NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-04-2026 10AM EST

Episode Date: January 4, 2026

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Giles Snyder. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says change in Venezuela will take time, following the ouster of leader Nicolas Maduro. Our expectations remain the same, and we are going to judge whoever we're interacting with moving forward by whether or not those conditions are met. We want, of course, we want to see Venezuela transition to be a place completely different than what it looks like today. But obviously, we don't have the expectation that's going to happen in the next 15 hours. Rubio, speaking on CBS, face the nation as Maduro is being held at the Federal Detention Center in Brooklyn. Maduro and his wife arrived in New York City last night to face drug trafficking charges. There is global uncertainty about who is leading Venezuela after the U.S. military operation that led to his capture early Saturday.

President Trump says the United States will run Venezuela with the help of Maduro's vice president. But as M.P.R. Robbie Griffiths reports, leaders in Venezuela are, undermining Trump's claim. In his press conference on Saturday, President Trump said Maduro's deputy, Delci Rodriguez, would act as a partner in letting the United States run the country. And she's essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again, very simple.

However, less than two hours later, Rodriguez delivered an address on state television, saying Maduro remained president. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the New York Times he was withholding judgment and would assess the future actions of the new Venezuelan leadership. Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Karina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, has expressed interest in helping shape Venezuela's politics. But Trump said that Machado did not have the support to lead. Robbie Griffiths, NPR News.

On Saturday, Venezuela's top court ordered Vice President Delci Rodriguez to assume the role of interim president. The capture of Venezuela's leader, Maduro, comes some 36 years after the U.S. captured another leader, Panamanian president, Manuel Noriega. NPR's Frank Lankford reports a path forward is not quite as clear now as it was then. John Feeley, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama, says one reason that invasion succeeded was because the political opposition was prepared to take over. He says President Trump's vision for Maduro's replacement is fuzzy. There seems to be popular will to get rid of him. What there does not seem to be, in my view, so far, is any kind of transition plan.

On Sunday, President Trump said the U.S. would, quote, run Venezuela for now, promising a, quote, safe, proper, and judicious transition later. Frank Lankfit, NPR News. The United Nations Security Council expected to hold an emergency meeting tomorrow to discuss Venezuela. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Katerish has described U.S. actions as, as dangerous precedent, saying that he's concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected. This is NPR News. As the government releases troves of documents related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, journalists, including those here at NPR, are racing to understand the contents,

given the huge volume reporters are getting tech help, which now includes artificial intelligence. MPR's Hoganan looked into how that works. One way to receive a document dump is to divvy it up for a team of reporters and editors to read. Another way is to use the software to extract all the text, and then reporters can look up keywords of interest to focus on. Both are still happening today, but AI adds the ability to go beyond keywords. Dylan Friedman is the AI Project editor at the New York Times. He gave the example of finding emails.

Or sometimes it might say from, sometimes it might say sender. And so AI is really good at kind of understanding that fuzzy context. Regardless of what technologies do, Friedman says, people, journalists, are making sense of the story. Huozingan, NPR News. Farmers in California's Central Valley are looking forward to a series of storms as they prepare to harvest citrus and vegetable crops. Ryan Jacobson is the CEO of the Fresno County Farm Bureau. Exciting time right now, but it's cautious optimism, hoping that we're going to continue to see these storms roll in. Weather Service is calling for widespread rainfall in the Central Valley and along the California

coast with isolated flash flooding a possibility into tomorrow. Meanwhile, a clipper system is expected to bring moderate snowfall and light freezing rain tonight to the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region. I'm Jail Snyder. This is NPR News.