Iris Xiomara Castro Sarmiento

Force in Play

Leaves office January 27, 2026

Two days before Honduras voted, Trump pardoned the country's former president from a 45-year drug trafficking sentence, endorsed his party's candidate, and threatened to cut all U.S. aid if the opposition won. The candidate Trump backed won by 0.74 percent—after a three-week count marred by system crashes, midnight data flips, and fraud allegations. Honduras pivots back toward Washington after two years courting Beijing, but the Congress president is refusing to validate the results, calling them an "electoral coup."

Updated May 16