NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-04-2026 5AM EST

Episode Date: January 4, 2026

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Giles Snyder. Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro is now in New York. Maduro and his wife were captured by the U.S. military in the capital city of Caracas in an attack during the early morning hours of Saturday. MPR. Jasmine Garst reports. The Venezuelan president arrived at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, late Saturday night. He and his wife, Celia Flores, have been charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation, conspiracy, and weapons offenses in Manhattan federal court.

Following the Venezuelan president's detention, President Trump said the U.S. would indefinitely, quote, run the country and seize Venezuela's massive oil reserves. Meanwhile, President Maduro's vice president, Delci Rodriguez, publicly accused the U.S. of invading Venezuela under false pretenses and said, quote, there's only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolas Maduro Moros. Jasmine Garst, NPR News, New York. Washington State Congressman Adam Smith is the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. He says the Trump administration acted without a plan for what comes next in Venezuela. You heard that from President Trump today when he said, you know, we're going to be, quote, running Venezuela in the short term with no explanation of what that means or how it would be accomplished. And also, it's completely impossible in the current situation.

As far as we know, we have no forces in Venezuela whatsoever to run. anything. But the Republican head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, told Fox News that Congress does not need to be notified every time the executive branch is making an arrest. Congressional reaction largely split along party lines in South Florida. The region's large Venezuelan community is celebrating Maduro-Auster demonstrations in Maryland. As residents and lawmakers rallied against the U.S. military operation, Scott Masioni from Member Station WIPR, has After the Trump administration's surprise attack in Venezuela, protesters converged on Baltimore's City Hall.

Rachel Vakera, Baltimore's Party for Socialism and Liberation, helped organize the protest. There is no shortage of needs that the people in the U.S. face. We want these taxpayer dollars to meet people's needs, ultimately, and not destroy other countries on behalf of, in this case, oil executives. Maryland-U.S. Representative Johnny O'Shevsky, who serves on the foreign Affairs Committee says he's deeply concerned by President Trump's comments that the United States will run Venezuela. O'Shefsky says he and other members of the committee are pushing for a briefing from the White House. For NPR News, I'm Scott Masioni in Baltimore. The United Nations Security Council

is expected to hold an emergency meeting tomorrow to discuss Venezuela. UN Secretary General Antonio Katersch has described U.S. actions as a dangerous precedent. And you're listening to 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 their contents. Given the huge volume, reporters are getting tech help, which now includes artificial intelligence. NPR's Haging Nod 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. Deidenne 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. Hwo Jinnan, NPR News. Authorities in Switzerland say they've opened an investigation into the managers of the ski resort, where a fire at a New Year's Eve party left 40 people dead. Prosecutors say the managers are suspected of crimes, including homicide, by negligence. Swiss police say they have identified 16 more bodies. Ukrainian President Volodymyrsen-Linsky expected to be in Paris Tuesday. He is to meet with European leaders amid the U.S.-led push to end the war in Ukraine,

saying he hoped documents on security guarantees would be finalized. National security advisors from 18 countries met in Kiev yesterday. I'm Jail Snyder. This is NPR News from Washington.