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Bukele claims he cleaned up El Salvador. But at what cost?

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Bukele claims he cleaned up El Salvador. But at what cost?

The last time I was in El Salvador, nearly a decade ago, the capital was gripped by the violence of gangs who terrified people — dictating where they could shop, work, go to school or even cross a street.

Homicides were mounting steadily, with little police investigation and no justice. Bodies were being dumped on neighborhood sidewalks and in clandestine graves. “We don’t even exhume many of the [mass] graves,” Dr. Saul Quijada, a forensic physician working at one of the city’s morgues, told me in April 2015.

Returning this summer, San Salvador was transformed. It was safe to walk out at night, to move around the city as normally as one might in a U.S. capital. Officially, at least, only a handful of people were being murdered per capita, fewer than in Los Angeles or Washington, on a daily basis.

But at what cost has this change come about?

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El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele gives a speech during the inauguration of an industrial data center in Ciudad Arce, El Salvador.

(Salvador Melendez/Associated Press)

Claiming credit for the new atmosphere is the autocratic president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who assumed a constitutionally suspect second term in office in June. The inauguration was attended by some of Bukele’s biggest admirers, including Donald Trump Jr. and former Fox TV host Tucker Carlson.

Bukele has built a well-financed PR machine that touts his administration’s ability to reduce the homicide rate in El Salvador to a fraction of its past numbers.

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In crafting a carefully orchestrated public persona, he has also trampled on human rights and worked to dismantle democracy, critics say.

Outside analysts question the statistics that Bukele frequently cites. But such doubts have not stopped politicians from across the Americas from voicing admiration for Bukele, a 43-year-old ad man with almost no political experience.

Bukele and government officials declined to comment for this story. He has dismissed accusations of corruption, abuse and rights violations as the propaganda of his enemies.

He began to dabble in electoral politics when he ran successfully for mayor of San Salvador in 2015, allied at first with the leftist ideas of the former guerrillas who fought in the country’s civil war, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, and then abruptly shifting to the right and hitching his wagon to conservative so-called family values — adamantly opposing LGBTQ rights, women’s equality and abortion.

Bukele has said he wants to be the “world’s coolest dictator.”

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A couple stands in front of a political mural depicting President Nayib Bukele.

A couple stands in front of a political mural depicting President Nayib Bukele with a message that reads in Spanish, “I order they sell 3 pupusas for a dollar,” part of a government crackdown to lower food prices, in San Salvador, El Salvador.

(Salvador Melendez/AP)

Assuming crime has been reduced by as much as the government claims, the question is how. For the last two and a half years, Bukele has been ruling under a “state of exception,” essentially an emergency decree that suspends many constitutional and civil rights and allows massive, arbitrary detentions without due process, among other harsh measures.

Dragnets have swept up tens of thousands of people, more than 1% of the national population, shoving them into overcrowded prisons.

Many are gang members, but many are not, human rights activists say, and authorities have been slow to make the distinction. Several thousand of those in prison are children. They are exposed to dire conditions and torture, and several hundred have died, according to human rights organizations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

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Bukele’s government denies torture is commonplace, and says most of the deaths have been from natural causes.

After winning election to the presidency in 2019, Bukele followed a familiar playbook used by strongmen around the world — stacking the judiciary with loyalists and using a legislative majority to rewrite the rules of governance and consolidate his power. That led to his bid for reelection this year, in violation of the Salvadoran constitution but with an exception authored by his congressional and judicial acolytes. He had virtually no opposition in the race.

It is true that he won both presidential elections by good margins, and Bukele often cites polls that give him an extraordinarily high approval rating. Yet experts say some of the opinion surveys that Bukele has used to demonstrate his popularity do not meet the rigorous standards of international polling, while critics say Bukele has managed to silence much opposition.

Salvadoran soldiers take part in an independence day celebration led by President Nayib Bukele in Ciudad Arce, El Salvador.

Salvadoran soldiers take part in an independence day celebration led by President Nayib Bukele in Ciudad Arce, El Salvador,on Sept. 15.

(Salvador Melendez/Associated Press)

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My experience in El Salvador was always that people were generally chatty, politically engaged and willing to share their thoughts. On this trip, however, I found people, including sources I’ve known for decades, more cautious than at any time since the civil war that ended in 1992. Few wanted to discuss politics or criticize Bukele on the phone unless it was an encrypted line.

Under Bukele, El Salvador’s vibrant world of journalism has also suffered.

The website El Faro, generally regarded as one of the best news organizations in Latin America, has been so rigorously hounded by government officials that most of its reporters have had to flee the country.

Its reporting has exposed Bukele’s alleged secret deals with gangsters and drug traffickers, among other corruption scandals.

Bukele has sought to rewrite some aspects of El Salvador’s storied history — which includes being a complex political staging ground that birthed an important revolution, hosting U.S.-backed death squads and yielding Central America’s only native-born Roman Catholic saint. The new El Salvador, in his view, is a paradise for tourism and business and is also the region’s champion of bitcoin and a crypto-currency economy.

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He canceled the annual ceremony marking the signing of the peace accords that ended the civil war, dismissing the importance of a historic document that stopped fighting between guerrillas and a right-wing U.S.-backed government that claimed more than 75,000 lives. It also set up a landmark “Truth Commission” that attempted to hold to account those who committed widespread abuses and atrocities.

Initially, the Biden administration was highly critical of Bukele’s tactics, even questioning the validity of his reelection. U.S. officials were appalled at what they saw as egregious backsliding on democracy in a country that still received nearly half a billion dollars in aid. They slapped sanctions on a number of Salvadorans.

Supporters wait for El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele outside the National Theater in San Salvador, El Salvador.

Supporters wait for El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele outside the National Theater, where he received the credential from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal certifying his reelection in San Salvador, El Salvador.

(Salvador Melendez/AP)

Within the last year or so, however, Biden administration officials have softened their attitude toward Bukele, crediting his reduction of violence with a parallel reduction in the flow of Salvadoran migrants entering the U.S. illegally. This comes as illegal immigration becomes a volatile electoral issue.

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“We have to work with who’s there,” a senior administration official said in acknowledging partnership with a sanctioned government.

Noah Bullock, executive director of Cristosal, a leading human rights organization based in San Salvador, says Bukele has created a nearly totalitarian regime with a patina of democratic trappings that he can point to in his defense. A handful of activists and journalists are allowed to function, he said.

“But any real threat to the political regime that journalism or civil society groups like us could pose is neutralized,” Bullock said. “The entire population is absolutely frightened to do anything.”

Antonio Avelar, 73, who sells watches and repairs eyeglasses in downtown San Salvador, calls the situation “bittersweet. We no longer have the dangers of the gangs, but we also have no freedom. Here, now, you cannot have an opinion, unless and only if it’s opinions favorable” to Bukele.

He worries his shop will soon be displaced by another big change under Bukele: investment from China.

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In El Salvador, as in other parts of Latin America, Beijing has made deep inroads with infrastructure and other projects under what the U.S. claims are unfavorable terms that often end up costing the country more than it gained.

Avelar is among hundreds of vendors who fear they will soon be evicted from the city’s historic center, where they have worked for years, to make room for more Chinese development, including a massive library.

“Where I live, we used to have the MS-13 gang on one side, the 18 gang on the other, and they were always fighting each other for territory — it was very violent and agonizing,” said Elizabeth Lopez, 62, who sells food near downtown. “We don’t have that anymore, but we also can’t say anything bad about the reality of the economic situation. If you do, they’ll accuse you of being a gangster and put you in prison.”

A special correspondent in San Salvador contributed to this report.

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Omar’s disclosures erased millions, leaving her with potential negative net worth. She won’t explain why.

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Omar’s disclosures erased millions, leaving her with potential negative net worth. She won’t explain why.

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Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., refused to address her revised financial disclosures that could imply she has a negative net worth after the progressive lawmaker dramatically reducing the reported value of assets tied to her husband’s business ventures.

“Can you tell us if your husband still has the consulting business and the wine business?” Fox News Digital asked Omar.

The congresswoman stayed silent as she was repeatedly questioned, after previously telling Fox News Digital that the original filing — showing Omar’s reported assets reducing by as much as $29.9 million — was inaccurate and “incomplete” information.

ILHAN OMAR’S OFFICE SAYS SHE’S ‘NOT A MILLIONAIRE’ AFTER $30M FILING REVISED DOWN TO UNDER $100K: REPORT

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US Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, speaks during a press conference with family members of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh as members of Congress call for US investigations into Israel’s actions and reintroduce the Justice for Shireen Act, outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, May 18, 2023. The Al Jazeera journalist, who was a dual US citizen, was killed on May 11, 2022. The Israeli army later admitted one of its soldiers likely shot the reporter. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

The controversy surrounding Omar’s finances began when a 2024 financial report estimated that Omar and her husband possessed between $6 million and $30 million in assets, all while the Minnesota fraud scandal within the Somali community was beginning to come to fruition.

A more recent 2025 financial disclosure report shows Omar’s revised value of shared assets between her and husband to sit at a maximum of $125,000 — a multi-million-dollar drop from the year prior. The lower estimate of their assets, $20,000, compared to the low and high debt estimates, $30,000 and $100,000, would imply the Minnesota Democrat could have a negative net worth.

Both her and her husband have separate debts, each ranging somewhere between $15,000 and $50,000 — from her own student loans and her husband’s credit card debt, according to the disclosures.

WATCH: OMAR SILENT WHEN CONFRONTED ON ALLEGED TIES TO MASSIVE MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL

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RICHFIELD, MN – AUGUST 08: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) (C) campaigns with her husband Tim Mynett (R) at the Richfield Farmers Market on August 8, 2020 in Richfield, Minnesota. Omar is hoping to retain her seat as the representative for Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in next week’s primary election. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

The biggest change in the documents involved Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett. His reported ownership interests in both his winery and venture capital advisory firm, which were previously valued in the millions of dollars, are listed with no value now.

In Omar’s 2024 financial disclosure records, Mynett’s share in his winery was valued between $1 million and $5 million, and his share at the venture capital advisory firm was valued between $5 million and $25 million. Now, his equity interests are both listed at $0.

Omar’s office previously told Fox News Digital that Mynett has partners in both businesses and said the earlier disclosure mistakenly reflected the businesses’ total equity rather than his ownership interest. The office also said the original filing listed assets without accounting for liabilities.

VANCE REFERS TIM WALZ, MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL TO DOJ FOR CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION OVER STATE’S ALLEGED FRAUD

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House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has publicly voiced his interest in the Ethics Committee opening an investigation into Omar’s personal finances after the 2025 financial reports came out showing the possibility of a $29 million drop in her net worth.

Vice President JD Vance also has previously said the U.S. Department of Justice will be opening a probe into her alleged fraud as part of the administration’s anti-fraud taskforce that he spearheads, though no formal investigations have been shared with the public at this time.

Omar has been reluctant to answer Fox News Digital’s questions about her financial fallout and potential probes to be opened against her.

The Minnesota lawmaker similarly dodged answering any of Fox News Digital’s questions just last month about the revised disclosures.

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“There’s also the possibility that it might rain on this sunny day,” Omar replied without responding directly to the content of the question.

Fox News Digital’s Robert Schmad contributed to this report.

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Column: Trump decries ‘communism’ while his government takes ownership of companies

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Column: Trump decries ‘communism’ while his government takes ownership of companies

As a student years ago, I dove deep into the history of the Red-hunting McCarthy era and became familiar with the actor who emerged second only to Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy as the villain of that insidious time: his shameless, conniving young lawyer, Roy Cohn. Never would I have imagined that a future president would count Cohn as a mentor and role model.

Then came Donald Trump.

Now, in Cohn-inflected McCarthyesque style, President Trump is channeling his tutor yet again, baselessly labeling his political enemies — all Democrats — as communists as he looks ahead to the fall’s midterm elections. Once more Trump shows that his catchphrase “Make America great again” means regressing, this time to Trump’s formative 1950s and the McCarthy era that sadly helped define it.

In recent speeches, including on the Fourth of July, Trump’s utterances of “communist” or “communism” reached double digits each time. (As that implies, the president didn’t set aside his divisive rhetoric even for the nation’s 250th birthday.)

“Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America,” Trump said late on the Fourth on the National Mall.

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Trump couples his commie-baiting with a dash of his trademark xenophobia. “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including by newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success,” he said at Mount Rushmore a day earlier. (He’s got it backward, of course: Immigrants come here for the American way of life and promise of success.)

Here’s the irony: Trump’s actions in his second term make him look more like the commie. He’s projecting again.

Now that Trump is exploiting a few victories lately by left-wing democratic socialists in Democratic primaries to paint the entire party as communists, it’s time to review the record — his record.

A hallmark of communism is government ownership of companies and control of the economy, at the expense of private property and free markets. In just over a year, Trump has used billions of taxpayers’ dollars to buy shares for the government in a growing list of private companies — U.S. Steel, Intel, Westinghouse and more — citing national security. The companies don’t always welcome their new stakeholder; at a minimum, they rightly fear it for the demands the government could make about prices and production.

“It’s what Putin did,” the estranged Republicans at the Lincoln Project posted online Monday. “Trump is the closest we’ve ever come to communism.”

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“What began as a populist revolt against so-called elites has become a program of state ownership, price fixing and top-down industrial control,” free-market economist Veronique de Rugy wrote in The Times last October of Trump’s actions. “The power to ‘partner’ with business is the power to control it.”

Comrade Trump’s first big government grab, and a model for those to come, was in June last year, when he wrested a permanent “golden share” in U.S. Steel in return for approving its sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel. The company’s charter was revised to give the U.S. president extraordinary veto power over nearly a dozen corporate activities, including closing or relocating plants, supply-chain decisions, even pricing.

“We have a golden share, which I control,” Trump told reporters at the time, in words I never thought I’d hear from a president of the party once associated with free markets.

Just last week, Trump boasted to CNBC how he’d extracted a 10% stake in beleaguered chip giant Intel last August, after first demanding that its chief executive resign. “Intel came in. They had a problem. I said, ‘I can solve your problem, but I want 10% of the company.’ … Somebody said that’s not very American. I said, ‘No, I think it is very American, actually.’ And I’ve done that with other deals.”

And so he has.

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The Pentagon is now the largest stockholder in struggling MP Materials, a large rare-earth mine in California, and guarantees a 10-year price floor for its output that stunned competitors. The administration has since taken shares in other rare-earth companies. The Commerce Department took an option for an 8% stake in Westinghouse, to spur construction of nuclear reactors, and has the right to 20% if the government decides the company should go public. The government takes a 15% cut of Nvidia’s and Advanced Micro Devices’ AI chip sales to China.

As much as anything he does, Trump’s direct intervention in private enterprise invites the question “What if Biden/Harris/Obama did that?” The answer, of course: Trump and Republicans would cry “Communist!”

Trump’s actions are the sort Americans generally have only seen during economic emergencies or major wars, and then rarely. I covered the frenzied and ultimately successful response to the near-collapse of the global financial system and the U.S. auto, insurance and housing industries. Behind the scenes in the Obama White House (and George W. Bush’s at the outset) was constant, angst-filled debate about any actions smacking of government takeovers and a determination that interventions be temporary, unlike Trump’s schemes. (For all the still-lingering unpopularity of the banking bailout, the Treasury — the taxpayers — got all the money back and then some, and exited the business.)

Trump’s economic big-footing isn’t the only way in which he resembles the commies Americans know best, and whom he so admires: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jung Un. There are also the images of himself everywhere, monuments planned, drearily long and self-adulating speeches and interference in the nation’s cultural, educational and legal spheres and — worst of all — in elections.

At Rushmore, Trump closed with a demand that Congress pass his so-called SAVE America Act to restrict voting. “We do that and we’re not going to lose an election for 100 years,” he said, speaking of course about Republicans.

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One-party rule through central government election finagling? Now that’s a communist.

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Who is Valli Geiger? Meet the Maine Dem that Platner urged to run for Senate

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Who is Valli Geiger? Meet the Maine Dem that Platner urged to run for Senate

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Maine state Rep. Valli Geiger, a Rockland Democrat, former nurse and former mayor, is drawing sudden national attention after saying now-former Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner encouraged her to consider taking his place on the ballot in the Maine Senate race.

While Geiger has not been named the replacement nominee, her name entered the Maine Senate scramble after she told local outlet WMTW that Platner called her Monday night, praised her as a “fighter” and asked whether he could put her name forward. Platner’s campaign told the outlet he had not made an endorsement decision but confirmed he encouraged Geiger to consider running if he stepped aside.

After Geiger said Platner called her about potentially putting her name forward, Geiger posted Tuesday she would not “throw Graham under the bus,” while also saying she would not “slander or accuse” Jenny Racicot, the woman who accused Platner of rape, “of anything more than telling the truth as she experienced it.” 

By Wednesday, local outlets were reporting that Geiger said Platner had encouraged her to consider running if he withdrew. Platner, who suspended his campaign Wednesday night, has denied the claim.

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WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IF PLATNER DROPS OUT? HERE’S WHO COULD REPLACE HIM ON THE BALLOT AND HOW IT COULD WORK

Graham Platner Maine State Rep. Valli Geiger  (Maine State Legislature/Getty Images)

“For the movement to continue, it can’t be me. For that reason, we are suspending campaign operations,” Platner said in a video posted to social media.

Geiger is a third-term Democratic state representative from Rockland, according to her legislative biography, representing a coastal House district in Maine that includes Rockland, Criehaven Township, Matinicus Isle Plantation, the Muscle Ridge Islands, North Haven and part of Owls Head. Her biography says she serves on the Labor Committee and the Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee.

Before entering the state legislature, Geiger served six years on the Rockland City Council, including one year as mayor and four years on the Rockland Comprehensive Planning Commission, three of them as chair. 

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Her biography says she holds a master’s degree in sustainable design and built her own passive-solar, net-zero-energy house. It also describes her as a former nurse at Pen Bay Medical Center who later worked as a health policy analyst and health administrator, including as director of the Healthreach Hospice program and clinical director for Federally Qualified Health Centers around Maine.

The Maine State Capitol May 18, 2026, in Augusta, Maine. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

PLATNER CAMPAIGN PUTTING ‘THUMB ON SCALE’ TO INFLUENCE POSSIBLE REPLACEMENT, MAINE DEM ALLEGES

Geiger’s connection to Platner predates the latest replacement speculation. Local reporting has described her as a close Platner supporter, and WMTW reported she previously stood with him and credited him with helping secure funding for rape kit tracking in Maine.

In her Facebook post responding to Racicot’s allegation, Geiger wrote that Racicot’s story “seems credible” but added that “none of us knows the truth nor will we ever.” She also described Platner as “a man becoming a better man” and said she had hoped he would lead the political movement his campaign had built and will not “throw Graham under the bus.”

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In the post, Geiger also praised Platner’s “passion for economic populism” and said she had granted him “an enormous amount of grace” for his behavior during what she described as his “dark years” after multiple deployments.

Dr. Nirav D. Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks during a news conference about COVID-19 at Maine Emergency Management Agency in Augusta. (Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)

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The Maine state representative is not the only Democrat whose name has surfaced as Maine Democrats prepare for the possibility that Platner exits the race against Republican Sen. Susan Collins. 

Several Democrats have expressed interest or are considering bids, including former gubernatorial candidate Troy Jackson, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former Maine CDC Director Nirav Shah.

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Under Maine law, the Maine Democratic Party can replace him on the general election ballot by selecting a new nominee through its party process, with the replacement required to be chosen by July 27.

Fox News Digital’s Andrew Mark Miller and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.

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