Overview
- President Trump said a U.S. operation captured Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores and flew them out of Venezuela, with more details promised later today.
- Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said authorities do not know their whereabouts and demanded proof of life for the pair.
- Opposition leader María Corina Machado, a 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is currently reported in Oslo after a clandestine extraction known as Operation Golden Dynamite.
- Analyst Jorge Jraissati says Machado and Edmundo González are the leading prospects to guide a transitional government with roughly 70% public backing, and the United States had recognized González as the legitimate winner of the disputed 2024 election.
- Experts warn senior regime figures such as Diosdado Cabello, Jorge and Delcy Rodríguez, Vladimir Padrino López and Iván Hernández Dala could attempt to seize control in the power vacuum.