The Dictatorship
Honduras weighs shift in China-Taiwan ties as Trump pushes for US dominance in Latin America
WASHINGTON (AP) — Three years after Honduras parted ways with Taiwan and forged diplomatic ties with China in hope of economic gainshrimp farmers in the Central American country are in revolt.
Their sales to Taiwan fell to a mere $16 million in 2025, down from more than $100 million in 2022, and the Chinese didn’t fill the void as hoped.
“We were deceived,” said Javier Amador, executive director of the National Aquaculture Association of Honduras, as he described the promises from former President Xiomara Castro of better opportunities with China when she severed ties with Taiwan and opened an embassy in Beijing in 2023.
Nasry Asfura, who was elected president with the backing of President Donald Trump and sworn into office in January, has ordered a review of agreements between Tegucigalpa and Beijing. This has fueled expectations that Honduras will distance itself from China, in line with a Trump administration campaign to reduce Chinese influence and economic clout in Latin America.
Asfura is expected to join other regional leaders for a security summit Trump is hosting at his golf course near Miami on Saturday.
“Honduras is probably the most likely country in the world right now to switch diplomatic recognition back to Taiwan,” said Francisco Urdinez, an associate professor at the Political Science Institute of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. “President Asfura campaigned on it, he met Trump at Mar-a-Lago within days of taking office, and his vice president has confirmed the government’s intention.”
“But it’s not as simple as flipping a switch,” he said, noting that Honduras has signed more than a dozen agreements with China since 2023.
China and Taiwan were both diplomatic in responding to questions about a potential shift in allegiance.
Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said Honduras has better prospects for its long-term development since establishing diplomatic ties with China and both countries have “reaped fruitful cooperation outcomes in various fields.”
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, the island’s de facto embassy in Washington, said Taiwan will continue to advance relations with Honduras “in an open and pragmatic manner, without preconditions, and on the basis of equality and reciprocity.”
The Honduras government has not responded to a request for comment.
Taiwan as a barometer of influence
Latin America’s ties with Taiwan have gained attention because they have become a barometer of the power balance between the world’s two largest economies.
Beijing considers Taiwan to be Chinese territory, while Washington, despite its lack of formal ties with Taiwan, is the island’s strongest partner and has vowed to help Taiwan keep its formal allies, seen as necessary for the island to eke out a legitimate space on the global stage.
Of the 12 governments that still recognize Taiwan’s statehood, seven are in Latin America, including Guatemala, Paraguay and five in the Caribbean.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, during a visit to Guatemala in February, thanked the country for sticking with Taiwan.
“It’s not easy in a world where there is a lot of pressure to change that recognition and to break those ties, but you have always stood firm,” Rubio said, as he promised to work with Guatemala to deepen its economic ties with Taiwan.
Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, had a similar message when hosting a delegation from Guatemala in November.
“While too many countries bow to the bullying of Beijing, Guatemala stands with the people of Taiwan and prospers through a strong trade relationship,” Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said. “I support Guatemala’s efforts to oppose Chinese aggression in our hemisphere and look forward to working with Guatemala on areas of common ground.”
U.S. lawmakers have introduced a bill that could provide $120 million over three years in assistance to Taiwan’s partners.
Thousands of shrimp farmers lose their jobs
In 2016 and 2017, Panama, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador all switched their allegiance from Taipei to Beijing. Nicaragua flipped in 2021, and Honduras in 2023.
The loss of the Taiwanese market led to the closure of at least 95 shrimp farms and one processing plant, the loss of more than 25,000 direct and indirect jobs, and the loss of millions of dollars in foreign exchange for the Central American country, according to Amador.
“Most of the companies closed in 2024 because many couldn’t ship to other markets, and China hasn’t been the answer, because we’re not competitive for them,” he said.
Amador hopes the president restores ties with Taiwan for the benefit of the 330 shrimp farming companies that are still operating.
“The issue of returning to Taiwan is not about recovering what we have already lost, but about whether we are going to start over to reactivate industry, improve productivity and generate foreign currency and employment,” he said.
Honduras’ new president has a dilemma
For Asfura, who campaigned on severing ties with Beijing, there’s more to untangle. China has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investments in Honduras.
Enrique Millán-Mejía, senior fellow on economic development at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, said Honduras could confer “a special status” on Taiwan and withdraw from Beijing’s global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, which has helped the Chinese government open markets and extend its influence.
Last year, Panama became the first Latin American country to quit the Belt and Road Initiative, prompting an angry response from Beijing, which accused the U.S. of using “pressure and coercion” to undermine the cooperation.
Urdinez said Asfura may go further and rebuild formal ties with Taiwan.
“Asfura’s calculus is fundamentally about the U.S., not about Taiwan per se,” Urdinez said. “Taiwan recognition is essentially the price of admission to Trump’s good graces.”
___
Gonzalez reported from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
The Dictatorship
In pursuit of a Jim Crow gerrymander, Georgia’s governor calls another special session
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is officially joining the GOP’s push to reinstitute Jim Crow governance after conservative Supreme Court justices opened the door to racist gerrymandering with their decision in the Callais v. Louisiana case.
On Wednesday, Kemp — who has signed multiple voter suppression laws in recent years — called for a special legislative session in an effort to gerrymander his state’s congressional districts ahead of the 2028 elections. The map would take effect after this year’s midterms.
Kemp, notably, has been floated as a potential presidential candidate in 2028. His announcement comes as other Republican governors have eagerly pressed conservatives in their states to rig their congressional maps in their favor, now that the Supreme Court has effectively allowed them to draw majority-Black districts out of existence.
Next month’s special session will mark the third time in five years that Georgia Republicans will attempt to gerrymander their map, a remarkable data point underscoring the GOP’s illiberalism in the state.
These repeated returns to the well were rebuked by the Georgia state Senate’s minority leader, Harold Jones II. In a statement on Xhe said in part:
If Republicans ever used their power to help Georgians, they wouldn’t have to waste time and money redrawing the maps every few years to keep their majorities.
June will be our third redistricting since 2021. Republicans need to undo their last gerrymander because it wasn’t good enough to keep their waffling political party in power. Most parties would try out some new ideas. Republicans choose to strip political power from Black people and undo the progress the South made in the last 60 years.
Jones also noted that Black people make up Georgia’s largest bloc of middle-class and working-class voters, adding: “When Republicans strip Black people’s political power away, it doesn’t just strip one community of power. It strips political power from every single middle and working class person and hands it over to billionaires and big corporations.”
🚨Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones II released the following statement today on Governor’s Kemp’s call for special session:
“If Republicans ever used their power to help Georgians, they wouldn’t have to waste time and money redrawing the maps every few years to keep their… pic.twitter.com/85Sv2ChNSC
— Georgia Senate Democrats (@GASenateDems) May 13, 2026
As the Southern Poverty Law Center explained in JanuaryGeorgia Republicans forced through a map in 2021 that voting rights activists said discriminated against Black voters. After a federal court struck down that map, Georgia Republicans replaced it with a different map in 2023 that has been similarly criticized.
And now — amid what some people fear could be the largest purge of Black lawmakers from Congress since the Jim Crow era — Kemp is planning yet another assault on Black political power.
And he’s not stopping there. Just a day prior to calling the special session, Kemp signed a law to make elections for district attorneys and other offices nonpartisan in five Atlanta counties where Democratic DAs are in charge, all of whom are Black women.
As writers Jeff Singer and David Nir explained in The Downballotthis change, which is being challenged by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, could make it easier for Republicans to flip these five offices.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
The House Ethics Committee announced Thursday that they are investigating whether Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards engaged in sexual misconduct or helped create a hostile workplace environment.
The bipartisan committee said in a statement that it is reviewing allegations that Edwards, 65, “may have created or fostered a hostile work environment and engaged in sexual harassment in violation of the Code of Official Conduct or any other applicable standard of conduct.”
The committee noted that opening and publicly acknowledging the investigation “does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred,” and said no further comments would be made, except as allowed under committee rules.
The investigation comes weeks after Axios first reportedon April 30 that the House Ethics Committee was investigating Edwards, though the outlet did not initially provide details about the allegations. CNN later reported the investigation involves allegations of sexual harassment. NOTUS also reporterd Edwards allegedly maintained a long-term affair with a former aide who is said to have left the office earlier this year.
Days later, Axios reportedthat they reviewed a handwritten letter Edwards gave to a departing female aide that expressed unusually personal and emotional language. Axios also cited sources who allege Edwards gave the aide personal gifts, including jewelry, and later spent time with her after she left his office, including a trip to Las Vegas.
House rules prohibit members of Congress from having sexual relationships with staffers under their supervision.
Edwards has represented North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District since 2023 and is currently seeking reelection. He has been married since 1980.
He said in a statement that he plans to comply with the investigation and “is confident the investigation will expose the facts, not politically motivated fiction.”
During an interview with BLN on Tuesday, Edwards denied any wrongdoing.
“I think you’re gonna find that when Ethics completes their investigation that the facts will have caught up with all the gossip and the rumor,” he said.
Scrutiny over workplace conduct on Capitol Hill has intensified in recent months following the resignations of three lawmakers facing ethics investigations.
Democrat Eric Swalwell of California resignedfrom the House in April after facing multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, including claims from several women, though he denied wrongdoing. Tony Gonzales, a Republican from Texas, also resigned from the House the same week after admitting to an affair with a staff member — conduct that prompted a House Ethics probe and potential expulsion proceedings. Days later, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick stepped down just before an expected expulsion vote following findings by the House Ethics Committee that she committed numerous violations tied to the misuse of federal funds.
Cases involving alleged misconduct by lawmakers have also increased pressure on congressional leadership to respond swiftly and transparently.
In April, the ethics panel urgedstaff and members to come forward with more reports of workplace misconduct, emphasizing that stronger enforcement depends on greater transparency and accountability.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
BEIJING (AP) — As President Donald Trumpwraps up his whirlwind visit to Chinaon Friday, he’s insistent that relations between the world’s two biggest powers are good and getting better despite deep differences on Iran, Taiwan and more.
Trump started his last day in Beijing by insisting in a social media post that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had “congratulated me on so many tremendous successes” and had been referring only to his predecessor, former U.S. President Joe Biden, when he “very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation.”
But Trump’s rosy outlook on the U.S.-China relationship collides with some difficult truths about the thorniest issues between the two superpowers.
Beijing has shown little public interest in U.S. entreaties to get more involved in solving the conflict in Iraneven though Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Xi had in their conversations offered to help. And the White House believes China can still do more to stem the flow of Chinese-made precursor chemicalsinto Mexico used to make illicit fentanyl that has wreaked havoc on many U.S. communities.
Xi, meanwhile, warned Trump during private talks that their differences on the self-ruled island of Taiwan, if handled poorly, could hurtle the world’s dominant powerstoward “clashes and even conflicts,” according to Chinese government officials.
Trump and Xi are set to have more time together at Xi’s official residence in Beijing on Friday before the U.S. leader makes the long journey back to Washington.
Taiwan remains the most important issue for China
Xi’s sharp language on Taiwan loomed large over Thursday’s talks, even as Trump sought to play up the notion that the U.S. and China share a “special relationship.”
But Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC News that U.S. policy toward Taiwan was “unchanged” and cautioned that it would be “a terrible mistake” for China to try to take Taiwan by force. He also framed Xi’s comments as standard practice.
“They always raise it on their side. We always make clear our position, and we move on to the other topics,” said Rubio, who was among senior aides to join Trump for the talks.
China in recent weeks has sought to put more focus on its view that Taiwan sits at the “core” of its interests and is key to ensuring a stable relationship with the U.S.
Trump has demanded Taiwan increase defense spending, and in December, the White House announced an $11 billion weapons package for Taiwanthe largest ever to the island democracy.
But the U.S. has yet to begin fulfilling the arms sales, and Trump had said he expected to discuss the matter with Xi in Beijing. He’s also groused that Taiwan “stole” America’s semiconductor business and called on Taiwan to paythe U.S. for protection.
All the while, Trump has, with the threat of hefty tariffs and Biden-era incentives, prodded Taipei to agree to massive investmentsin U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and to purchase billions of dollars’ worthof U.S. liquefied natural gas and crude oil. The attitude toward Taiwan has raised questions about whether Trump might be open to dialing back support for the island democracy.
Ma Chun-wei, an expert in China-Taiwan relations at Taiwan’s Tamkang University, said the elevated defense relationship between Washington and Taipei has caused China to toughen its rhetoric over Taiwan.
“For Xi Jinping, he must show that the Taiwan issue is in China’s hands. He must demonstrate this image, or else he would be criticized,” Ma said.
China wants the Strait of Hormuz opened
Iran was on the agenda when Trump sat down with Xi on Thursday for their two-hour meeting in the Great Hall of the People.
The leaders agreed that the Strait of Hormuz— effectively closed since the start of the Iran conflict — needs to be reopened to support global energy demands, Trump told Fox News in an interview. About 20% of the world’s oil flowed through the strait before the war started on Feb. 28.
Trump said in the interview that Xi privately offered assistance on resolving the war, though it was unclear what that would mean, given China’s strategic partnership with Iran.
“He’d like to see the Hormuz Strait open,” Trump said. “He said if I can be of any help whatsoever, I would like to help.”
The president also said Xi was also opposed to any implementation of tolls on vessels crossing the strait and expressed interest in China potentially purchasing more U.S. oil to reduce Chinese dependence on Gulf oil in the future.
Trump earlier this week had downplayedthe importance of talks with Xi on the 11-week-old Iran war that has led to surging energy prices and threatens to plunge the global economy into recession if the conflict does not conclude soon.
“We have a lot of things to discuss. I wouldn’t say Iran is one of them, to be honest with you, because we have Iran very much under control,” Trump told reporters Tuesday shortly before flying to Beijing.
But before Air Force One could land in Beijing, Rubio said administration officials would make the case to the Chinese officials about why they should be invested in prodding Iran to come to terms to end the war.
“Economies are melting down because of this crisis,” Rubio offered aboard the presidential plane as he flew with Trump to Beijing. That dynamic, the secretary added in an interview Wednesday with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, will result in consumers “buying less Chinese product.”
“So it’s in their interest to resolve this,” Rubio said.
Indeed, the Chinese, who have been critical of the U.S. and Israeli bombardment of Iran, hold unique leverage as Iran’s biggest trading partner. The Chinese government has managed to weather the economic damage caused by the war with the help of its strategic oil reserves, but that backstop is not limitless. Economists say the Iran conflict could still have a big impact on China’s export-driven economy.
Will Trump announce any major business deals?
The White House, ahead of the visit, insisted that Trump wouldn’t be making the trip without an eye toward securing results before he leaves, suggesting there could be announcements coming on trade.
Those could still come, with the U.S. side hoping to nail down Chinese commitments to buy U.S. soybeans and beef. Trump told Fox News that Xi had indicated a commitment for China to buy 200 Boeing jets from the U.S.
The leaders on Thursday discussed increasing U.S. agricultural purchases by the Chinese and opportunities for both sides to expand investment into each other’s markets, according to the White House. Trump administration officials also want to work toward establishing a Board of Trade with China to address commercial differences between the countries.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang stressed the need for friendship and cooperation in U.S.-China ties as he spoke with U.S. business titans, including Tesla’s Elon MuskApple’s Tim Cook and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huangwho were part of Trump’s delegation in Beijing.
“China and the United States have been able to maintain frank and smooth dialogue and communication and actively safeguard a stable and healthy bilateral relationship” despite international turbulence, Li said.
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