President Donald Trump announced over the weekend that Iranian leaders have reached out to negotiate as protests challenging Iran’s theocracy continue.On Sunday, Trump told reporters that a meeting with Iran is being arranged after the country called to negotiate. “We may meet with them. I mean, a meeting is being set up. But we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting. But a meeting is being set up. Iran called, they want to negotiate,” Trump said.Iran’s foreign minister claimed Monday the situation is now under total control following a crackdown on nationwide protests. He also alleged that the protests “turned violent and bloody to give an excuse” for Trump to intervene, though he provided no evidence for this claim.At least two major outlets reported that Trump has been presented with military options for a strike on Iran but has not made a final decision. Iran’s parliament speaker stated that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America launches a strike.The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reports that at least 572 people have been killed in Iran, including at least 496 protesters.Around the world, people have been rallying in support of protests in Iran. In Los Angeles, a driver of a U-Haul truck sped through an anti-Iran demonstration on Sunday. Police say one person was hit by the truck, but nobody was seriously injured. The driver of the truck has not been identified, but officials said they were being detained “pending further investigation.”Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:
WASHINGTON —
President Donald Trump announced over the weekend that Iranian leaders have reached out to negotiate as protests challenging Iran’s theocracy continue.
On Sunday, Trump told reporters that a meeting with Iran is being arranged after the country called to negotiate.
“We may meet with them. I mean, a meeting is being set up. But we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting. But a meeting is being set up. Iran called, they want to negotiate,” Trump said.
Iran’s foreign minister claimed Monday the situation is now under total control following a crackdown on nationwide protests. He also alleged that the protests “turned violent and bloody to give an excuse” for Trump to intervene, though he provided no evidence for this claim.
At least two major outlets reported that Trump has been presented with military options for a strike on Iran but has not made a final decision. Iran’s parliament speaker stated that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America launches a strike.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reports that at least 572 people have been killed in Iran, including at least 496 protesters.
Around the world, people have been rallying in support of protests in Iran.
In Los Angeles, a driver of a U-Haul truck sped through an anti-Iran demonstration on Sunday. Police say one person was hit by the truck, but nobody was seriously injured.
The driver of the truck has not been identified, but officials said they were being detained “pending further investigation.”
Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:
In August 2023, the U.S. Federal Reserve concluded an aggressive campaign to hike interest rates, which sent the cost of a mortgage skyrocketing to the highest level in two decades. The goal was to tame a soaring inflation rate, and thankfully, it worked, so the Fed has now cut interest rates six times since September 2024.
That isn’t fast enough for President Donald Trump, though, who regularly calls for the Fed to cut rates more quickly to bring relief to homeowners. However, he might have found a workaround, as last Thursday, he instructed his representatives to purchase $200 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities (MBSes). These bonds hold thousands of mortgages and are sold to investors.
As is the case with all bonds, a sudden flurry of buying activity will increase the price of each MBS, while decreasing its yield. A lower yield, in theory, will translate to lower interest rates on mortgages, thus helping Trump achieve his goal without help from the Fed.
Federal Housing Finance Director Bill Pulte said government-controlled enterprises Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) will carry out the $200 billion in MBS purchases in the public market.
Image source: Getty Images.
Existing home sales in the U.S. are currently hovering near a five-year low, and according to Redfin, there were 529,770 more sellers than buyers in November. Elevated interest rates have reduced the borrowing capacity of first-time home buyers, shutting many of them out of the market.
Additionally, many existing homeowners are locked into 30-year mortgages at significantly lower interest rates than what is currently available, so even if they wanted to upgrade or downsize, moving isn’t a financially sound decision at this time. That takes even more would-be buyers out of the market. It’s very hard for real estate brokers to deliver sales in this environment, especially at favorable prices.
Douglas Elliman(NYSE: DOUG) is America’s fifth-largest real estate brokerage company, but it’s one of the leaders in luxury markets in California, Florida, New York, Texas, and more. It was founded in 1911, so it has over a century of experience navigating the peaks and troughs of the housing market.
Douglas Elliman currently employs 6,600 brokers in 113 offices across America, and they sold $30.1 billion worth of real estate during the first three quarters of 2025 (ended Sept. 30). That was up 9% from the year-ago period, so the company is still growing despite the tough market conditions, which speaks to the quality of its business.
Douglas Elliman stock soared by 42% during 2025, crushing the S&P 500 index, which was up just 17%. I bought the stock last year because the Fed was cutting interest rates, which I felt would be great for its business. The Trump administration’s decision to buy $200 billion worth of MBSes to lower mortgage rates only adds fuel to my bullish thesis.
If it jump-starts the real estate sector as intended, Douglas Elliman’s sales growth could accelerate as we progress through 2026, which would be a further tailwind for its stock.
Based on Douglas Elliman’s trailing-12-month revenue of $1.03 billion and its current market capitalization of $220 million, its stock is trading at a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of just 0.2. That is a steep discount to its peak of 0.8, which was set during the last housing boom in 2021. I’m not suggesting the stock will get back there, but it would result in a fourfold return for investors if it did.
Douglas Elliman is also much cheaper than its core rival, Compass, which has a P/S ratio of 1. Compass is America’s largest residential real estate brokerage company, so you could argue it deserves a premium valuation to some degree, but I think the substantial gap leaves plenty of room for Douglas Elliman to gain ground. In fact, just three years ago, they were actually similarly valued.
Even if Trump’s new plan doesn’t have a material effect on the housing market, the Fed is expected to cut interest rates two more times during 2026 anyway. Additionally, Trump will have the opportunity to appoint a new Fed chairman in May, who may share his view that rates should be significantly lower.
Therefore, I believe Douglas Elliman stock is poised to be a significant winner in 2026.
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MEXICO CITY — Andrea Paola Hernández has one sister in Ecuador and another in London. She has cousins in Colombia, Chile, Argentina and the United States.
All fled poverty and political repression in Venezuela. Hernández, a human rights activist and outspoken critic of the country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, eventually left, too.
Since 2022 she has lived in Mexico City, working odd jobs for under-the-table pay because she lacks legal status. She cries most days, and dreams of reuniting with her far-flung relatives and friends. “We just want our lives back,” she said.
One of Maduro’s darkest legacies was the exodus of 8 million Venezuelans during his 13-year rule, one of the largest mass migrations in modern history. The flight of a third of the country’s population ripped apart families and has shaped the cultural and political landscape in the dozens of nations where Venezuelans have settled.
The surprise U.S. operation to capture Maduro this month has prompted mixed feelings among the diaspora. Relief, but also apprehension.
From Europe to Latin America to the U.S., those who left are asking whether they finally can go home. And if they do, what would they return to?
‘An ounce of justice’
Hernández was distressed by the U.S. attack, which killed dozens of people and is widely seen as illegal under international law. Still, she celebrated Maduro’s arrest as “an ounce of justice after decades of injustice.”
Andrea Paola Hernández, 30, an Afro-Indigenous, queer, feminist activist and writer from Maracaibo, Venezuela, stands for a portrait on the roof of her building on Friday in Mexico City. Hernández left Caracas in 2022.
(Alejandra Rajal / For The Times)
She is wary of what is to come.
President Trump has repeatedly touted Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, saying little about restoring democracy to the country. He says the U.S. will work with Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has been sworn in as Venezuela’s interim leader.
Hernández doesn’t trust Rodríguez, whom she believes is as responsible as anyone else for Venezuela’s misery: the eight-hour lines for food and medicine, the violent repression of street protests and the 2024 election that Maduro is widely believed to have rigged to stay in power.
Hernández blames the regime for personal pain, too. For the death of an aunt during the pandemic because there was no electricity to power ventilators; for the widespread hunger that caused her mother to tell her children: “We can have dinner or breakfast, but not both.”
Hernández, who believes she was being surveilled by Maduro’s government, says she will return to Venezuela only after elections have been held. “I’m not going back until I know that I’m not going to be killed or put in jail.”
‘Our identity was shattered’
Many in the diaspora are trying to reconcile conflicting emotions.
Damián Suárez, 37, an artist who left Venezuela for Chile in 2011 and who now lives in Mexico, said he was surprised to find himself defending the actions of Trump, a leader whose politics he otherwise disdains.
“We were fragmented and demoralized, and then someone came along and imprisoned the person responsible for all of that,” Suárez said. “When you’re drowning, you’re going to thank the person rescuing you, no matter who it is.”
Damián Suárez at his studio in the Condesa neighborhood on Friday in Mexico City. He arrived from Venezuela in 2011 and works as an artist and curator.
(Alejandra Rajal / For The Times)
Many countries have denounced the attack on Caracas and Trump’s vow to “run” the country in the short term as an unacceptable violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty.
For Suárez, those arguments ring hollow. For years, he said, the international community did little to mitigate the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.
“A cry for help from millions of people went unanswered,” Suárez said. “The only thing worse than intervention is indifference.”
One of the first embroidery art works made by Damián Suárez as a child on display in his studio, in la Condesa in Mexico City. To this day, he uses string as his primary material, a form of resistance and defiance rooted in the hand-labor traditions of the community he comes from.
(Alejandra Rajal / For The Times)
Suárez, who is organizing an art show about Venezuela, blames Maduro for what he sees as a “spiritual void” among migrants who lost not just their physical home but also the people who gave meaning to their lives.
“Our identity was shattered,” he said, comparing migrants with “plants ripped from their soil.”
And though Maduro now sits in a jail in Brooklyn facing drug trafficking charges, Suárez said he will not go back to Venezuela.
He has a Mexican passport now and helped his family migrate to Mexico City. After years of feeling stateless, he’s finally planted roots.
Building lives in new countries
Tomás Paez, a Venezuelan sociologist living in Spain who studies the diaspora, says that surveys over the years show that only about 20% of immigrants say they would return permanently to Venezuela. Many have built lives in their new countries, he said.
Paez, who left Venezuela several years ago as inflation spiraled and crime spiked, has grandchildren in Spain and said he would be loath to leave them.
“There isn’t a family in Venezuela that doesn’t have a son, a brother, an uncle, or a nephew living elsewhere,” he said, adding that 50% of households in Venezuela depend on remittances from abroad. “Migration has broadened Venezuela’s borders. We’re talking about a whole new geography.”
Migrants left Venezuela under diverse circumstances. Earlier waves left on flights with immigration documents. More recent departees often take clandestine overland routes into Colombia or Brazil or risked the dangerous journey across the Darien Gap into Central America on their way north.
The restriction of immigration law across Latin America has made it harder and harder for migrants to find refuge. One fourth of Venezuelan migrants globally lack legal immigration status, Paez said. And a majority don’t have Venezuelan passports, which are difficult to acquire or renew from abroad.
‘So tired of politics’
Throughout the Western Hemisphere, enclaves of Venezuelans have sprouted up, such as one in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, a Mexican town near the border with Guatemala.
Richard Osorio ended up there with his husband after a stint living in Texas. Osorio’s husband was deported from the U.S. in August as part of Trump’s crackdown on Venezuelan migrants. Osorio joined him in Mexico after a lawyer told him that U.S. immigration agents might target him, too, because he has tattoos, even though they are of birds and flowers.
The pair are undocumented in Mexico and work for cash at one of the Venezuelan restaurants that have sprung up in recent months.
On the day of the U.S. operation that resulted in Maduro’s arrest, hundreds of Venezuelans cheered the news in a local square. Osorio was working a 14-hour shift and missed the party. It was fine. He didn’t have the energy to celebrate.
“I’m so tired of politics, of these ups and downs that we’ve experienced for years,” Osorio said. “At every turn, there’s been suffering.”
Richard Osorio poses for a portrait in Juarez, Mexico, in July.
(Alejandro Cegarra / For The Times)
He had a hard time conjuring warm feelings for Trump given the U.S. president’s war on immigrants, including the deportation of more than 200 Venezuelans that he claimed were gang members to an infamous prison in El Salvador.
Maduro and Trump, he said, are more alike than many people admit. Neither cares for human rights or democracy. “We felt the same way in the U.S. as we did in Venezuela,” Osorio said.
He said he wouldn’t return to Venezuela until there were decent jobs and protections for the LGBTQ+ community. Life in southern Mexico was dangerous, he said, and he wasn’t earning enough to send money to relatives back home.
But returning to Venezuela didn’t feel like an option yet.
Daring to dream
Hernández, the writer and activist, said many in the diaspora are too traumatized to imagine a future in Venezuela. “We’ve all been deprived of so much,” she said.
But when she dares to dream, she pictures a Venezuela with free elections, functioning schools, hospitals and a vibrant cultural scene. She sees members of the diaspora returning, and improving the country with the skills they’ve learned abroad.
“We all want to go back and build,” she said. The question now is when.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced Sunday that he would not run for California governor, a decision grounded in his belief that his legal efforts combating the Trump administration as the state’s top prosecutor are paramount at this moment in history.
“Watching this dystopian horror come to life has reaffirmed something I feel in every fiber of my being: in this moment, my place is here — shielding Californians from the most brazen attacks on our rights and our families,” Bonta said in a statement. “My vision for the California Department of Justice is that we remain the nation’s largest and most powerful check on power.”
Bonta said that President Trump’s blocking of welfare funds to California and the fatal shooting of a Minnesota mother of three last week by a federal immigration agent cemented his decision to seek reelection to his current post, according to Politico, which first reported that Bonta would not run for governor.
Bonta, 53, a former state lawmaker and a close political ally to Gov. Gavin Newsom, has served as the state’s top law enforcement official since Newsom appointed him to the position in 2021. In the last year, his office has sued the Trump administration more than 50 times — a track record that would probably have served him well had he decided to run in a state where Trump has lost three times and has sky-high disapproval ratings.
Bonta in 2024 said that he was considering running. Then in February he announced he had ruled it out and was focused instead on doing the job of attorney general, which he considers especially important under the Trump administration. Then, both former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) announced they would not run for governor, and Bonta began reconsidering, he said.
“I had two horses in the governor’s race already,” Bonta told The Times in November. “They decided not to get involved in the end. … The race is fundamentally different today, right?”
The race for California governor remains wide open. Newsom is serving the final year of his second term and is barred from running again because of term limits. Newsom has said he is considering a run for president in 2028.
Former Rep. Katie Porter — an early leader in polls — late last year faltered after videos emerged of her screaming at an aide and berating a reporter. The videos contributed to her dropping behind Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, in a November poll released by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.
California hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 2006, Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans in the state, and many are seething with anger over Trump and looking for Democratic candidates willing to fight back against the current administration.
Bonta has faced questions in recent months about spending about $468,000 in campaign funds on legal advice last year as he spoke to federal investigators about alleged corruption involving former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, who was charged in an alleged bribery scheme involving local businessmen David Trung Duong and Andy Hung Duong. All three have pleaded not guilty.
According to his political consultant Dan Newman, Bonta — who had received campaign donations from the Duong family — was approached by investigators because he was initially viewed as a “possible victim” in the alleged scheme, though that was later ruled out. Bonta has since returned $155,000 in campaign contributions from the Duong family, according to news reports.
Bonta is the son of civil rights activists Warren Bonta, a white native Californian, and Cynthia Bonta, a native of the Philippines who immigrated to the U.S. on a scholarship in 1965. Bonta, a U.S. citizen, was born in Quezon City, Philippines, in 1972, when his parents were working there as missionaries, and immigrated with his family to California as an infant.
In 2012, Bonta was elected to represent Oakland, Alameda and San Leandro as the first Filipino American to serve in California’s Legislature. In Sacramento, he pursued a string of criminal justice reforms and developed a record as one of the body’s most liberal members.
Bonta is married to Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D-Alameda), who succeeded him in the state Assembly, and the couple have three children.
Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
More than 60 largely peaceful protests took place this weekend against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions, including several in Southern California.
But while many protests were without incident, they were not short on anger and moments of tension. Organizers called the gatherings the “ICE Out for Good” weekend of action in response to the fatal shooting of Renée Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis.
In Huntington Beach, Ron Duplantis, 72, carried a diagram to represent the three shots fired at Good, including one through her windshield and two others that appeared to go through her side window.
“Those last two shots,” he said, “make it clear to me that this is murder.”
Participants in the “ICE Out” protest hold signs Sunday in Huntington Beach.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Huntington Beach has seen past clashes between Trump supporters and anti-racism activists, but as of mid-afternoon, Sunday’s protest was tense at times, but free of violence. About 300 people — and two dozen counterprotesters — stood outside City Hall, with protesters carrying anti-ICE signs, ringing cowbells and chanting “ICE out of O.C.”
As cars sped past them on Main Street, many motorists honked in a show of solidarity, while some rolled down their windows to shout their support for ICE, MAGA and President Trump.
“The reason why I’m here is democracy,” said Mary Artesani, a 69-year-old Costa Mesa resident carrying a sign that read “RESIST.” “They have to remember he won’t be in office forever.”
Participants in the “ICE Out” protest in Huntington Beach hold signs as a car with a MAGA hat in the windshield passes.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
The Trump administration has largely stood behind the ICE agent, identified as Jonathan Ross, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem saying he acted in self-defense. Democratic officials and many members of the public have said the videos of the shooting circulating on social media appear to contradict at least some of the administration’s assertions.
“I’m outraged a woman was murdered by our government and our government lied to our faces about it,” said protester Tony Zarkades, 60, who has lived in the Huntington Beach area for nearly 30 years. A former officer in the Marines, Zarkades said he is thinking of moving to Orange to escape the presence of so many Trump supporters in Huntington Beach.
Large protests against ICE occurred in the Bay Area as well as Sacramento and other California cities over the weekend. In Oakland, hundreds demonstrated peacefully on Sunday, although the night before, protesters assembled at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and left graffiti, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.
In Los Angeles on Saturday night, protesters marched through the downtown area to City Hall and past the Edward Roybal Federal Building, with the L.A. Police Department issuing a dispersal order at about 6:30 p.m., according to City News Service.
While many of the protests focused on what happened to Good in Minnesota, they also recognized Keith Porter Jr., a man killed by an off-dutyICE agent in Northridge on New Year’s Eve.
In Huntington Beach, the coastal community has long had a reputation as a Southern California stronghold for Republicans, though its politics have recently been shifting. Orange County has a painful legacy of political extremism, including neo-Nazism. In 2021, a “White Lives Matter” rally in the area ended in 12 arrests.
On Sunday, a small group of about 30 counterprotesters waved Trump and MAGA flags on a corner opposite from the anti-ICE rally.
Counterprotester Victoria Cooper, 72, holds signs and shouts at participants of the “ICE Out” protest in Huntington Beach.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
“We’re here to support our country and president and support ICE,” said Kelly Johnson, who gave his age as “old enough to be your sugar daddy.”
Wearing an “ICE Immigration: Making America Safe Again” T-shirt, Kelly said the protesters were “paid agitators” who had been lied to by the media.
“Look at the other angles of the [shooting] videos,” he said. “She ran over the officer.”
Standing with him was Jesse Huizar, 66, who said he identifies as a “Latino for Trump” and was here to “support the blue.”
The Chino resident said he came to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 5, but that he has no fear of ICE because he “came here legally.”
Huizar said Good’s death was sad, but that she “if she had complied, if she got out of her car and followed orders, she’d be alive right now.”
But their voices were largely overpowered by those of the anti-ICE protesters. One of the event’s organizers, 52-year-old Huntington Beach resident Denise G., who declined to give her last name, said they’ve been gathering in front of City Hall every Sunday since March, but that this was by far one of the largest turnouts they have seen.
She felt “devastated, angry, and more determined than ever” when she saw the video of Good’s shooting, she said.
Counterprotester Kelly Johnson stands across from the “ICE Out” demonstration.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
“It could be any one of us,” she said. “The people not out here today need to understand this could be their family member, their spouse, their children. The time is now. All hands on deck.”
Nearby, 27-year-old Yvonne Gonzales had gathered with about 10 of her friends. They said they were motivated to come because they were outraged by the shooting.
“I wish I was surprised by it,” Gonzales said, “but we’ve seen so much violence from ICE.”
She suspected that race was a factor in the outpouring of support, noting that Good was a white woman while many others who have been injured or killed by immigration enforcement actions have been people of color, but that it was still “great to see this turnout and visibility.”
A few feet away, 41-year-old Christie Martinez stood with her children, Elliott, 9, and Kane, 6. She teared up thinking about the shooting and the recent ICE actions in California, including the killing of Porter.
“It’s sad and sickening,” said Martinez, who lives in Westminster. “It makes me really sad how people are targeted because of their skin color.”
Investors may be “having a cake and eating it” in 2026, with Wall Street strategists predicting stock market gains driven by Fed rate cuts, tax incentives, and lower-than-expected inflation.
As Wall Street prepares for this week’s highly anticipated monthly Consumer Price Index report, which is expected to stay unchanged from the prior month at an annual increase of 2.7%, strategists are pointing to cheap oil prices and easing shelter costs as a sign that prices may be cooling.
“Our view is that inflation will surprise to the downside in 2026,” Longview Economics global economist and chief market strategist Chris Watling told Yahoo Finance last week.
It’s not all good news on the economic front. Last month’s employment report, released on Friday, showed the economy added fewer jobs than expected to cap a weak 2025.
But a cooling labor market gives the Federal Reserve reason to cut rates this year, which could push bond yields lower. That’s especially true if President Trump’s pick to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell when his term ends in May shifts the central bank in a more dovish direction.
Lower yields mean cheaper borrowing costs, which can boost economic activity and keep corporate capital expenditures high.
“You could really get an economy pretty juiced as we go through this year, because you can have the capex, and you can have the sort of consumption starting to improve as housing fixes up and bond yields move lower,” Watling added. “This is what I call having a cake and eating it.”
Wall Street is already spotting “green shoots” as companies take advantage of the depreciation tax benefits from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act, signed into law in July.
“If you are a CFO of a company, and the OBBB allows you to get 100% depreciation for capex in one year … you will absolutely accelerate as much of your multi-year capex spend into 2026 as possible, or risk getting fired for missing those tax benefits,” Nomura Securities equity derivatives analyst Charlie McElligott wrote in a note last week.
Economic growth happens even as affordability challenges maintain a K-shaped divide, with the bottom half of consumers struggling to cover basic needs. In a nod to affordability ahead of the midterms, Trump recently criticized firms like Blackstone for buying single-family homes as investments, a hot-button issue for voters.
Rents have started to ease after years of relentless growth. That’s one reason Goldman Sachs expects the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index to trend toward the Fed’s 2% target. The firm also noted that the one-time price bump from last year’s tariffs is fading, which should further ease inflation.
“Healthy economic and revenue growth, continued profit strength among the largest US stocks, and an emerging productivity boost from AI adoption should lift S&P 500 EPS by 12% in 2026 and 10% in 2027,” Goldman’s Ben Snider wrote on Wednesday.
The latest data shows worker productivity in the third quarter grew at its fastest clip in two years, as businesses spent heavily on AI and pulled back on hiring.
That productivity boost is expected to broaden the stock market rally, as the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) touched all-time highs last week. Materials (XLB), Industrials (XLI), Energy (XLE), and Consumer Discretionary (XLY) were some of the leading sectors as investors trimmed tech exposure.
“We’re producing a lot more with less people,” RCM chief economist Joe Brusuelas told Yahoo Finance on Friday, though he believes the full impact of AI is still a couple of years away.
Wall Street strategists predict stock market gains in 2026 driven by Fed rate cuts, tax incentives, and lower-than-expected inflation. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
Against that backdrop, strategists are watching for sectors and companies positioned to benefit from leaner headcounts and growing AI adoption.
“Pay attention to high human capital businesses — so let’s say finance companies, retail companies, consulting, accounting type businesses,” Clark Capital CIO Sean Clark told Yahoo Finance recently.
“Quality value companies are now starting to experience the benefit of this AI revolution, driving earnings, driving productivity, [and] driving margins higher,” he added.
However, some warn that if the labor market is replaced by AI too quickly, it could pose a sudden threat to the broader economy.
“We term it as the dark side of AI,” Tim Urbanowicz, chief investment strategist at Innovative Capital Management, told Yahoo Finance. Urbanowicz estimates that 15%-20% of the layoffs at the end of last year were related to artificial intelligence.
“If you start to see the jobs market or labor market starting to be replaced by AI in a major way, we think that becomes problematic,” he added.
StockStory aims to help individual investors beat the market.
Ines Ferre is a senior business reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @ines_ferre.
WASHINGTON — After President Trump ordered strikes that led to the capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, celebrations erupted in Venezuelan communities across the U.S.
But for many of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants facing possible deportation, their relief and joy were cut by the fear about what comes next from an administration that has zeroed in on Venezuelans as a target.
“Many of us asked ourselves, ‘What’s going to happen with us now?’” said A.G., a 39-year-old in Tennessee who asked to be identified by her initials because she lacks legal status. Even so, Maduro’s ouster gave her a lot of hope for her mother country.
Venezuelans began fleeing in droves in 2014 as economic collapse led to widespread food and medicine shortages, as well as political repression. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans are now living outside the country — including 1.2 million in the U.S.
Venezuelans migrants walk toward Bucaramanga, Colombia, in 2019.
(Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)
A.G. and her now-18-year-old son arrived at the southern border in 2019. Since then, she said, they have built a good life — they own a transport company with delivery trucks, pay taxes and follow the law.
Maduro’s fall left her with mixed feelings.
“He’s obviously a dictator, many people have died because of him and he refused to give up power, but the reason that they entered Venezuela, for me what President Trump did was illegal,” she said. “Innocent people died because of the bombs. I’m asking God that it all be for good reason.”
Dozens of Venezuelans and others were killed in the U.S. invasion — more than 100, a government official said — including civilians.
The Trump administration is framing its Venezuela operation as an opportunity for Venezuelans like A.G. “Now, they can return to the country they love and rebuild its future,” said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Matthew Tragesser.
Katie Blankenship, a Miami-based attorney with Sanctuary of the South who has represented many Venezuelans facing deportation, sees a less promising future.
“We’re going to see increased targeting of Venezuelans to force them to leave the U.S. into a political and socioeconomic environment that’s likely only more destabilized and subject to more abuse,” she said.
The Venezuelan community in the U.S. swelled, in part, because the Biden administration expanded pathways for them to enter the country.
Volunteer help a Venezuelan immigrant at the storage units from a volunteer-run program that distributes donations to recently arrived Venezuelan immigrants in need, in Miami, Fla., in 2023.
(Eva Marie Uzcategui / Los Angeles Times)
One of those programs allowed more than 117,000 Venezuelans to purchase flights directly to the U.S. and stay for two years if they had a U.S.-based financial sponsor and passed a background check. Other Venezuelans entered legally at land ports of entry after scheduling interviews with border officers.
By the end of the Biden administration, more than 600,000 Venezuelans had protection from deportation under Temporary Protected Status, a program used by both Republican and Democratic administrations for immigrants who cannot return home because of armed conflict, natural disaster or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly referred to Venezuelan immigrants as criminals, singling them out more than any other nationality — in 64% of speeches, an Axios analysis showed. He has said repeatedly, without evidence that Venezuela emptied its prisons and mental institutions to flood the U.S. with immigrants.
One of Trump’s first acts as president was to designate the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization. Within two months, he invoked an 18th century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport 252 Venezuelan men accused of being Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador, where they were imprisoned and tortured despite many having no criminal histories in the U.S. or Latin America.
Later, the Trump administration stripped away protections for Venezuelans with financial sponsors and TPS, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calling the latter “contrary to the national interest.”
In a September Federal Register Notice, Noem said that TPS for Venezuelans undercut the administration’s foreign policy objectives because one result of allowing Venezuelans in the U.S. was “relieving pressure on Maduro’s regime to enact domestic reforms and facilitate safe return conditions.” In other words, if Venezuelans returned home, that would pressure the government to enact reforms.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, along with U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, left, and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, right, participates in a news conference near Camp 57 at Angola prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary and America’s largest maximum-security prison farm, to announce the opening of a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility that will house immigrants convicted of crimes in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, on Sept. 3, 2025.
(Matthew Hilton / AFP via Getty Images)
The administration has offered contrasting assessments of conditions in Venezuela. Noem wrote that although certain adverse conditions continue, “there are notable improvements in several areas such as the economy, public health, and crime.”
Throughout the year, though, the State Department continued to reissue an “extreme danger” travel advisory for Venezuela, urging Americans to leave the country immediately.
Conditions for Venezuelans in the U.S. grew more complicated after a man from Afghanistan was accused of shooting two National Guard members in November; in response, the administration froze the immigration cases of people from 39 countries, including Venezuela, that the administration considers “high-risk.” That means anyone who applied for asylum, a visa, a green card or any other benefit remains in limbo indefinitely.
After a panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act in September, the Justice Department appealed. In a support brief filed in December, the Justice Department cited escalating tensions with Venezuela.
David Smilde, a Tulane University sociologist and expert on Venezuelan politics, said that invading Venezuela could justify renewed use of the Alien Enemies Act.
The law says the president can invoke the Alien Enemies Act not only in times of “declared war,” but also when a foreign government threatens or carries out an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” against the U.S.
“Now it will be difficult, I think, for the court to say, ‘No, you can’t use this,’” Smilde said.
With U.S. officials promising improved conditions in Venezuela and encouraging citizens to return, Smilde said, they could invoke the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport undocumented immigrants who don’t leave willingly.
“There’s several layers to this,” he said, “and none of it looks very good for Venezuelan immigrants.”
This couple from Venezuela shared their story of why they left their three children back in their home country and spoke of the the experiences of their travel to the United States at the Parkside Community Church in Sacramento on June 16, 2023.
(Jose Luis Villegas / For The Times)
Jose, a 28-year-old Venezuelan living east of Los Angeles, fled Venezuela in 2015 after being imprisoned and beaten for criticizing the government. He lived in Colombia and Peru before illegally crossing the U.S. border in 2022, and now has a pending asylum application. Jose asked to be identified by his middle name out of fear of retaliation by the U.S. government.
The news this week that an ICE agent had shot and killed a woman in Minnesota heightened his anxiety.
“You come here because supposedly this is a country with freedom of expression, and there is more safety, but with this government, now you’re afraid you’ll get killed,” he said. “And that was a U.S. citizen. Imagine what they could do to me?”
People visit a memorial for Renee Nicole Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis.
(Scott Olson / Getty Images)
Jose qualifies for a work permit based on his pending asylum, but his application for one is frozen because of the executive order following the National Guard shooting.
The news of Maduro’s arrest was bittersweet, Jose said, because his mother and grandmother didn’t live to witness that day. He said his mother died last year of kidney failure due to lack of medical care, leaving him as the primary breadwinner for his two young sisters who remain in Venezuela with their father, who is disabled.
Still, he said he’s happy with what Trump has done in Venezuela.
“People are saying he’s stealing our petroleum,” he said, “but for 25 years, Cuba, China and Iran have been stealing the petroleum and it didn’t improve our lives.”
Many Venezuelans were encouraged by news that Venezuela would release a “significant number” of political prisoners as a peace gesture.
For Jose, that’s not enough. Venezuela’s government ordered police to search for anyone involved in promoting or supporting the attack by U.S. forces, leading to detentions of journalists and civilians.
“Venezuela remains the same,” he said. “The same disgrace, the same poverty and the same government repression.”
A.G. said she was heartened to hear Noem say Sunday on Fox News that every Venezeulan who had TPS “has the opportunity to apply for refugee status and that evaluation will go forward.” But the administration quickly backtracked and said that was not the case.
Instead, Noem and other administration officials have doubled down on the notion that Venezuelans without permanent lawful status should leave. Noem told Fox News that there are no plans to pause deportation flights despite the political uncertainty in Venezuela.
Tragesser, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman, said the agency’s posture hasn’t changed.
“USCIS encourages all Venezuelans unlawfully in the U.S. to use the CBP Home app for help with a safe and orderly return to their country,” he said.
Stephen A. Smith is arguably the most-well known sports commentator in the country. But the outspoken ESPN commentator’s perspective outside the sports arena has landed him in a firestorm.
The furor is due to his pointed comments defending an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot a Minneapolis woman driving away from him.
Just hours after the shooting on Wednesday, Smith said on his SiriusXM “Straight Shooter” talk show that although the killing of Renee Nicole Good was “completely unnecessary,” he added that the agent “from a lawful perspective” was “completely justified” in firing his gun at her.
He also noted, “From a humanitarian perspective, however, why did he have to do that?”
Smith’s comments about the agent being in harm’s way echoed the views of Deputy of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who said Good engaged in an “act of domestic terrorism” by attacking officers and attempting to run them over with her vehicle.
However, videos showing the incident from different angles indicate that the agent was not standing directly in front of Good’s vehicle when he opened fire on her. Local officials contend that Good posed no danger to ICE officers. A video posted by partisan media outlet Alpha News showed Good talking to agents before the shooting, saying, “I’m not mad at you.”
The shooting has sparked major protests and accusations from local officials that the presence of ICE has been disruptive and escalated violence. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frye condemned ICE, telling agents to “get the f— out of our city.”
The incident, in turn, has put a harsher spotlight on Smith, raising questions on whether he was reckless or irresponsible in offering his views on Good’s shooting when he had no direct knowledge of what had transpired.
An angered Smith appeared on his “Straight Shooter” show on YouTube on Friday, saying the full context of his comments had not been conveyed in media reports, specifically calling out the New York Post and media personality Keith Olbermann, while saying that people were trying to get him fired.
He also doubled down on his contention that Good provoked the situation that led to her death, saying the ICE agent was in front of Good’s car and would have been run over had he not stepped out of the way.
“In the moment when you are dealing with law enforcement officials, you obey their orders so you can get home safely,” he said. “Renee Good did not do that.”
When reached for comment about his statements, a representative for Smith said his response was in Friday’s show.
It’s not the first time Smith, who has suggested he’s interesting in going into politics, has sparked outside the sports universe. He and journalist Joy Reid publicly quarreled following her exit last year from MSNBC.
He also faced backlash from Black media personalities and others when he accused Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas of using “street verbiage” in her frequent criticisms of President Trump.
“The way that Jasmine Crockett chooses to express herself … Aren’t you there to try and get stuff done instead of just being an impediment? ‘I’m just going to go off about Trump, cuss him out every chance I get, say the most derogatory things imaginable, and that’s my day’s work?’ That ain’t work! Work is, this is the man in power. I know what his agenda is. Maybe I try to work with this man. I might get something out of it for my constituents.’ ”
It’s the first week of a new year for Congress, and each chamber is considering legislation with votes to watch on Thursday.Enhanced Health Care SubsidiesThe House of Representatives is voting on a bill to reinstate tax credits that expired last year and were central to the government shutdown.The bill aims to extend these subsidies for three years, helping those without insurance through their employers pay for coverage. Four Republicans: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-1st), Rep. Ryan McKenzie (PA-7th), Rep. Rob Bresnahan (PA-8th), and Rep. Mike Lawler (NY-17th) joined Democrats to push the vote, which is expected to pass. Five more Republicans joined Democrats during a test vote on Wednesday.However, the Senate is not expected to consider this bill, as they are working on their own Affordable Care Act reform measure designed to pass both chambers.Venezuela War Powers ResolutionThe Senate is revisiting a war powers resolution that would prevent the president from using military force in Venezuela without congressional approval. This follows a recent military operation in Venezuela’s capital, which led to the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, who are now in New York facing narcoterrorism charges. President Donald Trump has stated that the U.S. is running Venezuela and may deploy the military again if the remaining Maduro regime does not comply with U.S. demands.The same resolution failed a previous vote, as well as a measure to stop the Trump administration from bombing alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that the White House says were connected to Venezuela. Past administrations arrested and charged such suspects. The Trump administration’s campaign has killed more than 100 people.Reactions To Greenland RhetoricThe White House’s suggestion to use military force to take over Greenland has been met with criticism on Capitol Hill. Democrats have long opposed this idea, and several Republicans have recently spoken out against it.Rep. Mike Johnson, House Speaker, said, “All this stuff about military action and all that, I don’t even think that’s a possibility.” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina criticized the notion, saying, “Making insane comments about how it is our right to have territory owned by the kingdom of Denmark, folks, amateur hour is over.” Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana noted, “In the case of Greenland, you have two things: one, not a present threat, and so they have a duly elected president. So, he doesn’t have the authority without Congress.”Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska added, “It’s very… amateurish. I feel like we’ve got high school kids playing Risk.”Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also stated that the president wants to buy Greenland.Earlier this week, the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Hearst Television: “President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal.”Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:
WASHINGTON —
It’s the first week of a new year for Congress, and each chamber is considering legislation with votes to watch on Thursday.
Enhanced Health Care Subsidies
The House of Representatives is voting on a bill to reinstate tax credits that expired last year and were central to the government shutdown.
The bill aims to extend these subsidies for three years, helping those without insurance through their employers pay for coverage. Four Republicans: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-1st), Rep. Ryan McKenzie (PA-7th), Rep. Rob Bresnahan (PA-8th), and Rep. Mike Lawler (NY-17th) joined Democrats to push the vote, which is expected to pass. Five more Republicans joined Democrats during a test vote on Wednesday.
However, the Senate is not expected to consider this bill, as they are working on their own Affordable Care Act reform measure designed to pass both chambers.
Venezuela War Powers Resolution
The Senate is revisiting a war powers resolution that would prevent the president from using military force in Venezuela without congressional approval. This follows a recent military operation in Venezuela’s capital, which led to the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, who are now in New York facing narcoterrorism charges.
President Donald Trump has stated that the U.S. is running Venezuela and may deploy the military again if the remaining Maduro regime does not comply with U.S. demands.
The same resolution failed a previous vote, as well as a measure to stop the Trump administration from bombing alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that the White House says were connected to Venezuela. Past administrations arrested and charged such suspects. The Trump administration’s campaign has killed more than 100 people.
Reactions To Greenland Rhetoric
The White House’s suggestion to use military force to take over Greenland has been met with criticism on Capitol Hill. Democrats have long opposed this idea, and several Republicans have recently spoken out against it.
Rep. Mike Johnson, House Speaker, said, “All this stuff about military action and all that, I don’t even think that’s a possibility.”
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina criticized the notion, saying, “Making insane comments about how it is our right to have territory owned by the kingdom of Denmark, folks, amateur hour is over.”
Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana noted, “In the case of Greenland, you have two things: one, not a present threat, and so they have a duly elected president. So, he doesn’t have the authority without Congress.”
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska added, “It’s very… amateurish. I feel like we’ve got high school kids playing Risk.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also stated that the president wants to buy Greenland.
Earlier this week, the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Hearst Television: “President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal.”
Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:
WASHINGTON — A highly confidential CIA assessment produced at the request of the White House warned President Trump of a wider conflict in Venezuela if he were to support the country’s democratic opposition once its president, Nicolás Maduro, was deposed, a person familiar with the matter told The Times.
The assessment was a tightly held CIA product commissioned at the request of senior policymakers before Trump decided whether to authorize Operation Absolute Resolve, the stunning U.S. mission that seized Maduro and his wife from their bedroom in Caracas over the weekend.
Announcing the results of the operation on Sunday, Trump surprised an anxious Venezuelan public when he was quick to dismiss the leadership of the democratic opposition — led by María Corina Machado, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Edmundo González Urrutia, the opposition candidate who won the 2024 presidential election that was ultimately stolen by Maduro.
Instead, Trump said his administration was working with Maduro’s handpicked vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has since been named the country’s interim president. The rest of Maduro’s government remains in place.
Endorsing the opposition would probably have required U.S. military backing, with the Venezuelan armed forces still under the control of loyalists to Maduro unwilling to relinquish power.
A second official said that the administration sought to avoid one of the cardinal mistakes of the invasion of Iraq, when the Bush administration ordered party loyalists of the deposed Saddam Hussein to be excluded from the country’s interim government. That decision, known as de-Baathification, led those in charge of Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons to establish armed resistance to the U.S. campaign.
The CIA product was not an assessment that was shared across the 18 government agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, whose head, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, was largely absent from deliberations — and who has yet to comment on the operation, despite CIA operatives being deployed in harm’s way before and throughout the weekend mission.
The core team that worked on Absolute Resolve included Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who met routinely over several months, sometimes daily, the source added.
Signs have emerged that Trump’s team was in communication with Rodríguez ahead of the operation, although the president has denied that his administration gave Rodríguez advance notice of Maduro’s ouster.
“There are a number of unanswered questions,” said Evan Ellis, who served in Trump’s first term planning State Department policy on Latin America, the Caribbean and international narcotics. “There may have been a cynical calculation that one can work with them.”
Rodríguez served as a point of contact with the Biden administration, experts note, and also was in touch with Richard Grenell, a top Trump aide who heads the Kennedy Center, early on in Trump’s second term, when he was testing engagement with Caracas.
While the federal indictment unsealed against Maduro after his seizure named several other senior officials in his government, Rodríguez’s name was notably absent.
Rodríguez was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim president Monday in a ceremony attended by diplomats from Russia, China and Iran. Publicly, the leader has offered mixed messages, at once vowing to prevent Venezuela from becoming a colonial outpost of an American empire, while also offering to forge a newly collaborative relationship with Washington.
“Of course, for political reasons, Delcy Rodríguez can’t say, ‘I’ve cut a deal with Trump, and we’re going to stop the revolution now and start working with the U.S.,” Ellis said.
“It’s not about the democracy,” he said. “It’s about him not wanting to work with Maduro.”
In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Machado said she had yet to speak with Trump since the U.S. operation over the weekend, but hoped to do so soon, offering to share her Nobel Peace Prize with him as a gesture of gratitude. Trump has repeatedly touted himself as a worthy recipient of the award.
“What he has done is historic,” Machado said, vowing to return to the country from hiding abroad since accepting the prize in Oslo last month.
“It’s a huge step,” she added, “towards a democratic transition.”
On the same day that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro pleaded not guilty to drug charges in a Manhattan courtroom, U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi on Monday said he planned to introduce legislation in Washington that would block federal funds from being used for U.S. military occupation in the South American nation.
The chance of the legislation passing in the Republican-run U.S. House is highly remote for Krishnamoorthi, who is running in the Democratic primary to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin. But his declaration comes as Krishnamoorthi and other Democratic candidates running for the Senate seat — including U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton — are toeing the party line and raising questions about President Donald Trump’s actions this past weekend in Venezuela in which U.S. military forces captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a raid without alerting Congress.
The declaration also comes as Congress returns to Washington, D.C., this week following the holiday break to consider the president’s war powers, work to avoid another federal government shutdown and consider an extension of insurance subsidies purchased through the Obamacare exchange.
Krishnamoorthi linked his opposition to Trump’s plans for Venezuela to the rising cost of living in the U.S.
“While families here at home are confronting these increases in health insurance, turn on the television and you’ll see what this administration is focused on instead: President Trump’s fixation on Venezuela and an open-ended military occupation abroad,” he said at a news conference in Chicago, again raising the alarm about the expiration of Affordable Care Act tax credits. “That is why today I’m announcing my intention to introduce legislation when I return to Washington to block any federal funds for a military occupation of Venezuela.”
While the measure’s prospects remain dim, some Senate Democrats have begun discussing ways to block further military action in Venezuela, either by limiting federal spending or by asserting congressional war powers through a resolution.
U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi speaks at the Cook County Health Bronzeville Health Center on Jan. 5, 2026, to highlight the expiration of ACA tax credits. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
Krishnamoorthi’s announcement came days after a similar news conference highlighted rising health insurance premiums following the end of a pandemic-era special tax credit. Millions of Americans who had their insurance costs subsidized through ACA marketplaces are already seeing premiums double.
“The American people do not want another endless war, and they do not want their tax dollars diverted overseas while health care … is being cut here at home and Medicaid is being shredded to pieces. The choice before Congress is clear: We can spend billions on another foreign conflict or we can protect health care here at home,” Krishnamoorthi said Monday at a Cook County Health clinic in Bronzeville, standing alongside Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.
A House vote is scheduled this week on ACA credits, but Senate Republicans have opposed a simple extension. It is unclear, however, whether they have reached a compromise bill of their own.
Kelly on Saturday similarly condemned Trump’s attack on Venezuela in a statement, saying the president’s actions do “nothing to lower the cost of living for Americans and does everything to enrich himself and his billionaire oil-executive friends.”
The attack, Kelly’s statement said, “is shortsighted and drags the U.S. into a reckless conflict that could destabilize the entire region. I demand a vote on the War Powers Resolution to stop President Trump from launching further military action without Congressional approval.”
In a weekend social media post, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton said the action was “yet another unconstitutional abuse of power, one that puts our troops directly in harm’s way. … His actions are endangering the American people and he must be held accountable.”
For his part, Durbin released a joint statement with Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa about the Trump administration’s decision to exclude the Senate Judiciary Committee from Monday evening’s Capitol Hill briefing on the arrest of Maduro, who was indicted for drug trafficking and narco-terrorism conspiracy. Grassley is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Durbin is the ranking member.
“President Trump and Secretary Rubio have stated that this was a law enforcement operation that was made at the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) request, with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The Senate Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over DOJ, FBI and DEA, and all three agencies are led by individuals who our Committee vetted and processed. The Attorney General herself will be present at today’s briefing,” the joint statement said. “There is no legitimate basis for excluding the Senate Judiciary Committee from this briefing. The administration’s refusal to acknowledge our Committee’s indisputable jurisdiction in this matter is unacceptable and we are following up to ensure the Committee receives warranted information regarding Maduro’s arrest.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul, along with MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, celebrate the one-year anniversary of congestion pricing in Manhattan. Monday, Jan. 5, 2026.
Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
On the one-year anniversary of congestion pricing on Monday, Gov. Kathy Hochul declared that the program has yielded “extraordinary” results in reduced traffic and increased economic activity, “beyond what we could have expected.”
The governor, during a Monday afternoon news conference in Manhattan, stood alongside MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber and Mayor Zohran Mamdani. She lauded congestion pricing as a success in reducing car traffic, cutting air pollution, promoting the local economy, and generating vital funding for public transit.
“We changed how people in this great city and the region live, how they breathe, how they act, and now the results are in,” Hochul said of the program’s impact.
A van passes under a congestion pricing gantry in Manhattan on Jan. 5, 2026.Photo by Dean Moses
Hochul also noted that the once-fervent opposition to congestion pricing, when it was first launched one year ago, has seemingly “calmed down.”
“People like getting across the bridges faster, they like coming to the city with more time on their hands, they’re happy not to sit in traffic,” Hochul said. “So to those individuals who are driving in, their quality of life has improved as well, and I’m really proud of that, and I hope they understand what this program did for them.”
The governor touted the state’s and MTA’s success in winning most of the nearly a dozen lawsuits that opponents brought in hopes of halting congestion pricing over the past few years.=
“For those of you who are keeping score, I’ve got more than 10 lawsuits. We have a pretty good record. Every time it’s gone before a judge, the judge says, ‘no, no, the state is right,’” Hochul said.
Hochul said she believes the state will have the same result with its lawsuit seeking to block President Trump’s administration’s efforts to end the program. The Manhattan federal judge in the case, Lewis Liman, will hear oral arguments later this month.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined Gov. Kathy Hochul and MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber to celebrate one year of congestion pricing. Monday, Jan. 5, 2025.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Mamdani, who won the mayoralty on ambitious proposals like making city buses free, said congestion pricing is proof of the “change that can come when government dares to do big things.”
“This is a program that has been successful, no matter how you measure it,” he said.
Congestion pricing charges drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street a $9 base toll during peak hours. The tolls vary based on vehicle size and the time of day drivers enter the zone, known as the Central Business District (CBD).
The governor ticked off the program’s positive impacts on congestion and safety: reducing the number of vehicles enterring the CBD by 11% — equating to 27 million fewer vehicles; allowing those enterring and exiting the zone during rush hour to move an average 23% faster over crossings; boosting bus speeds in the CBD by 2.3%; and reducing crashes in the area by 7%.
She also pointed to a 22% drop in air pollution within the CBD; a 6.3% rise in economic activity in the zone; and Broadway having its best season in history — bringing in $1.9 billion in ticket sales.
MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber takes a victory lap on congestion pricing on the program’s one-year anniversary. Monday, Jan. 5, 2026.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Furthermore, the state’s and MTA’s projections indicate the program will raise $550 in net revenues for its first year. They will then begin bonding those dollars out to bring in $15 billion to fund major capital improvements to the system over the next several years.
“It’s going to bring us more benefits, more than just less congested streets,” Lieber said of congestion pricing. “It’s the new train cars that you’re making possible. The new signals. The more ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) elevators.”
The MTA has already approved contracts for signal modernization on the A/C line in Brooklyn and Queens and to install elevators at five stations utilizing congestion pricing revenue late last year.
By invading Venezuela, President Trump just lit America’s eternal exploding cigar.
For over 175 years — ever since the United States conquered half of Mexico — nearly every president has messed with Latin America while telling the rest of the world to stay the hell out.
From the Mexican American War to the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Panama Canal to NAFTA, we’ve only looked out for ourselves in Latin America even while wrapping our actions in the banner of benevolence.
It’s rarely ended well for anyone involved — especially us. Many of the leaders we put into power became despots we tolerated until they ran their course, like Panama’s Manuel Noriega. The political upheaval we helped create has led generations of Latin Americans to migrate to el Norte, fundamentally changing our country even as too many Americans think people like my family should have stayed in their ancestral homes.
His message to the world: Venezuela is ours until we say so, just like the rest of Latin America. And if allies and enemies alike still didn’t get the hint, Trump announced an updated Monroe Doctrine — the idea that the U.S. can do whatever it wants in the Western Hemisphere — called the “Donroe Doctrine.”
Because of course he did.
No one in Washington should be more versed in this terrible history than Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the child of Cubans who fled the island when it was ruled by the U.S.-backed caudillo Fulgencio Batista.
Rubio grew up in an exile community that saw Batista’s replacement, Fidel Castro, remain in power for decades, despite a U.S. embargo. As one of Florida’s U.S. senators, Rubio represented millions of Latin American immigrants who had fled civil wars sparked by the U.S. in one way or another.
On Saturday, Rubio looked on silently as Trump threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro to “watch his ass.” When it was Rubio’s turn to take questions from reporters, he said Cuban leaders “should be concerned” and offered a warning to the rest of the world: “Don’t play games with this president in office, because it’s not going to turn out well.”
In Latin America, few are more reviled than the vendido — the sellout. Betraying one’s country for personal or political gain is an original sin dating back to the tribes who aligned with Spanish conquistadors to take down repressive empires, only to suffer the same sad end themselves. Vendidos have dominated the region’s history and stilted its development, with leaders — Mexico’s Porfirio Diaz, the Somozas of Nicaragua, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic — more than happy to side with the yanquis at the expense of their own countrymen.
Rubio belongs to this long, sordid lineup — and in many ways, he’s the worst vendido of them all.
Then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), left, listens during a 2016 president debate with candidate Donald Trump.
(Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press)
I still remember the fresh-faced, idealistic guy trying to pass a bipartisan amnesty bill in 2013. Though too right-wing for my taste, he seemed like a Latino politician who could thread the needle between liberals and conservatives, gringos and us.
It was wonderful to see him call out Trump’s boorishness when the two ran against each other in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. He told CNN’s Jake Tapper, in words that sound more prophetic than ever, “For years to come, there are many people … that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump because this is not going to end well, one way or the other.”
The thirst for power has a way of corrupting even the most idealistic hearts, alas. Rubio ended up endorsing Trump in 2016, supporting Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged and proclaiming at the 2024 Republican National Convention that Trump “has not just transformed our party, he has inspired a movement.”
Rubio’s reward for his boot-licking? He sets our foreign policy agenda, which is like putting an arsonist in charge of a fireworks stall.
I’m sure all of this comes off as leftist babble to the Venezuelan diaspora, many of whom cheered Maduro’s fate from Spain to Mexico, Miami to Los Angeles. Only a deluded pendejo could support what Maduro wrought on Venezuela, which was a prosperous country and a relatively stable U.S. ally for decades as the rest of South America teetered from one crisis to another.
But for Trump, toppling Maduro was never about the well-being of Venezuelans or bringing democracy to their country; it was about securing a foothold to flex American power and enrich the U.S.
Back in 2022, when Rubio was still a senator, he advocated for Venezuelans to be eligible for temporary protected status, which is granted to citizens of countries considered too dangerous to return to. At the time, Rubio argued that “failure to do so would result in a very real death sentence for countless Venezuelans who have fled their country.”
Rubio has long fashioned himself as a modern-day Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan who led the liberation of South America from Spain and who has been a hero to many Latinos ever since.
But even Bolívar knew to be skeptical of American hegemony, writing in an 1829 letter that the U.S. “seems destined by Providence to plague [Latin] America with miseries in the name of Freedom.”
Plague, thy name is Marco Rubio. By pushing Trump to run rampant over Latin America, you’re setting in motion the same old song of U.S. meddling that ties your family and mine. By letting Maduro’s cronies remain in power if they play along with you and Trump, even though they stole an election in 2024, proves you’re as much for the Venezuelan people as, well, Maduro.
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are returning to Washington this week confronting the fallout from the stunning capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — and familiar complaints about the Trump administration deciding to bypass Congress on military operations that have led to this moment.
Democratic leaders are demanding the administration immediately brief Congress. Republican leaders indicated over the weekend those plans are being scheduled, but some lawmakers expressed frustration Sunday that the details have been slow to arrive.
President Trump told the nation Saturday that the United States intends to “run” Venezuela and take control over the country’s oil operations now that Maduro has been captured and brought to New York to stand trial in a criminal case centered on narco-terrorism charges.
The administration did not brief Congress ahead of the actions, leaving Democrats and some Republicans expressing public frustration with the decision to sideline Congress.
“Congress should have been informed about the operation earlier and needs to be involved as this situation evolves,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in a social media post Saturday.
Appearing on the Sunday news shows, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, ticked through a growing list of unknowns — and laid out plans for their party to try and reassert Congress’ authority over acts of war.
“The problem here is that there are so many unanswered questions,” Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week.” “How long do they intend to be there? How many troops do we need after one day? After one week? After one year? How much is it going to cost and what are the boundaries?”
Jeffries told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he was worried about Trump running Venezuela, saying he has “done a terrible job running the United States of America” and should be focused on the job at home.
In the coming days, Jeffries said Democrats will prioritize legislative action to try and put a check on the administration, “to ensure that no further military steps occur absent explicit congressional approval.”
Much of the unfinished business reflects a Congress that opted to punt some of its toughest and most politically divisive decisions into the new year, a move that could slow negotiations as lawmakers may be reluctant to give the other side high-profile policy wins in the lead-up to the 2026 midterm elections.
First and foremost, Congress faces the monumental task of averting yet another government shutdown — just two months after the longest shutdown in U.S. history ended. Lawmakers have until Jan. 30 to pass spending bills needed to keep the federal government open. Both chambers are scheduled to be in session for three weeks before the shutdown deadline — with the House slated to be out of session the week immediately before.
Lawmakers were able to resolve key funding disputes late last year, including funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, also known as food stamps, and other government programs. But disagreements over healthcare spending remain a major sticking point in budget negotiations, intensified now that millions of Americans are facing higher healthcare costs after lawmakers allowed Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire on Thursday.
“We can still find a solution to this,” said Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), who has proposed legislation to extend the tax credits for two years. “We need to come up with ways to make people whole. That needs to be a top priority as soon as we get back.”
Despite that urgency, Republican efforts to be the author of broad healthcare reforms have gotten little traction.
Underscoring the political pressure over the issue, four moderate House Republicans late last year defied party leadership and joined House Democrats to force a floor vote on a three-year extension of the subsidies. That vote is expected to take place in the coming weeks. Even if the House effort succeeds, its prospects remain dim in the Senate, where Republicans last month blocked a three-year extension.
Meanwhile, President Trump is proposing giving more money directly to people for their healthcare, rather than to insurance companies. A White House official said the administration is also pursuing reforms to lower the cost of prescription drugs.
Trump said last month that he plans to summon a group of healthcare executives to Washington early in the year to pressure them to lower costs.
“I’m going to call in the insurance companies that are making so much money, and they have to make less, a lot less,” Trump said during an Oval Office announcement. “I’m going to see if they get their price down, to put it very bluntly. And I think that is a very big statement.”
There is an expectation that Trump’s increasing hostility to insurance companies will play a role in any Republican healthcare reform proposal. If Congress does not act, the president is expected to leverage the “bully pulpit” to pressure drug and insurance companies to lower healthcare prices for consumers through executive action, said Nick Iarossi, a Trump fundraiser.
“The president is locked in on the affordability message and I believe anything he can accomplish unilaterally without Congress he will do to provide relief to consumers,” Iarossi said.
While lawmakers negotiate government funding and healthcare policy, the continuing Epstein saga is expected to take up significant bandwidth.
Democrats and a few Republicans have been unhappy with the Department of Justice’s decision to heavily redact or withhold documents from a legally mandated release of files related to its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Some are weighing options for holding Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi accountable.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), who co-sponsored the law that mandated the release with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), said he and Massie will bring contempt charges against Bondi in an attempt to force her to comply with the law.
“The survivors and the public demand transparency and justice,” Khanna said in a statement.
Under a law passed by Congress and signed by Trump, the Justice Department was required to release all Epstein files by Dec. 19, and released about 100,000 pages on that day. In the days that followed, the Justice Department said more than 5.2 million documents have been discovered and need to be reviewed.
“We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible,” the Justice Department said in a social media post on Dec. 24. “Due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told MS NOW last week that pressure to address the matter will come to a head in the new year when lawmakers are back at work.
“When we get back to Congress here in this next week, we’re going to find out really quick if Republicans are serious about actually putting away and taking on pedophiles and some of the worst people and traffickers in modern history, or if they’re going to bend the knee to Donald Trump,” said Garcia, of Long Beach.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Like many other Venezuelans, Ramón Arape said the image of ex-President Nicolás Maduro in U.S. custody was a stunning — and welcome — sight.
“I confess that I felt a sense of relief when I saw the photo of Maduro in the hands of los gringos,” said Arape, 59, a welder and father of three.
Less reassuring, however, were President Trump’s comments about Washington’s determination to take over the government and the oil industry, the nation’s defining natural resource.
“We’ve already had it with outsiders — Cubans, Iranians, Chinese — and now the Americans come along and want to name leaders and sell our oil?” said Arape, referring to a series of foreign allies sought out by the socialist governments of Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez. “It’s a violation of law and sovereignty.”
Many Venezuelans are hoping for a deliverance, but not, it seems, at the cost of selling off the country’s riches. How that plays out with Trump’s view that Venezuela “stole” a U.S.-built oil industry is one of the big questions as Washington embarks on a massive nation-building endeavor in South America.
Like many other nations, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in the 20th century, a process begun in the 1970s under a U.S.-allied government in Caracas. Several U.S. oil giants later made claims of illegal expropriation against the government of Chávez, Maduro’s mentor. But few here seemed inclined to believe in Trump’s assertion, made on social media, that Venezuela must return “all of the Oil, Land and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
Sunday was just a day after the shocking events that saw U.S. forces sweep into the capital and snatch Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from Miraflores Palace, the seat of government, and fly them out of the country — and, eventually, to New York, where both face drug-trafficking charges. Both deny the charges, calling them U.S. propaganda.
Venezuelans with internet access had the opportunity to view the unlikely image of Maduro, bundled up for distinctly non-tropical temperatures and flanked by federal agents, doing a perp walk at a military base in New York and apparently telling onlookers: “Happy New Year.”
In the Venezuelan capital, life was slowly returning to a semblance of normalcy on Sunday, albeit on a weekend pace.
Cars and some public transport circulated on streets that had been deserted the day before. People ventured cautiously from their homes after spending much of Saturday indoors, fearing the explosions and a potential aftermath. Many went to church in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation. Sermons called for peace.
There was a palpable sense of relief that the threat of war had abated, at least temporarily. Many were still absorbing the almost unbelievable turn of events that has surely transformed the nation’s future — albeit in still unpredictable ways.
But there was an overriding determination, among both supporters and critics of the ousted president, that the country’s oil and other resources were sacrosanct, and not to be handed over to the United States — or anyone else.
“Really it was very emotional to finally see Maduro and Cilia handcuffed and prisoners,” said Fernando González, 29, a plumber who says he supports Marína Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime opposition leader. “Those two have to pay for their crimes. For that we thank Trump. But that’s not to say we are in agreement with everything he seems to want to do.”
The president’s determination to “run” Venezuela — and take over its oil — didn’t go down well with González, a fervent nationalist in a country with a long history of nationalist activism.
“This is all a farce if they get rid of Maduro just to appropriate and sell the oil,” he said. “It can’t be that way. We want progress, change, but a transition led by Venezuelans. It can’t all be at the will of the Americans.”
González saw a role for the United States: “To help us deal with this social drama of an impoverished country.” But, he added: “They must respect our will.”
Arape, the welder, summed up the sentiment of many. “We didn’t go through all this so that Trump can name his people and take over our oil,” he said.
On Saturday, Trump had said, “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” On Sunday, however, administration officials walked back that statement, saying the U.S. would pressure the Venezuelan government to acquiesce to U.S. demands.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the threat of more military action would serve as “leverage” over the Venezuelan government.
In Caracas, confusion about the future was a prevalent sentiment, among both critics and supporters of Maduro.
“We would like to know who is really in charge,” said William Rojas, 31, a father of two who lives in the El Valle district, long a Maduro stronghold.
In his news conference Saturday, Trump said that Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, had been named interim president, a fact seemingly confirmed Sunday by Telesur, the government broadcast outlet. But Rodríguez, in an address Saturday from Miraflores Palace, demanded that Washington return the “kidnapped” Maduro, whom she called the “sole” president of the country.
“Delcy Rodríguez says that Maduro remains the president, but he’s no longer here,” said Rojas. “And how were they able to whisk him away? Who betrayed our president?”
He added, “We can’t live with the idea that the ones who really govern us are Trump and Marco Rubio! We are totally confused.”
Amid all the prevailing ambiguity, authorities called on people to revert to everyday patterns — as though Maduro were still around.
There were still no official casualty counts from Saturday’s raid. In an address, the defense secretary, Gen. Vladimir Padrino López, called the operation a “cowardly kidnapping” that was carried out “after cold-bloodedly assassinating a large part of the president’s security detail, soldiers and innocent civilians,” according to Telesur.
Padrino urged Venezuelans to return to their jobs and to school, adding, “I call on the Venezuelan people to peace, to order, to not fall to temptations or a psychological war, to threats, to the fear that they want to impose upon us.”
Special correspondent Mogollón reported from Caracas and staff writer McDonnell from Boston.
WASHINGTON — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had yet to weigh in on the U.S. operation to remove Nicolás Maduro from power in Caracas as of Saturday night, more than 24 hours since President Trump approved the audacious mission that captured the Venezuelan leader.
Her silence on the operation surprised some in the U.S. intelligence community, which laid the groundwork for the mission over several months, and which had assets in harm’s way on the ground in Venezuela as the operation unfolded.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, by contrast, accompanied Trump in Mar-a-Lago throughout the night as the extraction was underway, and stood beside the president as he conducted a news conference announcing the results.
“Teamwork at its finest,” Ratcliffe wrote on social media, posted alongside photos of him with the president’s team in the temporary situation room set up at Trump’s Florida estate.
Gabbard, a native of Hawaii who, according to her X account, spent the holidays in her home state, made a name for herself as a member of Congress campaigning against “regime change wars,” particularly the U.S. war in Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.
In a speech at Turning Point USA’s annual conference last month, Gabbard criticized “warmongers” in the “deep state” of the intelligence community she leads trying to thwart Trump’s efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.
“Too often we, the American people, are told we must choose between liberty or security, and which side often wins out in that proposition,” she told the gathered crowd. “Liberty loses, and the warmongers claim that they are doing what they are doing for the sake of our security. It’s a lie.”
Outside of government, during Trump’s first term, Gabbard also criticized advocates for regime change in Venezuela, writing in 2019, “It’s about the oil … again.”
“The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,” Gabbard wrote at the time. “Let the Venezuelan people determine their future.
“We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders,” she added, “so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”
WASHINGTON — An audacious overnight raid by elite U.S. forces that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his bedroom in Caracas plunged the country into turmoil Saturday, prompting international concern about Venezuela’s future and President Trump’s attempt to take control of the sovereign nation.
Trump justified the stunning attack by accusing Maduro, without evidence, of sending “monsters” into the United States from Venezuelan prisons, and by claiming Maduro’s involvement in the drug trade. But the American president focused more on Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, accusing its government of stealing U.S. oil infrastructure in the country decades prior and vowing that, under new U.S. government control, output would increase going forward.
He spoke little about democracy there, dismissing a potential role for Venezuela’s long-standing democratic opposition in running the country with Maduro now gone. Instead, Trump said his team was in touch with Maduro’s handpicked vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, whom he called “quite gracious” and said was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to Make Venezuela Great Again.”
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said. “We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind. We’re not going to let that happen.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in,” he added, “spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”
But the president offered few details on how his administration would exert control over Caracas — either through political coercion or by force. He suggested both options were on the table. “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” he added.
In a defiant speech, flanked by military leaders who had long stood by Maduro in the face of U.S. pressure, Rodriguez called for the “immediate release” of Maduro and his wife, who were flown to a New York airport Saturday afternoon. Top Venezuelan generals were also seen leaving the vice president’s office Saturday, indicating collaboration continues within the remnants of the government.
President Trump, alongside Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaks to the media Saturday after U.S. military actions in Venezuela.
(Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images)
No timeline for transition
Trump did not offer a timeline for how long a transition would take, or which Venezuelan factions he would support to assume leadership.
Maria Corina Machado, a leader of the Venezuelan opposition and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, said Saturday that she and her team were prepared to assume control of Venezuela.
“The hour of freedom has arrived,” she wrote on social media. “We are prepared to assert our mandate and take power.”
But in a surprising statement, Trump told reporters that he did not believe Machado had the “respect” needed to run the country.
Trump instead focused on how his Cabinet intends to run Venezuela in the coming days, stating that American oil companies are ready to descend on the country and begin “taking out tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”
“That wealth is going to the people of Venezuela and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela, and it goes to the United States of America, in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused to us by that country,” Trump said.
In recent speeches and media appearances, Machado has expressed support for privatizing Venezuela’s oil industry, without committing herself to granting U.S. companies preferential treatment in a post-Maduro world.
“Oil wealth was not used to uplift, but to bind,” Machado said in her Nobel Prize lecture last month. “And then came the ruin: Obscene corruption; historic looting. During the regime’s rule, Venezuela received more oil revenue than in the previous century combined. And it was all stolen. Oil money became a tool to purchase loyalty abroad.”
Among the world’s largest oil reserves
Venezuela, a country of 30 million people with twice the landmass of California, sits on one of the largest oil reserves in the world. But its production capacity has been relatively weak in recent years, owed in large part, experts say, to U.S. sanctions, as well as poor government investment in its infrastructure.
Up until now, China has been the largest importer of Venezuelan crude, purchasing between 60% and 80% of its barrels output each month. Senior Chinese officials were in Caracas when the raid occurred, and in a statement, China’s foreign ministry said it was “deeply shocked” by what it described as a “hegemonic” U.S. action that violated international law.
The U.S. operation began with explosions throughout Caracas, as more than 150 U.S. aircraft, including F-35 fighter jets, B-1 bombers and remotely piloted drones, cleared away Venezuelan air defenses to make way for the interdiction team, which included U.S. law enforcement officers. Electricity was cut throughout much of the city as the assault unfolded, Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.
A Delta Force unit penetrated Maduro’s heavily fortified compound at 2:01 a.m., capturing him and his wife as they attempted to escape into a safe room, U.S. officials said. Only one helicopter in the U.S. fleet was hit by Venezuelan fire, but was able to continue flying through the mission. No U.S. personnel were killed, Caine said.
Trump, who had ordered the CIA to begin monitoring Maduro’s movements months ago, watched as the operation unfolded from a room at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, “literally like I was watching a television show,” the president said in an interview with Fox News on Saturday morning.
‘Full wrath of American justice’
From there, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken to the USS Iwo Jima, stationed in the Caribbean alongside a third of the U.S. naval fleet, before their eventual flight to New York, where Maduro will face charges over his alleged ties to illicit drug trafficking.
“If you would’ve seen the speed, the violence,” Trump told Fox. “Amazing job.”
In a social media post, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi wrote that Maduro and his wife were “two alleged international narco traffickers” who would be facing criminal charges in New York.
“They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” Bondi said.
Maduro, according to a new indictment, is charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States. His wife is charged in the cocaine conspiracy.
The indictment says Maduro “sits atop a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking.”
“This cycle of narcotics-based corruption lines the pockets of Venezuelan officials and their families while also benefiting violent narco-terrorists who operate with impunity on Venezuelan soil and who help produce, protect, and transport tons of cocaine to the United States,” the indictment says.
‘Congress will leak,’ Trump says
The Trump administration did not seek congressional approval for the attack, prompting lawmakers from both parties on Capitol Hill to express trepidation and concern over the operation. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Saturday that it was “not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify because it endangers the mission.”
Trump agreed, saying that members of Congress tend to “leak” information to the public. “Congress will leak and we did not want leakers,” Trump said.
Democrats and some Republicans in Congress raised questions about the legality of the attack and the administration’s long-term vision for Venezuela.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) questioned whether Trump’s operation was consistent with his vows to put “America first,” and said a U.S. military campaign targeting drug cartels would focus not on Venezuela, but on Mexico. And Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a frequent critic of the president within his own party, expressed skepticism over the administration’s characterization of the attack as an “arrest with military support.”
“Meanwhile,” Massie wrote, “Trump announces he’s taken over the country and will run it until he finds someone suitable to replace him. Added bonus: says American oil companies will get to exploit the oil.”
Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), a former national security official in the Obama administration, accused Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of “blatantly” lying to Congress, saying the administration officials had assured lawmakers that the goal in Venezuela was not regime change. Kim said the Trump administration plan to run Venezuela was “disastrous.”
“The American people deserve a government focused on running our own country, not the folly of trying to run another,” Kim wrote on social media.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) dismissed the administration’s justification of the mission, stating on social media, “it’s not about drugs. If it was, Trump wouldn’t have pardoned one of the largest narco traffickers in the world last month,” referencing Trump’s recent pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.
“It’s about oil and regime change,” she added.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who represents a district with a large Venezuelan population, said she wants to know why Congress and the American people were “bypassed in this effort.”
“The absence of congressional involvement prior to this action risks the continuation of the illegitimate Venezuelan regime,” Wasserman Schultz wrote on social media.
Republicans largely backed the Trump administration’s action, but some did express some hesitancy about the attack’s potential implications.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said in a social media post that Maduro’s capture was “great for the future of Venezuelans and the region” — but raised concerns that other world leaders may follow the example in a way that may clash with U.S. interests.
“My main concern is now Russia will use this to justify their illegal and barbaric military actions against Ukraine, or China to justify an invasion of Taiwan,” Bacon said. “Freedom and rule of law were defended last night, but dictators will try to exploit this to rationalize their selfish objectives.”
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the Trump administration is working to schedule briefings for members next week, when lawmakers are expected to return to Washington.
Tense hours in capital after attack
In Caracas on Saturday, the mood was tense. Long lines formed at supermarkets and pharmacies as shoppers, fearful of uncertainty, stocked up on essentials.
Maduro’s supporters gathered throughout the city, many bearing arms, but seemed unsure of what to do next. Across Latin America, reaction to the U.S. operation was mixed. Right-leaning allies of Trump including Argentina’s Javier Milei and Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa backed the U.S. attack, while leftists broadly condemned it.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized an “aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and Latin America” and said he was ordering the deployment of the Colombian armed forces along his nation’s 1,300-mile-long border with Venezuela.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that the U.S. “crossed an unacceptable line” and compared the action to remove Maduro to “the darkest moments of [U.S.] interference in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Trump, meanwhile, boasted that the U.S. operation in Venezuela would help reassert U.S. dominance in Latin America.
“American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” he said. “We are reasserting American power in a very powerful way in our home region.”
‘The speed…the violence…it was an amazing thing,’ President Trump said of the clandestine military op that saw the Maduro family arrested and flown for US warship headed to New York
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, his wife Cilia Flores, and their 35-year-old son, known as “the Prince,” were charged with running a narco cartel as the couple was taken into custody in a dramatic special forces strike at their home in Caracas early Saturday morning, U.S. officials say.
“I watched it literally like I was watching…the speed, the violence…it was an amazing thing…There’s no other country on earth that can do such a maneuver,” President Trump told Fox News Saturday morning. Trump, who will have a press conference at Mar-a-Lago Saturday, said he watched the clandestine military operation unfold live in Venezuela, one that he said had been “planned and practiced” for months.
In it, Delta Force operators dragged the Venezuelan president and his wife from their bedroom and flew them to the USS Iwo Jima, which is now speeding toward New York. It is unclear whether their son, Nicolas Ernesto Maduro Guearra, was in custody, but he is named in the sprawling federal indictment unsealed Saturday.
Maduro aboard the USS Iwo JimaCredit: President Trump Truth Social
Maduro and his family will face a judge in Manhattan’s Southern District in connection with a federal four-count indictment charging them with a narco-terrorism conspiracy, conspiracy to import cocaine and possession of machine guns and destructive devices. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the clan “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”
After the dramatic announcement by the U.S. President was met with both celebration and criticism that the raid was unlawful, which will likely lead to a constitutional tug of war. The Spanish sports journalist Cristóbal Soria posted what appears to be the first photo of the Venezuelan leader in the custody of special forces soldiers on X, which exclaimed, “game over Maduro…!!!”
Mandar un abrazo a todo el pueblo Venezolano…game over Maduro…!!! Viva Venezuela…!!! pic.twitter.com/TCKOV1Lecx
The U.S. State Department had announced that the couple were the subject of an arrest warrant reward alleging that Maduro “helped manage and ultimately lead the Cartel of the Suns, a Venezuelan drug-trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials,” a network which had been given the special designation of a global terrorist network by the Trump administration in late November.
The new indictment starts by accusing Maduro and other leaders of Venezuela of abusing “their positions of public trust” and corrupting “once-legitimate institutions to import tons of cocaine into the United States.” The indictment also names Maduro’s wife and only son, whose father created a special government position for him as the “Head of the Corps of Special Inspectors of the Presidency,” a job that led him to earn the moniker, “The Prince.”
The family, the indictment alleges, sits atop what federal prosecutors call “a massive-scale drug trafficking” network that concentrated its “power and wealth” within their own family while they “partnered with some of the most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narco-terrorists in the world,” including FARC, a revolutionary group in Venezuela, the terrorist outfit ELN in Colombia and the bloodthirsty Sinaloa cartel in Mexico.
Maduro, the indictment alleges, “protects a culture of corruption in which powerful Venezuelan elites enrich themselves through drug trafficking and the protection of their partner drug traffickers.” The profits of that illegal activity flow to corrupt rank-and-file civilian, military, and intelligence officials, who, prosecutors say, “operate in a patronage system run by those at the top” of the Cartel de Los Soles.
Donald Trump announces the U.S. will take over Venezuela during the transition of power Credit: White House
Maduro, along with a dozen other Venezuelans, had been indicted in the U.S. in 2020 during Trump’s first term. At the time, Maduro was Venezuela’s vice president for the economy and he was charged with a scheme to “use cocaine as a weapon to flood the U.S.” alongside the country’s Minister of Defense, and Chief Supreme Court Justice, according to the Department of Justice. In 2024, Maduro was reelected in a disputed political contest. “The United States joined many other countries in refusing to recognize Maduro as the legitimately elected president,” the State Department says.
The Maduros’ capture comes after months of U.S. military buildup in the region that saw the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and other warships positioned in the Caribbean, and drone strikes on Venezuelan vessels, the Department of Justice and the so-called Department of War claimed were loaded with drugs. The U.S. also seized two fully-loaded Venezuelan oil tankers at sea, with the President saying his administration plans to become “very strongly involved” in that country’s energy trade.
Above: Venezuelans in Florida react to U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.In the overnight hours on January 2 into January 3, 2026, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured in a strike by U.S. forces in the South American country.The capture of the foreign leader comes after months of escalation from President Donald Trump against the nation, including more than a dozen strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats and a blockade on all “sanctioned oil tankers” going into and out of the country.U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York. Maduro was also indicted on “narco-terrorism” charges in 2020.In October, Trump said the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels after several strikes on boats in the Caribbean.Floridian lawmakers reacted to the overnight strikes in Venezuela and the capture of Maduro.U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-25), co-chair of the Congressional Venezuela Democracy Caucus, released a statement on President Maduro’s capture: “The capture of the brutal, illegitimate ruler of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who oppressed Venezuela’s people is welcome news for my friends and neighbors who fled his violent, lawless, and disastrous rule. However, cutting off the head of a snake is fruitless if it just regrows. Venezuelans deserve the promise of democracy and the rule of law, not a state of endless violence and spiraling disorder. My hope is it offers a passage to true democracy and liberation. This action offers beleaguered Venezuelans a chance to seat their true, democratically elected president, Edmundo González. I’ll demand answers as to why Congress and the American people were bypassed in this effort. The absence of congressional involvement prior to this action risks the continuation of the illegitimate Venezuelan regime.”Bondi shared the below indictment of Maduro and other Venezuelan officials on social media.
Above: Venezuelans in Florida react to U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
In the overnight hours on January 2 into January 3, 2026, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured in a strike by U.S. forces in the South American country.
The capture of the foreign leader comes after months of escalation from President Donald Trump against the nation, including more than a dozen strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats and a blockade on all “sanctioned oil tankers” going into and out of the country.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York. Maduro was also indicted on “narco-terrorism” charges in 2020.
In October, Trump said the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels after several strikes on boats in the Caribbean.
Floridian lawmakers reacted to the overnight strikes in Venezuela and the capture of Maduro.
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Thank you, @POTUS, @SecRubio, @SecWar, and the brave members of our military who led the operation that successfully CAPTURED narco-terrorist Nicolás Maduro.
A new day is here for Venezuela and Latin America. The United States and our hemisphere are safer because of President… https://t.co/VL4bnsbGVZ
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Capturing the murderous Dictator Maduro is a major step towards a #VenezuelaLibre. Now there must be concerted efforts to ensure the democratically elected Edmundo Gonzalez is seated as the rightful new president.
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The United States of America is safer today because of the leadership of President Donald J. Trump and the bravery and heroism of the American Military which again proved itself the best in the world.
Best news of the night: no American casualties, a narco-terrorist Dictator in… https://t.co/RijjbTHl8b
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Maduro used foreign terrorist organizations to traffic deadly drugs and violence into our country, killing countless Americans.
He was one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world and a threat to our national security.
U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-25), co-chair of the Congressional Venezuela Democracy Caucus, released a statement on President Maduro’s capture: “The capture of the brutal, illegitimate ruler of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who oppressed Venezuela’s people is welcome news for my friends and neighbors who fled his violent, lawless, and disastrous rule. However, cutting off the head of a snake is fruitless if it just regrows. Venezuelans deserve the promise of democracy and the rule of law, not a state of endless violence and spiraling disorder. My hope is it offers a passage to true democracy and liberation. This action offers beleaguered Venezuelans a chance to seat their true, democratically elected president, Edmundo González. I’ll demand answers as to why Congress and the American people were bypassed in this effort. The absence of congressional involvement prior to this action risks the continuation of the illegitimate Venezuelan regime.”
Bondi shared the below indictment of Maduro and other Venezuelan officials on social media.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ended the first year of President Trump’s second term with a record of rulings that gave him much broader power to control the federal government.
In a series of fast-track decisions, the justices granted emergency appeals and set aside rulings from district judges who blocked Trump’s orders from taking effect.
Upon taking office, Trump claimed migrants who were alleged to belong to “foreign terrorist” gangs could be arrested as “enemy aliens” and flown secretly to a prison in El Salvador.
Roberts and the court blocked such secret deportations and said the 5th Amendment entitles immigrants, like citizens, a right to “due process of law.” Many of the arrested men had no criminal records and said they never belonged to a criminal gang. Those who face deportation “are entitled to notice and opportunity to challenge their removal,” the justices said in Trump vs. J.G.G.
They also required the government to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been wrongly deported to El Salvador. He is now back in Maryland with his wife, but may face further criminal charges or efforts to deport him.
And last week, Roberts and the court barred Trump from deploying the National Guard in Chicago to enforce the immigration laws.
Trump had claimed he had the power to defy state governors and deploy the Guard troops in Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., Chicago and other Democratic-led states and cities.
The Supreme Court disagreed over dissents from conservative Justices Samuel A. Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.
For much of the year, however, Roberts and the five other conservatives were in the majority ruling for Trump. In dissent, the three liberal justices said the court should stand aside for now and defer to district judges.
In May, the court agreed that Trump could end the Biden administration’s special temporary protections extended to more than 350,000 Venezuelans as well as an additional 530,000 migrants who arrived legally from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua or Venezuela.
It was easier to explain why the new administration’s policies were cruel and disruptive rather than why they were illegal.
Trump’s lawyers argued that the law gave the president’s top immigration officials the sole power to decide on these temporary protections and that “no judicial review” was authorized.
Nonetheless, a federal judge in San Francisco twice blocked the administration’s repeal of the temporary protected status for Venezuelans, and a federal judge in Boston blocked the repeal of the entry-level parole granted to migrants under Biden.
Since 1887, when Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad rates, the government has had semi-independent boards and commissions led by a mix of Republicans and Democrats.
But Roberts and the court’s conservatives believe that because these agencies enforce the law, they come under the president’s “executive power.”
That ruling may come with an exception for the Federal Reserve Board, an independent agency whose nonpartisan stability is valued by business leaders.
Georgetown Law Professor David Cole, the former legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the court has sent mixed signals.
“On the emergency docket, it has ruled consistently for the president, with some notable exceptions,” he said. “I do think it significant that it put a halt to the National Guard deployments and to the Alien Enemies Act deportations, at least for the time being. And I think by this time next year, it’s possible that the court will have overturned two of Trump’s signature initiatives — the birthright citizenship executive order and the tariffs.”
For much of 2025, the court was criticized for handing down temporary unsigned orders with little or no explanation.
That practice arose in 2017 in response to Trump’s use of executive orders to make abrupt, far-reaching changes in the law. In response, Democratic state attorneys and lawyers for progressive groups sued in friendly forums such as Seattle, San Francisco and Boston and won rulings from district judges who put Trump’s policies on hold.
The 2017 “travel ban” announced in Trump’s first week in the White House set the pattern. It suspended the entry of visitors and migrants from Venezuela and seven mostly-Muslim countries on the grounds that those countries had weak vetting procedures.
Judges blocked it from taking effect, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, saying the order discriminated based on nationality.
A year later, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and upheld Trump’s order in a 5-4 ruling. Roberts pointed out that Congress in the immigration laws clearly gave this power to the president. If he “finds that the entry of … any class of aliens … would be detrimental,” it says, he may “suspend the entry” of all such migrants for as long as “he shall deem necessary.”
Since then, Roberts and the court’s conservatives have been less willing to stand aside while federal judges hand down nationwide rulings.
Democrats saw the same problem when Biden was president.
In April 2023, a federal judge in west Texas ruled for anti-abortion advocates and decreed that the Food and Drug Administration had wrongly approved abortion pills that can end an early pregnancy. He ordered that they be removed from the market before any appeals could be heard and decided.
The Biden administration filed an emergency appeal. Two weeks later, the Supreme Court set aside the judge’s order, over dissents from Thomas and Alito.
The next year, the court heard arguments and then threw out the entire lawsuit on the grounds that abortion foes did not have standing to sue.
Since Trump returned to the White House, the court’s conservative majority has not deferred to district judges. Instead, it has repeatedly lifted injunctions that blocked Trump’s policies from taking effect.
Although these are not final rulings, they are strong signs that the administration will prevail.
In November, the justices sounded skeptical of Trump’s claim that a 1977 trade law, which did not mention tariffs, gave him the power to set these import taxes on products coming from around the world.
In the spring, the court will hear Trump’s claim that he can change the principle of birthright citizenship set in the 14th Amendment and deny citizenship it to newborns whose parents are here illegally or entered as visitors.
Rulings on both cases will be handed down by late June.
