DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Protests sweeping across Iran neared the two-week mark Saturday, with the country’s government acknowledging the ongoing demonstrations despite an intensifying crackdown and as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world.
What You Need To Know
Protests in Iran have continued for nearly two weeks, with the government acknowledging the unrest despite a harsh crackdown
The internet and phone lines were down, making it hard to gauge the situation from abroad
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported at least 72 people have been killed and over 2,300 detained
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei signaled a clampdown, and Tehran warned protesters could face death-penalty charges
With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. But the death toll in the protests has grown to at least 72 people killed and over 2,300 others detained, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. Iranian state TV is reporting on security force casualties while portraying control over the nation.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has signaled a coming clampdown, despite U.S. warnings. Tehran escalated its threats Saturday, with the Iran’s attorney general, Mohammad Movahedi Azad, warning that anyone taking part in protests will be considered an “enemy of God,” a death-penalty charge. The statement carried by Iranian state television said even those who “helped rioters” would face the charge.
“Prosecutors must carefully and without delay, by issuing indictments, prepare the grounds for the trial and decisive confrontation with those who, by betraying the nation and creating insecurity, seek foreign domination over the country,” the statement read. “Proceedings must be conducted without leniency, compassion or indulgence.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered support for the protesters.
“The United States supports the brave people of Iran,” Rubio wrote Saturday on the social platform X. The State Department separately warned: “Do not play games with President Trump. When he says he’ll do something, he means it.”
State TV split-screen highlights Iran’s challenge
Saturday marks the start of the work week in Iran, but many schools and universities reportedly held online classes, Iranian state TV reported. Internal Iranian government websites are believed to be functioning.
State TV repeatedly played a driving, martial orchestral arrangement from the “Epic of Khorramshahr” by Iranian composer Majid Entezami, while showing pro-government demonstrations. The song, aired repeatedly during the 12-day war launched by Israel, honors Iran’s 1982 liberation of the city of Khorramshahr during the Iran-Iraq war. It has been used in videos of protesting women cutting away their hair to protest the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini as well.
“Field reports indicate that peace prevailed in most cities of the country at night,” a state TV anchor reported. “After a number of armed terrorists attacked public places and set fire to people’s private property last night, there was no news of any gathering or chaos in Tehran and most provinces last night.”
That was directly contradicted by an online video verified by The Associated Press that showed demonstrations in northern Tehran’s Saadat Abad area, with what appeared to be thousands on the street.
“Death to Khamenei!” a man chanted.
The semiofficial Fars news agency, believed to be close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and one of the few media outlets able to publish to the outside world, released surveillance camera footage of what it said came from demonstrations in Isfahan. In it, a protester appeared to fire a long gun, while others set fires and threw gasoline bombs at what appeared to be a government compound.
The Young Journalists’ Club, associated with state TV, reported that protesters killed three members of the Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force in the city of Gachsaran. It also reported a security official was stabbed to death in Hamadan province, a police officer killed in the port city of Bandar Abbas and another in Gilan, as well as one person slain in Mashhad.
The semiofficial Tasnim news agency, also close to the Guard, claimed authorities detained nearly 200 people belonging to what it described as “operational terrorist teams.” It alleged those arrested had weapons including firearms, grenades and gasoline bombs.
State television also aired footage of a funeral service attended by hundreds in Qom, a Shiite seminary city just south of Tehran.
More weekend demonstrations planned
Iran’s theocracy cut off the nation from the internet and international telephone calls on Thursday, though it allowed some state-owned and semiofficial media to publish. Qatar’s state-funded Al Jazeera news network reported live from Iran, but they appeared to be the only major foreign outlet able to work.
Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who called for protests Thursday and Friday, asked in his latest message for demonstrators to take to the streets Saturday and Sunday. He urged protesters to carry Iran’s old lion-and-sun flag and other national symbols used during the time of the shah to “claim public spaces as your own.”
Pahlavi’s support of and from Israel has drawn criticism in the past — particularly after the 12-day war. Demonstrators have shouted in support of the shah in some protests, but it isn’t clear whether that’s support for Pahlavi himself or a desire to return to a time before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The demonstrations began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear program. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocracy.
Airlines have cancelled some flights into Iran over the demonstrations. Austrian Airlines said Saturday it had decided to suspend its flights to Iran “as a precautionary measure” through Monday. Turkish Airlines earlier announced the cancellation of 17 flights to three cities in Iran.
NUUK, Greenland — Greenland’s party leaders have rejected President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for the U.S. to take control of the island, saying that Greenland’s future must be decided by its people.
What You Need To Know
Greenland’s party leaders have rejected President Donald Trump’s calls for the U.S. to take control of the island, and they insist that Greenland’s future must be decided by its people.
Trump said on Friday he wants to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous region of Denmark, to prevent Russia or China from taking it
He mentioned doing it “the easy way” or “the hard way” without explaining further
The White House is considering options, including military force
“We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and four party leaders said in a statement Friday night.
Trump said again on Friday that he would like to make a deal to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous region that’s part of NATO ally Denmark, “the easy way.” He said that if the U.S. doesn’t own it, then Russia or China will take it over, and the U.S. does not want them as neighbors.
“If we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way,” Trump said, without explaining what that entailed. The White House said it is considering a range of options, including using military force, to acquire the island.
Greenland’s party leaders reiterated that “Greenland’s future must be decided by the Greenlandic people.”
“As Greenlandic party leaders, we would like to emphasize once again our wish that the United States’ contempt for our country ends,” the statement said.
Officials from Denmark, Greenland and the United States met Thursday in Washington and will meet again next week to discuss the renewed push by the White House for the control of the island.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO.
The party leaders’ statement said that “the work on Greenland’s future takes place in dialogue with the Greenlandic people and is prepared on the basis of international laws.”
“No other country can interfere in this,” they said. “We must decide the future of our country ourselves, without pressure for quick decision, delay or interference from other countries.”
The statement was signed by Nielsen, Pele Broberg, Múte B. Egede, Aleqa Hammond and Aqqalu C. Jerimiassen.
While Greenland is the largest island in the world, it has a population of around 57,000 and doesn’t have its own military. Defense is provided by Denmark, whose military is dwarfed by that of the U.S.
It’s unclear how the remaining NATO members would respond if the U.S. decided to forcibly take control of the island or if they would come to Denmark’s aid.
WASHINGTON — U.S. forces boarded another oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea on Friday, the U.S. military said, as the Trump administration targets sanctioned tankers traveling to and from Venezuela as part of a broader effort to take control of the South American country’s oil.
What You Need To Know
The U.S. military says U.S. forces have boarded another oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea as the Trump administration continues to target sanctioned tankers traveling to and from Venezuela
The pre-dawn action was carried out by U.S. Marines and the Navy, taking part in the monthslong buildup of forces in the Caribbean, according to U.S. Southern Command, which declared “there is no safe haven for criminals” as it announced the seizure of the vessel called the Olina on Friday
The Olina is the fifth tanker seized by U.S. forces as part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to control the distribution of Venezuela’s oil products globally
The pre-dawn action was carried out by Marines and Navy sailors launched from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, part of the extensive force the U.S. has built up in the Caribbean in recent months, according to U.S. Southern Command, which declared “there is no safe haven for criminals” as it announced the seizure of the tanker called the Olina. The Coast Guard then took control of the vessel, officials said.
Southern Command and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem both posted unclassified footage on social media of a U.S. helicopter landing on the vessel and U.S. personnel conducting a search of the deck and tossing what appeared to be an explosive device in front of a door leading to inside the ship.
Once again, our joint interagency forces sent a clear message this morning: “there is no safe haven for criminals.”
In a pre-dawn action, Marines and Sailors from Joint Task Force Southern Spear, in support of the Department of Homeland Security, launched from the USS Gerald R.… pic.twitter.com/StHo4ufcdx
In her social media post, Noem said the ship was “another ‘ghost fleet’ tanker ship suspected of carrying embargoed oil” and it had departed Venezuela “attempting to evade U.S. forces.”
The Olina is the fifth tanker that has been seized by U.S. forces as part of the effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s oil products following the U.S. ouster of President Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid.
Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, said his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document that at least 16 tankers left the Venezuelan coast in contravention of the quarantine U.S. forces have set up to block sanctioned ships from conducting trade. The Olina was among that flotilla.
U.S. government records show that the Olina was sanctioned for moving Russian oil under its prior name, Minerva M, and flagged in Panama.
While records show the Olina is now flying the flag of Timor-Leste, it is listed in the international shipping registry as having a false flag, meaning the registration it is claiming is not valid. In July, the owner and manager of the ship on its registration was changed to a company in Hong Kong.
According to ship tracking databases, the Olina last transmitted its location in November in the Caribbean, north of the Venezuelan coast. Since then, however, the ship has been running dark with its location beacon turned off.
While Noem and the military framed the seizure as part of an effort to enforce the law, other officials in the Trump administration have made clear they see it as a way to generate cash as they seek to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry and restore its economy.
In an early morning post on his social media network, Trump said the U.S. and Venezuela “are working well together, especially as it pertains to rebuilding, in a much bigger, better, and more modern form, their oil and gas infrastructure.”
The administration said it expects to sell 30 million to 50 million barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan oil, with the proceeds to go to both the U.S. and Venezuelan people. But the president expects the arrangement to continue indefinitely as he meets on Friday with executives from 17 oil companies to discuss his goal of investing $100 billion in Venezuela to repair and upgrade its oil production and distribution.
Vice President JD Vance told Fox News this week that the U.S. can “control” Venezuela’s “purse strings” by dictating where its oil can be sold.
Madani estimated that the Olina is loaded with 707,000 barrels of oil, which at the current market price of about $60 a barrel would be worth more than $42 million.
Installation view: “Aiza Ahmed: The Music Room” at Sargent’s Daughters. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Sargent’s Daughters, New York
In a year defined by market calibration—especially on the ultra-contemporary front—very few young artists have truly emerged. One of the rare exceptions is 28-year-old Pakistani and New York-based artist Aiza Ahmed, who in 2025 achieved rapid, sustained recognition across two key regions: the art world’s center in New York and the rapidly expanding cultural ecosystem of the Gulf. Her enthusiastically received debut solo at Sargent’s Daughters closed only weeks ago, yet she is already preparing for the inaugural edition of Art Basel’s Qatar in February, where she will be one of the youngest artists featured in the fair’s curated exhibition format led by artist Wael Shawky. Although she completed a year-long residency at Silver Art Projects, Ahmed has temporarily traded her downtown Manhattan studio views for the MENA region’s most prestigious residency at the Fire Station in Doha, also directed by Shawky. She spoke with Observer from that studio, where she is working on the major installation she is preparing for her next milestone moment in Doha.
This continual movement between countries and cultures is not new to Ahmed, whose life has been shaped by constant geographical crossings. Her grandparents were originally from Calcutta but left India for Pakistan after the 1947 Partition, beginning a migratory trajectory that has threaded through the family ever since. Born in 1997 in Lahore, she spent a brief period in Karachi before relocating to London with her family at a young age. Ahmed spent her adolescence in Dubai before moving to the U.S. for her undergraduate studies at Cornell, followed by an MFA in painting at RISD. Now a decade into living in the States, she acknowledges that her life—and by extension, her art—has been defined by inhabiting the in-between, switching between cultural contexts governed by different social codes. That instability has sharpened her acute spirit of observation of the humanity around her, from which all her work originates.
Upon entering her solo at Sargent’s Daughters, what stands out is not only the maturity of her visual lexicon but also the clarity of her world-building instinct. Ahmed moves fluidly and inventively across mediums, shaping entire narrative spaces from the moment she traces a face or draws the psychological contour of a figure, then expands that gesture outward into the room as a potentially ever-evolving story.
Aiza Ahmed in her studio. Photo: Leo Ng
“I’ve been drawing and working with my hands for as long as I can remember,” Ahmed tells Observer. Her parents say she was always making things or engaged in some kind of craft. But it was around year seven or eight—early in high school—that her interest began to take real shape. “I had a favorite art teacher who I credit so much—she supported me from the beginning and would leave little notes in my journals, encouraging me. They were just drawings I used to do, but she really saw something in them,” she recalls. “I also recently found these caricatures I made when I was about ten, these political cartoons, and looking at them now, I can see the threads. The seeds were already there—this instinct for humor, for drawing the line.”
Ahmed’s style, in fact, isn’t straightforwardly figurative. Her figures remain suspended in an unfinished state—between dimensions, between figuration and something surreal or even abstract—rooted more in the emotional and psychological space of her characters than in the synthesized volume of their bodies. At the same time, her sharp, confident line work grounds the compositions in a tradition that evokes comics, political satire and caricature. As seen in the work of French satirical artist Honoré Daumier or the German George Grosz, Ahmed’s caricatural style exaggerates posture, expression and behavior with a few quick, incisive strokes, distilling personality or social type into its most telling gestures. She readily acknowledges her connection to this lineage. “I’m really drawn to the face. I feel like I’m a keen observer of people, especially having lived between so many worlds and having to assimilate—from Pakistan to London to Dubai to the U.S.” she reflects. Across all those moves, she adapted in an ongoing process of code-switching—first observing, then imitating, learning to fit in without losing sight of who she was or where she came from.
Drawing gives Ahmed a space for unfiltered, intuitive expression—a way of seeing that precedes the expectations of society or culture. “When I draw, it’s quick and raw,” she explains. “It’s the first mark that comes out. I don’t erase. It’s whatever is coming through me in a stream-of-consciousness way.”
Ahemed’s practice contends with borders, migrations, public histories, and private archives within diasporic identities originating from the Indian Subcontinent. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Sargent’s Daughters, New York
Notably, most of the characters Ahmed brings to the stage are men—often exaggerated in their grotesque appearances and postures, whimsically distorted in their grinning or perverse expressions, or revealed in moments of fragile vulnerability beneath a masculine performance of power.
The artist admits she only recently realized that, over time, she has consistently drawn or painted male figures. “I didn’t notice it at first, but recently I was like, okay, in my studio it’s just all these men of different types and me,” she reflects. Earlier in her graduate studies at RISD, she had been thinking a lot about uncles, she adds. “My whole practice is me trying to trace where I come from, the ancestry I didn’t know, the histories and displacement of my own country that I wasn’t taught until really late in my upbringing.” In more recent series, however, something has shifted—or perhaps she has simply become more aware of the deeper reasons behind her recurring male subjects.
Growing up, and even after she left Pakistan, she returned every summer to visit grandparents, aunts and cousins. During those visits, she became attuned to what she calls the grammar of men. “In public spaces, all you see are men. Women are usually inside, or covered,” she recalls, noting how her visual field was filled with authority, corruption and performance. Even after moving to New York, she found the dynamic not so different—only more indirect. “I can’t walk from point A to point B without feeling the male gaze. It’s uncomfortable. It’s charged. At first, I thought it was just Pakistan, but it’s everywhere I go.”
Portraying men, then, becomes a kind of role reversal. “As a young woman, I’m looking at men. In art history, it was usually the opposite: men looking at women, and no one questioned it,” she reflects. Still, she admits she sometimes feels sorry for her subjects. “The way I draw these border guards, they look clunky, short, stout, almost fragile. And then I’m like, wait, why do I feel sorry for them? It’s all very layered,” she acknowledges.
Ahmed enacts, through her art, a sharp human and cultural diagnosis—exposing the hypocrisies and paradoxes embedded in socially coded, gendered behaviors. With her cartoonish figures, she deciphers patterns of authority and performance. Aiza Ahmed observes society as a system shaped by power dynamics—and claims art as a space to imagine different ones.
Ahmed constructs theatrical narratives that unsettle fixed ideas of nationhood, masculinity, and belonging. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Sargent’s Daughters, New York
When asked if she remembers being particularly drawn to political satire in newspapers or to the language of comics more broadly, she says she probably was not looking at anything specific. “I used to read the newspaper because my father would tell me to—just to know what was happening in the world,” she says, recalling how she often found it difficult and would flip straight to the illustrated sections. “It’s funny—I never connected that until now. Maybe that planted something,” she acknowledges, adding that she loved Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake and grew up watching a lot of Disney. “The Disney aesthetic really shaped me,” she reflects, describing how she recently discovered a Disney encyclopedia series in an antique shop in Doha. “One volume was called Great Leaders. It listed all these men and maybe two women—like Queen Victoria. It was fascinating, and the illustrations were unlike anything I’d seen,” she says. The find feels serendipitous, almost luminous, given the direction her work is now taking.
The fact that Ahmed constantly oscillates between caustic social indictment and a playfully theatrical or carnivalesque register pushes the grotesque into the realm of the fantastical and hallucinatory. As James Ensor once did, Ahmed’s line exaggerates expression to the point of derangement, using humor, absurdity and the grotesque to surface moral and psychological undercurrents, as well as the paradoxical fragility at the heart of today’s crisis of masculinity and the masculine-led world these performances of power seek to uphold. Applying the inverse of a more gentle, compassionate feminine playfulness, Ahmed’s work unsettles fixed ideas of nationhood, masculinity and belonging.
After all, it is playfulness and humor that often allow satire to resonate. They soften the critique just enough for the viewer to enter, while sharpening the underlying point. The best satire lets you laugh and wince at the same time.
This is why Aiza Ahmed’s work often takes on a theatrical presence, as she stages human drama within the space, suspended in dreamlike atmospheres. This was particularly evident in her solo debut with Sargent’s Daughters. Drawing its title, “The Music Room,” from Jalsaghar (The Music Room), Satyajit Ray’s mesmerizing 1958 film, Ahmed translated the movie into spatial terms through a multimedia installation of shifting characters rendered in monumental paintings and wooden cut-out figures. An original composition by historian, composer and guitarist Ria Modak further shaped the mise-en-scène, transforming the gallery into both a soundscape and a theater where these narratives unfolded with unsettling resonance in the present.
Evoking the film’s psychological portrait of India’s zamindar class, propped up under British colonial rule before facing dissolution amid land reforms and shifting politics in the mid-20th century, the music room here similarly becomes a stage for hollow rituals of nostalgia and masculine display. Ahmed’s figures appear as ghostly presences, drawn with raw, essential lines that balance humor and pallor, exposing the paradoxes and slow decay of any myth of masculinity. Crucially, in another act of inversion, she imagines a music room authored by women, turning their gaze back onto patriarchal and colonial power.
A similar impulse shaped her Spring Break Art Show presentation last May, where she first drew wider attention with a booth curated by Indira A. Abiskaroon, a curatorial assistant at the Brooklyn Museum. There, Ahmed reimagined the Wagah-Attari border ceremony, a daily ritual established in 1959 that draws thousands to watch soldiers from India and Pakistan march, gesture and parade as mirrored adversaries in a choreography that has long fascinated her for its oscillation between fury and restraint, rivalry and camaraderie.
Installation view: Aiza Ahmed’s “Border Play” at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in 2025. Photo: Leo Ng
In her installation, she amplified the spectacle to expose its built-in theatricality: bugle calls and Kishore Kumar’s bright vocals led visitors through hot pink drapes and onto a red carpet flanked by wooden soldiers, toward an imagined stage where painted and sculpted figures performed their own exaggerated version of the ritual. Within this draped, cardboard mise-en-scène, the soldiers’ postures, uniforms and expressions became social masks—revealing not only the codes through which authority and masculinity are enacted, but also the fragility those performances attempt to conceal. Her presentation at Art Basel Qatar will continue this narrative; she is currently working on new paintings, a suspended muslin work and a series of wooden cut-out soldiers for the installation.
Ahmed’s visual and narrative approach is not far from the narrative strategies used in commedia dell’arte, which established the idea of fixed “characters” representing social types, each defined by a mask and exaggerated behavioral code—or pantomime, which strips these roles even further, reducing gesture to language and expression to narrative. Ahmed’s suspended storylines operate in a similar register. Much like in Pirandello’s work, she uses playful role-playing and seemingly naive humor to generate immediate empathy while simultaneously revealing the fragile, absurd theater of human existence and the drama of identity.
Thus far, Ahmed acknowledges, two main sources have shaped the origins of her work. One is her personal observation of societal rituals—weddings, funerals and ceremonies that exist in a liminal space between the public and the private, where she has been both observer and participant. The other is the India-Pakistan border, which she has studied in depth. Still, she notes, the overarching theme that continues to emerge is the spectrum of masculinity and the attempt to understand its psyche. What is going on in their heads—and how has that interiority hardened into a social rule that has long shaped a shared sense of reality?
When asked if her work is political, Ahmed says that every action can be a political act. “Even if you don’t voice it, you’re making a statement. Being a brown woman is already a political act. There are endless layers you can add to that,” she argues. And endless, too, are the dimensions in which Ahmed’s powerful imagination can evolve, as she continues to translate her both empathic and critical observations of the world around her.
Is anyone surprised? After a headline-making press run for Josh Safdies’ ping-pong caper, Timothée Chalamet has smashed A24 records at the U.K. box office.
Sources confirmed that Marty Supremeis now, officially, the studio’s highest-grossing release of all time across the Atlantic, having so far accrued $8.6 million as of Jan. 6.
The dramedy, also starring Odessa A’zion, Gwyneth Paltrow and Tyler, The Creator, surpassed the previous record-holder — Alex Garland’s 2024 thriller Civil War — in just less than two weeks. The story of the arrogant but assured New Yorker Marty Mauser hit theaters Dec. 26.
The film also reigned supreme by nabbing $4.38 million over its first weekend in around 130 locations, another new high for the indie studio and a stat that pips awards rival One Battle After Another to the post. Paul Thomas Anderson’s political thriller grossed around $3.3 million in its first weekend in U.K. cinemas.
Marty Supreme was distributed by Entertainment Film Distributors in Britain and its box office success was no doubt advantaged by Chalamet’s eyebrow-raising marketing tactics, which have included global pop-ups for Marty merch — London’s queue was made up of thousands of fans and resellers desperate to get their hands on anything orange ping-pong ball-adjacent — and listing Britain’s Got Talent singer Susan Boyle among his list of British heroes.
Chalamet’s character, loosely based on ’50s table tennis champion Marty Reisman, embarks on a self-destructive pursuit of greatness and has allowed the actor to run wild with the tagline “Dream Big.” When Chalamet told BBC News that Boyle “dreamt bigger than all of us” while taking to the BGT stage in 2009, thousands were surprised he even knew her name. “Who wasn’t moved by that?” asked the star. She was swiftly gifted the iconic Marty Supreme jacket, to the delight of nostalgic Brits.
In another unpredictable move, Chalamet put to bed the rampant online rumors that he’s moonlighting as British rapper EsDeeKid by jumping on a remixed version of “4 Raws” before Christmas. The accompanying video — showing an unmasked Chalamet beside an obscured EsDeeKid, dropping bars about Marty Supreme and girlfriend Kylie Jenner — went stratospherically viral.
As of Jan. 5, Marty Supreme has captivated critics and fans alike, grossing $57.5 million in the U.S. and Canada. Chalamet is currently one of the favorites for the best actor Academy Award for his performance and on Sunday, picked up the coveted Critics’ Choice Award.
LOS ANGELES — The high-profile private attorney for Nick Reiner resigned from his case Wednesday for reasons he said he could not reveal, and he later told reporters that under California law his client is definitely not guilty of murder in the killing of his parents, Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner.
What You Need To Know
Jackson would not specify what he meant and took no questions at the brief news conference, but it was the first direct statement from a Nick Reiner representative about his guilt or innocence in the 3 1/2 weeks since the killings
After meeting with the Judge Theresa McGonigle in chambers, Jackson, at his own request, was replaced by a public defender and the plea hearing was postponed to Feb. 23
A Reiner family spokesperson said in a statement after Wednesday’s hearing that “They have the utmost trust in the legal process and will not comment further on matters related to the legal proceedings”
Reiner, 32, the third of Rob Reiner’s four children, has been held without bail since his arrest hours after his parents were found dead on Dec. 14
“Circumstances beyond our control and more importantly circumstances beyond Nick’s control have dictated that, sadly, it’s made it impossible to continue our representation,” lawyer Alan Jackson said as he stood with his team outside a Los Angeles courthouse.
But, Jackson added, after weeks of investigation, “what we’ve learned, and you can take this to the bank, is that pursuant to the laws of this state, pursuant to the law of California, Nick Reiner is not guilty of murder. Print that.”
Jackson would not specify what he meant and took no questions at the brief news conference, but it was the first direct statement from a Nick Reiner representative about his guilt or innocence in the 3 1/2 weeks since the killings.
He spoke after a hearing where Reiner was supposed to be arraigned and enter a plea to two charges of first-degree murder. Instead, after meeting with the Judge Theresa McGonigle in chambers, Jackson, at his own request, was replaced by a public defender and the plea hearing was postponed to Feb. 23.
Jackson does not say why he has to quit case
Jackson said that for legal and ethical reasons, he could not reveal why he had to resign. He first appeared in court representing Nick Reiner at a hearing a few days after the beloved actor-director and his wife of 36 years were found dead with stab wounds in their home in the upscale Brentwood section of Los Angeles. Jackson did not say how he was hired — or who hired him. Generally, defendants use public defenders when they can’t pay for a private attorney.
Jackson has become one of the most prominent defense attorneys in the nation in recent years after his defense of clients including Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Karen Read at her intensely followed trials in Massachusetts.
Deputy Public Defender Kimberly Greene took over as Reiner’s attorney during the hearing.
“The Public Defender’s Office recognizes what an unimaginable tragedy this is for the Reiner family and the Los Angeles community,” LA County Public Defender Ricardo D. Garcia said in a rare public statement on a case from the office. “Our hearts go out to the Reiner family as they navigate this difficult time. We ask for your patience and compassion as the case moves through the legal process.”
A Reiner family spokesperson said in a statement after Wednesday’s hearing that “They have the utmost trust in the legal process and will not comment further on matters related to the legal proceedings.”
Nick Reiner appears in jail clothes, without suicide prevention smock
During Wednesday’s hearing, Reiner stood behind glass in a custody area of the courtroom wearing brown jail garb and with his hair shaved. Two deputies stood behind him. Jackson and his team stood in front of him on the other side of the glass. At one point, Reiner stood on his tiptoes to peer over the lawyers’ heads to look at the audience. He spoke only to agree to the delayed arraignment.
McGonigle approved the use of cameras inside the courtroom but said photos and video could not be taken of the defendant. Reiner did not wear the suicide prevention smock he had on at his initial court appearance on Dec. 17.
Reiner, 32, the third of Rob Reiner’s four children, has been held without bail since his arrest hours after his parents were found dead on Dec. 14.
Jackson says he ‘dropped everything’ to represent Reiner
Jackson, a former LA County prosecutor, had given no indication of the plans for his defense.
He said that just hours after Nick Reiner’s arrest, he and his team were in New York when they got a call about representing him. He did not say who called him.
“We dropped everything,” Jackson said. “For the last three weeks, we have devoted literally every waking hour to protecting Nick and his interests. We’ve investigated this matter top to bottom, back to front.”
He said they remain “deeply, deeply committed” to him and said, “We’re not just convinced; we know that the legal process will reveal the true facts.”
Rob Reiner, 78, and Michele Singer Reiner, 70, were killed early on the morning of Dec. 14, and they were found in the late afternoon, authorities said. The LA County Medical Examiner said in initial findings that they died from “multiple sharp force injuries.” A court order has prevented the release of more details. Police have said nothing about possible motives.
Prosecutors have said they have not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty for Nick Reiner.
Rob Reiner was a prolific director whose work included some of the most memorable and endlessly watchable movies of the 1980s and ’90s. His credits included “This is Spinal Tap,” “Stand By Me,” “A Few Good Men,” and “When Harry Met Sally …,” during whose production he met Michele Singer, a photographer, and married her soon after.
A decade ago, Nick Reiner publicly discussed his struggles with addiction and mental health after making a movie with his father, “Being Charlie,” that was very loosely based on their lives.
Everybody to Kenmure Street, the new documentary from Felipe Bustos Sierra that was executive produced by two-time Oscar winner Emma Thompson, will open the 22nd edition of the Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) on Feb. 25. It tells the story of “one of Scotland’s most spontaneous and successful acts of civil resistance in recent memory.”
The film will world premiere at Sundance before getting its U.K. premiere at Glasgow. “In May 2021, a U.K. Home Office dawn raid in the Glasgow district of Pollokshields, one of Scotland’s most diverse neighborhoods, prompted local residents to rush to the streets to stop the deportation of their neighbors,” explains a synopsis. “As word spread in the early morning of what was Eid celebrations for many locals, a handful of protestors swelled to hundreds of people, flooding Kenmure Street and making it impassable to the immigration enforcement van. The eight-hour stand-off made international headlines as the community organized itself in an extraordinary act of peaceful solidarity.”
The film uses crowd-sourced footage from the day along with archive film and “set-designed scenes captured by cinematographer Kirstin McMahon, featuring actors relaying verbatim the testimonies of contributors who wished to remain anonymous.”
Bustos Sierra’s debut documentary Nae Pasaran, which told the story of how the boycott of East Kilbride Rolls Royce factory workers helped end General Augusto Pinochet’s regime in 1970s Chile, had its world premiere as the closing gala of Glasgow 2018. It was honored as the best film at the BAFTA Scotland Awards.
Everybody to Kenmure Street was produced by Ciara Barry of Glasgow-based production company barry crerar, in association with Bustos Sierra through Debasers Films. The film was supported by the National Lottery through Screen Scotland. Mark Thomas of Screen Scotland served as executive producer alongside Thompson. The film features an original score by Barry Burns of Mogwai.
Everybody to Kenmure Street will hit U.K. and Irish cinemas on March 13, released by Conic.
Said Bustos Sierra: “This film is a snapshot of a day, of a neighborhood, and of gestures repeated through time, for the right to have a voice and to live in peace. Glasgow’s long history of civil disobedience and meaningful change has been a barometer throughout the making of this film.” He concluded: “I cannot wait to watch it at the GFT with its hometown audience, for whom we can only hope it’ll be a joyful reminder of what a beacon they can be in uncertain times.”
Paul Gallagher, head of program for the Glasgow Film Festival, said: “I’m delighted that Felipe Bustos Sierra will be returning to GFF to open our festival with this hugely inspiring film. Everybody to Kenmure Street tells a story that is pertinent for the whole world right now, focusing on a very specific moment in Glasgow’s recent past to offer a deeply moving vision of community action and resistance to injustice. With this film Felipe has captured an essential aspect of Glasgow’s people-loving heart; I can’t wait to share his vision with the world.”
GFF will close with the U.K. premiere of James McAvoy’s directorial debut California Schemin’ on March 8, making it the second year in a row that the Scotland festival has opened and closed with Scottish features.
CARACAS, Venezuela — President Donald Trump said Tuesday on his social media site that “Interim Authorities” in Venezuela would be providing 30 million to 50 million barrels of “High Quality” oil to the U.S. at its market price, an announcement that came after officials in Caracas announced that at least 24 Venezuelan security officers were killed in the dead-of-night U.S. military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro and spirit him to the United States to face drug charges.
What You Need To Know
President Donald Trump said Tuesday on his social media site that “Interim Authorities” in Venezuela would be providing 30 million to 50 million barrels of “High Quality” oil to the U.S. at its market price
The announcement came after Venezuelan officials said least 24 of the country’s security officers were killed in the dead-of-night U.S. military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro and spirit him to the United States to face federal drug charges
Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab said Tuesday that “dozens” of officials and civilians were killed and that prosecutors would investigate the deaths in what he described as a “war crime”
The death toll for Venezuelan security officials comes after Cuba’s government on Sunday announced that 32 Cuban military and police officers working in Venezuela had died in the operation, prompting two days of mourning on the Caribbean island
Trump posted on Truth Social that the oil “will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States.” He said the money would be controlled by him as president but it would be used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.
Separately, the White House is organizing an Oval Office meeting Friday with oil company executives regarding Venezuela, with representatives of Exxon, Chevron and ConocoPhillips expected to attend, according to a person familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss the plans.
Earlier Tuesday, Venezuelan officials announced the death count in the Maduro raid as the country’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, pushed back on Trump, who earlier this week warned she’d face an outcome worse than Maduro’s if she does not “do what’s right” and overhaul Venezuela into a country that aligns with U.S. interests. Trump has said his administration will now “run” Venezuela policy and is pressing the country’s leaders to open its vast oil reserves to American energy companies.
Rodriguez, delivering an address Tuesday before government agricultural and industrial sector officials, said, “Personally, to those who threaten me: My destiny is not determined by them, but by God.”
Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab said overall “dozens” of officers and civilians were killed in the weekend strike in Caracas and said prosecutors would investigate the deaths in what he described as a “war crime.” He didn’t specify if the estimate was specifically referring to Venezuelans.
In addition to the Venezuelan security officials, Cuba’s government had previously confirmed that 32 Cuban military and police officers working in Venezuela were killed in the raid. The Cuban government says the personnel killed belonged to the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior, the country’s two main security agencies.
Seven U.S. service members were also injured in the raid, according to the Pentagon. Five have already returned to duty, while two are still recovering from their injuries. The injuries included gunshot wounds and shrapnel injuries, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to comment on the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
A video tribute to the slain Venezuelan security officials posted to the military’s Instagram account features faces of the fallen over black-and-white videos of soldiers, American aircraft flying over Caracas and armored vehicles destroyed by the blasts. Meanwhile, the streets of Caracas, deserted for days following Maduro’s capture, briefly filled with masses of people waving Venezuelan flags and bouncing to patriotic music at a state-organized display of support for the government.
“Their spilled blood does not cry out for vengeance, but for justice and strength,” the military wrote in an Instagram post. “It reaffirms our unwavering oath not to rest until we rescue our legitimate President, completely dismantle the terrorist groups operating from abroad, and ensure that events such as these never again sully our sovereign soil.”
Trump grumbles about how Democrats reacted to the raid
Trump on Tuesday pushed back against Democratic criticism of this weekend’s military operation, noting that his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden had also called for the arrest of the Venezuelan leader on drug trafficking charges.
Trump in remarks before a House Republican retreat in Washington grumbled that Democrats were not giving him credit for a successful military operation, even though there was bipartisan agreement that Maduro was not the rightful president of Venezuela.
In 2020, Maduro was indicted in the United States, accused in a decades-long narco-terrorism and international cocaine trafficking conspiracy. White House officials have noted that Biden’s administration in his final days in office last year raised the award for information leading to Maduro’s arrest after he assumed a third term in office despite evidence suggesting that he lost Venezuela’s most recent election. The Trump administration doubled the award to $50 million in August.
“You know, at some point, they should say, ‘You know, you did a great job. Thank you. Congratulations.’ Wouldn’t it be good?” Trump said. “I would say that if they did a good job, their philosophies are so different. But if they did a good job, I’d be happy for the country. They’ve been after this guy for years and years and years.”
With oil trading at roughly $56 a barrel, the transaction Trump announced late Tuesday could be worth as much as $2.8 billion. The U.S. goes through an average of roughly 20 million barrels a day of oil and related products, so Venezuela’s transfer would be the equivalent of as much as two and a half days of supply, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Despite Venezuela having the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves, it only produces on average about one million barrels day, significantly below the U.S. average daily production of 13.9 million barrels a day during October.
What US opinion polls show
Americans are split about the capture of Maduro — with many still forming opinions — according to a poll conducted by The Washington Post and SSRS using text messages over the weekend. About 4 in 10 approved of the U.S. military being sent to capture Maduro, while roughly the same share were opposed. About 2 in 10 were unsure.
Nearly half of Americans, 45%, were opposed to the U.S. taking control of Venezuela and choosing a new government for the country. About 9 in 10 Americans said the Venezuelan people should be the ones to decide the future leadership of their country.
Maduro pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in a U.S. courtroom on Monday. U.S. forces captured Maduro and his wife early Saturday in a raid on a compound where they were surrounded by Cuban guards.
In the days since Maduro’s ouster, Trump and top administration officials have raised anxiety around the globe that the operation could mark the beginning of a more expansionist U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere. The president in recent days has renewed his calls for an American takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests and threatened military action on Colombia for facilitating the global sale of cocaine, while his top diplomat declared the communist government in Cuba is “in a lot of trouble.”
Colombia responds to Trump
Colombia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Rosa Villavicencio said Tuesday she’ll meet with the U.S. Embassy’s charge d’affaires in Bogota to present him with a formal complaint over the recent threats issued by the United States.
On Sunday, Trump said he wasn’t ruling out an attack on Colombia and described its president, who’s been an outspoken critic of the U.S. pressure campaign on Venezuela, as a “sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”
Villavicencio said she’s hoping to strengthen relations with the United States and improve cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking.
“It is necessary for the Trump administration to know in more detail about all that we are doing in the fight against drug trafficking,” she said.
Meanwhile, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom on Tuesday joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in defending Greenland’s sovereignty. The island is a self-governing territory of the kingdom of Denmark and thus part of the NATO military alliance.
“Greenland belongs to its people,” the statement said. “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”
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.”
__
Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this story.
Cuban officials on Monday lowered flags before dawn to mourn 32 security officers they say were killed in the U.S. weekend strike in Venezuela, the island nation’s closest ally, as residents here wonder what the capture of President Nicolás Maduro means for their future.The two governments are so close that Cuban soldiers and security agents were often the Venezuelan president’s bodyguards, and Venezuela’s petroleum has kept the economically ailing island limping along for years. Cuban authorities over the weekend said the 32 had been killed in the surprise attack “after fierce resistance in direct combat against the attackers, or as a result of the bombing of the facilities.”Related video above: What happens next: Venezuela’s future after U.S. capture of MaduroThe Trump administration has warned outright that toppling Maduro will help advance another decades-long goal: Dealing a blow to the Cuban government. Severing Cuba from Venezuela could have disastrous consequences for its leaders, who on Saturday called for the international community to stand up to “state terrorism.”On Saturday, Trump said the ailing Cuban economy will be further battered by Maduro’s ouster.“It’s going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It’s going down for the count.” Loss of key supporterMany observers say Cuba, an island of about 10 million people, exerted a remarkable degree of influence over Venezuela, an oil-rich nation with three times as many people. At the same time, Cubans have long been tormented by constant blackouts and shortages of basic foods. And after the attack, they woke to the once-unimaginable possibility of an even grimmer future.“I can’t talk. I have no words,” 75-year-old Berta Luz Sierra Molina said as she sobbed and placed a hand over her face.Even though 63-year-old Regina Méndez is too old to join the Cuban military, she said that “we have to stand strong.”“Give me a rifle, and I’ll go fight,” Méndez said.Maduro’s government was shipping an average of 35,000 barrels of oil daily over the last three months, about a quarter of total demand, said Jorge Piñón, a Cuban energy expert at the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute.“The question to which we don’t have an answer, which is critical: Is the U.S. going to allow Venezuela to continue supplying Cuba with oil?” he said.Piñón noted that Mexico once supplied Cuba with 22,000 barrels of oil a day before it dropped to 7,000 barrels after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Mexico City in early September.“I don’t see Mexico jumping in right now,” Piñón said. “The U.S. government would go bonkers.”Ricardo Torres, a Cuban economist at American University in Washington, said that “blackouts have been significant, and that is with Venezuela still sending some oil.”“Imagine a future now in the short term losing that,” he said. “It’s a catastrophe.”Piñón noted that Cuba doesn’t have the money to buy oil on the international market.“The only ally that they have left out there with oil is Russia,” he said, noting that it sends Cuba about 2 million barrels a year.“Russia has the capability to fill the gap. Do they have the political commitment, or the political desire to do so? I don’t know,” he said.Torres also questioned whether Russia would extend a hand.“Meddling with Cuba could jeopardize your negotiation with the U.S. around Ukraine. Why would you do it? Ukraine is far more important,” he said.Torres said Cuba should open its doors to the private sector and market and reduce its public sector, moves that could help prompt China to step in and help Cuba.“Do they have an alternative? I don’t think they do,” he said.Rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industryOn Monday, Trump told NBC News in an interview that the U.S. government could reimburse oil companies making investments in Venezuela to maintain and increase oil production in that country.He suggested that the necessary rebuilding of the country’s neglected infrastructure for extracting and shipping oil could happen in less than 18 months.“I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money,” Trump said. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”It still remains unclear how quickly the investment could occur given the uncertainties about Venezuela’s political stability and the billions of dollars needed to be spent.Venezuela produces on average about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day, down from the 3.5 million barrels a day produced in 1999 before a government takeover of the majority of oil interests and a mix of corruption, mismanagement and U.S. economic sanctions led output to fall.___Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Associated Press reporters Milexsy Durán in Havana, Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires and Joshua Boak in Washington, D.C., contributed.
Cuban officials on Monday lowered flags before dawn to mourn 32 security officers they say were killed in the U.S. weekend strike in Venezuela, the island nation’s closest ally, as residents here wonder what the capture of President Nicolás Maduro means for their future.
The two governments are so close that Cuban soldiers and security agents were often the Venezuelan president’s bodyguards, and Venezuela’s petroleum has kept the economically ailing island limping along for years. Cuban authorities over the weekend said the 32 had been killed in the surprise attack “after fierce resistance in direct combat against the attackers, or as a result of the bombing of the facilities.”
Related video above: What happens next: Venezuela’s future after U.S. capture of Maduro
The Trump administration has warned outright that toppling Maduro will help advance another decades-long goal: Dealing a blow to the Cuban government. Severing Cuba from Venezuela could have disastrous consequences for its leaders, who on Saturday called for the international community to stand up to “state terrorism.”
On Saturday, Trump said the ailing Cuban economy will be further battered by Maduro’s ouster.
“It’s going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It’s going down for the count.”
Loss of key supporter
Many observers say Cuba, an island of about 10 million people, exerted a remarkable degree of influence over Venezuela, an oil-rich nation with three times as many people. At the same time, Cubans have long been tormented by constant blackouts and shortages of basic foods. And after the attack, they woke to the once-unimaginable possibility of an even grimmer future.
“I can’t talk. I have no words,” 75-year-old Berta Luz Sierra Molina said as she sobbed and placed a hand over her face.
Even though 63-year-old Regina Méndez is too old to join the Cuban military, she said that “we have to stand strong.”
“Give me a rifle, and I’ll go fight,” Méndez said.
Maduro’s government was shipping an average of 35,000 barrels of oil daily over the last three months, about a quarter of total demand, said Jorge Piñón, a Cuban energy expert at the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute.
“The question to which we don’t have an answer, which is critical: Is the U.S. going to allow Venezuela to continue supplying Cuba with oil?” he said.
Piñón noted that Mexico once supplied Cuba with 22,000 barrels of oil a day before it dropped to 7,000 barrels after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Mexico City in early September.
“I don’t see Mexico jumping in right now,” Piñón said. “The U.S. government would go bonkers.”
Ricardo Torres, a Cuban economist at American University in Washington, said that “blackouts have been significant, and that is with Venezuela still sending some oil.”
“Imagine a future now in the short term losing that,” he said. “It’s a catastrophe.”
Piñón noted that Cuba doesn’t have the money to buy oil on the international market.
“The only ally that they have left out there with oil is Russia,” he said, noting that it sends Cuba about 2 million barrels a year.
“Russia has the capability to fill the gap. Do they have the political commitment, or the political desire to do so? I don’t know,” he said.
Torres also questioned whether Russia would extend a hand.
“Meddling with Cuba could jeopardize your negotiation with the U.S. around Ukraine. Why would you do it? Ukraine is far more important,” he said.
Torres said Cuba should open its doors to the private sector and market and reduce its public sector, moves that could help prompt China to step in and help Cuba.
“Do they have an alternative? I don’t think they do,” he said.
Rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industry
On Monday, Trump told NBC News in an interview that the U.S. government could reimburse oil companies making investments in Venezuela to maintain and increase oil production in that country.
He suggested that the necessary rebuilding of the country’s neglected infrastructure for extracting and shipping oil could happen in less than 18 months.
“I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money,” Trump said. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”
It still remains unclear how quickly the investment could occur given the uncertainties about Venezuela’s political stability and the billions of dollars needed to be spent.
Venezuela produces on average about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day, down from the 3.5 million barrels a day produced in 1999 before a government takeover of the majority of oil interests and a mix of corruption, mismanagement and U.S. economic sanctions led output to fall.
___
Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Associated Press reporters Milexsy Durán in Havana, Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires and Joshua Boak in Washington, D.C., contributed.
NEW YORK — Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro declared himself “innocent” and a “decent man” as he pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in a U.S. courtroom on Monday.
Maduro was making his first appearance in an American courtroom Monday on the narco-terrorism charges the Trump administration used to justify capturing him and bringing him to New York.
What You Need To Know
Deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro made his first appearance in a U.S. courtroom Monday following his capture over the weekend
Maduro declared himself “innocent” and a “decent man” as he pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges
A motorcade carrying Maduro left jail around 7:15 a.m. and made its way to a nearby athletic field, where Maduro slowly made his way to a waiting helicopter. The chopper flew across New York harbor and landed at a Manhattan heliport, where Maduro, limping, was loaded into an armored vehicle
Maduro, wearing a blue jail uniform, and his wife were led into court around noon for a brief, but required, legal proceeding that will likely kick off a prolonged legal fight over whether he can be put on trial in the U.S. Both put on headsets to hear the English-language proceeding as it is translated into Spanish.
The couple were transported under armed guard early Monday from the Brooklyn jail where they’ve been detained to a Manhattan courthouse.
The trip was swift. A motorcade carrying Maduro left jail around 7:15 a.m. and made its way to a nearby athletic field, where Maduro slowly made his way to a waiting helicopter. The chopper flew across New York harbor and landed at a Manhattan heliport, where Maduro, limping, was loaded into an armored vehicle.
A few minutes later, the law enforcement caravan was inside a garage at the courthouse complex, just around the corner from the one where Donald Trump was convicted in 2024 of falsifying business records. Across the street from the courthouse, the police separated a small but growing group of protesters from about a dozen pro-intervention demonstrators, including one man who pulled a Venezuelan flag away from those protesting the U.S. action.
As a criminal defendant in the U.S. legal system, Maduro will have the same rights as any other person accused of a crime — including the right to a trial by a jury of regular New Yorkers. But he’ll also be nearly — but not quite — unique.
Maduro’s lawyers are expected to contest the legality of his arrest, arguing that he is immune from prosecution as a sovereign head of state.
Venezuela’s new interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has demanded that the U.S. return Maduro, who long denied any involvement in drug trafficking — although late Sunday she also struck a more conciliatory tone in a social media post, inviting collaboration with President Trump and “respectful relations” with the U.S.
Before his capture, Maduro and his allies claimed U.S. hostility was motivated by lust for Venezuela’s rich oil and mineral resources.
The U.S. seized Maduro and his wife in a military operation Saturday, capturing them in their home on a military base. Trump said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela temporarily, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that it would not govern the country day-to-day other than enforcing an existing “oil quarantine.”
A lot of attention is being paid to the results of Sunday evening’s Critics Choice Awards, from which I have just returned home. Among the most notable: One Battle After Another was recognized with best picture, best director (Paul Thomas Anderson) and best adapted screenplay (Anderson) prizes, while Marty Supreme’s Timothée Chalamet won best actor and Hamnet’s Jessie Buckley won best actress and, in outcomes that were less widely predicted, best supporting actor went to Frankenstein’s Jacob Elordi and best supporting actress went to Weapons’ Amy Madigan.
To all of the above individuals, congratulations on well-deserved recognition! But the question on everyone’s mind — including, I’m sure, theirs — is this: do the results of the Critics Choice Awards actually tend to predict the results of the Academy Awards? The answer is tricky…
Critics Choice Award winners are determined by some 600 critics and journalists who are members of the Critics Choice Association (full disclosure: I’m one of them), whereas Oscar winners are determined by some 11,000 people who actually work on films. Plus, the vast majority of CCA members are based in America, whereas one-quarter of Academy members are based outside of the country. In other words, there is virtually no overlap between the membership of the two groups, save for Leonard Maltin.
That being said, because the Critics Choice Awards is the first major televised awards show of the season, coverage of its winners — via the live broadcast and subsequently in articles, photographs, social media posts and the like — reaches quite a few Academy members, and may, consciously or not, shape their thinking about what/who is worthy of their time (they have to decide which movies to prioritize watching) and support as they head in to the Oscar nomination voting window of Jan. 12-16.
But on that note, one needs to remember that most critics and journalists who cover film see, as part of their job, everything, or at least a lot more films than most Academy members, especially since the Academy’s recent influx of people who are younger and still highly active in their careers, leaving them less time to, well, watch movies. As a result, the CCA tends to spread its votes around a lot of projects (it also has six nominees in most categories, while the Academy has only five), whereas the Academy tends to do a lot more coattail voting (ticking off people from the same film straight down the ballot).
In some years, the CCA truly is an early indicator of which way the wind is blowing — last year, for instance, it was the first major awards body to give its top prize to Anora, two days before the Producers Guild and Directors Guild did the same, followed by the Academy. And in some years, the CCA and the Academy agree of a lot of things — eight years ago, both groups picked the exact same winners for their their six highest-profile awards — best picture, director, actor, actress, supporting actor and supporting actress.
Most of the time, though, the groups diverge, in those six categories, on at least one or two categories, so I decided to put under the microscope the past decade of results to see what they tell us…
Best picture Overlaps: Six — Spotlight, The Shape of Water, Nomadland, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Oppenheimer and Anora Splits: Four — CCA went with La La Land, Academy went with Moonlight; CCA went with Roma, Academy went with Green Book; CCA went with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Academy went with Parasite; CCA went with The Power of the Dog, Academy went with CODA Pattern: To me, the interesting splits are the two in which there was a marked difference between the winners: see Roma/Green Brook and The Power of the Dog/CODA. CCA went with the highbrow choice, while the Academy went with the populist choice. This makes sense given not only the groups’ different constituencies, but also that the CCA uses a straight vote to pick its best picture winners, which can redound to the benefit of a polarizing film, whereas the Academy employs a preferential ballot, which boosts films that most people at least like. Bottom line: I suppose One Battle could be vulnerable to some of the same things that probably derailed two other critical and commercial successes between the Critics Choice Awards and the Oscars, La La Land (the challenge of maintaining frontrunner status through a long season) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (a non-English-language of wide appeal). Plus, Sinners and Hamnet should both fare pretty well on the Academy’s preferential ballot. But, on the heels of three consecutive years in which the two groups overlapped on their best picture winner, the smartest Oscar bet remains One Battle.
Best director Overlaps: Eight — La La Land’s Damien Chazelle, The Shape of Water’s Guillermo del Toro, Roma’s Alfonso Cuarón, Parasite’s Bong Joon-ho (tied with 1917’s Sam Mendes), Nomadland’s Chloé Zhao, The Power of the Dog’s Jane Campion, Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert and Oppenheimer’s Christopher Nolan Splits: Two — CCA went with Mad Max: Fury Road’s George Miller, Academy went with The Revenant’s Alejandro G. Inarritu; and CCA went with Wicked’s Jon M. Chu, Academy went with Anora’s Sean Baker Pattern: Both groups tend to treat this award as a place to recognize the filmmaker who had the greatest directorial challenge and/or is overdue (e.g. Cuarón, del Toro, Campion, Nolan). Bottom line: PTA — who is revered by fellow filmmakers, is certainly overdue for an Oscar, and is not exactly asking for pity votes for a so-so film with One Battle — is very likely to repeat at the Oscars. In fact, I think he is even likelier to win best director than his film is to win best picture. Plus, there’s a very real chance that Oscar voters will choose to recognize his primary competitors, Hamnet’s Chloe Zhao and Sinners’ Ryan Coogler, with the best adapted screenplay and best original screenplay awards, respectively, so all three would take home statuettes.
Best actor Overlaps: Seven — The Revenant’s Leonardo DiCaprio, Manchester by the Sea’s Casey Affleck, Darkest Hour’s Gary Oldman, Joker’s Joaquin Phoenix, King Richard’s Will Smith, The Whale’s Brendan Fraser and The Brutalist’s Adrien Brody Splits: Three — CCA went with Vice’s Christian Bale, Academy went with Bohemian Rhapsody’s Rami Malek; CCA went with Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman, Academy went with The Father’s Anthony Hopkins; and CCA went with The Holdovers’ Paul Giamatti, Academy went with Oppenheimer’s Cillian Murphy Pattern: None discernible. Bottom line: Chalamet gives the performance of his career in Marty Supreme, and could well be on his way to a repeat of his Critics Choice win at the Oscars, where he would be up for best actor for the second year in a row and third time overall. I don’t think that one can make a stronger argument for the prospects of anyone else at this time. But I would just caution that the Academy has only once, in nearly a century of the Oscars, given its best actor prize to someone younger than Chalamet, who just turned 30 (Adrien Brody, who was 29 when he won for The Pianist). Fairly or not, many Academy members feel that someone that young will have other chances in the future, and elect to instead reward someone with a larger body of work. Could Chalamet be derailed by One Battle’s Leonardo DiCaprio, even though DiCaprio already has a best actor Oscar to his name, because One Battle seems to have been more widely embraced by Oscar voters than Marty Supreme? Or by The Secret Agent’s Wagner Moura, on the back of significant international support? Or by Sinners’ Michael B. Jordan, who had as challenging an assignment as anyone, playing twins? Or by Blue Moon’s Ethan Hawke, who has been around a long time and never been recognized? Time will tell.
Best actress Overlaps: Five — Room’s Brie Larson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’s Frances McDormand, Judy’s Renée Zellweger, The Eyes of Tammy Faye’s Jessica Chastain and Poor Things’ Emma Stone Splits: Five — CCA went with Jackie’s Natalie Portman, Academy went with La La Land’s Emma Stone; CCA went with The Wife’s Glenn Close and A Star Is Born’s Lady Gaga (tie), Academy went with The Favourite’s Olivia Colman; CCA went with Promising Young Woman’s Carey Mulligan, Academy went with Nomadland’s Frances McDormand; CCA went with Tár’s Cate Blanchett, Academy went with Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Michelle Yeoh; and CCA went with The Substance’s Demi Moore, Academy went with Anora’s Mikey Madison Pattern: Here is where we can really see evidence of coattail voting by Academy members — in every instance of a split, the CCA’s pick was either (a) not in a best picture nominee and lost at the Oscars to someone who was or (b) was in a best picture nominee and lost at the Oscars to someone from a more popular best picture nominee. Bottom line: The good news for Buckley is that there are only two films that might be regarded as stronger best picture contenders than Hamnet — One Battle and Sinners — and they have only one best actress contender between them, Chase Infiniti, who makes her big screen debut in One Battle. For Infiniti, who is just 25, a nom would be a win. Buckley’s path looks pretty clear.
Best supporting actor Overlaps: Nine — Moonlight’s Mahershala Ali, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’s Sam Rockwell, Green Book’s Mahershala Ali, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Brad Pitt, Judas and the Black Messiah’s Daniel Kaluuya, CODA’s Troy Kotsur, Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Ke Huy Quan, Oppenheimer’s Robert Downey Jr. and A Real Pain’s Kieran Culkin Splits: One — CCA went with Creed’s Sylvester Stallone, Academy went with Bridge of Spies’ Mark Rylance Pattern: The last nine Critics Choice and Oscar winners in this category overlapped, which is a pretty remarkable track record. Both groups seem drawn to breakthrough performers (e.g. Ali, Kotsur and Kaluuya) and overdue veterans (e.g. Rockwell, Pitt and Downey), whether or not they are in best picture winners (of the overlapping nine, five were and four weren’t). Bottom line: Critics Choice winner Elordi is certainly a breakthrough performer, and there is nothing that the Academy loves and tends to reward more than a good-looking person who undergoes a giant physical transformation for a part that leaves them looking less good-looking, as he did, so there’s a certain logic to him winning. But only one person younger than the 28-year-old has ever won an Oscar in this category — Ordinary People’s Timothy Hutton, who was just 20 — in part because, I suspect, one can only have made so many relationships in the business at such a young age. That’s a big part of why I would still look out, at the Oscars, for Sentimental Value‘s Stellan Skarsgård, who most expected to win at the Critics Choice Awards. The 74-year-old is a well-liked and respected veteran who, like Elordi, is central to a likely best picture nominee, but unlike Elordi, has worked with countless fellow filmmakers all across the world over the course of his decades-long career. Consider the number of collaborators he has had on just the MCU, Pirates of the Caribbean, Mamma Mia! and Dune film franchises!
Best supporting actress Overlaps: Eight — The Danish Girl’s Alicia Vikander, Fences’ Viola Davis, I, Tonya’s Allison Janney, If Beale Street Could Talk’s Regina King, Marriage Story’s Laura Dern, West Side Story’s Ariana DeBose, The Holdovers’ Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Emilia Pérez’s Zoë Saldaña Splits: Two — CCA went with Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’s Maria Bakalova, Academy went with Minari’s Youn Yuh-jung; and CCA went with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s Angela Bassett, Academy went Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Jamie Lee Curtis Pattern: None discernible. Bottom line: For Wicked: For Good’s Ariana Grande and One Battle’s Teyana Taylor, losing at the Critics Choice Awards to Madigan has to hurt, because members of the Academy are even more inclined than members of the CCA to reward a veteran. In other words, if Madigan can beat them here, she can beat them there. Moving forward, the best hope for Grande and/or Taylor is that they will benefit from coattail voting — their films are likelier to be nominated for best picture than Madigan’s is — but even that may not be enough to help them overcome Madigan’s “overdue” narrative: the 75-year-old, who has given dozens of memorable performances, but received her only prior Oscar nomination 40 years ago, says movie offers had largely dried up for her as she got older, and she had basically come to terms with being out of the game — but then she got offered an off-the-wall part, took a huge swing and is now winning awards for it.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro arrived in the United States to face criminal charges after being captured in an audacious nighttime military operation that President Donald Trump said would set the U.S. up to “run” the South American country and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.
What You Need To Know
Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro arrived in the U.S. to face criminal charges after being captured in a nighttime military operation that President Donald Trump said would set the U.S. up to “run” the South American country and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations
Maduro landed late Saturday afternoon at a small airport in New York following the middle-of-the-night operation that extracted him and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home in a military base in the capital, Caracas
Venezuela’s capital remained unusually quiet Sunday with few vehicles moving around and convenience stores, gas stations and other businesses closed
Lawmakers from both American political parties have raised reservations to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling. Congress has not approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region
Maduro landed late Saturday afternoon at a small airport in New York following the middle-of-the-night operation that extracted him and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home in a military base in the capital, Caracas — an act that Maduro’s government called “imperialist.” The couple faces U.S. charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.
The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela’s autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval. Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, meanwhile, demanded that the United States free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader as her nation’s high court named her interim president.
Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Rodríguez, who didn’t give a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured, but none was killed.
Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.
After arriving at a small airport in New York City’s northern suburbs, Maduro was flown by helicopter to Manhattan, where a convoy of law enforcement vehicles, including an armored car, was waiting to whisk him to a nearby U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office.
A video posted on social media by a White House account showed Maduro, smiling, as he was escorted through that office by two DEA agents grasping his arms.
Trump says U.S. will ‘run the country’
The Trump administration promoted the ouster as a step toward reducing the flow of dangerous drugs into the U.S. The president touted what he saw as other potential benefits, including a leadership stake in the country and greater control of oil.
Trump claimed the U.S. government would help lead the country and was already doing so, though there were no immediate visible signs of that. Venezuelan state TV aired pro-Maduro propaganda and broadcast live images of supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference. He boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”
Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges, and the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife that painted his administration as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S with cocaine. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro as the country’s leader.
The Trump administration spent months building up American forces in the region and carrying out attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean for allegedly ferrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. campaign began in September.
Early morning attack
Taking place 36 years to the day after the 1990 surrender and seizure of Panama leader Manuel Antonio Noriega following a U.S. invasion, the Venezuela operation unfolded under the cover of darkness early Saturday. Trump said the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights” in Caracas while forces moved in to extract Maduro and his wife.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had rehearsed their maneuvers for months, learning everything about Maduro — where he was and what he ate, as well as details of his pets and his clothes.
“We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again and again,” Caine said. “Not to get it right, but to ensure we cannot get it wrong.”
Multiple explosions rang out that morning, and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas. Maduro’s government accused the United States of hitting civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets. The explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they saw and heard.
Restrictions imposed by the U.S. government on airspace around Venezuela and the Caribbean expired early Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on X, an announcement that suggested any further immediate major U.S. military action was unlikely. “Airlines are informed, and will update their schedules quickly,” he posted.
Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro. Rodríguez, however, stressed during a Saturday appearance on state television that she did not plan to assume power, before Venezuela’s high court ordered that she become interim president.
“There is only one president in Venezuela,” Rodriguez said, “and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”
Some streets in Caracas fill up
Venezuela’s ruling party has held power since 1999, when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, took office, promising to uplift poor people and later to implement a self-described socialist revolution.
Maduro took over when Chávez died in 2013. His 2018 reelection was widely considered a sham because the main opposition parties were banned from participating. During the 2024 election, electoral authorities loyal to the ruling party declared him the winner hours after polls closed, but the opposition gathered overwhelming evidence that he lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
Venezuela’s capital remained unusually quiet Sunday with few vehicles moving around and convenience stores, gas stations and other businesses closed. A road typically filled with runners, cyclists and other fitness enthusiasts on Sundays only had a handful of people working out the day after Maduro was deposed.
The presidential palace was guarded by armed civilians and members of the military. At a nearby plaza, only a street sweeper and a soldier stood, and across the street, a church remained close for a second day in a row.
Caracas resident David Leal arrived to the lot where he parks vehicles for a living only to quickly realize that he would likely not see any clients for a second day.
“People are still shaken,” Leal, 77, said.
Questions of legality linger
Whether the United States violated any laws, international or otherwise, was still a question early Sunday. “There are a number of international legal concepts which the United States might have broken by capturing Maduro,” said Ilan Katz, an international law analyst.
Pope Leo XIV, who last month had expressed concern about growing U.S. threats of military intervention in Venezuela, raised alarms during his Sunday noon blessing and said the good of the Venezuelan people must prevail above everything else. History’s first U.S. pope demanded an end to violence and for Venezuela’s sovereignty to be guaranteed.
In New York, the U.N. Security Council, acting on an emergency request from Colombia, planned to hold a meeting on U.S. operations in Venezuela on Monday morning.
Lawmakers from both American political parties have raised reservations and flat-out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling. Congress has not approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he had seen no evidence that would justify Trump striking Venezuela without approval from Congress and demanded an immediate briefing by the administration on “its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelans on Sunday remained shell-shocked a day after President Nicolás Maduro was deposed and captured in a U.S. military operation, with an uncertain future ahead in the South American nation.
What You Need To Know
Venezuelans remain in shock after President Nicolás Maduro was deposed and captured in a U.S. military operation
A tense calm has settled over Caracas, with many stores and churches closed
Maduro is in custody in New York, but his officials remain in power, demanding his release
U.S. President Donald Trump has asserted that his administration will run Venezuela, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio instead said the U.S. will use control of Venezuela’s oil industry to force policy changes
A tense calm settled over the capital, Caracas, which was unusually quiet. Many stores, gas stations and churches remained closed and people patiently lined up outside others, staring at their phones or into the distance.
“People are still shaken,” said 77-year-old David Leal, who arrived to work as a parking attendant but realized he likely would not have customers. He pointed to the deserted street.
While Maduro was in custody in New York, the officials who had surrounded him remained in power and demanded his release. Venezuela’s presidential palace was guarded by armed civilians and members of the military.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday asserted that his administration would “run” Venezuela with the help of Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president and now the interim president after a high court’s order.
But Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday appeared to back off Trump’s assertion. In interviews with CBS and ABC, he insisted instead that Washington will use control of Venezuela’s oil industry to force policy changes. He said the government currently in place was illegitimate but a step toward where the U.S. wanted Venezuela to be.
“We want to see Venezuela transition to be a place completely different than what it looks like today. But obviously, we don’t have the expectation that’s going to happen in the next 15 hours,” Rubio said. “There has to be a little realism here.”
While Venezuelans in the U.S. and Latin America broke out in celebration or protest, there were no signs of celebration within the country. A number of government supporters rallied over the weekend, some burning U.S. flags and holding signs reading “gringo go home”.
In a low-income neighborhood in eastern Caracas, construction worker Daniel Medalla sat on the steps outside a Catholic church and told a few parishioners that there would be no morning Mass.
Medalla said he believed the streets remained mostly empty because people fear government repression if they dare celebrate.
“We were longing for it,” Medalla, 66, said of Maduro’s exit.
There are fresh memories of a government crackdown during 2024’s fraught elections, which Maduro was widely accused of stealing. Street protests left 28 people dead, 220 injured and at least 2,000 detained, according to official figures.
In the coastal state of La Guaira, families with houses damaged in blasts during the overnight operation that captured Maduro and his wife were cleaning up debris.
Wilman González, who was left with a black eye from a blast, picked through rubble on his floors, surrounded by broken furniture. One part of his apartment building was almost entirely blown off, leaving walls gaping.
A number of people were killed by the U.S. strikes, though Venezuelan officials did not confirm how many.
Among those killed was González’s aunt.
“This is it, what we are left with: ruins,” he said.
González spoke with anger at the wreckage but also at the compounding economic and political crises that Venezuela has endured for decades.
“We are civilians, we are not with the government or anyone else,” he said.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Hours after an audacious military operation that plucked leader Nicolás Maduro from power and removed him from the country, President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States would run Venezuela at least temporarily and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.
What You Need To Know
President Donald Trump says the United States will run Venezuela at least temporarily after an audacious military operation plucked leader Nicolás Maduro from power and removed him from the country
Trump on Saturday also described plans to tap Venezuela’s vast oil reserves to sell to other nations
The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on the South American nation and its autocratic leader and months of secret planning
It resulted in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq
Legal experts immediately raised questions about whether the operation was lawful
The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on the South American nation and its autocratic leader and months of secret planning resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Legal experts immediately raised questions about whether the operation was lawful. Venezuela’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez demanded in a speech that the U.S. free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader, before Venezuela’s high court ordered her to assume the role of interim president.
Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.
Maduro and his wife, seized overnight from their home on a military base, were first taken aboard a U.S. warship on their way to face prosecution for a Justice Department indictment accusing them of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.
A plane carrying the deposed leader landed around 4:30 p.m. Saturday at an airport in New York City’s northern suburbs. Maduro was escorted off the jet, gingerly making his way down a stairway before being led across the tarmac surrounded by federal agents. Several agents filmed him on their phones as he walked.
He was then flown by helicopter to Manhattan, where a convoy of law enforcement vehicles, including an armored car, was waiting to whisk him to a nearby U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office.
A video posted on social media by a White House account showed Maduro, smiling, as he was escorted through that office by two DEA agents grasping his arms.
He was expected to be detained while awaiting trial at a federal jail in Brooklyn.
Move lacks congressional approval
The legal authority for the incursion, done without congressional approval, was not immediately clear, but the Trump administration promoted the ouster as a step toward reducing the flow of dangerous drugs into the U.S. The president touted what he saw as other potential benefits, including a leadership stake in the country and greater control of oil.
Trump claimed the U.S. government would help run the country and was already doing so, though there were no immediate signs of that. Venezuelan state TV continued to air pro-Maduro propaganda, broadcasting live images of supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference where he boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”
Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on “narco-terrorism” conspiracy charges, but the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, that painted the regime as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug trafficking operation that flooded the U.S with cocaine. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro as the country’s leader.
Trump posted a photo on social media showing Maduro wearing a sweatsuit and a blindfold on board the USS Iwo Jima.
Early morning attack
The operation followed a monthslong Trump administration effort to push the Venezuelan leader, including a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America and attacks on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean accused of carrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September.
Maduro had decried prior military operations as a thinly veiled effort to topple him from power.
Taking place 36 years to the day after the 1990 surrender and seizure of Panama leader Manuel Antonio Noriega following a U.S. invasion, the Venezuela operation unfolded under the cover of darkness early Saturday as Trump said the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights” in the capital city of Caracas while forces moved in to extract Maduro and his wife.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had rehearsed their maneuvers for months, learning everything about Maduro — where he was and what he ate, as well as details of his pets and his clothes.
“We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again and again,” Caine said. “Not to get it right, but to ensure we cannot get it wrong.”
Early Saturday, multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas. Maduro’s government accused the U.S. of hitting civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets.
The assault lasted less than 30 minutes, and the explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they saw and heard. Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Rodríguez, the country’s vice president, without giving a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured but none were killed.
Video obtained from Caracas and an unidentified coastal city showed tracers and smoke clouding the landscape as repeated muted explosions illuminated the night sky. Other footage showed cars passing on a highway as blasts illuminated the hills behind them. The videos were verified by The Associated Press.
Smoke was seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas, while another military installation in the capital was without electricity.
Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro. Rodriguez, however, stressed during a Saturday appearance on state television that she did not plan to assume power, before Venezuela’s high court ordered that she assume the interim role.
“There is only one president in Venezuela, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros,” Rodriguez said.
Government supporters burn a U.S. flag in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that U.S. forces had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
Some streets in Caracas fill up
Venezuela’s ruling party has held power since 1999, when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, took office, promising to uplift poor people and later to implement a self-described socialist revolution.
Maduro took over when Chávez died in 2013. His 2018 reelection was widely considered a sham because the main opposition parties were banned from participating. During the 2024 election, electoral authorities loyal to the ruling party declared him the winner hours after polls closed, but the opposition gathered overwhelming evidence that he lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
In a demonstration of how polarizing a figure Maduro is, people variously took to the streets to protest his capture and celebrate it.
At a protest in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas Mayor Carmen Meléndez joined a crowd demanding Maduro’s return.
“Maduro, hold on, the people are rising up!” the crowd chanted. “We are here, Nicolás Maduro. If you can hear us, we are here!”
Earlier, armed people and uniformed members of a civilian militia took to the streets of a Caracas neighborhood long considered a stronghold of the ruling party.
In other parts of the city, the streets remained empty hours after the attack. Some areas remained without power, but vehicles moved freely.
“How do I feel? Scared, like everyone,” said Caracas resident Noris Prada, who sat on an empty avenue looking down at his phone. “Venezuelans woke up scared, many families couldn’t sleep.”
In Doral, Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the U.S, people wrapped themselves in Venezuelan flags, ate fried snacks and cheered as music played. At one point, the crowd chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”
In this photo released by the White House, President Donald Trump monitors U.S. military operations in Venezuela with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, center, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (Molly Riley/The White House via AP)
Questions of legality
Some legal experts raised immediate concerns about the operation’s legality.
The U.N. Security Council, acting on an emergency request from Colombia, planned to hold a meeting on U.S. operations in Venezuela on Monday morning, according to a council diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a meeting not yet made public.
Lawmakers from both political parties in Congress have raised reservations and flat-out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling near the Venezuelan coast. Congress has not specifically approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he had seen no evidence that would justify Trump striking Venezuela without approval from Congress and demanded an immediate briefing by the administration on “its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”
“Minimal” is on view at La Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection through January 19, 2025. Courtesy Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection
Minimalism emerged as both an act of resistance and a direct response to the exuberance of mass media and mass production—forces celebrated as progress that fundamentally reshaped how we relate to objects and to material reality itself. Seen from today’s vantage point, works made during the height of the movement in the 1960s and ’70s reveal a radical and strikingly timely philosophical and political interrogation of our modern sense of reality that feels particularly urgent in an era defined by the mediatization and spectacularization of the digital sphere.
Against the promise of endless availability and the relentless cycles of production, circulation and consumption—including the infinite reproducibility of the digital image—Minimalism’s artists embraced an ascetic discipline of reduction, stripping the artwork to its essential terms and events while intensifying its effects. In doing so, they underscored how an object, through restraint, can shape perception and reconfigure the very space and architecture that contain it.
“Minimal,” a major exhibition that opened at La Bourse de Commerce in October, brings together over 100 works, including a core group drawn from François Pinault’s collection, alongside international loans from the Dia Foundation in New York and other institutions. Curated by Dia director Jessica Morgan, it traces, likely for the first time, both the diversity and the global reach of the movement launched by a generation of artists who initiated a radical approach to art that later took on different forms around the world.
The exhibition unfolds as a journey that allows for multiple discoveries and rediscoveries, showcasing how artists from diverse cultural backgrounds across Asia, Europe, and North and South America similarly challenged traditional methods of art production and display. At its core is a fundamental reconsideration of the artwork’s placement in relation to the viewer and within the cyclical flow of energy and matter that underpins the cosmos itself.
Lygia Pape’s Weaving Space. Photo: Nicolas Brasseur/Pinault Collection | Courtesy Projeto Lygia Pape
The works in the show were born out of a shared attempt to stage raw encounters with matter and to engage the most primordial and authentic structures of human experience. Conceived with both conceptual and spiritual rigor, they privilege presence and perception over form, becoming experiential sites of “lived perception”—embodying an entire mode of thinking in an art object that places the physical self at the center of understanding the world.
Philosophically, Minimalist artworks foreground a mature awareness of reality as inherently interrelational, something that arises only in the encounter between object, viewer and environment. A radical manifestation of this interdependence appears in the central installations by American artist Meg Webster, which dominate the Bourse’s scenic, frescoed rotunda. Conceived and realized in collaboration with natural processes, their final form stages a tense resistance to entropy, which inevitably alters their shape and appearance over time beyond any claim to human formal control or perfection. Natural processes are embedded within these seemingly simple structures, which ultimately draw an entire ecosystem into Tadao Ando’s spare architecture. Here, the total choreography matters as much as its individual components, as Webster constructs an interior landscape at the building’s core.
Merging nature and culture, matter and energy, Webster’s process-based sculpture is infused with a prescient ecological consciousness. Poised between the elemental and the formal, between human-shaped material and natural transformation, her work prompts reflection on sustainability and our relationship to the earth—particularly resonant today as she receives long-overdue international attention through this presentation, which runs in conjunction with her year-long exhibition at Dia Beacon.
Meg Webster works at Bourse de Commerce. Photo : Florent Michel / 11h45 / Pinault Collection
If Minimalism has long been interpreted as an aesthetic reaction to the subjective overflow of Abstract Expressionism and the figuration of Pop Art, the global perspective and breadth of this exhibition make clear that the approach often extended far beyond a purely aesthetic exercise. In doing so, it prepared the conceptual ground for a substantial share of contemporary sculpture and Conceptual Art, pushing the logic of economy of means to the point of privileging the idea over its realization. This shift opened up possibilities for many contemporary artistic practices that operate beyond, or are no longer confined to, fixed traditional media.
The exhibition is organized into seven thematic sections: Light, Mono-ha, Balance, Surface, Grid, Monochrome and Materialism. The titles signal the core elements these artists investigated in their inquiry into the most radical ways of translating reality through art reduced to its most essential components. Unadorned by any pretense of figuration or narrative and detached from the biographical identity of its maker, each work functions simultaneously as proposition and question.
Underlying the pieces on view is a shared desire to situate the audience within the same perceptual field, calling for a bodily correspondence between artwork and viewer through scale and proximity. In many parts of the world, this reconceptualization of three-dimensional form and perception led to a dialogue with performance, whether through process-based making, choreographic collaboration or direct physical interaction with the work.
The exhibition naturally includes the early generation of American artists most closely associated with the movement, including Donald Judd, Carl Andre and Dan Flavin, though they do not occupy center stage, reflecting an effort to decentralize and broaden the narrative. As at Dia, the show presents artists from the 1960s who pursued a similarly radical engagement with the canvas, exploring austerity and mathematical rigor through monochrome and grid-based structures. Figures such as Robert Ryman and Agnes Martin are represented by some of the most significant works drawn from Pinault’s collection.
Particularly compelling is the dialogue established with parallel aesthetics emerging from markedly different cultural, philosophical and spiritual contexts outside the United States. Among these, the Japanese Mono-ha group offers one of the exhibition’s most resonant contributions. Pinault’s holdings include one of the most substantial collections of Mono-ha works outside Japan. Artists such as Lee Ufan, Kishio Suga, Koji Enokura, Susumu Koshimizu, Nobuo Sekine and Jiro Takamatsu foreground the interrelation of object, space and viewer, staging “things” together in their natural or industrially fabricated states. By embracing the delicate balance and tension produced by their transitory condition, these artists investigated a form of material intelligence, examining how matter retains identity even as form shifts, prioritizing material presence over sculptural expression and over any symbolic or linguistic framing.
Another compelling perspective included in the exhibition is the organic and participatory reinterpretation of geometric abstraction developed in Brazil through the Neo-Concrete movement, exemplified by Lygia Pape, Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica. A capsule exhibition dedicated to Pape, “Weaving Space,” which opened a month earlier and runs concurrently, served as a prelude to “Minimal.” It traces key moments in her oeuvre, from Max Bill-inspired geometries to an increasingly organic and participatory use of abstraction, presenting works that range from her first abstract engravings to her monumental Livro Noite e Dia III (Book of Night and Day III) from 1963-76, alongside experimental films that emerged in response to Brazil’s sociopolitical context at the time. At the heart of the presentation is her poetic, full-room installation Ttéia 1, C (2003-2017), in which she literally weaves space into a new architectural structure using delicate gold threads, transforming the environment into a luminous and diaphanous site of exchange between physical presence and imagination, light and darkness.
One of her most radical works, Divisor (1968), was restaged during the show’s opening weeks. As in its original enactment in Rio de Janeiro, a hundred participants moved as one beneath an immense perforated white sheet, forming a living metaphor for a shared social fabric. In this gentle merging of forms, hierarchy is suspended, and the work invites a collective, participatory meditation on equality, employing abstraction as a universal language that transcends individuality and binds participants within a shared structure.
Occupying the entirety of the rotunda is On Kawara’s Minimal Chronology of Dated Paintings, forming a minimalist diary and record of personal and collective time. By painting the numbers that denote each passing day, Kawara creates a fragment of space and materiality in which the durational act of painting absorbs the multiplicity of events and meanings implied within a single date, set against the relentless flow of time. By confronting the idea that linear time itself is a conventional and ultimately arbitrary human construction, Kawara’s date paintings distill life to its most essential marker—time alone—aligning with Minimalism’s drive toward radical reduction through their emphasis on the viewer’s direct encounter with the present. Meanwhile, in Europe, movements such as Zero in Germany and Arte Povera in Italy pushed the boundaries of sculpture through minimalist vocabularies and a direct engagement with space as a hybrid, active presence.
The additional perspectives and less expected figures presented in the Light section offer a fresh reading of how Minimalism enabled artists to investigate one of the most phenomenologically charged elements through which we access physical reality. In the 1960s and ’70s, light became a primary material. Artists including Dan Flavin, Nancy Holt, François Morellet, Robert Irwin, Mary Corse, Keith Sonnier and Chryssa worked with fluorescent tubes, neon, black light, projected light and natural illumination, driven by a broader inquiry into perception and immateriality as artificial and industrial lighting came to dominate the urban environment. Flavin’s fluorescent structures redefined spatial boundaries and architectural features, while Holt and Irwin explored the relational, phenomenological nature of light, focusing on how it organizes perception and bodily movement. Corse, meanwhile, experimented with Tesla coils and argon gas, producing works that appear to capture and hold light itself.
It is in these perspectives that we gain further evidence of how, through a minimalist language, these artists were already posing urgent questions that remain, or have become even more timely today. Ultimately, Minimal art, in its various declinations, was already probing the dynamics and structures that shape our relationship to reality and our physical position within a world of things transformed into products and meaning through human-made symbols and systems that often attempt to contain or neutralize, through illusion, the entropic nature of reality beyond human cognitive and sensory grasp.
The emphasis in these works rests on the moment of encounter itself: the phenomenology of seeing before and beyond any process of signification. Form becomes secondary to process, presence and the inherent agency of materials. Through deconstruction and reduction, these works introduce profound existential doubts rather than offering closed propositions, redirecting attention to a pre-linguistic register of experience—the first contact with reality, which already carries its own phenomenological truth. What they propose is an epistemology grounded in dynamic, open-ended relationships with matter. In doing so, the works cultivate a heightened awareness of the sensory core of our experience of the world, our only access within the limits of embodied perception.
In a culture saturated with mediated images and, increasingly, with algorithmic simulations and machine-generated forms, Minimalism restores the body as the primary filter and medium through which the world is apprehended—an insistence on embodied perception that feels newly urgent in a desensitized and increasingly alienated society, where digital mediation and elaboration govern, or can potentially substitute for, much of our experience of reality.
When Cherien Dabis‘ All That’s Left of You, which she wrote, directed and starred in, premiered a year ago at the Sundance Film Festival, she considered it a rousing success. They were given a slot at the sought-after Eccles Theater, received a standing ovation and landed strong reviews. “And then, we struggled for months,” she says, despite winning more than 20 awards since Sundance. The movie traces the fallout of the displacement of Palestinians in 1948, also known as the Nakba, through the lives of one family, and an act of violence they suffer at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces. It didn’t secure a buyer at the festival. “We really wanted a mainstream distributor, which was maybe naive because no Palestinian film has gotten that. But then I felt really empowered, like, ‘All right, I’m just going to have to learn distribution.’ ”
Dabis eventually partnered with Watermelon Pictures, a distributor that describes itself as “rooted in creative resistance,” and picked back up on the fest circuit starting with Telluride. On Jan. 6, Dabis will bring the film to the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Here, she speaks to THR about what she’s learned from the long road.
Movies from Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, like No Other Land and The Voice of Hind Rajab, have been recognized critically and with awards but also struggled to find mainstream distribution. Do you feel as if you’re in good company?
The bottom is falling out of this industry. All kinds of films are struggling to be seen. That doesn’t make me feel better, but it did show me that the business model doesn’t really work.
What was the first seed of an idea for this movie?
It came back in 2014. I wanted to tell a story about the devastating impact of the Nakba for Palestinians. My father was exiled in 1967, and it took him many years to get foreign citizenship just to be able to go back and visit his family. I watched him get older and more disillusioned and angry about the situation, and I saw how his health suffered as a result. I was looking at my intergenerational trauma and going, “OK, what do I do with this?” But I was a broke indie filmmaker, so I was like, “OK, I need to get into television and fill the bank account before I do this.”
Can you talk about how the current war affected the film?
We prepped the movie for five months in [the West Bank], then suddenly everything came to a halt and we had to evacuate. We were always going to shoot 10 percent in Cyprus, so we started there hoping we’d be able to go back to Palestine. Luckily my cast had Israeli citizenship — they’re Palestinians living in Israel proper — so they were able to travel. My production designer has a Jerusalem ID, which makes it hard for him to get out. Every time we were looking to travel him, he was stopped and interrogated, so he ended up working remotely through FaceTime.
Do you find that Palestinian films have roadblocks in looking for financing?
No. The financing came together really quickly. There was a lot of support and public funding for this story in Europe and the Arab world. Americans are still the gatekeepers [in Hollywood], and there are some people who do not want the dominant narrative about this region to be challenged. Speaking authentically about our lived experience is seen as threatening. From the Palestinian point of view, that is deeply painful.
This story appeared in the Jan. 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
Alicja Kwade’s Pars pro Toto (2020) in the museum’s courtyard. Courtesy of Dib Bangkok. Photographer Auntika Ounjittichai, 2025
IT WAS HARD TO GET HERE reads a painted vinyl and plywood bench created by Finnegan Shannon and situated past the entryway of Dib Bangkok. It provides an abbreviated backstory behind a new museum that opened in the Thai capital in late December—the first of its kind in the city and the country. Stability is something the Thai art scene has lacked, and the museum’s launch marks a significant structural shift. “For the general arts scene here, the ecosystem is fast developing,” Miwako Tezuka, director of the museum, told Observer. “What we need is constancy.”
Located in a converted industrial warehouse designed by WHY Architecture (the same firm behind the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), the museum takes its name from the Thai word “dib,” meaning “raw” or “natural, authentic state.” The institution’s holdings are comprised of the private art collection of Thai businessman Petch Osathanugrah, amassed over the course of three decades before his death in 2023. It comprises around 1,000 works by some 200 artists, more or less equally divided between Asian and non-Asian origins. “There was no institution presenting a space that allows local artists and global artists to have equal ground [in] conversation,” Tezuka added, contextualizing the importance of the museum.
The debut exhibition, “(In)visible Presence” (on view through August 3, 2026), is a meditation on memory curated by Ariana Chaivaranon. “It’s so important for local artists to see how they’re in dialogue with something that’s so much bigger than the nation or what’s going on right now in Thailand,” she told Observer. “These artists are all deeply intertwined with an international conversation. And yet, so often in Thailand, we only have a conversation internally, which is partly because of the collections that have been on display.” The mise-en-scène at Dib Bangkok reflects that these practices developed in different geographical regions, but Chaivaranon insisted that “visitors can actually see that they have been in dialogue for decades.”
She further emphasized how crucial the experiential aspect of museum-going is as a cornerstone of art education, and how Dib Bangkok is filling an absence in the city’s scene. In previous decades, “for many of these [Thai] artists, they were getting their knowledge of international work from slides, from books, from magazines, and they didn’t have a chance to see international art of their time. Dib is offering a site where the artists can now see these works in person. When you see it in person… it takes on a whole new dimension that is inaccessible through just digital media, even.” She cited as a key example the Anselm Kiefer work on view, Die verlorene Buchstabe, an installation unfurling from a Heidelberg letterpress sprouting tall resin sunflowers. “The sunflowers gently move with the air, right? That’s something you couldn’t get online—and something that I’m really excited for young artists now to be able to come here and be inspired by.”
Montien Boonma, Lotus Sound piece (1999-2000). Remade from a smaller 1992 version. Courtesy of Dib Bangkok. Photographer Auntika Ounjittichai, 2025
Dib Bangkok’s 11 indoor galleries are spaced over three levels. The ground floor hosts Marco Fusinato’s work Constellations, a site-specific commission in which visitors are invited to whack a white wall with a Brooklyn Whopper Model CS38 Cold Steel baseball bat, whose sound is amplified at 120 decibels: a symbolic blow to the pristine museum space. This is followed by works from Jean-Luc Moulène and Ugo Rondinone; nearby, in the cone-shaped Chapel gallery, is Incubate, Subodh Gupta’s 2010 installation of stainless steel lunch tins (dabbas) overhung by chandeliers. (Recent sexual assault allegations did not prevent him from being featured.) Jannis Kounellis’s 1998 untitled work, comprised of four steel panels, I-beams and rolled second-hand garments—impecunious items he first used because he could not afford to buy new canvases—works well in conversation with Thai artists shown later in the exhibition, who also funneled principles of Arte Povera in their work: frugality, material simplicity.
On the second level, visitors encounter an iron bed by Rebecca Horn, Jinjoon Lee’s two-channel video installation and 22 folios on music paper by Louise Bourgeois. These pieces are paired with work by Thai artists, including gelatin silver prints by Surat Osathanugrah—father of the collector—which feature a modest depiction of day-to-day Thai life. Also on view are Navin Rawanchaikul’s tiers of photos of elders encased in salvaged medicine bottles (1994) and Somboon Hormtientong’s 1995 installation of wrapped vihara columns laid flat amongst libation vessels and glassware. These artists sanctify the rites that shape Thai lifestyles but refresh the perspective on tradition.
Under skylights on the top floor, the work of Montien Boonma is the star (he’s arguably the star of the whole museum). The Thai artist studied in Europe in the 1980s, and his sensitive, thoughtful work fosters a crossover between Arte Povera ideas and Thai spirituality. Lotus Sound piece (1999-2000, remade from a smaller 1992 version) stacks 500 terra-cotta bells around a gilded lotus flower, celebrating negative space, as does Arokayasala: Temple of the Mind (1996), with its herbal medicine drawers encircling aluminum lungs coated in aromatic herbal pastes. His 1998-99 installation Zodiac Houses models, at a modest scale, six existing German structures on stilts: visitors can take off their shoes, mount the platform and stand under their hollow structures, scented with cinnabar.
Outdoor works create a compelling complement to the galleries. Alicja Kwade’s Pars pro Toto (2020), an installation of 11 monumental stone globes ranging from 70-250 cm in diameter, speckle the courtyard like an outsized game of boules or errant marbles; Pinaree Sanpitak’s Breast Stupa Topiary (2013), a series of stainless-steel forms, dots the upper terrace. As is his signature, James Turrell’s 1988 Straight Up installation frames the sky above; the museum hosts dedicated sunrise and sunset programs for visitors. Sho Shibuya’s 85-meter-long print on vinyl, MEMORY, was specially commissioned by the museum, hugely enlarging the Sunrise from a Small Window series, in which the artist painted the sensuous colors of daybreak over the front page of the New York Times.
There is an emphasis on interactive and participatory works, so visitors can play. Surasi Kusolwong’s installation featuring an overturned and ceiling-suspended 1965 Volkswagen Beetle functions like a cradle in which visitors can sit and watch a video; the installation also includes TAO BIN vending machines, from which one can buy sour cream Pringles, salted cocktail nuts, Pepsi or Nescafé. “There are some works that are fragile, very sensitive, but we don’t want to make our exhibition precious,” Tezuka noted. The museum very much isn’t “a top-down institution where everything is didactically explained. … We want to make sure that we offer [visitors] the opportunity to educate themselves, to have their own creative agency and be their own active viewers.”
The first few shows will showcase the collection, and some galleries will rotate out more frequently than others (the display of Montien Boonma works will remain on the longest because these works haven’t previously been seen in context with each other). As for the way the collection will grow in the future, Chaivaranon confirmed that the institution is “continuing to acquire work, and I would say our strategy has a few different aspects, but one is to be quite deep. It’s not just one work from the big names.” Tezuka added that the “curatorial team is continuing to do the collection research to identify which are the gaps in the collection, whether that be cultural representation or different mediums that artists globally are using or experimenting with… How can we strategically fill in those gaps, while at the same time creating opportunities for newly discovered artists to present their works?”
Beyond the museum walls, Tezuka spoke about a “collective energy” brewing in the city’s art scene, citing the publicly funded art space BACC, the experimental programming at Bangkok Kunsthalle and the art destination of the Khao Yai Art Forest several hours outside the city. On the horizon, there will be deCentral, a space focusing on regional creative voices, and the Bangkok Biennale, which began in 2018, will return in fall 2026. According to Tezuka, “every organization is approaching art from a completely different way, bringing different perspectives.” The scene is most definitely one to watch.
Rebecca Horn, The Lover’s Bed, 1990. Courtesy of Dib Bangkok. Photographer Auntika Ounjittichai, 2025
NEW YORK — From Sydney to Paris to New York City, crowds rang in the new year with exuberant celebrations filled with thunderous fireworks or light shows, while others took a more subdued approach.
As the clock struck midnight in Japan, temple bells rang and some climbed mountains to see the year’s first sunrise, while a light show with somersaulting jet skis twinkled in Dubai. The countdown to 2026 was projected onto the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, while in Moscow people celebrated in the snow.
In New York City’s Times Square, revelers braved frigid temperatures to celebrate with the famed New Year’s Eve ball drop.
In Rio de Janeiro, revelers packed more than 4 kilometers (2 1/2 miles) of the city’s Copacabana Beach for concerts and a 12-minute fireworks show, despite high tides that had both organizers and tourists worried and large waves that rocked barges carrying fireworks.
Other events were more subdued. Hong Kong held limited celebrations following a recent fire at an apartment complex that killed 161 people. Australia saluted the new year with defiance less than a month after its worst mass shooting in almost 30 years.
Ball drop in New York City
Crowds bundled up against the chilly temperatures cheered and embraced as the New Year’s Eve ball covered in more than 5,000 crystals descended down a pole and confetti rained down in Times Square.
Revelers wearing tall celebratory hats and light-up necklaces had waited for hours to see the 12,350-pound (5,602-kilograms) ball drop. The festivities also included Tones and I performing John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
The television hosts interviewed visitors who were attending from such places as Florida, Mexico and South Korea, and read people’s wishes for the new year.
After the ball dropped it rose again, sparkling in red, white and blue, to mark the country’s upcoming 250th birthday.
Police in the city had planned additional anti-terrorism measures at the ball drop, with “mobile screening teams.” It was not in response to a specific threat, according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
Fireworks burst over the Sydney Harbour Bridge during the New Year celebrations in Sydney, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
More security in Sydney
A heavy police presence monitored crowds watching fireworks in Sydney. Many officers openly carried rapid-fire rifles, a first for the event, after two gunmen targeted a Hannukah celebration at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, killing 15.
An hour before midnight, victims were commemorated with a minute of silence, and the crowd was invited to show solidarity with Australia’s Jewish community.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns had urged residents not to stay away from festivities, saying extremists would interpret smaller crowds as a victory: “We have to show defiance in the face of this terrible crime.”
Shadows of war and disasters
Indonesia scaled back festivities in solidarity with communities devastated by floods and landslides in parts of Sumatra a month ago that killed over 1,100. Fireworks on the tourist island of Bali were replaced with traditional dances.
Hong Kong rang in 2026 without fireworks over Victoria Harbor after the massive fire in November. Facades of landmarks were turned into countdown clocks and a light show at midnight.
And in Gaza, Palestinians said they hope the new year brings an end to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
“The war humiliated us,” said Mirvat Abed Al-Aal, displaced from the southern city of Rafah.
A light show is projected on the Arc de Triomphe as fireworks explode during New Year celebrations on the Champs Elysees in Paris, France, Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Around Europe
Pope Leo XIV closed out the year with a plea for the city of Rome to welcome foreigners and the fragile. Fireworks erupted over European landmarks, from the Colosseum in Rome to the London Eye.
In Paris, revelers converged around the glittering Champs-Élysées avenue. Taissiya Girda, a 27-year-old tourist from Kazakhstan, expressed hope for a calmer 2026.
“I would like to see happy people around me, no war anywhere,” she said. “Russia, Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, I want everybody to be happy and in peace.”
In Scotland, where New Year’s is known as Hogmanay, First Minister John Swinney urged Scots to follow the message of “Auld Lang Syne” by national poet Robert Burns and show small acts of kindness.
Greece and Cyprus turned down the volume, replacing traditional fireworks with low-noise pyrotechnics in capitals. Officials said the change was intended to make celebrations more welcoming for children and pets.
PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump said Sunday he believes both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin truly want peace, as he welcomed the “brave” Ukrainian leader for talks at his Florida resort.
What You Need To Know
President Donald Trump says he believes both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin want an end to their war
Trump welcomed Zelenskyy to his Florida club Sunday after speaking with Putin by phone
Trump is hosting Zelenskyy to try to close out a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia that would end nearly four years of war
Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s capital in the days before the meeting
“The two leaders want it to end,” Trump said at the outset of the meeting at Mar-a-Lago. Before Zelenskyy arrived, Trump spoke with Putin by phone for more than an hour, and planned to speak with him again soon after.
Greeting Zelenskyy at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said of him: “This gentleman has worked very hard, and is very brave, and his people are very brave.”
Zelenskyy, by Trump’s side, said he’d discuss issues of territorial concessions with Trump, which have so far been a red line for his country. He said his negotiators and Trump’s “have discussed how to move step by step and bring peace closer” and would continue to do so in the meeting.
Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s capital in the days before the meeting.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov, said the Trump-Putin call was initiated by the U.S. side, lasted over an hour, and was “friendly, benevolent, and businesslike.” Ushakov said Trump and Putin agreed to speak again “promptly” after Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy.
But Ushakov added that a “bold, responsible, political decision is needed from Kyiv” on the fiercely contested Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and other matters in dispute for there to be a “complete cessation” of hostilities.
In overnight developments, three guided aerial bombs launched by Russia struck private homes in the eastern city of Sloviansk, according to the head of the local military administration, Vadym Lakh. Three people were injured and one man died, Lakh said in a post on the Telegram messenger app.
The strike came the day after Russia attacked Ukraine’s capital with ballistic missiles and drones on Saturday, killing at least one person and wounding 27, a day before planned talks between the leaders of Ukraine and the United States, Ukrainian authorities said. Explosions boomed across Kyiv as the attack began in the early morning and continued for hours. Trump said, however, that he still believes Putin is “very serious” about ending the war.
“I believe Ukraine has made some very strong attacks also,” Trump told reporters as Zelenskyy stood by his side. “And I don’t say that negatively. I think, you probably have to. I don’t say that negatively. But I think, he hasn’t told me that, but there have been some explosions in various parts of Russia. It looks to me, like, I don’t know. I don’t think it came from the Congo.”
Trump and Putin will speak again
Trump said he’d call Putin after the meeting with Zelenskyy and also reach out to European leaders who he said “have been really great.” He tempered his optimism about ending the conflict, however.
“It’ll either end or it’s going to go on for a long time and millions of additional people will be killed,” Trump said.
Trump and Zelenskyy sitting down face-to-face underscored the apparent progress made by Trump’s top negotiators in recent weeks as the sides traded draft peace plans and continued to shape a proposal to end the fighting. Zelenskyy told reporters Friday that the 20-point draft proposal negotiators have discussed is “about 90% ready” — echoing a figure, and the optimism, that U.S. officials conveyed when Trump’s chief negotiators met with Zelenskyy in Berlin earlier this month.
During the recent talks, the U.S. agreed to offer certain security guarantees to Ukraine similar to those offered to other members of NATO. The proposal came as Zelenskyy said he was prepared to drop his country’s bid to join the security alliance if Ukraine received NATO-like protection that would be designed to safeguard it against future Russian attacks.
‘Intensive’ weeks ahead
Zelenskyy also spoke on Christmas Day with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The Ukrainian leader said they discussed “certain substantive details” and cautioned “there is still work to be done on sensitive issues” and “the weeks ahead may also be intensive.”
The U.S. president has been working to end the war in Ukraine for much of his first year back in office, showing irritation with both Zelenskyy and Putin while publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the conflict. Long gone are the days when, as a candidate in 2024, he boasted that he could resolve the fighting in a day.
After hosting Zelenskyy at the White House in October, Trump demanded that both Russia and Ukraine halt fighting and “stop at the battle line,” implying that Moscow should be able to keep the territory it has seized from Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said last week that he would be willing to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
Putin wants Russian gains kept, and more
Putin has publicly said he wants all the areas in four key regions that have been captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, to be recognized as Russian territory. He also has insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas in eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s forces haven’t captured. Kyiv has publicly rejected all those demands.
The Kremlin also wants Ukraine to abandon its bid to join NATO. It warned that it wouldn’t accept the deployment of any troops from members of the military alliance and would view them as a “legitimate target.”
Putin also has said Ukraine must limit the size of its army and give official status to the Russian language, demands he has made from the outset of the conflict.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told the business daily Kommersant this month that Russian police and national guard would stay in parts of Donetsk -– one of the two major areas, along with Luhansk, that make up the Donbas region — even if they become a demilitarized zone under a prospective peace plan.
Ushakov cautioned that trying to reach a compromise could take a long time. He said U.S. proposals that took into account Russian demands had been “worsened” by alterations proposed by Ukraine and its European allies.
Trump has been somewhat receptive to Putin’s demands, making the case that the Russian president can be persuaded to end the war if Kyiv agrees to cede Ukrainian land in the Donbas region and if Western powers offer economic incentives to bring Russia back into the global economy.
