With an annual budget of over $500 million, Fort Buchanan supports a military community of approximately 15,000 personnel from Active Duty, Reserve, National Guard, Marine Corps Reserve, and Navy ...

Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth during the signing of a bilateral agreement, in Panama City on April 9, 2025.

The United States will "take back" the Panama Canal from Chinese influence, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday during a visit to the Central American nation.

President Donald Trump himself has repeatedly said the U.S. is taking back the country’s canal, which was ceded to Panama in 1999 after a 20-year handover.

For over 40 years, Capt. Efraín Hallax, 73, has been steering vessels through the canal, and he has seen it all, from a dictator’s fall to the rise of U.S. interest in retaking the waterway.

Host Beryl Dakers interviews Senator Ernest F. Hollings about the Panama Canal Treaty. In this program, recorded December 8, 1977, Senator Ernest F. Hollings discusses the Panama Canal Treaty that ...

Chinese antitrust regulators are investigating a US consortium’s deal for two ports in the Panama Canal zone, delaying the deal’s closing that was originally set for next week.

Privately, Trump has told his advisers that he sees a U.S. military presence in Panama and on the canal itself as critical to that effort, the U.S. officials said.

They have a standing military of an estimated 80,000 personnel. The Panama Canal Zone is 50 miles long and 10 miles wide. The terrain is a mix of jungle, lakes, agricultural land and urban sprawl.

And they were visible everywhere in such suburbs as Albrook and Clayton, a former neighborhood and fort, respectively, in the previously U.S.-administered Panama Canal Zone.

The bill, named the Panama Canal Repurchase Act, was introduced by Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., a member of the Select Committee on China and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.