Closing summary
It’s just past 11.30pm in New York and 12.30am in Caracas and we’re about to close this blog and continue our live coverage in another file here. Here’s a recap of latest news – thanks for being with us.
Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel peace prize winner María Corina Machado has said in her first televised interview since the US military’s weekend raid on Venezuela that she hasn’t spoken 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,” she said on Fox News. Machado – widely seen as deposed president Nicolás 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:
Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democratic minority in the US Senate, expressed discontent with a classified briefing for Congressional leaders, calling the Trump administration’s “plan for the US ‘running Venezuela’ … vague, based on wishful thinking and unsatisfying”.
Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House, emerged from the classified briefing 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”.
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.
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.”
White House adviser Stephen Miller reaffirmed to CNN the Trump administration’s position on Greenland becoming a part of the US.
Updated
Keeping with María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader also denounced the country’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, accusing her of being a key architect of abuses.
Machado told Fox News from an undisclosed location that Rodriguez was “rejected” by the Venezuelan people and that voters were on the opposition’s side.
“In free and fair elections, we will win by over 90% of the votes, I have no doubt about it,” Machado said, quoted by the AFP news agency.
Rodríguez, who was Venezuela’s vice-president under Nicolás Maduro, has signalled her willingness to cooperate with Washington.
As reported earlier, Machado also said she planned to return home “as soon as possible”.
Updated
