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CBP agents stand by a plane that's believed to have carried Mexican drug lord Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, who were arrested in El Paso, Texas.
Sinaloa cartel leaders arrested
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the leader and co-founder of the notorious Sinaloa cartel was arrested on Thursday in El Paso, Texas, along with Joaquin Guzmán Lopez, the son of imprisoned cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The two men are considered to be among the most powerful drug traffickers in Mexico, and this is a major victory for US law enforcement agencies that have hunted figures like Zambada for years.
Attorney General Merrick Garlandsaid the men face “multiple charges” for leading the cartel’s criminal operations, which include “its deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks.”
The DEA has directly attributed the deadly synthetic drug crisis in the US, involving substances like fentanyl and methamphetamine, to the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels and their associates.
“Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, and the Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,” Garland said.
A congressional report earlier this year pointed to fentanyl as the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-45. The opioid crisis is a major political issue in the US and has emerged as a key topic in the 2024 presidential election.
Though these arrests are a win for the Justice Department, experts doubt they will put a major dent in the drug trade — and suggest the arrests could lead to a spike in violence due to infighting that was already prevalent.
Political violence is on the rise again, at home and abroad
In a small town out in coal country, a lone assassin shoots a controversial populous leader. The leader miraculously survives, and his supporters blame the press and his political opponents for fomenting violence. Does that sound familiar? Months before Donald Trump was shot in Pennsylvania in the first assassination attempt of its kind in America in 40 years, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico took a bullet to the stomach during a visit to Central Slovakia. But Fico is just one of many leaders or high-level candidates who have been attacked in democracies around the world in recent years.
Across the democratic world, political violence and violent political language are becoming more common again as polarization deepens, viewpoints harden, and political differences start to feel like existential battles. Here in the US last year, there were more than 8,000 threats of violence against federal lawmakers alone, a tenfold increase since 2016. And as we head into the most contentious and high-stakes election in America's modern history, people are bracing for more. A poll taken just after the attempt on Trump's life showed that two-thirds of Americans think the current environment makes political violence more likely. Who is responsible for stopping this slide into violence? Is it our leaders, our media outlets, or our social media platforms? Is it ourselves? Unless things change, we will be lucky if it's another 40 years before this happens again in the US.
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Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador hands over a ceremonial baton of command to Claudia Sheinbaum after she was elected by the ruling National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) as its candidate to succeed him in 2024 in the presidential election, in Mexico City, Mexico September 7, 2023.
Mexico’s president-elect pushes controversial judicial reform
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.
Claudia Sheinbaum, presidential candidate of the ruling MORENA party, addresses her supporters after winning the election, in Mexico City, Mexico June 3, 2024.
Are Canada and Mexico set for a closer relationship?
Earlier this week, Claudia Sheinbaum became the first female president-elect in Mexico – and the first woman elected to lead a North American country. Canada was briefly led by Prime Minister Kim Campbell in the early 1990s, but she was appointed ahead of the 1992 election, which she lost.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t waste any time getting in touch and offering a typically effusive – and perhaps strategic – congratulations. A readout shared by his office says that Trudeau and Sheinbaum spoke about “areas of common interest and the strong bilateral relations between Canada and Mexico” and “underscored the importance of growing our economies and delivering fairness for every generation through the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.”
The subtext says more than the readout. As Donald Trump anxiety builds in Canada and concerns rise about the future of free trade between the US and Canada, experts are suggesting Canada and Mexico could be pushed closer together in the years to come, especially if a future Trump administration pursues a more aggressive protectionist agenda or attempts to bully Canada, Mexico, or both countries on trade, defense, and migration.
Sometimes a congratulations is just a congratulations, but in a world of shifting and uncertain geopolitical alliances and arrangements, sometimes it’s a way of opening a door.
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., May 31, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Trump takes to TikTok, Mexican mayor murdered, Shootout outside US Embassy in Beirut, A criminal epoch?, Spain’s menstrual law misses mark
5.2: From president to felon to social media influencer? Donald Trumpposted his first TikTok from a UFC fight last Saturday. He has already amassed over 5.2 million followers, beating Biden at his own game, who in 3 months has failed to even reach half a million followers. The app Trump once sought to ban as president has now become a part of his campaign for presidency as he hopes to woo the younger vote.
19: Within hours of Claudia Sheinbaum’s monumental presidential victory in Mexico, the mayor of Cotija, a town in western Mexico, was shot 19 times in an attack that killed her and her bodyguard. No arrests have been made since the assassination – another tragic example of Mexico’s rampant political violence.
1: A shootout involving one assailant occurred outside the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, on Wednesday. The gunman, identified by the Lebanese military as a Syrian national, was shot and wounded by Lebanese soldiers before being taken into custody and transferred to a local hospital for treatment. The motive is unknown, but the incident occurred amid simmering tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border that have led the Jewish state to warn it could soon launch an offensive against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
67: Weidong Guan, CFO of the Epoch Times, has been charged with one count of conspiring to commit money laundering and two counts of bank fraud in an alleged $67 million, four-year-long scheme involving cryptocurrency and prepaid credit cards. If convicted, Guan faces up to 80 years in prison.
1,559: On June 1, Spain celebrated the first anniversary of Europe’s first paid menstrual leave law. Surprisingly, it has only been taken 1,559 times, according to the country’s Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security, and Migration. While hailed as a step forward for feminism, the law has limited applicability – as it can only be used by those with previously diagnosed conditions like endometriosis.Political violence in Mexico
Graphic Truth: Mexico’s political murder problem
The Mexican political campaign season that concluded with the June 2, 2024, general election was the deadliest on record, with at least 34 candidates for local or state office killed during the preceding nine months.
According to observers at the Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City, nearly a third of the dead were members of current president Andres Manuel López Obrador’s ruling Morena party, whose candidate Claudia Sheinbaum won the presidential vote in a landslide.
Over the past two decades, homicides have soared in Mexico, driven in large part by the rise of powerful drug cartels warring for territory and markets. Between 2000 and 2018, the rate of killings more than tripled to 16 per 100,000 people, before coming down slightly in the years since.
But within that, there’s also been a staggering rise in political violence specifically. This includes assassinations of candidates, officials, human rights defenders, journalists, and other activists.
During the presidential term of Vicente Fox, between 2000 and 2006, there were a total of 58 such killings. In the current term of López Obrador, which extends until October, there have already been 500.
Here is a look at how political violence in Mexico has evolved over the past quarter of a century.
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, candidate for the Presidency of Mexico by Sigamos Haciendo Historia coalition shows a electoral ballot before casting their vote at a polling booth during the 2024 Mexico s general election on June 2, 2024,
Mexico elects first woman president — will she bring change?
Claudia Sheinbaum made history on Sunday, with preliminary results showing she won roughly 60% of the vote to become the first woman elected Mexico’s president. Her victory was never really in doubt, given the support she enjoyed from outgoing and immensely popular President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador. But that same popularity means it will be hard for Mexico’s first female president to emerge from her predecessor’s shadow.
Mexican presidents are limited to a single six-year term, but AMLO has pitched Sheinbaum as his loyal successor. He’s promised she will carry on the work of what he calls Mexico’s populist “Fourth Transformation” (the first three being Mexican Independence in 1821, the civil war of 1858-1861, and the revolution 1910-1917).
Her vote more than doubled the runner-up’s, and her party took 251 seats in the lower house and 60 in the Senate, which should give her so-called “qualified” majorities in both houses alongside coalition partners. In other words, she can change the constitution, and perhaps enact some of the controversial changes AMLO failed to implement.
When the fiesta dies down at Morena headquarters, Sheinbaum will face demands from voters to tackle cartel violence, the country’s historically high murder rate, and immigration – problems she has slim chances of resolving. On the latter issue, she’s at the mercy of Washington, as folks crossing her southern border with Guatemala are trying to get to the United States, not stay in Mexico. She won’t have a clear picture of the policy environment she can act within until the gringos vote in November.
And she’ll need to break away from AMLO’s “hugs not bullets” policy, which has utterly failed to protect Mexicans, especially women and girls, from the predations of drug traffickers. The trick will be doing so without implicitly criticizing her former boss.
“The challenge is to follow Lopez Obrador, manage an extremely challenging security situation, ensure macroeconomic fundamentals remain sound and potentially deal with Trump,” said Eurasia Group analyst Daniel Kerner, who was at Sheinbaum HQ on Sunday. “And if she tries to do the constitutional reforms, economic and social stability will suffer.”
Claudia Sheinbaum
Amid violence and polarization, Mexico prepares to elect first female leader
Mexicans go to the polls Sunday in a landmark election that will install the country’s first female president.
The front-runner, by some 20 points, is Claudia Sheinbaum, a trained physicist and former mayor of Mexico City, who is the candidate of popular incumbent President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador’s newish left-wing Morena party. Her main opponent is former Senator Xochitl Gálvez, representing an oddball coalition of centrist and center-right establishment parties that used to be rivals.
Voters are choosing between the two women against a backdrop of rising cartel violence, which AMLO’s “hugs not bullets” crime policy has failed to tamp down (dozens of candidates have been murdered ahead of local elections), as well as deepening political and social polarization.
López Obrador’s folksy style, hefty social spending, and personal frugality have earned him immense popularity, especially among Mexico’s working class and rural population. He is expected to loom large over his successor in any scenario. But in his crusade against the establishment and monied elites, he has also centralized political power in ways that have raised alarm among democracy advocates.
What to watch: Sheinbaum looks set to win the top job, and Morena is well positioned in down-ticket races to cement its role as the defining force in Mexican politics. Analysts say that the only question is whether Morena will win all of the key governor races or merely most of them.