War Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said the United States remains committed to helping defend Bolivia’s fragile government amid ongoing warnings of a coup d’état.

In a post on X, Hegseth said the War Department and the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (A3C), a recently established multinational military and political alliance, reject all attempts to overthrow the government of Rodrigo Paz Pereira a mere six months into his term.

«The United States is watching. Bolivia must not allow itself to fall prey to the old status quo of narco-terrorist dominance in the region,» Hegseth wrote. «We will continue to support our A3C partners like Bolivia to ensure that narco-terrorists are deterred from profiting on death and destruction in our hemisphere.»

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Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, has been rocked by weeks of social unrest as mass protests have blocked streets in major cities amid economic inflation and rising fuel prices.

Bolivian Defense Minister Marcelo Salinas resigned Tuesday.

Upon taking office, Paz supported a land reform bill to boost agribusiness that Indigenous farmers said put them at risk of eviction. He further scrapped fuel subsidies, sending prices surging by nearly 90%. Motorists complained that the gasoline was contaminated and ruined their cars.

The Trump administration has said drug traffickers are responsible for inciting the mass unrest.

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Police officers fired tear gas at community members who seized the Humberto Suarez oil facility during protests calling for President Rodrigo Paz’s resignation in Santa Rosa del Sara, Bolivia, on June 3, 2026. The protests have caused fuel and food shortages. (Ipa Ibanez/Reuters)

«Let there be no mistake: the United States stands squarely in support of Bolivia’s legitimate constitutional government,» Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote Wednesday on X. «We will not allow criminals and drug traffickers to overthrow democratically elected leaders in our hemisphere.»

«Let us not make any mistake about that; it is a coup financed by this perverse alliance between politics and organized crime across the region,» Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said Tuesday, stating that the protests were part of an ongoing «coup d’état.»

Bolivia’s President Rodrigo Paz delivers a speech in La Paz on June 3, 2026, after naming Ernesto Justiniano as defense minister following the resignation of Marcelo Salinas amid protests. (Claudia Morales/Reuters)

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Meanwhile, former President Evo Morales, the country’s first Indigenous president who ruled for an unprecedented 14 years, is calling for early elections. «Paz only has two paths left: a suicidal decision like militarization or … an election in the next 90 days,» he wrote on X.

For almost two years now, Morales has been hiding out in Bolivia’s central coca-growing Chapare region, evading an arrest warrant on human trafficking charges relating to allegedly having sex with a 15-year-old girl. He rejects the allegations as politically motivated.

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Democrats splintered over a resolution seeking to block the U.S. from assisting Israel’s war against Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist group, on Thursday. 

The measure, offered by progressive Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., would require President Donald Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from Lebanon. For months, Israel and Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group and Iranian proxy, have been at war in southern Lebanon, but the United States has not joined the conflict.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., rejected the measure. Critics argued the resolution could aid Hezbollah and potentially hamstring U.S. military operations in the country. 

Tlaib’s resolution failed 92-324, with more than half of House Democrats joining nearly all Republicans to vote it down.

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Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., an Israel critic, was the lone Republican to support Tlaib’s measure. Meanwhile, Reps. Derek Tran, D-Calif., and Betty McCollum, D-Minn., voted present.

House Democratic leaders said shortly before the vote they would oppose Tlaib’s resolution and work with the progressive lawmaker on a narrower measure exempting some U.S. military operations in the country. Their statement also denounced Hezbollah as a «violent terrorist organization» and a «sworn enemy of the United States.»

Tlaib, who has accused Israel of committing «ethnic cleansing» in Lebanon, did not mention Hezbollah in her resolution. She and other proponents of the measure also avoided discussing the Iranian proxy force during heated floor debate over the measure. 

Republicans highlighted the omission and accused the legislation’s supporters of serving as «proxies for Hezbollah.»

«Apparently they don’t want to see Israel killing Hezbollah, even though it’s Hezbollah that is killing Israeli children, Israeli adults, Israeli elders,» House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., said Wednesday, referring to his Democratic colleagues.

Tlaib asserted that her resolution would only affect U.S. forces actively engaged in hostilities. Republicans, however, disputed that claim and suggested it would hurt U.S. efforts to counter Hezbollah. 

«It doesn’t say anything about [whether] you can keep the Marines that are in the embassy,» Mast said, referring to the U.S. embassy in Beirut. «That’s a pretty big oversight. It doesn’t say anything about whether we can keep United States armed forces that are training missions with the LAF [Lebanese Armed Forces]. Again, pretty big oversight.»

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, attempted to bar U.S. forces from joining Israel’s war in Lebanon. (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg)

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The debate turned personal when Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, linked Tlaib to Hezbollah.

«Hezbollah is a terrorist organization … and its members are butchers that you like to hang out with to a certain extent,» the Ohio lawmaker said, referring to Tlaib.

A shouting match between the two then broke out, with Tlaib demanding that Miller’s remarks be stricken from the record.

The presiding chair ultimately complied with her request, but Miller doubled down on his remarks.

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«Yes, I said it. I own it, and I stand by it,» Mast said on behalf of Miller on the floor.

Tlaib’s failed war powers resolution comes as Iran has sought to tie Israel’s invasion of Lebanon to its ceasefire negotiations with the United States.

Hezbollah, which has long helped Iran project power in the region, rejected a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon’s government Thursday.