Machado’s return would pose an urgent question, a diplomat said: “Who’s in charge?”Photograph by Jared Soares for The New YorkerAmong Venezuelans, María Corina Machado is revered to the point of devotion. The Venezuelan opposition leader rose to prominence in the summer of 2024, when she ran for President against Nicolás Maduro and won two-thirds of the vote. During the campaign, Machado travelled across the country in a two-car caravan, dressed in the woman-of-the-people ensemble that she favors for rallies: a T-shirt and jeans, her hair pulled into a ponytail. Wherever she went, Machado would climb onto the roof of her car, with swathes of people assembled around. Supporters hoisted their children toward her or presented her with gifts—amulets, handwritten notes, rosaries, prayer cards.After Maduro brazenly stole the election, Venezuelans put their lives on the line to defend the rightful outcome. So, when President Donald Trump announced the leader’s arrest, on January 3rd, many expected to hear him mention Machado. She retained the support of a majority of Venezuelans and had become the face of the resistance. But Trump never referred to her, nor did he signal a concern for democracy. “We’re in the oil business,” he declared. Maduro’s Vice-President, Delcy Rodríguez, would be left in charge. Observers around the world accused Trump of toppling a foreign government with no plan for the future. Machado, though, was careful not to issue a single criticism.I started reporting this Profile right around that time, and ended up conducting long interviews with Machado, who has been living in exile, and with U.S. officials. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, had laid out a three-phase plan for Venezuela, entailing stabilization, recovery, and, ultimately, a political transition. But no one in the Administration ever put forth a concrete electoral timeline, and the U.S. economic incentives in Venezuela overshadowed the question of when—and if—Venezuelans would get to choose their country’s leader.That question has come to define Machado’s time in exile. She remains the most popular politician in the country, but she can’t lead unless she goes back. The Trump Administration seems convinced that her return would deepen the country’s tumult—destabilizing both the regime and the United States’ aims there. Machado’s years in the opposition taught her that the regime would adapt to nearly any circumstances to remain in power. Yet she insisted that the people would no longer allow it.“You cannot sustain an arrangement in which the entire country is against you,” she told me. Machado is now determined to return home. “Wait until I go back to Venezuela. What are they going to do? Throw me in jail? What are the gringos going to do? Negotiate a transition while I’m behind bars?” she asked, flashing a derisive look. “Help me get there. Otherwise, I’ll swim.”Read or listen to the story »Editor’s PickHow a Chinese Immigrant Driver Got Entangled in a Drug BustIn early 2025, a man from Queens arranged to pick up a passenger in New York’s North County. He’s been in jail upstate ever since. Jennifer Gonnerman reports »More Top StoriesThe new documentary short “Sawyer Avenue, Sunday Afternoon” goes inside an immigration arrest in Chicago that sparked a neighborhood protest. Watch it here. The cyclospora outbreak has added a new layer of anxiety to grocery shopping, and has laid bare our underfunded and overwhelmed public-health system. Marco Rubio’s ever-increasing prominence in the Administration has given him the power to take aim at leftists all over the world. “No one knows when it will end.” A doctor on the front lines of the Ebola emergency shares his experience of the third-largest outbreak of the disease in history. The most-clicked item in yesterday’s newsletter was a list of Richard Brody’s top three films of 2026 so far.Our Culture PicksThree books: Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s “Trilogy About the Boy” is set in the remote Westfjords of Iceland, and has the makings of a classic, “not only a work that endures but one that makes something endure in you,” our critic writes. A play: Jane Wickline, of “S.N.L.” fame, has created a musical revue about best friends with bad jobs and no girlfriends. A movie: In “Lost Chapters,” the director Lorena Alvarado “perceives a quasi-mystical dimension of ordinary things and serenely fills the screen with a sense of bittersweet wonder.”Puzzles & GamesToday’s Crossword Puzzle: Shade of blue that’s the subject of a monologue in “The Devil Wears Prada”—eight letters. Catalogues: Can you sort the items into the correct order? Shuffalo: Can you make a longer word with each new letter? Laugh Lines: Test your knowledge of classic New Yorker cartoons.Daily Cartoon“What if we call it Operation This Time Will Be Different?”Cartoon by Brendan LoperP.S. Helen Phillips’s very short story, the latest in our summer Flash Fiction series, is about the thrill and dread that a parent feels when leaving a child home alone.Ian Crouch contributed to today’s edition.