Venezuela Supreme Court Seizes Power from Legislature

President Nicolás Maduro further consolidated his one-man rule over Venezuela on Thursday as the loyalist Supreme Court effectively dissolved the legislature, seizing power to write laws itself, The New York Times reported. According to the high court’s ruling, lawmakers were “in a situation of contempt” in opposition to the leftist ruling party, and that the justices would need to take over in order to “ensure that parliamentary powers were exercised directly by this Chamber, or by the body that the Chamber chooses.” According to the Times, one opposition legislator declared that the court “kidnapped the Constitution, they have kidnapped our rights, they have kidnapped our liberty.” Another lamented: “It’s demonstrating before the world the authoritarianism here. The people chose us through a popular vote.”