WASHINGTON
Good morning! It’s Danielle Battaglia with the latest edition of Under the Dome focused on the Trump administration.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado visited Washington this week, first to see President Donald Trump and then to stop by the Capitol.
I watched from a window inside the Capitol’s press gallery as a mob of reporters and Machado’s supporters surrounded her near the steps to the U.S. Senate. It was chaos.
María Corina Machado is mobbed by reporters and supporters outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. Danielle Battaglia [email protected]
But her actual meetings with Trump and Capitol Hill leaders were much more subdued, and largely kept secret.
Except for one small piece: she gave Trump her Nobel Peace Prize.
You may recall, and I wrote in October, that Trump wasn’t happy to be passed over again for the prize. And that Rep. Richard Hudson, a Republican from Southern Pines, generated an AI image of Trump receiving the prize surrounded by some of our country’s founding fathers.
The Nobel Peace Prize dates to in 1901 and was named after Alfred Nobel. The prize has been awarded to 990 people and 28 organizations who “conferred the greatest benefit to humankind” over the past year.
Machado was awarded the prize in October “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,” the Nobel Peace Prize website states.
On Thursday, the 58-year-old leader stood before Trump and offered him her prize.
Trump called it “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”
The Nobel Peace Center quickly put out a statement saying, “Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others. The decision is final and stands for all time.” A longer news release was issued Friday stating, “even if the medal or the diploma come into someone else’s possession, this does not alter who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
This time, members of Congress from North Carolina stayed quiet.
What else we worked on:
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading and supporting local journalism.
Be kind to each other.
If you have any feedback or tips for this edition of the newsletter, feel free to reach out to me directly at [email protected].
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This story was originally published January 19, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
Danielle Battaglia
McClatchy DC
Danielle Battaglia is the D.C. correspondent for The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, leading coverage of North Carolina’s congressional delegation and elections. She also covers the White House. Her career has spanned three North Carolina newsrooms where she has covered crime, courts and local, state and national politics. She has won two McClatchy President’s awards and numerous national and state awards for her work.
