NEW YORK (AP) — Tyrese Maxey scored 36 points, Joel Embiid and VJ Edgecombe each had 26 and the Philadelphia 76ers beat the New York Knicks 130-119 on Saturday night for their third straight victory.
Paul George added 15 points and Quentin Grimes had 10 for the Sixers, who won at Madison Square Garden for the second time this season. Embiid also grabbed 10 rebounds.
Philadelphia extended its streak to 9-0 when Edgecombe started the second quarter with a 3-pointer. Consecutive three-pointers from Anunoby and Jordan Clarkson put the Knicks back in the lead.
Jalen Brunson scored 31 points for the Knicks, who have lost three straight for the second time this season. Karl-Anthony Towns, who returned after missing one game due to illness, added 23 points and 14 rebounds.
Deuce McBride scored 20 points, OG Anunoby had 19 and Mikal Bridges added 12 for New York.
The Knicks were ahead 30-25 when the Sixers scored the final six points of the first quarter and led 31-30.
Trailing 38-37, the 76ers produced a 9-0 run and grabbed the lead for good. They went ahead by 13 before the Knicks scored the last five points of the second quarter and cut their deficit to 66-58 at halftime.
Embiid’s two free throws gave Philadelphia its largest lead at 96-77 with 3 minutes, 13 seconds remaining in the third quarter. The Knicks’ 10-3 run pulled them within 99-87 heading into the fourth.
Towns’ bucket opened the final quarter and his three-point play with 9:59 left brought the Knicks within 103-94.
The 76ers regained a 15-point lead, but Anunoby’s free throws with 2:08 left got the Knicks within 121-114. However, a Maxey free throw, a layup from Grimes and a a decisive jam from Edgecombe would follow and the Knicks never got any closer.
Next up for the Sixers is a return to Xfinity Mobile Arena to take on the Denver Nuggets on Monday (8:30 p.m., Peacock).
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife could appear in federal court in Manhattan within days to face narco-terrorism charges, which, if accepted by a jury, could put them behind bars on American soil for decades.
A plane carrying Maduro arrived at a suburban airport outside New York on Saturday evening. He was expected to be processed by Drug Enforcement Administration officials and will be held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn until a court appearance, most likely on Monday, according to people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
Maduro’s capture and indictment have drawn protests from some lawmakers and scholars, who say international law does not allow President Donald Trump to unilaterally attack a foreign country and bring its leader to the U.S. to face charges.
Even those critics, however, concede that under Supreme Court precedent, those arguments are unlikely to have much impact on federal legal proceedingsonce Maduro gets to U.S. court.
Trump and his top aides defended the decision to capture Maduro. They noted that the U.S. and many other countries have long viewed Maduro as an illegitimate leader who has remained in power despite losing the country’s most recent election. Officials sought to portray the extraordinary military action against Venezuela as a straightforward law enforcement operation, with the military backing up the Justice Department as they sought to bring someone to U.S. court.
“At its core, this was an arrest of two indicted fugitives of American justice,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a news conference with Trump on Saturday.
A sweeping four-count indictment against Maduro was unsealed in the Southern District of New York on Saturday. It alleged that he, his wife, Cilia Flores, and members of their inner circle illegally enriched themselves as they conspired to flood the United States with cocaine. Among the charges: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, and possession of machine guns and destructive devices.
“The defendants, and other corrupt members of the regime facilitated the empowerment and growth of violent narco-terrorist groups fueling their organizations with cocaine profits,” the indictment reads. “These narco-terrorist organizations not only worked directly with and sent profits to high-ranking Venezuelan officials, but also reaped the benefits of the increased value of that cocaine at each transshipment point along the way to the United States, where demand and thus the price of cocaine is highest.”
The remarkable prosecution of a foreign leader in American federal court was the result of Trump’s deployment of the U.S. military to strike Venezuela overnight and capture Maduro and his wife, bringing them to New York to face charges.
Trump at the Saturday news conference gave reporters a more expansive set of reasons for Maduro’s capture, saying that the U.S. attack was justified, in part, because Venezuela stole U.S. oil — claims that are not included in the indictment. He also said the United States will “run” the South American country until a succession plan is determined.
Critics said Trump’s arguments raised more legal questions.
“If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership?” Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement. “What stops Vladimir Putin from asserting similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president? Once this line is crossed, the rules that restrain global chaos begin to collapse, and authoritarian regimes will be the first to exploit it.”
International law experts, however, said that while those issues may be debated in Congress and international bodies, they are unlikely to affect the legal proceedings against Maduro and his co-defendants in U.S. court.
A line of Supreme Court cases starting in the late 19th century makes clear that “you can’t claim that you were abducted and therefore the court should not be allowed to assert authority over you,” said Geoffrey Corn, who heads the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University and is a former top legal adviser to the U.S. Army.
“Maduro is not going to be able to avoid being brought to trial because he was abducted so to speak, even if he can establish it violated International law.” Corn said, adding that in his view the administration’s overnight military operation lacked any “plausible legal basis.”
Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor who previously headed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the George W. Bush administration, noted on Substack that similar arguments were raised after U.S. forces deposed Panamanian leader Manuel Antonio Noriega on Jan. 3, 1990. Courts upheld the government’s right to try Noriega, who was convicted on drug charges in 1992 and sentenced to 40 years in federal prison.
The charging document against Maduro unsealed Saturday — known as a superseding indictment — is an update to charges filed against him and his associates during the first Trump administration in 2020. At the time, U.S. leaders conceded that they couldn’t go into Venezuela and arrest Maduro. The charges essentially made him an international fugitive, who risked arrest if he traveled outside his country.
The superseding indictment contains the same four charges as the original 2020 indictment. But the new indictment also names Flores, who was not a co-defendant in the 2020 case. Some of the other co-defendants — all part of Maduro’s inner circle — are also different, including Maduro’s son, Nicolás Ernesto Maduro.
The younger Maduro does not appear to have been captured.
U.S. authorities have alleged that Maduro and his inner circle worked with international drug trafficking groups to transform Venezuela into a transshipment hub for moving massive amounts of cocaine to the United States. Maduro and his associates created a culture of corruption in which the Venezuelan elite made themselves rich through drug trafficking, the indictment alleged. Drug traffickers, the document said, gave these leaders a portion of their profits in exchange for protection and aid.
“In turn, these politicians used the cocaine fueled payments to maintain and augment their political power,” the indictment states.
Jeremy Paul, a law professor at Northeastern University, said the Trump administration had no legal authority to stage the military intervention, but he agreed that it probably would not derail Maduro’s prosecution.
The administration’s justification is “a terrifying theory, because, as I have been saying to people, you’re basically saying that U.S. prosecutors and a grand jury is all you need as justification for sending the military into another country,” Paul said. “That can’t be the law.”
Trump also faced criticism Saturday from Democratic lawmakers for striking Venezuela and capturing Maduro just a month after he pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in a U.S. court last year on drug trafficking charges.
Maduro’s case in the Southern District of New York was randomly assigned to U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a 92-year-old jurist appointed by President Bill Clinton and who last year was among a group of judges who prohibited the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan immigrants. Those findings are under appeal.
Hellerstein did not take any action in the case against Maduro on Saturday, and an appearance in court has not yet been publicly announced. But public officials, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, have said that officials are arranging this weekend to transport Maduro and his wife to New York.
China strongly condemned the overnight U.S. strike on Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro, which came just hours after a Chinese special envoy met with the Venezuelan leader to reaffirm Beijing’s support for the imperiled regime, calling the action “deeply shocking” and a serious violation of international law.
Shortly before the surprise U.S. attack unfolded, a delegation of Chinese officials arrived in Caracas, led by Beijing’s special envoy for Latin American and Caribbean affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi, and met with Maduro to discuss the rising tensions with the United States. It was Maduro’s last publicly reported official meeting before he and his wife were captured by U.S. forces and flown out of the country.
President Donald Trump on Saturday said that the United States will now “run” Venezuela for an unspecified amount of time, following the operation that saw over 150 U.S. military aircraft marshal for a spectacular extraction mission.
Maduro’s exit marked an abrupt end to a monthslong effort by China to support the embattled leader, as fears grew in Beijing that the United States would soon attempt to seize Chinese-flagged oil tankers as part of its blockade of the country. Beijing has been the regime’s most influential global ally and Venezuela’s primary financial lifeline through loans and oil purchases, accounting for around 80% of the country’s total oil exports.
At 7:30 p.m. Friday, Maduro shared a final message on his Telegram channel, lauding his meeting with Qiu as reaffirming “the strong bonds of brotherhood and friendship between China and Venezuela. A relationship that stands the test of time!” It was accompanied by a video set to triumphant music showing Qiu — a vice-minister level diplomat — and his team walking through what appeared to be the hallways of the presidential palace and shaking hands with Maduro.
Just 6½ hours later, Chinese officials in Caracas were stunned when the U.S. strike began, setting off a furious string of missives back to Beijing, according to one Chinese diplomat familiar with the situation. “It was completely shocking,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to media.
On Saturday, China’s Foreign Ministry issued a sharp rebuke, strongly condemning the U.S. raid. “Such hegemonic acts of the U.S. seriously violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty, and threaten peace and security in Latin America,” it said in a statement. Separately, the Foreign Ministry and China’s embassy in Venezuela warned citizens to avoid traveling to the country.
“China employed rare, forceful language previously reserved for political assassinations and mass casualty events,” sail Neil Thomas, a fellow at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.
According to Venezuelan reports and the Chinese official, Qiu met with Maduro to review the roughly 600 political and economic agreements between the two countries and address concerns over the rising threat of a U.S. military intervention and potential threats to Chinese oil tankers.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Maduro in May last year on the sidelines of Russia’s Victory Day celebrations. According to the Chinese readout of the meeting, Xi described the two countries’ relationship as an “all-weather strategic partnership” and reaffirmed China’s support for Venezuela’s sovereignty.
Asked on Saturday how the takeover would affect U.S. relations with major oil buyers including China, Trump said that “in terms of other countries that want oil, we’re in the oil business, we’re going to sell it to them. We’re not going to say we’re not going to sell it to them.”
China has long viewed Venezuela as a key political ally in Latin America as it seeks to expand its influence in the region. This month, Beijing released its first major Latin America strategy update in nearly a decade, more explicitly incorporating security cooperation — including military exchanges — into its framework and reaffirming support for the sovereignty of regional partners.
Republican lawmakers focused on China policy welcomed the move Saturday, saying it curtailed Chinese influence in the region. “The Trump Administration’s decisive action against Nicolás Maduro removes a Chinese ally from power and makes the world a safer place. China’s partnership with Maduro propped up an authoritarian ruler who worked with our nation’s adversaries and hurt the American people,” said Rep. John Moolenaar (R., Mich.), chairperson of the House Select Committee on China.
Analysts say that the potential seizure of Venezuela’s government by the United States is unlikely to seriously undercut Beijing’s broader efforts to expand its regional presence.
“Left-leaning governments in the region will likely lean further toward Beijing as a preferred economic partner and diplomatic alternative to Washington. This strike is unlikely to dissuade China’s regional trade and investment; Beijing requires booming exports to sustain growth, and Washington currently lacks a competitive economic diplomacy strategy to match its security presence,” said Thomas.
Trump on Saturday lambasted Maduro’s regime for facilitating the growing influence of U.S. adversaries in the region, but stopped short of naming China explicitly. “Venezuela was increasingly hosting foreign adversaries in our region and acquiring menacing offensive weapons that could threaten us,” said Trump. “They used those weapons last night.”
In recent months, Maduro has called on China, as well as Russia and Iran, to provide weapons and other assistance amid rising U.S. pressure. According to documents obtained by the Washington Post, Maduro drafted a letter appealing to Xi for “expanded military cooperation” in the face of U.S. escalation, including a request to expedite the production of radar detection systems by Chinese companies.
MINNEAPOLIS — Just a few months ago,Larissa Laramee would have encouraged Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to run for president. She admired the man who helped lead the Democratic presidential ticket in 2024 — and who once taught her social studies.
But Laramee’s feelings have changed as a yearslong welfare fraud probe in Minnesota becomes a national maelstrom. Prosecutors say scammers stole brazenly from safety net programs,taking hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding — potentially billions — for services they never provided while Walz led the state.
“I like him as a person. He’s fantastic,” said Laramee, 40, who works at a Minnesota nonprofit for people with disabilities. Walz, as her high school teacher, helped inspire her career, she said. “But with all of this that’s happened, I’m struggling with seeing a path forward for him.”
Laramee’s doubts show how the sprawling fraud cases in Minnesota now hang over Walz — even as it’s too soon to tell how they will ultimately affect his political future. A year and a half after he vaulted onto the national stage as Kamala Harris’ running mate, Walz is back in the spotlight, this time for acontroversy that Republicans around the country view as political gold.
Republicans are betting the fraud saga will hurt Walz, a staunch liberal and potential 2028 presidential candidate who is seeking a third term as governor this year. GOP officials say it will be one of their top campaign issues in Minnesota as they try to reverse many years of statewide losses and navigate through tough national headwinds in the midterms.
But many of the attacks on Walz are geared just as much toward riling the GOP’s national base, using the issue and Walz’s prominence to validate broader anger within the party over immigration and a social welfare system that President DonaldTrump and others have long argued is out of control.
How much blame Walz should bear forthe state’s response to the fraud is a matter of a debate. He has said that, as state executive, he takes ultimate responsibility. Walz has said officials have “made systematic changes to state government” over the past few years as prosecutions were underway. The governor’s critics say the changes were insufficient and came too late.
Democrats say Republicans are risking a backlash by fixating on the fraudsters’ nationality — most people charged in the schemes are of Somali descent — and by freezing some federal childcare funding in response. Trump has lobbed broad attacks on Somali immigrants that Walz denounced as “racist lies,” and many on the right have called for deportations, even though officials say most of the fraud defendants are U.S. citizens.
Maria Snider, director of the Rainbow Development Center and vice president of advocacy group Minnesota Child Care Association, speaks as people gather for a news conference at the state Capitol on Wednesday in St. Paul.
Democrats are favored to win the governor’s race in 2026; Republicans have not won a statewide election in Minnesota since 2006. Walz won reelection by about 8 percentage points in 2022, when some of the fraud cases had already surfaced, and it’s not clear that the new attention to the issue has affected his approval in the state. There are no clear recent shifts in available surveys.
Some Democrats remain worried the falloutthreatens to blunt Walz’s attacks on Trump, as well as the economic issues the party has sought to highlight.
“The anti-fraud message is going to be very strong. …I fear that message will dominate or drown out the affordability message,” said Ember Reichgott Junge, a former Minnesota state senator who is now a Democratic political analyst.
Junge said she’s heard many Democrats express concern about Walz’s reelection campaign and noted thathis performance couldaffect lower-profile races on the ballot. Democrats are defending a one-vote majority in the state Senate and trying to retake the House, where Republicans hold a two-seat advantage amid two vacancies.
“He is a riskier candidate than any other Democrat” would have been, she said of Walz, who has not drawn primary challengers so far.
Walz has accused Trump of politicizing the probes. Walz appointed a statewide “director of program integrity” to prevent fraud in mid-December, among other changes, and the state shut down one fraud-plagued housing program this fall.
“We have made significant progress. We have much more to do. And it’s my responsibility to fix it,” Walz wrote in a recent op-ed for the Minnesota Star Tribune.
His office did not make him available for an interview.
Other Democrats dismissed Republicans’ chances in the governor’s race, said the GOP response to the fraud has overreached and accused Trump — who has pardoned people convicted on fraud charges — of hypocrisy. Trump and others on the right have also attacked Walz in highly personal terms that many call cruel; Trump recently called Walz “seriously retarded,” and videos of people yelling “retard” outside Walz’s house have circulated online. (Walz has spoken about his son’s learning disability).
“Republicans are overplaying their hand, and this is what’s going to turn off a lot of voters,” said Abou Amara, a former adviser to Democratic leadership in the state legislature. “They have made this not just about fraud, but they’ve made it about xenophobia.”
President Donald Trump on Dec. 16 at the White House.
Federal authoritiesin Minnesota have been investigating the sweeping abuse of safety net programs for years and brought many of the charges in 2022, accusing 47 people of misusing $250 million — meant to feed children during the pandemic — on luxury cars and property as far away as Kenya and Turkey.
News reports, a viral video and a flood of criticism from right-wing influencers and politicians have drawn new national attention to the issue in recent weeks. Federal investigators also suggested last month that the problem could be much bigger than previously known.
Joe Thompson, a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, said at a news conference last month that authorities have identified “significant fraud” in14 state Medicaid programs — and said fraud may account for more than half of the $18 billion that went to those programs since 2018.
“Every day we look under a rock and find a new $50 million fraud scheme,” Thompson said.
Republican leaders including Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) have weighed in this past week, sharing a video posted on social media on Dec. 26 by a 23-year-old YouTuber, Nick Shirley, who joined a roundtable with Trump last year. In the 42-minute video, Shirley claimed daycare centers were not caring for children because he could not see them on-site. Regulators, however, saw children on their visits within the last 10 months, according to officials and records.
Shirley’s video has accumulated more than 130 million views on X and triggered a flood of GOP interest — and criticism of Walz. House Republicans said they would call Walz to testify before Congress next month. Right-leaning billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, suggested Walz should go to prison.
“Minnesotans are finally much more aware of the extent of the fraud and how deep it is and how it’s gone unchecked, and it is going to play favorably for Republicans on every level of government in the ’26 election,” said state House speaker Lisa Demuth, one of many candidates seeking the GOP nomination to challenge Walz.
Another GOP gubernatorial candidate, Minnesota Rep. Kristin Robbins — who chairs a House committee on fraud — called it the top issue in the race. “We are still, sadly, at the tip of the iceberg,” she said.
A 2024 report from the nonpartisan Minnesota LegislativeAuditor found that the state education department, which administered nutrition programs at the center of many fraud cases, “failed to act on warning signs” and “created opportunities for fraud.”It did not point specifically at Walz.
Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota GOP who has crossed the aisle in the past to vote for Walz, said he isn’t sure how he’ll vote in the coming gubernatorial race, and argued that the Walz administration could have been more responsive. Voters, he said, will have to decide if state officials “have the credibility to be a part of the solution when maybe a lot of Minnesotans think they’re part of the problem.”
But he also warned that Trump’s rhetoric isn’t helping local Republicans. The president railed against Somali immigrants in a cabinet meeting last month, saying “they contribute nothing” and declaring, “Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country.”
Some Republicans in Minnesota want to leave race out of the debate — though they argue sensitivities about racism helped enable the fraud. (A nonprofit behind much of the fraud once accused a state agency of racial discrimination while pushing back on skepticism).
“We want to stay focused on the fraud and just the act itself, not on the culture or the people behind it,” Minnesota GOP chair Alex Plechash said in an interview, adding later, “I’m not at all into dividing the people by race or by socioeconomic status or any other way.”
At a Somali mall in Minneapolis, Kadar Abdi, a student at a nearby mosque, said he believes Trump is trying to turn attention away from his own political challenges. “Because of these failures, as a distraction tactic, you want to blame a marginalized group” he said. “It’s as old as American society.”
An hour away in Owatonna, an exurb of the Twin Cities, diners at the Kernel represented the full gamut of opinions. Trump voter Michael Haag, 54, said Walz “should be in prison” and that he plans to leave the state if Walz is reelected.
He “should resign, and I also think he should be charged, because he’s for the Somalis,” Haag said. “He should have been looking out for us, vs. them.”
Another patron wearing a pink Carhartt hat and sipping coffee disagreed.
“I find him honest,” said Joan Trandem, who is retired. “He cares about the small guy.”
Given the drama that’s surrounded Walz, Trandem said she’s surprised he wants to run fora third term. But if he continues with the campaign, she plans to vote for him. In the rural part of Minnesota where Trandem lives, the fraud probe doesn’t get much play anymore, she said. “I’m tired of talking about it.”
In 1976, the government of oil-rich Venezuela assumed control of the country’s petroleum industry, nationalizing hundreds of private businesses and foreign-owned assets, including projects operated by the American giant ExxonMobil.
In 2007, Hugo Chávez, the founder of Venezuela’s socialist state, assumed control of the last privately run oil operations in the Orinoco Belt, home to the country’s largest oil deposits.
President Donald Trump said in December that the expropriation of American oil company assets justified a “total and complete blockade” of oil tankers arriving and leaving Venezuela in defiance of U.S. sanctions. The blockade will remain, he wrote on Truth Social, until the South American nation returns “to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
“They’re not going to do that again,” Trump told reporters. “We had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”
But U.S. companies never owned oil or land in Venezuela, home to the world’s largest proven reserves of crude, and officials didn’t kick them out of the country.
“Trump’s claim that Venezuela has stolen oil and land from the U.S. is baseless,” said Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Denver.
Nationalization was the culmination of a decades-long effort by administrations of both the right and the left to bring under government control an industry that an earlier leader had largely given away.
The right-wing strongman Juan Vicente Gómez, the military dictator who ruled Venezuela from 1908 until his death in 1935, granted concessions that left three foreign oil companies in control of 98% of the Venezuelan market. The country became the world’s second-largest oil producer and largest exporter; oil accounted for over 90% of the country’s total exports.
Gómez’s successors tried to seize greater control over the country’s economy. Under President Isaías Medina Angarita, authorities approved a law in 1943 that required foreign oil companies to relinquish half their profits to the government. A 1958 pact signed by Democratic Action, the Democratic Republican Union, and the Independent Political Electoral Organization Committee ensured the country’s major political parties had access to oil profits.
By the time Venezuelan lawmakers began debating nationalization legislation in 1975, Rodríguez said, the “writing was on the wall.”
“Nobody was going to resist Venezuela carrying this nationalization to its end, and the U.S. was much more interested in having Venezuela be a provider of oil — relatively cheap oil — than to have a production collapse in Venezuela,” Rodríguez said. The change, consequently, was “relatively uncontroversial.”
President Carlos Andrés Pérez, a social democrat, signed the bill into law that August. In January 1976, Venezuelan state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. took over the exploration, production, refining, and export of oil.
The country followed Mexico, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia in a wave of resource nationalism aimed at trying to wrest control of energy resources, primarily from the United States, to achieve economic sovereignty.
American oil companies, including Exxon and Mobil, which merged in 1999, and Gulf Oil, which became Chevron in 1984, were hit hardest. The Dutch giant Shell was also affected. The companies, which had accounted for more than 70% of crude oil production in Venezuela, lost roughly $5 billion in assets but were compensated just $1 billion each, according to news reports from that period.
But they didn’t seek larger sums, Rodríguez said, and “felt that it didn’t make sense to press it more.” They also lacked “a mechanism that would have allowed the companies in 1976 to actually take these cases to court.”
(A 1991 bilateral investment treaty between Venezuela and the Netherlands created a legal pathway for investors to sue a foreign government for unfair treatment. Cases go before private arbitration panels rather than courts.)
In January 2007, Chávez called for the nationalization of the natural gas industry — part of his plan to redistribute oil wealth and transform the poverty-stricken nation into a socialist state.
When PDVSA assumed control of oil operations in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips were unable to agree to new contract terms and sought up to $40 billion in compensation through arbitration.
Several oil companies, including Chevron and Spanish-owned Repsol, remained in Venezuela under new contract terms. Chevron is the only American company still operating there.
In 2012, the International Chamber of Commerce awarded ExxonMobil $908 million in compensation, less than the $1 billion that Venezuela had offered. The tribunal awarded ConocoPhillips $2 billion in 2018. The World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes awarded ExxonMobil $1.6 billion in 2014 and ConocoPhillips $8.7 billion in 2019.
Venezuela has yet to pay the full amounts. The economy is struggling under hyperinflation, government corruption, and U.S. sanctions. Under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, oil exports, once 3 million to 4 million barrels a day, are now estimated at no more than 900,000 barrels per day. Most of it goes to China.
“American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser, wrote in a post on X. “Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property.”
Rodríguez said the administration’s position “just doesn’t have any logic.”
“It’s kind of like an odd argument,” he said. “You owe me some money. We both went to court. The court said, ‘You pay me this.’ You start paying me, then I — by force, by the imposition of sanctions — make it impossible for you to continue paying me, and then I accuse you of stealing something from me.”
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Venezuelans on Saturday were scrambling to understand who is in charge of their country after a U.S. military operation that captured President Nicolás Maduro.
President Donald Trump delivered a shocking pick: the United States, perhaps in coordination with one of Maduro’s most trusted aides.
Delcy Rodríguez has served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018, overseeing much of Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy as well as its feared intelligence service. But she is someone the Trump administration apparently is willing to work with, at least for now.
“She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump told reporters of Rodríguez, who faced U.S. sanctions during Trump’s first administration for her role in undermining Venezuelan democracy.
In a major snub, Trump said opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, didn’t have the support to run the country.
Trump said Rodríguez had a long conversation with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in which Trump claimed she said, “‘We’ll do whatever you need.’”
“I think she was quite gracious,” Trump added. “We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.”
Rodríguez tried to project strength and unity among the ruling party’s many factions, downplaying any hint of betrayal. In remarks on state TV, she demanded the immediate release of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and denounced the U.S. operation as a flagrant violation of the United Nations charter.
“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” Rodríguez said, surrounded by top civilian officials and military commanders.
There was no immediate sign that the U.S. was running Venezuela.
“What will happen tomorrow? What will happen in the next hour? Nobody knows,” Caracas resident Juan Pablo Petrone said.
No sign of a swearing-in
Trump indicated that Rodríguez had been sworn in already as president of Venezuela, per the transfer of power outlined in the constitution. However, state television has not broadcast any swearing-in ceremony.
In her televised address, Rodríguez did not declare herself acting president or mention a political transition. A ticker at the bottom of the screen identified her as the vice president. She gave no sign that she would be cooperating with the U.S.
“What is being done to Venezuela is an atrocity that violates international law,” she said. “History and justice will make the extremists who promoted this armed aggression pay.”
The Venezuelan constitution also says a new election must be called within a month in the event of the president’s absence.
Venezuelan military officials were quick to project defiance in video messages.
“They have attacked us but will not break us,” said Defense Minister Gen. Vladimir Padrino López, dressed in fatigues.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello appeared on state TV in a helmet and flak jacket, urging Venezuelans to “trust in the political leadership and military” and “get out on the streets” to defend the country’s sovereignty.
“These rats attacked and they will regret what they did,” he said of the U.S.
Strong ties with Wall Street
A lawyer educated in Britain and France, Rodríguez has a long history of representing the revolution started by the late Hugo Chávez on the world stage.
She and her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, head of the Maduro-controlled National Assembly, have strong leftist credentials born from tragedy. Their father was a socialist leader who died in police custody in the 1970s, a crime that shook many activists of the era, including a young Maduro.
Unlike many in Maduro’s inner circle, the Rodríguez siblings have avoided criminal indictment in the U.S. Delcy Rodríguez has developed strong ties with Republicans in the oil industry and on Wall Street who balked at the notion of U.S.-led regime change.
Among her past interlocutors was Blackwater founder Erik Prince and, more recently, Richard Grenell, a Trump special envoy who tried to negotiate a deal with Maduro for greater U.S. influence in Venezuela.
Fluent in English, Rodríguez is sometimes portrayed as a well-educated moderate in contrast to the military hard-liners who took up arms with Chávez against Venezuela’s democratically elected president in the 1990s.
Many of them, especially Cabello, are wanted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges and stand accused of serious human rights abuses. But they continue to hold sway over the armed forces, the traditional arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela.
That presents major challenges to Rodríguez asserting authority. But experts say that Venezuela’s power brokers have long had a habit of closing ranks behind their leaders.
“These leaders have all seen the value of staying united. Cabello has always taken a second seat or third seat, knowing that his fate is tied up with Maduro’s, and now he very well might do that again,” said David Smilde, a sociology professor at Tulane University who has conducted research into Venezuela’s political dynamics over the past three decades.
“A lot depends on what happened last night, which officials were taken out, what the state of the military looks like now,” Smilde said. ”If it doesn’t have much firepower anymore, they’re more vulnerable and diminished, and it will be easier for her to gain control.”
An apparent snub of the opposition
Shortly before Trump’s news conference, Machado, the opposition leader, called on her ally Edmundo González — a retired diplomat widely considered to have won the country’s disputed 2024 presidential election — to “immediately assume his constitutional mandate and be recognized as commander-in-chief.”
In a triumphant statement, Machado promised that her movement would “restore order, free political prisoners, build an exceptional country and bring our children back home.”
She added: “Today we are prepared to assert our mandate and take power.”
Asked about Machado, Trump was blunt: “I think it would be very tough for (Machado) to be the leader,” he said.
“She doesn’t have the support or respect within the country.”
Venezuelans expressed shock, with many speculating on social media that Trump had mixed up the two women’s names. Machado has not responded to Trump’s remarks.
President Donald Trump on Saturday demonstrated how expansively he is willing to exert U.S. power abroad, removing a foreign leader who had not threatened military force against America and declaring that Washington could assume long-term control in Venezuela.
The operation echoed those by past hawkish U.S. presidents to overthrow leaders in Iraq and Panama, raising questions about whether Trump’s “America First” doctrine is being redefined as he authorizes successive foreign attacks and pursues regime change in the South American nation.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump said in a news conference at Mar-a-Lago. The remark contrasted with Trump’s past criticism of U.S. leaders who, he has argued, acted as “the policemen of the world,” andstood to sharpen tensions inside his political movement, which has long been skeptical of overseas entanglements. He did not say how long the United States would seek to control Venezuela.
But Trump described the operation as part of a broader effort to reassert “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere,” language that echoed Cold War-era interventionism more than the restraint he once championed.
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” Trump said, adding that the United States would be “replacing” the country’s oil infrastructure. The remarks pointed to a scope of involvement that could extend beyond the limited, short-term actions Trump has previously championed.
In a wide-ranging news conference, Trump pointed to multiple justifications for the action, citing drugs, dictatorship, and regional dominance. Taken together, the shifting explanations suggest not a single rationale for the operation, but a broader assertion of presidential authority — one in which the White House claims latitude to act first and justify later.
Trump’s approval of a “large scale strike” on Venezuela early Saturday to capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife marked the latest in a series of U.S. military actions since Trump returned to office, following strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June and attacks against the Islamic State in Nigeria on Christmas that underscore his expanding use of force abroad.
Despite branding himself a “peace president” who ran on a promise of “no new wars” and openly coveted the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump has increasingly relied on military force abroad — a turn that has unsettled parts of his MAGA base even as it has not yet produced prolonged U.S. involvement.The approach reflects a gamble Trump appears willing to take as he seeks to project strength and test the limits of presidential authority, even if doing so strains the anti-interventionist identity once central to his political brand.
Asked how taking control of a South American country was “America First,” Trump told reporters it is because he wanted to “surround” America with “good neighbors” and “stability.”
“We have tremendous energy in that country,” Trump said. “It’s very important that we protect it. We need that for ourselves. We need that for the world.”
Trump rose to power in 2016 in part because of his willingness to break sharply with previous Republican interventionism, especially the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton supported.
Throughout his first term, he focused on reducing U.S. presence abroad, including setting in motion the pullout from Afghanistan ultimately carried out by President Joe Biden in 2021.
But Trump has been willing to be sharply more interventionist in his second term, declaring a desire to take over Gaza and again threatening Iran this week — saying the U.S. is “locked and loaded” to take action if the government harms more protesters in a 3 a.m. social media post Friday.
The president said hehad watched the Venezuela mission in real time fromhis Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., surrounded by military generals, and compared the feed to an action-packed “television show.” The “massive number” of aircraft — helicopters and fighter jets — and “steel all over the place” that didn’t stop the U.S. team from snatching Maduro in the dead of night.
Calling into Fox News’ morning show, Trump touted “the speed, the violence” employed by the military personnel assigned to the mission.
“‘Violence.’ They used that term,” Trump said, describing accounts of the operation relayed to him. “It was just an amazing thing.”
As he spoke with the conservative news channel, his first extensive public remarks about the operation since he had announced it hours earlier on Truth Social, Trump offered shifting rationales for why the apprehension of Maduro had occurred,suggesting that he is still testing howto sell the operation to American voters.
On the one hand, Trump said,preventing Venezuela from being “run by a dictatorship” was important, asserting that the United States has a role in shaping the country’s political future — a claim he framed as serving Venezuelan citizens’ interests.
“We can’t take a chance of letting somebody else run it and just take over what he left off,” Trump said. “We’ll be involved in it very much. And we want to do liberty for the people … I think the people of Venezuela are very, very happy because they love the United States. You know, they were run by, essentially, a dictatorship or worse.”
“But look,” Trump said as he returned to the antidrug message he has emphasized for months, “Tremendous numbers of people were being killed through drugs. And what they did to our country in sending prisoners and mental people, people from mental institutions and drug lords and everything — they sent them by the hundreds of thousands of people into our country — and that is just unforgivable.”
An Economist/YouGov poll conducted Dec. 20-22 found that 52% of respondents opposed using the U.S. military to overthrow Maduro, while just 22% said they supported doing so. Another 26% of adults, meanwhile, said they were not sure.
Vice President JD Vance, who has privately urged restraint in some foreign-policy decisions, said on social media Saturday that Trump had “offered multiple off-ramps” to Maduro before apprehending him, framing the operation as chiefly a law enforcement mission. He cited U.S. indictments ofMaduro “for narco-terrorism.”
“You don’t get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas,” Vance wrote.
He was not among theseniorofficials flanking Trump during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday — a notable absence given his past criticisms of excessive military action abroad. A spokesperson for Vance said the vice president “was deeply integrated in the process and planning of the Venezuela strikes and Maduro’s arrest,” and remotely took part in several late-night meetings ahead of and during the operation. Vance “briefly” met with Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club Friday to discuss the strikes, the spokesperson said, but steered clear of Mar-a-Lago as the operation took place for fear of signaling an attack was imminent.
Trump gave little indication this week that his administration was preparing the strike, declining to answer reporters’ questions about Venezuela as he entered his glitzy New Year’s Eve party Wednesday. He spent Friday shopping for marble for his planned White House ballroom project and spending time at his West Palm Beach golf club.
Photos released by Trump on Truth Social showed that the administration had stood up a makeshift situation room where the president, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — a longtime proponent of regime change in the South American country — monitored the attack. Black fabric draped the room, where the president and administration officials sat on golden chairs.
Trump at the news conference Saturday embraced the “Donroe Doctrine” — a play on former president James Monroe’s declaration that the Western Hemisphere is Washington’s sphere of interest and that U.S. leaders would not tolerate unfriendly nations in their backyard.
Despite a flurry of recent declarations from right-wing commentators and online influencers criticizing the Trump administration for focusing too much on foreign affairs, many MAGA-aligned voices were largely silent Saturday morning, a sign that they were waiting to see the scope of the strike and potential fallout.
Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump adviser and prominent MAGA commentator who has been sharply critical of the prospect of the United States pushing for regime change in Iran, initially spoke favorably about the operation in Venezuela.
Before Trump’s news conference, during his War Room show, Bannon called it “a stunning and dazzling overnight strike by U.S. forces.” But after Trump declared the United States would “run” the country, Bannon withheld further endorsement.
While Trump appeared to have the backing of traditional, hawkish Republicans, there were signs that his staunchest supporters may remain uneasy about open-ended control.
MAGA-aligned pollster Rich Baris warned that any brief “rally around the flag” effect from Trump’s announcement would fade if the Venezuela mission expanded. “Unless Trump can pull off the first ever successful regime change in a non-Western European nation since WWII,” Baris wrote on social media, “this will consume much of the year and voters will get more pissed he isn’t focused on them.”
So far, however, resistance inside Trump’s coalition has been limited. Congressional Republicans largely praised the strike despite Trump not seeking authorization or briefing lawmakers in advance, while only two House Republicans publicly raised concerns. Democrats, by contrast, warned the move amounted to an overreach of executive authority that could set a dangerous precedent.
Trump has declared ambitions over the Western Hemisphere so sweeping that they would reshape world affairs — and maps — for generations. He has said he wants to turn Canada into the 51st state, an effort that would require military force.
He evinced interest in annexing Greenland from Denmark, a close ally, and has tapped a top Republican as a special envoy to the territory. He has tied military action in Latin America to his top domestic priorities of reducing immigration and stopping the flow of drugs into the United States.
On Saturday, he left the door open to further military action against the leaders of Cuba and Colombia, who have also opposed Trump and his policies.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s supreme leader insisted Saturday that “rioters must be put in their place” after a week of protests that have shaken the Islamic Republic, likely giving security forces a green light to aggressively put down the demonstrations.
The first comments by 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei come as violence surrounding the demonstrations sparked by Iran’s ailing economy has killed at least 10 people. The protests show no sign of stopping and follow U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran on Friday that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”
While it remains unclear how and if Trump would intervene, his comments sparked an immediate, angry response, with officials within the theocracy threatening to target American troops in the Mideast. They also take on new importance after Trump said Saturday that the U.S. military captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.
The protests have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the protests have yet to be as widespread and intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
Khamenei makes first comments on protests
State television aired remarks by Khamenei to an audience in Tehran that sought to separate the concerns of protesting Iranians upset about the collapse of the rial, Iran’s currency, from “rioters.”
“We talk to protesters, the officials must talk to them,” Khamenei said. “But there is no benefit to talking to rioters. Rioters must be put in their place.”
He also reiterated a claim constantly made by officials in Iran that foreign powers like Israel or the United States were pushing the protests, without offering any evidence. He also blamed “the enemy” for Iran’s collapsing rial.
“A bunch of people incited or hired by the enemy are getting behind the tradesmen and shopkeepers and chanting slogans against Islam, Iran, and the Islamic Republic,” he said. ”This is what matters most.”
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard ranks include the all-volunteer Basij force, whose motorcycling-riding members have violently put down protests like the 2009 Green Movement and the 2022 demonstrations. The Guard answers only to Khamenei.
Hard-line officials within the country are believed to have been pushing for a more aggressive response to the demonstrations as President Masoud Pezeshkian has sought talks to address protesters’ demands.
But bloody security crackdowns often follow such protests. Protests over a gasoline price hike in 2019 reportedly saw over 300 people killed. A crackdown on the Amini protests of 2022, which lasted for months, killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained.
“Iran has no organized domestic opposition; protesters are likely acting spontaneously,” the Eurasia Group said in an analysis Friday. “While protests could continue or grow larger (particularly as Iran’s economic outlook remains dire), the regime retains a large security apparatus and would likely suppress such dissent without losing control of the country.”
Deaths overnight in protests
Two deaths overnight into Saturday involved a new level of violence. In Qom, home to the country’s major Shiite seminaries, a grenade exploded, killing a man there, the state-owned IRAN newspaper reported. It quoted security officials alleging the man was carrying the grenade to attack people in the city, some 80 miles south of the capital, Tehran.
Online videos from Qom purportedly showed fires in the street overnight.
The second death happened in the town of Harsin, some 230 miles southwest of Tehran. There, the newspaper said, a member of the Basij died in a gun and knife attack in the town in Kermanshah province.
Demonstrations have reached over 100 locations in 22 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported.
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. However, those talks have yet to happen as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting its atomic program.
KYIV, Ukraine — National security advisers from Europe and other allies visited Kyiv on Saturday to discuss security guarantees and economic support as a U.S.-led diplomatic push to end the nearly 4-year-old war in Ukraine intensifies.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, preparing to travel to Paris for a meeting with partners, said work on the peace proposals could now accelerate as Ukraine has shared all documents under discussion with the 18 national security advisers, including those on security guarantees.
“We expect that this further work will now take place in the capitals of European countries as well as Canada, Japan, and other representatives of the Coalition of the Willing,” he said, referring to the approximately 30 countries who support Kyiv’s effort to end the war with Russia on acceptable terms.
“We are not allocating a great deal of time for this process,” Zelensky added.
He said representatives from Ukraine’s General Staff and military sector would meet on Monday in Paris, followed by a meeting Tuesday of European leaders, where he said he hoped documents on security guarantees would be finalized. He said there also would be meetings with U.S. representatives in Paris.
In a briefing earlier in the day, Ukrainian negotiator Oleksandr Bevz said Kyiv is coordinating security guarantee plans with European partners that would include a multilateral framework agreement involving Ukrainian forces as the first line of defense, European-led troops deployed in Ukraine, and U.S. “backstop” support.
Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Taras Kachka, said international partners have reached consensus on an economic support package of about $800 billion for Ukraine over the next decade.
The package, based on calculations by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Union, would cover damage compensation, reconstruction, economic stability, and a $200 billion growth “booster” and is tied to Ukraine’s EU accession reforms.
Specific funding sources have not been identified, economy minister Oleksii Sobolev said, though roughly $500 billion is expected from public grants and concessional loans, with details to be worked out over the next two weeks.
Also on Saturday, Zelensky announced further changes to the government, saying he had proposed Denys Shmyhal to become energy minister and first deputy prime minister.
Shmyhal, who served most recently as defense minister and formerly as Ukraine’s longest-serving prime minister, is well respected. His proposed replacement in defense is Mykhailo Fedorov, who is widely credited with leading the introduction of drone technology into the army in his role as digital transformation minister.
Zelensky on Friday appointed the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence as his new chief of staff. The president framed the appointment of Gen. Kyrylo Budanov as part of an effort to sharpen the focus on security, defense development, and diplomacy.
Meanwhile, the death toll from a Russian missile attack on the city of Kharkiv on Friday increased to two, including a 3-year-old boy, Kharkiv regional head Oleh Syniehubov wrote on Telegram.
An overnight Russian drone attack on the Mykolaiv region targeted critical infrastructure and left some communities without electricity, according to regional head Vitalii Kim. He said engineers spent the night working to restore power and there were no casualties reported.
DORAL, Fla. — Revelers chanted “liberty” and draped Venezuelan flags over their shoulders in South Florida on Saturday to celebrate the American military attack that toppled Nicolás Maduro’s government — a stunning outcome they had longed for but that left them wondering what comes next in their troubled homeland.
People gathered for a rally in Doral, Fla. — the Miami suburb where President Donald Trump has a golf resort and where roughly half the population is of Venezuelan descent — as word spread that Venezuela’s president had been captured and flown out of the country.
Outside the El Arepazo restaurant, a hub of the Venezuelan culture of Doral, one man held a piece of cardboard with “Libertad” scrawled with a black marker. It was a sentiment expressed by other native Venezuelans hoping for a new beginning for their home country as they chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”
“We’re like everybody — it’s a combination of feelings, of course,” said Alejandra Arrieta, who came to the U.S. in 1997. “There’s fears. There’s excitement. There’s so many years that we’ve been waiting for this. Something had to happen in Venezuela. We all need the freedom.”
Trump insisted Saturday that the U.S. government would run the country at least temporarily and was already doing so. The action marked the culmination of an escalating Trump administration pressure campaign on the oil-rich South American nation as well as weeks of planning that tracked Maduro’s behavioral habits.
About 8 million people have fled Venezuela since 2014, settling first in neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. After the COVID-19 pandemic, they increasingly set their sights on the United States, walking through the jungle in Colombia and Panama or flying to the U.S. on humanitarian parole with a financial sponsor.
In Doral, upper-middle-class professionals and entrepreneurs came to invest in property and businesses when socialist Hugo Chávez won the presidency in the late 1990s. They were followed by political opponents and entrepreneurs who set up small businesses. In recent years, more lower-income Venezuelans have come for work in service industries.
They are doctors, lawyers, beauticians, construction workers, and house cleaners. Some are naturalized U.S. citizens or live in the country illegally with U.S.-born children. Others overstay tourist visas, seek asylum, or have some form of temporary status.
Niurka Meléndez, who fled her native Venezuela in 2015, said Saturday she’s hopeful that Maduro’s ouster will improve life in her homeland. Meléndez immigrated to New York City, where she co-founded Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid, a group striving to empower the lives of immigrants. She became a steadfast advocate for change in her home country, where she said her countrymen were “facing a humanitarian crisis.”
She hopes those hardships will end as a result of American intervention.
“For us, it’s just the start of the justice we need to see,” Meléndez said in a phone interview.
Her homeland had reached a “breaking point” due to forced displacements, repression, hunger, and fear, she said. She called for international humanitarian support to help in Venezuela’s recovery.
“Removing an authoritarian system responsible for these crimes creates the possibility, not a guarantee, but a possibility, for recovery,” she said. “A future without criminal control over institutions is the minimum condition for rebuilding a country based on justice, rule of law, and democratic safeguards.”
