The Dictatorship
What’s troubling about Delcy Rodriguez’s transition from pariah to Trump’s partner
Some major changes are looming for Venezuela: A law passed Thursday opens mining to foreign investors — a priority of the Trump administration. The U.S. government recently recognized the regime of acting President Delcy Rodriguez and removed long-standing sanctions against Rodriguez herself. The message is clear: The priority is economic recovery.
So the question must be asked: What are the people of Venezuela getting out of all this, and what is the Trump administration getting for its concessions? As things stand, the U.S. risks frittering away the leverage it holds over Venezuela’s recovery.
What are the people of Venezuela getting out of all this, and what is the Trump administration getting for its concessions?
President Donald Trump implemented sanctions against Rodriguez and other key regime figures during his first term. The designation drew a moral line. Rodriguez, then Venezuela’s executive vice president, was accused of participating in the dismantling of Venezuela’s democratic institutions and undermining the lawfully elected National Assembly in order to maintain Nicolás Maduro’s control of the country. By directly sanctioning her and others in 2018, the Trump administration, which had sanctioned Maduro the year before, signaled that it considered their actions so egregious that these individuals should not retain access to their assets in the U.S., engage with U.S. business interests or travel to the U.S. They were cut off from the U.S. financial system, with a goal of isolating them internationally.
At the time, the Trump administration also recognized the National Assembly’s presidentJuan Guaido, as the interim president of Venezuela, according to the Venezuelan Constitution. I was the top U.S. diplomat on the ground then and helped lead these efforts. This policy delineated bad actors from the good, even if it did not deliver the democratic transition the Venezuelan people clamored for.
Fast-forward to today: In the wake of ousting Maduro from powerPresident Trump calls Rodriguez the “President-elect” even though the Maduro regime stole the July 2024 presidential election and Rodriguez herself was not directly elected. The focus on supporting stability over democratic rights in Venezuela makes me think the administration has forgotten Benjamin Franklin’s warning: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
The Trump administration’s logic appears to be: If you want to stabilize an imploding petro‑state, manage migration and keep global oil markets calm, you deal with the person who commands the bureaucracy and security forces — not a president in exile (such as Edmundo Gonzalez) nor the popular opposition leader (Maria Corina Machado).
It cannot be forgotten that Venezuela’s stability is merely a continuation of the same regime under new management.
Here’s the problem with that approach: Between Trump’s focus on Iran and the sanctions relief his administration has approved for the Venezuelan regime members still in office, the power calculus for Venezuela is being fundamentally altered. No longer a pariah in the U.S. system, Rodriguez can travel, sign deals and invite foreign capital without putting counterparties in legal jeopardy. Energy majors, bondholders and multilateral lenders have cover to at least begin to discuss debt restructuring, oil‑sector rehabilitation and other economic projects. And a president who can pay civil servants, restore some basic services and stabilize the nation’s currency gains political capital and breathing room.
It cannot be forgotten that Venezuela’s stability is merely a continuation of the same regime under new management. How else should the Venezuelan people understand statements such as this from Trump: “The relationship with Venezuela, the leaders, has been fantastic. And I think we’re going to have a long-term, very good relationship. And it may be beyond long term, you understand.”
By normalizing ties before ensuring there is a binding road map on elections, power‑sharing or judicial reform, Washington has surrendered significant leverage without securing commensurate concessions. The message to Chavista elites, long conditioned to see sanctions as the price of authoritarian behavior, is that change in personalities, not in institutions, may suffice to regain international legitimacy. That is a dangerous precedent in a system where the legislature remains dominated by loyalists, the courts are deeply politicized and the security services have never been held to account.
Take, for example, Gustavo Enrique González López. He is serving as defense minister and effectively heading the military. He has been on the U.S. Treasury’s list of sanctioned foreign officialssince 2015 for his direct actions attacking the democratic opposition and undermining the rights of Venezuelans as the head of SEBIN, the repressive intelligence apparatus that terrorized ordinary Venezuelans and oversaw some of the country’s worst human rights abuses. This abusive system led the International Criminal Court to begin an investigation in Venezuela for crimes against humanity. How can one see installing such a bad actor as head of the military as anything other than calcification of the Maduro regime?
The Trump administration’s logic appears to be: If you want to stabilize an imploding petro‑state, manage migration and keep global oil markets calm, you deal with the person who commands the bureaucracy and security forces.
For years, the U.S. conferred diplomatic recognition on actors who met minimal democratic criteria, regardless of whether they controlled the presidential palace. Today, by contrast, recognition is granted to those who effectively control state power, on the assumption that only they can deliver stability, migration management and cooperation on energy. While there is a theory to that logic, such an approach reduces the opposition’s bargaining power (which in Venezuela was already thin). It signals that international legitimacy no longer hinges on competitive elections or institutional pluralism.
It does not have to be this way. Sanctions relief and recognition can be powerful tools for democratization if they are deployed conditionally. The U.S. and its partners could and should make every tranche of economic normalization — whether oil licenses, access to multilateral financing or diplomatic rehabilitation — contingent on specific, verifiable steps: an agreed electoral calendar, an independent electoral authority, equal media access, the reinstatement of banned opposition figures and the full and unconditional release of political prisoners. Those commitments should be codified in public agreements and monitored by credible international observers, not left to private assurances and back‑channel understandings.
Whether Rodriguez is personally inclined toward liberalization — and there is no reason to think she is — is almost beside the point. What matters in the long run is whether her quest for economic normalization can be harnessed to secure institutional changes that outlast her tenure. Postponing the hard asks on democratizing Venezuela will not make them easier. If anything, as the U.S. becomes further embroiled in another Middle East conflict and as energy prices rise everywhere, Rodriguez’s leverage only increases. The midterms, too, are a factor, as her regime and everyone else watches to see whether control of the U.S. Congress changes hands. Not tying recognition and sanctions relief to democratic commitments undermines what leverage the U.S. still has.
James Story was U.S. ambassador to Venezuela from 2018 to 2023. A retired U.S. diplomat who has served in posts around the world, he is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and founding partner of Global Frontier Advisors.
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. The Supreme Court these days is generally in the business of helping executions go forward. But on Thursday night, the court did something notable: It told Alabama no.
Even then, the court wasn’t unanimous. Justices Clarence ThomasSamuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the refusal to let the nitrogen gas execution of Jeffery Lee proceed.
What prompted the rare rejection? In line with the typical shadow docket practice, the court didn’t explain itself. Nor did the dissenters, who merely noted their disagreement.
But a deeper look at the case helps us understand why a majority of the court was unwilling to help the state this time.
A Trump-appointed judge had permanently blocked Alabama from killing Lee using the nitrogen method, due to the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In her ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Emily Marks made it clear that she wasn’t stopping officials from executing Lee for the 1998 murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson. Rather, she was only barring the nitrogen method while leaving the state free to use others, such as a firing squad.
Yet the state still pressed to execute Lee with nitrogen on Thursday. The next roadblock it hit was a divided appellate panel, which declined to lift Marks’ injunction. Trump-appointed Judge Robert Luck dissented, stressing the high bar the justices have set for Eighth Amendment claims and accusing Lee of delaying his claim until the last minute. Luck noted that Lee’s victims didn’t get to choose how they died.
The appellate dissent reflects the Supreme Court majority’s view on capital punishment. So, when Alabama filed an emergency application to the justices on Thursday, it felt like the setting of a familiar scene: A lower court halts an execution, only for the high court majority to let it move forward. We have seen this movie before.
Plus, the court previously permitted nitrogen gas executions in Alabama. In the case of Anthony Boyd last yearJustice Sonia Sotomayor lamented the majority’s refusal to extend him what she called “the barest form of mercy,” which she said would have been letting him die by firing squad, which “would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to 4 minutes.” She issued a similar dissent the year before in the case of Kenneth Smithwhich she concluded “with deep sadness, but commitment to the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.”
Lee’s case was different, as his lawyers and a key outside advocate explained to the justices. His lawyers said it was “unlike every previous method of execution challenge that this Court has considered.” They said that unlike prior cases where lower courts issued temporary stays for inmates, this one had a permanent injunction that followed “a full three-day bench trial on the merits — the first such trial anywhere on the constitutionality of nitrogen asphyxiation.”
That key outside advocate was Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck, a Supreme Court expert who filed an amicus brief. He said Alabama was trying to do something procedurally that it shouldn’t be allowed to do. “After all,” Vladeck wrote, “allowing Alabama to execute Mr. Lee through a grant of emergency relief would necessarily frustrate this Court’s ability to conduct plenary review of the district court’s final, permanent injunction.”
To be clear, the justices can still reverse Marks’ ruling in a future round of litigation. Or, as the judge noted, the state can execute him by other means. The question on Thursday night was whether the court would make the case moot by letting Alabama execute Lee before the state’s appeal could be fully vetted in an orderly fashion. With that in mind, it would almost be unremarkable that the court rejected the state’s emergency application, if it weren’t for the fact that the justices had previously intervened to help governments conduct executions over lower courts’ objections.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that three justices voted to let Lee’s execution go forward as planned, its unconstitutionality notwithstanding. Of course, while none of the justices explained their views, we can presume that the three dissenters are prepared to disagree with the lower courts’ constitutional analysis if and when the case comes back to the high court.
Next week, the justices are set to issue another round of opinions from cases argued this term, as we creep toward the end of June, when some of the court’s most contentious decisions have historically come.
Have any questions or comments for me? Pleasesubmit them through this formfor a chance to be featured in the Deadline: Legal Blog and newsletter.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
Ex-reality TV star and MAGA-backed Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt angrily conceded the race Friday in a combative video in which he derided, and appeared to threaten, the women who finished ahead of him.
Nearly four days after The Associated Press projected Councilmember Nithya Raman will advance to the November general election to face incumbent Mayor Karen BassPratt announced that “the campaign portion of my mission to save Los Angeles is coming to a close, and I’m moving on to the next, more interesting phase.”
With 99% of ballots counted as of Friday, the AP put Pratt in third place, with just more than a quarter of the vote — 3.5 percentage points behind Raman and nearly 9 points behind Bass.
Pratt initially stood in second as returns came in on primary night, but his lead over Raman steadily narrowed as mail-in ballots were counted. By Sunday, she had overtaken him by less than 1 percentage point.
President Donald Trump and other MAGA supporters suggested Pratt’s apparent reversal of fortune proved fraud, but elections experts say it is California’s voting systemcoupled with the city’s small Republican voter base, that explain his third-place finish.
What, exactly, Pratt’s next chapter in civic life will consist of is unclear. But if his Friday announcement is any indication — he called Bass and Raman “dumb and dumber” and “corrupt communists” — it will include continued attacks on his former opponents. And contrary to Pratt’s pledge that he would leave the city if he lost, he suggested he will instead stay put in LA.
“A lot of dim-witted jerks thought I was in this for a grift, that I was going to roll up and leave town if I didn’t get into City Hall,” Pratt said in the video. “Hey, morons, I didn’t get in this for political power. I got in this to expose this corrupt machine, and nothing has changed.”
Addressing Bass and Raman, Pratt added: “I will be lighting you up every single day, and now I don’t have to worry about offending BLN viewers. I don’t have campaign laws hamstringing me now. It’s war.”
Filled with expletives and images of fires, violence and homeless encampments, Pratt’s video channels the same angry populism he ran on. His Republican supporters —including Benny JohnsonTrump administration official Richard Grenell and the chair of the LA County GOP — cheered his final message as a candidate.
Best known for his role as Heidi Montag’s bad boyfriend on MTV’s “The Hills,” Pratt launched his surprise mayoral campaign in January, a year after his family home burned down in the Pacific Palisades fire. While his platform initially focused heavily on what he and his supporters characterized as the failures that led to the damage caused by the fires, Pratt expanded his campaign to focus on forcing homeless people off the streets, cleaning up alleged “fraud” in the city’s finances and saving abused dogs on Skid Row.
With his massive online following and social media savvy, Pratt catapulted himself from long-shot candidate to one who earned Trump’s support and managed to outraise both Bass and Raman.
In the video, Pratt also said he possesses “some recordings of one of your exalted candidates doing and saying something that would make her resign in shame.”
A spokesperson for Raman’s campaign declined to comment to MS NOW on Pratt’s message. Spokespeople for the Bass campaign did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama on Friday pledged to move forward with negotiations on a controversial luxury coastal resort linked to Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushnerthat is set for construction on the country’s only island.
The deal has sparked protests in Albaniawith some calling for Rama’s resignation. But in an interview Friday with MS NOW, the prime minister waved off such criticism as “ideological bulls—.”
He told MS NOW that “negotiations” for the property were still ongoing and dismissed concerns of any conflict of interest, insisting talks began before President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year and that Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was not acting on behalf of the U.S. government.
“When Jared Kushner and Ivanka came here and we started work together, it was not clear if Trump would go to jail or go to the White House,” he said, appearing to refer to Donald Trump’s legal battles ahead of the 2024 election.
The project, backed by Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partnerswill cost an estimated $1.6 billion. It involves the construction of dozens of hotels, apartments and villas along the country’s western coast. A larger development is planned for the Narta Lagoon area, home to a wildlife reserve, and a smaller resort is set to be built on the uninhabited island of Sazan, a former communist-era military base.
Ivanka Trump said she and her husband first came across the location by accident while on a trip in 2021. “We were on a friend’s boat, and we stopped for a swim,” she told podcaster David Senra last month. “Effectively, that’s how we found it. We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated.”
In response to the construction, protests have broken out in the country’s capital, Tirana, where tens of thousands of residents have marched through the streets proclaiming, “Albania is not for sale.” Many demonstrators have carried cut-outs of flamingos, a species whose habitats they say will be destroyed if the project goes through.
Rama stressed that the deal included other parties besides Kushner’s firm. He said the “incredible team of investors” was “not coming to Albania to destroy” but “coming to build” and suggested his country was being used as a pawn to attack the Trump administration.
“Don’t come here to fight with Trump. It’s not your fight,” he said. “You want me to believe that suddenly the American media, the American influencers, the American world is caring about some flamingos in Albania?”
Earlier this month, Albania’s anti-corruption agency opened a probe into how the investment firm was granted the right to the land, which was previously designated a protected area.
Redi Muçi, a member of parliament from the left-wing party Lëvizja Bashkë (Movement Together), said the agreement between the Kushner-backed firm and the Albanian government “looks like political and financial corruption” because “there is no competition.”
“It’s very fashionable to use all these words,” Rama said when he was asked about accusations of widespread corruption in his country.
While the protests were sparked by the Kushner-backed project, they have expanded into broader anti-government demonstrations, with many calling for Rama’s resignation.
During his interview with MS NOW, the prime minister said he would not resign and suggested, without evidence, that a “majority” of the population “wants the project.” He also said an “investment of such magnitude in tourism” would bring “a lot of income for everyone” in the country.
Construction of the development could also complicate Albania’s effort to join the European Union. On Tuesday, EU spokesperson Guillaume Mercier reminded the country, which is one of the poorest in Europe, that its entry into the coalition depends on adherence to its laws, including those on the environment.
“Albania should refrain from action that could undermine the fulfillment of the closing benchmark, and we expect the Albanian authorities to act without delay,” spokesman Guillaume Mercier said.
Rama told MS NOW he was not concerned that the construction would impact his country’s chances of joining the EU.
In the U.S., news of the resort reignited ethical concerns around Kushner’s business dealings and possible conflicts of interest. While he holds no formal government role — and is frequently referred to as simply a “volunteer” by the Trump White House — Kushner has been a key figure in the administration’s foreign policy efforts, participating in negotiations between Israel and Hamasand more recently, in the Iran was.
He’s done so while attempting to raise billions of dollars from governments in the region for his private equity fund. After the first Trump administration ended, Kushner secured $2 billion in investment from the Saudi government, along with hundreds of millions more from other Gulf nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Critics have suggested foreign leaders may be using the president’s son-in-law to curry favor with Trump. Kushner and the White House have previously claimed he is abiding by all applicable ethics laws.
Ines de La Cuetara is a London-based reporter for MS NOW.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
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