By VANESSA A. ALVAREZ, TIM REYNOLDS and BRUCE SCHREINER, Associated Press

DORAL, Fla. (AP) — Revelers chanted “liberty” and draped Venezuelan flags over their shoulders in South Florida on Saturday to celebrate the American military attack that toppled Nicolás Maduro’s government — a stunning outcome they had longed for but left them wondering what comes next in their troubled homeland.

People gathered for a rally in Doral, Florida — the Miami suburb where President Donald Trump has a golf resort and where roughly half the population is of Venezuelan descent — as word spread that Venezuela’s president had been captured and flown out of the country.

Outside the El Arepazo restaurant, a hub of the Venezuelan culture of Doral, one man held a piece of cardboard with “Libertad” scrawled with a black marker. It was a sentiment expressed by other native Venezuelans hoping for a new beginning for their home country as they chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”

“We’re like everybody — it’s a combination of feelings, of course,” said Alejandra Arrieta, who came to the U.S. in 1997. “There’s fears. There’s excitement. There’s so many years that we’ve been waiting for this. Something had to happen in Venezuela. We all need the freedom.”

Trump insisted Saturday that the U.S. government would run the country at least temporarily and was already doing so. The action marked the culmination of an escalating Trump administration pressure campaign on the oil-rich South American nation as well as weeks of planning that tracked Maduro’s behavioral habits.

About 8 million people have fled Venezuela since 2014, settling first in neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. After the COVID-19 pandemic, they increasingly set their sights on the United States, walking through the jungle in Colombia and Panama or flying to the U.S. on humanitarian parole with a financial sponsor.

In Doral, upper-middle-class professionals and entrepreneurs came to invest in property and businesses when socialist Hugo Chávez won the presidency in the late 1990s. They were followed by political opponents and entrepreneurs who set up small businesses. In recent years, more lower-income Venezuelans have come for work in service industries.

They are doctors, lawyers, beauticians, construction workers and house cleaners. Some are naturalized U.S. citizens or live in the country illegally with U.S.-born children. Others overstay tourist visas, seek asylum or have some form of temporary status.

Niurka Meléndez, who fled her native Venezuela in 2015, said Saturday she’s hopeful that Maduro’s ouster will improve life in her homeland. Meléndez immigrated to New York City, where she co-founded Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid, a group striving to empower the lives of immigrants. She became a steadfast advocate for change in her home country, where she said her countrymen were “facing a humanitarian crisis.”

Related Articles

How the US captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro

Today in History: January 3, Apple Computer incorporated in California

US captures Venezuela’s leader and his wife in a stunning operation and plans to prosecute them

US Coast Guard searches for survivors of boat strikes as odds diminish days later

Fans mourn closure of cupcake vending machine company Sprinkles Cupcakes

She hopes those hardships will end as a result of American intervention.

“For us, it’s just the start of the justice we need to see,” Meléndez said in a phone interview.

Her homeland had reached a “breaking point” due to forced displacements, repression, hunger and fear, she said. She called for international humanitarian support to help in Venezuela’s recovery.

“Removing an authoritarian system responsible for these crimes creates the possibility, not a guarantee, but a possibility, for recovery,” she said. “A future without criminal control over institutions is the minimum condition for rebuilding a country based on justice, rule of law, and democratic safeguards.”

Schreiner reported from Shelbyville, Kentucky.

Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb

When people hear the phrase “financial health,” they often picture high income, a perfectly balanced portfolio, or a retirement account with a very large number attached to it. In reality, financial health is much more personal and far more practical.

At its core, financial wellness is about feeling secure today while preserving the freedom to make changes as life evolves. Financial health isn’t something you acquire and file away. It’s a habit that seeks progress, not perfection.

One useful way to track your progress is through a regular Financial Health Check — a simple, repeatable process to see what’s working, what isn’t, and where small tweaks to how you do things could make a big difference over time.

Start with goals and understanding

A good financial checkup begins with clarity. Do you know what you’re working toward, and do you understand the basics needed to get there? That might mean saving consistently, managing debt responsibly, or having a basic grasp of how investing works.

Many people underestimate how important education is to financial confidence. Money stressors often stem from uncertainty, not poor decisions. Reading financial articles, listening to educational podcasts, or attending a community workshop can be important first steps in becoming financially literate.

Know your net worth

A net worth statement may sound intimidating, but it’s simply a snapshot: what you own minus what you owe. Your home equity, savings, and investments go on one side; mortgages, loans, and credit card balances go on the other.

Updating this once-a-year can be surprisingly powerful. The number itself matters less than the direction. Is your net worth gradually improving over time? That trend often tells the real story.

Understand your cash flow

Before you can create a budget, you need to know where your money actually goes. Tracking spending for a month or two, whether through an app, spreadsheet, or even a simple notebook, can reveal patterns you might not notice otherwise.

This step isn’t about judgment. It’s about awareness. Many people discover they’re doing better than expected, while others find small leaks that quietly add up.

Spend with purpose

Not all spending is bad spending. The real question is whether your money is supporting what matters most to you.

Cutting back on low-value expenses, such as unused subscriptions or impulse purchases, can free up dollars for things you truly enjoy. The goal isn’t deprivation. It’s balance, so you can spend on what brings you happiness without guilt.

Pay yourself first

Saving for retirement remains one of the clearest indicators of long-term financial health. Even modest increases, especially when tied to raises, can make a meaningful difference over time.

It’s also worth paying attention to where your savings go from a tax perspective, balancing taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free accounts when possible. Workplace benefits, such as employer matches, health savings accounts, and financial education tools can add meaningful support.

Manage debt and credit sensibly

Debt isn’t inherently bad, but high-interest debt can be a major obstacle to achieving financial peace of mind. Paying down credit cards and other costly loans often delivers immediate relief from money worries.

Checking your credit report once a year is another smart habit. Errors and identity theft are more common than many people realize, and your credit profile affects everything from loan rates to insurance costs.

Prepare for the unexpected

An emergency fund acts as your financial shock absorber. Ideally, it covers several months of essential expenses. Building it gradually is perfectly acceptable.

Accessibility is very important. Emergency savings should be liquid and stable, not tied up in long-term investments meant for growth.

Review your investments periodically — and your comfort level

At least once a year, it’s worth asking whether your investment mix still fits your goals, time horizon, and tolerance for risk. A simple gut check helps: Are you sleeping well at night? If market swings cause ongoing anxiety, your portfolio may need adjustment.

Don’t overlook your physical health

Financial health doesn’t exist in isolation. Physical health plays a major role in how much you can enjoy the life you’re planning for. Staying active, eating well, and keeping up with preventive care are just as important as saving and investing.

In the end, a Financial Health Check isn’t about achieving a perfect score. It’s about staying engaged, making thoughtful choices, and recognizing that small, consistent improvements can lead to lasting financial freedom.

Related Articles

Your Money: Resolution: New year, no (bad) debt

Your Money: Meaningful conversations around the holidays 

Your Money: Holiday spending without the guilt

Your Money: Financial planning tips for America’s heroes

Your Money: Financial stress can lead to avoidance, survey says

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb are financial advisers at Wealth Enhancement Group and co-hosts of “Your Money” on WCCO 830 AM on Sunday mornings. Email Bruce and Peg at yourmoney@wealthenhancement.com. Advisory services offered through Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services LLC, a registered investment adviser and affiliate of Wealth Enhancement Group.

Koi Perich has thrown his hat into the NCAA transfer portal and there’s no way to spin this as a positive for the University of Minnesota’s football program.

Or college football.

Even if he wasn’t the Gophers’ best safety this season — that was Kerry Brown — and coach P.J. Fleck can use the money the U was paying Perich on more than one transfer who can help next season, the fact is, the best in-state prospect to buy into P.J. Fleck’s row-the-boat paradigm has taken a long look and decided he’s more interested in the big-time NIL paradigm.

Whether it’s more money, more national exposure or a more likely path to the NFL — debatable — Perich has decided it won’t happen at Minnesota.

As a college football fan, one has to wonder if watching most of your school’s best players go look for the bigger, better thing after every season is palatable. And as a Gophers’ fan, one has to accept that this just doesn’t bode well for the program’s viability as, for all intents and purposes, a small-market professional football franchise.

One could look at what Indiana has done the past two seasons and see a crack under the fence just big enough for those without a ticket to crawl through. We know that, for now, it’s possible for an also-ran Power Four program to genuinely contend for a national championship. But Minnesota appears to be moving the other way at an inopportune time.

The Gophers went 8-5 after beating New Mexico in the Rate Bowl in Phoenix. The Lobos were one of two bowl teams they beat this season, and Minnesota was 0-3 against the best Big Ten teams they played — Ohio State, Iowa and Oregon — and was outscored 123-19.

With talented young quarterback Drake Lindsey under center and what they believed would be a prolific running game — it wasn’t — the Gophers had their eyes on another move up the conference ladder. Instead, it was a typically OK season.

Minnesota Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck leads his team onto the field at the start of an NCAA football game against the Nebraska Cornhuskers at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Friday, Oct. 17, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

It’s probably not lost on longtime Gophers fans that Indiana started the season as the only other OG Big Ten school with a Rose Bowl drought (1968) nearly as long as Minnesota’s (1962). And the Hoosiers just humiliated Alabama in Pasadena on New Year’s Day to advance to the College Football Playoff semifinals.

This space has been used, fairly recently, to praise the job that Fleck has done in his nine seasons in Dinkytown. A large reason for that is the way he cleaned up an ugly culture fomented by former coach Jerry Kill that later exploded into ugly, and very public, behavior under replacement Tracy Claeys.

What was once a national embarrassment for the Gophers has changed for the better under Fleck. Against most odds, his dedication to teaching his players how to meditate and where to place the salad fork has, in fact, resulted in a program that Minnesota can be proud of off and, largely, on the field.

When, for instance, they were short of the six wins required to earn a berth in one of 41 bowl games in 2023, they became eligible because they had the best graduation rate of available teams. That matters, or used to, anyway.

Further, Fleck’s teams are 7-0 in bowl games, including a victory over a then-Top 10 Auburn team in the 2019 Outback Bowl that pushed them to a program-record 11 wins and No. 10 in the final Associated Press poll. The Gophers also have been sending more players to the NFL, a recruiting point that could help build the talent coffers.

Landing Perich, a four-star recruit from Esko who turned down 2025 national champion Ohio State to stay home, was another positive step. Losing him, as seems inevitable, is two steps back, because whatever the safety and kick returner’s goals are, he’s convinced they will be easier to meet elsewhere.

Even Darius Taylor, a talented but oft-injured tailback, who will no doubt be the Gophers’ starter next season, waited until the last moment — at least publicly — to renew his vows with Minnesota.

Fleck did something smart when this season ended, when he publicly revealed that he was allowing Lindsey to help him target receivers in the next recruiting class. In the absence of the big, big money, giving a promising QB like Lindsey that kind of ownership is the next best thing to the bigger, better thing.

But isn’t it exhausting? Not just for Fleck, or athletics director Mark Coyle, but everyone with an emotional stake in the Gophers’ success.

Fleck has been conspicuously tied to just about every coaching opening that appears to be a step up from Minnesota. If any of that was real, and those offers come again, he might want to finally take one with more money in the slush fund.

Related Articles

Wisconsin-River Falls football: North Central is a dynasty, but D3 title game isn’t David vs. Goliath

World Juniors: Finland stuns U.S. in overtime

Women’s hockey: Gophers shutout Sacred Heart

Division III football: River Falls’ Kaleb Blaha wins Gagliardi trophy as D3 Player of the Year

Gophers add quarterback Michael Merdinger in transfer portal

By MEG KINNARD and MICHELLE L. PRICE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of growing military pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump ordered a brazen operation into the South American country to capture its leader and whisk him to the United States where his administration planned to put him on trial.

In a Saturday morning interview on “Fox and Friends Weekend,” Trump laid out the details of the overnight strike, after which he said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were flown by helicopter to a U.S. warship.

Maduro was in a ‘fortress,’ Trump says

Trump described Maduro as being “highly guarded” in a presidential palace that was “like a fortress,” although the Venezuelan leader was not able to get to a safe room.

American forces were armed with “massive blowtorches,” which they would have used to cut through steel walls had Maduro locked himself in the room, Trump said.

“It had what they call a safety space, where it’s solid steel all around,” Trump said. “He didn’t get that space closed. He was trying to get into it, but he got bum-rushed right so fast that he didn’t get into that. We were prepared.”

Part of that preparation, Trump said, included practicing maneuvers on a replica building.

“They actually built a house which was identical to the one they went into with all the same, all that steel all over the place,” Trump said.

‘We turned off all the lights’

Trump said that the U.S. operation took place in darkness, although he did not detail how that had happened. He said the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights in Caracas,” the capital of Venezuela.

“This thing was so organized,” he said. “And they go into a dark space with machine guns facing them all over the place.”

At least seven explosions were heard in Caracas. The attack lasted less than 30 minutes.

Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who under that country’s law takes power, said some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed.

Trump says ‘a couple of guys injured’

Trump said a few U.S. members of the operation were injured but he believed no one was killed.

Related Articles

Today in History: January 3, Apple Computer incorporated in California

US captures Venezuela’s leader and his wife in a stunning operation and plans to prosecute them

US Coast Guard searches for survivors of boat strikes as odds diminish days later

Fans mourn closure of cupcake vending machine company Sprinkles Cupcakes

President Trump orders divestment in $2.9 million chips deal to protect US security interests

“A couple of guys were hit, but they came back and they’re supposed to be in pretty good shape,” he said.

The Republican president said the U.S. had lost no aircraft, but that a helicopter was “hit pretty hard.”

“We had to do it because it’s a war,” he added.

The weather was a factor

Trump said U.S. forces held off on conducting the operation for days, waiting for cloud cover to pass because the “weather has to be perfect.”

“We waited four days,” he said. “We were going to do this four days ago, three days ago, two days ago. And then all of a sudden it opened up and we said, go. And I’ll tell you, it’s, it was just amazing.”

Where is Maduro now?

Trump said that Maduro and Flores were flown by helicopter to a U.S. warship and would go on to New York to face charges. The Justice Department released an indictment accusing the pair of having an alleged role in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.

Months of escalating actions

The raid was a dramatic escalation from a series of strikes the U.S. military has carried out on what Trump has said were drug carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since early September. There had been 35 known strikes that killed at least 115 people.

On Dec. 29, Trump said the U.S. struck a facility where boats accused of carrying drugs “load up.” The CIA was behind the drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels. It was the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began its strikes in September.

Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina.