MADURO TOPPLED: US forces swept into Venezuela overnight, captured its President Nicolás Maduro, and flew him out of the country, President Trump announced. Maduro’s wife also was captured.

  Video shows helicopters in the night sky and explosions on the ground in Caracas.

  Trump announced the operation on his Truth Social account saying, “This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement.” He said he would address the nation at 11 this morning. Trump told The NY Times “It was a brilliant operation, actually,” but did not answer whether he had consulted Congress before triggering the operation.

  Trump has accused Maduro of being the head of a “narco-terrorist” organization. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Twitter/X that the Maduros “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”

NEW YEAR’S FIRE: The New York Times interviewed a 20-year old survivor of the horrific barroom fire in Switzerland who told them from a hospital bed that he had started to burn before there were flames 

  The fire was what’s called a flashover, a fire that superheats the air before spreading nearly instantly and creating temperatures up to 1,000 degrees.  “I saw my hands decomposing,” Noa Bersier  told the Times. “I felt like I was on fire. But there was no fire around me.” He said that, “My face was half-burned, I could tell that my hair was burned. I stank of burns.”

  It was a flashover fire that killed 100 people in a Rhode Island nightclub back in 2003.

  Swiss authorities have spent two days pulling out bodies and beginning to identify them. Investigators say, as witnesses have told reporters, that the fire was likely started by people holding up champagne bottles affixed with sparklers that ignited a low ceiling.

EXECUTIVE POWER: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani sparked his first controversy on only his second day in office revoking the executive order of his predecessor defining antisemitism, sweeping it out with a number of executive orders to give his administration a “clean slate.” 

  Mayor Eric Adams had signed some executive orders in his last months designed to crimp a new administration.  One of them barred city agencies from boycotting or divesting from Israel. He had also adopted the Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which says in its opening line that, “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” Mamdani in response to critics pledged to fight hate and “protect Jewish New Yorkers.”

PROTEST AND THREAT: President Trump threatened Iran with military action if they kill any of the thousands of protesters who’ve been in the streets for a week angry about the cost of living. Trump posted on his Truth Social that; “If Iran shots (sic) and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

  At least seven protesters have already been killed.

  Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s parliament, said, “The disrespectful President of America should also know that with this official statement, all American centers and forces across the entire region will be legitimate targets for us in response to any potential actions.”

  As one of the most economically sanctioned countries in the world, the value of Iranian currency is low and the price of food and other goods is high. Social protests have broken out in Iran before, resulting in tens of thousands of arrests and the use of live ammunition against crowds, resulting in hundreds of deaths. 

THE REGIME:

— The FBI announced yesterday that they interrupted an ISIS inspired New Year’s Eve terror attack on a grocery store.

  Agents said that Christian Sturdivant, an 18-year-old Burger King employee from suburban Charlotte, planned to attack shoppers at a grocery store with hammers and knives.  “It was a very well-planned, thoughtful attack,” Russ Ferguson, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, said at a news conference. 

  Authorities also admit that Sturdivant has serious psychiatric troubles. 

— Stephen Schwartz, the composer of “Wicked,” announced that he’s pulling out of hosting the Kennedy Center’s annual gala after President Trump put his name on the building. Schwartz said, “appearing there has now become an ideological statement.” 

— Contrary to the evidence provided every time he speaks, President Trump claims to be in perfect intellectual health. He wrote on his Truth Social that, “The White House Doctors have just reported that I am in “PERFECT HEALTH,” and that I “ACED” (Meaning, was correct on 100% of the questions asked!), for the third straight time, my Cognitive Examination, something which no other President, or previous Vice President, was willing to take.”

  If it’s a real cognitive test, there’s no such thing as getting every answer correct.

THE OBIT PAGE: Richard Pollak, the founding editor of More magazine, which took a critical look at the press during the 1970s, at times skewering coverage by the mainstream press of such subjects as  the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon, and the oil industry, died on December.27 in Stockholm. He was 91.

  The name “More” was taken from what reporters in the days before computers typed at the bottom of a page to indicate to editors that the article continued.

  A frequent target of the magazine was The New York Times and Columnist James Reston. The magazine published an article spiked by the Baltimore Sun that described improvements to Vice President Spiro Agnew’s home at government expense.

  “The magazine’s mission,” Pollak wrote in the introduction to a book collection of More articles, was to “embarrass the nation’s media managers whenever they deserve it — and thus (with luck) to nudge change.”

BELOW THE FOLD: Wake Forest last night outscored Mississippi State 43-29 to win the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. Wake Forest is not in the top 25 college football teams but Duke’s Mayo finished the game as the third most popular mayonnaise in the country. 

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