Plus: Chevron shares rally, but oil futures are muted after President Trump says the U.S. could keep some of the profits from Venezuela’s oil output. And news of a potential market-first diabetes treatment for children as young as one.
Earlier this year, two children went missing in Milwaukee. Despite the pleas of their parents and loved ones, the local police did not treat these children as "critically missing," meaning they issued no Amber Alert. Desperate for answers, family members took matters into their own hands, tracing one of the missing children's phones to a duplex in town. Amid ongoing, unrelated protests, more and more citizens of Milwaukee began to believe the authorities were actively preventing a full investigation of the house in question. So what actually happened?
President Trump says the United States will run Venezuela after U.S. forces seized Nicolás Maduro and his wife in Caracas. Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodriguez shifts from defiance to calls for cooperation as the White House ramps up pressure and threatens further action. And Nicolás Maduro is set to appear in a New York courtroom, facing drug trafficking, weapons, and narco-terrorism charges that could test the reach of U.S. law overseas.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Andrew Sussman, Tara Neill, Krishnadev Calamur, Mohamad ElBardicy, and HJ Mai.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
(0:00) Introduction (01:54) U.S. In Venezuela (05:49) Future Of Venezuela (09:46) Maduro In NYC Court
Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was brought to New York with his wife over the weekend to face criminal charges.
Charlie Savage, who covers national security and legal policy, discusses the legality of Mr. Maduro’s capture and whether the operation could undermine the legal case against him.
Guest: Charlie Savage, who covers national security and legal policy for The New York Times.
Background reading:
Can the United States legally “run” Venezuela after Mr. Maduro’s capture? Here’s what to know.
The U.S. indictment of Mr. Maduro cites cocaine smuggling. Venezuela’s role in the trade is believed to be modest.
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
OA1222 - Actual sane coverage of Trump's kidnapping of a foreign leader PART 1
OA NYC correspondent Liz Skeen joins Thomas and Matt for this emergency episode recorded the day after the US bombed Caracas in a truly unprecedented military operation to kidnap Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife and transport them to Brooklyn to stand trial on federal narco-terrorism charges. We field dozens of patron questions as we try to understand how any of this could possibly be legal. How does this situation compare to the charges against former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, and how is Trump’s record on narcotrafficking these days anyway? What is in this indictment, and what kinds of defenses might Maduro have? Is the federal government going to let this defendant pay his lawyer? Should a federal court be able to consider that this defendant was illegally abducted from his country by the US military while acting as the head of state of a sovereign nation? What kinds of consequences could there be for Venezuelans in the U.S.? And what can we--and the world--do to stop Trump from doing anything like this again?
What kind of state does the UK find itself in as we start 2026? That’s the question Tim Harford and the More or Less team is trying to answer in a series of five special programmes.
In the first episode, we’re starting the week by asking some interesting questions about the economy:
Is the cost-of-living crisis over?
The economy is expected to have grown by 1.5% in 2025. Is that a big number?
When taxes are at record highs, why does it feel as if everything is such hard work for public services?
Do the majority of people in Scotland pay less tax than they would in the rest of the UK?
Does the UK have a more progressive tax system than Scandinavian countries?
Get in touch if you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should take a look at: moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Contributors:
Ruth Curtice, Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation
Helen Miller, Director of Institute for Fiscal Studies
Mairi Spowage, Professor and Director of the Fraser of Allander Institute at the University of Strathclyde
John Burn-Murdoch, chief data reporter for the Financial Times
Credits:
Presenter: Tim Harford
Quiz contestant: Lizzy McNeill
Producers: Nathan Gower, Katie Solleveld and Charlotte McDonald
Series producer: Tom Colls
Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele
Sound mix: Sarah Hockley and James Beard
Editor: Richard Vadon
Leah kicks off the episode with repeat guest Rebecca Ingber of Cardozo Law to discuss the wild illegality–both domestic and international–of Trump’s regime change operation in Venezuela. Then, Kate, Melissa, and Leah welcome Princeton professor and expert on the rise of modern autocracies, Kim Lane Scheppele to break down how Trump is consolidating power over the executive branch and the courts. Leah next catches up with president and CEO of Democracy Forward Skye Perryman on some of the legal developments over the holidays, including challenges to Department of Education funding cuts, the freezing of childcare payments to Minnesota, and a near-total abortion ban for veterans. Finally, the hosts speak with Demand Justice's Josh Orton about the worrying trends his organization is seeing among Trump 2.0’s judicial nominees.
Japan’s new prime minister Sanae Takaichi made waves last fall after saying her country might intervene if China invaded Taiwan. In response, China launched state-organized boycotts against Japan — canceling concerts, restricting seafood imports, and even recalling pandas. Today on the show, what does it look like for a state to organize a boycott, and does it work?
Choose your fighter for the origin of water on Earth! Was it always here or did it come to this planet from somewhere else in space? And, either way, what does this mean for other water worlds in our galaxy? To find out, we talk with Michael Wong, an astrobiologist and planetary scientist at Carnegie Science. He gets into scientists’ strongest candidates for the ways water could have come to our planet many, many years ago – including whether it could have been made here. Buckle up: This is a hot debate in astrobiology right now.
Interested in more space science and more unresolved hypotheses about how the universe came to be how it is today? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.
Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.
The Trump administration has a handful of answers to the question “Why did the United States pluck Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela?”—it was for narcoterrorism, or payback, or just oil. They’re even less clear about what’s going to happen with the country now.
Guest: Shane Harris, staff writer covering national security and intelligence for the Atlantic.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.