Tag: colombia

Trump Admin Shuts Down Mamdani’s Attempt to Meet with Foreign Leader

President Donald Trump’s administration has thwarted a planned meeting between two prominent democratic socialists.

According to The Washington Post, U.S. diplomats in the Colombian capital of Bogotá told Colombian officials that a planned meeting between Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City and leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro in New York this week would violate U.S.-imposed visa restrictions against Petro.

Colombian officials took that to mean that the U.S. might arrest Petro if he went ahead with the Mamdani meeting.

Petro’s visa restrictions stem from comments he made outside United Nations headquarters in September 2025.

“I ask all the soldiers of the army of the U.S. not to point their rifles at humanity,” the Colombian president said to a group of pro-Palestinian supporters. “Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity.”

“A visa is a privilege, not a right,” a State Department official told the Post. “Any individual’s U.S. visa is at risk of revocation if they visit America and outrageously implore U.S. soldiers to disobey orders of the duly elected president of the United States.”

Petro has also accused Trump of being “complicit in genocide” for supporting Israel’s war in Gaza. Trump, meanwhile, called the democratic socialist a “lunatic who’s got a lot of problems, mental problems.”

The two presidents did have what Trump characterized as a “terrific” meeting in February.

Since then, however, Petro has reportedly irritated Secretary of State Marco Rubio by criticizing U.S. boat strikes in Latin America and the capture earlier this year of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

According to The New York Times, the Colombian president’s criticisms of the boat strikes in particular prompted sanctions from the U.S. Treasury. Federal prosecutors also launched an investigation into possible drug-trafficking ties.

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Sen. Bernie Moreno: ‘We Can Learn’ from Colombia Election System with Voter ID, No Mail-In Vote

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) applauded the Colombian electoral integrity system following a trip to the country as an observer in Sunday’s presidential election, describing it as “world-class” and a model to learn from for the United States.

Sen. Moreno made the remarks during a call with the media on Tuesday in which he detailed his experiences in the country as an election observer and responded to claims by outgoing President Gustavo Petro, a Marxist who regularly boasts of his membership in a terrorist guerrilla, that the election was fraudulent. Sen. Moreno gave Colombian authorities an “A+” for their handling of the election and dismissed Petro’s refusal to accept the results of the election, noting that Petro’s hand-picked successor, Sen. Iván Cepeda, had publicly come out in defense of the election results.

The Colombian-American senator described an intricate security system in which Colombians are allowed to vote only with a federally issued identification card, ballots are filled out and tallied on paper, and no mail-in voting is allowed. Even abroad, Colombian citizens must visit a consulate in person to vote. Sen. Moreno suggested that America could significantly improve its own election integrity by taking even a small number of these measures, such as requiring identification to vote. Congress is currently debating a bill that would change voting requirements to align more with those of Colombia, the SAVE America Act, which Democrats are loudly decrying as discriminatory and equating to Jim Crow-era bigotry.

Colombia held its first round of presidential voting on Sunday when all 14 candidates were on the ballot. As no candidate obtained 50 percent or more of the vote, the race will go to a second “runoff” election featuring the top two candidates in the first round. Outsider conservative candidate Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round with 43.74 percent of the vote, while Sen. Iván Cepeda obtained 40.90 percent, enough to enter the runoff. The establishment conservative candidate, Sen. Paloma Valencia, came in third place and immediately pledged support to de la Espriella.

“The elections in Colombia were done, actually, extraordinarily well,” Sen. Moreno explained on Tuesday. “The process that they have for elections — I think there are some things that we can learn here in the U.S. They require 100-percent proof of citizenship in order to get a national ID that’s required to obtain before you can vote.”

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Colombia to the Right? Anti-Crime Outsider Crushes Election Expectations.

Up until 2022, Colombia had never had a left-wing president, at least not in modern history. But, for some reason, it tried to experiment with one between 2022 and 2026. Not only did they vote in a leftist, but they voted in a corrupt socialist clown. Four years of Gustavo Petro was, apparently, enough. 

As I wrote on Friday, the Colombian presidential elections were held on Sunday, May 31, and it was down to three candidates:  

On the left, you have Petro’s hand-picked candidate, senator, and human rights activist Iván Cepeda. He’ll be more of the same: heavy spending on social programs and pointless peace talks with gangs and guerrillas that go nowhere, instead of actually cracking down on crime. He’s leading in the polls right now, anywhere from 35 to 42%, depending on which poll you believe. 

But don’t panic. One reason why he’s leading in the polls is that the right is split between Abelardo de la Espriella, aka “El Tigre,” and Paloma Valencia. El Tigre is the outsider, a bombastic lawyer who has a little Trump and a little Nayib Bukele in him. He’s promising mega-prisons to deal with the criminal groups that plague the country and a crackdown on drugs and crime. And he’s gaining a lot of enthusiasm right now. Most of the emails I receive from Colombians want him to win. 

Valencia, a center-right senator, is more of an establishment conservative. She’s a big Petro critic and campaigns on stabilizing the country’s economy and restoring security. 

Valencia actually won the nomination as the right-wing candidate in the country’s primaries earlier this year. Cepeda was the left-wing winner. El Tigre (“The Tiger”) had to kind of do things on his own. And boy, did he. Even as I wrote about the election on Friday, he was not projected to perform as well as he did on Sunday. 

I should have know better — I’ve receive so many emails from Colombians over the last few months telling me that he was their guy.  

Going into, it looked like Cepeda would receive the most votes, and that the rest would be split between de la Espriella and Valencia, but de la Espriella actually came out on top with about a 3%-ish lead. 

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Countries Plan “Fossil Fuel” Phaseout at Colombia Conference

Nearly 60 countries met in Santa Marta, Colombia, on April 24-29 to participate in the first Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, where they agreed to take steps to phase out so-called fossil fuels.

The conference, organized by Colombia and the Netherlands, was intended to facilitate a hastened phaseout of fossil fuels by countries already committed to implementing a radical climate agenda. A second conference is planned for next year in Tuvalu.

The Guardian reports:

Governments have been asked to develop national “roadmaps” setting out how they will end the production and use of fossil fuels, after a landmark climate meeting involving nearly 60 countries.

The voluntary plans will form the bedrock of a new initiative to wean the world off coal, oil and gas, the focus of two days of intensive talks in Colombia this week….

Colombia published a draft roadmap during the conference and set up a scientific panel to advise countries. On Tuesday, France became the first developed country to release a national roadmap to phase out fossil fuels….

While countries already publish climate plans under the Paris agreement, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), [Colombian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development Irene Vélez Torres] said these were not sufficient to serve as roadmaps because they addressed only countries’ domestic greenhouse gas emissions, allowing fossil fuel producers to sidestep the climate impact of their exports.

The Gulf states and countries such as China, Russia, and India did not attend, while the United States was not invited. A list of participating countries, which includes Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, can be found here. The European Union also participated.

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Colombian Lawmakers Approve Bill To Legalize Marijuana

Lawmakers in Colombia have advanced a bill to legalize marijuana through its first step in the legislative process.

The First Committee of the House of Representatives approved the measure from Rep. Alejandro Ocampo on Tuesday, sending it to the full chamber for consideration. If approved there, the legislation would then go to the Senate for two additional votes.

“We just approved the regulation of cannabis in the first debate. It’s time to regulate. We’re going to regulate everything from seed to finished product,” Ocampo said in a social media post. “We’re going to keep marijuana off the streets so that it can only be sold in places where you have to show your ID, have a permit, and have a license.”

The bill will “help homeless people, help farmers and indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities who have lived with this plant for many years,” he said.

Colombian lawmakers have considered cannabis legalization legislation over multiple recent sessions, with one such proposal to insert the reform into the nation’s constitution falling short at the final stage of the process in 2023.

A separate bill to legalize marijuana advanced through the first stage of the process last year, but then stalled.

President Gustavo Petro, for his part, is supportive of legalizing cannabis—and he’s put pressure on legislators to advance the reform. He said in late 2023 that lawmakers who voted to shelve a legalization bill that year only helped to perpetuate illegal drug trafficking and the violence associated with the unregulated trade.

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New York Jewish man found dismembered, stuffed in closet after being killed by Colombian gang

A Hasidic dad from Brooklyn who mysteriously disappeared in Colombia was found dismembered inside a bloodstained wardrobe — after traveling to the South American nation to meet a potential wife, his friends say.

Nachum Israel Eber’s mutilated remains were discovered inside the abandoned closet after it was dumped on a street in Bogota on Sunday — just days after his family reported him missing, local media reported.

The 51-year-old divorced father, a member of the Belz Hasidic community in Borough Park, was looking for a love connection, a pal told The Post.

“It’s a terrible tragedy,” friend Motti Dresdner said. “A person, a gentleman in his prime. He was always talking about his future, how he was going to get remarried and find a perfect bride and have a beautiful life. And to be cut off like this is very sad,” he said. 

He was originally mistaken for a rabbi by Colombian police and media, but his pal said he’s a property developer and plumber.

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Political Theatre – Solve Energy Crisis by Eliminating Fossil Fuels

Over 50 nations are gathering in Colombia to map out a future without oil, gas, and coal, all while the world is in the middle of an energy crisis driven by war, supply disruptions, and rising demand that cannot even be met today. The same governments pretending they can eliminate fossil fuels are quietly scrambling behind the curtain to secure more of them just to keep the lights on.

This is what happens when policy is driven by ideology instead of reality. I have warned repeatedly that there is no viable alternative capable of replacing fossil fuels at scale. This is not an opinion. It is a simple matter of physics and infrastructure. Wind and solar cannot provide baseload power. They are intermittent, unreliable, and require storage systems that do not exist at the level needed to sustain a modern industrial economy. Yet politicians stand up and pretend we can simply flip a switch and transition the entire world economy to renewables as if energy were some optional luxury.

What makes this entire agenda even more dangerous is that they are no longer speaking in vague terms, they are openly stating the objective. Ursula von der Leyen declared that “the global fossil fuel crisis must be a game-changer… let’s earn the clean ticket to heaven,” which is not economic policy, it is ideological rhetoric detached from reality. John Kerry has pushed that leaders must accelerate the “transition away from fossil fuels” or face catastrophe, while Ed Miliband continues to insist Net Zero is essential to eliminate dependence on traditional energy altogether. Then you have Ro Khanna advocating ending fossil fuel subsidies and halting new permits, which in practical terms means cutting supply before any viable replacement exists.

Yet even within their own ranks the cracks are showing. Tony Blair bluntly admitted that any strategy centered on phasing out fossil fuels in the near term is “doomed to fail.” They are publicly advancing an agenda that even insiders know cannot function in the real world.

What they refuse to admit is that every single modern economy depends on fossil fuels at its core. Transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, heating, electricity, all of it. You cannot remove that foundation without collapsing the structure built on top of it. Even now, as they hold conferences and make declarations, countries are reverting to coal because when crisis strikes, theory disappears and survival takes over. That is the reality they will never say out loud.

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HIGHWAY BOMB MASSACRE: Terrorist Attack by FARCS Guerilla Group Kills at Least 19 People in Colombia Ahead of Next Month’s Elections

Deadly cartels show their hand to weak-on-crime Gustavo Petro.

As we approach the May elections in Colombia, the pressure from FARC narcoterrorists is being felt with a highway massacre.

A reported bomb attack on a highway in southwestern Colombia has killed at least 19 people, with the authorities blaming a drug lord for the attack.

The massive explosion took place on the Pan-American Highway in the Cauca province.

Deutsche Welle reported:

“At least 38 people — including five children — were injured in the attack on Saturday, which comes a month before the country’s presidential election.

[…] According to local media reports, an explosive cylinder fell onto a minibus and detonated.”

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Democrat Senator and Swalwell BFF Ruben Gallego Partied All Night in Colombia Club Despite Credible Threat to His Life

Democrat Senator Ruben Gallego partied all night at a Bogotá, Colombia club despite a credible threat to his life.

Gallego is currently under review after GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna alerted Senate Majority Leader John Thune to his potential sexual misconduct after Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress.

Gallego and Swalwell were very close friends; however, the Democrat Senator distanced himself from Swalwell amid allegations of sexual assault.

Last Tuesday, after a fifth Swalwell accuser came forward at a press conference in Beverly Hills and accused the California Democrat of violently raping her at a West Hollywood hotel in 2018, Gallego threw Swalwell under the bus.

“Eric Swalwell lied to all of us. He lies to the most powerful people in this country. And they trusted him,” Gallego told reporters last week.

A reporter asked Gallego if he was in the hotel room and sitting next to Swalwell on the bed in the leaked video.

Martin Shkreli and Jack Posobiec released videos of Swalwell sitting on a bed with a sex worker. A man who resembles Gallego is briefly seen sitting on the bed.

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New audio recordings put Petro’s government on the spot over alleged efforts to shield drug traffickers wanted in the United States

The audios that have shaken Colombia in recent hours are no minor episode. Far from it, they are not just another anecdote in the long list of controversies surrounding President Gustavo Petro.

What is at stake, according to security and justice experts, is the possibility that members close to the government may have discussed or hinted at alleged efforts to favor drug traffickers wanted by U.S. authorities.

This issue alone would be enough to spark a political storm, but it takes on another dimension as it surfaces just before diplomatic meetings and at a time of particular sensitivity for Bogotá and Washington.

The audios were released by sources that so far have kept the exact origin of the material confidential.

They feature several voices talking about contacts and potential maneuvers involving drug lords facing ongoing proceedings in the United States. Although President Petro is not heard in the recordings, opposition sectors interpret the content as a sign that someone within the government could be willing to provide some form of unofficial protection or negotiation.

The president’s response was swift. Petro called the recordings “smear tactics” and asserted that he has never had contact with drug traffickers nor ordered any irregular intervention in favor of criminal organizations.

He did admit, however, that he was alerted to the existence of the audios before meeting with President Donald Trump, which heightened suspicions in diplomatic circles and raised concerns about whether the Casa de Nariño fears that these leaks could damage its relationship with Washington.

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