Category: Uncategorized

Amid the many questions swirling since last weekend’s dramatic events in Caracas – and there are many – one that refuses to go away centres on the bespectacled woman now leading what US officials are calling Venezuela’s “interim authorities.”

Why Delcy?

What is it about Delcy Rodríguez, daughter of a former Marxist guerilla and deputy to ousted dictator Nicolas Maduro, that has caught the eye of the Trump administration?

And why has Washington decided on an avowed “Chavista” revolutionary to stay in power, rather than backing the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, whose opposition movement is widely believed to have won the 2024 presidential elections?

The answer, according to one former US ambassador to Venezuela, is simple.

“They’ve gone for stability over democracy,” says Charles Shapiro, who served as George W Bush’s ambassador in Caracas from 2002-04.

“They’ve kept the dictatorial regime in place without the dictator. The henchmen are still there.”

“I think it’s risky as hell.”

But the alternative, involving wholesale regime change and backing Machado’s opposition movement, would have involved other dangers, including potential infighting among opposition figures and the alienation of those Venezuelans – perhaps as many as 30% – who voted for Maduro.

In his dramatic press conference on Saturday morning, President Trump shocked many observers by dismissing the Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado as “not respected” inside Venezuela, while describing Rodríguez as “gracious.”

“I was very surprised to hear the disqualification of María Corina Machado by President Trump,” Kevin Whitaker, former deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Caracas, says.

“Her movement was massively elected…and so disqualifying Machado, in effect, disqualified that whole movement.”

The speed, and apparent ease, with which Maduro was removed and Rodríguez installed led some observers to speculate that the former vice president might have been in on the plan.

“I think it’s very telling that we just went after Maduro and the vice president survived,” says former CIA officer Lindsay Moran.

“It’s obvious that there were high-placed sources. My immediate speculation was that those high placed sources were in the office of the VP, if not the VP herself.”

But Phil Gunson, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group who lives in Caracas, says the conspiracy theory doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny, given that enormous power still rests with Venezuela’s defence minister, General Vladimir Padrino Lopez, and hardline interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, both loyal Maduro allies.

“Why would she sell out Maduro, leaving her defenceless, internally, against the guys who really control the guns,” Gunson says.

Instead, the decision to back Rodríguez followed warnings that installing Machado could result in dangerous levels of instability.

In October, an ICG report warned that “Washington should beware of regime change.”

“The risks of violence in any post-Maduro scenario should not be downplayed,” the report urged, saying elements of the security forces could launch a guerilla war against the new authorities.

“We were warning people in the administration, this is not going to work,” Gunson says. “There will be violent chaos, it will be your fault and you’ll own it.”

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported the existence of a classified US intelligence assessment reaching the same conclusions and determining that members of the Maduro regime, including Rodríguez, were in a better position to lead a temporary government.

The White House hasn’t commented publicly on the report, but made it clear that it plans to work with Rodríguez for the foreseeable future.

“It belies a bit of hard-nosed realism on the part of the Trump administration, says Henry Ziemer, an associate fellow with the Americas Program at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

But the challenges, he says, have only just begun.

“The capture of Maduro was the easy part. The broader rebuilding of Venezuela, the oil, drugs and democracy goals…are going to take much more time to come to fruition.

For now, though, Rodríguez seems to be someone the Trump administration feels it can deal with.

“She’s been a bit of an economic reformer,” Gunson says. “She’s aware of the need for an economic opening and she’s not averse to the idea of bringing back foreign capital.”

Ziemer agrees that Rodríguez may not find it difficult to do Washington’s bidding when it comes to rolling out the welcome mat for US oil companies, offering greater cooperation on counter-narcotics and even scaling down Venezuela’s relations with Cuba, China and Russia, especially if it means the gradual lifting of US sanctions.

“I think she can deliver on that,” he says.

“But if the US is asking for genuine progress towards a democratic transition, that becomes much harder.”

At the moment, this does not appear to be high on Washington’s list of priorities.

In remarks to the press on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke of a three-stage plan for Venezuela, starting with stabilisation of the country and the marketing of 30-50 million barrels of oil under US supervision.

The plan would lead to what Rubio called “a process of reconciliation”, including amnesties for opposition forces, the release of political prisoners and the rebuilding of civil society.

“The third phase, of course, will be one of transition,” he said, without elaborating.

Article 233 of Venezuela’s constitution calls for fresh elections within 30 days of a president becoming “permanently unavailable to serve,” something that would seem to apply to a situation in which Maduro languishes in a New York jail, awaiting trial.

But in an interview with NBC News on Monday, President Trump said elections were not on the horizon. “We have to fix the country first,” he said. “You can’t have an election.”

Gunson says Washington’s decision not to go for regime change in the short term might make sense, but the absence of a medium- or long-term prospect is disappointing.

“Trump may be getting something out of this, but Venezuelans aren’t,” he says. “Ordinary Venezuelans are getting screwed as usual.”

With the Trump administration talking up the prospects of international oil companies re-investing in Venezuela’s corrupt and moribund petroleum infrastructure, Gunson says reality may be more complicated.

“Nobody’s going to come in here with the tens of billions of dollars that are required…to start the recovery process if the government is illegitimate and there’s no rule of law,” he says.

When the former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez designated Nicolás Maduro as his successor, shortly before his death in 2013, the move was described as Chavez’s “dedazo,” a Spanish slang term meaning a “finger pointing,” a personal anointment which bypasses the normal democratic process.

Ambassador Shapiro sees a parallel with the rise to power of Delcy Rodríguez.

“This is Trump’s dedazo,” he says.

A US immigration agent fatally shot a 37-year-old woman on Wednesday in the city of Minneapolis, but the details of what led up to the incident have left a wide chasm between federal and local government officials.

Trump administration officials claim the woman, identified as Renee Nicole Good, was a “violent rioter” attempting to run over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents when one agent fired “defensive shots” into her vehicle.

But city and state leaders, and Democrats nationally, are disputing that account.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey claims that “this was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying”, telling ICE agents: “Get out of our city.”

Multiple videos posted to social media by onlookers appear to show the moment of the shooting, which occurred around 10:25 local time.

From various vantage points, a maroon SUV can be seen blocking a residential street in Minneapolis. A crowd of people, who appear to be protesting, are lining the sidewalk area.

Multiple law enforcement vehicles appear nearby. Immigration agents pull up to the vehicle parked in the street, get out of the truck and order the woman behind the wheel to get out of the SUV. One of the agents tugs at the driver’s side door handle.

Another agent is positioned near the front of the vehicle. It’s not clear exactly where the officer is standing based on the videos reviewed immediately by the BBC. That agent opens fire as the maroon SUV attempts to drive off.

Three pops are heard, and the vehicle can be seen losing control and crashing into a white car parked along the street nearby.

The shooting comes amid a major immigration crackdown in Minneapolis by the Trump administration.

US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said the deceased woman’s actions constituted “domestic terrorism” – and that ICE’s operations in the city will continue.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that an ICE officer was “viciously” run over. “It is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital,” he wrote.

The president also blamed the “Radical Left” for “threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis”.

Speaking to press later in the day, Noem called the loss of life “preventable”.

But she repeatedly claimed that the ICE agent fired in self-defence and that Good used her vehicle as a “deadly weapon” against agents. The details are pending an FBI investigation she said, adding that the same agent injured Wednesday was also hit by a car in the line of duty in June.

The Minneapolis City Council, however, said that Good was simply “caring for her neighbors” when she was shot and killed.

Minnesota State Governor Tim Walz also pushed back on federal accounts of the incident.

“Don’t believe this propaganda machine,” Walz wrote in response to a Department of Homeland Security post about the shooting. “The state will ensure there is a full, fair, and expeditious investigation to ensure accountability and justice.”

Top Democrats, like former Vice President Kamala Harris and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also released statements Wednesday evening. Harris called the Trump administration’s version of events “gaslighting”.

Protests erupted in several parts of the city as outraged Minneapolis residents condemned the shooting and called for ICE to leave. According to local media reports, the main gathering happened near the scene of the shooting.

A makeshift vigil, displaying flowers and candles, was laid in the snow there, as protesters chanted slogans and delivered speeches.

One group of protesters formed a line blocking the entrance to a federal courthouse with ICE officers standing inside, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The group of around 50 people chanted Good’s name and dispersed after breaking a glass window.

Protests are also taking place in cities outside Minneapolis, with gatherings expected in New Orleans, Miami, Seattle and New York City.

The Trump administration deployed an additional 2,000 federal agents to the Minneapolis area in recent weeks in response to allegations of welfare fraud in the state, sources told the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.

Frey said in the press conference Wednesday that ICE is not making the city safer. “They’re ripping families apart, they’re sowing chaos in our streets,” he said.

The deployment, which began on Sunday, is one of the largest concentrations of Department of Homeland Security personnel in a US city in recent years.

It follows an immigration enforcement campaign launched by ICE in late 2025 to target individuals in Minneapolis who were issued deportation orders, including members of the city’s Somali community.

That community has been criticised frequently by Trump, who has called them “garbage”.

“I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you,” the president has said. “Their country’s no good for a reason. Their country stinks.”

Trump later doubled-down on his remarks after a YouTube video by a conservative online content creator accused day care centres run by Somali immigrants of fraud.

“Send them back from where the came,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in December. He also withheld federal child care funds to the state of Minnesota in response.

The Trump administration has sent ICE agents to other cities as well, all part of a widespread crackdown on what it says is unlawful immigration in the US.