Headlines October 10, 2025 from Democracy Now!

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced its decision in a ceremony in Oslo earlier today.

Jørgen Watne Frydnes: “She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

In 2023, Machado launched a campaign to challenge incumbent President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela’s 2024 election. She was barred from running after the government accused her of corruption and cited her support for U.S. sanctions against Venezuela. Machado has vowed to privatize Venezuela’s state oil industry. She’s praised right-wing Latin American leaders, including Argentina’s Javier Milei.

In 2020, Machado’s opposition party, Vente Venezuela, signed a pact formalizing strategic ties with Israel’s Likud party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Machado has said that, if elected, she’ll move Venezuela’s Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

We’ll have more on María Corina Machado later in the broadcast.

The Nobel Peace Prize is being awarded at a time when the U.S. bombed four boats off the coast of Venezuela, killing 21 people. Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said Wednesday that the U.S. killed Colombians in one of the boats it bombed in the Caribbean for allegedly carrying drugs.

In Peru, lawmakers swore in a new president, 38-year-old head of Peru’s Legislature, José Jerí, soon after voting unanimously to remove President Dina Boluarte. Her removal comes after months of deadly protests in rural Andean and Indigenous communities; rights groups accused Boluarte’s government of using lethal force to suppress the protests. Boluarte was also enmeshed in a corruption scandal involving undeclared assets and watches.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the U.S. has begun implementing parts of a bailout for Argentina by finalizing a $20 billion currency swap with Argentina’s central bank. Argentina’s far-right President Javier Milei is an ally of President Trump. On Thursday, eight Democratic senators introduced a bill that would prevent the Treasury Department from rescuing Argentina’s economy. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said, “It is inexplicable that President Trump is propping up a foreign government, while he shuts down our own.”

In Washington, the federal government shutdown has entered its 10th day. On Thursday, President Trump said at a Cabinet meeting he will permanently cut programs approved by Congress during the shutdown, like billions of dollars in climate and infrastructure for Democratic-led states, adding, “we’re only going to cut Democrat programs.” The White House has suggested furloughed federal workers may not receive back pay. On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson ruled out advancing a standalone bill to pay the salaries and benefits of military members, who are due to miss paychecks on October 15.

Meanwhile, Food & Water Watch reports that if the shutdown continues into next week, 5.3 million children under the age of 5 will lose access to SNAP food assistance benefits, with many likely to go hungry. That’s on top of more than 2 million people set to lose some — or all — of their SNAP benefits under the budget reconciliation bill Trump signed in July.

A federal judge in Chicago has issued a temporary restraining order against President Donald Trump’s deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops to Illinois, after city and state officials sued to block the move. U.S. District Judge April Perry said in an oral ruling Thursday that deploying soldiers would “only add fuel to the fire that defendants themselves have started.” The ruling came as Illinois’s Democratic Governor JB Pritzker once again accused Trump of overstepping constitutional limits on his authority.

Gov. JB Pritzker: “We’ve seen at every turn that they’ve tried to militarize our cities. Indeed, look at what ICE and CBP are doing. They’re wearing fatigues. They’re carrying long guns, automatic weapons. They’re coming to downtown. Come on, downtown Chicago, Michigan Avenue, what is the purpose of that? It’s all a show.”

Separately, another federal judge in Chicago ruled Thursday that federal agents violated the constitutional rights of peaceful demonstrators, journalists and religious leaders at recent protests against ongoing ICE raids. A lawsuit brought by victims of the violence accuses federal agents of a “pattern of extreme brutality,” saying they tackled and slammed people into the ground and fired rubber bullets and pepper balls at peaceful protesters and working journalists. In her ruling, District Court Judge Sara Ellis wrote, “Individuals are allowed to protest. They are allowed to speak. That is guaranteed by the First Amendment of our constitution, and it is a bedrock right that upholds our democracy.” Judge Ellis’s temporary restraining order also requires all uniformed federal agents to prominently display identification like badge numbers on their uniforms or helmets.

In Tennessee, National Guard troops are scheduled to begin patrolling the streets of Memphis today, over the objections of city officials. They’ll add to a surge of federal law enforcement officers already in Memphis. Trump claims the deployment is aimed at quelling violent crime in the majority-Black city. On Thursday, Trump signaled he’s prepared to send troops into even more cities.

President Donald Trump: “And we’re restoring law and order in our country. We’re restoring it here, but we’re restoring it — right now we’re in Memphis. We’re going to Chicago. We’re going to other cities.”

Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt has criticized the deployment of National Guard troops to Illinois. Stitt is the current chair of the National Governors Association. Speaking to The New York Times, he said, “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.” Stitt stated that President Trump should have first federalized troops already in Illinois.

A court in Texas has halted the execution of Robert Roberson, whose 2003 murder conviction over the death of his 2-year-old daughter was based on the “shaken baby syndrome” theory, which has never been scientifically validated. On Thursday, a narrow 5-4 majority of Texas’s Court of Criminal Appeals granted Roberson’s request to stay his execution, citing a Texas law that allows for new trials in cases with flawed scientific evidence. The trial court that convicted Roberson will now consider whether he should be granted a new trial. Throughout his more than two decades on death row, Roberson has always maintained his innocence.