BOSTON — An expected vote by the U.S. Senate on a war powers resolution to restrict U.S. military action in Venezuela has become a campaign issue in the Democratic primary race between incumbent U.S. Sen. Ed Markey and challenger U.S Rep. Seth Moulton.
The Senate on Thursday is poised to vote on a war powers resolution, filed by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, to halt President Donald Trump’s use of military force against Venezuela. The move comes after Trump ordered the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, who were brought to New York to face drug trafficking and weapons charges.
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A White House social media post misleadingly links deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro with the U.S. fentanyl crisis.
The X post includes a video highlighting parents who lost children to fentanyl overdoses thanking President Donald Trump for capturing Maduro.
“Angel Families thank President Trump for saving lives & capturing Maduro — the kingpin flooding America with deadly fentanyl,” the White House’s Jan. 5 X post said. “Justice is being served.”
U.S. troops captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their Caracas home in the early hours of Jan. 3. The two pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges Jan. 5 in New York federal court.
The White House post isn’t the first time the Trump administration blamed Maduro for trafficking fentanyl to the U.S. Trump has cited the potent synthetic opioid that is responsible for most U.S. drug overdose deaths to justify pressure on Venezuela in the months before Maduro’s capture.
But neither Venezuela nor Maduro plays a role in smuggling fentanyl to the U.S. The majority of U.S. fentanyl comes from Mexico and is made with chemicals from China, according to U.S. government reports and drug policy experts.
The White House did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment.
Vice President JD Vance addressed fentanyl in a Jan. 4 X post, the day before the White House’s post, saying cocaine is “the main drug trafficked out of Venezuela,” and, “Yes, a lot of fentanyl is coming out of Mexico. That continues to be a focus of our policy in Mexico and is a reason why President Trump shut the border on day one.”
Drug trafficking experts, government reports say fentanyl does not come from Venezuela
The Drug Enforcement Agency’s annual National Drug Threat Assessmentreportsfor years have pointed to Mexico and China as the countries responsible for illicit fentanyl in the U.S. None of the agency’s reports from 2017 through 2025 list Venezuela as a fentanyl producer or trafficker.
Most illicit fentanyl entered the U.S. via the southern border at official ports of entry, and 83.5% of the smugglers in fiscal year 2024 were U.S. citizens.
“There is no evidence of fentanyl or cocaine laced with fentanyl coming from Venezuela or anywhere else in South America,” David Smilde, a Tulane University sociologist who studies violence in Venezuela, told PolitiFact in September.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime World Drug Report also points to Mexico as the country of origin for the most fentanyl seized in the U.S.
U.S. fentanyl overdose deaths recently have dropped. From May 2024 to April 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 43,000 synthetic opioid deaths, most of which were from fentanyl, down from nearly 70,000 in the previous year.
“The United States has been suffering an enormous overdose crisis driven by opioids and fentanyl in particular in recent years,” John Walsh, director for drug policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, a group advocating for human rights in the Americas, previously told PolitiFact. “I would say it has zero to do with anything in South America or the Caribbean.”
Maduro’s indictment on drug-related charges doesn’t mention fentanyl
The Justice Department first indicted Maduro in 2020 for alleged drug-related actions dating to 1999. A newly unsealed and updated indictment filed in the Southern District of New York charges Maduro and two co-defendants with narcoterrorism conspiracy and he, Flores and the four other co-defendants with cocaine importation conspiracy and possession of machine guns.
The indictment calls Maduro an illegitimate leader who transported cocaine under Venezuelan law enforcement protection, enriching his family and cementing power.
The 25-page document does not mention fentanyl or fentanyl trafficking.
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The Trump White House described Maduro as “flooding America with deadly fentanyl.”
Drug experts and official government and international reports point to Mexico and China as the countries primarily involved in producing and trafficking the illicit fentanyl that reaches the U.S. The majority of fentanyl in the U.S. comes from Mexico, is made with chemicals from China, and is smuggled by U.S. citizens via official ports of entry at the southern border.
The U.S. Justice Department indicted Maduro on charges related to cocaine. The indictment does not mention fentanyl.
Last week, Donald Trump ordered a military operation in Venezuela that included a series of air strikes in Caracas and the seizure of Nicolás Maduro, the country’s President, and his wife. The couple were then brought to New York City to face drug-trafficking and other charges. (They have pleaded not guilty.) The operation, which killed more than seventy people, has been followed by vows from President Trump to take Venezuela’s oil—something that he said the new Venezuelan government would facilitate. Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s Vice-President, the interim leader of the country, has contradicted Trump’s claim that he will “run” Venezuela, but she nevertheless is currently favored by the American government to remain in charge. Trump has pushed aside the opposition to Maduro, who won the election that Maduro stole, in 2024.
Democrats have largely condemned Trump’s actions in Venezuela, but Republican support has been strong, even among some so-called Never Trump Republicans, including the former congressman Adam Kinzinger, who backed Kamala Harris in the 2024 Presidential election. But there’s bipartisan concern, shared by American allies abroad, about Trump’s escalating threats to Greenland, which is part of Denmark, and which Trump and the White House have repeatedly said should be taken by the United States.
I recently spoke by phone with Matthew Kroenig, who is a professor at Georgetown and the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine. Kroenig recently wrote a piece for the New York Times titled “Trump Was Right to Oust Maduro.” (Kroenig has worked as an adviser to Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, and in the Pentagon during Trump’s first term.) During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what Trump’s ultimate aims are in Venezuela, the possibility of an American attack on Greenland, and whether there is a danger in encouraging Trump’s bellicosity.
Why do you think that the move by the Trump Administration to remove Maduro was the right one?
Well, Maduro’s a bad guy and it’s good that he’s gone is the bottom line, and he gave America’s adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran a foothold in the Western Hemisphere. He mismanaged his economy so badly that about a quarter of the population fled, contributing to a refugee crisis and pressure on the U.S.’s southern border. And he is charged with trafficking drugs into the U.S. So he was bad—bad for U.S. security, and bad for the Venezuelan people, and it’s better that he’s gone.
Do you have some sense that the Trump Administration cares about the welfare of the Venezuelan people and the future of Venezuela? I read a piece of yours in Foreign Policy in November where you said that it’s important for the Trump Administration to try to insure that a pro-American democracy arises in Venezuela after Maduro.
In terms of the mismanagement of domestic politics and economics in Venezuela, there are two ways you could get somewhere better. One is a policy change and the other is a regime change. It does seem like the near-term strategy is to use carrots and sticks to encourage the current leaders in Venezuela to change policy. It is possible that the remnants of the Maduro regime could put in place the right policies—economic reforms to curb or stop drug trafficking, and to push out the Russians, the Chinese, and the Iranians—for a variety of reasons, including that they don’t want to have happen to them what happened to Maduro. But I do think over the longer term, the outcome we would want is a democratic Venezuela. As to whether the Administration cares about that—if you just look at Trump’s statements on Saturday or Rubio’s appearances on the Sunday shows, they did talk multiple times about how they were pursuing America’s interests, but also that this would be to the benefit of the Venezuelan people. [The New York Times reported on Wednesday that repression in Venezuela had ramped up, from already high levels, since Maduro’s removal, with journalists and people who celebrated Maduro’s capture being detained.]
You could make a utilitarian case that an invasion or a regime change will improve the lives of the Venezuelan people. That’s a little different than saying that the Trump Administration cares about democracy. Because Trump seems like he’s more interested in pursuing oil rights for American companies and whatever else.
Yeah. Well, and so again, looking at the Rubio interviews, he did talk about how democracy is the goal, but he said we have to be realistic. The opposition [to Maduro] is not in the country. These things take time.
Trump seems like he’s soured on the opposition.
Yeah, I think that’s right. Obviously America has an Iraq and Afghanistan hangover and part of how I see the strategy is that it’s kind of correcting for some of the mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan. And I think one of the mistakes was overpromising on democracy in places where it was not realistic. I see Rubio as trying to downplay the expectations that a Jeffersonian democracy is going to pop up overnight. But even Trump was asked about elections, and he said something, like, Well, I hope it happens quickly, but it’s a process.
Sure, but you’re a very smart guy. You know that Trump doesn’t actually care about Venezuela in terms of whether it’s a democracy or not, right?
I think that’s fair—that he’s less focussed on values than traditional U.S. politicians.
Less focussed. Yeah.
Yeah. Whereas I do think that Rubio does care, including because of his family background and his long record in the Senate being a supporter of democracy and human rights.
Your Times piece does not address the fact that the person carrying this out has the qualities of Donald Trump, and that he’s also threatened a bunch of other countries in the past several days. The Administration seems to even be threatening Greenland. I’m curious if that should be part of our calculation as Americans when we wonder whether it’s a good idea for the President to order a military operation to remove a head of state.
I guess I do see the cases as different, and you’re right that Trump has threatened adversaries and allies. But in the case of Maduro—this is a leader who has stolen an election, who’s committed human-rights abuses, who was not recognized by Joe Biden or by the European Union. And so this is kind of the easiest case. With Greenland, Denmark is a NATO ally, and it’s very hard for me to see something similar happening there. With Mexico, the President has a pretty good relationship with Claudia Sheinbaum. She and the Colombian President, Gustavo Petro, are both democratically elected. The one place where I do think there should be some concern is Cuba: Rubio was asked about this and he said, ‘Yeah, if I lived in Havana, and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.’ And, in fact, the cutting off of Venezuelan oil is already really putting a lot of pressure on the government in Cuba. So I do think this is a model that could be applied elsewhere, but I think some of the hyperventilating over the past few days that this is going to be unleashed everywhere probably goes too far.
Learn 3 practical ways to lose weight that actually work including cannabis, focusing on sustainable habits, metabolism, and real-life results.
Losing weight doesn’t require extreme diets, expensive programs, or punishing workout schedules. For most people, the smartest goal is steady, sustainable fat loss—about 1 to 2 pounds per week, which is exactly what most doctors and nutrition experts recommend. Over a month, it adds up to meaningful progress without wrecking your metabolism or daily life.
Here are 3 practical ways to lose weight that actually work including cannabis. No special, expensive tricks but, a proven path a regular person drop pounds safely and consistently, with the third approach highlighting how cannabis can be used thoughtfully as part of a modern wellness strategy.
Weight loss still comes down to one core principle: burning slightly more calories than you consume. The key word is slightly. A daily deficit of 300–500 calories is enough to lose 1–2 pounds per week without triggering intense hunger or fatigue.
The most practical approach:
Focus on protein first (eggs, chicken, fish, beans, Greek yogurt)
Build meals around fiber-rich foods like vegetables, oats, and fruit
Reduce liquid calories such as soda, sweetened coffee, and alcohol
Instead of tracking every bite forever, many people succeed by tracking just two weeks per month to recalibrate portion sizes. This alone often creates the needed calorie deficit.
This approach is simple, flexible, and sustainable for real life.
Photo by Nastasic/Getty Images
You don’t need marathon training to lose weight. Consistency beats intensity every time.
The most effective plan:
30–45 minutes of walking most days of the week
2–3 short strength sessions weekly using bodyweight or light weights
Staying active throughout the day—standing, stretching, and moving often
Walking burns fat efficiently, lowers stress hormones, and is easy to maintain long-term. Strength training preserves muscle mass, which keeps your metabolism higher as you lose weight.
Together, these habits can burn 1,500–2,500 extra calories per week, enough to support steady fat loss without exhaustion.
Cannabis may seem like an unlikely weight-loss tool, but research and real-world use suggest it can play a supportive role when used intentionally.
Many people associate cannabis with overeating, but the reality depends on strain, dosage, and timing.
Smart cannabis use can help by:
Reducing stress and emotional eating
Improving sleep quality, which is crucial for fat loss
Supporting post-workout recovery and pain management
Helping some users regulate appetite more mindfully
Certain strains and cannabinoids, particularly THCV and CBD-dominant products, are associated with appetite control and metabolic balance rather than hunger stimulation.
The most practical approach:
Use low-dose cannabis, not heavy intoxication
Avoid late-night use that leads to snacking
Pair cannabis with healthy routines like walking, stretching, or meal prep
For many adults moving away from alcohol, cannabis can also eliminate hundreds of empty calories per week—often enough on its own to trigger weight loss.
Losing 1–2 pounds per week doesn’t require perfection. It requires small, repeatable habits fitting into daily life.
Control calories without extremes. Move your body consistently. And when used wisely, cannabis can be part of a balanced, modern approach to weight loss and wellness.
Sustainable results don’t come from punishment—they come from smart systems working with your body, not against it
After U.S. officials arrested Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lauded the operation, saying the state’s large Venezuelan population knows firsthand how “destructive” Maduro’s policies were.
DeSantis also said during a Jan. 5 press conference that Maduro was “releasing people from his prisons and sending them to our southern border under the Biden administration” and that he “deserves to be brought to justice.”
DeSantis repeated the comments the following day, adding that Florida would consider bringing state drug charges against Maduro.
Then and now, we found no evidence, such as in academic or government reports, that Maduro purposely freed Venezuelan prisoners and sent them to infiltrate the U.S. before, during or after Joe Biden’s presidency. Groups that track Venezuelan prisons say they remain overcrowded.
PolitiFact contacted DeSantis for comment but received no response.
Narrative rose to prominence in U.S. after anonymous source in 2022 article
In September 2022, as immigration at the southern U.S. border surged, 13 Republican Congress members sent a letter to then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, requesting information on an “intelligence report” they said his department sent to Border Patrol agents.
According to the lawmakers, DHS had told agents to be on the lookout for violent criminals who Venezuela was deliberately releasing from prisons and encouraging to join caravans headed to the U.S.
When we examined the claim at the time, we found its only source was a Sept. 18, 2022, article by conservative news website Breitbart, which credited an anonymous U.S. Customs and Border Protection source who it said was not authorized to speak to the media.
The article vaguely described the DHS intelligence report and did not link to it. The lawmakers sent a second letter to Mayorkas in February 2024 letter, again referring to the intelligence report and asking him to investigate.
We reached out again to DHS and CBP about the report’s existence and asked for a copy. We received no response. In 2022, the fact-checking organization Factchequeado reported that DHS responded to its inquiry about the Breitbart article and said the article’s claims “are not verified.”
Experts say there’s no evidence for the prison claim
Experts in Venezuelan politics said Maduro could have been capable of such actions, and the FBI says some Venezuelan criminals have come to the U.S.
But immigration experts in the U.S. and Latin America and Venezuelan criminologists said the assertion that the government freed Venezuelan prisoners and sent them to the U.S. southern border is baseless.
“There is no evidence that (Maduro’s) government is freeing prisons or sending prisoners to the United States,” Universidad Central de Venezuela criminology professor Luis Izquiel told PolitiFact in 2024.
Mike LaSusa, deputy director of content at InSight Crime, a think tank focused on crime and security in the Americas, previously told PolitiFact that Venezuela’s government “has no known policy of selecting particular migrants to send them to any specific country, including the United States.”
The Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones, an independent nonprofit that tracks Venezuela’s prison population, hasn’t reported that prisons emptied out during the Biden administration. In its 2023 report, the group said 64% of Venezuela’s prisons were overcrowded, estimating there were more than 33,500 inmates imprisoned, compared with a 20,000-person capacity.
The non-governmental organization A Window to Freedom, which has monitored Venezuela’s prison population and conditions for over 25 years, reported that overcrowding in the country’s pretrial detention centers, known as police cells, in 2023 was 189% — a 13% increase from 2022.
On May 5, 2025, the federal National Intelligence Council released a declassified memo that found no evidence that the Venezuelan government under Maduro directed the Tren de Aragua gang or sent its members to the U.S. The gang formed in a Venezuelan prison.
The U.S. does not admit people with criminal convictions who it encounters at U.S. ports of entry unless there are extenuating circumstances. Part of the entry process involves Border Patrol checking immigrants’ backgrounds and taking their fingerprints and other biometric information.
Crime has declined in Venezuela in recent years, but experts say that isn’t evidence Maduro sent freed prisoners to the U.S. It’s because of a confluence of factors, including a humanitarian crisis and a declining economy, pushing close to 8 million people to flee Venezuela since 2014. Most have migrated to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile.
Many of the people who lived in poor and rural areas — who were often victims of crime — have left the country, experts said.
“The opportunities for crime were lost,” Roberto Briceño León, founder and director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, which monitors crime in Venezuela, told PolitiFact in 2024. “Generalized poverty in the country, the absence of money circulating, the bankruptcy of companies and commerce all made the opportunities for crime in the country drop.”
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DeSantis said Maduro “was releasing people from his prisons and sending them to our southern border under the Biden administration.”
We found no evidence, such as academic or government reports, that Maduro freed prisoners and sent them to the U.S.
Immigration experts said Venezuela has no known policy or practice of sending prisoners to any specific country, including the U.S. And groups that track Venezuelan prisons said they remain overcrowded.
The U.S. carried out an operation Wednesday to seize the Marinera, a Venezuela-linked oil tanker formerly known as Bella-1, officials said.
The U.S. European Command confirmed the seizure, saying the tanker was seized in the North Atlantic for violations of U.S. sanctions, and pursuant to a warrant issued by a U.S. federal court after being tracked by USCGC Munro.
The U.S. has been following the tanker since last month, CBS News first reported on Monday. The pursuit began during a pressure campaign on former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was captured by U.S. forces last weekend. Two other oil tankers were seized by the U.S. last month.
The Marinera — which has historically carried Venezuelan crude oil and was sanctioned by the Treasury Department — was previously flagged out of Panama. Like other tankers that were seized, it was sanctioned by U.S. authorities for its prior involvement in Iranian oil trading. It is now sailing under the Russian flag.
A Russian submarine and other naval vessels had been deployed to escort the tanker as the U.S. followed it, two U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News on Tuesday.
File photo: The vessel tanker Bella 1 at Singapore Strait in a picture taken from social media on March 18, 2025.
Hakon Rimmereid/via REUTERS
The Russian Maritime Register of Shipping lists the tanker as being ported out of Sochi, off the western coast of the Black Sea. The New York Times reported that the Russian government officially had asked the U.S. to stop all attempts to interdict the ship.
The two officials familiar with the Marinera seizure plans said earlier this week that the U.S. would rather seize the ship than sink it and that the operation could be similar to the one conducted last month when U.S. Marines and special operation forces working with the U.S. Coast Guard seized The Skipper, a large crude oil tanker flagged out of Guyana, after the vessel had left port in Venezuela.
Ships like the Marinera and The Skipper are part of a so-called shadow fleet of ships that illegally transport oil from sanctioned nations like Russia, Iran and Venezuela.
Maduro has rejected U.S. allegations about how the vessels are being used and accuses the U.S. of plundering Venezuelan resources under the cover of law enforcement.
El Helicoide, a brutalist complex sitting atop a hill in central Caracas, is known as one of Latin America’s most notorious detention centers. Built as a shopping mall in the nineteen-fifties, the structure was taken over by Venezuela’s national-intelligence services, who turned its abandoned storefronts and lavatories into makeshift prison cells.
Early on Saturday afternoon, hours after American forces captured Nicolás Maduro, Amanda Monasterios sped off to El Helicoide. Her son, Jesús Armas, a prominent opposition leader, was among the political prisoners held inside. Monasterios, who is seventy-four, looked out at the capital’s eerily deserted streets: caraqueños had awakened to a bombed city, where people had been called on to begin la lucha armada. She arrived at El Helicoide to find that armed men had sealed off the premises. Patrol cars guarded the entrance—and there was no way to get near the prison. “It was as if the entire national police were guarding the approaches,” she said.
Her son had been in detention for just over a year, during which time Monasterios had been allowed to see him only occasionally. Clutching a bag of homemade food, she was prepared to step out of her car and seek a way into El Helicoide, but a companion advised her against it. “Don’t do it,” the person implored her. “We’ll come back on Wednesday.”
An engineer by training, Armas made a foray into politics as a student and was later elected a councilman in Caracas. He worked to address the city’s crumbling infrastructure, but it was his work in the general election of 2024 that drew the regime’s attention. After officials barred María Corina Machado, the opposition leader, from entering the race, she anointed a retired diplomat named Edmundo González to run in her place. Armas helped lead González’s campaign in the capital.
The election was mired in fraud: Armas, along with others, rallied hundreds of volunteers to observe the vote and preserve printed tallies from every voting machine. When polls closed, Maduro rushed to claim victory—a claim the opposition forcefully disputed, showing proof that González had won in a landslide. The regime never released a full count of the vote. Instead, officials engaged in a vicious crusade to repress whoever dared challenge the outcome.
On the morning of December 10, 2024, Armas was abducted from a cafeteria in eastern Caracas. It took almost a week—and a sustained public campaign—for him to be tracked down. Saimar Rivas, Armas’s partner and a longtime civil-rights activist, told me that he had been taken to a clandestine site run by the SEBIN, Venezuela’s intelligence agency. “There, he was tortured, asphyxiated with plastic bags, and questioned about the whereabouts of Edmundo, María Corina, and other opposition leaders,” Rivas said. “They offered him to become an informant, but he refused.”
What followed was a ten-month period of isolation at El Helicoide, where Armas was barred from any visits. He became one of about two thousand Venezuelans detained in the election’s aftermath; many of them remain behind bars to this day. “Every single leader who was involved in the election is either in detention, living in exile, or hiding,” Rivas said.
From the beginning, Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Maduro raised numerous questions about the fate of Venezuela’s political prisoners. Inside detention centers, rumors spread that an American intervention would trigger a killing spree. Family members worried that their relatives could be held hostage or disappeared by the regime. “I haven’t slept in a year,” Monasterios said. Stories abounded of prisoners gone missing and of relatives who never got to see their loved ones again. Now, people worried that detainees could be used as human shields.
Trump’s silence on the subject had only raised more doubts. In public, the President had seldom mentioned political prisoners. His rhetoric around Venezuela had focussed almost entirely on the country’s oil resources and on what the U.S. stood to gain. In the eyes of many Venezuelans, his endorsement of Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s second-in-command, was proof of his disregard for Venezuela’s democracy. “The fact that Delcy has been sworn in as President is, in itself, a flagrant violation of our sovereignty,” Rivas said. “And to do so under an American tutelage is to double down on that violation.”
María Corina Machado spoke with “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil on Tuesday, January 6, about the U.S. capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, her opposition movement that she says is ready to lead the country, Venezuelan Interim President Delcy Rodriguez and more.
Questions remain over how Venezuela will be run in the aftermath of the U.S. capture of its former leader, Nicolás Maduro. One outstanding issue is how the U.S. will handle the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, which has had a drug operation stronghold in the country for decades. CBS News’ Anna Schecter has more.
A new analysis finds that the average price of gas in the U.S. is expected to fall to its lowest level since 2020 this year. While the yearly average will fall under $3, GasBuddy notes that there is some expected fluctuation throughout the year due to seasonal demand, weather and geopolitics. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, joins “The Daily Report” to break down the report and discuss what the military raid in Venezuela may mean for gas prices.
At least 29 protesters have been killed as major anti-government demonstrations spread across Iran for a 10th day, a U.S.-based rights group says. The Iranian government is trying to quell the unrest, and reacted angrily to President Trump’s veiled threat of a U.S. armed intervention.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency, which gave the death toll based on its network of contacts in the country, said in its daily report on Monday that more than 1,200 people had been detained by Iranian security forces since the protests started more than a week ago. HRANA shared video on Tuesday that it said showed clashes between protesters and security forces at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar — a center of commerce in the capital where shop owners have long backed the regime.
The protests began more than a week ago in Tehran as business owners took to the streets to vent their frustration over soaring inflation in the nation, whose economy has been crippled by U.S. and international sanctions for years. But the anger spread quickly to more than 250 locations in at least 27 of Iran’s 31 provinces, according to the Washington-based HRANA, with social media videos showing violent clashes between protesters chanting anti-government slogans and security forces every night since.
Video posted online on Jan. 6, 2026 and location verified by the Reuters news agency shows Iranian security forces operating amid tear gas as they confront protesters in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar market.
Reuters
People who spoke with CBS News from inside the country on Tuesday said the latest demonstrations in the capital were relatively small, corroborating other reports that efforts by the Iranian authorities to placate the protesters have likely had some effect in reducing numbers in recent days.
President Trump said Friday — a day before American forces attacked Venezuela and captured the country’s longtime leader Nicolas Maduro — that the U.S. was “locked and loaded and ready,” warning that if Iran “violently kills protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.”
Mr. Trump hasn’t offered any further detail on his threat, but he’s been ratcheting up pressure on Tehran since taking office for his second term, including with unprecedented U.S. strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities in June as Israel and Iran fought a 12-day war.
“I think many Iranian people will be inspired by that,” Maziar Bahari, editor of the independent Iranian news website IranWire, told CBS News on Saturday, referring to Mr. Trump’s remarks. “The message has made the Iranian regime more careful about its actions and using violence against people.”
Iranian officials have not confirmed the deaths of any protesters, and while acknowledging the demonstrations and economic pain felt in the country, they make little mention of the violence seen on the streets and accuse the U.S. and Israel of fomenting the unrest. The Islamic Republic’s semiofficial Fars news agency claimed Monday that about 250 police officers and 45 members of the feared Basij security force had been injured amid the unrest.
Protesters march in downtown Tehran, Iran, Dec. 29, 2025.
Fars News Agency via AP
The U.S. State Department has issued statements condemning specific incidents in Iran since Mr. Trump leveled his ambiguous threat, but the chances of an American intervention remained unclear on Tuesday.
As has long been the case with Iran, the uncertainty left space for rumors to swirl. There were unconfirmed reports that the country’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was considering escaping into exile in Russia if the protests escalated out of control.
Other reports have speculated that the government could even launch a new attack on Israel — something the regime has said it is ready for since the 12-day war in June — in a bid to divert attention away from domestic problems and refocus the population’s anger at Iran’s biggest foreign adversary, which would likely respond quickly and harshly.
But Iran’s intelligence services have a history of leaking false information to the media, especially foreign outlets, to create an exaggerated narrative that the country’s leaders can then deny and portray as deliberate Western disinformation.
In the meantime, the government has tried to quash the unrest on the streets not only with security forces, but with a series of measures aimed at showing sympathy with the protesters, including freezing some commodity prices and taxes on businesses, and even a dramatic move Monday to announce cash subsidies for essential goods for all households.
The government does appear to have been bracing for unrest in the wake of the summer war with Israel, which constrained its sanctions-squeezed budgets even further and forced slashes to subsidies and social services.
So far, however, even if the protests haven’t continued escalating — which is difficult to gauge as Iran’s government tightly controls the flow of information inside the country — the efforts to quell the unrest haven’t fully succeeded.
In the meantime, the demonstrations continue, as people wait for any further signals from Mr. Trump that he might be willing to try to take advantage of a vulnerable moment for the Islamic Republic’s rulers.
In 2017, as political outsider Donald Trump headed to Washington, Delcy Rodríguez spotted an opening.
Then Venezuela’s foreign minister, Rodríguez directed Citgo — a subsidiary of the state oil company — to make a $500,000 donation to the president’s inauguration. With the socialist administration of Nicolas Maduro struggling to feed Venezuela, Rodríguez gambled on a deal that would have opened the door to American investment. Around the same time, she saw that Trump’s ex-campaign manager was hired as a lobbyist for Citgo, courted Republicans in Congress and tried to secure a meeting with the head of Exxon.
The charm offensive flopped. Within weeks of taking office, Trump, urged by then-Sen. Marco Rubio, made restoring Venezuela’s democracy his driving focus in response to Maduro’s crackdown on opponents. But the outreach did bear fruit for Rodríguez, making her a prominent face in U.S. business and political circles and paving the way for her own rise.
“She’s an ideologue, but a practical one,” said Lee McClenny, a retired foreign service officer who was the top U.S. diplomat in Caracas during the period of Rodríguez’s outreach. “She knew that Venezuela needed to find a way to resuscitate a moribund oil economy and seemed willing to work with the Trump administration to do that.”
Nearly a decade later, as Venezuela’s interim president, Rodríguez’s message — that Venezuela is open for business — seems to have persuaded Trump. In the days since Maduro’s stunning capture Saturday, he’s alternately praised Rodríguez as a “gracious” American partner while threatening a similar fate as her former boss if she doesn’t keep the ruling party in check and provide the U.S. with “total access” to the country’s vast oil reserves. One thing neither has mentioned is elections, something the constitution mandates must take place within 30 days of the presidency being permanently vacated.
This account of Rodríguez’s political rise is drawn from interviews with 10 former U.S. and Venezuelan officials as well as businessmen from both countries who’ve had extensive dealings with Rodríguez and in some cases have known her since childhood. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from someone who they almost universally described as bookishly smart, sometimes charming but above all a cutthroat operator who doesn’t tolerate dissent. Rodríguez didn’t respond to AP requests for an interview.
Father’s murder hardens leftist outlook
Rodríguez entered the leftist movement started by Hugo Chávez late — and on the coattails of her older brother, Jorge Rodríguez, who as head of the National Assembly swore her in as interim president Monday.
Tragedy during their childhood fed a hardened leftist outlook that would stick with the siblings throughout their lives. In 1976 — when, amid the Cold War, U.S. oil companies, American political spin doctors and Pentagon advisers exerted great influence in Venezuela — a little-known urban guerrilla group kidnapped a Midwestern businessman. Rodriguez’s father, a socialist leader, was picked up for questioning and died in custody.
McClenny remembers Rodríguez bringing up the murder in their meetings and bitterly blaming the U.S. for being left fatherless at the age of 7. The crime would radicalize another leftist of the era: Maduro.
Years later, while Jorge Rodríguez was a top electoral official under Chávez, he secured for his sister a position in the president’s office.
But she advanced slowly at first and clashed with colleagues who viewed her as a haughty know-it-all.
In 2006, on a whirlwind international tour, Chávez booted her from the presidential plane and ordered her to fly home from Moscow on her own, according to two former officials who were on the trip. Chávez was upset because the delegation’s schedule of meetings had fallen apart and that triggered a feud with Rodriguez, who was responsible for the agenda.
“It was painful to watch how Chávez talked about her,” said one of the former officials. “He would never say a bad thing about women but the whole flight home he kept saying she was conceited, arrogant, incompetent.”
Days later, she was fired and never occupied another high-profile role with Chávez.
Political revival and soaring power under Maduro
Years later, in 2013, Maduro revived Rodríguez’s career after Chávez died of cancer and he took over.
A lawyer educated in Britain and France, Rodríguez speaks English and spent large amounts of time in the United States. That gave her an edge in the internal power struggles among Chavismo — the movement started by Chávez, whose many factions include democratic socialists, military hardliners who Chávez led in a 1992 coup attempt and corrupt actors, some with ties to drug trafficking.
Her more worldly outlook, and refined tastes, also made Rodríguez a favorite of the so-called “boligarchs” — a new elite that made fortunes during Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution. One of those insiders, media tycoon Raul Gorrín, worked hand-in-glove with Rodríguez’s back-channel efforts to mend relations with the first Trump administration and helped organize a secret visit by Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, to Caracas in April 2018 for a meeting with Maduro. A few months later, U.S. federal prosecutors unsealed the first of two money laundering indictments against Gorrin.
After Maduro promoted Rodríguez to vice president in 2018, she gained control over large swaths of Venezuela’s oil economy. To help manage the petro-state, she brought in foreign advisers with experience in global markets. Among them were two former finance ministers in Ecuador who helped run a dollarized, export-driven economy under fellow leftist Rafael Correa. Another key associate is French lawyer David Syed, who for years has been trying to renegotiate Venezuela’s foreign debt in the face of crippling U.S. sanctions that make it impossible for Wall Street investors to get repaid.
“She sacrificed her personal life for her political career,” said one former friend.
As she amassed more power, she crushed internal rivals. Among them: once powerful Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami, who was jailed in 2024 as part of an anti-corruption crackdown spearheaded by Rodríguez.
In her de-facto role as Venezuela’s chief operating officer, Rodríguez proved a more flexible, trustworthy partner than Maduro. Some have likened her to a sort of Venezuelan Deng Xiaoping — the architect of modern China.
Hans Humes, chief executive of Greylock Capital Management, said that experience will serve her well as she tries to jump-start the economy, unite Chavismo and shield Venezuela from stricter terms dictated by Trump. Imposing an opposition-led government right now, he said, could trigger bloodshed of the sort that ripped apart Iraq after U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein and formed a provisional government including many leaders who had been exiled for years.
“We’ve seen how expats who have been outside of the country for too long think things should be the way it was before they left,” said Humes, who has met with Maduro as well as Rodríguez on several occasions. “You need people who know how to work with how things are not how they were.”
Democracy deferred?
Where Rodríguez’s more pragmatic leadership style leaves Venezuela’s democracy is uncertain.
Trump, in remarks after Maduro’s capture, said Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado lacks the “respect” to govern Venezuela despite her handpicked candidate winning what the U.S. and other governments consider a landslide victory in 2024 presidential elections stolen by Maduro.
Elliott Abrams, who served as special envoy to Venezuela during the first Trump administration, said it is impossible for the president to fulfill his goal of banishing criminal gangs, drug traffickers and Middle Eastern terrorists from the Western Hemisphere with the various factions of Chavismo sharing power.
“Nothing that Trump has said suggests his administration is contemplating a quick transition away from Delcy. No one is talking about elections,” said Abrams. “If they think Delcy is running things, they are completely wrong.”
Jan 6 (Reuters) – Russia has deployed a submarine and other naval vessels to escort an aging oil tanker, Bella 1, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday , citing a U.S. official.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
(Reporting by Bipasha Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Tom Hogue)
A U.S. Marine who was held captive in Venezuela for two years under Nicolás Maduro‘s regime recalled on Tuesday being handcuffed and electrocuted after he says he was wrongfully detained.
Matthew Heath, a corporal in the Corps from 1999 until 2003, says Maduro detained Americans to be used as “trading chips” and a policy tool, telling CBS News’ Major Garrett on “The Takeout” that he was arrested by Venezuelan authorities in September 2020 after showing Venezuelan authorities his passport at a regular checkpoint.
“I was placed in their holding facility called Casa de los Sueños, the House of Dreams,” Heath said. “I can assure you it does not live up to its name.”
Matthew Health, a U.S. Marine imprisoned under Nicolas Maduro, on “The Takeout” on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2025.
CBS News
There are at least four detained Americans being held in Venezuela, according to a hostage advocate familiar with the situation. Health says they’re under “terrible treatment” without access to clean drinking water or medical facility and recounted his own experience.
“I was tortured. They handcuffed me to the frame of metal bed and electrocuted me with a car battery and jumper cables,” he told CBS News. “It’s not exactly polite conversation but I can tell you that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
Health was accused of entering Venezuela illegally, the prosecutor said, claiming that he didn’t have a passport but rather had a copy of it hidden in one of his shoes. Three Venezuelan nationals were also accused of conspiring with Heath.
The Venezuelan government also accused him of being a spy and charged him in an alleged terrorist plot to sabotage oil refineries and electrical service in order to stir unrest.
The Marine was released in October 2022 along with six other Americans imprisoned in the South American country in exchange for the release of two nephews of Maduro’s wife who had been jailed for years by the U.S. on drug smuggling convictions. Their release came after senior U.S. government officials traveled to Caracas that summer in a bid to bring home detained Americans. The trip also followed a public plea from Heath’s family to the Biden administration to take urgent action to save his life following what they said was a suicide attempt.
When asked whether he wants President Trump to publicly call on the interim president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, to released the detainees, Health said it would likely help the moral of their family members — but added that Mr. Trump can do more.
“I think [Mr. Trump] should get on the phone tonight. Call Delcy Rodríguez and say that he’s sending a plane down there and that he’d like them loaded on that plane immediately. I think that we still got time to get them home tonight,” Heath said.
For a singer-songwriter who came to the United States from Venezuela seven years ago, the news that the U.S. had removed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from power was welcome news.
For a singer-songwriter who came to the U.S. from Venezuela seven years ago, the news that the U.S. had removed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from power was welcome news.
Jonathan Acosta, who made his home in Virginia, told WTOP in an interview that when he initially heard the news, he was overjoyed.
“The reaction was something like, ‘Oh, my God, we got it,’” Acosta said.
He explained that, in his eyes, Maduro was a dictator.
Acosta said there had been many human rights abuses under the Maduro regime. Maduro has also been accused of stealing elections.
“We don’t have a regular government, a conventional government, a normal government in Venezuela,” he said.
Some Venezuelans living in the U.S., as well as Americans, have been critical of the military action and the lack of consultation with Congress before President Donald Trump’s administration deployed U.S. forces into Venezuela.
Acosta said if he were asked whether he would prefer Venezuela to be aligned with Russia, China or the U.S., “My response for you is very clear. I prefer the United States.”
At the same time, Acosta said it’s disheartening to see how Venezuelan immigrants as a whole have been portrayed as gang members and criminals.
“It’s true that Tren de Aragua came from Venezuela. That is true,” he said, while noting the majority of Venezuelan immigrants “are good people … working very hard.”
Acosta has performed locally, including at the Kennedy Center, and sang the national anthem at a Washington Wizards game in September 2024. He described that experience as important, because he felt he represented Venezuelans and the Hispanic community to a broad audience.
“I was singing to say ‘thank you’ to the United States,” he said of the experience.
Acosta has released a new album called “Americano Somos,” a nod to the cultures of North America, Central America and South America. The music spotlights what Acosta said he wants listeners to recognize, that all residents of the continents are Americans.
“With the music, we can bring hope, esperanza,” Acosta said. “That is my work, my job now.”
Days after the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, a viral audio clip appears to show President Donald Trump yelling at advisers to stop the release of the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s files.
“Leaked Donald Trump audio about the Epstein files and Venezuela,” reads the caption of a Jan. 5 Facebook post sharing the purported recording that drew over 2 million views.
“(We’re) not releasing the Epstein file, f— Marjorie Taylor Greene, I don’t care what you do, start a f—— war, just don’t let them get out. If I go down, I will bring all of you down,” Trump appears to say.
A reporter can then be heard asking Trump if he is all right, to which Trump says, “I feel great, I was shouting at people because they were stupid about something.”
That part of the recording is authentic. But the first part — about Epstein and Greene — isn’t.
The fake audio matches the audio in a TikTok video from Nov. 18, 2025, before the U.S. captured Maduro on Jan. 3. Fact-checkers from Lead Stories and Snopes found a similar version of the audio first published Nov. 5, 2025 by the @fresh_florida_air TikTok account, which is no longer available. The archived version of that video shows a Sora watermark, which is OpenAI’s video-generating platform. With the launch of Sora 2 on Sept. 30, 2025, the tool can generate audio-only results.
The TikTok account, @fresh_florida_air, posted another version of the “leaked” audio that featured a Sora watermark that said @bradbradt31. PolitiFact searched for that username on the Sora app, but that account is also unavailable.
The TikTok user, @fresh_florida_air, told Snopes that the videos were AI-generated. “My intent is creative expression, not presenting anything as factual,” the user said.
The second part of the audio clip in the Facebook post that features a reporter asking Trump if he’s OK is real, but it was taken out of context. On Nov. 17, 2025, a reporter questioned why the president sounded hoarse. A longer version of Trump’s response reveals he said he had been shouting during trade talks with a foreign country. Trump was not being asked about a leaked audio or the Epstein files.
Our ruling
A viral Facebook post claims to show “leaked Donald Trump audio about the Epstein files and Venezuela.”
The audio was created with artificial intelligence.
PolitiFact found the first part of the clip was generated with OpenAI’s video-generating platform, Sora.
The second part of the clip is real but it’s from November 2025, before Maduro was captured by the U.S. government. At that moment, Trump was not being asked about leaked audio or the Epstein files. We rate this claim False.
MIAMI (AP) — In 2017, as political outsider Donald Trump headed to Washington, Delcy Rodríguez spotted an opening.
Then Venezuela’s foreign minister, Rodríguez directed Citgo — a subsidiary of the state oil company — to make a $500,000 donation to the president’s inauguration. With the socialist administration of Nicolas Maduro struggling to feed Venezuela, Rodríguez gambled on a deal that would have opened the door to American investment. Around the same time, she saw that Trump’s ex-campaign manager was hired as a lobbyist for Citgo, courted Republicans in Congress and tried to secure a meeting with the head of Exxon.
The charm offensive flopped. Within weeks of taking office, Trump, urged by then-Sen. Marco Rubio, made restoring Venezuela’s democracy his driving focus in response to Maduro’s crackdown on opponents. But the outreach did bear fruit for Rodríguez, making her a prominent face in U.S. business and political circles and paving the way for her own rise.
“She’s an ideologue, but a practical one,” said Lee McClenny, a retired foreign service officer who was the top U.S. diplomat in Caracas during the period of Rodríguez’s outreach. “She knew that Venezuela needed to find a way to resuscitate a moribund oil economy and seemed willing to work with the Trump administration to do that.”
Nearly a decade later, as Venezuela’s interim president, Rodríguez’s message — that Venezuela is open for business — seems to have persuaded Trump. In the days since Maduro’s stunning capture Saturday, he’s alternately praised Rodríguez as a “gracious” American partner while threatening a similar fate as her former boss if she doesn’t keep the ruling party in check and provide the U.S. with “total access” to the country’s vast oil reserves. One thing neither has mentioned is elections, something the constitution mandates must take place within 30 days of the presidency being permanently vacated.
FILE – Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, then Constituent National Assembly President Delcy Rodriguez, left, and first lady Cilia Flores, wave as they arrive to the National Assembly, in Caracas, Venezuela, May 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)
This account of Rodríguez’s political rise is drawn from interviews with 10 former U.S. and Venezuelan officials as well as businessmen from both countries who’ve had extensive dealings with Rodríguez and in some cases have known her since childhood. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from someone who they almost universally described as bookishly smart, sometimes charming but above all a cutthroat operator who doesn’t tolerate dissent. Rodríguez didn’t respond to AP requests for an interview.
Father’s murder hardens leftist outlook
Rodríguez entered the leftist movement started by Hugo Chávez late — and on the coattails of her older brother, Jorge Rodríguez, who as head of the National Assembly swore her in as interim president Monday.
Tragedy during their childhood fed a hardened leftist outlook that would stick with the siblings throughout their lives. In 1976 — when, amid the Cold War, U.S. oil companies, American political spin doctors and Pentagon advisers exerted great influence in Venezuela — a little-known urban guerrilla group kidnapped a Midwestern businessman. Rodriguez’s father, a socialist leader, was picked up for questioning and died in custody.
McClenny remembers Rodríguez bringing up the murder in their meetings and bitterly blaming the U.S. for being left fatherless at the age of 7. The crime would radicalize another leftist of the era: Maduro.
Years later, while Jorge Rodríguez was a top electoral official under Chávez, he secured for his sister a position in the president’s office.
But she advanced slowly at first and clashed with colleagues who viewed her as a haughty know-it-all.
FILE – Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez meets with her brother, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez at the Foreign Ministry in Caracas, Venezuela, Dec. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
In 2006, on a whirlwind international tour, Chávez booted her from the presidential plane and ordered her to fly home from Moscow on her own, according to two former officials who were on the trip. Chávez was upset because the delegation’s schedule of meetings had fallen apart and that triggered a feud with Rodriguez, who was responsible for the agenda.
“It was painful to watch how Chávez talked about her,” said one of the former officials. “He would never say a bad thing about women but the whole flight home he kept saying she was conceited, arrogant, incompetent.”
Days later, she was fired and never occupied another high-profile role with Chávez.
Political revival and soaring power under Maduro
Years later, in 2013, Maduro revived Rodríguez’s career after Chávez died of cancer and he took over.
A lawyer educated in Britain and France, Rodríguez speaks English and spent large amounts of time in the United States. That gave her an edge in the internal power struggles among Chavismo — the movement started by Chávez, whose many factions include democratic socialists, military hardliners who Chávez led in a 1992 coup attempt and corrupt actors, some with ties to drug trafficking.
FILE – Constitutional Assembly President Delcy Rodriguez, and her brother, Minister of Communications Jorge Rodriguez, center right, flanked by diplomat Roy Chaderton, left, and former Vice President Elias Jaua, pose for a photo at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Dec. 1, 2017. (AP Photo/Tatiana Fernandez, File)
Her more worldly outlook, and refined tastes, also made Rodríguez a favorite of the so-called “boligarchs” — a new elite that made fortunes during Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution. One of those insiders, media tycoon Raul Gorrín, worked hand-in-glove with Rodríguez’s back-channel efforts to mend relations with the first Trump administration and helped organize a secret visit by Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, to Caracas in April 2018 for a meeting with Maduro. A few months later, U.S. federal prosecutors unsealed the first of two money laundering indictments against Gorrin.
After Maduro promoted Rodríguez to vice president in 2018, she gained control over large swaths of Venezuela’s oil economy. To help manage the petro-state, she brought in foreign advisers with experience in global markets. Among them were two former finance ministers in Ecuador who helped run a dollarized, export-driven economy under fellow leftist Rafael Correa. Another key associate is French lawyer David Syed, who for years has been trying to renegotiate Venezuela’s foreign debt in the face of crippling U.S. sanctions that make it impossible for Wall Street investors to get repaid.
“She sacrificed her personal life for her political career,” said one former friend.
As she amassed more power, she crushed internal rivals. Among them: once powerful Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami, who was jailed in 2024 as part of an anti-corruption crackdown spearheaded by Rodríguez.
In her de-facto role as Venezuela’s chief operating officer, Rodríguez proved a more flexible, trustworthy partner than Maduro. Some have likened her to a sort of Venezuelan Deng Xiaoping — the architect of modern China.
Hans Humes, chief executive of Greylock Capital Management, said that experience will serve her well as she tries to jump-start the economy, unite Chavismo and shield Venezuela from stricter terms dictated by Trump. Imposing an opposition-led government right now, he said, could trigger bloodshed of the sort that ripped apart Iraq after U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein and formed a provisional government including many leaders who had been exiled for years.
“We’ve seen how expats who have been outside of the country for too long think things should be the way it was before they left,” said Humes, who has met with Maduro as well as Rodríguez on several occasions. “You need people who know how to work with how things are not how they were.”
FILE – Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, from left, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, National Assembly Vice President Pedro Infante, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez and National Assembly Second Vice President America Perez, arrive for the swearing-in ceremony of President Nicolas Maduro for his third term in Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)
Democracy deferred?
Where Rodríguez’s more pragmatic leadership style leaves Venezuela’s democracy is uncertain.
Trump, in remarks after Maduro’s capture, said Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado lacks the “respect” to govern Venezuela despite her handpicked candidate winning what the U.S. and other governments consider a landslide victory in 2024 presidential elections stolen by Maduro.
Elliott Abrams, who served as special envoy to Venezuela during the first Trump administration, said it is impossible for the president to fulfill his goal of banishing criminal gangs, drug traffickers and Middle Eastern terrorists from the Western Hemisphere with the various factions of Chavismo sharing power.
“Nothing that Trump has said suggests his administration is contemplating a quick transition away from Delcy. No one is talking about elections,” said Abrams. “If they think Delcy is running things, they are completely wrong.”
Thousands of people were stranded abroad because their flights home were scrapped after the U.S. temporarily shut down airspace around Venezuela following the capture of former President Nicolás Maduro.
Some travellers remain stuck because airlines rebooked them on flights that don’t leave for days, while others face thousands of dollars in extra travel-related expenses, such as lodging costs. Now, industry experts are advising them to ask airlines for refunds and, for those with travel insurance, to file a claim.
On Saturday, the day of the attack, roughly 1,130 flights within, into or out of the U.S., were cancelled, hundreds of which were scheduled to depart from Aruba, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and other Caribbean islands, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Airlines have since resumed service in the region after the flight restrictions were lifted.
What travel insurance doesn’t cover
If you’re already on a trip, of course, it’s too late to purchase travel insurance.
“It’s like buying car insurance after you hit a tree,” Suzanne Morrow, CEO of InsureMyTrip, a travel insurance comparison site, told CBS News.
Even if you have coverage, meanwhile, there are limitations. Most travel policies include exclusions that might apply to trip interruptions of the sort that led to the now-lifted restrictions on Caribbean airspace. That can make it hard for purchasers of travel insurance to know if a policy will protect them.
“Coverage decisions are based on policy language and official determinations. My recommendation is to save all of your receipts for every expense incurred,” Morrow said.
Specifically, most policies expressly exclude coverage when a policyholder’s trip is disrupted due to an act of war, terrorism, or civil unrest, she noted. Such determinations are based on airlines’ stated reasons for cancelling flights.
As a result, payouts for delayed trips might not apply to the Venezuela flight restrictions, Jeff Rolander, vice president of claims and customer experience at Faye Travel Insurance, told CBS News.
“Insurers have been assessing the situation to determine if coverage will apply, and acts of war are a general exclusion under all travel insurance policies,” he said.
What travel insurance does cover
People who bought travel insurance are generally entitled to compensation when an airline cancels a flight because of a mechanical issue or other problem within the carrier’s control.
“Standard travel insurance policies are designed to protect against baggage loss or flight delays due to an airline issue,” said Chrissy Valdez, senior director of operations at Square Mouth, a travel insurance comparison site.
The policies can also protect travellers if they need to cancel trips for personal emergencies, such as illness or injury.
Many travel insurance providers also offer add-ons that provide coverage for trips that are interrupted for “any reason,” but such an upgrade has to be purchased in advance.
Valdez said some fliers could be eligible for compensation for a cancelled flight if the rebooked flight is cancelled due to an airline issue.
“Sometimes, because of airspace closures, airlines are trying to catch up and there may not be aircraft available. Mechanical issues could prevent them from adding additional aircraft to the fleet, and those kinds of things could still be covered,” she said.
The average cost of travel insurance is around $21 a day, according to Square Mouth. A policy’s pricing is based on trip costs and the breadth of coverage.
Always file a claim
For travellers whose flights are cancelled, Morrow said the first course of action beyond saving receipts should be to file a claim with their airline for any added expenses. Those costs could include meals, lodging and other costs incurred as a result of a flight cancellation.
“Go through the process, whether or not they cover anything. At least make the effort to get compensation, particularly if you don’t have insurance,” she advised.
If you do have travel coverage, your provider can also help with rebooking flights and finding alternate accommodations in the interim.
“Travel insurance does so much more than reimburse for expenses. It also comes with assistance benefits that can help when trips are interrupted,” Morrow said.
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.”
