By JOSHUA GOODMAN

MIAMI (AP) — In 2017, as political outsider Donald Trump headed to Washington, Delcy Rodríguez spotted an opening.

Related Articles

Trump’s former Russia adviser says Russia offered US free rein in Venezuela in exchange for Ukraine

FACT FOCUS: Trump sows confusion on number of childhood vaccinations

Trump administration says it’s withholding social safety net money from 5 states over fraud concerns

US nearly triples list of countries whose citizens must post bonds up to $15,000 to apply for visas

Trump says his voters loved the Venezuela attack — here’s what they really think

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.

FILE – Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, then Constituent National Assembly President Delcy Rodriguez, left, and first lady Cilia Flores, wave as they arrive to the National Assembly, in Caracas, Venezuela, May 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)

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.

FILE – Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez meets with her brother, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez at the Foreign Ministry in Caracas, Venezuela, Dec. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)

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.

FILE – Constitutional Assembly President Delcy Rodriguez, and her brother, Minister of Communications Jorge Rodriguez, center right, flanked by diplomat Roy Chaderton, left, and former Vice President Elias Jaua, pose for a photo at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Dec. 1, 2017. (AP Photo/Tatiana Fernandez, File)

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 Gorrin.

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.”

FILE – Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, from left, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, National Assembly Vice President Pedro Infante, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez and National Assembly Second Vice President America Perez, arrive for the swearing-in ceremony of President Nicolas Maduro for his third term in Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)

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.”

By EMMA BURROWS

Russian officials indicated in 2019 that the Kremlin would be willing to back off from its support for Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela in exchange for a free hand in Ukraine, according to Fiona Hill, an adviser to President Donald Trump at the time.

The Russians repeatedly floated the idea of a “very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine,” Hill said during a congressional hearing in 2019. Her comments surfaced again this week and were shared on social media after the U.S. stealth operation to capture Maduro.

Hill said Russia pushed the idea through articles in Russian media that referenced the Monroe Doctrine — a 19th century principle in which the U.S. opposed European meddling in the Western Hemisphere and in return agreed to stay out of European affairs. It was invoked by Trump to justify the U.S. intervention in Venezuela.

Even though Russian officials never made a formal offer, Moscow’s then-ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, hinted many times to her that Russia was willing to allow the United States to act as it wished in Venezuela if the U.S. did the same for Russia in Europe, Hill told The Associated Press this week.

FILE – Anatoly Antonov, Russian ambassador to the United States, departs the U.S. State Department in Washington, March 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

“Before there was a ‘hint hint, nudge nudge, wink wink, how about doing a deal?’ But nobody (in the U.S.) was interested then,” Hill said.

Trump dispatched Hill — then his senior adviser on Russia and Europe — to Moscow in April 2019 to deliver that message. She said she told Russian officials “Ukraine and Venezuela are not related to each other.”

At that time, she said, the White House was aligned with allies in recognizing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim president.

But fast forward seven years and the situation is different.

Related Articles

How Delcy Rodríguez courted Donald Trump and rose to power in Venezuela

FACT FOCUS: Trump sows confusion on number of childhood vaccinations

Trump administration says it’s withholding social safety net money from 5 states over fraud concerns

US nearly triples list of countries whose citizens must post bonds up to $15,000 to apply for visas

Trump says his voters loved the Venezuela attack — here’s what they really think

After ousting Maduro, the U.S. has said it will now “run” Venezuela policy. Trump also has renewed his threat to take over Greenland — a self-governing territory of Denmark and part of the NATO military alliance — and threatened to take military action against Colombia for facilitating the global sale of cocaine.

The Kremlin will be “thrilled” with the idea that large countries — such as Russia, the United States and China — get spheres of influence because it proves “might makes right,” Hill said.

Trump’s actions in Venezuela make it harder for Kyiv’s allies to condemn Russia’s designs on Ukraine as “illegitimate” because “we’ve just had a situation where the U.S. has taken over — or at least decapitated the government of another country — using fiction,” Hill told AP.

Men watch smoke rising from a dock after explosions were heard at La Guaira port, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

The Trump administration has described its raid in Venezuela as a law enforcement operation and has insisted that capturing Maduro was legal.

The Russian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Hill’s account.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the military operation to oust Maduro but the Foreign Ministry issued statements condemning U.S. “aggression.”

President Donald Trump spread some confusion about childhood vaccinations in social media posts about changes to U.S. vaccine recommendations.

Related Articles

How Delcy Rodríguez courted Donald Trump and rose to power in Venezuela

Trump’s former Russia adviser says Russia offered US free rein in Venezuela in exchange for Ukraine

Trump administration says it’s withholding social safety net money from 5 states over fraud concerns

US nearly triples list of countries whose citizens must post bonds up to $15,000 to apply for visas

Trump says his voters loved the Venezuela attack — here’s what they really think

Trump’s administration on Monday took the unprecedented step of cutting the number of vaccines the government has long routinely recommended for all children. On that list are vaccines against 11 diseases. Additional vaccines that were once broadly recommended now are separately categorized for at-risk children or as available through “shared decision-making” with their doctor.

Leading medical groups are sticking with prior vaccine recommendations, saying there’s no new science to warrant a change — and they worry the conflicting advice will leave more children vulnerable to preventable illness or death.

On social media, Trump wrote that “America will no longer require 72 ‘jabs’” for children, and shared a misleading graphic comparing the U.S. to a “European country” that administered 11 “injections.”

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: In a social media post about changes to federal childhood vaccination recommendations, Trump shared a misleading graphic about vaccinations abroad and misstated vaccine requirements in the U.S.

THE FACTS: A year ago, the government’s childhood vaccination schedule recommended routine protection against 18 diseases. Doses were spread across different ages, based on carefully vetted scientific research about disease risk and vaccine protection.

How many separate injections that added up to between birth and age 18 varied. It depended on things like the brand used, the availability of combination shots and the child’s starting age. But unless you counted once-a-year flu vaccines (which some kids can get as a nasal spray) or COVID-19 shots, the number of injections was closer to three dozen.

That would drop to about 23 injections if children received only the recommended-for-all vaccinations on the administration’s new schedule. They include vaccines against diseases such as measles, whooping cough, polio, chickenpox and HPV, or the human papilloma virus.

Contrary to Trump’s claim, 72 injections were never “required,” as families could opt out. States do require children to get certain vaccines before enrolling in school. But the state lists’ of school shots were narrower than the prior U.S. vaccine schedule, and many states offer different types of exemptions.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday answered questions from reporters for the first time since announcing the suspension of his reelection campaign earlier this week, offering a look into what he called his “personal” decision to drop out of the race.

Asked if he had made his decision not to seek a third term because of pressure from fellow Democrats, Walz said it was a choice “made with my family,” and took aim at the administration of President Donald Trump, calling recent immigration enforcement actions and suspension of federal aid due to suspected welfare fraud a “war that’s being waged against Minnesota.”

“I think it’s a personal decision,” Walz said during a news conference on paid family and medical leave in Minneapolis. “It’s effectiveness. I never took this job to be governor. I took the job to pass things like paid family medical leave. I took this job to get our children food. I took this job, and what I will continue to do for a year … (to) protect every single person in this state.”

Minnesota has attracted significant attention from the Trump administration in recent months after long-standing issues with government fraud gained national media attention. Federal officials have cut off day care funding to Minnesota and threatened to pause Medicaid funding unless the state demonstrates further actions to boost the integrity of its federally funded programs.

Walz: ‘It’s the best decision for Minnesota’

Federal prosecutors estimate the state lost billions of federal dollars in recent years to Medicaid theft schemes, though Walz officials have disputed that figure and have painted recent actions by Trump officials as a weaponization of the federal government.

“This is a concerted effort to try and destroy the president’s opponents, to destroy the rule of law,” Walz said. “And it became apparent to me that he was going to do that with me being there. I just feel, along with my family, that it’s the best decision for Minnesota. I feel very confident in that.”

Walz announced he wouldn’t seek another term on Monday amid mounting scrutiny on his handling of large-scale fraud in state welfare programs in recent years. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor governor’s final decision on a third term reportedly came after a weekend meeting with U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is now considering running for governor in 2026.

Asked if he recommended Klobuchar run, Walz said he spoke with “all” of the Democratic Congressional delegation and “let them know” of his plans.

“I spoke with a lot of key allies. I spoke with my family. And just let them know that this is what we were going to do,” he said. “Sen. Klobuchar was one of those conversations.”

A central issue in state politics

While the governor described his decision as personal, it comes as fraud has become an unavoidable, central issue in state politics.

Walz had initially pushed against criticisms that his administration had not been proactive enough in stopping fraud. But in recent months, he directed his administration to take greater action amid a wave of new federal prosecutions and pressure from Republican opponents.

Federal fraud indictments continue to emerge in housing and autism programs after a federal investigation first became public in the summer of 2025. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson recently described Minnesota as having an “industrial-scale” fraud problem.

In December, Thompson announced new fraud charges in two Medicaid-funded programs and told reporters that the state could have lost $9 billion or more to fraud in 14 “high-risk” Medicaid-funded programs since 2018. Walz and other state officials have disputed that estimate.

Walz said Thompson “would have been let go by any other administration” for “speculating about things with no factual information.”

“That’s defamation,” Walz said. “And that’s coming from the U.S. attorney. We are under assault like no other time in our state’s history because of a petty, vile administration that doesn’t care about the well-being of Minnesotans.”

Not resigning

Walz was first elected in 2018 and won a second term in 2022. No governor has served three consecutive terms in Minnesota history.

Asked about Republican calls for his resignation, Walz told reporters: “You can make all your requests for me to resign over my dead body.”

The governor said dropping out of the race would allow him to focus on addressing fraud in state programs during his final year in office.

“I’m accountable for this, and because of that accountability, I’m not running for office again,” he said Tuesday. “But I have a year to continue to improve on a record that I think will stand up against anybody’s.”