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World
In Boost to 'Dictator' Bukele, El Salvador Abolishes Presidential Term Limits
"But you won't see Marco Rubio or Donald Trump calling him a dictator, as they do with Maduro," one critic said of the Salvadoran president.
Aug 01, 2025
El Salvador's Legislative Assembly—which is controlled by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's New Ideas party—on Thursday approved a series of constitutional reforms, including abolition of presidential term limits, that critics warned pose a grave threat to the Central American nation's fragile democracy.
As El Faro reported, lawmakers approved measures allowing for indefinite presidential terms, expanding the current five-year presidential terms to six years, eliminating the second round of presidential elections, and advancing the end of Bukele's term from 2029 to 2027 in order to synchronize presidential, legislative, and municipal elections.
New Ideas Congresswoman Ana Figueroa, who proposed the reforms, argues that if other elected offices in El Salvador do not have term limits, why should the presidency?
"This is quite simple, Salvadoran people. Only you will be able to decide how long you support your president," Figueroa said Thursday.
Congressional Vice President Suecy Callejas, also of New Ideas, contended that "power has returned to the only place to which it truly belongs... to the Salvadoran people."
However, opposition lawmakers, journalists, human rights defenders, and others condemned the measures, which come amid an ongoing "state of emergency" that, while dramatically reducing crime in what was once the world's murder capital, has seen widespread repression of human and civil rights.
"Democracy has died in El Salvador today," said Congresswoman Marcela Villatoro of the opposition ARENA party, who argued that the reforms were "approved without consultation, in a gross and cynical way."
Thiago Süssekind, a Brazilian scholar and professor at the University of Oxford in England, called the reforms' passage "the moment when El Salvador buried its democracy."
"Nayib Bukele—the darling dictator of the Latin right—can now govern forever," Süssekind added. "The discourse, paradoxically, is about democracy—deliberately conflating it with the will of the majority."
Chilean pollster Marta Lagos argued on social media that El Salvador is being transformed into "an electoral dictatorship" that "excludes an essential element of democracy: respect for minorities, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and civic and political freedoms."
Lagos noted "the detention of thousands of people without due process," an apparent reference to prisons including the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, where the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump—an erstwhile critic-turned-ally of Bukele—is sending deported migrants, including innocent people, to face abusive and sometimes deadly imprisonment.
Juanita Goebertus, director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), argued that New Ideas is "following the same path as Venezuela."
HRW and other human rights groups accuse the United Socialist Party government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of grave human rights and electoral abuses, and many leftists in Venezuela and beyond feel the Bolivarian Revolution launched under former President Hugo Chávez has been betrayed.
"It starts with a leader who uses their popularity to concentrate power, and ends in dictatorship," Goebertus warned.
Like Trump, Bukele has shrugged off—and at times even embraced—the "dictator" label. He once called himself the "coolest dictator in the world."
Trump—who has himself flirted with the concept of being president for life, or at least for a third term—has remained silent about Bukele's democratic backsliding, even as his administration imposes staggering tariffs on Brazil and punitive sanctions on a leading member of its judiciary for defending democracy.
Plaudits for Bukele, Magnitsky sanctions for de Moraes. The Rubio way.
[image or embed]
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) July 30, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Such actions, along with the Trump administration's record of targeting certain authoritarian governments while courting and coddling others, drew stinging rebuke by social media users in El Salvador and beyond.
Comments from Latin American X users included:
- "Spending 20 years calling Hugo Chávez a dictator over the issue of indefinite reelection only to end up applauding Bukele for doing the same and calling him a democrat. They're so adorable!!!" -@ArondonFT
- "They criticize Venezuela and Cuba, but support the dictator Bukele? Hypocrisy disguised as democracy." -@zandrusky
- "To me, 'indefinite presidential reelection' sounds like a dictatorship, but since it's Bukele and not Maduro, I guess it's no big deal and just my imagination." -@BenderOfuscando
- "Bukele perpetuates himself in power, but the right will not call him a dictator as it does with Maduro. And El Salvador will not receive sanctions from the U.S., as Venezuela does. The right and the U.S. do not care that Bukele is a dictator, as long as he is one of theirs." -@andres20ad
Thursday's reforms—which must still be ratified by lawmakers—mark the second major modification of presidential term limits in El Salvador. Although the country's constitution prohibits presidential reelection, New Ideas purged the constitutional court's judges and replaced them with ones loyal to Bukele. The court subsequently ruled Bukele was eligible to run again, and he won last year's election in a landslide.
Bukele wasn't always so keen on presidential reelection. In a 2013 interview, he said that "in El Salvador, a president cannot be reelected."
"This is to ensure that he... doesn't use his power to remain in power," Bukele added.
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'An Avoidable Disaster': Israeli Blockade of Gaza Could Starve Hundreds of Premature Babies
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that 580 premature infants are at risk of death due to "depleted" reserves of baby formula.
Jun 26, 2025
Israel's blockade of aid is starving hundreds of premature babies, according to new reports that cite Gaza health officials, doctors, and aid groups.
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that 580 premature infants are at risk of death, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, due to a shortage of medical-grade formula entering the strip.
Despite a recent policy change by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow "minimal aid" into the strip following a total blockade of food, water, shelter, and medication, it has proven far too little to keep hospitals running and keep people fed. It has proven especially deadly for children.
The AP report quotes Dr. Ahmed al-Farah, head of the pediatrics and obstetrics department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, one of the few functional medical facilities left in Gaza.
Last week, al-Farah warned that the hospital's stock of milk was "completely depleted," and that unless aid was delivered immediately, the babies would face "an avoidable disaster." The widely publicized call was answered with the shipment of 20 boxes of formula from the U.S. aid group Rahma Worldwide.
Al-Farah said this was enough to meet the needs of 10 babies for two weeks, but warned that in the long run it would be far too little, especially with no guarantee of aid in the future.
"This is not enough at all," he told the AP. "It solved the problem temporarily, but what we need is a permeant solution: Lift the siege."
Many other hospitals reported shortages of formula that had not been answered, such as Al-Rantisi Hospital in Gaza City, which was completely out of stock.
Fortified milk has become increasingly necessary in Gaza due to the increasing number of premature births. In May, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that as a result of widespread hunger, 1 in 5 children is now born pre-term or underweight. That malnutrition has also left many new mothers unable to breastfeed.
Dr. Asaad Nawajha, a pediatric specialist at Nasser Hospital, told Middle East Eye that the blockade has proven catastrophic for the health of both children and their mothers.
"This all goes back to the [harsh] conditions mothers endure amid this vicious war on the Gaza Strip," Nawajha said. "Due to the lack of nutritious items entering the Gaza Strip, both mothers and children have been exposed to illnesses resulting from malnutrition."
The Israeli government's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has insisted that the amount of aid allowed into Gaza is sufficient to provide for the population.
On June 22, COGAT announced that 430 aid trucks had been allowed to enter the strip during the preceding week. However, this is but a fraction of the more than 600 trucks per day that the United Nations is necessary to meet their needs.
Many people who have come to aid sites administered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), to obtain the meager supplies available, have been met with deadly violence from the Israeli military.
Since May 27, at least 549 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 injured by Israeli forces at these sites, according to the U.N. Office for Coordinated Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Gaza Ministry of Health. The Gaza Media Office reports at least 19 fatal incidents at these GHF sites over the span of just one month.
Many of the victims have been children. According to a study released Thursday by the humanitarian group Save the Children, children have been killed at 10 of those 19 incidents.
"No child should be killed searching for food," said Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children's regional director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. "This is not a humanitarian operation—it’s a death trap."
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WHO Declares Covid-19 Global Health Emergency Officially Over
The agency leader said that "it is time for countries to transition from emergency mode to managing Covid-19 alongside other infectious diseases."
May 05, 2023
The World Health Organization chief announced Friday that it is "with great hope that I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency."
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had declared the emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020, when there were fewer than 100 reported cases outside of China.
"In the three years since then, Covid-19 has turned our world upside down," Tedros noted Friday. "Almost 7 million deaths have been reported to WHO, but we know the toll is several times higher—at least 20 million."
"But Covid-19 has been so much more than a health crisis," he continued. "It has caused severe economic upheaval, erasing trillions from GDP, disrupting travel and trade, shuttering businesses, and plunging millions into poverty."
Stressing that the move does not mean the virus "is over as a global health threat," Tedros said that "it is time for countries to transition from emergency mode to managing Covid-19 alongside other infectious diseases."
The public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) "is a tool created within the International Health Regulations to help the WHO respond to disease events with the potential for global spread," STAT explained.
As the news outlet reported:
When a PHEIC is in place, the WHO director-general can make special recommendations, mainly aimed at discouraging countries from closing borders or restricting trade—actions that could deter countries from alerting the WHO if they are dealing with dangerous disease outbreaks.
Didier Houssin, the chair of the emergency committee, said the decision to recommend an end to the PHEIC was in part due to the belief that the tool was not adapted to disease events that are sub-acute or chronic. Houssin acknowledged that there remains a risk that a more pathogenic variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus may emerge, and that a new PHEIC might need to be declared.The WHO's declaration comes days before the U.S. public health emergency will expire, on May 11.
The Biden administration announced Monday that when the U.S. emergency ends next week, so will Covid-19 vaccine requirements for federal employees and contractors as well as international air travelers—and agencies will start the process to cancel such mandates for Head Start educators, employees of some healthcare facilities, and certain noncitizens at land borders.
"While vaccination remains one of the most important tools in advancing the health and safety of employees and promoting the efficiency of workplaces," the White House said, "we are now in a different phase of our response when these measures are no longer necessary."
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'Should We All Join Them?' NPR First Major News Outlet to Leave Twitter
"We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public's understanding of our editorial independence."
Apr 12, 2023
NPR on Wednesday announced plans to leave Twitter—the social media platform now owned by billionaire Elon Musk—after being branded last week with a "state-affiliated media" label that, after backlash, was replaced with "government-funded media."
"NPR's organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent," the media organization said in a statement.
"We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public's understanding of our editorial independence," the statement added. "We are turning away from Twitter but not from our audiences and communities. There are plenty of ways to stay connected and keep up with NPR's news, music, and cultural content."
After the platform's initial decision last week, NPR president and CEO John Lansing said that "we were disturbed to see... that Twitter has labeled NPR as 'state-affiliated media,' a description that, per Twitter's own guidelines, does not apply to NPR."
Others also criticized applying that specific label to NPR—including Liz Woolery, PEN America's digital policy leader, who called it "a dangerous move that could further undermine public confidence in reliable news sources."
\u201cIt won\u2019t be the last news org to do this. Interesting months ahead.\u201d— Richard Deitsch (@Richard Deitsch) 1681308253
In an email exchange, an NPR reporter informed Musk that—like other U.S. public media—only about 1% of NPR's budget comes from the government, while about 40% is from corporate sponsors and 31% is from local stations' programming fees.
Musk reportedly wrote to the journalist that "the operating principle at new Twitter is simply fair and equal treatment, so if we label non-U.S. accounts as [government], then we should do the same for U.S., but it sounds like that might not be accurate here."
Twitter then updated the label on NPR's main account—which has 8.8 million followers—to government-affiliated, a label that has also been applied to the BBC, which has disputed the platform's decision.
"The BBC operates through a Royal Charter agreed with the U.K. government, which states the corporation 'must be independent,'" the British outlet explained Wednesday. "Its public service output is funded by U.K. households via a TV license fee, as well as income from commercial operations."
In a wide-ranging Tuesday interview with the BBC, Musk said: "We want [the tag] as truthful and accurate as possible. We're adjusting the label to [the BBC being] publicly funded. We'll try to be accurate."
\u201cBefore we get too lost in the latest @NPR/@Twitter scuffle, it's worth noting that having more "publicly-funded media" is a proven positive for democratic nations.\n\nIf anything, the U.S. doesn't have enough. \n\nht @jbenton, @VWPickard & @Teejneff \n\nhttps://t.co/5r9VBAQCOf\u201d— Tim Karr (Hold This Space for Substack Notes) (@Tim Karr (Hold This Space for Substack Notes)) 1681314683
Since Musk finalized his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in October, when he was the world's richest man, "it has been quite a rollercoaster," Musk admitted to the BBC. "It's been really quite a stressful situation."
The billionaire has come under fire for various platform policy and business decisions, from suspending journalists reporting on the movements of his private jet to laying off Twitter staff. While there was an initial exodus of advertisers, Musk said Tuesday that "I think almost all advertisers have come back or said they are going to come back."
However, the battle over how or even whether to label publicly funded media and NPR's decision to become the first major media outlet to ditch Twitter have some users, such as the U.S.-based advocacy group Free Press, asking, "Should we all join them?"
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