A defiant Nicolás Maduro declared himself “the president of my country” as he protested his capture and pleaded not guilty Monday to federal drug trafficking charges that the Trump administration used to justify removing him from power in Venezuela.

“I was captured,” Maduro said in Spanish as translated by a courtroom interpreter before being cut off by the judge. Asked later for his plea to the charges, he stated: “I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country.”

Maduro’s court appearance in Manhattan, his first since he and his wife, Cilia Flores, were seized from their Caracas home Saturday in a stunning middle-of-the-night military operation, kicked off the U.S. government’s most consequential prosecution in decades of a foreign head of state. She also pleaded not guilty.

The criminal case is unfolding against a broader diplomatic backdrop of an audacious U.S.-engineered regime change that President Donald Trump has said will enable his administration to “run” the South American country.

Maduro, 63, was brought to court under heavy security early Monday — flown by helicopter to Manhattan from Brooklyn, where he is jailed, and then driven to the courthouse in an armored vehicle. He and Flores were led into court just before noon. Both were in leg shackles and jail-issued garb, and both put on headsets to hear the English-language proceeding as it was translated into Spanish.

As Maduro left the courtroom, a man in the audience denounced him as an “illegitimate” president.

As a criminal defendant in the U.S. legal system, Maduro will have the same rights as any other person charged with a crime in the country — including the right to jury trial. But, given the circumstances of his arrest and the geopolitical stakes at play, he’ll also be nearly — but not quite — unique.

That was made clear from the outset as Maduro, who took copious notes throughout the proceedings and wished Happy New Year to reporters as he entered the courtroom, repeatedly pressed his case that he had been unlawfully abducted.

“I am here kidnapped since Jan. 3, Saturday,” Maduro said, standing and leaning his tall frame toward a tabletop microphone. “I was captured at my home in Caracas.”

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a 92-year-old jurist who was appointed to the federal bench in 1998 by Bill Clinton, interrupted him, saying: “There will be a time and place to go into all of this.” Hellerstein added that Maduro’s lawyer could do so later.

“At this point in time, I only want to know one thing,” the judge said. “Are you Nicolás Maduro Moros?”

“I am Nicolás Maduro Moros,” the defendant responded.

Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said he expects to contest the legality of his “military abduction.”

Pollack, a prominent Washington lawyer whose clients have included WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said Maduro is “head of a sovereign state and is entitled to the privileges and immunities that go with that office.”

Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega unsuccessfully tried the same immunity defense after the U.S. captured him in a similar military invasion in 1990. But the U.S. doesn’t recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state — particularly after a much-disputed 2024 reelection.

Flores, who identified herself to the judge as “first lady of the Republic of Venezuela,” had bandages on her forehead and right temple. Her lawyer, Mark Donnelly, said she suffered “significant injuries” during her capture.

A 25-page indictment accuses Maduro and others of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. They could face life in prison if convicted.

Among other things, the indictment accuses Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money or undermined their drug trafficking operation. That included the killing of a local drug boss in Caracas, the indictment said.

Outside the courthouse, police separated those protesting the U.S. military action from pro-intervention demonstrators. Inside the courtroom, as the proceeding wrapped up and Maduro prepared to leave, 33-year-old Pedro Rojas stood up and began speaking forcefully at him in Spanish.

Rojas said later that he had been imprisoned by the Venezuelan regime. As deputy U.S. marshals led Maduro from the courtroom, the deposed leader looked directly at the man and shot back in Spanish: “I am a kidnapped president. I am a prisoner of war.”

Demands for Maduro’s return

Trump said Saturday the U.S. would “run” Venezuela temporarily and reiterated Sunday night that “we’re in charge,” telling reporters “we’re going to run it, fix it.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to strike a more cautious tone, telling Sunday morning talk shows that the U.S. would not govern the country day-to-day other than enforcing an existing ” oil quarantine.”

Before his capture, Maduro and his allies claimed U.S. hostility was motivated by lust for Venezuela’s rich oil and mineral resources.

Trump has suggested that removing Maduro would enable more oil to flow out of Venezuela, but oil prices rose 1.7% on Monday. There are uncertainties about how fast oil production can be ramped up in Venezuela after years of neglect, as well as questions about governance and oversight of the sector.

Venezuela’s new interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, has demanded that the U.S. return Maduro, who long denied any involvement in drug trafficking — although late Sunday she struck a more conciliatory tone in a social media post, inviting collaboration with Trump and “respectful relations” with the U.S.

Every time I use San Antonio Airport, I notice that the parking fees accumulate significantly when parking at the airport terminal for long periods.

The close and expensive spots, just a 3-minute walk from the terminal, can easily cost $150 for 3 days and 4 nights.

So, if you are planning a trip to another area for more than 2-3 days, managing parking fees is essentially managing your travel budget.

Today, based on 2026, I will summarize how to use the Green Parking Lot, the most cost-effective parking method at San Antonio Airport.

First, regarding the SAT Green Parking Lot rates, if you book online at least 7 days in advance, it costs about $7 to $9 per day. If you don't book, the long-term parking rate is about $10 per day. This is the cheapest parking option when using San Antonio Airport.

The Green Parking Lot is located deep within the airport grounds, but it is quite convenient because a free shuttle runs 24 hours. When entering the airport, you can follow the GPS directions for Economy Parking or Green Lot, and if you have a reservation, the gate will open automatically by recognizing your license plate. If you haven't made a reservation, you will need to take a ticket at the entrance. Make sure to keep the ticket visible in your car.

When you park, the most important thing is to record your zone number. You should take a photo of the zone number, like G-3, or note it in a parking app. I can assure you that you won't remember it after 2 days. If you forget where you parked after your trip, it can be really frustrating. By the way, the parking lot is very large, so there are separate shuttle stops numbered 1, 2, and so on. I'm not sure how many there are, but I've heard of up to 4.

If you wait at the Bus Stop shelters located throughout the parking lot, the white shuttles usually arrive every 10 to 15 minutes. It takes about 5 to 10 minutes to get to the terminal by shuttle. They come frequently, so you won't have to wait long.

Upon arrival at the airport, the shuttle drops you off near the baggage claim areas of Terminals A and B. When you return from your trip, you can take the Green Lot shuttle from the same Ground Transportation area, and the driver will drop you off near your zone number if you tell them.

As mentioned earlier, to save even more on parking fees, it is advisable to make a reservation in advance. Booking through the official San Antonio Airport website is often cheaper than paying on-site, and during peak seasons, there may not be any spots available, making it practically essential.

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Swiss authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the managers of the bar where a fire at a New Year’s party left 40 people dead, authorities said Saturday.

The two are suspected of involuntary homicide, involuntary bodily harm and involuntarily causing a fire, the Valais region’s chief prosecutor, Beatrice Pilloud, told reporters. She said the investigation was opened on Friday night and that it would help “explore all the leads.” The announcement of the investigation did not name the managers.

More than 100 other people were injured in the blaze that broke out around 1:30 a.m. on Thursday at Le Constellation bar in the Alpine resort town of Crans-Montana. Police have said many were in their teens to mid-20s.

The process of identifying the dead and injured continued on Saturday, leading to an agonizing wait for relatives.

Investigators said Friday they believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited the fire when they came too close to the ceiling of the crowded bar.

Authorities planned to look into whether sound-dampening material on the ceiling conformed with regulations and whether the candles were permitted for use in the bar. Officials said they also would look at other safety measures on the premises, including fire extinguishers and escape routes.

The Valais region’s top security official, Stéphane Ganzer, told SRF public radio Saturday that “such a huge accident with a fire in Switzerland means that something didn’t work — maybe the material, maybe the organization on the spot.” He added: “Something didn’t work and someone made a mistake, I am sure of that.”

Nicolas Féraud, who heads the Crans-Montana municipality, told RTS radio he was “convinced” checks on the bar hadn’t been lax, the broadcaster reported.

Asked whether the tragedy could have been avoided, Swiss Justice Minister Beat Jans replied that officials could not yet answer and “we know that the world needs an answer on this question.”

The severity of burns has made it difficult to identify the dead and injured, requiring families to supply authorities with DNA samples. In some cases, wallets and any identification documents inside were turned to ash.

On Saturday, regional police said the bodies of four victims — a boy and a girl, both 16, an 18-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman, all of them Swiss — had been identified and handed over to their families.

Several injured people still haven’t been identified.

Laetitia Brodard, whose 16-year-old son, Arthur, went to Le Constellation to celebrate the New Year, held out hope that he might be one of them.

“I’m looking everywhere. The body of my son is somewhere,” Brodard told reporters Friday evening. “I want to know where my child is and be by his side. Wherever that may be, be it in the intensive care unit or the morgue.”

On Saturday, she told French broadcaster BFM TV that “we, parents, are starting to get tired ... and anger is starting to rise.”

“It’s a wait that destroys people’s stability,” said Elvira Venturella, an Italian psychologist working with the families. “And the more time passes, the more difficult it becomes to accept the uncertainty, not having information.”

Swiss officials said Friday that 119 people were injured and 113 had been formally identified.

On Saturday, Italy’s ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, told reporters he had just been briefed by local authorities that the number of injured stood at 121, with five not yet identified. He said 14 Italians were being treated in hospitals.

Cornado acknowledged “a lot of stress,” but said it was right for authorities to share information only when it is “accurate and 100% sure.”

Ganzer, visiting the site along with Jans, called the families’ wait “unbearable,” and said officials’ top priority was providing them the “legitimate answers they are waiting for.”

Swiss police have said the injured included more than 70 Swiss nationals and over 10 each from France and Italy, along with citizens of Serbia, Bosnia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal and Poland.

Mourners and well-wishers bearing flowers flowed to makeshift memorials outside Le Constellation, some consoling one another with hugs as they shed tears. “RIP you are all our children” one handwritten note said.

A week after immigrant groups filed a lawsuit, California said Tuesday it will delay the revocations of 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses until March to allow more time to ensure that truckers and bus drivers who legally qualify for the licenses can keep them.

But U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the state may lose $160 million if it doesn’t meet a Jan. 5 deadline to revoke the licenses. He already withheld $40 million in federal funding because he said California isn’t enforcing English proficiency requirements for truckers.

California only sent out notices to invalidate the licenses after Duffy pressured the state to make sure immigrants who are in the country illegally aren’t granted the licenses. An audit found problems like licenses that remained valid long after an immigrant’s authorization to be in the country expired or licenses where the state couldn’t prove it checked a driver’s immigration status.

“California does NOT have an ‘extension’ to keep breaking the law and putting Americans at risk on the roads,” Duffy posted on the social platform X.

The Transportation Department has been prioritizing the issue ever since a truck driver who was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people in August.

California officials said they are working to make sure the federal Transportation Department is satisfied with the reforms they have put in place. The state had planned to resume issuing commercial driver’s licenses in mid-December, but the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration blocked that.

“Commercial drivers are an important part of our economy — our supply chains don’t move, and our communities don’t stay connected without them,” said DMV Director Steve Gordon.

The Sikh Coalition, a national group defending the civil rights of Sikhs, and the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the California drivers. They said immigrant truck drivers were being unfairly targeted. The driver in the Florida crash and the driver in another fatal crash in California in October are both Sikhs.
Immigrants account for about 20% of all truck drivers, but these non-domiciled licenses immigrants can receive only represent about 5% of all commercial driver’s licenses or about 200,000 drivers. The Transportation Department also proposed new restrictions that would severely limit which noncitizens could get a license, but a court put the new rules on hold.

Mumeeth Kaur, the legal director of the Sikh Coalition, said this delay “is an important step towards alleviating the immediate threat that these drivers are facing to their lives and livelihoods.”

Duffy previously threatened to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding from California, Pennsylvania and Minnesota after audits found significant problems under the existing rules like commercial licenses being valid long after an immigrant truck driver’s work permit expired. He dropped the threat to withhold $160 million from California after the state said it would revoke the licenses because the state was complying.

Trucking trade groups have praised the effort to get unqualified drivers who shouldn’t have licenses or can’t speak English off the road. They also applauded the Transportation Department’s moves to go after questionable commercial driver’s license schools.

States will share $10 billion for rural health care next year in a program that aims to offset the Trump administration’s massive budget cuts to rural hospitals, federal officials announced Monday.

But while every state applied for money from the Rural Health Transformation Program, it won’t be distributed equally. And critics worry that the funding might be pulled back if a state’s policies don’t match up with the administration’s.

Officials said the average award for 2026 is $200 million, and the fund puts a total of $50 billion into rural health programs over five years. States propose how to spend their awards, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services assigns project officers to support each state, said agency administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.

“This fund was crafted as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, signed only six months ago now into law, in order to push states to be creative,” Oz said in a call with reporters Monday.

Under the program, half of the money is equally distributed to each state. The other half is allocated based on a formula developed by CMS that considered rural population size, the financial health of a state’s medical facilities and health outcomes for a state’s population.

The formula also ties $12 billion of the five-year funding to whether states are implementing health policies prioritized by the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative. Examples include requiring nutrition education for health care providers, having schools participate in the Presidential Fitness Test or banning the use of SNAP benefits for so-called junk foods, Oz said.

Several Republican-led states — including Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas — have already adopted rules banning the purchase of foods like candy and soda with SNAP benefits.

The money that the states get will be recalculated annually, Oz said, allowing the administration to “claw back” funds if, for example, state leaders don’t pass promised policies. Oz said the clawbacks are not punishments, but leverage governors can use to push policies by pointing to the potential loss of millions.

“I’ve already heard governors express that sentiment that this is not a threat, that this is actually an empowering element of the One Big Beautiful Bill,” he said.

Carrie Cochran-McClain, chief policy officer with the National Rural Health Association, said she’s heard from a number of Democratic-led states that refused to include such restrictions on SNAP benefits even though it could hurt their chance to get more money from the fund.

“It’s not where their state leadership is,” she said. Oz and other federal officials have touted the program as a 50% increase in Medicaid investments in rural health care. Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska who has been critical of many of the administration’s policies but voted for the budget bill that slashed Medicaid, pointed to the fund when recently questioned about how the cuts would hurt rural hospitals.

“That’s why we added a $50 billion rural hospital fund, to help any hospital that’s struggling,” Bacon said. “This money is meant to keep hospitals afloat.”

But experts say it won’t nearly offset the losses that struggling rural hospitals will face from the federal spending law’s $1.2 trillion cut from the federal budget over the next decade, primarily from Medicaid. Millions of people are also expected to lose Medicaid benefits.

Estimates suggest rural hospitals could lose around $137 billion over the next decade because of the budget measure. As many as 300 rural hospitals were at risk for closure because of the GOP’s spending package, according to an analysis by The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“When you put that up against the $50 billion for the Rural Health Transformation Fund, you know — that math does not add up,” Cochran-McClain said.

She also said there’s no guarantee that the funding will go to rural hospitals in need. For example, she noted, one state’s application included a proposal for healthier, locally sourced school lunch options in rural areas.

And even though innovation is a goal of the program, Cochran-McClain said it’s tough for rural hospitals to innovate when they were struggling to break even before Congress’ Medicaid cuts.

“We talk to rural providers every day that say, ‘I would really love to do x, y, z, but I’m concerned about, you know, meeting payroll at the end of the month,’” she said. “So when you’re in that kind of crisis mode, it is, I would argue, almost impossible to do true innovation.”