U.S. Defends Venezuela Operation as PDVSA Confirms Oil Talks and Brazil Decries 'Kidnapping'

Overview

• Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA said it is negotiating sales to the United States, as Trump touted 30–50 million barrels and the White House claimed “maximum influence” over interim authorities.
• House Speaker Mike Johnson said the United States is not at war and that a War Powers report will follow the two-hour mission that neutralized air defenses and airlifted troops into Caracas.
• Brazil told the OAS the seizure of Nicolás Maduro was a “kidnapping” that breached Venezuela’s sovereignty, while UN concerns and legal experts’ analyses questioned the action under international law.
• Inside Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez holds interim authority with military backing as tightened security, checkpoints and detentions keep streets largely quiet.
• AI-generated images falsely depicting Maduro’s arrest spread widely, with New York Times tests showing tools from Google’s Gemini, OpenAI and X’s Grok could quickly produce convincing fakes.