dailynewsnblog
Key events
More than a dozen media workers were detained on Monday while covering events in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, including a march in support of ousted president Nicolás Maduro and the swearing-in of the country’s new legislature, the Venezuelan press association said.
All 14 of those detained were later released, the association posted on X, though one was a foreign journalist who was deported.
Reuters quoted the association as saying those detained included 11 people working with international media outlets and one with a national outlet.
Opening summary
Welcome to our live coverage of the continuing aftermath of the US military’s weekend raid on Venezuela and removal of president Nicolás Maduro from power.
Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel peace prize winner María Corina Machado has said in her first televised interview since then that she hasn’t spoken to Donald Trump since October 2025.
“Actually, I spoke with president Trump on October 10, the same day the [Noble peace] prize was announced, [but] not since then,” Machado said on Fox News. Machado – widely seen as Maduro’s most credible opponent – left Venezuela last month to travel to Norway to accept the award and hasn’t returned since.
“I’m planning to go as soon as possible back home,” she told Fox when asked about her plans to return to Venezuela.
Trump on Saturday dismissed the idea of working with Machado, saying: “She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.” US media reported on Monday that a classified CIA assessment presented to Trump concluded that senior Maduro loyalists, including interim president Delcy Rodríguez, were best positioned to maintain stability.
Despite this, Machado welcomed the US actions as “a huge step for humanity, for freedom and human dignity”.
In other key developments:
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Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House, emerged from a classified briefing for congressional leaders insisting that “we are not at war” and “this is not a regime change” but “a demand for a change of behaviour by a regime”.
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Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic minority leader, expressed discontent with the briefing, calling the Trump administration’s “plan for the US ‘running Venezuela’ … vague, based on wishful thinking and unsatisfying”.
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The reported appearance of unidentified drones over the presidential palace in Venezuela’s capital on Monday night filled the night sky with the sound of heavy gunfire and tracer fire as the regime’s security forces reacted to what they mistook for another raid.
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Trump suggested to NBC News that US taxpayers could fund the rebuilding of Venezuela’s infrastructure for extracting and shipping oil. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”
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White House adviser Stephen Miller reaffirmed to CNN the Trump administration’s position on Greenland becoming a part of the US.
