Day: November 20, 2025

• The 74th annual Miss Universe pageant was held in Bangkok early Friday local time.
• This year’s event included 120 women competing in swimsuit, evening gown, and interview rounds.
• Miss Mexico Fátima Bosch won the Miss Universe title after a drama-filled few weeks for the pageant.

After a drama-filled competition, Miss Mexico has been crowned the new Miss Universe.

Fátima Bosch, 25, was named the winner of the 74th annual Miss Universe competition in Bangkok on Friday morning local time (Thursday night in the US). She was crowned by Miss Universe 2024 Victoria Kjær Theilvig, the first woman from Denmark to win the title.

In second place was Miss Thailand, followed by Miss Venezuela and Miss Philippines.

Bosch’s crowning comes after weeks of controversy surrounding the Miss Universe competition, which kicked off with some drama of her own.

On November 4, the very first day of the pageant, Miss Thailand director Nawat Itsaragrisil, who hosted Miss Universe 2025, got into an argument with Bosch over a sponsorship event. Their exchange was caught on the Miss Thailand Facebook livestream and quickly went viral.

Miss Universe president Raul Rocha announced on the same day that he would restrict Itsaragrisil from attending future Miss Universe 2025 events. However, the director was photographed at many of the pageant’s events leading up to the crowning. He was also thanked during the live finals.

Just days before the Miss Universe finals, composer Omar Harfouch also dropped out as a judge, alleging that the organization had pre-selected the top 30 contestants through a “secret vote” that did not involve the official judges.

“I felt honored to be invited as an official judge, and I approached it with full integrity and artistic dedication,” he told Business Insider. “But that changed when I discovered the existence of a parallel selection committee acting independently from the official jury. That moment shifted everything — from trust to credibility.”

In an Instagram statement shared on November 18, the Miss Universe organization said Harfouch was confused by the organization’s use of a separate selection committee for the pageant’s “Beyond the Crown Program,” which celebrates the contestants’ charities.

“The Miss Universe Organization clarifies that this eight-person committee operates entirely independently from the official Miss Universe judging panel,” the statement said. “This committee does not evaluate the performance of the delegates during the 74th Miss Universe competition, nor do its decisions grant any additional points toward the final results.”

The Miss Universe Organization did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Hours after Harfouch resigned, Claude Makélélé — a former professional French soccer player — said he could no longer serve as a judge for the Miss Universe finals “due to unforeseen personal reasons.”

It remains to be seen if the chaos surrounding the Miss Universe competition will settle, but it now has a new queen to take the lead.

Bosch, the first Miss Mexico from Tabasco, has dedicated her career to sustainable fashion. She also volunteers to help children with cancer and partners with Corazón Migrante and Ruta Monarca on social initiatives to support migrants and environmental causes, according to her Miss Universe bio.

During the question round of the pageant, Bosch was asked what she thought the challenges of being a woman in the year 2025 were, and how she would use the title of Miss Universe to create a safe space for women around the world.

She said women, as well as Miss Universe titleholders, are here to “speak up” and “make change.”

“The brave ones that stand up are the ones that will make history,” she added.

She was also asked: “If you win the title of Miss Universe tonight, how would you use this platform to empower young girls?”

“As Miss Universe, I will say to them: ‘Believe in the power of your authenticity. Believe in yourself. Your dreams matter, your heart matters, and never let anyone make you doubt your worth,'” she said.

“Information has impact,” the Washington Post has insisted. And on Thursday, the paper showed how quickly its reporting could lead to results. At the same time, it got labeled as a purveyor of fake news because of the change it led to.

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“U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses as hate symbols,” the Post reported, citing publicly available updated guidelines set to take effect Dec. 15 that revised the description of the Nazi insignia and representation of lynchings to “potentially divisive.”

The reporting, which comes as the Trump Administration has pledged to combat antisemitism while the Defense Department (which the Coast Guard does not sit under) has criticized anti-harassment policy as “overly broad,” sparked immediate outcry from the public and members of Congress.

Rep. Rick Larsen (D, Wash.) posted on X: “Lynching is a federal hate crime. The world defeated the Nazis in 1945. The debate on these symbols is over. They symbolize hate. Coast Guard: be better.”

“This is disgusting,” Sen. Ed Markey (D, Mass.) posted. “We cannot let the Trump administration normalize hate.”

Rep. Lauren Underwood (D, Ill.) posted on X that she met with Coast Guard acting commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday, who “committed to publishing an updated version” of the policy later in the evening. “Displays of hate have no place in our armed services,” Underwood said.

Tara Copp, one of the two reporters of the Post story, said on X that the Coast Guard initially did not respond to requests for comment, but after publication, a Coast Guard spokesperson said that the Armed Forces branch disagreed with the story and that it would look into the policy and “will be reviewing the language” that apparently downgrades the classification of these symbols. Lunday also reportedly sent an email to the force afterwards that emphasized the symbols remained “prohibited.”

“The claims that the U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses or other extremist imagery as prohibited symbols are categorically false,” Lunday said in a statement posted on X. “These symbols have been and remain prohibited in the Coast Guard per policy.”

Lunday added that the Coast Guard “remains unwavering in its commitment to fostering a safe, respectful and professional workplace” and that “any display, use or promotion of such symbols, as always, will be thoroughly investigated and severely punished” as those symbols “violate our core values.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard, also blasted the Post’s report. “The @washingtonpost should be embarrassed it published this fake crap,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin posted on X. The DHS’s official X account also posted: “Y’all are just making things up now.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D, Hawaii) noted the apparent contradiction in the sequence of events in a post on X: “So they are not approving the policy change that was in the works because the Washington Post reported about it. Good. But that means the reporting was accurate.”