The U.S. and Venezuela have entered into an oil deal. And, NPR spent two years tracking heat-related deaths and found that people in the U.S. are dying from heat more than the official counts show.
Page A4From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 31 August 2026
US signs oil deal with Venezuela as its jailed president flashes a peace sign for cameras.
As it ran on the front
They call it a 'deal.' That's the word doing the work here, same as it always does — a 'deal' between the United States and Venezuela, two governments, business as usual, nothing to see. Except one side of that deal is currently a guy in a jail cell holding up two fingers for the camera, smiling, because apparently that's what you do now when you're the head of state and also an inmate — you flash a peace sign, you look slimmed-down, healthy, camera-ready, and somewhere a photo editor is picking the best angle.
And on the same day, or close enough to it, the oil starts flowing again, or the paperwork does, which in this business is the same thing. Nobody's asking how you sign an oil deal with a government whose president is currently in custody, because that question answers itself the second you say it out loud — you don't need the president smiling for the cameras, you need the guy who has the barrels, and it turns out those aren't always the same address anymore, and that used to matter and today it just doesn't.…
…(cont) This is the part nobody wants to say plain: the oil deal isn't about Maduro. It was never about Maduro. Maduro is the mascot, the guy they parade out for the jail photo, smiling like he just won something, while the actual transaction — the barrels, the money, the terms — gets negotiated somewhere else entirely, with somebody else entirely, and the smiling guy in the cell is there so the rest of us have a face to be mad at.
So you get to be mad at Maduro. Go ahead. Be mad at Maduro, flashing the peace sign, slimmed-down for his mugshot era. Meanwhile the oil deal closes and the gas station on the corner doesn't change its price by a nickel, because that was never what this was for. It's not for you. It was never for you. That's the whole deal, right there, in the actual word.
“They put Maduro in a cell and hand him a peace sign for the cameras while the actual oil deal gets cut somewhere else, with somebody else. You don't need the mascot's permission to move the barrels, you just need him smiling so the rest of us have someone to be mad at.”
“The Maduro photos are unrelated to ongoing energy diplomacy — two separate news cycles that happen to share a dateline. The United States negotiates with governments, not individuals, and Venezuela's oil infrastructure predates any one man's legal situation, which is a point I feel very confident about, mostly.”
The receipts
Ousted Venezuela dictator Nicolas Maduro appears to have slimmed down during his time behind bars — and even flashed a smile and peace sign in new photos from his New York City prison.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.