Updates: Maduro faces US court; Trump says US to ‘run’ Venezuela

See our explainer on how the US raid that led to Nicolas Maduro’s capture unfolded, here.

Learn who Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez is and how she came to lead the country here.

And read our breakdown of how Venezuela’s oil factors into US strategy here.

This live page will close soon. Here’s a look at the day’s main developments:

• Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York after his abduction during a US attack on Caracas.
• US President Donald Trump says that Washington will “run” Venezuela and tap its vast oil reserves, without providing details on how it will do so.
• Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay have denounced US suggestions of “running” Venezuela, warning against any outside control or appropriation of the country’s resources.
• Trump warned that Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s acting leader, could face a “very big price” if she did not “do what’s right”.
• Venezuelan Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino has backed Rodríguez as interim president, saying the armed forces are mobilised nationwide to defend sovereignty and confront “imperial aggression”.
• Padrino condemned the US operation as a “cowardly kidnapping“, saying some of Maduro’s bodyguards were killed “in cold blood”.

Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has urged Trump to stop threatening to ⁠take over Greenland, after the US president reiterated his wish to do so in an interview with The Atlantic magazine.

“It makes absolutely ⁠no sense to talk about the US needing to take over Greenland. The US has no right to annex any ‌of the three countries in the Danish Kingdom,” Frederiksen said in an emailed ‌statement.

“I would therefore strongly urge ‌the US stop ⁠the threats against a historically close ally and against another country and another ‌people who have very clearly said that they are not for sale.”

Besides Venezuela, Trump told The Atlantic that other countries ‌may be subject to US intervention.

“We do need Greenland, absolutely,” he said.

In less than 24 hours, the US bombed Venezuela, brazenly abducted President Nicolas Maduro and his wife from their compound in Caracas, and whisked them to a detention centre in New York City.

Watch how the events unfolded overnight:

It’s important to have the military’s support. Under the time of Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez before him, the support of the army was all-important, and, in some ways, it is what keeps this administration and government in place.

It’s the image as well that’s important. It wasn’t just Vladimir Padrino, the defence minister; there was a host of generals and military personnel behind him. There have been other senior members in the government who have come out and supported Delcy Rodriguez as she takes on this interim presidency.

So, the image they’re trying to give is a government that’s coalescing. Nicolas Maduro was often seen as sort of the cornerstone, a person who, as well as being the president, knew how to make everyone get on together.

Now they’re trying to do that without him, and it seems they are coming together around Delcy Rodriguez.

Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer says Trump’s decision to strike Venezuela and abduct its leader was “unlawful and reckless”.

“The problem here is that there are so many unanswered questions… They’re so important in terms of where we go in the future. This could change our history for years. A: How long do they intend to be there? B: How many troops do we need after one day, after one week, after one year? How much is it going to cost, and what are the boundaries?” Schumer told reporters.

“So the American people are worried that this is creating an endless war. The very thing that Donald Trump campaigned against over and over and over again was no more endless wars, and right now, we’re headed right into one with no barriers, with no discussion. This is reckless.”

We’re hearing from residents that there has been no letup in the sorties of US F-35 fighter jets and transport helicopters.

The question is whether this is the new normal now, here in Puerto Rico. This was a military base that had been shut down in 2004 and then reopened with a new focus on the Caribbean.

We see all of these pledges now for “force projection and dominance” of the Western Hemisphere, and indeed, there are a lot of questions about whether Secretary of State Marco Rubio really wants to strangle Cuba now as well.

There has been no letup in the commitment to maintain a heavy presence in the waters around the Caribbean.

For weeks, Trump and his officials said the rhetoric and military posturing against Venezuela were aimed at countering the flow of narcotics.

But abundant evidence, including Trump’s own words in the aftermath of the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro, suggests that Washington’s true interest lies in Venezuela’s vast oil reserves – the largest in the world, estimated at about 303 billion barrels.

Francisco Rodriguez, former head of the Venezuelan National Assembly’s economic advisory, said that gold and oil reserves are among the country’s main hopes for economic recovery.

“If the US moves to remove the sanctions and clear the hurdles for investors to come back in, you can get the oil output to 2.5 million barrels per day in the scope of three to five years,” he told Al Jazeera, noting that production currently stands at below one million bpd.

Read more here.

Opposition to Trump’s Venezuela policy has yet to emerge within the Republican Party.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine called Nicolas Maduro a “narco-terrorist and international drug trafficker”, who should stand trial, even though “Congress should have been informed about the operation earlier and needs to be involved as this situation evolves”.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who often criticises military interventions, did not specifically oppose Trump’s actions. He wrote on social media that “time will tell if regime change in Venezuela is successful without significant monetary or human cost”.

Many Democrats denounced Trump’s actions in Venezuela, and the Democratic National Committee quickly sought to raise money by blasting “another unconstitutional war from Trump”.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rejected the Trump administration’s argument that it is combating drug crimes, saying the White House is instead focused on “oil and regime change” while seeking “to distract from Epstein + skyrocketing healthcare costs”.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the assault is part of an “old and obvious pattern”, where an “unpopular president – failing on the economy and losing his grip on power at home – decides to launch a war for regime change abroad”.

It’s not about drugs. If it was, Trump wouldn’t have pardoned one of the largest narco traffickers in the world last month.

It’s about oil and regime change.

And they need a trial now to pretend that it isn’t. Especially to distract from Epstein + skyrocketing healthcare costs.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 3, 2026

Donald Trump has given an interview to a US magazine, saying that Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez must do what they expect of her, comply with the United States, or else, she could pay a very heavy price, perhaps even heavier than Maduro.

So, it’s very clear that the United States believes it has significant influence over Venezuela.

The US military hasn’t moved out of the Caribbean after the military buildup we’ve seen over the last couple of months, and instead, Trump is saying there’s a possibility of a second round of strikes. So, for the moment, the United States believes it has taken charge of Venezuela.

We are told there’s no army, no navy on the ground. There is, of course, the possibility of special forces somewhere in the country.

That means it would be difficult for them to exert a great deal of influence beyond the political at the moment, but it’s clear the US is taking on the running of a country that’s one-and-a-half times the size of Texas, with a population of 31 million people.

Venezuela’s state-run Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) is asking some of its joint ventures to cut back crude output ⁠by shutting down oilfields or well clusters as onshore stocks mount and the company runs out of diluents amid an ⁠export paralysis, Reuters news agency reports.

Oil exports from the OPEC country – whose deposed President Nicolas Maduro and ‌first lady were abducted by US forces on Saturday, unleashing a deep ‌political crisis – remain at a standstill ‌following the ⁠announced US blockade of all sanctioned tankers going in and out ‌of its waters and the seizure of two oil cargoes.

US President Donald Trump said the United States would for now manage the South American nation of about 30 million people plus its oil reserves, the largest in the world. But he gave few details of how.

Five Latin American countries have warned against any outside bid for “control” of Venezuela after US President Donald Trump suggested Washington would “run” the country and access its oil.

Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay in a joint statement expressed their “rejection” of US forces’ ousting of Nicolas Maduro as Venezuela’s president and “concern about any attempt at governmental control or administration or outside appropriation of natural or strategic resources”.

Maduro’s allies are still in charge of the government and have denounced their ⁠leader’s kidnapping as part of an imperialist oil grab. The defence minister said earlier that the military is ready to confront the “aggression”.

When the United States carries out a regime change, it never ends well. Tony Karon, AJ+ Editorial Lead, looks at the many, many times the US has decided who gets to run a country.

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