friday night

WASHINGTON — Maria Eugenia Torres Ramirez was having dinner with her family in Los Angeles on Friday night when the flood of messages began. Word had begun to circulate that the U.S. was invading Venezuela and would seize its president, Nicolás Maduro.

Torres Ramirez, 38, fled her native country in 2021, settled in L.A. and has a pending application for asylum. Her family is scattered throughout the world — Colombia, Chile and France. Since her parents died, none of her loved ones remain in Venezuela.

Still, news that the autocrat who separated them had been captured delivered a sense of long-awaited elation and united the siblings and cousins across continents for a rare four-hour phone call as the night unfolded.

“I waited for this moment for so long from within Venezuela, and now that I’m out, it’s like watching a movie,” said Torres Ramirez, a former political activist who opposed Maduro. “It’s like a jolt of relief.”

Many Venezuelans across the U.S. celebrated the military action that resulted in Maduro’s arrest. Economic collapse and political repression led roughly 8 million Venezuelans to emigrate since 2014, making it one of the world’s largest displacement crises.

About 770,000 live in the U.S. as of 2023, concentrated mainly in the regions of Miami, Orlando, Houston and New York. Just over 9,500 live in L.A., according to a 2024 U.S. Census estimate.

In the South Florida city of Doral, home to the largest Venezuelan American community, residents poured into the streets Saturday morning, carrying the Venezuelan flag, singing together and praising the military action as an act of freedom.

In Los Angeles, a different picture emerged as groups opposed to Maduro’s arrest took to the streets, though none identified themselves as being of Venezuelan descent. At a rally of about 40 people south of downtown Los Angeles, John Parker, a representative of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, called the raid a “brutal assault and kidnapping” that amounted to a war crime.

The United States’ intervention in Venezuela had nothing to do with stopping the flow of drugs, he said, and everything to do with undermining a legitimate socialist government. Parker called for Maduro to be set free as a few dozen protesters behind him chanted, “Hands off Venezuela.”

Parker said when he visited Venezuela a few weeks ago as part of a U.S. peacemaking delegation, he saw “the love people had for Maduro.”

A later demonstration in Pershing Square drew hundreds out in the rain to protest the U.S intervention. But when a speaker led chants of “No war in Venezuela,” a woman draped in a Venezuelan flag attempted to approach him and speak into the microphone. A phalanx of demonstrators circled her and shuttled her away.

At Mi Venezuela, a restaurant in Vernon, 16-year-old Paola Moleiro and her family ordered empanadas Saturday morning.

A portion of one of the restaurant’s walls was covered in Venezuelan bank notes scrawled with messages. One read: “3 de enero del 2026. Venezuela quedo libre.”

Venezuela is free.

Around midnight the night before, Paola started getting messages on WhatsApp from her relatives in Venezuela. The power was out, they said, and they forwarded videos of what sounded like bomb blasts.

Paola was terrified. She’d left Venezuela at age 7 with her parents and siblings, first for Panama and later the U.S., in 2023. But the rest of her family remained in Venezuela, and she had no idea what was going on.

Paola and her family stayed up scanning television channels for some idea of what was happening. Around 1:30 a.m., President Trump announced that U.S. forces had captured Maduro.

“The first thing I did, I called my aunt and said, ‘We are going to see each other again,’” she said.

Because of the Venezuelan state’s control over media, her relatives had no idea their leader had been seized by U.S. forces. “Are you telling me the truth?” Paola said her aunt asked.

Paola hasn’t been home in nine years. She misses her grandmother and her grandmother’s cooking, especially her caraotas negras, or black beans. As a child, she said, certain foods were so scarce that she had an apple for the first time only after moving to Panama.

Paola said she was grateful to Trump for ending decades of authoritarian rule that had reduced her home country to a shell of what it once was.

“Venezuela has always prayed for this,” she said. “It’s been 30 years. I feel it was in God’s hands last night.”

For Torres Ramirez, it was difficult to square her appreciation for Trump’s accomplishment in Venezuela with the fear she has felt as an immigrant under his presidency.

“It’s like a double-edged sword,” she said. “Throughout the course of this whole year, I have felt persecuted. I had to face ICE — I had to go to my appointment with the fear that I could lose it all because the immigration policies had changed and there was complete uncertainty. For a moment, I felt as if I was in Venezuela. I felt persecuted right here.”

During a news conference Saturday morning, Trump said Maduro was responsible for trafficking illicit drugs into the U.S. and the deaths of thousands of Americans. He repeated a baseless claim that the Maduro government had emptied Venezuela’s prisons and mental institutions and “sent their worst and most violent monsters into the United States to steal American lives.”

“They sent everybody bad into the United States, but no longer, and we have now a border where nobody gets through,” he said.

Trump also announced that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela and its vast oil reserves.

“We’ll run it professionally,” he said. “We’ll have the greatest oil companies in the world go in and invest billions and billions of dollars and take that money, use that money in Venezuela, and the biggest beneficiary are going to be the people of Venezuela.”

Torres Ramirez said that while she’s happy about Maduro’s ouster, she’s unsure how to feel about Trump’s announcement saying the U.S. will take over Venezuela’s oil industry. Perhaps it won’t be favorable in the long term for Venezuela’s economy, she said, but the U.S. intervention is a win for the country’s political future if it means people can return home.

Patricia Andrade, 63, who runs Raíces Venezolanas, a volunteer program in Miami that distributes donations to Venezuelan immigrants, said she believes the Trump administration is making the right move by remaining involved until there is a transition of power.

Andrade, a longtime U.S. citizen, said she hasn’t been to Venezuela in 25 years — even missing the deaths of both parents. She said she was accused of treason for denouncing the imprisonment of political opponents and the degradation of Venezuela’s democracy under Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez. She said she worries that Venezuela’s remaining political prisoners could be killed as payback for Maduro’s arrest.

“We tried everything — elections, marches, more elections … and it couldn’t be done,” she said. “Maduro was getting worse and worse, there was more repression. If they hadn’t removed him, we were never going to recover Venezuela.”

While she doesn’t want the U.S. to fix the problems of other countries, she thanked Trump for U.S. involvement in Venezuela.

She said she can’t wait to visit her remaining family members there.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Morez Johnson Jr. scored a career-high 29 points, including 17 in the first half, and No. 2 Michigan beat No. 24 USC 96-66 on Friday night.

Roddy Gayle Jr. added 12 points for the Wolverines (13-0, 3-0 Big Ten), and Will Tschetter, Trey McKenney and L.J. Cason each scored 10.

Michigan is off to its best start since it won 17 straight games to start the 2018-19 season.

Jaden Brownell scored 16 points and Ezra Ausar added 15 for the Trojans (12-2, 1-2), whose only previous loss was by eight points against Washington on Dec. 6. Chad Baker-Mazara, who came into the game averaging 21 points, was hampered by early foul trouble and finished with 12 points on three-of-11 shooting.

Michigan starting guard Nimari Burnett was helped from the court with 16:25 left after falling during a battle under the basket. He went down to the floor and appeared to be bleeding above his eyebrow and holding his ankle. He sat on the bench the rest of the night.

The Wolverines bolted out to an 11-0 lead thanks to a defense that forced six early turnovers. USC got within five points twice in the first half and Michigan responded with a 32-19 run to build a 49-31 halftime advantage.

USC got no closer the rest of the way.

On the Friday night after Thanksgiving, a hotel room on the 17th floor of the Hotel Indigo in Downtown Los Angeles was transformed into a leather dressing room. About a dozen friends crowded around a king-size bed, cracking open Tecates, vibing to techno house music from a portable speaker, and adjusting each other’s harnesses.

The flash of a digital camera went off like a strobe as Yair Lopez documented his friends before their night at an afterparty. They were all there as part of the L.A. iteration of CLAW: a national leather and kink convention that offers workshops, parties and community spaces for people interested in BDSM culture. Founded in 2002, the convention started out in Cleveland, but has also held events in in L.A. since 2021.

As others spent their Thanksgiving holiday with blood relatives at the dinner table, this particular gathering was dubbed “Leather Thanksgiving” — a celebration of chosen family, cobbled together from various corners of L.A.’s queer nightlife. For Lopez and his friends, that sense of belonging is only growing.

“This chain was gifted to me from a friend,” Lopez said as he adjusted the silver around his neck. “Chains with a lock represent that you have a dom and the other person has the key. I’m still waiting for the lock,” he added jokingly, glancing at his boyfriend.

Leather enthusiasts pre-game ahead of the release party for the film, “Encuerados,” on November 28th at the Hotel Indigo in Downtown Los Angeles.

(Yair Lopez / For De Los)

It was a big day for Lopez. Earlier he showcased three of his photos as part of a leather art gallery and attended a screening of “Encuerados,” a short documentary he appeared in, which shadowed a group of Latino men carving out space in L.A.’s leather community. An “Encuerados” afterparty would soon follow.

For Lopez and his friends, leather is less about fetish and more about kinship, safety and visibility, in a city where queer Latino spaces remain scarce.

Lopez has become a visible force in L.A.’s leather underground scene, building community through both his art and the spaces he helps create. He has self-published his work through photos and zines; he also founded Contramundo, a Latino leather night at the Bullet Bar in North Hollywood. His community work even led to a third-place finish in the 2023 Mr. L.A. Leather competition.

He started shooting a decade ago, moving from street scenes and hikes to L.A.’s queer nightlife. That work eventually led him to the Eagle, where he found a muse and a community he didn’t know he needed.

“I grew up in a pretty religious Mexican household in the San Fernando Valley. I was made to feel ashamed of who I was, even my own body, so finding this felt so needed,” he recalled.

Located in Silver Lake, the Eagle is a legacy leather bar that has anchored L.A.’s kink scene for decades. It is also one of the few remaining spaces for this corner of queer nightlife. And while Lopez did feel seen through the leather community, there was still a piece missing.

“It is no surprise that a lot of gay spaces are predominantly white, so finding gay brown community is hard. But that changed when I started meeting other like-minded Latinos in leather,” Lopez said.

One of those Latinos was Leonardo Iriarte, the first Latino Mr. L.A. Leather and co-founder of Payasos L.A., a nonprofit that organizes events and mutual aid efforts to support Latino visibility in the leather world.

The group of friends ran into Iriarte as they made their way to the 18th floor, where he was DJing for the night in a large, dimly lit conference room.

Dressed in black leather pants and boots, Iriarte had “Mr. L.A. Leather 2011” embroidered across the back of his vest. The Michoacán native also happened to be the protagonist of the “Encuerados” documentary and host of the “” afterparty.

“When I moved to the United States in 2001, I didn’t move for the classic American dream of looking for a better life financially,” said Iriarte. “My purpose of moving here was to be free as a gay person.”

Latinos in leather pose ahead of the “Encuerados” screening during the CLAW L.A. convention on November 28th at the Hotel Indigo in Downtown Los Angeles.

(Yair Lopez / For De Los)

And while Iriarte did find that freedom he hoped for, he was not prepared for the racism he would encounter in the leather scene — especially after winning his title.

“I remember a hate campaign and even death threats after I won,” he said. “It was scary, but it opened a door for other Latinos, and this space has grown so much since.”

As it gets closer to midnight, the dark conference room swells with bodies moving to Iriarte’s pulsing techno. Partygoers poured in sporting leather chaps, chest-hugging harnesses, and even tejana hats for a vaquero-leather twist.

Lopez put down his camera to circulate and greet friends from over the years. He bumped into Orlando Bedolla, director of “Encuerados,” who first met Lopez four years ago while filming the documentary.

“I learned about his photography, the zine he was making, all of it,” Bedolla said. “I found him interesting because he is literally a Latino increasing Latino representation in the leather community.”

Bedolla recalled attending CLAW L.A. in 2021 and going to his first Latino party there after getting an invite from Payasos L.A. Inside, he found a room full of mostly Latino men in jockstraps, harnesses and leather. He was struck by the energy of an underground community he didn’t realize existed. That night would become the seed for the film.

On the dance floor, colored lights flashed across Lopez’s visage as he tried to keep track of his room key. His friends borrowed it to run upstairs to their shared room for more drinks — and he wondered aloud about how messy it would be after their two-night stay.

These spaces, low-lit yet overflowing with camaraderie, offer the community something harder to find anywhere else, especially during the holidays: the freedom to be fully themselves.

“When I step into spaces like this, I don’t just see leather,” Lopez said, taking a sip of his vodka soda. “I see people reaching for some kind of joy and connection we’re constantly told is wrong. But we all want to feel touched and seen — and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

A worried mother working miles away from her family frantically tries to get her three children out of harm’s way as an out of control fire ravages their community. Firefighters do everything they can, but strong winds are working against them to make the destruction go from bad to worse.

This scenario is reminiscent of the heroics that are portrayed weekly on the CBS firefighter television drama “Fire Country,” which follows the dedicated Cal Fire station in Northern California where an abundance of wooded areas make fire a common hazard. However, this particular story is very real and comes from actor Diane Farr, who plays Cal Fire Division Chief Sharon Leone and mother to firefighter Bode Leone (Max Thieriot, also a co-creator and executive producer) on the series. Farr remembers how in January she was on the show’s set in Vancouver while the wildfires were wreaking havoc in Los Angeles.

“My house was inside the evacuation order and I had to start flying my children out as fast as I could from L.A.,” she says of her La Cañada Flintridge home, which survived. “We were evacuated for eight days and the wind just went toward Altadena as opposed to coming toward our house. It was terrifying and was very eye opening for us.”

The horrific Los Angeles fires were eventually contained after catastrophic damage to the city, with some heroic firefighters leaving with jarring stories they were able to share with the “Fire Country” cast and crew. “Two of our consultants are L.A. firefighters, Matty and Marty Mullen, who had shown me a lot of videos of real firefighting of what was going on in L.A. that we were able to infuse into our [Season 3] finale,” says executive producer Tia Napolitano. “It felt important that we could show real authenticity inspired by the L.A. fires that we all lived through. I can’t believe it’s only been a year.”

Diane Farr as Sharon Leone in “Fire Country.” The actor’s home was in the evacuation zone during the L.A. wildfires in January.

(Sergei Bachlakov / CBS)

That dedication to authenticity has helped “Fire Country” become one of the sturdiest series on CBS’ prime-time schedule since premiering October 2022. Currently in its fourth season, “Fire Country” has won its time slot every week this season except when it aired against Game 6 of the World Series. It is now the veteran drama on Friday nights sandwiched between two new successful procedurals, “Sheriff Country” starring Morena Baccarin at 8 p.m. and “Boston Blue” starring Donnie Wahlberg at 10 p.m. Pacific, both spinoffs that have quickly caught the attention of audiences since their October debuts.

Farr believes the success of these shows is akin to the huge popularity of genres like true crime and their basic storytelling structure. “There is a good guy and a bad guy that’s very clear and very binary,” she says. “If you can create a situation that feels a little bit unsafe, if you can show me how people would make me safe in it, how they would solve the problem, it’s slightly relieving on a nervous system level.”

“Fire Country” delivers on all those components with the Station 42 crew performing regular acts of heroism as they keep their community safe, a reflection of real-life firefighters, says Thieriot. “People who have to do this job day in and day out are really a special breed. For me, a big thing has always been trying to capture that and trying to portray that the best way possible,” he says. “It’s television, so obviously there are more moments when we’re trying to find the drama, but at the end of the day, it’s really important that we focus on the real and we find the real in there.”

Eve (Jules Latimer) and Bode (Max Thieriot) in “Fire Country.” “People who have to do this job day in and day out are really a special breed. For me, a big thing has always been trying to capture that and trying to portray that the best way possible,” Thieriot says. (Sergei Bachlakov/CBS)

Part of the real comes in knowing that where there are heroes, there are also villains and, as its midseason finale is set to air on Friday, “Fire Country” currently has a frightening one in the form of Landon (Josh McDermitt). Initially seen as meek and even-tempered, the layers have been pulled back to show something different.

“Landon is a threat to our people and that’ll go forward for a few episodes,” teases Napolitano. “You feel like this guy is out there and he has nothing to lose.”

That’s because Landon has already lost the trust of his girlfriend Chloe (Alona Tal) and her teenage son Tyler (Conor Sherry), who recently revealed to Bode that Landon set the tragic Zabel Ridge Fire. That’s the L.A.-inspired blaze from the third-season finale that not only destroyed homes and land but also took the life of Cal Fire battalion chief Vince Leone (Billy Burke), Sharon’s husband and Bode’s father.

In Friday’s episode, a vengeful Landon isn’t happy about being investigated or the fact that Bode and Sharon have made sure that Chloe and Tyler are staying away from him. “Landon’s a small man with a very big ego and a big victim complex and that’s going to manifest in a scary way,” Napolitano says.

It also may not help matters that Chloe and Bode were once romantically involved and a spark may still exist, especially since Bode has been mentoring the troubled Tyler. Is the single Bode’s heart open to a second chance at love? “He’s getting there,” says Thieriot. “Leading up to this season, Bode had so many obstacles and I think this journey with Tyler [as mentor] is a big part of that.”

Bode (Max Thieriot) and Chloe (Alona Tal) were once romantically involved. (Sergei Bachlakov/CBS)

Hearts are also healing on the show in the aftermath of Vince’s shocking death, an event that was never in the show’s plan to quickly sweep under the rug. “We really want to be the show that everyone knows and loves, which is a comfort to a lot of our viewers,” says Napolitano. “It’s a show of joy and levity but also honors the fact that we are missing a core character who did die a hero’s death and honoring him by keeping his memory alive.”

That memory exists for Farr in several rings she regularly wears representing Sharon’s marriage and family with Vince, but she added another piece this season based on a suggestion from director Sarah Wayne Callies.

“Vince’s bracelet is heavy and regularly bumps the smaller bones in my hand,” Farr says. “Just like my former scene partner Billy, who would debate any word or line or blocking or intention with me to get to the truest take on anything we did together. Losing him is always going to be loss.” Farr said she doesn’t want to play grief forever but upcoming episodes will continue to show Sharon “trying to figure out who she is as a ‘one’ instead of a ‘two.’”

Though everyone hopes Los Angeles won’t see more fires like the ones from nearly a year ago, “Fire Country’s” creators and cast will continue to shine a light on firefighters and all the life-and-death work they do on a daily basis and, above all else, entertain.

“It’s not always easy to continue to surprise the audience and come up with this stuff that’s just really captivating and fresh and new but I believe that we can,” Thieriot says. “I’m really eager to accomplish that.”