Elected officials across South Carolina are weighing in after the United States struck the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and captured the country’s leader Nicolas Maduro at President Trump’s direction early Saturday morning.
A defiant Nicolás Maduro declared himself the “president of my country” as he protested his capture and pleaded not guilty on Monday to the federal drug trafficking charges that the Trump administration used to justify removing him from power.
By: REGINA GARCIA CANO, KONSTANTIN TOROPIN and ERIC TUCKER Updated 5:34 PM EST, January 3, 2026 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….
Venezuela is open to negotiating an agreement with the United States to combat drug trafficking, the South American country’s President Nicolás Maduro said in a pre-taped interview aired Thursday on state television.
President Donald Trump has indicated that the U.S. has “hit” a dock facility along a shore as he wages a pressure campaign on Venezuela, but the U.S. offered few details.
President Donald Trump on Monday delivered a new warning to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as the U.S. Coast Guard steps up efforts to interdict oil tankers in the Caribbean Sea as part of the Republican administration’s escalating pressure campaign on the government in Caracas.
