The Dictatorship
Hondurans face election as Donald Trump stirs political waters
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — The day before Honduras elects a new presidentsuddenly the main topics of conversation here shifted from domestic matters to U.S. President Donald Trump and the former Honduran president he said he will pardon.
Trump cannonballed into the deep end of Honduran politics this week, first endorsing presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura from the conservative National Party and then announcing the pardon of ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández — of the same party — sentenced to 45 years in a U.S. prison for helping move tons of cocaine.
Trump’s influence
Until the U.S. president’s splashy entrance, the main concern around the election was that the three candidates with an apparent chance to win were all undermining the process’ credibility and warning of manipulation.
On Saturday, Hondurans were trying to sort out who would benefit from Trump’s actions and what exactly he was trying to do.
Wild card
The endorsement of Asfura seemed straightforward enough: one conservative backing another. But throwing in Hernández, someone whose lengthy U.S. federal trial in a New York City courtroom was covered daily in the Honduran media, was a wild card.
It could hurt Asfura by reminding voters of the depths of the corruption of his party. Or it could help him by firing up the National Party’s base.
Trump also dismissed the other two leading candidates Rixi Moncada of the governing social democrat LIBRE or Liberty and Re-foundation party and Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, who he called a “borderline Communist.”
Eve of the election
Moncada, the former finance and defense secretary in the outgoing administration of President Xiomara Castro, pounced on the U.S. president’s intervention.
Before she stepped to the podium before cheering supporters, a giant screen played video loops of Hernández’s arrest.
Moncada framed it as Honduras’ organized crime interests and the country’s handful of economically dominant families deciding in the days before the election that their candidates wouldn’t be able to beat her, so they went to Washington for help.
It was Castro who had Hernández arrested weeks after he left office, something Moncada said that Honduras’ powerful economic interests allowed, because he was no longer of use to them. But now, desperate, Trump was sending who she called “the biggest capo in the history of Honduras” back to try to energize conservative voters.
“What has happened yesterday (the pardon) is a new crime and that new crime we will judge tomorrow (Sunday) at the ballot box,” Moncada said to cheers. “They won’t come back.”
The night before, Nasralla tried to use Trump’s interference to bolster his own cultivated outsider status, even in his fourth bid for the presidency.
“I don’t answer to dark pacts, or corrupt networks or criminals who have killed our people,” he said Friday night.
Divisive figure
It was all giving Hondurans a lot to talk about Saturday.
At an intersection in a wealthier Tegucigalpa neighborhood, Adalid Ávila sold oranges, bananas, pineapples and rambutans from the back of a pickup truck. About 100 yards away a banner fluttered from a highway overpass with a picture of Hernández the day he was handed over to U.S. authorities in 2022.
It warned people not to forget allegations that he had also diverted money from social security as president.
But Ávila said a lot of people still think highly of Hernández, so he didn’t think Trump’s pardon would have much effect on the election.
Endorsement of Asfura
The 21-year-old vendor said that he planned to vote for Asfura, who he remembered as Tegucigalpa’s mayor for building tunnels and bridges – including the one the banner hung from — that somewhat relieved its crushing traffic.
“He’s hardworking, he inspires you,” Ávila said. He did think that Trump’s endorsement could help Asfura, because Hondurans know how much help the U.S. can be, he said.
Most of all, Ávila wants Honduras’ next president to be “honorable,” to work for the people and not forget the campaign promises, he said. He worried that the leading candidates won’t accept Sunday’s result.
“People aren’t tolerant in this country,” he said. “There’s always revolution, because no one likes to lose.”
Hope for peaceful vote
Melany Martínez, a 30-year-old nurse, waited in a long line Saturday morning for a “baleada,” a Honduran delicacy of beans, cheese and cream wrapped in a soft, fresh tortilla.
She called Trump’s endorsement of Asfura an “alert” to Hondurans and she wondered what the U.S. president’s angle was.
“I think the people’s decision must be taken here, because in the end we’re the citizens,” she said. Trump’s pardoning of Hernández struck her as wrong, because he had been convicted of a crime.
She too hoped for a peaceful election with a respected result. But she had heard talk in the street about the chance of trouble and even suggestions to stock up on household essentials.
As a nurse, she wants the next president to focus on education and health, two areas that have been chronically ignored.
Oliver Erazo, a law professor at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, said that he didn’t expect Trump’s interference to have a big impact on voters’ decisions.
“The social and collective behavior of the electorate was already defined a week or two ago, especially when it comes to the National Party and the Liberal Party,” he said.
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Marlon González contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump is giving fragile U.S.-Iran diplomacy “some space” before deciding whether to resume strikes, United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz said Sunday.
Hours later, however, Trump posted images to social media depicting the U.S. attacking Iran.
Waltz also dismissed concerns over the United States’ diminished munitions stockpiles, even as he conceded that “a lot” of weapons have been depleted, which he said was because of the Russia-Ukraine war and fighting with the Houthis.
“I want to be crystal clear: The U.S. military — and I’ve verified this every which way — has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign as effectively as it needs to be,” Waltz told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Waltz’s comments came on the second consecutive day of paused fighting between the United Sates and Iran amid reports of a dwindled U.S. stockpile of Patriot antimissile interceptors, among other munitions.
The New York Times reported Sunday that the depletion of interceptor stockpiles is among the reasons why the administration is wary of resuming major combat operations in a war launched without congressional authorization and which has grown exceedingly unpopular.
But Waltz underscored that the pause in fighting is to allow for an opportunity for peace — not because of an insufficient weapons supply, and warned that those leaking information to the press about the U.S. not having sufficient weaponry “deserve to be in jail.”
“What the president is doing right now, as we’ve seen all along, is giving some talks some space. Talks are ongoing,” Waltz told NBC. “They’re happening at every level, from the more technical aspect of it all the way to the highest levels, of course, within both the Iranian government and the U.S. government.”
He reiterated in an appearance on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that Trump “is giving diplomacy a chance.”
But even after Waltz publicly touted giving peace a chance, Trump posted several AI-generated images on Truth Social Sunday afternoon depicting the U.S. striking Kharg Island. In one imageTrump is standing on the deck of an Iranian oil tanker with an American flag in hand.
Trump met with top aides on Friday to weigh escalating military action against Iran, according to a senior White House official. On Saturday, the president told a French journalist that he is “absolutely” considering resuming full-scale war with Iran if the U.S. doesn’t “get 100% of what we want.”
Waltz declined to give a timeline for when the war would end.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that if Iran plays any role in attacking Israel, it would be making a “terrible mistake” and that the response would be “very forceful.”
“If Iran attacks Israel – either directly or through proxies, either with ballistic missiles or UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles]’s or killer drones — it will make a terrible mistake,” he said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”“Because our response, Israel’s response, will be very, very forceful.”
Netanyahu, who launched the war with Iran jointly with Trump on Feb. 28, is set to meet with his U.S. counterpart at the White House on Tuesday, the same day he’s scheduled to attend the funeral of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Jake Traylor and Emily Hung contributed to this report.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
BERLIN (AP) — The suspect in the deadly Berlin Pride attackthat left one person dead and 29 injured was shot and killed by police during a confrontation on Sunday in a suburb of the city, authorities said.
Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, was killed following a search that lasted nearly 24 hours after the attack in downtown Berlin. Prosecutors said he had previously sought to join the militant Islamic State group.
Ballout was suspected of driving a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival Saturday night before apparently stabbing others with a machete in what authorities believe was an Islamic extremist terror attack.
“Everything we see here points to us dealing with an Islamic terror attack,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said.
Dobrindt put the total number of wounded at 29. The attack occurred a few hundred meters (yards) from a party near the Brandenburg Gate that was supposed to close out the city’s Pride festival.
Ballout was born in Germany, the minister said. His mother was naturalized in 2002, three years before he was born.
Ashley Jump, a 26-year-old U.K. resident, had traveled to Berlin for Saturday’s Pride parade but had left the celebrations before the attack. They returned Sunday to leave flowers at a memorial near the crime scene in support of the LGBTQ+ community.
“They’ll never erase us, we’ll never be gone,” they said. “As long as humanity has existed, we’ve existed. And as long as humanity exists, we will exist. We will not be removed.”
Suspect convicted of ties to Islamic extremism
Ballout traveled to Lebanon in 2025 with the goal of going to Syria to join the Islamic State group, Berlin prosecutors said Sunday.
There, he made contact with several people who were presumed members of the militant group — or at least he believed them to be, prosecutors said. He was arrested in Lebanon last year and sentenced by a military court to three months’ imprisonment for offenses including incitement to religious and sectarian conflict.
He returned to Germany after completing his sentence, where he was arrested at the Berlin airport.
In May, a juvenile court in Berlin convicted Ballout of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state, as well as publishing Islamic State propaganda on his Instagram account and other charges, prosecutors said.
The court handed down a suspended sentence of 1 year and 10 months in youth custody, which Berlin prosecutors have appealed.
The court said it took Ballout’s months of pre-trial detention in Germany and Lebanon into account. It also said it considered that Ballout had confessed to the crimes, appeared to distance himself from the militant group and no actual threat had ever materialized.
He was released from detention pending the appeal.
Berlin’s Pride festival is one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations
According to police, a white van drove into the Tiergarten park around 10 p.m. and hit several people before colliding with a tree. The closing party at the Pride festivalknown as Christopher Street Daywas ongoing at the time next to the Brandenburg Gate, a short distance away. The party followed a parade with some 80 trucks that had made its way through downtown Berlin earlier in the day.
The attack did not occur at the festival, along its route or at the closing party. Rather, the violence took place a few hundred meters (yards) away on a track in the Tiergarten park. The van drove into a crowd that was likely a mix of festivalgoers and other locals or visitors.
Police said a woman was killed.
On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of mourners gathered at a memorial at the iconic gate. They hugged each other and laid down flowers, candles, rainbow flags and homemade signs, including a cardboard one that said: “the only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Hundreds of thousands had come to Berlin to celebrate on Saturday, though it’s unclear how many were still at the festival by late evening. It’s one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+celebrations.
“We are simply stunned by what happened,” said Andre Lehmann, a top official with the main national LGBTQ+ association, LSVD+. “This suspected attack hits the heart of the queer community.”
Amsterdam says it will celebrate freedom in the wake of Berlin attack
Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed that law enforcement would find the suspect.
“I would like to say this to Christopher Street Day participants here in Berlin but also across Germany: Don’t let yourselves, let us not let ourselves, be intimidated,” he said. “These acts have only one purpose: They aim to divide our society. They want to take away from us the most important thing we have: Namely our openness and our freedom.”
Dobrindt said he expected security measures at other major events in Germany, including Pride events elsewhere, to be reviewed and if necessary significantly strengthened.
Berlin has seen Islamic extremist attacks before. In December, 2016, a rejected asylum seeker from Tunisia plowed a hijacked truck into a Christmas marketkilling 13 people and injuring dozens. He was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
In February last year, a Spanish tourist was stabbed and seriously wounded at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, an attack that saw a Syrian man convicted in March and sentencedto 13 years.
This week, Amsterdam will be hosting World Pride alongside its own annual Pride celebrations. Mayor Femke Halsema said authorities and organizers “are closely monitoring the security situation” after the Berlin attack but aim to prevent any extra measures getting in the way of celebrating freedom and love.
Katy Perry lambasted the Trump administration over the weekend for using her song “Firework” in one of its social media videos about U.S airstrikes on Iran.
The pop star said she was “deeply appalled and angry” over the use of her song in a White House TikTok video featuring bombs exploding set to Perry’s 2010 hit — specifically featuring her lyrics “boom, boom, boom.” A caption on the video, which has more than 6 million views, reads: “Iran has been warned.”
“I did not approve this, I was not asked, and I absolutely do not condone it. I wrote this song to be an anthem of hope, healing, and inner strength for people going through their darkest personal moments,” Perry wrote in an X post on Saturday. “To see a message of self-worth and upliftment weaponized to soundtrack destruction and violence is a complete violation of everything my song stands for. My music is for bringing people together, not celebrating warfare.”
White House aide Kaelan Dorr responded to Perry, saying“This you?” He posted Perry’s own military-themed music video of her song “Part of Me,” in which she’s dressed in combat uniform.
Perry, who is in a romantic relationship with former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is among many other prominent artists who have rebuked the Trump administration for using their music in videos on official accounts.
Kesha publicly admonished President Donald Trump’s administration in March after the official White House TikTok account used her song “Blow” in another video about military action. “Stop using my music, perverts,” she said on X.
The Filipino American pop star Olivia Rodrigo expressed outrage at the Trump administration after it used her song “All-American Bitch” last fall in a video threatening deportations. She responded to the Department of Homeland Security at the time, saying, “Don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda.”
While the video is still visible, Rodrigo’s music has been removed.
And last December, Sabrina Carpenter condemned the administration for using her song “Juno” in a video about immigration arrests, which she called “evil and disgusting.”
“Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda,” the singer wrote at the time.
Ariana Grandealso posted on her Instagram story last September criticizing the administration over its immigration policyanti-LGBTQ+ messaging and alleged censorship. In response, White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai told her, “Save your tears,” a reference to one of her songs. Last month, after the White House used her song “Bye” in an anti-immigration video on TikTok, she commented“Please do not ever use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense.”
Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Taylor Swift. The White House poked fun at the mega star earlier this month when shemarried Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden. Its official X account posted photo-shopped images of the venue’s billboards blaring, “TRUMP IS YOUR PRESIDENT.” After she endorsed his opponent, Kamala Harris, in the 2024 election, Trump wrote, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
Last year, Trump went after Bruce Springsteenfor insulting the president at a concert in Manchester, England, where the Boss called the administration “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous.” Trump called the Grammy-award winning artist “highly overrated,” writing in part, “Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy.”
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
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