Updated at 10:01 p.m. ET on January 3, 2026
Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been forcibly taken from Venezuela and are being moved to the United States to face criminal drug-trafficking charges. Regardless of the international-law implications of this military action, the Trump administration’s description of what awaits Maduro and Flores has also transgressed basic principles of American domestic criminal law, as well as the underlying philosophical justification for punishment.

The most memorable moment in the presidency of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro—at least until his kidnapping by Delta Force early this morning—came in 2017, when he accomplished the extraordinary feat of making the entire population of his country salivate with hunger simultaneously by taking a huge bite of an empanada on live television. It was as if President Donald Trump were to pause during an Oval Office address, then produce from a drawer in the Resolute Desk a fully loaded chili dog.

President Donald Trump has launched not a splendid little war, but perhaps a splendid little operation in Venezuela. He has captured a dictator and removed him from power. So far, Trump seems to have executed a bad idea well: The military operation, dubbed “Operation Absolute Resolve,” seems to have been flawless. The strategic wisdom, however, is deeply questionable. And the legal basis, as offered by the president and his team, is absurd. Some Americans, and some U.S. allies, are appalled.

Earlier this week, some people on X began replying to photos with a very specific kind of request. “Put her in a bikini,” “take her dress off,” “spread her legs,” and so on, they commanded Grok, the platform’s built-in chatbot. Again and again, the bot complied, using photos of real people—celebrities and noncelebrities, including some who appear to be young children—and putting them in bikinis, revealing underwear, or sexual poses.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Donald Trump spent the holidays drifting further and further from the “America First” doctrine he campaigned on. The president who once promised to disentangle the United States from foreign conflicts has turned his focus abroad: On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, respectively, the U.S.

Alone in the dead of night, a man can fall into bleak thoughts. In the wee, small hours of the morning, he might think about lost loves, mull over great regrets, or wrestle with the inevitability of his own mortality. But Donald Trump, awake and restless in the Florida darkness, apparently consoles himself by imagining a war of liberation in a Middle Eastern nation of 92 million people.
At 2:58 a.m.

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books.
Recently, I went out for drinks with a young woman who wanted advice about establishing herself as a book critic. “Everyone has read less than you think they have,” I told her immediately. I reassured her that in some respects, making your way through the world’s great literature is a numbers game: Someone twice your age has simply spent more time on the planet—and has therefore had more time to turn pages.

The Divine Comedy is more than 14,000 lines long and is divided into three parts, but it’s the first part, the Inferno, that gets all the attention. For centuries, readers have preferred the horrors of hell to the perfection of heaven. Gustave Doré, the celebrated French illustrator, did elaborate engravings for the three canticles in the mid-19th century and devoted 99 out of 135 of them to Dante Alighieri’s darkest scenes.