What we know
• Trump’s plan for Venezuela: President Donald Trump said the US will indefinitely “run the country” of Venezuela and “rebuild the oil infrastructure” after capturing President Nicolás Maduro in a large-scale military operation today.
• Oil reserves: Trump said the US would take control of Venezuela’s massive oil reserves and recruit American companies to invest billions of dollars to refurbish the country’s gutted oil industry. He specified that US troops would “have a presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil.”
• What’s next for Maduro: The Venezuelan leader is expected to arrive today in New York, where he will face drugs and weapons charges. His wife, Cilia Flores, was also taken into custody after the couple was dragged from their bedroom by elite US forces during the overnight raid.
• On the ground: Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado has called for an opposition candidate to be installed as leader, while the country’s foreign minister insists Maduro remains the rightful leader. Venezuelans in the capital have voiced mixed reactions to the US operation.
Chevron is focused on safety of employees in Venezuela after Maduro capture
US oil giant Chevron said Saturday it remains squarely focused on the safety of its employees and business interests in Venezuela following the sudden US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Houston-based Chevron is the leading American oil company in Venezuela, where it started operating more than a century ago.
“Chevron remains focused on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets,” Laura Hurst, a company spokesperson, said in a statement to CNN.
Hurst said Chevron continues to “operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.”
Chevron has operations in five onshore and offshore production projects in Venezuela and partners with PDVSA, a state-owned oil and natural gas company.
Chevron did not comment on how the US strikes on Venezuela and dramatic arrest of Maduro will change the company’s business interests in Venezuela and whether it will seek to expand operations in the country under a friendlier government.
Venezuela has the most oil reserves of any nation on the planet, yet it accounts for roughly just 1% of world oil production.
GOP lawmakers largely praise Venezuela strike
Republican lawmakers are largely applauding the Trump administration’s military action in Venezuela this weekend, after the US carried out a strike in the country’s capital, Caracas, and captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson said they had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio this morning and expect briefings to Congress in the coming days.
“President Trump’s decisive action to disrupt the unacceptable status quo and apprehend Maduro, through the execution of a valid Department of Justice warrant, is an important first step to bring him to justice for the drug crimes for which he has been indicted in the United States,” Thune said in a news release.
Johnson said in his own statement that he had also spoken with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “in the last several hours” and that “today’s military action in Venezuela was a decisive and justified operation that will protect American lives.”
Sens. Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul said in respective statements they support Maduro’s removal.
“We will be more prosperous and safer for it. I am hoping and praying that the Venezuelan people will soon have a fresh start on democracy and freedom,” Graham wrote.
In a long post mostly criticizing socialism, Paul wrote, “few Venezuelans, or Americans for that matter, will or should mourn the removal of Nicolas Maduro from power.”
Rep. Adam Smith told reporters on Capitol Hill on Saturday he was “glad” the US conducted the strike, adding that “Americans have died because of Nicolas Maduro.”
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska in a statement called the strike “great for the future of Venezuelans and the region” but added that he worried “dictators will try to exploit this to rationalize their selfish objectives.”
Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a top ally-turned-critic of President Donald Trump who is resigning from Congress this week, was one of the rare Republican voices to criticize the strike outright.
“If U.S. military action and regime change in Venezuela was really about saving American lives from deadly drugs then why hasn’t the Trump admin taken action against Mexican cartels?” Greene wrote in a lengthy post on X. “And if prosecuting narco terrorists is a high priority then why did President Trump pardon the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez who was convicted and sentenced for 45 years for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into America? Ironically cocaine is the same drug that Venezuela primarily traffics into the U.S.”
From disbelief to anxiety, Venezuelans avoid the streets after US attack
Caught between disbelief and fear of possible new attacks, Venezuelans woke up to news that until recently seemed impossible: the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his removal from Venezuela, announced by US President Donald Trump.
“That’s a lie,” a doorman in Caracas said in the morning upon hearing the first reports of what had happened. Skepticism prevailed among those who had not heard the overnight explosions in the capital — sounds that some mistook for New Year’s fireworks — until senior figures within the Venezuelan leadership confirmed the US operation themselves. A request for proof of life made by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez indicated that, at that moment, Maduro’s whereabouts were unknown.
Hours later, Trump said in an interview with Fox News that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were aboard the USS Iwo Jima en route to New York. “The helicopters took them out, and they went by helicopter in a nice flight.”
Numerous streets in Caracas, where the smell of gunpowder lingered, appeared deserted in the early hours of Saturday. Some people who went out in search of basic necessities, such as diapers, found that most businesses were closed — even those that had opened on January 1, including pharmacies, supermarkets and gas stations.
“I see a somewhat warlike atmosphere. Silence can say many things,” a driver from eastern Caracas told CNN, asking not to be identified for security reasons. According to him, he traveled through several neighborhoods of the city and saw a recurring scene: shops operating behind closed doors, allowing only two people in at a time. This has led to long lines outside establishments, with people seeking food and medicine.
“Everything is relatively calm, but there could be shortages. No one expected this; we were caught off guard,” he said.
The silence has not been absolute. Some opponents of Maduro’s government celebrated from their balconies and played lively music. The political situation prevents many critics from taking to the streets for fear of repression.
Those who did go out very early were some supporters of the Venezuelan socialist movement known as Chavismo. They were seen in the vicinity of the Miraflores presidential palace, showing their support for Maduro.
Beyond political alignment, a broader sense of tension persists due to Trump’s statements. In addition to saying that the United States will govern Venezuela for now, he did not rule out further military actions in the country.
Fact check: Trump repeats false claim about deaths caused by drug-smuggling boats
In his Saturday address to the nation, President Donald Trump touted the military attacks he ordered on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean near Venezuela — then repeated his false claim that “each boat kills 25 — on average, 25,000 people.”
This figure is fiction.
Aside from the fact that the Trump administration has not presented public proof for his repeated claims that the boats carried fentanyl – the Caribbean is not known to be a significant fentanyl-smuggling route – his “25,000” number does not make sense.
The total number of US overdose deaths from all drugs in 2024 was about 82,000, according to provisional federal data published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The president’s figure is “absurd,” Carl Latkin, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University school of public health with a joint appointment at its medical school, told CNN in October, when Trump also made such claims. “He’s claiming that he’s solved the overdose mortality crisis” with the boat strikes (just four known at the time), Latkin said, and “that does not have any semblance of reality.” You can read a longer fact check here.
Expert notices one word missing from Trump’s press conference: “democracy”
One Venezuela expert who spoke to CNN noticed a glaring omission in US President Donald Trump’s press conference on the extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
During the press conference, Trump called Maduro a “dictator” and said the US would “run” Venezuela until it could ensure a “judicious transition.”
However, a transcript of the president’s remarks shows that he did not specifically reference the return of democracy in Venezuela.
“It doesn’t look like they have in mind a democratic transition,” Smilde said. “They have in mind a country that is friendly and open to the United States’ interests, stable and economically productive.”
“It doesn’t sound like democracy or (opposition leader) Maria Corina Machado are even on the map, at this point,” Smilde added.
Trump told reporters Saturday that Machado “doesn’t have the support” to lead Venezuela.
When asked about the possibility of new elections in the country, Trump said he’d “like to do it quickly,” but soon pivoted to an extended response about Venezuelan oil infrastructure.
Smilde said Trump’s stated plan harkens back to the age of US “gunboat diplomacy” in the region during the 19th and 20th centuries, when US presidents toppled Latin American leaders and replaced them with figures more amenable to US economic interests.
“It’s realpolitik, but I think it goes beyond that,” Smilde continued. “It’s much more a sort of gunboat diplomacy, and gunboat economic development as well.”
Trump administration justifying Maduro capture by citing legal opinion associated with Panama invasion
Trump administration officials are internally pointing to a 1989 legal opinion and the subsequent US invasion of Panama as precedent to justify the operation that was carried out in Venezuela without US congressional authorization, three people familiar with the matter told CNN.
The opinion concluded that the president has the constitutional authority to deploy the FBI to investigate and arrest individuals for violating US law, “even if those actions contravene international law.”
The FBI was on the ground with US Delta Force soldiers during Friday night’s operation to arrest Maduro and his wife, CNN has reported. Another source said placing the FBI on the ground was likely a “loophole” so the administration could lean on the 1989 opinion.
The 1989 legal opinion paved the way for the US, under George H.W. Bush, to invade Panama later that year without congressional authorization and ultimately capture Panama’s military dictator, Manuel Noriega, who was flown to stand trial in Miami for drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering.
Maduro was similarly captured by US forces on Friday night following a US military operation that was carried out without congressional authorization and is being sent to New York to face charges related to drug trafficking.
The 1989 opinion also says the president has the authority to override a provision of the UN Charter that stipulates that member states “shall refrain … from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser at the State Department who now serves as a senior adviser at the Crisis Group, said the use of the legal opinion to justify the Venezuela operation is “not persuasive as a matter of international law” and called Trump’s actions a “flagrant violation of the UN Charter.”
But, he said, “as a matter of domestic law, this may check all the boxes.”
Sources noted a key difference, however, between the Panama and Venezuela operations: Panama had declared war on the US before the American intervention.
“There were tens of thousands Americans in Panama allegedly in danger; Noriega had declared war on the US, and the neutrality and protection of the Panama Canal was at risk,” said Daniel Maurer, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and judge advocate.
As Maduro heads to New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani calls his capture an "act of war"
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the US operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro an “act of war” and a violation of international and federal law.
Maduro and his wife, who were captured overnight in Caracas, are being transported back to the United States. The authoritarian leader is expected to be held in federal custody in New York City, where he is facing federal indictment.
Mamdani, who is three days into his term as mayor, said he was briefed on the operation as well as Maduro’s “planned imprisonment in federal custody here in New York City.”
Some background: New York City is home to a large Venezuelan community, which has grown significantly in the last three years as hundreds of thousands of people fled the country. Many of them settled in New York, helping to drive a massive migrant crisis in the city in 2022.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist, faced some criticism during the mayoral campaign for hesitating to refer to Maduro as a dictator during an interview. He later clarified his position, saying he believed Maduro was a dictator.
Vance not at Mar-a-Lago with Trump during strike, but was involved in planning, spokesman says
Vice President JD Vance was not in the room with President Donald Trump and other top-level officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth while the Venezuela operation was underway, and he was not at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
But he was “deeply integrated in the process and planning” of the strikes and President Nicolás Maduro’s arrest, a Vance spokesman told CNN.
The vice president joined several late-night meetings via secure video conference with top national security officials leading up to the operation.
Vance had met briefly with Trump at his Florida golf course — which is a short distance from Mar-a-Lago — earlier Friday to discuss the strikes, but the Trump national security team “was concerned a late-night motorcade movement by the Vice President while the operation was getting underway may tip off the Venezuelans,” the Vance spokesman said.
Vance returned to Cincinnati, Ohio, after the operation concluded.
“Due to increased security concerns, the Administration has aimed to limit the frequency and duration of the Vice President and President being co-located away from the White House,” the spokesman told CNN.
What we've just learned about the US attack on Venezuela and capture of Maduro
US President Donald Trump just spoke to journalists about his country’s actions in Venezuela this morning, including large-scale strikes on Caracas and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Here are key takeaways from the news conference that wrapped up a short time ago:
- Trump said the US is “going to run” Venezuela in the immediate aftermath of Maduro’s capture, without giving any details about how this would work or how long it could last. “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” he said.
- Trump also said he planned to authorize US oil companies to take over Venezuela’s energy infrastructure. “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, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” he said.
- Top US officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will work with a “team” to help run Venezuela, Trump said.
- No US troops or equipment were lost in the military operation, Trump said, describing it as highly effective and saying it involved extensive US military assets. More than 150 aircraft were deployed in the mission, said Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
- The US was prepared to conduct a second attack on Venezuela if it was needed, Trump said, adding that “now it’s probably not” necessary.
- US forces will remain in the region, according to Caine. Trump said the US would put troops in Venezuela for the purposes of securing oil, vowing the money would go toward reimbursing Venezuelans and the United States for damages caused under Maduro’s leadership.
CNN’s Adam Cancryn, Betsy Klein, Kit Maher, Alejandra Jaramillo and Donald Judd contributed to this reporting.
Trump defends pardon of former Honduran president, who was convicted of drug trafficking
President Donald Trump on Saturday defended his pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug-trafficking charges, claiming that Hernández was “unfairly” persecuted.
Trump’s remarks came at a news conference after the US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who the administration has said will face drugs and weapons charges.
When asked by a reporter to explain how the situations that led to Hernández’s pardon and Maduro’s capture are different, Trump said, “The man that I pardoned was … treated like the Biden administration treated a man named Trump.”
“This was a man who was persecuted very unfairly,” Trump said.
Hernández, who was the president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was convicted and sentenced in 2024 to 45 years in prison and given an $8 million fine by a US judge for drug-trafficking offenses.
Trump pardoned Hernández in early December, drawing criticism from both Republican and Democratic members of Congress, with some saying they didn’t understand the decision given the administration’s efforts to stop drug trafficking.
Fact check: Trump’s unproven claim about Venezuela’s prisons and mental institutions
In the hours after US forces removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump repeated his frequent claim that Venezuela under Maduro emptied its prisons and mental health facilities to send the people in them to the US as migrants. Trump has never corroborated the claim, and experts have told CNN that they have seen no evidence for it.
Trump revived the claim in a Fox News interview Saturday morning, then said it once more in his address to the nation: “As I’ve said many times, the Maduro regime emptied out their prisons; sent their worst and most violent monsters into the United States to steal American lives. And they came from mental institutions and insane asylums, they came from prisons and jails.” He added: “They sent from their mental institutions, they sent from their jails, prisons; they were drug dealers, they were drug kingpins. They sent everybody bad into the United States.”
There has been large-scale emigration from Venezuela under Maduro. But despite multiple requests for comment from CNN and other outlets, Trump and his aides have not proven that Maduro emptied any facility to somehow send undesirable citizens into the US.
Roberto Briceño-León, founder and director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, an independent organization that tracks violence, said in an email to CNN in June 2024: “We have no evidence that the Venezuelan government is emptying its prisons or mental health institutions to send them outside the country, in other words, to the U.S. or any other country.”
Helen Fair, an expert on global prisons at Birkbeck, University of London, told CNN in 2024 that she had “seen absolutely no evidence” that any country had emptied prisons to send prisoners to the US, let alone that numerous countries had done so as Trump has claimed.
Trump says US is working with Venezuelan vice president
President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States is now working with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez after the US captured Nicolás Maduro.
Asked by reporters whether he is willing to work with Rodríguez, Trump said that she was sworn in as president, but that she was “picked by Maduro.”
The president said Secretary of State Marco Rubio “just had a conversation with her, and she’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”
He added later that Rodríguez “had a long conversation with Marco, and she said, ‘We’ll do whatever you need.’ … I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn’t have a choice.
Trump questions Machado’s ability to lead Venezuela: "She doesn't have the support”
President Donald Trump said Saturday that he does not believe Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has the support or respect needed to lead the country following the capture of Nicolás Maduro.
Pressed on whether he has been in contact with Machado since Maduro’s capture, Trump said, “no.”
“I think it’d be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect to be leader.”
Democrats accuse administration of lying to Congress in previous briefings on Venezuela
Democrats are accusing the Trump administration of lying to Congress in previous classified briefings on Venezuela, insisting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told members of Congress that regime change wasn’t their goal.
Senate Foreign Relations Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen warned that Congress is in the dark on any “long-term strategy” on Venezuela and said the administration “consistently misled” them.
Sen. Andy Kim wrote in a post on X that “Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth 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.”
Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat on the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, agreed. “The Trump Administration repeatedly lied to Congress and the American people about Venezuela. Over and over, officials testified that this was not about regime change,” he said.
Sen. Chris Coons, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, also said that lawmakers were given “false” information by the administration.
Democrats also demanded an immediate briefing on the operation and the administration’s plan to deal with the aftermath of removing Maduro. The Senate is scheduled to return from recess on Monday, and the House is set to return on Tuesday.
Remember: Following a briefing by Rubio and Hegseth in December, ahead of the holiday recess, senators from both parties told CNN they left without a clear sense of whether the administration was actively working toward a regime change in Venezuela.
At the time, GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin insisted that regime change “was never a conversation” in the briefing with all senators, and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said that the briefers were “very careful in that briefing not to get over their skis on the future war plans.”
Trump clarifies US troops would be on the ground in Venezuela to secure oil
President Donald Trump clarified that the US would put troops in Venezuela for the purposes of securing oil, vowing the money would go toward reimbursing Venezuelans and the United States for damages caused under Nicolás Maduro’s leadership.
Trump said earlier during a news conference in Florida that he would not rule out the possibility of US military involvement, saying, “We’re not afraid of boots in the ground.”
Asked by CNN’s Kevin Liptak whether he envisions US boots on the ground while the US essentially runs the Venezuelan government in an interim period, Trump said, “Well, no, we’re going to have a presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil.”
Trump downplayed how many troops would be needed, adding, “We’re sending our expertise in, so you may need something, not very much.”
Trump warns Colombian President Petro: "He does have to watch his ass”
President Donald Trump issued a sharp warning to Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Saturday, citing concerns about drug trafficking in the wake of the US capture of Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro in a large-scale military operation.
When asked about Petro’s recent comments that he was unconcerned about any fallout from the operation, Trump responded directly during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
“He has factories where he makes cocaine,” Trump said. “He’s making cocaine and they’re sending it into the United States,” adding, “So he does have to watch his ass.”
Trump says he did not speak about Maduro during phone call with Putin
US President Donald Trump said he did not talk about Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during a recent phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
“We never spoke about Maduro,” Trump told reporters at a news conference today.
Trump added that he is “not thrilled with Putin” at the moment, saying, “He’s killing too many people.”
Remember: Russia has remained a key ally of the Maduro regime in the face of Trump’s campaign against the Venezuelan government.
Rubio says Maduro was given multiple offers to leave power but chose to "play around"
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was given “multiple very, very, very generous offers” to leave power, but “chose instead to act like a wild man” and “play around.”
Speaking to the press Saturday after a US military operation that apprehended Maduro, Rubio said the Venezuelan leader had “multiple opportunities to find his way somewhere else.”
“Instead, he wanted to play big boy,” Rubio said.
President Donald Trump told Fox News Saturday that Maduro “wanted to negotiate at the end” and was “trying hard to make a deal.”
“I didn’t want to negotiate. I said, ‘Nope, we got to do it,’” Trump said.
Rubio reiterated Saturday that Maduro was “a fugitive of American justice” and an illegitimate leader with a $50 million bounty.
“I guess we saved $50 million,” he quipped, turning to Trump, who responded, “we should make sure.”
“Don’t let anybody claim it, nobody deserves it but us,” Trump added.
Rubio argues Venezuela operation is "not the kind of mission you can do a congressional notification on"
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued the US military mission that saw strikes in Venezuela and the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro was “not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on.”
“It was a trigger-based mission in which conditions had to be met night after night. We watched and monitored that for number of days. So it’s just simply not the kind of mission you can call people and say, ‘Hey, we may do this at some point in the next 15 days,’” Rubio told reporters in Florida on Saturday.
“It’s just not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify because it endangers the mission,” he said. He also said it was “largely a law enforcement function.”
President Donald Trump added that “Congress has a tendency to leak.”
CNN reported, according to numerous sources, that the administration notified congressional leadership and key committees about the operation after the fact.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair in a previous interview that US strikes inside Venezuela would require congressional approval.
Handful of US troops sustained bullet and shrapnel wounds in Venezuela operation
During the operation in Venezuela early Saturday morning, “a handful of troops sustained bullet and shrapnel wounds, but none are life-threatening,” a source briefed on the matter told CNN.
President Donald Trump told Fox News on Saturday that “a couple of guys were hit. But they came back and they’re supposed to be in pretty good shape.”
