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Right-wing Trump ally Abelardo de la Espriella has clinched a narrow victory in Sunday's runoff presidential election in Colombia, defeating leftist Senator Iván Cepeda, an ally of current President Gustavo Petro. De la Espriella ran a fearmongering, "tough-on-crime" campaign, promising to build mega-prisons inspired by El Salvador's authoritarian President Nayib Bukele, to bomb "narcoterrorist camps" and to abandon Petro's peace efforts. His reported victory is also a win for U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration is waging an intensifying "war on drugs" across Latin America, targeting left-wing leaders like Petro with false allegations and threats of military intervention.
"De la Espriella clearly represents a criminal approach to politics: lying, propaganda, coordination and collusion with criminal narcotrafficking, restriction of rights, and money laundering," says longtime Colombian activist Manuel Rozental. With his victory, says Rozental, "We expect to have military operations and a U.S. intervention within the country. We expect to have human rights abuses. We expect to have militarization. And it's all for the extraction of resources and the link of drug trafficking to the U.S. government, U.S. interests and global mafia."
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The story of one progressive activist arrested in Minnesota in January shows what critics say is the aggressive nature of the Trump administration's response to those who have protested its immigration crackdown.
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After the downing of an Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz, the United States and Iran have begun trading missile and drone strikes in the most serious escalation of hostilities since the April ceasefire agreement. President Trump posted on social media Wednesday morning that Iran has taken "too long to negotiate a deal" and would now have to "pay the price!!!" For more, we speak to Mohammad Eslami at Tehran University, who says Trump's "lies and broken promises" have shattered Iranians' trust in a diplomatic solution. "Every night, there are lots of peoples chanting all around the street against Trump. And also, … unfortunately, many of them are chanting against negotiation with Donald Trump," he says. "Right now they are asking the Iranian [forces] to retaliate."
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