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.

“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.”

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he wants Republicans to reach a deal on health care insurance assistance by being willing to bend on a 50-year-old budget policy that bars federal money from being spent on abortion services.

“You have to be a little flexible” on the Hyde AmendmentTrump told House Republicans as they gathered in Washington for a caucus retreat to open the midterm election year. “You gotta be a little flexible. You gotta work something. You gotta use ingenuity.”

With his suggestion, Trump, who supported abortion rights before he entered politics in 2015, is asking conservatives to abandon or at least ease up on decades of Republican orthodoxy on abortion and spending policy — something lawmakers and conservatives pushed back on immediately.

At the same time, he is demonstrating his long-standing malleability on abortion and acknowledging that Democrats have the political upper hand on health care after Republicans, who control the White House, the Senate and the House, allowed the expiration of premium subsidies for people buying Affordable Care Act insurance policies. As negotiations on Capitol Hill continue on the matter, some Democrats are pushing to end the Hyde restrictions as part of any new agreements on health care subsidies.

Trump’s road map on the Hyde Amendment came more than an hour into a stem-winding speech intended as a part strategy session and part pep rally as Republicans attempt to maintain their threadbare House majority in the November midterms.

The president touted the GOP proposal to replace ACA subsidies — which taxpayers typically steer directly to insurance companies after selecting their policies — with direct payments that taxpayers could use for a range of health care expenses, including insurance. The expanded ACA subsidies expired on Dec. 31, 2025, hitting millions of policy holders with steep premium increases.

“Let the money go directly to the people,” Trump said, before casually slipping in a reference to the Hyde Amendment.

“We’re all big fans of everything,” he said. “But you have to have flexibility.”

Turning directly to GOP leaders, including Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump added, “If you can do that, you’re going to have — this is going to be your issue.”

House Republicans did not visibly react to Trump’s argument. But Senate Republicans appeared unlikely to back off their demands that any new health care legislation maintain existing restrictions on government funding for abortion services.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune reiterated his stance Tuesday afternoon that any legislation must ensure “that those dollars aren’t being used to go against the practice that has been in place for the last 50 years.”

Beyond Capitol Hill, Trump drew swift condemnation from parts of the GOP coalition that want absolute opposition to any policy that might ease abortion restrictions.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said it would sour core conservative voters and make Republicans “sure to lose this November.”

“To suggest Republicans should be ‘flexible’ is an abandonment of this decades-long commitment,” she said in a statement. “The voters sent a GOP trifecta to Washington and they expect it to govern like one. Giving in to Democrat demands that our tax dollars are used to fund plans that cover abortion on demand until birth would be a massive betrayal.”

Even before Trump’s speech, activists were ramping up pressure on Republicans in their talks with Democrats.

At Americans United for Life, a leading advocacy group that opposes abortion rights, Gavin Oxley penned an op-ed this week for “Blue Light News” titled, “Republicans must hold the line: No Hyde Amendment, no deal on health care.”

“If they play their cards right,” Oxley wrote, “Republicans just might earn back enough of their base’s trust to sustain them through the 2026 midterms.”

The Hyde Amendment, named for the late Rep. Henry Hyde, originally applied to Medicaid, the joint federal-state insurance program for poor and disabled Americans, and barred it from paying for abortions unless the woman’s life is in danger or the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. Hyde first introduced it in 1976, shortly after the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide.

Over the years, Congress reauthorized Hyde policy as part of spending bills that fund the government. Democrats who support abortion access often joined Republicans who opposed abortion rights as a bipartisan compromise to pass larger spending deals. But as the two parties hardened their respective positions on abortion, Democrats became more uniform opponents of the ban, most famously when presidential candidate Joe Biden reversed his long-standing support for Hyde on his way to winning the 2020 Democratic nomination and general election.

Republicans have maintained their near-absolute support for the amendment.

The anti-abortion movement was initially skeptical of Trump as a presidential candidate in 2015 and 2016. But he has mostly aligned with the key faction of the Republican coalition, especially on Supreme Court appointments that led to the 2022 decision overturning Roe.

—- Barrow reported from Atlanta. Associated Press reporter Stephen Groves contributed from Washington.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Republican Doug LaMalfa, a California rice farmer who served seven terms in the U.S. House and was a reliable vote on President Donald Trump’s agenda, has died at age 65.

His death trims the Republicans’ narrow margin of control of the House to 218 seats to Democrats’ 213.

The congressman experienced a medical emergency Monday night and was taken to a local hospital, where he died during a surgical procedure, the Butte County sheriff’s office said Tuesday. Officials haven’t disclosed the cause of his death.

Trump expressed “tremendous sorrow” over LaMalfa’s death as he addressed a meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, lamenting the loss of a lawmaker he championed as an ally for his agenda. He said the late congressman “wasn’t a 3 o’clock in the morning person” like other lawmakers he would call in the wee hours to lobby for their votes.

“He voted with me 100% of the time,” Trump said. “With Doug, I never had to call.”

Longtime public servant

LaMalfa, a fourth-generation rice farmer, was elected to Congress in 2012 after serving in the state Legislature. He represented California’s 1st District, which covered a vast portion of the state’s rural Northspanning from the Oregon border down to just north of the capital, Sacramento.

He was a regular presence on the House floor, helping GOP leadership open the chamber and frequently offering his view on local and national affairs. He served on the House Agriculture Committee and as the chairman of a subcommittee with jurisdiction over forestry issues. He also served on committees dealing with transportation and natural resource issues.

LaMalfa had planned to run for reelection despite his district being dramatically redrawn under a ballot measure passed by California voters in November. The measurebacked by Democrats, was designed to make it harder for LaMalfa and four other Republicans to win reelection.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, must call a special election to replace LaMalfa, his office said. The election could happen as late as June, when California will hold its primary for the 2026 midterm.

A focus on rural issues, wildfire prevention

LaMalfa’s colleagues, staff members and friends said he cared deeply about his district, often driving far distances to check in with constituents and working on key local issues such as wildfire prevention and water storage.

“He would show up at the smallest events that were important in people’s lives in this district,” recalled David Reade, a former chief of staff of LaMalfa’s from the state legislature. “He would drive literally hundreds and hundreds of miles to be there.”

His current chief of staff, Mark Spannagel, who started working for him in 2002, said the congressman was a “deeply funny guy.” He was obsessed with cars, often showing up at events with grease under his fingernails, and he loved classic rock and the “Austin Powers” movies, Spannagel said.

“He’s probably one of the most normal people in Congress, down to earth,” he said in a phone interview. “You want to sit there and have an iced tea with him.”

LaMalfa once traveled to multiple Veterans Affairs offices in Washington to advocate for a constituent, Spannagel said. He also would host town halls and political events in small towns in his district to meet more constituents.

“Just because, ‘Why not? We’re gonna go do them. We’re gonna be there. Let those people be heard, too,’” he said. “It’s not all about the biggest city or the biggest town.”

One of his priorities in Congress was advocating for wildfire mitigation and protecting victims, said state Assembly member James Gallagher, who called LaMalfa his “big brother.”

LaMalfa successfully passed legislation in 2024 to exempt wildfire relief payments from federal income taxes. It came after parts of his district were ravaged by the deadliest wildfire in state history in 2018. President Joe Biden signed it into law. LaMalfa also called for increased water storage and for more forest management to reduce the threat of wildfires.

But LaMalfa’s unwavering support of Trump has prompted frustration for some voters in recent years. Some were hoping to oust him during the midterm election because of his vote for Trump’s plan to overhaul health care, food assistance and other rural resources. LaMalfa was met with yelling and booing at several town halls last year.

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson called LaMalfa “a principled conservative and a tireless advocate for the people of Northern California.”

“He was never afraid to fight for rural communities, farmers, and working families,” Hudson said. “Doug brought grit, authenticity, and conviction to everything he did in public service.”

C-SPAN in a recent compilation said LaMalfa gave at least one set of remarks for the record on 81 days in 2025. Only two other lawmakers spoke on the House floor more frequently.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York called for a moment of silence in honor of LaMalfa at the start of a panel at the Capitol commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

___

Catalini reported from Trenton, N.J., and Freking from Washington. Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.