U.S. Faces Uproar Over Venezuela Attack, and Kennedy Scales Back Childhood Vaccine Recommendations

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, January 6th. Here's what we're covering.

0:13The continuing uproar over the U.S.'s attack on Venezuela and its capture of Nicolas Maduro played out in four key moments yesterday. First, at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live. And we're not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be used as a base of operation for our nation's adversaries. There, the U.S. defended its actions in Venezuela, but faced a wave of criticism from some of its staunch allies, including Brazil, Mexico and France. They said the military operation to seize Maduro was a violation of international law, and a top French diplomat said the U.S.

0:58had chipped away at the, quote, very foundation of international order.

1:08Next, in Venezuela.

1:14There was a fiery meeting of the country's National Assembly, where lawmakers, including Maduro's son, called for his release. And Delce Rodriguez, the interim president of the country, blasted what she called an illegitimate military aggression, taking a hostile tone toward the U.S., even as she has called for peaceful coexistence. The defiant tone of the meeting underscored the fact that even with Maduro in detention in the U.S., his loyalists still have a tight grip on power in Venezuela. Then, at almost exactly the same time, in a courthouse in Manhattan, Maduro himself made his first appearance in front of a judge, entering a plea of not guilty to narco-terrorism and other charges, and saying that he had been kidnapped by the American government.

2:03He said he was not a common criminal defendant, but a prisoner of war.

2:11Outside the courthouse, crowds gathered both to protest the U.S.'s actions, with chants of no blood for oil, hands off Venezuelan soil, but also to celebrate Maduro's capture. The Times spoke with Venezuelan dissidents in the crowd who said they'd been persecuted by the Maduro regime, and others who said that they hoped his removal would be a new beginning for Venezuela. I understand that so many people doesn't agree because it looks crazy what happened. But for us that have been suffering so many years, I just tell you, you never even know what we already live with this situation. And lastly, in Washington.

2:55We have the United States military stationed outside the country. We set the terms and conditions. We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So the United States is in charge. The administration has been doubling down on its insistence that it now controls Venezuela. Stephen Miller, one of President Trump's top policy advisors, went on CNN to explain their approach. He was quickly met with sharp criticism from Senator Bernie Sanders. Mr. Miller gave a very good definition of imperialism. And that's not new. I mean, England did it. France did it. The United States has done it.

3:33We are powerful. We have the strongest military on Earth. We can run any country we want. Is that really the kind of America that our people want? I don't think so. The Senate is expected to hold a vote later this week on a resolution that would force President Trump to get Congress's permission to continue any military operations in Venezuela. So far, Republican lawmakers have largely backed the administration, while some Democrats have questioned whether the raid to capture Maduro was legal.

4:11Now, two more quick updates on the Trump administration. The United States should have Greenland as part of the United States. In his interview on CNN, Stephen Miller also declared that Greenland rightfully belongs to the U.S. and that the Trump administration could seize it from Denmark if it wanted to. We live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. The comments reflect Miller's vision for a world order in which the U.S. can overthrow other countries and take territory if the government says it's in the national interest.

4:50If the U.S. does act on Greenland, it would essentially rip NATO apart. Denmark and the U.S. are both founding members of the military alliance, where countries pledge to defend each other against attack. Denmark's prime minister said yesterday that Trump's threats to seize Greenland should be taken seriously.

5:14And in one of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s most significant changes yet, The CDC's list of recommended vaccines for children has been drastically scaled back. There were 17 routine shots recommended for kids. Now there are 11. Federal officials announced yesterday that they no longer suggest all children get immunized against hepatitis A and B, the flu, or RSV, which is the leading cause of hospitalization for infants in the U.S. Kennedy, who's been a longtime vaccine skeptic, said the move, quote, protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health. The updated guidance isn't expected to immediately affect families' access to the shots, but public health experts expressed outrage, saying federal officials did not present evidence to support the changes or incorporate input from vaccine experts.

6:11It's been an honor and a privilege to serve Georgia's 14th district as their representative. Effective midnight last night, the hard-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene has resigned from office. She abruptly announced that she was leaving late last year after publicly breaking with President Trump. The two went from close allies to repeatedly clashing over the last year, most notably over her push to get the Epstein files released. Trump branded her Marjorie Traitor Greene. As she leaves Washington, swearing that she's done with politics, my colleague Robert Draper says her legacy in Congress isn't a legislative one.

6:51It's not about any bills she championed. It's about how she used the political spotlight. What I am doing is sounding the alarm bells. This is a major crisis in America. She really, more than almost any legislator before her, understood that in Congress all the world's a stage and that you could seize people's attention, you could increase your own audience, you could amass online donations by doing outrageous things on camera. Are your feelings hurt? Her words down. Both in committee hearings and, for that matter, at the State of the Union address, where in 2022 she famously heckled President Biden.

7:31I'll give you a copy of the proposal. I spoke to Green at length, and in a nutshell, her reason for leaving Congress broke down into two categories. First, that Congress had become even more of a do-nothing branch of government than it had in the past. And secondly, because she felt that the leader of her party, President Trump, had strayed from the America First principles that brought her to Congress to begin with. I think that, among other things, it shows that there is a real fracture developing slowly but surely in the MAGA movement, where a few, not many, but a few leaders of that movement are calling into question its godfather.

8:22And finally, Eva Schloss, a Holocaust survivor and the stepsister of Anne Frank, has died at 96. Growing up, her family fled Vienna, then Brussels, ahead of the Nazis, before they landed in Amsterdam, where they became neighbors with the Franks. When both Eva and Anne were barely teenagers, their families went into hiding. Anne famously detailed that time in her diary. After roughly two years of staying hidden away, both families were discovered by the Gestapo. Anne died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Eva was later freed from Auschwitz. And Anne's father, who was the only surviving member of the Frank family, went on to marry Eva's mother.

9:06For more than 40 years, Eva didn't talk about the horrors that she'd endured during the war When her grandkids asked her about the tattoo on her arm, she told them it was a phone number. I was a very shy person, never spoken about my experience, and suddenly there were 200 people looking at me. But at the opening of an exhibit about Anne's life in the 1980s, Eva began to tell her own story publicly. Then eventually the floodgates opened and I couldn't stop anymore. She went on to travel all across the world to speak about the dangers of injustice, particularly to young people. In 2019, when she heard about a group of students in California who'd been photographed giving a Nazi salute, she went to meet with them personally, saying afterwards, I think they really didn't think about the consequences, but I think they have learned a lesson for life.

10:04Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, The View from Venezuela, with a Times correspondent on the ground in Caracas. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.