In her first press conference since winning the Mexican election in a landslide earlier this month, president-elect Claudia Sheinbaumbacked a highly controversial plan to introduce a popular vote for the country’s Supreme Court justices.
The reform is the brainchild of current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO, a charismatic left(ish) populist whose Morena party won a supermajority in Congress and fell just shy of one in the Senate.
Directly electing Supreme Court justices via popular vote would put Mexico in the company of just one other country that we know of: Bolivia, where AMLO’s ideological cousin Evo Morales instituted the practice in 2009.
AMLO and his supporters say the move would introduce more accountability to a system long dominated by corrupt elites.
But critics say it would dangerously politicize the justice system, upending the rule of law right as Mexico tries to catch an investment boom from “nearshoring” – that is, the trend of US-oriented companies moving their factories out of Asia as a way to skirt US-China trade tensions and avoid future global supply chain issues.
The skeptics could be right: The Mexican peso fell 2% after Sheinbaum’s comments.
People in support of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol rally near Seoul Central District Court in Seoul on Feb. 19, 2026. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment the same day for leading an insurrection with his short-lived declaration of martial law in December 2024.
65: The age of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday after being found guilty of plotting an insurrection when he declared martial law in 2024.
In an era when geopolitics can feel overwhelming and remote, sometimes the best messengers are made of felt and foam.
The Hungarian election is off to the races, and nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is facing his most serious challenger in 16 years.
Does skepticism rule the day in politics? Public opinion data collected as part of the Munich Security Conference’s annual report found that large shares of respondents in G7 and several BRICS countries believed their governments’ policies would leave future generations worse off.