After President Donald Trump made global shockwaves by capturing and extraditing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, thoughts inevitably turned to Maduro’s successor. That role quickly landed at the feet of Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, who’s now serving as Venezuela’s interim president. She has been a mainstay in Venezuelan politics, but her role as Venezuela’s de facto leader could prove significantly more challenging.

Her beginnings
Rodríguez, 56, was born in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas alongside her brother, who has served as the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly since 2021. Rodríguez and her family have “sterling leftist credentials,” said The Associated Press. Her father, who heavily influenced her career, helped found the Socialist League, a militant far-left Marxist party, in the 1970s. 

She was an attorney before entering politics and then “began her political career in 2003, during the reign of former President Hugo Chávez,” said Time. Under Chávez, Rodríguez climbed the ranks and “served in many roles.” When Maduro took over in 2013, he “appointed Rodríguez as minister of communication” before appointing her vice president in 2018.

In 2017, Maduro praised Rodríguez, saying she had “defended Venezuelan sovereignty, peace and independence like a tiger,” according to Reuters. But like Maduro himself, who was reelected several times following contested elections, Rodríguez has “faced sanctions from several countries and is currently banned from neighboring Colombia,” said Time. The U.S., Canada, Switzerland and the European Union have sanctioned Rodríguez for her “role in undermining Venezuelan democracy,” said the AP.

‘Deeply uncertain future’
As interim president, Rodríguez will likely face an uphill battle, given that the majority of the Western world, including the U.S., did not recognize the Maduro administration as legitimate. Despite this, she has been “backed thus far as the nation's new leader by Venezuela's military,” said CBS News. 

With Rodríguez at the helm, the country’s “roughly 30 million people face a deeply uncertain future in the wake of Trump’s actions,” said CBS. It remains unclear “how much autonomy Washington will allow the country,” though Rodríguez and Trump have reportedly been in contact, with Trump pushing for pro-U.S. policies. If Rodríguez “doesn’t do what’s right, she’s going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump said to The Atlantic, though he did not elaborate on this threat.

The U.S. Mint began circulating new coins this week in celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary. And these semiquincentennial coins are generating headlines for what they depict as much as for what they don’t. The coin designs omit notable moments in women’s history, the civil rights movement and more in what some are calling a whitewashing effort. And many are pointing to the Trump administration as the culprit.

What do these coins depict?
The coins feature various moments throughout the country’s life, with the new quarter in particular featuring “five new designs related to American history,” according to the Mint. The designs depict a pilgrim couple, as well as four former presidents: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison and George Washington. The coins are part of an American history movement “dedicated to fostering prosperity and patriotism,” said U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach to Fox News.

Why are they controversial?
The Trump administration has been accused of nixing prior coin designs for the semiquincentennial that featured more women and people of color. During the Biden administration, a bipartisan advisory panel for the coin designs “settled on five options, including quarters honoring abolitionist Frederick Douglass; Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old girl who helped integrate public schools in New Orleans; and the women’s suffrage movement,” said The Washington Post.

But when the Trump administration took over, they decided to “ignore the committee’s recommendation and produce quarters that are far less diverse and more traditional,” said the Post. The White House claimed that the Biden administration’s designs were too “focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory.”

Another controversial element of the coins involves President Donald Trump himself. The Mint is reportedly considering a $1 coin featuring Trump’s face, a “move usually shunned as a symbol of monarchy,” said NPR. George Washington “didn’t appear on a coin until 1932, more than a century after his death,” and the first president was “strongly opposed to that kind of personal aggrandizement.” Nine Democratic U.S. senators wrote a letter to the Treasury claiming this coin would be part of Trump’s “cult of personality.”

South Africans join in the Tweede Nuwe Jaar (Second New Year) parade, also known as Kaapse Klopse, in Cape Town. The annual event is thought to have begun in the 1800s to celebrate the one day off that the city’s enslaved people were traditionally allowed each year.
Rodger Bosch / AFP / Getty Images

The new year means the kickoff of a season with highly anticipated book releases. This month, readers can dig into several promising projects, including a clever take on a literary staple, a peek into the world of homeschoolers, and former Nickelodeon star Jennette McCurdy’s fiction debut.

‘Call Me Ishmaelle’
One of this year’s most anticipated releases is a feminist reimagining of the literary classic “Moby Dick.” National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Xiaolu Guo recasts Ishmael as a 17-year-old girl disguised as a cabin boy and Ahab as a Black freedman named Seneca. Guo “blends in her own rhetorical tweaks,” shifting to the “mad, complex voices of Seneca and, at times, the whales themselves.” (out now, $18, Grove Atlantic)

‘Homeschooled: A Memoir’
Novelist Stefan Merrill Block recounts the five years he spent largely on his own while homeschooled in his new “absorbing” memoir, said The Washington Post. Isolated from his peers and “virtually abandoned by the adults who might have intervened,” Block “moldered behind closed doors with only his unraveling mother for company.” (out now, $30, Harper Collins Publishers)

‘Half His Age’
Former child star Jennette McCurdy’s provocative debut novel follows Waldo, a “naive, lonely, impulsive teenager” who sets her sights on her married creative writing teacher, said the Booklist Queen. Through Waldo, McCurdy explores the “complexities of desire, consumerism, class, loneliness, the internet, rage, addiction and the (oftentimes misguided) lengths we will go to in order to get what we want,” the author said in a statement, per Variety. (Jan. 20, $30, Penguin Random House)