MIAMI (AP) — In 2017, as political outsider Donald Trump headed to Washington, Delcy Rodríguez spotted an opening.
Then Venezuela’s foreign minister, Rodríguez directed Citgo — a subsidiary of the state oil company — to make a $500,000 donation to the president’s inauguration. With the socialist administration of Nicolas Maduro struggling to feed Venezuela, Rodríguez gambled on a deal that would have opened the door to American investment. Around the same time, she saw that Trump’s ex-campaign manager was hired as a lobbyist for Citgo, courted Republicans in Congress and tried to secure a meeting with the head of Exxon.
The charm offensive flopped. Within weeks of taking office, Trump, urged by then-Sen. Marco Rubio, made restoring Venezuela’s democracy his driving focus in response to Maduro’s crackdown on opponents. But the outreach did bear fruit for Rodríguez, making her a prominent face in U.S. business and political circles and paving the way for her own rise.
Joshua Goodman is a Miami-based investigative reporter who spent two decades reporting from South America. From 2013 to 2019, he led AP’s bureau in Venezuela, where he interviewed then-president Nicolás Maduro and spoke frequently with Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s new interim president.
Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez said on Tuesday the capture of ousted President Nicolas Maduro was a “complete violation of international law and Venezuelan law.”
“She’s an ideologue, but a practical one,” said Lee McClenny, a retired foreign service officer who was the top U.S. diplomat in Caracas during the period of Rodríguez’s outreach. “She knew that Venezuela needed to find a way to resuscitate a moribund oil economy and seemed willing to work with the Trump administration to do that.”
Nearly a decade later, as Venezuela’s interim president, Rodríguez’s message — that Venezuela is open for business — seems to have persuaded Trump. In the days since Maduro’s stunning capture Saturday, he’s alternately praised Rodríguez as a “gracious” American partner while threatening a similar fate as her former boss if she doesn’t keep the ruling party in check and provide the U.S. with “total access” to the country’s vast oil reserves. One thing neither has mentioned is elections, something the constitution mandates must take place within 30 days of the presidency being permanently vacated.
This account of Rodríguez’s political rise is drawn from interviews with 10 former U.S. and Venezuelan officials as well as businessmen from both countries who’ve had extensive dealings with Rodríguez and in some cases have known her since childhood. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from someone who they almost universally described as bookishly smart, sometimes charming but above all a cutthroat operator who doesn’t tolerate dissent. Rodríguez didn’t respond to AP requests for an interview.
Father’s murder hardens leftist outlook
Rodríguez entered the leftist movement started by Hugo Chávez late — and on the coattails of her older brother, Jorge Rodríguez, who as head of the National Assembly swore her in as interim president Monday.
Tragedy during their childhood fed a hardened leftist outlook that would stick with the siblings throughout their lives. In 1976 — when, amid the Cold War, U.S. oil companies, American political spin doctors and Pentagon advisers exerted great influence in Venezuela — a little-known urban guerrilla group kidnapped a Midwestern businessman. Rodriguez’s father, a socialist leader, was picked up for questioning and died in custody.
McClenny remembers Rodríguez bringing up the murder in their meetings and bitterly blaming the U.S. for being left fatherless at the age of 7. The crime would radicalize another leftist of the era: Maduro.
Years later, while Jorge Rodríguez was a top electoral official under Chávez, he secured for his sister a position in the president’s office.
But she advanced slowly at first and clashed with colleagues who viewed her as a haughty know-it-all.
In 2006, on a whirlwind international tour, Chávez booted her from the presidential plane and ordered her to fly home from Moscow on her own, according to two former officials who were on the trip. Chávez was upset because the delegation’s schedule of meetings had fallen apart and that triggered a feud with Rodriguez, who was responsible for the agenda.
“It was painful to watch how Chávez talked about her,” said one of the former officials. “He would never say a bad thing about women but the whole flight home he kept saying she was conceited, arrogant, incompetent.”
Days later, she was fired and never occupied another high-profile role with Chávez.
Political revival and soaring power under Maduro
Years later, in 2013, Maduro revived Rodríguez’s career after Chávez died of cancer and he took over.
A lawyer educated in Britain and France, Rodríguez speaks English and spent large amounts of time in the United States. That gave her an edge in the internal power struggles among Chavismo — the movement started by Chávez, whose many factions include democratic socialists, military hardliners who Chávez led in a 1992 coup attempt and corrupt actors, some with ties to drug trafficking.
Her more worldly outlook, and refined tastes, also made Rodríguez a favorite of the so-called “boligarchs” — a new elite that made fortunes during Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution. One of those insiders, media tycoon Raul Gorrín, worked hand-in-glove with Rodríguez’s back-channel efforts to mend relations with the first Trump administration and helped organize a secret visit by Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, to Caracas in April 2018 for a meeting with Maduro. A few months later, U.S. federal prosecutors unsealed the first of two money laundering indictments against Red.
After Maduro promoted Rodríguez to vice president in 2018, she gained control over large swaths of Venezuela’s oil economy. To help manage the petro-state, she brought in foreign advisers with experience in global markets. Among them were two former finance ministers in Ecuador who helped run a dollarized, export-driven economy under fellow leftist Rafael Correa. Another key associate is French lawyer David Syed, who for years has been trying to renegotiate Venezuela’s foreign debt in the face of crippling U.S. sanctions that make it impossible for Wall Street investors to get repaid.
“She sacrificed her personal life for her political career,” said one former friend.
As she amassed more power, she crushed internal rivals. Among them: once powerful Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami, who was jailed in 2024 as part of an anti-corruption crackdown spearheaded by Rodríguez.
In her de-facto role as Venezuela’s chief operating officer, Rodríguez proved a more flexible, trustworthy partner than Maduro. Some have likened her to a sort of Venezuelan Deng Xiaoping — the architect of modern China.
Hans Humes, chief executive of Greylock Capital Management, said that experience will serve her well as she tries to jump-start the economy, unite Chavismo and shield Venezuela from stricter terms dictated by Trump. Imposing an opposition-led government right now, he said, could trigger bloodshed of the sort that ripped apart Iraq after U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein and formed a provisional government including many leaders who had been exiled for years.
“We’ve seen how expats who have been outside of the country for too long think things should be the way it was before they left,” said Humes, who has met with Maduro as well as Rodríguez on several occasions. “You need people who know how to work with how things are not how they were.”
Democracy deferred?
Where Rodríguez’s more pragmatic leadership style leaves Venezuela’s democracy is uncertain.
Trump, in remarks after Maduro’s capture, said Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado lacks the “respect” to govern Venezuela despite her handpicked candidate winning what the U.S. and other governments consider a landslide victory in 2024 presidential elections stolen by Maduro.
Elliott Abrams, who served as special envoy to Venezuela during the first Trump administration, said it is impossible for the president to fulfill his goal of banishing criminal gangs, drug traffickers and Middle Eastern terrorists from the Western Hemisphere with the various factions of Chavismo sharing power.
“Nothing that Trump has said suggests his administration is contemplating a quick transition away from Delcy. No one is talking about elections,” said Abrams. “If they think Delcy is running things, they are completely wrong.”
After ICE officer Jonathan Ross killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin immediately blamed the victim. She said ICE offices were “conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.”
Video footage from the scene doesn’t seem to support the government’s description of Good or capture the complexities of the scene, and Ross hasn’t been charged with a crime. But McLaughlin’s “violent rioter” label wasn’t an off-the-cuff remark. Rather, this is a phrase the Trump administration, particularly DHS, has regularly and quite purposefully used to characterize people who show up to oppose its officers and actions.
This is a phrase the Trump administration has regularly used to characterize people who show up to oppose its officers and actions.
Chicago was the site of many protests throughout the fall and winter, as ICE agents flooded the city streets during Operation Midway Blitz. DHS consistently described those protests with one-sided, inflammatory language. On Nov. 14, for example, DHS posted a video on X that characterized protesters outside an ICE facility as “violent rioters” attempting to secure the release “of some of the worst human beings on planet earth.” Jack Jenkins, a reporter for The Christian Century who was present that day, wrote that among the peaceful protesters that day was the Rev. Michael Woolfa Baptist preacher who, Jenkins reported, was standing “alongside fellow protesters, fiddling awkwardly with his backpack as faith leaders and other protesters chant slogans at a line of police officers.”
When an officer walked up, grabbed Woolf’s wrist and yanked, Jenkins reported, “Demonstrators attempted to hold onto Woolf, who was wearing a clerical collar, but four officers wrenched him from the crowd and tossed him to the ground.”
Womp womp, cry all you want. These criminal illegal aliens aren’t getting released.
Like clockwork, violent rioters have arrived at the Broadview ICE facility to demand the release of some of the worst human beings on planet earth.
Also in Chicago, Marimar Martinez was shot multiple times by a CBP agent in October, who claimed he was acting in self-defense after she assaulted him with her car. A DHS statement called Martinez a “domestic terrorist” and initially charged her and a co-defendant with assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers — only to drop the charges before the case could fully get underway. A defense attorney said bodycam video showed an agent drove into Martinez’s truck.
As The Guardian pointed out, “Since Operation Midway Blitz began in September, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has characterized protesters as violent rioters and vowed to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. But of the more than two dozen people arrested for impeding or assaulting federal officers or other protest-related offenses, none have gone to trial and charges have been dropped against at least nine of them.”
There’s no doubt that some federal agents have been confronted by violent individuals who want to hurt them, but the government’s broad, seemingly reflexive use of “violent rioters” has helped push the noxious idea that it’s criminal to publicly gather and express outrage at government officials and law enforcement as they carry out Trump’s deportation agenda. In Minneapolis, the government seems determined that we not think of Good as an American who had the right to object to her government’s actions. They want us to reduce Good to a “violent rioter” who got what violent rioters are due.
This attitude has been confirmed by leadership at some of the highest levels of the U.S. Border Patrol. During an Oct. 30 deposition related to a lawsuit alleging overly aggressive immigration enforcement tactics in Chicago, Locke Bowman, a lawyer for plaintiffs, asked U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino a question about how federal agents had responded to “protesters.” Bowman said agents had responded “to violent rioters and assaultive subjects.”
“Will you acknowledge that some of those at the Broadview facility who came to that location to protest are not violent rioters and assaulters?” Bowman asked. And Bovino said, “I don’t know what they are.”
Quoting Bovino’s phrase “violent rioters and assaulters,” the lawyer asked, “Have you ever interacted with anybody who wasn’t that?”
“I can’t remember,” he replied.
It’s noteworthy that, in that deposition, Bovino’s refusal to acknowledge the presence of peaceful protesters at that Broadview ICE facility came after the attorney showed him video of Pastor David Black being shot in the head with a pepper ball. His refusal also came after Bovino was shown video of the CBP commander climbing over a barrier and personally tackling a man who was walking away after calling Bovino a fascist. (Despite the video evidenceand to a federal judge’s dismayin the deposition, Bovino wouldn’t even admit he’d tackled that man.)
I shared the lawyer’s exchange with Bovino with Ashley Howard, author of “Midwest Unrest: 1960s Urban Rebellions and the Black Freedom Movement,” who has written thoughtfully about the way the words “riot” and “rioter” have been used to depoliticize and delegitimize violent protest. But, in this case, the federal government is using “riot” to describe nonviolent protest. Bovino was shown the video footage of the pastor being hit by federal agents and still wouldn’t say whether any peaceful protesters had been in attendance.
“It would be comically absurd if it wasn’t so terrifying,” Howard said, of Bovino’s testimony. “People who can use force with impunity need to justify the use of that force, and so they must portray these people, regardless of how they’re engaging, as violent, as rioters.”
“They have a vested interest in suppressing this type of protest,” Howard noted, “and so they need to drum up this idea that they are in imminent danger and that the people who are out in the streets pose an immediate and violent threat.”
To be clear, the stretchy use of the word “riot” didn’t start with the Trump administration. Howard’s book, which focuses on the 1960s, quotes the U.S. criminal codewhich shows that it’s easy for the government to paint a protest (or even a gathering) as a “riot.”
“It’s three people,” Howard said. “Three people acting in concert, and that can be a group of high school students tipping over a trash can. That can be people out in the street blocking a car. They can use that designation of ‘riot’ or ‘riots’ as they see fit. And that’s what makes it so dangerous.”
“Foolish” doesn’t really get at it. It’s more authoritarian.
Tricia McLaughlin isn’t the first government official to try to weaponize language in this way. But the government’s push to immediately dehumanize Good in the wake of her killing is just another sign of how authoritarian this government is becoming.
Jarvis DeBerry is an opinion editor for MS NOW Daily.
For months, House Democratic leaders have mulled over creating their own “Contract with America” to pitch to voters before this fall’s midterms.
Like the set of Republican ideas often credited with helping win the 1994 elections, the document would outline the party’s goals if it took back the lower chamber — an ambitious set of aims for candidates to rally around.
In conversations I’ve had this week with members of Congress, leadership staffers and outside strategists, it seems clear that the party leadership is leaning toward doing so. The remaining questions largely revolve around when to release it and how detailed they need to get.
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who would likely be elected speaker if the plan works, has been publicly previewing a three-pronged plan that is thought to be the best blueprint: addressing the high cost of living, dealing with health care and cleaning up corruption — another name for heavily investigating the Trump administration.
But so far, it’s not a partywide plan, much less a PDF that Democratic candidates can put on their websites.
There is still plenty of time. The original Contract with America, put forward by future Speaker Newt Gingrich, didn’t come out until six weeks before the elections, which ended up in a landslide for the GOP.
It would show voters that they are coming in with a plan on Day 1.
Democrats in favor of writing their own version this year see it as pretty simple. It would show voters that they are coming in with a plan on Day 1 at a time when they have the wind at their back electorally but the party still has a very low approval rating. And it would go a long way with the party’s activist base, which is still upset that the Democratic National Committee decided not to release an autopsy of the 2024 losses.
This kind of conversation comes up every midterm election. The difference is the party’s standing with voters is at a historic low, despite the fact that it overperformed in race after race in the off-year elections of 2025. Supporters argue that a plan could go a long way toward gaining back some trust in the party.
Members such as California Rep. Eric Swalwell — who is also running for governor — have pitched a message that President Donald Trump and Republicans “cost too much” and that Democrats are going to pass bills to fix that, weaving together concerns about high prices with Trump’s executive overreach.
“Literally, in what we’re paying for groceries, goods, homes, etc.,” he told me. “And then figuratively: What it means for our rights — for, like, immigrants in our community, for women and their rights.”
But the real key for Swalwell, a member of the Judiciary Committee and one of the most outspoken critics of Trump, is outlining to the American people what type of accountability they can expect if Democrats get the gavel.
“You have to make it clear that there are going to be consequences for bad actors. Their asses are coming to the committee, they’re testifying under oath, it’s all coming out,” Swalwell said. “Also, you may deter people right now who are thinking about doing a dirty Trump deal that he’s done with law firms or university presidents or entertainment companies.”
But then there are the downsides. The biggest? If you make a promise, you’re going to have to figure out how to actually do it. Overpromising in 2026 is the fastest way for Democrats to get a beatdown come 2028. The fix for that is to keep it exciting enough to bring out voters but also to make it something you can actually do.
Amanda Litman, president of Run for Something, said that the plan needs to be “ambitious but realistic,” because promising voters that, say, you’ll make housing affordable when there are large structural reasons that won’t happen will just lead voters to “blame you.”
Releasing a blueprint could allow Republicans to take the midterms from a referendum on Trump.
Other downsides are pretty obvious. Releasing a blueprint could allow Republicans to take the midterms from a referendum on Trump to a tussle between Republican and Democratic policies.
Getting to consensus may also be difficult for a party that’s grown into a big tent that includes everyone from disaffected former Republicans to progressive activists. Those conversations won’t stay private for long, which would only create a classic “Democrats in disarray” moment.
As one former senior official from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who spoke off-the-record in order to be candid, put it to me: “The caucus is diverse in viewpoint and in every way. And so, like, it [forces] us to squabble. But that’s going to happen. And that’s fine. [But] Democrats are more obsessed with being [in] lockstep than Republicans are, frankly, in a weird way.”
While the original Contract with America was signed by all but two of the nonincumbent Republican House candidates, a Democratic version might not get as much buy-in.
Most Democratic strategists agree that candidates running in red or even purple districts should do whatever they need to do to win. But, they add, making some promises to voters while Republicans can’t come to an agreement on a day-to-day basis could go a long way.
Eugene Daniels is an MS NOW senior Washington correspondent and co-host of “The Weekend.”
As a professor of philosophy and ethics, I am more accustomed to reading the news than being a part of it. But many media outlets have reported this week on a directive I was given to excise Plato lessons from a course syllabus. I offer this to provide insight into my experiences at Texas A&M both recently and more broadly.
I have been to Athens many times, and on every visit I make a point of stopping by the site of Plato’s Academy, the world’s first university, founded around 387 BCE. Whereas other schools at the time primarily trained students in rhetoric and the art of winning debates, Plato explicitly urged his students to seek the truth — even when it was uncomfortable or controversial. It is precisely this attitude toward teaching and research that has made American universities the best in the world. We do not Make Universities Great Again by censoring the classics.
We do not Make Universities Great Again by censoring the classics.
The ban on teaching Plato’s “Symposium” at Texas A&M is, in a sense, understandable. If one accepts the university rule, adopted in Novemberthat bans the teaching of “race and gender ideology,” Plato joins a long list of prominent thinkers whose ideas might be deemed corrupting to youth and therefore subject to censorship.
In the “Symposium,” Plato describes homosexuality as fully natural and suggests that there are more than two genders: “you should learn the nature of humanity … in times past our nature was not the same as it is now, but otherwise. For in the first place there were three kinds of human being and not two as nowadays, male and female. No, there was also a third kind, a combination of both genders.”
Upon being notified that part of my course curriculum for “Contemporary Moral Issues” was not compliant with university policy, I was, in one respect, pleasantly surprised that high-level administrators at Texas A&M know their Plato so well. But it was still a shock that they were unwilling to let this pass.
Plato explicitly urged his students to seek the truth — even when it was uncomfortable or controversial.
I was offered the option to remove the noncompliant passages from my course syllabus or be reassigned, to teach a different philosophy class. I informed administrators that I would replace the offending modules with lectures on free speech and academic freedom.
For the record, Plato can hardly be accused of being a left-wing extremist. He explicitly rejects democracy in favor of enlightened philosopher-kings. He is the go-to philosopher for authoritarian leaders seeking to limit free speech, academic freedom and much else we have taken for granted for generations. So, isn’t he exactly the kind of philosopher I should ask my students to read if my aim were to please the conservative leaders responsible for the new censorship policy?
To be clear, I am not a left-wing extremist; I am firmly middle of the road. I know I am not alone at my institution. A former student recently sent the following message to the university provost and president, cc’ing me, which I quote with permission:
“I benefited from being challenged by professors at Texas A&M during my undergrad studies. I chose A&M because it was a safe, ideologically conservative campus. And yet, as someone who went to Christian school K–12, my professors and my classmates challenged me to rethink some things, to evaluate for myself what I believed. It was a good exercise, and I came out a better person because of it. I came out a stronger Christian.”
Texas A&M welcomes all kinds of students — conservatives and liberals, Christians, Jews, and Muslims — and it is my job to ensure that all my students feel welcome and safe in the classroom.
The idea that this goal can be achieved by censoring central elements of the Western canon is absurd.
It is my job to ensure that all my students feel welcome and safe in the classroom. The idea that this goal can be achieved by censoring central elements of the Western canon is absurd.
The official response from the university, shared with the press, said in part that “Texas A&M University will teach numerous dialogues by Plato in a variety of courses this semester.” This would make excellent material for a “Monty Python” sketch. One can imagine the official censorship list: these dialogues you are permitted to teach; those you must pretend do not exist — and if you ever cross the line, you will be fired.
Some say that Texas A&M is no longer a real university because of the new rules being imposed on us. As of now, I would say that claim is an exaggeration. As chair of the Academic Freedom Council, I have discussed these issues with university leadership on numerous occasions. In my experience, they are honest and reasonable people trying to do an impossible job. I do not blame them for what is happening.
The real problem is the absurd policy imposed by the Board of Regents. There is no state law that requires us to censor Plato. The policy could be dropped tomorrow if they chose to do so — and I very much hope they will.
Martin Peterson is a professor of philosophy and the Sue G. and Harry E. Bovay Jr. Professor of the History and Ethics of Professional Engineering at Texas A&M University. The views expressed here are his alone.
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