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Delcy Rodríguez strikes defiant tone but must walk tightrope as Venezuela’s interim leader

In her first speech as Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez lambasted the US and pledged fealty to Nicolás Maduro. But the Trump administration has made a cold calculation: she will bow to Washington. Rodríguez is a political veteran who served as Maduro’s vice-president and oil minister and defended the regime against accusations of terrorism, drug-running and election-stealing, yet for now she is Donald Trump’s favoured option to lead Venezuela. “She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump said. The US president has not ruled out deploying ground troops but appears to want to “run” Venezuela through Rodríguez, who finds herself in charge of a regime shocked and demoralised by the abduction of Maduro yet still in power. The 56-year-old former labour lawyer struck a defiant tone in her televised speech on Saturday night. She condemned the abduction of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and demanded their return. “What is being done to Venezuela is an atrocity that violates international law. History and justice will make the extremists who promoted this armed aggression pay,” she said. “There is only one president in Venezuela and his name is Nicolás Maduro.” In a crisis that blends political theatre, military power and economic calculation, the defiance may have been to some extent performative – a sop to the Bolivarian revolution’s humiliated loyalists, especially those in the armed forces, while Rodríguez consolidates her position. To stay in power – assuming that is her goal – she must accommodate US demands while shoring up an authoritarian regime that is despised by many Venezuelans. One wrong step could trigger an internal putsch, a street uprising or another blast of US firepower. Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, elaborated on Trump’s declaration that the US would run the South American country. “It means we set the terms. President Trump sets the terms,” he said. “It means the drugs stop flowing, it means the oil that was taken from us is returned, ultimately, and that criminals are not sent to the United States.” That implied a puppet ruler of a vassal state, but Rodríguez has some room to manoeuvre. Where Venezuelan opposition figures see an apparatchik of Maduro’s dictatorship, the Trump administration sees a potential business partner. A senior official told the New York Times: “I’m not claiming that she’s the permanent solution to the country’s problems, but she’s certainly someone we think we can work at a much more professional level than we were able to do with [Maduro].” The English-speaking technocrat impressed Trump’s team with her management of Venezuela’s oil industry and intermediaries convinced the administration that she would protect and champion future American energy investments in the country, the paper reported. For Trump that was enough to ditch an alternative candidate to replace Maduro: María Corina Machado. The opposition leader mobilised Edmundo González’s winning presidential campaign last year – Maduro ignored the result – and won the Nobel peace prize. Machado dedicated that prize to Trump as she courted the US leader and supported the Pentagon’s military buildup in the Caribbean – but on Saturday Trump said she lacked support and that it would be “very tough” for her to lead Venezuela. Millions of Venezuelans revere Machado but she is unacceptable to the military hierarchy that props up the regime, said one informed source in Caracas. The result, for now, is that leadership of a revolution launched by Hugo Chávez in 1999 and taken up by Maduro in 2013 now falls to a softly spoken woman with a reputation as a flinty pragmatist. When she was a child, her father, a Marxist activist, died during interrogation by Venezuelan authorities over his role in the kidnap of a US citizen. That US forces then kidnapped her boss is an irony doubtless not lost on Rodríguez. A student leader, she studied law in Caracas and Paris and joined Chávez’s government in 2003, following the path of her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, a psychiatrist who served as vice-president and is currently head of the national assembly. Under Maduro she was promoted to senior posts, including foreign minister, and became vice-president in 2018. Her bright outfits stood out on podiums filled with military uniforms but no one doubted her commitment and her portfolio expanded to include the economy and oil. Unlike many of Maduro’s inner circle, Rodríguez has not been indicted for drug trafficking or other charges in the US. Trump’s team hope it has found a market-friendly technocrat who can steer the regime while taking direction from Washington. For Rodríguez, a vertiginous tightrope awaits. Venezuela’s opposition leaders, despite being sidelined by Trump, sense opportunity. “Today we are prepared to assert our mandate and seize power,” said Machado. Having tasted military success, Trump seems hungry for more chances to use force. What is left of the Bolivarian revolution – a socialist experiment that morphed into quasi-capitalism – still needs rhetorical justification. Rodríguez said Venezuela “will never again be anyone’s colony – neither of old empires, nor of new empires, nor of empires in decline”.

‘Venezuela helped us a lot’: US’s capture of Nicolás Maduro stirs anxiety in Cuba

Dr Ifraín Pérez had been checking the news on his phone since the early hours. All day, the capture of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, had been the main subject of conversation in his neighbourhood in Havana. “It’s really pretty unpleasant news – for Cuba and the world,” he said late on Saturday. Pérez, 62, served twice in Venezuela as part of Cuban medical missions, from 2005 to 2011 and from 2013 to 2016. “I’m worried because I know many Venezuelans. I have a great affinity with that people because of what I lived through with them,” he said. “The most important thing is to achieve stability and that President Nicolás Maduro go back to his nation.” After the US attacked Venezuela and captured its long-serving president on Saturday, allies including Russia and Iran were quick to criticise the strikes as a violation of sovereignty. During a meeting called this Saturday morning, the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, called the incident “an unacceptable, vulgar and barbarian kidnapping”. He said the US attack was an “act of state terrorism, comparable only to the crimes against humanity committed by Israeli Zionism in the Gaza Strip”. But for the regime in Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida, the attack on Venezuela also evoked more immediate memories. US troops twice occupied Cuba in the 20th century, and after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution the CIA backed a string of attempts to topple the Communist government, including the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Addressing reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, Trump said Cuba was “not doing very well”, adding that the country’s people had “suffered for many, many years”. He added: “I think Cuba is going to be something we’ll end up talking about because Cuba is a failing nation right now. Very badly failing nation […] We want to help the people in Cuba, but we want to also help the people that were forced out of Cuba and living in this country.” The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio – the son of Cuban immigrants and a longstanding critic of the regime in the country – sent a clear warning shot to Díaz-Canel and his allies. “If I lived in Havana, and I was in the government, I’d be concerned – at least a little bit,” Rubio said. Trump later appeared to row back on his earlier comments in an interview with the New York Post, saying he was not considering military action against Cuba. “No, Cuba is going to fall of its own volition. Cuba is doing very poorly,” Trump said. The US capture and rendition of Maduro has removed a key ally for the Cuban government. A subsidised supply of Venezuelan oil has been crucial to keep the island’s ageing electrical system functioning, despite a reduction in quantity in recent years. Blackouts have become a common occurrence in Cuba. In September its entire electrical grid failed, affecting nearly 10 million people, and over the past 14 months it has suffered a dozen nationwide outages. A malfunctioning energy network has not been helped by the US naval blockade on Venezuela, which has limited Maduro’s ability to keep its ally supplied with oil. Daily, hours-long blackouts are the norm. “[Venezuela] helped us a lot, and now with this problem I don’t know where we’re going to end up,” said Reina María Arias, a retired 68-year-old. She said that on the bus she had taken earlier in the day everyone was talking about the situation. “People were saying that Americans don’t let anyone live in peace, that they have always had ambitions for Cuba, and now it’s Venezuela.” In Havana, fuel shortages have become apparent as cars form long queues at gas stations. Raúl Menéndez, a 40-year-old self-employed worker, predicted that butane gas and oil for transportation would only become scarcer. At a pro-Maduro event across the street from the US embassy on Saturday, the Cuban president declared his country’s continuing loyalty to its ally. “For Venezuela, and of course for Cuba too, we are willing to give even our own blood,” said Díaz-Canel. Similar acts of solidarity took place across the country. But despite the official condemnation and private fears, opinions among Cubans are far from unanimous. “Some people say [the US forces] should come here too, to take Díaz-Canel away,” said María Karla, a 26-year-old housekeeper. “But there is no opposition here to take charge of the country, nor is there any [opposition] leader. So it would be totally crazy, and I don’t think that’s going to happen here.”

Why has the US captured Venezuela’s president and what happens next?

The US carried out airstrikes across Venezuela overnight on Friday, with explosions rocking the capital, Caracas, before dawn. Shortly afterwards, Donald Trump announced that US forces had captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flown them out of the country. The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said they would face trial in New York on charges of involvement in narco-terrorism. A fresh indictment was issued on Saturday. Trump later posted a picture on his Truth Social platform with the caption “Nicolas Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima”. Late on Saturday, the White House posted a video on social media that appeared to show Maduro handcuffed and escorted by agents at the US Drug Enforcement Administration offices. The attack and unprecedented capture of a sitting president follow months of an intense US pressure campaign against Venezuela. SThe US navy has amassed a huge fleet off the Venezuelan coast since September, carried out airstrikes against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific and seized Venezuelan oil tankers. At least 110 people have been killed in the strikes on boats, which human rights groups say could amount to war crimes. The attack was the largest, most direct US action in Latin America since the 1989 Panama invasion. The lightning operation stunned the international community. US allies and adversaries alike were taken aback by the brazen interference in a foreign country. At a Mar-a-Lago news conference, Trump said the US would “run the country” until a leadership transition could take place, and that US oil companies would go into Venezuela, bragging that “no nation in the world could achieve what America achieved”. The future of Venezuela’s ruling regime remains uncertain. Despite Trump’s statements that the US will decide the fate of the country, the Venezuelan military appears to be in control of the country and its military assets. On Saturday, the country’s supreme court ordered the vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, to assume the role of acting president during Maduro’s “temporary absence”. Trump later said Rodríguez had offered her support to Washington, observing: “She really doesn’t have a choice.” Rodríguez has a strong leftist pedigree as the daughter of a Marxist guerrilla who won fame for kidnapping a US businessman, but she is also a French-educated technocrat who has forged links with Venezuela’s economic elites, foreign investors and diplomats. Trump appeared to dismiss Venezuela’s democratic opposition, saying the Nobel peace prize winner María Corina Machado did not have the necessary respect and support to lead. How did we get here? Since Trump took office for his second term, he has put Maduro squarely in his sights, pursuing a maximum pressure campaign against the Venezuelan regime. He accused Maduro of being behind destabilising activity in the Americas, including drug trafficking and illegal immigration to the US. In July, the US announced a $50m (£37m) bounty on Maduro’s head, accusing him of being one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world. Trump’s administration declared Venezuelan gangs such as Tren de Aragua as terrorist organisations and began carrying out airstrikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea. Soon, the US began to seize Venezuelan tankers and build up its military presence in the waters surrounding the South American country. Trump has openly flirted with the idea of regime change in Venezuela. In late November, Trump gave Maduro an ultimatum to relinquish power, offering him safe passage out of the country. Maduro refused the offer, telling supporters in Venezuela that he did not want “a slave’s peace” and accusing the US of wanting control of his country’s oil reserves. As the Trump administration ratcheted up the pressure, the government in Caracas at times seemed bewildered. Maduro repeatedly said Venezuela did not want war with the US, at one point dancing in front of Venezuelan students to the lyrics “no war, yes peace” and mimicking Trump’s double-fist pumping dance move. Trump was reportedly not amused, and the dancing is said to have contributed to the decision to remove him from power. On Thursday, two days before his capture, Maduro said in a televised interview he would welcome US investment in the country’s oil sector. A newly unsealed US justice department indictment accuses Maduro of running a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fuelled by an extensive drug trafficking operation that flooded the US with thousands of tonnes of cocaine. Why are the US and Venezuela at odds? Relations between the US and Venezuela have been strained since Hugo Chávez became Venezuela’s president in 1999. A self-professed socialist and anti-imperialist, Chávez angered the US in his opposition to its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as his alliances with countries such as Cuba and Iran. Relations further spiralled after Chávez accused the US of backing a 2002 coup attempt. To many in the US, particularly in the more hawkish wing of the Republican party, the socialist ideological orientation of Venezuela’s government has made it a natural adversary of the US, alongside its ally Cuba. As Chávez consolidated power, punished political opponents and expropriated much of the country’s private sector, the US condemned Venezuela for its poor human rights record. Despite occasional minor thaws in relations between the two countries over the years, the relationship has continued to deteriorate, especially after Maduro took power in 2013. Under the Trump administration, the US has portrayed the Maduro government as illegitimate, recognising Juan Guaidó, the speaker of the parliament, as Venezuela’s president in 2019. In July 2024, Maduro appeared to suffer a landslide defeat in the presidential election, amid widespread anger at his increasingly authoritarian rule and Venezuela’s economic collapse. The Biden administration recognised the opposition candidate Edmundo González as the victor. Detailed voting data released by the opposition and verified by independent experts indicated that González won the vote, but Maduro clung to power after launching a ferocious crackdown. In early December, the Trump administration published what it called the “Trump corollary”, which said the western hemisphere must be controlled by the US politically, economically, commercially and militarily. As part of the new Trump doctrine, the US military can be used to gain access to energy and mineral resources in the area. During a press conference hours after the capture of Maduro, Trump invoked the 19th-century Monroe doctrine, which was used to assert US military power in Latin America. Dubbing it the “Don-Roe doctrine”, he said: “American dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again.” Who is Nicolás Maduro and why did Trump capture him? Maduro has been the president of Venezuela since 2013. The former bus driver rose to prominence under Chávez, working as his minister of foreign affairs, before becoming the country’s president after Chávez’s death. Maduro’s rule is considered dictatorial, with the UN estimating in 2019 that more than 20,000 Venezuelans were killed in extrajudicial executions. Key institutions such as the judiciary have been eroded under Maduro and the rule of law has deteriorated. Over recent months, Trump has repeatedly called for the ousting of Maduro, accusing him of sending drugs and criminals into the US – a claim experts have said lacks evidence. He also claimed that Maduro was stealing US oil. Despite months of escalating rhetoric, Saturday’s capture of the sitting president arrived without warning and Venezuelan authorities seemed to have been caught off guard by the brazen operation. At least 40 people, including civilians and soldiers, were killed in Saturday’s attack, the New York Times reported, citing a senior Venezuelan official. What happens next? The future is uncertain. Venezuela’s defence minister has vowed to fight on and has called on citizens to unite to resist the foreign “invasion”, calling resistance to the US a “fight for freedom”. Though Maduro has been captured, Venezuela’s institutions and military appear to be intact. It is unclear if Saturday’s attack on Venezuela was the beginning of a wider conflict or a one-off operation, as Trump said the US retained the right to mount further military operations in the country. What is clear is that the US is determined to play a large role in Venezuela, through the use of military force or otherwise. Trump said on Saturday that the US would be making decisions on what was next for Venezuela. “We can’t take a chance in letting somebody else run and just take over what he left, or left off,” Trump said. It was unclear what exactly Trump meant when he said the US would run Venezuela, as there were no signs that the US had taken over the capital and Venezuelan soldiers remained at their posts at military bases across the country. Trump did not rule out US military boots on the ground but said Venezuelan officials were agreeable to his demands – a sharp contrast to the defiant statements of officials in the hours after Maduro’s capture. The US has in the past carried out war games to simulate a scenario where Venezuelan leadership was “decapitated”. The simulations predicted prolonged chaos, with refugees pouring out of Venezuela and rival groups fighting one another for control of the country. “You’d have prolonged chaos … with no clear way out,” said Douglas Farah, a Latin America expert who helped run the war games. Colombia has mobilised its armed forces and expressed concerns about a potential influx of refugees.

‘It’s an opportunity’: joy and wariness among US Venezuelans after Maduro toppled

The first chants of “libertad” cut through the air well before dawn in Doral, the suburban Miami city where up to 40% of the population is Venezuelan. Hundreds of people, dancing, singing and waving Venezuela’s yellow, blue and red flag filled the street outside the El Arepazo restaurant, the traditional community meeting place, as they celebrated the downfall of the despised president Nicolás Maduro. The euphoria lasted well into the day on Saturday as residents learned how the strongman and his wife, first lady Cilia Flores, were snatched from their beds by US military members and bundled away towards an eventual court date in New York City. Then came Donald Trump’s head-scratching press conference, and a realization for many that the US president’s vision for the next steps towards freedom in their homeland bore little relation to their own. Instead of popular opposition leaders Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, the Nobel peace prize winner, returning to guide Venezuela through the immediate post-Maduro period, Trump declared the US would temporarily seize control of the country, and American businesses would be taking over its rich oil infrastructure. “We are ready to stage a second and much larger [military] attack if we need to do so,” the president warned in a thinly disguised threat to those who would stand in his way. Trump’s sidelining of Machado in particular sits uncomfortably with south Florida’s diaspora of Venezuelans, the largest in the US, which was already reeling from his action, upheld by the supreme court in October, to strip immigration protections from hundreds of thousands of them. If anything, some experts said, the capture of Maduro and imposition of a US-run government in Venezuela might even speed up deportations. “They’re celebrating the ouster of Maduro, and I’m in agreement with that. But he also said we’re doing this for the Venezuelans who have been in the US because of Maduro, and now they will be able to go back to a free Venezuela, right?” said Eduardo Gamarra, professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University and a former director of its Latin American and Caribbean center. “He didn’t say anything of all the refugees, the people who lost their temporary protected status and people who have asylum. So on what basis are you going to say somebody in Venezuela is going to persecute me when it’s the US government that’s running Venezuela? What you might see is an accelerated path of deportations, but you might call them repatriations now. “I’m not sure that Venezuelans in Doral, or anywhere in the US, really grasp this. They’re all happy, but I really wonder how many of them are going to go back to Venezuela.” Republican politicians in Florida, unsurprisingly, were quick to praise Trump’s action. The representative Carlos Gimenez, a former mayor of Miami, likened Maduro’s ouster to the “fall of the Berlin wall” in a post on X, and said the community was “overwhelmed with emotion and hope”. “President Trump has changed the course of history in our hemisphere. Our country & the world are safer for it,” he wrote. But the Democratic representative Maxwell Frost, who is Cuban-American, said the president’s action was “illegal, dangerous, and outside the bounds of his constitutional authority”. In a statement, Frost echoed Gamarra’s fears of escalating deportations of Florida’s Venezuelans: “President Trump thinks that Maduro is a big enough problem to take illegal actions in Venezuela, but not a big enough problem to provide Venezuelans with temporary protected status.” “He’s willing to risk American and Venezuelan lives for political gain, but refuses to extend a critical legal lifeline to families fleeing the very crisis he claims to oppose. “Nicolás Maduro was a brutal dictator and an authoritarian. He has repressed, jailed, disappeared, and murdered his people for over a decade. I stand against authoritarianism, no matter the nation. I shed no tears for Maduro’s loss of power. “But I do shed tears for the destruction of our own democracy. Authoritarians like Donald Trump will always seek justification to break the law in order to start foreign wars for unclear reasons. Congress cannot give him an inch, or there will be much more reckless behavior that endangers lives and allows him to consolidate more power.” Some Doral Venezuelans said they were hopeful for the “opportunity” they believed Maduro’s removal might bring. “Many of our entrepreneurs fled the Maduro regime, including myself,” said Leonardo Trechi, president of the Miami-based Venezuelan American Chamber of Commerce. “I have an independent media company and my employees, journalists and cameramen were arrested and persecuted, even our equipment was confiscated. “There was a car dealership in Venezuela threatened by Farc dissidents and closed its business there, but opened here in Florida and they are now one of the most successful businesses of its kind. That’s why we believe the Venezuelan diaspora in the US plays an active and fundamental economic role in the growth of both countries. “The detention of Maduro is not just a relief, it’s an opportunity. We’re willing to contribute the experience we have gained within the US and the capital of Venezuelan entrepreneurs in the US to the reconstruction of Venezuela, and we are also willing to work hand in hand with the Trump administration.” Celestino De Caires, who was born in Caracas and has lived in California since 1980, said he was hopeful that conditions would begin to improve in his homeland. “If you go to Venezuela, you will realize that it’s the grandparents who are raising the kids, their grandchildren, because the parents had to migrate to all parts of Latin America and the US due to corruption. There was no jobs, there was nothing to eat,” he said. “People in Venezuela are hungry and their wellbeing depends on this transition.”

Canadian officials say US health institutions no longer dependable for accurate information

Canadian officials and public health experts are warning that US health and science institutions can no longer be depended upon for accurate information, particularly when it comes to vaccinations, amid fears that misinformation from the Trump administration could further erode Canadians’ confidence in healthcare. “I can’t imagine a world in which this misinformation doesn’t creep into Canadians’ consciousness and leads to doubt,” said Dawn Bowdish, an immunologist and professor at McMaster University in Ontario. Those fears have emerged as the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has forwarded an anti-vaccine agenda. In December, a panel appointed by Kennedy voted to remove a longstanding recommendation by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that all newborns be vaccinated against hepatitis B. The CDC also updated its website in November at the instruction of Kennedy to claim that “studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism”, which top public health experts have decried as false. The agency’s move toward misinformation and away from public health leadership makes it more difficult to combat distrust in vaccinations in Canada, says Bowdish. In December, Canada’s health minister, Marjorie Michel, warned that US health and science institutions can no longer be depended upon for accurate information. In an interview with the Canadian Press, she said: “I cannot trust them as a reliable partner, no.” Michel also told CBC News that “some” Canadians could be influenced by Kennedy. The minister’s comments come at the conclusion of a disastrous year for measles in Canada, as the country was stripped of its measles elimination status in November after more than 5,000 cases were reported across the country. Physicians pointed to drops in childhood vaccination rates, limited access to family doctors and surging misinformation in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic as just some of the factors fuelling the spread. Meta’s ban on the sharing of news in Canada, due to an ongoing dispute over legislation between the tech company and the government, also impedes reliable public health messaging, said Bowdish. In 2021, Canada published the results from a national survey on childhood immunisation and found 2.1% of two-year-olds had not received any vaccinations, an increase from 1.7% in 2019. Parents cited safety concerns or beliefs that vaccines did not work as their reasons for refusal. Bowdish said in 2021 that these reasons often were connected to not having a family doctor and were related to access rather than skepticism. But in the last four years she suspects misinformation has surged, and new data is not available. A December poll on vaccination hesitancy by research firm Leger Healthcare found that while most Canadians (74%) have confidence in vaccines, hesitancy has increased primarily due to fears around safety driven by social media and government mistrust. The survey also found that 17% of those who expressed a lack of confidence in vaccines say they get their information from US government websites. Kumanan Wilson, a doctor and professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa, said Canada can combat concerns about changes at the CDC by cooperating with other public health systems worldwide and taking the helm on developing health surveillance while US institutions languish. “If we build this system, it’s not only going to be great for Canada. We can provide really valuable information to the world,” he said. But Michel Grignon, a professor and health economist at McMaster University, warned that increased mistrust in vaccinations in Canada is the country’s own doing. He said the federal government instead needs to look at the homegrown causes of vaccine distrust, rather than focusing too much on the US. As Canada’s social safety nets have eroded over many decades, the pandemic was a further catalyst that disrupted social cohesion, pushing people to the margins of society and sowing distrust in government, he said. Grignon pointed to the 2022 trucker protests against Covid restrictions as a manifestation of the collapse of trust. “We are the source of our own problem, and our vaccine hesitancy has not much to do with the US. It has to do with us,” he said.

UK ‘not entirely clear’ what it means for US to ‘run’ Venezuela

The UK is “not entirely clear” what it means for the US to be in charge of Venezuela, the chief secretary to the prime minister has said, urging a move towards a peaceful transition of power. Darren Jones said the UK would wait to determine whether there had been a breach of international law after the US attacked the Venezuelan capital and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife on Saturday. Trump told a press conference on Saturday in Florida that the US would run the country until it could do a “safe, proper and judicious transition”. Asked on Sky News if that was tantamount to colonialism, Jones said that the UK was “not in favour of colonialism and we’re not entirely clear yet what President Trump meant by those comments”. He said the UK would not weigh in on what should happen to the government of Venezuela, but said that it should “move quickly” towards a transition of power that reflected the will of the country’s people. “It’s for the Americans now and for Venezuela to set out what happens in the coming days,” he said. “I think the important thing now, given the events that have unfolded over the last 48 hours, is that we are quickly able to get to a point where we can get to a peaceful transition to a president in Venezuela that has the support of the people of Venezuela.” He repeated assurances given by Keir Starmer that the UK had no involvement and was not informed of the plan to strike Venezuela. “So it’s not for us to judge whether it’s been a success or not. That’s for the Americans to speak to.” On Saturday, Starmer said he wanted to speak to Trump directly before making any judgment on the US’s actions. “I don’t shy away from this, I’ve been a lifelong advocate of international law and the importance of compliance with international law,” he told the BBC. “But I want to ensure that I’ve got all the facts at my disposal, and we haven’t got that at the moment, and we need to get that before we come to a decision about the consequences in relation to the actions that have been taken.” The deputy leader of Reform UK defended Trump’s actions and said it was not comparable to Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine and attempt to capture President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Richard Tice said: “It’s clearly in accordance with US domestic law. Lawyers will argue, of course, about UN article 51. The reality is that an enemy of the west has been removed. The challenge now … is to ensure that you don’t end up with a vacuum that slides into what happened in Iraq and Libya, that’s the key challenge.” He said the comparisons with Russia “are chalk and cheese; there is no comparison whatsoever”, and “Putin has never said he was going to give Ukraine back to the Ukrainians … He wanted to invade the whole of Ukraine and to keep it”. Tice added: “The US constitution gives the right to the commander-in-chief, the US president, to act in the self-defence of US citizens.” The shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, said it was clear that Maduro did not have a mandate to remain in power. “We believe in democracy, and the question has to be now, these are political questions about what that pathway to democracy is going to be for Venezuela. “There was an opposition leader who won the previous election in 2024, which Maduro clearly cancelled that result. So I think these are the important questions that we should be asking. I’m sure these are questions the British foreign secretary will ask of her counterpart. I hope those conversations will take place.”

Maduro indictment attempts to link Venezuelan leader to Tren de Aragua

The superseding federal indictment unsealed against Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro on Saturday immediately after his capture closely resembles 2020 charges against him but has several important new twists: the new indictment appears to embrace controversial claims made by the Trump administration about a Venezuelan street gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA). Maduro was captured by US forces early Saturday and ferreted out of the country after a series of explosions in the Venezuelan capital. The operation has drawn widespread international criticism and outrage from Democrats on Capitol Hill. One of Maduro’s five co-defendants is the alleged founder of the gang, Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, who was indicted separately two weeks ago. Though the indictment doesn’t allege Maduro ever met Guerrero Flores, it builds the case in court for what critics say are Trump’s exaggerated and unsubstantiated allegations about TdA. Trump has repeatedly insisted Venezuela’s government sent the gang to the US intentionally as a form of guerrilla warfare, to commit crimes and spread chaos, and has used the claims to further his foreign policy and his mass deportation tactics. The Trump interest in TdA dates back in 2024, when members of the gang were accused of taking control of an apartment building in Aurora, Colorado. At the time law, enforcement told reporters they saw TdA as a vicious group but not as a major international threat. Still, when Trump, on his first day in office, signed an executive order to designate drug cartels and other groups as “foreign terrorist organizations”, he specifically included TdA. The gang became a central part of the administration’s rationale to try to launch deportations without hearings, by invoking a 200-year-old law called the Alien Enemies Act, which addressed expelling people during wars, or invasions, or a “predatory incursion”. “I find and declare,” wrote Trump in March, “that TdA is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.” The street gang was an invading force sent by Maduro, his executive order concluded, so under the law TdA members “are subject to immediate apprehension, detention, and removal”, without any court action necessary at all. The deportation of purported TdA members, with no court oversight, to El Salvador’s Cecot prison has been one of the most contested parts of Trump’s deportation efforts. Those deportations have since been blocked by courts. Intelligence from inside the US ran counter to all of Trump’s claims about Tren de Aragua. A national intelligence memorandum dated in April said “the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of coordinating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States”. The new indictment doesn’t spell out precisely what Maduro’s connection would be to TdA. Instead, it says Maduro and others “partnered with narco-terrorists”, including TdA. A local police detective who has investigated TdA said the gang was probably the most brutal he’d come across but said based on gang members he had interrogated, they had not been directed by the Venezuelan government or even their own leadership to come to the US. One former Drug Enforcement Administration official who had investigated the Venezuelan regime said he was unaware of any personal connection between Maduro and TdA, but said there was solid evidence of Maduro’s profiting from the cocaine trade. “TdA has been part of the Trump narrative since the beginning of the campaign,” Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America said. “Really it’s more of a political change in this indictment. It updates or sharpens the narrative they need for the pretext for the capture.”