President Donald Trump said the United States was now “in charge” of Venezuela after a U.S. military operation removed Nicolás Maduro, according to CBS News. The report says Maduro and his wife are expected to face federal charges tied to drug trafficking and to working with gangs that Washington has designated as terrorist organizations, a dramatic escalation that turns a political crisis into a legal and security battle.
For the Venezuelan opposition, the operation did not close the book on the country’s crisis. Edmundo González Urrutia said the removal of Maduro was an important step but not enough, arguing that normalization depends on the release of political prisoners and on respect for the will of voters in the 2024 election, which the United States recognized him as having won. His remarks frame the fall of Maduro not as an end point, but as the start of a much larger struggle over legitimacy.
Delcy Rodríguez, now serving as acting leader, tried to lower the temperature. She said Venezuela seeks peace and peaceful coexistence and wants a balanced, respectful relationship with the United States built on sovereignty and non-interference. That message suggests the new leadership understands that the next phase will be defined as much by diplomacy and administration as by the military operation that brought Maduro down.
Trump signaled that Washington may not be finished. He said he had not spoken directly with Rodríguez, but described her as cooperating with the United States and said American oil companies were eager to help rebuild Venezuela’s infrastructure. He also left open the possibility of additional military action if Venezuela “doesn’t behave,” which keeps the pressure on a country already facing an abrupt change in power and an uncertain legal future for its former leader.
The wider reaction was immediate and regional. Iran called for Maduro’s release, Colombia rejected Trump’s threats after he floated military action against President Gustavo Petro, and Cuba said 32 of its citizens were killed in the operation. That mix of support, alarm and retaliation shows why the CBS report matters beyond Caracas: the U.S. has moved from pressing Maduro to trying to manage the political vacuum his removal left behind.
For Washington, the hardest part may be what follows the operation itself. Once a foreign government says it is “in charge,” it inherits the practical burden of keeping institutions running, managing external criticism and deciding how far to push against the old order without creating a wider regional rupture. The CBS report suggests that Venezuela has entered exactly that kind of unstable middle ground.
