Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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⚖️ Trump's big SCOTUS year ahead

The Supreme Court has a number of pivotal cases lined up for '26, including those concerning President Trump's policies, Axios' Julianna Bragg reports:

1. The court will likely decide on Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship in early 2026 in Trump v. Barbara. Upholding the order would overturn a right guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
2. SCOTUS will determine the legality of Trump declaring a national emergency to impose sweeping tariffs on foreign goods without congressional approval in Learning Resources v. Trump.
3. The high court appears poised to severely curtail Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a decision that would reshape how legislative and congressional maps are drawn nationwide and potentially reduce minority representation by significant margins in Louisiana v. Callais.
4. SCOTUS will decide whether Trump has the unilateral authority to fire leaders of independent agencies in Trump v. Cook and Trump v. Slaughter. A ruling for Trump would overturn a 90-year-old precedent that shielded independent agency commissioners from political firings.

More cases.

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Sleepless Trump, 79, Threatens New War in 3AM Rage Post

The president, who has been lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize, warned a foreign adversary that the U.S. is “locked and loaded and ready to go.”

President Donald Trump fired off a 3 a.m. social media post threatening to attack Iran after protests against the country’s supreme leader turned deadly.“If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” the president wrote on Truth Social at 3 a.m. Friday Washington time.

The post came about an hour after Fox News reported that six people had been killed Thursday during anti-government demonstrations in Iran, where protesters have called for an end to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s 36-year rule.

Trump has alarmed critics and supporters alike with his sleep habits, as several members of his inner circle have admitted the 79-year-old president doesn’t sleep at night.

He has, however, dozed off repeatedly during high-stakes meetings, just one of several health issues that have dogged the aging president this year.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.

Trump was reacting on Friday to protests that began Sunday in Tehran among shopkeepers angered by a sharp fall in the value of the Iranian currency, and on Tuesday, students from at least 10 universities joined the demonstrations, which spread to several more cities, Al Jazeera reported.

The demonstrations are the most widespread since 2022, when an uprising broke out after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody after being accused by the morality police of not wearing her veil properly.

But so far, the economic protests have not been on the same scale, according to the BBC.

In June, Trump declared that his administration had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities in a series of targeted strikes, although the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog estimated the attacks only halted Iran’s ability to enrich uranium for a period of months, not years.

Iran has said its nuclear program is purely for peaceful, civilian purposes, but it was enriching uranium at levels far above those required for domestic power generation. Still, investigators have not found evidence that the country was on the verge of creating a nuclear bomb when Trump authorized the June strikes.

Since then, the administration has tried and failed to reach an agreement with Iran to govern its nuclear program.

On Tuesday, the president told reporters during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he had received word Iran was trying to rebuild its nuclear program.

“If they are, we’re going to have to knock them down,” he said, according to ABC News. “We’ll knock the hell out of them.”

The president campaigned on a promise to end foreign wars—not start them—and his team refers to him as the “peacemaker in chief” based on the dubious claim that he has ended or prevented eight wars and counting, including the ceasefire in Gaza.

At the same time, he has bombed Iran and Venezuela, authorized deadly strikes on small vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, and claims to have killed Islamic terrorists in Nigeria. During his meeting with Netanyahu, he was caught on a hot mic complaining that he had deserved to win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which he lobbied for all throughout 2025.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/sleepless-donad-ltrump-79-threatens-new-war-in-late-night-rage-post/?

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MAGA’s Favorite ‘Journalist’ Busted Paying to Fake ‘News’

The far-right YouTuber alleging Somalian welfare fraud in Minnesota has a history of manufacturing news.

The “journalist” at the center of a viral clash over alleged Somalian welfare fraud once paid Hispanic laborers to protest outside the White House in support of President Joe Biden.

Nick Shirley, 23, is currently being praised and amplified by the MAGA right, including FBI Director Kash Patel and billionaire Elon Musk, for a video purporting to reveal “Minnesota’s Billion Dollar Fraud Scandal.”

While the YouTuber with no journalism background and only a high school-level education claims to “bring the truth to all” of his 1.35 million subscribers, he has previously been shown to be staging his content.

Last year, in a video titled “I Took Migrants to Visit Joe Biden,” Shirley rounded up people in Washington, D.C., loaded them into a van, and brought them to the White House to demand an audience with Joe Biden. He pays them all $20 for their time.

The stunt aligns with Shirley’s history of Mr. Beast-style shock content, but is deeply problematic for the self-described “100% independent journalist” as it contravenes several professional ethical codes.

The Utah native who has been making right wing-aligned content for the past few years is part of the new wave of conservative influencers blurring the lines between journalism and agenda-pushing who have been embraced by the Trump administration.

“This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 Pulitzer prizes,” Vice President JD Vance wrote in response to his Minnesota video published on Dec. 26.

The video causing political waves purports to reveal that millions of dollars in government funding are being fraudulently claimed by child day-care center operators in Minnesota and are allegedly being funnelled to terrorist organisations in Somalia like Al-Shabaab.

The claims made in the video have been thoroughly discredited, while the story itself is at least five years old. Five of the centers Shirley visited have previously been the subject of federal investigation into fraudulent benefit claims and cleared of wrongdoing, while dozens of individuals were otherwise convicted.

Still, the Department of Health and Human Services threatened to freeze all child care payments to the state while the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have both said they are ramping up investigations into the issue.

In a race-baiting rant at his Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve party, President Donald Trump claimed the Minnesota fraudsters had stolen $18 billion—a figure which appears to correspond with total federal funding for 14 social programs in the state since 2018.

“Can you imagine, they stole $18 billion,” Trump told guests at his Palm Beach club. “That’s just what we’re learning about.”

Shirley, who has been confronted by CNN over issues with his reporting, has claimed that the “mainstream media” is attacking him and politicizing his claims.

The child care centers involved have reportedly received hundreds of death and bomb threats, while Somali-run day cares in Ohio have reportedly been harassed.

“This is a targeted attack on our community,” Ayan Jama, manager at Mini Childcare Center in Minneapolis, has said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/magas-fav-journalist-paid-hispanic-laborers-for-bizarre-stunt/?

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ICE Barbie Quietly Launches Purge of Disaster Relief Staff After Floods Humiliation

Shocked FEMA workers said it’s “beyond cruel” to be given just a few days’ notice that they’re being let go.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem quietly axed dozens of key workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in a round of emails sent out on New Year’s Eve.

Around 50 staff members from the Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery (CORE) team—who play a vital role in preparing for and responding to natural disasters—received an email on Dec. 31 informing them their “services will no longer be needed” and their contracts will expire in early January, according to

The move is believed to be part of a broader effort by the Department of Homeland Security to lay off thousands of disaster relief workers at FEMA under the Trump administration’s federal cost-cutting plans, an approach that has already raised fears it could cost lives.

Noem, who has called for FEMA to be “eliminated,” faced calls to resign over her handling of the agency in the wake of deadly flooding in Texas last summer. She was heavily criticized for implementing a policy requiring her review and sign off on all DHS contracts and grants over $100,000. The added layer of bureaucracy was blamed for delaying the approval of vital federal aid in July 2025 for flood-ravaged parts of Texas where around 135 people died. Several Democratic lawmakers demanded an investigation into her actions at the time, accusing her of turning FEMA into a “PR agency.”

The decision to cut the CORE workers is believed to have been approved by new FEMA chief Karen Evans, dubbed “The Terminator,” whose appointment by Noem in November was widely seen as a step toward dismantling the agency, CNN reported.

One worker who learned Wednesday that their contract would not be renewed in a matter of days told the network that it was “beyond cruel to be treated in such a way.”

A former senior FEMA official said the loss of dozens of CORE workers would be a huge blow to disaster response efforts, as they are typically among the first on the ground assisting local officials in the aftermath of natural disasters like hurricanes or flooding.

“FEMA can’t do disaster response and recovery without CORE employees,” the former official said. “The regional offices are almost entirely CORE staff, so the first FEMA people who are usually onsite won’t be there. The impact is that states are on their own.”

Multiple sources told CNN that DHS is considering allowing more contracts to expire in order to gut FEMA, with several thousand CORE workers expected to see their contracts lapse sometime in 2026.

CORE workers typically serve on two-to four-year contracts that are almost always renewed. However, in 2025, DHS under President Donald Trump changed policy so that FEMA would renew CORE contracts for only 180 days while plans to shrink the agency were being considered.

A DHS spokesperson denied that the recent terminations were tied to the policy change and did not address broader plans to downsize FEMA or the abrupt layoffs.

“Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees (CORE) are hired to work for a specific, limited period. The CORE program consists of term-limited positions that are designed to fluctuate based on disaster activity, operational need, and available funding,” the spokesperson told the Daily Beast.

“CORE appointments have always been subject to end-of-term decisions consistent with that structure, and there has been no change to policy.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-barbie-kristi-noem-launches-purge-of-disaster-response-staff-after-fury-over-delays/?

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Drug prices

Drugmakers plan to raise US prices on at least 350 branded medications, including vaccines against COVID, RSV and shingles, as well as the blockbuster cancer treatment Ibrance, even as the Trump administration pressures them for cuts. Patients in the US currently pay by far the most for prescription medicines — often nearly three times more than in other developed nations — and President Trump has repeatedly urged drugmakers to lower their prices to what patients pay in similarly wealthy countries. The price increases come despite Trump striking deals with 14 drugmakers to lower costs for some medicines under the government's Medicaid program. ps:Well there goes to 1000% drop in prices!!!!!

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US faith leaders supporting targeted immigrants brace for a tough year ahead Faith leaders across the United States face challenges in 2026 as they support immigrant communities worried by Trump administration actions. Among the targeted communities are Haitians, Afghans and Somali Americans. Some faith leaders are uniting to provide sanctuary and support, and speaking out against dehumanizing rhetoric from politicians. Read more.

Why this matters: Haitians who fled gang violence in their homeland, as well as Afghans allowed entry after assisting the U.S. in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover, now fear that their refuge in America may end due to get-tough policy changes.   Somali Americans, notably in Minnesota's Twin Cities, worry about their future after President Trump referred to them as “garbage.”   U.S. Catholic bishops recently issued a “special message” decrying developments causing fear and anxiety among immigrants. It marked the first time in 12 years that the bishops invoked this urgent way of speaking collectively.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Trump says he wants to ‘permanently pause’ migration to the US from poorer countries Trump ventures deeper into anti-immigrant language by calling people from Somalia ’garbage" Afghan refugees in US struggle as faith-based aid is disrupted

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Trump wants to overhaul the ‘president’s golf course.’ He hasn’t played there yet

President Donald Trump has spent much of his two-week vacation in Florida golfing. But when he gets back to the White House, there’s a military golf course that he’s never played that he’s eyeing for a major construction project. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

FBI says it disrupted a potential New Year’s Eve attack inspired by Islamic State group Judge dismisses Louisville police reform proposal with the US Department of Justice Montana’s Supreme Court dismisses misconduct case against the state’s attorney general Farmers can now learn how much aid they will get from the Trump administration The nation’s 250th anniversary arrives with a call for year-round community service

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Pasta prices spared!

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

The U.S. is scaling back threatened tariffs on Italian pasta that could have pushed duties as high as 107%, stepping back from a trade dispute for the Trump administration, Axios' Kelly Tyko reports. ? The news is a relief for grocery shoppers who feared the cost of spaghetti would spike this year. ???? The U.S. Commerce Department and Italy's Foreign Ministry both confirmed the reduction of proposed antidumping duties on 13 Italian pasta makers. Final tariff rates are expected in mid-March, once Commerce completes its review.

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America First?

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Donald Trump spent the holidays drifting further and further from the “America First” doctrine he campaigned on. The president who once promised to disentangle the United States from foreign conflicts has turned his focus abroad: On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, respectively, the U.S. bombed a dock in Venezuela and struck ISIS militants in Nigeria. And this morning, just over six months after the U.S. struck three nuclear facilities in Iran, Trump threatened to deploy military force in support of anti-government protesters in the country. “If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Trump’s statement about Iran included no elaboration or specific plan for military action. But with only a few short lines on social media, the president effectively put Iran’s government on alert. “Trump should know that U.S. interference in this internal matter would mean destabilizing the entire region and destroying America’s interests,” wrote Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, on X. “The American people should know—Trump started this adventurism. They should be mindful of their soldiers’ safety.”

As my colleague Nancy A. Youssef put it, Trump’s version of “America First” has so far meant avoiding large-scale military incursions “oriented around nation-building.” But the policy has also apparently allowed for aggressive interventions around the world, both to pursue America’s enemies and to aid its allies. When the U.S. conducted its clandestine operation in Iran in June under the code name “Operation Midnight Hammer,” Trump gave a televised address explaining his thinking: forcible disarmament to further American security interests in the Middle East.

Other strikes can’t be as easily slotted into “America First.” After the U.S. launched more than a dozen Tomahawk missiles at ISIS camps in northwest Nigeria on Christmas Day, Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar said the strike had “nothing to do with a particular religion.” But Trump claimed in a Truth Social post that militants had “been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!” (Although there have been several high-profile killings of Christians in northern Nigeria in recent years, Muslims have been deeply affected too—and it’s not clear what evidence Trump is drawing on for his claim that the rate of Christian deaths is the highest that it has been in centuries.) Trump’s focus on the plight of Christians abroad is in line with his explicit defense of Christian heritage at home. But these actions don’t seem to contribute to immediate American security needs, nor will they bring stability to the broader region. Military insurgency in northern Nigeria has been going on for decades, and these latest strikes aren’t likely to end it.

The Nigeria attack came a day after the CIA conducted a drone strike on a Venezuelan port facility. The White House has threatened Venezuela with land strikes for months as part of what my colleague Jonathan Chait has called a “slow roll to war” with the country: ostensibly a military campaign against drug cartels in Latin America, but also a kind of imperialistic push. Although Venezuela is a transit country for illegal drugs on their way to the U.S., plenty of other countries share that distinction. It could be that the conflict is a pretext for deposing the country’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, as White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles recently suggested in an uncharacteristically candid interview, or for seizing Venezuela’s oil wealth (a theory that Maduro advanced in an interview this week). But so far, the president’s thinking remains largely unknowable.

Over the past two weeks, Trump has threatened foreign governments, unleashed military strikes in sovereign territories, and pledged his support for at least one American ally looking to conduct campaigns of its own: During a recent summit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said the U.S. would back potential Israeli strikes on Iran. Rather than explicitly acknowledging the apparent shift in policy, Trump has simply slowed down on the “America First” rhetoric.

At the same time, his approach to announcing new foreign interventions has become more brazen. As my colleague Tom Nichols pointed out, today’s ungrammatical threat to Iran arrived on Truth Social at 2:58 a.m. EST, as if it just couldn’t wait. A “locked and loaded” country isn’t what Trump promised, but it’s what Americans should start to expect.

Related:

• Is this “America First”?
• Tom Nichols on Trump’s “Operation Iranian Freedom”

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US plans to ‘run’ Venezuela and tap its oil reserves, Trump says, after operation to oust Maduro

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Hours after an audacious military operation that plucked leader Nicolás Maduro from power and removed him from the country, President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States would run Venezuela at least temporarily and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.

https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-us-explosions-caracas-ca712a67aaefc30b1831f5bf0b50665e?

ps:Ain't that something, so now we're trying to be like Russia??? Just invade whoever we feel like??

US plans to ‘run’ Venezuela and tap its oil reserves, Trump says, after operation to oust Maduro

Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.

https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-us-explosions-caracas-ca712a67aaefc30b1831f5bf0b50665e?

US plans to ‘run’ Venezuela and tap its oil reserves, Trump says, after operation to oust Maduro

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Hours after an audacious military operation that plucked leader Nicolás Maduro from power and removed him from the country, President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States would run Venezuela at least temporarily and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.

https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-us-explosions-caracas-ca712a67aaefc30b1831f5bf0b50665e?

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Nobel-Thirsty Trump Starts War 48 Hours After Declaring His Resolution for 2026 Was ‘Peace on Earth’

The commander-in-chief said Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife have been “captured.”

Donald Trump launched an unprovoked major military attack just 48 hours after declaring that his New Year’s resolution was “peace on earth.”

Trump, 79, ordered military strikes on targets in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas in the early hours of Saturday. In a sensational Truth Social post, he then claimed to have captured the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The 2 AM sneak attack began just shy of 24 hours after the president appeared to threaten a separate military attack on Iran in a 3 AM Truth Social post.

It is unclear why Trump is attacking Venezuela.

The president claimed that military strikes on Venezuelan boats over the last few months were motivated by the so-called war on drugs. He threatened to expand that campaign onto the mainland last month, but he has also indicated that he is seeking regime change in Caracas, and admitted that U.S. access to Venezuela’s natural resources is also a consideration for his foreign entanglement.

The surprise attack would also appear to clash with Trump’s long-stated obsession with winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The false claim that he has ended eight wars since he came into office has become one of Trump’s go-to riffs during speeches and rambles to the media since he returned to the White House.

He was rebuffed by the Nobel Prize committee for the 2025 prize, which went to a Venezuelan opposition leader, perhaps further explaining his interest in the South American country.

Trump’s desperation for the Nobel Prize was so obvious that the World Cup organizers invented a whole new FIFA Peace Prize to give him ahead of this year’s World Cup, which is being partially hosted in the United States. FIFA is now facing calls to withdraw the award after Trump’s military strikes on Venezuela.

Just 48 hours ago, Trump’s mood had seemed very different.

On New Year’s Eve, he arrived at his Mar-a-Lago gala and was asked by the carefully assembled media if he had a resolution for the New Year.

“I have,” he said. “Peace. Peace on Earth. Peace on Earth.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/nobel-thirsty-donald-trump-starts-war-48-hours-after-declaring-his-resolution-for-2026-was-peace-on-earth/?

ps:Captured? From what? The undeclared WAR?? From the no WAR president???? What a vane human being!!!!!!!!!!

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Trump Busted Launching Deadly Strikes on Venezuela Without Telling Congress

MAGA Senator accidentally reveals major constitutional question.

President Trump bombed Venezuela and detained its president without informing Congress or the Senate, keeping a deadly secret with only high-ranking members of his Cabinet.

Trump, 79, announced his military operation in the South American country in a wild 4 a.m. EST Truth Social post, where he also said its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, had been captured.

His post sparked confusion, even amongst his allies—busting open the fact that he had not told Congress of his actions.

Those known to be in the circle which ordered the strikes were Trump, JD Vance—who flew from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Palm Beach, Florida on Friday—Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio.

Mike Lee, the Republican U.S. Senator for Utah, made clear that there was no notification to members of Congress by using X to raise questions not long after Trump’s social media declaration.

“I look forward to learning what, if anything, might constitutionally justify this action in the absence of a declaration of war or authorization for the use of military force,” he said.

The Trumpy senator then said on X about an hour later that he had just spoken to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who appeared to have appeased him. “Just got off the phone with @SecRubio. He informed me that Nicolás Maduro has been arrested by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States, and that the kinetic action we saw tonight was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant.“

He continued: “This action likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack. Thank you, @SecRubio, for keeping me apprised."

Article II makes the President Commander in Chief of the armed forces. In this position, Trump can begin military operations without prior approval from Congress or the Senate, but only in certain circumstances and typically on a limited basis–war is an entirely different power.

Since Sept. 18 2001, seven days after the 9/11 attacks, presidents have used the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by both houses of Congress to pursue war in Afghanistan and Iraq and military actions around the world as part of the “war on terror.” There is no parallel authorization for Trump’s actions in Venezuela.

The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee said it was not informed before the strikes on several sites across Venezuela that have reportedly left an unspecified number of people dead, according to officials in the country.

A source with knowledge of the operation told CNN that Trump administration officials did not inform Congressional committees, including the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

Andy Kim, the Democratic Senator for New Jersey, accused Rubio and so-called ‘Secretary of War’ Pete Hegseth of straight-up lying to Congress. He said they “looked every Senator in the eye a few weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change.”

“I didn’t trust them then and we see now that they blatantly lied to Congress. Trump rejected our Constitutionally required approval process for armed conflict because the Administration knows the American people overwhelmingly reject risks pulling our nation into another war,” Kim added.

He lamented the dangers strikes could cause, as well as the reputational damage to the U.S.

Before he was hooked by U.S. operatives, Venezuela’s left-wing dictator accused Donald Trump of a naked attempt to grab his country’s vast oil reserves. “The objective of this attack is none other than to seize Venezuela’s strategic resources, particularly its oil and minerals, by attempting to forcibly break the political independence of the Nation,” Maduro said. “They will not succeed.”

Trump has wanted to arrest Maduro and try him in the U.S. since his first term. In 2020, he was charged in a U.S. court in absentia for “narco-terrorism,” conspiracy to import cocaine, and related charges. Trump later put a $50 million arrest bounty on his head.

Trump said his Truth Social post early Saturday that Maduro had been captured “in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement,” so it is likely he will face similar charges.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said in a post on X that his arrest has brought “a new dawn for Venezuela.” “The tyrant is gone. He will now — finally — face justice for his crimes,” Landau wrote.

Trump, meanwhile, was happy with the operation even if it risks rankling lawmakers who were not informed in advance. Trump bragged to the New York Times that “a lot of good planning and lot of great, great troops and great people” were involved in the operation. “It was a brilliant operation, actually,” he added, declining to clarify whether he had obtained congressional approval.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-busted-launching-deadly-strikes-on-venezuela-without-telling-congress/?

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Trump Says He Captured President in Wild Attack on Venezuela

Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife have been “captured and flown out of the Country.”

President Donald Trump says he has “captured” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores, as part of a large-scale attack on the capital city of Caracas on Saturday morning.

Trump made an uncharacteristically brief announcement about the attacks on Truth Social at 4:21 a.m., writing that: “The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country.”

The 79-year-old president went on to note that the operation was executed “in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement,” but did not cite which law enforcement agency was involved.

Trump promised that more details would be shared during a press conference from Mar-a-Lago at 11 a.m. He had spent the previous day golfing and shopping for marble for his tacky White House ballroom.

CBS News was the first to confirm that it was the U.S. president who had ordered large-scale strikes on sites inside Venezuela, including military facilities, triggering explosions that ripped through Caracas just before 2 a.m. local time on Saturday.

The strikes marked a significant escalation of U.S. military action beyond previous maritime operations and isolated attacks. The pre-dawn blasts heard across the Venezuelan capital were the result of direct American intervention, according to CBS News reporters Jennifer Jacobs and Jim LaPorta, citing U.S. officials.

Trump authorized U.S. military commanders to carry out strikes inside Venezuela several days ago, according to U.S. officials cited by CBS News. Military planners had been prepared to move as early as Christmas Day, but other operations took priority, the sources said.

According to the officials, U.S. airstrikes targeting ISIS-linked militants in Nigeria were deemed more urgent at the time, delaying the Venezuela operation.

In the days after Christmas, additional strike windows opened, but the mission was postponed in part because of weather conditions. U.S. military leaders wanted conditions that would maximize the likelihood of success before giving the final go-ahead, the officials told CBS News.

At least seven blasts were reported just before 2 a.m. local time, according to residents and journalists from Reuters, the Associated Press, and CNN. Videos circulating online showed scenes of chaos and plumes of smoke over the city as residents took to social media.

Witnesses also reported the roar of low-flying aircraft, and several neighborhoods, especially in southern Caracas, near a major military base, have reportedly lost electricity. Journalists on the ground confirmed the repeated detonations and aircraft noise.

The attack took place amid escalating geopolitical tensions between Venezuela and the United States. U.S. military forces have recently intensified operations targeting alleged “narco-terrorist” networks in the region. Maduro has previously accused the U.S. of aggression and interference, even as, days earlier, his government signaled willingness to negotiate on anti-drug cooperation.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a longtime critic of Trump, posted an alert to social media minutes after the explosions were first reported. “Caracas is under attack right now,” he wrote. “Alert the world: Venezuela has been attacked! They are bombarding with missiles. The OAS and the UN must meet immediately.”

He followed that post just six minutes later with video of the attacks on Caracas, noting, “Colombia, now a member of the United Nations Security Council, must be convened immediately to establish the international legality of the aggression against Venezuela.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/multiple-explosions-reported-in-venezuelas-capital-of-caracas/?

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Trump Risks Totally Blowing Up MAGA With Shock New Invasion

The president has turned his back on the very people who swept him back into office.

This may be the day that Donald Trump’s MAGA support blew up in a plume of Venezuelan smoke.

He has prevaricated over the Epstein files, posed as a peacemaker, and partied with billionaire friends—abandoning the MAGA voters who swept him back into the Oval Office.

Now, when he needs it the most, Trump risks losing the support that handed him the power to “make America great again.”

To bomb a South American country and make off with its leader has little to do with North America First.

And it will have disturbing repercussions that will extend way beyond our shores.

But here at home, Trump has shown a perilous disregard for his own base.

His argument that he is going to war with a country because it sends fentanyl into the U.S. holds little water. It’s a dribble of drugs compared to other countries. There are few documented smuggling routes from Venezuela to the U.S., especially compared to those from Mexico. Is Trump going to target Mexico City next?

The biggest fentanyl producer is China. Are we going to war with Beijing?

The world suddenly feels much less secure when its most powerful nation strikes a much smaller one with no cogent explanation and precious little debate.

Those who say the attack is a power grab for Venezuela’s oil should ask George W. Bush how that worked out in Iraq.

Explaining away the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facility in June, Trump could at least claim to be saving the country from a potential Doomsday attack from a regime that positioned itself as an enemy of the West.

But that didn’t play well with his MAGA base at the time. Marjorie Taylor Greene revealed her growing split with the president by criticizing the attack. “Six months in, Steve, and here we are turning back on the campaign promises, and we bombed Iran on behalf of Israel,” she told Steve Bannon on his War Room show. She wasn’t alone.

Trump loyalists, disillusioned by betrayals over Epstein and issues like giving visas to foreign students, are deserting the president in droves.

This may be the final straw.

As a young war correspondent, I traveled often on a road called the “Highway to Hell” from the bombed-out Kuwait capital to the Iraqi border as Saddam Hussein’s troops beat a hasty retreat from the Western Alliance in 1991.

A gaggle of kids would run alongside my car, begging for candy or spare army food supplies. I noticed after a while that the smallest of the children would be bullied out of the sweets by the larger boys. One day, I stopped and gave him $20 and some treats, out of sight of the other kids.

I drove on, feeling good about myself. It was only later that I heard that a boy had been beaten and killed in a village on the route I traveled most days.

I could never know for sure, but I am convinced my misplaced act of kindness may well have cost that boy his life.

It was a heartbreaking lesson that meddling in affairs—and especially in foreign affairs—when you don’t understand them, can have terrible consequences.

Trump has yet to learn that lesson. As his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair recently, Trump has an alcoholic’s mentality—he thinks he can do anything he wants.

His remarkable return to power in the 2024 election was based primarily on his appeal to a MAGA base swept along by boasts that he would focus on domestic policies and not get waylaid by long, costly foreign wars.

We finally extricated ourselves from Afghanistan and Iraq at enormous cost in lives and money, and now we find ourselves in another war with another country that, I suggest, most MAGA supporters care little about. Most probably couldn’t pin it on a map.

The president is 79. He is increasingly behaving like an old man who won’t be told. One sign of latent dementia is flashes of irrational anger, even against people and things they love.

There is no question that Trump loves America.

No doubt, too, he believes that he is doing the right thing. And his Cabinet of cronies is not going to tell him any different.

But Trump is no longer putting MAGA first.

And MAGA will turn. Mark my words.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-war-on-venezuela-is-last-straw-for-america-first-maga/?

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Trump Rewards CBS for Going MAGA With Massive Venezuela War Scoop

CBS News reported on Trump’s 2 a.m. strikes before any official confirmation—after a rightward reset under new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.

The White House seemed to reward CBS News for its new pro-Trump stance by allowing it to break the news of the U.S. attack on Venezuela, hours before any official statement.

CBS News’ big exclusive comes as its new MAGA-curious boss and Trump-aligned owners has been realigning its posture in ways that have alarmed some staffers and delighted Trump-world—and hours after declaring on Friday, “We love America,” and calling the U.S. “the last best hope on Earth.”

In the early hours of Saturday, the Trump administration launched bomb strikes on the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. No official news of the attack appeared until after 4 a.m. ET, in a Trump statement on Truth Social—around two-and-a-half hours after CBS News had broken the news.

Trump claimed the U.S. had “captured” the country’s President Nicolás Maduro.

At 2.05 a.m. ET, CBS News’ senior White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs posted on X that “Trump administration officials” had been “aware of reports of explosions and aircraft over Venezuela’s capital Caracas.”

Less than 30 minutes later, at 2.31 a.m. ET, she and the network’s national security editor, Jim LaPorta, revealed on X that Donald Trump had “ordered strikes on sites inside Venezuela including military facilities,” citing U.S. officials. They said this was “the administration ratchet[ing] up its campaign against the regime of President Nicolás Maduro.”

At around the same time, the station also launched a running live blog reporting the developments, framing the action as a White House-directed operation, not a mystery blast. The channel also broadcast a “special report,” showing what it described as explosions and low-flying aircraft over the capital. In discussions with the host, reporters told viewers that Trump had given the “green light” for the strikes.

Trump didn’t formally claim responsibility until 4:21 a.m. ET—when he wrote on Truth Social that the U.S. had carried out a “large scale strike” and that Maduro, 63, and his wife Cilia Flores, 69, had been “captured and flown out of the Country,” with a promised 11 a.m. press conference at Mar-a-Lago. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth followed suit soon after, reposting Trump’s statement.

On CBS News, Jacobs continued to drop exclusive stories about the attack, including reporting sources as telling her that Maduro was seized by Delta Force, and giving exact locations of the strikes.

In the fall, Paramount Skydance installed Bari Weiss, 41, as CBS News editor-in-chief after acquiring her outlet The Free Press in a $150 million cash-and-stock deal—putting a high-profile “anti-woke” media figure in charge of the network’s news division.

She frustrated many viewers, but pleased MAGA, with a softball interview of murdered conservative pundit Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, in December. Weiss then provoked a newsroom storm when she spiked a 60 Minutes segment that was unfavorable to Trump, a move staffers characterized as political.

The organization is now openly embracing patriotism as a guiding newsroom value. Ahead of Tony Dokoupil’s debut as presenter of CBS Evening News, it issued five principles, including: “We love America. And we make no apologies for saying so.”

The statement links that to “liberty, equality and the rule of law,” calls the country the “last best hope on Earth,” and frames the broadcast as a daily conversation about “where we are as a country and where we are going,” invoking Benjamin Franklin’s line about a republic—“if we can keep it.” Critics have said the language fits CBS’s rightward reset under Weiss and its new leadership.

Weiss was a former junior Wall Street Journal opinion editor who went to the New York Times, but quit, complaining it was “woke,” and set up her own MAGA-curious Substack, The Free Press. She was brought to run CBS News in by David Ellison, the billionaire nepo-baby who bought CBS with cash from his father, Trump-aligned Oracle founder Larry Ellison.

She has now installed Tony Dokoupil, a morning show co-host and former Daily Beast reporter, as CBS Evening News anchor, making him a successor to Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. He previewed his approach in a two and a half minute video railing against “elites”—he and Weiss were, however, both educated at expensive private high schools and Columbia University—and mentioning MAGA dog-whistles including Hillary Clinton’s emails and Hunter Biden’s laptop. He was also sent to Grand Central Station in New York for an awkward video in which he asked people who he was and how to say his name. One woman asked, “Are you running for office, or something.”

The strikes in Venezuela follow months of U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean. The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford has been dispatched to the area, as part of a broader campaign that has included tanker seizures and deadly interventions at sea.

Maduro’s government has declared an emergency and urged supporters to take to the streets, while U.S. lawmakers from both parties have questioned the legal basis for the action.

The Daily Beast has contacted CBS News. The White House declined to answer if it had given the scoop to CBS News.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-rewards-maga-sell-outs-cbs-with-massive-war-scoop/?

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Trump Calls His Overnight Invasion ‘Brilliant, Actually’

The president’s assessment of capturing a foreign leader on foreign soil would appear to fly in the face of all historic and legal precedent.

President Donald Trump has offered a characteristically rosy assessment of his administration’s overnight attack on a sovereign state to capture its leader. Trump told the New York Times that “a lot of good planning and lot of great, great troops and great people” were involved in the operation in Venezuela, in which President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured and flown out of the country. “It was a brilliant operation, actually,” he added, declining to clarify whether he had obtained congressional approval for the seizure. Maduro’s capture, which was reportedly accompanied by a series of airstrikes across the Venezuelan capital, follows a months-long campaign of pressure against the repressive Latin American country, which the Trump administration has framed as a response to state-backed narcotrafficking operations. The Maduro regime has described the seizure as an act of “imperialist aggression” and called on the “entire country” to “mobilize” in response. Trump himself is set to address the operation at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago at 11 a.m. local time.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/president-donald-trump-calls-his-overnight-invasion-of-venezuela-brilliant-actually/?

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Venezuela Spills Real Reason for Trump’s Unhinged New Invasion

It’s got nothing to do with drugs, said a defiant Nicolás Maduro, hours before his alleged capture by the United States.

Venezuela’s left-wing dictator accused Donald Trump of a naked attempt to grab his country’s vast oil reserves after the U.S. president ordered American special forces to hit targets in Caracas and other cities early Saturday morning.

Trump and his henchmen have framed an increasingly violent campaign against Venezuelan targets over the past few months as a new “war on drugs,” with air strikes against 30 alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, as well as a CIA drone strike this week on a docking facility in Venezuela itself.

Just hours before Trump claimed on Truth Social that U.S. authorities had captured President Nicolás Maduro in Saturday’s raids, the Maduro government issued a defiant statement about Trump’s aims.

In an angry communiqué, it said the U.S. attack was a “flagrant violation” of the U.N. Charter, especially Articles 1 and 2, guaranteeing respect for sovereignty and prohibiting the use of force.

“The objective of this attack is none other than to seize Venezuela’s strategic resources, particularly its oil and minerals, by attempting to forcibly break the political independence of the Nation,” it said. “They will not succeed.”

It went on: “After more than two hundred years of independence, the people and their legitimate Government remain firm in defense of sovereignty and of the inalienable right to decide their own destiny. The attempt to impose a colonial war to destroy the republican form of government and force a ‘regime change,’ in alliance with the fascist oligarchy, will fail like all previous attempts.”

The extraordinary attacks came just two days after Maduro said for the first time that he was open to talks with the U.S. on the issue of drug trafficking.

But the Venezuelan leader has long portrayed Trump’s anti-drugs campaign as an excuse to get America’s hands on the country’s vast, and under-exploited, oil reserves in a 21st-century neocolonial adventure. The country has estimated crude oil reserves of around 300 billion barrels, the world’s largest.

Narcotics experts say Venezuela is in fact a relatively minor player in the Latin American drugs trade—virtually no coca is grown in the country and it serves as a secondary transit route for just 5 percent of the cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia, the world’s largest producer.

Trump’s claim to be waging a new war on drugs was blown up by his decision to give a presidential pardon to a former president of Honduras who once bragged that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.”

Juan Orlando Hernandez, 57, is thought to have smuggled hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States and was convicted of drug trafficking and firearms offenses last year, and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

But Trump granted Hernandez a “full and complete pardon,” explaining that he’d been told that the former president had been victim of a “Biden set-up.”

The pardon came as a shock to many, including Liz Oyer, who served as the Biden-era Justice Department’s pardon attorney. “The pardoning of drug kingpins is virtually unheard of,” she told The Washington Post, which reported that Trump had pardoned nearly 100 people convicted of drug-related crimes.

Reacting to the American attacks, the government said Maduro had ordered a state of “external emergency” across Venezuela “in order to protect the rights of the population, ensure the full functioning of republican institutions, and immediately move to armed struggle. The entire country must mobilize to defeat this imperialist aggression.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/venezuelas-nicolas-madruo-reveals-real-reason-for-trumps-unhinged-new-war/?

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Health Authorities Issue Measles Alert at Creationist Museum

In 2025, the U.S. experienced the highest number of measles cases since 1992.

Measles may have spread at a Noah’s Ark-themed creationist museum in Kentucky earlier this week, the state’s health authority said.

Visitors and staff at Ark Encounter in Williamstown are being encouraged to be on the alert for symptoms of the highly contagious—and vaccine-preventable—disease through Jan. 19, the Kentucky Department of Public Health explained, following a potential exposure on Monday.

“An unvaccinated, out-of-state traveler stayed at the Holiday Inn & Suites in Dry Ridge from Dec. 28 to 30, 2025 and visited the Ark Encounter on Dec. 29, 2025,” the agency said in a Facebook post. It then noted that “vaccination is the best protection against measles,” and that young, unvaccinated children are particularly at risk of developing complications.

Answers in Genesis, the young Earth creationist group that operates the venue and a second creationist museum in Kentucky, told the Daily Beast that the state health department informed them that a child visitor had contracted measles.

“For guests who gave us their email address when they purchased tickets for that day, we shared—in an email message coordinated with health officials—that if visitors were fully vaccinated, no action would be needed," co-founder Mark Looy said in a statement. “For unvaccinated guests in attendance on Monday, the email requested that they promptly contact their personal physician for guidance, indicating that measles can be contagious before symptoms appear. That same information was shared with Ark staff. 775 emails were sent to guest families who visited [on] Monday.”

Looy added: “We pray that the child affected is doing well. We have not heard of reports that other guests have contracted measles.”

Ark Encounter, which includes exhibits showing dinosaurs and humans living together, allows children 10 years old and under to enter for free. It reported 1 million visitors from mid-2017 to mid-2018, its second year of operation.Measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, but has made a comeback amid vaccine skepticism under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy, 71, has baselessly claimed that herd immunity is more effective than vaccines. Since he took office, major measles outbreaks have occurred in Texas in March and in South Carolina last month, among other locations.

In Texas, the outbreak began in a county where 1 in 4 residents had not been vaccinated against the disease. At least two unvaccinated children died.

At least 49 other U.S. outbreaks occurred last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2024, there were 16.

By the end of 2025, the U.S. had reported more than 2,000 measles cases for the first time since 1992, the CDC said. Eleven percent of patients were hospitalized, half of them under 19 years old.

In Florida last September, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis axed the state’s measles vaccine mandate for children in school. He did the same with mumps and chickenpox vaccines.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/health-authorities-issue-measles-alert-at-creationist-museum/?

ps:This can't be true! Don't we have a genius in charge?? Oh that's right he doesn't even have a degree in science or medicine does he??????????

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?️ Trump's presidential bucket list

In a race against time to cement his legacy, President Trump has lined up a series of mega-projects with a single deadline — 2028 — and little room for error, Axios' Noah Bressner writes.

• Why it matters: With three years left in his term, Trump is unleashing the full force of the federal government to push legacy assignments.

1. ? A new moonshot: Trump set a 2028 target for a crewed return to the moon last month, reviving a long-delayed goal that has slipped across multiple administrations because of technical challenges, cost and shifting priorities.

• Trump's plan also calls for establishing a permanent moon base by 2030.

2. ? White House ballroom: Trump's new 1,000-person ballroom on the site of the former East Wing is expected to be completed in the summer of 2028, according to a National Park Service assessment revealed in a court filing.

• Trump says the grand ballroom is projected to cost $400 million, funded via private donations, and will span 90,000 square feet.

3. ✈️ New Air Force One: The first of two new Air Force One jets from Boeing is now expected to be delivered in mid-2028 — six years behind the project's original schedule.

• Those two jets are separate from the Boeing 747-8 that Trump accepted from Qatar, which is currently being retrofitted for presidential use.

4. ? Golden Dome demo: Trump has directed his administration to have a prototype for his ambitious new missile shield project ready by 2028.

Reality check: Big government projects rarely run on schedule. But delivering even one of these accomplishments would leave Trump with a tangible, enduring legacy.

White House assistant press secretary Liz Huston told Axios that Trump is "fully committed to delivering on every promise he made to the American people."

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Clearing the Way (Illustration by The Atlantic; Sources: AFP / Getty; Sarah Meyssonnier / AFP / Getty; Mikhail Metzel / AFP / Getty)

View in browser President Donald Trump has launched not a splendid little war, but perhaps a splendid little operation in Venezuela. He has captured a dictator and removed him from power. So far, Trump seems to have executed a bad idea well: The military operation, dubbed “Operation Absolute Resolve,” seems to have been flawless. The strategic wisdom, however, is deeply questionable. And the legal basis, as offered by the president and his team, is absurd. Some Americans, and some U.S. allies, are appalled. Russia and China claim to be appalled, too, but to use a classic diplomatic expression, the leaders in Beijing and Moscow should be invited, with all due respect, to shut their traps. “We firmly call on the U.S. leadership to reconsider this position,” the Russian foreign ministry said this morning, “and release the lawfully elected president of a sovereign country and his wife.” The Russians then shamelessly turned all the sanctimony knobs to supernova levels: “Venezuela must be guaranteed the right to determine its own future without destructive external interference, particularly of a military nature.” You don’t say. Perhaps we might generalize that principle to other nations, such as Ukraine, where Moscow’s forces are murdering people every week—in part because the Russians failed to kill or capture the “lawfully elected president of a sovereign country” four years ago. The Chinese, too, are absolutely shocked that a great power is menacing a small neighbor and inflicting regime change by military force. China, the foreign ministry in Beijing said, “is deeply shocked”—at least it wasn’t shocked and stunned—“and strongly condemns the use of force by the U.S. against a sovereign country and the use of force against the president of a country.” Noble words. And then, like the Russians, the Chinese dared the world to laugh out loud: “China firmly opposes such hegemonic behavior by the U.S., which seriously violates international law, violates Venezuela’s sovereignty, and threatens peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean. We urge the U.S. to abide by international law and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and stop violating the sovereignty and security of other countries.” Only two days ago, however, China engaged in military exercises that included surrounding Taiwan and then firing missiles in the waters around the island. A giant nation regularly running war games aimed at invading its tiny neighbor—and threatening Japan, for good measure—counts as “hegemonic behavior” that threatens the “peace and security” of a region, and China knows it. The more stinging irony here is that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping probably approved these public statements with a chuckle. The United States has now given Russia, China, and anyone else who wants to give it a try a road map for invading countries and capturing leaders who displease them, with a lawlessness that by comparison makes the 2003 invasion of Iraq seem as lawyered up as a bank merger. Let us all stipulate that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is a bad guy. He deserved to be driven from power, perhaps with American help. An operation rooted in support from the international community and approved by Congress would be a tough sell because Venezuela presented no threat to the United States or anyone else, but it would have been the right way to go. (Drugs don’t count as an imminent danger.) Instead, the president declared the “Donroe Doctrine,” another moment that will stand for ages as an embarrassment to the United States and raises the question yet again of whether the commander in chief is cognitively stable enough to be ordering the invasion of other nations. Trump and his team didn’t even try creating a coalition either at home or abroad. By simply landing troops in another nation and decapitating its leadership, Trump has done Russia and China a great service by trashing, yet again, guardrails that limit other nations from running amok. International law? Pointless. The United Nations? Never heard of it. The Congress of the United States? Well, they’re good folks, but according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, they couldn’t be told ahead of time, for security reasons. (He said this while standing next to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a fountain of security violations.) Putin and Xi must have watched Trump’s presser while nodding and taking notes. Hypocrisy, the French nobleman François de La Rochefoucauld once said, is the tribute vice pays to virtue. In this case, there is little virtue to be found; the Russian and Chinese statements are vice paying tribute to vice. They already know that the president of the United States is helping to clear the way for their adventures—and they should keep their faux outrage to themselves.

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What happens now

Top Trump administration officials will continue to diplomatically engage with those remaining in the Venezuelan government after the stunning overnight raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a top U.S. official tells Axios' Marc Caputo.

• President Trump said today at an hour-long Mar-a-Lago news conference that the U.S. is "going to run" Venezuela until a "proper transition can take place."
• "We're going to be running it with a group, and we're going to make sure it's run properly," he said.

? Two other key developments to watch:

?️ 1. The Trump administration will engage with oil executives to begin oil expansion in the country, the source tells Axios.

• The U.S. embargo on all oil produced in Venezuela will remain in effect.

? 2. The U.S. military "will remain postured and ready," the source says.

• "We're not afraid of boots on the ground," Trump said at the conference today. "We had boots on the ground last night at a very high level."

? During his news conference, Trump also referred to billions of dollars in outstanding judgments awarded to natural resource companies that sued Venezuela for expropriating their property.

• Companies like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips say their oil fields were taken by Venezuela without compensation nearly 20 years ago.
• Venezuela has been loath to pay international debts, a problem that may be solved by simply seizing the oil.

In the U.S., Maduro will face a trial after he and his wife were flown out of South America — in what will inevitably become a lengthy legal process.

• The indictment of Maduro accuses him and his associates of terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, drug trafficking, corruption of public institutions to protect illegal drug shipments, and partnerships with foreign drug-terror groups. Read the charges.

"The administration will continue to take action to dismantle drug cartels and take lethal action against foreign drug traffickers and narco-terrorists who are attempting to bring illegal drugs to the homeland," the source said.

?? The intrigue: Caputo reports that as the day wore on, some Trump advisers had growing qualms about what's ahead.

• Trump caught Venezuelan exiles and experts by surprise by saying that opposition leader María Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, might not be best suited to run the country.
• "I think it'd be very tough for her to be the leader," Trump said. "She doesn't have the support or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect."

Trump's blunt comment speaks to the broader problem that the fractured opposition party has had in Venezuela.

• After Trump's press conference, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez contradicted Trump's claim that she'd comply with the U.S. government.
• Rodriguez later asserted she was not the country's leader — Maduro is. (Under the country's law, the VP is next in line for power.) And she signaled she wasn't on board with deposing Maduro.
• Rodriguez said Venezuela won't submit to being a U.S. "colony."

Go deeper.

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?️ Trump: U.S. oil giants to spend billions

Screenshot: CNN The U.S. will be "very strongly involved" in Venezuela's oil industry, President Trump said today, asserting that American companies will take a lead in rebuilding its deteriorating petroleum infrastructure, Axios' Ben Geman and Chuck McCutcheon report. Trump's comments about Venezuela's oil — which accounts for 17% of global reserves — raise many unanswered questions, including how much interest companies have in reestablishing operations. Chevron is currently the only U.S. oil company operating there. "What can I say? We have the greatest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the greatest, and we're going to be very much involved in it," Trump told "Fox & Friends Weekend" in a lengthy phone interview this morning. Trump said later at a news conference: "We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, and start making money for the country." ? Between the lines: While Venezuela has the world's largest known reserves, it has a relatively small stature in global oil markets. Its production and exports have declined amid years of mismanagement, sanctions and underinvestment. ? What we're watching: The market reaction to the strikes and Maduro's capture when oil trading begins again on Sunday evening. There's often an initial spike on news of geopolitical friction or conflict involving oil producers and exporters. But the latest developments could ultimately push prices in the other direction. Go deeper ...

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Rubio's Venezuela moment

Marco Rubio is suddenly facing his most daunting puzzle in his 28 years in politics.

• The U.S. secretary of state didn't just help mastermind yesterday's ouster of Venezuela's dictator. Now he must ensure President Trump's risky move against Nicolás Maduro doesn't descend into chaos, Axios' Marc Caputo reports.

Why it matters: The U.S. is effectively laying claim to the country with the globe's largest proven oil reserves — a move that could threaten global stability and complicate relations with China, a major buyer of Venezuelan crude.

• Maduro is in U.S. custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. (He flashed a peace sign during a perp walk last evening).
• The world is watching whether Venezuela will suffer the same fate as the last country where the U.S. achieved regime change — Iraq, which fell into chaos shortly after the 2003 invasion.

? The big picture: A child of Miami's anti-communist Cuban exile community, the 54-year-old Rubio built his political career denouncing Latin American socialist regimes hostile to the United States.

• Rubio's background and worldview meshed with Trump's desire for hemispheric dominance in Latin America. Trump also wants Venezuela's oil and blames Maduro for an unprecedented migration crisis.
• Rubio "knows the region, knows the politics. He speaks Spanish basically as a first language," a senior White House adviser said. "There's a reason the president chose him as secretary and as his national security adviser."

? The secretary of state flexed those bilingual skills yesterday, first by informing Congress of the U.S. military incursion, then by speaking in Spanish with Venezuela's vice president, Delcy Rodríguez.

• Rubio and Rodríguez could have daily calls, the adviser told Axios, as Trump decides what to do next with Venezuela. "It's going to be done by a small committee, led by Rubio, with the president heavily engaged."

The intrigue: Hours after Trump described the Rubio–Rodríguez call as friendly and productive, Rodríguez publicly denounced the snatching of Maduro and called him the rightful president.

• U.S. officials and experts brushed off her statements as domestic political pandering to hold together Venezuela's Chavista factions, the nickname given to the left-wingers who gained power under Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

? Those factions include Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister accused by the first Trump administration of plotting to assassinate Rubio in 2017, when he was a U.S. senator and had emerged as first-term President Trump's top adviser on the Western Hemisphere.

• Cabello was charged in a second superseding indictment of Maduro that was released yesterday. Rubio allies say he wouldn't mind seeing Cabello snatched as well.

? Between the lines: The fact that just Maduro was taken while Cabello, Rodríguez and her brother, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, so far remain untouched is a sign Trump and Rubio want to keep Venezuela's government intact — for now.

• It's a break from the Bush administration's disastrous purge of Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq after the invasion, which led to an insurgency.

"This isn't de-Baathification," a Rubio ally told Axios. "This is intentional and methodical."

Zoom out: Trump and Rubio view Venezuela as one of the last major lifelines to communist Cuba, which has supplied intelligence services in return for free oil.

• "If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I'd be concerned," Rubio said yesterday at Trump's Mar-a-Lago news conference.

? Trump administration officials quietly acknowledge they could be in for what one adviser called "some bumps in the road":

1. Venezuela faces a financial crisis amid Trump's oil sanctions and his decision to seize and interdict tankers. When and how they're lifted is crucial.
2. Venezuela also has a violent gang problem that could prove troublesome for U.S. peacekeepers if they're deployed.
3. Tough decisions remain about when to call for free and fair elections. Maduro is widely viewed as having stolen his election in 2024. Trump's dismissive comments yesterday of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, struck many supporters of the president as tone deaf and ill-placed.

? Juan Gonzalez, who negotiated with Maduro's regime under Biden, told Axios: "This could come home to haunt them in the midterms and really blow up in their face ... For Trump, right now, he's looking great. And if it fails? Then it's Rubio's fault."

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? How it happened

President Trump posted this image on Truth Social with the caption: "Nicolas Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima." Via Reuters Axios reporters drew on conversations with officials and public comments from the Trump administration to chronicle the months of preparation leading up to yesterday's Operation Absolute Resolve, and construct an hour-by-hour account of how the night itself unfolded. Here's what we know: The order came at 10:46 p.m. ET on Friday, with a message from President Trump to troops around the hemisphere: "Good luck and Godspeed." Trump's order sent 150 aircraft into the sky ahead of the stunning raid on Nicolás Maduro's fortified compound on a military base. The mission ended with the Venezuelan leader blindfolded on a U.S. battleship and the uncertain future of his country seemingly in Trump's hands, Axios' Dave Lawler, Marc Caputo and Barak Ravid report. ? On the night: Helicopters carrying an "extraction force" of U.S. special forces and FBI agents skimmed 100 feet over the Caribbean Sea, with fighter jets, bombers and drones overhead, launched from 20 bases on land and sea. As the choppers closed in on Maduro's compound, aircraft overhead took out air defense systems. Trump said the U.S. also cut the power, blanketing the area in darkness. ? At 1:01 a.m., U.S. boots hit the ground. The extraction force had real-time intelligence from the ground and air as they closed in on Maduro. Trump was watching a live feed from Mar-a-Lago, with a team that included Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Trump said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, tried to flee to a steel-reinforced safe room but were apprehended before they could reach it. "We had ... massive blow torches and everything else that you need to get through that steel, but we didn't need it," Trump told "Fox & Friends Weekend" in a phone interview just hours after the mission. ? Now it was time to get out. More helicopters arrived to aid the exfiltration. Fighter jets and drones "provided overhead coverage and suppressive fire," Caine said. No U.S. troops were killed, but Trump confirmed "a few" were wounded. The Venezuelan casualties aren't yet known. A senior Venezuelan official told the N.Y. Times that at least 40 people were killed in the attack. "The force was over the water at 3:29 a.m.," per Caine. At 4:21 a.m., Trump took to Truth Social to inform the world. The preparations: A small CIA team spent months in Venezuela tracking Maduro's locations and habits, a source familiar with the operation told Axios. Caine said the U.S. knew "where he lived, where he traveled, what he ate, what he wore... his pets." ? Meanwhile, according to Trump, U.S. special forces practiced on a replica of Maduro's "fortress." "They actually built a house which was identical to the one they went into, with all the safes, all the steel all over the place," he told Fox News. For months, plan A was for Maduro to step down voluntarily, multiple Trump advisers told Axios. Maduro was prepared to negotiate but not evacuate. Trump gave the order. Go deeper ... 6 reasons the U.S. went after Maduro.

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? Miami's Venezuelans celebrate

Miami's Venezuelan community welcomed Maduro's capture with a day-long rally that drew hundreds, Axios Miami's Martin Vassolo reports.

• Greater Miami has the largest Venezuelan diaspora in the U.S.

In Doral, a Miami-Dade city nicknamed "Doralzuela" for its large Venezuelan population, police closed roads outside restaurant El Arepazo as crowds waved flags, honked horns and snapped photos.

Elking Cadenas, a 49-year-old exiled Venezuelan, waved a Venezuelan flag he said he used during anti-government protests in the country in 2016 and 2017.

• "I had friends get shot, I have friends still in jail [following the protests]," he told Axios.

Get Axios Miami ...