.
Maduro and Trump, he said, are more alike than many people admit. Neither cares for human rights or democracy. “We felt the same way in the U.S. as we did in Venezuela,” Osorio said.
He said he wouldn’t return to Venezuela until there were decent jobs and protections for the LGBTQ+ community. Life in southern Mexico was dangerous, he said, and he wasn’t earning enough to send money to relatives back home.
But returning to Venezuela didn’t feel like an option yet.
Daring to dream
Hernández, the writer and activist, said many in the diaspora are too traumatized to imagine a future in Venezuela. “We’ve all been deprived of so much,” she said.
But when she dares to dream, she pictures a Venezuela with free elections, functioning schools, hospitals and a vibrant cultural scene. She sees members of the diaspora returning, and improving the country with the skills they’ve learned abroad.
“We all want to go back and build,” she said. The question now is when.
Russell Dickerson is reflecting on his small-town roots.
The country music star, who grew up in Tennessee and is best known for hit songs like “Yours” and “Blue Tacoma,” has spent the past decade building a successful country music career that has taken him from rural fairgrounds to some of the biggest stages in the genre, including an upcoming performance at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
While speaking with Fox News Digital, Dickerson said that entertainment in his household growing up revolved around small-town traditions.
Russell Dickerson reflects on his small-town Tennessee roots and a full-circle career moment ahead of his Houston Rodeo appearance.(Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo )
“Absolutely… we didn’t go to the movies that much really. We went to rodeos, we went to tractor pulls and that was my redneck entertainment growing up.”
WATCH: COUNTRY STAR RUSSELL DICKERSON SAYS SMALL-TOWN UPBRINGING MEANT ‘RODEOS AND TRACTOR PULLS,’ NOT THE MOVIES
That upbringing is now coming back around in a very real way for the country singer as he prepares to take the stage at one of the most iconic rodeos in the country.
“Yes, I mean, surely we’ll bring my oldest son, Remington. Surely he’ll be there, ‘cuz this is the biggest show of my entire life. And he’s gotta see that. I think he’ll flip out.”
Russell Dickerson performs during a recent live concert as he prepares for a milestone appearance at the Houston Rodeo.(Gilbert Flores/Getty Images)
On Wednesday, Jan. 7, Dickerson helped bring a taste of RodeoHouston culture to New York City, taking part in a pop-up performance in Times Square as part of the event’s national promotion. The appearance gave fans a preview of the Western traditions that shaped his upbringing ahead of his upcoming HoustonRodeo performance.
“I’ve never seen this many cowboy hats and boots stomping around Times Square. It’s a beautiful sight, and country music is universal like that.”
The Times Square New York City appearance was just one part of a bigger moment for Dickerson, as the RodeoHouston invitation marked a major milestone in his career.
WATCH: RUSSELL DICKERSON SAYS COUNTRY MUSIC TOOK OVER TIMES SQUARE AHEAD OF RODEOHOUSTON MOMENT
Dickerson said the opportunity was especially meaningful as an artist.
“I remember when I got the call. I was just in the gym, you know, and my manager — they were like, there was all three of them on the phone. And I was like, ‘This is weird.’ And they’re like, ‘Hey, we just wanted to all tell you at the same time that you got invited to play the RodeoHouston.’ And I just, like, ‘Oh, I mean, absolute bucket list.’ So it’s already been said, but an absolute honor to be one of those artists that’s in that lineup this year.”
The moment comes as Dickerson is riding one of the biggest years of his career. His song “Happen to Me,” released in March 2025, took off and helped introduce his music to an even wider audience.
Dickerson said the response caught him by surprise, calling it “absolutely out of nowhere,” and thanked fans for embracing the song and showing up along the way.
Russell Dickerson poses with his wife, Kailey, with whom he shares two sons.(Taylor Hill/WireImage/Getty Images)
He is set to perform at RodeoHouston on March 5, 2026, joining a star-studded lineup that includes Chris Stapleton, Kelly Clarkson, Luke Bryan, Lainey Wilson, Tim McGraw, Lizzo and Cody Johnson, among others.
Protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown erupted across the United States this weekend, including outside the White House, following two recent shootings involving immigration officers.A border officer wounded two people in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday. In a separate event on Wednesday, an ICE agent fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis, where thousands marched on Saturday. Minnesota leaders urged demonstrators to remain peaceful after several protesters were arrested on Friday. The Trump administration insists that federal officers acted in self-defense in both shootings. The Department of Homeland Security is not backing down from what it has called its biggest-ever immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities. The agency highlighted the arrest of “criminal illegal aliens” in social media posts on Saturday. Meanwhile, the administration faces pushback from Democrats and certain Republicans on Capitol Hill. Critics are calling for a full, objective investigation into the Minneapolis shooting after state officials were left out of the probe.Some Democrats are calling to impeach DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, while others want to restrict funding for her department and add further restrictions on federal agents.Cellphone video below from the ICE agent who shot Renee Good shows the moments before and during the shooting. Viewer discretion is advised.
WASHINGTON —
Protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown erupted across the United States this weekend, including outside the White House, following two recent shootings involving immigration officers.
A border officer wounded two people in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday. In a separate event on Wednesday, an ICE agent fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis, where thousands marched on Saturday.
Minnesota leaders urged demonstrators to remain peaceful after several protesters were arrested on Friday.
The Trump administration insists that federal officers acted in self-defense in both shootings.
The Department of Homeland Security is not backing down from what it has called its biggest-ever immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities. The agency highlighted the arrest of “criminal illegal aliens” in social media posts on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the administration faces pushback from Democrats and certain Republicans on Capitol Hill. Critics are calling for a full, objective investigation into the Minneapolis shooting after state officials were left out of the probe.
Some Democrats are calling to impeach DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, while others want to restrict funding for her department and add further restrictions on federal agents.
Cellphone video below from the ICE agent who shot Renee Good shows the moments before and during the shooting. Viewer discretion is advised.
A day after a woman in Minneapolis was killed by an immigration federal agent, clergy leaders and advocates gathered on the steps of the downtown Los Angeles federal immigration building to honor her and denounce the killing.
Holding printed out photos of Nicole Renee Good, the woman shot in the head by a federal immigration agent, a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Thursday morning for a vigil organized by the Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice and joined by immigrant rights groups. They held signs that read “Justice for Renee.”
“We stand holding the fear and the terror and the sorrow, the deep grief that has transpired needlessly,” said Rev. Francisco Garcia. “Murder at the hands of our tax dollars. State sanctioned. This cannot be, this cannot stand, and we offer our continued witness to stand against these atrocities, against this evil.”
A woman protests the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good, while joining dozens who protested her death Wednesday by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, in front of the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles on January 8, 2026.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
One woman held a sign that read: “End ICE death squads.”
Good, a mother of three who had recently moved to Minneapolis, was driving her car Wednesday morning when she was stopped by federal immigration agents. Videos of the shooting have spread online and appear to show Good, 37, being told to get out of her car, with one agent walking and prying at the door handle. She is seen backing up when another agent stands in front of her car and, as she appears to drive forward, shoots her.
Good’s death has sparked protests that has put the city on edge as protesters have filled the streets, and similar protests have spread across the country.
In Sacramento, police said protesters vandalized a federal building during a march in response to the shooting. TV station KCRA reported that the protest was largely peaceful until a small group of protesters pushed open a security gate and threw rocks at parked cars and the building.
Ampara Rincon, holding a photo of Renee Nicole Good, watches as protesters leave flowers in Good’s memory a day after her shooting death by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, in front of the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles on January 8, 2026.
The Trump administration has defended the agent’s action, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calling it an “act of domestic terrorism” against ICE officers and accused Good of trying to run the agent over.
For months, the administration has contended that federal immigration actions are necessary in carrying out Trump’s mandate to secure the borders. On Thursday, the DHS released statistics that officials say demonstrate that ICE agents have faced an increase in vehicular assaults.
Local leaders have disputed the administration’s narrative that agents were defending themselves as Good attempted to run them down, with Mayor Jacob Frey calling the claim a “garbage narrative.” He called on the agency to withdraw its agents from the city.
For months, clergy leaders have organized vigils and marches in the downtown area after immigration raids began in Los Angeles last year. This time, they felt compelled to speak out because even though Minneapolis is some 1,900 miles away, Good’s death has been felt across the country, Rev. Carlos Rincon said.
“It’s a life that was taken in a horrible way,” Rincon said. “I felt that it was very important to be present, to lament, to pray, but also to denounce. You know what this administration is doing because it comes from the President.”
As an immigrant himself, Rincon said he has attended protests to bear witness. When a large protest broke out in Paramount last year, Rincon was there with a Bible and dressed in clergy wear to help de-escalate the conflict. Instead, he said, he was shot with rubber bullets and tear gassed by agents. Violent confrontations between federal immigration agents and bystanders have continued, and Rincon feared a moment like this was bound to happen.
“She made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of our community, and I wanted to honor her,” he said.
For many, the shooting was a sign of escalation by an administration that they said has turned against its own citizens. In California, ICE agents have opened fire while conducting immigration stops. On Aug. 16, masked U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers surrounded a man driving his truck and smashed his driver’s side window. When he tried to drive away, one agent shot at the truck three times, leaving bullet holes in the side of the car.
Dozens attend a protest over the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good who was shot dead Wednesday by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, in front of the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles on January 8, 2026.
In Chicago, Border Patrol agents shot a woman several times after they accused her of ramming her vehicle into an agent’s car. She was charged with felony assault, but the charges were ultimately dropped.
“We are experiencing fascism by an administration who is at war with its own citizens,” Martha Arevalo, executive director of CARECEN LA, said. “What we are seeing all over the country is unprecedented, and it’s an attack against all of us, undocumented or citizen, it doesn’t matter. We’re all at risk. We should all be worried. We should all be outraged.”
L.A. resident Kelsey Harper said she felt angry and shocked when she learned of Good’s death. She felt compelled to attend the event and support an end to immigration raids and violent confrontations.
“This only ends if enough people are active about it,” Harper said. “The most we can do is show up for each other.”
WASHINGTON — A highly confidential CIA assessment produced at the request of the White House warned President Trump of a wider conflict in Venezuela if he were to support the country’s democratic opposition once its president, Nicolás Maduro, was deposed, a person familiar with the matter told The Times.
The assessment was a tightly held CIA product commissioned at the request of senior policymakers before Trump decided whether to authorize Operation Absolute Resolve, the stunning U.S. mission that seized Maduro and his wife from their bedroom in Caracas over the weekend.
Announcing the results of the operation on Sunday, Trump surprised an anxious Venezuelan public when he was quick to dismiss the leadership of the democratic opposition — led by María Corina Machado, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Edmundo González Urrutia, the opposition candidate who won the 2024 presidential election that was ultimately stolen by Maduro.
Instead, Trump said his administration was working with Maduro’s handpicked vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has since been named the country’s interim president. The rest of Maduro’s government remains in place.
Endorsing the opposition would probably have required U.S. military backing, with the Venezuelan armed forces still under the control of loyalists to Maduro unwilling to relinquish power.
A second official said that the administration sought to avoid one of the cardinal mistakes of the invasion of Iraq, when the Bush administration ordered party loyalists of the deposed Saddam Hussein to be excluded from the country’s interim government. That decision, known as de-Baathification, led those in charge of Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons to establish armed resistance to the U.S. campaign.
The CIA product was not an assessment that was shared across the 18 government agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, whose head, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, was largely absent from deliberations — and who has yet to comment on the operation, despite CIA operatives being deployed in harm’s way before and throughout the weekend mission.
The core team that worked on Absolute Resolve included Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who met routinely over several months, sometimes daily, the source added.
Signs have emerged that Trump’s team was in communication with Rodríguez ahead of the operation, although the president has denied that his administration gave Rodríguez advance notice of Maduro’s ouster.
“There are a number of unanswered questions,” said Evan Ellis, who served in Trump’s first term planning State Department policy on Latin America, the Caribbean and international narcotics. “There may have been a cynical calculation that one can work with them.”
Rodríguez served as a point of contact with the Biden administration, experts note, and also was in touch with Richard Grenell, a top Trump aide who heads the Kennedy Center, early on in Trump’s second term, when he was testing engagement with Caracas.
While the federal indictment unsealed against Maduro after his seizure named several other senior officials in his government, Rodríguez’s name was notably absent.
Rodríguez was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim president Monday in a ceremony attended by diplomats from Russia, China and Iran. Publicly, the leader has offered mixed messages, at once vowing to prevent Venezuela from becoming a colonial outpost of an American empire, while also offering to forge a newly collaborative relationship with Washington.
“Of course, for political reasons, Delcy Rodríguez can’t say, ‘I’ve cut a deal with Trump, and we’re going to stop the revolution now and start working with the U.S.,” Ellis said.
“It’s not about the democracy,” he said. “It’s about him not wanting to work with Maduro.”
In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Machado said she had yet to speak with Trump since the U.S. operation over the weekend, but hoped to do so soon, offering to share her Nobel Peace Prize with him as a gesture of gratitude. Trump has repeatedly touted himself as a worthy recipient of the award.
“What he has done is historic,” Machado said, vowing to return to the country from hiding abroad since accepting the prize in Oslo last month.
“It’s a huge step,” she added, “towards a democratic transition.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top officials briefed leaders in Congress late Monday on the striking military operation in Venezuela amid mounting concerns that President Donald Trump is embarking on a new era of U.S. expansionism without consultation of lawmakers or a clear vision for running the South American country.Republican leaders entered the closed-door session at the Capitol largely supportive of Trump’s decision to forcibly remove Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro from power, but many Democrats emerged with more questions as Trump maintains a fleet of naval vessels off the Venezuelan coast and urges U.S. companies to reinvest in the country’s underperforming oil industry.A war powers resolution that would prohibit U.S. military action in Venezuela without approval from Congress is heading for a vote this week in the Senate.“We don’t expect troops on the ground,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., afterward.He said Venezuela’s new leadership cannot be allowed to engage in narcoterrorism or the trafficking of drugs into the U.S., which sparked Trump’s initial campaign of deadly boat strikes that have killed more than 115 people.“This is not a regime change. This is demand for a change in behavior,” Johnson said. “We don’t expect direct involvement in any other way beyond just coercing the new, the interim government, to get that going.”Johnson added, “We have a way of persuasion — because their oil exports, as you know, have been seized, and I think that will bring the country to a new governance in very short order,” he said.But Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, emerged saying, “There are still many more questions that need to be answered.”“What is the cost? How much is this going to cost the United States of America?” Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said afterward.Lawmakers were kept in the darkThe briefing, which stretched for two hours, came days after the surprise military action that few, if any, of the congressional leaders knew about until after it was underway — a remarkable delay in informing Congress, which has ultimate say over matters of war.Administration officials fielded a range of questions — from further involvement of U.S. troops on the ground to the role of the Venezuelan opposition leadership that appeared to have been sidelined by the Trump administration as the country’s vice president, Maduro ally Delcy Rodriguez, swiftly became the country’s interim president.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who brought drug trafficking charges against Maduro, all joined the classified session. It was intended for the called “gang of eight” leaders, which includes Intelligence committee leadership as well as the chairmen and ranking lawmakers on the national security committees.Asked afterward if he had any more clarity about who is actually running Venezuela, Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said, “I wish I could tell you yes, but I can’t.”Leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee — Republican chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and ranking Democrat Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois — said they should have been included in the classified briefing, arguing they have oversight of the Justice Department under Bondi.Earlier in the day, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warned that Trump’s action in Venezuela is only the beginning of a dangerous approach to foreign policy as the president publicly signals his interests in Colombia, Cuba and Greenland.“The American people did not sign up for another round of endless wars,” Schumer said.Afterward, Schumer said the briefing, “while extensive and long, posed far more questions than it answered.”Republicans hold mixed views reflective of the deepening schism within Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement as the president, who vowed to put America first, ventures toward overseas entanglements many lawmakers in both parties want to avoid — particularly after the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.No clarity on what comes nextNext steps in the country, and calls for elections in Venezuela, are uncertain.The Trump administration had been in talks with Rodríguez, who took the place of her ally Maduro and offered “to collaborate” with the Trump administration. Meanwhile, Trump has been dismissive of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who last month won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in her nation. Trump has said Machado lacks the “support” or “respect” to run the country.But Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a staunch Trump ally, said he plans to speak soon with Machado, and called her “very popular if you look at what happened in the last election.”“She eventually, I think, will be the president of Venezuela,” Scott said. “You know, this is going to be a process to get to a democracy. It’s not easy. There’s a lot of bad people still there, so it’s going to take time. They are going to have an election, and I think she will get elected.”Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has been a leading critic of the Trump campaign of boat strikes against suspected drug smugglers, said there are probably a dozen leaders around the world who the U.S. could say are in violation of an international law or human rights law.“And we have never gone in and plucked them out the country. So it sets a very bad precedent for doing this, and it’s unconstitutional,” Paul told reporters. “There’s no way you can say bombing a capital and removing the president of a foreign country is not an initiation of war.”__Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this story.
WASHINGTON —
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top officials briefed leaders in Congress late Monday on the striking military operation in Venezuela amid mounting concerns that President Donald Trump is embarking on a new era of U.S. expansionism without consultation of lawmakers or a clear vision for running the South American country.
Republican leaders entered the closed-door session at the Capitol largely supportive of Trump’s decision to forcibly remove Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro from power, but many Democrats emerged with more questions as Trump maintains a fleet of naval vessels off the Venezuelan coast and urges U.S. companies to reinvest in the country’s underperforming oil industry.
A war powers resolution that would prohibit U.S. military action in Venezuela without approval from Congress is heading for a vote this week in the Senate.
“We don’t expect troops on the ground,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., afterward.
He said Venezuela’s new leadership cannot be allowed to engage in narcoterrorism or the trafficking of drugs into the U.S., which sparked Trump’s initial campaign of deadly boat strikes that have killed more than 115 people.
“This is not a regime change. This is demand for a change in behavior,” Johnson said. “We don’t expect direct involvement in any other way beyond just coercing the new, the interim government, to get that going.”
Johnson added, “We have a way of persuasion — because their oil exports, as you know, have been seized, and I think that will bring the country to a new governance in very short order,” he said.
But Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, emerged saying, “There are still many more questions that need to be answered.”
“What is the cost? How much is this going to cost the United States of America?” Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said afterward.
Lawmakers were kept in the dark
The briefing, which stretched for two hours, came days after the surprise military action that few, if any, of the congressional leaders knew about until after it was underway — a remarkable delay in informing Congress, which has ultimate say over matters of war.
Administration officials fielded a range of questions — from further involvement of U.S. troops on the ground to the role of the Venezuelan opposition leadership that appeared to have been sidelined by the Trump administration as the country’s vice president, Maduro ally Delcy Rodriguez, swiftly became the country’s interim president.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who brought drug trafficking charges against Maduro, all joined the classified session. It was intended for the called “gang of eight” leaders, which includes Intelligence committee leadership as well as the chairmen and ranking lawmakers on the national security committees.
Asked afterward if he had any more clarity about who is actually running Venezuela, Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said, “I wish I could tell you yes, but I can’t.”
Leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee — Republican chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and ranking Democrat Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois — said they should have been included in the classified briefing, arguing they have oversight of the Justice Department under Bondi.
Earlier in the day, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warned that Trump’s action in Venezuela is only the beginning of a dangerous approach to foreign policy as the president publicly signals his interests in Colombia, Cuba and Greenland.
“The American people did not sign up for another round of endless wars,” Schumer said.
Afterward, Schumer said the briefing, “while extensive and long, posed far more questions than it answered.”
Republicans hold mixed views reflective of the deepening schism within Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement as the president, who vowed to put America first, ventures toward overseas entanglements many lawmakers in both parties want to avoid — particularly after the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
No clarity on what comes next
Next steps in the country, and calls for elections in Venezuela, are uncertain.
The Trump administration had been in talks with Rodríguez, who took the place of her ally Maduro and offered “to collaborate” with the Trump administration. Meanwhile, Trump has been dismissive of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who last month won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in her nation. Trump has said Machado lacks the “support” or “respect” to run the country.
But Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a staunch Trump ally, said he plans to speak soon with Machado, and called her “very popular if you look at what happened in the last election.”
“She eventually, I think, will be the president of Venezuela,” Scott said. “You know, this is going to be a process to get to a democracy. It’s not easy. There’s a lot of bad people still there, so it’s going to take time. They are going to have an election, and I think she will get elected.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has been a leading critic of the Trump campaign of boat strikes against suspected drug smugglers, said there are probably a dozen leaders around the world who the U.S. could say are in violation of an international law or human rights law.
“And we have never gone in and plucked them out the country. So it sets a very bad precedent for doing this, and it’s unconstitutional,” Paul told reporters. “There’s no way you can say bombing a capital and removing the president of a foreign country is not an initiation of war.”
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Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this story.
President Donald Trump said Saturday the U.S. would tap into Venezuela’s oil reserves following President Nicolás Maduro’s capture. Trump wants U.S. oil companies to invest in Venezuela’s oil industry, which holds the largest crude oil reserves in the world. The country has about 303 billion barrels of crude, roughly a fifth of the world’s oil reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The Get the Facts Data Team compiled data to explain the state of Venezuela’s oil industry and what it means for the U.S. Which countries have the highest oil reserves?Oil reserves refer to estimates of crude oil underground that can be recovered in the future, according to the EIA. Behind Venezuela, Saudi Arabia has the second-highest amount of reserves at 267 billion, about 12% less than Venezuela. The U.S. has about 74 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, roughly 76% less than Venezuela.How much oil does the U.S. import from Venezuela? The U.S. doesn’t import as much oil from Venezuela as it did in prior decades. At its peak, the U.S. imported 61.7 million barrels of crude in Oct. 1997. That figure has since dropped to 4.2 million barrels, a decline of about 93%. Imports of Venezuelan crude oil fell sharply in 2019 after the U.S. imposed sanctions on the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA. Those sanctions were later eased in Nov. 2022, when the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control granted waivers to Chevron, allowing it to resume exporting crude from its joint venture operations in Venezuela to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.The country accounts for about 1% of the crude oil the U.S. imports. Canada supplies 51% of the crude oil the U.S. imports, roughly 4.4 million barrels per day. Which countries import Venezuela oil?China imports the majority of Venezuela’s oil. In 2023, China accounted for 68% of imports. The U.S. imported the second highest at 23%. From 2019 to 2023, Venezuela exported more heavy-sour oil than any other type of oil. Heavy-sour oils contain high sulfur content, requiring more processing to remove the sulfur. Venezuela exported about 782,000 barrels per day of heavy-sour in 2019. In 2023, that number dropped to about 618,000 barrels per day.PHNjcmlwdCB0eXBlPSJ0ZXh0L2phdmFzY3JpcHQiPiFmdW5jdGlvbigpeyJ1c2Ugc3RyaWN0Ijt3aW5kb3cuYWRkRXZlbnRMaXN0ZW5lcigibWVzc2FnZSIsKGZ1bmN0aW9uKGUpe2lmKHZvaWQgMCE9PWUuZGF0YVsiZGF0YXdyYXBwZXItaGVpZ2h0Il0pe3ZhciB0PWRvY3VtZW50LnF1ZXJ5U2VsZWN0b3JBbGwoImlmcmFtZSIpO2Zvcih2YXIgYSBpbiBlLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdKWZvcih2YXIgcj0wO3I8dC5sZW5ndGg7cisrKXtpZih0W3JdLmNvbnRlbnRXaW5kb3c9PT1lLnNvdXJjZSl0W3JdLnN0eWxlLmhlaWdodD1lLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdW2FdKyJweCJ9fX0pKX0oKTs8L3NjcmlwdD4=
WASHINGTON —
President Donald Trump said Saturday the U.S. would tap into Venezuela’s oil reserves following President Nicolás Maduro’s capture.
Trump wants U.S. oil companies to invest in Venezuela’s oil industry, which holds the largest crude oil reserves in the world. The country has about 303 billion barrels of crude, roughly a fifth of the world’s oil reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The Get the Facts Data Team compiled data to explain the state of Venezuela’s oil industry and what it means for the U.S.
Which countries have the highest oil reserves?
Oil reserves refer to estimates of crude oil underground that can be recovered in the future, according to the EIA.
Behind Venezuela, Saudi Arabia has the second-highest amount of reserves at 267 billion, about 12% less than Venezuela.
The U.S. has about 74 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, roughly 76% less than Venezuela.
How much oil does the U.S. import from Venezuela?
The U.S. doesn’t import as much oil from Venezuela as it did in prior decades. At its peak, the U.S. imported 61.7 million barrels of crude in Oct. 1997. That figure has since dropped to 4.2 million barrels, a decline of about 93%.
Imports of Venezuelan crude oil fell sharply in 2019 after the U.S. imposed sanctions on the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA.
Those sanctions were later eased in Nov. 2022, when the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control granted waivers to Chevron, allowing it to resume exporting crude from its joint venture operations in Venezuela to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.
The country accounts for about 1% of the crude oil the U.S. imports.
Canada supplies 51% of the crude oil the U.S. imports, roughly 4.4 million barrels per day.
Which countries import Venezuela oil?
China imports the majority of Venezuela’s oil. In 2023, China accounted for 68% of imports. The U.S. imported the second highest at 23%.
From 2019 to 2023, Venezuela exported more heavy-sour oil than any other type of oil. Heavy-sour oils contain high sulfur content, requiring more processing to remove the sulfur.
Venezuela exported about 782,000 barrels per day of heavy-sour in 2019. In 2023, that number dropped to about 618,000 barrels per day.
WASHINGTON — Venezuela risks “a second strike” if its interim government doesn’t acquiesce to U.S. demands. Cuba is “ready to fall,” and Colombia is “very sick, too.”
Iran may get “hit very hard” if its government cracks down on protesters. And Denmark risks U.S. intervention, as well, because “we need Greenland,” President Trump said.
In just 37 minutes while speaking with reporters Sunday aboard Air Force One, Trump threatened to attack five countries, both allies and adversaries, with the might of the U.S. military — an extraordinary turn for a president who built his political career rejecting traditional conservative views on the exercise of American power and vowing to put America first.
The president’s threats come as a third of the U.S. naval fleet remains stationed in the Caribbean, after Trump launched a daring attack on Venezuela that seized its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife over the weekend.
The goal, U.S. officials said, was to show the Venezuelan government and the wider world what the American military is capable of — and to compel partners and foes alike to adhere to Trump’s demands through intimidation, rather than commit the U.S. military to more complex, conventional, long-term engagements.
It is the deployment of overwhelming and spectacular force in surgical military operations — Maduro’s capture, last year’s strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, assassinations of Islamic State leadership and Iran’s top general in Iraq — that demonstrate Trump as a brazen leader willing to risk war, thereby effectively avoiding it, one Trump administration official said, explaining the president’s strategic thinking.
Yet experts and former Trump aides warn the president’s approach risks miscalculation, alienating vital allies and emboldening U.S. competitors.
At a Security Council meeting Monday at the United Nations in New York — called by Colombia, a long-standing and major non-North Atlantic Treaty Oranization ally to the United States — Trump’s moves were widely condemned. “Violations of the U.N. Charter,” a French diplomat told the council, “chips away at the very foundation of international order.”
Even the envoy from Russia, which has cultivated historically strong ties with the Trump administration, said the White House operation was an act of “banditry,” marking “a return to the era of illegality and American dominance through force, chaos and lawlessness.”
Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark with vast natural resources, drew particular concern across Europe on Monday, with leaders across the continent warning the United States against an attack that would violate the sovereignty of a NATO ally and European Union member state.
“That’s enough now,” Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said after Trump told reporters that his attention would turn to the world’s largest island in a matter of weeks.
“If the United States decides to militarily attack another NATO country, then everything would stop,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, told local press. “That includes NATO, and therefore, post-World War II security.”
Trump also threatened to strike Iran, where anti-government protests have spread throughout the country in recent days. Trump had previously said the U.S. military was “locked and loaded” if Iranian security forces begin firing on protesters, “which is their custom.”
“The United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump wrote on social media on Jan. 2, hours before launching the Venezuela mission. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
In Colombia, there was widespread outrage after Trump threatened military action against leftist President Gustavo Petro, whom Trump accused, without evidence, of running “cocaine mills and cocaine factories.”
Petro is a frequent critic of the American president and has slammed as illegal a series of lethal U.S. airstrikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
“Stop slandering me,” Petro wrote on X, warning that any U.S. attempts against his presidency “will unleash the people’s fury.”
Petro, a former leftist guerrilla, said he would go to war to defend Colombia.
“I swore not to touch a weapon again,” he said. “But for the homeland, I will take up arms.”
Trump’s threats have strained relations with Colombia, a devoted U.S. ally. For decades, the countries have shared military intelligence, a robust trade relationship and a multibillion-dollar fight against drug trafficking.
Even some of Petro’s domestic critics have comes to his defense. Presidential candidate Juan Manuel Galán, who opposes Petro’s rule, said Colombia’s sovereignty “must be defended.”
“Colombia is not Venezuela,” Galán wrote on X. “It is not a failed state, and we will not allow it to be treated as such. Here we have institutions, democracy and sovereignty that must be defended.”
The president of Mexico, another longtime U.S. ally and its largest trading partner, has also spoken out forcefully against the American operation in Caracas, and said the Trump administration’s aggressive foreign policy in Latin America threatens the stability of the region.
“We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said in her daily news conference Monday. “The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: Intervention has never brought democracy, has never generated well-being or lasting stability.”
She addressed Trump’s comments over the weekend that drugs were “pouring” through Mexico, and that the United States was “going to have to do something.”
Trump has been threatening action against cartels for months, with some members of his administration suggesting that the United States may soon carry out drone strikes on drug laboratories and other targets inside Mexican territory. Sheinbaum has repeatedly said such strikes would be a clear violation of Mexican sovereignty.
“Sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples are non-negotiable,” she said. “They are fundamental principles of international law and must always be respected without exception.”
Cuba also rejected Trump’s threat of a military intervention there, after Trump’s secretary of State, Marco Rubio, himself the descendant of Cuban immigrants, suggested that Havana may be next in Washington’s crosshairs.
“We call on the international community to stop this dangerous, aggressive escalation and to preserve peace,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel posted on social media.
The U.S. attacks on Venezuela, and Trump’s threats of additional military ventures, have caused deep unease in a relatively peaceful region that has seen fewer interstate wars in recent decades than Europe, Asia or Africa.
It also caused unease among some Trump supporters, who remembered his pledge to get the United States out of “endless” military conflicts for good.
“I was the first president in modern times,” Trump said, accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, “to start no new wars.”
Wilner reported from Washington and Linthicum from Mexico City.
MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday again condemned the U.S. capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, criticizing the Trump administration’s aggressive foreign policy in Latin America for threatening the stability of the hemisphere.
“We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” Sheinbaum said in her daily news conference. “The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: Intervention has never brought democracy, has never generated well-being or lasting stability.”
“Unilateral action and invasion cannot be the basis of international relations in the 21st century,” she said. “They don’t lead to peace or development.”
Her comments came as Trump on Sunday threatened more military strikes on Venezuela — and raised the possibility of intervention in Mexico as well as in Cuba, Colombia and the Danish territory of Greenland. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said drugs were “pouring” through Mexico and that “we’re going to have to do something.”
He has been threatening action against cartels for months, with some members of his administration suggesting that the U.S. may soon carry out drone strikes on drug laboratories and other targets inside Mexican territory. Sheinbaum has repeatedly said such strikes would be a clear violation of Mexican sovereignty.
“Sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples are non-negotiable,” she said. “They are fundamental principles of international law and must always be respected without exception.”
Sheinbaum is part of a bloc of leftist Latin American leaders who have spoken out forcefully against the U.S. after its surprise attack on Caracas on Saturday morning. U.S. special forces abducted Maduro, Venezuela’s leftist president, and his wife, Cilia Flores, the former head of the National Assembly.
Venezuela says at least 40 people were killed in the attack. The couple have been indicted in New York’s Southern District on drug trafficking charges.
Right-wing leaders in the region, on the other hand, have cheered the removal of Maduro from power.
At her news conference on Monday, Sheinbaum called for cooperation among countries in the region, at one point quoting Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.
“Washington called for good faith and justice toward all nations, and for the cultivation of peace and harmony among all,” she said.
Nations cannot impose their wills on other countries, she said, and do not have the right to their resources. That was a clear reference to Trump’s stated desire to exploit Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.
“Only the people can build their own future, decide their path, exercise sovereignty over their natural resources, and freely define their form of government,” she said. “Each nation has the inalienable right to decide its political, economic, and social model, free from external pressure.”
Sheinbaum warned that infighting among Latin American nations would hurt the region economically.
“Global economic competition, particularly in the face of Asia’s growth, is not achieved through the use of force … but rather through cooperation for development, productive investment, innovation, education and social welfare,” she said.
She said Mexico was committed to fighting organized crime, and reminded the U.S. that it fuels that dynamic.
“The violence plaguing our country is partly caused by the illegal flow of high-powered weapons from the United States into Mexico, as well as the serious problem of drug consumption in our neighboring country,” she said.
By invading Venezuela, President Trump just lit America’s eternal exploding cigar.
For over 175 years — ever since the United States conquered half of Mexico — nearly every president has messed with Latin America while telling the rest of the world to stay the hell out.
From the Mexican American War to the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Panama Canal to NAFTA, we’ve only looked out for ourselves in Latin America even while wrapping our actions in the banner of benevolence.
It’s rarely ended well for anyone involved — especially us. Many of the leaders we put into power became despots we tolerated until they ran their course, like Panama’s Manuel Noriega. The political upheaval we helped create has led generations of Latin Americans to migrate to el Norte, fundamentally changing our country even as too many Americans think people like my family should have stayed in their ancestral homes.
His message to the world: Venezuela is ours until we say so, just like the rest of Latin America. And if allies and enemies alike still didn’t get the hint, Trump announced an updated Monroe Doctrine — the idea that the U.S. can do whatever it wants in the Western Hemisphere — called the “Donroe Doctrine.”
Because of course he did.
No one in Washington should be more versed in this terrible history than Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the child of Cubans who fled the island when it was ruled by the U.S.-backed caudillo Fulgencio Batista.
Rubio grew up in an exile community that saw Batista’s replacement, Fidel Castro, remain in power for decades, despite a U.S. embargo. As one of Florida’s U.S. senators, Rubio represented millions of Latin American immigrants who had fled civil wars sparked by the U.S. in one way or another.
On Saturday, Rubio looked on silently as Trump threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro to “watch his ass.” When it was Rubio’s turn to take questions from reporters, he said Cuban leaders “should be concerned” and offered a warning to the rest of the world: “Don’t play games with this president in office, because it’s not going to turn out well.”
In Latin America, few are more reviled than the vendido — the sellout. Betraying one’s country for personal or political gain is an original sin dating back to the tribes who aligned with Spanish conquistadors to take down repressive empires, only to suffer the same sad end themselves. Vendidos have dominated the region’s history and stilted its development, with leaders — Mexico’s Porfirio Diaz, the Somozas of Nicaragua, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic — more than happy to side with the yanquis at the expense of their own countrymen.
Rubio belongs to this long, sordid lineup — and in many ways, he’s the worst vendido of them all.
Then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), left, listens during a 2016 president debate with candidate Donald Trump.
(Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press)
I still remember the fresh-faced, idealistic guy trying to pass a bipartisan amnesty bill in 2013. Though too right-wing for my taste, he seemed like a Latino politician who could thread the needle between liberals and conservatives, gringos and us.
It was wonderful to see him call out Trump’s boorishness when the two ran against each other in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. He told CNN’s Jake Tapper, in words that sound more prophetic than ever, “For years to come, there are many people … that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump because this is not going to end well, one way or the other.”
The thirst for power has a way of corrupting even the most idealistic hearts, alas. Rubio ended up endorsing Trump in 2016, supporting Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged and proclaiming at the 2024 Republican National Convention that Trump “has not just transformed our party, he has inspired a movement.”
Rubio’s reward for his boot-licking? He sets our foreign policy agenda, which is like putting an arsonist in charge of a fireworks stall.
I’m sure all of this comes off as leftist babble to the Venezuelan diaspora, many of whom cheered Maduro’s fate from Spain to Mexico, Miami to Los Angeles. Only a deluded pendejo could support what Maduro wrought on Venezuela, which was a prosperous country and a relatively stable U.S. ally for decades as the rest of South America teetered from one crisis to another.
But for Trump, toppling Maduro was never about the well-being of Venezuelans or bringing democracy to their country; it was about securing a foothold to flex American power and enrich the U.S.
Back in 2022, when Rubio was still a senator, he advocated for Venezuelans to be eligible for temporary protected status, which is granted to citizens of countries considered too dangerous to return to. At the time, Rubio argued that “failure to do so would result in a very real death sentence for countless Venezuelans who have fled their country.”
Rubio has long fashioned himself as a modern-day Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan who led the liberation of South America from Spain and who has been a hero to many Latinos ever since.
But even Bolívar knew to be skeptical of American hegemony, writing in an 1829 letter that the U.S. “seems destined by Providence to plague [Latin] America with miseries in the name of Freedom.”
Plague, thy name is Marco Rubio. By pushing Trump to run rampant over Latin America, you’re setting in motion the same old song of U.S. meddling that ties your family and mine. By letting Maduro’s cronies remain in power if they play along with you and Trump, even though they stole an election in 2024, proves you’re as much for the Venezuelan people as, well, Maduro.
Ahn Sung-ki, one of South Korean cinema’s biggest stars whose prolific 60-year career and positive, gentle public image earned him the nickname “The Nation’s Actor,” died Monday. He was 74.The death of Ahn, who had been had blood cancer for years, was announced by his agency, the Artist Company, and the Seoul-based Soonchunhyang University Hospital.”We feel deep sorrow at the sudden, sad news, pray for the eternal rest of the deceased and offer our heartfelt condolences to his bereaved family members,” the Artist Company said in a statement. Born to a filmmaker in the southeastern city of Daegu in 1952, Ahn made his debut as a child actor in the movie “The Twilight Train” in 1957. He subsequently appeared in about 70 movies as a child actor before he left the film industry to live an ordinary life. In 1970, Ahn entered Seoul’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies as a Vietnamese major. Ahn said he graduated with top honors but failed to land jobs at big companies, who likely saw his Vietnamese major largely useless after a communist victory in the Vietnam War in 1975.After spending a few years unemployed, Ahn returned to the film industry in 1977 believing he could still excel in acting. In 1980, he rose to fame for his lead role in Lee Jang-ho’s “Good, Windy Days,” a hit coming-of-age movie about the struggle of working-class men from rural areas during the country’s rapid rise. Ahn won the best new actor award in the prestigious Grand Bell Awards, the Korean version of the Academy Awards.He later starred in a series of highly successful and critically acclaimed movies, sweeping best actor awards and becoming arguably the country’s most popular actor in much of the 1980-90s.Some of his memorable roles included a Buddhist monk in 1981’s “Mandara,” a beggar in 1984’s “Whale Hunting,” a Vietnam War veteran-turned-novelist in 1992’s “White Badge,” a corrupt police officer in 1993’s “Two Cops,” a murderer in 1999’s “No Where To Hide,” a special forces trainer in 2003’s “Silmido” and a devoted celebrity manager in 2006’s “Radio Star.”Ahn had collected dozens of trophies in major movie awards in South Korea, including winning the Grand Bell Awards for best actor five times, an achievement no other South Korean actors have matched yet. Ahn built up an image as a humble, trustworthy and family-oriented celebrity who avoided major scandals and maintained a quiet, stable personal life. Past public surveys chose Ahn as South Korea’s most beloved actor and deserving of the nickname “The Nation’s Actor.” Ahn said he earlier felt confined with his “The Nation’s Actor” labeling but eventually thought that led him down the right path. In recent years, local media has given other stars similar honorable nicknames, but Ahn was apparently the first South Korean actor who was dubbed as “The Nation’s Actor.” “I felt I should do something that could match that title. But I think that has eventually guided me on a good direction,” Ahn said in an interview with Yonhap news agency in 2023.In media interviews, Ahn couldn’t choose what his favorite movie was, but said that his role as a dedicated, hardworking manger for a washed-up rock singer played by Park Jung-hoon resembled himself in real life the most. Ahn was also known for his reluctance to do love scenes. He said said he was too shy to act romantic scenes and sometimes asked directors to skip steamy scenes if they were only meant to add spice to movies.”I don’t do well on acting like looking at someone who I don’t love with loving eyes and kissing really romantically. I feel shy and can’t express such emotions well,” Ahn said in an interview with the Shindonga magazine in 2007. “Simply, I’m clumsy on that. So I couldn’t star in such movies a lot. But ultimately, that was a right choice for me.”Ahn is survived by his wife and their two sons. A mourning station at a Seoul hospital was to run until Friday.
SEOUL, South Korea —
Ahn Sung-ki, one of South Korean cinema’s biggest stars whose prolific 60-year career and positive, gentle public image earned him the nickname “The Nation’s Actor,” died Monday. He was 74.
The death of Ahn, who had been had blood cancer for years, was announced by his agency, the Artist Company, and the Seoul-based Soonchunhyang University Hospital.
“We feel deep sorrow at the sudden, sad news, pray for the eternal rest of the deceased and offer our heartfelt condolences to his bereaved family members,” the Artist Company said in a statement.
Born to a filmmaker in the southeastern city of Daegu in 1952, Ahn made his debut as a child actor in the movie “The Twilight Train” in 1957. He subsequently appeared in about 70 movies as a child actor before he left the film industry to live an ordinary life.
In 1970, Ahn entered Seoul’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies as a Vietnamese major. Ahn said he graduated with top honors but failed to land jobs at big companies, who likely saw his Vietnamese major largely useless after a communist victory in the Vietnam War in 1975.
After spending a few years unemployed, Ahn returned to the film industry in 1977 believing he could still excel in acting. In 1980, he rose to fame for his lead role in Lee Jang-ho’s “Good, Windy Days,” a hit coming-of-age movie about the struggle of working-class men from rural areas during the country’s rapid rise. Ahn won the best new actor award in the prestigious Grand Bell Awards, the Korean version of the Academy Awards.
He later starred in a series of highly successful and critically acclaimed movies, sweeping best actor awards and becoming arguably the country’s most popular actor in much of the 1980-90s.
Some of his memorable roles included a Buddhist monk in 1981’s “Mandara,” a beggar in 1984’s “Whale Hunting,” a Vietnam War veteran-turned-novelist in 1992’s “White Badge,” a corrupt police officer in 1993’s “Two Cops,” a murderer in 1999’s “No Where To Hide,” a special forces trainer in 2003’s “Silmido” and a devoted celebrity manager in 2006’s “Radio Star.”
KIN CHEUNG
FILE – South Korean actor Ahn Sung-ki attends an event as part of the 11th Pusan International Film Festival in Busan, South Korea, Oct. 13, 2006.
Ahn had collected dozens of trophies in major movie awards in South Korea, including winning the Grand Bell Awards for best actor five times, an achievement no other South Korean actors have matched yet.
Ahn built up an image as a humble, trustworthy and family-oriented celebrity who avoided major scandals and maintained a quiet, stable personal life. Past public surveys chose Ahn as South Korea’s most beloved actor and deserving of the nickname “The Nation’s Actor.”
Ahn said he earlier felt confined with his “The Nation’s Actor” labeling but eventually thought that led him down the right path. In recent years, local media has given other stars similar honorable nicknames, but Ahn was apparently the first South Korean actor who was dubbed as “The Nation’s Actor.”
“I felt I should do something that could match that title. But I think that has eventually guided me on a good direction,” Ahn said in an interview with Yonhap news agency in 2023.
In media interviews, Ahn couldn’t choose what his favorite movie was, but said that his role as a dedicated, hardworking manger for a washed-up rock singer played by Park Jung-hoon resembled himself in real life the most.
Ahn was also known for his reluctance to do love scenes. He said said he was too shy to act romantic scenes and sometimes asked directors to skip steamy scenes if they were only meant to add spice to movies.
“I don’t do well on acting like looking at someone who I don’t love with loving eyes and kissing really romantically. I feel shy and can’t express such emotions well,” Ahn said in an interview with the Shindonga magazine in 2007. “Simply, I’m clumsy on that. So I couldn’t star in such movies a lot. But ultimately, that was a right choice for me.”
Ahn is survived by his wife and their two sons. A mourning station at a Seoul hospital was to run until Friday.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Like many other Venezuelans, Ramón Arape said the image of ex-President Nicolás Maduro in U.S. custody was a stunning — and welcome — sight.
“I confess that I felt a sense of relief when I saw the photo of Maduro in the hands of los gringos,” said Arape, 59, a welder and father of three.
Less reassuring, however, were President Trump’s comments about Washington’s determination to take over the government and the oil industry, the nation’s defining natural resource.
“We’ve already had it with outsiders — Cubans, Iranians, Chinese — and now the Americans come along and want to name leaders and sell our oil?” said Arape, referring to a series of foreign allies sought out by the socialist governments of Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez. “It’s a violation of law and sovereignty.”
Many Venezuelans are hoping for a deliverance, but not, it seems, at the cost of selling off the country’s riches. How that plays out with Trump’s view that Venezuela “stole” a U.S.-built oil industry is one of the big questions as Washington embarks on a massive nation-building endeavor in South America.
Like many other nations, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in the 20th century, a process begun in the 1970s under a U.S.-allied government in Caracas. Several U.S. oil giants later made claims of illegal expropriation against the government of Chávez, Maduro’s mentor. But few here seemed inclined to believe in Trump’s assertion, made on social media, that Venezuela must return “all of the Oil, Land and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
Sunday was just a day after the shocking events that saw U.S. forces sweep into the capital and snatch Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from Miraflores Palace, the seat of government, and fly them out of the country — and, eventually, to New York, where both face drug-trafficking charges. Both deny the charges, calling them U.S. propaganda.
Venezuelans with internet access had the opportunity to view the unlikely image of Maduro, bundled up for distinctly non-tropical temperatures and flanked by federal agents, doing a perp walk at a military base in New York and apparently telling onlookers: “Happy New Year.”
In the Venezuelan capital, life was slowly returning to a semblance of normalcy on Sunday, albeit on a weekend pace.
Cars and some public transport circulated on streets that had been deserted the day before. People ventured cautiously from their homes after spending much of Saturday indoors, fearing the explosions and a potential aftermath. Many went to church in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation. Sermons called for peace.
There was a palpable sense of relief that the threat of war had abated, at least temporarily. Many were still absorbing the almost unbelievable turn of events that has surely transformed the nation’s future — albeit in still unpredictable ways.
But there was an overriding determination, among both supporters and critics of the ousted president, that the country’s oil and other resources were sacrosanct, and not to be handed over to the United States — or anyone else.
“Really it was very emotional to finally see Maduro and Cilia handcuffed and prisoners,” said Fernando González, 29, a plumber who says he supports Marína Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime opposition leader. “Those two have to pay for their crimes. For that we thank Trump. But that’s not to say we are in agreement with everything he seems to want to do.”
The president’s determination to “run” Venezuela — and take over its oil — didn’t go down well with González, a fervent nationalist in a country with a long history of nationalist activism.
“This is all a farce if they get rid of Maduro just to appropriate and sell the oil,” he said. “It can’t be that way. We want progress, change, but a transition led by Venezuelans. It can’t all be at the will of the Americans.”
González saw a role for the United States: “To help us deal with this social drama of an impoverished country.” But, he added: “They must respect our will.”
Arape, the welder, summed up the sentiment of many. “We didn’t go through all this so that Trump can name his people and take over our oil,” he said.
On Saturday, Trump had said, “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” On Sunday, however, administration officials walked back that statement, saying the U.S. would pressure the Venezuelan government to acquiesce to U.S. demands.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the threat of more military action would serve as “leverage” over the Venezuelan government.
In Caracas, confusion about the future was a prevalent sentiment, among both critics and supporters of Maduro.
“We would like to know who is really in charge,” said William Rojas, 31, a father of two who lives in the El Valle district, long a Maduro stronghold.
In his news conference Saturday, Trump said that Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, had been named interim president, a fact seemingly confirmed Sunday by Telesur, the government broadcast outlet. But Rodríguez, in an address Saturday from Miraflores Palace, demanded that Washington return the “kidnapped” Maduro, whom she called the “sole” president of the country.
“Delcy Rodríguez says that Maduro remains the president, but he’s no longer here,” said Rojas. “And how were they able to whisk him away? Who betrayed our president?”
He added, “We can’t live with the idea that the ones who really govern us are Trump and Marco Rubio! We are totally confused.”
Amid all the prevailing ambiguity, authorities called on people to revert to everyday patterns — as though Maduro were still around.
There were still no official casualty counts from Saturday’s raid. In an address, the defense secretary, Gen. Vladimir Padrino López, called the operation a “cowardly kidnapping” that was carried out “after cold-bloodedly assassinating a large part of the president’s security detail, soldiers and innocent civilians,” according to Telesur.
Padrino urged Venezuelans to return to their jobs and to school, adding, “I call on the Venezuelan people to peace, to order, to not fall to temptations or a psychological war, to threats, to the fear that they want to impose upon us.”
Special correspondent Mogollón reported from Caracas and staff writer McDonnell from Boston.
