Top Stories — Saturday, April 18, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Nvidia's once-tight bond with gamers is cracking over AI, 'and that breaks my heart' — CNBC
- 'It's just scale': Local mom-and-pop car dealerships are growing or dying amid industry consolidation, rise of mega-retailers — CNBC
- Maduro’s Successor Is Purging Allies Who Kept Him in Power in Venezuela — nyt News
Nvidia's once-tight bond with gamers is cracking over AI, 'and that breaks my heart'
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/18/2026, 5:30:01 PM
For its first 30 years, Nvidia wasn't a household name unless you were a gamer. Now, some of its original fan base feel left behind as artificial intelligence has made the chipmaker the world's most valuable company.
"The gaming segment is no longer the driving force of the company. There was one point when it clearly was," said Stacy Rasgon of Bernstein Research.
Nvidia popularized the graphics processing units, or GPUs, that enable fast frame rates and rendering that make the best video game play possible.
When Nvidia released its first GPU in 1999, the GeForce 256, it laid off the majority of workers and approached bankruptcy to make it happen. Gamers snapped up the new type of processor, bringing Nvidia back from the brink.
Now, with demand for AI soaring, nearly all of Nvidia's revenue comes from its products that serve that industry, instead of gaming. And as AI chipmaking shrinks the available memory supply, Nvidia has been forced to make tough decisions about priorities.
In a memory-constrained reality, it's not shocking that Nvidia would prioritize its far more profitable data center GPUs such as Hopper and Blackwell.
Nvidia's operating margins in its compute and networking segment averaged 69% over the past three years, compared to a 40% margin for the consumer-forward graphics segment.
"I understand that they're going to chase that. And that breaks my heart," said Greg Miller, co-founder and host of popular video game podcast Kinda Funny Games Daily in an interview with CNBC.
"Dance with the one who brought you. Gamers have brought you this far," Miller added.
If analyst predictions are correct, 2026 will be the first year in three decades that Nvidia doesn't release a new generation of its consumer-facing GeForce line of graphics processing units.
Gamers are "hugely important" to Nvidia, according to an email the company sent to CNBC, adding that it's "always innovating, testing and releasing" new gaming-focused technologies.
The current RTX 50 series of GeForce GPU was unveiled at CES in January 2025.
But with 2026 CES and GTC in the rearview mirror, some worry this will be the first year without a new generation, although Nvidia does commonly reveal new hardware as late as September.
While it represents a big strategy pivot, some gamers say it's not a bad move for their budgets.
"It's kind of hard to keep up. You can't upgrade every single year, so having a bit of a break and waiting for a generation to really matter I think is actually in service of the gamers out there," said Tim Gettys, Miller's co-founder of Kinda Funny Games.
Nvidia's current era of AI dominance started two decades ago with the 2006 launch of its CUDA software toolkit. Suddenly, developers could use GPUs for general-purpose computing instead of just graphics.
Then, in 2012, Nvidia's deep learning capabilities were made clear during what many consider the big bang moment for modern AI. Nvidia's GPUs and CUDA were used to build a neural engine called AlexNet that blew away the competition during a prominent image recognition contest.
Although Nvidia didn't stop making gaming GPUs, it signaled a new focus on GPUs for AI in 2020 when it purchased high-performance computing chipmaker Mellanox Technologies for $7 billion.
The company has been releasing new generations of high-end GPUs ever since, along with full rack-scale systems for AI workloads such as the new Vera Rubin platform, which CNBC got an exclusive first look at in February.
Nvidia doesn't reveal prices for its AI chips, but analysts say one Blackwell GPU costs up to $40,000, while the Futurum Group estimates a full Vera Rubin system will cost up to $4 million.
In contrast, Nvidia sells its RTX 50-series gaming GPUs for between $299 to $1,999.
During the cryptocurrency peaks of 2018 and 2021, Nvidia's GPUs sold in online marketplaces for up to three times listing price because they were once key to mining Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Although prices fell when mining changed course in 2022, Nvidia's current RTX 5090 GPU is still sold online for up to double the retail price.
Plenty of demand for last year's generation may make Nvidia less motivated to put out a new version this year.
But the memory shortage is a more likely culprit for Nvidia's gaming drawback.
Industry reports suggest Nvidia has made plans to reduce production of its latest gaming GPUs by up to 40% as it faces a major shortage of the general-purpose memory that's necessary for making a GPU.
Dynamic Random Access Memory, or DRAM, enables fast, temporary data storage so the GPU can run parallel tasks.
Personal computers, where Nvidia's gaming GPUs end up, have borne the brunt of DRAM shortages. When memory prices go up, manufacturing a GPU costs more, and that cost trickles down to consumers.
Gartner predicts PC prices will rise by 17% this year, causing PC shipments to decline 10.4%.
"With how expensive all of this has gotten, it's concerning to see prices go up on the gaming side with no signs of ever coming back down, and then Nvidia clearly chasing a completely different category of consumer," Gettys said.
If the entry-level consumer PC market disappears by 2028 as Gartner predicts, the market for Nvidia's entry-level gaming GPUs is likely to contract, too.
Instead, Nvidia is likely saving limited memory inventory for its higher cost, higher margin AI chips.
"If there is push-outs or delays on the gaming roadmap, it's probably in large part that they probably can't make the cards anyways because it's hard to get the memory," Rasgon said. "Every bit of memory that's out there, I think is really getting prioritized to AI compute."
Higher-performance GPUs like Blackwell and Rubin are lined with dense stacks of a specific type of DRAM known as High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM. Rasgon said it takes about four times as many silicon wafers to make a gigabyte of HBM as it does to make the same amount of more traditional types of DRAM.
"That dynamic is starving the overall industry of the type of memory that is traditionally used for more consumer type applications. It's just not available," Rasgon said.
Nvidia told CNBC that it's continuing to ship all GeForce GPUs as it sees strong demand, and is working closely with suppliers to maximize memory availability.
"If they're making three times the money and the stockholders are three times happier, then yeah, I do think that they will abandon gaming despite it being what got them there," Gettys said.
CEO Jensen Huang did make a big gaming announcement at the beginning of his keynote address at Nvidia's annual GTC conference in March, but the gaming community was less than enthused.
Huang announced the next generation of its rendering software called Deep Learning Super Sampling or DLSS, coming in the fall. It's well known for boosting frame rates by rendering games at lower resolutions and using AI to scale up the image, helping games run more smoothly on less powerful hardware.
The controversy with the new DLSS 5 is that gamers worry it uses generative AI to change the look of the game. Huang unveiled DLSS 5 with a sizzle reel of photorealistically enhanced versions of characters in popular games such as Resident Evil Requiem, Starfield, and Hogwarts Legacy.
"I play video games because they're an art form. And so I like to see the thumbprint of the creator in what I'm doing," said Miller of Kinda Funny Games. "That raised a lot of hair on a lot of necks in the video game industry as we deal with so many layoffs, so many studio closures."
As it grapples with a post-pandemic slowdown, the gaming industry has seen studio closures, canceled games, and thousands of job cuts across giants like Epic Games, Microsoft's Xbox, and Sony's PlayStation.
Gettys was a fan of previous versions of Nvidia's DLSS for making gaming more accessible on a lower budget.
"The technology is mind-blowing for what it can do to make games run on lower-end PCs," he said. "But then to add this generative AI stuff, it feels like a slap in the face."
Gettys' big fear is that this is a step toward fully AI-generated games, which he thinks is "100% the goal."
Elon Musk has already addressed the potential for it. In an October post on X, Musk said his xAI game studio will release "a great AI-generated game" before the end of 2026.
"You're literally altering the art created by the developers. And then at a certain point you're replacing the developers and then their studio gets closed down," Gettys said.
Nvidia said in a statement to CNBC, "Games are a creative artform that give developers the opportunity to tell engaging stories and immerse players in incredible worlds. Our RTX technologies are tools that enable game developers to achieve their creative vision - these include rendering techniques such as ray tracing and path tracing, and those enhanced by AI, like DLSS Super Resolution, DLSS Frame Generation, and DLSS 5, all working together to provide the best performance and image quality."
During his GTC keynote, Huang said AI is going to "revolutionize how computer graphics is done."
In a question-and-answer session the next day, Huang responded to assertions from the gaming community that DLSS 5 makes games appear homogeneous.
"They're completely wrong," Huang said.
He emphasized that game developers will still be in control, able to "fine-tune the generative AI" to match their style.
For over a decade, Nvidia has also offered gaming in the cloud through a service called GeForce NOW. The model has evolved to include different subscription tiers — including a free option — that lets users stream games they own on services like Steam, running on Nvidia GPUs in data centers, rather than on personal devices.
"You see XBox and you see PlayStation, you see other competitors trying to get the cloud into gamers' hands in a way that actually makes sense. And Nvidia GeForce NOW has really cracked that code," Miller said.
Gettys told CNBC that Nvidia's streaming platform is the best "by a landslide."
"It allows millions more people access to gaming at the highest level, even if they don't have the latest cards and all of that. And it's truly incredible technology," he said.
Advanced Micro Devices is Nvidia's top competitor in gaming, with its Radeon line of GPUs.
But the memory crunch remains a challenge for both.
"If Nvidia can't get the memory, AMD ain't going to get the memory," Rasgon said. "Sentiment wise, both brands have their fans and they can be die hard."
"There's a clear favorite," Gettys said. "If you're playing on PC, you're going to want an Nvidia card."
'It's just scale': Local mom-and-pop car dealerships are growing or dying amid industry consolidation, rise of mega-retailers
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/18/2026, 5:30:01 PM
Derek Sylvester's father built the family's original Chevrolet dealership with his bare hands on Main Street in rural Peckville, Pennsylvania, in 1972.
The store and family have been a pillar of the village, outside Scranton, ever since. That was until late last month, when Sylvester and his family closed a deal to sell Sylvester Chevrolet to a New York-based dealer group.
"As a family, we decided this might be the time," said Sylvester, who at 67 has been contemplating retirement. "Unless you're a larger store, a much larger store, it's a little bit harder to make money. ... It's just scale."
Many of Sylvester's family members plan to continue working at the dealership, but he said they didn't feel they were in a position to continue running the business amid the rapidly changing automotive retail landscape in the U.S. The industry is facing a tumultuous adoption of all-electric vehicles, technological shifts such as artificial intelligence, and growing demands from automakers.
Sales of dealerships such as Sylvester Chevrolet are occurring across the country at a rapid pace as the business of selling cars, once considered the purview of mom-and-pop shops, has evolved into a lucrative trillion-dollar industry rife with consolidation that has drawn more notice from Wall Street and investors in recent years.
While the National Automobile Dealers Association, or NADA, reports that the vast majority of its U.S. franchised dealers are small business owners such as Sylvester who have fewer than six stores, the top retailers in the country have significantly grown.
The top 150 dealers sold 27% of all retail and fleet new vehicles in 2025, up from 24.3% in 2021 and 21.2% in 2015, according to Automotive News' annual ranking of top automotive retailers. They also owned roughly a quarter of dealerships last year, up from less than 20% a decade ago, according to the trade publication.
Meanwhile, top publicly traded dealers such as Lithia Motors and AutoNation have ballooned to market caps of more than $6 billion each. Even online used-car retailer Carvana — and its $74 billion market cap, which surpasses the value of most car companies it sells vehicles from — has quietly started purchasing new vehicle franchises without disclosing its future plans.
"There's a lot of money that wants to come to the industry," Brian Gordon, president of dealer advisor and broker Dave Cantin Group, told CNBC. "And, generally, the industry is sort of aligned on how to value these things. That makes for a good climate for [mergers and acquisitions]."
Multibillion-dollar dealerships have been on the rise amid a decadeslong consolidation that has led to a grow-or-die mentality for many U.S. automotive retailers.
NADA, a trade association representing franchised dealers, reports the average dealership owner has between two and three stores, but the largest growth area over the past decade has been in medium-sized dealerships that own between six and 25 stores.
NADA reports 90.5% of its nearly 17,000 dealers own between one and five stores, down from 94.4% in 2016. Meanwhile, 0.2% of dealers own 50 stores or more, up from 0.1% during that time frame.
"It's clear that it's a consolidating industry, and it's an industry that is going to continue to consolidate," Gordon said. But, he added, that is happening at every level, especially the expansion of mom-and-pop shops to larger players.
Dave Cantin Group — the advisor for Matthews Auto Group, the dealer group that acquired Sylvester Chevrolet — conducts dozens of such deals a year and said it expects the pace of consolidation and mergers and acquisitions to continue to increase this year.
Matthews Auto Group is one of many regional dealership companies that has decided to expand. The family-owned company started in Vestal — in central New York, south of Syracuse — in 1973 with a single Chrysler-Plymouth store that has grown into a roughly $800 million business with 18 locations and 800 employees.
Rob Matthews, a second-generation owner and CEO of Matthews Auto Group, said the company's decision to grow is ongoing and that it aims to be more profitable and better compete in its current markets of New York and Pennsylvania.
"I think that's certainly a competitive advantage. I think staying still is probably not the best play. You're seeing continued scale," Matthews said. "The trend is you're just going to continue to see consolidation to allow you to stay competitive."
That's also why Sylvester said he wanted to sell his business, with stipulations about retaining the store's dozens of employees — something that's part of Matthews' strategy when acquiring a store.
"There's a lot of things that, because of our scale, we see we can really unlock a store like his," Matthews said. "I think, honestly, it's exciting in the sense that we're just looking to give them more tools and hopefully let everyone work going forward."
Wall Street has taken notice of how lucrative and protected franchised dealerships are in the U.S. The franchised dealer system, which exists to sell new vehicles to consumers rather than automakers selling their vehicles themselves, is unique and heavily regulated.
"I think there's endless upside. The opportunity for growth in our company is just endless," Sonic Automotive President Jeff Dyke told CNBC during a recent interview. "I think having mom-and-pop dealers is really good for the business. The thing is, the mom-and-pop dealer is going to have to advance their thinking."
Sonic Automotive, a publicly traded company with a market cap of more than $2 billion, has grown from 96 franchised dealership stores in 2015 to 134 to end last year. It's also gone through a massive expansion of its EchoPark used vehicle stores and Sonic Powersports. The company's revenue during that time jumped 58% to $15.2 billion last year.
Others, such as Lithia Motors, have been even more aggressive in growth. The Medford, Oregon-based company surpassed longstanding dealership group AutoNation to become the top U.S. new vehicle franchised dealer in 2022.
Lithia, with a $6.3 billion market cap, has executed an audacious growth plan, from $8.7 billion in revenue in 2016 to $37.6 billion last year. The company nearly tripled its new and used stores from 154 locations to 455 stores during that time frame.
John Murphy, a longtime automotive analyst who is a managing director of strategic advisory at buy-sell advisory firm Haig Partners, said he believes that dealerships remain an extremely lucrative market for investors, despite things settling down somewhat after companies saw inflated profits during the Covid pandemic.
"Structurally, there's some real potential upside, and there is an increasing level of attention by existing capital in the dealership community as it stands right now from outside players, private equity family offices, other pools of capital on this limited number of dealers and finite number of dealers," he said. "The earnings upside is increasing and there's increasing attention, or demand, on the buy side of the equation."
All of that combines to make many mom-and-pop dealerships ripe for acquisition or expansion.
"There's just so many factors that make competition for a small mom-and-pop dealership more difficult," said Talon Fee, a managing director at Dave Cantin Group who led the sale of Sylvester Chevrolet to Matthews Auto Group. "It's not to say that small mom-and-pop dealerships can't continue to exist and thrive and survive, but they do need to have a plan."
Fee and others said the top reasons for owners to sell are a lack of succession planning, a growing competitive and changing industry, and a lack of commitment to reinvest in the businesses.
"There's a lot of outside capital that's figured out how to come in, given the fact that you have to be an operator in order to get approved by a manufacturer," said Gordon, of Dave Cantin Group.
But the industry is changing in other ways, as new automakers such as Tesla, Rivian and Lucid try to bypass the franchised dealer model and sell vehicles directly to consumers.
Such companies have continuously fought state laws to allow such sales, with Rivian recently winning a battle with car dealers in Washington state by threatening to take its case to voters with a ballot measure to permit direct sales.
It adds to the evolving U.S. automotive retail landscape that owners such as Sylvester and his wife, who also worked at the dealership, haven't had to deal with in the past. It's also something Sylvester and many other smaller mom-and-pop stores won't have to compete with once they sell their businesses.
"I lived a great life, don't get me wrong. But, hey, good things come to an end," said Sylvester, who plans to spend retirement caring for a 92-acre farm in Pennsylvania. "We made a good living. You know, we helped the community out."
Maduro’s Successor Is Purging Allies Who Kept Him in Power in Venezuela
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/18/2026, 4:36:56 PM
U.S. Special Forces brought down President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela swiftly and publicly.
Now, the people who kept him in power are being purged gradually and inconspicuously. Some have been fired or detained, and others are anxiously looking over their shoulders, worried they might be next.
Oligarchs close to Mr. Maduro’s family have been snatched from their homes. His political allies have been summarily removed from their posts. His relatives have been sidelined from business deals and barred from media appearances.
The housecleaning is being carried out by Mr. Maduro’s former vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who is running the country under instructions from the Trump administration. The detentions and leadership purges have unfolded without public explanation, but often with the approval — and sometimes at the urging — of the White House, according to people close to Ms. Rodríguez’s government.
After Mr. Maduro was dragged off in January to a New York jail, Ms. Rodríguez presented herself as a reluctant and temporary stand-in for a fallen leader, denouncing his capture as an illegal attack on her country.
But now, with Mr. Maduro gone, she is dismantling his ruling coterie and embarking on the largest redistribution of power in Venezuela in decades.
The overhaul of national leadership, combined with sweeping new laws and her alliance with President Trump, is reshaping Venezuela and its management of one of the planet’s largest oil reserves, just as the world grapples with the energy turmoil caused by war in the Middle East.
In the three months since Mr. Maduro’s capture, Ms. Rodríguez has changed 17 ministers, replaced military commanders and installed new diplomats. She has also overseen the detention of at least three businessmen tied to Mr. Maduro, fired several of his relatives and cut off most of his family from oil contracts.
In their places, she has appointed her own loyalists or championed businessmen beholden to her, while opening the doors to American oil and mining investors.
The changes have brought little transparency or pluralism to a government that remains authoritarian. Venezuela’s opposition says that rather than returning the country to democracy, Ms. Rodríguez is solidifying her rule.
But she is hardly making all decisions on her own. After capturing Mr. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in an overwhelming show of force, the Trump administration threatened to attack Venezuela again if the new leaders refused to cooperate. Several senior Venezuelan officials and government insiders have likened Ms. Rodríguez’s rule to governing with a gun to her head.
Ms. Rodríguez is now using that threat of U.S. coercion to go after ruling party power brokers once considered untouchable. The result has been a political win for Mr. Trump and Ms. Rodríguez, allowing U.S. officials to settle scores with Maduro allies who had defied them, while simultaneously cementing Ms. Rodríguez’s leadership.
Venezuela’s transformation from U.S. adversary to a protectorate has been head spinning for most Venezuelans.
Polls show a large majority of Venezuelans welcome the end of Mr. Maduro’s 13-year autocratic reign, which he enforced through violence, corruption and electoral fraud.
Many also remain skeptical of Ms. Rodríguez, a longtime official of the governing Socialist Party who has never held elected office.
But for Mr. Maduro’s friends, business associates and governing party companions, the new political landscape has ushered in an unfamiliar swirl of anxiety and danger.
More than a dozen spoke with The New York Times on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal. Some said they had been placed under surveillance by Venezuela’s secret police since Mr. Maduro’s ouster. Others said they had tried to stay out of Caracas, the capital, and have considered exile.
The Venezuelan government did not respond to questions for this article. A White House spokeswoman, Anna Kelly, said the Trump administration had a mutually beneficial relationship with the Rodríguez government.
“We are dealing very well with President Delcy Rodríguez,” Ms. Kelly said. “Oil is starting to flow, and large amounts of money, unseen for many years, will soon be greatly helping the people of Venezuela.”
The people who lost out from Mr. Maduro’s downfall are part of a disparate group. They include relatives of Mr. Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez, many of whom amassed great wealth in the nearly three decades of their combined rule.
They also include businessmen who owe their fortunes to personal ties to the two presidents, as well as veterans of the socialist movement formed by Mr. Chávez in the 1990s, which became known as chavismo.
One longtime friend of Mr. Maduro’s broke down in tears in an interview after his capture, calling Mr. Maduro the last bastion of Venezuela’s revolution.
Few apparatchiks have dared criticize Ms. Rodríguez publicly, but Mario Silva is one who has. A veteran propagandist, his state television program was canceled after Mr. Maduro’s capture, forcing him to turn to social media or radio graveyard slots.
Like many pro-government Venezuelan media figures, he built a career promoting official anti-imperialist dogma, only to fall out of favor when the new administration shifted to building a business-friendly, pro-American image.
“Damn it, keep following the gringos’ orders, then, go ahead,” Mr. Silva said on his radio show on March 18. “Just prostrate yourself and be done with it.”
Mr. Maduro’s disparate allies are united by a distrust of Ms. Rodríguez, who has transformed from a socialist firebrand into Washington’s lauded partner.
People close to the deposed president argued that Mr. Maduro had never considered her as his successor, seeing her as a capable manager rather than a leader.
Nor did Mr. Maduro’s inner circle prepare for the possibility that the clash with Mr. Trump could result in a government led by one of their own, the people said. “The plan was always either everyone falls, or nobody does,” said one senior Maduro official.
The apparent ease with which U.S. forces snatched Mr. Maduro from a heavily guarded military base has fueled suspicion that he was betrayed by people who benefited from his downfall.
One senior Venezuelan official, a day after the U.S. attack, said treason had been committed. Officials from Russia, which lost an ally in Mr. Maduro, have made similar claims.
The Trump administration had been considering Ms. Rodríguez as Mr. Maduro’s successor since 2025, and had indirect contact with her. There has been no evidence that she was privy to the U.S. military’s plans, yet that fact has not eased the distrust within the governing party.
Ms. Rodríguez’s caretaker post began hours after Mr. Maduro’s capture, on Jan. 3, with a fiery speech denouncing U.S. aggression. A week later, Ms. Rodríguez led a retinue of power brokers and Cuban officials to commemorate dozens of Cuban and Venezuelan servicemen who died in the American attack.
“We are not handing down a legacy of traitors and cowards,” Ms. Rodríguez said in a televised speech intended to project unity.
Most of those by her side that day have since been cast aside.
Mr. Maduro’s longest-serving minister, Gen. Vladimir Padrino López, was fired as defense minister in March and later given a much less important post running agriculture. Mr. Maduro’s son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, and a son of Ms. Flores, Yosser Gavidia Flores, have been sidelined from lucrative business deals with the state, according to government insiders.
Mr. Maduro’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, was fired, given a consolation post, and then fired again. Camilla Fabri, Mr. Maduro’s immigration envoy, lost her post. Days later, her husband was detained.
And then there’s Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez. Since attending Ms. Rodríguez’s speech, he has watched his country’s decades-long alliance with Venezuela unravel in weeks.
As Ms. Rodríguez has tightened control, the dismissals grew bolder.
The first Maduro confidant to fall was Alex Saab, a Colombian-born businessman and Ms. Fabri’s husband, who has made billions from preferential food and oil trade contracts and is under indictment in the United States on corruption-related charges.
On Jan. 16, Ms. Rodríguez wrote on social media that Mr. Saab was no longer Venezuela’s industry minister, thanking him “for his service to the Fatherland” and saying he would “assume new responsibilities.”
Two weeks later, Mr. Saab was detained. American officials and Ms. Rodríguez are now negotiating his fate, which includes potential extradition to the United States.
People close to Ms. Rodríguez said she had overseen the detention of two other prominent businessmen close to Mr. Maduro’s family: Raúl Gorrín and Wilmer Ruperti. Mr. Gorrín also faces a corruption-related indictment in the United States.
Mr. Saab’s lawyer declined to comment. Legal representatives for Mr. Ruperti and Mr. Gorrín did not respond to requests for comment.
Ms. Rodríguez’s administration has neither commented on the detentions nor announced any charges, leaving Mr. Maduro’s allies to speculate who might be next.
Ms. Rodríguez in March widened the purge to the armed forces, firing Venezuela’s entire military leadership, including General Padrino López, once considered one of Venezuela’s most powerful men.
One Venezuelan general said that many see the dismissals of senior commanders as the start of a much deeper, U.S.-guided overhaul of Venezuela’s armed forces.
People close Ms. Rodríguez’s government said she had coordinated some replacements with the Trump administration. U.S. officials, they said, have also pressured her to go after American adversaries like Mr. Gorrín and Mr. Saab.
Ms. Rodríguez’s allies include younger chavistas with weaker connections to the movement’s roots. Some are scions of the governing party’s aristocracy more interested in the fruits of a market economy than in maintaining Mr. Chavez’s legacy.
Ms. Rodríguez has also found willing enforcers in Venezuela’s security forces who have pledged their allegiance, hoping to avoid retribution for decades of human rights abuses. Her new defense minister is Gen. Gustavo González López, Venezuela’s former head of secret police, who was placed under sanction by the Obama administration for crushing protests.
Some former government opponents have been lured by career opportunities. Venezuela’s new envoy to North America and Europe, Oliver Blanco, had worked as personal assistant to an opposition leader.
The winners of Ms. Rodríguez’s economic restructuring include Venezuela’s traditional economic elites, who once sided with the opposition but made peace with chavismo. Their bet on stability over democracy has given them access to foreign markets and the U.S. banking system.
Western investors are other beneficiaries. They have recently been descending on Caracas’s luxury hotels searching for bargain assets in the oil, mining and tourism industries.
Only one senior minister in Mr. Maduro’s government remains in his post: Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister who oversaw the governing party’s repression apparatus.
Mr. Cabello is wanted by the United States on drug-trafficking charges and had clashed with Ms. Rodríguez in the past. But his connections to armed pro-government groups have also made him a valuable ally — and a risky target.
To hang on to power, Mr. Cabello has recast himself, from ruling party pit bull to a patriotic guarantor of stability.
“Let’s accompany our sister Delcy,” Mr. Cabello said at a government rally. “Let’s confide completely in the ability, work ethic and conscience of comrade Delcy.”
His adaptation has so far borne fruit. Mr. Cabello’s cousin and brother have kept their government jobs running Venezuela’s secret police and tax service. His daughter is Venezuela’s new tourism minister.
Inside the governing party, most officials have adapted, jettisoning their avowed anti-imperialism for a chance to stay in power.
One senior official said his colleagues did not trust Ms. Rodríguez, but felt they had no choice.
“We need her, and she needs us,” another said.
Sheyla Urdaneta contributed reporting from Buenos Aires, and Tyler Pager from Washington.
Anatoly Kurmanaev covers Venezuela and its interim government.
Read the full story at nyt News.
For complete details, visit the original sources linked above.
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