House Speaker Mike Johnson stated following tonight’s roughly two-hour-long closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill to senior members of Congress regarding the operation to capture Nicolás Maduro, that he does not expect troops on the ground in Venezuela. “We don’t expect direct involvement in any other way beyond just coercing the interim government to get that going. I expect that there will be an election called in Venezuela,” said Johnson.

At least sixteen oil tankers under sanctions imposed by the United States are currently in the process of attempting to evade and possibly break the U.S. Navy’s “complete blockade” in the Southern Caribbean, which was ordered by President Donald J. Trump to be positioned around Venezuela, according to The New York Times and TankerTrackers.

The vessels, which for several weeks have been spotted docked at ports on the northern coast of Venezuela, had all departed by Saturday’s following the capture of Venezuela’s Former President Nicolás Maduro in an operation against the nation’s capital by the U.S. Army’s Delta Force. Four of the vessels have been tracked by satellite sailing east along the shore of Venezuela, using fake ship names and “spoofing” their positions, one falsely appearing in the Baltic Sea and another off the coast of Nigeria.

According to internal communications from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company and two people in the Venezuelan oil industry, the vessels left port without authorization from the interim government led by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, which was created following the capture Saturday of Maduro. At least three of the ships were in close proximity as they left Venezuela in the same direction, suggesting at least some coordination and a possible attempt to “overwhelm” the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard.

Fires burn and smoke rises from an oil depot near the town of Usman, in the Lipetsk Oblast of Western Russia, following a drone attack earlier tonight by Ukraine.

Venezuela’s Ministry of Communication and Information has now confirmed that gunfire heard earlier tonight near the Miraflores Presidential Palace Complex in Caracas, was the results of warning shots being fired by police at “unidentified drones” flying over the palace without permission from the Ministry of Defense. “We want to clarify that what happened in downtown Caracas was because some drones flew over without permission and the police fired dissuasive shots. No confrontation took place. The whole country is in total tranquility,” said a Spokesman for the Information Ministry.

Rare footage from recent clashes between Cambodia and Thailand, which shows a Thai FPV Drone striking a bunker used by the Royal Cambodian Army. Unlike Ukraine, we have gotten very little footage of drone use by either Cambodian or Thai Forces.

President Donald J. Trump speaking this morning about Nicolás Maduro: “He was a violent guy. He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit. But he’s a violent guy.”

President Trump speaking this morning in front of House Republicans:

President Donald J. Trump speaking to House Republicans this morning about Democrats: “They had the worst president. They did the worst job. They have the worst policy. How we have to even run against these people - I won't say cancel the election, they should cancel the election, because the fake news with say, 'He wants the elections canceled. He's a dictator.' They always call me a dictator. Nobody is worse than Obama and the people that surrounded Biden. Not Biden. I don’t think it was Biden. He didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

Um, okay…

Talks today in Paris between Israel and Syria were “positive,” with both sides agreeing to step up the pace of negotiations and meet more often, according to an Israeli official. “Both countries expressed a desire to reach a security agreement under President Trump’s vision for the Middle East,” the official tells Axios.

RRR7206, an RC-135W “Rivet Joint” Signals Intelligence Aircraft with the Royal Air Force is returning to RAF Waddington following a mission over the Northern Atlantic near Iceland, possible looking at the Guyana-flagged Iranian-linked sanctioned crude oil tanker, Bella 1, also known as the Russian-flagged, Marinera.

In a several-paragraph-long post this morning on Truth Social, President Donald J. Trump once again attacked Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, announcing his support for Ed Gallrein as a primary challenger to Massie for his congressional seat in Kentucky.

Lockheed Martin announced Tuesday that it would be increasing its annual production rate of PAC-3 MSE (Missile Segment Enhancement) Interceptors for the MIM-104 “Patriot” Surface-to-Air Missile System from roughly 600, to 2,000 a year, under a new contract with the Department of Defense. Stockpiles for Patriot Interceptors have been running dangerously low now for over a year, with hundreds of missiles being expended in Ukraine and during the Twelve-Day War against Iran.

Footage published by the Russian state-owned media network RT, which appears to show a naval vessel - claimed to be a cutter with the U.S. Coast Guard, however, it does not appear to represent any ship operated by the United States - closely following the Guyana-flagged Iranian-linked sanctioned crude oil tanker, Bella 1, also known as the Russian-flagged, Marinera, in the Northern Atlantic.