Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the outcome of Venezuela’s disputed election, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump receiving a lenient sentence, and Earth experiencing record-breaking temperatures in 2024.
A Dark, Dangerous Hour
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in on Friday for his third six-year term as president amid a backdrop of mass protests and foreign outcry. Much of the international community and independent vote monitors claim that opposition leader Edmundo González rightfully won last July’s presidential election, with tally sheets from electronic voting machines showing that González secured twice as many votes as Maduro.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the outcome of Venezuela’s disputed election, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump receiving a lenient sentence, and Earth experiencing record-breaking temperatures in 2024.
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A Dark, Dangerous Hour
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in on Friday for his third six-year term as president amid a backdrop of mass protests and foreign outcry. Much of the international community and independent vote monitors claim that opposition leader Edmundo González rightfully won last July’s presidential election, with tally sheets from electronic voting machines showing that González secured twice as many votes as Maduro.
“This is the darkest and most dangerous hour that Venezuelans have experienced since the fall of the atrocious dictatorship Marcos Pérez Jiménez,” journalist Boris Muñoz wrote in El País on Wednesday ahead of the inauguration ceremony.
González and ally María Corina Machado urged Venezuelans to take to the streets to protest the Maduro regime, leading hundreds of anti-government demonstrators to march on Caracas. Even Machado, long in hiding due to government crackdowns against political dissidents, emerged to participate in one of the rallies. Her team accused government forces of violently detaining her on Thursday, only to release her hours later. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez denied government responsibility.
Since last July, the Maduro regime has arrested thousands of protesters. More than 20 people have been killed during the unrest, and many demonstrators have said they were tortured while in custody.
Police, military, and intelligence officers guarded the legislative palace in Caracas as Maduro was sworn in. “I swear that this new presidential term will be one of peace, prosperity, equality, and new democracy,” Maduro said in his inauguration speech. At the same time, he blamed other Latin American governments and the United States of “attacking” Venezuela’s electoral process, but without any evidence.
Washington has been calling González the “president-elect” since last November, and earlier this week, the opposition leader met with U.S. President Joe Biden and vowed to return to Caracas on inauguration day. At the time of writing, González’s current whereabouts are unknown.
“The international community cannot allow the normalization of fraud in the most transcendental human rights crisis in our hemisphere,” Juan Pappier, the Americas deputy director at Human Rights Watch, posted on X on Thursday.
Following Maduro’s inauguration, Washington imposed sanctions on eight Venezuelan officials and increased the reward for Maduro’s arrest from $15 million to $25 million. Rewards also exist for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López. The European Union and United Kingdom also announced sweeping new sanctions on Caracas on Friday.
Also on Friday, the Biden administration extended temporary protected status for approximately 600,000 Venezuelan nationals in the United States for an additional 18 months, citing “the severe humanitarian emergency the country continues to face due to political and economic crises under the inhumane Maduro regime.”
Even among Venezuela’s Latin American neighbors, very few foreign leaders attended the ceremony. “The poor showing due at Maduro’s inauguration represents a chilling in regional support,” FP’s Catherine Osborn wrote in Latin America Brief this week. Notable absences included Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Lenient ruling. U.S. Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan could have sentenced Donald Trump to up to four years in prison. Instead, the convicted felon and soon-to-be U.S. president received an unconditional discharge on Friday, allowing him to return to the White House on Jan. 20 with no jail terms, fines, or probationary period.
“This court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of judgment of conviction without encroaching on the highest office of the land is an unconditional discharge,” Merchan said. Backlash toward the ruling was largely split along party lines, with Republicans lambasting the conviction and Democrats calling for a harsher sentencing. The prosecution does not plan on appealing the decision.
Last May, Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments totaling $130,000 to adult film star Stormy Daniels that were disguised as legal fees to lawyer Michael Cohen. Trump is the first former or current U.S. president to ever be convicted of a felony.
“It’s been a political witch hunt,” Trump said on Friday from his home in Florida. “It was done to damage my reputation so that I’d lose the election, and, obviously, that didn’t work.” The president-elect has repeatedly denied the charges, and the other criminal cases against him have stalled or ended.
Environmental threats. Earth recorded its hottest year on record in 2024, according to government agencies on Friday. Not only did temperatures reach new heights, but the global average surpassed the 1.5-degree Celsius limit from preindustrial levels set by the 2015 Paris Agreement to prevent irreversible climate change.
Last year was not unique in this trend. Every year for the past decade has been warmer than the previous, said Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Climate experts report that the primary reason for global warming is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. Last year, the effects were disastrous—and often deadly, from 100-plus-degree heat waves in the Middle East, to powerful cyclones in the Indo-Pacific, to this week’s raging wildfires in Los Angeles.
“This is a warning light going off on the Earth’s dashboard that immediate attention is needed,” Marshall Shepherd, a meteorology professor at the University of Georgia, told The Associated Press.
Musk campaign efforts. Tesla CEO Elon Musk urged Germans on Thursday to vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in elections next month. Musk referred to the AfD’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, as “the leading candidate to run Germany” during a conversation between the two that was broadcasted on Musk’s social media platform, X, despite most parties in Berlin refusing to work with the hard-right bloc.
Deputy Bundestag spokesperson Claus Hinterleitner said on Thursday that officials were investigating whether the Musk-Weidel discussion constituted an illegal party donation. Under German law, party donations include third-party advertising, and it prohibits donations from outside the European Union.
Musk, a close ally of Trump’s, has ventured into European politics several times since formally joining the incoming U.S. administration. According to the Financial Times, he has held private conversations with other right-wing allies about how to oust liberal British Prime Minister Keir Starmer before the United Kingdom’s next general election in 2029.
What in the World?
Which relative of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump drew headlines when they visited Greenland on Tuesday?
A. Wife Melania TrumpB. Eldest daughter Ivanka TrumpC. Eldest son Donald Trump Jr.D. Youngest son Barron Trump
Odds and Ends
Polish authorities fired Maj. Gen. Artur Kepczynski on Thursday for allegedly losing more than 1,000 tons of anti-tank mines last June. According to an official government statement, soldiers failed to unload the explosive material from a train and, after it traveled around the country, the mines eventually disappeared—only to wind up in an IKEA. Authorities were reportedly unaware of the problem until an IKEA warehouse worker called the military to ask “when they would collect their mines.” FP’s World Brief editor is excited to pick up her new IKEA coffee table, the TANKFLÖRP.
And the Answer Is…
C. Eldest son Donald Trump Jr.
The president-elect’s recent bombastic overtures to buy Greenland have drawn shock and condemnation, but Trump first floated the idea back in 2019, FP’s Christina Lu reports.
To take the rest of FP’s weekly international news quiz, click here, or sign up to be alerted when a new one is published.
The post Venezuela Extends the Reign of Nicolás Maduro appeared first on Foreign Policy.
