World
Bolivia’s president denounces 'self-coup' accusations as 'lies' as supporters rally
- Bolivian President Luis Arce has denied accusations of orchestrating a coup, labeling them as lies and saying that General Juan José Zúñiga acted independently.
- Arce’s statement followed Zúñiga’s claim that the president directed the mutiny to bolster his popularity.
- Arce’s supporters rallied outside the presidential palace, offering political support.
Bolivian President Luis Arce on Thursday angrily called accusations that he was behind an attempted coup against his government “lies,” saying the general who apparently led it acted on his own and vowing that he would face justice.
Arce’s comments, his first to the press since Wednesday’s failed apparent coup, came after the general involved, Juan José Zúñiga, alleged without providing evidence that the president had ordered him to carry out the mutiny in a ruse to boost his flagging popularity.
That fueled speculation about what really happened, even after the government announced the arrest of 17 people, most of them military officers. Opposition senators and government critics joined the chorus of doubters, calling the mutiny a “self-coup.”
BOLIVIAN PRESIDENT SURVIVES FAILED COUP, CALLS FOR ‘DEMOCRACY TO BE RESPECTED,’ ARMY GENERAL ARRESTED
Some Bolivians said they believed Zúñiga’s allegations. “They are playing with the intelligence of the people, because nobody believes that it was a real coup,” said 48-year-old lawyer Evaristo Mamani.
Bolivian President Luis Arce speaks during a press conference the day after troops stormed the presidential palace in what he called a coup attempt, in La Paz, Bolivia, on June 27, 2024. Arce on Thursday called accusations that he was behind an attempted coup against his government “lies,” saying the general who apparently led it acted on his own and vowing that he would face justice. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)
Those claims have been strongly denied by Arce and his government. “I am not a politician who is going to win popularity through the blood of the people,” he said Thursday.
Meanwhile, Arce’s supporters rallied outside the presidential palace on Thursday, giving some political breathing room to the embattled leader as authorities made more arrests in a failed coup that shook the economically troubled country.
Among the 17 people arrested are the army chief, Gen. Zúñiga, and former navy Vice Adm. Juan Arnez Salvador, who were taken into custody the day before. All face charges of armed uprising and attacks against government infrastructure, and penalties of 15 years in prison or more, said the country’s attorney general, César Siles.
BOLIVIA GRAPPLES WITH AFTERMATH OF FAILED COUP ATTEMPT AS NATION STRIVES TO RESTORE STABILITY
The president claimed that not only military officers were involved in the plan, but people retired from the military and civil society. He did not elaborate.
The South American nation of 12 million watched in shock and bewilderment Wednesday as military forces appeared to turn on Arce, seizing control of the capital’s main square with armored vehicles, repeatedly crashing a small tank into the presidential palace and unleashing tear gas on protesters.
Senior Cabinet member Eduardo del Castillo said among the arrested was one civilian, identified as Aníbal Aguilar Gómez, who was as a key “ideologue” of the thwarted coup. He said the alleged conspirators began plotting in May.
Riot police guarded the palace doors and Arce — who has struggled to manage the country’s shortages of foreign currency and fuel — emerged on the presidential balcony as his supporters surged into the streets singing the national anthem and cheering as fireworks exploded overhead. “No one can take democracy away from us,” he roared.
Bolivians responded by chanting, “Lucho, you are not alone!”
Analysts say the eruption of public support for Arce, even if fleeting, provides him with a reprieve from the country’s economic quagmire and political turmoil. The president is locked in a deepening rivalry with popular former President Evo Morales, his erstwhile ally who has threatened to challenge Arce in 2025.
“The president’s management has been very bad, there are no dollars, there is no petrol,” said La Paz-based political analyst Paul Coca. “Yesterday’s military move is going to help his image a bit, but it’s no solution.”
Soon after Wednesday’s military maneuver was underway, it became clear that any attempted takeover had no meaningful political support. The rebellion passed bloodlessly at the end of the business day. In an extraordinary scene, Arce argued strongly with Zúñiga and his allies face-to-face in the plaza outside the palace before returning inside to name a new army commander.
“What we saw is extremely unusual for coup d’etats in Latin America, and it raises red flags,” said Diego von Vacano, an expert in Bolivian politics at Texas A&M University and former informal adviser to President Arce. “Arce looked like a victim yesterday and a hero today, defending democracy.”
Speaking in Paraguay on Thursday, U.S. deputy secretary of state for management, Rich Verma, condemned Zúñiga, saying that “democracy remains fragile in our hemisphere.”
The short-lived mutiny followed months of mounting tensions between Arce and Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president. Morales has staged a dramatic political comeback since mass protests and a deadly crackdown prompted him to resign and flee in 2019 — a military-backed ouster that his supporters decry as a coup.
Morales has vowed to run against Arce in 2025, a prospect that has rattled Arce, whose popularity has plunged as the country’s foreign currency reserves dwindle, its natural gas exports plummet and its currency peg to the U.S. dollar collapses.
Morales’ allies in Congress have made it almost impossible for Arce to govern. The cash crunch has ramped up pressure on Arce to scrap food and fuel subsidies that depleted state finances.
Defense Minister Edmundo Novillo told reporters that Zuñiga’s coup attempt had its roots in a private meeting Tuesday in which Arce sacked over the army chief’s threats on national TV to arrest Morales if he proceeded to join the 2025 race.
But Zuñiga gave officials no indication he was preparing to seize power, Novillo said.
“He admitted that he had committed some excesses,” he said of Zuñiga. “We said goodbye in the most friendly way, with hugs. Zuñiga said that he would always be at the side of the president.”
Pro-democracy advocates have already expressed doubt that any government-led investigation can be trusted.
“Judicial independence is basically zero, the credibility of the judiciary is on the floor,” said Juan Pappier, deputy director of the Americas at Human Rights Watch. “Not only do we not know today what happened, we probably will never know.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives.
The court’s order, issued without any noted dissent, is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.
In recent days, the justices have sided with Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana who hope to redo their congressional maps to produce more GOP-leaning seats following the court’s voting rights decision.
But the Virginia situation was different, stemming from a 4-3 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that struck down a constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month.
The state court found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.
The Supreme Court typically doesn’t intervene in state court proceedings unless they present an issue of federal law. Virginia Democrats had hoped to persuade the justices that the Virginia court misread federal law and Supreme Court precedent that hold that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.
Virginia’s amendment had been intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.
That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision.
The state’s attorney general, Democrat Jay Jones, slammed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, saying it was another example of what he described as a national attack on voting rights and the rule of law.
“Let’s be clear about what is happening. Donald Trump, Republican state legislatures, and conservative courts are systematically and unabashedly tilting power away from the people for Trump’s political gain,” Jones said in a statement issued late Friday night.
The state’s top Democrats had disagreed about whether it was even too late for help from the Supreme Court. “Time grows short, but it is not yet too late,” lawyers for the Democratic leaders of the legislature as well as the state told the justices in a brief filed Friday.
A day earlier, the office of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger already had confirmed that the state will hold this year’s elections under the current districts established in 2021. Last month, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Steve Koski said a court order was needed by this past Tuesday to set the district lines for primary elections on Aug. 4.
Spanberger reacted to Friday’s decision by saying both courts had nullified the votes of the more than 3 million Virginians who cast ballots in the April 21 special election.
“These Virginians made their voices heard — casting their ballots in good faith to push back against a President who said he’s ‘entitled’ to more seats in Congress before voters go to the polls,” she posted on her X account.
The leader of the state Republican Party said the justices made the right call.
“Wisely, the Supreme Court of the United States has confirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia,” state party chairman Jeff Ryer said. “This should once and for all put to rest the Democrats’ effort to disenfranchise half of Virginia.
___
Associated Press writer Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.
World
Trump says Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, killed in US-Nigerian operation
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President Donald Trump announced late Friday that U.S. and Nigerian forces carried out an operation that killed a global ISIS leader.
Trump identified the terrorist as Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, whom he described as ISIS’s second-in-command globally.
“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” Trump continued. “He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans.”
100 US TROOPS LAND IN NIGERIA AS ISLAMIC MILITANTS THREATEN WEST AFRICA REGIONAL SECURITY
President Donald Trump sits at a table monitoring military operations during Operation Epic Fury against Iran at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 2. (The White House via X Account/Anadolu/Getty Images)
Trump also thanked the Nigerian government for its cooperation in the mission.
“With his removal, ISIS’s global operation is greatly diminished,” he added.
Additional details surrounding the mission were not immediately available.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.
US MILITARY IN SYRIA CARRIES OUT 10 STRIKES ON MORE THAN 30 ISIS TARGETS: PHOTOS
The announcement comes after U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said it carried out multiple strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria in February as part of a joint military effort to “sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network.”
CENTCOM said U.S. forces struck ISIS infrastructure and weapons-storage targets using fixed-wing, rotary-wing and unmanned aircraft.
DEADLY STRIKE ON US TROOPS TESTS TRUMP’S COUNTER-ISIS PLAN — AND HIS TRUST IN SYRIA’S NEW LEADER
The U.S. military carried out ten strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria following a December ambush that killed U.S. troops. (CENTCOM)
Trump told reporters on Jan. 27 that he had a “great conversation” with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“All of the things having to do with Syria in that area are working out very, very well,” he said at the time. “So, we are very happy about it.”
CENTCOM announced in February that more than 50 ISIS terrorists had been killed or captured and more than 100 ISIS infrastructure targets struck during two months of targeted operations in Syria.
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The U.S. launched Operation Hawkeye Strike in response to an ISIS ambush that killed two U.S. service members and an American interpreter Dec. 13, 2025, in Palmyra, Syria.
Fox News Digital’s Ashley J. DiMella contributed to this report.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks have killed 2,951 people since March 2 with at least 8,988 wounded.
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