Nearly 200 people gathered Saturday evening for a “No War With Venezuela” protest in downtown Dallas, mere hours after U.S. President Donald Trump carried out the most assertive American action for regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Following months of secret planning, Trump said Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured early Saturday at their home on a military base.

During a news conference, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.

Trump said the U.S. would run Venezuela until a transition of power takes place, though it remains unclear how the U.S. would assume control.

In Dallas’ Main Street Garden Park, signs reading “U.S. hands off Venezuela” were met with honks by passing vehicles as participants chanted: “Venezuela isn’t yours, no more coups, no more wars. We know what we’re fighting for, not another endless war.”

“We are gathered here today because injustice has crossed another line,” Zeeshan Hafeez, a Democratic primary candidate for Texas’ Congressional District 33, said as he addressed the crowd. “This is not just about Venezuela. This is not just about Gaza.

“This is about whether America will be ruled by law or force.”

Rick Majumdar, a member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization Dallas, told The Dallas Morning News that the message of Saturday’s collective action was simple: “We don’t want the United States to go to another war for oil.”

“The people of the United States should stand in solidarity with the people of Venezuela, as well as stand against the oppression that is happening to immigrants in this country,” Majumdar said. “Stand in solidarity with both Venezuelans in the United States and those in Venezuela.”

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Maduro and his wife landed Saturday afternoon in New York to face prosecution for a Justice Department indictment accusing them of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy. The indictment painted the regime as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug trafficking operation that flooded the U.S with cocaine.

Lawmakers from both political parties have previously raised both profound reservations and flat-out objections to U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling near the Venezuelan coast.

Congress has not specifically authorized the use of military force for such operations in the region, and leaders said they were not notified of the plan to seize Maduro until it was already underway.

“I’m appalled that we broke a law and decided that we can invade a country and capture their leader,” said Cynthia Ball, of Amarillo, at the Dallas protest. “Normal citizens like ourselves can’t do a lot at a governmental level, but if we band together and stay informed, hopefully we can get our city to see what’s happening.”

Other officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, supported the move, explaining the secretive nature was necessary to preserve the operation’s integrity. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, called it a “decisive and justified operation that will protect American lives”

Venezuela’s vice president has demanded the U.S. free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Carla Rockmore has 1.3 million followers on TikTok and her own fashion line, but there was a time when she was just another carpool mom in North Dallas, wondering what happened to her dreams. “It was challenging,” she says. “The guard at school would tell me I couldn’t idle the car in line while waiting to pick up my kids. What are you talking about? It’s 110 degrees!”

A Montreal native, Rockmore enjoyed a globe-trotting early career, leaving fashion school in Toronto for a couture house in Amsterdam. After returning to Canada, she toggled between corporate and boutique gigs, but motherhood meant slowing down. In 2012, her family moved to Dallas so her husband, Michael Stitt, could become CEO of the menswear brand Haggar Clothing, but Rockmore struggled to find industry work in Texas.

Fashion is about transformation, though, and Rockmore underwent a dramatic one. In March 2020, she was in India working to launch her own jewelry line when the pandemic hit, and she had to come home. Frustrated and looking for escape under quarantine, she started making videos in her closet, part practical stylist advice, part creative riff. She was a natural on camera, with her dark spiraling hair and outsize personality, trying on outfits that ranged from classy to wacky. “It was a convergence of my education and talent, my need to be in front of a stage and a void in the market,” she says. She became a social media phenomenon.

Architectural Digest has featured the closet in her Preston Hollow home, a two-story Narnia of color, spangle and swish so expansive it includes a spiral staircase and fireplace. But the real lure of her videos is a 50-something woman taking delight in the art of dressing up. “Our media don’t show us so many examples of women this age who know who they are and clearly like it,” New York Times Magazine said about Rockmore.

Now 58, Rockmore has a line of clothes on her website as well as through QVC. Many of her videos these days feature Ivy, the 21-year-old daughter whose gender transition became part of the tale, bringing new meaning to Rockmore’s TikTok slogan of self-expression through fashion. (Her 24-year-old son, Eli, helps behind the scenes.) I spoke with Rockmore over the phone, where she was as charming as she is in her videos.

This is a first for me. In researching the clothes on your website, I actually bought the wrap shirt dress in marigold. I haven’t even started this interview, and I’m already out $55.

Ooh, you did? I love it! That dress is sort of the ethos of my design, where clothing is your canvas, and jewelry and accessories are your paint. You can dress it up however you want. I think color is one of my fortes, because my mom was a painter. Proportion, color and shape were dinner conversation.

I’m not much of a trend person. I’m more like, “I love it, now I’m going to wear versions of it for the rest of my life.”

How do you describe Dallas to people who have never been here?

Dallas is a strange juxtaposition. On the good side, you have some of the nicest people in the world. Being a Northeastern girl, I was completely floored when I moved to a place where people strike up conversations in line at the coffee shop. I kept looking over my shoulder thinking, What’s happening? What’s the ulterior motive? But it never came. They’re just genuinely nice.

The downside is that every strip mall looks exactly the same. I once got lost driving around a strip mall in Plano because I thought I was in Preston Hollow. Same Chico’s, same Starbucks. And everyone drives everywhere. I once tried to walk a single block, from Elements on Lovers near the Tollway to my chiropractor across the street, and while I was walking along the underpass, a woman pulled over and asked, “Are you OK, dear?” I said, “I’m just walking,” and she looked at me like I’d completely lost my mind.

How do you describe Dallas fashion?

Hidden. There’s incredible fashion here, but it doesn’t announce itself. It’s not going to smack you in the face, and I think that’s because Dallas isn’t a walking city. I’m always floored when I go to Forty Five Ten or to the downtown Neiman’s. Fashion here is a destination. You have to go to the restaurant, the party, the bar, and when you do — you will see it.

And no matter where I am, I could be going to the doctor for a physical, if I’m wearing a great pair of shoes, another woman will inevitably stop me and say, “Those shoes! Where did you get them?” That’s a kind of sisterhood. In New York, nobody ever asks about your shoes.

You went viral for putting outfits together, something others might find frivolous. Can you make the pitch that fashion matters?

Fashion matters, because it’s a declaration of how you’re feeling without words. It’s also a barometer of what’s going on in the world. I find fashion history so fascinating, why certain pieces of clothing were adopted at certain times.

In the 1910s, hobble skirts restricted women’s movement so completely that in cities like New York and Vancouver, they lowered the streetcars to allow women to get in and out. By mid-century, the story had flipped: Cars and fenders echoed the streamlined silhouette of the pencil skirt popularized by Christian Dior. From hoop skirts to hobble hems to pencil skirts, fashion has always shaped how we move, what we build and how the world makes room for us.

The closet gets used as a metaphor for repression, staying “in the closet,” but your closet has been an engine of self-discovery. Eventually, this became true in your own family, too. Can you talk about how Ivy started joining you in the videos?

Ivy was there from the beginning, because I was doing 10-minute videos on YouTube for my girlfriends up in Canada. I had 91 followers, and I was happy about that! The only reason I blew up was because Ivy said, let’s take it down to a minute and put this on TikTok.

Then Ivy came to me crying one day. Actually, we were in the closet. She said, “I don’t think I’m gay. I think I’m trans.” I felt so bad for her, because she said, “I’m so tired of coming out, Mom. I’m so tired of not being who I am.” At that point, I still naively thought it was a choice, and I was so afraid she was choosing a harder path. But I quickly decided, we’re going to support, full-force. About a week later, she and I did our first video together, because I wanted her to feel not only accepted by her family but also pretty, feminine — all those qualities she’d been craving for the first 17 years of her life. I wanted her to catch up to herself.

I thought, I don’t know if there are a lot of other parents in this situation, but maybe the benefit of my platform is we can show a “normal” family — then again, what’s normal? — modeling what it’s like to accept your child no matter who they are. Sometimes I feel like that’s the whole reason I went viral. Not for my fashion, not for my self-expression. For hers.

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