Accordingly, what happened in Caracas is best understood not as the US enforcing the law, but as the US breaking international law. ‘It’s not a bad term’Venezuelan officials, including Maduro himself (New York Times, 1/5/26), say that he was “kidnapped” by the US. Co-anchor Andrew Chang asked:Did the US military just kidnap Nicholas Maduro?… “Kidnap” is a loaded word because it implies illegality. Yet corporate media eschew such language for the same sanitized “arrest” or “capture” language they employed for Maduro and Flores. Five (2%) included a version of the word “kidnap,” all in quotation marks.

Source: International New York Times January 23, 2026 03:07 UTC